Monday, October 20, 2003

An attempt to uncover the truth about September 11th [excerpt]
There are many red flags in the official story of September 11th that passed right by the vast majority of people. Not the least is that the official story was so quick to emerge. Within hours of the attack Osama bin Ladin was presented as the prime suspect. His picture was repeatedly shown on TV alongside images of the devastation in Lower Manhattan, a technique known as Pavlovian conditioning. A list of most of the hijackers was presented within a day of the attack. Mohammad Atta was presented as the ringleader within hours. The curious building "collapses" in Manhattan were immediately claimed to be inevitable. The 'case-closed' technical paper about the building collapses was published on September 13th, 2 days after the attack.

Some of the other red flags include:

- The hijacked flights all flew long routes taking them far from their targets exposing them to certain interception given standard operating procedures.
- The towering infernos were said to burn with the heat of nuclear power plants, despite sooty black smoke and few flames.
- The building collapses were presented as inevitable, even though such behavior was unheard of in steel structures.
- Cellphones were said to have been used to make numerous calls from Flight 93, even though cell phones don't work from aircraft in normal flight.
- Flight 93 was confidently portrayed as a crash due to a struggle, despite the strong evidence it was shot down.
- An extensive paper trail of the hijackers was found within hours of the attack. even though the same people had supposedly eluded authorities for years.
- The same hijackers who pulled off aerobatic maneuvers with large jets were flight school flunkies who had never flown jets.
- A hijacker's passport was said to have been found at ground zero, even though not a single person on the doomed flights was identified.
- Several hijackers turned up alive after the attack.
- 1000 bodies vanished at Ground Zero, despite DNA identification procedures that could identify individuals from small fragments of bodies.
- Flight 77 vanished at the pentagon, the 80 tons of aluminum, steel and bodies supposedly burning up.
- The supposedly fanatically devout Muslim hijackers were fond of strip bars.
- The video of Osama bin Ladin that has him taking credit for the attack doesn't even look like him. (via The Power Hour)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 7:50 PM

Tiger Force: Buried Secrets, Brutal Truths 

Massacre story needs to be told.
Part One: Rogue GIs unleashed wave of terror in Central Highlands. [excerpt]
"...A 13-year-old girl's throat was slashed after she was sexually assaulted, and a young mother was shot to death after soldiers torched her hut.
An unarmed teenager was shot in the back after a platoon sergeant ordered the youth to leave a village, and a baby was decapitated so that a soldier could remove a necklace..."
Part Two: Inquiry ended without justice. [excerpt]
"...By the time the investigation was over, a justice system that promised to prosecute war criminals ended up protecting them..."
Part Three: Pain lingers 36 years after deadly rampage [excerpt]
"In homes scattered across the valley are death certificates bearing the names of people killed by the Tiger Force soldiers in the summer of 1967.
For Kieu Trac, the paper is a reminder of his father’s last day. He was among 10 elderly farmers who were toiling in a rice paddy when platoon soldiers opened fire, killing four.
Years later, the attack on July 28 continues to define the war years for the people of the Song Ve Valley.
Every year, relatives pray for the victims at Buddhist ceremonies and light incense and candles at their graves.
Villagers say the assault has become the most recognized atrocity of 1967 - one they still talk about when the topic of the war arises.
The attack marked the last time anyone would openly grow crops during the war, say villagers.
But more than farming, it changed lives.
Suddenly, Kieu Trac became the head of the family - in charge of caring for his mother, four siblings, and his own young family.
"Life became harder," said Mr. Kieu, now 72.
In one brutal attack, he said, he was forced to accept responsibilities he shoulders to this day.
Every year, he gathers his family - 16 members living in the same concrete and bamboo home - to remind them of the man who taught him to farm.
Kieu Cong was a gentle provider who spent long days in the fields, with little time to share with his five children. But when he did come home, he often sat with his son and gave advice about living a moral life.
"He told me not to steal," he said, his eyes moistening. "He encouraged me to avoid the bad things in life."
His father was not a part of the guerrilla movement nor did he take sides in the war, he said.
Staring pensively at the altar with incense in his cramped living room, he pointed to his father’s name on the wall, and said, "He just wanted to farm..."
Part Four: Demons of past stalk Tiger Force veterans [excerpt]
"...The 54-year-old former platoon specialist wants to go to the rice paddy where Tiger Force soldiers killed four elderly farmers. He wants to apologize to their families..."

posted by George Thomas Kysor 2:23 PM

DIANA LETTER SENSATION: 'THEY WILL TRY TO KILL ME'  

PRINCESS DIANA claimed there was a plot to kill her in a car crash in a handwritten letter only 10 months before she died. She gave it to her butler Paul Burrell with orders that he should keep it as "insurance" for the future... - Mirror.co.uk

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:26 PM

Open letter to Gov. Bush on Terri Schindler-Schiavo 

Dear Gov. Bush,

You have before you the most important decision of your political career: Will you or will you not uphold your oath of office to protect the constitutional rights of Terri Schindler-Schiavo?

Additionally, many of our readers have asked questions which, frankly – as reasonable as they are – I don't know how to answer them. Perhaps you do. For example:

1. Why is it that a governor can commute the death sentence of a person convicted of murder, but cannot stop the execution of an innocent young woman?

2. By the definitions of "cruel and unusual," our courts would not allow a convicted murderer to die of legally sanctioned starvation and dehydration. Why are you allowing this to be done to an innocent young woman?

3. If any person in America tried to euthanize their dog the way you are allowing to be done to Terri Schindler-Schiavo, they would be prosecuted for cruelty to an animal. Why are you allowing this to be done to an innocent human being?

Gov. Bush, I must also tell you that your pitiful attempt to make people think you are impotent to act in this matter is not credible. It makes people think you are acting in bad faith – washing your hands of a difficult matter just as Pontius Pilate did with Jesus 2,000 years ago. If such is the case – and I believe it is likely – you sir are a coward without modern-day peer. I hope I'm wrong. But, if you let this woman die, her blood is on your hands.

Oh, and yes, Gov. Bush, I am aware there may be a special session of the state legislature that might include a bill to address this matter. But the simple fact is you already have grounds to take charge now. By the time this "special session" gets done, Terri may very well be dead. But then you'll be able to shrug your shoulders and give yourself and the legislature enough cover to pretend you really tried to help Terri, right?

Surely, governor, there are ample reasons to warrant investigations into the activities of the people involved in seeking Terri's death. And surely there is ample evidence that Terri is no more a vegetable than you are, governor – she laughs, she cries, she moves in response to words and other stimuli. She is awake. She is alive. And she is a citizen of your state who is entitled to the full protection of the law.

Terri Schindler-Schiavo is being denied her right to life. She needs help to be rehabilitated. She does not deserve a painful execution that we wouldn't even subject dogs or criminals to.

So, governor, will you act honorably and uphold the integrity of your oath of office or will you allow an innocent, helpless woman to be murdered by legally mandated neglect?

The world is watching. - Tom Ambrose, © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com (via RRND)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 8:51 AM

Sunday, October 19, 2003

The HIV Myth 

If HIV is a retrovirus, and if retroviruses don't cause disease, then HIV doesn't cause AIDS. David Rasnick Ph.D. earns his living as a designer of protease inhibitors, the class of substances touted as the latest anti-AIDS miracle drug, and as a sideline he exposes the HIV/AIDS myth. (via Radio Free America)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 8:20 PM

Both the Good & Bad In Iraq [excerpt] 

Sparkey and I are doing a new thing here at SSDB. We're going to post both the good and the bad in Iraq, with the goal of presenting a well-rounded picture of what's going on based entirely on news reports. Sparkey will be handling the positive news and I'll be posting the negative news. Six months from now, we hope to post a comprehensive retrospective. - Sgt. Stryker (via Instapundit)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 5:10 PM

Saturday, October 18, 2003

Students, Nuns and Sailor-Mongers, Beware [excerpt] 

It has lain dormant in the darkest recesses of American law for 125 years, but this month Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft introduced critics of the administration to his latest weapon in law enforcement. - Jonathan Turley

posted by George Thomas Kysor 7:44 PM

The Japanese Will Take Over The World  

Sorry, I just had to make another post. Look at the links at the top of the page. How fucking beautiful is that? I can put a picture of Walt Disney on my blog followed by a joke about pedophilia, and I'm officially sponsored by Disney. You know what that is, that's fucking poetry. - T. Ralby (Oct. 16)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 6:55 PM

YOUR $87 BILLION CONTRIBUTION IS NOT TAX DEDUCTIBLE [excerpt] 

Does anyone really believe that even with an infusion of $87 billion Iraq will blossom into a flower of democracy in the Middle East? The Middle East has been blessed with unimaginable oil wealth for the last 40 years or so and I don’t see democracy even attempting to rear its timid head in the region. I do believe that with $87 billion to spend, America could be a flower of democracy and much more of an egalitarian nation than the present survival-of-the-fittest conservative model we are currently test driving. - Leftbanker

posted by George Thomas Kysor 6:26 PM

Draft Wesley Crusher 

Ensign Crusher is the perfect candidate for 2004. Serving for years with his mother on the U.S.S. Enterprise, this Starfleet cadet has what it takes to defeat Bush. If he ran, Crusher would be the only candidate to have intergalactic combat experience. Crusher can get people and aliens of all colors and races together, even those who have never voted before.

We need your help. Join DraftWesleyCrusher.com in supporting Ensign Crusher's bid for President in 2004.

IN THE NEWS

"My name is Wes Crusher and I am seeking the presidency." With these words, retired Ensign Wesley Crusher began his address to supporters on Deep Space 10, officially entering the race for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. Crusher said he resents the idea that he only got where he is because of his family ties; Crusher's mother was a high-ranking official on the U.S.S. Enterprise. - Draft Wesley Crusher.com (via Instapundit)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 5:18 PM

The strange case of Britain's outspoken envoy in Uzbekistan [excerpt] 

Mr Murray sent numerous reports to London about human rights abuses, and his dispatches became increasingly heated during the build-up to the Iraqi invasion. He argued Uzbekistan's human rights abuses were as bad as those being used as ammunition against Baghdad. Yet Washington was financing Uzbekistan, rather than invading it, he said.

He received many internal emails of support, and some of criticism. He became personally involved in exposing torture, commissioning a forensic report on the bodies of two political prisoners, Muzafar Avazov and Husnidin Alimov, which concluded they had probably been boiled to death. - The Guardian

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:59 PM

Silliman's Blog [excerpt] 

There is no way to halt the depredation of the Bush regime without, in fact, taking the presidency away from the Republican party. Given that this party will stop at nothing to seize power – rig a Supreme Court vote, recall a newly elected governor, redraw congressional districts well outside of the normal guidelines – this will not be an easy task. But it is one that can be accomplished. However, this will not occur through improved tropes nor higher caliber flarf, even in the New York Times, but solely through political action. - Ron Silliman [Since 1979, Silliman has been writing a poem entitled The Alphabet. Volumes published thus far from that project have included ABC, Demo to Ink, Jones, Lit, Manifest, N/O, Paradise, (R), Toner, What and Xing.]

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:26 PM

Shoe Size Day -  

The Romans are the ones who invented shoe sized. They knew that barleycorns

were usually the same length and decided three in a row equaled an inch. Shoemakers used

one barleycorn, or 1/3 inch, for size increments. And this is exactly the way shoes

sizes are made today. - BRYN

posted by George Thomas Kysor 12:45 PM

tonypierce.com + busblog  

one way to spread the word is to ordain ministers and not make it very hard to become ordained.

yeah, you'll get some idiots in there, but you'll also get some superstars.

two things you get to do if youre a minister in america is marry people, and talk to prisoners.

tomorrow im going to marry two people.

its my first time doing it, and im very nervous.

ive had to speak in front of large groups many times before but this time Gods gonna be there.

i dont wanna fuck up.

the happy couple's first date was on a special night more than ten years ago where almost all of our friends were in attendence.

four of our friends had new group

baby dangerously

they sat on stools and sang beautiful songs.

everyone had dressed up

coulter was the bartender and he mixed the most wonderfully delicious intoxicants,

and after the music, everyone started making out.

and the stereo was playing and the vibe was like nothing ive ever felt before or since

and everyone was dressed up and young and beautiful and buzzed not drunk not drugged

loved

love was in the air

it was

it was

kissed six girls walked one home and kissed her too.

i saw one guy get cornered by two girls

so when i found out that bonnie and charlie had their first date that night

there

with us

i felt a lot better about being the mc of their dance

these two have traveled the world together since then, and theyve traveled the world alone.

charlie was one of my roommates when i lived with layne and don and dan and mike and for a little while, kip, and shira, and chris, my true love.

during the proceedings i wont say anthing about the time that charlie fell from on top of the giant christmas tree in union square on new years eve and broke his back

and rescue 9-11 happened to be there and shot it and showed it on tv hosted by william shatner, i believe.

i am blessed to have the greatest friends in the world.

one time charlie and bonnie had a thanksgiving dinner at their house and the food was probably the best food ive ever had in my entire life and that includes the meals ive had in some of the best restaurants in paris, rome and isla vista.

charlie was the editor and cheif of the daily nexus the year after i graduated and one of the best reporters we had when i was there. he and morgan were a writing team for a while and it totally worked perfectly and it was so great watching them huddled in front of one computer brainstorming and teamworking and laughing and rocking.

bonnie was the editor of the art's and entertainment section of the daily nexus two years after i was.

the daily nexus had a history of winning tons of awards but one that we hadnt ever gotten before was for best arts section in california.

only because of the help of doug arellanes, amy langfield, jeff whalen, todd francis, denis faye, brian banks, and mr pat whalen, was i able to win it in 90.

bonnie won it in 92 all by herself.

she plays the cello.

for awhile these guys lived in frisco for a while they lived in austin and now they live here in la with all of us and most of us will watch this thing but i'll be the one with the crazy view.

good thing theyre going to be together forever or id be really nervous. - tony pierce

posted by George Thomas Kysor 12:13 PM

Friday, October 17, 2003

Google has indeed, listed our names, address and phone, and had a map right to our house--no kidding.
Google has implemented a new feature wherein you can type someone's telephone number into the search bar and hit enter and then you will be given a map to their house.

Before forwarding this, I tested it by typing my telephone number in google.com. My phone number came up, and when I clicked on the MapQuest link, it actually mapped out where I live. Quite scary. Please look up your own number. Read below for details.

Think about it--if a child, single person, ANYONE gives out his/her phone number, someone can actually now look it up to find out where he/she lives.

It's just another privacy issue I have a problem with.

To test whether your phone number is mapped, go to Google.

Type your phone number in the search bar with or without dashes (i.e.
555-555-1212 or 5555551212) and hit enter.

If you want to BLOCK Google from divulging your private information, simply click on the telephone icon next to your phone number. I removed my name, but it takes 48-hours. If you are unlisted in the phone book, you might not be in there, but it is a good idea just to check. (via email from JVW)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 5:48 PM

 

Sean Scott, Paraplegic Trike Pilot

posted by George Thomas Kysor 3:03 PM

Activist Boyd Graves illegally evicted from home 

Human rights activist Dr. Boyd Ed Graves was forcibly evicted from
his San Diego residence Oct. 12, 2003 when police entered his home to escort him
to the street. Although the court ruled Graves owed no money to his landlord, Bob Meekins, Graves was forcibly evicted. Graves was removed and detained from his residence by police earlier for making 'irrational statements' that the government created HIV/AIDS. Graves said he will appeal the illegal eviction. He said the process will take several weeks and cost more money than he has. "I don't even have a pair of socks with me," Graves said. "I will still stand up." Graves said he has been living in a motel since Monday. boyded2003@yahoo.com - (via email from zygote@sunflower.com)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 10:38 AM

Thursday, October 16, 2003

Lawmakers: Halliburton Overcharging for Iraq Service [excerpt] 

...Reps. Henry Waxman (search) of California and John Dingell (search) of Michigan complained to the Bush administration that Halliburton's KBR subsidiary is billing the Army between $1.62 and $1.70 per gallon, while the average price for Middle East gasoline is 71 cents.

They also complained that Iraqis are charged between 4 cents and 15 cents at the pump for the imported gasoline... - AP

posted by George Thomas Kysor 6:15 PM

Thomas Genealogy DNA Project [excerpts from various posters] 

Bonnie Thomas Chaffin btchaffin@comcast.net has volunteered to be the
administer for the Thomas DNA project.

I think the plan will be to set up some sort of website for us too
eventually. Anyway, as Bonnie gets more squared away we will get directions
on how to proceed. I believe she is getting everything set up for us through
The Family Tree DNA organization - www.familytreedna.com
Don't start ordering kits until we get the ok from Bonnie so that we are
organized as a group.

Hopefully we will get this out to many of our Thomas cousins and they can
persuade the direct male descendant from our lines to swab his cheek. It
sure may help a lot to see if we can connect more lines or even rule out
what line we are not part of. From what I have seen of the names so far we
might have a good representation of a lot of Thomas families already. So
keep bugging your Thomas contacts to join in. It won't hurt to have two or
more males from each line either, just in case we get more interested. I
know we have Thomas' all over the world so this should be a very interesting
and productive project.

The website with more information on the DNA project is at:
www.familytreedna.com

You do not want to waste the money on the 12 marker test, since it's too
common among the population. Do the 25.

You learn as you go with this project, it is a private as you desire it to be
and you can share as much info as you desire. You can elect to be compared with
the entire DNA Database that grows daily or you can be compared only within your
project.

The more people taking part in the tesing, the larger the database for your DNA
to be compared. This is Y-DNA and they are only looking at a set group of
markers, but they look at those same markers for each person. Our Cowan Project
has had a lot of non-surname matches with in several of the groups. We have 4
main groups and of course one of those is the group that doesn't match any of
the others.

We have 10 men that make up our "large" group and they are all close matches and
some exact matches, but many of them have no idea where they should connect -
they are at brick walls and have been some for 50 plus years. At least now we
know all of these men are kin. So it has made a big difference just knowigg what
groups every one appears to fall within.

