There's a website to analyze and duscuss particular AOL users: http://aol.zanoza.lv

"My neighbour is killing cats": http://aol.zanoza.lv/user/723190
"ways to kill yourself": http://aol.zanoza.lv/user/9486162
"wife killer": http://aol.zanoza.lv/user/17556639

A Face Is Exposed for AOL Searcher No. 4417749: http://aol.zanoza.lv/user/4417749

(Some good links here courtesy of maxevil. This is the best AOL data interface that I've seen yet, by far.)

RE: AOL Search Database

Evangelicals who read biblical prophecy from a premillennialist perspective -- which we'll get to later -- see the creation of Israel as the direct fulfillment of Old Testament passages in Ezekiel 36 and 37, in which God promises to restore his Hebrew people to their homeland right before a period of intense judgment and warfare.

A similar subject was discussed on the local television news last weekend. Check this:

"Can you hear the soft tread of the Messiah's footstep? Can you feel the soft beating of your heart in anticipation of His soon return?"

I'm going to file "Giddy Anticipation of an Apocalypse" next to actually having an AK-47 on your flag as God's way of telling you that you're bat shit crazy.

Apocalypse soon | Salon Life

Bush spoke:
The recent arrests that our fellow citizens are now learning about are a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to -- to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation.

When he uses that "those of us who love freedom" line its hard to take him seriously or conceive that he has a plan. These people don't want to kill Americans because we love freedom. They want to kill Americans because we're the most prominent political power center for people who don't practice their religion. Maybe what Bush really wants to say is "those of us who love jesus" but, of course, that would be extremely divisive, so he says "freedom," knowing that his constituency sees "freedom" and "jesus" as interchangable concepts.

It -- travelers are going to be inconvenienced as a result of the steps we've taken. I urge their patience and ask them to be vigilant. The inconveniences occurs because we will take the steps necessary to protect the American people.

By searching their hard drives for kiddie porn.

I'm sure if they hadn't caught these guys I wouldn't feel like making light of Bush's comments, so, my thanks goes out to the CT people in the UK and US governments who brought you this blog post tonight.

I'll be here all week.

RE: Does Bush have something in store?

TSA is asking people to dump their liquids into a common receptical in airports.... You know, so the explosive components can mix under government scrutiny instead of on an airplane.

One wonders why the suicide bombers don't just blow up the metal detector lines.

Boing Boing: If the liquid could be explosive, why are you dumping it in a crowd?

This module exploits a stack overflow in the NetApi32 NetpIsRemote() function using the NetpwPathCanonicalize RPC call in the Server Service. It is likely that other RPC calls could be used to exploit this service. This exploit will result in a denial of service on on Windows XP SP2 or Windows 2003 SP1. A failed exploit attempt will likely result in a complete reboot on Windows 2000 and the termination of all SMB-related services on Windows XP.

Don't be suprised if someone turns this into a worm. Patch early and often.

The Metasploit Project: MS06-040

What is the significance of Aug. 22? This year, Aug. 22 corresponds, in the Islamic calendar, to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427. This, by tradition, is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to "the farthest mosque," usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back (c.f., Koran XVII.1). This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world. It is far from certain that Mr. Ahmadinejad plans any such cataclysmic events precisely for Aug. 22. But it would be wise to bear the possibility in mind.

A passage from the Ayatollah Khomeini, quoted in an 11th-grade Iranian schoolbook, is revealing. "I am decisively announcing to the whole world that if the world-devourers [i.e., the infidel powers] wish to stand against our religion, we will stand against their whole world and will not cease until the annihilation of all them. Either we all become free, or we will go to the greater freedom which is martyrdom. Either we shake one another's hands in joy at the victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours."

In this context, mutual assured destruction, the deterrent that worked so well during the Cold War, would have no meaning. At the end of time, there will be general destruction anyway. What will matter will be the final destination of the dead--hell for the infidels, and heaven for the believers. For people with this mindset, MAD is not a constraint; it is an inducement.

