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12/31/2003
Neil Bush Makes 1-Day Stock Windfall :.Do you get it yet? Cashing in stock options before the market crashed, presidential brother Neil Bush made at least $171,370 in a single day by buying and selling shares in a small U.S. high-tech firm where he had previously been a consultant, according to tax returns that give a glimpse into his business dealings.
The July 19, 1999 purchase and quick sale of stock from Kopin Corp. of Taunton, Mass., came on a day that the company received good news about a new Asian client that sent its stock value soaring.
"My timing on this transaction was very fortunate," Bush told The Associated Press.
posted by Kevin at 12:47 PM
12/30/2003
Happy New Years: Most Public Gaterings Military Operational Areas :.Security will be extra tight at this year's New Year's celebrations around the country, with military helicopters patrolling over the Rose Parade, Times Square and the Las Vegas Strip.
"I think the level of security this time around within the United States is absolutely unprecedented," Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said on CBS's "The Early Show."
As revelers prepare for New Year's Eve, the nation's terrorism alert is at its second-highest level, though officials said there were no specific threats against the holiday gatherings and urged people to go ahead with their plans.
In Las Vegas, where 300,000 revelers are expected on the Strip, officials announced that armed military helicopters will fly overhead.
Jerry Bussell, Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn's adviser on homeland security, said military helicopters will also be used in New York City, Los Angeles, Washington and other cities with big outdoor gatherings.
"These aircraft are equipped to dismantle or disrupt any kind of ground attack, and also other aircraft that would attempt to fly into our airspace," said Bill Young, the sheriff in Las Vegas.
Sharpshooters will be posted on hotel-casino roofs, and streets will be blocked off with concrete barricades, Young said. Sightseeing helicopters will be prevented from flying over the Las Vegas Strip from 8 p.m. New Year's Eve to 3 a.m.
In Pasadena, where thousands gather along the 5 1/2-mile Rose Parade route and attend the Rose Bowl football game on New Year's Day, video surveillance cameras will watch the spectators lining the streets.
posted by Kevin at 10:16 PM
Remain Calm: Consumer Confidence Retreats Slightly :.Don't call your broker. Don't click the "sell" button. Everything is just peachy: Anxiety about the job market is causing consumer confidence levels to dip, while housing sales also are slowing. But economists aren't worried -- they say the outlook for improvement remains rosy, and the pullbacks are a normal kink in the economy's path to recovery.Did we mention: Remain Calm?!
posted by Kevin at 12:10 PM
Bush Regime Targets Greenpeace :.Can you hear the dull grunts coming up from Joe and Jane Sixpack? "I don't have anything to worry about. I'm not a member of Greenpeace." Bay Area nonprofits and anti-war leaders are fuming about what they see as an attempt by the Justice Department to clamp down on peaceful dissent by filing criminal charges against a group for the nonviolent actions of its followers.
Local activists are closely watching a case winding through the federal courts in Miami. There, a federal prosecutor has dusted off a 19th century law designed to prevent bar owners from luring sailors ashore with booze and prostitutes to file charges against Greenpeace in connection with an April 2002 case in which two activists tried to hang an anti-President Bush banner on a container ship headed into port.
The sign-hangers and four other Greenpeace activists pleaded no contest last year to misdemeanor charges and were sentenced to time served. Now it's their 32-year-old parent organization's turn in court.
If convicted of conspiring to illegally board a ship, Greenpeace could be sentenced to five years' probation and a $10,000 fine, and be required to allow federal probation officers to oversee certain parts of its organization.Research Credit: BW
posted by Kevin at 11:17 AM
Beware of People Carrying Almanacs :.I snapped this afternoon and went on a movie marathon. LOTR: Return of the King and Paycheck, back to back. (I hate Ben Affleck, but it's Philip K. Dick sci-fi, so give me a break.) Due to my brief lapse away from the news churn, I'm a little late in mentioning that we need to be on the lookout for people carrying almanacs! If I get pulled over, the cops will surely report me to the Joint Terrorism Task Force. I'm actually stupid enough to carry books around in the backseat of my car! 1984, The Myth of the Machine, Rule by Secrecy and The Gnostic Bible. All with marginalia and underlining! *GASP!* TR adds: Just in case you thought this thing couldn't get more insane. Now cops are told to be on the lookout for people carrying almanacs!!!! Forget about the plane circling the Statue of Liberty, go after the guy carrying a book! I'm going to start carrying one with me everywhere I go and wave it in people's face like the deadly weapon it is. Oh, please, oh please, let me get arrested for it!!From the CNN article: The FBI is warning police nationwide to be alert for people carrying almanacs, cautioning that the popular reference books covering everything from abbreviations to weather trends could be used for terrorist planning.
In a bulletin sent Christmas Eve to about 18,000 police organizations, the FBI said terrorists may use almanacs "to assist with target selection and pre-operational planning."
It urged officers to watch during searches, traffic stops and other investigations for anyone carrying almanacs, especially if the books are annotated in suspicious ways.
The FBI urged police to report such discoveries to the local U.S. Joint Terrorism Task Force. I've been writing passing thoughts in a notebook lately. Just random nonsense, mostly. I don't know why it came to mind, but I wrote this in my notebook last week: Underlined passages in books will soon become evidence of criminal activity.We are living in a dystopian nightmare. There's no need to read about a fictional one. Look outside your window. Research Credit: TR, DG, BW
posted by Kevin at 1:09 AM
12/29/2003
New Wi-Fi Tracker Pinpoints User, Device Location :.National Scientific Corporation announced Tuesday that it's wrapped up work on its new WLAN hardware platform -- Wi-Fi Tracker -- which lets IT administrators pinpoint the position of wireless users and devices with accuracy within a few feet.
Hardware developer kits are now available to select early adopting customers, the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company said.
posted by Kevin at 1:13 AM
12/28/2003
Awash in Dangerous Pollutants and Carcinogens :.Humans are so dumb: Davis Baltz shops for organic food and otherwise tries to live as healthy as he can. So he was shocked to learn that the pollutants collecting inside his body sounded much like a Superfund cleanup site: pesticides, flame retardants and other nasty, man-made chemicals turned up in a recent test.
"What that told me is that no matter what I tried to do, the plumes of chemicals that we are passing in and out of everyday give us exposure," said Baltz, who works for Commonweal, an environmental group in Bolinas, Calif. Commonweal and the Washington-based Environmental Working Group funded tests for Baltz and eight others at $5,000 apiece.
posted by Kevin at 7:36 PM
Parmalat: Fat Cat PHB Led Away in Handcuffs :.I don't know if you guys understand the scale of this thing. This is the European equivalent of Enron: An Italian judge today ordered the arrest of Calisto Tanzi, the founder and former chairman of the Italian dairy and food giant Parmalat, on suspicion of fraudulent auditing and market rigging, according to a person close to the investigation.
Italian investigators looking into Parmalat's insolvency detained Mr. Tanzi on Saturday in downtown Milan, the Italian financial capital, as he climbed into a chauffeured Mercedes-Benz automobile near his lawyer's offices. He spent the night in San Vittore Prison in Milan and was interrogated there for most of today by investigating magistrates in connection with the failure of the company he built from a family delicatessen business over four decades.
Mr. Tanzi and about 20 other Parmalat officials and others are under investigation, but he is the first official formally arrested in the case.
posted by Kevin at 7:30 PM
The IT Industry Is Shifting Away from Microsoft :.The IT industry is also shifting to India, China and Russia, but as long as B Gates gets pummeled, I guess this is good news. Don't get too happy, though. After the next event, DRM could be required by law for any computer connected to the Internet. Sure, you laugh now. But I have a feeling that B Gates will be the one laughing in The End: People did the math. With expensive lock-ins on one hand, and cheaper, more interoperable software on the other, they started choosing the less expensive route. Imagine that. The high profile defections started happening with more and more regularity, and Redmond was almost out of tricks.
Some defections were headed off, like the Thai government, which pays $36 for Office and Windows XP comes with a 95% discount if you compare it to list. There are probably other similar deals elsewhere that we have not heard about. For every one of the Microsoft victories, there were two or three Linux wins. Then four or five. Now it is not even a contest. High profile defections like cities, governments, and, gasp, IBM, are just the tip of the iceberg, and almost everyone is looking at the pioneers to see if the trail they are blazing is worth following.
If it turns out that these first few companies can make it, expect the floodgates to open, and everyone to follow. The designed in security flaws, that make Microsoft software insecurable, are only adding to the misery. Every day that a company is down due to worms or viruses, it starts re-evaluating Microsoft software. When bidding on the next round of contracts, the memory of all night cleanups tends to weigh heavily on the minds of many CIOs and CTOs.
posted by Kevin at 12:07 PM
12/27/2003
The Air Car :.I thought this was a joke at first. Nope. The thing runs on compressed air. Research Credit: CL
posted by Kevin at 8:11 PM
Spider Hole 101 :.How did itsy-bitsy Saddam fit in his itty-bitty hole? Find out!Research Credit: TR
posted by Kevin at 7:03 PM
New Hybrid Propulsion System Easily 50% More Efficient Than Traditional Internal Combustion Engines :.The best part about it is that the generator runs on diesel, which means it will run on non-polluting biodiesel or vegetable oil. Someone obviously didn't get the word to disappear this technology. My guess is that it will simply fade away, or remain in a constant state of obscurity, like all of the other technologies that could have solved our energy problems: A new Dutch invention can make cars, busses and other vehicles no less than 50 percent more efficient and thus more environmentally friendly. Better still, the technology is already available; it all comes down to a smart combination of existing systems.
This winter, in the city of Apeldoorn, a city bus will be used to prove that the claims about the new invention are true. These are quite bold. E-traction, the company that developed the bus, boasts fuel savings of up to 60 per cent, with emissions down to only a fraction of the soot and carbon dioxide an ordinary bus would blow out of its tailpipe.
In addition, the test bus requires no adaptation, its drivers need no extra training and there'll be no discomfort for passengers. It will simply run on diesel, just like all the other buses, and it should be just as reliable. One thing however will be very different; the Apeldoorn bus hardly makes a sound, hence its nickname "the whisperer".
posted by Kevin at 9:48 AM
Col. Sabow Case Won't Die :.Buried in the hundreds of pages that comprise the 2004 Defense Authorization Act, was the order that the mysterious death of Col. John Sabow, USMC, be reviewed and that "experts outside the Defense Department" investigate the medical and forensic evidence from the 12 year-old shotgun death.
Thanks to California Congressman Duncan Hunter, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, the Marine Corps will no longer have absolute control on what is revealed by the new probe. And that could open a Pandora's Box when the cover-up of Sabow's murder is revealed.
More than 12 years has gone by since the colonel's body was discovered outside his quarters at El Toro MCAS in California, a shotgun by his side. Evidence the Marine Corps chose to ignore showed Sabow did not commit "suicide." For all these years, the Corps refused to re-examine the case. Politicians and most of the establishment media declined to get involved. Until now.
posted by Kevin at 12:06 AM
12/25/2003
Best Practices for Seizing Electronic Evidence :.Some of the things the pigs will be thinking about when they steal your stuff and accuse you of thought crimes: Computers and digital media are increasingly involved in unlawful activities. The computer may be contraband, fruits of the crime, a tool of the offense, or a storage container holding evidence of the offense. Investigation of any criminal activity may produce electronic evidence. Computers and related evidence range from the mainframe computer to the pocket-sized personal data assistant to the floppy diskette, CD or the smallest electronic chip device. Images, audio, text and other data on these media are easily altered or destroyed. It is imperative that law enforcement officers recognize, protect, seize and search such devices in accordance with applicable statutes, policies and best practices and guidelines.
posted by Kevin at 9:59 AM
Man Gets Three Years For Barroom Remark About Bush :.WOW! It's important to maintain appearances when in public: A federal appeals court has upheld the sentence for a man who had suggested that President Bush might be set ablaze.
Richard Humphreys appealed his three-year sentence, saying his comment was protected by free speech rights. He was convicted in 2002 of threatening to kill or harm the president.
The court found Humphreys suffers from bipolar disorder, and should serve his confinement in a federal medical center.
