AIUSA Action: Demand that Syria Release Four Kurdish Schoolchildren (ages 12 and 13) from Incommunicado Detention

AIUSA Action: Help Save the Children of Northern Uganda -- tell your Senators to support the Northern Uganda Crisis Response Act (S.2264)

From Jerry Springer -- The Opera:

The production, which won the Olivier Award (the British equivalent of the Tony Award) for best musical, features tap-dancing Ku Klux Klansmen, rude language and a never-ending parade of lowlifes and freaks. In the musical, Springer is shot at the end of the first act and gets dragged down to hell.

Why Study Rome When You Can Build It?

From Technology Review: Is Cold Fusion Heating Up?:

Though their work is dismissed by most physicists, a determined cadre of scientists is still chasing after what could be an energy jackpot -- and their experiments are producing heat and nuclear byproducts that can't be otherwise explained.

A marvelous Categorization of Dystopias.

Unfertilized eggs yield fatherless mouse.
Men may not be obsolete yet, but I'd say our biological clock is ticking. In trying to imagine a world without men, and how huMANity might get there, I'm put in mind of the short stories "Houston, Houston, Do You Read" by James P. Tiptree, Jr. (aka Alice Sheldon), "An Old-Fashioned Girl", by Johanna Russ, and "Men Are Trouble", by James Patric Kelly.

From BetterHumans.com > News > Eureka Moments Brain-mapped -- Findings help provide a physiological basis for insight and intuition :

First, the researchers found that about 0.3 seconds before the subjects indicated solutions achieved through insight there was a sudden burst of high-frequency activity often associated with complex cognitive processing.

A second, unexpected EEG effect also was observed: About 1.5 seconds prior to insight solutions, an increase in lower frequency activity appeared over the right posterior cortex.

From FDA Approves Human Brain Implant Devices:

Cyberkinetics Inc. of Foxboro, Mass., has received Food and Drug Administration approval to begin a clinical trial in which four-square-millimeter chips will be placed beneath the skulls of paralyzed patients.

If successful, the chips could allow patients to command a computer to act - merely by thinking about the instructions they wish to send.

One step closer to NUIs (Neural User Interfaces)

MoveOn.org: Sign the petition to demand U.N. authority for Iraq:

"The United States must immediately transfer management authority over Iraq to the United Nations, to enable a transition to peaceful Iraqi self-rule."

Technology Review: Sturdy Quantum Computing Demoed

Sarajevo on the Euphrates -- An Eyewitness Account From Inside the US siege of Falluja

ACLU: Urge the Senate to oppose the so-called 'Victims' Rights Amendment' to the U.S. Constitution (S.J. Res. 1/H.J. Res 48) which would compromise the rights of the accused, and erode the presumption of innocence, the right to a fair trial and guarantees of fairness or due process under law.

Go to http://www.google.com
Type WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION
Don't hit enter - click the I'M FEELING LUCKY option.
Read the Google error message.

"The War President" -- a memorial to the fallen in Iraq.

Source: http://amleft.blogspot.com/

Symphony #1 ("The Windows") by Anonymous

From New Scientist: Software beats all CD copy protection :

The magazine c't (Computertechnik) and RapidSolution Software have developed a program called unCDcopy to enable computer users to get around any [CD] copying restrictions.
[...]
All CDs can be copied by recording the analogue output from a regular CD player, but reconfiguring the recorded data into a useable digital file can be time-consuming.

UnCDcopy performs this task automatically. Once the analogue output has been captured, the program then checks with a database hosted by c't to determine where the digital file should be split up, in order to make separate tracks for each song.

The quality of this recording will be significantly less than that of a digital copy. Jim Peters, a representative of the UK's Campaign for Digital Rights, agrees that the technique is low-tech, but says it should be effective.

Tired: free-speech zones -- Wired: microwaves for crowd-control:

The system, which will be mounted on a military vehicle, inflicts no permanent damage on humans, but temporarily inflicts a disabling, burning pain over the whole body by triggering heat receptors in the skin.

"This is an effect that literally gets under your skin," said [Wade Smith, deputy director of Raytheon's Directed Energy Weapons program], who has voluntarily felt the "intolerable pain" of the beam during testing.

"I can assure you, once you come in contact with the beam, you will be inclined to stop whatever you are doing," he said.

The active-denial system uses so-called "millimeter waves" of electromagnetic energy to penetrate about one-64th of an inch into the skin.

The nonlethal system could be used to control crowds or to disable enemy soldiers, Smith said.

Raytheon's system will likely be tested by the military through midsummer at a test range in China Lake, Calif., Smith said.

Memory-Loss Engineering. The next best thing to a standard-issue Neuralizer.

From Telegraph.uk: US tactics [in Iraq] condemned by British officers:

One senior [British] Army officer told The Telegraph that America's aggressive methods were causing friction among allied commanders and that there was a growing sense of 'unease and frustration' among the British high command.

The officer, who agreed to the interview on the condition of anonymity, said that part of the problem was that American troops viewed Iraqis as untermenschen - the Nazi expression for 'sub-humans'. Speaking from his base in southern Iraq, the officer said: 'My view and the view of the British chain of command is that the Americans' use of violence is not proportionate and is over-responsive to the threat they are facing. They don't see the Iraqi people the way we see them. They view them as untermenschen. They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life in the way the British are. Their attitude towards the Iraqis is tragic, it's awful.

