Ashcroft, Snoops and Gag Orders: The Secrets of Surveillance :.

I've noticed something lately. On occasion, Blogger and Yahoo seem to forget the cookies that allow their systems to immediately recognize me. Specifically, I noticed that this happens when I log into these services from computers other than my home system. When I return home, they require me to login again. I figured that since a login occurred from a different system, the security token is removed from the home system, therefore requiring authentication once I use the home system again.

Well, here's where the tinfoil hat comes in handy. Occasionally, Blogger and Yahoo drop the security tokens from my system without me logging into those services from other computers! And no, I didn't accidentally hit the "Log Out" links. I've had a feeling that something weird was happening, but I've just ignored it because I thought it was paranoia. I'm not so sure after reading this:

Everyone knows by now (or should) that the Patriot Act allows the FBI to conduct surveillance on Internet and email usage. Using so-called National Security Letters (NSLs), the FBI directs Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to provide passwords and identifying information that will allow the government to target people who are plotting terrorism or who are otherwise potentially dangerous to national security. I am sure that many of you reading this (and I, likely) have the government in our computers.
posted by Kevin at 6:44 AM

Rumsfeld Says 'War on Terror' Just Beginning :.

With "liberation" like this, who needs the Apocalypse?

The United States' declared war on terror is closer to the beginning than the end, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told graduates of the U.S. Military Academy on Saturday.

Rumsfeld told the 2004 graduating class of 935 cadets that in the three years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America, the U.S.-led coalition had "overthrown two vicious regimes and liberated 50 million people, disrupted terrorist cells across the globe and thwarted many terrorist attacks."

"Yet despite our successes, we are closer to the beginning of this struggle with global insurgency than to its end," he said.
posted by Kevin at 1:28 AM

Cheney Office Denies Role in Halliburton Deal :.

What? How could anyone suggest that Cheney would be involved in any underhanded dealing!? These are shocking accusations!

Vice President Dick Cheney's office denied Sunday that he was involved in a coordinated effort to secure a multibillion dollar Iraq oil deal for Halliburton, his former employer.

A reference to such an arrangement was made in an internal Pentagon e-mail from an Army Corps of Engineers official to another Pentagon employee, Time magazine reports in its June 7 edition, which is due on newsstands Monday.

The existence of the e-mail was confirmed to CNN by a senior administration official familiar with it.

The e-mail -- dated March 5, 2003 -- says Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, approved the arrangement to award the contract to the oil-services company, the administration official said.

According to an e-mail excerpt in Time, the contract was "contingent on informing WH [White House] tomorrow. We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated w[ith] VP's office."
posted by Kevin at 1:02 AM

60th Anniversary of D-Day: French Town Under Martial Law :.

This article goes on for several paragraphs about all of the military power that will be deployed for this event, and then, in the last paragraph, we read:

The town's residents have been told that they must either stay indoors throughout next Sunday or leave the area. Even Patrick Jardin, the mayor, one of the few local people invited to the international ceremony, will have to travel by bus to Caen, 45 minutes' drive away, and board a special bus to return to Arromanches that afternoon.

Who won World War II again?
posted by Kevin at 12:52 AM

Don't Try to Cheat the Telescreen, Hide Your Books :.

Inside the flat a fruity voice was reading out a list of figures which had something to do with the production of pig-iron. The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall. Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely.

---George Orwell, 1984

Telescreen viewing mandatory for school kids:

"To Ms. Ehrenfeld: This morning I observed that during the morning news program, you and your students were engaged in activities other than watching television."

So began the official letter of reprimand placed in my personnel folder by the principal at the elementary school in Maryland where I was teaching 3rd grade at the time. Odd as the accusation was, it was made even odder by the fact that my students were reading when the principal caught them not watching television. She had walked in, and there they were, sitting as silently as a group of 3rd graders can, every one of them absorbed in a book.

What they were supposed to be doing was watching our school's morning news show, an exercise in terminal boredom during which students from the upper grades mumbled incoherently into a microphone, reading the weather forecast, the lunch menu, and the daily announcements in a fast monotone. Every day, this list would be supplemented by an "educational lesson," which often consisted of a vocabulary word and its definition. I imagine the expectation was that after hearing the word spoken once, all of the children would retain it in their memories forever.

Because this was an inner-city school with abysmal test scores and a learning day far too short to cover the material necessary to help these students, I hoarded every educational second. For much of the year, my television had been mysteriously out of order, which neatly solved the problem of wasting 20 minutes watching the news. Then, sadly, it was fixed, and I no longer had an excuse for skipping the program. So I did the next best thing: I devoted the time to silent reading and trained the kids to ignore the screen (no small feat with TV-addicted children). This worked beautifully�until we were busted.

Related: New Microsoft System Has no "Off" State
posted by Kevin at 4:00 PM

National Geographic: The End of Cheap Oil :.

Humanity's way of life is on a collision course with geology---with the stark fact that the Earth holds a finite supply of oil. The flood of crude from fields around the world will ultimately top out, then dwindle. It could be 5 years from now or 30: No one knows for sure, and geologists and economists are embroiled in debate about just when the "oil peak" will be upon us. But few doubt that it is coming. "In our lifetime," says economist Robert K. Kaufmann of Boston University, who is 46, "we will have to deal with a peak in the supply of cheap oil."
posted by Kevin at 2:07 PM

Shooting Rampage, Hostage Crisis in Saudi Arabia Leaves 22 Dead :.

Helicopter-borne Saudi commandos drove al-Qaeda militants from an expatriate housing complex in the kingdom's oil hub Sunday, ending a shooting and hostage-taking spree that left 22 dead � most of them foreigners.
posted by Kevin at 2:01 PM

Israeli Movers In Sub Base Security Scare Freed :.

Get out of jail free card, if you're an Israeli spy:

The two Israeli men in a moving van who tried to get past security officials at Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base without proper identification last Friday will soon be released, the MadCowMorningNews has learned, if they haven't been already.

The arrest of the two Israelis, Tamir David Sasson, 24, and Daniel Henry Levy, 23, prompted a security scare that shut down the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in Georgia, home port for 10 of the nation's 18 submarines armed with nuclear missiles.

Moreover it marked the second time in two weeks that Israelis in moving vans have been apprehended under suspicious circumstances near U.S. nuclear facilities. The other reported incident also occurred near a U.S. Navy nuclear facility, this time in Mars Hill, NC., which the local Sheriff explained is "the nation's sole provider of fuel for the Navy's nuclear subs."

If authorities discerned a pattern, they weren't saying.

Flashback: Israel Targets... New Zealand? :.

Two of the spies have been caught red-handed, and arrested, while one has fled the country and police are still looking for a fourth Israeli who is believed to be still at large. While not admitting that the four are spies � but not denying it, either � New Zealand's Prime Minister, Helen Clark, is furious, and has vowed "a strong and public response once the court action has concluded."

What in heck is going on in New Zealand?

According to the New Zealand Herald, the police set a trap for the Mossad spooks when officials became suspicious about this particular passport application, and, noting an irregularity, contacted the alleged applicant � who turned out to be not only wheelchair-bound but also in residential care. He wasn't going anywhere.

Flashback: U.S. Jew Pleads Guilty to Handling Missile Money :.

A New York Jewish diamond dealer pleaded guilty on Tuesday to charges that he unwittingly handled a $30,000 payment for smugglers of a shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile who intended to shoot down U.S. airliners.

Yehuda Abraham, 76, could be fined up to $250,000 and sentenced to up to five years in prison for operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, according to the U.S. Attorney in Newark, New Jersey.

Abraham was arrested last August in an FBI sting operation that also netted a British arms dealer charged with trying to sell the missile to an FBI informant at a hotel near the Newark International Airport.

Abraham told a U.S. District Court judge in Newark, New Jersey, that he had received $30,000 from the informant who had agreed to buy the missile. He said he did not know and did not ask what the $30,000 payment was to be used for when he accepted it at his business office in New York in October 2002, and wired the payment to a bank in Hong Kong.
posted by Kevin at 1:53 PM

San Francisco Gallery Owner Beaten Over Abu Ghraib Display :.

All fascist states devolve into this. The U.S. is no different than any of the others:

After displaying a painting of U.S. soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners, a San Francisco gallery owner bears a painful reminder of the nation's unresolved anguish over the incidents at Abu Ghraib -- a black eye and bloodied brow delivered by an unknown assailant who apparently objected to the art work.
posted by Kevin at 5:58 AM

Cryptogon Reader Contributes $10

Long time reader JM sent in $10. Thanks!
posted by Kevin at 11:35 AM

Wave Your Flags: Friendly Fire Killed "American Hero" Pat Tillman :.

Former pro football player Pat Tillman was killed by friendly fire as he led Army Rangers up a hill during a firefight in Afghanistan last month, newspapers in California and Arizona reported today.

The U.S. Army Special Operations Command was to release information later today on the death of Tillman, who walked away from a $3.6 million NFL contract to join the Army after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
posted by Kevin at 11:31 AM

Flashback: Pentagon Tells Bush: Climate Change Will Destroy Us :.

Since many of you might see The Day After Tomorrow, I thought I'd re-link to a report that we should actually take seriously. I saw the movie. Blah. For a real thrill, read the report the Pentagon sent to the President.
posted by Kevin at 9:58 PM

NEC America: Guilty of Collusion and Wire Fraud, Will Pay $20.6 Million Criminal Fine :.

Many (if not most) corporations are nothing more than criminal enterprises with a thin patina of legitimacy that helps to maintain appearances:

NEC-Business Network Solutions Inc., a subsidiary of NEC America Inc., has agreed to plead guilty and to pay a total $20.6 million criminal fine, civil settlement and restitution today relating to charges of collusion and wire fraud in the Federal Communication Commission's E-Rate program, the United States Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Califomia and the Department of Justice's Antitrust and Civil Divisions announced.

The E-Rate program, created by Congress in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, provides funding for needy schools and libraries to connect to and utilize the Internet. Under the E-Rate program, which is funded by monies collected from telephone users, schools apply for monies for cabling, Internet backbone equipment (i.e. servers, PBX, and switches), and monthly connectivity service fees.

In court papers filed under seal on May 24, 2003, and unsealed today in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, NEC-Business Network Solutions Inc. (NECBNS), based in Irving, Texas, was charged with allocating contracts and rigging bids for E-Rate projects at five different school districts in Michigan, Wisconsin, Arkansas, and South Carolina, in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. NEC/BNS is also charged with wire fraud by entering into a scheme to defraud the E-Rate program and the San Francisco Unified School District by inflating bids, agreeing to submit false and fraudulent documents to hide the fact that it planned on installing ineligible items, agreeing to donate "free" items that it planned to bill E-Rate for, and submitting false and fraudulent documents to defeat inquiry into the legitimacy of the funding request.

Related: The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power by Joel Bakan
posted by Kevin at 3:36 AM

Pending Draft Legislation Targeted for Spring 2005 :.

There is pending legislation in the House and Senate (twin bills: S 89 and HR 163) which will time the program's initiation so the draft can begin at early as Spring 2005 -- just after the 2004 presidential election. The administration is quietly trying to get these bills passed now, while the public's attention is on the elections, so our action on this is needed immediately.
posted by Kevin at 12:54 AM

Terrorists on Ashcroft's 'Wanted List' Already in Jail :.

This will help when arrests/bodies of suspects need to be produced after something happens:

At least two of the terrorists identified by John Ashcroft as part of an 'Al-Qaeda cell' that is waiting to attack America this summer are already in jail.

A respected website that holds databases on terror suspects lists Amer El-Maati as 'incarcerated'.

Likewise, Aafia Siddiqui, a female former MIT student, was arrested in Pakistan over a year ago, according to NBC.

The 'cell' that these individuals are said to belong to doesn't even exist. The Abu Hafs al Masri group was described by the Boston Globe as a 'phantom organization'. Their researchers could find no evidence that the group was real.
posted by Kevin at 6:58 PM

Musings with TR from Yesterday :.

Yesterday, TR and I were talking about how .gov and .mil will eventually classify people living outside of cities in a self sufficient manner as terrorists:

"They'll say that people who are growing and raising their own food are supporting al Qaeda."

* Laughter *

"Sure, why not..." said TR.

"And most people will think, 'Yep, that sounds about right.'"

* Laughter *

Now, I have to admit, this was partially hyperbole... Just a couple of guys making fun of how absurd things are getting.

Today, though, we're hearing that "the terrorists" wanted to set up a training camp in rural Oregon!

Abu Hamza al-Masri, a radical Muslim cleric linked to Zacarias Moussaoui and shoe bomber Richard Reid, was arrested Thursday in London and accused in a U.S. indictment of trying to establish a terrorist training camp in Oregon, U.S. officials said.

The subtle message in all of this BS is: "There are terrorists in the hills." Oregon has a large number of freedom minded people who will refuse to go along with the impending lockdown. It makes sense that the seeds of a PSYOP to manage perceptions about "terrorists in the hills" are being sown now.
posted by Kevin at 6:10 PM

SHOOT TO KILL ORDERED AT G8, DNC, and RNC :.

Fascism in full bloom this Summer:

Pacifica News and the AP have both stated in the last two days that there is potential for the use of Lethal Force at the G8, DNC, and RNC this summer.

Related: Endangered Species- Safe, People in Pink Tutus Waving Signs- Marked for Death :.

HAHAHA! You couldn't even make this stuff up if you tried. This is an AP story!

Military and security forces will be authorized to shoot to kill while policing Sea Island and its surrounding waters during next month's G8 summit. But they'll be careful not to step on turtle eggs or mow down a manatee while they're doing it.

Georgia natural resources officials have trained forces from the military, Secret Service and other agencies on how to keep an eye out for the coastal region's natural inhabitants -- including several endangered species.

The coastal division director with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Susan Shipman, said, "We've tried to make them aware, to show them the sensitive areas. There's really been a sense from the G8 people of wanting to make everything as environmentally friendly as possible."

Since violent protests broke out at the 2001 summit in Genoa, Italy, G8 organizers have looked for meeting sites in remote areas that are easier to secure from protesters than previous urban sites.
posted by Kevin at 5:57 PM

Dublin Supports Home Composting :.

The Irish people are still smart. They haven't been lobotomized by the Myth of the Machine... yet.

Ireland is a weird place. It's got one foot in everything that's ultra modern and the other foot in a way of life that hasn't changed that much in several hundred years. If the Irish refuse to forget the role the land has played in their history, other countries might just be looking to the tiny, green island for ideas on how to solve their own mounting and seemingly intractable problems.

Consider this: Of all the places John Seymour could have picked to build his school of self sufficiency and live out his days, he picked Ireland. Look into Seymour's background. He's a fascinating guy who has mastered the skills that average humanity is going to have to re-learn. I also like his solution to the GM crop issue... Burn them to the ground.

I'm also guessing that innovative energy solutions will emerge, first, on island, energy poor states such as Ireland and Japan. They have everything to gain (and nothing to loose) by having the courage to utilize new and old solutions to the energy problems the world is facing.

A note on this composting guide: It's a great introduction to composting. You can follow what this little guide says and get great compost. If, however, you want to become a compost freak, amaze, amuse and possibly frighten friends and relatives, check out something like, The Rodale Book of Composting by Grace Gershuny and or, Let it Rot by Stu Campbell.

Warning: If you have never made compost before, be prepared to have a religious experience. I'm not kidding. Try it!

Related: Mantis No-Wait Compost Thermometer

Research Credit: DG
posted by Kevin at 4:28 PM

Military Families Mourn Daughters :.

They will be coming for your sons AND your daughters when the draft starts in 2005:

When Sgt. Isela Rubalcava's body arrived at the airport from Iraq, her mother wailed like a child. "I don't want to see her like this," Maria Isela Rubalcava cried out in Spanish, a priest at the scene said. "Why, Isela, why? Get up, get up! Let's go home."

By the time a funeral Mass was celebrated last week at St. Patrick's Church in nearby Canutillo, the Rev. Manny Marrufo said, Maria Rubalcava had accepted the reality that her daughter was gone, dead of shrapnel wounds she suffered when a mortar round exploded during an attack in Mosul on May 8. It was three days before her 26th birthday.

Rubalcava was one of 20 female U.S. service members to die so far in Operation Iraqi Freedom -- the highest number of U.S. military women to die in a combat operation since World War II, military historians said.

In addition, 162 women have been wounded in Iraq, 99 of them too badly to return to duty, according to the Defense Department.

Related: Military Uses Pink T-Shirts to Recruit Girls
posted by Kevin at 4:22 PM

New Home Sales Dive 11.8 Percent :.

I hope you're not going to try to squeeze through the exists with the rest of the sheep, after I've been warning you about this for a year. The frightening thing is, we haven't seen anything yet. Wait until the panic ensues as those adjustable rates start ticking up:

Sales of new U.S. homes sagged well below expectations in April to post their biggest monthly drop in more than ten years as rising mortgage interest rates cooled the busy housing market, a government report showed on Wednesday.

Sales of new homes tumbled 11.8 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.093 million units from an upwardly revised record high of 1.239 million in March, the Commerce Department (news - web sites) said.

Analysts polled by Reuters were expecting sales to ease to a 1.200 million unit pace.

April's rate was the lowest level of new home sales since November in what is normally the peak season for real estate sales. The decline -- the largest monthly drop since January 1994 -- could signal the end of a housing boom fueled by the lowest mortgage interest rates since the early 1960s.
posted by Kevin at 4:10 PM

Total Information Awareness Operational :.

Place this one in the No Shit Sherlock file folder:

Nine months after Congress shut down a controversial Pentagon computer-surveillance program, the U.S. government continues to comb private records to sniff out suspicious activity, according to a congressional report obtained by Reuters.

Privacy concerns prompted Congress to kill the Pentagon's $54 million Total Information Awareness (TIA) program last September, but government computers are still scanning a vast array of databases for clues about criminal or terrorist activity, the General Accounting Office (GAO) has found.

Overall, 36 of the government's 199 data-mining efforts collect personal information from the private sector, a move experts say could violate civil liberties if left unchecked.

Several appear to be patterned after the TIA program, which critics said could have led to an Orwellian surveillance state in which citizens have little privacy.

"I believe that Total Information Awareness is continuing under other names, and the [Defense Department] projects listed here might fit that bill," said Peter Swire, an Ohio State University law professor who served as the Clinton administration's top privacy official.

Defense Department officials didn't respond to a request for comment.

Research Credit: BW
posted by Kevin at 3:52 PM

Van to Photograph Buildings, Link Images to GPS Data :.

An odd-looking van sprouts 13 digital cameras that its builder wants to use to photograph 50 million buildings in the country while driving, taking pictures every 15 feet.

The van's drive-by snaps would be matched against GPS satellite positioning data and aerial photographs in a database. Police, insurance agents and others then could call up overhead and street-level views simply by entering an address.

The setup from Imageos Inc. was one of the security-related exhibits on display at this year's CeBIT America technology trade show, which opened here Tuesday. Other companies were showing software tools to secure wireless networks, monitor employee surfing and protect users from viruses and spyware.

The main market for Imageos' photographs would be insurance appraisals, but the Boulder, Colo., startup is also touting the pictures for "homeland security" applications, law enforcement and emergency services.
posted by Kevin at 11:30 PM

Cryptogon Reader Contributes $11.11

Thanks, Ben! I'm firing up a sunflower grove near my garden.

One packet of Heirloom Russian Mammoth Sunflower seeds from Mother's Market and Kitchen: $2.49

Three bags of Steer Manure Blend from Home Depot: $2.64

Several wheelbarrows full of dead leaves: Free

Seeing 12 foot tall plants with 10-14 inch flowers outside my garden in a few months: Priceless

Note: TR mentioned possible dangers with the Home Depot steer manure. He's right. I just assumed people would realize not to use this on food crops. But I shouldn't assume everyone will realize this. Don't use that stuff on food crops! I just bought it because it was 88 cents per bag and I'll just be using in on flowers.
posted by Kevin at 10:57 PM

U.S. Army Releases VX Nerve Agent into Wildlife Sanctuary :.

The U.S. Army and a contractor were fined nearly $52,000 for releasing a deadly chemical weapon on a wildlife sanctuary in the Pacific Ocean, federal environmental officials announced Wednesday.

An unknown quantity of VX nerve agent was released in August 2002 at a chemical weapons disposal facility on Johnston Atoll when a tray holding remnants of a VX shell was improperly loaded into an incinerator, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's office in San Francisco.
posted by Kevin at 10:44 PM

"Super Size Me" Gets Downsized by MTV :.

Let them eat Freedom Fries:

Film documentary "Super Size Me," a critical look at the health impact of a fast-food only diet, has been downsized at cable network MTV which has refused to air advertisements for the film, its distributors said on Wednesday.

Roadside Attractions and Samuel Goldwyn Films said in a statement the cable TV channel targeted to young audiences has told them the ads are "disparaging to fast food restaurants."
posted by Kevin at 10:40 PM

Israeli "Movers" Who Prompt Kings Bay Lockdown To Be Deported :.

Two Israeli men working for a moving-and-storage company who attempted Kings Bay Submarine Base Friday are being held for deportation.

The two entered the Franklin gate about 10:30 a.m. Friday to pick up some items in base housing, base spokesman Ed Buczek said.

Neither was able to present valid work permits to security personnel, and one had an expired passport. Base personnel and bomb-sniffing dogs inspected the van, prompting a lockdown of the base.

St. Marys police closed access to an area one-half mile surrounding the base and called in a bomb squad, Buczek said.

"The military dogs were alerted to a scent in the cab of the truck," Buczek said. "Guards closed access to the base and notified the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service."

Nothing was found in the van, but both men, Tamir D. Sason, 24 and Daniel Levy, 23, both of Metar, Israel, were turned over to federal immigration officers as undocumented aliens. They are being held for deportation.

Kings Bay is near Sea Island, which will host the G8 Summit next month.

Research Credit: AV
posted by Kevin at 7:35 PM

Handcuffed, 9 Year Old Girl Shot with Taser Gun :.

Mad pig disease:

A veteran South Tucson police sergeant is under investigation for firing his stun gun to subdue a handcuffed 9-year-old girl.

At the request of Chief Sixto Molina, the Pima County Sheriff's Department is trying to determine if the sergeant committed a crime when he sent a jolt through the child's body.

The police officer used a Taser on the girl at about 5:30 p.m. May 8, Molina said. The nonlethal weapon uses a pulsating electrical charge to immobilize a person for several seconds.

"I'll be the first to admit, you've got a veteran sergeant Tasing a 9-year-old girl, it doesn't look good," said Molina.
posted by Kevin at 7:17 PM

California May Require Thumb Print for Ammo Purchases :.

A bill passed by the California Senate that would require ammunition buyers to provide a thumb print at the time of purchase amounts to "an insidious invasion of privacy," the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) said today.

"California lawmakers are trying to reinvent a broken wheel," said CCRKBA Executive Director Joe Waldron. "Recording ammunition sales has proven to be ineffective in solving crime, and requiring a thumb print moves this idea into the realm of the ludicrous. It's a waste of time and taxpayers' money, but more importantly, this constitutes a serious privacy issue. If this measure dealt with something other than a gun control issue, the ACLU would be screaming about it.

"If this becomes law," he added, "it is just another example of California lawmakers treating honest gun owners like criminals. What comes next? Will citizens be required to submit a fingperprint to buy a car? Will the next dumb idea force gun owners to submit their medical records before they can legally buy firearms and ammunition?"

Research Credit: BW
posted by Kevin at 7:02 PM

Liberation: U.S. Asks Private Sector to Ease Bullet Shortage :.

Even in the age of unmanned aerial vehicles, satellite-guided bombs and night-vision goggles, the US army cannot fight a war without its most basic necessity: bullets.

And with more troops in Iraq, more intense combat than expected and the need for almost every soldier from frontline infantryman to rearguard logistician to be prepared for an ambush, the army suddenly finds itself in a bullet crunch.

According to a requisition last week by the Army Field Support Command, the service will need 300m to 500m more bullets a year for at least five years, or more than 1.5m a year for combat and training. And because the single army-owned, small-calibre ammunition factory in Lake City, Missouri, can produce only 1.2m bullets annually, the army is suddenly scrambling to get private defence contractors to help fill the gap.

The bullet problem has its roots in a Pentagon effort to restock its depleted war materiel reserve. But it has been exacerbated by the ongoing operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, where rearguard and supply units have been thinly-stretched throughout the countryside, occasionally without active duty combat soldiers to protect them.

The army's formal solicitation acknowledges that its current m anufacturing abilities have been all but exhausted. "Increasing military contingencies have created a situation where the capability to produce small calibre ammunition through conventional methods has been fully exercised," it said.

Specifically, the army is looking for 300m more bullets annually, potentially rising to 500m a year.
posted by Kevin at 6:57 PM

NASA Integrating Robot Craft into Nation's Airspace :.