Humphreys says he got into a barroom discussion with a truck driver a day before Bush's March 2001 visit to Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
A bartender who overheard the conversation told police that Humphreys talked about a "burning Bush" and the possibility of someone setting Bush on fire.
posted by Kevin at 9:04 AM
Durable Goods Orders Plunge :.The dollar took it on the chin, again, on the mad cow news as well: New orders for long-lasting U.S. manufactured goods plunged unexpectedly in November, falling at the steepest rate in more than a year across a broad range of categories, a government report said on Wednesday.
The Commerce Department said orders fell 3.1 percent to a seasonally adjusted $180.07 billion -- defying Wall Street economists' expectations for a 0.8 percent rise.
It was the biggest monthly orders decline since a 6 percent tumble in September 2002 and followed a revised 4 percent increase in October.
US treasuries surged on the news. The benchmark 10-year Treasury note was last up 9/32 in price for a yield of 4.23 percent, down from 4.26 percent on Tuesday and down from 4.27 percent just before the durable goods report was released.
Every single category of durable goods suffered weaker demand in November, with orders for everything from computers and aircraft to new cars and defense goods falling.
posted by Kevin at 9:00 AM
Battered Orange Cutlass and Yuletide Mayhem :.I felt obligated to include a Christmas-themed article. I laughed uncontrollably for about five minutes after reading this: Cruising in a battered orange Cutlass, Berrick allegedly drove up on the lawns and smashed through the displays.
The Yuletide mayhem built to a crescendo on Saturday night, after retiree William Grasso flipped the switch on the elaborate display he sets up every year in his Islip Terrace yard. Scores of neighborhood children turned out for an open house to get a first peek at the lawn crammed with handmade wooden penguins, angels and a blinking 5-foot Santa on his gift-laden sleigh.
A few hours later, Grasso's son, John Altenburg, awoke to the sound of screeching tires. A car "was taking off with all the ornaments. The light posts were flying," said Altenburg, 41. "It was a war zone."
The car left behind a 35-foot-long swath of chewed-up grass where 30 Christmas characters had stood. A plastic teddy bear Santa Claus was found crushed in the road a half mile away.
posted by Kevin at 8:55 AM
12/23/2003
Parmalat Files for Bankruptcy :.To the tune of $5 billion: Parmalat, a dairy, juice and snack enterprise, has been struggling to survive after revelations that it claimed billions of dollars in assets it didn't have. A claim by a Parmalat offshore company to have nearly $5 billion deposited with Bank of America Corp. proved false, and Italian prosecutors said a document showing the account balance was fake.
posted by Kevin at 11:34 PM
FDA Investigating Reports of Unlicensed Influenza Vaccine :.The media unleashed what can only be described as a pure PSYOP aimed at frightening people into getting the flu vaccine, which, under the best of circumstances, amounts to medical fraud. But wait. It gets better. Now we learn that unlicensed individuals were smacking people up with questionable influenza vaccine!?!? WOW! This is practically unbelievable. And the mindless troglodytes just lap it up. Poor troglodytes. So dumb. So easily manipulated: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has received reports of potential distribution of unlicensed influenza vaccine in the United States. The Agency is aggressively working with State health authorities and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to investigate the source and quality of influenza vaccine being made available through unusual suppliers.
Specifically, FDA has received reports of offers to sell unlicensed influenza vaccine in the U.S., and of individuals who are not licensed health care professionals administering questionable influenza vaccine in apparent efforts to take advantage of reports that influenza vaccine is in short supply. FDA is actively investigating these reports and taking prompt action, when appropriate. For example, FDA and the Florida Department of Health worked together to prevent unlicensed product from entering the country and being offered for sale.
posted by Kevin at 5:46 PM
First U.S. Case of Mad Cow Disease :.There have been rumbles of coverups of this in the past. One has to wonder if it's much, much worse than this. The most shocking thing, in my opinion, is that a "downer" (non ambulatory) cow had been slaughtered for its meat! Do you understand what that means?! I can't even write any more about this. Oh man. This is what happens in The Meatrix: The first apparent case of mad cow disease in the United States has been discovered in Washington state, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Tuesday.
Two tests have already been carried out on the cow enabling Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman to call the case a "presumptive positive" and a sample is being flown to England for a third test to absolutely confirm the case.
Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, is linked to a similar form of the incurable and fatal brain-wasting disease in humans, called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, or vCJD. There have been a small number of cases of vCJD reported worldwide, primarily in the United Kingdom, in people who ate BSE-contaminated meat.
Officials believe that meat from the Washington animal left a processing plant, Veneman said, and an investigation is under way to determine if any had reached store shelves.
posted by Kevin at 5:25 PM
'Pre-Emptive' Arrests in Los Angeles :. ( Local Copy as PDF) This is beyond the pale. Arbitrary, secret arrests. Pure tyranny. How many people were arrested? Unknown. What are their names? Unknown. Can thought crimes get a person on the pre-emptive arrest shitlist? What will happen when this thing goes Red? Is there going to be a knock on my door? Is there going to be a knock on your door? After all, you're a thought criminal if you read information produced by thought criminals. Seriously, when this thing goes Red, and it will, I wouldn't be surprised if I was taken down. The shitlist is probably much longer under Red. Run of the mill thought criminals are probably included on that thing, and who would say or do anything about it? Most of my regular readers won't even throw me a dollar. If Cryptogon suddenly went silent, there would be concerned emails from about ten people, and that would be it. It seems like we're getting close to very bad things, writ large. And it's too late to do anything about it. Doubleplusungoodthinkers, know this: We are the dead: In response to the national terrorism alert, Los Angeles police have made "a number of pre-emptive arrests," a high-ranking LAPD source said Tuesday.
Those arrests were made in the past 48 hours and included people who came to authorities' attention after the September 11, 2001, al Qaeda terror attacks in the United States.
The source stressed that none has been charged with any terrorism-related offense but were rounded up on unrelated charges -- in one case, credit card fraud -- in an effort to get information about possible threats. None of those picked up was identified.UPDATE: CNN Activates Memory Hole on this StoryThe text of this story has been changed. I do not have the original text and I couldn't find it anywhere. They actively suppressed this one. If anyone happened to save this, please email me.UPDATE: Original CNN Story Recovered From My Browser's Cache Files ( Local Copy as PDF) The fact that CNN disappeared this story really irked me. So, I started messing around, searching, assuming Microsoft Internet Explorer does weird things. I was shocked by what Explorer stores locally! I routinely dump Explorer's offline content, but I never realized just how much information that thing was saving locally! It's insane. In this case, though, it came in handy. I think it's incredibly ironic that a Microsoft product allowed me to snatch this story from the memory hole! By the way, Internet Cache Explorer is a great tool, if you want to rummage through the Internet detritus that Explorer accumulates on your hard drive. Note: To delete offline content, in Explorer, go to Tools -> Internet Options -> In Temporary Internet Files select Delete Files -> Check Delete All Offline Content -> Click OK. This operation could take several minutes to complete. You might also want to change the size limit on offline content.
posted by Kevin at 5:13 PM
Nuclear Arms Race to Oblivion Continues :.With the U.S. running roughshod all over the planet, what should we expect from frightened states? Russia has deployed a new batch of its top-of-the-line strategic nuclear missiles after a break caused by a funding shortage, even as the military presented ambitious plans on Monday for building weapons even more potent.
Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov inaugurated the new set of Topol-M missiles at the Tatishchevo missile base in the central Saratov region on Sunday, describing them as a "21st-century weapon" unrivalled in the world.
"This is the most advanced state-of-the-art missile in the world," Ivanov said in remarks broadcast by Russian television stations on Monday. "Only such weapons can ensure our sovereignty and security and make any attempts to put military pressure on Russia absolutely senseless."
Ivanov reported the deployment to President Vladimir Putin on Monday, saying that the military will continue modernising all components of the nation's nuclear forces.
posted by Kevin at 4:31 PM
Fund Scandal: Ratting Out the Rats :.Looking to bring some excitement to the workplace? Get your PHB thrown in jail, and knock the mainpole out from under your bigtop: The mutual fund scandal, which has ensnared dozens of companies and generated countless headlines, started with an anonymous tip.
In March, an unnamed whistleblower told Massachusetts securities regulators that Morgan Stanley executives pressured brokers to steer clients toward their in-house mutual funds, prompting both Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin and New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer to investigate.
Other leads soon followed.
posted by Kevin at 4:26 PM
Race to the Bottom: "Nobody has come up with a way to spin it in a positive way." :.I say, bitchslap these evil monsters. If you must buy their goods, buy them used. Cut off the revenue and you cut off their heads: Morgan Stanley estimates the number of U.S. jobs outsourced to India will double to about 150,000 in the next three years. Analysts predict as many as two million U.S. white-collar jobs such as programmers, software engineers and applications designers will shift to low cost centers by 2014.
But the biggest companies looking to "offshoring'' to cut costs, such as Microsoft Corp., International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) and AT&T Wireless (AWE), are reluctant to attract attention for political reasons, observers said this week.
"The problem is that companies aren't sure if it's politically correct to talk about it,'' said Jack Trout, a principal of Trout & Partners, a marketing and strategy firm. "Nobody has come up with a way to spin it in a positive way.''
This causes a problem for publicly traded companies, which would ordinarily brag about cost savings to investors. Instead, they send vague signals that they are opening up operations in India and China, but often decline to elaborate.
Moreover, on the threshold of a U.S. presidential election year, job losses are a hot button issue. A company that highlighted a major job transfer could wind up in the campaign debate.
Multinationals find that when they trumpet expansion overseas, they cause problems at home. When Accenture Ltd. (ACN) executives in India this month announced plans to double their staff to 10,000 next year, they triggered a flood of calls to the company's U.S. offices about U.S. job losses.
Offshoring companies "are paying Chinese wages and selling at U.S. prices,'' said Alan Tonelson, of the U.S. Business and Industrial Council, a trade group for small business. "They're not creating better living standards for America.''
posted by Kevin at 4:22 PM
12/22/2003
Outside the NYSE: Pigs with Assault Rifles :.I saw some video on CNBC today of packs of NY cops, walking the streets in full battle dress, including assault rifles, as troglodytes meandered about with their Christmas gifts. Someone pinch me. Am I awake? Is this a nightmare?
posted by Kevin at 9:36 AM
Make Sure to Study Hard for that Computer Science Degree! :.IT graduates face a "grim" future as the UK's jobs market continues to show little sign of improvement.
A report by specialist publishers, GTI, does not make chirpy reading for IT grads looking to enter the world of work.
Says its Graduate Trends Survey 2003/4: "This year sees once again the nightmare scenario of thousands of well-qualified IT graduates looking forward to an uncertain future that they could not have imagined when they started their degrees three or four years ago."
According to the report, there are more graduates chasing fewer vacancies, with the average number of vacancies, and the actual number on offer, falling further. One measly crumb of comfort is that the rate of decline has slowed.
posted by Kevin at 6:56 AM
12/21/2003
The Bankruptcy of The United States :.United States Congressional Record, March 17, 1993 Vol. 33, page H-1303
Speaker-Rep. James Traficant, Jr. (Ohio) addressing the House:
"Mr. Speaker, we are here now in chapter 11.. Members of Congress are official trustees presiding over the greatest reorganization of any Bankrupt entity in world history, the U.S. Government. We are setting forth hopefully, a blueprint for our future. There are some who say it is a coroner's report that will lead to our demise.
It is an established fact that the United States Federal Government has been dissolved by the Emergency Banking Act, March 9, 1933, 48 Stat. 1, Public Law 89-719; declared by President Roosevelt, being bankrupt and insolvent. H.J.R. 192, 73rd Congress m session June 5, 1933 - Joint Resolution To Suspend The Gold Standard and Abrogate The Gold Clause dissolved the Sovereign Authority of the United States and the official capacities of all United States Governmental Offices, Officers, and Departments and is further evidence that the United States Federal Government exists today in name only.
