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Right now newspapers and newsstations keep each other in check by double-checking facts.

Not that that works all that well. Columnist Jon Carroll of the San Francisco Chronicle noted recently that newspapers no longer bother with fact checkers. Except when someone thinks that there might be a story in someone else's sloppy story, nothing gets checked, ever -- even by the editorial folks at that newspaper.

We're already relying on a system that isn't really there, for the accuracy of what's in the paper.

I'm living in Jerusalem right now, and I assure you that what I've seen in my year here bears no resemblance to either Fox or CNN.

President Bush's contention that America went to war with Iraq to rid Saddam Hussein of hidden biological and chemical weapons "could be the greatest intelligence hoax of all time," the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee warned Friday.

Exactly how much more power do they really need, especially when they've got things like the Patriot Act and the proposed Son of Patriot Act?

There are more pressing military waste issues than M$ licensing to worry about, like the one trillion missing USD that they simply can't explain. ("Sorry, Senator, I must have left it in my other pants.")

Whom did they intend to use it against if congress hadn't stopped them?

Runaway Texas Democratic legistators

US needs Europe at least as much as Europe needs the US.

The Germans and the French are beginning to learn otherwise.

BushCo Reems Nation Good

Cheers,
W00t

Apparently the guys that were actually working on it. In fact, no hoax at all. The claim of a hoax was apparently premature and uninformed. The project was real, but now it's just dead - obviously because of the poor PR it received. 'Uh, yeah.. we're not dumb enough to do that.. it was a hoax' *wink*.

From SFGate.com:

When he prepared for the original "Matrix," the Wachowski brothers asked Reeves to read Jean Baudrillard's "Simulacra and Simulation" and Kevin Kelly's "Out of Control" so he'd gain an understanding of issues surrounding artificial intelligence. For the sequels, Reeves says, "the brothers told me if I wanted to look at what they were doing, I should read some Schopenhauer, some Hume and their old pal Nietzsche. I got a little bit into Schopenhauer, but you have to keep going backward -- you start at 'Will and Representation,' then you have to read 'The Four Fold Path,' and then, Schopenhauer hates Hegel and he's opposed to Kant, so you start reading Kant, and then you go, OK -- I've got to do some stretching and some kicking."

Heh. The famous Baudrillard book, of course, was featured prominently in the first movie. And I know exactly how he feels about Kant!

You mean like how 3Com just moved their headquarters from California to Massachusetts? Let the exodus begin..

3Com to move its headquarters Marlborough, Mass., to become home

*applause*

Let's see - we have a two-year boom in capital gains tax collections (oh yeah, you non-Californians probably don't know that we pay an extra 9.3% state tax on top of the 20% federal rate for long term capital gains), so we jack up spending by 40%+ over a term.

Then, when boom turns to bust, we're shocked - shocked, I tell you! - that revenues have fallen. But there's an election coming up, so we keep spending.

And taxing. Mandatory health insurance? Sure, why not fuck over the few remaining businesses in the state, they've got money! Jack up the taxes on employers for extension of maternity leave, too! Money grew on trees during the dot-com boom, the private sector obviously has an infinite supply of the stuff, so what's another 1-2% of that infinite supply when there's prole votes to be bought?

In answer to your question, "n+1", where "n" is the number of ways a given transaction is taxed in the preceding election cycle.

In Nevada, there's no state income tax, and there are places where you can walk down the street with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

In California, you pay the highest taxes in the nation - higher than most of Canada - and soon, you'll need proof of age-21 to purchase dangerous foods like cigarettes, beer, and now Oreo cookies.

Atlas, if you're listening, it's time to shrug.

2. People say State has no right to make laws in the privacy of someones home

3. "Senator from PA" says wait: the State should be able to have power in the bedroom, because then your saying "anything goes" which is not right. State needs to be able to make incest, rape etc. illegal in the bedroom.

