"The best of XXXX" is a TV show which looks at the events and music of a year, with comments from famous and not so famous people. During a recap of the career of Alanis Morisette (The best of 1995) it suddenly came to me in a bright flash of light:

"There are not enough bullets!"

http://www.bushfordummies.com

"Playing Area 51 was like playing a concrete bunker for people who were all identically dressed in mall clothes, who all watched MTV and didn't know about music unless they saw it on MTV," -tina weymouth

"ah physics" and yes iis is total crap. that new licensing scheme using the subscription platform truly makes me ill. are they trying to completely isolate every even slightly knowledgable user because i know alot of people who are really getting completely fed up with their greedy bullshit products. xp? give me a break. at last check pc world had the %market share use on the server side at ms- 40% and linux(all distributions)-29%. and that was pre xp. sometimes i wonder how smart they really are. 'i'm the operator of my pocket calculator'

Gartner: Dump IIS "From the mouths of the expert analysts, Microsoft has finally pushed them over the top. The leaky IIS security track record and lack of widespread attack threat on other web server software leads Gartner to recommend that companies look elsewhere. For what it's worth, I can't say that it's a bad idea. I run my own personal web site on IIS, but I certainly don't consider it to be critical. I run business websites on Apache and have no intention of changing that anytime soon. Apache is stable, secure, easy to manage, and generally doesn't require the babysitting that IIS has garnered. Not to mention that it's FREE!" The writing is on the wall...

ID Card FAQ An ID card, by definition, is a form of internal passport. Virtually all ID cards worldwide develop a broader usage over time, than was originally envisioned for them. This development of new and unintended purposes is becoming known as function creep.

Its increadible; there are countries in Europe that have legalized slavery, mandatory psychological evaluation, and NO ONE seems to think that this is wrong. The European declartation of human rights is a sham, devised to trick the people of eorope into thinking that they have some kind of ultimate protection under this fake document. Let me spell it out for you. It is WRONG and IMMORAL and a VIOLATION OF YOUR RIGHTS AS A HUMAN BEING to be compelled to serve in the army, FOR ANY PURPOSE. Such compulsory service is SLAVERY, and as such, should be ILLEGAL in al civilized nations. If a country needs to maintain an army, then it should be a VOLUNTEER ARMY ONLY. Volunteer armies are much stronger and more effective than ones made of unwilling conscripts; this is a well understood fact. What I cannot FOR THE LIFE OF ME understand, is why there has not been mass revolt about this situation, and why no one has challenged these barbaric and absurd laws in the European court of human rights.

Arabs removed from flights; airlines investigate

"Your turn now ol' buddy!"

ah physics! "The next Pearl Harbor will not announce itself with a searing flash of nuclear light"-yeah let's hope not. all of those 20 megaton weapons sitting there gathering dust.....and don't forget about tzar bomba! 80 mt straight to the dome piece. but is trench warfare any better? frankly i would welcome an ebomb. it might get us to rethink what the f*ck we are doing to the planet. i don't really need these computers i have here. just to make money. and why do i need the money? please please ebomb me...please. self sustinance is the only solution as far as i see it. but it's a little hard in the 8x8 polluted garden we have out back here. cities ah....it's all fucked up. it's all fucked up completely. what is it to be human? poof.....

E-BOMB

BY JIM WILSON September 2001 In the blink of an eye, electromagnetic bombs could throw civilization back 200 years. And terrorists can build them for $400. The next Pearl Harbor will not announce itself with a searing flash of nuclear light or with the plaintive wails of those dying of Ebola or its genetically engineered twin. You will hear a sharp crack in the distance. By the time you mistakenly identify this sound as an innocent clap of thunder, the civilized world will have become unhinged. Fluorescent lights and television sets will glow eerily bright, despite being turned off. The aroma of ozone mixed with smoldering plastic will seep from outlet covers as electric wires arc and telephone lines melt. Your Palm Pilot and MP3 player will feel warm to the touch, their batteries overloaded. Your computer, and every bit of data on it, will be toast. And then you will notice that the world sounds different too. The background music of civilization, the whirl of internal-combustion engines, will have stopped. Save a few diesels, engines will never start again. You, however, will remain unharmed, as you find yourself thrust backward 200 years, to a time when electricity meant a lightning bolt fracturing the night sky. This is not a hypothetical, son-of-Y2K scenario. It is a realistic assessment of the damage the Pentagon believes could be inflicted by a new generation of weapons--E-bombs. The first major test of an American electromagnetic bomb is scheduled for next year. Ultimately, the Army hopes to use E-bomb technology to explode artillery shells in midflight. The Navy wants to use the E-bomb's high-power microwave pulses to neutralize antiship missiles. And, the Air Force plans to equip its bombers, strike fighters, cruise missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles with E-bomb capabilities. When fielded, these will be among the most technologically sophisticated weapons the U.S. military establishment has ever built. There is, however, another part to the E-bomb story, one that military planners are reluctant to discuss. While American versions of these weapons are based on advanced technologies, terrorists could use a less expensive, low-tech approach to create the same destructive power. "Any nation with even a 1940s technology base could make them," says Carlo Kopp, an Australian-based expert on high-tech warfare. "The threat of E-bomb proliferation is very real." POPULAR MECHANICS estimates a basic weapon could be built for $400. An Old Idea Made New The theory behind the E-bomb was proposed in 1925 by physicist Arthur H. Compton--not to build weapons, but to study atoms. Compton demonstrated that firing a stream of highly energetic photons into atoms that have a low atomic number causes them to eject a stream of electrons. Physics students know this phenomenon as the Compton Effect. It became a key tool in unlocking the secrets of the atom. Ironically, this nuclear research led to an unexpected demonstration of the power of the Compton Effect, and spawned a new type of weapon. In 1958, nuclear weapons designers ignited hydrogen bombs high over the Pacific Ocean. The detonations created bursts of gamma rays that, upon striking the oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere, released a tsunami of electrons that spread for hundreds of miles. Street lights were blown out in Hawaii and radio navigation was disrupted for 18 hours, as far away as Australia. The United States set out to learn how to "harden" electronics against this electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and develop EMP weapons. America has remained at the forefront of EMP weapons development. Although much of this work is classified, it's believed that current efforts are based on using high-temperature superconductors to create intense magnetic fields. What worries terrorism experts is an idea the United States studied but discarded--the Flux Compression Generator (FCG). A Poor Man's E-Bomb An FCG is an astoundingly simple weapon. It consists of an explosives-packed tube placed inside a slightly larger copper coil, as shown below. The instant before the chemical explosive is detonated, the coil is energized by a bank of capacitors, creating a magnetic field. The explosive charge detonates from the rear forward. As the tube flares outward it touches the edge of the coil, thereby creating a moving short circuit. "The propagating short has the effect of compressing the magnetic field while reducing the inductance of the stator [coil]," says Kopp. "The result is that FCGs will produce a ramping current pulse, which breaks before the final disintegration of the device. Published results suggest ramp times of tens of hundreds of microseconds and peak currents of tens of millions of amps." The pulse that emerges makes a lightning bolt seem like a flashbulb by comparison. An Air Force spokesman, who describes this effect as similar to a lightning strike, points out that electronics systems can be protected by placing them in metal enclosures called Faraday Cages that divert any impinging electromagnetic energy directly to the ground. Foreign military analysts say this reassuring explanation is incomplete. The India Connection The Indian military has studied FCG devices in detail because it fears that Pakistan, with which it has ongoing conflicts, might use E-bombs against the city of Bangalore, a sort of Indian Silicon Valley. An Indian Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis study of E-bombs points to two problems that have been largely overlooked by the West. The first is that very-high-frequency pulses, in the microwave range, can worm their way around vents in Faraday Cages. The second concern is known as the "late-time EMP effect," and may be the most worrisome aspect of FCG devices. It occurs in the 15 minutes after detonation. During this period, the EMP that surged through electrical systems creates localized magnetic fields. When these magnetic fields collapse, they cause electric surges to travel through the power and telecommunication infrastructure. This string-of-firecrackers effect means that terrorists would not have to drop their homemade E-bombs directly on the targets they wish to destroy. Heavily guarded sites, such as telephone switching centers and electronic funds-transfer exchanges, could be attacked through their electric and telecommunication connections. Knock out electric power, computers and telecommunication and you've destroyed the foundation of modern society. In the age of Third World-sponsored terrorism, the E-bomb is the great equalizer. http://popularmechanics.com/science/military/2001/9/e-bomb/print.phtml

