Israeli Reich: Racist Marriage Laws :.

The Israeli parliament passed a law preventing Palestinians married to Israelis from gaining Israeli citizenship.

Human rights groups have condemned the law as racist but supporters say it is necessary for security reasons and to maintain the Jewish character of the state of Israel.

The law will prevent Palestinians from the occupied territories in the West Bank and Gaza from marrying Arab-Israelis, who make up about 20% of the population of Israel.
posted by Kevin at 10:30 PM

Poindexter Quits :.

John Poindexter, the Iran-Contra scandal figure who headed two criticized Pentagon projects, including one that would have enabled investors to profit by predicting terrorist attacks, will quit his post within weeks, U.S. defense officials said Thursday.
posted by Kevin at 5:24 PM

Mars :.

I have no idea whether or not this is significant, but it certainly might be:

This month and next, Earth is catching up with Mars in an encounter that will culminate in the closest approach between the two planets in recorded history. The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287. Due to the way Jupiter's gravity tugs on Mars and perturbs its orbit, astronomers can only be certain that Mars has not come this close to Earth in the Last 5,000 years, but it may be as long as 60,000 years before it happens again. The encounter will culminate on August 27th when Mars comes to within 34,649,589 miles of Earth and will be (next to the moon) the brightest object in the night sky.

Research Credit: NF
posted by Kevin at 5:03 AM

Global Financial System On the Brink

Combine these stories with the ongoing unemployment catastrophe and it's difficult to imagine the overall situation getting worse.... Well, just wait until the next event. We are near to the end game of all of this nonsense:

European Central Bank Selling All Debt Issued by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae :.

The European Central Bank is eliminating its holdings of debt issued by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the two biggest U.S. providers of mortgage financing, and recommended that its national central banks do the same, according to a person who has seen the ECB's recommendation.

The Frankfurt-based central bank, which sets interest rates for the 12 countries sharing the euro, gave its opinion at the last meeting of the 18-member governing council on July 10, said the person who declined to be named. ECB spokeswoman Regina Schueller declined to comment. Officials of the 12 central banks declined to comment.

Asian Central Banks Selling Debt Issued by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae :.

Securities backed by Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE) widened three to 6.5 basis points across the yield curve in Tuesday's session. Add that to Monday's four-to-five basis point cheapening - and you have the worst two sessions in recent history, excluding the week of Freddie Mac's management shakeup in early June.

Richard Russell :.

During the 1990s our government ran up $2.87 trillion of new debt. This was more than all the debt the US government had built up since the United States were first formed.

But that's just part of the story. Coming up is roughly $44 trillion of unfunded liabilities, which includes Social Security, Medicare, normal government expenses and interest on the national debt.

We have a $10 trillion economy. How on earth is a $10 trillion economy going to service what's coming up in the way of $38 trillion in debt?

There are two choices. Repudiate a good chunk of this debt or at least cut it back drastically. Or finance the debt via the printing presses. Which one do you think the US government is going to choose? Look, if we're running the printing presses full speed now, and the BIG expenses haven't even hit yet, what do you think our leaders are going to do when the "debt hits the fan?" You guessed it, they're going to inflate at a level that has never been seen before.

Growing Cracks in Housing Market :.

Right now, it is undeniable that the most critical sector determining the fate of the economy is housing. Throughout the last three years, while techs wrecked and manufacturing tumbled, housing has been the last bastion of support for consumer spending, retail sales, and the ENTIRE economy.

Problem: The housing bubble was driven by the mortgage refinancing boom -- and the refi boom, in turn, was driven by ridiculously low Treasury bond rates.

Now, take away the low mortgage rates and what do you get? You get a chain reaction of events that could lead to the greatest housing bust in decades: A sharp slowdown in refinancing, a sudden disappearance of cash in the market, falling prices and fire sales -- a bursting bubble that could make the tech wreck seem small by comparison.

Muslim Call to Thwart Capitalism :.

Mr Vadillo, a Spanish Muslim, called on all followers of Islam to stop using western currencies such as the dollar, the pound and the euro and instead to return to the use of the gold dinar.

He said the introduction of the gold dinar to the world's economies would be the single most unifying event for Muslims in the modern era.

Shortly afterwards, he said, the capitalist structure would quickly fall and it would make the Wall Street crash of 1929 seem minor by comparison.

Malaysia�s First Gold Dinar Available to Public Next Week :.

The Royal Mint of Malaysia has launched Malaysia�s first Gold Dinar, which will be available to the public next month in the � and 1 Dinar types, priced at RM51 and RM181.

It has a gold purity composition of 91.7%, widely known as 22-carat.

Research Credit: NF
posted by Kevin at 4:26 AM

Supersize It: Fast Food 'As Addictive as Heroin' :.

Hamburgers and French fries could be as addictive as heroin, scientists have claimed.

Researchers in the United States have found evidence to suggest people can become overly dependent on the sugar and fat in fast food.

The controversial findings add weight to claims that over-eating is simply down to a lack of self-control.
posted by Kevin at 8:27 PM

RFIDs in Japanese Currency by Next Year! :.

After the next big one, most of the cash in the world will be chipped:

As Europe mulls the idea of implanting radio chips into euro notes, Japan has gone a step further with plans to incorporate the controversial technology in currency that will enter circulation next year.

New 10,000 Yen bills (worth about �51) currently entering production are to be implanted with IC chips from Hitachi in a bid to combat counterfeiters and money launderers, according to Japanese reports relayed to us by Osaka-based Reg Reader D. Michael Ramirez.
posted by Kevin at 5:57 AM

Another 10% of Computer Jobs Gone by the End of 2004 :.

One out of 10 jobs in the U.S. computer services and software industry could shift to lower-cost emerging markets such as India or Russia by the end of 2004, a top computer consultancy said on Tuesday.

Gartner Inc., the world's biggest high-tech forecasting firm, said in a report entitled "U.S. Offshore Outsourcing: Structural Changes, Big Impact" that 500,000 of the 10.3 million U.S. technology jobs could move just in 2003 and 2004.

Don't ask me why, but I watched the ABC Nightly News last night. They ran a piece about how the professional ranks in U.S. corporations are being exported to India, Russia, etc. The guy in the interview, who was asked to train the foreign workers who would take over his work after he was eliminated, said, "If you sit at a desk, beware." That's right, folks. Americans are not economically viable anymore. Unless it's for working crap jobs involving nametags, hair nets and/or the operation of a cash register. You see, the only thing that matters is producing some good or service at the lowest possible price. Well, what difference does it make if fewer and fewer people have the money to buy the stuff?

Michael Emmons thought he knew how to keep a job as a software programmer.

"You have to continue to keep yourself up to speed," he said. "If you don't, you'll get washed out."

Up to speed or not, Emmons wound up being "washed out" anyway. Last summer, he moved his family from California to Florida for the Siemens Co., makers of electronics and equipment for industries. Not long after, Emmons and 19 other programmers were replaced by cheaper foreign workers.

Adding insult to injury, Emmons and the others had to train their replacements.

"It was the most demoralizing thing I've ever been through," he told ABCNEWS. "After spending all this time in this industry and working to keep my skills up-to-date, I had to now teach foreign workers how to do my job so they could lay me off."
posted by Kevin at 5:36 AM

Microsoft Flushing 800 More :.

Microshaft:

Employees estimate that Microsoft is planning to eliminate at least 800 jobs in the next fiscal year at the company's Las Colinas facility outside of Dallas, Texas and shift the work offshore.

If this outsourcing goes as expected, it will be the largest one-time firing of full-time Microsoft employees - in the company�s history.
posted by Kevin at 5:34 AM

Why You Shouldn't Believe the New Jobless Stats :.

You really do need to read 1984 again, if you haven't lately. It's all there folks, all of it. On government stats, let's see how our friend, Winston Smith, arrives at his numbers:

But actually, he thought as he re-adjusted the Ministry of Plenty's figures, it was not even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another. Most of the material that you were dealing with had no connexion with anything in the real world, not even the kind of connexion that is contained in a direct lie. Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version. A great deal of the time you were expected to make them up out of your head. For example, the Ministry of Plenty's forecast had estimated the output of boots for the quarter at one-hundred-and-forty-five million pairs. The actual output was given as sixty-two millions. Winston, however, in rewriting the forecast, marked the figure down to fifty-seven millions, so as to allow for the usual claim that the quota had been overfulfilled. In any case, sixty-two millions was no nearer the truth than fifty-seven millions, or than one-hundred-and-forty-five millions. Very likely no boots had been produced at all. Likelier still, nobody knew how many had been produced, much less cared. All one knew was that every quarter astronomical numbers of boots were produced on paper, while perhaps half the population of Oceania went barefoot. And so it was with every class of recorded fact, great or small. Everything faded away into a shadow-world in which, finally, even the date of the year had become uncertain.

And now, to the unemployment numbers. Hint: Take the government generated number and multiply it by three or four. Now you're approaching the realm of the real:

Friday the government will report the latest employment figures for the nation. And while I won't - because I can't - predict whether the numbers will continue to show a miserable job market, you can count on one thing: The data will be misleading.

Here are some reasons why, good or bad, the U.S. Labor Department's 8:30 a.m. announcement will be as credible as the fortune you get in those Chinese cookies.

The government missed a whopping 440,000 jobs that were lost last year. Why should this year's figures be any more accurate?

Last January the unemployment rate was "adjusted" downward by 0.2 percent for changes in surveying methods. Right now the closely watched rate should actually be 6.6 percent, not 6.4 percent. If the rate does drop - as some on Wall Street are hoping/predicting - so what?

The government recently started seasonally adjusting its employment figures each and every month. Washington may as well let the numbers be picked by a Lotto machine.
posted by Kevin at 5:33 AM

The Sum of All Fears: No Takers for U.S. Bonds :.

Well, folks, writers on the "fringe" have been warning about this for easily 15 years. When I suggested that this would happen in an advanced international political economy class, the smug professor (and member of the Council of Foreign Relations) said, "Won't happen. There will always be plenty of buyers for U.S. paper." In this case, "always" turned out to be eight years.

Hold on, this isn't going to be pretty:

The stage was set yesterday for a make-or-break showdown over the White House's handling of the economy.

The U.S. Treasury said it would try to pull off its biggest ever borrowing deal in weeks ahead to manage the government's record $455 billion budget deficit.

The agency plans to borrow a record $230 billion in the second half through the sale of its three-year, five-year and 10-year notes.

But analysts doubt that any buyers will step up to buy Uncle Sam's IOUs and bail out the White House's huge deficit.

"The bond market is revolting because they've already lost trillions on bonds," said portfolio manager Bill King. "A lot of the very rich are hurting badly, and they're leveraged to the hilt."

News of the giant bond sale sent the already battered bond prices tumbling again yesterday on fears the new paper will flood the market with unwanted securities.

If investors turn their backs on the new debt and it's withdrawn, the embarrassment "will totally repudiate everything [Fed Chairman Alan] Greenspan has been doing all these years," said King. "All the usual buyers of Treasury bonds are now sellers, and there's no reason for them to buy."

The sinking bond prices caused yields, which move in the opposite direction, to soar to eight-month highs yesterday. The higher yields are also sending up mortgage rates, which some investors fear could nip the housing boom that has propped up the economy for two years.
posted by Kevin at 5:31 AM

The Sum of All Fears: Idiots Realize They Are Almost Tapped Out :.

Consumers, nervous about rising unemployment, lost confidence in their economic prospects in July, resulting in a sharp, unexpected drop in sentiment, according to the latest Conference Board survey.
posted by Kevin at 5:28 AM

Ghost of Joseph Mengele at Porton Down :.

Many years ago I worked alongside other women campaigning against both animal and human experimentation at the Porton Down research facility in the UK. At the time rumour was rife that not only were animals bred and tortured in horrific conditions, but humans too, including servicemen, the elderly and the mentally handicapped were being subjected to terrifying and dangerous experiments, evidence of which is just now coming to light.
posted by Kevin at 5:26 AM

U.S. Warned it Faces 'Third Gulf War' in Iraq :.

Maybe Iraq will be used to get the classic New World Order model back on track. As the situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate (almost by design), one has to wonder if the UN will be called upon to save the day. Ordo ab chao:

A study on guerrilla warfare in Iraq by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington think-tank, blames bad planning by the US administration and the low priority given to "conflict termination" and nation-building strategies by the Pentagon.

CSIS military specialist Anthony Cordesman says the US has not learned the lessons of past conflicts, that "even the best military victories cannot win the peace".

He writes: "Unless this situation changes soon, and radically, the United States may end up fighting a third Gulf war against the Iraqi people . . . It is far from clear that the United States can win this kind of asymmetric war."

The study is likely to be a further blow to the US administration, already facing mounting criticism for chaotic reconstruction efforts in the country.

Mr Cordesman offers a grim assessment of the future of the Iraqi conflict: "The most likely case still seems to be a mixed and poorly co-ordinated US nation-building effort that does just enough to put Iraq on a better political and economic path, but does so in a climate of constant low-level security threats and serious Iraqi ethnic and sectarian tensions."
posted by Kevin at 3:52 AM

Terror Futures Contracts: Go Long the Suicide Bus Bombers :.

