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3/14/2003



Democracy in Iraq Doubtful :.

A classified State Department report expresses deep skepticism that installing a new regime in Iraq will foster the spread of democracy in the Middle East, a claim President Bush has made in trying to build support for a war, according to intelligence officials familiar with the document.

Research Credit: BW





Risking Everything for Independent Journalism :.

All of you should read the incredible story of Christopher Allbritton, an independent journalist who is raising money through his weblog so that he can bring his readers direct reports from Iraq. No filters. No editors. No limits to what he can say.

Obviously, he will be risking his life to bring this information out of Iraq. The list of potential threats he will face on an expedition like this could probably fill volumes. For example, his satellite phone may draw fire from U.S. military forces. But never mind all of that; he's willing to go. All he needs is money.

This is what journalism is all about. I hope all of you give the guy some money! I'm too embarrassed to reveal how much (actually, how little) I donated, but that's not the point. I donated. I would like nothing more than to bankroll his entire trip. Well, actually, if I was in a position to do that, I'd pay his way and then I'd go myself. <---That was a hint to you rich folks who read this site. I'm a very competent photographer. So if any of you want to pay to get me into Iraq with a satellite phone and a Canon EOS1D, let me know. I'd be willing to risk my life for a chance to get images that might be useful for prosecuting Bush, Rumsfeld, Franks, et al for war crimes.

From the Wired story on Chris:

Allbritton, a former New York Daily News reporter living in the East Village, plans to file stories directly to his weblog, Back to Iraq 2.0, next month as part of an independent news-gathering expedition to Iraq.

Allbritton says he wants to cover the humanitarian effects the likely U.S.-Iraq war will have on civilians in Iraqi Kurdistan, which is protected by a U.S.-imposed no-fly zone over northern Iraq.

While "embedded" reporters with backing from major news outlets bump along on prearranged Hummer rides and report what they see in the mainstream media, Allbritton will hitchhike and bribe his way through an area that could become the most dangerous place in Iraq outside Baghdad.





Verint Watches Over You :.

If you're under FBI surveillance, there's a good chance your phone calls and Internet traffic are traveling over the equipment of Verint Systems -- a company that's doing very well these days, writes SecurityFocus' Kevin Poulsen.

New York-based technology firm Verint Systems recently launched a product called "IntelliFind" that claims impressive capabilities. The system is designed to be attached to the phone lines at a company's call center, where it silently monitors every telephone call, and -- using advanced voice recognition technology -- picks out conversations in which certain keywords are spoken, dumping a digital recording into a searchable database. "You can decide you want to see all the calls where product 'xyz' was mentioned, and then you can pick one and listen to that entire call," says Alan Roden, Verint's VP of corporate development.





U.S. Jobs Jumping Ship :.

Over the past two decades, most of the jobs sent overseas were in the manufacturing sector. Not anymore. Companies are increasingly hiring cheap foreign labor for engineering and computer jobs. In case you missed the free trade bullshit propaganda: Those were the types of jobs that were supposed to stay in the U.S.

Think about it! The point of hiring cheap labor is to produce goods at a lower cost. Fine. Who buys these finished goods? There's the problem. Since more Americans are being fired from their jobs, fewer Americans will be buying those Nike shoes. And how many pairs of Nike shoes will be purchased by a Chinese factory worker making a dollar per day?

This is the Oh Shit moment. This is the point at which you come to realize that the entire system is flawed. This system is based on the ability of companies to produce goods at a minimum apparent cost without any consideration of how people are going to get the money to buy the finished goods.

American slaves have allowed their jobs to be exported and are relying on the momentum of the past to be able to afford the goods produced by lower paid slaves abroad. And companies are now trying to export the professional echelons of their staffs to the lowest possible bidders. Again, the simple question: Who's going to be left to buy the finished goods?

