Filed Under : science by vemrion
Aug.11,2006
You know what the fucking sweet part is? You see those glowing red things that look like little marbles? Those are fucking atoms!!
Totally sweet, eh? Check out this page for a bigger view and more information.
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[digg] America’s drug tsar raised the stakes on drug testing in schools yesterday, suggesting that it could come to be seen as normal required and “responsible behaviour” in the same way that some US schools routinely test all pupils for tuberculosis.
read more | digg story [/digg]
Yes, but they don’t arrest the students who test positive for tuberculosis. What an idiotic thing to say. There’s more idiocy:
Mr Walters said cannabis use was not just a matter of personal choice and the expression of freedom in the same way as a preference for clothes and hairstyles. “We’re still living as if substance abuse is a fashion statement,” he said.
Taking a strong line against marijuana was “not being judgmental but showing that we care”.
In other news: down is up, freedom is slavery and war is peace.
So by “care” he means “ruin the student’s life”, right?
Caring for him seems to involve random, unconstitutional, invasive searches of bodily fluids, a draconian, fear-based atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust, combined with a desire to put people in jail for as long as murderers because they may have used a plant that grows freely across the world. Am I getting this correctly?
Man, I would hate to be Walter’s kid.
His string of sheer stupidity continues into the land of awful analogies:
The US policies were based on scientific evidence – some of it from the UK – that cannabis was linked to psychosis and schizophrenia. “We have a particular problem of our attitudes towards cannabis which hinders policy and hinders people going into treatment,” he said.
“The attitude is that it’s only marijuana. It doesn’t help if your kids are playing Russian roulette that they are using a smaller calibre weapon.”
This is some grade A bullshit, folks. As the Drug Czar he (probably) knows that cannabis is entirely non-fatal. It can’t kill you. When you overdose on it, you fall asleep and wake up with a headache. Aspirin, meanwhile, can kill you. Alcohol kills you. Cigs kill you. Cannabis does not. In fact, the only way to die from cannabis is to get several hundred pounds of it, pack it up tight, suspend it from a height, and drop it on your head. In other words: blunt force.
Before I move on, notice where he talks about treatment in the quote above. Now, let’s proceed to his next quote wherein he reveals even more hypocrisy:
Permitting such harm reduction measures gave the impression that “society allows a stance of it’s OK to be an addict”, he said.
Oh, I get it. Being an addict is bad and you should be arrested!! But what about treatment? Oh, maybe Walter’s idea of treatment is spending 10 years in jail. How compassionate. Most sane, non-hateful people are gravitating to the idea of addiction as disease/disorder. The D.C. Establishment is the only group of people I know of pushing the idea of addict as criminal.
Quite frankly, Walters doesn’t really have to make sense. Nobody really listens to him and it’s not his job to make logical, coherent arguments. He’s just an ideological attack dog. His job is to viciously defend the position staked out by his masters, much like how a junkyard dog guards his turf. The dog doesn’t ask why and neither does Walters.
Of course, if you’ve been reading this blog, you know why: The CIA. If drugs aren’t illegal the CIA won’t be able to make the obscene profits necessary to fund its black ops. Drugs smuggling is only worth your time if drugs are a valuable commodity. If drugs are legal, they monetary value will drop by 90%, easy.
So we can thank the CIA for making it necessary to have a Drug Czar, who has turned around and endorsed mandatory drug testing for every single student. This guy might’ve heard of the “presumption of innocence” but obviously he didn’t like the idea much. I also suspect that he’s not a big fan of the 4th amendment. It’s so much easier to rule people when everyone’s treated like a potential criminal.
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Filed Under : elections by vemrion Aug.9,2006
What happened to his “Joe-mentum”?
Lieberman is a sniveling Bush toady and he deserved to lose for that fact alone. His support for the War in Iraq is just more reason to kick him out.
It’s actually an extremely rare event to kick a sitting senator out of his seat in a primary — incumbancy re-election rates approach 98%. Joe must’ve really pissed some people off.