How then can one confront such an enemy, with such a view of life and death? Some immediate precautions are obviously possible and necessary. In the long term, it would seem that the best, perhaps the only hope is to appeal to those Muslims, Iranians, Arabs and others who do not share these apocalyptic perceptions and aspirations, and feel as much threatened, indeed even more threatened, than we are. There must be many such, probably even a majority in the lands of Islam. Now is the time for them to save their countries, their societies and their religion from the madness of MAD.

The August 22nd meme was going around at Defcon.

Does Iran have something in store? | Bernard Lewis

pics from Washington Post
Punks in China
global culture
they would feel at home in my local pub and certainly not look out of place

China's Punk's Look to Rock - Washington Post

Stratfor: Geopolitical Intelligence Report - August 8, 2006

Break Point: What Went Wrong

By George Friedman

On May 23, we published a Geopolitical Intelligence Report titled "
Break Point ." In that article, we wrote: "It is now nearly
Memorial Day. The violence in Iraq will surge, but by July 4 there
either will be clear signs that the Sunnis are controlling the
insurgency -- or there won't. If they are controlling the
insurgency, the United States will begin withdrawing troops in
earnest. If they are not controlling the insurgency, the United
States will begin withdrawing troops in earnest. Regardless of
whether the [political settlement] holds, the U.S. war in Iraq is
going to end: U.S. troops either will not be needed, or will not be
useful. Thus, we are at a break point -- at least for the
Americans."

In our view, the fundamental question was whether the Sunnis would
buy into the political process in Iraq. We expected a sign, and we
got it in June, when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed -- in our
view, through intelligence provided by the Sunni leadership. The
same night al-Zarqawi was killed, the Iraqis announced the
completion of the Cabinet: As part of a deal that finalized the
three security positions (defense, interior and national security),
the defense ministry went to a Sunni. The United States followed
that move by announcing a drawdown of U.S. forces from Iraq,
starting with two brigades. All that was needed was a similar
signal of buy-in from the Shia -- meaning they would place controls
on the Shiite militias that were attacking Sunnis. The break point
seemed very much to favor a political resolution in Iraq.

It never happened. The Shia, instead of reciprocating the Sunni and
American gestures, went into a deep internal crisis. Shiite groups
in Basra battled over oil fields. They fought in Baghdad. We
expected that the mainstream militias under the Supreme Council for
Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) would gain control of the
dissidents and then turn to political deal-making. Instead, the
internal Shiite struggle resolved itself in a way we did not
expect: Rather than reciprocating with a meaningful political
gesture, the Shia intensified their attacks on the Sunnis. The
Sunnis, clearly expecting this phase to end, held back -- and then
cut loose with their own retaliations. The result was, rather than
a political settlement, civil war. The break point had broken away
from a resolution.

Part of the explanation is undoubtedly to be found in Iraq itself.
The prospect of a centralized government, even if dominated by the
majority Shia, does not seem to have been as attractive to Iraqi
Shia as absolute regional control, which would guarantee them all
of the revenues from the southern oil fields, rather ... [ Read More (2.1k in body) ]

If you could make one small change to MemeStreams, what would it be?

The traditional approach in the past has been that the U.S. will help a foreign country investigate foreign offenses even if the same conduct is not a crime in the U.S. so long as cooperation does not raise any constitutional difficulties (such as 1st Amendment issues). The cybercrime treaty maintains this traditional approach.

I've read a lot of dithering about this cybercrime treaty. Its reads very similar to US law, and some of the more controversial edges are presented as optional provisions. Furthermore, this treaty doesn't supercede the Constitution. We can't implement it or comply with it in violation of our own Constitution. So I'm not sure there really is a problem here.

Two provisions I'm not so sure about are provisions about the disclosure of crypto keys (19.4), and provisions about secret searches (20.3), but we cannot implement these provisions in a manner that violates the 4th and 5th amendments.

Ship it. If the online civil liberties people bitch about everything we'll be perceived as crying wolf. Save the fights for things that are actually problematic.

OrinKerr.com : Senate Ratifies Cybercrime Treaty