Somehow the media has gotten away from reporting the news. Back in October, an estimated 100,000 people (according to the Capitol Police) gathered for an anti-war protest. Most media organizations, if they reported all, claimed the number was 10,000 and sent their reporters off to cover the sniper shootings.
After protests from Fair and other organizations, some outlets published corrections, but CNN's reponse was to yank the story off their website completely. You'd think an outfit Rush Limbaugh calls the Communist News Network would be relishing anti-government protests, but that something else entirely.
So what's the deal? News is stil news, right? Well, in addition to corporate ownership of networks and papers, the media still want to appear patriotic,. Combined with official government sources that consider anyone against the Homeland Security Act, the USA Patriot Act, or War to be unpatriotic freaks, we get a scenario where such events are just not news unless there's a riot to spin.
Glad I am that we have a free press...
Strange, isn't it, that all of a sudden the White House is saying that we've been getting ready to pressure the Saudis on their ties to terrorists? Supposedly the plan is to show the House of Saud the evidence, and tell them to "take care of it". If after 90 days, no action is taken, we'll do it ourselves. No details have been releaseed on what that means. Probably some pathetic, poorly-conceived sanctions.
My thought is that if we're going to drop bombs in the Middle East, Riyadh is where we should start. I'm not too worried aboutt he consequences to US troops in Saudi Arabia -- their combat readiness is so much higher than our desert "allies" that those battles would likely be quick and bloody for the Saudi Army.
Anyone who thinks otherwise should really check out some Saudi media outlets.
Predictably, the House of Saud denies everything, saying that it's all baseless and ridiculous. The even deny torturing Westerners they accuse of crimes, though they will admit that it's probably a bad idea to torture and release accountants. Saudi jusice makes the nonsense going on here look like the height of liberalism.
We need to start using more renewable energy and demand improved gas mileage for our vehicles and cut these guys loose.
After Republicans snuck a clause protecting Eli Lilly from potential autism related lawsuits in the Homeland Security Act, the Department of Justice is trying to seal the evidence in related suits that attempt to link the mercury-derived preservative in many childhood vaccines to autism, so they can't be used by plaintiffs in the future.
This, combined with some of the forced vaccination clauses in the Homeland Security Actr can only be a pay-off to big pharma comanies that have supported the Republicans during the past several years, including campaign contributions to the President.
It appears that Florida's audit of the state employee pension fund was delayed by Health and Human Services' Inspector General Janet Rehnquist (the Chief Justice's daughter) in order to prevent the results from coming out during Jeb Bush's re-election campaign. The audit was originally scheduled to start in April, but was delayed for 5 months to accomodate the "transition" of the pension fund's directors. On of Ms. Rehnquist's former aides said that he had never seen any audits delayed in this manner in 25 years on the job.
You'd think that after all of the media attention pointed at Florida elections, the people involved would at least try to keep things looking like there were no political games going on. This isn't to say that the audit would have deifinitely turned up anything negative, but the circumstances seem to indicate that there was an effort made to prevent any negative press from coming until after the November election. It just makes me wonder if there really was some political back-door dealing going on.
The big-money guys are in the news again, and I'm not talking about the tame retirement savings, accounting errors stuff, either. We're talking corporate corruption of the slave-labor, right-wing fascist, government approved torture kind of corporate corruption. Ok, maybe the slave labor thing is a stretch.
The newest scandal is that, like Mercedes-Benz, Ford Motor Company, was directly involved in Argentina's "dirty war" back in the 1970's. Apparently, several Ford employees were not only detained by the Argentine military, but were held and tortured on Ford property for over a year. Ford Motor company and Ford Argentina are claiming no knowledge of these acts, but do admit that Ford had a relationship with the Argentine military in order to provide protection from dissidents for Ford executives.
Of course, news that Mercedes might be involved in this type of behavior should be no surprirse after their involvement with the Nazis during World War II, but to find an American company condoning this sort of action is appalling. This is a reminder that the excesses of the past -- the United Fruit Company, for instance, are really not that far gone.
The big revelation this weekend seems to be that the Saudis are supporting terrorists, and that members of the government, or the Royal Family might have been giving the perpetrators of the World Trade Center Attacks financial support. Like this is news. Anyone with a passing familiarity of Saudi poltics, Wahhabism, or non-US news sources is well aware of potential links between the House of Saud and al-Qaeda (and similar) organizations.
The main difference of opinion between the House of Saud and al-Qaeda is that the House of Saud wants to use US forces to defend Saudi Arabia again external attack. Al-Qaeda seems to think that the US presence in Saudi Arabia is just that sort of attack. On matters of religion, though, there isn't much difference. Both subscribe to an ultra-extreme brand of Islam, both view western ideas and lifestyles as corrupting.
The fact of the matter is that al-Qaeda and organizations like it are used by the Saudi government to distract radical elements from problems in Saudi Arabia that range frmo under employment to the totalitarian regime in place there. Any skepticism regarding this can be easily overcome by reading English translations of official Saudi media outlets denouncing the United States and praising terrorists.
Of course, you wouldn't know this by listening to the White House. Ties between the Bush family and the House of Saud are many and long-lasting, and with US reliance on oil and our bases in Saudi Arabia means that the chances of the US Government denouncing Saudi ties to terrorists are quite small.
