I agree with BicycleRepairMan, looking at political stances and such he is no different then Hillary. Sure his character might be better, and its wonderful to see someone being able to speak coherently again after so many years of NUCULAR. I wonder how the GOP is reloading it's slime guns, am waiting to hear all about him being a terrorist, a muslim, with middle name of Hussein. Fox News will be going beserk if he gets the nomination.

Though I think its all a facade, I don't think he will change so much. He pulls alot of string with his hope and change rehetoric, but doesn't really say all that much of substance, its classic JFK in that sense, that why he can't be caught not acutally doing anything, unlike Bush who promised the world democracy and a trip to Mars.

Will Obama unravel all those years of consolidating executive power? Reform DOJ? Reform OLC? Come out against US torture programs? increase taxes? rebuild the import based economy? End the war with dignity? Wane off oil?

Though one bright side is that speeches by him internationally would be something to really witness, I can totally see him pulling a "Ich bin Berliner" somewhere... "Ana Arabia" would be awesome to ease Middle East tensions.

But then again part of me thinks there is a white neo-Nazi loading a sniper rifle right now somewhere out there.

The only way I can deal with watching these presenters is by rationalising that they each must be thinking, behind that Fox facade, "Yes, this guy's fucking right, but I can't say anything. I'm gonna make some horrible point now, just to vindicate his remarks".

Oh, how I hope and pray this is the case.

The NATO designated Bear bomber is a relic stright from the 60s, unlike the B-52 it has not been incrementally upgraded over the years to keep up with the times, its 4 rotory engines are so loud deterent air patrols along the UK and US would hear the bomber before actually making visual contact. Occasionally submarine crews would pick up the Bear bomber ascoustics when they were flying overheard.

It's outlandish military wankery by the Kremlin, its a waste of human resources and fuel for the dubious benefit of looking hardcore. When in reality the illusion of might is simply another facade for a military that is still trying to recover and reconsitute itself.

WTC 7, where tons of burning debries from the collapsing WTC crashed through the facade and set fire throughout the building? And where the fire crews let the fires burn because the building was empty and they were in the middle of the biggest rescue operation in American history -- and had no way of fighting it anyway because most of their men and equipment was history? THAT "Building 7"? The same building that the fire crews told city engineers that the floors were sagging in and were ordered out almost a half-hour before it collapsed? Is that what you're talking about? Because, really, the only people who don't know the truth about 9/11 are the 9/11 "truthers".

Marxist-leftist weenies bend over backwards apologizing to and for, say, Saddam, the 9-11 terrorists and "I'm-a-Dinner-Jacket", the imam-punk'd 'President' of Iran, for these poor souls are/were merely "misunderstood", and "we have no right to judge them, because all cultures are equal."

It takes Ann Coulter, a 100-lb Christian White Woman, whose greatest "crime" is having a point of view in a wussified PC-world that can no longer bear strong opinions on any subject, to evoke the kind of rabid hatred that should be reserved for the aforementioned madmen.

I stand by my original statement, which is correct. Had it been Katie Couric in the hot seat you might recognize the obvious about the no-talent schmuck host, but hey, I'm just shocked the rage even emerged, usually so well-concealed behind the elitist intelligentsian facade. Too bad it's wasted on skinny White girls and not murderous muslims.

Indeed, World Trade Center 7 wasn't hit by a plane. However, as I've already said, it suffered severe structural damage from the impact of a collapsing 110-storey skyscraper; it also suffered eight hours of widespread, unfought fires. Further, World Trade Center 7's collapse wasn't particularly "graceful". The collapse caused significant damage to 30 West Broadway and The Verizon Building and minor damage to several others; the debris spanned the width of Barcley Street. The substructure of the east mechanical penthouse began sinking into the main superstructure due to an internal collapse appreciably before the main superstructure -- including the visible facades, etc. -- of the building collapsed. (Incidentally, controlled demolitions simply do not exhibit this kind of behaviour -- yet more evidence against the controlled demolition theory.)

sounds like something straight out of the books of the US facade err gov't.

at least our psuedo-journalists are critical of what he says..

Well put snipe-The fur trade is like fast-food. We know it kills by the truck-load daily, yet return like the dogs we are, to our own, delicious vomit-

Poor makeitstop....the only way to make it "stop", is to make the world go away....like Heather Mills tries to do with her inane crap, cause she can't deal reasonably, or roll without what SHE loves.......drama, and vampirism, fueled by a do-gooder facade, built of self-pity, self-hate, and diversion.......

