When was the last time you heard someone mention Katrina?

See also: The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. [Their latest tv ad breaks my bleeding heart. That dog that looks up to with one eye poked out? Fucking kills me.]

Labels: animal cruelty, animal rights, compassion for animals

Evolutionary Cognitive Neuroscience
Dual Use Discipline for Understanding & Managing Complexity and Altering Warfare
by John Stanton

John Stanton is a Virginia based writer specializing in political and national security affairs.

Excerpts:

Complexity (the number of ways-hows-and-whys a system can act) may become an anachronism as novel research demystifies consciousness reducing human complexity to a deterministic system. Biomachines that bypass time consuming conscious activity ultimately may be fielded by the DOD.

In the United States, the ongoing obsession with national security and the enormous funding necessary to soothe a national psyche of fear and war is a key driver for enhancing security thereby eliminating the uncertainty of daily living. ECN may generate predictive and diagnostic biotechnologies to reduce tension. Such a development could eliminate much uncertainty and concomitant drama in human affairs by providing leaders with assets to manage the complexities in brain-behavior relationships. To get there though, reliable data on human beings, as they function as interconnected consumers, warfighters, enemies, refugees, diplomats, criminals, and citizens of their respective nations will need to be collected and assessed. The entire effort depends on the application of general Evolution and Evolutionary Psychology.

Neuroweapons may be an outcome of ECN R&D programs. It is likely that DOD may classify as Top Secret programs that seek to turn the speed of thought into a weapon, or programs that blur the line between human and machine. With classification, no one may ever know of the existence of such programs. Some in the scientific community have suggested that, beyond the development of neuro-biomachinery and genetic manipulation, non-traceable neuroweapons with viral genetic payloads may be used to disrupt the brain and central nervous system. As a result, the creation of neurosecurity advisory and/or ethics boards may be required to keep R&D and testing efforts in bounds.

Biomachines that bypass time consuming conscious activity ultimately may be fielded by the DOD.

Creepy, indeed eh?

Sure, this may actually be our evolutionary outcome. But I'll be damned if the Deparment of Defence is spearheading it!


Along the same lines:

Harnessing humans for subconscious computing

Technology Review has an article on using humans as part of a digital face recognition system.

Uniquely, you don't have to take part in any deliberate recognition, the system uses electrical readings to automatically measure the response of the brain - even if you're not aware of it.

Finally, Strategic Personality Simulation: personality simulation systems ?
For Personality Profiling and Simulation?

Welcome to Huntingdonian culture and total war. All war, all the time. It's a pkd world now, where you are the battleground.

Obama would consider missile strikes on Iran

U.S. Senate candidate Barack Obama suggested Friday that the United States one day might have to launch surgical missile strikes into Iran and Pakistan to keep extremists from getting control of nuclear bombs.

****

Obama said the United States must first address Iran's attempt to gain nuclear capabilities by going before the United Nations Security Council and lobbying the international community to apply more pressure on Iran to cease nuclear activities. That pressure should come in the form of economic sanctions, he said.

But if those measures fall short, the United States should not rule out military strikes to destroy nuclear production sites in Iran, Obama said.

"The big question is going to be, if Iran is resistant to these pressures, including economic sanctions, which I hope will be imposed if they do not cooperate, at what point are we going to, if any, are we going to take military action?" Obama asked.

Given the continuing war in Iraq, the United States is not in a position to invade Iran, but missile strikes might be a viable option, he said. Obama conceded that such strikes might further strain relations between the U.S. and the Arab world.

"In light of the fact that we're now in Iraq, with all the problems in terms of perceptions about America that have been created, us launching some missile strikes into Iran is not the optimal position for us to be in," he said

From Fall, 2004 when bombing folks was a bit more popular among the numbnut populace.

Joe Bageant,nuff said.

EASILY lost, on page 425, in the mass of the CIA's notorious "Family Jewels" files is a short paragraph outlining "potentially embarrassing Agency activities". Agency's Strangeloves altered mind of a girl aged 4

And you paid to have it done.

inspired by this post and angry making vid at mefi.

Also along these lines, Deadly "wrong door" Paramilitary Police Raids in USA

Finally, as if these things were enough, Special Ops ready for missions on American soil?

About time eh? They have been using the well trained and highly paid officers of the FBI to carry out the trash for far too long. Now all those returning vets who distinguished themselves in Haditha can be rewarded with a stateside job where they can continue to hone their skills, and at the same time keep the FBI agents out of harms way from the scum sucking bastards who pay their wages. Uh, thats us...

How you guys liking the slow stroll to fascism?

Last month, Brian Kelly of Carlisle, Pa., was riding with a friend when the car he was in was pulled over by a local police officer. Kelly, an amateur videographer, had his video camera with him and decided to record the traffic stop.

The officer who pulled over the vehicle saw the camera and demanded Kelly hand it over. Kelly obliged. Soon after, six more police officers pulled up. They arrested Kelly on charges of violating an outdated Pennsylvania wiretapping law that forbids audio recordings of any second party without their permission. In this case, that party was the police officer.

Kelly was charged with a felony, spent 26 hours in jail, and faces up to 10 years in prison. All for merely recording a police officer, a public servant, while he was on the job.

There's been a rash of arrests of late for videotaping police, and it's a disturbing development. Last year, Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly threatened Internet activist Mary T. Jean with arrest and felony prosecution for posting a video to her website of state police swarming a home and arresting a man without a warrant.

See UnReal ID for more information and to fax your senators.

Today (June 28) is the anniversary (1969) of the Stonewall Riots in New York City. Wikipedia states: Details about how the riot started vary from story to story. According to one account, a transgender woman named Sylvia Rivera threw a bottle at a police officer after being prodded by his nightstick. Another account states that a lesbian being brought to a patrol car through the crowd put up a struggle that encouraged the crowd to do the same . Whatever the case may be, mêlée broke out across the crowd—which quickly overtook the police. Stunned, the police retreated into the bar. [...] Throughout the night the police singled out many transgender people and gender nonconformists, including butch women and effeminate men, among others, often beating them. On the first night alone 13 people were arrested and four police officers, as well as an undetermined number of protesters, were injured. It is known, however, that at least two rioters were severely beaten by the police. Bottles and stones were thrown by protesters who chanted “Gay Power!” The crowd, estimated at over 2000, fought with over 400 police officers. The police sent additional forces in the form of the Tactical Patrol Force, a riot-control squad originally trained to counter Vietnam War protesters. The tactical patrol force arrived to disperse the crowd. However, they failed to break up the crowd, who sprayed them with rocks and other projectiles. [...] Eventually the scene quieted, but the crowd returned again the next night. While less violent than the first night, the crowd had the same energy as it had on the previous night. Skirmishes between the rioters and the police ensued until approximately 4:00 a.m.. The third day of rioting fell five days after the raid on the Stonewall Inn. On that Wednesday, 1,000 people congregated at the bar and again caused extensive property damage. [...] The forces that were simmering before the riots were now no longer beneath the surface. The community created by the homophile organizations of the previous two decades had created the perfect environment for the creation of the Gay Liberation Movement. By the end of July the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) was formed in New York and by the end of the year the GLF could be seen in cities and universities around the country. Similar organizations were soon created around the world [...]. The following year, in commemoration of the Stonewall Riots, the GLF organized a march from Greenwich Village to Central Park. Between 5,000 and 10,000 men and women attended the march. Many gay pride celebrations choose the month of June to hold their parades and events to celebrate “The Hairpin Drop Heard Round the World."

