squad di morte

WAR
* " U.S. troops who mistakenly killed an Italian intelligence agent last week on the road to Baghdad's international airport were part of extra security provided by the U.S. Army to protect U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte" return of the squad di morte.... put yuor hand up if u think negroponte would take the most dangerous road in the world, at night. nice to see the whole 'trigger-happy nervous teenagers' argument out the window. so many lies... http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000836000

* the huge truck bomb that blew up in baghdad the other day hurt a bunch of foreign contractors - but the media was saying that it was targetting the ubiquitous police recruits. why do they lie?

* AQKhan sold iran centrifuges, but the pakgovt didnt know about it, and we cant talk to khan. perfect.

* bushbeat wonders whether the sex and sentiment at abug might be more interesting/investigation-worthy than whatever happened at neverland http://villagevoice.com/blogs/bushbeat/archive/000754.php

* what was your favorite madrid311 moment? was it the unexploded bomb being found in a backpack in the lostproperty dept at the police station? or was it when the apartment blew up, with the cameras rolling? or the fact that some people escaped from the apartment after the police had it surrounded? or the shot of the policecommissioner guy walking out of the building with the passport of the perpetrator in a clearplastic bag for everyone to see? or the white van with the koranic tapes and personal belongings? or the car that was found next to it 3 months later? or that the people who bought the explosives had the phone number of the policecommissioner? any others?


SCAMOCRACY
* are street demonstrations illegal in am? why is it that every country can have them except ams? the ukr's can do it, the lebs can do it, the iraqis are too scared prolly, otherwise they'd do it. but not in the greatest democracy in the world! it was, what, 3 years ago that i thought that i thought the only possible salvation was rioting in the streets - and even after that, i thought that the only hope was a military revolt... and now we get another stolen election, more wars, and bolton at the UN. good grief. when is enough enough? what colour will the revolution be? orange has already been taken, as has cedar, and velvet, and rose. methinx the amrevolution will necessarily be black. does anyone truly believe that if there was a million protestors in dc tomorrow that it would get nearly as much attention as the 50,000 anti-syrian protestors in beirut last week, all week? we already know the answer to that question. and the answer is fucking spooky. why not? democracy scamocracy. where is rendon when u need them? how many people will it take on the streets?

* the password on the diebold machines is 'diebold' - bev did a real world hack of a system. sweet.
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0310-32.htm

* are we seeing glimpses of *actual* checks and balances in the uk? at least someone
is putting up a fucking fight. its democracy, dude, but not as we know it.



MEDIA
* jons: 'i really think the bush badmin's foreign policy is top spread irony around the world' http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/001982.html#001982

* robertbyrd was on insannity&colmes (for some reason!) - holmes conducted the interview - it was remarkable to even see him there, and they didnt slam him too much

* "The New York Times said today that Frank Rich will be returning to the Op-Ed pages as a columnist on April 10." woohoo. http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000836606

* it seems that the latest derogatory codeword is 'outspoken'


AMDOM
* lefkow case gets weirder "The letter writer said he broke into the Lefkow home about 6 a.m. on February 28 and was going to wait until the judge returned" - yeah - cos if u are gonna wait for someone to get home from work, you break in at 6am? broken tail light on the day he wants to suicide? at least the guy suicided with only one shot - thats getting increasingly uncommon. luckily, the shot went thru his head and out the drivers window, which is probably just about where the cop was standing. lucky the cop didnt get hit, huh. as for me, id prolly favour the barrel-in-the-mouth suicide...nothing smells right. http://edition.cnn.com/2005/US/03/10/judge.bodies/index.html

* they are trying to ram thru the bolton hearings next week - one can almost hear the logic already 'we cant afford to be without a UNamb at this important and dangerous time so we need to move fwd quickly' - how long since danforth announced his resignation? http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000359.html

* the thing that seems to be most missing amongst all the noise about bolton is his support for taiwan, (and illegal payment from the taiwanese govt) - which would seem to be an issue given china's warmongering noise wrt to taiwan. alarmbells. alarmbells.

* buffet made "more than $2.3 billion of investment gains as Buffett bet the U.S. dollar would fall." - i wonder if he'll get tainted with the soros brush. methinx not. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9540-2005Mar5.html

* anwr is toast :-(

* will the repugs get nukular on socsec?


MISC
* bobgeldof's speak on the africa commission report was amazing.

* brits who have lost their job: andrewgilligan, davidkelly, piers morgan, gavindavies

SHOUT-IN
i got a lovely shout-in from the common ills:
"And when we're "in" Australia, we always have to check up on our friend Luke (we should rather we're there or not). At wotisitgood4, Luke's addressing something very obvious but nothing that hit me (or anyone else I know of) so read "shove it" and be glad that Luke's tying together and analyzing something's that flown over most people's heads (including mine):



* in any case, the heinz hacking story vs the heinz estate story score on news.google is still about 14-to-50. of the 14, most are foreign.

* c.i. is the most prolific blogger on the planet - and s/he has some serious neighbour issues to deal with as well!