Now....where's my fur pajamas!!

May I direct you to a lovely little, Animal Rights ditty I know and love, and sing at lest once a year, in my birthday suit, standing on a rug of beaver pelts....

http://www.videosift.com/video/See-My-Vest--MBurns-dedicated-to-Ms-Heather-Mills

Am from Uzbekistan. This is all because of the fucking goverment that is just raping my nation over and over again, the whole thing is mafia from the soviet times. Across the border Kazakhstan is booming economically while our goverment seeks only to oppress the people and media.

They just shot up civilians protesting ridiculous goverment taxes and actions mercilessly, and then turned around and said it was terrorists... Everyone in the world turned a blind eye because of The Global War on Terror. Uzbekistan kicked the US forces out, and got all cushy with Putin. Even if the western countries embargo cotton from Uzbekistan, all that will do is drive Uzbekistan into the arms of Russia even more, who are looking to strike pipeline deals for our natural gas reservoirs.

I wish I could just assassinate the entire fucking cabinet and hang the president because they have been committing crimes against our own people ever since we gained 'independence', its such a facade and it makes me sick.

Great post!

I have friends who helped with their legal fight for return. The case really exposed a very nasty, cruel and uncaring side of the British government.

Paradise Cleansed by John Pilger 10/11/04 - 'The Guardian'

"There are times when one tragedy, one crime tells us how a whole system works behind its democratic facade and helps us to understand how much of the world is run for the benefit of the powerful and how governments lie. To understand the catastrophe of Iraq, and all the other Iraqs along imperial history's trail of blood and tears, one need look no further than Diego Garcia.

The story of Diego Garcia is shocking, almost incredible. A British colony lying midway between Africa and Asia in the Indian Ocean, the island is one of 64 unique coral islands that form the Chagos Archipelago, a phenomenon of natural beauty, and once of peace. Newsreaders refer to it in passing: "American B-52 and Stealth bombers last night took off from the uninhabited British island of Diego Garcia to bomb Iraq (or Afghanistan)." It is the word "uninhabited" that turns the key on the horror of what was done there. In the 1970s, the Ministry of Defense in London produced this epic lie: "There is nothing in our files about a population and an evacuation."

Diego Garcia was first settled in the late 18th century. At least 2,000 people lived there: a gentle creole nation with thriving villages, a school, a hospital, a church, a prison, a railway, docks, a copra plantation. Watching a film shot by missionaries in the 1960s, I can understand why every Chagos islander I have met calls it paradise; there is a grainy sequence where the islanders' beloved dogs are swimming in the sheltered, palm-fringed lagoon, catching fish.

All this began to end when an American rear-admiral stepped ashore in 1961 and Diego Garcia was marked as the site of what is today one of the biggest American bases in the world. There are now more than 2,000 troops, anchorage for 30 warships, a nuclear dump, a satellite spy station, shopping malls, bars and a golf course. "Camp Justice" the Americans call it.

During the 1960s, in high secrecy, the Labour government of Harold Wilson conspired with two American administrations to "sweep" and "sanitize" the islands: the words used in American documents. Files found in the National Archives in Washington and the Public Record Office in London provide an astonishing narrative of official lying all too familiar to those who have chronicled the lies over Iraq.

To get rid of the population, the Foreign Office invented the fiction that the islanders were merely transient contract workers who could be "returned" to Mauritius, 1,000 miles away. In fact, many islanders traced their ancestry back five generations, as their cemeteries bore witness. The aim, wrote a Foreign Office official in January 1966, "is to convert all the existing residents ... into short-term, temporary residents."

What the files also reveal is an imperious attitude of brutality. In August 1966, Sir Paul Gore-Booth, permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office, wrote: "We must surely be very tough about this. The object of the exercise was to get some rocks that will remain ours. There will be no indigenous population except seagulls." At the end of this is a handwritten note by DH Greenhill, later Baron Greenhill: "Along with the Birds go some Tarzans or Men Fridays ..." Under the heading, "Maintaining the fiction", another official urges his colleagues to reclassify the islanders as "a floating population" and to "make up the rules as we go along".

There is not a word of concern for their victims. Only one official appeared to worry about being caught, writing that it was "fairly unsatisfactory" that "we propose to certify the people, more or less fraudulently, as belonging somewhere else". The documents leave no doubt that the cover-up was approved by the prime minister and at least three cabinet ministers.

