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"The agency which Poindexter will run is called the Information Awareness Office. You want to know what that is? Think, Big Brother is Watching You. IAO will supply federal officials with 'instant' analysis on what is being written on email and said on phones all over the US. Domestic espionage."
--John Sutherland of UK's Guardian.

Personally, as a Finn, I would never consider moving to a place where

• over 20% of adults are having trouble reading
• corporate interests result in laws like the DMCA
• the foreign policy threatens the safety of the entire world
• etc...

Well, to each his own, I guess.

PS. The $42000 speeding fines were recently dropped to about $5000 in court.. ;-)

That's not such a weird idea. Apparently the The Observer, a UK newspaper, agrees with you, and presents some supporting evidence.

But I'm sticking with the cockup theory. I'd readily believe that the US military and the CIA would like to have us believe that they're devastatingly clever rather than ploddingly dumb. I'm less sure that I should accept their self-assessment, and wouldn't put it past them to plant deniable stories like this as a face-saver. It's cheaper than getting things right in the first place.

Religious fundamentalism (whether of the Taliban or the Bush variety) is spreading all over the world. Get ready for the new dark ages.

Guardian UK article

The article also states that the power cell still has about 8 watts left, out of an original 165... enough for a signal, but not much else. Pioneer 11's cell ran out a few years ago.

Enron fell despite the fact that the govt tried their damned best to keep it propped up

No they didn't.

You can say the opposite until you're blue in the face but that doesn't make it true. The Bush government could have done a great deal more to help Enron but chose not to. That doesn't mean they didn't help them at all, clearly they did but the government clearly refused to bail out Enron. The government has bailed out companies in as much or worse trouble than Enron was in, such as LTCM previously mentioned. They chose not to do that for Enron.

I very much doubt Kenneth lay would agree with your assesment that he had "an extremely helpful government".

Uh huh. That's a deft little attempt on your part to ignore the massive election fraud that happened in Florida, without which Bush wouldn't be calling himself President. Further, Florida was the focal point of legal actions by both sides concerning the election, so in the most real sense the election was decided there. You did hear of a little case called Bush vs. Gore, didn't you?

As for "learning something", here's some starters for you.

1.58 million votes were never recounted even once.

There were also a lot of people who lost their right to vote because they were wrongly labelled as felons by a private company Kathryn Harris hired to scrub the voters lists.

And then there were all the illegal absentee ballots, some postdated as much as a week after the election, that did get counted.

According to the NORC recount, Gore won under all six possible scenarios for a state wide recount. If you count all the votes, Gore wins. If you don't count all the votes, Bush wins. It's as simple as that.

Here is a quote from an article about that:

"Abraham Foxman, ADL's national director, said the groups were both creating racist games using open source software and modifying commercially available games to make targets of particular ethnic groups."

Great, now we will have people trying to outlaw Open Source - saying it promotes hate.

Well I have 2 responses to that.

#1 Just because a tool can be used for evil doesn't make it evil. Baseball bats aren't evil, even though they can and often are used in a wrongful manner.

#2 The NAACP website is running Apache which is Open Source Software.

Partially true. Google is actually a pretty profitable company. However, the main revenue source that they get do not originate from the end users, but rather through licensing schemes. One of their biggest customers is Yahoo [Notice the Powered by Google]. In addition to this, as you might have read in /., Google is marketting a "Google Search Appliance. This is actually a pretty high revenue stream as the demand for intranet searchable content increases.

Misinformation or even disinformation via mass media is NOT the problem.

While this isn't true with respect to every issue or group, thanks to the Web, we have more access to all sides of every issue than we have ever had before. All we have to do to find out what any group has to say about itself is to go to their website and look. No need to be concerned about media agendas or "editorial judgement".

If you don't like "misinformation" or "disinformation" about a group or country or company, go to their Websites and get their side of it. Many newspapers in foriegn lands have English-language versions. In some cases, this is government-controlled media, in which case you at least know what the government has to say. Other countries have presses with varying degrees of freedom.

Don't whine about misinformation, make or find better information and tell people about it yourself.

If you care to take the time, you can become a better informed citizen than has ever been possible in the history of the world.

