CIA Built Flying, Mechanical Insects :.

We can't even begin to imagine what they have now:

The CIA once built a mechanical dragonfly to carry a listening device but found small gusts of wind knocked it off course so it was never used in a spy operation.
posted by Kevin at 3:24 PM

Israel to Deploy Robot Bulldozers :.

When I came unhinged the other day about the use of technology to attack people in built-up areas, I had absolutely no idea that Israel was about to deploy remote controlled bulldozers!

I said, "The trick....is to stop Them while They still bleed. Things will get considerably more difficult when They're made out of steel, titanium and kevlar."

It's too late for the Palestinians:

The giant Caterpillar bulldozer, used by the Israeli military to destroy Palestinian homes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, now comes with a controversial new feature: remote control.

Israel says its remote-control technology will lower risks to soldiers. But Palestinians fear it will lead to more frequent raids using the machines and make the three-year conflict even bloodier.

The remote-controlled D-9 bulldozer and a remote-control version of the Humvee, equipped with machine guns, were developed by the Israeli army and the Technion Institute of Technology. Both machines are U.S.-made, with Israeli modifications. They are expected to go into service in the next few weeks.

The army refused to comment or reveal further details about the new equipment.

Israel has been a pioneer in unmanned weapons systems for nearly three decades, developing one of the first remote-controlled planes and more recently creating machine guns and grenade launchers that can be fired from afar. The weapons are equipped with cameras, so their operators can see what they are doing.
posted by Kevin at 3:20 PM

Clone Burgers with Your Freedom Fries :.

Apocalypse Now:

Milk and meat products from cloned cattle, pigs and goats are safe for consumers to eat, according to a Food and Drug Administration document obtained by Reuters on Thursday.

The FDA findings bring the agency one step closer to determining whether to allow the commercialization of food from cloned animals. A final policy decision is expected next year.
posted by Kevin at 2:56 PM

Barbara Bush Unfurls on Larry King :.

And you can criticize me, but don't criticize my children and don't criticize my daughters-in-law and don't criticize my husband, or you're dead.
posted by Kevin at 2:52 PM

Third-Quarter Growth of 7.2% Strongest in Nearly Two Decades :.

More debt than ever, piled on top of MORE DEBT THAN EVER, piled on top of Depression-like joblessness and underemployment. Yep, things are great! As long as new credit card applications keep showing up and people can pull cash out of their home equity, it's Freedom Fries For All!

Gross domestic product (GDP), the broadest measure of economic activity, grew at a 7.2 percent annual rate in the quarter after growing at a 3.3 percent pace in the second quarter, the Commerce Department reported. Economists, on average, expected GDP growth of 6 percent, according to Briefing.com.

"This is obviously an extraordinarily strong report, led by the consumer, but also with good signs about the state of the business sector and business confidence," said Lehman Brothers economist Drew Matus.

The burst of GDP growth was led by a 6.6 percent jump in consumer spending, the fastest pace since the third quarter of 1997. Consumer spending grew at a 3.8 percent pace in the second quarter.
posted by Kevin at 2:55 PM

Chomsky: Bush Could Manufacture a Threat :.

No shit:

Leading linguist and commentator Noam Chomsky has said President George Bush will have to "manufacture" another threat to American security to win re-election in 2004 after US failure in occupying Iraq.

Chomsky, attending a Latin American social sciences conference in the Cuban capital Havana, said that since the September 11 attacks the Bush administration had redefined US national security policy to include the use of force abroad, with or without United Nations approval.

"It is a frightened country and it is easy to conjure up an imminent threat," Chomsky said at the launching of a Cuban edition of a book of interviews published by the Mexican newspaper La Jornada, when asked how Bush could get re-elected.

"They have a card that they can play... terrify the population with some invented threat, and that is not very hard to do," he said.

Research Credit: TR
posted by Kevin at 2:46 PM

Britain: Hell on Earth :.

Just as Britain gets used to CCTV cameras, a new Big Brother system is to become part of everyday life.
Hidden watchers are starting to talk - loudly - to anyone seen acting suspiciously or misusing disabled bays at trial parking sites.

