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and your wish shall be granted...

The Memory Hole has lots of goodies. The following was of particular personal interest:

DOJ Attorney Diversity

That agreement was with the U.N. Are we the U.N.?

Attempt to assassinate Bush Sr.

Was that a response to us attempting to assassinate Saddam? Or, Kaddafi, or Castro, or [insert long list of U.S. successful and unsuccessful attempts to assassinate foreign leaders from South America to Asia]?

Giving aid and comfort to terrorists

Who? The U.S.? If it were that, then why not invade North Korea, or Iran, or Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia...etc? The answer is below.

Refusing to cooperate with the UN.

Again, are we the U.N.?

Being a rat-bastard tyrant

Finally, the honest answer. But, only partially honest. His daddy was made a fool by Saddam, and everyone knew that if Shrub got into office, the Iraqis would pay. Shrub's Secretary of the Treasury reports that plans for invading Iraq were in the making only within a few days of Shrub's theft of the election. If it were simply a matter of being a rat-bastard, there are plenty of others further along the road to bastard-hood: North Korea's loony leader for one. The problem is, no oil there, so no business drive to get there. Afghanistan proved a perfect, inarguable cause. Not for the one you think. True, Bin-Loonie was there, but that was simply the inescapable argument for invasion. If we could tame that country (only an asteroid dropped from space could achieve that), we could finally lay that oil pipeline we've been planning on for the past 30 years. Unfortunately, CNN and FauxNews channels don't cover this little bit of history, but we've been in a chess game with the Russians and Chinese for this bit of inhospitable land for quite a while. By the way, this is also why we're "friends" with Pakistan.

Simple failture of Washington/Baghdad diplomacy

No. Simple failure of Shrub Administration/U.N. diplomacy. His daddy was better at it, but this numbskull couldn't control his trigger finger. His only half-way feasable argument (even Powell had to excise some of the outright lies from the deceptive rhetoric he was forced to spew to the U.N.'s collective face) of Weapons of Mass Destruction have vanished into thin air, leaving a unpleasant odor that the rest of the world blames us for.

'they're trying to get nukes'

Again, why not invade Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea, or Pakistan? They're the biggest terrorist threats outside of Afghanistan. They've been attempting to get nuclear long before Iraq, and have actual terrorist ties. The reason is this was a personal vendetta and business agenda, and he used to this country to fulfill it. If he should force Iraq's oil wells within U.S. corporate controls in the process of taking revenge, all the better. This monkey has to go come November.

You're right in that Shrub didn't attack Iraq simply for Weapons of Mass Destruction. That's just what he used to sell it.

The truth is, the rest of the world was behind us going into Afghanistan because that's where t

You're right: what's the point of ridding a country from a vicious dictator who (1) brutalizes his own population, (2) destroys the environment, (3) instigates war and (4) supports terrorism unless you actually get some financial benefit from it?!?

(1) Agreed. (2) Not sure. (3) Yes, but with US support on both sides (Iran-Iraq war). (4) False.

1983 HANDSHAKE #1
http://www.workingforchange.com/comic.cfm?itemid=1 4912

2003 HANDSHAKE #2
http://www.thememoryhole.org/pol/us-and-uz.htm

I thought so too, until I realised that the human brain has a tendency to wander.

Not the brain of a military pilot...at least not with all of the speed they're given these days...

There was a white supremecist group in Texas (with a cyanide bomb, 500,000 rounds of ammo and lotsa of other WMD) who ONLY got caught by accident!

This was just a few weeks ago and BTW, they haven't caught all the members. Here's the link.

What is more intresting is that US Terrorist plot that media ignores.

Try to explain to a widow that lost her family due to U.S bombs in the name of "freedom". Especally since we are wrapping their villages in barbed wire.