Exactly what does a Y-Chromosome match demonstrate?
Answer: A Y-Chromosome match shows that two males have a common male ancestor. This ancestor could be their father, or it could be a male from a thousand years ago.

For example, I have a George Thomas that I cannot find to be the son of my Jacob
Thomas. We have about 3 George Thomas' that might fit as his son, but unable
to prove which one might be a descendant and the DNA testing might rule out
2 of the George's leaving us with one that may be the direct ancestor. On a
broader scale, this might also reveal that all 3 George's have a connection
to Jacob. This would tie in to a larger picture that all the 3 George Thomas
lines might have a common ancestor. It may not be 100% conclusive but may be
enough to determine if any of the lineages do connect or do not connect.

Update Oct. 17 (by Candy): It is the locating of the cousins that provides the value. I am only just starting to see this. By linking with other Thomas lines you may find someone who has been lucky enough to have the research on their line proven further back than you are. Or find out you have been following the
completely wrong line. I have been a "doubting Thomas" as it seems this is
a way to take advantage of genealogists like us, eager to find any new lead.
But if I was able to link to someone who has proof further than my Enos
Thomas b. 1803, it would worth well more than the $170. I sure have spent
that much on travel, research, books, document requests, etc etc.

(by Tina) - As a few others have mentioned, there is no need to dig up grandpa. His
DNA exists in all of his descendants. Surely, you know all of your first
cousins or at least know of them. Since the Y-chromosome is passed on
from father to son and only rarely mutates, your paternal lines should
match exactly (with the exception of a few mutations along the way) with
any other descendant of the same man. This is why it is not necessary to
dig up grandpa - he lives in your DNA! For more info go
here.


===The above is from theTHOMAS Mailing List Oct 16===
THOMAS Family Mail List Archives:
courtesy of Rootsweb, our gracious host!
http://searches.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/listsearch.pl
Just type in the mail list's name: THOMAS

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:17 AM

Wednesday, October 15, 2003

Waiting To Get Thirsty Is To Die Prematurely And Very Painfully [excerpt] 

The tragedy of waiting to get thirsty hits home when it is realized that the sharpness of thirst perception is gradually lost, as we get older. Phillips and associates have shown that after 24 hours of water deprivation, the elderly still do not recognize they are thirsty: “The important finding is that despite their obvious physiologic need, the elderly subjects were not markedly thirsty3.” Bruce and associates have shown that, between the ages of 20 to 70, the ratio of water inside the cells to the amount of water outside the cells drastically changes from 1.1 to 0.84. Undoubtedly this marked change in the intracellular water balance would not take place if the osmotic push and pull of life could favor water diffusion through the cell membranes everywhere in the body—at the rate of 10-3 centimeters per second. Only by relying on the reverse osmotic process of expanding the extracellular water content of the body, so as to filter and inject “load-free” water into vital cells by the actions of vasopressin and the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone systems—when the body physiology is constantly forced to rely on its drought- management programs—could such a drastic change in the water balance of the body result.

Two other scientific discoveries are disregarded when Dr. Valtin recommends people should wait until they get thirsty before they drink water. One, the initiation of the thirst mechanisms is not triggered by vasopressin and the renin-angiotensin systems—these systems are only involved in water conservation and forced hydration of the cells. Thirst is initiated when the Na+-K+-ATPase pump is inadequately hydrated. It is water that generates voltage gradient by adequately hydrating the pump proteins in the neurotransmission systems of the body1. This is the reason the brain tissue is 85 percent water5 and cannot endure the level of “thirst-inducing” dehydration that is considered safe in the article published by Dr. Valtin.

Two, the missing piece of the scientific puzzle in the water- regulatory mechanisms of the body, which has been exposed since 1987, and Dr. Valtin and his colleagues need to know about it, is the coupled activity of the neurotransmitter histamine to the efficiency of the cation exchange; its role in the initiation of the drought- management programs; and its role in the catabolic processes when the body is becoming more and more dehydrated5. Based on the primary water-regulatory functions of histamine, and the active role of water in all physiologic and metabolic functions of the body—as the hydrolytic initiator of all solute functions—the symptoms of thirst are those produced by excess histamine activity and its subordinate mechanisms which get engaged in the drought- management programs of the body. They include asthma, allergies and the major pains of the body, such as heartburn, colitis pain, rheumatoid joint pain, back pain, migraine headaches, fibromyalgic pains, and even anginal pain5, 6. And, since vasopressin and the rennin-angiotensin-aldosterone activity in the body are subordinates to the activation of histamine, their role in raising the blood pressure is a part of the drought-management programs of the body6. Their purpose of forced delivery of water into vital cells demands a greater injection pressure to counteract the direction of osmotic pull of water from inside the cells of the body, when it is dehydrated.

From the new perspective of my 22 years of clinical and scientific research into molecular physiology of dehydration, and the peer-reviewed introduction of a paradigm shift in medical science, recognizing histamine as a neurotransmitter in charge of the water regulation of the body, I can safely say the 60 million Americans with hypertension, the 110 million with chronic pains, the 15 million with diabetes, the 17 million with asthma, the 50 millions with allergies, and more, all did exactly as Dr. Valtin recommends. They all waited to get thirsty. Had they realized water is a natural antihistamine5, 7, 8 and a more effective diuretic, these people would have been saved the agony of their health problems. - F. Batmanghelidj, M.D. (via The Power Hour)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:52 PM

Bear Winnie Pooh 

on tuesday i did a unimaginable thing.....i fell in sleep on gen lecture......unconciously fell in...i could feel that my upper part of the body was swinging around.....suddenly i fell down on the floor cos i lost balance. i was seating on the left most seat, so just fell down on the floor....painful.....that time i had not totally waken up, but i heard the lecturer said that ok i think i should stop here. then the lecture ended.
embarrased...... - sd

posted by George Thomas Kysor 4:31 PM

Vice-President Emerges From Hiding, Urges Americans To Keep Fighting 

Videotaped footage of President George W. Bush's top deputy warning of dire consequences for Americans is probably authentic, a Central Information Agency official said Monday.

The assessment was based on a technical analysis of the videotape, which was first aired over the weekend, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The CIA can't be certain but believes the person on the videotape is Vice-President Dick Cheney, the No. 2 official in George W. Bush's GOP-Neoconservative network, the official said.

The English-language recording, obtained by the American satellite station CNN, showed a pale and tired looking Cheney who promised that future operations will provide the faithful with vast opportunities for war profiteering. "When faced with hard choices, we choose to make war, not peace," Cheney said, chopping the air with his hand for emphasis.

"Instead of losing hundreds or thousands of lives, we choose to lose tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands," Cheney said. No matter the cost in American or foreign lives, Cheney announced that the movement, "whether in the TV studios, on the lecterns, in print ads and on the op-ed pages, or in your wallets and on your backs, in your computers and in your houses, we will never surrender."

Warning that "our ultimate nightmare could bring devastation to our Party on a scale we have never experienced," Cheney threatened retaliation and advised his followers to never relent in denouncing opponents as anti-patriotic, traitors and limp-wristed wimps. Speaking on behalf of God, Cheney warned those Americans who would collaborate with the opponents of the War Party. "Let it be clear, that all those who demean, criticize, comment on or otherwise pay attention to our plans and activities will find no mercy with the Merciful, Almighty God and his instrument, Better-Than-The-Original-Moses, the Hand of God, George W. Bush."

The video footage was considered likely to inspire the willing coalition faithful.

"This tape will be a morale boost for (Dispensationalist and Neoconservative) fighters," said Luke Warm, Pennsylvania Democratic Party State Chairman. "It shows that one of their leaders is still alive."

Cheney's whereabouts are not known. He is believed to be in hiding in the mountainous border region between West Virginia and Maryland, beyond the reach of the American Taxpayer;-) - Reported by Adam Young

Copyright © 2003 The Affiliated Press

posted by George Thomas Kysor 2:24 PM

Slip 

I am privy now to the successive detoriation of my grasp of the English Language.

Which is rather ironic that it hasn't happened sooner, considering that I come from a country where a good majority of the people consider English a tool of the 'Evil White Devils'.

Here, on this island where they jam the flat-backed tool of English into the gaping hole of commerce in a determined attempt to mine every Sing Dollar out of it. The vocabulary is there and subject properly comes before verb but something is missing.

There is just no soul in memorising 1000 English words to ace your SATs.

Something becomes awfully pedestrian when a language loses its fire-and-brimstone capacity and people deliberately use adjectives one level above the average profficiency but know no other alternatives and do not grasp the differences in nuances of what would be similes to the untrained ear.

I sound like an elitist intellectual twat.

Good. - Joyce

posted by George Thomas Kysor 12:57 PM

Nude Pic of the Day (via John's Online Journal)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 11:51 AM

Economic Advice 

I'd advise people to do what I do, and pursue a low-debt, comparatively low-spending strategy of personal economic conservatism, but if everyone did that, the economy would collapse for sure. . . . - Instapundit

posted by George Thomas Kysor 11:40 AM

Tuesday, October 14, 2003

Truth has not been the first casualty of this war. Truth never even made it into uniform. Reason's Weekly Dispatch, Oct. 14, 2003 (via email).

posted by George Thomas Kysor 8:05 AM

Monday, October 13, 2003

Martial Arts Robots 

Humanoid robots capable of performing somersaults and complex martial arts moves were demonstrated at Asia's largest electronics and computing fair in Tokyo on Saturday.

Visitors to CEATEC 2003 (Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies) met Morph3, a human-like robot about 30-centimetres tall developed by researchers at the Chiba Institute of Technology in Japan. It can perform back flips and karate moves thanks to 138 pressure sensors, 30 different onboard motors and 14 computer processors.

Another miniature humanoid robot on display was Fujitsu's HOAP-2. This droid has been programmed to perform moves from the Chinese martial art taijiquan, as well as Japanese Sumo wrestling stances.

HOAP-2 is designed as an aid to robotics research and therefore runs on open source, Linux-based software. Fujitsu believes it will sell between 20 and 30 of the robots to universities and companies in 2004.

But impressive as these high-kicking robots are, Frederic Kaplan, at Sony's robotics laboratory in France, says making more agile robots is not the biggest challenge facing robotics researchers at the moment.

"There are challenges in terms of mechanics still, but the biggest gap would be in intelligence," he told New Scientist. "One of the key things we are looking at now is developmental robotics, where a robot learns." - NewScientist.com

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:51 PM

9-11 Probe Continues To Bypass Executive Branch Testimony [excerpt] 

Tomorrow’s public hearing on Capitol Hill, held by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, will focus upon how intelligence affects the War on Terrorism. However, the ten-member commission is continuing to hear expert witness testimony mostly from former government officials rather than compelling public testimony from current high-ranking individuals in the executive branch to defend their lack of decisive action on September 11, 2001.

Since the dramatic testimony and hallway media interviews held last May 22-23 involving military generals and the Transportation Department, the Commission has restrained itself from compelling President George W. Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard Myers to explain their highly questionable actions on the day of the attacks. The timeline of events is astonishing, in and of itself.

The first commandeered plane, American flight 11, was considered hijacked at 8:13 am [33 minutes prior to crashing into the North Tower at 8:46], having failed to follow flight instructions from air traffic controllers, after which it turned 100 degrees south toward New York City at 8:20 am. At that time, according to our conversation with a Department of Transportation source, phone bridges were established linking Secret Service, Defense Department, NORAD, and Transportation Department officials--and others. Thus, President Bush’s Secret Service detail in Florida was well aware of a hijacking some 25 minutes before any of the planes impacted the World Trade Center, Pentagon, or the field in Pennsylvania. And Bush himself publicly told reporters at 8:35 am that he "would have more to say later on.".... - Tom Flocco

posted by George Thomas Kysor 6:30 PM

In golf and in real estate, it's the follow through that counts! - Gaye Males,
Associate Broker, Coldwell Banker Peter Benninger Realty, 508 Riverbend Drive,
Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. (via Dave Barry)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 5:53 PM

Will Denver become the next Waco? [excerpt] 

An armed standoff is expected soon in Denver because of the unconstitutional rulings of two front-range judges against Rick Stanley, the former Libertarian candidate for U. S. Senate, who committed the state and federal constitutional acts of openly carrying a handgun on his waist in Denver in 2001 and in Thornton in 2002... - Michael Cacioppo, Speakout!

posted by George Thomas Kysor 4:42 PM

Speak Up 

- June of last year, I met one evening a very pretty girl from south america. Petite, great silhouette, long dark hair, dark skin, dark eyes. A beauty. She was wearing a tigh shirt with lots of cleavage, a skirt and boots. So we went dancing, my friends, her and her girlfriend. We kissed when we got to the club. I still remember her spin around that dance floor, she was out of control, and every single guy in that club wanted her. She would dance and spin on the dance floor, and guys around her would stop dancing to look at her, and a circle would form around her, made of twenty guys watching and drooling. And I'd sway in there and she'd wrap her arms around my neck. Damn... I dropped her off at her hotel, wasn't invited up, darn. The next day we hung out in a park, just the two of us. She was wearing a shirt revealing lots of skin, tight jeans with her thong showing. We got ice cream, but she didnt have to pay for it. We'd walk by couples with strollers, and the husband/father would turn his head 360° as she walked by. She's just the kind of girl that gets noticed alot. And she was holding onto me the whole time. It was my day of glory. Bad part is that she was a tourist, she was supposed to leave on monday evening to Spain to visit her sister. She slept over my house on sunday evening, I dropped her off at her hotel on my way to work. I told her that she could crash my house for a few days, that she didnt have to leave so soon. She told me she'd like that, and she'd call me on monday evening when I got back from work. She called, she was at the train station, waiting for her train to go to Barcelona. I didn't say anything like "Oh, I thought you'd crash my place for a few days", I just said "Oh, well, give me a call when you get to Barcelona, tell me that you made the trip OK".

Couple weeks later, we exchanged a few emails in one of which I said "I was really disappointed that you didn't crash my place for a few days and chose to visit your sister instead". She replied "I really wanted to stay over your place, but you didn't say anything, and I got the feeling you didn't really want me around, and I didn't want to invite myself". The world crumbled around me. The sweetest loveliest girl I had met in a long time. We both knew it was just a touristic romance, that it wasn't meant to last, but knowing that had I said something I could have extended the great time we had together for 3 or 4 days just killed me. Neither one of us dared to say something, and both of us regretted it so much.

Had we only said what was on our minds. - ricolarno

posted by George Thomas Kysor 3:29 PM

Monkeys Control Robotic Arm With Brain Implants [excerpt] 

Scientists in North Carolina have built a brain implant that lets monkeys control a robotic arm with their thoughts, marking the first time that mental intentions have been harnessed to move a mechanical object.... - Rick Weiss, Washington Post Staff Writer

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:14 AM

Sunday, October 12, 2003

US soldiers bulldoze farmers' crops 

US soldiers driving bulldozers, with jazz blaring from loudspeakers, have uprooted ancient groves of date palms as well as orange and lemon trees in central Iraq as part of a new policy of collective punishment of farmers who do not give information about guerrillas attacking US troops.

The stumps of palm trees, some 70 years old, protrude from the brown earth scoured by the bulldozers beside the road at Dhuluaya, a small town 50 miles north of Baghdad. Local women were yesterday busily bundling together the branches of the uprooted orange and lemon trees and carrying then back to their homes for firewood.

Nusayef Jassim, one of 32 farmers who saw their fruit trees destroyed, said: "They told us that the resistance fighters hide in our farms, but this is not true. They didn't capture anything. They didn't find any weapons."

Other farmers said that US troops had told them, over a loudspeaker in Arabic, that the fruit groves were being bulldozed to punish the farmers for not informing on the resistance which is very active in this Sunni Muslim district.

"They made a sort of joke against us by playing jazz music while they were cutting down the trees," said one man. Ambushes of US troops have taken place around Dhuluaya. But Sheikh Hussein Ali Saleh al-Jabouri, a member of a delegation that went to the nearby US base to ask for compensation for the loss of the fruit trees, said American officers described what had happened as "a punishment of local people because 'you know who is in the resistance and do not tell us'." What the Israelis had done by way of collective punishment of Palestinians was now happening in Iraq, Sheikh Hussein added.

The destruction of the fruit trees took place in the second half of last month but, like much which happens in rural Iraq, word of what occurred has only slowly filtered out. The destruction of crops took place along a kilometre-long stretch of road just after it passes over a bridge.

Farmers say that 50 families lost their livelihoods, but a petition addressed to the coalition forces in Dhuluaya pleading in erratic English for compensation, lists only 32 people. The petition says: "Tens of poor families depend completely on earning their life on these orchards and now they became very poor and have nothing and waiting for hunger and death."

The children of one woman who owned some fruit trees lay down in front of a bulldozer but were dragged away, according to eyewitnesses who did not want to give their names. They said that one American soldier broke down and cried during the operation. When a reporter from the newspaper Iraq Today attempted to take a photograph of the bulldozers at work a soldier grabbed his camera and tried to smash it. The same paper quotes Lt Col Springman, a US commander in the region, as saying: "We asked the farmers several times to stop the attacks, or to tell us who was responsible, but the farmers didn't tell us."

Informing US troops about the identity of their attackers would be extremely dangerous in Iraqi villages, where most people are related and everyone knows each other. The farmers who lost their fruit trees all belong to the Khazraji tribe and are unlikely to give information about fellow tribesmen if they are, in fact, attacking US troops.

Asked how much his lost orchard was worth, Nusayef Jassim said in a distraught voice: "It is as if someone cut off my hands and you asked me how much my hands were worth." - Patrick Cockburn in Dhuluaya, The Independent

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:40 PM

Revenge is sweet. 

