The guys @ FederalJack.com show you how to lobotomize your RFID chips. Way to go guys!
Click this link as it seems WordPress is censoring this video
Aug
20
Antifascist Calling…
August 15, 2008
Operation Sentinel, a new program unveiled by the New York City Police Department (NYPD) and U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), would encircle Manhattan with thousands of surveillance cameras that photograph every car or truck entering and exiting the city across its network of bridges and tunnels.
Information captured by this intrusive project would be stored in a huge database for an undisclosed period of time. Additionally, a network of sensors installed at toll plazas would allegedly be able to capable detect radiological materials that could be used in potential terror plots, the New York Times reports.
However, the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) has denounced the proposal as “an attack on New Yorkers’ right to privacy.” NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman lambasted this outrageous proposal saying,
“The NYPD’s latest plan to track and monitor the movements of millions of law-abiding people is an assault on this country’s historical respect for the right to privacy and the freedom to be left alone. That this is happening without public debate, and that elected officials have had no opportunity to study this program is even more alarming.” (“NYCLU: NYPD Plan to Track Millions of Law-Abiding People is an Assault on Privacy Rights,” New York Civil Liberties Union, August 12, 2008)
Last month I reported on a high-tech surveillance system under development by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) called “Combat Zones That See” (CTS).
The 2003 program was predicated on the notion that once thousands of digital CCTV networks were installed across occupied or “homeland” cities, CTS would provide occupying troops–or police–with “motion-pattern analysis across whole city scales.” Based on complex algorithms linked to the numeric recognition of license plate numbers and scanned-in human profiles, CTS would furnish troops–or cops–real-time, “situational awareness” of the “battlespace.”
Despite repeated attempts by NYCLU to obtain information on Operation Sentinel, NYPD and DHS have refused to provide any information about their mega-surveillance system. While all traces of CTS disappeared from DARPA’s website, portions of the program have resurfaced with a vengeance, courtesy of the NYPD and DHS.
According to New York Times reporter Al Baker,
Data on each vehicle–its time-stamped image, license plate imprint and radiological signature–would be sent to a command center in Lower Manhattan, where it would be indexed and stored for at least a month as part of a broad security plan that emphasizes protecting the city’s financial district, the spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said. If it were not linked to a suspicious vehicle or a law enforcement investigation, it would be eliminated, he said. (“City Would Photograph Every Vehicle Entering Manhattan and Sniff Out Radiation,” The New York Times, August 12, 2008 )
While preventing terrorists from detonating a radiological dirty bomb or a nuclear device in Manhattan–or anywhere else for that matter–is certainly a salutary government function, the misuse of such a system for illegal surveillance of the citizenry cannot be ruled out in advance nor dismissed out of hand as mere paranoia.
In addition to civil liberties concerns–no small matter after all, given the repressive nature of NYPD and DHS–Operation Sentinel’s grandiose scheme bank on technological systems which do not exist.
The Times dryly notes, the proposed plan “relies on integrating layers of technologies, some that are still being perfected.” In other words, the program is rife with potential abuse by enterprising security contractors, many with documented histories of promising much, delivering little and with substantial cost overruns borne by the public.
The department currently deploys portable radiation vehicles known as TRACS, or Tactical Radiation Acquisition and Characterization System, which the Times claims can detect radiological agents such as cesium and cobalt, and differentiate “between dangerous ones and ones used in products like smoke detectors or medical devices.”
However, as I reported in June, another system under development, the “Advanced Spectroscopic Portal” or ASP, allegedly a more “advanced” system than those currently used, failed, as do today’s systems, to differentiate between the components of a radiological dirty bomb and natural radiation emitters such as kitty litter, ceramics and bananas!
As I noted, the ASP program is already tens of millions of dollars above the original estimate provided by Raytheon, other contractors and DHS. Why therefore, would any sane person believe that the system currently under consideration would be anymore functional or cost effective? Unless that is, Operation Sentinel’s real purpose is to enhance an already-formidable surveillance state.
NYPD Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and his staff have been “urging the creation of a London-style surveillance system for the financial district that relies on license plate readers, movable roadblocks and 3,000 public and private security cameras below Canal Street, all linked to a coordination center at 55 Broadway. Known as the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, the center is to open in September,” according to the Times.
NYPD spokesperson Paul J. Browne “could not say, when the program [Operation Sentinel] would be completed,” though “the Lower Manhattan Initiative is expected to be in place by 2010.” Since 2007, NYPD have been using CTS-type CCTV systems to read license plates linked to databases for (unspecified) “intelligence purposes.”
And if the illegal handling of the 2004 Republican National Convention protests are an indication of Operation Sentinel’s intended purpose, New York City residents’ outrage with the proposal are fully justified.
