Remember this when it's election time.
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Large deficits matter.

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He said a lawsuit is the best way to make the point that he was mistreated.

"I'm going to sue the Secret Service, Santa Fe Police, St. John's and everybody involved in this whole thing," he said. "The way our country is now, the only way people apologize anymore is with money. So I'm going to sue."
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I stopped in New York last week to see two of the most interesting early examples. Gawker is a weblog devoted to news and gossip about New York City and its gossip-heavy industries. Gizmodo, also a weblog, covers electronic gadgets. They're both fun to read, and highly informative.
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Here's the prewar zeitgeist in a nutshell: In a widely reported January 16 speech, Tony Blair proclaimed that the impending invasion of Iraq "has nothing to do with oil, or any of the other conspiracy theories put forward."

One week later, Sen. Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, quietly passed word to Russia and France that their countries will be frozen out of staggeringly lucrative postwar oil contracts unless they roll over and endorse the US attack.

Behind the Invasion of Iraq, the startling new book-length report authored by the Research Unit for Political Economy (RUPE), synthesizes the seemingly disparate threads of the US war drive in what amounts to a blistering indictment of American foreign policy. The report (available on the Web at www.rupe-india.org) is lavishly documented and jargon-free; the effect, especially for readers with limited understanding of global commerce and finance, is of puzzle pieces clicking decisively into place.

The RUPE report wholly confirms the widely-held view of the coming war as a massive oil grab, "on a scale not witnessed since the days of colonialism." Further, the current debate about arms inspections and alleged links to al-Qaeda is revealed as pure political theater, since the decision to invade Iraq was made months ago.

Links to the report

Why this Special Issue: India as a Pillar of US Hegemony

Behind the Invasion of Iraq (a summary)

Western Imperialism and Iraq:
From Colony to Semi-Colony
Towards Nationalisation
The Iran-Iraq War: Serving American Interests
The Torment of Iraq
Return of Imperialist Occupation

The Real Reasons for the Invasion of Iraq—and Beyond: The Current Strategic Agenda of the United States
Home Front in Shambles
Military Solution to an Economic Crisis
Rehabilitating Colonialism

Appendices:
US Declares India a Strategic Pillar
The Pages Ripped out by the US from the Weapons Report

  2:35:00 PM  Google It!  comment

After Secretary of State Colin Powell's powerful presentation at the United Nations on Wednesday, it's hard to doubt that the United States is on the verge of war with Saddam Hussein. Although many Americans still have qualms about this war, most agree with Powell that Saddam is both inhumane and dangerous.

But there is a great difference between Churchill's war leadership and President Bush's. Churchill recognized that a time of war places a special obligation on the governing classes to those who benefit least from a nation's social and economic arrangements. Bush, on the other hand, is doing all he can to benefit the economic elites and, through stealth, to undercut government's commitments to the least fortunate.

This not a liberal fantasy. Conservatives acknowledge that Bush's long-term goal is to reduce the federal government's capacity to act -- yes, to spend -- without saying so publicly. The large tax cuts the president has put on the table, conservative columnist Donald Lambro wrote candidly this week, “are, in effect, Mr. Bush's stealth initiative to curb future spending -- big time.” Exactly. And if you look carefully, most of the spending cuts will be in programs for the poor and near-poor.

Read the full story
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An open-source programming tool for nonprogrammers called Konfabulator lets Mac OS X users create Widgets to do anything from getting the local weather to ordering a pizza online. By Leander Kahney. [Wired News]

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The days of outrage overload. [Salon]

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This American Life: Secret Government (RealAudio stream).

It's a spine-tingling episode of This American Life, a wonderfully-engaging and entertaining radio program that mixes comedy with serious discussion of serious issues, which covers our new secret government by calling up the Justice Department and the victims and letting them tell their stories.

Act One covers the story of Jose Padilla, the man who was whisked away from his average criminal trial, declared an enemy combatant, placed on a military brig and not allowed to see a lawyer or a court until "the end of the war". The Justice Department says it was because he had serious discussions about a "dirty bomb" and they need all the information they can get from him. This American Life suggests it was to distract people from the FBI's misbehavior.

Act Two covers the everyday people who woke up one morning to find 25 FBI officers outside their door, were taken to solitary confinement for months without their family being told where they were, and then were flown back to their home countries.

Act Three covers the secret FISA court, which meets in secret to issue secret decisions about who the government can secretly wiretap. They'd never said no until the Government asked for broad new powers to override the the safeguards that were in place to prevent abuse of the court. That time they said no, and, at the request of some senators, told the public of their decision. The government appealed, to a secret court which had never met before. The ACLU, finding out about this, tried to fight it.

[found via GreaterDemocracy]

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Now that you have your own Dot Mac server up and running, here are six new things you can do with it -- including "iTunes Central," "iPhoto online," and the "Safari Rendezvous mod." Alan Graham shows you how. [MacDevCenter]

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This release fixes a really annoying bug that appeared in the previous beta. The new headlines and group feeds weren’t getting updated when they should be. Now they are. Other changes, mostly weblog editing changes, are listed on the change notes page. [Ranchero]

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