cryptogon.com
   HOME
9/10/2004

Ankle Bracelet for Alcohol Offenders :.

If you abuse alcohol and endanger others, you might find Big Brother not only breathing down your neck but wrapped snugly around your ankle.

In criminal justice terms, the Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitor, or SCRAM ankle bracelet, is about saving lives, meting out punishment to drunken drivers, and helping alcoholics fight their addictions, according to its designers.

In technological terms, it's about sweat.

Specifically, a tiny pump inside the 8-ounce, tamper-proof device periodically scoops up a trace amount of perspiration vapor around your ankle. Then, a fuel cell similar to those used in Breathalyzer equipment tests for alcohol migrating through your skin. If it detects any, the bracelet kicks into high gear - its memory chip recording levels of alcohol, in parts per million, every half hour.



Chicago Mayor Outlines Elaborate Camera Network for City :.

Unfurling:

From a hi-tech command center, the City of Chicago plans to monitor a vast security network. Thousands of surveillance cameras will be linked -- and authorities will be alerted to crimes and terrorist acts. The mayor unveiled the plans for this new security network at a news conference this morning.

Some people are concerned about "Big Brother" invading their privacy but Mayor Daley says the cameras will be located in public areas.

The technology that is now so much a part of crime-fighting and anti-terrorism has gone -- as one police spokesman says -- from Stone Age to Star Wars in less than a decade. This step in the evolution will link more than 2,000 public surveillance cameras in Chicago into a unified system.


9/9/2004

Sound Cannon in Place in NY Pointed at Protesters :.

Here are photos from NY of the sound weapon in place and pointed at protesters. One time, the sound weapons was turned on to a low hum. So the weapons they are using on Iraqis are going to be used on American citizens. This is the nature of the Police State we're living in.



Half of Workers in Los Angeles Unable to Read :.

Continued immigration and a stubborn high school dropout rate have stymied efforts to improve literacy in Los Angeles County, where more than half the working-age population can't read a simple form, a report released Wednesday found.

Alarmingly, only one in every 10 workers deemed functionally illiterate is enrolled in literacy classes and half of them drop out within three weeks, said the study by the United Way of Greater Los Angeles.

"It's an emergency situation," said Mayor James Hahn, adding that poor literacy rates could jeopardize the region's economy by driving out high-tech businesses and other industries that pay well.


9/8/2004

Secret Society Gathering Place Discovered in Paris' Underground Tombs :.

Oh no, secret societies don't exist! That's all a bunch of bullshit! Uh...

Police in Paris have discovered a fully equipped cinema-cum-restaurant in a large and previously uncharted cavern underneath the capital's chic 16th arrondissement.

Officers admit they are at a loss to know who built or used one of Paris's most intriguing recent discoveries.

"We have no idea whatsoever," a police spokesman said.

"There were two swastikas painted on the ceiling, but also celtic crosses and several stars of David, so we don't think it's extremists. Some sect or secret society, maybe. There are any number of possibilities."

Members of the force's sports squad, responsible - among other tasks - for policing the 170 miles of tunnels, caves, galleries and catacombs that underlie large parts of Paris, stumbled on the complex while on a training exercise beneath the Palais de Chaillot, across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower.

After entering the network through a drain next to the Trocadero, the officers came across a tarpaulin marked: Building site, No access.

Behind that, a tunnel held a desk and a closed-circuit TV camera set to automatically record images of anyone passing. The mechanism also triggered a tape of dogs barking, "clearly designed to frighten people off," the spokesman said.

Further along, the tunnel opened into a vast 400 sq metre cave some 18m underground, "like an underground amphitheatre, with terraces cut into the rock and chairs".

There the police found a full-sized cinema screen, projection equipment, and tapes of a wide variety of films, including 1950s film noir classics and more recent thrillers. None of the films were banned or even offensive, the spokesman said.

