Expedient Election-Year Inaccuracies

So to recap, regarding the "Miami 7":

• None were Muslim.
• Some practiced Santoria.
• Others were studying the Bible.
• None had connections with Al Qaeda.
• They were prompted/encouraged to think about terrorist actions by.... an FBI agent.
• They were homeless, and living in a run-down warehouse.
• They had no money to travel with.
• They received no weaponry of any kind, but the FBI did give them snazzy matching "terrorist" combat boots, and promised to give them uniforms. Because, you know, terrorists wear uniforms....
• They had bad thoughts. More "aspirational than operational".
• They surfed the internets.
• They could in Maureen Dowd's words, "Barely find the LOCAL Sears, much less the Sears Tower."

Why even bother with a trial? Because, "If the boots don't fit, you must acquit!" So don't take the chance of these "high value" targets gettting away on some legal technicality like.... a complete lack of evidence.

Just send these boys off to Gitmo, because clearly, their FBI-implanted thoughts have condemned them.

Just like the Canuck homegrown "terrorists" "captured" a few days earlier, who are apparently guilty of playing paintball on the weekends and REFUSING a shipment of amonium nitrate sent by the Canadian Mounties intended to entrap them.

Indeed, clearly we should all be very afraid and give up our rights and freedoms immediately so Alberto "Torquemada" Gonzales and John "Look the other way while they torture, rape, and then drop four American nuns out of helicopters into your back yard" Negroponte, can protect us all....

With geniuses like this running things, it's no wonder we can't find an angry six-foot Saudi dragging a kidney dialysis machine behind him.

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UPDATE - July 26th, 2006:

It has now been revealed by the Florida newspaper, the Sun Sentinel, that the FBI paid "terror informants" as much as $56,000 to individuals who themselves were guilty of other crimes such as assault, possession of marijuana, and motor vehicle violations -- all to coerce the 7 homeless men in this case into becoming "terrorists". One of the informants, an illegal immigrant, also received valuable "noncash perks", like immigration parole, so that he could stay in the United States.

According to the report:

According to a document filed by federal prosecutors, the FBI paid one unnamed informant $10,500 and an additional $8,815 in expenses. They also paid a second informant $17,000 with another $19,570 for expenses.

Gee, I wonder whether their informants will tell the FBI just what it WANTS to hear?

This is frighteningly reminiscent of the market for "suspects" that developed in Afghanistan following 9/11.

Our idiotic government offers whopping huge reward for anyone who turns in a "member" of Al Qaeda. So what happened? There emerged a nice black market in scooping random fucks up off the street, turning them in to the stupid Americans who never bothered to verify anyone's identity, and taking the cash.

And those poor suckers have been in the Kafka nightmare of GITMO for 4 years now....

It's called entrapment, people. And there's a reason why it's ILLEGAL.

Guilt By Semantics

The organization responsible for overseeing web standards, the W3C, is supporting an "advance" in internet technology called the "semantic web". The semantic web is developed from a data structure called Resource Description Framework (RDF). RFD basically assigns every type of data with a unique marker or tag, which then can be tracked.

David de Roure at the University of Southampton states:

"RDF turns the web into a kind of universal spreadsheet that is readable by computers as well as people."

As the magazine "New Scientist" reported:

"The idea is to see by how many links or “degrees” separate people from, say, a member of a blacklisted organisation."

Great, the government's playing the EVIL version of the Kevin Bacon game. So now, if you even play community softball with the 3rd cousin of a radical vegetarian PETA member, or go to the movies with the uncle of a pesky peaceful Quaker, you're on the Pentagon's "terrorist" watch list.

Meanwhile, Osama's walking right into the Capital Building for a meeting of the Carlyle Group, kidney dialysis machine in tow.

Perfect.

This is literally the development of a system by which people are guilty by association, something completely antithetical to American standards of Democracy. Political preferences, sexual orientation, preferred media sources, club memberships, mutual sporting or entertainment activities, banking usage, consumer purchases, and medical history all could be lumped into a nice fat file on over 230 million Americans. All while simultaneously reducing our capacity to narrow our focus on REAL terrorists.

Funny, but I thought we were hunting a small number of crazed, violent, wingnut religious fanatics, not average Americans. Silly me.

Well, snooping on so-called guilt-by-association trails goes both ways. Behold the trail of reports:

• At W3C's annual conference in Edinburgh, Scotland this May, a research paper entitled "Semantic Analytics on Social Networks" was released. In a footnote to that paper, it was revealed that part of the funding for the research came from an organization called Advanced Research Development Activity (ARDA).
• Another report produced in January of this year by the Congressional Research Service entitled "Data Mining and Homeland Security" revealed that ARDA is in fact a research arm of the NSA, whose job it is, to "make sense" of the voluminous amounts of data NSA is scooping up now, including domestic data, which NSA was never intended to be given access to when it was originally chartered. ARDA's job is to see if the notion of a "semantic web" could be used to connect people.
• The NSA recently changed the name of ARDA to DTO. The ominously named "Disruptive Technology Office". Charged with "online social network analysis", it has the familiar whiff of the similarly odious criminal Poindexter-led "Total Information Awareness (TIA) program, which was by Congressional order, SUPPOSED to have been abolished. Instead, they simply broke the program into smaller pieces and reincorporated the Fascist nightmare into the classified section of the September 2003 Defense Appropriations Act.

