posted 09-27-2003 02:24 PM            

Data recorders interest parents, police
By Don Oldenburg

THE WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON, Sept. 9 — On a freeway north of Los Angeles, as Ryan Evans’s sleek 1998 Honda Accord coupe speeds above 70 mph, the black box tucked under his front passenger seat grumbles a grating noise, warning the 18-year-old that he’s going too fast.

**************

THEY ARE MAKING YOUR EVERYDAY LIFE ILLEGAL.

ARE YOU ANGRY YET?

YOU BETTER BE.

posted 09-27-2003 02:33 PM            

Henry Makow September 22 2003

Many people think "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is anti Semitic "hate literature" and a fraud. Nobel Prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote that the book exhibits "the mind of genius." This is pretty unusual for a fraud.

Solzhenitsyn said it exhibits "great strength of thought and insight...Its design...(increasing freedom and liberalism, which is terminated in social cataclysm)...is well above the abilities of an ordinary mind...It is more complicated than a nuclear bomb."

I'm afraid Protocols may be genuine. They are lectures addressed to Jewish Luciferians (Illuminati, Freemasons) detailing an incredible plan to overthrow western civilization, subjugate mankind, and concentrate "all the wealth of the world...in our hands."

The lectures, typical of similar Illuminati documents, were leaked to the Czarist Secret police and published in Russia in 1905.

The issue of anti Semitism diverts attention from this plot which has been unfolding for over 200 years and is behind world government, September 11, Iraq, Homeland Security and the bogus "War on Terror."

FAIT ACCOMPLI

The plotters control the world's wealth. Their multinational corporations use Freemason symbols in their logos. Shell and Citibank have the rising sun; Exxon the double cross, CBS and Time Warner the eye of Horus; Alcan and AOL, the circle in the triangle.

The mass media, education and politics all create an illusion of democracy in order to control and defraud humanity. The Great Seal of the United States reflects the unhappy truth. It is also a Freemason symbol and bears the inscription "We have achieved New World Order." Almost all American Presidents including George W. Bush are Freemasons or Illuminati.

Israel's Star of David (interlaced triangles) is the Masonic symbol of the double divinity, Adonai and Lucifer.

The issue of anti Semitism is irrelevant because Jewish and non-Jewish Luciferians intermarried long ago. (See Milan Martin, Lucifer's Children p.74) The elite now consists of humanity-haters of all stripes. No wonder corruption is endemic. As the Greeks say, "the fish rots from the head."

ROTHSCHILD

Meyer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812) played a key role in advancing this monstrous conspiracy. He was a follower of the occult Cabbalism (or Lucifer worship) that is the basis of Illuminism and Freemasonry. (See Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry.)

Researchers have speculated that Adam Weishaupt or Asher Ginzberg penned Protocols. I think it may have been Rothschild himself. I came to this conclusion after reading Protocols 20-23, the "financial programme... the crowning and the decisive point of our plans." These lectures require a detailed knowledge of banking and finance. Moreover the author states that all power ultimately will reside in the "King of the Jews," which is how Rothschild was known.

THE SOURCE OF POWER

The author makes clear that whoever creates money is sovereign. He ridicules the goyim kings for forfeiting this power and says that he doesn't intend to repeat this mistake." When we come into our Kingdom," the government will change from being "a payer of tribute by loan operations...into a lender at a profit."

"This measure will stop the stagnation of money, parasitic profits, and idleness which were useful for us among the goyim so long as they were independent but are not desirable under our rule."

The Protocols is full of Talmudic contempt for non-Jews. "How clear is the undeveloped power of thought of the purely brute brains of the goyim...What could have been simpler than to take the money they wanted from their own people? "...We "will put an end to those abuses to which we owe our mastery over the goyim, but which cannot be allowed in our Kingdom." (178)

(I am using the L. Fry edition of The Protocols, entitled Waters Flowing Eastward, available from gsgbooks@mindspring.com)

COMMUNISM, SOCIALISM, LIBERALISM, FEMINISM

Similarly the bankers have financed intellectuals and politicians to promote a mania for "senseless utopian principles" like "collectivism," "freedom of conscience, equality and the like." (182) They are designed to bring down the Old Order but will have no place in the New.

"We have set them on the hobbyhorse of an idea about the absorption of individuality by the symbolic unit of collectivism...They have never yet and they never will reflect that this hobbyhorse is a manifest violation of the most important law of nature, which has established from the very creation of the world one unit unlike another and precisely for the purpose of instituting individuality..." (159)

"The purely brute mind of the goyim is incapable of analysis and observation and still more of foreseeing whither a certain matter of settling a question may trend...Their eyes are open but see nothing before them..." (160)

"Everything in this world is in a state of submission, if not to man, then to ... what is stronger. And so shall we be this something stronger for the sake of good." (163)

THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION

Estonian journalist Juri Lina has examined the recently opened Soviet archives and documented the connection between the Bolshevik Revolution and Jewish Illuminism in his book "Under the Sign of the Scorpion." (1994)

I will probably devote a separate column to this. Suffice to say that Communism was the outcome of the plan outlined in Protocols. No wonder this book was banned in the USSR on pain of death! Its status in America is a measure of our condition.

Karl Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, all Jewish Freemasons, were essentially dysfunctional losers who were employed by the Illuminist bankers to hoodwink the masses. Lenin for example had been an unsuccessful lawyer who had only six cases in which he defended shoplifters. He lost them all. A week later he gave up the law to become a highly paid revolutionary.

Lenin declared: "Peace means quite simply the domination of Communism over the entire world." His reign of terror caused nine million deaths but you never see him compared to Hitler. The secret police, the Cheka, dominated by Jews, published the names of 1.7 million people they murdered in 1918-1919, including 300,000 priests.

"A river of blood flowed through Russia," Lina writes. "According to official Soviet Reports, 1,695,904 people were executed from January 1921 to April 1922. Among these victims were bishops, professors, doctors, officers, policemen, lawyers, civil servants, writers...Their crime was 'anti social thinking' " (90)

CONCLUSION

Jews will never understand anti Semitism until they realize that it is not always based on irrational prejudice.

In 1920, Winston Churchill made a distinction between national and "International Jews." He said the latter are behind "a worldwide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality...

It played ... a part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band ...[has] gripped the Russian people by the hair and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire."

Our culture, not Protocols, is a hoax. Luciferian Communist Jews set an example for the Nazis. This is not a debating contest where I convince you to agree with me or vice versa. I am concerned only with the historical record. Our focus must be on establishing the truth.

Luciferians like Rothschild, Lenin and Hitler still control the planet and intend to enslave humanity. I'm afraid that this will become increasingly evident. I pray I am wrong. This is a debate I want to lose.

posted 09-27-2003 02:55 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mech:

Bush is just a puppet.

There is a much greater evil at work.

