Blair kicks off campaign to become EU President

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/tonyblai ... 63,00.html


Tony Blair launched his campaign to become the first fully-fledged President of the European Union yesterday by describing the notion of left- and right-wing politics as redundant.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=507558&in_page_id=1811


Computer hackers 'may be behind Hillary Clinton's shock new Hampshire victory'
By DAVID GARDNER - More by this author »
Last updated at 22:10pm on 11th January 2008




Clinton's win shocked all the pollsters - were they so far off base after all?
Computer hackers may have been behind Hillary Clinton's dramatic win in the New Hampshire primary, it was claimed yesterday.


One of her rivals in the race to be Democratic Party candidate in November's presidential election is demanding a recount.


Mrs Clinton's victory in Tuesday's primary - one of a series of votes by individual states to pick each party's candidate - confounded the polls and revived her campaign.

http://www.blacklistednews.com/iNP/view.asp?ID=5263

Prisoners 'to be chipped like dogs'

Published on Sunday, January 13, 2008.

Source: UK Independent

Ministers are planning to implant "machine-readable" microchips under the skin of thousands of offenders as part of an expansion of the electronic tagging scheme that would create more space in British jails.
Amid concerns about the security of existing tagging systems and prison overcrowding, the Ministry of Justice is investigating the use of satellite and radio-wave technology to monitor criminals.

But, instead of being contained in bracelets worn around the ankle, the tiny chips would be surgically inserted under the skin of offenders in the community, to help enforce home curfews. The radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, as long as two grains of rice, are able to carry scanable personal information about individuals, including their identities, address and offending record.

The tags, labelled "spychips" by privacy campaigners, are already used around the world to keep track of dogs, cats, cattle and airport luggage, but there is no record of the technology being used to monitor offenders in the community. The chips are also being considered as a method of helping to keep order within prisons.

A senior Ministry of Justice official last night confirmed that the department hoped to go even further, by extending the geographical range of the internal chips through a link-up with satellite-tracking similar to the system used to trace stolen vehicles. "All the options are on the table, and this is one we would like to pursue," the source added.

The move is in line with a proposal from Ken Jones, the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), that electronic chips should be surgically implanted into convicted paedophiles and sex offenders in order to track them more easily. Global Positioning System (GPS) technology is seen as the favoured method of monitoring such offenders to prevent them going near "forbidden" zones such as primary schools.

"We have wanted to take advantage of this technology for several years, because it seems a sensible solution to the problems we are facing in this area," a senior minister said last night. "We have looked at it and gone back to it and worried about the practicalities and the ethics, but when you look at the challenges facing the criminal justice system, it's time has come."

The Government has been forced to review sentencing policy amid serious overcrowding in the nation's jails, after the prison population soared from 60,000 in 1997 to 80,000 today. The crisis meant the number of prisoners held in police cells rose 13-fold last year, with police stations housing offenders more than 60,000 times in 2007, up from 4,617 the previous year. The UK has the highest prison population per capita in western Europe, and the Government is planning for an extra 20,000 places at a cost of £3.8bn – including three gigantic new "superjails" – in the next six years.

More than 17,000 individuals, including criminals and suspects released on bail, are subject to electronic monitoring at any one time, under curfews requiring them to stay at home up to 12 hours a day. But official figures reveal that almost 2,000 offenders a year escape monitoring by tampering with ankle tags or tearing them off. Curfew breaches rose from 11,435 in 2005 to 43,843 in 2006 – up 283 per cent. The monitoring system, which relies on mobile-phone technology, can fail if the network crashes.

A multimillion-pound pilot of satellite monitoring of offenders was shelved last year after a report revealed many criminals simply ditched the ankle tag and separate portable tracking unit issued to them. The "prison without bars" project also failed to track offenders when they were in the shadow of tall buildings.

The Independent on Sunday has now established that ministers have been assessing the merits of cutting-edge technology that would make it virtually impossible for individuals to remove their electronic tags.

The tags, injected into the back of the arm with a hypodermic needle, consist of a toughened glass capsule holding a computer chip, a copper antenna and a "capacitor" that transmits data stored on the chip when prompted by an electromagnetic reader.

But details of the dramatic option for tightening controls over Britain's criminals provoked an angry response from probation officers and civil-rights groups. Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said: "If the Home Office doesn't understand why implanting a chip in someone is worse than an ankle bracelet, they don't need a human-rights lawyer; they need a common-sense bypass.

"Degrading offenders in this way will do nothing for their rehabilitation and nothing for our safety, as some will inevitably find a way round this new technology."

Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of the National Association of Probation Officers, said the proposal would not make his members' lives easier and would degrade their clients. He added: "I have heard about this suggestion, but we feel the system works well enough as it is. Knowing where offenders like paedophiles are does not mean you know what they are doing.

"This is the sort of daft idea that comes up from the department every now and then, but tagging people in the same way we tag our pets cannot be the way ahead. Treating people like pieces of meat does not seem to represent an improvement in the system to me."

The US market leader VeriChip Corp, whose parent company has been selling radio tags for animals for more than a decade, has sold 7,000 RFID microchips worldwide, of which about 2,000 have been implanted in humans. The company claims its VeriChips are used in more than 5,000 installations, crossing healthcare, security, government and industrial markets, but they have also been used to verify VIP membership in nightclubs, automatically gaining the carrier entry – and deducting the price of their drinks from a pre-paid account.

The possible value of the technology to the UK's justice system was first highlighted 18 months ago, when Acpo's Mr Jones suggested the chips could be implanted into sex offenders. The implants would be tracked by satellite, enabling authorities to set up "zones", including schools, playgrounds and former victims' homes, from which individuals would be barred.

"If we are prepared to track cars, why don't we track people?" Mr Jones said. "You could put surgical chips into those of the most dangerous sex offenders who are willing to be controlled."

The case for: 'We track cars, so why not people?'

The Government is struggling to keep track of thousands of offenders in the community and is troubled by an overcrowded prison system close to bursting. Internal tagging offers a solution that could impose curfews more effectively than at present, and extend the system by keeping sex offenders out of "forbidden areas". "If we are prepared to track cars, why don't we track people?" said Ken Jones, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo).