If your neighbor is beating his wife. You are not allowed to go over and capture the husband and accidentaly kill one of their children. You can not just make up your own law. You call the proper authorities. In the case of Iraq. The U.N. is the proper authorities. I have supported the U.S./U.N. actions in the past, 1st Gulf war, Kosovo, and Somalia. I would have also supported this Gulf War if the U.N. was involved. However, the U.N. realised that Iraq did not have WMD and did not have a military capable of projecting force on it's neighbors. Iraq was contained. By ignoring the U.N. The U.S had broken several international laws and has set a precedent that other countries can just ignore international law. If we were really so worried about freedom for Iraq we would never have supported Saddam back in the 80's. I like freedom and will stand up for any one's rights. However, I can not lie to my self and justify that this war was done in the interests of the Iraqi Oil....I mean people.

Indeed. In fact, the US public education system was designed to keep people uneducated and docile.

The Corporations That Supplied Iraq's Weapons Program (mirror)

Report: U.S. supplied the kinds of germs Iraq later used for biological weapons

>We don't make closed source or "secret" laws in
>this country, ie, laws that effect the public
>in general, and that the public is not
>permitted to know or examine, but yet will be
>held accountable to. We don't have anonymous or
>secret agencies enforcing laws and arresting
>people, ie, a secret police force.

are you serious? two words my friend: Patriot. Act.

get your memory checked now: http://www.thememoryhole.org

Why the hell aren't we stopping countless dictators in Africa (like, oh say, Mugabe in Zimbabwe)?

Don't forget about Islam Karimov:

Here are some pictures of Bush and Powell shaking hands with their good buddy, Islam Karimov.

I wonder if they might ask him politely to stop, you know, boiling people alive. I mean since Hussein's atrocities are now the only rationale for invading Iraq, you would think the administration would think twice about cozying up to brutal dictators. (But, then, no one was ever really bothered by that picture of Rumsfeld and Hussein shaking hands when Hussein was a CIA asset, either. To quote Chou En Lai, "One of the delightful things about Americans is that they have absolutely no historical memory." )

So what? Time pulled it, thememoryhole posted it, PBS has Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser in the George H. W. Bush administration, interviewed in October 2001, Libertarian Thought and many others have the text.

Once it hits the net, it is around for a looong time.

How can we keep corporate America honest?

1) Be helpful. Inform Time Magazine to their 404 missing page.

2) Donate to The Memory Hole.

i was hoping this thread might end :) But you're incorrect about pre-9/11 gate screeners. The whole situation is pretty complicated, but the largest airlines at a given airport (say, United and Northwest) would form a private company that did all the security screening. Other airlines would have to pay that company for the service. There were dozens of these partnerships, being run by whoever was the biggest players at any given airport. I'm not sure when this system came about, whether it was in the 80s with airline deregulation or later.

I agree that the government will give us gestapo in the name of protecting our freedom (it's already happening, esp. for all the Iraqis who's new freedom we're protecting). But I don't think the airlines ever envisioned an attack like 9/11 coming. The government knew but couldn't get their ducks in a row, and didn't mention it to anybody.

• The Memory Hole

• Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

Here's a minor example of something those two sites didn't catch: Remember Iraq's so-called "mobile biological weapons factories"? A month after the story broke that they were for weather balloons, the CIA moved their report's URL.

An intriguing fact about this whitehouse.gov/*/iraq thing is that they do in fact cover some of the important statements which are apparently not duplicated in the press release, conference, and briefing directories. Perhaps there was a "unique urgency" to cover up some poor choices of words?

If you are Dutch, then Piet Hein is a national folk hero. If you are Spanish or Portugese then he was a rapacious Dutch pirate stealing colonial income.

If you're Canadian, then the Brig the Sir John Sherbrooke was a warship, if you were American, a pirate ship. Vice-versa for the Syren.

As with acts of war anywhere, perspectives can differ even amongst folks supposedly on the same side.

Maybe I've watched too much Babylon 5, but I just can't get read the phrase 'President Clark' without looking around for Nightwatch.

Didn't you get the memo? Someone decided that TIPS was a better name than Nightwatch.