---

I agree! We use him as the target, but the motley crew and the elitists behind them bark the orders, make the decisions -- oh yeah, the Bush senior regime/world elitists/certain corps. busies itself behind the scenes. Wasn't it me who read your Skolnick? Well, I've read more than that, between Feb. 2002 and now.

But remember to never succumb to fear, always know that truth and justice will win. Why? Because the liars and the lies they tell blacken and wither, and fly like dust when brought into the light of day--images of vampires sizzling in the sun? If you look at the whole play, get out from the planet a bit, you can see that a lot of this shit coming to the surface about the illuminati, the Nazi connection, the oil cabals, all of it up to the obvious lies and deceit, is actually facilitating a big WAKE up on many, many levels -- the spiritual level, the citizen participation level, the day to day life level, the the war and peace survival level, the global consciousness level -- OMG -- when you stop to consider you yourself, Mech, as not the only person discovering this, that there are thousands if not hundreds of thousands outraged and searching for truth -- well, the 100th monkey adage kicks in and the present dark trends will, like snakes, eat themselves in their tails. Perhaps the negative had to form and present itself in this duality play in order for the positive to rise to the occasion. Think about it!

I'm actually happy that the upper layer of obvious lies and deceit has slapped the general population in the chops! It should make you happy, too, to know that this anger is a motivator at the polls. Now don't give me crap about voting manipulations because that has come into awareness, too -- due to Flori-duh! Polls show a decline, Republicans are getting fed up as well. I've been reading responses on the smirking chimp and outrages are out raging.

Why no one can impeach the shits when the Repulsicans tried impeaching Clinton for a lot less -- is beyond me and creepy at that! Guess the outvoting on the Congressional floors might explain some of it. But dang! How blind do these politicians have to be?

OK, I'll grant you most of the Rockefellar scenarios minus a little b.s., but even then, without a power base, such as the White House with a British collusion, not much can be done and they know it, they meaning the you-know-who!

When I think of all the possible scenarios that could get them sustained in office for 2004, even another pre-planned terrorist attack, I just don't see it erasing all the damage done already on the surface level! And I see no one listening to fear messages after their blatant lies that we all knew were lies to begin with! Trust is gone.

A majority of citizens have now arisen from their sleep -- many levels and many stimulants for that awakening and we have months for continued shit accumulation! LOL! Well, you know what I mean! They are playing into the hands of the light! Trust it. Watch it.

As far as technology? In the hands of ethical human beings, technology can aid humanity. Getting ethical human beings into power positions is our main goal right now. We see what can happen when the unethical get into power not to mention the greedy. And please don't tell me the Dems are no different than the Repubs -- it ain't so! And even free trade is up for renegotiation after the Dems are in. But first we have to kick the bastards out! Skull and bones Kerry won't make it! I don't believe he will -- but even if he does, his past voting record on all kinds of issues should reassure you that he's no oil supporter!

Keep searching Mech, keep turning over all the slime covered boulders and rocks and psychically smashing those bugs and slugs -- and don't forget to keep your light shining, your hope because if you don't, you play into the dark side's power play. Fear is their name and world domination is their game! But I tell you, the light forces are at work on this and they outpower the dark. Know this.

About aliens and the shadow military connection? It will come out, too! HAARP and the holographic controlling of citizens through fear of alien attack -- I have sources that tell me the aliens will not allow it! If you need some of those contacts, I will provide them to you privately!

Stepping off my platform ....

BC

posted 09-27-2003 03:22 PM            

The "left" and "right" really dont exist. The NWO establishment with all of its tentacles does.

Fear? Hah! Try anger. I'm a military veteran. When I discovered the REAL STORY several years ago..you could say that I wasn't happy and seeing this country fade into the sunset under the CLOAK of "globalization" (a big lie) makes my BLOOD BOIL!!!

All I know is what the founding fathers used to do to traitors to the Constitution.

I dont care who it is...Democrat or Republican. If they violate my constitutional rights...especially under the excuse of "terrorism prevention" they should be kicked out and tried for treason.

The illuminati IS REAL and their agenda is most certainly to enslave us all by using high technology and imploding America..economically. Its a matrix like control grid they are setting up. Or what I call a BEAST SYSTEM. They are setting it up right now. You are WATCHING it happen.

They won't get my guns.

Id rather be dead than live in tyranny.

posted 09-28-2003 08:49 PM            

By Christopher Bollyn, Khilafah

KAPOSVAR, Hungary--"Camp Freedom" is a converted Soviet-era base at Taszar near Kaposvar, where the U.S. military trained an exile militia known as the "Free Iraqi Forces" and where it reportedly plans to train another 28,000 Iraqi "policemen." The Taszar base resembles a high-security prison, and local authorities say they don't know anything about what actually goes on inside the base.

Bernard B. Kerik, a former New York City police commissioner who heads the Iraqi Interior Ministry in Baghdad, told The New York Times that he hoped to begin training Iraqis at Taszar within a few months. Kerik said the courses in Hungary would be short and intensive, lasting about eight weeks.

When U.S. officials said they were holding talks with Hungary about training up to 28,000 Iraqi police officers at Taszar, the local authorities only learned of the plan when the Hungarian press picked up the story.

Karoly Szita, the mayor of Kaposvar, told the Hungarian press that it was "the same game" the U.S. had played earlier in the year when "nobody knew anything." The exiles then were said to be training as interpreters for U.S. forces, but "were armed, in uniform, and being put through combat training," The Guardian (UK) reported recently.

European press reports allege that the former Iraqi chief of staff and high-profile defector Gen. Nizar al-Khazraji, who mysteriously vanished on March 17 from Denmark where he was under house arrest, was snatched by the CIA and taken to Taszar, where he is helping the Americans train the new Iraqi forces.

Al-Khazraji, who was suspected of war crimes against Iraqi Kurds was under a court order to remain in Denmark, where he defected in 1999.

Danish reporter Arne Moeller said that CIA agents shepherded Khazraji out of Denmark to help with the war against Saddam: "All the witnesses told our newspaper that he left in a black car heading to the south of Denmark," Moeller said. A Gulfstream aircraft "was ready to take off and two members of the CIA put him on board."

American company Brown and Root Services, a subsidiary of Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) and its Dallas-based parent company Halliburton Corp., is running operations at the base from its fortress-like headquarters in Kaposvar. Brown and Root employees are forbidden from discussing what they do and see at the base. Local authorities say, "I don't know" and add they are not allowed to discuss activities related to the base.

AFP visited KBR's Kaposvar headquarters to ask about Wayne Uhl about the work the company did at the Taszar base. After an hour, a company representative named Valeria Strasszer emerged from the compound with the mayor of Taszar, Sandor Pataki.

"I don't know," Pataki replied to all questions.

Strasszer said all questions had to be submitted in writing. To a dozen questions submitted by AFP, Strasszer responded, "We do not discuss any given mission" and "we cannot answer on behalf of the U.S. Army."

Kellogg, Brown and Root won a 10 year contract to provide support services to U.S. military bases around the world on Dec. 14, 2001. The contract is known as the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP).

