To lend complex rationalisations to his simplifications...

The u-turn that saved the Gipper After Iran-contra, Reagan ditched the right and embraced Gorbachev Sidney Blumenthal Thursday June 10, 2004 The Guardian Ronald Reagan's presidency collapsed at the precise moment on November 25 1986 when he appeared without notice in the White House briefing room, introduced his attorney general, Edwin Meese, and instantly departed from the stage. Meese announced that funds raised by members of the national security council and others by selling arms to Iran had been used to aid the Nicaraguan contras. Anti-terrorism laws and congressional resolutions had been wilfully violated. Eventually 11 people were convicted of felonies. In less than a week, Reagan's approval rating plunged from 67% to 46%, the greatest and quickest decline ever for a president. On December 17 1986, William Casey, the director of the CIA, was scheduled to testify before the Senate intelligence committee. But he collapsed into a coma, suffering from brain cancer, never to recover. Lt Col Oliver North, Casey's action officer on the NSC, explained to a select congressional investigation that Casey had been the mastermind in creating an "overseas entity ... self-financing, independent", that would conduct "US foreign policy" as a "stand-alone". Called "the Enterprise", it was the apotheosis of the Reagan doctrine, the waging of a global war for the rollback of communism. The hardline secretary of defence, Caspar Weinberger, and his neoconservative underlings were summarily dismissed, the NSC purged. "Let Reagan be Reagan," had long been the cry of conservatives. Now they screamed that Reagan was either being held prisoner or had sold out. In interviews with investigators, Reagan said he couldn't recall what had happened. But he retained his utopianism and idealism that had propelled him from leftwing liberal in Hollywood to rightwing man on horseback, switching ideologies but never his temperament. At his first meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985, Reagan had perplexed him by talking about how they might work together if there were an invasion of aliens from outer space. Reagan had got his idea from a 1951 science fiction movie in which an alien warns of earth's destruction if nuclear weapons are not abolished. At the Reykjavik summit in October 1986, Reagan had agreed to eliminate all nuclear weapons (to the consternation of his advisers) until Gorbachev insisted that testing for the Star Wars missile defence shield be suspended. Two of Reagan's utopian dreams collided. But after the exposure of the Iran-contra scandal, Gorbachev dropped the objection to Star Wars. Instead, he crafted a practical arms reduction agreement, the intermediate nuclear forces treaty. And, despite opposition from conservatives, Reagan seized upon it. With script in hand, Reagan was Reagan again. In September 1987, he addressed the United Nations general assembly: "I occasionally think how our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world." That December, Gorbachev came to the White House to sign the treaty. Then, in June 1988, Reagan went to Moscow, where he declared that "of course" the cold war was over and that his famous reference to the "evil empire" was from "another time." Reagan did not bring about the downfall of the Soviet Union. But he lent support to the liberalising reform that hastened the end. In reaching out to Gorbachev, Reagan blithely discarded the rightwing faith that totalitarian communism was unchangeable and that only rollback, not containment and negotiation, would lead to its demise. Reagan was acutely self-conscious about his about-face and on his trip to Moscow he explained it. "In the movie business actors often get what we call typecast," he said. "Well, politics is a little like that too. So I've had a lot of time and reason to think about my role." [...] This is a great article from The Guardian. As for My emphasis: "The Enterprise"."The Project". "The Merchandise"

The 60th

Number 60. There is a relationship between 60 and 12,000. Is there not? Come up with a 60th BLOGDIAL banner, to DELETE the present placeholder. Or you suffer it, 1/60th of the loads.

Computer iliterates at it again!

Problem The real problem is computer illiteracy. Let me show you why.

Google offers 1 gig of storage, which is more than 100 times the storage offered by Yahoo or Hotmail, or any Internet service providers that we know about.

Yahoo and Hotmail are providers of wemail; email you access from a browser. They are not "internet service providers". There are many internet service providers that offer more than a gigabyte of storage, but almost no webmail services that offer anywhere near a gigabyte of space just for your email. In order to enter into a discussion about something, you ideally have to have at least a little knowledge about it. You have to be able to understand the detail. If you cannot, you cannot discuss it in any meaningful way.

After 180 days in the U.S., email messages lose their status as a protected communication under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and become just another database record.

This is bad law, and has nothing to do with Gmail. Gather together a group to remove this law from the american lawbooks; dont penalise business because of it.

Google's relationships with government officials in all of the dozens of countries where they operate are a mystery, because Google never makes any statements about this. But here's a clue: Google uses the term "governmental request" three times on their terms-of-use page for Gmail and once on their privacy page. Google's language means that all Gmail account holders have consented to allow Google to show any and all email in their Gmail accounts to any official from any government whatsoever, even when the request is informal or extralegal, at Google's sole discretion.