Tests in Nottingham have persuaded nine local schools to start the school year by installing the "talking eye" system, officially called public address voice activation. Security cameras are linked to loudspeakers and staff in a central control room who issue messages such as: "The police are coming."
posted by Kevin at 2:43 PM

While People Die, Corporations Make a Killing :.

Buying off politicians has got to be one of the most lucrative investment activities around. I don't know of any other racket in which a $500,000 "investment" pays out billions:

Private contractors that received billions in reconstruction contracts for Iraq and Afghanistan contributed significantly to President Bush's election campaign and stocked their staffs and governing boards with well-connected former federal officials, according to a report released today by a watchdog group.

The Center for Public Integrity matched companies with political donations to conclude that dozens of companies that won contracts had contributed to national political campaigns, with President Bush receiving more money than any other candidate since 1990--about $500,000.
posted by Kevin at 2:41 PM

Weapon of Mass Deconstruction

Question: What common piece of hardware could be used to collapse society?

Answer: A wrench.

If society is just hanging by a thread (or, in this case, a few bolts) to begin with, can someone explain to me why the "terrorists" haven't done us in yet? I've written about how easy it would be to attack the information systems, but even I was making the task more complicated than it really is! If "they" hate us so bad, why go through all the trouble of getting weapons of mass destruction when all they would have to do is drive on down to Home Depot with twenty bucks in their pocket and buy a weapon of mass deconstruction?

Try to keep this story in mind if Bush/Cheney unleash some kind of dirty bomb or biological weapon scenario:

FBI Investigating Sabotage of West Coast Power Lines
By Jeff Stein, Congressional Quarterly
Thu Oct 30 2003 13:04:58 ET

An "individual with an extensive criminal record" is suspected of loosening the bolts on the base of high voltage electrical transmission towers in California and Oregon, authorities said Thursday in a bulletin to West Coast utilities.

"Several incidents involving the removal of support bolts at the base of electric high-power transmission towers have been reported on the West Coast, between Oregon and California," said the warning from the National Counterintelligence Executive, a unit of the Department of Homeland Security.

"Although not confirmed at this time, due to the common modus operandi and Pacific Northwest locations of these events, the sabotage may be the work of a single individual or group," it said.

There was "no evidence" of a terrorist connection to the attempted sabotage, the bulletin said.
posted by Kevin at 2:39 PM

Shooting Around Corners and Leveraging Technology for Oppression :.

"Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not so costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no chance of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves."

-Winston Churchill

I don't talk too much about firearms on this site, but I thought that readers should be aware of a new weapon system that not only represents a paradigm shift in close quarters battle (CQB) and military operations on urbanized terrain (MOUT), but also serves as an indicator of how technology is being leveraged for destructive purposes and oppression.

As the civilian populations of the planet are increasingly targeted by military operations, weapons technologies designed for use against individuals in built up areas will proliferate. Combatants have been looking around corners with small mirrors for generations and there have been several niggardly attempts to convert firearms to shoot from around corners. The CornerShot weapon system, however, is a complete break from all previous attempts to enable aimed fire from defensive positions. That weapon is not science fiction, or an artists representation of technology described in some dystopian novel. Nope. Fascists with the proper credentials are receiving those things by the crateloads today; all paid for with your tax money!

To place this development in a wider sociological context, I would note that this weapon is the epitome of what technology winds up being used for when psychopaths are in control. Gaze upon that thing and try to imagine where we will be in twenty years. Will resistance be possible then? (HA! Is it even possible now?)

My guess is that the "operator" of such weapon systems won't even be human in the years ahead. If that sounds nuts, what do you think is the purpose of this race? The U.S. government is funding hundreds of similar projects involved with making computers self aware of their surroundings. The ultimate goal is to be able to field autonomous robots that kill people; machines that don't get tired, don't question orders and don't require food or water. Instead of the video feed from a camera mounted on the muzzle of a gun winding up on a small monitor, I'd expect that imagery data to be processed by machines on a battle field near you within a decade.... assuming humanity makes it that long.

