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It's not the cash-cow speed traps and Officer Dickweed hiding behind your neighbor's azaleas with a laser gun that I'm worried about. It's the mindless, shoot-first cops that are determined to become a leading cause of death to unarmed civilians despite supposedly safe weapons.

Maybe cops need a sensible, community-minded mission in a media friendly format? "Serve and Protect", maybe, or "We're tackling real criminals now instead of the harmless pot smokers".

We have plenty of reasons to hate cops, from racially-motivated shootings to blatant theft and rage murder, these incidents happen many thousands of times every year. If they want to change I'm all for it but in the meantime let me know where these trigger happy fuckers are so I can avoid them. I believe believe in personal safety, freedom to possess property and the inviolable rights of every human being. That's why I feel justified in helping highlight gang members with badges on Waze. Think of the children (AKA collateral damage) please folks.

It's not the cash-cow speed traps and Officer Dickweed hiding behind your neighbor's azaleas with a laser gun that I'm worried about. It's the mindless, shoot-first cops that are determined to become a leading cause of death to unarmed civilians despite supposedly safe weapons.

Maybe cops need a sensible, community-minded mission in a media friendly format? "Serve and Protect", maybe, or "We're tackling real criminals now instead of the harmless pot smokers".

We have plenty of reasons to hate cops, from racially-motivated shootings to blatant theft and rage murder, these incidents happen many thousands of times every year. If they want to change I'm all for it but in the meantime let me know where these trigger happy fuckers are so I can avoid them. I believe believe in personal safety, freedom to possess property and the inviolable rights of every human being. That's why I feel justified in helping highlight gang members with badges on Waze. Think of the children (AKA collateral damage) please folks.

"The money won't just appear out of thin air, you know?"

Funny you should mention that... take a look at http://www.opednews.com/articl...

Apparently there is no real need for taxation any more. All the government has to do is run the printing presses and print up as many dollars as it needs - plus a few trillion for its good buddies, of course. Because the rest of the world owes the unique, exceptional, indispensable nation a generous living. The economics of Oz is here to stay!

Glad the Norris link was helpful. Still hope you check out the"Skills of Xanadu" links... Yeah, it's hard to know when to "barge" and when not to...

Your County Currency link was off, but I found this:
http://countycurrency.org/

Reminds me a bit of LETS:
http://www.lets-linkup.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

Although, from the fist link: "Don't think of LETS points like dollars. Think of them as favours. LETS Favours. ... The LETS group's function is to act as a bookkeeper for their members' activities; keeping record of these 'favours' and putting the members' accounts into debit or credit accordingly. An account that is in credit identifies a member who has given more favours than he has received, and an account that is in debit identifies a member who has received more favours than he has given. These credits have no value and cannot be exchanged for cash. Their only purpose is to keep track of each member's involvement in the group so they can aim to bring their accounts back to zero -- a sign of fair and equitable participation in the system. ..."

And:
http://banknd.nd.gov/
"Welcome to Bank of North Dakota (BND). As the only state-owned bank in the nation, we act as a funding resource in partnership with other financial institutions, economic development groups and guaranty agencies."

Although they presumably don't issue currency except as debt like any other conventional bank. But one can wonder how far debt lending could go at he state level these days with Fed support.

See also on having adequate currency as the cause of the American Revolution (assuming it is true):
"How Benjamin Franklin Caused the Revolutionary War"
http://www.opednews.com/articl...

Jane Jacobs was big on cities having their own currencies. She especially values currency fluctuations between cities as markers of how well cities were doing processes like import replacement. She pointed out how national currencies could hurt most cities (while perhaps benefiting the capital city). Reading her work, I realized how the Euro was a big step backwards for most Europeans, especially in a computer age where translating currencies using current values (over a network) was a fairly easy problem to solve technically. The Euro shows the folly of trying to have a common currency without a common form of governance for the people who use it.

When I've thought about currencies, I eventually realized that a currency is implicitly a constitution. It's backed in a sense by an community and is only as strong as the governance of that community, which controls how much of the currency is issued and the official rules for exchange it. When a currency loses value relative to other currencies, it mostly reflects an assessment of the community or its governance that stands behind the currency as a medium of exchange. In that sense, the county currency idea fits a definable unit of governance -- the county.

As for getting back to the countryside with technology, my wife and I moved to the Adirondack park more than ten years ago. When we first arrived we had only dialup, but a couple years after that paid the cable company US$4000 to extend cable about a half mile to us so we could get broadband speeds. Money well spent as far as ROI. It was only computer networking that let us live in such a remote area and still be able to do consulting projects. And dialup speeds were getting more and more problematical, with people sending multi-megabyte files and asking us if we got them, and having to say, well, it will take a couple hours to download... I spent 2.5 years recently supporting NBCUniversal's broadcast operations and writing new software for them to con

A dispatch from a sinister, dystopian future, you mean: http://www.opednews.com/articles/Google-Is-Building-A-Zombi-by-Anthony-Kalamar-Automobiles_Capitalism_Commodities_Consumerism-130902-903.html

But fracking is 'ok"... right? http://www.opednews.com/articles/Fracking-and-Big-Oil-Come-by-Anita-Stewart-130611-66.html

No suprise Monsanto is having relations with BSA, look who the members are...
http://www.bsa.org/country/bsa%20and%20members/our%20members.aspx

...And one of the members is having relations with Monsanto
http://naturalsociety.com/bill-gates-foundation-buys-500000-shares-of-monsanto/

..and if you were wondering what they do with all those seeds...
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_f__willi_080123__22doomsday_seed_vault.htm

But "recalibration" can also be an excuse to reprogram the vote-flipping algorithms from "Romney" to "Romney/Ryan"...

