Sunday, May 15, 2005
That heartbreaking photo...You know that heartbreaking photo of the little girl dying in a soldier's arms? 6:10:55 PM | Here's the story behind the photo. (Via a comment on OpTruth's blog) 
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OopsFrom Reuters: 5:29:20 PM | Newsweek magazine on Sunday said it may have erred in a May 9 report
that said U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran at Guantanamo Bay,
and apologized to victims of deadly violence sparked by the article.
[...] "We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst," Editor Mark Whitaker wrote in the magazine's latest issue, due to appear on U.S. newsstands on Monday. The report has sparked angry and violent protests across the Muslim world from Afghanistan, where 16 were killed and more than 100 injured, to Pakistan to Indonesia to Gaza. On Sunday, Afghan Muslim clerics threatened to call for a holy war against the United States in three days unless it handed over the interrogators in question. I don't know what to say.
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Our Excellent Support...Another story of the excellent "support" our troops receive when they
come home injured. This former airborne ranger is completely getting
the shaft, but then again, what else is new. 12:34:13 AM | I can tell you from personal experience that the military health plan is a joke. I'm automatically signed up because S is active duty (but only while he's active duty -- the minute he gets home, I'm off and so is he). It's run by Tricare. They try to push you into their "Prime" plan, an HMO, and away from their "Standard" plan, which allows you to pick your own doctors (though you have to pay 20% of your bills). I can't tell you how impossible it is to get information about coverage from them and how much they try to scam you into the HMO. ("Prime" my ass! I don't think so.) It's even more bureaucratic than the crappy student insurance we had before. As a "Standard" dependent, I have to file my own claims. (BTW, none of the plans cover abortions, which I guess shouldn't be surprising, but still is shocking since it is a legal procedure.) The "Prime" plan, though, has a higher limit on what you have to pay overall. It's a worse deal than Standard, in my opinion, and that they call it "Prime" just shows you how the military has no problem handing over major deals to private corporations so they can trick soldiers and cheat them at every turn. They do the same thing with life insurance. The military offers life insurance, which is quite good, but also allows private insurance companies to huckster their below-prime services on bases and basically pretend they're military-approved. I can only imagine how difficult it has been for this soldier and his family. Picture yourself in his shoes: you've come home from an unneccessary war, severly injured, and now you have to SUE YOUR OWN GOVERNMENT to get proper health care. It's so infuriating!! (Corrected post. Sorry for the missing link earlier. Via Atrios.)
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Complete and utter insanity...This is so completely twisted,
I don't even know where to begin. Yes, I know it's not new. But 200
suicide bombers-to-be parading in the streets of Iran?! It's insane!!!! 12:13:37 AM | Half of them are women and all intend to blow themselves up to kill Americans in Iraq and Israelis (and Salman Rushdie in England -- !). Unbelievable.
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"Identity Crisis" IndeedSalon's Farhad Manjoo has an excellent piece about the new National "Real ID" card
that was attached to the Iraq appropriations bill. Who knew? Not me!
But then again, how could I have when the news covers absolutely
everything that isn't important while completely ignoring everything
that is. We'll have to start the KLOP awards, the opposite of the Polk,
for journalists/news outlets who do the best job at hiding the truth.
Of course it would be impossible to decide who to give the prize to
since there'd be so many nominated. 12:05:02 AM | There are many, MANY frightening things about the machine readable Real ID. We already have a problem with identity theft. Imagine the problems of the very, very near future when people can read your ID from a distance, anonymously!! Worried about government knowing everything about you now? Imagine! And as Manjoo points out, we'll be even less safe with these IDs. Evildoers will only have to fake an ID and not deal with law enforcement officers at all, since we'll all be remotely scanned. What a nightmare. It somehow fits in with the overall Chriscap (Viva Christan Capitalism! ) governing style of the neo-cons. Big Brother would be so proud: Ingsoc adapted for our modern capitalist/theocratic state. And no doubt Philip K. Dick is muttering "I told you so" in his grave to the great annoyance of his neighbors. In the words of Ren and Stimpy (who else can we turn to in these times except cartoon characters?): "Happy happy joy joy, happy happy joy joy, happy happy joy joy joy..."
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Last update: 8/24/05; 8:16:40 PM .
