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It's worth noting that's where the character currently is in the comic.

http://dir.salon.com/topics/berkeley_breathed/

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/09/24/army/print.html

Not sure why that hasn't made Slashdot yet. It's huge. Far bigger than just a satellite spying on us.

I do not blame you for posting as AC.... I know that even though I post this information for others to look at and decide for themselves, just by posting it a certain percentage will label me a conspiracy nut and I might even get modded as trying to cause problems when I am just acknowledging that I too have heard about (article) this and am providing additional information for people to chew on and think about.

The USA is slowly being turned into a police state so that we can be controlled, systematically taking away freedoms from Americans. This site suggests there are over 800 camps around the USA. Here is a video about a FEMA camp in Indiana, supposedly closed in 1933, but has received funding within the last two years as a amtrak - train maintenance facility.

I heard Alex Jones on Coast to Coast, here is a link to his website infowars. Supposedly he predicted not just the current collapse over two years ago, but nailed the reason as sub-prime markets...I need to find the document with the date he first made the prediction. My Realtor and mortgage broker friends knew the Real Estate bubble would burst over 2 years back. As a Notary/Signing Agent we talked about what was going on. As a person who participated in the RTC bailout, I am not surprised that it is happening again. My friends 2 to 2 1/2 years ago did not tie the bubble bursting to the sub prime market as Alex supposedly did.

Per the show, Alex got interested in how the government worked in High School and has actively looked into many issues for well over 20 years. The amount of information he has is incredible...again, check it out for yourself.

Not only did he sound very, very credible, he stated that there is so much dis-information being put online much in his name that he sometimes has 50 - 100 utube videos removed that are slandering him, all posted in the same 24 hour period. If you listen to the recorded show you will hear it in his words, but he basically is very well known at utube and once they verify it is him, the videos are instantly yanked. When someone is attacked so ardently as he obviously is, someone does not want you and I to know or think too much about what he is saying. Again listen yourself and form your own opinion.

I ask myself, what do they NOT want me to know. There is a reason they distract us from what is really going on with other things.

Supposedly he has a document that shows the Banking groups' plans that they are currently following now...supposedly leaked by someone when they left the Federal Reserve system. I need to look for it and provide a link. He stated on the show, that they are not doing anything in secret but instead are following a well thought out and detailed plan. This same template has been used to take the physical assets of other countries using that country's own banks and currency to do it. The documents state that the countries were expected to default on the loans the group of banks provided. I believe the details are in this video End Game, however I am not a subscriber so I have not watched it yet.

I also admit that I currently do not have three or more sources for this information, so it is up to you to decide for yourself.

I personally don't believe there are as many coincidences as many would like for us to believe. I find it very coinci

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/09/24/army/print.html

Not sure why that hasn't made Slashdot yet. It's huge.
Far bigger than just a satellite spying on us.

I learned threads from this book by W. Richard Stevens. I have to warn you that Stevens' books are specific to C, but he has a clear and concise style, and his treatment of the basic issues such as synchronization, locking, shared memory, and semaphores is excellent. If you're coding in C, buy the book; if you're not coding in C you may not need to own it, but you ought to spend a couple hours reading Stevens' discussion of key issues.

I am the first to admit that conservatives tend to hyperventilate about media bias more than they should (in many cases, the bias of the mainstream media has been only mildly left, no worse than Fox's bias rightwards). But even a broken clock is right twice a day, and this is one of those times.

Ah ha. Ah ha. Ha. After the last decade, still claiming that the media has a liberal bias is as laughable as Nader continuing to say that there really wouldn't have been a difference between a Bush presidency and a Gore presidency. As laughable as a Miramax exec still thinking passing up on Lord of the Rings was a good decision, after Peter Jackson brought New Line eleven oscars and a few billion dollars.

If the media has such a liberal bias, why did they hate Al Gore's guts back in 2000, while giving Bush a free pass on his business failures, especially Harken Energy (a mountain next to the molehill of Whitewater)? They were so busy inventing Gore "fib factor" stories they didn't pay any attention to when Bush took credit for passing HMO legislation that he actually vetoed as governor of Texas:

Touting his support for a patients' bill of rights in the third debate (10/17/00), Bush said: "As a matter of fact, I brought Republicans and Democrats together to do just that in the state of Texas, to get a patients' bill of rights through." In fact, Governor Bush vetoed the Patients' Bill of Rights the Texas State Legislature passed in 1995. When it was passed again in 1997, the bill's support was strong enough to withstand his threatened veto (New York Times, 10/18/00).

If the media has such a liberal bias, why was it so gung ho on the Iraq war? In 2002-2003, the media conversation was dominated by neocons and pro-war hawks. What has changed since then, long after the public has turned against the war? Now the conversation is dominated by pro-war hawks, some of whom now think "mistakes were made" in the occupation, not that invading was a mistake in the first place. Those who were right that the war would be a disaster are as excluded from the media narrative today as they were in 2003.

And finally, just to put this turd to bed once and for all, compare representatives Gary Condit and Joe Scarborough. In May 2001, Gary Condit's aide, Chandra Levy, went missing. For months, the press obsessed over it, the allegations that he was having an affair and that he might have had something to do with her disappearance. Her body turned up in a park, and while no connection to Condit was found, he eventually admitted to having an affair with her.

In July 2001, Joe Scarborough's aide Lori Klausutis turned up dead, in his office, of blunt force trauma to the head. Dead. In his office. OF BLUNT FORCE TRAUMA TO THE HEAD. No scandal, no media obsession.