For those who don't keep up with hilarious news of how rethuglicans are eating their own, he's talking about this story.

More (Part 1)
(Part 2)
There's supposed to be a Part 3 forthcoming...

Maybe Dominion just read that, or this, for instance. These are recent news...

Greens shut down nuclear plants with lawsuits

That's such a joke. I've got aging nuclear plants all around me here, and not a single damn one of them has ever been bothered in the slightest by "Greens". You're drinking somebody's kool-aid, my friend.

Read this and tell me how 40 years of continuous Green protests, which have achieved nothing, are going to shut down the poorly maintained, barely functional Yankee Vermont plant that every single sane human being in the state wants shut down. US greens are the definition of powerlessness; there's been more legislation influenced by looney anti-vaxxers for chrissakes.

I believe popular dissent, which admittedly was aroused by Green activists, preventing the building of one or two plants which were going to be built on fault lines or had other outrageous safety concerns. But are you going to pretend that this is a problem, and that we should knowingly build plants on major fault lines?

Environmentalists are the right-wing's favorite boogey man. Any time all the sane people in the whole country oppose some right-wing nutbaggery it's blamed on mythical environmentalist superpowers. It's totally laughable. US "greens" are close to powerless.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/What-if-Low-Energy-Nuclear-by-Christopher-Calder-120103-869.html
"If LENR is real, then aircraft capable of flying at full speed for months on end without refueling will be possible. Vertical takeoff and landing aircraft could become commonplace, and flying wingless cars as seen in Star Wars movies will be buildable for those brave or reckless souls who don't worry about the potential for engine failure. LENR jet engines should be relatively quiet, resulting in nearly silent aircraft sailing through the skies.
          [NASA scientist] Zawodny claims that reusable single stage LENR powered space planes will be able to take off from any commercial airport, fly to orbit to deliver satellites, and then land like an ordinary jetliner. This would not only lower the cost of satellite launches, but would allow the cost effective construction of very large space stations. Trips to the moon would become relatively cheap and commonplace, and trips to Mars with active radiation shielding would be possible with a 3 month travel time each way. Space travel could be pursued by private corporations for commercial, industrial reasons, not just by governments. We won't be able to fly to the stars with LENR, but our solar system would become easily navigable at a price we can afford."

First off, you speculating on what might have happened - while enlightening as to the depths you're willing to go to invent boogymen - has little to do with reality

What you don't seem to understand is that I speculate with the information that I have access too. I'm not willing to invent boogy-men; I was at some point this past week genuinely worried for my two little kids, although I live on the very opposite part of the planet.

I'm too young to remember much about TMI, however I vividly remember Chernobyl. What I retain from this event is that: first the disaster was shamelessly denied by the Soviets, but we really didn't expect much more from them. The consensus in western Europe at the time was that the USSR was a tyrany with gulags and thought police, pretty much similar to what North Korea is now, and that the guys in power would have dropped babies in the nuclear furnace if it would have advanced their fucked-up ideology.

Secondly the French governement lied openly to the public by pretending that the radioactive cloud stopped at the German border. How nice of this pretty little cloud! So the conclusion, right or wrong, was that the nuclear industry in France, in bed with the governement and the military, was ok to let some kids absorb some amount of radionucleides and get a few additional thyroid cancers, provided it could be hidden and avoid turning the public against nuclear energy.

Then the IAEA issued an official report evaluating the consequences of the disaster to 4000 additional deaths by cancer. This figure was afterwards challenged by the WHO itself it seems(!) as being a "political communication tool". Greenpeace says 60,000 deaths, some russian biologistsays 985,000. Who to believe? Definitely not the IAEA who appears as a corrupt organization in bed with industry interests.

Finally a quick search on google brings back haunting images of a world where "the living envy the dead". Since those consequences were seemingly not even considered by the IAEA, brushed away as collateral casualties to the advance of a certain concept of "progress", it reinforces the feeling of a bunch of people who would saw your kids legs if it would allow them to line their own pockets, just like with the Iraq war (who cares about the Iraqi children? Not Cheney nor Rumsfeld it seems), the BP and countless other oil spills, the incredible pollution in Niger, in China, etc, etc. That's for the background.

None of the six reactors would go "full meltdown" - an event incidentally not even remotely as horrible as you seem to believe it to be. Furthermore, now that we have had visuals on the spent fuel pools we also know that there wasn't a risk of any of them drying out, catching fire or in any other way exploding in a nasty way.

