] Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has nearly doubled the
] estimated military costs in Iraq to $3.9 billion a month.

Rumsfeld doubles Iraq cost estimate - The Washington Times: United Press International

abaddon wrote:
] more comentary on the Jose Padilla saga, this one is a
] puletser (yeah yeah i dont spell) prize winning jurnalist
] chastising the media for not giving any coverage to the
] Padilla case...
]
] when exactly did the we all deside the government didnt need
] checks and balances any more...

Hrm, they have since released information that provides reasonable doubt that he might have been travelling to Afghanistan to join Al'Q. Its plausable enough to warrant detaining him and trying him.

Having said that, it is critical that these things be done out in the open. The public pressure on this is the reason they had to go public. Hopefully this will serve as a lesson in the future to those whose family members may be detained without reason. The Internet is your friend. Get as many eyes on the situation as possible. You now have the power to do that.

RE: no-one cares about civil liberties or reason 1502-B why i hate people

Thats Iraq, and Afghanistan, but who's keeping score? (Well, besides Fox News.)

With parties in the streets of Baghdad and the comment today from Iraq's UN ambassador that "its over," it appears that regardless of what you think about whats happening, it appears to be happening exactly according to plan.

Look for NK to quitely chill out over the course of a few months.
Look for at least a few countries to pursue domestic Al'Q cells with renewed vigor.

Elonka wrote:
] It would probably be worth clarifying this point for
] Memestreams, too, especially since we routinely quote other
] people's webpages word for word. Where's the dividing line
] between "fair use" quoting of someone else's page, and
] "plagiarizing" it?

This is a very important question, and also an very hard one to answer.

Basically:

What MemeStreams users are doing right which the Agonist is not is that they always link the articles they are taking information from.

I think that you shouldn't quote too much text. If you are responding to an article, then you need to quote the content you are referring to, but in the case where you are merely recommending, you should quote enough text to show the reader what they are getting on the other side of the link, but not enough text to allow the reader to get all of the information without following the link. I think that 99% of the time, MemeStreams users do this well.

There may be cases where things are over the line here. Its obviously impossible for me to police it completely. For the most part it hasn't been a problem. No one has ever complained about being linked from MemeStreams and users seem to do the right thing almost all of the time.

RE: Wired News: Noted War Blogger Cops to Copying

] Kelley's insightful window on the details of the war
] brought him increasing readership (118,000 page views on
] a recent day) and acclaim, including interviews in the
] The New York Times and on NBC's Nightly News, Newsweek
] Online and National Public Radio.
]
] The only problem: Much of his material was plagiarized --
] lifted word-for-word from a paid news service put out by
] Austin, Texas, commercial intelligence company Stratfor.

He should attribute everything. That is the key. Unfortunately, he is still posting unattributed entries.

Wired News: Noted War Blogger Cops to Copying

] In no uncertain terms, the president affirmed that “the
] world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic
] values,” not least because “free nations do not breed the
] ideologies of murder.” The president invoked the examples
] of American-led democratization in post-World War ii
] Germany and Japan, and he pointedly rejected the claim
] that Arab nations are incapable of sustaining democracy.
] What the president did not say, yet gently and
] ambiguously implied, was that so deep a cultural change
] would require America to occupy Iraq in force and manage
] its affairs for years to come.
]
] Could such a venture in democratic imperialism be
] harmonized with our liberal principles? Even if so, would
] it work? Is it possible to bring liberalism to a society
] so long at odds with the values of the West?
]
] All of these questions were posed and answered, both in
] theory and in practice, during Britain’s imperial rule of
] India. Three great British thinkers, Edmund Burke, James
] Mill, and John Stuart Mill, not only philosophized about
] liberal imperialism; they lived it.

This is long, and yet way too short...

Democratic Imperialism: A Blueprint by Stanley Kurtz - Policy Review, No. 118

] The Iraqi Information Ministry told Al-Jazeera office in
] Baghdad its decision to ban Diar al-Omari, Al-Jazeera's
] Baghdad correspondent, from practicing his journalistic
] duties.

Iraq bans Al'J, too...

CNN.com - Al-Jazeera suspends correspondents' work in Iraq - Apr. 3, 2003

] Iraqi civilians fleeing heavy fighting have stunned and
] delighted hungry US marines in central Iraq (news - web
] sites) by giving them food, as guerrilla attacks continue
] to disrupt coalition supply lines to the rear.

Yahoo! News - Iraqi civilians feed hungry US marines

] In spite of recording artist Sheryl Crow's strong
] protestations, including the wearing of a "No War" guitar
] strap, the U.S. went to war with Iraq last week. "Making
] the decision to go to war is never easy, but it's that
] much harder when you know Sheryl Crow disapproves," White
] House press secretary Ari Fleischer said at a press
] conference Monday.

I'm recommending this weeks whole onion issue... High Quality Journalism.

The Onion | Operation Piss off the Planet

] Perhaps most alarming, US policy towards Iraq has
] alienated many of the important moderate voices, both
] secular and religious, which until now had been unwilling
] to join militant anti-American forces.

Osama must be laughing - theage.com.au