hella kafka

WAR
* "Meanwhile, the number of Marines who committed suicide last year jumped by nearly 30 percent over the previous year. The 31 Marines suicides marked the highest total in at least a decade. Another 83 Marines attempted to commit suicide. " 73% of marines cant even kill themselves properly. if only the failure rate was so high when they try to kill others... i wonder how many uncounted suicides there are - 'suicide by insurgent' or 'gun accident' or whatever. can we leave yet?
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/04/1437206

* oreilly had some amguy on who was tortured in vietnam who talked about *rumours* of ams torturing darkies... sweet.

* "The intelligence agent who was killed, Nicola Calipari, had hurled himself atop Ms. Sgrena to protect her..." could this be more fucked up? i wish the journo had died instead of Calipari. praps it might have gone some ways to stopping the stoopid fucking war, rather than just another largely anonymous 'unfortunate' death. and maybe eason would get his job back, and maybe all those stupid fucking wingnuts would be shaken back into the reality of the world that we have, not the one they'd like to have. maybe. apologies to giuliana - but imagine the impact of her dying... its the closest we've been to something that, maybe, just maybe, might have been a tipping point. its hard to imagine anything more kafkaesque/hellerish. and that assumes that the shooting was an accident.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/05/international/middleeast/05italy.html

* if we consider for a moment that the sgrena shooting maybe wasnt an accident, then we have to assume that they wanted her dead for some other reason. its hard to imagine how that scenario could be valid - but some have suggested that some of the kidnappings are actually blackflag operations - cf robertfisk re margaret hassan. mr fisk isnt known for hyperbole. so its conceivably plausible that the ams (or their friends) kidnapped sgrena, and she knew too much. this seems impossible if she was released, cos the kidnappers wouldnt have released her if it was going to blow their cover - but maybe the italian secret service folk actually rescued her. the nyt says "The circumstances of Ms. Sgrena's release remain murky, and Italian officials have shed no light on how, or from whom, she was released." questions questions. i'd love to hear what sgrena has to say - altho one expects that she is being ummm debriefed and we wont hear much from her... under fear of death. speculation speculation. the details are all so fucking murky that you can hear the whir of the spin machine... if a security service car with precious luggage doesnt know to slow down at a checkpoint then something is seriously fucking wrong.

* lets try the waybackmachine - lets pretend we are in 1999 and someone guessed that we might read this in the nyt "Soldiers often fire warning shots in the air to slow on-coming or merging traffic when hand gestures do not work, though they have begun to adopt less aggressive techniques, like hand-held stop signs.'

* "According to a former top Bush administration official, Russian special forces teams moved weapons of mass destruction out of Iraq to Syria. (and lebanon)" please.make.it.stop. http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/3/2/230625.shtml

* "Vince Cannistraro, former head of the CIA's counterterrorism center, said the message may be good news: ''If you've got to go to Zarqawi to ask him to do operations in the US, that sounds pretty desperate."" i love this shit - 'alq is increasingly desperate' yada fucking yada. seriously. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/03/04/in_hunt_for_bin_laden_doubts_raised_on_skills_funds/

* "An Iraqi government claim about Syria arresting one of Saddam Hussein’s half-brothers and surrendering him to Iraqi authorities has now been contradicted by Iraqi defense minister Hazim al-Shalaan. He said the half-brother, Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan al-Tikriti, was seized by Iraqi and allied soldiers, not by Syrians.
Al-Shalaan refused to say where Hassan was captured, although the earlier Iraqi assertion described the operation as occurring inside Syrian territory. [NYT, March 2, 2005] If at least that part of the story is correct and if the “allied” soldiers were American, it would mean Bush has authorized secret cross-border raids into Syria, a suggestion that the neocons may be dusting off their original plan of following the “liberation” of Baghdad with “regime change” in Damascus and Tehran." http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/030305.html

* ive been wondering for 3 years now whether iran or syria would be next - it shuold have been obvious which was the next target a long time ago - the best i could come up with way-back-when was that itd happen simultaneuosly - it feels like we are in a sprint to the finish - which seems to reaffirm my 'sense' that theyll both happen at the same time - i dont have a clue how - but the noise for both cases is fucking deafening. watching the murdermonkey mouth his threats is truly frightening. and watching him giggle immediately afterwards is chilling - not cos he's evil, just cos he is a 2bit whore.

* kenlivingston tees off on israel. which means that he is antisemitic, ipso facto, despite his protestations to the contrary. "Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, is a war criminal who should be in prison, not in office." the adl's gonna getchya ken. its gonna get worse, you holocaust lover. http://politics.guardian.co.uk/gla/comment/0,9236,1430185,00.html

MEDIA
* someone who interviewed notgannon: "I am a partisan but I also believe in fair play... Jeff is articulate, engaging, pleasant, and bright. He would be a guy you'd happily engage in conversation at a sports bar or in the line at the grocery store." http://www.thunewatch.squarespace.com/journal/2005/3/3/breaking-news-todd-epp-interviews-jeff-gannon.html

* thecommonills does a good piece on amysuperstargoodman (and they gave me another shout-out - thnx guys) http://thecommonills.blogspot.com/2005/03/highlighting-amy-goodman-for-womens.html

* novak apologised for lying about HDean - the text on cnn was "A Dean Correction" - as though howie had lied. nice work cnn. http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/03/04.html#a1781

AMDOM
* ""I'm not a big Greenspan fan. ... I voted against him two times. I think he's one of the biggest political hacks we have in Washington," Reid said on CNN's "Judy Woodruff's Inside Politics."" how the mighty have fallen. http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/11044402.htm

* superhero-conyers: "I have written Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and urged him to relieve General Boykin from his duties, effective immediately. " boykin will get promoted again. http://www.johnconyers.com/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC={B166974A-C132-4EC3-9682-FE6E08C1A584}