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Written like a true tr0ll!

Of course, I think you either don't drink at your own fountain, or you have a little lead in your pipes, if you know what I mean.

I would like to speculate for the crowd how well this coherent-sounding rhetoric would hold up while you were being tortured by a few CIA-trained SAVAK interrogators. Oh, that SAVAK. The American-backed Shah of Iran's security services. The people who were so bad the Ayatollahs looked great by comparison. In the words of Amnesty International, "No country in the world has a worse record in human rights than Iran." Under our puppet dictator, that is.

We are lovers of totalitarianism in the West, and we gave the Soviets excellent competition. I just gave you one Middle Eastern country. Press me, and I can respond a dozen times before I even get into to South America.

The western elite cared plenty about methods. And, the methods of the western "elite" in general did not use methods as evil as the Soviets. Certainly the western "elite" didn't use evil methods against their own people!

I want you to chant this a dozen times before you go to bed each night, and two dozen times in the morning. But you have no chance of catching up to the number of "insurgents" (now the term is "terrorists") our regime has murdered, generally by proxy, but often directly, before you die. Unless you're visiting Guatemala and get mistaken for a communist. Then you'll really miss the mark. Or start chanting a lot faster, one or the other.

Think I should be confused by the fact that I won't go to reeducation for my comments? Why should I? I'm intimately familiar with the recent history which allows me to speak unfavorably about capitalism, as well as the more recent history that seems eager to turn back the clock.

I don't really understand it myself, but I suppose the idiot's garden of denial about the exigencies of power and the behavior of western governments is powerfully attractive to some - actually, most - people. I think it has something to do with our pain threshold. Or maybe just those regular public education funding cuts.

Rock on, "mesocyclone." If you really believe what you are saying, someone as obviously wrongheaded as yourself will be in little danger of questioning your beliefs, and if not, you're even more likely to profess the same. Take my advice, though. Don't do too much traveling in the 3rd world.

It nice to see Tradwars on it. Haven't seen that and years.

I haven't seen this in years. In case you were wondering, that's a banner ad Slashdot is running featuring John Wayne Gacy.

Yes, the same John Wayne Gacy that was convicted of 33 serial murders. Whom did he rape and murder, you ask? Why, he raped and murdered small children.

That's right, HE RAPED AND MURDERED SMALL CHILDREN. And now he's being used to sell things on Slashdot.

God Bless America.

Please, stop beating it.

I agree. We should be discussing why Slashdot is running ads featuring John Wayne Gacy.

Yes, the same John Wayne Gacy that was convicted of 33 serial murders. Whom did he rape and murder, you ask? Why, he raped and murdered small children.

That's right, HE RAPED AND MURDERED SMALL CHILDREN. And now he's being used to sell things on Slashdot.

God Bless America.

Hmmmm

Money and sexual stimulation

The Japanese are a culture that prides themselves on traditional values of honor, discretion and privacy. The 11 digit number system is an affront to this system of values in the eyes of many Japanese... this is the reason for the protests.
Many Japanese do not see any reason for the 11 digit number. They feel that this level of monitoring and tracking goes against their traditional values, and feel detached from the events that have lead to higher security levels all over the world.
Despite the Sarin gas attacks by Aum, the Japanese remain very confident in their society's moral standing and place privacy and discretion on a high pedestal.

Probably not, but we're going to take you through the movie anyway. Grab a bucket of popcorn and prepare yourself for the movie review of Star Wars: Episode II - The Attack of the Clones.

So the movie starts off with the requisite main score while the oddly skewed yellow text brings us up to speed on the goings-on in the galaxy. Something about unrest in the Senate, a separatist movement led by a "Count Dookie", Amidala being a Senator herself, yada yada yada. The main message is that the forced-perspective text looked lame as fuck in 1977, and seems downright abysmal 25 years later. One would think that with all the billions Lucas has made on the previous films he could afford a decent title sequence.

True to a movie made for kids and dysfunctional adults, we then jump right into the action. Senator Amidala is getting off her liqui-chrome spaceship on Coruscant when... kaboom! ...she blows up. Omigod, is she dead?!? Of course not, it was her stand in (you remember her from Episode I, right?). This scene provides a great opportunity for Natalie Portman to get all weepy over her dead assistant and show us that Amidala even cares for the little people. What an angel.

After that we see Yoda, Samuel "Mace Windu" Jackson and some freaky looking alien Jedi talking to Darth Sidious. Er, um, I mean Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, who of course is in no way connected to Mr. Sidious. I mean, he's obviously a good guy, right? Yeah, sure. If you paid any attention to Episodes IV-VI you already know who he is. Also, those subtle facial expressions and tones of voice suggesting devious intentions sure do lend an air of, shall we say, insidiousness, to him.

So do the Master Jedi Knights pick up on Palpatine's two-faced treachery? No. The eight year-old kids at the theater see it plain as day, but to the leaders of the Jedi Council, people who have undergone the most stringent of training for detecting such duplicity, people who have freakin' powers of mind control and are sitting right across the desk from this guy, to them Palpatine seems A-OK.

Anyway, the whole point of this scene is to set up Obi-Wan "Ewen McGregor looks goofy in a beard" Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker as Amidala's bodyguards since it seems like somebody is trying to kill her. Of course it is Palpatine who suggests this. My goodness, what sort of deviltry is he up to? We also briefly see Jar-Jar Binks stroll by in the background. No lines for him in this scene, though.