Now, try and tell us again with a straight face that the media has a liberal bias.

No - they attacked McCain for supposedly running a racist ad (apparently you can't mention close associations with corrupt CEOs if they happen to be black).

Um, because it was? The CEO in the ad has no connection whatsoever to Obama, but is black. The CEO that did actually have a connection to Obama is white, but was not in the ad. So do, please, explain how that ad was not racist. McCain's ads are littered with code and dog whistles. Watch his "The One" ad and pay attention to the subtext of Obama being a false prophet - aka the anti-Christ. No, I'm not kidding. Or his celebrity ad, which juxtaposes footage of Obama, two pretty white girls (Britney Spears and Paris Hilton) and phallic symbols like the Washington Monument and the Tower of Piza. Now, you might be able to make a case for the Washingto

"By child pornography, I mean adult porn with children. A picture of a thirty-year-old man naked != porn. Picture af ten-year-old naked != porn. Picture of either of said persons engaging in sexual acts or behaving provocatively = porn. "

Yes, but since you're probably not one of the Finnish policemen in charge of this black list, nor are you one of the highly trained Kmart/Walgreens photo clerk employees, your definition of what "child porn" is -- probably highly suspect.

• William Kelly was arrested in Maryland in 1987 after dropping off a roll of film that included shots his 10-year-old daughter and younger children had taken of each other nude.
• David Urban in 1989 took photos of his wife and 15-month-old grandson, both nude, as she was giving him a bath. Kmart turned him in and he was convicted by a Missouri court (later overturned).
• A gay adult couple in Florida decided to shave their bodies and snap their lovemaking, convincing a Walgreens clerk that one of them was a child. They are suing the Fort Lauderdale police.
• More recently, Cynthia Stewart turned in bath-time pictures of her 8-year-old daughter to a Fuji film processing lab in Oberlin, Ohio. The lab contacted the local police, who found the pictures "over the line" and arrested the mother for, among other things, snapping in the same frame with her daughter a showerhead, which the prosecution apparently planned to relate somehow to hints of masturbation.

• http://archive.salon.com/mwt/feature/2000/01/31/kincaid/

.

"That again: child running about naked on beach - NOT PORN. Child having sex or being filmed in a way intended to arouse the viewer - IS PORN, therefore far beyond questionable content. "

Sure, but that has yet to be proven. This guy for instance has already received personal threats against him because his site is listed as a "child porn web site", and yet he doesn't have a single picture on his site -- he only compiled a list of web sites that were banned by this list (he simply used a scanner to obtain that information, and it turns out that 99% of those web sites listed do not contain child pornography according to him). Should he put in jail because of this so-called "questionable content"? Should he be branded as a sexual predator and a child porn peddler because of this personal expose?

I know this from having been to several meetings. The atheist community is one of the most bitter and spiteful I have ever seen and actively wish to see all "non-rational" belief systems torn down and replaced with their "belief" system on a level that matches any religion. Pure tribalism at its best, two sets of group-think throwing stones at each other. the Atheists attack christen beliefs and they attack the atheists through ID.

The solution to the problem is not the one shown on /. of armchair intellectuals decrying the ignorance of the bible belt hicks, while smugly reassuring each other that they have the "best" ideology. It is through an understanding of their actions and why they do them and coming to terms with them. Calling their text book stupid isn't going to get them to stop. I don't know what the solution is, but I know what it isn't.

I couldn't agree more. Also: if "freedom" is our goal as a society, they have the right to have their belief, and to belief that a symbolic religion is more important than science. That's "freedom."

This guy had a good take:

The people who concretely affirm that there is in fact no higher being whatsoever are among the people that I do not agree with nor trust. I see such declarations as the epitome of self importance. Hard atheism is a belief structure and it is just as prideful and dangerous as the unflinching beliefs of religious extremists. ...But, like hard-line religious fanatics, the hard atheistsâ(TM) character flaw is an uncompromising belief in self. The individual fanatic and hard athiest both share the belief that they are right and disagreeing others are terribly misguided and wrong...

"Why Hard Atheists Shouldn't be Taken Seriously" by Edgar Alverson

It seems to me that the neutral position is agnosticism.

Atheism, or asserting definitively that a God/gods do not exist, is making a similarly conjectural and unprovable/non-disprovable assertion to theism.

Exactly, I mean McCain totally won that debate http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/09/26/mccain_wins/index.html well, I thought it was funny....

I have yet to see anyone ask Cheney or Palin if they feel they are above the law. Their actions seem to indicate they do.

Palin's position on this is, ahem, 'nuanced.' She appears to believe that the excutive is not entirely above the law, but that it is entitled to conduct itself in a prima facie illegal fashion until otherwise instructed by the judicature.

According to this article, she diverted $50k from the city highway fund to pay for a makeover of the majoral office. When she was told that it was illegal for her to make such an expenditure without the approval of council, she reportedly replied "I'm the mayor, I can do whatever I want until the courts tell me I can't."

I have trouble understanding why we put people with such obvious contempt for the law in positions that are in charge of it.

Masochism?

Why?

Simply because the next President and Vice President will be chosen for perhaps 50% on the strength of their respective programmes, and for the other 50% on the strength of their personality. As in "Do we feel that we can trust that person to take the helm for 4 years?".

That's why trying to dig up dirt on candidates is part of the procedure. If they can stand that test, they're either clean or adequately adept at covering up. I personally see little difference between snooping in someone's private life using private detectives and hacking into his (or her) email account.

