Craig Murray, the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, who was fired for speaking out about Karimov's use of torture, writes about the UK terror plot:

I have been reading very carefully through all the Sunday newspapers to try and analyse the truth from all the scores of pages claiming to detail the so-called bomb plot. Unlike the great herd of so-called security experts doing the media analysis, I have the advantage of having had the very highest security clearances myself, having done a huge amount of pro­fes­sion­al in­tel­li­gence analysis, and having been inside the spin machine....

None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. …continue.

I came across a very long interview with Saul Alinsky (24,000 words), conducted by Playboy in 1972, in a Fire­DogLake thread about the book 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Fight the Right.

Saul Alinsky was a longtime radical activist, starting in the Great Depression. He moved from labor organizing to social organizing in the late 1930s, working in the Back of the Yards neigh­bor­hood of Chicago that was made famous by Upton Sinclair in The Jungle. He is generally considered the father of community organizing.

Shortly before he died, he published his most famous book, Rules for Radicals

As a graduate student in crim­i­nol­o­gy, he spent a couple of years …continue.

Joe Lieberman, the 2000 vice-pres­i­den­tial nominee, lost the Democratic primary for his Senate seat tonight. He has said that he will run as an in­de­pen­dent. In effect, he will not accept the will of the people.

Lieberman lost, in part, because of his continuing refusal to admit that the Iraq war is a disaster, and in part because he has been a leading enabler of the Republican agenda. Good riddance!

Amer­i­ca­Blog suggests contacting your senators and demand that they come out in support of Lamont and that they strip Lieberman of his Senate committees.

I sent the following email to Senators Murray, Cantwell, and Reid:

Ned Lamont won the Democratic …continue.

I found an in­ter­est­ing piece on the NPR website about the modern anti-abortion movement:

In the 1980s, in order to solidify their shift from divorce to abortion, the Religious Right con­struct­ed an abortion myth, one accepted by most Americans as true. Simply put, the abortion myth is this: Leaders of the Religious Right would have us believe that their movement began in direct response to the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. Po­lit­i­cal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive evan­gel­i­cal leaders were so morally outraged by the ruling that they instantly shed their apolitical stupor in order to mobilize po­lit­i­cal­ly in defense of the sanctity of life. Most of these leaders did so re­luc­tant­ly …continue.

Christy at Fire­DogLake has written a post about this year's hurricane season, which officially started on June 1st.

New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf is still a disaster area: watch the video linked to above. Disaster pre­pared­ness is far from where it should be. The levee im­prove­ments are inadequate. Re­con­struc­tion is mired in bu­reau­cra­cy and stalled in in­com­pe­tence. The money promised has not ma­te­ri­al­ized. Only one-third of New Orleans residents have returned.

Christy links to a report put together by Nancy Pelosi, detailing the in­com­pe­tence and cronyism of the Re­pub­li­cans, both in the …continue.

As I implicitly promised here, we went to see Al Gore's new doc­u­men­tary on global climate change, An In­con­ve­nient Truth, when it opened in Seattle last night. We brought some friends too.

Gore lays out a compelling case that global climate change is real, that it's been happening for decades, and that it's spiralling out of control. He backs it up with plenty of statistics and graphs.

• The ten hottest years on record have all been since 1990.
• The glaciers are in full retreat everywhere. The "snows of Kil­i­man­jaro" are almost gone.
• At current rates, the Arctic ocean could be ice-free by 2050.
• If either the ice covering Greenland or the ice …continue.

Jamison Foser writes on the defining issue of our time:

The defining issue of our time is not the Iraq war. It is not the "global war on terror." It is not our inability (or un­will­ing­ness) to ensure that all Americans have access to affordable health care. Nor is it im­mi­gra­tion, out­sourc­ing, or growing income inequity. It is not education, it is not global warming, and it is not Social Security.

The defining issue of our time is the media.

The dominant political force of our time is not Karl Rove or the Christian Right or Bill Clinton. It is not the ruth­less­ness or the tactical and strategic su­pe­ri­or­i­ty …continue.

Here's a selection of the lies propagated by the Right in the last few years:

• Iraq sent its WMDs to Syria.
• Democrats don't want to wiretap terrorists.
• Mexicans are taking our jobs.
• Scooter Libby has a faulty memory.
• Tom DeLay is like Jesus Christ.
• No one could have an­tic­i­pat­ed that the levees would be breached.
• We do not torture.
• There is no global warming.
• There is global warming, but humans didn't cause it.
• John F. Kerry is a flip-flopper.
• George W. Bush is a decider.
• Nobody at the White House knows Jack Abramoff.
• Evolution isn't supported by the facts.
• Diebold voting machines are secure.
• Fox News is fair and balanced.
• Mission ac­com­plished.
• No one could have an­tic­i­pat­ed the …continue.

Amer­i­ca­Blog links to a CNN segment on the quacks who claim they can "cure" ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty.

Very creepy. Very bogus. And typical of so-called reparative therapy.

I believe that those "ex-gays" who do manage to make a go of it are bisexual rather than gay. In other words, they're no more than-5 on the Kinsey scale.

And I'm not the only one.

A front group for Big Oil is putting out ads denying the reality of global warming, in a pre-emptive bid to undermine Al Gore's new doc­u­men­tary, An In­con­ve­nient Truth.

The first ad portrays global warming science as a vicious smear campaign against carbon dioxide. The ad, which despite ap­pear­ances is not an SNL parody, helpfully reminds us that carbon dioxide is “essential to life” because “we breath[e] it out.”

"An In­con­ve­nient Truth" opens in Seattle on June 2nd, 2006.