Prior to Amidala getting hooked up with her Jedi, we get to meet the two of them alone in an elevator. Anakin is now a moody teen and his pining for Natalie Portman's firm buttox is quite apparent. When the elevator door opens they are greeted by Jar-Jar and... he speaks! Nothing like a little racist, neo-Jamaican patois to tickle the funny bone.

Once the whole gang is reunited all the complex character development gets dumped, wholesale, in about 45 seconds of screen time. Obi-Wan is the wise yet caring teacher, Anakin is straining under the throes of pubescent hormonal lust and good old rebellion, while Amidala is distant yet maternal in her care for Anakin. Jar-Jar appears to be little more than house nigger.

The next scenes begin to suggest why Lucas chose Attack of the Clones as title for this movie. All of the visual imagery was stolen from other people's films. The super-dense high rise cityscape, complete with moody nighttime lighting through half-open blinds, is equal parts Blade Runner and The Fifth Elephant to such an obvious degree that it is painful. We get to zoom about this impossibly crowded aerial metropolis at high speeds in a futuristic flying car chase. It's all Luc Besson at this point, including people falling from building to vehicle. You could swap Hayden Christensen (Anakin) with Bruce Willis at any point and the transition would be seamless (admittedly, replacing McGregor with Milla Jovovich might be noticed).

During this chase Anakin and Obi-Wan banter amusingly and offer flip one-liners. It almost works, but not quite. After the necessary crash to end the pursuit we swing fully into Ridley Scott's corner with teeming ground-level streets and a seedy bar full of oddly dressed people.

There's some sort of plot development going on through all this, but it's not very important. What is important is that this movie tries very hard to drop little nuggets of joy for the aging Star Wars fan base. The first one occurs outside the aforementioned bar when a bounty hunter who looks an awful lot like the Boba Fett of Episodes IV-VI kills somebody and then zooms off with his nifty jet pack. It is at this point where the first real signs of plot strain begin to show.

Now for some reason Obi-Wan is going to a mysteriously undocumented planet to investigate whatever the hell it is that we're supposed to care about, while Anakin stays behind to give the screenwriter a convenient opportunity to have Amidala reciprocate Anakin's puppy love.

The mystery planet is actually a sterile looking clone factory run by tall, lizard necked folks. Hard to say which movie set is being cloned, since the sterile, white, space-based science facility has been done so many times before. It's probably safe to credit Kubrick with being the biggest victim of theft here. All the clones themselves look vaguely ethnic. Additionally, they are apparently the precursor to Stormtroopers. Basically, at the factory they quickly breed a bunch of brown-skinned people who are literally identical looking, dress them up in white armor, and now they represent a huge, sinister force. What exactly is George Lucas trying to say here?

The lizard-necked scientists are a bit daft and don't realize they are revealing details to the wrong person when they tell Obi-Wan that the clones were ordered 10 years ago by a supposedly long-dead Jedi. They are also oblivious to the error of revealing the presence of a bounty hunter and his cloned "son", named Jango and Boba Fett, respectively, at the station. People in technical professions like genetics and computer science are often socially and politically clueless that way, resulting in atrocities like nuclear weapons and peer-to-peer file sharing.

Jango and Obi-Wan have a tense little meeting where more plot details of some sort are revealed, including the fact that all the clones look just like Jango himself, and then they get into a fight. Neither one of them dies though, so they chase after each other in space ships instead.

Back in the world of sappy love stories, things are progressing quite slowly. Anakin is still behaving like the sort of teen you'd send to military school as punishment. This brings to mind another apparent failing of Jedi University. If they're so great at molding super-competent Jedi, how come they can't raise a teenager who isn't a whiny little brat?

Amidala stays cold and distant to the advances of "Ani", and it's hard to see how they're going to end up getting busy and squirting out two kids. Then, they kiss. Yes, that abruptly. First she couldn't care less, then she's probing for tonsils. Whatever caused her change of heart apparently got left on the editing room floor.

George Lucas seems to be awfully fond of himself, so eventually he starts cloning his own movies. First Anakin has a dream about his mother being in pain, so he disobeys his orders and goes off to help her (Luke, 1:2). Amidala tags along.

Of course helping Mom means dropping another joy nugget for the fans, so it's back to Tatooine yet again. We reminisce with Watto a bit, and then head out to an awfully familiar looking house. Yup, it's the same one where future whiny little Jedi wannabe Luke grows up, and we get to meet the aunt and uncle who will be so trivial in later movies. The plot strains become more noticeable.

But hey, what's the point of time spent on Tatooine of you don't get to see some Tusken Raiders? Seems they've kidnapped Anakin's mother, Shmi, so we get to bust a hang with a whole bunch of them. Hell, even the Jawas pop up for a cameo. Nothing like rehashing old ground when you can't come up with a decent plot device.

Oh yeah, Anakin's Mom dies in his arms just as he rescues her (how convenient), and then he goes bezerk and slaughters all the Tusken Raiders. Apparently this is bad. Even Yoda gets some negative Force vibes from it, and he's way on the other side of the galaxy.

Meanwhile, Obi-Wan's story line isn't doing much better. Lacking anything more exciting to do in a space chase, they fly into an asteroid field. They even venture into an asteroid tunnel. To be fair though, the absolute coolest part of the whole movie happens in this scene. See, Jango Fett has these bomb thingies, and he's hurling them at Obi-Wan's ship. Whenever one of them hits an asteroid and detonates everything goes dead silent for a half second and then a wonderfully flanged and modulated kwaaang! rings out while a pale blue shock wave radiates through space. Hearing that sound is almost worth the price of admission.

