(CNN) — A federal judge on Thursday ruled that the U.S. government’s warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional and ordered it ended immediately.

In a 44-page memorandum and order, U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, — who is based in Detroit, Michigan –struck down the National Security Agency’s program, which she said violates the rights to free speech and privacy.

Taylor’s ruling stems from a case filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. According to The Associated Press, Taylor is the first judge to rule the eavesdropping program unconstitutional. (Read the complete ruling — PDF)

The defendants “are permanently enjoined from directly or indirectly utilizing the Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP) in any way, including, but not limited to, conducting warrantless wiretaps of telephone and Internet communications, in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Title III,” she wrote.

She further declared that the program “violates the separation of powers doctrine, the Administrative Procedures Act, the First and Fourth amendments to the United States Constitution, the FISA and Title III.”

She went on to say that “The president of the United States … has undisputedly violated the Fourth in failing to procure judicial orders.”

The lawsuit, filed January 17 by civil rights organizations, lawyers, journalists and educators, “challenges the constitutionality of a secret government program to intercept vast quantities of the international telephone and Internet communications of innocent Americans without court approval.”

The judge rejected the government’s argument that the program is within the president’s authority, according to the AP. […]

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/08/17/domesticspying.lawsuit/index.html

The UK Terror plot: what’s really going on? August 14, 2006

Craig Murray [former British ambassador to Uzbekistan]

I have been reading very carefully through all the Sunday newspapers to try and analyse the truth from all the scores of pages claiming to detail the so-called bomb plot. Unlike the great herd of so-called security experts doing the media analysis, I have the advantage of having had the very highest security clearances myself, having done a huge amount of professional intelligence analysis, and having been inside the spin machine.

So this, I believe, is the true story.

None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn’t be a plane bomber for quite some time.

In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.

What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for over a year – like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need for early arrests.

Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing plot to blow up multiple planes – which, rather extraordinarily, had not turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries. As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give the interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to stop or avert torture. What it doesn’t give is the truth.

The gentleman being “interrogated” had fled the UK after being wanted for questioning over the murder of his uncle some years ago. That might be felt to cast some doubt on his reliability. It might also be felt that factors other than political ones might be at play within these relationships. Much is also being made of large transfers of money outside the formal economy. Not in fact too unusual in the British Muslim community, but if this activity is criminal, there are many possibilities that have nothing to do with terrorism.

We then have the extraordinary question of Bush and Blair discussing the possible arrests over the weekend. Why? I think the answer to that is plain. Both in desperate domestic political trouble, they longed for “Another 9/11”. The intelligence from Pakistan, however dodgy, gave them a new 9/11 they could sell to the media. The media has bought, wholesale, all the rubbish they have been shovelled.

We then have the appalling political propaganda of John Reid, Home Secretary, making a speech warning us all of the dreadful evil threatening us and complaining that “Some people don’t get” the need to abandon all our traditional liberties. He then went on, according to his own propaganda machine, to stay up all night and minutely direct the arrests. There could be no clearer evidence that our Police are now just a political tool. Like all the best nasty regimes, the knock on the door came in the middle of the night, at 2.30am. Those arrested included a mother with a six week old baby.

For those who don’t know, it is worth introducing Reid. A hardened Stalinist with a long term reputation for personal violence, at Stirling Univeristy he was the Communist Party’s “Enforcer”, (in days when the Communist Party ran Stirling University Students’ Union, which it should not be forgotten was a business with a very substantial cash turnover). Reid was sent to beat up those who deviated from the Party line.

We will now never know if any of those arrested would have gone on to make a bomb or buy a plane ticket. Most of them do not fit the “Loner” profile you would expect – a tiny percentage of suicide bombers have happy marriages and young children. As they were all under surveillance, and certainly would have been on airport watch lists, there could have been little danger in letting them proceed closer to maturity – that is certainly what we would have done with the IRA.

