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Today's TERROR ALERT level is:
AQUA!
William Pitt, 1783"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
"The Jewish, Polish and German focus groups polled very negative on this, and the WWII veterans focus groups pretty much wrecked the interview rooms. The neo-nazi and KKK focus groups, on the other hand, did respond favorably."
"Very well, Mr. Rumsfeld, my old friend! The filthy Kurds, they die in their own shit like the pigs they are!"
You really ought to read this.
Keep all this in mind when the Moron in Chief and SecDef Rumsfeld talk about the weapons of mass destruction Iraq has. They should well know about them. After all, the U.S. SOLD Iraq the technology and most of the raw materials for them.
Hey, here's something you can do at home. If you have a Republican Congresscritter and/or Senator(s), why not write them and ask them how they feel about the Republican administration in the 80's selling Saddam weapons and technology and treating Iraq as a friendly nation, while Saddam was nerve gassing Iraqi citizens.
I swear, every day it just keeps getting worse!
As for the Waterloo of South Carolina, most of the facts are well-known, and among this group of Republicans, what happened has taken on the air of an unsolved crime, a cold case, with Karl Rove being the prime suspect. Bush loyalists, maybe working for the campaign, maybe just representing its interests, claimed in parking-lot handouts and telephone "push polls" and whisper campaigns that McCain’s wife, Cindy, was a drug addict, that McCain might be mentally unstable from his captivity in Vietnam, and that the senator had fathered a black child with a prostitute. Callers push-polled members of a South Carolina right-to-life organization and other groups, asking if the black baby might influence their vote. Now here’s the twist, the part that drives McCain admirers insane to this very day: That last rumor took seed because the McCains had done an especially admirable thing. Years back they’d adopted a baby from a Mother Teresa orphanage in Bangladesh. Bridget, now eleven years old, waved along with the rest of the McCain brood from stages across the state, a dark-skinned child inadvertently providing a photo op for slander. The attacks were of a level and vitriol that even McCain, who was regularly beaten in captivity, could not ignore. He began to answer the slights, strayed off message about how he would lead the nation if he got the chance, and lost the war for South Carolina. Bush emerged from the showdown upright and victorious . . . and onward he marched.
Quoth The Slacktivist:
Whether Mr. Bush was directly behind this despicable, sinful, racist behavior or not, these things are clear: a. Bush knew about it. b. Bush benefited from it -- and would not be president had it not been for this racist appeal. c. Bush has never, ever publicly apologized for it.
God's Mercy! And the Moron in Chief has the gall to condemn Trent Lott. Hell, it almost makes me feel sorry for the old scumbag. Almost.
"A lot of people in Washington have been trying to nail me for a long time," Lott said. "When you’re from Mississippi and you’re a conservative and you’re a Christian, there are a lot of people that don’t like that. I fell into their trap and so I have only myself to blame." He wouldn't say who those political enemies were.
Lott, there was no trap. There was only your own big mouth and your own racism. You shot off your mouth, at least three times in public, and that’s it. Not a trap. Not a conspiracy of liberals and atheists. It’s just yourself to blame.
Alas, A Blog has a comprehensive update on the INS roundups including this from the ACLU.
...the agency recently failed to process more than 200,000 change of address forms and then unceremoniously dumped them in the largest underground records facility in the world < an abandoned mine near Kansas City > putting hundreds of thousands at risk of wrongful arrest and deportation for failing to report a change of address.
O.K. Hundreds of Middle Eastern men and young men and boys. Legally here in the US. They complied with the lawful request. And due to the fact that the INS essentially THREW OUT their paperwork, these Middle Eastern men are arrested and imprisoned.
Because they obeyed the law and the INS SCREWED UP THEIR PAPERWORK!
Now, get this. The EXACT SAME THING can likely occur as other INS offices direct Middle Eastern Men and young men and boys to show up and establish their legal residency bona fides.
Do you honestly think that, seeing what happened in California, the average, legally resident in the US Iranian is going to show up without a lawyer? Think of what this will do to the already moribund INS bureaucracy.
Click on that link for Alas, A Blog up there, read the details & follow the links.
