Anyone considering a move "to the country" needs to understand what they're doing. And nobody said it was going to be easy! Limousine liberals are going to have a pretty hard time, whether they're in the country or the city.

Why was this guy running low on water and manure? WTF!? If you don't have water and manure, what do you have? Not much.

Why wasn't more research done on the community before the land was purchased? If your neighbors are useless, what do you have? A (potentially serious) problem. The community is as important as water and manure. And your community is going to need guns and ammo and weekly live fire exercises. (Limousine liberals don't like that part.)

You can't expect to drop yourself into a remote area with values that are totally alien to the natives and expect to pull off a successful show. No way.

Portland. Yep, Portland is about as good as a city can get. Portland with the lights and heat turned off? No thanks, brother. I'll take my chances... out there somewhere:

Slowly a mild paranoia set in. I started to wonder whether, if the Big Crash came, I was really in the right place. We had the best garden for miles around, and everyone knew it. If law broke down, wasn’t there more than a chance that my next door neighbor, a gun-selling meth dealer and felon, might just shoot me for all that food? How about the right-wing fundamentalists past him, who shot Stella's jays for fun and clearcut their land when they suspected spotted owls lived there? Or the two feuding families beyond them-one had fired a pistol during an argument, and neither would give way when their cars met on the road. I began to sense the outlines of a pattern that replicated one in society at large. We have the technical means to feed, clothe, and house all humanity. But legions starve because we have not learned to tolerate and support one another. People's real problems are not technical, they are social and political. Down in Douglas County, I'd solved most of the technical problems for our own personal survival, but the social hurdles to true security were staring me in the face.

Research Credit: GH
posted by Kevin at 8:00 PM

This Wired article is a human readable account of how the upper echelons of electronic piracy operate. This will be especially interesting to students of insurgency/counter insurgency:

The upper reaches of the network are a "darknet," hidden behind layers of security. The sites use a "bounce" to hide their IP address, and members can log in only from trusted IP addresses already on file. Most transmissions between sites use heavy-duty encryption. Finally, they continually change the usernames and passwords required to log in. Estimates say this media darknet distributes more than half a million movies every day. It's also, by any reading of the law, a vast criminal enterprise engaged in wholesale copyright infringement.

But the Feds are getting smarter. Last spring, the FBI and US Department of Justice launched a series of raids codenamed Fastlink. Working with cops in Sweden, the Netherlands, and eight other countries, the operation seized more than 200 computers. One confiscated server alone contained 65,000 pirated titles. Fastlink rubbed out a few topsites, but new ones filled the void. The flow of illicit games and movies slowed briefly, then resumed. In April, federal agents interrogated Frank and impounded all his computer equipment. So far, no charges have been filed. "But the Feds had no idea about Half-Life," he boasts. "I was never connected to that shit. If they found out, I'd be in jail."
posted by Kevin at 5:47 PM

I just assumed that the killer robots of the future would eventually utilize some sort of miniaturized atomic cell for power. I never, in my worst nightmares, thought they would be able to eat the flesh of the dead to power themselves. Well, well, well... I guess the Dark Lords who are building this stuff are looking at alternative fuels:

Scientists at the University of the West of England (UWE) have designed a robot that does not require batteries or electricity to power itself.

Instead, it generates energy by catching and eating houseflies.

Dr Chris Melhuish and his Bristol-based team hope the robot, called EcoBot II, will one day be sent into zones too dangerous for humans, potentially proving invaluable in military, security and industrial areas.

Melhuish, who is director of the Intelligent Autonomous Systems Lab at the UWE, told CNN that the EcoBot II was a result of a quest for an intelligent robot that could function without human supervision.

"That means they need energy. It is one thing to have a robot getting its energy from a household socket, or maybe from the factory floor, but it is another thing when the robot goes outside buildings," he said.

"Of course, there is solar energy outside. Little robots can use solar energy to move about. But mostly, if there is not a lot of solar energy about, you have to give robots batteries -- which eventually run out."

The EcoBot II powers itself in much the same way as animals feed themselves to get their energy, he said.

Research Credit: The Friar in the Freelands of the North

Who adds:

In these dark days of the Oil Age, a new science will be reborn: Demonology.

Here's a recent entry from a Friar in the Freelands of the North:

Beware my friends! According to my recent studies, I have discovered that the evil wizards of the Isle of Albion have summoned a foul new demon into the sub-lunar sphere is which we dwell. The demon is called "EcoBot II." It is similar in appearance to Beelzebub, the Lord of the Flies, in that it wreaks of human excrement. The wretched creature uses it's foul stench to attract flies, which is how the vile entity sustains itself. Friends beware! This hideous monstrosity has pledged service to the Dark Lord of the Empire. It is weak in powers today and can still be destroyed. But make haste friends, for a day will come when it's strength will wax. And on that day, it can no longer be sent back to the hell from whence it came.

Who ever thought the flesh eating demons would be manmade?
posted by Kevin at 4:19 PM

Setting the stage for controversial tracking technology, the satellite telecommunications company ORBCOMM has signed an agreement with VeriChip Corp., maker of the world's first implantable radio frequency identification microchip.

VeriChip, a subsidiary of Applied Digital, will work with ORBCOMM to develop and market new military, security and healthcare applications in the U.S. and around the world, the company said.

As WorldNetDaily reported, Applied Digital has created and successfully field-tested a prototype of an implant for humans with GPS, or global positioning satellite, technology.

Satellites monitored 24 hours a day from ORBCOMM's Network Control Center in Dulles, Va.

Once inserted into a human, it can be tracked by GPS technology and the information relayed wirelessly to the Internet, where an individual's location, movements and vital signs can be stored in a database for future reference.
posted by Kevin at 4:07 PM

In a "down" situation, cold will kill you first, then lack of water, then lack of food. Your survival strategy must solve these issues in that order. Cold-Water-Food. (Dealing with human feces should be the next concern.) It's not cold in South Asia, and it won't be food. So what will kill the most people? Water. The lack of clean water:

Public health officials warn survivors of Sunday's tsunami face a grave danger, death and disease caused by filthy drinking water. Officials say rescue teams are focusing their attention on getting potable water to survivors of the massive undersea earthquake to keep the population of the affected areas from falling victim to its aftermath.

The United Nations and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have deployed relief teams to the 11 Asian countries devastated by Sunday's tsunami. The hardest hit countries have been Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and the Maldives. Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Somalia, Tanzania, Seychelles and Kenya are also assessing damage from the massive Indian Ocean earthquake.

At a State Department briefing, USAID administrator Andrew Natsios says the primary focus of relief effort is sanitation.

"What's happened basically is the water and sewage systems are now combined because of the water surges that took place and the destruction that followed, and as a result people are drinking sewage water," he explained. "And that will substantially increase the risk of communicable disease and diarrheal disease which could kill many people in epidemics if they get out of control."
posted by Kevin at 8:35 PM

Wow!
posted by Kevin at 5:14 PM

amrdec217.amrdec.army.mil searched Yahoo for: N379P

host-141-116-153-16.ptr.hqda.pentagon.mil searched MSN for: Premier Executive Transport Services

gate2-norfolk.nmci.navy.mil searched Google for: N379P

yakko.whs.mil searched Google for: N379P

oaa-194-130.hq.af.mil searched Google for: N379P

iz-proxy1b.iraq.centcom.mil clicked on link in this post http://www.socnetcentral.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=45230.

fsh-proxy.samhouston.army.mil searched Yahoo for N379P

strangers140.bragg.army.mil clicked on a link in this post http://www.socnetcentral.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=45230
posted by Kevin at 1:02 PM

Ok. I'm sick of people sending me links to the Mike Ruppert story about how he thinks Gary Webb committed suicide.

Were you there when it happened, Mike? No? Well, you sure write about it like you were. Keep an open mind people. With something as weird as the Gary Webb incident, watch out for anyone selling a 100%-for-sure story; especially when the 100%-for-sure story involves someone like Gary Webb shooting himself in the head... twice.

My response to Mark R, who's sending the Ruppert story around:

I don't remember anyone dying and making Mike Ruppert God. And I sure as hell didn't sign up to blindly parrot everything that guys says. I think he's off his rocker on this. I happen to know a thing or two about firearms. Nobody is going to sell me on two self inflicted .38 caliber shots to the head. Nobody has a monopoly on the actual version of reality, especially not Mike Ruppert.

I've tolerated Ruppert's pomposity because his information is generally good. But his reporting on Gary Webb is problematic. He says that the .38 is an essentially useless weapon. Question: What is the standard close range execution weapon of choice for CIA? Standard or reduced velocity .22. Ponder on that as Ruppert talks about .38.

Related: Statistical Analysis of Bush Author Suicides

Related: Was Gary Webb Suicided to Kill a New Book?
posted by Kevin at 11:38 AM

When the court translators working in the hire of King James chose to translate antistenai as "Resist not evil," they were doing something more than rendering Greek into English. They were translating nonviolent resistance into docility. The Greek word means more than simply to "stand against" or "resist." It means to resist violently, to revolt or rebel, to engage in an insurrection. Jesus did not tell his oppressed hearers not to resist evil. His entire ministry is at odds with such a preposterous idea. He is, rather, warning against responding to evil in kind by letting the oppressor set the terms of our opposition.

A proper translation of Jesus' teaching would then be, "Do not retaliate against violence with violence." Jesus was no less committed to opposing evil than the anti-Roman resistance fighters like Barabbas. The only difference was over the means to be used.

Jesus' Third Way

* Seize the moral initiative.

* Find a creative alternative to violence.

* Assert your own humanity and dignity as a person.

* Meet force with ridicule or humor.

* Break the cycle of humiliation.

* Refuse to submit or to accept the inferior position.

* Expose the injustice of the system.

* Take control of the power dynamic.

* Shame the oppressor into repentance.

* Stand your ground.

* Force the Powers into decisions for which they are not prepared.

* Recognize your own power.

* Be willing to suffer rather than retaliate.

* Force the oppressor to see you in a new light.

* Deprive the oppressor of a situation where force is effective.

* Be willing to undergo the penalty of breaking unjust laws.
posted by Kevin at 4:19 PM

"Against the most heavily armed opponent in the history of War, Fallujah has still not let itself be "taken" to date. The mightiest military machine in history has met its match. A turning point in military affairs? The end of warfare, as practiced by the Americans - the application of overwhelming force to obtain a victory?"
posted by Kevin at 4:16 PM

Continuing to monitor this...

Before all articles, legitimate questions, and informed speculation critical of Webb's alleged 'confirmed' suicide are automatically tossed in the 'memory hole', or are destined to endlessly travel through the 'conspiracy belt' - I have some new and important revelations that need to be factored into the Gary Webb death equation, including information that he was working on a NEW book that he would soon finish. And what would people think about Gary Webb's OFFICIAL airtight 'confirmed suicide' pronouncement - if they were to read an email containing a recollected conversation between Jon Roland and Gary Webb about this very subject: the possibility of Webb's being "suicided", where Webb confirms that if he's found dead it would never be a suicide.

Research Credit: GH
posted by Kevin at 4:02 PM

Ran Prieur has a keen eye for top quality, critical information. He's avoiding the blow-by-blow account of events (like you get from Cryptogon and other sites) and focusing more on the philosophical underpinnings of resistance, sustainability and survival. All Cryptogon readers should visit ranpreiur.com often. He posts very selectively, so you can take advantage of his editorial skills to glean a wealth of extremely useful information in a short time. His site should be a pre-requisite for all (especially new) Cryptogon readers.
posted by Kevin at 3:07 PM

When Cryptogon reader RS sent in an Agence France-Presse story about CIA cutout aircraft flying U.S. detainees around the world for interrogation and torture, I didn't expect to personally find proof of the CIA with its pants around its ankles.... but it looks like I did.

Let's take it from the top:

The article RS sent me fails to mention that, almost certainly A) there is a fleet of aircraft with tail number N379P, or B) the aircraft in question has had arbitrary tail number changes applied over a period of time. (It turned out to be B, but we'll get to that.)

Fast and loose doesn't begin to describe the manner in which the CIA uses aircraft tail numbers and the FAA Aircraft Registration database. It's almost as if they think nobody is watching. If the authors of the AFP piece had read, Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA by Terry Reed, they might have considered these possibilities. Compromised provides an excellent account of CIA air transport proprietaries and the associated tail number antics. See Chapter 7, Tail Numbers Game.

AFP article posted on news.com.au:

A US jet registered to a ghost company whisked terror suspects to countries that used torture, The Washington Post reported today, based on its own investigation.

The Gulfstream V turbojet had been seen at US military bases around the world, often loading up hooded and shackled suspects and delivering them to countries known to use torture, a process the CIA called "rendition", the paper said.

The Post investigated the ownership of the jet, which had been spotted in Afghanistan, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan and which carried the tail number N379P, according to the newspaper.

It said the officers of the plane's corporate owner, Premier Executive Transport Services, were all listed with dates of birth in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, but with social security numbers issued since 1998.

The paper was unable to locate any further business or credit information on them or on the company.

The CIA refused comment, but such "proprietary" or front corporations were standard procedure for the agency, former operatives told the Post.

Morton Sklar, executive director of the World Organisation for Human Rights USA, told the daily the "rendering" of suspects to countries that employed interrogation techniques banned in the United States was worrisome and could violate the UN Convention on Torture.

The Post article confirmed much of a November 14 article published in the Sunday Times, of London, which obtained flight plans for the plane, which, the Times said, always departed from Washington, DC and had visited the US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where about 550 terror suspects are held.

A Swedish television program, Cold Facts, reported that in December 2001, the jet took hooded terror suspects to Egypt, according to the Post, which said it had independently confirmed the Swedish report.

The Post said the plane, with hooded crew members speaking with US accents, loaded two Egyptian nationals and took off at 4.30am for Cairo.

It said airport officials and amateur plane spotters, some using binoculars, have logged multiple sightings of N379P at several US military airports and fuelling stations.

More: N379P Becomes N8068V

Here is an account of activists trying to get the Irish National Police (Garda Síochána) to investigate the transshipment of prisoners through the Shannon airport on CIA aircraft. It looks like N379P was getting too much attention. So, CIA changed it to N8068V.

Here's where it gets really interesting.

I just checked N8068V on the FAA database and it now comes up as a "deregistered" Robinson R22 BETA helicopter.

But there's just one problem...



Does that Gulfstream V look like a Robinson R22 BETA helicopter to you? Wave hello to the spooks and their busted cutout operation.

Here's a screenshot of the FAA record for N8068V showing it to be a "Deregistered" Robinson R22 BETA helicopter. The plain text from the FAA follows:

N8068V is Deregistered

Deregistered Aircraft 1 of 1

Aircraft Description
Serial Number 2401 Type Registration Corporation
Manufacturer Name ROBINSON HELICOPTER Certificate Issue Date None
Model R22 BETA Mode S Code 52575653
Year Manufacturer None Cancel Date 12/29/1993
Reason for Cancellation Exported Exported To SOUTH AFRICA

Aircraft Registration prior to Deregistration

Name ROBINSON HELICOPTER COMPANY
Street 24747 CRENSHAW BOULEVARD
City TORRANCE State CALIFORNIA Zip Code 90505
County None
Country Unknown

Airworthiness
None

Other Owner Names
None

If you're wondering what N8068V looked like as N379P, here it is:



What does the FAA N-Number inquiry show for N379P?

N379P is not Assigned/Reserved

Here's a screenshot of that result.

More: Original Washington Post Article

Jet Is an Open Secret in Terror War

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 27, 2004; Page A01

The airplane is a Gulfstream V turbojet, the sort favored by CEOs and celebrities. But since 2001 it has been seen at military airports from Pakistan to Indonesia to Jordan, sometimes being boarded by hooded and handcuffed passengers.

The plane's owner of record, Premier Executive Transport Services Inc., lists directors and officers who appear to exist only on paper. And each one of those directors and officers has a recently issued Social Security number and an address consisting only of a post office box, according to an extensive search of state, federal and commercial records.

Bryan P. Dyess, Steven E. Kent, Timothy R. Sperling and Audrey M. Tailor are names without residential, work, telephone or corporate histories -- just the kind of "sterile identities," said current and former intelligence officials, that the CIA uses to conceal involvement in clandestine operations. In this case, the agency is flying captured terrorist suspects from one country to another for detention and interrogation.

The CIA calls this activity "rendition." Premier Executive's Gulfstream helps make it possible. According to civilian aircraft landing permits, the jet has permission to use U.S. military airfields worldwide.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, secret renditions have become a principal weapon in the CIA's arsenal against suspected al Qaeda terrorists, according to congressional testimony by CIA officials. But as the practice has grown, the agency has had significantly more difficulty keeping it secret.

According to airport officials, public documents and hobbyist plane spotters, the Gulfstream V, with tail number N379P, has been used to whisk detainees into or out of Jakarta, Indonesia; Pakistan; Egypt; and Sweden, usually at night, and has landed at well-known U.S. government refueling stops.

As the outlines of the rendition system have been revealed, criticism of the practice has grown. Human rights groups are working on legal challenges to renditions, said Morton Sklar, executive director of the World Organization for Human Rights USA, because one of their purposes is to transfer captives to countries that use harsh interrogation methods outlawed in the United States. That, he said, is prohibited by the U.N. Convention on Torture.

The CIA has the authority to carry out renditions under a presidential directive dating to the Clinton administration, which the Bush administration has reviewed and renewed. The CIA declined to comment for this article.

"Our policymakers would never confront the issue," said Michael Scheuer, a former CIA counterterrorism officer who has been involved with renditions and supports the practice. "We would say, 'Where do you want us to take these people?' The mind-set of the bureaucracy was, 'Let someone else do the dirty work.' "

The story of the Gulfstream V offers a rare glimpse into the CIA's secret operations, a world that current and former CIA officers said should not have been so easy to document.