The LOGCAP contract "basically means that the federal government has an open-ended mandate and budget to send KBR anywhere in the world to run humanitarian or military operations for profit," according to a 2002 article entitled "The War on Terrorism's Gravy Train" published by the Berkeley-based (Calif.) CorpWatch.

Dick Cheney, who served as secretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush during the first Gulf War, was chief executive of Halliburton before resigning to run for office with George W. Bush. During his last two years at Halliburton (1999-2000) Cheney made nearly $30 million from compensation and stock sales. In 2001 KBR took in $13 billion in revenue, much of it from service contracts with the U.S. military.

The board of directors of Halliburton includes well-known former and active senior executives from the energy giants Chevron Corp., Hunt Oil Co., Phillips Petroleum Co., and Southern California Gas Co. Robert L Crandall, chairman emeritus of American Airlines and AMR Corp. has been on the board since 1986.

Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage worked as a consultant to Halliburton before his present job.

On "Meet the Press" on Sept. 14, Cheney said: "I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had, now, for over three years." Cheney, however, continues to receive a large deferred salary of more than $160,000 a year from Halliburton. Cheney also holds 433,333 in unexercised Halliburton stock options.

Cheney bought an insurance policy for $15,000 before he was sworn in as vice president to protect this income if Halliburton were to go out of business, according to CNN. In 2001, Cheney received $205,298, and in 2002, another $162,393, in deferred salary payments from Halliburton.

Sens. Thomas Daschle (D-S.D.) and Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) say the revelations of Cheney's financial interest in Halliburton and the no-bid contracts Halliburton has received from the Bush administration should be investigated.

"In 2001 and 2002, Cheney was paid almost as much in salary from Halliburton as he made as vice president," Lautenberg said.

"The vice president needs to explain how he reconciles the claim that he has 'no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind,' with the hundreds of thousands of dollars in deferred salary payments he receives from Halliburton," Daschle said in a statement.

On Sept. 16, Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Cal.) and John Dingell (D-Mich.) asked the General Accounting Office (GAO) to look into contracts awarded to Halliburton and its subsidiaries during the past two years.

KBR began providing services at U.S. military bases in 1992 after the Pentagon, under Cheney's direction, paid the company nearly $9 million to produce a classified report on how private companies could help American troops. The same year, KBR won its first five-year logistical contract from the Army Corps of Engineers to provide services to the U.S. military in the Balkans and elsewhere.

CorpWatch reported that KBR's Balkan operations had been the most profitable part of the company prior to the current U.S. war against Iraq. KBR has made more than $2.2 billion from its Balkan contract to provide a host of services for the U.S. military, according to the GAO.

In March 2003, Halliburton received a contract, without open bidding, from the Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) to repair and restore Iraq's oil fields. The cost of this contract to taxpayers is about $1 billion, according to the ACE. Reuters reported that KBR has "racked up over $1 billion in expenses in Iraq, according to the U.S. Army Field Support Command."

A February 1997 study by the GAO found that KBR overcharged the government $462.5 million for an operation it said would cost $191.6 million when presented to Congress in 1996.

In February 2002, KBR paid $2 million to settle a lawsuit with the Justice Department which alleged that the company had defrauded the government during its work in the closure of Fort Ord in Monterey, Calif.

Dammen Gant Campbell, a former contracts manager for KBR, turned whistle-blower and revealed "that between 1994 and 1998 the company had fraudulently inflated project costs by misrepresenting the quantities, quality and types of materials required for 224 projects," CorpWatch reported.

"This is a company which has more experience with insider dealing and corruption than with efficiency," Bill Hartung of the World Policy Institute said about KBR.

"During the Second World War, there was a Senate committee on war profiteering," Hartung said, "I think we should set it up again and investigate Kellogg, Brown & Root."

"The Bush-Cheney team have turned the United States into a family business," Harvey Wasserman, author of The Last Energy War, said about the KBR contracts with the military. "That's why we haven't seen Cheney--he's cutting deals with his old buddies who gave him a multi-million dollar golden handshake."

Source: American Free Press

Reprinted from Khilafah.com: http://www.khilafah.com/home/category.php?
DocumentID=8339&TagID=2
***********************

posted 10-01-2003 02:09 PM            

Pentagon plans 'defence blimps'
From correspondents in Cleveland
October 1, 2003

http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,7428326%5E1702,00.html

THE Pentagon has awarded Lockheed Martin Corp. a $US40 million ($58.8m) contract to develop a high-flying, remote-controlled blimp that would monitor U.S. borders and scan the horizon for enemy missiles.

The idea is to supplement radar and satellites. The helium-filled dirigibles - about 25 times larger than those seen at sporting events - could also be used to monitor combat zones overseas.

They would patrol at more than 28 kilometres up, and be powered by the sun.

"It's another mix in the multilayered defense sensors," Christopher Taylor, a spokesman for the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, said. The goal is to have a prototype ready to fly in 2006. The contract includes a $50 million option to build one.

The agency will direct the design and construction of the prototype in Akron, Ohio, by Lockheed on behalf of the Department of Defense, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and the Army.

Blimps can peer down into valleys missed by surface radar and, unlike satellites, their surveillance isn't limited by the earth's rotation. They can be aloft for months at a time and, unlike satellites, can land for equipment changes or maintenance.

Depending on tests, the Pentagon will order an undetermined number of the blimps, Taylor said. The Department of Homeland Security, which includes border patrols, also will consider ordering blimps, he said.

Last year, NORAD proposed stationing 10 ships to cover America's borders. The Coast Guard and customs agents already use radar on low-altitude tethered balloons to scan for drug smugglers. The Navy discontinued its blimp program in 1962.

Akron's Lockheed Martin Airdock, where the blimp is to be developed about 48 kilometres south of Cleveland, was once the site of mass production of U.S. Navy surveillance airships during World War II.

posted 10-01-2003 02:15 PM            

(Fort Wayne Indiana, September 30, 2003) - Hoosier's who want to buy guns will have to undergo more background checks. Everyone wanting to buy a gun will be given the once-over by the FBI, and possibly the state as well. The background check will add up to 20 minutes for the phone calls to authorities. Currently, state and federal checks are NOT required if a customer shows a valid permit. WITHOUT a permit, one call to the ISP now takes care of both checks. But under new rules, dealers will have to call the FBI directly. And for those who don't have a permit, dealers will also have to call state police.

Here are the specifics:

For handgun sales -- buyer has no license to carry, gunshop has to contact FBI and Indiana State Police (ISP).

For handgun sales -- buyer has a license to carry, gunshop has to contact FBI.

For long gun sales -- buyer has no license to carry, gunshop has to contact FBI

For long gun sales -- buyer has an license to carry, gunshop has to contact FBI

SO MUCH FOR YOUR 2nd AMENDMENT RIGHTS

2ND AMENDMENT--

" A WELL REGULATED MILITIA BEING NECESSARY TO THE SECURITY OF A FREE STATE, THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS, SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED APON.

posted 10-01-2003 02:24 PM            

Wednesday, October 1, 2003
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2003/10/01/biz_notes01.html

Patriot Act kicks in at banks today
Industry notes: Banking

By Jeff McKinney
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Beginning today, don't be surprised if you get asked more questions than usual where you bank if you try to open a new account.