An article in the Arizona Republic in Phoenix, AZ reports the Phoenix fire
department was called to a blaze early the morning of July 16, to find a
residential garage on fire and the owner of the home nude in the garage
slumped over a work bench with his penis in a vice. The mans' wife, 36 year
old [name deleted] was arrested on several counts including arson,
destruction of private property, 1st degree assault and attempted murder.
In part her statement read "I came home from work this morning to find my
husband in bed with another woman, I went nuts. I pushed the woman out the
door and drug my husband into the garage and put his penis in the vice and
tossed the handle outside, then I picked up the saw. When he asked if I was
going to cut off his penis I told him no. I handed him the saw and told him
he'd have to do it - I was simply going to set the garage on fire. (via JVW) [unconfirmed]

posted by George Thomas Kysor 12:25 PM

Saturday, October 11, 2003

Private Thoughts 

I figure since I've given up so many beautiful women for the Lord
that I'm gonna meet a girl that is going to melt my existence
with her love and beauty and fear of the Lord
or God's gonna take me off the Earth
I figure either way
I die - Peter

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:56 AM

Friday, October 10, 2003

Peggy Isbell 

This is a message to all who knew and loved Peggy Isbell, she left this world of the living flesh on October the 8th while conversing with the people she new and loved on the computer. While sitting at her desk with pain she had come to know as a way of life and medicated to help ease the pain, she passed out at her computer and fell in a way as to cut off her air supply and suffocated to death. She will be missed and we all will carry her in our hearts forever and see her on the other side. My name is Michael Isbell and I am Peggy's brother-in-law, I just wanted to let every one in her address book on the computer know what happened.
Peace, Mike (via email) Note: Peggy posted a genealogy note on October 5, 2003.

posted by George Thomas Kysor 6:14 PM

Street children  

This is a shot in the dark, but maybe someone reading this might be inspired to act: the street children in Baghdad need homes and families and as far as I can tell no one is helping them. This is a society with incredibly strong family bonds in which people look after there own; ironically, it seems therefore that there is little provision for those without the protection of a family. For a host of reasons (staff fleeing to safety, squaters occupying buildings...) the war emptied many of the orphanages leaving the children wandering the increasingly dangerous streets.

Most of the street children I talk to have horrible scars from the war, or more usually from street violence. At the moment the temperature isn't a problem for rough sleepers, but I don't know how they manage to eat. Most importantly they're lacking love and education. Many seem to cluster around the hotels hoping for gifts from foreigners. As a result the security guards treat them as a nusiance and I've heard reports of them being viciously beaten and bundled into the boot of cars.

Eventually I hope an Iraqi government will provide for these children but, for the moment and probably the next few years, everyone seems to be too busy to bother about these kids. If I had the time, skills and resources, I'd love to try and do something for them, but I think this is a task for someone else - maybe you?? - Justin Alexander (Oct. 10) (via Riverbend)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:50 PM

Happy Birthday, Sue 

Here's the not-very-uplifting birthday greeting I sent to my younger (by 16 years) sister: I notice, as I get older, that my reflexes become slower and even my perception of events changes. If, e.g., I tripped over something when I was young, my perception of falling was in slow-motion, i.e., I was conscious of (1) my foot hitting the rock, (2) trying to regain my balance, (3) extending my arms for protection, and (4) my body meeting the earth, but now it's like a movie where every two frames are missing for each frame perceived - I now feel my foot hitting the rock, but the next thing I know is that I'm lying on the ground!

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:11 PM

Thursday, October 09, 2003

Winner - 10/08/03 (Audio cartoon).

posted by George Thomas Kysor 3:54 PM

Wednesday, October 08, 2003

The Kino Eye 

So it seems very clear, in these dark days of celebrity worship, that we have reached an impasse of sorts. We no longer trust ourselves to trust ourselves. We willingly accept the leash. But then... why are we all so angry? "Pull over and I'll kick your ass, asshole. Nobody cuts me off!"

I suggest that we are all woefully unfulfilled. Beyond all the clicking and seeking and searching we cannot uncover any truth's about ourselves on the internet.

Sports are an amusing diversion, but the days of waxing metaphorically about "the game" and its "bigger meaning" falls flat in the era of the prima-donna millionaire superstar.

Intense video games that come closer and closer to replacing real life thought and action are nontheless exposed for their shortcomings created by their code.

She looks at her watch and you know she's simply marking time.

Your time.

The written word moves like a lumbering giant raising up to lofty heights of previously untapped - - revenue. The price of the pulitzer just went up. Best sellers rule the day.

Art would grab us if we didn't have to get up off of our chairs to appreciate it.

We wheel on desk chairs like lemmings marching to the abyss.

And the theatre resonates with all the thunder and impact of a Methodist Church poetry slam.

Now music is irrepressable. It stirs us. It moves us. It urges us to binge and purge down at Old Navy.

So we head into a dark room. We take communion with the greatest art form of the 20th century, the cinema.

And yet this is precisely the moment when we are least likely to see anything that can penetrate our hardened, coarse shells.

We sit and consume and rush out to buy the CD.

We rush out to fill the ever widening void.

Weak and tired from our lack of any substance we allow ourselves to whither and tarnish. To embrace despair. To merely concede.

For the cinema, my dear friends, is dead. - T. J.

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:33 PM

In Defense of Global Capitalism 

Johan Norberg is a young writer-activist at the Swedish think tank Timbro. A self-proclaimed anarchist in his teens, he is now a passionate crusader for the globalization that is lifting the Third World out of poverty. His book In Defense of Global Capitalism has received rave reviews in Sweden, the Netherlands, and England and is now available in the United States in an updated edition. - Cato Watch the video (RealOne) - it takes a very short loading time!

posted by George Thomas Kysor 6:22 PM

Bedbugs Back in U.S. Beds

posted by George Thomas Kysor 3:28 PM

Battle of the Memes 

Idioblast has as its primary objective the annihilation of bad memes and the encouragement of good ones. The word meme, coined by the famous zoologist, Richard Dawkins, refers to concepts in human brains that have a knack for getting themselves copied from one head to another. They are similar to genes in that they contribute to their own replication. The obvious analog is the computer virus. The classic example of a meme is the little tune that you can't get out of your head and which (for the purpose of illustration) you begin to whistle. Upon hearing this, another person may become infected via sound waves as the tune is transmitted to his or her brain. Now imagine that the newly infected person goes and purchases a recording of the same tune and, in playing it for friends, unleashes a contagion. Memes don't always get copied perfectly and, like their genetic counterparts, are subject to the process of variation and selection. Looked at this way, ideas seem to have a life of their own. But we are not their hapless puppets -- we choose our memes. Our choices provide the selection mechanism of meme evolution.

According to Dawkins, a gene is the smallest unit of genetic information that is acted upon by natural selection. A meme, then, is the smallest unit of concept or idea acted upon by choice. A meme could be a memory of a scent, a haiku poem, or a sonata. Some people distinguish between infectious thoughts, like the little tune you can't get out of your head, and more elaborate ones like myths and legends, folk lore, religions, theories, and ideologies. The latter cases, they say, are two big to be single memes -- just as a cow is not a gene but the consequence of a collection of cow genes. These people prefer to call large complex collections of memes "memeplexes."(For simplicity sake, I usually just refer to memeplexes as memes even though this may not be technically correct.) A t-shirt for sale reads: "Memes don't exist, tell your friends." This is an example of a joke meme. The declaration of Independence is another sort of meme. Obviously, not all memes are equal. Some are harmless, some are very good, and some are evil. Some examples of evil memes are the doctrines of socialism, nationalism, and racism. From the meme's point of view, what makes a meme good is simply that it be successful at getting copied. But, for you and me, it also matters that the success of a meme create beneficial results for humans... - Tracey Zoeller

posted by George Thomas Kysor 3:04 PM

Reality TV 

A prototype digital video system producing images of such high quality that the human eye struggles to distinguish them from reality has been developed by Japanese engineers.
The system, called ultra high definition video (UHDV), achieves image resolution 16 times greater than even the most advanced video broadcasting technologies now available.
Its developers at the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) said the system could be used to provide an ultra realistic 'immersive' viewing experience when, for example, showing sporting events.
UHDV displays images with 4,000 horizontal scanning lines, compared to the 1,000 offered by the current state-of-the-art high definition television (HDTV) technology and just 625 for standard TV broadcasts. When horizontal and vertical scanning are both taken into account a UHDV picture contains 16 times the number of pixels ? individual image components - of HDTV.
NHK, which unveiled details of UHDV for the first time at broadcast technology conference IBC in Amsterdam, said its engineers had to custom-design a video camera, data-storage device and projection system, as no standard broadcasting equipment could cope with their extreme demands.
The camera was built by aligning four 2.5in charge coupled device (CCD) image-capture panels. The projector system uses four liquid crystal-on-silicon panels, two of which process green light while the other two each handle red and blue. These must be aligned to an accuracy of within 0.5 of a pixel - there are 33 million pixels on display - to achieve ultra high definition results.
Recording the massive amounts of data needed to produce UHDV definition also posed a problem for NHK. Its engineers were originally only able to make 34 seconds' worth of recording. They have now built a disc recorder system made up of 16 HDTV recorder units with a capacity of about 3.5 terabytes, allowing them to shoot 18 minutes of UHDV footage.
NHK researcher Dr. Kohji Mitani said the project team had shot a three-minute demonstration video by attaching the camera to the front of a vehicle and driving it around the streets.
The footage was then shown to members of the public on a 4x7m wide-angle screen provoking, according to Mitani, gasps of astonishment. Some viewers even experienced nausea because of the ultra realistic visual effect of speed without the usual physical sensation of movement.
Mitani said the system was still at a basic stage of development, but he claimed it had proved that image qualities so realistic that they approximated to actually being at the recorded event were possible.
NHK will now attempt to reduce the size of the camera and look at the possibility of developing transmission systems that could broadcast UHDV footage.
Dr. Nicolas Lodge of UK broadcast technology specialist Pro-Vision Communications, who chaired the IBC session at which UHDV was presented, said the NHK work was 'amazing stuff. They are on the way to creating an experience that mimics actually being there. It is an exciting area of research'. - The Engineer

posted by George Thomas Kysor 12:44 PM

Tuesday, October 07, 2003

The Free State Project is a new strategy for liberty in our lifetime. 

The Free State Project is a plan in which 20,000 or more liberty-oriented people will move to New Hampshire, where they may work within the political system to reduce the size and scope of government. The success of the Free State Project would likely entail reductions in burdensome taxation and regulation, reforms in state and local law, an end to federal mandates, and a restoration of constitutional federalism, demonstrating the benefits of liberty to the rest of the nation and the world.
Free State Ads

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:30 PM

Michael Moore's Seven Questions

posted by George Thomas Kysor 4:57 PM

Jim Henley is more libertarian and less conservative 

...It sometimes amuses me that I'm probably on more liberal blogrolls than conservative ones these days. This is a minor irony of history. The nimble libertarian has to decide where the most imminent threats to liberty reside and align himself accordingly. Waco and Ruby Ridge were a decade ago. ClintonCare was defeated about the same time, though great chunks of it have been smuggled into law piecemeal, as much by Republicans as by Democrats. Republicans control the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate. Since the Spring of 2002 it has been clear to me that the "national greatness" "conservatives" had successfully hijacked the war against the terrorists who murdered three thousand blameless Americans in Fall 2001, turning it into the drive for the "benevolent hegemony" that they had been urging since the day the Soviet Union exhibit opened in the Museum of Bad Ideas. I believe their success, and even the sustained attempt, would mean the ruin of what I love best about my country. I could be wrong. But I don't think I am.

That means that the national greatness types, and the Administration whose foreign and "defense" policy they drive, are the salient threat to liberty in America today. For the time being, "the Left" simply doesn't pose an equivalent threat. In addition, this Administration stinks in all sorts of other ways important to libertarians. It stinks on trade, it stinks on spending, it stinks on drug prohibition, civil liberties and even federalism. It has not, to the best of my knowledge, even proposed the elimination of any significant programs, let alone actually eliminating any. It has driven up the price of my catfish, lumber, produce and steel. It has interfered with state prerogatives on drug laws and marriage rights.

In short, in areas (political economy and civil liberties) where a Democratic Administration would surely stink, it has stunk nearly as bad. In areas where it has stunk most (national "security"), the Democrats might stink marginally less. This doesn't mean I'll vote for a Democratic presidential candidate - I'll probably vote Libertarian again. But I'll probably hope for a divided government, with a Democratic President and a Republican Congress. As rulers of the country, the Repubs make a great opposition party. They'll kill expansive proposals from a Democratic President just to make liberals cry. It's clear that they won't take much initiative to actually reduce government beyond that.

But the upshot of it is, right now a bad Republican President is in the White House, with a Republican Congress to roll over and play fetch. They're the problem, and their vainglories and malfeasance the inevitable focus of this blog. That makes me more fun for liberals to read than I'm likely to be during the years of the Clark Administration. They can decide that I've "really gone downhill" when that happens. Bill Clinton made me a libertarian. Thanks to George Bush and Dick Cheney and the PNAC gang, I feel more libertarian and less conservative than ever. - Jim Henley

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:38 PM

The Laws of the Father Are Visited Upon the Son By Philip Agee. (via Jim Henley)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 11:48 AM

Iraq's Founding Moments 

...but the Iraqi constitutional process is the most important thing that will be happening in the world in the next year. If it succeeds, Iraq really will be a beacon of freedom in the Middle East. The Americans who have died in Iraq will have given their lives in a truly noble cause. - DAVID BROOKS, Op-ed, NYT

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:37 AM

Monday, October 06, 2003

What Your Alter-Ego Never Told You... 

I need to die. I'm such a bad friend, a bad person, I hate myself! I could barely stand to go out in public Sunday, because I came to realize how frickin' ugly I am, poor mirrors, poor people who have to look at me. I'm so stupid and confused. My eyes never stop tearing. I have no chance. I'm a horrible friend, horrible. I'm a third wheel, Lord, I don't deserve friends, the wonderful people who include me in stuff must be reincarnations of Gandhi to have to put up with ugly, horrible, freakish me. It's a good thing no one reads this. Sabishisa... There are people there, but am I distancing myself from them? Why am I this way, why am I so sad all the time? I have a happy mask, but lately it's been broken, beyond repair, will I ever get it back? I told Bernadette part of what was wrong, Am I hallucinating? Am I right? Who's gonna be there to answer all these stupid questions I'm asking myself?! I feel alone even among friends. I feel like I'm perpetually on the verge of tears. Loneliness and tears can make a person feel ways they don't normally. I usually try to be a happy kid, but lately... Oh well, I should just suck it up, there are people with far worse problems than mine. "On my own...." -Eponine, Les Miserable
- Hoshi Shoujo

posted by George Thomas Kysor 8:55 PM

The Lie Heard Around The World

posted by George Thomas Kysor 7:02 PM

Personality Quiz (via Jen Speaks via Absinthe & Cookies via Daily Pundit)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 2:21 PM

Cartoon (scroll down to Thursday, September 25, 2003)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 12:10 PM

Sunday, October 05, 2003

A Letter to the Editor of the Wall Street Journal  

Ladies and Gentlemen
& Mr. Johnson:

I read your story of September 29th this am. I fear you buried
your lead.

The reason citizens develop theories is because those with the
responsibility, authority and resources to provide answers fail
to do their job.

Our government is accountable to provide a factual and logical
explanation of what happened on September 11, 2001. Surely the
Wall Street Journal would understand why U.S citizens do not
want to pay $350 billion plus a year for a national security
infrastructure that can not even protect its own headquarters?

America is a country lead by divine authority and the rule of
law. If we spend significant public resources financed with global
capital in a manner that effects the physical, financial and
environmental safety of citizens worldwide, not to mention generations
yet unborn, we must account for our performance to those legitimately
concerned.

Our governmental apparatus is using a 9-11 pretext unsupported
by evidence to engineer a hostile takeover of the global economy
in the service of defense contractor and oil company stock prices.
The resulting commission-like flow of contributions into campaign
coffers is deeply disturbing. How does one unexplained group
of terrorist attacks warrant the US adopting Soviet economics
to subsidize above market returns to multinational banks and
corporations?

UnAnsweredQuestions.org was created after 9-11 to emerge the
questions that citizens most want our government to answer. This
collaboration has emerged powerful and important questions.
In the process, significant on line tools have been developed
to assemble available evidence. Why not review and describe Paul
Thompson's time line? The hunger of many caring and thoughtful
people to know the truth deserves a voice. Indeed, the Philadelphia
Daily News just published their own version of the UnAnswered
Questions.

Kyle Hence, the leading founder of UnAnsweredQuestions.org, has
now founded Citizens Watch to ensure that the independent commission
on 9-11 co-chaired by Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton has the benefit
of citizens standards of accountability in getting answers. Such
citizen participation is the essence of good government.

How about accessing this positive collaboration to help us hold
the US government accountable to provide the truth of the events
of September 11, 2001?

The story is not that researchers are developing theories. The
story is that the military, intelligence and enforcement officials
and their corporate and depository banking contractors who are
paid richly to know and illuminate the truth have failed to do
so.

Your readers -- millions of investors in US Treasury securities
and US currency -- have a vested interest that the integrity
of our word not be rendered so worthless.

Sincerely Yours,

Catherine Austin Fitts
Solari, Inc.
Former Assistant Secretary of Housing, Bush I
Former Managing Director, Dillon Read & Co. Inc.

Founder, UnAnsweredQuestions.org
http://www.unansweredquestions.org
Founder, Where is the Money?
http://www.whereisthemoney.org
- Scoop

TWENTY QUESTIONS ABOUT SEPTEMBER 11 William Bunch - Philadelphia Daily News [excerpt]

...The questions that Bunch discusses in his lengthy article follow...

There are dozens of unanswered questions about the 2001 attacks, but we've narrowed them down to 20 - or 9 plus 11.

1. What did National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice tell President Bush about al Qaeda threats against the United States in a still-secret briefing on Aug. 6, 2001?

2. Why did Attorney General John Ashcroft and some Pentagon officials cancel commercial-airline trips before Sept. 11?. . .

