BIGGFISH

A hidden world, growing beyond control

2010-07-19T20:24:00.000-07:00

The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.

These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

The investigation's other findings include:
* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.
* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space.

so-called "World War II"

2010-07-17T23:02:00.000-07:00

-This is a very funny post-

As I mentioned in my last entry, I've been watching Babylon 5 lately. It's not a perfect show, but it has one big advantage: it's consistent and believable.

Contrast this with Doctor Who. Doctor Who is fun to watch, but if you think about it for more than two seconds you notice it's full of plot holes and contradictions. Things that cause time travel paradoxes that threaten to destroy the universe one episode go without a hitch the next. And the TARDIS, the sonic screwdriver, and the Doctor's biology gain completely different powers no one's ever alluded to depending on the situation. The aliens are hysterically unlikely, often without motives or believable science, the characters will do any old insane thing when it makes the plot slightly more interesting, and everything has either a self-destruct button or an easily findable secret weakness that it takes no efforts to defend against.

But I guess I'm not complaining. If the show was believable, the Doctor would have gotten killed the first time he decided to take on a massive superadvanced alien invasion force by walking right up to them openly with no weapons and no plan. And then they would have had to cancel the show, and then I would lose my chance to look at the pretty actress who plays Amy Pond.

So Doctor Who is not a complete loss. But then there are some shows that go completely beyond the pale of enjoyability, until they become nothing more than overwritten collections of tropes impossible to watch without groaning.

I think the worst offender here is the History Channel and all their programs on the so-called "World War II".

Let's start with the bad guys. Battalions of stormtroopers dressed in all black, check. Secret police, check. Determination to brutally kill everyone who doesn't look like them, check. Leader with a tiny villain mustache and a tendency to go into apopleptic rage when he doesn't get his way, check. All this from a country that was ordinary, believable, and dare I say it sometimes even sympathetic in previous seasons.

A great blog I just found

2010-07-02T15:30:00.000-07:00

The Church of SANTA-ology

2010-05-26T13:30:00.000-07:00

I have decided to start my own religion. Peace!

Seedbom, throw it grow it

2010-05-26T08:44:00.000-07:00

kabloom is a small design led business based in Scotland. We develop unique and innovative products in an ethical, eco-friendly and socially responsible way. We think being 'green' and 'ethical' should be a part of our everyday lives. Our products encourage interaction with nature and seek to promote environmental awareness.

Wish more companies could say the same. Thank you Kabloom

Pimp Your Pavement

2010-05-26T08:40:00.000-07:00

http://www.guerrillagardening.org/
Just because you live in a city does't mean you can't help green your world. BE A GUERRILLA!!!!

Every Purchase Funds Global Literacy

2010-05-25T23:23:00.000-07:00

Better World Books, check them out next time your looking for a book, and help out the world.

Daily Show's Lewis Black on Glenn Beck's Nazis (Hilarious)

2010-05-25T23:16:00.000-07:00

Wow Glenn Beck just blows me away with is stupidity. The sad thing is, there are people who actually listen and believe him.

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama

2010-05-25T23:00:00.000-07:00

http://twitter.com/dalailama
http://www.facebook.com/DalaiLama?v=wall#!/DalaiLama?v=wall

Ok, am I the only human being on the planet that doesn't understand Twitter???

Surfrider Foundation-Oregon Chapter

2010-05-25T22:46:00.000-07:00

Ban the Bag! - A campaign to end single use plastic bags in PortlandJuly 14th, mark you calendars! WE're taking this fight to city hall! Engage! We're in the home stretch

2010-05-25T22:19:00.000-07:00

http://www.tricycle.com/

A Great Magazine, I highly recommend it.

A quick update

2010-05-23T23:18:00.000-07:00

Well I spent a little time cleaning up the blog, getting some old links and pics off of here. Will work on it some more in the morning.

Lost but not forgoten

2010-05-23T22:01:00.000-07:00

Well, I have been away for a long time, and I need to update my blog. I have missed blogging and will hopefully be able to update it and get back in the habit of blogging. So coming soon, a new and improved blog,,,,,hopefully.

Tor: anonymity online

2008-07-30T21:29:00.000-07:00

Tor is a network of virtual tunnels that allows people and groups to improve their privacy and security on the Internet. It also enables software developers to create new communication tools with built-in privacy features. Tor provides the foundation for a range of applications that allow organizations and individuals to share information over public networks without compromising their privacy.
Individuals use Tor to keep websites from tracking them and their family members, or to connect to news sites, instant messaging services, or the like when these are blocked by their local Internet providers. Tor's hidden services let users publish web sites and other services without needing to reveal the location of the site. Individuals also use Tor for socially sensitive communication: chat rooms and web forums for rape and abuse survivors, or people with illnesses.
Journalists use Tor to communicate more safely with whistleblowers and dissidents. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) use Tor to allow their workers to connect to their home website while they're in a foreign country, without notifying everybody nearby that they're working with that organization.
Groups such as Indymedia recommend Tor for safeguarding their members' online privacy and security. Activist groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recommend Tor as a mechanism for maintaining civil liberties online. Corporations use Tor as a safe way to conduct competitive analysis, and to protect sensitive procurement patterns from eavesdroppers. They also use it to replace traditional VPNs, which reveal the exact amount and timing of communication. Which locations have employees working late? Which locations have employees consulting job-hunting websites? Which research divisions are communicating with the company's patent lawyers?
A branch of the U.S. Navy uses Tor for open source intelligence gathering, and one of its teams used Tor while deployed in the Middle East recently. Law enforcement uses Tor for visiting or surveilling web sites without leaving government IP addresses in their web logs, and for security during sting operations.

FC-TV

2008-07-27T13:21:00.000-07:00

YES, WE'RE OPEN!!

2008-07-27T13:20:00.000-07:00

Charter Will Monitor Customers’ Web Surfing to Target Ads

2008-07-27T13:09:00.000-07:00

By Saul Hansell

Charter Communications, the fourth-largest cable system in the United States, has started telling its high-speed Internet customers that it is going to keep track of every site they visit on the Web.
The cable company will sell the data to a firm called NebuAd, which in turn will use it to show ads to Web-surfing Charter customers that are meant to be related to their interests. (Visit a knitting site yesterday and see yarn ads today.)
Charter started sending letters out to several hundred thousand customers in four markets: Fort Worth, Tex.; San Luis Obispo, Calif.; Oxford, Mass.; and Newtown, Conn. (The letters were first reported by DSLreports.com.)
Charter said it will start testing the system within 30 days and will make a decision whether to introduce it to its 2.8 million Internet customers a few months after that.
-cont.-

2007-10-28T17:34:00.000-07:00

"Beware the leader who bangs the drums in war to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind.
And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, they will offer up all their rights unto the leader and gladly so.

How do I know ? For this is what I have done. And I am Ceasar."

2007-10-28T17:29:00.000-07:00

"We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it. And we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into a trial of the causes of the war for our position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy."

- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, U.S. representative to the International Conference on Military Trials, Aug. 12, 1945.

2007-10-28T17:27:00.000-07:00

"Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."
~ Hermann Goering, President of the Reichstag, Nazi Party, and Luftwaffe Commander in Chief

ARE YOU BEING CLASSIFIED AS A TERRORIST ?

2007-10-28T17:24:00.002-07:00

2007-10-28T17:24:00.001-07:00

"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."
~ James Madison, while a United States Congressman

The Bush Junta Unmasked

2007-10-28T17:22:00.000-07:00

"This (9/11) was all planned. This was a government-ordered operation. Bush personally signed the order. He personally authorized the attacks. He is guilty of treason and mass murder." --Stanley Hilton

Students for an Orwellian Society

2007-10-28T17:20:00.000-07:00

What is SOS?

Students for an Orwellian Society (SOS) is a nationwide student group. Although SOS has always been a nationwide student group, there is evidence to suggest that it first appeared at

Columbia University. The mission of SOS is to promote the vision of a society based upon the principles of Ingsoc, first articulated by George Orwell in his prophetic novel, 1984.

As an Oceania-wide organization, SOS has a number of local chapters. For a partial listing, see our contact section.

2007-10-28T17:12:00.001-07:00

"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men." -Abraham Lincoln

2007-10-28T17:11:00.000-07:00

"Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death." - Adolf Hitler

Psy-Ops henchman for Hitler

2007-10-28T17:10:00.000-07:00

"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the State." - Dr. Joseph M. Goebbels

Big Brother Controlling Your Head

2007-10-28T17:08:00.000-07:00

Anyone who thinks someone isn't watching, listening to and constantly plotting to control the minds of the masses might be shocked to view the following list of patents by a string of inventors who apparently found a variety of ways to do it all.

The problem: which devices will be chosen, and when were they put in service. Notice that many of these patents are 20 to 30 years old.

The list was sent to me by a reader who noted that it was marked Top Secret, and the patent list was to be removed from public domain. Of course the list immediately ended up on the Internet.

In the chance that the list is bogus, I did a search on the patent names and numbers. They came up as legitimate invention ideas being hawked, sometimes by their inventors, on line. Most commonly they were in lists of mind control devices. Beyond that, I have no reason to verify or deny them as factual. Click on the highlighted search links and decide for yourself.

Do they work?

What other explanation do we have for the masses following George W. Bush into an attack on Iraq like they did, with few questions asked? What other reason do we have for the people taking the Bush Supreme Court appointment over Al Gore to the presidency, even though most voters chose Gore in 2000?

This list ought to alarm everybody. I am betting it doesn't.

Silent Subliminal Presentation System, US Patent #5,159,703, Oliver Lowery, October 27, 1992. A silent communications system in which non-aural carriers in the very low or very high audio-frequency range, or in the adjacent ultrasonic frequency spectrum, are amplitude-modulated with the desired intelligence and propagated acoustically or vibrationally for inducement into the brain.

Hearing System, US Patent #4,877,027, Wayne Brunkan, October 31, 1989. A method for directly inducing sound into the head of a person, using microwaves in the range of 100 MHz to 10,000 MHz, modulated with a waveform of frequency- modulated bursts.

Psycho-Acoustic Projector, US Patent #3,568,347, Andrew Flanders, February 23, 1971. A system for producing aural psychological disturbances and partial deafness in the enemy during combat situations.

Noise Generator and Transmitter, US Patent #4,034,741, Guy Adams and Jess Carden, Jr, July 12, 1977. An analgesic noise-generator.

Method and System for Altering Consciousness, US Patent #5,123,899, James Gall, June 23, 1992. A system for altering the states of human consciousness involving the use of simultaneous application of multiple stimuli, preferably sounds, having differing frequencies.

Subliminal Message Generator, US Patent #5,270,800, Robert Sweet, December 14, 1993. A combined subliminal and supraliminal message generator for use with a television receiver; permits complete control of subliminal messages and their presentation. Also applicable to cable television and computers.

Superimposing Method and Apparatus Useful for Subliminal Messages, US Patent #5,134,484, Joseph Wilson, July 28, 1992. Method of changing a person's behavior.

US Patent #4,717,343, Alan Densky, January 5, 1988. A method of conditioning a person's unconscious mind in order to effect desired change in the person's behavior, and which does not require the services of a trained therapist.

Auditory Subliminal Message System and Method, US Patent #4,395,600, Rene Lundy and David Tyler, July 26, 1983. An amplitude-controlled subliminal message may be mixed with background music.
Auditory Subliminal Programming System, US Patent #4,777,529, Richard Schultz and Raymond Dolejs, October 11, 1988.

Apparatus for Inducing Frequency Reduction in Brain Wave, US Patent #4,834,70l, Kazumi Masaki, May 30, 1989.

Ultrasonic Speech Translator and Communication System, US Patent #5,539,705, M. A. Akerman, Curtis Ayers, Howard Haynes, July 23, 1996. A wireless communication system, undetectable by radio-frequency methods, for converting audio signals, including human voice, to electronic signals in the ultrasonic frequency range, transmitting the ultrasonic signal by way of acoustic pressure waves across a carrier medium, including gases, liquids and solids, and reconverting the ultrasonic acoustic pressure waves back to the original audio signal. This invention was made with government support under Contract DE-ACO5-840R2l400, awarded by the US Department of Energy to Martin Marietta Energy Systems, Inc.

Non-Audible Speech Generation Method and Apparatus, US Patent #4,821,326, Norman MacLeod, April 11, 1989.

Apparatus for Electrophysiological Stimulation, US Patent #4,227,516, Bruce Meland and Bernard Gindes, October 14, 1980.

Method and Recording for Producing Sounds and Messages to Achieve Alpha and Theta Brainwave States and Positive Emotional States in Humans, US Patent #5,352,181, Mark Davis, October 4, l994.

Method and Apparatus for Translating the EEG into Music to Induce and Control Various Psychological and Physiological States and to Control a Musical Instrument, US Patent #4,883,067, Knispel et. al., November 28, 1989.

Method of and Apparatus for Inducing Desired States of Consciousness, US Patent #5.356,368, Robert Monroe, October 18, 1994. Improved methods and apparatus for entraining human brain patterns, employing frequency-following-response (FFR) techniques and facilitating attainment of desired states of consciousness.

Method of Inducing Mental. Emotional and Physical States of Consciousness, including Specific Mental Activity, in Human Beings, US Patent #5,213,562, Robert Monroe, May 25, 1993.

Device for the Induction of Specific Brain Wave Patterns, US Patent #4,335,710, John Williamson, June 22, 1982. Brainwave patterns associated with relaxed and meditative states in a subject are gradually induced without deleterious chemical or neurologic side effects.

Method and Apparatus for Repetitively Producing a Noise-like Audible Signal, US Patent #4,191,175, William Nagle, March 4, 1980.

Apparatus for the Treatment of Neuropsychic and Somatic Diseases with Heat, Light, Sound and VHF Electromagnetic Radiation, US Patent #3,773,049, L. Y. Rabichev, V. F. Vasiliev, A. S. Putilin, T. G. Ilina, P. V. Raku and L. P. Kemitsky, November 20, 1973.

Non-Invasive Method and Apparatus for Modulating Brain Signals through an External Magnetic or Electric Field to Reduce Pain, US Patent #4,889,526, Elizabeth Rauscher and William Van Bise, December 26, 1989.

Nervous System Excitation Device, US Patent #3,393,279, Gillis Patrick Flanagan, July 16, 1968. A method of transmitting audio information via a radio frequency signal modulated with the audio info through electrodes placed on the subject's skin, causing the sensation of hearing the audio information in the brain.

Method and System for Simplifying Speech Waveforms, US Patent #3,647,970, G. Patrick Flanagan, March 7, 1972. A complex speech waveform is simplified so that it can be transmitted directly through earth or water as a waveform and understood directly or after amplification.

Means for Aiding Hearing, US Patent #2,995,633, Henry Puharich and Joseph Lawrence, August 8, 1961. Means for converting audible signals to electrical signals and conveying them to viable nerves of the facial system.

Means for Aiding Hearing by Electrical Stimulation of the Facial Nerve System, US Patent #3,170,993, Henry Puharich, February 23, 1965.

Hearing Device, US Patent #4,858,612, Philip Stocklin, August 22, 1989. A method and apparatus for simulation of hearing in mammals by introduction of a plurality of microwaves into the regions of the auditory cortex.

Montana Supreme Court Justice Warns

2007-10-28T17:04:00.000-07:00

Believe it or not, it's perfectly legal for police to rummage through your garbage for incriminating stuff on you -- even if they don't have a warrant or court approval.

The Supreme Court of Montana ruled last month that police could conduct a warrantless "trash dive" into the trash cans in the alley behind the home of a man named Darrell Pelvit. The cops discovered evidence of pseudoephedrine and Naptha--a solvent with uses including the manufacture of methamphetamine--and Pelvit eventually ended up in prison.

Pelvit's attorney argued that his client had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his trash, but the court rejected the argument and said the trash was, well, meant to be thrown away.

What's remarkable is the concurring opinion of Montana Supreme Court Justice James C. Nelson, who reluctantly went along with his colleagues but warned that George Orwell's 1984 had arrived. We reproduce his concurring opinion in full:

Justice James C. Nelson concurs.

I have signed our Opinion because we have correctly applied existing legal theory and constitutional jurisprudence to resolve this case on its facts.

I feel the pain of conflict, however. I fear that, eventually, we are all going to become collateral damage in the war on drugs, or terrorism, or whatever war is in vogue at the moment. I retain an abiding concern that our Declaration of Rights not be killed by friendly fire. And, in this day and age, the courts are the last, if not only, bulwark to prevent that from happening.