That's because Oct. 1 is when commercial banks, savings banks, credit and brokerage firms and other financial providers must comply with rules of the Patriot Act.

The new federal law basically will allow financial institutions to ask more questions about you than previously if the entity thinks that's necessary for background purposes, industry consultants told Bankrate.com.

posted 10-08-2003 06:03 PM            

http://www.wral.com/news/2540371/detail.html

posted 10-08-2003 08:26 PM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by the professor:
I think a more appropriate title for this thread should be partial tyranny, if it was total there wouldn't be any of this nwo nonsense on the internet. period.

---

"The best way to handle the opposition is to control it ourselves." V I Lenin

That magic lantern shines on our every keystroke.
http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/
>a totalitarian society led by Big Brother, which censors everyone’s behavior, even their thoughts. Winston is disgusted with his oppressed life and secretly longs to join the fabled Brotherhood, a supposed group of underground rebels intent on overthrowing the government. Winston meets Julia and they secretly fall in love and have an affair, something which is considered a crime. One day, while walking home, Winston encounters O'Brien, an inner party member, who gives Winston his address. Winston had exchanged glances with O'Brien before and had dreams about him giving him the impression that O'Brien was a member of the Brotherhood. Since Julia hated the party as much as Winston did, they went to O'Brien’s house together where they were introduced into the Brotherhood. O'Brien is actually a faithful member of the Inner-Party and this is actually a trap for Winston, a trap that O'Brien has been cleverly setting...<

The Gestapo would never have captured the members of the White Rose, if they had not continued to speak out against the fascist regime. http://www.jlrweb.com/whiterose/
> The leaflet was scathing in its criticism of every-day Germans who sat back and did nothing to combat the Third Reich.<

excerpts only:
>The First Leaflet
Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized nation as allowing itself to be governed without opposition by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to base instinct.<
>The Second Leaflet
Hitler states in an early edition of "his" book "It is unbelievable, to what extent one must betray a people in order to rule it." <
"Rule or ruin!" Newt Gingrich 1994
---------------------------
Blame Clinton for all current ills?:
>The Third Leaflet
...our present "state" is the dictatorship of evil. "Oh, we've known that for a long time," I hear you object, "and it isn't necessary to bring that to our attention again." But, I ask you, if you know that, why do you not bestir yourselves, why do you allow these men who are in power to rob you step by step, openly and in secret, of one domain of your rights after another, until one day nothing, nothing at all will be left but a mechanized state system presided over by criminals and drunks?<

Heartened by Bush's successes in Afghanistan and Iraq?:
>The Fourth Leaflet
Hitler has choked up successes in Africa and in Russia. In consequence, optimism on the one hand and distress and pessimism on the other have grown within the German people with a rapidity quite inconsistent with traditional German apathy.<

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
George Santayana

posted 10-08-2003 08:56 PM            

Total Recall (of our rights), And What Is To Be Done! --by Michael Rectenwald

After yet another election debacle--the installation of the Schwarzengroper (a.k.a. Schwarzenegger) as governor of the largest state in the union by means of complete rightwing chicanery, including effectively the buying of petitioners, we have decided that the old methods have failed us. We asked ourselves: are we going to WAIT around for the next election debacle, for Bush to be reinstalled as the [p]resident, by means of whatever fraudulence they can muster?

First we had the 2000 coup. Then the fraudulent "energy crisis," overseen by Cheney as he met clandestinely with the criminals themselves, and consented and collaborated with them as they defrauded and defrocked the whole state out of billions.

Then we had 9-11, followed by the erosion of personal rights in the (un)Patriot Act.

Then the Republican takeover of both houses due to the 9-11 fallout and fear-and-war-mongering. (This is to say nothing, for the moment, of the questions of enormous importance that still surround this national and now international catastrophe).

Then, we witnessed the chicanery in the election that stole Cynthia McKinney's office; the illegal war and occupation in Iraq based on fraud and lies, just as McKinney put it; the continual draining of our treasury into the pockets of the fraudsters and their cohorts; the enrichment by the billion at the public trough by Halliburton and other companies in bed with or actually IN the current administration. The list goes on and on.

And now a coup in California, with the installation of a fascist womanizer and abuser with absolutely NO political knowledge or experience, probably, in part, in the effort by the rightwing operatives at the top--Rove, Cheney and Co.--to forestall any investigation into the Enron RAID on the CA economy.

The country is under siege. With the recent accession of California into rightwing territory by means of the purchase of the governorship, we are now nearly at the completion of Project "Total Recall"--a total recall of the rights of citizens to government of, by and for the people. We have an illiterate swine ruling the most populous and richest state in our country. Schwarzenegger is merely a buffoon, an overstuffed mannequin for Rove and company. He will be used to rip off the state of California--both financially and in terms of its huge treasure of votes for national candidates. The end of real elections and any semblance of democratic representation in a democratic Republic is here!

What is to be done??? We are suggesting nothing short of a revolution. But revolution is not terrorism. The organization required to stage a revolution is enormous. It will take immense labor. It will take immense struggle. It will require commitment and fearlessness and the conviction of right reason and moral rectitude. But it cannot be a war of words alone. We begin by recuperating and using ALL of our first ten amendment rights! Go down the list: I mean ALL of them.

Michael Rectenwald, CLG Founder
With inspiration from Lori Price, CLG Chair
__________________________

From the new yahoo board:

October 8, 2003

The time for liberal activism as it has been conducted to date is now passed. Illegitimate elections have now become the rule, not the exception. With corporate interests embedded in the election machinery itself, and those corporations served by rightwing interests, the chances of fair and true elections are dwindling and perhaps already gone. We know what the majority wants, but voicing alone it will not obtain it. Instead, our will is over-ruled by that of the few.

Furthermore, the media is also under rightwing corporate control, and those media serve their own interests and those of the government officials who represent them, and not the people. Likewise, the voice of the majority is drowned out. The liberal version of political persuasion by means of dissemination of ideas alone—protests, petitions, letter-writing, lobbying, and influence of all kinds—will obviously not bring us to our goal. The only hope that remains for legitimate government—government that represents the majority—is akin to a revolution. We must take back the government, by whatever means necessary.

This board was established for those who agree with the premises stated above, and plan to move into the realm of tactics, rather than argumentation.

Post tactical ideas here. We must undo the Coup!

Michael Rectenwald, CLG Founder
Lori Price, CLG Chair www.legitgov.org





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posted 10-13-2003 10:04 PM            

Tiny robots in the trees
By CHARLES CHOI UPI Science News
http://www.coloradodaily.com/articles/2003/10/12/news/est/est02.txt

NEW YORK (UPI) - Tiny mobile robots zipping through the wilderness on cables could monitor endangered species discreetly and analyze environmental chemistry linked to global climate.

