Boeing Profits from CIA Secret Prisons

Boeing aids and abets war crimes. A story in the Seattle Weekly shows that Boeing worked with the CIA in moving prisoners to and among the network of secret prisons in Europe.

From the story:

[A] wholly owned Boeing subsidiary called Jeppesen Inc. cleared the airways and runways for the CIA, providing landing and navigation assistance, scheduling flight crews, and booking hotels for them. Jeppesen is a unit of Boeing's Seattle-based Commercial Aviation Division.

Assholes.

More at Stephen Grey's web site.

Digital Nostalgia

Relive the PC world before Windows and even before MS-DOS for around $1800. For your money, you get a reproduction of the Altair 8800 computer kit, the first PC. And I bet by the time you're through soldering, it's feeling very personal.

Who Owns a Language?

The answer would seem, effectively, to be "no one." The Mapuche people of Chile disagree, and are taking Microsoft to court for creating a Mapuzugun version of Windows. Its a little hard to tell from the article, but it looks like the Mapuche are making an intellectual property argument.

Thanksgiving

The day itself is in the rearview mirror, though there's still cranberry sauce and a slice of mince pie in the refrigerator at my house. And my brother and his wife, up from Berkeley, will be around for a few more days.

I thought this post by a US-expat living in Canada helped put the holiday—and its tacit politics—in a very interesting perspective.

Michael Partington

The Seattle-based classical guitarist was on KUOW's The Beat this afternoon for the first twenty minutes (High Low).

He's also giving a concert this Saturday at Benaroya Hall. The particulars:

Michael Partington
Saturday, November 18th, 2006, 7:30 p.m.
Nordstrom Recital Hall at Benaroya Hall
200 University Street, Seattle, WA 98101.

What Peter Says

I'm late to the party, but the Radish King is reading. As Peter says, Don't Miss It:

Monday, November 13, 7 p.m.
Richard Hugo House
1634 11th Ave.
Seattle, WA 98122
206-322-7030 (tel)
Free

This reading is co-sponsored by Richard Hugo House.

Buffy Wisdom Monday

BUFFY: No! You guys are going to have a prom. The kind of prom that everyone should have. I'm going to give you all a nice, fun, normal evening if I have to kill every single person on the face of the earth to do it.

XANDER: Yay?

Season 3, The Prom

Buffy Wisdom Monday

GILES: You saved Willow.

BUFFY: Right now she wishes I hadn't. Giles, I've never seen her like this. It's like it hurts too much to form words.

GILES: You've... You've felt that way yourself, And you got through it.

BUFFY: Yeah. I ran away and went to hell and then got through it. I'm kind of hoping she doesn't use me as a model.

GILES: Fair enough.

Season 4, Wild at Heart

Bill Maher on the Election

When they say, "Democrats will raise taxes," you say, "We have to, because some asshole spent all the money in the world cutting Paris Hilton's taxes and not killing Osama bin Laden."

More at Salon.

Tree House of Horror

Final scene from tonight's episode of the The Simpsons. More trenchant than usual.

Even the Rats

...have figured out the ship is in flames and going down.

Remember, Remember the 7th of November

Vote early and vote often. It's time these thugs and their brutish enablers began to fear the people.

I find the following a joyful, if nostalgic, reminder of a time when the people brought a government to its knees (LBJ, Nixon). Your mileage may, of course, vary.



"We are forces of chaos and anarchy.
Everything they say we are we are.
And we are very
Proud of ourselves.
Up against the wall.
Up against the wall, motherfucker.
Tear down the walls.
Tear down the walls."

"We must begin here and now,
A new continent of love and fire.
Tear down the walls.
Tear down the walls.
Tear down the walls.
Won't you try?"

A Hazy Shade of Winter

Look around.
Leaves are brown.
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter.

Low quality video, marred by "rock fact" graffiti, but a great song. From Bookends, released in April 1968.

And the cover of it by the Bangles, used in Less Than Zero. Go here if you're suddenly overcome with the urge to walk like an Egyptian.