1. type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search. 2. using only the first page of results, pick one image. 3. copy and paste each of the url’s for the images into big huge lab’s mosaic maker to create a mosaic of the picture answers.
The questions: 1. what is your first name? 2. what is your favorite food? right now? 3. what high school did you go to? 4. what is your favorite color? 5. who is your celebrity crush? 6. what is your favorite drink? 7. what is your dream vacation? 8. what is your favorite dessert? 9. what do you want to be when you grow up? 10. what do you love most in life? 11. what is one word that describes you? 12. what is your flickr name?
some blogs are posting their answers to each other questions - i’d rather remain an enigma. i think the mosaic stands on it’s own.
And now for some music:
Moby - Slipping away (Crier la vie) (ft. Mylene Farmer)
"So you want me to announce the game before our announcement?" he told GamesIndustry. "No offense, but I think there's like 300 people here, and I'll be ripped apart by 8000 people [at the Invitational] if I pre-announce it—but it's going to be really exciting. I think everybody here will be really excited about the announcement."
Moreover, Diablo fan website DiabloII.net reports that Blizzard's game announcement will be Diablo III, the long-awaited next title in Blizzard's hack-and-slash RPG series.
The site claims to have confirmation of the forthcoming announcement from "inside sources," but does not specify whether the information came from within the company or an external source.
Speculation flared this week over teaser images posted on the front page Blizzard's website, which many believed to contain possible connections to the anticipated hack-and-slash sequel.
I mean really, of all the people to say something like this, Karl Rove? And please spare me the "Armitage said it first!" bull. Just because somebody commits a crime does not open the way for others. Armitage cooperated with investigators, Rove and Libby obstructed justice.
Sometimes, the irony is so overwhelming, I have to wonder if it’s some kind of satirical performance art, and I’m just not in on the joke. Consider this fascinating exchange between Bill O’Reilly and Karl Rove on Fox News last night:
There are two key angles to this. First, the NYT article did, in fact, identify the CIA interrogator who questioned Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. The article characterizes him as one of the good guys, gaining information through non-abusive means. Indeed, the interrogator, who refused training on how to waterboard a detainee, established a rapport with the terrorist — which “astonished his fellow C.I.A. officers” — by talking and bringing KSM food. The article, in other words, wasn’t a slam job.
But for Karl Rove to have the chutzpah to lambaste the Times for this is extraordinary.
"And the GAO report finds just that, that the Bush administration has no plan for what to do next. With the 18-month surge coming to an end in July, the report says that the administration has not set out "strategic goals and objectives in Iraq for the phase after July 2008 or how it intends to achieve them" and "an updated strategy is needed for how the United States will help Iraq achieve key security, legislative, and economic goals."
The report acknowledged that violence was down in May (after rising in March and April) and attributed the reduction to three factors: "1) the increase in U.S. combat forces, 2) the creation of nongovernmental security forces such as the Sons of Iraq, and 3) the Mahdi Army's declaration of a cease fire." What do these three conditions have in common? They are all temporary and unlikely to continue in the future.
The statement is made in the U.S. media, over and over again, as if it is as factual as the sun rising in the morning and setting in the evening: "The surge is working." But just because the media has parroted the talking points of the Bush administration and John McCain's campaign in making such an assertion, it does not make it true. And a report released by the U.S. Government Accounting Office (GAO) yesterday does something that McCain and the White House probably wish would not be done: actually evaluating progress in Iraq against the goals the administration laid out in January 2007 when undertaking the surge. Guess what? In many material ways, the surge isn't working. Sorry to rain on the parade of CNN, Fox News, ABC, CBS, etc. with the facts.
The mainstream media is barely even acknowledging the report's release. At the time of this writing, the GAO report didn't even warrant a headline on the CNN.com home page,
Holographic mobile handsets capable of projecting, capturing and sending 3D images have been developed by an Indian tech company.
By 2010 the devices will routinely beam 3D films, games and virtual goods into our laps according to Indian technology giant Infosys, which has patented the handset.
The portable machines will capture and send 3D snapshots of the surrounding world, helping accident investigators, teachers and doctors work remotely by instantly relaying realistic depictions of car damage, injuries, medical scans or educational aids.
The powerful onboard processor on the Infosys machine would build a series of 2D shots taken, for example, from a digital camera, into 3D holograms using algorithms called 'Fourier' transformations to calculate the extra third dimension.
