Friday, October 27. 2006Project TangramImagine a data mining system that searches for "suspicious behavior" modeled from criminal activity, never sleeping, always aware. When the behavior shifts to elude attention how does the system find guilt from mere information? A coercion map of correct behavior is awaiting to be enforced by the New Commandments of Tangram. (SpaceWar article). Saturday, October 7. 2006R.I.P. America'I can't take it anymore. Every morning, I sit at this keyboard and think this will be the day I rant about Israel's genocidal insanity and how George Bush splashes my hands with blood in furtherance of that derangement. Wednesday, September 27. 2006Wake Up Neo: There Is No Counterculture, You Twit'Any element of punk, underground, beatnik, hippy, psychedelic, straight edge, or occult culture will be co-opted by the straight shooters the moment the shtick becomes profitable. It doesn't matter that these ideologies have little in common - it is the fashion or mystique which gets sold. When all an ideology really boils down to is an easy to replicate aesthetic, how could they not? Psychedelic and straight edge can share the same rack in a store if the store owner can co-brand the fashions. Marketers are wily as hell. They are paid to be.' (Jive Magazine article). Wednesday, September 13. 2006Virus Implanted: Diebold Touchscreen Voting'A vote for George Washington could easily be converted to a vote for Benedict Arnold on an electronic voting machine and neither the voter, nor the election officials administering the election would ever know what happened. It wouldn't require a "conspiracy theory" or a "conspiracy" at all. It could be done by a single person with just a few moments of access to the voting systems. Saturday, August 12. 2006From The Archives: Meet Jack Black - Hired Corporate BrainwasherThis article was published on media underground and disinformation back in October 2001. It was written under the pseudonym "George R.M. Moretti" (an anagram) since I didn't think the company I was working for would appreciate my realisation of their attempts to brainwash their workforce... Continue reading "From The Archives: Meet Jack Black - Hired Corporate Brainwasher" Tuesday, May 16. 2006Life Imitates 'South Park''Some days New York really does feel like a small town. The annual pot parade - or J-Day - is one of them. It's kind of like the Halloween parade, only a lot less crowded and held in the warmth of the first week in May. Saturday, May 6. 2006Telling The Emperor He’s Naked'The big story in media circles this week was Steven Colbert’s skewering the Washington press establishment (and incidentally G.W. Bush & Co.) over dinner on Saturday night. It will be interesting for future journalism scholars to study how the news of his thinly disguised attack on the administration and its tepid critics rolled across the country on the Internet after it was originally ignored by the big media. Evidently C-Span viewers who were watching on Saturday night caught it first, and some of them posted the video clips on the Internet, using magic technology which I don’t begin to understand. The only person I know who is glued to C-Span is my 91-year-old mother, who watches it the way some men watch ESPN and for some of the same reasons, and even she missed it.' (Berkley Daily Planet article & ABC News video stream). Friday, April 21. 2006Coming Home - Disillusioned'Three years ago, I was a Marine Corps captain on the Iraqi/Kuwaiti border, participating in the invasion of Iraq. Awestruck, I heard our howitzers thunder and watched artillery rockets rise into the night sky and streak toward Iraq - their light bathing the desert moonscape like giant arc welders. How Safe Is Your Job?'Is your job safe? Not if it can be done abroad. The only safe jobs are in domestic services that require a “hands-on” presence, such as barbers, hospital orderlies, and waitresses. Thursday, April 20. 2006Coming Home - Disillusioned'Three years ago, I was a Marine Corps captain on the Iraqi/Kuwaiti border, participating in the invasion of Iraq. Awestruck, I heard our howitzers thunder and watched artillery rockets rise into the night sky and streak toward Iraq - their light bathing the desert moonscape like giant arc welders. Wednesday, April 12. 2006Dweller On The Threshold'The most enigmatic figure to emerge from the 'occult revival' of the early 20th century was also the most successful: the Austrian 'spiritual scientist' Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925). Although many of his contemporaries and near-contemporaries were outwardly more eccentric – think of Madame Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, or of the inimitable GI Gurdjieff, or the scandalous 'magician' Aleister Crowley – it's precisely Steiner's sobriety that is so striking, even making him seem out of place in the often flamboyant world of the esoteric. The Gospel According To Judas'An ancient manuscript rediscovered after 1,700 years may shed light on the relationship between Jesus and Judas, the disciple said to have betrayed him. Saturday, April 1. 