So how did the FBI's general incompetence, arrogance and all-around stupidity get translated into broad new latitude to tap, follow, harass and smear the rest of us? doesn't anyone remember what these fuckheads did the American Indian Movement and the Panthers?

i mean, my god, they can't even track down spies in THIER OWN OFFICES! and we expect them to respect our privacy rights? ha! remember HUAC?

we're fucked.
spun by the propagandist at 1:15:00 PM

 
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
spun by the propagandist at 11:13:00 AM

 
"he who makes a beast of himself relieves himself of the pain of being a man."

HST
spun by the propagandist at 2:21:00 PM

 
i just read an article in the l a times where mueller admitted the agency potentially could have prevented the attacks. i also just found out that ashcroft stopped using commercial aircraft in june of last year because of hijacking warnings.

the worst thing is that apparantly these people are just plain stupid. i don't know what i fear more: a sinister government that at least can prevent nuclear annihilation, or a bunch of incompetent and nostalgic cold warriors playing jack ryan.

i think it is the latter and let me use one word: Kashmir.
spun by the propagandist at 11:29:00 AM

 
went and saw the new star wars in a digital theater last night. i saw it with my partner's family and her 12 year old brother. this movie is essentially a perversion of the original, as if the empire had conquered lucasfilms. the story really means nothing - that was more than apparent in lucas' choice of actors and seeming absence during any scenes involving human beings - and the focus is completely on the effects. i mean the acting was terrible in a way that has no excuse. sure, mark hamil was no great shakes, but whoever the recycled boy band bad boy was that played annikan should have the skin flayed off his back for that performance.

it seems as if the cloning, technology and order obssesed futuro-nazis that run the empire nee republic have taken over the star wars series. the only characters with good lines are the digital ones and the emphasis is completely on large, gradiose battle and troop scenes - something that goering would have loved.

oh - and the constant slams on politicians. hey lucas, fuck you rich boy. i don't think your hands are too clean after the presidio business, eh?
spun by the propagandist at 10:38:00 AM

 
"I've got to put the squeeze on the cojones of the exploitative industries in my state. You'd be shocked how well they'll behave...You have to learn how to terrorize the bastards...If you start giving these special interests what they should end up with, they don't lose a dime, because they have no limits on their greed or their view of their own self-worth and power. ...Do not make them figure out how much more they're going to get, but how much they've got that they're going to lose."

Rep. Phillip Burton
spun by the propagandist at 2:10:00 PM

 
JUNE 30, 1971 FROM 2:55 - 3:07 PM
NIXON, MITCHELL AND KISSINGER
OVAL OFFICE

PRESIDENT NIXON: Well, I want to get that out...Don't worry about his [Ellsberg's] trial. Just get everything out. Try him in the press. Try him in the press. Everything, John, that there is on the investigation get it out, leak it out. We want to destroy him in the press. Press. Is that clear?
spun by the propagandist at 11:13:00 AM

 
i've spent the last day and a half getting this damn thing up and running, and i know that i am the only one that is going to read it - that is, unless i say something that is likely to get me in trouble - then i'm POSITIVE the wrong person will read it. the domain seems to be forwarding at least from thepropagandist.com - www.thepropagandist.com is still directing traffic to the parking location. guess i'll just have to figure it out later...


spun by the propagandist at 12:59:00 PM

 
MARCH 22, 1973 FROM 1:50, TO 3:43 P.M.


NIXON: I don't give a shit what happens. I want you all to stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth Amendment, cover-up or anything else, if it'll save it--save the plan. That's the whole point. On the other hand, uh, uh. I would prefer, as I said to you, that you do it the other way. And I would particularly prefer to do it that other way if it's going to come out that way anyway. And that my view, that, uh, with the number of jackass people that they've got that they can call, they're going to--The story they get out through leaks, charges, and so forth, and innuendos, will be a hell of a lot worse than the story they're going to get out by just letting it out there.

MITCHELL: Well--

NIXON: I don't know. But that's, uh, you know, up to this point, the whole theory has been containment, as you know, John.

MITCHELL: Yeah.

spun by the propagandist at 11:01:00 AM

 
some more

okay, i used to think this guy was a wing nut, and i still believe he's out to get even, but it sure is nice to see mccain fuck with bush. i mean, come on, even the right wing nutcase press is flogging bush for using scare tactics to cover up his mistakes.

and now they're planting skulls in washington parks to try and draw the heat off...what's next, threats of north koreans pouring across the canadian border clenching knives in their teeth and anthrax grenades up their ass during the enron hearings?
spun by the propagandist at 2:11:00 PM

 
Lions tigers and bears, oh my!

so today starts the drumbeat of danger by the bush administration. cowed by their lack of attention to detail (i thought they tried to make us believe this was a GOOD thing in 2000), and instead of admitting that they maybe made a mistake, cheney jumps to the podium, predicts the burning of the homestead and the heresy of the loyal opposition. is it just me, or is all this really that transparent?

other people seem to get it. like robert parry on consortiumnews.com:

Major national news outlets are continuing to coddle George W. Bush even as new disclosures show that Bush and his senior advisers failed to respond effectively to warnings last year about Osama bin Laden’s plans to attack the United States.

This defensiveness about Bush was apparent in the immediate framing of the revelations as “The Blame Game,” a title used by CNN on May 16, as the stories broke, and atop a New York Times lead editorial on May 17. The implication to the public was that Democrats were trying to make political hay from the Sept. 11 tragedy by blaming Bush.

he also calls out bush on his supposed ignorance of al-qaeda's plans to crash planes into buildings, a fact extracted by the clinton administration, when the fbi and the cia coordinated on anti-terrorism measures:

The press also has done little to bring into focus how the Clinton administration succeeded twice in thwarting planned terrorist attacks by bin Laden operatives on U.S. soil, while the Bush administration failed.

In 1995, Abdul Hakim Murad, a Pakistani terrorist tied to bin Laden, was arrested in the Philippines and admitted under interrogation coordinated with the FBI and CIA that he planned to use pilot training in the United States to fly an explosives-packed plane into CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Murad was convicted in New York on other charges that he had plotted to hijack and destroy 12 American jumbo jets over the Pacific Ocean. [NYT, May 18, 2002]

That case tipped off the U.S. government to the possibility that al-Qaeda operatives were considering the use of their own pilots to hijack planes and crash them into targets. Citing the Murad case, a 1999 report for the CIA's National Intelligence Council said "suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaeda's Martyrdom Battalion could crash land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, (CIA), or the White House." [Washington Post, May 18, 2002]

but don't trust me. go read it yourself.
spun by the propagandist at 12:26:00 PM