In all of this, the one thing of which I am certain is that the timing is deeply political. This is more propaganda than plot. Of the over one thousand British Muslims arrested under anti- terrorist legislation, only twelve per cent are ever charged with anything. That is simply harrassment of Muslims on an appalling scale. Of those charged, 80% are acquitted. Most of the very few – just over two per cent of arrests – who are convicted, are not convicted of anything to do terrorism, but of some minor offence the Police happened upon while trawling through the wreck of the lives they had shattered. […]

http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/index.html

Olbermann Exposes Nexus Of Politics And Terror
Details ten clear examples where Bush admin. alerts preceded by damaging revelations

Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | August 15 2006

During a prime time segment on his MSNBC show last night, anchor Keith Olbermann presented ten clear examples where the Bush administration had issued terror alerts days after politically damaging revelations and questioned the credibility of each of the alleged plots’ authenticity in light of astounding evidence to the contrary.

Olbermann overwhelmingly documents the staged timing of terror alerts spanning back four years and ends by scrutinizing the latest alleged liquid bomb plot – an operation infiltrated and surveilled for months by intelligence agencies, yet announced to the public on a carefully scripted pre-arranged schedule.

The alleged foiling of the terror plot was announced days after darling of the Neo-Fascists Joe Lieberman was defeated in the Connecticut Senatorial election by anti-war opponent Ned Lamont. Hours afterwards, drooling feverish Neo-Con cheerleaders tried to smear Lamont as “the Al-Qaeda candidate.”

Go here to watch the video segment.

[…]

‘No Sale’ is what the awake are saying, and there are ALOT of people who are awake.

The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.

~William Colby, former CIA director

They can’t POSSIBLY own Olbermann. And that is amazing, because he is on Prime Time TV. Or maybe Colby was lying.

hmmmmmm!

Liquid Bomb Pakistan Link Is False Flag Smoking Gun
Veracity of liquid explosives method also put under dubious doubt

Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | August 13 2006

Revelations concerning the origins and connections of the alleged liquid bomb terror plot to Pakistan and the 7/7 bombings in London provide a strong indication that the operation, known for months yet deliberately timed for public release, was a synthetic ruse concocted by the Bush/Blair cabal to re-package the flagging war on terror.

Media reports in the days following the alert cite Pakistan’s ISI as having identified Rashid Rauf as, “the link between the plot’s planners and British-based Muslims who were allegedly preparing to carry out attacks on transatlantic flights.”

According to former NSA official Wayne Madsen, the Lashkar-e-Toiba terror group, to which Rashid Rauf is affiliated, is wholly operated and funded by the Pakistani ISI.

The Pakistani ISI is a CIA front and controls terror cells at the discretion of the highest levels of the US military-industrial complex. This means that the potential mastermind of the liquid bomb plot, Rashid Rauf (pictured), was operating under the oversight and direction of Pakistani and by proxy American intelligence agencies.

To understand why the Pakistan link strongly indicates that Thursday morning’s terror alert was a manufactured ruse, it is necessary to understand the the nexus that connects Pakistani intelligence, the CIA and terrorist organizations.

In October 2001, under the headline ‘Pakistani Intelligence Had Links to Al Qaeda, U.S. Officials Say,’ the New York Times reported, “The intelligence service of Pakistan, a crucial American ally in the war on terrorism, has had an indirect but longstanding relationship with Al Qaeda, turning a blind eye for years to the growing ties between Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, according to American officials.”

The ISI has received CIA funds to create and control militant organizations, including the Taliban and Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.

Funds transferred from Pakistan bankrolled the alleged 9/11 hijackers before the attack. Ahmad Umar Sheikh wired $100,000 from Karachi to alleged lead hijacker Mohammed Atta at the behest of ISI chief Mahmoud Ahmad. If this isn’t a direct link from the ISI to Al-Qaeda then nothing is.

Porter Goss, later appointed as director of the CIA, was having breakfast with the money man behind the terrorists as the planes crashed on the morning of 9/11. Ahmad had also met with top defense and intelligence officials in Washington in the days before the attack, including then CIA director George Tenet, Pentagon officials, and White House personnel.

The fact that the Pakistani financier of the alleged hijackers was meeting with the top brass of the US government in the week before the attack was never investigated by the 9/11 Commission.

In addition, alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was repeatedly protected by the ISI, according to Josef Bodansky, the director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare.

Defense Intelligence Agency documents dated from 2001 clearly indicate that the CIA is aware that Pakistan’s ISI supports and bankrolls Al-Qaeda groups but they have deliberately chosen to ignore the connection.

