The Fauster Factor: (.045 * (# of people linking to you))

Peak Oil

2006-04-26T00:22:00.000-07:00

Life After The Crash

Also see interview with David Goodstein (Cal-tech physicist):
Crude Awakening

Interesting included merger timeline:

December 1998: BP and Amoco merge;
April 1999: BP-Amoco and Arco agree to merge;
December 1999: Exxon and Mobil merge;
October 2000: Chevron and Texaco agree to merge;
November 2001: Phillips and Conoco agree to merge;
September 2002: Shell acquires Penzoil-Quaker State;
February 2003: Frontier Oil and Holly agree to merge;
March 2004: Marathon acquires 40% of Ashland;
April 2004: Westport Resources acquires Kerr-McGee;
July 2004: Analysts suggest BP and Shell merge;
April 2005: Chevron-Texaco and Unocal merge;
June 2005: Royal Dutch and Shell merge;
July 2005: China begins trying to acquire Unocal

If the oil companies aren't monopolies now, what constitutes a monopoly? Exxon CEO gets $6 from every American family of 4 for his retirement. You better believe we already paid him that money at the pump. Efficient hand of the market?

Cache of the Time article:

Feb. 17 - Remember 1973? If you do, there are plenty of reasons to wish you didn’t. Chief among them (right after leisure suits) would be the oil crisis that began in October. The Middle Eastern OPEC nations stopped exports to the United States and other Western nations just as stateside oil production was peaking. The artificial shortage that followed had devastating effects: The price of gas quadrupled in the United States, climbing from 25 cents to more than a dollar, in a matter of months. The American Automobile Association reported that in one isolated week up to 20 percent of the country’s gas stations had no fuel; in some places motorists were forced to wait in line for two to three hours to gas up. The number of homes built with gas heat dropped.

But that was the 1970s and this is now, right? Not according to David Goodstein. Saudi princes and SUV drivers may do well to read his new book, “Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil” (W.W. Norton), in which Goodstein argues that our oil-dependent civilization is in for a crude awakening when the world’s oil supply really begins to run out—possibly within a few decades. “As we learned in 1973, the effects of an oil shortage can be immediate and drastic, while it may take years, perhaps decades, to replace the vast infrastructure that supports the manufacture, distribution, and consumption of the products of the 20 million barrels of oil we Americans alone gobble up each day,” he writes.

Goodstein’s book is not a happy read, but an important one. In layman’s terms, he explains the science behind his prediction and why other fossil fuels might not do the trick when the wells run dry. Goodstein, a physicist and vice-provost at the California Institute of Technology, recently spoke with NEWSWEEK’s Brian Braiker about the fundamental principles of oil supply and demand, and whether civilization can survive without fossil fuels. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: This is scary stuff. You’re saying that oil production will soon peak.

David Goodstein: The prediction that it will peak—that is to say the crisis will come when we reach a peak when half the oil has been used up—that prediction quantitatively is unquestionably true. But the quantitative question of when the peak will occur depends on extremely undependable numbers. The so-called proven oil reserves as reported by various countries and companies around the world are often just guesses and they’re often not even honest guesses. Among those who would analyze those figures, some have predicted that it will come as early as this year; others, within this decade. It could possibly be in the next decade. But I think that’s about as far as you can push it.

Let’s start at the beginning. What is oil and what do we use it for?
Oil is hydrocarbons that grew up in the earth when source rock full of organic inclusions sank to just the right depth—not too little and not too much—and got cooked over the ages. It took hundreds of millions of years for the world’s supply of oil to be created. The oil is used to make gasoline obviously, but also home heating oil, diesel fuel but also 90 percent of all the organic chemicals that we use. That includes pharmaceuticals, agricultural products, plastics, fabrics and so on. They are petrochemicals, meaning they originate as oil.

So our demand, regardless of supply, is unlikely to decrease anytime soon.
Well, the need for those hydrocarbon materials has been increasing for 150 years and will go on increasing especially because the world’s population is increasing. The poorer parts of the world want to increase their standard of living, which inevitably means using more energy. Fossil fuels are our principal source of energy.

You used an interesting word: “need.” Do we need the oil or is it something that we have just become dependent on?
We have certainly become dependent on it. This is a habit that will be very, very difficult to break.

Knowing human behavior and how hard the habit is to break, we probably won't, in all likelihood, break it.
I think we will not. One of the reasons I wrote the book was in the hope that enough people will become aware of the problem and we will be a little better prepared.

How do you suggest people prepare now?

Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil by David Goodstein
Right now we don’t have the kind of leadership that would take us in the direction that would make major changes. As individuals we can do things; I drive a hybrid car, for example. But as a society we have to redesign cities so that people live close to where they work. There are all kinds of measures. We are so profligate in the use of energy that even with the smallest effort we can reduce the rate at which we use energy very significantly, as Californians showed after the last energy crisis. But what we really need is massive infusion of research on all of the possible ways of ameliorating this problem.

You’re talking about researching fusion and fuel cells and —
Fusion, fuel cells, biomass. There are all kinds of possibilities, but none of them are worth a thing unless you’ve shown that it actually works. You’ve got to prototype it; you’ve got to show that it can be scaled up, that it can be done on a large scale. And so on.

You write that the crisis doesn’t happen when we run out of oil, it happens when we reach the peak, the halfway point. Explain that.
We had a peak once before—it was in 1973. The production in North American had reached its peak in 1970 and was declining. Supplies were not available in North America and the Arab countries embargoed the oil; they shut down the pipeline. We had an immediate, instantaneous panic, mile-long lines at gas stations and fear for the future of our way of life. That was an artificial, temporary peak. And it’s just a slight foretaste of what will happen when we reach the real [global] peak and supplies start to decline and continue to decline forever.

So what happens then? Do we revert to coal?
It’s possible for us to revert either to natural gas or to coal or both. Among consequences are the increasing global climate change. But another consequence is, let us suppose you tried to substitute coal for oil. Natural gas is a good substitute and it will last for a while but it will have its own peak one or two decades after oil, so it’s only a temporary solution. If you turn to coal, we’re now using twice as much energy from oil as we are from coal. So if you want to liquefy coal as a substitute for oil in transportation—which is its most important application—you would have to mine coal at a rate that’s many, many times at the rate of what we’re doing now. But the conversion process is very inefficient. So you’d have to mine much more than that. If you put that together with the growing world population and the fact that the rest of the world wants to increase its standard of living, you realize that the estimates that say we have hundreds of years worth of coal in the ground are wrong by a factor of ten or more. So we will run out of all fossil fuels. Coal will peak just like any natural resource. We will reach the peak for all fossil fuels by the end of the century.

You mentioned transportation as one of oil’s greatest uses. Doesn’t alternative technology already exist?
Not exactly, no. We tried electric cars and that was sort of more or less withdrawn from the market. I think there was plenty of demand. But when I tried to buy an EV1 some years ago, they said that the car had a range of 50 to 100 miles, but there was an onboard computer that always told you what your range was and when it was freshly charged, it had a range of about 30 miles. And they only sold them in California and Arizona because they were useless in colder climates. So that’s not the solution. There are advanced batteries—the kind of batteries that we use now in our cell phones and laptops are lithium ion batteries and they have about five times the energy density of the old lead acid batteries. So if you could imagine something like an EV1 with five times the range, that starts to become believable. But nobody is showing that you can scale up the lithium ion batteries to use in transportation.