NASA said Thursday it is launching a program that could have robot planes and conventional piloted aircraft routinely and safely sharing civil airspace by 2008.

Unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, are now limited primarily to restricted test or military airspace.
posted by Kevin at 6:51 PM

Drug Causing GIs Permanent Brain Damage :.

Six U.S. soldiers have been diagnosed by the military with permanent brain damage from an anti-malaria drug used in Iraq and Afghanistan, and health officials must reassess its safety, a U.S. senator said.
posted by Kevin at 3:51 PM

The Jesus Landing Pad :.

It's easy to write off lunatic Christians, Jews, whatever, as raving freaks, cranks and nuts. You think, "These people are insane," and then you go about your day.

All of this nonsense about alleged Christians in the Bush administration could, however, be a cover story to get all of the average idiot Christians to believe Bush is actually a Christian.

There's one problem: Bush is obviously not a Christian.

I don't like using mumbo jumbo from the Bible, but I do this only to get the average Christians to see the error in their emotional attachment to the concept of Bush-the-Christian. READ YOUR OWN BOOK, THAT YOU CLAIM TO VALUE SO MUCH, YOU FILTHY HYPOCRITES!

Matthew 7:15-17

15 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.

Wake up all ye imbeciles!

It was an e-mail we weren't meant to see. Not for our eyes were the notes that showed White House staffers taking two-hour meetings with Christian fundamentalists, where they passed off bogus social science on gay marriage as if it were holy writ and issued fiery warnings that "the Presidents [sic] Administration and current Government is engaged in cultural, economical, and social struggle on every level"-this to a group whose representative in Israel believed herself to have been attacked by witchcraft unleashed by proximity to a volume of Harry Potter. Most of all, apparently, we're not supposed to know the National Security Council's top Middle East aide consults with apocalyptic Christians eager to ensure American policy on Israel conforms with their sectarian doomsday scenarios.

But now we know.

Related: Hallelujah In Fallujah

Research Credit: TR
posted by Kevin at 4:39 AM

Sources: Major Terror Attack Possible this Summer :.

* Yawn * Yeah, the "sources" should know, since they're the ones who are going to do this thing. It's about time. Let's get it over with. When I started Cryptogon two years ago, I presented a warning in the ABOUT section:

I think it would be wise to bear in mind that the events of 9/11 will probably pale in comparison to the diabolical plots that may be hatched in the near future. I say that because, even as bad as 9/11 was, it wasn't enough to polarize the world. Something else is going to happen that will require a bold move by the G8 states. I don't know what that event will be, but it will be transformational in nature, changing the way we think about freedom of speech and movement, money, surveillance, state sovereignty and many other factors.

The only thing that has surprised me is that "it" hasn't happened yet.... But sometime before the next meaningless presidential election will make for a pretty good show.

I think there are two possible scenarios of how the aftermath will unfold. The first isn't likely, but would make sense. The second, I think, is very possible:

1) There is no election. Bush cancels it. Martial law is declared. Kerry acknowledges that "extreme" circumstances warrant that the country needs to stand behind Bush. Kerry, an obvious stooge, may have been hand picked for this very reason.

2) There is an election and Kerry "wins." I think this is a much more likely scenario because the task of implementing the run of the mill lockdown activities of the unfurled police state will fall on a "Loving Liberal's" watch. Kerry will have a more legitimate appearance, as fascism ramps up, than the retarded Bush. In reality, they are two criminal operators in the same gang. Kerry will simply be continuing the "War on Terror" that started under Bush. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller will hold a news conference Wednesday amid intelligence that has increased concern over the possibility of a major terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

The intelligence has indicated that a major terror attack could take place as early as this summer, several U.S. officials said Tuesday.

Such an attack might take place before the November presidential election in an attempt to affect the outcome, the officials said.

Related: FAKE TERROR - THE ROAD TO WAR AND DICTATORSHIP
posted by Kevin at 3:29 AM

U.S. Develops Lethal New Viruses :.

We are at the knife's edge of oblivion. This activity is so insane, it's difficult to even form a coherent response! Have you ever tried to reason with an insane person? That's what these scientists sound like:

A scientist funded by the US government has deliberately created an extremely deadly form of mousepox, a relative of the smallpox virus, through genetic engineering.

The new virus kills all mice even if they have been given antiviral drugs as well as a vaccine that would normally protect them.

The work has not stopped there. The cowpox virus, which infects a range of animals including humans, has been genetically altered in a similar way.

The new virus, which is about to be tested on animals, should be lethal only to mice, Mark Buller of the University of St Louis told New Scientist. He says his work is necessary to explore what bioterrorists might do.
posted by Kevin at 3:10 AM

Nanotech Pipe Dream: Supersoldiers :.

Thanks to their sleek, form-fitting battle suits, ordinary soldiers may someday turn into supermen.

Bullets won't stop them; neither will chemical attacks. Their nanotech-made muscles might let them jump higher and kick more butt than their opponents. And if they do somehow get hurt, the suit could immediately start to heal them and report their injuries back to headquarters.

At least, that's what a collection of industrial, academic and military bigwigs promise, as they gather here this week for the official launch of MIT's Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies.

The reality is, many bugs have to be worked out before the U.S. puts super soldiers on the field. A good start for ISN would be simply keeping their electronics-laden outerwear dry in the rain.

No, actually, the reality is that humanity will be extinguished long before this technology matures to the point where it's usable in any combat capacity.

Related: Why the Future Doesn't Need Us
posted by Kevin at 2:52 AM

Green Cars Strive to End Oil Era :.

Biodiesel won, of course, but I like the idea of unfurling a photovoltaic and wind powerplant each time you park the car. This is similar to my idea for the Aquafuel Toyota Hybrid:

Designers of alternative-fuel vehicles are trying to convince consumers that fossil-fuel cars should go the way of the dinosaur. The 2004 Tour de Sol touted cars powered by cooking oil, corn, the sun and the wind as alternatives to paying record prices for gasoline.

More than 30 vehicles were on display at the Tour de Sol, a combination road rally and green car festival that promotes nonpolluting renewable-energy technologies. Vehicles created by high-school students, college students and auto manufacturers competed in tests that evaluated their fuel-efficiency, handling, braking and emissions.

Students at Trenton Central High School won the Tour de Sol award for Best in Technology in the Hybrid and Alternative category by demonstrating that the school cafeteria is a good source of energy for students and cars alike. The students used cooking oil to power the Vegginator, a converted 1985 VW Golf.

The students used a solar-powered blender to mix the cooking oil with lye, methanol and alcohol to create biodiesel, according to sophomore Danny DeLeon. He said the glycerin byproduct filtered from the biodiesel was turned into soap that was used in the student garage.

DeLeon said the team spent less than $1,000 to buy and fix the car and replace the rubber hoses so that it could run on biodiesel. Because the students had just finished a robotics project, they only had three weeks to ready the car, which gets 43 miles per gallon of biodiesel. "It was a lot of hours after school and a lot of trips to Wendy's to keep us going."
posted by Kevin at 2:43 AM

Your Rights as a Photographer :.

A decent, single page guide, in case you're wondering. Of course, it doesn't matter when cops wield arbitrary arrest power, but that's a different story.
posted by Kevin at 2:19 AM

Recloning :.

A clone of a cloned prized bull thrives today on a Japanese farm, living proof that "serial cloning" can successfully create life beyond mice.

The second generation cloning that created the black bull named Kamitakafuku took place in 2000, but wasn't announced until Sunday because researchers wanted to ensure the bull matured and was healthy. The only other mammal known to have been cloned from a clone are mice.

"We have proven that recloning can be done in higher species," said University of Connecticut researcher Xiangzhong "Jerry" Yang, one of three authors of the study. The results appeared online Sunday in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
posted by Kevin at 2:50 AM

Las Vegas Officials Worried About City's Foul Stench :.

Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment. But you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague.

-Agent Smith, The Matrix

Viva Las Vegas! Or, Urban Hell. Take your pick:

City officials, fearful that the smells emanating from downtown alleys is hampering the area's economic resurgence, have launched an assault on stench.

"People are walking downtown and holding their noses," said David Semenza, Las Vegas' neighborhood response manager. "What good is redevelopment when you have this stench?"

The stinky problems involve everything from rotting food to people relieving themselves wherever they please.

Since April, crews from the city's Rapid Response Team have spent thousands of dollars a week clearing out debris from alleys and spraying them with an odor-eating, enzyme-producing bacteria.

The enzyme, which the maker claims is nontoxic and biodegradable, has an odor akin to laundry detergent, some say. Others, like Deputy City Manager Betsy Fretwell, whose nose the city relied on in choosing among several deodorizers in tests, describe it as antiseptic.

The deodorizing of downtown is scheduled to end July 1.

"It's very expensive but it's part of what a city has to do," Mayor Oscar Goodman said. "You don't want noxious odors to affect the experience of people who come downtown."
posted by Kevin at 4:28 PM

U.S. Nearing Deal on Way to Track Foreign Visitors :.

It's not The End, but doesn't it feel like we're getting really damn close? Sure, let's leave the real borders wide open, so all the real terrorists, CIA narcotics traffickers and illegal aliens can stroll in and out as they please. Meanwhile, legitimate foreign travelers (and eventually U.S. citizens) will be tracked like pigs in a slaughterhouse using a "virtual border." Oh sure, this will only be used to track foreigners. HAHAHAHA!

The Department of Homeland Security is on the verge of awarding the biggest contract in its young history for an elaborate system that could cost as much as $15 billion and employ a network of databases to track visitors to the United States long before they arrive.

The program, known as US-Visit and rooted partly in a Pentagon concept developed after the terrorist attacks of 2001, seeks to supplant the nation's physical borders with what officials call virtual borders. Such borders employ networks of computer databases and biometric sensors for identification at sites abroad where people seek visas to the United States.

With a virtual border in place, the actual border guard will become the last point of defense, rather than the first, because each visitor will have already been screened using a global web of databases.

Visitors arriving at checkpoints, including those at the Mexican and Canadian borders, will face "real-time identification" � instantaneous authentication to confirm that they are who they say they are. American officials will, at least in theory, be able to track them inside the United States and determine if they leave the country on time.

Officials say they will work to ensure that the privacy of foreigners is protected and that the system will not be used to profile travelers, but civil libertarians say they are nonetheless alarmed that databases could be used to monitor both foreign visitors and American citizens, and they have already challenged it in court.
posted by Kevin at 7:04 AM

Cryptogon Sister Site: Tech-Watch.Org :.

Those of you who have been reading Cryptogon since the beginning have been seeing input from the mysterious TR. I don't want to say too much about him, because I don't know how much he wants you to know....

I will tell you one thing, however: This guy knows what he's talking about. He's been inside the belly of the beast. So, if you don't get enough terminator robot, genetic engineering and nanotech nightmare stories on Cryptogon, just wait until you see Tech-Watch.org.

I'm glad he's taking on the task of dedicating an entire site to exposing the tools of the coming dystopia. To say that he's qualified to do this would be a serious understatement.

I've been able to see the site for the past few days and I've been dying to tell you guys about it.

Earlier today, TR gave the go-ahead to unfurl it, so check it out!
posted by Kevin at 6:59 AM

James Lovelock Goes Off the Rails: More Nuke Power! :.

Senile? Fraud? Frightened? Interesting conclusions, days after Eugene Mallove was found murdered:

Global warming is now advancing so swiftly that only a massive expansion of nuclear power as the world's main energy source can prevent it overwhelming civilisation, the scientist and celebrated Green guru, James Lovelock, says.

Related: Dr. Eugene Mallove on George Noory Radio Show

Related: Alternative Energy Magazine Editor, Cold Fusion Author Murdered
posted by Kevin at 6:46 AM

Berg Beheading: No Way, Say Medical Experts :.

American businessman Nicholas Berg's body was found on May 8 near a Baghdad overpass; a video of his supposed decapitation death by knife appeared on an alleged al-Qaeda-linked website (www.al-ansar.biz) on May 11. But according to what both a leading surgical authority and a noted forensic death expert separately told Asia Times Online, the video depicting the decapitation appears to have been staged.

"I certainly would need to be convinced it [the decapitation video] was authentic," Dr John Simpson, executive director for surgical affairs at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, said from New Zealand. Echoing Dr Simpson's criticism, when this journalist asked forensic death expert Jon Nordby, PhD and fellow of the American Board of Medicolegal Death Investigators, whether he believed the Berg decapitation video had been "staged", Nordby replied: "Yes, I think that's the best explanation of it."

Research Credit: AL, KH
posted by Kevin at 6:12 AM

Cryptogon Readers Contribute $25, $20 and $40

$25 EM
$20 MW
$40 JK and a nice stack of Deception Dollars

I am stunned by the level of support you guys are providing! Thank you! Thank you!
posted by Kevin at 5:26 AM

New Israeli Nuclear Incident :.

High weirdness, people. High weirdness. This stinks as bad as anything I've ever posted on this site!

For the second time in the past two weeks Israelis in a moving van have been detained near a U.S. nuclear facility, this time at the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base near St. Marys, GA., near Sea Island, host of the G-8 Summit next month.

"Security scare shuts Kings Bay" reported the Jacksonville Times-Union on Saturday. "Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base was locked down for security reasons Friday after two Israelis were detained for questioning."

Two Israeli men attempted to enter the base about 10:30 a.m., on the pretext that that had been hired by a moving-and-storage company to pick up household goods at an address on the base, the paper reported.

One occupant of the vehicle was unable to provide base security personnel with proper credentials, a base spokesman told reporters.

"Base personnel then inspected the van."

What the MP's found has no doubt since become highly classified. But before that could happen, a base spokesman had blurted this much of it out...

"A briefcase was removed from the vehicle with a remote control robot, but nothing was found in it."

"Nothing was found in the van, but both men, whose names were not released, were later taken into custody," the AP reported.


Another 'NASCAR Israeli' incident

But wait. There's more...

A bomb squad was called in after the van tested positive for a bomb. Local police were notified and shut down all roads leading to the base.

The Times-Union said, "Military dogs trained to detect bombs were called in. The military dogs were alerted to a scent in the cab of the truck. Guards closed access to the base and notified the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service."

The parallels between today's account and last week's incident (see story below: Israeli Movers Freed, Back in Miami,") are almost too numerous to mention...

"The dogs were called in again for a second pass of the vehicle, and they didn't pick up anything," said a base spokesman.

The two Israelis, whose names were not released, were taken into custody by federal immigration officers in Savannah for possible deportation.

Research Credit: Me. I read this before the 5 of you submitted it to me. Thanks, though, for making sure I didn't miss it. FYI: I see everything Dan Hopsicker puts out.
posted by Kevin at 5:08 AM

Chechens in Iraq? :.

I find this interesting, since the Chechens are still trying to throw the Russians out of Chechnya. Interesting, nonetheless.

Yes, the terrorists are the common enemy of both Russia and the U.S. Put on your best George Bush Senior imitation and say it with me, NEW WORLD ORDER:

According to Russian Intelligence Service Abroad, the units of Chechen terrorists penetrate in Iraq since June 2003 through Syria. Today there are 2-3 thousand Chechen fighters in Iraq. Their command is in the so-called Staff of Iraqi Resistance located in Syria. The Staff controls the main anti-American groups in Iraq: the unit led by Abu al-Valid, the successor of killed "Black Arab" Khattab who was fighting in Chechnya, Army of Mohammed and Wahabees (radical Muslems). Iraqi guerillas from the former Iraqi Army officers look like kids in comparison with these groups being notorious for their atrocities. If Iraqis chose whom to attack, for the newly arrived fighters nationalities do not matter. There is no difference whom to cut throat: to Russian or to American. Both are enemies.

Research Credit: NF
posted by Kevin at 4:59 AM

Ibuprofen and Colon Cancer :.

This is very interesting. Keep this in the back of your head. You probably won't hear much about it ever again:

A cheap headache pill may not only help prevent colon cancer, but may turn out to be an effective therapy, U.S.-based researchers said on Wednesday.

Mice with cancer that were given small daily doses of ibuprofen had smaller tumors and were less likely to die of colon cancer, they told a meeting.

Several studies have shown that people who take aspirin, ibuprofen and related drugs called non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDS, have a lower risk of colon cancer. [Look into the anti inflammatory effects of Vitamins B (the entire complex and, especially, folic acid) C and E.]

But Wolfe said no one had tested NSAIDS as a potential cancer therapy.

Ibuprofen seemed to affect tumor cells in lab dishes, so he tried using laboratory mice that had been infected with colon cancer cells. These mice always develop tumors and die if not treated.

They treated the mice for 21 days with either ibuprofen alone, or with ibuprofen added to the standard colon cancer drugs irinotecan, sold by Pfizer under the brand name Camptosar, or 5-fluororacil.

By day 50, all the untreated mice had died. But 20 percent of the mice treated with ibuprofen alone died, compared to 20 percent given Camptosar and just 10 percent given ibuprofen plus Camptosar. But 70 percent of the mice that got 5-fluororacil alone or with ibuprofen died.

Ibuprofen and 5-fluororacil seem to interfere with one another, Wolfe said. The findings were presented on Wednesday to a meeting in New Orleans of cancer and digestive experts called Digestive Disease Week.

"I'd love to see a study done for the actual treatment of cancers," Wolfe said. But because ibuprofen is cheap, he feared it was "not sexy enough" for any big drug company to sponsor.

This researcher admits what people in the alternative health movement have been saying for decades: Cancer research is a scam. Read it again:

Because ibuprofen is cheap, he feared it was "not sexy enough" for any big drug company to sponsor.

I'm not quite sure if it's premeditated genocide, greed or both, but it's a scam. And your friends and lovedones are dying because of it. FYI: My mom died of colon cancer.

Related: Large Study Backs Use of Ibuprofen Against Alzheimer's :.

Long-term use of ibuprofen, naproxen or other medicines of a type commonly taken for arthritis or pain appears to greatly reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, according to new findings.

In a seven-year study that monitored the mental capacities of almost 7,000 people, Dutch researchers reported that the likelihood of developing the disabling brain disease was 80 percent lower in people who had taken such a medicine daily for two years or longer than in those who had never taken the drugs.

Research Credit: RB
posted by Kevin at 4:42 AM

Bush Buddies Get $155 Million Worth of Federal Land for $875 :.

Sure, why not?

In April, Bush quietly gave a mining conglomerate larded with his top contributors a little gift: $155 million worth of federal land, the Denver Post reports. Invoking an obscure 1872 law designed to help frontier prospectors gain title to their small mining claims, Bush turned over a swathe of prime Colorado mountaintop property to the firm of Dodge Phelps, whose board is packed with oil men, military contractors and official Bush "Pioneers": corporate fat cats who've strongarmed at least $100,000 from their friends -- and employees -- for Bush campaign coffers.

Because the never-updated 1872 law requires that federal mining land be sold for $5 per acre, Bush's bagmen only had to pony up $875 for the whole spread -- in an area where land is worth a staggering $1 million per acre. The idea is to build an elite ski playground on the looted public property -- even though the law requires that such land sales be used for actual mining.

Research Credit: KB
posted by Kevin at 4:36 AM

Dr. Eugene Mallove on George Noory Radio Show :.

This is one of the best Coast to Coast shows ever. Free to download. I would suggest, in the strongest possible terms, that everyone listen cafefully to all three hours of this program.

Then read what Dr. Santilli has to say about his experience with corporate, government and academic spheres in the U.S. We are existing in a Neo-Dark Age.

In case you don't know, Dr. Mallove was recently murdered.
posted by Kevin at 4:25 AM

Immigration Invasion View from a Border Patrol Officer :.

Make sure you get your body cavity search at the airport as the physical borders of the U.S. are left wide open:

After 30 years in the Border Patrol as a special agent and highly decorated veteran, John W. Slagle wrote an expose� ripping the pants off Tom Ridge�s Homeland Security charade. Slagle exposes Congress� complete assistance of illegal immigration. Finally, he uncovers President Bush�s unending support for this massive invasion that will, in the end, prove more catastrophic to this nation than dozens of 9/11�s.

Research Credit: NF
posted by Kevin at 4:23 AM

Civilians Built Nuclear-Capable Weapon with Off the Shelf Components :.

Yawn. I used to (formally) study nuclear proliferation issues. After a little while, I found it boring, because there can't be any real non-proliferation regime. It's all laughable, as soon as you learn about what's involved.

I don't have the essay in front of me, but I remember reading a good one called, Five Minutes Past Midnight -- And Welcome to the Age of Proliferation by Tom Clancy & Russell Seitz. This piece appeared in National Interest, No.26, Winter 1991-92. Clancy and Seitz list three requirements to build a nuclear weapon (not a hydrogen bomb, mind you, but a little, old egg in the 5-15 kiloton range).

You need:

1) Intellectual know-how. There are plenty of PhDs in places with open sewers who have the know-how. This means that most states on the planet have people with the brains to do it.

2) Mechanical ability measured in terms of being able to build a diesel engine from scratch. Trivial, for most states and organizations with money. Obviously, this assumes that the built-to-order CNC lathe work had to be accomplished by the bomb builder in-house, so to speak, and not purchased on the open market, which could easily be done.

3) Fissile material. Weapons grade fissile material is relatively rare, but it's not that rare. Any states with "peaceful" nuclear power programs could easily produce materials for nuclear bombs. Never mind the former USSR. HA! Fissile material!? Why mess with that dangerous stuff. Assume that finished weapons have been carted off... But forget about all of that for a minute for the sake of this discussion. (Can you see why I couldn't stay involved with International Relations? My face hurt from laughing so much at the absurdity of it all.)

The rest of it, conventional high explosives and the means of setting it all off at once (krytron switch, electronics, etc.) are all trivial matters.

So, if the entire thing is silly, why did I mention this story? There is, actually, one very interesting aspect to all of this. The article states:

A few months later, they returned to the soundproof Senate meeting room with a workable nuclear weapon, missing only the fissile material.

Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of nuclear weapons knows that this can only mean that the team entered the Senate meeting room with several pounds of high explosives. Now, in the post 9/11 world, how was that little detail worked out with Capitol security personnel?

Did Old Joe Biden ring up Bob, the security guard, and say, "I told a bunch of eggheads to build a nuclear weapon, and they did! Isn't that great? Yeah, well, you see, they want to bring it into the Capitol building to show it to me in my sound proof, Faraday cage meeting room."

"THEY WANT TO BRING A NUKE IN HERE?!" Bob shouts!

"No, Bob, calm down, there's no plutonium or uranium in the bomb, just several pounds of conventional, high explosives that would be used to compress the core into critical mass... if it was a real nuclear bomb," reassures Old Joe.

"Oh, that's ok then," says Bob.

Someone explain to me how that could have happened?

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. wondered aloud one day in 2002 whether someone could build an atomic weapon from parts available on the open market. His audience, the leaders of the government's nuclear laboratories, said it could be done.

Then do it, the Delaware Democrat, then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, instructed the scientists in a confidential session. A few months later, they returned to the soundproof Senate meeting room with a workable nuclear weapon, missing only the fissile material.

"It was bigger than a breadbox and smaller than a dump truck, but they were able to get it in," Biden said in a recent speech. The scientists "explained how -- literally off the shelf, without doing anything illegal -- they actually constructed this device."

The relative ease with which U.S. scientists built an explosive nuclear weapon illustrates the need to secure plutonium and highly enriched uranium scattered in armories and research sites around the world, a pair of Harvard University researchers argue in a new study that contends the Bush administration is not doing enough.
posted by Kevin at 3:10 AM

National Guard Are on Target with Pink T-shirt Idea :.

I remember, back in 10th grade biology, learning about the paramecium. This is a simple organism that uses an eye-spot to detect light. They feed on small organisms such as bacteria and even other smaller protozoans using a funnel-shaped gullet into which food is drawn by the action of cilia.

Things are pretty damn simple for these single celled critters.

I'm starting to wonder: Is the world any more complex for average humanity than it is for a paramecium? In general, we behave like single celled organisms, not really aware of what we're doing, or why. We act in a predictable, simple and unconscious manner:

Behind the pink T-shirt - and the pink sheepskin rug, pink picture frames and big, pink shaggy pillow that adorn her office - is a message Sgt. 1st Class Stacey Weston wants young women to hear: The National Guard wants you, too.

"Not many of them think about joining the military because they think they have to be a quote-unquote tomboy," explained Weston, the recruiter/career counselor at the Guard's Company B (MSE) 138th Signal Battalion in Greenfield.

That's not true at all, said Weston, a 12-year Guard member who last year transferred into the office previously filled by her husband.

"You can still have the nails, still have the hair. You can still have your feminine side and your military side, too."

