LAPD's creepy Orwellian anti-terrorism ad (video)--The Live Feed | THR
Ever get the feeling you're being watched?
Check out the Los Angeles Police Department's creepy new public service announcement for its city-wide anti-terrorism iWatch program. The civilian program was launched earlier this month and is endorsed by 63 police chiefs around the country. [Coming to a city near you?]
The ad features wide-eyed, blink-free residents reciting Orwellian mantras and looking as if they're about to crawl out of your television like that girl in "The Ring."
So what have we learned by this ad?
We've learned that terrorism is actually a crime. And that if we smell something suspicious, we should report it. Think about the power of that...
First, IBM (those progressive thinkers who brought us Hitler's Hollerith machines!) has been rolling out slickly produced ads that seem straight out of an Alex Jones tirade.
IBM ads: The "Smart Cities. Smart People" theme
summary: wouldn't it be cool if every financial transaction, blog, post, email, etc by you...turn it into "intelligence", identify patterns, and predict what you'll do? Oh it'll be good!
summary: facial scanning cameras, pre crime units, biometrics, etc... will be good for you and the planet!
IBM TV - Smarter Public Safety: Protecting Citizens
summary: turning your city into a total control grid will be good for public safety
Smarter Healthcare: Solutions for a Smarter Planet
summary: we need ALL your info, genetic code, medical info, pre-predicted data all connected to a central grid
RFID Commercial - The Future Market
summary: RFID chips are cool!
Smarter Way: The Smarter Planet Anthem
summary: eugenics is back, and its hip baby!
Notice how ALL this is being sold on us, not by post 9/11 fear mongering...but by slick a more "you too can be a hip young ipod listening facebook twittering smart minded liberal!"
Now for people who dont think THEY are data mining the emotional peaks and American and foreign pavlovian responses to Balloon boy, Michael Jackson, Kanye West, Swine Flu, Obama, UHC and other trending memes ...
It looks like the CIA is openly starting to use advanced technology from outsourced companies to monitor your every email, blog, post, chat, etc
"The technotronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities."
2009-10-14 | H.E. Dr. Ali Abdussalam Treki President of the Sixty-fourth Session of the United Nations General Assembly United Nations New York, NY 10017
October 12th 2009
Your Excellency,
RE DEFORMED BABIES IN FALLUJAH
Young women in Fallujah in Iraq are terrified of having children because of the increasing number of babies born grotesquely deformed, with no heads, two heads, a single eye in their foreheads, scaly bodies or missing limbs. In addition, young children in Fallujah are now experiencing hideous cancers and leukaemias. These deformities are now well documented, for example in television documentaries on SKY UK on September 1 2009, and on SKY UK June 2008. Our direct contact with doctors in Fallujah report that:
In September 2009, Fallujah General Hospital had 170 new born babies, 24% of whom were dead within the first seven days, a staggering 75% of the dead babies were classified as deformed.
This can be compared with data from the month of August in 2002 where there were 530 new born babies of whom six were dead within the first seven days and only one birth defect was reported.
Doctors in Fallujah have specifically pointed out that not only are they witnessing unprecedented numbers of birth defects but premature births have also considerably increased after 2003. But what is more alarming is that doctors in Fallujah have said, “a significant number of babies that do survive begin to develop severe disabilities at a later stage”.
As one of a number of doctors, scientists and those with deep concern for Iraq, Dr Chris Burns-Cox, a British hospital physician, wrote a letter to the Rt. Hon. Clare Short, M.P. asking about this situation. She wrote a letter to the Rt. Hon.Douglas Alexander, M.P. the Secretary of State of the Department for International Development (a post she had held before she resigned on a matter of principle in May 2003 ) asking for clarification of the position of deformed children in Fallujah.
She received a reply dated 3rd September 2009 (two days after the Sky TV broadcast of 1st September 2009 ) from a junior minister, deputy to The Secretary of State, Mr. Gareth Thomas MP, Duty Minister, Department for International Development. In his reply he denies that there are more than two or three deformed babies in Fallujah in a year and asserts that there is, therefore, no problem. This is at wild variance with reports coming out of Fallujah. One grave digger of a single cemetery is burying four to five babies a day, most of which he says are deformed.
I have thought very carefully before adding my voice to the discussion about the 2009 Nobel Prize for Peace. What I've discovered is that few, if any, have written or talked about the irony of the award, concentrating on whether Obama "deserved" the prize.
It is obvious that Obama has not "earned" it. But that's not the point. As many have noted, the Peace Prize has indeed been awarded in the past on an "aspirational" note in the hope that certain efforts had sown the most fertile seeds in the soil of hope. But y'all know how I feel about "hope": hope don't feed the bulldog.