It's getting too weird, even for me:

The war on terror has come to this: The Pentagon is setting up a commodity-style market to use real investors -- putting down real money -- to help its generals predict terrorist attacks, coups d'etat, and other turmoil around the globe.

Under the program, disclosed yesterday by two of its critics in the Senate, investors with knowledge of the Middle East and other hot spots would be lured, by the prospect of making money of course, into using their expertise to buy and sell futures contracts on world events.

Register coverage of the same story.

Update: Cancelled :.

The Pentagon will abandon a plan to establish a futures market to help predict terrorist strikes, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said Tuesday.

Sen. John Warner said he spoke by phone with the program's director, "and we mutually agreed that this thing should be stopped."

Nice dartboard. Does that also work for picking stocks and predicting the weather?

What will billions of tax dollars buy next? I, personally, would like to see a circus macaque with a crayon and a large drawing surface? Rumsfeld and the rest of the crew would be standing around, taking copious notes. Disputes resulting from different interpretations of the analysis would be resolved by a contest to see who could fling their feces the farthest.
posted by Kevin at 2:25 AM

Israel's Ongoing Crimes Against Humanity :.

'I can't imagine anyone who considers himself a human being can do this'

On Friday a four-year-old Palestinian boy was shot dead by a soldier - the most recent child victim of the Israeli army. Chris McGreal investigates a shocking series of deaths.

Research Credit: DG
posted by Kevin at 2:21 AM

Classified Section of Sept. 11 Report Faults Saudi Rulers :.

Yep. And since when did the Saudi royal family do anything without first checking with Bush Sr. et. al.? On the other hand, 9/11 could have been a setup to facilitate the theft of the biggest jewel of them all: Saudi Arabia. See my entry entitled, Qatar: The Gateway to Empire (pay special attention to the map). I wrote:

On 8/30/02, I wrote, "I think Saudi Arabia, not Iraq, is the actual crown jewel in the eyes of U.S. geostrategists."

We all know what is going to happen to Iraq. That is a done deal.

What is less clear is what is going to happen to Saudi Arabia. Take a look at a map of the region... Is there anyone out there who thinks that the establishment of U.S. Central Command less than three hundred miles from Riyadh is a coincidence?

Also consider the fact that the U.S. now controls a suberbase on the outskirts of Baghdad. This facility could be used to launch air strikes against Saudi or Iranian targets with the heaviest U.S. bombers.

From the NY Times piece:

Senior officials of Saudi Arabia have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to charitable groups and other organizations that may have helped finance the September 2001 attacks, a still-classified section of a Congressional report on the hijackings says, according to people who have read it.

The 28-page section of the report was deleted from the nearly 900-page declassified version released on Thursday by a joint committee of the House and Senate intelligence committees. The chapter focuses on the role foreign governments played in the hijackings, but centers almost entirely on Saudi Arabia, the people who saw the section said.

It's just a matter of time before They unleash the justification to take over Saudi Arabia. A mushroom cloud would do nicely, but it might not even have to be that big of a display.
posted by Kevin at 11:20 AM

Philippines Mutiny :.

UPDATE [7/27/03 10:15am PST]: They Surrendered

Rouge elements of Philippine Special Forces are rigging a Manila financial district with explosives:

Armed men have seized the financial center of the Philippine capital and set up booby traps, hours after the administration announced a crackdown on what it called "rebellion" soldiers.

About 30 armed men, who identified themselves as members of the military, set up devices between the Rustan department store in the Glorietta Shopping Center and the Hotel Intercontinental.

The men rigged the explosives at 3.30 a.m. Sunday [3:30 p.m. Saturday EDT]. About 4:15 a.m. Sunday, the armed men appeared to be entering negotiations with the military.

A small crowd of onlookers had gathered, but had been told by the armed men to leave the area, as the explosives could go off.

Update: These Guys Figured it Out :.

So, when should we expect the Navy SEALs to take control of the New York Stock Exchange?

The Philippine government has accused the soldiers of plotting a coup attempt against President Gloria Arroyo. But the renegade soldiers say they did not intend to grab power.

They accused the government of selling arms to rebel groups and carrying out terrorist attacks.

More: When You Know Too Much, You Have Two Choices :.

Choice 1: Let them take you down.

Choice 2: Try to take them down first.

Maybe this is why U.S. soldiers must be kept in total ignorance of the foreign affairs of the United States over the last 50 years or so. If even a small percentage of U.S. military personnel had any idea of what was actually happening, this incident in the Philippines would look like a boyscout exercise in comparison to what would happen in the U.S.:

They accused the government of selling ammunition and weapons to the Muslim separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels, the Abu Sayyaf kidnap-for-ransom group and the communist New People's Army (NPA) insurgents.

They also said the government was behind a series of deadly bombings in the southern city of Davao in March and April that claimed dozens of lives.

The group also accused Arroyo of planning to declare martial law in August, by using a series of bombings in the capital as the pretext to stay in power after her term ends in 2004.
posted by Kevin at 3:22 PM

The New Feudalism :.

The aim of the book is to provide enough shocking facts about the manipulative practices of America's power elite, that readers will be motivated (i.e., made angry enough) to take part in efforts to bring the richest 1% under control, ...before they impoverish the planet and destroy the biosphere.

The book presents overwhelming evidence that masquerading behind a democratic facade, an economic elite comprising less than 1% of the population is quietly and cunningly ruling America. Their immense wealth and power enable them to exercise so much control over the governmental process, that they effectively operate the country as a Feudal oligarchy. The book will leave little doubt that Government has been serving as a tool to subsidize and legitimize their exploitation of national and international resources, while legislative tax changes have left the nation with a Feudal wealth distribution system.
posted by Kevin at 3:01 PM

Hunter Thompson: Welcome to the Big Darkness :.

The Rumsfield-Cheney axis has self-destructed right in front of our eyes, along with the once-proud Perle-Wolfowitz bund that is turning to wax. They somehow managed to blow it all, like a gang of kids on a looting spree, between January and July, or even less. It is genuinely incredible. The U.S. Treasury is empty, we are losing that stupid, fraudulent chickencrap War in Iraq, and every country in the world except a handful of Corrupt Brits despises us. We are losers, and that is the one unforgiveable sin in America.

Beyond that, we have lost the respect of the world and lost two disastrous wars in three years. Afghanistan is lost, Iraq is a permanent war Zone, our national Economy is crashing all around us, the Pentagon's "war strategy" has failed miserably, nobody has any money to spend, and our once-mighty U.S. America is paralyzed by Mutinies in Iraq and even Fort Bragg.

The American nation is in the worst condition I can remember in my lifetime, and our prospects for the immediate future are even worse. I am surprised and embarrassed to be a part of the first American generation to leave the country in far worse shape than it was when we first came into it. Our highway system is crumbling, our police are dishonest, our children are poor, our vaunted Social Security, once the envy of the world, has been looted and neglected and destroyed by the same gang of ignorant greed-crazed bastards who brought us Vietnam, Afghanistan, the disastrous Gaza Strip and ignominious defeat all over the world.

The Stock Market will never come back, our Armies will never again be No. 1, and our children will drink filthy water for the rest of our lives.

The Bush family must be very proud of themselves today, but I am not. Big Darkness, soon come. Take my word for it.
posted by Kevin at 2:55 PM

Cryptogon.com Email Is Working

If you sent me email in the past 24 hours, I didn't get it. Please re-send any messages. Thanks.
posted by Kevin at 12:23 AM

Operation Rockingham: The Secret Cabal Which Spun for Blair :.

BRITAIN ran a covert 'dirty tricks' operation designed specifically to produce misleading intelligence that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction to give the UK a justifiable excuse to wage war on Iraq.

Operation Rockingham, established by the Defence Intelligence Staff within the Ministry of Defence in 1991, was set up to 'cherry-pick' intelligence proving an active Iraqi WMD programme and to ignore and quash intelligence which indicated that Saddam's stockpiles had been destroyed or wound down.

The existence of Operation Rockingham has been confirmed by Scott Ritter, the former UN chief weapons inspector, and a US military intelligence officer. He knew members of the Operation Rockingham team and described the unit as 'dangerous', but insisted they were not 'rogue agents' acting without government backing. 'This policy was coming from the very highest levels,' he added.

'Rockingham was spinning reports and emphasising reports that showed non-compliance (by Iraq with UN inspections) and quashing those which showed compliance. It was cherry-picking intelligence.'
posted by Kevin at 5:53 PM

And For His Next Trick...

I found this on What Really Happened:

US Code, Title 4, Chapter 1, Sec. 8 (g): "The flag should never have placed upon it, nor on any part of it, nor attached to it any mark, insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature."


posted by Kevin at 5:44 PM

Another "Suicide": Colin McMillan :.

Colin McMillan was clearly a big player in various Bush/Oil/Military criminal enterprises. Now he has a bullet in his brain. This incident reminds me of the scene in Good Fellas when the Joe Pesci character is going to be "made" at the local Don's house. Indeed, McMillan thought he was headed to a top slot in the Organization, but, for some reason, it didn't work out that way. Since this story will soon dissappear down the memory hole, I'll post the entire article:

Navy Chief Nominee May Have Killed Self

By By RICHARD BENKE, Associated Press Writer

Oilman Colin McMillan, who was awaiting Senate confirmation as Navy secretary, died from a single gunshot wound, and investigators said Friday it might have been self-inflicted.

"All indications are it could be suicide, but we're not going to reach that conclusion until the investigation is over," said District Attorney Scot Key of Alamogordo.

McMillan was nominated as Navy secretary by President Bush in May. He was 67.

He died around lunch time Thursday and his body was found at his southern New Mexico ranch by two employees, said Roswell Mayor Bill Owen, a family spokesman and longtime McMillan employee. The 55,000-acre Three Rivers ranch is on the edge of the White Sands Missile Range.

McMillan had run Permian Exploration Corp. in Roswell, chaired Bush's New Mexico presidential campaign in 2000 and served as an assistant defense secretary under the first President Bush.

Sen. Pete Domenici and Rep. Steve Pearce, both New Mexico Republicans, issued statements mourning McMillan's death.

"America has lost a leader, a patriot and statesman," Pearce said.

Domenici said McMillan was "someone who succeeded at everything he tried and everything he did, and yet he was about as humble as anyone you will ever meet."

President Bush had submitted McMillan's nomination to the Senate in May to fill a post left vacant since January, when Gordon England left to become deputy secretary of the new Homeland Security Department.

McMillan had run for the U.S. Senate in 1994, losing to incumbent Jeff Bingaman in a bitter and costly campaign. He was a member of the New Mexico House of Representatives from 1971 to 1982.

Besides managing the 2000 Bush campaign in New Mexico, McMillan was state chairman for Bob Dole's presidential campaign in 1996.

He served in the Marine Corps from 1957-72 and was an assistant defense secretary in the early 1990s when Vice President Dick Cheney was the defense secretary.

Owen said he worked for McMillan for about 22 years in the oil and gas industry, at McMillan Production Co. He praised his honesty, ethics and business skill.

"He was involved in numerous types of business, was successful in all those business ventures and did so in a very up-front and honest and straightforward fashion," Owen said.

McMillan is survived by his wife, Kay, and their four children.
posted by Kevin at 11:58 AM

�Ghost Planes� :.

Perhaps related to the chemtrail ops? Perhaps related to HAARP?

No one�s quite sure, but they�re spooking pilots and air traffic controllers alike. Images of airplanes that either do no exist or are very far away are popping up on radar that controls traffic at O�Hare International Airport, according to reports.

And on a few occasions, controllers at Terminal Radar Approach Control center in Elgin unnecessarily ordered pilots to make sudden, dangerous moves to avoid the false images.

�The ghosting is a complete terror for the air traffic controllers,� Charles Bunting, president of the Elgin local of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, told the Chicago Sun-Times.
posted by Kevin at 11:50 PM

Germans Know Fascism When They See It :.

Almost one in three Germans below the age of 30 believes the U.S. government may have sponsored the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, according to a poll published on Wednesday.

And about 20 percent of Germans in all age groups hold this view, a survey of 1,000 people conducted for the weekly Die Zeit said.
posted by Kevin at 11:39 PM

SCO Shoots Poison Into the Veins of the Linux Movement :.

B Gates comes out on top, again:

SCO's legal threats have prompted Gartner Group to recommend that companies delay deployment of critical Linux applications, determine "whether Unix or Windows will provide functions equivalent to those of Linux deployments", and take a "go-slow" approach to Linux in high-value or mission-critical production systems.
posted by Kevin at 1:57 PM

What's the RDA for Bloody Pus? Ask Monsanto :.

Monsanto is suing Portland, Maine-based Oakhurst Dairy for labeling their milk "Our Farmers' Pledge: No Artificial Growth Hormones." According to Monsanto, manufacturer of the genetically engineered recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (known as rBGH or rBST), Oakhurst Dairy does not have the right to let its customers know whether its milk is laced with genetically engineered hormones. Oakhurst says they've been labeling their products like this for four years, in response to consumer demand.

