Richard Alley's eyes glint as we sit in his office in the University of Pennsylvania discussing how fast global warming could cause sea levels to rise. The scientist sums up the state of knowledge: "We used to think that it would take 10,000 years for melting at the surface of an ice sheet to penetrate down to the bottom. Now we know it doesn't take 10,000 years; it takes 10 seconds."
posted by Kevin at 4:10 PM

The environmental activist lawyers can now sit around and read 1984 in their spare time:

Prosecution of polluters by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency "will be compromised" due to the loss of "timely, correct and accessible" information from the agency's closure of its network of technical libraries, according to an internal memo released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). EPA enforcement staff currently rely upon the libraries to obtain technical information to support pollution prosecutions and to track the business histories of regulated industries.

In a memo prepared last week by the enforcement arm of EPA, called the Office of Enforcement and Compliance (OECA), agency staff detailed concerns about the effects of EPA's plans to close many of its libraries, box up the collections and eliminate or sharply reduce library services.
posted by Kevin at 4:17 AM

"It's over, my friend. The game is lost."

Research Credit: EG
posted by Kevin at 9:27 PM

This is incredible, and in the scheme of things, it's probably a walk-in-the-park:

An article in this morning's Washington Post reveals that for the first known time, a whistleblower working on a US Government contract has posted a video on YouTube making his case about a problem inside government. RAW STORY has located the video referred to in the Post article and made it available here.

The Washington Post story tells the case of Michael De Kort, an engineer for Lockheed Martin, who worked on a US Coast Guard contract to replace the patrol boats used by the service. The contract is worth billions of dollars. In the video, De Kort, a 41-year old, fails to give his name, but commented in an interview after being contacted by the Post.

In Related News: Lockheed Martin Wins Multi Billion Dollar NASA Moon Contract
posted by Kevin at 8:18 PM

I sincerely hope that you guys have made arrangements and prepared for what is now unfolding. While Cryptogon, and thousands of other sites, have been sounding alarms about this for months and years, it doesn't make it any less frightening now that the crash is underway.

Best of luck to all:
Research Credit: Housing Panic Blog
posted by Kevin at 5:29 AM

Water. Water. Water. Water.

With parts of South Dakota at its epicenter, a severe drought has slowly sizzled a large swath of the Plains States, leaving farmers and ranchers with conditions that they compare to those of the Dust Bowl of the 1930's.

The drought has led to rare and desperate measures. Shrunken sunflower plants, normally valuable for seeds and oil, are being used as a makeshift feed for livestock. Despite soaring fuel costs, some cattle owners are hauling herds hundreds of miles to healthier feedlots. And many ranchers are pouring water into "dugouts" - natural watering holes - because so many of them (up to 90 percent in South Dakota, by one reliable estimate) have gone dry.

Gov. Michael Rounds of South Dakota, who has requested that 51 of the state's 66 counties be designated a federal agricultural disaster area, recently sought unusual help from his constituents: he issued a proclamation declaring a week to pray for rain.

"It's a grim situation," said Herman Schumacher, the owner of a livestock market in Herreid, S.D., a small town near the North Dakota line where 37,000 head of cattle were sold from May through July, compared with 7,000 in the corresponding three months last year. "There's absolutely no grass in the pastures, and the water holes are all dried up. So a lot of people have no choice but to sell off their herds and get out of the business."
posted by Kevin at 5:18 AM

Matt Savinar, over at Life After the Oil Crash, is running a special for Cryptogon readers for the next few days.

The Global Sun Oven looks like an excellent appliance. And forget about waiting for an emergency to use that thing. Becky and I are paying NZ$.22 per kilowatt hour here in New Zealand... Turning on the oven is a big deal for us, never mind taking a hot shower.

Yes, I know about ______<---- fill in the blank with alternative energy technology of your choice. We would need to get day jobs to come up with the money necessary to buy any of that stuff at the moment. This useful and durable appliance is much more reasonably priced.

Check out the Global Sun Oven, and if you buy one, let me know how you like cooking with it.
posted by Kevin at 6:32 PM

A small number of activists (and poor, unemployed, disgruntled, etc.) are realizing that they have been wasting their time with their signs and letters-to-the-editor etc. and are moving to more traditional insurgency tactics. That is, they are becoming insurgents. This isn't my definition. The following is from U.S. Army Field Manual FM 100-20, Military Operations in Low Intensity Conflict / The Nature of Insurgency:

An insurgency is an organized, armed political struggle whose goal may be the seizure of power through revolutionary takeover and replacement of the existing government. In some cases, however, an insurgency's goals may be more limited. For example, the insurgency may intend to break away from government control and establish an autonomous state within traditional ethnic or religious territorial bounds. The insurgency may also only intend to extract limited political concessions unattainable through less violent means.

I've covered this before. Violent tactics against the American Corporate State are doomed to fail because the ACS enjoys a position of total dominace when it comes to perception management in these matters.

All students of insurgency must understand that overthrowing an existing regime by force is impossible unless the masses are behind the thing, at least in principal. In the U.S., would-be insurgents are simply pissing in the wind. The more miserable average Americans get, the more they cling to the state, their crappy jobs, their empty consumer lifestyle and their addictions.

Get them to support a revolution?

Which Americans? The tens of millions of who watch American Idol? Maybe the ones who do price comparisons on aerosol cheezepHood? The 61% who believe the Bible is literally true?

The point that any would-be insurgent must keep in mind is that Americans, in general, have fully internalized the axiom: Do as Dick Cheney says, not as Dick Cheney does. The corporate state doesn't even need to teach them to be this way. Most of the time, they spring from the womb in this state.

Additionally, my guess is that the insurgents would have more to fear from a mob of troglodyte Americans than Cheney's ninja suited minions. Threats to The Machine are interpreted by troglodytes as threats to their iPods, pills, pornography, video games, etc. They will support anything the government does to protect these core values. In other words: Any insurgency will be opposed by not only the corporate state, who's military, intelligence and PSYOP capabilities are almost unimaginable, AND the troglodyte masses who rely on the corporate state for their existence and their drugs:

UCLA will increase security for animal researchers because of a harassment campaign that included the attempted firebombing of a professor's home, the acting chancellor said.

"These activities have risen to the level of domestic terrorism, and that's what we should call them," Norman Abrams told the Los Angeles Times in Saturday's editions.

The school will increase security and try to reduce the time it takes police to respond to threats at the homes of researchers, Abrams said. It also will warn researchers of possible threats.
posted by Kevin at 6:22 PM

Former military intelligence satellite imagery analysts are mapping every farm in the United States:

Farmers may seem like trustworthy people, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture is taking no chances. It's spending tens of millions of dollars to create an enormous computerized map of every farmer's field in America.

...

Craig Molander, Senior Vice President of Surdex....spent much of his life looking down at the Earth from far overhead, but the pictures used to be classified top secret. Before he went to work at Surdex, he worked in military intelligence.

...

And Scott Willbrant, a coordinator of the USDA's mapping effort for the state of Kansas, says the new digital atlas will be useful to a lot of other people, too. "This will be one of the most sought-after datasets ever," he says.

...

"It's unlimited what other industry; other agencies can do with it. They probably have more use for it than we do, actually," Willbrant says.

For now, though, the USDA is keeping much of their computerized atlas confidential.

Hmmm.

What other uses?

Did you ever hear the one about the USDA's Mandatory Property and Animal Surveillance Program? Try to raise a cow, goat or chicken for yourself after this horrific prison system is in place and you'll know all about it.

Research Credit: JF
posted by Kevin at 5:49 PM

I just hope the ashes aren't radioactive:

The Second Great Depression is a frightening book. It shows how massive consumer debt will trigger the next depression, starting about the year 2007. Most of the logic used to support this premise is based on the government's own published data. The exuberance resulting from the overheated stock market of the 90s caused consumers to stop saving and go into debt. Then, the dramatic drop in mortgage rates enabled people to refinance their homes and go even further into debt. People are no longer living on what they can afford; instead they are living the lifestyle they think they deserve, costs be damned! With interest rates increasing, savings rates near zero, and debt at its maximum; many people will be pushed over their debt limit, having homes foreclosed by the banks or going into bankruptcy. Others will heed the warnings and reduce spending, causing a dramatic slowing of the economy. Other problems related to the economy, such as balance of payments and deficits, are discussed. But it is consumer debt that will trigger the depression. Even during a depression, people will need to save for their future. To survive this depression, savings should be in Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, and the stock market should be reentered only after it drops 73% from its 2004 level. Included charts show required savings for retirement. These charts give different options as to the number of years before retirement, expected pension, and the amount of existing savings. In this depression, the United States will be brought to its knees. But not unlike the mythical bird Phoenix that dies in flames and is then reborn out of its own ashes, the United States will also be reborn. However, it will be a poorer and less arrogant country that emerges from its own ashes.
posted by Kevin at 3:07 AM

* yawn *

The downturn in the US housing market will force businesses to slash 73,000 jobs a month in the new year and could be more damaging to the world economy than the dotcom crash, economists have warned.

After official figures last week showed that the number of new homes sold in July was 22 per cent lower than a year earlier, while prices were almost flat, fears are mounting that the 'orderly' housing slowdown predicted by the Federal Reserve will become a full-blown crash.
posted by Kevin at 7:58 PM

Protesters including striking school teachers in southern Mexico seized 12 private radio stations today after unidentified assailants shot up a government-owned station already under the demonstrators’ control.

At least 50 protesters of the antigovernment group, Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO), simultaneously took over each of the stations in the city of Oaxaca, 325 miles (520 kilometers) southeast of Mexico City, the Associated Press reported. The protesters, a mixture of strikers, trade unionists and leftists, were armed with pipes, wooden planks, and clubs.
posted by Kevin at 4:07 PM

The nuts who are running the nut house---from which their is no escape---have nukes on the brain:

In the heart of Tehran sits one of Iran's most important nuclear facilities, a dome-shaped building where scientists have conducted secret experiments that could help the country build atomic bombs. It was provided to the Iranians by the United States.