Thank you to all those who have come before us who made the world a better place. More specifically, thank you to those who have moved homosexuality from 'sin' to 'mental illness' to 'lifestyle' to whatever it may be today and tomorrow. Some of those who came before us worked quietly, some publicly; some worked civilly, and some used physical force. I think some of each ended up having their place in making the world as it is today. And I think our work is not yet done.

Where work is needed most is not same-sex marriage, nor renters rights, nor lessening job discrimination, or passing 'hate speech' laws. These just aren't the most important or terrible things happening to homosexuals right now. The most important and terrible thing happening right now is that homosexual men (and sometimes women) are being put to death in Islamic countries. Being stoned to death really and truly is worse than being called a faggot, no matter what cultural relativists may have to say on the subject. All things are related but all things are not equally related. Efforts to make this a better world should continue in many areas, but "people being killed to appease an invisible monster that lives in the sky" trumps what I think much of the West pays attention to on Pride day. That noise about respecting diversity and honoring ancient traditions and the hands-off policy religion gets? That's all over now. When people stop dying, we can play nice-nice with theists again.

And so on this Pride day for 2007, I will do two things. I will give thanks where thanks is due. And I will suggest that more efforts need to be made toward saving homosexuals in Islamic counties. Homosexuality is still at the 'sin' stage in Islamic countries. Not in the all-but secular way the West talks about sin, but in the way religions have talked about sin throughout history: as a kind of germ that physically exists and must be physically destroyed.

Amnesty International has done some work on this topic. The International Society for Islamic Secularization has done some work on this topic as well. Jack Malebranche's book Androphilia isn't specifically on this topic, but is in agreement on this topic. What work will you do today?

Labels: superstition, theocracy

Within the architecture of denial and duplicity: The Democratic Party and the infantile omnipotence of the ruling class

By Phil Rockstroh
Online Journal Contributing Writer

Jun 26, 2007, 01:28

Why did the Democratic Congress betray the voting public?

Betrayal is often a consequence of wishful thinking. It's the world's way of delivering the life lesson that it's time to shed the vanity of one's innocence and grow-the-hell-up. Apropos, here's lesson number one for political innocents: Power serves the perpetuation of power. In an era of runaway corporate capitalism, the political elite exist to serve the corporate elite. It's that simple.

Why do the elites lie so brazenly? Ironically, because they believe they're entitled to by virtue of their superior sense of morality. How did they come to this arrogant conclusion? Because they think they're better than us. If they believe in anything at all, it is this: They view us as a reeking collection of wretched, baseborn rabble, who are, on an individual level, a few billion neurons short of being governable by honest means.

Yes, you read that correctly: They believe they're better than you. When they lie and flout the rules and assert that the rule of law doesn't apply to them or refuse to impeach fellow members of their political and social class who break the law, it is because they have convinced themselves it is best for society as a whole.

The way I see it -- there are a lot of things you can and should do. And to embrace as many of them as possible really can't hurt. I mean, maybe you can say, "Hey, we shouldn't pass a law because these band-aids – these reforms – because they are going to make the system more livable, more tolerable. And we should actually do things to increase suffering in order to foment a revolution." A lot of people take that view. But I don't see it that way. I think anything that reduces suffering shouldn't be ignored.

Features my favorite female playing tuba in a jazz rock band.

Labels: favorite female playing tuba in a jazz rock band, music

We aren't angry that you criticize the dems. We're annoyed when you don't offer constructive alternatives to the dems. That seems counter productive. For example, you might say, "The dumbocrats sux! So...vote green."

And then I would say "Underfunded Green campaigns go no place fast."

And then you would say, "I've figured out a way for a third party candidate to win without money!"

And then I would say "WTF! Don't keep it to yourself tell us how!" or something.

So anyway, I was reading Common Dreams (with comments now by the way) and here's a version of the Uncle Scam argument but notice he gives you some proposals. That's all we're asking for. Give options a chance. Don't sour me on the dems so that republican nominee Pat Robertson wins in a landslide....

Labels: Options Please Uncle Scam

John Perkins is interviewed in Tuesday's Democracy Now.

Tuesday, June 5th, 2007
John Perkins on "The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Global Corruption"

Listen to Segment || Download Show mp3
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AMY GOODMAN: Talk about Congo.

JOHN PERKINS: Oh, boy. The whole story of Africa and the Congo is such a devastating and sad one. And it’s the hidden story, really. We in the United States don’t even talk about Africa. We don’t think about Africa. You know, Congo has something called coltan, which probably most of your listeners may not have even heard of, but every cell phone and laptop computer has coltan in it. And several million people in the last few years in the Congo have been killed over coltan, because you and I and all of us in the G8 countries demand low -- or at least we want to see our computers inexpensive and our cell phones inexpensive. And, of course, the companies that make these sell them on that basis, that “Oh, here, mine’s $200 less than the other company.” But in order to do that, these people in the Congo are being enslaved. The miners, the people mining coltan, they’re being killed. There’s these vast wars going on to provide us with cheap coltan.

And I have to say, you know, if we want to live in a safe world, we need to be -- we must be willing, and, in fact, we must demand that we pay higher prices for things like laptop computers and cell phones and that a good share of that money go back to the people who are mining the coltan. And that’s true of oil. It’s true of so many resources that we are not paying the true cost, and there’s millions of people around the world suffering from that. Roughly 50,000 people die every single day from hunger or hunger-related diseases and curable diseases that they don’t get the medicines for, simply because they’re part of a system that demands that they put in long hours, and they get very, very low pay, so we can have things cheaper in this country. And the Congo is an incredibly potent example of that.

Rest of the transcript here. He can also be seen talking at the bestest music channel that I've ever created here and above.

Labels: amy goodman, economic hitman, john perkins

Labels: counter revolutionary tactics, silly black republicans

An okay song that turns into a world class tune when the sax solo kicks in.

Labels: music, war

The Situationists, May 1968

In 1955, 560,000 people in the United States were being treated for mental health problems in state hospitals. Adjusting for population increase, we would expect there to be about 930,000 individuals being treated in state hospitals today. This is not the case. Fewer than 55,000 people are being treated in such facilities.

