"Britain to install early warning bases in Oregon." These will be sited on US air bases in areas of protected wilderness, but will be leased out to the UK and solely answerable to HM Govt, with no state or Congressional accountability. If you protest outside, you'll be prosecuted on trumped-up charges. Oh, and they'll be tapping your phones and emails as well. (more inside...)
posted by holgate
on May 2, 2001 -
11 comments
"You don't have to burn books now," says Thomas. "You just press the delete key." Two unabashedly
partisan reports of the Bush administration's clandestine campaign to "tighten up" anything from online government sources dealing with the development of Alaskan mineral resources.
We've done the debate on Alaska, but what about the ability to amend online records? The old administration's sites are meant to be preserved by law, but plenty appears to have been deleted in the name of "polishing":
"We changed value-laden words like 'destroy' to 'impact.'"
Newspeak in action? Should government-run sites be required to carry a Changelog?
posted by holgate
on Apr 14, 2001 -
7 comments
Through rose-tinted spectacles? It's media waffle for a quiet news day, and comes on the back of a wave of nostalgia, but Reagan's "victory" in this latest poll feels like the triumph of selective memory, and of the desire to reassociate the presidency with jelly-bean eating. (FDR trails in fifth, and there's no mention of Woodrow Wilson, though Carter and Nixon get a look-in.) Which makes me wonder: does the US have a clear sense of its history, as far as Presidents are concerned?
posted by holgate
on Feb 19, 2001 -
15 comments
Not very clever. Florida's Secretary of State (the BBC reports her being described as "a bit of an airhead") manages to make her position look even more ridiculous. Anyone get the disturbing feeling that this may be resolved, not in the courts, but on the streets?
posted by holgate
on Nov 13, 2000 -
16 comments