In truth, though, we area throw-away society. My garbage can contains the remains of what I eat and drink. It may contain discarded credit card receipts along with yesterday's newspaper and junk mail. It might hold some personal letters, bills, receipts, vouchers, medical records, photographs and stuff that is imprinted with the multitude of assigned numbers that allow me access to the global economy and vice versa.

My garbage can contains my DNA.

As our Opinion states, what we voluntarily throw away, what we discard--i.e., what we abandon--is fair game for roving animals, scavengers, busybodies, crooks and for those seeking evidence of criminal enterprise.

Yet, as I expect with most people, when I take the day's trash (neatly packaged in opaque plastic bags) to the garbage can each night, I give little consideration to what I am throwing away and less thought, still, to what might become of my refuse. I don't necessarily envision that someone or something is going to paw through it looking for a morsel of food, a discarded treasure, a stealable part of my identity or a piece of evidence. But, I've seen that happen enough times to understand--though not graciously accept--that there is nothing sacred in whatever privacy interest I think I have retained in my trash once it leaves my control--the Fourth Amendment and Article II, Sections 10 and 11, notwithstanding.

Like it or not, I live in a society that accepts virtual strip searches at airports; surveillance cameras; "discount" cards that record my buying habits; bar codes; "cookies" and spywear on my computer; on-line access to satellite technology that can image my back yard; and microchip radio frequency identification devices already implanted in the family dog and soon to be integrated into my groceries, my credit cards, my cash and my new underwear.

I know that the notes from the visit to my doctor's office may be transcribed in some overseas country under an out-sourcing contract by a person who couldn't care less about my privacy. I know that there are all sorts of businesses that have records of what medications I take and why. I know that information taken from my blood sample may wind up in databases and be put to uses that the boilerplate on the sheaf of papers I sign to get medical treatment doesn't even begin to disclose. I know that my insurance companies and employer know more about me than does my mother. I know that many aspects of my life are available on the Internet. Even a black box in my car--or event data recorder as they are called--is ready and willing to spill the beans on my driving habits, if I have an event--and I really trusted that car, too.

And, I also know that my most unwelcome and paternalistic relative, Uncle Sam, is with me from womb to tomb. Fueled by the paranoia of "ists" and "isms," Sam has the capability of spying on everything and everybody--and no doubt is. But, as Sam says: "It's for my own good."

In short, I know that my personal information is recorded in databases, servers, hard drives and file cabinets all over the world. I know that these portals to the most intimate details of my life are restricted only by the degree of sophistication and goodwill or malevolence of the person, institution, corporation or government that wants access to my data.

I also know that much of my life can be reconstructed from the contents of my garbage can.

I don't like living in Orwell's 1984; but I do. And, absent the next extinction event or civil libertarians taking charge of the government (the former being more likely than the latter), the best we can do is try to keep Sam and the sub-Sams on a short leash.

As our Opinion states, search and seizure jurisprudence is centered around privacy expectations and reasonableness considerations. That is true even under the extended protections afforded by Montana's Constitution, Article II, Sections 10. and 11. We have ruled within those parameters. And, as is often the case, we have had to draw a fine line in a gray area. Justice Cotter and those who have signed the Opinion worked hard at defining that line; and I am satisfied we've drawn it correctly on the facts of this case and under the conventional law of abandonment.

That said, if this Opinion is used to justify a sweep of the trash cans of a neighborhood or community; or if a trash dive for Sudafed boxes and matchbooks results in DNA or fingerprints being added to a forensic database or results in personal or business records, credit card receipts, personal correspondence or other property being archived for some future use unrelated to the case at hand, then, absent a search warrant, I may well reconsider my legal position and approach to these sorts of cases--even if I have to think outside the garbage can to get there.

I concur
/S/ JAMES C. NELSON
Posted by Declan McCullagh

OPEN LETTER TO PUBLIC SERVANTS

2007-10-28T16:51:00.000-07:00

At the expense of the American people and with the blessings of unseen hands at high policy-making levels, you have created a subculture for yourselves we will call the bureaucratic class. There are millions of you now and, as of 2002, the bureaucratic class has near carte blanche authority to do anything it wants to the American people. It's as if you and your classmates are blessed with some magic shield that protects you from being held personally accountable for the damage you have inflicted upon the very people who have afforded your existence. You have been used by those unseen hands to morally, spiritually, economically and politically bankrupt the people of this nation.
The bureaucratic class in the United States has been growing steadily since “the New Deal.” From the humble beginnings of a few scattered overworked and underpaid public servants providing government services from impromptu field offices have sprung legions of high-paid bureaucrats with well-staffed offices centralized in government-owned complexes. The bureaucratic class has forgotten its service-based roots and has come to regard its protected-class status as a birthright.

Members of the bureaucratic class make comparatively high-end wages that come with comparatively elaborate benefits packages and the ability to charge many of life's expenses to the American people. Over and above all holidays off with pay, you accumulate sick time, vacation time and are allowed to take x number of personal days off each year -- with pay. No such largesse exists in the private sector as we must work almost half the year just to pay for you. While we have grudgingly afforded you these things with only moderate protest, you have been enforcing upon us increasingly invasive, injurious and absurdist policies.

If we complain and attempt to seek a redress of our grievances for your abusive conduct through agency superiors, congresspersons or the courts, we are denied. You are immune from prosecution while functioning in your official capacity -- even if you act abusively or beyond the scope of your authority. With increased wages, increased benefits, increased authority has come prosecutorial immunity so airtight you may wrongfully imprison and murder ordinary people without fear of repercussion. You have all of these things going for you and the law on your side so you must be doing the right thing, you rationalize. How else could you be allowed to steal the property, the children, the freedom and the life from people you must know in your heart do not deserve your bureaucratic wrath? The ends must justify the means, you assuredly tell yourselves while drowning your conscience in alcohol or medicating it with Prozac.

Look around you. As bureaucrats who enforce policies that tie ordinary people up into frustrated statutory knots, how many of them appreciate you? How many ordinary people are happy to see you compared to the ones who are barely able to contain the contempt your mere presence in their lives causes them to feel? How many lives have been improved through the functions of your office compared to the lives that have been destroyed by it? Would you say that over the last several years angry and destroyed people are beginning to drastically outnumber happy and improved people? Is that why many of you now address the public from behind bullet-proof glass and metal detectors?

There is an undercurrent of frustration in this country. Things are not going well for ordinary people because their lives are being taxed and regulated out of existence. Right now most people must content themselves to burden their friends and family members with their frustration because there is no other outlet for their emotions. But, what would happen if the magic shield that has protected you and your classmates is removed? Your protection is not divine. It is the construct of men. As easily as it has been given to you it can be taken away. Have you read the news lately? Enron, the lynx hair fraud, no scientific foundation for cutting off irrigation water to protect Klamath Basin suckerfish last year: Your protection is being removed.

The bureaucratic class has been set up to take the fall for a failed society. And, in apparent anticipation of imminent chaos, the Bush administration announced Feb. 3, 2002, that soon it will appoint a four-star general to command the American theater of operations for the Homeland Security Agency. Here is the scenario to which you must take heed: The hand that provided immunity to the bureaucratic class while it bankrupted the people of a nation is lifted. Media-triggered events expose the abusive actions of the bureaucratic class to the masses. The masses identify those in the bureaucratic class as the real cause of their misery and frustration and stop beating their children and spouses. Thousands of government offices are suddenly vacated as bureaucrats flee them in fear of their lives or are otherwise prevented from performing their duties. The structure of government begins to collapse. A power vacuum is created. Homeland Security steps in to administrate our socio/political unraveling as a nation. The general is commissioned to call out the armed forces and take military control of our domestic affairs. Think about it.

The description of the bureaucratic class and what it has done to the American people with murderous immunity cannot be disputed. The scenario above is not unprecedented in recent world history. It also cannot be disputed that, by enjoying the benefits of your class in trade for willingly and knowingly damaging innocent people, you have betrayed them. While worthy adversaries may respect one another, no one respects a traitor. ***

The purpose of this letter is to inform members of the bureaucratic class that it was created to perform a task that has been accomplished; you are now as expendable as us ordinary folks whose ranks you are about to rejoin. You have been used to destroy the people of this nation. Immunity for your lifestyle is evaporating. You have been positioned as an outlet for the prodigious anger and frustration that enforcement of increasingly injurious and absurd policies has generated in the people who have paid your wages. The only question remaining is, “what are you going to do about it?”

Don Harkins
The Idaho Observer

The Militarization of Our Police

2007-10-28T16:48:00.001-07:00

Vatican beatifying 498 from Spain's war

2007-10-25T19:02:00.000-07:00

By DANIEL WOOLLS, Associated Press Writer
Thu Oct 25, 12:06 PM ET

CUENCA, Spain - First the militia fighters thought of hacking the bishop to death with an ax. In the end, they showed pity and shot him — one of hundreds of executions of Roman Catholic clergy as civil war erupted in Spain.

The bishop and 497 other people will be beatified Sunday by the Catholic Church, the last step before possible sainthood. The ceremony — the largest mass beatification in Vatican history — comes as Spain is taking a closer look at its painful past.

Bishop Cruz Laplana y Laguna was taken prisoner by leftist militiamen two days after the war broke out on July 17, 1936. The mayor of this town in central Spain offered to free him with a ruse: send police into the seminary where he was being held, have the bishop dress as a cop and sneak out.

Laplana y Laguna declined — he would not shed his vestments. Two weeks later, the bishop blessed his killers as they took aim and opened fire. "May God forgive you, as I forgive and bless you," he said, according to a book published by the Spanish Bishops Conference.

He will be beatified along with 497 other people the Catholic Church has declared victims of religious persecution just before or during the Spanish civil war.

The 1936-39 war pitted an elected, leftist government against right-wing forces that rose up under Gen. Francisco Franco, who went on to win and preside over a nearly 40-year dictatorship that was staunchly supported by the Catholic Church.

Violence against the clergy had been simmering since 1931, when a republic was declared in Spain. Leftist forces targeted the church as an institution they saw as a symbol of wealth, repression and inequality.

The violence was one of Franco's pretexts for launching his rebellion, and it intensified after the war started, with churches in government-held areas burned and more and more clergy attacked.

The Catholic Church says there is no official death figure, but estimates nearly 7,000 clergy were killed in Spain from 1931 to 1939.

Except for seven lay people, all of those being beatified Sunday were clergy — priests, deacons, seminarians, monks and nuns, ranging in age from 16 to 78.

Some in Spain question the beatification's timing — three days before Parliament is to pass a Socialist-sponsored law seeking to make symbolic amends to victims of the war and the Franco dictatorship.

The bill mentions people persecuted for their religious beliefs, but for the most part it is an unprecedented formal condemnation of the Franco regime, the executions of civilians by pro-Franco militia and summary postwar trials of people accused of opposing his regime.

Critics say the Vatican, which since the late 1980s has beatified nearly 500 other clergy killed in the war, is now hitting back at the government by choosing to beatify so many more all at once.

Christian Networks, a grouping of lay Catholic organizations, said the church should apologize for supporting Franco. "As the church has not asked forgiveness for what happened, this beatification is inopportune," it said.

The church insists research has been under way for decades, and the ceremony is being held now because Pope Benedict XVI finished signing the decrees only two months ago.

"The church works on this very slowly and with its own calendar, which is not shaped by any other calendar, much less the political calendars of any government," said Juan Antonio Martinez Camino, secretary-general of the Spanish Bishops Conference.

The government has clashed with the church by legalizing gay marriage and instituting other social reforms, but has taken care not to pick a fight this time.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero says he respects the beatification as much as he respects the civil war atonement bill.

Jose Andres Torres Mora, a Socialist lawmaker who sponsored the war amends bill, will be among those at the beatification ceremony in St. Peter's Square.

Torres Mora's great-uncle, Juan Duarte Martin, is being beatified. He was a 24-year-old deacon when the militia tortured and killed him. "I am honoring him both ways," the lawmaker said.

Oh My Fucking GOD!!!! What the fuck is up with this? religious persecution???? What about all the people the church has had killed? What the fuck do they get???? Inquisition??? Ring a fucking bell with anyone? Do they get a fucking sorry we tortured and killed u from anyone?? I bet there are some Templars that would like a hug and a little sorry from someone.

Myanmar monks lead anti-junta protests

2007-09-16T20:20:00.000-07:00

By MICHAEL CASEY, Associated Press Writer
Sun Sep 16, 2:28 PM ET

BANGKOK, Thailand - Monks have vandalized shops of those supporting the dictatorship in Myanmar, briefly taken local officials hostage and are now threatening to launch a boycott as early as Tuesday against the military leaders and their families.

Nearly a month into the worst demonstrations to hit Myanmar in decades, the saffron-robed Buddhist clergy are emerging as the focal point of the anti-government protests. With dozens of pro-democracy activists behind bars or in hiding, most people are counting on monks — who have a role in almost all aspects of society from weddings to funerals — to take the lead in challenging the repressive regime in the mostly Buddhist country.

"Monks are our only hope now as they always have been in Myanmar political history," said Hla Myint, a 75-year-old schoolteacher. "The military rulers can easily crush protests by students and other people. But brutal suppression of monks usually results in negative consequences and further protests."

Much of the talk on the streets of big cities like Yangon is on a Monday deadline set by monks for the regime to apologize for beating hundreds of them two weeks ago as they marched and chanted Buddhist prayers peacefully in Pakokku, a center of Buddhist learning.

Without an apology, monks across the country have threatened to march Tuesday from their monasteries, cut off communication with the military and their families and refuse alms — a humiliating gesture that will likely embarrass the junta.

"What the (junta) did in Pakokku is unforgivable. The monks are frustrated and angry," said Zin Linn, information minister for the Washington-based National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, which is Burma's government-in-exile.

"This boycott is significant because other underground labor unions, underground student unions and activists are calling on one another to join the boycott," he said. "I expect the demonstrations will grow bigger than ever. People may join with the monks and we may see chaos and disorder."

A chief abbot at a Yangon monastery said the boycott will have a symbolic importance in the ongoing struggle against the junta.

"In a staunchly Buddhist country, such a boycott is the most severe form of punishment for a Buddhist," said the abbot, who refused to be identified for fear of reprisals. "The boycott brings extreme shame to the ruling junta and should be taken seriously."

Monks in Myanmar, also known as Burma, have historically been at the forefront of protests — first against British colonialism and later military dictatorship. They also played a prominent part in the failed 1988 pro-democracy rebellion that sought an end to military rule, imposed since 1962. The uprising was brutally crushed by the military and thousand were killed.

This time around, the military regime has appeared nervous and indecisive in its dealings with the monks.

Since protests broke out Aug. 19 after the government hiked fuel prices by as much as 500 percent, it detained dozens of pro-democracy activists and cut off the phone lines as the country's main opposition group the National League for Democracy or NLD.

But it has yet to arrest any monks, preferring a mix of heavy-handed threats, gentle persuasion and outright pleas to convince the estimated half-million Buddhist clergy to stay off the streets.

It stepped up surveillance around monasteries in major cities to keep young monks in check and order monks to remain in some monasteries. It has accused them in newspaper articles of being tools of the NLD and other government critics who want to overthrow the government.

"Exploiting these situations, some are trying to disrupt the prevailing peace, stability and law and order and the momentum of development and to derail the seven-step road map," the government said, blaming everyone from foreign governments to troublesome monks for fueling the protests.

But last week in an evident attempt to improve its image, high-ranking officials have been making high-profile donations of cooking oil and other donations to Buddhist monasteries, according to the state-controlled press. Making donations to temples is a traditional way of showing respect.

Experts appear divided over whether the monks can persuade the public to join the protests — partly because civil servants have been removed to the new capital in the remote town of Naypyitaw, while universities have been moved out of Yangon and other big cities to sideline students.

Some experts said monks could persuade rural residents to get involved because they hold such sway in the countryside as well as elements of the military who feel they would be unfairly slandered by the boycott.

"This could also create divisions in the military," said Soe Aung, spokesman for the pro-democracy group National Council of the Union of Burma which is based in Thailand. "The majority of the military is already suffering from the mismanagement of the economy."

But other experts argued that fear will likely trump the boldest of actions by the monks, with many citizens afraid to challenge a military with a history of brutality.

"The military is much stronger than they have ever been in Burmese history," said David Steinberg, a Myanmar expert at Georgetown University in Washington.