This is a problem with governments and not with Google. In fact, any ISP can be asked to reveal information about you in exactly the same way. Throughout Europe new dictats have been issued saying that ISP Data, including emails sent and recieved must be retained for inspection. In the UK, they are going to hold your email for 7 years. Once again, these are problems created by government, not by the providers of services, who would very much prefer not to have to spend time and money looking through your dirty underpants at the command of some beaurocrat. Fix the REAL problem, which is intrusive government. But of course, that is a HARD PROBLEM to face up to and solve. Its easy to attack Google, get millions of hits and become an anti-google celebrity. People who attack google are actually cowards without the guts to address the fundamental flaws in this.

Google has not even formally stated in their privacy policy that they will not keep a list of keywords scanned from incoming email, and associate these with the incoming email address in their database.

Dont send email to Gmail. Write some tools that automagically return all gmail email.

For example, their cookie with the unique ID in it, which expires in 2038, has been tracking all of the search terms you've ever used while searching their main index.

Delete it. Write a tool that deletes Googles cookie every minute. YOU control your computer not Google; act like you have at least a little understanding, and take control of what you do. You of course, could use another search engine...oh you didnt know? There ARE other search engines!

If Google builds a database of keywords associated with email addresses, the potential for abuse is staggering. Google could grow a database that spits out the email addresses of those who used those keywords. ... Intelligence agencies would love to play with this information. The fact that Google offers so much storage turns Gmail into something that is uniquely dangerous and creepy.

Everyone who knows anything about any of this knows that ECHELON is already doing this. They already have a database of email addresses indexed against keywords. Now, a private corporation wants to take advantage of the same techniques, and all of a sudden, its a big problem. ECHELON takes this information from you, and you get nothing but spied upon. Google does it, and hundreds of millions of people get enfranchised with a powerful tool. How stupid do you have to be to not see that it is ECHELON that is the real enemy, that it is ECHELON which is the unnacountable, illegal, immoral abomination that is invading your privacy, and the privacy of everyone with email? You would have to be very stupid or a computer illiterate, or a coward to not see this and face up to it. Gmail is not a problem. Governments out of control are the real and present danger to your privacy.

Inappropriate ad matching

Irrelevant. Unless you are the person buying the ad placements. You cannot on the one hand say that the scanning is entirely wrong, and in the next breath say that its bad because its innacurate. Either its bad or its good, full stop.

Esther Dyson, queen of the digerati, gets it wrong "We're not going to have any choice but to send mail to people at Gmail just to function in the e-mail world," says Daniel Brandt, founder of the Google-Watch.org Web site.

That is a lie. You always have a choice. People who know better refuse to accept unencrypted email. Whats that I hear you say? Yes indeed, you can encrypt your email so that no one can read it while it is in transit to and from you. But you have to be one of the digerati to understand how it works :]

"And what guarantees do we have that all this won't end up on some bureaucrat's desk at some intelligence agency someday?"

Only a computer illiterate could say this. Governments can already do this without Gmail. Gmail doenst change anything at all, except to give people more useful webmail. Anyone who things that your email cant end up on a bureaucrat's desk doesnt know enough to enter this debate.

But those who support Gmail say such privacy concerns are not Google issues so much as constitutional ones, best addressed to Congress and law-enforcement agencies. "They've got a beef with the wrong person. The problem there is the FBI, not Google," says Dyson.

That is entirely correct. The digerati understand perfectly not only the issues of the technology involved, but also the legal aspects. They are smarter than you!

"And in the scheme of things, I'd rather have Google than my employer have access to my personal mail." -- Baltimore Sun, 20 May 2004

That is perfectly reasonable. You have to trust SOMEBODY if you want to be able to send email. You have to trust your postman and the postal service if you want to be able to send snail mail. This is what being alive in a group of people is about. The only way you can be in a position where you do not have to trust someone is when you live alone on an isolated island.

The point is this: Some two-thirds of all Google searches come in from outside the U.S., and Gmail will also have a global reach. We're not dealing with only the FBI (and yes, the same privacy advocates who oppose Gmail are dealing with the FBI), but potentially with hundreds of agencies in dozens of countries.

The real point is that cross border spying agreements were sealed before Gmail, and were inplimented in the form of ECHELON before any of these arguments were brought to your attention. Now that you know about them, you need to get off of the Gmail case and onto the much more difficult case of destroying ECHELON.