The global 3D screen market is forecast by industry to grow to 8.1 million units by 2010.
"NATO has said the prison break was a tactical success for the Taliban but would not have a long-term or large impact on the Afghan conflict. However, Afghan officials have warned that dangerous members of the militia are now free, and that the prison attack essentially boosted the insurgents' ranks by 400."
The entrance gate of a prison is seen after it was attacked by Taliban militants in Kandahar south of Kabul, Afghanistan, Saturday, June 14, 2008. More than 600 prisoners escaped during the brazen Taliban bomb and rocket attack on the main prison in southern Afghanistan that knocked down the front gate and demolished a prison floor, officials said Saturday. At least nine police were killed. (AP Photo/Allauddin Khan)
KABUL, Afghanistan — U.S.-led coalition and Afghan forces killed more than 15 insurgents during a hunt for inmates who fled prison after a sophisticated Taliban attack that set hundreds free, while Afghan forces recaptured 20 prisoners, officials said Sunday.
The provincial police chief of Kandahar province has said 870 prisoners _ including some 400 Taliban militants _ escaped from the Kandahar prison during a coordinated assault on the facility by dozens of insurgents late Friday.
KABUL, Afghanistan — American soldiers herded the detainees into holding pens of razor-sharp concertina wire, the kind that's used to corral livestock.
The guards kicked, kneed and punched many of the men until they collapsed in pain. U.S. troops shackled and dragged other detainees to small isolation rooms, then hung them by their wrists from chains dangling from the wire mesh ceiling.
Former guards and detainees whom McClatchy interviewed said Bagram was a center of systematic brutality for at least 20 months, starting in late 2001. Yet the soldiers responsible have escaped serious punishment.
This picture from a U.S. court martial file, drawn by military polygraph examiner George Chigi III, shows how Afghan detainee Dilawar was shackled by his wrists to the ceiling of an isolation cell at Bagram Air Base before being beaten to death in December 2002. | View larger image
GARDEZ, Afghanistan — The militants crept up behind Mohammed Akhtiar as he squatted at the spigot to wash his hands before evening prayers at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
They shouted "Allahu Akbar" — God is great — as one of them hefted a metal mop squeezer into the air, slammed it into Akhtiar's head and sent thick streams of blood running down his face.
"He was not an enemy of the government, he was a friend of the government," a senior Afghan intelligence officer told McClatchy. Akhtiar was imprisoned at Guantanamo on the basis of false information that local anti-government insurgents fed to U.S. troops, he said.
An eight-month McClatchy investigation in 11 countries on three continents has found that Akhtiar was one of dozens of men — and, according to several officials, perhaps hundreds — whom the U.S. has wrongfully imprisoned in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments.
Cont...
"This unprecedented compilation shows that most of the 66 were low-level Taliban grunts, innocent Afghan villagers or ordinary criminals. At least seven had been working for the U.S.-backed Afghan government and had no ties to militants, according to Afghan local officials. In effect, many of the detainees posed no danger to the United States or its allies.
The investigation also found that despite the uncertainty about whom they were holding, U.S. soldiers beat and abused many prisoners.
Prisoner mistreatment became a regular feature in cellblocks and interrogation rooms at Bagram and Kandahar air bases, the two main way stations in Afghanistan en route to Guantanamo.
While he was held at Afghanistan's Bagram Air Base, Akhtiar said, "When I had a dispute with the interrogator, when I asked, 'What is my crime?' the soldiers who took me back to my cell would throw me down the stairs."
"Premier Rejects Terms of Proposed Pacts; Cleric Reactivates Militia"
The Surge? What Surge? I thought that was working! You know, six more months (hi Mr. Friedman!), turning the corner (or going around in circles), you know success! Or not....
BAGHDAD, June 13 -- The Bush administration's Iraq policy suffered two major setbacks Friday when Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki publicly rejected key U.S. terms for an ongoing military presence and anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called for a new militia offensive against U.S. forces.
During a visit to Jordan, Maliki said negotiations over initial U.S. proposals for bilateral political and military agreements had "reached a dead end." While he said talks would continue, his comments fueled doubts that the pacts could be reached this year, before the Dec. 31 expiration of a United Nations mandate sanctioning the U.S. role in Iraq.
