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.
- Moomin Merchandise Those pillowcases are cute.
- Good moomin resource.
15
Feb 02
On Paranoia
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
15
Feb 02
You Belong to a Terrorist Organization
Increasingly, any activity not sanctioned by our benificent masters has been linked to and equated with terrorism. Use drugs, you’re helping terrorists make money. Ergo, you are a terrorist. Violate intellectual property, you help pirates make money. Pirates are criminals, terrorists are criminals thus pirates are terrorists. Ergo, you are a terrorist. See, it’s a easy. However, it only works against the weaker party. You can’t say for example that the United States is engaged in terrorism even though engaging in terrorism is standard operating procedure for our government. I remember when the US first started bombing Serbia. They bragged about having levelled power plants, bridges, and hospitals. Essentially, the US bombing campaign was a terrorist act. The US has admitted that they only destroyed a handful of tanks and artillery. In the end more hospitals were destroyed than tanks. I’m sure those hospitals were busy making WMD (the lingo for weapons of mass destruction) and sheltering terrorists or we wouldn’t have bombed them, right?
Terrorism is a question of power. Since US power is globally heremonic any force seeking to counter the US is terrorist. Because what really is terrorism? During the Revolutionary War we used guerrilla tactics against the British and Americans loyal to the British. Today, this would be called terrorism. At the time, the British tried to play the same name game because the guerrilla tactics of the American Revolutionaries were effective. If Al Quaeda has murdered thousands of innocent people the United States has undoubtedly done the same with just as much hypocrisy and self-righteousness. The US government and Al Quaeda actually have a lot in common. Both are run by insane religious fundamentalists. Both do business with the Carlyle Group, and both have proven a deep disregard for human life and a hatred of freedom and tolerance. The biggest difference between the two is that the US has been engaged in terrorism for over 50 years whereas Al Quaeda seems to be on a more short-term trajectory.
- Testimony from U.S. Under
Secretary of State for Economic, Business and Agricultural Affairs
Alan Larson at Senate Foreign Relations Committee February 12, 2002:
With growing evidence of links between intellectual property crime,
organized crime and funding for terrorist activities, embassy country
teams are seeking to foster closer ties between U.S. Government
agencies and the foreign counterparts who work these enforcement
issues. - Will the real bad guy please stand up?
- He showed the three robed judges, and the prosecutors who spent two days depicting Milosevic as the architect of the Balkans horror, dozens of gruesome pictures of heads without bodies, severed limbs crusted in blood, and the remnants of fingers poking from a pile of rubble.
Milosevic said they were ethnic Albanian civilians from Kosovo as well as Yugoslav civilians slain by NATO bombs during the alliance’s 78-day air war, which he called “the greatest aggression in the world after World War II.”
He said they were killed not because they were fleeing the Serb forces he allegedly commanded to wipe out the Albanian population of Kosovo, but because they were racing to get away either from NATO air strikes or marauding Kosovo guerrillas rising up against the Yugoslav state.
- Return of the ‘military-industrial complex’?
- We arm the world to make it safer. Basically, your taxes are given to huge corporations in exchange for over-priced weaponry which is sold/given to other countries meanwhile we buy the dangerous, crappy weaponry no one wants to bailout these same huge corporations. Some of the ridiculously expensive, pointless weaponry you paid for includes the crash-prone Osprey, the useless B-1 bomber, the crash-prone Comanche helicopter, the rendundant F-22 Raptor, and the idiotic Crusader self-propelled artillery system.
15
Feb 02
Coming to a Corrupt Police Department Near You!
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.
15
Feb 02
You’ve been warned
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!
14
Feb 02
A Scanner Darkly
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.
14
Feb 02
The Ministry of Love
I started up a Bulletin Board, The Ministry of Love, for LNS users, friends, etc. You can access it here. It’s a good way to communicate and to leave messages for other readers etc. I’ll be setting up a sub-domain for it shortly since the url is a tad long. By the way, infopop makes great stuff…I’d like to plug their package, Ultimate Bulletin Board System. It is perl-based and very affordable.
13
Feb 02
They’re Watching You
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?
10
Feb 02
October Surprise
History has a tendency to repeat itself especially when dealing with dirty scoundrels and mountebanks. About 20 years before Bush Jr. and co. took control of the whitehouse, the CIA and Republicans staged another secret effort to gain power. In the fall of 1980, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan were neck in neck headed toward the November election. Reagan and ex-CIA head, George Bush made an all-out effort to sabotage Jimmy Carter’s efforts to win the release of the Iranian-held hostages. This became known as the October Surprise and was the beginning of the Iran-Contra Scandal.
Essentially, the Republicans and the CIA wanted to prevent Carter negotiating the release of the American hostages. This could have won him reelection. In fact, there were many parties who had a stake in it. The CIA wanted off their leash and as you know the 80’s were THE decade of CIA trained death squads and covert ops, the Iranians wanted weapons to fight Iraq which they got from the United States through Israel, and Israel wanted the Republicans in power since Carter had been a little too conciliatory towards the Arabs for their tastes. (Remember the peace talks at Camp David?)
Exactly five minutes after Reagan took the oath of office the Iranians agreed to release 52 American hostages. And later, a few days after the inauguration, the arms starting flowing to Iran.
Reagan turned 91 last week. More evidence that only the good die young.
- More on the October Surprise
- The Election Story of the Decade There was a probe into all this in 1991-1992. This has a lot of information.
- Think Reagan was a good president? You’re wrong. Now start reading. (Thanks to George for the link!)