The News at a Furtive Glance: Read Pravda or We'll Shoot This Dog, Comrade edition

In advance of the NATO pow-wow in Chicago later this month, the Chicago Police are doing what the Chicago Police do: making calculated, surgical arrests and literally disappearing activists without even valid warrants. In fact, the disappeared aren't even shown the warrants until four hours after their illegal arrests and without a judge's signature (that helps if you're running a fascist police state). Add to that the FBI and Secret Service are jamming cell phone tower signals during the summit, meaning the entire city of Chicago has to suffer. These assholes must really miss the 60's and are bound and determined to bring back the good old days when Daley's goons were literally cracking down on protesters in 1968.

---

In a totally related story from CBS News, jets from NORAD have been conducting flying exercises (i.e. war games) over the streets of Chicago in preparation for the UN summit. They'll have orders to shoot down any plane that violates restricted air space. Yes, they're ready, willing and able to shoot down aircraft over one of the most populous cities in the United States. Apparently, someone at the Pentagon's been watching too many Michael Bay movies.

---

Speaking of Nazis, you'd think a bill as nakedly fascist as this would have just the Republican Party's fingerprints all over it. But this attempt to lift the ban on government propaganda actually has bipartisan support in the House. Yes, that's right. Uncle Sam is petitioning for the right to mislead us once again when we're supposedly in peacetime and in no threat of martial law. Damn, and I was getting accustomed the government's neverending truth and transparency.

---

Speaking of bipartisan support, in the higher chamber, we're closer than ever to going with war with Iran over its nonexistent nuclear weapons. In other words, we're about to go to war with a Middle Eastern nation over WMD that don't exist when we're already at war with Afghanistan. Oh no, I don't think they're using a playbook at all. We're not at war with Iraq, comrades. We're at war with Iran. We've always been at war with Iran.

---

Meanwhile, closer to my neck of the woods, Fatherland Homeland Security and the MBTA are planning on releasing allegedly dead bacteria into the Boston subway system as a simulated biological terrorist attack. Oh, yeah, they're also not telling commuters when these tests will take place. As if taking mass transit to work wasn't exciting enough. Sounds like the makings for a sci fi direct-to-DVD movie to me. I'd consider walking to work for the rest of the year, if I were you.

---

In that vein, some fucking geniuses in the Netherlands and Wisconsin turned an already deadly virus into an airborne virus. The H5N1, which has made hundreds of people sick for 15 years now, isn't very communicable. So scientists wanted to see if it could be turned into a more contagious strain by turning it into an airborne virus. What's even more ominous is that our government has stepped in and has strongly "advised" against dissemination of the findings.

---

You'd think that after the clusterfuck at the Fukushima Plant in Japan last year, that could still be ten times worse than Chernobyl if the fuel rods somehow ignite, we here in the US would be on higher alert and would ramp up evacuation and other emergency drills. If that's what you thought, you'd be wrong because we've actually done the exact opposite. Says the AP:

Without fanfare, the nation's nuclear power regulators have overhauled community emergency planning for the first time in more than three decades, requiring fewer exercises for major accidents and recommending that fewer people be evacuated right away.

Nuclear watchdogs voiced surprise and dismay over the quietly adopted revamp — the first since the program began after Three Mile Island in 1979. Several said they were unaware of the changes until now, though they took effect in December.

At least four years in the works, the changes appear to clash with more recent lessons of last year's reactor crisis in Japan. A mandate that local responders always run practice exercises for a radiation release has been eliminated — a move viewed as downright bizarre by some emergency planners.

---

If you know of Lori Price's Citizen's Legitgov newsletter and have dismissed it as full of conspiracy theories, think again. If it was simply that, then why is it being greylisted and blocked from being electronically delivered, especially to AT&T customers? Lori herself writes, "The subject line of the most recent newsletter was, 'Lawyers Guild claims NATO activists 'disappeared' without warrant or charges.'" Hm, that story sounds familiar. Remember, comrades, censorship and abrupt disappearances is one of the telltale signs of a totalitarian sta