indeed!

Received in email: "try this one on for size... Open a new word Doc, type in capitals Q33NY, the number of the flight that crashed in New York. Then change font size to 26. Then change font to Wingdings. See what happens ..."

From "The Guardian" letters pages: Dr. Johnson 1749 "Wealth heaped on wealth nor truth nor safety buys, The dangers gather as the treasures rise." Voltaire "It is lamentable that to be a good patriot we must become the enemy of the rest of mankind." Rudyard Kipling 1892 "when you're wounded and left on Afganistans plains, and the women come out to cut up the remains, gest roll to your rifle, and blow out your brains, an go to your gawd like a soldier." http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/extra

Disconnect the Dots

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41015-2001Sep16.html By Joel Garreau Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, September 17, 2001; Page C01 The essence of this first war of the 21st century is that it's not like the old ones. That's why, as $40 billion is voted for the new war on terrorism, 35,000 reservists are called up and two aircraft carrier battle groups hover near Afghanistan, some warriors and analysts have questions: In the Information Age, they ask, how do you attack, degrade or destroy a small, shadowy, globally distributed, stateless network of intensely loyal partisans with few fixed assets or addresses? If bombers are not the right hammer for this nail, what is? Bombers worked well in wars in which one Industrial Age military threw steel at another. World War II, for instance, was a matchup of roughly symmetrical forces. This is not true today. That's why people who think about these things call this new conflict "asymmetric warfare." The terrorist side is different: different organization, different methods of attack -- and of defense. "It takes a tank to fight a tank. It takes a network to fight a network," says John Arquilla, senior consultant to the international security group Rand and co-author of the forthcoming "Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime and Militancy." He asks: "How do you attack a trust structure -- which is what a network is? You're not going to do this with Tomahawk missiles or strategic bombardment." "It's a whole new playing field. You're not attacking a nation, but a network," says Karen Stephenson, who studies everything from corporations to the U.S. Navy as if they were tribes. Trained as a chemist and anthropologist, she now teaches at Harvard and the University of London. "You have to understand what holds those networks in place, what makes them strong and where the leverage points are. They're not random connections," she says. Human networks are distinct from electronic ones. They are not the Internet. They are political and emotional connections among people who must trust each other in order to function, like Colombian drug cartels and Basque separatists and the Irish Republican Army. Not to mention high-seas pirates, smugglers of illegal immigrants, and rogue brokers of weapons of mass destruction. But how to establish a target list in a network? The good news is that in the last decade we have developed a whole new set of weapons to figure that out. An industry has arisen to help corporations build new networks and junk old hierarchical bureaucracies in the age of merging and emerging companies, says Kathleen Carley, director of the Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems at Carnegie Mellon University. New tools have been developed that analyze how an organization interacts, yielding a kind of X-ray that shows where the key links are. There is a general set of principles to any network, says Stephenson, whose company, NetForm, has developed software that mathematically analyzes networks. She points out that typically a network is made up of different kinds of nodes -- pivotal people. The critical ones are "hubs," "gatekeepers" and "pulsetakers," she believes. Hubs are the people who are directly connected to the most people; they know where the best resources are and they act as clearinghouses of information and ideas, although they often are not aware of their own importance. Gatekeepers are those connected to the "right" people. They are the powers around the throne, and often they know their own importance. Pulsetakers are indirectly connected to a lot of people who know the right people. They are "friends of a friend" to vast numbers of people across widely divergent groups and interests. The classic example of how to use this analysis is "finding the critical employee in the company -- the lone expert who knows how to fix the machine," Carley says. Ironically, without network analysis, managers frequently don't recognize who that is and the nature of his importance. "But there's no reason it can't be turned around in the opposite way," she says. There's no reason organizational glitches, screw-ups, jealousies and distrust that slow and degrade performance can't be intentionally introduced." A network's ability to adapt to new challenges can be degraded. Carley says: "One of the things that leads to the ability to adapt is who knows who and who knows what. The higher that is, the better the group's flexibility. But you can reduce the number of times the group can communicate or congregate. Or you can rotate personnel rapidly." And in war, this may have to be done by capturing or killing them. "You can also segregate the things people are doing, so they learn only on a need-to-know basis. The more isolated the tasks are, the more you inhibit their ability to function as a team. "Imagine in your office if you knew who went to whom for advice," Carley says. "If you found a set of people who gave out more advice than anyone else and then removed them from the network, so they can't communicate with others, you would infringe on the ability of the network to operate." In the case of terror networks, people are linked by family ties, marriage ties and shared principles, interests and goals. They thus can be all of one mind, even though they are dispersed and devoted to different tasks. They "know what they have to do" without needing a single-central leadership, command or headquarters. There is no precise heart or head that can be targeted, Arquilla says. Even if you take out an Osama bin Laden, his organization, al Qaeda ("The Base"), still has the resilience of a classic human network. Bin Laden's, for instance, is made up of an estimated two dozen separate militant Islamic groups in the Philippines, Lebanon, Egypt, Kashmir, Algeria, Indonesia and elsewhere, with hundreds of cells, some of them located in Western Europe and even the United States, as we've discovered in the past week. On the other hand, depending on the structure of the network, removing a few key nodes can sometimes do a lot of good, says Frank Fukuyama, author of the seminal work "Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity" and now a professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. "Some are so tightly bound to each other that they are not embedded in other networks. Kill a few nodes, and the whole thing collapses. Take the case of the Sendero Luminoso [Shining Path] in Peru. It couldn't have been that hierarchical. It was designed for the mountains of Peru. It couldn't have been terribly centralized. It had a scattered cell structure. It was hard to infiltrate. It was dispersed. And yet when you got [Shining Path founder and leader Abimael] Guzman and a few top aides, the entire thing fell apart. "The idea that there is no end of terorrists, no way to stamp them all out, that if you kill a hundred, another hundred will spring up -- I would be very careful of that assumption. The network of people who are willing to blow themselves up has to be limited. Sure, there are sympathizers and bagmen and drivers. But the actual core network of suicide bombers is probably a much smaller population. It is also tightknit and hard to infiltrate. But it is limited. It is not obvious to me that there is an endless