I'm beginning to wonder if the elite are planning to destroy the United States, and shift their primary markets to Europe or Asia. Americans may turn out to be too much trouble to be included in the fully locked down, global prison camp. (If you want to know why I think this is the case, email me and I'll send the paragraph I deleted from this entry.)

---Paragraph Deleted---

From the CNN/Money article:

As painful as February's big job cuts were, what's even more painful is that many of those jobs are never coming back, as U.S. employers in a wide range of industries move more and more jobs overseas.

That's old news for manufacturers, who have been cutting jobs and moving them offshore for decades, but it's a trend that's also starting to gather steam in a number of service industries, especially information technology, formerly one of America's best-paying industries.


More: Sony Shifts PS2 Production to China

Japanese workers aren't safe either:

Sony is to shift the production of its PlayStation 2 console to Chinese production facilities next year in a bid to reduce costs, the company announced this week, prompting speculation that the company will pass on the cost savings to consumers in the near future.

Spokesman Koichiro Katsurayama said the company would move production to Chinese plants run by Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. and Asustek Computer Inc, and cease production in Japan, where half of its current PS2 output is based.

On a cost basis, the move makes a huge amount of sense for Sony Computer Entertainment; with average labour costs in China around one twentieth of that in the US, according to official US and Chinese labour statistics.


3/13/2003



Elizabeth Smart :.

I try to make a point of not delving into the weird areas of cults and the sexual deviance and perversion of elites. And as weird as the Elizabeth Smart case is, I planned on sticking to my policy of avoiding the subject. But I came across a picture associated with the case that was so weird that I had to mention it.

Take a look at this picture:


Daniel Trotta poses on his bed, where he says Elizabeth Smart slept for nearly a week in October. (Fred Hayes -- AP)

Well, folks, I can't help it: Look at the Joy Division poster on the back wall of that room.

Read this collection of links that show military/intelligence/cop/elite connections to sex slaves, prostitution, etc. and then tell me how Elizabeth Smart happened to find accommodations in a room with a poster on the wall of a band named after groups of women who were forced to have sex with Nazi officers during World War II.

If you think I've lost it, don't worry, I'm just going to go watch Pi again.

More: Photos of Party

Google may not have indexed these photos yet, but I want to see the photos of Smart and her kidnappers at the party. If you find these, let me know. The photographer's name was Dan Gorder:

In September, Mitchell appeared at a late-night party in a downtown Salt Lake City apartment, said freelance photographer Dan Gorder, who snapped shots of the wandering preacher chugging a beer. Mitchell was accompanied by two women dressed in white, veils covering all but their eyes, Gorder said.





Military and Intelligence Agency Outsourcing :.

With war in the air and a new market in homeland security booming, many private firms are looking to expand their government work. Which is why Computer Sciences Corporation, a California-based technology services company, came to this part of the Beltway to do a bit of Christmas shopping. On a Friday in mid-December, CSC announced it would buy a little-known contractor named DynCorp in an acquisition worth nearly $1 billion. Ranked 13th in the dollar value of its federal business - and dwarfed by Lockheed Martin by a factor of 16 - DynCorp has operated in the shadows of the capital for five decades. It is neither the most visible nor the most powerful of the companies that rely on government contracts. But it has thoroughly mastered the byways of Washington, and its purchase by CSC shines a spotlight on the modern military techno-industrial complex.





Serbian Prime Minister Assassinated in Belgrade :.

Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, chief organizer of the October 2000 democratic revolution that toppled Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, was shot and killed today by snipers as he approached the door of his government headquarters in Belgrade.

JM writes: It's interesting that the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria took place in Serbia that exoterically sparked the First World War. It took place in Sarajevo, but the plotting occurred in Belgrade by a group called The Black Hand.





Cheney is Still Getting Paid by Halliburton :.

Halliburton, the Texas company which has been awarded the Pentagon's contract to put out potential oil-field fires in Iraq and which is bidding for postwar construction contracts, is still making annual payments to its former chief executive, the vice-president Dick Cheney.