Somehow Obi-Wan ends up on a droid factory planet pursuing Jango and Boba and he gets caught by the dread Count Dooku/Darth Tyranus/Saruman the White/Christopher Lee. Count Doofus tells him about some plot involving the Senate and the separatists that is entirely too confusing for this sort of movie. In short, he asks Obi-Wan to join him, and Obi essentially tells him to go fuck himself. Count Doodu responds to the snubbing by amassing a huge army of orcs, er, droids, and leaving Obi-Wan trapped in a tower until he is rescued by a giant owl.

Over on Tatooine, Amidala is revealing herself to be quite the mischievous little minx, and she talks Anakin into going to save Obi-Wan. They arrive at the factory and proceed to battle their way through the exact same sorts of choppy, bashing mechanical bits that so flummoxed Sigourney Weaver in Galaxy Quest. R2-D2 has no problems with them though because he has jet packs. I don't recall him having jet packs before. I imagine they would have been very useful if he had managed to hang onto them for his later adventures.

I wish I could say C3PO did as well as R2, but his head gets lopped off and installed on one of those battle droids, while a battle droid's head gets stuck onto 3PO's ungainly frame. I don't want to ruin the movie, but I must tell you that much hilarity ensues from this manufacturing gaffe. But this movie isn't about droids, it's about clones, so let's get back to those.

The next clone returns us to Ridley Scott territory. Anakin and Amidala get captured, and are joined with Obi-Wan in a gladiator arena (yes, a gladiator arena) where they are forced to fight animals and robots to the death. It is at this point where Natalie Portman's midriff begins to receive significant screen time.

Things go well at first, then our protagonists get into trouble as the robots multiply. All seems lost until Samuel Jackson's bald head strides in, accompanied by a whole bunch of other Jedi. Jedi and robot go at it in great numbers and there's lots of glowing phalluses being wielded about and much carnage. Jango Fett flies on into the fray only to get beheaded by Mace Windu. His young clone Boba seems to find this upsetting, and presumably he'll be holding a grudge for some time over this.

Things go well (again) until our protagonists get into trouble (again) as the robots multiply (again). The next turn in the battle occurs when Yoda comes strafing into the arena with several ships loaded with clones and utters his most absurdly spoken line ever: "Around the survivors a perimeter create!" It made me want to beat Frank Oz to death with a copy of Labyrinth.

As the arena battle winds down and everybody leaves to chase the fleeing Count Dooker we see Boba Fett cradling his progenitor's severed head. Somebody should get the kid some counseling or he's going to have some real issues later on.

After a rolling battle across the plains of... whatever planet they're on ...Doochu gets cornered by Anakin and Obi-Wan. As anybody who's ever seen one of the other Star Wars movies can tell you, it's light saber time.

Anakin attacks. Anakin gets tossed in the corner like a sack of dirty laundry. Obi-wan attacks. Obi-Wan gets beaten down like a filthy Scottish actor. Anakin attacks again, this time in the dark and with two glowing phalluses! He looks a lot like one of those irritating Rave kids waving glowsticks about, but he must've forgotten to take his vitamin E because he gets his hand chopped right off. Yes, his hand. The right one. Just like his future son. Oh, the anachronistic irony! This is profound stuff.

Our protagonists are once again in trouble and all seems lost (again) until... ninja Yoda!

He comes hobbling in on his cane looking a bit feeble, but oh is he pissed. After a short hand gesturing bit of "My Schwartz if bigger than yours" they get down to the wand waving. But Yoda doesn't grab his saber. Nosirree, he telekenesifies it from his belt to his wrinkled green paw. Yoda is one bad mother fucker.

He flips, he spins, he darts through the air like a mosquito on crack. If you watch Iron Monkey on fast forward it still won't come close to the acrobatics of this little gremlin. However, he doesn't win. He's forced to chose between killing Count Doosey and saving the other two Jedi from a falling pillar, and he lets the Count go. Despite his ninja skills, Yoda is a humanitarian at the core. The next shot shows the Count flying away in a ship powered by some sort of solar sail (the "hard science" geeks are going to love that bit).

As the movie draws to a close we see Anakin flexing his new prosthetic hand, just like Luke does in Episode V. It might be chilling if it weren't so contrived. When a screenwriter/director has a decade and a half to come up with a prequel you would expect him to conclude with something a little less obvious. But, that's what you get when you focus on joy nuggets of nostalgia for a pathetic group of emotionally underdeveloped adults.

Probably not, but we're going to take you through the movie anyway. Grab a bucket of popcorn and prepare yourself for the movie review of Star Wars: Episode II - The Attack of the Clones.

So the movie starts off with the requisite main score while the oddly skewed yellow text brings us up to speed on the goings-on in the galaxy. Something about unrest in the Senate, a separatist movement led by a "Count Dookie", Amidala being a Senator herself, yada yada yada. The main message is that the forced-perspective text looked lame as fuck in 1977, and seems downright abysmal 25 years later. One would think that with all the billions Lucas has made on the previous films he could afford a decent title sequence.

True to a movie made for kids and dysfunctional adults, we then jump right into the action. Senator Amidala is getting off her liqui-chrome spaceship on Coruscant when... kaboom! ...she blows up. Omigod, is she dead?!? Of course not, it was her stand in (you remember her from Episode I, right?). This scene provides a great opportunity for Natalie Portman to get all weepy over her dead assistant and show us that Amidala even cares for the little people. What an angel.