Officials argue that the internal tags enable the authorities to enforce thousands of court orders by ensuring offenders remain within their own walls during curfew hours – and allow the immediate verification of ID details when challenged.

The internal tags also have a use in maintaining order within prisons. In the United States, they are used to track the movement of gang members within jails.

Offenders themselves would prefer a tag they can forget about, instead of the bulky kit carried around on the ankle.

The case against: 'The rest of us could be next'

Professionals in the criminal justice system maintain that the present system is 95 per cent effective. Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is unproven. The technology is actually more invasive, and carries more information about the host. The devices have been dubbed "spychips" by critics who warn that they would transmit data about the movements of other people without their knowledge.

Consumer privacy expert Liz McIntyre said a colleague had already proved he could "clone" a chip. "He can bump into a chipped person and siphon the chip's unique signal in a matter of seconds," she said.

One company plans deeper implants that could vibrate, electroshock the implantee, broadcast a message, or serve as a microphone to transmit conversations. "Some folks might foolishly discount all of these downsides and futuristic nightmares since the tagging is proposed for criminals like rapists and murderers," Ms McIntyre said. "The rest of us could be next."

Homeland Security Contracts KBR to Build Detention Centers in the US

Sources:
New America Media, January 31, 2006
Title: “Homeland Security Contracts for Vast New Detention Camps”
Author: Peter Dale Scott

New America Media, February 21, 2006
Title: “10-Year US Strategic Plan for Detention Camps Revives Proposals from Oliver North”
Author: Peter Dale Scott

Consortiium, February 21, 2006
Title: “Bush's Mysterious ‘New Programs’”
Author: Nat Parry

Buzzflash
Title: “Detention Camp Jitters”
Author: Maureen Farrell

Community Evaluator: Dr. Gary Evans
Student Researchers: Sean Hurley and Caitlyn Peele

Halliburton’s subsidiary KBR (formerly Kellogg, Brown and Root) announced on January 24, 2006 that it had been awarded a $385 million contingency contract by the Department of Homeland Security to build detention camps in the United States.

According to a press release posted on the Halliburton website, “The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs. The contingency support contract provides for planning and, if required, initiation of specific engineering, construction and logistics support tasks to establish, operate and maintain one or more expansion facilities.”

What little coverage the announcement received focused on concerns about Halliburton’s reputation for overcharging U.S. taxpayers for substandard services.

Less attention was focused on the phrase “rapid development of new programs” or what type of programs might require a major expansion of detention centers, capable of holding 5,000 people each. Jamie Zuieback, spokeswoman for ICE, declined to elaborate on what these “new programs” might be.

Only a few independent journalists, such as Peter Dale Scott, Maureen Farrell, and Nat Parry have explored what the Bush administration might actually have in mind.

Scott speculates that the “detention centers could be used to detain American citizens if the Bush administration were to declare martial law.” He recalled that during the Reagan administration, National Security Council aide Oliver North organized the Rex-84 “readiness exercise,” which contemplated the Federal Emergency Management Agency rounding up and detaining 400,000 “refugees” in the event of “uncontrolled population movements” over the Mexican border into the U.S.

North’s exercise, which reportedly contemplated possible suspension of the Constitution, led to a line of questioning during the Iran-Contra Hearings concerning the idea that plans for expanded internment and detention facilities would not be confined to “refugees” alone.

It is relevant, says Scott, that in 2002 Attorney General John Ashcroft announced his desire to see camps for U.S. citizens deemed to be “enemy combatants.” On February 17, 2006, in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spoke of the harm being done to the country’s security, not just by the enemy, but also by what he called “news informers” who needed to be combated in “a contest of wills.”

Since September 11 the Bush administration has implemented a number of interrelated programs that were planned in the 1980s under President Reagan. Continuity of Government (COG) proposals—a classified plan for keeping a secret “government-within-the-government” running during and after a nuclear disaster—included vastly expanded detention capabilities, warrantless eavesdropping, and preparations for greater use of martial law.

Scott points out that, while Oliver North represented a minority element in the Reagan administration, which soon distanced itself from both the man and his proposals, the minority associated with COG planning, which included Cheney and Rumsfeld, appear to be in control of the U.S. government today.

Farrell speculates that, because another terror attack is all but certain, it seems far more likely that the detention centers would be used for post-September 11-type detentions of rounded-up immigrants rather than for a sudden deluge of immigrants flooding across the border.

Vietnam-era whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg ventures, “Almost certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next September 11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters. They’ve already done this on a smaller scale, with the ‘special registration’ detentions of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantánamo.”

Parry notes that The Washington Post reported on February 15, 2006 that the National Counterterrorism Center’s (NCTC) central repository holds the names of 325,000 terrorist suspects, a fourfold increase since fall of 2003.
Asked whether the names in the repository were collected through the NSA’s domestic surveillance program, an NCTC official told the Post, “Our database includes names of known and suspected international terrorists provided by all intelligence community organizations, including NSA.”

As the administration scoops up more and more names, members of Congress have questioned the elasticity of Bush’s definitions for words like terrorist “affiliates,” used to justify wiretapping Americans allegedly in contact with such people or entities.

A Defense Department document, entitled the “Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support,” has set out a military strategy against terrorism that envisions an “active, layered defense” both inside and outside U.S. territory. In the document, the Pentagon pledges to “transform U.S. military forces to execute homeland defense missions in the . . . U.S. homeland.” The strategy calls for increased military reconnaissance and surveillance to “defeat potential challengers before they threaten the United States.” The plan “maximizes threat awareness and seizes the initiative from those who would harm us.”

But there are concerns, warns Parry, over how the Pentagon judges “threats” and who falls under the category of “those who would harm us.” A Pentagon official said the Counterintelligence Field Activity’s TALON program has amassed files on antiwar protesters.

In the view of some civil libertarians, a form of martial law already exists in the U.S. and has been in place since shortly after the September 11 attacks when Bush issued Military Order Number One, which empowered him to detain any noncitizen as an international terrorist or enemy combatant. Today that order extends to U.S. citizens as well.

