The US pulls out of the ABM treaty, while Russia calls it a mistake.
Argentia faces a general strike.
Afganastan would implode if there was anything left of it.
Suicidal attackers assault the Indian parliment.
Isreal cut off contact with the Palestinians and Palestine declares Isreals action acts of war.
Maybe the al Queda aren’t such fools. If I knew of any place, I would be crawling into the nearest hole in the ground right now too.

Imagine the unimaginable: The president, in the White House, the vice president, at the National Observatory, and all Cabinet members, in their respective agency headquarters, are killed in a terrorist attack on downtown Washington. So are all members of Congress, except the few who happen to be out of town.

What happens to the Republic?

— Dana Milbank
You know, it really doesn’t make me feel better when they’re actually thinking about things like this.

In a letter to a consultant in Britain who runs a personal website that has not been especially nice to KPMG, the company said it had discovered a link on his site to www.kpmg.com, and that the website owner, Chris Raettig, should “please be aware such links require that a formal Agreement exist between our two parties, as mandated by our organization’s Web Link Policy.”

— wired.com
You know you’ve subordinated all independent thought to the organization when you can no longer see how ridiculous you’ve become.
From a technical standpoint, as the article states, if every link on the web had to be mutually agreed upon, there would be no web. (You figure it out… some 60 billion pages on the web with probably 3 links each, minimum.) And to imply that you have a right to say who can and cannot link to your site means you believe you have editorial control over a someone else’s intellectual property.
Can you believe companies pay millions of dollars to an organization that has so little grasp on the common sense workings of the World Wide Web.
Or maybe not.
There are supposedly 25 million regular direct internet users in the United States right now. That is about one tenth of the population of the country. Now figure that no more than one in ten of those users has a strong grasp of the history and workings of the internet (web included).
That’s about 1 percent of the people in this country who might find this story truly ridiculous. And every day as more people come online, the ‘power users’ are a shrinking proportion.
So when the overwhelming majority of people don’t know any better, and they’re simply told that they’ve done wrong, in a non-confrontational society as the US has become, …
Who’s left to tell KPMG to fuck off?

The man then volunteered that he had more weapons, directing officers to his parked truck opposite the Treasury Department on the far side of the White House complex. Officers found an SKS assault rifle in plain view on the front seat, Mackin said. Also in the truck, which had Idaho plates registered to the man, were a rifle with scope, a handgun, a Kevlar helmet and a bulletproof vest.

— AP
It’s always comforting to read about shit like this after I walked right by there at lunch time. And within half a block on my way to work this morning.
The sad thing is that the world is so fucked up right now, this story didn’t even make local news.
When I left work, I was almos feeling guilty about not going to the National Christmas Tree lighting.
On a good year, there is a crowd of a couple hundred people standing in the cold, waiting for 2 hours, jockeying for position to peek through the fences, trailers, bleachers, and crowds.
I’ve done that twice.
This year, the entire street was cordoned off all afternoon leading up to the event. No backpacks allowed. People being searched before approaching the field.
It just weren’t worth it.
Like so many other things in Federal City lately, everything is focused on the television audience. Camera operators are VIPs and politicians are reading scripts.
Does anybody remember anymore that you needn’t be a politician to be elected to office?

“Ashcroft said the use of the National Guard troops will be a temporary measure to assist Border Patrol personnel overtaxed by heightened security measures put in place after the terrorist attacks.

“It’s not a militarization of the border or a fortification of the border,” Ashcroft said.

For what the Justice Department described as an “initial phase,” 419 National Guard troops will be deployed in 12 states bordering Canada.”

Ummmm…..
bullshit.
I don’t remember ever hearing about a temporary government action.

Bush cyber-security adviser wants Internet users to get free security software
What did I just say?
This bodes ill.
Am I the only one that becomees suspicious when the government advocates forcing people to install certian pieces of software on their computer?
It’s not incredibly brilliant in execution anyway. Right now there is no reasonable way to force people to keep such things up to date. Hell, you won’t even get half the people to install the shit.

“We’re an open society, but we’re at war,” Bush told the federal district attorneys. “We must not let foreign enemies use the forms of liberty to destroy liberty itself.”

— George W. Bush, Jr.
After all, we wouldn’t wanna treat these damn foriegners like they’re human or anything.
What would be next? Giving equal rights to gays, lesbians, and republicans?
Maybe some of you out there haven’t taken this to heart yet, but our freedoms and liberities only truley exist, and are only valuable, when they extend to covering those instances where it would be most convenient to sweep them away.
Free speach and freedom of the press is not important until we sue a magazine publisher for printing an article about a software program.
Freedom of movement is not important until I have to show my ID to National Guardsman to get into work at a public building.
Freedom of belief is not important until the government declares all muslims to be suspects in a crime commited for the least holy of reasons.
The founders of this country had a few choice words for their former dictatorial oppresors:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”

— The Declaration of Independence
Granted, my glasses are a little dirty right now, but the way I read that, it seems to completely conflict with the Shrub’s ridiculous comments.
And don’t come talking to me about these times being especially trying and an exceptional circumstance. When the founding fathers of the US wrote those words, at best thirty percent of their countrymen were willing to fight for freedom against the biggest empire the earth had ever known. I call that trying.

Law enforcement officers in the rest of the nation are questioning foreigners about their possible knowledge of terrorist activities. But Kroeker, worried about civil rights violations, has said his officers will not join in this task. His is the only police agency in the country to refuse to cooperate for such reasons, according to a spokesman for the U.S. Justice Department.

Because of that decision, based on advice from Portland’s city attorney, Kroeker is winning plaudits from civil libertarians. But he is catching flak from all over the country.

— Los Angeles Times
Oh just shoot me now. I cannot live with myself anymore. I am actually coming out in favor of a cop.
I can save myself the mental anguish though. More precisely, as usual I am coming out against stupid and ignorant people.
I can’t believe the entire country is guning for a police department, because the police actually decided to show restraint. The cops didn’t make a knee-jerk reaction like most of their counterparts by drooling over themselves with incestuous glee while fulfilling a FBI and Justice Department directive.
I refuse to even be concerned that it involves the September attacks on the US. That is by far a secondary concern in this case, at least to me.
First of all, Police departments are intentionally localized organizations. Having each community police itself is not only more efficient than a national force, but removes any temptation to evolve such a national police force into Big Brother from 1984 or the firemen from Farrenheight 451. That this local police department is now being assailed for not immediatly and blindly following the federal decree is insane.
Considering I personally have never seen an officer stop to utilize that lump of graymatter between their shoulders, (yes, between their shoulders. they never seem to have necks), I find it very comforting to know there are police out there who take time to consider the right and wrong of their actions, and what effect those actions will have on the people they’re dealing with.
If people in this country had any conscience, this would be just one more thing that would lead to a lot of ashamed people in a few months.
Thankfully, we all have the long-term memory of a pile of steaming dog shit.