As many people know government is the shadow of business, and when the corporate masters come calling the government gets in line. Instead of doing what’s right for all Americans they serve the interests of the powerful few. Members of DrinkOrDie one of the more prominent warez groups were sentenced to extreme prison sentences of 33-44 months in prison. This is disappointing in that rapists routinely get sentences lighter than this. Obviously, the intellectual property barons are eager to send a message to violators of copyright law. I have news for you. If you listen to mp3s, record tv shows, skip commercials, or borrow library books you may soon be a criminal. What can you do about it? Well, most importantly support people who oppose crap like this like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU. Also, try not to waste money on mofos like Disney and any other members of the MPAA. Basically, keep your money spending in check. They can’t live without you.
18
May 02
Dumpster Diving
An article here has some good general information on dumpster diving. I used to go dumpster diving when I was a kid. Got some books with the covers ripped off and some movie posters. This one time I even found an INVISIBLE DOG! Okay, well, to be honest it wasn’t really invisible..it was just a leash with a wire through it to look like you were walking an invisible dog. It was just about the coolest thing any kid could find.
18
May 02
Military Spending Clock
“The above figure represents U.S. military spending since the start of Fiscal Year 2001. Every minute the United States spends another $589,802 on the military, 51.3% of the discretionary federal budget.”
When I just checked it, it was up to 504 billion and counting. Watch money being pissed away on better ways to kill poor and innocent folk. View the Military Spending Clock.
18
May 02
Good Stuff to Read
Found a few good things you can read for free online. Sometimes it’s hard to find good stuff.
- The Best of Extra! from Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting Read some choice selections online from their bi-monthly magazine. Right now you can get a year’s subscription for 21$.
- Read Gore Vidal’s The Decline and Fall of the American Empire in its entirety online.
17
May 02
Ted Rall rips into the Bush Gang
Rall makes a good case for trying Bush as an attempted murderer for the CIA’s assassination attempt of an alleged rival of Hamid Karzai. You really should read the whole thing yourself. It’s priceless. Here’s a good piece of it:
We had information,” an anonymous Pentagon (news – web sites) official told The New York Times’ Thomas Shanker, “that he was planning attacks on American and coalition forces, on the interim government and on [interim president Hamid] Karzai himself.”
You and I, faced with such information, might have had Hekmatyar picked up for questioning. We might put him and his pals on trial for conspiracy and, if he were found guilty, thrown in prison. But the guys in the White House aren’t like us. They’re gangsters. Gangsters are above the law. Gangsters don’t bother with judges and juries. They pay off judges; they have their enemies whacked.
And so your illegitimate gangster government, less than a month after it attempted to overthrow the democratically-elected government of Venezuela, sent up one of those unmanned Predator drone planes. Some dude punched a button on an iMac at an undisclosed location in the Virginia suburbs and fired a Hellfire missile at Hekmatyar’s car convoy on a road just outside Kabul. “I believe some others were killed in the strike, but the target escaped,” an unnamed U.S. official told Reuters. Hekmatyar’s spokesman and son-in-law Ghairat Baheer in Islamabad said: “He is in Afghanistan…but there was no attack.”
Experts speculate that the missile hit a group of cars that had nothing to do with Hekmatyar.
Have you ever noticed how government sources are all anonymous these days? I think it is a calculated decision so that people cannot follow up with further questions to said sources. I don’t think Rall goes far enough. I think there is enough evidence from many things that Bush has done (ie. executing people, killing innocents, graft, corruption, election fraud, assassination) to have him tried for murder or worse.
16
May 02
The Oil Wars
We bomb your people, depose your government, set up our guy Karzai, and then we build our pipeline. What, you thought this was about Bin Laden and the Taliban? Go back to sleep.
Mr Razim said US energy company Unocal was the “lead company” among those that would build the pipeline, which would bring 30bn cubic meters of Turkmen gas to market annually.
Unocal – which led a consortium of companies from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Japan and South Korea – has maintained the project is both economically and technically feasible once Afghan stability was secured.
This article fails to mention that Karzai, the puppet leader of Afghanistan, is a former employee of Unocal. And when Unocal uses the word ‘stability’ they mean once the US has crushed all opposition to Karzai. Earlier this week, the CIA admitted to trying to assassinate one of Karzai’s rivals who supported the US against the Taliban.
16
May 02
Free as in Freedom
You can read the entire book about Richard Stallman and the free software/GNU-LINUX movement online. Now put that wallet away!
16
May 02
Trading democracy?
DOCUMENTS FROM NAFTA’S SECRET TRIBUNALS from the National Security Archives
The PBS documentary Bill Moyers Reports: Trading Democracy, which premieres tonight, February 5, at 10 p.m. Eastern time (local times may vary) exposes an obscure provision of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that has given multinational corporations the power to demand compensation if a law of any one of the three NAFTA countries – the United States, Mexico or Canada – threatens their potential profits. Laws designed to protect the environment or public health, the decisions of states or local communities – even jury verdicts – can prompt a corporation to file a lawsuit. But instead of bringing claims through the court system, these NAFTA Chapter 11 cases are heard by trade tribunals that meet in secret, without public participation or oversight. And although the rulings can mandate millions of tax dollars in compensatory payments, NAFTA makes no provision for a full appeal to US courts – and sets no caps on the amount of damages that can be awarded.
16
May 02
Matrix Reloaded Trailer
I can’t wait for this movie to come out. Watch the first trailer here.