A little homegrown American terorism:

   Aug 6th, 1945 -  Hiroshima:
                                76,000 building destroyed
                                200,000 innocent civilians murdered in one day
   Aug 9th, 1945 -   Nagasaki:
                                140,000 innocent civilians murdered in one day

American reaction: Celebration

Kyoto, the beautiful ancient city of Japan, was originally scheduled to be destroyed. The decision to bomb Nagasaki instead saved at least 800,000 innocent people.

General Leslie Groves was dissapointed:

"I particularly wanted Kyoto as a target because, as I have said, it was large enough an area for us to gain complete knowledge of the effects of an atom bomb. Hiroshima was not nearly so satisfactory in this respect."

"The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerate our victims while incidentally capturing their markets, to civilise savage and senile and paranoid peoples while blundering accidentally into their oil wells."

"One picture taken shortly after the Taliban takeover says it all: a trembling woman covered in a head to toe veil, her face completely obscured, sobs as she speaks with a Western reporter. Who is she?  An impoverished peasant?  A homeless woman? No, she's the recently removed chief surgeon at the country's largest hospital!"
U.S. Policy Has Betrayed Afghan Women for 20 Years

Florida, home to Big Borther Bush, is the first state to propose moving to a secret government

"Jean Joseph Rive will have that a bibliophile is one who reads for pleasure; but he is opposed by Locker-Lampson, who maintains that 'your true bibliophile rarely reads anything: he contemplates, he examines bindings, criticizes illustrations, and scrutinizes title-pages or pagination.' Others, as G.H.Powell, have dilated upon the difference between reading and 'the refined curiosities of the bibliophile,' and Gleeson White, in express words, affirms that your book-lover must gaze at books 'mutely, with a satisfied joy in being near enough to caress or abstain.' A book need not even be 'in a particular language, nor on a particular subject, to be the book of a book-lover.' You love a book first because it is a book, however much you may particularize afterwards: 'He loved a book because it was a book; he loved its odour, its form, its title.' You love it inwardly and outwardly, soul and body..."

"'It does not follow at all that a person devoted to reading is fond of books. It is often the other way: the most learned men, the most gluttonous of readers, may not have the smallest love for books.' They know nothing of their value or how to treat them; using them for their 'selfish purpose' and casting them aside as useless: 'Ten people care for a book--but they are apostles. A thousand enjoy another book, but when they have sucked it on a hot afternoon, they have finished.'"

                                --The Book About Books,
                                  The Anatomy of Bibliomania
                                  Holbrook Jackson

"A Middle East fit for heroes"

Domestic censorship, deciet, and oppression. 1984, here we come.

A detailed account of American hypocracy in the face of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

"The Pentagon has spent millions of dollars to prevent western media from seeing highly accurate civilian satellite pictures of the effects of bombing in Afghanistan," possibly because "it would be possible to see bodies lying on the ground after last week's bombing attacks."

300,000 people marched for peace in Italy

BabySmasher

Living Dead Dolls
...because dead is better

Port Scan of the Month (DANGER: of interest to security geeks only)

The really big button that doesn't do anything.

Technology infrastructure disaster recovery logistics inadequate to deal with 9-11 fallout.

Ronald bin McLaden

Origami Underground
'erotic (and generally "objectionable") origami diagrams'

Chupacabras has a moment of clarity

Informative graphic of the NYC 9-11 damage.

People detained in the wake of 9-11 are suffering beatings and other violations of human and civil rights, while often being denied even minimal contact with their defense lawyers.

"As usual, the U.S. opposes the creation of a war crimes court; Now Congress threatens invasion of the Netherlands if the rest of the world goes ahead with the court."

"What could possibly motivate the propping up of repressive non-democracies like the Saudi and Kuwaiti royal families or murderous regimes like that of Reza Pahlevi, Shah of Iran? Or pouring billions into the coffers of Saddam Hussein in the '80s, or even creating the monster who is the mastermind of these attacks, Osama Bin Laden, beneficiary of CIA lucre and training?"
It's the oil, stupid

Oil War II: The Empire Strikes Back in the Caspian
Caspian Oil and Gas and the Afghanistan Pipeline Connection

If you're going to be pro-war, at least be sarcastic about it!