But seriously, you can see the Democratic candidates' positions (in soundbite form) on "homeland security" at CNN. Nothing very concrete from Clark, but Howard Dean is listed as:

Against military tribunals, labeling of "enemy combatants"

Repeal parts of Patriot Act that restrict basic liberties

I'd be willing to bet you were going to a small branch library. In the first few years of the Google era, I felt the same way that you do. Then one day I found myself back in a large university library. Big surprise: the big libraries blow away the internet in terms of quality and accessibility of information. Sure, you don't get your instant access to quotes, dates and other trivia. But if you want serious, in-depth, reliable information from an authoratative internet source, you have to pay subscription fees 9 times out of 10.

Besides, most libraries have Google too.

Now, when I want to learn about something I hear mentioned on TV or radio, or read in a book or magazine, I just load up Google, and type it in.

Another thing: ever been to The Memory Hole? Stuff on the internet can change quickly, and without notice. Vital facts can disappear overnight for any number of reasons. Electronic data cannot be trusted in the same way that old paper can.

Now, I'm not saying that books are infallible, but (most of the time) library books don't disappear or change overnight, real newspapers cannot be un-printed, and, reassuringly, librarians tend to get upset when the White House tries to boss them around. Conversely, it only takes a few minutes of browsing The Memory Hole to be convinced that your favorite online journals are all tools of The Man.

You and all your little friends who think the U.S. is some kind of fascist police state ought to wake up and smell the coffee. Go live in one for a few years then come back and tell me how shitty you think America is.

Maybe you should take a look around a little more, Sunshine.

I'm sure with such deeply rose colored contacts in, the blood will be easier to miss.

Don't be a fool. We're being lied to left and right now, and people like you are eating it up whole. You're the kind that are giving these rat bastards the power.

Wake up. You're only as free as the leash you're on.

TIA (Terrorist Information Awareness)

Whhaaa?
It was called Total Information Awareness until recently, and this is what their website used to look like. When did they rename it?
Bah, just more newspeak...

As I've just posted elsewhere, it is quite feasible that a site owner could be damaged if caches maintain information after the original site has been changed or taken down.

Damaged in what way? Aren't there archives of newspapers, journals, and magazines? And if time-sensitive information is present on a website, does the public have a right to see what was previously there? Websites can get away with a lot of instant censorship that way - you can check out this site for an archive designed in response to that very issue. If you have a specific example related to this problem, I would love to hear it.

There is also the issue of a site owner's right to know who is visiting them.

Right - just like WalMart has the right to pat down and run a credit check on everyone who walks through their doors. While a site admin might like to know everything about a person who wanders on to their site, they have no "de facto" claim to information about any/everybody who browses their site.

On a related note, there are questions of advertising revenue etc.

If your site is being sponsored by ad revenue, I think the site owners need to find a better business model. (Might I recommend the "customers pay a premium to not have ads" model?) And if your content is worth viewing, your viewers will want the latest, greatest version of it - I haven't seen a web archive yet that claims this information is the most current and up-to-date.

This issue isn't so black and white as the "information belongs to me" crowd seems to believe it is.

Hello !
I am for the arab world, whatever happend on 911 was certainly not the official story, now I'm not saying that Dubya made it happen he is simply too stupid for that, but there is something FISHY about it, click over and read:

1.Two 911 Jetliners EXCEEDED Their Software Barriers

2.The Israeli "arts" students cheering and photographing the collapse of the WTC?

3.The WTC buildings were designed to withstand a jet impact

4.9/11 Survivor Describes Multiple Explosions

ok now you read it, dont be scared, or you can just ignore it and trust your reality.

not just a rumor started in the arab world...
dont you just *WISH* that it is a only a rumor :-) ?

News articles, especially those about government, are always subject to fair use exemptions. Have people forgotten that?