Not only have the plane's movements been tracked around the world, but the on-paper officers of Premier Executive Transport Services are also connected to a larger roster of false identities.

Each of the officers of Premier Executive is linked in public records to one of five post office box numbers in Arlington, Oakton, Chevy Chase and the District. A total of 325 names are registered to the five post office boxes.

An extensive database search of a sample of 44 of those names turned up none of the information that usually emerges in such a search: no previous addresses, no past or current telephone numbers, no business or corporate records. In addition, although most names were attached to dates of birth in the 1940s, '50s or '60s, all were given Social Security numbers between 1998 and 2003.

The Washington Post showed its research to the CIA, including a chart connecting Premier Executive's officers, the post office boxes, the 325 names, the recent Social Security numbers and an entity called Executive Support OFC. A CIA spokesman declined to comment.

According to former CIA operatives experienced in using "proprietary," or front, companies, the CIA likely used, or intended to use, some of the 325 names to hide other activities, the nature of which could not be learned. The former operatives also noted that the agency devotes more effort to producing cover identities for its operatives in the field, which are supposed to stand up under scrutiny, than to hiding its ownership of a plane.

The CIA's plane secret began to unravel less than six weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

On Oct. 26, 2001, Masood Anwar, a Pakistani journalist with the News in Islamabad, broke a story asserting that Pakistani intelligence officers had handed over to U.S. authorities a Yemeni microbiologist, Jamil Qasim Saeed Mohammed, who was wanted in connection with the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole.

The report noted that an aircraft bearing tail number N379P, and parked in a remote area of a little-used terminal at the Karachi airport, had whisked Mohammed away about 2:40 a.m. Oct. 23. The tail number was also obtained by The Post's correspondent in Pakistan but not published.

The News article ricocheted among spy-hunters and Web bloggers as a curiosity for those interested in divining the mechanics of the new U.S.-declared war on terrorism.

At 7:54:04 p.m. Oct. 26, the News article was posted on FreeRepublic.com, which bills itself as "a conservative news forum."

Thirteen minutes later, a chat-room participant posted the plane's registered owners: Premier Executive Transport Services Inc., of 339 Washington St., Dedham, Mass.

"Sounds like a nice generic name," one blogger wrote in response. "Kind of like Air America" -- a reference to the CIA's secret civilian airlines that flew supplies, food and personnel into Southeast Asia, including Laos, during the Vietnam War.

Eight weeks later, on Dec. 18, 2001, American-accented men wearing hoods and working with special Swedish security police brought two Egyptian nationals onto a Gulfstream V that was parked at night at Stockholm's Bromma Airport, according to Swedish officials and airport personnel interviewed by Swedish television's "Cold Facts" program. The account was confirmed independently by The Post. The plane's tail number: N379P.

Wearing red overalls and bound with handcuffs and leg irons, the men, who had applied for political asylum in Sweden, were flown to Cairo, according to Swedish officials and documents. Ahmed Agiza was convicted by Egypt's Supreme Military Court of terrorism-related charges; Muhammad Zery was set free. Both say they were tortured while in Egyptian custody. Sweden has opened an investigation into the decision to allow them to be rendered.

A month later, in January 2002, a U.S.-registered Gulfstream V landed at Jakarta's military airport. According to Indonesian officials, the plane carried away Muhammad Saad Iqbal Madni, an Egyptian traveling on a Pakistani passport and suspected of being an al Qaeda operative who had worked with shoe bomber suspect Richard C. Reid. Without a hearing, he was flown to Egypt. His status and whereabouts are unknown. The plane's tail number was not noted, but the CIA is believed to have only one of the expensive jets.

Over the past year, the Gulfstream V's flights have been tracked by plane spotters standing at the end of runways with high-powered binoculars and cameras to record the flights of military and private aircraft.

These hobbyists list their findings on specialized Web pages. According to them, since October 2001 the plane has landed in Islamabad; Karachi; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Dubai; Tashkent, Uzbekistan; Baghdad; Kuwait City; Baku, Azerbaijan; and Rabat, Morocco. It has stopped frequently at Dulles International Airport, at Jordan's military airport in Amman and at airports in Frankfurt, Germany; Glasglow, Scotland, and Larnaca, Cyprus.

Premier Executive Transport Services was incorporated in Delaware by the Prentice-Hall Corporation System Inc. on Jan. 10, 1994. On Jan. 23, 1996, Dean Plakias, a lawyer with Hill & Plakias in Dedham, filed incorporation papers with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts listing the company's president as Bryan P. Dyess.

According to public documents, Premier Executive ordered a new Gulfstream V in 1998. It was delivered in November 1999 with tail number N581GA, and reregistered for unknown reasons on March 2000 with a new tail number, N379P. It began flights in June 2000, and changed the tail number again in December 2003.

Plakias did not return several telephone messages seeking comment. He told the Boston Globe recently that he simply filed the required paperwork. "I'm not at liberty to discuss the affairs of the client business, mainly for reasons I don't know," he told the Globe. Asked whether the company exists, Plakias responded: "Millions of companies are set up in Massachusetts that are just paper companies."

A lawyer in Washington, whose name is listed on a 1996 IRS form on record at the Secretary of the Commonwealth's office in Massachusetts -- and whose name is whited out on some copies of the forms -- hung up the phone last week when asked about the company.

Three weeks ago, on Dec. 1, the plane, complete with a new tail number, was transferred to a new owner, Bayard Foreign Marketing of Portland, Ore., according to FAA records. Its registered agent in Portland, Scott Caplan, did not return phone calls.

Like the officers at Premier Executive, Bayard's sole listed corporate officer, Leonard T. Bayard, has no residential or telephone history. Unlike Premier's officers, Bayard's name does not appear in any other public records.

Researchers Margot Williams and Julie Tate contributed to this report. Williams has since left The Washington Post.

More: Is N8068V Now N44982?

I've blown an entire afternoon on this story. Wake me up if you see hooded and shackled men being loaded or unloaded from N44982...
posted by Kevin at 6:30 PM

The Los Angeles Police Department is experimenting with facial-recognition software it says will help identify suspects, but civil liberties advocates say the technology raises privacy concerns and may not identity people accurately.

"It's like a mobile electronic mug book," said Capt. Charles Beck of the gang-heavy Rampart Division, which has been using the software. "It's not a silver bullet, but we wouldn't use it unless it helped us make arrests."

But Ramona Ripston, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said the technology was unproven and could encourage profiling on the basis of race or clothing.

"This is creeping Big Brotherism. There is a long history of government misusing information it gathers," Ripston said.

The department is seeking about $500,000 from the federal government to expand the use of the technology, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday. Police have been testing it on Alvarado Street just west of downtown Los Angeles.
posted by Kevin at 3:17 PM

Rumsfeld fails to maintain appearances:

Ever since Sept. 11, 2001, there have been questions about Flight 93, the ill-fated plane that crashed in the rural fields of Pennsylvania.

The official story has been that passengers on the United Airlines flight rushed the hijackers in an effort to prevent them from crashing the plane into a strategic target – possibly the U.S. Capitol.

During his surprise Christmas Eve trip to Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld referred to the flight being shot down – long a suspicion because of the danger the flight posed to Washington landmarks and population centers.

Was it a slip of the tongue? Was it an error? Or was it the truth, finally being dropped on the public more than three years after the tragedy of the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000?

Here's what Rumsfeld said Friday: "I think all of us have a sense if we imagine the kind of world we would face if the people who bombed the mess hall in Mosul, or the people who did the bombing in Spain, or the people who attacked the United States in New York, shot down the plane over Pennsylvania and attacked the Pentagon, the people who cut off peoples' heads on television to intimidate, to frighten – indeed the word 'terrorized' is just that. Its purpose is to terrorize, to alter behavior, to make people be something other than that which they want to be."

Several eyewitnesses to the crash claim they saw a "military-type" plane flying around United Airlines Flight 93 when the hijacked passenger jet crashed – prompting the once-unthinkable question of whether the U.S. military shot down the plane.
posted by Kevin at 3:07 PM

I thought this was a fake site at first, but I think it's real. I went as far as the secure checkout page that asks for a credit card:

HURRY AND BUY NOW!

He wears a Cross Necklace! Matching One including for your child too!

Comb His Hair! Just like Yours!

He's Big and 17 inches Tall!

... And Most of All, "Jesus Comes 2 Play!" is Full of Fun and Love!

Buy Now: $29.95

100% Satisfaction Guarantee

He Prays! His hands can hold together to pray.

He's Soft! And Always Ready to Give a Hug!

His Clothes and Sandals are Removable!

Research Credit: JH
posted by Kevin at 11:49 AM

Viktor Yushchenko claimed victory in the rerun of Ukraine's presidential election, vowing to bring the former Soviet republic closer to the European Union and end divisions that led to mass demonstrations during the past month.

Yushchenko has 52.5 percent to Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych's 43.7 percent, with 97 percent counted, the Central Election Committee said today. The Supreme Court three weeks ago said the results of the original Nov. 21 vote, which showed Yanukovych won, were fraudulent and ordered the second election.
posted by Kevin at 2:00 AM

As dawn broke Monday across the Bay of Bengal, countries struck by tsunamis in the wake of the most powerful earthquake the planet has seen in 40 years focused on relief and rescue efforts, and said the death toll from the giant waves -- already more than 15,000 -- is expected to rise further.
posted by Kevin at 7:52 PM

MW spreads the Christmas Cheer! Thanks MW!

I've had a great Christmas with my girlfriend. We're going to get tucked into bed and read about cob building methods. Merry Crustmas!

The usual pace of updates will return soon.... *sigh*
posted by Kevin at 11:29 PM

Anyone claiming to be a follower of Jesus Christ has a very high standard to live up to. Christians are supposed to love everyone, their enemies included, without exception. That means loving Iraqis. It means speaking up when “our troops” kill and maim them. Christians are supposed to be truthful and avoid even the appearance of evil. That means Christians shouldn’t lie about the existence of weapons of mass destruction. It of course follows that Christians shouldn’t give the Medal of Freedom to the creators of those lies.
posted by Kevin at 8:58 PM

Merry Christmas!

Hervé Gaymard, France's new finance minister, on Thursday warned of a global "economic catastrophe" if the US, Europe and Asia did not work together to stem the decline of the dollar against the Euro.

As the dollar reached new lows against the European currency, Mr Gaymard voiced the strongest criticism yet from a European finance minister of the dollar's decline, saying it was "absolutely essential" that the US understood the need for "co-ordinated management at the world level" at the next G7 finance ministers meeting in February.

"If we stay as we are, with no co-ordination, one can imagine a catastrophic economic situation at the global level," he said.
posted by Kevin at 8:40 PM

Click through for detailed...uh... speculation:

The president apparently uses a wearable defibrillator, a device to stop heart arrhythmia, as seen in photographs. He has had a sudden fainting spell and other symptoms of atrial fibrillation (AF) and has a genetic tendency for it. Some observers have noted neurological and psychological irregularities and other evidence of stroke, which is a possible result of AF. Some of these irregularities could be caused by Wernicke-Korsakoff's, a disease of inveterate alcoholics. The president has an even stronger genetic predisposition for hyperthyroidism and some symptoms of it, including the heartbeat arrhythmia. Only his doctors know for sure.
posted by Kevin at 8:36 PM

For the first time in nearly three years, reader contributions covered my expenses for food and gas for the month of December.

AH, TL, AM, HM, AZ, RS: I humbly offer my most sincere thanks to all of you.

In early 2005, Cryptogon will be moving to a modern content management system (CMS). Your generosity is making this upgrade possible! Thanks again.
posted by Kevin at 7:00 PM

Thanks, RS!
posted by Kevin at 6:45 PM

U.S. Marines battled insurgents in Fallujah on Thursday with warplanes dropping bombs and tanks shelling suspected guerrilla positions, causing deaths on both sides, as the first 200 residents returned to the battered city.

In Fallujah, U.S. F-18 fighter-bombers were seen striking at targets in the city's outskirts. Tank and artillery fire was also heard.

Officials said U.S. Marines were killed but would not specify the number. Several insurgents were also killed, they said. However, military officials said three Marines were killed in the general area.
posted by Kevin at 6:19 PM

A new report blames the continuing bloodshed in Iraq on America's failure to honestly assess the situation.

The US is facing increasingly deadly attacks in Iraq because, as in the Vietnam War, it failed to honestly assess facts on the ground and is living in "fantasy land", a report says.

The report, prepared by Anthony Cordesman, senior fellow of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said Administration spokesmen and women had appeared to live "in a fantasy land" when giving accounts of events in Iraq.

Mr Cordesman, a former Pentagon official who has made several trips to Iraq, said Iraqi spies were a serious threat to US operations and that there was no evidence insurgent numbers were declining, despite vigorous US and Iraqi counterattacks.
posted by Kevin at 6:16 PM

Hundreds of thousands of secret Whitehall files are being shredded before the public gains the right to see them under the Freedom of Information Act on 1 January.

Figures obtained by The Independent show a dramatic escalation in the destruction of confidential papers before the new rights of access come into force. Whitehall departments, including the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), have almost doubled the number of files they have destroyed since the Freedom of Information Act became law.

Although the legislation was passed in 2000, Whitehall was given more than four years to prepare for its introduction. Ministers are bracing themselves for a flood of demands to see confidential documents. Freedom of Information will give the public unprecedented access to previously secret files, including details of ministers' diaries and confidential briefing papers.
posted by Kevin at 6:13 PM

"Christians" are constantly telling me that the Bible is the complete, 100%, no shit, honest to God, Word of God, end of story. As soon as I'm finished laughing at them, and telling them that their holy book is the product of the editorial whims of madmen and to seek professional psychiatric help, another one tries to "save" me, etc.

To those thinking people out there, I ask: If you were going to read one book about the material Constantine (and the various councils) removed from what "Christians" now call the Bible, which one would you read?

On a related topic, The Isaiah Effect by Gregg Braden seems interesting. I heard Gregg Braden on the radio today talking about this book. It might make for some thought provoking reading.
posted by Kevin at 5:01 PM

Let me get this straight... The U.S. invaded Iraq to steal its oil and now the U.S. is mad at Russia for nationalizing Yukos? Tell me another one:

The Bush administration has criticized Russia's takeover of key parts of the embattled oil giant Yukos and warned the lack of transparency in the case could damage Russia's role in the global economy.

"We are disappointed in the way this case has been handled," deputy State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said Thursday.

"We certainly don't think it has been disposed of in a transparent manner."

On Thursday the Russian state oil firm Rosneft announced it purchased the Baikal Group, an unknown firm that was the winner of an auction on Sunday of Yuganskneftegaz, Yuko's main production division.

The auction went ahead despite a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge in Houston, Texas issuing a stay order, pending the outcome of Yukos' U.S. Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection application.

Thursday's move essentially nationalizes Yuganskneftegaz.
posted by Kevin at 4:51 PM

Another day, another record low for the dollar:

The U.S. dollar hit an all-time low in thin pre-holiday trading Thursday against the euro, which breached the $1.35 mark after a mixed economic report from the U.S. Commerce Department.
posted by Kevin at 4:25 PM

Most people will laugh this story off as a freak aberration, a nexus, where lunatic cat ladies and criminal corporations treat the tools of Creation the way a six year old treats a Lego set. (Actually, if one was to compare the fruits of their labor, the six year old's work would seem masterful compared to the Mengele-style tinkering that passes for "science" in genetics labs around the world today.)

I know someone who worked in a neuroscience "wet" lab in which other scientists were manufacturing cloned rats for research purposes. She said that when the process fails, which is most of the time, the results are, "the stuff of nightmares." Now, consider the following paragraph from the article:

Scientists also warn that cloned animals suffer from more health problems than their traditionally bred peers and that cloning is still a very inexact science. It takes many gruesome failures to produce just a single clone.

At what point will the imbecile whims of humans lead to an extinction level event?

If these idiots continue to pretend to be God, we might find out sooner rather than later.
posted by Kevin at 2:36 PM

The ultimate nightmare scenario is that this society doesn't collapse before the techno-dystopia fully unfurls. We might come to learn that death is, by far, a preferable outcome than what They have in store for us.

Look at your pink, freshly spawned babies as you read the bold sections below. Do you think this stuff is being designed for use on some far-away population of heretics? No brother, they're building this stuff for use against you and your kids (and their kids). The purpose of this technology is to stop the oscillation of history between relative stability and revolution, as The Party of Big Brother did in Orwell's 1984.

So, here are some companies to place at the top of your shit list. And make sure to read down to the bottom of this story for some cheery UAV news!

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency late last week awarded 37 contracts for new urban-warfighting technologies.

The agency last June solicited proposals for casualty-reduction technologies; intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance devices; beyond-line-of-sight weapons; urban command and control tools; and training and simulation systems.

The 37 awards, each worth from $130,000 to $2.7 million for six- to 12-month feasibility demonstrations, are intended to reduce casualties and collateral damage while improving effectiveness of smaller forces, DARPA said in a statement.