The problem isn't the media, it's that most people can't find the time or more often, the interest to find out for themselves what their media is deliberately not telling them.

The US is hardly immune to this, the best 2000 election coverage came from The Guardian in England.

With a bit of digging around, you can find out why the rest of the world believes that the 2000 US Presidential Election was stolen and that the democratic process in the US is a joke. And not 1 American citizen in 10 knows why, most have accepted the mass media version as spin-controlled by both political parties as TRUTH.

While "The Truth" isn't necessarily out there, you can go out and find very large chunks of it by simply knowing what to point and click at.

Here are some of the URLs I use when I want to find things the mass media isn't discussing:
http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/index1.html#news1, warning, the page is 250K of text, it'll take a while to load even in lyns for dialup users.

Its difficult for most North Americans (unfortunately I include my Canadian Countrymen) to see through simple Jingoist myopia and McCarthyism when talking about Socialism and Communism (and any Socialist/Communist States).

Most dont see any difference between Fascism (Totalitarianism) and Socialism. McCarthyism did a fine job in making the two synonymous -- when in fact Communism (Socialism) is more compatible with a Democratic (and rep.democratic (like Canada)) state, and Capitalism is more in line with Totalitarianism.

For everyone that cannot compile the concept of personal/individual Liberty and Freedom in a Socialist or Communist State please see Political Compass.org which illustrates the concept, they are in fact totally and completely separate.

Capitalism leads to Plutocracy...dont agree? Plutocracy is the Totalitarian rule by the Moneyed Class. Have you heard about the concentration of wealth in America? How about Enron literally choosing the heads of Federal Commissions.

For years now, scientists have known that some fraction of women have four different cone photopigments in their retinas. The question still remains, however, whether any of these females have the neural circuitry that enables them to enjoy a different -- surely richer -- visual experience than the common run of humanity sees. "If we could identify these tetrachromats, it would speak directly to the ability of the brain to organize itself to take advantage of novel stimuli," says Dr. Neitz. "It would make us a lot more optimistic about doing a gene therapy for color blindness."

. . .

Dr. Nathans also believes, however, that for full-blown tetrachromacy, the fourth photopigment must not have a peak in sensitivity that is too close to the peaks of either the red or the green photopigments. That's the rub, as far as he's concerned -- he suspects that most female tetrachromats would have only mildly superior color vision, because the genetics indicates that the fourth photopigment would almost always be very close to either the red or the green. Every now and then, however, an oddball photopigment might appear, well separated from both red and green. "The genetics do not rule it out," Dr. Nathans explains. "It would be a rare event. But who's to say it hasn't happened? There are a lot of people out there."

There are innumerable variations of this quote, which is attributed to Lenin.

• When it comes time to hang the capitalists they will compete with each other to sell us the rope at a lower price.
• The capitalists will sell us the rope by which we hang them
• Greedy capitalists will sell us the rope by which we will hang them
• If we were to announce today that we intend to hang all capitalists tomorrow, they would trip over each other trying to sell us the rope.
• When Communism finally hangs Capitalism, a Capitalist will sell us the rope
• A capitalist would sell the rope to his own hangman."
• Western business men will sell us the rope with which to hang them.

Unfortunately, no source for these quotations has ever been found in Lenin's collected works.

It may have been fabricated originally by the John Birch Society 40 years ago as part of their anti-Communist propaganda.

Curiously, Lenin actually said some things the John Birch Society might agree with: "While the State exists there can be no freedom; when there is freedom there will be no State."

The Guardian also has an article. It includes the hilarious quotation 'Some very
clever people have been chipping away at the problem, and now we think it could be possible without breaking the laws of physics' - I presume as opposed to how people used to think it was possible only *with* breaking the laws of physics...

In the case of computer magazines, they're trying to get the FIRST REVIEW!!! (a bit like First Post!) which will sell more copies of the magazine.

But sloppy work happens everywhere. David (Hutch) Soul recently successfully sued the one time showbusiness columnist of the "Daily Mirror" (crappy UK tabloid) over a review of a play Soul starred in.
The review said at the Monday performance, only 45 people turned up and the audience laughed derisively at Soul. They didn't do Monday performances...!