This rich history of ISI creation and protection of terrorist cells, allied with the fact that the ISI is a known CIA front, and added to the revelation that the mastermind of the liquid bomb plot Rashid Rauf is under ISI control, it is therefore obvious to conclude that the entire charade was cooked and orchestrated by elements of the Bush/Blair cabal and sold as promotional propaganda for the increased surveillance and behavioral control of UK and US citizens.

At the very least, the terror cell had been fully infiltrated for months – this has already been admitted – and the snap “foiling” of the attack was coordinated and stage-managed for purposes of political grandstanding on the part of Bush, Blair and the Neo-Fascist apparatus that seeks to use the ailing justification of the war on terror for a future military incursion into Iran.

Another dimension to the indication that we are being fed another hoax, are reports detailing the alleged plot’s links to the 7/7 London bombings.

As this website has exhaustively documented for over a year, the 7/7 bombings and the patsies that were used to take the fall for them, were controlled and engineered by the British intelligence apparatus.

The alleged ringleader of the attack which targeted three tube trains and one bus, Mohammed Siddique Khan, was an MI5 informant, according to former London Metropolitan Police detective and terror expert Charles Shoebridge. Therefore, in the case of the liquid bomb plot suspects, any link to the London bombers is a link to MI5.

It is clear that the scope of the attack has been greatly exaggerated by the British government to maximize fear and subservience engendered by images of alarmed and frightened airliner passengers.

Doomsday proclamations of ten planes exploding into balls of flames in mid-air do not correlate with the capacity of the liquid explosives the alleged terrorists were to use.

The only other example where terrorists used liquid explosives was the December 1994 Philippines Airline Boeing 747 incident, a dry run for a bigger plot conducted by Ramzi Youssef.

In this case, Youssef planted the explosives explosives under one of the seats in the airliner and timed them to detonate after he disembarked for a connecting flight. The subsequent explosion killed only the Japanese businessman who was sitting directly above the bomb. Besides five people with minor injuries, the other 200-plus passengers were unharmed and the plane landed safely.

Only liquid explosives in large and noticeable amounts can have any literal chance of “blowing up” a plane in mid-air. Confiscating pregnant white women’s lip gloss is completely insane and proves in itself that the new airport measures are purely designed to act as a PR coup for the police state.

In addition, photographs of passengers being ordered to pour liquids into one single container completely belies the claim that the alleged terrorists planned to mix the liquids to create the deadly explosives. If mixing liquids was a key component of the bomb making process then why are airport security ordering people to mix liquids?

World Affairs Brief editor Joel Skousen highlights prescient questions about the inconsistencies of the properties of the alleged liquid explosives in relation to the much vaunted scale of the foiled attack.

“The supposed explosive device this time was a Peroxide-based explosive, which is mildly explosive and can be prepared from acetone, hydrogen Peroxide, and an acid catalyst. This type is claimed by governments to be “widely in use by terrorist groups,” though we have no known terrorist events where it has been used, except by one Palestinian terrorist, and then as a detonator only-not as the main charge. This explosive material is usually known by its abbreviation TATP (Tri Acetone Tri Peroxide),” writes Skousen.

“Both Peroxide and Acetone are clear liquids, but acetone (laquer thinner) is easily identifiable by smell and its high rate of evaporation. Experts indicate it is very unstable and highly unlikely to be a stand-alone explosive to take down an airliner. The quantities would have to be large enough to be easily noticed. Thus, even though this is a theoretical threat, banning all cosmetics and lotions is stupid and banning all liquids is unnecessary. Only clear liquids need checking. There is cheap test equipment for TATP, and simple ways for TSA employees to quickly check for acetone and peroxide.”

Returning to how the latest plot is a mirror image of Operation Bojinka – the Ramzi Youssef link is also telling because Youssef has been protected and coddled by the US government at every juncture.

In September of 1992 Youssef entered the US with Ahmad Ajaj. Ajaj’s luggage contained documents on how to make bombs and was stuffed with fake passports and ID’s. Ajaj was arrested – amazingly Youssef was released.

Youssef later masterminded the WTC ’93 bombing with the gracious help of FBI agents. Having penetrated the group before the bombing, the FBI’s mole, Emad Salem, was told to arm the terror cell with dummy explosives so a sting operation could ensnare the perpetrators. Salem was mystified when the orders changed, the sting was called off and the FBI allowed the bombing to go forward. This was all admitted in an October 1993 New York Times front page story.