Where then are the hundreds of thousands of people with mental health issues? Most are imprisoned by, or otherwise caught up in, the legal system. Between 170,000 and 300,000 mentally ill individuals suffer today in jails and prisons. Another 500,000 are on court-ordered probation.

Since 1960, more than 90 percent of state psychiatric hospital beds have been eliminated. Mental health professionals and sociologists call this "deinstitutionalization." As a result of this phenomenon, many mentally ill patients who need hospital care are in prison instead.

Here's your opposition/ progressive party...

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) was told by other Democrats to withdraw an amendment that would have required House members to lease hybrids and other alternative-fuel vehicles if they wanted taxpayers to foot the bill.

please stop bashing the democrats... ;-(

Confidence in Congress has hit an all-time low. A mere 14 percent of Americans tell Gallup pollsters that they have a great deal or quite a lot of faith in the US House and Senate.Since Gallup began using the current measure of confidence in Congress in 1973, the worst rating had been the 18 percent figure accorded it in the early years of the 1990s, when the House was being rocked by scandals that would eventually see a number of top Democratic lawmakers rejected in their own party primaries and the “Republican revolution” vote of 1994.

<further into the article>

No one expected Democrats to fix everything that was wrong with the United States, let alone the world.

But there was an expectation of progress–especially on the central issue of the moment: ending the war in Iraq.

That expectation, a basic and legitimate one in a functioning democracy, has not been met. And it has created a sense of frustration, and in many cases anger, on the part of Americans who really did want the Democrats to succeed–not in gaining partisan advantage but in the far more essential work of checking and balancing the Bush administration. Some leading voices of opposition, including anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, have simply given up on the Democratic Party. And no one should underestimate that, even if Sheehan says she no longer wants to be the face of the anti-war movement, Sheehan’s denunciation of the Democrats for failing to seriously challenge Bush’s management of the war is an honest and clear expression of the sense of betrayal that a great many Americans who voted Democratic in 2006 are now feeling

.

Hillary booed for her stance on the Iraq war she voted for:

Democratic Presidential hopeful Senator Hillary Clinton was booed at a conference on Wednesday for blaming failure in Iraq on the Iraqi government.

Some members of the audience at a conference of a liberal activist group called ‘Take Back America’ were dissatisfied with Hillary's remarks on Iraq.

They were also unhappy with the Senator asking for more US troops to be sent to Iraq. The 'Take Back America' group had also protested Hillary's stand on Iraq in 2006.

Clinton had been doing well with the crowd, slamming President Bush in unusually harsh terms for a full 23 minutes before treading into the political danger zone of Iraq.

"The American military has succeeded," Clinton said, before she triggered jeers and competing cheers from supporters by adding, "It is the Iraqi government which has failed to make the tough decisions."

She also said, “"I love coming here every year. I see the signs - 'Lead us out of Iraq now.' That is what we are trying to do.” But the crowd booed her again.

Obviously there were some actual thinkers in the crowd- considering her actions, not her rhetoric.

Have you noticed the political arm of the elite is as far removed from reality on one side of the uniparty aisle as the other?

Take exception to the uniparty label? think the Democrats are our only hope?

Clinton and Obama Raiding Donors Who Backed Bush

As senators Clinton and Obama crisscross the country seeking the Democratic presidential nomination and sharply criticizing President Bush, they have been collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars from donors who funded one or both of Mr. Bush's campaigns for the White House.

In the first quarter of this year, more than 150 former Bush donors pitched in for Mrs. Clinton's campaign, while a similar number anted up for Mr. Obama, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission data performed for The New York Sun by the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics.

Even NeoCons love Obama:

...a surprising new name joined the chorus of praise for the antiwar Obama – that of Robert Kagan, a leading neoconservative and co-founder of the Project for the New American Century in the late 1990s, which called for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Kagan is an informal foreign policy adviser to the Republican senator John McCain, who remains the favoured neoconservative choice for the White House because of his backing for the troops in Iraq.

But in an article in the Washington Post, Kagan wrote approvingly that a keynote speech by

Obama at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs was “pure John Kennedy”, a neocon hero of the cold war.

In his speech, Obama called for an increase in defence spending and an extra 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 marines to “stay on the offense” against terrorism and ensure America had “the strongest, best-equipped military in the world”. He talked about building democracies, stopping weapons of mass destruction and the right to take unilateral action to protect US “vital interests” if necessary, as well as the importance of building alliances.

Mr Bush has the same stands.

Let Robert Kagan breathelessly inform you:

He wants the American military to "stay on the offense, from Djibouti to Kandahar," and he believes that "the ability to put boots on the ground will be critical in eliminating the shadowy terrorist networks we now face." He wants to ensure that we continue to have "the strongest, best-equipped military in the world."

Obama never once says that military force should be used only as a last resort. Rather, he insists that "no president should ever hesitate to use force -- unilaterally if necessary," not only "to protect ourselves . . . when we are attacked," but also to protect "our vital interests" when they are "imminently threatened." That's known as preemptive military action. It won't reassure those around the world who worry about letting an American president decide what a "vital interest" is and when it is "imminently threatened."

Read the full article. See what the Obama component of "The opposition" thinks.

Bases in Iraq forever? You bet- our hands on the gas pump- well Halliburtons, the oil companies, etc; fascism is a merging of corporate and state power, so yup, our hands.

Look:

Democrat-Led House Lays Legal Groundwork for Korea-Style Bases in Iraq

It seems the Democratic-led House of Representatives Thursday approved an amendment that, contrary to the leadership’s intention, lays the legal groundwork for a protracted – if not “permanent” — U.S. military presence in Iraq.

During debate on the 2008 Foreign Operations bill, the House approved by voice vote an amendment submitted by Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King that inserted the word “permanent” before “basing rights agreement” in the following text:

“SEC. 685. None of the funds made available in this Act may be used by the Government of the United States to enter into a basing rights agreement between the United States and Iraq.”

As King has pointed out in the past, the United States has never had a “permanent” basing rights agreement with any country where, like Germany, Japan, and South Korea, Washington has based troops for decades. So the amendment, if it becomes law, means that the administration may now use funds to enter into any kind of basing rights agreement with the government of Iraq that it wishes – be it five, ten, 25 or even 50 years. Jim Fine of the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) explained the effect of the amendment in a memo last month after King almost succeeded in getting the same amendment attached to the defense authorization bill.

