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Disinformation has a decent article, but it's the links at the bottom that rock.

Infiltration has some good 'case studies' -- with pictures. Nice.

Also, jinx isn't as cool. :P

Read the article:

"mad cows and englishmen".

The FDA rule that you quote is an extremely weak rule, is the only FDA rule on the topic of preventing BSE, and the serious problems with it are discussed in some depth in the article.

The fact is that the FDA has not yet banned animal protien in animal food products and really really needs to before things get bad. As in awful.

Regards,
Ross

The parts that ought to frighten you don't necessarily seem that bad until all of the factors are taken in at once:

1) total incurability of infected people/animals.

2) near indestructability of prions (1100F for hours, etc.)

3) ability of TSE's to cross species (scrapie in sheep, BSE in cattle, CJD in people, TME in mink, PSE in pigs, etc.) and it's all the same group of diseases. They differ in the speed that they cause damage, but that's about it.

4) The US meat/poultry industry practice of rendering slaughterhouse remains and *DOWNER CATTLE* into feed for other animals and poultry. This rendering process always includes brain and spinal cord tissue in the resulting product.

Basically, if the US meat industry hasn't found BSE in cattle, it's because it doesn't want to. The fact that downer cattle are never checked for BSE should piss just about everyone off. When Dr. Richard Marsh at the University of Wisconsin injected US cattle with TME infected US mink tissues, the cattle didn't act like the British cattle, they simply collapsed, looking like any other downer cow.

The US industry takes those downer cows, never checks to see what might have brought them down, grinds them up, brains and all, and feeds them to chickens, pigs, other cattle.

The scariest part is that slower forms of CJD (the human disease) look exactly like Alzheimer's and other forms of progressive dementia. In a Yale study, 6 of 46 Alzheimer's patients (13%!) were CJD positive at autopsy.

CWD (deer, elk, etc.) is almost certainly picked up from raiding contaminated feed meant for livestock. At least, that's my marginally informed position on the topic. It has to be injested somehow and it's a distorted animal protien so these wild herbivorous animals have to be consuming animal proteins to get sick.

The European Union has now banned all animal products in livestock feed, but the US FDA resists this simple and absolutely necessary step to halt the progress of the perfect pathogen throughout the United States.

An article that does a much better job of describing these problems and substantiating these arguments is at: "mad cows and englishmen". I hope it worries you and that you tell someone else about it. Even better, tell your congresscritter about it and what you think about it.

Regards, Ross

there is only so many times in a day you can "go make coffee" or "check your email".

Geek Slack List

• http://www.subgenius.com/
• http://www.slackersguild.com/
• BBC News
• http://www.memepool.com/
• http://www.plastic.com/
• http://www.arstechnica.com/
• http://www.metafilter.com/
• http://www.techdirt.com/
• http://www.bottomquark.com/ (Science News)
• http://newsforge.com/
• http://www.theregister.co.uk/
• http://www.anandtech.com/
• http://www.bjorn3d.com/
• http://cellar.org - Image of the Day
• http://www.collegehumor.com/
• http://www.everything2.com/
• http://www.kuro5hin.org/
• http://www.theonion.com/
• NASA - Astronomy Picutre of the Day
• http://www.majorgeeks.com - Windows Shareware / Freeware
• http://www.advogato.org/
• http://www.sweetcode.org/
• http://www.disinfo.com/ - Disinformation
• http://www.somethingawful.com/
• http://www.astronomynow.com/ - Astronomy News
• http://www.aip.org/ - American Institue of Physics - News
• http://www.adequacy.org/

• The Effects of Moore's Law and Slacking 1 on Large Computations

Hope this helps =)

How about -

Indymedia

BBC

or for some partial journalism / general questioning and sometimes odd, but certainaly not bland corp media

Michael Moore

DisInfo

then there are specialist sites for different topics -

Cryptome

Statewatch

it is also true that too many links makes text unreadable.

I would have hoped you also saw the result of NOT using force when it should have been...like keeping Hitler from rearming after WWI.

Of course, Hitler didn't do it alone. He had help. Lots of help.

