In der tyz: "Weiß ist heute die Farbe der Peinlichkeit und des Trotteltums. Angefangen bei dem unumstritten schlechtesten Präsidenten aller Zeiten, der, typisch für viele Millionen weißer Trottel, sein Alkohol-Problem gegen ein Jesus-Problem eingetauscht hat, hört dieser Trend mit den verwahrlosten White-Trash-Pop-Stars und ihre Unappetitlichkeiten noch lange nicht auf."

You can't miss this story in Le Monde Diplomatique: "Scheherazade in the White House - How George Bush’s wartime administration used a magician, Hollywood designers and Karl Rove telling 1,001 stories to sell the invasion of Iraq."

Quote: "A scene in which the US army spokesman, General Tommy Franks, addressed journalists cost $200,000 and was produced by a designer who had worked for Disney, Metro Goldwyn Mayer and the television programme Good Morning America. In 2001 the White House had put him in charge of creating background designs for presidential speeches – unsurprising to those aware of the ties between the Pentagon and Hollywood.

More surprising was the Pentagon decision to recruit David Blaine for interior design; he is a magician famous in the US for his TV show and for conjuring tricks such as levitating or being shut in a cage without food."

Ermüdend. Den ganze Abend drüber geredet.

SPON mit den ersten Ergebnissen vom Chaos Computer Congress.

Who's left, who's right?

Unbelievable! You have to read this yourself!

USA TODAY: "Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign has used words attributed to Sen. Barack Obama from when he was a kindergartner -- and from when he was in third grade -- to accuse him of 'rewriting history' when he says he hasn't been planning for a long time to run for president."

Talking about War with Iraq and Canada.

Excellent article from Rollingstone.com:"After Thirty-Five Years and $500 Billion, Drugs Are as Cheap and Plentiful as Ever: An Anatomy of a Failure."

DUCK AND COVER, KIDS!

"To learn why your life is entrusted to Manchurian candidates who don't even know how and why they aim to kill you.

Dr. Horowitz brilliantly critiques the government's new 24-hour television network and feature documentary, History of Bioterrorism, which is now broadcasting daily over the Dish Network. "

From KickThemAllOut.com

Watch Waiting for the Guards

"Amnesty International have just released a truly powerful film to coincide with the official launch of the unsubscribe campaign.

Waiting For The Guards is the first of 3 films commissioned by Amnesty to highlight the enhanced interrogation techniques used by the CIA in the “War on Terror”.

The Directors approached the making of the film in a way that has never been done before, choosing to show the reality of Stress Positions in as authentic a way as possible. They filmed a person being put into Stress Positions over a 6 hour period. There is no acting on the part of the 'prisoner'" – his pain and anguish is for real.

This powerful film shows without doubt that what the US administrations say is interrogation is in reality, torture and must be stopped. "

GET STARTED HERE!

Steinmeier and Kouchner to Record R&B Song : "The French and German foreign ministers, Bernard Kouchner and Frank-Walter Steinmeier, are to record a duet together for release on YouTube. Fortunately professional musicians will be on hand to help out the two crooning politicians. (...) The two politicians will record the song in a recording studio in Berlin's Kreuzberg neighborhood together with young Turkish-German musicians, German Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Jäger announced Friday in Berlin."

Looks like he's serious!

Nice comment!

Und zwar mit Hilfe russischer Maschinen (Wired: "The Weird Russian Mind-Control Research Behind a DHS Contract")

Die sollten da beim Verein für Home Security ma' besser nicht immer nur Science Fiction-Filme gucken...

Daily Kos: "Depending on whether the Blackwater security firm stays in Iraq will inform us whether Prime Minister Maliki has any power or is just a U.S. puppet."

"There's a huge industry!"

Excellent!

Noam Chomsky on 911 conspiracy - Part 1 and Part 2

Bonus: Justice Vs. Power - Chomsky Vs. Foucault (1971) : "In 1971, American linguist/social activist Noam Chomsky squared off against French philosopher Michel Foucault on Dutch television ... the program was entitled 'Human Nature: Justice Vs. Power' and offered sharp contrasts between the more traditional view of 'human nature' and what would become a postmodernist perspective ..." Part 2 is over here!