But it's her medium and not her message that's causing a stir throughout the state and beyond: Weston came up with the idea to create a pink T-shirt with the words "Soldier Girl" printed across the front to promote the Guard. Printed on the back is the slogan "Legally Guard," a play off the movie "Legally Blonde."

"So far, the feed-off of these has been unbelievable. It's so far outside the box," said Sgt. 1st Class Rodney Dowling, marketing director for the Indiana Guard. "They are pretty awesome."

Related: "American Hero" Pat Tillman

Research Credit: NF
posted by Kevin at 2:44 AM

Hillary Clinton, Lindsey Graham Call for Larger U.S. Military :.

It's just one big RepubliCrat love fest. The loving liberals are going to take your kids, just like Evil Bush did, but the Berkeley Democrats won't care, because they're loving liberals too! The absurdity of this thing is almost beyond belief:

A unlikely pair of Senate allies called for a larger military Sunday and pledged a thorough investigation of abuse against Iraqi prisoners in Baghdad.

Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-New York, and Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, are both members of the Senate's Armed Services Committee.

"A number of us have been sounding this alarm. We have to face the fact we need a larger active-duty military," Clinton told the television show "Fox News Sunday."
posted by Kevin at 2:31 AM

Nothing New: Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 :.

Don't get me wrong... I'm going to watch the movie, but anyone advocating Democrats as the solution, this late in the game, is part of the problem. Moore is a limousine liberal! What else do you need to know!?

I will probably agree with much of what the film depicts. In fact, I've been reporting that stuff and much more for nearly two years on Cryptogon. I have a problem, though, with anyone who speaks MOSTLY the truth then says, "Vote for Kerry." This concerns me deeply. If you have figured this thing out to the point Moore (and anyone who's willing to take a look at the situation) has, you know damn well that Democrats are part of the problem. THEY ARE IN ON ALL OF IT TOGETHER WITH THE REPUBLICANS. Limousine liberals want the same totalitarian government/corporate system that Bush wants.

Alex Jones nailed all of this to the wall in documentary format two years ago. It's even admitted in the New York Post. If Michael Moore wasn't an egomaniac, with the same old Left Right agenda, he would have simply worked out some agreement with Alex Jones and transferred, "9/11: The Road to Tyranny" to 35mm film and released that to theaters:

MICHAEL Moore's anti-Bush film "Fahrenheit 9/11" isn't even original. Two years ago, "9/11: The Road to Tyranny," a real documentary by Alex Jones, had most of the "facts" Moore uses in his scatter-shot diatribe. Jones, who is less interested in making money than the self-aggrandizing Moore, released his film for free on his Web site www.infowars.com, where it drew legions of new fans, including producer Curt Johnson, who is hiring Jones as a consultant on a political action thriller titled "Wake Up."
posted by Kevin at 1:13 AM

Rumor: Berg Video Smoking Gun? :.

I would say that there is something like an 85% chance that this is BS. Which means there's about a 15% chance that it's not BS. If this is true... well, I don't quite know. Maybe They could just make it go away, maybe not. The only reason I'm posting it is because I'm inviting anyone with knowledge of any potential video device watermarking technologies to write in and set us all straight. I know this is done with color copiers. There isn't any question about that. But video cameras? If you write in, provide links to back up what you're saying. Thanks:

Today new pictures were released of prison torture at Abu Ghraib prison. But not just still pictures. Today video was released showing prisoners being tortured by Americans. Apparently Kodak film experts are Kodak Park in Rochester New York have compared the digital watermarks of the turture video and the beheading video and have determined that one of the cameras used in the Nick Berg beheading is THE SAME CAMERA that took the prison torture video. [sic]
posted by Kevin at 5:50 AM

Deranged Maniacs Create Blue Franken-Rose :.

Never mind the swindling of public money for private profit, these people should be locked up because of their "work." There's nothing like being a failure in one branch of quackery and then finding a freakish and profitable "discovery" in another:

Roses come in many colours - from pink to yellow, peach and red - but, until now, no one has found a way to create a natural blue rose and the quest has acquired an almost mystical significance among breeders.

The discovery was made by chance by two biochemists conducting research into drugs for cancer and Alzheimer's in a medical laboratory at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee.

Professor Peter Guengerich and Dr Elizabeth Gillam were trying to find out how the human liver breaks down drugs when they came across a liver enzyme that had a startling effect.

"When we moved a liver enzyme into a bacterium, the bacterium turned blue," Dr Guengerich said. "We were aware that there were people in the world who had been interested in making coloured flowers, especially a blue rose, for a number of years.

"Dr Gillam had the bright idea that we could capitalise on our discovery by moving the gene into plants - and produce a blue rose."

Related: Recent Genetic Engineering Experiment Could Have Wiped Out All Plant Life on Continent

Related: Genetically Engineered Pet: GloFish

Related: Bald Chicken 'Needs no Plucking'
posted by Kevin at 2:57 AM

Volta: Toyota's 32-Miles-Per-Gallon, Hybrid Supercar :.

Holy !*&#^!&@^)!:

This second generation Hybrid Synergy Drive system uses the 3.3-liter V6 common to a variety of Toyota/Lexus products, plus two powerful electric motors to produce a phenomenal 408 horsepower (300 kW). Needless to say the lightweight sports car is quick, shooting forward from standstill to 100 km/h (62 mph) in a sizzling 4.03 seconds before reaching a terminal velocity of 250 km/h (155 mph).

Now, what's the most interesting aspect of this story? Read the second to last sentence carefully:

Ironic, but the one company that would have no financial challenges building a car this daring, probably won't.

So it goes...

Related: Toyota Unveils Highlander Hybrid SUV :.

After further research, I found out that Toyota IS releasing the Highlander SUV as a hybrid. Let's not kid ourselves, folks, hybrid SUVs are way too little, way too late. BUT... The hybrid platform could allow us to actually eliminate the use of gasoline---RIGHT NOW!

If you don't know anything about Aquafuel, none of what follows will make any sense to you, so, start with Blaze Labs and J.L. Naudin. Then return to this story.

I don't think hybrids are a big deal, on their own, since they still require petroleum based gasoline. The hybrid platform, though, is very close to being something revolutionary! The power recovery system that's integrated into the braking system is the big deal. We just need to eliminate the requirement of having to burn petroleum based gas in the damn thing!!!

Until the multiple issues with fuel cells are sorted out, the thing to do would be to build an Aquafuel generator into these hybrids. Integrate something like three 185watt solar panels into the top facing surfaces of this SUV and guess what! THE VEHICLE COULD BE MAKING IT'S OWN FUEL THE ENTIRE TIME IT'S SITTING IN THE SUN.


Obviously, any integrated solar power system isn't, on its own, going to make enough Aquafuel to accommodate most drivers' needs. (In sunny areas, where the vehicle isn't used everyday, it might.) Therefore, when larger amounts of Aquafuel are required, say, to fill up the vehicle for a long trip, high current electricity from clean or dirty sources may be utilized to top off the vehicle's Aquafuel tank. At that point, you just need to make sure the Aquafuel generator has a sufficient water supply.

In the early stages, this idea could be implemented as a duel fuel system. Aquafuel runs fine in unmodified, internal combustion engines that call for 87 octane, unleaded gasoline. In the event that high current electricity isn't available to produce Aquafuel in large quantities, the internal combustion engine could burn regular gasoline.

Now, if only the companies would make hybrids with diesel engines... Well, you would be done right there. Can you imagine? Being able to drive for about 600 miles on one tank of biodiesel, straight vegetable oil (SVO), or petroleum based diesel? The biodiesel and SVO freaks would snap up every last diesel hybrid vehicle.

Question/Answer

Q: Can Aquafuel systems be added to existing vehicles as well?

A: As long as they burn 87 octane, unleaded gasoline.

Q: Where can I buy an Aquafuel system?

A: Uh, you can't.

Q: Why not?

A: I don't know, exactly. Ask the good people at Santilli Magnegas. They say the U.S. government has hindered the development of this technology. They also own all the patents on this. You can see a Ferrari running on Aquafuel and some other vehicles converted to use it on this site as well.

These ideas are merely stopgap measures that would buy us some time. These are not solutions. The agricultural sector's dependence on petroleum products is far more frightening than automobile related consumption. I would say to get the gas out of our cars first, because that is actually possible. Getting the gas out of our food, on the other hand, will require much more time and effort. The nightmare scenario is that humanity will find itself in a situation where petroleum supplies have dwindled to the point where alternative solutions can't be bootstrapped into operation because the energy isn't available.

Hint: Nothing is being done about any of this (to any degree that matters) and our so-called leaders are allowing the energy situation to go off the rails, one can only assume, on purpose. I suppose it's possible that greed and criminal incompetence are involved, but in the final analysis, it doesn't matter. So, what's the moral of the story? Learn how to grow and raise your own food before you get hungry.

And dream about the world we could have had if untold trillions of dollars worth of our tax money hadn't been used for purely evil purposes.

Related: Alternative Energy Magazine Editor, Cold Fusion Author Murdered

Related: Wind, Solar, Hydro, Ethanol, Biodiesel, Aquafuel and Fuel Cell Technologies
posted by Kevin at 4:58 PM

Snooping Robot Going to Iraq :.

These primitive remote controlled units will soon be replaced by much more autonomous versions. The rise of the machines is virtually unstoppable:

A robot designed for urban warfare will soon be on its way to assist U.S. Marines in Iraq, where the scrappy machine can peer around corners and snoop in areas too dangerous or inaccessible for human soldiers.

Called Dragon Runner, the four-wheeled device is small and light enough to be carried in a soldier's backpack and rugged enough to be tossed over fences and up or down stairwells.

"We've thrown it out of second- and third-story windows," said Capt. Dave Moreau, project officer for Dragon Runner at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory in Quantico, Va. "We've thrown it off the back of a moving vehicle at 45 miles an hour."

If Dragon Runner performs well, the Pentagon conceivably would be interested in buying hundreds of the robots. Hagen Schempf, a senior systems scientist at the Robotics Institute who was principal investigator for Dragon Runner, said he thinks applications in civilian law enforcement and firefighting might eventually outnumber those in the military.

"We might soon face a different problem here ---- how fast can we make how many?" said Schempf, who is co-founder and chairman of Automatika, which has licensed the Dragon Runner technology from CMU.
posted by Kevin at 4:22 PM

Monsanto: The Epitome of Evil :.

I have no formal training in agriculture, farming, gardening, etc. Now, if I can grow a wide variety of food crops using nothing but dirt, dead leaves, chicken shit, open pollinated, organic seeds and water, why would anyone use the frightening, toxic and dangerous pHarming products manufactured by Monsanto?

Monsanto wants to go after everyone, including people who opt out of their stupid, genitically engineered paradigm. Even if their crap blows into your field, they can sue you for damages! Well, I hope that doesn't happen to my crops once I'm finally out in the middle of nowhere. I won't be settling the matter in a courtroom:

In a 5-4 decision, the court sided with the biotech giant, which sued Percy Schmeiser in 1997 after Monsanto agents found the company's patented gene in canola plants on his farm near Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. The court agreed that he stole Monsanto's seed, even though Schmeiser maintained that he inadvertently used seed that had blown into his field.

Schmeiser said he had no interest in planting genetically modified seed. The seed blew into his fields from a neighbor's crop, he said, and rather than profiting from Monsanto's technology, it actually contaminated and ruined a seed Schmeiser had cultivated for 50 years.
posted by Kevin at 3:49 AM

Cryptogon Garden Update

Ahhh, the garden. It's really starting to unfurl. I eat a few handfuls of veggies out of it every day now. Blue lake bush beans, peas and lettuce are good to go. Everything else is growing well. The corn is over my head, the carrots are about three inches long, watermelon, honey dew, and cucumbers are all in progress, as are cabbage, broccoli, onion, and okra. The tomato plants are off the rails. They are fat and lush. I can't wait until they start producing fruit. Here are a few snaps:

The sweet corn is preparing to spawn!

The dreaded, but beautiful, cabbage looper. I wish I had a couple of hens. Bock!

These peas taste like candy; incredibly sweet. The problem I have with them is that I usually gobble them up before they get this big. This one had escaped my glance, and I'm glad it did. Yum.

The cuke vines are out of hand. One has latched on to a corn stalk. Another is sticking up through my cabbage. A few are trying to creep out of the raised bed.

posted by Kevin at 2:47 AM

Summer 2004: The Summer of Terror! :.

* Yawn * Just do it already. Everyone knows it's going to happen. Get on with it:

The FBI is warning law enforcement agencies to be on the alert for the possibility that suicide bombers may attempt to strike inside the United States. A lightly classified intelligence bulletin circulated Thursday to 18,000 U.S. law enforcement bodies is headlined "Possible suicide bomber indicators," and was distributed via the Bureau's secure Law Enforcement Online (LEO) Intranet. It warns local badge-carriers to look for obvious signs of trouble � people wearing heavy, bulky jackets on warm days, smelling of chemicals, trailing wires from their jackets � as well, more subtle ones, such as tightly clenched fists. Someone who never shows his palms could be gripping a detonator rigged to go off when a button is released. "If you shoot him, you're still not safe because his hands relax and the bomb explodes," says a counter-terrorism official.

We're just never going to hear the end of it. It will be surreal, watching the fat, lazy imbeciles brimming with fear and rage. Get your Big Gulp and your Freedom Fries, the homeland is under attack! Film at 11. Maybe the reporters will wear body armor when they broadcast from WalMart. Fantastic.

It may or may not be The End, but at least it will be entertaining.

* Shaking head, stumbling to bed. *
posted by Kevin at 4:14 AM

Email Has Been Heavy

I'll get back to you guys soon. Lots of people writing in lately.
posted by Kevin at 3:50 AM

'In the Mouth of Madness' :.

Drink more:

A lot of you have been asking why I haven't written anything lately.

My jaw dropped about three weeks ago and damn few words have come out of my mouth ever since. Mostly I've been asking for food, lots of food. And watching a lot of movies, the black and white ones, film noir, trying to pretend I don't live in this world of 2004. I think this is what many people do when they reach a certain age, when current events overtake them and they can't cope with it, and try to take refuge in the past.

But let's face it. I can't cope with this reality. It's more than I can handle. The best phrase to describe it? Incredulous stupefaction. My head just wags back and forth involuntarily these days.

Some of my friends say I simply read too much bad news. Since the 9/11 deception, there's been anthrax, Afghanistan, Patriot Act, and Iraq, to list the major chapters that go along with perhaps the worst of all the atrocities, that neverending story about the mass murder of the Palestinians that the world seems so good at ignoring. And I've been writing about all this ceaselessly for the past couple of years. And I don't mean to demean all those wonderful people who have written to me in appreciative support, but hell, there are six billion people in the world, and most of them are not listening, or doing anything constructive to stop this juggernaut of carnage that is really the world's dominant moneymaking operation.

Strife makes money for the rich losers who foment it. And it's getting me down to the point of speechlessness.

What hope exists if people who profess to adhere to the principles of the good life remain silent?
posted by Kevin at 3:46 AM

Material Given to Congress in 2002 Is Now Classified :.

The Justice Department has taken the unusual step of retroactively classifying information it gave to Congress nearly two years ago regarding a former F.B.I. translator who charged that the bureau had missed critical terrorist warnings, officials said Wednesday.

Law enforcement officials say the secrecy surrounding the translator, Sibel Edmonds, is essential to protecting information that could reveal intelligence-gathering operations. But some members of Congress and Congressional aides said they were troubled by the move, which comes as critics have accused the Bush administration of excessive secrecy.

"What the F.B.I. is up to here is ludicrous," Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, said in an interview. "To classify something that's already been out in the public domain, what do you accomplish? It does harm to transparency in government, and it looks like an attempt to cover up the F.B.I.'s problems in translating intelligence."

F.B.I. officials gave Senate staff members two briefings in June and July of 2002 concerning Ms. Edmonds, who said the F.B.I.'s system for translating intelligence was so flawed that the bureau missed chances to spot terrorist warnings.
posted by Kevin at 3:40 AM

'U.S. Soldiers Started to Shoot Us, One by One' :.

I feel sick:

It was 10.30pm in the remote village of Mukaradeeb by the Syrian border and the guests hurried back to their homes as the party ended. As sister-in-law of the groom, Mrs Shihab, 30, was to sleep with her husband and children in the house of the wedding party, the Rakat family villa. She was one of the few in the house who survived the night.

"The bombing started at 3am," she said yesterday from her bed in the emergency ward at Ramadi general hospital, 60 miles west of Baghdad. "We went out of the house and the American soldiers started to shoot us. They were shooting low on the ground and targeting us one by one," she said. She ran with her youngest child in her arms and her two young boys, Ali and Hamza, close behind. As she crossed the fields a shell exploded close to her, fracturing her legs and knocking her to the ground.

She lay there and a second round hit her on the right arm. By then her two boys lay dead. "I left them because they were dead," she said. One, she saw, had been decapitated by a shell.

"I fell into the mud and an American soldier came and kicked me. I pretended to be dead so he wouldn't kill me. My youngest child was alive next to me."

Mrs Shibab's description, backed by other witnesses, of an attack on a sleeping village is at odds with the American claim that they came under fire while targeting a suspected foreign fighter safe house.

She described how in the hours before dawn she watched as American troops destroyed the Rakat villa and the house next door, reducing the buildings to rubble.

Another relative carried Mrs Shihab and her surviving child to hospital. There she was told her husband Mohammed, the eldest of the Rakat sons, had also died.

As Mrs Shihab spoke she gestured with hands still daubed red-brown with the henna the women had used to decorate themselves for the wedding. Alongside her in the ward yesterday were three badly injured girls from the Rakat family: Khalood Mohammed, aged just a year and struggling for breath, Moaza Rakat, 12, and Iqbal Rakat, 15, whose right foot doctors had already amputated.

By the time the sun rose on Wednesday over the Rakat family house, the raid had claimed 42 lives, according to Hamdi Noor al-Alusi, manager of the al-Qaim general hospital, the nearest to the village.

Among the dead were 27 members of the extended Rakat family, their wedding guests and even the band of musicians hired to play at the ceremony, among them Hussein al-Ali from Ramadi, one of the most popular singers in western Iraq.

Dr Alusi said 11 of the dead were women and 14 were children. "I want to know why the Americans targeted this small village," he said by telephone. "These people are my patients. I know each one of them. What has caused this disaster?"

"I saw something that nobody ever saw in this world," said Mr Nawaf. "There were children's bodies cut into pieces, women cut into pieces, men cut into pieces."

Among the dead was his daughter Fatima Ma'athi, 25, and her two young boys, Raad, four, and Raed, six. "I found Raad dead in her arms. The other boy was lying beside her. I found only his head," he said. His sister Simoya, the wife of Haji Rakat, was also killed with her two daughters. "The Americans call these people foreign fighters. It is a lie. I just want one piece of evidence of what they are saying."

There lay 27 graves: mounds of dirt each marked with a single square of crudely cut marble, a name scribbled in black paint. Some gave more than one name, and one, belonging to a woman Hamda Suleman, the briefest of explanations: "The American bombing."
posted by Kevin at 3:20 AM

Giuliani Hears 'Your Government Trained and Funded Al-Qaeda' at End of Commission Hearing :.

Eleventh public hearing of the 9/11 Commission, with testimony by Fmr. Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Wind the video on to three minutes before the end to hear the family members of the victims chastise the whitewash commission, where a family member of a victim says, "remmeber this, your government trained and funded Al-Qaeda" - as the rest of the 9/11 families applause.
posted by Kevin at 3:05 AM

Smaller Blockquotes

You will notice formatting changes on today's posts. I was experimenting with the BLOCKQUOTE tag and I CSSed the size of the font down a bit. Do you guys like this style of quoting materials better than the old way (italics)?

Would you like to see the quoted passages in italics, as well? Like so:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consetetur sadipscing elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor invidunt ut labore et dolore magna aliquyam erat, sed diam voluptua.

Let me know your preference.

QUESTION FOR CSS HEADS: My BLOCKQUOTE is causing the equivalent of like three BRs between the end of the BLOCKQUOTE and the next line. Is there an attribute in CSS that I can mod to make it stop doing this? I've become used to Blogger converting carriage returns in the edit mode to BRs in the code it generates. For me to make BLOCKQUOTEs look right, I have to back up the line that follows right next to the closed BLOCKQUOTE tag. This is a minor pain in the hole. Thanks for any assistance.
posted by Kevin at 7:15 AM

Robotics to Play Major Role in Future Warfighting :.

Rise of the machines:

From Star Wars to The Terminator, Junkyard Wars and Robot Warriors, our glimpse at the potential for tomorrow has amazed and sometimes stunned us.

Well, get ready. The future may be closer than you think.

Project Alpha, a U.S. Joint Forces Command rapid idea analysis group, is in the midst of a study focusing on the concept of developing and employing robots that would be capable of replacing humans to perform many, if not most combat functions on the battlefield.

The study, appropriately titled, "Unmanned Effects: Taking the Human out of the Loop," suggests that by as early as 2025, the presence of autonomous robots, networked and integrated, on the battlefield might not be the exception, but, in fact, the norm.

Related: High School Essays Graded by Computer

Do you get it yet?
posted by Kevin at 7:12 AM

High School Essays Graded by Computer :.

I shit you not:

In the computer lab at Warren Central High School in mid-May, Craig Butler, a junior, squinted at the question on his screen, paused to ponder his answer and began typing.

Craig was one of 48,500 Indiana juniors gathering in high schools across the state to take the end-of-year online English essay test. Unlike most essay tests, however, this one is being graded not by a teacher but by a computer.

Craig has already decided he prefers computer grading. "Teachers, you know, they're human, so they have to stumble around telling you what you need to do," he said at a practice session. "A computer can put it in fine print what you did wrong and how to fix it."

With the increasing number of mandates to test student writing, "there's a certain inevitability to computerized essay grading," said Stan Jones, the Indiana commissioner of higher education. Indiana's computerized essay scoring, he said, will reduce by half the cost of administering a pencil-and-paper test and will free teachers from distributing, collecting and, above all, grading thousands of test booklets.

Do you want to know what's inevetable if this system doesn't collapse, and soon? Your kids will have to face this thing. And they will, because there's a certain inevitability to terminator robots when humans are posessed by the Myth of the Machine.

Related: Robotics to Play Major Role in Future Warfighting

Do you get it yet?
posted by Kevin at 6:54 AM

Savant for a Day :.

Enhancements: Coming soon to a brain near you! I found this article fascinating and frightening at the same time. Rather than examining the potential social causes of our high level cognitive filters, Snyder is using technology to artificially bring down the barriers our brains have erected!

Did anyone stop to think that maybe there's a reason our brains are not allowing the very granular details through to our everyday consciousness? My guess is that it probably has something to do with a self defense mechanism. Look at the endless stream of stressful stimuli that we are bombarded with on a daily basis. It's no wonder our brains shut down to some extent.

Never mind the fact that the main reason behind our increasing dumbness is the relentless creep of technology into every aspect of our lives.* Now, having said that, even I found myself reading this article and thinking, "This is kinda cool."

But consider this: The nature of the brain is probably one of the least understood topics in all of human inquiry. What is known, though, is that it a complex and sensitive bioelectrical system. Many would argue (and I tend to believe) that the brain is also a nexus of very subtle, non-physical components which are, at this time, mostly invisible to reductionist science.

In other words, the brain is not a toy.

What would you think of a medical doctor who devised a new surgical technique that involved the use of chain saw? Well, that's roughly the equivalent of nuttery involved with pulsing the brain with electromagnetic magnetic radiation. These neuroscience quacks have no idea of what they're doing. They actually make genetic engineers seem like knowledgeable professionals!

Watch out:

In a concrete basement at the University of Sydney, I sat in a chair waiting to have my brain altered by an electromagnetic pulse. My forehead was connected, by a series of electrodes, to a machine that looked something like an old-fashioned beauty-salon hair dryer and was sunnily described to me as a "Danish-made transcranial magnetic stimulator." This was not just any old Danish-made transcranial magnetic stimulator, however; this was the Medtronic Mag Pro, and it was being operated by Allan Snyder, one of the world's most remarkable scientists of human cognition.

Nonetheless, the anticipation of electricity being beamed into my frontal lobes (and the consent form I had just signed) made me a bit nervous. Snyder found that amusing. "Oh, relax now!" he said in the thick local accent he has acquired since moving here from America. "I've done it on myself a hundred times. This is Australia. Legally, it's far more difficult to damage people in Australia than it is in the United States."

"Damage?" I groaned.

"You're not going to be damaged," he said. "You're going to be enhanced."

* Don't try to debate me on this, I won't even bother. It's not worth my time to argue the finer points of something that's obvious on its face. Feel free, however, to stuff Lewis Mumford's, Myth of the Machine and Jerry Mander's, In the Absence of the Sacred into your Palm Pilot/cell phone/video camera and smoke it.
posted by Kevin at 6:11 AM

Don't Jerk It for Jesus :.