• this will help remove mines in Afghanistan, which after 20 years of war has more then a few around

Some factoids from the Gruaniad:

• 2,000 people a month are killed or maimed by landmines worldwide.
• There are 110 million active landmines deployed worldwide.
• For every mine removed, 30 more are layed.
• Laying a mine costs between 3 and 30 dollars. Removing one costs between 300 and 1000 dollars.

I hope this will be useful for all unexploded ordnance (UXO), not just mines. Iraq and Kuwait are still full of US UXO from the Gulf, and in a karmic twist, this report for the US army actually focuses on US troop casualties (based on Gulf data) as a prime consideration of US UXO, with civilian casualties as an "Oh yeah" afterthought. When even the military starts getting worried about the amount of explosives they're scattering everywhere, it's time to take stock.

Let Immersion have the patent.

We're due for a whole new round of legal cases for "white finger syndrome" anyway. Legal costs incurred by Sony & Microshaft can then be recouped from the ongoing royalty payments made to Immersion. Ha!

*this posting does not constitute true legal advice, persons wanting true legal advice should consult with a qualified lawyer.

Not a wholly informative hyperlink that. See the full list, here

I don't want to evoke Schadenfreude either, but what is happening to the tech industry is the same thing that happened to all other production and manufacturing jobs over the past couple decades: the value of their work decreases as productivity of systems increases, as markets saturate, as margins thin, as processes become easier to automate. In a recession, the people who are really worth their weight in gold are people who can grow demand. That's why sales organizations, and those who work at a strategic level, get compensated so far beyond the rank and file, modulo a handful of hotshot engineers. I think it's wrong, mind you, but it's pretty much inherent in the way of things.

But that link definitely moderated any sense of sympathy or pity I had for the lay-offees - and made me grateful for the fact that I'm enjoying a standard of living and security that, frankly, I don't inherently deserve.

Some movies - Black Hawk Down - are greatly enhanced by 9/11. Because it was true and well done

There are many "truths" out there, you only have to go across the Atlantic to the UK to find a radically different "truth":

The Guardian (a UK broadsheet newspaper) says:

Black Hawk Down looks set to become one of the bestselling movies of all time. Like all the films the British-born director Ridley Scott has made, it is gripping, intense and beautifully shot. It is also a stunning misrepresentation of what happened in Somalia.

Read more at...

I think you'll find the good old USA had a system of aparteid right up until the 1960s! Some would say current drug laws etc are in fact defacto aparteid. And then there was slavery before that...

Australia also had aparteid, and the Europeans basically invented slave trading. While the Arabs currently carry on this fine tradition in Southern Sudan.

I'm not defending South African aparteid, but lets not rewrite history "BlackHawkDown" style, and pretend it was only them!

Why go again? All of these missions to moons or planets just turn into a really expensive way to litter. If these things came back, that would be worth it. The learning of how to design spacecraft would be greatly advanced if something came back into Earth orbit, was retrieved by a shuttle, and brought back to a lab on Earth to be tested. Maybe then, NASA could learn from their mistakes, and design something that actually works, all the time, as designed. We spend billions of dolllars on a budget that sends things into space, and hope/pray it woorks, without really knowing. And accepting the fact that it will not be comng back?! And why do we want to learn so much about Mars? To colonize it? That would be a disaster with current technology, and thinking, at NASA. Not to mentio the problems we have on Earth currently. How about pushing the focus of living on Mars, to that of living on a clean Earth? We are starting to go on the right direction. Fix us first, then colonize.

A basic interview at Imperial College, London is here.

Then again, his father invented Jif! (It's in the text of the interview.)

Funny thing is, he catapulted to fame by trying to update Darwin, not argue the theories were bollocks.

Self-promoting twat.

Why grammar is the first casualty of war

"WHAT really alarms me about President Bush's "war on terrorism" is the grammar. How do you wage war on an abstract noun? It's rather like bombing murder."

"Imagine if Bush had said: "We're going to bomb murder wherever it lurks. We are going to seek out the murderers and the would-be murderers, and bomb any government that harbours murderers.""
...