The Tehran Research Reactor represents a little-known aspect of the international uproar over the country's alleged weapons program. Not only did the U.S. provide the reactor in the 1960s as part of a Cold War strategy, America also supplied the weapons-grade uranium needed to power the facility-fuel that remains in Iran and could be used to help make nuclear arms.

As the U.S. and other countries wrestle with Iran's refusal this week to curb its nuclear capabilities, an examination of the Tehran facility sheds light on the degree to which the United States has been complicit in Iran developing those capabilities.
posted by Kevin at 4:06 PM

If you've ever heard Perkins speak, and felt a bad vibe, check this out:

There's a school of liberal American thought - one that serves a gated community - that says John Perkins' Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is about as deep as it gets. If there is a conspiracy, so that mindset goes, then it goes this far: the cheating of nations of their inheritance by persuading their rulers to take on massive developments contracted to US industry, paid for by enormous loans, that in turn become the weapon of indebtedness to buy a government's allegiance. The story Perkins tells in Hit Man is that of the privateering ruin of the world, coordinated by the deniable aegis of covert statecraft, and it's as good as it goes. But it's not Perkins' only story.
posted by Kevin at 3:50 PM

UPDATE: Will Probably Miss Rigs

Theoildrum.com will have the best tactical coverage of events:

The fifth tropical storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, Ernesto, could become a dangerously powerful hurricane in the oil-producing Gulf of Mexico next week, US forecasters said.

The US National Hurricane Centre said forecasting Ernesto's future strength was riddled with uncertainty.

But very warm waters in its path as it approached the Gulf, where a quarter of US crude oil and natural gas production is located, could lead to significant strengthening around the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the Miami-based centre said.

"This could result in Ernesto becoming a powerful hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico," said hurricane centre forecaster Lixion Avila in a bulletin on the storm.
posted by Kevin at 3:31 PM

A rare, sane move in California. How the lumber/paper industry allowed this to happen is a mystery to me. Let's wait and see if Ahhnold terminates it:

California lawmakers narrowly passed a bill Monday that would allow California's farmers to tap into the $270 million hemp industry by providing the raw materials used to create hemp products.

The bill, AB1147, is a bipartisan effort by Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, and Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine (Orange County), that would allow California's farmers to produce hemp oil, seed and fiber -- the raw materials that are used in hemp products.
posted by Kevin at 3:52 AM

WOW!

Long time contributor PT sent $20 along with the kind words:

Best to you both in your new venture and lives together.

Warmest regards.
PT

Check your email, PT...

MT sent $20. Thanks for that and the story tips as well. ;)

Sharing the Wealth: Sent $10 to whatreallyhappened.com for Mike's Non-Stop Reporting
posted by Kevin at 5:34 PM

Isn't it interesting how "the terrorists" don't simply take down the data communications infrastructure with shovels, hatchets, boltcutters, etc? This is what I noticed when I studied strategic information warfare (SIW) back in the mid 1990s; reading all this nonsense from the thinktanks, written by people who allegedly knew a thing or two about the subject:

Why aren't physical infrastructure attacks generally mentioned?

The answer is that this area of inquiry is simply unthinkable and better left alone by people with PhDs who are paid to provide authoritative answers. The physical infrastructure is A) very fragile and B) impossible to defend against focused but rudimentary attacks. End of story. Analysts usually don't even consider it. Well, not in the public discourse, anyway. What you get (in public) is all denial of service, hacking, worms, etc. Software. Virtural. Not real.

What would happen if "the terrorists" took out an OC-768 or two or ten? I'm sure this scenario has been gamed in some underground, DoD crypt, somewhere. And I'm quite sure that the generals and propeller heads running the thing had nighmares for days or weeks afterwards.

Sean Gorman didn't think his work had implications for national security... Until the feds showed up and classified it. Of course, all the materials Gorman used were freely available, totally out in the open, to anyone with the clarity of mind of a 12-year-old an 11-year-old child. When I wrote an informal essay on the same subject several years ago, I intentionally left out the details I knew would bring door knocks late at night.

The bottom line is this: If anyone, or a small group of someones, decided that they really wanted to take this system down, that is, deliver a kill shot---not something to dazzle the idiots at home in their EZ chairs---it wouldn't be hard. The Birkenstock and granola crowd, however, would be the last group to strike the core, strategic assets of The Machine. They are very dependent on it for their vain existence, despite all the noise to the contrary. They love it, actually.

Look, if the hippies started thinking funny thoughts about OC-768s and root DNS nodes and gigabit class switches---by the rack full---in places like the San Francisco Bay area, New York, London and Tokyo...

Where would the fairtrade, organic hemp hacky sacks come from, man? And nevermind the hybrid vehicles with Hillary 2008 bumper stickers (neatly placed over the fading Kerry 2004 bumper stickers) to demonstrate their revolutionary cred. Would there be any vegan carrot cake available in the various metropolitan, vanity health food boutiques after the electromagnetic pulse weapons capped off inside the data centers?

No.

With hippies it's always about talking the talk and never walking the walk. On that, you can bet your life:

Last February the Department of Homeland Security oversaw a large-scale international cyber terror simulation involving 115 public and private organizations in the U.S., Canada, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand [The ECHELON member states---Cryptogon edit], all testing their ability to coordinate with one another and respond to computer-driven attacks. It was called Cyber Storm.

Nobody's said much about the results, or the details of the exercise scenario. But a newly-published DHS PowerPoint presentation on the exercise reveals that the real terrorist threat in cyber space isn't from obvious suspects like al Qaida types or Connecticut voters; it's from anti-globalization radicals and peace activists.

The attack scenario detailed in the presentation is a meticulously plotted parade of cyber horribles led by a "well financed" band of leftist radicals who object to U.S. imperialism, aided by sympathetic independent actors.

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

More: Rat Takes Down New Zealand Telecom System

More: Backhoe Fade

Research Credit: West
posted by Kevin at 4:06 PM

They hate us for our freedom:

A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that if a motorist is carrying large sums of money, it is automatically subject to confiscation.

Research Credit: West
posted by Kevin at 4:01 PM

You couldn't even shake a stick at all the apocalyptic energy news over the last few days.

That was before this:

BP PLC said Wednesday that oil production at its Prudhoe Bay oilfield in Alaska, already running at half capacity due to pipeline corrosion, has been cut by 90,000 barrels per day (bpd) for several days due to a technical fault.

A company spokesman said output at the biggest oilfield in the United States had been reduced to 110,000 bpd after a natural gas compressor in Gathering Center 2 failed.

"We anticipate that fixing the compressor will require several days," said BP (Charts) spokesman Daren Beaudo.

Cryptogon Analysis: Is the BP Prudhoe Bay Shutdown More Serious Than It Appears?
posted by Kevin at 5:44 AM

After multiple dramas, waiting several months and spending a few Cryptogon contributor dollars---installation and hardware were free, but the service will cost us about NZ$20 more per month than we were paying Telecom NZ---Becky and I have this thing on our roof!


Notes to current and future Kiwis who are considering this thing, out of desperation, or otherwise:

We were barely able to hit the bird over the hills to the west. We were lucky! This is the final option in the dire struggle for fast Internet access in rural NZ. The pitch is that this thing will work from anywhere in New Zealand. There's no way. Many of our neighbors don't have a line of sight path to that bird, and that's just on one road.

The modem that comes with this package makes more noise than an average server. That's right. The fan is loud! Way too loud. You don't want it in the same room with you. No, really, it's loud!

In any event, we're now enjoying glorious late 1990s-era data communication speeds of 121 kbit/sec upload and 247 kbit/sec download.

It's slow and shockingly expensive by developed world standards, but, man, I'll tell ya, it's SOOOOOOOO much better than dialup. (FYI: If you have the ability to pay, it can go MUCH faster.)

Thanks, Farmside, I'm a fan so far. And thanks to all Cryptogon contributors. It wouldn't have happened without you.

P.S. While this is exciting news, it's not the exciting news I mentioned in the story below...
posted by Kevin at 4:37 AM

Over the years, MW has emerged as the largest overall contributor to Cryptogon. His generosity helps to keep Cryptogon free and open to all---as well as helping my wife and I get our farm up and running.

Thanks, MW. (I hope you don't get tired of reading that. I know I've written it lots of times.)

Oh yeah, re: the farm: Stay tuned on this front, as Becky and I will have some exciting news to post soon, AND a new place to post it. ;)

We're really busy at the moment.
posted by Kevin at 4:40 PM

Northwest Airlines recently advised fired employees to go dumpster diving if they were low on cash. Keep that in mind as you read this:

These workers turned the logic of corporate cost-cutting on its head. Instead of eliminating jobs to fatten profit margins, Argentina's recovered factories jettisoned an entire managerial hierarchy to preserve the livelihoods of workers. The upshot: participants in the recuperadas movement have saved about thirteen thousand jobs. They also may have generated one of the densest clusters of new worker-run co-operative enterprises in modern history.

Observers have heralded the recuperadas as examples of---depending on the proponent---socialism, a radical co-operative movement, or classic anarchism, which envisions a spontaneous collapse of the powers-that-be and the rise of a new society in which men and women decide for themselves how to parcel out the tasks of community building, all without hierarchy, institutions, or oppressive regulations. But in organizing the recuperadas out of economic ruin, the workers themselves were not championing any ideology. "Let me tell you how this works," said Gustavo Crisaldo, a thoughtful machinist with prematurely gray hair, now a member of Cristal Avellaneda's directorial commission. "It's this simple: if we hadn't had our backs against the wall, we wouldn't be here right now."

