From the Department of They Don’t Make Em Like They Used To:
01
Dec 02
Clarence Darrow (1857-1938) quotations
01
Dec 02
No end to government corruption
Reuters: US Government Asks Court to Seal Vaccine Records:
WASHINGTON (Reuters Health) – Attorneys for the Bush Administration asked a federal court on Monday to order that documents on hundreds of cases of autism allegedly caused by childhood vaccines be kept from the public.
Department of Justice lawyers asked a special master in the US Court of Federal Claims to seal the documents, arguing that allowing their automatic disclosure would take away the right of federal agencies to decide when and how the material should be released. …
The court is currently hearing approximately 1,000 claims brought by the families of autistic children. The suits charge that the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine, which until recently included a mercury-containing preservative known as thimerosal, can cause neurological damage leading to autism.
Federal law requires suits against vaccine makers to go before a special federal “vaccine court” before any civil lawsuit is allowed. The court was set up by Congress to speed compensation claims and to help protect vaccine makers from having to pay large punitive awards decided by juries in state civil courts. Plaintiffs are free to take their cases to state courts if they lose in the federal vaccine court or if they don’t accept the court’s judgment.
The current 1,000 or so autism cases are unusual for the court. Because it received so many claims, much of the fact-finding and evidence-gathering is going on for all of the cases as a block.
NY Times: Justice Dept. Seeks to Seal Vaccine Papers
Lawyers for the families said they were outraged by today’s move. They said the government was trying to prevent families from obtaining damaging information about the preservative, which could later be used against drug companies in civil courts.
“We’re dealing with real injury to real children in a program that is funded by taxpayer dollars,” said Michael R. Hugo, a Boston lawyer. “It is unbelievable to me that the president of the United States, in the name of trying to help the drug industry, would put the interests of the drug industry over the interests of neurologically impaired sick children and their parents.”
Today’s move comes on the heels of another controversy involving thimerosal.
Congressional Republicans inserted a provision into the domestic security bill, signed into law on Monday by President Bush, that is intended to protect Eli Lilly, thimerosal’s manufacturer, from lawsuits over the preservative. The provision would force families to seek compensation through the vaccine court instead of civil courts.
01
Dec 02
Guardian: US pulls out Karzai’s military bodyguards
Special forces who foiled assassination attempt [Actually, an Afghan youth foiled the attempt] on Afghan leader replaced by private security guards:
DynCorp has been involved in a series of recent high-profile scandals. A substantial financial backer of Bush’s election campaign, the company employs almost 25,000 staff, many of them former US military personnel, working in areas from security to aircraft maintenance.
While much of DynCorp’s work is of a non-controversial nature, it has become embroiled in a series of damaging allegations involving personnel in sensitive missions overseas.
DynCorp personnel contracted to the United Nations police service in Bosnia were implicated in buying and selling prostitutes, including a girl as young as 12. Several DynCorp employees were also accused of videotaping the rape of one of the women.
When a fellow DynCorp employee blew the whistle on the sex ring, she was dismissed by the company for drawing attention to their misbehaviour, according to the ruling of a British industrial tribunal earlier this year.
According to a recent article in New Republic magazine, DynCorp staff allegedly contracted to the CIA were involved in the accidental shooting down of a plane carrying US missionaries in Peru which had wrongly been identified as a drug smuggling aircraft. …
Defending the decision to remove Karzai’s special forces bodyguard, a spokesman for the Department of Defense said the decision to recall the US troops had been intended to take place around the time of the assassination attempt in September, but that the switchover had been put off because of the incident.
DynCorp refused to comment, telling The Observer it had been ‘gagged’ over talking about the Afghan deal.
It was left to the State Department to offer a rationale. ‘Responsibility for Mr Karzai’s security was handed over earlier this month to the Diplomatic Security Service,’ said an official, speaking anonymously. ‘DynCorp personnel are involved in the detail that is being managed by the Diplomatic Security Service officials who have long experience in providing this kind of protection.’
So, now American tax dollars are going to support the protection of a corrupt Afghan warlord, our friend Karzai, by a corrupt, Bush-election-supporting, murdering, child-raping corporation? I’m proud to be an American, how about you?
01
Dec 02
Why
Every time I read an article about the resistance to American occupation or ‘nation-building’ in Afghanistan I always notice some line like this:
Afghan forces tightened security in Khost and were stopping cars and searching them. American attack helicopters were circling above the city, the official said.
U.S. forces based in eastern Afghanistan are hunting al-Qaida and Taliban fugitives near the Pakistan border. Unknown attackers sometimes fire rockets and other weapons at the troops or their bases, but they rarely hit their target.
Is it really necessary whenever describing new attacks against American Special Forces goons that Afghan rocket attacks rarely hit their targets? It makes me think the US is afraid people will get the idea that anyone can successfully oppose the American military. I hope the Afghans are successful in driving the US military out of their country. Let’s hope no one else has to dies because of this stupidity.
01
Dec 02
Someone please stop this government
My emphasis added. Covert Legal System Sought: Under Bush’s plan, suspects could be held indefinitely and denied all rights:
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 1, 2002; Page A01
The Bush administration is developing a parallel legal system in which terrorism suspects — U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike — may be investigated, jailed, interrogated, tried and punished without legal protections guaranteed by the ordinary system, lawyers inside and outside the government say.
The elements of this new system are already familiar from President Bush’s orders and his aides’ policy statements and legal briefs: indefinite military detention for those designated “enemy combatants,” liberal use of “material witness” warrants, counterintelligence-style wiretaps and searches led by law enforcement officials and, for noncitizens, trial by military commissions or deportation after strictly closed hearings.
