cryptogon.com
   HOME
12/25/2004

Cryptogon Reader Contributes $20

MW spreads the Christmas Cheer! Thanks MW!

I've had a great Christmas with my girlfriend. We're going to get tucked into bed and read about cob building methods. Merry Crustmas!

The usual pace of updates will return soon.... *sigh*


12/24/2004

Merry Christmas, Damn It :.

Anyone claiming to be a follower of Jesus Christ has a very high standard to live up to. Christians are supposed to love everyone, their enemies included, without exception. That means loving Iraqis. It means speaking up when “our troops” kill and maim them. Christians are supposed to be truthful and avoid even the appearance of evil. That means Christians shouldn’t lie about the existence of weapons of mass destruction. It of course follows that Christians shouldn’t give the Medal of Freedom to the creators of those lies.



French Finance Minister Warns of Global Economic Catastrophe :.

Merry Christmas!

Hervé Gaymard, France's new finance minister, on Thursday warned of a global "economic catastrophe" if the US, Europe and Asia did not work together to stem the decline of the dollar against the Euro.

As the dollar reached new lows against the European currency, Mr Gaymard voiced the strongest criticism yet from a European finance minister of the dollar's decline, saying it was "absolutely essential" that the US understood the need for "co-ordinated management at the world level" at the next G7 finance ministers meeting in February.

"If we stay as we are, with no co-ordination, one can imagine a catastrophic economic situation at the global level," he said.



Possible Bush Illness :.

Click through for detailed...uh... speculation:

The president apparently uses a wearable defibrillator, a device to stop heart arrhythmia, as seen in photographs. He has had a sudden fainting spell and other symptoms of atrial fibrillation (AF) and has a genetic tendency for it. Some observers have noted neurological and psychological irregularities and other evidence of stroke, which is a possible result of AF. Some of these irregularities could be caused by Wernicke-Korsakoff's, a disease of inveterate alcoholics. The president has an even stronger genetic predisposition for hyperthyroidism and some symptoms of it, including the heartbeat arrhythmia. Only his doctors know for sure.


12/23/2004

Reader Contributions to Cryptogon Covered Food and Gas This Month

For the first time in nearly three years, reader contributions covered my expenses for food and gas for the month of December.

AH, TL, AM, HM, AZ, RS: I humbly offer my most sincere thanks to all of you.

In early 2005, Cryptogon will be moving to a modern content management system (CMS). Your generosity is making this upgrade possible! Thanks again.



Cryptogon Reader Contributes $50

Thanks, RS!



The New Battle for Falluja :.

U.S. Marines battled insurgents in Fallujah on Thursday with warplanes dropping bombs and tanks shelling suspected guerrilla positions, causing deaths on both sides, as the first 200 residents returned to the battered city.

In Fallujah, U.S. F-18 fighter-bombers were seen striking at targets in the city's outskirts. Tank and artillery fire was also heard.

Officials said U.S. Marines were killed but would not specify the number. Several insurgents were also killed, they said. However, military officials said three Marines were killed in the general area.



U.S. Living in 'Fantasy Land' Over Iraq :.

A new report blames the continuing bloodshed in Iraq on America's failure to honestly assess the situation.

The US is facing increasingly deadly attacks in Iraq because, as in the Vietnam War, it failed to honestly assess facts on the ground and is living in "fantasy land", a report says.

The report, prepared by Anthony Cordesman, senior fellow of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said Administration spokesmen and women had appeared to live "in a fantasy land" when giving accounts of events in Iraq.

Mr Cordesman, a former Pentagon official who has made several trips to Iraq, said Iraqi spies were a serious threat to US operations and that there was no evidence insurgent numbers were declining, despite vigorous US and Iraqi counterattacks.



British Government Shreds Hundreds Of Thousands Of Documents On Eve Of FOIA :.

Hundreds of thousands of secret Whitehall files are being shredded before the public gains the right to see them under the Freedom of Information Act on 1 January.

Figures obtained by The Independent show a dramatic escalation in the destruction of confidential papers before the new rights of access come into force. Whitehall departments, including the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), have almost doubled the number of files they have destroyed since the Freedom of Information Act became law.