Now whatever their political color, I think that most Americans would be Ok with McCain as a person. Nevermind his age, his health, his policies, or his party. McCain comes across as someone who won't panic in a tight corner, who won't flip and start pushing the nuclear button, who won't let his personal feelings get in the way of necessary politics, and who won't stick his head in the sand when there's bad news. You may or may not agree with his policies and his ideas, but at least he's reliably and predictably biased in certain directions.

When it comes to Governor Palin, I'm not convinced. Being a relative outsider she hasn't really had so much time in the limelight as the other candidates, so her past and personal quirks haven't been looked at in as much detail.

Personally I'm scared of having someone as VP who doesn't know what the Bush doctrine is, who doesn't know why we went into Iraq, who felt that "I'm the mayor, I can do whatever I want until the courts tell me I can't." (see http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/09/17/palin_mayor/). That level of ignorance coupled with that level of contempt for rules (in my view) creates a level of unpredictability which is very uncomfortable in someone who might become president on medical grounds. Such ignorance is Ok for Joe Sixpack, but not Ok for a candidate VP. If I had to choose between Palin and Cheney, Cheney would get my vote. I find his political ideas abhorrent, but at least I can trust him to have thought them through. By the same token, I find Hillary no more likeable than Palin, but at least I trust Hillary to know what she's doing.

What I can discern of Palin's political ideas doesn't appeal to me either, and I have grave doubts about her intellectual abilities.

In this respect I find the following disturbing:

Carney, who comes from a long-established homesteading family in the area and once ran the city's garbage collection business, has decided to speak out for the first time since Palin's vice-presidential nomination. He is viewed as a longtime Palin gadfly, ever since he sided with her opponent in the 1996 mayor's race. After Palin won, she froze out Carney, refusing to call on him at City Council meetings and deep-sixing his proposals. "That's the way Sarah is," Carney said. "She rewards friends and cuts everyone else off at the knees."

Other local officials -- who lack Carney's acrimonious history with Palin -- share his dim view of her mayoral reign. When Palin ran for mayor, she dismissed concerns about her lack of managerial expertise by saying the job was "not rocket science." But after a tumultuous start, marked by controversial firings and lawsuits against the city, Palin felt compelled to hire a city manager named John Cramer to steady the ship. "Sarah was unprepared to be mayor -- it was John Cramer who actually ran the city," said Michelle Church, a member of the Mat-Su Borough Assembly, who knows Palin socially. "As vice-president she'll certainly have to rely on faceless advisors with no public accountability. Haven't we had enough of that in the past eight years?"

(see http://www.sa

Why?

Simply because the next President and Vice President will be chosen for perhaps 50% on the strength of their respective programmes, and for the other 50% on the strength of their personality. As in "Do we feel that we can trust that person to take the helm for 4 years?".

That's why trying to dig up dirt on candidates is part of the procedure. If they can stand that test, they're either clean or adequately adept at covering up. I personally see little difference between snooping in someone's private life using private detectives and hacking into his (or her) email account.

Now whatever their political color, I think that most Americans would be Ok with McCain as a person. Nevermind his age, his health, his policies, or his party. McCain comes across as someone who won't panic in a tight corner, who won't flip and start pushing the nuclear button, who won't let his personal feelings get in the way of necessary politics, and who won't stick his head in the sand when there's bad news. You may or may not agree with his policies and his ideas, but at least he's reliably and predictably biased in certain directions.

When it comes to Governor Palin, I'm not convinced. Being a relative outsider she hasn't really had so much time in the limelight as the other candidates, so her past and personal quirks haven't been looked at in as much detail.

Personally I'm scared of having someone as VP who doesn't know what the Bush doctrine is, who doesn't know why we went into Iraq, who felt that "I'm the mayor, I can do whatever I want until the courts tell me I can't." (see http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/09/17/palin_mayor/). That level of ignorance coupled with that level of contempt for rules (in my view) creates a level of unpredictability which is very uncomfortable in someone who might become president on medical grounds. Such ignorance is Ok for Joe Sixpack, but not Ok for a candidate VP. If I had to choose between Palin and Cheney, Cheney would get my vote. I find his political ideas abhorrent, but at least I can trust him to have thought them through. By the same token, I find Hillary no more likeable than Palin, but at least I trust Hillary to know what she's doing.

What I can discern of Palin's political ideas doesn't appeal to me either, and I have grave doubts about her intellectual abilities.

In this respect I find the following disturbing:

Carney, who comes from a long-established homesteading family in the area and once ran the city's garbage collection business, has decided to speak out for the first time since Palin's vice-presidential nomination. He is viewed as a longtime Palin gadfly, ever since he sided with her opponent in the 1996 mayor's race. After Palin won, she froze out Carney, refusing to call on him at City Council meetings and deep-sixing his proposals. "That's the way Sarah is," Carney said. "She rewards friends and cuts everyone else off at the knees."

Other local officials -- who lack Carney's acrimonious history with Palin -- share his dim view of her mayoral reign. When Palin ran for mayor, she dismissed concerns about her lack of managerial expertise by saying the job was "not rocket science." But after a tumultuous start, marked by controversial firings and lawsuits against the city, Palin felt compelled to hire a city manager named John Cramer to steady the ship. "Sarah was unprepared to be mayor -- it was John Cramer who actually ran the city," said Michelle Church, a member of the Mat-Su Borough Assembly, who knows Palin socially. "As vice-president she'll certainly have to rely on faceless advisors with no public accountability. Haven't we had enough of that in the past eight years?"