Depression Taking Toll on Returning U.S. Vets

2007-08-17T21:19:00.000-07:00

By E.J. Mundell
HealthDay Reporter
Fri Aug 17, 7:01 PM ET

FRIDAY, Aug. 17 (HealthDay News) -- Depression may be a largely unrecognized problem for many U.S. soldiers returning from duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, placing a tremendous strain on them and their families, a new study suggests.

Researchers studied the home life of 168 soldiers diagnosed with psychological symptoms upon their return home from deployment. Nearly half -- 42 percent -- of these veterans said they now felt like a "guest in their own home," and one in five felt their children did not respond warmly to them, or were even afraid of them.

In many of these cases, depression or another psychological problem, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), played a major role, the researchers said.

The PTSD finding has been observed in other studies, but the link between returning veterans' depression and family trouble is new, experts said.
-continued-

O.K. So u know they probably spent hundreds of thousands of dollars if not more, to find out what? The obvious!!! Wow, Maybe next they can find out why catching your junk in your zipper hurts. Why not put the money into helping them, instead of doing a damn study. Thank you captain obvious, were would we be with you??

T-Shirt Hell

2007-08-13T21:01:00.000-07:00

The Shirts at this place are at times a bit wrong, but still very very funny, CHECK THEM OUT NOW!!!!!

Woman has pencil removed from head

2007-08-07T18:48:00.000-07:00

Tue Aug 7, 12:30 PM ET

BERLIN - After being plagued for 55 years with the torment of a pencil lodged in her head, a German woman has finally had it removed.

Margaret Wegner, now 59, was 4 years old when she fell while carrying the 3.15 inch-long pencil, which went through her cheek and into her brain.

"It bored right through the skin and disappeared into my head," Wegner told Germany's best-selling newspaper, Bild. "It hurt like crazy."

At the time the technology did not exist to safely remove the pencil, so Wegner had to live with it — and the chronic headaches and nosebleeds that it brought — for the next five-and-a-half decades.

But on Friday, Dr. Hans Behrbohm, an ear, nose and throat specialist at Berlin's Park-Klinik Weissensee, was able to use modern techniques to identify the exact location of the pencil so that he could accurately determine that the risks of removing it, and then take most of it out.

The operation was particularly difficult because of the way the pencil had shifted as Wegner grew, Behrbohm told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

"This was something unique because the trauma was so old," said Behrbohm, who has also operated to remove bullets from the brains of shooting victims, and glass from the brains of people involved in car accidents.

Though a 0.79-inch piece of the pencil could not be removed, Behrbohm said it does not present a danger.

And now Wegner, the wife of German boxing coach Ulli Wegner, will no longer have the headaches and nosebleeds, and her sense of smell should also return soon, Behrbohm said.

"She shouldn't suffer any longer," he said.

Fish Soccer

2007-08-04T22:54:00.000-07:00

Afghanistan poppy cultivation skyrockets

2007-08-04T21:58:00.000-07:00

By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 46 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Afghanistan will produce another record poppy harvest this year that cements its status as the world's near-sole supplier of the heroin source, yet a furious debate over how to reverse the trend is stalling proposals to cut the crop, U.S. officials say.

As President Bush prepares for weekend talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, divisions within the U.S. administration and among NATO allies have delayed release of a $475 million counternarcotics program for Afghanistan, where intelligence officials see growing links between drugs and the Taliban, the officials said.

U.N. figures to be released in September are expected to show that Afghanistan's poppy production has risen up to 15 percent since 2006 and that the country now accounts for 95 percent of the world's crop, 3 percentage points more than last year, officials familiar with preliminary statistics told The Associated Press.

But counterdrug proposals by some U.S. officials have met fierce resistance, including boosting the amount of forcible poppy field destruction in provinces that grow the most, officials said. The approach also would link millions of dollars in development aid to benchmarks on eradication; arrests and prosecutions of narcotraders, corrupt officials; and on alternative crop production.

Those ideas represent what proponents call an "enhanced carrot-and-stick approach" to supplement existing anti-drug efforts. They are the focus of the new $475 million program outlined in a 995-page report, the release of which has been postponed twice and may be again delayed due to disagreements, officials said.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because parts of the report remain classified.

Counternarcotics agents at the State Department had wanted to release a 123-page summary of the strategy last month and then again last week, but were forced to hold off because of concerns it may not be feasible, the officials said.

Now, even as Bush sees Karzai on Sunday and Monday at the presidential retreat in Camp David, Md., a tentative release date of Aug. 9, timed to follow the meetings, appears in jeopardy. Some in the administration, along with NATO allies Britain and Canada, seek revisions that could delay it until at least Aug. 13, the officials said.

The program represents a 13 percent increase over the $420 million in U.S. counternarcotics aid to Afghanistan last year. It would adopt a bold new approach to "coercive eradication" and set out criteria for local officials to receive development assistance based on their cooperation, the officials said.

Although the existing aid, supplemented mainly by Britain and Canada and supported by the NATO force in Afghanistan, has achieved some results — notably an expected rise in the number of "poppy-free" provinces from six to at least 12 and possibly 16, mainly in the north — production elsewhere has soared, they said.

"Afghanistan is providing close to 95 percent of the world's heroin," the State Department's top counternarcotics official, Tom Schweich, said at a recent conference. "That makes it almost a sole-source supplier" and presents a situation "unique in world history."

Almost all the heroin from Afghanistan makes its way to Europe; most of the heroin in the U.S. comes from Latin America.
-continued-

Soldier gets 110 years in rape-slay case

2007-08-04T21:54:00.000-07:00

By RYAN LENZ,
Associated Press Writer 5 minutes ago

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. - A soldier convicted of rape and murder in an attack on an Iraqi teenager and her family was sentenced Saturday to 110 years in prison, with the possibility of parole after 10 years.

The sentence was part of a plea agreement attorneys for Pfc. Jesse Spielman had made with prosecutors that set the number of years he could serve in prison, regardless of the jury's recommendation.

The jury had recommended life with parole, a sentence under which he would have to wait longer for the possibility of freedom.

Spielman was convicted late Friday of rape, conspiracy to commit rape, housebreaking with intent to rape and four counts of felony murder.

Military prosecutors did not say Spielman took part in the rape or murders but alleged that he went to the house knowing what the others intended to do and served as a lookout.
-continued-

Thriller in the Philippines

2007-08-03T22:27:00.000-07:00

Arctic Monkeys

2007-08-02T17:52:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite groups, The Arctic Monkeys, has a new CD out. I am very late posting this. My bad. But definitely check it out, it's amazing!!! Favourite Worst Nightmare.

Castleberry's Announces Voluntary Recall of Chili Products

2007-07-23T19:47:00.000-07:00

Georgia Firm Recalls Canned Meat Products That May Contain Clostridium botulinum

WASHINGTON, July 19, 2007 - Castleberry's Food Company, an Augusta, Ga., establishment owned by Bumble Bee Foods, LLC, is voluntarily recalling approximately 721,389 pounds of canned meat products that may contain Clostridium botulinum as a result of an equipment malfunction, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service announced today.

FDA...Castleberry Recall now includes Dog Food Sunday, 9:36 AM

Ok, is it just me, or does anyone else find it very disturbing that the same factory that does human canned food, is doing dog food.

Injured Iraq war veterans sue VA head

2007-07-23T19:28:00.000-07:00

By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer 10 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Frustrated by delays in health care, injured Iraq war veterans accused VA Secretary Jim Nicholson in a lawsuit of breaking the law by denying them disability pay and mental health treatment.

The lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, filed Monday in federal court in San Francisco, seeks broad changes in the agency as it struggles to meet growing demands from veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Suing on behalf of hundreds of thousands of veterans, it charges that the VA has failed warriors on numerous fronts. It contends the VA failed to provide prompt disability benefits, failed to add staff to reduce wait times for medical care and failed to boost services for post-traumatic stress disorder.

The lawsuit also accuses the VA of deliberately cheating some veterans by allegedly working with the Pentagon to misclassify PTSD claims as pre-existing personality disorders to avoid paying benefits. The VA and Pentagon have generally denied such charges.

"When one of our combat veterans walks into a VA hospital, then they must see a doctor that day," said Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, which filed the lawsuit. "When a war veteran needs disability benefits because he or she can't work, then they must get a disability check in a few weeks."

"The VA has betrayed our veterans," Sullivan said.

VA spokesman Matt Smith said Monday he could not comment on a pending lawsuit
-continued-

2007-07-23T19:24:00.001-07:00

July 23, 2007

LONG BEACH, California (Ticker) - A minor league baseball has announced that on Sunday they will host "Michael Vick Animal Awareness Day."
The Long Beach Armada of Los Angeles of California of the United States of North America including Barrow, Alaska in the Independent Golden League are holding the event on the heels of Vick - the quarterback of the Atlanta Falcons - being indicted on federal dogfighting charges.
Fans are invited to bring their dogs and sit in a special section at Blair Field.
Also, any fan who trades in a Michael Vick jersey will receive free admission to the game. The Armada also will destroy all Vick jerseys in protest to the inhumane treatment of animals.

WOW

2007-07-23T19:15:00.000-07:00

11 Things Women Don't Know About Men

2007-07-23T19:09:00.000-07:00

By Evan Marc Katz

1. Getting angry at us for not reading your mind is like getting angry at yourself for not being able to fly. It's not just futile, it's physically impossible.

2. Yes, we do think Jessica Alba is hot. Sometimes we're even dumb enough to admit it.

3. Don't ask us to understand your shoe fetish. Asking us to respect it is even sort of pushing it.

4. You do look good without makeup, just not as good as you look with it.

5. Ever notice how we don't fight with our male friends? That's why we get so frustrated when we fight with you.

6. You care what you're wearing infinitely more than we do. In fact, if you're naked when you open the front door, you won't hear an argument from us.

7. You don't like to get hit on in public, you don't want to date online and you don't want to be set up on blind dates. Tell us if sending messenger pigeons is an appropriate way of courting. Because if it is, we're all over it.

8. There should a statute of limitations on stupid things that we said that can come back to haunt us. I propose 24 hours.

9. Cooking dinner for a man is like buying flowers for a woman, except it takes a lot more time, effort and thought for you to do it. Thanks. We appreciate it.

10. We actually like your girly pet-names for us, but please, not in front of the guys!

11. Just because we like looking at the women in Maxim doesn't mean we want to actually converse with the women in Maxim. Not for long, anyway.

12. Your nice guy friends are the most reliable source for telling you if your new boyfriend's a jerk. And he probably is. (By the way, you might want to consider marrying that nice guy who's giving you advice about the jerk.)

2007-05-17T23:17:00.001-07:00

US toddlers tuning in for a Disney cartoon in the state of New Jersey this week got more than they bargained for, when the local cable company mistakenly started broadcasting hardcore pornography.(AFP/Illustration)

Mommy, what is Mickey doing to pluto??

Walt Disney World: The Government's Tomorrowland?

2007-05-17T22:52:00.000-07:00

Karen Harmel, Laura Spadanuta
Wed May 16, 8:00 PM ET

Walt Disney World, which bills itself as one of the happiest and most magical places anywhere, also may be one of the most closely watched and secure.

Walt Disney World, which bills itself as one of the happiest and most magical places anywhere, also may be one of the most closely watched and secure. And control over park entrances is getting even tighter: the nation's most popular tourist attraction now is beginning to scan visitor fingerprint information.

For years, Disney has recorded onto tickets the geometry and shape of visitors’ fingers to prevent ticket fraud or resale, as an alternative to time-consuming photo identification checks.

By the end of September, all of the geometry readers at Disney’s four Orlando theme parks, which attract tens of millions of visitors each year, will be replaced with machines that scan fingerprint information, according to industry experts familiar with the technology.

“It’s essentially a technology upgrade,” said Kim Prunty, spokeswoman for Walt Disney World. The new scanner, like the old finger geometry scanner, "takes an image, identifies a series of points, measures the distance between those points, and turns it into a numerical value." She added, "To call it a fingerprint is a little bit of a stretch."
Prunty said the new system will be easier for guests to use and will reduce wait times. The old machines required visitors to insert two fingers into a reader that identified key information about the shape of the fingers. The new machines scan one fingertip for its fingerprint information. Prunty said the company does not store the entire fingerprint image, but only numerical information about certain points.

Theme park consultant Arnold Tang said parks like Disney use the technology because it is more convenient for guests than showing photo identification and more accurate for theme parks, which have a significant ticket fraud problem.

“There’s a lot of subjectivity,” Tang said about traditional identification checks. “People can look at a photo and identify it differently.”

Prunty said the technology ensures that multiday passes are not resold. A one day, one-park ticket to Walt Disney World costs $67, but the daily price falls dramatically for a 10-day pass. Prunty said multiday pricing is the reason for the scanners. “It’s very important that a guest who purchases the ticket is the guest who uses it,” she said.
-continued-
Soon Homeland security will be handed over to Disney. All airports will be transformed into little wonderlands, were the armed guards are dressed as your favorite characters. Just be careful. If you get a body cavity search I heard they don't take off the big glove/hands. OUCH!!!

The Future of Spying

2007-05-17T22:47:00.000-07:00

Beth Davidz
Wed May 16, 8:00 PM ET

A relatively unknown branch of the CIA is investing millions of taxpayer dollars in technology startups that, together, paint a map for the future of spying. Some of these technologies can pry into the personal lives of Americans not just for the government but for big businesses as well.

The CIA's venture capitalist arm, In-Q-Tel, has invested at least $185 million in startups since 1999, molding these companies' products into technologies the intelligence community can use.

More than 60 percent of In-Q-Tel’s current investments are in companies that specialize in automatically collecting, sifting through and understanding oceans of information, according to an analysis by the Medill School of Journalism. While In-Q-Tel has successfully helped push data analysis technology ahead, implementing it within the government for national security remains a challenge, and one of In-Q-Tel’s former CEOs, Gilman Louie, has concerns about whether privacy and civil liberties will be protected.

News reports about programs like Total Information Awareness -- an anti-terrorism government program that would have mined not only government data but also personal information -- and National Security Agency wiretaps, have sparked criticism by lawmakers, privacy advocates and the public.
-continued-

A Sinking Presidency

2007-05-17T22:10:00.000-07:00

By Kenneth T. Walsh
Mon May 7, 2:47 PM ET

President Bush's admiration for Abraham Lincoln knows no bounds. In a recent meeting at the White House, Bush told visitors how Lincoln (whose portrait he has installed in the Oval Office) persevered in the Civil War despite many defeats on the battlefield, tens of thousands of casualties, and doubts among Northern voters that the conflict could ever be won. As the campaign of 1864 approached, Bush related, Lincoln admitted privately that he didn't think he would be re-elected, but pursued his policies anyway. Bush also described how Lincoln pressed on despite his grief when his beloved 11-year-old son Willie died in February 1862. The visitors came away with the conviction that Bush sees himself in Lincoln's mold more deeply than ever.

To Bush's critics, the incident is unsettling. Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, noting that the president has also compared himself to Harry Truman, told U.S. News: "This is delusional-comparing the equivalent of Warren Harding to two of our greatest presidents!" Adds presidential historian Robert Dallek, author of Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power: "He may come across to some people as a man of principle, but a great majority see him as stubborn and unyielding. ... And everything he touches turns to dust."

This is all nonsense, according to senior White House officials. They say that Bush isn't delusional at all and that history will vindicate him, just as it vindicated Lincoln and Truman. "He believes the correctness of his policies-including the war in Iraq-may not be recognized for 10, 15 years," says a Bush adviser. Adds another confidant: "If something reaches his level, it tends to be bad news, but he keeps it all in perspective, and there's no equivocation."

These assessments reflect a fundamental fact about George W. Bush's presidency as it approaches what many consider a twilight stage. Despite a cascading series of setbacks that convey the impression of a White House in crisis, Bush continues to exude an aura of calm and self-confidence. Like him or not-and he is one of the most polarizing leaders in American history-he rarely if ever backs down or exhibits self-doubt. This intransigence infuriates his critics and delights his admirers, and it will remain perhaps the most vivid characteristic of his leadership. Friends say one of Bush's favorite self-descriptions is "the decider." It's an inelegant but apt definition of his whole approach to governing. Whether it's an approach that still works is another question entirely.
-Continued-

Please tell me that this Piece of Shit is not compairing himself to President Lincoln. I love the line in the third paragraph "They say that Bush isn't delusional at all". Yeah I am sorry, if you expect to be thought of differently 10-15 years from now, your fucking delusional!!!!