4. "Senator from PA"'s statement taken out of context and blown out of proportion, people say he "hates homosexuals" which he even said was untrue and there is no evidence to show that fact.

Something I read recently from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a pretty good arguement (I think) for extending the current unemployment extension for another 3-6 months--

Looking Back and Looking Forward:
An Assessment of the Temporary Federal Unemployment Benefits
Program and the Needs of the Long-term Unemployed
http://www.cbpp.org/3-5-03ui.htm
http://www.cbpp.org/3-5-03ui.pdf - Direct link to PDF article

Basically, comparisons are made between the current extension and previous extensions (the previous ones being the recession of 1991/1992, and the one prior to that in the early 1980's), ranging from how they were implemented to the length of the extensions provided. It shows a history of shorter and shorter unemployment extensions, and that with this latest recession, instead of tieing the end of the extension benefits to the decrease of unemployment figures, they've been hardcoded to specific dates (the 1991/1992 extension, it seems, was legislated such that it would be valid until unemployment percentages dropped back to a specific point).

Another thing to keep in mind is that there's an entire federal fund set aside for emergency unemployment, and while some might not believe the current situation qualifies, I personally believe it does. There's billions of dollars sitting in this trust/account that can only be used for unemployment extensions, but this Congress/Senate refuses to act on the issue and provide the aid that more and more people (myself included) need to get by. And what makes it worse in my eyes is that instead of helping people out in the short term while providing long term growth, this Congress and Administration seems bent on only implementing tax cuts, and resisting any attempts to extend unemployment.

What really irks me though, is that they pushed through an extension of unemployment benefits for airline industry workers. Yeah the airlines took a beating after 9/11, but so did a lot of other people. It seems wrong to extend it just for people who were working in profession X but ignore everyone else.

Anyways, just some food for thought on unemployment, the benefits it can have, and maybe why it should be extended further for those who have run out of options.

In Toronto, huh? Enjoy your high-speed internet connection while you can!

Obviously I'm really into the whole situation of IT in Africa (they call it ICT .. the C is for communications). Here are some links for you to look at. A lot of them are really oriented towards WiFi too since I think that's the "last best hope" for the internet in Africa

Weblogs:
riptari filter

m u l t i p l i c i t y

R Alden

News

Balancing Act: Africa This looks dense but it's the BEST news source about ICT in africa and getting better all the time. Very reliable too.

Shameless plug
I wrote about using the open source model for (ICT) development here and some other stuff from here.

Stories

Laos

You've already heard about that ... but this much more story and pictures about another project:

Pictures, stories, of setting up the real thing in Bhutan a country you've maybe never even heard of ... but they have a WiFi based VoIP long-distance system that doesn't even need electrical grid to work.

I'll leave you with one that's going on right now ... the Digital Plains of India.

simon

Link to story on SFGate.com

wouldnt this lead to reduced profits by haliburton & co. after we've "awarded" them their contracts to rebuild iraq's oil industry?

Put down the tinfoil hat and back away slowly...Halliburton never even submitted a bid. (What this has to do with anybody in the current administration is even more puzzling, given that their stocks are sold and the proceeds from those sales are put into a blind trust while they're in office...)

The mayor of SF is going to ask the federal government for money to cover the protests from last week.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/ch ronicle/archive/2003/03/29/MN65765.DTL

Personally I hope it goes through since up to 70% of the protestors who were arrested (depends on the day) weren't even from San Francisco.

A bit of searching at the Cronicle's site turned up this link for the quoted story.
It appears to be directly quoted by commondreams, FWIW.
I'm curious about something -- If it's not an anomoly caused within the guy's camera, how come nobody else saw it? It's not like San Fran isn't populated.
--

Actually, no, no it isn't.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A522 41-2002Dec29.html

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/88244_sean24 .shtml

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/publications/iraq gate/iraqgate.html

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2 003/03/02/IN123519.DTL

http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/01/17/iraq.chemical.su it/

Defend your viewpoint, ass!