The AP has apparently called the primary in Lamont’s favor, meaning Joe is being forced to make good on his threat to bolt the Democratic party (but I thought he looooved the Democrats so much!! [snort]) and run as an independent.
He could win as an independent, but I suspect that his partisan friends will pressure him to withdraw. I don’t really see Lieberman as an independent — he needs a circle of allies around him. I think he would do much better to join the Republican Party. Not that I would suggest that to anyone I didn’t hate, but Joe and the Republicans are perfect together.
As for Lamont and the Democrats — meh. We’ll see if he can get elected to the Senate. I would like to see the Democrats start nailing Bush’s balls to the wall, but I have my doubts. The Democrats are infested and corrupted with the same corporate dollar that the Republicans are. You can’t truth either of them. And if Joe’s an independent, that just proves you can’t trust certain independents either.
In fact, an honest man has practically zero chance of ever getting elected.
Is it any wonder I’m cynical and depressed about the state of affairs in this country? We need another revolution.
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I’m talkin’ 20 percent approval. More stats from the Bloomberg poll:
A Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll of Americans age 18 to 24 found Bush’s approval rating was 20 percent, with 53 percent disapproving and 28 percent with no opinion. That compares to a 40 percent approval rating among Americans of all ages in a separate Bloomberg/Times poll.
… [snip] …For example, 26 percent of those age 18 to 24 who consider themselves religious approve of the job Bush is doing, compared with 12 percent of those who say they are non-religious. The poll surveyed 811 adults aged 18-24 and 839 minors aged 12-17. It was taken June 23 to July 2 and has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
If early indications are a guide, Bush and the Republicans also have a challenge with the next wave of young voters. The poll found his approval rating was 21 percent among those age 12 to 17, with 44 percent disapproving and 35 percent having no opinion.
Hahahahaaaaa!!! Man, Bush can’t even fool the fucking 12-year olds! Hahahahaaa… Oh man. That’s too funny. Those are some looooow numbers. 12 percent of nonreligious 18-24ers approve of Bush. 12 percent! That’s barely more than a fucking rounding error!
Glad to see the younger generation has Bush figured out. Too bad a bunch of the older folks haven’t caught on yet. 40 percent seems high, actually; most of the polls I’ve seen indicated mid 30s at best and low 30s at worst.
Anyway, it doesn’t really matter to — certainly not to Bush. He’s gonna do what he’s gonna do. And the American public is too fat and lazy to rise up against their corporate oppressors, so that’s not an issue. We’ll just continue to take his shit. We can be all united in hatred of him, but it doesn’t really matter.
I guess if we lived in a democracy, it might. But democracy is largely a sham in this country. Politicians don’t go after democracy — they go after votes! And votes can be pried from the voter in any number of ways, legal and otherwise. Once your political machine is no longer a hotrod, but a planet-sized monster like the Republican party, it’s not really about democracy, it’s about sucking votes into your octopus-like apparatus. Democracy, like freedom, is just something you talk to voters about. We don’t live in a democracy; we live in a constitutional republic that has been taken over by dark forces.
I don’t think the 12 to 17 year olds really understand the fact that we’ve had a de-facto coup by “moneyed interests”. But I think a growing number of people — especially the young — are beginning to understand that:
…And things are not always as they seem.
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Title says it all. Here’s the story from the Central Valley IndyMedia:
As I’m filling out my name and address on the petition I notice that the young lady is filling out a very official looking form. Probably just the ballot initiative form, I think to myself. Then, she says “is it OK if I register you as a Republican?” “What?!?” I say “yes, I do mind! What are you doing?” She says that if I register Republican she will get an extra 10 cents. But, I complain, “I don’t want to re-register.” She explains that this is just to update the records for the County Clerks office. I repeat that “I do not want or need to update my records.” I am repeatedly told that it is OK and that they just want to update my voter registration records. She also tells me that she is working for the Republican party, being paid hourly, and that the ploy about the “10 cent bonus” was not accurate.
This Republican party employee goes on to tell me that she is there to attract people to the table that is set up in Fresno’s Courthouse Park, and that the legalize marijuana petition is just a prop. She confirmed that there is no ballot initiative to legalize marijuana. She said that the petition will be given to an elected official in Sacramento. I have my doubts about that.