A smaller cave next door had been turned into an informal restaurant and bar. "There were bottles of whisky and other spirits behind a bar, tables and chairs, a pressure-cooker for making couscous," the spokesman said.

"The whole thing ran off a professionally installed electricity system and there were at least three phone lines down there."

Three days later, when the police returned accompanied by experts from the French electricity board to see where the power was coming from, the phone and electricity lines had been cut and a note was lying in the middle of the floor: "Do not," it said, "try to find us."



Alex Jones: Martial Law Film Trailer :.

Looks good!



Liberation: Over 10,000 Killed in Baghdad Alone Since U.S. Occupation Began :.

At Sheik Omar Clinic, a big book records 10,363 violent deaths in Baghdad and nearby towns since the war began last year - deaths caused by car bombs, clashes between Iraqis and coalition forces, mortar attacks, revenge killings and robberies.

While America mourns the deaths of more than 1,000 of its sons and daughters in the Iraq campaign, the U.S. toll is far less than the Iraqi. No official, reliable figures exist for the whole country, but private estimates range from 10,000 to 30,000 killed since the United States invaded in March 2003.

The violent deaths recorded in the leather ledger at the Sheik Omar Clinic come from only one of Iraq's 18 provinces and do not cover people who died in such flashpoint cities as Najaf, Karbala, Fallujah, Tikrit and Ramadi.

Iraqi dead include not only insurgents, police and soldiers but also civilian men, women and children caught in crossfire, blown apart by explosives or shot by mistake - both by fellow Iraqis or by American soldiers and their multinational allies. And they include the victims of crime that has surged in the instability that followed the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime.



Government Wants Secret Judicial Review for Secret Law :.

Welcome to Banana Republic USA! The U.S. legal system is now rule of the gun. It's that simple. Force is the law, because it is. Because the government has a monopoly on the use of force, it is legitimate. Want to test the theory? Think it isn't this way?

Whereas, previously, the appearances of legitimacy were maintained by the existence of a "fair and impartial legal system" (which was bullshit), they are now dispensing with the façade altogether and unfurling the star chambers, secret arrests and kangaroo courts familiar to all students of fascism. Make your time:

The U.S. Department of Justice has asked an appellate court to keep its arguments secret for a case in which privacy advocate John Gilmore is challenging federal requirements to show identification before boarding an airplane.

A federal statute and other regulations "prohibit the disclosure of sensitive security information, and that is precisely what is alleged to be at issue here," the government said in court papers filed Friday with the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Disclosing the restricted information "would be detrimental to the security of transportation," the government wrote.

Attorneys for Gilmore, a 49-year-old San Francisco resident who co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group, said they don't buy the government's argument and that its latest request raises only more questions.

"We're dealing with the government's review of a secret law that now they want a secret judicial review for," one of Gilmore's attorneys, James Harrison, said in a phone interview Sunday. "This administration's use of a secret law is more dangerous to the security of the nation than any external threat."


Research Credit: TR



Russia Adopts Policy of Pre-Emption :.

Don't read this post. It's gibberish/notes for something I'm writing.

And Britain supports the move. Maybe we're seeing the crystallization of the New World Order plan...by other means. The classic NWO theory called for an omnipotent U.N., global federalism, etc. Obviously, that hasn't happened. Perhaps as "terrorists" start showing up in the G8 states, those governments will shape the political order in a de facto manner (by the arbitrary use of military power). What political order? It's pretty simple: Where there are oil and natural gas deposits, G8 states will strike "terrorists" with the right hand, while the left hand steals the natural resources.

Obviously, if this is the case, back room deals have been struck between the criminal operators. Now, here's the problem. When groups of fascists/criminals/mobsters get together to make deals, someone always tries to ratfuck the rest of the group in order to take all the marbles for himself. (Just watch the Godfather movies for a quick lesson in this.) So, now that the U.S., Britain and Russia (don't forget Israel) are in on this scam, it will be interesting to see who gets screwed---and how.

