A Derbyshire company is launching a range of “Muslim-friendly” drinks as part of a backlash against American brands including Coca-Cola.
The Qibla Cola Company claims its products are an alternative for people who “reject injustice and exploitation” and as a means of protesting against what it calls the “colonial” administration of President Bush.
Its decision to launch a range of drinks comes months after a French company launched Mecca Cola in a bid to cash in on anti-US sentiment among Muslims. Guardian/UK
Daily Archives: 23 Apr 03
U.S. Planners Surprised by Strength of Iraqi Shiites:
“As Iraqi Shiite demands for a dominant role in Iraq’s future mount, Bush administration officials say they underestimated the Shiites’ organizational strength and are unprepared to prevent the rise of an anti-American, Islamic fundamentalist government in the country.” Washington Post
A Star with two North Poles
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“Sometimes the Sun’s magnetic field goes haywire and the effects are felt
right here on Earth. Using a supercomputer and data from NASA’s Ulysses
spacecraft, scientists are beginning to understand a curious event two
years ago when the Sun sprouted two north poles.” NASA
Industrial Strength
“Julie Bargmann’s on a mission: Can a tough girl from New Jersey teach the EPA how to make Superfund sites live and breathe again?” Metropolis
Spiritual Refugee:
Junko Chodos: “In a society that does not allow for the existence of individuality, the effort to become an individual invites persecution. Although this sort of persecution is not as visible as political persecution it is nevertheless fatal to one’s spiritual being, so the persecuted person becomes an exile. One usually goes into this sort of exile only after a sustained battle against the cultural system in which one’s whole life is wrapped up. The battle is painful. Wounded and bleeding, one becomes an exile. These people I call “spiritual refugees”; I consider myself one of them.” CrossCurrents
Weapons of Mass Confusion —
A Security Strategy Doomed to Failure: “Whatever the merits of the case for war against Iraq, the terms of debate about the Bush administration’s larger strategy are flawed. The new emphasis on WMD has not been accompanied by any serious public discussion of the differences among such weapons. A security strategy that fails to acknowledge those differences and their consequences for U.S. foreign and military policies is doomed to failure—in Iraq and elsewhere.” — Owen R. Cote, Jr., Boston Review
Also: Stakes high for White House in arms search: Too early for criticism, administration insists. DenverPost In other words: ‘Just you wait.’ I have said repeatedly that, if clandestine arms are found, the sociopathic dysadministration will announce their ‘discovery’ when it is coincidentally most politically opportune to deflect mounting denunciation.
Smart Heuristics:
“Isn’t more information always better?” asks Gerd Gigerenzer.
…Gigerenzer provides an alternative to the view of the mind as a cognitive optimizer, and also to its mirror image, the mind as a cognitive miser. The fact that people ignore information has been often mistaken as a form of irrationality, and shelves are filled with books that explain how people routinely commit cognitive fallacies. In seven years of research, he, and his research team at Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, have worked out what he believes is a viable alternative: the study of fast and frugal decision-making, that is, the study of smart heuristics people actually use to make good decisions. In order to make good decisions in an uncertain world, one sometimes has to ignore information. The art is knowing what one doesn’t have to know. The Edge
Eric Harris Admitted Homicidal and Suicidal Thoughts
To this day, the authorities want us to believe that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold showed absolutely no signs of being violent before they and others unknown (and officially unacknowledged) committed the Columbine massacre, the bloodiest school shooting in US history.
We’ve already seen that just two months before the killings, Harris turned in a graphic short story about a massacre as a school assignment.
The three documents below are from Harris’ juvenile diversion file. They were sent to The Memory Hole by Randy Brown, a Columbine parent and a member of the Columbine Records Review Task Force. In them, Harris tells the authorities that he has homicidal and suicidal thoughts, and his parents reveal that their son has suicidal thoughts. The Memory Hole
R.I.P. Nina
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Jazz great Nina Simone dies at 70: “Nina Simone, the jazz great whose rapsy, forceful voice helped define the civil rights movement, died Monday at her home in France, according to her U.S. booking agent. She was 70.
Though she remained a top concert draw in her later years, she was quite frail… At a 2001 concert at Carnegie Hall, she had to be helped to the stage, and was later seen sitting backstage in a wheelchair.” AP/Salon I listen all the time to a compilation CD I made from my scratchy Simone LPs on the very day I first learned how to burn CDs. From the joyousness of ‘Here Comes the Sun’ to the plodding, inexorable anguish of ‘Just Like a Woman’, Simone’s jazz chops were not at all trivialized by covering pop tunes, which coinhabit the Simone heights for me with ‘I Need a Little Sugar…’ and ‘Mississippi Goddamn’.