And another alternative is nuclear.
Nuclear is an alternative, but remember you’re not going to have any nuclear cars and nuclear airplanes. Nuclear is not a substitute for oil. There’s a lot of talk about hydrogen because of the president’s initiative—the governor of California has also announced an initiative. I think what people don’t understand about hydrogen is that it is not a source of energy. You have to use energy to make hydrogen—it’s just a way of storing and transporting energy. And with today’s economics and today’s technology, it takes the equivalent of six gallons of gasoline to make enough hydrogen to replace one gallon of gasoline.

How do we know that all the oil that will be discovered has been discovered?
We don’t know that all the oil that will be discovered has been discovered, and this is a somewhat controversial subject. But we do know that the peak in oil discovery occurred decades ago. The rate at which we’ve been discovering new oil has been declining for decades. That’s one of the arguments that the peak in oil supply must be coming soon because the supply curve follows the discovery curve by a few decades. The United States Geological Survey conducted an exhaustive study between 1995 and 2000 and gave out a statistical output in which they said that the amount of oil that we started with, we could be 95 percent certain, was at least 2 trillion barrels. But they also thought there was a 50 percent chance that there was 2.7 trillion barrels. The difference between those two is 700 billion barrels of oil—that’s the entire reserves of the Middle East. They were predicting discovering the Middle East all over again. That’s pretty implausible. But if you really did add 700 billion barrels to the world’s oil supply, it would delay the peak by about a decade. So we’re not talking about really something that does away with the problem.

And opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve in Alaska?
It makes no dent at all. It isn’t even worth talking about.

Is there a silver lining here?
I really don’t think so. If the peak comes and we can’t get our act together fast enough to make up for it, you will end up with people all over the world burning coal as fast as they can just for the space heating and primitive industry. And if you do that the effect on the climate is completely unpredictable.

What about solar energy?
Solar energy will be an important component, an important part of the solution. If you want to gather enough solar energy to replace the fossil fuel that we’re burning today—and remember we’re going to need more fossil fuel in the future- using current technology, then you would have to cover something like 220,000 square kilometers with solar cells. That’s far more than all the rooftops in the country. It would be a piece of land about 300 miles on a side, which is big but not unthinkable. But making that area of solar cells one heck of a challenge because all of the solar cells every made probably wouldn’t cover more than 10 square kilometers. This is not impossible. It’s just difficult. It’s hard and we’re not trying.

You’re a physicist by training.
This is not my research field. I do research in a completely different field. I just thought that this was such an important problem that somebody ought to write a book about it. I am not an expert—there is no subject covered in that book about which I know more than anybody else. If you want to know about superfluid helium or certain kinds of phase transitions I may know more than anybody else in the world. I just thought I should lend my pen to this cause.

For me:

2006-04-18T01:34:00.000-07:00

May switch my page to this site: Nearly Free Speech

To Boost Feingold's rankings:

2006-04-18T01:29:00.000-07:00

Russ Feingold: Born again as a Dem? Only with Feingold's help. He can win. He's the only Dem I know with balls. All others are afraid to take Bush on over the negative spin they'll recieve from: FOX, abc, and MSNBC. Ready to switch parties just to vote for Russ in the primaries. Unfortunately, can't jump ship in primaries in Oregon. Nice way to solidify the 2 party system. Someday, somehow, the U.S. will ammend the Constitution to allow for a parlimentary system. The only reason we have a 2 party system now is to let the Whigs and Torries stay in power.

Argentina on 2 steaks a day

2006-04-18T01:28:00.000-07:00

Though I feel guilty for eating fellow mammals, can't wait to try the program:

Argentina on 2 steaks a day

Religious Inclination By County

2006-04-16T03:55:00.000-07:00

A very cool site:

Mapping Religion in America

Leading religions: (terrifying red counties)

Church Adherents:

Reminds me of:
Goverment maps for drinking and drug use in substate areas

Marijuana use:

Binge drinking:

30 pygmy owls left, now not a species

2006-04-16T03:31:00.000-07:00

How fucking distinct does an endangered owl need to be before the government will admit it's a species?! The cactus ferruginous pygmy owl is 6 inches long and weighs 3 ounces! Now it's not a distict species with much larger owls with which it DOES NOT MATE? If it had a single unicorn horn coming out of it's forehead would it be a distinct subspecies? This just in: Endangered Species Act no longer needed after the U.S. government discovers that all owls are the same species! Meanwhile, Fish And Wildlife Service managers are found indistinct from lying criminals. If branches of the government intentionally refuse to uphold the endangered species act, they are breaking the law. Playing semantic games by saying a species isn't a species doesn't make their actions any less illegal. If you intentionally torch a forest, it's arson and a felony, regardless of whether you call it a large campfire.

soon to be extinct pygmy owl

Cache:
Tiny Owl May Be Taken Off Endangered List

Fri Apr 14, 8:33 PM ET

TUCSON, Ariz. - A tiny desert owl is set to be taken off the federal government's endangered species list, drawing praise from developers but protests from environmentalists.

The cactus ferruginous pygmy owl is only about 6 inches long and weighs in at less than 3 ounces, but has been at the center of a battle between environmentalists and developers for more than a decade.

Environmental groups successfully sued to have it placed on the endangered list in the early 1990s. Developers countersued in 2001, opposing restrictions placed on land use to protect the bird. An appeals court ordered the government to reconsider the listing and the habitat designation.

The owl is set to be removed from the endangered species list next month, a move that also will rescind critical habitat designation for 1.2 million acres in Arizona.

The Fish and Wildlife Service determined the bird was not a distinct subspecies and therefore not worthy of protection. The decision is expected to go into effect May 15.

The bird is native to the Sonoran desert and its population has dropped below 30 at last count.

The decision is likely to be fought by the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity.

"We might end up having to take it right into the courts," said Daniel Patterson, a desert ecologist with the environmental group. He said the move was a political decision that ignores years of research.

"It's anti-science, it's anti-conservation and it's anti-public interest," Patterson said.

The Southern Arizona Home Builders Association said the federal decision ends the fight.

"Now that the federal government has made its final ruling, we consider this issue to be over and will direct our attention to other development policy issues in southern Arizona," he said.

The decision won't mean much in Pima County because the county's Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan protects sensitive habitats for all species, said County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry. Some of the pygmy owl's prime habitat is in Pima County.

Iraq Mobile Biolabs Hoax

2006-04-16T03:11:00.000-07:00

At the time the Bush Administration claimed to have found WMD in Iraq in the form of mobile biolabs, the CIA had already concluded that these labs "had nothing to do with biological weapons". According to the Scott: this is nothing new, we knew that we had bad intelligence regarding Iraq. This is a lie. This revelation is new. In the months after the bioweapon trailer hoax, there was a tremendous amount of debate in the press regarding their authenticity. At the time, those who doubted that the trailers produced some bioweapon were shouted down.