The awards went to:

AETC Inc. of San Diego for sound detection devices

Alphatech Inc. of Burlington, Mass., for 3-D situational perception devices

Analysis Group of Falls Church, Va., for automated urban decision support

Applied Research Associates Inc. of Raleigh, N.C., for aerial firefight sensors; optical navigation for operations not using the Global Positioning System; and detectors for concealed weapons and explosives

Aptima Inc. of Woburn, Mass., for a culture-based urban modeling environment

BAE Systems North America of Rockville, Md., for millimeter wave exposure to improve recognition; nonstop communications; an infrared situational awareness and threat warning system; and a rational observer system

BBN Technologies Inc. of Cambridge, Mass., for force multipliers and persistent target tracking by 3-D radar

BBNT Solutions LLC, also of Cambridge, for a cultural analysis and learning environment

DEKA R&D of Manchester, N.H., for a rapid vertical mobility concept Draper Laboratory Inc., also of Cambridge, for radio frequency indoor geolocation and precision emplacement

General Atomics of San Diego for Raptor View high-resolution surveillance

Harris Corp. of Melbourne, Fla., for an urban communications environment

ISX Corp. of Camarillo, Calif., for a culturally aware peacekeeping tool set

Lockheed Martin Corp. for force multiplication and stabilization analysis models

Metal Storm USA Ltd. of Arlington, Va., for urban weapons

NextGen Aeronautics Inc. of Torrance, Calif., for small gunships

Omnitech Robotics International of Englewood, Colo., for sensor emplacement methods

PPG Industries Inc. of Allison Park, Pa., for nanostructured light-weight armor

Raytheon Co. for active-protection and head-mounted alert systems

Science Applications International Corp. of San Diego for smart-dust sensors, RF predictive propagation models, focused situational awareness and renewed-conflict models

Sandia National Laboratories of Albuquerque, N.M., for air-dropped unmanned ground vehicles and multiplayer wargaming environments

Smart Information Flow Technologies LLC of Minneapolis for cross-cultural training simulations

SRI International of Menlo Park, Calif., for a wall-climbing robot

University of Texas at Austin for low-cost radar sensors for personnel detection and tracking

Wave Technologies of Chantilly, Va., for a rapid urban-warfare training environment.

DARPA this week also announced that its Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems AV-1 aircraft, built by Boeing Co., successfully obeyed ground-based pilots’ commands via satellite. The first pilot, at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., handed the UAV over to another in Seattle. The Seattle pilot executed four air maneuvers before returning control to Edwards.

Capt. Ralph Alderson, the J-UCAS program manager, said in a statement that the demonstration shows future UAVs could maintain “a persistent, lethal presence anywhere, anytime” with operators located at air bases and carriers around the world.

DARPA said the aircraft’s software could become one of the first candidates for the Defense Department’s planned Common Operating System to enable interactive, worldwide operational control.
posted by Kevin at 2:12 PM

In a development without precedent in Australia, secret evidence is being heard in closed sessions, with access denied to the public, the media and even the accused man and his lawyer, in a hearing of terrorist-related offences currently underway in Sydney. A magistrate has granted wide-ranging secrecy and suppression orders, in the first test of the Howard government’s latest “national security” legislation.
posted by Kevin at 10:03 PM

A reader tipped me off on this a couple of days ago. Thanks!

HIV positive children and their loved ones have few rights if they choose to battle with social work authorities in New York City.

Jacklyn Hoerger worked at the Incarnation Children's Center

Jacklyn Hoerger's job was to treat children with HIV at a New York children's home.

But nobody had told her that the drugs she was administering were experimental and highly toxic.

"We were told that if they were vomiting, if they lost their ability to walk, if they were having diarrhoea, if they were dying, then all of this was because of their HIV infection."

In fact it was the drugs that were making the children ill and the children had been enrolled on the secret trials without their relatives' or guardians' knowledge.

As Jacklyn would later discover, those who tried to take the children off the drugs risked losing them into care.
posted by Kevin at 9:58 PM

Back in August, I wrote:

I've been telling people, in private, that I believe the Russian government shut down Yukos because of strategic military reasons. Key word, "believe." I have no proof of this, but I don't buy the justification that back taxes are the cause. The establishment of Yukos was a crime in the first place.

With the U.S. drawing a bead on every piece of dirt that contains more than a few drops of oil, if you were a Russian military planner, what would you do?

I'll count that one in the "correct" column:

Gazprom, Russia's state-controlled gas monopoly, could team up with the China National Petroleum Corporation to develop the Yukos oil company's main production asset, sold to a mystery bidder on Sunday.

Speaking in Germany, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, said: "We don't rule out that CNPC would take part in the production of Yuganskneftegas, which was sold at an auction." He said CNPC did not participate in the auction. "However, Gazprom and CNPC have reached an agreement about co-operation in the energy sector."

Immediately after Mr Putin's statement, Gazprom said a new memorandum, signed two days before the auction, covered strategic co-operation with China in the oil sector - particularly over oil projects in Russia. It already has an agreement with CNPC over gas.
posted by Kevin at 7:06 PM

Southern California Cryptogon readers should show up to the next Orange County Post Carbon Group meeting:

Wednesday, January 12, 7:00 PM

Diedrich's Coffeehouse
1170 Baker
Costa Mesa, CA
714-432-0747

Thanks, GH, for letting me know about this meeting!
posted by Kevin at 6:56 PM

I was shooting some b-roll for the documentary several weeks ago, and I was pointing my video camera at the red-light and surveillance cameras at an intersection in Costa Mesa, CA (close to where I live). Within minutes, cops started circling. Yep. Cops were driving in circles around my location, slowing as they went past me. They don't like it when you point cameras at Their cameras. Tens of thousands of people drive underneath those surveillance masts every day without thinking anything about it at all. But when an individual points his or her camera at the matrix.... Well... That's different.

For some reason, I'm happy to report, the cops left me alone that day. But I know it's just a matter of time until most activity involving cameras in public will be considered possible terrorist activities. Ashley's story is probably pretty typical nowadays:

Ashley Miner didn't think taking pictures of the state Capitol would rise to the level of a terrorist plot. The building has been photographed only a jillion times.

She thought the photos would help with her final paper in a University at Albany history class. But as Miner sat in her car taking pictures last Thursday, parked between the Capitol and Empire State Plaza, somebody walked by and got the idea she was a threat. The person dialed 911 and gave the Albany Police Department her license plate number.

At 7 a.m. the next day, Miner got a call from her upset mother, Carol, in Rhode Island. The police had called Carol Miner to find out what her daughter, a UAlbany senior planning on going to law school, was doing with a camera alongside New York's Capitol.
posted by Kevin at 6:26 PM

Brisbane-based ballistics company, Metal Storm Ltd, was selected by the US Department of Defense to demonstrate the feasibility of one of its weapons mounted on an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV).

Related: U.S. ARMY ROBOTS TO ENTER URBAN COMBAT IN IRAQ IN EARLY 2005

Research Credit: AL
posted by Kevin at 6:20 PM

AZ is helping to keep food in the belly! Thanks AZ!
posted by Kevin at 6:13 PM

This is the material I was emailing by request a few weeks ago. Someone posted it to a webserver:

The end of the world "as we know it" is very close. There may be nothing that can be done to prevent it and only little that will soften its impact. This places even greater importance on what FTW has been advocating for many years: personal and community preparedness.

This article constitutes FTW's third-ever economic warning to its subscribers. The first, published on September 9, 2001 was followed two days later by the "attacks" on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The second was on July 8, 2002 just before a precipitous drop in the Dow of more than 1400 points and the wiping out of more than a trillion dollars of shareholder equity, especially from pension funds.

One key to grasping the interrelatedness of these developments is to understand that dramatic economic collapse, especially in the case of a super power or an Empire, has historically created a power vacuum which has resulted in war. If, as von Clausewitz said, "war is a continuation of politics by other means," then we must also admit that politics is a continuation of economics; and economics is a continuation of energy. All economics (at least in this world) is founded upon energy, whether it is hydrocarbon energy or physical labor (food calories). There are 10 calories of hydrocarbon energy in every calorie of food consumed.

Energy is the ability to do work; it is, in effect, the ability to survive. Energy is economics. Now, economic warfare several orders of magnitude above that which has occurred since 9/11 is underway. As much of the world hoped it would soon be dealing with a Kerry presidency that might have provided a partner still worth working with, it refrained from making economic moves that might permanently damage the US.

There was no point in destroying the US economy until it became clear that the election was rigged and the neocons had been moving ahead with a hostile agenda all along. For the world, November 2nd represented yet another Rubicon: there is no longer any hope of "peaceful coexistence" with the American Empire. Ultimately this conflict must become a physical one.

Research Credit: GH
posted by Kevin at 6:08 PM

An attack at a US military base in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul has killed 24 people and injured more than 60, the US military has said.

Research Credit: DG
posted by Kevin at 12:59 PM

HAHAHA! Can you believe it!?

A senior U.S. official said Iran and Syria have developed ballistic missiles that can destroy U.S. targets in Iraq as well as in nations aligned with Washington.
posted by Kevin at 6:35 PM

There's a news blackout on Falljuah. This is from Agence France-Presse:

West and Wilson insisted however that fighting that broke out Friday in Fallujah, which left six marines dead, was not an example failure.

"We are not talking of a setback, but just about insurgents hiding in houses for a chance to kill a soldier," Wilson said.
posted by Kevin at 1:19 PM

We were taught at school that Franz Kafka's The Trial was a dark satire on bureaucracy. No disrespect to the teacher in question...but The Trial is considerably more than that.

In fact Kafka's tale of Joseph K, a bank clerk charged with an unspecified crime, arrested and eventually executed without ever knowing the reason why, is one of the most chilling horror stories of the 20th century. But its horror lies not in the simple mocking of opaque, bureaucratic obstinacy, but in the nightmare vision of a society where morality and logic, the keystones that build civilisation, have been replaced by an authority exercising feckless whims and displaying insane, dangerous inconsistencies.
posted by Kevin at 1:12 PM

Liberation... Victory... Democracy...

Gaze upon it! Look at this hell we've built on earth! Your tax money and the indebtedness of your children (and their children and their children and their children...) are making this possible.
posted by Kevin at 2:48 AM

If you only read one thing today, read Ran's latest essay.
posted by Kevin at 2:16 AM

A well-respected and popular professor at the University of California in Berkeley has been fired after publishing a scientific paper regarding the uncontrolled contamination of irreplaceable native Mexican corn varieties by genetically engineered corn. Dr. Ignacio Chapela, whose corn contamination article was published in the science journal "Nature," was denied his tenure due to pressure from the biotech company Monsanto on the University (the UC Berkeley tenure review panel had actually voted almost unanimously to approve his tenure). Professor Chapela has been told to have his office cleaned out by December 31.
posted by Kevin at 1:14 AM

Since 2000, Gray and more than 6 million other Americans have joined the ranks of the families who find it increasingly difficult to perform a most basic function - to put food on their tables.

The economic indicators are numerous.

After a seven-year decline, the number of Americans on food stamps has shot up 39 percent since 2000, according to federal statistics. Every state, except Hawaii, has felt the impact. In Arizona, food stamp rolls have increased 104 percent, in Nevada, 97 percent; Oregon, 79 percent; South Carolina, 68 percent; Missouri, 65 percent.

Texas has added nearly a million people to its food stamp rolls in only four years.
posted by Kevin at 1:10 AM

Really? No!

The CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department have warned President Bush that the United States and its Iraqi allies aren't winning the battle against Iraqi insurgents who are trying to derail the country's Jan. 30 elections, according to administration officials.
posted by Kevin at 1:06 AM

Researchers at Rockefeller University in the US have made the first tentative steps towards creating a form of artificial life.

Their creations, small synthetic vesicles that can process (express) genes, resemble a crude kind of biological cell.

The parts for their "vesicle bioreactors", as they call them, all come from diverse realms of life.

The soft cell walls are made of fat molecules taken from egg white. The cell contents are an extract of the common gut bug E. coli, stripped of all its genetic material.

This essence of life contains ready-made much of the biological machinery needed to make proteins; the researchers also added an enzyme from a virus to allow the vesicle to translate DNA code.

When they added genes, the cell fluid started to make proteins, just like a normal cell would.
posted by Kevin at 12:03 AM

Do you get it yet?

The White House is telling federal agencies to expect lean budgets next year, with congressional aides and lobbyists saying President Bush appears ready to propose freezing or even slightly cutting overall domestic spending.

Targeted would be all annually approved programs except for defense and domestic security.
posted by Kevin at 1:31 AM

Just when you think you've seen it all...

This is America's Army, a computer "first-person shooter" game, in which players advance through the stages of soldierhood — drilling in basic training, taking target practice with an M-16, studying basic emergency medicine and, finally, going into combat.

It's been such a hit that the Army has recently gone one step further with the game, organizing video-game parties around the country like this one in Woodinville, offering free game play, free "chow" and plenty of exposure to the Army's recruitment tactics. Woodinville and Bellevue recruiters plan to repeat the events every three months.

The Army makes no bones about the fact that it designed the game to attract a new generation of potential soldiers reared on ever-more-realistic video games. Information on joining the Army is a mouse-click away through an Internet link.

Since the Army released the game in July 2002, it has proved to be a low-cost advertising jackpot. The game has been downloaded more than 16 million times, and the Army estimates that nearly a third of all young people of prime recruitment age have been exposed to it.

Related: America's Army, Potential Frontend to MK Program? (Click and scroll down)
posted by Kevin at 4:39 PM

An unenlightened populace, imputing televised propaganda as its own opinion, ignorant to the true state of the country, conditioned to never question either the monitor or government propagandists, captured by lies, deceits, fears, schizophrenia and obedient to the Amerikan Nazis cannot be said to vote wisely, with neither all available information at their disposal or with a clear understanding of the issues. This is not democracy, this is controlled debauched democracy, reminiscent of the best media propaganda in the now defunct Soviet Union and Iron Curtain, reminding one of the state owned channels available in dictatorships. Today in America, the only thing those in power have to do to win votes is control the television, its content and message. In the United States, nothing is easier to do.

Related: From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology Of Victory

The document was written by Michael Aquino, a Lieutenant Colonel (retired) in the U.S. Army and founder of the Temple of Set, a Satanic front organization for U.S. intelligence MK programs, and Paul Vallely, a U.S. Army General (retired) and a military analyst for Fox news (no, I'm not kidding). I refuse to link to the filth at the Temple of Set, but I encourage you to read it on your own.

Research Credit: DG
posted by Kevin at 3:02 PM

Ahh, it's so easy to control the prols with sufficient amounts of victory gin... and surveillance cameras on every corner:

For a sizeable proportion of Britons, binge-drinking is a weekend institution, with the young especially showing a greater taste for blind inebriation and its side effects than many of their European neighbors.

According to the Institute of Alcohol Studies (IAS), 48 percent of British men and 31 percent of women aged 19 to 24 admit to having been blind drunk at least twice a month during the past year.
posted by Kevin at 11:47 AM

Police officers don't have to give a reason at the time they arrest someone, the U.S. Supreme Court said in a ruling that shields officers from false-arrest lawsuits.
posted by Kevin at 11:38 AM

Thanks HM!

I have just sent $5 from this contribution to Ran Prieur. Come on you guys! Help out the people who are actually doing something!
posted by Kevin at 11:30 AM

You guys have heard me making noise about getting land and growing food, etc. for a long time. Recently, I noticed referral hits to Cryptogon emerging from www.ranprieur.com. Well, Ran Prieur is doing more than just writing about getting land and living a sane existence. He bought the land, and he's in the process of making it livable!

As far as I can tell, Ran is otherwise homeless and has been living very close to the edge in Seattle. Please check out his site and support Rand's efforts in any way you can. Cryptogon readers in the Pacific Northwest might want to consider networking with Rand and possibly working with him on his land.

If you're interested, here are some of my essays of these topics:

A Shovel, a Wheelbarrow and a Pile of Dead Leaves

A Shovel, a Cell Phone and an Epiphany in the Dirt

Peace Rallies Over, Everyone Back to Work

Cryptogon Organic Garden: First Results

Cryptogon Garden Update

TR Comments on Helen and Scott Nearing

Chinese Try Mobile Death Vans (This is actually about self sufficiency.)
posted by Kevin at 10:07 AM

And I can't fire up a yurt with a garden and some chickens.
posted by Kevin at 10:00 AM

Perhaps a little lunch break reading over at nga.mil today? Or was it work related?

This is the original post.

Here's the raw Apache log entry that shows the user from relay8.nga.mil checking out the document:

164.214.4.32 - - [16/Dec/2004:07:34:28 -0700] "GET /docs/cryptogon_bush_prob.pdf HTTP/1.0" 200 28315 "http://www.cryptogon.com/" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.0 (CK-NGA)"
posted by Kevin at 5:23 PM

A few days ago, I mentioned the Gary Webb story about the U.S. military's video game called America's Army, and how the game's graphics and audio should be carefully examined. Here's an example of why:

Writing in the journal Neuron, the researchers said they used high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging, a way of scanning brain activity in real time, on 17 undergraduate university students.

While the volunteers were looking at a computer, the researchers displayed a fearful face on the monitor for 33 milliseconds, immediately followed by a similar neutral face.

People all over the world respond similarly to a fearful expression, even a photograph of one. In this case, the face appeared and disappeared so quickly the volunteers could have had no conscious awareness of it.
posted by Kevin at 4:00 PM

This story is interesting for a number of reasons. Most interesting, in my opinion, is how these Irish guys came to be arrested in the first place. According to the Irish Independent article, "The cousins were arrested at the beginning of November by four policemen carrying out spot checks on a Seattle-bound train."

Municipal cops in the U.S. are conducting "spot checks" on trains? If anyone can tell me more about this "spot check" nonsense, please do. I'm very curious about this. What happens to Americans who don't have their "papers"??? Do they get the same shackle and chain treatment as foreigners? (For you Americans who plan on not-identifying yourself, think again.)

Since when did local cops begin checking the Visa status of people at random on trains!?

THE Government was accused last night of not doing enough to help Irish people arrested in the US for visa violations.

Fine Gael TD John Deasy made the charge as attempts were being made to secure the release of two men being held for the past six weeks in a top security Denver prison since being picked up for overstaying on their holiday visas.

The men, cousins Alan and Cliff Whelan, both 23, from Waterford city, are being locked up 23 hours a day, according to their families.