And then, PLEASE, for the love of our Constitution, fax and email your Senators and Representative in Washington, D.C. and tell them that something must be done to turn back this repressive tide and the Ashcroft assault on the Bill of Rights.
Now, go HERE, RIGHT NOW! Then, try and convince yourself that you still have rights under the Bush/Ashcroft regime.
Speaking of the GOP, have you seen this? Yep. Those poor multimillionaires and billionaires, groaning under the yoke of taxes, pleading for relief. And those poor and middle class taxpayers, shirking their fair share of the tax burden! Well, the GOP will soon set things to right! Permanent tax cuts for the rich, and increased taxes for the poor and middle classes!
REMEMBER this the next time Ari Fleischer or any other Republican says ONE WORD about "Tax and Spend Democrats"!
While Bill Gates, Donald Trump, and thousands of professional athletes heave a weary sigh of relief, knowing that the onerous tax burdern they have shouldered for so long will be reduced by a generous and beneficent GOP, two dozen professional firefighters who worked around the clock the summer of 2002, battling wildfires in the west, are being told to hand over their overtime pay.
Here, now! Looks like John Ashcroft runs in the same racist scumbag circles as Trent Lott. Link O Rama time! Link here & here & here & here.
So, the question on the table is this: Will we see the same determination by the Press to investigate and expose this racist scumbag?
Interesting editorial by Bob Herbert. (NY Times registration required. Be creative!)
People will soon be given access to knowledge from one of the world's foremost technology institutes for free over the internet, as BBC World ClickOnline's Ian Hardy reports.
Like almost every organisation in the US, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology spent the late 1990s struggling with the question of how to take advantage of the internet.
Many other colleges launched online degree courses aimed at anyone with a modem and a big wallet.
But MIT has taken a completely different direction with a project called OpenCourseWare (OCW) that could stop the trend of commercialising online education dead in its tracks.
The first group of courses are set to be published on the internet on 30 September, including subjects like anthropology, biology, chemistry and computer science.
"I genuinely think there was an 'a-ha' moment when they said our mission was actually to enhance education," said Anne Margulies, Executive Director of OCW.
"Why don't we, instead of trying to sell our knowledge over the internet, just give it away."
Over the next 10 years, MIT will move all its existing coursework on to the internet.
There will be no online degrees for sale, however. Instead, it will offer thousands of pages of information, available to anyone around the globe at no cost, as well as hours and hours of streaming video lectures, seminars and experiments.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. MIT wants to start nothing short of a global revolution in education.
"Our hope and aspiration is that by setting an example, other universities will also put their valued materials on the internet and thereby make a truly profound and fundamental impact on learning and education worldwide," said MIT's Professor Dick Yue.
MIT admits that getting OpenCourseWare ready for its internet debut has been a huge challenge.
Staff have spent months clearing up complex copyright issues and designing software tools that will enable hundreds of faculty members to upload their daily lecture notes and video clips directly onto the website.
At a time when many internet administrators in America have been removing any technological resources that could be of use to terrorists, MIT will not be sifting online information.
"With regard to censoring or filtering what might be construed as sensitive materials, at this time we are not doing any of that kind of censorship," said Laura Koller, OCW Project Manager.
"As we go forward through our pilot project those issues will certainly come up again and be revisited by faculty, administrators and so forth. But at this time we're publishing all the materials we get."
Most websites now have abandoned the idea of offering totally free content.
The trick is to lure you to the site with good intentions, then start entangling you in charges.
MIT are offering an eternal promise, rare these days on the world wide web.
"There is no revenue objective for OCW, ever. It will always be free," insisted Ms Margulies.
MIT staff point out that if this initiative is successful, and other institutions follow, it will put the net back on track towards its original goal of sharing information and knowledge around the world, rather than selling CDs and t-shirts.
Pretty Good Privacy lives! The PGP Corporation has purchased the rights to most of PGP from Network Associates.
PGP, the best personal encryption package for the individual, had been languishing ever since Network Associates, Inc. ceased all development and support for it some time ago.