I think what the Nobel Committee is saying to Obama is nothing less than "Put Up or Shut Up". It is a recognition that Obama talks a good game most of time, even considering the contradictions between what he speaks about on the stump and the policies he's continued or created. The actions don't match the words - it's as simple as that. The Committee is saying, "Look, man. Talking peace and making peace just ain't the same breed of cat".
Truth be told, some pretty nasty folks have been in the mix in the past. Hitler was nominated. Stalin made off with one. Run your finger down the list of 208 winners and you get the impression that the criteria are sometimes pretty questionable. Even more questionable when you factor in the resouces of the Nobel Institute, the organization of scholars, researchers, and impressive resources which advises the Committee on its selections. George Will's recent on-the-air comment about "seriousness" is well taken. So awarding the prize to a man who has done little besides make speeches about peace is really not so odious. At least they didn't choose Ahmadinejad ...
REQUIREMENTS FOR INDIVIDUALS: Everyone must get coverage through an employer, on their own or through a government plan. Exemptions for economic hardship. The bill requires individuals and families to buy coverage as long as it costs no more than 8 percent of their income.
is to make it a crime to not purchase private health insurance?
Sometimes you run across a story that defies all comment, rational analysis -- even parody. This is one of those times:
In Surprise, Nobel Peace Prize to Obama for Diplomacy (NYT).
To give a peace prize to the commander-in-chief of a war machine now churning its way through the populations of three countries (Iraq/Af-Pak), with innumerable black ops, lightning raids and drone shots on the side .... to a man who even as we speak is deciding just how he wants to kill even more civilians in Afghanistan and Pakistan ... a man who has enthusiastically embraced as "an extraordinary achievement" one of the most heinous and barbaric acts of military aggression since Hitler rolled across the border into Poland ... a man who blusters about leaving "all options on the table," including the use of mass-murdering nuclear weapons, to bully other nations into compliance with American wishes ... to give a peace prize to such a man, while all over the world, there are men and women who have devoted their entire lives to non-violence and reconciliation, many of them suffering imprisonment, torture and ruin for their efforts ... well, like I said, it's beyond words.
But it's good to see that the spirit of arms merchant Alfred Nobel -- purveyor and profiteer of death and destruction -- is being honored so perfectly with today's award.
UPDATE: Arthur Silber has some choice thoughts on the great honour, with a title that says it all: "Depraved, Obscene Absurdities." Here's an excerpt:
Quote:
Almost no one will acknowledge the single, fundamental truth about Barack Obama, the truth of greatest and most terrifying consequence:
Barack Obama is a war criminal.
Many facts overwhelmingly and conclusively compel this judgment, and no other. Not because I say so, but because an honest application of the relevant language of international law, as well as of the Nuremberg Principles, necessitates the conclusion.
Silber then points us to some excellent chapter and verse backing up that statement of truth. Later on:
Quote:
History, facts, unimaginable brutality, torture, widescale murder, bodies ripped apart, guts spilling out of blood-drenched bodies, arms, legs and heads sundered and tossed aside to be gnawed on by starving animals, souls destroyed, never again to experience joy or happiness for even a moment -- all of this is minimized, ignored, denied, even mocked as the perpetrators of this immense evil and those who enable and support them (which is most people) claim that those who identify the truth are "exaggerating." "Oh, don't be such a doomsayer. Don't be so gloomy and dire. It's not that bad!"
These denials are easily known to be lies: an honest observer need only open his eyes, look and see. This is precisely what the great majority of people will never do.
He concludes:
Quote:
Large-scale denial and avoidance impose terrifying costs. Today's story may simply be absurd, and it undeniably is. The man or woman, or child, whose life and mind are seared beyond recognition in the next minute, and hour, and day, and year, in all the nightmare years to come, is condemned to torment and death by the lies upon which we insist, the lies we refuse to give up or even question.
But read the whole thing, and follow the links. Words may have failed me in this instance; but they have most assuredly not failed Silber.
UPDATE II: The Guardian gives a view from Kabul on Obama's peace prize:
Quote:
"I don't know how he can get this prize," said Najeeb, a 30-year-old shopkeeper attending a friend's wedding party. "Maybe it's been awarded for all the houses they are bombing, or perhaps it's for all his soldiers that are dying in Afghanistan and Iraq."
Next to him a local staff member of a western NGO called Elyas wondered whether Obama will ever be able to bring peace to Afghanistan. "Obama and his favourite president [Karzai] haven't been able to do anything here. We used to be able to drive to Kunduz and Mazar-i-Sharif [two northern cities considered safe until recently] but now we can't because fighters are coming to the roads and looting people."
