BANGKOK: The death toll from a powerful cyclone that struck Myanmar over the weekend rose to 22,500 on Tuesday, and foreign governments and aid organizations began mobilizing for a major relief operation.
http://news.google.com/nwshp?tab=wn&ncl=1154951388&hl=en&topic=w
Gag Films has a great idea to get cheaper batteries. Get a 6v Lantern Battery (about $6), Take the label off, Pop the top, disconnect the wires. And you’ll find 32 AA batteries.
The Chinese are uploading more Internet videos of sex, scandal and protest. It’s big business—and a headache for Beijing. With an audience estimated at 78 million people, online video is big business in China: Western venture capitalists have poured $120 million into the industry since 2004, according to CCID Consulting, a leading Chinese IT firm.
But regulations issued by SARFT and
The decision to open up the borders for the sake of business was made in the 90s by the first Bush, finalized by President Clinton and nurtured by David Rockafeller (CFR). The entire package was called the North American Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA]. Many of the same concerns were brought up back then.
Truckers from Mexico will be delivering goods as early as 2007 Labor day weekend.
The expected employment effects of NAFTA were by far the most common point of debate and were at the center of a series of Senate Finance Committee hearings held during Sep., 1992 and again in Sep., 1993. It was well understood that NAFTA would lead to job decreases in some sectors and job creation in others. The main point of contention was the expected net effects of NAFTA on employment. The position of the committee members, the administration and public witnesses on this point were often polarized. Senator Donald Riegle Jr. (D-Mich.), for example, noted in his opening statement at Sep. 8, 1992 Senate Finance Committee hearings, “The main export we are going to ship to Mexico under the agreement, apparently, as it has been negotiated here, is going to be jobs.”(5) This sentiment was echoed by Thomas R. Donahue, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO as he noted in his prepared 1993 statement, “In brief, the AFL-CIO believes that the adoption of [NAFTA] would seriously harm the US economy, resulting in the loss of hundreds of thousands of American jobs and a decline in the nation’s standard of living.”(6) Whereas administration witness, US Trade Representative, Carla Hills, held the opposite view as she noted in 1992, “This agreement will generate new, higher-paying jobs for Americans. More than 600,000 Americans now owe their jobs to our exports to Mexico. This number is expected to swell to over 1 million by 1995 with NAFTA.”(7) — Find Articles
“What a slap in the face to American workers, opening the highways to dangerous trucks on Labor Day weekend, one of the busiest driving weekends of the year,” said Teamsters President Jim Hoffa.
Joining the Teamsters in seeking the emergency stay were the Sierra Club and Public Citizen.
“Before providing unconditional access throughout the country to tens of thousands of big rigs we know little to nothing about, we must insure they meet safety and environmental standards,” Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope said.The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, in a statement, said it was working closely with the department’s inspector general “as his office completes an additional assessment of the program and we prepare a detailed response to that report.”The Bush administration said last week it would start the cross-border program once the Transportation Department’s inspector general certifies safety and inspection plans.
The elected officials voting on NAFTA were influenced greatly by the cold hard cash of lobbyists who wanted it to happen. David Rockafeller & Dick Cheney of the Council on Foreign Relations had a LOT to do with NAFTA.
Dick Cheney keeping CFR Secrets
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But why would the CFR support this:
Is this really going to happen:
If there is a North American Union, why isn’t on the news:
bonus conspiracy theory:
Happy Birthday, India! Welcome to the arms race. You’ve gone from most enlightend, wise and anchient spiritual civilization to Westernized nuclear power.
Sarcasm aside, I think its great that India is sprinting into modernization. As a nation they have already done a lot to stimulate a global economy. I guess the standoff with Pakistan is inevitable.