Research Credit: TR
posted by Kevin at 2:52 PM

Massachusetts had one of the most overblown real estate bubbles in the U.S.:

Sales of single-family homes in Massachusetts declined in July at the sharpest rate for a single month since 1995, and condominium sales dropped off at the fastest pace since 2003, according to a report released Tuesday by a firm that tracks real estate transactions.
posted by Kevin at 2:36 PM

What draft? There's no draft:

The U.S. Marine Corps said Tuesday it has been authorized to recall thousands of Marines to active duty, primarily because of a shortage of volunteers for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Up to 2,500 Marines will be brought back at any one time, but there is no cap on the total number of Marines who may be forced back into service in the coming years as the military battles the war on terror. The call-ups will begin in the next several months.
posted by Kevin at 2:33 PM

Water, water, water, water....

Veteran science writer Pearce (Turning Up the Heat) makes a strong-and scary-case that a worldwide water shortage is the most fearful looming environmental crisis. With a drumbeat of facts both horrific (thousands of wells in India and Bangladesh are poisoned by fluoride and arsenic) and fascinating (it takes 20 tons of water to make one pound of coffee), the former New Scientist news editor documents a "kind of cataclysm" already affecting many of the world's great rivers.

Related: Water Scarcity Affects One in Three
posted by Kevin at 5:39 AM

People are wondering what the story is with the Google ads on Cryptogon:

Do you realize that Google is serving ads on Cryptogon for _______? <--- fill in the blank

How dare I promote _______. <--- fill in the blank

Etc.

Google is pretty weird about what site admins can say about Adsense advertising.

According to Google's policy, here's what I'm allowed to say:

"I use AdSense and recommend it to monetize your website."

Cryptogon readers should be smart enough to understand that...
posted by Kevin at 4:48 AM

Three words: Grass Under Renovation:

A conservative estimate has it that one in six Americans, or over 57 million people live in some 270,000 mandatory membership common ownership developments across the country. These include condominiums, cooperatives, townhouses and single-family homes that are all part of a homeowners' association. Those numbers keep growing.

Today, over half of all new housing built nationally is part of an association. However, many municipal jurisdictions mandate HOAs so in those towns, cities and counties virtually all new housing includes automatic membership in an association. In fact, in some of the fast growing areas of the country it is impossible to buy a house that does not include an association of some sort.

Contrary to the glossy ads promising carefree living, recreational amenities for pennies a day and the promise of protected and enhance property values, far from an asset, HOAs are a liability.

The first thing housing consumers should understand is that associations were never intended to benefit them. They benefit municipal governments, builders/developers and the growing industry that feeds off associations. This $30 billion annual industry includes managers, attorneys, landscape companies, pool companies, CPAs, insurance companies and now, banks as well.
posted by Kevin at 3:22 PM

Top Italian telecom security official involved in Abu Omar rendition case commits suicide in Naples.

Research Credit: What Really Happaned
posted by Kevin at 4:11 PM

Years from now, the survivors of this horror show will be sitting around crackling fires, telling stories about the dark days before the collapse.

The young ones will find these stories impossible to believe:

A mix of bacteria-killing viruses can be safely sprayed on cold cuts, hot dogs and sausages to combat common microbes that kill hundreds of people a year, federal health officials said Friday in granting the first-ever approval of viruses as a food additive.

The combination of six viruses is designed to be sprayed on ready-to-eat meat and poultry products, including sliced ham and turkey, said John Vazzana, president and chief executive officer of manufacturer Intralytix Inc.

The special viruses, called bacteriophages, are meant to kill strains of the Listeria monocytogenes bacterium, the Food and Drug Administration said in declaring it safe to use on ready-to-eat meats prior to their packaging.

The viruses are the first to win FDA approval for use as a food additive, said Andrew Zajac, of the regulatory agency's office of food additive safety.
posted by Kevin at 4:01 PM

Based on the information I have seen, these corporations should be outlawed:

Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns announced late Friday that U.S. commercial supplies of long-grain rice had become inadvertently contaminated with a genetically engineered variety not approved for human consumption.

Johanns said the company that made the experimental rice, Bayer CropScience of Monheim, Germany, had provided information to the Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration indicating that the rice poses no threats to human health or the environment.

"Based upon the information we have seen, this product is safe," he said in a telephone news conference.
posted by Kevin at 3:55 PM

Dear Cryptogon Contributors:

Look at all the organic, heirloom seeds that Becky and I have purchased! And seedlings are coming up! We just thought that you would like a glimpse at how we're transforming your financial support into growing, living, nourishing goodness.

We're happy to be doing this work. You should be proud for helping to make it possible.

Best,
Kevin and Rebecca

Related: FDA APPROVES VIRUSES AS FOOD ADDITIVE
posted by Kevin at 6:51 PM

The techno-liberals from Northern California are some of the most frightening lunatics around. They are so far out that absolutely anything can somehow be spun as clean, green and politically correct.

Even dungeons???

Watch Apple's PR megamachine kick into high gear over this. (iPSYOP?) It'll be smiling, happy workers and maybe even free iPods:

'We have to work too hard and I am always tired. It's like being in the army. They make us stand still for hours. If we move we are punished by being made to stand still for longer.

The boys are made to do push-ups.' Every morning the workers, in beige jackets to denote their junior status, are taken up to the factory roof for a military-style drill.

'We have to work overtime if we are told to and can only go back to the dormitories when our boss gives us permission,' says Zang Lan. 'If they ask for overtime we must do it.'

Related: No Military Use for Open Source Software: Sure Stupid
posted by Kevin at 5:43 PM

Anytime the ghoulish PSYOP/sex/murder/cult stories are being hammered and bleeding on front pages everywhere, I block it all out and just wait for Jeff to sort through the bones, entrails, detritus, black hooded corporate/government power brokers and mind controlled intelligence assets:

As much as the media love a good blood feast, it's beginning to slowly back away from the bizarre John Karr. The seeming Manchurian Paedophile is right to say he's not innocent, but he doesn't contain the mystery of the Ramsey case, which America is likely never to admit to itself.
posted by Kevin at 5:33 PM

Sometimes I need to take a close look at the domain names when I read news stories. You know, because you think, "This can't be real."

This story, for example, was from CNN. It looked like the CNN page. It didn't seem like the URL had been linkjacked somehow. I verified the story anyway...

It's real:

By granting absolution to a convicted moonshiner, George W. Bush also earned the unique distinction of becoming the first president to pardon a cast member of the 1972 Academy Award-nominated movie "Deliverance."

Randall Leece Deal of Clayton, Georgia, had a small role in the film about four Atlanta businessmen who have unpleasant encounters with locals during a north Georgia canoe trip.

...

Deal never served any jail time for the convictions, but the black mark on his record rankled him enough to seek a presidential pardon more than 40 years later. "I just got to thinking about it, you know. Just to get her wiped out if possible," he said.

Deal hired a local attorney and "just filled out the papers and sent it in to the White House, or wherever you send them to, a good long time ago."

Deal's "Deliverance" performance consisted of a single line: "It ain't nothing but the biggest [expletive] river in the state!" For the record, Deal did not play one of the surly locals involved in an infamous rape scene with actor Ned Beatty.
posted by Kevin at 5:31 PM

Sploid was great. I'll miss it:

Winners write the history books, but anybody can write the blog post. So get right up close to your computer screen and we'll tell you a little story...
posted by Kevin at 4:06 AM

This one will be interesting to watch:

DUBLIN (Reuters) - An Irish technology firm issued a challenge to the world's scientific community on Friday to give its verdict on technology it says smashes one of the basic laws of physics by producing "free energy."

Dublin-based Steorn said it had placed an advertisement in The Economist magazine seeking 12 top physicists to examine the technology -- based on the interaction of magnetic fields -- and publish their results.

"We fully accept there is going to be cynicism surrounding this but what we're saying to the world of science is come and prove us wrong," said Steorn Chief Executive Sean McCarthy.

Related: Steorn
posted by Kevin at 11:55 PM

Cholera may return to London, the mass migration of Africans could cause civil unrest in Europe and China's economy could crash by 2015 as the supply of fresh water becomes critical to the global economy. That was the bleak assessment yesterday by forecasters from some of the world's leading corporate users of fresh water, 200 of the largest food, oil, water and chemical companies.

...

Globally, water usage has increased by six times in the past 100 years and will double again by 2050, driven mainly by irrigation and demands of agriculture. Some countries have already run out of water to produce their own food.
posted by Kevin at 11:17 PM

INVESTORS and home owners have received a rare, dire warning from the Treasurer to brace for the economic fallout from "world record oil prices".

And Peter Costello delivered a blunt message to the Reserve Bank: he may provide it with a "wider perspective" by filling the deputy governor's chair with an outsider.

With underlying inflation high and apparently rising, Mr Costello told reporters yesterday that the country faced a "great" risk of repeating the economic mess that followed the 1970s oil shocks.

Research Credit: Life After the Oil Crash
posted by Kevin at 11:07 PM

Maybe he has been reading Cryptogon... ;)

My country is dead. Its people have surrendered to tyranny, and in so doing, they have become tyranny's primary support group; its base constituency; its chief defender. Every day they offer their endorsement of tyranny by banking in its banks and spending their borrowed money with the corporations that run it. The great Neocon strategy of George H.W. Bush has triumphed. Convince the American people that they can't live without the "good things", then sit back and watch as they endorse the progressively more outrageous crimes you commit as you throw them bones with ever-less meat on them. All the while, lock them into debt. Destroy the middle class, the only political base that need be feared. Make them accept, because of their own shared guilt, ever-more repressive police state measures. Do whatever you want.

...

I left the United States with one large suitcase, my laptop, and a backpack. I left behind my precious library, most of my clothing, my personal possessions, my guns, and a house full of furniture. I brought with me less than eight thousand dollars in cash and gold to start the final segment of my life.