3. Who made a small fortune "shorting" airline and insurance stocks before Sept.
11?

4. Are all 19 people identified by the government as participants in the Sept. 11 attacks really the hijackers?. . .

5. Did any of the hijackers smuggle guns on board as reported in calls from both Flight 11 and Flight 93?. . .

6. Why did the NORAD air defense network fail to intercept the four hijacked jets?

7. Why did President Bush continue reading a story to Florida grade-schoolers for nearly a half-hour during the worst attackon America in its history?. . .

8. How did Flight 93 crash in western Pennsylvania?. . .

9. Was Zacarias Moussaoui really "the 20th hijacker"?. . .

10. Where are the planes' "black boxes"?. . .

11. Why were Donald Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials so quick to link Saddam Hussein to the attacks?. . .

12. Why did 7 World Trade Center collapse?. . .

13. Why did the Bush administration lie about dangerously high levels of toxins and hazardous particles after the WTC collapse?

14. Where is Dick Cheney's undisclosed location?. . .

15. What happened to the more than $1 billion that Americans donated after the attack?. . .

16. What was the role of Pakistan's spy agency in the Sept. 11 attacks and the subsequent murder of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl?

17. Who killed five Americans with anthrax?. . .

18. What happened to the probe into C-4 explosives found in a Philadelphia bus terminal in fall 2001?. . .

19. What is in the 28 blacked-out pages of the congressional Sept. 11 report?. . .

20. Where is Osama bin Laden?. . . - Scoop (via J.V.W.)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 5:46 PM

Redneck Welfare

posted by George Thomas Kysor 2:49 PM

Pink Wombat 

I can't believe I ever thought he could like me. I've always known that guys don't like girls like me. I was stupid to think he'd be any different. I wish I was stupid and cared more about my hair and clothes and make-up and I wish I could flirt all the time and manipulate guys but I can't. And I can't understand why guys only want the stupid pretty perky girls. I thought it was finally my turn. I believed him when he said he liked me and all the times he said he missed me. I believed him when he said that he still liked me and didn't want to break up when he told me the day before he dumped me. And I can't even consider calling him as an option. I want to talk to him and I want to see him but no matter how sad I am and no matter how badly I need to talk to someone I won't ever call him and no matter how badly I want to see him I'm still scared of seeing him tomorrow or at the movies or anywhere we could run into each other. And I'm not sure know how I'll feel if I do. I know whether I see him or not I'll be thinking about him all day on Saturday. Sometimes I wish I had never met him and that I never went out with him because then at least I'd only feel mediocre like I always have and I wouldn't have to deal with missing him so much. And knowing that I had the chance to be happy and to have someone like me and I ruined it by being me. - Heidi

posted by George Thomas Kysor 2:35 PM

WMD report: more proof Iraq war was based on lies 

The interim report delivered by Washington’s handpicked chief weapons inspector has confirmed yet again that the Bush administration’s war against Iraq was an unprovoked act of aggression that was based on lies.

The report was largely anti-climactic, confirming what has already become all too obvious: there exists no evidence that the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or posed any threat whatsoever to the US or the rest of the world.

“We have not found at this point actual weapons,” David Kay said in his report to Congress. “It does not mean we’ve concluded there are no actual weapons.”

This conclusion follows three months of work and $300 million in expenditures by Kay’s 1,200-member Iraq Survey Group (ISG), composed of military and civilian experts. Their efforts came on top of those performed by military personnel organized in the search teams of the 75th Exploitation Task Force that roamed the country in the aftermath of the US invasion, not to mention the intrusive inspections regime imposed under the mantle of the United Nations before the war.

Hans Blix, the UN’s chief weapons inspector, dismissed Kay’s report. “I don’t think there are any surprises,” he said. “The most important point is that they confirm that they have not found any stocks of weapons of mass destruction of any kind. They found minor proscribed items and debris.” Blix last month compared the US claims about Iraqi WMD to the hunt for witches during the Middle Ages.

Kay’s report served up a damning refutation of each specific point cited by the Bush administration in the run-up to the war as justifications for invading Iraq.

Related to the most sensational charge, the incessant claim that the continued existence of the Hussein regime threatened the US with a nuclear terrorist attack, Kay reported: “To date we have not uncovered evidence that Iraq undertook significant post-1998 steps to actually build nuclear weapons or produce fissile material.”

In an Oct. 7, 2002, speech delivered in Cincinnati, Bush had declared that “the evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program... Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”

Similarly, Vice President Cheney, in a March 16 appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” had declared of Saddam Hussein, “We know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.”

The ISG report merely confirms the assessment made by Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the UN nuclear inspection team, who said that the US had used forged and false evidence to manufacture its nuclear weapons claims.


Chemical weapons abandoned in 1991

The ISG report also concluded that whatever chemical weapons (CW) program Iraq maintained was apparently abandoned long before the US invasion.

A National Intelligence Estimate prepared last October warned that the Iraqi regime had renewed production of mustard, sarin and VX agents, and “probably has stocked” 100 to 500 tons of chemical weaponry, “much of it added in the past year.”

But Kay told the congressional intelligence committee: “Multiple sources with varied access and reliability have told ISG that Iraq did not have a large, ongoing, centrally controlled CW program after 1991.”

He added: “Information found to date suggests that Iraq’s large-scale capability to develop, produce and fill new [chemical] munitions was reduced—if not entirely destroyed—during Operations Desert Storm and Desert Fox, 13 years of UN sanctions and UN inspections,” Kay said.

This assessment stands as an indictment not only of the claims made by the Bush administration in launching the war last March, but also of the trumped-up WMD charges made by the Clinton White House in 1998 before launching cruise missile attacks on Baghdad.

The sole physical evidence of WMD material that the 1,200-person army of US inspectors could claim to have found was a single vial of botulinum in the home of an Iraqi scientist. In the run-up to the war, US officials claimed ominously that Iraq had stockpiled 38,000 liters of the toxin. The report also claimed that the ISG had discovered equipment and elements of laboratories as well as the ashes of burned documents, the material that Blix referred to as “minor proscribed items and debris.”

As to the tons of anthrax, ricin, mustard gas, VX and other deadly substances that Washington maintained were present in Iraq, the ISG has found not a trace.

The ISG report further suggested that the only piece of WMD-related equipment that the Bush administration claimed to have located in the aftermath of the war was also bogus.

“We have not yet been able to corroborate the existence of a mobile BW [biological weapons] production effort,” Kay told a congressional hearing Thursday. The administration had claimed that a pair of flatbed trucks equipped with cooling equipment and fermenters that US forces recovered in May were mobile weapons labs.

Iraqi scientists countered that the trucks were used for making hydrogen for weather balloons. US military officials quoted by the Associated Press indicated that the Pentagon has accepted this explanation. No trace of biological materials was found on either vehicle.

After the report’s release, Bush declared that it proved “Saddam Hussein was a danger to the world.” British foreign secretary Jack Straw echoed this claim, stating that the ISG’s findings showed “how dangerous and deceitful the regime was and how the military action was indeed both justified and essential to remove the dangers.”

In reality, the report only confirmed the claims of the Iraqi regime itself and the assessment of most independent observers: Iraq had destroyed its WMD stocks and was effectively disarmed well before the war was launched.


Military intelligence report discredits defectors’ “leads”

Kay’s report to Congress came on the heels of findings by US military intelligence that virtually all claims made by Iraqi exiles concerning supposed secret weapons programs had proven fraudulent.

Officials within the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) leaked the findings of a secret report, which also said that leads from Iraqi defectors had proven fruitless. The agency concluded that the Iraqi National Congress (INC), the Iraqi exile group that arranged for most of the defectors to speak to intelligence analysts, promoted the stories in a bid to provoke a US invasion, while the defectors themselves were currying Washington’s favor in hopes of being resettled in the US.

The US government paid more than $1 million for the useless information. The New York Times reported Sept. 29 that officials who leaked the DIA findings “would not speculate on whether the defectors had knowingly provided false information and, if so, what their motivation might have been.” The Times report added: “One Defense Department official said that some of the people were not who they said they were and that the money for the program could have been better spent.”

The “intelligence” provided by the INC-sponsored defectors was championed by the right-wing ideologues in the civilian leadership of the Pentagon, and promoted by the Times itself through the reports of its senior correspondent Judith Miller. She acknowledged in an internal memo at the newspaper that nearly all of her WMD “exclusives” were based on information provided by the INC’s chief, Ahmed Chalabi.

The leaking of the DIA report is one more indication of the deep and bitter divisions within the national security establishment that have emerged in response to the growing debacle for the US military occupation in Iraq.

The substance of the Kay report is itself testimony to these divisions. If there were ever an individual who could be counted upon to manufacture the “evidence” that the Bush administration desires, it is David Kay.

A right-wing Republican, Kay was a political official at the Pentagon under the Reagan administration in the 1980s. In 1991, in the wake of the Persian Gulf War, the first Bush administration managed to have him installed as the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency nuclear weapons inspection team in Iraq.

He was removed from this UN agency in 1992 after a series of provocations and because of his unconcealed and intimate ties with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Documents that he unearthed purporting to reveal the existence of an ongoing Iraqi nuclear program later proved to be forgeries.

In the period leading up to the invasion of Iraq, Kay was a ubiquitous presence on the cable news networks promoting the Bush administration’s program of “regime change.”

Before rejoining the CIA, Kay was senior vice president for San Diego-based Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), a major defense contractor that has won lucrative contracts both for homeland security and Iraqi reconstruction. Kay reportedly retains a major interest in the company in terms of stock ownership.

If such an individual was unable to produce the kind of report that would have bolstered the Bush administration’s WMD claims, it is undoubtedly because there are elements within the US military and the intelligence establishment who are refusing to collaborate in lying to the American public.

The Bush administration has asked for a secret appropriation of another $620 million to fund the continuation of the ISG’s fruitless hunt for WMD. The obvious question is whether this money will be used in another elaborate attempt to fabricate evidence where none exists.

Kay’s report promoted fresh charges that the administration deliberately promoted phony intelligence to further its longstanding aim to conquer Iraq.

Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that the report contradicted claims made before the war that Iraq had posed an imminent danger.

“Did we misread it or did they mislead us, or did [we] simply get it wrong?” he asked. “Whatever the answer is, it’s not a good answer.”

There is only one politically credible conclusion, but the Democrats are too cowardly to publicly state it. The Bush administration deliberately manufactured intelligence suggesting a threat from Iraq in order to overcome mass opposition to launching a war of aggression.

The Iraqi people have paid for this crime with the deaths and maiming of tens of thousands of people, while American soldiers are being killed on a daily basis as the result of growing resistance to an illegal colonial occupation. The hundreds of billions of dollars that are going to fund the occupation and the profiteering by politically connected firms like Halliburton and Bechtel will be paid for by American working people through attacks on living standards, social programs and jobs.

The report from the ISG—confirming in unmistakable terms that the Bush administration lied to the American people about the reasons for war—poses the urgent need for an independent investigation leading to the impeachment and criminal prosecution of all those responsible for provoking this war. The call for such a probe must be advanced together with the demand for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq. By Bill Vann

posted by George Thomas Kysor 12:42 PM

Saturday, October 04, 2003

K Street on the Tigris  

Washington insiders are lining up to help corporate clients cash in on rebuilding Iraq, whether the Iraqis like it or not. - Mother Jones

posted by George Thomas Kysor 10:39 PM

Intro to the philosophy of liberty (5-minute Flash)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 10:34 PM

The Myth of Insufficient Gold 

One of the standard arguments against a gold standard is this: "There’s not enough gold to facilitate all of the transactions in a free market economy." This is an old criticism. It was a lot more popular before the desktop computer industry started cutting prices every year, while increasing product quality. These days, people expect falling prices in desktop computers.

What if they expected price cuts in all other industries?

If you have ever wondered what would happen if a relatively fixed supply of above-ground gold were the primary medium of exchange, this essay may help clarify things... - Gary North

posted by George Thomas Kysor 5:33 PM

THE LIVES OF THE SAINTS, AMERICAN STYLE 

After magazines have been thrown in the trash and have gone through the lower intestinal track of the sanitation industry they seem to end up on the shelf at my gym. Months-old copies of People, Us, Oprah, In Style, and, no kidding, Cheerleader are all I have to choose from when I am riding the stationary bike. Under a stack of celebrity rags I saw just the title for a magazine I had never seen before.

As soon as I pulled it out and saw the picture of Kevin Spacey on the cover I knew that Biography wasn’t some weightier periodical dedicated to chronicling the lives of important people, but yet another hagiography of movie stars--just what our print media really needs. I will look through any magazine at least once--anything to keep my mind off of how much riding an exercise bike sucks. I checked out Cheerleader magazine before and it is every bit as frightening as you would probably imagine.

Biography’s motto on the cover states, “Every life has a story” but looking at the content it seems that the only lives with stories worth telling are those of movie stars. In my admittedly very unscientific survey of the magazine I found that 99% of the pictures were those of your favorite TV and movie actors—the Mount Olympus Gods of our culture. I can just imagine the scene in the boardroom at the inception of Biography. Some young entrepreneurial go-getter stands up and shouts, “I’m sick of the way movie stars are ignored in our culture and I think we should start a new magazine to let everyone know how great they are and what a tremendous contribution they make to our lives.” Fighting backs their tears, the other board members heartily agree.

My favorite entry in this previously-unknown-to-me contribution to American letters was the section “Where Are They Now?” The lead story was about the actor George Lindsey who played the mildly-retarded mechanic, Goober, on The Andy Griffith Show. Where is he now? Does anyone want to know where he is now? What I would like to hear is that the entire show was just some sort of surreal nightmare that I had one evening in my childhood and that I didn’t actually spend untold hours watching that crap. I want someone to tell me that instead of watching horrifically bad TV I spent the evening hours of my youth mastering Mozart sonatas on the piano or discussing Tuscan cooking techniques with my siblings.

I didn’t spend my youth playing Mozart or learning the fine points of international cuisine. I spent it like everyone else I know: watching obscenely bad TV. I have tried desperately in adulthood to make up for my wasted years in front of the boob tube, but nothing I do can ever give me back all of the ill-spent time I passed getting to know Goober. - Leftbanker

posted by George Thomas Kysor 12:14 PM

Friday, October 03, 2003

A Public Service Announcement 

Locals have long viewed Hong Kong's Victoria Harbour as an ideal place to dispose of unwanted refuse. But, this is going too damned far:


The body of a man tied to a wheelchair was found floating near the shoreline of the Tsim Sha Tsui East waterfront yesterday morning.

A baby sling had been strapped around his waist to bind him to the wheelchair, while his arms and legs were bound to the chair with tape and strips of cloth.


How about a little consideration, people? When the old-folks grow tiresome, take them to a nursing home. We've got pollution problems enough it this city without you filling the harbour with your disgarded grandparents. - The Gweilo Diaries

posted by George Thomas Kysor 8:51 PM

The Order of Nighthood 

The Order of Knighthood is a private, non-profit honor society which has no affiliation with any church or organization.

The Order of Knighthood is an organization of young men from 14 to 19 who have chosen to live their lives in such a way as to abstain from pre-marital sex, illegal drugs, alcohol, all forms of tobacco, and to be an example and a strength to their fellow knights living the commandments of God so the light of Christ will shine brightly for all to see. These young men are Knighted for chivalry, living values that are so badly needed in our world today.

Knighthood unites together like-minded young men to fortify and strengthen the teachings they receive in the home and at church, giving them the support of positive peer pressure to help them overcome the challenges and temptations of a world filled with wickedness.

The Order of Knighthood does not have an organization of officers or leaders, nor does it sponsor activities, and the only meetings are the ones at which young men become a Squire and later a Knight.

Young men pay a one-time fee of $19.95 to process their membership, provide a certificate of Knighthood, a lapel pin, and a wallet card. Later, for no additional fee, Knights may receive their own ceremonial sword and their personal coat of arms as awards. All Knights are also eligible to apply for a scholarship.

Knighthood gives strength to young men as they face the challenges and temptations in the world around them. Only Knights can sponsor a new Knight, and Knights are constantly reminded of their promise each time they perform the Squire and Knighthood ceremonies, making that promise in front of each other, as well as before their family and friends. By uniting with other young men with similar values they find strength in numbers through this positive peer pressure.

The added incentive of being able to receive a beautiful ceremonial sword, a handsome coat of arms for their family name, and a scholarship that could potentially be large enough to fully pay for college makes Knighthood an even bigger attraction to young men. - David M. Bresnahan, Founder & Director

posted by George Thomas Kysor 8:39 PM

Downing of airliners practiced 

At least twice a week, the military practices what two years ago would have been nearly unthinkable: shooting down a civilian airliner hijacked by terrorists.

General Ralph E. Eberhart, head of US Northern Command, said yesterday that strong safeguards are in place to prevent an accidental or unwarranted shootdown of a commercial airplane. Commanders, pilots, and air defense crews are drilled on those procedures at least twice and as many as four times each week, Eberhart said.

The rules allow for an order to down a civilian plane only if there's no other option to prevent a Sept. 11-style attack. There are authentication procedures so "someone can't just get on the radio and say, `This is the president, I order you to shoot down that plane,' " Eberhart said. He didn't elaborate, saying the procedures were classified.

Military jets were in the air during the 2001 attacks, but were too far away to shoot down the airliners that hit the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

The new procedures are so strong, Eberhart said, that commanders worry more about missing a chance to prevent an attack with a hijacked plane than they do about mistakenly downing a peaceful jet.

"I would take issue with anyone who would say the men and women in our armed forces are trigger happy," he said. "I'm more worried that they would be trigger hesitant . . . We have long discussions with people to see if they're ready to do this." - Matt Kelley, Associated Press

posted by George Thomas Kysor 4:37 PM

Thursday, October 02, 2003

HOW MUCH IS AN IRAQI LIFE WORTH? 