“Gandhi’s dream of a free India will only be fully realized when we banish poverty from our midst,” Singh told a crowd of thousands of dignitaries and schoolchildren dressed in the orange, white and green of the Indian flag, referring to independence leader Mohandas Gandhi. —newstaronline
Security was tight across India for the festivities. Police stepped up security around the Taj Mahal, India’s famed white-marble monument to love, saying there was a specific threat to the site.
p.s. thanks for producing the most beautiful woman in the world:
The FCC is going to open up the 700MHz frequency to the wireless market.
What does this mean to you and me? This:
In implementing Congress’ directive to reallocate the airwaves, the Commission is
focused on serving the public interest and the American people.
–News Information #202
We’ll see what that REALLY means in a short time.
Google proposed that the FCC force a completely leveled playing ground like the Internet: open applications, open devices, open services and open networks. AT&T lobbyists were violently opposed to this proposition. The FCC agreed to open applications & devices but denied the others.
I hope this isn’t another way of saying that AT&T/Verison will divy up the spectrum and force their proprietary BS down our collective throats. I hope “open devices/applications” means that I can use something like a Skype cell phone (or google iphone – if they ever decide to create it).
I’m bitter about the telecos.
It is because of the American Telecos and the FCC that we are so far behind Asia and Europe. I’ve been to parts of Korea and Italy and I’ve got to say that it is a damn shame its easier to get on the net there than here.
techcrunch on fcc – http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/07/31/fcc-fails-to-mark-their-place-in-history/
This post is completely OFF TOPIC – I started off writing about the Great Fire Wall of China and then went on an insane religious and political tangent. I started asking myself, “Why does the chinese government and other nations repress the cutting edge of human social evolution?”  And here is what I came up with.Â
There are a few cultures hopelessly fighting against the social evolution of humanity. the Chinese government and the Islamic fundamentalist are among the largest and potentially most influential. In a relatively short period of time humanity has gone from tribalism to nationalism and now to globalism.  Each stage in social evolution has happend faster and faster and now globalization is happening so fast that it is hard to keep up. Almost every nation is facing immigration, refugee, and security issues as third world conflicts and economic situations leave impoverished people behind forcing them to seek stability in other countries. So called “first world” countries face immigration issues and are greatly influenced by the globalized economy. Â
Technology, trade and travel have merged humanity and there is nothing any of us can do about it. To their detriment, the Chinese government and the Islamic fundamentalists are really trying to resist portions of this inevitable social change.Â
The Chinese trade globally and are clearly a leader in the commodities market. But the chinese government represses its people by greatly filtering the exchange of ideas.  Some how they don’t understand that it is the ideas of the people that are the greatest and most revolutionary asset in any globalized society… or perhaps they do understand this as certain ideas are a threat to their level of communistic control over the people. They have created what has been coined the Great Fire Wall of China in which they filter certain ideas from the public. Keywords like “tank man” and “freedom” are blocked. The greatest part of globalization is the free exchange of ideas. In the US, this exchange of ideas is making a new breed of middle class who are self-sufficient and becoming very wealthy very quickly.
Contrary to many elitist beliefs the Arab and Islamic world have made many contributions to science, medicine, mathematics, and technology. In fact, Arab muslim Ibn al-Haytham is knows as the Father of optics because he formulated “the first comprehensive and systematic alternative to Greek optical theories”. Many of their contibutions occured between 600 A.D. and 1200 A.D, a period known as the Islamic Golden Age. All this was done when Europe was still in the Dark Ages. Many of there discoveries were passed on and further developed by the Europeans during the Renaissance. (Note: of course, many of the arab/muslim innovations were built on the systems and inventions of the people they conquered… as is the case with the europeans which makes up we know as modern western civilization. We owe the bulk of the origins of western civilization to the greeks and egyptians who the Roman got most of their innovations from).
Bernard Lewis put out a book shortly after 9/11 called, What Went Wrong?  which talks about the clash betwen Islam (civilization based in islam not the Religion itself) and Modernity in the Middle East.   In a discussion about Bernard’s book, Joanne Myers says:
[Bernard] takes the reader on a journey through history, from the time when Islam was the world’s greatest, most enlightened, and most powerful civilization, to modern times when it has failed to adjust to the challenges brought about by the reformation and the scientific and political revolutions in the West.
