Periodic Static

Austin area swimming holes

2011-04-25T14:19:00.001-05:00

View Austin Area Swimming Holes in a larger map

Karmatron live at 21st st. Co op Austin, TX

2011-04-12T14:49:00.000-05:00

Karmatron

2011-03-23T13:27:00.000-05:00

Check out this great new Austin hip-hop, rock, funk, R&B, soul band!!!

Kansas City Kitty & Georgia Tom - Show Me What You've Got

2011-02-05T23:11:00.000-06:00

The Insanity Virus | Mental Health | DISCOVER Magazine

2010-11-25T09:50:00.000-06:00

The Insanity Virus | Mental Health | DISCOVER Magazine: "genetic parasites related to viruses account for more than 40 percent of all human DNA."

How I Incorporated My Startup - hey hamza

2010-11-20T18:39:00.000-06:00

How I Incorporated My Startup - hey hamza

Betty Davis - Anti Love Song (1973)

2010-09-06T10:01:00.000-05:00

VentriloChoir on Hungarian TV

2010-05-28T08:30:00.000-05:00

Toumast

2010-05-26T18:52:00.000-05:00

BP Fails Booming School 101 Gulf Oil Spill (MIRROR)

2010-05-23T19:25:00.000-05:00

James Brown, The T.A.M.I. Show 1/3: Out of Sight & Prisoner of Love

2010-05-22T15:30:00.000-05:00

Animals AutoTuned: Wolves

2010-05-22T11:02:00.000-05:00

CLICK-CLACK: Hooked On Phonics Ft Nabeyin Beats

2010-05-21T13:07:00.000-05:00

BOOTSY'S BASIC FUNK FORMULA

2010-05-15T18:54:00.000-05:00

Gever Tulley, Big Ideas Fest 2009

2010-05-09T14:15:00.000-05:00

Taxijam presents Die Antwoord.mp4

2010-03-27T09:38:00.001-05:00

Holy Fuck - Song 2 - SXSW Music 2010

2010-03-24T17:57:00.001-05:00

Die Antwoord - Ninja Was Here (Official)

2010-03-13T13:05:00.001-06:00

Prince - When Doves Cry

2010-02-16T16:52:00.001-06:00

U900 -Diamond Head

2010-02-07T23:16:00.001-06:00

Die Antwoord - Zef Side.

2010-02-03T22:11:00.001-06:00

Die Antwoord - Wat Pomp

2010-02-03T22:09:00.001-06:00

Misa Digital Guitar Demo

2010-01-24T08:50:00.001-06:00

JAMMIN' THE BLUES - Gjon Mili,1944

2010-01-24T08:13:00.001-06:00

Lester Young!

Mule Skinner Blues

2009-10-23T00:05:00.003-05:00

Stimulus funds used for building Iditarod Trail cabins

2009-05-06T11:38:00.000-05:00

By Craig Medred | The Anchorage Daily News

One public-use cabin is already under construction along the Iditarod Trail, another is planned for this summer, and $400,000 in federal stimulus funding is on the way to pay for at least four more, the trail's chief manager said Monday.

read the rest here

LOL.

And she didn't want the money.

Thank god for McClatchy

Frank Zappa at 22 (1 of 4)

2009-04-05T17:51:00.001-05:00

This is worth watching... there are 4 parts ....if you make to the 4th part you should be laughing out loud

Frank Zappa Conducting TV Show Audience

2009-04-05T11:38:00.001-05:00

This is fun.

Wall of Welcome at Crestview

2009-04-05T10:39:00.002-05:00

My neighborhood art project

Joe Biden -- The Commuting Insider

2008-08-23T11:34:00.003-05:00

The hardest working man in politics ?

My two cents. Selecting Joe Biden as VP is excellent choice by Obama. I just finished reading Biden's Wikipedia page and some DailyKos posts and Biden has a compelling personal story, a commitment to family life, and a history of real accomplishments in the Senate in both Judiciary and Foreign relations.