To conclude, just remember, the opposing force has God-Like powers. Just because you can't see Them, it doesn't mean that They can't see you. Consider a move to a main battle rifle that uses .308 (7.62x51 NATO). You'll have a better chance of reaching out and touching someone more effectively through walls, shelter and barricades. Do what you can to increase your standoff distance. I haven't seen any specs, but from a lifetime of firearms experience, I can tell you that the CornerShot system can't be accurate past more than about 100 feet. I don't feel like talking too much more about it, but those of you who know what to do... will know what to do. The trick, I'd say, is to stop Them while They still bleed. Things will get considerably more difficult when They're made out of steel, titanium and kevlar.

More: The Robot Air Corps :.

Never send a human to do a droid's job. Unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, fly hundreds of dull, dirty, or dangerous missions for the US military each year, including surveillance and bombing missions over Afghanistan and Iraq. They don't get tired or scared, and many can stay aloft longer than manned planes. Plus, if the bad guys shoot one down, you've lost a $3 million Predator instead of a $15 million F-16 and its pilots. The Pentagon plans to spend $10 billion over the next seven years on a new fleet of UAVs that will be able to evacuate troops, fly alongside manned jets, even carry out civilian operations.

More: Unmanned Aerial Drones Raise Specter of Big Brother :.

Industry representatives are enthusiastic about the drones' potential.

"I believe we will see Predator and Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) watching over major events, such as the Olympic Games and the Super Bowl, in the not-too-distant future," Brad Brown, then-president of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International wrote earlier this year.

For some privacy advocates, the talk about civilian use of unmanned aircraft has raised a specter of Big Brother in the skies, and a new privacy debate is brewing.

"The law that governs how the government can use these technologies is back in the stone ages. Our laws say that if you're in a public place, the government can surveil you," said lawyer Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union.

When the law was conceived, Steinhardt said, "No one imagined the extraordinary power that would be given to the government by new technologies. They really are, in many respects, Superman's powers." If the laws aren't updated, he cautioned, "Pretty soon we're going to live in a surveillance society where our every movement, action or utterance is going to be tracked and monitored."

Message to TR, AI Researcher

Have you read about the latest version of the Sony Aibo? The AI in this thing allows it to recognize the owner's face, run around the house in "autonomous" mode and find its charger to charge itself back up! It will also fetch toys. It's not hard to imagine the terminator corollaries to all of these "cute" and innocent behaviors. It sends video from its visual system over 802.11. Nope, this is not something out of a DARPA lab. This is a $1600 toy.

http://www.us.aibo.com/

Again: Revolutionary Technology
posted by Kevin at 10:49 AM

Made in America: Israelis Shoot Australian Activist Through Both Legs :.

The Australian government should hold the U.S. responsible for this:

An Australian activist campaigning against Israel's occupation of the West Bank was shot through both legs during a protest, the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) said.

Perth university student Joshua Taaffe, 24, was shot through both legs by Israeli troops who used a searchlight to spot him, ISM spokesman Michael Shaiq said.

Mr Shaiq said Mr Taaffe arrived in the town of Nablus about four weeks ago to join international protesters opposed to what they say is Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian territory.

Mr Taaffe is now receiving medical treatment in a Nablus hospital, although Israeli troops had earlier entered the ward where he was lying and allegedly trained a weapon on him, Mr Shaiq claimed.
posted by Kevin at 11:55 AM

Already Down the Memory Hole? Abigail Tapia and Jacqueline Toves

I've been monitoring this one and there has been no new information. Where is the press circus that usually surrounds weird death cases? Isn't it interesting that this case has totally dropped out of sight? Does this sound like a suicide case to you?

As to why the women were found bound with tape and rope, with garbage bags fastened tightly over their heads, and why Toves was wearing a Kabuki-style mask, Kanalakis said, "It's very, very difficult to understand what goes through someone's mind when they are determined to kill themselves. We are at a loss to explain it."
posted by Kevin at 11:38 AM

Bad Mileage: 98 Tons of Plants Per Gallon :.

