Americans Must Have Criminal Checks Before Contacting Foreigners on Internet
April 5th, 2007(Several thousand people have read this and Reddit is only showing 2 up votes? Do you guys not use Reddit?)
HAHA! “They” may hate us for our freedom, but if you’re an American, don’t try chatting up any foreigners online without the seal of approval from Cheney’s Magic 8-Ball.
Do you notice what’s happening here?
As Americans go to interact with the outside world, what they’re finding more and more of is red tape.
Try getting a FOREX account that allows you to send your money out of the United States at will.
If you don’t have a U.S. passport already, try to get one, just don’t hold your breath.
Will you be allowed to board your flight out of the U.S.?
Have you paid your exit tax?
Want to renounce your U.S. citizenship? Again, don’t hold your breath.
Want to correspond with a foreign person, and possibly start a relationship with that person? Well, now that’s a matter for the Department of Justice.
How long will it take for the government ink pisser to approve your plans to correspond with someone over email?
Via: prweb:
On March 26, 2007, a new federal law restricting Americans from contacting foreigners through internet dating sites was upheld by a federal court after a Constitutional challenge by an internet dating company. In European Connections v. Alberto Gonzales, 1:06-CV-0426-CC, Judge Clarence Cooper of the US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia dismissed a lawsuit by European Connections which claimed that the law violated the right to freedom of speech contained in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The plaintiff had failed to challenge the law based on the First Amendment right to assemble.
According to Tristan Laurent, President of the advocacy group Online Dating Rights, “We will now have to take legal action from the point of view of the users of online dating sites. The whole idea that it is now a crime for American men to send emails to women in other countries is so preposterous it is beyond belief. The judge’s ruling that there is no Constitutional violation in forcing Americans to divulge all sorts of highly personal information to a complete stranger or scammer abroad before the American can even say hello or know to whom he is writing is only exceeded in foolishness by Congress in making the law.”
The law was originally called the International Matchmaker Regulation Act, but it did not pass Congress in previous years by that name and it was later named the International Marriage Broker Regulation Act (IMBRA) before it passed on December 17th, 2005. The law, which was attached to the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) was apparently not debated in public and Mr. Laurent says that no dating company or dating site user was invited to a closed-door Senate hearing in July 2004.
IMBRA makes it a felony for an internet dating company, that primarily focuses on introducing Americans to foreigners, to allow any American to communicate with any person of foreign nationality without first subjecting that American to a criminal background check, a sex offender check and without first having the American certify any previous convictions or arrests, any previous marriages or divorces any children and all states of residence since 18. Match.com is excluded from the law, and the judge found that this exception posed no challenge to the Fifth Amendment equal protection clause because American women are supposedly not abused by American men that they meet on the internet, and thus are not in need of protection.
Justice Center Leoben: New Apple Store, or Austrian Prison?
April 5th, 2007This look is also popular on U.S. university campuses. Although, Austrian prisoners clearly live better lives than U.S. grad students!
I kid.
Not really.
Via: Ah Boon Net.
The Last Confessions of E. Howard Hunt
April 4th, 2007Via: Online Journal:
The April 5 issue of Rolling Stone features the deathbed confession of CIA operative and key Bay of Pigs/Watergate/Nixon administration figure E. Howard Hunt, The Last Confession of E. Howard Hunt by Erik Hedegaard. This piece is significant not only for its exploration of Hunt, but for breakthrough information that appears to thoroughly corroborate the work of key John F. Kennedy assassination researchers and historians.
Who killed JFK?
According to Hunt’s confession, which was taken by his son, St. John (“Saintâ€) Hunt, over the course of many personal and carefully planned father-son meetings, the following individuals were among the key participants:
Lyndon B. Johnson: LBJ, whose own career was assisted by JFK nemesis J. Edgar Hoover (FBI), gave the orders to a CIA-led hit team, and helped guide the Warren Commission/lone gunman cover-up.
Cord Meyer: CIA agent, architect of the Operation Mockingbird disinformation apparatus, and husband of Mary Meyer (who had an affair with JFK).
David Atlee Philips: CIA and Bay of Pigs veteran. Recruited William Harvey (CIA) and Cuban exile militant Antonio Veciana.
William Harvey: CIA and Bay of Pigs veteran. Connected to Mafia figures Santos Trafficante and Sam Giancana.
Antonio Veciana: Cuban exile, founder of CIA-backed Alpha 66.
Frank Sturgis: CIA operative, mercenary, Bay of Pigs veteran, and later Watergate figure.
David Morales: CIA hit man, Bay of Pigs veteran. Morales was also a figure involved with the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.
Lucien Sarti: Corsican assassin and drug trafficker, possible “French gunman,†Grassy Knoll (second) shooter.
Would Hunt continue to tell lies on his deathbed? Perhaps. Would Hunt tell a final tall story or two, to protect himself, or perhaps deal one final slap in the face to the US government (which made him a fall guy for Watergate)? Yes. Would Hunt hide the involvement of certain individuals to whom he remained loyal, including people who are still alive? Certainly. Anything from an operative like Hunt can only be accepted with caution and healthy skepticism.