A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.

The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped "secret" and shelved. Meanwhile, for nearly a year, administration and intelligence officials continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories.

The administration diliberately misled the public into believing that WMD had been found in the runup to the 2004 presidential election. Evidence of this duplicity was made classified. While the revelation surrounding the facts of the WMD hoax is new, it is hardly surprising. Most people either concluded that the labs were cladestine, or forgot about it entirely. Now that this is out of the open, no one is really surprised by the Bush administration's abuse of power and their abuse of classifying information to serve political goals.

Here is a cache of the above Washington Post article:

Lacking Biolabs, Trailers Carried Case for War
Administration Pushed Notion of Banned Iraqi Weapons Despite Evidence to Contrary

By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 12, 2006; Page A01

On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."

The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.

A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.

The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped "secret" and shelved. Meanwhile, for nearly a year, administration and intelligence officials continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories.

The authors of the reports were nine U.S. and British civilian experts -- scientists and engineers with extensive experience in all the technical fields involved in making bioweapons -- who were dispatched to Baghdad by the Defense Intelligence Agency for an analysis of the trailers. Their actions and findings were described to a Washington Post reporter in interviews with six government officials and weapons experts who participated in the mission or had direct knowledge of it.

None would consent to being identified by name because of fear that their jobs would be jeopardized. Their accounts were verified by other current and former government officials knowledgeable about the mission. The contents of the final report, "Final Technical Engineering Exploitation Report on Iraqi Suspected Biological Weapons-Associated Trailers," remain classified. But interviews reveal that the technical team was unequivocal in its conclusion that the trailers were not intended to manufacture biological weapons. Those interviewed took care not to discuss the classified portions of their work.

"There was no connection to anything biological," said one expert who studied the trailers. Another recalled an epithet that came to be associated with the trailers: "the biggest sand toilets in the world."

Primary Piece of Evidence

The story of the technical team and its reports adds a new dimension to the debate over the U.S. government's handling of intelligence related to banned Iraqi weapons programs. The trailers -- along with aluminum tubes acquired by Iraq for what was claimed to be a nuclear weapons program -- were primary pieces of evidence offered by the Bush administration before the war to support its contention that Iraq was making weapons of mass destruction.

Intelligence officials and the White House have repeatedly denied allegations that intelligence was hyped or manipulated in the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. But officials familiar with the technical team's reports are questioning anew whether intelligence agencies played down or dismissed postwar evidence that contradicted the administration's public views about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Last year, a presidential commission on intelligence failures criticized U.S. spy agencies for discounting evidence that contradicted the official line about banned weapons in Iraq, both before and after the invasion.

Spokesmen for the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency declined to comment on the specific findings of the technical report because it remains classified. A spokesman for the DIA asserted that the team's findings were neither ignored nor suppressed, but were incorporated in the work of the Iraqi Survey Group, which led the official search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The survey group's final report in September 2004 -- 15 months after the technical report was written -- said the trailers were "impractical" for biological weapons production and were "almost certainly intended" for manufacturing hydrogen for weather balloons.

"Whether the information was offered to others in the political realm I cannot say," said the DIA official, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.

Intelligence analysts involved in high-level discussions about the trailers noted that the technical team was among several groups that analyzed the suspected mobile labs throughout the spring and summer of 2003. Two teams of military experts who viewed the trailers soon after their discovery concluded that the facilities were weapons labs, a finding that strongly influenced views of intelligence officials in Washington, the analysts said. "It was hotly debated, and there were experts making arguments on both sides," said one former senior official who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.

U.S. officials asserted that Iraq had biological weapons factories in trailers, even after a Pentagon mission found them unsuited for that role.
U.S. officials asserted that Iraq had biological weapons factories in trailers, even after a Pentagon mission found them unsuited for that role. (By Pfc. Joshua Hutcheson Via Associated Press)

From 'Biological Laboratories'
Two Iraqi trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops became a center-piece of U.S. claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. But shortly after the fall of Baghdad, an internal report showed the trailers had nothing to do with banned weapons.

George Promised to FIRE the leaker!

2006-04-12T14:10:00.000-07:00

No MSM replays of GW's quote that he would fire anyone found to be the leaker! Of course, he knew all along that there was no leak, because this info was secretly declassified. But it's time for GW to fire himself. Resign!

Libby reveals Bush as Leaker in chief

Cache:

Why 'leaker in chief' charge harms the president

By Linda Feldmann, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor Mon Apr 10, 4:00 AM ET

WASHINGTON - Leaks of information out of the White House are as old as the republic. So the assertion that the president himself had authorized the dissemination of then-classified information to select reporters should come as no surprise. Except that the president in question is George W. Bush.
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President Bush has long railed against leaks of classified information as a threat to national security; his administration is vigorously investigating unauthorized revelations of classified material to the press about secret overseas prisons and warrantless wiretapping. Now, a revelation of grand jury testimony establishes Bush himself as a player in White House efforts to discredit an
Iraq war critic through the use of classified information.

The president is not accused of illegality. And no one questions his legal right to declassify information. But critics are now charging Mr. Bush with hypocrisy - a development that makes efforts to put his presidency back on track all the more daunting.

"Here's why this hurts: It reminds people again that the intelligence was bad and we're in Iraq without end for some of the wrong reasons, and that's at the heart of his 36 percent," says Larry Sabato, a professor of politics at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, referring to Bush's job approval rating in recent polls.

In a legal filing last week, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald does not allege that Bush was involved in exposing the identify of
CIA agent
Valerie Plame, the wife of former Ambassador Joe Wilson, the Iraq war critic whom Mr. Fitzgerald says the White House was trying to discredit. Ms. Plame's "outing" as a CIA agent lies at the heart of Fitzgerald's investigation, which eventually led to the indictment last October of Vice President Cheney's then-chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Mr. Libby was charged with perjury and obstruction of justice in the investigation, though not with illegally exposing Plame's identity.

Private Briefing
It was in Libby's grand jury testimony, revealed publicly for the first time in the government filing, that the former White House official stated that Bush had approved Cheney's instruction to reveal portions of a classified prewar National Intelligence Estimate that they believed would bolster the administration's argument that Iraq was seeking to develop nuclear weapons. At least three reporters received that information: then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller, author Bob Woodward, and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine.

On July 18, 2003, after those three had been privately briefed, the administration publicly declassified much of the document. A striking aspect of the administration's private dissemination effort is that the information Cheney and Libby put forth - regarding efforts by Iraq to acquire uranium from Niger - had already been widely discredited within the administration.

In his filing, Fitzgerald described a "concerted effort" by top White House officials, with Cheney at the heart, to "discredit, punish, or seek revenge against" Ambassador Wilson.

Even if Bush turns out to have been a bit player in an effort to discredit Wilson, he is now explicitly tied to the decision to selectively disseminate classified information. Whether that constitutes a "leak" is a matter of semantics.

"Most White Houses believe that a leak is an uncontrolled revelation where they're not in control of it," says Charles Jones, an emeritus professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "Otherwise, it's associated with implementation of policy."