Hillary '1984'

2007-03-21T19:35:00.000-07:00

The Enlightenment of Resistance

2007-02-24T23:09:00.000-08:00

Manuel Valenzuela

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Exorcising Our Demons

Into the infancy of the 21st century has humanity somehow managed to reach, despite our insatiable addiction for violence and suffering that has for millennia been both endemic and devastating, in spite of the continued tribalism, now called the nation state, that fosters competition, ignorance, fear, hatred and war among the peoples of the world, even with the hierarchical need among peoples to perpetually follow corrupt, immoral and warmongering leadership that continues to lay ruin the vast potential within us and notwithstanding the locust-like hunger of six billion primates whose consumptions and needs for resources are raping and pillaging Earth at unsustainable levels, thus accelerating our inevitable implosion.

Into the early years of the 21st century does humanity find itself in, in the present seeing our past, in our future seeing the present, refusing to learn from the sands of time and the chronicles of those who have come before, knocking on the heavy iron doors of progressive modernity yet hearing only the echoing thuds of regressive primitiveness, desperately seeking the keys that will allow us to finally escape the pestilence of times past and malignant cancers of the present.

Yet in turbulent times do we once more find ourselves living in, surrounded by war, destruction and death, gnawed at by suffering and misery, living among the ignorant, fearful and easily led, taken hostage by fundamentalists, zealots and extremists, refusing to eradicate from our condition the plague called violence and the warmongering, greed-infected leaders who birth it.
-continued-

Stop the War

2007-02-24T22:50:00.000-08:00

Oily truth emerges in Iraq

2007-02-24T22:36:00.000-08:00

Saturday, February 24th, 2007

Juan Gonzalez

Throughout nearly four years of the daily mayhem and carnage in Iraq, President Bush and his aides in the White House have scoffed at even the slightest suggestion that the U.S. military occupation has anything to do with oil.

The President presumably would have us all believe that if Iraq had the world’s second-largest supply of bananas instead of petroleum, American troops would still be there.

Now comes new evidence of the big prize in Iraq that rarely gets mentioned at White House briefings.

A proposed new Iraqi oil and gas law began circulating last week among that country’s top government leaders and was quickly leaked to various Internet sites - before it has even been presented to the Iraqi parliament.

Under the proposed law, Iraq’s immense oil reserves would not simply be opened to foreign oil exploration, as many had expected. Amazingly, executives from those companies would actually be given seats on a new Federal Oil and Gas Council that would control all of Iraq’s reserves.

In other words, Chevron, ExxonMobil, British Petroleum and the other Western oil giants could end up on the board of directors of the Iraqi Federal Oil and Gas Council, while Iraq’s own national oil company would become just another competitor.

The new law would grant the council virtually all power to develop policies and plans for undeveloped oil fields and to review and change all exploration and production contracts.

Since most of Iraq’s 73 proven petroleum fields have yet to be developed, the new council would instantly become a world energy powerhouse.

“We’re talking about trillions of dollars of oil that are at stake,” said Raed Jarrar, an independent Iraqi journalist and blogger who obtained an Arabic copy of the draft law and posted an English-language translation on his Web site over the weekend.

Take, for example, the massive Majnoon field in southern Iraq near the Iranian border, which contains an estimated 20 billion barrels. Before Saddam Hussein was toppled by the U.S. invasion in 2003, he had granted a $4 billion contract to French oil giant TotalFinaElf to develop the field.

In the same way, the Iraqi dictator signed contracts with Chinese, Russian, Korean, Italian and Spanish companies to develop 10 other big oil fields once international sanctions against his regime were lifted.

The big British and American companies had been shut out of Iraq, thanks to more than a decade of U.S. sanctions against Saddam.

But if the new law passes, those companies will be the ones reviewing those very contracts and any others.

“Iraq’s economic security and development will be thrown into question with this law,” said Antonia Juhasz of Oil Change International, a petroleum industry watchdog group. “It’s a radical departure not only from Iraq’s existing structure but from how oil is managed in most of the world today.”

Throughout the developing world, national oil companies control the bulk of oil production, though they often develop joint agreements with foreign commercial oil groups.

But under the proposed law, the government-owned Iraqi National Oil Co. “will not get any preference over foreign companies,” Juhasz said.

The law must still be presented to the Iraqi parliament. Given the many political and religious divisions in the country, its passage is hardly guaranteed.

The main religious and ethnic groups are all pushing to control contracts and oil revenues for their regions, while the Bush administration is seeking more centralized control.

While the politicians in Washington and Baghdad bicker to carve up the real prize, and just what share Big Oil will get, more Iraqi civilians and American soldiers die each each day - for freedom, we’re told.

737 U.S. Military Bases = Global Empire

2007-02-24T22:30:00.000-08:00

Monday, February 19th, 2007

With more than 2,500,000 U.S. personnel serving across the planet and military bases spread across each continent, it’s time to face up to the fact that our American democracy has spawned a global empire.

The following is excerpted from Chalmers Johnson’s new book, “Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic” (Metropolitan Books).

Chalmers Johnson

Once upon a time, you could trace the spread of imperialism by counting up colonies. America’s version of the colony is the military base; and by following the changing politics of global basing, one can learn much about our ever more all-encompassing imperial “footprint” and the militarism that grows with it.

It is not easy, however, to assess the size or exact value of our empire of bases. Official records available to the public on these subjects are misleading, although instructive. According to the Defense Department’s annual inventories from 2002 to 2005 of real property it owns around the world, the Base Structure Report, there has been an immense churning in the numbers of installations.

The total of America’s military bases in other people’s countries in 2005, according to official sources, was 737. Reflecting massive deployments to Iraq and the pursuit of President Bush’s strategy of preemptive war, the trend line for numbers of overseas bases continues to go up.

Interestingly enough, the thirty-eight large and medium-sized American facilities spread around the globe in 2005 — mostly air and naval bases for our bombers and fleets — almost exactly equals Britain’s thirty-six naval bases and army garrisons at its imperial zenith in 1898. The Roman Empire at its height in 117 AD required thirty-seven major bases to police its realm from Britannia to Egypt, from Hispania to Armenia. Perhaps the optimum number of major citadels and fortresses for an imperialist aspiring to dominate the world is somewhere between thirty-five and forty.

Using data from fiscal year 2005, the Pentagon bureaucrats calculated that its overseas bases were worth at least $127 billion — surely far too low a figure but still larger than the gross domestic products of most countries — and an estimated $658.1 billion for all of them, foreign and domestic (a base’s “worth” is based on a Department of Defense estimate of what it would cost to replace it). During fiscal 2005, the military high command deployed to our overseas bases some 196,975 uniformed personnel as well as an equal number of dependents and Department of Defense civilian officials, and employed an additional 81,425 locally hired foreigners.

The worldwide total of U.S. military personnel in 2005, including those based domestically, was 1,840,062 supported by an additional 473,306 Defense Department civil service employees and 203,328 local hires. Its overseas bases, according to the Pentagon, contained 32,327 barracks, hangars, hospitals, and other buildings, which it owns, and 16,527 more that it leased. The size of these holdings was recorded in the inventory as covering 687,347 acres overseas and 29,819,492 acres worldwide, making the Pentagon easily one of the world’s largest landlords.

These numbers, although staggeringly big, do not begin to cover all the actual bases we occupy globally. The 2005 Base Structure Report fails, for instance, to mention any garrisons in Kosovo (or Serbia, of which Kosovo is still officially a province) — even though it is the site of the huge Camp Bondsteel built in 1999 and maintained ever since by the KBR corporation (formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root), a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation of Houston.

The report similarly omits bases in Afghanistan, Iraq (106 garrisons as of May 2005), Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan, even though the U.S. military has established colossal base structures in the Persian Gulf and Central Asian areas since 9/11. By way of excuse, a note in the preface says that “facilities provided by other nations at foreign locations” are not included, although this is not strictly true. The report does include twenty sites in Turkey, all owned by the Turkish government and used jointly with the Americans. The Pentagon continues to omit from its accounts most of the $5 billion worth of military and espionage installations in Britain, which have long been conveniently disguised as Royal Air Force bases. If there were an honest count, the actual size of our military empire would probably top 1,000 different bases overseas, but no one — possibly not even the Pentagon — knows the exact number for sure.
-continued-

US ratchets up ‘psy-ops’ against Tehran

2007-02-24T22:28:00.000-08:00

Friday, February 23rd, 2007

Mahan Abedin

Psychological warfare is fast emerging as the key component of the conflict between Iran and the United States. It is being used extensively by the latter to influence Iranian behaviour in Iraq and secure a climb down by the Islamic Republic in the intricate negotiations over the country’s controversial nuclear programme.

As the Iranians analyse and react to this carefully crafted psychological warfare campaign, they run the risk of miscalculating broader developments in the region. The most important of these is Saudi Arabia’s new pro-active foreign policy. In this climate of heightened tensions and widespread misunderstanding it is easy for the Iranians to dismiss Saudi diplomacy as yet another plank of America’s psychological warfare against the Islamic Republic. Miscalculations of this kind can have drastic long-term consequences for Iranian interests in the Middle East.

war of Words

Psychological warfare has been a feature of Iranian-US relations since the 1979 revolution. Both sides have made extensive use of it, not only to damage the morale of the other, but also as a means of managing the conflict and preventing it from escalating into a shooting war. But never has this psychological war been so intense and potentially dangerous as it is now. Given the unprecedented instability across the Middle East – with opposing factions either allied to Iran or the US – there is a real danger of misunderstandings spinning out of control.

As always, it is the Americans who have ratcheted up the war of words, with the Iranians trying to come to terms with it.
-continued-

RFID chips shrink to powder size

2007-02-24T22:26:00.000-08:00

Thursday, February 22nd, 2007

Yuri Kageyama

Tiny computer chips used for tracking food, tickets and other items are getting even smaller. Hitachi Ltd., a Japanese electronics maker, recently showed off radio frequency identification, or RFID, chips that are just 0.002 inches by 0.002 inches and look like bits of powder. They’re thin enough to be embedded in a piece of paper, company spokesman Masayuki Takeuchi said Thursday.

RFID tags store data, but they need to be brought near special reading devices that beam energy to the chips, which then send information back to the readers.

The technology is already widely used to track and identify items, such as monitoring the distribution of food products or guarding against forgery of concert tickets.

Shown to the public for the first time earlier this month, the new chip is an improvement on its predecessor from Hitachi - the Mu-chip, which at 0.4 millimeters by 0.4 millimeters, looks about the size of the period at the end of this sentence.

The latest chip, which still has no name, is 60 times smaller than the Mu-chip but can handle the same amount of information, which gets stored as a 38-digit number, according to Hitachi.

One catch is that the new chip needs an external antenna, unlike the Mu-chip.

The smallest antennas are about 0.16 inches - giants next to the powder-size chip.

There are no plans yet to start commercial production of the new chip, Takeuchi said.

Invisible tracking brings to mind science-fiction-inspired uses, or even abuses, such as unknowingly getting sprinkled with smart-tag powder for Big Brother-like monitoring.

“We are not imagining such uses,” Takeuchi said, adding that the latest chip is so new - and so miniature - Hitachi is still studying its possible uses.

‘Big Brother’ clocks in at the Royal Mail

2007-02-24T22:24:00.000-08:00

Abigail Townsend

The Royal Mail, which earlier this month revealed an 86 per cent plunge in profits, is spending hundreds of thousands of pounds installing television screens in every delivery and sorting office in the country.

Management will use the screens to convey information and updates on the company’s performance to staff, including speeches by chief executive Adam Crozier and chairman Allan Leighton - prompting wags inside the state-controlled postal group to dub it “Allan Leighton Direct” and to compare it to George Orwell’s Big Brother.

A Royal Mail spokesman declined to comment on the cost of the new communication system, but insiders believe it will set the business back considerably. The TVs are understood to be 42-inch Fujitsu screens, which retail for around £2,000 each.

The Royal Mail will be able to negotiate a discount but it is still buying a considerable amount: at least one will be installed in every site, including 1,400 delivery offices, the 470 post offices the group manages directly, administration centres and other depots. The spokesman defended the communication system, commenting: “It’s absolutely normal good practice for any large company to have effective and swift communications with its people, especially when we’re operating out of many different sites nationwide.”
-continued-

Egyptian blogger sentenced to jail

2007-02-24T22:20:00.000-08:00

Thursday, February 22nd, 2007

An Alexandria court has convicted an Egyptian blogger for insulting both Islam and the Egyptian president, sentencing him to four years in jail over his writings on the internet.

During the trial, an Egyptian imam allegedly kidnapped by CIA agents in Italy and taken to Egypt, showed up to speak to the media, breaking his release conditions.

Known as Abu Omar, the former Milan-based imam on Thursday told reporters that he was tortured in an Egyptian prison and that he wants to return to Italy.

He showed the cameras scars he said were from torture in Egyptian jails and said he will resort to the Italian government to help him.

Al Jazeera’s correspondent, Amr El-Khaky reported: “Abu Omar also pleaded to both the Egyptian and American presidents to release all political prisoners”, including US prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Later on Thursday, Abdel Karim Nabil Suleiman, the first blogger to stand trial in Egypt for his internet writings, was sentenced to four years in jail.

Convicted blogger

Suleiman, a 22-year-old former law student, has been in custody since November over eight articles he had written under the name “Kareem Amer” on his blog since 2004.

Rights groups and opposition bloggers have watched Suleiman’s case closely, and worried the conviction could set a legal precedent limiting internet freedom in Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous country.

A blogger attending the trial who goes by the name “Sandmonkey” said: “It’s a dangerous precedent because it will impact the only free space available now, which is the internet. The charges were undefined and vague.”

Human Rights Watch condemned the trial, saying that the charges Suleiman was convicted for “contradict guarantees of free expression under international law”.

Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said: “The Egyptian government should abide by its commitments to uphold free expression and release Suleiman without delay.”

Criticism or insult?
-continued-

Friends don't let friends play Alliance

2007-01-13T20:25:00.000-08:00

When I first started playing WoW, I started as a Night Elf, a member of the alliance. After 20 minutes I killed the character, and started a undead character, which is on the Horde side. I have never looked back. I can say from my experience that the Alliance side, is boring and full of people that will completely ruin your playing experience. The Horde side seems to attract people who are more interested in playing the game, working together, and having fun. I am sure there are some good people on the alliance side, but there few and far between, and hopefully, they will see the errors of there ways, and come to the light. Now, i do have a dwarf alt. but that is only because I am trying to take them down from the inside, and convert the few good I find. Honestly, I swear, I never enjoy my time with that alt. I'm doing it for the good of the horde.

My Guild

2007-01-13T19:23:00.000-08:00

The guild, (in WoW), that I belong too is Silent Vendetta . I have been in a few other guilds, and considered many others, but in all honesty must say that this is by far the best guild. I could not ask for anything more from a group of people. Many guilds are very clicky, or full of immature players, who just like making rude/crude jokes. This guild is full of fun, friendly and very helpful people that will jump at the chance to help other players. I can not even count the number of times that a fellow guildy has stopped what they are doing, and come helped me with something, usually it is helping me find my way, thence I tend to get lost a lot.

I have to admit that there is one slightly bad thing about the guild, and it is really a silly, minor thing. The guild is full of happy couples, husband, and wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, what ever. This does cause the slight odd man out feeling at times. But that is OK, you get used to it, and it's actually pretty sweet. I'm just a bit jaded lately I guess.

Sorry, for my Absence, but I have a really good reason

2007-01-13T19:03:00.000-08:00

I would like to take a moment to say how sorry I am for my extended absence. But I have been very busy, with many, many things. Most of all, I have been addicted to the game WoW, for those of u not familiar with it, it is World of Warcraft, and is a great online game that will totally consume all of your free time if you allow it.

This is a picture from http://www.blizzard.com/inblizz/fanart/page1.shtml . It is a collection of fan art, from players of the game.

Other then that, I have been very busy with work, with storm after storm, we have been very, very busy. Also, to be totally honest, I have been feeling very burnt out. Like I am screaming at a tree, or wall. I have been staying as far away from anything political as humanly possible. I still feel the same way, so I guess this blog will be slowly changing directions, and going into different subjects for a while.

Rumsfeld’s Fake News Flop in Iraq

2006-09-17T19:45:00.000-07:00

Sheldon Rampton

The following is an excerpt from The Best war Ever: Lies, Damned Lies, and the Mess in Iraq by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber (Tarcher, 2006).