He knows how many houses he has. He knows because he had returned to that home each night, on the train, while working in Washington since 1972. Even though he is a Washington insider, he's a commuting insider. Anyone who has ever had a job understands what it means to commute to work.

One post says that he is considered the second poorest Senator in the Senate. The same posting, from someone who interned with him in Washington, said that he has avoided investing in stocks to avoid conflicts of interest. Oh did I say Irish Catholic. I wonder if he went to a Jesuit Prep School. -- I just checked, it was a Catholic Prep School but not Jesuit, Norbertines.

Joe Tex-Show Me

2008-07-16T22:15:00.000-05:00

Daruma-Otoshi

2008-07-16T19:35:00.000-05:00

The Game

The Demolition Method

Pictures of my garden

2008-07-13T21:50:00.000-05:00

Frederick Douglass's Independence Day Speech on Daily Kos

2008-07-04T09:26:00.000-05:00

I just read Frederick Douglass's Independence Day speech from 1852 over at the Daily Kos. Well worth reading

It's fairly long, I guess attention spans where longer 150 years ago, here's the ending:

For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not as astonishing that, while we are plowing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, and secretaries, having among us lawyers doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers; and that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives, and children, and above all, confessing and worshiping the Christian's God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!...

What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply....

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States at this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms- of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

County Convention Day

2008-03-29T07:49:00.000-05:00

Wow

All most time. The Democratic county convention is today and we are expecting between 7000 and 12000 people at our county convention. Hope to see everyone there!!

Trek Bikes Slaps Wheelchair Vets

2008-03-07T13:45:00.000-06:00

Well I need to tell everyone about my friend Chris Stanford.

Chris designed a innovative treadmill for wheel chair users, then started a company to refine the design and start manufacturing. He named the company TREKEASE which first sounds like "trekkies" ala Captian Kirk and his bunch and also means: Translational & Rotational Equivalent Kinetic Energy Aerobic Stationary Exercise. Ok with me so far. oh and by the way Chris himself is a wheelchair user and a past Officer of the PVA -- Paralysed Veterans Association.

Chris filed a trademark application for the name TREKEASE to be used in association with exercise equipment for the disabled, or differently-abled or what ever one is to say these days.

Then it got interesting, Trek Bicycle Corporation, objected to his use of the name TREKEASE as being too close to Trek their trademark.

It seems that Trek lost a very big and public trademark battle with another exercise equipment manufacture Orbitrek and since then it has adopted a policy of harassment and opposition to every trademark application that has any thing close to trek in its name.

So even after clearly losing a court case where it was determined "Although, the mark TREK might be famous among bicycle enthusiasts, Trek did not establish fame in the niche market for stationary exercise machines, the market in which Thane operates. Similarly, Trek did not establish the level of fame among the general public necessary to support a claim for dilution." Trek continues to file objection after objections. According to Chris some of their oppositions include:

FastTrek, Trexa, TrekTile, CyberTreks, Electrec, Strekoza, Neotrekk, Treq, EasyTrec, Tech Bike, Ripp Traxx, SuperTrax, I-Trek! , Velotrekk, TC Trecker, T-REX, OrbiTrek, Treknology, Jazztreks, Trek PhoneCard, Trek Desk, SkyTrek, History Trek, Treksys, LifeTrek, ProTrek, WordTrek, Trekkers, Treksta, Trekker, VersaTrek,Trek-N-Treat, UltraTrek, CamTrek, GreenTreks, Treks, TimeTreks, IdeaTrek, TurboTrek, Trekkers, Rainforest Trek, EcoTrek, AltoTrek

Well Chris wasn't really wanting to give up his trademark, even though Trek Bicycles offered him $5000 for the trademark. So they are planning on going forward with thier objections, and since Chris can't afford an attorney to argue at the trademark office he feels that it is unlikely he will win even though precedent and truth and justice is on his side.

To publicize his plight he made up a flyer that me mailed to a few folks, which quickly resulted in a threatening letter form the Trek Bicycle People.