2006-04-12T14:02:00.000-07:00

ACLU online townhall meeting tonight Terrorists calling Americans? FISA never applied to the target of surveillance being a foreign citizen. Only when the target is an American. And for God's sake, why can't Gary Hart run again? Who the fuck cares about his trist on the Monkey Business now?

NSA may have violated rights of Millions

2006-04-12T13:56:00.000-07:00

According to congressional investigators with classified info, spying is much more widespread

Feb 14th 2006 article

Cache:

Security & Terrorism
Whistleblower says NSA violations bigger

WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 (UPI) -- A former NSA employee said Tuesday there is another ongoing top-secret surveillance program that might have violated millions of Americans' Constitutional rights.

Russell D. Tice told the House Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations he has concerns about a "special access" electronic surveillance program that he characterized as far more wide-ranging than the warrentless wiretapping recently exposed by the New York Times but he is forbidden from discussing the program with Congress.

Tice said he believes it violates the Constitution's protection against unlawful search and seizures but has no way of sharing the information without breaking classification laws. He is not even allowed to tell the congressional intelligence committees - members or their staff - because they lack high enough clearance.

Neither could he brief the inspector general of the NSA because that office is not cleared to hear the information, he said.

Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., and Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, said they believe a few members of the Armed Services Committee are cleared for the information, but they said believe their committee and the intelligence committees have jurisdiction to hear the allegations.

"Congressman Kucinich wants Congressman Shays to hold a hearing (on the program)," said Doug Gordon, Kucinich's spokesman. "Obviously it would have to take place in some kind of a closed hearing. But Congress has a role to play in oversight. The (Bush) administration does not get to decide what Congress can and can not hear."

Tice was testifying because he was a National Security Agency intelligence officer who was stripped of his security clearance after he reported his suspicions that a former colleague at the Defense Intelligence Agency was a spy. The matter was dismissed by the DIA, but Tice pressed it later and was subsequently ordered to take a psychological examination, during which he was declared paranoid. He is now unemployed.

Tice was one of the New York Times sources for its wiretapping story, but he told the committee the information he provided was not secret and could have been provided by an private sector electronic communications professional.

© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Open Letter

2006-04-12T13:53:00.000-07:00

The Electronic Freedom Foundation claims to possess documents provided by a retired AT&T whistle blower that indicate that all of AT&T's Internet traffic in the US (a significant portion of total traffic in the US) is forwarded directly to the NSA. The article is here:

http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2006_04.php#004538

The EEF has filed suit, and the documents are currently under seal. If these documents are legitimate, then it indicates the scope of Bush's illegal electronic surveillance program: every packet of information sent through the routers of acquiescing companies (maybe even this one) is data mined by computers to look for a terrorist connection. If the former AT&T employee is honest, this likely means that NSA computer programs have spied on your web traffic without a warrant or probable cause to look for the illegal activities of a handful of extremists.

Please forward this link to any of your family and friends who might be concerned about their civil rights. Also remind your friends that the FISA act was intended not only to clarify constitutional limits of the the executive branch, but to also to specify a criminal penalty for such a violation. Any "officer or employee of the United States" who violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act faces a maximum penalty of 5 years in federal prison and a $10,000 fine.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode50/usc_sec_50_00001809----000-.html

The FISA act carries civil liability as well. If the NSA is monitoring your Internet communications without a warrant, you are entitled to not less than $1,000, or $100 per day for each day of violation of your rights.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode50/usc_sec_50_00001810----000-.html

If the NSA wiretapping program is really this expansive, persons involved must be brought to trial in a court of law.

FISA provisions, Subchapter I, Electronic Surveillance:

§ 1809. Criminal sanctions
Release date: 2005-03-17

(a) Prohibited activities
A person is guilty of an offense if he intentionally—
(1) engages in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute; or
(2) discloses or uses information obtained under color of law by electronic surveillance, knowing or having reason to know that the information was obtained through electronic surveillance not authorized by statute.
(b) Defense
It is a defense to a prosecution under subsection (a) of this section that the defendant was a law enforcement or investigative officer engaged in the course of his official duties and the electronic surveillance was authorized by and conducted pursuant to a search warrant or court order of a court of competent jurisdiction.
(c) Penalties
An offense described in this section is punishable by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than five years, or both.
(d) Federal jurisdiction
There is Federal jurisdiction over an offense under this section if the person committing the offense was an officer or employee of the United States at the time the offense was committed.

§ 1810. Civil liability
Release date: 2005-03-17

An aggrieved person, other than a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power, as defined in section 1801 (a) or (b)(1)(A) of this title, respectively, who has been subjected to an electronic surveillance or about whom information obtained by electronic surveillance of such person has been disclosed or used in violation of section 1809 of this title shall have a cause of action against any person who committed such violation and shall be entitled to recover—
(a) actual damages, but not less than liquidated damages of $1,000 or $100 per day for each day of violation, whichever is greater;
(b) punitive damages; and
(c) reasonable attorney's fees and other investigation and litigation costs reasonably incurred.

250+ working proxies

2006-04-12T13:51:00.000-07:00

http://www.econsultant.com/proxylist/index.html

Totalitarian Societies Use Indoctrination (FOX NEWS FLASH!)

2006-03-05T13:55:00.000-08:00

Watch out for the big money, media-owning SP conspiracy! Oh wait, since the market boom of the 80's and 90's, 90% of the media is owned by companies that donate heavily to Republican candidates. Those sneaky liberals in disguise!

Bill says "income redistribution" in place of "etc"... but yeah, all are noble goals for a society.

The disciplined high school teacher drew analogies between Hitler's use of the Military to spread German Fascist ideals with Bush's words in his state of the Union speech. To be sure, the young teacher is practically shouting.

Teachers must uphold the letter and spirit of the FOX slogan! Otherwise, YOUR kids will be brainwashed.

Watch out for totalitarian social indoctrination! Maybe it even happens to your kid!!

Missori State Relgion Xtianity?

2006-03-05T03:50:00.000-08:00

Missori debates whether Christianity should be state reliion :

Cache:
Missouri legislators in Jefferson City considered a bill that would name Christianity the state's official "majority" religion.

House Concurrent Resolution 13 has is pending in the state legislature.

Many Missouri residents had not heard about the bill until Thursday.

Karen Aroesty of the Anti-defamation league, along with other watch-groups, began a letter writing and email campaign to stop the resolution.

The resolution would recognize "a Christian god," and it would not protect minority religions, but "protect the majority's right to express their religious beliefs.

The resolution also recognizes that, "a greater power exists," and only Christianity receives what the resolution calls, "justified recognition."

State representative David Sater of Cassville in southwestern Missouri, sponsored the resolution, but he has refused to talk about it on camera or over the phone.

KMOV also contacted Gov. Matt Blunt's office to see where he stands on the resolution, but he has yet to respond.

Boycott FOX NEWS sponsors!

2006-03-05T02:53:00.000-08:00

To get a glimpse of the kind of world we're living in, spend a good half-hour previewing the videos on www.foxnews.com. It's like the The Colbert Report without the satire.

I searched for the title and found a pretty weak page suggesting that we boycott FOX NEWS until Fox decides to be impartial. Hmm... yeah, that'll work.

