3/6/2004
Secret Documents: U.S. Endorsed Indonesia's East Timor Invasion :.Confirmation of what everyone has known for years: The United States offered full and direct approval to Indonesia's 1975 invasion of East Timor, a move by then-president Suharto which consigned the territory to 25 years of oppression, official documents released Thursday show.
The documents prove conclusively for the first time that the United States gave a 'green light' to the invasion, the opening salvo in an occupation that cost the lives of up to 200,000 East Timorese.
General Suharto briefed US president Gerald Ford and his secretary of state Henry Kissinger on his plans for the former Portuguese colony hours before the invasion, according to documents collected by George Washington University's National Security Archive.
When Ford and Kissinger called in Jakarta on their way back from a summit in Beijing on December 6, 1975, Suharto claimed that in the interests of Asia and regional stability, he had to bring stability to East Timor, to which Portugal was trying to grant autonomy.
"We want your understanding if we deem it necessary to take rapid or drastic action," Suharto told his visitors, according to a long classified State Department cable.
Ford replied: "We will understand and will not press you on the issue. We understand the problem you have and the intentions you have."
Kissinger, who has denied the subject of Timor came up during the talks, appeared to be concerned about the domestic political implications of an Indonesian invasion.
"It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly, we would be able to influence the reaction in America if whatever happens, happens after we return.
"The president will be back on Monday at 2:00 pm Jakarta time. We understand your problem and the need to move quickly but I am only saying that it would be better, if it were done after we returned."
The invasion took place on December 7, the day after the Ford-Suharto meeting.
Kissinger has consistently rejected criticism of the Ford Administration's conduct on East Timor.
posted by Kevin at 6:07 PM
French/Canadian Consortium Will Produce Electric Cars in 2006 :.I think that a much better near term solution would be to burn ethanol or aquafuel/bingofuel in hybrid vehicles like the Toyota Prius and Honda Insight. If diesel based hybrids emerged, biodiesel could be used as the fuel. While a purely electric vehicle is the Holy Grail for sustainable transportation purposes, there is no indication that the energy storage, i.e. vehicle range, problems will be overcome anytime soon. The problems with present generation electric vehicles are related to the battery systems (the means of storing the energy required to run the engine). Clean carbon based fuels (mentioned above) should be used on hybrid vehicles to bridge the gap between the old paradigm internal combustion systems and the elusive fuel cell type vehicles of the future. While Dassault, and the rest of the companies involved with the design and production of this new electric car, should be praised for their efforts, this type of vehicle will not become ubiquitous as long as petroleum based fuels are available.* We need to examine solutions that have the potential to appeal to the average (ignorant) consumer. Hybrids, burning clean, carbon based fuels, offer an immediate way out of the petroleum prison in which we are all forced to exist: Hydro-Quebec, the Canadian power utility, said on Tuesday it will team up with French companies Dassault and Heuliez to produce a low-pollution electric vehicle by 2006.
The cars will be powered by technology developed by Hydro-Quebec, one of North America's largest electricity producers and distributors.
The four-seat vehicles -- initially aimed at commercial markets -- are expected to cost about C$24,000 ($16,000) each, and have a range of about 150 kilometres (95 miles) at 120 km/h (75 mph). The battery takes between six and eight hours to be recharged.* It is very possible that the peak of oil production has already been crossed and that near term demand will greatly outstrip supply.
posted by Kevin at 5:16 PM
Amish Man Not Allowed to Return to U.S. :.Indeed, self sufficiency and simple living are obvious threats to national security. These people are terrorists for sure: An Amish man who visited his ailing father in Canada has not been allowed to return because of border security aimed at thwarting terrorists. The man, adhering to the Bible's prohibition of graven images, has no photo identification.
According to officials in Licking Township, a municipality of 475 people midway between Pittsburgh and the New York border, U.S. officials told the man photo waivers once granted the Amish have been cut off due to security concerns.