Hindsight may be 20/20, but this is a lesson the American aristocracy can't seem to learn - realpolitik is a great way to create trouble down the road.* I fear Dubya and his grand viziers are going down this road again to take care of problems left by previous administrations, although one current Administration member was directly involved in creating the current problem.

It is hypocrises such as this that cast great doubt upon the current intentions of the US government, and why so many people distrust the rhetoric coming out of Washington these days.

* More frightening is that a few powerful American industrialists and entrepeneurs sympathized with Hitler - Hearst and Ford among them. That goes beyond realpolitik, which I don't think had been coined at that point; powerful people made money off Hitler's aggression and slaughter of Jews, Romani, communists, homosexuals, etc., and still benefit from it today.

Does the Trading With the Enemy Act still apply? That could be used on them - you know, like it was against Dubya's grandpa Prescott in 1942 to stop him from helping fund the Nazis.

(And the axe of Godwin falls upon the thread...)

Those caught doing unethical or downright criminal acts are held accountable. Think Mi Lai or Nuremburg.

The My Lai massacre. On March 16, 1968, US soldiers from the Americal Division slaughtered 347 civilians--primarily old men, women, children, and babies--in the Vietnamese village of My Lai 4 (pronounced, very appropriately, as "me lie"). The grunts also engaged in torture and rape of the villagers.

Around six months later, a soldier in the 11th Light Infantry Brigade--known among the men as "the Butcher's Brigade"--wrote a letter telling of widespread killing and torturing of Vietnamese civilians by entire units of the US military (he did not specifically refer to My Lai). The letter was sent to the general in charge of 'Nam and trickled down the chain of command to Major Colin Powell, a deputy assistant chief of staff at the Americal Division, who was charged with investigating the matter and formulating a response.

After a desultory check--which consisted mainly of investigating the soldier who wrote the letter, rather than his allegations--Powell reported that everything was hunkey-dory. There may be some "isolated incidents" by individual bad seeds, but there were no widespread atrocities. He wrote: "In direct refutation of this portrayal is the fact that relations between Americal soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent." The matter was closed.

To this day, we might not know about the carnage at My Lai if it hadn't been for another solider who later wisely sent a letter to his Congressman. (Twenty-five years later Powell gave an interview in which he not only failed to condemn the massacre but seemed to excuse it.)

What bothers me about the military is there is no accountability when it comes to its past. What happened to the people who ordered LSD testing on soldiers? What happened to the people who used chemical warfare in Vietnam (Agent Orange)? What about the person who wrote the manual to teach the Latin American soldiers to torture? What does it mean that someone who tried to cover up My Lai has become Secretary of State? I don't know what has become of all the past military criminals, but it doesn't seem like much -- and anyone who joins the military now doesn't really know what they are going to be asked to do, or what the ultimate intentions of the leaders are. But past performance gives a pretty damn good idea.

And what you do in the military isn't about stupid shit like illegal monopolies. You can do wrong on a scale not normally possible in our everyday lives. Let's be honest: you can do evil. And you might not even realize it... when you flip the switch that drops the bomb, do you know if your cause is really just? Do you know who you are killing? Are you ready to kill a child? Are you ready to kill a mother? Because the military is killing a lot of children and mothers these days, and if the bombs start falling on Baghdad, the number of innocent dead is going to skyrocket, no one can deny it. Are you ready to be part of that killing machine?

It's one thing to bet your own life on a cause, but the military gave up that a while ago -- American soldiers die in accidents, not battle. Now they're betting other people's lives on it. The moral weight of killing is far heavier than the moral weight of dying. I'm not a Christian man, but I have great respect for the teachings of Jesus -- I think we all know on which side of the bomb he'd be on when it falls from the plane, and I think we'd all know which person would receive his blessings.

Anyway, I think it IS likely to cause spontaneous stripping. People are more readily programmed by television than you think. It puts you into an alpha state. (Boy is it hard to find reasonably reputable links about that!) As such, you are more suggestible (it is similar to the state achieved during hypnosis, though with somewhat different results here, we hope.)

Now, am I saying that guys are going to run around raping people because they see more porn? No. In fact, some studies have shown just the opposite. If you don't make people feel guilty about sexual urges they're more likely to beat off and get all that tension out of their system. Then they can just beat women up instead of raping them, like good little Americans. Hey, it works for football stars.

