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2/7/2004



President Revises Rationale for War :.

This is incredible. Oh, woops:

President Bush and Vice President Cheney yesterday said the war in Iraq was justified because Saddam Hussein could have made weapons of mass destruction.

The new rationale offered by the president and vice president, significantly more modest than earlier statements about the deposed Iraqi president's capabilities, comes after government experts have said it is unlikely banned weapons will be found in Iraq and after Bush's naming Friday of a commission to examine faulty prewar intelligence.

"Saddam Hussein was dangerous, and I'm not just going to leave him in power and trust a madman," Bush said yesterday in an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press" that will be broadcast today. "He's a dangerous man. He had the ability to make weapons at the very minimum."





False Domain Info May Mean Jail :.

I guess I better not break any federal laws! But I think we're all breaking federal laws all day long... who knows which ones??? How about this, I'll put my real information in that thing when monkeys fly out of my ass! You know what, just come and shoot me now. Let's cut the bullshit and get on with it:

Congress may crack down on businesses and people who provide false information when they register a website, proposing huge fines and extra jail time for those who violate copyright and trademark law.

Backers say the bill, known as the Fraudulent Online Identity Sanctions Act, targets only those who lie when submitting data to domain-registration databases and then go on to break federal laws.

Some online activists say the law is draconian -- it proposes seven more years in prison for committing a felony if a website with fake contact information is involved. More importantly, activists say, the bill threatens one of the core principles of the Internet: anonymous speech.





Rumsfeld Summons Entities from His Transdimensional Portal

It may not be real, but I bet it's close:






Israeli Military War Crime of the Hour: Air Strike Kills 12-Year-Old Boy :.

An Israeli helicopter gunship attacked a car carrying members of the Islamic Jihad on a busy Gaza City street on Saturday, killing a 12-year-old boy and wounding 10 people, according to the military and witnesses.


2/6/2004



noHTML: How to Knee-Cap Outlook 2000 to Improve It :.

Have you ever wanted to stop Outlook from displaying HTML based email messages? You know, the ones mostly sent by spammers? Of course, Microsoft doesn't provide you with the option to do this. NoHTML v1.2.0.0 does the trick. Just make sure you read all the info so you don't set yourself up the bomb.

I would also recommend Microsoft's own Outlook knee-capping tools to further degrade the potential for Outlook to bring down your entire show.

Of course, the best thing to do would be to avoid using any Microsoft products, but that would make too much sense, I guess.





Why Isn't the Moscow Train Bombing the Top Story? :.

It's not that the major media aren't covering the story, but they are giving it "sound bite" type coverage. They are focusing, rather, on the murder of one girl, Carlie Brucia, in Florida. With 39 people slaughtered in a major world capital in a terrorist incident, to be harping on about the Carlie Brucia murder is either criminal negligence or gross incompetence. My theory is that the Moscow train bombing hits too close to home. Seeing dozens of bloody, injured white people stammering around after a bombing, one wonders: how far is the U.S. from Cheney's day of horror?

A bomb blew apart a subway car packed with rush hour commuters Friday morning, killing 39 people and wounding more than 130 in the deadliest terrorist attack in Moscow since Russia launched its second war in Chechnya in 1999.

President Vladimir Putin blamed Chechen separatists, although it was unclear whether the blast was the work of a suicide bomber or someone who merely placed a device on the train as it left the station.

"Russia doesn't conduct negotiations with terrorists - it destroys them," Putin said, adding that the attack appeared aimed at sowing discord before next month's presidential election.





Spooks on Board at Google! :.

WOW! It reads like standard .com BS, reminiscent of the late 1990s... but this isn't the 1990s. Hey, at least this job won't go to India. HAHAHA!

Is anyone aware of any open source search projects (not dmoz), possibly using massively distributed p2p technology, to get around the memory hole forming at Google?

One search engine to rule them all?