Farrell ends her article with the conclusion that while much speculation has been generated by KBR’s contract to build huge detention centers within the U.S., “The truth is, we won’t know the real purpose of these centers unless ‘contingency plans are needed.’ And by then, it will be too late.”

UPDATE BY PETER DALE SCOTT
The contract of the Halliburton subsidiary KBR to build immigrant detention facilities is part of a longer-term Homeland Security plan titled ENDGAME, which sets as its goal the removal of “all removable aliens” and “potential terrorists.” In the 1980s Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld discussed similar emergency detention powers as part of a super-secret program of planning for what was euphemistically called “Continuity of Government” (COG) in the event of a nuclear disaster. At the time, Cheney was a Wyoming congressman, while Rumsfeld, who had been defense secretary under President Ford, was a businessman and CEO of the drug company G.D. Searle.

These men planned for suspension of the Constitution, not just after nuclear attack, but for any “national security emergency,” which they defined in Executive Order 12656 of 1988 as: “Any occurrence, including natural disaster, military attack, technological or other emergency, that seriously degrades or seriously threatens the national security of the United States.” Clearly September 11 would meet this definition, and did, for COG was instituted on that day. As the Washington Post later explained, the order “dispatched a shadow government of about 100 senior civilian managers to live and work secretly outside Washington, activating for the first time long-standing plans.”

What these managers in this shadow government worked on has never been reported. But it is significant that the group that prepared ENDGAME was, as the Homeland Security document puts it, “chartered in September 2001.” For ENDGAME’s goal of a capacious detention capability is remarkably similar to Oliver North’s controversial Rex-84 “readiness exercise” for COG in 1984. This called for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to round up and detain 400,000 imaginary “refugees,” in the context of “uncontrolled population movements” over the Mexican border into the United States.

UPDATE BY MAUREEN FARRELL
When the story about Kellogg, Brown and Root’s contract for emergency detention centers broke, immigration was not the hot button issue it is today. Given this, the language in Halliburton’s press release, stating that the centers would be built in the event of an “emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S.,” raised eyebrows, especially among those familiar with Rex-84 and other Reagan-era initiatives. FEMA’s former plans ‘for the detention of at least 21 million American Negroes in assembly centers or relocation camps’ added to the distrust, and the second stated reason for the KBR contract, “to support the rapid development of new programs,” sent imaginations reeling.

While few in the mainstream media made the connection between KBR’s contract and previous programs, Fox News eventually addressed this issue, pooh-poohing concerns as the province of “conspiracy theories” and “unfounded” fears. My article attempted to sift through the speculation, focusing on verifiable information found in declassified and leaked documents which proved that, in addition to drawing up contingency plans for martial law, the government has conducted military readiness exercises designed to round up and detain both illegal aliens and U.S. citizens.
How concerned should Americans be? Recent reports are conflicting and confusing:
In May, 2006, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began “Operation Return to Sender,” which involved catching illegal immigrants and deporting them. In June, however, President Bush vowed that there would soon be “new infrastructures” including detention centers designed to put an end to such “catch and release” practices.
Though Bush said he was “working with Congress to increase the number of detention facilities along our borders,” Rep. Bennie Thompson, ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said he first learned about the KBR contract through newspaper reports.
Fox News recently quoted Pepperdine University professor Doug Kmiec, who deemed detention camp concerns “more paranoia than reality” and added that KBR’s contract is most likely “something related to (Hurricane) Katrina” or “a bird flu outbreak that could spur a mass quarantine of Americans.” The president’s stated desire for the U.S. military to take a more active role during natural disasters and to enforce quarantines in the event of a bird flu outbreak, however, have been roundly denounced.

Concern over an all-powerful federal government is not paranoia, but active citizenship. As Thomas Jefferson explained, “even under the best forms of government, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.” From John Adams’s Alien and Sedition Acts to FDR’s internment of Japanese Americans, the land of the free has held many contradictions and ironies. Interestingly enough, Halliburton was at the center of another historical controversy, when Lyndon Johnson’s ties to a little-known company named Kellogg, Brown and Root caused a congressional commotion—particularly after the Halliburton subsidiary won enough wartime contracts to become one of the first protested symbols of the military-industrial complex. Back then they were known as the “Vietnam builders.” The question, of course, is what they’ll be known as next.

Additional links:
“ Reagan Aides and the Secret Government,” Miami Herald, July 5, 1987, http://fpiarticle.blogspot.com/2005/12/ ... -1987.html

“Foundations are in place for martial law in the US,” July 27, 2002, Sydney Morning Herald, smh.com.au/articles/2002/07/27/ 1027497418339.html

“Halliburton Deals Recall Vietnam-Era Controversy: Cheney’s Ties to Company Reminiscent of LBJ’s Relationships,” NPR, Dec. 24, 2003, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=1569483

“Critics Fear Emergency Centers Could Be Used for Immigration Round-Ups,” Fox News, June 7, 2006, http://www.foxnews.com/ story/0,2933,198456,00.html

“U.S. officials nab 2,100 illegal immigrants in 3 weeks,” USA Today, June 14, 2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/200 ... ests_x.htm

http://parallelnormal.com/2007/12/17/20 ... lar-cycle/


2012: NASA sees start of “new solar cycle”
Posted on December 17, 2007 by Mark Baard



A bumpy ride ahead for sats and power grids. (Image: NASA)

NASA today published a forecast for a “big and intense” new solar cycle in 2011 or 2012, which its suggests will wreak havoc on satellite GPS and telecommunications, power grids and air traffic.

NASA says the next solar cycle, Solar Cycle 24, “could make itself felt as never before.”

We are now at the end of Solar Cycle 23 (see graphic, and excerpts, below), according to the U.S. space agency.



Is a New Solar Cycle
Beginning
It may not look like much, but “this patch of magnetism could be a sign of the next solar cycle,” says solar physicist David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center.

U.S. Drafting Plan To Access Any E-Mail
01-14-2008
Raw Story


National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell is drawing up plans for cyberspace spying that would make the current debate on warrantless wiretaps look like a "walk in the park," according to an interview published in the New Yorker's print edition today.

