Annan speech to the UN and Bush speech to the UN. Bush persists in citing falsehoods; Annan cites plain realities. Bush looks back, to justify; Annan looks forward. I have always thought of Kofi Annan as a weak and ineffective UN Secretary General. But given the alternatives, he seems to have a real vision in the context of the very realpolitik UN.

The citizens of nowhere. For a more radical expression of this view, check out Arthur Kroker’s work on the Virtual Class from the early-to-mid 90s.

is starting to look like nothing more than the old bait-n-switch trick, a base fraud that really required a great deal of intention to come up with. Part of the tactic can be seen clearly in this CNN story: Iraq story falls short, Democrats say.

Way down at the end, Condi Rice is quoted as saying the following, “The president of the United States did not go to war because of a question of whether or not Saddam Hussein sought uranium in Africa […] He took the American people and American forces to war because this was a bloody tyrant who for 12 years defied the international community.”

In fact, this is not true, it is a blatant lie. The administration went for the war by making the case that yes Saddam was a tyrant and yes he was a barbarian, but the proximate cause was expressly NOT that – because there’s no provision for pre-emptive war in such a situation. Rather, their case was very specific – none of those things were the reasons for war, though awful – the reason for war was the “imminent threat” Saddam posed. That was what Congress and the public around the world were sold, not that he was a monster. Everyone knew he was a monster – but as the French and others know, that is not enough to justify war.

I would most definitely keep a weblog chronicling the hundreds of non-news-stories being thrown out there by the big American networks. I’m afraid I’d have to quit my job and dedicate my life to it, though, there are so many bullshit stories being published lately. The latest: Marines discover Iraqi 9/11 mural, about a mural depicting a plane crashing into a building that was found in Iraq the other day. Another was the completely loaded story that UK troops had found Iraqi chemical suits, which obviously (to them) means that they plan to use chemical weapons. I guess the fact that the US troops all have chemical suits proves that the US is about to use chemical weapons too, eh? After all, it was the US who provided the foundation of the whole Iraqi chemical program.