---
Bush Family Values Photo Album
---

Book: U.S. Military Drafted Plans to Terrorize U.S. Cities to Provoke War With Cuba

In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.


Bush and Ashcroft are making laws to keep this kind of revealing information from ever being released. The Freedom of Information Act was created after Nixon's antics, and it is being withdrawn for the wrong reasons. We need to keep gov't checks and balances, as this article clearly proves.
---
An article about Gulf War propaganda, outlining how the 'Babies Torn from Incubators by Iraqi Soldiers' was manufactured and used by Bush to instill war fever. 2 minute read.
---
More gov't lies - Trumped up terrorism numbers
---

I think I figured out the reason the White House covered up Bush's condition!

FACT 1)
REPORT: President Bush Has A Heart Arrhythmia; White House Did Not Disclose After Pretzel Incident That Mr. Bush Has Sinus Bradycardia
---
FACT 2)
Arrhythmias Causes and Risks:
[...]
Arrhythmias are also caused by some drugs. These include antiarrhythmics, Beta blockers, caffeine , COCAINE , psychotropics, and sympathomimetics.
...
---
GRAPH COMPARISON The EKG on the top shows normal sinus rhythm. The EKG at the bottom shows sinus bradycardia

A slowly beating heart means that he's not getting as much oxygen to his brain as healthy people, right? Could this partly be the reason his intelligence suffers?
:)

Here's am image what of the astronomers used to see.

Google's making money, albeit a modest amount, from advertising. Here's an old article from August on how they're doing.

Reuters story can be found here and there is a story here on The Guardian.

It's nice that the hero of the story, John Stebbins aka John Grimes, is currently serving time in Levenworth for raping a 12 year old. Yeah, a real hero there.

And of course there's the 1950's era cyborg cat we tried to cook up. Didn't work to well though.

"you are either with us or against us" - W

/. are just enforcing freedom the American way (for example ignoring the Geneva convention).

yeah it's off topic, but this makes the principle of free software pale in comparison!

"you are either with us or against us" - W

/. are just enforcing freedom the American way (for example ignoring the Geneva convention).

yeah it's off topic, but this makes the principle of free software pale in comparison!

According to the article in today's Guardian Newspaper, Google is running a profit that they recognise is down to being good, thin, and useable, so we hopefully won't see it go the way of the IMDb etc.

According to the article in today's Guardian Newspaper, Google is running a profit that they recognise is down to being good, thin, and useable, so we hopefully won't see it go the way of the IMDb etc.

Seeking Search Engine Perfection

Well worth a read.

S.O.A.

Blowback

CIA in Guatemala

Interview

Use the computers to track all the Paedophiles running around in that country with impunity. Even the government and the royal family is

Yeah, Techno fetishists everywhere are already creaming their pants over the demonstration of the new "doctrine" of remote warfare displayed by the US in the Afghan War.

It's certainly good for initial deployment and aerial interdiction and control, but remains untested for endgame positional tactics using soft assets.

But this development is nothing that Our Prophet Philip Dick did not foresee in such stories as Second Variety .

It reminds me of how Twain saw the devastating and immobilizing affect on warfare of machine guns and trench technology in the closing chapters of his 1889 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court .

Or HG Wells foreseeing aerial warfare and the bombardment of cities and civilian populations in The War in the Air .

But because war is politics by any means necessary, when one approach is blocked the street will find a way to express itself through another. If politicized groups and countries cannot hope to use conventional warfare, then they will move on to more promising avenues and asymmetrical opportunities. Things more horribly inventive than destroying buildings with sharp knives and opportunity.

And as so many here have pointed out, most of this is self-serving propgaanda. 30% of munitions dropped still fail to explode. And this article points out, the Rout of the Taliban was largely a social victory. Factions on the ground saw which way the wind was blowing, shaved their beards, and changed sides.

But most of the same local bosses are still running things... why else do you think so many high-profile "Taliban" are being let go. Why is it proving so difficult to arrest Omar, a practically dead, half-blind guy doing a Steve McQueen on a motorbike?



Meanwhile, Blair ran a victory lap in Kabul. Right.