Google has no data retention policies,

Neither does ECHELON.

and never comments on their relationships with governments.

Neither does ECHELON.

The problem must be addressed at the source, which is Google.

no, it is ECHELON.

Elitist digerati do a disservice to the entire world when they assume such narrow points of view.

The digerati are the elite. It is a terrible burden to bear, especially when 90% of all the chatter (like gmail is too creepy) is so igmorant, impotent, pathetic and insufferably DULL. It is a truely narrow point of view to see Gmail only as a tool to read peoples email and track their behaviour. It has been clearly demonstrated that ECHELON and the slew of new directives and laws about data retention are the real threat to peoples privacy. These laws will force google to be evil, whereas in a world where these laws did not exist, all webmail providers and ISPs could simply tell beaurocrats to fuck off when they recieved a request for information on a user without a properly issued warrant. Gmail is too creepy is just a little too ignorant to be real. I suggest to you that it is a shill site created by M$ or someone connected to them, to try and destroy the viability of Gmail to give M$ time to ramp up the features of the utterly pathetic Hotmail, and forstall the mass exodus of users to a new, FAST, useful service, namely Gmail. This puts gmail is too is creepy into context, explains its existence and the very lame and PR-like name of this "protest" site. Gmail will be launched. Gmail will change the face of webmail. Deal with it. If you dont want some beaurocrat reading your email, defang your government. Its that simple. Dand Brandt is behind "Public Information Research" He is the registrant of the domain:

Registrant:
Public Information Research
PO Box 680635
San Antonio, Texas 78268-0635
United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com
Domain Name: GMAIL-IS-TOO-CREEPY.COM
Created on: 06-May-04
Expires on: 06-May-05
Last Updated on: 06-May-04

Administrative Contact:
Brandt, Daniel namebase@earthlink.net
Public Information Research
PO Box 680635
San Antonio, Texas 78268-0635
United States
2105093160 Fax -- 2105093161
Technical Contact:
Brandt, Daniel namebase@earthlink.net
Public Information Research
PO Box 680635
San Antonio, Texas 78268-0635
United States
2105093160 Fax -- 2105093161

Domain servers in listed order:
NS3.WESTSERVER.NET
NS4.WESTSERVER.NET

Here is his Nambebase Social Network Look at the people he is connected to. Astonishing.

This is your football on drugs.

It's OK to smoke dope, England fans told Paul Kelso in Lisbon Friday June 11, 2004 The Guardian Portuguese police officers will turn a blind eye to England supporters who openly smoke cannabis during Euro 2004, having decided that a stoned crowd is easier to control than a drunk one. Lisbon police confirmed yesterday that England fans will not be arrested for puffing on joints on the streets of the Portuguese capital, following a recommendation from the Dutch authorities responsible for policing the English during Euro 2000. Four years ago England's match in Eindhoven, ironically against Portugal, passed off peacefully as many supporters took advantage of the Netherlands' liberal drugs laws. By contrast the game against Germany in the Belgian town of Charleroi was marred by violence, much of it fuelled by alcohol. Portugal has similarly relaxed legislation to the Dutch and the authorities hope it will help them police the 50,000 supporters expected to arrive in the country in the next few days. Possession of small amounts of cannabis is not illegal in Portugal but, technically, consumption is. However, having liaised with the Dutch, police will not act except in extreme circumstances. Isabel Canelas, a spokeswoman for the Portuguese police, said cannabis would be a low priority during the tournament. "Everyone knows that here everyone can smoke. The police are doing another kind of job and their priorities are different. "We won't be hiding behind doors waiting for someone to smoke a joint. We have to use common sense. If people are smoking but not kicking each other, not beating each other, and not making a problem, why on earth would an officer go and ask 'Is that cannabis?' "If you are quietly smoking and a police officer is 10 metres away, what's the big risk in your behaviour? I'm not going to tap you on the shoulder and ask 'What are you smoking?' if you are posing no menace to others. Our priority is alcohol. [...] http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,1563,1236261,00.html