There's an interesting analogy from SCUBA diving that is very useful to understanding the situation the world is now facing with regard to energy, oil and natural gas in particular. "Buddy breathing" is technique in which one SCUBA diver shares his regulator with another diver who has run out of air. In SCUBA class, they emphasize that the diver who shares his air MUST grip the regulator in a way that maximizes control of the device. Why? Because the diver who ran out of air tends to panic, and tries to fight the other diver for the regulator. The result of buddy breathing, in actual diving emergency situations, tends to result in the death of both divers.

Now, how does this relate to the current political situation?

It looks like states with the most to lose are clinging to each other in an attempt to use what's left of global energy resources to survive. Remember what happens to the divers who try to buddy breathe... Eventually, someone will panic and kill his ally for one more gasp of air. (Of course, unlike in the diving example, a catastrophic outcome in terms of the energy crisis would be absurd, because viable alternatives are available, and could be developed with ease. This, however, would loosen the grip the elite have around our necks.)

If you want a more eloquent description of this phenomenon, read The Tragedy of the Commons by Garrett Hardin. While I don't agree with his prescriptions, his description of the problem is accurate. To think things would go any other way is, I'm sorry to say, folly:

The tragedy of the commons develops in this way. Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. Such an arrangement may work reasonably satisfactorily for centuries because tribal wars, poaching, and disease keep the numbers of both man and beast well below the carrying capacity of the land. Finally, however, comes the day of reckoning, that is, the day when the long-desired goal of social stability becomes a reality. At this point, the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy.

As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain. Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, "What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my herd?" This utility has one negative and one positive component.

1. The positive component is a function of the increment of one animal. Since the herdsman receives all the proceeds from the sale of the additional animal, the positive utility is nearly + 1.

2. The negative component is a function of the additional overgrazing created by one more animal. Since, however, the effects of overgrazing are shared by all the herdsmen, the negative utility for any particular decision­making herdsman is only a fraction of - 1.

Adding together the component partial utilities, the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another.... But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit -- in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.


There are theoretical solutions to the scarcity issues, but the probability of operationalizing them before the collapse is zero. The way of dealing with warlords in a state of nature (post collapse world) would have to rely on memes held to be valid by multitudes of mostly disorganized actors, who would occasionally be called upon to swarm and destroy those aspiring to warlord status. The goal is to recognize individuals' narrow self interests through positive sum situations, WITHOUT---and this is key---relying on any heirarchcal organizations. Hint: This almost certainly won't happen.

Not long to wait now:

Col.-Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, chief of the general staff of Russia's armed forces, asserted Russia's right to strike terrorists beyond its borders.

"As for carrying out preventive strikes against terrorist bases ... we will take all measures to liquidate terrorist bases in any region of the world," he told reporters.

Baluyevsky made his comments alongside NATO's supreme allied commander in Europe, Gen. James Jones, after talks on Russia-NATO military cooperation, including anti-terror efforts.


9/7/2004

THX 1138 :.

One of the best dystopic films of all time:

You are being watched by millions of security cameras. You have a job that is both tedious and dangerous and live in a culture where war and politics have been reduced to banal forms of entertainment. You define personal freedom as the liberty to go shopping and console yourself by gorging on antidepressants and free porn.

You are the hero of THX 1138, George Lucas' first feature film, which few have heard of and fewer still have seen.



Prisons, Profits and Prophets :.

Nation's largest private prison corporation joins forces with conservative faith-based ministries

In an era where the Bush Administration touts faith-based organizations as engines of individual and social transformation, and is actively recruiting and funding religious organizations to deliver a bevy of social services, it isn't surprising that a high-powered politically-savvy corporation wants in on the action. The Corrections Corporation of America, the nations’ largest owner and operator of private prisons, is trucking out a new product line with a little help from its fundamentalist friends: Prison Conversions to Christ.


Research Credit: EG


9/6/2004

Bush "Took Cocaine at Camp David" :.

