RussianAnimation.com"From 1924 to perestroika the USSR produced more than 4 dozen animated propaganda films. They weren't for export. Their target was the new nation and their goal was to win over the hearts and minds of the Soviet people. Anti-American, Anti-British, Anti-German, Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Fascist, some of these films are as artistically beautiful as the great political posters made after the 1917 revolution which inspired Soviet animation."

(Here is Part 1 of the 4 parts of the documentary uploaded to Google Video. We are making this part a preview. The DVDs contain the actual films too.)"

The Simpsons do Army Recruitment [VIDEO]

Slate has a look at the worst political commercials of the year.

Don't miss the cover-story of the new "Rolling Stone": "These past six years were more than just the most shameful, corrupt and incompetent period in the history of the American legislative branch. These were the years when the U.S. parliament became a historical punch line, a political obscenity on par with the court of Nero or Caligula -- a stable of thieves and perverts who committed crimes rolling out of bed in the morning and did their very best to turn the mighty American empire into a debt-laden, despotic backwater, a Burkina Faso with cable."

Girl questioned after threatening Bush on MySpace: "The latest Sacramento resident to be questioned by federal agents for threatening President Bush is a 14-year-old girl who is passionate about liberal politics and cute movie stars."

SPACE.COM: "U.S. assets must be unhindered in carrying out their space duties,' the Bush space policy says, stressing that 'freedom of action in space is as important to the United States as air power and sea power. (...) The policy calls upon the Secretary of Defense to "develop capabilities, plans, and options to ensure freedom of action in space, and, if directed, deny such freedom of action to adversaries."'

Guardian: The two faces of Rumsfeld 2000: director of a company which wins $200m contract to sell nuclear reactors to North Korea 2002: declares North Korea a terrorist state, part of the axis of evil and a target for regime change

BoingBoing Here's video of Clint Curtis, a former programmer for Yang Enterprises (YEI) in Florida, testifying under oath that Representative Tom Feeney asked him to write a voting machine program to rig elections. (...) In the video, Curtis testifies that Feeney asked him to write a program for touchscreen voting machines that could undetectably "flip the vote 51-49 to whoever you wanted it to go to and whichever race you wanted to win. (...) Yang claims that Curtis' allegations are untrue, and Tom Feeney denies ever meeting Curtis. "

This story is a little strange. Follow the boingboing-link up there for updates

Alternet: "Kellogg Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, is constructing a huge facility at an undisclosed location to hold tens of thousands of Bush's 'unlawful enemy combatants.' Americans are certain to be among them."

This Is What Waterboarding Looks Like!

boingboing.net: "CIA's recruiting website includes weird personality quiz"

Hammerharter Scheiß!

Metafilter has all the links!: "Within the next two days, the U.S. Congress will vote, bipartisanly, for a law allowing the President to kidnap anyone including U.S. citizens, from anywhere including the United States, hold them in prison for life solely on the President's word, deny them any trial at all, deny them access to the legal system, torture them into a made-up confession, and use that made-up confession obtained by torture in show trials, with sentences ranging from imprisonment to death. "

Foreignpolicy.com! Recommended reading!

Wonkette: "Polish Prime Minister Jaroslav Kaczynski arrived in Washington thinking he was going to meet with the president. According to a schedule released before Kaczynski’s arrival, he was to meet with President Bush at midafternoon, but White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said there was no such meeting on Bush’s schedule. She said a meeting was planned with Vice President Dick Cheney. 'If the president were to drop by, we would let you know,' she added."

I love Dave Chappelle!

Jeden Tag was Neues von meinem Lieblingspräsidenten! Heute protestieren diverse Gouverneure gegen eine neue Gesetzesvorlage, die Bush die totale militärische Kontrolle über sämtliche Bundesstaaten in die Hände geben soll. Fraglich ist eigentlich nur, warum der Präsident da nicht schon eher drauf gekommen ist!

Spaß mit dem Präsidenten: Lil' Bush - The Web Cartoon! Watch it because you got nothing else to do!

Frog Style Biscuit: "The National Governors Association, a bipartisan organization of American governors, has sent a letter to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees to protest an upcoming bill that would allow the federal government to usurp state control over the National Guard in "emergencies".

