The Real Reason for the Government's Pre-emptive strike on the Twin Cities

They don't want any witnesses.

clipped from www.nytimes.com The city has agreed to pay $2,007,000 to end a lawsuit brought by 52 people who were swept up in a mass arrest along a Midtown sidewalk during a protest against the invasion of Iraq. They were charged with blocking pedestrians, but videotapes show that at their most annoying, they might have slowed a few people carrying coffee into work. Public order did not seem to be in unusual danger that morning — certainly nothing that called for rounding up 52 people, or spending millions of dollars. Only two people were tried; they were acquitted, and charges against the other 50 were dismissed. The arrests were made on April 7, 2003, during the opening days of the invasion of Iraq and right after the city persuaded the Republican Party to hold its 2004 convention in New York. The people arrested said their rights to free speech had been abused, and sued the city and the police.

When you get to define the crime, everybody is a criminal

Including people that gather at Vegan potlucks!

clipped from www.citypages.com They were looking for an informant to show up at "vegan potlucks" throughout the Twin Cities and rub shoulders with RNC protestors. Carroll, who requested that his real name not be used, showed up early and waited anxiously for Swanson’s arrival. Ten minutes later, he says, a casually dressed Swanson showed up, flanked by a woman whom he introduced as FBI Special Agent Maureen E. Mazzola. For the next 20 minutes, Mazzola would do most of the talking. What they were looking for, Carroll says, was an informant—someone to show up at “vegan potlucks” throughout the Twin Cities and rub shoulders with RNC protestors, schmoozing his way into their inner circles, The effort’s primary mission, according to the Minneapolis division’s website, is to “investigate terrorist acts carried out by groups or organizations which fall within the definition of terrorist groups as set forth in the current United States Attorney General Guidelines.”

But wait, there is more:

Carroll’s story echoes a familiar theme. During the lead-up the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City, the NYPD’s Intelligence Division infiltrated and spied on protest groups across the country, as well as in Canada and Europe.(Just ask our friend Nezua, he can give you a first person account on what went down in 04) The program’s scope extended to explicitly nonviolent groups, including street theater troupes and church organizations.

There were also two reported instances of police officers, dressed as protestors, purposefully instigating clashes. At the 2004 Republican National Convention, the NYPD orchestrated a fake arrest to incite protestors. When a blond man was “arrested,” nearby protestors began shouting, “Let him go!” The helmeted police proceeded to push back against the crowd with batons and arrested at least two. In a similar instance, during an April 29, 2005, Critical Mass bike ride in New York, video footage captured a “protestor”—in reality an undercover cop—telling his captor, “I’m on the job,” and being subsequently let go.

The GOP! They will defend all the freedoms that you are NOT allowed to enjoy. Have a nice day!

Big Brother Goes on the Offensive in Minneapolis

Leave it to the GOP to out stage the Denver police in the repression department. Cowards. What are they afraid of? That people will speak the truth? Will their ears bleed from the demonstrators chants?

I guess this goverment is afraid of it's people.

clipped from www.nytimes.com People organizing demonstrations related to the Republican National Convention said that members of the St. Paul police department and the Ramsey County sheriff's department had detained dozens of people on Friday night inside a building in St. Paul that was being used as a protest-planning headquarters. People who had been inside the building said that officers entered shortly after 8:30 p.m., saying they had a warrant and instructing the occupants to lie on the ground. “They handcuffed all of us,” said Sonia Silbert, 28, from Washington. “They searched everyone.” People who had been inside said that teach-ins and legal training had been conducted there and that the space was also a repository for such items as computers and bicycles. Mr. Kushner said he believed that the police had read a warrant aloud but said he had not seen the document. they had “detained over 50 people in an attempt to pre-empt planned protests.”

H/t to Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com. Please follow the link and read the whole story.

Friday Night Nonsense: Cat House on the Kings

Very interesting story. The fact that the cats actually stick around is amazing:

Georgia is the graveyard of America's unipolar world

Cont...

There has been much talk among western politicians in recent days about Russia isolating itself from the international community. But unless that simply means North America and Europe, nothing could be further from the truth. While the US and British media have swung into full cold-war mode over the Georgia crisis, the rest of the world has seen it in a very different light. As Kishore Mahbubani, Singapore's former UN ambassador, observed in the Financial Times a few days ago, "most of the world is bemused by western moralising on Georgia". While the western view is that the world "should support the underdog, Georgia, against Russia ... most support Russia against the bullying west. The gap between the western narrative and the rest of the world could not be clearer."