(see http://www.sa

Oh there are Special Circumstances. Times when actions not normally allowed must be taken. Drop a daisy cutter on the town to stop a viral outbreak, shoot the suspect who you think is about to set off a bomb, tap the phone of the guy you suspect has access to some terrible weapon.
There need to be mechanisms to decide when it was justified to break the law.

But when it's all over, the disease is contained, the bomb plot finished or foiled, the suspect found guilty or exonerated it all needs to be draged into the light.

The general who decided to break a law and bomb the town should have to stand before the people and show that what they did saved lives. Not investigated by a closed military court where his mate from boot camp is the judge and his golf friends are the jury.

The cop who shot the suspected bomber should stand before a public court, not a closed internal police investigation. Everyone should see the evidence, let the members of the society that's being protected decide if they are willing to accept such actions for the sake of more safety or if they can't tollerate them.

Let the agent who tapped the phones of suspects stand up and explain exactly why what he was doing was so important that he was willing to break the law. If the people decide if he was ultimatly justified.

But instead we get closed hearing, classified documents and amnesties for politicians friends.
There needs to be strict short limits for how long government documents can be kept secret with careful controls on extensions. If some operation needs to be kept secret for more than a few years or months then let them explain why to the supreme court (closed court sessions like this should be kept to a minimum).

Otherwise you get stories like this:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/07/09/alharamain_lawsuit/print.html

Or perhaps, every now and then after killing and/or socializing with other creatures and finding relics and things, the Creator decides to modify us...

One solution is to switch to a different business model -- make your money from touring, and treat everything else as promotional material.

If a few million people have heard your music because it was pirated, or because it was (illegally!) attached as a soundtrack to a funny YouTube video, well, it's hard (impossible?) to buy publicity that good, and you just got it for free.

In fact, there was a great article about this -- basically arguing that because of how ridiculously greedy the publishers and studios are, you're actually better off playing in bars and nightclubs than you are signing with a major label.

Well, Reagan-era scientists were probably as good as those who came before or after. But Ron was a cowboy, and had a special knack for ignoring them.

Dutifully reporting the lies of a dishonest government and campaigning politicians?

I'm not in a position of power to influence others.

When you drag that "morality comes from religion" stupidity into a voting booth with you, that's precisely what you're doing.

You, and your co-religionists, are being played like cheap fiddles. (Or did you think McCain chose Palin because she was the most qualified person for the job?)

Again, this should piss you off, but for some reason, it doesn't. (I'm guessing low IQ is part of the reason, but that's "just a theory.")

We've had 9 Presidents leave office (4 assassinations, 4 natural deaths, 1 abdicated) out of 43 people. That's over a 20% chance just to begin with.

Actuarial tables give McCain a 1 in 3 chance of dying in the next 8 years, though I don't believe that adjusted for things like the treatment he received as a POW or all the plane crashes he survived, both in training and the time he was shot down.

McCain's thousands pages of medical records didn't get much scrutiny, either. They gave a few friendly journalists a few hours to go over them. I don't know about you, but 100 pages/hour is a pretty good clip for me reading a story, let alone medical records. There's no way they could have read them all, so we just don't know.

It was ironic that Karl Rove attacked Obama over the mere idea that he might choose an inexperienced VP for "political" reasons. There's a great table about Rove contradicting himself here, as well as a link to the video.

Why do artists feel they are owed money for a lifetime and a half

This isn't about the artists, who are usually screwed over in the deals(big time). It's about the recording industries milking them and their fans for all they're worth, even after they're dead and buried.

I don't need to be a mind reader to see the obvious. Perhaps that is because I'm objective where your convinced.

Say what?

I don't need proof of anything, the cops do. And this proof will come out during their trial.

If there is one. And what if this is one of those "oops we made a mistake" situation? Too bad?

The article presented is a little misleading on facts too.

I have more than one link in my collection:

• I-Witness Video Members Detained En Masse by St.Paul, Minnesota Police in Advance of the 2008 Republican National Convention
• Houses raided, 5 arrested; critics decry crackdown
• National Lawyers Guild: What police seized was not 'weaponized' urine
• Dozens Detained Ahead of Convention
• Dozens Detained Ahead of Convention
• Federal government involved in raids on protesters
• Massive police raids on suspected protesters in Minneapolis

As people posted links in the tread, I'd open then in a new Firefox tab then I'd bookmark after reading them.

The cops said they had informants who told them about the planned activities.

Yea, and those informants were getting paid only if there was an arrest.

They were making, not possession but making devices to cause harm to other people's property

And there were no legitimate uses for any of them? Oh and they were all made illegal?

Now, as for proof, the cops will show that to the courts during their prosecution. I don't need it, all I need is an accusation and charged to be filed which both are true at this point.

In other words it's okay to deny people the right to protest just by making an accusation, or paying an informant to make the accusation. I wonder what you would think if that happened to you.

BTW, possession of dangerous chemicals can be a fire code violation as well as a felony. But there were more then "fire code" violations involved.

And what charges will stand up in court? Or doesn't it matter to you? Is all that counts is that protesters were stopped? Maybe you'll like it with Kim Jong-il then.

Falcon

I don't need to be a mind reader to see the obvious. Perhaps that is because I'm objective where your convinced.

Say what?

I don't need proof of anything, the cops do. And this proof will come out during their trial.

If there is one. And what if this is one of those "oops we made a mistake" situation? Too bad?