The Times revealed their own proclivities on this score when they prominently featured the “analysis” of so-called “terrorism expert,” Steven Emerson, the executive director of the Washington-D.C.-based Investigative Project on Terrorism, a right-wing think-tank with close ties to the Bush administration and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani.
When civil libertarians (unnamed by the “newspaper of record”) voiced concerns over the intrusive nature of Operation Sentinel and the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, Emerson dismissed their apprehensions out of hand,
“It is one tool of ensuring that if there is somebody on a terrorist watch list or someone driving erratically, or if a pattern develops that raises suspicions, it gives them an opportunity to investigate further and–if need be–track down the drivers or the passengers,” he said. “The bottom line is they can’t frisk everybody coming into Manhattan; they cannot wand everyone, as they do at airports. This is a passive collection of data that is not as personally invasive as what they do at airports.”
An Islamophobe with a long record of blaming Muslims and the left for every act of terrorism under the sun, Emerson demonstrated his bona fides in 1995 when he claimed that “Arab terrorists” were responsible for the horrific bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City.
The blast claimed 168 lives, including 19 children in a daycare center while wounding hundreds of others. Attentive readers may recall that the Murrah building bombing was in fact, carried out by a neo-Nazi gang linked to Timothy McVeigh and the Aryan Republican Army.
While Emerson claims Operation Sentinel is “a passive collection of data,” as the American Civil Liberties Union reports, there are currently more than one million names in an FBI-administered database known as the Terrorist Screening Center. Such an unwieldy monstrosity is hardly a tightly-focused list of potential “threats”!
But let’s be clear: Operation Sentinel, and a host of other programs cooked-up by Bush regime war criminals and their corporatist allies is another sordid scheme to keep Americans terrorized, while destroying our civil liberties under cover of “homeland security.”
Aug
11
This just in from contributing writer for LiberalJesus.com, R.E. Griffey.
Off Shore Oil drilling facts
1. All drilling rigs are leased and in use for years to come.
2. It takes years to drill and develop a well and pipelines to transport the oil.
3. The refining capacity in the U.S. is at capacity because “Big Oil” has bought up small refineries and closed them down for years to control refining prices. (See Shell Oil CEO evade the question at:
5. Oil men Bush and Cheney, along with the Big Oil men established the U.S. Energy Policy, still “Secret” from us the taxpayers. Mission Accomplished with $4 gas?
6. A 1981 law still has to be repealed before ANY off shore drilling can begin.
7. Big Oil has 68 MILLION acres under lease now they are not drilling on. I suspect they just want to keep ANYONE else from drilling on it. IF they get it they should be made to drill on it within a specified time.
8. Congress passed a law saying Big Oil doesn’t have to pay royalties on the oil the get from U.S. Federal lands (Our money) to give them “incentive’s”.
9. Any oil they get they can sell anywhere in he world, like they did to the first Alaskan oil, which went to the Orient, not the U.S.
Definitely something to think about and ask your Representatives and Senators about as we head into this election season.
Aug
11
Is Tom Clancy a prophet? Check out the storyline from the 1st Ghost Recon game
The world teeters on the brink of war. Radical ultranationalists have seized power in Moscow – their goal, the reestablishment of the old Soviet empire.
Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan – one by one the nearby independent republics slip back into the Russian orbit. Russian tanks sit in the Caucasus Mountains and the Baltic forests, poised to strike to the south and east. The world hold its breath, and waits.
For one small group of elite soldiers, the war has already begun: U.S. Special Forces Group 5, First Battalion, D Company. Deployed on peacekeeping duty to the Republic of Georgia in the Caucasus, this handful of Green Berets represents the very tip of the spear – the first line of defense. Equipped with the latest battlefield technology, and trained in the latest techniques of covert warfare, they strike – swiftly, silently, and invisibly.
They call themselves “The Ghosts”
What’s really strange is that this game came out nearly 7 years ago. Is the US Government preconditioning our youth to “play” war before they are actually called to do it? Definitely something to think about.
Let’s just hope that we don’t see “Rainbow Six” play out.
Their plan is to infect the air conditioning system at the Sydney Olympics, spreading the disease across the world when the infected attendees return home. They will then use their firm to distribute further quantities of the disease, disguised as a vaccine, to nearly every person in the world, killing everyone but their selected few, who will rebuild the world in a scientifically and environmentally friendly way.