...

Like all humans I want to hold on to dreams for as long as possible, even long after I know they will never come true. I have tried and sacrificed with every fiber of my being to change my country, but the plain fact is that the United States of America cannot and will never be changed from within.
posted by Kevin at 5:09 PM

BIOMETRIC testing is set to be introduced at European airports under plans for stringent new security measures revealed yesterday in the wake of last week's alleged terror plot.

Passengers would have their fingerprint or iris scanned under the measures proposed by EU interior ministers, which would also use passenger profiling to try to identify potential terrorists.

The move to beef up relaxed security procedures in Europe came as John Reid, the Home Secretary, warned that human rights would have to be balanced against the threat from terrorism and that the current terror threat was Europe-wide and needed to be tackled on an international level.

The EU minister in charge of justice, Franco Frattini, said ministers were looking at the "positive profiling" of passengers, carried out well in advance of their flights, based on "biometric identifiers" such as iris scans or fingerprints.

Research Credit: Aftermath News
posted by Kevin at 4:10 PM

That'll show the NSA!

* yawn *

A federal judge ruled Thursday that the government's warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional and ordered an immediate halt to it.
posted by Kevin at 3:34 PM

Bankrupt Northwest Airlines Corp. advised workers to fish in the trash for things they like or take their dates for a walk in the woods in a move to help workers facing the ax to save money.

The No. 5 U.S. carrier, which has slashed most employees' pay and is looking to cut jobs as it prepares to exit bankruptcy, put the tips in a booklet handed out to about 50 workers and posted for a time on its employee Web site.
posted by Kevin at 4:13 AM

The Federal Communications Commission has mailed letters to the owners of 77 television stations inquiring about their use of video news releases, a type of programming critics refer to as "fake news."

Video news releases are packaged news stories that usually employ actors to portray reporters who are paid by commercial or government groups.

The letters were sparked by allegations that television stations have been airing the videos as part of their news programs without telling viewers who paid for them.

FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein said Tuesday the letters ask station managers for information regarding agreements between the stations and the creators of the news releases. The FCC also asked whether there was any "consideration" given to the stations in return for airing the material.

"You can't tell any more the difference between what's propaganda and what's news," Adelstein said.

Research Credit: TR
posted by Kevin at 7:17 PM

Imagine my shock:

The US government was closely involved in the planning of Israel's military operations against Islamic militant group Hezbollah even before the July 12 kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers, The New Yorker magazine reported in its latest issue.

The kidnapping triggered a month-long Israeli operation in South Lebanon that is expected to come to an end on Monday.

But Pulitzer Prize-winning US journalist Seymour Hersh writes that President George W Bush and vice president Dick Cheney were convinced that a successful Israeli bombing campaign against Hezbollah could ease Israel's security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential US pre-emptive attack to destroy Iran's nuclear installations.

Citing an unnamed Middle East expert with knowledge of the current thinking of the Israeli and US governments, Israel had devised a plan for attacking Hezbollah - and shared it with Bush administration officials - well before the July 12 kidnappings.

The expert added that the White House had several reasons for supporting a bombing campaign, the report said.

If there was to be a military option against Iran, it had to get rid of the weapons Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation against Israel, Hersh writes.

Citing a US government consultant with close ties to Israel, Hersh also reports that earlier this summer, before the Hezbollah kidnappings, several Israeli officials visited Washington "to get a green light" for a bombing operation following a Hezbollah provocation, and "to find out how much the United States would bear".

"The Israelis told us it would be a cheap war with many benefits," the magazine quotes the consultant as saying. "Why oppose it? We'll be able to hunt down and bomb missiles, tunnels, and bunkers from the air. It would be a demo for Iran."

US government officials have denied the charges.
posted by Kevin at 5:54 PM

Just in case you don't click through, this is from The Wall Street Journal. You guys will love this:

At airport security checkpoints in Knoxville, Tenn. this summer, scores of departing passengers were chosen to step behind a curtain, sit in a metallic oval booth and don headphones.

With one hand inserted into a sensor that monitors physical responses, the travelers used the other hand to answer questions on a touch screen about their plans. A machine measured biometric responses -- blood pressure, pulse and sweat levels -- that then were analyzed by software. The idea was to ferret out U.S. officials who were carrying out carefully constructed but make-believe terrorist missions.

The trial of the Israeli-developed system represents an effort by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration to determine whether technology can spot passengers who have "hostile intent." In effect, the screening system attempts to mechanize Israel's vaunted airport-security process by using algorithms, artificial-intelligence software and polygraph principles.

Neither the TSA nor Suspect Detection Systems Ltd., the Israeli company, will discuss the Knoxville trial, whose primary goal was to uncover the designated bad guys, not to identify threats among real travelers. They won't even say what questions were asked of travelers, though the system is generally designed to measure physical responses to hot-button questions like "Are you planning to immigrate illegally?" or "Are you smuggling drugs."

The test alone signals a push for new ways to combat terrorists using technology. Authorities are convinced that beyond hunting for weapons and dangerous liquids brought on board airliners, the battle for security lies in identifying dangerous passengers.
posted by Kevin at 5:37 PM

Sorry, guys: There's no free-love, clean-green, holodeck, techno utopia at the end of the tunnel. It's going to be terminator robots, microchip implants and much worse... Assuming humanity survives for another couple of decades.

But thanks for thinking Happy Thoughts and hoping that the deranged killers who run this horror show pay any attention to your terms and conditions:

GPU is a Gnutella client that creates ad-hoc supercomputers by allowing individual PCs on the network to share CPU resources with each other. That's intriguing enough, but the really interesting thing about GPU is the license its developers have given it. They call it a "no military use" modified version of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Tiziano Mengotti and Rene Tegel are the lead developers on the GPU project. Mengotti is the driving force behind the license "patch," which says "the program and its derivative work will neither be modified or executed to harm any human being nor through inaction permit any human being to be harmed."

Mengotti says the clause is specifically intended to prevent military use. "We are software developers who dedicate part of our free time to open source development. The fact is that open source is used by the military industry. Open source operating systems can steer warplanes and rockets. [This] patch should make clear to users of the software that this is definitely not allowed by the licenser."
posted by Kevin at 5:26 PM

Thriving on nonsense, tastes great, less filling:

Some brief thoughts on the latest mass-induced near-death experience.

The crawl on MSNBC Thursday night read Terror in the Sky: Mass Murder on an Unimaginable Scale! Well, no; and I mean no to everything.

There is no terror in the sky, unless you're Iraqi or Lebanese, or reside in northern Israel or any of the world's other free-fire zones and might expect to see death fall from it. Or unless we can include the sky itself, churning with strange weather and unwholesome artifacts, and a sun that now seems to burn an alien white. Because if we look up, we may just catch our breath.

The mass murder never was, and the unimaginable scale! was imagined more than ten years ago, and given the name Project Bojinka. Substitute the Pacific for the Atlantic, and toss in the assassination of the Pope and the crashing of a plane into CIA headquarters for good measure, and you have a thwarted operation that's earned its exclamation point. But 2006 isn't 1995, and today citizens of the great crusader nations must be reminded, repeatedly and at the pleasure of their minders, just how vulnerable they are, and therefore dependent upon the dark mills of empire that intentionally exacerbate those same vulnerabilities.
posted by Kevin at 7:30 PM

In other news, the oceans are dying:

The oxygen-starved "dead zone" along America's Pacific Coast that is causing widespread crab and fish deaths is worse than first thought, scientists said.
posted by Kevin at 7:03 PM

The alleged U.K. terror plot has been investigated for months by British intelligence, and the idea that the airliner attacks were planned for today seems to be nothing more than political fabrication and media hysteria.

Tony Blair and George W. Bush even planned the terror freakout in a series of phone calls that began last Friday and continued through the weekend. Blair and Bush put the finishing touches on their diabolical operation in a phone call early Wednesday, the Associated Press revealed today.

That's right: While millions of travelers are going through absolute hell today because of the sudden terror "news," it was last week when the U.S. president and U.K. prime minister began their cold calculations on how to get the maximum political benefit from the months-old investigation.

"U.S. President George W. Bush seized on a foiled London airline bomb plot to hammer unnamed critics he accused of having all but forgotten the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks," AFP noted this afternoon.
posted by Kevin at 10:10 PM

David A. Burtt II, director of the Counterintelligence Field Activity, the Defense Department's newest intelligence agency whose contracts based on congressional earmarks are under investigation by the Pentagon and federal prosecutors, told his staff yesterday that he and his deputy director will resign at the end of the month.
posted by Kevin at 9:37 PM

Hmmmm, how about that Total Surveillance System? Doesn't that sound like a cunning plan?

The UK might have to modify its freedoms in the short term in order to prevent their "misuse and abuse" by terrorists, John Reid has said.

He conceded that was never an easy request, but it was up to everyone to ask: "What price our security, at what cost can we preserve our freedoms?"

The UK faced its "most sustained period of severe threat since the end of World War II", the home secretary warned.

He urged people from all communities to help by being vigilant.
posted by Kevin at 9:15 PM

CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour equated yesterday's alleged sky terrorist liquid explosive plotters with the 9/11 truth movement, the latest brazen attempt to vilify anyone who disagrees with the official 9/11 fairytale.

Related: Newt's American Insurgency
posted by Kevin at 9:06 PM

Please read these recent posts before you continue on with this one:

Britain's Total Surveillance System

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

Do you get it yet?

London's anti-terrorist police said they foiled a plot to blow up airliners bound for the U.S. using explosives smuggled in hand luggage, five years after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.

U.K. authorities arrested 21 people overnight, Deputy Metropolitan Police Commissioner Paul Stephenson said today. The U.K. and the U.S. raised their terror alerts to the highest level. Sky News said six aircraft were targeted. Heathrow, Europe's busiest airport, said as many as 440 flights may be canceled.