And that has the neocons scare witless!

clipped from www.guardian.co.uk Russia's defiance in the Caucasus has brought down the curtain on Bush senior's new world order - not before time If there were any doubt that the rules of the international game have changed for good, the events of the past few days should have dispelled it. On Monday, President Bush demanded that Russia's leaders reject their parliament's appeal to recognise the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Within 24 hours, Bush had his response: President Medvedev announced Russia's recognition of the two contested Georgian enclaves. The Russian message was unmistakable: the outcome of the war triggered by Georgia's attack on South Ossetia on August 7 is non-negotiable - and nothing the titans of the US empire do or say is going to reverse it. After that, the British foreign secretary David Miliband's posturing yesterday in Kiev about building a "coalition against Russian aggression" merely looked foolish.

And here comes the punchline....

The real gripe is not with these states' lack of accountability - Russian public opinion is in any case overwhelmingly supportive of its government's actions in Georgia - but their strategic challenge and economic rivalry. For the rest of us, a new assertiveness by Russia and other rising powers doesn't just offer some restraint on the unbridled exercise of global imperial power, it should also increase the pressure for a revival of a rules-based system of international relations. In the circumstances, that might come to seem quite appealing to whoever is elected US president.

BTW, for those who think that Russia is baking down anytime soon, check this out:

Moscow has issued an extraordinary warning to the West that military assistance to Georgia for

use against South Ossetia or Abkhazia

would be viewed as a "declaration of war" by Russia.

The extreme rhetoric from the Kremlin's envoy to NATO came as President Dmitry Medvedev stressed he will make a military response to US missile defense installations in eastern Europe, sending new shudders across countries whose people were once blighted by the Iron Curtain.

And Moscow also emphasized it was closely monitoring what it claims is a build-up of NATO firepower in the Black Sea.

It is so easy to poke the Bear when somebody else is the bait.

John McCain Campaign Takes a +3 Vorpal Blade to Dungeons & Dragons Players

Cont....

But it does raise the obvious question: If John McCain were a D&D character, what kind would he be?

Our money is on some sort of shape-shifting offshore drill monster. But what you do think? Submit your McCain inspired D&D creature below: Pick a name, decide what kind of damage he can inflict in combat, and don't forget his special powers. Vote on your favorites. Threat Level will incorporate the winning entry into our next dungeon map, which is set in the vast caverns lurking beneath the Old Executive Office Building.

clipped from blog.wired.com Confronting questions about whether John McCain stole an inspiring POW story from the autobiography of a former Soviet prisoner, a campaign spokesman threw out this melee attack against a much-maligned geek pastime: "It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman's memory of war from the comfort of mom's basement," said McCain aide Michael Goldfarb, in a posting to the campaign website. "But most Americans have the humility and gratitude to respect and learn from the memories of men who suffered on behalf of others." Ouch. I'd take offense, but I have a saving-throw to make, and the dim light in this basement is making it hard to see the D20.

I find this very surprising considering all the myths and legends that Republicans and the McCain campaign pushes on the world, such as "The Myth of America", "The Stab in the Back", "The Quest to Liberate Iraq", "The Adventures of the Culture Warriors", "Return of the Prisoners of War", "The Success of the Surge" and of course the grandest saga of them all "The War on Terror"!

Friday Night Nonsense: Take your god and shove him

Another reason why religious freedom must also include freedom FROM religion. Otherwise it makes no sense whatsoever:

Iraq Takes Aim at Leaders of U.S.-Tied Sunni Groups

This is one of those time I wish I was wrong, but another of my predictions came true. The Myth of the Surge Success is giving away to cold, hard bloody reality.

Cont....

Even before the new pressure from the government, many Awakening members were growing frustrated — and at an especially delicate time. United States and Iraqi negotiators have just completed a draft security agreement that next year, Iraqi officials say, would substantially pull American forces back from cities and towns to be replaced by Iraqi security forces.

Awakening members complain, with rising bitterness, that the government has been slow to make good on its promises to recruit tens of thousands of its members into those security forces. General Perkins said only 5,200 members had been recruited in a force of about 100,000.

clipped from www.nytimes.com BAGHDAD — The Shiite-dominated government in Iraq is driving out many leaders of Sunni citizen patrols, the groups of former insurgents who joined the American payroll and have been a major pillar in the decline in violence around the nation. In restive Diyala Province, Unites States and Iraqi military officials say there were orders to arrest hundreds of members of what is known as the Awakening movement as part of large security operations by the Iraqi military. At least five senior members have been arrested there in recent weeks, leaders of the groups say. “The state cannot accept the Awakening,” said Sheik Jalaladeen al-Sagheer, a leading Shiite member of Parliament. “Their days are numbered.” But it is causing a rift with the American military, which contends that any significant diminution of the Awakening could result in renewed violence, jeopardizing the substantial security gains in the past year.