Aug
10
Cringe Factor: Sport Accidents with an oooo
Aug
08
Published on Friday, August 8, 2008 by The Nation
Is McCain the Antichrist?
by Robert Dreyfuss
Biblical scholars in Colorado Springs have uncovered startling evidence that Senator John McCain may be the Antichrist. Their conclusions, while highly controversial, may have a dramatic impact on the 2008 elections, since many Bible-believing Christians have already expressed doubts about McCain’s fealty to Christianity.
The analysis was conducted by the respected True Bible Society, and it will be published next month in the End Times Journal.
The analysis was especially ironic, given that it came out just one day after McCain was accused of subtly hinting that Barack Obama could be the Antichrist. McCain ran a commercial depicting Obama as “The One,” giving rise to charges that he was sending a subliminal messages to anti-Obama Christians.
“What started us looking at this issue is the fact that Senator McCain has declared his intention to maintain US forces in Iraq for a hundred years,” said David Jenkins, a leading Biblical scholar. “That means that McCain wants to control Babylon for at least a century.” According to many scholars of the Book of Revelation, the Antichrist will try to rebuild the ancient city of Babylon in order to use it as a springboard for an international effort at world domination. Ultimately, the Antichrist will marshal forces from Babylon to spark a showdown with Christian and Jewish-led forces in the battle of Armageddon.
“We believe that the End Times is near, based on the pattern of wars, earthquakes. and other strange phenomena we’ve been witnessing since the start of the New Millennium,” said Jenkins. “Given that it may be imminent, the person who controls Babylon must be the Antichrist.” Until 2003, many Christians believed that Saddam Hussein might be the Antichrist, since he started excavations to restore Babylon in the mid 1970s. But Hussein’s death meant that the Antichrist is someone else. Since Obama wants to get out of Iraq, he can’t be the Antichrist either, concluded Jenkins.
Jenkins said his teams suspicions were further heightened when genealogical research showed that McCain’s great-grandfather was actually not John McCain, but John Mihai. Mihai is an ancient Romanian name, and according to Bible-believing Christians, the Antichrist is likely to be a Romanian. “What clinched it for us was that the name Mihai means ‘who is like the Lord,’” said Jenkins. “As far as we’re concerned, that was enough. It means that McCain might easily pretend to be the Redeemer.”
McCain’s geniality and folksiness are consistent with his being the Antichrist, Jenkins said. “Many people think that the Antichrist will be a evil-seeming leader, but in fact the Bible tells us that he will be charming.”
So far the McCain campaign has refused to comment on Jenkins’ study.
Robert Dreyfuss, a Nation contributing editor, is an investigative journalist in Alexandria, Virginia, specializing in politics and national security. He is the author of Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam and is a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone, The American Prospect, and Mother Jones.
Copyright © 2008 The Nation
Aug
08
I don’t know how we as Americans can stand for what we’ve done to this country. We will reap what we’ve sown and it makes me sad.
How will G-d judge us for this?
Aug
08
I’ve been researching a medical phenomenon that has become known as Morgellons Disease. It’s a very strange rabbit hole that I’ve wandered down and I invite you to do the same.
To begin I’m reprinting a letter to Jeff Rense at rense.com from a family that has this affliction. I have also included a video from ABC news that details some of what this disease is all about.
Here we go!
- By Laurie and Steve Smith
A Morgellons Family
2-3-8 -
- Hello Jeff -
- Here is another odd but powerfull side effect of Morgellons. The countless fibers from this affliction permeate virtually our entire home and probably those of most Morgellons victims. We have found that the fibers seem to have a strange ability to infest home electrical equipment…which further suggests a nanotechnology component in this sometimes fatal ‘disease.’ We strive very hard to keep our home clean of the fibers coming from our bodies but no matter what measures we take, we have found that Morgellons fibers find their way into our computer and into our home stereo system amplifier/receiver and speakers.
- We have an air compressor and about every 90 days we use it to blow all the fibers out of all of our home electronic equipment. We can tell when it is time for this kind of fiber control because our speakers will fade in and out, or the DVD player will start skipping and not reading properly. We have also had the mother board on our computer completely fail on us. Morgellons fibers actually collect/congregate all over the inside our computer, so we take the cover off and blow out the entire inside of the computer. Additionally, a small circuit control board on our KitchenAid mixer went out, too. After we do our fibre control blow-off routine, everything is back to normal…until the next time. We have also found that our Morgellons fibers extend beyond our home and have infested our car.
- I keep our home as clean as possible and that requires I have to clean my floors daily just to keep up with the fibers. You would be shocked at the fibers I find every day…one might think I never clean…but I do. I wonder if they are proliferating in our home OUTSIDE of our bodies. They are even under the clothes dryer and dishwasher…both particularly bad spots. Morgellons fibers act like they are charged or something…almost like static electricity…but I suspect there is far more going on than just that.