Again what you don't seem to understand is that nobody gives a shit about what the situation ends up to be, same thing with TMI. What people want to know, need to know is very simple: a precise description of a realistic worst case. If there was an incident on your plane and you land safely you don't want the company to tell you "What are you worrying about, you're safely on the ground now aren't you? Move along." You need to know what happened and how close to dying you went.

I've tried several times now to get a clear picture of a reasonable worst-case scenario for Fukushima from several seemingly knowledgeable persons here and elsewhere, and haven't been able to get any answer yet. And in fact nobody seems to have the answer, so ev

Wikileaks is the news recovering from decades of chicken-shit ownership and/or FuckUS Plutocratic Corporate Souls controlling the news in the USA.

The USA Congress could have increased protection for whistle-blowers, but decided the real enemy of the STATE is any public-responsible press sustaining our citizen right to know when politicians, diplomats, generals, C*Os, clergy commit crimes, lie, steal, murder, and/or act stupid by personal nature/whim.

As long as the politicians... cannot, or refuse to, protect The USA Constitutional interest of our nation, then they should be greatly concerned the every USA Warrior and Civil Servant swears an oath to "protect and defend The USA Constitution (as TOP priority) from all enemies both foreign and domestic." IOW-IMO all USA Warriors and employees must consider that their sworn oath, prison, and death will all to frequently define a path of life, honor, and authentic-self. If I am ever on a jury in such a big-brother STATE propaganda trial I will acquit our heroes and indite Big-Brother.

There are far to many good citizens protecting US on our streets and remotes battlefields, while a proportional very few (know it all) megalomaniacs and sociopaths seek to manage and control US Citizens with extortion and exploitation policy and law.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Whistleblower-Protections-by-Joan-Brunwasser-101229-343.html
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-devine-whistleblower-20110110,0,5483256.story
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-985
http://www.whistleblowersblog.org/

1) Whatever his background, Assange apparently seems unversed with the social conventions surrounding the one-night stand. But then again, neither is most of slashdot.
2) I, um, heard on slashdot that the particular Swedish law violated is about sex without a condom during their morning intercourse. But reportedly there was a condom that broke.
3) Because Anna Ardin is one hot forskningsassistent (actual job title). If all I have to do to get some attention from the likes of her is to embarrass the US, WHERE DO I SIGN UP?!
4) Anna Ardin wrote some paper on how to enact sexual revenge, so it was probably a good way to exercise her thesis. And that kind of thing probably looks good in a CIA dossier as well.
5) Supposedly she had some twitter tweets that she deleted after the fact.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Dissecting-Anna-Ardin-s-Ca-by-Press-Release-101208-16.html

There was a *lot* more information out about the circumstances the first time this was reported. Now all the articles I find have everything filtered out... down to the names of the victims (Ms. "A" and Ms. "W"). Before there were a lot of details being reported on things like how she paid for Julians train fare to / from her flat, how they made love at night and again the following morning, and then she cooked breakfast for him, etc. etc. that didn't make for a very convincing case. It's almost as if they decided to drop the charges for a few months and wait for the facts to subside and fade from memory before they can bring it up again and hit him with a pretty dull cut & dried "rape" case devoid of any of those sorts of considerations. InfoOps at its finest, I suppose.

Coincidentally rape and sexual crimes are also higher on the Swedish public radar nowadays, thanks to the "Girl with the Dragon Tatoo" book / movie trilogy that got big there (and internationally) over the past few years. Yay, vengeance.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/36783.html
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_timothy__071011_corporate_donations_.htm
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/democrats-rake-record-donations-corporations/story?id=9777742

Btw, since we are on the subject of Soros: http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=589

Aside from the previously posted screenshot link of the Obama campaign website that shows an image of graffiti "Obama is God", this would be an short example of my best:

A messiah in our midst?
By Jonah Goldberg

Obama's Satyagraha: Or, Did Obama Swallow the Mahatma?
June 27, 2008. (Dinesh Sharma is a marketing science consultant with a PhD in Psychology from Harvard).

Miami Herald March 28, 2006.

Okello Oculi, Daily Monitor
AllAfrica.com. February 20, 2008.

Obama Draws Throngs To Target Center
WCCO.com. February 2, 2008

There you go, 5 non-right-wing articles.

That is interesting because 99% of people I ask say no to that question, and instead reply that almost all new channels are guilty of it. I once tried to do a survey of people on a forum of the perceived bias of various news outlets and although there was surprisingly little interest (only about 8 people responded) no one claimed fox was alone in spewing propaganda, and no one disputed that they were the worst for it. I personally have yet to find a general news organisation that I am even comfortable with reading/watching and would claim that all media outlets spew propaganda. So you can add me to the quoted statistic here and make it 98%, or 98.9% or whatever depending on the size of your sample.
I have recently been evaluating http://www.opednews.com/ for bias and it seems ok but I wont be sure until I have read it for a few weeks straight. The layout on their site bothers me but that is something I may have to deal with.