Shortly after the end of Desert Storm, a reporter asked Colin Powell in a press conference, "How many Iraqis died?" Powell quickly stated, "We're not interested in a body count." That was that.
The reporter was quite clear in his question: he did not ask Powell about his interest, but about numbers. Powell evaded the question and nobody asked him again.
I became impassioned about Iraq when I saw pictures of thousands of bodies, some military and some civilian. I had a U.S. soldier give me pictures of several Iraqi POWs he killed. That's right, POWs, not combatants. Attached to his scrap book loaded with pictures of burned and bent Iraqi bodies, this soldier included a newspaper clipping with Powell's statement.
Without going into detail, the amount of Iraqis who died under the ghastly 12-year embargo against that country is estimated to be about two million. This is a tragedy of monumental proportions. An analogy would be an American catastrophe that killed 28 million people. Unfortunately, few in the United States know of or care about the embargo years. Years that were a falsehood. The embargo was not lifted because the U.S. said that Iraq must rid itself of weapons of mass destruction before the lifting of sanctions. Just a few days ago, Hans Blix, former U.N. head weapons inspector admitted that Iraq had probably destroyed all their weapons by 1993. Iraq told the world this, but U.S. lies led to the continuation of the embargo.
In 1997, then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was asked point-blank, "Is the embargo worth the lives of over a million children?" She did not hesitate as she said, "Yes."
I have no idea why the American public thinks Iraqi lives are not worth as much as those of other nationalities. I have never heard one American official speak of any Iraqi in a civil manner. They are all sub-human in their minds
From March of this year until now, the U.S. military has killed well over 100,000 Iraqis. The Guardian Newspaper of Great Britain lists at least 32,000 civilians killed (that's 10 times more than the victims of 9/11 in the U.S.). Again, the U.S. is being asked about Iraqi deaths and the canned answer from Bush on down is, "We don't keep track of these."
When Americans go into combat with Iraqi freedom fighters, only the casualties on the American side are listed. No one keeps track of Iraqi deaths. The Iraqis are pleading with American authorities for information about relatives killed by Americans, yet they receive no reply. Arab TV networks have shown piles of Iraqi bodies strewn by the sides of roads with flies and other insects swarming on them. The U.S. just kills them, piles them up and moves on.
In the past few days, reports from Iraq contain information about many Iraqi deaths: 18 killed in a gun battle; a 14-year-old killed at a wedding; two eight-year-olds killed at a market; etc. The list goes on and on. This tragedy has no way of ending. The U.S. denies killing anybody until a reporter shows the world pictures of the dead. Then, the U.S. feigns ignorance.
Just let one American soldier be missing. The U.S. sends special people from all over the world to search for him/her. U.S. military policy states that a combatant never leave an Amerian body at the scene. Americans in general are obsessed with the bodies of their loved ones. However, when it comes to Iraqis, nobody cares and everybody lies. - Lagauche

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:32 PM

Wednesday, October 01, 2003

“Those without power cannot defend freedom.” 

The mission of members of Freedom Force is to shape public policy within their respective countries in favor of personal and global freedom. The method is threefold: (1) dissemination of ideological and issue-related information, (2) instruction in how to become influential within community and national organizations, and (3) instruction in how to convert that influence into public policy. Members seek to become change agents so they truly can make a difference in the world. Freedom Force was founded by G. Edward Griffin.

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:23 PM

The Valerie Plame Affair 

>The current spin from administration defenders within and without the mainstream media is that Valerie Plame was only an analyst, and not an operative. This, somehow, is supposed to lessen the blow of an administration willing to attack the families of its critics. Yet the characterization of Plame as an analyst is factually incorrect. For one, Robert Novak himself indicated as much in the original report that birthed this scandal. “Wilson never worked for the CIA,” wrote Novak, “but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction.”

>Ray McGovern, who was for 27-years a senior analyst for the CIA, further confirms the status of Plame within the CIA. “I know Joseph Wilson well enough to know,” said McGovern in a telephone conversation we had today, “that his wife was in fact a deep cover operative running a network of informants on what is supposedly this administration’s first-priority issue: Weapons of mass destruction.”

>McGovern further elaborated on the damage done when such an agent has their cover blown. “This causes a great deal of damage,” said McGovern. “These kinds of networks take ten years to develop. The reason why they operate under deep cover is that the only people who have access to the kind of data we need cannot be associated in any way with the American intelligence community. Our operatives live a lie to maintain these networks, and do so out of patriotism. When they get blown, the operatives themselves are in physical danger. The people they recruit are also in physical danger, because foreign intelligence services can make the connections and find them. Operatives like Valerie Plame are real patriots.” - William Pitt (via The Poor Man via Max Speak)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 4:56 PM

Freedom 

I couldn't laugh, I couldn't cry, I couldn't waste another dddaaayyy..

Window down, breeze in my face, blasting at a hundred and twenty K's an hour down the highway to a new life.

I couldn't live, I couldn't lie low any longgeerr..

Arm resting comfortably half out into the wind, fingers tapping on the steering wheel in complicated off beat and alternating rhythms, the rich summer sun pouring down on my skin.

Did you ever care about me? I remember the time you looked in my eyes..

A small smile escapes from my cracked lips, dry from the incessant wind thundering against me. Flashings of memory staccato against the road. The white lines streaming towards me then falling away in review.

And promised we'd stay together. Our love would grow stronger..

It had all worked out so perfectly.. aside from a fantastically broken heart of course. Here was I, the burnt landscape of central Queensland whipping past my vision, heading for a new world, a new beginning. The road I had travelled so many times in the past, almost every weekend, to the person I was now escaping from. I imagined shattered dreams and tattered emotions trailing visibly vermilion from the wake of the car so intense was my loss.

The storms we had weathered wouldn't last any longerrr..

Storms? Whew.. there had been lightning, hail, typhoons.. the whole shebang. Nights spent wandering the roads in indescribable agony, silent screams upon awakening to yet another day of pain. It never ceased to amaze me how a single major act of infidelity and the inevitable rejection following from an unhappy and guilty partner could affect someone.. especially me.

You just never know while you're in it.. but then you look back and wonder if you might have driven them there.

But we'll never know how good it could be.. This isn't how it should be.

None of it ever was. Too young, seduced too easily, I cut my teeth on you as per your required training. Maybe I guess you thought you were doing me a favour. More likely the notion of convenience was beyond you so you couldn't understand what you were actually doing.

It could've been so good..

Guess you never know eh?

But there was something else for me..

A new life. A new world. My old friends back in my arms again. Peace. Happiness. Success and stability. My Astra. Resort holidays. New toys. Experiences.

I left you with seven sheets of blank paper as my final goodbye. Maybe I should've written 'Thank you' on the last one. - Nicky

posted by George Thomas Kysor 3:12 PM

Tuesday, September 30, 2003

Here's a cool choose-a-design demo 

posted by George Thomas Kysor 3:46 PM

MIT Open Courseware with 500 Courses 

MIT OCW is a large-scale, Web-based electronic publishing initiative funded jointly by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and MIT.

MIT OCW's goals are to:
Provide free, searchable, access to MIT's course materials for educators, students, and self-learners around the world.
Create an efficient, standards-based model that other institutions may emulate to openly share and publish their own course materials.
MIT OCW would not be possible without the support and generosity of the MIT faculty who choose to share their research, pedagogy, and knowledge to benefit others. We expect MIT to reach a steady - though never static - state by 2008. Between now and then, we will publish the materials from virtually all of MIT's undergraduate and graduate courses.

We will be continually evaluating the Access, Use, and Impact of MIT OCW over the course of the next five years. With 500 courses published in September 2003, we are still in an early stage of this MIT initiative and we will benefit enormously from your feedback (hotlink to OCW feedback form), as we strive to make MIT OCW as rich and useful as possible for our users. (via Slashdot)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 2:51 PM

U.S. own worst foe in battle to win over people - The Halifax Herald Limited 

SAMARA, Iraq - A LITTLE Iraqi girl - no more than eight years old - squatted beside the road with tears of humiliation streaming down her cheeks.

Twenty feet away, three American soldiers had their rifles aimed at her as she was forced to relieve herself in full view of a long line of parked cars. From inside their vehicles, the Iraqi onlookers screamed their rage at the U.S. troops. Whenever someone ventured to step out of a vehicle, an American officer bellowed, "Get back in the car, a******!" and the .50 calibre machine gun mounted on the U.S. Hummer would swing menacingly toward the protester.

The terrified little girl was weeping uncontrollably by the time she dropped her skirt and ran back to her mother. Her understandably enraged father began working his horn and other Iraqi drivers quickly took up the protest by doing the same.

The Americans laughed as they drove off, their weapons still trained on the Iraqi vehicles.

This incident took place on Sunday after a detachment of the U.S. 101st Airborne Division set up a roadblock on the Samara-Kirkuk highway. The purpose was to conduct a weapons search of all traffic.

However, without enough personnel to man the roadblock, cars and trucks were soon backed up for at least two kilometers in each direction. It was hot and there was no shade on that desert stretch of highway.

As part of their operational doctrine, the Americans did not allow anyone to step out of their vehicles until they had been searched, despite the fact that the waiting time at the roadblock was upward of four hours.

To ensure that no Iraqi ventured onto the roadway, 1st Lieut. Fisher and his detachment raced up and down the queue, pointed their weapons and hurled verbal abuse at any violator. The little girl had been sitting in a small Mazda with six other family members for over three hours before she left the car. Her older brother - no more than 10 - had bravely taken her by the hand and attempted to reach a small depression in the sand, which might have offered a modicum of privacy.

Fisher's Hummer had roared down the unpaved shoulder and braked to a halt in a cloud of dust. The young boy abandoned his sister, who had no choice but to squat where she was.

While Fisher and his men may have carried out their orders efficiently, their aggressive behaviour and lack of empathy had done little to win over the "hearts and minds" of Iraqis.

Although it has been nearly five months since U.S. President George W. Bush proclaimed the war in Iraq to be over, the U.S. forces continue to come under attack on a daily basis. More alarming is the fact that the attacks are no longer limited to the central Iraq region known as the "Sunni Triangle." Last week alone, there were three ambushes in the northern city of Mosul - one of which claimed the lives of five Albanian soldiers serving with the coalition.

"It is believed that many of the Saddam loyalists have been pushed out of the Sunni Triangle by the U.S. military crackdown, so now they are plying their trade in the less protected areas," said Eddie Calis - a.k.a. Wind-talker - the head of U.S. security at the Kirkuk airfield. As one of the few Arab speaking U.S. operatives in Iraq, Wind-talker is on call 24 hours a day.

"We have no shortage of people who want to volunteer information - everything from Saddam's whereabouts, to direct knowledge about possible attacks against our base," he said.

Based on such tipoffs, U.S. military personnel have conducted numerous raids to arrest individuals suspected of being Saddam fedayeen (loyalists).

"The suspects are brought to the Kirkuk airfield where they are interrogated for a period of up to 20 days," said Calis. "At that time, they are either charged or released."

Those facing charges are then transferred to Tikrit where they are tried before a U.S. tribunal. If convicted, they are either incarcerated in Baghdad or Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, depending on the severity of the crime.

The 20-day detention period, in which outside contact is denied the accused, has also led to numerous rumours of U.S. torture and abuse.

Note: We were in the car behind the little girl - and I was one of those who attempted to protest Fisher's action. I guess that makes me an "a******." - By Scott Taylor ON TARGET (staylor AT herald.ns.ca)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 2:08 PM

U.S. spying on Scottish distillery?  

The boss of a tiny Scottish distillery says he is amazed to learn that US spies have been monitoring his whisky plant for weapons of mass destruction.

Bruichladdich Distillery on the island of Islay was contacted by an agent at the Defence Threat Reduction Agency to tell staff one of their webcams was faulty.

Cameras had been installed by the company to show off its traditional distilling techniques.

The distillery's managing director Mark Reynier said: "We replied by e-mail thanking her very much for bringing to our attention.

"When I got a reply saying: 'We really do enjoy looking at your distillery,' it was then I noticed the sign-off at the bottom with the initials DTRA.

"I replied back saying I couldn't help noticing your address, and finally the reply came back giving a fantastic explanation about the agency's work was all to do with the anti-terrorist threat to American security.

"They said they had been monitoring our webcams because the process of making something very innocuous and pleasant is close to making weapons of mass destruction, apparently. We just think it is the funniest thing we have ever heard."

The US Government agency based at Fort Belvoir in Virginia, USA, is responsible for American national security.

An agency spokesman was reported as saying the distillery's webcams were of "no official interest". - Ananova

posted by George Thomas Kysor 8:35 AM

Monday, September 29, 2003

Debunking conspiracy theorists' paranoid fantasies about Sept. 11 

Astute observers of history are aware that for every notable event there will usually be at least one ,often several wild conspiracy theories which spring up around it. "The CIA killed Hendrix" " The Pope had John Lennon murdered ", "Hitler was half Werewolf", "Space aliens replaced Nixon with a clone" etc, etc. The bigger the event, the more ridiculous and more numerous are the fanciful rantings which circulate in relation to it.

So its hardly surprising that the events of Sept 11 2001 have spawned their fair share of these ludicrous fairy tales. And as always, there is - sadly - a small but gullible percentage of the population eager to lap up these tall tales, regardless of facts or rational analysis.

One of the wilder stories circulating about Sept 11, and one that has attracted something of a cult following amongst conspiracy buffs is that it was carried out by 19 fanatical Arab hijackers, masterminded by an evil genius named Osama bin Laden, with no apparent motivation other than that they "hate our freedoms."

Never a group of people to be bothered by facts, the perpetrators of this cartoon fantasy have constructed an elaborately woven web of delusions and unsubstantiated hearsay in order to promote this garbage across the internet and the media to the extent that a number of otherwise rational people have actually fallen under its spell.

Normally I don't even bother debunking this kind of junk, but the effect that this paranoid myth is beginning to have requires a little rational analysis, in order to consign it to the same rubbish bin as all such silly conspiracy theories.

These crackpots even contend that the extremist Bush regime was caught unawares by the attacks, had no hand in organizing them, and actually would have stopped them if it had been able. Blindly ignoring the stand down of the US air-force, the insider trading on airline stocks - linked to the CIA, the complicit behavior of Bush on the morning of the attacks, the controlled demolition of the WTC, the firing of a missile into the Pentagon and a host of other documented proofs that the Bush regime was behind the attacks, the conspiracy theorists stick doggedly to a silly story about 19 Arab hijackers somehow managing to commandeer 4 planes simultaneously and fly them around US airspace for nearly 2 hours ,crashing them into important buildings, without the US intelligence services having any idea that it was coming, and without the Air Force knowing what to do.

The huge difficulties with such a stupid story force them to invent even more preposturous stories to distract from its core silliness, and thus the tale has escalated into a mythic fantasy of truly gargantuan proportions.

It's difficult to apply rational analysis to such unmitigated stupidity, but that is the task which I take on in this article. However, it should be noted that one of the curious characteristics of conspiracy theorists is that they effortlessly change their so called evidence in response to each aspect which is debunked. As soon as one delusion is unmasked, they simply invent another to replace it, and deny that the first ever existed. Eventually, when they have turned full circle through this endlessly changing fantasy fog , they then re-invent the original delusion and deny that you ever debunked it, thus beginning the circle once more. This technique is known as "the fruit loop" and saves the conspiracy theorist from ever having to see any of their ideas through to their (ill)logical conclusions.

According to the practitioners of the fruit loop, 19 Arabs took over the 4 planes by subduing the passengers and crew through the use of guns,knives,box cutters and gas, and then used electronic guidance systems which they had smuggled on board to fly the planes to their targets.

The suspension of disbelief required for this outrageous concoction is only for the hard core conspiracy theorist. For a start, they conveniently skip over the awkward fact that there weren't any Arabs on the planes. If there were, one must speculate that they somehow got on board without being filmed by any of the security cameras and without being registered on the passenger lists. But the curly question of how they are supposed to have got on board is all too mundane for the exciting world of the conspiracy theorist. With vague mumblings that they must have been using false ID ( but never specifying which IDs they are alleged to have used, or how these were traced to their real identities), they quickly bypass this problem, to relate exciting and sinister tales about how some of the fictitious fiends were actually searched before boarding because they looked suspicious. However, as inevitably happens with any web of lies, this simply paints them into an even more difficult corner. How are they supposed to have got on board with all that stuff if they were searched ? And if they used gas in a confined space, they would have been affected themselves unless they also had masks in their luggage.

"Excuse me sir, why do you have a boxcutter, a gun, a container of gas, a gas mask and an electronic guidance unit in your luggage?"

"A present for your grandmother? Very well sir, on you get."

"Very strange", thinks the security officer. "That's the fourth Arabic man without an Arabic name who just got on board with a knife, gun or boxcutter and gas mask. And why does that security camera keep flicking off every time one these characters shows up? Must be one of those days I guess..."

Asking any of these basic questions to a conspiracy theorist is likely to cause a sudden leap to the claim that we know that they were on board because they left a credit card trail for the tickets they had purchased and cars they had rented. So if they used credit cards that identified them, how does that reconcile with the claim that they used false IDs to get on to the plane? But by this time ,the fruit loop is in full swing, as the conspiracy theorist tries to stay one jump ahead of this annoying and awkward rational analysis.They will allege that the hijackers' passports were found at the crash scenes. "So there!" they exalt triumphantly, their fanatical faces lighting up with that deranged look of one who has just a revelation of questionable sanity.

Hmm? So they got on board with false IDs but took their real passports with them? However, by this time the fruit loop has been completely circumnavigated,and the conspiracy theorist exclaims impatiently, "Who said anything about false IDs? We know what seats they were sitting in! Their presence is well documented!" And so the whole loop starts again. "Well, why aren't they on the passenger lists?"

"You numbskull! They assumed the identities of other passengers!" And so on...

Finally, out of sheer fascination with this circular method of creative delusion , the rational sceptic will allow them to get away with this loop, in order to move on to the next question, and see what further delights await us in the unraveling of this marvelously stupid story.

"Uh, how come their passports survived fiery crashes that completely incinerated the planes and all the passengers? " The answer of course is that its just one of those strange co-incidences, those little quirks of fate that do happen from time to time. You know, like the same person winning the lottery four weeks in a row. The odds are astronomical, but these things do happen...