Man, who can you trust when the Republican Party lets you down? [snort!] [snort!]
It looks like the Republicans are desperately using every trick in the book to make people register as Republicans so that their electoral ploys this November will look more plausible. I’ll keep an eye for any of these fake campaigns in my neck of the woods.
At least the Republicans know how popular their drug policy is; which is to say, not at all! Both parties remain committed to the continuation of the failed War on Drugs, despite its unpopularity with voters. Gee, sounds a bit like Iraq, doesn’t it?
These ideological wars aren’t waged because they’re popular — though they may be at the start — they are waged to serve as a distraction and a power amplification conduit. The distraction part is obvious, but the power conduit part is less recognized. These wars transfer massive amounts of political, financial and military power to certain people within the government; that is the point of these wars. Bush/Cheney’s wartime expansion of executive power is the prototypical example for this type of power amplification, and it is repeated down the chain of command, at least where it’s relevant. The Dept. of Education hasn’t gained much power from the War in Iraq. But the Drug Czar, the FBI, DEA and the CIA have all benefitted hugely from the War on Drugs.
Of course, the fact that the War on Drugs and the War in Iraq don’t make sense from a rational point of view also constitutes an unanncounced War on Logic. Many of the neocons’ statements seem to portend an upcoming War on Reality. We can only guess at what comes after that. Perhaps a War on Everybody is in the works?
Before that war, we’ve got a series of additional wars that need waging. The War on Syria and the long-awaited War on Iran are coming down the pipeline shortly. What other wars will we need after that? Well, perhaps a War on Every Other Islamic Nation will be needed because I suspect they will assume they’re next even if they aren’t. And who can blame them? We’ve been invading Islamic nations for awhile now. If we go into Iran and Syria that will make 4 that we’ve taken out in the last half-decade.
War, war, war!! It’s a dirty business, but it hasn’t to be waged, doesn’t it?
Well, what about the power amplification conduit I mentioned earlier? What about the incredible amount of power we’ve transferred to the Pentagon, the White House, NSA, CIA and all the corporations helping them wage the war? Doesn’t it seem clear that they are addicted to power? They constantly need more of it. They feed, but they’re still hungry. More power!
When does it end?
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. It ends with the War on Everybody.
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A group of 9/11 widows are demanding a full and independent investigation into the crimes of September 11th after new allegations reveal that the Kean 9/11 Commission suspected that they were being deceived by the Pentagon. The 9/11 widows released a withering statement criticizing the Kean Commission for not properly investigating the attack from all angles:
“Recent stories in the Washington Post, the New York Times, as well as the release of the transcripts of the NORAD tapes in Vanity Fair, clearly show that the 9/11 Commission failed in its duties,” says the widows’ statement.
“Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon’s initial story of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public rather than a reflection of the fog of events on that day, according to sources involved in the debate,” reported Dan Eggan for The Washington Post.
“As one of its last acts before disbanding, in July 2004, the 9/11 commission made referrals to the inspector general’s offices of both the Department of Transportation (which includes the F.A.A.) and the Defense Department to further investigate whether witnesses had lied,” wrote Michael Bronner for Vanity Fair.
In light of these reports, the 9/11 widows “question the veracity of the entire Commission’s report.”
“The fact that the Commission did not see fit to tie up all loose ends in their final report or to hold those who came before them accountable for lying and/or making misleading statements puts into question the veracity of the entire Commission’s report,” the widows write.
“Furthermore, the lack of tenacity and curiosity, by the Commissioners themselves, to determine why NORAD had deceived them is unconscionable,” the statement continues. “Knowing full well that the lack of military response was such a critical failure, begs the question of whether that same lack of tenacity and curiosity was applied to other critical areas of the 9/11 investigation.”
Indeed. The 9/11 Omission Commission stank from day 1. For one thing, “day 1” was over a year after the attacks. The Bush administration stalled for over 400 days before finally backing down. The 9/11 Widows are probably the only reason we even got an investigation. The Bush Regime showed a distinct lack of curiosity and tenacity, too.
