What's Going On

I've requisitioned my parents' computer for a few hours, and figured I'd post some of the stuff I'm just starting to go through online. So, following up on last week's volley of catch-up, here's a similar list of stuff that's striking me as relevant and useful:

*“The United States edited out more than 8000 crucial pages of Iraq's 11,800-page dossier on weapons, before passing on a sanitised version to the 10 non-permanent members of the United Nations security council,” reports the Sunday Herald.

*Take a peek at the corporations that supplied Iraq's weapons program.

*In an appearance on PBS’ NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Senator Bob Graham remarked that there is some “very compelling evidence” that a “sovereign foreign government” was “involved in facilitating the activities of at least some of the terrorists in the United States” on 9/11. Justin Raimondo and the folks over at antiwar.com were the first to pick up on this bombshell of a story last week. Not surprisingly, Raimondo thinks the “sovereign foreign government” in question is Israel. See the archive of media coverage of the Israeli–9/11 connection for some background.

*“Confidential UN planning papers paint a grim picture of the effects of an attack against Iraq,” reports the Times of London. Reporter James Bone writes that the UN is “making secret contingency plans for a war that would halt all Iraqi oil production, 'seriously degrade' the country’s electricity system, provoke civil unrest and create 900,000 refugees."

*The White House continues its class warfare with a proposal to cut “taxes on corporate dividends for shareholders by about half.” The NY Times reports that the “cut would cost the Treasury more than $100 billion over 10 years, and the tax benefits would overwhelmingly flow to the nation's very wealthiest taxpayers.”

*LibertyThink asks, “Why are we supposed to forget about the Anthrax attacks?"

*“To strive toward creating the no-sleep soldier,” ABC News reports, the US military has funded a “multi-tiered program from tinkering with a soldier's brain using magnetic resonance to analyzing the neural circuits of birds that stay awake for days during migration. The hope is to stump the body's need for sleep — at least temporarily.”

*Geov Parrish & Maria Tomchick have published their list of Media Follies for the year 2002.

*German TV airs documentary charging American war crimes in Afghanistan – and the US State Department is furious.

*Nearly half of the entering Congressional fresh(wo)men are millionaires, and many have financial interests in the banking, oil and pharmaceutical industries. God bless plutocracy!

*“The Bush administration is planning to propose requiring Internet service providers to help build a centralized system to enable broad monitoring of the Internet and, potentially, surveillance of its users,” reports the NY Times. “The proposal is part of a final version of a report, 'The National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace,' set for release early next year, according to several people who have been briefed on the report. It is a component of the effort to increase national security after the Sept. 11 attacks.”

*Scott Peterson of the CS Monitor reminds us, “If US fights Iraq, it would use a weapon that left a radioactive trail in Gulf War.”