Saddam got key to Detroit

Saddam's wife, daughters safe in Syria:

Not a damn thing. 76% of Americans approve of the war, but the protesters want to make it seem like they are the majority rather than a (shrinking) minority.

Sorry, dipshit, you just did. Effect on the war: goose egg. Effect on "business as usual": nil. (I telecommute, haha!)

Here More information than the press blurb in the article

Storm Clouds Rise Over H-1B



"Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, introduced a bill this week to lift all limits on foreign workers "

She deleted this press release, but it's in the Google cache ...

She was among 26 House members (14 Democrats and 12 Republicans) who achieved perfect scores for their votes in the 105th Congress on encryption, securities litigation, patent reform, fast track, MFN, export controls, H1-B visas, and Y2K issues.

and she takes money from Microsoft!
(click on expand all).

Dump this wench!

Using a fixed camera mounted in the floor of the plane, the crew made images of the rally from 2,000 feet. The photographs -- taken directly above Market Street and Civic Center Plaza and enlarged -- provide a perspective that allows a discrete count of individuals and a view of the spaces between them, a view that is impossible from ground-level.

Both Air Flight Service and The Chronicle examined the photo survey and independently arrived at the estimate of 65,000 marchers at the time the photographs were taken, a figure supported by public transportation statistics.

The flight service says its count is accurate within a range of plus or minus 10 percent.

Using a fixed camera mounted in the floor of the plane, the crew made images of the rally from 2,000 feet. The photographs -- taken directly above Market Street and Civic Center Plaza and enlarged -- provide a perspective that allows a discrete count of individuals and a view of the spaces between them, a view that is impossible from ground-level.

Both Air Flight Service and The Chronicle examined the photo survey and independently arrived at the estimate of 65,000 marchers at the time the photographs were taken, a figure supported by public transportation statistics.

The flight service says its count is accurate within a range of plus or minus 10 percent.

I think the word you're looking for is "mondegreen." It was coined by Jon Carroll, columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. He actually uses it in reference to misheard song lyrics ("There's a bad moon on the rise"-->"There's a bathroom on the right").

The whole point of GTA is to run around doing stuff you could never get away with in Real Life (tm). Some of the misogynistic stuff in it raises hackles, but hey, considering the age/sex of most gamers, I understand completely why that's in there.

The fun of the game is just to drive around and create as much havoc as possible. Mission? What mission? Bloodshed, mayhem...and nobody...NOBODY...gets hurt for real.

In Huxley's Brave New World there was a hormonal/psychotropic treatment given on occasion called "violent passion surrogate." You had to get it done at least once. In a world without anything resembling pain or violence, where survival was assured and the happiness of their subjects the prime duty of the World State, apparently people needed the occasional safe release of adrenaline to maintain health.

Perhaps GTA3 and other violent games are this civilization's answer to this adrenaline safety valve. I know I feel REAL GOOD after blowing bots away in UT. I know that back when I was building websites for people who couldn't make up their fsckn minds what they wanted, a nice round of Doom 2 was just the ticket. "You want me to change the counter? Good! I'll make the death count go up, beeyatch! BLAM!!!"

Just as long as you don't go over the edge and start acting things out IRL, like those lamers in Oaktown did.

She's kinda cute and she kinda understands computers... and she's got a job that kinda makes sense.

Kinda. I mean if you need that data off the laptop at the bottom of the Amazon river enough to fish it out, send it to SF and have these guys try and get the data... you just might be kinda nuts.

Kinda nuts for not having backups of data that would be that valuable... and kinda nuts for then having toted it around the Amazon. I can imagine reasons for this nuttiness... kinda... but nothing too realistic.

--sex

She's HOT? You find her ATTRACTIVE? Not trolling or baiting you but, get a grip!

How the heck did this ignorant A/C post get modded up to 5? NASA already has a big piece of the left wing, see here.

