General
09
Jan 03
The New Holocaust
First they came for the Palestinians. The Israelis are clearly perpetrating a racist ethnic cleansing
On Tuesday, Israel further tightened restrictions, saying only Palestinian workers age 35 and over could enter Israel, the military said. Before the current conflict erupted in September 2000, more than 100,000 Palestinian workers crossed into Israel every day, providing a key source of income for the West Bank and Gaza.
Angered by the deadliest suicide attack in nearly a year, Israel vowed Monday to shut down three universities in the Palestinian territories and restrict the travel of Palestinian leaders in an effort to crack down on militants.
09
Jan 03
Awesome. I love Helen Thomas
MR. FLEISCHER: Good afternoon and happy New Year to everybody. The President began his day with an intelligence briefing, followed by an FBI briefing. Then he had a series of policy briefings. And this afternoon, the President will look forward to a Cabinet meeting where the President will discuss with members of his Cabinet his agenda for the year. The President is going to focus on economic growth, making America a more compassionate country, and providing for the security of our nation abroad and on the homefront.
And with that, I’m more than happy to take your questions. Helen.
Q At the earlier briefing, Ari, you said that the President deplored the taking of innocent lives. Does that apply to all innocent lives in the world? And I have a follow-up.
MR. FLEISCHER: I refer specifically to a horrible terrorist attack on Tel Aviv that killed scores and wounded hundreds. And the President, as he said in his statement yesterday, deplores in the strongest terms the taking of those lives and the wounding of those people, innocents in Israel.
Q My follow-up is, why does he want to drop bombs on innocent Iraqis?
MR. FLEISCHER: Helen, the question is how to protect Americans, and our allies and friends —
Q They’re not attacking you.
MR. FLEISCHER: — from a country —
Q Have they laid the glove on you or on the United States, the Iraqis, in 11 years?
MR. FLEISCHER: I guess you have forgotten about the Americans who were killed in the first Gulf War as a result of Saddam Hussein’s aggression then.
Q Is this revenge, 11 years of revenge?
MR. FLEISCHER: Helen, I think you know very well that the President’s position is that he wants to avert war, and that the President has asked the United Nations to go into Iraq to help with the purpose of averting war.
Q Would the President attack innocent Iraqi lives?
MR. FLEISCHER: The President wants to make certain that he can defend our country, defend our interests, defend the region, and make certain that American lives are not lost.
Q And he thinks they are a threat to us?
MR. FLEISCHER: There is no question that the President thinks that Iraq is a threat to the United States.
Q The Iraqi people?
MR. FLEISCHER: The Iraqi people are represented by their government. If there was regime change, the Iraqi —
Q So they will be vulnerable?
MR. FLEISCHER: Actually, the President has made it very clear that he has not dispute with the people of Iraq. That’s why the American policy remains a policy of regime change. There is no question the people of Iraq —
Q That’s a decision for them to make, isn’t it? It’s their country.
MR. FLEISCHER: Helen, if you think that the people of Iraq are in a position to dictate who their dictator is, I don’t think that has been what history has shown.
Q I think many countries don’t have — people don’t have the decision — including us.
08
Jan 03
‘DVD Jon’ scores huge legal victory
Cool. Link.
A Norwegian teenager who helped crack a code meant to protect the content of DVDs won full backing from an Oslo court on Tuesday. The court acquitted him on all charges, a ruling that comes as a crushing blow to public prosecutors and entertainment giants.
07
Jan 03
Iraq Is No Afghanistan
It just occurred to me that if it had not been for the fall of the Soviet Union I doubt the whole Gulf War thing would have happened. At least during the Cold War there was some balance in the world, as fucked up as that was. Now I have to live in Babylon, in the belly of the Evil Empire praying for the day when normalcy and moderation and peace will emerge.
My heart goes out to all the American and Iraqi people and families that will lose their lives and loved ones in this corporate/military takeover of Iraq. It must be a good feeling to know you might die as part of some power struggle by global elites. If that’s patriotism then you can shove it up your ass. In fact, I hope our wayward military learns a lesson when and if this charade happens. We need to be taken down a notch.
07
Jan 03
Our beloved congress
As it happens, only one of the hundreds of saber-rattlers in congress has a son in the military. I think these pigs at the trough ought to be the first to ship out in the event of war. I’m sure that idiot Lieberman or Lott can shoulder a modern-day musket. We’d probably be better off if they caught the wrong end of an Iraqi grenade or something. Lord knows they do nothing for us here but drive us to betray the very principles our constitution is supposed to uphold.
03
Jan 03
Wanted: Shrikes
I was thinking. Maybe I should see if some shrikes wanted to move into the neighborhood.
Feathered Terror: The Strange World of the Shrike:
The hunter spots his prey. He quickly swoops down and slams his victim to the ground. Battering it into submission with repeated blows to its neck, he picks it up and . . . impales it upon a spike?
Such violence seems more suited to a mad slasher in a horror movie than a robin-sized songbird. Yet this behavior is the ingenious adaptation of the shrike, a bird with the carnivorous tastes of a hawk without the raptor’s full set of predatory equipment. Like hawks, shrikes have keen eyesight and sharp beaks, but they do not have the same powerful talons. “They are perching birds with delicate feet,” says Carola Haas, a wildlife ecologist at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg. “Consequently they can’t hold on to their food and eat it at the same time.”
So what’s a hungry shrike to do but look to nature for the necessary silverware? The birds use everything from cactus spines to hawthorn thorns to barbed wire barbs for skewering their prey, which includes insects, amphibians, reptiles, other birds and even small mammals. The two American shrike species, the loggerhead and the northern, are the only songbirds in the country that regularly prey on other adult songbirds. But despite their butchering habits, shrikes are in trouble. Data are scant for the northern, which breeds in Alaska and Canada, and ranges as far south as New Mexico in the winter. But the loggerhead, once found throughout most of the United States (as well as in Canada and Mexico), has declined an average of 3.6 percent yearly since 1966, according to U.S. Geological Survey figures.
02
Jan 03
Fascist Cog of The Day
Got a visit from some Pentagon desk jockey looking for information on GPS jamming. The DoD is concerned with this given their tactical reliance on GPS technology which they use to target missiles and direct units. They use an encrypted GPS system that operates on a secret restricted band, but the Pentagon still has concerns about GPS jamming.
02 Jan, Thu, 14:01:15 WCS2-PENT-2.NIPR.MIL Netscape 3 Other
02 Jan, Thu, 14:01:16 WCS2-PENT.NIPR.MIL MSIE 6 Windows 2000
From this Google search on “gps “aviaconversia”“.