I'm going to burn karma with my Christian friends on here, but I can't help it. This is too much:

"Rick," a 20-year-old Krispy Kreme employee from Washington, says he has a serious problem: He masturbates.

He recently befriended several other Christian men who share his belief that masturbation is sinful, and together they've pledged not to "defile themselves" for 40 days -- the same amount of time the Bible says Satan tempted Jesus in the desert. They encourage each other to remain steadfast by e-mail and instant messages.

"I'm only a few days into it, but I'm really seeing how used to it that my body really is, and how I am addicted to it," Rick writes in a blog chronicling his quest. "As difficult as it is, I'm contending not only for myself, but the men that are on this fast with me, to be strong, and beat this addiction. Let's do it guys! We can be holy."

Well, this is interesting because researcher and long time Cryptogon contributor, TR, recently informed me of a technique that Christians may use to determine whether or not they're Holy. And they don't have to make up silly games to figure it out. Check out Mark 16:16-18:

16 He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.

17 And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;

18 They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

So, after these guys manage to NOT peel one off for 40 days, let's see them slurp down a large cup full of rattlesnake venom, which they could obtain from handling the serpent (no pun intended). In fact, they could emphasize the point by letting the snake bite them a few times. (I swear, the pun is not intended.) If they're Holy, there's nothing to worry about. Right?

Well, there might be an easier solution. According to verse 18, these guys could meet up and, "lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover." Well, they're all going to be feeling pretty sick (maybe uncomfortable is a better word) after a couple weeks of this nonsense. And the laying on of hands... Well, you get the picture.

Now, why do I devote space on Cryptogon to a story like this? I mean, who cares about some guy's whacked (again, no pun intended) interpretation of the Bible?

"God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East."

-George W. Bush

My advice for Christians and everyone else: Pray to God to keep crazy people out of positions of power.
posted by Kevin at 4:28 AM

Cryptogon Reader Sends $100

One hundred big ones. That's right. This is the largest single contribution to date. Cryptogon reader, AP, indicated that he wanted the site to remain available to the general public (as opposed to a 'subscription only' site). Thanks AP!

Average humanity needs to learn the Right use of money. Money makes things happen in the world. Money in motion builds momentum, so it's best not to let it sit in one place for any length of time. The trick is to send it in the right direction when you move it. Have you noticed that the more money I give away, the more money comes in? Consider that, the next time you're reading Cryptogon on the backs of AP and all of the other contributors.

From this latest contribution, I have sent $10 to infinite-energy.com, the organization associated with murdered cold fusion author and researcher Dr. Eugene F. Mallove. I have also sent $10 to John over at cryptome.org for his unwavering commitment to the 1st Amendment.

I'll tell you what I did with the rest of the money, after I do it. Yep, I have a plan.
posted by Kevin at 2:46 AM

Israel Defies International Fury Over Civilian Attacks, Expands Gaza Offensive :.

Defying international fury and a rare U.S. rebuke, Israel has expanded its bloodiest Gaza Strip raid in years after killing 38 Palestinians in the besieged Rafah refugee camp.

The U.N. Security Council, convened at the behest of Arabs incensed at what they branded a "war crime", urged an end to violence after Israeli forces killed up to 10 Palestinians, many of them youths, at a peaceful protest on Wednesday.

Reflecting its displeasure, the United States, Israel's chief ally, allowed adoption of the U.N. resolution by abstaining rather than using its veto. President George W. Bush urged restraint from the Jewish state.

Senior U.S. officials kept up pressure with phone calls to Israeli counterparts, urging Israel to wrap up the three-day-old raid as quickly as possible, an Israeli political source said.

posted by Kevin at 12:31 AM

Israel Massacres Civilians with Tanks and Helicopter Gunships :.

More: BBC Video Report (Requires RealPlayer)

Made in America:

Israeli forces fired a missile and a barrage of tank shells to hold back a crowd of Palestinians protesting military operations in Gaza on Wednesday, killing at least 10, including children and teens. Overwhelmed doctors treated some of the dozens of wounded on blood-drenched hospital floors.

White smoke rose into the air as Palestinians carried the wounded - including children with bloodied faces - from the scene. Some were evacuated to the hospital in donkey carts, witnesses said.

"I could see the tank, first it fired a tank shell, it landed next to an electricity pole," said Hisham Ashour, 45, who was near the front of the crowd. "We immediately started picking up the wounded who had collapsed to the ground. Many of them were kids."


posted by Kevin at 2:07 PM

American Aircraft Kill More than 40 at Wedding Party :.

Liberation:

A U.S. helicopter fired on a wedding party early Wednesday in western Iraq, killing more than 40 people, Iraqi officials said. The U.S. military said it could not confirm the report and was investigating.

Lt. Col Ziyad al-Jbouri, deputy police chief of the city of Ramadi, said between 42 and 45 people died in the attack, which took place about 2:45 a.m. in a remote desert area near the border with Syria and Jordan. He said those killed included 15 children and 10 women.
posted by Kevin at 2:03 PM

FBI and CIA Protected Nazis After World War II :.

This has been obvious for decades, but here's more information on the subject:

The FBI and other U.S. agencies ignored the murky pasts of alleged Nazi collaborators living in the United States because the government saw them as useful during the Cold War, according to newly released records.
posted by Kevin at 11:40 PM

Atrocities in Iraq: 'I Killed Innocent People for Our Government' :.

Paul Rockwell interviews U.S. Marine, Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey:

Q: Your feelings changed during the invasion. What was your state of mind before the invasion?

A: I was like every other troop. My president told me they got weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam threatened the free world, that he had all this might and could reach us anywhere. I just bought into the whole thing.

Q: What changed you?

A: The civilian casualties taking place. That was what made the difference. That was when I changed.

Q: Did the revelations that the government fabricated the evidence for war affect the troops?

A: Yes. I killed innocent people for our government. For what? What did I do? Where is the good coming out of it? I feel like I've had a hand in some sort of evil lie at the hands of our government. I just feel embarrassed, ashamed about it.
posted by Kevin at 11:14 PM

Jack Blood Pressued into Removing Information

This is what was taken down from Jack Blood's site:

JackBlood.com Has Traced The Address Of 'Islamic Website' That Posted The Berg Decapitation Video To London, England

After several hours of research, I have learned the web addresses for the 'Islamic Websites' that posted the Nick Berg decapitation video. The website addresses are www.al-asnar.net and www.al-asnar.biz . Both websites have apparently been disabled by 'authorities.' The location of the web server is reportedly in Malaysia. However, the addresses of the publishers for these sites are located in London, England and Nurnberg, Denmark.

The addresses began to disappear from the internet listings as reported on the Power Hour Radio Show. Apparently, 'Big Brother' had been listening to the show and didn't like the news at all.

The location of the publishers for al-ansar.net appears to be at an Arab Press Building, which appears to be shared by different Arab news publications. The name of the organization is the Arab Press House. The building is apparently the headquarters for news magazines such as, Al Jamilla, Sayidaty, and Al Majallah among others.

The London address is the following:

http://www.al-ansar.net

Arab Press House

Abdel Rahman al-Rashed
184 High Holborn, WCIV78P, London
tel. 020 78318181

The other address is located in Nurnberg, Denmark. It apparently belongs to a man named Omar AbuOmar. His email address is:
alansar_alansar@hotmail.com .

The complete mailing address is the following:

http://www.al-ansar.biz

Omar AbuOmar
New Dream St. 33
Nurnberg, Denmark, 42114

Phone: +965.15441211
Email: alansar_alansar@hotmail.com
posted by Kevin at 6:57 PM

Freeway Blogger :.

Nice one:

posted by Kevin at 6:31 PM

White House: There Will Be an Attack Before the Election :.

Getting you ready:

White House officials say they've got a "working premise" about terrorism and the presidential election: It's going to happen. "We assume," says a top administration official, "an attack will happen leading up to the election." And, he added, "it will happen here." There are two worst-case scenarios, the official says. The first posits an attack on Washington, possibly the Capitol, which was believed to be the target of the 9/11 jet that crashed in Pennsylvania. Theory 2: smaller but more frequent attacks in Washington and other major cities leading up to the election.
posted by Kevin at 5:40 PM

Donations to Cryptogon: $50 and $10

WB $50
PQ $10 (From Ireland!)

Gentlemen, thank you!

I am immediately sending $10 to Jules at pathtofreedom.com and $10 to Mike at whatreallyhappened.com.

It may seem weird for me to be giving money away that people have just given to me, but it's not weird at all. Jules and Mike are responsible for some of the information I have been conveying to you guys. These individuals are working hard, everyday, to make a difference. Their work is incredible and should not only be supported, but emulated by all of us to the extent possible.

Note on PQ's contribution: PQ is a reader from Ireland. I haven't mentioned it in the past, but I have received donations from Portugal and Switzerland as well. Truth knows no borders. I am honored that people in other parts of the world see the value of this work, and support it.
posted by Kevin at 3:43 PM

Shampoo Compounds May Block Brain Choline :.

Bathing in toxic compounds; day in, day out... Although, if people can't understand the fluoride issue, I doubt they'll look into this:

The research in animals centers around diethanolamine (DEA), a chemical used in shampoos, lotions, creams and other cosmetics. DEA is used widely because it provides a rich lather in shampoos and keeps a favorable consistency in lotions and creams, but there's also some research that shows it may rob the brain of its ability to make memory cells.

"Depending on the treatment, some mice are stupid, some are not," said researcher Dr. Steven Zeisel.

Research Credit: JM
posted by Kevin at 3:40 PM

Organs into Fuel :.

Cattle brains and other remains that may carry the deadly mad cow disease would be turned into biofuels under a plan announced on Monday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Cattle brains, skull, eyes, spinal column, small intestine and other parts suspected of harboring mad cow disease were banned from human consumption in December as a safety precaution, shortly after the discovery of the first case of mad cow disease in the United States.

Related: Thermal Depolymerization

Related: Cheney's Secret Organ Bank
posted by Kevin at 7:20 AM

Cisco Systems IOS Source Code Stolen :.

Oh man... Where the hell was the Self Defending Network as this caper was going down?

A portion of the Cisco Systems Inc. software that runs most of the networking equipment on the Internet was apparently stolen and published on the Web, Tuesday's Wall Street Journal reported.

The apparent theft might allow hackers to exploit weaknesses in the code and could embarrass Cisco, which has a growing business helping other companies fend off cyberthreats.
posted by Kevin at 6:54 AM

Alternative Energy Magazine Editor, Cold Fusion Author Murdered :.

No suicide note? Beaten to death, car missing... I'm surprised they haven't called this a suicide!

This story will be sent down the same memory hole as the $30 million worth of cocaine on the WalMart truck and the 8,000 AK-47 and other weapons bound for a company in Georgia.

So it goes...

A 56-year-old former Norwich man was killed during a suspected robbery and brutal assault at his family home on Salem Turnpike Friday.

Dr. Eugene F. Mallove, a Norwich Free Academy graduate, published author and father of two, died of multiple injuries to his head and neck, according to an autopsy performed Saturday at the Office of the Chief State Medical Examiner in Farmington. The death was ruled a homicide.

Police would not confirm Mallove's identity Saturday pending positive identification by family members.

Mallove was discovered at the small 119 Salem Turnpike house at 10:55 p.m. Friday after police received a report of an injured person.

At the house, situated at the entrance to Interstate 395 in a primarily commercial area, police found Mallove unresponsive, the victim of an assault. He was later pronounced dead by medical personnel called to the scene.

Police said initial investigation indicated a robbery, during which a physical confrontation took place. Several unidentified items were taken from the scene and Mallove's vehicle was missing, according to a written statement released by Norwich police.

Several hours later, Mallove's 1993 green Dodge Caravan was found in the Foxwoods employee parking lot on Route 2 in Preston. The vehicle is easily identifiable by several large bumper stickers, including an American flag and his company Web site, www.infinite-energy.com, in the rear window. The New Hampshire license plate bears the registration INFNRG.

In New Hampshire, Mallove was the president of the nonprofit New Energy Foundation and since 1995 the editor-in-chief of the organization's magazine Infinite Energy.

The bimonthly magazine covers topics of new technological innovations in energy and science and follows developments in the field, according to its Web site.

He is the author of numerous technical articles and of several books, including the Pulitzer-nominated book on cold fusion titled, "Fire and Ice: Searching for the Truth Behind the Cold Fusion Furor."
posted by Kevin at 6:46 AM

Israeli Military Takes Page from Serb Playbook :.

At least the U.S. didn't give the Serbs billions of dollars to fund their crimes against humanity:

"My brother was against us leaving," said Hamad. "He said we should stay and defend the house, but there were too many children. So he helped us move all the kids and then said he was going back to pick up some important documents. We pleaded with him not to go, but he was stubborn."

Ashraf Qishta was last seen alive by his relatives standing in the doorway of his home with a white flag in one hand and an axe in another.

"He thought the Israelis would respect him if he stood there and said he would defend his house," said Hamad. "They just shot him in the chest. The bulldozer pulled the building on to him. When we found him we could see where the blade hit his head."

That night, several rows of houses in Saladin disappeared under the bulldozers.

Yesterday Hamad Qishta was bundling up the pathetic remains of his home plus a few pots and pans given to him by the Red Cross.

"They bulldozed my home so I moved my things to my sister's place. Now I think they will bulldoze it too," he said.
posted by Kevin at 6:38 AM

Bush Told Geneva Convention 'Obsolete' :.

Military intelligence, jumbo shrimp, living dead, working vacation, international law:

The Iraq prisoner abuse scandal shifted today to the question of whether the U.S. administration set up a legal foundation that opened the door for the mistreatment.

Within months of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales reportedly wrote President George W. Bush a memo about the terrorism fight and prisoners' rights under the Geneva Convention.

"In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions," Newsweek magazine quoted the memo as saying. Secretary of State Colin Powell "hit the roof" when he read the memo, according to the account.
posted by Kevin at 6:28 AM

E.U. Seeks Quantum Cryptography Response to ECHELON :.

My gut reaction is, even though they will have confidence in the integrity of their private keys, how do they know the keys are actually as strong as they think they are? What if a 4096 bit key only has 100 bits of true entropy? How random are the random numbers? Did the complier insert any Easter eggs into the encryption program executable? You step through all of your binaries to make sure the compiler implemented your code properly, right? HAHA! (Surely, some troll, wearing a tinfoil hat, has written his own compiler in binary to avoid this concern.)

The thing to do would be to send all of the high value traffic over a quantum crypto system, not just the keys. Now that would be a TFA (Through F*cking Around) solution. Obviously, this would be prohibitively expensive and cumbersome.

I just don't believe in PGP, twofish, blowfish or any of the rest of it. I mean, I believe in them if the attacker is a 14 year old boy with a packet sniffer on the wire. I believe in them if the attacker is my PHB (assuming he doesn't have access to my private key and he hasn't installed a key logger on my system, which is assuming a lot). But with the NSA as the attacker? Brother, you better have your shit together.

This is why quantum crypto is cool. As soon as the attacker looks at the data, the data changes and the operator of the system knows he's been set up the bomb! I'd like to see the Dark Knights inside the NSA figure out how to get around that one:

The European Union is to invest $13 million over the next four years to develop a secure communication system based on quantum cryptography, using physical laws governing the universe on the smallest scale to create and distribute unbreakable encryption keys, project coordinators said Monday.

If successful, the project will produce the cryptographer's holy grail -- absolutely unbreakable code -- and thwart the eavesdropping efforts of espionage systems such as Echelon, which intercepts electronic messages on behalf of the intelligence services of the U.S., Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.
posted by Kevin at 4:55 AM

Nerve Gas Used for First Time Against Coalition :.

This means that either the CIA finally managed to pull off a stunt involving planted WMDs, or the Iraqi insurgency finally found some of the munitions that the U.S. provided to Saddam Hussein back in the 1980s. Take your pick, but keep in mind, even Kimmitt admits that insurgents probably didn't know the shell contained sarin. Perhaps someone will get a chance to ask Saddam Hussein where he initially got the artillery shells containing sarin. Hmmm, that might just be an interesting thing to do:

The explosion of a roadside bomb containing a small quantity of the nerve agent sarin near a US military convoy in Iraq marks the first time that chemical or biological agents have been detected in attacks on US troops.

Two soldiers were treated for "minor exposure to nerve agent", according to the military, but it was not clear how seriously they were affected. The sarin was contained in a 155mm artillery shell, one of the more common devices used in the past year for roadside bombs.

Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said the shell appeared to be of a type of which the Iraqi regime claimed to have destroyed before the 1991 Gulf war. He said it was unlikely that the insurgents who planted it knew it contained sarin.
posted by Kevin at 4:27 AM

Donations to Cryptogon: $25, $1.95 and $.08

MS $25
PF $1.95

Thanks to both of you!

In other funding news, Cryptogon had 732 visits yesterday, an above average traffic day, the Alex Jones interview with Fintan Dunne was downloaded 168 times (5.8 gigs of bandwidth burned so far on that alone) and a total of four, 4, cuatro, people clicked the "2 Cent" button at the right. HAHAHA! I put a button up that allows people who view the site to contribute money, even if it's just 2 cents, and a total of four people clicked it in 24 hours. HAHAHAHA! That's hilarious and incredible all at once.

I understand, being dirt broke, not having credit cards, not having bank accounts, not being able to use PayPal, and every other reason I've heard from people.... But why wouldn't you just click a God damned button after you're finished reading Cryptogon each day? Your popup killer handles the popups and then you surf away to some other site. But no, that's too much to ask, I guess. That's really incredible.

No wonder the so called "progressive" movement is totally doomed. The vast majority of the people who purport to share these views won't even click a button on a webpage to help out! Yet, there's a tiny fraction of 1% of you who have contributed cold, hard dollars. And a couple of you have contributed in excess of $50.

This is an extremely valuable life lesson. There's just a VERY small number of us who get it. Remember this: 732 visits and four people clicked that thing.

Maybe you think clicking that button is so insignificant that it's not even worth the effort. If 500 people clicked that button each day, that's $300 a month! I don't know about you, but that's a life altering amount of money to me.

(Thanks, by the way, to the four people who clicked the button. And it only works once every 12 hours per IP address, fyi, in case you were going to try to help out by clicking it millions of times.)

I'm wondering... Should Cryptogon become a private information service? Several people have contributed money (and beer), and as far as I'm concerned, I work for them. Those of you who have supported this effort, how do you feel? Do you mind carrying the weight of all these slackers on your shoulders? Would you rather see it go private? By taking it private, the people who take it seriously will still see it, and I'd block the cops and spooks who are, doubtlessly, doing nothing good with the information I'm posting here. I mean, if most of you can't even click a button to help out... I don't even want you reading this thing. You're useless. You're bums. No, actually, you give bums a bad name. Go away. Go watch MTV or Fox News.

And to the guy who keeps wanting me to get eGold, just click the 2 cent button instead of sending emails about eGold. ;)
posted by Kevin at 2:38 AM

Alex Jones and Fintan Dunne Unravel Berg PSYOP

This is an excellent discussion between Alex Jones and Irish researcher, Fintan Dunne. I was so moved by the quality of the information in this dialog that I decided to host the 35MB file for TWO DAYS ONLY. Save this file, locally, right now!

The bottom line: This thing is so sloppy, it's not sloppy at all. There are multiple layers to it.

The message to the average viewer: Be afraid of the terrorists, we (the military/police/etc.) need to torture people like you see in this video because they're so evil.

The message to people like you (alternative media consumer) and me (alternative media producer/analyst): Don't mess with us. You're smart enough to figure out what we're capable of doing. Therefore, you must be aware that you're powerless to do anything to stop us. Give up. Submit. Or this just might happen to you!

Can you see how they orchestrated the release of the torture materials and then legitimized that activity with this Berg video!?

Also keep in mind the following passage from the 1995 Pentagon publication Strategic Assessment: The Internet by Charles Swett:

The Internet could also be used offensively as an additional medium in psychological operations campaigns and to help achieve unconventional warfare objectives.
posted by Kevin at 5:14 AM

U.S. Shifts 4,000 Troops from South Korea to Iraq :.

There is going to be a draft:

The United States on Monday officially made request to South Korea for redeploying part of United States Forces Korea (USFK) to Iraq, and Seoul already accepted the demand, reported South Korean Yonhap News Agency.

United States Deputy National Security Advisor Steve Hadley called South Korea's Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon earlier Monday, officially asking for redeploying one brigade-level or 4,000 US forces here to Iraq, reported South Korean Yonhap News Agency.
posted by Kevin at 3:49 AM

U.S. Moving with Switch to 'Biometric' Passports :.

Americans get scanned, probed and surveiled while thousands of miles along the borders between the U.S., Canada and Mexico are wide open!

In the near future, Americans returning from abroad will have their faces scanned by cameras at ports of entry, then compared by computer to digitized photos encoded on high-tech chips in their passports for verification.

The goal is to prevent known terrorists from entering the country and to make the use of stolen passports virtually impossible.

Because such biometric identification incorporates a person's unique physical characteristics, including fingerprint swirls or iris patterns, it is considered the best method yet invented of authenticating someone's identity.

The State Department plans to start issuing the first biometric passports in a trial run in the fall and hopes to ramp up to full production next year.
posted by Kevin at 3:25 AM

India Stock Market Crash :.

Halted twice...

Indonesia down 6.5%

Japan down 3.1%

South Korea down 5.1%
posted by Kevin at 3:00 AM

Grocery Store Checker Asks TR a Question

Researcher and long time Cryptogon contribututor, TR, seeing the writing on the wall, fled California for an undisclosed location somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. He just sent this email:

Today I was at the grocery store. While I was at the check-out line,
the checker said, "Are you getting prepared? I haven't started yet, but
I need to get going on it." I said, "On what?" She said, "On growing
my own food, to prepare for the coming hikes in food prices." I
shockingly asked, "What hikes?" She matter-of-factly replied, "Well,
with the price of gas going up, the food prices could double over the
summer." I said, "You don't say. I've got some chickens and a garden
going but I'd like to do more." She said, "Me too." I then asked her
why she didn't already have her garden ready. She sighed and admitted,
"I guess I've just been too busy working here." And there you have it.
People are too busy serving their PHBs to change their lifestyles.

I think we are witnessing the beginnings of an awakening stage. As the
price for gas--and thus all other goods and services--rise, people will
suddenly begin to realize that it makes more sense to go to the source
for their basic needs. Why go to Albertson's for eggs, when you can go
to the chicken in your backyard? Why ship tomatoes 1,000 miles to your
nearest Safeway, when you can get tomatoes two feet from your backdoor?
The reason most people don't go to the source is that right now it SEEMS
easier to go to work and just buy what you need from the store.
However, as gas prices continue to rise, that will no longer be an
economically viable option. Instead people are going to be forced into
growing their own food. When a dozen eggs costs six, or even twelve,
bucks, people are going to finally get it. They're then going to have
to go crawling on their hands and knees to that backyard chicken for
their eggs. Let's hope that when that moment comes, the chicken will
still be around to save their butts.
posted by Kevin at 2:35 AM

Car Bomb Kills Head of Iraq Ruling Council :.

How much further off the rails can this thing go?

The head of Iraqi Governing Council was killed today in a car bombing near a US checkpoint in central Baghdad, an Iraqi official said.

Abdel-Zahraa Othman, also known as Izzadine Saleem, was among four Iraqis killed in the blast, according to Redha Jawad Taki, a member of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shia Muslim organisation.
posted by Kevin at 2:29 AM

Dave Emory Lecture: Half Great, Half Rat Poison

On Saturday, I decided to drive up to Santa Monica to see Dave Emory give a two part lecture. The titles of the talks were:

Why Do Men Have Nipples?

Dave Emory's Views on God, the Nature of Existence and Consciousness and the Meaning of Life

and

What Lies Ahead? A Preview of the 2004 Elections

I'm writing this up for two reasons. I spoke with a couple of people at the event who might visit Cryptogon, and I think these issues will speak to Cryptogon regulars as well.

First of all, I want to say that I like Dave Emory very much. (I even threw $8, a couple quarters, some dimes and pennies in the plastic bag that he circulated around the room.) I've listened to him for about 15 years. I think he is, without a doubt, the leading authority in the world on matters involving members of the Third Reich in the post World War II era. His work on the Gehlen organization (RFA-37 How the US Lost the Second World War) played a substantial role in the formation of my world view.

As long as I've been listening to Dave Emory, I've never heard him mention anything related to religious or spiritual matters. According to Dave, the situation is now so dire that we should all, basically, get our spiritual houses in order.

