U.S. House tells Bush 'No More Troops'

From Yahoo News: "The Democratic-controlled House issued a symbolic rejection of President Bush's decision to deploy more troops to Iraq on Friday, opening an epic confrontation between Congress and commander in chief over an unpopular war that has taken the lives of more than 3,100 U.S. troops."

The vote on the nonbinding measure was 246-182, and within minutes, Democrats said their next move would be to challenge Bush's request for $93 billion in new funds for the Pentagon.

Apparently, "Bush made no comment on the developments in the House, and his spokesman said the president was too busy to watch the proceedings on television."

BUT, the the Pentagon added another 1,000 troops to the surge, despite House disapproval.

Why not ban certain video games? Clue: Start using the age ratings!

Ban violent games? It's not the games people play that motivate them to kill, kill, kill. The problem the parents AND/OR the environment the child is subjected to throughout life, or the early stages at the very least.

It's not difficult to keep young children away from violent games, they're labeled as violent. SO if you think your kids may become violent, don't let them play it. IT's not sensible to ban a game entirely that others could enjoy, while not committing violence. Plus, action games can improve your vision!

More from Technophile Monkey

N. Korea agrees to ditch nukes, Bolton wins Asshole of the Year

Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, the lead American official at the talks, said the United States will give an unspecified amount of energy assistance to North Korea in exchange for North Korea freezing its production of plutonium.

Everything seems to be going great. Right? Until.... John Bolton (militant fuckhead imperialistic piece of shit) makes these remarks, calling the whole thing "a very bad deal."

From CNN: It makes the Bush administration "look very weak, at a time in Iraq and dealing with Iran that it needs to look strong," Bolton told CNN's Wolf Blitzer Monday.

"I'm hoping that the president has not been fully briefed on it and still has time to reject it," he said.

What the hell is wrong with this idiot? Hey, John Bolton, go continue to fuck yourself.

Congress pushing for ISP data retention: Will use porn to try and get bill passed

Geez. Still goin' at it. According to The Register, "The data retention requirements sit within the so-called Safety Act introduced by Representative Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, as part of the "Law and Order Agenda" that he and other Republicans have begun pushing in the House."

A large part of this bill is about labeling requirements for porn sites. Bringing tougher restrictions to online porn, etc. However, THIS is part they'll use to gain a nice chunk o' support from many people. As they'll try keep the mass data retention part of this bill somewhat quiet (ha!). They do this all the time with all types of bills, hiding their agendas under a cover which they believe the masses will support.

The Register says "the Safety Act would require the [Attorney General] to order the retention of, at a minimum, the name and address of every subscriber or user corresponding to an assigned IP address or user identification."

While the ISPs aren't going to have this 'data retention bullshit' (and they'll fight against it) it's still a danger to everyone in this country, just the fact that people support this sort of Big Brother nonsense.

Addicted to War: Why the U.S. Can't Kick Militarism

Addicted to War by Joel Andreas is a compelling comic book showing the history of U.S. foreign policy and its effects on our society. It offers insight into the alternative, the things kids aren't taught in school. Until now. Yes, the book is going to be used in some San Francisco public schools.

Frank Dorrel, Publisher of "Addicted to War": "We're really glad that the San Francisco School District, which is apparently against the war in Iraq, well not apparently, obviously is, has chosen to do this."

According to ABC 7, "Frank Dorrel is now helping to supply the San Francisco Unified School District with 4,000 copies of the book for use in high school social studies and history classes. The books are being donated by a local anti-war activist."

From the 'Addicted to War' site: "With 77, hard-hitting, carefully documented pages, including 161 reference notes, this book reveals why the U.S. has been involved in more wars in recent years than any other country.

Packed with historical photographs and quotes from people in the military, the government, and big buisness, Addicted to War explains who benefits from these military adventures, who pays and who dies.

Addicted to War is being used as a history textbook in hundreds of high schools and colleges."

Paul Gigot says "No one ever claimed a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda"

Today on Fox News, Wall Street Journal editor Paul Gigot claimed, “We didn’t go to war because of al Qaeda links.” What an asshole.

Apparently, Paul Gigot didn't read what the White House resolution authorizing force against Iraq said:

"Whereas members of al Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq."

What bothers me is that this guy was on the Fox News show with millions of people watching. Bad Fox News, bad. (watch video here)

Escalation: a 1968 anti-war short film by Disney animator [video]

This was created by Academy Award-winning Disney animator Ward Kimball (1914 –2002). The 1968 film protests then-president Lyndon B. Johnson's escalation of the Vietnam war.

via Boing Boing

Jailing Pot Smokers Costs U.S. Taxpayers $1 Billion a Year. Treating Nearly Half of All Americans as Criminals: Priceless

According to the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), "Drug Use and Dependence, State and Federal Prisoners, 2004," 12.7 percent of state inmates and 12.4 percent of federal inmates incarcerated for drug violations are serving time for marijuana offenses. This turns into it costing U.S. taxpayers more than $1 billion a year to keep pot heads locked up. That can be turned into 1 out of 8 American drug prisoners are locked up for marijuana.

Paul Armentado (AlterNet) reports that according to the most recent figures available from the FBI, police arrested an estimated 786,545 people on marijuana charges in 2005 -- more than twice the number of Americans arrested just 12 years ago. Among those arrested, about 88 percent -- some 696,074 Americans -- were charged with possession only. The remaining 90,471 individuals were charged with "sale/manufacture," a category that includes all cultivation offenses, even those where the marijuana was being grown for personal or medical use. These totals are the highest ever recorded by the FBI, and make up 42.6 percent of all drug arrests in the United States.