Gmail is too creepy

Gmail is too creepy

Bush/Zombie Reagan 2004

Bush/Zombie Reagan 2004

The Rebellion

Council opposes national ID cards County councillors in Devon are opposing the introduction of national citizens' identity cards. Councillor David Morrish put forward a motion to oppose the government's plan. He claims the scheme would not give Devon any additional security from terrorist attacks, nor reduce anti-social behaviour. Despite arguments that ID cards were similar to PIN numbers and could protect ethnic minorities, councillors voted by 20 to 13 to oppose the plan. Mr Morrish also claims the scheme, estimated to cost �3 billion, would mean a further financial burden on the people of Devon and could undermine council policies. He says there is no evidence the scheme would achieve its aims, adding that ID cards had not prevented the terrorist attack in Madrid in March. It will cost a fortune and lead to another expensive IT fiasco Cllr Brian Greenslade "We are sleepwalking into the future and before we go any further, we'd better stop and look at the map." [...] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/3781189.stm My emphasis. Well well well. It looks like the impurification plans have not reached Devon. Pensioners in open revolt, Councillors voting to reject government dictat. Just in case you didnt know, the impurification measures have prooved to be 100% effective in Essex, where people believe that there is nothing wrong with creating a DNA database of everyone in the UK, they run around in spoilered Fords and think that living next to a motorway is preferable to living in a quiet location. And Im not making that last bit up inaaaaaaaaat! Oh my, check the third entry.

The Language of Love

'caricature of a car'...classic!! The French language is a beautiful thing, and in the hands of the literate, its a devastating instrument of great beauty. My favourite phrase in this vein was the one used to describe the suggestion of the placing of the pyramid at the louvre by Im Pei. It was made by someone, and sadly, I cant find it online, but it went something like this (and I am paraphrasing very poorly

"This Egyptian symbol of death has no place in the heart of French culture"

The disdain in the actually spoken phrase was so perfectly transmitted, that even in translation it was almost like a musical phrase dancing into your ears. The French are wonderful, complicated, vibrant and by God, they know how to eat!

Stuff and more stuff

Who has an MP3 player here? Not yet. I think I will ask for one for my birthday, and I would really like to have an iPod, especially for skiing. Does anyone collect apparently pointless ephemera? No, not anymore. Well, maybe the odd rock or pinecone, but I try not to keep anything that is "pointless." I don't have the space, and I prefer functional items, or sentimental things, to fill my rooms. I do collect plants, but I think they are essential.

Yahoo! News - Paris Goes After SUVs

Paris Goes After SUVs Wed Jun 9, 9:22 AM ET PARIS (Reuters) - Bulky four-by-fours could be banned from clogging up the chic streets of Paris after a top official in the capital's left-wing government described them as a polluting "caricature of a car" unsuited to city life. An anti-sports utility vehicle (SUV) resolution passed by the city council could lead to a ban on the popular vehicles in about 18 months if it is included in an overall project to improve traffic flow in the city, Deputy Mayor Denis Baupin said Wednesday. "You have to wonder why people want to drive around in SUVs," Baupin, a Greens party member, said on Europe 1 radio. "We have no interest in having SUVs in the city. They're dangerous to others and take up too much space." The city council voted Tuesday to urge Socialist Mayor Bertrand Delanoe to consider banning SUVs, which have become popular in recent years and now make up about five percent of the French car market -- just below the western Europe average. [...] Yahoo! News - Paris Goes After SUVs 'caricature of a car'...classic!!

Well Deserved!http://www.andante.com/article/article.cfm?id=23801

Gy�rgy Ligeti and B. B. King Accept 2004 Polar Music Prize Agence France-Presse - 26 May 2004 STOCKHOLM, May 24 (AFP) ? Sweden's prestigious Polar Music Prize was on Monday [24 May] presented to B. B. King for his contribution to the blues and to Gy�rgy Ligeti for his innovations in classical music. [...] Ligeti, 81, was too weak to make the trip to Stockholm, so his secretary accepted the prize on his behalf for his role in expanding the frontiers of classical music. Hungarian-born, like his famous forerunner and influence B�la Bart�k, Ligeti helped breathe new life into a music form that peaked in the 19th century with the great symphonies, but then moved away from the mainstream ? making room for popular music forms like the blues, B. B. King's domain. The Academy credited Ligeti with "stretching the boundaries of the musically conceivable, from mind-expanding sounds to new astounding processes, in a thoroughly personal style that embodies both inquisitiveness and imagination". Often using traditional instruments in an unconventional way, Ligeti also sometimes shunned instruments altogether, writing pieces like a Symphonic Poem for 100 Metronomes, which in a live performance ends when the final tick has been heard. In addition to the prize, King and Ligeti received a check for one million kronor (US$131,000; 110,000 euros) each. [...] http://www.andante.com/article/article.cfm?id=23801

Ligeti As a Child

Ligeti as a child. http://www.gyoergy-ligeti.de/fotos/index.html

New OSX measures

Have you noticed that you can no longer just drop an application into your application folder? You now have to "authenticate" before OSX allows you to drag an app there. Makes sense. By the way, if you are running Mozilla on fully patched OSX, dont bother with RC3 it has some sort of performance "feature" that slows it down to molasses.