But you can't go up to Dick Cheney and say "Fuck you, Mr. Cheney"

abundance of unemployed people means that in general minimum wage is set too high.

Economics 101: big supply + low demand = downward pressure on prices.

Yes, according to econ 101 conventional wisdom the only cause of unemployment is the minimum wage. Slight problem: until 1938 there was no federal minimum wage, yet unemployment somehow hit 23% anyways (i.e. the Great Depression). Looking at the data there is little support for econ 101 conventional wisdom.

Or maybe someday Canada? :-)
http://www.biophagepharma.net/

But thanks for the insight on the regulatory aspect. I had not known that.

Related:
"Choosing to let patients with superbug infections die rather than phage them?"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x338050
http://www.opednews.com/articles/life_a_pkdkso_080212_choosing_to_let_pati.htm
"""
In Canada the official body counters tell us that "an estimated 220,000 patients who walk through the doors of hospitals each year suffer the unintended and often devastating consequences of an infection" and they also estimate that 8,000 to 12,000 Canadian patients die annually from such infections and I have read claims that a similar number of limb amputations are done to cure such infections. That means as many as 30 Canadians become victims of superbug infections each day.
In the USA the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus seriously sickened more than 94,000 Americans in 2005 and almost 19,000 died, more than the 17,000 Americans who died of AIDS-related causes.
Yet the French-Canadian microbiologist, Felix d'Herelle, while working at the Institute Pasteur in Paris in 1917 discovered phage therapy which uses highly specific viruses, bacteriophages, which have been observed to be harmless for humans, to treat bacterial infections, including infections caused by superbugs. While there is considerable expertise on phage therapy in Canada and the USA at the research level medical phage therapy is not currently approved or practised in Canada; however, according to a letter signed by the former federal health minister phage therapy can be made available legally to Canadian patients under the Special Access Program of our Food & Drugs Act! Additionally, there are moral and ethical reasons for making phage therapy available in countries that are members of The World Medical Association which states: "In the treatment of a patient, where proven prophylactic, diagnostic and therapeutic methods do not exist or have been ineffective, the physician, with informed consent from the patient, must be free to use unproven or new prophylactic, diagnostic and therapeutic measures, if in the physician's judgement it offers hope of saving life." ...
Further, the phage therapy file has dramatically changed because the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has amended the US food additive regulations to provide for the safe use of a bacteriophage preparation on ready-to-eat meat and poultry products as an antimicrobial agent against Listeria monocytogenes (see http://www.fda.gov/OHRMS/DOCKETS/98fr/02f-0316-nfr0001.pdf ). An enlightening FDA questions-and-answers document can be found at http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/opabacqa.html . Listeria causes an estimated 2,500 cases of mainly food borne infections in the USA annually and as many as 500 deaths; however, they ideas that ready-to-eat meat can be treated if contaminated with Listeria bacteria while a doctor could not get a pharmaceutical grade phage therapy product when faced with a patient suffering listeriosis strikes this author as absurd. Superbugs are everybody's business because sooner or later everybody will be faced with an infection or know a relative or friend who will be suffering or dying with one. Withholding such treatment from patients when antibiotics are failing ought to be a crime; however, those who have the money, knowledge and time to travel when faced with an infection where antibiotics are failing may b

Someone obviously doesn't understand how electronics work :)

In any case, its quite likely that the attack never happened:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_sherwood_080203_doubt_claims_israel_.htm

It was all a cover to probe the radar systems -- which did work and the interceptors arrived on time. Its also likely that Israel used Iraqi air space.

I would not put it past these companies to create new flu strains and unleash them on the public, knowing sales would be generated. We've known about this strain since March 2009 and there are shortages of the vaccine so everyone is scrambling to buy it. One company in 2008 in it's SEC filing (sorry I do not recall it) claimed that they expected a 800% increase in antiviral sales in 2009 from government stockpiling.

and here's a gem.

"That the so-called swine flu was first observed in Mexico just at the same time Nicholas Sarkozy, president of France, was visiting there to announcement the establishment of a new French vaccine plant in Mexico, has to be more than coincidence." http://www.lewrockwell.com/sardi/sardi122.html

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Aventis-Vaccine-Factory-in-by-Doreen-Carlson-090519-669.html

Even our own government has in the past infected it's own population to see how disease spreads.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_biological_weapons_program#Experiments_on_non-consenting_individuals

I'm not one to cook up conspiracy theories, but it's always healthy to question things IMO.

I haven't read one way or the other if all these victims had recently received vaccinations for *anything*. I am suspicious this might be a cause, bad vaccines. No data available, but worth a look if this was possible.

    We just had an up and disappeared media story a few weeks back barely covered about baxter shipping some vaccines with avian flu mixed in, *live* virus., I mean, WTF? Why isn't this a major news story, why the ignoring? The customers caught it in time,. or it might have been some real bad news there.. They are stonewalling explaining what happened, claiming "trade secrets" no less, and the odds of it being totally accidental approach zero, according to what I have read about how these labs operate. And they just got the contract to make this new swine flu vaccine! I am suspicious of this, plus the description of this new virus, having attributes of so many other different viruses. I don't know if there is fire, but there's a little smoky sign here.