Although rBGH has been banned in every industrialized nation in the world except for the United States, Monsanto continues to claim that rBGH-derived milk is no different from the natural stuff, despite documentation that rBGH milk contains substantially higher levels of a potent cancer tumor promoter called IGF-1. Monsanto sued two dairies and threatened several thousand retailers in 1994 for labeling or advertising milk and dairy products as "rBGH-free." Despite Monsanto's intimidation tactics, more than 10% of U.S. milk is currently labeled as "rBGH-free," while sales of organic milk and dairy products (which prohibit rBGH) are booming. In recent months a Monsanto-funded front group, the Center for Consumer Freedom, has launched a smear campaign against organic dairies, claiming they are defrauding consumers.

More: Monsanto Suing Maine Dairy over rBGH Issue
posted by Kevin at 9:54 PM

IBM Flushing More Programming Jobs to India, Elsewhere :.

Man, and I thought sysadmin prospects looked grim...

With American corporations under increasing pressure to cut costs and build global supply networks, two senior I.B.M. officials told their corporate colleagues around the world in a recorded conference call that I.B.M. needed to accelerate its efforts to move white-collar, often high-paying, jobs overseas even though that might create a backlash among politicians and its own employees.

During the call, I.B.M's top employee relations executives said that three million service jobs were expected to shift to foreign workers by 2015 and that I.B.M. should move some of its jobs now done in the United States, including software design jobs, to India and other countries.

Related: Boeing cuts another 5000, Ford to axe 2000
posted by Kevin at 4:01 PM

Biometric Passports for Americans Starting October 2004 :.

A senior US government official has laid out detailed plans for the timing and form of US government issued biometric passports.

Frank Moss, deputy assistant secretary for Passport Services, presented his organisation's plans to evolve to a new, more secure "intelligent document" from today's paper-based passports at the Smart Card Alliance's Government Conference and Expo conference last week.

"Our goal is to begin production by October 26, 2004," Moss announced.
posted by Kevin at 3:51 PM

National Reconnaissance Office Website for Kids!? :.

I thought it was a joke. As I navigated nrojr.gov, I refused to believe the site was real. Now, several minutes later, I sit here in stunned silence. What the hell is this all about? My best guess: This site is used to pass orders to the mind controlled sleeper agents. Ok, maybe I'm kidding. Before you place that aluminum foil cap on your head (shiny side out), I'd like you to tell me what you think that site is for! Hell, maybe the deepest black agency in the federal government just needs to entertain the spawn of their employees. Yeah, that's it:

The Web site for NRO, which is jointly operated by the CIA and Defense Department, was born out of a family day for the Virginia-based agency, according to NRO spokesman Art Haubold. The agency announced the Web site's presence late last year.

"We thought it was something that could be fun, and there's some educational elements to it," said Haubold.

"The realities of today are different than when NRO was shrouded in a complete cloak of secrecy," said Haubold. "One of the reasons we are doing this is we want today's youth to become interested in science and technology. This is one way we do some outreach to them.

"Whether or not they end up working for NRO, its importance to get today's youth interested in the science and technology we need to continue United States pre-eminence in space," he added.
posted by Kevin at 4:47 PM

Linux Under Attack From Santa Cruz Operation :.

I think this just affects Linux distributions running on larger, multi processor systems. SCO thinks that SMP works so well in Linux because the code was stolen from them. Or something. If you have enough lawyers, just start making up the BS to suit your needs. Linux users, don't worry, copyright violations will be the least of your worries once Linux is declared a terrorist operating system:

SCO is giving the "tainted" Linux users out there a way to clean up their filthy ways via a licensing program that will begin in the coming weeks.

After dolling out threats of legal action, SCO has called on enterprise Linux users to come forward and pay for code the company claims to own. The legal zealots at SCO reckon Linux has grown up too fast by nicking technology such as support for large SMP systems from its copyrighted Unix code. SCO plans to stat calling Linux customers this week, asking them to pay up or face the consequences.
posted by Kevin at 9:28 AM

Readers of Computer Security Book Flagged? :.

Update: This entire thing appears to be bollix. The book is freely available, according to a Cryptome reader in Newcastle.

ATTENTION: CRYPTOGON READERS IN THE U.K.

I would like verification of events that may or may not be unfolding in Britain re: the sale of the following book:

Secrets of Computer Espionage: Tactics and Countermeasures by Joel McNamara

According to information reposted on Cryptome, booksellers are being asked to collect information on people who inquire about the book. I'd simply like a couple of the many Cryptogon readers in the U.K. to walk into a bookstore and try to get this book. We should be able to get to the bottom of this one fairly easily.

NOTE: Buying the book online doesn't count. Assume that the intelligence agencies have all the information you provided to web retailers like Amazon, etc. So, physically walk into a bookstore. I would especially appreciate accounts from people who actually purchase the book with cash.
posted by Kevin at 6:49 PM

What Was Inside World Trade Center Number 7? :.

Check out the astonishing video of the collapse of WTC-7 over at What Really Happened. What was inside that building that had to go away?

Possibly Related: Controlled Demolition Inc.

From the CDI About page:

A two thousand ton skyscraper collapses like a house of cards, crumbling in on itself - a waterfall of well-fractured steel and concrete debris. It lasts only seconds, and buildings within a few meters stand untouched. The very essence of Controlled Demolition, Inc. is in our name: CONTROL.

Note: CDI removed what was left of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City. CDI was also involved with the World Trade Center "clean up" operation. More info on 9/11 demolition theories.
posted by Kevin at 1:55 PM

Cheney Was Carving It Up In 2001! :.

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption and abuse, said today that documents turned over by the Commerce Department, under court order as a result of Judicial Watch�s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit concerning the activities of the Cheney Energy Task Force, contain a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as 2 charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and �Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts.� The documents, which are dated March 2001, are available on the Internet at: www.JudicialWatch.org.

The Saudi Arabian and United Arab Emirates (UAE) documents likewise feature a map of each country�s oilfields, pipelines, refineries and tanker terminals. There are supporting charts with details of the major oil and gas development projects in each country that provide information on the projects, costs, capacity, oil company and status or completion date.

Related: REBUILDING AMERICA'S DEFENSES: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century

Related: It's Harvest Time
posted by Kevin at 12:39 AM

Microbiology: The Most Dangerous Area of Inquiry in the World :.

In case you haven't noticed, the world's top microbiologists are dying.

The MURDER of David Kelly in Britain brings the total of dead experts in microbiology to 13. (Update 1/15/04: It's 14 now. See below.) To call Kelly's death a suicide is complete folly. See my entry on Israel's Kidon.

Kidon is the Mossad's elite political assassination team that specializes in suicides. While I'm not saying that Kidon did or did not murder Kelly, Kidon is known to have been in Britain. The story was that they were executing individuals associated with Muslim extremism.

Leland Rickman of University of California, San Diego was number twelve. The previous eleven deaths are detailed here. I would also add SAIC analyst Christopher Legallo and potentially MD/microbiologist/lawyer Jeffrey Paris Wall and FBI analyst Linda Franklin to the list.

Why are these people dying? Your guess is as good as mine:

Kelly was the Ministry of Defence's chief scientific officer and senior adviser to the proliferation and arms control secretariat, and to the Foreign Office's non-proliferation department. The senior adviser on biological weapons to the UN biological weapons inspections teams (Unscom) from 1994 to 1999, he was also, in the opinion of his peers, pre-eminent in his field, not only in this country, but in the world.

Update: Kelly Was Eager to Get Back to Work :.

From C4 News:

Just yesterday in an email to a friend he expressed a desire to return to the job that meant so much to him. "Hopefully it will soon pass" he wrote "and I can get to Baghdad and get on with the real work."

Update: Kelly Email to New York Times Minutes Before His Death :.

"many dark actors playing games."

More: The Sudden and Suspicious Deaths of 11, 12, 13 of the World's Leading Microbiologists

Who they were:

1. Nov. 12, 2001:

Benito Que was said to have been beaten in a Miami parking lot and died later.

2. Nov. 16, 2001:

Don C. Wiley went missing. Was found Dec. 20. Investigators said he got dizzy on a Memphis bridge and fell to his death in a river.

3. Nov. 21, 2001:

Vladimir Pasechnik, former high-level Russian microbiologist who defected in 1989 to the U.K. apparently died from a stroke.

4. Dec. 10, 2001:

Robert M. Schwartz was stabbed to death in Leesberg, Va. Three Satanists have been arrested.

5. Dec. 14, 2001:

Nguyen Van Set died in an airlock filled with nitrogen in his lab in Geelong, Australia.

6. Feb. 9, 2002:

Victor Korshunov had his head bashed in near his home in Moscow.

7. Feb. 14, 2002:

Ian Langford was found partially naked and wedged under a chair in Norwich, England.

8. 9. Feb. 28, 2002:

San Francisco resident Tanya Holzmayer was killed by a microbiologist colleague, Guyang Huang, who shot her as she took delivery of a pizza and then apparently shot himself.

10. March 24, 2002:

David Wynn-Williams died in a road accident near his home in Cambridge, England.

11. March 25, 2002:

Steven Mostow of the Colorado Health Sciences Centre, killed in a plane he was flying near Denver.

12. June 24, 2003:

Leland Rickman, Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at the UCSD School of Medicine, died suddenly on June 24 while traveling and teaching medicine in Lesotho, Africa. Actual cause of death, apparently due to natural causes, is not known.

13. July 18, 2003

David Kelly, a British biological weapons expert, was said to have slashed his own wrists while walking near his home. Kelly was the Ministry of Defence's chief scientific officer and senior adviser to the proliferation and arms control secretariat, and to the Foreign Office's non-proliferation department. The senior adviser on biological weapons to the UN biological weapons inspections teams (Unscom) from 1994 to 1999, he was also, in the opinion of his peers, pre-eminent in his field, not only in this country, but in the world.

14. November 20, 2003

Robert Leslie Burghoff, 45, a postdoctoral fellow at Baylor College of Medicine's molecular virology and microbiology department, was walking to his car Nov. 20 when he was hit from behind by a white or light-colored cargo van that jumped the sidewalk in the 1600 block of South Braeswood. Burghoff, a father of three who lived in The Woodlands, had been studying the Norwalk virus plaguing cruise ships.


People Who Aren't on the Main List, but Probably Should Be

Nov. 5, 2001:

Jeffrey Paris Wall was said to have jumped from the parking structure at his place of work, the law firm of O'Melveny & Myers. See this entry for more details.

Sept. 30, 2002:

Christopher Legallo

Legallo died in a plane crash. He was a terrorism analyst for SAIC. His wife, Laura Koepfler, a weapons of mass destruction analyst for SAIC, was also supposed to be on the doomed plane, but decided to take a different flight at the last moment.

Oct. 10, 2002:

Linda Franklin was allegedly killed by the Lee Boyd Malvo/John Allen Muhammad sniper team. Franklin was a top analyst at the FBI National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC).

Update: Three More

AM sends:

Hi Kevin,

You forgot to include:

4 - 6.Nov 24, 2001:

Three more dead microbiologists: A Swissair flight from Berlin to Zurich crashes during its landing approach; 22 are killed and nine survive. Among those killed are Dr. Yaakov Matzner, 54, dean of the Hebrew University school of medicine; Amiramp Eldor, 59, head of the haematology department at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv and a world-recognized expert in blood clotting; and Avishai Berkman, 50, director of the Tel Aviv public health department and businessman.

Any more?
posted by Kevin at 7:46 AM

Madness: Save the Soil with GPS Guided Tractors?! :.

It's so far gone, it's starting to get funny:

The world's over-farmed soil is sick and has been rapidly getting sicker, but scientists say space-age, satellite-driven tractors are coming to the rescue.

Heavy modern farm equipment is killing the soil through repeated compaction and tilling, which in turn worsens salinity that kills crops.

But a new world of automatically steered tractors, guided by satellites, will allow them to run on pre-determined tracks and lessen their impact on the soil.

Stop pharming and start farming.
posted by Kevin at 5:15 PM

Wet Work: Weapons Expert Found Dead :.

Police searching for missing Dr David Kelly, the Government adviser on Iraqi arms named as the possible "mole" for a BBC report claiming the Government "sexed up" its dossier on weapons of mass destruction, say a body found earlier today is probably his.
posted by Kevin at 2:12 PM

Implantable Human Tracking Chip Launched :.

Borrowing from technology for tracking pets, a U.S. company on Thursday launched Mexican sales of microchips that can be implanted under a person's skin and used to confirm health history and identity.

The microchips, already available in the United States, could tap into a growing industry surrounding Mexico's criminal concerns. Kidnappings, robberies and fraud are common here, and Mexicans are constantly looking for ways to protect themselves against crime.

The microchip, the size of a grain of rice, is implanted in the arm or hip. Hospital officials and security guards use a scanning device to download a serial number, which they then use to access blood type, name and other information on a computer.

Research Credit: TL, TR
posted by Kevin at 1:54 PM

Stephanopoulos: Journalistic Leader for the Next 30 Years :.