Cartoon: Truth about the war in Georgia

H.T oldephartte!

clipped from my.opera.com The truth about the war in Georgia: http://war.georgia.su/

H/T to Monte over at Monte Asbury's Blog.

10 French soldiers die in Afghan battle

So now it is up to the Europeans (including the French) to bear the burden of US forgotten war in Afghanistan.

clipped from news.yahoo.com SUROBI, Afghanistan - Insurgents ambushed a group of French parachutists outside Kabul, sparking a battle that killed 10 of the soldiers in the biggest loss of life for international forces in combat in Afghanistan in more than three years, officials said Tuesday. Meanwhile, a team of suicide bombers tried unsuccessfully to storm a U.S. military base near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in a daring attack on a major American installation. The French soldiers from the 8th infantry parachute regiment were on a reconnaissance mission in the Surobi district, an area known as a militant redoubt about 30 miles east of the Afghan capital. An Afghan official said that four of those soldiers had been kidnapped by insurgents and killed. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't supposed to release the information. NATO officials had no immediate comment. It was the highest French military death toll in an attack since clashes in Bouake, Ivory Coast in 2004.

Goverment Spying: The Target is You

"They say the measures preserve civil liberties and are subject to internal oversight."

Oh yes, I find that so comforting.

clipped from www.msnbc.msn.com The Justice Department has proposed a new domestic spying measure that would make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive data with federal agencies and retain it for at least 10 years. The proposed changes would revise the federal government's rules for police intelligence-gathering for the first time since 1993 and would apply to any of the nation's 18,000 state and local police agencies that receive roughly $1.6 billion each year in federal grants. Taken together, critics in Congress and elsewhere say, the moves are intended to lock in policies for Bush's successor and to enshrine controversial post-Sept. 11 approaches that some say have fed the greatest expansion of executive authority since the Watergate era. They say the measures preserve civil liberties and are subject to internal oversight.

Friday Night Nonsense: A Bit of Gender Bending for Ya!

Two videos on this lovely Friday Night. First off a current hit on the Top 20 charts, Katy Perry with I Kissed a Girl:



I kissed quite a few girls myself, and I agree one hundred percent. Best when they kiss in front of you as well and then you are the guy that gets to join in!

Also in the mix is Portishead with Glory Box. You can find this tune as part of my mixtape (under Massive Attack/Give Me A Reason to Love You):



Enjoy!

McCain: "In The 21st Century Nations Don't Invade Other Nations"

That right! Invasions are so 200_. Wait a minute?

clipped from www.huffingtonpost.com Speaking to reporters about the situation in Georgia, Sen. John McCain denounced the aggressive posture of Russia by claiming that:"in the 21st century nations don't invade other nations." "This isn't a time for partisanship and sniping between campaigns," he said. "This is about hundreds of thousand of individuals whose lives are being taken... Maybe later on in the campaign let's have a back and forth about whose comments and statements... but now lets devote all our efforts to resolving a situation that is fraught with tragedy." A subsequent questioner asked McCain whether this non-partisan window applied to Sen. Joseph Lieberman as well, who, at a townhall on Tuesday, suggested that Barack Obama had not always "put his country first." McCain's answer was classically evasive.

Is the Surge Working? Hardly....

The Guardian's (UK) take on the reality of Iraq 5 years after the invasion. Is the Surge working? Not really....

Plucky little Georgia? No, the cold war reading won't wash

All is not what is what it looks like....

Cont:

Devoted to achieving Nato entry for Georgia, Saakashvili has sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan - and so clearly felt he had American backing. The streets of the Georgian capital are plastered with posters of George W Bush alongside his Georgian protege. George W Bush avenue leads to Tbilisi airport. But he has ignored Kissinger's dictum: "Great powers don't commit suicide for their allies." Perhaps his neoconservative allies in Washington have forgotten it, too. Let's hope not.

clipped from www.guardian.co.uk For many people the sight of Russian tanks streaming across a border in August has uncanny echoes of Prague 1968. That cold war reflex is natural enough, but after two decades of Russian retreat from those bastions it is misleading. Not every development in the former Soviet Union is a replay of Soviet history. The clash between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia, which escalated dramatically yesterday, in truth has more in common with the Falklands war of 1982 than it does with a cold war crisis. When the Argentine junta was basking in public approval for its bloodless recovery of Las Malvinas, Henry Kissinger anticipated Britain's widely unexpected military response with the comment: "No great power retreats for ever." Maybe today Russia has stopped the long retreat to Moscow which started under Gorbachev. The more Russia drew in its horns, the more Washington and its allies denounced the Kremlin for its imperial ambitions.