The men say that during their transfer by bus from Montana, where they were arrested, they were shackled and chained with 16 other prisoners and accompanied by heavily armed guards.

The cousins were arrested at the beginning of November by four policemen carrying out spot checks on a Seattle-bound train. Since then, they have been allowed one three-minute phone call a week.

According to new figures Mr Deasy has obtained, 290 Irish people have been deported from the US in the past five years. He plans to raise the men's detention with the US ambassador.

Research Credit: DG
posted by Kevin at 3:13 PM

Although the International Bible Society (IBS) indeed will crank out a limited-run, special edition of the New International Version Bible in the near future, it's unlikely that readers will discover, for example, a previously unreleased surprise ending to the Good Book. Rather, according to FedBizOpps.com, a site for federal government procurement opportunities, the Department of Defense intends to award the IBS a sole-source contract for the production of 10,000 Bibles containing military-specific messages and imagery. The Bibles - which will be distributed to soldiers of the elite U.S. Special Operations Command - will feature a "custom-designed cover" and "Army designed color photographs and text inserts."

It appears that IBS's crafting of the Special Ops Bible will rely on the "new package, same great taste" approach that the commercial sector often takes when introducing a new logo or easy-grip handle for an existing product. It's hopefully safe to assume that though the Bibles are new, they will not be "improved." IBS has an extraordinary task ahead of it, as they must juxtapose, hypothetically, Christ's "Blessed are the peacemakers" pronouncement with army-centric motivational messages and images. A tough job indeed, given the context of 100,000 "excess casualties" - consisting mainly of women and children - that U.S. and British military forces may have caused since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, as indicated in the Oct. 29, 2004, edition of The Lancet, a British medical journal.
posted by Kevin at 2:16 PM

$100 billion here, $100 billion there:

The Bush administration plans to ask for between $80 billion and $100 billion to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan next year, rather than the $70 billion to $75 billion the White House privately told members of Congress before the election, according to Pentagon and White House officials.
posted by Kevin at 1:21 AM

Two .38 caliber shots to the head and this is officially called a suicide!?

Tell me another one!

Gary Webb was murdered. It's that simple:

Facing a barrage of calls from the media and the public, the Sacramento County Coroner's Office issued a statement Tuesday confirming that former investigative reporter Gary Webb committed suicide with two gunshots to the head.

"The cause of death was determined to be self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the head," the coroner's statement said.

"Information and evidence gathered at the scene of death, including a handwritten note indicating an intention on the part of the decedent to take his own life, resulted in 'suicide' as the determined manner of death.

"The investigation is continuing and will take an estimated additional six to eight weeks to complete."
posted by Kevin at 6:40 PM

Popular sites, such as infowars.com and rense.com, have posted a statistical analysis of four Bush researcher deaths (Danny Casolaro, J.H. Hatfield, Mark Lombardi and now Gary Webb) that originated from brasscheck.com. I didn't post these data on Cryptogon because I don't have sufficient skill with statistics to assess the validity of the results.

I passed the numbers by a friend of mine who is highly competent in data analysis and mathematics. He immediately noticed a flaw in the brasscheck.com data. Last night, he wrote up his own analysis for all of you to consider. The author of this paper has a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science and a PhD in Cognitive Science. He has had several articles published in peer reviewed, scientific journals. He is a (full time) computer programmer.

The bottom line of TR's analysis is that, while the chances of four Bush authors committing suicide are not as astronomical as the brasscheck.com data seem to show, there is about a 94% chance that these suicides were NOT a coincidence. The result varies by the number of authors we consider to be full time, hard core Bush researchers. TR, erring on the safe side, assumed there are 40, full time, hard core Bush researchers. All in all, this was a fascinating look into the complex nature of citing statistics with regard to this string of deaths.
posted by Kevin at 3:36 PM

The NSA user (host: aimhold2.ncsc.mil*, ip: 144.51.206.175) conducted the following Google search: remove hate "live bookmark" die kill

Weird, eh?

What are those guys smokin' over at the NSA these days?

* ncsc.mil = National Computer Security Center. This is the NSA.
posted by Kevin at 3:35 PM

Link includes commentary by Mike Ruppert:

Talk about a double standard. While corporate leaders tout the benefits of investors owning their stocks, many executives seem to be running for the doors themselves.

Selling of shares by insiders - which includes executives and other top officers and directors at a company - has been rampant in recent months, with sales rising to their highest level in more than four years in November.

While no one can pinpoint an exact reason for that run-up, the implication is troubling since big insider selling is often considered bearish for the overall market as well as for individual stocks.
posted by Kevin at 3:32 PM

POLICE have rejected calls to re-open the inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly, the government weapons expert, after two paramedics who found him at the scene of his death said he could not have died from self-inflicted knife wounds.

Dave Bartlett and Vanessa Hunt, both ambulance workers, yesterday spoke out for the first time since the Hutton Inquiry, which concluded that Dr Kelly had committed suicide and died of wounds to the ulnar artery in his left wrist.

The paramedics disputed the findings of the investigation, claiming there was not enough blood at the scene to merit the official conclusions.

They had raised the same concerns while giving evidence to the inquiry last year.
posted by Kevin at 2:36 PM

This is an example of a very effective propaganda film. The fact that much of it is accurate adds to its utility. The insurgency in Iraq is waging war against the U.S. using standard U.S. methods: pure propaganda and terror.

By the way, where did the person on the voice over learn to speak English? I can't place his accent.

Research Credit: DG
posted by Kevin at 2:15 PM

This is a book by William Kötke. The full text is available for free:

"There appears to be nothing that the controlling elites of the imperial hierarchies will not do to service their greed and their craving for power. Guns, drugs, slavery, torture, massacre, assassination, and the most massive destruction, ecologically and socially is the stock in trade."

Research Credit: GH
posted by Kevin at 1:51 PM

In other news, Google blocks news sites for the fascist Chinese regime:

Under a deal announced yesterday between the internet search engine Google and five of the world's top libraries, some of the globe's greatest literary treasures will soon be freely available for all to read on the world wide web.
posted by Kevin at 1:27 PM

My crap webhost went down again. If you emailed me in the last 12 hours, send it again. It went down a black hole. And Blogger was dead for about 12 hours... Again. I've had it. So... I'm going to burn Cryptogon to the ground in order to improve it. New webhost. New content management system. I will make the archives available in some (possibly broken) form, but don't count on them existing as they do now. One possible solution will be a raw, site dump file, with selected stories moved into the new system.

So, how do you want the phoenix to rise?

Which content management system should Cryptogon use?
	Movable Type
	PHPNuke
	PostNuke
	GeekLog
	Drupal
	Mambo
	Xoops
	I don't know which operating system I'm using, help me.
Free polls from Pollhost.com

posted by Kevin at 1:19 PM

Credible sources who were close to Gary Webb have stated that he was receiving death threats, being regularly followed, and that he was concerned about strange individuals who were seen on multiple occasions breaking into and leaving his house before his apparent 'suicide' on Friday morning.
posted by Kevin at 1:11 AM

Bush needs to land on an aircraft carrier and declare victory again:

Insurgent attacks on U.S. convoys in Iraq have prompted the Air Force to step up airlifts of supplies to troops, allowing the Army to reduce the number of convoys on dangerous routes, Pentagon officials said Tuesday.

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. John Jumper authorized the increase in airlifts in November after seeing firsthand the frustration Army officials were having in Iraq with attacks on convoys.
posted by Kevin at 1:09 AM

America's trade deficit swelled to a record high of $55.5 billion in October as imports -- including those from China -- surged to the loftiest levels ever. Skyrocketing crude oil prices also contributed to the yawning trade gap.
posted by Kevin at 1:05 AM

Incredible!

A 9-11 rescue worker recently came forward to say he was told by FBI agents to "keep my mouth shut" about one of the "black boxes" a fellow firefighter helped locate at ground zero, contradicting the official story that none of the flight and cockpit data recorders were ever recovered in the wreckage of the World Trade Center (WTC) towers.

Honorary firefighter Mike Bellone claims he was approached by unknown bureau agents a short time after he and his partner, Nicholas DeMasi, a retired New York firefighter, found three of the four "black boxes" among the WTC rubble before January 2002.

The pair first claimed in an August 2003 book entitled Behind the Scene: Ground Zero to have found the data recorders.

DeMasi said the "black boxes" were found while he traversed "ground zero" in his all-terrain vehicle (ATV) with three federal agents.

FBI and New York fire officials have denied ever finding the voice and data recorders.

Now Bellone claims agents were adamant about keeping the discovery a secret.

"They confronted me and told me to not to say anything," recalled Bellone, referring to one of three reddish-orange boxes with two white stripes he saw in the back of DeMasi’s ATV. "I said, 'Give me a good reason.' When they couldn't, I told them I wouldn't shut up about it.

"Why should I? I have nothing to hide and nothing to gain. It's the truth, and Nick and I are sticking to our story as we always have."

Bellone said he and DeMasi were not the only 9-11 rescue workers to see the "black boxes." He said there were several other witnesses and said he knows they have been silenced by federal agents.

"I know two or three others saw what went down, but they are not talking," said Bellone. "They got to those guys after they talked to me. The only reason I can figure they are trying to hide the truth is that the government knows it screwed up, and the recorders would prove it."
posted by Kevin at 1:04 AM

Local school officials in a suburb of Houston, Texas, are investigating how it was possible that a school police officer handed out calendars to students that featured explicit details on satanic and sexual rituals for every day of the month.

Parents in Pearland are demanding answers, according to a news report on KHOU-TV.

The school police officer who handed out the calendars was supposed to deliver a positive anti-gang message to the students last Monday, according to the report.

"September 20th is a 'midnight host' whatever that is," said one unidentified parent reading from the calendar. "You should have a blood-type ritual. September 23rd is the fall equinox – you should have an orgy. Activity group sex, any age, any sex."
posted by Kevin at 1:01 AM

What happens to people who make death threats against other people who then wind up meeting untimely ends? Under normal circumstances, the person who made the threats would be dragged away for for questioning by the cops!

First, Barbara Bush's public death threat:

...you can criticize me, but don't criticize my children and don't criticize my daughters-in-law and don't criticize my husband, or you're dead.

Barbara Bush, on the Larry King Live, 22 October 2003

Comments from Garry Webb, following the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election:

What this election tells me, unfortunately, is that it doesn't matter to most Americans if their government lies to them repeatedly.

They no longer care if their leaders erode their civil liberties, push this country further towards a police state, or shroud their actions in additional layers of official secrecy.

They don't mind if their government operates strictly for the benefit of the rich and the corporate class, as long as their own taxes don't go up.

Nor do they care if their government spends itself to the brink of bankruptcy. As long as they feel threatened by some external evil, everything is permitted.

Since the Bush administration did all of this and more, and still won re-election, my suspicion is that things will only get worse over the next four years.

Bush no longer has the threat of voter disapproval hanging over his head. He is free to pursue his agenda without restraint.

And now, I think, we will find out just how extreme that agenda is.

Anyone who thought the last four years were bad hasn't seen anything yet.

Gary Webb, in the BBC, 5 November 2004

Is Barbara Bush being questioned by the police?
posted by Kevin at 6:04 PM

Click through to read more about Paul Vallely's connection to Lt. Col. Michael Aquino, Satanist, Nazi occultist (he conducted a black magic ceremony at Himmler's Wewelsburg Castle), and founder of the "Temple of Set."

FoxNews hasn't landed in Canada just yet - the CRTC only recently approved adding its channel to digital cable - so I was spared being scared recently by Fox military analyst, Retired General Paul Vallely. He told Fox house "liberal" Alan Colmes that "we are not going to permit" a Shia majority victory in the forthcoming theatre of a "free" election in Iraq. Worse, he said "Iran and Syria are next. It's easy to do.... Israel is (already) prepared to take Iran down."

Colmes, according to Newshounds, followed up by asking whether he thought a Judeo/Christian holy war against Muslims was such a great idea. Vallely replied "That's what's going on. If you don't understand that, then you don't get it."
posted by Kevin at 2:06 PM

The next time you see that BushCheney/Jesus fish/cross/flag sticker nonsense on the ass end of a SUV, drop off a copy of this document for humble servants of Jesus to behold:

Home Cooking

By Chris Floyd
Published: December 10, 2004

When the devil comes knocking on your front door, looking for a way to spread his evil inside, he won't be sporting horns and a tail. He's going to come dressed as your sweetest dream, clean as a whistle, pious, sincere. He's going to speak your lingo, ape your ways -- and when he opens up his little box of poison, it's going to look like the heaven your mama sang about when she rocked you to sleep in your cradle.

Then one day, when the mind-fog lifts, you see him sitting at the head of the table, the walls of the room smeared with filth, dead bodies swelling on the blood-mucked floor, the still-living victims hog-tied and naked, screaming for mercy as the whipcords strike. He beckons you forward with a welcoming smile. You pause for a moment. It seems so strange: All this horror -- it would have once made you sick, but now it just feels like ... home. You shrug, you grin, you take your place beside him at the feast.

In just this way, while Americans were finishing their Thanksgiving dinners and preparing to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, a series of stories exposed -- once again -- the torture chamber at the heart of their feast: a government gone insane, embracing terror, atrocity and tyranny. Yet there was no public outcry against these desecrations. Few even noticed; fewer still cared.

Last week, the minions of George W. Bush announced, in open court, that he has the power to seize anyone on earth -- even "little old ladies in Switzerland" -- and imprison them forever if he so chooses, The New York Times reports. The minions said that anyone Bush declared "an enemy combatant" -- even if they never took up arms against America, even if they didn't know their actions were related to terrorism in any way -- could be abducted from any nation, friend or foe, or in the Homeland itself, and held indefinitely, "at the president's discretion," stripped of all rights under the U.S. Constitution or the Geneva Conventions.

Assistant Attorney General Brian Boyle said Bush's captives were entitled only to a single hearing, alone before a military tribunal, without legal counsel or access to the evidence against them -- evidence which Boyle cheerfully admitted could be obtained by torture in foreign countries, The Associated Press reports. Overturning centuries of Anglo-American jurisprudence, Boyle said there were no restrictions whatsoever on using torture evidence, as long as the president or his military agents arbitrarily decide it is "credible."

Days earlier, The Sunday Times tracked down the "private" planes of CIA front companies that Bush uses to carry victims of his lawless abductions to torture chambers in Jordan, Egypt, Libya and Uzbekistan, where "credible" evidence can be obtained with fists, cattle prods, rape, drugs and starvation. For example, witnesses told of hooded American agents grabbing captives in Sweden, stripping them, jamming drugs up their rectums, putting them in diapers and chains, and bundling them off to Egypt's hellhole prisons -- whose tortures have already produced generations of violent extremists.

But outsourcing is only one aspect of Bush's Torture, Incorporated; he has plenty of domestic production as well. Last week, the Pentagon released a report -- completed long before the election -- confessing that the "aberrations" of Abu Ghraib were in fact part of a broad system of state terror spread throughout Iraq, the Washington Post reports. Elite squads of "Special Operations" officers and CIA agents beat and abused prisoners across the country, the Pentagon said, while regular troops committed "technically illegal acts" by rounding up thousands of innocent people at random and holding them for months in crowded prisons, where they were often turned over to those same "elite" squads for "special handling." Some of this blood-soaked "intelligence" was "sent directly to the White House," interrogators noted. The report also admitted that American forces had taken innocent people hostage -- especially "female family members" -- in an effort to pressure wanted men to surrender: a clear war crime, as if such things mattered anymore.

Meanwhile, the International Red Cross revealed that Bush has even perverted the healing professions at his concentration camp in Guantanamo Bay, using doctors and nurses to help "set the conditions for interrogation" by withholding medical treatment and using their diagnostic skills to determine captives' "vulnerabilities" to various physical and psychological torments -- "a flagrant violation of medical ethics," said the Red Cross. Its investigators also found that the Guantanamo regime -- "an intentional system of cruel, unusual and degrading treatment, and a form of torture" -- was growing worse over time, Salon.com reports.

In such a moral sink, it was hardly even news that more photos of prisoner abuse -- taken months before the Abu Ghraib atrocities -- were uncovered last weekend, Reuters reports. This time it was "elite" teams of Navy SEALs mugging for the cameras with bloodied captives -- some with guns to their heads. Nor did anyone blink when Bush military brass announced plans last week to create forced labor camps for all male citizens in "liberated" Fallujah, the Boston Globe reports.

This Satan's Rout of blood and abandon comes directly from the White House, where Bush's legal counsel, Al Gonzales, engineered memos "justifying" torture and exalting unrestricted presidential power, beyond the reach of any law, foreign or domestic. As a reward for this violent outrage of American honor, Gonzales -- sweet-talking, pious and sincere, just like his boss -- will soon become the chief law officer of the land.

And the American people, what do they do about all the horror being wrought in their name? They shrug. They grin. They sit down to the feast.
posted by Kevin at 1:42 AM

Mark Lombardi
J.H. Hatfield
Danny Casolaro
Gary Webb

Reader Comments: Myth and Rumor

A Cryptogon reader wrote in to complain about not having links associated with the assertion (above) that Lombardi, Hatfield and Casolaro were suicided, in addition to Webb. By not providing links, I'm adding to "rumor and myth" that gives true conspiracy research a bad name. HA.

If you've been reading this site for any length of time, you know that, if anything, I provide too many links to backup my assertions. I provide distractive amounts of supporting information. Now, why would I list four non hyperlinked names in a post with no other information? Here's my response to the reader:

I intentionally didn't provide links. I know most of my readers are extremely lazy. I wanted to try to get them curious enough to do their own research. Type the names into google and do some reading on your own.

Rumor and myth? Brother, if you need convincing at this stage, you haven't been paying attention. Feel free to read another site if you don't like the content on mine.