supply." Another tactic: advancing the cause of the weakest link. "Suppose I've got a really powerful pulsetaker," says Stephenson, "vying for a position of dominance. But I also know that a member of the blood kin group is moving forward who is weaker. If you arrange an accident to eliminate the pulsetaker, and let the weaker family member come in, you've helped corrupt the network." The beauty of seeding weakness into an organization is that you can degrade its effectiveness while still monitoring it, and not causing a new and potentially more efficient organization to replace it. "You don't want to blow away the organization. You want to keep some fraudulent activity going on so you can monitor it. If you blow them away, you lose your leads," says Stephenson. "Better the devil you know. Like [Moammar] Gaddafi. Keep him alive, because you know him. Who knows what sort of clever mastermind might replace him." Intelligence is crucial to analyze the network's weak links so you can destroy it. "You're talking about what amounts to a clan or a tribe or brotherhood of blood and spilled blood. That is really tough to crack. Trying to infiltrate it -- we're talking years," says David Ronfeldt, a senior social scientist at Rand. However, from outside the network you can also look for patterns that stand out from the norm, like who talks to whom, e-mail exchanges, telephone records, bank records and who uses whose credit card, says Ronfeldt. "I would attack on the basis of their trust in the command and control structures by which they operate," says Arquilla. "If they believe they are being listened to, they will be inhibited. If we were to reduce their trust in their infrastructure, it would drive them to non-technical means -- force them to keep their heads down more. A courier carrying a disk has a hell of a long way to go to communicate worldwide. If you slow them down, interception is more likely." Human networks are distinct from electronic networks. But technology is the sea in which they swim. "What made nets vulnerable historically is their inability to coordinate their purpose," says Manuel Castells, author of "The Rise of the Network Society," the first volume of his trilogy, "The Information Age." "But at this point," he says, "they have this ability to be both decentralized and highly focused. That's what's new. And that's technology. Not just electronic. It's their ability to travel everywhere. Their ability to be informed everywhere. Their ability to receive money from everywhere." This is why Arquilla is dubious about some traditional intelligence-gathering techniques, and enthusiastic about new ones. For instance: You can talk about turning one of the network members over to your side, but "that's problematic," he says. "You don't know if they're playing you as a double agent or are simply psychotic." He is also dubious about the value of satellite reconnaissance in determining what we need to know about these networks. However, Arquilla likes the idea of understanding how the network works by using clandestine technical collection. For instance, he says, when any computer user surfs on the Web -- looking for travel tickets, say -- more often than not a piece of software, called a cookie, is transmitted to his computer. The device monitors his every move and reports back to some database what he's done. Now, Arquilla says, "think of something much more powerful than cookies." They exist, he says. One way to use them is by creating "honey pots." This involves identifying Web sites used by activists or setting up a Web site that will attract them, and seeding them with these intelligent software agents. When the activists check in, they can't leave without taking with them a piece of software that allows you to backtrack, getting into at least one part of the enemy network. "That likely gives you his/her all-channel connections, and maybe even some hints about hubs or the direction of some links," says Arquilla. There are other possibilities. "You know those little cameras that some people have on top of their monitors? Let me just say that it is entirely possible to activate those and operate them and look through them without the machine being turned on," he says. Software also exists that "allows you to reconstruct every single keystroke. One after the other. Why is that important? If you do find the right machine, you can reconstruct everything that happens. Even with unbreakable encryption, you have all the keystrokes." Much of this is hardly new, of course. Divide and conquer has worked for a long time. Whenever the police got a Mafia wiseguy -- Joe Valachi, for instance -- to betray the others, no Mafiosi could trust another one as much anymore. Machiavelli, in "The Prince" of 1505, wrote about the strategic deployment of betrayal to undermine trust. What's different is our technological ability to track groups in real time and see patterns that may be invisible on the surface. "Our technology is sufficient that you can now handle realistic-ized groups. We can deal with 30 to several thousand," says Carley. "You couldn't do that before." In 1996, Arquilla and Ronfeldt wrote a slim but highly prescient volume called "The Advent of Netwar" for the National Defense Research Institute, a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the defense agencies. It predicts that in a war between human networks, the side with superior intelligence wins. It also makes some tactical suggestions about countering human networks with counter-networks that actually have been used to combat computer hackers. They include: * Find a member of the enemy group who is clearly a harmless idiot; treat him as if he were the most important figure and the only one worthy of being taken seriously. * Single out competent and genuinely dangerous figures; write them off or call their loyalty to the cause into question. * Control the stories people tell each other to define their reason for living and acting as they do. The terrorist story, says Ronfeldt, "gives these people common cause -- us versus them. Right now the U.S. would seem to have the edge at the worldwide level. But within the region, there was the dancing in the streets in Palestine. Part of the story is that America's evil, and that America's presence is to blame for so many of the problems in the Middle East. We have to attack that part." * Find the list of demands extorted by the network; grant some that make no sense and/or disturb and divide their political aims. * Paint the enemy with PR ugly paint so that they seem beyond the pale, ridiculous, alien, maniacal, inexplicable. * Destroy their social support networks by using "helpful" but differently valued groups that are not perceived as aggressive. * Divide and conquer; identify parts of the network that can be pacified and play them against former allies. * Intensify the human counter-networks in one's own civil society. Adds Manuel Castells: "We should be organizing our own networks, posing as Islamic terrorist networks. We should then demand to join one of these networks and then destroy the trust structures. Only way to infiltrate. Oldest technique in the world." Few of these ideas involve flattening Kabul, all of these analysts note. Stephenson worries that massing the Navy near Afghanistan is "a symbolic show of old-fashioned strength. It's not about that anymore. This whole playing ground has shifted." "In order to do anything, you cannot be blind," says Castells. "The most extraordinary vulnerability of the American military is it looks like they do not have many informants inside Afghanistan. It also looks like the majority of the components of this network do not relate directly or essentially to nation-states. That is new. Unless we have a fundamental rethinking of strategic matters, it's going to be literally, literally exhausting and impossible. It will be desperate missile attacks at the wrong targets with a lot of suffering. Massive bombardments turn around the opinion in many ways." "Basically," says Ronfeldt, "you have to find somebody to wipe out."