In the discussion Bernard points out that the question “What went wrong?” is so pronounced in the Islamic world that many muslim leaders in the last few hundred years have asked the question. The answers they’ve come up with range from “There are too many infidels” to “We have not kept up with modernity”.Â
Different things have also been tried in the world of Islam to change:
Now, for the first time, in Iran they are carrying out what I might describe, without intending any disrespect, as the “Christianization†of Islam, using the word to indicate not doctrines, not morality, but institutions. What you now have in Iran, for the first time in Islamic history, is the functional equivalent of a papacy, a college of cardinals, a bench of Bishops, and, most important of all, an inquisition, and, inch’Allah, they will soon have a reformation too.
Bernard Lewis does not state a single reason why Islam (as a civilization) has failed to keep up with modernity. I think Ken Wilber and Robert Keegan are the closest to an explaination when they discusses the the Many faces of Terrorism and Integral politics.  They place the Islamic fundamentalists (particularly fundamentalist) in the Amber stage of consciousness which means that they are ethnocentric conformist. I would go even further and suggest that they are glued together with flecks of Red (tribalism, sects controled by Imams) Considering their stage of consciousness it seems that (unlike the old dominating amber roman catholic christianity) they have not been broken up diluted enough to accept the bleeding edge of human development. That is not to say the individuals and small groups within the Islamic world (such as the Bahai’a and Sikhs) are not at the cutting edge. The core is true hard core amber.Â
I digress a little, the Islamic world HAS been broken up (Sunnis vs. Shia, etc) but it has not been sufficiently diluted yet. Christianity broke up into Catholic and Protestants. At one time those were large warring factions of Christiandom (societies built on christianity) but now those two have been broken in to hundreds of denominations and spin-off belief systems. Islam has different factions but not as diluted and broken up as Christianity.
Religious denominations are usually created when a member of a certain faith has a spiritual awakening that is so profound they express it to others and start to get a following.  Islam seems to have such a strong fundamentalist (solid Amber and Red) core that any new development is stamped out like a camp fire threatening to become a forest fire. I believe that reform is happening right now within the Islamic world the result is constant relentless violence.Â
I’ve been getting into podcasts lately. I was put on to podcast novels by my buddy, Tre who told me about 7th Son, by J. C. Hutchins. I am not only entertained, I am inspired. The guy can write like nobodies business. The action reminds me of something you might find in a Dean Koontz novel.
Its so good I don’t want to give anything AT ALL away, but I will mention one of cool technologies he makes up in the novel. He talks about something called EGG. Its basically an encryption software that not only protects against those trying to gain unauthorized entry, it tracks them and then goes after them. It actually hacks the hackers.Â
This is something that a friend talked to me about creating as a part of his PHD. “Would that break some kind of law?” I asked. He was insistent that people should be able to protect themselves and I don’t totally disagree with that I’m just saying that I don’t think the law protects vigilantes.
Actually, a lawyer at Defcon 14 talked about that very issue when questioned. And if I’m pretty certain he said it was illegal to hack someone even if they have hacked you.Â
But in J. C. Hutchins’ world the PATRIOT ACT III allows the hack back feature of EGG to exist.
So anyway, all security geek stuff aside, its a really good story. Highly recommended.Â
The Air Force Directory Services (AFDS) has a requirement to provide a persistent e-mail address to all Air Force users. Its called E-Mail for Life, or E4L. Anyone with a current CAC card on a .mil, .gov will have one “@us.af.mil” address instead of having to change their email address with each base or command they go to.   The Air Force will also be “deploying an anti-spam solution with this initiative which is sized to protect the Air Force from the worldwide increase in e-mail spam” — Air Force Link. I imagine that all other branches will follow suit.
There is a trend for all branches of service in which everything seems to be merging. All the networks (Army, Airforce, Navy) for example must follow a Standard Desktop Configuration.