Unfortunately Chris's Document is in pdf form so I'm trying to figure out how to post it to this site. In the mean time check out his site at www.trekease.com

Moses was high on drugs: Israeli researcher

2008-03-07T10:06:00.000-06:00

High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week.

Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy.

"As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don't believe, or a legend, which I don't believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics," Shanon told Israeli public radio on Tuesday.

Moses was probably also on drugs when he saw the "burning bush," suggested Shanon, who said he himself has dabbled with such substances.

"The Bible says people see sounds, and that is a clasic phenomenon," he said citing the example of religious ceremonies in the Amazon in which drugs are used that induce people to "see music."

Results from my precinct

2008-03-05T13:31:00.000-06:00

We had quite a night last night. 639 peopled showed up to caucus, which is amazing!! The problem was that the curch that was being used as a polling place had a fire safety limit of 96 people. So we got the caucus started in the parking lot. Final sign in results:

Obama 442
Clinton 197

As one of the 5 biggest precincts in Travis county we had a total of 91 delegates to the county convention the brake down was

Obama 63
Clinton 28

I must say I was never prouder of my neighbors and friends that I was last night. Thanks all for coming out and thanks for being so patient with us through out the night. It was truely amazing and humbling.

Let The Investigations Begin

2008-02-22T12:44:00.000-06:00

Inside the world of war profiteers

By David Jackson and Jason Grotto | Tribune reporters
February 21, 2008

From prostitutes to Super bowl tickets, a federal probe reveals how contractors in Iraq cheated the U.S

ROCK ISLAND, Ill.—Inside the stout federal courthouse of this Mississippi River town, the dirty secrets of Iraq war profiteering keep pouring out.

Hundreds of pages of recently unsealed court records detail how kickbacks shaped the war's largest troop support contract months before the first wave of U.S. soldiers plunged their boots into Iraqi sand. ....

Federal prosecutors in Rock Island have indicted four former supervisors from KBR, the giant defense firm that holds the contract, along with a decorated Army officer and five executives from KBR subcontractors based in the U.S. or the Middle East. Those defendants, along with two other KBR employees who have pleaded guilty in Virginia, account for a third of the 36 people indicted to date on Iraq war-contract crimes, Justice Department records show.

....

more at chicagotribune.com

KBR : Haliburton : Cheney : War Profiteers : Truely Evil

I just like this picture

2008-02-21T23:14:00.000-06:00

CNN Producer Fired for blogging

2008-02-20T22:10:00.000-06:00

It appears that this CNN producer was fired for having a successful personal blog . I think we should all check it out.

The Inernet Silent Debate

2008-01-15T16:48:00.000-06:00

Thanks Harry Shearer

Capitol Hill Police 'Football Tackled' Hip Hop Activist Rev. Lennox Yearwood at Petreus Hearing

2007-09-11T16:08:00.000-05:00

From Salon.com -- Bush knew Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction

2007-09-09T02:21:00.000-05:00

Salon exclusive: Two former CIA officers say the president squelched top-secret intelligence, and a briefing by George Tenet, months before invading Iraq.

By Sidney Blumenthal

On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam's inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up again.

Nor was the intelligence included in the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002, which stated categorically that Iraq possessed WMD. No one in Congress was aware of the secret intelligence that Saddam had no WMD as the House of Representatives and the Senate voted, a week after the submission of the NIE, on the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq. The information, moreover, was not circulated within the CIA among those agents involved in operations to prove whether Saddam had WMD.

On April 23, 2006, CBS's "60 Minutes" interviewed Tyler Drumheller, the former CIA chief of clandestine operations for Europe, who disclosed that the agency had received documentary intelligence from Naji Sabri, Saddam's foreign minister, that Saddam did not have WMD. "We continued to validate him the whole way through," said Drumheller. "The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming, and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy."

more

Rachel Maddow's Campaign Asylum: Fred Thompson's Sex Appeal

2007-09-09T02:16:00.000-05:00

Uke song from the Jerk

2007-08-28T12:56:00.000-05:00

Data show no surge in safety in Iraq so far in 2007

2007-08-26T14:58:00.000-05:00

The Associated Press

BAGHDAD | The U.S. troop buildup has brought violence in Baghdad down from peak levels, but the death toll from sectarian attacks nationwide is running nearly double the year-ago pace.