If I was to pick out the most incredible/shocking articles posted on Cryptogon, this one would be somewhere in the top five.

A staggering 98 tons of prehistoric, buried plant material � that's 196,000 pounds � is required to produce each gallon of gasoline we burn in our cars, SUVs, trucks and other vehicles, according to a study conducted at the University of Utah.

"Can you imagine loading 40 acres worth of wheat � stalks, roots and all � into the tank of your car or SUV every 20 miles?" asks ecologist Jeff Dukes, whose study will be published in the November issue of the journal Climatic Change.

But that's how much ancient plant matter had to be buried millions of years ago and converted by pressure, heat and time into oil to produce one gallon of gas, Dukes concluded.

Dukes also calculated that the amount of fossil fuel burned in a single year � 1997 was used in the study � totals 97 million billion pounds of carbon, which is equivalent to more than 400 times "all the plant matter that grows in the world in a year," including vast amounts of microscopic plant life in the oceans.

"Every day, people are using the fossil fuel equivalent of all the plant matter that grows on land and in the oceans over the course of a whole year," he adds.

In another calcultation, Dukes determined that "the amount of plants that went into the fossil fuels we burned since the Industrial Revolution began [in 1751] is equal to all the plants grown on Earth over 13,300 years."

Explaining why he conducted the study, Dukes wrote: "Fossil fuel consumption is widely recognized as unsustainable. However, there has been no attempt to calculate the amount of energy that was required to generate fossil fuels, (one way to quantify the 'unsustainability' of societal energy use)."
posted by Kevin at 9:01 AM

Flashback: FBI: al-Qaeda Detainee Spoke of Fire Plot :.

Get ready for it. Just about the time when we won't be able to handle watching any more of the sobbing teenage girls, destroyed houses and panic stricken people, They could drop this one on us. I'm not saying that They will do this, but it would certainly fit the problem-reaction-solution paradigm. As the situation in Iraq slides straight down the toilet, al-Qaeda burns down San Diego, a city that is home to strategic naval and marine installations. That sounds about right for a pretty good scam:

The FBI alerted law enforcement agencies last month that an al-Qaeda terrorist now in detention had talked of masterminding a plot to set a series of devastating forest fires around the western United States.

Rose Davis, a spokeswoman for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, told The Associated Press that officials there took note of the warning but didn't see a need to act further on it.

The contents of the June 25 memo from the FBI's Denver office were reported Friday by The Arizona Republic. Davis declined to share a copy of the memo and an FBI spokeswoman in Denver didn't immediately return a telephone call.

The Republic reported that the detainee, who was not identified, said the plan involved three or four people setting wildfires using timed devices in Colorado, Montana, Utah and Wyoming that would detonate in forests and grasslands after the operatives had left the country.
posted by Kevin at 5:39 PM

Another JFK Enigma: Japanese "Journalist" in Photograph with Jack Ruby :.

John, over at Cryptome, is looking into a possible Japanese thread in the JFK imbroglio. I'd like to offer some context to get us thinking about possible Japanese connections:

Before we focus on Japan, though, let's take a brief look at Post World War II Germany.

Anyone who has looked into the American efforts to de-Nazify Germany after World War II knows that the entire thing amounted to a shell game. Their Nazis became our Nazis, company names were changed, Gestapo personnel shed their black leather and death's head regalia and worked seamlessly with all order of American spooks. The U.S. National Security Agency set up its German HQ in the I.G. Farben building in Berlin, for example.

With American de-Nazification turning into an open joke, what was happening on the other side of the planet in Japan? Quite simply, American efforts to breakup the Japanese keiretsu organizations were as flaccid as those aimed at de-Nazification in Germany. You see, fascism works, until interstate wars breakout among competing powers. But with the U.S. victorious, what was to become of the vanquished? Understanding the primacy of fascism, U.S. geostrategists (Council of Foreign Relations), undertook perception management campaigns in Germany and Japan designed strictly for public consumption. Out with old, in with the new, etc. In reality, what happened was that the U.S. and other elites used a Roman-style, integrative strategy in order to maintain and co-opt the established German and Japanese elites, rather than scatter them to the wind. The ultimate goal, of course, was global fascism.

