Ruins of Empire

Friday Night Nonsense: Bizarre Zone

2009-11-13T09:44:00.001-04:00

clipped from www.questionablecontent.net

Friday Night Nonsense: Hammond's Audi RS6 vs Skiers French Alps Race - Top Gear - BBC

2009-11-06T08:21:00.001-04:00

Haven't done Top Gear for awhile, so enjoy the treat.

One crazy race, Top Gear stylez!

clipped from www.youtube.com

New row over Colombia-US accord

2009-11-05T15:00:00.001-04:00

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk

President Uribe's deal with the US has caused concern in the region

Colombian opposition groups have reacted angrily after details of a controversial military deal with the US were made public.

Under the 10-year deal, the US military will not only have access to military bases, but also be able to use major international civilian airports.

US personnel and defence contractors will also enjoy diplomatic immunity.

President Alvaro Uribe says the agreement will help rid Colombia of drugs gangs and left-wing rebel groups.

But leading opposition senator Gustavo Petro, of the left-wing PDA party, said the deal amounted to a virtual US occupation of Colombia.

They reveal that the US military will have access to seven Colombian army, navy and air force bases and also be able to use civilian airports under conditions that have still not been made clear.

The deal has led to a worsening of already strained ties between Colombia and Venezuela.

Venezuela has broken off diplomatic relations with Bogota and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has warned that Colombian military bases could be used by the US to attack his country.

Other countries in the region, including Brazil and Chile, have also expressed concern.

The BBC's Jeremy McDermott, in Colombia, says Colombia is increasingly isolated in the region, but does not seem to care, just so long as it has US support.

Saudi Royal Air Force carries strikes against Yemeni rebels

2009-11-05T14:59:00.001-04:00

clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com

SAN'A, Yemen — Saudi Arabia sent fighter jets and artillery bombardments across the border into northern Yemen on Thursday in a military incursion apparently aimed at helping its troubled southern neighbor control an escalating Shiite rebellion.

The Saudis – owners of a sophisticated air force they rarely use – have been increasingly worried that extremism and instability in Yemen could spill over to their country, the world's largest oil exporter. The offensive came two days after the killing of a Saudi soldier, blamed on the rebels.

The offensive immediately raised concerns of another proxy war in the Middle East between Iran and Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally. Shiite Iran is believed to favor the rebels in Yemen while Saudi Arabia, which is Sunni, is Iran's fiercest regional rival.

The same dynamic has played out in various forms in Lebanon, where Iran supports the Shiite militant Hezbollah and Saudi Arabia favors a U.S.-backed faction, and in Iraq, where Saudi Arabia and Iran have thrown support to conflicting sides in the Sunni-Shiite struggle.

A top Saudi government adviser confirmed "a large scale" military operation underway on the Saudi-Yemeni border with further reinforcements sent to the rugged, mountainous area.

"It is a sustained operation which aims to finish this problem on our border," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. He said Saudi troops were coordinating with Yemen's army, but Yemen's defense ministry denied the Saudis were inside the country.

The northern rebels, known as Hawthis, have been battling Yemeni government forces the past few months in the latest flare-up of a sporadic five-year conflict. They claim their needs are ignored by a Yemeni government that is increasingly allied wit

Jon Krakauer: McChrystal's Explanation For Pat Tillman Cover-up Is "Preposterous"

2009-11-02T10:00:00.001-04:00

clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com

Little attention has been paid to Gen. Stanley McChrystal's back-story and his rise to the height of military command of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Before becoming the voice of gravity and a champion of higher troop levels in the eight-year long war, McChrystal's resume was sullied by a controversy in that same theater: the misclassified death of Pat Tillman.

McChrystal was the head of Special Operations command in Afghanistan during Army Ranger (and former football star) Pat Tillman's death. McChrystal was the one who approved paperwork awarding Tillman a Silver Star despite knowing (or at least suspecting) that he had died in fratricide and not, as originally determined, enemy fire.

This was once a big embarrassment for the army and, to a lesser extent, McChrystal himself (though he has copped to making an innocent mistake). But when the general was elevated to top spot in Afghanistan this past spring, relatively few publications revisited the affair.

That may change. On Sunday, journalist Jon Krakauer joined the Meet the Press panel to discuss his new book on Tillman's death called Where Men Win Glory. Krakauer offered a harsh assessment of McChrystal's conduct during that period and even stressed that the General's explanations upon reflection were "preposterous" and "unbelievable."

Newt Gingrich Too Liberal?

