(thanks, zach.)

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Kucinich gives the only substantive speech at DNC so far

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Mumia on the Democratic National Convention

Boomp3.com

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Biden = Obama will not end Iraq War

Read the Stephen Zunes Alternet article on Biden's orchestration the Iraq war. Excerpts:

Biden, who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during the lead-up to the Iraq War during the latter half of 2002, was perhaps the single most important congressional backer of the Bush administration’s decision to invade that oil-rich country.

. . .

As Scott Ritter, the former chief UN weapons inspector, noted at the time, “For Sen. Biden's [Senate Foreign Relations Committee] Iraq hearings to be anything more than a political sham used to invoke a modern-day Gulf of Tonkin resolution-equivalent for Iraq, his committee will need to ask hard questions – and demand hard facts – concerning the real nature of the weapons threat posed by Iraq.”

Biden refused to even allow Ritter himself – who knew more about Iraq’s WMD capabilities than anyone and would have testified that Iraq had achieved at least qualitative disarmament – to testify. Ironically, on Meet the Press last year, Biden defended his false claims about Iraqi WMDs by insisting that “everyone in the world thought he had them. The weapons inspectors said he had them.”

. . .

Biden also refused to honor requests by some of his Democratic colleagues to include in the hearings some of the leading anti-war scholars familiar with Iraq and Middle East. . . . Nor did Biden even call some of the dissenting officials in the Pentagon or State Department who were willing to challenge the alarmist claims of their ideologically-driven superiors.

. . .

"[Biden insisted] that 'If we wait for the danger from Saddam to become clear, it could be too late.'"

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(old) chomsky round-up

zach de la rocha of rage against the machine interviews chomsky on NAFTA, globalization, etc.:

and chomsky debates foucault: Part 1 & Part 2

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brundel fly robot

part cujo, part brundel fly, 100% my worst childhood nightmare come to life in a forest clearing.

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carsick cars

carsick cars is probably making the best music coming out of beijing today. their music is really sonic youth-y but also owes a lot to joy division.

music on chinese radio is sappy, cheesy shit, seriously some of the worst music i've ever heard. every song is about love, a lover, being loved, or losing love, and it all sucks.

carsick cars writes songs about cigarettes and pandas:

Boomp3.com
Boomp3.com

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U.S. role in Georgia-Russia conflict

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$$ Troopers

first finland brought us techno viking, and now this. is there anything they can't do?

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naomi klein

from her recent interview in the Onion for her new book, the Shock Doctrine:

In the natural cycles of capitalism, you have built-in crises and built-in catastrophes and new industries and new innovations come out of that and new technology obliterates an entire past industry and revolutionizes the way we live. That is the way capitalism works. But what I mean by disaster capitalism is not those built-in crises that come from technology, but rather a political strategy based on the need for crisis to advance unpopular policies.
...
After the market crash in 1929, the tide really did turn in favor of the middle class and workers. We saw a period over 30 to 40 years where the middle class rose to unprecedented levels in the United States, but not just in the United States, in any country that adopted these types of policies. And it really did work, in terms of creating class mobility. But it really did eat into profits and this stage that we've been living in since Reagan is really about the people in the highest income brackets saying, "We want our New Deal. We don't want to share so much." The basic demands of this counterrevolution, or this revolt of the elites, have all been about taking back those gains—breaking unions, being able to pay lower wages, having the freedom to scour the world for the lowest wages—and it's really been a liberation movement—the liberation of capital from all constraints.

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Linfen

a little look a linfen, china, the most polluted city in the world. tianjin's level of pollution isn't nearly this bad, though the constantly white/gray skies are sadly shared.

linfen is a documented pollution nightmare, but i have heard there are many other chinese cities that few people living outside of the city's area know exist and are quite difficult to travel to even if you know where one of these cities is located because no buses or pedestrian trains go there, no taxi driver wants to take foreigners there, and, if you do find the city, local police will politely tell you to leave immediately.

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In newest policy change, Obama supports off-shore oil drilling

From Democracy Now:

Senator Barack Obama has dropped his blanket opposition to offshore oil drilling after weeks of criticism from his Republican rival John McCain. Obama said that he would be willing to expand some offshore oil drilling if it meant winning approval for a broader bipartisan energy bill to make the country more energy independent. Obama told the Palm Beach Post: “I don’t want to be so rigid that we can’t get something done.”

And from CNN:

Obama said Friday that he would be willing to compromise on his position against offshore oil drilling if it were part of a more overarching strategy to lower energy costs. "My interest is in making sure we've got the kind of comprehensive energy policy that can bring down gas prices."

Obama says it's a compromise but, as with FISA, a compromise isn't needed. All Obama needs to do is point to the evidence--and Bush's own concession--that says drilling won't reduce gas prices. Again, this issue is so clear cut. What a failure.

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