"when does editorial content become propaganda?" -cbc host "well i'm just being honest with my feelings. now is the time for laughter....i mean with all that is happenning. when we print a cartoon of bin laden walking thru a metal detector with a box cutter we are just providing a vehicle for people to blow off steam." -a.w.s editor maclean's magazine

"We have to fight the terrorists as if there were no rules and preserve our open society as if there were no terrorists."

Last Tuesday's terrors were so calamitous that they threaten to shake us loose from our constitutional mooring. A civil liberties catastrophe looms as citizens surrender to fear, fury and frustration and as lawmakers throw money and shards of the Bill of Rights at the specter of terrorism. Some of our elected leaders predict a gloomy future for freedom. "We're in a new world where we have to rebalance freedom and security," said House Democratic Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt, D-Mo. "We're not going to have all the openness and freedom we have had." Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., repeated the warning: "When you're in this type of conflict, when you're at war, civil liberties are treated differently." Even staunch First Amendment advocates, haunted by the suffering and devastation in New York City, near Washington, D.C., and the Pennsylvania countryside, are tempted to temporize in the face of insistent calls to suspend or re-examine our commitment to civil liberties. The First Amendment fallout commenced within hours of the airplanes crashing into their targets. Tuesday afternoon, FBI agents fanned out to persuade Internet firms and service providers to hook up e-mail sniffing software to monitor private citizens' e-mail. While the desire to marshal all resources in such circumstances is understandable, there are serious consequences for private speech and public discourse when ordinary citizens fear that law enforcement officials with broad powers to investigate and detain are listening in. Expressive activity was curtailed in a variety of places. A high school official reprimanded a student who distributed a flier asking her classmates to pray. Officials at the Baltimore Museum of Art took down a Christopher Wool painting containing the word "Terrorist" (later, they promised to provide "new interpretation" for the painting when it is reinstalled). New York police and members of the National Guard confiscated film from journalists and tourists. If only that were the worst of it. Government officials and policymakers immediately called for measures that would chill public discourse, disrupt reporting by the press, and interrupt the flow of information to the public. They want an expansion of law enforcement powers to spy on telephone and Internet traffic, to restrict the use of Internet encryption products that thwart online monitoring of private email, to slow down and divert funds from the declassification of secrets, and to force public libraries to reveal information about patrons' use of their computers. In Congress, prospects brightened for several troubling measures, including:

The Cyber Security Information Act, which among other things would blow a gaping hole in the Freedom of Information Act.

Anti-leaks legislation, dubbed the "official secrets acts" by those who are deeply concerned about its impact on speech and the press and the flow of critical information to the public.

The Flag Desecration Act, which would for the first time in the history of our nation amend the First Amendment to prohibit burning the flag as a form of political dissent.

To compound the threat, there are disturbing examples of private or self-imposed restrictions on expression. Web pages shut down or removed content, a radio network circulated a list of songs that would be problematic to play, an employer confiscated American flags from the desks of workers, and a wire service withheld news footage after Palestinian threats against a photographer. It would be foolish to dismiss such events � public or private � as mere nibbling at the edges of our rights. In fact, each nibble diminishes our commitment to freedom and the principles that distinguish our way of life from all others. In such an atmosphere, voices of dissent grow silent, probing questions by the press are viewed as unpatriotic and subversive, and whistleblowers inside government with vital information are quieted. In such an atmosphere, propaganda, rumor and paranoia fester and infect. In such an atmosphere, citizens are denied their place as full partners in their own governance. By suspending some of our most precious principles, the risk becomes not just terrorists whose hearts have grown rancid with hate but also a citizenry whose hearts are filled with fear. There are things we can and should be doing rather than joining the stampede to ditch our rights. As columnist Thomas Friedman put it: "We have to fight the terrorists as if there were no rules and preserve our open society as if there were no terrorists." First, we must remember that we've gone down this road too many times before. We have suspended freedom of speech, press and assembly during wartime and other crises, to the point of sending prominent Americans to jail for long terms for uttering unpatriotic words. And always we've looked back in wonderment that we could have been so stupid, that we could have so easily cast aside our democratic heritage. We must demand of ourselves that a distinction is made � in public discourse as well as public policy � between what is merely inconvenient and what strikes at the heart of our most important freedoms. We must demand of those proposing a degradation of our freedom that they provide an immediate and convincing argument that such an approach represents a real solution rather than a false hope. Finally, before we begin to contemplate forfeiture of any of our essential liberties, we must thoroughly examine the lapses in public policy and operations that have become so cruelly evident in the wake of the disaster. Lapses in intelligence collection and analysis; in basic security measures at airports; in granting and monitoring of visas; in national, state and local emergency preparedness. As much as we wish to be safe forever from the horrors of last week, we simply cannot protect freedom by forsaking freedom. As much as we want relief from this time of national duress, we simply cannot make ourselves more secure by making fundamental freedoms less secure. The words of Samuel Adams, in a different time and context, present a challenge to our natural impulse to sacrifice freedom in the face of terrorism: "Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say, What should be the reward of such sacrifices? - If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom - go from us in peace. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you." What an affront to the courage and heroism shown by those who gave their lives in rescue efforts or in forcing hijackers into a crash if we give in easily to fear or panic. Fire from the skies and hatred from afar last Tuesday caused human carnage and suffering at an unthinkable level. They dealt terrifying blows to our financial institutions, our transportation and communications systems, our political and military nerve centers, and to a nation's sense of self and security. Do we really want to add constitutional freedoms to that sorrowful list of casualties? From Freedom Forum

Like I said before, cameras and ID cards will do nothing to stop people carrying out these acts. One of these "terrorists" actually had "International Terrorist" as his occupation on his official identity card. Some of the pilots who flew the planes were caught on CCTV at ATMs and in the Airport just before they got on the plane. CCTV does not stop crime. ID cards will hurt the millions of people who will be compelled to carry them and use them in transactions. What these governments want is TOTAL CONTROL of ORDINARY people; they dont give a toss about "terrorists" this is just a pretext to bring an Orwellian Jackboot state into existance, and they will get ZERO resistance from the sheeple because they all believe that these measures will protect them. And dont look to human rights legislation to help you UK citizens, because all the sheeple in Europe ALREADY CARRY ID CARDS BY LAW. It is ILLEGAL to leave your house without your ID in Belgium for example. I have discussed this with Belgian friends before, and they dont have any problem whatsoever with this legislation. Game Over.

i'm going to go watch dr. mabuse again. that is totally fucking unbelievable.