2006Losing One's Head'Somewhere on a shelf in a cavernous warehouse in Alabama rests the life-like noggin of Philip K. Dick, quietly dreaming of electric sheep. Or maybe the robotic head of the legendary sci-fi author got blown up. These are among the possible explanations for the bizarre disappearance of an artist's homage to Dick. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. This tale of loss should start from the beginning. 'It's a story as strange as anything PKD ever wrote - a body of work that includes the short stories behind the movies Blade Runner, Total Recall, and A Scanner Darkly. It involves, naturally, a robot, a group of confused humans, and a series of misunderstandings. The head was built by David Hanson, founder of Hanson Robotics. The self-described sculptor-roboticist, who has a degree from the Rhode Island School of Design and did some undergrad work in AI, specializes in creating amazingly realistic robot faces sheathed in a rubbery polymer he calls f'rubber. The bots have a wide range of facial expressions driven by dozens of tiny servomotors. They make eye contact with passersby through motion-tracking machine vision and can engage in complex conversations via AI speech software. They even recognize familiar faces.' (Wired magazine article). Friday, March 24. 2006Bring The Sixties Out Of The Closet'There are some present-day chilling parallels to the repression of the Nixon era - and of course many differences - but there is a feeling in the air that smells like the '60s, that sends paranoid vibes through the body politic. The events taking place - warrantless wiretapping, political corruption, torture, the war in Iraq with its disgusting profiteering while tens of thousands of people die - demand a response equal to the situation, Yet we sit without a clear path showing us our step.' (Alternet article). Tuesday, March 14. 2006Educational System Designed To Keep Us Docile'It's no secret that the US educational system doesn't do a very good job. Like clockwork, studies show that America's schoolkids lag behind their peers in pretty much every industrialized nation. We hear shocking statistics about the percentage of high-school seniors who can't find the US on an unmarked map of the world or who don't know who Abraham Lincoln was. Wednesday, March 8. 2006Bush Declares War On Freedom Of The Press'Using many of the questionable surveillance and monitoring techniques that brought both questions and criticism to his administration, President George W. Bush has launched a war against reporters who write stories unfavorable to his actions and is planning to prosecute journalists to make examples of them in his "war on terrorism." The Limits Of The Internet Or The Silence Of The Streets'While we're all sitting comfortably at some desk looking at our computer screens, reading articles by people whose opinion we cherish, celebrating the feeling that we might be able to change whatever we want to change by just writing the kind of highly opinionated piece I am about to write, I have lately been giving this complacent feeling of mine a thorough cleansing which led to the following musings: Tuesday, February 28. 2006The History Of CIA Interrogation'We now take a look at what lies behind the shocking images of torture at Abu Ghraib prison by turning to the history of the CIA and torture techniques. Professor Alfred McCoy talks about his book "A Question of Torture", a startling expose of the CIA development of psychological torture from the Cold War to Abu Ghraib. CIA mercenaries attempted to assassinate McCoy more than 30 years ago.' (Uruknet article). Thursday, February 23. 2006Surveillance: Obedient Slaves Have Nothing To Fear'It has nothing to do with the Bill of Rights or the right to be left alone in peace, unmolested and free from harassment, but rather it has to do with suspicion, with guilt before innocence, with mistrust and intrusion, and the roving eye of Big Brother. Quantum Computer Works Best Switched Off'Even for the crazy world of quantum mechanics, this one is twisted. A quantum computer program has produced an answer without actually running. Conspiracy Theories: The Basics'Imagine that a government illegally and secretly sells weapons to an enemy nation and diverts the proceeds to a guerrilla group. Or agents in one country, hoping to keep control of a second country, use spies in a third country to try to assassinate a religious leader. Let's say, in order to hurt a rival, operatives for a candidate cut a back-channel deal with hostage takers to delay the release of the captives. Better yet, what if three countries make a pact in which one starts a war so the others can play peacemakers and get what they want? How American Elections Became A Criminal Enterprise'Jeb ultimately appointed staunch Republicans to control Florida's educational system: state senator Jim Horne as Florida’s first Secretary of Education and most of the individual university presidents. Wednesday, February 22. 