- I am so sick of Morgellons and the fibers…they are everywhere. It’s no wonder visitors to our home are now showing symptoms of Morgellons – our home is pretty obviously toxic and anyone coming into it seems to be at risk.
- Steve’s Daughter
- Steve’s daughter started to come for visits to our home when she was 16 years old and would stay several times a year for a week or two. We both were sick but what I was experiencing and what Steve was going through at the time still did not connect…and we knew nothing of Morgellons back than. His daughter began having her own health problems such as with her vision…which was altered. She began having headaches, some very bad, and in general seemed more sickly than healthy at 19 years of age. Even the doctors were stumped as to the cause of her troubles. Then at age 21, about 5 years after she began her visits to our home, the first Morgellons lesions broke out on her back. Then, at age 24, she had her first child. The baby was premature…as least partly linked to the horrific pains which caused her to almost lose her baby. We believe Morgellons transferred via blood to her baby in the womb and contributed to the premature birth. Steve’s daughter has now been discovered to have a heart murmur, as well as (to the doctors) the unexplainable lesions on her back that are very painful and spreading. Of course, all typical medical testing shows nothing is wrong…
- Steve’s Brother and His Son
- Another guest in our home was Steve’s brother. He stayed with us approximately one month back in 1997. This Christmas, 2007, he mentioned he is now starting to see sores that won’t heal. He also experience ‘off’ mental/emotional feelings. His son was rushed to hospital in 1997 after he fell at a babysitters and was in a coma for one week. Through testing, the doctors found strange lesions on his brain. He came out of the coma and ‘recovered’…something the doctors have no clue about. This happened after he had visited our home on several occasions while his father was living with us The little boy also played with our dogs…which as you know from out first letter, became infected with Morgellons and two of them died very young. My mother has visited us on several occasions in past 10 years and she is now showing signs of Morgellons as well. She was extremely healthy all of her life. However, lately, Morgellons has begun to take a terrible toll on her. She has begun experiencing vertigo – possibly evidence of fibers in her brain – severe unexplained lower back pain, and what doctors diagnosed as ‘e Coli poisoning’ after which she battled IBS symptoms for over one year and lost 40 pounds. She now chronically ill with many hallmark Morgellons symptoms. And the psychological issues are profound.
- Transmission On Contact
- We have no doubt this disease is infectious at close contact. Unfortunately, we don’t know for sure what the infectious nature of this disease is. Research has proven the blood of Morgellons victims is different. What is/are the actual vector/s of transmission? Is it the fibers we fight daily that have also invaded our home? Is it the unseen ‘nano’ stage…which could be spread through a cough or a sneeze and then inhaled? (Fibers have been found in all body fluids and orifices) Or touched and then introduced through food or by putting fingers in mouth, eyes, nose, etc? Or, is the ’slobber ball’ friends and family held in their hands playing with our infected pets? Or, is it the loving kisses we give each other on greeting? A simple hug and a peck could easily transmit this monster. The only thing we are sure about is that Morgellons turns your life upside down, and your fear of infecting one more victim sits in the back your mind every hour of every day.
- ‘They’ have created the perfect weapon…one that defies all typical medical lab tests. We believe that its baseline size (NANO) invades our cells, and the immune system, and the brain – causing mental and personality changes and pure hell. It then dominates the entire body and finally can make one so chronically ill you cannot continue to support yourself. We are in deep, deep trouble with this one. Many have died. Entire families have become infected, apparently quickly and easily spreading it to one another. And yet, in other cases, some seem to be immune, or at least show no overt signs of having it. Only time will tell just how far and fast Morgellons spreads and how many (millions…billions?) will become infected.
- Muscle Pain, Spasms And Other Symptoms
- When I was infected, it hit me differently than Steve. Steve had the lesions first on his back and a few on his arms. Now Morgellons is in his joints and causes random and severe pain in multiple locations of his body. Bizarre, often intolerable muscle cramping, spasms and nerve pain…even in very unusual places…can occur at random. This suggests the fibers are in the nerve paths and soft muscle tissues. The fibers, most probably, also cause poor circulation in his legs and lower back, and sky high liver counts during the past 14 years.
- I had liver counts shoot off the charts FIRST, and was bed-bound for over two weeks with what doctors called Hep B – even though I didn’t fit the Hep B category! They assumed I had sex with someone who had Hep B. Dead wrong. It is all a big guessing game. Again, about the first symptoms I had, unlike Steve’s, hit my liver which was in deep trouble. Then my eyesight took a strange turn for the worse. And then came the lesions. I continued working for 9 years with this disease. I fought it with everything I had. The lesions would ebb and flow, but those are just the visible signs. Then, all of a sudden, the lesions over took my body and for the past 4 years I have been very, very sick…so sick that I cannot work. It has been quite an adjustment for both of us unable to support ourselves. We have had to make drastic changes in our lifestyle to survive. We avoid even seeing our dearest relatives so concerned are we for their safety and welfare. Others might not be so concerned. All Morgellons victims have some very serious decisions to make.