Debate on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act “will be a walk in the park compared to this,” McConnell said. “this is going to be a goat rope on the Hill. My prediction is that we’re going to screw around with this until something horrendous happens.”

The article, which profiles the 65-year-old former admiral appointed by President George W. Bush in January 2007 to oversee all of America's intelligence agencies, was not published on the New Yorker's Web site. (It can be read here in pdf).

McConnell is developing a Cyber-Security Policy, still in the draft stage, which will closely police Internet activity.

"Ed Giorgio, who is working with McConnell on the plan, said that would mean giving the government the autority to examine the content of any e-mail, file transfer or Web search," author Lawrence Wright pens.

“Google has records that could help in a cyber-investigation, he said," Wright adds. "Giorgio warned me, 'We have a saying in this business: ‘Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.'"

A zero-sum game is one in which gains by one side come at the expense of the other. In other words -- McConnell's aide believes greater security can only come at privacy's expense.

McConnell has been an advocate for computer-network defense, which has previously not been the province of any intelligence agency.

According to a 2007 conversation in the Oval Office, McConnell told President Bush, “If the 9/11 perpetrators had focused on a single US bank through cyber-attack and it had been successful, it would have an order of magnitude greater impact on the US economy.”

Bush turned to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, asking him if it was true; Paulson said that it was. Bush then asked to McConnell to come up with a network security strategy.

"One proposal of McConnell’s Cyber-Security Policy, which is still in the draft stage, is to reduce the access points between government computers and the Internet from two thousand to fifty," Wright notes. "He claimed that cyber-theft account for as much as a hundred billion dollars in annual losses to the American economy. 'The real problem is the perpetrator who doesn’t care about stealing—he just wants to destroy.'"

The infrastructure to tap into Americans' email and web search history may already be in place.

In November, a former technician at AT&T alleged that the telecom forwarded virtually all of its Internet traffic into a "secret room" to facilitate government spying.

Whistleblower Mark Klein said that a copy of all Internet traffic passing over AT&T lines was copied into a locked room at the company's San Francisco office -- to which only employees with National Security Agency clearance had access -- via a cable splitting device.

"My job was to connect circuits into the splitter device which was hard-wired to the secret room," Klein. said "And effectively, the splitter copied the entire data stream of those Internet cables into the secret room -- and we're talking about phone conversations, email web browsing, everything that goes across the Internet."

"As a technician, I had the engineering wiring documents, which told me how the splitter was wired to the secret room," Klein continued. "And so I know that whatever went across those cables was copied and the entire data stream was copied."

According to Klein, that information included Internet activity about Americans.

"We're talking about domestic traffic as well as international traffic," Klein said. Previous Bush administration claims that only international communications were being intercepted aren't accurate, he added.

"I know the physical equipment, and I know that statement is not true," he added. "It involves millions of communications, a lot of it domestic communications that they're copying wholesale."

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/december2007/121807_rockefellers_joked.htm


Rockefellers "Joked" About Controlling The World
Elitist sons would carve up the planet into different thiefdoms, "something really behind the joke," admits biographer

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Tuesday, December 18, 2007


The elitist Rockefeller sons would sometimes "joke" about which parts of the world they would each control according to biographer Peter Collier, carving the world up into different thiefdoms. Collier's admission that there was "something really behind the joke" is an understatement considering the revelations of the late Aaron Russo about what Nicholas Rockefeller told him.

The admission is taken from a segment of a History Channel documentary about the Rockefeller family which hit You Tube today.

"Sometimes they would joke about it, they would say well David gets Europe, Nelson's gonna have Latin America, and you know John D. the third gets Asia and then they'd make some joke about what Winthrop got, you know which would be something like Arkansas - but nonetheless there was something really behind the joke," states Peter Collier, who wrote a glowing biography of the family with top Neo-Con and former Marxist David Horowitz.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb-5DYxbHf0

Of course the so-called "joke" was a thin veil for the fact that by the end of the 1950's the Rockefellers had become the pre-eminent elitist family and controlled huge swathes of economies, infrastructure, media and business worldwide.

Revelations on behalf of the late Aaron Russo concerning what Nicholas Rockefeller told him about his family's predatory control of the planet were explicit in their honesty and scale.

Nick Rockefeller told Russo in advance that an "event" would precipitate the invasion of Afghanistan so the U.S. could run oil pipelines through the country before invading Iraq and establishing military bases throughout the Middle East. He also stated that we would see soldiers looking in caves in Afghanistan and Pakistan for Osama bin Laden and that there would be an "Endless war on terror where there's no real enemy and the whole thing is a giant hoax," so that "the government could take over the American people," according to Russo, who said that Rockefeller was cynically laughing and joking as he made the astounding prediction. This was all related to Russo nearly a year before 9/11 happened.

Rockefeller also related how members of the elite were obsessed by creating a world identification society where people had to carry ID cards and prove who they were at all times.

During one conversation, Rockefeller asked Russo if he was interested in joining the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) but Russo rejected the invitation, saying he had no interest in "enslaving the people" to which Rockefeller coldly questioned why he cared about the "serfs."

"I used to say to him what's the point of all this," said Russo, "you have all the money in the world you need, you have all the power you need, what's the point, what's the end goal?" to which Rockefeller replied (paraphrasing), "The end goal is to get everybody chipped, to control the whole society, to have the bankers and the elite people control the world."

Rockefeller also told Russo that his family's foundation had created and bankrolled the women's liberation movement in order to destroy the family and that population reduction was a fundamental aim of the global elite.

Watch a clip of Russo's interview with Alex Jones in which he details the admissions of Rockefeller below.

The History Channel documentary also mentions the Rockefeller's involvement in population control in the clip below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XrGINLd_r8

US drafting plan to allow government access to any email or Web search RAW STORY Published: Monday January 14, 2008

National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell is drawing up plans for cyberspace spying that would make the current debate on warrantless wiretaps look like a "walk in the park," according to an interview published in the New Yorker's print edition today.

