JITTERS FOR RADIO PROJECT: "During the early days of the Iraq invasion, some Marines were forced to use as many as seven different radios to communicate with colleagues and superiors. That's why the Defense Department has been working so feverishly on 'Jitters,' or JTRS, the $5 billion Joint Tactical Radio System effort to replace 750,000 old-school radios with software-based models. But now, National Defense magazine reports, Jitters may be in trouble."

(Via Defense Tech.)

BBC NEWS | UK | Founder of Amnesty dies aged 83: "The British lawyer set up the group in 1961, after reading an article about the imprisonment of two students in Portugal who drank a toast to liberty."

(Via BBC News.)

Salon.com News | Bush's bait and switch: "Liberal author Thomas Frank and conservative opinion maker Richard Viguerie agree that Bush roped in voters with moral issues, only to sell them out with his Social Security plan."

(Via Salon.)

EnviroHealth: The Age of Icelessness: "According to the latest forecasts, the Arctic could be ice-free in the summer by the end of this century."

(Via AlterNet.)

Donald Trump vs. The Mandarins by Gary North: "The problem: Our political representatives have accepted the self-serving opinion of institutionally self-certified academics in non-profit institutions, namely, that this special-interest group has the moral right to determine who gets certified academically and who doesn’t. Legislators have granted them this legal right by way of college-accrediting agencies, which then determine what constitutes a legal degree-granting institution.

The solution: The free market. What saves us from complete control by these mostly tax-funded, Ph.D.-holding bureaucrats and their certified disciples is the right of consumers to spend their money almost any way they please. Consumers, in paying for what they want, irrespective of the educational background of producers, keep the flow of funds flowing to street-smart entrepreneurs."

(Via Lew Rockwell.)

'Anti-Islamist' Crusader Plants New Seeds by Jim Lobe: "He has proposed the creation of a new Anti-Islamist Institute (AII) designed to expose legal 'political activities' of 'Islamists,' such as 'prohibiting families from sending pork or pork byproducts to U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq,' which nonetheless, in his view, serve the interests of radical Islam.

'In the long term...the legal activities of Islamists pose as much or even a greater set of challenges than the illegal ones,' according to the draft of a grant proposal by Pipes' Middle East Forum (MEF) obtained by IPS."

(Via Lew Rockwell.)

Secrecy News for 02/09/05: "Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) yesterday introduced three bills that would amend the USA Patriot Act. The proposals would limit so-called 'sneak and peek' searches (S.316); restrict government access to library, bookseller and other records (S. 317); and modify the authority to intercept computer communications (S. 318)."

Oh thank God.

(Via Secrecy News.)

The Nation | Blog | The Daily Outrage | Inhofe's Idiocy | Ari Berman: "Labeling global warming 'the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people' and comparing the Environmental Protection Agency to the Gestapo apparently wasn't enough for Senator James Inhofe. Unable to ram Bush's polluter-friendly Clear Skies Act through the Senate, the Chairman of the Environmental and Public Works Committee (EPW) ordered two national organizations opposing Bush's plan to turn over their financial and tax records.

The two groups attacked by Inhofe collectively represent 48 state and 165 local air pollution control agencies. "

(Via The Nation Weblogs.)

Safety and Security of Russian Nuclear Facilities: "The National Intelligence Council has issued an updated (November 2004) Annual Report to Congress on the Safety and Security of Russian Nuclear Facilities and Military Forces. (The 2002 edition is on the CIA website.) The 2004 edition repeats the judgment made in 2002 ‘undetected smuggling [weapons-grade and weapons-usable nuclear materials] has occurred, although we do not know the extent or magnitude of such thefts’ and again expressed concern about the total amount of material that could have been diverted."

(Via ArmsControlWonk.com.)

Feb 25, 2005: The end of privacy: "The attempt by Phill Kline, the Republican attorney general of Kansas, to obtain the unedited and unredacted medical files of dozens of Kansas women who had late-term abortions falls clearly into the latter category. Those files are filled with the kinds of sensitive information ('like sexual history, birth control practices, drug use, psychological profiles,' and more according to the New York Times) that ought to be inviolate.

Kline plans to scour the personal details of Kansas women searching for unreported crimes he can prosecute. He's trying to cloak his attack on privacy rights under the guise of protecting children. But make no mistake. This isn't about children (doctors are already required to report any suspected abuse to the proper authorities), and it's not about abortion."

(Via DNC: Kicking Ass.)

Editor's Cut: "So let's see, covert torture operations, involvement with Iran/Contra, failed nation building, and a history of lying to the press and Congress--sounds like the perfect man with the perfect qualifications for the job of Bush's National Intelligence Director."

