A sober look at the developing environment of complete surveillance.

ACLU on data/video surveillance

Who can keep a straight face with the bullshit they're feeding us? Nobody, apparently....

ARI FLEISCHER LAUGHED OFF THE STAGE

] At the core of this is oil. When the administration's
] people say American involvement in Iraq is "not about
] oil," they're often responding to charges that they're
] only going after profits for American oil companies. They
] speak truth, in that context, when they say the war isn't
] about revenues from oil - the profits will only be a
] desirable side-effect. What the war is really about is
] the survival of the American lifestyle, which, in their
] world-view, is both non-negotiable and based almost
] entirely on access to cheap oil.

the vision of America held by the New Right

Maybe it has something to do with oil.

AlterNet: Obviously Oil

This is a really fabulous bipartisan organization we should all support.

Billionaires for Bush (or Gore)

A British Establishmentarian heeds the voice of God:

...Sea level is predicted to rise by 3ft over the next
century, leading to huge areas of Bangladesh, Egypt and China being inundated.

We don't know the limits of nature - how much rain could fall for how long a period, how much more powerful and frequent hurricanes could become, for how long droughts could endure. The ultimate concern is that if runaway global warming occurred, temperatures could spiral out of control and make our planet uninhabitable.

Five times in the past 540 million years there have been mass
extinctions, in one case involving the destruction of 96% of species then living. But while these were the result of asteroid strikes or intense glaciation, this is the first time that a species has been at risk of generating its own demise...

See also, Aral Sea Disaster

Noah Says...

...But it's very interesting to consider in terms of the
American right and in terms of the Bureau, what they define terrorism to be. And I'll give you just two examples of conflicting or contrasting examples to
explain this. Right wing fundamentalist Christians and
racist groups are responsible for probably between 600
and 700 terrorist acts every year in the U.S.

The principal groups involved are the Ku Klux Klan, the National Alliance, Aryan Nation and so on. To my knowledge, there hasn't been a congressional investigation of it, there is not much dedication of FBI resources to it and yet it is instrumental in creating an atmosphere of terror for every person of color in this country, for women and for gays. It is a program of terrorism against almost the majority of the people in the United States. It is of far greater concern to most people of color that they are likely to be murdered by the Klan than by international Islamic terrorists.

In fact Ashcroft used 9/11 as an excuse to divert resources from the enforcement of the nation's civil rights laws into anti-terrorist scams. The right in the U.S. and the media in the U.S. don't consider this terrorism. It's just murder, bombings, arson, but hey it's against people who don't have much political power so it's not important. To give you an example of the sort of terrorism they are concerned about, a quote from a U.S. Senate subcommittee investigation concerned with this terrorism - it describes a horrific act of terrorism committed by Earth First, a radical environmental organization:

"On October 16, 1997, my Eureka, California office was rocked by what sounded like a thunderous explosion. In fact the sound was that of a 500-pound tree stump being dumped off a truck into my office foyer floor. Upon responding to the horrific sound, my two female staff members were greeted by the visages of several Earth First terrorists - one wearing a black ski mask. These masked marauders were wearing combat boots and dressed in black from head to toe and their cohorts in the stump drop then dumped large garbage bags of sawdust on the floor…"

This wasn't a joke, they were quite serious about this.

Isn't this when they held them down and put swabs of tear gas in their eyes?

Yes…

…while handcuffed?

Yes. What we see here is an example of how anti-terrorism is going to be used. Anti-terrorism is going to be used to attack groups that are concerned about the environment, about civil rights, about the rights of gays and women. It's not going to be used to attack racist or fundamentalist religious groups that are murdering people outside of abortion clinics. It's a purely political term and it's being promulgated with a political agenda in mind - that is the rollback of Constitutional rights.

The FBI's greatest hits

] For years, people will be debating what made this country
] go from conservative to liberal, from gerontocracy to
] youth culture and from staunchly pro-American to a deeply
] ambivalent ally all seemingly overnight.
]
] For most here, the change is symbolized by the election
] in December of Roh Moo Hyun, a reformist lawyer with a
] disarmingly unfussy style who at 56 is youthful by South
] Korean political standards. But for many observers, the
] most important agent of change has been the Internet.

Online Newspaper Shakes Up Korean Politics

Good music.
] But what about Terrorism and 9/11? Do you have facts or
] is this a conspiracy theory?
]
] Understand the label "conspiracy theory" is a tactic that
] the media often invokes to immediately discredit voices
] of dissent and people who seek truth. The tactic of
] creating manufactured enemies for personal gain has been
] around for as long as there have been conflicts. Of
] course there's no concrete proof of a conspiracy - the
] media would never allow that - but rather an abundance of
] evidence that points to a conspiracy on behalf of US
] interests. Know that there's no concrete proof of the
] involvement of any other country either. The first thing
] that you must do is ask yourself, over and over again,
] the following question: "Who benefits?"
]
] Does Bin Laden benefit from the response that an act of
] war was surely to generate? Does Saudi Arabia and/or
] Afghanistan? How did we know it was him immediately after
] the event? It's now more important then ever that we
] question everything and recognize propaganda when we see
] it.
]
] Many of the media outlets now do little more than fan the
] flames of bigotry, exacerbate irrational fears or attempt
] to appeal to our sense of compassion - oftentimes in
] collaboration with some type of "Save/Heal/Help America"
] sales campaign. And while we all agree that a crime was
] committed with the WTC bombings, was this crime an act of

Guerrilla Funk

Thus every step toward war fills Bush pockets quite literally with gold. That's the way they operate, these liars and thieves in thousand-dollar suits, these secretive fronts who profit from war, fear, blood and greasy palms. They arm the "monsters," they disarm the monsters, making money both ways. Then they drape themselves with Bible and flag, like smug pimps promenading to church, singing "Glory Hallelujah" while the whole world burns.

War is Golden for the Bush Administration