Marijuana isn't a harmless substance, and those who argue for a change in the drug's legal status do not claim it to be. However, pot's relative risks to the user and society are arguably fewer than those of alcohol and tobacco, and they do not warrant the expenses associated with targeting, arresting and prosecuting hundreds of thousands of Americans every year.

New Technology for Mind Reading Raises Ethical Debates

The London Guardian reports that scientists have now learned to use high resolution brain scans to translate brain activity patterns into meaningful thoughts about a person's intention.

"Using the scanner, we could look around the brain for this information and read out something that from the outside there's no way you could possibly tell is in there. It's like shining a torch around, looking for writing on a wall," said John-Dylan Haynes at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Germany, who led the study with colleagues at University College London and Oxford University.

There is talk of refining this method in the hopes that judgment will be passed before any laws have been broken. Currently, the software used to spot the subtle differences in brain activity, is only about 70% accurate with predicting a person's intentions.

Barbara Sahakian, a professor of neuro-psychology at Cambridge University, said "A lot of neuroscientists in the field are very cautious and say we can't talk about reading individuals' minds, and right now that is very true, but we're moving ahead so rapidly, it's not going to be that long before we will be able to tell whether someone's making up a story, or whether someone intended to do a crime with a certain degree of certainty."

The Quotable Atheist by John Huberman

"Meanwhile, religion continues to be granted far too much respect and too little critical examination in our culture and mainstream media.We need to change the cultural climate so as to make supernatural, occult, and faith-based claptrap feel unwelcome and to make adults ashamed of the blithe surrender of their otherwise sound minds to idiocy.We need climate change. Bullshit levels are rising globally, threatening to submerge intellectually low-lying areas. Much of the United States is already inundated.Temperatures are rising; IQs are dropping. Four of the five stupidest years on record have occurred since 2000."

In his book, The Quotable Atheist: Ammunition for Non-Believers, Political Junkies, Gadflies, and Those Generally Hell-Bound, John Huberman has collected powerful and moving quotations from a variety of people concerning organized religion and the belief in God.

... As Sam Harris wrote in The End of Faith, "Unreason is now ascendant in the United States -- in our schools, in our courts, and in each branch of the federal government. Only 28 percent of Americans believe in evolution; 68 percent believe in Satan. Ignorance in this degree, concentrated in both the head and belly of a lumbering superpower, is now a problem for the entire world."

Read more excerpts at Alternet.

Televangelists and Tax-Exempt Private Luxury Jets

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has filed a complaint with the IRS against Preacher Mac Hammond for using church funds to not only but a jet plane, but also a stunt plane.

Last fall, Hammond endorsed Rep. Michele Bachman, which CREW also filed a complaint about for violating the prohibition against clergy endorsing political candidates.

The purchasing of luxury jets, however, is indeed common among Televangelists. The funds used to purchase the jets, are basically payed for by taxpayers. Churches receive tax-exempt donations, and in return donors get tax deductions.

I wasn't aware that luxury jets were necessary for spreading the Word. Perhaps they put those streamers on the end of them? Maybe that is why Hammond also bought a stunt plane, to write the Message in the sky? And I haven't heard a complaint from any Republicans about this.

Via AlterNet

Update: Judge Declares Mistrial in Watada Case

On Wednesday, presiding judge, Lt. Col. John Head declared a mistrial, in the court-martial of First Lt. Watada, over a technicality. Beginning the court-martial, Judge Lt. Col. Head had Watada sign an agreement admitting that he failed to deploy to Iraq, and that he had given several antiwar speeches, for which he was charged with 'conduct unbecoming of an officer'. During exchanges in the trial, however, Watada disagreed.

“Your Honour,” he said. “I have always believed that I have a legal and moral defence. I realise that the government can make arguments and you can make rulings contrary to that, but that does not negate my belief that I have a defence.”

“To me,” Watada told the court, leading soldiers into battle in Iraq “means to participate in a war that I believe to be illegal.”

Aaron Glantz (GNN) reports that Col. Head had ruled that Watada’s claim—that the war is immoral and illegal—would not be a permissible defence at trial, and that Watada had hoped to argue under the so-called Nuremberg Principals which arose from trials of Nazi war criminals after World War II.

Lt. Watada's attorney, Eric Seitz, had this to say about the trial; “Every time the government has tried to prevent political speech, which they are attempting to punish, from infusing the trial proceedings it has created a major mess and many of those cases resulted in mistrials.”

“The government tried in artificial ways to prevent the defendants from explaining in their own way why they were there and why they did what they did,” Seitz said. “But there is a contradiction, because they are the core issues of what led the defendant from being there in the first place.”

Many antiwar activists cheered for the mistrial declaration. Mike Wong, a San Francisco social worker who deserted the Army rather than fight in the Vietnam War, stated that A GI Rights hotline has been set up for the men and women fighting the war, who want to get out of Iraq. Wong says that the army is now receiving 2000 calls a month.

“The military doesn’t want the American public to know that soldiers are talking about this in the barracks. Some soldiers think he’s a disgrace and others think he’s a frickin’ hero. But what it’s causing is for soldiers to discuss, to debate, and what’s really frightening to this administration is that soldiers are thinking. They don’t want soldiers to think. They want soldiers to follow orders.” -Geoff Millard (about the court-martial)