And of course, they initially wanted to have Henry Kissinger lead the Commission, which is a bit like having Joseph Goebbels lead the Nuremberg Trials. Luckily, Goebbels was dead by then. It’s a shame we can’t say the same about the war-criminal Kissinger.
The 9/11 Widows have exposed a progressive crumbling of the official story. I would say that that the official conspiracy (remember: the official story is a conspiracy theory, too. It states that 19 al-Qaeda members conspired to orchestrate the attacks) is in tatters. It’s being attacked from all angles because it doesn’t make any sense.
The 9/11 Commission looks increasingly like part of a massive coverup. The Commission knew that they were being lied to by somebody, but did they bother to follow up and demand the truth? According to the Washington Post, they dithered about it for awhile and then passed the buck:
Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, according to several commission sources. Staff members and some commissioners thought that e-mails and other evidence provided enough probable cause to believe that military and aviation officials violated the law by making false statements to Congress and to the commission, hoping to hide the bungled response to the hijackings, these sources said.
In the end, the panel agreed to a compromise, turning over the allegations to the inspectors general for the Defense and Transportation departments, who can make criminal referrals if they believe they are warranted, officials said.
“We to this day don’t know why NORAD [the North American Aerospace Command] told us what they told us,” said Thomas H. Kean, the former New Jersey Republican governor who led the commission. “It was just so far from the truth. . . . It’s one of those loose ends that never got tied.”
Although the commission’s landmark report made it clear that the Defense Department’s early versions of events on the day of the attacks were inaccurate, the revelation that it considered criminal referrals reveals how skeptically those reports were viewed by the panel and provides a glimpse of the tension between it and the Bush administration.
Tension? The Bush administration was tense before they even created the Commission. They were dragged, kicking and screaming into it. So yeah, there was tension there. The same kinda tension that a murderer feels when the cops are getting uncomfortably close.
A new level of tension must be ratcheting up over in the Bush White House as magazines like Vanity Fair creep closer to the truth and reveal dangerous amount of truth to a public that is starting to wake up to the serious questions that have been posed (mostly online) about the attacks of September 11th.
I wonder how many Americans are aware of the 5+ war games that were being played out on 9/11, many of which included simulated hijackings. At least one of these war games involved putting false blips on the screens of FAA air-traffic controllers. This led to incredible confusion not only at the FAA, but also at NORAD and NEADS (Northeast Air Defense Sector):
For the NEADS crew, 9/11 was not a story of four hijacked airplanes, but one of a heated chase after more than a dozen potential hijackings—some real, some phantom—that emerged from the turbulence of misinformation that spiked in the first 100 minutes of the attack and continued well into the afternoon and evening. At one point, in the span of a single mad minute, one hears Nasypany struggling to parse reports of four separate hijackings at once. What emerges from the barrage of what Nasypany dubs “bad poop” flying at his troops from all directions is a picture of remarkable composure. Snap decisions more often than not turn out to be the right ones as commanders kick-start the dormant military machine. It is the fog and friction of war live—the authentic military history of 9/11.
Once you realize that there were multiple simultaneous war-games on 9/11, some involving hijackings and others which diverted our air defense to other sectors, certain questions arise… Questions that may cause Americans to wonder if this was all some amazing coincidence or if something darker was involved. One has to wonder if Al-Qaeda has moles within the Defense Department, the CIA, FEMA, the National Reconnaissance Office, the Justice Department, and the City of New York. Oh and somehow the NSA, the FBI and the CIA
would have to be totally unaware of that fact.
That seems a bit unlikely.
I’m not going to jump to any conclusions for you, but I will give you a list of the War Games of September 11th for your googling pleasure:
Northern Vigilance
Northern Guardian
Vigilant Guardian
Vigilant Warrior
TRIPOD II
And there was an exercise involving the NRO and the CIA which evacuated NRO offices. Apparently it involved a plane crashing into a building. Hmm…
If you want to know more about the war games on 9/11, check out Michael Ruppert’s site for volumnous additional info, and a finger pointed at the man most likely responsible:
Dick Cheney.
