cryptogon.com
   HOME
10/8/2004

U.S. Military Bombs Wedding Party in Fallujah, Kills 11 :.

A US air raid, aimed at foreign fighters led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killed 11 people and wounded 17 after a wedding party in the rebel-held Iraqi city of Fallujah today, residents and doctors said.

The US military said a "precision strike" hit a safe-house used by associates of the Jordanian Islamist militant.

Rescuers dug bodies from rubble with their hands after the raid on the house where residents said a wedding party had just taken place. They said the groom died and the bride was wounded.

"Credible intelligence sources confirmed Zarqawi leaders were meeting at the safe house at the time of the strike," a US military statement said.

Blood pooled on the floor of the hospital. A doctor named Rafah al-Hayat said 11 people had been killed and 17 wounded. One of his colleagues, Khaled Nasser, said nine females aged between 5 and 50 were among the wounded.

Reuters television footage showed four of the wounded women lying bloodied and bandaged in the hospital.


10/7/2004

U.S. Government Plans to Track Every Car :.

A little-known federal agency is planning a new monitoring program by which the government would track every car on the road by using onboard transceivers.

The agency, the Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office, is part of the Department of Transportation. According to an extensive report in the Charlotte, N.C., Creative Loafing, the agency doesn't respond to public inquiries about its activity.


According to the report, cutting-edge tracking technology will be used by government transportation management centers to monitor every aspect of transportation. Under the plan, not only will movement be monitored but it also will be archived in massive databases for future use.

The paper reports a group of car manufacturers, technology companies and government interests have worked toward implementing the project for 13 years.



Researchers Resurrect Deadly 'Spanish' Flu :.

I couldn't make it up if I tried!

A tiny genetic change may be all that stands between us and the next deadly flu pandemic.

A team of scientists at the National Microbiology Research Laboratory in Winnipeg, Manitoba arrived at that chilling conclusion after they managed to create a cousin of the deadly 1918 Spanish flu virus in the lab.

The results of their work are published in the journal Nature.

Working with American and Japanese partners, the researchers used two synthetic genes copied from the 1918 virus, as well as three other human viruses, to come up with something that mimics the deadly effects of the 1918 strain.

When the lab-produced virus was injected into the noses of lab mice, it went on a deadly rampage through their lungs, causing fatal internal bleeding and inflammation.



FBI Seizes Global Indymedia Servers, Reasons Unknown :.

The FBI took the hard drives of Global IMC servers in the USA and the UK. It appears that a court order was issued to Rackspace (Indymedia's service provider with offices in the US and in London) to physically remove the hard drives from Global Indymedia servers (backup servers are now in place). Rackspace was given no time to defend against the order before it was acted upon and turned over the hard drives, both in the US and the UK. The servers hosted numerous local IMCs, including UK Indymedia, Belgium, African imcs, Palestine, UK, Germany, Brasil, Italy, Uruguay, Poland, Belgrade, Portugal and others.



Heating Oil Supply Issues

I'd like to hear from readers who rely on heating oil. Are you making contingency plans for this winter? I emailed a good friend of mine who lives near Boston and these issues were VERY much on his mind. I'm just curious if anyone else is doing anything about it. Of course, a disruption in the supply of heating oil is unthinkable. As my friend put it:

What you have to realize is that most of the East Coast runs on heating oil. If we have a severe winter and people can't heat their homes you are going to have a natural disaster much worse than any f*cken hurricane.
This is why I like Oregon... Trees are an excellent way to store solar energy. Keep enough trees around and you will never freeze.



OIL $53

In the short term, I'd say this is now a panic buying bubble. Traders who take long positions during panic buying bubbles tend to get their clocks cleaned. We might see some whipsawing back down to the $48 region before it consolidates and rises more. But as someone who has traded using just about every technical indicator in the book, and combinations thereof, I can tell you that there is no rhyme or reason to these moves. We could be at $60 just as easily as we could be at $40. It certainly does seem like it's headed even higher, based on the steady din of supply problems.


