News - August 9, 2005

Military Draft or Latte Cafe? - "This is the first protracted war of the all-volunteer military. Of course much of our all-volunteer military is prohibited from leaving the military, but they’re still volunteers. Others are being thrown huge wads of money not to leave, but we detest mercenary armies. Still others are civilians, but they are in our military. Anyway, how is our all-volunteer military doing? On the battlefield, it appears to be doing. Not winning, but that’s not its fault. In Iraq the mission is, we're told, “complicated.” It is so complicated no one knows what the mission is, except to kill whoever and protect the oil where ever -- but not necessarily in that order. With that mission, to win the war would require a budget-breaking and economy-destroying amount of humongous resources. Considering we’re already broke and our economy is teetering, this would put an ugly crimp in U.S. corporate profits. Like, why fight the war then?"
http://www.interventionmag.com/cms/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=11321132

Secret terror courts considered in UK - "Special courts sitting in secret for pre-trial hearings in terror cases are being considered by the Home Office. Security-vetted judges would weigh up sensitive evidence against suspects before cases went further. In a separate move, judges may oversee plans to allow terror suspects to be held for longer before being charged."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4133564.stm

Pentagon Plans to Send More Troops to Iraq - "Although much public attention has been focused recently on the prospect of reducing U.S. forces next spring and summer, defense officials foresee the likelihood of first increasing troop levels."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5198129,00.html

War Plans Drafted To Counter Terror Attacks in U.S. - "The war plans represent a historic shift for the Pentagon, which has been reluctant to become involved in domestic operations and is legally constrained from engaging in law enforcement. Indeed, defense officials continue to stress that they intend for the troops to play largely a supporting role in homeland emergencies, bolstering police, firefighters and other civilian response groups. But the new plans provide for what several senior officers acknowledged is the likelihood that the military will have to take charge in some situations, especially when dealing with mass-casualty attacks that could quickly overwhelm civilian resources."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/07/AR2005080700843_pf.html

Half of all Americans support a national ID card - "Fifty percent said the introduction of a national form of identification would be very or somewhat positive, while 32 percent viewed it negatively. However, 79 percent of Americans either strongly or somewhat support inclusion of biometrics in passports, 75 percent in Social Security cards and 74 percent in driver’s licenses, the survey reports. ... Almost half said biometrics in a government-issued national ID card would make the nation more secure. About 81 percent of respondents chose fingerprint as the most acceptable form of a biometric identifier to prove their identity. That was followed by an iris scan (58 percent), hand geometry (50 percent), voice recognition (48 percent), facial recognition (44 percent) and DNA (34 percent)."
http://www.fcw.com/article89821-08-05-05-Web

A credible plan to take down the Internet - "At stake is the exploitation of flaws affecting the once-invincible Cisco router hardware, which currently carries most of the Internet's traffic on a daily basis. Once a working exploit for the Cisco IOS Shellcode is available on the Internet, it'll be only a matter of days before someone finds a way to craft it into a network worm. And then it's going to be a rough ride for everyone who uses the Internet. Unless, of course, the forces of Good prevail. Hyperbole? Perhaps, but a credible threat to the infrastructure of the Internet does exist. All indications suggest that the clock is ticking toward some kind of showdown between criminal hackers and the good guys. Unfortunately, the bad guys have a head start."
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-3513_7-6282711-1.html?tag=nl.e757

Brit License Plates Get Chipped - "The British government is preparing to test new high-tech license plates containing microchips capable of transmitting unique vehicle identification numbers and other data to readers more than 300 feet away."
http://wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,68429,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1

Army Whistleblower Draws Fire - "She has asked many questions: Why is Halliburton — a giant Texas firm that holds more than 50 percent of all rebuilding efforts in Iraq — getting billions in contracts without competitive bidding? Do the durations of those contracts make sense? Have there been violations of federal laws regulating how the government can spend its money?"
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/being_bunny_greenhouse

Surviving Chicago's sex slave trade - "To Z, Mishulovich's offer was exhilarating. It was also a lie -- something she discovered shortly after landing at O'Hare Airport. Put up in a cramped apartment with other Latvian women, she was watched constantly, beaten and threatened with being sold as a prostitute. Her passport was taken away. And the dancing? Really it was stripping. For maybe $20 a night. She was a virtual slave -- a sex slave, a victim of "human trafficking.""
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-traffic07.html

Stealing your neighbor's Net - "Forty bucks for high-speed Internet access? Not a bad deal. But how does free sound? ... One study by Jupiter Research said 14 percent of wireless network owners have accessed their neighbor's connection. Yet anecdotal evidence suggests that more and more people are logging on for free. "I haven't paid for Internet since I've been in New York City," said one friend of this reporter. "Ditto," chimed in another. And as the practice of using someone else's connection without paying for it expands, it raises the question: Is there anything wrong with that?"
http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/08/technology/personaltech/internet_piracy/index.htm

'Thoughts read' via brain scans - "Teams at University College London and University of California in LA could tell what images people were looking at or what sounds they were listening to."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4715327.stm

Scientist: Men do have trouble hearing women - "Men who are accused of never listening by women now have an excuse -- women's voices are more difficult for men to listen to than other men's, a report said."
http://www2.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2005-08/08/content_467149.htm

Jagger mauls Bush - ""Sweet Neo Con", one of the tracks on the band's forthcoming LP "A Bigger Bang", is known to be fiercely anti-Bush. ... An extract from "Sweet Neo Con" features the following lines: "You call yourself a Christian, I call you a hypocrite/You call yourself a patriot, well I think you're full of sh*t." Speaking to Newsweek, Jagger explained the background to the track. "It is direct. Keith said (adopting Richards' voice), 'It's not really metaphorical.'"
http://uk.news.launch.yahoo.com/dyna/article.html?a=/050809/340/fp7n1.html&e=l_news_dm

Quote of the Day

"Liberty has never come from government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of government power, not the increase of it."

~ Woodrow Wilson