Will there be more unprotected sex? I'm sure there will be more sex, and a certain percentage of it is unprotected. So you could say yes, but probably not. Then again, if you make people horny enough they sometimes skip the protection and move right onto the beast with two backs phase of the evening.

as opposed to the enlightened, freedom-loving united states of america? I don't know what country -you-'re from, but the united states, where I hail from, is responsible for bombing and napalming civilians (including children), toppling democracies when they don't like the elected leader, and engaging in covert acts of terror around the world, while skillfully duping it's populace into giving away it's civil liberties. disinfo.org - guerrillanews.com

Remember, the united states is an exremely oppressive government that uses whatever it can get its hands on to harm people. I hope we fail.

I've been a /.er for a few years and decided it was time to get involved as opposed to only replying on /. -

See my site at http://victormarks.org - unfortunately you won't see my stance on IP issues/copyright law on that page, simply because as a state representative, it's a non-issue- those laws are made in US congress, not the state legislature.

Instead, state legislatures get to deal with laws concering EULAs, ( http://www.cptech.org/ecom/ucita/ ), laws concerning model health acts , ( http://www.disinfo.com/pages/article/id2454/pg1/ ) and other threats to our rights to live our lives without intrusion.

Tara really latched onto Coble's prominent "I've-been-bought" issue, and has done well with it- however, the Coble bill isn't going to go anywhere- even Republican candidates I know are writing Coble telling him to put it to rest.

Vote Libertarian! http://victormarks.org

Who wasn't anticipating part 2 of "Best of Both Worlds" all summer long?

My question is, why were you that interested in part one?

There is a third possibility: the World Bank and the IMF loan a ton of money to a third world country and effectively enslave it. This is different from an Empire, because it is all done with trade agreements and loan conditions. There are no parent countries to kick out. And it is different from the U.S., because these countries hear a great sucking sound when globazation hits. They don't benefit like we do.

Go read Everything You Know is Wrong. Good stuff.

Remember that MIT, like any other guvverment organisation, cannot teach anything that really annoys the ruling elite.

Ali

Note: The books are fatter than they appear (roughly A4, more than 1" thick), so are excellent value. :)

Remember that MIT, like any other guvverment organisation, cannot teach anything that really annoys the ruling elite.

Ali

Note: The books are fatter than they appear (roughly A4, more than 1" thick), so are excellent value. :)

Encryption and geography are the peoples greatest weapons against "them".

Have the stream encrypted, and if possible, the source IP spoofed. A third machine could relay any connection details back... ok so it would be an arse but it's just an idea.

Encrypting the stream (via keys derived from mouse movement, keypress timing etc.) would also mean "they" would have either have lotsa suits in black vans down every road or have every "suspected" pirate's house bugged up like a Redmond OS...

Ah yeah i can see Hollings now...
(2 hours after another attack by the Bin Laden Boys*) "Well we tried our best, but we simply can't do a thing to stop them when we have to put all our men out catching these evil music and software pirates! When they stop pirating we can move to protect the good citizens of the United States! Remember, report all the pirates you know of! They're as bad as the terrorists! And anyone who says otherwise is un-American, un-P.A.T.R.I.O.T-ic, and is as evil as the terrorists! You can recognise them easily, they have computers and they use "Emm Pee Three's", "Net Radio", "Morpheus" and "Kazaa"... so go forth and seek out these vile anti-american-way individuals, fight for your country, and help the fight against terror!"

The people are the guvverment's greatest weapon against the people. Nobody seems to realise that.

*OK, so I know (not think/suspect/reckon/"read somewhere", but i cant talk about it) that the Al-Q'ieda [sp?] attacks were requested by the US guvverment, and that Saudi Bin Laden Inc and bin laden himself are on the US guvverment payroll, but that's another matter...

If you think you are running out of oil, Iceland, instead of acting like a silly celebrity thinking the sky is falling, call my friends down in Texas. I am sure they will be happy to sell you some oil from the massive underwater oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico. Its so abundant in the Gulf that if you SCUBA dive to the bottom you can see oil leaking from the sea floor all by itself. After that call, give Sting a ring and see where all that money that was donated to his Amazon forest campaigns went because it sure didn't go to the trees (the trees have no wallets or bank accounts...believe it or not).

