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Frogs
ABC documentary on 9/11
[Quote:]
The Senate Democratic leadership just threatened Disney’s broadcast license. Not the use of the word “trustee” at the beginning of the letter and “trust” at the end. This is nothing less than an implicit threat that if Disney tries to meddle in the US elections on behalf of the Republicans, they will pay a very serious price when the Democrats get back in power, or even before.
This raises the stakes incredibly for Disney.
And if you wonder how much influence a network has on the production of series like that, read this..
Al Jazeera Shows Tape of bin Laden and Planners of 9/11
[Quote:]
Five years ago, in the soaring mountains of Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden met with some of the men involved in planning the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. He had a video camera rolling to document the moment.
On Thursday, four days before the fifth anniversary of the attack, that tape was made public and broadcast on the news channel Al Jazeera, allowing Al Qaeda once again to command headlines, even as its leaders remain in hiding and its organization apparently has been fractured.
Perhaps somebody could notify the FBI – Osama is currently on their Top Ten Most Wanted list, but the reason he’s on that list is, ehm, not quite complete:
[Quote:]
USAMA BIN LADEN IS WANTED IN CONNECTION WITH THE AUGUST 7, 1998, BOMBINGS OF THE UNITED STATES EMBASSIES IN DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANIA, AND NAIROBI, KENYA. THESE ATTACKS KILLED OVER 200 PEOPLE. IN ADDITION, BIN LADEN IS A SUSPECT IN OTHER TERRORIST ATTACKS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD.
Note: no word of 9/11 whatsoever on that page…
One of the hardest parts…
“One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror.”
Pres. Bush, CBS Evening News, 9/6.
Yeah, especially when the lies start contradicting each other and stuff. Lying is hard work!
And so he stayed home
[Quote:]
On the Fourth of July in 2002, John Gilmore set out to fly from the West Coast to Washington, D.C. As things turned out, he never made the trip, mainly because the airline security folks wouldn’t let him board a plane. He hasn’t flown commercially from that day to this.
[..]
The facts are not in dispute. Gilmore’s petition identifies him as a founding employee of Sun Microsystems in California. On this Independence Day he intended to manifest his own independence by a dramatic gesture: He would fly to the nation’s capital — or attempt to fly there — and make a personal appeal to Congress. He would urge a law that would prohibit the airlines from demanding that passengers identify themselves as a condition for coming aboard.
(It is a measure of Gilmore’s idealism, or naivete, that he expected to appeal to members of Congress on the weekend of the Fourth of July. On this weekend, believe me, this town is as empty as a beer barrel after a bikers’ party.)
Sure enough, at the Southwest Airlines ticketing counter in Oakland, gate agents obliged him by asking for identification. He asked what authority they had for thus invading his privacy. They were unable, or unwilling, to cite chapter and verse. It was just something the FAA required. After some sparring around, the agents offered to give him a boarding pass if he would submit to a pat-down, a shoe search, a body scan by handheld magnetometer and a hand search of his luggage. This may have been a deal he couldn’t refuse, but he refused anyhow and left. Later the same day he tried his luck at the San Francisco airport. Same story.
[..]
Gilmore’s counsel asked to see the text of this gauzy ordinance. Judge Illston said the text couldn’t be disclosed to her at the District Court level, so — go ask the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. He did as told. After much haggling and a secret “in camera” inspection, the Court of Appeals decided that Gilmore’s baggage could be tumbled under the authority of an “administrative order.”
This “order,” sometimes called a “security directive,” is of uncertain provenance. Whatever it is, the appellate court concluded that its text “does not have to be disclosed to the petitioner.” It just has to be obeyed.
Obey, Citizen!
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Kampung Jabor
A python sits on a road after swallowing a pregnant ewe in the village of Kampung Jabor, about 200 km (124 miles) east of Kuala Lumpur, on September 5, 2006. The six-metre reptile weighing 90 kg (198.5 lbs) was too laden to move, making it easy for firemen to capture it, said a local daily newspaper.
De vergrijzing
In een normaal jaar: “Hoe houden we de AOW betaalbaar?”
In een verkiezingsjaar: We gaan de AOW verhogen!
Wartime Nazi code cracker rebuilt
[Quote:]
A code-cracking machine that enabled Britain to read Nazi military ciphers during World War Two has been rebuilt by enthusiasts after a 10-year project.
The replica British Turing Bombe — a large cabinet covered in dials and full of electromagnetic machinery — was displayed for the first time on Wednesday.
Fittingly, it was unveiled at Bletchley Park, 25 miles north of London, the country house that was once the most secret place in Britain, where codebreakers toiled around the clock to decipher German military communications.
By the end of the war in 1945 there were 200 of the so-called Bombes at Bletchley but once hostilities ceased they were all dismantled.
It was only in the 1970s that the veil of secrecy was lifted and the story emerged of how Bletchley Park and its Bombes helped crack the Nazi’s Enigma code.
For contrast W’s response to the August 6 PDB, see this. Clinton’s administration stopped terrorist actions before they happened by listening to well informed people like John O’Neill, not ignoring them (see Iraq). Perhaps we wouldn’t have this 9-11 clusterf*ck if W,et al, were more into fighting terrorism and less into making money. Then again, like 2002 and 2004, the Republicans seek to *benefit* politically from 9-11. And I thought the Republican rhetoric of the 1980′s was cynical and duplicitous.