Kevin

posted by Kevin at 7:04 PM

Every once in a while, individuals stumble upon information that simply CANNOT come out. This type of information usually includes prima facie evidence of capital crimes and/or active covert operations.

The murder of Gary Webb is the highest profile political assassination to occur in the U.S. in several years. Hopefully, we will learn about what Gary was working on before he was killed.

As with all political assassinations that cross my radar, I will continue to monitor the situation closely for any further information. Anyone with inside information on this case is encouraged to contact me via PGP encrypted email. My PGP key is here. WARNING: IF YOU DO HAVE INSIDE INFORMATION ON THIS THING, DO NOT USE PLAINTEXT EMAIL OR YOUR HOME OR WORK INTERNET CONNECTION. THIS IS FOR YOUR OWN SAFETY. I would encourage you to CC any information to John Young of Cryptome. Scroll down the page for John's PGP key. Everyone needs to keep their eyes and ears open, espcially in the immediate aftermath of this crime. If Webb was onto an active op, there's a chance that it might not have been shut down (or retasked) yet:

The full text of Gary Webb's obituary from the San Jose Mercury News follows:

Gary Webb, a former Mercury News investigative reporter, author and legislative staffer who ignited a firestorm with his controversial stories, died Friday in an apparent suicide in his suburban Sacramento home. He was 49.

The Sacramento County coroner's office said that when A Better Moving Company arrived at Mr. Webb's Carmichael home at about 8:20 a.m. Friday, a worker discovered a note posted to the front door which read: ``Please do not enter. Call 911 and ask for an ambulance.''

Mr. Webb, an award-winning journalist, was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head, Sacramento County Deputy Coroner Bill Guillot said Saturday.

Mr. Webb's friends and colleagues described him as a devoted father and a funny, dogged reporter who was passionate about investigative journalism.

As a staff writer for the Mercury News from 1989 to 1997, he exposed freeway retrofitting problems in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and wrote stories about the Department of Motor Vehicles' computer software fiascos.

Mr. Webb was perhaps best known for sparking a national controversy with a 1996 story that contended supporters of a CIA-backed guerrilla army in Nicaragua helped trigger America's crack-cocaine epidemic in the 1980s. The ``Dark Alliance'' series in the Mercury News came under fire by other news organizations, and the paper's own investigation concluded the series did not meet its standards.

Mr. Webb resigned a year and a half after the series appeared in the paper. He then published his book, ``Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.''

In the past few years, Mr. Webb worked in the California Assembly Speaker's Office of Member Services and for the Joint Legislative Audit Committee. The committee investigated charges that Oracle received a no-bid contract from Gov. Gray Davis. After being laid off from his legislative post last year, Mr. Webb was hired by the Sacramento News and Review, a weekly publication.

Tom Dresslar, a spokesman for state Attorney General Bill Lockyer who has known Mr. Webb for more than a decade, was distraught Saturday when he heard that his friend may have taken his own life.

``He had a fierce commitment to justice, truth and cared a lot about people who are forgotten and society tries to shove into the dark corners,'' Dresslar said. ``It's a big loss for me personally and a great loss for the journalism community.''

Services for Mr. Webb are pending.

MORE: DEAD OF MULTIPLE, SELF-INFLICTED GUNSHOT WOUNDS TO THE HEAD

Multiple, self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the head. Wounds... Self-inflicted...

Gary Webb, a prize-winning investigative journalist whose star-crossed career was capped with a controversial newspaper series linking the CIA to the crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles, died Friday of self-inflicted gunshot wounds, officials said.

Mr. Webb, 49, was found dead in his Carmichael home Friday morning of gunshot wounds to the head, the Sacramento County Coroner's Office said Saturday.

He left a note, but officials would not disclose its contents.

"I'm still in a state of shock," said Tom Dresslar, who works as a spokesman for California Attorney General Bill Lockyer and had known Mr. Webb for 15 years.

"He was a hard-core, no-fear investigative reporter," Dresslar said. "He wasn't afraid to stand up to whatever authority."

The two worked together when the Joint Legislative Audit Committee was investigating the Davis administration over the failed Oracle Corp. software contract.

Dresslar said Mr. Webb brought all the skills and tenacity that he had honed as an investigative reporter to his job as an investigator for the Assembly. "I was proud to work with him and call him a friend," Dresslar said.

Mr. Webb was divorced and had three children, according to Dresslar.

Most recently, Mr. Webb had been reporting for the Sacramento News & Review, covering politics and state government.

Mr. Webb had been working in the California Assembly speaker's Office of Member Services until February, when he was ousted after the new speaker, Fabian Núñez, took office.

Mr. Webb won more than 30 journalism awards in his career, which included stints with the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the San Jose Mercury News.

But it was Mr. Webb's tenure at the Mercury News from 1988 to 1997 that made his name in the business and eventually drove him from daily newspapers.

Mr. Webb, who was based in the newspaper's Sacramento bureau, authored a three-part investigative series in 1996 that linked the CIA to Nicaraguan Contras seeking to overthrow the Sandin ista government and to drug sales of crack cocaine flooding south-central Los Angeles in the 1980s.

The series, "Dark Alliances: The Story Behind the Crack Explosion," was controversial almost from the start.

Even as newspapers nationwide carried versions of Mr. Webb's reporting and congressional leaders called for investigations, the CIA director at the time visited Los Angeles for an unprecedented town hall meeting with area residents at which he denied the allegations and was met with loud jeers.

Three of the nation's leading newspapers, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, followed up with reports questioning Mr. Webb's conclusions, and eventually his own newspaper turned on him.

In a letter to readers published in the Mercury News in May 1997, then-Executive Editor Jerry Ceppos told readers there had been problems with the series and that "we fell short at every step of our process - in the writing, editing and production of our work."

Within a month of that note's publication, Mr. Webb told the Washington Post that he had been pulled off the story, and his editors had told him they would not publish his follow-ups.

He also said he was fighting a transfer from the Sacramento bureau to a posting in Cupertino.

By then, however, his fate at the Mercury News was sealed, and he left the paper that year, eventually taking a job with the Assembly.

Mr. Webb later published a 548-page book based on his series, and in a 1998 interview with The Bee he said he still was befuddled over how he became notorious while the allegations in his stories were dismissed.

"That is an amazing phenomenon," he said. "I'm still not exactly sure how that happened."

MORE: Red Light, Green Cash

This is a recent story by Gary Webb about the criminal activities related to cities robbing the public blind with traffic cameras.

Maybe the traffic cameras were only the tip of the iceberg. What else did Webb find out?

MORE: The Killing Game

This is another recent Gary Webb article. This one describes disturbing aspects of a video game designed jointly by the U.S. Army and Navy called America's Army. Clearly, this game is the front end of a something that makes the original MKULTRA programs seem innocuous by comparison. I wonder what close analysis of the sound and graphics used in this game would reveal... Are any "extra" image frames inserted into the gameplay? Just what exactly is contained on the audio tracks?

Are you confused? Are you wondering where I'm going with this? Too lazy to read the books, the declassified documents, the victim accounts? Then watch the 2004 version of The Manchurian Candidate again and pay close attention to the scenes where the troops are being modified. Note the video displays. Oh sure, that's just a movie. It's all made up.... Well, how about the 18,000 pages of recently released information related to CIA mind control experiments in the 1950s and 1960s. That's right. The documents describe the creation of information couriers and unsuspecting assassins in the 1950s and 1960s. But all of that research and development ended, you tell yourself, because the government realized how evil all of that stuff was and quit working on it.

Yep. Everything is A-Ok.

Oh yeah, by the way, make sure your children download the latest free first-person-shooter games from the U.S. military, and that they "play" for several hours per day. What's that? The guy who wrote this article is dead of multiple, self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the head. Nevermind all of that. Supersize your freedom fries... One last thing. How many of the kids playing this game are taking psychiatric medications? Ahhh, I'd say .mil has a steady stream of choice MK candidates lined up:

From an Army report: “Aptitudes related to information handling and information culture values are seen as vital to the effectiveness of the high-tech, network-centric Army of the future, and young American gamers are seen as especially proficient in these capabilities. More importantly, when young Americans enter the Army, they increasingly will find that key information will be conveyed via computer video displays akin to the graphical interfaces found in games.”

With the vast funding of the U.S. government behind them, the Army/Navy team began developing a game that hopefully would turn some of its players into real soldiers. “The overall mission statement ... was to develop a game with appeal similar to the game Counter-Strike,” wrote Michael Zyda, the director of the Navy think tank. “We took Counter-Strike as our model, but with heavy emphasis on realism and Army values and training.”

An experimental psychologist from the Navy helped tweak the game’s sound effects to produce heightened blood pressure, body temperature and heart rate. It was released in digital double surround sound, which few games are. In terms of game play, it was designed as a “tactical” shooter, slower-paced, more deliberate, but with Counter-Strike’s demanding squad tactics and communications--a “serious” game for kids who took their war gaming seriously.

Research Credit: AV
posted by Kevin at 1:17 PM

Support our troops:

At a time when some U.S. troops in Iraq are complaining they have to scrounge for equipment, six Ohio-based reservists were court-martialed for taking Army vehicles abandoned in Kuwait by other units so they could carry out their own unit's mission to Iraq.

Research Credit: GR
posted by Kevin at 1:02 PM

When Marine Lance Cpl. David Battle learned he'd either have to sacrifice his ring finger or the wedding band he wore, he told doctors at a field hospital in Iraq to cut off the finger.

With his approval, doctors severed his finger, but somehow in the chaos that followed, they lost his ring.
posted by Kevin at 1:00 PM

Alex Jones linked to a story called, "US Adopts National ID: Homeland Security Now In Charge Of Regulations For All US States Drivers Licenses and Birth Certificates" by Jonathan Wheeler.

Wheeler states that all birth certificates and driver's licenses will contain biometric components:

Beginning in 2005, the Department of Homeland Security will issue new uniformity regulations to the States requiring that all Drivers Licenses and Birth Certificates meet minimal Federal Standards with regard to US citizen information, including biometric security provisions.

Added to currently existing Federal Laws and Supreme Court rulings American citizens when born will be issued a Social Security Number that will be included on their Birth Certificates, along with DNA biometric markers. All birth certificates will also be registered in a Federal Government database maintained by the Department of Homeland Security. No child will be allowed enrollment to schools or be entitled to either State of Federal Government benefits programs without first presenting a certified Homeland Security registered Birth Certificate.

Drivers Licenses will also contain DNA biometric markers and include the holders Social Security Number and be required for receiving and applying for all State and Federal benefits programs.

While this sounds plausible, Wheeler doesn't provide any source information for the DNA-related statements. Can anyone provide me with confirmation of the validity of these statements?

While sections 1026 and 1027 of S. 2845 (National Intelligence Reform Act of 2004) do enable the federal government to set the "minimum standards" for birth certificates and driver's licenses, I don't see how Wheeler gets to DNA on birth certificates and driver's licenses.

Please don't think that I'm trying to assert that S. 2845 isn't a dangerous piece of legislation. IT IS. Will it result in the establishment of a de facto national ID card system? IT WILL. I just wish Wheeler would have included the source information for these statements about the DNA-based biometrics. (Obviously, if there is a plan to integrate DNA into identification systems, that is a deadly serious matter.) I've emailed the author for clarification.

Possibly Related: Falluja: DNA Testing for Residents
posted by Kevin at 5:16 AM

THOUSANDS of gallons of heavy-duty oil were pouring from a grounded cargo ship off the Alaska coast last night in a disaster that appears to have claimed six lives and threatens an environmental catastrophe.

The 40,000-tonne Malaysian-registered Selendang Ayu, carrying 480,000 gallons of heavy fuel oil and 21,000 gallons of diesel, yesterday split in two off the coast of Unalaska island, a region near a wildlife refuge that is home to sea lions, seals, otters, halibut fishing stocks and several endangered species.
posted by Kevin at 5:12 AM

These antics are so rotten, they don't even pass the Bush regime's smell test. Wow:

Former New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, President Bush's choice to be homeland security secretary, has withdrawn his name from consideration, the White House announced late Friday.

Bush's nomination of Kerik quickly proved controversial. News reports in recent days focused on revelations that Kerik had made millions of dollars a stun gun company that sold weapons to the Homeland Security Department and which wants more business. The White House had said that Kerik would avoid any conflicts of interest.
posted by Kevin at 7:28 PM

WHILE insurgents draw on deep wells of fury to expand their ranks in Iraq, the US military is fighting desertion, recruitment shortfalls and legal challenges from its own troops.
posted by Kevin at 1:24 PM

How many "Support Our Troops" bumper stickers did you see today?

He lost his arm serving his country in Iraq. Now this wounded soldier is being discharged from his company in Fort Hood, Texas, without enough gas money to get home. In fact, the Army says 27-year-old Spc. Robert Loria owes it close to $2,000, and confiscated his last paycheck.

"There's people in my unit right now – one of my team leaders [who was] over in Iraq with me, is doing everything he can to help me .... but it's looking bleak," Loria said by telephone from Fort Hood yesterday. "It's coming up on Christmas and I have no way of getting home."

UPDATE: Lawmakers Help Wounded Soldier Get Home After Dispute with Army

The PR firestorm wasn't good for maintaining appearances.
posted by Kevin at 1:10 PM

What Cryptogon service would you be most likely to pay for?
	The RSS feed
	A premium content area, topic index, message boards, maybe a weekly video news summary, etc.
	Open Souce Intelligence Service, where you task my research and analysis
	I'll never pay for anything
Free polls from Pollhost.com

posted by Kevin at 6:34 AM

Greetings, Gentlemen... Do you feel like unburdening your soul? My PGP key is here.

.mil

relay8.nga.mil
bluecoat01.randolph.af.mil
fwa160069.ak.pac.army.mil
gateway.uscg.mil
gate5-hawaii.nmci.navy.mil
gate2-hawaii.nmci.navy.mil
ce1.leavenworth.army.mil
webcache.irwin.army.mil
gate16-sandiego.nmci.usmc.mil
gate11-sandiego.nmci.usmc.mil
ce2.leavenworth.army.mil
ce.vicenza.army.mil
walker-cache.korea.army.mil
gate18-sandiego.nmci.usmc.mil
mirbluecoat2.afspc.af.mil
buc064068.pac.army.mil
host3.stratcom.mil
gate14-quantico.nmci.usmc.mil
gate15-sandiego.nmci.usmc.mil
nosc1.pacaf.af.mil
wcs2-cbus.nipr.mil
ncnc.northcom.mil
malice.ramstein.af.mil
fuel3.nasni.navy.mil
wcs2-mcpherson.nipr.mil
falcon3.langley.af.mil
px0o.wpafb.af.mil
scuhqgw1.hq.southcom.mil
gate4-norfolk.nmci.navy.mil
netcache2.redstone.army.mil

.gov

bowie-fc.census.gov
internet1.irs.gov
ancient.inel.gov
nwg001-ce2.customs.treas.gov
res1.gtwy.uscourts.gov
vicce003.net.gov.bc.ca
host-22.hants.gov.uk
gatekeeper4.fcc.gov
scott-pc.mel.nist.gov
host-11.hants.gov.uk
elia.larc.nasa.gov
bcccache6-1.tco.census.gov
digger1.defence.gov.au
ip202006.niehs.nih.gov
internet3.irs.gov
hscpx.hsi.dhs.gov
internet2.irs.gov
host.199-75-185-103.gsa.gov
wcdc.ocio.usda.gov
housegate5.house.gov
deptvass-cp.va.gov
n021.dhs.gov
wdcsun24.usdoj.gov
pc04174160529.jpl.nasa.gov
nat.nbc.gov
clayton.state.gov
ostsd-29893.ad.dot.gov
posted by Kevin at 6:17 AM

Oh sure:

Retired Gen. Tommy Franks has signed on to be the spokesman for a company that uses global positioning system technology in teens' cell phones to let parents know how fast they're driving.

Research Credit: Mike
posted by Kevin at 6:09 AM

WARNING: EXTREMELY GRAPHIC.

Anyone want to bare witness to the "liberation" of Falluja?
posted by Kevin at 5:54 AM

The number of Americans filing initial claims for jobless pay grew unexpectedly last week to 357,000, Labor Department (news - web sites) data showed on Thursday, but an official said an increase in the week after a public holiday was typical. <--- HAHA!
posted by Kevin at 5:53 AM

The value of Halliburton's Iraq contracts has crossed the $10 billion threshold. Halliburton has now received $8.3 billion in Iraq work under its LOGCAP troop support contract and $2.5 billion under its no-bid Restore Iraqi Oil (RIO) contract, a total of $10.8 billion.
posted by Kevin at 5:51 AM

Fire investigators in three area counties are trying to determine whether government passenger cars used by military recruiters are being targeted for arson.

The three latest cases involved cars authorized for Army use that were parked outside of a recruiting office in the 8,200 block of Georgia Avenue in Silver Spring. They were burned early Monday.
posted by Kevin at 1:37 PM

A team of US researchers has shown that controlling devices with the brain is a step closer.

Four people, two of them partly paralysed wheelchair users, successfully moved a computer cursor while wearing a cap with 64 electrodes.

Previous research has shown that monkeys can control a computer with electrodes implanted into their brain.
posted by Kevin at 4:49 PM

If "Evangelical Christians" were some lunatic cult, off in the woods somewhere, I wouldn't care too much about what they were saying. There are, however, something like 60 million of them in the U.S. As a thinking person, you might be laughing off these folks as purely nuts and/or harmless. Years ago, when I needed a laugh, I'd turn on the local Jesus freak channel for some entertainment. It's so nuts and such an obvious fraud that I'd laugh at it for a while, turn off the TV and then not think anything more about it.