2009-11-01T12:33:00.001-04:00

Oh boy!

clipped from www.youtube.com

Friday Night Nonsense: HL2 - Civil Protection: Halloween Safety (Ross Scott)

2009-10-30T12:46:00.001-04:00

clipped from www.youtube.com

Friday Night Nonsense: He just yelled fire in a crowded theatre.

2009-10-23T09:09:00.001-04:00

clipped from www.xkcd.com

CNN's Fareed Zakaria interviews author Tom Ricks - Afghanistan & Pakistan

2009-10-20T16:47:00.001-04:00

Interesting stuff, although you have to take what Ricks says with a grain of salt. He is enamored with America's Imperial view of itself to see through it's weaknesses.

clipped from www.youtube.com

Scientist spying for Israel busted by the FBI

2009-10-20T10:51:00.001-04:00

clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com

WASHINGTON — A scientist credited with helping discover evidence of water on the moon was arrested Monday on charges of attempting to pass along classified information to an FBI agent posing as an Israeli intelligence officer.

Stewart David Nozette, 52, of Chevy Chase, Md., was charged in a criminal complaint with attempting to communicate, deliver and transmit classified information, the Justice Department said.

Nozette was arrested by FBI agents and is expected to make his initial appearance in federal court in Washington on Tuesday. Law enforcement officials said Nozette did not immediately have a lawyer.

At Energy, Nozette held a special security clearance equivalent to the Defense Department's top secret and "critical nuclear weapon design information" clearances. DOE clearances apply to access to information specifically relating to atomic or nuclear-related materials.

An affidavit suggests why FBI agents posed as agents of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad to conduct the sting operation.

From 1998 to 2008, the complaint alleges, Nozette was a technical adviser for a consultant company that was wholly owned by the Israeli government. Nozette was paid about $225,000 over that period, the court papers say.

Then, in January of this year, Nozette allegedly traveled to another foreign country with two computer thumb drives and apparently did not return with them. Prosecutors also quote an unnamed colleague of Nozette who said the scientist said that if the U.S. government ever tried to put him in jail for an unrelated criminal offense, he would go to Israel or another foreign country and "tell them everything" he knows.

The complaint does not allege that the government of Israel or anyone acting on its behalf violated U.S. law. In Jerusalem, Israeli government officials had no immediate comment.

The affidavit by FBI agent Leslie Martell s

GOP House members call for investigation of Muslim political activity

2009-10-16T10:03:00.001-04:00

Just to underscore how extremist the House GOP caucus is, this hysteria is all based on a new book entitled "Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America." That's the source which these House members are using. In fact, one of the GOP House members, Rep. Sue Myrick of North Carolina, wrote the foreword to the book. One of the two authors of that book, Dave Gaubatz, maintains this website, where he's hawking the book through Paypal.

In 2006, Gaubatz created a project called "Mapping Sharia in America", the purpose of which was to create a comprehensive map of every mosque and Islamic school in the U.S. This is what he wrote:

It is our task to conduct an extensive mapping of all the Islamic day schools, mosques, and other identifiable organizations in the US and to determine which ones teach or preach Islamic law, Sharib.

clipped from www.salon.com

This might actually be the most despicable domestic political event of the year:

A group of House Republicans is calling for an investigation into whether a leading American Muslim advocacy group tried to "spy" on congressional offices by placing interns on key security committees.

Rep. Sue Myrick, North Carolina Republican, cited an internal January 2007 memo in which the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) discussed placing Muslim interns on Capitol Hill to "focus on influencing congressmen responsible for policy that directly impacts the American Muslim community."

While the Republicans said they did not know of specific legislation that CAIR had affected, Franks, a Judiciary Committee member, said he wouldn’t be surprised if it was trying to amend the Patriot Act.

Sean Hannity helps Jerome Corsi promote his black-helicopter 'New World Order' conspiracy theories

2009-10-14T15:26:00.001-04:00

clipped from crooksandliars.com

Sean Hannity hosted not one but two whole segments last night devoted promoting the new book by Jerome Corsi -- godfather of the Swift-Boating of John Kerry -- titled America For Sale, which is basically an extended black-helicopter-style conspiracy tome straight out of the Patriot movement of the 1990s, updated for the new century.

This is a classic case of conservatives mainstreaming extremist ideas. I haven't read all of Corsi's book yet, but it differs very little in ideas and content and overall thesis from the kinds of books you could buy at militia-meeting tables in the '90s.

I haven't yet found whether Corsi decided to include his recent reportage for WorldNetDaily detailing the nefarious Obama conspiracy to round up conservatives and imprison them in concentration camps. Hannity managed to not bring up that point last night.