That often inaccurate, untrue, exaggerated, and incomplete personal data about individuals might actually be used by intelligence "professionals" to come to ANY conclusion about who you are, what you believe, or worse, be used improperly guage what you MIGHT do in the future and thereby result in a miscarriage of justice, should be deeply alarming to anyone with a brain.

And when you combine this with clearly partisan, not to mention incompetant data collection agencies like Choicepoint, Sweet Jesus, freedom itself is in danger.

In all their efforts to "connect-the-dots", all the (now conservobot-controlled) intelligence community has been able to do, is create more dots. Now they seek to find more efficient methods to locate the needle in the haystack they themselves created, and they are willing to put your personal freedoms and privacy on the chopping block to do it.

In a wealth of damn fool ideas these days, this one is among the top ten classic demonstrations of sheer idiocy.

Understanding Your Enemy

It was just announced about three seconds ago (with much bloviating) that Al Zarqawi, the supposed leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, was killed in an air strike.

The best part about this is that George Bush and his idiot followers actually think this means something.

They still have a pre-9/11 mindset that looks at things in terms of national, authoritarian, top-down organizations. Al-Qaeda is decentralized, and bottom-up. At most, a couple of cells were disrupted. And none of this addresses the civil war that is raging in Iraq this very minute, whether we are there or not.

The Neocons are going to make the same mistake made in Vietnam, where they think killing ANY individual makes a difference to the fight. This thing we're fighting isn't motivated by any ONE individual, and you could kill 100,000 Zarqawis and not make a dent. Just as we killed over 5 times as many Vietcong and still lost.

Those idiots think we're fighting terrorism. Terrorism is just a tactic. We're fighting an IDEA. Radical religious fundamentalism. THAT is the CAUSE of the violence.

And George Bush could no more defeat that, than he could ride his bike without falling off it.

George Bush can't defeat radical religious fundamentalism, because he IS a radical religious fundamentalist. He's just the Christian version of it. The flip side of the same damn stupid coin.

You can't defeat something when you agree with it, and George Bush and his minions are part of a planetary problem that INCLUDES Al Qaeda.

BOTH need to go bye-bye.

You don't defeat ideas with bombs. You defeat them with better ideas. Ideas Neocons haven't the faintest clue about.

Gaywatch 2006!

In a desperate and pathetic attempt to divert attention from their awful poll numbers, and the definitive proof that they've stolen not one, but two Presidential elections, George Bush and the Neocon Cabal have trotted out the tried-and-true "Election Year Gay-Bashing Distract-a-thon Moment", this time in the form of a Constitutional Amendment to ban same-sex marriage. As his illegal domestic spying activities prove, Dubya regards the Constitution as toilet paper anyways, so inserting this petty nonsense should come as no surprise.

In support of this idiocy, Tina J. Benkiser, Chair of the Republican Party in Texas has written:

"We Texans ARE the people, and we will fight vigorously for our rights while defending and protecting marriage and family. Now is not the time to destroy over two thousand years of human experience for a failed sociological experiment."

And then she went on to blither about so-called "activist judges" yadda, yadda, yadda.....

Firstly, marriage as it is currently defined didn't exist 2,000 years ago. Indeed, it didn't even exist 500 years ago. Back in the day, marriage was for political expedience. Your family told you who to marry. It was not based on love. The concept of "courtly love" first came about during the Renaissance. You remember the Renaissance, right? The moment where, for the first time since the Christian religion had come to power, people began ignoring petty, man-made dogma for the sake of REALITY, science, believing their own eyes, trusting the love in their hearts, etc....

So already, if you fell in love and got married, no matter what gender we're talking about, you're threatening "traditional marriage", because that "tradition" is about power and property, not love.

Secondly, how can allowing gay marriage be a "failed experiment" if you haven't even tried it yet, Texas? Things seem to be working out just spiffy for those OTHER PEOPLE, your fellow AMERICANS in Massachussetts, which incidentally also has a lower divorce rate among it's straight populous than you do.

So tell me again what exactly you're protecting? Besides your place at the front of the bus?

During this whole idiot marriage argument, I can't help but to keep thinking about a documentary I saw recently on Showtime called "little man", about film Director Nicole Conn and her partner in their real-life battle to save their son's life, who was born prematurely. The film is not about "gay rights" or gay marriage. It's just a film about the couple's struggles to keep their infant son alive, and their family intact.

