Ascroft Rocks, & Rolls America
"We should not march into Baghdad . . . . To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us, and make a broken tyrant into a latter-day Arab hero . . . assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an unwinnable urban guerrilla war. It could only plunge that part of the world into even greater instability." -- Former President, George Bush, in his 1998 book A World Transformed, co-authored with Brent Scowcroft, Random House.
John Ashcroft's Patriot Act Summer Tour - flash animation
commentary on Ashcroft's speaking tour. Hehe. "Ashcroft Rocks, & Rolls
America." Very loud. Turn down your volume before
clicking the link. [kaba]
KeepAndBearArms.com has been up for a couple of days now. Looks like
they fixed their technical problems.
Kevin Tuma - Religion - cartoon commentary on the difference between banned religious speech and n.e.a. approved religious speech.
I updated the prices on my Mail-Order Ammunition Distributors page.
Paul Craig Robers at VDARE.com - Neocons Admit They've Blown It -- Is The Draft Next? - Bush'es neocons are running short of troops. If they want to continue their war-making, they're going to have to start a draft. [lew]
If you think about it, you will realize that the neocons' war plans are taking us back to the draft. There's no way around it. Lacking sufficient military forces to occupy Iraq with its small population of 25 million, what would we do once neocons get us mired down in Iran or Egypt with their large populations?
Somebody needs to call a halt to this. It will not be the neocon press or Fox News that does it. These folks hide behind superpatriotism, but their real motive is to make the Middle East safe for Israel.
Amy Guthrie at The Village Voice - Zero Tolerance Comes to Mexico City, Courtesy of Rudy Giuliani: When Cops Are Thugs - the problems of using Herr Rudolph's methods where the cops are even more corrupt than in the Big Apple. [grabbe]
Having brought the five boroughs to heel, the former mayor of New York is now unloading his crime-fighting secret here. Those secrets, of course, start with cracking down on "quality of life" violations, nuisance infractions like graffiti. Last year, a group of business executives paid Giuliani's consulting firm $4.3 million for advice, and many are hoping for miraculous results. But some experts warn that applying the "broken windows" theory made famous by Giuliani to a society that largely lacks law and order could be a recipe for disaster.
...
Manuel Caliz, a 29-year-old marketing manager for a major tequila company, knows all about the dark side of the Mexico City police force.
Caliz was stopped well after midnight last year for driving his New Beetle in the wrong direction on a one-way street. Afraid to roll down his window, he pressed his driver's license against the glass, enraging one of the officers. The officer lifted his gun from its holster and demanded that Caliz roll the window down.
The agitated officer then slid into the passenger seat and pointed his pistol at Caliz's chest, demanding everything in his possession. "He told me I had really screwed up and that I would die if I didn't do what they said," Caliz recalls.
Since he only had about $50 in cash, the officers suggested a trip to a nearby ATM. The policemen, about four in all, retrieved the remaining $300 in Caliz's account before letting him go with a warning not to report the incident. Caliz recovered the cash under an insurance policy, but never considered reporting the officers.
"How can you ask for help when the police are the ones holding you up?" says Caliz.