The payments, which appear on Mr Cheney's 2001 financial disclosure statement, are in the form of "deferred compensation" of up to $1m (�600,000) a year.





Benetton to Weave Tracking Chips Into Clothes :.

Can I get some Freedom Fries with my RFID tagged t-shirt??? So, where do we go next, now that CLOTHES ARE SPYING ON US?

By placing a radio frequency ID tag in the labels of its clothing items, Benetton hopes to tie customer information to purchases in their computer systems. The radio frequency ID tags are about the size of a grain of sand, but they can hold much more information than the washing instructions that are written on the labels themselves. Once a purchase is made, the buyer's personal information is linked to the item bought in Benetton's database. It's only a matter of time before targeted products start appearing whenever that clothing item is worn.





World's First Brain Prosthesis Revealed :.

Things are getting really weird:

No one understands how the hippocampus encodes information. So the team simply copied its behaviour. Slices of rat hippocampus were stimulated with electrical signals, millions of times over, until they could be sure which electrical input produces a corresponding output. Putting the information from various slices together gave the team a mathematical model of the entire hippocampus.

They then programmed the model onto a chip, which in a human patient would sit on the skull rather than inside the brain. It communicates with the brain through two arrays of electrodes, placed on either side of the damaged area. One records the electrical activity coming in from the rest of the brain, while the other sends appropriate electrical instructions back out to the brain.


A neuroscience researcher sent in this response:

These guys are professional grant scammers and bozos who have conned the media into pumping up their nonsense so they can get more funding. To simulate the rat cortex they did single-cell recording. There's one problem in developing a human version of this chip: it's unethical to do single-cell recordings in humans--unless mass-murder and torture in the name of progress becomes an accepted practice (which it might). Also, notice that all they did was build the chip. It has not been tested in a rat. My guess is that they could not possibly have accounted for all the possible input-output combinations that the hippocampus performs. And how many of those unaccounted for combinations are crucial to normal functioning is unknown. I would imagine that when they plug this chip into the rat it will start having seizures and drop dead. Oh well, add dead, tortured rat #1,435,953 to the trash heap. Back to the drawing board. I suppose the creation of terminator drones and troglidyte workers will have to wait another year.


3/12/2003



German Minister Calls Bush a Dictator :.

GERMANY clashed with the United States again yesterday over the Iraq crisis after a Junior Defence Minister in Berlin described President Bush as a dictator.
The comments made by Walter Kolbow are sure to complicate further the troubled relationship between the Bush Administration and Gerhard Schr�der, the German Chancellor.

During the German election campaign last year, Mr Bush was furious after one minister compared him to Hitler and another leading Social Democrat politician accused him of behaving like a Roman Emperor.





U.S. Military Strategy in Iraq: Create a Radiological Catastrophe :.

And the U.S. government is worried about terrorists using a "dirty" bomb in America??? Uh, the U.S. uses "dirty" munitions as part of standard military practice:

U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf may be armed with radioactive bombs and missiles hundreds of times more potent than similar weapons used during the Gulf War and the U.N. military campaign in Bosnia.

As evidence that the United States is expanding its use of depleted uranium weapons beyond the relatively small 30-millimeter to 120-millimeter armor-piercing bullets and shells used by tanks and tank-killer aircraft in the Gulf and Balkans, weapons watchdogs cite the so-called "bunker-buster" bombs and missiles unleashed on Afghanistan.





New Ed McCabe Book: Flood Your Body with Oxygen :.

Do you have a chronic disease? Do you know someone who does? How many people do you know who have had cancer, or died from it? Hint: Start with this book. Why doesn't your doctor know anything about this?! Hmmm...

Flood Your Body with Oxygen by Ed McCabe:

Our too-low cell oxygen levels encourage toxic buildups and the growth of anaerobic (can�t live in active oxygen) microbes such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, and other pathogens inside us and inside our animals and pets, and in our plants. Anaerobes and toxicity slowly building up and overtaking us until we break down are the ultimate cause of most human, animal, and plant health problems as well as being the precursors to the whole list of �incurable� diseases.