"This was intended to be mass murder on an unimaginable scale," Stephenson said in a televised briefing. "We are confident that we have disrupted a plan by terrorists to cause untold death and destruction."
posted by Kevin at 4:51 AM

The CIFA.MIL user (host: CIFAGB01.CIFA.MIL, ip: 214.4.150.228) conducted a Google search for one of their own IP addresses, the same one upon which this session originated: 214.4.150.228

Keeping track of who's keeping track? Who knows...
posted by Kevin at 1:07 AM

It's Dawn of the Dead:

SOME 30 per cent of Americans cannot say in what year the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against New York's World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in Washington took place, according to a poll published in the Washington Post newspaper.

While the country is preparing to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the attacks that claimed nearly 3000 lives and shocked the world, 95 per cent of Americans questioned in the poll were able to remember the month and the date of the attacks.

But when asked what year, 30 per cent could not give a correct answer.

Of that group, six per cent gave an earlier year, eight per cent gave a later year, and 16 per cent admitted they had no idea whatsoever.

Research Credit: Dan
posted by Kevin at 5:59 PM

Well, folks, I'd like to be able to brag about nailing this one to the wall, but it wasn't difficult. See today's update at the bottom of the original story.
posted by Kevin at 4:55 PM

Organic Kiwifruit, if you can find it:

New research shows kiwifruit could potentially be sold with specific health claims, such as helping to keep some cancers at bay by repairing damaged human DNA.

A pilot study carried out at the AUT University in Auckland has reported that a daily "prescription" of kiwifruit, in addition to dietary advice and improved physical activity, led to a significant increase in repair of damaged DNA.

Kiwifruit are the first specific food which has been found to not only limit the amount of oxidative damage done to the DNA, but to also stimulate cellular repair of damage.

"Prescription of daily kiwifruit may provide a sustainable population intervention that could reduce some of the risk factors associated with cancer," the researchers reported on the Nutrition Research journal.

In a report titled Kiwifruit Consumption reduces DNA Fragility, the university's professor of nutrition, Elaine Rush, said regular kiwifruit consumption led to a significant increase in the ability of leukocytes - white blood cells that make up the immune system - to repair DNA breakage by oxygen-free radicals, charged particles produced by processes in the body.
posted by Kevin at 4:11 AM

Just wait for the next MI6/false flag ourtage in London. People will beg for this:

'Sources' close to Chancellor Gordon Brown are floating plans to finish off ID cards entirely in the UK - although that isn't quite how they're putting it. Instead, the advance men for the Prime Minister in waiting are offering a nightmare pitch that harnesses the private sector to implement a total surveillance system while raking in revenue for the Government.

Most of the components of what's being run up the flagpole now have already been suggested by mad wonks, with reference to the Home Office ID project. Future generations of cashpoints and point of sale equipment, they've told us, could cater for biometrics and ID cards, and the widespread use of ID checks in association with financial transactions would combat identity fraud (or credit card theft, as we used to call it before we needed to fiddle the identity fraud figures). People would find themselves (happily, not grudgingly, in this deranged scenario) using their ID card several times a day, and all of those lovely ID checks of the National Identity Register would provide the Government with revenue, and detailed records of everybody's financial transactions and whereabouts.
posted by Kevin at 8:03 PM

I've been hosting Cryptogon on Blue Host for just over a year. I've been so impressed with the service that I personally started referring people to them. I know that five of these people went on to sign up for hosting.

Here's the bad news: I missed out on $65 EACH time one of these folks signed up for hosting with Blue Host.

Here's the good news: I'm now an affiliate, so now I will make $65 each time a Cryptogon reader/fan/supporter signs up for hosting with Blue Host.

I searched long and hard for a reliable and reasonably priced host for Cryptogon (after repeated disasters with other hosting companies). Check out Blue Host's features and reputation. You'll see why I went with them.

And I don't need to tell you about their reliability.

How often has Cryptogon been down over the past year? You, the Cryptogon reader, should know.

Exactly! It's never down. (Well, it may have been down once for about two hours, but I don't remember if that was their fault or mine... It was probably mine.)

So, if you're looking for the best hosting possible for a reasonable price AND you want to support Cryptogon, it's simple: Blue Host.

PLEASE NOTE: Sadly, there is some confusion about how I receive Blue Host referral payments.

IN ORDER FOR ME TO RECEIVE CREDIT, YOU MUST CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS TO BLUE HOST FROM CRYPTOGON.COM AND SIGN UP FROM THERE. If you just go to Blue Host, without clicking a link from Cryptogon, and sign up, I won't and can't get credit for it after the fact. So far, this has happened twice.

It's my fault for not making this explicitly clear in the first place. Sometimes, computer people, like me, assume things that shouldn't be assumed. This was one of those cases.
posted by Kevin at 2:33 PM

We already know that this 'period' involves concentration camps.

Will the ovens be supersized?

This morning on Fox News, Newt Gingrich claimed there is a "legitimate insurgency in Connecticut, which needs to be met head on," made up of people who say Iraq "is so hard, it is so frightening, it's so painful, can't we come home and hide?" Gingrich said that if the "insurgency" wins, "it will be the beginning of extraordinarily important period in American politics, and in American history."
posted by Kevin at 5:48 AM

I was pouring over the comments in this Oil Drum story when I found this little nugget of data. The original source is BP PRUDHOE BAY ROYALTY TRUST (BPT) Form: 10-K Filing Date: 3/16/2006:

Production from the Prudhoe Bay field has declined over the past five years. The average well production rate was about 546 barrels of oil per day in 2001, 375 barrels per day in 2002, 350 barrels per day in 2003, 317 barrels per day in 2004 and 293 barrels per day in 2005.

That's a fairly obvious trend.

Keep reading and you find that in 2005 "Oil Net to BP Interests" was 101,500 barrels per day, down from 144,100 in 2001.

Here is a question that I can't answer: What is the minimum operational threshold of the pipeline that BP shutdown?

They have to be able to pump a minimum amount of oil through the thing to make it work. Has the decline in production, documented in their own corporate filings, reached a point where the operation of the pipeline is affected?

Deploy tinfoil hat: Is it too far out to wonder if BP simply had to shut the thing down because they're not extracting enough oil?

Obviously, "rusty pipeline" sounds better than, "not enough oil to fill the pipeline."

UPDATE: BP Neglected Prudhoe Maintenance Because Production Was Declining

G sent in a short email telling me to start Googling Prudhoe Bay whistleblowers, and that BP is running the operation there into the ground (no pun intended!) because the fields are running dry. Why sink more money into a drying up hole?

Or, as recent events may indicate, a dry hole.

This is from an Anchorage Daily News article, Workers Convince BP Valve is Faulty, dated, January 9, 2002:

Some workers believe BP, which runs Prudhoe, is finally replacing the valve only after facing criticism for poorly maintaining the pipes, valves and other machinery that handle more than a half-million barrels of oil a day.

These valves are like the brakes on your car, and the brakes don't work right now, said Marc Kovac, vice chairman of a union that represents about 200 BP workers on the western side of Prudhoe Bay.

...

The matter was dropped until last year, when workers publicly criticized BP for not keeping up with maintenance at Prudhoe as production has fallen. Production at the 24-year-old Prudhoe -- North America's largest oil field -- peaked 13 years ago.

BP has wanted to run the same equipment until the field runs dry, but we need this stuff in top shape for the life of the field. Otherwise, we're going to have problems, Kovac said.

And now, in a research note, AG Edwards analyst, Bruce Lanni, is telling investors to expect up to 10% less output when the pipeline is brought back online:

"We estimate it could take between 2-3 months to get it back on line," Bruce Lanni, an industry analyst with A.G. Edwards, wrote in a research note. "However, there are no assurances that it will return to current capacity, given the complexities and age of the reservoirs. Thus, we would not be surprised to see volume losses in the area of 5 percent to 10 percent."

Hmm. Fix Replace pipeline, get 10% less oil? That makes sense:

If the diameter of the new pipeline is smaller.

And why would it have to be smaller?

You better be making progress with your garden.

UPDATE 8/9/06: BP NEARLY HALVING DIAMETER OF PRUDHOE BAY PIPELINE

Original pipeline diameter 34 inches, replacement pipeline diameter 18 inches.

It's only a conspiracy theory on Cryptogon until it's verified as fact by the mainstream press several days later.

From BP PRUDHOE BAY ROYALTY TRUST (BPT) Form: 10-K Filing Date: 3/16/2006:

Production from the Prudhoe Bay field is carried to Pump Station 1, the starting point for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, through two 34-inch diameter transit lines, one from each half of the Prudhoe Bay field.

The following is from the Associated Press, Oil Field Shutdown Raises More Questions by Allison Linn, 8/9/2006:

BP has approached the Japanese firm JFE Steel Corp. and other steel producers about buying 18-inch pipe to replace the corroded sections at Prudhoe Bay, said David Belvin, senior technology manager of sales and service at JFE's Houston office.

The new pipeline diameter will be nearly half the size of the original. Previous analysis confirmed.

What does this mean, in terms of output?

Reader Ulf notes:

18" pipe is actually only about 28% of the size of a 34" pipe in cross-section. Nearly half-size equals just over a quarter in possible volume to be pumped, greatly reducing actual output!!

Again, Cryptogon leads in free, actionable intelligence and analysis on a critical issue. Why not put my skills to use on your specific project, issue or case?

To All the Big Oil Company Employees Reading This:

If you feel like unburdening your soul, my PGP key is here.

Related: Sludge Buildup
posted by Kevin at 4:19 AM

Fascist outrage. Yep, that about sums it up:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Thursday he has withdrawn his country's ambassador from Israel to show his "indignation" over the military offensive in Lebanon.