I don't trust the big media cartels, the **AA members, liars and skunks
I don't trust the big energy cartels, price gougers
I don't trust the big military/armaments complex cartels, always needing those little wars for profits, don't they, can't have peace breaking out
I don't trust the big ghoulish central banks and investment banks, economy parasites
I don't trust the big food and seed and agco chemical monopoly cartels, monopolies on food just seem a bad idea
and I REALLY don't trust the big for profit pharmco cartels, there's a LOT of cash in treatments, trillions, especially with their practices of patent farming to extend patents indefinitely, but not so much in real cures

Anyway, I'd really like to find out if some of these victims who died had some common recent vaccination of any kind

The solution is to take computer systems charged with managing electricity off the Internet

The view that high cholesterol is bad, and saturated fats are always a no-no is, on closer examination another example of problems being created out of nothing in order to sell more drugs.

A very profitable and corrupt situation has evolved where the FDA is in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry, the editorial boards of medical journals are bought and paid for, and academic research often dependent on industry money.

Luckily we have the FDA looking out for our health and best interests (joke!).

You do realize that the FDA employees and their families use this medicine, right? They've got a bit of a vested interest in actually looking out for us.

Yes, I always trust my government to look out for me too. Anyway, never mind the rank and file employees. They don't make the important decisions. How about the decision-makers of the FDA? Are they trustworthy? They're often pharmaceutical industry insiders (and when they're done working at the FDA, they often go right [back] into the industry). Fox, hen house, anyone? I won't waste anyone's time posting lots of links to stuff you can easily research yourself, but here's one good example of a no-good FDA commissioner who actually got canned.

In the words of another writer: However, the profits up for grabs have become so enormous that critics say the goal of industry-controlled research is no longer focused on finding a cure for cancer to save lives. Instead, the focus is on thwarting the development and approval of new therapies in order to protect the profits of the treatments already on the market. (source; emphasis mine)

I mean, come on, READ the article you just linked: "The results in The Lancet Infectious Diseases conflict with other studies that show no beneficial effect."

I have. The conclusions of the cited study were based on the results of 14 previous studies! As stated, some previous studies haven't shown any preventative or ameliorative effect of Echinacea. Those might have been commissioned by people with a vested interest in "proving" Echinacea ineffective. Or maybe they were done by incompetent researchers. Maybe they were using some adulterated form of the herb that wasn't effective, or based on the wrong variety (before you call 'bullshit', consider the difference in "effectiveness" of smoking industrial hemp vs. smoking recreational marijuana; all varieties of the same plant).

I'm sure I could design with a study that would pass the average peer review AND fail to show any positive effect of Echinacea (especially if those "peers" were biased towards, or at least expecting, the stated results). Perhaps I could design one to show positive results. The question is, what is my vested interest in proving something one way or another? Even if there's no personal benefit involved, do I have a preconceived notion of what the results will be? Let's say I carefully design a double-blind study, and the results, to my chagrin, prove something that is extremely financially detrimental to me and/or my employer. Will I lose my funding grants? Will my employer even allow it to be published? Will my conscience demand that I publish it, or will I leave it to the dust heap of history because I must feed my family? It's incredibly naive to assume that all "scientific" studies are accurate. Especially when you see similar ones appearing to contradict one another.

In my first post, perhaps I shouldn't have been so bold as to say Echinacea *does* have value. I don't know that. Some studies have shown it to be so. Some have shown otherwise. My personal experience is generally positive, but obviously that could be the placebo effect at work. Good thing it's cheap; if I'm wasting my money, at least I'm not wasting much.

Speaking of money--although alternative medicine is a multi-billion dollar industry in the US, it is still dwarfed by the pharmaceutical industry. The more money you've got to prove your point (which will help you get more money), the more skeptical I'm going to be about your

Please pay closer attention to what is happening in your world.

Mr Bush has created and deployed an entire US Army battalion on U.S. soil for use against U.S. citizens for the first time in history. And against 2 U.S. laws forbidding such actions.

The Army says,
"Despite conspiracy theories that this could be a first step toward martial law in the U.S., there won't be tanks on Main Street or active-duty troops putting down demonstrations. That is barred by federal law banning the military from being used on U.S. soil for domestic law enforcement.

        Instead, the soldiers of the 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Ga., have been training to back up civilian authorities in providing medical care and dealing with chemical, biological, high explosive or nuclear attack.

BUT,

Not only does this entirely contradict the first Army Times reports, it also egregiously misrepresents to readers the status of US law in regards to this deployment. Yes, there are laws against military policing on US streets -- they are part of both the 1807 Insurrection Act and 1879's Posse Comitatus Act -- but the Defense Authorization Act of 2007 gutted them.

Congress restored some limitations on the President's ability to deploy troops to engage in military policing in 2008 -- but President Bush issued a signing statement declaring he did not feel bound by those limitations. He also can direct these troops -- and the National Guard, and Blackwater -- to engage in military policing of civilian populations simply by verbally and unilaterally declaring a national emergency of whatever kind he wishes.