After that we see Yoda, Samuel "Mace Windu" Jackson and some freaky looking alien Jedi talking to Darth Sidious. Er, um, I mean Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, who of course is in no way connected to Mr. Sidious. I mean, he's obviously a good guy, right? Yeah, sure. If you paid any attention to Episodes IV-VI you already know who he is. Also, those subtle facial expressions and tones of voice suggesting devious intentions sure do lend an air of, shall we say, insidiousness, to him.

So do the Master Jedi Knights pick up on Palpatine's two-faced treachery? No. The eight year-old kids at the theater see it plain as day, but to the leaders of the Jedi Council, people who have undergone the most stringent of training for detecting such duplicity, people who have freakin' powers of mind control and are sitting right across the desk from this guy, to them Palpatine seems A-OK.

Anyway, the whole point of this scene is to set up Obi-Wan "Ewen McGregor looks goofy in a beard" Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker as Amidala's bodyguards since it seems like somebody is trying to kill her. Of course it is Palpatine who suggests this. My goodness, what sort of deviltry is he up to? We also briefly see Jar-Jar Binks stroll by in the background. No lines for him in this scene, though.

Prior to Amidala getting hooked up with her Jedi, we get to meet the two of them alone in an elevator. Anakin is now a moody teen and his pining for Natalie Portman's firm buttox is quite apparent. When the elevator door opens they are greeted by Jar-Jar and... he speaks! Nothing like a little racist, neo-Jamaican patois to tickle the funny bone.

Once the whole gang is reunited all the complex character development gets dumped, wholesale, in about 45 seconds of screen time. Obi-Wan is the wise yet caring teacher, Anakin is straining under the throes of pubescent hormonal lust and good old rebellion, while Amidala is distant yet maternal in her care for Anakin. Jar-Jar appears to be little more than house nigger.

The next scenes begin to suggest why Lucas chose Attack of the Clones as title for this movie. All of the visual imagery was stolen from other people's films. The super-dense high rise cityscape, complete with moody nighttime lighting through half-open blinds, is equal parts Blade Runner and The Fifth Elephant to such an obvious degree that it is painful. We get to zoom about this impossibly crowded aerial metropolis at high speeds in a futuristic flying car chase. It's all Luc Besson at this point, including people falling from building to vehicle. You could swap Hayden Christensen (Anakin) with Bruce Willis at any point and the transition would be seamless (admittedly, replacing McGregor with Milla Jovovich might be noticed).

During this chase Anakin and Obi-Wan banter amusingly and offer flip one-liners. It almost works, but not quite. After the necessary crash to end the pursuit we swing fully into Ridley Scott's corner with teeming ground-level streets and a seedy bar full of oddly dressed people.

There's some sort of plot development going on through all this, but it's not very important. What is important is that this movie tries very hard to drop little nuggets of joy for the aging Star Wars fan base. The first one occurs outside the aforementioned bar when a bounty hunter who looks an awful lot like the Boba Fett of Episodes IV-VI kills somebody and then zooms off with his nifty jet pack. It is at this point where the first real signs of plot strain begin to show.

Now for some reason Obi-Wan is going to a mysteriously undocumented planet to investigate whatever the hell it is that we're supposed to care about, while Anakin stays behind to give the screenwriter a convenient opportunity to have Amidala reciprocate Anakin's puppy love.

The mystery planet is actually a sterile looking clone factory run by tall, lizard necked folks. Hard to say which movie set is being cloned, since the sterile, white, space-based science facility has been done so many times before. It's probably safe to credit Kubrick with being the biggest victim of theft here. All the clones themselves look vaguely ethnic. Additionally, they are apparently the precursor to Stormtroopers. Basically, at the factory they quickly breed a bunch of brown-skinned people who are literally identical looking, dress them up in white armor, and now they represent a huge, sinister force. What exactly is George Lucas trying to say here?

The lizard-necked scientists are a bit daft and don't realize they are revealing details to the wrong person when they tell Obi-Wan that the clones were ordered 10 years ago by a supposedly long-dead Jedi. They are also oblivious to the error of revealing the presence of a bounty hunter and his cloned "son", named Jango and Boba Fett, respectively, at the station. People in technical professions like genetics and computer science are often socially and politically clueless that way, resulting in atrocities like nuclear weapons and peer-to-peer file sharing.

Jango and Obi-Wan have a tense little meeting where more plot details of some sort are revealed, including the fact that all the clones look just like Jango himself, and then they get into a fight. Neither one of them dies though, so they chase after each other in space ships instead.

Back in the world of sappy love stories, things are progressing quite slowly. Anakin is still behaving like the sort of teen you'd send to military school as punishment. This brings to mind another apparent failing of Jedi University. If they're so great at molding super-competent Jedi, how come they can't raise a teenager who isn't a whiny little brat?

Amidala stays cold and distant to the advances of "Ani", and it's hard to see how they're going to end up getting busy and squirting out two kids. Then, they kiss. Yes, that abruptly. First she couldn't care less, then she's probing for tonsils. Whatever caused her change of heart apparently got left on the editing room floor.

George Lucas seems to be awfully fond of himself, so eventually he starts cloning his own movies. First Anakin has a dream about his mother being in pain, so he disobeys his orders and goes off to help her (Luke, 1:2). Amidala tags along.

Of course helping Mom means dropping another joy nugget for the fans, so it's back to Tatooine yet again. We reminisce with Watto a bit, and then head out to an awfully familiar looking house. Yup, it's the same one where future whiny little Jedi wannabe Luke grows up, and we get to meet the aunt and uncle who will be so trivial in later movies. The plot strains become more noticeable.

