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9/16/2006

9/11 Toxic Dust Whistleblower Raided By SWAT Team :.

And then it was too late...

A 9/11 toxic dust whistleblower, a ground zero hero and one of the individuals influential in the release of documents proving a government cover-up that deliberately put police, firemen and rescue personel at risk, has been raided by a New York SWAT team - who ransacked his home for three hours after he was arrested.



GetHydroPower Reports Nearly 2x Highway Mileage Boost :.

Not only is the product available for sale now, they offer a money back guarantee if you're not satisfied with it.

It would be cool if someone made a bed cover for that pickup out of solar panels. You could easily get another 400-500 watts off that space in full sun, which would lower the load on the ICE system.

Wait a minute... I was thinking more about that solar panel idea and started wondering how much power the Gorilla unit draws. The site says:
The unit draws 60 amps at initial startup until the unit has been "charged" Once charged, the unit draws roughly 15 amps.
Assuming a 12volt system in the vehicle:

Amps x Volts = Watts

60 x 12 = 720 watts to "charge" the thing, probably the initial juice needed to jump the gap

15 x 12 = 180 watts to keep it running (pulse frequency, guys?)

180 watts... Hmm.

Wait a minute... Wait a minute... I knew this sounded familiar. It's a bingo fuel cell! I hope these guys tip Mr. Naudin a buck or two for his work.

In any event, it's funny how the Ford's computer fought the adjustment of the fuel ratio for 300 miles before yielding the gains:

Gorilla Development LLC has announced the results of their recent testing of their newest hydrogen boost system, which produced a 1.41fold increase in city mileage, and a 1.9-fold increase in highway driving in a test vehicle.

...

Note that a car's internal computer requires a "breaking-in" period to adjust to the input from "The Gorilla" Electrolzer. The computer in the Ford rebelled for about 300 miles before it began accepting the new ratios. Until then, due to the inappropriate compensations made by the vehicle's internal computer, the potential fuel improvements were not being fully realized. Other vehicle types are much faster in their response time to fuel-economy add-ons. Thus anyone testing a vehicle with an added Electolyzer should exercise patience until the car's computer settles into the new fuel/air ratios. Sometimes, merely disconnecting the battery for a few minutes can reset the vehicle's computer giving it a fresh start with the new ratios.


Related: gethydropower.com



Laptops May Be Subject to Seizure After Overseas Trips :.

They hate us for our freedom! And God help you if you encrypt your data! I wonder what would happen if the goon squad ran up against a 4096 bit setback on their tour of your system... and you refused to provide the passphrase?

"That's fine, Mr. Smith, we have procedures in place to handle situations like this. You will now be escorted by these men (wearing ninja outfits and holding machine guns) to an extraordinary rendition center in an undisclosed location. Have a nice flight."

In U.S. v. Romm, No. 04-10648, the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit ruled that customs officials can seize and search the contents of anyone's laptop computer, even in the absence of a search warrant or probable cause.

Some attorneys say the ruling goes too far, invading the privacy of anyone who crosses into the United States. And the ruling may pose special problems for attorneys who need to keep client information confidential when they go on business trips overseas.

"What's dangerous about this opinion is that it pushes the line for searches along the border very far toward one end of the constitutional spectrum," says Shaun Martin, a professor at the University of San Diego School of Law. "It is one thing to turn on your computer in the airport to make sure it is not a bomb. It is another thing for customs officials to turn on your computer and to read everything you ever wrote and to look at everything you ever downloaded."



Aussie Bible Piss Take a Best Seller :.

I'd probably choose The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster for my religious piss take needs, but suit yourself. Both the Strine Bible and the Gospel of the FSM are written by devout believers in 'Him':

The 90-page phenomenon was promoted as a "ripping yarn about Jesus of Nazareth" in which Mary was "a pretty special sheila," Jesus was "God's toddler," and the Three Wise Men were "eggheads from out east."

Not everyone is happy with the sometimes irreverent, always entertaining, rendering of the Gospel into the vernacular known as Strine, supposedly the sound Aussies make when they say "Australian." The Bible Society of New South Wales, which publishes the series, has received about 30 letters of complaint, including some hate mail.

Undeterred, devout Christian and author Kel Richards released his second volume called "More Aussie Bible" at a sausage sizzle (barbecue) outside a Sydney cathedral this month. For Mr. Richards and his publisher, the two vernacular volumes are an attempt at swelling the ranks of the faithful in a country where only 9 percent of people attend church regularly.