10/6/2004

U.S. Job Cuts Hit 8-Month High in September :.

U.S. planned job cuts soared to an eight-month high in September while new hiring rose only slightly, a report said on Tuesday.

Employment consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. said employers announced 107,863 layoffs in September, 41 percent more than in September 2003 and 45 percent more than in August of this year, when 74,150 were laid off.

The September figure was the largest since January 2004, when employers laid off 117,556 workers.

The September figure brings third-quarter job cuts to 251,585, 19.9 percent more than the 209,895 registered in the previous quarter and 4 percent more than the 241,548 for the third quarter of 2003.

Job losses in September were particularly heavy in the computer, transportation, telecommunications and consumer products industries, the report said.

Adding to the glum jobs picture was the slow pace of new hiring in September. The report said employer hiring announcements revealed only 16,166 new job openings in that month compared with 132,105 in August.



Smart Highways: GPS Tracking and Toll Roads for Everyone :.

Increased transportation technology investment will center on Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC), the technology expected to support applications for "smart" highway initiatives such as real-time traffic and weather updates to motorists, comprehensive automobile tracking, and universal electronic toll collection. Used today primarily for automated toll collection, DSRC is a combination of wireless and radio frequency identification technologies, used to support a wide range of roadside-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-vehicle public safety applications, according to INPUT.



'Panic Sets In' As Oil Prices Hit New High :.

"There is a grim realisation that there is a chronic shortage of light sweet crude in the world," analysts said.

"Real panic is setting in, and the hurricane-related bad weather is still causing a backlog in US imports, so this afternoon's results will be interesting to say the least," they added.

Almost 27% of Mexico's 1.7 million barrels of daily production is still disrupted, according to the US Department of the Interior.

More than 15 million barrels, 2.5% of Mexico's annual oil production, have been affected.



OIL ABOVE $52

Light crude for November delivery rose $1.06 to $52.15.



Final Official Report: No Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq :.

In a final report to be made public Wednesday, investigators will conclude that Saddam Hussein didn't possess stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction at the time of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.



Robert Reich: U.S. Dollar Heading For Collapse :.

The US dollar is fast reaching a point at which foreign investors will abandon it and send it into a freefall, says Bill Clinton's former economic adviser.

Robert Reich told the Global Business Forum in Banff that record high budget and trade deficits, personal debt and a foreign policy that is alienating traditional allies, has the already slumping US dollar headed for collapse. The US already requires a daily infusion of $1.2 billion in foreign investment just to keep the greenback's decline under control, he said.

"The mainstream view is that the budget deficit (currently $422 billion).. is going to get larger,: said Reich, who is an "informal adviser" to presidential hopeful John Kerry. "Simultaneously, the mainstream view is that there is no reason to believe that the trade deficit (approximately $600 billion) is going to shrink anytime soon.

In fact, I see the dollar continuing to decline and I see at some point a tipping point where East Asian banks that have been trying to prop up the dollar, maintaining their exports (to the US), because at some point it becomes a lousy investment."

Reich said global investors are already conducting significant amounts of business in Euros, not US dollars.



Oh Dude: Video of U.S. F-16 Slaughter in Iraq :.

The video is here:

The Pentagon said yesterday it was investigating cockpit video footage that shows American pilots attacking and killing a group of apparently unarmed Iraqi civilians.

The 30-second clip shows the pilot targeting the group of people in a street in the city of Fallujah and asking his mission controllers whether he should "take them out". He is told to do so and, shortly afterwards, the footage shows a huge explosion where the people were. A second voice can be heard on the clip saying: "Oh, dude."

The existence of the video, taken last April inside the cockpit of a US F-16 fighter has been known for some time, though last night's broadcast by Channel 4 News is believed to be the first time a mainstream broadcaster has shown the footage.

At no point during the exchange between the pilot and controllers does anyone ask whether the Iraqis are armed or posing a threat. Critics say it proves war crimes are being committed.