SID -- a unit, known as founder and chairman George Wackenhut's "private FBI," that provided executive protection and conducted undercover investigations and sting operations. Once they arrived, they rented two gray Ford Taurus's and drove four hours to a desolate town on the Mexican border called Eagle Pass. There, just after dark, they met two truck drivers who had been flown in from Houston. Inside a nearby warehouse was an 18-wheel tractor-trailer, which the two truck drivers and the four Wackenhut agents in their rented cars were supposed to transport to Chicago. "My instructions were very clear," Ramirez recalls.
"Do not look into the trailer, secure it, and make sure it safely gets to Chicago." It went without saying that no one else was supposed to look in the trailer, either, which is why the Wackenhut men were armed with fully loaded Remington 870 pump-action shotguns.
The convoy drove for 30 hours straight, stopping only for gas and food. Even then, one of the Wackenhut agents had to stay with the truck, standing by one of the cars, its trunk open, shotgun within easy reach. "Whenever we stopped, I bought a shot glass with the name of the town on it," Ramirez recalls. "I have glasses from Oklahoma City, Kansas City, St. Louis."
A little before 5:00 on the morning of the third day, they delivered the trailer to a practically empty warehouse outside Chicago. A burly man who had been waiting for them on the loading dock told them to take off the locks and go home, and that was that. They were on a plane back to Miami that afternoon. Later Ramirez's superiors told him—as they told other SID agents about similar midnight runs—that the trucks contained $$40 million worth of food stamps. After considering the secrecy, the way the team was assembled and the orders not to stop or open the truck, Ramirez decided he didn't believe that explanation.
Neither do we. One reason is simple: A Department of Agriculture official simply denies that food stamps are shipped that way. "Someone is blowing smoke," he says. Another reason is that after a six-month investigation, in the course of which we spoke to more than 300 people, we believe we know what the truck did contain—equipment necessary for the manufacture of chemical weapons—and where it was headed: to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. And the Wackenhut Corporation—a publicly traded company with strong ties to the CIA and federal contracts worth $$200 million a year—was making sure Saddam would be getting his equipment intact. The question is why.
IN 1954, GEORGE WACKENHUT, THEN A 34-YEAR-old former FBI agent, joined up with three other former FBI agents to open a company in Miami called Special Agent Investigators Inc. The partnership was neither successful nor harmonious—George once knocked partner Ed Dubois unconscious to end a disagreement over the direction the company would take—and in 1958, George bought out his partners.
However capable Wackenhut's detectives may have been at their work, George Wackenhut had two personal attributes that were instrumental in the company's growth. First, he got along exceptionally well with important politicians. He was a close ally of Florida governor Claude Kirk, who hired him to combat organized crime in the state, and was also friends with Senator George Smathers, an intimate of John F. Kennedy's.
It was Smathers who provided Wackenhut with his big break when the senator's law firm helped the company find a loophole in the Pinkerton law, the 1893 federal statute that had made it a crime for an employee of a private detective agency to do work for the government. Smathers's firm set up a wholly owned subsidiary of Wackenhut that provided only guards, not detectives. Shortly thereafter, Wackenhut received multimillion-dollar contracts from the government to guard Cape Canaveral and the Nevada nuclear-bomb test site, the first of many extremely lucrative federal contracts that have sustained the company to this day.
CNN's hoax on America. REAL VIDEO PROOF!! NO BS!!!
"This video first appeared on YouTube roughly a year ago, but I did not see it until just now. Using behind-the-scenes footage, it shows CNN 'war correspondent' Charles Jaco allegedly in Saudi Arabia covering a missile attack. (For better quality, see here. You can see more behind-the-scenes footage -- plus a remake of the above scene with different costuming -- here, or just scroll down to the bottom of this post.)
I beg you to stick with this clip until the very end. The last minute of this video is mind-blowing. This is not an exercise in evidence-free paranoia-mongering.
Jaco now works for a Fox affiliate.
In the past, I've often talked about the day the statue of Saddam was pulled down during Gulf War II. American teevee viewers thought that the act was a spontaneous demonstration by the citizens of Baghdad. In fact, the people who actually lived in the city were kept behind barricades. The whole thing was staged, with Ahmed Chelabi's rent-a-goons playing the Baghdadis.
That same day, the Los Angeles ABC affiliate showed what they claimed to be footage (allegedly taken that very morning) of Saddam's fearsome Republican Guard mounting a counter-offensive against the Americans in Baghdad. I had seen the same footage two days earlier on a foreign-language cable channel. It was shot in a completely different city by a French crew -- and the 'Republican Guard' were actually a handful of dunderheaded extremists from Syria. The real Republican Guard was bought off and did not fight.