"I think the appeal is that it brings back the force of the original language in which the Bible was written," says Daniel Willis, chief executive officer of the Bible Society. "Plus, it's an easy read; you don't need a tertiary education to understand it."


Research Credit: SA



Top Professors and Leading Scientists: 9/11 Was a U.S. Government Operation :.

The mainstreaming of the-official-9/11-story-as-fraud can go a couple of different ways.

America's collective cognitive dissonance engine will draw some people closer to the official myth---no matter how ridiculous. Or, as with trauma victims, some may experience a sort of split, where different aspects of the persona are compartmentalized and exist in different realities from the one in which the trauma occurred. Sports, gadgets, drugs, sex, television and video games are popular vectors. If the reality of the trauma starts to seep out into waking consciousness, the individual will delve deeper into one or more of their other realities, and/or create new ones.

If all the news networks were to show Cheney himself at the controls, so to speak, of 9/11, most people would flip the channel, looking for American Idol or sports scores or some other pizzle. Get stoned. Play X-Box. Pass out. Whatever.

The alternatives are too horrible and frightening to even consider:

The 9/11 terrorist attack on America which left almost 3,000 people dead was an "inside job", according to a group of leading academics.

Around 75 top professors and leading scientists believe the attacks were puppeteered by war mongers in the White House to justify the invasion and the occupation of oil-rich Arab countries.

The claims have caused outrage and anger in the US which marks the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on Monday.

But leading scientists say the facts of their investigations cannot be ignored and say they have evidence that points to one of the biggest conspiracies ever perpetrated.

Professor Steven Jones, who lectures in physics at the Brigham Young University in Utah, says the official version of events is the biggest and most evil cover up in history.

He has joined the 9/11 Scholars for Truth whose membership includes up to 75 leading scientists and experts from universities across the US.



20% of U.S. Rice Contaminated with Illegal GM Strain :.

Clear and present danger:

Up to one fifth of rice entering the EU is contaminated with an illegal genetically modified (GM) strain from the US. Those are the findings of the European Commission's own investigation into EU rice imports, following the admission in August by the US government that untested strains of GM rice had entered the food chain.

If that wasn't alarming enough, our own research has shown this rice has made its way into products available in German supermarkets. Coming just one week after we revealed how Chinese products containing another illegal and untested GM rice variety were available on supermarket shelves in the UK and Europe, these results illustrate the inability of the GM industry to control its own technologies.



Baghdad to be Ringed with Trenches :.

The U.S. military, with all of its otherworldly capabilities, is resorting to medieval siege tactics against one of the largest cities in the Persian Gulf region?!

What's next? Hot oil and petards?

Iraq said it will ring Baghdad with trenches in a bid to restrict movements of insurgents, as more than 100 people were reported killed in sectarian attacks in the past three days.

The US military, meanwhile, announced that one of its soldiers had gone missing after two others were killed in a deadly suicide car bomb attack on Thursday that also wounded 30.

The new security measures were spelled out Friday by Interior Ministry spokesman Brigadier General Abdel Karim Khalaf.

"We will surround the city with trenches," Khalaf told AFP. "The entry to the capital will be permitted through 28 roads as against 21 at the moment, but at the same time we will seal off dozens of other minor roads with access to Baghdad."

He said checkpoints will be set up on the 28 roads on which access will be allowed.

Another top security official told AFP that the plan was to "monitor who is coming into Baghdad and who is going out.

"This way we will have a better control of movements, including those of insurgents."

Baghdad has a circumference of 80 kilometres (50 miles) and observers noted that an operation of this scale would take months to complete.


9/15/2006

Schwarzenegger Gone Wild :.

Must see.



Al Qaeda Doesn't Exist :.

This is a clip from the excellent three-part BBC documentary "The Power of Nightmares".


9/14/2006

Google Hires Most Evil Perception Management Firm on Planet :.

Google won't allow me to run paid Adwords ads for Cryptogon AND they disabled my Adsense account without warning after the thing was up to about $80. This has happened to thousands of sites.

Maybe they'll break the free search widget at some point as well. Or screw with my Blogger account, like they did with Jeff Wells. Who knows...

The 'Don't be evil' search engine company has hired the infamous astroturfing and dirty tricks firm Direct Connect, Inc.