National Security Archive Update, June 21, 2007

THE CIA's FAMILY JEWELS

Agency Violated Charter for 25 Years,
Wiretapped Journalists and Dissidents

CIA Announces Declassification of 1970s "Skeletons" File,
Archive Posts Justice Department Summary from 1975,
With White House Memcons on Damage Control

Washington DC, June 21, 2007 - The Central Intelligence Agency violated its charter for 25 years until revelations of illegal wiretapping, domestic surveillance, assassination plots, and human experimentation led to official investigations and reforms in the 1970s, according to declassified documents posted today on the Web by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden announced today that the Agency is declassifying the full 693-page file amassed on CIA's illegal activities by order of then-CIA director James Schlesinger in 1973--the so-called "family jewels." Only a few dozen heavily-censored pages of this file have previously been declassified, although multiple Freedom of Information Act requests have been filed over the years for the documents. Gen. Hayden called today's release "a glimpse of a very different time and a very different Agency."

Hayden also announced the declassification of some 11,000 pages of the so-called CAESAR, POLO and ESAU papers--hard-target analyses of Soviet and Chinese leadership internal politics and Sino-Soviet relations from 1953-1973, a collection of intelligence on Warsaw Pact military programs, and hundreds of pages on the A-12 spy plane.

"This is the first voluntary CIA declassification of controversial material since George Tenet in 1998 reneged on the 1990s promises of greater openness at the Agency," commented Thomas Blanton, the Archive's director.

THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE is an independent non-governmental
research institute and library located at The George Washington University in
Washington, D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified
documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). A
tax-exempt public charity, the Archive receives no U.S. government funding; its
budget is supported by publication royalties and donations from
foundations and individuals.

Osama bin Laden may have chartered a plane that carried his family members and Saudi nationals out of the United States after the September 11, 2001 attacks, said FBI documents released Wednesday.

The papers, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, were made public by Judicial Watch, a Washington-based group that investigates government corruption.

One FBI document referred to a Ryan Air 727 airplane that departed Los Angeles International Airport on September 19, 2001, and was said to have carried Saudi nationals out of the United States.

"The plane was chartered either by the Saudi Arabian royal family or Osama bin Laden," according to the document, which was among 224 pages posted online.

The flight made stops in Orlando, Florida; Washington, DC; and Boston, Massachusetts and eventually left its passengers in Paris the following day.

In all, the documents detail six flights between September 14 and September 24 that evacuated Saudi nationals and bin Laden family members, Judicial Watch said in a statement.

"Incredibly, not a single Saudi national nor any of the bin Laden family members possessed any information of investigative value," Judicial Watch said.

"These documents contain numerous errors and inconsistencies which call to question the thoroughness of the FBI's investigation of the Saudi flights.

"For example, on one document, the FBI claims to have interviewed 20 of 23 passengers on the Ryan International Airlines flight ... on another document the FBI claims to have interviewed 15 to 22 passengers on the same flight."

more

Gov. Eliot Spitzer's plan to limit government action affecting religious practice has won support from some religious leaders [...] The Democratic governor said his bill would ensure that state and local laws and regulations, "wherever possible and consistent with the state's important interests, accommodate religious beliefs and practices."

[...] The New York State Catholic Conference wants the legislation to go further and include exemptions for people of faith to follow their conscience. "The bill also needs to ensure protecting Catholic service providers, such as Catholic hospitals, from having to perform abortions or Catholic institutions from having to give contraceptives to employees," said Dennis Poust, director of communication for the conference.

[Article continues at link. I am very much in favor of Catholic service providers, such as Catholic hospitals, to not be forced to perform abortions or give contraceptives to employees. They are private, voluntary organizations and should be free to do as they please. But to be private enough to do as they please and to simultaneously public enough to demand non-profit tax-free status is unacceptable. You get one or the other, not both.]

Labels: superstition, theocracy

The sprawling $43 billion homeland security department is known for being in charge of America's color-coded terrorist-threat alarm system, a sham that obscures HSD's real mission:

to serve as a giant federal cookie jar for corporate America.

Titled "Taking Charge of Federal Personnel," it showed the Bushites how to storm into office and seize control of every agency. It stressed that they "must make appointment decisions based on loyalty first and expertise second," that "the whole governmental apparatus must be
managed from this perspective," and that they should use "contracting out as a management strategy."

If you think the DEMS are not FEEDING AT THE CORPORATE TROUGH... read, think again.

Sadly, our Govt. is being DIS-MANTELED from the inside.

Of course, this ongoing assault is not even being talked about by the so called "progressive" blogs, for example dkos etc...

These tactics are complete in they're profundities of systematic war crimes.

Neil Young's site Living with War Today offers up, at last count, 1915 current protest songs.

As you take in your daily dose of shocking, scary and unsettling information that is so much of the current portrait of todays overculture news listen to these musical manifestations of hope.

When folks stop calling out corporate deathculture then hope seems about gone.

Until that happens it's just part of the bumpy ride to a world of peace, justice, dignity, decency- you know, Humanity, writ large.

Long time comin'...

they can and will curb your voice in specific instances, through intimidation and litigation; in any and all instances if they possibly can. We (bloggers and the free internet) are the last bastion of freedom and democracy...and you know they can't let that stand.

Why is it, --and when did it come about that--, all these legislation titles (example:The Free Flow of Information Act) have become foremost and always the opposite of their their intended nomenclature? Of course this is not a new phenomena, but it has become extreme under the Clinton/Bush era axis.

The Committee of Oversight and Government Reform has released its initial findings after investigating the use of parallel email accounts by officials in Bush's White House.

According to the Presidential Records Act, White House officials are obliged to keep and preserve all communications which they send on official government business. But some 88 Bush officials ignored this law. Instead, they used addresses supplied by the Republican National Committee (RNC), which raises funds and promotes the Republican Party.

It also appears that White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales knew officials were using these accounts for official communications but did nothing about it.

The committee first learnt of the parallel email system when investigating which White House officials had contact with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Karl Rove's PA, Susan Ralston, sent an email to Abramoff's associate Todd Boulanger, which said: "I now have an RNC BlackBerry which you can use to email me at any time. No security issues like my WH email."

In March 2007, the White House said only a handful of officials had such accounts. That number has now risen to 88.

Many of these emails have been destroyed. The RNC has no emails for 51 of the accounts, although it has saved over 140,000 emails sent or received by Karl Rove. But there are big gaps - only 130 emails to or from Rove exist from the first Presidential term - the first Rove email the RNC preserved dates from November 2003. For many other officials there are no emails dated before autumn 2006.

In total the RNC has preserved 674,367 emails of which 36 per cent were sent or received from .gov addresses - suggesting the mails related to government business.

The committee also dismissed the claim that officials acted out of ignorance. White House Counsel issued "clear written policies" in February 2001 that White House staff should only use the official White House email system for official communications.

88 eh?


Also see, Those RNC email accounts...

Hersh's new article has brought the topic up again, so it might be worth a refresher -- particularly if you or anyone else still clings to the "bad apples" thesis.