The danger of negative news, according to President Bush, is that it may undermine morale and support for the war, as Americans “look at the violence they see each night on their television screens and they wonder how I can remain so optimistic about the prospects of success in Iraq.” But propaganda itself is a danger to the nation, as the United States has long recognized, both in theory and in law. In 1948, Congress, concerned by what it had seen propaganda do to Hitler’s Germany, passed the Smith-Mundt Act, a law that forbids domestic dissemination of U.S. government materials intended for foreign audiences.

The law is so strict that programming from Voice of America, the government’s overseas news service, may not be broadcast to domestic audiences. Legislators were concerned that giving any U.S. administration access to the government’s tools for influencing opinion overseas would undermine the democratic process at home. Since 1951, this concern has also been expressed in the appropriations acts passed each year by Congress, which include language that stipulates, “No part of any appropriation contained in this or any other Act shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by Congress.”

Economic and media globalization, however, have shrunk the planet in ways that blur the distinction between foreign and domestic propaganda. This has been acknowledged in the U.S. Defense Department’s Information Operations Roadmap, a 74-page document approved in 2003 by Donald Rumsfeld. It noted that “information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and PSYOP [psychological operations], increasingly is consumed by our domestic audience and vice-versa. PSYOP messages disseminated to any audience… will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public.”

This ought to be of particular concern to Americans because the Pentagon’s doctrine for psychological operations specifically contemplates “actions to convey and (or) deny selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning. … In various ways, perception management combines truth projection, operations security, cover, and deception, and psyops.”

An example of a psyops operation that used “deception” in Iraq occurred during the 2004 preparations for the U.S. military assault on Fallujah, which had become a stronghold for insurgents. On October 14, a spokesman for the marines appeared on CNN and announced that the long-awaited military campaign to retake Fallujah had begun. In fact, the announcement was a deliberate falsehood. The announcement on CNN was intended to trick the insurgents so that U.S. commanders could see how they would react to the real offensive, which would not begin until three weeks later. In giving this bit of false information to CNN, however, the marines were not merely reaching a “foreign audience” but also Americans who watch CNN.

Much of the U.S. propaganda effort, however, is aimed not at tactical deception of enemy combatants but at influencing morale and support for the war in the United States. The Office of media Outreach, a taxpayer-funded arm of the Department of Defense, has offered government-subsidized trips to Iraq for radio talk-show hosts. “Virtually all expenses are being picked up by the U.S. government, with the exception of broadcasters providing their own means of broadcasting or delivering their content,” reported Billboard magazine’s Radio Monitor website.

Office of media Outreach activities included hosting “Operation Truth,” a one-week tour of Iraq by right-wing talk-show hosts, organized by Russo Marsh & Rogers, a Republican PR firm based in California that sponsors a conservative advocacy group called Move America Forward. The purpose of the “Truth Tour,” they reported on the Move America Forward website, was “to report the good news on Operation Iraqi Freedom you’re not hearing from the old line news media… to get the news straight from our troops serving in Operation Iraqi Freedom, including the positive developments and successes they are achieving.” Even before the trip began, however, the radio talkers’ take on Iraq was already decided. “The war is being won, if not already won, I think,” said tour participant Buzz Patterson in a predeparture interview with Fox News. “[Iraq] is stabilized and we want the soldiers themselves to tell the story.”

In September 2004, the U.S. military circulated a request for proposals, inviting private public relations firms to apply for a contract to perform an “aggressive” PR and advertising push inside Iraq to include weekly reports on Iraqi public opinion, production of news releases, video news, the training of Iraqis to serve as spokesmen, and creation of a “rebuttal cell” that would monitor all media throughout Iraq, “immediately and effectively responding to reports that unfairly target the Coalition or Coalition interests.”

According to the request for proposals, “Recent polls suggest support for the Coalition is falling and more and more Iraqis are questioning Coalition resolve, intentions, and effectiveness. It is essential to the success of the Coalition and the future of Iraq that the Coalition gain widespread Iraqi acceptance of its core themes and messages.”
-continued-

UK troops ‘to spend 10 years’ in Afghanistan

2006-09-17T19:44:00.000-07:00

Michael Smith

THE commander of the British taskforce in southern Afghanistan said last week that UK troops could be in the country for as long as 10 years.

In his first interview since arriving in Afghanistan, Brigadier Ed Butler said: “I don’t think there’s any doubt we will be here for a considerable time. There will need to be training teams and embedded officers for 10 years or so.”

Butler, commander of 16 Air Assault Brigade, took full responsibility for setting up the “platoon houses” at Sangin and Musa Qala, where 15 British soldiers have died. But he said the decision to send troops into the frontline bases, described by many of his men as “hellholes”, was made “under not inconsiderable pressure” from Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s president.

When British troops began arriving in April to take charge of Helmand province, they met immediate Taliban resistance, Butler said. Baghran district centre had been overrun by the Taliban.

“The governor [of Helmand] was concerned, and the Afghan government was concerned, that northern Helmand was about to fall to the Taliban,” said Butler.

British troops had shown immense bravery in intense combat. “They have been in almost constant engagement with the enemy. Some of these guys are barely out of school. Killing someone is a very difficult thing to do,” Butler said. “People think: ‘Well, that’s what soldiers are paid to do’, but it still takes raw courage to go out and do it.”

The ID Chip You Don’t Want in Your Passport

2006-09-17T19:42:00.000-07:00

Bruce Schneier

If you have a passport, now is the time to renew it — even if it’s not set to expire anytime soon. If you don’t have a passport and think you might need one, now is the time to get it. In many countries, including the United States, passports will soon be equipped with RFID chips. And you don’t want one of these chips in your passport.

RFID stands for “radio-frequency identification.” Passports with RFID chips store an electronic copy of the passport information: your name, a digitized picture, etc. And in the future, the chip might store fingerprints or digital visas from various countries.

By itself, this is no problem. But RFID chips don’t have to be plugged in to a reader to operate. Like the chips used for automatic toll collection on roads or automatic fare collection on subways, these chips operate via proximity. The risk to you is the possibility of surreptitious access: Your passport information might be read without your knowledge or consent by a government trying to track your movements, a criminal trying to steal your identity or someone just curious about your citizenship.

At first the State Department belittled those risks, but in response to criticism from experts it has implemented some security features. Passports will come with a shielded cover, making it much harder to read the chip when the passport is closed. And there are now access-control and encryption mechanisms, making it much harder for an unauthorized reader to collect, understand and alter the data.

Although those measures help, they don’t go far enough. The shielding does no good when the passport is open. Travel abroad and you’ll notice how often you have to show your passport: at hotels, banks, Internet cafes. Anyone intent on harvesting passport data could set up a reader at one of those places. And although the State Department insists that the chip can be read only by a reader that is inches away, the chips have been read from many feet away.

The other security mechanisms are also vulnerable, and several security researchers have already discovered flaws. One found that he could identify individual chips via unique characteristics of the radio transmissions. Another successfully cloned a chip. The State Department called this a “meaningless stunt,” pointing out that the researcher could not read or change the data. But the researcher spent only two weeks trying; the security of your passport has to be strong enough to last 10 years.

This is perhaps the greatest risk. The security mechanisms on your passport chip have to last the lifetime of your passport. It is as ridiculous to think that passport security will remain secure for that long as it would be to think that you won’t see another security update for Microsoft Windows in that time. Improvements in antenna technology will certainly increase the distance at which they can be read and might even allow unauthorized readers to penetrate the shielding.

Whatever happens, if you have a passport with an RFID chip, you’re stuck. Although popping your passport in the microwave will disable the chip, the shielding will cause all kinds of sparking. And although the United States has said that a nonworking chip will not invalidate a passport, it is unclear if one with a deliberately damaged chip will be honored.

The Colorado passport office is already issuing RFID passports, and the State Department expects all U.S. passport offices to be doing so by the end of the year. Many other countries are in the process of changing over. So get a passport before it’s too late. With your new passport you can wait another 10 years for an RFID passport, when the technology will be more mature, when we will have a better understanding of the security risks and when there will be other technologies we can use to cut the risks. You don’t want to be a guinea pig on this one.

Pope sorry for reaction to his remarks

2006-09-17T12:55:00.000-07:00

AP - 1 hour, 12 minutes ago

CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy - Pope Benedict XVI said Sunday that he was "deeply sorry" about the angry reaction to his recent remarks about Islam, which he said came from a text that did not reflect his personal opinion. Despite the statement, protests and violence persisted across the Muslim world, with churches set ablaze in the West Bank and a hard-line Iranian cleric saying the pope was united with President Bush to "repeat the Crusades."

He then went on to tell his notoriously naughty joke about the Islamic Cleric and the Rabbi, that walked into the topples bar,,,, then finished with a heartfelt medley of Hitler speach highlights.

U.S. holds AP photographer in Iraq 5 month

2006-09-17T12:52:00.000-07:00

By ROBERT TANNER, AP National Writer
1 hour, 7 minutes ago

The U.S. military in Iraq has imprisoned an Associated Press photographer for five months, accusing him of being a security threat but never filing charges or permitting a public hearing.

Military officials said Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi citizen, was being held for "imperative reasons of security" under United Nations resolutions. AP executives said the news cooperative's review of Hussein's work did not find anything to indicate inappropriate contact with insurgents, and any evidence against him should be brought to the Iraqi criminal justice system.

Hussein, 35, is a native of Fallujah who began work for the AP in September 2004. He photographed events in Fallujah and Ramadi until he was detained on April 12 of this year.

"We want the rule of law to prevail. He either needs to be charged or released. Indefinite detention is not acceptable," said Tom Curley, AP's president and chief executive officer. "We've come to the conclusion that this is unacceptable under Iraqi law, or Geneva Conventions, or any military procedure."

Hussein is one of an estimated 14,000 people detained by the U.S. military worldwide — 13,000 of them in Iraq. They are held in limbo where few are ever charged with a specific crime or given a chance before any court or tribunal to argue for their freedom.

In Hussein's case, the military has not provided any concrete evidence to back up the vague allegations they have raised about him, Curley and other AP executives said.

The military said Hussein was captured with two insurgents, including Hamid Hamad Motib, an alleged leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. "He has close relationships with persons known to be responsible for kidnappings, smuggling, improvised explosive device (IED) attacks and other attacks on coalition forces," according to a May 7 e-mail from U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Jack Gardner, who oversees all coalition detainees in Iraq.

"The information available establishes that he has relationships with insurgents and is afforded access to insurgent activities outside the normal scope afforded to journalists conducting legitimate activities," Gardner wrote to AP International Editor John Daniszewski.

Hussein proclaims his innocence, according to his Iraqi lawyer, Badie Arief Izzat, and believes he has been unfairly targeted because his photos from Ramadi and Fallujah were deemed unwelcome by the coalition forces.

That Hussein was captured at the same time as insurgents doesn't make him one of them, said Kathleen Carroll, AP's executive editor.

"Journalists have always had relationships with people that others might find unsavory," she said. "We're not in this to choose sides, we're to report what's going on from all sides."

AP executives in New York and Baghdad have sought to persuade U.S. officials to provide additional information about allegations against Hussein and to have his case transferred to the Iraqi criminal justice system. The AP contacted military leaders in Iraq and the Pentagon, and later the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad.

The AP has worked quietly until now, believing that would be the best approach. But with the U.S. military giving no indication it would change its stance, the news cooperative has decided to make public Hussein's imprisonment, hoping the spotlight will bring attention to his case and that of thousands of others now held in Iraq, Curley said.

One of Hussein's photos was part of a package of 20 photographs that won a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography last year. His contribution was an image of four insurgents in Fallujah firing a mortar and small arms during the U.S.-led offensive in the city in November 2004.
-continued-

Dear “Terrorist” Child

2006-09-16T16:24:00.000-07:00

Imprisoned in the Vortex of the Pax Americana

Growing up, young child, as you surely are, affected in some way, shape or form by the tentacles of America’s malevolent imperialism in the Middle East, whether by market colonialism, economic genocide or military occupation, surely bitterness, hatred, rage and a thirst for vengeance are slowly yet inevitably building inside your tiny body. Like a seed planted into the fertile soils of American hegemony, sprouting in anger with every downpour of American interference in your land, over time nurtured to become a tree bearing the blowback fruit America will be forced to reap, ready to ripen at maturity, your emotions against the Empire growing stronger with every year that passes, with every act of further humiliation and dehumanization, with every display of blatant hypocrisy or lost opportunity, with every new maiming and death upon your family and people.

Whether living in lands overrun by American-sponsored and supported despotic, undemocratic puppets depriving you of real “freedom and democracy,” whether living under the billions-of-dollars-a-year in financial and military assistance American subsidized brutal Israeli occupation and apartheid in the world’s largest concentration camps, Gaza and the West Bank, whether living in lands under constant American military threats, sanctions and embargoes imposed on their citizens, depriving you of healthcare, opportunity, full nourishment and a chance to grow up as a child should, simply because your people happen to resist the Empire’s gluttonous desire for your nation’s location and/or resources, or whether subjected to American styled “birth pangs” of a new Middle East, living amongst the violence-riddled, security-absent, depleted uranium-infested, radioactive-filled rubble and destroyed infrastructures of Iraq, Afghanistan and recently Lebanon, now but birth pangs of death and destruction, not life and freedom, the claws of America’s appetite for the lands of the Middle East are as omnipotent as they are malfeasant, an inescapable reality for millions of Arab and Muslim children such as yourself whose only crime is being born Arab in lands deemed strategic and vital to the continued expansion of the greed-mongering American Leviathan.
-continued-

Empire in the Mirror

2006-09-16T16:22:00.000-07:00

Empire – A Tribe on Steroids

Inside the belly of the beast can the harbinger of what is to come be seen, for the internal machinations of the Pax Americana have become rusted and decrepit, its lifeblood infected and diseased by the spoils of its conquests and the narcissism of its hubris. In pursuit of unmatched wealth and power its internal organs have been infected by the malignancies of greed, arrogance and corruption, spreading from coast to coast, a haze of barrenness infiltrating every city and every town, afflicting a society 300 million strong, slowly yet invariably eroding the foundations of an Empire on fast-forward time, as if America’s domination has been accelerated, her reign compressed and her demise made absolute. Yet in her accelerated cycle can civilization once more bear witness that while the greatness of man may build empires, it is the deep flaws inherent in our nature that crumbles them as well.

What the genius of humankind helps construct the vices of the human condition will assuredly destroy, for what is history but a written record of our greatness always decimated by our weaknesses, of our vices, corruption and incurable penchant for death, violence and destruction as always laying waste to the marvels humankind is capable of constructing? What is history if not a linear pattern, repeated over and over and over again, regardless of time, location or of cultural differences, of the triumphs of humankind trumped and squashed by the mammalian passions and emotions inherent in our primate species, of our species taking a leap forward only to have us take two leaps back?
-continued-

Two Axioms of 9/11

2006-09-16T16:21:00.000-07:00

Axiom One: November Fears

With government and corporate media propaganda echoing the traumatic memories of five years ago, from sea to shining sea, enveloping the airwaves and print media of the nation with a clenched fist of wall to wall coverage, Americans have again been bombarded with the exploitation of the mass murder of 3,000 human beings, their death once more serving the political interests of the Bush cabal as well as the financial concerns of the corporate Leviathan. The War on the American People – that psychological operation against our minds and emotions that began with the demolition of the World Trade Center and has continued unabatedly for five consecutive years – has been reinvented and redeployed, its army of lackey journalists, talking heads, government institutions and authoritarian politicians eager to spread the language and images needed to resurrect emotions and feelings, spreading the filth designed to manipulate our fears and hatreds, conditioning us into accepting the dictates of the state and the corporation along with the reality of a world of perpetual war and perpetual terror.

Once more we are being reminded, at the expediency of those in power, and just in case we had begun to forget, that fear is bravery, war is peace, authoritarianism is freedom, dissent is treasonous and a police state is security. Only those truly responsible for perpetrating the events of 9/11, we are made to believe, those lurking behind the smoke, mirrors and purple curtains of the state, can save and defend us from dark-skinned bogeymen of Arab/Muslim lineage that hate us for our freedoms and way of life. Only the fascists in power, we are told, care about preserving and protecting our freedoms, rights, liberties and democracy even as it is they, and not the barbarians at the gates, that are eroding and destroying each with every new day that passes, taking away what the evil terrorist cannot accomplish. It is the dreaded terrorist – of course always Arab in ethnicity or Muslim in faith – we are told by the deciders and the fascists, that roams like a giant cloud of death, hovering above the lands of America, wanting nothing more than to kill us and our children. However, it is the state and its propaganda machine that does not relent in its campaign at frightening and terrorizing the American people, as if it, and not the enemy, is the real terrorist, scaring families, creating stresses and causing insecurity among the masses.
-continued-

An Inconvenient Truth

2006-09-05T19:07:00.000-07:00

Save a tree

2006-09-05T19:05:00.000-07:00

A Shopper's Guide to Home Tissue Products
Shop smart. Save forests.