Remember, the Russians also "took" Afghanistan with virtually no resistance within a few months. But their mistake was to stay longer, and eventually the factions started uniting against them. That KC-130 that crashed, they are flying bricks. One hasn't crashed in error since the start of the 1970s. Odds are it was brought down by a shoulder-launched SAM at extremely close range.

And now the Marines are exiting and being replaced by the 101st, who'll be digging fortifying those bases that annoy the Russians so much. They are there for the long haul? I hope they have better luck than Reagan's Marines in Lebanon.

And why are Katz's articles so goddamn difficult to read? Does he go through a rewrite phase where he trys to find longer latinate words whenever possible, replacing anything short and punchy with polysyllabic monstrosities? A dose of Strunk and Whyte would go a long way there.

Yeah, Techno fetishists everywhere are already creaming their pants over the demonstration of the new "doctrine" of remote warfare displayed by the US in the Afghan War.

It's certainly good for initial deployment and aerial interdiction and control, but remains untested for endgame positional tactics using soft assets.

But this development is nothing that Our Prophet Philip Dick did not foresee in such stories as Second Variety .

It reminds me of how Twain saw the devastating and immobilizing affect on warfare of machine guns and trench technology in the closing chapters of his 1889 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court .

Or HG Wells foreseeing aerial warfare and the bombardment of cities and civilian populations in The War in the Air .

But because war is politics by any means necessary, when one approach is blocked the street will find a way to express itself through another. If politicized groups and countries cannot hope to use conventional warfare, then they will move on to more promising avenues and asymmetrical opportunities. Things more horribly inventive than destroying buildings with sharp knives and opportunity.

And as so many here have pointed out, most of this is self-serving propgaanda. 30% of munitions dropped still fail to explode. And this article points out, the Rout of the Taliban was largely a social victory. Factions on the ground saw which way the wind was blowing, shaved their beards, and changed sides.

But most of the same local bosses are still running things... why else do you think so many high-profile "Taliban" are being let go. Why is it proving so difficult to arrest Omar, a practically dead, half-blind guy doing a Steve McQueen on a motorbike?



Meanwhile, Blair ran a victory lap in Kabul. Right.

Remember, the Russians also "took" Afghanistan with virtually no resistance within a few months. But their mistake was to stay longer, and eventually the factions started uniting against them. That KC-130 that crashed, they are flying bricks. One hasn't crashed in error since the start of the 1970s. Odds are it was brought down by a shoulder-launched SAM at extremely close range.

And now the Marines are exiting and being replaced by the 101st, who'll be digging fortifying those bases that annoy the Russians so much. They are there for the long haul? I hope they have better luck than Reagan's Marines in Lebanon.

And why are Katz's articles so goddamn difficult to read? Does he go through a rewrite phase where he trys to find longer latinate words whenever possible, replacing anything short and punchy with polysyllabic monstrosities? A dose of Strunk and Whyte would go a long way there.

Yeah, Techno fetishists everywhere are already creaming their pants over the demonstration of the new "doctrine" of remote warfare displayed by the US in the Afghan War.

It's certainly good for initial deployment and aerial interdiction and control, but remains untested for endgame positional tactics using soft assets.

But this development is nothing that Our Prophet Philip Dick did not foresee in such stories as Second Variety .

It reminds me of how Twain saw the devastating and immobilizing affect on warfare of machine guns and trench technology in the closing chapters of his 1889 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court .

Or HG Wells foreseeing aerial warfare and the bombardment of cities and civilian populations in The War in the Air .

But because war is politics by any means necessary, when one approach is blocked the street will find a way to express itself through another. If politicized groups and countries cannot hope to use conventional warfare, then they will move on to more promising avenues and asymmetrical opportunities. Things more horribly inventive than destroying buildings with sharp knives and opportunity.

And as so many here have pointed out, most of this is self-serving propgaanda. 30% of munitions dropped still fail to explode. And this article points out, the Rout of the Taliban was largely a social victory. Factions on the ground saw which way the wind was blowing, shaved their beards, and changed sides.

But most of the same local bosses are still running things... why else do you think so many high-profile "Taliban" are being let go. Why is it proving so difficult to arrest Omar, a practically dead, half-blind guy doing a Steve McQueen on a motorbike?