How about an unremarkable personality, totally unwilling to rock the boat and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Bilderberg Group? Yep. He sounds like a journalistic leader to me:

Bettag said ABC News viewed Stephanopoulos as a key to bringing a younger audience to the Sunday morning shows, where the viewers average 58 years old.

"We see him as one of the bright stars on the horizon," Bettag said. "If you can help him get a dominant position on Sunday morning, he is in a position to be a journalistic leader for the next 30 years."
posted by Kevin at 1:24 PM

Nothing Left To Lie About :.

Mark Morford's unhinged rant does a good job of summing up the dire situation we are all facing. But, it's not that bad, Mark, it's much worse.

The fake liberal press... So concerned. So interested in exposing the lies. So willing to take risks.

So full of shit.

With each passing regime in the U.S., the theory around election time becomes, "Anyone would be better than ________." <---- Fill in the blank.

When you're through living in the bullshit dream world of Republican vs. Democrat, you come to the same realization that Carroll Quigley did when he wrote, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in our Time:

The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can "throw the rascals out" at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.

Election Day 2004??? Yawn. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

You see, the appearance of choice is the mechanism of control. The problem is that as long as Democrats and Republicans are running the show, it really isn't unraveling. The swindle just goes on and on. Eventually, appearances will not be maintained and a massive crash will occur. But until that day, that truly glorious day, the game of musical chairs, played with Democrats and Republicans, will continue. And suckass journalists, fake liberals and fake conservatives alike, will continue to decry the evil and corrupt nature of the other. Wake me up when major newspapers and TV news shows are running headlines and soundbites saying that both parties are equally corrupt and that the entire political process is a scam.
posted by Kevin at 5:33 AM

Child Abuse? :.

Your kids WILL be indoctrinated, or else!

A 15-year-old Manhattan girl whose parents sent her to college instead of high school has been told by a judge that she can't get her associates degree even though she's got enough credits - as city officials launched an "educational neglect" probe against her dad.

Angela Lipsman has been passing courses since she was 11 at the Fashion Institute of Technology and Manhattan Community College. She has a 3.8 average.

...

Meanwhile, her dad, Daniel, said the Administration for Children's Services notified him he's being investigated.

ACS opened the probe after getting a complaint through a child abuse hot line.

"I'd rather go to jail than send my daughter to high school," he said.
posted by Kevin at 3:03 PM

Upload a File, Go to Prison :.

A new bill proposed in Congress on Wednesday would land a person in prison for five years and impose a fine of $250,000 for uploading a single file to a peer-to-peer network.

The bill was introduced by Reps. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and Howard Berman (D-Calif.). They said the bill is designed to increase domestic and international enforcement of copyright laws.
posted by Kevin at 2:57 PM

Live TV: U.S. Soldier Wants Rumsfeld's Resignation :.

Hey, G.I. Joe, think twice before you voluntarily sign up to be the muscle for a mafia organization. Maybe these numbnuts will wake up and figure out who the real enemies are:

Fed up with being in Iraq and demoralized by their role as peacekeepers in a risky place, a group of U.S. soldiers aired their plight on U.S. television on Wednesday and said they had lost faith in the Army.

Told several times they would be going home only to have their hopes dashed this week, a small group of soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division in Iraq, spoke of poor morale and disillusionment with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

"If Donald Rumsfeld were here, I'd ask him for his resignation," one disgruntled soldier told ABC's "Good Morning America" show.

Asked by a reporter what his message would be for Rumsfeld, one said: "I would ask him why we are still here. I don't have any clue as to why we are still in Iraq."
posted by Kevin at 8:53 AM

Activists Prepare for Counter-Bohemian Grove Ritual :.

After thousands of hours of reading and researching global political and economic power, I am starting to believe that the upper echelons of the elite have tapped into, and are drawing their power from, some form of tangible evil. This statement may put off many Cryptogon readers who eschew "woo woo" and religious explanations for events.

But I go where the information leads me. At a minimum, we can say, without a doubt, that the core global elite are fascinated with a human (child) sacrifice ritual involving the ancient symbol of Moloch.

From the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia:

The chief feature of Moloch's worship among the Jews seems to have been the sacrifice of children, and the usual expression for describing that sacrifice was "to pass through the fire", a rite carried out after the victims had been put to death. The special centre of such atrocities was just outside of Jerusalem, at a place called Tophet (probably "place of abomination"), in the valley of Geennom.

The members of "The Establishment" are not particularly smart. On an individual basis, they are basket cases. Yet, somehow, they have managed to enslave the planet! It might be that they are aware of the proclivities and weaknesses of human consciousness, and opportune accordingly. I think there is more to it. Look at the words of President Woodrow Wilson (in The New Freedom, 1913):

"Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it."

This refers to the core of the core. The nucleus. The Them.

Bohemian Grove is probably the most accessible example of what is truly frightening about these people.

What is Bohemian Grove?

As with just about everything, there is the public cover story, "Oh, it's just a bunch of boys having fun," ....and then there is the story you probably don't want to know more about. Antony C. Sutton, editor of the Phoenix Letter, stated in the October, 1996 edition:

"Up to a few months ago, our knowledge of Bohemian Grove, the exclusive elitist hideaway by supposedly adult wheeler dealers, a.k.a. Washington statesman and prominent people (all male.)

We dismissed the behavior as immature, even pitiful by emotionally disturbed juveniles and not worth attention. This is where Kissinger, Ford, Nixon, Bechtel, Bush, Cheney, Hoover and their friends (2600 members) hang out and "relax." And if they want to behave as little boys that is their privilege, it is private property.

Recent [O'Brien and Phillips, TRANCE Formation of America (pp 170-1)] information may radically change this perception of Bohemian Grove. Not merely drunkenness, unbounded use of alcohol and drugs with vague homosexual tones (confirmed by our sources) but reported activities much more serious - kidnapping, rape, pedophilia, sodomy, ritual murder. Investigation is blocked under the 1947 National Security Act. (!) And like the Omaha child abuse case, includes illegal detention of children.

For decades, there have been vague rumors of weird goings on in Bohemian Grove in more remote parts of its 2200 acres. Reliable reports claim Druidic like rituals, druids in red hooded robes marching in procession and chanting to the Great Owl (Moloch.) A funeral pyre with "corpses." (Scores of men work in the Bohemian Grove as servants so this party is fairly well established.)

An article in a local community newspaper, Santa Rosa Sun (1993, July) reported on the Cult of Canaan and the legend of Moloch in place at Bohemian Grove. The Moloch Pagan Cult of Sacrifice is human sacrifice. About the mid 1980s there were rumors of murders in remote parts of the property. A local police investigation went nowhere. State investigators on related criminal acts went nowhere.

According to an observer and near victim, who can describe the Bohemian Grove inner hideaways, the closed sanctum, even the decor at secret locations, places where no outsider goes (or servants according to our sources) there is an UNDERGROUND lounge (sign spelled U.N.derground) a Dark Room, a Leather Room and a Necrophilia Room.

Here is one of O'Brien's quote "Slaves of advancing age or with failed programming were sacrificially murdered at random in the wooded grounds of Bohemian Grove and I felt it was only a matter of time until it would be me."

This potential victim survived. Others reportedly did not.

Alex Jones has done extensive work on Bohemian Grove. He even infiltrated the grounds and video taped some of the rituals.
posted by Kevin at 7:06 AM

Media Leviathan, U.S. Intelligence Form Secret Cabal :.

Each year, at the posh ranch of investment banker Herbert Allen Jr., the world�s media elites meet to discuss strategy, possible mergers and editorial policy. It can only be called a media version of Bilderberg as government, corporate and media officials are meeting in secret, behind the usual wall of security.

As always, for all of these meetings that actually matter, leftist protests are strangely nonexistent, even though it is summertime and colleges are largely empty.

This year is a bit different, given that the key note speaker is none other than CIA Director George Tenet.

Tenet�s attendance has been likened to the �smoking gun� that researchers have been looking for, proving the institutional link between finance, media, government and business.

Like all meetings of this type, it is off limits to reporters, however ironic it might be for a media confab.

The world�s media, whose bosses are attending the gathering, have not bothered to mention the CIA connection this year, likely the first time the world�s premier intelligence gathering service has been invited to this media gathering.
posted by Kevin at 6:59 AM

Excellent Interviews with Paul David Collins

Paul David Collins, author of The Hidden Face of Terrorism: The Dark Side of Social Engineering, from Antiquity to September 11, was interviewed on the For a Closer Look Show.

Real Audio: Segment 1, Segment 2, Segment 3.
posted by Kevin at 6:58 AM

Britain Massively Expands Wind Power Program :.

Clean energy and jobs. What a concept:

Britain is pushing ahead with a huge expansion of offshore wind farms which could supply green power to more than 3 million households and create 20,000 new jobs, the government said Monday.

The government is inviting companies to bid to build new farms, some of which are likely to be 10 times the size of the first scheme under construction in Wales, Patricia Hewitt, Secretary of State for Trade an Industry said.

"The first wind farm has 30 turbines. Developers are saying they want to build much, much larger offshore wind farms -- up to 300 turbines," Hewitt told the BBC.

The program could involve an investment of 6 billion pounds ($9.76 billion) and add 6,000 megawatts of generation capacity.
posted by Kevin at 6:54 AM

Iraq Cost Could Mount to $100 Billion :.

Never mind the thousands of dead civilians:

The cost of the war and occupation of Iraq could reach $100 billion through next year, substantially higher than anticipated at the war's outset, according to defense and congressional aides. This is raising worries that other military needs will go unmet while the government is swamped in red ink.

The cost of the war so far, about $50 billion, already represents a 14 percent increase to military spending planned for this year. Even before the United States invaded Iraq in March, President Bush had proposed defense budgets through 2008 that would rise to $460 billion a year, up 74 percent from the $265 billion spent on defense in 1996, when the current buildup began.

At the same time, the federal budget deficit is exploding. This week, officials expect to announce that it will exceed $400 billion for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30, the largest in U.S. history by a wide margin.
posted by Kevin at 6:52 AM

Shock and Awe: U.S. Budget Deficit May Surpass $450 Billion :.

War, tax cuts and a third year of a flailing economy may push this year's budget deficit past $450 billion, according to congressional sources familiar with new White House budget forecasts. That would be 50 percent higher than the Bush administration forecast five months ago.

The deficit projection due out today is nearly $50 billion more than economists anticipated just last week, and it underscores the continuing deterioration of the government's fortunes since 2000, when the Treasury posted a $236 billion surplus. That represents a fiscal reversal exceeding $680 billion.

"It's shock and awe," said a senior Republican Senate aide.
posted by Kevin at 10:58 PM

Takedown: U.S. Computer Programmers Face Oblivion :.

This is part of the conscious effort to destroy the United States. We are nearing the endgame. Read this very carefully:

Peter Kerrigan encouraged friends to move to Silicon Valley throughout the 1980s and '90s, wooing them with tales of lucrative jobs in a burgeoning industry.

But he lost his network engineering job at a major telecommunications company in August 2001 and remains unemployed. Now 43, the veteran programmer is urging his 18-year-old nephew to stay in suburban Chicago and is discouraging him from pursuing degrees in computer science or engineering.

"I told him, 'Unless you're planning to do this as a path to technical sales, don't do it,'" said Kerrigan, who lives in Oakland. "He won't be able to have a career designing and building stuff because all those jobs have moved to India."

Like many unemployed programmers, Kerrigan blames the sour labor market on offshore outsourcing -- the migration of tech jobs to relatively low-paid contractors or locally hired employees in India, China, Russia and other developing countries.

The hemorrhaging of tens of thousands of technology jobs in recent years to cheaper workers abroad is already a fact of life -- as inevitable, U.S. executives say, as the 1980s migration of Rust Belt manufacturing jobs to Southeast Asia and Latin America.

But a new wave of technology outsourcing -- involving tasks that involve greater skills -- could be cutting to the industry's bone, threatening to prolong the three-year U.S. economic downturn.

Some who oppose the trend, which such industry stalwarts as Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Dell and Microsoft are embracing, believe it could even usher in the end of American domination in technology.

"We're giving countries like China and India the support they need to build up their technology industries, and the result could disadvantage us in the long run," said Phil Friedman, an electrical engineer and chief executive of New York-based Computer Generated Solutions, a 1,200-employee software company that targets the apparel industry.

"We outsourced electronics manufacturing. We're closing steel mills. Every week, 400,000 people file for new unemployment claims," said Friedman, a 54-year-old Ukrainian native who immigrated in 1976. "At the same time, we're shipping tech jobs offshore -- it's a shortsighted approach and cheats the American work force."

Cost-conscious executives have been shifting lower-level tech jobs in data entry and systems support abroad to cheaper labor markets for more than a decade. But now they are exporting highly paid, highly skilled positions in software development -- jobs that have been considered intrinsic to Silicon Valley and tech hubs such as Seattle; Boston; and Austin, Texas.

Critics say it's the equivalent of exporting not just the automobile industry's assembly line jobs -- but the core engineering and car design jobs, too.