After relying on a questioned document, Dan Rather was tossed out of the news business. But Charles Jaco still works in what he is pleased to call 'journalism.' As do, no doubt, many of the dozens of people at CNN who knew about this massive deception."
“Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.”
--Karl Marx
If Karl Marx and V. I. Lenin were alive today, they would be leading contenders for the Nobel Prize in economics.
Marx predicted the growing misery of working people, and Lenin foresaw the subordination of the production of goods to financial capital’s accumulation of profits based on the purchase and sale of paper instruments. Their predictions are far superior to the “risk models” for which the Nobel Prize has been given and are closer to the money than the predictions of Federal Reserve chairmen, US Treasury secretaries, and Nobel economists, such as Paul Krugman, who believe that more credit and more debt are the solution to the economic crisis.
In this first decade of the 21st century there has been no increase in the real incomes of working Americans. There has been a sharp decline in their wealth. In the 21st century Americans have suffered two major stock market crashes and the destruction of their real estate wealth.
Some studies have concluded that the real incomes of Americans, except for the financial oligarchy of the super rich, are less today than in the 1980s and even the 1970s. I have not examined these studies of family income to determine whether they are biased by the rise in divorce and percentage of single parent households. However, for the last decade it is clear that real take-home pay has declined.
The main cause of this decline is the offshoring of US high value-added jobs. Both manufacturing jobs and professional services, such as software engineering and information technology work, have been relocated in countries with large and cheap labor forces.
The wipeout of middle class jobs was disguised by the growth in consumer debt. As Americans’ incomes ceased to grow, consumer debt expanded to take the place of income growth and to keep consumer demand rising. Unlike rises in consumer incomes due to productivity growth, there is a limit to debt expansion. When that limit is reached, the economy ceases to grow.
The immiseration of working people has not resulted from worsening crises of over-production of goods and services, but from financial capital’s power to force the relocation of production for domestic markets to foreign shores. Wall Street’s pressures, including pressures from takeovers, forced American manufacturing firms to “increase shareholders’ earnings.” This was done by substituting cheap foreign labor for American labor.
Corporations offshored or outsourced abroad their manufacturing output, thus divorcing American incomes from the production of the goods that they consume. The next step in the process took advantage of the high speed Internet to move professional service jobs, such as engineering, abroad. The third step was to replace the remains of the domestic work force with foreigners brought in at one-third the salary on H-1B, L-1, and other work visas.
This process by which financial capital destroyed the job prospects of Americans was covered up by “free market” economists, who received grants from offshoring firms in exchange for propaganda that Americans would benefit from a “New Economy” based on financial services, and by shills in the education business, who justified work visas for foreigners on the basis of the lie that America produces a shortage of engineers and scientists.
In Marx’s day, religion was the opiate of the masses. Today the media is. Let’s look at media reporting that facilitates the financial oligarchy’s ability to delude the people.
The financial oligarchy is hyping a recovery while American unemployment and home foreclosures are rising. The hype owes its credibility to the high positions from which it comes, to the problems in payroll jobs reporting that overstate employment, and to disposal into the memory hole of any American unemployed for more than one year.
On October 2 statistician John Williams of shadowstats.com reported that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has announced a preliminary estimate of its annual benchmark revision of 2009 employment. The BLS has found that employment in 2009 has been overstated by about one million jobs. John Williams believes the overstatement is two million jobs. He reports that “the birth-death model currently adds [an illusory] net gain of about 900,00 jobs per year to payroll employment reporting.”
The non-farm payroll number is always the headline report. However, Williams believes that the household survey of unemployment is statistically sounder than the payroll survey. The BLS has never been able to reconcile the difference in the numbers in the two employment surveys. Last Friday, the headline payroll number of lost jobs was 263,000 for the month of September. However the household survey number was 785,000 lost jobs in the month of September.
The headline unemployment rate of 9.8% is a bare bones measure that greatly understates unemployment. Government reporting agencies know this and report another unemployment number, known as U-6. This measure of US unemployment stands at 17% in September 2009.
When the long-term discouraged workers are added back into the total unemployed, the unemployment rate in September 2009 stands at 21.4%.
The unemployment of American citizens could actually be even higher. When Microsoft or some other firm replaces several thousand US workers with foreigners on H-1B visas, Microsoft does not report a decline in payroll employment. Nevertheless, several thousand Americans are now without jobs. Multiply this by the number of US firms that are relying on “body shops” to replace their US work force with cheap foreign labor year after year, and the result is hundreds of thousands of unreported unemployed Americans.
Obviously, with more than one-fifth of the American work force unemployed and the remainder buried in mortgage and credit card debt, economic recovery is not in the picture.
