Monday, August 14, 2006

Quickies

Curtailing rights was supposed to make us safer from terrorists. Yet, as demonstrated last week in Britain, it hasn't. Still, Michael Chertoff assures us that if we curtail more rights, then the world will be safer. What happened in Britain was that a neighbor tipped off police to the suspects and then good investigation techniques were followed. No curtailing of rights was needed to capture the alleged terrorists.

It shouldn't be any problem for Chertoff to get the measures he wants. According to the Boston Globe, most representatives in Congress don't bother reading the wording of intelligence bills - they just vote for them trusting the administration. Note: That's Republicans and Democrats alike.

Seymour Hersch:
According to a Middle East expert with knowledge of the current thinking of both the Israeli and the U.S. governments, Israel had devised a plan for attacking Hezbollah—and shared it with Bush Administration officials—well before the July 12th kidnappings...

The Israeli plan, according to the former senior intelligence official, was “the mirror image of what the United States has been planning for Iran.”
Robert Fisk has written several articles on Lebanon from his home in Beirut. From the latest:
The US saw this war as an opportunity to humble Hizbollah's Iranian and Syrian sponsors but already it seems as if the tables have been turned. The Israeli military appears to be efficient at destroying bridges, power stations, gas stations and apartment blocks - but signally inefficient in crushing the "terrorist" army they swore to liquidate.

U.S. citizens are near the bottom of countries that believe the theory of evolution is true. Only Turkey's population ranked lower in 34 countries surveyed.

Know and practice your rights during police stops.

Plasma television screens use 4 times the amount of electricity as CRTs.

This is rich: the RIAA wants to depose the family of a dead man in order to collect funds from his estate. Being the sensitive organization that it is, the RIAA is giving the family 60 days to grieve.

1 comment:

Scott said...

Sounds just like the U.S. and the Afghani Freedom Fighters during the Cold War. I am thinking of Iran and Hezbollah. Maybe if we stop trying to hold Iran's head under the water, they won't have any desire to fund Hezbollah any longer. Heck they might have the same lovely experiences with their former proxy warriors as we had with the freedom fighters we now call terrorists.