The article presented is a little misleading on facts too.

I have more than one link in my collection:

• I-Witness Video Members Detained En Masse by St.Paul, Minnesota Police in Advance of the 2008 Republican National Convention
• Houses raided, 5 arrested; critics decry crackdown
• National Lawyers Guild: What police seized was not 'weaponized' urine
• Dozens Detained Ahead of Convention
• Dozens Detained Ahead of Convention
• Federal government involved in raids on protesters
• Massive police raids on suspected protesters in Minneapolis

As people posted links in the tread, I'd open then in a new Firefox tab then I'd bookmark after reading them.

The cops said they had informants who told them about the planned activities.

Yea, and those informants were getting paid only if there was an arrest.

They were making, not possession but making devices to cause harm to other people's property

And there were no legitimate uses for any of them? Oh and they were all made illegal?

Now, as for proof, the cops will show that to the courts during their prosecution. I don't need it, all I need is an accusation and charged to be filed which both are true at this point.

In other words it's okay to deny people the right to protest just by making an accusation, or paying an informant to make the accusation. I wonder what you would think if that happened to you.

BTW, possession of dangerous chemicals can be a fire code violation as well as a felony. But there were more then "fire code" violations involved.

And what charges will stand up in court? Or doesn't it matter to you? Is all that counts is that protesters were stopped? Maybe you'll like it with Kim Jong-il then.

Falcon

Did you RTFA? http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/31/raids/index.html Even without reading, if you scroll to the bottom of the page, you can clearly see FBI on the jacket of one of the thugs.

Let's make this a short dance: Call me a "fascist", run away and brag to your comrades about "standing up to a pig."

That's a short dance, I don't have comrades.

Dodo would be more accurate.

Don't you mean you're the dodo? But don't let that stop you.

Try this another way, here you said "We had college-aged, playtime anarchists" however only two of the articles linked to says anything about anarchists, and that was the sheriff calling them "self-styled anarchists". Nowhere does it say the protesters themselves call themselves anarchists. However at least one of them says "both journalists and lawyers -- in addition to protesters -- have been detained and arrested even though not a single violent or criminal act has occurred."

So, who's talking shit?

Falcon

Let's make this a short dance: Call me a "fascist", run away and brag to your comrades about "standing up to a pig."

That's a short dance, I don't have comrades.

Dodo would be more accurate.

Don't you mean you're the dodo? But don't let that stop you.

Try this another way, here you said "We had college-aged, playtime anarchists" however only two of the articles linked to says anything about anarchists, and that was the sheriff calling them "self-styled anarchists". Nowhere does it say the protesters themselves call themselves anarchists. However at least one of them says "both journalists and lawyers -- in addition to protesters -- have been detained and arrested even though not a single violent or criminal act has occurred."

So, who's talking shit?

Falcon

Let's make this a short dance: Call me a "fascist", run away and brag to your comrades about "standing up to a pig."

That's a short dance, I don't have comrades.

Dodo would be more accurate.

Don't you mean you're the dodo? But don't let that stop you.

Try this another way, here you said "We had college-aged, playtime anarchists" however only two of the articles linked to says anything about anarchists, and that was the sheriff calling them "self-styled anarchists". Nowhere does it say the protesters themselves call themselves anarchists. However at least one of them says "both journalists and lawyers -- in addition to protesters -- have been detained and arrested even though not a single violent or criminal act has occurred."

So, who's talking shit?

Falcon

On Saturday afternoon, he displayed a number of the confiscated items: a gun, throwing knives, a bow and arrows, flammable liquids, paint, slingshots, rocks and buckets of urine.

"We know these things were going to be used as weapons," Fletcher said, a charge protesters and their advocates vigorously disputed.

Fletcher however, stressed that he and other agencies had informants planted inside this and other groups for "a long period of time."

Clearly, somebody is guilty of conspiracy here. I wonder whether it's the activists or the fuzz, but after reading the Star Tribune article, the arrests look legit and the anarchists look dirty. I also suspect that they're criminals. Responsible gun owners never store their buckets of urine nearby. Corrosion.

But then, Salon includes a very important detail that the Star Tribune omitted: the cops never presented a warrant! Because they failed to present a warrant, Title 18, USC, Section 242 says they were "acting under color of law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom to willfully deprive or cause to be deprived from any person those rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution and laws of the U.S."

In the house that had just been raided, those inside described how a team of roughly 25 officers had barged into their homes with masks and black swat gear, holding large semi-automatic rifles, and ordered them to lie on the floor, where they were handcuffed and ordered not to move. The officers refused to state why they were there and, until the very end, refused to show whether they had a search warrant. They were forced to remain on the floor for 45 minutes while the officers took away the laptops, computers, individual journals, and political materials kept in the house. One of the individuals renting the house, an 18-year-old woman, was extremely shaken as she and others described how the officers were deliberately making intimidating statements such as "Do you have Terminator ready?" as they lay on the floor in handcuffs.

I hope that the fraudulent arrests are prosecuted as kidnapping, committed during conspiracy against rights.

Title 18, USC, Section 241

Title 18, U.S.C., Section 241 Conspiracy Against Rights

This statute makes it unlawful for two or more persons to conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person of any state, territory or district in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him/her by the Constitution or the laws of the United States, (or because of his/her having exercised the same).

It further makes it unlawful for two or more persons to go in disguise on the highway or on the premises of another with the intent to prevent or hinder his/her free exercise or enjoyment of any rights so secured.