What they can learn from it, and what they will admit after they do are different issues, but moding someone up to 5 when they shoot their mouth off as an A/C and claim that something can't happen when it's well known that it already has doesn't make much sense.

"Peggy Bresee was in Bear Pond Books recently to buy " War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning" and "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" as birthday gifts for a son who lives in Utah. She had the store purge the purchase records." - Vt. bookseller purges files to avoid potential `Patriot Act' searches

Is this purple beam part of a missile defense system?

NASA orbiter struck by "electrical phenomena" - San Francisco Chronicle - "The pictures, taken with a Nikon-880 digital camera on a tripod, reveal what appear to be bright electrical phenomena flashing around the track of the shuttle's passage, but the photographer, who asked not to be identified, will not make them public immediately." - February, 2003

Orbiter hit by "purple lightning" - San Francisco Chronicle - "Investigators are combing records from a network of ultra-sensitive instruments that might have detected a faint thunderclap in the upper atmosphere at the same time a photograph taken by a San Francisco astronomer appears to show a purplish bolt of lightning striking the shuttle." - February, 2003

NASA admits photographs of "bolt of something" exist - NASA - "DITTEMORE: I have seen the photo. We have sent the photo off to be examined, to verify its validity. We have not completed that activity yet. We have invited some atmospheric scientists to come to the Johnson Space Center to help us understand is there any phenomena that they know of that might exist in the upper atmosphere." - February, 2003

Starfire uses a telescope for "sending and receiving laser beams" - CRN - industry newsweekly - "For the Starfire Optical Range (SOR), a division of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory's Directed Energy Directorate at Kirtland Air Force Base, near here, measuring the effect of that air turbulence is critical to a project that uses a telescope for sending and receiving laser beams." - January, 2003

Directed Energy Directorate's "plasma projectiles" - Global Security - "Garcia said the directed-energy unit, which also is working on laser weapons, space-based optics and plasma projectiles some have likened to firing a bolt of lightning, has about 600 employees with an annual budget of about $120 million." - February, 2003

The curiously mislabeled document on NASA's web site. Check the title if you load this document.

Is this purple beam part of a missile defense system?

NASA orbiter struck by "electrical phenomena" - San Francisco Chronicle - "The pictures, taken with a Nikon-880 digital camera on a tripod, reveal what appear to be bright electrical phenomena flashing around the track of the shuttle's passage, but the photographer, who asked not to be identified, will not make them public immediately." - February, 2003

Orbiter hit by "purple lightning" - San Francisco Chronicle - "Investigators are combing records from a network of ultra-sensitive instruments that might have detected a faint thunderclap in the upper atmosphere at the same time a photograph taken by a San Francisco astronomer appears to show a purplish bolt of lightning striking the shuttle." - February, 2003

NASA admits photographs of "bolt of something" exist - NASA - "DITTEMORE: I have seen the photo. We have sent the photo off to be examined, to verify its validity. We have not completed that activity yet. We have invited some atmospheric scientists to come to the Johnson Space Center to help us understand is there any phenomena that they know of that might exist in the upper atmosphere." - February, 2003

Starfire uses a telescope for "sending and receiving laser beams" - CRN - industry newsweekly - "For the Starfire Optical Range (SOR), a division of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory's Directed Energy Directorate at Kirtland Air Force Base, near here, measuring the effect of that air turbulence is critical to a project that uses a telescope for sending and receiving laser beams." - January, 2003

Directed Energy Directorate's "plasma projectiles" - Global Security - "Garcia said the directed-energy unit, which also is working on laser weapons, space-based optics and plasma projectiles some have likened to firing a bolt of lightning, has about 600 employees with an annual budget of about $120 million." - February, 2003

The curiously mislabeled document on NASA's web site. Check the title if you load this document.

See here (info on Norton) and here (more Clamper info in the second article as well).