An excellent point-by-point comparison of the police-state legislation designed to demolish civil-liberties.

Disturbing portents for freedom from the US Supreme Court.

chequerboard of oil and minefields

The Empire Strikes Back

Metaphor and War makes explicit the myths and assumptions of the public perceptions of war.
It is the skillful manipulation of these myths and assumptions that makes for effective propaganda.

Oppressive regimes in the Middle East propped up by the US.

Doctors Without Borders calls US food drops "propaganda"

The Cave is a Lovecraftian story I wrote back in 1989, for a freshman college English class.

Is massive starvation and death in Afghanistan inevitable?

Into the valleys of death
Insight in to the roles of Pakistan and the United Front (Northern Alliance).

The US government had plans to commit terrorist acts against America itself and blame a politically convenient enemy.

On the use of the word "terrorist" in the media.

"It is a sobering thought, that better evidence is required to prosecute a shoplifter than is needed to commence a world war"
Tony Blair releases allegations against Bin Laden and calls them "evidence". Apparently the public isn't supposed to know the difference, or care.
Commentary, more commentary, and yet more commentary on the flimsy allegations.

Testimony of civil liberties defenders censored, and even the presense of censorship was censored.

"This may be the first war where an American reporter is killed or garroted by a Green Beret for getting in the way." --The Return of Censorship

'Mainstream journalists in the United States often function more like a fourth branch of government than a feisty fourth estate. If anything, the patterns of media bias that characterize sycophantic reporting in "peacetime" are amplified during a war or a national security crisis." --13 Questions for Bush about America's Anti-terrorism Crusade

Know Your Rights

"To maintain public support for a war... a government should sanitize the visual images of war; control media access to military theaters; censor information that could upset readers or viewers; and exclude journalists who would not write favorable stories." --Desert Storm Disinformation

Five arguments against the war.
(print as a flyer or a poster)

"As we hear talk about the United States engaging in diplomacy, we must remember this:. the U.S. conception of diplomacy does not mean seeking to avoid war, as the U.N. charter requires. It means coupling a 'principled' refusal to negotiate with threats and verbal provocations designed to stiffen the spine of an enemy, so that situations cannot be resolved peacefully. It means lining up allies -- sometimes by naked coercion, sometimes by bribes of debt-restructuring or trade favors -- so that military actions can begin." --No News is Bad News

Participate in LinkBack to keep track of what blogs link back to your blog, and to facilitate discussion.

A personal diary of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Highly recommended.

Ten Things to Know About U.S. Policy in the Middle East

The newly created Office of Homeland Security can and has shut down websites without evidence or trial.

"Having decided that readers and viewers in post-Cold War America cared more about celebrities, scandals and local news, newspaper editors and television news executives have reduced the space and time devoted to foreign coverage by 70% to 80% during the past 15 to 20 years"... more here

The Fire This Time

Similarities between Operation Eternal Freedom and George Orwell's 1984.

Foreign Policy In Focus

FEMA: the most powerful organization in the United States

to anyone who is contemplating joining the american armed forces

"Fascism, which was not afraid to call itself reactionary... does not hesitate to call itself illiberal and anti-liberal." --Benito Mussolini

Who is Ramsey Clark and who are the IAC

Cops videotaping protestors at last week's peace rally in Berkeley. Why isn't this on the news?
more cops videotaping protestors

9-11 Peace Network
Independent Media Center

shocked and horrified

war dissenters punished and silenced

Interview with Noam Chomsky about the terrorist attacks and the war
Re: bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone age - written by an Afghani in the U.S.
The reason for all this...
Why this has happened
Violence doesn't work
A petition for peace
Michael Moore's views on the tragedy
nonviolence.org
antiwar.com
Background on Afghanistan from the NY Times

"He moved as slowly as an hour hand amidst a crowd of second hands" --Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Sinister Ducks
I always suspected ducks were evil, but now there's proof!

"The skin is a continuing caress, each pore a rung of thrills on the endless ladder of sensual pleasure." --Malcolm de Chazal
"If we resist our passions, it is more often because they are weak than because we are strong." --La Rochefoucauld

Come and see!
But, for your own safety, please don't stare directly in to the face of God, okay?