Nobody seemed to care that Clinton was a pot-head:

GEORGE W Bush snorted cocaine at Camp David, a new book claims.

His wife Laura also allegedly tried cannabis in her youth.

Author Kitty Kelley says in her biography The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty, that the US President first used coke at university in the mid-1960s.

She quotes his former sister-in-law Sharon Bush who claims: "Bush did coke at Camp David when his father was President, and not just once either."

Other acquaintances allege that as a 26-year-old National Guard, Bush "liked to sneak out back for a joint or into the bathroom for a line of cocaine".

Bush has admitted being an alcoholic but, asked during the 1999 election if he did drugs, he said: "I've told the American people that years ago I made some mistakes.

"I've learned from my mistakes and should I be fortunate enough to become president I will bring dignity and honour to the office."



Censored 2005: The Top 25 Censored Media Stories of 2003-2004 :.

Not much of this will be new to regular Cryptogon readers, but just in case:

#1: Wealth Inequality in 21st Century Threatens Economy and Democracy

#2: Ashcroft vs. the Human Rights Law that Hold Corporations Accountable

#3: Bush Administration Censors Science

#4: High Levels of Uranium Found in Troops and Civilians

#5: The Wholesale Giveaway of Our Natural Resources

#6: The Sale of Electoral Politics

#7: Conservative Organization Drives Judicial Appointments

#8: Cheney's Energy Task Force and The Energy Policy

#9: Widow Brings RICO Case Against U.S. government for 9/11

#10: New Nuke Plants: Taxpayers Support, Industry Profits

#11: The Media Can Legally Lie

#12: The Destabilization of Haiti

#13: Schwarzenegger Met with Enron's Ken Lay Years Before the California Recall

#14: New Bill Threatens Intellectual Freedom in Area Studies

#15: U.S. Develops Lethal New Viruses

#16: Law Enforcement Agencies Spy on Innocent Citizens

#17: U.S. Government Represses Labor Unions in Iraq in Quest for Business Privatization

#18: Media and Government Ignore Dwindling Oil Supplies

#19: Global Food Cartel Fast Becoming hte World's Supermarket

#20: Extreme Weather Prompts New Warning from UN

#21: Forcing a World Market for GMOs

#22: Censoring Iraq

#23: Brazil Holds Back in FTAA Talks, But Provides Little Comfort for the Poor of South America

#24: Reinstating the Draft

#25: Wal-Mart Brings Inequality and Low Prices to the World



Perendev Magnetic Motor to Debut on German TV :.

What do you think? Will this be the one that finally works?

German television will be the first to document and air a demonstration of the Perendev Magnetic Motor any day now, if things go according to plans, says inventor, Michael Brady, who is in Germany to oversee the final touches on a German manufacturer's first production run of the motor.

Related: Trying to Understand the Perendev Motor

Related: Possible Perendev Fraud


9/5/2004

Selsam Innovations Wind Turbine :.

They have come up with a way of combining multiple rotors for wind power generation. Nice!



U.S. Near Seizing bin Laden, Official Says :.

Bravo! Bravo! Uh, and what will They do for Their next trick?

The United States and its allies have moved closer to capturing Osama bin Laden in the last two months, a top U.S. counterterrorism official said in a television interview broadcast Saturday.



Alex Jones on C-Span :.

Alex Jones pulled a good one on C-Span!



Russia School Siege Toll Tops 350 :.

I looked at the photowire images related to this incident. I wish I hadn't. This is a bad one. Really bad. Slaughtered children...

The death toll in the Russian hostage crisis has climbed beyond 350 as President Vladimir Putin denounced the massacre as "an attack on our country."

In a nationally televised speech Saturday, Putin said the fall of the Soviet Union had left the country unable to react to attacks, and he urged Russians to join together.

"We must create a much more effective system of security," he said. "We couldn't adequately react. ... We showed weakness, and weak people are beaten."




Google


cryptogon.com
www

:. 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.