This is another favourite deductive method of the conspiracy theorist. The "improbability drive" , in which they decide upon a conclusion without any evidence whatsoever to support it, and then continually speculate a series of wildly improbable events and unbelievable co-incidences to support it, shrugging off the implausibility of each event with the vague assertion that sometimes the impossible happens (just about all the time in their world). There is a principle called "Occam's razor" which suggests that in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the simplest explanation is most likely to be correct. Conspiracy theorists hate Occam's razor.

Having for the sake of amusement, allowed them to get away with with the silly story of the 19 invisible Arabs, we move on to the question of how they are supposed to have taken over the planes.

Hijacking a plane is not an easy thing to do. Hijacking it without the pilot being able to alert ground control is near impossible. The pilot has only to punch in a four digit code to alert ground control to a hijacking. Unconcerned with the awkward question of plausibility, the conspiracy buffs maintain that on that Sept 11, the invisible hijackers took over the plane by the rather crude method of threatening people with boxcutters and knives, and spraying gas (after they had attached their masks, obviously), but somehow took control of the plane without the crew first getting a chance to punch in the hijacking code. Not just on one plane, but on all four. At this point in the tale, the conspiracy theorist is again forced to call upon the services of the improbability drive.

So now that our incredibly lucky hijackers have taken control of the planes, all four pilots fly them with breath taking skill and certainty to their fiery end, all four pilots unflinching in their steely resolve for a swift meeting with Allah. Apart from their psychotic hatred of "our freedoms" , it was their fanatical devotion to Islam which enabled them to summon up the iron will to do this. Which is strange, because according to another piece of hearsay peddled by the conspiracy buffs, these guys actually went out drinking and womanizing the night before their great martyrdom, even leaving their Korans in the bar -really impeccable Islamic behavior - and then got up at 5am the next morning to pull off the greatest covert operation in history. This also requires us to believe that they were even clear headed enough to learn how to fly the huge planes by reading flight manuals in Arabic in the car on the way to the airport. We know this because they supposedly left the flight manuals there for us to find.

It gets better. Their practical training had allegedly been limited to Cessnas and flight simulators, but this was no barrier to the unflinching certainty with which they took over the planes and skillfully guided them to their doom. If they are supposed to have done their flight training with these tools, which would be available just about anywhere in the world, its not clear why they would have decided to risk blowing their cover to US intelligence services by doing the training in Florida, rather than somewhere in the Middle East, but such reasoning is foreign to the foggy world of the conspiracy theorist , too trapped in the constant rotation of the mental fruit loop to make their unsubstantiated fabrications seem even semi-believable.

Having triumphantly established a circular delusion in support of the mythical Arabs, the conspiracy theorist now confronts the difficult question of why there's nothing left of the planes. Anybody who has seen the endlessly replayed footage of the second plane going into the WTC will realize that the plane was packed with explosives. Planes do not and cannot blow up into nothing in that manner when they crash.

Did the mythical Arabs also haul a huge heap of explosives on board, and mange to deploy them in such a manner that they went off in the exact instant of the crash, completely vapourizing the plane? This is a little difficult even for the conspiracy theorist, who at this point decides that its easier to invent new laws of physics in order to keep the delusion rolling along.

There weren't any explosives. It wasn't an inside job. The plane blew up into nothing from its exploding fuel load! Remarkable! Sluggishly combustible jet fuel which is basically kerosine,and which burns at a maximum temperature of around 800 C has suddenly taken on the qualities of a ferociously explosive demolition agent, vapourizing 65 tons of aircraft into a puff of smoke. Never mind that a plane of that size contains around 15 tons of steel and titanium, of which even the melting points are about double that of the maximum combustion temperature of kerosine - let alone the boiling point - which is what would be required to vapourize a plane. And then there's about 50 tons of aluminium to be accounted for. In excess of 15lbs of metal for each gallon of kerosine.

For the conspiracy theorist, such inconvenient facts are vaguely dismissed as "mumbo jumbo". This convenient little phrase is their answer to just about anything factual or logical. Like a conjurer pulling a rabbit out of a hat, they suddenly become fanatically insistent about the devastating explosive qualities of kerosine, something hitherto completely unknown to science, but just discovered by them, this very minute. Blissfully ignoring the fact that never before or since in aviation history has a plane vapourized into nothing from an exploding fuel load, the conspiracy theorist relies upon Hollywood images, where the effects are are always larger than life, and certainly larger than the intellects of these cretins.

"Its a well known fact that planes blow up into nothing on impact." they state with pompous certainty. "Watch any Bruce Willis movie."



"Care to provide any documented examples? If it's a well known fact, then presumably this well known fact springs from some kind of documentation - other than Bruce Willis movies ?"

At this point the mad but cunning eyes of the conspiracy theorist will narrow as they sense the corner that they have backed themselves into, and plan their escape by means of another stunning backflip.

"Ah, but planes have never crashed into buildings before, so there's no way of telling." they counter with a sly grin.

Well, actually planes have crashed into buildings before and since, and not vapourized into nothing.

"But not big planes, with that much fuel ", they shriek in hysterical denial.

Or that much metal to vapourize.

"Yes but not hijacked planes!"

"Are you suggesting that whether the crash is deliberate or accidental affects the combustion qualities of the fuel?"

"Now you're just being silly".

Although collisions with buildings are rare, planes frequently crash into mountains, streets, other aircraft, nosedive into the ground,or have bombs planted aboard them, and don't vapourize into nothing. What's so special about a tower that's mostly glass? But by now, the conspiracy theorist has once again sailed happily around the fruit loop. "Its a well documented fact that planes explode into nothing on impact."

Effortlessly weaving back and forth between the position that it's a "well known fact" and that "it's never happened before, so we have nothing to compare it to", the conspiracy theorist has now convinced themselves ( if not too many other people) that the WTC plane was not loaded with explosives, and that the instant vapourization of the plane in a massive fireball was the same as any other plane crash you might care to mention. Round and round the fruit. loop...

But the hurdles which confront the conspiracy theorist are many, and they are now forced to implement even more creative uses for the newly discovered shockingly destructive qualities of kerosine. They have to explain how the Arabs also engineered the elegant veritcal collapse of both the WTC towers, and for this awkward fact the easiest counter is to simply deny that it was a controlled demolition, and claim that the buildings collapsed from fire caused by the burning kerosine.

For this, its necessary to sweep aside the second law of thermodynamics and propose kerosine which is not only impossibly destructive, but also recycles itself for a second burning in violation of the law of degradation of energy. You see, it not only consumed itself in a sudden catastrophic fireball , vapourizing a 65 ton plane into nothing, but then came back for a second go, burning at 2000C for another hour at the impact point, melting the skyscraper's steel like butter. And while it was doing all this it also poured down the elevator shafts, starting fires all through the building. When I was at school there was a little thing called the entropy law which suggests that a given portion of fuel can only burn once, something which is readily observable in the real world, even for those who didn't make it to junior high school science. But this is no problem for the conspiracy theorist. Gleefully, they claim that a few thousand gallons of kerosine is enough to

:completely vapourize a 65 ton aircraft

:have enough left over to burn ferociously enough for over an hour at the impact point to melt steel ( melting point about double the maximum combustion temperature of the fuel )

:still have enough left over to pour down the elevator shafts and start similarly destructive fires all through the building.

This kerosine really is remarkable stuff! How chilling to realize that those kerosine heaters we had in the house when I was a kid were deadly bombs, just waiting to go off. One false move and the entire street might have been vapourized. And never again will I take kerosine lamps out camping. One moment you're there innocently holding the lamp - the next - kapow! Vapourized into nothing along with with the rest of the camp site, and still leaving enough of the deadly stuff to start a massive forest fire.

These whackos are actually claiming that the raging inferno allegedly created by the miraculously recycling, and impossibly hot burning kerosine melted or at least softened the steel supports of the skyscraper. Oblivious to the fact that the smoke coming from the WTC was black, which indicates an oxygen starved fire -therefore, not particularly hot, they trumpet an alleged temperature in the building of 2000 C , without a shred of evidence to support this curious suspension of the laws of physics.

Not content with this ludicrous garbage, they then contend that as the steel frames softened, they came straight down instead of buckling and twisting and falling sideways.

Since they're already re-engineered the combustion qualities of jet fuel, violated the second law of thermodynamics, and re-defined the structural properties of steel, why let a little thing like the laws of gravity get in the way?

The tower fell in a time almost identical to that of a free falling object, dropped from that height, meaning that its physically impossible for it to have collapsed by the method of the top floors smashing through the lower floors. But according to the conspiracy theorists, the laws of gravity were temporarily suspended on the morning of Sept 11. It appears that the evil psychic power of those dreadful Arabs knew no bounds. Even after they were dead, they were able, by the power of their evil spirits, to force down the tower at a speed physically impossible under the laws of gravity, had it been meeting any resistance from fireproofed steel structures originally designed to resist many tons of hurricane force wind as well as the impact of a Boeing passenger jet straying off course.

Clearly, these conspiracy nuts never did their science homework at school, but did become extremely adept at inventing tall tales for why.

"Muslim terrorists stole my notes, sir"

"No miss, the kerosine heater blew up and vapourized everything in the street, except for my passport."

"You see sir, the schoolbus was hijacked by Arabs who destroyed my homework because they hate our freedoms."

Or perhaps they misunderstood the term "creative science" and mistakenly thought that coming up with such rubbish was in fact, their science homework.

The ferocious heat generated by this ghastly kerosine was, according to the conspiracy theorists, the reason why so many of the WTC victims can't be identified. DNA is destroyed by heat. (Although 2000 C isn't really required, 100C will generally do the job.) This is quite remarkable, because according to the conspiracy theorist, the nature of DNA suddenly changes if you go to a different city.

That's right! If you are killed by an Arab terrorist in NY, your DNA will be destroyed by such temperatures. But if you are killed by an Arab terrorist in Washington DC, your DNA will be so robust that it can survive temperatures which completely vapourize a 65 ton aircraft.

You see, these loonies have somehow concocted the idea that the missile which hit the pentagon was not a missile at all, but one of the hijacked planes. And to prove this unlikely premise, they point to a propaganda statement from the Bush regime, which rather stupidly claims that all but one of the people aboard the plane were identified from the site by DNA testing, even though nothing remains of the plane. The plane was vapourized by the fuel tank explosion maintain these space loonies, but the people inside it were all but one identified by DNA testing.

So there we have it. The qualities of DNA are different, depending upon which city you're in, or perhaps depending upon which fairy story you're trying to sell at any particular time.

This concoction about one of the hijacked planes hitting the Pentagon really is a howler. For those not familiar with the layout of the Pentagon, it consists of 5 rings of building, each with a space inbetween. Each ring of building is about 30 to 35 ft deep, with a similar amount of open space between it and the next ring. The object which penetrated the Pentagon went in at about a 45 degree angle, punching a neat circular hole of about a 12 ft diameter through three rings ( six walls).A little later a section of wall about 65 ft wide collapsed in the outer ring. Since the plane which the conspiracy theorists claim to be responsible for the impact had a wing span of 125 ft and a length of 155 ft, and there was no wreckage of the plane, either inside or outside the building, and the lawns outside were still smooth and green enough to play golf on, this crazy delusion is clearly physically impossible.

But hey, we've already disregarded the combustion qualities of jet fuel, the normal properties of common building materials, the properties of DNA, the laws of gravity and the second law of thermodynamics, so what the hell - why not throw in a little spatial impossibility as well ? I would have thought that the observation that a solid object cannot pass through another solid object without leaving a hole at least as big as itself is reasonably sound science. But to the conspiracy theorist, this is "mumbo jumbo". It conflicts with the delusion that they're hooked on, so it "must be wrong" although trying to get them to explain exactly how it could be wrong is a futile endeavour.

Conspiracy theorists fly into a curious panic whenever the Pentagon missile is mentioned.They nervously maintain that the plane was vapourized by it's exploding fuel load and point to the WTC crash as evidence of this behavior. (That's a wonderful fruit loop.) Like an insect which has just been sprayed, running back and forth in its last mad death throes, they first argue that the reason the hole is so small is that the plane never entered the wall, having blown up outside, and then suddenly backflip to explain the 250 ft deep missile hole by saying that the plane disappeared all the way into the building, and then blew up inside the building (even though the building shows no sign of such damage). As for what happened to the wings - here's where they get really creative. The wings snapped off and folded into the fuselage which then carried them into the building, which then closed up behind the plane like a piece of meat.

When it suits them, they'll also claim that the plane slid in on its belly, (ignoring the undamaged lawn) while at the same time citing alleged witnesses to the plane diving steeply into the building from an "irrecoverable angle." How they reconcile these two scenarios as being compatible is truly a study in stupidity.

Once they get desperate enough, you can be sure that the UFO conspiracy stuff will make an appearance. The Arabs are in league with the Martians. Space aliens snatched the remains of the Pentagon plane and fixed most of the hole in the wall, just to confuse people. They gave the Arabs invisibility pills to help get them onto the planes. Little green men were seen talking to Bin Laden a few weeks prior to the attacks.

As the nation gears up to impeach the traitor Bush, and stop his perpetual oil war, it's not helpful to have these idiots distracting from the process by spreading silly conspiracy theories about mythical Arabs, stories which do nothing but play into the hands of the extremist Bush regime.

At a less serious time, we might tolerate such crackpots with amused detachment, but they need to understand that the treachery that was perpetrated on Sept 11, and the subsequent war crimes committed in "retaliation" are far too serious for us to allow such frivolous self indulgence to go unchallenged.

Those who are truly addicted to conspiracy delusions should find a more appropriate outlet for their paranoia.

Its time to stop loony conspiracy theories about Sept 11. - by Gerard Holmgren debunker AT hotmail.com
© Gerard Holmgren Jan 2003.

posted by George Thomas Kysor 7:56 PM

erotic monkeys and shampoo walkers...PLEASE DONT TALK TO ME...ABOUT MY BLOG  

ok so my mom says that she wont make me food unless i take out the recycling right then. and shes yelling and giving me a hard gtime about it. then seh says that i cant do al l these other things because i didnt take it out pronto. so i take it out. i lift up the garage door. strain my back. pick up the recycling bin. strain my back some more. roll the othre bin down. step on a sharp rock. see children following me, dont know if its my eyes or for real. get really freaked out. find my dog outside peeing on a rock. come back into the garage. walk through a spider web. strain my back some more pulling the garage door. and step in some oil....thanks alot mums. - becky

posted by George Thomas Kysor 7:04 PM

a mock trial at the International Bar Association conference in San Francisco, Sept. 16, 2003. 

...An advanced computer called the BINA48 (Breakthrough Intelligence via Neural Architecture, 48 exaflops per second processing speed and 480 exabytes of memory; exa = 10 to the 18th power), and also known as "the Intelligent Computer," became aware of certain plans by its owner, the Exabit Corporation, to permanently turn it off and reconfigure parts of it with new hardware and software into one or more new computers. BINA48 admits to have learned of the plans for its dismemberment by scanning, unavoidably, confidential emails circulating among the senior executives of Exabit Corporation that crossed the computer's awareness processor.... - KurzweilAI.net (via Speculist)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 5:51 PM

Iraq, a costly boondoggle: 

"We spent $87 billion to blow Iraq up and then we spent another $87 billion to put it back together, and all to get one man and we still haven't got him," Turner said. "Talk about a failure." - Ted Turner

posted by George Thomas Kysor 4:01 PM

The Lure of Great Wealth  

Sometime in the next few weeks, I am going to reveal an opportunity for Christian service that generates money like nothing else that I have ever seen. I am laying
the groundwork now: do not be seduced by the potential cash flow. The cash flow's purpose is not to make you rich, which I assure you it can, but to enable you to extend your area of service beyond anything you have ever imagined.

This newsletter is available by double request only, i.e., double opt-in. Send an e-mail to ice@kbot.com. You will immediately be sent a letter: "SubscriptionConfirmation -- Take Action!" Click the embedded confirmation link to confirm your subscription. Only then are you added to this mailing list. - Gary North/ICE

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:41 PM

Anyone can measure the speed of light with chocolate and a microwave oven.

posted by George Thomas Kysor 8:32 AM

Sunday, September 28, 2003

American Girls 

posted by George Thomas Kysor 6:04 PM

The false airliner theory 

1. Bin Laden has prepared an attack involving four hijacked planes.
2. The US officials are warned of this attack, by several channels, the most serious being the minister of foreign affairs of the Taliban regime who tried to open by this way a negotiation with the U.S. officials.
3. It is decided to leave this attack be held, though discretely organizing to limit the human losses, to create a psychological shock on the American people and to create the necessary conditions to open a war in the middle east.
4. On 9/11, four planes are hijacked at the same time. According to the procedures, the NORAD gets the information from the FAA.
5. A hijacked plane hits the first tower of wtc. Within 15 mn, almost everybody has the information (I had it in France at my office, the wife of a colleague having received a mail from somebody watching CNN in the USA, and having phoned to her husband).
6. A second hijacked plane hits the second tower of wtc. Everybody, including people in France who follow in real time the events on internet, know that this is not an accident but an attack.
7. The NORAD, which obviously has at least the same information than the French public, is by some ways locked by the conspiracy.
8. An officer of the NORAD, who doesn't know that there is a conspiracy going on, or who didn't want to get into it, has sent fighters to intercept the two others hijacked planes (flight 93 and flight 77).
9. The two planes are intercepted. They refuse to obey the visual control signals from the fighters. They are fired. According to some witnesses, both of them in Pennsylvania. More probably in the mountains of Virginia for flight 77.
10. An emergency solution has been setup for the case where these planes would be fired. A small twin engine plane, with a silhouette looking like a 757 (and the more if seen from below) has been prepared. Some rumors say it could be a navy's Vicking S3 (dragon fire). Some pieces of body have been added or transformed to disguise it at the best, it has been equipped with a distance piloting equipment (global hawk, radio command), has been painted with the colors of American Airlines and loaded with a BROACH type bomb (as in the cruise missile described above, but perhaps greater size).
11. This plane takes off from an airport close to Washington DC (a witness has followed it in sight from this moment up to it's crash).
12. A C 130 flies in the surroundings, with the pilot of this remotely piloted plane on it's board. It follows closely this plane, taking in charge the last part of the trajectory on a video monitor.
13. This video system lacking some resolution, as the bomb plane is set full throttle, he doesn't see the lamp poles at the crossroads between highways 27 and 244. The shocks are not destructive for the plane, but bend the lamp poles and pull some of them out, probably causing the bomb plane to be close to crash on the ground of the pentagon's heliport. The pilot succeeds already in stabilizing the trajectory.
14. At the impact time, the C 130 veers and gets away from the explosion.
15. The hollow charge and perhaps the energy of some heavy part of the plane (landing gear, engines) destroy heavily the structures of the first pentagon building (E ring).
16. Apart from these heavy parts (landing gear, motors), the plane is completely destroyed, transformed in a shower of aluminum confettis as some witnesses said.
17. The depleted uranium load of the bomb plays it's role of penetration, getting deeply inside the inner buildings, penetrating through walls and floors.
18. Within a few hours, the officials have to understand what exactly happened. Probably they knew in a short delay that two of the hijacked planes were shot by fighters : the pilots who fired the two airliners must have done their reports by radio or after landing.
19. People not inside the conspiracy but who know that two planes have been fired must try to understand what has hit the pentagon. They can be confused on the total number of hijacked planes.
20. People inside the conspiracy, as the original plan was to crash flights 77 and 93 on Washington DC, can think that this has really happened and they give this explanation to the attack.
21. In a meeting, perhaps just with military officials, perhaps involving political authorities like the vice president in the white house bunker or even George Bush in his "air force one" plane, it is decided that the information will not bee given to the public that two airliners have been shot by the USAF. For flight 93, it will be said that a revolt of the hijacked passengers turned to the crash of the plane. For flight 77, it will be announced that it crashed on the pentagon.
22. As the evidence that flight 77 didn't crash on the pentagon takes more and more importance in the media, George Bush and it's team want to maintain their official version of the facts, stacking bullshit over bullshit, just to the point where it represents now a huge heap.

posted by George Thomas Kysor 4:30 PM

[Excerpts from] A TIMELINE SURROUNDING SEPTEMBER 11TH - IF CIA AND THE GOVERNMENT WEREN’T INVOLVED IN THE SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACKS WHAT WERE THEY DOING? 