Also: Nina Simone: The End of an Era. BBC
Embedded in Washington:
When it comes to the mainstream media, embedded journalism is hardly a new phenomenon. In fact, collusion is its most essential nature, argues writer and editor Tom Englehardt in Mother Jones (in language that makes it sound inspired by the renewed fever over the Matrix sequel, it seems to me):
It may seem that the Pentagon invented “embedding” for the war in Iraq. The media has certainly reported the phenomenon that way. But it’s worth remembering how ordinary a phenomenon embedding actually is. The world is largely brought to us, here in these United States, by the deeply embedded, complete with a deeply embedded worldview and little consciousness of the rules by which the embedees live and work. It works so much better that way, when no one bothers to point out the problems, and no one even thinks that you might be an embedee.
And, speaking of the extent of collusion:
On April 21, New York Times reporter Judith Miller broke what appeared to be one the most important stories since the war in Iraq began. In a piece that ran on the paper’s front page, Ms. Miller reported that a scientist in Saddam Hussein’s chemical-weapons program, in speaking to U.S military investigators, had claimed that Iraq had destroyed illicit weapons in the days leading up the war.
The revelation was huge news because if the scientist’s claims were true, they supported President Bush’s stated rationale for the war: that Iraq was a menace to world peace because it was secretly harboring chemical and biological weapons.
But the deal Ms. Miller made to get her piece was wildly peculiar, and it provoked concern not only among the usual journalism ethics hand-wringers, but also among her colleagues at The Times. New York Observer
Cairo buzzes with rumors about Hussein
“He was spirited out of the country by the CIA, which agreed to alter his appearance and identity in exchange for a quick military surrender to U.S. forces.
The Russian ambassador ferried him to Moscow via Syria in a car, which could explain why U.S. forces reportedly attacked a diplomatic convoy headed to Damascus.
He made a secret deal with the Americans to trade his life and the lives of his family and top aides in return for the safe release of seven American prisoners of war.
Saddam Hussein has vanished, and his top deputies and their families have fled. With their whereabouts unknown, Cairo’s rumor mill is churning out conspiracy theories by the dozens, mostly involving clandestine plots with the U.S. government.” Sunspot
Related: Steve Perry: The Buyout of Baghdad?: “Tales of a secret arrangement between the Bushies and the Republican Guard persist.” From dubious sources, to be sure, but Perry feels suggestive evidence is beginning to accumulate.
What happened to Iraq’s army?
“The whole issue of Iraqi soldiers — how many died or were wounded, how many deserted or fought to the end, where they are now — is surrounded by a veil of secrecy. Neither the U.S. forces in Iraq nor the Iraqis themselves seem to be willing to delve into it too deep. As a result, conspiracy theories about Iraq’s defeat, involving either treason or the U.S. use of ‘low-level nuclear devices,’ abound.” Salon
For 2004, Bush’s Aides Plan Late Sprint for Re-election:
“President Bush’s advisers have drafted a re-election strategy built around staging the latest nominating convention in the party’s history, allowing Mr. Bush to begin his formal campaign near the third anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and to enhance his fund-raising advantage, Republicans close to the White House say.” NY Times If this man’s insidious handlers succeed in co-opting the memory of the WTC victims for their purposes, it will rank as one of the most heartless maneuvers in the sordid history of American gutter politics. But will its hearlessness be matched by the Democrats’ gutlessness in failing to respond effectively?
Fellowship finances townhouse where 6 congressmen live:
“Six members of Congress live in a million-dollar Capitol Hill townhouse that is subsidized by a secretive religious organization, tax records show.
The lawmakers, all of whom are Christian, pay low rent to live in the stately red brick, three-story house on C Street, two blocks from the Capitol. It is maintained by a group, alternately known as the ”Fellowship” and the ”Foundation,” that brings together world leaders and elected officials through religion.” The Tennessean
In a chilling article from Harper’s, Jeffrey Sharlet (of killing the buddha) infiltrates the secret theocrats.
