Anonymous Comrade writes

"Interested Persons Memo: Section-by-Section Analysis of Justice Department draft “Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003,” also known as “PATRIOT Act II”

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has been drafting comprehensive anti-terrorism legislation for the past several months. The draft legislation, dated January 9, 2003, grants sweeping powers to the government, eliminating or weakening many of the checks and balances that remained on government surveillance, wiretapping, detention and criminal prosecution even after passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, Pub. L. No. 107-56, in 2001.

http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID =11835&c=206"

Anonymous Comrade writes

Terry Jones, of Monty Python, offers an insightful reason why we all should support Bush's plan to bomb Iraq:

"For some time now I've been really pissed off with Mr Johnson, who lives a couple of doors down the street. Well, him and Mr Patel, who runs the health food shop. They both give me queer looks, and I'm sure Mr Johnson is planning something nasty for me, but so far I haven't been able to discover what. I've been round to his place a few times to see what he's up to, but he's got everything well hidden. That's how devious he is.

As for Mr Patel, don't ask me how I know, I just know - from very good sources - that he is, in reality, a Mass Murderer. I have leafleted the street telling them that if we don't act first, he'll pick us off one by one."

http://www.observer.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,882 459,00.html"

Anonymous comrade writes

"A Monument to Hypocrisy"

Edward Said, 16/02/2003

It has finally become intolerable to listen to or look
at news in this country. I've told myself over and over
again that one ought to leaf through the daily papers
and turn on the TV for the national news every evening,
just to find out what "the country" is thinking and
planning, but patience and masochism have their limits.
Colin Powell's UN speech, designed obviously to outrage
the American people and bludgeon the UN into going to
war, seems to me to have been a new low point in moral
hypocrisy and political manipulation. But Donald
Rumsfeld's lectures in Munich this past weekend went
one step further than the bumbling Powell in unctuous
sermonising and bullying derision.
=