Nevertheless, Hunt’s scenario has the ring of truth.
Each of the named names are well-known CIA and CIA-linked players exposed by many researchers and historians who have detailed the enduring connection from the Bay of Pigs and the Dallas hit to Watergate and Iran-Contra.
George Orwell’s Former London Home Now Surrounded by Dozens of Surveillance Cameras
April 4th, 2007Via: This Is London:
The Big Brother nightmare of George Orwell’s 1984 has become a reality – in the shadow of the author’s former London home.
It may have taken a little longer than he predicted, but Orwell’s vision of a society where cameras and computers spy on every person’s movements is now here.
According to the latest studies, Britain has a staggering 4.2million CCTV cameras – one for every 14 people in the country – and 20 per cent of cameras globally. It has been calculated that each person is caught on camera an average of 300 times daily.
Use of spy cameras in modern-day Britain is now a chilling mirror image of Orwell’s fictional world, created in the post-war Forties in a fourth-floor flat overlooking Canonbury Square in Islington, North London.
On the wall outside his former residence – flat number 27B – where Orwell lived until his death in 1950, an historical plaque commemorates the anti-authoritarian author. And within 200 yards of the flat, there are 32 CCTV cameras, scanning every move.
John McCain Sees Progress in Baghdad; 21 Dead in Bombing the Next Day Where He Stood
April 4th, 2007Via: The Australian:
A NEWBORN baby was one of at least 14 children and adults killed today when a suicide bomber detonated a truck laden with explosives close to a primary school in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk.
The latest massacre of Iraqi children came as 21 Shia market workers were ambushed, bound and shot dead north of the capital.
The victims came from the Baghdad market visited the previous day by John McCain, the US presidential candidate, who said that an American security plan in the capital was starting to show signs of progress. [See: McCain’s Potemkin Village]
The Kirkuk bloodshed erupted when a bomber driving a truck full of explosives hidden by sacks of flour targeted an Iraqi police station that US soldiers were visiting. The full force of the blast hit a nearby primary school.
Enronization of America
April 4th, 2007Via: Prudent Bear:
The U.S. economy has been held up for the last half decade only by the housing and consumption bubbles caused by cheap money. Much of its healthy capitalist tissue has rotted internally, and been replaced by corrupt politically-determined rent-seeking. Only when the cheap money finally disappears, and recession occurs, will we be able to tell the full damage caused by the Enronization of America.
Pay to Upgrade DRM Infested Music Files to Open Format
April 4th, 2007I thought this was a lingering April Fool’s joke. Pay extra to get the music files the way they should have been released in the first place?
Tell me another one.
Via: The Inquirer:
Apple and EMI triumphantly announced that they were removing DRM from Apple tracks for a mere $.30 more, upgradable if you got the old tracks. They are also giving it to you at a higher bit rate, 256Kbps instead of the older 128. Sounds good on the surface.
The problem is they snowed you, there is no removal of anything, this is a completely different product. The older ones remain totally DRM infected, cost the same, and if you bought them, you are just as locked in as you were, unless you tithe more.
The content mafiaa distracted you with a shiny thing, and sold you back the rights they had no standing to take in the first place. Readers hate it when I say this, but you are idiots if you bought that line.
CRYPTOGON READER CONTRIBUTES $100
April 4th, 2007I think a few Cryptogon contributors like to try to get me to spit my coffee all over the screen in the morning as I check messages! NH is one of them. He has used this tactic twice now! 😉
To receive 20% of the monthly goal in a single shot is incredible, and reassuring. Thanks, NH, for your extreme generosity.
Sanitizing Gels and Latex Gloves: Plying the Librarian’s Trade
April 3rd, 2007If this one doesn’t belong in the Collapse category, I don’t know what does. I selected a passage to quote that will not turn your stomach, but be warned, if you click through, that this is an extremely grim account.
Via: Tom Dispatch:
Although the public may not have caught on, ask any urban library administrator in the nation where the chronically homeless go during the day and he or she will tell you about the struggles of America’s public librarians to cope with their unwanted and unappreciated role as the daytime guardians of the down and out. In our public libraries, the outcasts are inside.
UK: Armed Forces’ Suicides Surpass Combat Deaths
April 3rd, 2007Via: The Independent:
More servicemen and women have committed suicide over the past two decades than have died in military action, according to new figures.
The latest death toll for those in the armed forces who have taken their own lives has risen to 687 compared with 438 killed during active service in major conflicts such as the Gulf, Afghanistan and Northern Ireland.
Ministry of Defence (MoD) figures released this weekend also reveal that the number of suicides among servicemen and women has risen by at least 49 in a year. This is more than three times the number of soldiers killed since the start of war in Afghanistan in 2001 and has raised fresh concerns about the mental welfare of troops. Those most at risk of taking their own lives are soldiers in their early 20s and teenage army recruits.