This first part of the talk was great. He said that average people are so focused on just trying to survive that they are unable and/or unwilling to examine matters of wider significance. Additionally, those people who are noticing what is happening are often, "Physically frightened, overwhelmed and depressed." He focused on the Pentagon report that warns of catastrophic climate changes that are beginning to take place. (Old news to Cryptogon regulars.)

He said, "You're going to have to deal with these things or they're going to deal with you."

As a result of all of this, he said, "Religious faith is essential," and "There's no such thing as atheists in fox holes, and we're all in fox holes." Then he said, "Religion is for people who are afraid of going to Hell. Spiritualism is for people who have already been there."

Now, Dave isn't, by any means, telling us to go find a snake handler or a corrupt priest, and nope, "Repent now all ye sinners," isn't going to cut it. Dave is advocating a wholly secular, spiritual and personal approach. Dave's truth lies in finding correlations between tangible, observable phenomena in the physical world with aspects of religious writings such as the The Dhammapada.

I'm going to throw out some bullet points that describe his view on these matters:

* He believes in a Supreme Being. This Supreme Being couldn't care less about us in our day to day lives. Dave finds various religious personifications (old men with flowing, white beards, etc.) of this Supreme Being laughable; wholly ridiculous.

* He believes, "in the probability of reincarnation."

* Like a high school physics teacher, Dave reminds us that matter and energy are finite in the universe. There is only transformation of energy and material from some form into another. Life is a form of energy. The energy is concentrated in us at birth and it is dispersed/transformed at death.

* Language is a form of information. Information is energy. Language determines what we are as human beings. He used the example of a photograph of a group of people being essentially useless at conveying any significant meaning about individuals. Words do this.

* Language is the key to understanding consciousness. Conscious memory in individuals is tied to the development of a verbal capacity.

* Proof of a Supreme Being, for Dave Emory, arrived on page one of the New York Times on April 30, 2001 in an article entitled, "Listen Closely: From a Tiny Hum Came a Big Bang."

* In 20 words or less: Scientists are observing harmonics from the "Sound" that set the initial mass of the universe on its course of expansion.

* Dave thinks the sound that initiated the Big Bang is the "Word" of God described in Christianity. Other religions describe utterances and sounds from a Supreme Being that relate to creation.

* Dave asks the rhetorical question: What made that sound?

* The fact that harmonics from this initial "Word" are in all matter in the universe leads Dave to believe that we have a predisposition to religious belief. That is, a tiny bit of the maker is in all of us and everything.

* Dave recalls earlier stages in life when happiness meant cold beer and warm women. [I'll drink to that.] But he laments that, as one gets older, these referents to happiness become less meaningful. [I'll drink to that, again!]

* So, on life sucking, in general: This is where Buddhism speaks to Dave in meaningful ways. (He likes Buddhism most of all, but said he wasn't affiliated with any organizations.)

* Wanting/Desire and Attachment are the causes of all strife. Standard axiom in Buddhism.

* He sees Karma as a resonant wave phenomenon. The more gravitational pull that you have on things (and that they have on you), the worse off you're going to be in terms of karma and the wheel of rebirth.

* "As ye sow, so shall ye reap."

* The goal is to become less attached and lighter.

* Dave finally got into the topic of why men have nipples. The males are an evolutionary scheme to create a warrior creature capable of protecting the females and their offspring from threats in the natural world. As such, all humans start out as females, but some, roughly half, mutate into males. Why would this happen? What's the benefit?

* The more complex the organism, the more intelligent, the longer it takes for that organism to become viable in the natural world. That is, an organism with greater mental capacity takes longer to develop, and is, therefore, exposed to physical threats for a longer period of time before it is able to defend itself. Dave calls this the psycho social moratorium, although I think, technically, this is more of a psychological development factor than a physical one. Compared to all other animals, humans, take the longest period of time to develop into socially viable individuals. We are also endowed with the highest levels of mental capacity, cultural complexity and tool making ability. [Note: Read Lewis Mumford's, "Myth of the Machine" if the last few sentences interest you.]

* Dave spoke about television and how destructive it is. It's physically dangerous. He said something very close to, "You are acting against the fundamental makeup of your being," when you watch TV. This is because the TV is primarily a visual projection system that bypasses the mechanisms that have been established in your brain for processing information. He stresses "The Word," "The Word," "The Word." Read more. Listen to the radio, if you can't stand to read. And shoot your television.

* On average Christians, Dave said, "They have the right string, but the wrong yo-yo."

* When we die, Dave doesn't think that there is going to be an individual accounting of you did this or you did that, but he feels that at the end of the universe, in the final analysis, there is going to be an accounting, and you better have damn well sorted out your karma by then. He said, "You are going to cross paths with whatever made that Sound at the beginning." I didn't write down exactly what he said after that, but it was something like, "If you think you're going get the better of It, you're an idiot."

He thought the following books were excellent:

The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead, by Frank J. Tipler

The Hidden Face of God: Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth by Gerald L. Schroeder

That was a snapshot of the first part of the lecture. I really liked it. My personal cosmology is more complex than his, and perhaps more sinister, but I like his. I would like his to be right.

It pains me, now, to have to write about the second half of Dave's talk. But it MUST be done.

Almost immediately, I found myself wondering how someone as smart as Dave Emory could, at the same time, be so stupid.

It boils down to this: Dave is a Democrat.

Dave spoke at length about how there are problems with Amy Goodman and how Ralph Nader is a millionaire that is potentially a CIA asset. I agree, with having serious reservations about people on the Left like Goodman and Nader. A member of the audience spoke out about the support Democracy Now gets from George Soros, the billionaire financier and speculator who is now associated with the Carlyle Group. Dave then went on to support Kerry and talk about Gore like he was the best friend the environment ever had.

Questions about 9/11. What does Dave think about the technical problems and serious discrepancies in the official story of how the events of the day went down?

I was in such shock that I don't know if I wrote down the exact quote of what he said, but it was something very close to, "I think the events of 9/11 are exactly what they appeared to be." One woman went off the rails at that point, openly confronting Emory, offering anyone in the audience free books and information to the contrary.

I yelled out, "Dave, what about the local New York CBS reporter in a helicopter who reported secondary explosions in both buildings immediately before each one collapsed?"

He said something like, "I saw them come down and I didn't see any such thing. He may have thought he was seeing secondary explosions and maybe it was just debris being ejected."

I was looking right at the guy, thinking, "Ladies and gentlemen, we have just lost cabin pressure."

Then he took a strange turn and his motivation became a bit more clear to me. I think Dave wants, more than anything, to be viewed as a legit source of information in mainstream circles, probably because he sees this as the only possible way of making any impact. He's pushing 55 and he's been at this a long LONG time. I don't think he likes the fact that he's still relegated to weird radio stations that are last in every market in which they're heard. (And they are last. Gary Null purchased the Arbitron data and talked about how the Pacifica stations are dead last in ratings.) He made references to having to stick to information that is out in the mainstream so as to not sound nuts! And I'm sitting there wondering, "Well how much more mainstream can you get than information from a CBS news reporter???"

On Kerry and Bush both being members of Skull & Bones: This was interesting. He essentially laughed it off at first, but then he acknowledged that, "Maybe They think Kerry can run things better than Bush." So, Dave can have moments of clarity. But it's like Chomsky.... Kerry is evil, but he's slightly less evil than Bush. The moral of the story, boys and girls: Bush is a gallon of rat poison. Kerry is a half gallon of rat poison. That's the logic of the aging, Left, dissident. Listen up, you old farts: You're still going to die if you drink a half gallon of rat poison!

It's clear to me now. Most of the people in the room were Democrats. Dave is a Democrat. Dave is from Northern California, which is full of Democrats. Dave is dependent on the meager handouts he gets from, yep, you guessed it, Democrats. Now, understand, these are active people. The most active. Think of the freakishness of this crowd. About one hundred people showed up to a place on Saturday night, paid $10 to hear a guy talk about the collapse of society, his thoughts on consciousness, religion, etc., and how Bush is evil and vote for Kerry, etc. FOR 4 HOURS. Dave even said that this crowd was made up of people who least needed to hear the message.

The sad reality is that very few people are capable of hearing about what actually has to happen.

[Reader, prepare yourself, I am about to unfurl.]

Very few people are willing to accept the fact that our only real chance of survival is to leave the system and re-establish right human relationships, and a balance with the natural world, outside of the societies currently in existence---BEFORE THEY COLLAPSE. This is the only option that offers even a slim hope for the survival of the human race in any form we would like to see. Dave sees the collapse on the horizon, as do many others. What's his solution? Find religion and vote for Kerry.

This is the state of the people who purport to be at the cutting edge of what's going on. This is the state of the people who purport to form the vanguard of progressive political thought. And even in this group, we started to bicker about the details of how the thing came down, is coming down, will come down.... The smart move---self-sufficiency in small groups outside of cities---however, is unthinkable for most people. Even to the people in this room, who would be classified as radical by most definitions.

As the talk ended, and people started to move outside to continue the banter, someone started trying to give newspapers away, yelling at the crowd about how the religious right was as bad as Al Qaeda. A crowd was gathering, listening, nodding heads, etc.

I walked away, quietly, feeling sorry them all.

This was my last Dave Emory lecture. While I found the first part of the talk interesting, I don't see any reason to attend another if the practical, tangible advice at the end of the day is, "Vote for Kerry."

My advice to anyone who is serious about doing something real and meaningful: RUN FOR YOUR LIFE, RIGHT NOW. Run for your life. It's that simple.

If you try to run after "it" happens, you might as well forget it. If you have a place "in the hills," you should already be there. Think hard about what you should take with you. Build an arc with the things you think are important to the survival of the human race. Take an encyclopedia with you. Take some of the books I have listed on the right side of this webpage. Take some heirloom seeds with you. Have kids out there and tell them what happened and why they MUST NOT allow it to happen again.

Yes. This means you should stop voting, stop working at the job you hate and stop buying shit from WalMart. This also means that you may not have much money, but chances are, you don't have much money anyway. And what do you care if you are self-sufficient, or getting close to it?

Oh, but wait, Kevin, if "it" comes down, that will mean that there will be chaos, violence and, and, and... I won't get any new DVDs or that neat sweater or the new video game...

Hey, nobody said it was going to be easy, but it just might be paradise compared to what this thing is about to become. Besides, if this society doesn't come down, if the genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, robotics and surveillance research all continue apace, your children are going to inherit a dystopia that is so incomprehensible that science fiction authors will be struck dumb by it. A total, systemic collapse would be extremely bad, and it's the best of all possible outcomes at this point. Pray for it.

Yeah, I'm nuts. I know. But if what I'm saying is nuts, what would you call the belief that "getting on talk radio" or voting for Kerry is going to accomplish anything? That's what Dave Emory advocates.

Dave, I like you, I respect you, but it's time to throw in the towel on the Democrats, the Republicans, the Greens, Pinks, Blues and Reds. This system is down. D.O.W.N. Nobody is coming to save you or me or anyone else.

If you're afraid, that's fine, you should be. Now get over it and figure out how you're going to get your land. And if you're lucky enough to have land, by God, you had better be getting proficient in the skills you need to live off of that land. You have an obligation to the human race to learn those skills and to pass them on to others.

People are making the mistake of squirting out babies in toxic, polluted cities that are, quite literally, on the verge of collapse. Friend, don't disconnect your brain from your biological predisposition to multiply. What's the point of having a child in a prison? Sure, go forth and multiply! But do it in a place where you and your children will have a fighting chance to not just survive, but to prosper. Build a new society outside of this doomed society, rebuild the culture, before you are forced to do these things under the yoke of chaos and starvation. Choose your wife/husband, friends and neighbors wisely. You're going to need their help, and they're going to need yours.
posted by Kevin at 2:11 AM

Lynndie England Audio: It Was a PSYOP :. (mp3)

The Abu Ghraib war crimes were ordered by senior military intelligence and CIA case officers. This was not a case of a few military personnel misbehaving. They were ordered to do this.

Now, if senior military intelligence and CIA case officers were taking the pictures, why did the materials become public? The last time I checked, MI and spook types don't go around handing out CD-ROMS containing evidence of their war crimes.

Story from CBS News:

In an exclusive interview with Brian Maass of Denver CBS station KCNC-TV, England also confirmed that abuses worse than those depicted in the photos were carried out at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, but she declined to discuss them.

England, 21, repeatedly insisted that her actions were dictated by "persons in my higher chain of command."

In the photos, England is seen smiling, cigarette in her mouth, as she leans forward and points at the genitals of a naked, hooded Iraqis. Another photo taken at Abu Ghraib shows her holding a leash that encircles the neck of a naked Iraqi man lying on his side.

"I was instructed by persons in higher rank to stand there and hold this leash and look at the camera," she said.

"We thought that's how they did it," England said. "We're not trained as MI or CIA -- mind games, intimidation, it sounded pretty typical to us."

England said the actions depicted in the photos were intended to put psychological pressure on the Iraqi prisoners.

"Well, I mean, they [the photos] were for psy-op reasons," she said.
posted by Kevin at 4:58 PM

Seymour Hersh Unfurls on Rumsfeld :.

The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld�s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of �lite combat units, and hurt America�s prospects in the war on terror.
posted by Kevin at 3:49 PM

Bargins: U.S. Military Trying to Buy-Off Iraqi Survivors :.

This story represents the epitome of America's depravity and belief in the primacy of money. For Americans, money is the end and the means. Money is why we do most of what we do. It makes perfect sense that U.S. Military Psychological Warfare theorists devised this half-cocked plan. The flaw, however, exists in assuming that the Iraqi people have the same shallow values as Americans:

In accordance with the brutal accounting of modern combat, cash payments were made Thursday to people in this small village who suffered during recent fighting between U.S. Marines and insurgents in nearby Fallouja.

The village leader received $15,000 on behalf of residents in compensation for dead livestock, uprooted trees, damaged fields and other losses. The Marines tried to bargain him down to $10,000, but he stood firm.

The son of a man killed by gunfire while driving in a battle zone received $2,500. And a man who said his 7-year-old daughter was killed as she tended the family's sheep also received $2,500.
posted by Kevin at 5:41 AM

Another Dumb Idea: Smart Roads :.

Now, after perfecting illuminated markers that are embedded in the road surface to guide motorists through bad weather or warn of dangerous conditions, Mr. Dicks's company, Astucia Traffic Management Systems, is going a step further. Its latest creation is an embedded stud equipped with a camera that catches speeders, monitors traffic for criminals or stolen cars and even checks for bald tires on the fly.
posted by Kevin at 6:52 PM

Sex Magic Rituals in Abu Ghraib Prison!? :.

This New York Post article goes from sounding like an account of depraved idiots to something else... like some kind of strange sexual ritual:

Iraq's feared Abu Ghraib jail was one big sex romp - sometimes by candlelight with an audience watching, U.S. troops said yesterday.

Sex and alcohol were commonplace, and soldiers frequently set up candlelit rooms for voyeuristic sex shows, said a soldier who served at the notorious prison.

"There were lots of affairs. There was all kinds of adultery and alcoholism and all kinds of crap going on," said Dave Bischel, a National Guardsman with the 870th Military Police unit, who returned home from Abu Ghraib last month.

"There was a bed found in one of the abandoned buildings. There was a mattress on the ground. They had chairs all circled around it and candles all over the place," said Bischel, adding the chairs were "obviously for an audience."

Not knowing much about sexual rituals, thank you very much, I started typing words from the article into Google; sexual magic ritual candles circle etc.

Well, well, well...

I found a handy little essay called Invocation of the Demon-Brother: A Sadeo-Sex Magical Working that seems to provide some insights:

The purpose of this working is for a magician to identify and invoke the powers of his demon-brother. This is not a 'binding' in the usual sense but the beginnings of a mutual partnership whereby the magician gains a demonic ally to assist him in his works and in turn, 'feeds' this ally by sacrifices � offerings of pain or sexual energy, or by providing a vessel through which his demon-brother can enjoy the carnal world.

All workings open with Rite of the Averse Star. [pentagram] A short outline of this rite follows.

The Averse Star is the central rite of the Brotherhood of Lucifer, an affirmation of kinship with Lucifer and the fallen ones. This rite always takes place within a circle of candles, which provide a 'flicker' effect enabling celebrants to clairvoyantly see the demon-horde who gather beyond the circle. Unlike the 'banishing rituals' used in Western Magick, the object of the Averse Star is to 'thin' the veils between the worlds, and allow the free exchange of 'enthusiasm' between the human participants and their demonic kin.

The temple used for this series of workings is a large cellar beneath the lodge-house. [A prison is a type of lodge-house.] A permanent magical circle 9' in diameter is inscribed on the floor of this chamber. This circle is ringed with candles. In the centre of the circle is a triangle, within which is a low altar (a leather-topped seat) [how about an old mattress?] over which the recipient of the rite may be placed. Shackles around the altar enable the magician to be bound in place. A mirror is placed at the apex of the triangle and positioned so that the recipient can view his or her own face.
posted by Kevin at 4:03 PM

Thy Will Be Done: Was the Berg PSYOP Also a Ritual Killing? :. (mp3)

Irish researcher, Fintan Dunne, has extracted the last few seconds of audio from the Berg execution video. I'm relatively convinced that I'm hearing, "Thy will be done." I found different sources of the video and listened all the way through to the end. Indeed, this enigmatic phrase is present.

What do you think?

Are there any Cryptogon readers out there who have done research into ritual killings? The reason I'm asking is because I think it would be interesting to know which flavor of black death magic these maniacs are following. Whatever it is, I think this would be the same version of the "religion" that the elite enablers, like Bush/Cheney/Kerry/Clinton et al. follow.

If we can determine which "book" these freaks are following, perhaps we can gain some insights into what their plans are and more about their modus operandi.

Questions:

Is there any occult significance in the fact that Berg was beheaded (as opposed to being stabbed, slashed or some other method)?

Is there anything in the text of what what the killer read that serves as an incantation? If so, from where is this derived? Give me an exact source. Don't just say, "This is Satan worship." Book and verse, please... spell name, number, eye of newt, toil and trouble, weird vats full of stuff, boil and bubble, etc.

There are five people involved with killing Berg. Is this a possible reference to the five sided pentagram?

This is more of an observation than a question: The prominent colors worn by the killers are black red and white. These colors play a prominent role in any group that dabbles in black magic and weird rituals. The Catholic Church, the Third Reich and even run of the mill Satanists are some examples.
posted by Kevin at 2:04 PM

Berg PSYOP Summary on Alex Jones :.

Alex Jones has most of it. I would add:

Pictures of the chairs. Alex mentions the chairs, but take a look for yourself. I know. I know. The same chairs are probably all over Iraq. But are they? I've seen that chair for sale outside grocery stores here in the U.S. Are those chairs common in Iraq? Or did the U.S. military bring them along?

The ring. Executioner wore gold ring - forbidden by Islam:

One of the clues the FBI and CIA is studying is the large gold ring Zarqawi is wearing on his right hand, giving off a glare several times during the six-minute tape.

The accent. Berg's killer isn't Zarqawi. The speaker in the tape is not speaking with a Jordanian accent. Zarqawi is a Jordanian.

Michael Berg's comments. What the hell does this mean?

"Nicholas Berg died for the sins of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld," Michael Berg said. "The al-Qaida people are probably just as bad as they are, but this administration did this."
posted by Kevin at 5:00 PM

World Bank Corruption May Top $100 Billion :.

They want you to believe that this is all some big mistake. *gasp* The corruption must stop! It's so terrible!

Just like the torture in Iraq is an aberration...

You see, the Elite buy off corrupt officials in developing countries in order to INSURE that legitimate social and infrastructure programs never take place. It's payola. World Bank "loans" are made to THE MOST CRIMINALLY CORRUPT PEOPLE IN THE WORLD! But you better believe that they will buy U.S. made weapons, and other "tie aid"* items on the World Bank spreadsheets. This is yet another way of funneling taxpayer money to corporations.

And it's all fun and games as long as these target states allow foreign corporations to run roughshod over their land, stealing natural resources and enslaving people. If some leader decides, "Enough is enough," well, that's when the U.S. Marines go in.

$100 billion, $200 billion... It doesn't matter. The purpose of setting up the World Bank in the first place was to facilitate a wholesale theft of what was left to steal in the world! The real question should be, what did these "corrupt" billions yield in terms of corporate profits? Ahhhh, well, I'm not going to attempt any exact figures, but you're surly talking trillions of dollars since the inception of these multilateral banking swindles:

Corrupt use of World Bank funds may exceed $100 billion and while the institution has moved to combat the problem, more must be done, the chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee said on Thursday.

Sen. Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican, charged that "in its starkest terms, corruption has cost the lives of uncounted individuals contending with poverty and disease."

He commended World Bank President James Wolfensohn for bringing greater attention to the issue, but said, "Corruption remains a serious problem."

Lugar opened a hearing on corruption at the multilateral development banks, the first public examination in an ongoing Senate investigation.

He cited experts who calculated that between $26 billion and $130 billion of the money lent by the World Bank for development projects since 1946 has been misused. In 2003, the bank distributed $18.5 billion in developing countries.

Jeffrey Winters, an associate professor at Northwestern University, said his research suggested corruption wasted about $100 billion of World Bank funds, and when other multilateral development banks are included, the total rises to about $200 billion.

* Monetary aid that is made to a state contingent on that state's agreement to buy specific goods and services from lender states. The U.S. is the largest contributor to World Bank programs. U.S. corporations, therefore, are the primary beneficiaries of World Bank "loans."
posted by Kevin at 1:37 PM

The Israeli High-Speed Pursuit Story :.

Extreme weirdness:

Two Israelis driving a moving van were arrested in Tennessee last Saturday after leading police on a high-speed chase, marking at least the third time since 9/11 that Israelis in moving vans suspected of espionage in the U.S. have been taken into custody.

Taken into custody in the incident were Israeli nationals Shmuel Dahan and Almaliach Naor. In the wallet of 23-year old Dahan, an Israeli military veteran living in Miami Beach, police discovered a "Learn to Fly in Florida" business card.

More: POLITICALLY CONNECTED ISRAELIS! :.

The leader of the two Israelis arrested after leading police on a high speed chase in a moving van last Saturday in rural Tennessee is the son of the spokesman for the Likud Party of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the MadCowMorningNews has learned.

The arrested Israeli 'mover,' Shmuel Dahan, 23, is himself a former spokesman, for the National Union of Israeli Students which represents the country's 150,000 university students.

News that one of the two Israeli 'movers' belonged to that country's political elite might have proven useful in the criminal investigation underway in rural North Carolina and Tennessee, where the two men led authorities on a high-speed chase in a rented moving van last weekend.

However, the investigation was halted Wednesday, after the men were released from Unicol County Jail to the custody of federal officials from the INS, where they face only a deportation hearing.

"They�re taking it out of my jurisdiction," stated Sheriff Kent Harris, who apprehended the men last Saturday after a high speed chase on a little-used state highway.

"We may never know what they were doing."
posted by Kevin at 7:59 AM

U.S. Department of Justice Hits Cryptogon

Yesterday, I mentioned that the NSA was looking for info related to cyberwar on Cryptogon, but that they didn't download my essay on the subject.

This morning, someone at the Department of Justice conducted this Google search on Sean Gorman. The DOJ user DID download my cyberwar essay. (This is why I locked the essay; so the disclaimer couldn't be separated from the "possible terrorist scenario" section.)

This is interesting, since I was just discussing Sean Gorman and this very same cyberwar essay over Yahoo (unencrypted) chat with someone two days ago. Coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not.

Do I realize that my Yahoo chat sessions are open to surveillance?

Yes.

Do I care?

No, because I'm not afraid of the bozos. Besides, I haven't done anything wrong.

Here's a hint to federal agents, just in case you get any weird thoughts about me: I have nothing to say to you, so don't bother emailing me, calling me or showing up to my house. Remember how John Young dealt with you? Well, I plan on taking a page out of his play book if you people feel the need to interact with me. What this means is that all of my readers will know EVERYTHING.

So, feel free to check the archive section, if you want. There's almost two years worth of stuff for you to pour over.

Related: U.S. DOJ Host

[13/May/2004:07:43:53 -0600] wdcsun16.usdoj.gov 149.101.1.116
posted by Kevin at 6:48 AM

Abu Ghraib: Freak Orgy!? :.

Depraved, white trash sex acts, rape and torture... We're never going to hear the end of this. Here's the formula: This is Michael Jackson X OJ Simpson to the 10th power all over unspeakable war crimes.

If you have kids, pull the TV and Internet connections out of the wall. Consider sending them into the forest to be raised by wolves:

Shocking shots of sexcapades involving Pfc. Lynndie England were among the hundreds of X-rated photos and videos from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal shown to lawmakers in a top-secret Capitol conference room yesterday.

"She was having sex with numerous partners. It appeared to be consensual," said a lawmaker who saw the photos.