But hey, what's the point of time spent on Tatooine of you don't get to see some Tusken Raiders? Seems they've kidnapped Anakin's mother, Shmi, so we get to bust a hang with a whole bunch of them. Hell, even the Jawas pop up for a cameo. Nothing like rehashing old ground when you can't come up with a decent plot device.

Oh yeah, Anakin's Mom dies in his arms just as he rescues her (how convenient), and then he goes bezerk and slaughters all the Tusken Raiders. Apparently this is bad. Even Yoda gets some negative Force vibes from it, and he's way on the other side of the galaxy.

Meanwhile, Obi-Wan's story line isn't doing much better. Lacking anything more exciting to do in a space chase, they fly into an asteroid field. They even venture into an asteroid tunnel. To be fair though, the absolute coolest part of the whole movie happens in this scene. See, Jango Fett has these bomb thingies, and he's hurling them at Obi-Wan's ship. Whenever one of them hits an asteroid and detonates everything goes dead silent for a half second and then a wonderfully flanged and modulated kwaaang! rings out while a pale blue shock wave radiates through space. Hearing that sound is almost worth the price of admission.

Somehow Obi-Wan ends up on a droid factory planet pursuing Jango and Boba and he gets caught by the dread Count Dooku/Darth Tyranus/Saruman the White/Christopher Lee. Count Doofus tells him about some plot involving the Senate and the separatists that is entirely too confusing for this sort of movie. In short, he asks Obi-Wan to join him, and Obi essentially tells him to go fuck himself. Count Doodu responds to the snubbing by amassing a huge army of orcs, er, droids, and leaving Obi-Wan trapped in a tower until he is rescued by a giant owl.

Over on Tatooine, Amidala is revealing herself to be quite the mischievous little minx, and she talks Anakin into going to save Obi-Wan. They arrive at the factory and proceed to battle their way through the exact same sorts of choppy, bashing mechanical bits that so flummoxed Sigourney Weaver in Galaxy Quest. R2-D2 has no problems with them though because he has jet packs. I don't recall him having jet packs before. I imagine they would have been very useful if he had managed to hang onto them for his later adventures.

I wish I could say C3PO did as well as R2, but his head gets lopped off and installed on one of those battle droids, while a battle droid's head gets stuck onto 3PO's ungainly frame. I don't want to ruin the movie, but I must tell you that much hilarity ensues from this manufacturing gaffe. But this movie isn't about droids, it's about clones, so let's get back to those.

The next clone returns us to Ridley Scott territory. Anakin and Amidala get captured, and are joined with Obi-Wan in a gladiator arena (yes, a gladiator arena) where they are forced to fight animals and robots to the death. It is at this point where Natalie Portman's midriff begins to receive significant screen time.

Things go well at first, then our protagonists get into trouble as the robots multiply. All seems lost until Samuel Jackson's bald head strides in, accompanied by a whole bunch of other Jedi. Jedi and robot go at it in great numbers and there's lots of glowing phalluses being wielded about and much carnage. Jango Fett flies on into the fray only to get beheaded by Mace Windu. His young clone Boba seems to find this upsetting, and presumably he'll be holding a grudge for some time over this.

Things go well (again) until our protagonists get into trouble (again) as the robots multiply (again). The next turn in the battle occurs when Yoda comes strafing into the arena with several ships loaded with clones and utters his most absurdly spoken line ever: "Around the survivors a perimeter create!" It made me want to beat Frank Oz to death with a copy of Labyrinth.

As the arena battle winds down and everybody leaves to chase the fleeing Count Dooker we see Boba Fett cradling his progenitor's severed head. Somebody should get the kid some counseling or he's going to have some real issues later on.

After a rolling battle across the plains of... whatever planet they're on ...Doochu gets cornered by Anakin and Obi-Wan. As anybody who's ever seen one of the other Star Wars movies can tell you, it's light saber time.

Anakin attacks. Anakin gets tossed in the corner like a sack of dirty laundry. Obi-wan attacks. Obi-Wan gets beaten down like a filthy Scottish actor. Anakin attacks again, this time in the dark and with two glowing phalluses! He looks a lot like one of those irritating Rave kids waving glowsticks about, but he must've forgotten to take his vitamin E because he gets his hand chopped right off. Yes, his hand. The right one. Just like his future son. Oh, the anachronistic irony! This is profound stuff.

Our protagonists are once again in trouble and all seems lost (again) until... ninja Yoda!

He comes hobbling in on his cane looking a bit feeble, but oh is he pissed. After a short hand gesturing bit of "My Schwartz if bigger than yours" they get down to the wand waving. But Yoda doesn't grab his saber. Nosirree, he telekenesifies it from his belt to his wrinkled green paw. Yoda is one bad mother fucker.

He flips, he spins, he darts through the air like a mosquito on crack. If you watch Iron Monkey on fast forward it still won't come close to the acrobatics of this little gremlin. However, he doesn't win. He's forced to chose between killing Count Doosey and saving the other two Jedi from a falling pillar, and he lets the Count go. Despite his ninja skills, Yoda is a humanitarian at the core. The next shot shows the Count flying away in a ship powered by some sort of solar sail (the "hard science" geeks are going to love that bit).

As the movie draws to a close we see Anakin flexing his new prosthetic hand, just like Luke does in Episode V. It might be chilling if it weren't so contrived. When a screenwriter/director has a decade and a half to come up with a prequel you would expect him to conclude with something a little less obvious. But, that's what you get when you focus on joy nuggets of nostalgia for a pathetic group of emotionally underdeveloped adults.