Beginning in the fourth quarter of 2002, they will begin selling NEW PGP products, including the long awaited PGP for Mac OS X! They will continue the very valuable service of providing freeware versions of PGP for non-commercial use. They even have a version of PGP for Palm OS devices in the pipeline.
For privacy minded individuals, human rights workers, indeed, anyone who wants to keep their private stuff private, this is great news.
"Gosh! I left my copy of the Bill of Rights at home! How embarrassing!"
Well, fret no more! Now you can have your very own pocket-sized copy of the Bill of Rights, printed on a sturdy sheet of steel, coated with plastic to protect the printing.
Yes, this version of the Bill of Rights JUST MIGHT cause trouble at airports or other places that use metal detectors.
"May I have the Bill of Rights back, please?"
"Uhhhh.... I'll have to talk to my supervisor."
Hijinx Ensue!
Don't leave home without it!
Just scroll on down past all that blather about Human Rights and you'll find some very incriminating words of mine concerning your biblehumping boss at the Justice Department, and the Moron in Chief himself.
I stand FULLY behind each and every word.
You agents have to make a choice. You have to choose to make a stand of your own.
You can honor the oath you swore as an agent of the FBI, an oath to "protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" and demonstrate your loyalty to that Constitution, or you can be good little order-following drones of The Moron in Chief and "Thumbscrew" Al Gonzales.
You can stand WITH the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, or you can tread UPON them.
The Offical Hacktivismo Website
ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES!
The Hacktivismo FAQ.
The Harlem Declaration of Hacktivismo
At Defcon 9 in 2001, cDc presented a panel on hacktivism.
You can read the transcript and see the viewgraphs here.
The never ending battle for Human Rights and Sovereignty goes on inside the borders of North America, as well as across the oceans.
Here's one site concerning an American Indian tribe struggling to regain their lands.
Click here to sign their petition demanding that the US Government recognize their original status.
20 minutes a month. One letter a month. Some postage.
With these simple things, you can stop an illegal execution. You can stop the torture. You can force the prison gates to swing wide and let an innocent person walk free.
Amnesty International - US. Click HERE to add your voice to the thousands who demand justice for the oppressed worldwide.
20 minutes a month. One letter a month. Some postage.
Camera/Shy allows anyone to hide text inside standard GIF images. So, for example, someone in China could put up a website with pictures from a birthday party, and Camera/Shy could hide detailed information on the latest atrocities commited against Falun Gong by the Public Safety Bureau, the Chinese Secret Police.
Anyone in the free world could then use Camera/Shy to extract the text from the images and spread the word.
Read all the details about Camera/Shy HERE.
Download the latest version of Camera/Shy HERE.
Access my page of personal cyptography links HERE. Might as well get a copy of PGP for your computer while you're online.
To quote Dr. Emilio Lizardo, "Jesu Christo! Make the ganglia TWITCH!"
We just cured blindness.
Let me say that again. We Just Cured Blindness!
Read all about it in the September 2002 issue of WIRED. It's the cover story, or online here.
By the way, the cover photo is not Photoshopped. That guy REALLY DOES have a William Gibson-esque jack in his head.
There are three sites I read every day.
The first site is This Modern World, the site of cartoonist Tom Tomorrow. His weblog is just chockablock (I've always wanted to use "chockablock" in a sentence) full of tasty links to stories of interest, many of whch are originally found here: Cursor.org. These guys read everything so you don't have to, and then select and link to the very best articles and news stories of the day.
The third site is Eschaton. Run by Atrios, a Mystery Man if ever there was one, lots of informative links and some of the best reader commentary to be found anywhere on the web!
It's a great way to start the morning. A big steaming mug o' joe, and Tom Tomorrow, Cursor and Eschaton on the monitor.
Another site to bookmark is Alternative News Network
Hey, here's an interesting site. The Moron in Chief, after daddy got him a nice safe Air National Guard gig to keep him out of the Viet-Nam war, decided that he really didn't need to actually show up for duty during the last year of his enlistment.
See this site for details.
I don't know about you, but the thought of that coward in the Oval Office sending far better men and women than he can ever hope to be, to their deaths in Iraq, sickens me beyond words.