Punishment varies from a fine or imprisonment of up to ten years, or both; and if death results, or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years, or for life, or may be sentenced to death.

These jack-booted thugs need to be reminded who they're responsible to protect and serve. If standing trial for a death penalty offense doesn't put them in line, convict and execute.

The story submitter could have just as easily linked to *both* stories about illegal arrests before both conventions.

Anyone who RTFA would see the author's observation that "...Denver was the site of several quite ugly incidents where law enforcement acted on behalf of Democratic Party officials and the corporate elite that funded the Convention to keep the media and protesters from doing anything remotely off-script. But the massive and plainly excessive preemptive police raids in Minnesota are of a different order altogether."

So if the submitter had an agenda to conceal that abuses happened in Denver, he did a crappy job of it.

However, the Denver abuses seem to have been mostly garden-variety police thuggery; these Minnesota raids involved the FBI and included months-long espionage and infiltration. One of the groups specifically targeted is "I-Witness Video", a group that did a great job capturing exposing thuggery and perjury by police during the 2004 Republican convention.

Everyone should read his blog. It's amazing... covers lots of civil-liberties-related stuff like this. http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

If only it were the police; it looks like the FBI may be involved as well http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/31/raids/index.html

For the sake of the country, the people responsible for these raids must be fired (and very possibly sent to prison) for this. This is utterly unacceptable.

This is how you terrorise innocent people. (Today in Minneapolis, not in some remote police state that you can ignore.)

She doesn't have many thoughts on Iraq.

In an interview with Alaska Business Monthly shortly after she took office in 2007, Palin was asked about the upcoming surge. She said she hadn't thought about it. "I've been so focused on state government, I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq," she said. "I heard on the news about the new deployments, and while I support our president, Condoleezza Rice and the administration, I want to know that we have an exit plan in place; I want assurances that we are doing all we can to keep our troops safe."

Seven months into the surge, she still either had not formed any opinion on the surge or the war or just wasn't sharing. "I'm not here to judge the idea of withdrawing, or the timeline," she said in a teleconference interview with reporters during a July 2007 visit with Alaska National Guard troops stationed in Kuwait. "I'm not going to judge even the surge. I'm here to find out what Alaskans need of me as their governor."

the simple fact of the matter is that the telecom companies committed to deploying massive fiber networks and managed to squirm out of it (mostly thorough regulator-capture).

This is the inevitable and inescapable result of attempts to use the power of government to regulate the marketplace because regulatory capture will always occur given enough time and money. Clearly this is a case of an adversarial system (i.e. the customer wants the best speeds at the lowest prices and the telecoms want profit) so why not let the marketplace decide who the winners and losers are and let the disputes, when they arise, be settled in court at the losers expense? Before you excoriate me for having the temerity to suggest this ask yourself what have you gotten under the present system of government regulated telecoms? Crappy Internet service at very high prices, high priced private parties for your elected officials and regulators complete with booze, bribes (gifts, cash, or insider opportunities...your choice), and call girls for all of the attendees (why else would they want to to keep their parties secret with loads of private security?), and higher taxes on your phone and cable bill to pay for all of it? Is that a "change that we can believe in"? It seems that the Democratic Party has two messages, one for all of the little people in the stadium and one for their lawyer lobbyist friends and big money corporate backers at the private invitation only party. The Republicans are just as bad in many cases and for different reasons, but at least they don't make any bones about being for big business so you know where you stand if you vote Republican.

Good luck with that.... http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/25/blue_dogs/index.html

What the hell do you think HTML, XML, news stories, book descriptions, and reviews are? Are they not text?

Yahoo Shopping was written in Lisp. It was later rewritten, in sections at least, by a mixture of C++ and Perl. They wrote a Lisp interpreter in C++ to facilitate this.

Yahoo would have never happened without Perl.

Slashdot already ran a story about the BBC making a Rails-like framework for Perl because they liked Rails but prefer Perl as a language. The article at that second link says they're pretty dedicated to Perl for their whole Web infrastructure.

Amazon use Perl as a major component gluing the front end order-entry system to a back-end database, and also for part of their document authoring chain.

Amazon (for Amazon.com's own site) uses Mason (a Perl website templating system) as their official web development template system, and they're hiring for people with that skill set. They do use a lot of Java, too, apparently, but Perl is an important part of the site.

IMDb uses Linux, Apache, Perl and mod_perl to run pretty much the whole site, and is part of Amazon.

Google is using quite a bit of server-side JavaScript -- on the JVM as a replacement for Java in many cases.

Google uses C++, Python, and Java for most public-facing sites, and much of the management of the systems is done with Python.

This Google job (for a software engineer) lists C++ as a must and Python as a plus. This other job (for a software engineer) requires both one or more of C, C+, or Java and one or more of shell, Perl, PHP, or Python.

The nation of Scotland used Perl to migrate millions of land records between systems, which certainly is data munging, but a pretty important bit of it.

It was way back in 1999, but Agilent used Perl to build their big customer-facing e-commerce site.

Booking.com (part of Priceline) uses primarily Perl to run their site.

This PowerPoint presentation says Morgan Stanley in 2004 was using Perl written by over 500 developers on over 9000 (no, that's not a /b/ ism) systems to keep their network running smoothly, for a web front end development language, to develop middleware, and to develop backend applications.

ValueClick and TicketMaster make much use of Perl, too. That's along with the content management system -- Bricolage -- used by the Dean for President campaign, ETOnline, and the World Health Organization being written in Perl. You may have also heard of MovableType, which is a serious CMS from Six Apart. Or maybe you've heard of a site that runs it, called The Huffington Post, who right now is looking for someone to work on it?