Learn More:
Tissue Paper & Forests
Forests are being destroyed to make toilet paper, facial tissues, paper towels and other disposable paper products. You can help stop this destruction by pressing manufacturers to use recycled content and clean manufacturing processes (click here to send a message to paper giant Kimberly-Clark), and by making smart shopping decisions.

If every U.S. household replaced one roll of regular paper towels with 100 percent recycled ones, we'd save 544,000 trees.

Need help lowering your energy bills?

2006-09-05T18:58:00.000-07:00

With winter fast approaching, I thought it would be nice to share this site, and hopefully encourage people to be a little pro-active in weatherizing there homes, and making a smaller foot print on our planet. DOE Building Technology

Preliminary Draft Maps of Potential Energy Corridors

2006-09-05T18:52:00.000-07:00

Preliminary draft maps of potential energy corridors on federal lands in eleven Western States.

The Departments of Energy, Interior, Agriculture, and Defense (the Agencies) are preparing a draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act to identify the impacts associated with designating energy corridors on federal lands in eleven Western states. Energy corridors may contain oil, gas, and hydrogen pipelines and electricity transmission facilities. The Agencies are preparing the PEIS at the direction of Congress, as set forth in Section 368 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Based upon the information and analyses developed in the PEIS, the Agencies will designate energy corridors by amending their respective land use plans.

The Government wants to build a new power grid through our national parks and protected wildlands. Please go to this site and write them, telling them to keep there hands off our parks and wildlands!!!!!!!!

The Liquid Bomb Hoax: The Larger Implications

2006-08-29T14:11:00.000-07:00

James Petras

The charges leveled by the British, US and Pakistani regimes that they uncovered a major bomb plot directed against nine US airlines is based on the flimsiest of evidence, which would be thrown out of any court, worthy of its name.

An analysis of the current state of the investigation raises a series of questions regarding the governments’ claims of a bomb plot concocted by 24 Brits of Pakistani origin.

The arrests were followed by the search for evidence, as the August 12, 2006 Financial Times states: “The police set about the mammoth task of gathering evidence of the alleged terrorist bomb plot yesterday.” (FT, August 12/, 2006) In other words, the arrests and charges took place without sufficient evidence — a peculiar method of operation — which reverses normal investigatory procedures in which arrests follow the “monumental task of gathering evidence.” If the arrests were made without prior accumulation of evidence, what were the bases of the arrests?

The government search of financial records and transfers turned up no money trail despite the freezing of accounts. The police search revealed limited amounts of savings, as one would expect from young workers, students and employees from low-income immigrant families.

The British government, backed by Washington, claimed that the Pakistani government’s arrest of two British-Pakistanis provided “critical evidence” in uncovering the plot and identifying the alleged terrorist. No Western judicial hearing would accept evidence procured by the Pakistani intelligence services that are notorious for their use of torture in extracting ‘confessions’. The Pakistani dictatorship’s evidence is based on a supposed encounter between a relative of one of the suspects and an Al Qaeda operative on the Afghan border. According to the Pakistani police, the Al Qaeda agent provided the relative and thus the accused with the bomb-making information and operative instructions. The transmission of bomb-making information does not require a trip half-way around the world, least of all to a frontier under military siege by US led forces on one side and the Pakistani military on the other. Moreover it is extremely dubious that Al Qaeda agents in the mountains of Afghanistan have any detailed knowledge of specific British airline security, procedures or conditions of operations in London. Lacking substantive evidence, Pakistani intelligence and their British counterparts touched all the Propaganda buttons: A clandestine meeting with Al Qaeda, bomb-making information exchanges on the Pakistani-Afghan border, Pakistani-Brits with Islamic friends, family and terrorist connections in England . . .
-continued-

Spy software is coming your way

2006-08-29T14:09:00.000-07:00

Stuff

Software capable of powerful and intrusive searches of personal computers is to be used in New Zealand.

The spy software, which can trace Google searches and other download attempts back to the computer they came from, is a new tool used by movie companies to combat piracy but it is upsetting privacy watchdogs and Internet companies.

The New Zealand Federation Against Copyright Theft (NZfact), the international Motion Picture Association’s representative here, will use the software to identify pirates by their IP address – a computer’s unique identity, the Weekend Herald reported today. The association is a consortium of major movie studios.

The software can track the IP address to the Internet company which holds the user’s details. The Internet company could then agree – or be compelled – to give those details to NZfact.

Federation executive director Tony Eaton said the pirate-hunting software was “basically a search engine that searches the search engines”.

The programme was used in a recent trial in New Zealand, discovering 1153 attempts to illegally download the children’s movie Chicken Little.

Action against pirates could begin with a “cease and desist” letter. In more serious cases, Mr Eaton said, the police could be informed, a search warrant executed, the computer seized and the user prosecuted under the Copyright Act.

Mr Eaton was seeking the co-operation of Internet companies in giving the details behind the IP addresses but ihug and Orcon have said they would not give up the information without a court warrant.

Privacy Commissioner Marie Shroff said computer users could ask her to investigate as the software intruded into their personal space. But it was unclear if the software breached existing law because an IP address identified a computer that could be used by more than one person.

The move comes after John Houston was this week jailed for two years after admitting to 21 charges relating to pirating movies.

He is believed to have made $150,000 a year from selling pirated movies.

Judge David Harvey described it as a highly sophisticated operation in which Houston used decrypting programmes to get around encryption codes on compact discs aimed at stopping movies being copied.

Behind the Plan to Bomb Iran

2006-08-29T14:03:00.000-07:00

Ismael Hossein-zadeh

It is no longer a secret that the Bush administration has been methodically paving the way toward a bombing strike against Iran. The administration’s plans of an aerial military attack against that country have recently been exposed by a number of reliable sources. [1]

There is strong evidence that the administration’s recent public statements that it is now willing to negotiate with Iran are highly disingenuous: they are designed not to reach a diplomatic solution to the so-called “Iran crisis,” but to remove diplomatic hurdles toward a military “solution.” The administration’s public gestures of a willingness to negotiate with Iran are rendered utterly meaningless because such alleged negotiations are premised on the condition that Iran suspends its uranium enrichment program. Considering the fact that suspension of uranium enrichment, which is altogether within Iran’s legitimate rights under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), is supposed to be the main point of negotiations, Iran is asked, in effect, “to concede the main point of the negotiations before they started.” [2]

The administration’s case against Iran is eerily reminiscent of its case against Iraq in the run up to the invasion of that country. Accordingly, the case against Iran is based not on any hard evidence provided by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), but on dubious allegations that are based on even more dubious sources of intelligence. Iran is asked, in effect, to prove a negative, which is of course mission impossible-hence grounds for “noncompliance” and rationale for “punishment.”

The administration’s case against Iran is so weak, its objectives of a military strike against that country are so fuzzy, and the odds against achieving any kind of meaningful victory are so strong, that even professional military experts are speaking up against the plans of a bombing campaign against Iran. [3] Furthermore, predominant expert views of such a bombing campaign maintain that it would more likely hurt than help the geopolitical and economic interests of the United States.

So, if the administration’s “national interests” argument as grounds for a military strike against Iran is suspect, why then is it so adamantly pushing for such a potentially calamitous confrontation? What are the driving forces behind a military confrontation with Iran?

Critics would almost unanimously point to neoconservative militarists in and around the Bush administration. While this is obviously not false, as it is the neoconservative forces that are beating the drums of War with Iran, it falls short of showing the whole picture. In a real sense, it begs the question: who are the neoconservatives to begin with? And what or who do they represent?

The neoconservative ideologues often claim that their aggressive foreign policy is inspired primarily by democratic ideals and a desire to spread democracy and freedom worldwide-a claim that is far too readily accepted as genuine by corporate Media and many foreign-policy circles. This is obviously little more than a masquerade designed to hide some real powerful special interests that lie behind the faï¿½ade of neoconservative figures and their ideological rhetoric.

The driving force behind the neoconservatives’ War juggernaut must be sought not in the alleged defense of democracy or of national interests but in the nefarious special interests that are carefully camouflaged behind the front of national interests. These special interests derive lucrative business gains and high dividends from War and militarism. They include both economic interests (famously known as the military-industrial complex) and geopolitical interests (associated largely with Zionist proponents of “greater Israel” in the Middle East, or the Israeli lobby).
-continued-

US spy agencies pressed for “intelligence” to justify war against Iran

2006-08-29T13:59:00.000-07:00

Bill Van Auken

With the clock ticking to an August 31 deadline set by the United Nations Security Council’s resolution demanding that Iran abandon its uranium enrichment program, a section of the American ruling establishment is pressing US intelligence agencies to produce “evidence” that Iran’s nuclear ambitions pose an imminent nuclear weapons threat.

The aim is the same as that pursued by Vice President Dick Cheney and others in the Bush administration in the run-up to the Iraq War who sought to manufacture phony “intelligence” that Saddam Hussein’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction justified a US invasion and occupation of the country.

This is the political significance of the hastily written and shoddy report issued by the House Intelligence Committee last Wednesday, a day after Iran issued its response to the UN ultimatum, which Washington deemed to have fallen “short” of the resolution’s conditions for avoiding sanctions.

While Russia and China—both veto-wielding members of the UN Security Council—have indicated support for Iran’s call for further negotiations, Washington is having none of it, demanding instead that Teheran unconditionally surrender to the UN diktat.

Iran has shown no inclination to follow such a course. Instead, on Saturday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad staged a symbolic inauguration of a heavy water plant near Arak, in central Iran. He insisted that the facility was intended solely for peaceful purposes, serving medical, scientific and agricultural needs. But Western powers have stressed that it is possible to extract plutonium—a material used in the production of nuclear weapons—from spent fuel produced at an associated heavy water, research reactor that is still under construction.
-continued-

Experts warn U.S. is coming apart at the seams

2006-08-29T13:54:00.000-07:00

Chuck McCutcheon

WASHINGTON - A pipeline shuts down in Alaska. Equipment failures disrupt air travel in Los Angeles. Electricity runs short at a spy agency in Maryland.

None of these recent events resulted from a natural disaster or terrorist attack, but they may as well have, some homeland security experts say. They worry that too little attention is paid to how fast the country’s basic operating systems are deteriorating.

“When I see events like these, I become concerned that we’ve lost focus on the core operational functionality of the nation’s infrastructure and are becoming a fragile nation, which is just as bad — if not worse — as being an insecure nation,” said Christian Beckner, a Washington analyst who runs the respected Web site Homeland Security Watch (www.christianbeckner.com).

The American Society of Civil Engineers last year graded the nation “D” for its overall infrastructure conditions, estimating that it would take $1.6 trillion over five years to fix the problem.

“I thought [Hurricane] Katrina was a hell of a wake-up call, but people are missing the alarm,” said Casey Dinges, the society’s managing director of external affairs.

British oil company BP announced this month that severe corrosion would close its Alaska pipelines for extensive repairs. Analysts say this may sideline some 200,000 barrels a day of production for several months.
-continued-

VeriChip wants to chip every US soldier

2006-08-29T13:52:00.000-07:00

Despite some pretty significant security concerns, everyone’s favorite futurific company VeriChip is looking to get its chips under the skin of the largest group of people yet: the entire US military.

According to the DC Examiner, the company is lobbying the Pentagon to choose its RFID tags as a replacement for the famous metal dog tags, making information like a person’s name and complete medical record instantly available with the swipe of an RFID reader.

Needless to say, not everyone’s sold on the idea, with veterans’ groups and some members of Congress already raising concerns. There doesn’t seem to be any indication as to when a decision might be made, although given VeriChip’s political connections, we wouldn’t be so quick to bet against it.

—————–

VeriChip Wants To Test Human-Implantable RFID On Military

The amount of information on the chip would be up to the military sponsors and could range from basic name and serial number to more advanced medical data.

K.C. Jones

VeriChip is pitching its human implantable RFID chips to the U.S. military.

VeriChip spokesperson Nicole Philbin confirmed Wednesday that the company’s Board Chairman Scott Silverman has held informal meetings with U.S. Navy and Air Force leaders to suggest a feasibility study of its VeriMed system.

The system relies on an implant the size of a grain of rice, which VeriChip claims has an encrypted 16-digit identification number. Philbin said only proprietary RFID readers can decipher the number, which is then entered into a secure database. A login name and password are required to access the database on a secure Web site, Philbin said, adding that the system is more secure and more effective than things people normally carry in their wallets.

Like overall participation, the amount of information attached to the identification number is at the discretion of individuals who volunteer for the program, Philbin said. That could be limited to the most basic information, like name and telephone number, or it could contain advance directives, organ donor status and more.

VeriChip is owned by Applied Digital, which lists federal agencies among its clients. The company markets the VeriMed system as a way to ensure that emergency responders and healthcare providers can identify a patient who is or unable to communicate and learn of allergies and medical conditions.

“The Department of Defense already has an electronic health records program, and VeriChip would like to enhance the quality of care for vets and military members,” Philbin said. “There is no power source. It can’t be tracked. It’s not a GPS device. It contains no information other than the identification number. It’s not mandatory. If a person with the device is presented to an emergency room unconscious, they may be allergic to something or have a preexisting condition, and that information is crucial.”

The RFID implants were approved as Class II medical devices by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in October 2004. In a letter, Donna-Bea Tillman, PhD, director of the F.D.A.’s Office of Device Evaluation, Center for Devices and Radiological Health, outlined potential health risks associated with VeriChip implants. They include adverse tissue reaction; migration of implanted transponder; compromised information security; failure of implanted transponder, inserter or electronic scanner; electromagnetic interference; electrical hazards; magnetic resonance imaging incompatibility; and needle stick.

“With any F.D.A. approval, they state the potential risks,” Philbin said. “The F.D.A. is satisfied with the product and that’s why they have given it the O.K.”

Some people have implanted chips in themselves to experiment with the technology and for fast access to their computer accounts.

Critics contend that VeriChip is peddling its products to governments, while targeting vulnerable populations ” like the elderly, inmates, immigrants and members of the military, who have less choice than the general population. They claim that RFID proponents’ eventual goal is to “chip” as many people as possible, then track consumers and their behaviors for marketing purposes.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center states that “the ability to track people, products, vehicles, and even currency would create an Orwellian world where law enforcement officials and nosy retailers could read the contents of a handbag—perhaps without a person’s knowledge—simply by installing RFID readers nearby.”

“Such a fear is not unfounded. Currently, some RFID readers have the capacity to read data transmitted by many different RFID tags,” the organization states on its Web site. “This means that if a person enters a store carrying several RFID tags—for example, in articles of clothing or cards carried in a wallet—one RFID reader can read the data emitted by all of the tags, and not simply the signal relayed by in-store products. This capacity enables retailers with RFID readers to compile a more complete profile of shoppers than would be possible by simply scanning the bar codes of products a consumer purchases.”

Some people have claimed to clone implants, saying that demonstrates how vulnerable they are, but Philbin said they are impossible to clone.

“The company can’t verify what hackers claim they can or cannot do,” she said.

Joe Davis, spokesperson for the Veterans of Foreign Wars office in Washington, D.C., said although it makes great sense to be able to scan a device and pull up a full medical history, he would like to see further study before the military uses the implants. He said his initial concerns include possible health effects, whether enemies could access soldiers’ information and whether the implants would replace dog tags, and, if so, stand up to an explosion.

“They issue two dog tags,” he said. “One goes around the neck and the other is laced into the boot. The foot and boot will survive an explosion. DNA from the foot in the boot will survive, plus you’ve got your metal dog tag right there. What type of survival rate does this little chip have in an explosion? From what I’ve read, it sounds like they’re trying to push this thing through. You don’t push things through when it’s new technology. You have to weigh all the pros and cons, and you have to ask the service members ‘What do you think of this?’ because it’s going in their neck, or wherever it’s going to go, and this proposal needs lot more study.”

'Lock up everybody!'

2006-08-29T13:42:00.000-07:00

The monstrous cretin who runs America's "Homeland Security" is now publicly calling for new fascist laws that would make the Bush Administration's domestic-spying crimes totally legal.

Michael Chertoff -- who many say looks just like an undead version of Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin -- says the United States needs more constant surveillance of everybody so he can lock up more "possible terrorists."