I'm an honorable businessman. I got dis business down in chicago. Wit dis money I make, I'm creating a loddof, watcha call it, jobs... yea, jobs. On toppadat, I also pay the state and da feds.. sometimes underda table. So in oder words, I'm generating a lot of revenue for da country. Wit dis Ness (or here for an update) mess, you got dis business set back some fiddy years. Do you really want to set us back 50 years and undo all the progress we made? The eco-system that we have created with our blood and sweat? People are working together day and night and the supply chain management is flawless. We have efficiency you don't see in any other industry. We also have the best dedication among any group of organized labor. They are ready to give their life for the good of da business. You want to dismantle us just because we rob banks and supply the alcohol that the consumer wants? Since when is it a crime to supply what the people want. This is what the consumer are telling us -- 'give us more alcohol'. The consumer also wants some redistribution of wealth so we bundled that together as well. We rob banks and give the money to the working class (as long as they're working for us.) People also wants protection. Why have the police as a seperate entity just to provide the protection. We bundled that together too -- just pay us the protection fee. So you see yo 'onor. We are just putting together dis package that the consumer wants. We bundle all these features together and give the consumer what they want. With everyting integreted into one big package, they just have one, how shall i say this, neighborhood representative to talk to for all their daily needs: booze, protection, etc..If you dismantle us we won't be able to function like one large organized business. It will take us years to rebuild this empire. Many more people will have to be killed in the process. Whadabbout all the 'little' people that drive trucks everynight to bring you the booze. In short, yor 'onor, we are one big happy family. We bring people what they want in one big package. It took us years to build this empire. Besides I just gave some money and R&D promise to provide for compition to Steve Jobs' Apple. Don't break us up.

You dissappoint me fredo. (oops.. wrong movie) you dissappoint me yor 'onor.

Sincerely,

Bill Gates

Seriously tho, the similarities about the business/empire and how they are evolving are scary. Bill Gates must be the digital gangsta'. He needs to get a wireless divice shooting bits and bytes all over the place disrupting standard protocol ala Kerberos. let's call it the 'tommy PDA'. wouldn't it be funny when you start hearing .. 'in the news.. Bill Gates is wanted by the feds for questioning for the drive by rebooting.'

I'm an honorable businessman. I got dis business down in chicago. Wit dis money I make, I'm creating a loddof, watcha call it, jobs... yea, jobs. On toppadat, I also pay the state and da feds.. sometimes underda table. So in oder words, I'm generating a lot of revenue for da country. Wit dis Ness (or here for an update) mess, you got dis business set back some fiddy years. Do you really want to set us back 50 years and undo all the progress we made? The eco-system that we have created with our blood and sweat? People are working together day and night and the supply chain management is flawless. We have efficiency you don't see in any other industry. We also have the best dedication among any group of organized labor. They are ready to give their life for the good of da business. You want to dismantle us just because we rob banks and supply the alcohol that the consumer wants? Since when is it a crime to supply what the people want. This is what the consumer are telling us -- 'give us more alcohol'. The consumer also wants some redistribution of wealth so we bundled that together as well. We rob banks and give the money to the working class (as long as they're working for us.) People also wants protection. Why have the police as a seperate entity just to provide the protection. We bundled that together too -- just pay us the protection fee. So you see yo 'onor. We are just putting together dis package that the consumer wants. We bundle all these features together and give the consumer what they want. With everyting integreted into one big package, they just have one, how shall i say this, neighborhood representative to talk to for all their daily needs: booze, protection, etc..If you dismantle us we won't be able to function like one large organized business. It will take us years to rebuild this empire. Many more people will have to be killed in the process. Whadabbout all the 'little' people that drive trucks everynight to bring you the booze. In short, yor 'onor, we are one big happy family. We bring people what they want in one big package. It took us years to build this empire. Besides I just gave some money and R&D promise to provide for compition to Steve Jobs' Apple. Don't break us up.

You dissappoint me fredo. (oops.. wrong movie) you dissappoint me yor 'onor.

Sincerely,

Bill Gates

Seriously tho, the similarities about the business/empire and how they are evolving are scary. Bill Gates must be the digital gangsta'. He needs to get a wireless divice shooting bits and bytes all over the place disrupting standard protocol ala Kerberos. let's call it the 'tommy PDA'. wouldn't it be funny when you start hearing .. 'in the news.. Bill Gates is wanted by the feds for questioning for the drive by rebooting.'

I'm an honorable businessman. I got dis business down in chicago. Wit dis money I make, I'm creating a loddof, watcha call it, jobs... yea, jobs. On toppadat, I also pay the state and da feds.. sometimes underda table. So in oder words, I'm generating a lot of revenue for da country. Wit dis Ness (or here for an update) mess, you got dis business set back some fiddy years. Do you really want to set us back 50 years and undo all the progress we made? The eco-system that we have created with our blood and sweat? People are working together day and night and the supply chain management is flawless. We have efficiency you don't see in any other industry. We also have the best dedication among any group of organized labor. They are ready to give their life for the good of da business. You want to dismantle us just because we rob banks and supply the alcohol that the consumer wants? Since when is it a crime to supply what the people want. This is what the consumer are telling us -- 'give us more alcohol'. The consumer also wants some redistribution of wealth so we bundled that together as well. We rob banks and give the money to the working class (as long as they're working for us.) People also wants protection. Why have the police as a seperate entity just to provide the protection. We bundled that together too -- just pay us the protection fee. So you see yo 'onor. We are just putting together dis package that the consumer wants. We bundle all these features together and give the consumer what they want. With everyting integreted into one big package, they just have one, how shall i say this, neighborhood representative to talk to for all their daily needs: booze, protection, etc..If you dismantle us we won't be able to function like one large organized business. It will take us years to rebuild this empire. Many more people will have to be killed in the process. Whadabbout all the 'little' people that drive trucks everynight to bring you the booze. In short, yor 'onor, we are one big happy family. We bring people what they want in one big package. It took us years to build this empire. Besides I just gave some money and R&D promise to provide for compition to Steve Jobs' Apple. Don't break us up.