Unfortunately, the US Army spokespeople are parsing their words and misleading us. And, whatever the stated mission is today, the fact remains that military up the chain of command report to the Commander in Chief -- not to Congress or to you and me, and not to the Governors as most of the National Guard do."

Links to look at:
http://www.nationalterroralert.com/updates/2008/09/30/us-army-brigade-deploys-for-homeland-mission/

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x394977

http://www.chelseagreen.com/content/index.php?p=1518

http://www.prisonplanet.com/concerns-about-deployment-of-military-on-us-soil-growing-while-mainstream-media-buries-its-head-in-the-sand-naomi-wolf.html

Oh, and Mr Bush has already threatened to declare marshal law ( when the bailout bill stalled, which would allow Bush to deploy that army unit.
Surely you've seen him and the infamous UTube video ?

House members threatened with 'Marshall Law' if they fail to pass bailout Submitted by Kathlyn Stone

Rep. Sherman (D-CA)says Congress threatened with Martial Law if bill not passed. 'The only way they can pass this bill is by creating and sustaining a panic atmosphere. That atmosphere is not justified. Many of us were told in private conversations that if we voted against this bill on Monday, that the sky would fall...there would be martial law in America if we voted no.'

http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/link.php?id=71196

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x205488

Watch how all this comes together and unfolds if McBush the 3rd
( McCain ) gets elected.

Interesting that he's not mentioned in the summary, but several other sources seem to indicate that Karl Rove is behind this.

Go ahead and mod me down, I've got decent karma.

That reminds me. Did I mess that story on Slashdot about how Spitzer was caught by the feds while data mining financial records? It seems like a perfect story for Slashdot. A computer founds some funny financial transactions and a human then decided to investigate Spitzer. He had a lot of enemies. It's very important to note here that if Spitzer's name hadn't been a on "high profile government official" (aka targets) list, these transactions would have been ignored. Even more amazing, Spitzer himself argued in favor of this type of constant government surveillance. When computers are used to spy on and destroy people like this, you'd think Slashdot would have a story on it.

People are getting wise and no longer expect corporate/government news sources to provide them with anything close to the truth. More and more, they are turning to various independent Internet news sources, and make up their own minds about what is credible, and what is not.

News sources such as these: http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/ http://www.opednews.com/ http://www.electricpolitics.com/ http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/

As long as you are dressed appropriately for Our Overlords..... Admirers of Constitution Booted for Wearing Impeach T-shirts in DC http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_ralph_lo_080112_admirers_of_constitu.htm (One of these days I'll figure out how to embed a link, I swear, really....)

CCTVs have vecome quite popular in places like NYC. And the FBI has already used cellphone carriers to remotely modify smartphone firmware to eavesdrop on suspects, even when the phones appeared to be turned off. It is no great leap to apply the same procedures to PCs (and indeed, they are).

As for the Internet, the cozy relationship between VeriSign and the NSA anf FBI through the eavesdropping ("legal intercept") services it offers. That means much of your https traffic can be decrypted with nary a complaint from your browser.

Americans also often overlook the fact that the constitution was dispensed with decades ago in the 'war on drugs', turning many inner cities into police-state surveillance zones that have helped send far, far more adult males per capita to prison than any other country in the world. Similar tactics are beggining to be used against politically inconvenient people (welcome to the Western Block).

That doesn't even cover what the United States ruling interests do to people in its non-domestic protectorates and war zones around the globe.

I'm nice. I don't know about the changing accusations but this story looks like more evidence of high crimes to me. Are we following a felony here? This story really blew open in the media over the weekend. (Google news:Nacchio)

"What occurred before 9/11." You ask.

Well, as court documents (heavily redacted but showing enough to prove the time line) in the Nacchio trial state the whitehouse demanded wiretap information without court orders in violation of the FISA act. Nacchio refused and Qwest was passed over for big dollar contracts issued by the Feds. The rub is all this happened six months before 9/11. Why is that a story? Read on.

Perhaps this is a better article then the one linked in this story. From the Washington Post.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/12/AR2007101202485.html?hpid=topnews
or this one. http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/10/nsa-asked-for-p.html

It says the NSA was demanding wiretaps without court oversight six months before 911.

But on this whitehouse.gov page. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/05/20060511-1.html it says
"President Bush: After September the 11th, I vowed to the American people that our government would do everything within the law to protect them against another terrorist attack. As part of this effort, I authorized the National Security Agency to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations. In other words, if al Qaeda or their associates are making calls into the United States or out of the United States, we want to know what they're saying." [White House, 5/11/06]

Not convinced? Watch this video
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/10/10/bush-pushes-for-telco-immunity/
"must grant liability protection to companies who are facing multi-billion-dollar lawsuits only because they are believed to have assisted in the efforts to defend our nation following the 9/11 attacks."

FOLLOWING? How about six months before!

Oh yea, Impeachment. "Bush administration was either incompetent or is guilty of malfeasance" http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_frank_j__071015_bush_administration_.htm OK he's a known Bush basher.

