Bush seeks to bolster war on terror - "The White House and Republicans are setting the stage for a security-heavy September, with President Bush preparing a series of speeches to bolster the war on terror and with Congress ready to debate defense spending and terrorist detention."
Soldiers die, CEOs prosper - "While Army privates died overseas earning $25,000 a year, David Brooks, the disgraced former CEO of body-armor maker DHB, made $192 million in stock sales in 2004. He staged a reported $10 million bat mitzvah for his daughter. The 2005 pay package for Halliburton CEO David Lesar, head of the firm that most symbolizes the occupation's waste, overcharges, and ghost charges on no-bid contracts, was $26 million, according to the report's analysis of federal Securities and Exchange Commission filings. "Those examples take the cake, especially because it's all related to their government contracts, which is money straight out of the taxpayer's pocket," Leondar-Wright said."
US would consider Israeli request for military aid - "If Israel asks, the US would "seriously consider" granting the Defense Ministry additional financial assistance because of the huge expenses incurred during the war in Lebanon, a high-ranking US diplomat revealed Wednesday."
Is this Bush's secret bunker? - "Mount Weather is a top-security underground installation an hour's drive from Washington DC. It has its own leaders, police, fire department - and laws. A cold war relic, it has been given a new lease of life since 9/11. And no one who's been inside has ever talked."
President Bush 'assassinated' in new TV docudrama - "Death of a President, shot in the style of a retrospective documentary, looks at the effect the assassination of Bush has on America in light of its 'War on Terror'."
US military leaders planning $20m public relations effort - "US military leaders in Baghdad have put out for bid a two-year $20 million public relations contract that calls for extensive monitoring of US and Middle Eastern media in an effort to promote more positive coverage of news from Iraq." -- Now think about why this would be needed.
Guard families cope in two dimensions - "Welcome to the "Flat Daddy" and "Flat Mommy" phenomenon, in which life-size cutouts of deployed service members are given by the Maine National Guard to spouses, children, and relatives back home. The Flat Daddies ride in cars, sit at the dinner table, visit the dentist, and even are brought to confession, according to their significant others on the home front." -- Check out the picture. I now feel kind of creepy.
Stevens is Smoked Out - "After much speculation, a staffer to Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, admitted to Cox Newspapers today that the senator is the lawmaker who placed a “secret hold” on legislation that would open up the obscure world of government contracting to public scrutiny. Until now, it was a political whodunnit as to who quietly blocked legislation introduced by Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., that would create a searchable database of government contracts, grants, insurance, loans and financial assistance, worth $2.5 trillion last year." -- One would think that a country where politicians are supposed to represent the people, government contracting would have always been available for public scrutiny. Maybe politicians do not really represent the people? Oh, how naive of me.
Doubt about official version of 9/11 widespread - "With the fifth anniversary of Sept 11 on the way, there will undoubtedly be a flood of television specials, terror-alert updates, and newspaper editorials. Yet a sizable portion of the public will likely remain dubious of the authorized version of 9/11."
Feds challenge 9/11 conspiracies - "In the wake of growing skepticism, the U.S. government is taking the unusual step of responding to conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11, 2001, destruction of the World Trade Center.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, headquartered in Gaithersberg, Md., investigated the causes of the collapse of the twin towers. Yesterday NIST announced it had posted a "fact sheet" addressing alternative theories about the World Trade Center fires and collapse. "
Sen. Burns: Terrorists drive taxis by day, kill at night - "Republican Sen. Conrad Burns, whose recent comments have stirred controversy, says the United States is up against a faceless enemy of terrorists who "drive taxi cabs in the daytime and kill at night.""
Pro illegal immigration protesters replace American flag with Mexican.. - "On Saturday, August 26, 2006, approximately 70 supporters of Save Our State and the Minutemen gathered in Maywood, California to protest the city's decision to openly declare themselves a sanctuary city for illegal aliens. They were met by an angry mob of illegal aliens that displayed offensive signs, damaged property, assaulted Americans, and removed the US Flag from the post office replacing it with a Mexican flag."
They know all about you - "What was published by AOL represents only a tiny fraction of the accumulated knowledge warehoused within Google's records - but it has given all of us, as users, a dramatic and unsettling glimpse of how much, and in what intimate detail, the big search engines know about us. ... All of this information is stored. Google identifies every computer that connects to it with an implant (known as a cookie) which will not expire until 2038. If you also use Gmail, Google knows your email address - and, of course, keeps all your email searchable. If you sign up to have Google ads on a website, then the company knows your bank account details and home address, as well as all your searches. If you have a blog on the free blogger service, Google owns that. The company also knows, of course, the routes you have looked up on Google maps. Yahoo operates a similar range of services. ... One of the first researchers to demonstrate that we will tell anything, however intimate, to a computer, was Joseph Weizenbaum of MIT, who in 1966 wrote a programme called "Eliza" that parodied non-directional psychotherapy. If the user typed anything in, Eliza would appear to ask a question based on that cue. In no time at all, unhappy students were telling the computer all their troubles as if there were a real and sympathetic person behind the screen. Stories and jokes about this circulated for decades, but the men most successful at turning this concept into a fortune were the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergei Brin. As users, we think that the Google search engine is a way of supplying us with information about what's on the web. But the flow of information is two way. We ask Google things that we would hesitate to ask anyone living. The price for the answers is that Google remembers it all. ... This is knowledge beyond the dreams of any secret police in history. ... But the real power for a totalitarian government is no longer just censorship. It is to allow its citizens to search for anything they want - and then remember it. No western government, so far as we know, has gone that far. But if one ever does, it will know where the information is kept that will tell it almost everything about almost everyone." -- Interesting read.