"The hijackers did not use encryption techniques", the official said. or.................................it dosen't matter. if it needs to be read then we'll get it for you, um sir "and they used it well" -dosen't look like it....does it?

The most revolting, stupid and irresponsible edition of the Daily Mail was distributed today, with the following cartoon on page 17: Not since Nazi era racial propaganda has the world seen a cartoon like this printed in a national newspaper. Its quite a development. The people responsible for it are no different to the people who made the postcards that you can see on this page, and this one. The whole world has gone totally INSANE!

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On Wed, 19 Sep 2001 09:10:28 -0500, in alt.security.pgp
 kohster@northwestern.edu (Julian Y. Koh) wrote:
>
>http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010918/ts/attack_investigation_dc_23.html
> 
>
> Which makes me wonder why Echelon didn't pick up the traffic.  :)



| In Washington, DC, an FBI official told reporters the hijackers and their
| known associates used public computers, such as those in libraries, as
| well as their own personal computers to communicate. 
|
| ``They did use it (the Internet) and they used it well,'' the official
| said of the e-mails of the hijackers and their associates. The FBI has
| been able to get e-mails that date back as far as 30 to 45 days, the
| official said. 
|
| The official said the e-mails were in English and Arabic, that there were
| hundreds of communications, and the e-mails were not just limited to the
| United States. The hijackers did not use encryption techniques, the
| official said. 




O x
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Owen Blacker
Senior Internet Software Developer / Information Security Consultant
See http://www.owens-place.org.uk/pgp.html -- more about my PGP keys
Sig  0x3e2056b9 | 18cd 92aa 32aa 81b9 f5e8  c520 6475 6239 3e20 56b9
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Opinions are mine.  My employer and their clients can get their own!


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Infinite \In"fi*nite\, a. [L. infinitus: cf. F. infini. See In- not, and Finite.] 1. Unlimited or boundless, in time or space; as, infinite duration or distance.
Whatever is finite, as finite, will admit of no comparative relation with infinity; for whatever is less than infinite is still infinitely distant from infinity; and lower than infinite distance the lowest or least can not sink. --H. Brooke.
2. Without limit in power, capacity, knowledge, or excellence; boundless; immeasurably or inconceivably great; perfect; as, the infinite wisdom and goodness of God; -- opposed to finite.
Great is our Lord, and of great power; his understanding is infinite. --Ps. cxlvii.5.
O God, how infinite thou art! --I. Watts.
3. Indefinitely large or extensive; great; vast; immense; gigantic; prodigious.
Infinite riches in a little room. --Marlowe.
Which infinite calamity shall cause To human life. --Milton.
4. (Math.) Greater than any assignable quantity of the same kind; -- said of certain quantities.
5. (Mus.) Capable of endless repetition; -- said of certain forms of the canon, called also perpetual fugues, so constructed that their ends lead to their beginnings, and the performance may be incessantly repeated. --Moore (Encyc. of Music).
Syn: Boundless; immeasurable; illimitable; interminable; limitless; unlimited; endless; eternal. Justice, by definition brings closure to an event or crime, sets the record straight, evens out the score. Justice is descreet, deals in instances that have a beginning and an end. And there is always an end in justice, that is how parties seeking justice can finally be satisfied. Since Justice is about bringing balance, and attaining a single goal, rectifying once, an injustice it is totally absurd to speak about INFINITE JUSTICE. You FOOLS! Wait a minute: The opposite of INTINITE is FINITE. So they for sure have spoken about a FINAL SOLUTION TO THE ISLAMIC TERRORIST PROBLEM. Oh dear me, can you imagine?, "turn the name around boys; no one will notice".

operation "infinite arrogance"

When you have a leaking pipe that you want to stop, you do not write legislation outlawing leaking pipes; you TURN OFF THE WATER and PATCH THE HOLE. Banning cryptography, introducing ID cards, opening peoples mail, security cameras, face scanners; NONE of these will stop people from bombing, hijacking and murdering. Its amazing (though not surprising) that no one has pointed out to the Americans that the most CCTV'd country on earth STILL gets bombed by the IRA whenever they choose to do a campaign. Are we the only people who understand this? cameras have not prevented a SINGLE explosion from taking place in mainland UK. It does however, provide huge revenues for the CCTV companies and the Police, who use them to fleece car drivers. The only measures that people should be thinking about are the ones that FIX THE PIPES, in other words, solutions that fix the ROOT CAUSE of all these problems, the main one being an un-democratic United Nations. Everything else is just a ploy to enforce Orwellian controls on the civilized peoples of the earth. It will solve nothing, destroy everything, and leave the "criminals" untouched. If freedom is outlawed, only outlaws will have freedom. You heard it here first.

