A Day in Paradise

BBC NEWS | UK | Family condemns police shooting

What more could a terrorist organisation want than to provoke a western government into killing their own people without the fear of recompense.

Anyone who reads this and thinks (or worse yet comments) that the extenuating circumstances made this case regrettable but an exceptable loss, is no better than the many people through history who justified the loss of life to attain a higher goal. Whether the end goal is Security, or the creation of a master race it doesn’t make any difference.

It’s not who we are, it’s what we do!

What we don’t hear anymore is that the police that killed this guy (brazillian electrician) were plainclothes police. If he was running at all he was running from MEN WITH REGULAR CLOTHES AND GUNS!

I find that highly disturbing.

Wired News: Blog Bares Sex Offender’s Demons

Why is it that these articles always put the scariest things at the very end. This is a story about the blog of some psycho. I assume it was headline news in the US, but I have no idea what he’s done.

The blog (as these blogs do) got attention from the media and thousands of people start commenting. The final comment is:

“Why didn’t anyone on this blog report this activity to authorities,” another post asked. “This kind of thing is what the Patriot Act is supposed to help!?! Isn’t it?”

What kind of crazy crap is that? And Hacker-turned-Journalist, Kevin Poulsen really shouldn’t do this type of fear mongering in his articles. Obviously he wasn’t the one who wrote it, but seeing that he chose this comment over the 2000+ other comments available is a bad thing.

MasterCard Says 40 Million Files Put at Risk - New York Times

OMG!!! Someone just bought a brand new laptop using my credit card, oh wait… that was me!

Anyway, it is scary if you have a mastercard, especially the line that said “The accounts affected included credit cards and certain kinds of debit cards.” Very disturbing.

“She would not elaborate on how long the breach might have lasted” probably means that they don’t have a farking clue, “the investigation is just beginning.” means that they probably never will.

Amazon.com: Books: Leaving the Saints : How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith

This is funny… I found this book from an Amazon Affilate banner on a Mormon site.

One Small Step For Hand [The Present Tense - BME/News]

Amal’s site is here, which includes a FAQ where he answers the “Mark of the Beast” question. The question that needs to be asked is not “Is this the mark of the beast” which the obvious answer is No, but rather, “Could this be used as the mark of the beast” to which the answer would be “It would hurt like hell to have one implanted in your forehead, but sure”.

I never really understood why everyone associates number 666 with the mark of the beast.

- Revelation 13:16 - And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads.
- Revelation 13:17 - And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
- Revelation 13:18 - Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. (666)

Amal says “I don’t see how each unique code could be calculated in some way to 666″, explain to me where in the above verses does it say that is nessesary. Verse 18 refers to the “number of the beast”, not the number of the mark. It sounds to me like it’s only his number that needs to add up to 666.

Council Presidency Adopts Software Patent Agreement Against Council’s Rules

Quick story: Europe started the procedure to legalize Software patents. Denmark and Poland stonewalled it. Luxembourg (who holds the presidancy) violated the coucil rules and pushed it through.

Comment from FFII Board Member:

It is absolutely unfathomable what happened today. I cannot see how the promoters of the European Constitution can still support it with a straight face. This event shows that something is clearly rotten in the city of Brussels at the Council building. Why on Earth do we still have the rules that state that national parliaments should be taken into account by the Council?

Things would be much more easier if we scrapped all those rules and simply wrote down “The Council presidency and Commission can do together whatever they like”. There’s no need for those pesky democratically elected parliamentarians to interfere with the smooth decision making process of the Council, since its only goal appears to be to please big business and to produce as many texts as the sausage machine can bear.

This is absolutely disgusting.

CNN.com - Many Iraqis say Graner sentence too lenient - Jan 16, 2005

Check the Poll, it seems the majority of everyone else think otherwise! Maybe the Poll should have read “Have you seen ‘A few good men?’”