Some of the recent bloodshed appears to be the result of militants drifting into northern Iraq, where they have fled after U.S.-led offensives. Baghdad, however, still accounts for slightly more than half of all war-related killings — the same percentage as a year ago, according to figures compiled by The Associated Press.

The data offer a sobering snapshot after an additional 30,000 U.S. troops began campaigns in February to regain control of the Baghdad area.

In street-level terms, it means that life for average Iraqis appears to be even more perilous and unpredictable.

NO REALLY THE SURGE IS WORKING......

Long Newseek Piece -- The Ongoing Hunt for Osama bin Laden

2007-08-26T14:50:00.000-05:00

This long, it's 15 pages, interesting piece about the history and present status of the hunt for Osama. Well worth the Read!

By Evan Thomas
Newsweek

Sept. 3, 2007 issue - The Americans were getting close. It was early in the winter of 2004-05, and Osama bin Laden and his entourage were holed up in a mountain hideaway along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Suddenly, a sentry, posted several kilometers away, spotted a patrol of U.S. soldiers who seemed to be heading straight for bin Laden's redoubt. The sentry radioed an alert, and word quickly passed among the Qaeda leader's 40-odd bodyguards to prepare to remove "the Sheik," as bin Laden is known to his followers, to a fallback position. As Sheik Said, a senior Egyptian Qaeda operative, later told the story, the anxiety level was so high that the bodyguards were close to using the code word to kill bin Laden and commit suicide. According to Said, bin Laden had decreed that he would never be captured. "If there's a 99 percent risk of the Sheik's being captured, he told his men that they should all die and martyr him as well," Said told Omar Farooqi, a Taliban liaison officer to Al Qaeda who spoke to a NEWSWEEK reporter in Afghanistan.

the rest here

Army of Dude -- Stupid Shit of Deployment Awards

2007-08-25T12:54:00.000-05:00

The Surge

.... The increase of troops in Baghdad pushed the insurgents to rural areas (like Diyala), hence our move here in March. The surge was nothing more than a thorn in the side of nomadic fighters having to move thirty five miles while the generals watched Baghdad with stubborn eyes.

Two Companies Clearing Baqubah

...Someone, somehow, somewhere decided that two companies of Strykers would be adequate to take down what Al Qaeda had deemed their headquarters in Iraq .....Two hours into the first mission, my friend was killed in a massive IED blast that busted the hell out of the squad leader’s face, resulting in traumatic brain injury and facial reconstruction surgery......At once we realized reinforcements were needed but we didn’t get any for two more months. Many more men were killed because we were stretched to our operational breaking point.

The Extension

........What was surprising was the fact that everyone in Iraq was extended to fifteen month deployments. It was meant to give every unit at least a year in between deployments, as some were coming back to Iraq after only ten months back in the states. Now at the end, it’s not hard to assess the achievements of our three extra months. ....It seems at a quick glance that we pacified the city, street by street......The enemy ran out of ways to kill us until the ingenious idea of putting bombs in houses took hold. Instead of blowing us up in armored vehicles, they thought about doing it inside an abandoned house. What kills you isn’t the bomb, but the foundation of the house that comes crashing down after the explosion......When you’re worried about how much water you have left and the trucks are too far away to get more, you tend to miss the trip wire in the dark stairwell. Twelve month deployments are a burden on your body and mind. Asking men for three more months is not only unfair but deadly.

more here

GIs' morale dips as Iraq war drags on

2007-08-25T12:46:00.000-05:00

From the LA Times

With tours extended, multiple deployments and new tactics that put them in bare posts in greater danger, they feel leaders are out of touch with reality.