What is happening is that the hundreds of billions of dollars in TARP money given to the large banks and the trillions of dollars that have been added to the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet have been funneled into the stock market, producing another bubble, and into the acquisition of smaller banks by banks “too large to fail.” The result is more financial concentration.
The expansion in debt that underlies this bubble has further eroded the US dollar’s credibility as reserve currency. When the dollar starts to go, panicked policy-makers will raise interest rates in order to protect the US Treasury’s borrowing capability. When the interest rates rise, what little remains of the US economy will tank.
If the government cannot borrow, it will print money to pay its bills. Hyperinflation will hit the American population. Massive unemployment and massive inflation will inflict upon the American people misery that not even Marx and Lenin could envisage.
Meanwhile America’s economists continue to pretend that they are dealing with a normal postwar recession that merely requires an expansion of money and credit to restore economic growth.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
Gee, thanks Paul. I was 18 when your boss Ronnie started us on this road. I watched, over the next 28 years, as each president, irregardless of party, did their part to dismantle the country. There were many who pointed out the obvious, but they were increasingly marginalized & ignored. Now, that the dismantling is almost complete, you come out of the closet shrieking, "They're dismantling the country. They're dismantling the country," and blame it on the media. Well, gee Paul, they own the media for crap's sake. When your boss, Ronnie the Senile, had the FCC revoke the Fairness Doctrine, he practically ensured the dominance of the corporate viewpoint, didn't he?
As I remember, he was recently canonized on national TV.
So Paul, does the phrase 'Too fucking little, too fucking late' mean a damn thing to you?
Asked why the prize had been awarded to Mr Obama less than a year after he took office, Nobel committee head Thorbjoern Jagland said: "It was because we would like to support what he is trying to achieve".
hahaha...
Obviously, peace doesn't mean what you think it means...
La Société du spectacle
spectacle and celebrity, celebrity and spectacle, brand Obomba is just as much a celebrity as a spectacle. The importance of celebrity -- of being famous for being famous, as Debord may have said... modern truth is insubstantial. These dinks love their metals of honor, prizes, awards and ceremonies.. guy debord has a posse!...lol
Let me begin by stating that what is written here is not just an attack on the Bush Administration. I am extremely disappointed in the Obama Administration to date. Although there will be more mention of the Bush administration for several reasons. 1. They started both wars discussed 2. I have 8 years worth of history to draw from the Bush Administration compared to 9 months of history for the Obama Administration. With that out of the way...here we go.
"It is easy to be overwhelmed or intimated by the realization that the war makers have enormous power. But some historical perspective can be useful, because it tells us that at certain points in history, governments find that all their power is futile against the power of an aroused citizenry." Howard Zinn
I wonder if any of you are having an overwhelming feeling of deja vues like I am. I'm pretty certain that the administration is carefully laying the groundwork for a U.S. invasion in Iran. Having learned from the previous administration how not to propagandize a "preemptive war" i.e. illegal invasion of a Foreign Sovereign State, the Obama team is getting the United Nations, The Council on Foreign Nations and the IAEA involved, and moving much more slowly than did hispredecessor. But come on, do they really think ALL of us have been turned into the blind, unthinking sheeple they have worked so hard to create? Maybe it's just an unpleasant hint in the back of your mind, or a nagging worry, or a known that you don't want to give voice too- but I think most of us believe that war with Iran is in our near future.
And I admit that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (I'm a dinner jacket), is a whack job. Perhaps insane, perhaps not. He's definitely a news whore and enjoys the spotlight. He enjoys it so much that he makes ridiculous statements such as "death to Israel" and that the entire solution to the Mid-East "problem" is to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, who knows if he has the cojones to do so? In the remote chance that he fully intends to do just that, so be it. Israel is also a Sovereign State and can defend herself. Sure it's nice when you can help your buddy out when they are in a fight, but umm, I don't recall their forces joining ours in Afghanistan or Iraq. And frankly, we can't even pay for the 2 illegal wars we are in, let alone start a new one to protect our "friend".
I don't have anything in particular against Israel- I just don't think they are that good of a friend. I mean America is bankrupt yet we still send $10 million dollars a day to the country ranked 27Th richest in the world. A true friend would say, "oh we can make due, you guys need it more than we do." We borrow money like a junkie begging for a fix from numerous countries, not the least of which is China, to loan to Israel, while 35 million Americans go hungry in the "land of plenty."