The robot networks, strung on their steel webs, also could screen urban streams for pollutants and germs and probe bridges for cracks. The little machines could even help archaeologists explore ancient sites while minimizing damage to precious artifacts, and any data they collected could be beamed, wirelessly and instantaneously, to public Web sites for researchers and students to analyze.

"We would like, in particular, to enable students in grades 6 to 8 to participate," Bill Kaiser, an electrical engineer at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a developer of the mobile robot sensor concept, told United Press International. "On a given day, a class could reach in and view things, maybe even take control and do their own measurements, take their own images - be there for that day," he said.

Kaiser and his colleagues have been testing prototypes of the robot networks over the past year.

Though fixed sensors can gather an incredible variety of data, such as video images and sounds, as well as water vapor, sunlight, heat and chemistry readings, "scientists do need to be able to explore a three-dimensional environment, including the regions in-between the trees and above the surface," Kaiser explained. He added it could prove difficult or impractical to deploy many fixed sensors to monitor a site adequately. But the new, networked, infomechanical systems, or NIMS, can travel along a light, easily deployed network of cables to make the most of their capabilities.

"Another advantage they have is the ability ... to collect a physical sample, and then return that sample to a repository for subsequent analysis," Kaiser said. Though the robot's sensors might not be keen enough to spot a small concentration of germs in water, it could detect events linked to such microbes, such as changes in water flow or color.

After completing a rough NIMS prototype after only three months of work last year, in September Kaiser and his team field-tested a fully-loaded version, equipped with a rotatable camera, a wireless Internet connection and sensors it can drop down and via cable swoop back up to measure temperature, humidity, sunlight and gather water or air samples. The prototype is designed to get power from solar power generators on the cable itself. It generally travels at a leisurely pace of roughly 20 feet per minute, although a NIMS can travel up to 20 miles per hour if necessary.

"Its similarity to a spider is very strong," Kaiser said.

The federal National Science Foundation has awarded Kaiser $7.5 million to continue his NIMS work. Over the next five years, Kaiser and his UCLA colleagues plan to build 100 of the robots. Next spring, they plan to deploy a prototype in the James Reserve in California's San Jacinto Mountains, the home of 50 endangered species. He said they anticipate completing a fully sustainable system in March that can operate for about one year outdoors.

"The societal, technological and economic impact is that in this ever-complex, rapidly changing, environmentally degrading world we're in, we need every trick in the book to keep tabs on how things are transforming," James Reserve director Michael Hamilton told UPI. "NIMS is a robotic sentry that can augment what a human expert will be able to do."

posted 10-15-2003 10:01 AM            

"--The new Guidelines now encourage the FBI to snoop around looking for people who might be suspicious, creating files on anyone who catches their fancy. Agents can now investigate people, organizations, websites, chat rooms and forums for any reason or for no reason at all. They can enter your home without a warrant and are not required to inform you that they have invaded your home if you are not present.

All the records they create in their investigations will be placed in national databases available to all agencies now under the new "Homeland Security" umbrella. Never in U.S. history has there been such a monolithic surveillance mechanism with the terrible power to destroy American citizens' lives.--"

posted 10-15-2003 10:11 AM            

Panel Ponders New Intelligence Agency
Mon Oct 13, 5:38 PM ET

By LAURENCE ARNOLD, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The independent commission studying the Sept. 11 terror attacks is considering recommending changes in U.S. intelligence that would go well beyond actions of the Bush administration, including creation of a domestic spy agency modeled after Britain's MI5.

James B. Steinberg, deputy national security adviser in the Clinton administration, said he advocates the creation of two new entities: an independent director of national intelligence and a domestic security service like the MI5.

Steinberg was expected to testify Tuesday at a public hearing for the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. Other experts at the hearing will include James R. Schlesinger and John M. Deutch, both former directors of central intelligence, chief of the CIA and all other U.S. intelligence operations.

In an interview on the eve of his testimony, Steinberg said U.S. counterterror efforts remain hampered by decades-old walls separating the work of the FBI, which operates domestically and traditionally has focused on catching people who break laws, and the CIA, which works abroad and focuses on learning secrets.

"The beauty of the MI5 model is it breaks down both those walls," said Steinberg, director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution.

MI5 describes itself as Britain's defensive security intelligence agency. It cannot detain or arrest its targets but seeks to "to gain the advantage over (them) by covertly obtaining information about them, which we can use to counter their activities."

Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge visited MI5 headquarters during a trip to Britain last year. He later said he doubted the Bush administration would create a similar domestic intelligence agency, because MI5's powers would be unacceptable under the U.S. Constitution.

FBI Director Robert Mueller also opposes the idea of an American MI5, saying such a proposal is based on "a faulty understanding of counterterrorism that sees a dichotomy between `intelligence operations' and `law enforcement operations.'"

The 10-member, bipartisan commission has until May 27 to submit a report that also will deal with law enforcement, diplomacy, immigration, commercial aviation and the flow of assets to terror organizations.

Commission chairman Thomas H. Kean said the panel is considering several ideas to make U.S. intelligence more effective, "including the question of whether the United States should establish a Director of National Intelligence."

Vice chairman Lee H. Hamilton said the commission also hopes to learn how the government prepares warnings about attacks.

A joint House-Senate inquiry after the Sept. 11 attacks concluded that serious failings by U.S. intelligence leaders left the country vulnerable. Successive leaders, including Deutch and others, did not work hard enough "to overcome the institutional and cultural obstacles to interagency cooperation and coordination that bedeviled counterterrorism efforts before the attacks," the report said.

The Bush administration has acted to strengthen intelligence gathering and sharing since the 2001 attacks. It created a Terrorist Threat Integration Center to bring together information gathered by the CIA, FBI and other agencies. The center reports to the CIA director but is not part of the agency.

Also, the FBI, under new powers granted by the USA Patriot Act, "is now dedicated to preventing future attacks" instead of just investigating past crimes, President Bush said in a September speech at the FBI Academy.

Still, some critics say a fundamental overhaul is needed.

In a report last year, a task force of intelligence experts, academics and technology executives assembled by the Markle Foundation faulted the Bush administration's homeland security plans for giving the FBI too much responsibility for analyzing terror threats. Philip Zelikow, who served as executive director of the Markle task force, is now executive director of the Sept. 11 commission.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has proposed legislation that would split the current position of director of central intelligence into two jobs: a CIA director and a national intelligence director.

posted 10-15-2003 10:26 AM            

Monday, October 13, 2003 11:52PM EDT

Virginia Beach is last U.S. city scanning faces
http://newsobserver.com/24hour/nation/story/1027482p-7209015c.html

By DAVID LAMB, LOS ANGELES TIMES

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (LAT) - Twelve feet above the sidewalk, three cameras scan the faces of unsuspecting crowds on Atlantic Avenue. In a police control room a few blocks away, Lt. Dennis Santos sits before a bank of screens, holding a joystick that enables him to pivot the cameras and zoom in or out. With the help of computers, he is looking for terrorists and criminals.