Deployment Engineer (with security clearance)
Reply to: Google
Date: Wed Oct 2nd 2002

Position based in United States Northeast Coast or Washington D.C. Area

Are you a Linux/Unix technical guru who wants to have a chance to work directly with customers? Do you have a passion for hands-on technical problem solving? Are you eager to make things work better for our customers? If your answers are YES, and you have solid experience in Internet application/system engineering and Unix System Administration, this unique opportunity is what you are looking for. This position will help you to advance your engineering career with a challenge like you have not experienced before. You will interact with corporate customer engineering personnel, and tackle a variety of fun and challenging system engineering or administration issues on daily basis. You will continue to expand your engineering/technical skills with a business savvy edge. Although East coast based, you will be a contributing member of the team based in the Corporate Headquarters, and work with the team to complete projects as necessary.

Please email us if you are interested in being a key contributor to the Google Search Appliance product's success.

Responsibilities will include:

Provide on-site support in system configuration, network setup, replication and diagnosis of customer problems.
Conduct face-to-face training for the Google Search Appliance product.
Hands-on testing and certification the Google Search Appliance for delivery
Provide technical assistance and consulting service.
Provide the software development and product management teams with feedback on the product (manageability, supportability, robustness, functionality, etc.)
Provide support and troubleshooting 24x7 on a rotation basis.
Develop training presentation materials and document detail incident reports.
50% domestic travel

Qualifications:

BS degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field.
Must have current government top security clearance (TS/SI).
Must have 5+ years industry experience in Unix system administration, professional service engineering, or system engineering.
Significant direct experience implementing, troubleshooting and supporting Linux/Unix operating system, Internet based applications, Apache web server, and java application servers.
Solid understanding of web technologies, Internet Protocol and Linux/Unix system administration.
Strong knowledge of XML/XSLT, regular expressions, scripting in some admin language (Perl, Python, JavaScript) and modification in web applications.
Experience with training materials and support documentation development is preferred.
Past experience with network appliance technical support is a plus.

Characteristics:

Enthusiasm for problem solving and the ability to work independently and rapidly.
Outstanding account management and follow-through skills, resourceful and detail oriented.
Must be sensitive to sales situations, and able to interface with sales managers, and engineering.
Excellent customer skills, and able to work in very stressful customer situations.
Strong organizational and communication skills in both verbal and written.
Must be customer oriented, team player, self-motivator, and able to hit the ground running.


2/5/2004



The U.S. Job Machine Is Broken :.

The jobless recovery we're now in is unlike anything the American economy has ever seen. Typically, the Great American Job Machine energizes our economy. New jobs beget more income, which begets more spending, which begets more hiring, incomes and spending. What we're seeing now, however, suggests that there may be something fundamentally wrong in the engine room of the American economy.

In the recoveries of the mid-1970s and 1980s, America was generating about 300,000 new jobs a month within six months of cyclical upturns. In the early 1990s, this expansion slowed to about 200,000 a month, and we had to wait a full two years for that.

This time, we have seen not a deceleration in job creation, but a net loss - the sharpest in any period since the Great Depression, especially in manufacturing. No work and not much in the way of wage increases either. Ouch!

What's going on? International competition and outsourcing have hit some sectors hard. In the past decade, China became the world's workshop. In this decade, India is becoming the world's back office. Cheap bandwidth and the Internet permit companies to tap into a huge supply of English-speaking, educated, dedicated workers, happy to take knowledge-based jobs for 10% to 20% of what American employees receive.

"Offshoring" is moving up the food chain of services to include professions like engineering, design, accounting, legal work, actuarial and insurance work, medical services and financial analysis.

That's why virtually all the jobs created in the latter part of 2003 were concentrated in the most sheltered segments of the workforce. It also explains why some 80% of the 2.5 million manufacturing jobs lost are gone for good. The result is that too many of America's jobs today cannot support a full household, at least at the level that most people feel appropriate to a middle-class lifestyle.





H.R. 3439 Would Embed CIA Employees within Police Departments! :.

Cops can also work for the CIA. At the moment, the status of this thing is, "Referred to the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security." This is an extremely troubling development. We will have to keep an eye on this:

SEC. 4. DETAIL PROGRAM FOR STATE AND LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT PERSONNEL TO THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY.

The Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949 (50 U.S.C. 403a et seq.) is amended by adding at the end the following new section:

`DETAIL OF EMPLOYEES WITH STATE AND LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES

`SEC. 23. (a) DETAIL- Notwithstanding any other provision of law--

`(1) upon request of the head of State or local law enforcement agency, the Director of Central Intelligence may detail any employee within the Central Intelligence Agency to that State or local law enforcement agency on a nonreimbursable basis; and

`(2) subject to the approval of the Director of Central Intelligence, the head of a State or local law enforcement agency may detail any employee of that State or local law enforcement agency to the Central Intelligence Agency on a reimbursable basis.


Research Credit: BW





Apple Plays Big Brother :.

Pretty good video. Hope you have broadband...





Bush Makes Comparison to Churchill :.

I almost choked on my cheap wine when I read this one! Are clothespins issued to the people in the audience before a speech like this, or do they just hold their noses with their fingers?

President Bush yesterday defended his decision to go to war against Iraq and compared it with the challenges Winston Churchill faced in World War II and the early stages of the Cold War.

"In some ways, our current struggles or challenges are similar to those Churchill knew," Bush said in a speech at a Library of Congress exhibit honoring Britain's famous wartime prime minister. "We are the heirs of the tradition of liberty, defenders of the freedom, the conscience and the dignity of every person."


2/4/2004



Bin Laden: "Obviously, He�ll be Caught Between Now and the Election" :.

Obviously:

He doesn�t bother to attend secret CIA briefings of his fellow senators because he seldom learns anything he hasn�t read in the newspapers, but Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is convinced the U.S. will track down the elusive mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks before November.

"Obviously, he�ll be caught between now and the election," Grassley said Monday when asked if he�s disappointed that Osama bin Laden hasn�t been killed or captured.





How About that Cisco?

One day loss of 9%. And Ciena, down almost 18%. HAHAHA. What a scam. Just wait.





Cable Spools in Path of 9/11 Pentagon Attack "Aircraft"? :.

Something is so wrong with that Pentagon thing, I don't even know what to say:

Would you expect anything less from the makers of the most resilient lawn in the world?!





The Race to the Rainbow Bridge :.

Excellent article by John Kaminski:

Capitalism has failed because it relies on slums in which to dump its failed products, as well as an unregulated fluidity at the top with which to constantly bail us out of our busted budgets. A socialist system has never failed to overcome the temptations of privilege and authority, and tyrannical corruption has always evolved out of noble intentions for the masses in the administrative processes of collectivized wealth disbursal.

No system of government ever devised on this planet has ever truly placed control of its resources in the hands of its community. Corruption has always prevailed, and quicker minds have always managed to make off with the loot and let the masses starve. Real wealth always remains in the hands of the privileged few. There is no clearer example of how our religions have failed us. They have all been bought off by secular authorities in exchange for the state- protected right to fleece their flocks.

We cannot authentically aspire to real freedom as long as the money supply remains in the hands of a few rich men. As long as it does, we have zero power over the events and processes that control our lives.


2/3/2004



The Dollar's Dangerous Path :.

Would I make it as a "legitimate" journalist (if there is such a thing)? The only difference between what follows and what I've been saying for months is that this guy doesn't swear:

A stronger yen, or a weaker dollar, is a drag on Japan's export-led economic recovery. Trying to stem the tide, the government often steps into currency markets on a massive scale. Market players, however, worry that these dollar-buying, yen-selling interventions could be putting the Japanese and U.S. economies on a dangerous path: A falling dollar, should it continue, would open a Pandora's box on both sides, with dire implications for the world economy.

The theory goes something like this: America's "twin deficits" -- in the federal government budget and in the current-account international payments balance (mostly the trade deficit) -- continue to mushroom as President George W. Bush's administration pushes ahead with aggressive economic stimulus measures, such as huge tax cuts. As a result, investors and traders are coming around increasingly to the view that the greenback is in for a further fall.