In response to Tuesday's terrorist attacks, Clear Channel, the world's largest radio network, has sent out a list of some 150 "lyrically questionable" songs by everyone from the Animals to the Zombies to its radio stations, recommending that the songs not be aired. Some songs are overtly violent in their intent, but the majority simply contain metaphorical language or narrative aspects that connect uncomfortably with the tragedy. http://www.hitsdailydouble.com/news/songs.html Clear Channel's List of Songs with Questionable Lyrics Artist - Title Drowning Pool - "Bodies" Mudvayne - "Death Blooms" Megadeth - "Dread and the Fugitive" Megadeth - "Sweating Bullets" Saliva - "Click Click Boom" P.O.D. - "Boom" Metallica - "Seek and Destroy" Metallica - "Harvester or Sorrow" Metallica - "Enter Sandman" Metallica - "Fade to Black" All Rage Against The Machine songs Nine Inch Nails - "Head Like a Hole" Godsmack - "Bad Religion" Tool - "Intolerance" Soundgarden - "Blow Up the Outside World" AC/DC - "Shot Down in Flames" AC/DC - "Shoot to Thrill" AC/DC - "Dirty Deeds" AC/DC - "Highway to Hell" AC/DC - "Safe in New York City" AC/DC - "TNT" AC/DC - "Hell's Bells" Black Sabbath - "War Pigs" Black Sabbath - "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" Black Sabbath - "Suicide Solution" Dio - "Holy Diver" Steve Miller - "Jet Airliner" Van Halen - "Jump" Queen - "Another One Bites the Dust" Queen - "Killer Queen" Pat Benatar - "Hit Me with Your Best Shot" Pat Benatar - "Love is a Battlefield" Oingo Boingo - "Dead Man's Party" REM - "It's the End of the World as We Know It" Talking Heads - "Burning Down the House" Judas Priest - "Some Heads Are Gonna Roll" Pink Floyd - "Run Like Hell" Pink Floyd - "Mother" Savage Garden - "Crash and Burn" Dave Matthews Band - "Crash Into Me" Bangles - "Walk Like an Egyptian" Pretenders - "My City Was Gone" Alanis Morissette - "Ironic" Barenaked Ladies - "Falling for the First Time" Fuel - "Bad Day" John Parr - "St. Elmo's Fire" Peter Gabriel - "When You're Falling" Kansas - "Dust in the Wind" Led Zeppelin - "Stairway to Heaven" The Beatles - "A Day in the Life" The Beatles - "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" The Beatles - "Ticket To Ride" The Beatles - "Obla Di, Obla Da" Bob Dylan/Guns N Roses - "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" Arthur Brown - "Fire" Blue Oyster Cult - "Burnin' For You" Paul McCartney and Wings - "Live and Let Die" Jimmy Hendrix - "Hey Joe" Jackson Brown - "Doctor My Eyes" John Mellencamp - "Crumbling Down" John Mellencamp - "I'm On Fire" U2 - "Sunday Bloody Sunday" Boston - "Smokin" Billy Joel - "Only the Good Die Young" Barry McGuire - "Eve of Destruction" Steam - "Na Na Na Na Hey Hey" Drifters - "On Broadway" Shelly Fabares - "Johnny Angel" Los Bravos - "Black is Black" Peter and Gordon - "I Go To Pieces" Peter and Gordon - "A World Without Love" Elvis - "(You're the) Devil in Disguise" Zombies - "She's Not There" Elton John - "Benny & The Jets" Elton John - "Daniel" Elton John - "Rocket Man" Jerry Lee Lewis - "Great Balls of Fire" Santana - "Evil Ways" Louis Armstrong - "What A Wonderful World" Youngbloods - "Get Together" Ad Libs - "The Boy from New York City" Peter Paul and Mary - "Blowin' in the Wind" Peter Paul and Mary - "Leavin' on a Jet Plane" Rolling Stones - "Ruby Tuesday" Simon And Garfunkel - "Bridge Over Troubled Water" Happenings - "See You in Septemeber" Carole King - "I Feel the Earth Move" Yager and Evans - "In the Year 2525" Norman Greenbaum - "Spirit in the Sky" Brooklyn Bridge - "Worst That Could Happen" Three Degrees - "When Will I See You Again" Cat Stevens - "Peace Train" Cat Stevens - "Morning Has Broken" Jan and Dean - "Dead Man's Curve" Martha & the Vandellas - "Nowhere to Run" Martha and the Vandellas/Van Halen - "Dancing in the Streets" Hollies - "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother" San Cooke - Herman Hermits, "Wonder World" Petula Clark - "A Sign of the Times" Don McLean - "American Pie" J. Frank Wilson - "Last Kiss" Buddy Holly and the Crickets - "That'll Be the Day" John Lennon - "Imagine" Bobby Darin - "Mack the Knife" The Clash - "Rock the Casbah" Surfaris - "Wipeout" Blood Sweat and Tears - "And When I Die" Dave Clark Five - "Bits and Pieces" Tramps - "Disco Inferno" Paper Lace - "The Night Chicago Died" Frank Sinatra - "New York, New York" Creedence Clearwater Revival - "Travelin' Band" The Gap Band - "You Dropped a Bomb On Me" Alien Ant Farm - "Smooth Criminal" 3 Doors Down - "Duck and Run" The Doors - "The End" Third Eye Blind - "Jumper" Neil Diamond - "America" Lenny Kravitz - "Fly Away" Tom Petty - "Free Fallin'" Bruce Springsteen - "I'm On Fire" Bruce Springsteen - "Goin' Down" Phil Collins - "In the Air Tonight" Alice in Chains - "Rooster" Alice in Chains - "Sea of Sorrow" Alice in Chains - "Down in a Hole" Alice in Chains - "Them Bone" Beastie Boys - "Sure Shot" Beastie Boys - "Sabotage" The Cult - "Fire Woman" Everclear - "Santa Monica" Filter - "Hey Man, Nice Shot" Foo Fighters - "Learn to Fly" Korn - "Falling Away From Me" Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Aeroplane" Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Under the Bridge" Smashing Pumpkins - "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" System of a Down - "Chop Suey!" Skeeter Davis - "End of the World" Rickey Nelson - "Travelin' Man" Chi-Lites - "Have You Seen Her" Animals - "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" Fontella Bass - "Rescue Me" Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels - "Devil with the Blue Dress" James Taylor - "Fire and Rain" Edwin Starr/Bruce Springstein - "War" Lynyrd Skynyrd - "Tuesday's Gone" Limp Bizkit - "Break Stuff" Green Day - "Brain Stew" Temple of the Dog - "Say Hello to Heaven" Sugar Ray - "Fly" Local H - "Bound for the Floor" Slipknot - "Left Behind, Wait and Bleed" Bush - "Speed Kills" 311 - "Down" Stone Temple Pilots - "Big Bang Baby," Dead and Bloated" Soundgarden - "Fell on Black Days," Black Hole Sun" Nina - "99 LuftBalloons/99 Red Balloons"

Cryptome and a host of other crypto resources are likely to be shutdown if the war panic continues. What methods could be used to assure continued access to crypto for homeland and self-defense by citizens of all nations against communication transgressors? A while back a list of global sites for accessing crypto and privacy tools was set up: http://jya.com/crypto-free.htm This list of crypto sources, and additions to it, should be mirrored and the mirrors widely publicized to aid citizen access to tools for personal and homeland protection worldwide from those urging war and terrorism at home and around the globe. To supplement that, Cryptome would appreciate hearing by encrypted mail (anonymous remail too) what others have done or could do to stockpile and distribute self-dense tools. We've sent out a few hundred CDs of the Cryptome collection, and are considering offering here a ~100MB compressed package of the ~8000 files. If so, we would first make more of the packages available to other global sites to offset our bandwidth limitations. There are only a few crypto programs in the files, mostly PGP since 2.62. We might grab more for inclusion unless others are doing that. To comply with law we'd have to notify BXA of any new program offerings. Responses welcome: jya@pipeline.com Pipeline.com is owned by Earthlink, one of the ISPs reportedly now intercepted by Carnivore; Verio, host of this site, may be as well, your hosts too. John Young PK below.

Check it, the tide anti war sentiment is growing. WW3 has been looming on the horizon for years; its only now that a hot enough match has been found that will ignite it. No thanks. no to war, no to unfairness, taboo subjects, lies and favouritism.

I know that all people who post on Blogdial know this; its posted here for the record / for your use.