Related: Creepy Google Recruitment Video <--- The onsite laundry machines, 24hour cafes, deoderant sticks and day care center are all nice touches. Just don't drink the KoolAid!



Experimental AI Powers Robot Army :.

"Rise of the Machines" is one of my favorite scenarios. It demonstrates human behavior at the maximum-dumb end of the chart. Civilization probably (and hopefully won't) last long enough to build fieldable armies of killer robots, but that's not stopping the U.S. military from trying. Each year, more robots kill more people in "combat", but it's just at boneheaded levels now. It's remote control, video game style killing.

Autonomous mode killing is what They want. They want the robot to search for the target (as specified by Cheney, et al), ID the target and kill it, all on its own. My gut feeling is that it won't be a purely software based innovation that gives them a Skynet-type solution. The thing that will probably do it will involve living brain tissue at some level, like with the rat brain hooked up to the flight simulator.

I like the part about the robot swarm sacrificing one of its own to create a distraction in order to achieve the objective. Maybe the software watched CNN and learned tactics from the Iraqi insurgency...

Laugh now. You probably won't be laughing later:

Perhaps the most impressive -- and spookiest -- aspect of the project is the swarming behavior of the robots. In computer simulations, they acted together to tackle obstacles and grouped together into defensive formations where needed, Thaler said. They also worked out how to deal with defenders, and spontaneously devised the most efficient strategy for mapping their environment, he added.

"This approach has less chance of getting stuck than any other" when dealing with unpredictable obstacles, according to Lloyd Reshard, a senior electronics engineer at AFRL.

Thaler declined to describe his results in detail, but said his system has produced unspecified "humanlike capabilities."

"I can relate the results of virtual-reality simulations, where swarms of Creativity Machine-based robots have deliberatively sacrificed one of their kind to distract a human guard, enabling the remainder to infiltrate a mock facility," he said.


Research Credit: JL



Solar Powered White 208 LED String Lights :.

Man... This would just about do the trick:

Finally, Solar-Powered Stringlights! Our amazing solar panel includes a heavy-duty rechargeable 6V battery sufficient to power this 54ft long strand of 208 white LEDs. Two full days of direct sunlight is what you need to get started. Then each day of sun gives you a night of light. No worry about where an electrical outlet is located- these lights work wherever the sun shines. Perfect for remote outdoor locations. Place the solar panel in a sunny location, and wrap the string of lights around that backyard tree or fence [or our living room and kitchen]. Place in full sun to charge the battery in daytime. Auto-on at night.



Tony Blair Represents a Clear and Present Danger to Britain :.

From the creature who licks the toes of American billionaires with glee:

British Prime Minister Tony Blair launched a withering attack on Thursday on what he called "mad anti-Americanism" among European politicians.

Blair, U.S. President George W. Bush's closest ally in the so-called war on terror, said the world urgently needs the United States to help tackle the globe's most pressing problems.

"The danger is if they decide to pull up the drawbridge and disengage. We need them involved," Blair said, spelling out his political vision in a pamphlet published by The Foreign Policy Center think-tank.

"The strain of, frankly, anti-American feeling in parts of European politics is madness when set against the long-term interests of the world we believe in," he said.



Cryptogon Reader Contributes $30

TM, a longtime Cryptogon reader and first time contributor, sent $30 and wrote:
Hi Kevin,
I've been reading the site forever, and it was about time to help out. I was waiting for your farmstead site to start up. I wasn't withholding the money for that, but it did finally get me on my butt and PayPal-ing the way I should. Keep up the great work.
Thanks so much, TM!



DHS Releases Cyber Storm Report :.

Four years ago, I wrote an essay called, Cyberwar: How Terrorists Could Defeat the U.S., and Why They Won't. It's an informal summary of what I learned back in the mid 1990s, when I researched information warfare in college. If you cut through all the BS wonk-speak, the bottom line is that a kill shot could be delivered to the U.S. economy by rudimentary physical attacks on critical infrastructures.

The Department of Homeland Security, after running a massive simulation on such an attack, pretty much confirmed my analysis. I say pretty much, because they don't explicitly call it a kill shot. They dress it up with a lot of stuff that makes the still warm cow sh*t I put on my garden beds smell like perfume.

In any event, it sounds like the scenario that DHS gamed was more or less similar to the one I laid out in the "Possible Terrorist Scenario" section of my essay.