YOUSIFIYA, IRAQ -- In the dining hall of a U.S. Army post south of Baghdad, President Bush was on the wide-screen TV, giving a speech about the war in Iraq. The soldiers didn't look up from their chicken and mashed potatoes.

As military and political leaders prepare to deliver a progress report on the conflict to Congress next month, many soldiers are increasingly disdainful of the happy talk that they say commanders on the ground and White House officials are using in their discussions about the war.

....

"This occupation, this money pit, this smorgasbord of superfluous aggression is getting more hopeless and dismal by the second," a soldier in Diyala province, north of Baghdad, wrote in an Aug. 7 post on his blog, www.armyofdude.blogspot.com.

more here

Iranians attack Kurdish rebels in Iraq

2007-08-24T00:53:00.000-05:00

By Chris Collins and Yaseen Taha | McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD — Iranian soldiers crossed into Iraq on Thursday and attacked several small villages in the northeastern Kurdish region, local officials said.

U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said he couldn't confirm the attacks, but five Kurdish officials said that troops had infiltrated Iraqi territory and fired on villages.

The Iranian military regularly exchanges artillery and rocket fire with Kurdish rebels who've taken refuge across the border, but Iraqi Kurdish officials worried that Iran's willingness to cross the border raises the possibility of a broader confrontation that would draw the Iraqi government and U.S. forces into an unwanted showdown.

Iranian troops crossed the border in 10 places and traveled approximately three miles into the mountainous Iraqi region, bombing rural villages in the process. He didn't say how many Iranian troops were involved.

more here

Will Durst on the Current Bush Administration

2007-08-24T00:43:00.000-05:00

This is great

Unclassified NIE on Iraq Key Judgments

2007-08-24T00:21:00.000-05:00

From Mother Jones

An early copy of the unclassified key judgments from the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, "Prospects for Iraq’s Stability: Some Security Progress but Political Reconciliation Elusive," prepared by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and available to the masses in a few hours.

Key Judgments

We assess, to the extent that Coalition forces continue to conduct robust counterinsurgency operations and mentor and support the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), that Iraq’s security will continue to improve modestly during the next six to 12 months but that levels of insurgent and sectarian violence will remain high and the Iraqi Government will continue to struggle to achieve national-level political reconciliation and improved governance. Broadly accepted political compromises required for sustained security, long-term political progress, and economic development are unlikely to emerge unless there is a fundamental shift in the factors driving Iraqi political and security developments.

more here

War Made Easy - TRAILER

2007-08-20T20:06:00.000-05:00

13th floor elevators

2007-08-20T19:43:00.000-05:00

a great video, a great band

SUV to top all SUV's

2007-08-20T17:24:00.001-05:00

This is amazing ... watch how fast this thing is

Arctic ice seen shrinking much faster than forecast

2007-08-17T16:37:00.000-05:00

Kyodo News

Beating forecasts by more than 40 years, Arctic sea ice has shrunk to about 5.31 million sq. km, the smallest area seen since satellite observations began in 1978, Japanese state-run agencies reported Thursday.

The ice is melting because a stagnant low pressure system over Siberia has caused warm air to flow into the Arctic region from over land at a time when the winter ice is relatively thin, the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said.

In mid-September, when the ice is usually at its smallest in any year, it could shrink to as little as 4.5 million sq. km, a threshold the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicted would be reached in 2050, they said.

"If the reduction continues at this pace, it is feared that global warming will accelerate and bring about changes to the climate system, such as frequent abnormal weather," said JAMSTEC, based in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture.

According to the two agencies' analyses based on observations using satellites and ocean buoys, the ice Wednesday shrank further than the previous record, logged on Sept. 22, 2005, of about 5.32 million sq. km.

AIST develops 3D image projector

2007-08-15T14:45:00.000-05:00

Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) has developed a device that uses lasers to project real three-dimensional images in mid-air. The institute unveiled the device on February 7 in a demonstration that showed off the device’s ability to project three-dimensional shapes of white light.