High School Students Build Solar/Hydrogen Vehicle :.

This project cost less than $10,000 and was undertaken by high school physics students and their teacher. Please Please Please support Mr. Waxman and his students!

From the Arizona Republic story:

The ungainly looking Chevy pickup parked in the courtyard at Central High School, with a huge set of solar panels mounted on top, may not look so futuristic.

But it certainly points the way.

Hand-built on a shoestring budget by a Central physics teacher and a team of students, the truck is one of a kind, a demonstration of how future transportation can be self-sustaining and pollution-free.

The truck is hydrogen-powered and creates its own fuel from solar energy and water, a technical feat that rivals the advanced technology being researched by major auto companies and universities. The four-cylinder engine is tuned to run on hydrogen, which is produced by a hand-built electrolysis system mounted in the bed.

Teacher Cory Waxman and his students took four years to build the experiment, believed to be the only self-sustaining hydrogen vehicle that uses a conventional internal-combustion engine.

"Nobody has ever made a car that runs on sunlight and water," Waxman said. "There are other cars that run on hydrogen, but they don't make their own fuel."

Built for less than $10,000, the project has caught the attention of experts in alternative-fuel research.

"Over the past three years of research in hydrogen, I've been more impressed with what they did than anything else I've seen around the world," said Scottsdale inventor Bryan Beaulieu, who is building a hydrogen-powered house in north Scottsdale. "With practically no resources, they are doing something everybody says it's going to take 20 years to do."


Related: Central High School (Phoenix, Arizona) E-Tech Club (Environmental Technologies Club)



Edwards/Cheney Debate

Believe me when I say that I have no intention of voting for Kerry/Edwards or Bush/Cheney. Last night's Vice Presidential debate, however, was an incredible spectacle to behold!

The Kerry/Edwards ticket represents mainstream, status quo criminality. The Bush/Cheney ticket, on the other hand, represents the knife's edge of a lunatic element of the elite.

I listened to the debate with my girlfriend, and she would be able to tell you: Cheney's comments left me in awe. I was expecting men in coats to drag Cheney off the stage with a big net.

Would you believe me if I told you that Cheney cited El Salvador as a model of democracy!!??

CHENEY: Twenty years ago we had a similar situation in El Salvador. We had—guerrilla insurgency controlled roughly a third of the country, 75,000 people dead, and we held free elections. I was there as an observer on behalf of the Congress.

The human drive for freedom, the determination of these people to vote, was unbelievable. And the terrorists would come in and shoot up polling places; as soon as they left, the voters would come back and get in line and would not be denied the right to vote.

And today El Salvador is a whale of a lot better because we held free elections.

The power of that concept is enormous. And it will apply in Afghanistan, and it will apply as well in Iraq.
WOW!


10/5/2004

Fahrenheit 9/11 Out On DVD :.

Number 1 on Amazon.com.



OIL HITS $51 ON LENGTHY U.S. SUPPLY OUTAGE :.

Oil prices hit a new record of more than $51 a barrel Tuesday as a prolonged U.S. production outage following Hurricane Ivan attracted fresh speculative buying.

U.S. light crude set a high of $51.24 a barrel in afternoon trading, while London Brent moved to a record $47.40 a barrel.

"Fair value is probably not too far from these levels," said Emanuele Ravano, head of portfolio management at PIMCO. "If you look at the longer term factors there is still clearly demand inelasticity and poor infrastructure."

High prices have had little effect on the fastest oil demand growth in a generation this year, while concern of potential supply disruptions as oil producers pump at full capacity has fed price gains.

Supply anxiety is building ahead of the northern hemisphere winter, when demand for heating oil surges. Inventories of crude and distillates in the world's top energy user, the United States, are running as much as 4 percent below last year.



Air Force Pursuing Antimatter Weapons :.

Rest assured, humanity will annihilate itself:

The U.S. Air Force is quietly spending millions of dollars investigating ways to use a radical power source -- antimatter, the eerie "mirror" of ordinary matter -- in future weapons.