(Via The Nation Weblogs.)

The Nation | Blog | The Daily Outrage | Shipped in Secret | Ari Berman: "The New York Bar Association estimates that 150 people have been covertly rendered since 9/11. 'Let someone else do the dirty work,' was the program's original motto, says former CIA counter-terrorism officer Michael Scheuer. 'All we've done is create a nightmare,' Scheuer now says of his brainchild."

(Via The Nation Weblogs.)

Haaretz - Israel News: "Israel Air Force Commander-in-Chief Major General Eliezer Shakedi said Monday that Israel must be prepared for an air strike on Iran in light of its nuclear activity."

The Onion | America's Finest News Source™: "WASHINGTON, DC—In a surprise press conference Monday, President Bush said he will not rest until the warehouse where the Ark of the Covenant, the vessel holding the original Ten Commandments, is located. 'Nazis stole the Ark in 1936, but it was recovered by a single patriot, who braved gunfire, rolling boulders, and venomous snakes,' Bush said, addressing the White House press corps."

(Via The Onion.)

Technocrat.net | Scott Ritter Claims Iran Attack by US Coming in June: "Scott Ritter, appearing with journalist Dahr Jamail yesterday in Washington State, dropped two shocking bombshells in a talk delivered to a packed house in Olympia’s Capitol Theater. The ex-Marine turned UNSCOM weapons inspector said that George W. Bush has 'signed off' on plans to bomb Iran in June 2005, and claimed the U.S. manipulated the results of the recent Jan. 30 elections in Iraq."

(Via Technocrat.net.)

Secrecy News for 02/15/05: "A federal appeals court panel today said that two reporters must respond to a grand jury subpoena requiring them to identify their confidential sources or else they may be jailed for contempt.

Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time Magazine have no First Amendment protection from a grand jury subpoena seeking the identity of sources for their reporting on the matter of former covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, the court said."

(Via Secrecy News.)

Blogs: Time to End the "Self-Appointed" Name-Calling: "The word ‘self-appointed’ is the odd part, especially if it’s meant to distinguish between bloggers and publishers of traditional newspapers or those who run the TV or even the film industry.

Deja vu is the phrase that comes to mind.

Back in the mid 1980s, when I was in Moscow stringing for RKO Radio and Cox News, the foreign correspondents who represented major US newspapers and big networks laughed at upstart CNN, which had opened a bureau in the Soviet capital. They laughed at Ted Turner, too, the ‘self-appointed’ millionaire (or was it already a billion?) who had presumed to start a 24/7 TV news operation."

(Via WhirledView.)

Meanwhile, US drones at it: "WASHINGTON: The US has been flying drones over Iran since April 2004, seeking evidence of nuclear weapons programmes and probing for weaknesses in Iran's air defences, the Washington Post reported on Sunday."

(Via TOI - The United States.)

Pak will be failed state by 2015: CIA: "NEW DELHI: A report by US intelligence agencies states that Pakistan would be a failed state, ripe with civil war, bloodshed, and Talibanisation."

(Via TOI - The United States.)

Files suggest US troops tried to hide abuses: "WASHINGTON -- A former Iraqi detainee told Army investigators that a US soldier forced him to sign a statement that he had not been abused even though American interrogators in September 2003 had dislocated his arms, beaten his leg with a bat, crushed his nose, and put an unloaded gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger, according to newly ..."

(Via Boston Globe -- World News.)

In shift, Russia calls ex-Soviet states free: "MOSCOW -- The Kremlin signaled a fundamental foreign policy shift yesterday, acknowledging that two former Soviet republics, Ukraine and Georgia, are no longer part of the Russian orbit."

(Via Boston Globe -- World News.)

"EX" STRESS RELIEF FOR G.I.S: "First we found out that the Army was planning to ply G.I.s with the raver favorite Ketamine, or 'Special K,' as a morphine substitute. Now comes word that 'American soldiers traumatized by fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are to be offered the drug ecstasy to help free them of flashbacks and recurring nightmares,' the Guardian reports."

(Via Defense Tech.)

Capital Games: "After all, during the Reagan years, when he was ambassador to Honduras, Negroponte was involved in what was arguably an illegal covert quid pro quo connected to the Iran/contra scandal, and he refused to acknowledge significant human rights abuses committed by the pro-US military in Honduras."

...

"He has been credibly accused of rigging a human rights report that was politically inconvenient. This is a bad omen. The fundamental mission of the intelligence community is to provide policymakers with unvarnished and valuable information-even if it causes the policymakers headaches."

(Via The Nation Weblogs.)