-W-

See here for some more information.

I'm with the group mentioned in that story, the THD. Here's a reprint of a story we ran on why this is a bad deal. Here's a San Francisco Chronicle story about the apparent conflict of interest (you have to scroll halfway down the page) behind the deal.

enron fun
Califronia got hit in 2 huge ways at te same time. The above is just further proof of what people already knew: Enron and other energy companies bilked california out of millions? billions? This, at a time when californians were in a slide due to the .com crash. California may have made some mistakes in its deregulation, but this was blatent abuse of the system, which was allowed by the president to go on WAY too long. You dont drain that much money out of an already faltering economy and expect it to do well, and its people to be prosperous. This brings us to internet taxes: just a bad idea. Eventually, every state is going to want a pice of the action, and in the end, its the consumer who gets dicked once again, and it will be the end of online shopping as we know it. I already find it hard to order items from in state, as shipping and tax together mean i can get a better deal locally a lot of the time. Maybe thats what they want, but I feel regualtiong this will be stupid, and it will do nothing to help the economy in the long run.

Spoken like a true Libertarian (or a demagoguing Republican). There are budget cuts happening all over California. They're coming in public schools, rural healthcare, state parks, higher education, and more. Those are services that most Americans, and especially Californians, think are important. In fact, in order to cover the necessary gap, Gov. Davis has proposed more cuts than new taxes.

Incidentally, I decided to reply instead of modding you down, even though zapping your "insightful" bonus was very tempting.

The ionosphere itself wasn't very active either. First, the pre-dawn ionosphere tends to be weaker than after the sun heats things up. Also, the sun's xrays were not strong, and geomagnetic storm activity was subdued.

More confirmation and information related to my theory of events in this article which describes a blue jet being created by a meteor, and a research balloon being destroyed by an electric bolt at over 100,000ft. I have been posting this for a few days, and all the new information keeps confirming it as a real possibility.

More confirmation and information related to my theory of events in this article which describes a blue jet being created by a meteor, and a research balloon being destroyed by an electric bolt at over 100,000ft. The odds of a shuttle passing through a sprite or jet was estimated at 1 in 100.. seems pretty accurate.

so says a couple news reports
One
and
Two
and
Three (yeah yeah, someone posted this last one above)

I haven't seen anyone try and connect the "purple streak" picture and the break-up, so i'll post my theory references again and hope it gets considered.

The tiles were damaged heavily at launch, scratched deeply as in previous incidents.
The roughtiles heated and shed, leaving a trail of debris plasma.
The plasma trailacted as a conduit for an electrical arc from charged particles in the high upper atmosphere,similar to the Ben Franklin kite legend.
A huge bolt travelled along the plasma trail to the left wing where it caused severe damage, enough to cause a cascading failure over subsequent minutes. Blue jets, elves and sprites are large atmospheric electrical phenomena which occur at the altitude the space shuttle was passing thru and were being studied by Ramon in the MEIDEX dust experiment.
My,My, Hey, Hey

I haven't seen anyone try and connect the "purple streak" picture and the break-up, so i'll post my theory references again and hope it gets considered.

The tiles were damaged heavily at launch, scratched deeply as in previous incidents.
The roughtiles heated and shed, leaving a trail of debris plasma.
The plasma trailacted as a conduit for an electrical arc from charged particles in the high upper atmosphere,similar to the Ben Franklin kite legend.
A huge bolt travelled along the plasma trail to the left wing where it caused severe damage, enough to cause a cascading failure over subsequent minutes. Blue jets, elves and sprites are large atmospheric electrical phenomena which occur at the altitude the space shuttle was passing thru and were being studied by Ramon in the MEIDEX dust experiment.
My,My, Hey, Hey

I haven't seen anyone try and connect the "purple streak" picture and the break-up, so i'll post my theory references again and hope it gets considered.

