] CCS International, a surveillance products company in New
] Rochelle, NY, estimates that ordinary Americans are
] buying surveillance devices, many of dubious legality, at
] a clip of $6 million a day. We have met the enemy of our
] privacy, and it is us.

a great article that talks about how loss of privacy is not inevitable.

Surveillance Nation Part Two

This is a fairly extreme example, but Atlanta has really taken to "new urbanism." The idea is that in typical suburban "zoning" you work, live, shop, and go to school in different places, and the result is that you interact with different people in each place. Therefore you tend not to care about them. By doing all of these things in the same place you form stronger bonds with the other people in your community.

INFOTO : Mega City Pyramid TRY 2004

] America's dream of waging wider war in the region is all
] too familiar to James Akins, former political officer at
] the US Embassy in Baghdad and Ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
] 'If the ultimate goal [of the US] is to be world
] dominatrix, then she will need the oil of Arabia, from
] Kirkuk to Muscat,' he states. 'The ideological, imperial
] aim and that of commanding the oil markets for the rest
] of the oil era, entwine into the same game plan. If we do
] this, and move into Saudi Arabia, we are masters of the
] universe - the American Imperium.'

masters of the universe

] Hydrogen is the most abundant element on the planet.
] But it cannot be harvested directly. It must be extracted
] from another material. There is an upside to this and a
] downside. The upside is that a wide variety of materials
] contain hydrogen, which is one reason it has attracted
] such widespread support. Everyone has a dog in this
] fight.
]
] Renewable energy is a very little dog. Environmentalists
] envision an energy economy where hydrogen comes from
] water, and the energy used to accomplish this comes from
] wind. Big dogs like the nuclear industry also foresee a
] water-based hydrogen economy, but with nuclear as the
] power source that electrolyzes water. Nucleonics Week
] boasts that nuclear power "is the only way to produce
] hydrogen on a large scale without contributing to
] greenhouse gas emissions."
]
] For the fossil fuel industry, not surprisingly,
] hydrocarbons will provide most of our future hydrogen.
] They already have a significant head start. Almost 50
] percent of the world's commercial hydrogen now comes from
] natural gas. Another 20 percent is derived from coal.
]
] The automobile and oil companies are betting that
] petroleum will be the hydrogen source of the future. It
] was General Motors, after all, that coined the phrase
] "the hydrogen economy".

A Hydrogen Economy Is a Bad Idea

You can't spell AMERICA without O-P-P-R-O-T-U-N-I-T-Y!

] When asked what it felt like to control as much wealth as
] all of the world's GNPs combined excluding the U.S.,
] Cheney said, "Along with control of the U.S. armed forces
] that's a mighty big club and we at the PNAC (Project for a New American Century) have always
] been open about our desire to wield that club. Of course,
] we're bullshitting about rebuilding Iraq. I mean we'll get
] our companies in there so we can collect the money, but
] look at Afghanistan. We really haven't done shit except
] make the raw opium/heroin trade number one in the world
] again. Even Nightline can't cover it up. I mean look at
] our track record on that score. Say, Nicaragua or heaven
] forbid, South-East Asia. Listen up. After we destroy a
] country its recovery mimics what it was before we leveled
] it. The rest is State Department agitprop.
]
] "The good news is, we do plan to give the Palestinians
] their own state. The bad news is it's Haiti. Start
] packin', Haitians.
]
] "And through our Satanic/Miltonic quest for 'eternal war'
] we hope to provide security for Israel through perpetual
] region-wide conflict. We figure the Israeli people won't
] notice any difference.
]

It's Official: Dick Cheney Is The World's First Trillionaire!!:

Get the popcorn, there's a war on!