But if you take the time to actually examine the twisted doctrine emerging from the Evangelical movement, you're going to be in for the shock of your life. If you ever needed proof of the existence of Satan, look no further than the leadership of the "Evangelical Christian" movement in the U.S.:

Leading up to the war in Iraq, evangelical Christians became perhaps the most enthusiastic advocates of imperium. Though politicians have often abused "Just War theory," it is still an integral part of Christian ethics when examining issues of war and peace. Thus, one must ask, was the Iraq war "just" based on the criteria of historic Just War theory?

Lets look at a sampling of comments proffered by Evangelical leaders leading up to the war.
posted by Kevin at 2:12 PM

A former United States marine told a refugee hearing for an American war dodger Tuesday that trigger-happy U.S. soldiers in Iraq routinely killed unarmed women and children, and murdered other Iraqis in violation of international law.

In chilling testimony intended to bolster the asylum claim of compatriot Jeremy Hinzman, former staff sergeant Jimmy Massey recounted how nervous soldiers trained to believe that all Iraqis were potential terrorists often opened fire indiscriminately.

"I was never clear on who the enemy was," Massey, 33, told the hearing.

"If you have no enemy or you do not know who the enemy is, what are you doing there?"

On several occasions, his soldiers pumped hundreds of bullets into cars that failed to stop at U.S. military checkpoints, killing all occupants - who were later found to be unarmed, Massey said.

On another occasion, marines reacted to a stray bullet by killing a small group of unarmed protesters and bystanders, said Massey, who said he suffers from nightmares and post-traumatic stress disorder.

"I was deeply concerned about the civilian casualties," he said.

"What they were doing was committing murder."
posted by Kevin at 1:57 PM

This is probably a short squeeze. Hold on for the next leg down:

The dollar reached a three-week high against the yen and rallied versus the euro, Canadian dollar and a dozen other major currencies as some traders reduced bets the U.S. currency would decline.
posted by Kevin at 1:09 PM

I haven't read anything like this since the days of Danny Casolaro. The Octopus is still up to its old tricks:

The story of this corruption is nothing new. What is new is the purpose. The use of this old and covert tranche of money for a special Bush operation to deny the American people their right to a free and fair vote was not the typical illegal sale of arms to a terrorist nation, the overthrow of a foreign government, or the payment of bribes to foreign potentates. It was a high crime in every constitutional sense. The target was the American political system and not just in 2004 but also in 2003, 2002, and 2000. The scandal goes right up to the White House and the Governor's Mansion in Tallahassee. It involves an extremely crooked Florida national politician and other Florida state government officials. And, as with all modern American political scandals, we have at least one dead body, a number of whistleblowers and anonymous "Deep Throats," powerful but corrupt politicians, counterfeit and real documents, con men, and a money trail tied to off-shore foreign bank accounts.

Research Credit: AL
posted by Kevin at 11:47 AM

A USC engineer uses his expertise with nerve cells to create a surveillance system that can recognize the sound of a nearby gunshot - and identify the shooter. In a unique pilot program, L.A. and Chicago will deploy test units in high-crime areas.

Research Credit: JL
posted by Kevin at 11:35 AM

U.S. veterans from the war in Iraq are beginning to show up at homeless shelters around the country, and advocates fear they are the leading edge of a new generation of homeless vets not seen since the Vietnam era.

"When we already have people from Iraq on the streets, my God," said Linda Boone, executive director of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. "I have talked to enough (shelters) to know we are getting them. It is happening and this nation is not prepared for that."
posted by Kevin at 11:28 AM

I wonder, how many people in the military are there because they saw it as a way to get food and shelter?

In a rare public airing of grievances, disgruntled soldiers complained to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Wednesday about long deployments and a lack of armored vehicles and other equipment.

"You go to war with the Army you have," Rumsfeld replied, "not the Army you might want or wish to have."
posted by Kevin at 10:52 AM

MEDICAL experts have confirmed that Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine’s opposition leader, was poisoned in an attempt on his life during election campaigning, the doctor who supervised his treatment at an Austrian clinic said yesterday.

Doctors at Vienna’s exclusive Rudolfinerhaus clinic are within days of identifying the substance that left Mr Yushchenko’s face disfigured with cysts and lesions, Nikolai Korpan told The Times in a telephone interview.

Specialists in Britain, the United States and France had helped to establish that it was a biological agent, a chemical agent or, most likely, a rare poison that struck him down in the run-up to the presidential election, he said.
posted by Kevin at 10:49 AM

By the end of this recruiting year, the Regular Army, Reserves and Guard could fall short more than 50 percent of its projected requirement, or about 60,000 new soldiers. And according to many recruiters, quality recruits are giving way to mental midgets who have a hard time telling their left foot from their right.

Moms and dads are outraged about desperate Army recruiters on a relentless campaign to sign up their teenagers. High-school kids are actually running away from recruiters like they were George Romero’s living dead.

Unless a miracle happens and the new Iraqi security force decides to stop running and start fighting, we’ll be in Iraq for a long time. Most likely with a draftee force.
posted by Kevin at 10:39 AM

Meanwhile, executive pay has never been higher:

A record number people are working in the global economy but half of them make $2 a day or less, according to a report published yesterday.
posted by Kevin at 10:31 AM

Cingular Wireless LLC, the nation's largest cell phone company, will cut about 10 percent of its 68,000 jobs over the next 12 to 18 months as it combines operations with the recently acquired AT&T Wireless, Cingular's chief executive said Tuesday.

Many of the 7,000 or so job cuts will come from administrative ranks, while relatively few if any would come from customer service, CEO Stan Sigman told The Associated Press.
posted by Kevin at 10:28 AM

Colgate-Palmolive, the U.S. consumer products company, has said that it plans to close about a third of its factories and cut more than 4,400 jobs over the next four years as part of a major restructuring effort to increase profit margins.
posted by Kevin at 10:24 AM

Lenovo, China's largest personal computer maker, will pay US$1.75 billion (HK$13.65 billion) in cash, stock and assumed debt for IBM's struggling PC operations in a move that will make it the world's third-biggest PC manufacturer and fulfil its long-held ambition to become a global force.
posted by Kevin at 10:20 AM

You'll have to read this one to believe it. We've now reached the point where some people entering the workplace with graduate degrees are functionally illiterate!

R. Craig Hogan, a former university professor who heads an online school for business writing here, received an anguished e-mail message recently from a prospective student.

"i need help," said the message, which was devoid of punctuation. "i am writing a essay on writing i work for this company and my boss want me to help improve the workers writing skills can yall help me with some information thank you".
posted by Kevin at 2:09 PM

More than 181,000 dead people were listed on the rolls in swing states for the Nov. 2 U.S. presidential election, the Chicago Tribune reported Sunday.

The Tribune reviewed voter data from New Mexico, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan and Minnesota. The newspaper found numerous errors in the integrity of voter rolls.

In addition to the registered deceased, thousands of voters were registered to vote in two locations, which could have allowed them to cast more than one ballot. More than 90,000 other voters in Ohio cast ballots without a valid presidential choice. Either they decided not to choose a candidate, the machine failed to register their choice, or they mistakenly voted for more than one candidate.

The FBI was investigating allegations that Republicans in Florida mounted a large-scale campaign to tamper with ballots.

Research Credit: AM
posted by Kevin at 3:41 AM

Well, there goes the neighborhood:

The programmer claims that he designed and built a "vote rigging" software program at the behest of then Florida Congressman, now U.S. Congressman, Republican Tom Feeney of Florida's 24th Congressional District.

Clint Curtis, 46, claims that he built the software for Feeney in 2000 while working at a sofware design and engineering company in Oviedo, Florida (Feeney's home district).

Curtis, in his affidavit, says that as technical advisor and programmer at Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI) he was present at company meetings where Feeney was present "on at least a dozen occasions".

Feeney, who had run in 1994 as Jeb Bush's running-mate in his initial unsuccessful bid for Florida Governor, was serving as both corporate counsel and registered lobbyist for YEI during the period that Curtis worked at the company. Feeney was also concurrently serving as a Florida state congressman while performing those services for YEI. Feeney would eventually become Speaker of the Florida House before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2002. He is now a member of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.

At an October 2000 meeting with Feeney, according to the affidavit and BRAD BLOG interviews with Curtis over the past three days, Feeney inquired whether the company could build a "vote fraud software prototype".

At least three YEI employees are said to have been present at that meeting; Curtis, company owner, Mrs. Li Woan Yang, and her executive secretary, Mike Cohen. Two other YEI employees may have come in and out at different points of the meeting according to Curtis.

Curtis says that Feeney "was very specific in the design and specifications required for this program."

"He detailed, in his own words, that; (a) the program needed to be touch-screen capable (b) the user should be able to trigger the program without any additional equipment (c) the programming to accomplish this needed to stay hidden even if the source code was inspected."

Though there was no problem with the first two requirements, Curtis explained to the Congressman that it would be "virtually impossible to hide such code written to change the voting results if anyone is able to review the uncompiled source code"

Nonetheless, he was asked at the meeting by Mrs. Yang to build the prototype anyway.
posted by Kevin at 3:16 AM

All trade with China should be outlawed. In fact, New Zealand should pull its diplomatic staff out of China and expel Chinese government personnel. What negotiations are possible with a criminal gang? When the Chinese regime figures out what century it's living in, re-open negotiations.

Hey, the Kiwis had the balls to slap Israel in the face over that Mossad nonsense. Why not tell the Chinese regime where they can stuff their products made with slave labor?

The Greens are calling on the Labour Government to call off trade negotiations with China in response to the Chinese Government cancelling CTU President Ross Wilson's visitor's visa.

The Chinese Government has cancelled an OECD seminar in Beijing next week which was due to discuss raising labour standards in China. Mr Wilson was to attend the seminar.

"This is tantamount to a gagging order," Green Co-Leader Rod Donald said. "It illustrates that the Chinese Government will not allow open discussion of its pitiful and exploitative labour standards.

"It is meaningless for the Government to say it intends to discuss labour and environmental standards in trade talks with China, when the Chinese regime refuses to allow union leaders from OECD countries, including New Zealand's Ross Wilson, to talk about those very issues..

"Labour must take a principled stand against China's attempt to stifle free speech. If it does not call off trade talks with China, it will have sold out workers in both New Zealand and China.

"What will it take for the Government to face the fact that it is dealing with an oppressive regime that has no respect for labour or environmental standards, for freedom of speech, or for the basic human rights of its own citizens?

"Labour should be ashamed to negotiate a preferential trade deal with a regime that tries to silence the very international labour movement our government claims to strongly identify with."

Research Credit: RT
posted by Kevin at 3:14 AM

Heat, water, food. In that order. Start thinking along those lines:

Member nations of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries have cut the proportion of their deposits denominated in dollars by more than 13 percentage points in the past three years, mainly to the advantage of the euro, the Bank for International Settlements said Sunday.
posted by Kevin at 3:05 AM

There are no protagonists in this tale of woe. It's easy to point fingers at the drunk uncle (America) and talk in solemn tones about fiscal responsibility and maintaining appearances. But who has been responsible for keeping the drunk uncle out of the gutter for the last 20 years? The Europeans and the Japanese deserve every bit of the pain they're going to endure for getting hooked on selling their goods to bankrupt Americans.

Europe and Japan allowed this to happen. IT COULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED WITHOUT THEM. As the drunk uncle repeatedly stumbled and teetered on the brink of collapse, there was Europe and Japan offering to buy the drunk uncle's booze for a few more weeks. But now, America is getting increasingly ugly and out of hand. Penniless, slurring and belligerent, the drunk uncle expects the offerings of free booze to not only continue, but to increase!

Europe and Japan are, only now, starting to question the logic of providing the drunk uncle with free booze?

In a situation like this, who's to blame: The drunk uncle, or those who have given him the free booze? Like I said, there are no protagonists in this tale of woe:

Japan is warning the White House that there will be 'enormous capital flight' from the dollar if the Bush administration maintains its laissez-faire approach to the mounting currency crisis.

Tokyo fears that Japan's strongest economic recovery in a decade could be derailed by the sudden appreciation in the yen against the greenback.

The criticism of President Bush's inaction, by a senior member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, will be taken as a veiled threat that Japan could start to sell off its multi-billion-dollar holdings of US Treasuries. 'The Japanese government is going to ask for a strong dollar policy; if it continues to fall, there would be enormous capital flight from the dollar,' said Kaoru Yosano, chairman of the LDP's policy council, adding that Japan would be calling on its fellow G7 governments to demand the US deal with the massive fiscal deficit that has helped to prompt the dollar's decline.

Research Credit: AM
posted by Kevin at 1:59 AM

THE dollar has been the leading international currency for as long as most people can remember. But its dominant role can no longer be taken for granted. If America keeps on spending and borrowing at its present pace, the dollar will eventually lose its mighty status in international finance. And that would hurt: the privilege of being able to print the world's reserve currency, a privilege which is now at risk, allows America to borrow cheaply, and thus to spend much more than it earns, on far better terms than are available to others. Imagine you could write cheques that were accepted as payment but never cashed. That is what it amounts to. If you had been granted that ability, you might take care to hang on to it. America is taking no such care, and may come to regret it.

America has habits that are inappropriate, to say the least, for the guardian of the world's main reserve currency: rampant government borrowing, furious consumer spending and a current-account deficit big enough to have bankrupted any other country some time ago. This makes a dollar devaluation inevitable, not least because it becomes a seemingly attractive option for the leaders of a heavily indebted America. Policymakers now seem to be talking the dollar down. Yet this is a dangerous game. Why would anybody want to invest in a currency that will almost certainly depreciate?

Research Credit: DG
posted by Kevin at 1:44 AM

This would be funny, if it wasn't so sad:

An American T-shirt company has a solution for their fellow citizens who want to vacation in Europe without having to answer questions about U.S. politics -- pose as Canadians.

For $24.95, T-shirtKing.com offers the "Go Canadian" package, full of just the kind of things an American traveler needs to leave their country and its politics behind.

There's a Canadian flag T-shirt, a Canadian flag lapel pin and a Canadian patch for luggage or a backpack. There's also a quick reference guide -- "How to Speak Canadian, Eh?" -- on answering questions about Canada.
posted by Kevin at 1:30 AM

Thanks AM!
posted by Kevin at 7:16 AM

Any guesses? Speculation? What were these guys up to?

Monckton was Knights of Malta. He was also into corporate bonds. Knights of Malta + Corporate bonds = Vatican money laundering (if I had to guess). Any word on Wilson's secret society affiliation/s? At least these guys weren't found hanging from a bridge, like God's Banker and P2 member, Roberto Calvi...

Murder One:

JOHN ROSS Thu 2 Dec 2004 THE four-year-old son of murdered banker Alistair Wilson saw his father dying on their doorstep after being gunned down by a killer who has yet to be found.

Andrew Wilson and his younger brother Graham, two, had just been put to bed by their parents on Sunday evening when the gunman came to their door in Crescent Road, Nairn.

Mr Wilson’s wife, Veronica, answered the door to the murderer, who asked for her husband by name. She returned inside but then heard three shots.

She ran out to find Mr Wilson, 30, with wounds to this head and body from which he died soon afterwards.

Murder Two:

A WEALTHY and highly respected City of London financier was stabbed to death and his wife was left seriously injured after two knife-wielding intruders burst into their multi-million pound townhouse in Chelsea.

John Monckton’s family were "profoundly shocked" by the murder and described him as an "incredibly gentle and thoughtful man".

The couple’s nine-year-old daughter, Isobel, alerted emergency services after finding her parents fighting for their lives after the incident on Monday night. Detectives believe it could have been an attempted burglary, but were keeping an open mind on the motive for the attack.

Yesterday, shocked residents of the exclusive and close-knit area, where actors, rock stars and the aristocracy live next to leading lawyers and businessmen, spoke of a spate of burglaries, robberies and assaults in recent years.

Mr Monckton, 49, died in hospital shortly after the attack. His wife, Homeyra, 45, who was also stabbed, was in a stable condition at St Thomas’ Hospital last night after undergoing "significant surgery" for her injuries. She is not expected to be discharged for a week. The couple’s other daughter, Sabrina, 12, was at her boarding school, St Mary’s Ascot, at the time of the murder. She travelled to be with her mother and sister yesterday.

A respected director with financial giant Legal and General and a leading City authority on the corporate bond market, Mr Monckton was also well-known for his deeply held religious beliefs and charitable work. The cousin of Rosa Monckton, a close friend of the late Princess Diana and wife of Dominic Lawson, the Sunday Telegraph editor, Mr Monckton came from a well-established Catholic family and was active in the Knights of Malta charity, which helps the poor.
posted by Kevin at 6:09 AM

Brad Menfil is not my real name. I work for the RNC. I fear reprisals if I'm found out.

The truth about this election is this: Florida and Ohio had to go for Bush in order for him to "win" the election. In reality he lost both states. In fact, he did not even win the popular vote. He lost the national popular vote by at least 1,750,000. This shows you the scale of the fraud.
posted by Kevin at 6:04 AM

Trade with China should be outlawed:

The cost of Chinese factory labor is a paltry 64 cents an hour. Although that figure is rough, since it's pieced together from sketchy statistics, it's still the most thorough estimate ever compiled. It includes both wages and employer contributions for benefits and social insurance. And it covers not just city factory workers, who get the most attention, but the more numerous rural and suburban factory workers as well. For comparison, hourly factory compensation in the U.S. in 2002 was $21.11, and an average of $14.22 in the 30 foreign countries covered by the existing BLS report.
posted by Kevin at 5:42 AM

It's a good thing the U.S. restored the heroin flow out of Afghanistan after the Taliban wiped out opium production in July of 2000. What would bin Laden do without so much help from the U.S.?

Do you get it yet?