Related: Corporations Thrashing Indian Workers Now

Related: The Apocalypse in Commercial Real Estate

Related: China Doing Development Work on Software Running on NSA Supercomputers
posted by Kevin at 3:14 PM

The End: Pentagon Online Voting Plan Requires Microsoft Windows :.

No commentary necessary:

Voters using SERVE can register to vote and cast their ballots from any computer using Microsoft Windows with Internet access. Local election officials will use the system to process voter registration applications, send ballots to voters and accept voted ballots instantly. Long delays in counting absentee ballots, a factor in the disputed 2000 presidential election, would be relegated to the past.

Security remains the top concern for the system's coordinators and fodder for critics.

"I think Internet voting is a good idea for this population if you can assure security, but I'm not confident that they can do that," said John Dunbar, a project manager at the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan government watchdog group. "It wouldn't take much for some smart hacker to send around a virus that lays in wait for someone to issue a vote."

Other computer security experts call the project an open invitation to election tampering.

"We're opening up a whole host of opportunities for voter coercion and voter fraud," said Rebecca Mercuri, a research fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government who specializes in studying electronic vote tabulation.

Mercuri said even the most secure systems can be cracked, hacked or left vulnerable to Internet viruses, leaving the ballot contents and the voter's identity open to perusal.

"If we have this going on in commerce and all other transactions on the Internet, why would people think we can avoid it in voting?" she said. "This is just an experiment that's doomed."
posted by Kevin at 6:01 PM

Rumsfeld Is Clearly Psychotic :.

"...you go in and find them and capture them or kill them. And that's what's going on. And it seems to me it's a no-brainer. It's a three-minute decision. The first two are for coffee."

posted by Kevin at 5:49 PM

Trading on Fear :.

From the start, the invasion of Iraq was seen in the US as a marketing project. Selling 'Brand America' abroad was an abject failure; but at home, it worked. Manufacturers of 4x4s, oil prospectors, the nuclear power industry, politicians keen to roll back civil liberties - all seized the moment to capitalise on the war. PR analysts Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber explain how it worked.

Research Credit: NF
posted by Kevin at 4:53 AM

Satellite Jamming :.

Hmmm, this could come in handy someday:

As for the actual jamming, its simply a matter of aiming a strong signal at the uplink transponder on the satellite and overwhelming the Farsi language broadcasters� signals.

Said the investigator: �You need a dish, some power, not too much. You put up a test pattern ... and do a sweep and find the transponder on the satellite you want to jam. It could even be smaller than the standard 6-meter dish. It could be a small dish with a lot of power.�
posted by Kevin at 3:51 AM

Corporations Thrashing Indian Workers Now :.

Question: When does a yak and a rice paddy look like paradise?

Answer: When you're an Indian who winds up getting the job of a fired American or European IT worker.

Oh yeah, for those of you who think these "jobs" are coming back to the U.S., think again. Indian IT workers make $160 to $300 per month. Think about it. What do you do? There are people in countries that most Americans have never heard of who are not only qualified, but willing to do your job for under $1 per hour (in some cases, much less than $1 per hour). Have a nice day!

Outsourcing tech jobs to India has caused turmoil for workers in the United States and Europe. But it seems it's causing turmoil for Indians, as well.

An estimated 50,000 young English-speaking Indians who work in call centers here are exposed to a host of health problems. They are usually in their early 20s, just out of college and up all night answering tech calls.

Because of the time difference between India and the United States, the work day for these Indians starts late in the evening and extends until dawn. Such odd work hours have brought on a host of health problems including digestive diseases, hair loss, back pain and stress.
posted by Kevin at 2:58 AM

U.S. Stealing Oil From Iraq? :.

With the help of Kuwait!?

On May 25, while scanning the Air Force Defense Meteorological Satellite Program images pipelined into his desktop from 450 miles in orbit, Hank Brandli skidded at a nighttime photo of Iraq. It looked familiar. But not exactly.

Brandli retrieved another DMSP image he'd archived from May 3. He compared the two. The most recent photo showed a blazing corridor of light running the length of Kuwait, south to north, all the way to the Iraqi border. The image wasn't there on May 3.

"It's going right up to Iraq's oil fields," says the retired Air Force colonel from his home in Palm Bay. "Maybe I'm full of s---. Maybe all they're doing is building a highway to put in McDonald's and sell hamburgers. But why go that way? I think we're in bed with Kuwait. I think we're pumping oil out of Iraq to pay for this war."

Research Credit: TR
posted by Kevin at 2:40 AM

Rumsfeld: Iraq War Not About Weapons of Mass Destruction :.

International terrorists are running the United States government. This regime has no legitimacy and easily represents the most dangerous element in world politics:

The United States didn't declare war on Iraq because of new evidence of banned weapons, U.S. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld said on Wednesday.

Rumsfeld said the U.S. declared war because it saw existing evidence of Iraqi arms programs in "a dramatic new light" following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
posted by Kevin at 10:17 AM

Handful of Companies Moving Towards Owning Every Stage of Global Food System :.

Public opposition to genetically modified foods has been a stumbling block to the commercialisation of GM crops and animals. The agri-biotech industry is hoping GM foods with "consumer-friendly" traits might overcome some of this opposition.

But they have also been running big advertising campaigns in an attempt to convince the public that GM foods will be required to "feed the world". These are the kinds of predictable arguments being aired at the International Congress of Genetics in Melbourne.

In reality, the new genetic technologies will largely be used to feed the power and profits of agri-food corporations, and they are more likely to exacerbate - rather than alleviate - the problems of widespread hunger and malnutrition in the Third World.
posted by Kevin at 9:48 AM

Wal-Mart Cancels RFID Trial :.

Pay close attention because this is an excellent example of how public opinion is managed. The firestorm of pissed people stopped this from going into Wal-Mart... for the moment.

RFID is going to be everywhere. Do not doubt it for one second. But because so many people freaked out so fast over this, They realize that it's a no-go...for the moment. We will probably enter a "cooling off" period, as the people behind the RFID wait for angry consumers to forget about this. Then, guess what? After some period of time...

It's back.

When it comes back, it will be back with a vengeance, and it will probably be legislated into existence for some bogus reason or another. When corporations realize they have hit an obstacle with public opinion, they simply pay the whores on Capital Hill and the various federal agencies, and that's it. The next thing you know, it's, "RFID is for the children," or, "RFID protects you from the terrorists."

If their lips are moving, they're lying. Don't forget it:

Wal-Mart Stores has unexpectedly canceled testing for an experimental wireless inventory control system, ending one of the first and most closely watched efforts to bring controversial radio frequency identification technology to store shelves in the United States.
posted by Kevin at 2:43 PM

The Apocalypse in Commercial Real Estate :. (mp3 audio, 1.15MB)

Things are very bad in the commercial real estate market. So many businesses have laid off so many people, so fast, that there is a massive glut of vacant commercial real estate space in virtually every part of the country...except in Washington DC, where the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security need more room to grow.

Ask yourself this: Where is the economy going if so much commercial property is sitting empty?

In my area (Orange County, California), ALL commercial buildings I see have for sale or for lease signs out front. All of them. I thought it was only that bad in my area. I didn't imagine that the commercial market could be that bad all over.

Now this is where one could say, "It's not that bad, it's worse." Think about the individuals and organizations who owe money on those buildings! Vacant buildings don't pay off the loans that were taken out to buy those buildings.

The wheels are coming off the cart. Somebody please tell me how this thing can possibly stay up.

Related: Unemployment Rises Again, 20 Year High :.

The number of out-of-work Americans continuing to draw jobless benefits [read commentary below] jumped by 87,000 to 3.8 million for the work week ending June 28, the most recent period for which that information is available. That represented the highest level since Feb. 26, 1983, and suggested that not a lot of hiring is taking place.

Related: Cryptogon Reader Commentary on Unemployment

The following was sent in by BF, and I agree with it 100%:

The un-employment rates quoted by local, state and federal governments are bogus because they are based upon "applications" for un-employment benefits. Once an un-employed person runs out of benefits, they don't get counted as the un-employed but they still are. During the great depression un-employment was around 30%, it's estimated that we are in the mid twenties now. Some 60% of last years collage grads have returned to their parents home, jobless with a student loan to pay off.

Recent statements that we may be returning to a recession mode seem to have missed the point that we have yet to get out of the recession... yet the administration says "the fundamentals are sound"... sounds more like bullshit to me!

Related: Original NPR Audio :.

Commercial Real Estate Slump

July 5, 2003

Host Steve Inskeep looks at the slump in the commercial real estate market as a reflection of the lagging economy nationwide. The one bright spot seems to be downtown Washington, D.C., where the presence of the federal government keeps the economy strong.
posted by Kevin at 1:51 PM

Euro Currency to Get RFID Chips :.

If embedded in the euro, the chips could make it possible to track information such as when and where transactions take place, according to Paul Lee of Deloitte Research in London.

RFID technology involves a minuscule chip and antenna, which would be implanted in the bank notes, and a reader similar to those used with bar codes, only much smaller, Lee said. Though it might be used simply to identify the note's serial number, it would also be possible to add more data.

"There is a worry in our field as to how these things will be used, given the lack of coherent privacy regulations," said Dan Moriz, staff technologist for San Francisco's Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital watchdog organization.

"It would be easy to establish a system where intelligence agencies track how money is spent.
posted by Kevin at 12:31 PM

Saudi Business Group Threatens to Implicate Four "Western Banks" in 9/11 Lawsuit :.

We go down, you go down:

A leading Islamic business group has warned four major Western banks they could be implicated in a multi-trillion-dollar lawsuit filed by families of victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the group said Sunday.

The legal team for Dallah Al-Baraka Holding and its owner Saleh Kamel has notified the four unnamed Western banks that their names could be added to the list of defendants implicated in the lawsuit, Dallah said in a statement.

Dallah's banking subsidiary, Al-Baraka Investment and Development (ABID), and Kamel are among more than 100 Saudi organisations, charities, businessmen and well-known personalities sued by the families.

"Saleh and Dallah Al-Baraka's legal team expects that the court will agree to drop their clients' names from the lawsuit," the statement said.

"However ... in the unlikely event that Saleh and Al-Baraka are not dropped from the lawsuit, the Western banks will also be added to the list of Saudi banks as defendants under the legal procedure known as 'third party lawsuit' which gives defendants the right to name other parties," it warned.

The statement said that "based on various reports, the banks had provided services to the alleged terrorists or their assistants," and accordingly can be held liable under the "aggressive legal theory" put forward by the plaintiffs' lawyers.

posted by Kevin at 12:05 PM

The Pentagon's Plan for Tracking Everything That Moves :.

Tying it all together:

The cameras are already in place. The computer code is being developed at a dozen or more major companies and universities. And the trial runs have already been planned.

Everything is set for a new Pentagon program to become perhaps the federal government's widest reaching, most invasive mechanism yet for keeping us all under watch. Not in the far-off, dystopian future. But here, and soon.

More: Existing Surveillance Cameras Will Be Used

In Pentagon Developing System to Track Every Vehicle in a City, I wrote, "Anyone who thinks this technology is headed for a foreign battlefield better think again. Take a look around your freeways and intersections. If you live near a couple of hundred thousand other people, or more, you will notice that the video camera infrastructure is already in place and operational. Once they add the new software to the backend systems....well, that, as they say, will be that."

I hate it when I'm right. From the Village Voice article:

As currently configured, the old-line cameras speckled throughout every major city aren't that much of a privacy concern. Yes, there are lenses everywhere�several thousand just in Manhattan. But they see so much, it's almost impossible for snoops to sift through all the footage and find what's important.

CTS would coordinate the cameras, gathering their views in a single information storehouse. The goal, according to a recent Pentagon presentation to defense contractors, is to "track everything that moves."
posted by Kevin at 7:32 AM

Are Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden Running PROMIS? :.

Remember the recent story by Mike Ruppert indicating that the Bushes were about to be taken down? Well, that might be something to keep in mind as you read the rest of this.

Some very old and very heavy stuff is creeping out about Bush Senior. I quite literally can't believe that the PROMIS software story is alive again. Not only is it alive, but it appears to be behind the resignation of Homeland Security official, Paul Redmond, who was looking into how Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden happened to come into possession of PROMIS. In the case of Saddam, the information was leading to Bush Senior as the probable source. Immediately following Redmond's resignation, George W. Bush put out a $25 million contract on Saddam Hussein:

AMERICA'S top spy catcher, Paul Redmond, has suddenly resigned in the middle of his secret investigation into how Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden allegedly obtained US computer software, the SUNDAY EXPRESS claimed this weekend.

The software is said to enable the two most wanted men in the world to avoid capture because it can pinpoint every move in the global manhunt.

Redmond's departure last week was accepted "without discussion" by President Bush, the man who had brought the spy catcher out of retirement to conduct the investigation.

Hours after Redmond had cleared his desk, Bush ordered a GBP 25million bounty on Saddam's head. He wants Saddam "dead or alive" and the same goes for bin Laden. Already Bush has agreed to either man forgoing a trial and being shot after interrogation. The official reason given for Redmond's abrupt departure was "health reasons." But stunned colleagues in the Homeland Security department in Washington, where Redmond had his office, insist the former Associate Director of the CIA was in perfect health. His departure has led to intense speculation that he may have begun to uncover embarrassing details of how the software came into the hands of Saddam and bin Laden.