Although the legislation was passed in 2000, Whitehall was given more than four years to prepare for its introduction. Ministers are bracing themselves for a flood of demands to see confidential documents. Freedom of Information will give the public unprecedented access to previously secret files, including details of ministers' diaries and confidential briefing papers.



Constantine: God's Editor

"Christians" are constantly telling me that the Bible is the complete, 100%, no shit, honest to God, Word of God, end of story. As soon as I'm finished laughing at them, and telling them that their holy book is the product of the editorial whims of madmen and to seek professional psychiatric help, another one tries to "save" me, etc.

To those thinking people out there, I ask: If you were going to read one book about the material Constantine (and the various councils) removed from what "Christians" now call the Bible, which one would you read?

On a related topic, The Isaiah Effect by Gregg Braden seems interesting. I heard Gregg Braden on the radio today talking about this book. It might make for some thought provoking reading.



U.S. Warns Russia Over Yukos Sale :.

Let me get this straight... The U.S. invaded Iraq to steal its oil and now the U.S. is mad at Russia for nationalizing Yukos? Tell me another one:

The Bush administration has criticized Russia's takeover of key parts of the embattled oil giant Yukos and warned the lack of transparency in the case could damage Russia's role in the global economy.

"We are disappointed in the way this case has been handled," deputy State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said Thursday.

"We certainly don't think it has been disposed of in a transparent manner."

On Thursday the Russian state oil firm Rosneft announced it purchased the Baikal Group, an unknown firm that was the winner of an auction on Sunday of Yuganskneftegaz, Yuko's main production division.

The auction went ahead despite a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge in Houston, Texas issuing a stay order, pending the outcome of Yukos' U.S. Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection application.

Thursday's move essentially nationalizes Yuganskneftegaz.



Dollar Reaches a New Record Low Against Euro :.

Another day, another record low for the dollar:

The U.S. dollar hit an all-time low in thin pre-holiday trading Thursday against the euro, which breached the $1.35 mark after a mixed economic report from the U.S. Commerce Department.



Company Delivers First Cloned Cat to Client :.

Most people will laugh this story off as a freak aberration, a nexus, where lunatic cat ladies and criminal corporations treat the tools of Creation the way a six year old treats a Lego set. (Actually, if one was to compare the fruits of their labor, the six year old's work would seem masterful compared to the Mengele-style tinkering that passes for "science" in genetics labs around the world today.)

I know someone who worked in a neuroscience "wet" lab in which other scientists were manufacturing cloned rats for research purposes. She said that when the process fails, which is most of the time, the results are, "the stuff of nightmares." Now, consider the following paragraph from the article:
Scientists also warn that cloned animals suffer from more health problems than their traditionally bred peers and that cloning is still a very inexact science. It takes many gruesome failures to produce just a single clone.
At what point will the imbecile whims of humans lead to an extinction level event?

If these idiots continue to pretend to be God, we might find out sooner rather than later.



Apocalypse Please: DARPA Funds Dozens of New Urban-Warfare Tools :.

The ultimate nightmare scenario is that this society doesn't collapse before the techno-dystopia fully unfurls. We might come to learn that death is, by far, a preferable outcome than what They have in store for us.

Look at your pink, freshly spawned babies as you read the bold sections below. Do you think this stuff is being designed for use on some far-away population of heretics? No brother, they're building this stuff for use against you and your kids (and their kids). The purpose of this technology is to stop the oscillation of history between relative stability and revolution, as The Party of Big Brother did in Orwell's 1984.

So, here are some companies to place at the top of your shit list. And make sure to read down to the bottom of this story for some cheery UAV news!

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency late last week awarded 37 contracts for new urban-warfighting technologies.

The agency last June solicited proposals for casualty-reduction technologies; intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance devices; beyond-line-of-sight weapons; urban command and control tools; and training and simulation systems.

The 37 awards, each worth from $130,000 to $2.7 million for six- to 12-month feasibility demonstrations, are intended to reduce casualties and collateral damage while improving effectiveness of smaller forces, DARPA said in a statement.