Bernhard over at MOA has an scary but must read post...

New intelligence reveals China is covertly supplying large quantities of small arms and weapons to insurgents in Iraq and the Taliban militia in Afghanistan, through Iran.
...
Some arms were sent by aircraft directly from Chinese factories to Afghanistan and included large-caliber sniper rifles, millions of rounds of ammunition, rocket-propelled grenades and components for roadside bombs, as well as other small arms.

The Washington Times reported June 5 that Chinese-made HN-5 anti-aircraft missiles were being used by the Taliban.

According to the officials, the Iranians, in buying the arms, asked Chinese state-run suppliers to expedite the transfers and to remove serial numbers to prevent tracing their origin. China, for its part, offered to transport the weapons in order to prevent the weapons from being interdicted.

NEW PORT RICHEY, Fla. -- A 24-year-old woman fatally stabbed her 2-year-old son and cut herself, telling officers later that she was "trying to kill the law of non-contradiction," authorities said. Police in the Gulf Coast community northwest of Tampa said Jessica Warren was in the hospital Friday with non-life-threatening cuts on her arms after Thursday evening's incident.

When Warren is medically stable, she will be charged with murder in the death of her son, Jeremiah Oshinkanlu, who turned 2 last month, police said. It was initially reported that the child was 3 years old. Officers were called to the family's home at about 5:30 p.m. Thursday after Jeremiah's uncle stopped by to check on them and found the boy dead in a pool of blood and Warren conscious but bleeding, police said. Neighbors said they thought Warren had been living in the house less than a year.

[Just one more of the thousands of atheist-caused murders that occur every year around the world.]

Labels: superstition

This is just the beginning...

"Bradley J. Schlozman is systematically attempting to purge all Civil Rights appellate attorneys hired under Democratic administrations,"the lawyer wrote, saying that he appeared to be "targeting minority women lawyers" in the section and was replacing them with "white, invariably Christian men." The lawyer also alleged that "Schlozman told one recently hired attorney that it was his intention to drive these attorneys out of the Appellate Section so that he could replace them with 'good Americans.'"

Don't let these feel good articles fool you. For every Christian ideologue they uncover there are three more to take their places. The federalist society has infiltrated and infested our whole legal system.

I know the conservative myth that PBS is some kind of hotbed for liberalism isn’t true, but to see the network go out of its way to prove its conservative bona fides is disconcerting.

Two months ago, PBS gave Richard Perle a whole hour to repeat discredited neocon arguments about Iraq and the Middle East, including the notion that Saddam Hussein had a working relationship with al Qaeda, and the bizarre argument that Osama bin Laden’s “network has been destroyed.” As Media Matters noted, Perle’s PBS special “made a series of assertions about the Iraq war that have already been shown to be false.”

It appears that PBS is going down a similar road this month, with a special on religious liberty called “Wall of Separation.”

The “wall of separation” is a metaphor deeply embedded in the American consciousness. Most Americans assume that the First Amendment prevents the mixing of politics and religion. The freedom of religion clauses protect individuals from the entanglement of religion with government and secure the right to freely exercise religious faith. America is a religiously pluralistic culture guided by a secular government.

But what would surprise most Americans is the discovery that this is not what the Founding Fathers intended when they established the nation and wrote the Constitution and Bill of Rights. In fact, they had a radically different interpretation of the role of religion in state and federal governments.

Uh oh. This reads a bit like a pamphlet from Focus on the Family. In fact, “Wall of Separation” is a production of Boulevard Pictures, which explained on its website that this PBS special will explain that the Founding Fathers had “a radically different definition” of religious liberty than what we have today, and that “the modern understanding of the role of religion in the public square is exactly the opposite of what the Founders intended.”

If this is starting to sound to you like religious right claptrap, we’re on the same page.

more...

Also see this bizarre interview:
The pentagon's new map.

TB: Remember, the key thing is that oil has to flow, investment has to flow, people have to flow, and security has to flow. Again, to emphasize that theme, war falls within that context of everything else. There are the four great flows, so to speak, that define globalization's ability to expand: They are the flow of energy, the flow of people, the flow of investment, and the flow of security. Without security, energy won't move, people won't move, money won't move. So the notion that if America pulls back its military from the world, this will somehow lead to less conflict and more stability is wrong.

Security that American military strength provides is as important as any of those other flows. If you remove that security, you will feed the disruption of the flow of people, investment, and energy. Walls will go up and globalization can be killed. That is one thing that the American public does not understand. Our export of security is one thing -- it does not mean exporting arms. It means paying attention to mass violence around the world. The Department of Defense is the world's largest consulting force. It goes to where the "client," so to speak, lives. The American public only wants to hear about the exit strategy. But "the boys" are not coming home until we make globalization truly global. People don't want to hear about that long-term effort.

here's the money quote

TB: What we need to do with the globalization map, so to speak, is to identify the big sources of violence, position ourselves around them, and shrink them over time. We are the only ones who can go somewhere and do things and help. Through our power, military and economic, we can establish stability. We are not interested in empire. When we export security to places that lack it, we do not seek to extend our rule.

yowza!


“The Defense Department budget last year was three-quarters of a trillion dollars. I guarantee you that when war becomes that profitable, there will be more of it.”

—Chalmers Johnson, 2005

Sibel Edmonds and Henry Waxman's Silence

"Henry Waxman knows very well who Sibel Edmonds is; he can't plead ignorance. He has heard her testimony behind closed doors... But despite the shock and outrage that Waxman apparently expressed when he heard the full classified version of Edmonds' allegations, his answer to the former translator and her grassroots supporters has been silence. Absolute silence. "

For Five friggin years...Sibel Edmonds has begged for hearings. In this interview with Armenian Weekly, Sibel Edmonds asks you to call Henry Waxman and demand hearings into her case, just as he has promised for 5 years.

Here's Part 1: Sibel Edmonds wants hearings Pt 1

Bonus: Lest ye forget: "little-noticed provision" to criminalize protesters under Patriot Act as "disruptors" does this remind anybody else of Stalins, Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code)

Coming, as he does, from Fox News, Tony Snow is obviously a deeply cynical fellow, but this takes some beating: Asked to comment Wednesday on the bloodbath in Gaza, he answered: "Ultimately, the Palestinians are going to have to sort out their politics and figure out which pathway they want to pursue — the pathway toward two states living peaceably side-by-side, or whether this sort of chaos is going to become a problem."