CNN.com - Pentagon: Rumsfeld misspoke on Flight 93 crash - Dec 27, 2004

So Rumsfeld “misspoke” when he mentioned the “the people who … shot down the plane over Pennsylvania.”

His head should roll — not really in context, just a nice thought.

Update: A bit of googling and I dig up this interview where Rumsfeld mentions the “the missile to damage this building [pentagon] and similar (inaudible) that damaged the World Trade Center.” The missing plane theory jumped up a couple notches as most likely conspiracy theory!

CNN.com - Source: Fingerprints of Jackson, boy on magazines - Dec 11, 2004

I don’t see what is so surprising about this. I don’t see how this is damning evidence either. Put a 13-year-old and some dirty magazines under the same roof and you’re bound to find fingerprints (if nothing else) on the magazine!

Seeing that it is the boy (and his mother) who are charging MJ they could have very easily set it up. I see no evidence of anything here.

Seeing what americans classify as pr0n, it was probably just something you’d see on page 3.

The Blue Lemur - Progressive Politics and Media News » In sworn affidavit, programmer says he developed vote-rigging prototype for Florida congressman; Congressman%u2019s office silent

In the vote fraud prototype that I created things are not what they seem. Hidden on the screen are invisible buttons. A person with knowledge of the locations of those invisible buttons can then use them to alter the votes of everyone before them. By clicking the correct order of invisible buttons the candidate selected by the user is compared to other candidates within that same race. If the candidate they selected is leading the race nothing happens. If the other candidate is leading the race the vote totals are altered so that the selected candidate is now leading the race with 51% of the vote. The other candidates then share the remaining 49% in exact proportion to the totals they had previously. In the prototype supplied to Feeney the vote totals show on the screen. In an actual application the user would receive no visible clues to the fraud that had just occurred. Since the vote is applied by race, any single race or multiple races can be altered. The supervisors or any other voter would never notice this fraud since no visible sign would appear. Additionally, the procedure could be repeated as many times as was necessary to achieve the desired results. No amount of testing or simulations would expose the fraud as its activation and process is completely invisible to everyone except the person programming the vote fraud routine.

The same procedure could be automated to activate without any user intervention whenever the machine detects a certain pattern of voting. The algorithm could also be altered from hidden keys or triggers that would allow the fraudulent user to manipulate both the margins and percentages of any particular race. In most national elections it is not necessary to win every area.

Here are a few links for the conspiracy theorist in us all.

Diebold’s Political Machine
Keith Olbermann’s blog
The Free Press
Terrorist Lockdown
Ralph Nader Calls for Recount
Kerry campaign scrutinizes Ohio
Democrats Blog

Oh, yes… and fuck the south!

If you don’t read any of the above links at least read fuck the south, it’s a rant but it’s as good as they get!

Here’s a cute site… I just called to say I’m sorry!

New GOP rules could help DeLay

The change, proposed by Rep. Henry Bonilla, a Texas Republican, would apply only to leaders indicted by a state prosecutor or grand jury. A party leader indicted by a federal court would have to step down at least temporarily. The GOP conference, however, could waive that restriction at any time.

A Texas grand jury in September indicted three of DeLay’s political associates on charges of using a political action committee to collect corporate donations and funnel them to Texas legislative races.

ABC, Fox air tape by purported terrorist

This one set off my conspiracy alarms. Fox (republican propoganda machine) would not have aired this if it was serious.

Of course, if the purpose was to scare Americans enough to vote for a “strong President who knows how to handle these terrists”, then airing it would make sense.

Rules of debate: No asking each other questions

A pretty funny read. Good stuff to keep in mind while watching the “debate”

The most stupid points are the ones regarding what the camera’s can show… “No reaction shots of one candidate when the other candidate is answering a question.“.

My theory is that the candidates will have big monkey masks under their podium and while the one candidate is talking the other is wearing the mask trying to make the audience laugh.

Pentagon - Flash Animation

A very interesting flash presentation making a pretty clear case that no 757 hit the pentagon.

Very well done.