And, videos showed the disgraced soldier - made notorious in a photo showing her holding a leash looped around an Iraqi prisoner's neck - engaged in graphic sex acts with other soldiers in front of Iraqi prisoners, Pentagon officials told NBC Nightly News.

"Almost everybody was naked all the time," another lawmaker said.

Many members of Congress left the 45-minute viewing session early, thereby missing the porno performance by England, but there were enough other images of torture, humiliation and intimidation to sicken anyone.
posted by Kevin at 6:14 AM

Wholesale Prices Shoot Up 0.7 Percent :.

Oh yeah, baby, here it comes. Make your time:

Wholesale prices shot up by 0.7 percent in April, the largest increase in a year, propelled by higher gasoline costs and the biggest jump in dairy product prices since 1946.

The increase in the Producer Price Index came after wholesale prices rose by 0.5 percent in March, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The latest PPI report, which measures prices before they reach store shelves, provided fresh evidence that inflation is awakening after a long slumber.
posted by Kevin at 6:09 AM

CIA: Torture as Official Policy :.

Knowing what we all know about the NY Times, take this and multiply it by 1000:

The Central Intelligence Agency has used coercive interrogation methods against a select group of high-level leaders and operatives of Al Qaeda that have produced growing concerns inside the agency about abuses, according to current and former counterterrorism officials.

At least one agency employee has been disciplined for threatening a detainee with a gun during questioning, they said.

In the case of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a high-level detainee who is believed to have helped plan the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, C.I.A. interrogators used graduated levels of force, including a technique known as "water boarding," in which a prisoner is strapped down, forcibly pushed under water and made to believe he might drown.

These techniques were authorized by a set of secret rules for the interrogation of high-level Qaeda prisoners, none known to be housed in Iraq, that were endorsed by the Justice Department and the C.I.A. The rules were among the first adopted by the Bush administration after the Sept. 11 attacks for handling detainees and may have helped establish a new understanding throughout the government that officials would have greater freedom to deal harshly with detainees.

Defenders of the operation said the methods stopped short of torture, did not violate American anti-torture statutes, and were necessary to fight a war against a nebulous enemy whose strength and intentions could only be gleaned by extracting information from often uncooperative detainees. Interrogators were trying to find out whether there might be another attack planned against the United States.

The methods employed by the C.I.A. are so severe that senior officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation have directed its agents to stay out of many of the interviews of the high-level detainees, counterterrorism officials said. The F.B.I. officials have advised the bureau's director, Robert S. Mueller III, that the interrogation techniques, which would be prohibited in criminal cases, could compromise their agents in future criminal cases, the counterterrorism officials said.
posted by Kevin at 2:32 AM

Last 24 Hours: Irish, British and U.S. Government Hits to Cryptogon

jaffwa.staffordshire.gov.uk (Looking for info on hits from U.S. .mil domains.)

tias-gw7.treas.gov (Looking for info on the Moscow theater siege.)

h1.vpn.gov.ie (Looking for info on Bush's links to Nazis.)

jadegold.ncsc.mil (This is the U.S. National Security Agency. User conducted this Google search. He/she/it didn't grab my cyberwar essay, though. Darn. That would have been a good story to tell in a camp ringed by razor wire someday.)

gate1.dsid52.usmc.mil (Tired of looking through Apache logs.)

lr12249.littlerock.af.mil (Tired of looking through Apache logs.)
posted by Kevin at 5:14 PM

Get Chipped, Then Charge without Plastic - You Are the Card :.

Getting chipped is so hip, sexy and cool! That's the message, anyway.

It's surreal, finally watching it happen. I've been hearing warnings about this for 15 years. Well, it's here. They're finally doing it:

For instance, there's the important and deeply scientific experiment being conducted among the barely clothed patrons of Baja Beach Club in Barcelona. They're getting electronic credit cards implanted under their skin.

Beautiful club-goers have a problem: If you're going to wear a halter top and micro-skirt, there's not much of anywhere to put a wallet. And who wants to carry a purse when you're there to dance? Luckily, a company called VeriChip this year unveiled a solution based on radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology.

It's a slender glass capsule about as long as a dime is wide. Inside sits a computer chip, which stores a unique code that can identify an individual � sort of an electronic Social Security number. The capsule also holds a tiny antenna, which can radio that code to a receiver many feet away.

At the Baja Beach Club, Tuesdays are VeriChip implantation days. Stop in and a "nurse" � the club's word � uses a syringe to inject a VeriChip capsule under your skin. There don't seem to be any rules about where on the body it has to be placed. If you think this sounds like something you'd never do, then you're not the kind of person who goes to clubs wearing your bestest nose ring.

Once implanted, you become your own credit card. Need to pay for a drink? Wave your implant near a reader, and you're done. VeriChip has dreams of going global with its "human implantable ID technology" � once implanted, you could wave a body part to pay for a burger at Wendy's, a beer at a baseball game, or whatever.

There are a few kinks to be worked out, like the fact that you can't turn the chip off.
posted by Kevin at 4:40 PM

Mexican Military UFO Story

Story on: CNN, MSNBC, Independent, U.K., Rense, etc. etc. Take your pick, it's all over the place.

I make a point of NOT posting UFO stories. And this one was no different. I wasn't going to mention it.

Well, I just saw it televised on CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight, so... Beheadings yesterday, UFOs today... What's next? Why are these memes being driven by major media? Why now?


The Mexican Air Force has released footage of what appear to be unidentified flying objects picked up by an infrared camera as they whizzed around a surveillance plane.
posted by Kevin at 4:07 PM

Apple: Add Cluster to Cart, Buy Now :.

The Apple Workgroup Cluster for Bioinformatics provides a faster, easier and lower-cost path to scientific discovery. You�ll get rapid access to data analysis with minimal administrative burden in one comprehensive, industry-leading solution. All starting at $27,999.

Do-It-Yourself Cluster
You don�t have to be a computer scientist to set up a fully functioning UNIX-based computational cluster. Apple has assembled the parts you need in one easy-to-set up, easy-to-use cluster powerhouse. In about 30 minutes you�ll be ready to run BLAST, HMMER, fasta and more from a powerful, easy-to-use Web interface � the setup process installs over 200 bioinformatics applications on your cluster.
posted by Kevin at 4:01 PM

Eli Lilly, Zyprexa, & the Bush Family :.

More than one journalist has uncovered corrupt connections between the Bush Family, psychiatry, and Eli Lilly & Company, the giant pharmaceutical corporation. While previous Lillygates have been more colorful, Lilly�s soaking state Medicaid programs with Zyprexa�its blockbuster, antipsychotic drug�may pack the greatest financial wallop. Worldwide in 2003, Zyprexa grossed $4.28 billion, accounting for slightly more than one-third of Lilly�s total sales. In the United States in 2003, Zyprexa grossed $2.63 billion, 70 percent of that attributable to government agencies, mostly Medicaid.
posted by Kevin at 3:01 AM

Petabox :.

Check the date, it's not April 1. We are entering an era in which computers are going to start having weird capabilities. Now, if a private company thought this thing up and built it, try to imagine what the NSA has humming along in their football field sized Ops centers:

The petabox by the Internet Archive is a machine designed to safely store and process one petabyte of information (a petabyte is a million gigabytes). The goals-- and current design points are:
* Low power-- 6kWatts per rack, and 60kWatts for the whole system
* High density-- 100 Terabytes per rack
* Local computing to process the data-- 800 low-end PC's
* Multi-OS possible, linux standard
* Colocation friendly-- requires our own rack to get 100TB/rack, or 50TB in a standard rack
* Shipping container friendly-- Able to be run in a 20' by 8' by 8' shipping container
* Easy Maintainance-- one system administrator per petabyte
* Software to automate mirroring with itself
* Inexpensive design
* Inexpensive storage

This thing is actually powerful enough to run Microsoft Longhorn. *snicker*
posted by Kevin at 5:02 PM

American Execution Situation...

I watched the unedited video of this execution. I was planning to link to it, but after watching it, I decided not to. I don't know what to tell you people. I don't have anything to add. What's the point of speculation? This is probably some sort of PSYOP thing, but I'm starting to wonder: Why try to understand this? It doesn't matter who is behind it.

We're all trapped on a bus that's ghost riding down a steep hill. The steering wheel is gone, and so are the brakes. We might as well enjoy the scenery on the way down. There's no reason to have nightmares before the real nightmare begins.

Here's the clearing house of possible theories from Alex Jones, if you're interested. I don't have the energy to sort this nonsense out. I think the facts are unknowable on this one.
posted by Kevin at 5:00 PM

Church Group Wants U.N. to Take Over Iraq :.

Alex Jones called this one long before anyone else; over a year ago. Paul, of Aftermath News, started saying it as soon as the torture story broke. HAHAHA! I can almost hear Alex Jones and my lunatic Christian readers (you know I love you guys) going nuts over this one. While I don't always agree with the Bible crowd, I don't always disagree with them either. (You won't see me in that line-up to get chipped.) You've got to hand it to these guys: mainstream Christianity is starting to look more and more like what some Christians call, "The Anti Christ Religion," which is part of a U.N. based global government.

Whatever the details, I'm with them on this: It's The End!

A national religious group representing 36 Protestant and Orthodox denominations said Tuesday that U.S. foreign policy is "dangerous" and urged President Bush to turn over authority in Iraq to the United Nations.

The National Council of Churches, which has been highly critical of the war, acknowledged that Christians disagree on the issue, but said that giving control to the U.N. was the only way to create "lasting peace."
posted by Kevin at 4:50 AM

Lou Dobbs and Bill Moyers Unfurl on CNN :.

Lou Dobbs' level of insubordination is insane!

DOBBS: And your book is, I must say, I consider myself a rather straightforward fellow, but you get right to it, in talking about the idea that democracy is dying. What do you mean by that?

MOYERS: Well, I mean that the soul of democracy is representative government. We can't all make policy. We can't all keep a watch on things. We elect representatives who go to Washington and we expect them to make their best measured judgment in our behalf. We won't agree with them all the time. We won't disagree with them all the time.

But when they go to Washington now, Lou, you know as well as I do that they more often follow the dictates of their big donors than they do of their voters. Whether it's in our Middle East policy, tax policy, trade policy or whatever. The people who buy access are the ones who get the last word. And that's what I mean by that. The rich have every right to buy as many homes as they want, as many cars as they want, as many gizmos as they want, but they do not have the right to buy more democracy than the rest of us.

Book: Moyers on America: A Journalist and His Times by Bill Moyers
posted by Kevin at 4:33 AM

Leaked Military Email Re: Taguba Report :.

If this is real, and I have no reason to believe that it isn't, it is, simultaneously, one of the funniest and most pathetic things I have ever read in my life. At some point, someone on the inside of this beast might really let some of the family jewels slip out onto the floor for everyone to see. Maybe Cheney has an Internet Kill Switch in his undisclosed location (SiteR).

On a serious note, I hope this indicates that people are waking up inside the U.S. Government, and that they understand that the only way to save the village is to burn it down (to put the situation in terms the Department of Defense can understand):

SUMMARY
Fox News and other media outlets are distributing the Tugabe report (spelling is approximate for reasons which will become obvious momentarily). Someone has given the news media classified information and they are distributing it. THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS REPORT IS CLASSIFIED. ALL ISD CUSTOMERS SHOULD:

1) NOT GO TO FOX NEWS TO READ OR OBTAIN A COPY
2) NOT comment on this to anyone, friends, family etc.
3) NOT delete the file if you receive it via e-mail, but
4) CALL THE ISD HELPDESK AT 602-2627 IMMEDIATELY

This leakage will be investigated for criminal prosecution. If you don't have the document and have never had legitimate access, please do not complicate the investigative processes by seeking information. Again, THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS REPORT IS CLASSIFIED; DO NOT GO TO FOX NEWS TO READ OR OBTAIN A COPY.

Research Credit: KH
posted by Kevin at 4:15 AM

Monsanto Abandons Worldwide GM Wheat Project :.

For the moment, we shuffle back a few inches from the edge of the abyss. If you think Monsanto will just throw up its hands, take its ball and go home... you're dead wrong. This corporation is the epitome of evil. And evil always comes back to fight another day:

Monsanto has abandoned plans to introduce GM wheat on to the world market despite spending seven years and hundreds of millions of dollars developing the crop.

The decision, announced yesterday, is a major fillip for the anti-GM lobby and follows pressure from US and Canadian farmers who feared the introduction of GM wheat would lead to the collapse of their billion-dollar markets in Europe and Japan.

Monsanto, the world's biggest seller of GM seeds, had looked to the development and introduction of GM wheat to fulfil a dream of dominating the world's bread market.

The company had proved that GM wheat increased yields by 5% to 15% but consumer resistance to the idea of eating GM bread - particularly in Europe - meant the biggest part of the US export market would disappear overnight.
posted by Kevin at 4:08 AM

Mario Savio Audio Clip :. (mp3)

Man!!! Savio's level of insubordination was insane! This stood the hair on my arms on end when I heard it!

Feel free to send this to your PHB. It might rattle his or her chicklets after the morning espresso has had a chance to percolate:

"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even tacitly take part; and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all."
posted by Kevin at 3:54 AM

ANOTHER Cryptogon Reader Contributes $25

This is incredible. I'm ready to call this an outpouring of generosity.

In the last week, alone, thank you:

EA $25
AS $10
JS $25
EB $50

If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to know what it was that convinced you folks to contribute. Not just the four readers above, but all of you guys who have contrinuted. I'm curious, on a personal level, more than anything else. There are, at minimum, about 500 REGULAR readers of Cryptogon. In nearly two years, slightly more than a dozen of you have chosen to actively support this site with cold, hard cash. Considering the fact that there are between 600 and 700 unique visits to this site per day, any contribution is a big deal. A couple of you have given $50. Mike sends me $50 every three months! I've noticed that several cash contributors came from women (including an ex girlfriend), although I get virtually no email from women. Karin, however, routinely sends articles and has contributed money.

It's weird, thinking about what would be possible with money. I don't think about it too often, but seeing as how my Cryptogon warchest is up in the $180 range, I closed my eyes for a few seconds and wondered what we could do if the balance in my account was $180,000, or $1,800,000...

What would be our first project? Provide potable water systems for any one of about 100 countries in the world that need them? Design a car that runs on water and sunlight? Produce a non-fiction Matrix movie? Build a weird village, complete with a yurt complex, organic farm, chicken tractors, windmills, fuel cells, composting toilets and a school to teach others about living in a sane manner.

Any of these things are easily doable...with some money.

Doesn't it seem strange that people who have the kind of money that could make these things happen, just don't do it? The rich people I know seem most concerned with not appearing to be rich and never saying anything (in public) to offend anyone. These are real rich people, not leased BMW "rich" people. I don't think that all rich people are evil, but are they afraid? Are they ignorant? Are they content with the way things are? Are they physically prevented from upsetting the apple cart? Does someone sit down with people like BGates or MDell and say something like, "No fuel cell cars, or else."????

Maybe I'm so willing to do things that will upset the apple cart because I have nothing to lose. (And besides, this show is coming down before our eyes.) Rich people have a lot to lose. I'm wondering if my priorities would be different if I had money. I mean, would I really live in a yurt if I had a million dollars!? I guess I might go for a nicer geodome thing, or a professionally designed underground house. I'd buy the $5000 Thermomax solar hotwater system rather than the half ass, wood stove/copper pipe thing that I'll probably wind up doing. A fuel cell instead of lead acid batteries to store up the solar, wind and hydro power. That's about the extent of my lunatic fringe, extravagant fantasies. I have no desire for expensive cars, big houses, or 60" plasma screen TVs. I did have one experience with a "luxury" item, though. I used to wear a Rolex watch. I lived on the money from the sale of that Rolex for about three months. That's fine because my 15 year old Casio G-Shock keeps better time.

I read an article a while ago about a company called Orbital Development. They are looking for someone willing to spend $6 million to have them shoot a payload of stuff to the moon. Yep. Just crash land a pile of stuff on the surface of the moon for $6 million. Here's what the president thinks about the potential investor:

Gregory Nemitz, president of Orbital Development, said: "The MoonCrash Project would probably be attractive to some bored rich guy, who is tired of playing with his radio-controlled model airplanes and wants to move up to the next level."

Well, if any "bored" rich guys or girls want to do something substantive with their money, instead of just blowing it, I've got a few ideas that you might find interesting. Hell, if these Orbital Development jokers have the balls to ask for $6 million to launch Bozo's rocket ship on a pointless, doomed mission, I don't feel bad tossing around the idea of someone funding a project that could potentially do some good in the world.
posted by Kevin at 3:23 AM

U.S. Powerless to Halt Iraq Net Images :.

I don't think I totally agree with this assessment of the situation in this piece; mainly, that the U.S. can't control its own C4I (Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence) systems. Remember, the Pentagon document from 1995, Strategic Assessment: The Internet. The DoD knew, early on, that the Internet would be used for PSYOPS. Charles Swett states:

The Internet could also be used offensively as an additional medium in psychological operations campaigns and to help achieve unconventional warfare objectives. Used creatively as an integral asset, the Internet can facilitate many DoD operations and activities.

Armed with this knowledge, do you honestly believe that the military hasn't thought about the implications of allowing soldiers to use open Internet connections in a warzone!? Impossible. The article has a cavalier tone about the use of the Internet by troops. It's almost as if the author of the piece assumes that soldiers have a right to use the Internet to talk to their families. If the military was ACTUALLY concerned about PSYOPS implications of Internet use, why is it available? Why not simply eliminate it? Any number of schemes could be implemented to lock down the systems such that only plain text emails of a certain length (with content screened by AI filters) could be sent. Etc. Etc. Perhaps, however, there is a PSYOPS objective in allowing the soldiers to use the Internet.

We, the public, as consumers of allegedly "unauthorized" materials, must use our skills of discernment more than ever. Remember, the DoD built the technologies that became the Internet. They thought it all up in the first place. They have roomfulls of men and women who design perception management campaigns and write propaganda as their full time jobs. That is, they think about attaining strategic objectives via the use of memes. Since the Internet is the ultimate meme propagation system, it would be foolish to believe that the U.S. military and intelligence community have not done heavy research into the SIW (Strategic Information Warfare) implications of this technology.

Some intelligence operations are often predicated on the fact that the target of a meme payload believes that they have come into possession of privileged information by some unauthorized means. This came to mind as most people (me included) automatically assumed that the torture images we have all been bombarded with lately are, 1) authentic, and 2) unauthorized.

Consider the fact that the torture story grew legs and ran because the television enabled media took it from the Internet backwaters of sites like mine, and thousands of others, and made it a "real" story in the consciousness of Joe and Jane Sixpack. Why did that happen? Why did they start driving that meme? The same types of horrific torture occurs routinely in U.S. prisons. Why isn't that a big story?

Bottom line: Do I think the pictures from Iraq are authentic? Yes.

Do I think their release was unauthorized? No. They let this stuff out. These are scientifically engineered stimuli that were designed to provoke unthinking, emotional responses. Not only is this a setup, but it's an inside job. And the media are fully in on it.

I tend to believe that if U.S. intelligence wanted to keep what happened at Abu Ghraib a secret, most of us wouldn't have ever heard of the place. Even if the material eventually found its way onto the Internet, without the television meme driving, these data would have simply languished in obscurity on the Internet.

For example, there are thousands of sites dedicated to covering the chemtrail situation, yet you NEVER see anything in the media about it, unless it's some silly thing trying to maintain the witless, status quo dogma on the subject. There are all order of sites that showcase easily viable alternative energy technologies. Where is the hard driving, never ending news coverage?

No... It's TORTURE, TORTURE, TORTURE. Standard operating procedure of U.S. forces/clients for easily 50 years. Taught to special forces as a matter of routine. So, why now? Why is this a big deal to the media at this point?

Mr Rumsfeld was indignant at the publication of such images: "We're functioning with peacetime constraints, with legal requirements, in a wartime situation in the Information Age, where people are running around with digital cameras and taking these unbelievable photographs and then passing them off, against the law, to the media, to our surprise."

However, he admitted that he had not realized the seriousness of the allegations until the pictures were leaked to the media.

The internet has been acting as an unofficial clearing-house for all sorts of unapproved images of conflict in Iraq.
posted by Kevin at 10:04 PM

Top Brass 'Picked Man Who Ordered Torture' :.

They'll need a Neo-Oli North to fall on his sword; he'll say, "I did it. I ordered it." Just like the Contra operation and the rest of it, this stuff originates with the president and is carried out through the NSC (National Security Council):

THE torture tactics used to "soften up" Iraqi detainees at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib jail began under orders from the highest level of the US defence administration, it was claimed yesterday.

The creation of torture units was the consequence of orders by the Defence Department � headed by Secretary Donald Rumsfeld � to prise information out of prisoners.
posted by Kevin at 5:00 PM

Oral Sex Lessons for U.K. Teens :.

The Brits are consistently out in front of the rest of the world, in terms of the degenerate race to oblivion. Get the kids hooked on speed (Ritalin) by age five, stick a mobile phone to their skulls by age ten and get them going down on each other by age 15! The End:

Encouraging schoolchildren to experiment with oral sex could prove the most effective way of curbing teenage pregnancy rates, a government study has found.

Pupils under 16 who were taught to consider other forms of 'intimacy' such as oral sex were significantly less likely to engage in full intercourse, it was revealed.

Britain's teenage pregnancy rate is the highest in Europe. In 2002 there were 39,286 teen pregnancies recorded. The government has spent more than �60 million to tackle the problem but so far failed to halt the rise.

A sex education course developed by Exeter University trains teachers to talk to teenagers about 'stopping points' before full sex.
posted by Kevin at 12:18 PM

Chemtrail Story Pretending to be a Contrail Story :.

Oh sure... all of those are just normal old contrails. You bet your bippy. How do these rocket scientists explain the fact that normal contrails disappear in seconds, while other jets, in the sky at the same time, are leaving grid patterns that stick around for up to an hour or more, and then turn the entire sky a grey/green color? Hmm...
posted by Kevin at 6:14 AM

Former U.S. Diplomat: Irish Media Responsible for 9/11 :.

Have you noticed that the pro-war and 9/11 "official story" mythologists are starting to sound like psychopaths in a nut house?

Oh yeah, the Irish media would be the first place I'd be looking to place blame for 9/11. HAHAHAHA! And what?! Depleted uranium is not a toxic substance!? This guy would have you believe that sprinkling it on your corn flakes would be a great idea. Man, at this point, I have heard it all.

It's easier for George Depmsey to believe that members of the Irish media have gone insane rather than admit to himself that he has been serving the moral equivalent of the Third Reich for his entire career. The shrill, hysterical bloviation emerging from these nutters would almost be funny if they were representing some dodgy banana republic, with corrupt officials at every level, and a capital that resembled an armed camp. Ohhh, uh... woops.

Well, at least the U.S. banana republic has nuclear weapons! Does that count for anything?

FYI: If I had a way of surviving there, I'd move to Ireland in a second. I like it there. And it probably wouldn't come as a shock to Mr. Dempsey that I like RTE and the Irish Times can be pretty good. Oh yeah, these are hot beds of enemy combatant activity for sure:

A former American diplomat has accused the Irish media of playing a part in the terrorist attacks of September 11th by stirring up "anti-Americanism" internationally.

Mr George Dempsey, first secretary of the US embassy in Dublin from 1988 to 1992, said "dishonest" stories circulated by Irish newspapers and broadcasters had helped to fuel terrorism in the Arab world.

A spokeswoman for the US embassy said Mr Dempsey was entitled to his views, but "his views are entirely his own, and he does not speak for the embassy".

In a book to be published next month, on the eve of President Bush's visit to Ireland, Mr Dempsey criticised what he described as "witless pandering to Arab irrationality and intransigence" in the Irish media.

Of the attacks on September 11th, he writes: "Let us be clear about this. The Irish media, in general, bear their share of responsibility for what happened in the United States.

"For far too long in this country there has been a prevailing view, which denigrates and condemns and even vilifies American foreign policy.

"Many of these venomous falsehoods - such as claims that hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed in the Gulf war - have continued to spill out over Irish airwaves this last week. The hatred of America, which drove the suicidal terrorists, doesn't flourish in a global vacuum."

Speaking to The Irish Times yesterday from his home in Sacramento, California, Mr Dempsey - who lived in Dublin for 15 years - said he did not object to criticism of US foreign policy. Rather, he opposed its "deliberate mischaracterisation" in the Irish media.

One "dishonest" claim widely asserted following the 1991 Gulf War was that depleted uranium shells were causing cancer in Iraq - a "scientific nonsense", he said. Another lie, he said, was "that UN sanctions were responsible for children being killed in Iraq when anyone who paid attention in the world knew it was Saddam's manipulation of the sanctions which caused the misery.