The receivers of the United States Bankruptcy are the International Bankers, via the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. All United States Offices, Officials, and Departments are now operating within a de facto status in name only under Emergency War Powers. With the Constitutional Republican form of Government now dissolved, the receivers of the Bankruptcy have adopted a new form of government for the United States. This new form of government is known as a Democracy, being an established Socialist/Communist order under a new governor for America. This act was instituted and established by transferring and/or placing the Office of the Secretary of Treasury to that of the Governor of the International Monetary Fund. Public Law 94-564, page 8, Section H.R. 13955 reads in part: "The U.S. Secretary of Treasury receives no compensation for representing the United States."
posted by Kevin at 11:06 PM
When Was Saddam Captured? Ripe Dates and Drying Meat... :.This is a pretty good one: The CIA photograph, shown on the left, clearly shows a tree full of ripe dates which in Iraq ripen in late July or early August and never in December. The picture also shows a rope with hanging meat for drying. Our Iraqi sources informed us that this occurs always in the summer and never in December. Local link to a better quality photograph depicting the dates and the drying meat. I have no idea how valid this theory is, but it's something to keep in mind. It makes sense, but I just don't know. Research Credit: DH via TR
posted by Kevin at 10:57 PM
Across U.S., Jobless Losing Benefits :.More than 90,000 people who have been out of work for months will lose their federal benefits today, when a program to aid the long-term unemployed expires.
During the first six months of next year, more than 2 million unemployed people across the country will be cut off from the extra assistance, unless Congress acts. In Massachusetts, 2,500 workers a week will lose their benefits, according to government statistics studied by a congressional committee and several economic analysis groups.
"It's a really diverse group of people who are running out of benefits -- higher-income, dot-commers, lower-wage workers, and manufacturing employees. It's people from every industry, from all states," said Maurice Emsellem, public policy director for the National Employment Law Project. "Whatever's going on with the economy, it's not translating into significant job growth."
posted by Kevin at 10:32 PM
Police Call for Remote Button to Stop Cars :.It's a good thing I don't live in Britain: After speed cameras, road humps and mobile phone bans, there could be more bad news for Britain's motorists. Police are urging Ministers to give them the power to stop vehicles by remote control.
In what will be seen as yet another example of the in-creasing power of Big Brother, drivers face the prospect of their cars being halted by somebody pushing a button.
posted by Kevin at 10:14 PM
Slave to the Machine: The Dawn of Ubiquitous GPS Surveillance :.Whether they're dispatching a fleet of garbage trucks or a team of bail-bond collectors, managers love the idea of knowing where their "assets" are. They can coordinate routes that arebased upon traffic data, offer customers a narrower time frame for delivery, and, yes, make sure mobile employees are actually on the job when they're supposed to be. The popularity of GPS in the workplace parallels its growth in the consumer realm: By 2006, according to some estimates, 4 out of 5 new vehicles will come equipped with the technology.
For workers, GPS can add convenience and security. But as the plowers' protest shows, close tracking can put a dent in morale. Privacy experts warn that employees may not realize how much they can be tracked, especially if they use a company cellphone or a vehicle with GPS during personal time.
posted by Kevin at 10:11 PM
Lost? Hiding? Your Cellphone Is Keeping Tabs :.The machine is going to eat us all alive if we don't opt out of this nightmare: Driven by worries about safety, the need for accountability, and perhaps a certain "I Spy" impulse, families and employers are adopting surveillance technology once used mostly to track soldiers and prisoners. New electronic services with names like uLocate and Wherify Wireless make a very personal piece of information for cellphone users � physical location � harder to mask.
But privacy advocates say the lack of legal clarity about who can gain access to location information poses a serious risk. And some users say the technology threatens an everyday autonomy that is largely taken for granted. The devices, they say, promote the scrutiny of small decisions � where to have lunch, when to take a break, how fast to drive � rather than general accountability.
posted by Kevin at 3:05 AM
12/19/2003
Deployed in the U.S.A.: The Creeping Militarization of the Home Front :.These U.S. Marines cheered when they executed an injured Iraqi. Will they cheer when they are tasked to do the same thing to Americans? Deploying troops on the home front is very different from waging war abroad. Soldiers are trained to kill, whereas civilian peace officers are trained to respect constitutional rights and to use force only as a last resort. That fundamental distinction explains why Americans have long resisted the use of standing armies to keep the domestic peace.
Unfortunately, plans are afoot to change that time-honored policy. There have already been temporary troop deployments in the airports and on the Canadian and Mexican borders and calls to make border militarization permanent. The Pentagon has also shown a disturbing interest in high-tech surveillance of American citizens. And key figures in the Bush administration and Congress have considered weakening the Posse Comitatus Act, the federal statute that limits the government's ability to use the military for domestic police work.
The historical record of military involvement in domestic affairs cautions against a more active military presence in the American homeland. If Congress weakens the legal barriers to using soldiers as cops, substantial collateral damage to civilian life and liberty will likely ensue.
posted by Kevin at 7:06 PM
Jobless Recovery: Hunger, Homelessness Grew in 2003 :.Anyone who believes we're experiencing a "jobless recovery" needs to be slapped around a bit. If this is a "recovery" I'd hate to see things get really bad: Hunger and homelessness increased in many of America's largest cities this year, with growing demand for emergency food supplies for families with children, the elderly and even people with jobs, a survey by U.S. mayors finds.
The report by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, released Thursday, found that requests for emergency food assistance rose 17 percent overall from last year in the survey of 25 large cities. Requests for emergency shelter assistance increased by 13 percent, the report showed.
Most of the cities expected that requests for emergency food assistance and shelter would rise again over the coming year, the study said.
Food needs for the poor grew in nearly nine out of 10 of the surveyed cities.
posted by Kevin at 6:57 PM
Merrill Lynch Trader Pleads Guilty to Wire Fraud, Money Laundering and Conspiracy :.Merrill Lynch's former chief energy trader pleaded guilty Friday to charges that he faked documents to bilk the firm of $43 million, saying that he was following orders from superiors to make the company's energy business to seem more profitable than it was.
Daniel L. Gordon, 27, of Old Lyme, Conn., pleaded guilty to wire fraud, money laundering and conspiracy in U.S. District Court in Manhattan in a deal with prosecutors in which he promised to testify against others, if necessary, as part of the government's continuing probe.
"The decision was made by my superiors to make the business look more profitable by altering certain of the data," Gordon said.
Sentencing was set was April 30.
posted by Kevin at 10:50 AM
Goldman Sachs CEO to Head NYSE :.Oh my God. What did the NYSE want-ad say, "Wolf Needed to Watch the Hen House"??? HA! Restore investor confidence? What's he going to do? Burn the NYSE to the ground and start over? I'm afraid to say anything about what I know about Goldman Sachs. (Although, getting a cease and desist letter on GS letterhead could be quite thrilling.) Anyone who has ever watched Goldman Sachs (GSCO on the handy Level 2 market data screen) "make the market" in a stock knows what I mean. It's a miracle that a) I ever managed to take money from them, and b) I didn't lose my ass while trying to do it. I might have nearly had a coronary and a couple of panic attacks, but, hey, you gotta break a few eggs if you want to make an omelet.... And now their top PHB is now going to run the NYSE!? Man, hold on to your wallet: John A. Thain, chief operating officer and president of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., was named chief executive of the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday as part of an effort to restructure the institution following a damaging pay scandal.
Thain, 48, will start the job Jan. 15, and will receive total annual compensation of $4 million. In accepting the post, he replaces John S. Reed, who was brought in three months ago to help reform the NYSE's governance after former chairman and CEO Richard Grasso resigned amid a furor over his $188 million pay package.
"I am deeply honored to accept this call to service,'' Thain said at a news conference where he was introduced. "Let us work as one to restore investor confidence and to ensure the reputation of the New York Stock Exchange rests securely on the firm foundation of integrity and excellence."
posted by Kevin at 4:12 AM
Bush Brothers Bathing in Fascist, Chinese Blood Money :.It looks like Neil and Marv are taking a page from the Bill Clinton playbook! If you don't get what I mean by fascist, Chinese blood money, read this. Any legitimate U.S. president would ban the importation of goods made in China, and every other place where workers live as slaves. HA! Woops, there wouldn't be much of anything left to buy from most stores in the U.S. Hmm. I guess Americans would then have to be hired to manufacture that stuff. Beware: If you attempt to lecture me about my insane level of insubordination re: "free trade" issues, I may publicly disembowel you for the entertainment and enjoyment of all of the other freaks, cranks, bums and lunatics that read this site. So, if you're tempted to send a "free trade is great" letter, please make sure you do your homework: Many observers were surprised last week when George W. Bush came down in favor of the People's Republic of China, against a democratic referendum in Taiwan. His weighing in on behalf of mainland China becomes more questionable at a time when well-connected Chinese companies are funneling large sums of money to Bush's brothers.
News reports reveal that Shanghai-based Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing, a multi-billion-dollar company co-founded by a son of China's former president, has presidential brother Neil Bush under a $2 million contract.
With no background in semiconductors, Neil Mallon Bush, third brother in the family, got a five-year contract from Grace, involving an annual retainer of $400,000 in stock. The arrangement is disclosed in court papers in Mr. Bush's scandal-ridden divorce. The business press has conjectured that Grace hoped to influence US limits on exporting sensitive technology to China.
An even bigger Chinese company recently moved in ways that benefit youngest Bush brother Marvin P. Bush. The company is Hong Kong-based Cheung Kong Holdings, a gargantuan real estate and investment conglomerate now branching into biotechs. According to the company, "combined market capitalization of the Cheung Kong Group amounts to HK$515 billion," or "approximately 11.5 percent of the total market capitalization of the Hong Kong stock market."
posted by Kevin at 3:01 AM
Iraq: Liberation? :.
"Any demonstration against the government or coalition forces will be fired upon," Jaburi's voice said, according to an army interpreter. "This is a fair warning."
Demonstrators risk a year in jail and, if they work for the state as civil servants or teachers, they will loose their jobs, the message said. All demonstrations are illegal in the U.S.-occupied province.
posted by Kevin at 2:55 AM
Unemployment Apocalypse in the U.S. :.Just wait until this thing really comes down: "People are tired and angry and upset," says the 47-year-old unemployed worker from Danville, California, frustration noticeable in his voice. "People are hurting, losing their homes. If we keep pulling jobs out of the country, how is the economy going to stay up?"
Coming from an autoworker or a steelworker, these would be familiar words. But Bennett isn't a laid off Ford or GM employee. He used to work for companies such as Bank of America and Wells Fargo, where, as a contract database programmer, he earned between $80,000 and $90,000 a year. But in the last year, he says, he hasn't been able to find any programming work � such jobs, he is told, are moving overseas.
Bennett is not alone. In recent years, hundreds of thousands of highly skilled, well-paid positions have been sent abroad.
These days architects in the Philippines are producing blueprints for Fluor; electronic engineers in India are designing cell phone chips for Texas Instruments; and computer programmers in the Czech Republic are building software for Kodak. The stream of job loss is set to become a torrent; a November 2002 study by the consulting firm Forrester Research estimated that over the next 15 years some 3.3 million US service sector jobs would be sent abroad. A more recent report by economists at UC Berkeley says as many as 14 million programming, accounting, paralegal and other service jobs are at risk of being "off-shored."More: Vanishing Jobs :.Never coming back: An August Federal Reserve study estimates that as many as 79 percent of jobs are in industries where jobs have been lost forever, a phenomenon Fed economists call "structural change."
Another estimate by Forester Research goes into more specifics. Forrester estimates that by 2015, some 3.3 million service-sector jobs will be shipped overseas or rendered obsolete by technology. Forester analyst John McCarthy says jobs that are most at risk require fewer skills, are automated or are highly portable.
Those include computer programming and software engineer jobs, that have long been leaving the country. By 2015, 26 percent of those jobs will be gone, says McCarthy.
Clerical jobs, like accounts receivable and payable, financial research, data-entry and various administrative services also are vulnerable since their tasks are either becoming automated or can be performed by less-expensive workers somewhere else.
posted by Kevin at 2:52 AM
Pop a Pill, Save Your Hearing? :.There are many reasons to take antioxidant supplements, but check this out re: N-acetyl cysteine: People who've had their ears damaged by gunfire, jackhammers or punk rock have traditionally had two choices: get hearing aids, or suffer in silence.