This -as far as the /. crowd is concerned- is a very serious issue for those who consider Obama/Biden as the candidates for change.

Change? I don't think so. There will be no change. People who are old enough to vote don't really believe that stuff, do they?

RE: "Crackpot theories can be discussed elsewhere ..."

I am not wedded to particular explanations, however, the recent certainty of government explanations that are later proved to be fatally flawed only to be followed by another propagated with the same level of certainty leave me skeptical of all official pronouncements.

While I think the National Institute of Standards was a class outfit, since the "Reagan Revolution" scientific studies have not been immune to political interference. Moreover, when more than one explanation can explain the observations the simplest is usual given the greater weight. Three years sounds a bit too much time and effort to create another, albeit more complex explanation for an unlikely coincidence leading to a weird physical outcome. An asymmetric heat source left unattended could still bring down a building vertically? That results in a symmetric final failure mode brought together by the happenstance of low probability set of failures. Truly astounding, if it really happened that way.

On principle, I have qualms about accepting these findings on little more than blind faith from sources that have proven to be unreliable.

I worry too that the one and only anthrax terrorist has been found and explained (via leaks) to the most credulous and receptive types, i.e. the establishment press corps. I would prefer the skeptical scientific types with relevant skills to evaluate the evidence. Moreover, when you see a key element blown one day to be replaced the next without mention the first was bogus (Washington Post, http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/08/18/anthrax/), I think we all should give a hearing to the supposed crackpots. I no longer trust anything said or supported by the "realists" and their unlimited credulity to all official explanations. I bring this up, because they too (the establishment press) attack conspiracy theorists, that fail to see the truth as easily as they.

Then you really need to peek outside your door. Maybe you haven't noticed, under Bush's tenure: extraordinary rendition, torture, a $3 trillion+ war of aggression, colossal hypocrisy, illegal wiretapping, disgusting cronyism and profiteering, a million dead civilians, galloping environmental destruction ... Need I go on. Bush (and his cabal) has earned the absolute hatred of every civilised individual on the planet. We wait for their Nuremberg.

Has Maury Markowitz shown up to tell us how bad we are for wanting to steal music and about how artists will starve without the RIAA?

Here's a link to Courtney Love's rant that i posted yesterday in the Electra v Barker thread:
http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/index.html

One bit worth noting is that of the 30,000 albums released in a year, only about 30 go platinum (1 million?). To me that suggests that there are many talented artists who just haven't been blessed by the powers that be. Some of those 30 platinum albums might have utterly flopped without massive marketing campaigns.

In other news, Jared Leto's band sold 2 million copies of its album and received nothing for it:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7569924.stm

i can't vouch for it being literally nothing, but 2M sales should net them something.

As i said yesterday, data (and anything that can be converted to data) is worthless. Finite Demand/Virtually Infinite Supply = $0.00 Value. Sell something that is finite, like t-shirts and tickets to shows.

While we're at it, stop forcing artists to make albums. Release a few singles with B-sides (another obsolete idea, but that's what we call them), then once in while bundle them and call it an album. There is no reason to require a band to record 3 singles and 8 tracks of crap no one wants to hear. If the artists wants to do some kind of conceptual album like Santana's Supernatural of Floyd's "The Wall", so be it. But there is no *real* need to record an hour of music when all you have is 3 singles. Abandoning the album requirement will take pressure off the artists. Release something when it is ready. Think of all the studio time wasted on one hit wonders. For the listener, it means buying only what you want instead of the other stuff. Win/Win!

This is one area of life where letting the market decide might be the right thing to do. Get the RIAA out of the picture. Let artists retain the copyright of their own work (novel idea, huh?). Treat the cost of recording as part of the advertising budget. Let file sharing be your marketing campaign. Let servers be your warehouse. If you're worth a shit, your next show will be sold out and angsty teens will be buying your shirt at hot topic.

btw: piracy is armed robbery on a boat. Pirates often killed people. Napster and Torrent haven't, AFAIK. Well, aside from Kid Rock:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28467

>could not "weaponize" the anthrax (WTF does that even mean anyway?)

In this context, what it means is managing to take Bacillus anthracis growing in culture, getting it to form spores, extracting those spores in a way that they're still viable, drying them, physically separating them into a homogenous fine powder (called 'milling') and in this particular case, apparently then uniformly coating the powdered bits with a hydrophilic silica that had an associated surface electric charge.
Above taken from this wall street journal article (which says these weren't physically milled but were particularized in some other way.)

There's a *lot* of work involved in making these samples, and it requires access to large amounts of very high-tech equipment, stuff that a microbiologist who is making vaccines doesn't have. The equipment doesn't exist anywhere outside of the old US bioweapons labs at Fort Dettrick, according to multiple other people.

Let me add that Glenn links to an interview with am immunologist and editor of Biosecurity and Bioterrorism and a WSJ oped with the former head of the biological-weapons section of Unscom and former member of the Iraq Survey Group (who also provided strongly misleading Congressional testimonial about the WMD capabilities of Iraq).

They both provide some technical details about why they question the Ivins and only Ivins theory.

Glenn Greenwald reports that the alleged timeline of Ivins' activities on the day the anthrax was mailed seems to rule him out as the one who sent the letter from Princeton. He attended a meeting he couldn't have made it back for in time if he had driven to Princeton and mailed it late enough that the letter was postmarked for the following day.