Both sides of the calendar debate were wrong; the new century began on 11 September 2001. All day I fielded phone calls from reporters looking for the "computer security angle" to the story. I couldn't find one, although I expect several to come out of the aftermath. Calls for increased security began immediately. Unfortunately, the quickest and easy way to satisfy those demands is by decreasing liberties. This is always short sighted; real security solutions exist that preserve the free society that we all hold dear, but they're harder to find and require reasoned debate. Strong police forces without Constitutional limitations might appeal to those wanting immediate safety, but the reality is the opposite. Laws that limit police power can increase security, by enforcing honesty, integrity, and fairness. It is our very liberties that make our society as safe as it is. In times of crisis it's easy to disregard these liberties or, worse, to actively attack them and stigmatize those who support them. We've already seen government proposals for increased wiretapping capabilities and renewed rhetoric about encryption limitations. I fully expect more automatic surveillance of ordinary citizens, limits on information flow and digital-security technologies, and general xenophobia. I do not expect much debate about their actual effectiveness, or their effects on freedom and liberty. It's easier just to react. In 1996, TWA Flight 800 exploded and crashed in the Atlantic. Originally people thought it was a missile attack. The FBI demanded, and Congress passed, a law giving law enforcement greater abilities to expel aliens from the country. Eventually we learned the crash was caused by a mechanical malfunction, but the law still stands. We live in a world where nation states are not the only institutions which wield power. International bodies, corporations, non-governmental organizations, pan-national ethnicities, and disparate political groups all have the ability to affect the world in an unprecedented manner. As we adjust to this new reality, it is important that we don't become the very forces we abhor. I consider the terrorist attacks on September 11th to be an attack against America's ideals. If our freedoms erode because of those attacks, then the terrorists have won. The ideals we uphold during a crisis define who we are. Freedom and liberty have a price, and that price is constant vigilance so it not be taken from us in the name of security. Ben Franklin said something that was often repeated during the American Revolutionary War: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." It is no less true today. From Cryptome, Sept 15 2001

MP George Galloway was, whilst explaing to the dim witted Adam Bolton on Sky news the REASONING behind this atrocity, was abruptly cut off by the Sky News vision controllers. There will be no debate. There will be no reason. There will be no withdrawl from the affairs of the Middle East. There will only be WAR and INSANITY and STUPIDITY, BLINDNESS, LIES and counting of the dead.

Daily Telegraph "The World Trade Centre outrage was co-ordinated on the internet, without question. If Washington is serious in its determination to eliminate terrorism, it will have to forbid internet providers to allow the transmission of encrypted messages - now encoded by public key ciphers that are unbreakable even by the National Security Agency's computers - and close down any provider that refuses to comply. Uncompliant providers on foreign territory should expect their buildings to be destroyed by cruise missiles. Once the internet is implicated in the killing of Americans, its high-rolling days may be reckoned to be over."

Anyone watching the special debate in the UK Parliament yesterday would have been amazed at some of the outbursts; Dennis Skinner made the most absurd statement, to the effect,"..should the UK government be riding on the coat-tails of an American president, who whilst the firefighters were standing ten feet tall, was cowering in a bunker?" One MP called for the mandatory issuing of ID cards for all UK citizens, as well as "mandatory genetic profiling of all UK citizens", "so that we can follow these people where ever they go, from safe house to safehouse". Yet another asked if the government would be preparing to invoke its special wartime measures allowing it to round up potential enemies living in the UK. Think about it; this will HAVE to happen if the UK decides it is going to "stand shoulder to shoulder" with the USA when it bombs, for example, XXXXXXX. They will, as the americans rounded up all people with "Japanese ancestry" in WW2, round up all citizens of XXXXXXX because they will be seen as potential threats. If however, there is no bombing, this will not be an issue. 40 billion Dollars has been freed up by congress to prosecute this battle, after "the Pearl Harbor of World War 3". It would be the correct move to simply NOT go to war, as it will only possibly CAUSE WW3 to start, solve nothing, create more hate and disorder and a destruciton of our already eroding freedom. George Gallawy, made the only sensible speech during the debate. He has never been listened to, and of course, his words fell on deaf ears today. He said, and these are not ver batim but they are close, "10,000 Bin Ladens will be created if we bomb any country that we believe is involved in this atrocity"..."if 5000 people were killed in this attack, then that is the same number of people that have died EVERY MONTH in Iraq in the 10 years since the end of the Gulf War". No one wants to address the root problem in this, and it has nothing to do with timing and respect for the dead. It's a symptom of the wests refusal to play fair, its refusal to apply the same standards to everybody that it does to itself. If it cannot do this, then it should take its marbles home and go and play with the people it feels equal to. Jack Straw engaged in a "told you so" tirade saying that, "the extra powers for the security services and police that we asked for were in proportion to the "terrorist threat", as we said". This is par for the course from him. Everyone is angry, scared and ill. Aparently in France, there are two kilometer lines for Diesel in advance of shortages due to forthcoming military action. This could have all been avoided if the UN was a fair place, which it is demonstably not. Now we are being dragged into a fully blown war, at a time when we should be thinking about everything else BUT war. This is the fault of the UN, who, as the last place a country can turn to for justice, failed miserably to apply its resolutions evenly, failed miserably to heed the calls for help from the countries that were suffering, failed to stop the USA controlling the amazingly undemocratic and unrepresentative Security Council.....which of you will be called up to fight in this? and where will you run to to avoid sucking in some depleted uranium dust, taking an experimental anti biological warfair coctail or just getting killed?

"CNN reported on television broadcast earlier today that the NSA was now going through volumes of recorded cellular calls for calls made by passengers on the planes." Someone at the NSA has made a slip of the tounge; this is an admission that they have recordings of all cellular telephone calls made in the USA!

"LET'S BE PERSONAL" Broadcast June 5, 1973, CFRB, Toronto, Ontario Topic: "The Americans" The United States dollar took another pounding on German, French and British exchanges this morning, hitting the lowest point ever known in West Germany. It has declined there by 41% since 1971 and this Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least-appreciated people in all the earth. As long as sixty years ago, when I first started to read newspapers, I read of floods on the Yellow River and the Yangtse. Who rushed in with men and money to help? The Americans did. They have helped control floods on the Nile, the Amazon, the Ganges and the Niger. Today, the rich bottom land of the Misssissippi is under water and no foreign land has sent a dollar to help. Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy, were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of those countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States. When the franc was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it. When distant cities are hit by earthquakes, it is the United States that hurries into help... Managua Nicaragua is one of the most recent examples. So far this spring, 59 American communities have been flattened by tornadoes. Nobody has helped. The Marshall Plan .. the Truman Policy .. all pumped billions upon billions of dollars into discouraged countries. Now, newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent war-mongering Americans. I'd like to see one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplanes. Come on... let's hear it! Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tristar or the Douglas 107? If so, why don't they fly them? Why do all international lines except Russia fly American planes? Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or women on the moon? You talk about Japanese technocracy and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy and you find men on the moon, not once, but several times ... and safely home again. You talk about scandals and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everyone to look at. Even the draft dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, most of them ... unless they are breaking Canadian laws .. are getting American dollars from Ma and Pa at home to spend here. When the Americans get out of this bind ... as they will... who could blame them if they said 'the hell with the rest of the world'. Let someone else buy the Israel bonds, Let someone else build or repair foreign dams or design foreign buildings that won't shake apart in earthquakes. When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are still broke. I can name to you 5,000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake. Our neighbours have faced it alone and I am one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them kicked around. They will come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. I hope Canada is not one of these. But there are many smug, self-righteous Canadians. And finally, the American Red Cross was told at its 48th Annual meeting in New Orleans this morning that it was broke. This year's disasters .. with the year less than half-over� has taken it all and nobody...but nobody... has helped.