But a new set of drugs, about to be tested on Marine recruits, is showing promise as a way to protect ears against the din.
posted by Kevin at 2:42 AM
12/17/2003
U.S. Marines Execute Iraqi and then Cheer :. Warning: Graphic video. Liberation. Backup link to video.
posted by Kevin at 11:47 PM
9/11 Chair: Attack Was Preventable :.Yawn: For the first time, the chairman of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is saying publicly that 9/11 could have and should have been prevented, reports CBS News Correspondent Randall Pinkston.
posted by Kevin at 11:34 PM
9/11: Explosion Before First Impact? :.Why is there an explosion before the first plane hits the building?
posted by Kevin at 9:49 PM
Diebold Subsidiary Hires Convicted Felons for Management Positions :.At least five convicted felons secured management positions at a manufacturer of electronic voting machines, according to critics demanding more stringent background checks for people responsible for voting machine software.
Voter advocate Bev Harris alleged Tuesday that managers of a subsidiary of Diebold, one of the country's largest voting equipment vendors, included a cocaine trafficker, a man who conducted fraudulent stock transactions and a programmer jailed for falsifying computer records.The programmer, Jeffrey Dean, wrote and maintained proprietary code used to count hundreds of thousands of votes as senior vice president of Global Election Systems, or GES. Diebold purchased GES in January 2002.
According to a public court document released before GES hired him, Dean served time in a Washington state correctional facility for stealing money and tampering with computer files in a scheme that "involved a high degree of sophistication and planning."
"You can't tell me these people passed background tests," Harris, author of Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century, said in a phone interview.
posted by Kevin at 8:33 PM
While You Were Sleeping: Stealth Enactment of the "Patriot II" Legislation :.While CNN and other media outlets are rejoicing because of the capture of Saddam Hussein, Bush again introduced new legislation last Saturday which increased the federal powers to investigate and reduces the privacy rights of American citizens :
H.R. 2417, INTELLIGENCE AUTHORIZATION AGREEMENT OF 2004
Whitehouse Statement on HR 2417 (December 13, 2003)
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/12/20031213-3.html
HR 2417 was cleared by the Congress on November 21, 2003
http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=4862&sequence=0
Comments of Ron Paul, Congressman for Texas on HR 2417 :
It appears we are witnessing a stealth enactment of the enormously unpopular "Patriot II" legislation that was first leaked several months ago. Perhaps the national outcry when a draft of the Patriot II act was leaked has led its supporters to enact it one piece at a time in secret. Whatever the case, this is outrageous and unacceptable. I urge each of my colleagues to join me in rejecting this bill and its incredibly dangerous expansion of Federal police powers.
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2003_cr/h112203.htmlResearch Credit: TR
posted by Kevin at 8:23 PM
Flu Vaccine Swindle :.I can't believe how many people bought into this!!! Commentary sent by TR: Now congress wants to funnel $150M to the pharmaceutical companies to produce more flu vaccine since there was such a demand for it this year. This is un-be-f*cking-lievable! First they have CNN use scare-tactics to get everyone to vaccinate, thereby creating a shortage, they then have the nerve to steal $150M from tax payers to give to the drug manufacturers to produce another year's supply of rat DNA and formaldehyde.
Federal health officials will seek $150 million from Congress over the next two years to encourage flu vaccine makers to adopt new manufacturing processes that could speed up production to respond to outbreaks, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said Tuesday.
posted by Kevin at 2:50 AM
12/16/2003
Fraud: Ex-Pentagon Officials Sentenced :.Bribes and hookers. This is standard operating procedure in the government procurement racket. Well, except for the getting caught part: Two former top Pentagon officials each were sentenced Friday to 24 1/3 years in prison for taking more than $1 million in bribes and accepting prostitutes from government contractors.
Robert Lee Neal Jr., 51, and Francis Delano Jones Jr., 51, also were ordered to jointly pay $1.75 million in restitution. The Maryland men were convicted in U.S. District Court in July of conspiracy, extortion, money laundering, witness tampering and obstruction of justice.
posted by Kevin at 9:46 PM
Saddam Trial: Hoping for Amnesia :.I haven't even had the energy to deal with this Saddam Hussein issue. That's because I've been spinning my wheels on the covert relationship between the U.S. and Iraq since 1995. And you know what all of it amounts to? Nothing. So now the trial. Oh yes, the trial. It's time for justice to be served. Well, if that's the case, a bunch of very powerful Americans had better get ready to fly to Iraq because there's no way to put Saddam Hussein on trial without calling the likes of George Bush Sr., Rumsfeld, and Cheney. Oh yeah, don't forget the comatose Ronald Reagan. Well, and then there are some prominent French, British and German folks who would probably have to pack their bags for Iraq as well. Saddam Hussein, everyone agrees, was made in The West: It is hard to believe that either Washington or London would relish the prospect of an open trial. They would not want Saddam to adumbrate their support for him - credit-by-credit, pathogen-by-pathogen, weapon-by-weapon - during the 12 years before he became an official enemy by invading Kuwait in August 1990.
posted by Kevin at 9:37 PM
Specialists Are Crooks: Calpers Sues NYSE, Alleges Fraud :.Anyone who has ever daytraded NYSE equities already knows what Calpers learned the hard way: Calpers, the biggest U.S. public pension fund, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against the New York Stock Exchange and its specialist trading firms, claiming that widespread fraud and lax oversight cost investors millions of dollars.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, comes three months after Calpers' protests helped push out former NYSE Chairman Richard Grasso following the disclosure of his $188 million compensation package.
The pension fund alleged that specialists, in conjunction with the NYSE, routinely engaged in "wide-ranging manipulative, self-dealing, deceptive and misleading conduct" that hurt public investors seeking to trade stocks.
posted by Kevin at 9:20 PM
Exposed: The Carlyle Group :. (RealPlayer Required) This is one of the more astonishing documentaries I have ever seen in my life. Even though none of this information is new, seeing it all edited together in a single video is enough to send a chill down your spine. All of you need to watch this, and then tell everyone you know to watch it. These people are the REAL DEAL. They have taken over the U.S. government and are directing American foreign policy for private, elite interests. This is absolutely insane. NOTE: The first couple of minutes are in Dutch, and then English follows.
posted by Kevin at 5:59 AM
A Net of Control: DRM Nightmare Ahead :.It's more than a bit ironic that this story appears on MSNBC: ....staving off the Internet power shift will be a difficult task, made even harder by apathy on the part of users who won�t know what they�ve got till it�s gone. �I�ve spent hundreds of hours talking to people about this,� says Walker. �And I can�t think of a single person who is actually going to do something about it.� Unfortunately, our increasingly Internet-based society will get only the freedom it fights for.
posted by Kevin at 2:32 AM
Wal-Mart Reports Subdued U.S. Sales :.Richard Hastings, analyst at Bernard Sands, said: "Wal-Mart shoppers are a huge aggregation of American society. The sales reflect that there are a lot of households insufficiently funded for the future," said Mr Hastings. "If you're an observer, you need to be very worried about this."
posted by Kevin at 1:04 AM
12/15/2003
IBM to Export Highly Paid Programming Jobs to India, China :.The employment situation in the United States has gone off the rails: In one of the largest moves to "offshore" highly paid U.S. software jobs, International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) has told its managers to plan on moving the work of as many as 4,730 programmers to India, China and elsewhere, Monday's Wall Street Journal reported.
The unannounced plan, outlined in company documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal, would replace thousands of workers at IBM facilities in Southbury, Conn., Poughkeepsie, N.Y., Raleigh, N.C., Dallas, Boulder, Colo., and elsewhere in the U.S.Already, the managers have been told, IBM has hired 500 engineers in India to take on some of the work that will be moved.
IBM calls its plan, first presented internally to some midlevel managers in October, "Global Sourcing." It involves people in its Application Management Services group, a part of IBM's giant global-services operations, which comprise more than half IBM's 315,000 employees.
posted by Kevin at 8:49 AM
Dick Cheney Personally Slaughters 70+ Captive Birds with a Shotgun :. While it might shock and repulse you that the Vice President of the United States slaughters animals for fun, this type of thing should come as no surprise. The people who wield any level of power in this system are, quite literally, nuts. This type of system attracts and rewards psychotic behavior. See Kurt Vonnegut's statement on psychopathic personalities. You better damn well understand the meaning and spirit of the Second Amendment and arm yourself and your family to the extent that you are able. It's obvious that we are ruled by psychopaths who have no regard for life at all: Monday's hunting trip to Pennsylvania by Vice President Dick Cheney in which he reportedly shot more than 70 stocked pheasants and an unknown number of mallard ducks at an exclusive private club places a spotlight on an increasingly popular and deplorable form of hunting, in which birds are pen-reared and released to be shot in large numbers by patrons. The ethics of these hunts are called into question by rank-and-file sportsmen, who hunt animals in their native habitat and do not shoot confined or pen-raised animals that cannot escape.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported today that 500 farm-raised pheasants were released yesterday morning at the Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier Township for the benefit of Cheney's 10-person hunting party. The group killed at least 417 of the birds, illustrating the unsporting nature of canned hunts. The party also shot an unknown number of captive mallards in the afternoon.
"This wasn't a hunting ground. It was an open-air abattoir, and the vice president should be ashamed to have patronized this operation and then slaughtered so many animals," states Wayne Pacelle, a senior vice president of The Humane Society of the United States. "If the Vice President and his friends wanted to sharpen their shooting skills, they could have shot skeet or clay, not resorted to the slaughter of more than 400 creatures planted right in front of them as animated targets."Research Credit: TR
posted by Kevin at 12:01 AM
12/14/2003
Death by Medicine :.A definitive review and close reading of medical peer-review journals, and government health statistics shows that American medicine frequently causes more harm than good. The number of people having in-hospital, adverse drug reactions (ADR) to prescribed medicine is 2.2 million. Dr. Richard Besser, of the CDC, in 1995, said the number of unnecessary antibiotics prescribed annually for viral infections was 20 million. Dr. Besser, in 2003, now refers to tens of millions of unnecessary antibiotics.
The number of unnecessary medical and surgical procedures performed annually is 7.5 million. The number of people exposed to unnecessary hospitalization annually is 8.9 million. The total number of iatrogenic deaths shown in the following table is 783,936. It is evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the United States. The 2001 heart disease annual death rate is 699,697; the annual cancer death rate, 553,251.Related: Perscription Drugs Don't Work on Most People
posted by Kevin at 4:49 PM
The Capture of Saddam (U.S. Army Slides) :.I've been watching the coverage on television. The strangest thing to me is that Hussein managed to elude capture from an enemy with essentially God-like powers for about nine months! It feels weird to me to watch everyone jumping around, cheering and celebrating over this. I want to feel the joy with the rest of the troglodytes, but this rings pretty hollow with me. Perhaps if I was capable of forgetting Hussein's previous relationship with the United States government, his arrest might have more meaning to me. This entire mess is nothing more than a falling-out between crooked business partners. The fact that this former U.S. business partner was sitting on the second largest proven oil supply in the world insured his downfall.
posted by Kevin at 4:39 PM
12/13/2003
In the Capital of the Car, Nature Stakes a Claim :. back-up linkThis is an incredible look at what happens when people are forced to survive in the post industrial era. In Detroit, wide swaths of deserted, urban wasteland are being taken over by individuals in order to grow food: PAUL WEERTZ lives less than 10 minutes from downtown, but the view from his window is anything but urban. On a warm day this fall, the air was ripe with the smell of fresh-cut hay and manure. In the alley behind his house, bales of hay teetered and listed where garbage cans once stood. Chickens scratched in the yard, near a garage that had been turned into a barn. Mr. Weertz drives a Ford � not a sleek sedan but a rebuilt 1960 tractor.
"My sisters and brothers gave me a pig for my birthday," Mr. Weertz said, referring to his newest barnyard resident. "I am not sure what I am going to do with it."
After decades of blight, large swathes of Detroit are being reclaimed by nature. Roughly a third of this 139-square-mile city consists of weed-choked lots and dilapidated buildings. Satellite images show an urban core giving way to an urban prairie.
