News -- December 28, 2005

Big Brother is Watching - "IT took 21 years longer than expected, but the future has finally arrived. ... War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. George Orwell was right after all. In 1949, Orwell penned "1984," a dark, futuristic satire in which the totalitarian government used indoctrination, propaganda and fear to enforce order and conformity. His "Big Brother" — the face of this all-knowing regime — was never wrong, and to make sure of it, history was constantly being rewritten. ... In America today, Big Brother is watching. He's watching because President Bush told him to. ... When it comes to fighting terror, Bush is totalitarian — remember, you're either with us or against us. Trust me to get it right, he says. Debate on the law is not only not needed, it's evil. ... Remember, too, that we invaded Iraq primarily because we were told Saddam Hussein was an immediate threat with his weapons of mass destruction. Now the Bush administration acknowledges that wasn't so, but insists there were (are?) other reasons to invade. History is malleable. Orwell wrote of war without end; we're told the war on terror will last decades at least. Orwell wrote of a dumbed-down "Newspeak," and who could argue that our national discourse hasn't slumped? Orwell's "Ministry of Love" tortured dissidents real or imagined; our government decries Iraq's secret torture prisons while arguing over whether to ban torture. Meanwhile, we maintain our own secret CIA prisons. ... Turns out the truth is no stranger than fiction.
We think it's time for Congress to heed the warning of George Orwell." -- I hope you pull out your copy of 1984 and reread it.
http://www.insidebayarea.com/search/ci_3337465

The I-Word is Gaining Ground - "Fast forward to December 2005. Not one official in the entire Bush Administration has been fired or indicted, not to mention impeached, for the shedding of American blood in Iraq or for the shredding of our Constitution at home. As Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter put it--hours after the New York Times reported that Bush had authorized NSA wiretapping of US citizens without judicial warrants--this President has committed a real transgression that "goes beyond sex, corruption and political intrigue to big issues like security versus liberty and the reasonable bounds of presidential power."" -- Impeach them all.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut?pid=45006

Bush was denied wiretaps, bypassed them - "U.S. President George Bush decided to skip seeking warrants for international wiretaps because the court was challenging him at an unprecedented rate."
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20051226-122526-7310r

Rice authorized National Security Agency to spy on UN Security Council in run-up to war, former officials say - "President Bush and other top officials in his administration used the National Security Agency to secretly wiretap the home and office telephones and monitor private email accounts of members of the United Nations Security Council in early 2003 to determine how foreign delegates would vote on a U.N. resolution that paved the way for the U.S.-led war in Iraq, NSA documents show."
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/After_domestic_spying_reports_U.S._spying_1227.html

Most Americans back Bush-ordered wiretaps - "A new survey found nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the National Security Agency should monitor communications between terrorist suspects overseas and contacts inside the U.S."
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=48103

Tsunami was God's revenge for your wicked ways, women told - "MARLUDDIN JALIL, a Sharia judge who has ordered the punishment of women for not wearing headscarves, was uncompromising: “The tsunami was because of the sins of the people of Aceh.”" -- Idiot.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25689-1952823,00.html

Revealed: the pill that prevents cancer - "A daily dose of vitamin D could cut the risk of cancers of the breast, colon and ovary by up to a half, a 40-year review of research has found. The evidence for the protective effect of the "sunshine vitamin" is so overwhelming that urgent action must be taken by public health authorities to boost blood levels, say cancer specialists."
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/article335359.ece

Official: Drug Companies Lack Vaccine Incentive - "The federal chief of AIDS research says he believes drug companies don't have an incentive to create a vaccine for the HIV and are likely to wait to profit from it after the government develops one."
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=1441470

Canada blames U.S. for gun violence - "Canadian officials, seeking to make sense of another fatal shooting in what has been a record year for gun-related deaths, said Tuesday that along with a host of social ills, part of the problem stemmed from what they said was the United States exporting its violence."
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/americas/12/27/canada.crime.ap/index.html

Age of information overload - "Will all this instantly accessible information make us much smarter, or simply more stressed? When can we break to think, absorb and ponder all this data? ... Were books as easily searchable as Web pages, she'd reconsider. Otherwise, they might as well not exist. ... Steve Jones, a professor of communications at the University of Illinois at Chicago, says centralization and easy access could make people smarter: Instead of wasting time finding information, they can focus more on assessing its worth. But there's the danger, he says, that people will simply take information for granted: Assuming that whatever pops up first is the best. Worse, people may simply tune out. Field research by Jennifer Kayahara, a sociology graduate student at the University of Toronto, shows people are overwhelmed as it is."
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/12/26/information.everywhere.ap/index.html

Prime time for Missouri computing team - " A Central Missouri State University team using more than 700 computers has found the largest prime number so far, a gargantuan 9,152,052-digit numeral."
http://news.com.com/Prime+time+for+Missouri+computing+team/2100-11395_3-6009198.html?tag=nefd.top




Quote of the Day
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."
~ George Orwell