One thing that can be done is to reduce the Fascist and Balanced revenue stream by letting advertisers know that advertising on FOX comes with a price. Where's the risk? It's not like MoveOn.org or Naral can run adds on networks these days anyway. Below a partial list of FOX advertisers. For this post, and future posts, I'll be focusing on
The Most Watched Videos
• Bill O'Reilly's Talking Points
• Scott Bleier's Market Wrap
• 'Catholic' Town in Florida?
• The Oscars in the FOXLight

And the rabidly conservative O-Factor-Clone tripe. All businesses that advertise on FOX should be boycotted. However, businesses that plug Cavuto or Oreilly must be shun like a bacon breakfast on Ramadan.

Corporate Sponsors of Domestic Fascism:
-Sony (TV that's stylish, so artistic Women like it, but powerful Men love it's technological prowess. Couple meets for the first time in front of TV exchanging charged filled glance upon realizing they share share a common passion for flat panel TVs). Sony already deserves a boycott for their illegal spyware infested CDs. But, just in case you were thinking about buying the admittedly awesome but overpriced PS3, watch Oreilly online with their commercial lead in.
-Orbitz... Soccer Mom's armed with hedgetrimmers in Edward Scissorhand's neighborhood compete to be the first to book the trip to the Cayman's...disturbing and surreal... Need a more amusing reason to boycott Orbitz?
-Office of National Drug Control Policy [good way for the government to fund FOX. Was anyone else upset by the government November 2nd campaign during the last 2004, election cycle? It looked like A) propaganda for patriotic people to vote B) propaganda for churchgoers to vote. ]
-Microsoft Office (dinosaur commercial)... Let me guess, you'd like to boycott M$, but you're dependent on their file formats because they're the monopolistic standard? It looks like you're doubly obligated to pirate all Microsoft software henceforth. If you don't pirate Microsoft, you're financially supporting the rise of domestic fascism and the demise of competitive capitalism and open source software.
-Merck (kids don't have a clue about diseases adults remember, thanks to Merck scientists [and no thanks to us spending R&D money on ads]... Kid: Chicked Pox is where Chickens go to have fun) "If you ran a drug company, what would you change?" I'd spend more money on ads!

Non-political
-Visene
-American Express

Other fun stuff:
-Female commentator saying I'm sure we'll be following the development of this story with great interest (on "good girl" Jessica Alba suing Playboy... video title: "Hot and Bothered").
-Strippers for Jesus, see next post

-"The fact is, when you overload a brain with too much information, there's potential for harm" -Mike Schnepp with his blissfully unoverloaded brain. Pulled his kids out of school because a substitute teacher had a sex change operation. (O'reilly Factor)

Endless Stripper Montage for Jesus on FOX NEWS!

2006-03-05T00:49:00.000-08:00

Holy Hotties?

JC's Girls bring faith to strip clubs

Strippers for Jesus: Sanctimonious born again strippers who pay for lap dances and try to convert the stripper dancing for them. Titled: "Holy Hotties: JC's Girls bring faith to strip clubs"). Quotatble Quotes: "Meanwhile their mission is saving strippers, quite literally. They go into strip clubs, pay for a lap dance, but instead use the time with the stripper to get her to give up life on the pole for life committed to Jesus Christ, and get this! It's a group of women doing this! [terrifying women with long bleach blonde hair, the one on the right with ample facial plastic surgery, who knows about the breasts]...

To left of announcer, bathed in purple light, wearing a tight-fitting HUSTLER baby tank top, J-Lo's FUCKING HOT little sister gingerly bobs up and down on an imaginary dick! Is she masrturbating?! No, she's just caressing her inside of her young, smooth thigh. JEZABELLE! TEMPTRESS! How dare you impune your sinful ways on my red-state programming! Maybe I should go pay for a lap dance only to convert the wayward young lady to God's Path?

Former Stripper: "And while I was there, In This Perfect Christian World Bubble, I learned that a girlfriend I had in the [stripping] industry, had passed away from alcoholism."

There's something really spiritually profound in Heather's words. To understand, try to put yourself in Heather's frame of spiritual enlightentment and repeat as you would a Buddhist Mantra:

This Perfect Christian World Bubble This Perfect Christian World Bubble This Perfect Christian World Bubble This Perfect Christian World Bubble This Perfect Christian World Bubble This Perfect Christian World Bubble This Perfect Christian World Bubble This Perfect Christian World Bubble This Perfect Christian World Bubble This Perfect Christian World Bubble This Perfect Christian World Bubble This Perfect Christian World Bubble This Perfect Christian World Bubble This Perfect Christian World Bubble This Perfect Christian World Bubble This Perfect Christian World Bubble This Perfect Christian World Bubble This Perfect Christian World Bubble This Perfect Christian World Bubble This Perfect Christian World Bubble This Perfect Christian World Bubble This Perfect Christian World Bubble This Perfect Christian World Bubble This Perfect Christian World Bubble This Perfect Christian World Bubble This Perfect Christian World Bubble This Perfect Christian World Bubble This Perfect Christian World Bubble This Perfect Christian World Bubble This Perfect Christian World Bubble This Perfect Christian World Bubble This Perfect Christian World Bubble

Seriously! Go back and try it. Take a deap breath, open yourself to grace, maintain good posture and a positive view of the world and say "This perfect Christian...." Know what it feels like to be GW Bush? Know what it feels like to get all your news from FOX?

Cavuto: "you pay for the dance, you have your audience with the stripper, what do you do, what do you say?"

"Well, what we say is, we do not want you to actually dance for us..." [MEANWHILE, J-LOs FUCKING HOT little sister is suddenly blown up full screen, simulating the rythmic up and down motion of a girl on top of a really big pole. Her eyes are closed and her mouth is open in ecstacy before she bobs up and flashes a quick flirty smile]
"...and we just let them know right then and there that there's a God out there that cares for them and loves them, right where they're at!" Amen. I love you right where you're at baby. You play right into my Jesus Approved, Cavuto Inspired Barely-Legal Christian Conversion Sex Fantasy!

Neil: I'd like to thank you... both outside of LA, trying to do the Lord's Work, in the oddest of places ...

Shit! If I wanted a good Christian Masturbation Fantasy, FOX is the place to find it. Watch the video full screen if your wife is at the Baptist Bake Sale.

Now, seriously, boycott all of the sponsors. E-mail them and let them know that their time on FOX is a liability.

Foreign Student? Can't Drive in Texas!

2006-02-23T16:52:00.000-08:00

Texas has recently passed a law that will make foreign students unable to obtain driver's licenses, since their passports are not issued by the Department of Homeland Security. This is a discriminatory measure enacted to relegate 2nd class status to non-American citizens. An inability to drive make the lives of foreign students a lot harder while they study in the states. Additionally, a state ID is often a must have for other purposes, like securing a credit card or state bank account. International grad students here in Oregon are quite upset by the new law. Here's the text of an e-mail describing the situation:

Dear International Students,

International Student and Scholar Services has learned of a change in the rules governing the issuance of Texas driver's licenses. The change occurred last Friday, February 10, 2006. According to the new rules, the Department of Public Safety (DPS) can no longer issue a Texas driver's license or a Texas identification card to anyone who does not have a "facially identifiable document" issued by Department of Homeland Security . This includes F-1 students, J-1 students and scholars, and H-1B employees. Under the new rule, the only two categories that are eligible for a driver's license are F-1 students on OPT with a valid EAD (Employment Authorization Document) and J-2 dependents with a valid EAD.

