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6/17/2005

OIL CLOSES ABOVE $58 :.

$60 might be a tough nut to crack, but when it does.... Watch out:

CRUDE oil futures soared to record highs today as worries over Nigeria combined with already heightened concern over fuel supplies later this year.

The July contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange surged as high as $US58.60 a barrel, eclipsing the April 4 record of $US58.28 a barrel.

It then settled at $US58.47, the highest close on record and a jump of $US1.89.



Your ISP as Panopticon :.

You'll feel safer... Or something:

The U.S. Department of Justice is quietly shopping around the explosive idea of requiring Internet service providers to retain records of their customers' online activities.

Data retention rules could permit police to obtain records of e-mail chatter, Web browsing or chat-room activity months after Internet providers ordinarily would have deleted the logs--that is, if logs were ever kept in the first place. No U.S. law currently mandates that such logs be kept.



More Sell Homes to Lock in Big Gains :.

Don't keep those profits in paper denominated assets, or you'll be out your house and your winnings:

Looking to cash in on a red-hot housing market that has lifted prices an estimated $5 trillion in the past decade, some homeowners are selling and pocketing the profit.

Home values have more than doubled in the past five years in some states, and the median price of existing homes nationwide topped $200,000 for the first time.

Real estate agents in hot markets say more of their clients have sold their homes to lock in gains or are considering the move.

Although it's impossible to quantify such activity, and the National Association of Realtors estimates the numbers are small, anecdotal evidence suggests house-rich folks are cashing out. Unlike a typical situation where sellers take profits and plow them into bigger homes, some people worried about an upcoming price drop are getting out of real estate altogether...


6/16/2005

HERSH: CHILDREN RAPED AT ABU GHRAIB, PENTAGON HAS VIDEOS :.

The Darkness is unfurling. If you think, "It just can't be"... Think again:

"Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."



Cryptogon Reader Contributes $20

MW is helping to send Becky and me to a small farm in New Zealand.

Wanna see the house we're trying to buy? It's on five beautiful acres in the far North. Note: Bullaphants not included. They belong to the neighbor. Becky's mum is sending us an article about selecting good bulls! Oh yeah, there's a Kiwi bird reserve nearby.

Hopefully, we will find a bank that will give us a loan. It's a weird situation, since neither of us is in NZ at the moment. Becky's parents are frantically trying to find us a lender on that end that will help us.

If you happen to know someone who can get results out of a bank in NZ, please don't hesitate to contact me. I have impeccable credit, a decent job and money saved for the downpayment. The problem is: I'm in the U.S. and not showing any income in NZ. We will have 20% of the purchase price when it comes time to pull the trigger. * Please * If there is anyone out there with banking connections in NZ, let me know.


We got approval for the loan. We heard late last night (from Becky's mom) that the bank changed its mind. The offer is going in very soon. Cross your fingers for us.



Cryptogon Not Fit for Google News

* yawn *

Hi Kevin,

Thank you for your note. We apologize for our delayed response. We have reviewed www.cryptogon.com and cannot include it in Google News at this time. We appreciate your willingness to provide your articles to us, and we will log your site for future consideration.

Thank you for your interest in Google News.

Regards,
The Google Team

Original Message Follows:
------------------------
From: kevin at c r y p t o g o n dot com
Subject: Potential News Source
Date: Fri, 22 Apr 2005 22:10:32 -0000

Some of my readers are wondering why cryptogon.com isn't included as a source on Google News. I don't have a good answer for them.

Cryptogon has been around since 2002. It's updated daily with news and original analysis. I'm well known for having material around that .gov and .mil users are looking for. Googlebot crawls about every couple of days and I get about 2000 unique visits per day.

Thanks,
Kevin Flaherty



Cryptogon Reader Contributes $50

PT is a regular and very generous contributor. Thanks so much, PT!

I'm sending $10 of this contribution to Jeff Wells of Rigorous Intuition. All Cryptogon readers should make a point of reading Rigorous Intuition daily, and supporting Jeff's work.


6/15/2005

Former Bush Official: 9/11 an 'Inside Job' :.

A former Bush team member during his first administration is now voicing serious doubts about the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9-11.

Former chief economist for the Department of Labor during President George W. Bush's first term Morgan Reynolds comments that the official story about the collapse of the WTC is "bogus" and that it is more likely that a controlled demolition destroyed the Twin Towers and adjacent Building No. 7.

Reynolds, who also served as director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis in Dallas and is now professor emeritus at Texas A&M University said, "If demolition destroyed three steel skyscrapers at the World Trade Center on 9/11, then the case for an 'inside job' and a government attack on America would be compelling."