- –Laurie and Steve Smith
View ABC video here videosift.com
Aug
07
Published on Thursday, August 7, 2008 by The Guardian/UK
Defra’s chief adviser says we need strategy to adapt to potential catastrophic increase
by James Randerson
The UK should take active steps to prepare for dangerous climate change of perhaps 4C according to one of the government’s chief scientific advisers.
In policy areas such as flood protection, agriculture and coastal erosion Professor Bob Watson said the country should plan for the effects of a 4C global average rise on pre-industrial levels. The EU is committed to limiting emissions globally so that temperatures do not rise more than 2C.
“There is no doubt that we should aim to limit changes in the global mean surface temperature to 2C above pre-industrial,” Watson, the chief scientific adviser to the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, told the Guardian. “But given this is an ambitious target, and we don’t know in detail how to limit greenhouse gas emissions to realise a 2 degree target, we should be prepared to adapt to 4C.”
Link to this audio
James Randerson: ‘Massive shifts in Earth’s systems’
Globally, a 4C temperature rise would have a catastrophic impact.
According to the government’s 2006 Stern review on the economics of climate change, between 7 million and 300 million more people would be affected by coastal flooding each year, there would be a 30-50% reduction in water availability in Southern Africa and the Mediterranean, agricultural yields would decline 15 to 35% in Africa and 20 to 50% of animal and plant species would face extinction.
In the UK, the most significant impact would be rising sea levels and inland flooding. Climate modellers also predict there would be an increase in heavy rainfall events in winter and drier summers.
Watson’s plea to prepare for the worst was backed up by the government’s former chief scientific adviser, Sir David King. He said that even with a comprehensive global deal to keep carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere at below 450 parts per million there is a 50% probability that temperatures would exceed 2C and a 20% probability they would exceed 3.5C.
“So even if we get the best possible global agreement to reduce greenhouse gasses on any rational basis you should be preparing for a 20% risk so I think Bob Watson is quite right to put up the figure of 4 degrees,” he said.
One big unknown is the stage at which dangerous tipping points would be reached that lead to further warming – for example the release of methane hydrate deposits in the Arctic. “My own feeling is that if we get to a 4 degree rise it is quite possible that we would begin to see a runaway increase,” said King.
He said a two-and-half-year analysis by the government’s Foresight programme on the implications for coastal defences had more impact in the corridors of power than any other research on the effects of climate change that he presented.
“No other single factor focussed the minds of the cabinet more than the analysis that I produced through that … We begin to have to talk about ordered retreat from some areas of Britain because it becomes impossible to defend,” he said. “There’s no choice here between adaptation and mitigation, we have to do both.”
Other experts were concerned that Watson’s comments might be seen as defeatist and an admission that emissions reductions were impossible to achieve.
“At 4 degrees we are basically into a different climate regime,” said Prof Neil Adger, an expert on adaptation to climate change at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Norwich.
“I think that is a dangerous mindset to be in. Thinking through the implications of 4 degrees of warming shows that the impacts are so significant that the only real adaptation strategy is to avoid that at all cost because of the pain and suffering that is going to cost.
“There is no science on how we are going to adapt to 4 degrees warming. It is actually pretty alarming,” he added.
Speaking to the Guardian, Watson, who is a former science adviser to President Clinton and ex-chief scientist at the World Bank, said the UK should take a lead in research on carbon capture and storage (CCS).
Alluding to the US effort in the 1960s to put a man on the moon he advocated an “Apollo-type programme” to introduce 10 to 20 CCS pilot projects – which work by burying carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels underground – among OECD countries to develop the technology.
“This would allow coal-fired power plants that are currently being built to be modular and capable of having carbon capture retrofitted, and would show the world that we take the issue of climate change seriously, thus demonstrating real leadership. Without this technology we have a real problem.”
He also said as coal burning is cleaned up to remove harmful sulphur pollution climate change would actually get worse. The sulphur aerosols are actually preventing some warming from taking place currently.
“This offsetting effect, which is equivalent to about 100 parts per million of carbon dioxide, will largely disappear if China and India follow the lead of the US and Europe in limiting sulphur emissions, the cause of acid deposition,” he said.
© 2008 The Guardian
Time to build a boat or move to the Rockies! – LJ