Meanwhile, Blair ran a victory lap in Kabul. Right.

Remember, the Russians also "took" Afghanistan with virtually no resistance within a few months. But their mistake was to stay longer, and eventually the factions started uniting against them. That KC-130 that crashed, they are flying bricks. One hasn't crashed in error since the start of the 1970s. Odds are it was brought down by a shoulder-launched SAM at extremely close range.

And now the Marines are exiting and being replaced by the 101st, who'll be digging fortifying those bases that annoy the Russians so much. They are there for the long haul? I hope they have better luck than Reagan's Marines in Lebanon.

And why are Katz's articles so goddamn difficult to read? Does he go through a rewrite phase where he trys to find longer latinate words whenever possible, replacing anything short and punchy with polysyllabic monstrosities? A dose of Strunk and Whyte would go a long way there.

Yeah, Techno fetishists everywhere are already creaming their pants over the demonstration of the new "doctrine" of remote warfare displayed by the US in the Afghan War.

It's certainly good for initial deployment and aerial interdiction and control, but remains untested for endgame positional tactics using soft assets.

But this development is nothing that Our Prophet Philip Dick did not foresee in such stories as Second Variety .

It reminds me of how Twain saw the devastating and immobilizing affect on warfare of machine guns and trench technology in the closing chapters of his 1889 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court .

Or HG Wells foreseeing aerial warfare and the bombardment of cities and civilian populations in The War in the Air .

But because war is politics by any means necessary, when one approach is blocked the street will find a way to express itself through another. If politicized groups and countries cannot hope to use conventional warfare, then they will move on to more promising avenues and asymmetrical opportunities. Things more horribly inventive than destroying buildings with sharp knives and opportunity.

And as so many here have pointed out, most of this is self-serving propgaanda. 30% of munitions dropped still fail to explode. And this article points out, the Rout of the Taliban was largely a social victory. Factions on the ground saw which way the wind was blowing, shaved their beards, and changed sides.

But most of the same local bosses are still running things... why else do you think so many high-profile "Taliban" are being let go. Why is it proving so difficult to arrest Omar, a practically dead, half-blind guy doing a Steve McQueen on a motorbike?



Meanwhile, Blair ran a victory lap in Kabul. Right.

Remember, the Russians also "took" Afghanistan with virtually no resistance within a few months. But their mistake was to stay longer, and eventually the factions started uniting against them. That KC-130 that crashed, they are flying bricks. One hasn't crashed in error since the start of the 1970s. Odds are it was brought down by a shoulder-launched SAM at extremely close range.

And now the Marines are exiting and being replaced by the 101st, who'll be digging fortifying those bases that annoy the Russians so much. They are there for the long haul? I hope they have better luck than Reagan's Marines in Lebanon.

And why are Katz's articles so goddamn difficult to read? Does he go through a rewrite phase where he trys to find longer latinate words whenever possible, replacing anything short and punchy with polysyllabic monstrosities? A dose of Strunk and Whyte would go a long way there.

Yeah, Techno fetishists everywhere are already creaming their pants over the demonstration of the new "doctrine" of remote warfare displayed by the US in the Afghan War.

It's certainly good for initial deployment and aerial interdiction and control, but remains untested for endgame positional tactics using soft assets.

But this development is nothing that Our Prophet Philip Dick did not foresee in such stories as Second Variety .

It reminds me of how Twain saw the devastating and immobilizing affect on warfare of machine guns and trench technology in the closing chapters of his 1889 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court .

Or HG Wells foreseeing aerial warfare and the bombardment of cities and civilian populations in The War in the Air .

But because war is politics by any means necessary, when one approach is blocked the street will find a way to express itself through another. If politicized groups and countries cannot hope to use conventional warfare, then they will move on to more promising avenues and asymmetrical opportunities. Things more horribly inventive than destroying buildings with sharp knives and opportunity.

And as so many here have pointed out, most of this is self-serving propgaanda. 30% of munitions dropped still fail to explode. And this article points out, the Rout of the Taliban was largely a social victory. Factions on the ground saw which way the wind was blowing, shaved their beards, and changed sides.