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Been really busy lately. I have some potentially big news, but nothing that will concern 99% of you. Just tryin’ to get by.
Life is very weird sometimes…. and no, I shan’t elaborate. 🙂
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Filed Under : Uncategorized by vemrion Aug.2,2006Fidel Castro underwent surgery today, adding to the general sense of unease in the world. He is reportedly doing fine after surgery and in good spirits.
Fidel handed power over to his brother Raul during the operation.
What will Cuba be like after Fidel is gone? Only time will tell. Castro is 79 (soon to be 80) and in pretty decent shape for a guy his age. He’s a brutal dictator, but at the same time, he’s got a point about the U.S. wanting to swallow his country whole.
What does Fate have in store for us? I guess we watch and wait.
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Oh shit. Sistani is the only reason Iraq is going as well as it is. I know that sounds retarded, but he’s the only person keeping it from full-blown chaos! Okay, it’s that bad already, but if al-Sistani withdraws his support of the U.S. invasion everything will crumble.
Sistani is the number one cleric of Iraq (at least for the Shiite majority), sort of like the pope of Iraq or something. If he says “attack Americans” we’re going to see U.S. casualties skyrocket. We need him on our side, for our troops’ sake.
Iraq’s top Shiite cleric demanded an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon, warning Sunday that the Muslim world will “not forgive” nations that stand in the way of stopping the fighting.
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani issued the call following the Israeli airstrike that killed at least 56 Lebanese, mostly women and children, in the village of Qana. It was the deadliest attack in nearly three weeks of fighting.
“Islamic nations will not forgive the entities that hinder a cease-fire,” al-Sistani said in a clear reference to the United States.
Oooohhh, he’s talking shit about our pathetic excuse for a diplomatic effort over in the Middle-east. Was Condi Rice even trying to make peace or was she just over there stalling for time?
To be sure, Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, started her tour of the region in Beirut, giving that warred-over capital a brief respite. But no sooner had she moved to Jerusalem than Israel resumed massive air strikes on Beirut’s teeming southern suburbs, the heartland of Hizbollah, the heavily armed Shia Islamist group.
The message she brought to both parties was that there would be no return to the status quo ante. Hizbollah had to pull back from the border, disarm and hand back the two Israeli soldiers it seized two weeks ago, precipitating the crisis.
The chances of this happening are virtually nil, as Israel should know. Hizbollah was spawned by the Israeli invasion of 1982, and its shrewd but implacable guerrilla warfare forced Israel finally to abandon its occupation in 2000. Ignoring the hard reality of the region, Washington appears to believe diplomacy is about achieving Israel’s unrealisable war aims by other means.
The U.S. effort so far has not been a genuine attempt to achieve a cease-fire or a lasting peace. It’s been a charade, a phony, a fake pageant of pretending to want peace. The neocons want war. War is the only thing that will save them.
It’s not even a fair negotiation strategy to allow the U.S. to intervene when it’s clear that Israel is our dog in this race. We stand to gain from their actions and we give then diplomatic and international cover, which enhances their stand against Hezbollah. The Europeans would perhaps be a better group to try and negotiate peace, but everyone looks to America. It’s a shame our government is so cruel and contemptable.
But we risk alienating a powerful “ally” in al-Sistani. Now the choice is clear: continue our shameful pseudo-attempts to bring peace and we will face increasing pressure in Iraq from the Shia majority.
But the point is that fighting could now easily spread, and not just by sucking in Hizbollah’s patrons in Syria and Iran. Israel’s assault on Shia Lebanon has inflamed the Shia majority in Iraq – the community preventing the total meltdown of the US occupation. Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi army, modelled on Hizbollah, which fought alongside it in the 2004 siege of Najaf, is itching to launch a new uprising. Even Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the spiritual leader of the Shia who has held the Iraqi ring, is reportedly on the verge of withdrawing his tacit but vital support for the American project.
If he withdrawls his already-unenthusiastic support for America’s war then this whole thing falls apart into a regional war that will probably escalate into World War IV.
That’s horrible!
That’s tragic!
That’s…. exactly what the neocons want.
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