British crime lords rule £40 billion underworld

So while the Nanny state focuses on it's own people providing a false sense of security, crime thrives.

clipped from www.timesonline.co.uk A £40 billion underworld economy is dominated by homegrown criminals, with at least 27 “Mr Bigs” running their empires from inside British jails, The Times has learnt. An intelligence map drawn up by the leading police expert on organised crime identifies more than 1,000 active criminal networks and shows that gangland is still controlled by British families, despite the influx of crime syndicates from Eastern Europe and South-East Asia over the past decade. In a separate operation, investigators have identified 27 crime bosses running networks from prison cells. Although they are all in jail, Terry Adams, Kenneth Noye, Brian Brendon Wright, Brian Gunn and Curtis Warren are being monitored closely. Career criminals prefer to work together when they have common interests. They will form loose coalitions, sharing their specialist skills in pursuit of the highest profit with the least risk.

Friday Night Nonsense: Cornershop - Brimful of Asha (Fatboy Slim remix)

A bit of 60s-90s nostalgia:

White House Faked Evidence Linking Saddam to al-Qaida

Excellent coverage here. Plus watch the the interview with Ron Suskind on Countdown with Keith Olbermann:

White House forged Iraq war documents

Cont...

"Over the next few days, the Habbush letter continued to be featured prominently in the United States and across the globe," Suskind writes. "Fox's Bill O'Reilly trumpeted the story Sunday night on 'The O'Reilly Factor,' talking breathlessly about details of the story and exhorting, 'Now, if this is true, that blows the lid off al Qaeda—Saddam.'"

clipped from www.politico.com A new book by the author Ron Suskind claims that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein. Suskind writes in “The Way of the World,” to be published Tuesday, that the alleged forgery – adamantly denied by the White House – was designed to portray a false link between Hussein’s regime and al Qaeda as a justification for the Iraq war. The author also claims that the Bush administration had information from a top Iraqi intelligence official “that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.” The letter’s existence has been reported before, and it had been written about as if it were genuine. It was passed in Baghdad to a reporter for The (London) Sunday Telegraph who wrote about it on the front page of Dec. 14, 2003, under the headline, “Terrorist behind September 11 strike ‘was trained by Saddam.’”

Pics & Music

	U2 - Mysterious Ways
	Found at skreemr.com

	Gnarls Barkley - Crazy
	Found at skreemr.com

And one from my friend debbyski at clipmarks!

	Jewel - Hands
	Found at skreemr.com

British Territory Used for US Torture

Cont...

"TIME discussed the allegation with Richard Clarke, who served as a Special Advisor to President George W. Bush on the National Security Council dealing with counter-terrorism until 2003 but is not the source for this story. "In my presence, in the White House, the possibility of using Diego Garcia for detaining high value targets was discussed," says Clarke. Clarke did not witness a final resolution of the issue, but adds, "Given everything that we know about the Administration's approach to the law on these matters, I find the report that the U.S. did use the island for detention or interrogation entirely credible."

clipped from www.time.com Almost two years have passed since President George W. Bush publicly acknowledged the existence of a CIA program in which agency-leased aircraft fly terror suspects between secret prisons and interrogation sites around the world. "This program has helped us to take potential mass murderers off the streets before they have a chance to kill," the President said on Sept. 6, 2006. Since that admission, the White House has declined to elaborate or comment further on the program's specifics, although multiple reports have surfaced regarding the existence of secret facilities in Poland and Romania. The source tells TIME that, in 2002 and possibly 2003, the U.S. imprisoned and interrogated one or more terrorist suspects on Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean controlled by the United Kingdom.

Friday Night Nonsense: Olbermann gets Spaced!

Mix a silly self-parodying show on an American cable network dedicated to covering all things celebrity with Keith Olbermann and the cast from Spaced and hilarity (and Hillary?) will ensue!



And if you don't know what Spaced is, check this out: