These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. ~~~ Thomas Paine, 1776

You Know We're Really Screwed When ... Even The Anti-War Propaganda Has A Pro-War Bias

Sat, 08/16/2008 - 06:25 — Winter
At A Tiny Revolution (good blog!), Jonathan Schwarz has been highlighting a new book by former U.S. Army colonel Andrew Bacevich [photo], who is now a professor of history and international relations at Boston University.

Bacevich's new book is called "The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism" and in it he hits some "notes" that I consider "right", such as the assertion (which is, or is close to, the central thesis of his book) that

the lessons drawn from America's post-9/11 military experience are the wrong ones.
I agree with Bacevich when he says
America doesn't need a bigger army. It needs a smaller -- that is, more modest -- foreign policy.
But I found it hard not to gag ...

You can read more here, and/or comment below:

Local And State Police To Be Granted New Spy Powers

Sat, 08/16/2008 - 05:07 — Winter

Just what we need.

According to Spencer Hsu and Carrie Johnson in the Washington Post,
The Justice Department has proposed a new domestic spying measure that would make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive data with federal agencies and retain it for at least 10 years.

The proposed changes would revise the federal government's rules for police intelligence-gathering for the first time since 1993 and would apply to any of the nation's 18,000 state and local police agencies that receive roughly $1.6 billion each year in federal grants.

Quietly unveiled late last month, the proposal is part of a flurry of domestic intelligence changes issued and planned by the Bush administration in its waning months. They include a recent executive order that guides the reorganization of federal spy agencies and a pending Justice Department overhaul of FBI procedures for gathering intelligence and investigating terrorism cases within U.S. borders.

Taken together, critics in Congress and elsewhere say, the moves are intended to lock in policies for Bush's successor and to enshrine controversial post-Sept. 11 approaches that some say have fed the greatest expansion of executive authority since the Watergate era.


You can read all about it here, or comment below.

WELCOME!

Fri, 08/15/2008 - 16:17 — Winter
Hello, and welcome to the new winter palace. It's nice to see so many new people here, and it's nice to see familiar names as well.

This is meant to be OUR site, not just mine. It's a good place to host comments related to my blog, but it's intended as more than that; it's for ALL of us and (within reason) we can all use it however we like.

Once you register here, you can post new blogs, start new threads in the forum, start a poll, or comment on any thread that's already going.

If you have a blog of your own and you have something there that you want to bring to our attention, by all means do so. Give us a few paragraphs and a link, and if anyone accuses you of "link-whoring", I'll slap 'em! (in a polite, virtual way of course).

Or if you find yourself reading something really good (or really bad) and you want to share it with a few like-minded cranky dissidents, feel free: that's what this site is for.

Thanks again to NJT for setting up this site for us, and best wishes to all my online friends, as always.

Federal Court Grants Immunity To Sponsors Of 9/11 Attacks

Fri, 08/15/2008 - 10:43 — Winter
Yesterday, according to Reuters, a federal court ruled that
"The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, four princes and other Saudi entities are immune from a lawsuit filed by victims of the September 11 attacks and their families alleging they gave material support to al Qaeda..."
Why? Because foreigners are protected by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act unless their country is "designated a state sponsor of terrorism by the U.S. State Department", and Saudi Arabia is not so designated. So there.
You can read more here or comment below

The Entrapment Dividend: Setting A Few Knuckleheads Up, And Knocking The Rest Of Us Down

Wed, 08/13/2008 - 21:18 — Winter
The threat of homegrown terrorism is now so grave that we must take extraordinary action to protect ourselves.

This grave threat is personified by the Toledo Terror Cell and the Rockford Mall Bomber, who are presented to the nation by the likes of FOX News and the Counterterrorism blog as the face of the homegrown terror threat. They are portrayed as such for a reason: they are the most visible "successes" of the FBI and its JTTFs. However:

Both of these cases were the work of admitted agents provocateur. In both cases the agents provocateur were entrapment specialists working for the FBI. In neither case -- according to the government -- was the public in any danger.

But the threat posed by these terrorists and others of their ilk is so serious that we must shred some of our remaining civil liberties in order to protect ourselves, even though they are now in prison for having taken part in the plotting of crimes they never could have accomplished, and never would have thought of on their own.

read more here or comment below:

Negative of an eclipse

Wed, 08/13/2008 - 10:23 — littlehorn
Negative of an eclipse

This is the picture I use as an avatar everywhere I create stuff. I find it pretty good.

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