Documents obtained by the respected International Currency Review, a London-based newsletter for the financial community, allege that the software was provided for Saddam on the authority of President Bush's father when he was in the White House - a time when relations between Iraq and Washington were close during Baghdad's war with Iran. The Review's publisher, Christopher Story, a former financial adviser to Lady Thatcher, said: "The documents are extremely sensitive and raise some very serious questions."

He confirmed that they had originally been in the possession of Barzan alTakriti, Saddam's half-brother, when he was managing Saddam's estimated GBP 40billion fortune.

A Paris intelligence source said the documents were copied by operatives of DGSE, the French intelligence service, earlier this year when al-Takriti made a visit to several banks in Geneva.

He is now in American hands, one of the key names on the famous "deck of cards" list.

Shortly after the documents reached Washington on the eve of the war with Iraq, President Bush brought Paul Redmond out of retirement.

Redmond was a legendary CIA spy catcher who helped unmask some of the most infamous spies before he retired in 1998.

He was told to investigate how Robert Hanssen, the renegade FBI computer specialist who was a longtime Soviet agent, had handed over a copy of the software - known as Promis - to his KGB controllers for $ 2million.

Hanssen, now serving a life sentence, has yet to reveal all he knows about how the KGB sold on a copy of the software to Osama bin Laden for $ 4million shortly before the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

"But until Redmond's abrupt resignation, increasingly the documents relating to Saddam's use of Promis - and his relationship with President Bush's father - were what Redmond had begun to focus on", said a source close to the departed spy catcher.
posted by Kevin at 7:17 AM

China Doing Development Work on Software Running on NSA Supercomputers :.

The security agency, one of many federal supercomputer users that rely on Platform's software, typically keeps the identities of its employees under tight wraps. Gabrenya, who had just joined Platform as a salesman, found the names on a list of potential customer contacts for Platform's sales team. The discovery crystallized his growing concern that the company was perhaps too lax about the national security needs of its United States government customers, in the military, intelligence and research.

"Anyone who had an account on the system could see this list," Gabrenya recalled in a recent interview. "They shouldn't be seeing this information and I shouldn't be seeing it."

What really worried him, Gabrenya said, was that Platform, although based in Markham, Ontario, maintains a software maintenance and testing operation in Beijing--which he was not sure the company had made clear enough to its American government customers.

He repeatedly raised the concerns with Platform executives, who say his fears were unfounded. In March, Gabrenya, who had previously worked for nearly 10 years as a salesman for the supercomputer maker Silicon Graphics, was let go by Platform. The company said he had not met sales goals. Gabrenya said his whistle-blowing led to his dismissal.

Gabrenya, a 42-year-old American, stressed that he had seen no evidence of espionage or other wrongdoing by Platform employees either in Canada or China. But he said that he was concerned about two possibilities, that sensitive government information was not receiving adequate protection and that the Chinese software operation could be infiltrated by foreign agents who could tamper with software being used by United States government agencies.
posted by Kevin at 5:59 AM

Cryptogon Was Down

Cryptogon.com just came back online after being down since 8pm (Pacific) yesterday. My web hosting company said there was a regional network outage (Calgary, Canada) and both their primary and secondary OC3s were affected.
posted by Kevin at 5:20 AM

Google: Weapons of Mass Destruction

Go to Google. In the search field, type:

weapons of mass destruction

Press the, "I'm Feeling Lucky" button.

HA!

Research Credit: JL

Related: Setting Google Up the Bomb :.

Anthony Cox describes how his spoof error page turned into a 'Google bomb' for weapons of mass destruction.

Research Credit: JH
posted by Kevin at 1:40 PM

Cyberwar: Dissertation Could Be Security Threat :.

Back in September of 2002, I wrote an essay entitled, Cyberwar: How Terrorists Could Defeat the U.S., and Why They Won�t (requires Acrobat Reader 5 or later). This brief essay explains how vulnerable information infrastructures are to very simple physical attacks. I intentionally removed all company names and locations of the critical assets, not because I was afraid that the information would come as any surprise to international terrorists, but because I was afraid the FBI would think I was a terrorist.

A guy named Sean Gorman is completing a doctoral dissertation that deals with similar issues. Unlike my informal essay, Gorman's work isn't sanitized. It's classified:

Tinkering on a laptop, wearing a rumpled T-shirt and a soul patch goatee, this George Mason University graduate student has mapped every business and industrial sector in the American economy, layering on top the fiber-optic network that connects them.

He can click on a bank in Manhattan and see who has communication lines running into it and where. He can zoom in on Baltimore and find the choke point for trucking warehouses. He can drill into a cable trench between Kansas and Colorado and determine how to create the most havoc with a hedge clipper. Using mathematical formulas, he probes for critical links, trying to answer the question: "If I were Osama bin Laden, where would I want to attack?" In the background, he plays the Beastie Boys.

For this, Gorman has become part of an expanding field of researchers whose work is coming under scrutiny for national security reasons. His story illustrates new ripples in the old tension between an open society and a secure society.

"I'm this grad student," said Gorman, 29, amazed by his transformation from geek to cybercommando. "Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined I'd be briefing government officials and private-sector CEOs."

Invariably, he said, they suggest his work be classified. "Classify my dissertation? Crap. Does this mean I have to redo my PhD?" he said. "They're worried about national security. I'm worried about getting my degree." For academics, there always has been the imperative to publish or perish. In Gorman's case, there's a new concern: publish and perish.

"He should turn it in to his professor, get his grade -- and then they both should burn it," said Richard Clarke, who until recently was the White House cyberterrorism chief. "The fiber-optic network is our country's nervous system." Every fiber, thin as a hair, carries the impulses responsible for Internet traffic, telephones, cell phones, military communications, bank transfers, air traffic control, signals to the power grids and water systems, among other things.

"You don't want to give terrorists a road map to blow that up," he said.

Sorry, old boy, but the road map is sitting on Google, out in the open. If I'm capable of hashing it out on my own, sitting around in my underwear, using nothing more sophisticated than a web browser, what would a group of international terrorists, with infinite funding and teams of engineers be able to accomplish?
posted by Kevin at 1:04 PM

Bush-linked Company Handled Security for the WTC, Dulles and United :.

There's definitely nothing to see here. Move along:

George W. Bush's brother was on the board of directors of a company providing electronic security for the World Trade Center, Dulles International Airport and United Airlines, according to public records. The company was backed by an investment firm, the Kuwait-American Corp., also linked for years to the Bush family.

The security company, formerly named Securacom and now named Stratesec, is in Sterling, Va.. Its CEO, Barry McDaniel, said the company had a "completion contract" to handle some of the security at the World Trade Center "up to the day the buildings fell down."

It also had a three-year contract to maintain electronic security systems at Dulles Airport, according to a Dulles contracting official. Securacom/Stratesec also handled some security for United Airlines in the 1990s, according to McDaniel, but it had been completed before his arriving on the board in 1998.

McDaniel confirmed that the company has security contracts with the Department of Defense, including the U.S. Army, but did not detail the nature of the work, citing security concerns. It has an ongoing line with the General Services Administration - meaning that its bids for contracts are noncompetitive - and also did security work for the Los Alamos laboratory before 1998.

Marvin P. Bush, the president's youngest brother, was a director at Stratesec from 1993 to fiscal year 2000. But the White House has not publicly disclosed Bush connections in any of its responses to 9/11, nor has it mentioned that another Bush-linked business had done security work for the facilities attacked.
posted by Kevin at 6:56 AM

Plans for '�40 ID Cards' in U.K. :.

Under communistic fascism, ID cards are issued by the state. Under capitalistic fascism, will people have to pay for their ID cards!? I guess that's the major innovation with this iteration of "the free market." First They took us off the land, then They swindled us blind for a century or so, now that the party is just about over, They want us to pay for our own prison IDs:

In a leaked letter to Cabinet ministers Home Secretary David Blunkett said he believed the case for a "universal identity card in the UK" was overwhelming, according to the Sunday Times.

The cards would carry information identifying their owner - a fingerprint, for example, or a picture of their iris or other facial characteristics, the paper reports.

Individuals would not have to carry the card at all times but would have produce it within a few days if asked to do so by police, the document says.

The letter dated 25 June was officially addressed to Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, as chairman of the domestic affairs cabinet committee, said the paper.

It quotes Mr Blunkett as saying "a highly organised minority" would "campaign vocally" against the cards but that he believed the argument that ID cards would inhibit freedom was "wrong."

"We are strengthened in our liberty if our identity is protected from theft; if we are able to access the services we are entitled to; and if our community is better protected from terrorists and organised criminals," he wrote.

Related: U.S. Version of a National ID Card? :.

Look closely at the name on the card. Winston Smith. Does that name ring a bell? It would, if you've read 1984.

From Popular Science:

September 11 was quickly followed by calls from some lawmakers and business leaders for a more robust national identification system: ID cards that possess sophisticated biometric data, making them harder to forge than today's driver's licenses. Privacy advocates are strongly opposed, arguing that such cards, while enabling the government to track individuals and access personal data, would do little to separate the innocent citizen from the walking security threat. For now, the Bush administration is cool to the idea, but it's not hard to envision the Department of Homeland Security re-examining the concept if further terrorist attacks occur. More than 30 countries, from Italy to Malaysia, have already introduced "smart" ID cards. If you're eventually issued a national card, it will likely incorporate several of the technologies shown here, combined to make the card readable by both high- and low-tech devices.
posted by Kevin at 6:45 AM

Mystery Boeing Briefly Resurfaces After Disappearance :.

A Boeing 727, whose sudden disappearance in Angola in May unnerved US intelligence agencies, reappeared last week in the Guinean capital Conakry before vanishing once again, British newspaper The Guardian reports.

Washington has been working with African governments in the past month in a frantic bid to hunt down the cargo plane, amid fears the aircraft could be used by terrorists in a repeat of the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

The paper said the plane was seen on June 28 by a Canadian pilot, Bob Strother, in Conakry, sporting a new coat of paint and a Guinean registration number.

But Mr Strother told the paper that two letters of the plane's old tail number - N844AA - were still showing, proving the aircraft was the same Boeing that was being sought by US diplomats throughout Africa.

"There's absolutely no doubt it's the same aircraft, the old registration is clearly visible," he was quoted as saying.

"Whoever owns it must have some important friends to get it reregistered in two days: going by the book, the whole process usually takes a couple of months," he added.

"We only saw it that one time, now it's gone."

I've said it once, and I'll say it again:

See Compromised, by Terry Reed, for a description of operation SEASPRAY. The CIA and U.S. Army special forces run a secret air traffic control system that allows any aircraft to slip inside U.S. airspace undetected. I can hear the shrill screams of "Bullshit!" erupting from the peanut gallery. Yeah, well, that's how the real drug shipments move. Fake tail numbers. Insurance scams. Stolen aircraft. Cut out companies. Covert operations. Read that ABC News story and then decide for yourself if any of that sounds similar to what is described in Compromised. I don't know what that plane is being used for, but I am 100% sure that it's nothing good.

Research Credit: pr0spero
posted by Kevin at 5:09 AM

Diplomat: U.S. Knew Uranium Report Was False :.

A former U.S. diplomat said Sunday he told the Bush administration that Iraq had not tried to buy uranium from Niger in the late 1990s to develop nuclear weapons.

Former Ambassador to Gabon Joseph Wilson told NBC's "Meet the Press" he informed the CIA and the State Department that such information was false months before U.S. and British officials used it during the debate that led to war.

During his State of the Union address in January, two months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, President Bush accused Iraq of trying to buy "significant quantities of uranium" from an unnamed African country. He cited British intelligence, which had published a similar report in September 2002.

"If they were referring to Niger when they were referring to uranium sales from Africa to Iraq, ... that information was erroneous and ... they knew about it well ahead of both the publication of the British white paper and the president's State of the Union address," Wilson said.

Yawn: White House Backs Off Claim on Iraqi Uranium Buy :.

Nobody believed any of this nonsense, except the imbeciles flapping their gums on major network and cable TV news broadcasts:

The Bush administration acknowledged for the first time yesterday that President Bush should not have alleged in his State of the Union address in January that Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Africa to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program.
posted by Kevin at 9:06 AM

RFID Confidential Documents :.

Grab em' before the bozos at Auto-ID Center figure it out. Save first, read later. I have provided a temporary mirror of the Auto-ID Center confidential documents. Part 1 (11.6MB zip) and Part 2 (8.2MB zip).

From the CASPIAN press release:

CASPIAN asks, "How can we trust these people with our personal data?"

CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering) says anyone can download revealing documents labeled "confidential" from the home page of the MIT Auto-ID Center web site in two mouse clicks.

The Auto-ID Center is the organization entrusted with developing a global Internet infrastructure for radio frequency identification (RFID). Their plans are to tag all the objects manufactured on the planet with RFID chips and track them via the Internet.

