US Troops plant weapons on dead Iraqi civilians in order to claim they are insurgents. The page contains photos of dead teenagers that you won't see in the mainstream press:

The pictures were taken with a digital camera in Buhriz, Iraq on Oct. 22nd, 2004, and their file names are numbered, apparently from the digital camera in question. They show the basics for you: no weapons in the first photos, then weapons inserted into the pictures later.

The last photo shows one boy who survived and, if he is still in U.S. custody, and still alive, would be an eyewitness.

You can ask your Senators to demand an investigation, starting with a few questions for 1st Lt. Terry "T.J." Grider, Captain Bill Coppernoll and the other members of the 1st Infantry Division platoon nicknamed the "Punishers".

U.S. finds second mad cow, industry defends guards:

"Neither official would identify the state where the cow came from. Published reports have said it was sent to slaughter last November in Texas, the nation's biggest cattle state."

I want to see Dubya invite Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns and National Cattlemen's Beef Association president Jim McAdams down to the ranch in Crawford for a July 4 photo op where they'll chow down on some juicy USDA-approved burgers. In a live press conference. On second thought, they'd probably sneak in their beef from Japan.

Feds fumble on letting public know about [mad] cows :

"What's harder to comprehend is the USDA's refusal to take the steps that, according to John Stauber of the Madison-based Center for Media & Democracy, would all but guarantee the safety of U.S. beef: Implementing a science-based food safety testing program that tests millions of cattle a year. And a bona fide 'fire-wall feed ban' that would stop the current feeding of blood, meat, bone meal, animal fat and poultry feces to cattle."

And because the USDA refuses to take such steps, it's almost a sure-thing that other U.S. cows will become infected, says Diane Farsetta, a senior researcher with Stauber's organization.
[...]
What can concerned citizens do? Join the protest, Farsetta says. Call or email the USDA (contact info is on the web at www.usda.gov) and demand that it quit stalling and implement a "real" fire-wall feed ban.

And tell them you WON'T BUY U.S. BEEF until they do.

Woman Carrying $47K in Bra at Airport Sues:

Anthony Pettigrew, a spokesman for the DEA in Boston, said he could not comment on the lawsuit. But he said federal asset forfeiture laws allow agents to seize suspected drug profits.

OPERATION YELLOW ELEPHANT:

"The objective of OPERATION YELLOW ELEPHANT is to recruit College Republicans and Young Republicans to serve as infantry. They demanded this war and now viciously support it. It's only right that they also experience it.

The 56th College Republican National Convention (June 24-26) and the Young Republican National Convention (July 6-10) are the settings for most of the ops."

US Doctors Linked to POW 'Torture' at Guantanamo:

"Since late 2003, psychiatrists and psychologists (at Guantanamo) have been part of a strategy that employs extreme stress, combined with behavior-shaping rewards, to extract actionable intelligence from resistant captives"

So can Richard Durbin take back his apology now?

Boston Globe: For Venezuela's poor, music opens doors. Yet another example of what Socialism can lead to.

Under a little-known provision (Section 9528) of the No Child Left Behind Act, public high schools must hand over personal information about students to local military recruiters. The good news is, parents can (in theory) get their kids removed from this list by submitting a request in writing to their school district superintendent.
LeaveMyChildAlone.org provides an online tool that makes it easy to "opt out" your kids from the list that your local high school is required to release to military recruiters. The site also provides activist tools to help change the law that lets military recruiters prey on our children without their parents' explict permission.

I know I ought to contribute to my local NPR radio station, WBUR Boston, 90.9 FM, but I just can't bring myself to do it after hearing one of their local news readers refer to Guantanamo as "the terrorist prison". What would Orwell do?

Apparently, I'm not the only Craig Burket in the world. I hope his middle name isn't Lee, or I'm really in trouble. This reminds me of "Anna to the Infinite Power" by Mildred Ames. Oh, no -- what if we're both clones of Jango Fett??

Here's the sort of thing House Republicans don't want you to be able to see on PBS: The Education of Shelby Knox:

"Shelby Knox, of Lubbock Texas, is a self-described 'good Southern Baptist girl' who has pledged abstinence until marriage. But she becomes an advocate for comprehensive sex education when she finds that Lubbock, where high schools teach abstinence-only-until-marriage, has some of the highest rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in the state."

It will be shown on PBS's "P.O.V" starting June 21. Watch the trailer. Check for local listings. While you still can.

Tired: dot-com bubble -- Wired: genomics bubble. But whatever you do, for god's sake, don't even think the words "real estate bubble"!

Tired: hate crimes -- Wired: "faith crimes"

Watch the movie: "Those weapons of mass destruction have gotta be somewhere."

Coming soon: Your ISP as Net watchdog for the U.S. Dept. of Justice:

"'It was raised not once but several times in the meeting, very emphatically,' said Dave McClure, president of the U.S. Internet Industry Association, which represents small to midsize companies. 'We were told, 'You're going to have to start thinking about data retention if you don't want people to think you're soft on child porn.''"

jlassen: When Bears Growl (Or how I become the subject of a Secret Service Investigation)

Seymour Hersh claims children were raped at Abu Ghraib, Pentagon has videos

Democracy Is a 'Bad Word:' Microsoft Censors Blogs at Its New Chinese Portal:

"Users of the MSN Spaces section of Microsoft Corp.'s new China-based Web portal get a scolding message each time they input words deemed taboo by the communist authorities -- such as democracy, freedom and human rights.