You dissappoint me fredo. (oops.. wrong movie) you dissappoint me yor 'onor.

Sincerely,

Bill Gates

Seriously tho, the similarities about the business/empire and how they are evolving are scary. Bill Gates must be the digital gangsta'. He needs to get a wireless divice shooting bits and bytes all over the place disrupting standard protocol ala Kerberos. let's call it the 'tommy PDA'. wouldn't it be funny when you start hearing .. 'in the news.. Bill Gates is wanted by the feds for questioning for the drive by rebooting.'

The person is probably referring to Rebecca Schaeffer, who played on the TV show My Sister Sam. She was killed in 1989 by Robert John Bardo, who got her personal information indirectly from the California DMV.

That's my whole concern. I'm not overly concerned with the FBI finding something incriminating on my computer, but if they get their suspicions up at all, there goes your stuff for a very long time. The Steve Jackson Games case a few years back being a very famous example.

One that hit close to home for me was when my wife's cousin got picked up for strongarm robbery. Turns out the witness who picked him out was sitting in the back of a squad car in a parking lot at night and IDed him while he was driving past. Turns out she was looking for a guy with brown hair, brown eyes and a moustache. The next day at county, she walked in to give her statement, took one look and said, "Oh, that's not him; I'm sorry." Moral to the story: He had $160 in his wallet at the time, which is a small fortune in student money as many of you know. Confiscated upon arrest but not returned to him until about seven months later.

I've spent years putting my computers together since I don't make a whole lot of money, and if I happen to write the wrong thing in something like a diary entry or database on my own computer and the FBI picks it up, then I risk losing everything for a long time. This is where I spend the majority of my time expressing my thoughts and is more of an extension to my home than my living room, so these assholes would be less invasive by sticking microphones all over my house. Besides, I can't help but laugh at the idea of FBI oversight, when they are a continuation of the Hoover administration that spent almost five decades targeting every single person in the country that Hoover didn't personally like. Not to mention the current hardon that the FBI has for locking people away and terrorizing them on the flimsiest of pretenses.

As if we should fully trust the FBI is capable of keeping something like this from being compromised. It doesn't take but a matter of secods to see that they are not cabale of keeping information secret. 30 seconds at google gave me these little tidbits from
CNN
The Las Vegas sun
and Crimelibrary Online
Since this thing was first announced I'm willing to bet there have been swarms of unethical people waiting in the wings to snatch it up. Bah! I'm just a little bothered at the whole thing. In the past I've been a victim of the wrong person getting their hands on information that was supposed to be protected. Incompitence, that's all I have to say.
And no, I don't double check my grammar/spelling.

Use of Indonesian soldiers to provide "security" at the Nikomas Factory in Indonesia
Members of the Indonesian army are frequently employed as "security" in factories in Indonesia during periods of industrial unrest to prevent industrial action. In September 1999 a US student delegation observed Indonesian soldiers stationed at the Nikomas factory at a time when wage negotiations were being conducted. Following the publicity the issue received the soldiers were replaced by non-military security (police and security guards) who were playing an appropriate role. Subsequently however, during peaceful strike action by workers at PT Nikomas, police from Brimob (an armed police brigade) equipped with guns entered the factory and together with factory security guards and hired civilians they threatened and provoked workers. We repeat our call for Nike to ensure that Indonesia's armed forces are never called in to prevent or interfere with peaceful industrial action.

You go on to say: and, a little note: they hate us because we're the rich, good-looking kid on the playground who is smart enough not to give his lunch away everyday to the kids who are too stupid to find their own money.

Again, I feel I must correct you: they hate us because we are a genocidal nation of gun-crazy psychopaths and lunatics.

The willingness of the terrorists to die in the commission of their attacks isn't a strength, it's a weakness. The willingness to die restricts potential recruits to a relatively small segment of the population. As far as detection goes, the situation is far better than in the 70s when people who looked like Japanese tourists could suddenly pull automatic weapons out of their bags as happened at Tel Aviv's Lod Airport in May 1972 at the cost of 24 lives. Radical Marxism backed by covert support from Easter bloc intelligence agencies is no longer turning out as many terrorists with different nationalities as Germany did with Baader-Meinhof or Venezuela did with Carlos the Jackal. Furthermore in the 1970s members of attacking terrorist teams often were female such as Leila Khaled.

Trying to track the terrorists back to their native lands is the United States weakness and their strength. On the other hand, their operating on United States soil should be their weakness and our strength. The suspicious eyes and mouths willing to inform the authorities of any suspicious activity should accompany them wherever they go.

Suicide attackers have to be kept in a constant state of psychological preparedness. They have to travel together in at least pairs because they have to have reinforcement of the need for them to die. Often their support comes from the only people they can trust, relatives.

In short, suicide attackers who are foreign nationals from a distinct ethnic group are the perfect targets for proactive profiling. The question is whether the people, the intelligence agencies, the leadership, and the judicial system of the United States are going to be willing to make the necessary painful decisions. To easily separate suspects from nonsuspects, reducing the amount of work by two orders of magnitude, the people will have to accept a comprehensive national database with easy means of checking attributes such as fingerprints, voice, DNA, photographs. The United States does have a population of millions of loyal citizens of Middle Eastern descent. (No suspected hijackers or accomplices born in the United States have been identified so far.) Some means must be found to quickly distinguish them from foreign nationals so that they can efficiently exercise their rights as citizens.

