Monthly Archives: October 2001

Good going!

Wednesday, October 24, 2001

The US government say they have detained around a thousand people since September 16th. A few have been let out when the government was eventually sure they had nothing to do with the attacks — and of course this is the case for almost everyone held. They describe sitting in tiny cells by themselves in the cold with no clothes, being denied contact with either lawyers, family, or even fellow prisoners, and being called nothing but “fucking terrorist”.

These are mostly not people suspected in the attacks. These are simply people who they suspect might have had contact with people involved in the attacks at some point — for example, one of the first that they released was a former roommate of a person suspected.

Last week the FBI admitted that they'd gotten effectively no information from the people they're holding (not surprising if the people aren't involved), and that they were going to being torturing and drugging them (in violation of every human rights and war crimes code ever written) to try and get confessions (even though they admit that many of these people may not actually be connected to any crimes).

The inevitable has happened… they just executed their first prisoner. No matter what excuses as to the cause of death are made, there is NO explanation that can leave out “murdered by the US government”.

Comments (0)

Stuff

Wednesday, October 24, 2001

Since I get a couple messages about it a week, I'll mention it here again: there's no rule that says you can't discuss politics on IAM. After the bombing there was roughly a one week voluntary moratorium (it was not enforced, just recommended). I'm not really sure how to make it more clear, but it was for one week, not permanently.

The reason it was instituted is because a frightening majority of people here proudly flying US flags decided that the patriotic thing to do would be to send insults, slurs, and death threats to people such as myself who do not feel that the US government is acting in the best interests of its people, and to post strings of ethnic slurs and general bigotry. Rather than delete hundreds of people, I called for a “cool down” perioud.

So if you want to make whatever political posts you want, you can. You're not going to get deleted for disagreeing with me or anything like that. If you want to post about how proud you are that the US bombed some hospital or murdered some children, or how the US is the freeest place in the world so to protect that it's best to suspend freedom, or you want to yell out your pride that the FBI has reinstuted torture as a legitimate part of interrogation, fine. Just don't let your comments degrade to insults and bigotry and calls for ethnic genocide you will be removed. This place isn't anything goes — many things will not be tolerated.

Now, any time I say that, I get a few emails whining about how I'm taking away your right to free speech. Free speech, even in the freeest societies is not free speech all the time everywhere. If you send an article to a magazine they have no duty to publish it. If you call a friend and insult them, they have the right to hang up on you. If you go to a club and start chanting white power slogans, they have the right to throw you out. Same deal here.

If you do not like the rules here, I 100% support your right to start a site of your own and pay the bills yourself and say whatever you want. If you want to do that, but don't have the skills required to make the software, I'll even consider selling you a license to the software I developed for this site.

On a side note, 5000 COBM.CA cards just went to print and we should have them within the week. They'll be sent out (free of course) to all the first set of Canadian members and ministers so they can help spread the word.

Comments (0)

Today

Wednesday, October 24, 2001


It's in stock (look right):

Today I have to settle up some bills, put together COBM.CA member cards and member packages, work on a track for the IAM CD, and work on a project called iam.bored (you'll see)… I'm looking forward to all but the first. I can't wait to get out of the city where my insurance will drop in half…

An interesting thing about this “war” is that the government is admitting doing some crazy things… Everything from bombing old age homes and hospitals, to using torture and drugs to get confessions out of witnesses held in domestic prisons… And many of their activities are truly confusing — for example, they are currently developing even stronger versions of Anthrax “to test out the vaccines”.

Assuming it's not just Hallmark behind this conflict, evidence is mounting that the CIA was involved. I know I linked to this a few days ago, but remember how some people were doing stock trades that made it clear they knew something was going down at the WTC on the 11th? Because the markets stayed closed, they were not able to grab their money before attention was drawn, but they finally traced the money trail back… If you'd like a full explanation of how this worked, and how the CIA was potentially involved, click here.

Florida has been passing some kooky bills lately — things like bills that force children to say the pledge of allegiance every day with their hand over their hearts and stuff like that. I'm sure it's good to be patriotic, but you can't force someone to be a patriot… The end result of this will be the opposite. Chris Smith (D-Fort Lauderdale) said, “What's next? We pass a bill that says you have to tattoo a flag on your butt?”

Math time. In Y2K, the US government spent $547 billion on the military. That doesn't include the CIA, FBI, and other programs. Let's round the number up to $800 billion (and I'm sure it's more). That's roughy $10 per day per person in taxes devoted purely to military strength. If that number were cut in half, could the US provide free healthcare, and education right on up through university to everyone? Well, you decide which is more important…

Comments (0)

Last post of the evening

Tuesday, October 23, 2001

In a little while I'm off to CHRY to help out on Saira's radio show. If it's between 11PM and 2AM EST, you can click here to listen live! It's going to be an amazing show. Some of the things I'll be playing:

Serious, this is one of the best sets of music I've ever played. You won't regret checking it out.

"Most religions offer return on an investment of faith upon the death of the body. We offer return on investments of faith immediately, while you are living. Spiritual commitment will give immediate and measurable verifyable phsyical gratification."

Well, I've got a minute before I have to leave so I'll give some news links (although I won't have to much longer, but that's a secret)…

I want to start with a great quote from Arundhati Roy: “Will burning the haystack find you the needle? Or will it escalate the anger and make the world a living hell for all of us?”

First, I understand that part of the reason that civilian targets are getting struck is that the Taliban sometimes situate themselves in residential areas to shield themselves… Considering the stoneage level of technology they have access too, that's not a big surprise. However, if the US is perfectly willing to kill Afghans that have nothing to do with this war because they're inbetween the bomb and the target somehow, they have no right to complain when the same happens in reverse (as it did). Muslim groups around the world are already starting to seriously turn on the US, it's going to get a whole lot worse now that the US has announced it will continue bombing through Ramadan. I'm somewhat perplexed as to what the US government is trying to accomplish… because it's certainly not going to help any of the things that made September 11th happen. If anything, it'll make it worse. At least the Pentagon hired a good PR firm to promote the bombing. Whatever they do, I guess it'll keep the Royal — or should I say oil — family in power.

Quick link: Wait, that's not Anthrax… it's cocaine!

Comments (0)

More shirty stuff

Tuesday, October 23, 2001

Just got back from Artik… Talked to Raffi (the owner) for a while. He's clearly middle eastern looking and speaks with an accent — he's Israeli. His ex-wife and kids live in America and he's not sure if he'll be able to get across the border without a whole lot of anal probing.

The HARD/text and HARD/girl shirts (which you've seen already) and the Irezumi shirts (pictured below) are on their way to BMEshop, so I'll post here shortly to let you know that they're in stock. I helped them get the ink colors right on the skull xray shirt, so that one will ship tomorrow. I also got the COBM.ca shirts!

On a more miserable note, I got a call from my insurance company telling them that I owe $8000 and change — they forgot to remove a whole pile of cars from my policy so now I have to get all sorts of paperwork together for them to avoid having to write a beast of a cheque.

Comments (0)