"We have ordered the withdrawal of our ambassador in Israel," Chavez said in a televised speech, calling Israeli attacks in Lebanon "genocide."

The leftist leader has repeatedly criticized Israel's offensive aimed at Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon, noting mounting civilian deaths and saying the United Nations should act to halt the violence.

"It really causes indignation to see how the state of Israel continues bombing, killing ... with all of the power they have, with the support of the United States," Chavez said after a military parade in the northwestern state of Falcon.

The Venezuelan leader, a close ally and protege of Cuban President Fidel Castro, spoke after returning from an international tour that included Iran. While there, Chavez called the Israeli offensive in Lebanon a "fascist outrage."

"The Israeli elite repeatedly criticize Hitler's actions against the Jews, and indeed Hitler's actions must be criticized, not just against the Jews but against the world," Chavez said during his visit to Iran, adding: "It's also fascism what Israel is doing to the Palestinian people ... terrorism and fascism."
posted by Kevin at 4:10 AM

At least two Israeli fighter pilots have deliberately missed civilian targets in Lebanon as disquiet grows in the military about flawed intelligence, The Observer has learnt. Sources say the pilots were worried that targets had been wrongly identified as Hizbollah facilities.

...

As international outrage over civilian deaths grows, the spotlight is increasingly turning on Israeli air operations. The Observer has learnt that one senior commander who has been involved in the air attacks in Lebanon has already raised concerns that some of the air force's actions might be considered 'war crimes'.

Yonatan Shapiro, a former Blackhawk helicopter pilot dismissed from reserve duty after signing a 'refusenik' letter in 2004, said he had spoken with Israeli F-16 pilots in recent days and learnt that some had aborted missions because of concerns about the reliability of intelligence information. According to Shapiro, some pilots justified aborting missions out of 'common sense' and in the context of the Israeli Defence Force's moral code of conduct, which says every effort should be made to avoiding harming civilians.

Shapiro said: 'Some pilots told me they have shot at the side of targets because they're afraid people will be there, and they don't trust any more those who give them the coordinates and targets.'

He added: 'One pilot told me he was asked to hit a house on a hill, which was supposed to be a place from where Hizbollah was launching Katyusha missiles. But he was afraid civilians were in the house, so he shot next to the house ...

'Pilots are always being told they will be judged on results, but if the results are hundreds of dead civilians while Hizbollah is still able to fire all these rockets, then something is very wrong.'
posted by Kevin at 4:03 AM

This would be an excellent story to deliver to ALL "christians" who support the U.S. presence in Iraq:

US soldiers, accused of raping and murdering a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, drank alcohol and hit golf balls before the attack. One of them grilled chicken wings afterwards, a criminal investigator told a US military hearing yesterday.
posted by Kevin at 9:52 PM

"International law is that law which the wicked do not obey and the righteous do not enforce."

---Abba Eban, Israeli diplomat and politician

Incredible:

Lebanese officials said there were many reports of other casualties throughout southern Lebanon but rescue workers were not able to reach the sites because of continued Israeli airstrikes. Israel also threatened to attack UN peacekeepers if they attempted to repair bomb-damaged bridges in southern Lebanon. UN officials contacted the Israeli army to inform them that a team of Chinese military engineers attached to the UN force in Lebanon intended to repair the bridge on the Beirut to Tyre road to enable the transport of humanitarian supplies.

According to the UN, Israeli officials said the engineers would become a target if they attempted to repair the bridge.

Senior UN officials reacted angrily to the destruction of a temporary causeway over the Litani river overnight. "We must be able to have movement throughout the country to deliver supplies. At this point we can't do that," said David Shearer, the humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon. "The deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure is a violation of international law."
posted by Kevin at 9:43 PM

The Energy Department is prepared to provide oil from the government's emergency supplies if a refinery requests it because of the disruption of supplies from Alaska, a department spokesman said Monday.
posted by Kevin at 5:52 PM

We've already seen Walmart and McDonald's talking about sustainability; now it's the U.S. National Security Agency.

Sustainability of what?

Fascism, that's what.

Isn't it interesting that a few undefended copper cables are so critical to the operation of the NSA?

What does this tell you about "the terrorists"?

We always hear about how smart, how cunning, "the terrorists" are. After all, according to legend, "the terrorists" are so smart and so cunning that they hijacked aircraft and flew them into buildings, and all the rest of that bullsh*t...

Yet, for some reason, "the terrorists" don't seem interested in attacking the undefended support infrastructure of the U.S. National Security Agency?! "The terrorists" are, likewise, uninterested in taking out the undefended data infrastructures that undergird U.S. mega corporations.

If "the terrorists" hate the U.S. so much, why haven't they attacked the undefended electrical and data infrastructures that animate the Great Satan? Why do "the terrorists" only carry out symbolic pinprick attacks that are MUCH more difficult to execute than strategic, decapitation strikes? Why not deliver a blow to the U.S. that would actually take it down?

A better question is: Who benefits from the Hollywood blockbuster-style fireballs and fetishisation of victims that TV-camera terrorism facilitates?

"The terrorists" are manufactured by the corporate state in order to deliver increasing amounts of power to the psychopaths at the top of the pyramid. Sustainable fascism requires a constant application of psychological terror in order to frighten the populace into a numb state of acquiescence and helplessness. This is accomplished, quite simply, by running eye catching fodder in an endless loop on the PSYOP payload delivery boxes that most people voluntarily watch for several hours per day. This PSYOP payload forms the basis of reality for the victims/consumers of mass media. The elite get an easy to manage prison camp as a result.

"The terrorists" don't want to bite the hand that feeds them, by, say, shutting down all financial transaction clearing in the Western World, or plunging the largest cities in North America into darkness with tools no more complicated than shovels, wrenches, hatchets, bolt cutters and sledgehammers. (Actually, the plunging-into-darkness part is happening without any assistance from "the terrorists".) Sticking hot pokers into the eyes and ears of the corporate state (the NSA) wouldn't be a sustainable practice for fascism either.

No.

Rather than striking at the strategic assets of the corporate state, "the terrorists" are tasked with creating an environment in which fascism can bloom and prosper... Sustainably:

The demand for electricity to operate its expanding intelligence systems has left the high-tech eavesdropping agency on the verge of exceeding its power supply, the lifeblood of its sprawling 350-acre Fort Meade headquarters, according to current and former intelligence officials.

Agency officials anticipated the problem nearly a decade ago as they looked ahead at the technology needs of the agency, sources said, but it was never made a priority, and now the agency's ability to keep its operations going is threatened. The NSA is already unable to install some costly and sophisticated new equipment, including two new supercomputers, for fear of blowing out the electrical infrastructure, they said.

At minimum, the problem could produce disruptions leading to outages and power surges at the Fort Meade headquarters, hampering the work of intelligence analysts and damaging equipment, they said. At worst, it could force a virtual shutdown of the agency, paralyzing the intelligence operation, erasing crucial intelligence data and causing irreparable damage to computer systems -- all detrimental to the fight against terrorism.

...

Agency leaders, meanwhile, are scrambling for stopgap measures to buy time while they develop a sustainable plan. Limitations of the electrical infrastructure in the main NSA complex and the substation serving the agency, along with growing demand in the region, prevent an immediate fix, according to current and former government officials.
posted by Kevin at 9:50 PM

BRACE FOR IMPACT!!!

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - In a sudden blow to the nation's oil supply, half the production on Alaska's North Slope was being shut down Sunday after BP Exploration Alaska, Inc. discovered severe corrosion in a Prudhoe Bay oil transit line.

BP officials said they didn't know how long the Prudhoe Bay field would be off line. "I don't even know how long it's going to take to shut it down," said Tom Williams, BP's senior tax and royalty counsel.

Once the field is shut down, in a process expected to take days, BP said oil production will be reduced by 400,000 barrels a day. That's close to 8 percent of U.S. oil production as of May 2006 or about 2.6 percent of U.S. supply including imports, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The shutdown comes at an already worrisome time for the oil industry, with supply concerns stemming both from the hurricane season and instability in the Middle East.

"We regret that it is necessary to take this action and we apologize to the nation and the State of Alaska for the adverse impacts it will cause," BP America Chairman and President Bob Malone said in a statement.

A 400,000-barrel per day reduction in output would have a major impact on oil prices, said Tetsu Emori, chief commodities strategist at Mitsui Bussan Futures in Tokyo.

"Oil prices could increase by as much as $10 per barrel given the current environment," Emori said. "But we can't really say for sure how big an effect this is going to have until we have more exact figures about how much production is going to be reduced."
posted by Kevin at 9:47 PM

Die off:

Southwest China is experiencing a serious drought, with 2.39 million people facing a shortage of drinking water, state media have said.

The dry spell has descended over Sichuan province, which is located only a few hundred kilometers (miles) from Guizhou region which is currently soaked in torrential rains.

Xinhua news agency said 53 counties were hit by drought in spring, followed by 113 counties during the summer months, affecting not just large numbers of people but also more than three million head of livestock.

By the end of last month, over 60 percent of small-scale irrigation systems in the drought-stricken areas had dried up, resulting in total crop failure on 120,000 hectares (300,000 acres) of farmland, Xinhua said.
posted by Kevin at 9:12 PM

Electronic passports being introduced in the United States and other countries have a major vulnerability that could allow criminals to clone embedded secret code and enter countries illegally, an expert warned.

A demonstration late Friday by German computer security expert Lukas Grunwald showed how personal information stored on the documents could be copied and transferred to another device.

It appeared to contradict assurances by officials in government and private industry that the electronic information stored in passports could not be duplicated.

"If there is an automatic inspection system, I can use this card to enter any country," Grunwald said, holding up a computer chip containing electronic information he had copied from his German passport.
posted by Kevin at 9:09 PM

* yawn *

And then it was too late...

