Technology marches on!

Woman uses baby’s stomach to start car.

A woman whose baby swallowed the transponder of a car key managed to start the car by holding him close to the steering wheel, according to a report in the Daily Telegraph. Amanda Webster’s one-year-old son Oscar swallowed the pill-sized security device while fiddling with the keys.

Ms Webster, who was out shopping in west London could not start her car and called the Royal Automobile Club. Keith Scott, the patrol man who went out to help her noticed that part of the key was missing and cottoned on to the possibility that the baby had swallowed the transponder.

Scott then suggested that Ms Webster hold Oscar as close to the steering column as possible and try to start the car with the key. The vehicle responded and when the transponder made its appearance again, having made the route that Nature devised, it was none the worse for wear. [Smart Mobs]

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Unfortunately, this is probably true

MSNBC Op-ed

I avoid making predictions. But I’ll risk this one because if it’s wrong everyone will be glad, including me. The prediction is that Nov. 28, 2002, the day terrorists shot surface-to-air missiles at a chartered Israeli airplane in Kenya, will be a more important divide in the history of airline travel than Sept. 11, 2001.

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Turnabout is fair play

Turning the tables on TIA and crooked Poindexter.

John Gilmore is calling for an early demonstration of how bad convicted felon Poindexter’s Total Information Awareness campaign will be. This demonstration will consist of the compiling of as much personal, lawfully obtained info as we can about John M. and Linda Poindexter of 10 Barrington Fare, Rockville, MD, 20850, +1 301 424 6613.

It would be good to have an early public demonstration of just how bad life could become for such targeted citizens. While ratfink’s system is probably not working yet, and a large part of it is classified, much of it can be manually simulated for demonstration purposes. Public records can be manually searched and then posted to the net by people who happen to be looking there for something else. Many Internet public records search sites also exist; try searching for “People finder”. (Matt Smith at matt.smith@sfweekly.com has offered to “publish anything that readers can convincingly claim to have obtained legally”.) Photographs and videos of the target, their house, car, family, and associates, can be made and circulated to demonstrate facial recognition techniques.

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Oooo, those fiendish members of the Axle of Evil.

“The lack of a confrontation thus far between Iraq and inspectors has the White House worried that the Iraqi president might be winning the early public relations battle by creating an impression that he is complying.” Yahoo News

Got that? Emperor Shrub is upset because those danged Eye-Wrack-Eees aren’t producing their WMD for us like good little evildoers should, and this is preventing us from attacking them with our WMD. Not only can the inspectors not find any such weapons, Iraq is being reasonable about the whole procedure.  

But not to worry, we’ll bomb them anyway. Proof or no proof. And the rest of the world be damned.

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Veterans Against an Iraq War

A coalition of American veterans who oppose war with Iraq.

Rooting out evil

Expanding the search for weapons of mass destruction.

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Not In Our Name press release

NION organized the nationwide Oct 6 demonstrations.

The government has stepped up its moves toward war on Iraq while domestic spying has taken a giant leap with the new “Total Information Awareness,” a program recently unveiled by the Defense Department. It is aimed at amassing computerized dossiers on the private lives of millions of U.S. citizens.

Accordingly, we are stepping up the publication of the Not In Our Name Statement of Conscience and Resistance.

In the next few weeks, our statement will be published in the largest Spanish-language daily newspaper in the country, La Opinion in LA, two of the major African-American newspapers (the Chicago Defender and the Amsterdam News in NYC), The Nation, the New York Review of Books, and the Seattle Times and Post-Intelligencer.

Please help make all this happen by sending your contribution to Not In Our Name, 158 Church Street, PMB 9, New York, NY 10007, or by contributing by credit card at our web site www.nion.us.

Finally, December 10th is ‘International Human Rights Day’. We urge you to join in antiwar actions all over the country that day. Our website (www.nion.us) can direct you.

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He’s a Baaaad man…

Henry Kissinger, the man Bush choose to “investigate” 9/11.

Via ProRev

Because of judicial proceedings in various countries concerning his role in sanctioning assassinations and state terrorism during the years when he directed American foreign policy, Kissinger can no longer travel freely in Europe and Latin America. He had to cancel a trip to Brazil last year because of human rights protests. He was sought for questioning by French police during a visit to Paris, in a case involving a French citizen murdered by the US-backed military dictatorship in Chile. He is the subject of lawsuits in Chile and the US for his role in the assassination of General Rene Schneider, the Chilean military commander whose elimination paved the way for the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.

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Rich Man’s Strike Fails in Venezuela

Today’s attempted strike in Venezuela the fourth this year attempted by pro-coup elements of the oligarchy, the country’s former rulers, foreign interests, and that nation’s corrupt and dishonest Commercial Media is, by all accounts, an abject failure, limited to wealthy neighborhoods while the great majority of Venezuelans work and shop today in open defiance of the strike call.

Hmm, while the Bushies rant and foam about Iraq, lefties are gaining, and keeping, major power in much of South America

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This Saturday, in Los Angeles

Two events worth going to, if you live in L.A.

BEYOND THE BATTLEFIELD: THE REAL COSTS OF WAR
Sat Dec 7, 10:30 AM
Westwood United Methodist Church, 10497 Wilshire Blvd, Westwood

Speakers include:
Scott Ritter, Former Chief U.N. Weapons Inspector
James Kenneth Galbraith, Professor of Economics, U of Tx.
Antonio Villaraigosa, Speaker Emeritus, CA Assembly
Arriana Huffington, Columnist
many more

workshops too

PROPAGANDA, WAR AND DEMOCRACY
Media Control in the 21st Century
Sat Dec 7, 7:30 PM
Cal Tech, 1200 E. California, Beckman Auditorium, Pasadena

Learn how propaganda and corporate control of the media promote war and prevent democratic discourse. Learn what you can do about it.

Speakers:
David Barsamian, author Decline and Fall of Public Broadcasting
Sonali Kolhatkar, KPFK and Afghan Women’s Mission
Nancy Snow, author Propaganda Inc.

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