Again, any Operation Bojinka or Ramzi Youssef link in the case of the liquid bomb plot is a link back to western intelligence agencies.

Within three days of its exposure, Tony Blair and MI5 are already milking the alleged plot for political purposes in re-introducing the argument for 90-day detention without charge legislation. Blair suffered his only defeat to date in the Commons last November when the bill was shot down by Labour rebels – a humiliating rejection of the so-called ‘liberal’ government’s feverish bloodlust for authoritarian control.

Reports of criminal insider trading on airline stocks before the announcement of the alleged foiled plot, specifically British Airways stocks, have also started to filter in and will be the subject of a follow-up investigation. […]

http://prisonplanet.com/articles/august2006/130806liquidbomb.htm

Paul Joseph Watson goes where no one else will go, ties it all together, presents the citations and cleans up the mess. Thre is no excuse for believeing the murder inc lies; if HE can do it, any ‘journalist’ can do it.

“Why don’t they” is the question that you need to be asking. Or not. We don’t need them to join the dots, after all.

Digging around over the last couple of days, I came across this post from October 05 concerning more details about what David Shayler knows and has revealed.

Tony Gosling – 15Oct05 – BRISTOL

This story was to be found neither on UK Indymedia or on Bristol Indymedia as neither appear to be working properly. I spent 30 mins. or so attempting to publish this on both without success, seems this is a scoop Indymedia aren’t interested in.

Ex anti-terrorism officer David Shayler came out with an interesting revelation when stuck in Bristol recently.

There has been much speculation as to how the most right wing and powerful elements in the Labour Party used to be such left wing radicals. Did they have a change of heart? Apparently not, according to Ex MI5 Counter-Terrorism Officer David Shayler.

It would also explain why the spooks have been so busy trying to blacken Shayler’s name.

Ex MI5 anti-terrorism officer David Shayler, who spent three days with us in Bristol recently, when his car got brake failure while parked up at the University, said at his Cube cinema presentation that he had access to information contained in Blair’s Security File while in ‘the service’.

“Tony Blair worked for MI5 before he became Labour leader.”
Evening Post reference http://tinyurl.com/d9b32

The day after Shayler was arrested in France the Mail on Sunday came out with the Headline ‘Shayler Could Bring Down Government’.

On the Monday, Shayler says, Blair Summoned the editor to Downing Street and asked him into the Garden (to avoid bugs) demanding to know what Shayler knew about him (Blair).

The editor wisely explained that due to a government injunction he could not tell Mr Blair anything that Shayler knew or he’d be breaking Blair’s government’s own injunction.

Blair, according to Shayler, had documents in his file which clearly meant he had been spying on his comrades in CND and The Labour Party before being made Party Leader – which explains his so-called radical left activities as a young man – he was a spy reporting back on Communist ‘subversives’ in CND and in the Labour Party!

Shayler says his secret state agent past would make Blair utterly unreliable to hold public office – particularly in the Labour party and would make him a puppet of the hawks in MI6. The same hawks I guess who cooked up the dodgey dossier at our expense which has been used to kill nearly 150,000 Iraqis and open the gates of hell in the Middle East. (oh yes and boost the profits and margins of every single Western Arms business leaving not enough to pay our pensioners and treat people on the NHS properly).

http://www.bilderberg.org/sis.htm#agent

If what Mr Shayler says is true (anyone have any doubt?) and given the history of whats happened in the Labour party, this country and their effect and influence in certain regions of this planet, over the last 15 years.

August 10 2006: Alex predicts the next “terra” attack is just around the corner:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAHqSfDNjaI

Think he is fear mongering? Check out his prediction in July of 2001:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGtOFudmHG8

Iranian Guardian Council Secretary Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati in Tehran Friday Sermon: The Gates of the U.N. and the Security Council Should Be Closed

Following are excerpts from a Tehran Friday Sermon delivered by Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, Secretary of the Iranian Guardian Council, aired on Channel 1, Iranian TV on August 4, 2006:

God is using one of Ali’s descendents [Nasrallah], to confront the spiritual and physical descendents of Marhab of Khaybar [the Jews]. God is reviving the memories of early Islam – the memories of the conflict between Ali and the Jews of [the battles] of Khaybar and Khandaq. On one side stood Ali with a small number of Muslims, and on the other side stood the strong, rich, vain, and arrogant Jews. Ultimately, the sword of Ali did what had to be done, and he humiliated the people of Khaybar and the vain and arrogant Jews. Today, this descendent of Ali stands in the same position, and so do the descendents of Marhab of Khaybar, the Jews of Khaybar and Khandaq.