"Why do people say things they know not to be true? I offer a number of suggestions. People in authority in the media came of age intellectually when universities were heavily leftist, and lying about the United States is par for the course for liberal leftists, as it is for extremes on the right."

Same story on the Guardian.
posted by Kevin at 5:31 AM

Cryptogon Reader Contributes $25, Another Contributes $10

There have been more individual contributions over the last month than in the previous two years that I've been running Cryptogon. What's going on out there? I mean, I know what's going on, but why now? What's different? Whatever it is, thank you for your generosity.

Note on previous donations: I used $5.95 to buy a month subscription to prisonplanet.tv and I just sent $10 to Paul of Aftermath News Service. I know, it seems like I'm getting reckless with finances on this end, giving away $16 of YOUR money to other people out here on the edge. But this is the right thing to do, as these guys are working hard to bring this stuff out everyday.

Thanks again for your generosity.
posted by Kevin at 4:14 AM

Japanese Nikkei Drops Nearly 5% in One Session :.

Fasten your seat belts, return your seat backs to their upright position:

The yen slumped on the foreign exchange market on Monday as overseas investors continued to pull out of the Tokyo stock market.

The Nikkei 225 crashed 4.8 per cent overnight, its third straight session of heavy losses, amid concerns Japan's export-led recovery could be blown off course by ill winds from China, where the authorities are keen to damp growth, and the US, where borrowing costs may start to rise as early as June. The effects of rising oil prices, now at a 14-year high, also weighed on sentiment, particularly with Japan importing 100 per cent of its oil.
posted by Kevin at 4:10 AM

USA: Pattern of Brutality and Cruelty - War Crimes at Abu Ghraib :.

In an open letter to US President George W. Bush today, Amnesty International said that abuses allegedly committed by US agents in the Abu Ghraib facility in Baghdad were war crimes and called on the administration to fully investigate them to ensure that there is no impunity for anyone found responsible regardless of position or rank.

Amnesty International said that it has documented a pattern of abuse by US agents against detainees, including in Iraq and Afghanistan, stretching back over the past two years.

Despite claims this week by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld to be "stunned" by abuses in Abu Ghraib, and that these were an "exception" and "not a pattern or practice", Amnesty International has presented consistent allegations of brutality and cruelty by US agents against detainees at the highest levels of the US Government, including the White House, the Department of Defense, and the State Department for the past two years.

Last July, the organization raised allegations of torture and ill-treatment of Iraqi detainees by US and Coalition forces in a memorandum to the US Government and Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq. The allegations included beatings, electric shocks, sleep deprivation, hooding, and prolonged forced standing and kneeling. It received no response nor any indication from the administration or the CPA that an investigation took place.

Despite repeated requests, Amnesty International has been denied access to all US detention facilities.
posted by Kevin at 1:47 AM

Mistreatment of Prisoners Routine in U.S. :.

I mentioned this fact, almost in passing, a couple of days ago. If you were looking for some data to backup what I was saying, this NY Times article is actually decent.

Why should we assume that Iraqi prisoners of war/detainees/etc. should receive better treatment than American prisoners in American prisons?

When I took International Law in college, one of the concepts that I found interesting was the way the treatment of prisoners reflected a TRUER picture of the government in question. Guess who routinely scores at the bottom, in terms of prison conditions, along with China, Russia, etc.?

Physical and sexual abuse of prisoners, similar to what has been uncovered in Iraq, takes place in American prisons with little public knowledge or concern, according to corrections officials, inmates and human rights advocates.

In Pennsylvania and some other states, inmates are routinely stripped in front of other inmates before being moved to a new prison or a new unit within their prison. In Arizona, male inmates at the Maricopa County jail in Phoenix are made to wear women's pink underwear as a form of humiliation.

At Virginia's Wallens Ridge maximum security prison, new inmates have reported being forced to wear black hoods, in theory to keep them from spitting on guards, and said they were often beaten and cursed at by guards and made to crawl.

The corrections experts say that some of the worst abuses have occurred in Texas, whose prisons were under a federal consent decree during much of the time President Bush was governor because of crowding and violence by guards against inmates. Judge William Wayne Justice of Federal District Court imposed the decree after finding that guards were allowing inmate gang leaders to buy and sell other inmates as slaves for sex.

The experts also point out that the man who directed the reopening of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq last year and trained the guards there resigned under pressure as director of the Utah Department of Corrections in 1997 after an inmate died while shackled to a restraining chair for 16 hours. The inmate, who suffered from schizophrenia, was kept naked the whole time.
posted by Kevin at 11:52 PM

Acoustic Cryptanalysis :.

Just slide the food under the door:

A powerful method for extracting information from supposedly secure systems is side-channel attacks: cryptanalytic techniques that rely on information unintentionally leaked by computing devices. Most side-channel attack research has focused on electromagnetic emanations (TEMPEST), power consumption and, recently, diffuse visible light from CRT displays. The oldest eavesdropping channel, namely acoustic emanations, has received little attention. Our preliminary analysis of acoustic emanations from personal computers shows them to be a surprisingly rich source of information on CPU activity.
posted by Kevin at 11:47 PM

U.K. Forces Taught Torture Methods :.

The sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison was not an invention of maverick guards, but part of a system of ill-treatment and degradation used by special forces soldiers that is now being disseminated among ordinary troops and contractors who do not know what they are doing, according to British military sources.

The techniques devised in the system, called R2I - resistance to interrogation - match the crude exploitation and abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad.

One former British special forces officer who returned last week from Iraq, said: "It was clear from discussions with US private contractors in Iraq that the prison guards were using R2I techniques, but they didn't know what they were doing."

He said British and US military intelligence soldiers were trained in these techniques, which were taught at the joint services interrogation centre in Ashford, Kent, now transferred to the former US base at Chicksands.

"There is a reservoir of knowledge about these interrogation techniques which is retained by former special forces soldiers who are being rehired as private contractors in Iraq. Contractors are bringing in their old friends".

Using sexual jibes and degradation, along with stripping naked, is one of the methods taught on both sides of the Atlantic under the slogan "prolong the shock of capture", he said.
posted by Kevin at 4:04 AM

OFF THE RAILS: U.S. PERSONNEL MADE RAPE VIDEOS :.

Rumsfeld did not describe the photos, but U.S. military officials told NBC News that the unreleased images showed U.S. soldiers severely beating an Iraqi prisoner nearly to death, having sex with a female Iraqi female prisoner [this means rape, in case you were wondering] and "acting inappropriately with a dead body." The officials said there was also a videotape, apparently shot by U.S. personnel, showing Iraqi guards raping young boys.

Related: Limbaugh on Torturing Iraqis: U.S. Guards Were Just "Having a Good Time"
posted by Kevin at 7:29 PM

Rumsfeld on Unreleased Videos, Pictures: "They're Hard to Believe" :.

What does it tell you when a psychopath has difficulty dealing with the content of these materials?

HUNDREDS more photographs and at least two videos of abuse of Iraqi prisoners could worsen the scandal that has engulfed the US military, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned today, as he apologised for the scandal.

Mr Rumsfeld said he and General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, looked at all the images for the first time on Thursday US time (yesterday AEST) after days of trying to get copies from military investigators.

"If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse. That's just a fact," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"I mean, I looked at them last night, and they're hard to believe."

Mr Rumsfeld extended "my deepest apology" to Iraqis brutally abused in US military prisons and said he favoured compensating them for their suffering.

I find it interesting that Rumsfeld never apologized for the "care" and "humanity" he unleashed on Iraqi civilians in the earlier phases of this illegal and unnecessary slaughter.

My guess, if we are actually seeing the catalyst that will serve to get the U.N. into Iraq, is that the really shocking stuff will come out. It will be "leaked" on purpose.
posted by Kevin at 5:18 PM

Allegation: 12 Year Old Iraqi Girl Stripped Naked, Beaten by U.S. Troops :.

This is starting to sound like the accounts of Serb atrocities during the catastrophe in Yugoslavia. Russian soldiers in Chechnya rape both men and women. Is that where this is headed next?

The US military has said it will investigate claims by a former inmate of Abu Ghraib prison that a girl as young as 12 was stripped and beaten by military personnel.

Suhaib al-Baz, a journalist for the al-Jazeera television network, claims to have been tortured at the prison, based west of Baghdad, while held there for 54 days.

Mr al-Baz was arrested when reporting clashes between insurgents and coalition forces in November.

He said: "They brought a 12-year-old girl into our cellblock late at night. Her brother was a prisoner in the other cells.

"She was naked and screaming and calling out to him as they beat her. Her brother was helpless and could only hear her cries. This affected all of us because she was just a child.
posted by Kevin at 3:50 PM

Limbaugh on Torturing Iraqis: U.S. Guards Were Just "Having a Good Time" :.

There's a nice Skull and Bones reference in there, too:

Hours before President George W. Bush announced plans to address the Arab world to condemn the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. military personnel at the Abu Ghraib prison, Rush Limbaugh justified the U.S. guards' mistreatment of the Iraqis, stating that they were just "having a good time," and that their actions served as an "emotional release."
posted by Kevin at 3:47 PM

Secret GM pHarming Experiments in Germany :.

Seven of Germany's 16 states were revealed to be hosting secret trials of genetically modified crops after environmental activists destroyed a field of corn in Saxony-Anhalt, in the east of the country.

Saxony-Anhalt, which, with Bavaria, is one of two states to admit funding GM crop trials, said five other states were holding trials in 29 secret locations.

Saxony-Anhalt's economics minister, Horst Rehberger, said GM corn, which will be fed to cattle, was also being cultivated in Baden-W�rttemberg, Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony and Thuringia.

Germany's Green party, which is backing a tough genetic engineering law, said it was dismayed to discover from the media the extent of GM cultivation. The Greens are the junior partner in the ruling coalition.

"We were surprised not only to discover the number of trial fields but also the total size more than 300 hectares [750 acres] ... This is not just an experiment, they are growing the corn for profit," said a spokesperson.
posted by Kevin at 5:00 AM

F.A.A. Official Scrapped Tape of 9/11 Controllers' Statements :.

This is one for the I Shit You Not file:

At least six air traffic controllers who dealt with two of the hijacked airliners on Sept. 11, 2001, made a tape recording that same day describing the events, but the tape was destroyed by a supervisor without anyone making a transcript or even listening to it, the Transportation Department said in a report today.

The taping began before noon on Sept. 11 at the New York Air Route Traffic Control Center, in Ronkonkoma, on Long Island, where about 16 people met in a basement conference room known as "the Bat Cave" and passed around a microphone, each recalling his or her version of the events a few hours earlier.

But officials at the center never told higher-ups of the tape's existence, and it was later destroyed by an F.A.A. official described in the report as a quality-assurance manager there. That manager crushed the cassette in his hand, shredded the tape and dropped the pieces into different trash cans around the building, according to a report made public today by the inspector general of the Transportation Department.
posted by Kevin at 4:45 AM

Is it Time for Bush to Press the Panic Button? :.

Personally, I can't believe "it" hasn't happened already. Mock funerals for the next terrorist attack!

Bush may be thinking about hitting the "panic button".

What I refer to is, of course, a last ditch attempt to prop up his sagging poll numbers and revive support for the wars of conquest by staging yet another phony "terror" attack, framing it on the intended invadee. Planes crashing into buildings is now pass�, and repeating that stunt would only underscore the utter uselessness of the millions of dollars spent on increased airport security. So, scratch that one. Maybe a truck with a bomb in it on the Golden Gate Bridge? Those San Franciscans got lots of other bridges anyway and there are lots of great places for the news crews to shoot from at the Presidio. Ah, but maybe that's not scary enough. Not every city has a bridge, and Tacoma survived the collapse of "Galloping Gerty" without major trauma. Soooooooooo, mebbe a suitcase nuke welded to the keel of a cargo ship? Not scary enough; most of the nation is landlocked. They don't worry about cargo ships coming into town from far away. So, that leaves us with everyone's favorite boogeyman, BIOLOGICAL TERROR!
posted by Kevin at 4:37 AM

Keep Your Eyes on the Ball: Massive PSYOPs Underway

A year ago, Alex Jones predicted the events unfolding before our eyes right now. He said the U.S. would wind up being humiliated in Iraq and that the U.N. would be forced to take over as a result. This is exactly what is beginning to happen. The PSYOPs involving the release of the torture pictures from the prisons in Iraq is serving as the catalyst.

The fact of the matter is that the U.S. has been TRAINING torturers all over the planet for over 50 years, and the types of things that are happening in Iraq are standard operating procedure in many U.S. jails and prisons. So, ask yourself: What is the left hand doing while the right hand is waving at you, trying to get your attention?

U.S. = Bad Cop. U.N. = Good Cop.

I just hope the Iraqis remember what the U.N. has done to them since the end of the first Persian Gulf War. Somehow, I don't think they will ever be able to forget.
posted by Kevin at 3:58 AM

Cryptogon Reader Contributes $50

Thank you so much!
posted by Kevin at 3:55 AM

Quotes from Aftermath News Service

The Aftermath News Service is the best list that I'm aware of. I pull stories from it often. If you think you can take it, send an email with SUBSCRIBE as the subject to pjw56108 at yahoo dot com:

"The Iraqi people are now free. And they do not have to worry about the secret police coming after them in the middle of the night, and they don't have to worry about their husbands and brothers being taken off and shot, or their wives being taken to rape rooms. Those days are over."

- Paul Bremer, Administrator, Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority, Sept. 2, 2003

"Iraq is free of rape rooms and torture chambers."

- President Bush, remarks to 2003 Republican National Committee Presidential Gala, Oct. 8, 2003

"The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in time of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality."

- Dante, The Inferno
posted by Kevin at 3:42 AM

U.S. Outsourcing Torture :.

Extraordinary Rendition:

CIA director George Tenet let slip other revelations in his testimony to the 9-11 Commission, admissions that sharpen the contours of the shadowy intelligence practice called "extraordinary rendition."

The policy, codified in the late 1980s to allow U.S. law enforcement to apprehend wanted men in lawless states like Lebanon during its civil war, has emerged in recent years as one of America's key counterterrorism tools, and has now expanded in scope to include the transfer of terrorism suspects by U.S. intelligence agents to foreign countries for interrogation�and, say some insiders, torture prohibited inside this nation's borders.

Tenet testified that in an unspecified period before September 11, the U.S. had undertaken over 70 such renditions, adding that the Counterterrorist Center at the CIA had "racked up many successes, including the rendition of many dozens of terrorists prior to September 11, 2001." Tenet's testimony marked a rare occasion when the CIA, which doesn't comment publicly on the practice, provided any details about rendition.
posted by Kevin at 3:24 AM

Student Requests Information, Gets Interrogated by the Joint Terrorism Task Force :.

Just don't ask for the "wrong" information:

What interested the agents, from Austin's Joint Terrorism Task Force, was an open records request he filed with UT administrators for information about the underground campus tunnel system.

"The point was to see if there was any type of a threat to campus or public safety due to the nature of the information being sought," said Mark Rich, a special agent in the FBI San Antonio field office. "I don't think it had anything to do with the fact that a records request was made. It was what the request involved."

Miller said the agents wanted to know everything from his major to why he wears long hair.

They asked, how did he know open records laws? How did he know about campus tunnel systems? Did he ever think of joining UT Watch or filing a lawsuit through the American Civil Liberties Union?

"What disturbed me was the fact, that they went on for about 10 minutes asking me if I belonged to things like UT Watch. Anything to overthrow the government," Miller said. "They used the term 'activist organization.' Any stuff like that."

He said he had no luck visiting the Austin Secret Service office to ask what information on him had been collected. He also filed an open records request for this information with the FBI. It was denied.
posted by Kevin at 3:12 AM

Photos of Dead May Indicate Graver Abuse :.

Liberation:

Grisly photographs taken at Abu Ghraib prison of two dead men may indicate that the violence at the prison went far beyond degrading treatment of detainees. The Bush administration has provided only limited information about one of the men; the other remains a mystery.

The photographs come from the same collection of pictures that show military guards humiliating other detainees. All of the photographs, including those of the dead men, were taken at Abu Ghraib, according to people who provided them to The New York Times.

One photograph shows the body of a man with a huge head wound. Next to him is a piece of paper with a detainee identification number: 153399.

Pentagon officials have not answered any questions about the identity of that prisoner or the circumstances of his death. However, an internal military report completed in March by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba described the death of prisoner No. 153399 during a riot on Nov. 24, 2003. The Taguba report said that the guards were authorized to use deadly force, but it harshly criticized the handling of the incident.

Among the problems cited were overcrowding, lack of training for guards, poor communication between commanders and soldiers and "the mix of less than lethal rounds with lethal rounds in weapons."

The other unidentified photo shows the body of a man with facial wounds and a bandage under his swollen right eye. He is in an unzipped body bag covered with bags of ice. There is no other information.

Military officials have said they are investigating 10 deaths of detainees, but have not said where any of the deaths occurred and have so far declined to provide any explanation of the photographs or describe the circumstances of the deaths.

The photograph of the man packed in ice appears to match a reference in a diary entry made by Staff Sgt. Ivan L. Frederick, who was a guard at the prison. He is one of six members of a military police unit charged in the abuse cases at Abu Ghraib.

The diary mentioned an incident in November 2003 involving a detainee that Sergeant Frederick described as an "O.G.A. prisoner." That reference to O.G.A., or Other Government Agency, usually meant prisoners under the control of the C.I.A. or other intelligence agencies.

In his diary, Sergeant Frederick wrote of the detainee: "They stressed him out so bad that the man passed away. They put his body in a body bag and packed him in ice for approximately 24 hours in the shower in 1B. The next day the medics came in and put his body on a stretcher, placed a fake IV in his arm and took him away. This O.G.A. was never processed and therefore never had a number."
posted by Kevin at 2:19 AM

Update On Covert Assassination Booklet

A few days ago, I found a booklet about covert assassination outside my front door. (Originally reported here.) I've read the thing, and here's the story.

The title and author are as follows:

The Pricker: A True Story of Assassination, Terrorism and High Treason by Kevin Harris

First of all, I'm almost sure that this booklet wasn't directed specifically at me. Near the end of the text, Harris indicates that he personally distributes these booklets (by the thousands) to neighborhoods throughout South Orange County (where I happen to live). He lives in Costa Mesa (very near me), gives his home address, and even asks people to drop by on the first of each month!

Harris describes a covert assassination weapon that he calls, "The Pricker." This is a tiny and very sharp barb that is covered with various toxic substances. After the victim has been jabbed, these substances (he lists them) can induce a wide array of deadly medical conditions, including cancer, AIDS, heart attack, stroke, etc. According to Harris, the victim does not know that he or she has been attacked.

As proof, he offers some stories about how the wives of federal agents die of chronic diseases at a much higher rate than women who are not married to federal agents.

Obviously, I'm very open to all sources of information. However, about a third of the way through this short booklet, it becomes clear that Harris is delusional and has potentially had a break from reality. The rest of the booklet is a nonsensical, deranged mess that wanders into macro scale geopolitical weirdness involving the Chinese being behind everything happening on the planet. If you ever come across this booklet, suppress the urge to start skipping paragraphs as you read through it. The extra few minutes is worth it for the entertainment value. Harris believes that his booklet contains such incredible information that events subsequently happen because he has distributed it to various people and organizations. And near the end, he includes an ominous warning:

"Now that you have been warned I should also point out that my adversaries know you have been warned. They may now take the precaution of killing you without determining your intent."

Why, for example, if his information is so explosive, doesn't someone bump him off? Why would They be after the people who have received his booklet and not the author of the booklet? Crazy people always have great answers to questions like these. (If Harris addressed this point, I missed it.) He also worries that copies of his booklet are intercepted and tampered with before influential readers have had a chance to read it... On and on...

I'm not sure if Kevin Harris is an old man, but I suspect he might be. Why not post this information on the web and really blow the lid off this thing? <--- Attempt at humor. (The booklet isn't online. I checked.)

Placing it on the web might eliminate the time consuming duties of walking around, breathing fresh air and meeting new people. So, in that respect, this activity is probably healthy for him. (Maybe I should do this!)

I don't make a point of trying to reason with neurochemically unhinged people, but I'm sometimes willing to attempt to filter the signal from the noise of what they're saying. Just because someone is nuts doesn't mean that everything they say is worthless. Much of it is deranged babble, but some small percentage of it may be useful. I apply the same filter to the ravings of alcoholics, dope fiends and psychopaths as I do to CNN, the New York Times and White House Press releases.

Having said all of that, you might be surprised (and/or frightened) to know that I believe the weapon Harris refers to as "The Pricker" is real to some extent. It's obviously real. Harris, though, came to his conclusions through some dodgy logic and probably something resembling the activities of John Nash in the film A Beautiful Mind. If Harris had done his homework, he could have cited the evidence that came to light as part of the Truth and Reconciliation hearings in South Africa to bolster his argument. That information is more solid than anything he presents.

After you read about Project Coast and the Dr. Mengele-type antics of Wouter Basson, it's clear that this type of weapon is very real. Furthermore, I don't think it's out of the question to wonder about a potentially higher death rate in the wives of federal agents, but I certainly didn't see a convincing argument for that position from reading this booklet. The statistics Harris cites as proof are dubious at best.

I appreciate what Kevin Harris is trying to do, but he needs to stick to the initial thesis, firm up his facts and evidence and avoid talking about the events that he thinks correlate to the distribution of his information. His message might be taken more seriously at that point. Maintaining the appearance of sanity is definitely helpful when engaging in a discourse on any topic related to covert assassination!

Finally, you might be wondering why I'm dedicating so much space to a pamphlet like the one distributed by Kevin Harris. The reason is that, if he has actually distributed thousands of these things, people might start looking for information on the Internet. I'd like people searching for more information to keep in mind that the basis of what Harris is saying is sound, but don't look to his "proof" as confirmation. Look at that South African experience and the CIA's connection to South Africa during the Apartheid years.
posted by Kevin at 12:55 AM

U.S. Torture of Iraqis: Another "Independent" Commission? :.

Get out the hip waders, again...

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld will tell congressional committees Friday that he plans to form an independent panel to review how the Pentagon handled investigations into allegations of abuses of Iraqi prisoners, a senior administration official said.


posted by Kevin at 7:12 PM

By Endorsing Sharon's Plan Bush Has Legitimized Terrorism :.

So President George Bush tears up the Israeli-Palestinian peace plan and that's okay. Israeli settlements for Jews and Jews only on the West Bank. That's okay. Taking land from Palestinians who have owned that land for generations, that's okay. UN Security Council Resolution 242 says that land cannot be acquired by war. Forget it. That's okay. Does President George Bush actually work for al-Qa'ida? What does this mean? That George Bush cares more about his re-election than he does about the Middle East? Or that George Bush is more frightened of the Israeli lobby than he is of his own electorate. Fear not, it is the latter.

Research Credit: DG
posted by Kevin at 5:23 PM

Business Buys Into Fuel Cells :.

It's getting so old, beating the same dead horses, over and over again:

Joel Makower, co-founder of green energy consultancy Clean Edge, said fuel cells have "extremely exciting potential" for reducing demand on the energy grid, but they won't likely relieve the strain on the system during the next few years.

Makower said Californians may encounter rolling blackouts or brownouts again this summer. He said companies are turning to fuel cells powered by natural gas as insurance policies that also provide more capacity and a cleaner-burning alternative to the diesel generators currently used as backup systems.

Makower said the federal government needs to provide incentives to ramp up demand because fuel cells will remain more expensive than traditional energy sources for the immediate future. The adoption of fuel cells "has more to do with political will than with technological problems," he said. <--- I've been saying this, almost word for word, since 1996.

Here's the way I put it most recently:

The barriers to the wide adoption of alternative sources of energy are political and economic in nature, not scientific or technical.
posted by Kevin at 4:49 AM

Depopulation Research: Fears Rise with 'Hot Lab' Building Boom :.

From Boston to Livermore, Calif., "hot labs" designed to combat bioterrorism and house the world's deadliest germs are being planned and constructed with a huge cash infusion from the federal government.

Supporters of the unprecedented building boom say the new or expanded high-containment labs -- there are at least 18 -- are essential to national security in a post-Sept. 11 world.

But as the labs rise on college campuses and government installations across the country, so do concerns about safety and security.

Neighbors fear that some frightening variant of Ebola virus, plague or other deadly disease could be loosed into their backyards, and are filing lawsuits and lobbying politicians to halt construction.

A growing number of scientists complain that the $6 billion earmarked by Congress for fighting bioterrorism is excessive, is being doled out with little oversight and is detracting from efforts to combat problems that are much more deadly -- for example, AIDS and malaria, which are already killing millions of people.

Others worry that the buildup actually threatens national security, by arming more people with the know-how to construct bioweapons, and perhaps even sparking a new biological arms race since two of the hot labs are to be built inside national weapons labs at Livermore and Los Alamos, N.M.

