Letter Never Sent

Thank goodness for the ACLU (membership 35$). They’re trying to block the use of an x-ray security machine that can view your body through clothing [pic].

NEW YORK — The American Civil Liberties Union today called upon Orlando International Airport to remove a controversial new X-ray body-scanning device that can see through clothing and show a person’s naked body.

“This body-scan technology is nothing more than an electronic strip search,” said Barry Steinhardt, ACLU Associate Director. “This technology brings an extraordinary potential for abuse. We certainly should not be using it in our airports before other, less intrusive alternatives have been tried out.”

Steinhardt cited as an example of a less-intrusive approach another technology being tested in Orlando, a particle analyzer that blows air on passengers as they walk through a short corridor and reacts if any explosives particles are detected.

Continue reading →

One journalist’s experience trying to find out about shadow government bunker ‘Site-R’. This piece also illustrates the operating mentality of the FBI and other fascist cogs. *chuckle* I’m heartened to know that if and when we are attacked with nuclear weapons our fearless leaders will be snug and safe deep in their underground burrows:

It is officer Powers, the cop the candle lady told me about. And he immediately lets known his displeasure.

“Are you an American?” he shouts, shaking his head. “Do you speak English?

I answer yes to both.

“Do you read English?”

Before I can answer that question, he shouts again, demanding that I take my hands out of my pockets because, he says, “it makes me want to shoot somebody.”

Then he launches into his take on the media.

“Our boys are dying over there. Unacceptable. You guys in the media, don’t you think that Saddam Hussein was watching CNN?” …
Then Powers.

“Tell your buddies in the media to keep the body count down,” he says. “Now, I don’t expect to see you up here again. Understand?” …

And, this is from the secretive fellow who wanted to sell the reporter photos of Site R over the internet:

“Howard, I am letting you know ahead of time that what I am giving you will be the largest story since Sep 11, the governments secret base. It is nicknamed the underground pentagon, it has 5 buildings, each 3 stories, a helipad, a national satellite comm. center,direct lines to the president, moscow, norad, and other top notch organizations. Not only can I get you the pics, and/or film but I can give you the layout of any activities. So chump change will not be accepted for me risking my career. I know the shadow gov is the hottest thing going so be generous. Hope to do business soon. Mike.”

From Texans for Public Justice:

A little more than a year after more than 200 “Pioneers” narrowly helped put him in the White House, George W. Bush has rewarded at least 43 of these elite fundraisers with federal appointments. The Bush “Pioneers” raised a minimum of $100,000 for Bush by bundling together contributions of up to $1,000 (the legal limit) from other individuals. Bush’s 43 Pioneer appointees delivered more than $4.3 million to Bush’s presidential race. Collectively they also gave $204,000 to Bush’s two gubernatorial races.

“Political patronage is alive and well in the Bush White House,” said Craig McDonald, Director of Texans for Public Justice. “Rewarding big donors with ambassadorships is a sure-fire way to keep the campaign money rolling in. If Congress outlaws soft money, Pioneer bundling will become a blueprint for the future of special-interest politics in Washington.”

The highest-ranking Pioneers are Terrorism Czar Tom Ridge (a former Pennsylvania Governor) and Labor Secretary Elaine Chao (an ex-Heritage Foundation Fellow and the wife of U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell).

Other Pioneers who received Bush appointments include:

• 19 U.S. ambassadors to countries from Austria to Uruguay
• Five members of the Energy Department Transition Team that first envisioned Bush’s supply-side energy policy (including ex-Enron CEO Ken Lay) and
• Two seats on the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

More on the ‘Pioneers’ and their backgrounds available here.

Which is more likely, that the bodies of an estimated 500-800 Al Quaeda supposedly killed by our military vanished into thin air, or that our government is full of shit? Amazingly, the brilliant success and firefight reported by the US Military at Shahikot has resulted in a paltry handful of actual dead ‘terrorists’. The US killed more people crashing helicopters in the past few weeks than they have the phantasmic Al Quaeda.

Want a glimpse of how things really work? Follow the battle between the tech industry and hollywood to stop ‘piracy’. Michael Eisner of Disney Corp., who has suggested executing pirates, is up at Capitol Hill trying to force the government to come up with mandated technological barriers to prevent copying. There is no representation for the public. The entire debate is between the manufacturers and the content producers. At issue, is the reality that people don’t check with Hollywood before changing things. Despite their best measures to control everything big media is seeing that people all over the world are doing what comes natural thing…sharing. The internet has freed books, music, and video. Why should people be compelled to pay for something which they can borrow or copy from someone else? I say, fuck Michael Eisner, Jack Valenti, and all the other leeches like them. Piracy will continue even if people have to use camcorders to copy movies. Their is no hope to protect books. Text is what computers do best. You can download a book that someone scanned and ocred and it will be anywhere from 50-100 Kilobytes. That’s nothing. You could have 1500 books per 700 MB Disc. Movies are more of a problem, but there is no way to stop it without preventing people from creating videos entirely which would be nearly impossible.

Online one can find anything. Millions of people are involved in a large-scale process to share what they have. People are collaborating to create a virtual limitless library of culture. You can find sewing patterns, crochet patterns, recipes, television episodes, movies, music, music videos, books, comic books, and even scans of magazines like Playboy. All of these things shackeled by copyright. It is an exciting time to be alive.

America Still Has an Office of Disinformation. It’s Called the Pentagon from CommonDreams.org

In all frankness, the only thing more dishonest than an Office of Strategic Influence aimed at deceiving foreigners is the suggestion that the Bush administration, or any other since the Second World War, likes to tell Americans the truth.

Continue reading →

Pat Buchanan is blunt on the new American nuke policy:

Why would we use nuclear weapons on Iraq in retaliation for an attack on Israel, when Israel has its own nuclear weapons? Under what conceivable circumstances would we use atomic weapons on Syria? Does the United States claim a right of first use of atomic weapons against any “rogue state” that develops a weapon of mass destruction? If so, where does the president get the authority to launch such wars? Or was this document leaked to intimidate the “Axis of Evil”? Is it perhaps a product of the Office of Strategic Influence, the now-defunct disinformation agency of the Pentagon?

Read the rest here.

The United States government is making secret deals to hand over Al-Quaeda suspects to states which use torture. The US is prohibited by the constituiton from torturing suspects, but that’s not stopping them from violating the spirit of that prohibition. As if you needed any more proof that the government has no scruples or morality. Via the Syndey Morning Herald:

The United States has been secretly sending prisoners with suspected al-Qaeda connections to countries where torture during interrogation is legal, according to US diplomatic and intelligence sources.

Prisoners are being moved to places in Egypt and Jordan where they can be subjected to torture and threats to their families to extract information sought by the US.

Continue reading →

Fortune magazine had a warm and fuzzy piece on the Carlyle Group. It started out nicely and had some good stuff, but ultimately was more of a public relations profile:

Are you the sort of person who believes in conspiracies–the Trilateral Commission secretly runs the world, that sort of thing? Well, then, here’s a company for you. The Carlyle Group, a Washington, D.C., buyout firm, is one of the nation’s largest defense contractors. It has billions of dollars at its disposal and employs a few important people. Maybe you’ve heard of them: former Secretary of State Jim Baker, former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, and former White House budget director Dick Darman. Wait, we’re just getting warmed up. William Kennard, who recently headed the FCC, and Arthur Levitt, who just left the SEC, also work for Carlyle. As do former British Prime Minister John Major and former Philippines President Fidel Ramos. Let’s see, are we forgetting anyone? Oh, right, former President George Herbert Walker Bush is on the payroll too.

Continue reading →