'The US troops view things in very simplistic terms. It seems hard for them to reconcile subtleties between who supports what and who doesn't in Iraq. It's easier for their soldiers to group all Iraqis as the bad guys. As far as they are concerned Iraq is bandit country and everybody is out to kill them.'

"When US troops are attacked with mortars in Baghdad, they use mortar-locating radar to find the firing point and then attack the general area with artillery, even though the area they are attacking may be in the middle of a densely populated residential area.

"They may well kill the terrorists in the barrage but they will also kill and maim innocent civilians. That has been their response on a number of occasions. It is trite, but American troops do shoot first and ask questions later. They are very concerned about taking casualties and have even trained their guns on British troops, which has led to some confrontations between soldiers.

From Alleged rabbit thief, 9, seized:

A nine-year-old girl was arrested, handcuffed and questioned at a Florida police station on Tuesday after she was accused of stealing a rabbit and $10 from a neighbour's home.

According to the arrest report, a Pasco County sheriff's deputy found the black-and-white rabbit, Oreo, hopping around in the girl's living room. She was read her rights and taken away in a patrol car.

The girl broke down under questioning on Tuesday and confessed to taking the rabbit belonging to another child. She denied taking two $5 bills and some change, according to reports.

Asked by the St Petersburg Times whether this was standard procedure, a sheriff's spokesman, Kevin Doll, said: "To arrest burglars? Sure."

Mr Doll added that if the victim of a crime wanted an arrest, deputies were required to act if there was enough evidence.

"Somebody entered a residence without permission and stole money and a pet rabbit. That's burglary," Doll said. "I don't know what other explanation you need. Nine years old is enough to know right from wrong."

Kevin Doll, Public Information Officer for the Pasco County Sherriff's Office, can be reached at:

kdoll@pascosheriff.com
727-844-7759

From LA Weekly: News: Bush’s Biggest Mistake, by David Corn:

The CIA had spied on an al Qaeda meeting in Kuala Lumpur that occurred the first week of January 2000. Within days, the CIA knew that [Khalid] al-Mihdar and [Nawaf] al-Hazmi had been present, and the agency had enough information on the two to add them to a State Department watch list that could have been used to deny them entry to the United States. Yet it did not do so. In early March 2000, the CIA learned that a week after the Malaysia gathering, al-Hazmi traveled to Los Angeles. It also knew that al-Mihdar had accompanied al-Hazmi part of the way, but the CIA did consider the possibility that al-Mihdar, too, had been heading toward the United States. In February 2000, the two settled in San Diego. They rented a place and obtained driver’s licenses using their own names. They took flight lessons. In July 2000, al-Hazmi applied for a visa extension. In December, he moved to Arizona with another 9/11 hijacker. And at some point, al-Hazmi’s brother came to the United States. He, too, would become one of the 9/11 hijackers.

Because the CIA failed to tell the FBI — until August 23, 2001 — that al-Hazmi and al-Mihdar were in the United States, the FBI never went looking for them. Had the FBI been searching for them, it well could have found them. The two had had numerous contacts with a longtime FBI informant in San Diego. The FBI agent who handled this informant told the intelligence committees, “I’m sure we could have located them, and we could have done it within a few days.” Unfortunately, the CIA was 17 months late in passing information on the pair to the FBI, and then FBI headquarters did not disseminate it to the FBI office in San Diego until after September 11. All this means that the CIA had a bead on two of the hijackers, who could have led the feds to others, and it did virtually nothing.

FBI Disputes Rice's 9/11 Testimony

Have you or someone you know had a "no-fly" experience? Report it using the ACLU's NO-FLY/WATCHLIST COMPLAINT FORM

Tell the airlines to oppose CAPPS II

HomeStarRunner.com -- it's A Jorb Well Done!

From The Seattle Times: Democrats could learn from Nader:

When Nader says the choice is between warmongering Republicans and warmongering Democrats, who can say he's far off the mark?

Or that both parties are beholden to corporate interests?

Or that Democrats helped usher through Congress the entirety of President Bush's agenda, from the Patriot Act to tax cuts for the wealthy?

THE GOSPEL OF DEBBIE

Must read: Warrior King: The Case for Impeaching George Bush, by John Bonifaz:

"President Bill Clinton was ultimately censured over alleged charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. But no one died as a result of the Monica Lewinsky affair. President George W. Bush's offenses to the Constitution are far more serious and have resulted in the deaths of thousands. It is time for Congress to investigate whether the president's offenses constitute high crimes worthy of impeachment. To protect and uphold the Constitution, that process should begin."

From Doug Giebel: Candide in the Wilderness -- How Bush Administration Policy Was Made:

"Prior to 9/11, it seems plausible the Bush team in fact expected an attack, either at a U.S. installation overseas or on home ground. The air inside the Beltway was rife with warnings from many reliable sources.
[...]
Bush insiders expected an attack, wherever it occurred, would be similar to earlier assaults on the World Trade Center or the U.S.S. Cole. In other words, the event would do damage, only not on a massive scale -- merely sufficient damage to justify pointing a finger at Iraq."

Tired of flying from the U.S. to the U.K.? Then why not take the tunnel?

From FOXNews.com: 12-Year-Old Sued [by RIAA] for Music Downloading:

"Nobody likes playing the heavy and having to resort to litigation," said Cary Sherman, the RIAA's president. "But when your product is being regularly stolen, there comes a time when you have to take appropriate action."

Cary Sherman can be reached at: 1330 Connecticut Ave N.W., Suite 300 Washington, D.C. 20036 (202) 775-0101