AIST developed the projector with the cooperation of Keio University and Burton Inc. (Kawasaki, Japan). Until now, projected three-dimensional imagery has been “artificial” — optical illusions that appear 3D due to the parallax difference between the eyes of the observer. Prolonged viewing of this conventional sort of 3D imagery can cause physical discomfort.

The newly developed device, however, creates “real” 3D images by using laser light, which is focused through a lens at points in space above the device, to create plasma emissions from the nitrogen and oxygen in the air at the point of focus. Because plasma emission continues for a short period of time, the device is able to create 3D images by moving the point of focus.

more here

Shotgun Party

2007-08-13T17:30:00.000-05:00

My new favorite Austin trio -- Jen is great

The Forbidden City of Terry Gou

2007-08-13T14:59:00.000-05:00

By JASON DEAN
From the Wall Street Journal Online
August 11, 2007;
Shenzhen, China

WOW this place looks like something

Past a guarded gate on the outskirts of this city sits one of the world's largest factories. In dozens of squat buildings, it churns out gadgets bearing technology's household names -- Apple Inc.'s iPods and iPhones, Hewlett-Packard Co.'s personal computers, Motorola Inc. mobile phones and Nintendo Co. Wii videogame consoles. electronics

Few people outside of the industry know of the plant's owner: Hon Hai Precision Industry Co.

With a work force of some 270,000 -- about as big as the population of Newark, N.J. -- the factory is a bustling testament to the ambition of Hon Hai's founder, Terry Gou. In an era when manufacturing has been defined by outsourcing, no one has done more to shift global electronics production to China. Little noticed by the wider world, Mr. Gou has turned his company into China's biggest exporter and the world's biggest contract manufacturer of electronics.

Here's the rest of the story

Rudy Giuliani's Five Big Lies About 9/11

2007-08-11T13:06:00.000-05:00

from the Village Voice

by Wayne Barrett
with special research assistance by Alexandra Kahan

Giuliani isn't shy about reminding audiences of those heady days. In fact he hyperventilates about them on the stump, making his credentials in the so-called war on terror the centerpiece of his campaign. His claims, meanwhile, have been met with a media deference so total that he's taken to complimenting "the good job it is doing covering the campaign." Opponents, too, haven't dared to question his terror credentials, as if doing so would be an unpatriotic bow to Osama bin Laden.

Here, then, is a less deferential look at the illusory cloud emanating from the former mayor's campaign .

read the rest at the Voice

Are GOP Leaders Leaking State Secrets?

2007-08-10T20:32:00.000-05:00

Justin Rood of ABC news Reports:

For the second time in as many weeks, a senior House Republican may have divulged classified information in the media.

In an opinion article published in the New York Post Thursday, Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., reported the top-secret budget for human spying had decreased -- the type of detail normally kept under wraps for national security reasons.

ABC News has the rest of the story

Court Rules: Novell owns the UNIX and UnixWare copyrights

2007-08-10T20:25:00.000-05:00

via Groklaw

[T]he court concludes that Novell is the owner of the UNIX and UnixWare Copyrights.

Government Segregates Muslim Prisoners, Restricts Phone Calls and Visits

2007-08-09T01:26:00.000-05:00

from William Fisher at Prison Legal News

Legal authorities are charging that racial profiling is responsible for low-risk Muslim prisoners convicted for crimes the Justice Department intimates are terror-related being held in a segregated unit, where communications are more severely restricted than for high-profile inmates such as al-Qaeda operative Zacarias Moussaoui and Unabomber Theodore J. Kaczynski.

The facility is known as the Communications Management Unit (CMU), and is located in the medium security federal prison at Terre Haute, Indiana. Its occupants are almost entirely Muslims.

Under the CMU program, telephone communications must be conducted using monitored phone lines and be live-monitored by staff. Calls are subject to recording and must be in English only. All letters must be reviewed by staff prior to delivery or sending. Visits must be non-contact only, also live-monitored, and subject to recording in English. Telephone calls and mail are monitored, the number of phone calls are limited and visits are restricted to a total of four hours per month, according to special rules enforced by the Justice Department's Bureau of Prisons.