The most powerful potential energy source presently thought to be available to humanity, antimatter is a term normally heard in science-fiction films and TV shows, whose heroes fly "antimatter-powered spaceships" and do battle with "antimatter guns."

But antimatter itself isn't fiction; it actually exists and has been intensively studied by physicists since the 1930s. In a sense, matter and antimatter are the yin and yang of reality: Every type of subatomic particle has its antimatter counterpart. But when matter and antimatter collide, they annihilate each other in an immense burst of energy.

During the Cold War, the Air Force funded numerous scientific studies of the basic physics of antimatter. With the knowledge gained, some Air Force insiders are beginning to think seriously about potential military uses -- for example, antimatter bombs small enough to hold in one's hand, and antimatter engines for 24/7 surveillance aircraft.

More cataclysmic possible uses include a new generation of super weapons -- either pure antimatter bombs or antimatter-triggered nuclear weapons; the former wouldn't emit radioactive fallout. Another possibility is antimatter- powered "electromagnetic pulse" weapons that could fry an enemy's electric power grid and communications networks, leaving him literally in the dark and unable to operate his society and armed forces.



U.S. Faces Complex Insurgency in Iraq :.

The key to fighting an enemy like the U.S. is to avoid, to the extent possible, formal, heirarchical organization:

The U.S. military is fighting the most complex guerrilla war in its history, with 140,000 American soldiers trained for conventional warfare flailing against a thicket of insurgent groups with competing aims and no supreme leader.

The three dozen or so guerrilla bands agree on little beyond forcing the Americans out of Iraq.

In other U.S. wars, the enemy was clear. In Vietnam, a visible leader - Ho Chi Minh - led a single army fighting to unify the country under socialism. But in Iraq, the disorganized insurgency has no single commander, no political wing and no dominant group.

U.S. troops can't settle on a single approach to fight groups whose goals and operations vary. And it's hard to sort combatants from civilians in a chaotic land where large parts of some communities support the insurgents and others are too afraid to risk their lives to help foreigners.

"It's more complex and challenging than any other insurgency the United States has fought," aid Bruce Hoffman, a RAND counterinsurgency expert who served as an adviser to the U.S.-led occupation administration.



Air Force Building Superconducting Generator to Power Microwave Weapons :.

Five megawatts of power from a generator the size of a beer keg!?

"Wright-Patterson... Wright-Patterson," I mumbled to myself for a few seconds. "Where have I heard references to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in the past?"

Then it hit me. Type Wright-Patterson UFO into Google. HAHA!

Force expects planes will be able to fire non-lethal microwave rays at enemy ground troops with the help of a new superconducting generator system developed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base after about 25 years of research.

Heavy, inefficient generators have been a hurdle to the development of airborne microwave weapons, which create a disabling burning sensation.

Microwaves could be used to control large groups of enemy fighters without killing them or disable electronics-dependent enemy weapons, said Philip Coyle, senior adviser for the Center for Defense Information.

The Air Force is preparing to award a $22 million contract to a private contractor to construct and demonstrate the new electrical generating system by 2009.

"We finally have the materials where we're ready to build this generator," Lt. Col. JoAnn Erno, chief of the power division of Air Force Research Laboratory's Propulsion Directorate, said Monday.

Microwaves high-powered electromagnetic beams that can rapidly heat water molecules and other directed-energy weapons could bring advantages to the battlefield in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, where U.S. troops have had to deal with hostile but unarmed crowds as well as dangerous insurgents.

Aside from paralyzing potential attackers or noncombatants like a long-range stun gun, the weapons could disable the electronics of missiles and roadside bombs or even disable a vehicle in a high-speed chase, developers say. The weapons emit a pulse of energy and can destroy semiconductors with a surge of volts.

Erno said conventional generators, which have heavy copper coils, are large, heavy and less efficient in producing power than the superconducting generators. Planes carrying conventional generators would have to fly at low altitudes and be in danger of being shot down by small-arms fire, she said.