Maliki's comments came as Sadr called for a new armed wing of his Mahdi Army militia to fight U.S. troops. Sadr had ordered the militia to cease carrying weapons last August -- a leading factor in the recent decline in violence --
would operate in "total secrecy" and attack only American forces.
As you may well know long awaited (and endlessly delayed by Republicans in Congress) Phase II of the Senate Report on how intelligence was used to sell the war in Iraq came out recently. It was quickly buried by the media and ignored. One would think that such a report would garner more attention based on the following conclusions:
Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa’ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa’ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.
Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.
Statements by President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding the postwar situation in Iraq, in terms of the political, security, and economic, did not reflect the concerns and uncertainties expressed in the intelligence products.
Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq’s chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community’s uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing.
The Secretary of Defense’s statement that the Iraqi government operated underground WMD facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply buried was not substantiated by available intelligence information.
The Intelligence Community did not confirm that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 as the Vice President repeatedly claimed.
Seems pretty obvious to me, but alas that was not enough for some in the Right who quickly jumped on selected quotes from the report as proof that the Administration did not lie to the American people. Yes, I know, up is down, right is left, good is evil, etc, etc, etc.
And on what basis do they make such claims. On statements like these:
Statements that Iraq provided safe haven for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other al Qaeda-related terrorist members were substantiated by the intelligence assessments.
Intelligence assessments noted Zarqawi's presence in Iraq and his ability to travel and operate within the country. The intelligence community generally believed that Iraqi intelligence must have known about, and therefore at least tolerated, Zarqawi's presence in the country.
and this
Postwar information supports prewar assessments and statements that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was in Baghdad and that al Qaeda was present in northern Iraq.
True, except that a) the Bush Administration knew where Zarqawi was and did not attack him and b) he was operating in Northen Iraq under the protection of the Kurdish Pershmerga and ironically enough, well within reach of U.S. and British warplanes operating in the Northern No Fly Zone.
Or these:
Captured documents reveal that the regime was willing to co-opt or support organizations it knew to be part of al Qaeda - as long as that organization's near-term goals supported Saddam's long-term vision.
Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda's stated goals and objectives.
Plus the report does suggest that some of the Administration statements where backed up by the available intelligence at the time. But is that enough? No, and here is why:
The Best Lies,
have just enough of the truth in them to make them believable.
That is, you take a fact such as "at one time Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction" and then tell your audience that it has those weapons now and ready to use. Ignore the realities of said program(s) or that they can be dealt with by means other than an invasion. Once you introduce that one fact, the rest becomes easier to swallow.
The Best Liars
will tell you exactly what you want to hear, regardless of the truth.
That is the key to telling a good lie. People where not going to be impressed by the fact that Iraq had or could still have chemical weapons, many nations have them (and worse). Even the fact that Saddam had once used them against his own people would not have sufficed (ignoring other inconvenient facts, such as how the U.S. rewarded such actions by giving Saddam funds after the fact). If that was the case, airtrikes and inspections could have taken care of that. But tell them that Iraq is in league with Al-Qaida and everything changes. People wanted revenge for what happened in New York and Washington and where willing to believe anything that told them that this could be possible. If invading Iraq satisfied their thirst for vengeance, so be it.
Of course the real lies were (and are) the following, that Iraq was an imminent threat that could only be dealt with an invasion and occupation of the country.
CONDOLEEZZA RICE, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER:There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein's regime is a danger to the United States and to its allies, to our interests. It is also a danger that is gathering momentum, and it simply makes no sense to wait any longer to do something about the threat that is posed here. As the president has said, "The one option that we do not have is to do nothing."
It was the certainty of these statements, the unassailable picture of doom was at the center of the lie(s). And the Senate Report says the following about it:
The October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate assessed that Saddam Hussein did not have nuclear weapons, and was unwilling to conduct terrorist attacks (against) the US using conventional, chemical or biological weapons at the time, in part because he feared that doing so would give the US a stronger case for war in Iraq.
But their will still be those, that in spite of all the evidence, all the facts, and the obvious truth, will still finagle with the sentences and try to cut and paste their way into an alternate reality. For them I have this last fact:
Those who can fool themselves think they can fool the world.