In Japan, keep in mind that the political, industrial, banking and mafia organizations are integrated in a type of meta keiretsu that is based on ancient familial hierarchies (1). Richard W. Wright notes:

Before World War II several large industrial groups dominated Japanese economic activity. They were centrally owned and controlled with common interlocking directorships. After the war the United States forced Japan to dissolve these groups as they contravened anti- monopoly and anti-combine regulations. Since that time a number of major groups, or keiretsu, have reformed. Today each group is clustered together in voluntary association with a central bank at the core.

If you don't believe this, take a look at Japanese activity in the international currency markets and note the beneficiaries: the largest Japanese corporations and banks via the U.S. consumer. <---This is a gross oversimplification. Literature on the Japanese keiretsu model is particularly interesting and illustrative of fascist organizations generally. I highly recommend that individuals pursue further research on their own in this area.

The U.S. pays great lip service to the rhetoric of "open markets and free trade." However, while I can't say with certainty that U.S. elites were jealous of the imperial Japanese economic model, the political economy of the U.S. in the post World War II era seems to have borrowed heavily from the keiretsu system (2).

Let it suffice to say that Japanese elite are part of the Them. One can safely assume that if the plot to murder JFK was carried out by international banking interests, as I suspect, Japanese would be involved at the highest levels of planning. Also note that one of the three spheres of influence and focus in the Trilateral Commission is Japan. Although the Trilateral Commission did not come into existence until 1973, working relationships between Japanese elite and their counterparts in the West were well underway by the late 1940s. I would assume there were profound Western connections to the Empire of Japan (pre-WW2) but I have not looked into that area of inquiry.

So, if the Japanese man in the photograph is Atsuyuki Sassa, a man with formal national security training from the most prestigious university in Japan, what was he doing at Dallas Police Headquarters, within a few feet of Jack Ruby, all those years ago?

Notes:

1 Keiretsu: A Japanese term describing a loose conglomeration of companies organized around a single bank for their mutual benefit. The companies sometimes, but not always, own equity in each other.

2 That system was cemented in the U.S. with the re-formation of the Military Industrial Complex. I say re-formation because the armaments complex in the U.S. existed long before World War II. The elite in question weren't about to make the same mistakes that were made after World War I by allowing the armaments industries to fade away after the end of hostilities.
posted by Kevin at 5:35 PM

Experience Your Amerika :.

Land of the slaves, home of the dumb.
posted by Kevin at 5:25 PM

Baghdad Blood Bath: Dozens Dead :.

One day after they missed Wolfowitz by that much, total chaos broke out. If this thing isn't the epitome of a shit storm, I don't know what is:

Up to 42 people are feared dead today after five large explosions ripped through the centre of Baghdad in the bloodiest day of terrorism since the end of Saddam Hussein's regime.

The blast blew down a 40ft section of the wall in front of the three-storey Red Cross building, destroying a dozen cars and shattering a water main. Emergency services fought to control the blaze as ambulances swept through the city, ferrying the injured to hospital. Witness Salah Mansour as he said: "When the driver reached near the Red Cross building he got down from the vehicle and a guard went up to ask him why he had stopped there.

"The driver said he was trying to fix the car and then the blast just went off."

In apparently co-ordinated attacks across the city at the height of the morning rush hour, four police stations were also targeted, bringing the total dead to at least 37. At least 225 other people were injured, 160 of them civilians. In north-east Baghdad, eight people died in a blast near a police station.
posted by Kevin at 5:24 PM

Afghanistan: U.S. Mercenaries Killed :.

These stiffs probably belonged to a Dyn Corp (now Computer Sciences Corporation) merc outfit:

Two U.S. civilians were killed in a raid against suspected Taliban and al Qaeda forces, Pentagon sources said.

