February 13, 2008 archive

1. Josh White, writing for the Washington Post reports, of the Bomb targeter-turned-human rights advocate.

   Sitting in a secure vault deep inside the Pentagon, Marc Garlasco cheered when the laser-guided bombs he had helped target slammed to Earth, striking Iraqi soil. As a body flew like a rag doll across the video screen, framed in a bright flash and a cloud of dust, Garlasco and his fellow intelligence analysts thought they had taken out one of the U.S. military’s top targets during the early days of the Iraq war.

   But even as he reveled in the April 2003 airstrike, Garlasco was thinking ahead to his next job, which would take him to the edges of the very crater he had just helped create. Just two weeks after the failed attack targeting Iraq’s notorious Ali Hassan Majeed, known as Chemical Ali, Garlasco left the Defense Intelligence Agency and traveled worldwide as a human rights activist seeking to determine the civilian toll of his previous work.

   “I found myself standing at that crater, talking to a man about how his family was destroyed, how children were killed, and there was this bunny-rabbit toy covered in dust nearby, and it tore me in two,” Garlasco said. “I had been a part of it, so it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. It really dawned on me that these aren’t just nameless, faceless targets. This is a place where people are going to feel ramifications for a long time.“

2. The New York Times reports GAO Report warns of threat to campus nuclear reactors. “The risks of a terrorist attack on a nuclear reactor on a college campus, and the potential consequences, have been underestimated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Congressional auditors say in a report. The report, by the Government Accountability Office, said the commission had overruled expert contractors who thought differently, and misrepresented what the contractors had said. Security requirements at the reactors have changed little since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, according to the auditors, even though many of the reactors still run on enriched uranium, which terrorists could convert into an atomic bomb.”

   According to the report, “There are 37 research reactors in the United States, mostly located on college campuses. Of these, 33 reactors are licensed and regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Four are operated by the Department of Energy (DOE) and are located at three national laboratories… DOE also has concluded that the consequences of an attack at some of its research reactors could be severe, causing radioactivity to be dispersed over many square miles and requiring the evacuation of nearby areas. As a result, all facilities where DOE reactors are located have extensive plans and procedures for responding to security incidents. NRC based its security and emergency response requirements largely on the regulations it had in place before September 2001. NRC decided that the security assessment it conducted between 2003 and 2006 showed that these requirements were sufficient.”

3. The Guardian reports the True scale of C02 emissions from shipping is revealed. “The true scale of climate change emissions from shipping is almost three times higher than previously believed, according to a leaked UN study… It calculates that annual emissions from the world’s merchant fleet have already reached 1.12bn tonnes of CO2, or nearly 4.5% of all global emissions of the main greenhouse gas.

   “The report suggests that shipping emissions… will become one of the largest single sources of manmade CO2 after cars, housing, agriculture and industry. By comparison, the aviation industry, which has been under heavy pressure to clean up, is responsible for about 650m tonnes of CO2 emissions a year, just over half that from shipping.” Makes all that ‘cheap stuff’ from overseas seem not so cheap.

4. From the Wall Street Journal news that a New era dawns for rail building. “America is back to working on the railroads… For decades, railroads spent little on expansion, even tore up surplus track and shrank routes. But since 2000 they’ve spent $10 billion to expand tracks, build freight yards and buy locomotives, and they have $12 billion more in upgrades planned. The buildout comes as the industry transitions away from its chief role in recent decades of hauling coal, timber and other raw materials in manufacturing regions. Now, increasingly, railroads are moving finished consumer goods, often made in Asia, from ports to major cities…

   “Railroad operators are pressing for advantage over their main competitor, long-haul trucking, which has struggled with rising fuel prices, driver shortages and highway congestion. Railroads say a load can be moved by rail using about a third as much fuel as it takes to haul it by truck… Demand for rail service increased sharply when the U.S. economy and Asian imports surged starting in 2003.” Of course, this rail renaissance is being driven by ‘cheap stuff’ from overseas… and no sign of passengers.

Custer’s Pipeline & Genocide Denial

Genocide denial is part of the steel that drills the oil in “Custer’s Pipeline,” is part of what moves the pens making lying papers that are stealing and have stolen the promised sovereignty of American Indians, and what makes the modern day Custers feel joy when they succeed and rage when they fail.

Looks like the modern- day Custers are feeling a little joy lately.

On two occasions now and on two computers using totally different IP addresses the web site www.infragard.net not only fails to respond it locks up Internet Explorer also.  Discovered only a short time ago Infragard is a “partnership” of “information sharing” (data mining) of untold amounts of your personal life’s history between the FBI and the private business world.  Think of it as the RIAA on steriods, hauling two years olds off the the gulags for listening to an “illegal” copy of Sesame St.

You may want to refrain linking to the main Infragard site for some time.  Focus instead on the FBI.gov one, don’t think they will take that one down.

As already reported the corporate members of Infragard will have shoot to kill capacity in the event of martial law.  Deputy Dogs, don’t taze me bro was just far too tame for these psychopaths.  It’s been “upgraded”, don’t shoot me, Mr CEO.

What could be done is an accounting of “vanishing” sites located by using Google and other search engines to find places discussing “Infragard”.  Are they today none functioning when you know you saw them yesterday.  Is the internet “malfunction” something you have never encountered before?

Consider doing it on an “expendable” computer.  I have a work laptop so if it frys there is an entire IT department.

Bring this latest piece of Satan inspired totalitarian fascism directly into the light.  Ah, it CAN”T be true you say?  How have your last seven years turned out?