Our elected officials in Congress were willing to impeach ol' Tricky Dick Nixon for breaking into a building, but the last Congress and the present Congress have not/will not impeach/convict George Bush and his cronies for breaking into a COUNTRY! They were more than happy to impeach President Clinton for his sexual peccadillo's (nothing that unusual with American politicians) but never even considered impeaching George W. Bush for deregulating every facet of American Industry which turned the wealth of this country over to the already "super-rich". Now this Democratic Congress sits idly by while people march in the streets calling the current President everything from Fascist to Socialist to Witch Doctor for his attempts to try and regain some of the bootee the last administration pirated from ordinary American citizens. All these outraged teabaggers and their ilk that abhor the "redistribution of wealth" weren't screaming so loud, or at all when the previous administration redistributed wealth on such a grandiose scale. Clearly the lunatics are running the asylum.
I've called the Bush-Cheney Administration out a number of times on these pages as being an "Imperial Presidency". And so far it appears that the Obama-Biden Administration is following their lead. But historically, Imperial Powers tend to get too cocky, to big for their britches- they consistently over reach because they have forgotten that real power does not lay in Military power. Over time, citizens come to rebel, human beings rediscover their humanity and begin to resist the inhumane policies their rulers sanction. The United States with 10,000 nuclear weapons could not win in Korea or Viet Nam. We couldn't prevent wars and revolutions in countries like Cuba, Nicaragua, or Honduras. Just as the USSR with their huge Army and nuclear weapons had to retreat from Afghanistan (just as the U.S. will be forced to do eventually). The USSR couldn't stop Lech Walesa in Poland, or even prevent the shattering of itsown union. War and military mightiness destroys but it can not build. Human nature dictates that we build, we improve, we update, we reach for something better.
Change in the public ideology, the group consciousness starts slowly, it smolders in disparate patches across the country with no apparent connection. The small embers of public discontent is caused by the actions of government politicos. Eventually these smoldering fires consume more dissatisfaction and merge into a wildfire of protest. The last 9 years have served to speed the building of public combustion. This resentment and desolation we are feeling were knowingly caused by the United States Government over reaching. Perhaps it started when the 2000 presidential election was stolen from us, increasing when more and more deregulation allowed American jobs to be shipped off shore, coupled with the rape of the U.S. Constitution and our loss of privacy via the Patriot Act. It may be about to culminate with the 2 ongoing un-win-able "wars without end."
We did the best we could as citizens, we voted out the previous Congress and 2 years later we elected a newcomer as President. Based on his idyllic speech's and the false promise of change we so desperately longed for. America's discontent with the status quo was shown worldwide last November when we elected a man that fit with the Congress who we believed would propagate that change.
Sadly, the change has not come. If anything the discontent has turned into a raging 3 alarm fire and has split the country in half like the proverbial third rail. No one is happy. No one is secure and no one knows what to do with their disappointment. More and more people are listening to fear mongers, impotent "infotainers" and taking to the streets. Although we vary greatly in our rhetoric and ideals, in our proposed solutions, we are all standing on the same field of broken dreams and promises. We are united in our distaste of government and politics as usual.
We are tired of spending $720 million a day for bullets & bombs that send Iraqi children to the Baghdad Hospital. Dollars which could/should be used to pay down our debt, to keep people in their homes, to provide health-care for every person in America. Dollars which could be used to stop the river of blood our young soldiers spill daily to protect our river of oil, dollars which could be used in creating new jobs in industry developing alternative forms of energy.
Out of this quagmire could rise a righteous army of pacifists and war opponents. The numbers of Americans against these 2 illegal wars are growing steadily each day, while the number of supporters diminish. Yet nothing is slowing down the war effort. In fact, we are debating another surge of worn out troops in country, while the groundwork is quietly being laid for another preemptive war in Iran. This is the process of Disaster Capitalism. Disaster capitalism and Corporatist Fascism are what has replaced our grand beautiful experiment of Democracy. The United States is no longer a democracy , for by definition a democracy is a system of government where the people either govern themselves or elect representatives to carry out the wishes of the people. Thus, it's been quite a spell since America has been a true democracy.
If we do not rise up soon to quell the advent of war without end it will be to late. Rebellions are most often born of cultural stock. We need to take inventory of our stock and organize a "battle plan". I use that term specifically because that is the only term the other side will comprehend.
It won't be an easy battle, our foes are the wealthiest among us, many of them elected officials in the pockets of disaster capitalists. As discussed in my last piece the media only covers what its shareholders want to hear. Our foes will use the Patriot Act, resort to name calling, and physical confrontation as witnessed during the peaceful protests at the G-20 last week. They will do their damnedest to bait us into physical conflict. They are bullies armed with money, media control, store bought politicans and disaster capitalists.