The civilians, identified as State Department contract workers, died in a gunfight on the weekend, southwest of the Afghan border town of Shkin. The two were working with Afghan army troops.

Ten suspected enemy fighters also died in the fighting, killed by Afghan army troops backed by U.S. helicopters and war planes, the sources added Monday.

While some sources indicated to CNN the dead Americans may have been working for the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA referred all inquiries to the State Department.

"They are listed as State Department contract security officers," a U.S. official told CNN.

Update: They Were Short Formers :.

They were CIA contractors:

Two Americans killed in a recent ambush in Afghanistan were contract employees of the CIA, the agency said Tuesday.

In a written statement, the CIA said William Carlson of Southern Pines, North Carolina, and Christopher Glenn Mueller of San Diego, California, were civilian contractors for the agency who were tracking terrorists when they died Saturday.
posted by Kevin at 5:21 PM

Another Dumb Idea: Smart Mail :.

Sending a letter may soon require more than a 37-cent stamp. It might also require a valid photo ID.

A small change in labeling requirements for bulk mailings announced Oct. 21 requires bulk mailers to identify themselves on the outside of the envelope with a valid address. This marks the first step in the Postal Service's desire to create "intelligent mail."
posted by Kevin at 5:20 PM

Identify Genetically Modified Food :.

An interesting tidbit, from the July 03 issue of Sunset Magazine, page 140:

Those tiny stickers on the loose fruits and vegetables at the market have a worthy purpose. Besides telling the store's computer database at checkout what the time is and how much it costs, the price lookup code (PLU) tells you how it was grown.

Conventionally grown produce carries a four digit code. On organically grown items, a number 9 precedes that basic code, on genetically modified produce a number 8. The number on a conventionally grown apple might be 4133; on an organic apple, 94133; and on a genetically modified one, 84133."

Research Credit: TR
posted by Kevin at 5:19 PM

robots.txt: Enabling Memory Holes :.

We need open source search NOW! And when that thing crawls, it needs to ignore robots.txt! I include a robots.txt file on Cryptogon as a joke. For those of you who don't speak nerd, it means, "Take it all, copt it all, I don't care." And for you freaks who want to complain to me about bandwidth, etc. I don't want to hear it. My ISP costs $50 per year for unlimited bandwidth! If you don't want your information to be archived, unplug your server from the network and start training homing pigeons.

I thought the WayBack machine might be of assistance, but that thing pays attention to robots.txt. Here's an idea for a software agent that would help us with the emerging memory hole problem: Create a spider that identifies itself as a Windows box running Internet Explorer. Instead of voraciously multithreading links simultaneously, have the thing parse all the URLs on the page and then "crawl" them at random, one at a time. Keep the thread open for some random period of time, close it, and then, on to the next one, at random. Obviously, the thing wouldn't pay any attention to robots.txt. Just let it run. Slow and steady. And by the time the Apache/IIS control freaks figure out how to defeat this type of bot on the server side (bandwidth cap by IP could be a problem), it needs to be peer-2-peer enabled.

Obviously, I just wish the entire Show would come down so we wouldn't have to think about this nonsense anymore:

Via Atrios, we see that the White House has edited its website to keep search engines from archiving pages on Iraq.

First, a bit of technical background. Most major websites include a text file named robots.txt that tells search engines which directories not to include in search results. (Here's an example: the Democrats.org robots.txt file lists folders with content � like images � that search engines can't index.) By adding a directory to robots.txt, you ensure that nothing in that folder will ever show up in a Google search and � more important for this discussion � never be archived by sites like Google.

Sometime between April 2003 and October 2003, someone at the White House added virtually all of the directories with "Iraq" in them to its robots.txt file, meaning that search engines would no longer list those pages in results or archive them.

Why would the White House do this? Those pages are still public, and the White House search engine itself does index those pages, so users can still get to them.

It's easy enough to understand the reasoning if you look at past White House actions. Earlier this year, the White House revised pages on its website claiming that "combat" was over in Iraq, changing them to say "major combat."