But yes, that's what Corsi wrote:

Funny, I still have a Militia of Montana book that outlines this very same nefarious plot being concocted by Bill Clinton.

As Steven Thomma explained for McClatchy:

In truth, Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., has proposed a bill that would order the Homeland Security Department to prepare national emergency centers — to provide temporary housing and medical facilities in national emergencies such as hurricanes. The bill also would allow the centers to be used to train first responders, and for "other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security.

Puerto Rico: Massive Layoffs and a Scramble to Resist

2009-10-10T20:30:00.001-04:00

clipped from mikeely.wordpress.com

Workers at the University of Puerto Rico joined September protests against Law 7, which enables thousands of layoffs in the public workforce. Photo: pr.indymedia.org

Governor Luis Fortuño announced in late September that nearly 17,000 public employees in Puerto Rico will lose their jobs by November, in addition to the nearly 8,000 laid off over the summer. The layoffs in total would reduce the public workforce by about 12 percent.

The government claims the massive layoffs, authorized by a notorious law that tramples on workers’ rights, are necessary to offset a huge budget deficit, estimated at $3.2 billion.

Approved in March, Law 7 authorizes the government to bypass both collective bargaining and existing labor laws that bar the unjustified firing of public employees. Additional measures provide for “Public-Private Alliances,” which open the door to outsource public services to private entities.

clipped from www.primerahora.com

Critics say the layoffs, together with unprecedented budget cuts, will have a devastating impact on workers and their families—in addition to crippling many government agencies, including those that provide basic services and serve vulnerable groups, such as battered women and the elderly.

Friday Night Nonsense: Photoshop 101

2009-10-09T09:03:00.001-04:00

For those bathroom pics you absolutely must send to soft porn websites.

clipped from www.questionablecontent.net

Republicans Oppose Al Franken's Law on Protecting Victims of Gang Rape

2009-10-08T10:48:00.001-04:00

clipped from www.youtube.com

Well, that ONE vision of America.

2009-10-07T22:40:00.001-04:00

Militaristic, dogmatic and with no room for the opposition. Yeah....

clipped from www.mcnaughtonart.com

The Power of Symbolism

Tree of Life on front of robe represents the love of God

Sash has ancient Hebrew writing of Psalm 33:12

Christ's hand points to the U.S. Constitution, the young boy, and the people representing the strength of America

Fifty stars shine in the sky representing the states of the Union -- some stars shine brighter than others

Patriotic heroes speaking and pleading from the dust to all Americans living today

Five generations of soldiers from the Revolutionary War era to the modern day U.S. Marine

Supreme Court Justice with hands on face, feeling remorse for damage to America through rulings on controversial court cases

Gun Show Undercover

2009-10-07T16:13:00.001-04:00

clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com

Ever wonder how criminals are able to get guns so easily? It's depressingly simple. On any given weekend, at dozens of gun shows held in states across the country -- criminals can buy guns from "private sellers" who are not required to perform background checks.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has identified gun shows as the source of more than 30% of all illegally trafficked guns in the country. Those are the guns most likely to be used in crimes -- and to kill innocent people, including police officers.

Today, New York City is releasing the results of a multi-state investigation into this activity: "Gun Show Undercover." We sent investigators with hidden cameras to seven gun shows across Ohio, Tennessee and Nevada, and we found out just how easy it is for criminals and the mentally ill to walk in and buy guns -- no questions asked.

Our investigator tells a seller that he "probably couldn't pass" a background check and tests a gun.

Glenn "Chicken Little" Beck, the lowest of the low.

2009-10-06T12:56:00.001-04:00

clipped from crooksandliars.com

Glenn Beck seems to be irked at the people digging into his past. But then, that's because his past is truly a disgusting thing to behold. I wouldn't want people looking at it either, if mine were anything remotely like Beck's.

He ranted about it last night on his Fox News show. He thinks we should be paying more attention to his phony "scandals" than to just what kind of character we're watching implore us to seek greater moral goods (as he sees them) every night.

He's no doubt thinking of Alexander Zaitchik's impressive three part series in Salon, the first of which does indeed point out that his mother's death remains a mystery -- and that Beck's own later assertion that it was a suicide was a peculiar event.

Beck was known as "the king of dirty tricks," including an invasion of Kelly's wedding.