Related: Who's Coming to Cryptogon to Grab the Documents?

monsanto.com, verisign.com, mit.edu, schwab.com, alientechnology.com, census.gov, oracle.co.uk, dell.com, army.mil, google.com (human reader, not the googlebot), rockwellcollins.com, af.mil, boeing.com, kohls.com, uscourts.gov, ford.com, ge.com, nortelnetworks.com, vollmerpr.com, navy.mil, willab.com, deq.state.or.us, generalmills.com, microsoft.com, donruss.com, sgi.com, natinst.com, dsainc.com, statera.com, norwest.com, hitachi.net (negotiating deal to embed RFID chips in Euro banknotes), berkeley.edu, chubb.com, smithnephew.com, eds.net, match.com, conversent.net, lanl.gov, compaq.com, globeranger.com, apple.com, gsi.gov.uk, morganstanley.com, nipr.mil, epa.gov, ibm.com, nvidia.com, harvard.edu, sun.com, turner.com, pfizer.com, peoplesoft.com, ti.com
posted by Kevin at 7:40 AM

Major PayPal/E-Gold Scam Running Now

This exact scam is described here.

The offending box is running Apache and is located at IP address 216.171.64.231.

The imbeciles didn't secure the top directory:

https://orange.srv2.com/~l45sd7o/

Notice the files related to both PayPal and E-Gold:

Index of /~l45sd7o
Name Last modified Size Description
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Parent Directory 05-Jul-2003 15:11 -
PayPal - Verify Your..> 06-Jul-2003 03:52 -
_private/ 05-Jul-2003 15:05 -
_vti_bin/ 05-Jul-2003 15:05 -
_vti_cnf/ 05-Jul-2003 15:05 -
_vti_inf.html 05-Jul-2003 15:05 2k
_vti_log/ 05-Jul-2003 15:05 -
_vti_pvt/ 05-Jul-2003 15:05 -
_vti_txt/ 05-Jul-2003 15:05 -
aC.cGi 06-Jul-2003 05:43 1k
cgi-bin/ 07-Jul-2003 05:27 -
e-gold Account Login..> 06-Jul-2003 14:52 -
e-gold top menu.files/ 06-Jul-2003 14:52 -
i.html 06-Jul-2003 15:09 1k
images/ 05-Jul-2003 15:05 -
index2.html 06-Jul-2003 06:01 13k
login2.html 06-Jul-2003 15:26 6k
menu.html 06-Jul-2003 14:52 3k
postinfo.html 05-Jul-2003 15:05 2k

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Apache/1.3.27 Server at orange.srv2.com Port 443

It started with this email.

--- BEGIN SCAM RELATED EMAIL ---

Return-Path:
Received: from compuserve.com (c-67-163-37-115.client.comcast.net [67.163.37.115])
by ws9.dns77.com (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id h679HRQ24733
for ; Mon, 7 Jul 2003 03:17:28 -0600
Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2003 08:26:50 +0000
From: Verify
Subject: PAYPAL - VERIFY AND UPDATE YOUR ACCOUNT
To: Kevin
References:
In-Reply-To:
Message-ID: <6ALF3KAH2I9911KJ@paypal.com>
Reply-To: Verify
Sender: Verify
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=Windows-1251
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-UIDL: Y[6"!fK6!!(^h"!4=g"!

-----Original Message-----
From: Verify [mailto:verify@paypal.com]
Sent: Monday, July 07, 2003 1:27 AM
To: Kevin
Subject: PAYPAL - VERIFY AND UPDATE YOUR ACCOUNT


Dear PayPal Member,

This email was sent by the PayPal server to re-verify your e-mail address
and to update your profile information on PayPal. You must complete
this process by clicking on the link below and entering the information
from your profile. This is done for your protection --- becaurse some of our
members no longer have access to their email addresses and we must verify it.

To update your profile information and access your account,
click on the link below. If nothing happens when you click on the
link (or if you use AOL), copy and paste the link into the address bar of
your web browser.

[Link deleted]

The link will take you to our Verify Your Identity page. Fill in the
appropriate fields to update your profile information and Security
Questions, and click Submit. You will then be able to access your account.

Thanks for using PayPal!

Please do not reply to this e-mail. Mail sent to this address cannot be
answered. For assistance, log in to your PayPal account and choose the
"Help" link in the footer of any page.

----------------------------------------------------------------
PROTECT YOUR PASSWORD

NEVER give your password to anyone and ONLY log in at
https://www.paypal.com. Protect yourself against fraudulent
websites by checking the URL/Address bar every time you log in.
----------------------------------------------------------------

--- END SCAM RELATED EMAIL ---

UPDATE: The Bastards Changed Domains!

Uhhhh. I got another email. This time, the scam is running on a different domain! I wonder how many machines these people have compromised???

Now it's now running on:

https://KI54fT.WoRlDiSpNeTwOrK.CoM/i.CgI?

XXXXX WARNING: THE WEBPAGE ON THE ABOVE URL IS A SCAM AND IS PRESENTED FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. THAT IS NOT PAYPAL. DO NOT ENTER YOUR INFORMATION INTO THAT FORM! XXXXX
posted by Kevin at 4:54 AM

Extreme Weather Prompts Unprecedented Global Warming Alert :.

In an astonishing announcement on global warming and extreme weather, the World Meteorological Organisation signalled last night that the world's weather is going haywire.

In a startling report, the WMO, which normally produces detailed scientific reports and staid statistics at the year's end, highlighted record extremes in weather and climate occurring all over the world in recent weeks, from Switzerland's hottest-ever June to a record month for tornadoes in the United States - and linked them to climate change.

The unprecedented warning takes its force and significance from the fact that it is not coming from Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth, but from an impeccably respected UN organisation that is not given to hyperbole (though environmentalists will seize on it to claim that the direst warnings of climate change are being borne out).
posted by Kevin at 5:27 AM

Government Information Awareness :.

At the moment, the Government Information Awareness site is struggling from Slashdot and Wired exposure. So, please be patient. This is excellent:

The premise of GIA is that individual citizens have the right to know details about government, while government has the power to know details about citizens. Our goal is develop a technology which empowers citizens to form a sort of intelligence agency; gathering, sorting, and acting on information they gather about the government. Only by employing such technologies can we hope to have a government "by the people, and for the people."

Related: Total Poindexter Awareness
posted by Kevin at 6:39 AM

Another Microbiologist Dies :.

Here are some details on the previous eleven, add Dr. Rickman and that makes twelve:

Dr. Leland Rickman, a UC San Diego expert on infectious diseases and, since Sept. 11, 2001, a consultant on bioterrorism, has died. He was 47.

Rickman died June 24 while on a teaching assignment in Lesotho, a small country bordered on all sides by South Africa. He had complained of a headache, but the cause of death was not immediately known.

The physician had been working in Lesotho with Dr. Chris Mathews, director of the UC San Diego Medical Center's Owen Clinic, teaching African medical personnel about the prevention and treatment of AIDS.

Rickman, the incoming president of the Infectious Disease Assn. of California, was a multidisciplinary professor and practitioner with expertise in infectious diseases, internal medicine, epidemiology, microbiology and antibiotic utilization.

Then there was SAIC analyst Christopher Legallo.

And don't forget Jeffrey Paris Wall. He died a couple of hundred yards away from where I worked at the time.

November 6, 2001
The Orange County Register
Lawyer's Body Found at Base of Parking Structure: Newport Police Probe Whether the Man was Killed-or Killed Himself

A lawyer's bloody body was found sprawled Monday next to a three-story parking structure near the man's Fashion Island office. Police are trying to figure out whether Jeffrey Paris Wall jumped, was pushed, or died some other way. State records show that Mr. Wall, 41, had studied at the University of California, Los Angeles. He was a biomedical expert who held a medical degree, and he also specialized in patent and intellectual property, according to the National Law Journal.

The cops eventually called it a suicide.

I know this parking structure well. There are no security cameras near the area from which Wall is said to have jumped, or anywhere in that structure, as far as I know. It just seems like a weird place to top oneself. Yeah, sure, maybe he'd had enough. But after finding everything I could on the guy, he seemed like a successful, highly sought after lawyer. He recently joind a "big deal" law firm called O'Melveny & Myers. And then, just like that...

There was one other thing. I stumbled across a website that alleged that Jeffrey Wall had some kind of connection to Biofem. You remember that weird little Biofem thing, right? Machine guns, thousands of rounds of ammo, plastic explosives, germs and toxins buried in a suburban back yard. Attempted murder. South African bioweapons programs. You know, the usual stuff.

You're going to hate me for this: I didn't save the information from the website that made the connection between Wall and Biofem. When I went to look for it a couple of days after I found it, that's right, it was gone. Poof. Disappeared. Needless to say, if anyone out there happens to know anything about Jeff Wall and any possible connections to Biofem, please email me, and use PGP. Here's my public key.
posted by Kevin at 6:36 AM

Jews Saying Powerful Zionists Pressing U.S. Into Mid East Wars :.

How does Israel do it? Do you think Mossad has compromised both the Republican and Democratic elite, or is it as simple as paying those whores with some the $2 billion in U.S. tax money that Israel gets each year? Whatever Israel is doing is yielding results:

When Congressman James Moran (D-VA) told an audience that leaders of American Jewish groups were pushing America into a war with Iraq, he was denounced as an "anti-Semite" and pressured to resign.

When Syndicated columnist and former Presidential candidate Pat Buchanan accused Jewish neo-conservatives and the US-Israeli lobby of pushing America into a war against Israel's enemies, he was also widely denounced as an "anti-Semite."

But what are we to make of the many outspoken Jewish writers, Jewish intellectuals and Jewish activists who have been warning us about the exact same thing? Should we dismiss these jews as "anti-Semites" or "self-hating Jews"?

Following are some very revealing quotes from just a few of these Jewish writers and journalists.
posted by Kevin at 6:21 AM

Group of Japanese Lawyers Indicts Bush for War Crimes :.

A group of Japanese lawyers unveiled documents Monday "indicting" U.S. President George W. Bush for war crimes allegedly committed against the Afghan people since the United States-led coalition began its antiterrorism campaign in Afghanistan in October 2001.
posted by Kevin at 6:08 AM

Army's PSYOPS Media Center a Special Kind of Weapon :.

Except for the woodland-camouflage dress code and a discreet lack of windows, the new building - with its state-of-the-art digital television and radio production rooms, studios and printing presses - could easily belong to a sophisticated marketing firm.

In a way it does. But the "firm" is the U.S. Army's 4th Psychological Operations Group, and its "products" are whatever messages the Defense Department wants to sell.

The group held an open house Monday to show off its new $8.1 million Special Operations Forces Media Operations Complex. It was a rare look inside the Pentagon's central production facility for "psyops" products such as fliers, posters and television and radio segments aimed at the hearts and minds of, well, those the military wants to persuade.

Since 9/11, those have included civilians and enemy troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. More than 150 million fliers, all of them produced at Fort Bragg and many of them printed there, have been spread over those countries, said Col. James Treadwell, the 4th POG's commander. About 16,000 hours of radio messages produced by the group were transmitted to Afghan listeners and another 4,000 hours to Iraqis, he said.

The psychological-operations campaign in Iraq reportedly cost tens of millions of dollars and has been called the biggest in history. It centered on Arabic-language leaflets and radio and television scripts designed by the 4th POG to encourage mass surrenders and erode support for Saddam Hussein.

Psyops troops are still in Iraq, but their efforts have shifted to calming and winning over civilians.

Like a marketing company, psyops soldiers often perform marketing studies before designing products. They also conduct detailed analyses of results. Army officials say it still may be a few months before the official report on the Iraq effort is complete. Civilian experts say the campaign probably had mixed results, but still likely saved thousands of lives on both sides by taking some of the fight out of the Iraqis.

Psyops has been busy lately, and not just in Iraq and Afghanistan: The staff of the media complex is supporting nearly 900 psyops troops spread across 13 countries, Treadwell said.
posted by Kevin at 4:27 PM

Man Gets Life in Prison for Spitting on Cop :.

The attorney for a man who received a life imprisonment term for spitting on a police officer promised to appeal his client's sentence.

Creek County Associate District Judge April Sellers White rejected defense and prosecution recommendations for a prison term on Monday and instead followed the recommendation by the jury which convicted John C. Marquez.

Marquez was convicted of hurling body fluids on Sapulpa Officer Charles Gadd while Gadd was taking Marquez to the Sapulpa municipal jail following a domestic disturbance.

Gadd told the jury that Marquez, 35, spat on him despite being warned and then bit him when Gadd was trying to prevent Marquez from spitting again.

Gadd and Marquez both tested negative for any communicable diseases.

At trial, Assistant District Attorney Laura Farris asked the panel for a 25-year sentence; defense attorney Jason Serner asked for a four-year term.

The jury took 15 minutes to return a life sentence May 14. Marquez had prior felony convictions, which enhanced his punishment.

Farris said Monday that a presentence investigation report recommended that Marquez be given a sentence consistent with state law. Marquez's prior felonies made him a threat to the community and asked the judge to follow the jury's recommendation, he said.