Rather than fight this return to nature, Mr. Weertz and other urban farmers have embraced it, gradually converting 15 acres of idle land into more than 40 community gardens and microfarms � some consuming entire blocks.Research Credit: TR
posted by Kevin at 8:31 PM
Berkeley Professor Denied Tenure for Stance on Corruption in Scientific Research :.Chapela and others protested a contract between UC Berkeley and the agricultural biotech firm Novartis (now called Syngenta) in 1998 that gave the company rights to the university's plant research, calling it a conflict of interest. Chapela went on to publish a study showing that genetically modified corn had made its way into maize crops in Mexico, which are considered pristine.
posted by Kevin at 1:55 PM
12/12/2003
RFID Credit Cards :.The problem with this is that the Feds can set up readers anywhere they want to track the movement of people. The article says that anyone trying to interrogate your card would have to be "very" close to you. Well, when I drive on a toll road near here, the RFID unit in my car is about 20 feet away from the reader. When I blow through that thing at freeway speeds, the little box beeps every time, announcing that the RFID reader scanned me. So, you do the math on how well your privacy will be protected when you walk around with those transmitters in your pocket: The new credit cards work much like the Speedpass system that ExxonMobil has accepted for quick payments at its gas stations since 1997. But the keychain fobs carried by Speedpass' 6 million users are good only at ExxonMobil stations and a handful of other retail outlets.
In contrast, credit cards that incorporate the technology could be used anywhere regular plastic is accepted, as long as stores install the new readers. The card companies have worked out technical standards that would let one reader handle multiple brands of contactless cards.
posted by Kevin at 1:33 PM
Hate Speach: Tactics of Tyrants are Always Transparent :.Banned drawing by Chuck Bowden.
posted by Kevin at 11:34 AM
Dollar Collapse: Hits 11-Year Low Vs Pound :.Down and down it goes, where it stops nobody knows. Ah, but what's there to worry about? The global economy just happens to be based on an irrational, cult-like belief in a valueless paper script with Luciferian and Masonic nonsense scrawled all over it: The dollar hit 11-year lows against the pound and eyed record lows against the euro on Friday, as looming U.S. trade data focused attention on the United States' wide current account deficit.
Worries the world's largest economy will find it increasingly hard to attract funds to finance its deficit have knocked the dollar to record lows against the euro and three-year lows against the yen this week.
posted by Kevin at 11:25 AM
Phoenix School First to Install Face Scanners :.Get those future slaves/prisoners/soldiers/cops to sKo0l: Rebecca Dornbusch, deputy director of the International Biometric Industry Association in Washington D.C., had never heard of biometric face scanning being used on K-12 campuses. Biometric handprints are being used by a few day care centers to insure the right adults are picking up kids after school, she said.
"This is a very interesting and new application of the technology," Dornbusch said.Indeed, I think they said the same thing about Dr. Mengele's work.
posted by Kevin at 12:55 AM
Cheney Lifts Your Wallet 24/7 :.A Pentagon audit has found Vice President Dick Cheney's former company may have overcharged the Army by $1.09 per gallon for nearly 57 million gallons of gasoline delivered to citizens in Iraq, senior defense officials say.
Auditors found potential overcharges of up to $61 million for gasoline that a Halliburton subsidiary delivered as part of its no-bid contract to help rebuild Iraq's oil industry.
But the company apparently didn't profit from the discrepancy, according to officials who briefed reporters Thursday on condition of anonymity. The problem, the officials said, was that Halliburton may have paid a Kuwaiti subcontractor too much for the gasoline in the first place.
Cheney and Pentagon officials deny any political motive for awarding the no-bid contracts to KBR, which has a long-standing relationship with the military as a major Pentagon contractor.
The defense officials, who are involved in the audit of the contracts, said the Pentagon was negotiating with KBR over how to resolve the fuel-pricing issue. They declined to name the Kuwaiti subcontractor that provided the fuel, saying that company may not have been notified of the inquiry's findings.Oh no! I'm sure all of this is totally innocent! Man, these stories are going totally off the rails. Anyone want to bet on whether or not the subcontractor was a Carlyle Group shell company? UPDATE: Bush: Halliburton Must Pay for Overcharge :.Sometimes, this stuff won't even pass the smell test in the White House: President Bush said Friday that Vice President Dick Cheney's former company should repay the government if it overcharged for gasoline delivered in Iraq under a controversial prewar contract.
"If there's an overcharge, like we think there is, we expect that money be repaid," the president told reporters when asked about the Halliburton contract controversy.
posted by Kevin at 12:34 AM
Bill Clinton Urges U.S. to Support Bush :.All of you limousine liberals can now suck on this big one. Choke on it, actually, for all I care. Saying it for years, thousands of times, doesn't seem to help people get it: "Republicans and Democrats are THE SAME F*CKING PARTY!" Some of you guys just don't want to get it. You want so hard to believe that this system isn't hopelessly broken. Well, you might as well click your red heels together and say, "There's no place like home." Either that, or vote for that assclown Dean. Oh yeah. Sure. Or Lieberman. HAHA! Kerry!? Why not Bush/Cheney for another four!? Hmm? Why not bring this thing down once and for all? Get if over with: Former President Clinton said Americans should support President Bush and U.S. troops in the war against Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.
"Tonight, many of thousands of America's finest young men and women in uniform, and their allies, are in Iraq with their lives on the line," Clinton said Tuesday at a fund-raising performance of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra.
"Whatever our politics at this hour, we all should want them and their commander in chief to know that we're praying for them and pulling for them, for their success in their mission, for their safety, for as little loss of life as possible."
In addition to his brief remarks at the event, Clinton narrated portions of the "I Have a Dream" speech of the late civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., while the orchestra played "Let Freedom Ring," by Alexander Miller.Let freedom ring!? Jesus. Someone pass me a puke bag.
posted by Kevin at 12:20 AM
12/11/2003
Scientists Create Ebola Vaccine :.Oh, that's great, since there's evidence that the same "scientists" created ebola: Scientists have successfully immunised mice against the deadly Ebola virus which has killed thousands in Africa.
They used virus-like particles (VLPs) which are non-infectious but are capable of triggering a strong response by the immune system.
Usually lethal doses of Ebola had no impact on the vaccinated mice.
The study, by the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The scientists hope their work will lead to a vaccine which will protect humans from the virus, which causes haemorrhagic fever and kills up to 90% of its victims.Oh sure. Yep. You betcha.
posted by Kevin at 11:58 PM
Congress Pushes for Larger Military :.Why not just drive around with a truck, grab 14 year old boys and put rifles in their hands? Make men out of them! That's usually what viscious fascist regimes do. The Russians have been doing this for years. Maybe the U.S. will vary the theme slightly and conscript girls too. Oh, just wait until the next event. When this thing finally unfurls, it's going to make the Third Reich look like a boyscout exercise: Members of Congress from both parties are pushing for the first significant increase in the size of the active-duty military in 16 years, despite resistance from the Pentagon.
Call-ups of part-time troops from the Army National Guard and the Army Reserve to fill the ranks in Iraq have intensified the bipartisan sentiment that the Pentagon doesn't have enough troops to fight an extended war on terrorism while keeping enough well-rested, well-trained troops ready for an emergency.
posted by Kevin at 11:15 PM
The Dollar Crisis :.You probably know the story, but in case you don't: The current international monetary system, based on floating fiat currencies, brings about tremendous distortions which inevitably must be corrected. This much has been known to Austrians for some time. Awareness is now starting to spread to mainstream economists. To understand how we got here requires some historical background.
posted by Kevin at 2:57 PM
Retail Sales Up, Dow Closes over 10,000, Uh... Jobless Claims Up??? :.Remember the runup to the last crash? The logic from the filthy whores on CNBC went something like this: "We need to establish new metrics to determine valuation in the Internet era." This was a fancy way of saying, "You would have to be insane to buy this thing, but keep buying just a bit longer so I can get a better price on my short." Now, the same painted up whores on CNBC are throwing around some new terminology: "Jobless recovery." BAAA HAAAA HAAAAAAAAA! Dig the hole deeper: In economic news, retail sales scored a better-than-expected 0.9 percent increase in November, boosted by surging auto and electronics sales, the Commerce Department said. The jump in retail sales helped offset separate data showing an unexpected increase in initial claims for jobless benefits to 378,000 in the latest week, contrary to forecasts for a decline in jobless claims.Related: My Job Went To India And All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt
posted by Kevin at 2:36 PM
Former WorldCom CEO John Sidgmore Dies :.I think it's interesting when PHBs bite the dust, especially when they presided over large corporate bankruptcies: John Sidgmore, the WorldCom executive who helped reveal the accounting troubles that led to the biggest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history, died Thursday at 52.
He died of complications associated with acute pancreatitis, said B. Jay Cooper, a family spokesman.Note: At least there wasn't any ratshot involved... It's not easy being a PHB. Sometimes, they go down in bad ways.
posted by Kevin at 2:07 PM
More Blowback on Tap :.The Bush administration has authorized creation of an Iraqi intelligence service to spy on groups and individuals inside Iraq that are targeting U.S. troops and civilians working to form a new government, according to U.S. government officials.
The new service will be trained, financed and equipped largely by the CIA with help from Jordan.
posted by Kevin at 1:31 AM
The Official 9/11 Story is Bullshit :.With more than 4,500 aircraft continuously sharing U.S. airspace, between September 2000 and June 2001 the Pentagon launched fighters on 67 occasions to escort wayward aircraft. [FAA news release Aug/9/02; AP Aug13/02]
But on Sept 11, 2001, NORAD and the FAA ignored routine procedures and strict regulations. In response to a national emergency involving hijacked airliners as dangerous as cruise missiles, interceptors launched late from distant bases flew to defend their nation at a fraction of their top speeds. [NORAD news release Sept. 18/01]
posted by Kevin at 12:50 AM
Whores of War: Mercs Represent 2nd Largest Allied Force in Iraq :.Private corporations have penetrated western warfare so deeply that they are now the second biggest contributor to coalition forces in Iraq after the Pentagon, a Guardian investigation has established.
While the official coalition figures list the British as the second largest contingent with around 9,900 troops, they are narrowly outnumbered by the 10,000 private military contractors now on the ground.
The investigation has also discovered that the proportion of contracted security personnel in the firing line is 10 times greater than during the first Gulf war. In 1991, for every private contractor, there were about 100 servicemen and women; now there are 10.
The private sector is so firmly embedded in combat, occupation and peacekeeping duties that the phenomenon may have reached the point of no return: the US military would struggle to wage war without it.
posted by Kevin at 12:42 AM
U.S., Israel Prepare Mass Killings in Iraq :.The Bush administration is about to launch a campaign of wholesale killings in Iraq with the assistance of the Israeli military, according to both US and Israeli sources quoted in several recent news reports.
Frustrated over the growing popular resistance to the US military occupation and determined to reduce US casualties in Iraq before next November�s election, the administration has authorized a policy that could well resemble the infamous �Operation Phoenix� assassination program run by the CIA during the Vietnam War. That operation claimed the lives of as many as 41,000 Vietnamese over a four-year period beginning in 1968.
posted by Kevin at 12:33 AM
12/10/2003
OPEC May Trade Oil in Euros to Compensate for Dollar Decline :.More bad news for the dollar: OPEC Secretary General Alvaro Silva said the organisation is considering trading oil in euros to compensate for the US dollar's decline in value.
Another alternative is to trade in a basket of currencies other than the greenback, Silva told Venezuela's state news agency, Venpres.
"There is a talk of trading crude in euros. It is one of the alternatives," the former Venezuelan oil minister said from Vienna late on Monday.
posted by Kevin at 11:32 PM
U.S. Kills 6 More Children in Afghanistan :.The US military announced today that six children and two adults were killed during a US attack on a weapons compound in south-eastern Afghanistan, the second bungled operation in the country to leave child victims in as many days.
posted by Kevin at 11:13 PM
Japanese Try to Halt Dollar Collapse to the Tune of 1 Trillion Yen :.The Bank of Japan has been "intervening" in the dollar's slide the entire way down. The question becomes: How long can they keep it up? In currencies, the dollar rose against others Wednesday in New York, aided by suspected aggressive dollar-selling intervention by the Japanese central bank.