[…]

All the oppressed victims of Lebanon break our hearts, but the most heart-breaking of all are the children, who are being killed everywhere, especially in the village of Qana. Israel gave the blood of these children to the impure and evil Rice, and to Bush, who is more impure than impure, in order to quench their thirst for blood.

[…]

I wish the Islamic regimes had some compassion, mercy, and honor. I do not know what good they could do. A non-Islamic country [Venezuela] recalls its ambassador, and tells him there is no reason for him to remain in Israel, but the neighboring Islamic countries and even the non-Islamic countries do not even do this. They do not even close the gates of their embassies. They really are raising the level of shame to the maximum, but they should know that they will bear this mark of shame, and one day, the hand of divine vengeance will, take revenge upon those who kept silent in the face of oppression.

[…]

The Security Council is so weak, so impotent, and is so susceptible to pressure that it in incapable of passing any resolution. But when it comes to Iran, and to the trampling of its right to nuclear technology underfoot, it immediately passes a resolution, with an absolute majority. At that moment, death takes over the Security Council. Indeed, the gates of the UN and the Security Council should be closed. What kind of Security Council is this?

Crowd: Allah Akbar

Allah Akbar

Allah Akbar

Khamenei is the leader

Death to those who oppose the rule of the Jurisprudent

Death to America

Death to England

Deth to the hypocrites [Mojahedin-e Khalq] and Saddam

Death to Israel

[…]

What Hizbullah does shows that all the humiliation endured by us and the Islamic world stems from our own impotence. If [the Muslims] were men enough to enter the arena, their spit and threats would be enough to put the others in their place. As [the Muslims] continue to keep silent, [America and Israel] became so insolent, to the point that this wretched woman comes and talks about a New Middle East. This means a Middle East that is subservient to America, follows its orders unconditionally. This is the Middle East they desire, but, Allah willing, they will take this desire to the grave. […]

MEMRI TV

[…]

Did you know that Venezuela has recalled its ambassador?!

I watched a program about this car

It is pure beauty, sorry if any of you guys have heard about alreay….

From Statewatch

A report from the EU Council Presidency at the end of June (EU doc no: 9403/1/06) proposes that for EU passports:

1. The “scanning of the facial image” should be:

“0 to 12 years of age.. storage in the chip [to be] on the basis of national legislation [and] from 12 years of age: Compulsory“. (emphasis in original).

[…]

2. The taking of finger-prints is a wholly different issue. Here the EU Council Presidency proposes that:

“Scanning of fingerprints up to 12 years of age.. is permissible if provided for by national legislation”

“From 12 years of age: compulsory” (emphasis in original)

And if any member states wants to set a lower limit, eg: 10, 8, 6 or 4 years, or 1 day, old they can do so and from 12 years old the compulsory taking of fingerprints from children.

The EU has absolutely no business in demanding anyones information be databased never mind children. At the very very most it should ensure a common format for any information that individual nations see fit to register. The EU is not a state and thanks to the rejection of the constitution it is still quite literally a non-entity in legal terms.

This was also reported in the Observer which has a typical half hearted quote from Liberty’s ex- Home Office employee, Shami Chakrabarti:

‘Secure passports make a lot more sense than ID cards,’ said Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights group Liberty. ‘But only as long as the information that is kept is no more than necessary and is not shared with other countries.’

NO. A secure passport system can be made operable without any centralised database whatsoever, no information about free individuals need be shared with anybody, even within ‘their own country’. For a secure system you need nothing more complicated than a passport containing a digital photograph encrypted with public/private key encryption so that the immigration control officer can verify you are the legitimate holder of your passport. Everything else is a waste of money, an imposition upon anonymity and an invitation to theft of personal information and individual rights.