I want to preface this with my views that typical future poling stations will be comprised of a touch screen with a printer, and an optical scan machine, which can scan the ballots produced by the printer. That way, the people who can't mark the ballot can use touch screen, and everyone else can do what Cambridge, Mass. does with Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) and also be able to use the mail.

May 15, 2003

To Register Doubts, Press Here
By SAM LUBELL

FTER the 2000 presidential election, with its disputes over the balloting in Florida and its hanging chad, the federal government moved swiftly to revamp the country's largely paper-based and mechanical voting systems. More than $1 billion has been appropriated for buying electronic voting systems, including optical scanners and touch-screen machines, that eliminate ballots written or punched on paper or tallied by mechanical equipment.

The new systems have already brought what proponents of electronic voting say is a new reliability and efficiency to the process.

"There's no guesswork as far as who you voted for," said Mark Radke, director of voting industry for Diebold Election Systems, which makes the AccuVote-TS, a $3,000 touch-screen machine. Mr. Radke said the unit, which presents voters with choices on an electronic monitor, quickened the voting and counting process and reduced the number of "undervotes," ballots that are not counted because they are unreadable or otherwise defective.

But not everyone likes the switch to electronic balloting. Some of the loudest opposition, in fact, is coming from computer experts who say the new technology could prove more troublesome than its predecessors. They warn of equipment malfunction, unchecked tampering and the lack of secure proof for each vote.

A group of more than 100 technologists, led by David Dill, a professor of computer science at Stanford University, has called for tighter security measures on electronic voting apparatus and a "voter-verifiable audit trail," meaning a permanent record of each vote that can be checked for accuracy even after the election. (The group's "resolution on electronic voting" is at verify.stanford.edu/evote.html.)

Without such a trail, Dr. Dill warned, if a machine is tampered with or malfunctions, "then the votes in question are corrupted and you have no option but to hold another election or accept bad results." Thus the only reliable backup, the group contends, is for the machines to print out paper ballots after each vote, which can be hand-counted if necessary.

Dr. Dill and his counterparts, who in- clude computer science experts in academia and Silicon Valley, also assert that unlike more mechanical machines, electronic systems cannot be opened up to the public for verification. And the only people who know what is encoded on them are computer experts. "I think it's unreasonable for the public to be asked to accept the security of these machines on blind faith," he said. "There's no question the technology is open to tampering."

Members of the group also assert that electronic voting machines have experienced breakdowns in some elections. "We're concerned," said Rebecca Mercuri, formerly a professor of computer science at Bryn Mawr and now the president of Notable Software, a consulting firm. "These machines are showing huge defects."

For their part, election officials and voting machine vendors dispute any notion that the systems have major problems, and caution that the public should not overreact.

Penelope Bonsall, director of the Federal Election Commission's Office of Election Administration, which helps set guidelines for the voting process, said that the possibility of vote tampering has always exi

Being able to back up your statements with fact ...'s something Rush does VERY well.

If by "well" you mean "without regard to the truth" -- for proof please see [Google cache of] www.fair.org/media-outlets/limbaugh.html

FAIR.org seems to be down today.

>Think 1984 (i know i know i know) for a second and consider Winston's job of rewriting news and, therefore, history.

This is a very valid concern and abuses have already come up. Thememoryhole.org just found a new one at the latimes.

Glance at that and tell me you aren't scared. CNN did the same thing with rewriting Powell's speech (i believe) to make it sound more pro-war. Sadly, no one is demanding that all changes and retractions on the web be disclosed. This is a problem journalists should be fighting tooth and nail right now before its too late.

By too late I mean when DRM will make it impossible to cache, screencap, wget, etc anything from these news sites. These are serious concerns and so far I haven't heard much from those in power regarding doing something about it. The attitude that the web can be changed willy-nilly is disturbing if not sickening.

This,

This,

This,

This,

This,

This

For the solution, wait for the Second American Revolution.

