Monthly Archives: June 2002

Gone for a while!

Sunday, June 16, 2002

Wow, I didn't update at all yesterday; you can tell how full the weekend was! I sqeezed out an update last night, and I will try and do a full image update as today goes by. In the current update you can see lots of pictures from NIX and pictures of Chad's suspension, along with all the experiences as well…

I am not doing a “news” thing today, but I did think that people should not forget the Anthrax case. As reported in the Scotsman,

American investigators know the identity of the killer who paralysed the US by sending anthrax in the post but will not arrest the culprit, according to leading US scientists.

[Dr Barbara Hatch Rosenberg] said she knows who that person is and so do a top-level clique of US government scientists, the CIA, the FBI and the White House.

Most crucially, she believes the suspect has in the past actually conducted experiments for the government to test the response of the police and civil agencies to a bioterror attack.

The answer that has been proposed is that they can't arrest this guy because he knows too much. As if they wouldn't just execute him if that was the case. I think it's damn obvious that the anthrax attacks were 100% US government sponsored. I think that now that we're getting more and more solid proof that the US government launched the Anthrax attacks on its own people, and that Bush et al knew all about it, that we can start feeling a lot more secure in stating that not only did the Bush dictatorship know the details of 9/11, but that they helped and encouraged it to happen.

Anyway, enjoy the update.

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The sun rises still…

Friday, June 14, 2002

First of all, I should mention for friends of Jordan and Dan that Jordan father just posted a brief note in the 7ANGELS7PLAGUES forum. Along similarly sad notes, if anyone would like to say something regarding former IAM member Brian Edge(less) who passed away recently I can post it as well.

I've gotten no sleep lately. I try to go to bed early, but when I go to bed early, I just end up getting up even earlier; today I was up at about 4AM. I have a lot to do this weekend, so I tried to go back to bed, but I'm one of those people who wakes up instantly, and then stays awake until they're totally tired again, so that was an unsuccessful mission.

I was supposed to hook up yesterday with Damian who's hosting NIX so we could go over the Internet connections, but that didn't happen. I know what a nightmare organizing ModCon was, so I really have to tip my hat to Damian for organizing a full-scale tattoo convention! In any case, I'll be there even if the booth falls through hanging out with Blair, Mark, Marty, and everyone else who I've forgotten has made it up to NIX. And I will have lots of stickers, and so will Ryan if you want a super-slick BMEbooks sticker!

Oh, and I hear there's a suspension tonight (although if it stays this chilly, I'm going to recommend it be pushed back a day or two).

Now the part that some of you love, and some of you hate… I was reading the news this morning and I'm starting to wonder if it's not corruption we're seeing in the government, but plain and simple stupidity? Of course, maybe that's what they want us to think. The latest with Rumsfield in India is particularly weird — he totally forgot or was uninformed that Musharraf had promised to shut down terrorist camps in Kashmir. Then the press reminded him that a few days before Powell had made this public in a speech. Rumsfield insisted that he didn't think that Powell would say anything like that, and that he was pretty sure Musharraf couldn't shut down the camps.

The government tried to explain that he was “impossible to reach” for most of his time abroad, but I have to seriously doubt that. Yeah, one of the most important US politicians is AWOL while in hostile territory? As if that crew doesn't have a dozen satellite phones. Worst case just as CNN, it't not as if Rumsfield isn't tailed by dozens of reporters.

Or, more along that line, remember how last week Rumsfield implied that Al Quaeda was in Kashmir? Now they've had to admit that was effectively made up and that there's no evidence for it. So who knows… Are they lying, stupid, or misinformed? The whole dirty bomber scam at least blew up in their faces… I just want to know why the (very well armed) Americans haven't revolted. I know if I was Texan, I'd be pushing the Republic of Texas a lot harder nowadays. I know I'd support Texas becoming a free country!

And, rolling the news way back, it's looking more and more like the Anthrax attacks after 9/11 were quite specifically launched by the US government at least in part. More in the “they're all out to get you” file includes this story about how even now the airlines are still trying to avoid reporting incidents out of fear that bombs on planes could mean less flights (well duh).

Finally, I have two more stories I'd like to address. First is this opinion piece in the Mercury News stating that the solution to terrorism is bringing American troops home. Now, I know Americans are told that America is the target because it represents freedom and the opulence of the West… If one is to make such a statement, you have to include the fact that America is one of the most debt-ridden countries in the West (especially now that the EU is making such extreme budget demands of its nations, and Canada just declared a $9 billion budget surplus this year), has pretty much the lowest standard of living in the Western world, has the highest crime, the least education, and the least civil rights (with the exception of guns). America is attacked for one reason alone: its foreign policy and its foreign troop movements.