The twin deficits are already ballooning to an all-time record: roughly $500 billion a year each. Add to this the low savings rate, or the small reserve of surplus domestic funds, and there emerges a precarious picture of the world's largest economy growing on the back of borrowed foreign money. A large-scale flight of capital may choke off growth.






Ricin Scare :.

The situation in Iraq is falling apart, U.S. officials knew there were no WMD in Iraq, the U.S. federal budget has more red ink than a slaughterhouse floor has blood, and India is the new Silicon Valley... Que up the envelopes full of deadly bioweapons material made at Fort Detrick, Maryland:

Following the discovery of the deadly toxin ricin in the mailroom of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, much of the Senate complex will be shut down Tuesday, the Senate Web site said.

"The Capitol will be open for essential personnel only. All tours will be canceled until further notice. Senate office buildings will be closed today. This includes the Hart, Dirksen, and Russell Senate Office Buildings," according to a statement on the Web page.

Tests on a white powdery substance found in the mailroom indicate the presence of ricin, U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer and Frist said late Monday.

Frist said he considers the incident a "terrorist activity."





1984 in 2004: Apple Users' Disgust at RIAA's Pepsi Child Ad :.

I covered this yesterday. You can watch the ad here. I can't believe this is real. HA! DRM, the choice of a dumb generation!

What a world...here I am a very long time dedicated Mac user (there are currently 5 late model Macs in the house)......I own maclovers.org, and yet Apple has again participated in an undefendable act.

-Eric Cohen

Your article was an excellent accounting of the Pepsi/Apple ads run during yesterday's SuperBowl! I was shocked that they would go that far to hock sugar water. Nice job!

-Linda Kimmelman

America is definitely NOT a civilized country. I thought it before. Now I'm sure!

-Jean-Dominique Veuve

Steve Jobs really has sold his soul to the RIAA... I hope he at least gets something in return. Like going to hell for it.

-Jeff Schwartz


2/2/2004



Cryptogon XML Feed Active


cryptogon feed

Many of you asked for it. A couple of you begged for it. Well, I finally have a news feed! Blogger implemented a content aggregation system called Atom. Whether or not this feed is compatible with your feedreader is a different matter. Here are the clients Atom has listed on their site. Please, no bitching, moaning or complaining if this doesn't work with your kEwl37337 feedreader. Chances are, the issues will be ironed out after the next version of your reader is released. Until then, use an Atom capable reader, or keep ingesting my bloviation the old fashioned way (slider bar, down arrow key, scroll wheel).





Double Jeopardy for Kids Caught in Pepsi Apple Promo :.

Wow, I really missed out on some good stuff by NOT watching the Stupor Bowl! One of Janet Jackson's fake tits. Dogs biting men's crotches. Hard-on pills. Oh man, good stuff!

And then there was the commercial jointly produced by Apple, Pepsi and the RIAA. (Did this actually air?)

You might want to teach your kids how to properly configure the family firewall so inbound connections from local, state, federal and corporate pig agencies are refused! Keeping your IP shitlist up to date is useful and fun for whole family!

That assclown, Steve Jobs, can line up to kiss it with the rest of them:

Four children bullied by the Recording Industry Association of America will re-enact their shame for tens of millions of TV viewers today, at the behest of two giant American corporations: Apple Computer and Pepsi Cola Inc.

Instead of using actors to dramatize their shame, the RIAA, Apple and Pepsi have forced the children themselves to conform with the copyright regime, and to look suitably browbeaten as a series of captions reads: INCRIMINATED � ACCUSED � BUSTED � CHARGED.

Is this a medieval costume drama? A low-budget dramatization of some era of America's dark and troubled past, recorded by Hawthorne, when public humiliations were commonplace? Or is it some strange and sadistic imported Japanese game show - the kind where people assent to be filmed eating worms?

No, it's a home-grown artifact which will be broadcast at great expense across the nation during the annual US Superbowl sport event today. The advertisement features four victims of the RIAA's legal jihad wearing the Scarlet Letter of their own shame for the benefit of the TV cameras - and quite disgustingly, the RIAA insisted that the agency couldn't hire stand-in actors to replay the script, insisting that the 'perpetrators' play themselves : a move which is likely to go down in history as one of the greatest public relations disasters in history.