But most of the same local bosses are still running things... why else do you think so many high-profile "Taliban" are being let go. Why is it proving so difficult to arrest Omar, a practically dead, half-blind guy doing a Steve McQueen on a motorbike?



Meanwhile, Blair ran a victory lap in Kabul. Right.

Remember, the Russians also "took" Afghanistan with virtually no resistance within a few months. But their mistake was to stay longer, and eventually the factions started uniting against them. That KC-130 that crashed, they are flying bricks. One hasn't crashed in error since the start of the 1970s. Odds are it was brought down by a shoulder-launched SAM at extremely close range.

And now the Marines are exiting and being replaced by the 101st, who'll be digging fortifying those bases that annoy the Russians so much. They are there for the long haul? I hope they have better luck than Reagan's Marines in Lebanon.

And why are Katz's articles so goddamn difficult to read? Does he go through a rewrite phase where he trys to find longer latinate words whenever possible, replacing anything short and punchy with polysyllabic monstrosities? A dose of Strunk and Whyte would go a long way there.

Even when the media get information they probably won't give it to you - a staggering 80% of Americans think that censorship of news from Afganistan is good. People actually wanting basic freedoms (like free information) taken away is terrifying, this is the sort of attitude that can lead to Bush's 'anti-terror' proposals sounding acceptable: detainment without charges, evidence against being kept secret from defendents, no right to choose an attorney, no right to a jury, secret trials behind closed doors (of course if you complain about these proposals that makes you dangerous too - "if you're not with us you're against us") ... remember where and when the last western 'civilized' country did that? People died to ensure freedoms that are currently being cast aside ... I find that pretty depressing.

Try going to the same bank each time you work with your money and deal with human employees. That's what I do. They know me. I know them. There is no chance of an imposter, short of a disguise artist, ripping me off.

The problem is that people are being encouraged by the banks and corporate bodies to engage in impersonal money practices which ARE prone to identity theft, and in which Bio-metrics would be useful. As you pointed out yourself, the problem is only when such systems are abused.

And THE problem is that those who are trying to implement identity tracking systems will almost certainly perpetuate abuse. They cannot be trusted.

I have cut & pasted a short response made to somebody else above which I think addresses some of your conceptions. . .

Down at my local business supplies warehouse outlet, you can already buy thumb print readers designed to lock all but 'favored users' out of computers or whatever.)

For those of you who don't see why this is bad, consider how much fun it would be to have yourself locked out of the economy for having dissident political views. --Or for failing to pay a traffic ticket. You only get to buy bread if you heartily agree that Arabs are evil. Mm. Fun!

Being able to accurately trace & identify any individual, (National I.D. cards), and the on-going movement towards a virtual money society, (debit & credit cards: note the effects of the Euro introduction, where citizens are being strongly encouraged by authorities to avoid 'confusion' with the new cash by relying only on plastic money), will make it MUCH easier to control the populace.

Anybody who thinks that any aspect of this is a good thing should remove from their ears and eyes the filters which only allow in the 'Very Reasonable Sounding' B.S. arguments as supplied by the U.S. propaganda departments, and take a good, hard look around.

9/11 was almost certainly manufactured, and even if it wasn't, it is being exploited to the hilt. Turn off CNN, (propaganda), grow a spine, (ignore the accusations by the popular kids of 'tin-foil hatters'; Time to grow up, ignore the Gap wearing sheep and their desperate to be accepted /. counterparts, (Harsh, I know, but unfortunately quite true), and rely on yourself to form your own conclusions), --And get down to doing some critical research.

If you are critical enough, (of words from BOTH sides of the fence; Very important), intelligent enough, -and if you work for long enough to get a solid feel for all the available information, then you will begin to see another reality rise from the fog.

Otherwise, you might as well just accept a nice ear-tag.

Remember: Sheep get tagged & numbered. They also get fleeced. And eaten.

Some links to get started:

A brief, but solid essay on the nature & mechanics of propaganda, with examples from the U.S. during WWI to present. A 7 minute read, approx.

An article about Gulf War propaganda, outlining how the 'Babies Torn from Incubators by Iraqi Soldiers' was manufactured and used by Bush to instill war fever. 2 minute read.