Reynolds commented from his Texas A&M office, "It is hard to exaggerate the importance of a scientific debate over the cause of the collapse of the twin towers and building 7. If the official wisdom on the collapses is wrong, as I believe it is, then policy based on such erroneous engineering analysis is not likely to be correct either. The government's collapse theory is highly vulnerable on its own terms. Only professional demolition appears to account for the full range of facts associated with the collapse of the three buildings."


Related: Alex Jones Full Coverage



Chinese Officials Interrogated Detainees... In Australia! :.

This is incredible:

Almost 50 Chinese people held in Australian immigration detention centres were put in isolation for up to 2.5 weeks last month and interrogated by officials of the Chinese Government.

Refugee advocates say it raises disturbing questions about the Federal Government's complicity with China and whether its actions have endangered the detainees and their families.

Some of the detainees interviewed were political dissidents and members of Falun Gong in the middle of asylum claims, the advocates said. Others were preparing appeals.

The extraordinary lockdown of Chinese detainees began on May 16 at Villawood detention centre, where about 20 were put into the isolation wing - unable to contact lawyers or supporters or accept visitors.


Research Credit: Pixelated Semantics


6/14/2005

Head Gentoo Lunatic Goes to Work for Microsoft :.

Trusted version of Gentoo, anyone? Hey, if Torvalds likes DRM, why not? HAHAHA!

Make your time:

Microsoft has recruited the father of a popular Linux distribution, under a continuing mission to further understand - some would argue "extinguish" - the open source operating system.

Daniel Robbins, founder and chief architect of the Gentoo distribution, is moving to Redmond to help Microsoft "understand open source and community-based projects" according to OSNews.


Related: Gentoo Is Rice

Research Credit: ME



New Bill Could Make Bush President For Life :.

A House bill has been introduced that would change the 22nd amendment and enable George Bush to remain President for the rest of his political life.

The bill would repeal limitations on a President holding office for a maximum of two terms.



One DRM Architecture to Rule Them All :.

The Horror. The Horror:

Apple could use the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip to ensure that only Mac computers can run its OS X operating system, according to a news analysis from Gartner.

The TPM is an open industry standard governed by the Trusted Computing Group, a non-profit organisation which develops security standards.

The chip is used to securely store and encrypt information. Because each chip has a unique identifier code, it could also be used to distinguish a Mac computer from a model made by Dell or any other Windows vendor.

Apple revealed last week that it is to switch from IBM's Power PC architecture to Intel's x86 models. The first Intel computers are expected to be available before June 2006 and Apple's entire product line will have switched architectures by 2007, the company said at its annual World Wide Developers Conference.

With Macs and Windows machines sharing the same hardware platform, users could theoretically install any software on the PCs, running Windows on a Mac or OS X on a Dell.

But Apple has stated that it would prevent users from installing OS X on non-Mac hardware.

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment for this story, saying that the company it is not yet ready to reveal product specifications.

A spokeswoman for the TPG confirmed to vnunet.com that there is nothing preventing Apple from implementing the module.

Vendors of enterprise desktop and laptop computers, including Dell, HP and IBM/Lenovo, are already using the TPM. IBM, for instance, uses the chip securely to store user passwords and encrypt the contents of the hard drive.

The upcoming Longhorn version of Windows relies on the TPM for a technology dubbed Secure Startup, which blocks access to the computer if the content of the hard drive is compromised. This prevents a laptop thief swapping out the hard drive, or booting the system from a floppy disk to circumvent security features.

Using the TPM is not without controversy, however. The module has raised privacy concerns, and has been criticised because it could be used to enforce digital rights management technologies.

Gartner also advised enterprises to continue with purchasing plans for Apple hardware, but warned that managers should "consider delaying software purchases until vendors offer a clear roadmap for upgrades to Intel-compatible versions".

Sales of Apple computers typically drop prior to the launch of a new product as users delay purchases to get their hands on the new model.


Related: DRM Coverage on Cryptogon


6/13/2005

I Like to Watch / CopVision :.

Funny?

Frightening?

Both?

I like to watch / CopVision is a program that watches television. Specifically, it watches COPS on Fox. It is not a video, it is a software process that tries to make sense of a live video feed. COPS is all it has ever known, and it probably thinks it is COPS. It has started to watch television as the show.

CopVision learns its language from closed captioning subtitles transmitted in the television signal. Everything that is said on COPS is tucked away in its memory to help it understand what it's seeing. It analyzes every frame, searching the field for outlines that remind it of something it has seen before. When it recognizes a contour it tags it with a guess as to what might be going on, gathered from its experience of words and pictures that go together. It sometimes tries to put words in the mouths of the characters. CopVision is funny when commercials come on because it doesn't know that it isn't COPS, and it keeps watching the same way.