So, I'll keep asking the question: If the U.S. could be taken down with shovels, hatchets and bolt cutters, why haven't "the terrorists" done it?

Hmm???

I'll take it a bit further: Now that They're gaming this scenario with the actual PHBs from the companies, it might mean that They ARE planning to take it down, mostly to obscure the real financial crimes that have already been carried out, and want to get it right. It'll be a slight of hand trick, when the economy is about the splatter against the wall, and people might start wondering what happened, and who ripped them off... The fiber will go dark. The datacenters will write zeros to the disks. The tape backups will go up in flames.

What happened to all the evidence of financial crimes? "Oh, uh, Your Honor, the terrorists destroyed it when they took out the Internet. There was a lot of confusion, uh, Your Honor." It'll be the next best thing since, "My dog ate my homework."

The exercise simulated a large-scale cyber campaign that disrupts multiple critical infrastructure, as well as simulated "physical demonstrations and disturbances" to test the ability of government to respond to multiple incidents simultaneously, even when its not clear that the events are related (read: 9/11).

So how'd our government do? Not so well.


Related: NSA Risking Electrical Overload: "The Terrorists" and Sustainable Fascism



NASA: Arctic Ice Melting Rapidly :.

Somehow, this article doesn't mention the methane bomb, but keep that in mind as you read this:

Scientists have long worried about melting Arcticsea ice in the summer, but they had not seen a big winter drop in sea ice, even though they expected it.

...

For more than 25 years Arctic sea ice has slowly diminished in winter by about 1.5 percent per decade. But in the past two years the melting has occurred at rates 10 to 15 times faster. From 2004 to 2005, the amount of ice dropped 2.3 percent; and over the past year, it's declined by another 1.9 percent, according to Comiso.

A second NASA study by other researchers found the winter sea ice melt in one region of the eastern Arctic has shrunk about 40 percent in just the past two years. This is partly because of local weather but also partly because of global warming, Comiso said.

The loss of winter ice is bad news for the ocean because this type of ice, when it melts in summer, provides a crucial breeding ground for plankton, Comiso said. Plankton are the bottom rung of the ocean's food chain.

"If the winter ice melt continues, the effect would be very profound especially for marine mammals," Comiso said in a NASA telephone press conference.

The ice is melting even in subfreezing winter temperatures because the water is warmer and summer ice covers less area and is shorter-lived, Comiso said. Thus, the winter ice season shortens every year and warmer water melts at the edges of the winter ice more every year.

Scientists and climate models have long predicted a drop in winter sea ice, but it has been slow to happen. Global warming skeptics have pointed to the lack of ice melt as a flaw in global warming theory.

The latest findings are "coming more in line with what we expected to find," said Mark Serreze, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. "We're starting to see a much more coherent and firm picture occurring."

"I hate to say we told you so, but we told you so," he added.


9/13/2006

Vogue Italia September 2006: Fashion Police State :.

They're just F-ing with us at this stage:


Research Credit: whatreallyhappened.com



China Replaces U.S. As World's Largest Exporter :.

During the first six months of this year, China surpassed the United States as being the world's largest exporter. Only five years ago, the United States exported more than double the amount of China. During the first half of 2006, Chinese exports of manufactured goods reached $404 billion compared to $367 billion in exports by the United States.

"This dramatic reversal, together with the increasingly high-tech orientation of Chinese exports, poses a serious challenge to U.S. export competitiveness and long-standing leadership in technological innovation," writes Preeg.

The composition of Chinese exports is undergoing a "structural shift" away from labor-intensive products to high tech and value-added goods. Chinese exports of textiles and apparel declined to 14.6 percent of total exports during the first half of 2006.



Air Force Chief: Test Directed Energy Weapons on U.S. Citizens :.

Wave your signs. That'll accomplish plenty!

Nonlethal weapons such as high-power microwave devices should be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations before being used on the battlefield, the Air Force secretary said Tuesday.

More: Cryptogon Reader Suggestion

I can see it now, the flower children cowering behind tinfoil peace signs. I sometimes wonder what the protest industrial complex would do without the military industrial complex?

DC writes:
The funny thing about directed energy is that it can be directed back. If you make the signs out of folded up cardboard square boxes lined with tinfoil, then unfold them and direct the open side at the microwave source, you create a retroreflector which sends the energy back at them. Imagine a bicycle reflector when your headlights shine on it- multiplied by a thousand people. (there's a little more to the box shape cutting, but it's simply making a cone out of the corners of the boxes)

Go ahead, wave the signs.....
Different strokes for different folks, I guess.



