Letter Never Sent

Here some interesting things I came across:

• FBI tortures Jordanian student in San Diego after unlawfully arresting him:
  

  After 20 FBI agents converged on him in the street outside his San Diego home, Awadallah was questioned and subsequently detained at four different jails, including New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center. He claims a guard there pushed him into a wall while he was handcuffed, drawing blood, and yanked his hair to force him to face the American flag. …

  A devout Muslim, Awadallah alleged that while he was detained at San Diego Metropolitan Correctional Center, guards served him food he was forbidden by his religion to eat. He was later transferred to a jail in San Bernardino, Calif., then to a federal correctional facility in Oklahoma City, where he said a guard threw shoes at his head and face and swore at him. On Oct. 1, shackled in leg irons, he was flown to New York.

• City of New Orleans adds $1 to the minimum wage of $5.15. This is not enough of a raise but it’s a step in the right direction. Of course, some small businessmen are up in arms because they say it will increase their costs which would be about one penny on the dollar. Greedy fucks. The hospitality industry lives on the backs of underpaid immigrant labor. Of course they’ll argue it will increase costs. Plantation owners used the same arguments to support slavery. What’s right is right. Keep increasing it. The last time the minimum wage was increased was 1997. Someone who works 40 hours a week should be able to make a living. Period.
• In China, open your mouth to the wrong government officials and you could end up forcibly admitted to a psychiatric hospital. This disrespect for human values is what we have to fight every day. Here in the US and all over the world. This poor woman was put through shock therapy and imprisoned for protesting the seizure of her farm land.
• US puppet in Afghanistan, ex-Unocal alumn, Hamid Karzai is not feeling too safe right now. Seeing as how one of his ministers was assassinated. Sure is dangerous being a plaything of the US. He’s asking the US to send more troops to keep him in power.

Tov Jannson, creator of Moominland, died last summer at the age of 86. I wasn’t very familiar with her work, but there is something very sentimental and sweet about it.

1. Moomin Merchandise Those pillowcases are cute.
2. Good moomin resource.

I think my personality type, sometimes referred to as the vigilant personality, can seem prone to paranoia. It seems that way to me a lot. It’s not the kind of paranoia where I think that my family is putting poison in my coffee or anything like that. It’s just that I have a sense that things happen for a reason and that there is a lot more going on than meets the eye. I think it also comes from an allergy to bullshit and dishonesty. Here are some good quotations on paranoia:

No matter how paranoid I get, it’s never enough to keep up.

Freedom is just a hallucination created by a pathological lack of paranoia.

“There are two kinds of paranoia: Total, and insufficient. I am both, because if you think you are sufficiently paranoid, you’re not.”
– Guildenstern, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

“When everyone is out to get to you, being paranoid isn’t going to help.” –
– Q, Star Trek: The Next Generation

“Paranoia is only the leading edge of the discovery that everything in the world is connected.”
– The Illuminatus Trilogy

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you – Nirvana

Just when you thought you weren’t being recorded, scanned, probed, and monitored enough. The FCC has just approved the use of Ultra-Wideband Technology for Law Enforcement. This will allow police to see through walls, underground, and into your body. This also restricts the ability to setup an invisible UWB perimeter to law enforcement. Only law enforcement will be authorized to apply UWB in this manner and we know THEY would never abuse this privilege. You know, why can’t we use this to protect ourselves? What if I wanted to set up an RF perimeter around my house to let me know when people were intruding? I wonder if there is a way to jam such frequencies.

Ground Penetrating Radar Systems: GPRs must be operated below 960 MHz or in the frequency band 3.1-10.6 GHz. GPRs operate only when in contact with or within close proximity of, the ground for the purpose of detecting or obtaining the images of buried objects. The energy from the GPR is intentionally directed down into the ground for this purpose. Operation is restricted to law enforcement, fire and rescue organizations, to scientific research institutions, to commercial mining companies, and to construction companies.