Our office, along with other schools and employers around Texas, is advocating for a workable change to this policy. We are hopeful that we will be successful in our efforts but for now we ask that you do not apply for a Texas driver's license or identification card because the DPS office will not accept an application for either card . This new rule applies only to those who do not yet have a valid Texas driver's license or identification card. If you already have a Texas driver's license or ID, you can continue using them. You can also continue using an International Driver's License, if you have one. As soon as we receive any additional information about the Texas driver's license or identification card rule, we will let you know by email.

Best wishes,

International Student and Scholar Services

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Reclassification of Unclassified Documents

2006-02-23T16:40:00.000-08:00

Since Clinton has left office, the government has begun a sweeping program to purge the National Archives of previously unclassified documents. According to some researchers, the reclassified documents had no concievable bearing on national security. This appears to be part of a general drive by the government to make secrecy the norm rather than the exception. This is a disturbing trend because transparency of government institutions is vital to maintain a healthy democracy. How can citizens know whether the U.S. government is being managed fairly and effectively if we're not permitted to know how it is managed? Here is The National Archive's response . Stay tuned to see if anything comes of the internal audit.

2005-02-24T22:56:00.000-08:00

New Helens Dome Pics

2005-02-24T14:00:00.000-08:00

Cool new Helens Flyover Pics

Putin's Dirty Work?

2005-02-22T21:01:00.000-08:00

In former Soviet republics, high-profile deaths spark rumors Excerpts: "in late January, Georgia's reformist prime minister, Zurab Zhvania, was found dead in an apartment. He and a friend, a regional politician, apparently had been poisoned by carbon monoxide from a faulty gas heater." When this story first broke I was amazed at how quickly the police declared the event an accident. Further: "Yushchenko has again called for a resolution to the probe into the 2000 beheading of investigative journalist Georgiy Gongadze. Former Ukraine President Leonid Kuchma has been heard on secret recordings approving the murder of Gongadze. Kuchma says the tapes are fakes and denies any involvement." Voice analysis could easily determine the authenticity of the tapes. What is the CIA's call on this?

Jason Kottke going pro Wish him luck! Patrons thus far.

Hunter S. Thompson is Dead. A Sad Day for America

2005-02-21T11:09:00.000-08:00

The last article of his that I read was a rolling stone piece predicting Bush's defeat after he lost in the debates. Poor guy took the triumph of fascism hard. The Boomer's 60's dream of a more enlightened tomorrow died today. I hear he was writing essays about the Bush doctrine recently. To me, Hunter is a hero to be admired, but not emulated. From Fear and Loathing:

"San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant... We had all the momentum. we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."

Bush Conversations Taped: "In Secretly Taped Conversations, Glimpses of the Future President" by DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

Excerpts/Direct Quotes (before the times Article is archived into a pay-per-read area): Simultaneously "[Bush] was wary of unnerving secular voters by meeting publicly with evangelical leaders. When he thought his aides had agreed to such a meeting, Mr. Bush complained to Karl Rove, his political strategist, "What the hell is this about?"

Mr. Bush... told Mr. Wead on the tapes that he could withstand scrutiny of his past. He said it involved nothing more than "just, you know, wild behavior." He worried, though, that allegations of cocaine use would surface in the campaign, and he blamed his opponents for stirring rumors. "If nobody shows up, there's no story," he told Mr. Wead, "and if somebody shows up, it is going to be made up." But when Mr. Wead said that Mr. Bush had in the past publicly denied using cocaine, Mr. Bush replied, "I haven't denied anything."...

He refused to answer reporters' questions about his past behavior, he said, even though it might cost him the election. Defending his approach, Mr. Bush said: "I wouldn't answer the marijuana questions. You know why? Because I don't want some little kid doing what I tried."

Mr. Bush threatened that if his rival Steve Forbes attacked him too hard during the campaign and won, both Mr. Bush, then the Texas governor, and his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida, would withhold their support. "He can forget Texas. And he can forget Florida. And I will sit on my hands," Mr. Bush said.

Dr. Dobson, probably the most influential evangelical conservative, wanted to examine the candidate's Christian credentials.

"He said he would like to meet me, you know, he had heard some nice things, you know, well, 'I don't know if he is a true believer' kind of attitude," Mr. Bush said.

By the end of the primary, Mr. Bush alluded to Dr. Dobson's strong views on abortion again, apparently ruling out potential vice presidents including Gov. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania and Gen. Colin L. Powell, who favored abortion rights. Picking any of them could turn conservative Christians away from the ticket, Mr. Bush said.

"They are not going to like it anyway, boy," Mr. Bush said. "Dobson made it clear."

Early on, though, Mr. Bush appeared most worried that Christian conservatives would object to his determination not to criticize gay people. "I think he wants me to attack homosexuals," Mr. Bush said after meeting James Robison, a prominent evangelical minister in Texas.

But Mr. Bush said he did not intend to change his position. He said he told Mr. Robison: "Look, James, I got to tell you two things right off the bat. One, I'm not going to kick gays, because I'm a sinner. How can I differentiate sin?"

Later, he read aloud an aide's report from a convention of the Christian Coalition, a conservative political group: "This crowd uses gays as the enemy. It's hard to distinguish between fear of the homosexual political agenda and fear of homosexuality, however."

"This is an issue I have been trying to downplay," Mr. Bush said. "I think it is bad for Republicans to be kicking gays."

As early as 1998, however, Mr. Bush had already identified one gay-rights issue where he found common ground with conservative Christians: same-sex marriage. "Gay marriage, I am against that. Special rights, I am against that," Mr. Bush told Mr. Wead, five years before a Massachusetts court brought the issue to national attention. [smart call on Bush's part]

Mr. Bush took stock of conservative Christian views of foreign policy as well. Reading more of the report from the Christian Coalition meeting, Mr. Bush said to Mr. Wead: "Sovereignty. The issue is huge. The mere mention of Kofi Annan in the U.N. caused the crowd to go into a veritable fit. The coalition wants America strong and wants the American flag flying overseas, not the pale blue of the U.N."

When Mr. Wead warned that he had heard reporters talking about Mr. Bush's "immature" past, Mr. Bush said, "That's part of my schtick, which is, look, we have all made mistakes."

He paid particular attention to Senator John Ashcroft. "I like Ashcroft a lot," he told Mr. Wead in November 1998. "He is a competent man. He would be a good Supreme Court pick. He would be a good attorney general. He would be a good vice president."

When Mr. Wead predicted an uproar if Mr. Ashcroft were appointed to the court because of his conservative religious views, Mr. Bush replied, "Well, tough."

"I want Ashcroft to stay in there, and I want him to be very strong," Mr. Bush said. " I would love it to be a Bush-Ashcroft race. Only because I respect him. He wouldn't say ugly things about me. And I damn sure wouldn't say ugly things about him."