AussieUFOpod2.mp4

AussieUFOpod6.mov

AussieUFOpod5.mov

All snarfed from:
http://australianufowave.blogspot.com/

And while we are at it, check out the following documentary, which has some really truely astonishing footage in it:

http://www.mininova.org/tor/328395

Dan Aykroyd Unplugged on UFOs (2005)

Dan Aykroyd Unplugged on UFOs explores past and present sightings
from around the world with shocking real footage, much of it never before seen,
that will leave even the most skeptical viewers scratching their heads.

Along with the fascinating collection of stunning eyewitness videos,
Akroyd reveals his own vast knowledge of the strange and paranormal
as he explores in detail his views on conspiracy theories, military secrets,
and how UFO technology is currently part of our everyday lives!

Best Torrents on the WEB
http://conspiracycentral.net:6969
30000 Active users
Enjoy

AVI File Details
========================================
Name………: Dan Aykroyd Unplugged on UFOs 2005.avi
Filesize…..: 697 MB (or 714,524 KB or 731,672,576 bytes)
Runtime……: 01:24:07 (120,997 fr)
Video Codec..: XviD
Video Bitrate: 963 kb/s
Audio Codec..: ac3 (0x2000) Dolby Laboratories, Inc
Audio Bitrate: 192 kb/s (96/ch, stereo) CBR
Frame Size…: 560×336 (1.67:1) [=5:3]

CIA has access to your bank records By Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor (Filed: 28/06/2006)

The bank transaction records of millions of people in Britain and around the world may have been disclosed illegally to US intelligence agencies as part of the Bush administration’s counter-terrorism programme, privacy campaigners said yesterday.

CIA agents and US treasury officials have been secretly monitoring financial transactions routed through Swift, the Brussels-based, industry-owned co-operative that links 7,800 financial institutions in more than 200 countries.

Swift, an acronym for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, provides electronic instructions for transfers between virtually every bank, brokerage house, and stock exchange and routes 11 million transactions each day.

The Terrorist Finance Tracking Program was disclosed by the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, which said they had been pressed by the administration not to divulge its existence […]

Telegraph

The great thing about this is that it will catch absolutely no one. These people (millions of them) use informal banking systems that are untracable.

How it works is…and I’m sure that I have written about this before, is:

1. You go to a man ‘Jim’ who makes money out of transferring money.
2. He has a trusted colleague in every city. You want to send 1000 Euros to your buddy in Paris.
3. You tell your friend “Billy’ in Paris to meet this man’s Paris colleague, ‘Jack’, to pick up the money.
4. You take your 1000 Euros to Jim, and he gets on the phone to Jack and tells him to hand over 950 Euros to ‘Billy’.
5. You just paid 1000 to Jim. Jim takes 25 Euros for his troubles.
6. Jack payed out 980. He just took 25 Euros for his troubles.

Jack and Jim reconcile their accounts regularly.

With this informal banking, no one can see the transfers. Perfectly ordinary people do this every day. CIA snooping into the SWIFT stream is corporate espionage pure and simple, as the comment on this post rightly asserts.

And while we are making up poor titles for post, this triplet came (back) to me:

Lil Kim Jong Il

The united states of total paranoia

Jeremy Clarkson

I know Britain is full of incompetent water board officials and stabbed Glaswegians but even so I fell on my knees this morning and kissed the ground, because I’ve just spent three weeks trying to work in America.

It’s known as the land of the free and I’m sure it is if you get up in the morning, go to work in a petrol station, eat nothing but double-egg burgers — with cheese — and take your children to little league. But if you step outside the loop, if you try to do something a bit zany, you will find that you’re in a police state.

We begin at Los Angeles airport in front of an immigration official who, like all his colleagues, was selected for having no grace, no manners, no humour, no humanity and the sort of IQ normally found in farmyard animals. He scanned my form and noted there was no street number for the hotel at which I was staying.

“I’m going to need a number,” he said. “Ooh, I’m sorry,” I said, “I’m afraid I don’t have one.”

This didn’t seem to have any effect. “I’m going to need a number,” he said again, and then again, and then again. Each time I shrugged and stammered, terrified that I might be sent to the back of the queue or worse, into the little room with the men in Marigolds. But I simply didn’t have an answer.

“I’m going to need a number,” he said again, giving the distinct impression that he was an autobank, and that this was a conversation he was prepared to endure until one of us died. So with a great deal of bravery I decided to give him one. And the number I chose was 2,649,347.