It's just the latest outrage from an administration desperately trying to turn last week's phony terrorist scare into justification for more fascist laws before the bogus scare is completely forgotten by Americans.

"It's not like the 20th century, where you had time to get warrants," the little totalitarian said Sunday on one of those political talk shows.

"We've done a lot in our legal system the last few years, to move in the direction of that kind of efficiency. But we ought to constantly review our legal rules to make sure they're helping us, not hindering us."

Chertoff, who presided over the horrific drowning of more than 1,500 citizens in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, is very excited about the opportunity to put anybody in jail for no reason at all.

While the White House and the administration's henchmen in Congress rush to pass new laws that will make everyone a potential terrorist and Halliburton builds the new concentration camps that will soon hold hundreds of thousands of "political prisoners," Chertoff is pursuing a two-pronged assault on Americans.

First, his goons at airports around the nation are methodically getting Americans "comfortable" with constant fear, harassment and intimidation. Second, his outrageous public statements are intended as a "trial balloon" to see just how much the White House can get away with.

The lack of outrage over Chertoff's latest insane proclamations will be used as "proof" that the administration can move ahead with the next phase of canceling the "g-ddamned piece of paper" known as the U.S. Constitution.

Proving the "U.K. terror plot" was manufactured fearmongering, U.S. airports have already been told the "threat level" has been reduced to the usual constant hysteria rather than the top-level hysteria enacted last week.

Also revealed this weekend was the fact that the "U.K. terror plot" was just that: Cops encouraging young Muslims to entertain fantasies of striking back at Britain, not the United States.

Remarkably, it was Chertoff himself who admitted this Sunday on CNN.

Unabomber sale!

2006-08-29T13:41:00.000-07:00

In a desperate bid to hang onto his fading fame, 1990s serial killer Ted Kaczynski is holding a crazy online auction.

The virtual garage sale, which was authorized by the U.S. District Court in California on Thursday, will benefit the families of Kaczynski's victims.

Items offered from his mountain lair include a hatchet, several of his infamous hooded sweatshirts, hundreds of history books, multiple versions of his manifesto and simple bomb-making tools.

"The Unabomber" was a media sensation in the 1990s.

His Luddite manifesto was published in big-time newspapers and his classic hoodie-and-shades look was heavily copied by wannabe hard players.

But home-grown terrorists lost their popularity after 9/11, because all terrorist activity is now said to be done by crazy Muslims from the Middle East rather than a crazy mathematical genius from Chicago living in a forest shack.

Dr. Theodore John Kaczynski was considered one of the finest modern minds when it came to advanced math such as geometric function theory, which is so complex that only a handful of people even understand the concept.

But for myriad reasons, Kaczynski was "socially retarded." So much smarter than normal people that he was pushed ahead to Harvard when he was only 16 years old, he never fit in and never had friends.

Suspiciously, he was chosen to take part in "psychological experiments" run by mad scientist Dr. Henry A. Murray, the psychologist who worked for the U.S. government's Office of Strategic Services -- which became the CIA after World War II.

Dr. Murray was instrumental in preparing the "Analysis of the Personality of Adolph Hitler" for OSS spy chief William "Wild Bill" Donovan.

After whatever Murray did to the young, meek math wizard, Kaczynski was even more withdrawn.

He became a math professor at Berkeley in 1967, where he creeped out students and staff. In 1969, he quit without explanation and seemingly vanished from the world.

For a decade, he lived quietly in a mountain shed. And in 1978, he sent his first mail bomb. His targets were colleges, airlines, retail computer stores and even public-relations executives. His crude bombs eventually hurt 29 people and killed 3 victims.

The G-men gave him the codename UNABOM, for "University and Airline Bomber." The media eventually turned that into "Unabomber."

In 1995, the New York Times and Washington Post supported terrorism and printed his entire 35,000-word manifesto, "Industrial Society and its Future."

The newspapers did this at the request of the U.S. Justice Department. While many were outraged over the federal government again supporting terrorists, FBI analysts argued that meeting the Unabomber's demand would actually help track him down, as somebody might be able to recognize his writing and theories.

And it worked, the FBI claimed, because Kaczynski's brother David reportedly recognized Ted's writing style and called the cops.

But the unintended result of the publication was that many of the top people in the technology industry were absolutely haunted by the Unabomber's conclusions.

Bill Joy -- "cofounder and Chief Scientist of Sun Microsystems and co-chair of the presidential commission on the future of IT research" -- found himself "most troubled" by Kaczynski's warning of a coming dystopia where robots either rule humanity or serve a tiny global elite who choose to exterminate the billions of undesirables:

"[T]he average man may have control over certain private machines of his own, such as his car or his personal computer, but control over large systems of machines will be in the hands of a tiny elite -- just as it is today, but with two differences. Due to improved techniques, the elite will have greater control over the masses; and because human work will no longer be necessary the masses will be superfluous, a useless burden on the system. If the elite is ruthless they may simply decide to exterminate the mass of humanity. If they are humane they may use propaganda or other psychological or biological techniques to reduce the birth rate until the mass of humanity becomes extinct, leaving the world to the elite."

Just 10 years later, much of Kaczynski's "paranoid fantasy" is reality. Total surveillance and constant bombardment by corporate and government propaganda has softened the citizens of industrialized nations to any possible rebellion.

Citizens are now "consumers," so addicted to the Internet that knowledge of constant illegal spying on their every online activity hasn't even led to calls to abandon the technology, let alone any actual reduction in usage. In fact, hours and money spent on the Internet have seen double-digit growth this year alone.

And instead of reducing dependence on telephones after it was revealed that all calls are illegally logged and tracked by the federal government, protest was limited to the suggestion that people concerned about civil liberties transfer their business to one of the few telecom companies that hasn't yet admitted complicity in the domestic-spying scandal.

A long government "health campaign" in the United States has succeeded in making much of the population sick from chronic disease and so obese that they're physically incapable of doing much more than sitting on a sofa watching war and crime propaganda, while federal education efforts have succeeded in significantly reducing the population's ability to read, write and think critically -- as compared to both earlier generations of educated Americans as well as modern-day populations in Europe and industrialized Asia.

The world's most populous country and fastest-growing "capitalist" state, China, has brutally enforced birth-rate reduction and brazenly killed and tortured dissidents with no reprisals from "democratic" nations that fuel its dynamic economic growth.

And in five short years, an ambiguous "anti-terror crusade" has replaced all humanist ideology, democratic debate and civil liberties in the world's lone military superpower.

Most American factory labor is already performed by robots. As millions of working-class people in the United States have already learned, the value of a human completely depends on his or her worth as a consumer. When a human is no longer required for factory labor or industrialized farming -- either because the work is now performed by robots or done overseas for pennies on the dollar -- their value as a consumer is obliterated.

As a General Motors analyst recently said about the nation's 110,000 auto-factory robots, "They're almost human, but they don't seem interested in organizing."

If the Unabomber's horrifying scenarios are correct, the next stage will be the culling of the herd, or the killing off of those who serve no purpose to the robots and their human masters.

Revolutionary’ farmer arrested for driving vegetable-powered truck

2006-08-05T10:17:00.000-07:00

John Lichfield in Paris

A French farmer faces prosecution for driving on public roads in a vegetable-powered truck.

Olivier Lainé, a cereals farmer based near Rouen in Normandy, believes he will go down in history, not as a criminal, or tax-evader, but a “revolutionary”.

M. Lainé, 49, was arrested near his farm by French customs officers. He faces prosecution for driving a vehicle powered by an “unauthorised fuel” - namely pure vegetable oil, made from colza, or rape seed, grown on his own farm.

An EU directive passed last year instructs member states to encourage the use of pure vegetable oil as a form of fuel for diesel-powered vehicles. Paris has failed so far to translate the directive into law.

“They say that I am breaking the law. I say that they are breaking European law,” M. Lainé said. “We will see who is right. What I am doing will be seen as the beginning of a revolution. The world is short of fossil fuels. It has a surplus of agricultural produce. Using pure vegetable oil as a fuel can make a small contribution to solving both problems.”
M. Lainé is spokesman within the département of Seine-Maritime for the militant small farmers’ union, the Confédération Pay-sanne. The union accused the French government yesterday of “hypocrisy”.

Paris talks of making a contribution to a cleaner environment, the union said, but blocks local initiatives to use pure vegetable oil.

The use of vegetable oil as fuel is authorised for vehicles while operating on a farm. It is illegal to drive vegetable-powered vehicles on public roads because no tax has been paid on the fuel.

Bill would ban chip implantation in employees

2006-08-03T22:27:00.000-07:00

Mary Dannemiller

SYCAMORE TWP. — State Sen. Robert Schuler (R — 7th District) recently introduced a bill that would prevent companies from implanting microchips in their employees without their consent.

The Employee Privacy Protection Bill comes as an answer to the company CityWatcher.com’s use of radio frequency identification tags in two employees.

The Walnut Hills-based security company came under fire in February after it was discovered that Chief Executive Officer Sean Darks and another unnamed employee were injected in the forearm with a VeriChip.

The chip acted as an identification card, allowing access to classified areas as a signal transmitted an ID number to a receiver.

The impending law defines “radio frequency identification tags” as silicon chips containing an antenna that stores data and transmits data to a wireless receiver.

A VeriChip can also be used as a global positioning system, the senator said.

“People have to have their privacy. It’s not up to the employer to keep tabs on (employees),” Schuler said.

If passed, the bill would make it illegal for employers to require their employees to be implanted with a chip.

CityWatcher.com’s employees were implanted with the chip voluntarily, which is permitted under the new bill.

“Voluntary use is OK, but sometimes it’s hard to say what’s voluntary and what’s not,” Schuler said.

What the fuck!!!!! Like they need to pass a law about this!!!! And what kind of company would even be considering inplanting chips in there employees?? I'm sorry, if your working for a company that even considers inplanting anything on, or in you, find a new job!!!! I don't care how much they pay, or anything else, there is something seriously wrong, that your not seeing, and you need to get the hell out of there!!!

E-passport will make terrorism easy

2006-08-03T22:03:00.000-07:00

As the U.S. prepares to embed all its passports with R.F.I.D. chips, a hacker in Germany has already rendered the new I.D. system obsolete.

"The whole passport design is totally brain damaged," security consultant Lukas Grunwald told Wired News. "From my point of view all of these RFID passports are a huge waste of money. They're not increasing security at all."

In Grunwald's native Germany, they've already begun issuing these new "high tech" passports. It took him all of two weeks to figure out how to clone one.

The new passports have chips in them that store encrypted data that acts as a kind of unique signature for each traveller.

"And of course if you can read the data, you can clone the data and put it in a new tag," Grunwald says.

With the U.S. set to introduce similar passports this fall, the question is "why bother?"

"Either this guy is incredible or this technology is unbelievably stupid," says Gus Hosein, senior fellow at Privacy International, a U.K.-based group opposed to R.F.I.D. passports. "Is this what the best and the brightest of the world could come up with? Or is this what happens when you do policy laundering and you get a bunch of bureaucrats making decisions about technologies they don't understand?"

Grunwald demonstrated for Wired how absurdly easy it is to make a fake E-passport. He placed one atop an official passport-inspection RFID used at border crossings -- anybody can order one. Even if they weren't readily available, Grunwald says you can build one for about $200.

He then used secunet Security Networks' Golden Reader Tool to extract the information on the chip. It took about four seconds. From there it was a simple matter of loading the info onto another chip and installing it into a fake passport.

Grunwald has been warning folks about R.F.I.D. issues for years. In January of 2004 he warned that R.F.I.D. rewriting technology would make it easy for shoplifters to remark inventory or just cause general mayhem.

Not only is the government planning to put R.F.I.D. tags into passports, they also want use them on immigrants, pets, A.I.D.S. patients ... basically anyone that doesn't meet their standards.

The weakness of these new "security" measures comes just a day after a Government Accountability Office testimony said that our border guards already have a bad habit of ignoring fake I.D. cards.

U.S. heroes vs. Gov't

2006-08-03T22:00:00.000-07:00

As victorious young World War II veterans returned home to the Tennessee town of Athens, they were all fired up about democracy and freedom in Europe.

But in their hometown, shamelessly corrupt sleazebags ran the local "political machine." Elections were charades. And when the election of August 1946 was stolen -- as per usual -- the tough veterans launched a mini-American Revolution and won.

It's an inspiring story for democracy-loving Americans of today, who seem to be watching with impotent shock as one election after another is nakedly stolen and emboldened political criminals commit their hideous sins in broad daylight, even on live television.

What the WWII boys did was simple: After yet another stolen election, the veterans raided the local armories and attacked the camp of the political crooks, who were holed up in the town jail where they could safely stuff the ballot boxes with bogus votes.

Unlike today's do-nothing consumers, the Americans of the "Greatest Generation" were no sissies. The soldiers tipped over cars in the streets and fired on the jail from the safety of the makeshift foxholes.

The town rallied to the cause of the brave veterans, with housewives even delivering refreshments during what was later known as the Battle of Athens. As regular Americans happily realized they could rise up and take out the political trash, the little revolution took place in a "party-type atmosphere," local historian Joe Guy says today.

The siege went on all through the night of August 1, and in the early hours of August 2 the veterans were tired of waiting for the political scoundrels to give themselves up. So the soldiers blasted the jail with dynamite.

The scumbags surrendered and the veterans approved the real vote results: a straight ticket of G.I. nonpartisan anti-corruption true American heroes.

And it all took place 60 years ago this week, the Associated Press notes in a feature celebrating the anniversary.

The Battle of Athens wasn't the only heroic insurgency of the post-WWII years, but it was certainly the most exciting example.

"Seasoned veterans of the European and Pacific theaters returned in 1945 and 1946 to Southern communities riddled with vice, economic stagnation and deteriorating schools," historian Jennifer E. Brooks wrote in the Tennessee Encyclopedia.

"Across the South, veterans launched insurgent campaigns to oust local political machines they regarded as impediments to economic progress. The McMinn County veterans had won the day in a hail of gunfire, dynamite, and esprit de corps."

Founding father Thomas Jefferson would've been so proud of those Tennessee patriots. Jefferson knew from the start that the only way to keep a political system clean was to keep it small and regularly purge it of corruption.

A significant rebellion against the young U.S. federal government was the famous Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. Alexander Hamilton, the power-crazed and money-hungry secretary of the Treasury, had arbitrarily decided the nation's many whiskey distillers would be a good source of government income.

The whiskey men thought otherwise and launched their rebellion. In the first important example of the United States drifting from its democratic principles to the all-powerful police state of today, Hamilton was able to force the president, revolutionary hero George Washington, to wage war against those liberty-loving American citizens.

Jefferson was heartbroken.

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants," he wrote in defense of regular revolution. "It is its natural manure."

Secret 2001 Pentagon Plan to Attack Lebanon

2006-08-01T21:06:00.000-07:00

Bush's Plan for "Serial War" revealed by General Wesley Clark

by A Concerned Citizen

"[The] Five-year campaign plan [includes]... a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan" (Pentagon official quoted by General Wesley Clark)

According to General Wesley Clark--the Pentagon, by late 2001, was Planning to Attack Lebanon

"Winning Modern Wars" (page 130) General Clark states the following:

"As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan.

...He said it with reproach--with disbelief, almost--at the breadth of the vision. I moved the conversation away, for this was not something I wanted to hear. And it was not something I wanted to see moving forward, either. ...I left the Pentagon that afternoon deeply concerned."

Of course, this is fully consistent with the US Neocons' master plan, "Rebuilding America's Defenses," published in August 2000 by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC)

And, as PNAC's website ( http://www.newamericancentury.org ) notes, that the lead author of that plan, Thomas Donnelly, was a top official of Lockheed Martin--a company well acquainted with war and its profit potential.

It's no surprise that Republicans are starting to talk about withdrawing troops from Iraq; the troops will be needed in Lebanon. And maybe Sudan and Syria?

C-SPAN BROADCAST REVITALIZES 9/11 TRUTH?

2006-08-01T21:01:00.000-07:00

The broadcast this past weekend of the proceedings of the American Scholars Symposium may have won more members for the 9/11 Truth movement. According to Paul Joseph Watson, whose Infowars partner Alex Jones hosted and moderated the event, the program, aired Saturday and Sunday and due to repeat on Tuesday evening, has generated a whole new audience for skepticism about the official version of the attacks five years ago.