Everyone following the conflict in Gaza knows full well that the reason for the violence is not that Palestinians have not "sorted out their politics" — they’ve made their political preferences abundantly clear in democratic elections, and later in a power-sharing agreement brokered by the Saudis. The problem is that the U.S. and the corrupt and self-serving warlords of Fatah did not accept either the election result or the unity government, and have conspired actively ever since to reverse both by all available means, including starving the Palestinian economy of funds, refusing to hand over power over the Palestinian Authority to the elected government, and arming and training Fatah loyalists to militarily restore their party’s power. Unfortunately, after three days of some of the most savage fighting ever seen in Gaza, that strategy now lies in tatters. Fatah is, quite simply, no longer a credible fighting force in Gaza, where it has long been in decline as a credible political force.

Labels: coups, Israel/Palestine

The Attorney General supposedly had his wings clipped by Congress on June 4th when they voted to rescind the authority he had been (quite sneakily) granted under the Patriot Act reauthorization - the authority to appoint "interim" US Attorneys.

After the abuse of this power was ferreted out; after Gonzalez and his corrupt crew pranced up to the Hill to sing their "I dunno's"; Diane Feinstein introduced a bill to solve the immediate problem by rescinding that authority. In a fit of wildy unexpected rationaity, the White House said they'd sign Feinstein's bill, and on June 4th, the bill landed on George W. Bush's desk.

He hasn't signed it yet.

Today Gonzalez made another interim appointment.

As this post shows, they're not pussies, they are complicit.

We all know who Mikey Weinstein is. The Jewish guy who stands between us & Theocracy, fighting the takeover of the military by the Theocrats. Even those of us who thought we knew how bad it was don't have a clue how dire it is. This is Essential Reading:

We currently have 737 U.S. military installations that the Pentagon acknowledges. It’s actually closer to a thousand military installations scattered around the globe -- in 132 countries. On every one of those military installations, we have something called the Officers' Christian Fellowship, for the officers, and for the enlisted folks, the Christian Military Fellowship.

They have a three-part goal that they are completely unabashed about –- it’s right on their website -– a goal they view as much higher than following the oath they have sworn, to support, defend, protect and preserve the Constitution. Their goals are, A, they want to see a spiritually transformed U.S. military; B, with ambassadors for Christ in uniform; and C, empowered by the Holy Spirit.

How does this manifest itself? It’s everywhere. It’s like gravity. To quote a senior official at West Point who told me the other day that they’re terrified to come forward, it’s like radio and TV waves. It bathes everything.

...

Clearly, this could not happen without approval from the hierarchy in the Pentagon.

Michael L. Weinstein: Actually, it’s happening top-down, I think. And it’s been going on for quite awhile. We think it started in 1972 when the draft ended.

The theory for having a draft was that we were pulling from what we now call blue and red states, conscripting people into the military. Of course, a lot of them were pissed off coming in, and when you’re pissed off, even a spoonful of sugar doesn’t make the Jesus go down. But since we ended the draft, going to the full volunteer force in 1972, now we’re pulling mostly from what we call red states, where there’s a lot of this blending of a virulent form of dominionist Christianity –- essentially predatory Christianity -– with patriotism.

...

Do you know that in this country in 1970, we only had ten mega-Evangelical churches, meaning those with 2,000 or more members? But after 9/11, a new mega-Evangelical church has opened up in our country every 48 hours.

...

...

Michael L. Weinstein: Exactly. This is not a Christian-Jewish issue at all. This is a dominionist Christian versus the Constitution issue.

We have a social contract in our society. In America, if you’re angry at your neighbor next door, you’re not allowed to pick up your fellow citizen and crush their head in. We have laws that are all derived from our U.S. Constitution. When you look at the Bill of Rights, which was passed in December of 1791, it was not at all created for the convenience of the majority. Quite to the contrary –- it was created to prevent the tyranny of the majority over the minority –- an amazing social experiment in America.

Whenever a virulent form of any religion has engaged the machinery of the state -– and by that, I’m talking about the armed forces, where the sticks and stones are that break our bones -- we end up with oceans and oceans of blood. And it’s happening again now. Right now, we have the nuclear weapons.

The train has left the station many times over and over and over again, and it always goes to one town, Slaughterville. Average Americans, docile and supine, need to get off their asses and realize that this is happening. We have to take our country back, which means simply following our Constitution of 200 years -- and Constitutional U.S. Supreme Court case law.


Also see, Justice Dept. Reshapes Its Civil Rights Mission Civil Rights and DOJ: All About God Now.

According to the article, the changes are evident in a number of areas including:

* Intervening in federal court cases on behalf of religion-based groups like the Salvation Army that assert they have the right to discriminate in hiring in favor of people who share their beliefs even though they are running charitable programs with federal money.
* Sharply reducing the complex lawsuits that challenge voting plans that might dilute the strength of black voters. The department initiated only one such case through the early part of this year, compared with eight in a comparable period in the Clinton administration.

Sho wouldda been a bitch if JackAss Party presidential nominee were actually a Democrat. Never fear, if Obamination is yr. choice.

“The Iranian governments uses the billions of dollars it earns from its oil and gas industry to build its nuclear program and to fund terrorist groups that export its militaristic and radical ideology to Iraq and throughout the Middle East,” Obama said in a statement released by his office this week. “Pressuring companies to cut their financial ties with Iran is critical to ensuring that sanctions have their intended result.”


The bill, which was also introduced in the House of Representatives by Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Tom Lantos and Financial Services chairman Barney Frank, is part of a much broader national divestment campaign spearheaded by some of the most hawkish neo-conservative groups, notably Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy (CSP); the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, as well as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Please stop bashing the Democrats '-(

BERKELEY A Berkeley watchdog organization that tracks military spending said it uncovered a strange U.S. military proposal to create a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting.

Pentagon officials on Friday confirmed to CBS 5 that military leaders had considered, and then subsequently rejected, building the so-called "Gay Bomb."


Edward Hammond, of Berkeley's Sunshine Project, had used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a copy of the proposal from the Air Force's Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio.

As part of a military effort to develop non-lethal weapons, the proposal suggested, "One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior."

The documents show the Air Force lab asked for $7.5 million to develop such a chemical weapon.

more

Labels: documentaries, film, healthcare, michael moore, sicko

In the mainstream press — and even in much of the leftysphere — commentary about atheism routinely boils down to this:

1. Atheists question religion, which has caused many wars, acts of terrorism, and so on. Hmm, maybe they have a point…
2. Nah, using little or no documentation, I’ve decided that atheists are a bunch of angry freaks. Unlike the people who cling to ancient supernatural beliefs, atheists are unreasonable. Screw ‘em!

[...] Even though these authors tell us we’re right, we are still adjudged as wrong, and our writings are “stupid,” unlike those sensible stories where a guy houses every species of flora and fauna in the world for over a month on a homemade boat, or where a virgin’s resurrected son ascends bodily to heaven.

Labels: superstition

Washington, DC: A 27-year-old quadriplegic man sentenced to serve ten days in a Washington, DC jail on charges that he possessed a minor amount of marijuana died while in custody last week due to inadequate health care, including prison officials' failure to provide him with a ventilator.