The twit governors aren't even aware of the martial law legislation already on the books. Ever heard of the Insurrection Act? Bush's lawyers have:

A senior administration official said that Bush has clear legal authority to federalize National Guard units to quell civil disturbances under the Insurrection Act and will continue to try to unify the chains of command that are split among the president, the Louisiana governor and the New Orleans mayor.

Maybe all the squealing over this is just to put on a show for the handful of people who still pay attention to these matters:

The nation's governors are closing ranks in opposition to a proposal in Congress that would let the president take control of the National Guard in emergencies without consent of governors.

...

The measure would remove the currently required consent of governors for the federalization of the Guard, which is shared between the individual states and the federal government.

Research Credit: C
posted by Kevin at 7:20 PM

I went to a screening of a new documentary called China Blue in Kaitaia last night. The director, Micha Peled, was in attendance.

The most interesting thing about the doc, in my opinion, is how Peled got access to the factory---this was discussed during the Q and A session after the screening. The factory (sweat shop) owner, a former Chinese police chief, believed that conditions in his operation were so admirable, compared to other factories, that he had absolutely nothing to hide! He was proud of his practices. As a result, Peled had unlimited, unsupervised access.

Of course, the factory is more like a prison than any sane or humane work place. The workers live in factory dorms, up to 12 per room. They eat company prepared food. The big difference between prison life and factory life is that the workers pay the company for the room and meals. Working 15 hours or more per day is routine... Etc.

Anyway, try to imagine some of the hardcore dungeons that have signed contracts with WalMart and Target, etc. that prohibit access to any media.

China Blue puts a very personal and human face on the grim sweatshop existence. The film is definitely worth your time.

Related: Teddy Bear Films
posted by Kevin at 5:58 PM

In case you're sick of hearing it from me over the years, here it is again in Matt's words:

In my opinion, Goodman's niche within the petroleum-banking matrix is to keep the 1%-5% of the population that considers themselves "dissidents" invested within what Jeffery Brown calls the "iron triangle" formed by the media, housing, and banking industries.

Now don't get me wrong, I'd prefer 30 minutes of Amy Goodman over 30 minutes of Rush Limbaugh any day of the week but I'm not a fool. Limbaugh's niche is to keep a certain (perhaps) 25%-to-33% of the population who identify themselves as "conservative" squarely trapped within the iron triangle. The Al Frankens and Randi Rhodes of the world exist to keep the 25-to-33% of the population who identify themselves as "liberal" trapped within the iron triangle. Goodman exists to keep the 2.5-3.3% of the population who identify themselves as "radicals" or "dissidents" within the iron triangle.

I've been to the suburban homes of people who listen to Limbaugh, Franken, and Goodman respectively. To be quite frank, somebody from Mars would not be able to distinguish the listener of one show from the listener of anotherr. They all had the following:

1. Moderate to severe weight problem(s)

2. Giant mortgages on overbubbled homes

3. Two or more cars in the garage/driveway

4. Jobs they either hated or were indifferent too

5. Neighbors they did not know

6. Multiple credit cards they were carrying balances on

The only differences were superficial. The Goodman listener might have a hybrid with a Che Guevara bumper sticker where the the Limbaugh listener has an SUV with a "W" sticker but, in the end, their respective lifestyles were far more similar than different. They're just located in within different corners and/or opposite sides of the "iron triangle."

I've never seen or heard anything on DN that would have helped the listener/viewer deal with numbers one-through-six listed above. The best I could tell, these things would vaguely be solved by getting some slightly greened- up Democrats into office.

Research Credit: Idleworm
posted by Kevin at 8:17 PM

Where are the chicken sh*t, rhetoric spewing Muslim states now? Due to their inaction, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc. are as responsible for the holocaust in Lebanon as Israel and the U.S.:

Israeli aircraft struck deep into Lebanon yesterday, killing at least 33 Syrian Kurdish farm workers and destroying four bridges on a key aid route leading north from Beirut.

The attack on the farm workers, who were loading peaches and plums on to trucks at Qaa in the north of the Beka'a valley, was one of the single deadliest strikes of the war.

And for the clinically insane Christians out there who support Israel in this holocaust:

Israel Strikes Christian Heartland Just North of Beirut
posted by Kevin at 6:12 PM

I've said it before and I'll say it again:

Choke on your dry-rotted, stuccobox McMansions and re-fi one last time to pay your bankruptcy lawyers!

As always, have a nice day:

The number of defaults on mortgage payments rose to a three-year high in the second quarter in California, a 67% increase from the year earlier period, according to DataQuick, a real estate data-compiling firm.

Lenders sent 20,752 default notices to homeowners across the Golden State, up 10.5% from 18,778 the previous quarter and up 67.2% from 12,408 in the second quarter of 2005. Notices of default are formal documents filed with the county recorder's office which mark the first step of the foreclosure process.
posted by Kevin at 6:06 PM

The guys over at The Oil Drum are trying to call "the" month when global oil production peaked.

That's right. Peaked.

The chart shocked me when I saw it.

"That's a triple top," I mumbled to myself. "Hoooooooooly sh*t."

Maybe it's a plateau. I hope it's a plateau. I'd like a bit more time...

Right now, May 2005 is the winner, but December 2005 and April 2006 are statistical ties.
posted by Kevin at 1:31 AM

Difficult as it may be to believe, many of the conservatives who have great influence in the Bush administration and now in Congress are governed by a Higher Power.

In his book "The Carbon Wars," Greenpeace activist Jeremy Leggett tells how he stumbled upon this otherworldly agenda. During the Kyoto climate change negotiations, Leggett candidly asked Ford Motor Company executive John Schiller how opponents of the pact could believe there is no problem with "a world of a billion cars intent on burning all the oil and gas available on the planet?" The executive asserted first that scientists get it wrong when they say fossil fuels have been sequestered underground for eons. The Earth, he said, is just 10,000, not 4.5 billion years old, the age widely accepted by scientists.

Then Schiller confidently declared, "You know, the more I look, the more it is just as it says in the Bible." The Book of Daniel, he told Leggett, predicts that increased earthly devastation will mark the "End Time" and return of Christ. Paradoxically, Leggett notes, many fundamentalists see dying coral reefs, melting ice caps and other environmental destruction not as an urgent call to action, but as God's will. In the religious right worldview, the wreck of the Earth can be seen as Good News!

Some true believers, interpreting biblical prophecy, are sure they will be saved from the horrific destruction brought by ecosystem collapse. They'll be raptured: rescued from Earth by God, who will then rain down seven ghastly years of misery on unbelieving humanity. Jesus' return will mark the Millennium, when the Lord restores the Earth to its green pristine condition, and the faithful enjoy a thousand years of peace and prosperity.
posted by Kevin at 1:07 AM

Another one for the Hating Us for Our Freedom file:

A freelance journalist and blogger was jailed on Tuesday after refusing to turn over video he took at an anticapitalist protest here last summer and after refusing to testify before a grand jury looking into accusations that crimes were committed at the protest.

The freelancer, Josh Wolf, 24, was taken into custody just before noon after a hearing in front of Judge William Alsup of Federal District Court. Found in contempt, Wolf was later moved to a federal prison in Dublin, Calif., and could be imprisoned until next summer, when the grand jury term expires, said his lawyer, Jose Luis Fuentes.

Suggested reading list for Josh Wolf, as he's cooling his heels in federal prison:

U.S. Army Field Manual FM 100-20, Military Operations in Low Intensity Conflict

Documents on the Information Warfare PSYOP site

Low-intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency and Peacekeeping by General Sir Frank Kitson

Endgame: Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization and Endgame: Volume 2: Resistance, both by Derrick Jensen

The section 'Political Activism and the ACS Counterinsurgency Apparatus' in Militant Electronic Piracy: Non-Violent Insurgency Tactics Against the American Corporate State

Research Credit: West
posted by Kevin at 5:31 PM

Ahh, to be a kid again...

To the 12-year-old friends planning to build themselves a den, the cherry tree seemed an inviting source of material.

But the afternoon adventure turned into a frightening ordeal for Sam Cannon, Amy Higgins and Katy Smith after they climbed into the 20ft tree - then found themselves hauled into a police station and locked in cells for up to two hours.

Their shoes were removed and mugshots, DNA samples and mouth swabs were taken.

Officers told the children they had been seen damaging the tree which is in a wooded area of public land near their homes.

Questioned by police, the scared friends admitted they had broken some loose branches because they had wanted to build a tree house, but said they did not realise what they had done was wrong.

Officers considered charging the children with criminal damage but eventually decided a reprimand - the equivalent of a caution for juveniles - was sufficient.
posted by Kevin at 4:35 PM

Are the poorest countries in the world going to have better rural broadband access than New Zealand? At the rate things are moving in New Zealand, you can bet on it.

Mr. Cunliffe:

Green Wi-Fi, a non-profit that seeks to provide "last mile internet access with nothing more than a single broadband internet connection, rooftops and the sun." Their wi-fi access nodes, which consist of a small solar panel, a heavy-duty battery, and a router, can be linked together to extend one internet connection into a larger network. By using an "intelligent" charge controller that moderates power use and access based on amount of sunlight, the $200 nodes can run for as long as a month on low sunlight.
posted by Kevin at 3:37 PM

French fries are back on the menu of cafeterias that cater to US lawmakers on Capital Hill, more than three years after they were replaced by "freedom fries" in anger over France's refusal to join the US-led war in Iraq.

...

A spokesman for Representative Vernon Ehlers, a Republican who chairs the House Administration Committee, which oversees the cafeterias, declined to comment on the change when questioned by AFP.
posted by Kevin at 7:21 PM

Harold Powers was only 20 when he watched a frightening sight unfold here 60 years ago: Battle-hardened World War II veterans in a shootout with armed sheriff's deputies.

