The United States is trying to get a DNA sample from the Bin Laden family. Earlier this month they killed several people with a missile fired from an unmanned aircraft, because one of them was tall (like Osama) and was treated deferentially by the others in the group. The locals say the dead were innocent villagers. The U.S. thinks they might have been al-Qaida leaders, which apparently is reason enough to blow someone up.
Been watching or reading the news lately? You might see a phony news story planted by the Pentagon and not know it. For an organization that’s supposed to be defending the Constitution, the U.S. military has a profound contempt for press freedom. Planting propaganda in the media is part of what the military calls “psychological operations.” The difference between psychological operations and conventional warfare is that in psychological ops, the target isn’t the enemy—it’s YOU.
Californians are trying to get out from under the long-term energy contracts they signed, at premium prices, during the energy crisis. They say the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) stood by while they were getting screwed in the deregulated energy economy. Only the most cynical observers think that the Bush Administration looked the other way in return for millions of dollars in campaign contributions from Enron and other corporate sharks.
Microsoft has admitted that its Windows Media Player doesn’t just play media. It also informs Microsoft who is listening to, and watching, what. Microsoft claims it has no plans to use the information. Wow, THAT’s a relief.
Yesterday the President called upon Chinese President Jiang Zemin to be a force for peace. President Zemin, to his credit, did not giggle at this.
The Republicans are fond of saying they’re for states’ rights. They don’t seem to be able to walk the walk, though: the Bush administration has intervened against a California medical marijuana initiative, against an Oregon assisted-suicide initiative, in support of an Ohio law outlawing late-term abortion, and now he’s just told the state of Nevada to shut up and eat their radioactive waste. The “states’ rights” crowd has never been interested in the rights of states, except when it suited their right-wing agenda.
Seems that W is working hard to increase Presidential secrecy in Washington, all of course in the name of national security. This is of course nothing new; Nixon was most famous for tarnishing the phrase “executive privilege,” his term for holding the President above the law. The current administration wants to hide Reagan administration documents from public view. Never mind that the Republicans were all about public scrutiny of Clinton documents while he was still in the White House.
John Henry Falk got to the essence of it: official secrets, he once said, always exist to hide official lying.
Well here’s a big surprise: Microsoft has been bribing politicians. Well, of course neither Microsoft nor their political lapdogs will actually call it bribery, they’d prefer to think of it as campaign contributions. For the 2000 election cycle, Microsoft gave $6.1 million to political parties, candidates and PACs. Strangely enough, the beneficiaries of this corporate largesse are now in a position to cut Microsoft a sweet settlement deal in its antitrust case (you will recall that Microsoft has already been found guilty of violating antitrust law). Microsoft can also expect red-carpet treatment when it seeks to have its copyright claims enforced by the government, at the expense of ordinary citizens.
We are supposed to be on heightened alert today against terrorist attack, according to U.S. officials who claim to have gathered “intelligence” from the prisoners taken in Afghanistan. What they don’t say, is whether the information was extracted under torture. FBI officials are on record as having discussed illegal interrogation techniques, i.e., torture, or moving suspects to countries where torture is permitted. The veil of official secrecy prevents us from having more than suspicions, at this point. (Do YOU think our government is too principled to torture a suspect?)
Still haven’t got my alotted 15 minutes of fame, but yesterday on All Things Considered there was a little installment: they read one of my letters on the air, regarding their obituary of Claude Brown, author of Manchild in the Promised Land. Here’s how it sounded.