Wall Imaging Systems: Wall-imaging systems must be operated below 960 MHz or in the frequency band 3.1-10.6 GHz. Wall-imaging systems are designed to detect the location of objects contained within a ?wall,? such as a concrete structure, the side of a bridge, or the wall of a mine. Operation is restricted to law enforcement, fire and rescue organizations, to scientific research institutions, to commercial mining companies, and to construction companies.

Through-wall Imaging Systems: These systems must be operated below 960 MHz or in the frequency band 1.99-10.6 GHz. Through-wall imaging systems detect the location or movement of persons or objects that are located on the other side of a structure such as a wall. Operation is limited to law enforcement, fire and rescue organizations.

Medical Systems: These devices must be operated in the frequency band 3.1-10.6 GHz. A medical imaging system may be used for a variety of health applications to ?see? inside the body of a person or animal. Operation must be at the direction of, or under the supervision of, a licensed health care practitioner.

Surveillance Systems: Although technically these devices are not imaging systems, for regulatory purposes they will be treated in the same way as through-wall imaging and will be permitted to operate in the frequency band 1.99-10.6 GHz. Surveillance systems operate as ?security fences? by establishing a stationary RF perimeter field and detecting the intrusion of persons or objects in that field. Operation is limited to law enforcement, fire and rescue organizations, to public utilities and to industrial entities.

From Cryptome. Original link here.

I was reading that the infamous goatse.cx website may be down. I was at work when I wrote this so I wasn’t willing to check. Be warned, this site is NOT safe for work. You only need to see it once to find out why. As the article from Kuro5hin.org points out goatse.cx has been around for a few years ensnaring unwary netizens. I used to recommend it to people as a joke just to see their reactions. Experiencing goatse.cx is an internet rite of passage, once you have seen it you will never forget it. You have been warned!

• Seems to be the new home (Not safe for work or for people with weak hearts)
• An interview with the goat man himself. (Also not safe for work)

WB Options PKD’s Scanner

Warner Brothers has acquired the film rights to Philip K. Dick’s semi-autobiographical novel A Scanner Darkly for Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney’s production company, Section 8, Variety reported. The book tells the story of Bob Arctor, a man in the grip of drug dementia whose delusions prevent him from discerning between his day job as a narcotics officer and his paranoid alter ego, Fred, who’s submersed in the addict’s lifestyle, the trade paper reported. No director is attached, but sources told Variety that the film is a possible candidate for either computer or traditional animation.

The proposed movie had been set up at Muse Productions, where producer Chris Hanley had attached Leonardo DiCaprio and for a time courted music-video director Chris Cunningham to develop it as his first feature, the trade paper reported. Those people are no longer involved.

Thanks to George for the link. Btw, looking pretty buff there, G.

It’s hard to be optimistic about the future when all the evidence points to the complete loss of freedom in the United States. You’ll still have freedom of speech unless you say the wrong thing, you’ll still have freedom of assembly unless you meet with the wrong people, and you still be able to worship whichever religion you like unless your beliefs forbid you from serving the government.

In the works are plans to set up a network of surveillance cameras all over the city of Washington, D.C. The money has already been allocated. This could be the blueprint for the entire country. In the likely future your image may be captured and recorded hundreds or thousands of times. In conjunction with facial recognition software large databases could be constructed where your movements could be stored and recorded for years. Law enforcement is also demanding new powers. Police now get search warrants for book store records to check what books certain people read. So, what you read could be used against you. After September 11, there has been a power grab by the authoritarian element of our society, but is there any hope of change? Interestingly, as the US slides towards the abyss of fascism there are signs that in some places outside America there is change for the better. In the former Soviet Union, a military secrecy law that has been used to prosecute whistle-blowers has been overturned by the Russian Supreme Court. Maybe there is still some hope that this trend can be reversed. Who knows if people will still be up for this War on Terrorism in a few years?