The Man we call "H"

poken to people about Gurdjieff, I have never talked about dieting - though I have talked about diet. Yes yes yes, but what have you said about diet?

Welcome to WORK MAGAZINE

Reality Check

Virtually every significant problem facing the American people today can be traced back to the policies and people that came from the Reagan administration. It is a laundry list of ills, woes and disasters that has all of us, once again, staring apocalypse in the eye. How can this be? The television says Ronald Reagan was one of the most beloved Presidents of the 20th century. He won two national elections, the second by a margin so overwhelming that all future landslides will be judged by the high-water mark he achieved against Walter Mondale. How can a man so universally respected have played a hand in the evils which corrupt our days? The answer lies in the reality of the corrupt society Abbey spoke of. Our corruption is the absolute triumph of image over reality, of flash over substance, of the pervasive need within most Americans to believe in a happy-face version of the nation they call home, and to spurn the reality of our estate as unpatriotic. Ronald Reagan was, and will always be, the undisputed heavyweight champion of salesmen in this regard. Reagan was able, by virtue of his towering talents in this arena, to sell to the American people a flood of poisonous policies. He made Americans feel good about acting against their own best interests. He sold the American people a lemon, and they drive it to this day as if it was a Cadillac. It isn't the lies that kill us, but the myths, and Ronald Reagan was the greatest myth-maker we are ever likely to see. [...] Like the song said; "Working for the bad guys"

America can right itself - this is its strength.

In an extraordinary sealed case, the ACLU has challenged the FBI's unchecked authority to issue "National Security Letters" (NSLs), which demand sensitive customer records from Internet Service Providers and other businesses without judicial oversight. Before the Patriot Act, the FBI could use the NSL authority only against suspected terrorists and spies. Thanks to Section 505 of the Patriot Act, the FBI can now use NSLs to obtain information about anyone at all. The ACLU filed the lawsuit under seal to avoid penalties for violating the NSL statute's broad gag provision, a provision that the ACLU is challenging on First Amendment grounds. While our challenge to the NSL provision was filed on April 6, it took nearly three weeks for the ACLU to reach an agreement with the government that allowed the disclosure of anything at all about the case. A redacted version of the complaint is now publicly available, but many details about the case are still under seal. The ACLU believes that the public has a right to more information about the government's use of the Patriot Act and is committed to unsealing more information about the case as quickly as possible. View a special feature about the case, including the redacted complaint. [...] Even though America has gone to hell in a handbasket, it might still be able to right itself. Its built in mechanisms that allow legal challenges to bad law can fix problems like the Patriot Act, so that in the end, even if its after decades, the true center of gravity in the USA can be restored. Theoretically. In the EU is there the right to legally challenge and overturn the endless stream of insane directives? Where is the right of this crucial type of legal challenge codified in the new constitution? For all countries in the EU, should there not be an "European Civil Liberties Union" to protect the rights of all Europeans? The answer is, sadly, that such a group is impossible. First of all, even if it were to exist, there is no legal framework with which such a group could challenge and change EU law. Secondly, European citizens have vastly different ideas about what liberty is, and so it would be impossible to form an independent group with a consensus on almost any subject. The Belgians have no problem with carrying an ID card. The French see nothing wrong in being guilty until proven innocent, and so on and so on. This fundamental mismatch means that a body that oversees all of these disperate groups can have unlimited power, because none of the member states have a consistent enough view on what a persons rights are to form a pan-European group to protect those rights. Europe is hopelessly broken. But you know this.

Cut... the... blue... wire...

Mr Thomas told the MPs: "This is beginning to represent a really significant sea change in the relationship between state and every individual in this country." It was now clear the scheme was not just about identity cards but about a national identity register, he said. "It is not just about citizens having a piece of plastic to identify themselves. "It's about the amount, the nature of the information held about every citizen and how that's going to be used in a wide range of activities." [...] BBC

And so, what do you recomend people do to not be subject to this outrage? Someone has to join up the dots and say; "This we cannot and should not do. This we will not do. We will not obey this order. You are mistaken. You are dismissed."

Thank you for the reports!

Being Libran (Venusian), of course I am interested in her transit. And it has been a funny flowing day, right place, right time, and sunny! Hopefully I will be able to watch real-time in 2012. BTW, finished me book, and now I am creeped out. I haven't read sci-fi in a while, perhaps it was a pat line, but damn disturbing all the same. Apocalyptic. I think I need to go play in the garden to get it off me.

That was quite a treat!

That really was a spectacle; I wonder what the Astrologers predict for children born during the transit?