'Prohibited language in text, please delete,' the message says."

Just in case you had any lingering doubts that the CEOs of Microsoft, Google and Yahoo are whores and quislings.

THE LIE OF THE CENTURY -- an excellent (IMHO) article that puts the Downing Street Memo, and BushCo's impeachable offenses of lying to congress and the citizenry in the runup to invading Iraq, into historical context.

RuneScape - the massive online adventure game by Jagex Ltd

Urge your House Rep. to support the Freedom to Read Amendment to the House Science, State, Justice, Commerce (SSJC) Appropriations Bill, which would cut off funds for bookstore and library searches under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act.

From FreewayBlogger Weblog:

"I was in Nasariyah and a couple came up to me on the street asking for help. They were carrying a large gym bag, an 'Adidas' bag, with their daughter inside. The city was in chaos, and they came up to me, I suppose, because I was a westerner and they thought I could help them. When I looked inside the bag there was a little girl, maybe two years old, with bandages around her head. There was a terrible smell and I thought to myself 'Okay, they have a dead girl...' The bandages were loose and soaked in fluid - it was a terrible wound, covering half her head. I guessed they'd gotten her to a hospital and they'd done what they could quickly and gave her back. It was the early days of the war and the hospitals were full. I couldn't believe it when I saw she was still alive.''I took them to the Americans, and there was a woman soldier there who said there was nothing they could do... that it had to be a military casualty or something like that. I forget exactly. I want to say she was mean, but I don't know. More like she was just following her orders... she stood like this...' he said, and folded his arms across his chest.

'We went to a couple more soldiers, but it was the same. There was one young soldier who went for help, but then came back saying he couldn't do anything. I went with them for awhile longer, but it was obvious I was useless. Eventually they just went away.'"

From The secret Downing Street memo:

"C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. "

Worms, slugs inspire robotic devices:

“This device can literally worm its way into complicated places or into curving tubing such as the colon”
[...]
The second device, a biologically inspired “gripper,” mimics the way hungry California sea slugs grasp seaweed.
[...]
If the gripping device were miniaturized and equipped with sensors, it could have medical applications as well. Such a device, for example, might eat its way through occluded blood vessels.

Okay, who wants to be the QA pair-testing team? You can take turns.

Something new to worry about: Databases increase DNA danger:

THERE is an increasing chance that innocent people will be "coincidentally" matched with the DNA of guilty people as DNA databases get bigger, a forensic scientist has warned.
[...]
The only known case of a coincidental DNA match being found between two different individuals had occurred in the UK, which has more than 2.5 million profiles on its DNA database. The case involved a 70-year-old man with Parkinson's disease who matched DNA from a crime scene on the other side of the country. The man was later cleared with subsequent testing.

First it's ligers and tigons -- now we have the worlds first wholphin.

Attention politicians and corporate webmasters: better buy up the domain name <your-name-here>.xxx, and right quick, before someone else does.

More video clips of "the horn guy", aka Michel Lauziere, "Master of the Unusual".

Well, I've got my summer reading list now, thanks to HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE: Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries:

• 1. The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx
• 2. Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler
• 3. Quotations from Chairman Mao, By Mao Zedong
• 4. The Kinsey Report, by Alfred Kinsey
• 5. Democracy and Education, by John Dewey
• 6. Das Kapital, by Karl Marx
• 7. The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan
• 8. The Course of Positive Philosophy, by Auguste Compte
• 9. Beyond Good and Evil, by Freidrich Nietzsche
• 10. General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, by John Maynard Keynes

And let's not forget the Honorable Mentions:

• The Population Bomb, by Paul Ehrlich
• What Is To Be Done, by V.I. Lenin
• Authoritarian Personality, by Theodor Adorno
• On Liberty, by John Stuart Mill
• Beyond Freedom and Dignity, by B.F. Skinner
• Reflections on Violence, by Georges Sorel
• The Promise of American Life, by Herbert Croly
• On The Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin (they have it listed as "Origin of the Species")
• Madness and Civilization, by Michel Foucault
• Soviet Communism: A New Civilization, by Sidney and Beatrice Webb
• Coming of Age in Samoa, by Margaret Mead
• Unsafe at Any Speed, by Ralph Nader
• Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir
• Prison Notebooks, by Antonio Gramsci
• Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson
• Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon
• Introduction to Psychoanalysis, by Sigmund Freud
• The Greening of America, by Charles Reich
• The Limits to Growth, by Club of Rome
• Descent of Man, by Charles Darwin

I'll be sure to check them out from my local library, just to keep the FBI/CIA/NSA informed of my thought crimes.

Scottish Supercomputer Built to Reconfigure (Itself) -- but only if you ask it nicely. This could be the perfect platform for experimenting with Recursive Self-Enhancement -- as long as you keep a vial of nanites handy, just in case.