John Gilmore, one of the more outspoken civil libertarians in the digital world, has sued John Ashcroft over his "secret" orders forcing US airlines to demand identification before you can go about your lawful occasions via commercial air travel.
Read the details here.
Way to go, Mr. Gilmore! Give him hell!
Speaking of that hypocritical yahoo Ashcroft, seems he's been found out on his whole dubious story about the backdrop that coincidentally hides a seminude female statue.
The New York DAILY NEWS in an exclusive story, reveals details from leaked internal Justice Department emails.
In a Nov. 29, 2001, E-mail, an aide was instructed to "obtain three bids for the permanent drape hiding the statues," "Spirit of Justice" and her male companion, "Majesty of Law." A later E-mail said, "The pipe [frame] and drape to hide the statues will be installed in the Great Hall tomorrow." And a Jan. 23 E-mail announced that, "The new drape in the Great Hall to cover the statues has been installed."
Not a word about "backdrops", but a whole lot of talk about "hiding" and "covering".
Read the full online story here.
Well, the good news is that Operation TIPS seems to be dead. Enough citizens took their responsibilities as citizens seriously enough to contact their Representatives and Senators about this, and the Press also took a close look at TIPS. Enough heat was generated that the Moron in Chief and Ashcroft have backed down.
The bad news is that the Feds now want to collect and correlate EVERY SINGLE FACT of YOUR lives into a Federal database. "Total Information Awareness", they call it. All your purchases. All your prescription medications. All your videotape/DVD purchases & rentals. What magazines you subscribe to. What movies you buy tickets to see. Who you call on the telephone. Who calls you on the telephone. Who you send email to. Who sends you email. What websites you visit.
The name of this is the Information Awareness Office.And the fellow in charge of all this is John Poindexter, one of the convicted felons of the Iran Contra scandal under Ronald Reagan and George Bush the Elder, the then Director of the CIA.
By the way, they have removed the logo/seal of the IAO from the website.
You can see the original site here.
That "eye and keyhole" logo up there is a joke. The IAO logo is REAL. The All Seeing Eye, casting it's gaze upon everyone on Earth.
But it's OK. It's all for our own good and safety, you know.
Pedophile Priest: You see us as being perverted because we're different from you! People are afraid of us because they don't understand, and sometimes, it's easier to persecute than to understand!
American Catholic Laity: Dude! You have sex with children!
Pedophile Priest: We are human! Most of us didn't even choose to be attracted to young boys! We were born that way! We can't help the way we are, and if you all can't understand that, well, then, I guess you'll just have to put us away!
American Catholic Laity: Dude! You have SEX with CHILDREN!
More American Catholic Laity: Yeah! Y'know, we believe in equality for everybody and tolerance and all that gay stuff, but dude, fuck you!
American Catholic Laity: Seriously!
(Slightly paraphrased from South Park. Ah, the simple innocent wisdom of children!)
I really respect Tom Tomorrow. He skewers both the Right and the Left, and instills an amazing amount of common sense into the few panels of his weekly cartoons.
I was particularly impressed by this one:
This is another good one!
I live in Boston, the city that two of the hijacked aircraft took off from.
I am not changing my behavior one bit. I rode the Boston subway Wednesday, the day after the awful events in New York City and Washington, D.C. I walked along the Charles River, and for a while, sat on a bench in Copley Square across from the evacuated Boston Public Library. My travels took me past the Old Granary Burying Ground. The victims of the Boston Massacre are buried there. I stood there for a while and looked at their memorial through the wrought iron fence.
Nearby, across from the State House, stands the memorial to Col. Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts 54th. I spent some time there, as well.
Then I returned home and again saw the World Trade Center towers take their mortal blows. And I heard of the bravery and sacrifice of those passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 93.
To do any less would dishonor the memory and the sacrifice of these three groups of heroes.
As for what the Civilized world must do, if Bin Laden is the individual behind this, he must be arrested and given a fair trial.
We set the precedent with the Nuremburg trials, when it comes to crimes against humanity. With the war crimes trials in The Hague and the arrest of Slobodon Milosovich, as well as the arrest and aborted prosecution of Augusto Pinochet, we have reaffirmed that precedent and expanded it to make state leaders answerable for their actions.
