many have asked why

intel, directives, aiding, etc the never ending war on a transitive adverb (GWOT) is given by the administration and it's supporters

intel, directives, aiding, etc the democrats in order to dig up dirt for political reasons is given by the democrats and it's supporters (plus the first also)

i've also thought, this bunch of crooks are just that, crooks first and foremost, the power comes second when you have the money first, but domestic eavesdropping would make stock market picks all the easier – ‘inside info’ when to buy, when to sell, no ?? leverage in mergers and acquisitions to your advantage, no ?? and when you 'own' the justice dept, foreknowledge or deflection of investigations only add to the fun

"you go to war with the Press corps you have. They're not the Press corps you might want or wish to have at a later time."

with this, and too many other things over the past (at least) eight years, i'm afraid (most of) the fourth estate has become a fifth column

it will be different now that a 'democrat' is in office, but for the wrong reasons

if we didn't have a corporate meadea, the page here: http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/category/y-2009/, would be devoid of content

and this works almost as well for this post too

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJxRE7LNadI&feature=related

but a co-worker sent this on

http://www.michaelyon-online.com/border-bullies.htm

more here

http://www.insidegitmo.com/Chapters/Inside%20Gitmo_Chapter_3.html

gratuitous, self-referential post

http://tofubo.blogspot.com/2006/10/republic-is-dead-long-live-republic.html

...the Constitution prohibits writs of attainders and the Geneva Conventions prohibits absolving people who commit war crimes. (Convention IV, Part IV, Section 1, Subsection III, Art. 148.) “No High Contracting Party shall be allowed to absolve itself or any other High Contracting Party of any liability incurred by itself or by another High Contracting Party in respect of breaches referred to in the preceding Article”...

http://fletcher.tufts.edu/multi/texts/BH241.txt (do a search for "Art. 148")

the preceding article (147) stipulates the things you can not do

...the Geneva Conventions prohibits absolving people who commit war crimes. (Convention IV, Part IV, Section 1, Subsection III, Art. 148. “No High Contracting Party shall be allowed to absolve itself or any other High Contracting Party of any liability incurred by itself or by another High Contracting Party in respect of breaches referred to in the preceding Article”...

http://fletcher.tufts.edu/multi/texts/BH241.txt

do a search for "Art. 148", and "Art. 147" for the preceding article for the list of things you can not do

back in sept of 2007, when the fcc had their half dozen town halls, i finally got to speak past 11pm, i closed with:

there are people on the right, who think that the media is liberal

there are people on the left, who know that it is not

and there are people all over the country, who unfortunately think that what they hear, see, and read is actually accurate and complete

the post just must not want readers to the paper or viewers to thier site, weird business model

(full speech @ sig)

there are two things never said about iran

a: are they enriching the material to the 97% necessary for munitions quality or to the 3% necessary for civilian power needs

b: how a certain presidentential directive allowed the transfer of the nuclear technology in the first place (bonus points on who the def sec and chief of staff at the time were)

if they are making highly enriched material, book 'em danno, if they are breaking iaea or non-proflif rules, have the Un pass a sanctions bill, if american companies were excluded from the contruction bids, have congress send a sternly worded letter, maybe the cia can stage something where the democratically (ha!) elected president is replaced by a more western friendly ruler, nothing bad could happen, right ??

was not aware of what the exact numbers were, but your's was the first time in memory that the degree of enrichment was noted and why the difference of enrichment matters in the intended use of the material

for a report in the meadea of how (and why and from whom) iran got the nuclear technology in the first place (self-referential answer @ sig)

http://www.salon.com/books/review/2006/03/16/phillips/index.html

from the article (please do read the book):

Phillips' final section, about national debt and the increasingly insubstantial nature of the United States economy, follows the model of the rest of the book, offering a summary of others' research on the subject, followed by historical analysis. What concerns Phillips here is not just the country's staggering national debt -- although that concerns him plenty -- but also the shift from a manufacturing to a financial-services economy, which he calls financialization. Instead of making things, Americans increasingly make money by moving money around. Finance, he writes, "fattened during the early 2000s -- this notwithstanding the 2000-2002 collapse of the stock market bubble -- on a feast of low interest enablement, credit-card varietals, exotic mortgages, derivatives, hedge-funded strategies, and structured debt instruments that would have left 1920s scheme meister Charles Ponzi in awe."

the above was regarding UPDATE II: There's also this: The U.S. is an empire in decline

for making it even harder to read your posts

the redesign, i don't know, sucks ?? hitting 3 links just to read the piece ?? who do you have coding the site here, sadists ?? because we'd have to be masochists to go thru the hoops to read a post