Let me set aside some core issues.

First off, please save the whole "You're young, so you don't know what you're talking about" thing. Had I snipped out that last paragraph, not much of a difference would be made and no one would say anything along those lines. It's really not relevant, especially since besides getting my information from all over the place (notably Disinformation, Guerilla News, and yes, as Lord Omlette pointed out, Vice), I've been getting my information from adults around me as well.

You guys seem to be justifying the massive amounts of casualities inflicted by the US as either "a mistake" or something that apparently served a greater good.

Sit back for a moment and realize you're justifying the loss of lives.

When did humans become so bleak as to find reasons to justify the loss of fellow humans? Do I think America is the only nation who is responsible for terrors beyond belief? No. I've frequently said that I don't think one non-corrupt nation has ever existed.

But I live in the United States and I'll work my way up if need be. And the United States fuels, in a large part, what I've come to recognize as a disgusting pattern of hatred, as clichéd as it sounds.

Take for example, the Israel-Palestine conflict. First off, despite whatever you may think makes this conflict justifiable, it's really not. The Palestenians are the only people, in this day and age, who are under occupation. Suicide bombers react harshly, with hatred (towards both the United States and Israel) and go kill innocent people. Israel retaliates. In their retaliations, they may kill innocent people. People, shocked by the death of the innocent people, become suicide bombers in moments of hatred.

And it continues.

The reason why the rest of the world hates the US is because the US fuels this. If the US refused to support Israel until it pulled back from Palestine, it would make a big impression on the entire world. And I guarantee you, we'd have a decent decrease in people hating America.

Until then, you flying your American flags and saying things like "Well, that was a mistake" or "The people of this country want it like that" (albeit many Jewish people, in both this country and Israel, are against Israel occupying Palestine, an article of one of these Jewish people can be found here. It's worthy to note that while there are many cases like this, there are none that involve someone from Palestine siding with the Israeli government.) isn't going to stop any kind of terrorism. And this terrorism isn't fueled by globalism or jealousy. And who's going to pay the price? Not the portion of "us" (as you all so fondly say) that makes the decisions, but the portion of "us" that doesn't really influence any of the decisions. That portion includes me, my family, my friends, and most likely all of you, your family and their friends and so on. So next time, rather then luckily not being in the portion of the city that's being attacked, I'll end up along side the other victims and the United States will fuel this cycle even more, and claim they're doing so in the name of victims like me and the others and you'll all justify it just the same.

what would hitler do? censorship and the new 'degenerate' art by Lucifer Marx, if anyone makes a bracelet, I want 5.

On Wednesday 8 December 1999, a jury of six whites and six blacks in Tennessee's Shelby County District Court took three hours to find that Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered by conspiracy, not by a lone-nut assassin. But the US government will file no charges.

Monsanto also holds patents on the bovine growth hormone (BGH) used to increase milk production in cattle. If you poke around on the web, at Disinfo for instance, there is a considerable literature about the various ways in which standard procedure was violated by both Monsanto and the FDA itself during the testing and approval of the use of BGH on dairy cattle. The story is enough to cause you to switch to "organic" milk and milk products.

"Nothing is true, everything is permitted." (Hassan i Sabbah)

The truth is, the world is pretty fucked up. And we get into our little inward worlds to try and ignore that. Some of us are workaholics, others watch TV incessantly, etc. Every different thing has it's angle. Video games are addictive especially to the technophile crowd because face it, we geeks like flashy stuff (no rhyme intended). We want feedback, interactivity (another "duh"), eye-candy, excitement, etc. But when it comes down to it, these are just desires that get filled the same way as anyone else fulfills them: abuse. I would argue that 70% of Americans are television addicts.

The point I'm getting at here is that we are a nation of hedonists because we don't need to worry about the consequences of our consumerism, apathy, etc. (bear with me as I get a bit political) Not to induce a guilt trip here, but I don't think anyone in Somalia has a problem with buying too much crap, watching too much TV, or spending too much time jerking their thumbs in front of CRT's. But they have all their own problems to worry about: AIDS, drug warlords, starvation, etc. What do you do in a situation devoid of all pleasure? It probably would involve heavy, heavy drugs. I, for one, would not be able to sit through 6 hours of Metal Gear Solid while two gangs have a firefight next door.