Canadian border guards allowed the man into the country to visit his father in Ontario just before Christmas; the United States has prevented his return. The man's wife and child remain in the United States.Research Credit: KH
posted by Kevin at 11:55 AM
Bill Gates Has a Solution for Spam: Buy Stamps to Send E-mail :.The general purpose computer is going to be transformed into a tamperproof vending machine. I don't have the energy to beat the DRM deadhorse anymore, but just add this to the list of reasons why I want to live in a yurt and grow my own food: If the U.S. Postal Service delivered mail for free, our mailboxes would surely runneth over with more credit-card offers, sweepstakes entries, and supermarket fliers. That's why we get so much junk e-mail: It's essentially free to send. So Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates, among others, is now suggesting that we start buying "stamps" for e-mail.
posted by Kevin at 12:44 AM
3/5/2004
International Criminal Court Investigating Tony Blair for War Crimes :.Watch as this goes nowhere: The International Criminal Court in the Hague is being asked to probe allegations of war crimes by Tony Blair, Jack Straw and Geoff Hoon. The claims surround the UK's role in invading Iraq and have been raised by the group Legal Action Against War.Research Credit: PW
posted by Kevin at 11:41 PM
Jean-Bertrand Aristide and His American Mercs :.His security detail was actually comprised of U.S. mercenaries. If you think that these merc outfits don't take orders from Uncle, think again: It turns out that Aristide was being guarded by a private security firm, based in San Francisco. It is called the Steele Foundation. It is made up of former US special forces soldiers, intelligence officers and other security experts. The company has been on a State Department-approved contract with the Haitian government since 1998.
The Miami Herald reports that the White House blocked a last-minute attempt by Aristide to bolster his US security as the paramilitaries reached the capital. The paper said U.S. officials prevented reinforcements from the Steele Foundation from going to Haiti last week to protect Aristide.Related: Excellent Overview of Private Military Corporations
posted by Kevin at 8:16 PM
Only 21,000 New Jobs Created in February :.Blah blah: The U.S. economy created only 21,000 jobs in February, falling short of economists' predictions and dimming the Bush administration's hopes that an early recovery of the job market would help the president's re-election bid.
The job figures, reported by the Labor Department on Friday, came in far below the 200,000-plus that would signal a healthy recovery.
posted by Kevin at 7:52 PM
Martha Stewart Guilty on All CountsI've been waiting for an excuse to post this:
posted by Kevin at 6:51 PM
3/4/2004
U.S. Military Deploys Sonic Weapons :.That thing doesn't look bullet proof to me. Hmmm: U.S. soldiers in Iraq have new gear for dispersing hostile crowds and warding off potential enemy combatants. It blasts earsplitting noise in a directed beam.
The equipment, called a Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD, is a so-called "non-lethal weapon" developed after the 2000 attack on the USS Cole off Yemen as a way to keep operators of small boats from approaching U.S. warships.
The devices have been used on some U.S. ships since last summer as part of a suite of protection devices.
Now, the Army and Marines have added this auditory barrage dispenser to their arms ensembles. Troops in Fallujah, a center of insurgency west of Baghdad, and other areas of central Iraq in particular often deal with crowds in which lethal foes intermingle with non-hostile civilians.
posted by Kevin at 11:27 PM
3/3/2004
I Used an Electronic Ballot System Yesterday for the First TimeI know, I said I wasn't going to vote anymore, but I showed up anyway, just to get a feel for the mood at my polling place. That's when I saw them; Hart InterCivic's eSlate electronic voting systems. It seemed like a great system. Very easy to read. Easy to use. There's only one problem... How does anyone know what that thing is doing with your ballot!? Oh well. I'm too tired to make any noise about this issue. It doesn't matter anymore. All is lost, goodnight: Hart InterCivic's eSlate electronic voting solution is the most fully-featured, affordable and accurate Direct Record Electronic (DRE) system available today. Successfully used in the November presidential election, eSlate has won acclaim for its ease of use, accessibility to disabled voters, and fast, efficient ballot tabulation.
posted by Kevin at 2:12 AM
3/2/2004
Latest Thought Crime: Treasury Department Is Warning Publishers of the Perils of Criminal Editing of the Enemy :.Writers often grumble about the criminal things editors do to their prose. The federal government has recently weighed in on the same issue � literally.
It has warned publishers they may face grave legal consequences for editing manuscripts from Iran and other disfavored nations, on the ground that such tinkering amounts to trading with the enemy.