Last week, when Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) secured enough delegates to clinch the Democratic nomination, he and his wife Michelle exchanged a fist pound greeting before he gave his speech. Teasing an upcoming "body language expert" segment on Friday, Fox News host E.D. Hill referred to the exchange as a possible "terrorist fist jab":
HILL: A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab? The gesture everyone seems to interpret differently. We'll show you some interesting body communication and find out what it really says.
I love clipmarks, use it all the time (abuse it more likely) as you can see on this blog. It allows me to "clip" sections of other blogs and web pages and then put them up on my blog or discuss them in the clipmarks forums. Now, as you all know, in every forum you will always find somebody who can not help but point the grammatical errors of other users. Some of these folks are helpful (like your middle school English teacher)while others are just grammar Nazis (like your high school English teacher). I really don't mind as I tend to write faster than I think and do obscene things to the English language in the process. So I thought I was dealing with one of the two types of folks described above when I read the following response to my clip:
Let me guess, punctuation wasn't a strong point for you in school?
Now I like snarky remarks and snappy comebacks, but this struck me as the work of a grammar Nazi and said so:
Let me guess, you had nothing more important to say?
I expected to be scolded on my (bad) grammar. Instead I read this:
Sorry, probably over your head. Just pointing out that there is a difference between a statement and a question. If you still don't understand, try reading what you clipped again.
Did he/she just said "try reading what you clipped again". Yes he/she/it did. Aparently he was referring to the interaction between the clip's title (Faux News Fair and Balanced? Nah....) and the statement I added (Fox Anchor Calls Obama Fist Pound A "Terrorist Fist Jab").
So I answered thus:
I guess it is you who missed the point, literally. I know the difference and I used the same rhetorical device used so often over at Fox News, that is couching something in the form of a question in order to mask an attack on someone as the clip above clearly shows.
But thank you for playing.
Told you I like my snark! I mean, if your going to attack someone on the basis of not reading what they post, it behooves you to do a little reading of your own. Thankfully, modern technology allows us to copy and paste to and from electronic sources and use them as useful references to backup what ever statement one makes like so:
HILL: A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab? The gesture everyone seems to interpret differently. We'll show you some interesting body communication and find out what it really says.
It is a question that has been on my mind for years, and now I have the answer. And it is not pretty, or good. It is ugly and dark. I don't like it and neither will you. But it is a question we must ask, and one we must answer.
And how can we answer this question? It took time to strip away the thin coat of paint covering the ugly facade. Piece by messy piece:
Propaganda at home and complicity by the media led the world astray. For to long Congress turned a blind eye to the truth and then:
More than five years after the initial invasion of Iraq, the Senate Intelligence Committee has finally gone on the record: the Bush administration misused, and in some cases disregarded, intelligence which led the nation into war. The two final sections of a long-delayed and much anticipated "Phase II" report on the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence, released on Thursday morning, accuse senior White House officials of repeatedly misrepresenting the threat posed by Iraq.
In addition to judgments that could prove troublesome for the White House and make waves in the presidential race, the report also contains some stinging minority reports from Republican committee members who allege that Democrats turned the intelligence review process into a "partisan exercise."
However, when the GOP controlled the intelligence committee and steered its "Phase I" reporting on the use of Iraq war intelligence, critics complained that tough questions about the Bush administration's actions had been kicked down the road, and thus required a second round of fact finding -- dubbed "Phase II." The committee's delay in producing that full report to the public was seen by Democrats as evidence of a stonewalling campaign executed by President Bush's Republican Senate allies.
And what where they hiding?
The "Phase II" report states -- in terms clearer than any previous government publication -- that there was no operational relationship between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, that Bush officials were not truthful about the difficulties the United States would face in post-war Iraq and that their public statements did not reflect intelligence they had at the time, and, specifically, that the intelligence community would not confirm any meeting between Iraqi officials and Mohamed Atta -- a claim that was nevertheless publicly repeated.
But what was it all for? What else bu the constant and predatory acquisition of wealth:
A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.
The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.
But the accord also threatens to provoke a political crisis in the US. President Bush wants to push it through by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated. But by perpetuating the US presence in Iraq, the long-term settlement would undercut pledges by the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, to withdraw US troops if he is elected president in November.