"We can't take those airborne," Erno said. "What we have to do from the Air Force side is to produce much smaller superconducting generators."

Powered by a turbine engine, the new generators are about the size of a small beer keg and designed to produce five megawatts of power.

The generators have lightweight metal foils coated with superconducting material that carry many times more current and are more efficient, making possible an electric power system strong enough for microwave weapons and light enough for airplanes.

Erno said the system would probably be used on cargo planes such as C-130s. With a superconducting generator, the system will weigh about half of its current 20,000 pounds, which is the equivalent of about eight Toyota Corollas.

"They've got something going there," said Ivan Oelrich, director of strategic security programs for the Federation of American Scientists, a private group dedicated to ending the arms race and avoiding the use of nuclear weapons. "What they're trying to do is doable."

However, Oelrich said that to operate a diesel engine to power the generator will require a lot of fuel, adding weight and cost to the operation.

"If you're going to use it continuously, then the fuel will be the big weight factor," he said. "To operate a thing like that requires a few tons of fuel per hour."

Oelrich also questioned whether the Air Force had considered a less efficient, but less expensive superconducting system. He said the proposed system could be expensive to maintain and might require multiple backup systems.

Coyle said it is not yet known how effective microwave weapons will be. For example, he said, it may take a lot of microwaves to disable just a few enemy weapons, and microwaves may not be effective in battling small numbers of insurgents in urban areas because the fighters hide and seek cover behind buildings.



Politics and Religion Spark Slap Fight :.

Fully nuts!

Police were called to quell a slap fight between two University of North Carolina students that began with an argument over who Jesus would vote for president.

James Robert Austin, 19, and Robert Brooks Rollins, 22, apparently let their passion get out of hand after watching the U.S. presidential debates Thursday night, the Durham Herald-Sun reported.

Austin reportedly slapped Rollins and Rollins slapped back -- and the slap fight escalated to where Austin fell on a concrete patio, hitting his head, police told the newspaper.

Rollins called an ambulance and Austin was taken to UNC Hospitals for examination, then released.

Both students decided to turn the other cheek and declined to press charges.


10/4/2004

Manifesting Madness in the Name of Jesus :.

Today, NPR ran a piece called Politics and the Prayer Group. This must be heard to be believed. I find it incredibly ironic that these "Christians" support presidential candidates who have both participated in Satanic rituals as part of their initiation into the Skull and Bones organization.

Tonight, I'll pray to God to save me from His followers.



REpower Completes Construction of a 5 MegaWatt Wind Turbine :.

With the installation of the rotor on Friday evening, all the essential assembly work on the REpower 5M had been successfully completed. The remaining work was finished off over the weekend, leaving the way clear for the electrical commissioning work. By the end of the year, the largest wind turbine in the world with a rated output of 5 megawatts and a rotor diameter of 126 metres, will be supplying the grid with enough power for around 4,500 average households.


10/3/2004

2004 Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival :.

this is an audio post - click to play


I was up in San Francisco with some friends for the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. I had a great time. I've never been to a concert in San Francisco, never mind a free, multistage, outdoor event. Golden Gate Park is a beautiful place.

I appreciated the cop tollerance of the flagrant disregard of alcohol laws. People were hauling their booze around by the cooler-load AND IT WAS ALLOWED! I kept having a gag-type reflex when I was walking with open containers right in front of cops. It seemed extremely weird to see cops showing no concern at all while standing in the middle of a public event with thousands of drunk people meandering about. I don't smoke pot, but I was shocked by the cop tolerance of pot heads at this thing! WOW. I know, it's San Francisco, but Jesus!!!! It REEEEEEEEKED like pot at that thing, pot was everywhere... the cops couldn't care less.

How about the music?

I liked Reeltime Travelers, John Prine and Old Crow Medicine Show most of all.




Google


cryptogon.com
www

:. Reading

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.