That sort of sums up my feelings on the subject... outright lies go unchallenged and the debate is restricted to how many supply wagons and troops should be sent into combat. That's hardly criticism of the administration. It's not that there's no debate - it's that the debate is about unimportant details, or about the severity of a course of action that is unquestioned. Individual facts are reported, and sometimes even on the front page, but they're not often used to challenge the status quo.

I understand the reasons for CNN being what it is (or at least think I do) but that's no reason to excuse them. Nobody to my knowledge has refuted Noam Chomsky's bread and butter book... if commercial US networks' coverage hasn't improved since Nicaragua I don't see why it's too likely to change now. The same style sells every year, and the penalties for pissing off your sources of prepackaged news remain the same. Hell, I wouldn't want to piss of the Bush adminsitration... they are incredibly adept at controlling and dispensing information. If you're not on their good list, you might not get invited.

Of course Al-Jazeera is just as biased. That was sort of my intent in my ranting post. One part CNN, one part The Guardian, one part the Hindu Times and a dash of Al-Jazeera, mix with the Page 16 article-hunters' reports and you might actually have a fair picture of what's going on.

Justified like this ?

I bet the IRAQI in the USA who supports this kind of war are stupid Kurds that want/belive to create their Kurdistan between Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq.

> Yes we started Iraq 2 but that is a justifyable one.

Justifyable such like this ? Pay attention on the first 2 pictures.

While other people have posted links to various sites that are hosting images and the Al-jazeera news feeds and images, I decided to mirror the news feeds as an attempt to help move these feeds to people who are curious about the hype circling this situation, but unable to see it in the news.

I've rarely been moved like this situation moved me. After reading about these Al-jazeera clips showing dead American soldiers and captured American POWs, I wanted to actually see them to see if the hype matched the furvor. They aren't completely gruesome, but they definately show that this war won't be a week jaunt through the Middle East.

I don't mind having the news censored for security reasons, but when the rest of the world can view these clips, and Americans can't, my whole opinion of the situation changes.

Posted anonymously. Mod accordingly.

From what I understand, the Al-Jazeera channel is available unencumbered off of some satellite, so given $200 worth of hardware (I'm sure many satellite junkies have the necessary hardware) their news content is readily available.

I'm not sure I'd buy into the organized DDOS, but rather into a (near) world-wide slashdotting type effect. I've been frequenting their website quite a bit over the last week, and it's been fading in and out of existence (at least for my locale) quite often.

Most of the 'scandalous' images have been slurped from various sources and they're available in plenty of places. One such site is http://www.thememoryhole.org/war/gulfwar2/ (be gentle!), which includes the pictures of the supposedly executed soldiers.

I hope Al-Jazeera beefs up their infrastructure and expands their newly launched minimal english service... it's nice to have news from outside sources (ie: outside the US sphere of influence) with an opposite view-point.

Not for her it's not.
Or her
Still believe in smart bombs, precision bombing etc.
Does he?

Not for her it's not.
Or her
Still believe in smart bombs, precision bombing etc.
Does he?

Shame on you, Mr. Bush

Shame on everyone who voted for Bush

Shame on everyone who didn't vote against Bush

Shame on all US Soldiers in Iraq

that is really funny. i am a vet (vietnam/gulf) and currently work for the goverment. i have never been anti-war or against my country before. in this instance i am whole-heartedly against it's current actions. i think it has absolutly nothing to do with democrat or republican politics. i think it has more to do with that the us is being an aggressor nation. you can say we are liberating iraq all you wish, but we have never had a desire to liberate iraq until now.

for those that say iraq supports terrorist and al-quieda(sp?), or that al-quieda(sp?) and osama are associated with iraq/911 all i would like is some proof. the cia and bush can't connect the two even if osama IS guilt.

snipped from site to save from /.

During one of his rare press conferences, President Bush admitted something which completely contradicts what we've been hearing from him, most other politicians, and the mainstream media. Not surprisingly, the media have completely ignored this; I couldn't find a single article that mentions it in any news source, domestic or foreign.

