Thursday, December 14, 2006

Starting to chip away

This is me exploring this new domain. A place to blog.

Here's some recent happenings on my favorite topics:

1. I just read an outstanding article in New Yorker by Calvin Trillin about his late wife, Alice. She was a giving, a caring person unlike probably anyone you've heard of before. As a very minor comment late in the article, Calvin said she had absolutely no interest in religion.

2. Two factions have developed within Scholars for 9/11 Truth. They have decided to go their separate ways. One side believes the towers came down due to conventional explosives. The other side believes they came down due to unconventional (high tech) explosives. However, they are united in their view that the official explanation (planes striking buildings plus fires initiated by jet fuel) could not be true.

3. Guess I can't think of any new developments on the peak-oil scene. Probably the biggest thing is the growing list of countries shifting their future oil contracts out of US dollars.

4. I sat in on a breakout session recently at a conference with Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. He discussed President Bush's support for the Military Commissions Act. During the session, Paul said that "the law officially allows for citizen concentration camp facilities."

Paul also warned that "the Military Commissions Act and the Defense Authorization Act . . . essentially wipes out Habeas Corpus."

Paul continued by noting, "Right now we don't have concentration camps, but . . . the authority has been given so that concentration camps can come without Habeas Corpus." He then said, "If they can lock you up, what good is freedom of speech or what good is a gun?"

Dwain

2 comments:

Unknown said...

3. . . . Probably the biggest thing is the growing list of countries shifting their future oil contracts out of US dollars.

I assume you are talking about oil sellers, rather than buyers, right?

Dwain said...

Hey Paul,

You are my first commenter.

Yes, I'm talking about oil sellers. I don't think oil buyers have much to say about it other than finding another seller.