cartel of defiance (noun): 1. In medieval combat, a formal declaration, delivered by herald, of a combatant's intention to fight and refusal to submit. 2. An electronic assemblage of engaged and enraged citizens. 3. An intertextual mode of reading, writing, and thinking that puts the current political, cultural, and personal moment in dialogue with text/art from the past in counterargument to the ahistorical Memory Hole into which America seems to have slipped.
1560 Sir T. Chaloner Let. 15 Jan. in Froude Hist. Eng. VI. 313 "Our professed enemies... instead of cartels of defiance, will send us solemn letters of congratulation."
posted by awol | 6:36 AM
3 Comments:
Used, abused without clues
I refused to blow a fuse
They even had it on the news . . .
Long, redundant comment....
Today's Washington Post expose (big):
By the end of their first day, team members still had differing views about what the trailers were. But they agreed about what the trailers were not.
"Within the first four hours," said one team member, who like the others spoke on the condition he not be named, "it was clear to everyone that these were not biological labs."
News of the team's early impressions leaped across the Atlantic well ahead of the technical report. Over the next two days, a stream of anxious e-mails and phone calls from Washington pressed for details and clarifications.
The reason for the nervousness was soon obvious: In Washington, a CIA analyst had written a draft white paper on the trailers, an official assessment that would also reflect the views of the DIA. The white paper described the trailers as "the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program."
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August 9, 2003 article by Doug Jehl (bigger):
The Defense Intelligence Agency's engineering teams had not concluded their work in Iraq at the time the white paper was drafted, and so their views were not taken into account at that time, the government officials said. They said the engineering teams had discussed their findings in meetings in Washington in June and again last month.
"We stand by the white paper," the Defense Department official said....
A C.I.A. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the agency was "continuing to gather more information about the labs, but we stand behind the white paper."
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July 12, 2004 article by Dana Priest (biggest):
The NIE ... was the most extensive intelligence assessment of Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs to be made public in several years.
The CIA began work on a public document after the agency's deputy director at the time, John E. McLaughlin, attended a White House meeting at which National Security Council deputies requested such a paper. Work on the document began in May 2002, months before the classified NIE was requested by the Senate intelligence committee.
Then-CIA Director George J. Tenet resisted producing the NIE for Congress.
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Coda I:
The fundamentalists, by "knowing" the answers before they start (when examining evolution), and then forcing nature into the straitjacket of their discredited preconceptions, lie outside the domain of science — or of any honest intellectual inquiry.
--Stephen Jay Gould (link)
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Coda II:
I still haven't found what I'm looking for.
--U2
In between the dirt and disgust there must be
Some air to breathe and something to believe
"Liquor & Guns," the sign says quite plain
Somehow life goes on in a place so insane
--Uncle Tupelo, "Whiskey Bottle"
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