So what can we do? Enough people contacting their elected representatives might have an effect, but it isn't likely. Exerting pressure on businesses who deal with the Saudis might help more, but when was the last time corporate America showed any sign of listening to the people? The best bet, other than spreading the information around, is to contact television news outlets and other mainstream media organizations.
Only media pressure or gigantic, Vietnam-era style street protests are likely to have any effect on this Administration, with with the aparent apathy of the American people, only on of those is likely.
Maybe I'm over-reacting a bit, but I doubt it. The Detroit Free Press is reporting about a little known Federal law that allows police to stop you and demand proof of citizenship at any spot within 100 air miles of the border. It also allows them to search your vehicle. The law says that they can perform the search without probable cause.
My question is this: although non-citizens must carry identification at all times, no law requires citizens to carry ID unless they happen to be operating a motor vehicle. What happens to non-white citizens who have a foreign accent and don't happen to have proof of citizensip on them? Do they get scooped up in a dragnet and sent off to jail?
What about the Fourth Amendment? It doesn't apply only to citizens, it applies to everyone within the borders of the United States and its territories. That means to be stopped and searched, there has to be probable cause, or a reason for the officer to believe that you have committed a crime. Since when is being within 100 miles of the border a crime?
This law has evidently been used for several years in the American Southwest as a tool to apprehend illegal aliens and drug smugglers, and people there have just "gotten used to it". That's right Americans are now getting used to having their rights infringed upon without complaint, just like those who lived in the old Soviet Bloc.
We can combine the checkpoints with passage of the Homeland Security Act, which, among other things, creates a cabinet level Department of Homeland Security. This new department is subject to almost no oversight, doesn not have to abide by the Freedom of Information Act, and its federal employees are not covered by whistle blower laws and are not granted normal civil service protections. They serve, like political appointees, at the pleasure of the President.
The little known Cyber Security Enhancement Act was also embedded into the new law. This lovely piece of work would "allow Net surveillance to gather telephone numbers, IP addresses, and URLs or e-mail information without recourse to a court, where an "immediate threat to a national security interest" is suspected. ISPs will also be permitted to hand users' records over to law enforcement authorities, overturning current legislation that outlaws such behaviour." It also creates a new punishment for Hackers: life in prison. That's right, if the federales decide that a guy vandalizing a web site is threat to others, he could rot at Fort Leavenworth for the rest of his days.
Further ammunition for the conspiracy theorists among us is provided by the Office of Information Awareness, headed by Iran-Contra felon Admiral John Poindexter (USN, retired), with its eye-pyramid, Illuminati themed logo. I'm not sure what this group is really for, but their website claims that they will be researching inromation technology to find means to ferret out terrorists. Given Admiral Poindexter's past, the results are not likely to be anything good for personal privacy. I notice that they seem to think they should have the right to monitor credit card purchases, among other things.
Finally, the FBI's terror watch list has spiralled out of control and is being distributed to local law enforcement and private enterprise. No one can quite tell how people are added to the list, or if there is a procedure to take them off. I'm left wondering if this list is the same one that is being used to keep peace activists off airplanes, and what the definition of "terrorist" is these days.
It's nice to know that we live in a place where our government cares enough to want to know everything about us that there is to know.
Over the long lay-off, I decided to go back to school to finish my Masters degree. Unfortunately, I didn't decide soon enough to start in the fall semester, so I'm shooting for this Spring. No big deal right? I've taken the GRE before, got my letters of recommendation, application, writing samples, transcripts. Too bad I took the GRE back in 1993. They only keep your scores for five years these days. So I had to take it again. Having done that, my main comments is this: If I ever have to take a standardized test again, it will be too soon.
The GRE has changed a bit since I last took it. When I took it back in 1993, with my college Statistics, Finite Mathematics, and Formal Logic courses still firmly entenched in my mind, it seemed like an easier version of the SAT. Same environment, same format, and I received a higher score. Times have definitely changed.
I took the test at a Sylvan Prometric, which had technical problems with their computer system. This delayed my test two hours. I did the whole rigamarole, even attesting that I would not divulge the contents of the test. No problem. I went to my assigned computer in the crowded testing room, and logged into the test. I was immediately hit with the "new" Analytical Writing Assesment.
The Writing Assessment has replaced the old IQ test Analytical portion of the GRE. I was not prepared for it to be the first thing I saw. I was in the mood for a nice set of Antonyms, or even some old-fashioned Algebra. So I wrote two pretty mind-numbing essays for an hour and a half. I decided that a middle of the road score of 4 (out of 6) would be just fine with me.
The Verbal section was pretty straight forward, with the exception that the more questions you get right, the harder the test becomes. Harder questions, result in higher scores. By the time I was done, I didn't even recognize the words involved as being English, much less know what they meant.
The Math section went as I expected. It was long. It was tedious. Toward the end, I was just picking answers that looked close. Not the best way to take a test. The Math section is also formatted strangely. In addition to the familiar problems where you just answer a question, there were comparson questsions, where you have to determine a relationhip between two columns of mathematical information.
Needless to say, by the time I was done, I thought my brain was going to ooze out my ears.