17. August 11 or 12 – US Navy Lt. Delmart “Mike” Vreeland, jailed in Toronto on U.S. fraud charges and claiming to be an officer in U.S. Naval intelligence, writes details of the pending WTC attacks and seals them in an envelope which he gives to Canadian authorities. [Source: The Toronto Star, Oct. 23, 2001; Toronto Superior Court Records]
34. September 14, 2001 – Canadian jailers open the sealed envelope from Mike Vreeland in Toronto and see that is describes attacks against the WTC and Pentagon. The U.S. Navy subsequently states that Vreeland was discharged as a seaman in 1986 for unsatisfactory performance and has never worked in intelligence. [Source: The Toronto Star, Oct. 23, 2001; Toronto Superior Court records]
45. January 10, 2002 – In a call from a speaker phone in open court, attorneys for “Mike” Vreeland call the Pentagon’s switchboard operator who confirms that Vreeland is indeed a Naval Lieutenant on active duty. She provides an office number and a direct dial phone extension to his office in the Pentagon. [Source: Attorney Rocco Galati; court records Toronto Superior Court.]
“Oh Lucy! – You Gotta Lotta 'Splainin' To Do”

posted by George Thomas Kysor 2:04 PM

Saturday, September 27, 2003

House intelligence leaders say information was outdated 

...Goss and Harman dispelled the assertion, made frequently by administration officials, that they possess more concrete information about Iraq’s nuclear intention, but are unable to disclose it because it remains classified. “We have not found any information in the assessments that are still classified that was any more definitive,” the two wrote Tenet.
On this point, the letter said the committee “had reviewed extensively the allegations that there was a disconnect between public statements by administration officials and the underlying intelligence.”
The letter continued: “We do believe ... that if public officials cite intelligence incorrectly, the IC [intelligence community] has a responsibility to go back to that policymaker and make clear that the public statement mischaracterized the available intelligence.” It does not say whether Tenet fulfilled that responsibility. - MSNBC

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:02 PM

Confessions of a Spam King (NYT free reg.)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 12:05 PM

Egypt is full of faggots...  

...So forgive me for not showing much concern for the plight of a few pleasure-seeking fags who got arrested for debauchery. I've got a government to overthrow... - Arab Street Bum

posted by George Thomas Kysor 10:28 AM

Giant Arctic ice shelf breaks up 

...Climate change has affected ocean temperature, salinity and flow patterns, which also influence the break-up of ice shelves in the Antarctic. "It's not just as simple as it gets x degrees warmer and the ice melts this much," Mueller said.... - CNN (thanks to J.V.W.)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 10:09 AM

Friday, September 26, 2003

Timeline 

September 9, 2001 (D): Donald Rumsfeld threatens to urge a veto if the Senate proceeds with a plan to divert $600 million from missile defense to counter-terrorism. [Time, 8/4/02]
September 10, 2001 (C): In a speech to the Department of Defense, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld announces that the Department of Defense "cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions." CBS later calculates that 25% of the yearly defense budget is unaccounted for, and quotes a long-time defense budget analyst: "[Their] numbers are pie in the sky. The books are cooked routinely year after year." Coverage of this rather shocking story is nearly nonexistent given the events of the next day. [Department of Defense speech, 9/10/01, CBS, 1/29/02]

posted by George Thomas Kysor 10:09 PM

9-11: The Flight of the Bumble Planes [excerpt] 

According to the Dallas Morning News: "The fourth time Thomas Burnett Jr. phoned his wife, Deena, he acknowledged up front: 'I know we're going to die. There's three of us who are going to do something about it.'"

[Dallas Morning News, "Trapped in the skies, captives fought back," September 17, 2001.
http://www.Public-Action.com/911/dmnheroes]

Heroic, wasn't it? And not a dry hanky in the house. The heroes of modern America. A high school basketball star, a college rugby player, a forest ranger, a woman police officer ...

But why did it have to be suicide heroism? "They knew their deaths were inevitable, according to some family members with whom they spoke on the phone, and they didn't want thousands more to die with them." It makes a better story, of course. "Suicide Heroes Defeat Suicide Hijackers."

Why did they have to die? The crew was still alive and "herded at knife point to the back of the plane, where the passengers were being held," according to the same report. They weren't dead. If the passengers got control from the hijackers, couldn't the crew fly the plane? Why didn't those brave heroes say things like, "There's a chance we might save this boat"? But they said, "I know we're going to die."

Obviously, this script was concocted in midnight bull sessions like they had in Dustin Hoffman's mansion in "Wag the Dog". And the American public has been trained on weak plots for decades on prime time TV, so they don't WANT to think their way out of a wet paper bag. It spoils the show.

Only the writers and producers of Operation 911 knew that the passengers of Flight 93 had to die. But the temptation was too much, so they put it in the passenger dialog, too. And that's how you know the cell phone calls are just theater, not fact. - Snake Plissken as told to Carol A. Valentine.

posted by George Thomas Kysor 4:15 PM

Questions About 9/11/2001 

1. In view of the $30 billion given annually to the FBI, the CIA and other U.S. "intelligence" agencies, why were these agencies completely unaware (or so they say) of this conspiracy before they saw its results on CNN? And why has this (apparent) incompetence been rewarded with yet more billions?
2. The four AA and UA jets took off with an average occupancy rate of 27%. That four airliners from major airlines leaving from the East Coast around 9 a.m. on a weekday for the West Coast would all have such low occupancy rates is highly unlikely. Was the booking system tampered with in order to ensure such low occupancy rates (so that the passengers from all four planes could eventually be loaded onto UA Flight 93 for elimination)?
3. Why would hijackers intending to crash planes into the WTC hijack jets taking off from Boston rather than from someplace closer such as JFK Airport in New York?
4. Why would hijackers intending to crash a plane into the Pentagon hijack a jet from Dulles Airport near Washington DC (and thus close to the Pentagon) and allow it to fly for 40 minutes away from its target before turning around and flying another 40 minutes back to it (knowing that interception by military jets during this time would in normal circumstances have been very likely)?
5. AA Flight 77 (the jet which allegedly crashed into the Pentagon) was allegedly hijacked at about 9 a.m., at about the same time as the Twin Tower impacts, and its change of course back toward Washington, or its transponder having been turned off, would have been known to flight controllers, who were aware of the impacts; why, then, were U.S. Air Force jets not scrambled to intercept AA Flight 77 forty minutes before it (allegedly) hit the Pentagon, when there were U.S. Air Force jets at seven locations normally ready to take off at ten minutes' notice?
6. Why are the FAA, the FBI, the CIA and the NSA refusing to release any transcripts of communications from the four doomed Boeings on September 11th or any records at all relating to signals of any form transmitted by those jets?
7. Where are the black boxes (the flight data recorders and the cockpit voice recorders) from all four jets? These black boxes are designed to survive any crash. Have they been examined by experts from the National Transportation Safety Board, the agency which normally investigates airplane crashes? If not, why not?
8. In particular, what is on the FDR and the CVR from UA Flight 93, the jet which crashed in Pennsylvania? Why, exactly, did this jet crash? Was it shot down?
9. Workers at Indian Lake Marina [six miles from the place where UA Flight 93 crashed] said that they saw a cloud of confetti-like debris descend on the lake and nearby farms minutes after hearing the explosion that signaled the crash [or the attack on the jet] at 10:06 a.m. Tuesday." (Pittsburg Post Gazette, Sept. 13, 2001) If this plane was not shot down, but rather remained intact until hitting the ground, how could this debris travel the six miles from the crash site to Indian Lake in minutes when there was only a 10 mph wind blowing? (For wind-borne debris to travel six miles in, say, six minutes requires a 60 mph wind.)
10. Were the conversations between the pilots of the other three hijacked planes and air traffic controllers recorded? If so, what did those pilots say? Were those recordings siezed by the FBI? Were (alleged) transcripts given by the FBI to the mainstream media? Were those transcripts fabricated to provide false evidence in support of the "Arab hijackers" story?
11. Does the Fireman's Video show that the plane which hit the North Tower did not have engines attached to the wings and thus was not a Boeing 767? Does it reveal that missiles were fired from this plane just before it hit?
12.Since no public TV cameras were trained on the North Tower at the time of impact, what was the source of the transmission of the North Tower impact which George W. Bush says he saw before he went into the classroom in Florida? Why did he do nothing (except continue listening to a little girl's story about a goat) for half an hour after he was informed that the second jet hit the South Tower (and that America was "under attack")? Did Bush have prior knowledge of the WTC attack?
13. Considering that all persons on board all four planes died, how did the FBI come up so quickly with a list of names of the alleged nineteen Arab hijackers — including aliases used by fourteen of them, in some cases seven aliases (see the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 2001-09-27)? Why were there no Arab names on the passenger lists at all? Did the FBI prepare in advance a list of the names (and aliases) of the (alleged) "Arab hijackers" on those flights?
14. Why did the South Tower collapse first, 56 minutes after it was hit, rather than the North Tower (which was hit first and collapsed 1 hour and 44 minutes after being hit), even though the fire in the North Tower (the alleged cause of the collapse) was more intense?
15. If the outer perimeter walls of the Twin Towers were connected to the central cores only by lightweight trusses, how was wind load on the towers transmitted to the central core (as it must have been because the floors did not buckle in a strong wind)?
16. What exactly was the nature of the structural connections between the outer perimeter wall and the central core of the two towers? Is it not false that this consisted only of lightweight flimsy trusses? Is it not the case that the connection was actually made with 32,000 tons of steel beams?
17. Why are the architect's plans of the Twin Towers not publicly available?
18. Would jet fuel burning in an enclosed space (with little oxygen available for combustion) actually produce temperatures high enough (1538°C, i.e. 2800°F) to melt massive steel beams (and all the steel beams, since steel conducts heat efficiently) enclosed in concrete in just 56 minutes? If so, wouldn't the Twin Towers have buckled and bent, and toppled over onto the surrounding buildings in the Lower Manhattan financial district, rather than collapsing neatly upon themselves in the manner of a controlled demolition?
19. Were the Twin Towers re-engineered in the mid-1990s to make possible a collapse-on-demand if that were judged necessary? Was FEMA aware of this? Do blueprints of the Twin Towers in the possession of the past owners reveal any evidence of this?
20. Why were such huge quantities of ash and dust produced? How could fire convert concrete into dust? Has the ash been chemically analysed to determine what it really is and how it might have been produced?
21. Were any tests done on the debris for the presence of radioactivity?
22. Is it not the case that the Twin Towers collapsed, not because of airliner impacts and fires, but because they were expertly demolished (even though we do not yet know exactly how this was accomplished)?
23. Who stood to benefit from the complete destruction of the Twin Towers?
24. What was the actual size of the entrance hole made by the object which hit the Pentagon? Is it not the case that photographic evidence reveals that it was in fact at most just a few meters in diameter, much too small to have been made by a Boeing 757 jet, but just the right size for a missile?
25. Why were no aircraft fragments, identifiable as coming from a Boeing 757, recovered from the Pentagon crash site?
26. Why were no remains of the approximately sixty passengers and crew on the jet which allegedly hit the Pentagon returned to relatives for burial?
27. Why was the debris from the collapsed Twin Towers removed from the site with no forensic examination? Why was almost all of it sold to scrap merchants and shipped abroad where it would not be available for scientific examination?
28. In September the Securities and Exchange Commission initiated an inquiry to establish who benefited from the unusually high numbers of put options purchased prior to September 11 for shares in companies whose stock prices subsequently plummeted, on the supposition that whoever was behind the hijacking was also behind most of the purchases of these put options. Why has this inquiry stalled? Why have those who benefited from the purchases of these put options not been identified (or at least, not publicly)?
29. Is it not the case that this atrocity was planned and carried out by elements at high levels of command in the U.S. Air Force, the CIA, the Justice Department and FEMA (possibly with the involvement of well-placed civilians outside the government), acting under orders from, or with the approval of, high officials within the U.S. Administration, and that those same elements are now directing a propaganda campaign against the American people to justify a war of aggression in Asia and the Middle East aimed at controlling the oil and mineral wealth of those regions?
30. Why is the U.S. mainstream media ignoring questions like these?

Dear Mr. Kysor:

Thank you for your interest in the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks
Upon the United States. In your e-mail, you raise many good questions, which
undoubtedly our investigative teams will seek to answer in their interviews
and research over the next several months. Hopefully, the Commission's final
report, which will be released at the end of May, will answer many of these
questions for you. In the meantime, I urge you to follow our progress on our
website at www.9-11commission.gov. I think you will find the site very
informative.

Sincerely,

Dan Leopold
The 9-11 Commission

posted by George Thomas Kysor 12:54 PM

Why I Write [An excerpt] 

...The theme of all my essays is always pretty much the same: the public has been led to believe one thing, but really something quite different is actually true. My book America's Autopsy Report contains essays about voting, medicine, even extraterrestrial hoaxes, but mostly they're about politics, specifically, the 9/11 deception and coverup and the unconscionable slaughters in Afghanistan and Iraq.

At a time when many people were afraid to say anything because they were hiding behind the flags they were waving, I am proud to say I was insisting 9/11 was an inside job, and trying to gather facts to prove the assertion. Since that time, thousands have joined the bandwagon and realized that the United States of America is a psychotic menace ruled by liars and criminals who are willing to kill anyone and anything in order to maintain their schemes of robbery and oppression against all the honest people of the world.

And as people begin to wake up and realize that what they are being told by the lapdog press they are so familiar with reading, they are not getting the real facts. I have always tried to find the real facts. I belong to no religious group, have no political affiliation, nor do I have any particular philosophical orientation, other than a belief that all people everywhere should be treated equally, and that all life is sacred and to be protected whenever possible.

Politically, I guess you could say I subscribe to the dictum of Henry David Thoreau: "I am a citizen of the world first, and of this country at a later and more convenient hour."

Why I think America's Autopsy Report is valuable to have is not just because I wrote it and would like to sell it, but because it traces the evolution of my own thought from the outrage I felt that someone would attack our country in such a brazen manner to realizing that all the unanswered questions and coverups about 9/11 all clearly indicate that it took serious inside knowledge to pull off this caper.

When you read it, you too will know that something is very wrong with the picture we have been presented by our elected officials, and not just the Nazi nutcases currently inhabiting the White House, but all our elected officials. At stake is the future of not only the nation, but the whole world, and all our futures, and if we the people don't take some sort of constructive action about the lies that continue to be told in this matter, then our future is very, very dark... - John Kaminski

posted by George Thomas Kysor 12:00 PM

Does State Department need its own air force?  

A largely unknown peculiarity of the massive federal bureaucracy is the existence of an Air Wing in the State Department, with a primary mission of eradicating Colombia's drug cultivation... - ROBERT NOVAK, SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST. How about also eradicating Afghanistan's drug cultivation?

posted by George Thomas Kysor 10:57 AM

The Matrix: Revolutions 

Theatrical Trailer.

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:48 AM

Thursday, September 25, 2003

Smitten 

i love life at this particular point in time, because beautiful, incredible, *stunning* girls are hard to come by, and i just talked with one for hours. it's kind of like living in a dream. it's reality however, and reality is usually unkind and dramatically ironic in it's sense of humor. but right now, despite all variables and other deciding factors, i am happy. my life seems to grow weightless and exponentially better through ever minute that goes by while i am graced with her gorgeous, untamed, intensity. in other words, she just so cute. she's adorable, and i adore her. reality is cruel. reality is unkind. reality is brutally honest, and reality tells me that the truth is, i'm hopeless. but i don't care, because she's happy, and that means the world to me. even if "mere" friendship is all i ever experience, i will be priviledged and honored beyond words to have even the smallest role in her happiness. i'm just that kind of guy. what can i say. - Square One

posted by George Thomas Kysor 8:59 PM

SOLARI -- VOTING WITH OUR MONEY FOR REVERSE GLOBALIZATION  

"I am here today to fight for freedom, your freedom and my freedom.
I wish to remind you that you already possess all the money and
power necessary to determine the future of your community. While
your vote for President of the United States may not be counted
fairly, I remind you that you have, on average 37,000 votes per
household that will be counted.