Debate on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act “will be a walk in the park compared to this,” McConnell said. “this is going to be a goat rope on the Hill. My prediction is that we’re going to screw around with this until something horrendous happens.”

The article, which profiles the 65-year-old former admiral appointed by President George W. Bush in January 2007 to oversee all of America's intelligence agencies, was not published on the New Yorker's Web site.


Available on audio from the site....

Maybe one more... ;D

I received a letter which (in part) reads:

"Yes or no gd_it! Should Intelligent Design be taught right now in public High School science class next to Darwinism? If yes why? If no why not? Your answer will determine my view of you. ... Are faith and science mutually exclusive? Please post it on your forum but don't show my name."

Now, how can I answer all that with a "yes" or "no?" ;D The word "please" was very helpful to you, to see your letter posted. ;D ...but please do not write me again using the expletive you applied. It is offensive to me. Eliminate it, remain polite, and I will continue answering as I can, as your email behavior determines my view of you.

Allow me take them one by one?

"Should Intelligent Design be taught right now in public High School science class next to Darwinism?"

No.

"If no why not?"

We have no known technique to measure infinite intelligence. The ID community essentially relies on this -

"Intelligent Design is the study of patterns in nature
that are best explained as the result of intelligence. -- William A. Dembski"

Well...while I agree that the whole of nature (especially including "patterns") is designed, the methodology being applied (save certain statistical methods just being developed) does not meet the standard for scientific evidence. Just as the National Academy of Sciences has found that Faith and Evolution are not incompatible...

http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?recor ... 76&page=10

Look at 10-15. :D

...we also see how attempting to reconcile the differences, by forcing square pegs toward round holes, rather than accepting each with their own merits, becomes a real problem.

See: PBS's Nova, "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial"

That said...I accept neither of the following tacks...

http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/boo ... /delusion/

http://www.nwcreation.net/ageyoung.html

To me, both are unfortunate extremes.

Just to let you know...I have invited multiple "Creationism" and ID people to the upcoming presentation. I would love to hear their responses, too, to what we are going to present. So far, no representative of a so called "Creation Science" group or an ID person is willing to come? I told them where/when, and indicated that some of our data may become a real issue to some hardline views in the scientific community. So far, they (the "Creation Science" people) appear "scared" as though a trap is being set for them. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

If anyone knows a person in such a club or group, I would love to invite them.

Do I "believe" in a Designer? Yes, however, try as I may I haven't located a measuring device large enough.

Prisoners today. YOU tommorrow. Its coming folks the mark of the beast. You should decided now what are going to do. Take it in arm or take up arms an start joinning the resistence!

US drafting plan to allow government access to any email or Web search RAW STORY Published: Monday January 14, 2008

National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell is drawing up plans for cyberspace spying that would make the current debate on warrantless wiretaps look like a "walk in the park," according to an interview published in the New Yorker's print edition today.

Uncle John here: This is classic ET/majestic mind control. If you can't control something, then deny it. Perhaps, dan would deny God using the same logic, but no, through our religions the ET have humans' perception of God under total control, so I guess that it is acceptable to them and thus dan to affirm God.

The ET/majestic just don't want humans to know about the information they have how human have been intelligently designed, in part, by ET's. Dan follows the company story. He has no free will or choice to do otherwise.

Mathematics has plenty of devices for measuring infinity and some infinite things are not measurable even by God. It is not measuring that our controllers can't do, it is controlling infinity that they will always come up short.

BTW, faith does not meet the standard for scientific evidence and should not be considered for anything by the National Academy of Sciences, but alas, that organization is controlled by the ET's also.

An alternate view here would be that the combination of everyone with an RFID chip (so that their location can be continuously tracked) and the government's ability to read everything on the Internet would result in there being nowhere to hide. It seems to me that is only a bad thing if one wants to hide from the government. And, if one has no criminal intent, then what is the problem since there is no need to hide?

The very act of trying to hide anything from the government could be seen as a corollary for criminal intent.

I know where you're coming from, Bunny-chan, but that position is predicated on having a 'good' and 'honest' government, which many (even and especially staunch conservatives) believe we haven't had in a long time, if ever. It wasn't that long ago that I saw a world in which love and logic ruled, and both weren't mutually exclusive but mutually derivative of each other. In the instance of Dadmiral McConnell making the above statement, I'm sure that if no 'catastrophic event' was facing us there would be no need for him to make such an ominous pronouncement

And, democracy is predicated on having a responsible electorate who votes beyond their self interest. Do we really have that? It seems that Dondep argues that we have a public bamboozled by the PTB and UJ argues that we are all mind-controlled by ETs. That leaves very little room for the exercise of civic-minded democracy.

My critique, for what its worth, is that it seems that too many people take the a priori postion that democracy and freedom are an end themselves without considering the larger questions of what is good for us all or good for the planet. Would you pursue "freedom" unto the very destruction of the planet? What is the point?

As it is, the elites that you criticize hide behind the "noise" of democracy and freedom. This may not be a popular notion, but consider for a moment that a "Caesar" might be able to break through the noise and reorganize society, laws, and the economy for the good of all. Or, he (or she) could be tyrant. Perhaps, however, at least we would have a chance of getting a good dictator whereas what chance do we really have in the existing system?

Having said that, if we were NOT a democracy but subject to the 'Good Caesar' or 'benevolent dictator' model, then I wouldn't have any problem in practice with such.