The tiles were damaged heavily at launch, scratched deeply as in previous incidents.
The roughtiles heated and shed, leaving a trail of debris plasma.
The plasma trailacted as a conduit for an electrical arc from charged particles in the high upper atmosphere,similar to the Ben Franklin kite legend.
A huge bolt travelled along the plasma trail to the left wing where it caused severe damage, enough to cause a cascading failure over subsequent minutes. Blue jets, elves and sprites are large atmospheric electrical phenomena which occur at the altitude the space shuttle was passing thru and were being studied by Ramon in the MEIDEX dust experiment.

New image evidence shows damage to the composite section of the wing. An increasing reliance on composite materials in aircraft construction creates the potential for additional problems because the composites can allow a connection between lightning and airplane electrical circuits

I haven't seen anyone try and connect the "purple streak" picture and the break-up, so i'll post my theory references again and hope it gets considered.

The tiles were damaged heavily at launch, scratched deeply as in previous incidents.
The roughtiles heated and shed, leaving a trail of debris plasma.
The plasma trailacted as a conduit for an electrical arc from charged particles in the high upper atmosphere,similar to the Ben Franklin kite legend.
A huge bolt travelled along the plasma trail to the left wing where it caused severe damage, enough to cause a cascading failure over subsequent minutes. Blue jets, elves and sprites are large atmospheric electrical phenomena which occur at the altitude the space shuttle was passing thru and were being studied by Ramon in the MEIDEX dust experiment.

New image evidence shows damage to the composite section of the wing. An increasing reliance on composite materials in aircraft construction creates the potential for additional problems because the composites can allow a connection between lightning and airplane electrical circuits

Top investigators of the Columbia space shuttle disaster are analyzing a startling photograph -- snapped by an amateur astronomer from a San Francisco hillside -- that appears to show a purplish electrical bolt striking the craft as it streaked across the California sky.

The digital image is one of five snapped by the shuttle buff at roughly 5: 53 a.m. Saturday as sensors on the doomed orbiter began showing the first indications of trouble. Seven minutes later, the craft broke up in flames over Texas.

The photographer requested that his name not be used and said he would not release the image to the public until NASA experts had time to examine it.

Although there are several possible benign explanations for the image -- such as a barely perceptable jiggle of the camera as it took the time exposure -- NASA's zeal to examine the photo demonstrates the lengths at which the agency is going to tap the resources of ordinary Americans in solving the puzzle.

Late Tuesday, NASA dispatched former shuttle astronaut Tammy Jernigan, now a manager at Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, to the San Francisco home of the astronomer to examine his digital images and to take the camera itself to Mountain View, where it was to be transported by a NASA T-38 jet to Houston this morning.

A Chronicle reporter was present when the astronaut arrived. First seeing the image on a large computer screen, she had one word: "Wow."

Jernigan, who is no longer working for NASA, quizzed the photographer on the aperture of the camera, the direction he faced and the estimated exposure time -- about four to six seconds on the automatic Nikon 880 camera. It was mounted on a tripod, and the shutter was triggered manually.

In the critical shot, a glowing purple rope of light corkscrews down toward the plasma trail, appears to pass behind it, then cuts sharply toward it from below. As it merges with the plasma trail, the streak itself brightens for a distance, then fades.

"It certainly appears very anomalous," said Jernigan. "We sure will be very interested in taking a very hard look at this."

Jernigan flew five shuttle missions herself during the 1990s, including three on Columbia. On her last flight, the pilot of the craft was Rick Husband, who was at the controls when Columbia perished.

"He was one of the finest people I could ever hope to know," said Jernigan.

It was an astounding day for the San Francisco photographer, who said he had not had any success in reaching NASA through its published telephone hot lines.

He ultimately reached investigators through a connection with a relative who attends the same church as former astronaut Jack Lousma, who flew 24 million miles in the Skylab 3 mission in 1973.

Lousma put him in direct touch with Ralph Roe Jr., chief engineer for the shuttle program at Johnson Space Flight Center in Houston.