"On December 17th, 2005, President Bush confirmed the existence of a National Security Agency eavesdropping program. That confirmation came one day after a report in the New York Times. The President said at the news conference, "in the weeks following the terrorist attacks on our nation, I authorized the National Security Agency, consistent with U.S. law and the constitution, to intercept the international communications of people with known links to Al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations." Critics argued that Bush became the first sitting president to admit committing a felony, when he circumvented the courts by not getting a subpoena from the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Court, as required by law." http://www.ksla.com/Global/story.asp?S=7112345&nav=0RY5

This would be Bush bashing; "Bush is a fake cowboy" http://tpmelectioncentral.com/2007/09/vicente_fox_cowboy_bush_is_scared_of_horses.php or "Bush is lazy" http://ask.yahoo.com/20031001.html but I won't resort to that kind of low stuff.

Some of them are on their way (two General Strikes,and a March in the same week!). Others think revolting is a sure way to martial law...

Dude, you are in fantasy land. I don't know what you're smoking, but check this out:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_david_sw_0 70313_what_if_the_fbi_hire.htm

Note the quote about Congress being under an illegal gag order.

Trying to make things sound better than they really are puts you in the Bush Apologiests camp in my book.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_alex_gab_0 61205_bush_adminstration_i.htm seems somehow related to this.

Careful. If you said that to Dick Cheney, you could be arrested. Apparently, the first amendment does not apply if you are speaking to a Republican Vice President in a public setting and expressing your anger at the Republican Vice President's mishandling of our nation's resources. I guess Newt has a point about helping the terrorists.

For those who think expressing profanity publicly should get you handcuffed by government officers wielding M-16s, do you also think saying "I think your policies in Iraq are reprehensible" warrants an arrest by the United States government's Secret Service?

For Libertarians who think Republicans are on your side, wake up! You are being used. These sick fucks are shredding the Constitution before our very eyes.

Yikes, that's a pretty big stretch to make - regardless of the numbers. Of course, it makes it easy to dismiss when you see the headquarters of the Election Defense Alliance leaders all working at someone's kitchen table on laptops. That's to say they aren't entirely legitimate and correct, but I might put there chances at, say, 10,000 to 1. ;-)

As seen here:

Clear Evidence 2006 Congressional Elections Hacked

"We see evidence of pervasive fraud, but apparently calibrated to political conditions existing before recent developments shifted the political landscape," said attorney Jonathan Simon, co-founder of Election Defense Alliance, "so 'the fix' turned out not to be sufficient for the actual circumstances." Explained Simon, "When you set out to rig an election, you want to do just enough to win. The greater the shift from expectations, (from exit polling, pre-election polling, demographics) the greater the risk of exposure--of provoking investigation. What was plenty to win on October 1 fell short on November 7.

First, another link to read this information. Read here

Second, I think this is sort-of FUD. I say sort-of because while one will require permission to fly, the selected quote from the law mentions nothing about the no-fly list. For all that we know, they could just be checking to see if a passenger is even a legal citizen or a citizen on a VISA here. If you are, then no problem. If you're not, then you get caught, which is what would happen to illegals anyway. It is possible that DHS might be searching for people on the black list, but this passage never makes it implied.

Does anyone have the statistic as to how many people were prevented from emigrating out of US (or into her) because of the "no-fly list" exclusion?

"They can train themselves over the Internet. They never have to necessarily go to the training camp or speak with anybody else and that diffusion of a combination of hatred and technical skills in things like bomb-making is a dangerous combination" - U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff

If I were you, I wouldn't trust polls from leftwing nutbag websites as gospel. "Progressive, Tough Liberal News and Opinions"? What could possible be more objective?

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_rob_kall_0 60511_poll_3a_2004_election_.htm

Except for viewers of Fox News, EVERY DEMOGRAPHIC SURVEYED gives more people who believe the election was stolen than who think it wasn't. And look at the Fox results - 99% believe the election was legit - those numbers are right up there with results for Soviet Russian elections.

[snip]
May 10, 2006 at 22:00:00
Poll: 2004 Election Was Stolen; according to viewers of all news networks except Fox News

Who are these Fox viewers. OpEdNews gives you the details.

In the first poll of its kind, (using First choice of TV news network as a demographic variable)OpEdNews.com, in the second OpEdNews/Zogby People's poll has learned that except for viewers of right wing news show, Fox News, poll respondents believe that the 2004 presidential election was stolen.

Overall, the poll of Pennsylvania residents found that 39% said that the 2004 election was stolen. 54% said it was legitimate. Shortly after the election, the NY Times suggested that a few fringe extremists and bloggers were concerned about the theft of the election.