The animosity between Beck and Kelly continued to deepen. When Beck and Hattrick produced a local version of Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" for Halloween -- a recurring motif in Beck's life and career -- Kelly told a local reporter that the bit was a stupid rip-off of a syndicated gag. The slight outraged Beck, who got his revenge with what may rank as one of the cruelest bits in the history of morning radio. "A couple days after Kelly's wife, Terry, had a miscarriage, Beck called her live on the air and says, 'We hear you had a miscarriage,' " remembers Brad Miller, a former Y95 DJ and Clear Channel programmer. "When Terry said, 'Yes,' Beck proceeded to joke about how Bruce [Kelly] apparently can't do anything right -- about he can't even have a baby."

Now the Bible is Too Liberal for Conservatives

2009-10-05T17:40:00.001-04:00

clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com

Lo and behold, the Bible has gotten too liberal, according to a group of conservatives. And it needs a little editing.

That's the inspiration behind the Conservative Bible Project, which seeks to take the text back to its supposed right-wing roots.

Yes, even scripture is not orthodox enough for the modern conservative. Not that it's the fault of the author(s), exactly. The group cites a few reasons why the Bible is too progressive: "Lack of precision in the original language ... lack of precision in modern language" and "translation bias in converting the original language to the modern one."

1. Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias

4. Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop;[4] defective translations use the word "comrade" three times as often as "volunteer"; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as "word", "peace", and "miracle".

6. Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.
7. Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning

Among the words to be eliminated: "government." A conservative columnist at Beliefnet described the effort as "just crazy ... like what you'd get if you crossed the Jesus Seminar with the College Republican chapter at a rural institution of Bible learnin'.

8 Troops Killed In Afghanistan; Remote Outposts Attacked

2009-10-04T10:32:00.001-04:00

clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com

KABUL — Militant fighters streaming from an Afghan village and a mosque attacked a pair of remote outposts near the Pakistani border, killing eight U.S. soldiers and as many as seven Afghan forces in one of the fiercest battles of the eight-year war.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the deadliest attack for coalition forces since a similar raid in July 2008 killed nine American soldiers in the same mountainous region known as an al-Qaida haven. The U.S. has already said it plans to pull its soldiers from the isolated area to focus on Afghan population centers.

Fighting began around dawn Saturday and lasted several hours, punctuated by American airstrikes. Jamaludin Badar, governor of Nuristan province, said the two outposts were on a hill – one near the top and one at the foot of the slope – flanked by the village on one side and the mosque on the other.

Nuristan, bordering Pakistan, was where a militant raid on another outpost in July 2008 claimed the lives of nine American soldiers and led to allegations of negligence by their senior commanders. Army Gen. David Petraeus last week ordered a new investigation into that fighting, in which some 200 militants armed with machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars pushed their way into the base, which is no longer operating.

The region was key for Arab militants who battled alongside Afghan warriors during the 1980s U.S.-backed war against invading Russians because it is a rare place in South Asia where the Wahhabi sect of Islam is practiced – the same sect followed by Osama bin Laden and most Saudis.

Friday Night Nonsense: Simon's Cat ' Hot Spot'

2009-10-02T08:51:00.001-04:00

clipped from www.youtube.com

Death Merchants: Rick Scott profits off the uninsured

2009-09-30T09:35:00.001-04:00

clipped from www.salon.com

YouTube screenshots

Rick Scott, foreground.

Yet even as Scott makes the rounds of Congress and talk-show green rooms, a wrongful death lawsuit has been working its way through the Florida courts against a doctor employed by the chain of walk-in clinics Scott founded. Scott has repeatedly bragged that the 27-clinic, Florida-based company, Solantic, is an example of the free-market ingenuity needed to fix our ailing medical infrastructure. The lawsuit, however, alleges a Solantic doctor misdiagnosed a patient's deep-vein thrombosis as a sprained ankle, leading to a pulmonary embolism and death. That same doctor was reprimanded by the state for misdiagnosing deep-vein thrombosis in a patient who died two years earlier. It's the kind of anecdote you'd expect to hear in Scott's documentary -- except that it condemns a free-market system where profit and patient volume may take precedence over care.

And this isn't the first time that Scott's warnings about the ills of socialist medicine have found an ironic echo in his own healthcare business. Scott argues that socialized medicine rations care and strangles competition, yet just after his first stint as anti-reform spokesman in the 1990s, while he was running the world's largest healthcare company, he was accused of monopolizing markets and choking out the competition while slashing the chain's costs to the point that it affected patient care. And while he asserts that two of the core principles of healthcare reform are "accountability" and "personal responsibility," Scott ran a company that ultimately pleaded guilty to defrauding the government in one of the nation's largest Medicare frauds ever. Two executives went to prison, the company paid almost $2 billion in fines, and Scott was pushed out of the company. Before he could retake the political stage, he had to build his healthcare business all over again.