The awards went to:

AETC Inc. of San Diego for sound detection devices

Alphatech Inc. of Burlington, Mass., for 3-D situational perception devices

Analysis Group of Falls Church, Va., for automated urban decision support

Applied Research Associates Inc. of Raleigh, N.C., for aerial firefight sensors; optical navigation for operations not using the Global Positioning System; and detectors for concealed weapons and explosives

Aptima Inc. of Woburn, Mass., for a culture-based urban modeling environment

BAE Systems North America of Rockville, Md., for millimeter wave exposure to improve recognition; nonstop communications; an infrared situational awareness and threat warning system; and a rational observer system

BBN Technologies Inc. of Cambridge, Mass., for force multipliers and persistent target tracking by 3-D radar

BBNT Solutions LLC, also of Cambridge, for a cultural analysis and learning environment

DEKA R&D of Manchester, N.H., for a rapid vertical mobility concept Draper Laboratory Inc., also of Cambridge, for radio frequency indoor geolocation and precision emplacement

General Atomics of San Diego for Raptor View high-resolution surveillance

Harris Corp. of Melbourne, Fla., for an urban communications environment

ISX Corp. of Camarillo, Calif., for a culturally aware peacekeeping tool set

Lockheed Martin Corp. for force multiplication and stabilization analysis models

Metal Storm USA Ltd. of Arlington, Va., for urban weapons

NextGen Aeronautics Inc. of Torrance, Calif., for small gunships

Omnitech Robotics International of Englewood, Colo., for sensor emplacement methods

PPG Industries Inc. of Allison Park, Pa., for nanostructured light-weight armor

Raytheon Co. for active-protection and head-mounted alert systems

Science Applications International Corp. of San Diego for smart-dust sensors, RF predictive propagation models, focused situational awareness and renewed-conflict models

Sandia National Laboratories of Albuquerque, N.M., for air-dropped unmanned ground vehicles and multiplayer wargaming environments

Smart Information Flow Technologies LLC of Minneapolis for cross-cultural training simulations

SRI International of Menlo Park, Calif., for a wall-climbing robot

University of Texas at Austin for low-cost radar sensors for personnel detection and tracking

Wave Technologies of Chantilly, Va., for a rapid urban-warfare training environment.

DARPA this week also announced that its Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems AV-1 aircraft, built by Boeing Co., successfully obeyed ground-based pilots’ commands via satellite. The first pilot, at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., handed the UAV over to another in Seattle. The Seattle pilot executed four air maneuvers before returning control to Edwards.

Capt. Ralph Alderson, the J-UCAS program manager, said in a statement that the demonstration shows future UAVs could maintain “a persistent, lethal presence anywhere, anytime” with operators located at air bases and carriers around the world.

DARPA said the aircraft’s software could become one of the first candidates for the Defense Department’s planned Common Operating System to enable interactive, worldwide operational control.


12/22/2004

Secret Evidence Used in Australian “Terrorist” Trial :.

In a development without precedent in Australia, secret evidence is being heard in closed sessions, with access denied to the public, the media and even the accused man and his lawyer, in a hearing of terrorist-related offences currently underway in Sydney. A magistrate has granted wide-ranging secrecy and suppression orders, in the first test of the Howard government’s latest “national security” legislation.



Guinea Pig Kids: How New York City is Using Children to Test Experimental AIDS Drugs :.

A reader tipped me off on this a couple of days ago. Thanks!

HIV positive children and their loved ones have few rights if they choose to battle with social work authorities in New York City.

Jacklyn Hoerger worked at the Incarnation Children's Center

Jacklyn Hoerger's job was to treat children with HIV at a New York children's home.

But nobody had told her that the drugs she was administering were experimental and highly toxic.

"We were told that if they were vomiting, if they lost their ability to walk, if they were having diarrhoea, if they were dying, then all of this was because of their HIV infection."

In fact it was the drugs that were making the children ill and the children had been enrolled on the secret trials without their relatives' or guardians' knowledge.

As Jacklyn would later discover, those who tried to take the children off the drugs risked losing them into care.


12/21/2004

Putin Hints at China Alliance for Yukos Oil :.

Back in August, I wrote:
I've been telling people, in private, that I believe the Russian government shut down Yukos because of strategic military reasons. Key word, "believe." I have no proof of this, but I don't buy the justification that back taxes are the cause. The establishment of Yukos was a crime in the first place.