At first, the islanders were tricked and intimidated into leaving; those who had gone to Mauritius for urgent medical treatment were prevented from returning. As the Americans began to arrive and build the base, Sir Bruce Greatbatch, the governor of the Seychelles, who had been put in charge of the "sanitizing", ordered all the pet dogs on Diego Garcia to be killed. Almost 1,000 pets were rounded up and gassed, using the exhaust fumes from American military vehicles. "They put the dogs in a furnace where the people worked," says Lizette Tallatte, now in her 60s," ... and when their dogs were taken away in front of them, our children screamed and cried."

The islanders took this as a warning; and the remaining population were loaded on to ships, allowed to take only one suitcase. They left behind their homes and furniture, and their lives. On one journey in rough seas, the copra company's horses occupied the deck, while women and children were forced to sleep on a cargo of bird fertilizer. Arriving in the Seychelles, they were marched up the hill to a prison where they were held until they were transported to Mauritius. There, they were dumped on the docks.

In the first months of their exile, as they fought to survive, suicides and child deaths were common. Lizette lost two children. "The doctor said he cannot treat sadness," she recalls. Rita Bancoult, now 79, lost two daughters and a son; she told me that when her husband was told the family could never return home, he suffered a stroke and died. Unemployment, drugs and prostitution, all of which had been alien to their society, ravaged them. Only after more than a decade did they receive any compensation from the British government: less than £3,000 each, which did not cover their debts.

The behavior of the Blair government is, in many respects, the worst. In 2000, the islanders won a historic victory in the high court, which ruled their expulsion illegal. Within hours of the judgment, the Foreign Office announced that it would not be possible for them to return to Diego Garcia because of a "treaty" with Washington - in truth, a deal concealed from parliament and the US Congress. As for the other islands in the group, a "feasibility study" would determine whether these could be resettled. This has been described by Professor David Stoddart, a world authority on the Chagos, as "worthless" and "an elaborate charade". The "study" consulted not a single islander; it found that the islands were "sinking", which was news to the Americans who are building more and more base facilities; the US navy describes the living conditions as so outstanding that they are "unbelievable".

In 2003, in a now notorious follow-up high court case, the islanders were denied compensation, with government counsel allowed by the judge to attack and humiliate them in the witness box, and with Justice Ousley referring to "we" as if the court and the Foreign Office were on the same side. Last June, the government invoked the archaic royal prerogative in order to crush the 2000 judgment. A decree was issued that the islanders were banned forever from returning home. These were the same totalitarian powers used to expel them in secret 40 years ago; Blair used them to authorize his illegal attack on Iraq.

Led by a remarkable man, Olivier Bancoult, an electrician, and supported by a tenacious and valiant London lawyer, Richard Gifford, the islanders are going to the European court of human rights, and perhaps beyond. Article 7 of the statute of the international criminal court describes the "deportation or forcible transfer of population ... by expulsion or other coercive acts" as a crime against humanity. As Bush's bombers take off from their paradise, the Chagos islanders, says Bancoult, "will not let this great crime stand. The world is changing; we will win." "


Finally in 2006 Lord Justice Hooper and Mr Justice Cresswell ruled that orders made under the royal prerogative to prevent the return of the Chagos islanders to their homes were unlawful. They described as "repugnant" the action to exile the population of the islands. "The suggestion that a minister can, through the means of an order in council, exile a whole population from a British overseas territory and claim that he is doing so for the 'peace, order and good government' of the territory is, to us, repugnant," the judges said.

But the government are appealing (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/6333223.stm) and the right of return is still being denied!

(sorry for long post - but this one really gets to me!)

Very graceful and accessible Glass, similar to the sound of his soundtracks for The Truman Show, Mishima, and others.

You can listen to almost all of his music online at The Glass Engine here. (IE and Java needed: this has crashed Firefox on me twice.) I'd recommend the soundtracks Mishima, The Thin Blue Line, The Truman Show, and Candyman, among others, for Glass newbies. My favourite piece is still track 5 from Glassworks, "Facades", for piano and clarinet.

I wouldn't really say that VideoSift is a stronghold for the Far Left. If we were that the website would be filled with Loose Change, 9/11 The Real Truth, and tons of Micheal Moore.

And tagging current events in the spectrum of left and right politics sa a facade to just muddle up the debate.