But let's look at the demographics on this question. Of the people who watch Fox news as their primary sourc of TV news, one half of one percent believe it was stolen and 99% believe it was legitimate. Among people who watched ANY other news source but FOX, more felt the election was stolen than legitimate. The numbers varied dramatically:

Here are the stats by network listed as first choice by respondent and whether the respondent thought the election was stolen or legitimate.
Network Stolen Legitimate
ABC 56% 32%
CBS 64% 31%
CNN 70% 24%
FOX .5% 99%
MSNBC 65% 24%
NBC 49% 43%
Other 56% 28%

[end snip]

Look at the disconnect between Fox and EVERY other media. Can Fox be right and everyone else wrong? Or does Fox really just pander to the clueless mouth-breathing sloped-forehead knuckle-draggers as their "natural demographic"?

And keep in mind this poll was more than 4 months ago - the numbers would be worse today.

already happening, unfortunately.

more aggressive on this issue.

Electronic Voting machines are not a trustworthy technology. They can be made reasonably trustworthy, but only with significant and constant public involvement and oversight. The core element to this happens to be our requirement of anonyminity for our votes. Being unable to link votes to voters means we must then capture the actual votes themselves if we are to be sure the election is just and true.

Roughly 80 percent of Americans will be using these machines in the coming elections. That should scare the tar out of every one of you, regardless of your political bent.

In 2004, this number was about 30 percent and the problems were so great, we really have no assurance our election results actually reflect the will of the American people, whatever that may be.

Think of it this way. Let's say I'm the voting machine counting votes. You tell me what your vote is, and I update my mental count. Can you see that I updated the count correctly? I could report your vote back to you correctly, yet still maintain a different internal count. There is no way to really know is there? That's the problem we face with electronic votes.

The votes are encoded into states stored on devices nobody can directly observe, other than via the proxy of other electronic technology. Essentially, we are voting by proxy when we vote electronically. Without an accounting in the form of a serial voter-verified paper record, or the use of vote storage that is both human and machine readable, we cannot oversee the election results in a manner that brings confidence to the whole affair.

These machines are general purpose computers for the most part. We all know how easily these things are tinkered with because it's what most of us do! Biggest problems are:

-no direct accountability on elections officials to actually hold a just and true election. Technology can and will be blamed for problems, leaving these folks off the hook for failed / unjust elections. Not good. Where the incentive for corruption and manupulation exists, you can bet it's happening. There is too much at stake for it to be otherwise.

-poor understanding of the core technology differences between paper voting and electronic voting. I summarized it above and have a longer, easy to understand, paper here. Mail it to your legislators along with a request for their position on the matter. If you do the mailing, please also do the request. That forces a response, which helps increase the overall perception of the importance of the issue. http://www.opednews.com/dingusDoug_112604_electron ic_voting.htm

Said poor understanding extends to all of us really, legislators and citizens alike. Too many people consider electronic data processing systems as being better than they actually are. Consider this: If they are so infallable, why do ATM machines deliver receipts? Also, be careful about ATM comparisons. The primary difference between an ATM machine and an electronic voting machine lies in the anonymous nature of voting. ATM transactions are keyed to people, electronic voting records are not --thus the need for a voter-verified paper trail.

What do we need to ask for?

Voter verified paper trails that are human readable, serial in nature and easily handled / processed for recounts. Flimsy, thermal rolls that can discolor from improper storage and or handling won't cut it.

Audits at the precinct level. These can catch abnormalities easily and quickly before too much damage is done. Use the paper record to verify issues and act accordingly.

Strong exit polling. Notice how that is being downplayed now? The reason is simple. In 2004, the exit polls did not jive with the voting records, yet we have been exit polling for a good long time. The differences did not appear in this way until the advent of the electronic machines.

Legislation that reinfo

U send me dtrace to hlp me do ur outsourced job plz.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_runner_060 525_h1_b_visa_foreign_it.htm

U hlp ur old frend 2 take ur job plz.

Thx.

U send me more jobs to me 4 ur outsource plz.

I clean out ur augean stable 4 u.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_runner_060 525_h1_b_visa_foreign_it.htm

Send me 2 my id slash@spambob.com

Thx 4 ur jobs.

U send me informartion on wat 2 do 4 windos 4 this.

I need ur hlp 2 do ur outsourced job

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_runner_060 525_h1_b_visa_foreign_it.htm

my is is slash@spambob.com

thx.

Just because the war fails doesn't mean that tons of people who've never hurt anyone won't have their lives destroyed by it.

I believe that the these wars are accomplishing exactly what the people who've instigated them wanted them to. As has been pointed out elswhere in responses to this story, these "wars" exist so that the powerful can prosecute and imprison people they don't like.

If you're a liberal pot smoker, you go to jail.

If you're a right-wing political pundit popping OxyContin, then boo-hoo, you have a drug addiction, and, well, you keep doing whatever you were doing before.

If you're a coke-snorting son of a family of senators, you do some community service, go AWOL, get arrested for drunk driving, and eventually get your governor-brother to rig election results so that you can become president, and stab your own CIA operatives in the back.

No, these wars and laws are a complete success.

--- SER

Agreed. I almost didn't read the comments after seeing the "Editors" let the story through with the obvious dig.

Both major parties will do horrible, illegal things to win various elections, but the linked article is just crap.

At least a link to this open letter would have been more useful.

Or, how about a nice sampling/a of stories related to the issue?