Hey, did you know there was a "real good" version of windows? Yes indeed! Check out WinRG

Close your eyes and step forward through the back door of the room. Where does it lead? To your cave. Step forward into your cave. That's right, you're moving deeper into your cave. And you're going to find your Power Animal... "slide."

I've never been so accurately insulted in my life!

Darren Aronofsky, director of "Pi" and the amazing "Requiem for a Dream" is working with Frank Miller on the next Batman

The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality and the Nazi Pary

I Gave My Cat An Enema

Flem comics
Many funny pages, but have to occasionally suffer through a bad streak.

A moody photograph with effective composition.

A stungun test to show how utterly ineffective stunguns are.

Batteries printed on paper

Textual analysis as a clue to suicide

Phillip K. Dick's letter to the FBI where he denounces Thomas Disch's "Camp Concentration" for containing coded neo-Nazi messages "to be read by the right people here and there" Curiously, in other correspondence he gave it the highest praise.

Look around you at the environment we live in. Carbon dioxide, flourocarbons, and methane have increased since 1968. Earth is being aclimatized. They are turning our atmosphere in to their atmosphere. We are like a natural resource to them. Deplete one planet, move on to another. They want benign indifference. They want us drugged. We could be pets. We could be food. But all we really are is livestock.
Our impulses are being redirected. We are living in an artificially induced state of consciousness that resembles sleep. They have created a repressive society and we are their unwitting accomplices. Their intention to rule rests with the annihilation of consciousness. We have been lulled in to a trance. They have made us indefferent to ourselves, to others. We are focused only on our own gain.

--John Carpenter's "They Live"

This is hilarious. To be seen to the tune of the Transformers soundtrack only!

Deep-space probes are decelerating for no apparent reason.

The woes of Ultima Online
"Lord British wears a silver crown and a gray tunic with a silver serpent emblazoned on the chest. As the ruler of Britannia, he has been a frequent target of protest; at one point, hundreds of disgruntled citizens stripped down to their underwear, broke into his castle, and stood around shouting (well, typing) profanities."

Apple says "Think Different", but Not Too Different

Evolving soccerbots
NOTE: The good stuff (pictures and captions) is near the bottom of the page.
The evolved soccerbot problem is an order of magnitude more interesting than something like evolving CoreWars bots, because the individual bots that make up a successful robotic soccer team have to cooperate without any direct communication (that would be mind-reading).

A brief overview of the role of military funding in artificial intelligence research.
And here is another look

An interview with John Koza, inventor of genetic programming
'There was incredible hostility to genetic programming,' Koza remembers. 'And most of it was centred in the genetic algorithm community - which is curious because the GA community on the whole has been excluded from the mainstream AI and machine learning community'

A cool Linux MPEG player

Clueless journalist's attempt to prove Why OpenBSD Will Never Be as Secure as Linux and his flaming death
flaming death
flaming death
flaming death
flaming death

It turns out that the aforementioned journalist had died the death of a thousand flames before, when he announced The End of SSL and SSH

Checkpoint Firewall 1 vs IPFilter
The message is somewhat dated, but I'd be a lot of the criticism still applies.

Zark for the Thing King! in The Paging Game

Dennis Ritchie, a creator of C and UNIX, interviewed in LinuxWorld.

Another interview with him is available in RealAudio format.

The ANSI C99 standard is the latest C language standard.

What if "The Matrix" was about real hackers?

A new study shows the German public was fully aware of the Holocaust as it happened.

A testament to the efficacy of the US Patent system:

Smucker's sues over infringement of its peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich patent

U.S. Patent 6,004,596 contains such gems as: "first bread layer having a first perimeter surface coplanar to a contact surface" and its careful legalistic delineation "wherein said first filling" is "comprised of peanut butter" and a "second filling is comprised of a jelly."

A funny, odd, and frequently disturbing series of Japanese comic characters. More here.

European Art Brut

An interesting international argument over the International Space Station.
Science in space... Russian vodka... Mexican TRUCK nuclear weapon delivery systems... and a good time for all.

Asian Spider Wrestling

Who ever thought there were so many ways to bake a potato? www.bigspud.com has lots of Usenet threads on baking, boiling, roasting, microwaving, and pretty much anything else you can do to a potato. Oh, and then there are all of the potato types. Truely a great find.

Kung-fu action like you've never seen it before!
(Thanks to Joel for this one)