Civilization stands or falls, based on if it chooses law or anarchy.
We MUST choose to stand in the light. We MUST choose to observe the law and to be the agents of justice, not vengeance.
Bin Laden MUST be given a fair trial, a trial televised for all to see and hear. It must be plainly seen that Law and Justice are the pillars and walls that support and protect Civilization.
And yes, Civilization MUST also endure the atrocities that will be committed against it by those who would seek the release of Bin Laden.
Civilization has fought many bloody wars to uphold the rules of Law & Civilization.
Osama Bin Laden must be brought to trial.
It is the only Civilized thing to do.
I really admire Russell Means. I just found his web site and what he had to say concerning the awful events of 9/11/2001 make a lot of sense. I only wish I had seen them earlier.
Here's a quote that Ashcroft, Chaney and the Moron in Chief need to have their noses rubbed in on a daily basis.
"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does NOT mean to stand by the President or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country." ~ Theodore Roosevelt
On December 7th 2001, a date which will live in infamy for yet another reason, John Ashcroft, the Attorney General of the United States said the following:
"...to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve."
If this be treason, then let us make the most of it!
Bush is a moron. Not only is he a moron, he has no business whatsoever being President, let alone any office higher than that of apprentice spittoon sanitizer. Ashcroft is a bluenosed biblehumping buffoon who is no better suited to be Attorney General than Charles Manson. Dick Chaney is SO far in the pockets of the oil interests that, if we had an unbiased Justice Department, he would be under investigation for massive conflict of interest. (And God bless and support the GAO for taking it's responsibilities seriously and suing the bastard!)
Yes, I FERVENTLY disagree with the policies of the Bush Administration, and I will vehemently criticize Bush and his cadre of right wing Yahoos whenever I, as a citizen, see fit, in whatever manner I see fit, be it here on my website, in a letter to the editor of the Boston GLOBE, in a letter to to the Moron in Chief himself or while standing upon a soapbox in the middle of Boston Common.
So, Mr. Ashcroft, I metaphorically spit in your jaundiced eye, as is the right and proud privilege of EVERY American since the Revolution, when any member of the Hired Help in D.C. forgets his place and station as a civil servant, and seeks to place himself above the citizenry whom he supposedly serves.
Should you wish to contest this fact, you pious hypocrite, you know where to find me.
And he just keeps getting more idiotic! John Ashcroft, the bluenosed biblehumper who is, for reasons incomprehensable to most of humanity, the Attorney General of the United States, has decided to hide a pair of statues that have stood in the Justice Department for 50 years. Why? Well, The Spirit of Justice is a 12 foot tall woman with an exposed breast, and by God!, a half nekked woman is no fit sight for a God-Fearing man like John Ashcroft. And he's probably not all that thrilled with the Majesty of Law, a 12 foot tall male figure whose loins are barely covered by a cloth.
The irony of Ashcroft placing opaque drapes before these icons of Justice and Law, while he oversees the dismantling of the Bill of Rights, is truly gut-wrenching, and more than a little creepy, too.
You know, John, you can seek to hide your actions from a couple of statues, but it's not the statues you need to worry about. They are not going to come to life, Golem-like, to smite the enemies of freedom (oh, where is Rabbi Loew when we really need him?). No, it is the people of the United States that you really need to fear. John Mitchell thought he had nothing to fear, and look what happened to him!
No, it's not those statues behind your back you need to worry about, it's some now-anonymous Justice Department agent who will serve you with the indictment for egregious abuses of your authority while in office.
And one day, A US Marshall will slap the cuffs on you and haul your self-rightious ass off to a Federal Pen.
It can't happen soon enough for me.
"After all, PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) is out on the net, right? There aren't that many people that are able to pick up, you just can't set up PGP between you and somebody else. And if you do, it's a good thing to look at."Personal Cryptography
   
   
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The above icons indicate how many Email and Newsgroup spammers I've had
kicked off of their Internet Service Providers. Some have been well hidden
behind diverse disguises and other tricks, but nevertheless, they have been
hunted down and their heads now adorn pikes on my homepage.
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Hits since February 11, 1999 |