The so-called "Battle of Athens" began Aug. 1, 1946, when veterans opened fire on the local jail to stop corrupt local officials from stealing an election.

"It was scary," said Powers, a retired elementary school principal who was right in the middle of the fighting and was sprayed with pellets from a shotgun blast.

Felix Harrod, 84, was a 25-year-old poll watcher at the courthouse during the shootout and said it was common for incumbents in the county about 45 miles northeast of Chattanooga to take ballot boxes to the jail and stuff them with pre-marked ballots.

That was a practice the former soldiers hoped to stop. They offered an all-ex-GI, nonpartisan ticket that promised a fraud-free election and reform. Their rallying cry: "Why fight overseas for freedom and come home and be denied the right to have your ballot counted?"

The shooting continued until the pre-dawn of Aug. 2 when the former soldiers tossed dynamite at the jail, prompting deputies and a sheriff candidate holed up with ballot boxes to surrender.

The uprising left one man with a bullet wound and sent a deputy to prison.

On the 60th anniversary of the uprising, Powers and others who can recall the 1946 violence shake their head as state election officials predict only about 35 percent of voters will cast ballots in Thursday's primaries in Tennessee.

"The lesson is that people ought to take voting a whole lot more seriously than they do and not let things get out of hand," Powers said. "Don't let the politicians just take over."

...

Guy said it remains unclear exactly how many veterans took up arms for the Battle of Athens.

"Estimates have ranged between 50 to 250," he said. "No one really knows. It wasn't any organized military type of assault. They only wanted the ballot boxes."

The former soldiers raided National Guard and State Guard armories for weapons, and the governor mobilized the Guard, although troops never went to Athens.

The veterans shielded themselves behind overturned cars as they fired shots at the jail from across the street. Sympathizers even served them refreshments.

"It almost got to be like a party-type atmosphere," Guy said.

Guy said that after the fighting, the GIs recovered several ballot boxes that hadn't been manipulated and counted the votes. The veteran-backed candidates were declared the winners and sworn into office.

"The McMinn County veterans had won the day in a hail of gunfire, dynamite, and esprit de corps," Brooks wrote.

The local government had been part of a statewide political machine run by Memphis Mayor Ed "Boss" Crump.

"That's just the way things were all over the South, machines everywhere," Guy said. Outdated state laws and overly powerful sheriffs who had the power to arrest and collect fines and fees contributed to the frustration.

"Unfortunately Athens sort of got to be the tinder point of a great many social problems," Guy said.

Powers said the violence was motivated by disgust about corruption. "Some folks just had had all they could take. They just lost it," Powers said.

In Other News: Worst Ever Security Flaw In Diebold Voting Machine
posted by Kevin at 3:31 PM

AM of resist.ca is sponsoring the the ad you now see on Cryptogon for Derrick Jensen's Endgame books. I have both Endgame volumes and will be writing an extensive review in the future. In the meantime, I encourage all Cryptogon readers to check out these books.
posted by Kevin at 12:02 AM

The ghoulish, international criminal, Tony Blair, recently delivered a warning to Syria and Iran:

"We need to make clear to Syria and Iran that there is a choice: come into the international community and play by the same rules as the rest of us; or be confronted."

The same rules as the rest of us...

Is Israel subject to those rules, Tony?


Hmmm. Just who are 'the rest of us'?

I'm WARNING Cryptogon readers now: This story is about to take a turn for the weird.

I found a hair raising article in Britain's Daily Mail about Tony Blair's recent visit to the U.S. While it did not, however, include any descriptions of summoning demonic entities through trans-dimensional portals, black robes or underground crypts, the mind fairly boggles in trying to imagine what did go on during Blair's trip to California. Oh yeah, HAHAHA, only the lunatic fringe, tinfoil hat crowd will see any connection to the Bohemian Grove (just-boys-having-fun) event that was happening at the same time.

Forget about the Them. It's all about 'the rest of us':

The Prime Minister flew into California amid claims he was using a taxpayer-funded trip to tout for lucrative retirement berths on the boards of American conglomerates. If so, he had certainly come to the right place.

He began his five-day West Coast tour with a glitzy cocktail party attended by America's richest men.

The soiree was arranged by society hostess Charlotte Shultz, whose husband George has advised the last three US Presidents.

She gushingly greeted Mr Blair when he arrived in San Francisco earlier before he rubbed shoulders with a select group of super-rich guests at the couple's home.

Among the 90 present were stockbroker Chuck Schwab and Phil Bronstein, Sharon Stone's media tycoon ex-husband. There were also executives from US corporate giants such as Chevron oil, internet search engine Yahoo and Wells Fargo bank.

...

Indeed, Mr Shultz, 85, retains an enviable reputation as one of California's best-connected men. His paid business interests include the banking giant JP Morgan, international stockbrokers Charles Schwab and management consultants Accenture.

Most controversially, he is the former president and director of Bechtel, the construction conglomerate which has been accused of having undue influence in Downing Street.

The San Francisco-based company has helped devise Mr Blair's new nuclear power strategy - but despite its inside knowledge it has itself recently been given the go-ahead to bid for potentially lucrative radioactive waste clean-up projects.

...

Mr Shultz remains well plugged into the Republican establishment, advising President Bush on foreign policy.

He was a leading advocate of "pre-emptive" action against Iraq and now recommends an equally hardline stance against Iran.

He is also a senior figure at Bohemian Grove, the secretive club of the US political and business elite which, by chance, is holding its annual gathering outside the city this weekend.

There was speculation that Mr Blair might even have been a guest at the male-only event, following in the footsteps of John Major and Prince Philip.

As it is, the Shultz party was said to have been littered with guests who had left the Grove in order to meet Mr Blair.

Mr Shultz's wife Charlotte has a reputation for throwing the best soirees on the West Coast.

Last year she entertained Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall during their official tour.

The fun-loving Shultzes dressed up as Superman and Wonderwoman in an amateur revue show put on specially for the Royal couple.

A previous party guest said of the Shultzes' apartment: "It is the most spectacular place, with 360-degree views over the city, San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate bridge.

"It has glass walls and is probably one of the most exclusive addresses in the country. It's very elegant inside, with priceless artwork on the walls."

Should Mr Blair elect to join the lucrative West Coast lecture circuit on his retirement, there will clearly be no shortage of invitations.

Mr Blair will also be the guest at a reception hosted by mayor Antonio Villaraigosa at the Getty Villa in Malibu. It reported that local officials were 'still dealing with attendance' requests from Anglophile business leaders.

Mr Blair will also fly the flag for BP boss Lord Browne of Madingley, who is eager to trumpet the oil giant's new-found 'ethical' and 'green' credentials.

...

Transport spokesman Chris Grayling urged him to provide the Commons with an urgent statement detailing exactly whom he was due to meet during the visit.

He said: "The trouble with the position that Mr Blair has now got himself into is that even if he is doing something perfectly properly, the suspicion always remains there is a hidden agenda.

What kind of lunatic would think there was a hidden agenda in any of this!? These deranged, costume wearing billionaires and ass licking politicians are obviously playing by the same rules as the rest of us.
posted by Kevin at 7:29 PM

I'm starting to really enjoy stories that sum up the situation humanity is facing in very concise ways. Stories that are so jam packed with insanity and evil that one doesn't even know where to begin the analysis. The point, of course, is that analysis is no longer necessary to see where we are headed. The thing is apparent, prima facie.

What's not totally clear, upon reading this, is how many blows from a sledge hammer would be required to smash this thing into dust. Maybe a few grad students will wake the F up and conduct that research:

...grad students at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) are creating the first biometric vending machine. The current machine comes equipped with a barcode scanner, a fingerprint reader, and a web cam for facial recognition. One student dubbed it the "most over-designed soda machine in the world." The project, code-named "SodaVision" is the brainchild of associate professor Stefan Savage, but it was the students who really made it come to life. And yes, it runs Linux.

Related Google Search: "Stefan Savage" DARPA
posted by Kevin at 6:09 PM

Greeting to readers from Germany who reached Cryptogon through blog.fefe.de. I find it incredible that, over the last couple of days, a site written in German has referred more visitors to Cryptogon than any other English language site on the Internet.

If you enjoy the content, please refer other German/English speakers to Cryptogon.

Thanks!
posted by Kevin at 5:54 PM

Imagine my surprize when I checked my email today and found not one, but TWO Blue Host signups!!! July was a great month for contributions and it looks like a couple of folks wanted to start August off right.

mlxvi.org and runwithscissors.com took hosting packages with Blue Host. Cryptogon received $130!

Thanks, guys. I'm sure you will be pleased with Blue Host and the $130 will go a long way for Becky and me. (We're making our spring seed selections right now.)

If you're thinking about starting a website, or changing hosts, check out what Blue Host has to offer.

Related: Hosting With Blue Host
posted by Kevin at 3:35 PM

They hate us for our freedom:

"You can't be in here protesting," Officer Adkins said, pointing to my Veterans For Peace shirt.

"Well, I'm not protesting, I'm having a cup of coffee," I returned, thinking that logic would convince Adkins to go back to his earlier duties of guarding against serious terrorists.

Flipping his badge open, he said, "No, not with that shirt. You're protesting and you have to go."

Beginning to get his drift, I said firmly, "Not before I finish my coffee."

He insisted that I leave, but still not quite believing my ears, I tried one more approach to reason.

"Hey, listen. I'm a veteran. This is a V.A. facility. I'm sitting here not talking to anybody, having a cup of coffee. I'm not protesting and you can't kick me out."

"You'll either go or we'll arrest you," Adkins threatened.

"Well, you'll just have to arrest me," I said, wondering what strange land I was now living in.

You know the rest. Handcuffed, led away to the facility's security office, past people with surprised looks on their faces, read my rights, searched, and written up.
posted by Kevin at 5:07 AM