Anyone who publishes material from a country under a trade embargo is forbidden to reorder paragraphs or sentences, correct syntax or grammar, or replace "inappropriate words," according to several advisory letters from the Treasury Department in recent months.
Adding illustrations is prohibited, too. To the baffled dismay of publishers, editors and translators who have been briefed about the policy, only publication of "camera-ready copies of manuscripts" is allowed.
The Treasury letters concerned Iran. But the logic, experts said, would seem to extend to Cuba, Libya, North Korea and other nations with which most trade is banned without a government license.
posted by Kevin at 12:26 AM
3/1/2004
RFID Tags in New U.S. Notes Explode When You Try to Microwave Them :.Nice one! Although, I'm not entirely convinced that there are RFID chips in those $20s. Let's see someone interrogate them and capture the results on a spectrum analyzer, or just get some images of the chips with a microscope... If they're actually present. I'll be standing by, wearing my aluminum foil hat---and now pants---(shiny side out), in any event: So we chose to 'microwave' our cash, over $1000 in twenties in a stack, not spread out on a carasoul. Do you know what exploded on American money?? The right eye of Andrew Jackson on the new twenty, every bill was uniform in its burning...More pics here. Slashdot in on the show, too. Some of the comments are funny.
posted by Kevin at 11:59 PM
"You Can Bail All You Want. We'll Keep Sinking."I met Jez in a chatroom a few weeks ago. She's in her mid 20s and married. She works for a large, evil corporation and feels trapped. You're fine, Jez, it's the allegedly "normal" people who need help. You're not alone, by the way. We're all going down on this sinking ship. Any sane person should feel like they're cracking up in this soceity! Yet, the primary job of the shrink appears to be to medicate peoples' natural responses to insane situations, to allow them to continue to function (at some level) in dehumanizing conditions. So, what should be considered "normal" if nuts are running the nut house? The DSM has an illness classification for all the folks who have trouble maintaining appearances. Nevermind the fact that the entire society has gone totally off the rails: Days still dark and no sign of getting better. I'm tired of this daily parade. I don't want to go to the shrink, I don't want to go to work. I just don't want to. But I guess I will anyways.
Wtf does hope do when things are so fucked up? It makes you delusionally starry eyed. For me at least. I can dream up a million fixes. But either they don't work or I don't follow through. I used to be very much about making things work. "just do it" wasn't really created by nike.
And I'm no help to anyone else in this same sinking boat. You can bail all you want. We'll keep sinking. Which brings me to the thought of removing myself. But that would leave everyone else up shit's creek without a paddle. So that's not an option.
I'm not a religious person, as you may know. But I pray everyday for some divine joy to carry me through this. Not something to fix all the problems I have with reality, but just a little something to help me not feel so bad about it. Please just anything.
Sometimes, it feels like if I sit still long enough I'll go away.
posted by Kevin at 1:44 AM
U.S. Troops 'Made Aristide Leave' :.Interesting: HAITIAN leader Jean Bertrand Aristide was taken away from his home by US soldiers, it was claimed today.
A man who said he was a caretaker for the now exiled president told France's RTL radio station the troops forced Aristide out.
"The American army came to take him away at two in the morning," the man said.
"The Americans forced him out with weapons.
"It was American soldiers. They came with a helicopter and they took the security guards.
"(Aristide) was not happy. He did not want to be taken away. He did not want to leave. He was not able to fight against the Americans."
posted by Kevin at 1:02 AM
2/29/2004
Congo: Silence=Rape :.Warning: This is the most disturbing story I have ever posted. The article discusses ghastly, unimaginable barbarities that are being committed against females (infants to elderly women) in the Congo. I can't even bring myself to quote excerpts from this article on my site. My intention is not to traumatize you, or get you to throw in the towel on the human race. My point in linking to this is to demonstrate that we need to be very suspicious when powerful states make the case for military intervention in the affairs of other states for humanitarian reasons. Ask yourself, after reading this article: why is no state intervening in the situation in the Congo if human rights are supposedly a justification for military intervention? If not here, where? You see, all of the mumbo jumbo out of powerful states (like the U.S.) about the plight of people, and how "the world cannot stand idly by" is empty rhetoric. These states use the humanitarian justifications when the narrowly self-interested reasons alone won't fly.
posted by Kevin at 11:13 PM
U.N. Staff See Boy Shot in Back: Israeli Officer Suspended :.An Israeli army officer has been suspended after an unarmed Palestinian youth was shot in the back at close range as he waved goodbye to a delegation of visiting United Nations aid workers, the Star has learned.