Tell Glenn Greenwald that Ivins used a sockpuppet. He'll understand that even as he denies it.

Glenn Greenwald reports that the alleged timeline of Ivins' activities on the day the anthrax was mailed seems to rule him out as the one who sent the letter from Princeton. He attended a meeting he couldn't have made it back for in time if he had driven to Princeton and mailed it late enough that the letter was postmarked for the following day.

Um, that's not really a problem. I've seen this very situation on Matlock in an episode where he broke a murderous cosmetic surgeon's alibi.

You see, this doctor claimed he was at a major medical conference, with witnesses to prove it, but in fact it was just his hitherto unknown identical twin. Quite simple, really.

Your assumption that there is no evidence that he wasn't in Princeton might be false (see Glenn Greenwald's reporting). In addition, the fed are painting contradictory pictures of Ivins when it suits them: was he a sorority-obsessed homicidal madman in the middle of a psychiatric breakdown or a meticulous criminal mastermind leaving no detail to chance?

Glenn Greenwald reports that the alleged timeline of Ivins' activities on the day the anthrax was mailed seems to rule him out as the one who sent the letter from Princeton. He attended a meeting he couldn't have made it back for in time if he had driven to Princeton and mailed it late enough that the letter was postmarked for the following day.

You say: Personally, I think the attacks were unexpected.

But just below your post another /.ter mentions another article which says:

"The attacks were not entirely unexpected. I had been told soon after Sept. 11 to secure Cipro, the antidote to anthrax. The tip had come in a roundabout way from a high government official, and I immediately acted on it. I was carrying Cipro way before most people had ever heard of it.

I hear this claim not the first time, and there should be plenty of physical evidence to support this claim if it's true (such as receipts for Cipro retained at pharmacies.) And if this is true then the attacks were expected, and the "right people" were advised to act ahead of time.

For those who aren't yet aware of it, Glen Greenwald at Salon.com has been making a rather thorough analysis of the holes in the DOJ's case against Ivins, and is not sparing the media coverage, either.

Read and judge for yourself.

I am the AC who posted and do not consider his answer a complete reply. ABC did finally retract its false claim, though incompletely, as reported here:

our original report was indeed wrong

It was 2007, not 2006. But no explanation has been put forward for the how this false information got reported repeatedly by ABC (and others citing ABC's report) to the American public. ABC needs to let the American public know exactly where this false information came from, why it got reported as truthful, and how ABC is going to fix its reporting method in the future to avoid progandizing the American public. Since it is 2008 and the false reporting occurred in 2001, I am not holding my breath.

Wait -- that was ABC, who kept screaming at the top of their lungs about how the anthrax was linked to Iraq, had bentonite traced to Iraq, and how three or four highly credible sources had confirmed that it was produced in Iraq labs.
And, to the best of my knowledge, they have never changed or recanted those allegations, even now that they're (along with everyone else) claiming that a single US-based scientist was actually the person who managed to produce, on his own, without access to the necessary equipment, weaponized anthrax that several FBI labs couldn't replicate given several years of effort.

But [it's] been so lopsided towards the creators these days.

Not the creators, the copyright holders. Those are not always the same people. Courtney Love does the math is still a good place to start.

This is important to me personally because I feel that our genuine intellectual lifeblood, the creators, are frequently screwed over by lawyers and businessmen who legally own the copyrights. As a Nietzschean, of course I feel that businessmen are supposed to be at the bottom of the social pyramid, and the creators, our genuine artists, at the top. The legal types are supposed to be a support mechanism for our creators. Instead, the artists are treated as a commodity to generate cash-flow for the suits.

Somehow these briefcase-wielding cocksuckers have flipped the whole damn world upside down.

Sadly, as another poster mentioned, "rights", once lost, are restored very slowly, if ever. Likewise, taxes rarely disappear once they are put in place. Choose your poison.

I'll take higher taxes over infringement of liberties any day. Render on to Caesar what is Caesar's: money is a government creation, and while there are practical matters and while current tax schemes are rather invasive in terms of data gathering, I don't have a problem with the fundamental idea that if you want to play the game of state capitalism with the state's counters you've got to ante up.

We can get rid of taxes as soon as we can get rid of government, and we can get rid of government just as soon as the prerequisite of "universal enlightenment" is fulfilled. In the meantime, we Americans ought to stop our famous tax whining - compared to other industrialized nations we as a whole are under-taxed.

Would I rather pay an extra thirty bucks a month in taxes, versus warrantless wiretapping? Versus illegal invasions of sovreign nations? A consistent attempt to force religion into biology classes? Attempts to criminalize medical procedures, to even re-outlaw birth control? Continual anti-gay bigotry shrouded in religious language? Ruinous borrow-and-spend policies that merely shift the tax burden on to future generations? I'd pay the extra thirty bucks and be happy.

But I wouldn't have to, since the current Democratic plan is to shift taxes off of the middle class and back on to the wealthy who have benefited from years of rule by the investment class that owns the GOP, and off of the middle class. Under Obama's proposals, a family making $66,000/year would get a tax reduction of $1,042, while a family making $604,000 a year would see a tax increase of $116,000.

Compared to the great economic boom of the 1950s, the rich are far, far, far undertaxed - under that radical leftist Eisenhower, top marginal rates were over 90%. And during the go-go early 80s it was 50%. So don't even try to play that raising the top rate back to the modest 39.6% it was during the Clinton years would ruin the economy.