Recalling the bruising primary fight Mr. Forbes waged against Bob Dole in 1996, Mr. Bush told Mr. Wead, "Steve Forbes is going to hear this message from me. I will do nothing for him if he does to me what he did to Dole. Period. There is going to be a consequence. He is not dealing with the average, you know, 'Oh gosh, let's all get together after it's over.' I will promise you, I will not help him. I don't care."
[spiteful! That's not very Christian!]

he acknowledged that winning might require hard jabs. "I may have to get a little rough for a while," he told Mr. Wead, "but that is what the old man had to do with Dukakis, remember?""

That's the summary of the important quips that Bush made. He comes off as intelligent and machivellian. His public image is dumb (due to flubs in speeches), resolute and stubborn. I like his quote about his "schtick"!

The Iran Fantasy

2005-02-19T17:43:00.000-08:00

The U.S. has, without a doubt been engaged in covert operations to determine locations associated with Iran's nuclear program for over a year. Unlike the case with Iraq, there is little doubt that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. Additionally, Iran will doubtlessly become the world's newest nuclear power over the next couple of years. The U.S. obviously doesn't want this to happen, and The Iran Fantasy is the pipe dream that we can do something minor to stop them. In addition to having Pentagon special forces in Iran, the U.S. has been flying drones over Iran in an attempt to pick up radioactive signatures. The fantasy is this: with isotope detectors we'll find one or two sloppily disguised locations where all the centrifuges are located. We'll surprise Iran and the world by bombing key facillities with satellite-guided misses. We'll destroy the centrifuges and the experts in one strike. With our superior technology we will have thwarted a state sponsor of terror from it's attempts to join the nuclear club without losing a single soldier. Maybe if we're lucky, we'll even locate the supreme leader after he threatens retaliation, and off him too. With this key figure gone, The Iranian Caliphates will fall apart in fear, and democracy will suddenly resurge in Iran, transforming the country back to a U.S. friendly civil-society. This is a fantasy, but one that is currently entertained by Bush, Rumsfield, and Pentagon Hawks. wargames scenarios have been run, and the conclusion is that we can't win a war with Iran while simultaneously keeping troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, unless we resort to our nuclear capability. But maybe, just maybe, we could win with a daring use of technology. The Iraq Fantasy was very similar. We could take out Saddam, retroactively find his chemical weapons, and eternally grateful Shiites and Kurds would elect a U.S.-friendly prime minister. Oil would flow, and contracts with Texan oil companies would be struck, and a prosperous, civil Iraq would be transformed into a greater-Kuwait in a few short years. Go back further and we find The Cuba Fantasy, yet unfufilled.

The Propaganda War has begun. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty use same fake photo of "Iranian" Nuke plant. Not just one mistake at CNN anymore. This points towards the conclusion that the U.S. government is spreading false info about Iran. Yes, Bush's rhetoric is that we have no intentions to invade, though "a president never says never." The rhetoric is that we want a diplomatic solution to work. We've heard this before. It may be Israel that takes action first, as Cheney has hinted. However action in Iran is not imminent. It takes a few years to develop enough nuclear grade uranium with the number of centrifugues that Iran has obtained. Rumsfield has said as much. However Iran and Syria are on the radar. North Korea is not. The Pentagon hopes that star wars will progress quickly after these initial setbacks. Twenty years from now, even if Iran has nukes, we'll still be able to invade, confident that their missles will be destroyed before they reach their targets.

Negorponte: Iran contra criminal tapped to lead national intelligence advisor post.

Global Warming Ocean temperatures have risen half a degree celsius in 40 years. Volcanic and solar explanations for temperature rise discredited. Nice photos of glacier recession .

Who Links Here

2005-02-16T18:57:00.000-08:00

Excellent article on an autistic savant. "Since his epileptic fit, he has been able to see numbers as shapes, colours and textures. The number two, for instance, is a motion, and five is a clap of thunder. "When I multiply numbers together, I see two shapes. The image starts to change and evolve, and a third shape emerges""

CNN uses North Korea Nuke Plant Photos and says they're suspected Iranian plant photos!!! Who gave them these photos? Did a single journalist try to pull a Jason Blair? Is the Government building a fake case against Iran A La Iraq? When I initially saw this CNN article, I assumed the photo was real, and I was impressed that the U.S. actually had a prospective target should they launch ceremonial missles at Iran.

Science News: Researchers Kill Cancer in Mice using a virus that's 20% HIV. If any virus holds hope for gene therapy, it's HIV. It's conceivable that using HIV to insert genes will be much less risky to the individual than a modified rhino or corona virus. However, will the transfer of genes then be communicable though unprotected sex or needle use? Possible benefits to individuals with life-threatening conditions outweigh the risks.

Intel Builds First Continuous Laser with Silicon

2005-02-16T18:30:00.000-08:00

Database giant gives access to fake firms: "ChoicePoint aggregates and sells [names, addresses, Social Security numbers, credit reports] to private companies" but not individuals. Anyone can register a company, and suddenly have rights and power that no individual has. What distinguishes a fake company from a real company? Perhaps nothing more than a criminal record and/or number of employees. What gives 2-bit corporations more of a right to violate my privacy than the 2-bit individuals who own them?

Nice double-chin mugshot!
Take note: Women on pill prefer healthy faces. Remember to exfoliate.

Pa. Sen. Specter Says He Has Hodgkin's: Pat Robertson says yet another testimonial of the power of prayer

Bush on 911

2005-02-13T15:47:00.000-08:00

Review of CNN videos related to the Jim Guckert scandal. According to Aaron Brown: "There is I think here a kind of so-what quality here... so why the fuss?" Guckert has a whitehouse press corp pass 6 days after setting up a "news" website. A few months later, he's getting CIA documents regarding Valerie Plame, who's identity as an undercover CIA agent was illegally exposed. When the real name of this Whitehouse press patsy was revealed, we quickly learned that he owned the domain names hotmilitarystud.com militaryescorts.com, and militaryescortsm4m.com. On CNN he claimed that he was in the web development business and he was holding these domains for someone else, and no escort functionality was ever incorporated into these sites. Wolf Blitzer accepts this explanation without blinking an eye. The MSM barely mentions these websites as if it would denigrate the discussion. But come on, the Secret Service approving background checks on someone owning gay escort sites? Also, it's reported in the above link that they won't even accept an application to the whitehouse press corp without congressional press corp certification.

