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Thursday, Mar 07, 2002

jail baiting

"When Arundhati Roy woke up at 5.30am this morning in Tihar prison, New Delhi, it must have struck her that reality was proving stranger than any fiction. Over the past week terrible communal violence in India has claimed hundreds of lives while the forces of law and order stood by. This has now been juxtaposed with the spectacle of a diminutive, softly spoken novelist being sent to one of the country's most notorious prisons to uphold what the supreme court called the "glory of the law" because she dared to criticise it. Images of what constitutes the law in modern India absurdly collide."

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future cia assets

"Will the riots in Gujarat spread to Jaipur? The odds, according to Jaipur’s bookmakers, are between 1:4 and 1:6. Seventy bookies have been arrested in Jaipur for offering bets on the communal riots. And the police say that this isn’t all they were doing. The bookies were also spreading rumours so that an atmosphere of uncertainty prevailed in the city-and more bets came in."

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safire when ready

"With the roundheeled Michael Powell steering the Federal Communications Commission toward terminal fecklessness; with the redoubtable Joel Klein succeeded at Justice's antitrust division by an assortment of wimps; and with appeals courts approving the concentration of media power as if nothing had changed since President Taft's day, the checks and balances made possible by diverse competition are being eradicated.

The longtime anti-business coloration of liberals reduces their ability to take on the convergence con. It is for conservatives to ask ourselves: Since when is bigness goodness?"

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steel will

"Bush's measures are new taxes on American consumers -- approaching $1 billion annually just on purchasers of cars and trucks -- and are purely political measures. Think of them as an $8 billion contribution coerced from manufacturers and consumers of steel products, for the benefit of about six Republican congressional candidates in steel-producing districts, and for Bush's reelection campaign."

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deficit spending

study of headlines about marijuana study highlights deficit in mentalities. we are absolutely positive that these findings are conclusively inconclusive. wait, what was i talking about again?

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green machine

ang lee goes from bruce lee to stan lee with his next movie.

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Wednesday, Mar 06, 2002

gone fishin'

"The Left Bank Cafe is for sale. The Left Bank has a rich history and holds an important place in the Downeast community. The Left Bank is an institution that has brought world class music, international cuisine, and a warm cafe atmosphere to the far reaches of Maine's rugged coast."

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master classes

american masters series

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monitor merrymaking

"The publisher of The Tyndall Report, a newsletter that monitors television news, discusses his organization's NewsHour- commissioned study of cable news network content." via pbs cablenews report

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dab-aholics

"The Big Secret might, however, be that the highest levels of the Bush Administration knew during the summer of 2001 that the largest bankruptcy in history was imminent? Or it might be that Enron and the White House were working closely with the Taliban only weeks before the Sept. 11 attack. Was a deal in Afghanistan part of a desperate last-ditch "end run" to bail out Enron? Here's a tip for Congressional investigators and federal prosecutors: Start by looking at the India deal. Closely."

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