One of the reasons some alert readers noticed the change � and were able to prove it � was that Google had archived the pages before the change occurred. Now that all of the White House pages about Iraq are no longer archived by Google, such historical revisionism will be harder to catch.
posted by Kevin at 5:18 PM

Pathtofreedom.com :.

TR writes:

Here's a great site on urban homesteading. These freaks live in Pasadena and grow most of their own food. They fed a family of five on $400 per month during winter. That's $80 per month per person! Their food expenses go down to $40 during summer. They have a home-based business selling herbs and flowers to local restaurants. These people are extremely dangerous.

In case you don't get TR's humor, when he says they're dangerous, he means that they're dangerous to the established order. I love this site. It gives me happy thoughts and hope. Imagine that! While most people medicate themselves with TV, I daydream of yurts, organic vegetables and windpower, etc.
posted by Kevin at 5:08 PM

Interesting Cryptogon Hits Today

Mon Oct 27 03 08:47:12 AM No cryptogon.com/2002_08_11_blogarchive.html Go : www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=gangs+in+the+9th+ward+in+new+orleans&btnG=Google+Search 209.3.152.35 fema.gov

Mon Oct 27 03 08:44:57 AM No cryptogon.com/2002_06_30_blogarchive.html Go : www.google.com/search?q="santacruz+computer"&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&start=10&sa=N 199.196.144.16 tias-gw6.treas.gov

Mon Oct 27 03 08:17:32 AM No main_page Go : search.yahoo.com/search?p="Santa+Claus+machine"&ei=UTF-8&n=20&fl=0&xargs=0&fr=fp-top&b=21 216.163.255.1 rpa.metlife.com

Mon Oct 27 03 02:06:57 PM No main_page Direct Access 198.26.123.36 BU-WCS1-KELLY.NIPR.MIL

Mon Oct 27 03 02:06:48 PM No no entry page detected unable to detect referrer (JavaScript not enabled in visitor's browser) 131.44.121.252 cacheflow.randolph.af.mil
posted by Kevin at 5:04 PM

Massive Update Brewing for This Evening

Rest your eyes, uncork the wine and get ready to read it and weep, laugh, or mumble to yourself like a mental patient...
posted by Kevin at 2:27 PM

Fire Update

I'm in El Cajon, CA at the moment. When I woke up this morning and looked out the window, I thought, "It's finally The End." Nope, not quite yet, although it sure looks and smells like a possible End Day scenario outside my window. Have you ever sat too close to a really smoky camp fire? That's what the air smells like around here and it burns your eyes a little. Darkness at noon:


posted by Kevin at 2:05 PM

Head of Russia's Yukos Oil Company Arrested :.

Try to imagine a scenario in which George W. Bush sends the Delta Force to arrest Warren Buffett or Bill Gates! That's roughly the equivalent of what just happened in Russia. The arrest of Khodorkovsky (Russia's richest man!) is a major development.... but I don't understand the implications just yet. Charging a CEO with tax evasion and fraud is like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500.* There has to be much more to it. Let's keep an eye on this one:

Camouflaged special forces arrested Russia's richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, at a Siberian airport on Saturday, and he was ordered jailed on charges of tax evasion and fraud.

The dramatic arrest of the head of Russia's largest oil producer alarmed the country's business and political elite, with many analysts saying the actions against the oil company, Yukos, are a Kremlin-directed campaign to keep him out of politics.

Khodorkovsky, who has openly funded opposition parties, is the latest of Russia's superrich oligarchs to be pursued by President Vladimir Putin's government. Tycoons Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky have gone into self-imposed exile to avoid criminal prosecution.

* From the film Apocalypse Now:

Cpt. Willard v.o.: Charging a man with murder in this place is like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500.
posted by Kevin at 2:31 AM

California Fires :.

Any guesses on when this will be called, "The work of al Qaeda"????

A wildfire leaped through dense housing tracts in the foothills of the San Bernardino Mountains on Saturday, destroying more than 200 homes, threatening 1,000 others and forcing thousands of people to flee under a sky thick with smoke and tinged orange-red by flames.
posted by Kevin at 2:08 AM