You may wonder how we can defeat them. The odds seem overwhelming. But on our side we have the most powerful weapon known to mankind- TRUTH and as long as we can keep speaking truth to power, truth to lies, the more people will understand and join us. We need to use all means at our disposal to spread the truth. As long as the Internet remains free, which is in serious question at present, it is our best friend and best tool. Sites like Facebook, Change.org, Care2, and many more provide a virtual meeting hall for us to bring new members on board. And as proven by my own success - Twitter & Friend Feed are powerful sources to get the word out, to speak truth to power and bullies.
We must not back down. We must not feel outnumbered. We must not be fearful that our names may end up on some "list" somewhere. The teabaggers and 9/12ers and fanatical right wing nut groups are on Homeland Security's watch list, but it has not slowed or deterred them.
The people we oppose- the Corporatists, the Disaster Capitalists have no regard for human life, or justice, let alone freedom.
As pacifists many of us dislike the terms I am using; "weapons","battle", "war", but it is these terms with which we must generate the courage of our convictions. For if we do not, we will know a world that believes war without end is the natural way, that believes blood, money, weapons, global genocide and slavery is our destiny.
Throughout history flyers, broadsides, and pamphlets have inspired movements. Poems have sparked revolutions. Civil disobedience, truthful discourse, and a united citizenry have toppled dictatorships. And we must now join together, bound by truth, welded by compassion, motivated by love; join together to save our great American Experiment of Democracy.
If we fail to do so- it will fall by the wayside and be swept away like so much flotsam in their rivers of blood.
Does anyone else find it more than a coincidence that lately the fear factory in Washington has stoked the fires up pretty close to a meltdown? The last time there was as much collective dread, I believe, was during the 1962 'Cuban Missile Crisis', a few days in October forty-seven years ago when the theory of Mutually Assured Destruction was challenged and stretched to a literal snapping point. We could hear the Nuke War Clock ticking down in our sleep. At that time, our national fear was shared and focused on just one thing. Now it is much different. Now there are a hundred fears and, it seems, as many factions ...
A group of hardware hackers recreated the Homeland Security-originated light-based weapon DAZZLER, publish the specs and instructions for making your own for under 250 dollarinos!
Our first open source Homeland Security non-lethal weapon project - The "THE BEDAZZLER: A Do-it-yourself Handheld LED-Incapacitator".
After attending a conference where the $1 million "sea-sick flashlight" (named "THE DAZZLER") was demonstrated by the US Dept. of Homeland Security, we decided to create our own version. For under $250, you can build your own dazzler and we've released the source code, schematics and PCB files to make it easy. A great Arduino project for people who really like blinking LEDs. We also added in a mode selection so you can put it into some pretty color-swirl modes, great for raves and parties!
Yes this project does indeed cause: Nausea, dizziness, headache, flashblindness, eye pain and (occasional?) vomiting! So don't use it on your friends or pets
Please note: This is not a kit, nor for sale...so don't ask us. All documentation is on the design and download pages
Older stuff, (see below) from elsewhere - the portable EMP generator made from a disposable camera, useful for frying RFID chips in, say, bills or products, or very close range meddling with other electronics.
Warning: (their certificat is self-signed so Firefox will cry bloody hell)
The RFID-Zapper is a gadget to deactivate (i.e. destroy) passive RFID-Tags permanently. The development-team presently consists of two people (MiniMe and Mahajivana), who had some help from a friend (thanks for that). Goals are a proof-of-concept and the construction of at least one functioning and appealing prototype, as well as a documentation of the project so everyone can build an RFID-Zapper. Since the project found so much positive resonance, we probably are going to work on some other realizations of the concept, e.g. building an RFID-Zapper from scratch, without a single-use-camera.
The RFID-Zapper solves this dilemma. Basically it copies the microwave-oven-method, but in a much smaller scale. It generates a strong electromagnetic field with a coil, which should be placed as near to the target RFID-Tag as possible. The RFID-Tag then will receive a strong shock of energy comparable with an EMP and some part of it will blow, thus deactivating the chip forever.
To keep the costs of the RFID-Zapper as low as possible, we decided to modify the electric component of a singe-use-camera with flash, as can be found almost everywhere. The coil is made from coated copper wire and placed inside the camera exactly where the film has been. Then one end of the coil is soldered to the camera's capacitor, from which we earlier disconnected the flash. The other end of the coil is soldered to a switch, which itself is connected to the capacitor's other terminal. Once everything is tested, the camera can be closed again and henceforth will serve as a RFID-Zapper, destroying RFID-Tags with the power of ordinary batteries.
I'd like to see instructions for anti- LRAD ear protection as well as other countermeasures for such devices. Like an active noise cancellation system utilizing counter-phase speakers, that actively nullify the sound waves produced by LRAD, thereby canceling them out and producing a sphere of quiet.
