It is a time of freedom and fear, of Gaia and of borders, of many paths and the widening of a universal toll road, emptying country and swelling cities, of the public bought into privacy and the privacy of the public sold into invisible data banks and knowing algorithms. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection.

These are the times when maps fade and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread.

Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times.


 
Here's a howdy-do. When confronted about the British government's spying on Kofi Annan at the United Nations in the months leading up to the war against Iraq, Secretary of State Colin Powell has refused to deny that the Bush Administration was involved in the illegal activity.

"We never talk about intelligence matters of that nature in public," Powell said.

Oh, really? How do you explain, Secretary Powell, that big presentation you gave about a year ago, revealing all kinds of "intelligence matters" about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

Is it that the Bush Administration has a policy of only discussing fake intelligence information in public?

And, are you actually meaning to state, Secretary Powell, that the Bush Administration has actually gone through the trouble to devise a policy of not discussing its efforts to spy on the private conversations of the Secretary General of the United Nations? What else could you mean when you say that you "never talk about intelligence matters of that nature"?

Don't we deserve better than this? American security is NOT at stake, unless we are to believe that the United Nations is planning an invasion... with black helicopters... and space aliens... with the Queen of England... and the Illuminati...

Posted by J. Clifford Cook at 7:30 AM. # (permalink)  




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