Lebanon Bathed in Cluster Bombs :.

"What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs," the head of an IDF rocket unit in Lebanon said regarding the use of cluster bombs and phosphorous shells during the war.

Quoting his battalion commander, the rocket unit head stated that the IDF fired around 1,800 cluster bombs, containing over 1.2 million cluster bomblets.

In addition, soldiers in IDF artillery units testified that the army used phosphorous shells during the war, widely forbidden by international law. According to their claims, the vast majority of said explosive ordinance was fired in the final 10 days of the war.

...

The cluster rounds which don't detonate on impact, believed by the United Nations to be around 40% of those fired by the IDF in Lebanon, remain on the ground as unexploded munitions, effectively littering the landscape with thousands of land mines which will continue to claim victims long after the war has ended.

Because of their high level of failure to detonate, it is believed that there are around 500,000 unexploded munitions on the ground in Lebanon. To date 12 Lebanese civilians have been killed by these mines since the end of the war.

According to the commander, in order to compensate for the inaccuracy of the rockets and the inability to strike individual targets precisely, units would "flood" the battlefield with munitions, accounting for the littered and explosive landscape of post-war Lebanon.


Research Credit: RB


9/10/2006

Cryptogon Reader Contributes $50

MO started sending quarterly $50 contributions to Cryptogon back in January of 2003!!! Thanks, MO, for providing such generous support for all of these years.

He just let me know that he's working on a software package that I think you guys would find VERY interesting. It's in the early stages of development, but stay tuned. I'll let you know more when MO is satisfied with the status of the project, and ready for folks to give it a try.



Blair: Public Still Does not See Danger of Islamic Extremism :.

Over four years ago, in Is Europe Due for a Pearl Harbor Style Event?, I wrote:
The U.S. has to get Europe on board. Britain is poised to be America's primary ally. The European public, however, is having the same reluctance to getting involved with America's War on Terror as Americans had to getting involved with World War II. Remember the event that changed American public opinion about World War II? Pearl Harbor.

In my opinion, Europe is about to suffer a Pearl Harbor style event that will affect pan European public opinion toward support of the U.S. led War on Terror; a war that is actually a crusade to secure control of the petroleum and mineral deposits of Central Asia and the Middle East. For months, I thought London would be a target, simply because Britain is the America's closest ally. Such an attack would silence the loud opposition to the war emerging out of Europe, and make imperial partners out of the U.S. and Britain.
The Madrid bombings not only didn't accomplish the desired PSYOP objective, they backfired horribly. The London attacks didn't do the trick, either.

Keeping my four-year-old comments in mind, note the following from Tony Blair:
Amongst the people in Europe and Western opinion there is a big battle to be won... And I think there is a desire not to face the fact that we are fighting a global struggle. There are all sorts of issues to do with America and whether people want to be associated with America. And I think there is sometimes a naivete about organizations like Hezbollah and the activities of Iran. I'm just being frank. I think there is a battle, and it is important that we take our case out and win that battle.
Now, I wonder what type of event would sort out all those pesky issues to do with America and whether people want to be associated with America?

Hmmm, Tony?

What's it's going to be, mate?

Related: Tony Blair on Playing by the Rules



Farmlet.co.nz Launched! :.

It's Spring in New Zealand and Becky and I have been very busy. Over the last several days, in addition to preparing our garden beds, we've been building a new website to document the work we're doing on our farm: farmlet.co.nz.

Cryptogon has documented the problems for years. Farmlet, we hope, will provide our vision of the solutions.

Additionally, several generous Cryptogon readers sent contributions, or purchased advertising, starting from the beginning of September.

Direct contributions came from:

AB $50
EP $27.77
Anonymous $30

Cryptogon advertisers:

resist.ca $50
freeinternetpress.com $28.50

The size of the group of people who support Cryptogon, month to month, is so small---a handful of individuals really---but their generosity is almost beyond belief. Thank you all so very much.

And I don't know who's doing all the shopping at Amazon, but you guys are going absolutely insane on there! Thank you for choosing to order your stuff via Cryptogon. It's all adding up.

Now, you might be wondering what Becky and I have done with your money... Have a look! Moooooooooo!!!




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:. 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.