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4/8/2006

Total: World 'Cannot Meet Oil Demand' :.

THE world lacks the means to produce enough oil to meet rising projections of demand for fuel over the next decade, according to Christophe de Margerie, head of exploration for Total and heir presumptive to the leadership of the French energy multinational.

The world is mistakenly focusing on oil reserves when the problem is capacity to produce oil, M de Margerie said in an interview with The Times. Forecasters, such as the International Energy Agency (IEA), have failed to consider the speed at which new resources can be brought into production, he believes.

"Numbers like 120 million barrels per day will never be reached, never," he said.


4/7/2006

EFF: AT&T Forwards All Internet Traffic Into NSA :.

* yawn *

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on Wednesday filed the legal briefs and evidence supporting its motion for a preliminary injunction in its class-action lawsuit against AT&T.

After asking EFF to hold back the documents so that it could review them, the Department of Justice consented to EFF's filing them under seal -- a well-established procedure that prohibits public access and permits only the judge and the litigants to see the evidence.

While not a party to the case, the government was concerned that even this procedure would not provide sufficient security and has represented to the Court that it is "presently considering whether and, if so, how it will participate in this case."

"The evidence that we are filing supports our claim that AT&T is diverting Internet traffic into the hands of the NSA wholesale, in violation of federal wiretapping laws and the Fourth Amendment," said EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston.

"More than just threatening individuals' privacy, AT&T's apparent choice to give the government secret, direct access to millions of ordinary Americans' Internet communications is a threat to the Constitution itself. We are asking the Court to put a stop to it now," said Bankston.

EFF's evidence regarding AT&T's dragnet surveillance of its networks includes a declaration by Mark Klein, a retired AT&T telecommunications technician, and several internal AT&T documents. This evidence was bolstered and explained by the expert opinion of J. Scott Marcus, who served as Senior Technical Advisor for Internet Technology to the Federal Communications Commission from July 2001 until July 2005.


4/6/2006

GOLD $600 :.

UPDATE: Big Pull Back

Retail sheep get slaughtered on the long side. They'll really be scratching their heads when it breaks above $600 again. This is a classic Magic Mystery Dot move. The trick is figuring out where to get long on the pullback... * sigh *

U.S. benchmark gold futures topped $600 an ounce for the first time since January 1981 on Thursday, while silver hit a 22-year peak at $12 an ounce, as a shaky dollar and high oil prices sparked buying by investors.

Gold for June delivery on the New York Mercantile Exchange's COMEX division closed at $599.70 an ounce for a rise of $7.20, or 1.22 percent, on the day.

Futures got as high as $601.90 in early morning electronic trading on the NYMEX ACCESS platform, way above a session low of $592.

The market jumped as the dollar fell to a seven-month low against the euro and oil extended this week's big gains to get nearer to last year's record above $70 per barrel.

"It was triggered by the dollar, the yen, and of course the idea of $70 crude," said George Gero, vice president at RBC Capital Markets Global Futures in New York.

"Oil didn't help the stock market, so investors were looking for another place to put their money and they seem to be looking at the metals."



Bank of America Funnels $3 Billion to Terrorists :.

Let this one tickle your chicklets for a while:

You want some 9/11 truth? You won't find it in the accretions of increasingly absurd conjecture and the tail-chasing diversions of no evidentiary value. The hard-ass, 9/11 truth has the colour of money and the sweet stink of opium, and plenty of both.


4/4/2006

Zfone: Zimmermann's New IP Crypto Phone :.

On March 14, Zimmermann released a beta version of the widely anticipated Zfone. The software is currently available only for OS X (Tiger) and Linux, though a Windows version is due in April.

The open-source software manages cryptographic handshakes invisibly, and encrypts and decrypts voice calls as the traffic leaves and enters the computer. Operation is simple, and users don't have to agree in advance on an encryption key or type out long passcodes to make it work.



U.S. Navy Sailors Training for Ground Combat :.

There's no draft. But...

With the Pentagon's call on the Navy to provide forces to ease the strain on Army and Marine Corps ground units, naval individual augmentees are flocking to South Carolina to learn the basics of ground combat.

During the 12-day training program, sailors are taught lessons that range from the proper way to carry weapons to basic warfare marksmanship, convoy operations, urban operations, battlefield first aid and land navigation, said Lt. Col. Douglas Snyder, battalion commander of Task Force Marshall and head of the Individual Augmentee Training Course at the Army's McCrady Training Center, Fort Jackson, S.C.