The victim, Jonathan Magbie, had been paralyzed from the neck down since the age of four, was unable to breath on his own, and required nursing care 20 hours a day.

Magbie was sentenced to spend ten days in jail on September 20, 2004 after pleading guilty to one charge of marijuana possession. Though prosecutors had recommended probation, the judge in the case ordered Magbie to serve jail time - noting that the defendant had told pre-sentence investigators that he would continue using marijuana because it made him feel better.

NORML Executive Director Keith Stroup called Magbie's death "one of the most tragic results of marijuana prohibition I have witnessed in the 35-year history of the organization."

more

From the German Press Agency (dpa), via the tiny Backnanger Kreiszeitung in south Germany, via the excellent Andreas Hauss: US agents tested G8 security by "smuggling explosives".

NEWS TICKER

Americans tested G8 security by "smuggling explosives".

07.06.2007 10:36

Rostock (dpa)

According to information provided to dpa [Deutsche Presse-Agentur], US security forces tested security at the G8 Summit in Heiligendamm by transporting a small amount of explosive material.

Dpa reports that the plastic explosives were hidden in a suitcase, and were discovered by German officers when they stopped a car at a checkpoint. Although only a "very small amount" of material was involved, the alarm was raised following an X-ray [examination of the suitcase]. The persons in the car, who were dressed in civilian clothing, then disclosed their identity as US security agents.

The perfect alibi. Never to be questioned.

King Middle School, Berkeley, May 24, 2007. Surprising as it might seem in a contemporary political landscape where mocking religion is an established liberal pastime, and where Christianity and spirituality are most often associated with conservatism, it was Hitchens -- now loathed by the left for not toeing the party line over the Iraq War -- who attacked religion, while the neo-Socialist, anti-patriotic, radical Hedges volunteered for the seemingly topsy-turvy position of having to defend spirituality and the existence of God.

How did this strange state of affairs come to pass? In one word: Islam.

The left -- of which Hitchens was a part until recently -- has always been anti-religion. But now, they've become caught in a philosophical bind: how can they promote multiculturalism -- and by extension all non-Western cultures, such as fundamentalist Islam -- if they condemn religion in general? Neocon pundits have since 9/11 frequently accused the left of being in bed with Muslim extremists, a charge which the left has vehemently denied.

[Article continues at link.]

Labels: superstition

...or what would Jesus Jack Bauer do?

Labels: big oil, environmentalism, heroes

The recent revelations of Cheney's involvement in the Justice Department scandals are fueling calls for Cheney's (and Gonzales') impeachment.

It's getting hot fast, get ready for an attack on Iran some major terrorist event or both. Cornered animals are extremely dangerous.

Sun of God?


Author Acharya S and truthbeknown webpage

Thanks to Acharya S for the use of her material. Acharya S is a scholar classically educated in archaeology, history, mythology and languages. Acharya specializes in religion and mythology, critiquing and comparing them, and providing unique insights into their origins. Although born into a Christian (Congregationalist Protestant) family, Acharya does not subscribe to any particular religion, nor is she a hardcore "atheist." Acharya is the author of the controversial books The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold and Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled. She is also the author of the number 1 ranked article on the net on the "Origins of Christianity."" Among other less flattering things, Acharya S has been called "the ranking religious philosopher of our era" and "the voice of reason amidst global chaos." Her web site contains a wealth of information about: religion spirituality mythology archaeology history...

Tip O'dee hat to Discordian Research Technology.

For those of you somewhat vaguely aware of the DOJ (department of justice) shenanigans Monica Goodling under oath and w/immunity before the the House Judiciary Committee busted!

Outside the system (read: using the RNC email servers)or other non-White House server to try to keep the real incriminating stuff out of the reach of Congressional subpoenas. No wonder the white house is stalling on the missing e-mails, if this is any indication of things you find.




She was obeying "God's laws" @ expense of man's. ...or so she thought...and in the process, she broke both. Burn her!

So does anybody seriously believe an independent Palestinian state rooted in the West Bank is still "viable"?

Labels: Israel/Palestine

A package left at a clinic that performs abortions contained an explosive device that investigators said Thursday could have been deadly. The incident came just days after a national abortion group alerted providers around the country to an increased risk of violence. The device, found in a duffle bag Wednesday, "was configured in such a way to cause serious bodily injury or death," said David Carter, assistant chief of the Austin Police Department. [...] In the last 30 years, abortion clinics have been bombed 41 times according to law enforcement statistics compiled by the National Abortion Federation. Many of the crimes directed at abortion providers, including 93 attempted bombings and arson, were committed during times that abortion issues were prominent in the news, [Vicki] Saporta [president of the National Abortion Federation] said.

[Article continues at link. You know and you cannot doubt that the bomb was designed, manufactured and placed by Christians. Please, please point out to me where the 'not in our name' protests by Christians are occuring. They aren't, are they? It takes one waste of sperm to be Eric Rudolph. It takes many more "good Christians" to keep Rudolph hidden for five years. Are you a "good Christian" too?]

Labels: superstition

If common sense ruled the day, the Daily Kos Democrats, with Markos Moulitsas Zúniga leading the charge, would use their “netroot” power to yank the bottom out of the Democrat party and thus send a message to Rahm Emanuel and his ilk. But this will not happen. Daily Kos Dems are emotionally wedded to the party, never mind the self-destructive irrationality of this marriage.

Via WRH blog

John Trudell 'look at us'




Buffy sainte-marie 'My country tis of thy people you're dying'


Phil Ochs 'Cops of the World'

Blackwater mercenaries and others 'could' become a force used by despots; they are currently waging a kind of asymmetrical warfare in the middle east, and are not under the purview of congress or any other governmental entity. they will likely be babysitting bush when he retires to Paraguay, and watching out for dick when he sneaks off to dubai, guarding against the threat of kidnapping for war crimes trials. blackwater is this elite's version of the SA. the role they'll play upon return to the US is anyone's guess, but it isn't too difficult to imagine.

On December 23, 2002, The Clash frontman Joe Strummer unexpectedly died from a heart attack. His death did not just alert a certain generation to the alarmingly rapid passage of time. ("Fifty? How can a punk rocker be fifty?") It also marked the loss of a truly brilliant artist. Strummer was a musician who stripped rock back down to its raw essentials, then exploded its creative vocabulary with borrowings from around the world. He was also a lyricist who channeled the ragged anger of punk into a vast, incisive social critique.

The tributes paid to Strummer in recent weeks have not forgotten that The Clash were the most politically engaged and articulate musicians of their time, perhaps in the history of rock and roll. Other bands wrote protest songs. The Clash had a full-blown foreign policy. Touted early on as "the only band that matters," they very nearly lived up to the hype.