Now that Tampa, Fla., has scrapped a similar system, calling it a failure, Virginia Beach is the only American city using controversial facial-recognition cameras, and although the system has led to no arrests since it was put into operation in this popular resort town a year ago, senior police officers call it an important law enforcement tool that is here to stay.

"This isn't a silver bullet," Deputy Police Chief Gregory Mullen said. "It's not going to stop or prevent crime. But the system works. It can capture images and it can match them with those in the database. It is one step in making this a safer city, and we have taken that step while being careful to protect the rights and liberties of our citizens."

Basic surveillance cameras - in schools, department stores and parking lots - have been part of American lives for years, and some private businesses, such as casinos, use facial-recognition cameras. But for many people, the idea of government agencies capturing our images in public venues is an unsettling invasion of privacy that smacks of the Orwellian message "Big Brother is watching."

"Broadly speaking, we are becoming a surveillance society," said Kent Willis, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Virginia. "While we may have concerns about private business using surveillance cameras, when government with its great power is the one doing the surveillance, we should worry. There is a long history of governments using the information they gather."

The ACLU has requested, under the Freedom of Information Act, the Police Department's data on the accuracy rate of the system and the contents of the image database. Officers said the system has registered numerous "false positives," all of which were dismissed by police personnel in the control room as unlikely matches. Police have been dispatched only twice: One match disappeared in the crowd and the other was not the felon whose image had come up on the screen.

Facial-recognition technology, still in its infancy, appears to work well in ideal laboratory conditions, but its reliability remains in question in real-life situations when light is bad or the camera lens gets dirty. Last year, for instance, two separate systems at Boston's Logan Airport failed 96 times to identify volunteer "terrorists" whose images had been entered into the database. It correctly identified the "terrorists" 153 times.

And last month Tampa pulled the plug on its system, not because of constitutional issues but because "it didn't work," said Capt. Bob Guidara, a Police Department spokesman. "We never identified, were alerted to, or caught any criminal."

Tampa installed the facial-recognition system in its Ybor City tourist area in June 2001 after testing it, unannounced, at Super Bowl XXXV the previous January. That mass screening of fans caused so much controversy that civil libertarians called for congressional hearings on high-tech surveillance, and Dick Armey (R-Texas), then the House majority leader, said, "Our comings and goings are none of the government's ... business."

posted 10-16-2003 10:28 AM            

Matrix system would put privacy on endangered list

Atlanta Journal Constitution

http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/1003/16matrix.html;COXnetJSessionID=
1Ow72ZKnyVgAegzD6PnKQPh4WKMZ3bUcovDkNdDRHnlulubfwJ0j!806829565?urac=n&urvf=10663159634690.503308062485831


In the hit sci-fi movie "The Matrix," a clueless slacker is offered a choice: Swallow a blue pill to continue life as he knows it, or swallow a red pill and learn the truth about a fearsome computer network secretly controlling humankind.

That's Hollywood. Here in real life, Georgia and a dozen other states have quietly chosen to join a vast computerized database purported to help fight crime and root out terrorists. It too is called Matrix, a tortured acronym for Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange.

Matrix was created by Seisint Inc., a Florida-based company, with the help of $12 million in taxpayer-funded grants from the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department. Adding to its cloak-and-dagger mystique, Seisint's millionaire founder, Hank Asher, was forced to sever ties with the company after reports surfaced that he was a former drug smuggler and government informant.

The Matrix system works by amassing terabytes of confidential information about private citizens, up to and including Social Security numbers and the addresses of their neighbors. Matrix then cross-references other public and private data, including credit and property records, and makes that intelligence available to participating police departments at lightning speed.

Florida was the first to take the plunge and has been using Matrix for about 18 months. Georgia has already sent information about some offenders to Matrix as part of a multistate experimental rollout.

No one can credibly argue with equipping law enforcement agencies with the constitutionally appropriate tools they need. What's worrisome is that state officials, including Gov. Sonny Perdue, apparently volunteered to include Georgia in a test of the Matrix program without first weighing the obvious public policy and privacy issues it raises.

In a belated spasm of common sense, Perdue has now instructed the state attorney general's office to review Georgia's proposed participation in the Matrix system. Specifically, Perdue wants to know if Matrix would violate Georgia laws that forbid disseminating drivers license information except in ongoing criminal investigations, and whether it's legally defensible to share other types of information with a non-government organization such as Seisint.

Such systems are often justified by high-minded talk about making Americans safer, but these digital dragnets could easily have the opposite effect. Congress recently balked at creation of a Matrix-like database originally labeled Total Information Awareness, later renamed Terrorist Information Awareness. In response to the Sept. 11 attacks, the TIA sought to use "data mining" techniques to collect confidential information about all Americans and then sift that data for possible patterns of lawbreaking.

Privacy advocates and civil libertarians are understandably queasy about the prospects of such unwarranted intrusions. "You can't trust government to keep data secure," state Rep. Brian Joyce (R-Lookout Mountain) observed after news broke of Georgia's participation in Matrix.

Private companies also have a mixed track record at best. Just last month, JetBlue Airways violated its own privacy policies by handing over 5 million passenger itineraries to a Defense Department contractor attempting to develop a profile of potential terrorists.

The information included Social Security numbers and information about customers' finances and their families. The airline apologized and an investigation is under way, but the damage is done.

Citing the dangers of privatizing critical law enforcement activities, California and Texas have decided to drop out of the Matrix program; Georgia should follow suit.

posted 10-17-2003 11:36 AM            

October 2003 Issue
http://www.progressive.org/oct03/zinn1003.html
It Seems to Me --- Howard Zinn

An Occupied Country

It has become clear, very quickly, that Iraq is not a liberated country, but an occupied country. We became familiar with the term "occupied country" during World War II. We talked of German-occupied France, German-occupied Europe. And after the war we spoke of Soviet-occupied Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Eastern Europe. It was the Nazis, the Soviets, who occupied other countries.

Now we are the occupiers. True, we liberated Iraq from Saddam Hussein, but not from us. Just as in 1898 we liberated Cuba from Spain, but not from us. Spanish tyranny was overthrown, but the United States established a military base in Cuba, as we are doing in Iraq. U.S. corporations moved in to Cuba, just as Bechtel and Halliburton and the oil corporations are moving into Iraq. The United States was deciding what kind of constitution Cuba would have, just as our government is now forming a constitution for Iraq. Not a liberation, an occupation.

And it is an ugly occupation. On August 7, The New York Times reported that U.S. General Ricardo Sanchez in Baghdad was worried about Iraqi reaction to the occupation. Iraqi leaders who were pro-American were giving him a message, as he put it: "When you take a father in front of his family and put a bag over his head and put him on the ground you have had a significant adverse effect on his dignity and respect in the eyes of his family." (That's very perceptive.)