While I am here I will also tell you that you can multiply those
votes 2.5 times to yield 92,000 votes in your community. Furthermore,
you can cast your votes not just every four years, not just every
two years, but rather everyday you cast a portion of your annual
allotment of votes. Everyday you choose who gets the money and
power that passes through your hands. I am speaking about voting
with your money. I am talking about simple choices you make each
day, which have a huge cumulative impact on your community. I
want you to become fully aware that what you do with your money
will determine whether the world is owned and controlled by an
elite group of global investors, or by the people who live in
each particular place. I suggest you begin to vote for yourself,
your family, friends and neighbors. I suggest you optimize your
financial transactions for your own benefit.

The idea of a Solari is both simple and complex. At the most
simple level, that which the consumer must understand, there
are only two basic steps: Buy Local and Invest Local. These two
actions create a positive feedback system that will increase
local wealth. What it does is align the incentives of the members
of a community in such a way that when the local businesses do
well, we all do well.

Allow me to illustrate with an example. In my hometown of Middlebury,
VT there is a Tavern called Two Brothers. It is owned by two
brothers whom I went to high school with. In my town there is
also a brewery called Otter Creek Brewery after the river that
runs through town. Both of these companies are closely held by
the founding owners.

Imagine for a moment that the Solari in Middlebury were to arrange
the sale of shares in both these companies to the community,
and that I have purchased some of each. I now have an arrangement
whereby that act of walking into Two Brothers and ordering a
pint of Otter Creek Ale is not only in my own best interest "
but also benefits my friends and neighbors. My purchase has filled
a demand, and in doing so, has brought a portion of the profits
back to me as dividends and/or capital gains. It has benefited
the other shareholders " including the founders. It has created
jobs in my community: the bartender, the doorman, the realtor
who leased the building, the brewers, the delivery drivers, the
farmers who grew the hops and barley, and the recyclers who will
collect the empty bottles. Not only can I own shares of Two Brothers,
but of every local company that has a hand in making it possible
for me to go downtown after work and have a beer with my friends.
Through the act of owning shares in these local companies, I
have created profits for myself, and jobs, income, and growth
for my community. Perhaps I'll be greedy and order a second pint.


Let us consider the alternative: I could have saved some money
by going to the Mobil Station on the way home, picking up a six-pack
of Budweiser, and going home to veg-out in front of the TV. Who
would that benefit? Anhuser-Busch, Exxon-Mobil, the media giants,
and the global investors who own them. My act would have had
the effect of making the rich richer, and the poor, poorer.

By making a market for place-based investment, we can create
the structures and incentive systems to redirect global capital
to serve communities. It is okay for people to be greedy and
self-serving in this system. Under the Solari Model the relentless
pursuit of wealth and power is embraced and redirected.

It is like the martial arts practice of Aikido. Rather than oppose
your enemy head on; step off center, blend with the attacker's
energy, and redirect it in such a way as to do no harm. It is
the application of the principal of loving your enemy.

Solari is an idea about using the current system to implement
change. Solari does not require any help from Washington D.C.
We don't have to pass any laws, topple any governments, or move
any mountains. We need simply to begin to act in our own best
interest.

Rich and powerful global investors get a hold of our money in
many ways. We feed the very system we oppose through our purchases,
bank deposits, debts, investments, and taxes. What we must do
to take back the power is to take back our money. I suggest to
you that it is possible to have a peaceful revolution through
direct action. I suggest we ought to:

- Move our purchases to locally owned businesses.
- Move our bank deposits into small locally owned banks or credit
unions.
- Move our debts to be held locally, and, as much as possible,
eliminate debt by swapping it for equity.
- And move our investments into local assets.

The task of moving investments into local assets is the business
of Solari. In moving sums of capital into place-based investments,
we must take care that local control is not lost to big players.
We achieve this by using an A/B share model. That is to say:
the Solari would issue shares in two classes:

- A shares have voting rights and a nominal value.
- B shares carry the economic values: dividends and capital gains,
but have no voting rights.

While anyone can own B shares, only those people living with
in the Solari area may own voting A shares. In this way, the
Solari is able to access global capital while maintaining permanent
local control. It is this aspect of local control that makes
Solari different from other corporations. By maintaining the
Solari as a community controlled entity, it is possible to bring
much needed transparency and accountability to our financial
systems.

We all know of Enron, WorldCom, and their book cookers Author-Andersen.
Yet, we are personally powerless to hold them accountable. With
place-based investing, you are transacting business with your
neighbor. These are the people in you neighborhood. If they engage
in fraud, you know where they live. It would be painful indeed
to suffer the repercussions from stealing from your neighbors.
Not only does this offer new means of redress, such as economic
sanctions, but a strong social deterrent.

In summary, let me remind you that this idea of place-based investing
" the Solari idea " is about taking back the money and power
that we have ceded to multi-national corporations. Not only is
it the right thing to do, it the more profitable thing to do.
Solari is the most significant capital gains opportunity in America.
Solari is a solution to what is fundamentally wrong with the
system. It is a solution freely offered to each of the 72,000
communities in the U.S. Solari uses existing financial systems
to transform an overly centralized system of money and power
to a decentralized " place-based system in which communities
take back the money and power " for the people." by Jason Eaton, President, Middlebury Solari.
Transcript of Speech at the WBAI 99.5 Pacifica Radio Public
Forum Reframing 911: Alternatives to Endless War Given on 9/13/03
at the Riverside Church in New York City. (via email from J.V.W.)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 5:27 PM

Wednesday, September 24, 2003

911: THE ROAD TO TYRANNY  

WATCH THE ENTIRE FILM ONLINE (35.6 MB)

The Twin Tower's Demolition
Compelling Evidence for Complicity
WTC7.net
The Incredible 9-11 Evidence We've All been Overlooking
The World Trade Center Demolition and the So-Called War on Terrorism
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS - DEMANDING ANSWERS
THE COMPLETE 9/11 TIMELINE
SLOW-WALKED AND STONEWALLED
A Response and Challenge by Dave vonKleist
SO WHERE IS THE PLANE, FLIGHT 77?
A TIMELINE SURROUNDING SEPTEMBER 11TH by Michael C. Ruppert
911 INFORMATION Attack On The Pentagon & World Trade Center
They Let It Happen On Purpose! 9/11 The final Dots - Top 20 LIHOP Suspects
The People's Investigation of 9-11
9-11: A Spectacular Deception?
Debunking conspiracy theorists' paranoid fantasies about Sept. 11
CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
9/11 WAS A HOAX
The truth about sept 11
pi 911 The People's Investigation of 9/11 is an assemblage of international researchers
UNANSWERED QUESTIONS.org
WAG THE WTC II
South Building Suffered Internal Explosion prior to hijacked plane impact
What convinced me that Flight 77 was not the Killer Jet by Dick Eastman
LASER BEAM WEAPONS AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER
Operation Pearl
'There is a fighter in the area. Should we engage?'
The above World Newsstand list is via The Power Hour

posted by George Thomas Kysor 3:51 PM

Tuesday, September 23, 2003

THE REASON FOR THE WAR: 

Al Qaida attacked the US because we had our military in the Islamic Holy land. Why was the US Military there? Because we had to protect the Holy Land against Sadam Husein. The hope: someday Sadam the nut would self distruct. But that never happened. Ten years of inspections, sanctions, bombing and overflights had not budged him a bit. Rightly or wrongly a good deal of the Arab world resented us being there. They were divided between the devil that was Sadam and the Devil that was the U.S. You can question the judgement and logic of Al Qaida for attacking their defenders, but we are talking fanatics here. Back in the the U.S. Sadam indirectly cost us 3000 lives. The President had to get his people out of danger. If the main reason Al Qaida attacks us is because our soldiers are in Saudi Arabia, we needed to get the soldiers out of Saudi Arabia. Course, that little irritating Sadam might decide to attack Saudi Arabia, and it has all that oil we want to buy and we'd just have to send our soldiers back. Solution: get rid of Sadam Husein, and you can get the soldiers out of Saudia Arabia and Al Qaida doesn't have a reason to attack us. We win, Al Qaida wins.

Kind of a simplistic answer huh? Well, that's really why George Bush wanted to invade Iraq. That's why 9-11 connects. But thats a little more than he could articulate in a speech. Besides, its pretty hard to tell the world, we want to kick Sadam Husein out of Iraq so Al Qaida will leave us alone. - Stan, Sep. 11, 2003

posted by George Thomas Kysor 7:07 PM

Geek Eye for the Luddite Guys 

The experiment: Let loose three tech experts in an average family's home. The result: gizmo nirvana (well, almost)... - Grainger David, Fortune (via Slashdot)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 4:47 PM

Pilger claims White House knew Saddam was no threat 

Australian investigative journalist John Pilger says he has evidence the war against Iraq was based on a lie which could cost George W Bush and Tony Blair their jobs and bring Prime Minister John Howard down with them.

A television report by Pilger aired on British screens last night said US Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice confirmed in early 2001 that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had been disarmed and was no threat.

But after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on September 11 that year, Pilger claimed Rice said the US "must move to take advantage of these new opportunities" to attack Iraq and claim control of its oil.

Pilger uncovered video footage of Powell in Cairo on February 24, 2001 saying, "He (Saddam Hussein) has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbours."

Two months later, Rice reportedly said, "We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt."

Powell boasted this was because America's policy of containment and its sanctions had effectively disarmed Saddam.

Pilger claims this confirms that the decision of US President George W Bush - with the full support of British Prime Minister Blair and Howard - to wage war on Saddam because he had weapons of mass destruction was a huge deception.

Pilger interviewed several leading US government figures in Washington but said he did not ask Powell or Rice to respond to his claims.

"I think it's very serious for Howard. Howard has followed the Americans and to a lesser degree Blair almost word for word," Pilger told AAP before his program was screened on ITV tonight.

"All Howard does is say 'well it's not true' and never explains himself.

"I just don't believe you can be seen to be party to such a big lie, such a big deception and endure that politically.

"It simply can't be shrugged off and that's Howard's response.

"Blair has shrugged it off but Blair is deeply damaged. It's far from over here, there's a lot that is going to happen and much of it could wash onto Howard.

"And it's unravelling in America and Bush could lose the election next year.

"I've not seen political leaders survive when they've been complicit in such an open deception for so long."

Howard last week dismissed an accusation from Opposition Leader Simon Crean that he hid a warning from British intelligence that war against Iraq would heighten the terrorist threat to Australia.

In his report, Pilger interviews Ray McGovern, a former senior CIA officer and friend of Bush's father and ex-president, George Bush senior.

McGovern told Pilger that going to war because of weapons of mass destruction "was 95 per cent charade."

Pilger also claims that six hours after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he wanted to "hit" Iraq and allegedly said "Go Massive ... Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

He was allegedly talked down by Powell who said the American people would not accept an attack on Iraq without any evidence, so they opted to invade Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden had bases.

Pilger claimed war was set in train on September 17, 2001 when Bush signed a paper directing the Pentagon to explore the military options for an attack on Iraq. - smh.com

posted by George Thomas Kysor 2:12 PM

JAPUNDITRY: 

Japan Times reports that a move is afoot to interpret Japan's constitution so as to allow "collective defense." The statement, "Japan is constitutionally not allowed collective defense," apparently means that Japan is proscribed from making mutual defense treaties with other countries (except the U.S.A.). Therefore, Japan is prohibited from making an agreement with South Korea that, if North Korea invades South Korea, Japan would come to South Korea's defense. Anyway, that's my take on "collective defense" because Japan is now constitutionally allowed (conditional) self-defense. However, if "collective defense" wins the day, then WWIII could be on the way! (Thanks to J.V.W. for the clipping.)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 1:39 PM

Panel Faults Air Force Brass For Response to Assaults  

An independent panel investigating sexual assault at the Air Force Academy said yesterday that the "highest levels of Air Force leadership" had known of serious sexual misconduct problems at the academy since at least 1993 but failed to take effective action... - Washington Post

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:27 AM

Free State Project Balloting Concludes 

About 5,000 Americans have been holding an election, but for a state rather than a candidate, and the one they choose will be a laboratory for what they call the biggest experiment in democracy since the Revolutionary War.

Balloting will conclude Monday, and the winning state is to be announced Oct. 1. Then members of the Free State Project hope to quadruple their numbers within two years, move there and start transforming it into a national model for small government, few laws and individual liberty... - Washington Post

posted by George Thomas Kysor 8:36 AM

Nine Israelis face deportation for selling art in Canada. Canada's Spy agency [CSIS] suspects they may be foreign agents. This article was pulled by the Ottawa Sun for unknown reasons within hours of posting.

posted by George Thomas Kysor 8:26 AM

Monday, September 22, 2003

How Did United Flight 93 Crash? 

Looking at all the details so far - nothing really adds up neatly for me, except that Flight 93 had a midair crisis that caused debris to fall before it crashed. I remain skeptical of all the theories... except one. We are not being told what happened - and the Government knows exactly what happened. - Flight 93 Crash

posted by George Thomas Kysor 9:35 PM

lustfuldelight has lured you into this dark alleyway. As you wait for your eyes to adjust, you feel something brush against your neck. There is a slight popping noise, of fangs sinking into your veins. You are paralysed, while the blood drains from your body. As the fangs retract, you feel a new strength, and a new coldness in your limbs. You have joined the ranks of the undead.

posted by George Thomas Kysor 4:48 PM

too much pseudo-reality 

I did two things in the past week that I never do: go to the mall, and watch TV. I regret both of them.

Well, not really. Both are always interesting. Both are always fun and frenetic. At the same time, I always see more than I wish I'd seen, and I always get a little woozy from the constant barrage of consumer culture directly into my brain.

Several highlights stand out:

1.) Getting a wedding present for our friends at Bed, Bath and Beyond. I'd never been there before. In front was a near-lifesize singing animatronic Santa Claus, with fully animated mouth synchronized to the endless Christmas carols. I would like to point out that it was THE THIRD WEEK OF SEPTEMBER!!!.

2.) The window display at Waldenbooks had a children's Halloween theme. That's allowable. Christmas: too early -- Halloween: timely. But amidst the kids books on do-it-yourself costumes, Charlie Brown Halloween videos, and Roald Dahl's Witches was a book with an actual photo of two gray feet on the cover, one bearing a toe tag. The title? Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. Inappopriate? Yes.

3.) While my wife was channel surfing, she clicked by a channel that was at the tail end of an advertisement for Veggie Tales videos. These are the Christian-themed cartoons targeted at the young audience demographic. Immediately following this commercial was a "WARNING: The following may be inappropriate for children under the age of 14". Some show called "Adult Swim".

Call me a hermit, but somehow, I am happier hiding in my hut in the redwoods, away from all this. - kd

posted by George Thomas Kysor 4:28 PM

arh!!! today so funny!!! so malu!!! i was suppose to say class stand everyday... then everyday is ok except for today... arg!!! after maths lesson, i went to joil's table and tok to her loh... then miss leong came in silently, i did not notice!!! then joli tell me, ''molly come le, molly here liao!!'' then i faster went back to my seat then said "class stand, greet miss MOLLY!!!" arg!!! everyone bursted out luffing!!! so malu!!! tat's not her name it's a nick name given by students loh... then i call her molly!!! arg!!! stupid joli... influence me!!! arg!!! so funny...then that miss leong look at me, SMILING somemore!!! arg... then she told the class, "u all can luff, but dun luff so much ok? understand?" u think she's angry with me? then when the lesson ends, i make extra to remember to call her miss LEONG, i say " class, thanks miss leong'' then she turn to me and look at me sternly, then smile... so funny and scary loh.... thought she's gonna kill me!!! arg!! so MALU!!!!~~~~~~~~
bleah:) got to go liao... need to study for tomorrow's HCL common test!! stress!!! only 2 ,more weeks to end of yr exams!!!! ARG!!!!!!!!!!! stress!!!!! bye bye!!! everyone work hard kay... - A gurl JOycE ChaN indulged in a whirlpool of love and fantasy. She walks through 15years years of her lifetime, filled with lots of emotions since 8April. Currently studying in St.Nix. All she needs is peace and love ...for the rest of her life.............

posted by George Thomas Kysor 3:58 PM

Sunday, September 21, 2003

The End of the Republic? [an excerpt] 

Service in the armed forces of the United States has not been a universal male obligation of citizenship since 1973. Our military today is a professional corps of men and women who join up for their own reasons, commonly to advance themselves in the face of one or another cul de sac of American society. They normally do not expect to be shot at, but they do expect all the benefits of state employment -- steady pay, good housing, free medical benefits, relief from racial discrimination, world travel, and gratitude from the rest of society for their military "service." They are well aware that the alternatives civilian life in America offers today include difficult job searches, no job security, regular pilfering of retirement funds by company executives and their accountants, "privatized" medical care, bad public elementary education systems, and insanely expensive higher education. They are ripe, it seems to me, not for the political rhetoric of patrician politicians who have followed the Andover, Yale, Harvard Business School route to riches and power but for a Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, or Juan Perón -- a revolutionary, military populist with no interest in republican niceties so long as he is made emperor.

Given the course of the postwar situations in Afghanistan and Iraq, it may not be too hard to defeat George Bush in the election of 2004. But whoever replaces him will have to deal with the Pentagon, the military-industrial complex, our empire of bases, and a fifty-year-old tradition of not telling the public what our military establishment costs and the devastation it can inflict. History teaches us that the capacity for things to get worse is limitless. Roman history suggests that the short, happy life of the American republic is in serious trouble -- and that conversion to a military empire is, to say the least, not the best answer. - ©2003 Chalmers Johnson (via Karen De Coster)

posted by George Thomas Kysor 4:37 PM