Previously on Popmoderne: The Great 911 Swindle

Remember that picture? A lot of people thought it was real....

DEUTSCH: Spreeblick 9/11 Lesetipps

Greg Palast found the right words for the 6th anniversary of September 11th 2001: "This is not a story of what George Bush knew but rather of his very-unfunny ignorance."

Down there are some links for those armchair detectives who have chosen to ignore 99% of what scientists and engineers have been saying about the collapse of the twin towers. It would destroy the illusion of being part of some great investigation, fighting for justice on the internet and all that escapism that keeps people from getting active for real.

Conspiracy theories have become an alternative fantasy role playing game on the internet. It's like "The Lost Experience", the internet egg hunt based on the TV show "Lost". You collect links and clues and ignore reality because reality would destroy the illusion that those evil people working for the Hanso Foundation and the Dharma Initiative rule the world. It's just a game. It's only television.

Watch some of those 911-reports out there. It's always some crazy tv-preacher like Alex Jones or a kid in a basement and both of them claim to "know the truth". Bullshit! "Today we know that....", they say. They don't know shit and they can turn everything into a clever marketing campaign or some sort of nerd activity.

Science Daily: Science-based 9/11 animation created: "Although most people say they believe they know what brought down the towers, Purdue University civil engineers want to better understand specifically what happened to prevent future structural failures.

The animation depicts how a plane tore through several stories of the World Trade Center's north tower within a half-second, showing how the weight of the fuel acted as a flash flood of flaming liquid, knocking out essential structural columns within the building and removing fireproofing insulation from other support structures.

'The crashes and computer models you often see on television are not scientifically accurate,' said Assistant Professor Voicu Popescu, who developed an application that automatically translates simulation data into a 3-D animation scene. 'This provides an alternative that is useful to the non-expert but is also scientifically accurate, so it provides a more realistic picture of the event.'"

More at Purdue University: 9/11 Attack Simulations Using LS-Dyna

Then there is a page on Wikipedia about the collapse of the World Trade Center and a special report at "Popular Mechanics" called "Debunking the 9/11 Myths".

If you're still into conspiracies, you might consider watching September Clues - What was the role of the mainstream media on 9/11? This is an interesting one.

Archive.org has a folder with the original live-coverage of 911 if you wanna check the sources.

But what about the Pentagon? Why aren't they releasing those videos....?

Scott Ritter on the consequences of going to war with Iran. (WATCH THIS!)

GQ: Colin Powell says "sorry" and things like "Terrorists are not greatest threat to nation"

Another interesting story in GQ about Obama: "You’ve heard all about Barack Obama’s potential. But he has to get elected first. And a campaign can do funny things to a man."

This is the 'A Current Affair' story on the Chaser gang of the Australian TV Show "The Chaser's War On Everything".

"They got within 10 metres of President Bush's hotel. They were only caught when one of the team (Chaz), left one of the vehicles dressed as Osama Bin Laden. This incident left Australian police and politicians furious, making a mockery of the US$138 million security budget for the event."

Quote from Grods.com: "They were only caught after they reached the edge of what they thought was the security zone, they were beginning to turn around anyway, and the police only apprehended them when Chas stepped out dressed as Osama.

Theoretically they could have kept on going past the third checkpoint (and how is this third checkpoint any better than the first two?) and caused a huge embarrassment - which is why the NSW police are so upset about this."

This is what their passes looked like:

Read the small print!

The Daily Telegraph has more on this: Osama 'chased' at APEC

Videos on The Chaser Team MySpace

They also have a really funny website over here.

The Chaser - Osama has a message for Australia (August 2007)

GMX: "Die NSA hat von nun an die Genehmigung E-Mails und Telefonate von Ausländern auch ohne richterliche Genehmigung abzuhören. Für die USA ist dies ein legitimes Mittel im Anti-Terror-Kampf, so ein Bericht von Pressetext."

TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS, TERRORISTS!