With the U.S. drawing a bead on every piece of dirt that contains more than a few drops of oil, if you were a Russian military planner, what would you do?
I'll count that one in the "correct" column:

Gazprom, Russia's state-controlled gas monopoly, could team up with the China National Petroleum Corporation to develop the Yukos oil company's main production asset, sold to a mystery bidder on Sunday.

Speaking in Germany, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, said: "We don't rule out that CNPC would take part in the production of Yuganskneftegas, which was sold at an auction." He said CNPC did not participate in the auction. "However, Gazprom and CNPC have reached an agreement about co-operation in the energy sector."

Immediately after Mr Putin's statement, Gazprom said a new memorandum, signed two days before the auction, covered strategic co-operation with China in the oil sector - particularly over oil projects in Russia. It already has an agreement with CNPC over gas.



Cryptogon Local Meetup/Orange County Post Carbon Group :.

Southern California Cryptogon readers should show up to the next Orange County Post Carbon Group meeting:

Wednesday, January 12, 7:00 PM

Diedrich's Coffeehouse
1170 Baker
Costa Mesa, CA
714-432-0747

Thanks, GH, for letting me know about this meeting!



Woman Photographing Capitol Triggers Police Response :.

I was shooting some b-roll for the documentary several weeks ago, and I was pointing my video camera at the red-light and surveillance cameras at an intersection in Costa Mesa, CA (close to where I live). Within minutes, cops started circling. Yep. Cops were driving in circles around my location, slowing as they went past me. They don't like it when you point cameras at Their cameras. Tens of thousands of people drive underneath those surveillance masts every day without thinking anything about it at all. But when an individual points his or her camera at the matrix.... Well... That's different.

For some reason, I'm happy to report, the cops left me alone that day. But I know it's just a matter of time until most activity involving cameras in public will be considered possible terrorist activities. Ashley's story is probably pretty typical nowadays:

Ashley Miner didn't think taking pictures of the state Capitol would rise to the level of a terrorist plot. The building has been photographed only a jillion times.

She thought the photos would help with her final paper in a University at Albany history class. But as Miner sat in her car taking pictures last Thursday, parked between the Capitol and Empire State Plaza, somebody walked by and got the idea she was a threat. The person dialed 911 and gave the Albany Police Department her license plate number.

At 7 a.m. the next day, Miner got a call from her upset mother, Carol, in Rhode Island. The police had called Carol Miner to find out what her daughter, a UAlbany senior planning on going to law school, was doing with a camera alongside New York's Capitol.



Metal Storm Weapon Systems for U.S. Military Killer Robots :.

Brisbane-based ballistics company, Metal Storm Ltd, was selected by the US Department of Defense to demonstrate the feasibility of one of its weapons mounted on an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV).

Related: U.S. ARMY ROBOTS TO ENTER URBAN COMBAT IN IRAQ IN EARLY 2005

Research Credit: AL



Cryptogon Reader Contributes $20

AZ is helping to keep food in the belly! Thanks AZ!



Ruppert's Warning: As The World Burns :.

This is the material I was emailing by request a few weeks ago. Someone posted it to a webserver:

The end of the world "as we know it" is very close. There may be nothing that can be done to prevent it and only little that will soften its impact. This places even greater importance on what FTW has been advocating for many years: personal and community preparedness.

This article constitutes FTW's third-ever economic warning to its subscribers. The first, published on September 9, 2001 was followed two days later by the "attacks" on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. The second was on July 8, 2002 just before a precipitous drop in the Dow of more than 1400 points and the wiping out of more than a trillion dollars of shareholder equity, especially from pension funds.

One key to grasping the interrelatedness of these developments is to understand that dramatic economic collapse, especially in the case of a super power or an Empire, has historically created a power vacuum which has resulted in war. If, as von Clausewitz said, "war is a continuation of politics by other means," then we must also admit that politics is a continuation of economics; and economics is a continuation of energy. All economics (at least in this world) is founded upon energy, whether it is hydrocarbon energy or physical labor (food calories). There are 10 calories of hydrocarbon energy in every calorie of food consumed.

Energy is the ability to do work; it is, in effect, the ability to survive. Energy is economics. Now, economic warfare several orders of magnitude above that which has occurred since 9/11 is underway. As much of the world hoped it would soon be dealing with a Kerry presidency that might have provided a partner still worth working with, it refrained from making economic moves that might permanently damage the US.