There are proven, safe, and effective re-oxygenating and re-mineralizing techniques not presently taught in our medical schools and they�re not just simply breathing oxygen from a tank and eating dirt. These little known (in our country) techniques have been used safely and effectively on the international scene daily for over 50 years by thousands of doctors.






Supersizing Absurdity: French Freedom Fries :.

Read Orwell's 1984. Note the references to Victory Gin and Victory Cigarettes. Well, in the real world, we now have Freedom Fries and Freedom Toast. The End:

The cafeteria menus in the three House office buildings changed the name of "french fries" to "freedom fries," in a culinary rebuke of France stemming from anger over the country's refusal to support the U.S. position on Iraq.

Ditto for "french toast," which will be known as "freedom toast."


Research Credit: JH, TR


3/11/2003



Libraries Post Patriot Act Warnings :.

Along with the usual reminders to hold the noise down and pay overdue fines, library patrons in Santa Cruz are seeing a new type of sign these days: a warning that records of the books they borrow may wind up in the hands of federal agents.

The signs, posted in the 10 county branches last week and on the library's Web site, also inform the reader that the USA Patriot Act "prohibits library workers from informing you if federal agents have obtained records about you."

"Questions about this policy," patrons are told, "should be directed to Attorney General John Ashcroft, Department of Justice, Washington, D.C. 20530."


3/10/2003



Another U.S. Diplomat Resigns Over Iraq :.

They're losing the ability to maintain appearances over at the State Department:

John H. Brown, who joined the U.S. diplomatic corps in 1981 and served in London, Prague, Krakow, Kiev, Belgrade and Moscow, said in a letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell made available to the media: "I cannot in good conscience support President Bush's war plans against Iraq.

"Throughout the globe the United States is becoming associated with the unjustified use of force. The president's disregard for views in other nations, borne out by his neglect of public diplomacy, is giving birth to an anti-American century," the diplomat added.


I couldn't have said it better myself!

See other recent resignations from the U.S. State Department.


3/9/2003



GCHQ Arrest for NSA UN Operations Leak :.

In NSA Spooks Target U.N. Members, I wrote that, "If this is real, someone is going to swing by their nuts for leaking it." Well, that person may be a woman:

An employee at the top-secret Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has been arrested following revelations in The Observer last weekend about an American 'dirty tricks' surveillance operation to win votes at the United Nations in favour of a tough new resolution on Iraq.

Gloucestershire police confirmed last night that a 28-year-old woman was arrested last week on suspicion of contravening the Official Secrets Act. The woman, from the Cheltenham area, has been released on police bail pending further inquiries. More arrests are expected.





Software to Support Human Rights :.

The way things are going, we might need to start using something like the Martus Human Rights Bulletin System in the United States:

The Benetech Initiative, a Silicon Valley nonprofit, today announced the release of The Martus Human Rights Bulletin System, an open source technology tool designed to assist human rights organizations in collecting, safeguarding, organizing and disseminating information about human rights abuses. Through a partnership with The Asia Foundation, a U.S.-based nonprofit working on the ground in Asia, Martus will first be implemented in the Philippines to provide better resources to groups combating hundreds of human rights violations per year.





Irish Activists Stop U.S. Military Airlift Operation in Shannon :. (Article in German)

I don't know what's more shocking; the fact that these people were able to pull this off, or that there's no English version of this article available!? In any event, NICE ONE IN SHANNON!!!

Info gathered from Indymedia.org:

Companies stop using Shannon Airport for military transports

The Irish airport Shannon was one of the major bases for the US to fly soldiers and material to the Middle East. Now three of the four US companies that undertake those flights, have stopped all traffic (de) through Shannon for safety reasons. On three occasions in the last weeks, activists got on the airport and into the hangars, and demolished planes with hammers and colour, making them unfit to fly. Flights will now continue via Frankfurt Aiport in Germany.




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