After a series of telephone conversations Tuesday afternoon, the photographer had a veteran shuttle mission specialist knocking at his door by dinnertime. Within hours, he was left with a receipt, and his camera was on its way to Houston.

Cassiopaeans comment on the Shuttle "Event":
Session: February 2, 2003

Q: One of the first questions we want to ask tonight is about the event of the Space Shuttle that was lost. First, was it an explosion, or was it just disintegration, or breaking up?
A: It was a "direct hit."

Q: A direct hit by what?
A: EM pulse.

Q: (S) What was the source of the EM pulse?
A: 3/4th density Consortium.

Q: Well, I thought Bush was a puppet of the Consortium? (A) Well, we know that the military are scrambling planes to go after UFOs...there are even reports of firing on them and there have been reports of military jets being disintegrated by UFOs. The UFOs are, somehow, in cahoots with the consortium. It seems that Bush and the gang are not in control of the Consortium and maybe they needed to be "reminded?"
A: It is not so much that he needs to be reminded, as he needs to be stimulated to react.

Q: (L) You once before said that Bush knows very little anyway - or that the "White House" level is pretty much in the dark about the plans of the Consortium - even if they are carrying them out. So, you are suggesting that they are being driven by forces of which they are unaware and do not understand?
A: Exactly. Bush is a "reaction machine."

Q: (L) I would like to know about this supposed "body guard" of Saddam recently presented by MOSSAD? Was he one of Saddam's former bodyguards?
A: To an extent, yes. But certainly not in the way presented. Just remember this: if pilots can be conditioned to commandeer airliners that will fly into certain death, how hard is it to "Produce" a "bodyguard?"

Q: (L) Piece of cake to produce a bodyguard, I guess. (A) He is saying exactly what the Israelis want him to say. He is not revealing any particular data that counts. It is just general things. Anybody could say such things and be called a "bodyguard." (L) Exactly. Okay, you say that an EM pulse brought down the shuttle. (A) Where did the EM pulse come from?
A: From space based satellite.

Q: (A) Does NASA know about the cause?
A: There are some who suspect.

Q: (L) Which explains why they are so anxious to convince everyone that it was NOT sabotage. Like Wellstone's death, there was "no question" about it being a terrorist attack. The likelihood is that the Bush Junta was behind Wellstone's death. In both cases they "know" the cause and want to divert the attention away from it. But, in the case of the shuttle, they aren't "dirty," but they most definitely do NOT want anyone to realize that they also are not "in charge." It makes me think of the remark the C's made a few years ago about the reason for the Military Industrial Complex build-up and manipulations. C's said that the REAL enemy is "out there" and that war was just a "cover" to prevent the masses from realizing what they were really doing. Maybe Bush and the gang are really convinced, in their own minds, that they are acting to "protect" humanity from this threat. Meanwhile, they are simply being driven to fulfill the agenda of the Consortium. And it is so interesting that the shuttle broke up over Palestine, Texas... as though it was saying to Bush: this is what is going to happen to you: Palestine is going to be your destruction. But, of course, Bush would be incapable of perceiving it in that context. Is it so that a message was intended in this event?
A: As always, confusion is the mask.

Q: (L) In other words, everyone's reaction to the event will depend on their own context. There is the view that it was a "message to Bush." Bush and gang will, of course, see it only as a stimulus to faster and more "decisive" military action. So, it will really work on them the way it is wanted. (A) And of course, we wonder how they will make use of this event.

A: The primary effect among the masses will be shock, thus making them less resistant to Bush's policies. Still other groups will see the clear threat to Bush and Co. from their activities. Bush and Co. will, of course, seek to capitalize on the event even while remaining in the dark as to its meaning. But there most certainly is awareness among them that there is a "Maverick" element at loose. Bush has even "felt" a bit of primal fear in respect of this event.

-Fantastic Lad