CBS News reported on July 19 that Amnesty International is looking into a number of cases of suspected torture in Iraq by American authorities. One such case involves Khraisan al-Aballi, CBS said. "When American soldiers raided the al-Aballi house, they came in shooting. . . . They shot and wounded his brother Dureid." U.S. soldiers took Khraisan, his 80-year-old father, and his brother away. "Khraisan says his interrogators stripped him naked and kept him awake for more than a week, either standing or on his knees, bound hand and foot, with a bag over his head," CBS reported. Khraisan told CBS he informed his captors, "I don't know what you want. I don't know what you want. I have nothing." At one point, "I asked them to kill me," Khraisan said. After eight days, they let him and his father go. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, responded, "We are, in fact, carrying out our international obligations."

On June 17, two reporters for the Knight Ridder chain wrote about the Falluja area: "In dozens of interviews during the past five days, most residents across the area said there was no Ba'athist or Sunni conspiracy against U.S. soldiers, there were only people ready to fight because their relatives had been hurt or killed, or they themselves had been humiliated by home searches and road stops." One woman said, after her husband was taken from their home because of empty wooden crates, which they had bought for firewood, that the United States is guilty of terrorism. "If I find any American soldiers, I will cut their heads off," she said. According to the reporters, "Residents in At Agilia--a village north of Baghdad--said two of their farmers and five others from another village were killed when U.S. soldiers shot them while they were watering their fields of sunflowers, tomatoes, and cucumbers."

Soldiers who are set down in a country where they were told they would be welcomed as liberators only to find they are surrounded by a hostile population become fearful, trigger-happy, and unhappy. We've been reading the reports of GIs angry at their being kept in Iraq. In mid-July, an ABC News reporter in Iraq told of being pulled aside by a sergeant who said to him: "I've got my own 'Most Wanted List.' " He was referring to the deck of cards the U.S. government published, featuring Saddam Hussein, his sons, and other wanted members of the former Iraqi regime. "The aces in my deck are Paul Bremer, Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush, and Paul Wolfowitz," the sergeant said.

Such sentiments are becoming known to the American public. In May, a Gallup Poll reported that only 13 percent of the American public thought the war was going badly. By July 4, the figure was 42 percent. By late August, it was 49 percent.

Then there is the occupation of the United States. I wake up in the morning, read the newspaper, and feel that we are an occupied country, that some alien group has taken over. Those Mexican workers trying to cross the border--dying in the attempt to evade immigration officials (ironically, trying to cross into land taken from Mexico by the United States in 1848)--those Mexican workers are not alien to me. Those millions of people in this country who are not citizens and therefore, by the Patriot Act, are subject to being pulled out of their homes and held indefinitely by the FBI, with no constitutional rights--those people are not alien to me. But this small group of men who have taken power in Washington, they are alien to me.

I wake up thinking this country is in the grip of a President who was not elected, who has surrounded himself with thugs in suits who care nothing about human life abroad or here, who care nothing about freedom abroad or here, who care nothing about what happens to the earth, the water, the air. And I wonder what kind of world our children and grandchildren will inherit. More Americans are beginning to feel, like the soldiers in Iraq, that something is terribly wrong, that this is not what we want our country to be.

More and more every day, the lies are being exposed. And then there is the largest lie: that everything the United States does is to be pardoned because we are engaged in a "war on terrorism." This ignores the fact that war is itself terrorism, that the barging into people's homes and taking away family members and subjecting them to torture, that is terrorism, that invading and bombing other countries does not give us more security but less security.

You get some sense of what this government means by the "war on terrorism" when you examine what Rumsfeld said a year ago when he was addressing the NATO ministers in Brussels. "There are things that we know," he said. "And then there are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know that we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know. . . . That is, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. . . . Simply because you do not have evidence that something exists does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn't exist."

Well, Rumsfeld has clarified things for us.

That explains why this government, not knowing exactly where to find the criminals of September 11, will just go ahead and invade and bomb Afghanistan, killing thousands of people, driving hundreds of thousands from their homes, and still not know where the criminals are.

That explains why the government, not really knowing what weapons Saddam Hussein is hiding, will invade and bomb Iraq, to the horror of most of the world, killing thousands of civilians and soldiers and terrorizing the population.

That explains why the government, not knowing who are terrorists and who are not, will put hundreds of people in confinement at Guantanamo under such conditions that twenty have tried to commit suicide.

That explains why, not knowing which noncitizens are terrorists, the Attorney General will take away the constitutional rights of twenty million of them.

The so-called war on terrorism is not only a war on innocent people in other countries, but it is also a war on the people of the United States: a war on our liberties, a war on our standard of living. The wealth of the country is being stolen from the people and handed over to the super-rich. The lives of our young are being stolen. And the thieves are in the White House.

It's interesting to me that polls taken among African Americans have shown consistently 60 percent opposition to the war in Iraq. Shortly after Colin Powell made his report to the United Nations on "Weapons of Mass Destruction," I did a phone interview with an African American radio station in Washington, D.C., a program called "GW on the Hill." After I talked with the host there were eight call-ins. I took notes on what the callers said:

John: "What Powell said was political garbage."

Another caller: "Powell was just playing the game. That's what happens when people get into high office."

Robert: "If we go to war, innocent people will die for no good reason."

Kareen: "What Powell said was hogwash. War will not be good for this country."

Susan: "What is so good about being a powerful country?"

Terry: "It's all about oil."

Another caller: "The U.S. is in search of an empire and it will fall as the Romans did. Remember when Ali fought Foreman. He seemed asleep but when he woke up he was ferocious. So will the people wake up."

It is often said that this Administration can get away with war because unlike Vietnam, the casualties are few. True, only a few hundred battle casualties, unlike Vietnam. But battle casualties are not all. When wars end, the casualties keep mounting up--sickness, trauma. After the Vietnam War, veterans reported birth defects in their families due to the Agent Orange spraying in Vietnam. In the first Gulf War there were only a few hundred battle casualties, but the Veterans Administration reported recently that in the ten years following the Gulf War, 8,000 veterans died. About 200,000 of the 600,000 veterans of the Gulf War filed complaints about illnesses incurred from the weapons our government used in the war. In the current war, how many young men and women sent by Bush to liberate Iraq will come home with related illnesses?

What is our job? To point all this out.

Human beings do not naturally support violence and terror. They do so only when they believe their lives or country are at stake. These were not at stake in the Iraq War. Bush lied to the American people about Saddam and his weapons. And when people learn the truth--as happened in the course of the Vietnam War--they will turn against the government. We who are for peace have the support of the rest of the world. The United States cannot indefinitely ignore the ten million people who protested around the world on February 15. The power of government--whatever weapons it possesses, whatever money it has at its disposal--is fragile. When it loses its legitimacy in the eyes of its people, its days are numbered.