Research Credit: DG





Growing Up Corporate: Tremor.com Creates Armies of Teenage Marketroid Zombies :.

Raise your children without television. Show them why they need to be leery of corporations, their products and their statements. De-school them. Teach them that they should use real-life experiences, personal relationships and thoughtful reflection to define their own reality. (I would also suggest healthy lessons on subversion and insurgency, with live-fire practice every week, but, hey, that's why I don't have children.) The puke spewing from these corporate PSYOPS factories is destroying the world, one child at a time:

Procter & Gamble has assembled a stealth sales force of teenagers--280,000 strong--to push products on friends and family. A brilliant move--or marketing gone amok?

Caitlin Jones is Hollywood's kind of pitch gal. Several months ago the 16-year-old received an e-mail announcing DreamWorks SKG's new teen flick, Win A Date With Tad Hamilton!, and was asked to help the studio pick the movie's logo. A few weeks later when she went to a movie theater, she was thrilled to see a trailer for the film and discover that they'd picked the logo she liked. "Oh, my God," she told a friend who was sitting next to her, "I voted for that logo!" She beamed. "So they do listen. It does matter."


More: From Tremor.com's Info Page :.

How Does It Work?

Tremor targets viral teens or Connectors with unique word-of-mouth Messaging to create Advocacy and Amplification.

Target the Connectors
The viral teens who are:
� Connected to multiple social networks
� Love to talk about ideas and products

The �crew� is a proprietary panel of 200,000+ teen connectors who have a relationship with Tremor. They have been screened, and they have �opted in� to Tremor.

They have been recruited with the promise of early access to new products and ideas, and they possess the ability to influence the market place.


Research Credit: KH


2/1/2004



More Robots Headed to the Battlefield :.

How about clean water, air and food before any more resources are spent on killer robots/robots that assist with killing?! I know. Crazy talk:

The eight-wheeled Stryker has already seen service in Iraq as an armored troop carrier with human drivers. The idea is to teach Stryker to accomplish a mission on its own, as a robot. By 2010, robotic Strykers and similar contrivances are slated to be in use as all-purpose battlefield vehicles, surveying battlegrounds, sniffing for land mines, or transporting supplies and troops to the front line.

If we don't stop this nonsense of hooking up AI to weapon systems, your kids might just have a run-in with this thing. More crazy talk, you say? Yes, well, it's all fun and games until you meet the robotic military bulldozer, or the video enabled gun that allows the shooter to fire from around corners. Nope, this stuff doesn't look much like the Terminator.

Not yet.

Military scientists (and their minions in business and academia) are feverishly working on various technologies that are allowing for the creation of self aware, killer robots. The pieces of the puzzle are mostly separate now (the AI isn't good enough yet, power sources are a problem, locomotion needs much more work), but with each passing day, watch as the systems become more refined and integrated. Note the increasing ubiquity of robots in surveillance, police and military roles. If humans manage to escape extermination via genetic engineering mishaps, nuclear/chemical/biological weapons and/or manmade environmental collapse over the next fifty years, what do you think the military robots will look like then? Does the Terminator analogy still sound nuts?





Linux: The Rebel Alliance :.

Good introduction to Linux. Suitable for reading by normals. It's also set in my favorite state, Oregon.





The Super Bowl Commercial CBS Won't Allow You to See :.

You guys probably know about this one, but here it is again, just in case:

During this year's Super Bowl, you'll see ads sponsored by beer companies, tobacco companies, and the Bush White House. But you won't see the winning ad in MoveOn.org Voter Fund's Bush in 30 Seconds ad contest. CBS refuses to air it. This is not a partisan issue. It's critical that our media institutions be fair and open to all speakers. CBS is setting a dangerous precedent, and unless we speak up, the pattern may continue.





Any Speculation on These .Mil Hits?

