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A patriotic potpourri. Say what you want about the war. It certainly has helped some people find their special purpose. Terrorists beware! You have gone to far this time & WE will DESTROY YOU. Also Current World News, War Infofmation, Kill Osama Pics, Games, Laughs & More..... (warning: crammed full of multimedia files, including (but not limited to) Bon Jovi cover songs interspersed with screeching eagles.)
posted by Ljubljana at 11:13 PM PST - 12 comments

Things going squish on my scanner - time lapse scanner fun with surprisingly cool results brought to you by Kamikazee Killmouse. I'm partial to the kiwi. His page of short animated choppings is also an amusing place to while away some time in a b3ta kind of way. (via j-walk)
posted by madamjujujive at 11:01 PM PST - 9 comments

House Resolution 153 recognizes the need for the American public to pray and fast in order to secure the blessings of "Providence" (read: Jesus) for our Armed Forces. Seriously. "Resolved that the President should issue a proclamation designating a day for prayer & fasting for all people of the United States". I take back the thing I said earlier about the Freedom Fries being the stupidest Congressional legislation I'd ever seen.
posted by jonson at 10:16 PM PST - 75 comments

Planet Kite is an ambitious website dedicated to world kites with notable appearances by Cambodia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Thailand, Japan, and the sublime Southeast Asian Leaf Kite, among many others.
posted by hama7 at 10:05 PM PST - 5 comments

Ground Laid for Historic Presidential Powers Push But as recently as March 4, Attorney General John Ashcroft was being coy about it, refusing to discuss any of the 86-page draft at a Senate hearing. Among the more extreme powers Patriot Act II would grant the executive branch: The ability to strip citizenship from an American who supports a group the feds label as terrorist. Secret arrests—the government could avoid revealing the location of, charges against, and evidence on someone it was holding. Far looser checks on search-and-seizure activities of law enforcement. And a DNA database for people deemed to be terrorist suspects. But with this "really cool war to watch on TV", who will even notice before it's too late?
posted by bas67 at 8:45 PM PST - 29 comments

Unless you take long breaks from your busy internet-trolling schedule to read print media, you did not see this chilling litany of stupidity from Elsa Walsh's 3/24 New Yorker profile of Bandar bin Sul "The meeting was scheduled to last twenty minutes, but Bush and Abdullah talked for two hours. At one point, the Crown Prince handed Bush the photographs of the dead Palestinian children. Do you think it's right? he asked. Bush appeared surprised by the photographs and his eyes seemed to well up. One person familiar with the conversation summarized Bush's comments: "I want peace. I don't want to see any people killed on both sides. I think God loves me. I think God loves the Palestinians. I think God loves the Israelis. We cannot allow this to continue." At one point, Bush told Abdullah that he believed Muslims and Israelis were all God's children and that God didn't want to see children from either side die." (Link via Atrios)
posted by crasspastor at 5:30 PM PST - 22 comments

Risks and realities of urban warfare Urban Operations Journal collects "open-source information on urban military operations," including military doctrine, an image library, war game reports, a quotes collection and much more. Lessons from Grozny, Hue City and Beirut shed light on what might be coming in Baghdad. The training section links to a number of documents noting the "scarcity of training resources" the U.S. devotes to urban warfare, including this PBS story in which an urban warfare specialist makes the claim U.S. forces are "not proficient" on the urban battleground, where the casualty rate is "about 30 percent."
posted by mediareport at 4:26 PM PST - 13 comments

Al-Qaeda fighting with Iraqis, British claim So say interrogated Iraqi POWs. But wait. Al Qaeda the group that killed 3 thousand Americans and now they are inside Iraq helping Saddam? Were they there when Blix lads inspecting? Do the French know about this? If so, do they think we should give Al Qaeda a chance to reform?
posted by Postroad at 3:36 PM PST - 29 comments

Kim Jong Il (the illmatic)'s LiveJournal
3:39 am Dear diary. Bush still doesn’t ‘get it.’ I tried making my feelings clear but he’s too busy ignoring me, he is such a jerk. Everything in his life is just Saddam, Saddam, Saddam and I am sick of it.