So I think the solution is quite obvious, and the writer of this piece sees it in my opinion.

Finally, I wanted to link to this piece in the Miami Herald. It points out that of the four US-citizen terrorists arrested recently (Jose Padilla, Yasser Esam Hamdi, John Walker Lindh, and Timothy McVeigh), their rights, as in whether they are treated as foreign military prisoners or whether they are treated as US citizens with rights, is determined almost exclusively by the colour of the skin.

I have friends that are of colour and political activists. I certainly hope they have the sense to not enter the United States. Good luck not being executed.

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On the bearing of bad news…

Thursday, June 13, 2002

I just got this message:

"another iam.bme person has passed away... his username on here is epix .. hisreal name is jordan.. he had a LOT of friends on bme, and a lot of people who knew either him or the band he was in on here... around 3am this morning, compromise.. his band... got in a car accident. we dont know all the specific details about what happened, but we do know that they were hit by a drunk driver. jordan was driving. he and one other member of the band did not make it."

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Stickers

Thursday, June 13, 2002

Yay — I got the stickers in this morning, as you can see below. If you want some, I'll have them at NIX this weekend (they're free of course). If there are any left over, I'll split them between me and BMEshop, so then we'll throw some in with every order till they're gone.

Also, I realized that now that the image size barriers aren't an issue any more, I can easily make it so that I can put the image upload box as part of the create form, so when you add an entry with pictures it happens all at once! I'm on vacation next week (I'll be gone from Monday to Friday or so), but I'll definitely be redesigning a lot of IAM from the ground up to meet these new capabilities.

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Morning…

Thursday, June 13, 2002

OK, I'm going to keep chugging along on the events engine today, so with any luck it should be done by day's end (so I can go to the convention)… There's really not much left to do on it, just a few little things like fiddling with the forum tie-in and adding a few admin features for broadcasts and shirt output.

As you know, more and more FBI screwups have continued to show up, involving things like “mistakenly capturing information (the FBI) was not entitled to have”. That is, spying on ordinary people and blaming it on a “technical error”. I should remind people at this point that most cell phone companies have dedicated lines to the FBI — if you speak on a cell phone, you are being recorded. Legally. It's public airwaves; they don't even need a judge's permission to listen. And, since the average person can't afford to spend $3000 on an encrypted phone, it will keep happening.

Oh, and if you use the phone at my house, don't ignore the big sticker over the phone that says: ASSUME THIS PHONE IS TAPPED.

I'm not saying this story about what Bin Laden is doing now is true, but is it just me, or are the spin-doctors setting him up as sort of the Muslim Che Guevara? Osama flying all over the world, fighting and helping organize revolutionary wars to free his people? Mark my words, in twenty years your children will be wearing OBL's photo on their t-shirts.

I'm sure everyone knows about the various “dirty bomber” BS… I'm glad that it's now finally been shown that it was total lies committed by the Bush administration to scare the public into giving them the money for the utterly unneeded homeland securty (aka police state) departments. Americans — READ these articles — you need to know what your government is doing to you!

Those are just a few stories from a variety of sources. Look at it logically — there are only two conclusions that we can come to from these stories in my opinion:

  1. The Bush administration can “resign or be prosecuted”. They'll have to step down in shame, and give up their power, and give up the enormous amounts of money they are currently stealing from the American people. They'll have to admit that this is not representative government, and that they'll commit any evil to get more money and power.
  2. The Bush administration can launch a major attack on the American people and blame it “terror” to justify everything that they're doing and keep the American people scared and willing. Remember as well that this was the plan in the 1960s. The US military proposed committing terrorist acts against America and blaming it on Cuba to create a pretext for invasion.

So… Which one is more likely? #1 is unheard of in American politics, whereas #2 fits in perfectly with their behavior up until now. Now here's the million dollar question: what US target will they sacrifice in the name of money? Will they hit New York again? Will they hit Los Angeles? Or will they hit smalltown America? And what will it do to Canada (America is currently considered the single largest military threat to Canada)?

Oh, and I should point out that when I say “they”, the attack quite likely will involved Islamic extremists… The easiest way to make an attack like this happen is for US intelligence agencies to help one of these crazy groups; then there's a patsy, and it's easier for them to keep the blood off their hands. But the attack still happens, and they control the whole thing (just like we all know now they did for 9/11) while maintain plausible deniability.

Now I really should get back to work…

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