Will NATO's 60th Anniversary Be Its Last?

2009-09-29T17:01:00.002-04:00

clipped from www.tomdispatch.com

If you think the Afghan War is increasingly unpopular in the United States, try Europe. A recent German Marshall Fund poll offered these figures on the question of the "share of population who want to reduce or withdraw troops" from that country: Romania, 71%; Poland, 68%; United Kingdom, 60%; Germany, 57%; Italy, 55%; Spain, 54%; France, 51%; Netherlands, 50%. When NATO took on its initial reconstruction role in Afghanistan -- a show of support for the U.S. and a pledge to help clean up its post-invasion mess -- it seemed a major step in the expansion of an alliance with the word "Atlantic" prominently in its name. It also represented something else seldom commented on: the long-term inability of junior partner Europe -- former French President Charles de Gaulle excepted -- to say "no" to whatever Washington desired.

Afghanistan: NATO's Graveyard?

Celebrating its 60th birthday this year, NATO is looking peaked and significantly worse for wear.

Frankly, it should be.

The painful truth is that NATO may be suffering from a terminal illness. Its current mission in Afghanistan, the alliance's most significant and far-flung muscle-flexing to date, might be its last. Afghanistan has been the graveyard of many an imperial power from the ancient Macedonians to the Soviets. It now seems to be eyeing its next victim.

For NATO, this year should have been a celebration, not a dirge. After suffering a transatlantic rift of epic proportions during the Bush years, the alliance thrilled to the election of Barack Obama and his politics of conciliation. The new American administration swore it would shift troops from Iraq to Afghanistan to give NATO more of what it wanted to fight "the right war." Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton both promised to push the "reset button" on U.S.-Russian relations, potentially removing one of the greatest obstacles to NATO's health and well-being. And in a final flourish for the alliance's diamond jub

Meanwhile, in the United States, both elite and public opinion is turning against the war. With the American economy still reeling from recession, President Obama faces a guns-vs-butter dilemma that threatens to wreck his domestic agenda as surely as the Vietnam War deep-sixed Lyndon Johnson's Great Society reforms of the 1960s. No surprise then that the president is ambivalent about following his top general's request to send yet more U.S. troops to fight in what the press now calls "Obama's War."

Not so long ago, pundits were calling for a global NATO that would expand its power and membership to include U.S. partners in Asia and elsewhere. This hubris has given way to despair and discord. Although the United States still holds out hope for a NATO that focuses on global threats like terrorism and nuclear proliferation, other alliance members would prefer to refocus on the traditional mission of defending Europe. Add in disagreements between the United States and its allies over how to approach the Afghan situation and NATO begins to look more like a rugby scrum than a military alliance.

Friday Night Nonsense: Free

2009-09-25T12:10:00.001-04:00

clipped from www.xkcd.com

Netanyahu's speech / Cheapening the Holocaust

2009-09-25T11:06:00.001-04:00

clipped from www.haaretz.com

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cheapened the memory of the Holocaust in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday. He did so twice. Once, when he brandished proof of the very existence of the Holocaust, as if it needed any, and again when he compared Hamas to the Nazis.

If Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denies the Holocaust, Netanyahu cheapens it. Is there a need of proof, 60 years later? Or, the world might think, is the denier right?

nd it is doubtful that any historian of stature would buy the comparison the prime minister made between Hamas and the Nazis, or between the London Blitz and the Qassam rockets on Sderot. In the Blitz, 400 German bombers and 600 fighter planes killed 43,000 people and destroyed more than one million homes. Hamas' Qassams, perhaps the most primitive weapon in the world, have killed 18 people in eight years. Yes, they sowed great terror - but a Blitz?

And if we can compare a poorly equipped terrorist organization to the horrific Nazi killing machine, why should others not compare the Nazis' behavior to that of Israel Defense Forces soldiers? In both cases, the comparison is baseless and infuriating.

Netanyahu began the speech as if he were chairman of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial - Holocaust, Holocaust, Holocaust; his family and his wife's family. Then he spoke in Shimon Peres' terms, proposing a "rosy future" to humanity.

No less demagogic was his attack on the Iranian regime. They shoot demonstrators there, he protested vehemently. As if they don't do that in our Bil'in and Na'alin.

Then came the kicker: Operation Cast Lead was a pinpoint attack. Israel telephoned thousands of people to tell them to leave their homes. Where to, Mr. Prime Minister? Into the sea? He said the IDF, which killed nearly 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, exhibited unprecedented restraint.