On the plus side, I think my hair looked pretty good today. Also I went frolicking at Paektu Mountain and the rainbow came out again. After dinner some of my subjects sang me a song because I invented Outer Space.
posted by woj at 2:18 PM PST - 20 comments

"Chaos in the Middle East is not the Bush hawks' nightmare scenario--it's their plan." This is a fascinating and disturbing article by Josh Marshall for next month's Washington Monthly, released early due to recent events. Of course, whether or not the war will destabalize the Mideast is open to debate.
posted by homunculus at 12:42 PM PST - 68 comments

Friday Thursday Flash Fun Art. Suspended Gardens 2 allows you to plant virtual flowers in Iraq. You can customize your flower and include a message. As Metafilterarians like to state their opinions, do not miss this opportunity. [more inside]
posted by MzB at 11:06 AM PST - 3 comments

Blair, the war criminal Tom Dalyell, a Labour MP with over 41 years of service in the House of Commons has voted with his Labour Party constitutency to call for Blair to reconsider his postion as party leader. He further states that he believes "[Blair] should be branded as a war criminal and sent to the Hague".
posted by lometogo at 10:25 AM PST - 34 comments

You're all a bunch of x-Eating y Monkeys!
posted by Pretty_Generic at 10:20 AM PST - 29 comments

A meteor hit the Chicago south suburbs last night, and the flash was seen as far away as Ohio. This flash was also caught on video. I missed the flash, which lit up the night sky like a nuke attack. Did anyone else see it?
posted by Sal Amander at 9:36 AM PST - 60 comments

The Myth of the "Civilian"? Rationalizing the status quo or hard-headed realism for "interesting times"? Baghdad coming shortly...
posted by dgaicun at 9:03 AM PST - 18 comments

Last August, Metafilter readers learned of the story of Laura Rothenberg, a student at Brown University who chronicled her battle with cystic fibrosis on NPR's Radio Diaries. Sadly, Laura died last week at age 22. NPR remembers her here and a moving tribute aired earlier this week on All Things Considered.
posted by PrinceValium at 7:22 AM PST - 13 comments

The Iraq-September 11th smoking gun? Finally, near proof that Iraq was involved in the September 11th attacks on America: a mural in the Iraqi military headquarters in Nasiriya depicts a plane crashing into a building complex similar to New York's twin towers! (Okay, seriously, are some folks so desperate to make the connection that this might become an actual story?)
posted by johnnydark at 7:15 AM PST - 50 comments

Electronic Arts released it's latest in the popular "Command & Conquer" series, "Command & Conquer: Generals" C&C are strategy and warfare games, that have bloodless and non-explicit violence. But this month the German government listed the game on their index of media that can not be advertised or displayed on shelves in Germany, although they may be kept under store counters and sold to adults. Most video games on this list show "especially brutal acts of violence," unlike C&C [more inside]
posted by Steve_at_Linnwood at 7:09 AM PST - 23 comments

The Supreme Court is currently hearing arguments about the constitutionality of homosexual sex. While this may not be news, just listening to some of the comments by the conservatives on the court can be a chilling experience, whether you are straight or gay. Is it possible that there can be supreme court justices, supposedly the best of the best, who are really this ignorant?
posted by eas98 at 6:59 AM PST - 68 comments

gigposters -- a collection of posters created by artists and musicians to advertise their shows and events.
posted by lilboo at 6:53 AM PST - 4 comments

How Will we know America is winning? Thomas Friedman poses six questions against which to judge US success...
posted by brettski at 6:41 AM PST - 19 comments

The G.I. Jones Photographic Archive of Southeastern Nigerian Art and Culture. 'This is an archive of digitized photographs depicting the arts and cultures of southeastern Nigeria. The collection includes examples from Ibibio, Igbo, Ijo and Ogoni speaking peoples. All of the photographs were taken in the 1930s by the late G.I. Jones, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge. The majority of the images are from the Igbo speaking regions where Jones conducted most of his research. The materials included here represent only a sample of the complete Jones collection. The photographs are unique for the creative brilliance of the art represented, the quality of the photography itself, and the cultural and historical significance of photographic records from this time period in Nigeria.'
Some related links :-
American Museum Congo Expedition 1909-1915. A truly interesting site, which includes field notes, photographs, watercolours, historical maps, anthropoligical objects, and so forth.
A Clickable Map of the Art of the African Continent, via Africa: The Art of a Continent.
The Woods Collection of African Art, with another clickable map.
Nigerian Stories.
posted by plep at 6:30 AM PST - 11 comments

Maryland voted to reduce penalities on folks who smoke marijuana for medical purposes. It's passed the house and is on it's way to becoming law!
posted by cpfeifer at 6:11 AM PST - 11 comments

Have a fling...or have a cow. Or fling a cow. Fried-day Flash Fun. (Gratuities are welcome, but please, no "tipping.")
posted by Dunvegan at 5:11 AM PST - 7 comments

nifty ancient eyecandy
posted by crunchland at 3:41 AM PST - 12 comments

Robert Fisk in the Independent Today's front page of the UK broadsheet comprises solely of a text-only report of yesterday's bombing of a Baghdad marketplace, beginning: "It was an outrage, an obscenity. The severed hand on the metal door, the swamp of blood and mud across the road, the human brains inside a garage, the incinerated, skeletal remains of an Iraqi mother and her three small children in their still-smouldering car..." This is how war reporting should be.
posted by garyh at 2:07 AM PST - 110 comments