Yousef Bashir, 15, remains in serious condition at a hospital in Tel Aviv, where he was taken after the Feb. 18 incident at his family's home near the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom in the southern Gaza Strip.
He is partially paralyzed beneath his shoulder blades, with shrapnel lodged against his spine, the boy's father said.
posted by Kevin at 10:20 PM
Stakeknife Interviewed by British Intelligence Media :.Is it real? Maybe. Maybe not. God, I would love to hear more of it, though: This is a 30-minute recording of interviews of Freddie Scappaticci, alleged to be "Stakeknife," a secret agent of British Army intelligence in Northern Ireland. The source of the recording claims it was secretly recorded by British military intelligence, in particular the Force Research Unit (FRU) which handled Stakeknife and other secret agents.
posted by Kevin at 1:05 AM
Mass Layoffs Set Record in January :.There were more mass layoffs in January in the United States than in any previous January for the nine-years that such records have been kept.
posted by Kevin at 12:17 AM
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:. Reading
Fatal
Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture by Andrew Kimbrell
Readers will come to see
that industrial food production is indeed a "fatal harvest"
- fatal to consumers, as pesticide residues and new disease vectors
such as E. coli and "mad cow disease" find their way
into our food supply; fatal to our landscapes, as chemical runoff
from factory farms poison our rivers and groundwater; fatal to
genetic diversity, as farmers rely increasingly on high-yield
monocultures and genetically engineered crops; and fatal to our
farm communities, which are wiped out by huge corporate
farms.
Friendly
Fascism: The New Face of Power in America by Bertram Myron Gross
This is a relatively
short but extremely cogent and well-argued treatise on the rise
of a form of fascistic thought and social politics in late 20th
century America. Author Bertram Gross' thesis is quite straightforward;
the power elite that comprises the corporate, governmental and
military superstructure of the country is increasingly inclined
to employ every element in their formidable arsenal of 'friendly
persuasion' to win the hearts and minds of ordinary Americans
through what Gross refers to as friendly fascism.
The
Good Life
by Scott and Helen Nearing Helen
and Scott Nearing are the great-grandparents of the back-to-the-land
movement, having abandoned the city in 1932 for a rural life based
on self-reliance, good health, and a minimum of cash...Fascinating,
timely, and wholly useful, a mix of the Nearings' challenging
philosophy and expert counsel on practical skills.
Silent
Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth by David Bollierd
In Silent Theft, David Bollier
argues that a great untold story of our time is the staggering
privatization and abuse of our common wealth. Corporations are
engaged in a relentless plunder of dozens of resources that we
collectively own—publicly funded medical breakthroughs,
software innovation, the airwaves, the public domain of creative
works, and even the DNA of plants, animals and humans. Too often,
however, our government turns a blind eye—or sometimes helps
give away our assets. Amazingly,
the silent theft of our shared wealth has gone largely unnoticed
because we have lost our ability to see the commons.
The
Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It: The Complete Back-To-Basics
Guide by John Seymour The
Self Sufficient Life and How to Live It is the only book that
teaches all the skills needed to live independently in harmony
with the land harnessing natural forms of energy, raising crops
and keeping livestock, preserving foodstuffs, making beer and
wine, basketry, carpentry, weaving, and much more.
When
Corporations Rule the World by David C. Korten
When Corporations
Rule the World explains how economic globalization has concentrated
the power to govern in global corporations and financial markets
and detached them from accountability to the human interest. It
documents the devastating human and environmental consequences
of the successful efforts of these corporations to reconstruct
values and institutions everywhere on the planet to serve their
own narrow ends.
The
New Organic Grower: A Master's Manual of Tools and Techniques
for the Home and Market Gardener
This expansion
of a now-classic guide originally published in 1989 is intended
for the serious gardener or small-scale market farmer. It describes
practical and sustainable ways of growing superb organic vegetables,
with detailed coverage of scale and capital, marketing, livestock,
the winter garden, soil fertility, weeds, and many other
topics.
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