Serner asked the judge to consider Marquez's family history of drug and alcohol abuse as well as his limited education.

Marquez was drunk during the incident and couldn't recall what happened but is remorseful, Serner said.

Serner said he plans to appeal to the state Court of Criminal Appeals.
posted by Kevin at 9:12 AM

Shocking Fraud: Bush Appoints Big Pharma Bag Man for Africa Swindle :.

On the eve of a presidential visit to Africa, President Bush today nominated Randall Tobias, a former chairman and chief executive of Eli Lilly & Company, to run a $15 billion program to fight AIDS worldwide.

Mr. Tobias, a major donor to Mr. Bush and the Republican Party, and a resident of Indianapolis, has little experience with AIDS issues or with Africa, where most of the program's money will be directed. But the president hailed Mr. Tobias in the Roosevelt Room of the White House this morning as "one of America's most talented and respected executives," and a man who "has shown the ability to manage complex organizations and to navigate government bureaucracies."

NOTE: U.S. DoD Appropriations for 1970 Hearings, 91st Congress, Part 6, p 129:

Dr. MacArthur (U.S. Bioweapons Researcher): Within the next 5 to 10 years, it would probably be possible to make a new infective organism which could differ in certain important aspects from any known disease-causing organisms. Most important of these is that it might be refractory to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease. A research program to explore the feasibility of this could be completed in approximately 5 years at a total cost of $10 million.
posted by Kevin at 8:40 AM

Hacker Contest May Target Web Sites :.

I'd ask readers to refer to Is It Random Noise, Or Is Something Coming Down? where I mention the Weird Network Scan/Pre-Attack. Perhaps the scanning activity was looking for targets for this upcoming blitz???

As the nation prepared for a three-day holiday weekend, government and private technology experts warned Wednesday that hackers planned a loosely coordinated "contest" aimed at defacing thousands of Web sites Sunday.

Organizers established a Web site called defacers-challenge.com, which was shut down early Wednesday evening. Before it was removed, the site listed in broken English the rules for hackers who might participate. The goal of the "Defacers Challenge" was to deface 6,000 Web sites in six hours. Winners would purportedly get prizes such as Web hosting space and Internet domain names.
posted by Kevin at 8:07 AM

Jobless Rate Hits 6.4%, 9-Year High :.

Just curious, is anyone out there shorting the major indexes or buying gold?

The nation's unemployment rate shot up to 6.4 percent in June, the highest level in more than nine years, in an economic slump that has cost nearly a million jobs in the last three months.

Businesses slashed 30,000 jobs just last month, with cuts heavily concentrated on factory assembly lines, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

The 0.3 percentage point increase from May's 6.1 percent rate was the largest month-to-month rise since the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. That surprised analysts who predicted a smaller rise, to 6.2 percent. The last time the overall rate was higher was in April 1994.
posted by Kevin at 6:27 AM

Pentagon Developing System to Track Every Vehicle in a City :.

Anyone who thinks this technology is headed for a foreign battlefield better think again. Take a look around your freeways and intersections. If you live near a couple of hundred thousand other people, or more, you will notice that the video camera infrastructure is already in place and operational. Once they add the new software to the backend systems....well, that, as they say, will be that:

The Pentagon is developing an urban surveillance system that would use computers and thousands of cameras to track, record and analyze the movement of every vehicle in a foreign city.

Dubbed "Combat Zones That See," the project is designed to help the U.S. military protect troops and fight in cities overseas.

Police, scientists and privacy experts say the unclassified technology could easily be adapted to spy on Americans.

The project's centerpiece is groundbreaking computer software that is capable of automatically identifying vehicles by size, color, shape and license tag, or drivers and passengers by face.

According to interviews and contracting documents, the software may also provide instant alerts after detecting a vehicle with a license plate on a watchlist, or search months of records to locate and compare vehicles spotted near terrorist activities.

Research Credit: AL
posted by Kevin at 6:02 AM

Kidon: Mossad's Assassination Squad :.

Interesting article about Israel's wet workers by Gordon Thomas:

A killing war between Israel's Mossad and Islamic fanatics came closer this weekend in Britain.

The Israeli intelligence agency has sent four members of its kidon assassination squad to this country, to join fifteen other handpicked katsas, its relentless field agents.

Their brief is to "disable" any of the "close to 50" British Muslims that the extremist Islamic group, Al-Muhajiroun, last week boasted were ready to carry out suicide missions similar to the one in Tel Aviv.

Al-Muhajiroun spokesman, Asif Butt, said the 50 were "primed and ready to go".

The threat was sufficient for Mossad to send its own termination squad to head off any further threat to Israel or to synagogues and other Jewish institutions in this country.

"In Mossad-speak 'disable' means taking them out permanently", said an MI5 source grimly. "We know from past experience that the kidon can make murder look like an accident. It is their speciality".

Two of the kidon are women. They have been trained to be ready to sleep with someone to obtain vital information.

Former Mossad chief Meir Amit said that "sex is a woman's weapon. Pillow talk is not a problem for her. But it takes a special kind of courage - to sleep with the enemy".

Mossad often operates outside the law of this country - or any country.

Previous Coverage: Israeli Operatives Will Assassinate People Inside the U.S. and Other Allied Nations
posted by Kevin at 5:51 AM

Idiot Bush Taunts Iraqis to Kill U.S. Troops :.

Well, if you ever imagined what a total collapse of national leadership looked like, this is probably it. Pray that the U.S. military comes to its senses and unleashes its wrath on the real enemies:

George W. Bush:

"There are some who feel like that conditions are such that they can attack us there," Bush said. "My answer is: Bring them on. We have the force necessary to deal with the situation."

Meanwhile: Paul Bremer Unfurls in Public :.

Paul Bremer:

"We are going to fight them and impose our will on them and we will capture or... kill them until we have imposed law and order on this country," he declared at the weekend. "We dominate the scene and we will continue to impose our will on this country."

More from the Guardian:

As the occupation of Iraq increasingly appears to be a springboard for a fresh regime-change offensive against Iran, the British troops controlling the Shia-dominated south of Iraq will be seen not merely as uninvited occupiers but as aggressors against their co-religionists as well.

If the recent warnings of Washington uberhawks Condoleezza Rice and John Bolton - that military action against Iran is a live option - become fact, British forces will be caught up in the campaign, like it or not. And how often have the musings of maniacs become official Bush administration policy faster than you can say "pre-emptive war"?

It is certainly hard to see Bush willingly withdrawing the forces of his "coalition" from Iraq without first having a crack at toppling the Iranian government. Indeed, the US has no strategy for pacifying Iraq that does not involve challenging Iran. Thus is the traditional logic of 19th-century empire being replayed in the 21st: protecting one conquest requires an indefinite extension of conflict.
posted by Kevin at 4:45 PM

Top U.S. Officials Discuss Expanding �Terror War� to Iran, Beyond :.

When Baghdad was about to fall, I posted U.S. Now in Possession of "Superbase", which described what is now unfolding. Look for Bush to unleash a slaughter in Iran as part of his 2004 presidential campaign:

Two weeks ago, a prince of the Kuwaiti Royal family received a phone call from an aide to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asking if the complex was available. The prince already suspected it was needed for one of those secret meetings, which Washington has taken to holding in the Gulf.

The next day a Hercules transport landed at Kuwait�s international airport. From it emerged a group of pale-faced, middle-aged men in drill shirts and chinos. They carried laptops and bulky briefcases.

To a casual observer they were just another delegation from Washington involved in post-war Iraq. But these men were the forward planners for the next war�the one against Iran.

Within an hour of installing themselves in their palatial surroundings�securely guarded by U.S. forces�they had unloaded their maps of Iran, downloaded their computer images of its terrain and set about planning �Target Iran.�

Secure communications lines had been established and tested with Washington. One was to the CIA, another to the Pentagon. Down those lines and on to their secure computers, the Kuwaiti task force would receive the latest intelligence from inside Iran.

Some of that intel would come from Israel�from Mossad deep cover agents in Tehran.

They will ensure that �Target Iran� being planned in that royal complex would lack nothing in information. The men based there are a Pentagon think tank for the next war.

More: Mike Ruppert Thinks the Elite Are Going to Take Bush Down :.

Yeah, so what!? Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. But, if Bush was to throw a tantrum and refuse to leave...now you're talking. The new occupant of the White House shows up for work and...What is that? OH MY GOD! Cheney is manning an M1 tank on the west lawn. Rumsfeld is loading his sizeable blunderbuss. Ashcroft has donned a bishop's miter and is anointing the Holy warriors with Crisco oil for the last stand. Yep, I'd actually turn on the TV to see that:

Let's just suppose for a moment that George W. Bush was removed from the White House. Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, Wolfowitz and Rove too. What would that leave us with? It would leave us stuck in hugely expensive, Vietnam-like guerrilla wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It would leave us with the Patriot Act, Homeland Security and Total Information Awareness snooping into every detail of our lives. It would leave us with a government in violation of the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th Amendments to the Constitution. It would leave us with a massive cover-up of US complicity in the attacks of 9/11 that, if fully admitted, would show not intelligence "failures" but intelligence crimes, approved and ordered by the most powerful people in the country. It would leave us with a government that now has the power to compel mass vaccinations on pain of imprisonment or fine, and with no legal ability to sue the vaccine makers who killed our friends or our children. It would leave us with two and half million unemployed; the largest budget deficits in history; more than $3.3 trillion missing from the Department of Defense; and state and local governments broke to the point of having to cut back essential services like sewers, police, and fire. It would leave us with a federal government that had hit the debt ceiling and was unable to borrow any more money. And we would still be facing a looming natural gas crisis of unimagined proportions, and living on a planet that is slowly realizing that it is running out of oil with no "Plan B". Our airports however, would be very safe, and shares of Halliburton, Lockheed and DynCorp would be paying excellent dividends.

This is not good management.

Leaving all of these issues unaddressed is not good management either.

And this is why, as I will demonstrate in this article, the decision has already been made by corporate and financial powers to remove George W. Bush, whether he wants to leave or not, and whether he steals the next election or not.
posted by Kevin at 3:05 AM

Deploy the Pumpkin Seeds: America to Build Super Weapons :.

The U.S. wants to develop hypersonic drones to drop bombs on distant enemies?

According to the article in the Guardian:

The unmanned HCV would carry a payload of up to 12,000 lbs and could ultimately fly at speeds of up to 10 times the speed of sound, according to Daniel Goure, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute in Washington.

Propelling a warhead of that size at those speeds poses serious technological challenges and Darpa estimates it will take more than 20 years to develop.

20 years to develop??? Hmmm.

As I read this, I thought my memory was short circuiting because all of this sounded vaguely familiar. My brain started giving me images of seeds. Oblong, seed shaped craft, streaking through space at incredible speed, dropping fire on cities. I thought, "I must be experiencing a glitch in the Matrix."

Then I remembered: The Pumpkin Seed.

Don't ask me how I initially heard about this, because I simply don't remember. From the Federation of American Scientists:

Aviation Week & Space Technology has proposed a current black aircraft that is something akin to a 1960s Sci-Fi concept. They depict an elongated diamond shaped vehicle (one hesitates to call it an aircraft) similar to a "flattened football." The airframe's dimensions might be 110 x 69 feet. Due to intense heat, the vehicle would have a heat-streaked appearance similar to that of the space shuttle. Contrary to intuition, the aft body would appear distinctly more pockmarked than the fore sections, as if the most intense heat was experienced in this region.

This vehicle would have a dual propulsion system. Jet engines buried in the fuselage would propel the vehicle to supersonic speeds, when a novel external burning mechanism would take control as the fundamental propulsion method:

"In the high Mach regime, misted fuel is ejected from the fuselage midsection -- the 'break point' of the elongated diamond -- across the aft surface tiles, into the area between the fuselage and a shock wave attacked to this break. In essence, the sloping, converging aft fuselage sections form the inside of a 'nozzle' and the shock boundary constitutes the outer surface, creating an expanding exhaust effect, much like that on a conventional rocket. The fuel is ignited by surface heating -- or other means -- creating combustion that accelerates the aircraft up to the Mach 6-8 regime."

Eliminating the human life-support requirements at Mach 8, this flaming, hypersonic pumpkin seed would be unmanned and capable of on-board self- control. This vehicle would be as destructive as it is unusual. A payload of 120- odd nuclear weapons would be dispensed as the flaming stone skipped across enemy skies.

Then consider the Pentagon's Missing $1.1 Trillion!

In Government Fails Fiscal-Fitness Test, Kelly Patricia O Meara offers us what might be a critical clue:

So where is that missing $1.1 trillion? Traditionally the top dogs at the Pentagon haven't liked the word "missing." The rationale at DoD has been that just because the money can't be accounted for doesn't mean it is lost, stolen or strayed.

Yeah, it might mean that they were trying to build a better pumpkin seed.

And never mind the fact that this topic is even on the agenda for the future. Given the living circumstances of most of the people in the world, to waste resources on something like "super weapons" indicates that the system has already collapsed.
posted by Kevin at 1:45 AM