Only now, however, is it becoming clear how these elements could ultimately interact.
For example, under authority it already has or is asserting in court cases, the administration, with approval of the special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, could order a clandestine search of a U.S. citizen’s home and, based on the information gathered, secretly declare the citizen an enemy combatant, to be held indefinitely at a U.S. military base. Courts would have very limited authority to second-guess the detention, to the extent that they were aware of it.
Administration officials, noting that they have chosen to prosecute suspected Taliban member John Walker Lindh, “shoe bomber” Richard Reid and alleged Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui in ordinary federal courts, say the parallel system is meant to be used selectively, as a complement to conventional processes, not as a substitute. But, they say, the parallel system is necessary because terrorism is a form of war as well as a form of crime, and it must not only be punished after incidents occur, but also prevented and disrupted through the gathering of timely intelligence.
“I wouldn’t call it an alternative system,” said an administration official who has helped devise the legal response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “But it is different than the criminal procedure system we all know and love. It’s a separate track for people we catch in the war.”
At least one American has been shifted from the ordinary legal system into the parallel one: alleged al Qaeda “dirty bomb” plotter Jose Padilla, who is being held at a Navy brig, without the right to communicate with a lawyer or anyone else. U.S. officials have told the courts that they can detain and interrogate him until the executive branch declares an end to the war against terrorism.
The final outlines of this parallel system will be known only after the courts, including probably the Supreme Court, have settled a variety of issues being litigated. But the prospect of such a system has triggered a fierce debate.
Continue reading →
01
Dec 02
Ok, admittedly I’m a freak…
..but I really enjoyed this article. It made me feel like cultural progress has been made, and I just like the idea of scores of women buying handcuffs.
YahooNews: Handcuffs the New Must-Have for Women?
BERLIN (Reuters) – Handcuffs are the fastest selling item at five new shops tailored for women by Germany’s biggest retailer of sex merchandise, the store chain said on Wednesday.
Beate Uhse AG said handcuffs have been flying off the shelves of stores it opened this year to focus on sex toys for women, rather than the traditional male clientele.
“Women’s sexual appetites are steeped more in the realm of fantasy — they like to use their imagination more than men,” said Assia Tschernookoff, a spokeswoman for Beate Uhse at corporate headquarters in Flensburg. …
The five new shops report some 90 percent of customers have been women.
“This just goes to show that these days women know what they want and they’re not shy about getting it,” Tschernookoff said.
26
Nov 02
Digging by Seamus Heany
Digging
Between my finger and thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving thier cool hardness in our hands.
By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.
My Grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.
The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.
Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.
Seamus Heany (1939 – )
25
Nov 02
Full text: bin Laden’s ‘letter to America’
In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful,
“Permission to fight (against disbelievers) is given to those (believers) who are fought against, because they have been wronged and surely, Allah is Able to give them (believers) victory” [Quran 22:39]
“Those who believe, fight in the Cause of Allah, and those who disbelieve, fight in the cause of Taghut (anything worshipped other than Allah e.g. Satan). So fight you against the friends of Satan; ever feeble is indeed the plot of Satan.”[Quran 4:76]
Some American writers have published articles under the title ‘On what basis are we fighting?’ These articles have generated a number of responses, some of which adhered to the truth and were based on Islamic Law, and others which have not. Here we wanted to outline the truth – as an explanation and warning – hoping for Allah’s reward, seeking success and support from Him.
While seeking Allah’s help, we form our reply based on two questions directed at the Americans:
(Q1) Why are we fighting and opposing you?
Q2)What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?
Continue reading →
25
Nov 02
Joe Bob Brigg’s on the Draft
I enjoyed his column in the San Antonio Current when I was a busboy. Joe Bob’s America: Draft Insanity:
Actually, I don’t even think this discussion has anything to do with the needs of the military. I got the impression, from the comments and emails, that the people in favor of a compulsory draft were more interested in indoctrinating young people than in beefing up the armed services.
“There are no free rides in life!” was the sacred mantra from several of them. The idea was that 18-year-olds should be forced to go through military training because it would teach them some kind of lesson about how grateful they should be. For the ones unfit for military service, there was talk of sending them into ghettos, hospitals and nursing homes as a kind of domestic Peace Corps. There were constant references to Boot Camp, as though it were some kind of end in itself. The idea is that someone who goes through Boot Camp ends up a better person. They come out disciplined and patriotic and moral.
What a wonderfully Soviet idea — that we have the power to MAKE people become good citizens. All those famous soldiers who passed through the rigors of Boot Camp — Lee Harvey Oswald, Charles Whitman, Timothy McVeigh, John Muhammad — no doubt cheated on their pushups or they would have become community leaders. The fact is, Boot Camp can be just as destructive as it is constructive, depending on the person. We’ve all seen “Full Metal Jacket.”
So what is this about really? I think it’s about fear and sacrifice. The vast middle class is fearful and paranoid. They want to offer some sacrifice to the gods of self-denial. So they offer up their children — or, more cynically, other people’s children.
We should heed the words of a famous man who explained just exactly why the compulsory permanent draft violates our freedoms. That kind of conscription, he said, “rests on the assumption that your kids belong to the state. If we buy that assumption then it is for the state — not for parents, the community, the religious institutions or teachers — to decide who shall have what values and who shall do what work, when, where and how in our society. That assumption isn’t a new one. The Nazis thought it was a great idea.”
Who said it? Some long-haired 60s draft resister? Some pacifist Harvard professor? Ronald Reagan said it. I had no idea he was such a wussy-boy.