This bill is highly significant because, if passed, it will dramatically decrease the security of the US. It will allow the federal government to unilaterally declare an emergency and take military control over America's states. "

Soviel Angst kann man vor Castro doch nicht gehabt haben, denkt man, aber die Amis hätten auch ihre eigenen Städte eingeäschert um ein bischen Krieg mit Kuba zu führen:

ABC NEWS: "U.S. Military Wanted to Provoke War With Cuba In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.

Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.

The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.

America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."

Details of the plans are described in Body of Secrets (Doubleday), a new book by investigative reporter James Bamford about the history of America's largest spy agency, the National Security Agency.

Washington Post: "U.S. officials urge nations' discretion on CIA prisons The Bush administration yesterday cautioned countries with secret CIA prisons in their territory against disclosing the sites' existence, even as the European Parliament renewed its demand that its members come clean if they host such detention centers."

Der Japaner kriegt was erklärt: Merkel's reforms drift toward dead end : No less than 41 percent of the voting-age adult population lives primarily on government transfers such as state pensions, full-scale public stipends, unemployment benefits, disability benefits, and social assistance. (In East Germany, the figure is a whopping 47 percent.)"

Washington Post: "FBI Role in Terror Probe Questioned - Lawyers Point to Fine Line Between Sting and Entrapment" American friends, please have a look!

"I believe, 10 years from now April, you and I...will be trying to remember back what it was like 10 years ago." -- George W. Bush, 8-28-06, to April Ryan of the American Urban Radio Networks

What's your favourite W-clip?

- Merkel Massage - Bush alone in the studio - Bush explains the world! - Bush drunk - Bush rehearsing - Bush explains that thing with Iraq

Guardian: "Lessons in how to lie about Iraq

The problem is not propaganda but the relentless control of the kind of things we think about."

SPIEGEL Interview with Salman Rushdie: "with the IRA it was the loss of credibility among their own people, who no longer saw any point in fighting violently in the underground. Remolding former terrorist organisations into political parties in the long term is at least not hopeless. It might work with those groups that are not primarily characterized by religious fanaticism -- the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, for example, a group which virtually invented suicide bombings, have no religious background at all. They have clear objectives: an independent state."

A Greg Palast special investigation for Democracy Now!:

"Here’s what happened. Right after Katrina swamped the city, I called Washington to get a copy of the evacuation plan.

Funny thing about the murderously failed plan for the evacuation of New Orleans: no one can find it.

That’s real bad. Here’s the key thing about a successful emergency evacuation plan: you have to have copies of it. Lots of copies — in fire houses and in hospitals and in the hands of every first responder. Secret evacuation plans don’t work."

What’s Happening Right Now?

Essential reading!

Alternet : "If you control the language, you control the debate. As the Bush Administration's Middle Eastern policy sinks ever deeper into bloody incoherence, the 'war on terror' has been getting a quiet linguistic makeover. It's becoming the 'war on Islamic fascism.' The term has been around for a while"

"Israeli activists have uploaded a video of the shooting of Lymor and the initial violence of the Israeli military in Bil’in on Friday, August 11th. The video clearly shows the Border Police unit firing on the demonstrators from close range. There is no evidence that the soldiers were in danger. Typically, the military spokesperson has claimed that “activists threw stones” and Haaretz’s article yesterday reiterating the same false information. The video also clearly shows the commander of the unit saying, “This is Lebanon!” as he orders his force to fire on retreating demonstrators, and “I will not allow a demonstration during wartime!”"

Story and video at Globalresearch

Andrew Sullivan's What-If Blog at NY METRO

Clowns like Alex Jones are "useful idiots", but he did actually predict 9/11... So, what is this all about and where does Mr. Jones get his ultra-secret information? Deep Throat? Bush sr.? Kermit the Frog? Or does he have a secret affair with Condi?

"Alex Jones predicted the 9/11 attacks stating 'Osama Bin Laden would be blamed for flying planes into buildings including the WTC'. He made this warning during the months of July and August of 2001; He is now stating for the fist time since 9/11, that all indicators suggest a massive terror attack is imminent, facilitated by corrupt rogue elements in western governments, possibly before October."

The broadcast is here!

The shit hits the fan: "The US government was closely involved in planning the Israeli campaign in Lebanon, even before Hizbullah seized two Israeli soldiers in a cross border raids in July. American and Israeli officials met in the spring, discussing plans on how to tackle Hizbullah, according to a report published yesterday. The veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh writes in the current issue of the New Yorker magazine that Israeli government officials travelled to the US in May to share plans for attacking Hizbullah."

Then again: "What's killing baseball cards?" Isn't that way more important?