The Bank of Japan might have injected as much as 1 trillion yen ($9.2 billion) when the dollar fluctuated just above mid-107 yen, pushing the U.S. currency above 108 yen, major economic newspaper Nihon Keizai reported Thursday.
posted by Kevin at 8:02 PM
No Updates: Two Days on the Can SlamI either got bad food poisoning or some kind of stomach flu. Yesterday, I wasn't away from the toilet for more than 45 minutes. Bad vomiting. Diarrhea. I thought it was THE END. I got to the point where I was uttering, "Jesus, help me." I actually felt like I was going to kick the bucket! I've never had anything like this. Imagine the worst hangover you've ever had, multiplied by 1000 and then your stomach feels like someone beat you with a bat. I considered the hospital, but then I thought, "I can't go there, it's run by quacks. If this is it, this is it." Well, I'm still here. Today is better. I'm not vomiting anymore. Man, that would not be a good way to go. The dehydration is weird. You feel thirsty, but you try to drink various things and you just throw up. Late last night I quit throwing up. I had been drinking every liquid I could find to try to hydrate myself. I finally tried some tonic water. I thought that it couldn't make me feel any worse than the water, Gatorade and 7up did. To my great surprise, I think it helped. I didn't throw up again after taking it. Alright, well, I'm ready for bed again. UPDATE: Colloidal SilverI forgot to mention it, but I took colloidal silver when I was at the worst point in this sickness. I don't know if it could have helped because I just threw up after taking it. I took a total of two ounces, over about two hours. Reader RB WritesIf you're interested in avoiding death by dehydration, you should probably try getting your hands on some Loperamide HCL (imodium). It should slow the rate of fluid loss through your intestines. It saved my ass a few years back when I had the exact same problem.
I still remember sitting on the can as the grey haze came over my eyes, thinking "Oh shit, I'm a gonna DIE!" so I can relate to your situation. I got poisoned by bad salsa from one of those worthless yuppie burrito shops. From then I've stuck to Mexican Food made and served by Real Mexican Immigrants. Reader NF Writestune in to steve quayle all this week as he's dealing with the massive flu outbreaks and chemtrails. the flu is killing little kids all over the country. it starts with a stomach ache and then you're in the hospital. little kids and elderly only at this point. but your symptoms are exactly
what is killing people.
my suggestion is to take some oregano, allimax, and silver. and, if you have a bible, read of few verses on healing.
posted by Kevin at 9:28 AM
12/9/2003
Israel Trains U.S. Assassination Squads in Iraq :.The U.S. should soon be racking up even more confirmed kills of women, children and old men in Iraq. The parallels to Vietnam are insane! Remember the Phoenix Program? Remember the cross border missions into Cambodia and Laos during that conflict? U.S. special forces are operating "over the fence" again; this time inside Syria. I don't believe this nightmare is happening. This thing is escalating, folks, I hate to break it to ya. Oh well, everything old is new again.: Israeli advisers are helping train US special forces in aggressive counter-insurgency operations in Iraq, including the use of assassination squads against guerrilla leaders, US intelligence and military sources said yesterday.
The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) has sent urban warfare specialists to Fort Bragg in North Carolina, the home of US special forces, and according to two sources, Israeli military "consultants" have also visited Iraq.
US forces in Iraq's Sunni triangle have already begun to use tactics that echo Israeli operations in the occupied territories, sealing off centres of resistance with razor wire and razing buildings from where attacks have been launched against US troops.
But the secret war in Iraq is about to get much tougher, in the hope of suppressing the Ba'athist-led insurgency ahead of next November's presidential elections.
US special forces teams are already behind the lines inside Syria attempting to kill foreign jihadists before they cross the border, and a group focused on the "neutralisation" of guerrilla leaders is being set up, according to sources familiar with the operations.
"This is basically an assassination programme. That is what is being conceptualised here. This is a hunter-killer team," said a former senior US intelligence official, who added that he feared the new tactics and enhanced cooperation with Israel would only inflame a volatile situation in the Middle East.
"It is bonkers, insane. Here we are - we're already being compared to Sharon in the Arab world, and we've just confirmed it by bringing in the Israelis and setting up assassination teams."
posted by Kevin at 5:33 AM
Dollar Crashing? :.If you don't think it's crashing, what would you call it? A controlled slide? It may not appear to be crashing because garbage at WalMart doesn't cost 30% more than it did in 2001. That's interesting, because the the dollar has lost about 30% of its value since then: The dollar hit a record low against the euro for an eighth consecutive session on Tuesday as investors bet a U.S. central bank meeting later in the day would do little to halt the greenback's slide.The people who toil in the WalMart dungeons for penury know why things don't cost 30% more than they did in 2001. The big retailers are turning the screws on their suppliers to produce goods at ever lower prices. This has allowed to dollar collapse to be offset by the lower costs of goods. The troglodytes continue to slurp up the pap, oblivious to the macroeconomic disaster brewing around them. How long can this system of swindling last? This isn't even a complicated scam. How long until this unwinds? If you have any predictions, let me know. I want to short a few cigarette butts and bottle caps on that QQQ. Hint: Oil Costs More When the Dollar Falls :.The 11-mmber Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) effectively raised its price target to $28 per barrel from $25 per barrel to offset the weak dollar at its meeting last week. The dollar, which has lost a third of its value against the euro since late 2001, is a reason for defending prices at the top of OPEC�s $22-$28 per barrel target band, OPEC oil ministers said at their Vienna meeting.Dollar�s Dramatic Decline Comes Out of Your Wallet :.Excellent article: One of these days, the dollar is going to be a problem for the world. Its decline will turn into a rout, and all of the negative consequences will be dealt with in short order.
When will that happen? I don't know, because it's as much a psychological phenomenon as it is an arithmetic one. But I do know that when a dollar rout does occur, there will be no non-chaotic or painless way out.Could the Stock Market Crash? Everyone Says 'No' :.Another excellent article: Every casual stock market participant is now bullish. Everyone KNOWS that the stock market is going up. Greenspan will continue to keep any crash from happening. Corporate management will continue with the positive press releases that �beat-by-a-penny�, and are �better-than-expected�. Mark Haynes, and Joe Kernan will continue to joke, and Sue Herrera will continue to smile. Stimulus-induced government economic data will continue to be positive (yet unsustainable). William O�Neil will continue to tout the speculative favorites in spite of irrational valuations, and Investors Business Daily (IBD) followers will continue to bid these stocks up. Merrill Lynch and others will continue to issue analyst upgrades, and the public will continue to listen to them and gap up these stocks. In short, the game will continue! (Nasty but truthful e-mails from Wall Street analysts about suspect companies will not continue though!)
Overvaluation, chicanery, and everybody thinking alike suggest to me that all the ingredients for a stock market crash are in place. The only thing missing is the catalyst, and there are a variety of potential ones on the horizon. The risk (of a crash) greatly outweighs the marginal gains that can be made at this point.
posted by Kevin at 2:43 AM
Top Secret Advisor To Four Presidents Dies 'Violently' In DC :.A "suicide" here, a "suicide" there: Gus W. Weiss, 72, adviser to four presidents on top secret policy matters, died violently in Washington, DC, on November 25, 2003, but his death was not reported by The Washington Post until December 7, 2003, in the obitiuary section at the bottom of page C12. His home town newspaper, The Nashville Tennessean, was only a week late in reporting his death, but at that late date all they could say was, "The circumstances surrounding his death could not be confirmed last night."
posted by Kevin at 2:36 AM
Glaxo Chief: Our Drugs Do Not Work On Most Patients :.I've been saying this for years, but it's a little different when a major PHB from one of the biggest drug companies in the world says it. I've got more news for you, not only is the garbage being pushed by your quack probably not going to help your condition, there's a good chance that it's extremely dangerous. Read the fine print. You'll think twice about throwing that shit down the toilet, much less ingesting it. The next swindle will involve your hopelessly flawed DNA. Salvation will allegedly arrive via a custom tailored genetic therapy solution. All the while, none of these frauds/quacks mentions anything about viable alternative therapies and lifestyle modification. Holding onto your wallet isn't enough when dealing with medical fraud. You have to be afraid for your life. They want your money, and they're willing to kill you to get it: A senior executive with Britain's biggest drugs company has admitted that most prescription medicines do not work on most people who take them.
Allen Roses, worldwide vice-president of genetics at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), said fewer than half of the patients prescribed some of the most expensive drugs actually derived any benefit from them.
It is an open secret within the drugs industry that most of its products are ineffective in most patients but this is the first time that such a senior drugs boss has gone public.
This goes against a marketing culture within the industry that has relied on selling as many drugs as possible to the widest number of patients - a culture that has made GSK one of the most profitable pharmaceuticals companies, but which has also meant that most of its drugs are at best useless, and even possibly dangerous, for many patients.
posted by Kevin at 1:35 AM
12/8/2003
Pre Cognition: Boodle BoysThis is a weird story. Weirder than usual. The phrase "boodle boys" has been popping into my head for the past several days. No, I'm not hearing "voices" and I won't be donning the aluminum foil hat (shiny side out) anytime soon. Do you ever tune out various gibberish that pops into your brain because you think it's just random noise? That's what I thought it was. Well, I was in the bookstore last night and, to my complete shock, I stumbled across America's Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones by Antony C. Sutton. I've heard about this book since the 1980s from various sources...weird radio shows at 3am, outlaw publications distributed on the floors of college bathrooms, etc. I've heard recordings of Sutton himself talking about it. I've just never physically seen a copy of it before (even in the "good" bookstores that are now out of business). I know, I could have ordered it, but I never did. So, when I saw it before me, in Barnes & Noble of all places, I just bought it. No questions asked. And that's when it hit me: boodle boys. More: Lewis Mumford's Myth of the Machine: The Pentagon of PowerTR has been raving about the work of Lewis Mumford. He's in the process of parsing the entire corpus of Mumford's work on technology and civilization very closely. According to TR, it's "that" good. When he mentioned, The Pentagon of Power I thought that it sounded very familiar. I thought that I might even have it. I went looking through my book collection. I'll be damned if I didn't have that book! Turns out, I bought it for fifty cents, fifteen years ago, from a church library sale that I just happened to be driving past. I remember picking it up and looking at it for about half a minute; technology, possibly bad, dehumanizing, history of impacts of technology on civilization. Seemed like it was worth fifty cents! HAHA! I never read it. It just sat around. It's incredible that the answers and explanations to so many things are just flung into a dusty heap and forgotten. How different would my life have been if I had read that thing fifteen years ago!?
posted by Kevin at 6:48 PM
New Sign in RestaurantI ate dinner at a local restaurant yesterday. As I paid my bill, I noticed that a new sign had been affixed to the wall behind the cash register. It said: WARNING
Chemicals Known To The State Of
California To Cause Cancer, Or Birth
Defects or Other Reproductive Harm
May Be Present In Foods Or Beverages
Sold Or Served Here I asked the teenage girl, who was running the cash register, when that sign was put up. I knew it hadn't been there very long. She said, "Oh, the cancer sign? Hmm. I have no clue." For fuck's sake, this thing is already down.
posted by Kevin at 12:14 AM
12/7/2003
Google Search: "miserable failure" :.This almost restores my faith in closed source, corporate, monolithic Internet search. I think Google needs further adjustment. How about: war criminal. Add a similar link to web pages under your control to improve the accuracy of Google's results. More: BBC CoverageMore: The George W. Bush G.I. Joke Action FigureResearch Credit: NF
posted by Kevin at 4:21 PM
The Four Horsemen of the Economy :.I can't believe this article appeared in wide distribution media. We must be getting close to something. When clarity begins to emerge in the establishment media, watch out, the "dumb money" is about to get it. I don't encourage you guys to read entire articles very often, but you should read this one all the way through. It sums up a great deal of information that has been presented here over the past several weeks and months: The U.S. economy of 1999 had only one serious imbalance -- the stock market bubble. Today's economy has not one but four imbalances; four "Horsemen of the Apocalypse" which may well cause war, famine, pestilence and death in the years to come. Really the only major uncertainty is: in which order?These "four horsemen" imbalances will reinforce each other. A decline in the dollar, the high Federal deficit and the resurgence of inflation will drive up interest rates, which in turn will adversely affect house prices and the stock market, which will adversely affect consumption and the "real economy." The U.S. economic position is much more serious than it was in 1999, and the outlook going forward is accordingly gloomier.