Usually, when Uncle reads Cryptogon, he shows up one session at a time. Today, I noticed this:

Sat Jan 31 04 08:37:07 PM cryptogon.com/2003_03_23_blogarchive.html Direct Access 198.26.119.86 BELVOIR-SUN2.IERN.DISA.MIL MSIE 6.0 - Win NT 800x600 16 M colors

Sat Jan 31 04 08:37:05 PM no entry page detected unable to detect referrer (JavaScript not enabled in visitor's browser) 198.26.119.85 WCS2-BELVOIR.NIPR.MIL Netcape 3.0

Sat Jan 31 04 08:37:05 PM no entry page detected unable to detect referrer (JavaScript not enabled in visitor's browser) 198.26.119.84 BELVOIR-SUN1.IERN.DISA.MIL Netcape 3.0


Is there any speculation out there as to why three sessions would open up, almost simultaneously, from three different IP address on the disa.mil domain? The first two hits appear to be from some kind of proxy server or robot. The third (top entry) reports itself as being a Microsoft browser running on Windows, but who knows what that thing actually is...

Also interesting, note the last octet on each IP. They are sequential: 84, 85, 86. I know what you guys are thinking, "Someone needs to slide Kevin's food under the door and give him some aluminum foil to wrap around his head (shiny side out)." Fine, point taken, but what is this!?

In case you don't know, disa.mil is the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency.




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Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture by Andrew Kimbrell Readers will come to see that industrial food production is indeed a "fatal harvest" - fatal to consumers, as pesticide residues and new disease vectors such as E. coli and "mad cow disease" find their way into our food supply; fatal to our landscapes, as chemical runoff from factory farms poison our rivers and groundwater; fatal to genetic diversity, as farmers rely increasingly on high-yield monocultures and genetically engineered crops; and fatal to our farm communities, which are wiped out by huge corporate farms.

Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America by Bertram Myron Gross This is a relatively short but extremely cogent and well-argued treatise on the rise of a form of fascistic thought and social politics in late 20th century America. Author Bertram Gross' thesis is quite straightforward; the power elite that comprises the corporate, governmental and military superstructure of the country is increasingly inclined to employ every element in their formidable arsenal of 'friendly persuasion' to win the hearts and minds of ordinary Americans through what Gross refers to as friendly fascism.

The Good Life
by Scott and Helen Nearing
Helen and Scott Nearing are the great-grandparents of the back-to-the-land movement, having abandoned the city in 1932 for a rural life based on self-reliance, good health, and a minimum of cash...Fascinating, timely, and wholly useful, a mix of the Nearings' challenging philosophy and expert counsel on practical skills.

Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth by David Bollierd In Silent Theft, David Bollier argues that a great untold story of our time is the staggering privatization and abuse of our common wealth. Corporations are engaged in a relentless plunder of dozens of resources that we collectively own—publicly funded medical breakthroughs, software innovation, the airwaves, the public domain of creative works, and even the DNA of plants, animals and humans. Too often, however, our government turns a blind eye—or sometimes helps give away our assets. Amazingly, the silent theft of our shared wealth has gone largely unnoticed because we have lost our ability to see the commons.

The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It: The Complete Back-To-Basics Guide by John Seymour The Self Sufficient Life and How to Live It is the only book that teaches all the skills needed to live independently in harmony with the land harnessing natural forms of energy, raising crops and keeping livestock, preserving foodstuffs, making beer and wine, basketry, carpentry, weaving, and much more.

When Corporations Rule the World by David C. Korten When Corporations Rule the World explains how economic globalization has concentrated the power to govern in global corporations and financial markets and detached them from accountability to the human interest. It documents the devastating human and environmental consequences of the successful efforts of these corporations to reconstruct values and institutions everywhere on the planet to serve their own narrow ends.

The New Organic Grower: A Master's Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener This expansion of a now-classic guide originally published in 1989 is intended for the serious gardener or small-scale market farmer. It describes practical and sustainable ways of growing superb organic vegetables, with detailed coverage of scale and capital, marketing, livestock, the winter garden, soil fertility, weeds, and many other topics.