Letter Never Sent

Police in Houston arrested 425 young adults at a local K-Mart and Sonic restaurant for hanging out. Don’t you think they could have handled this a little better? Was it really necessary to ARREST 425 people for trespass in a K-Mart PARKING LOT? This is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard or seen police do, and I’ve seen a lot. When I hear stuff like this it makes me want to carry a video camera around to catch it all on tape.

Related:

From Cryptome.org:

The known facts are as follows. On or about the first week of July this year an agreement was reached between an unknown American (male, mid-forties) temporarily assigned to the CIA chief of station in Berlin and two Iraqi ex-patriate businessmen (one living in Kiel, a former Iraqi air force electrical engineer who spoke near-fluent English, and the other from a suburb of Hamburg). The agreement focused on obtaining records from the Iraqi embassy (and consular offices in particular) in Berlin, either covertly or overtly “before November.” It appears that the latter was selected (perhaps as a result of a subsequent agreement with the BND and/or others in the Shroeder administration).

Apparently one of the two Iraqis was convinced that the diplomatic compound housed certain documents that could establish a link between at least one consular official and the Sept. 11 hijackers who operated primarily out of Germany.

As you know, the break-in into the Iraqi compound in Berlin occurred yesterday and the previously unknown group of dissidents managed to have nearly six hours to search for records. What is clear is that our intelligence services (with or without the knowledge of the German authorities) initiated an incident that is in breach of international law—the unauthorized, forced entry of a diplomatic compound. The rest of this puzzle is speculation.

Russia selling arms to China makes US hawks nervous. What do they expect from the rest of the world when we throw our military weight around? Less powerful groups will assist one another against a perceived common threat, ie. the US.

I love reading about the piracy wars. I’m a proponent of non-commercial piracy. Anything that takes money away from corrupt institutions is something I support. The music and movie industries have long enaged in price-fixing and market manipulation to the detriment of the rest of us, the people who are expected to pony up our hard-earned money for these created desires. I say download anything you want regardless of what they say. People know best what is right and wrong.

• General update on the ‘piracy’ wars. RIAA is having conniptions. Fuck ’em. People’s expectations are changing. They are being enlightened and empowered by technology. If you can hear something you can make an mp3 of it.
• RIAA trying to go after individual file sharers. They’re getting desperate. People will meet in person if they need to, to share files. We need to supplement the global internet with local area networks to prevent snooping by these organizations. There’s very little they could do to prevent infringement on a smaller level.
• DOJ to swappers: Law’s not on your side. Big Brother to get in on the action at the behest of their paymasters. During his confirmation hearing in June 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft told Congress that “given the fact that much of America’s strength in the world economy is a result of our being the developer and promoter of most of the valuable software, we cannot allow the assets that are held electronically to be pirated or infringed. And so we will make a priority of cybercrime issues.” This is an attempt to put the brakes on societal change. Christopher Cookson, executive vice president of Warner Bros. and another panelist, said there was “a need for governments to step in and maintain order in society.”

• CNN chief claims US media ‘censored’ war
• Why Were Government Propaganda Experts Working On News At CNN? Military’s so-called ‘psyops’ propaganda unit employed at CNN.
• USA Today Repeats Myths on Iraq Inspectors