Most federal inmates are granted 300 minutes of telephone time per month. At the CMU, the policy is one 15-minute call per week, and this can be reduced in the warden's discretion to three minutes once a month.

For Full article

Petraeus’ "Hail Mary" Move

2007-08-07T00:29:00.000-05:00

Militias Take the Field As the Clock Runs Down

Robert Y Pelton over at IraqSlogger has a very interesting, insightfull and sobering analysis of what the US is currently doing in Iraq. Which effectively is arming every one.!!! Unbelievable.!! This really going to backfire on the US.

His solution? Stick as many guns into as many hands as fast as possible appears to be the new ground strategy. Current US and Iraqi ground presence is not sustainable. So why not invite the spectators from the bleachers to play on your team as well? These new players are known as “Emergency Response Units” aka “Salvation Councils" aka "Legitimate Resistance Forces" aka local militias, mercenaries, armed gangs, tribal fighters or whatever. The solution harks back to the most basic counterinsurgency strategy: Divide and conquer or “If everyone is fighting each other they won’t have time to fight us.”

The CIA and the military are now busy calving off more and more local fighting groups to create a bewildering mix of Shia, Sunni, tribal, regional and even neighborhood armies. As long as they aren’t “the bad guys” (not really a label used in counterinsurgency since technically they are all bad and good guys) then that leaves smaller and smaller groups of insurgents left to fight. Even if they were or are bad guys, keeping them inside the tent is still a better prospect than wondering what they are doing outside the tent. Armies consisting of illiterates, criminals, drop-outs and former insurgents are being armed and trained and paid between $100 and $300 per mission to join the fray.

ERU’s are created by large financial payments to sheikhs who must provide manpower for the free guns and training or through local power brokering to once terrified citizens is another and simple survivor-like “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” logic provides the rest. Sometimes ad hoc armies are created by kicking open the back of a truck and handing out ammunition, food and medical supplies.

These tribal, ethnic or local militias are in effect glorified death squads. Groups who use their newly-found violent powers with little restraint to push out what they believe are hostile elements. Just one look at what we have wrought in Iraq brings back memories of Liberia or Albania. Ragged bands of oddly dressed civilians carrying brand new heavy machine guns, RPG’s and AK’s...with nary a clue on how to use them other than they can now use them on full auto with impunity or concern for ammo costs. You might notice that these homespun Iraqi militias are using identical weapons to those we gave the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan... and they are the same weapons we worked so hard to hand them back over when the fight was over. As one Iraqi politician Sami al-Askari commented in the CSN ""What the Americans are doing is very risky and unwise. They are planting the seeds for future wars,"

Read the whole thing here

Shamed scientist's 'breakthrough'

2007-08-03T17:23:00.000-05:00

A scientist who faked his research may have actually made a groundbreaking advance - without even realising it.

Professor Surani said Hwang's unwitting step forward might actually prove more useful than efforts to clone human embryos, which he had claimed fraudulently.

"I've always promoted the idea that efforts should be made to produce embryos from human eggs - it is far less ethically challenging, and the efficiency of these cell lines is likely to be higher than those produced from cloned embryos," he said.

Idea for a story

We figure out how to develop life saving treatments from stem cells so that human life is greatly extended.

The catch is that we can only develop the stem cells from eggs -- so only females have an extended life span.

The current credit tighening and the health care system

2007-08-03T14:26:00.000-05:00

One thing that Micheal Moore said the other day regarding the US health care system really stuck with me. He said that when there is a single payer national system , no one ever goes bankrupt because of medical expenses.

There's an interesting post by Paula Hall on Huffington here that details how a hard working family can fall on hard times from accidents and medical illness that results in financial ruin.

How does this tie into the current credit crunch, well bankruptcy usually means losing your house. I wonder how many foreclosures are driven by medical bills. This is another reason I'll continue to support a national single payer system.