Intelligence agencies must find the means to share information and break the bonds of bureaucratic inertia. Analyses such as Alexander B. Calahan's apply far beyond how to organize assassination teams, they apply equally to how to organize terrorism prevention teams. It is becoming clear that United States intelligence agencies had all the clues needed to prevent the attack. The WTC had been a previous target by the same groups, there had been an earlier plot to hijack a large number of airplanes, two hijackers were under watch by the FBI. What are needed are anti-terrorism units organized like special forces units who are allowed the initiative and the time to follow-up leads and build complete dossiers on suspects and the people they interact with.

Of course for this to happen the leadership and especially the courts have to get out of the way. The courts have to recognize that there has to be a distinction between the rights of citizens and the rights of foreign nationals, especially when there is a clearly demonstrated danger that a segment of foreign nationals is plotting to inflict massive terrorist attacks on the nation.

Carnivore, Echelon are simply manifestations of the truth that supply will increase to meet demand. We are no longer talking about hypotheticals. Foreign nationals are now plotting acts of mass terrorism on United States soil that have the potential to claim 50,000+ lives a strike. Something has to be done and something will be done.

1968, El Al 707 was hijacked to Algiers. After a month, Israel cut a deal to exchange the hostages for Palestinian prisoners.

September 6, 1970, the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) organized the attempted "simultaneous hijacking of four airliners bound for New York" . On one of the targetted planes, an El Al flight, the pilot put the plane into a nosedive, an armed air marshall shot dead hijacker Patrick Arguello, and the leader of the hijacking Leila Khaled "was overpowered by male passengers and savagely beaten". When the plane arrived at London, Khaled was taken into British custody. However two successfully hijacked airplanes had been diverted to Jordan at a former British airfield, Dawson's Field. The PFLP also successfully hijacked a fifth plane to bring their total to hundreds of hostages, dozens of them British. What followed were dramatic secret negotiations between the PFLP, Jordan, Britain, the United States, and Israel, some of whose details are now known because of a British law requiring release of documents after 30 years. A deal was struck to exchange Khaled and other Palestinians for the hostages. The PFLP had won again. Or had it?

King Hussein proceeded to launch a war which drove out the armed Palestinian groups he had formerly welcomed on his soil. This war was what came to be reviled by the Palestinians as Black September.

On the other hand, Leila Khaled has claimed "The success in the tactics of the hijacking and imposing our demands and succeeding in having our demands implemented gave us the courage and the confidence to go ahead with our struggle."

1968, El Al 707 was hijacked to Algiers. After a month, Israel cut a deal to exchange the hostages for Palestinian prisoners.

September 6, 1970, the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) organized the attempted "simultaneous hijacking of four airliners bound for New York" . On one of the targetted planes, an El Al flight, the pilot put the plane into a nosedive, an armed air marshall shot dead hijacker Patrick Arguello, and the leader of the hijacking Leila Khaled "was overpowered by male passengers and savagely beaten". When the plane arrived at London, Khaled was taken into British custody. However two successfully hijacked airplanes had been diverted to Jordan at a former British airfield, Dawson's Field. The PFLP also successfully hijacked a fifth plane to bring their total to hundreds of hostages, dozens of them British. What followed were dramatic secret negotiations between the PFLP, Jordan, Britain, the United States, and Israel, some of whose details are now known because of a British law requiring release of documents after 30 years. A deal was struck to exchange Khaled and other Palestinians for the hostages. The PFLP had won again. Or had it?

King Hussein proceeded to launch a war which drove out the armed Palestinian groups he had formerly welcomed on his soil. This war was what came to be reviled by the Palestinians as Black September.

On the other hand, Leila Khaled has claimed "The success in the tactics of the hijacking and imposing our demands and succeeding in having our demands implemented gave us the courage and the confidence to go ahead with our struggle."

I think the US tried a similar plan in Vietnam. It didn't work. There was no way to separate out a particular minority of the people who would be the sole source of enemy support. It was too big a task to try and take on an entire civilian population numbering many millions.

It is also possible that only the British were competent enough to accomplish such a feat. (That same factor might bode ill for the US if it tries to base its strategy on its own version of special forces. It might be better to let the British SAS lead a particularly critical mission such as a direct assault to apprehend Osama Bin Laden.)

There is also no way the rest of the world would stand for similar measures today. It would be the United States that would be accused of establishing concentration camps regardless of what conditions the people were given. The forceful removal of an entire minority population solely based on race to a controlled environment would create a wave of comparisons to prior shameful US events such as the Trail of Tears or the Japanese-American internment during World War II. In four years the rest of the world outside of a few allies would be calling for US leadership to be extradited to the Hague for trial, and internally the US would be at civil war.

A more meaningful comparison as far as a recent historic event would be the decision of Jordan's King Hussein in 1970 to crush the Palestinians, a war that was to become reviled by the Palestinians as "Black September".

This comparison is eery, especially since they too planned to crash a plane into New York City (scroll towards the end of the article).

Really? Check out Dr. Death.

I guess "corporatism" and "nationalism" could share similar traits in the stripping away of humanity in the sciences.

You've got the wrong hoover. You're talking about J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI, and if you're interested in the rumors around him, I suggest the following site: http://www.crimelibrary.com/hoover /hooverhomo.htm. I dug it up searching through yahoo for info about Hoover. -Mike