There was no point in destroying the US economy until it became clear that the election was rigged and the neocons had been moving ahead with a hostile agenda all along. For the world, November 2nd represented yet another Rubicon: there is no longer any hope of "peaceful coexistence" with the American Empire. Ultimately this conflict must become a physical one.


Research Credit: GH



Attack On U.S. Iraq Base Kills 24 :.

An attack at a US military base in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul has killed 24 people and injured more than 60, the US military has said.

Research Credit: DG


12/20/2004

Iran Missiles Pose Threat to U.S. Interests... In Iraq :.

HAHAHA! Can you believe it!?

A senior U.S. official said Iran and Syria have developed ballistic missiles that can destroy U.S. targets in Iraq as well as in nations aligned with Washington.



Six More Marines Die in Fallujah :.

There's a news blackout on Falljuah. This is from Agence France-Presse:

West and Wilson insisted however that fighting that broke out Friday in Fallujah, which left six marines dead, was not an example failure.

"We are not talking of a setback, but just about insurgents hiding in houses for a chance to kill a soldier," Wilson said.



Britain Has Become a Kafkaesque Nightmare :.

We were taught at school that Franz Kafka's The Trial was a dark satire on bureaucracy. No disrespect to the teacher in question...but The Trial is considerably more than that.

In fact Kafka's tale of Joseph K, a bank clerk charged with an unspecified crime, arrested and eventually executed without ever knowing the reason why, is one of the most chilling horror stories of the 20th century. But its horror lies not in the simple mocking of opaque, bureaucratic obstinacy, but in the nightmare vision of a society where morality and logic, the keystones that build civilisation, have been replaced by an authority exercising feckless whims and displaying insane, dangerous inconsistencies.



Cryptome's 'Eyeballing the Iraq Kill and Maim Zone' Series :.

Liberation... Victory... Democracy...

Gaze upon it! Look at this hell we've built on earth! Your tax money and the indebtedness of your children (and their children and their children and their children...) are making this possible.



How to Survive the Crash and Save the Earth :.

If you only read one thing today, read Ran's latest essay.



PROFESSOR FIRED FOR STANDING UP TO MONSANTO :.

A well-respected and popular professor at the University of California in Berkeley has been fired after publishing a scientific paper regarding the uncontrolled contamination of irreplaceable native Mexican corn varieties by genetically engineered corn. Dr. Ignacio Chapela, whose corn contamination article was published in the science journal "Nature," was denied his tenure due to pressure from the biotech company Monsanto on the University (the UC Berkeley tenure review panel had actually voted almost unanimously to approve his tenure). Professor Chapela has been told to have his office cleaned out by December 31.



Food Stamp Use is on Rise Across U.S. :.

Since 2000, Gray and more than 6 million other Americans have joined the ranks of the families who find it increasingly difficult to perform a most basic function - to put food on their tables.

The economic indicators are numerous.

After a seven-year decline, the number of Americans on food stamps has shot up 39 percent since 2000, according to federal statistics. Every state, except Hawaii, has felt the impact. In Arizona, food stamp rolls have increased 104 percent, in Nevada, 97 percent; Oregon, 79 percent; South Carolina, 68 percent; Missouri, 65 percent.

Texas has added nearly a million people to its food stamp rolls in only four years.



Agencies Warn Bush that U.S. Isn't Defeating Iraq Insurgents :.

Really? No!

The CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department have warned President Bush that the United States and its Iraqi allies aren't winning the battle against Iraqi insurgents who are trying to derail the country's Jan. 30 elections, according to administration officials.



'Artificial Life' Comes Step Closer :.

Researchers at Rockefeller University in the US have made the first tentative steps towards creating a form of artificial life.

Their creations, small synthetic vesicles that can process (express) genes, resemble a crude kind of biological cell.

The parts for their "vesicle bioreactors", as they call them, all come from diverse realms of life.

The soft cell walls are made of fat molecules taken from egg white. The cell contents are an extract of the common gut bug E. coli, stripped of all its genetic material.

This essence of life contains ready-made much of the biological machinery needed to make proteins; the researchers also added an enzyme from a virus to allow the vesicle to translate DNA code.

When they added genes, the cell fluid started to make proteins, just like a normal cell would.




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.