Universities in Boston, Pittsburgh, Texas and elsewhere have already won grants to build labs, some in urban neighborhoods.
posted by Kevin at 4:08 AM

WORLD FOOD PRICES RISING: Decades of Environmental Neglect Shrinking Harvests in Key Countries :.

There is going to be a return to sane food production practices. Organic agriculture, using open pollinated seeds and natural compost fertilizers, will again be the norm. Unfortunately, this is only going to happen after our societies collapse into chaos:

After nearly tripling from 1950 to 1996, growth in the world grain harvest came to a halt. In each of the last four years world grain production has fallen short of consumption, forcing a drawdown of stocks. During this period, expanding deserts, falling water tables, crop-withering temperatures, and other environmental trends have largely offset the positive contributions of advancing technology and additional investment in agriculture.

Prices of basic food and feed commodities are climbing. Wheat futures for May 2004 that traded as low as $2.90 a bushel within the last year on the Chicago Board of Trade have recently topped $4 a bushel, a climb of 38 percent. A similar calculation shows the price of corn up by 36 percent, rice up 39 percent, and soybeans doubling from just over $5 per bushel to over $10 a bushel. Rises in the price of wheat and rice (the world's two basic food staples) and corn and soybeans (the principal feedstuffs) are contributing to higher food prices worldwide, including in China and the United States, the largest food producers.
posted by Kevin at 4:01 AM

California May Declare 1st Fuel Emergency in 15 Years :.

California regulators may declare the first motor-fuels emergency in 15 years amid concern the rupture of a Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP pipeline will cause shortages of gasoline and diesel and further price increases.

When You're Tired of Being Scammed, Check Out: wind, solar, hydro, ethanol, biodiesel, aquafuel and fuel cell technologies.
posted by Kevin at 3:20 AM

Which One of You Freaks Dropped "That" Booklet in Front of My House?

I walked outside, yesterday, and found a booklet about how murder can be made to look like death by natural causes. I haven't read the thing yet, but here's the deal:

If you have information that you think should be posted on Cryptogon, send me an email for f*ck's sake. Don't come by my house and drop booklets on covert assassination techniques on my doorstep!

If this is someone trying to frighten me, trying to give me a hint, you're going to have to do better than that. Wouldn't it just be easier to buy me off? I want a minimum of 10 acres, somewhere in Western Oregon, a yurt, a woodstove, 10 hens, 2 goats and a pig. Thank you.
posted by Kevin at 2:36 AM

NYPD Planning to Install Its Own Surveillance Cameras :.

The NYPD is reportedly planning to install hundreds of cameras around the city that can automatically recognize the faces of suspected criminals or terrorists.

There are already tens of thousands of private surveillance cameras trained on city streets and buildings. According to the New York Post, the NYPD wants to install its own centralized system.

NYPD Deputy Commissioner James Onalfo is working on a plan for up to $1 billion in new computer and camera equipment, according to the Post. Facial recognition technology would allow police to pick out and follow suspects in high-crime areas and near potential terrorist targets.

Police reportedly hope to install many of the cameras before this summer's Republican National Convention at Madison Square Garden.

Research Credit: TR
posted by Kevin at 12:35 AM

Toward a Petro-Apocalypse :.

Make your time:

In a few years, the global production of conventional oil will fall, while the global demand continues to rise. The resulting shock of this structural oil famine is inevitable, so great are the dependency of our economies on cheap oil and, related to the first, our inability to wean ourselves from this dependency in a short period of time.

We can hope to soften the shock, but only if its imminence immediately becomes the unique reference point for a general mobilization of our societies, with, as a consequence, drastic consequences in every sector. The alternative is chaos.
posted by Kevin at 12:30 AM

Longhorn Projected System Requirements :.

Oh yeah, this is just what everyone needs. I sure would like to know what these systems are going to be doing, besides monitoring everything you do. I'm using a two year old system right now, and the last thing on my mind is upgrading it. What are normal people going to do with systems running at 6GHz with a minimum of 2 gigs of RAM!?

These specs are pure madness:

Microsoft is expected to recommend that the "average" Longhorn PC feature a dual-core CPU running at 4 to 6GHz; a minimum of 2 gigs of RAM; up to a terabyte of storage; a 1 Gbit, built-in, Ethernet-wired port and an 802.11g wireless link; and a graphics processor that runs three times faster than those on the market today.

Research Credit: AL
posted by Kevin at 12:22 AM

Disney Forbidding Distribution of Film That Criticizes Bush :.

Welcome to Democracyland:

The Walt Disney Company is blocking its Miramax division from distributing a new documentary by Michael Moore that harshly criticizes President Bush, executives at both Disney and Miramax said Tuesday.

The film, "Fahrenheit 911," links Mr. Bush and prominent Saudis � including the family of Osama bin Laden � and criticizes Mr. Bush's actions before and after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
posted by Kevin at 11:49 PM

Gates Paying $800,000 to Settle with U.S. Over Securities Violations :.

Pocket change for BGates:

Bill Gates, chairman of Redmond-based Microsoft Corp., has agreed to pay an $800,000 fine to settle charges that he failed to make a timely disclosure of an investment in Bothell biotech company Icos Corp.
posted by Kevin at 4:56 AM

Hell on Earth in Beta Testing Now :.

I don't even have to look into this to know that there are spook connections to it. If someone feels like digging up some of it, I'll post it. I'm beyond caring about this stuff, because I won't accept it. I won't live like this. It's that simple. Draw your own conclusions as to what that means:

In coming years, visitors to Ayers Island, the site of an abandoned paper and textile mill in Orono, Maine, will be spied upon by a comprehensive network of video cameras, motion detectors and sensors. Lurking behind all of those sensors will be an artificial intelligence system that will decide who can be trusted and who is deserving of greater scrutiny.

Ayers Island will be open to the public, who are expected to visit the island for its nature trails, amphitheater, sculpture garden and museum, all part of a planned renovation project for the island. A contemporary arts festival on Ayers Island is scheduled for this summer. Many cameras and motion detectors will be in place by that time, according to the company that owns the island, Ayers Island LLC.

The island's initial monitoring systems will be rudimentary, made from off-the-shelf parts and store-bought alarm systems.

But eventually, ubiquitous cameras and biometric readers, backed by a central computer, will recognize and record faces and license plates, and make it possible for someone sitting at a computer monitor to track individuals everywhere they go on the island, said George Markowsky, president of Ayers Island LLC.

"This is going to push the envelope on a lot of fronts," said Markowsky. "The goal is to detect anyone coming onto the island at any point, and to follow them if they exhibit suspicious behavior."

The central computer will pay special attention to individuals who seem to be trying to avoid detection, such as those slipping quietly onto the island in kayaks, for example. (The island is accessible via a one-lane bridge.)

The surveillance system will learn to recognize and trust regular visitors to Ayers Island, such as a woman who walks her dog on the island every morning, said Markowsky. "But if it sees three big guys it has never seen before, it will take notice," he said.

The system, called Intelligent Island, would also make Ayers Island less welcoming to visitors with nothing to hide, said a privacy lawyer who specializes in video tracking. Surveillance cameras put people on edge, and people learn to change their behaviors to avoid suspicion, or to conform to social norms, said Cedric Laurant, policy counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C.

"People start fitting in to what they think is good social behavior," Laurant said. "And that leads to increased discrimination against those that don't conform to those norms."
posted by Kevin at 4:47 AM

What Happened at the Verizon Datacenter in Midtown Manhattan on Sunday Night? :.

The physical layer of the global information infrastructure is extremely vulnerable. The potential for a catastrophic attack is so great that most people don't even notice it. Spooks, feds and some cops know about it, but they don't talk about it in public. This isn't because they would be releasing information that "terrorists" could use to launch an attack. Nope. That information is freely available to anyone who wants to find it. They don't talk about it because there is nothing anyone can do to prevent an attack in the event that some group, any group, decides to do it. A grad student named Sean Gorman had his thesis project classified by the U.S. government because it showed street level paths of all of the fiber the matters. The fact that they classified it is laughable, since he compiled all of the information from open sources.

My essay, Cyberwar: How Terrorists Could Defeat the U.S., and Why They Won't, while intentionally omitting information that would have gotten me in trouble, lays out a scenario that could be operationalized by a handfull of people with basic research skills, hatchets and shovels. Things would get really weird if someone had a large budget, knowledge of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons and distributed Denial of Service (dDOS) software. But never mind all of that...

What happened in New York on Sunday night?

What follows is long on speculation, and short on facts. This is me thinking out loud, hoping to get someone out there who has some information on this incident to write in and set me straight. If you normally take everything you read on here with a grain of salt, take what follows with a handful:

The public is being told that four DS-3 network interface units were removed from a router on Sunday night, and that several corporate clients lost service. Yet, the submitter of the story to Slashdot says there are rumors of cut fiber. To have four DS-3s go down is nothing to sneeze at, although, at about 180Mbits/sec total, it's not much in terms of the larger picture of bandwidth in and out of a datacenter like this.

Here's what worries me.

A) It would be impossible to enter/exit the rackspace in a datacenter like this without passing through (probably armed) security guards, keyscanners and maybe even biometric access control measures. Security cameras would be everywhere. We're talking about a core network service provider's facility in Midtown Manhattan. In other words, it shouldn't be a mystery as to who was in the "cage" where these DS-3 units were located at the time of the outage.

B) Maybe the cut fiber rumor is more than just a rumor, hence the immediate involvement of the Joint Terrorism Task Force. Maybe the missing DS-3 cards story is just a cover for the fact that the DS-3 lines themselves were cut.

C) If those circuits were cut, it would, in my opinion, mean that the attacker screwed up and hit the wrong targets. Did the attacker, if there was one (or more than one), think he was taking out an OC-768 instead? Now, I don't know if this particular datacenter uses OC-768 class equipment, but I'd say that there is a VERY high probability that it does. How important are OC-768s? Let's put it this way, if an OC-768 was cut (and it wasn't the result of an obvious accident), I think that there's a good chance that the national threat level could be raised to Code Red.

Indeed, if three downed DS-3s got the Joint Terrorism Task Force involved, what would happen if multiple OC-768s went down? Food for thought.

I want to know if people in Manhattan have noticed cops/feds hanging around manholes, sub street vaults, streetlevel vaults (big boxes that don't say much, but might have a Verizon emblem), etc. I know that there are several Cryptogon readers in New York City. Keep an eye out for this kind of activity. Do you know anyone who works for Verizon? Let's try to figure out what happened.

RELATED? 420,000 Verizon Customers Lose Service in Boston Area on Monday :.

The municipal power feed to a Verizon datacenter went down, and then the backup generator failed. Sure, this could be SNAFU (Situation Normal All F*cked Up), kinda like this. The question becomes, what happens when groups put thought and money into targeting these systems for a takedown?

About 420,000 Verizon Communications Inc. telephone subscribers in communities north and west of Boston lost voice mail -- but not dial tones -- after 1 p.m. yesterday when a power failure in Cambridge affected a Verizon telecommunications hub there. As of 5:45 p.m. about half of lost service was restored, but the company had no estimate of when full service would be resumed. Spokesman Jack Hoey said the problem occurred when the voice-mail system's backup emergency power unit failed to kick in at the Bent Street switching station near Kendall Square. NStar Electric said 15,000 Cambridge customers lost service for up to one hour. Among Verizon customers affected was Eastern Bank with nearly 1,000 employees. (Peter J. Howe)

EXAMPLE: Single Cut Fiber Takes Down Phone Service in Several Iowa Towns :.

Qwest Comminications technicians figured they were right on schedule late Monday afternoon to restore emergency telephone communications to much of Dickinson County and full service to the communities of Milford, Arnolds Park and Okoboji.

Monday's outage was the result of a fiber-optic cable cut in north Spencer where tiles were being laid for drainage along the west shoulder of U.S. Highway 71.

Allen Purvis of C.E. Construction Company of Hampton, Iowa, was operating a backhoe when he cut the fiber-optic cable. Both Purvis and his boss, Larry Havig, said the line was not marked.

The line was cut at about 9 a.m. Monday and affected all Qwest telephone customers in Arnolds Park, Okoboji and Milford, as well as 911 and long distance service to the western portion of Dickinson County, including Lake Park.

According to Qwest spokeswoman DeViney-McNeley in Des Moines, other services may have also been affected as well, including service to some telephone users in Spirit Lake. Those services, she said, were not to Qwest customers, but customers of other utility companies that lease the lines cut Monday morning.

While the cut cable appeared to be about an inch in diameter, what's inside is much smaller, explained Qwest tech Tim Stahle, who drove to Spencer from Sioux City to make the repairs.

Google Chum *Reader, please ignore.*: strategic information warfare cut fiber tiered connection optical carrier fiber optic cable single mode cut fiber in manhattan new york man hole sewer dedicated service t3 infrastructure vulnerability demarc demarcation point vault closet rack cage
posted by Kevin at 1:57 AM

RIP, Pat Tillman: Sorry You Believed the Beast and It Ate You :.

Hey, nobody said that carrying out the criminal whims of maniacs was going to be easy. It's much easier for the Ministry of Truth-MSN/Slate Directorate to simply send information that doesn't meet, "standards of fairness and taste" down the memory hole:

The cartoon, like others on MSNBC.com, is published daily on the site via an automated syndication feed. Such feeds are rarely reviewed. However, MSNBC.com Editor in chief Dean Wright concluded Monday's Rall item did not meet MSNBC.com standards of fairness and taste.


posted by Kevin at 6:05 PM

Brazil Gang Robs Air Force Armory :.

Armed men stole a van with assault rifles from a Brazilian Air Force armory on Monday in Rio de Janeiro and police found anti-tank rockets in a slum -- fresh signs that the city's drug gangs are expanding their arsenal and firepower.

The events occurred two weeks after police discovered an arsenal in another shantytown in the crime-ridden city that surprised even hard-boiled Rio violence experts as it contained eight Belgium-made land mines and more than 100 grenades.

The finds underscored the drug gangs' increasing firepower and sophistication at a time when authorities are struggling to crack down on their trade and the government is considering sending army troops into the city.

Watch it Again: Film Festival Entry Offers Glimpse at Our Hellish Future :.

I really hope you guys are able to see the connections that I'm identifying. This stuff is happening right in front of us:

Keep in mind that U.S. war fighting doctrine began a major transformation in the mid-1990s. Heavy emphasis has been placed on urban combat (see MOUT) ever since. According to Mike Davis, writing in the San Francisco Bay View, "Military theorists are now deeply involved in imagining how the evolving capacity of high-tech warfare can contain, if not destroy, chronic 'terrorist' insurgencies rooted in the desperation of growing mega-slums." The primacy of robots in the future of warfare is obvious.
posted by Kevin at 5:28 PM

TV Serves the Same Purpose Inside Prisons as in "Open" Society :.

Pay attention to what the prison guard says. The more you watch that thing, alone, in your cell, the less trouble you are:

Rank and file officers, however, are nearly as happy as the inmates.

"It's cut down on the number of inmates that come out in the evening to watch TV," said Julian Ruiz, a corrections officer who operates electronic door locks and monitors a cell block. "The more people you get down here in the evening, the more problems."

Related: Stoned on Television :.

This article discusses the psychological and physiological responses that occur when someone uses television.
posted by Kevin at 5:04 PM

U.S. Intelligence Involved with Torture at Abu Ghraib Prison :.

"The United States is committed to the worldwide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture and in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment." - George W. Bush

This is from a long, detailed and extremely disturbing article by Seymour Hersh:

A fifty-three-page report, obtained by The New Yorker, written by Major General Antonio M. Taguba and not meant for public release, was completed in late February. Its conclusions about the institutional failures of the Army prison system were devastating. Specifically, Taguba found that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" at Abu Ghraib. This systematic and illegal abuse of detainees, Taguba reported, was perpetrated by soldiers of the 372nd Military Police Company, and also by members of the American intelligence community.
posted by Kevin at 3:26 AM

Film Festival Entry Offers Glimpse at Our Hellish Future :. (Quicktime required)

Every time you read a story about artificial intelligence or robotics, keep this little movie from The Embassy Visual Effects in mind. I can't think of a more pure and simple depiction of where we're headed...

Armed robots patrolling urban slums.

We are now witnessing the initial stages of the robotification of military and law enforcement operations. The autonomous drones and the various remote controlled systems of today are just the beginning. Your children's children will exist under a totalitarian system that will be maintained by machines.*

Keep in mind that U.S. war fighting doctrine began a major transformation in the mid-1990s. Heavy emphasis has been placed on urban combat (see MOUT) ever since. According to Mike Davis, writing in the San Francisco Bay View, "Military theorists are now deeply involved in imagining how the evolving capacity of high-tech warfare can contain, if not destroy, chronic 'terrorist' insurgencies rooted in the desperation of growing mega-slums." The primacy of robots in the future of warfare is obvious.

During a discussion of the Tetra Vaal film with fellow researcher, TR (who also happens to be an expert in AI and human consciousness), he brought up an interesting point. He wondered why the Elite wouldn't simply eliminate the slums, and the people in them, altogether? If the AI gets that good---which TR doubts will happen in time before we experience a Simplification-type event---of what use is average humanity to the Elite? Why not perform a mass culling of the human population and eliminate the problem? Perhaps, this would be the likely scenario in the years following the era depicted in the short film.

* Assuming that cataclysmic nuclear, genetic engineering and or nanotechnology mishaps have not already destroyed existing societies. The robot scenario will probably need something like two additional decades to incubate before we see systems like the one depicted in this movie.
posted by Kevin at 2:31 AM

Robotic Legs Could Produce Army of Super Troopers :.

One of the recurring themes in Killer Robot research is the need to keep humans in the loop... at least for the moment. Since artificial intelligence is not yet good enough to serve as the basis of terminator brains, the maniac quacks who are doing this research plan on using humans as middleware:

Move over Bionic Man and make room for BLEEX -- the Berkeley Lower Extremities Exoskeleton, with strap-on robotic legs designed to turn an ordinary human into a super strider.

Ultimately intended to help people like soldiers or firefighters carry heavy loads for long distances, these boots are made for marching.

"The design of this exoskeleton really benefits from human intellect and the strength of the machine," said Homayoon Kazerooni, who directs the Robotics and Human Engineering Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley.

The exoskeleton consists of a pair of mechanical metal leg braces that include a power unit and a backpack-like frame. The braces are attached to a modified pair of Army boots and are also connected, although less rigidly, to the user's legs.

More than 40 sensors and hydraulic mechanisms function like a human nervous system, constantly calculating how to distribute the weight being borne and create a minimal load for the wearer.

"There is no joystick, no keyboard, no push button to drive the device," said Kazerooni, a professor of mechanical engineering. "The pilot becomes an integral part of the exoskeleton."

NOTE: The human generated articulation data (collected from the sensors) will probably be used to create software that will help engineers create more autonomous robots.
posted by Kevin at 1:07 AM

Selective Service Eyes Women, Specialists, Older People for Military Draft :.

Just sit there, don't worry, watch more MTV, shop at WalMart... None of it matters until you get a knock on the door. Then what?

The chief of the Selective Service System has proposed registering women for the military draft and requiring that young Americans regularly inform the government about whether they have training in niche specialties needed in the armed services.

The proposal, which the agency's acting Director Lewis Brodsky presented to senior Pentagon officials just before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, also seeks to extend the age of draft registration to 34 years old, up from 25.

The Selective Service System plan, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, highlights the extent to which agency officials have planned for an expanded military draft in case the administration and Congress would authorize one in the future.

"In line with today's needs, the Selective Service System's structure, programs and activities should be re-engineered toward maintaining a national inventory of American men and, for the first time, women, ages 18 through 34, with an added focus on identifying individuals with critical skills," the agency said in a Feb. 11, 2003, proposal presented to senior Pentagon officials.
posted by Kevin at 12:31 AM

U.N. Oil for Food Records: Gone :.

The dog must have eaten them:

The vast majority of the United Nations' oil-for-food contracts in Iraq have mysteriously vanished, crippling investigators trying to uncover fraud in the program, a government report charged yesterday.

The General Accounting Office report, presented at a congressional hearing into the scandal-plagued program, determined that 80 percent of U.N. records had not been turned over.

The world body claims it transferred all information it had - including 3,059 contracts worth about $6.2 billion for delivery of food and other civilian goods to the post-Saddam governing body, the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Related: Saddam Hussein, the U.N. and Corporations Use Oil-for-Food Program as Slush Fund
posted by Kevin at 12:30 AM

Cryptogon Garden Update

I'm encouraged by how well everything is working out. Seeing as this is my first attempt at growing anything, I'm very pleased. Take a look:

96 square feet of organic goodness.

Is this really going to make a cabbage?

Did I sow too many carrot seeds?!

I ate a handfull of these peas today. Pods and all. Sweet like candy.

Coccinella septempunctata patrolling my sweet corn. Here's a closeup.

posted by Kevin at 11:28 PM

One Contractor Escapes, 11 U.S. Soldiers Die :.

What do you think is the top story on all the mainstream news sites?

The wife of American contractor Thomas Hamill told reporters Sunday that her husband was "fine" and looking forward to seeing his family after escaping captivity in Iraq.
posted by Kevin at 6:56 PM

Pictures of British Troops Torturing Iraqi POW :.

UPDATE: 5/14/04 This story appears to be fake.

Liberation:

A HOODED Iraqi captive is beaten by British soldiers before being thrown from a moving truck and left to die.

The prisoner, aged 18-20, begged for mercy as he was battered with rifle butts and batons in the head and groin, was kicked, stamped and urinated on, and had a gun barrel forced into his mouth.

After an EIGHT-HOUR ordeal, he was left barely conscious and close to death. Bleeding and vomiting and with a broken jaw and missing teeth, he was driven from a Basra camp and hurled off the truck. No one knows if he lived or died.


Related: Video of U.S. Troops Torturing Iraqis

Related: Mercenaries Torturing Iraqis
posted by Kevin at 8:15 PM

U.S. Secret Service Wants User List from blackboxvoting.org :.

Under the Patriot Act, "hacking" crimes were turned over to a new division, called the CyberCrimes division, and placed under the auspices of the Secret Service. And let me tell you what they want from me now: They want the logs of my web site with all the forum messages, and the IP addresses. That's right. All of them. A giant fishing expedition for every communication of everyone interested in the voting issue. This has nothing to do with a VoteHere "hack" investigation, and I have refused to turn it over.

So, yesterday, they call me up and tell me they are going to subpeona me and put me in front of a grand jury. Well, let 'em. They still aren't getting the list of members of BlackBoxVoting.org unless they seize my computer -- which my attorney tells me might be what they have in mind.

Also, Agent Mike told me he just "happened" to be on the plane with me a couple weeks ago. What's that supposed to do? Scare me? "You were going to Oakland," he said. Yeah, and Diebold lawyer's memos appeared in the Oakland Tribune, but guess what, Mike: That was the first hop of three on my way to Dallas. I left that morning for a speech at the Dallas Democratic Forum that evening. Never even got off the plane. Better luck next time.

Related: Navy Investigators Sniffing Around Cryptome
posted by Kevin at 8:04 PM

California Bans E-Vote Machines :.

Not that it matters, but anyway:

California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley ended five months of speculation and announced Friday that he was decertifying all electronic touch-screen voting machines in the state due to security concerns and lack of voter confidence.

He also said that he was passing along evidence to the state's attorney general to bring criminal and civil charges against voting-machine-maker Diebold Election Systems for fraud.

"We will not tolerate deceitful tactics as engaged in by Diebold and we must send a clear and compelling message to the rest of the industry: Don't try to pull a fast one on the voters of California because there will be consequences if you do," he said.
posted by Kevin at 7:51 PM

Record Income at Chevron-Texaco :.

It's all about who dies, and who makes a killing:

ChevronTexaco, the second-biggest oil and gas company in the US, on Friday reported record first-quarter net income - $2.56bn, or $2.40 a share, up 33 per cent on the year.

The record figures continue a trend among the company's peers. The industry has profited from high oil and natural gas prices, as well as increased demand and better margins for refined products and chemicals.
posted by Kevin at 6:38 PM

Warren Buffet Adds to Foreign Currency Holdings, Bets on Further Dollar Decline :.

A five year old can see the inflation writing on the wall:

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett said he increased his bet against the U.S. dollar on concern that the country's trade deficit will weaken the currency.

"We think that over time that the dollar is likely to decline in value against some of the major currencies," said Buffett, 73, in an interview before Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s annual shareholder meeting in Omaha, Nebraska. In the last few months, Berkshire has added "more than a little bit" to its foreign currency holdings, he said. They were last disclosed at $12 billion as of yearend.
posted by Kevin at 4:02 PM