A noise-cancellation speaker emits a sound wave with the same amplitude but with inverted phase (also known as antiphase) to the original sound. The waves combine to form a new wave, in a process called interference, and effectively cancel each other out - an effect which is called phase cancellation. Depending on the circumstances and the method used, the resulting soundwave may be so faint as to be inaudible to human ears.
I guess military tech always finds its way home. Pittsburgh city officials believe their police department's use of a Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) at last week's G20 protests was "the first time the sound cannon had been used publicly."
Police used the device to emit a painful shrill that forced demonstrators to cover their ears and withdraw while police threw tear gas and stun grenades. "Other law enforcement agencies will be watching to see how it was used," Pittsburgh's police bureau chief told the NY Times. "It served its purpose well."
Whether or not you think the protesters have a right to demonstrate or are anarchists without a permit to march, it's still pretty eye-opening to see tech like that used at home.
As a non-lethal weapon, sound canons have been mounted to vehicles by the U.S Army, installed on American warships to warn incoming vessels, defended private cruise ships against Somali pirates, and were at the ready (though not used) at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York.
But this is the first time LRAD has been used against U.S civilians. According to reports, 20 people were arrested, but there were no serious injuries. [New York Times]
NYT's reporter Judy Judas (Blood on her hands) Miller, -er no, that's not it-, I mean, Billingsgazette reporter Becky Shay, the Palin-esque wanna be... had to post the likeness...
Blackwater/xe , Wackenhut, Pinkertons, APF...
COMMENTS from trusted commenters:
I saw this coming back when I had first heard of Blackwater and Wackenhut. I started doing some investigative journalism (that is my day job) with the intention of writing a series of articles about these private mercenary security companies and what their ultimate purpose may be in the future here in the US. Needless to say some of the stuff I was able to dig up scared my editor away and the story was pigeonholed and that was the end of it. But one of my main points in the final installment of the series of articles I had written was that in the post 9-11 world we would at some point be told that our regular city police departments were no longer capable enough to deal with the 'new threats that we face,' and that they would soon be replaced by these private security companies and we would of course be told that it would be cheaper, more efficient and keep us much safer to privatize the police forces.
This is obviously right along those lines and it makes sense that they would start out somewhere like Montana, outside of the public eye and slowly work their way in to the larger US metro areas and of course the main concern I had with this was that these private police/security forces would be above all elected official and public oversight since they didnt work for the mayor and city councils and were private corporations which would allow them to really abuse their power much more than our current police forces are able to.
Its a scary development and I really do see it coming to a city near all of us in the very near future.
and another...
"And this would be such an easy sell to a public trained by the right-wing propaganda machine to believe that "government can't do anything right.""
w/apologies to Jello Biafra, BAN PRIVATIZE EVERYTHING!
A sobbing spokeswoman for the secretive company occupying the Hardin jail welcomed an investigation by Montana's attorney general Friday and expressed concerns for her own safety amid rumors about her company.
Becky Shay, in a 45-minute, wide-ranging press conference during which she occasionally broke into tears, said the California-based American Police Force welcomed an information request made Thursday by Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock.
"A lot of work I've done has been to calm down or at least try to counteract comments from people I consider to be fear mongers," Shay said. "What has happened in the interim, however, is those people's friends around the nation have been in contact with me or tried to access me. I realize I'm being pretty vague so that we don't support or incite these people. I don't want my words to be taken out of context to further inflame the tensions that I'm working under."
At that point, Shay began to cry. She asked TV media at the conference to turn their cameras off because, she said, "it's important to me that I do not appear as vulnerable as I feel."
Gosh, the human part of me wants to have empathy for her, but I just can't muster it... as another said, This game truly is a meat grinder!
"America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception.
"Mass-market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight. Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth and hindsight. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight."
--James Ellroy, American Tabloid
Ensure a Free and Fair Election (Ban Paperless Voting Machines
"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words."
I have thought very carefully before adding my voice to the discussion about the 2009 Nobel Prize for Peace. What I've discovered is that few, if any, have written or talked about the irony of the award, concentrating on whether Obama "deserved" the prize.
Does anyone else find it more than a coincidence that lately the fear factory in Washington has stoked the fires up pretty close to a meltdown? The last time there was as much collective dread, I believe, was during the 1962 'Cuban Missile Crisis', a few days in October forty-seven years ago when the theory of Mutually Assured Destruction was challenged and stretched to a literal snapping point. We could hear the Nuke War Clock ticking down in our sleep. At that time, our national fear was shared and focused on just one thing. Now it is much different. Now there are a hundred fears and, it seems, as many factions ...
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