Here's the 'Red' again...Dex
From Dee
Cross posting:


http://www.associatedcontent.com/articl ... _skies_abo
ut_stephenville.html

UFO SIGHTINGS IN THE SKIES ABOUT STEPHENVILLE, TEXAS!

http://www.associatedcontent.com/articl ... _skies_abo
ut_stephenville.html?page=2

STEPHENVILLE, TX – The town of Stephenville, Texas has been buzzing
with reporters due to the many accounts of UFO (Unidentified Flying
Object) sightings. The number of those who witnessed this phenomenon
range from a dozen to several dozen people who claimed to see the bright
red lights that apparently changed color and took off at a remarkable
speed. Witnesses claim that whatever was producing these bright red
lights was followed by fighter jets, but was evidently faster than its
pursuers.
------------------------------------------------------
POSSIBLE UFO SIGHTING: 4 AREA RESIDENTS WITNESS MYSTERIOUS OBJECT and
LIGHTS IN THE SELDEN SKY! –
By Angelia Joiner, Staff Writer, Wednesday, 1-16-08, 2008 11:16 AM CST

http://www.empiretribune.com/articles/2 ... news02.txt

http://www.empiretribune.com/articles/2 ... news02.prt

TEXAS SIGHTING FLASH – Steve Allen, Mike Odom and Lance Jones were out
admiring a beautiful Texas sunset Tuesday evening when they saw
something none of them can explain. Allen called it an unidentified
flying object. And, because he's been a private pilot for more than 30
years, he has a little more experience judging air speeds and distances
than most.
------------------------------------------------------
UFOs PUT STEPHENVILLE, TX, IN WORLD SPOTLIGHT! –
By Bud Kennedy, Wednesday, Jan 16, 2008 / Posted on Wed., Jan. 16, 2008
bud@star-telegram.com

http://www.star-telegram.com/metro_news ... 11767.html

TEXAS – Stephenville's latest close encounter is weirder than any
light in the sky. Stephenville is under assault — not by Martians, but
by people hunting them. The phones haven't stopped ringing at Steve
Allen's trucking company in nearby Glen Rose. He's the guy who was out
Jan. 7 watching the sunset at a friend's house near Selden when they all
saw some weird flashing lights.

Don,

Tyrany, by definition, is "In modern usage a tyrant is a single ruler holding vast, if not absolute power through a state or in an organization. The term carries connotations of a harsh and cruel ruler who places his/her own interests or the interests of a small oligarchy over the best interests of the general population which they govern or control. This mode of rule is referred to as tyranny. Many individual rulers or government officials are accused of tyranny, with the label almost always a matter of controversy."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrant

In other words, we are living with a tyranical government overseen by a dictator. That is why our government doesn't work. Obsolute power should never reside with one person or one government, which is what we have and is why we are failing.

Since the earliest beginings of the war in Iraq 65% of our population opposed it, yet we still did it...

http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm

..why? One man's ambitions. In a true democracy, this never would have happened, yet we as a democracy voted for this tyrant. Why? One might argue he had us played from the begining, however, I say he became obscured by his own power and became a tyrant through his office. Needless to say, their has never been a 'good' tyrant or dictator. Governments who use such principals to govern their people have always failed eventually. I can't imagine why you or Bunny-chan could support such a communistic approach to government?

Dag

Terminator 4 coming 2009… as part of a trilogy?

The Terminator is back.

The Halycon Co. have purchased the rights to the franchise and they now intend to make a brand new trilogy, the first of which will be released in the first half of 2009. There will be no James Cameron involved which we all knew anyway, and certainly no Arnold Schwarzenegger. This is a brand new trilogy, that will focus on John Connor in his 30’s as part of a very depleted human race who must stand up against the machines.

The next installment, Terminator 4 will be based on a script written by John D. Brancato and Michael Ferris who collaborated together on Terminator 3 and also that hideous Catwoman movie.

The new deal also includes any t.v. spinoffs, merchandise, profits from the previous movie and all licensing rights including certain rights to The Sarah Connor Chronicles T.V. show which still hasn’t had it’s pilot picked up by anyone yet.

What’s your thoughts on this guys? Surely it’s a strange move to keep the writers from the weakest film in the franchise when you are going for a completely new cast, tone and direction. Can three more movies work, without Arnie or Cameron’s involvement?

Who for The Terminator? Who for director? Can’t help but feel those will be the make or break decisions in the upcoming months.

http://geology.com/articles/racetrack-playa-sliding-rocks.shtml

The Sliding Rocks of Racetrack Playa

One of the most interesting mysteries of Death Valley National Park is the sliding rocks at Racetrack Playa (a playa is a dry lake bed). These rocks can be found on the floor of the playa with long trails behind them. Somehow these rocks slide across the playa, cutting a furrow in the sediment as they move.

Some of these rocks weigh several hundred pounds. That makes the question: "How do they move?" a very challenging one.

The truth: No one knows for sure exactly how these rocks move - although a few people have come up with some pretty good explanations. The reason why their movement remains a mystery: No one has ever seen them in motion!

Let's learn how they are thought to move....


About Racetrack Playa

Racetrack playa is lake bed that is almost perfectly flat and almost always dry. It is about 4 kilometers long (2.5 miles - north to south) and about 2 kilometers wide (1.25 miles - east to west). The surface is covered with mudcracks and the sediment is made up mainly of silt and clay.

The climate in this area is arid. It rains just a couple of inches per year. However, when it rains, the steep mountains which surround Racetrack Playa produce a large amount of runoff that converts the playa floor into a broad shallow lake. When wet, the surface of the playa is transformed into a very soft and very slippery mud.


Are They Moved by People or Animals?

The shape of trails behind the rocks suggest that they move during times when the floor of Racetrack Playa is covered with a very soft mud. A lack of disturbed mud around the rock trails eliminates the possibility of a human or animal pushing or assisting the motion of the rocks.


Are They Moved by Wind?

This is the favorite explanation. The prevailing winds that blow across Racetrack Playa travel from southwest to northeast. Most of the rock trails are parallel to this direction. This is strong evidence that wind is the prime mover or at least involved with the motion of the rocks.

Strong wind gusts are thought to nudge the rocks into motion. Once the rock begins to move a wind of much lower velocity can keep the rock in motion as it slides across the soft and very slippery mud. Curves in the rock trails are explained by shifts in wind direction or in how the wind interacts with an irregularly shaped rock.


Are They Moved by Ice?

A few people have reported seeing Racetrack Playa covered by a thin layer of ice. One idea is that water freezes around the rocks and then wind, blowing across the top of the ice, drags the ice sheet with its embedded rocks across the surface of the playa.

Some researchers have found highly congruent trails on multiple rocks that strongly support this movement theory. However, the transport of a large ice sheet might be expected to mark the playa surface in other ways - these marks have not been found.