America currently has 151,000 troops in Iraq and, even after projected withdrawals next month, troop levels will stand at more than 142,000 – 10 000 more than when the military "surge" began in January 2007. Under the terms of the new treaty, the Americans would retain the long-term use of more than 50 bases in Iraq. American negotiators are also demanding immunity from Iraqi law for US troops and contractors, and a free hand to carry out arrests and conduct military activities in Iraq without consulting the Baghdad government.
And how are they going to do this?
The US is holding hostage some $50bn (£25bn) of Iraq's money in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to pressure the Iraqi government into signing an agreement seen by many Iraqis as prolonging the US occupation indefinitely, according to information leaked to The Independent.
US negotiators are using the existence of $20bn in outstanding court judgments against Iraq in the US, to pressure their Iraqi counterparts into accepting the terms of the military deal, details of which were reported for the first time in this newspaper yesterday.
And to be in the right position to acquire even more wealth:
So at the end of the day, what is it all for? Why Iraq? Empire of course. But I think there is still hope:
"The Senate report said that Pentagon officials never followed up on the investigators' recommendation for a comprehensive analysis of whether Ghorbanifar or his associates tried "to directly or indirectly influence or access U.S. government officials."
The counterintelligence investigators recommended that U.S. officials attempt "to map Ghorbanifar's relationship within Iranian elite social networks and, if possible, his contacts with other governments and/or intelligence organizations," but that effort was never undertaken."
WASHINGTON — Defense Department counterintelligence investigators suspected that Iranian exiles who provided dubious intelligence on Iraq and Iran to a small group of Pentagon officials might have "been used as agents of a foreign intelligence service ... to reach into and influence the highest levels of the U.S. government," a Senate Intelligence Committee report said Thursday.
A top aide to then-secretary of defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, however, shut down the 2003 investigation into the Pentagon officials' activities after only a month, and the Defense Department's top brass never followed up on the investigators' recommendation for a more thorough investigation, the Senate report said.
The revelation raises questions about whether Iran may have used a small cabal of officials in the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney's office to feed bogus intelligence on Iraq and Iran to senior policymakers in the Bush administration who were eager to oust the Iraqi dictator.
A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.
The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.
The timing of the agreement would also boost the Republican candidate, John McCain, who has claimed the United States is on the verge of victory in Iraq – a victory that he says Mr Obama would throw away by a premature military withdrawal.
"No wonder DIA was skeptical of al-Libi's information. Not only did the details of his testimony seem inconsistent with known facts, but DIA knew perfectly well he had given up this information only under torture and was probably just saying anything that came to mind in order to get it to stop."
Via Atrios, it turns out that we had excellent reasons to be skeptical of al-Libi's testimony. As Newsweek reported last year, al-Libi was one of the first test cases for Dick Cheney's campaign to introduce torture as a standard interrogation technique overseas, replacing the FBI's more mainstream methods:
Al-Libi's capture, some sources say, was an early turning point in the government's internal debates over interrogation methods...."They duct-taped his mouth, cinched him up and sent him to Cairo" for more-fearsome Egyptian interrogations, says the ex-FBI official. "At the airport the CIA case officer goes up to him and says, 'You're going to Cairo, you know. Before you get there I'm going to find your mother and I'm going to f--- her.' So we lost that fight."
Bill Kristol today proudly announces that one of his Weekly Standard staff members, Michael Goldfarb, was just named the Deputy Communications Director of the McCain campaign.
True enough, but they sought an energetic executive with near dictatorial power in pursuing foreign policy and war. So no, the Constitution does not put Congress on an equal footing with the executive in matters of national security.
[I]f federal agents show up at a corporate headquarters for a major American company and urgently seek that company's officers for assistance in the war on terror, the companies damn well ought to give it as a matter of simple patriotism, whether the CIA wants a plane for some extraordinary rendition or help in tracking terrorists via email. . . . [T]o expect a company to resist a plea from the government for help in a time of war is ridiculous.
SYDNEY, Australia — Australia, a staunch U.S. ally and one of the first countries to commit troops to the Iraq war five years ago, ended combat operations there Sunday, a Defense Department official said.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was swept into office in November largely on the promise that he would bring home the country's 550 combat troops by the middle of 2008.
Rudd has said the Iraq deployment has made Australia more of a target for terrorism.
In February, the head of Australia's defense force, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, told a Senate inquiry that the troops were no longer needed in Iraq.
Rudd remains committed to keeping Australia's 1,000 troops in Afghanistan.