The occasion was a press conference with UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, which took place in the White House on 31 January 2003. Here's the key portion:

[Adam Boulton, Sky News (London):] One question for you both. Do you believe that there is a link between Saddam Hussein, a direct link, and the men who attacked on September the 11th?

THE PRESIDENT: I can't make that claim.

THE PRIME MINISTER: That answers your question

http://www.thememoryhole.org/index.htm,

The links are just abbreviations, so you have to explore to discover what they mean, but the advantage to this is that I can cite the abbreviation easily each time I link a story found via that source.

The idea of putting them in rows at the top is so that frequent visitors to my blog can jump to other sources if they don't find anything new/interesting at mine. (I call them 'jumpbars'.) Lately I've started adding little asterisks for sources that have recently done especially noteworthy updates.

My local startpage duplicates the jumpbars, and adds less-frequent sources like monthlies. When I started blogging I made a serious effort to learn the update schedules of every online periodical, and I created a generic startpage that summarised these. (It's badly out of date now.) The idea was to encourage people to copy this page and customise it to their interests. But knowing when zines usually update makes it easy to prioritize my surfing-schedule. (I wish all periodicals spelled this info out on their front page, eg The Onion comes out late Tuesday.)

I think NewsHub still isn't appreciated for its headline-aggregation pages. I'd use NewsLinx too except that most all the tech zines have decided to use obnoxiously junky html-design, so I stick with Slashdot and the Register for tech news.

My politics are lefty, and Sam Smith's Progressive Review gives a very deep daily summary with links, while Common Dreams reprints full articles from many major sources. A newcomer is Memory Hole that specializes in stories the mainstream media tries to suppress/ignore.

For space news, NasaWatch is tops. I've mostly given up on Drudge and Salon, and am having doubts about the BBC science page.

Other daily faves include the AstroPic of the Day, two poem-of-the-day sites, Zippy the Pinhead, and various blogs. A weekly that I think is underappreciated is Dean Baker's Economic Reporting Review that gives a very dry weekly critique of economics-propaganda in the NY Times and Washington Post. (They very systematically distort the facts with the obvious goal of redistributing the wealth upwards.)

You won't see this at the Cheney News Network

Read about the companies that supplied Iraq weapons programs.

Cheers,

W00t

Get Your War On Iraq On

You see, there *are* consequences to *not* voting, Virginia.

What else is there really to comment on?

This is true so long as you're not an outlier. Consider some examples of things that could make you an outlier:

• surfing sites in Arabic
• using or downloading encryption software
• consulting non-mainstream media sites
• Reading the Poindexter bio at thememoryhole.org

I'm sure with minimal effort, others can come up with even more chilling examples. When the government of our corporate republic can legally trawl everything looking for outliers, safety in numbers doesn't make me so comfortable.

Wishing a terrorist attack on Madison because they do not hold the same narrow minded views as you is something I find despicable and ignorant but to flame is not constructive, so I offer you food for thought.

The patriots who setup the American constitution understood tyrants and the human failings of greed and power lust hence the checks and balances therein. If these checks and balances are removed for whatever excuse, I would certainly smell a rat. Members of the Congress & Senate pledge an oath to uphold the constitution when taking office however; they have just granted Bush the ability to declare war which the constitution clearly forbids and I think this spells trouble.

Everything isn't a cut and dried as you or Bush like to make out, this simplistic view of the world where there are good guys in white hats and bad guys in black hats is childish and ignorant yet you tell others to grow up.

Some Americans who have retained some critical thinking abilities are realising the people in the white house hijacked a nations grief to throw the nation in to a perpetual war. People like you label these anti-American but let me ask you this: When has it ever been American to blindly follow a leader?

Real people will die in the upcoming war against Iraq, real families will grieve for the loss of loved ones and for what? OIL.

Here are a couple of links If terrorists did attack Madison, after going against the Ashcroft patriot act, who would it really help? Certainly Would remind me of the Lavon Affair or maybe closer to Operation Northwoods.