He cites Webster Tarpley, who was a keynote speaker and panel member at the symposium, said: “Let us mobilize to organize the biggest audience ever by an incessant and sustained intervention in radio and television call-in talk shows, by blast emails, by direct personal contact alerts, by public signs, leaflets, and by every other means at our disposal.”

Watson notes concerns prior to the airing of the program, since “the conference was so unrelenting in its hardcore stance on 9/11, that C-Span would be pressured into canning the show.” He calls the airing, and its repeated showings, “another hammer blow to the establishment kingpins who had hoped questions about 9/11 would evaporate as we approach the fifth anniversary of the attack.” - ST

Third of Americans suspect 9-11 government conspiracy

2006-08-01T20:55:00.000-07:00

Thomas Hargrove

More than a third of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to War in the Middle East, according to a new Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll.

The national survey of 1,010 adults also found that anger against the federal government is at record levels, with 54 percent saying they “personally are more angry” at the government than they used to be.

Widespread resentment and alienation toward the national government appears to be fueling a growing acceptance of Conspiracy theories about the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Suspicions that the 9/11 attacks were “an inside job” _ the common phrase used by Conspiracy theorists on the Internet _ quickly have become nearly as popular as decades-old Conspiracy theories that the federal government was responsible for President John F. Kennedy’s assassination and that it has covered up proof of space aliens.

Seventy percent of people who give credence to these theories also say they’ve become angrier with the federal government than they used to be.

Thirty-six percent of respondents overall said it is “very likely” or “somewhat likely” that federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or took no action to stop them “because they wanted the United States to go to War in the Middle East.”

“One out of three sounds high, but that may very well be right,” said Lee Hamilton, former vice chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also called the 9/11 commission.) His congressionally appointed investigation concluded that federal officials bungled their attempts to prevent, but did not participate in, the attacks by al Qaeda five years ago.

“A lot of people I’ve encountered believe the U.S. government was involved,” Hamilton said. “Many say the government planned the whole thing. Of course, we don’t think the evidence leads that way at all.”

The poll also found that 16 percent of Americans speculate that secretly planted explosives, not burning passenger jets, were the real reason the massive twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed.
-continued-

Profits of Doom

2006-08-01T20:53:00.000-07:00

Soaring temperatures, water droughts, War in the Middle East and a mad scramble for dwindling energy supplies… Despite facing climate chaos, politicians - and the corporations they serve - continue as if nothing is happening to our ecosystem. Instead, the multinationals are rampantly exploiting away so that consumers can enjoy breakthroughs like cheaper plasma TV sets. And now climatologists are predicting that global temperatures will rise quicker than previously expected, as tipping points are reached and irreversible changes to our climate are just round the corner.

Faced with this, are the most powerful institutions on our planet slamming on the economic brakes before we get to the cliff edge? Er no, they’re plotting ‘profit driven’ solutions to the oncoming tumble into the abyss. OK, those bunny-huggin’ eco-nuts might have had some valid points about the whole global warming thing, but don’t think of Climate Chaos as a problem, look on it as a window to new markets! Judging by the tsunami of greenwash at the moment, rather than causing a major problem for big business, it looks there’s real cash to be made with global warming and investors are being told to look greenwards to make some serious loot. General Electric, the world’s 11th biggest corporation with £9billion worth of annual profits, have just launched ‘Ecomagination’, a subsidiary company which seeks to make as much cash as possible from all things solar-powered and run by the wind. Looking according to one former US government official, “to make money in a carbon constrained world”. Last autumn investment heavyweights, Goldmann Sachs, published its ‘Environmental Policy Framework’, which aims to “find effective market-based solutions to address climate change, ecosystem degradation and other critical environmental issues.”
-continued-

MSNBC Poll: Should Bush Be Impeached?

2006-07-30T18:34:00.000-07:00

It currently looks like this:

Yes, between the secret spying, the deceptions leading to War and more, there is plenty to justify putting him on trial.
87%

No, like any president, he has made a few missteps, but nothing approaching “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
4.3%

No, the man has done absolutely nothing wrong. Impeachment would just be a political lynching.
7.2%

I don’t know.
1.8%

GO VOTE NOW

Lovin' that bloodshed

2006-07-23T11:37:00.000-07:00

Apocalyptic Christians are thrilled over the horrific bloodshed in Lebanon.

That's because they're hoping the End of the World is finally at hand -- and only some 1,950 years after Jesus reportedly promised it would happen.

Christians have been depressed for two millennia over their savior's lies. But instead of giving up, they just keep looking for signs of the apocalypse Christ swore would occur during the lifetimes of his original disciples.

Harper's Magazine has been collecting some of the happy comments from the "Rapture Ready" website this week, where the mood is joyous:

"Praise God! We are chosen to be in these times and also watch and spread the word," one bloodthirsty Christian wrote. "Something inside me is exploding to get out, and I don't know what it is. Its kind of like I want to do cartwheels around the neighborhood."

Watching the massacre of innocent Lebanese on television, another one of Jesus' followers wrote, "Got that dancing feeling on the inside of me."

Christians believe Jesus will eventually make good on his promise, and they pay special attention to a crazy book in the New Testament called "The Revelation" or "The Apocalypse of St. John." In that psychedelic rant, the anonymous author claims all sorts of horrible things will happen.

Myriad multi-faced monsters will come out of the sky and kill people, for one thing, while some huge war is supposed to take place at Armageddon, a nonexistent place in Palestine that is only mentioned in the Greek text of Revelation.

But for Christians who pray every day for the destruction of Earth and the brutal torture of the billions of people who don't follow their religion, the best part is when Jesus will magically suck all of the Christians from the Earth -- right out of their clothes.

The awful image of millions of fat, naked Christians being hoovered into the sky may be disgusting to most people, but to the "Rapture Ready" crowd there is nothing more orgasmic.

The English term rapture comes from the Latin word for rape; Christians hoping for the Rapture are literally begging to be raped by Jesus. Sadly for those Christians, neither the word "rapture" nor the concept actually appears anywhere in the Bible.

The controversial Book of Revelation has long been attacked by important Christians such as Martin Luther, who wrote that "Christ is neither taught nor known in it."

Biblical scholars dismiss Revelation as nothing more than a nearly-crushed cult's political rhetoric against the ruling empire of the Romans, like an ancient version of David Koresh's mad ramblings before the U.S. government massacred him and more than 70 of his followers and their little children.

Columbus=Douchebag

2006-07-23T11:36:00.000-07:00

The famed explorer who supposedly "discovered" the Americas was a psychotic, bloodthirsty monster who enjoyed nothing more than Abu Ghraib-style torture parties.

That's according to disgusting new evidence unearthed by a Spanish archivist.

"Christopher Columbus was a cruel, despotic tyrant who ruled over his subjects with an iron fist, according to new documents which have emerged 500 years after his death," the Independent reports today.

"The discoverer of America routinely subjected slaves to torture and starved his own subjects in colonies in what is now the Dominican Republican."

Consuelo Varela of the High Council for Scientific Research in Seville found the outrageous documents last year and has been carefully transcribing them.

She found that the cruelty of Columbus was matched only by his greed and stupidity.

It was the greed that sent him back to Spain in shackles to face trial for massive graft. At the trial, 23 witnesses made their case against the satanic idiot. As everyone hated him, it wasn't hard to find witnesses.

Columbus encouraged the brutality of slavery, and happily punished even "white" Spaniards by cutting off various body parts and selling them as disfigured laborers.

There were no trials in his horrible outpost, and even members of his own inner circle were frequently tortured and killed when they did anything to upset the touchy tyrant. It's as if Donald Rumsfeld personally ran the torture prison at Guantanamo Bay and personally sodomized the inmates, rather than send specially-trained military psychotics to do his dirty work.

The stupidity of Columbus is famous; until his miserable death he believed Cuba's tropical mountains were the Himalayas. A simple hike across the narrow island's interior would've quickly settled the issue, but Columbus was too much of a moron to figure out how to walk uphill.

Like most sociopathic fascists, Columbus was a very pious Christian. The latest discoveries prove once again why the Devil was so anxious to get Columbus home to Hell.

Open mic night at the G8 Summit!

2006-07-17T19:26:00.000-07:00

Oh fuck a duck, Can Bush be anymore of a joke? Is it even humanly possible to fuck things up anymore then they already are? That's it, I have had it. I'm through. I'm selling everything I own, and moving to,,,I'm not sure were, but some other country. I just can't take this anymore.

My most recent e-mail to Senator Stevens

2006-07-15T12:17:00.000-07:00

Feel free to write to the Senator, I know he loves hearing from people. Share your deepest feelings, and be totally honest with him. It will make atleast one of you feel much better. Hopefully your letter won't get lost in his crowded tubes.

My dearest Senator Stevens,

You know nothing about the internet!!! Stop trying to regulate it. Deal with a real issue, like impeaching Bush, or ending the war. Stop dodging the real issues affecting our country. Grow some balls, and pick a issue that you might have a chance of understanding, if someone explains it real slow, and uses small words.

Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism

2006-07-15T12:13:00.001-07:00

Thursday, July 13th, 2006

Buzzflash

As a resurgent Taliban takes over large swatches of Afghanistan, changing that nation’s social mores, educational curriculum, and legal system, many Americans would be shocked to discover how massive and powerful the new American Christian Taliban has become. So powerful, in fact, that it could be argued it’s taken over large portions of the federal government, several state governments, and thousands of county and municipal governments.

Indeed, billions of dollars of your and my taxpayer dollars are today being diverted to GOP-affiliated ultra-rightist so-called Christian “charities” across the nation, without even the benefit of enabling legislation in many cases. As Michelle Goldberg writes in “Kingdom Coming”:

“The diversion of billions of taxpayer dollars from secular social service organizations to such sectarian religious outfits has been one of the most underreported stories of the Bush presidency. Bush’s faith-based initiatives have become a spoils system for evangelical ministries, which are now involved in everything from prison programs and job training to teenage pregnancy prevention, supplanting the safety net that was supposed to catch all Americans. As a result of faith-based grants, a growing number of government-funded social service jobs explicitly refuse to hire Jews, gay people, and other undesirables; such discrimination is defended by the administration and its surrogates in the name of religious freedom. Bringing the disposed to Jesus Christ has become something very close to a domestic policy goal of the United States government. And all this has happened with far less notice or public debate than attended the removal of Terri Schaivo’s feeding tube or the halftime baring of Janet Jackson’s breast.”
What Goldberg brilliantly reveals in this wonderfully readable and thoroughly researched book is the extent and reach of the Christian Nationalist movement in the USA — what is rapidly becoming a theocratic shadow government, intent on nothing less than rolling back the Enlightenment of the late 17th and 18th centuries, and replacing it with something that very resembles the Puritanism of Oliver Cromwell, a pseudo-Christian version of the Islam of Osama Bin Laden.

I say “pseudo Christian” (although Goldberg does not - she doesn’t engage in theological debate in her book) because for most people like myself who were raised as Christians, the Christian Nationalists propound a form of church/state merger, and an essential theology, that is completely at odds with the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount and Matthew 25 (”feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit those in prison, heal the sick,” etc.).

Instead, their Jesus is a muscular militarist who hates gays, is the first to see and condemn sin in others, and finds salvation not in poverty and charity but in building multi-million-dollar ministries, living high, and preaching that all problems are solved, all sins redeemed, all diseases cured (both physical and political) by simple belief in His name. This Jesus hates science, wants to use the power of the state to finance his ventures and punish his enemies, and wants to use the power of police, prisons, and courts to enforce his rigid view of everything from the role of women in society to the sanctity of the American flag.

This is not the Jesus that most Christians know, but it’s the Jesus in whose name a powerful and unrelenting movement is working to establish a theocracy in America. This Jesus is so far from the Biblical Jesus, in fact, that most in the movement refers to Him in His role — Christ — rather than His name - Jesus. The Jesus of the Bible, after all, had long hair, was homeless, hung out with social misfits, and preached poverty, pacifism, and mysticism. Hardly appropriate company for wealthy and powerful men like Falwell, Robertson, and Bush.

To write “Kingdom Coming,” Michelle Goldberg went from coast-to-coast deep inside the Christian Nationalist movement. Ninety percent of the book is storytelling — fascinating and often chilling — from these visits to everything from small rural churches to political-strategy conference calls with the most powerful men in America.

In a thoroughly dispassionate way, Goldberg walks the reader through Christian Nationalism from the level of the grass roots to the Astroturf to the offices of Bill Frist, Rick Santorum, and George W. Bush.

The final chapters of the book include one of the most lucid calls for a liberal response to Christian Nationalism I’ve read anywhere, and strategy outline that should be read by every progressive in America.

This is one of those books you can’t put down, in part because of Goldberg’s storytelling and reporting skills, but in larger part because it lays bare a truly frightening view of the future these folks have in mind for you, me, and the rest of America. And how shockingly close they already are to realizing their goals.

Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism

2006-07-15T12:13:00.000-07:00

US may have kidnapped families of Iraqi detainees

2006-07-15T12:06:00.000-07:00

American forces in Iraq have been accused of kidnapping the families of detainees as an interrogation tactic, RAW STORY has learned.

A story in today’s edition of Salon suggests that the kidnapping method may have been used systematically in the course of intelligence gathering through interrogations in the Iraq War.

Salon added that Members of Congress including Rep. Christopher Shays, a Republican of Connecticut, have issued a subpoena to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to hand over documents on the matter. They are due at 5 PM today.

An excerpt from the subscribers-only article is included below.

#
Congress has demanded that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld hand over a raft of documents to Congress that could substantiate allegations that U.S. forces have tried to break terror suspects by kidnapping and mistreating their family members. Rumsfeld has until 5 p.m. Friday to comply.

It now appears that kidnapping, scarcely covered by the Media, and absent in the major military investigations of detainee abuse, may have been systematically employed by U.S. troops. Salon has obtained Army documents that show several cases where U.S. forces abducted terror suspects’ families. After he was thrown in prison, Cpl. Charles Graner, the alleged ringleader at Abu Ghraib, told investigators the military routinely kidnapped family members to force suspects to turn themselves in.

A House subcommittee led by Connecticut Republican Christopher Shays took the unusual step last month of issuing Rumsfeld a subpoena for the documents after months of stonewalling by the Pentagon. Shays had requested the documents in a March 7 letter. “There was no response” to the letter, a frustrated Shays told Salon. “We are not going to back off this.”

U.S. government wants to begin using prisoners for medical experiments

2006-07-15T12:04:00.000-07:00

(NewsTarget) A new report by the Institute of Medicine recommends easing current restrictions on the use of prisoners in medical experiments to allow inmates to “benefit” from clinical trials.

Critics of the plan cite past abuses of prisoners by pharmaceutical companies and medical researchers as reasons to keep rigid restrictions on medical experimentation in place. About 300 former inmates have sued Penn drug researcher Albert Kligman for allegedly experimenting on them in 1964 with infectious agents, dioxin, radioactive isotopes and psychotropic drugs. Inmates were told the chemicals they were testing were harmless.

Following the Holmesburg scandal, the federal government placed strict limitations on performing medical experiments on prisoners, but the new Institute of Medicine report suggests prisoners should once again be used to test therapies in the final phase of FDA approval, as long as the trials do not involve cosmetic toxicity testing, and half the trial members are not inmates.

However, the Holmesburg prisoners represent only one of many cases of government-sponsored abuse at the hands of medical researchers. According to extensive NewsTarget.com research (http://www.newstarget.com/019189.html), prisoners have been experimented on with everything from malaria and hepatitis to cancer and cholera. Cases of performing vivisections on live prisoners have even been reported.

Ernest D. Prentice, chair of the Institute of Medicine’s advisory board, says the current regulations “were written in an era of protectionism — that taking part in research was bad and (prisoners) needed to be protected. We don’t have that same view anymore.”

Temple University professor Allen M. Hornblum, author of “Acres of Skin,” which details the experiments performed at Holmesburg, says prisoners should not be used in medical experiments, and that the new report “is like putting (on) the Good Housekeeping seal, saying it’s now okay to do some of these things.”

However, the Institute’s committee members say past mistakes in medical experimentation must be learned from and moved past. The report also says that with the prison population booming, prisoners are in need of new medicines that could help treat diseases from hepatitis to AIDS.

Pharmaceutical companies typically recruit poor people for medical experiments, but with the number of drug experiments on the rise, and with fewer people willing to voluntarily participate in such trials, opening the prison population to medical experimentation would allow drug companies access to a huge population of low-cost guinea pigs.

Alex Jones

2006-07-14T21:11:00.000-07:00