But Strummer could have been much more than that. He would have made one heck of law professor.

The range and depth of The Clash's commentary on law and justice humbles that of just about any other rock band. (It also happens to compare favorably to the written output of many tenured legal scholars.)

After all, how many popular musicians began songs by proclaiming "This is a public service announcement... with guitars!" or swearing "by Almighty God/To tell the whole truth/And nothing but the truth," as The Clash did in "Know Your Rights" and "Guns on the Roof"?

But before any sentimental record companies rush to endow a Joe Strummer Chair of Punk Jurisprudence, they should prepare themselves for a lively clash of values. For Strummer, "justice" and "the justice system" were fairly inimical concepts. As a result his views fell squarely into the "Critical Legal Studies" camp.

Given today's political climate, Strummer would have faced a tough road to tenure. But through his songs, we can at least get a glimpse of what the curriculum might have looked like.

This would be a great syllabus for anyone whom still believes in Jurisprudence, Law, and human rights. More at the above link.

Also, Once Illegal, Always Illegal

Let's hope that now, finally, someone will say 'nough is 'nough and shut this sham of legality and Guantanamo Bay down.

Labels: music, pinky show, radical cartooning

The Youtube version of this tune was suspended! I am inquiring. However, there's always Daily Motion. I have never seen a music video pulled from Daily Motion.

Labels: flora purim, music

PBS: The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis, by Bill Moyers

FOR TOO LONG the full length 90 min. version of this documentary has been unavailable. Only a 20 minute version/clips have been circulating. Here ... as of now this failure of access ends. Bill Moyers, the respected TV journalist, analyzes the threats to constitutional government posed by an illegitimate network [Read: Cheney and crew] operating from within the government but using secrecy to set itself up outside of the government / peoples oversight. All this back in 1987. This documentary gives a fascinating overview of what has actually happened in the last 50 years regarding the CIA and the Cold War (including Iran, Guatamala, Cuba, Vietnam and Chile). The foundation for the massive push towards greater secrecy in government going on today.

This is a truly eye opening documentary/report and has everything to do with today. Google has moved/removed it several times, PBS will not sale it to you, and it is damn near hard to find, so enjoy while it lasts.

Somebody needs to capture this in a torrent. And if you do, please let me know.

MIDDLETOWN, N.Y. (AP) _ A widely played surveillance video of a woman in a church pew warding off an attacker with her pen led to the arrest of a 44-year-old man, police said Friday.

Are confessions being videotaped in Catholic churches?

Labels: Art, photography

Remember the technology in the holywood movie Enemy of the State?

It's here with a vengence! the "Grim Meathook Future".

In God we trust. The rest we monitor; The only privacy left is inside of your head...For Now.



Es ist kein Verfolgungswahn - Sie sind wirklich hinter dir her (It's no persecution complex - They're really after you.)

With regards to the above vid:

Heads up you to the ipod/mac people...



I-Tunes hidden personal info.

Apple hides account info in DRM-free music, too

With great power comes great responsibility, and apparently with DRM-free music comes files embedded with identifying information. Such is the situation with Apple's new DRM-free music: songs sold without DRM still have a user's full name and account e-mail embedded in them, which means that dropping that new DRM-free song on your favorite P2P network could come back to bite you.

We started examining the files this morning and noticed our names and e-mail addresses in the files, and we've found corroboration of the find at TUAW, as well. But there's more to the story: Apple embeds your account information in all songs sold on the store, not just DRM-free songs. Previously it wasn't much of a big deal, since no one could imagine users sharing encrypted, DRMed content. But now that DRM-free music from Apple is on the loose, the hidden data is more significant since it could theoretically be used to trace shared tunes back to the original owner. It must also be kept in mind that this kind of information could be spoofed.

Concerned users could convert selections to MP3, but there will be a generational loss in quality resulting from the transcoding. We also have to wonder: who is buying DRM-free music with the plans of slapping it up on a P2P share, anyway? It's not like there aren't dozens of other ways to get access to music without paying for it.

What would Apple do with the info?
The big question, of course, is what might Apple do with this information? Because it can be spoofed, it's not exactly the best way to determine who is sharing music, and in any case, tracing a link back such as this would leave a copyright holder in a gray area. Embedded data or not, the mere presence of the data in a file found on a share is not an unassailable indicator of copyright infringement.

That said, it would be trivial for iTunes to report back to Apple, indicating that "Joe User" has M4As on this hard drive belonging to "Jane Userette," or even "two other users." This is not to say that Apple is going to get into the copyright enforcement business. What Apple and indeed the record labels want to watch closely is: will one user buy music for his five close friends? The entertainment industry is obsessed with the idea of "casual piracy," or the occasional sharing of content between friends. I wouldn't be surprised if some data was being analyzed in aggregate, although Apple's current privacy policy does not appear to allow for this. As with the dust-up over the mini-store, Apple should clarify what this embedded data is used for.

We've contacted Apple for a response but have not heard back from the company.

The famous documentary of the 2002 Venezuelan coup is now online. Timely.

While Bush publicly continued the one-China policy of his five White House predecessors, Wilkerson said, the Pentagon “neocons” took a different tack, quietly encouraging Taiwan’s pro-independence president, Chen Shui-bian.

“The Defense Department, with Feith, Cambone, Wolfowitz [and] Rumsfeld, was dispatching a person to Taiwan every week, essentially to tell the Taiwanese that the alliance was back on,” Wilkerson said, referring to pre-1970s military and diplomatic relations, “essentially to tell Chen Shui-bian, whose entire power in Taiwan rested on the independence movement, that independence was a good thing.”

Wilkerson said Powell would then dispatch his own envoy “right behind that guy, every time they sent somebody, to disabuse the entire Taiwanese national security apparatus of what they’d been told by the Defense Department.”
...
“They are dangerous men who will lie about almost anyone or anything,” Wilkerson angrily responded by e-mail, singling out Feith, DiRita, Cheney and Rumsfeld for scorn.

He called back-stage encouragement of the Taiwanese “even more serious” than the alleged manipulation of Iraq intelligence, because it could provoke China to attack the island, triggering a U.S. response and the world’s first nuclear shooting war.

The independence issue, agrees China experts Richard Bush and Michael O’Hanlon, is Beijing’s third rail—touch it and you die.

I find it's more fun to read and makes at least as much sense as "the"
"real" Bible. Some (Robert Anton Wilson) RAWfans at work here? WSB/RAW fans? Probably.

her own insights on the significance of the matter: Hayden, with the help of USA TODAY, was putting his best spin on the Agency’s devastating spy drain, citing “accomplishments” of his first year at the helm which included "some 'inefficiencies.'"

"The Corporate Takeover of U.S. Intelligence."