Snyder created a training program to accommodate as many as 600 students at once, though the largest class has been 215 students.

"We're getting everyone from E-2s to O-6s," Snyder said, adding he's been "amazed at how quickly they're adapting."

The Navy's individual augmentees deploy downrange from, and return to, Fort Jackson, complete with necessary gear and proper uniforms, to include the Army's new digital battle uniforms, if they are heading to Army units.


4/3/2006

America's War on the Web :.

The Internet could also be used offensively as an additional medium in psychological operations campaigns and to help achieve unconventional warfare objectives. Used creatively as an integral asset, the Internet can facilitate many DoD operations and activities.

Strategic Assessment: The Internet
Prepared by Mr. Charles Swett
Assistant for Strategic Assessment
Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict
July 1995
Everything old is new again... Rather, they just write about it in newspapers now:

IMAGINE a world where wars are fought over the internet; where TV broadcasts and newspaper reports are designed by the military to confuse the population; and where a foreign armed power can shut down your computer, phone, radio or TV at will.

In 2006, we are just about to enter such a world. This is the age of information warfare, and details of how this new military doctrine will affect everyone on the planet are contained in a report, entitled The Information Operations Roadmap, commissioned and approved by US secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld and seen by the Sunday Herald.

The Pentagon has already signed off $383 million to force through the document's recommendations by 2009. Military and intelligence sources in the US talk of "a revolution in the concept of warfare". The report orders three new developments in America's approach to warfare:

Firstly, the Pentagon says it will wage war against the internet in order to dominate the realm of communications, prevent digital attacks on the US and its allies, and to have the upper hand when launching cyber-attacks against enemies.

Secondly, psychological military operations, known as psyops, will be at the heart of future military action. Psyops involve using any media - from newspapers, books and posters to the internet, music, Blackberrys and personal digital assistants (PDAs) - to put out black propaganda to assist government and military strategy. Psyops involve the dissemination of lies and fake stories and releasing information to wrong-foot the enemy.

Thirdly, the US wants to take control of the Earth's electromagnetic spectrum, allowing US war planners to dominate mobile phones, PDAs, the web, radio, TV and other forms of modern communication. That could see entire countries denied access to telecommunications at the flick of a switch by America.

Freedom of speech advocates are horrified at this new doctrine, but military planners and members of the intelligence community embrace the idea as a necessary development in modern combat.


Related: Strategic Information Warfare

Related: Full Spectrum Dominance



Professor: Wipe Out 90% of Humanity with Ebola :.

Maybe this fat slob has seen the contents of Cheney's play book... In any event, Peak Oil is being discussed, in polite circles, as a justification for global depopulation:

Professor Pianka said the Earth as we know it will not survive without drastic measures. Then, and without presenting any data to justify this number, he asserted that the only feasible solution to saving the Earth is to reduce the population to 10 percent of the present number.

He then showed solutions for reducing the world's population in the form of a slide depicting the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. War and famine would not do, he explained. Instead, disease offered the most efficient and fastest way to kill the billions that must soon die if the population crisis is to be solved.

Pianka then displayed a slide showing rows of human skulls, one of which had red lights flashing from its eye sockets.

AIDS is not an efficient killer, he explained, because it is too slow. His favorite candidate for eliminating 90 percent of the world's population is airborne Ebola (Ebola Reston), because it is both highly lethal and it kills in days, instead of years. However, Professor Pianka did not mention that Ebola victims die a slow and torturous death as the virus initiates a cascade of biological calamities inside the victim that eventually liquefy the internal organs.

After praising the Ebola virus for its efficiency at killing, Pianka paused, leaned over the lectern, looked at us and carefully said, "We've got airborne 90 percent mortality in humans. Killing humans. Think about that."

With his slide of human skulls towering on the screen behind him, Professor Pianka was deadly serious. The audience that had been applauding some of his statements now sat silent.

After a dramatic pause, Pianka returned to politics and environmentalism. But he revisited his call for mass death when he reflected on the oil situation.

"And the fossil fuels are running out," he said, "so I think we may have to cut back to two billion, which would be about one-third as many people." So the oil crisis alone may require eliminating two-third's of the world's population.


Research Credit: DG




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