Article on how IBM made a fortune during WWII by covertly supplying Hitler with the punch card technology used to process Jews for termination -Throws an interesting light upon national identification tracking systems.
7 minute read including excerpt.

Significant anomalies regarding the flight lists of the planes used in the terror attacks. 5 minute read, (10, including searches of the passenger lists to verify the writer's sources)

Empty but maintained concentration camps in the U.S. This link is half sensationalist, alarmist B.S.. Read with caution. Although it is worth noting that FEMA and the Rex 80 programs are real; the laws can be found on-line. Food for thought.

Okay. That's enough for now. Read. Think. And I hope nobody bothers me with dip-shit flames unless you've actually read this stuff. Flames are usually a waste of time with me, but if you have legit questions or criticisms, I'm always happy to respond and/or update my own knowledge base. Growing and learning is fun!

Good luck.

-Fantastic Lad

Some links to get started:

A brief, but solid essay on the nature & mechanics of propaganda, with examples from the U.S. during WWI to present. A 7 minute read, approx.

An article about Gulf War propaganda, outlining how the 'Babies Torn from Incubators by Iraqi Soldiers' was manufactured and used by Bush to instill war fever. 2 minute read.

Article on how IBM made a fortune during WWII by covertly supplying Hitler with the punch card technology used to process Jews for termination -Throws an interesting light upon national identification tracking systems.
7 minute read including excerpt.

Significant anomalies regarding the flight lists of the planes used in the terror attacks. 5 minute read, (10, including searches of the passenger lists to verify the writer's sources)

Empty but maintained concentration camps in the U.S. This link is half sensationalist, alarmist B.S.. Read with caution. Although it is worth noting that FEMA and the Rex 80 programs are real; the laws can be found on-line. Food for thought.

Okay. That's enough for now. Read. Think. And don't waste my time with dip-shit flames unless you've actually read this stuff. Flames are usually a waste of time with me, but if you have legit questions or criticisms, I'm always happy to respond and/or update my own knowledge base. Growing and learning is fun!

Good luck.

-Fantastic Lad

Some links to get started:

A brief, but solid essay on the nature & mechanics of propaganda, with examples from the U.S. during WWI to present. A 7 minute read, approx.

An article about Gulf War propaganda, outlining how the 'Babies Torn from Incubators by Iraqi Soldiers' was manufactured and used by Bush to instill war fever. 2 minute read.

Article on how IBM made a fortune during WWII by covertly supplying Hitler with the punch card technology used to process Jews for termination -Throws an interesting light upon national identification tracking systems.
7 minute read including excerpt.

Significant anomalies regarding the flight lists of the planes used in the terror attacks. 5 minute read, (10, including searches of the passenger lists to verify the writer's sources)

Empty but maintained concentration camps in the U.S. This link is half sensationalist, alarmist B.S.. Read with caution. Although it is worth noting that FEMA and the Rex 80 programs are real; the laws can be found on-line. Food for thought.

Okay. That's enough for now. Read. Think. And don't waste my time with dip-shit flames unless you've actually read this stuff. Flames are usually a waste of time with me, but if you have legit questions or criticisms, I'm always happy to respond and/or update my own knowledge base. Growing and learning is fun!

Good luck.

-Fantastic Lad

President Bush's ultimatum to the people of the world - "If you're not with us, you're against us" - is a piece of presumptuous arrogance. It's not a choice that people want to, need to, or should have to make.

Thing is, these corporate types can poison a community, or sack tens of thousands of workers, rip-off millions of common folks - not to mention the crimes corporations commit in the third world... and after all this they resign or are sacked with enormous pay offs of millions of dollars!

There is something very wrong, there noses should be rubbed in the filth they create, just like kids these days are made to clean their graffiti off walls.

...Only the kids can't afford rich lawyers.

Here are some better pics

The UK government is even promoting Linux? Fuck those anti-white, racist Labour party communists! They're fucking their own country over!

Whites will be a minority in the UK in 2100!
For more info, please visit: http://www.geocities.com/white_truth/

Perhaps this may be part of the reason why there's an agreement to continue using DM (search for 'emerged').