"The American cowboys are reaping the fruit of their crimes against humanity."

"Ananova are reporting that just hours after the terrorist attack on New York, the FBI started approaching ISPs asking for help in installing Carnivore."

Incredibly, something that we all knew was �do-able� but never though would happen, has happened. The words that have come after this sickening outrage have been as predictable as they are useless. Much fighting talk, talk of steel, talk of resolve, and speech saying that this will �not change us or our direction.� Oh dear. Everything in this sad matter boils down to a choice. The UK and USA need to decide if they want to live a life of plenty and peace, or live a life of poverty, fear, uncertainty and death. The Swiss live a life of security, privacy, wealth and harmony. They are respected the world over. The people of the Netherlands have an extremely high standard of living, no enemies abroad, and the kind of security that the British only dream about. The Japanese, whilst not particularly loved by the generation of WW2, have had unprecedented growth, admiration, peace and prosperity. A choice needs to be made. Are the �superpowers� going to continue to foot the bill financially and psychologically of trying to civilize the rest of the world, or are they going to turn their backs on these people who are clearly so different from them that it is impossible to make any kind of human connection other than the most superficial changing of monies and false diplomatic gestures. America and Britain have many problems that need to be resolved; poverty, economic deterioration, dwindling and ageing populations, decaying infrastructures. These problems need the urgent attention of the people in their respective governments. The Middle East, and all of its irresolvable problems are not and should not be the responsibility of anyone but the people who live there. The west should look inwards, and turn away from these insane people once and for all; water always finds its lowest level, and the Middle East problems are being artificially bolstered by repeated, expensive and counterproductive intervention by foreign governments. The problems that have caused this attack are similar to the ones that America faced in the era of prohibition. A small religious minority caused the enactment of the prohibition laws. These insane, ant-freedom laws were the sole cause of the birth of organized crime in the USA, and we have been suffering the consequences of these laws ever since. The Middle East problems are exactly the same. Wrong-headed international policy has caused the USA to be the number one despised country on the planet. The problems of America and the Middle East are not going to be stopped by �defeating terrorism�, or �defeating evil�, but by changing the systemic problems that are the root cause of all the woes that are increasingly afflicting the USA. We need to do the modern equivalent of erasing the prohibition laws; this means extricating ourselves from anything to do with Middle East politics and people. It means driving out those embassies that hail from countries that do not comply 100% with UN resolutions and regulations. It means stopping all monies that are given away freely to all countries. It means a total and absolute isolation from the people who insist on living in a way that is not our way. I believe that these people have every right to live as they choose, under whatever type government that they like. It is not our place to tell anyone or any government what they should and should not do. If they should choose to live in a style that is not suited to us, then they must be separate from us, in every way shape and form. They should have their own UN, their own organizations, their own emergency systems that are totally separate from ours, run by and for them, and for which they have to foot 100% of the bill. We should not sing with them. We should not play sports with them, neither visit their lands or allow them to visit us. We should not teach them or sell them our technology. We need to be absolutely and completely separate from these people. They should not be able to use our phone systems, nor our satellite navigation systems; nothing that belongs to us. Let them create their own infrastructure from scratch. If the west turns inwards, and spends its saved billions on its own problems, we will live lives of unprecedented prosperity, as have all countries that have diminished their waste spending. We must however, keep �final course of action� defense systems in place, and there should be only one possible response from these systems, should any member of the west be attacked. We have to take this approach because it is extremely expensive to maintain and equip armies. This is an expense that we should not be compelled to make for the sake of people who are uncivilized and hell bent on suicide. It is the maintenance of these huge military budgets that keeps parts of the UK and USA in what the UN classifies as absolute poverty. The one response is this: if you attack us, you loose everything. Period. Bill Clinton enacted terrible legislation as a reaction to the original World Trade Center bombing. You can expect similar removals of our God given rights from this president as a reaction to this despicable and unnecessary act. As I have said before on this list, this is the worst side effect of terrorism after the deaths of the victims; knee jerk legislation that removes freedoms from the innocent population, and causes evermore internal friction. At the time of writing, it is not known who carried out this act of mass murder. �Make no mistake� it is far from clear who was responsible, and if this was another internal attack, more draconian legislation and restrictions on the American population will only make matters worse. America needs to roll back the part that government plays in its citizen�s lives to what it was in the 1920�s (without throwing away the social advances that make America work better). This is the only action that will restore the internal harmony that is missing inside America, it�s the only thing that will restore confidence in the federal government, the thing that will cause the four million militia men to go back to regular lives. Combined with a complete withdrawal from interfering in the affairs of other countries, America will finally be able to be at peace with itself, and with the rest of the world. It will be a dynamic, non �coo-coo-clock Switzerland, with all of the advantages of that fine nation, plus the advantage of American dynamism, flair and know how. The alternative is a total erosion of all the freedoms that the founding fathers fought and died for, an escalation of atrocities, outrages and hatred, more wars, and most importantly, a missed opportunity to lead by example. Those countries that believe what we believe should join with us in turning our backs on the barbarians. Together, the security of the western nations is stronger, bound by common ideals, goals and a love of freedom and the value of human life, a block of free countries will be able to trade with each other and thrive. The rest of the world will fall into savagery, and we should not feel bad about this, because it is precisely what they desire. If a descent into savagery were not what they desired, then all of these lands would have settled into stable places of order, prosperity and human dignity many years ago. They want war. They want to hate. It is up to us to decide whether we want to continue to consume them and their hatred, or whether we will eat another, more pleasant dish. One thing is for certain; no change in policy is the worst possible decision, leading inevitably to the worse possible outcome.

TO ALL BLOGDIALIAN's: let's keep the news channels open and use our resource to it's fullest capacity. we need each other now more than ever. we are our own free press. PEACE AND LOVE AND TRUTH TO YOU ALL

my thoughts are with you all as well during this time. love one another and there is room for us all. peace

www.iheu.org

now this is ascii.

wow. that Danmed site is scary. i searched my TypedURLs directories and found old messages i wrote in hotmail, URLs i typed into Internet Explorer and thought i had deleted out of History long ago, and searches i did all hidden away in folders only accessible by entering DOS mode. ANYbody using MS Internet Explorer or Outlook should go to the site that alex recommended: http://nvukcgi.virtualave.net/fuckms.htm

The real evil of coca-cola.

"..reason not the need.."

If you were able to have any feature you wanted in an audio editing tool like Sound Forge or Pro Tools, what would it be?