This, it turned out, was fine. He’d been told by his superiors to get a number. I’d given him a number. His job was done and so, just an hour or so later, I was on the streets of Los Angeles doing a piece to camera.

Except, of course, I wasn’t. Technically you need a permit to film on every street in pretty well every corner of the world. But the only countries where this rule is enforced are Vietnam, Cuba, North Korea and the United States of America.

So, seconds after breaking out the tripod, a policeman pulled up and demanded that we show him our permit. We had one that covered the city of Los Angeles . . . except the bit where we were. So we were moved on.

The next day I was moved on in Las Vegas too because the permit I had didn’t cover the part of the pavement I was standing on. Eight inches away was fine.

You need a permit to do everything in America. You even need a passport to buy a drink. But interestingly you don’t need one if you wish to rent some guns and some bullets. I needed a 50 cal (very big) machinegun. “No problem,” said the man at the shop. “But could you just sign this assuring us that the movie you’re making is not anti-Bush or anti-war.”

Also, you do not need a permit if you want — as I did — to transport a dead cow on the roof of your car through the Florida panhandle. That’s because this is banned by a state law.

Think about that. Someone has gone to all the bother and expense of drawing up a law that means that at some point lots of people were moving dead cows about on their cars. It must have been popular. Fashionable even.

Anyway, back to the guns. I needed them because I wished to shoot a car in the Mojave desert. But you can’t do that without the say-so of the local fire chief who turned up, with his haircut, to say that for reasons he couldn’t explain, he had a red flag in his head.

You find this a lot in America. People way down the food chain are given the power to say yes or no to elaborately prepared plans, just so their bosses can’t be sued. One expression that simply doesn’t translate from English in these days of power without responsibility is “Ooh, I’m sure it’ll be fine”.

And, unfortunately, these people at the bottom of the food chain have no intellect at all. Reasoning with them is like reasoning with a tree. I think this is because people in the sticks have stopped marrying their cousins and are now mating with vegetables.

They certainly aren’t eating them. You see them growing in fields, but all you ever find on a menu is cheese, cheese, cheese, or cheese with cheese. Except for a steak and cheese sandwich I bought in Mississippi. This was made, according to the label, from “imitation cheese”.

Nope, I don’t know what that is either but I do know that out of the main population centres, the potato people are getting fatter and dimmer by the minute.

Today the average petrol pump attendant is capable, just, of turning on a pump when you prepay. But if you pay for two pumps to be turned on to fill two cars, you can, if you stare carefully, see wisps of smoke coming from her fat, useless, war losing, acne-scarred, gormless turnip face.

And the awful thing is that you don’t want the petrol anyway, because it’ll simply get you to somewhere else, which will be worse. A point I shall prove next week when we have a look at what happened in Alabama. And why the poor of New Orleans will sue if the donation you make isn’t as big as they’d hoped for.

[….]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,24389-2252271.html

Jeremy Clarkson, that agromeglyous nincompoop, complains about his treatment in the USA, when EVERYONE knows this systematic abuse has been going on for ages, and then he makes himself part of the problem by making a programme in that beleagured country that everyone in the UK will watch, giving the utterly false impression that the USA is a normal country and that its perfectly normal and OK to go there for work and play.

I don’t have a single bit of sympathy for him.

On a similar subject, journalist Lou Dobbs gets exasperated at the blantant (yes, ‘blantant’) takeover of the USA in this clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueAdeZuns3A

For years this man has lied to the American public, and only now does he realise his monumental error. Of course, he would claim that he has been a good journalist, has never lied and did his job properly. If that is the case, if we looked back over his reports in the run up to the illegal war(s) would we find him screaming that it was all wrong? Do we see him now explaining to the american public that the mythical ‘9/11’ is the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on the american public? All that aside, where are his calls to impeach Bu$h over this, his attempt to sell the soverign control of the usa wholesale?

It has to be said that Europe is partly to blame for this North American Union roll out. When the elite of the usa saw how, for example, the British and French populations gave up their independence without even a shout, they must have licked their lips and said, “well, these people are far more educated than our own populations, we can impliement this with total ease!”.