BoingBoing.net: "Naomi Klein (No Logo) and Alfonso Cuarón and Jonás Cuarón (Children of Men) have created a short film to accompany her latest book, "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism," whose thesis is that present-day global capitalism took hold when its advocates learned to exploit disasters. "

Die Süddeutsche über die demnächst erscheinende Bush-Biographie "Dead Certain" und "die vielen Tränen des Präsidenten":

"Für Historiker interessanter ist da schon, dass Bush selbst nie so recht begriffen hat, wieso im Mai 2003 plötzlich Paul Bremer, Washingtons Statthalter in Bagdad, die irakische Armee auflöste (uns so dazu beitrug, dass überall im Land das Chaos eskalierte). Geplant war eigentlich, dass Saddams ehemalige Sicherheitskräfte für Ordnung sorgen sollten: "Ich kann mich nicht erinnern. Ich bin sicher, dass ich gesagt habe: 'Dies ist die Politik, was ist denn da passiert?‘." Aber für solche Details solle sich der Reporter an seinen Sicherheitsberater Stephen Hadley wenden - 'Hadley hat die Notizen über all das Zeug.'"

Bush's happily departed adviser Karl Rove once said that "we're an empire now -- we create our own reality."

6 years later... Who is left and who is right? About time to play amateur detective and have a look again.

Google Video: The BBC has an interesting documentary dedicated to debunking the conspiracy theories surrounding the 9/11 attacks on New-York and Washington DC.

Watch it in the comments

Excerpts: "It isn't just propaganda any more, it's prop-agenda. It's not so much the control of what we think, but the control of what we think about.

When our governments want to sell us a course of action, they do it by making sure it's the only thing on the agenda, the only thing everyone's talking about. (...) The more emotional the debate, the better. Emotion creates reality, reality demands action. (...) One reason that propaganda often works better on the educated than on the uneducated is that educated people read more, so they receive more propaganda.

Another is that they have jobs in management, media, and academia and therefore work in some capacity as agents of the propaganda system — and they believe what the system expects them to believe. (...) Look at Germany in the early 1930s. We tend to forget that it was the most advanced country in Europe, taking the lead in art, science, technology, literature and philosophy.

Then, in no time at all, it suffered a complete reversal of fortune and became the most barbaric, murderous state in human history. All that was achieved by using fear:

Fear of the Bolsheviks, the Jews, the Americans, the Gypsies – everyone who, according to the Nazis, was threatening the core values of European culture and the direct descendants of Greek civilisation (as the philosopher Martin Heidegger wrote in 1935).

However, most of the German media who inundated the population with these messages were using marketing techniques developed by US advertising agents."

Full text over here!

Daily Telegraph - Will President Bush bomb Iran?

Quote: A former White House aide added: "If this creates in the Iranians' mind a state of fear such that they back off, that helps your diplomacy. Bush is a political poker player. To play poker, you have to know when to bluff."

Also: a bit from David Cross who sets the record straight about the terrorists hating freedom.

Quote: "If the terrorists hated freedom so much, the netherlands would be dust!"

Audio: David Cross on flags and patriotism (from a comedy album called "Shut Up You Fucking Baby")

Alternet: A Feast of Bullshit and Spectacle: The Great American Media Mind Warp. By Joe Bageant: "Watch television in countries with supposedly primitive media, and after a while you will be shocked at the technologically mediated and shape-shifted image of the world presented to Americans. (...) All Americans, regardless of caste, live in a culture woven of self-referential illusions. Like a holographic simulation, each part refers exclusively back to the whole, and the whole refers exclusively back to the parts. All else is excluded by this simulated reality. Consequently, social realism in this country is a television commercial for America, a simulated republic of eagles and big box stores, a good place to live so long as we never stray outside the hologram. The corporate simulacrum of life has penetrated us so deeply it now dominates the mind's interior landscape with its celebrities and commercial images. Within the hologram sparkles the culture-generating industry, spinning out our unreality like cotton candy."

The New Yorker: A rare look inside the C.I.A.’s secret interrogation program. By Jane Mayer

Wired Blog: First Armed Robots on Patrol in Iraq " Robots have been roaming the streets of Iraq, since shortly after the war began. Now, for the first time -- the first time in any warzone -- the machines are carrying guns.

After years of development, three "special weapons observation remote reconnaissance direct action system" (SWORDS) robots have deployed to Iraq, armed with M249 machine guns. "