Osama bin Laden is using cash from the Afghanistan heroin market to finance his life on the run, paying bodyguards and buying off warlords in Pakistan, says a congressman who has visited the region.

Rep. Mark Steven Kirk, Illinois Republican, said in an interview that bin Laden's al Qaeda terror organization is reaping $28 million a year in illicit heroin sales. Some of the money is funding bin Laden's fugitive status as he pops back and forth between Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal areas and Afghanistan's eastern mountain regions.
posted by Kevin at 5:01 AM

Dear Mr Johnson, On November 26, your press counsellor sent a letter to the Guardian taking strong exception to a sentence in my column of the same day. The sentence read: "In Iraq, US forces and their Iraqi surrogates are no longer bothering to conceal attacks on civilian targets and are openly eliminating anyone - doctors, clerics, journalists - who dares to count the bodies." Of particular concern was the word "eliminating".

The letter suggested that my charge was "baseless" and asked the Guardian either to withdraw it, or provide "evidence of this extremely grave accusation". It is quite rare for US embassy officials to openly involve themselves in the free press of a foreign country, so I took the letter extremely seriously. But while I agree that the accusation is grave, I have no intention of withdrawing it. Here, instead, is the evidence you requested.
posted by Kevin at 3:37 AM

This is an incredible article:

LOCKHEED MARTIN doesn't run the United States. But it does help run a breathtakingly big part of it.

Over the last decade, Lockheed, the nation's largest military contractor, has built a formidable information-technology empire that now stretches from the Pentagon to the post office. It sorts your mail and totals your taxes. It cuts Social Security checks and counts the United States census. It runs space flights and monitors air traffic. To make all that happen, Lockheed writes more computer code than Microsoft.

Of course, Lockheed, based in Bethesda, Md., is best known for its weapons, which are the heart of America's arsenal. It builds most of the nation's warplanes. It creates rockets for nuclear missiles, sensors for spy satellites and scores of other military and intelligence systems. The Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency might have difficulty functioning without the contractor's expertise.

But in the post-9/11 world, Lockheed has become more than just the biggest corporate cog in what Dwight D. Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex. It is increasingly putting its stamp on the nation's military policies, too.

Lockheed stands at "the intersection of policy and technology," and that "is really a very interesting place to me," said its new chief executive, Robert J. Stevens, a tightly wound former Marine. "We are deployed entirely in developing daunting technology," he said, and that requires "thinking through the policy dimensions of national security as well as technological dimensions."

To critics, however, Lockheed's deep ties with the Pentagon raise some questions.

"It's impossible to tell where the government ends and Lockheed begins," said Danielle Brian of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit group in Washington that monitors government contracts. "The fox isn't guarding the henhouse. He lives there."
posted by Kevin at 3:18 AM

The US military is drawing up plans to keep insurgents from regaining control of this battle-scarred city, but returning residents may find that the measures make Fallujah look more like a police state than the democracy they have been promised.

Under the plans, troops would funnel Fallujans to so-called citizen processing centers on the outskirts of the city to compile a database of their identities through DNA testing and retina scans. Residents would receive badges displaying their home addresses that they must wear at all times. Buses would ferry them into the city, where cars, the deadliest tool of suicide bombers, would be banned.

Related: Falluja Residents to be Finger Printed, Retina Scanned and Issued ID Cards
posted by Kevin at 2:56 AM

Are you sick of filling out gibberish in nag screens to get access to news stories? Cryptogon reader JM just told me about the Bugmenot plugin for Firefox. Quite simply, it's the dog's bollox. Thanks, JM!
posted by Kevin at 2:44 AM

Backhoe. About 15% of Slashdotters are getting it right.

Related: Cyberwar: How Terrorists Could Defeat the U.S., and Why They Won't

Note: I don't think the "Why They Won't" part still applies, but this essay continues to be useful for understanding how vulnerable the global information infrastructure is to physical attack. The Elite now view the Internet as a threat, and with the economic situation nearing the endgame phase, there might be more to be gained from destroying the Internet than allowing it to continue to exist in its present form. Obviously, a new "secure" (locked down) Internet would rise from the ashes.
posted by Kevin at 2:25 AM

More scenes of liberation.
posted by Kevin at 3:39 AM

Can you believe it!? What's next? GM considers buyout from Norinco?*

According to the people close to the negotiations, I.B.M. is in serious discussions with Lenovo, China's largest maker of personal computers, and at least one other potential buyer for the unit. Lenovo was formerly known as Legend.

* Norinco is the front company for the Chinese Military.
posted by Kevin at 6:59 AM

Can you see the momentum building for an "event" related to the Internet? Look at the stories over the last few days:

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Hits Cryptogon

Major Incident in New York Verizon Datacenter

And now a former Director of the CIA is calling for a lockdown of the Internet! They want to use the Internet to rape, pillage, steal and kill. Those of us who try to use the Internet to resit "are with the terrorists." I hate to say I told you so, but see the articles on Digital Rights Management going back YEARS!

While Tenet doesn't mention it, he's alluding to DRM and the "trusted user" scheme that Microsoft has been cooking up since 2000 (Longhorn/Athens). Those of us who have been following Microsoft's DRM strategy from the beginning saw that it was the epitome of evil; the end of general purpose computing. But now, you have a former CIA director talking up that system, even though he doesn't mention it by name:

Former CIA Director George J. Tenet yesterday called for new security measures to guard against attacks on the United States that use the Internet, which he called "a potential Achilles' heel."

"I know that these actions will be controversial in this age when we still think the Internet is a free and open society with no control or accountability," he told an information-technology security conference in Washington, "but ultimately the Wild West must give way to governance and control."

Mr. Tenet pointed out that the modernization of key industries in the United States is making them more vulnerable by connecting them with an Internet that is open to attack.

The way the Internet was built might be part of the problem, he said. Its open architecture allows Web surfing, but that openness makes the system vulnerable, Mr. Tenet said.

Access to networks like the World Wide Web might need to be limited to those who can show they take security seriously, he said.
posted by Kevin at 6:51 AM

Just don't buy it. This horror show ends if people stop shopping at WalMart. It's that simple. (It's not really that simple, but it's a damn good start.):

Stung by its poor showing over the Thanksgiving weekend, Wal-Mart Stores - which accounts for about 10 percent of the nation's retail sales, excluding autos - is quickly changing some selling strategies, executives said yesterday. Starting today, it is marking down two dozen of its most popular toys and electronics, from Elmos (now $16.88, they were $26.78) to portable DVD players ($149.87, formerly $179.87) to Black & Decker electric jar openers ($28.42, down from $34.88).

Yesterday's across-the-board retailing numbers for November were mixed, with the gap widening between the "haves," namely luxury stores, and the "have-nots," discounters and midlevel department stores whose customers are suffering most from high gasoline prices. And while retailers reported that the day after Thanksgiving was strong, the rest of the weekend, for many, did not live up to expectations.

Wal-Mart will also begin an unusual advertising blitz this morning. Wal-Mart, which does not usually advertise in newspapers - preferring the monthly color circular - will run full-page ads in 15 major markets and 35 secondary markets, Mona Williams, the vice president for communications, said yesterday. Next week, Wal-Mart will introduce seven 15-second television spots.

In addition, Wal-Mart, with $253 billion in sales last year, will run an Internet "circular" for the first time, giving it flexibility to reduce prices again if the competition gets too aggressive.
posted by Kevin at 6:50 AM

Longtime Cryptogon reader, TL, donated $100. Wow. I don't know if my mouth dropped open further when I saw the email from Paypal, or when I heard the fingerprint/retina scan/ID card news from Falluja.

Thanks again, TL.
posted by Kevin at 6:38 AM

Keep buying that crap from WalMart!

China's military has launched the first of a new class of ballistic missile submarines in what defense officials view as a major step forward in Beijing's strategic weapons program.

The new 094-class submarine was launched in late July and when fully operational in the next year or two will be the first submarine to carry the underwater-launched version of China's new DF-31 missile, according to defense officials.
posted by Kevin at 6:35 AM

I will occasionally comment on lesser known movies that Cryptogon readers may enjoy. What follows is actually from an email I sent to a friend of mine who's a documentary filmmaker:

I saw an interesting documentary called War Photographer. You might like to check it out as well. (It's somewhat depressing.) I was drawn to it because I had wanted to become a photojournalist---a long time ago---for the same reason Nachtwey did. He saw photography as a form of activism against war. The film is a somber look at Nachtwey, and the almost existential nature of covering war and crushing poverty. Nachtwey is a weird, interesting and intensely driven character. While, at first, I thought it seemed like a bit of a stretch to focus an entire film on one photographer, I think it worked. I liked it a lot.

Support Cryptogon by Joining Netflix!
posted by Kevin at 5:16 AM

In sixty days from Nov. 25 the new proposal could be accepted, giving biotech companies a major disincentive to control field tests contamination ­ which is therefore likely to increase.

It is already impossible to test for the presence of experimental GM food crops in foods imported from or processed in the US, because over two-thirds of US experimental GM crops contain genes classified as confidential which therefore can't be detected.

Juan Lopez from Friends of the Earth International said: "The Bush Administration, with the active support of the biotechnology industry, is about to force their untested genetically modified experiments into the world's food supply. This proposal should be ringing alarm bells in every consumer, every food company and every food agency of the planet."

Adrian Bebb of Friends of the Earth Europe added:
"Because of the secrecy behind experiments in the United States, no one ­ not food companies, not even governments ­ will be able to test food products or food imports for contamination because they won't know what to test for. This will leave consumers worldwide exposed to new risks from genetically modified foods."

Experimental GM crops are currently permitted to be grown on a minimum of 23,000 hectares in the United States, and some individual releases are over 400 ha in size. The approved acreage for GM crop tests since the late 1980s is over 200,000 ha. They include crops engineered for herbicide or insect resistance, altered nutritional properties, or sterile pollen or seeds. Other crops generate pharmaceuticals or anti-fungal compounds that resemble proteins that cause food allergies. The US government is not proposing any maximum threshold for "inadvertent" contamination of food, feed and seed stocks from experimental sites.

The new policy sets out loose "safety assessment" guidelines under which a company may voluntarily consult with the FDA to have its experimental GM crop material deemed "acceptable" as a contaminant in food. The "safety assessment" is based on paperwork and two inadequate tests that the FDA estimates will take companies just 20 hours to complete. The proposed review also excludes testing for unintended effects caused by genetic modification. This inadequate review would grant biotech companies the legal cover to allow their experimental GM crops to enter the American food supply. And the US biotechnology and grain industries are already calling on the US government to "vigorously promote global adoption" of this policy [2]

Bill Freese, Research Analyst with Friends of the Earth US said: "Allowing conventional food to be contaminated by experimental crops is a recipe for disaster. What is even more unbelievable is that the Bush Administration wants to promote this policy around the world as an international model."

Since over two-thirds of experimental GM crops grown in the US contain genes classified as confidential, there is little public information about what genes are being tested. Without this basic information, laboratories will be unable to look for their presence in food products. This will have serious consequences for food companies wishing to avoid such contamination and Governments carrying out checks on imports. Neither will be able to detect the contamination as they won't know what they are looking for.

The FDA policy comes in response to a 2002 initiative by the Bush Administration. FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford describes the policy as "a high priority for the Administration and the industry, to enhance public confidence, avoid product recalls, and provide an international model" for similar policies around the world [3]

In January, the US Dept. of Agriculture proposed a similar policy for its sphere of GM crop regulation (plant pest risks). The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is expected to issue its own contamination approval policy applicable to pesticide-producting GM crops in the near future.

A briefing paper with more information is available at: http://www.foei.org/publications/pdfs/contamination.pdf
posted by Kevin at 5:06 AM

If it's good enough for ravers, it's good enough for U.S. troops. That's the thinking, apparently, behind the Army's decision to test the animal tranquilizer ketamine as a way to soothe injured soldiers.

The drug -- known in clubs as Special K -- has been reducing partygoers to gurgling blobs for more than a decade. This year, the Army has been running final, phase III Food and Drug Administration trials on a quarter-dose nasal inhaler of ketamine to see if it can substitute for morphine.

"With morphine, the soldier's just gorfed, he can't do anything," said Col. Bob Vandre, of the Army's Medical Research and Materiel Command. "With this, he can drive his truck, or shoot his gun."

Vandre said he knew full well that ketamine "had been snorted by people at rave parties" and that "it makes you kind of weird, sort of like acid."

However, he promised, the military's dose of ketamine would not have the same effects.
posted by Kevin at 4:55 AM

This is, by far, the best news site for alternative energy developments. They cover it all. Please support their efforts. (The $5 I tossed in their jar came from the recent contribution of $20 to Cryptogon.) If you can, please put some of your money to work. Thanks!
posted by Kevin at 4:36 AM

VHeadline.com is reporting that this is a Top Secret document. I don't see any evidence of that. However, it isn't approved for public release either:

Distribution Restriction: Distribution authorized to the DOD and DOD contractors only to maintain operations security. This determination was made on 1 April 2004. Other requests for this document must be referred to Commander, US Army Combined Arms Center and Fort Leavenworth, ATTN: ATZL-CD (FMI 3-07.22), 1 Reynolds Avenue (Building 111), Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027-1352.

Destruction Notice: Destroy by any method that will prevent disclosure of contents or reconstruction of the document.

Backup Link
posted by Kevin at 3:21 AM

A listener called in to Alex Jones today and said that the Evening News with Tom Brokaw reported that residents of Falluja would be allowed back into the city, but that they would be finger printed, retina scanned and issued ID cards. The Marines are authorized to shoot anyone who doesn't comply.

I sat there listening with my mouth agape. Alex Jones couldn't believe it either. Then the caller played the audio from the news broadcast over the phone.

It's real.

I captured the audio from the NBC Evening News. I haven't seen this reported anywhere else.

This aired on The Evening News with Tom Brokaw on 12/1/04. Here is a transcript of the audio:

So far, the plan is for most of the city's 250,000 residents to return in stages. At first, only a few thousand will be let in. They'll be finger printed, given a retina scan and then an ID card, which will only allow them to travel around their homes or to nearby aid centers, which are now being built. The Marines will be authorized to use deadly force against those breaking the rules.

This is shaping up to be some democracy! The CIA puppet is probably going to "win" the "election..." Assuming the entire place doesn't explode into civil war. The U.S. is increasing the number of troops in Iraq to 150,000, an all time high. It's illegal for farmers to save seeds for growing food. Falluja residents get a choice! Submit to retina scans, finger prints and ID cards, or be shot my U.S. Marines!

Man, if this isn't a victory for democracy, I don't know what is.

Get ready, America. These police state lockdown tactics will be coming to a town near you.
posted by Kevin at 3:07 PM

More than 40 percent of Americans take at least one prescription drug and one-in-six takes at least three, the government reported Thursday.

"Americans are taking medicines that lower cholesterol and reduce the threat of heart disease, that help lift people out of debilitating depressions, and that keep diabetes in check," Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson said in a statement.

The annual report on Americans' health found that just over 44 percent of all Americans take at least one prescription drug, and 16.5 percent take at least three.
posted by Kevin at 1:39 PM

Mark Robinowitz was kind enough to forward me Mike Ruppert's latest analysis on the dire financial/Peak Oil situation. This is MUST READ information, although none of it will come as a surprise to Cryptogon readers. I can't post the material because it's premium content from Mike Ruppert's site, fromthewilderness.com. It may, however, be circulated by other means. So, if you would like a copy, please email me a blank message with the word RUPPERT as the subject and I will email it to you.
posted by Kevin at 1:26 PM

Dear House.gov User,

Do you feel like chatting?

I will not reveal your identity without your permission. My PGP key is here.

Thanks,
Kevin
posted by Kevin at 1:18 PM

WARNING: It's very possible that this is a complete fraud. It's also possible that it's real. I post this simply because it might be worth following, if for entertainment value alone:

GMC Holding Corporation (GMCC), a publicly traded pink sheet company, has announced that they have a solution for the world's power and energy needs.

After twelve years of research and development GMCC announced Thursday that they have achieved a major breakthrough. They purport that the motor they have developed provides substantial mechanical power and/or electricity, without the need to consume fossil fuels, hydrogen or hydrogen fuel cells, substantial batteries or any other outside recharging source.

As such, their device would provide independence from the grid system, both electric and fuel.

GMCC says their stand-alone all-green power systems are 100% pollution-free, setting a new standard in energy efficiency and revolutionizing energy producing for the world market.

They say the systems can be adapted for powering all types of motor vehicles, including the trucking, RV, boating and golf cart industry, in addition to delivering energy for residential, commercial and agricultural markets.

Related: Several Videos Posted
posted by Kevin at 1:05 PM

The IRS user (host: internet3.irs.gov, ip: 152.216.3.5) navigated directly (no search or referral) to the following Cryptogon page:

http://www.cryptogon.com/2003_06_22_blogarchive.html

The IRS user then viewed the Cryptogon homepage.
posted by Kevin at 1:04 PM

Recently, I discussed the massive attempted "theft" of networking equipment from a New York Verizon datacenter. Part of my commentary included the following speculation:

If I had to guess, I'd say these "thefts" are probably related to some sort of Internet related terror attack that is nearing operational readiness. Consider the Federal Reserve's recent move to a packet switched (Internet) system and the decline of the dollar... Maybe the next "big" one will be the excuse for "The" financial collapse. The Big One. Who will have time to think about that national debt closing in on $8 trillion if terrorists wreck the financial system with a cyberwar attack? Hmm.

This morning, a Department of Homeland Security user (host: hscpx.hsi.dhs.gov, ip: 155.2.3.2) conducted the following Google search: worldcom uunet internet crash.