The Family is, in its own words, an “invisible” association, though its membership has always consisted mostly of public men. Senators Don Nickles (R., Okla.), Charles Grassley (R., Iowa), Pete Domenici (R., N.Mex.), John Ensign (R., Nev.), James Inhofe (R., Okla.), Bill Nelson (D., Fla.), and Conrad Burns (R., Mont.) are referred to as “members,” as are Representatives Jim DeMint (R., S.C.), Frank Wolf (R., Va.), Joseph Pitts (R., Pa.), Zach Wamp (R., Tenn.), and Bart Stupak (D., Mich.). Regular prayer groups have met in the Pentagon and at the Department of Defense, and the Family has traditionally fostered strong ties with businessmen in the oil and aerospace industries. The Family maintains a closely guarded database of its associates, but it issues no cards, collects no official dues. Members are asked not to speak about the group or its activities.
The organization has operated under many guises, some active, some defunct: National Committee for Christian Leadership, International Christian Leadership, the National Leadership Council, Fellowship House, the Fellowship Foundation, the National Fellowship Council, the International Foundation. These groups are intended to draw attention away from the Family, and to prevent it from becoming, in the words of one of the Family’s leaders, “a target for misunderstanding.”* The Family’s only publicized gathering is the National Prayer Breakfast, which it established in 1953 and which, with congressional sponsorship, it continues to organize every February in Washington, D.C. Each year 3,000 dignitaries, representing scores of nations, pay $425 each to attend. Steadfastly ecumenical, too bland most years to merit much press, the breakfast is regarded by the Family as merely a tool in a larger purpose: to recruit the powerful attendees into smaller, more frequent prayer meetings, where they can “meet Jesus man to man.”
Brian Doherty criticizes the article in Reason‘s online site both for its “imitable Harper’s style” and its suggestion that we should worry about The Family’s adulation for Hitler’s efficacy as an organizer. This, for me, is a red herring issue, since Bush’s forces have already proven themselves far more masterful at orchestrating — if you’ll pardon the mixing of the metaphors — an Unholy Alliance between the pitifully limited political vision of the Christian Right and the morally vacuous Machiavellian neocon pseudo-intelectuals.
A Nation Lost:
‘Beware of war as an organizing principle of society. It should be a source of alarm, not pride, that the United States is drawing such cohesive sustenance from the war in Iraq.
Photographic celebrations of our young warriors, glorifications of released American prisoners, heroic rituals of the war dead all take on the character of crass exploitation of the men and women in uniform. First they were forced into a dubious circumstance, and now they are themselves being mythologized as its main post-facto justification — as if the United States went to Iraq not to seize Saddam (disappeared), or to dispose of weapons of mass destruction (missing), or to save the Iraqi people (chaos), but ”to support the troops.” War thus becomes its own justification. Such confusion on this grave point, as on the others, signifies a nation lost.’ — James Carroll, Boston Globe [via CommonDreams]
Party Patrol:
A new anti-drug law could spoil your summer fun.
Two weeks ago, the House and Senate quietly passed the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act of 2003—legislation aimed at quelling club drugs like Ecstasy and GHB. Ushered through with little fanfare, the act was piggybacked onto the AMBER Alert Bill, a package of child-safety laws with overwhelming congressional support. President Bush has promised to sign it into law in the upcoming weeks. But despite serious grassroots opposition spearheaded by organizations like the Electronic Music Defense and Education Fund, the bill passed without a Senate hearing. “It was backdoor legislation at its worst,” says William McColl, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance, a group that lobbies for drug decriminalization.
The act expands upon the so-called “crack house” statute—an ’80s law allowing prosecutors to go after the owners of “crack houses,” even if they’re neither dealers nor users. In 2001, the DEA broke ground by aiming the crack house statute at a new target—the owners and promoters of a concert venue, the State Palace Theater in New Orleans. A teenage drug overdose spurred the investigation, and the defendants were indicted for “knowingly and intentionally” allowing drug use to take place…A year later, a federal judge overturned the ban on the grounds that it violated First Amendment rights. Village Voice
The Ethics of Uplift:
“There is a slim window of opportunity somewhere in the next fifty years when we will either create entities more capable than ourselves or become them. If we close off the paths to superhumanity, others will take them or create beings to fill those opening niches. If we halt human genetic engineering, if we ban research into brain-machine interfacing, if we outlaw smart drugs and place restraints on intellectual collectives, then something without those restraints will expand into those niches. And they are not the small closed niches, the crevices in rocks or dark undisturbed caves. The only equivalent in evolutionary terms is the colonisation of dry land thousands of millions of year ago. The landscapes beyond humanity are empty now. Whatever colonises them will face immense challenges but will also have the space to expand to become whatever it wants.” — Philip Tung Yep