Tool Generates Fake Searches for Privacy - "A new tool seeks to make your searches more private by hiding them in plain sight. TrackMeNot periodically sends fake, innocuous queries to search engines, making it harder for someone to glean your actual search habits by reviewing the companies' logs that contain your queries."
Hawaii Legislature Takes Steps to End War - "The Hawaii State Senate has passed a resolution "CALLING UPON THE GOVERNOR OF HAWAII TO TAKE STEPS TO WITHDRAW THE HAWAII ARMY AND AIR NATIONAL GUARD TROOPS FROM IRAQ.""
On YouTube, Charges of Security Flaws - "But when no one seemed to be stepping up to correct what he saw as critical security flaws in a fleet of refurbished Coast Guard patrol boats, De Kort did just about the only thing left he could think of to get action: He made a video and posted it on YouTube.com."
Downward Mobility - "If you’re still harboring the notion that the economy is “good,” prepare to be disabused."
US data show one in eight Americans in poverty - "In the world's biggest economy one in eight Americans and almost one in four blacks lived in poverty last year, the US Census Bureau said on Tuesday, releasing a figure virtually unchanged from 2004. The survey also showed 15.9 per cent of the population, or 46.6 million, had no health insurance, up from 15.6 per cent in 2004 and the fifth increase in a row."
NYT move to block Web to Britons raises questions - "A New York Times decision to block British online readers from seeing a story about London terrorism suspects raises new questions on restricting the flow of information in the Internet age, legal and media experts say."
Bush Nixes Public Access to EPA Libraries! - "What has been termed, "positively Orwellian", by PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, is indeed frightening. It seems that the self-appointed "Decider", George W. Bush, has decided to "end public access to research materials" at EPA Regional libraries without Congressional consent. In an all out effort to impede research and public access, Bush has implemented a loosely covert operation to close down 26 technical libraries under the guise of a budgetary constraint move. Scientists are protesting, but at least 15 of the libraries will be closed by Sept. 30, 2006."
Medical Practices Blend Health and Faith - "The center is one of a small but growing number of practices around the country that tailor the care they provide to the religious beliefs of their doctors, shunning birth-control and morning-after pills, IUDs and other contraceptive devices, sterilizations, and abortions, as well as in vitro fertilization. Instead, doctors offer "natural family planning" -- teaching couples to monitor a woman's temperature and other bodily signals to time intercourse."
Poll finds women take cynical view of politics - "Rhode Island women tend to be disengaged from politics and many don't regard political activity as an effective way to influence their world, according to interpretations of a poll released yesterday by the Women's Fund of Rhode Island."
Mother wins ban on violent porn - "A mother whose daughter died at the hands of a man obsessed with violent internet porn has won her fight for a ban on possessing such images. The government has announced plans to make the possession of violent porn punishable by three years in jail."
RadioShack Uses E-Mail to Fire Employees - "RadioShack Corp. notified about 400 workers by e-mail that they were being dismissed immediately as part of planned job cuts. Employees at the Fort Worth headquarters got messages Tuesday morning saying: "The work force reduction notification is currently in progress. Unfortunately, your position is one that has been eliminated.""
GM Withdraws CBS' 'Survivor' Sponsorship - " General Motors Corp. has decided to end its sponsorship of CBS' hit series "Survivor," but the world's largest automaker said Wednesday that the decision had nothing to do with the reality show's controversial decision to divide its contestants in the upcoming season by race and ethnicity." -- Sure it's not.
Schoolgirl 'stabbed for love of AC/DC' - "A teenager who was stabbed in the eye during her school lunch break said a "gang mentality" singled out pupils for their music and fashion tastes."
Scientists Erase Memories in Rat Brains - "Scientists have for the first time erased long-term memories in rats and also directly seen how the brain is changed by learning. The research points to potential human benefits." -- I bet.
Scientists report baldness breakthrough - "In a finding that could help treat an inherited form of baldness, a research team in Manchester claims to have discovered a protein "code" that instructs cells to sprout hair."
Smart Buildings Make Smooth Moves - "What if buildings could function like living systems, altering their shapes in response to changing weather conditions or the way people use them? That's the vision of a new breed of architects who are working on what they think is the future of architecture -- "responsive structures" that observe their internal and external environment and change form to suit any situation."
Robots that will change your life - "The robots are on the move — leaping, scrambling, rolling, flying, climbing. They are figuring out how to get here on their own. They come to help us, protect us, amuse us — and some even do floors."
Supernova caught in its exploding act - "Teams of international scientists have used observations from NASA's Swift satellite and other telescopes to witness the evolution of a cosmic blast into a stellar explosion or supernova."
Quote of the Day
"It is the function of the experts, and the mainstream media, to normalize the unthinkable for the general public."
~ Edward S Herman
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