Probably---hopefully---nothing, but I thought it was interesting.
posted by Kevin at 11:39 AM

Reader AH is getting into the spirit of giving this holiday season! Thank you so much.
posted by Kevin at 6:11 AM

Here's another great article on the dire economic situation. Read through to the prescriptions. They make sense, too bad there isn't the slightest possibility that they will be implemented. Maybe after the crash:

The spectre of austerity measures, wages and prices controls, restricted working weeks and gas rationing, is floating above the American economy, an elephant in the room that the White House and Congress refuse to acknowledge. It is in possibly the deepest trouble its been in since the Wall Street Crash, a fully avoidable crisis into which its custodians have sleepwalked because of their refusal to face basic economic realities. The malaise of the Carter years happened in a very much smaller economic environment than the Bush one; the Bush malaise in on a truly global scale. When it all falls down, 1929 will look like a picnic.

President Bush seems to believe that he can deliver stability while massively increasing public spending; while cutting taxes; while presiding over the erosion of industrial capacity; while refusing to impose any form of meaningful import controls; while refusing to curb illegal immigration; while fighting a war.

Memo to the White House: IT'S NOT WORKING!

Research Credit: DC
posted by Kevin at 5:23 AM

This thing is one of the biggest slush funds for corrupt legislators. This investigation will go away soon enough:

FBI agents searched files and served subpoenas Wednesday at the offices of the major pro-Israel lobbying organization as part of an investigation into whether Israel improperly obtained classified U.S. information on Iran.
posted by Kevin at 4:11 AM

Charlie, a Cryptogon reader, sent me the following message:

Kevin,

Do you really think that e-gold is safe, and if so, why?

Thanks, Charlie

Here is what I wrote back to Charlie:

Charlie,

What do you mean by safe?

Is there fiat currency exchange rate risk?

Most definitely.

Is there a risk that your physical share of gold will be stolen/lost?

I'm not in a position to assess the security of the independent vaults tasked with physically securing E-Gold's holdings.

If the physical security of the bullion is your concern, you should contact Brinks, Transguard and MAT Securitas Express AG. These are the companies that physically secure E-Gold's holdings.

These companies are all LMBA members.

http://www.lbma.org.uk/members_list.html

-Kevin

posted by Kevin at 9:01 PM

Maybe Bush should land on an aircraft carrier and declare victory again:

The United States is dispatching an additional 1,500 troops to Iraq and extending the stays of more than 10,000 others to bolster security ahead of January's scheduled elections, the Pentagon said Wednesday.

The moves will bring the number of U.S. troops in Iraq from nearly 140,000 to an all-time high of about 150,000, the Pentagon said.
posted by Kevin at 8:17 PM

...plug and play modular armament payloads, which include the M202, the 40mm grenade launcher and the Telepresent Rapid Aiming and Pointing system...

Five non-commissioned officers from ARDEC's Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit participated in the demonstration, which held was to show the operational utility of arming robots and to generate user interest in the concept of armed robots on the battlefield.

A live fire of all three armament systems engaging targets out to 450 meters in single fire and automatic fire modes followed.
posted by Kevin at 7:50 PM

WebMD is running a story about a new HIV vaccine.

Take a few moment to prepare yourself, especially if you or someone you know has fallen victim to the HIV scam...

HIV diagnosis is one of the grand frauds of establishment medicine. Why?

What's HIV?

That should be a simple question, right? (Especially if someone is proposing to stick you with a needle to vaccinate you against it!)

There is no objective, quantitative standard for HIV infection.

Let that sink in for a minute...

From The Ultimate Question: Do I Have HIV? The Answer: More Complex Than You Think, by Liam Scheff:

"You can be diagnosed HIV-positive if you possess antibodies formed in response to vaccinations, hepatitis, herpes, pregnancy, multiple infections or certain cancers. There are about 60 conditions that can trigger false positives."

And now there's going to be a vaccination against HIV?

The HIV antibody tests detect the presence of protiens that result from approximately 60 conditions. There are no FDA approved tests for the diagnosis of HIV infection.

If the diagnosis for HIV is arbitrary, how are They going to vaccinate you against it?

You do the math on this one. It's not difficult.

Read anything by Liam Scheff to find out more.
posted by Kevin at 6:55 PM

HAHA! Mainstream news is softening you up for the smackdown:

Despite the steady decline in the U.S. dollar, the greenback is still only halfway through its adjustment to the level where it belongs to avoid a global economic crisis, a group of leading economists said in a new book released Tuesday.
posted by Kevin at 6:06 AM

The elite are planning to stop the wheel of history from rotating between cycles of stability and revolution.

How?

Take everything I've been saying about technology over the last 2+ years on Cryptogon and extend it out to its logical conclusion. What do you get?

You get armed, autonomous robots patrolling massive, urban slums.

I know. I know... It's got to be bullshit.

Let's just say that I've been taking more than a casual look at this issue. Rather than spilling the beans on what I'm doing, I'd appreciate it if you would please read this Wired article in its entirety and fit this information into the framework of what you already know. I think it's pretty obvious where all of this is headed.

If we don't do something about this now, our kids will die trying to do something about it later:


Hunting for guerillas, handling roadside bombs, crawling across the caves and crumbling towns of Afghanistan and Iraq -- all of that was just a start. Now, the Army is prepping its squad of robotic vehicles for a new set of assignments. And this time, they'll be carrying guns.

As early as March or April, 18 units of the Talon -- a model armed with automatic weapons -- are scheduled to report for duty in Iraq. Around the same time, the first prototypes of a new, unmanned ambulance should be ready for the Army to start testing. In a warren of hangar-sized hotel ballrooms in Orlando, military engineers this week showed off their next generation of robots, as they got the machines ready for the war zone.

"Putting something like this into the field, we're about to start something that's never been done before," said Staff Sgt. Santiago Tordillos, waving to the black, 2-foot-six-inch robot rolling around the carpeted floor on twin treads, an M249 machine gun cradled in its mechanical grip.

For years, the Pentagon and defense contractors have been toying with the idea of sending armed, unmanned ground vehicles, or UGVs, into battle. Actually putting together the robots was a remarkably straightforward job, said Tordillos, who works in the Army's Armaments Engineering and Technology Center.

Ordinarily, the Talon bomb-disposal UGV comes equipped with a mechanical arm, to pick up and inspect suspicious objects. More than a hundred of the robots are being used in Iraq and Afghanistan, with an equal amount on order from the UGV's maker, Waltham, Massachusetts-based firm Foster-Miller.

For this new, lethal Talon model, Foster-Miller swapped the metal limb for a remote-controlled, camera-equipped, shock-resistant tripod, which the Marines use to fire their guns from hundreds of feet away. The only difference: The Marines' version relies on cables to connect weapons and controllers, while the Talon gets its orders to fire from radio signals instead.

"We were ready to send it a month ago," Tordillos said. Navigating the Pentagon bureaucracy and putting together the proper training manuals are what's keeping the Talon stateside, for now.

Back in December 2003, the Army's 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division tested an armed Talon in Kuwait. Now, the brigade wants 18 of the UGVs to watch the backs of its Stryker armored vehicles.

Four cameras and a pair of night-vision binoculars allow the robot to operate at all times of the day. It has a range of about a half-mile in urban areas, more in the open desert. And with the ability to carry four 66-mm rockets or six 40-mm grenades, as well as an M240 or M249 machine gun, the robots can take on additional duties fast, said GlobalSecurity.org director John Pike.

"It's a premonition of things to come," Pike said. "It makes sense. These things have no family to write home to. They're fearless. You can put them places you'd have a hard time putting a soldier in."

It's the same goal Army-funded researchers are keeping in mind as they develop an unmanned ambulance. The Robotic Extraction Vehicle, or REV, is a 10-foot-long, 3,500-pound robot that can tuck a pair of stretchers -- and life-support systems -- beneath its armored skin. The idea is for battlefield medics to stabilize injured soldiers, and then send them back to a field hospital in the REV. But the REV also carries an electrically powered, 600-pound, six-wheeled robot with a mechanical arm that can drag a wounded fighter to safety if there isn't a flesh-and-blood soldier around.

Ordinarily, it takes two to four men to get the wounded out of harm's way. Patrick Rowe, with Applied Perception of Pittsburgh, said he hopes the REV will cut that number, maybe by half. The firm is scheduled to show off prototypes of the robots to the Army's Telemedicine & Advanced Technology Research Center in March.

But this early version will be limited, Howe said. Ideally, the REV would drive around on its own, with no help from human operators. In practice, the robot would either be driven by a person with a joystick, or it would get around by itself by sticking to carefully preplanned routes. As the limited performances in the Pentagon's robot off-road rally in March showed, unmanned drivers are still pretty lousy at handling open, unknown terrain.

That's one of the reasons why iRobot's new UGV will still have a steering wheel inside, so it can be driven by a human, too. The company -- best known for its Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner and the PackBot UGVs that the Army has been using to clear bombs and explore suspected terrorist hideouts in the Middle East -- is now working with agricultural equipment manufacturer John Deere to build a cargo-hauling robot.

The M-Gator is a six-wheeled, diesel mini-Jeep that soldiers use to schlep about 1,400 pounds of gear. IRobot wants to have a robotic version ready by next year, so it can show it off to the Army and try to get funding for a full line of the vehicles, which would work as mechanical pack mules. The company hopes to be in production by 2006.

By then, the armed Talon will have been in operation for about a year, if all goes according to plan. And for those of you who might be worried about the robot getting loose with a "runaway gun," Tordillos orders you to relax.

"The thing is not shooting on its own. You've got to have these," he said, waving a set of small, silvery keys, which fit into a lock on the Talon's briefcase-sized controller. A single switch causes the robot to reboot and return to safe mode.

GlobalSecurity.org's Pike isn't worried about the Talon going haywire. He's concerned about what the armed UGV represents for the future.

"This opens up great vistas, some quite pleasant, others quite nightmarish. On the one hand, this could make our flesh-and-blood soldiers so hard to get to that traditional war -- a match of relatively evenly matched peers -- could become a thing of the past," he said. "But this might also rob us of our humanity. We could be the ones that wind up looking like Terminators, in the world's eyes."
posted by Kevin at 4:24 AM

Cryptogon is now a Netflix affiliate. I joined Netflix a few weeks ago because I wanted to see a bunch of documentary films that just aren't available from any video rental shop. You've probably heard about Netflix, but I had no idea how amazing the service was. I liked it so much, in fact, that I wanted Netflix as a Cryptogon partner.

I started by rating films I'd seen and liked. Then the system began recommending other films based on my ratings. I've found films I never knew existed! And it's all-you-can-watch for $17.99 per month. I get the DVDs the day after I request them. (Your mileage may vary, batteries not included.)

I'll post mini reviews on films related to Cryptogon topics.

If you've been thinking about joining Netflix, here's your chance to help Cryptogon at the same time. Just click any Netflix links you see on Cryptogon. Thanks!
posted by Kevin at 3:26 AM

I've been saying the same things for years on Cryptogon, but here it is from someone else, just in case you're sick of hearing it from me. Seriously, though, this is an excellent essay that describes the hard reality of what we're facing, and, as far as I can tell, the best (if not the only) way of achieving a future worth living:

Interestingly, work as we know it is on the chopping block as soon as petroleum supplies fail us – as they will shortly, as global production peaks –: Working for bosses and institutions is largely unnecessary, just as slavery has no justification. Working for ourselves and the community are millennia-proven, dating from our early evolution. To adjust to the imminent post-petroleum future, physical work must return massively to today's mechanized societies to mostly make up for the permanent depletion and virtual disappearance of cheap, abundant energy from petroleum.

What people really need from employment is what the paycheck and money are supposed to buy: food, housing, clothing, etc. How to go about getting these and other essentials – without the middle man or the boss or the taxman – is the real revolution. When people get together to collect or grow food, barter, and help one another with housing, no one needs to be paid on the basis of abstract symbols of wealth – especially something like the dollar or Euro which are tied to the world oil market.
posted by Kevin at 3:12 AM

Keep an eye on this one. It's unthinkable that he prevails in this:

A former IRS agent who believes citizens are not required to pay federal income taxes will appear in U.S. District Court in Sacramento tomorrow to face charges for numerous alleged tax crimes.

Joseph Banister, 41, a leading figure in the "tax honesty" movement, was taken into custody Nov. 19 by IRS agents and released on $25,000 bond after pleading not guilty.

A Certified Public Accountant in San Jose, Calif., Banister has been telling his clients they don't need to file federal income tax returns because the 16th Amendment, which gives Congress "power to lay and collect taxes on incomes," was never properly ratified.
posted by Kevin at 3:00 AM

Anyone who thinks this is about al Qaeda has another thing coming.

The fact that people are reading and supporting Cryptogon, and others sites like it, is the problem. Knowing that .mil and .gov does nothing but lie, cheat and steal, and having the proof of their criminal behavior, is the problem. And Abizaid wants more control over the Internet because of al Qaeda...

I've said it before and I'll say it again: The Internet will be turned into a locked down system that requires all users to be "trusted." Don't worry, B Gates has the solution and it will be rolled out (legislated into existence for national security purposes) soon:

A top US general called on Friday for bolder international action to stop the "spread of Muslim extremism", suggesting curbs were needed to prevent the Internet and other media from being used by groups like Al Qaeda.

"Why is it that people have the right to get on the Internet and spread this hatred and insanity without there being some curb, some law?" said Gen John Abizaid, the chief of the US Central Command.

"To me if we think this is some kind of freedom of speech to put on a picture of someone getting their head chopped off on the Internet and people have the right to purvey that, that's not the world I want to live in, and it just encourages this kind of behavior," he said.
posted by Kevin at 2:31 AM

Private banking is all about laundering drug money, and other ill gotten gains. It provides the appearance of legitimacy (and the infrastructure) necessary to launder billions of dollars through the global financial markets, primarily via corporate bond offerings.

Well, the appearance of legitimacy isn't maintained all of the time:

The new chief executive of Citibank Japan apologized at a parliament committee Tuesday and promised that customers who were misled about financial investment risks will be compensated.

In rare testimony by a foreigner in Japan's parliament, Douglas Peterson said 14 company officers were fired, including eight managing directors, for their dubious actions, including inappropriate dealings with customers, and lax implementation of internal and Japanese regulations.

In September, Japan's Financial Services Agency yanked Citigroup Inc.'s private-banking license and charged it with failing to implement safeguards against money laundering, misleading customers about financial investment risks, and other violations.

"We will work with those customers to ensure that those customers are compensated and treaty fairly," he told Japan's Fiscal, Financial and Monetary Policy Committee.

Citigroup has acknowledged that management at its private bank had "failed to establish a culture that ensured ongoing compliance with laws and regulations."
posted by Kevin at 2:22 AM

This is very bizarre! Who are the officers and shareholders of these corporations? If anyone can get this information, or add anything to this, please let me know:

"Still think you're free? Still think all you have to do is vote the incumbent out of office and everything will automatically return to 'normal.' It's too late. Protesting, voting, or - laughably - letters to the editor won't change anything.

Look at the corporate info I found at the Delaware Secretary of State website:

INTERNAL REVENUE TAX AND AUDIT SERVICE (IRS) For Profit General Delaware Corporation Incorporation date 7/12/33 File No. 0325720

FEDERAL RESERVE ASSOCIATION (Federal Reserve) Non-profit Delaware Corporation Incorporation date 9/13/14 File No. 0042817

CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AUTHORITY INC. (CIA) For Profit General Delaware Corporation Incorporation Date 3/9/83 File No. 2004409

background info: Transfers: With the National Security Council to the Executive Office of the President by Reorganization Plan No. 4 of 1949, effective August 20, 1949; to independent agency status by EO 12333, December 4, 1981.

Central Intelligence Group established under the National Intelligence Authority by Presidential directive, January 22, 1946, to plan and coordinate foreign intelligence activities. By National Intelligence Authority Directive 4, April 2, 1946, NIA assumed supervision of the SSU dissolution during spring and summer 1946, assigning some components to Central Intelligence Group at request of Director of Central Intelligence, and effecting incorporation of the remaining units into other War Department organizations. SSU officially abolished by General Order 16, SSU, October 19, 1946. Central Intelligence Group and National Intelligence Authority abolished by National Security Act, which created the CIA, 1947. SEE 263.1.

FEDERAL LAND ACQUISITION CORP. For-profit General Delaware Corporation Incorporation Date 8/22/80 File No. 0897960

RTC COMMERCIAL ASSETS TRUST 1995-NP3-2 For-profit Delaware Statutory Trust Incorporation Date 10/24/95 File No. 2554768

SOCIAL SECURITY CORP, DEPART. OF HEALTH, EDUCATION AND WELF For-Profit General Delaware Corporation Incorporation date: 11/13/89 File No. 2213135

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, INC. Non-profit Delaware Corporation Incorporation Date 4/19/89 File No. 2193946

http://www.state.de.us/corp/directweb.shtml
posted by Kevin at 2:09 AM

A U.S. human rights group urged German prosecutors Tuesday to investigate accusations that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and senior U.S. officers are guilty of war crimes over the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal.

In an unusual legal move, the U.S. Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) has filed a criminal complaint with Germany's Federal Prosecutors along with four Iraqis who say they were tortured and humiliated alongside other prisoners by U.S. soldiers at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad.

CCR is taking advantage of a 2002 German law allowing prosecutions for human rights and war crimes regardless of where the acts took place or the nationalities of the perpetrators.

The group says Rumsfeld, former CIA Director George Tenet, a senior defense official and seven U.S. military officers, including the former top U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, were ultimately responsible for the torture and humiliation of the Iraqis by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib.

CCR says the action is a last resort after the failure of the U.S. Congress to properly investigate Abu Ghraib. It argues that the Pentagon has essentially appointed investigators into the abuse, while U.S. prosecutors look away.
posted by Kevin at 2:00 AM