] The start of the war caused business at movie theaters to
] drop by 25 percent on Wednesday as people stayed home to
] watch the war, and snack-food sales and restaurant
] deliveries thrived. The opening salvos of the war had
] taken the place of prime-time entertainment, and
] television stations did their best to serve up gaudily
] produced coverage: the war in Iraq as the ultimate in
] reality television, as the apotheosis of every favorite
] Hollywood genre, from the combat thriller to the
] coming-of-age tale to the blow-'em-up, special-effects
] extravaganza.
]
] As he watched the "shock and awe" bombing that lit up the
] Baghdad sky on Friday , the veteran reporter Peter Arnett
] exclaimed, "An amazing sight, just like out of an action
] movie, but this is real." In the last week other
] commentators and viewers were drawing a lot of movie
] analogies too.
]
] The burning oil-well fires elicited comparisons to
] science-fiction movies; the plight of seven Tennessee
] families who had sent pairs of fathers and sons off to
] the war brought comparisons to "Saving Private Ryan."
] Allusions to the HBO mini-series "Band of Brothers" were
] ubiquitous, and the postbombing videotapes of Saddam
] Hussein (which might have starred one of his doubles)
] drew comparisons to the comedy "Dave," in which a
] look-alike fills in for an ailing American president, and
] "The Prisoner of

Shock, Awe and Razzmatazz in the Sequel

Rattle wrote:
] ] The cost of oil dependence has never been so clear. What
] ] had long been largely an environmental issue has suddenly
] ] become a deadly serious strategic concern. Oil is an
] ] indulgence we can no longer afford, not just because it
] ] will run out or turn the planet into a sauna, but because
] ] it inexorably leads to global conflict. Enough. What we
] ] need is a massive, Apollo-scale effort to unlock the
] ] potential of hydrogen, a virtually unlimited source of
] ] power. The technology is at a tipping point. Terrorism
] ] provides political urgency. Consumers are ready for an
] ] alternative. From Detroit to Dallas, even the oil
] ] establishment is primed for change. We put a man on the
] ] moon in a decade; we can achieve energy independence just
] ] as fast. Here's how.

Will it spoil anyone's fun if I point out that nuclear powered hydrolysis and gasoline are the proposed primary energy and feedstock choices for the new hydrogen infrastructure? Are gasoline and nuclear power 'green' now?
You can get a dog to swallow anything if you wrap it in a ball of hamburger....

RE: Wired 11.04: How Hydrogen Can Save America

] summary
]
] Although completely suppressed by the U.S. media and
] government, the answer to the Iraq enigma is simple yet
] shocking -- it is an oil currency war. The real reason
] for this upcoming war is this administration's goal of
] preventing further Organization of the Petroleum
] Exporting Countries (OPEC) momentum towards the euro as
] an oil transaction currency standard. However, in order
] to pre-empt OPEC, they need to gain geo-strategic control
] of Iraq along with its 2nd largest proven oil reserves.
] This essay will discuss the macroeconomics of the
] `petro-dollar' and the unpublicized but real threat to
] U.S. economic hegemony from the euro as an alternative
] oil transaction currency. The author advocates reform of
] the global monetary system including a dollar/euro
] currency `trading band' with reserve status parity, and a
] dual OPEC oil transaction standard. These reforms could
] potentially reduce future oil currency warfare.

The Real Reasons for the Upcoming War in Iraq: A Macroeconomic and Geostrategic Analysis of the Unspoken Truth, by W. Clark, 1/26/03

The chief reason why dollars are more than pieces of green paper is that countries all over the world need them for purchases, principally of oil. This requires them in addition to maintain dollar reserves to protect their own currency; and these reserves, when invested, help maintain the current high levels of the US securities markets.

...the need to dominate oil from Iraq is also deeply intertwined with the defense of the dollar. Its current strength is supported by OPEC's requirement (secured by a secret agreement between the US and Saudi Arabia) that all OPEC oil sales be denominated in dollars. This requirement is currently threatened by the desire of some OPEC countries to allow OPEC oil sales to be paid in euros.

THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO, "HMMM"...

Bush's Deep Reasons for War on Iraq: Oil, Petrodollars, and the OPEC Euro question

] Richard Wilson, Harvard University, January 1, 2003
]
] On Dec. 19 GNN ran an article about a relatively unknown
] former Iraqi atomic weapons scientist named Imad Khadduri
] ("In Search of Saddam's Bomb," A. Lappé). Khadduri, who
] currently lives in Canada, claims Saddam's push for the
] bomb began in earnest after the Israeli raid on Osirak, a
] French-made nuclear reactor the Israelis claimed Iraq
] could use to build a nuclear weapon. Here Harvard
] professor Richard Wilson, who visited the reactor after
] the attack, confirms much of Khadduri's acount of that
] incident and the effects it had on Saddam's atomic
] strategy. "Preemption," Wilson argues, is a dangerous
] game:

The Lessons of Osirak