We need to engage in whatever nonviolent actions appeal to us. There is no act too small, no act too bold. The history of social change is the history of millions of actions, small and large, coming together at critical points to create a power that governments cannot suppress. We find ourselves today at one of those critical points.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Howard Zinn, the author of "A People's History of the United States," is a columnist for The Progressive.

posted 10-21-2003 01:56 AM            

WATCH WHAT YOU SWALLOW!!!!!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3205800.stm

Writing in the journal Nature Materials they describe a drug-containing MICROCHIP which can be IMPLANTED in the body.

This then releases the medication slowly so the patient no longer has to take any pills.

Most drugs are still taken orally - but this has drawbacks, the biggest one being human error.

Simply forgetting to take your medicine can seriously affect how well a medicine works.

So this new microchip, which is just over a centimetre in length, could provide a way of delivering exactly the right dose at exactly the right time, therefore making the drug work as well as possible.

Keeping track

The chip's surface is covered in little grooves, where drugs can be loaded.

It is then covered with different types of polymer which slowly biodegrade releasing each dose at a different time.

This type of drug delivery could be very useful for patients who have to take many different tablets at specific times each day for instance those with HIV.

It could also help patients suffering from dementia who cannot remember when to take their drugs.

So far the researchers have tested the chip in the lab with the anti-clotting agent heparin.

They found that just one chip can be used for up to 140 days.

If this works as well for other drugs then clinical trials of the new implant will start soon.

posted 10-21-2003 05:11 PM            

Curtains Ordered for Media Coverage of Returning Coffins

By Dana Milbank

Tuesday, October 21, 2003: (Washington Post) Since the end of the Vietnam War, presidents have worried that their military actions would lose support once the public glimpsed the remains of U.S. soldiers arriving at air bases in flag-draped caskets.

To this problem, the Bush administration has found a simple solution: It has ended the public dissemination of such images by banning news coverage and photography of dead soldiers' homecomings on all military bases.

In March, on the eve of the Iraq war, a directive arrived from the Pentagon at U.S. military bases. "There will be no arrival ceremonies for, or media coverage of, deceased military personnel returning to or departing from Ramstein [Germany] airbase or Dover [Del.] base, to include interim stops," the Defense Department said, referring to the major ports for the returning remains.

A Pentagon spokeswoman said the military-wide policy actually dates from about November 2000 -- the last days of the Clinton administration -- but it apparently went unheeded and unenforced, as images of caskets returning from the Afghanistan war appeared on television broadcasts and in newspapers until early this year. Though Dover Air Force Base, which has the military's largest mortuary, has had restrictions for 12 years, others "may not have been familiar with the policy," the spokeswoman said. This year, "we've really tried to enforce it."

President Bush's opponents say he is trying to keep the spotlight off the fatalities in Iraq. "This administration manipulates information and takes great care to manage events, and sometimes that goes too far," said Joe Lockhart, who as White House press secretary joined President Bill Clinton at several ceremonies for returning remains. "For them to sit there and make a political decision because this hurts them politically -- I'm outraged."

Pentagon officials deny that. Speaking on condition of anonymity, they said the policy covering the entire military followed a victory over a civil liberties court challenge to the restrictions at Dover and relieves all bases of the difficult logistics of assembling family members and deciding which troops should get which types of ceremonies.

One official said only individual graveside services, open to cameras at the discretion of relatives, give "the full context" of a soldier's sacrifice. "To do it at several stops along the way doesn't tell the full story and isn't representative," the official said.

A White House spokesman said Bush has not attended any memorials or funerals for soldiers killed in action during his presidency as his predecessors had done, although he has met with families of fallen soldiers and has marked the loss of soldiers in Memorial Day and Sept. 11, 2001, remembrances.

The Pentagon has previously acknowledged the effect on public opinion of the grim tableau of caskets being carried from transport planes to hangars or hearses. In 1999, the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Henry H. Shelton, said a decision to use military force is based in part on whether it will pass "the Dover test," as the public reacts to fatalities.

Ceremonies for arriving coffins, not routine during the Vietnam War, became increasingly common and elaborate later. After U.S. soldiers fell in Beirut, Grenada, Panama, the Balkans, Kenya, Afghanistan and elsewhere, the military often invited in cameras for elaborate ceremonies for the returning remains, at Andrews Air Force Base, Dover, Ramstein and elsewhere -- sometimes with the president attending.

President Jimmy Carter attended ceremonies for troops killed in Pakistan, Egypt and the failed hostage rescue mission in Iran. President Ronald Reagan participated in many memorable ceremonies, including a service at Camp Lejeune in 1983 for 241 Marines killed in Beirut. Among several events at military bases, he went to Andrews in 1985 to pin Purple Hearts to the caskets of marines killed in San Salvador, and, at Mayport Naval Station in Florida in 1987, he eulogized those killed aboard the USS Stark in the Persian Gulf.

During President George H.W. Bush's term, there were ceremonies at Dover and Andrews for Americans killed in Panama, Lebanon and aboard the USS Iowa.

But in early 1991, at the time of the Persian Gulf War, the Pentagon said there would be no more media coverage of coffins returning to Dover, the main arrival point; a year earlier, Bush was angered when television networks showed him giving a news briefing on a split screen with caskets arriving.

But the photos of coffins arriving at Andrews and elsewhere continued to appear through the Clinton administration. In 1996, Dover made an exception to allow filming of Clinton's visit to welcome the 33 caskets with remains from Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown's plane crash. In 1998, Clinton went to Andrews to see the coffins of Americans killed in the terrorist bombing in Nairobi. Dover also allowed public distribution of photos of the homecoming caskets after the terrorist attack on the USS Cole in 2000.

The photos of coffins continued for the first two years of the current Bush administration, from Ramstein and other bases. Then, on the eve of the Iraq invasion, word came from the Pentagon that other bases were to adopt Dover's policy of making the arrival ceremonies off limits.

"Whenever we go into a conflict, there's a certain amount of guidance that comes down the pike," said Lt. Olivia Nelson, a spokeswoman for Dover. "It's a consistent policy across the board. Where it used to apply only to Dover, they've now made it very clear it applies to everyone."

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

posted 10-27-2003 02:23 PM            

Complete Article: http://washingtontimes.com/national/20031026-124606-8419r.htm

'Smart stamps' next in war on terrorism
By Audrey Hudson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Sending an anonymous love letter or an angry note to your congressman? The U.S. Postal Service will soon know who you are.

Beginning with bulk or commercial mail, the Postal Service will require "enhanced sender identification" for all discount-rate mailings, according to the notice published in the Oct. 21 Federal Register. The purpose of identifying senders is to provide a more efficient tracking system, but more importantly, to "facilitate investigations into the origin of suspicious mail."

The Postal Service began to look into updating mailing procedures after the anthrax scares in October 2001 when an unknown person or persons sent several U.S. senators and news organizations envelopes filled with the deadly toxin. Two post office workers died from handling envelopes laced with anthrax.

"This is a first step to make the mail more secure," said Joel Walker, customer service support analyst for the mailing-standards office.

East Centr