Other researchers experimented with stakes that would be disturbed by ice sheets. The rocks moved without disturbing the stakes. The evidence for ice-sheet transport is not consistent.



Wind is the Favored Mover!

All of the best explanations involve wind as the energy source behind the movement of the rocks. The question remains is do they slide while encased in an ice sheet or do they simply side over the surface of the mud? Perhaps each of these methods is responsible for some rock movement?

Perhaps this story will remain more interesting if the real answer is never discovered!



Photos of Sliding Rocks Below!

Movement of a large rock across a barren surface is almost impossible to believe. However, good photographs can serve as evidence for those who can not travel to Death Valley National Park. Thanks to Steve Geer, Stephan Hoerold, Skye Bajoul, sartriano, John Alcorn and Mike Nortan for the great images used here.



A sliding rock that has left a long track across the surface of Racetrack Playa. Some tracks are hundreds of feet long! (See below for several more sliding rock photos.) © iStockphoto / Steve Geer





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January 15, 2008
Big Brain Theory: Have Cosmologists Lost Theirs?
By DENNIS OVERBYE

It could be the weirdest and most embarrassing prediction in the history of cosmology, if not science.

If true, it would mean that you yourself reading this article are more likely to be some momentary fluctuation in a field of matter and energy out in space than a person with a real past born through billions of years of evolution in an orderly star-spangled cosmos. Your memories and the world you think you see around you are illusions.

This bizarre picture is the outcome of a recent series of calculations that take some of the bedrock theories and discoveries of modern cosmology to the limit. Nobody in the field believes that this is the way things really work, however. And so in the last couple of years there has been a growing stream of debate and dueling papers, replete with references to such esoteric subjects as reincarnation, multiple universes and even the death of spacetime, as cosmologists try to square the predictions of their cherished theories with their convictions that we and the universe are real. The basic problem is that across the eons of time, the standard theories suggest, the universe can recur over and over again in an endless cycle of big bangs, but it’s hard for nature to make a whole universe. It’s much easier to make fragments of one, like planets, yourself maybe in a spacesuit or even — in the most absurd and troubling example — a naked brain floating in space. Nature tends to do what is easiest, from the standpoint of energy and probability. And so these fragments — in particular the brains — would appear far more frequently than real full-fledged universes, or than us. Or they might be us.

Alan Guth, a cosmologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who agrees this overabundance is absurd, pointed out that some calculations result in an infinite number of free-floating brains for every normal brain, making it “infinitely unlikely for us to be normal brains.” Welcome to what physicists call the Boltzmann brain problem, named after the 19th-century Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, who suggested the mechanism by which such fluctuations could happen in a gas or in the universe. Cosmologists also refer to them as “freaky observers,” in contrast to regular or “ordered” observers of the cosmos like ourselves. Cosmologists are desperate to eliminate these freaks from their theories, but so far they can’t even agree on how or even on whether they are making any progress.

If you are inclined to skepticism this debate might seem like further evidence that cosmologists, who gave us dark matter, dark energy and speak with apparent aplomb about gazillions of parallel universes, have finally lost their minds. But the cosmologists say the brain problem serves as a valuable reality check as they contemplate the far, far future and zillions of bubble universes popping off from one another in an ever-increasing rush through eternity. What, for example is a “typical” observer in such a setup? If some atoms in another universe stick together briefly to look, talk and think exactly like you, is it really you?

“It is part of a much bigger set of questions about how to think about probabilities in an infinite universe in which everything that can occur, does occur, infinitely many times,” said Leonard Susskind of Stanford, a co-author of a paper in 2002 that helped set off the debate. Or as Andrei Linde, another Stanford theorist given to colorful language, loosely characterized the possibility of a replica of your own brain forming out in space sometime, “How do you compute the probability to be reincarnated to the probability of being born?”

The Boltzmann brain problem arises from a string of logical conclusions that all spring from another deep and old question, namely why time seems to go in only one direction. Why can’t you unscramble an egg? The fundamental laws governing the atoms bouncing off one another in the egg look the same whether time goes forward or backward. In this universe, at least, the future and the past are different and you can’t remember who is going to win the Super Bowl next week.

“When you break an egg and scramble it you are doing cosmology,” said Sean Carroll, a cosmologist at the California Institute of Technology.

Boltzmann ascribed this so-called arrow of time to the tendency of any collection of particles to spread out into the most random and useless configuration, in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics (sometimes paraphrased as “things get worse”), which says that entropy, which is a measure of disorder or wasted energy, can never decrease in a closed system like the universe.

If the universe was running down and entropy was increasing now, that was because the universe must have been highly ordered in the past.

In Boltzmann’s time the universe was presumed to have been around forever, in which case it would long ago have stabilized at a lukewarm temperature and died a “heat death.” It would already have maximum entropy, and so with no way to become more disorderly there would be no arrow of time. No life would be possible but that would be all right because life would be excruciatingly boring. Boltzmann said that entropy was all about odds, however, and if we waited long enough the random bumping of atoms would occasionally produce the cosmic equivalent of an egg unscrambling. A rare fluctuation would decrease the entropy in some place and start the arrow of time pointing and history flowing again. That is not what happened. Astronomers now know the universe has not lasted forever. It was born in the Big Bang, which somehow set the arrow of time, 14 billion years ago. The linchpin of the Big Bang is thought to be an explosive moment known as inflation, during which space became suffused with energy that had an antigravitational effect and ballooned violently outward, ironing the kinks and irregularities out of what is now the observable universe and endowing primordial chaos with order.

Inflation is a veritable cosmological fertility principle. Fluctuations in the field driving inflation also would have seeded the universe with the lumps that eventually grew to be galaxies, stars and people. According to the more extended version, called eternal inflation, an endless array of bubble or “pocket” universes are branching off from one another at a dizzying and exponentially increasing rate. They could have different properties and perhaps even different laws of physics, so the story goes.

A different, but perhaps related, form of antigravity, glibly dubbed dark energy, seems to be running the universe now, and that is the culprit responsible for the Boltzmann brains.