posted by Kevin at 4:47 AM
U.S. Strike Kills 9 Children in Afghanistan :.A U.S. warplane in pursuit of a "known terrorist" attacked a village in eastern Afghanistan, mistakenly killing nine children, officials said Sunday.FLASHBACK: The "Care" and "Humanity" Involved with U.S. Atrocities :. (WARNING! Graphic!) "The targeting capabilities and the care that goes into targeting to see that the precise targets are struck and that other targets are not struck, is as impressive as anything anyone could see. The care that goes into it, the humanity that goes into it, to see that military targets are destroyed, to be sure, but that it's done in a way, and in a manner, and in a direction and with a weapon that is appropriate to that very particularized target."-U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, 3/21/03
posted by Kevin at 4:12 AM
12/6/2003
SEAS Power UpdateSome of you may remember the SEAS Power situation. I covered it here. Dr. Steven Greer, SEAS CEO and Disclosure Project Director, is scheduled to be a guest on Coast to Coast AM Radio with Art Bell. Greer will be on tomorrow, December 7, 2003, 10 to 11 pm Pacific Time (1 to 2 am Dec. 8th Eastern time, 6 to 7 am GMT). After the last round of BS, this better be good. UPDATE: Nothing NewI listened to it. More bloviation. Nothing solid at all. Greer should have talked about ethanol. That would have made a much more informative show.
posted by Kevin at 6:15 PM
U.S. Unfurls Draconian Israeli Methods in Iraq :."This fence is here for your protection," reads the sign posted in front of the barbed-wire fence. "Do not approach or try to cross, or you will be shot."
"With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to help them," Colonel Sassaman said.Iraqi towns have been ringed with barbed wire. Citizens have been issued ID cards that are printed in English only! If they want to enter or leave their towns, they have to do so through a U.S. military checkpoint using that English only ID. Also consider that this is an account from the New York Times! Imagine what the situation on the ground is actually like. Anyone who thinks this can't happen in the U.S. is out to lunch. Take a good long look at what the U.S. is doing over in Iraq and you will get a feel for where things are headed on the homefront: In Abu Hishma, encased in a razor-wire fence after repeated attacks on American troops, Iraqi civilians line up to go in and out, filing through an American-guarded checkpoint, each carrying an identification card printed in English only.
"If you have one of these cards, you can come and go," coaxed Lt. Col. Nathan Sassaman, the battalion commander whose men oversee the village, about 50 miles north of Baghdad. "If you don't have one of these cards, you can't."
The Iraqis nodded and edged their cars through the line. Over to one side, an Iraqi man named Tariq muttered in anger.
"I see no difference between us and the Palestinians," he said. "We didn't expect anything like this after Saddam fell."
The practice of destroying buildings where Iraqi insurgents are suspected of planning or mounting attacks has been used for decades by Israeli soldiers in Gaza and the West Bank. The Israeli Army has also imprisoned the relatives of suspected terrorists, in the hopes of pressing the suspects to surrender.
The Israeli military has also cordoned off villages and towns thought to be hotbeds of guerrilla activity, in an effort to control the flow of people moving in and out.
American officials say they are not purposefully mimicking Israeli tactics, but they acknowledge that they have studied closely the Israeli experience in urban fighting. Ahead of the war, Israeli defense experts briefed American commanders on their experience in guerrilla and urban warfare. The Americans say there are no Israeli military advisers helping the Americans in Iraq.
posted by Kevin at 5:54 PM
Cryptogon Partners with DOMAI.comSince there is only one reader---out of easily 300 regulars---who actually supports this site (thanks Mike!), I have to try other methods of raising funds. Before you scoff and say, "Blech! pR0n!" I would ask you to take a look at DOMAI.com before passing judgment. This isn't porn! I've never seen such beautiful women and the photography is excellent. Take a break from all the heinous stuff on Cryptogon and check out the girls on DOMAI.com. And if you sign up for one of their very reasonable memberships, HALF of the fees will go toward supporting my efforts here. I don't know who said you couldn't see beautiful, naked women and support Cryptogon at the same time, but they must have been taking shots of Jack Daniels with the Bush daughters!
posted by Kevin at 4:25 AM
12/5/2003
Joseph Newman Claims 10 Kilowatt Closed Loop Generator, Video :.I've been following this stuff long enough to know that videos and claims mean nothing. Let's see plans that a competant engineer can turn into a machine that never needs to be recharged, RUNS ITSELF and the rest of the shit I plan on having in my yurt. If this thing is actually real, my recommendation to Mr. Newman: Don't fly. Joseph Newman's technology does not "create" energy. What his technology accomplishes (as verified by more than 30 scientists and engineers) is the TRANSFORMATION of energy from one state into another, TOTALLY IN ACCORDANCE with the First Law of Thermodynamics. That is also accomplished in accordance with Einstein's equation of E = mc^2 [originally written by Einstein as EL (Electricity) = mc^2. (from Einstein's 1912 manuscript)]
Ironically, when Joseph Newman originally began his research over 35 years ago, it was precisely because he HAS so firmly believed in the First Law of Thermodynamics that he knew it was possible to innovate his technology. As a result, his successfully operational technology works in accordance with the First Law of Thermodynamics and represents a verification of same.
In keeping with the 1st Law of Thermodynamics, one cannot simply create "energy" from nothing. All generation of energy consists of energy transfers/transformations that operate in strict accordance with that 1st Law.
That is PRECISELY what occurs in Joseph Newman's technology.
posted by Kevin at 4:54 PM
12/4/2003
Pump and Dump: November Insider Stock Sales Hit 2-Year High :.This rally is so false it's insane: Stock sales by top U.S. corporate executives reached their highest level in more than two years in November, a bearish signal at a time when the stock market has surged amid strong growth in the economy and company earnings.
Last month corporate executives cashed in $4.5 billion worth of their own companies' shares, up 43 percent from October and nearly double the five-year monthly average, according to Thomson Financial's Insider Research, which tracks insider transactions.
Meanwhile 3,680 executives from 1,592 companies engaged in share sales. Both measures set five-year highs.
posted by Kevin at 5:55 PM
Canadian Lawyer Was Made an Offer He Couldn't Refuse :.No horse head, but the strangled cat did the trick: Fighting for his composure, lawyer Rocco Galati said Thursday that he will drop all of his terrorism-related cases after a death threat that he said he believes came from an intelligence agency.
Mr. Galati is known as a tough-minded counsellor and he said he has put up with plenty of abuse for representing people many Canadians have no sympathy for. He has endured angry communications before and once found a strangled cat on his doorstep, but he almost broke down Thursday as he described his disillusionment upon receiving the threat.
�I'm not on the verge of tears for my safety. I'm on the verge of tears because it means we now live in Colombia. It means that the rule of law is meaningless. It means that lawyers cannot represent anyone even in what you profess to be a democracy here in Canada,� he said. �It comments on where we've arrived as a society.�
posted by Kevin at 5:51 PM
Hack the Vote :.Inviting Bush supporters to a fund-raiser, the host wrote, "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." No surprise there. But Walden O'Dell � who says that he wasn't talking about his business operations � happens to be the chief executive of Diebold Inc., whose touch-screen voting machines are in increasingly widespread use across the United States.
For example, Georgia � where Republicans scored spectacular upset victories in the 2002 midterm elections � relies exclusively on Diebold machines. To be clear, though there were many anomalies in that 2002 vote, there is no evidence that the machines miscounted. But there is also no evidence that the machines counted correctly. You see, Diebold machines leave no paper trail.Research Credit: NF
posted by Kevin at 2:01 AM
12/3/2003
War Chimp Planning a Return to the Moon? :.How about first using decades old technology to solve our energy problems on this planet? When President Bush delivers a speech recognizing the centenary of heavier-than-air-powered flight December 17, it is expected that he will proffer a bold vision of renewed space flight, with at its center a return to the moon, perhaps even establishment of a permanent presence there. If he does, it will mean that he has decided the United States should once again become a space-faring nation.
posted by Kevin at 11:18 PM
Will Segways Become Battlefield Bots? :.It's called the Segway Human Transporter, but the Pentagon is drafting the two-wheeled scooter as part of a plan to develop battlefield robots that think on their own and communicate with troops.
The program is still in the research phase, so the self-balancing scooters aren't expected to report to boot camp anytime soon. So far, university researchers armed with Pentagon funding have programmed Segway robots that can open doors, avoid obstacles, and chase soccer balls -- all without human control.Don't worry, this thing will be coming for you soon enough.
posted by Kevin at 11:04 PM
Wet Work: In Search of the Buy Button :."People who are more likely to purchase a product show significantly higher memory encoding than those who are less likely," explains Richard Silberstein, a neuroscientist with the Brain Sciences Institute at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. He developed the headgear used in Greenwich.
Using machines that detect brain tumors and strokes to determine whether pink satin underthings will outsell black ones or if people really like pickles on their hamburgers--could this yield practical results? Some big marketers are sufficiently intrigued to put research money into the idea. Among the companies looking into whether brain signals can supplement or replace traditional tests of consumer response to commercials are General Motors, Ford of Europe, and Camelot, the U.K.'s national lottery operator.Research Credit: TR
posted by Kevin at 10:59 PM
Does al-Qaeda Exist? :.Bush's turkey isn't even real: Adam Dolnik and Kimberly McCloud reckon it's time we 'defused the widespread image of al-Qaeda as a ubiquitous, super-organised terror network and call it as it is: a loose collection of groups and individuals that doesn't even refer to itself as al-Qaeda'. Dolnik and McCloud - who first started studying terrorism at the prestigious Monterey Institute of International Studies in California - claim it was Western officials who imposed the name 'al-Qaeda' on to disparate radical Islamic groups and who blew Osama bin Laden's power and reach 'out of proportion'. Both are concerned about the threat of terror, but argue that we should 'debunk the myth of al-Qaeda'.
There is a 'rooted public perception of what al-Qaeda is', says Dolnik, who is currently carrying out research on the Terrorism and Political Violence Programme at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore; but, he says, such perceptions are far from accurate. Dolnik argues that where many imagine that al-Qaeda is 'a super organisation of thousands of super-trained and super-secret members who can be activated any minute', in fact it is better understood as something like a 'global ideology that has not only attracted many smaller regional groups, but has also facilitated the boom of new organisations that embrace this sort of radical and violent thinking'. Dolnik and others believe that, in many ways, the thing we refer to as 'al-Qaeda' is largely a creation of Western officials.Research Credit: TR
posted by Kevin at 10:34 PM
1-Shot Killer: U.S. Mercenaries Testing New Ammo in Iraq :.Ben Thomas and three colleagues were driving north out of Baghdad in an SUV on a clear mid-September morning, headed down a dirt road into a rural village, when gunmen in several surrounding buildings opened fire on them.
In a brief but intense firefight, Thomas hit one of the attackers with a single shot from his M4 carbine at a distance he estimates was 100 to 110 yards.
He hit the man in the buttocks, a wound that typically is not fatal. But this round appeared to kill the assailant instantly.
�It entered his butt and completely destroyed everything in the lower left section of his stomach ... everything was torn apart,� Thomas said.
Thomas, a security consultant with a private company contracted by the government, recorded the first known enemy kill using a new � and controversial � bullet.
The bullet is so controversial that if Thomas, a former SEAL, had been on active duty, he would have been court-martialed for using it. The ammunition is �nonstandard� and hasn�t passed the military�s approval process.