My point is, people find outlets for their frustrated desires everywhere. Very seldomly do they have the courage to actually seek out the root causes of those desires. Here in the States, I think most of people's anxieties are caused by:

- working too much and taking it too seriously (ie. "miserable-ism" as termed by the Situationists)
- depending on others to make decisions for them ("pathological fascism" as called by Deleuze & Guattari)
- rampant commercialism driving down our self-esteem (and driving up demand)

To relieve this we watch: movies/shows about cops, criminals, rich people, sexy people, futuristic people, fantastic people, etc. (I'm talking mainstream, here, not "Clerks"-style stuff). All these movies/shows whatever romanticize these roles that only a few of us get to ever do. Since we're NOT those people, we feel more like a piece of shit, thus leaving us vulnerable to subconsicious suggestions that Diet Coke will instantly bestow us the sex appeal of Victoria Secret models.

So of course we want to feel like heroes, or drive ultrafast cars, or be the super-killer-soldier with the most frags: video games fulfill those vicarious pleasures because the media industry has successfully planted all those desires in us already!

So naturally, the best way to break a video game addiction is to withdraw from Hollywood/Viacom/AOLTimeWarner/Disney in every conceivable form. Or at least develop enough of a cynical veneer to be able to look someone in the eye and say, "The Matrix was good...for a Hollywood film."

watch, in a week, disney will come out with some new toys for McDonalds toys.

So, dig this: suppose the time-frame of compulsory education has been hiked up for the purpose of keeping children off the job market longer, so as to not devalue labor and thereby devalue the labor system.

Suppose the compulsory educational system, which is economically (and therefore ideologically) linked to every other industry, is regearing to keep the middle class from further expanding and gaining power.

Suppose that, with all the psychological research that's been done, someone actually thought ahead and said, "Okay, if we can institutionalize middle-class children within the first 2 decades of their life, we'll be able to not only increase the size of the prison-industrial-military complex, but also to grab more power for ourselves and our friends overall" Just the same way some retailer once said, "Let's hire some of these behavioral psychologists to figure out how to organize the store in the most influential possible way[s]."

The net effect of our compulsory school system is obvious: 23% illiteracy in America, 13% prevalence of social phobia, Major depression (18.9%), generalized anxiety (14.8%), and the 'Suicide Rate Among U.S. Teens Keeps Increasing'.

And I nearly left out the continuous rise in teenage violence...

You see, the problem is, as Adam Yauch is quoted in the last link, that "Being on either end of a violent situation, whether you seem to have come out with the upper hand or whether you don't seem to, it doesn't resolve anything. It escalates the problem. Hatred leads to more hatred. Violence leads to more violence." Violence is not by any means limited to its overt outbreaks; it is a sadist/masochistic cycle which perpetuates itself. Our "educational" system suffers the Disney syndrome: the violence of management over the tenderness of interaction.

"Nature once had a chance to run riot in South Florida, producing jungles and swamps; now nature must submit to control. " And nature (which, yes children, is very much alive in each and every one of us) is pissed.

________________________________________________ __

With the large number of blackhats likely to be in the population of those pissed-off about the way things have been going, I'm surprised that the RIAA and its major members still have intact web prescence. Not that I'm advocating or condoning civil disobedience as a means of political action. Oh, and I'm also surprised to see that the MPAA site is up.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/newsid_5030 00/503224.stm

You speak lightly of your phone analogy, but the fact is, this is no analogy to speak of.

Its a fact! scary huh!(see link above.)

for much more wonderful information about terrible conspiracies and the like, go to disinfo.com

scary indeed

It's a darn good thing that those countries that absolutely hate each other have a non-destructive outlet for their aggressions.

As an American, I certainly remember my own shaking vehemence toward the Red scoundrels of Moscow, back in the COLD WAR, and yet whenever those Olympic games came around I realized that both Commie Reds and upright American citizens like myself were still humans who appreciated the drama of an athlete struggling towards physical excellence and the accolades of his peers. Why, for a short time I didn't even want to incinerate them with nuclear weapons...