2006Land Of The Puppet People'It oftentimes boggles the mind to try and understand the ease with which the Establishment can manipulate the American citizenry into another warmongering escapade, this time an ominous foray into the Persian lands of Iran, a nation rich in history, culture, location and most importantly to the Evil Empire, oil and gas. Yet upon further inspection it is easy to comprehend this phenomenon, for we live, as Gore Vidal has labeled it, inside the United States of Amnesia, a country where all semblance of the yesterday becomes but a haze of blatant forgetfulness and convenient whitewash, a black hole of Alzheimer’s-like darkness from where no recollection of past lessons, mistakes, errors or history can be seen or touched. Tuesday, February 21. 2006Europe's Free Speech Paradox'Whether questioning conventional history is anti-Semitism is debatable. Illuminating is that Arab League Secretary General Amr Mousa brings to the fore the dichotomy in adherence to free speech depending on who is making that speech and who is on the offended end of remarks made under the cover of free speech. The infamous Danish caricatures of the Islamic prophet Mohammed are argued to be a free speech issue. The cartoons are published, so free speech was exercised. That does not make the issue one about free speech. The issue was rather about the right to make choices. What kind of choice did Flemming Rose, the culture editor at Jyllands Posten, make when he commissioned the cartoons? It was a calculated choice to be provocative, blasphemous, offensive, and to stir up enmity between Denmark’s majority population and its Muslim minority.' (Dissident Voice article). Wednesday, February 15. 2006Hack Your Nervous System'The brain has always been a battlefield. New weapons might be able to hack directly into your nervous system. Who Will Blow The Whistle Before We Attack Iran?'The question looms large against the backdrop of the hearing on whistleblowing scheduled for Tuesday afternoon by Christopher Shays, chair of the House Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats, and International Relations. Among those testifying are Russell Tice, one of the sources who exposed illegal eavesdropping by the National Security Agency, and Army Sgt. Sam Provance, who told his superiors of the torture he witnessed at Abu Graib, got no satisfaction, and felt it his duty to go public. It will not be your usual hearing.' (AntiWar article). Sunday, February 12. 2006Tunguska: The Fire In The Sky'Shattered trees from the now-famous "Tunguska Event" testified to the force of the mysterious aerial explosion (No-one can dispute the occurrence, but how it happened is the subject of continuing, and often heated, controversy. Despite the best efforts of science, every acceptable "explanation" leaves inescapable facts still shouting for attention). Sunday, February 5. 2006Almost Human'Robots are on the march. Already, 1.5 million Roomba vacuum-cleaning bots are crawling the globe, and autonomous planetary rovers are working overtime on Mars. But this is only the start of what engineers are hoping to achieve. Monday, January 30. 2006Noam Chomsky: The Terrorist In The Mirror'"Terror" is a term that rightly arouses strong emotions and deep concerns. The primary concern should, naturally, be to take measures to alleviate the threat, which has been severe in the past, and will be even more so in the future. To proceed in a serious way, we have to establish some guidelines. Here are a few simple ones: Thursday, January 26. 2006The Bush War Economy: Exporting Jobs & Security'America's role in corporate globalization will be "security export" says Barnett. We will build the weapons systems and send our children into endless war in order to protect the profits of the corporate elite. Under corporate globalization, Barnett says, there are places called "the non-integrating gap" that have not yet submitted to the authority of the new world order. The job of the U.S. will be to go into the "non-integrating gap" and make sure these countries comply with the dictates of corporate globalization.' (Counterpunch article).
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