�The way I explain what happened to people who weren�t there is � this stuff was like hitting somebody with a miniature explosive round,� he said, even though the ammo does not have an explosive tip. �Nobody believed that this guy died from a butt shot.�
The bullet Thomas fired was an armor-piercing, limited-penetration round manufactured by RBCD of San Antonio.
posted by Kevin at 10:00 PM
The Pain Merchants: U.S. Exports $20 Million of Shackles, Electro-Shock Technology :.A new Amnesty International report charges that in 2002, the Bush Administration violated the spirit of its own export policy and approved the sale of equipment implicated in torture to Yemen, Jordan, Morocco and Thailand, despite the countries' documented use of such weapons to punish, mistreat and inflict torture on prisoners. The US is also alleged to have handed suspects in the 'war on terror' to the same countries.
The total value of US exports of electro-shock weapons was $14.7 million in 2002 and exports of restraints totaled $4.4 million in the same period. The Commerce and State Departments approved these sales, permitting 45 countries to purchase electro-shock technology, including 19 that had been cited for the use of such weapons to inflict torture since 1990.
The report � The Pain Merchants � also reveals that the US approved the 2002 export to Saudi Arabia of nine tons of Smith & Wesson leg-irons. Former prisoners in Saudi Arabia have stated that their restraints were stamped with the name of Smith & Wesson.
posted by Kevin at 9:36 PM
Bush's Stunt Turkey :.It's all just schlock for troglodyte consumption: In the most widely published image from his Thanksgiving day trip to Baghdad, the beaming president is wearing an Army workout jacket and surrounded by soldiers as he cradles a huge platter laden with a golden-brown turkey.
The bird is so perfect it looks as if it came from a food magazine, with bunches of grapes and other trimmings completing a Norman Rockwell image that evokes bounty and security in one of the most dangerous parts of the world.
But as a small sign of the many ways the White House maximized the impact of the 2 1/2-hour stop at the Baghdad airport, administration officials said yesterday that Bush picked up a decoration, not a serving plate.
Officials said they did not know the turkey would be there or that Bush would pick it up. A contractor had roasted and primped the turkey to adorn the buffet line, while the 600 soldiers were served from cafeteria-style steam trays, the officials said.
posted by Kevin at 9:19 PM
WalMart Culture: Piss and Shit on the Walls :.Internal WalMart memo: Subject: Inappropriate use of restrooms
posted by Kevin at 3:45 AM
Kurt Vonnegut on Psychopathic Personalities :.I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d�etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka �Christians,� and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or �PPs.�
To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable medical diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete�s foot. The classic medical text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. Read it! PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!
And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country, and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And so many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick.
What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can�t. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody�s telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!
posted by Kevin at 1:51 AM
12/2/2003
More on the Death of Michael Halton at the UN :.This case has become completely strange already. As usual, there are more questions than answers. When I think of a conventional 9mm shot to the head, that scene is pretty ghastly. However, the article states, "The dead officer seemed to have committed suicide. Blood was spotted in the officer's right ear, leading investigators to believe the fatal shot was to his head." He seemed to have committed suicide?! This is interesting. A full velocity (or plus pressure, +P) 9mm jacketed hollow point (JHP) fired at a human skull at point blank range would leave little to the imagination as to the mechanism of death. "Blood spotted on the officer's right ear," is a strange description. There should have been blood everywhere. There should have been an exit wound on the skull, and blood, brain and possibly sections of skull on the walls. What would explain such a small amount of blood and no exit wound? Subsonic 9mm is one possible explanation. (I doubt an assassin would use silenced .22 because there is no way that would wash in the pathology report.) A subsonic 9mm fired at point blank range would not leave the skull. Weapons exist that fire subsonic 9mm loads that are almost completely silent. The pathologist would have to know the difference between a full velocity 9mm wound profile and a subsonic 9mm wound profile. The position of the gun is almost always interesting in these types of cases. The gun should be several feet from the body. The recoil from the blast throws the weapon back and out of the hand of the person pulling the trigger. But not in this case. It wound up wedged between the officer's legs. I wonder if Halton's weapon was even fired. That's what I'd like to know most of all. Not if a cartridge was missing from the magazine, but if the weapon was actually fired. Is there powder residue on the hand that Michael Halton supposedly used to hold the weapon to his head? Is there singeing on the skull and hair from the muzzle blast? (A silenced weapon contains most of the hot gasses from the muzzle blast.) Is there an impression on the skull from where the muzzle of the weapon made contact? Is that impression consistent with Halton's Glock? Even if Halton's weapon was fired, how is it possible that nobody else in the area heard the shot!? Does anyone buy suicide as an explanation for this one? From the article: At approximately 11:45am, a room adjacent to the cavernous General Assembly, used for occasional meetings and parties was entered. The room was darkened with curtains drawn. When the room's lights were turned on, the dead officer's body was discovered in a corner at the far end of the room.
Surprisingly, the dead officer had some company.
Only a few feet away, was another U.N. security officer who had decided to take a brief nap, apparently not knowing the officer seated nearby was dead.
Officers on the scene were puzzled by what they saw next... The dead officer seemed to have committed suicide. Blood was spotted in the officer's right ear, leading investigators to believe the fatal shot was to his head.
However, those on the scene say the officer's head was in a raised, not slouched position, as one might expect in a suicide.
The officer's gun was also found wedged between his legs.
Nobody heard any shots fired.
posted by Kevin at 3:24 PM
AIDS in Africa: It's the Vaccinations :.Not dirty needles, although they would like you to believe that: The largest association with HIV infection was found to be the number of medical injections, far higher than the risk associated with blood transfusion or the number of sexual partners.
More startling, however, is that children whose mothers were HIV negative were reported turning up HIV positive in surprisingly high numbers. In one study, 39 percent of children aged between one and 24 months were found to be HIV positive, despite having an HIV negative mother; and another study found 24 percent of children aged between one and 48 months were HIV positive, with HIV negative mothers.See: WHO Murdered Africa: Dr. Theodore Strecker's research of the literature indicates that the National Cancer Institute in collaboration with the World Health Organization made the AIDS virus in their laboratories at Fort Detrick (now NCI). They combined the deadly retroviruses, bovine leukemia virus and sheep visna virus, and injected them into human tissue cultures. The result was the AIDS virus, the first human retrovirus known to man and now believed to be 100 percent fatal to those infected.
posted by Kevin at 1:56 AM
Wars for Oil? Make Your Own Automobile Fuel :.This is incredible. There are simple and smart solutions to our most difficult problems. Although, there's one problem with ethanol: anyone can make it: I personally have driven five of my own cars on it, as well as many others. I have been able to get the same miles per gallon on 160 proof as I did with gasoline. There is hardly any pollution: no heavy hydrocarbons, so no SMOG. Best of all, I found I had the freedom of driving around on a fuel I had made instead of buying it from fat cat oil barons.The Ethanol Story: If alcohol is such a great fuel (and fuel additive), then why isnt everyone using it? <--- You wont believe this!
posted by Kevin at 12:42 AM
12/1/2003
Is the Rally Real? You Better Be Sitting Down For This One :.Incredible! I'm almost ready to get cash out of my credit cards so I can short this thing! If you think "dumb money" isn't a meaningful description of the average investor, just wait until you read this article: Nearly half the investors polled in a survey erroneously believed that stock market losses were insured and 70 percent were unaware of the risks of buying stocks on margin, according to the National Association of Securities Dealers.
The brokerage industry's self-regulatory organization released the survey results as it announced the creation of an investor education foundation with initial funding of $10 million. Additional money will come from fines levied by the NASD on brokerage firms and individuals for disciplinary breaches.
In the April survey of 1,086 adults around the country who had recently made at least one investment, 97 percent of respondents said they needed to be better informed about investing, while nearly half said they could have avoided a negative investment experience if they had known more.More: Gold Over $400, Dollar Down Against Euro, Again :.Gold jumped to its highest in more than 7-1/2-years above $400 an ounce in Europe on Monday as fund buyers took advantage of a strong euro/dollar rate and also dragged silver to a near-four-year high above $5.50.
The euro hit a lifetime high of $1.2041 against the battered dollar earlier on Monday and also rose to its highest in more than two months against the yen following the death of two Japanese diplomats in Iraq.
posted by Kevin at 3:09 PM
Another Suicide? * Wink * Bilnk * Nod *Body Found Inside U.N.
By The Associated Press
December 1, 2003, 3:01 PM EST
A body was found inside United Nations headquarters on Monday, a U.N. spokesman said. U.N. security and the New York police department are investigating the matter.
The U.N. spokesman said the person had been shot, and that the body was discovered inside the building's third-floor lounge at about 11:30 a.m. He declined to give any details on the deceased person pending notification of the family.
The spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the world body considered the shooting an "isolated incident."UPDATE: Looks Like a Suicide to Me * Wink * Bilnk * Nod * :.A guy sits down for a coffee break and blows his head off. Sounds perfectly believable to me: A U.N. security guard was found dead inside U.N. headquarters at midday on Monday with a gunshot wound to the head, the head of U.N. security said.
Michael Holton's body was found in a third floor lounge shortly before noon. He was discovered by two officers who were sent to check on Holton after he did not return to his duty station following a break, said Michael McCann, the U.N. security chief.
McCann told a news conference the incident was the first of its kind inside the United Nations buildings.
Holton, 41, was found in a lounge area where U.N. employees often take their breaks. He was seated in one of the chairs and his gun was on the chair next to his leg, McCann said.
McCann said that Holton was a 16-year veteran of the U.N. security department, was married and had two children. McCann gave no further details on the family. Holton was a U.S. citizen.
posted by Kevin at 12:41 PM
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:. Reading
 Fatal
Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture by Andrew Kimbrell
Readers will come to see
that industrial food production is indeed a "fatal harvest"
- fatal to consumers, as pesticide residues and new disease vectors
such as E. coli and "mad cow disease" find their way
into our food supply; fatal to our landscapes, as chemical runoff
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genetic diversity, as farmers rely increasingly on high-yield
monocultures and genetically engineered crops; and fatal to our
farm communities, which are wiped out by huge corporate
farms.
 Friendly
Fascism: The New Face of Power in America by Bertram Myron Gross
This is a relatively
short but extremely cogent and well-argued treatise on the rise
of a form of fascistic thought and social politics in late 20th
century America. Author Bertram Gross' thesis is quite straightforward;
the power elite that comprises the corporate, governmental and
military superstructure of the country is increasingly inclined
to employ every element in their formidable arsenal of 'friendly
persuasion' to win the hearts and minds of ordinary Americans
through what Gross refers to as friendly fascism.
 The
Good Life
by Scott and Helen Nearing Helen
and Scott Nearing are the great-grandparents of the back-to-the-land
movement, having abandoned the city in 1932 for a rural life based
on self-reliance, good health, and a minimum of cash...Fascinating,
timely, and wholly useful, a mix of the Nearings' challenging
philosophy and expert counsel on practical skills.
 Silent
Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth by David Bollierd
In Silent Theft, David Bollier
argues that a great untold story of our time is the staggering
privatization and abuse of our common wealth. Corporations are
engaged in a relentless plunder of dozens of resources that we
collectively own—publicly funded medical breakthroughs,
software innovation, the airwaves, the public domain of creative
works, and even the DNA of plants, animals and humans. Too often,
however, our government turns a blind eye—or sometimes helps
give away our assets. Amazingly,
the silent theft of our shared wealth has gone largely unnoticed
because we have lost our ability to see the commons.
 The
Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It: The Complete Back-To-Basics
Guide by John Seymour The
Self Sufficient Life and How to Live It is the only book that
teaches all the skills needed to live independently in harmony
with the land harnessing natural forms of energy, raising crops
and keeping livestock, preserving foodstuffs, making beer and
wine, basketry, carpentry, weaving, and much more.
 When
Corporations Rule the World by David C. Korten
When Corporations
Rule the World explains how economic globalization has concentrated
the power to govern in global corporations and financial markets
and detached them from accountability to the human interest. It
documents the devastating human and environmental consequences
of the successful efforts of these corporations to reconstruct
values and institutions everywhere on the planet to serve their
own narrow ends.
 The
New Organic Grower: A Master's Manual of Tools and Techniques
for the Home and Market Gardener
This expansion
of a now-classic guide originally published in 1989 is intended
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with detailed coverage of scale and capital, marketing, livestock,
the winter garden, soil fertility, weeds, and many other
topics.
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