The expansion of the universe seems to be accelerating, making galaxies fly away from one another faster and faster. If the leading dark-energy suspect, a universal repulsion Einstein called the cosmological constant, is true, this runaway process will last forever, and distant galaxies will eventually be moving apart so quickly that they cannot communicate with one another. Being in such a space would be like being surrounded by a black hole.

Rather than simply going to black like “The Sopranos” conclusion, however, the cosmic horizon would glow, emitting a feeble spray of elementary particles and radiation, with a temperature of a fraction of a billionth of a degree, courtesy of quantum uncertainty. That radiation bath will be subject to random fluctuations just like Boltzmann’s eternal universe, however, and every once in a very long, long time, one of those fluctuations would be big enough to recreate the Big Bang. In the fullness of time this process could lead to the endless series of recurring universes. Our present universe could be part of that chain.

In such a recurrent setup, however, Dr. Susskind of Stanford, Lisa Dyson, now of the University of California, Berkeley, and Matthew Kleban, now at New York University, pointed out in 2002 that Boltzmann’s idea might work too well, filling the megaverse with more Boltzmann brains than universes or real people.

In the same way the odds of a real word showing up when you shake a box of Scrabble letters are greater than a whole sentence or paragraph forming, these “regular” universes would be vastly outnumbered by weird ones, including flawed variations on our own all the way down to naked brains, a result foreshadowed by Martin Rees, a cosmologist at the University of Cambridge, in his 1997 book, “Before the Beginning.”

The conclusions of Dr. Dyson and her colleagues were quickly challenged by Andreas Albrecht and Lorenzo Sorbo of the University of California, Davis, who used an alternate approach. They found that the Big Bang was actually more likely than Boltzmann’s brain.

“In the end, inflation saves us from Boltzmann’s brain,” Dr. Albrecht said, while admitting that the calculations were contentious. Indeed, the “invasion of Boltzmann brains,” as Dr. Linde once referred to it, was just beginning.

In an interview Dr. Linde described these brains as a form of reincarnation. Over the course of eternity, he said, anything is possible. After some Big Bang in the far future, he said, “it’s possible that you yourself will re-emerge. Eventually you will appear with your table and your computer.”

But it’s more likely, he went on, that you will be reincarnated as an isolated brain, without the baggage of stars and galaxies. In terms of probability, he said, “It’s cheaper.”

You might wonder what’s wrong with a few brains — or even a preponderance of them — floating around in space. For one thing, as observers these brains would see a freaky chaotic universe, unlike our own, which seems to persist in its promise and disappointment.

Another is that one of the central orthodoxies of cosmology is that humans don’t occupy a special place in the cosmos, that we and our experiences are typical of cosmic beings. If the odds of us being real instead of Boltzmann brains are one in a million, say, waking up every day would be like walking out on the street and finding everyone in the city standing on their heads. You would expect there to be some reason why you were the only one left right side up.

Some cosmologists, James Hartle and Mark Srednicki, of the University of California, Santa Barbara, have questioned that assumption. “For example,” Dr. Hartle wrote in an e-mail message, “on Earth humans are not typical animals; insects are far more numerous. No one is surprised by this.”

In an e-mail response to Dr. Hartle’s view, Don Page of the University of Alberta, who has been a prominent voice in the Boltzmann debate, argued that what counted cosmologically was not sheer numbers, but consciousness, which we have in abundance over the insects. “I would say that we have no strong evidence against the working hypothesis that we are typical and that our observations are typical,” he explained, “which is very fruitful in science for helping us believe that our observations are not just flukes but do tell us something about the universe.”

Dr. Dyson and her colleagues suggested that the solution to the Boltzmann paradox was in denying the presumption that the universe would accelerate eternally. In other words, they said, that the cosmological constant was perhaps not really constant. If the cosmological constant eventually faded away, the universe would revert to normal expansion and what was left would eventually fade to black. With no more acceleration there would be no horizon with its snap, crackle and pop, and thus no material for fluctuations and Boltzmann brains.

String theory calculations have suggested that dark energy is indeed metastable and will decay, Dr. Susskind pointed out. “The success of ordinary cosmology,” Dr. Susskind said, “speaks against the idea that the universe was created in a random fluctuation.”

But nobody knows whether dark energy — if it dies — will die soon enough to save the universe from a surplus of Boltzmann brains. In 2006, Dr. Page calculated that the dark energy would have to decay in about 20 billion years in order to prevent it from being overrun by Boltzmann brains.

The decay, if and when it comes, would rejigger the laws of physics and so would be fatal and total, spreading at almost the speed of light and destroying all matter without warning. There would be no time for pain, Dr. Page wrote: “And no grieving survivors will be left behind. So in this way it would be the most humanely possible execution.” But the object of his work, he said, was not to predict the end of the universe but to draw attention to the fact that the Boltzmann brain problem remains.

People have their own favorite measures of probability in the multiverse, said Raphael Bousso of the University of California, Berkeley. “So Boltzmann brains are just one example of how measures can predict nonsense; anytime your measure predicts that something we see has extremely small probability, you can throw it out,” he wrote in an e-mail message.

Another contentious issue is whether the cosmologists in their calculations could consider only the observable universe, which is all we can ever see or be influenced by, or whether they should take into account the vast and ever-growing assemblage of other bubbles forever out of our view predicted by eternal inflation. In the latter case, as Alex Vilenkin of Tufts University pointed out, “The numbers of regular and freak observers are both infinite.” Which kind predominate depends on how you do the counting, he said..

In eternal inflation, the number of new bubbles being hatched at any given moment is always growing, Dr. Linde said, explaining one such counting scheme he likes. So the evolution of people in new bubbles far outstrips the creation of Boltzmann brains in old ones. The main way life emerges, he said, is not by reincarnation but by the creation of new parts of the universe. “So maybe we don’t need to care too much” about the Boltzmann brains,” he said.

“If you are reincarnated, why do you care about where you are reincarnated?” he asked. “It sounds crazy because here we are touching issues we are not supposed to be touching in ordinary science. Can we be reincarnated?”

“People are not prepared for this discussion,” Dr. Linde said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/scien ... nted=print