Conn and her partner literally spent over $2 million dollars in medical care before young Nicholas could even walk, and I watched that whole thing with the knowledge that, if by some accident the birth mother died, despite having devoted her entire life to caring for both their son and their daughter Gabrielle (who I might add is a JOY to behold), BOTH those kids would be taken away from their OTHER mother, Gwen, and placed in state custody, because "clearly" she's not a parent.


So not only does this couple have to jump through the trauma of trying to fight off all these mindbogglingly difficult medical challenges, but they ALSO have to pay gobs of money to lawyers to draw up hundreds of contracts, and powers of attorney just to preserve BOTH these women's rights to raise their kids.

Meanwhile, a straight couple doesn't have to endure HALF that foolishness.

I would honestly challenge ANYONE to look at Nicole's family and say, "That's not a family. That's not a marriage. A marriage is between a man and a woman."

If you can watch that movie and still say that hateful nonsense, LOOK TO YOUR OWN SOUL -- because you have none.

Now "little man" is actually replaying on Showtime 2 throughout the month. If you have a cable subscription, please check it out. If not, rent it -- but be forewarned, it is challenging and heartbreaking at times, though definitely uplifting at others. It's a definite emotional rollercoaster though. It's also one of the most rewarding films I have ever seen.

The irony that is inescapable is that Britney Spears, in her 12-second Vegas marriage, was given more rights than this family would have been under our current discriminatory laws. And Britney can drop her kid on his little noggin, and legally still be considered more of a parent than these two women who clearly suffered and sacrificed for their children's lives.

That's just outrageous.

The point blank of it is, there are 600+ rights and responsibilities afforded to straight couples AUTOMATICALLY with marriage, that are denied to gay people. Clearly, a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. If the President-Select were to succeed in his efforts to insert his petty religious prejudice into our most sacred legal document, he will have only succeeded in warping the document so that it contradicts itself - at once affording citizens religious freedom and equality under the law, while simultaneously denying both.

We shouldn't be considering an amendment to exclude gay people from marrying and starting families, we should be considering how to INCLUDE gay people in our marriage laws.

To quote Bill Maher, "Either we're all drinking from the same water fountain, or we're not." And Americans need to decide once and for all about whether they really believe in all those lofty sentiments about the Equality of Man, BEFORE we presume to run about the world spreading the message of freedom to others.

Proof of Republican Election Fraud

In a fantastic article in the new Rolling Stone, Bobby Kennedy Jr. lays out in rather scathing detail, how the 2004 Presidential Election was no more honest or reliable than the deeply fraudulent 2000 Presidential Selection.

A few choice facts that should make your blood boil (if you actually believe in Democracy, that is):

• Nearly half of the 6 million American voters living abroad never received their ballots, or received them too late to vote after the Pentagon mysteriously SHUT DOWN a state-of-the-art Web site used to file overseas registrations.
• A consulting firm called Sproul & Associates, which was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters in six battleground states, was discovered shredding Democratic registrations.
• In New Mexico, which was decided by 5,988 votes, malfunctioning machines mysteriously failed to properly register a presidential vote on more than 20,000 ballots.
• Nationwide, according to the federal commission charged with implementing election reforms, as many as 1 million ballots were spoiled by faulty voting equipment, roughly one for every 100 cast.
• In Ohio alone election officials (who also worked for the GOP):


• Purged tens of thousands of eligible voters from the rolls,


• Neglected to process registration cards generated by Democratic voter drives,


• Shortchanged Democratic precincts when they allocated voting machines,


• Prevented 357,000 voters, the overwhelming majority of them Democratic from casting ballots or prevented them from being counted,


• Neglected to list 1 in every 4 Ohio citizens who registered to vote in 2004 on the actual voter rolls,


• Credited 80,000 votes to Bush when they were intended for Kerry,


• Invented a nonexistent terrorist threat to bar the media from monitoring the official vote count and,


• Illegally derailed a recount.


• Exit polls took samples six times larger than normal, reducing the margin of error to +/- 1%. Against these numbers, the statistical likelihood of Bush winning was less than one in 450,000. Yet despite this, the votes supposedly tallied were reversed, and favored Bush. The odds against this reversal occurring in Pennsylvania, Florida, and Ohio simultaneously are one in 660,000.

"What is most anomalous about the irregularities in 2004 was their decidedly partisan bent: Almost without exception they hurt John Kerry and benefited George Bush", and this is indicitive of "a massive, coordinated campaign to subvert the will of the people," Bobby writes.

If you'll recall, the 2004 election was decided by a mere "mandate" of 118,601 votes.

If something isn't done NOW to address and ELIMINATE this rampant corruption, our Democracy is GONE, because it is basically a guarantee that this wretched behavior will continue in 2006, and 2008, and on, and on -- to the detriment of the Republic.