It is too late to cry over the destruction of your beloved country now Dobbs. Your opposition to the Neocon agenda should have come much earlier, and it should have been ferocious, loud and unequivocal. It should have been in the form of ‘a Howard Beale’…hmmm….it’s not too late Dobbs…”Im mad as hell, and I’m not goig to take it anymore!” is how it goes.

Some albums which were recorded at Conny’s Studio:

Kraftwerk – Autobahn
Devo – Are we not Men
Les Rita Mitsouko – Minuit Dansant
Eurythmitcs – In the Garden, Revenge
Ginanna Nannini – Latin Lover
DAF – Gold und Liebe, Alles ist Gut, Für Immer
Ultravox – System of Romances, Vienna
Brian Eno – Before and after Science, Music for Airports
Killing Joke – Revelations
Nina Hagen – FreuD Euch

Artists who worked at Conny’s Studio:

Doe Ärtzte
Einstürzende Neubauten
Crime and the City Solution
Manu Chao
Astor Piazolla
Tindersticks
The Metereors
Miranda Sex Garden
Keith Caputo
Die Fantastischen Vier
Ulrich Tukur
Herbert Grönemeyer
The Walabouts
The Kelly Family
Afrika Bambaataa
Whodini
CAN
Phew
Montanablue
Idel
Bläck Fööss
Tommi Stumpf
Stahlnetz
Marius Müller Westernhagen
Echo and the Bunnymen
Hunters and Collectors
A Flockj of Segulls
Gentleman
The Machine
Sons and Daughters
Eroc
Grobschnitt

Please visit the Wikipedia to get more Information on Connys life and work

Conny Plank’s Studio Liquidation.

Like a great meal that we ate and can only recount to you with words….its gone forever.

What a life!

The other day, whilst listening to CBS, Galaxy 2 Galaxy ‘High Tech Jazz’ burst into my speakers, followed by ‘Video Clash’ by Lil Louis.

Do you know what I am implying?

A nine-month-old baby is the youngest person to be identified as a future delinquent using new technology aimed at predicting risk, a Community Care conference heard last week.

Dr Eileen Munro, reader in social policy at London School of Economics, warned that rapidly developing IT could become a monster rather than a useful tool.

Do we see a potential future here?
Once the state has marked an individual as a potential (inherent) trouble-maker that person will be spending the rest of their life on the defensive trying to prove themselves against a databased assumption of their guilt.

And all that follows…

A woman who refused to pay her council tax in protest at the condition of her neighbourhood has been jailed. Josephine Rooney, 69, who lives in Hartington Street, Derby, has the £800 to pay, but said the city council has failed to clean up her area.

The council has denied Miss Rooney’s claims, saying measures were already in place to improve her district.

Rooney, who described herself as a “conscientious objector”, was jailed for three months by Derby magistrates. […]

A 69-year-old Derby woman facing jail after refusing to pay her council tax has won a national award for looking after her community.

Josephine Rooney owes Derby City Council nearly £800 and refuses to pay because, in her view, the council has failed in its duty of care to her.

Miss Rooney has now won a Taking a Stand award from the Government’s Respect campaign. […]

“I planned this nearly two years ago when I read about that pensioner down in the West Country, and I wanted to find a way of committing civil disobedience – in the way conscientious objectors do so in South American dictatorships and other parts of the world.

“So, that’s what I really am, a conscientious objector,” she said.

[…]

What a beautiful person. And now she is suffering at the hands of those employed to SERVE her, because THEY have failed in their duties.

If only everyone else on her street had stood with her…

Know what I mean?

Public libraries are on the verge of extinction warn campaigners. How can they be protected for the future?

Be honest – when did you last use your local library? Do you even know where it is?

[…]

We use our library at least weekly. There is no excuse not to, since:

We can rent CDs and DVDs from the library much cheaper than other places.

They may have a poor stock, but one can order ANY BOOK YOU LIKE and it will be brought to your local library. It takes one minute to fill in a form. Same for CDs and DVDs.
We can check stock and renew items online.

They hold a wealth of local information, both historical and about upcoming events.

They give classes in many things for kids and adults. There are kids story-telling sessions too.

They have computers with free internet access.

What more do you want!?!?!???

Knowledge is sustenance, and here is a font to sup at for free. Fill thy cups, my friends!