Review of President's April 2004 Press Address in wake of Guckert Scandal:

White House Press Corp plant James Guckert lobs one softball question to Bush as he is grilled about 9-11. Implies that the number of 70 FBI agents on terrorism was exaggerated: "do you now believe you were falsely comforted by the FBI?" Interestingly enough, Bush knew "Jeff Gannon's" real first name.
Question to Bush from mainstream reporter: "...Did [the August 6th PDB that mentioned Bin Laden and hijackings]the trigger some specific actions on your part and the administration, since it dealt with potentially hundreds of lives?"
Bush: "Had there been a threat that required action by anybody in the government, I would have dealt with it. In other words, had they come up and said, this is where we see something happening, you can rest assured that the people of this government would have responded, and responded in a forceful way." Okay, so the only something that this document see's happening is Al Qaeda hijacking planes inside the United States. However, since it doesn't mention which particular planes, the government doesn't respond in a forceful way?? Earlier in the session Bush laments only that the Department of Homelands Security wasn't formed before 9-11.
Additionally, Bush asserts: "nobody in our government, ...could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale." Of course, Bush knows that people in his governemnet did envision terrorists using airplanes as weapons before 911, but the "massive scale" modifier makes the sentence true. Finally, Bush indignantly asserts: "had I had any inkling whatsoever that the people were going to fly airplanes into buildings, we would have moved heaven and earth to save the country!" I believe Bush when he implys he had no inkling that people were going to fly planes into buildings. However, Bush did have an inkling that Al Qaeda might try to to hijack airplanes in the U.S.. Granted, a hijacking is less serious a threat than a suicide hijacking, but in either scenario, a non-trivial number of people will die. Heaven wasn't moved. Earth wasn't moved. The country wasn't saved. The FAA was informed but passed little information on to the airlines. Congress wasn't notified that legislating locks on cockpit doors might be a good idea. Airline security wasn't upgraded. Why not? Is a hijacking a more manageable crisis? Can we reactively deal with a mere hijacking when a suicide attack would require proactive action? Were there threats posed by other governments abroad that better warranted the presidents attention?

The Onion the week of Bush's initial inauguration (updated by Chak).

The Memory Hole: More recently purged government documents.

Five common features of all fundamentalist Religions:

Men rule the roost and make the rules. Women are support staff and for reasons easy to imagine, homosexuality is intolerable.
all rules must apply to all people, no pluralism.
the rules must be precisely communicated to the next generation
"they spurn the modern, and want to return to a nostalgic vision of a golden age that never really existed.
Fundamentalists deny history in a "radical and idiosyncratic way."

However, the study also concludes that major successful liberal movements must have crossover fundamentalist appeal and rhetoric.

Fauster's Facts: wasting time smarter and faster

2005-02-12T23:18:00.000-08:00

20040212

My name is Fauster. I'm a physics grad student.

The best blog out there that I know of is BoingBoing . However, I find myself longing for a blog with more political and current events content (minus redundant summary essays). My favorite political blog is The Daily KOS. But my ideal of a blog is one that bridges the gap between entertaining and informative. I don't wholly endorse the thoughts and opinions expressed in any of my links. Links must pass only the interesting litmus test.

Today's Thoughts: Never Trust Gallup's impartiality Or the media's breathless attention to emphasizing who's part of the in crowd.

Here's an obligatory James Gannon/Jeff Guckert/HotMilitaryStud article. The story is still active in blogland, but it dropped off the radar in Yahoo Most E-mailed and it's play on CNN and FOX has been muted and abbreviated. One of the things I really love about this story is that the investigation into Gannon's identity blew a scant day after John Stewart mocked his eggregious "Dems... out of touch with reality" question on The Daily Show . This story should get more play when one considers the disturbing trend of the Bush Admin to blatantly use taxpayer dollars for propaganda.

On a side note, The Daily Show is cutting edge liberal media. The Daily Show heavily influences Moore's F-911 and increasingly frames the left's side in the crossfire-esqe cable news "debates". Thank God new Daily Show clips regularly appear online because I refuse to pay $40/month to government-approoved, non-A-la-Carte cable monopolies. Especially when I get most of my copyrighted media for free.

Gnucleus Is a must have open-source shareware program for any PC owner. Unfortunately, I'm not yet aware of Linux and Mac binaries. I not only endorse the file-sharing of copyrighted material, but I feel that it piracy plays an important role in protecting American democracy. Fair use laws should absolutely extend to digital as well as printed media for the one reason that people consume it in such prolific quantities. We need to be able to download, display, and criticize flagrantly right wing FOX NEWS clips. We need to think critically about all aspects of news and popular media, not simply about what was said and what was printed. Cable news, commercials, and television clips can and should be chopped up, repackaged, and strewn across the gnutella networks. People should not only be allowed to download these democracy-influncing pieces of copyrighted works, but to redistribute them as well, so long as they don't personally profit from it. We must err on the side of a free discorse of ideas, not on the side of personal profit. Democracy, not income, is at stake. We've all had it beaten into us by the copyright-owning mass media powers that file-sharing is wrong, and criminal, and deserves Harsh Punishment . These voices come from institutions that care more about profit than justice, that care more about ratings than reality.

Fun Stuff: Here's a link that shows us how cool high resolution images can be: The original of each of these pictures has around 4 gb of info (A DVD!!). In a single image! Make sure to visit The GigaPxl Project . I am eagerly awaiting updates. Bet the spy agencies aren't happy with the quaility of his camera!

Learn to dance like a windsock!

Science News: link to the new Einstein Archives site. Complete with scans of original unpublished notes (in German unfortunately). Any great physicist must have dozens of unworkable ideas for every published theory. Maybe some of those dead ends are holed up here.

Finally, a site that drops the F-word: The Fourteen Points of Fascism. In the wake of 9-11, I and many others worried more about the impact of fear-mongering on our freedoms than that of Terror. In 2005 leftists and communists are unblinkingly labled Terrorists. Now, the Right has the new enemy that the miliary needed in communism's wake. In spite of America's manifestly Republican-owned liberal media, I don't believe we are yet a Fascist state. However, Neo-conservativism (i.e. post WTC conservatism), embraces many features of fascist states. Tyranny of the majority has come to pass. The system of Checks and Balances (beloved by our enlightened founding fathers) is comatose. Remember-> five of nine current supreme court justices are Republican-appointed. Though we're not there yet, I sincerely fear that we're one dirty bomb away from Fascism.

On a more personal note, one of my favorite physics professors is named Dr. Paul Csonka. Csonka (pronounced Chonka) graduated from high school in Hungary at the age of 16 and went straight to graduate school in Germany to study relativistic particle physics. He worked alongside The Werner Heisenberg as he earned his doctorate. Csonka lived in Europe as fascists gradually came to power. He now strongly warns his physics students that post-9-11 America has the same culture of fear that lead to fascism in Germany, Austria and Hungary. He knows what it feels like before fascists gain control of a democracy, and he says it feels like America in 2004. He warns us that with one more bomb in one more U.S. city our democracy and civil rights will be the greatest casualties. To be fair, we still live in a democracy, and talk of coming fascism is highly speculative. However, when so much is at stake, can we afford not to speculate? Comments welcome.

Pic of the day: An endangered tarsier, the world's smallest primate. His hind legs are long so he can jump and catch insects in midair. According to Wikipedia, "some are extremely traumatised by captivity, killing themselves by banging their heads against the cage." Poor wittle guy! =( Can you imagine him headbanging himself to death? How depressed and miserable do you have to be? He must be feeling something!

Sligtly related: The philosopher Nagel asserts that the problem with a scientific theory of consciousness is the subjective nature of human experience. We can never know what it's like to be something we're not, ergo it's impossible to know what it's like to be a tarsier trapped in a cage spazzing to death! Nagel article: "What is it like to be a bat" .