Research Credit: PW



U.S. Military Draft :.

The only way this will work is if They blow something up and blame the terrorists:

THE United States would "have to face" a painful dilemma on restoring the military draft as rising casualties saw the number of volunteers dry up, a senator warned today.

Joseph Biden, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, made the prediction after new data released by the Pentagon showed the US Army failing to meet its recruitment targets for four straight months.

"We're going to have to face that question," he said on NBC's Meet the Press TV show when asked if it was realistic to expect restoration of the draft.

"The truth of the matter is, it is going to become a subject, if, in fact, there's a 40 per cent shortfall in recruitment. It's just a reality," he said.

The comment came after the Department of Defence announced the army had missed its recruiting goal for May by 1661 recruits, or 25 per cent. Similar losses have been reported by army officials every month since February.

Experts said the latest figure was misleading because the army had quietly lowered its May recruitment target from 8050 to 6700 people. It has been suggested the real shortfall is closer to 40 per cent.



"Debt Relief" :.

Take your pick of hundreds of stories hailing the benevolence of the G8 re: "debt relief" for the poorest countries. Sure, the G8 will forgive your debt if you allow private corporations to show up and financially rape your population. You know, force people to pay for things like water; austerity measures, little details like that. See how kind we are!

All of this is very ironic since the U.S., the acting Mafia Don of the G8, is nearly $8 trillion dollars in debt itself!

The G-8 Finance Ministers announced this afternoon a new proposal to advance toward the cancellation of part of the multilateral debt claimed of 18 South countries, mostly in Africa but also including Bolivia, Honduras, and Nicaragua. While some of them celebrated the announcement as a "historic" step that would make possible a "new beginning" in the relations between enriched and impoverished countries worldwide, other Ministers admitted that the agreement had more to do with the needs of the international financial institutions (IFIs) themselves to salvage their credibility and initiate a new cycle of indebtedness.



Biowarfare and "Domestic Violence" :.

Jeff's latest essay reminds me of a song that I like. People don't seem to get it when I play it. You guys will:
Last week I had the strangest dream
Where everything was exactly how it seemed
Where there was never any mystery of who shot John F. Kennedy
It was just a man with something to prove
Slightly bored and severely confused
He steadied his rifle with his target in the center
And became famous on that day in November

Don't wake me I plan on sleeping
Don't wake me I plan on sleeping in

---Sleeping In, The Postal Service
Don't wake me I plan on sleeping:

Last week the body of Dr Leonid Strachunsky, described as "World Health Organization expert and head of the anti-microbe Therapy Research Institute," was found in his Moscow hotel room. He had arrived from Smolensk, en route to the United States, and died of blunt-force trauma to the head. (Some stories identify the murder weapon as a champagne bottle.) His laptop and mobile phone were missing.

According to MosNews, "some sources link Wednesday's murder of...Strachunsky, who specialized in creating microbes resistant to biological weapons, to [a] hepatitis outbreak" which, according to the latest report, has afflicted more than 500 people in Russia's Tver region. However, a Moscow police source tells Interfax that the murder was "probably domestic violence."



Nuclear Blackberry? :.

A truly profound debate about American safety and security is flying far below the public radar.

At issue is whether the United States should change its decades-old nuclear policy and pursue a new class of "small nuclear weapons" that could be the size of Blackberries.



Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google Lick the Toes of Criminal Chinese Regime :.

Users of Microsoft's new China-based Internet portal have been blocked from using the words "democracy", "freedom" and "human rights" in an apparent move by the US software giant to appease Beijing.

Other words that could not be used on Microsoft's free online blog service MSN Spaces include "Taiwan independence" and "demonstration".

Bloggers who enter such words or other politically charged or pornographic content are prompted with a message that reads: "This item should not contain forbidden speech such as profanity. Please enter a different word for this item".

Officials at Microsoft's Beijing offices refused to comment.

Internet sites in China are strongly urged to abide by a code of conduct and self-censor any information that could be viewed by the government as politically sensitive, pornographic or illegal.


6/12/2005

Mac OS X on Intel: Try Before You Buy? :.

On June 9th, I wrote:
"My guess is that the lunatics will have Apple development builds of this thing running on $200 white boxes within weeks to months."
I won't be etching another notch into my pistolgrip on this call... BECAUSE IT ONLY TOOK THREE DAYS! HAHAHA!

A reader who for obvious reasons wishes to remain anonymous just demonstrated to me that the software is, in fact, already available on Internet software piracy sites.

Is this really a stealth marketing move on Apple's part? Maybe. That makes more sense than any other scenario at this point.

It's all fun and games until the Empire Strikes Back with Intel's LaGrande chipset.




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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.

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