The notion of the Olympics as a place where athleticism is pursued above the banalities of international conflict, where legends are made & peace is formed - that's a load of balderdash. The Olympics have always been about media control, for the benefit of states & commerce in general and the status of the organizers in particular.

The 'Olympic ideal' simplifies the issues of politics, commerce & sports giving merchants another spectacle like Christmas to exploit and states a frame to place their images of nationalist struggle. We can't fix the Olympics to eliminate these 'benefits' without removing the features that make it THE global, elitist sporting event.

There're some interesting sites that describe people's objections to the Olympics in the Disinformation's dossier on Olympic protests.

Brilliant argument. I was thinking more within the last 50 years.

And going on the Marshall plan, it was mostly American companies (the grandpappy of one G.W Bush) financing the Nazis, so I suppose that it's only morally right that you try and clean up the mess.

Bush-Nazi connection

The software *Industry* is just that, an industry. What makes us think they'd be anymore fair and just than any other industry out there? Hell, almost every software company I can think of should have union the working conditions are so wretched. Check out the good dossier on Old Tricks in The New Economy for what really happens. Maybe this will knock some sense into all the teens out there reading /., thinking that a life of luxury and leisure awaits them as office drones...

You are more than the sum of what you consume.

It appears to obey the law of fives:

3+3+5+4+3+5 = 23

23 is of course a very important number in of itself, but we also then get

2+3 = 5

Hrhmm...Metallica involved with the occult? NEVER. :)


PS: the following was an attempt at humour if you don't get it i suggest you start out with The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson. It has a lot of good refrences. of course d|i|s|i|n|f|o|r|m|a|t|i|o|n isn't a bad place to check out either ;)

SgtPepper
hail eris

William Gibson is, to me, the father of "Cyberpunk" and all of its offshoots. The story he did this with is called "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep," and is a very interesting, if dated, venture into Gibson's depressing vision of the future, which is and was very revolutionary stuff.

Um, Philip K. Dick wrote Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? , which was later made into the movie Blade Runner . The book in which Gibson coined the term "Cyberspace" was Neuromancer .

I try to keep an open mind about the Evil Empire, but they just keep letting me down.

When the rumors first circulated that the Seattle Borg had been running propaganda under someone else's banner, I said to myself, "Self, this would not surprise me one little bit if it were true, but remember, it's just a rumor."

Except of course, it's not.

Big surprise.

Memes make me think of the Sarif-Whorf hypothesis in linguistics -- essentially that the way and what we think are defined by our language (i.e. newspeak in 1984). On the surface level, it makes sense and it's catchy as all hell. But the more you think about it, the more holes you start to see in it. This doesn't mean it's a poorly constructed theory or that it's wrong, it just means that it hasn't evolved into a working, usable model yet.

I havn't read the new book, perhaps someone who has can clarify this for me: is the method in which the memes are introduced taken into account?

The most successful ideas are those that have been marketed well. It's hard to have a successful product without a catchy phrase. Social Darwinism is more Lamarkian than Darwinistic, but Social Darwinism is a better way to sell it -- regardless of the nature of the idea itself and what psychological needs it satisfies.

A number of /. readers have pointed out the inherently memitical (let's coin some new buzzwords here!) nature of the meme itself; Indeed, it seems to be a rather virulent one. Five years ago most people would have blinked when asked to describe a meme, now anyone who reads wired, is into conspiracy theory, studies linguistics, social psychology or public relations, etc. will be able to give you a relitively succinct and accurate definition.

But this hardly qualifies as proof -- so let's just sit back, wait and see. If it looks like a solid object, it might just be a lot of empty space with some electrons whizzing around that you can't pinpoint.

more on memes and memetic engineering at disinfo

It is not the fault of the West that the third-world poor are poor. And simply building them internet connection, while a noble goal, is not going to solve the problem.

Here is some info on US "helping" of the third-world...

more info, or is that disinfo... :)

still think that the US has nothing to do with the poor being poor?



nmarshall
#include STD_DISCLAMER.H
R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE