January 2002 - cypherpunks-legacy

We send you warm greetings from Taxco, Guerrero
by Hilaria Castañeda 11 Jan '02

11 Jan '02

We send you warm greetings from Taxco, Guerrero, hoping that you are well in health and spirit. Before anything else, we hope that you had wonderful holidays, and that this year started to be the best of all in history! We want to thank you for your time this last year, the fact that you pay attention to us is very valued. We give thanks to have met you. We also wanted to comment to you about a big project that we completed this last year: A customer of ours came to visit us last year 2001, and commented to us about a company in the United States where we could get medical equipment donated for our hospital, Adolfo Prieto. (I say "our hospital" because is a public hospital, as poor as we are, and to which most of us have had to go to get medical attention for ourselves and for our children). We got in contact with this company in the United States, and after convincing them to donate it, we spoke to the officials of DHL International, so they would facilitate the shipping of this equipment for free. They also accepted, and gave us a list of the documents required to be filled by our State Government. Then we got in contact with the Secretary of Health of the State of Guerrero to get all the documents to import the equipment, and after some time we got the documents all made, signed, etc. Now the equipment is in the hospital Adolfo Prieto. We want to invite you to see pictures and the history in our web site, this is the address: http://www.artcamp.com.mx The reason why we did all this, was so the doctors and nurses of the hospital would know and recognize us, because, as we don't have health insurance, having a good relationship with them, it is more probable to get the necessary attention in case that we need it or any of our children have an illness or an accident. Well, I didn't mean for this letter to be long, but I really enjoyed telling you about this achievement of our cooperative. This letter was just to wish you a very nice new year 2002, and tell you that here in Taxco you have your friends of Artesanas Campesinas. We are happy to have met you and wish you the best for this year and the future. Sincerely, Tamara Hernández Danel Artesanas Campesinas

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Dreamworks/Pixar/CIA does bin Laden right this time
by Major Variola (ret) 11 Jan '02

11 Jan '02

http://www.megastories.com/attack/aip/02jan03/wahdat020103.shtml Thursday 3 January 2002 ISLAMABAD (Wahdat): The deputy chief of Afghan intelligence, Abdullah Tauhidi, has claimed that intelligence officials have acquired a number of new videotapes of Osama bin Laden and his associates in the al-Qaeda network. The videotapes show clearer camera work, which could be far better proof for a court of law to put the most wanted man on trial in connection with the September 11 terrorist attacks, he said in an interview. The videotapes pictured bin Laden and other members of his network planning terrorist activities around the globe. Unlike previous tapes obtained by the US, the new tapes are very clear in picture and voice. This will help to clear up continuing doubts about the authenticity of the videotapes that have earlier been obtained and made public. He said that these tapes would be put on public display after a thorough investigation by the authorities concerned. We are happy with the remarkable achievement made by the country's intelligence in a very short time, which started functioning after the recent fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan, he said.

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RE-FILL you Prescriptions on-line
by ron_naples＠yyhmail.com 11 Jan '02

11 Jan '02

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Re: [Reformatted] Burning down the olympics
by faustine.＠hushmail.com 11 Jan '02

11 Jan '02

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Eric wrote: >> Terrorism also struck the Olympics in Munich in 1972 when 11 Israeli >> athletes were killed by Palestinian gunmen. >Not quite. 11 Israeli athletes were captured by some Palestinians. They >were killed when the Israeli military attacked the site where they were >being held, and slaughtered everything that moved. Your corrections notwithstanding, do you really find it rational to expect the fate of a few citizens to change national policy? Why should it. >It is and always has been the policy of the Zionist Entity to regard its >civilians as expendable for propaganda purposes in any hostage situation. So? Only the weak-minded would sit around fretting and crying over what happens to a few people who are likely going to be killed anyway. If I--or anyone I ever cared about--were hostages, it wouldn't change my mind on this in the least. The terrorists are the ones responsible for rendering me "expendable", not whomever they're trying to pressure. Absolutely despicable, get a spine. Fuck negotiation, fuck capitulation. Give in once and you're setting yourself up for more of the same for eternity. Someone says they're going to slaughter my family unless I do what they want? Go right ahead and see what it gets you. The sentimental don't have a snowball's chance in hell against the ruthless: wallowing in the finer points of conscience is a luxury those on the wrong side of a gun just can't afford. Initiating force and responding to it in kind are two entirely different issues: just because the Palestinians have a legitimate cause for complaint doesn't mean they (or Israel, or the US) should get a free pass. Nobody gets a free pass. ~Faustine. *** "Critics frequently refer to the icy rationality of the Hudson Institute, the RAND Corporation and other such organizations. I'm always tempted to ask in reply, 'Would you prefer a warm, human error? Do you feel better with a nice emotional mistake?' We cannot expect good discussion of security problems if we are going to label every attempt at detachment as callous, every attempt at objectivity as immoral. Technical details are not the only important operative facts. Human and moral factors...must never be missing from policies and public discussion. But emotionalism and sentimentality, as opposed to morality and concern, only confuse the debates. Nor can experts be expected to repeat, 'If, heavean forbid...', before every sentence." - --Herman Kahn -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: Hush 2.1 Note: This signature can be verified at https://www.hushtools.com wl4EARECAB4FAjw/dc8XHGZhdXN0aW5lLkBodXNobWFpbC5jb20ACgkQGwpHwwWoj8Vv vACaAk0XZuTj8qbgtyjwlmdfyS73NKAAoIpf4cnbgyuIBU3CYqWVYKhP7Yyu =U2mr -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Konformist: Enrongate 01-11-02 (fwd)
by Jei 11 Jan '02

11 Jan '02

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 19:17:59 -0000 From: robalini <robalini(a)aol.com> Reply-To: konformist-owner(a)yahoogroups.com To: konformist(a)yahoogroups.com Subject: Konformist: Enrongate 01-11-02 ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> FREE COLLEGE MONEY CLICK HERE to search 600,000 scholarships! http://us.click.yahoo.com/vf6MrB/4m7CAA/ySSFAA/zgSolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Please send as far and wide as possible. Thanks, Robert Sterling Editor, The Konformist http://www.konformist.com Justice Opens Criminal Probe Of Enron By Kevin Drawbaugh 1-10-2 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Justice Department said on Wednesday it had opened a criminal investigation of Enron Corp., as the controversy over the energy giant's collapse widened. Officials declined to say exactly when the criminal probe began. But they said it was centered in the department's criminal division and that a task force was being set up to handle the case. Robert Bennett, attorney for Enron, said, "When this investigation is finished, a lot of the things that people are reading and hearing will be proven to be not true." He said he was pleased the Justice Department was centralizing its inquiry. "It is very difficult to deal with multiple entities ... We have been in contact with several different prosecutors," Bennett said. Once the world's largest energy trader, Enron slid in mere weeks last year from Wall Street stardom to making the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history on Dec. 2. Its downfall, after withdrawal of a rescue takeover bid by rival Dynegy Inc., threw thousands out of work and devastated investors. The episode sapped the life savings of many Enron employees whose 401 (k) retirement plans depended on the company's stock, while top executives allegedly pocketed fat profits by selling ahead of a dizzying plunge in the share price. The White House on Wednesday said it was likely to soon propose new policies to guard against a repeat of the Enron debacle. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, asked about the Justice Department probe, told Reuters it was important to get to the bottom of the Enron collapse and develop new policies to protect workers and pensioners. "It's important for the investigation to proceed to determine what was done and why it was done. The president also believes it's important to explore new policies so it (a similar collapse) can never happen again," Fleischer said. Asked whether new policies would be announced soon, he said, "likely." ENRON FACES MULTIPLE PROBES The Houston, Texas-based company, once ranked No. 7 on the Fortune 500 list of large corporations, is also being probed by five congressional committees, the market-regulating Securities and Exchange Commission and the Labor Department. At the heart of Enron's problems were complex financial partnerships - - known as special-purpose entities -- set up by Enron executives and used to keep debt off the company's highly leveraged books. After some deals involving the partnerships went sour, Enron in October had to take a $1 billion charge against earnings and cut shareholder equity by $1.2 billion. Those moves drew market attention to the partnerships, triggering a crisis in investor confidence and credit-rating downgrades that ultimately led to bankruptcy court. The SEC said its 10-week-old probe of Enron and its long-time auditor, the accounting firm Andersen, would not be altered by the Justice Department's action. "The Justice Department and the SEC frequently run concurrent investigations," said SEC spokeswoman Christi Harlan. The decision at Justice to move to a full-fledged criminal investigation came after weeks of examining whether such a probe was warranted, officials said. They were unable to say whether any charges would ever result from the investigation. "I'm not assuming they will file charges," Bennett said. "This is a very preliminary investigation ... To my knowledge there's no evidence of wrongdoing yet. You have a business failure and you have a lot of allegations. But allegations are not the same as evidence." The departmental task force on the case is expected to include federal prosecutors from Houston, New York and San Francisco. Also on the task force will be members of the Justice Department's fraud section, officials said. Enron was a major contributor to the election campaign of President Bush, as well as many other lawmakers in Washington. The once politically powerful company also advised the Bush administration on energy policy. The head of Congress' investigative arm said on Wednesday he would decide within a month whether to sue the White House over its refusal to name industry executives the administration met with last year while drafting its new energy policy. Shares in Enron closed on Wednesday at 79 cents on the New York Stock Exchange, off an August 2000 high of $90.56. ***** Enron Auditor Says Documents Gone Associated Press Last Updated: Jan. 10, 2002 at 3:39:49 p.m. WASHINGTON - The firm that audited the books of collapsed Enron Corp., Arthur Andersen LLP, disclosed Thursday that its employees had destroyed a ``significant but undetermined'' number of documents related to the company. Federal law enforcement agencies and congressional investigators are seeking the documents as part of their inquiries into the failure of the giant energy-trading company, which left countless investors burned and employees out of work with billions of dollars of losses in their Enron-heavy retirement accounts. Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., whose House Energy and Commerce Committee is among the agencies and panels investigating, called the destruction of documents ``a deeply troubling development.'' ``Anyone who destroyed records simply out of stupidity should be fired. Anyone who destroyed records to try and subvert our investigation should be prosecuted,'' Tauzin said. The Big Five accounting firm said in a statement that in recent months, electronic files and other documents related to its auditing of Enron had been destroyed or deleted. Chicago-based Andersen said its company policy ``required in certain circumstances the destruction of certain types of documents.'' However, the firm said, millions of documents related to Enron still exist, and it has managed to retrieve some of the deleted electronic files. Andersen said it is continuing retrieval efforts through electronic backup files, ``and is continuing in its efforts to fully learn and understand all the facts related to this issue.'' Andersen has asked John Danforth, the former Missouri attorney general and U.S. senator, ``to conduct an immediate and comprehensive review of Andersen's records management policy and to recommend improvements.'' Andersen's auditing work for Enron, which entered last month into the largest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history, is being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The surprise announcement by Andersen came in a day punctuated by revelations from members of the Bush administration concerning Enron. The White House disclosed that Enron Chairman Kenneth L. Lay reached out to two of President Bush's Cabinet officers when the energy company was collapsing. Attorney General John Ashcroft, who received campaign contributions from Enron executives during his failed 2000 senatorial bid, said he will recuse himself from the criminal investigation of Enron being conducted by the Justice Department. Andersen said that in recent months, people in the firm involved with the Enron auditing ``disposed of a significant but undetermined number of electronic and paper documents and correspondence.'' Ken Johnson, a spokesman for Tauzin, said Andersen officials told committee investigators Thursday that thousands of documents had been destroyed. ***** http://www.wsws.org WSWS : News & Analysis : North America New York Times defends Bush on links to Enron corporate fraud By David Walsh 10 January 2002 True to form, the editors of the New York Times have rushed to the defense of President Bush against suggestions that his administration could be implicated in one of the largest corporate frauds in history, which produced the collapse of Enron Corporation, the energy trading giant. Bush administration officials, and George W. Bush personally, had the most intimate ties to top Enron officials, including Chairman and CEO Kenneth Lay, one of the biggest fundraisers for the Bush 2000 campaign and the finance chairman of the Bush inaugural. The company filed for Chapter 11 status in December, the largest corporate bankruptcy in US history, leaving thousands of workers unemployed and with decimated retirement savings, and devastating thousands more small investors. Ten congressional committees and federal agencies have announced investigations into suspected illegal activities at the once high- flying firm, which at one time ranked seventh on the Fortune 500 list of the largest companies in the US, and whose stock price, once more than $90, had fallen to 66 cents a share by January 4. The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, chaired by Joseph Lieberman, the Connecticut Democrat, will open hearings January 24. A January 4 Times editorial, "The Enron Post-Mortem," noted: "No company has more generously backed President Bush throughout his political career than Enron," adding that company Chairman Kenneth Lay, "was among the influential advisers to Vice President Dick Cheney's secretive energy task force last spring." Then the Times arrives at its central theme: "Democrats ... should resist the temptation to use the Enron saga for cheap political gain. Talk of a `cancer on the presidency' [a reference to the Watergate scandal] and of a `Bush Whitewater' is unwarranted at this point, and threatens to trivialize and unduly politicize an inquiry vital to the health of the American economy." One has to rub one's eyes in disbelief. This comes from the newspaper that helped launch Whitewaterwith a notorious article by Jeff Gerth in March 1992and elevate it into a national scandal. Countless editorials appeared in the Times over the years portraying Whitewater as of monumental significance and declaring that every other scandal and misstep of the Clinton administration somehow flowed from it. Looked at objectively, Whitewater was small change. The real estate scheme was liquidated years before Clinton entered the White House and involved a failed investment, on the Clintons' part, of less than $100,000. It had no financial or political significance until the American media, led by the Times, and Clinton's far-right political opponents, seized on it as a pretext to undermine the Democratic administration. The collapse of multibillion-dollar Enron, on the other hand, has vast implications. It is a serious economic blow to tens of thousands of people, its former workers first of all. As the Washington Post noted, "Enron's employees were encouraged to invest their 401(k) plans in Enron stock, which came to make up more than half the assets in the company's retirement system. Enron's collapse therefore left many of the 4,500 U.S. employees who were laid off pensionless as well as jobless." A 33-year-old employee of the firm told senators in December that the value of his Enron stock had fallen from $1.3 million to $20,000. Charles Prestwood told his questioners, "I'm a very broke person. I lost everything I had." Company officials, according to widely reported allegations, forced employees to hold on to their stock as its value plunged in October and November. Executives reportedly meanwhile sold their shares and, on the eve of the declaration of bankruptcy, distributed some $100 million in bonuses to hundreds of high-level employees. Enron and the Republican Party Everything one learns about the operation of this company, to put it bluntly, stinks to high heaven. And linking the scandal to the Republican Party and the current White House is not an exercise in partisan "politicizing," let alone "trivializing." Enron is itself the product of the policies pursued by the Republican rightand largely supported by the Democratsover the past decade and a half, through the deregulation of energy markets. And the personal ties between Enron and the Bush administration are so extensive that one can only indicate them in outline form: * Kenneth Lay, Enron's chairman, has been George W. Bush's chief financial supporter and key backer since the latter went into politics. The connection between Lay and the Bush family goes back to the administration of the elder George Bush. Lay, known to the current president as "Kenny Boy," was a White House guest during the first Bush administration, which sponsored the passage of the 1992 Energy Policy Act. This legislation compelled established utility companies to open their transmission lines to electricity distributed through Enron's speculative marketing. * Lay and Enron together have given $2 million to George W. Bush's election efforts. In 2000 a company memo "recommended" that employees contribute to the Bush campaign: low-level managers were urged to give $500 and senior executives at least $5,000. Lay was listed by the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2000 as one of the "Pioneers" who raised at least $100,000, while Enron gave $100,000 to the inauguration gala, a contribution matched by Lay and his wife personally. * Lay was the only energy company executive to meet alone with Cheney when the latter was holding his secret discussion last year on a new energy policy. Cheney has so far rebuffed efforts by the General Accounting Office to reveal the others participants at those meetings and what they discussed. * Between 1995 and 2000 Enron donated $4.4 million to presidential and congressional candidates, more than any other company except UPS and Lockheed Martin. Enron contributed to the campaigns of 71 of the 100 current senators and nearly half the 435 members of congress. The investment paid off. In 2000 Enron secured exemption for its energy derivatives business under an act regulating commodity trading futures. * Another major beneficiary of Enron financial generosity has been Senator Phil Gramm, the Texas Republican right-wing demagogue, who pushed through the 2000 legislation just cited and whose wife Wendy sits on the company's board of directors. Wendy Gramm served under the first Bush as chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission at the time it allowed for an exemption in the trading of energy derivatives, which later became Enron's most lucrative activity. Gramm resigned from her government position to take a seat on Enron's board. In November 1998 she sold $276, 912 in Enron stock. * A number of other members of the first Bush administration joined Enron after Clinton's victory in 1992, including James Baker (who helped mastermind the hijacking of the Florida vote in 2000) and Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher. * Numerous officials went directly from Enron to the new administration in 2001, following the installation of George W. Bush. For example, Thomas White Jr., Bush's secretary of the Army, had been Vice Chairman of Enron Energy Services; he also served as a member of Enron's Executive Committee and Chief Executive Officer for Enron Operations Corporation. Bush's top economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsey, was an Enron consultant. Trade representative Robert Zoellick, an official in the Reagan administration and former counselor to Baker when he was secretary of the Treasury, served on Enron's Advisory council. Chief White House political adviser and dirty tricks operator, Karl Rove, at one time owned Enron stock worth $250,000. * In December Bush named former Montana governor Mark Racicot, and a registered lobbyist for the firm of Bracewell & Patterson where he personally represented Enron, as chair of the Republican National Committee. Racicot insisted that he would continue representing Enron and his other corporate clientswith the blessing of the White House even while heading the Republican Party, making him "instantly," in the words of one commentator, "the most powerful influence peddler in Washington." There is another sense in which the Enron collapse is connected to the White House. Both the Houston-based corporation and the Bush administration have engaged in massive misrepresentation of their financial books. Enron systematically shifted debts to off-book partnerships set up by company executives, to disguise the fact that it had relatively few assets. The Bush administration engaged in financial flimflam on an even larger scale in pushing through its record tax cut for the wealthy. If it happened under Clinton? What if the spectacular collapse of a massive corporate enterprise, operated by one of the president's closest cronies, had occurred under the previous administration? Columnist Molly Ivins legitimately asks her readers to imagine that "Clinton's long-time, all-time biggest campaign contributor, a guy for whom Clinton has carried water over the years, a guy with unparalleled `access,' a shaper of policy, a man with a veto on regulatory appointments affecting his business, with connections at every level of the administration, a political fixer beyond the wildest dreams of James Riadyimagine that this guy's worldwide empire has tumbled into bankruptcy in just three months amid cascading reports of lies, monumental accounting errors, evasions, iffy financial statements, insider deals, a board of directors rife with conflicts of interest, top executives bailing out with millions while regular employees see their life savings shrink to nothingimagine all this back in the day of Bill Clinton.... [W] e'd have four congressional investigations, three special prosecutors, two impeachment inquiries ... by now." This seems perfectly obvious, but not to the Times editors. As a corporate entity, Enron proved to be a criminal conspiracy. It shares this characteristic with the Bush administration. Indeed Enron's fingerprints are all over the present regime; its officials have helped draw up policy; its former officials are running important departments of the US government. In the face of this, the Times editors caution the Democrats against seeking "cheap political gain" from the affair. (The Washington Post editorialized January 6 along the same lines, chastising Democrats who "seem tempted" to focus "on links between Enron and the Bush administration.") The attempt by the Times to minimize the political significance of the Enron disaster and thus render aid and comfort to George W. Bush is consistent with the rightward turn by what passes today for American liberalism, a thoroughly rotten and compromised political force. Throughout the Clinton administration, the Times collaborated with ultra-right-wing forces in keeping the pot boiling in a series of largely concocted scandals, which did not lead to criminal charges but disrupted the administration politically, culminating in Clinton's impeachment and Senate trial. The Times joined in the witch- hunt over Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, giving a political cover to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, the congressional Republican leadership and a cabal of right-wing lawyers, judges and political operatives. While the Times warns today about "trivializing" the Enron collapse, it engaged in just such conduct throughout the Whitewater-Lewinsky years, insisting that the central issue was always the minutiae of Clinton's financial dealings in the 1980s, or his sexual activity in the 1990s, or whether he lied about one or the other, and not the right-wing campaign to stage a political coup d'état and oust an elected president. This campaign culminated in the theft of the 2000 presidential election and the installation of Bush in the White House by the Supreme Court. Having fueled the anti-Clinton fires and having accepted the hijacking of last year's election with barely a murmur of complaint, the Times editors have a vested interest in covering up for the regime that has come to power in part as the result of their own reactionary and cowardly positions. Moreover, their support for Bush's war in Afghanistan would be further discredited if they were obliged to admit that it was being run by the associates of corporate gangsters. In general, the Times editors react with hostility to anything that might encourage the growth of political and social opposition to the established order. Their January 4 editorial begins by referring to the need "to restore confidence in American capitalism and in the integrity of its financial markets." A dishonest and ill-fated project. The Times editors knowas well as anyone, for this is their milieuthat the American corporate and Wall Street establishments are corrupt to the bone and wracked by crisis. It will take considerably more than this kind of cynical and hypocritical editorializing to put that Humpty Dumpty together again. If you are interested in a free subscription to The Konformist Newswire, please visit: http://www.eGroups.com/list/konformist Or, e-mail konformist-subscribe(a)egroups.com with the subject: "I NEED 2 KONFORM!!!" (Okay, you can use something else, but it's a kool catch phrase.) Visit the Klub Konformist at Yahoo!: http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/klubkonformist Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

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Gov Deep Net Monitoring
by John Young 11 Jan '02

11 Jan '02

An anonymous ISP representative responds to "ISPs Not Filtering Viruses:" A major US ISP which is a subsidiary of a foreign corporation hosts a US government operation to monitor *all* traffic handled by the ISP at a central network operations center. This operation was set up as a condition for the foreign corporation to acquire the ISP and as far as known is not the result of a court order. No officer or employee of the foreign corporation or the ISP subsidiary has access to or control over the operation. Traffic is monitored by personnel who have security clearances for handling confidential information acquired by monitoring. Streaming data may be searched for key words or other information, collected and transmitted to the sponsoring agency for analysis and evaluation. The representative claims that another US government surveillance activity set up after September 11 is for ISPs to host sites set up to offer information likely to be sought by terrorists, such as detailed airline schedules or other dangerous information. The logs of access to these sites are copied to CDs daily and sent to the supervising agency. ISP personnel are forbidden to monitor the sites or examine the logs. Numerous US ISPs are allegedly involved in this activity. As far as known this activity is not the result of a court order. Cryptome would appreciate learning more about such non-court-ordered governmental Internet monitoring for publication. In particular, leads on information on the central monitoring operation at the foreign-owned ISP -- which sounds like a description of Verio, Cryptome's host, now owned by Japan's NTT Corporation. At the time of NTT's purchase of Verio, there were news reports of FBI objection to the sale unless arrangements were made to prevent foreign espionage and to avoid interference with lawful interceptions. Anonymous contributions welcomed. Encrypt if preferred. Public key on Cryptome home page.

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Re: Olympic Jewells: Utah = UK
by Michael Motyka 11 Jan '02

11 Jan '02

georgemw(a)speakeasy.net wrote : > >On 11 Jan 2002, at 12:19, Major Variola (ret) wrote: > >> "The Secret Service is one agency that hangs its hat on security that >> is discreet," Camillo said. >> "There will be a visual presence because of magnetometers and fencing. >> What you won't see is what I'll describe as a police state." > >I bet that guy's kicking himself in the ass after that quote. >I'm sure what he meant to imply was "there's nothing you'll >see that makes you think we're turning the place into a police state" >rather than what it comes out as sounding like, "there's a police >state, you just won't see it". > A happy accident. Overlooked by all but the most sensitive, alert types. >> http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-011102oly.story >> ..... >> Sounds like the British visitors will feel right at home... > >I'll feel right at home too...because I'll be staying home! > >One of life's little ironies is that the reason that security >was so crappy at the 72 olympics was that Germany wanted to >announce to the world "we're not Nazis anymore! >See, no police state!" > >There's probably a moral to the story, but I'm not learning anything. > Sure : High Profile == High Target Value, exponentially expensive security. >George > Oh, I've been to Lake Placid a few times, watched some ski jumpers, skaters etc. Practice is OK since there's no official bullshit going on. Ice^H^H^HWhiteface is OK. Pretty darn long run. I can't remember the last time I had even a remote interest in the Olympics. Too hyped. Too commercial. If this is some kind of unifying event that belongs to the whole world why can't all the stations televise it? Why can't anyone webcast it? Screw Olympics, Inc. If anyone starts up the Olympics again let me know. Mike PBS - The Greeks : Crucible of Civilization ME - The Geeks : Cubicle of Civilization BTW - I'm convinced about the random data stuff.

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RE: [Reformatted] Burning down the olympics
by Trei, Peter 11 Jan '02

11 Jan '02

> Eric Cordian[SMTP:emc@artifact.psychedelic.net] wrote: > > "I want to tell you something very clear: Don't worry about > American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, > and the Americans know it." > --Ariel Sharon > October 3, 2001 > Eric: I don't recall hearing about this remark on the news at the time, and I suspect I would have. A Google search turns up a number of cites, but they are all on white supremacist or anti-Isreal sites. The original source is the Islamic Association for Palestine site: http://www.iap.org. The message is archived at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/iapinfo/message/2132 Are there any major media citations in any country? If not, I suspect that this is a manufactured quote, like the ones we saw a few years ago where Janet Reno was alleged to indicate that Christians weren't good citizens. Regardless of what Sharon may or may not believe, I don't think he could have said this without the major media jumping all over it, in the way that Bush recently got pinged for referring to the people of Pakistan as 'Pakis' (a racial slur in Britain). Of course, one could take the self-fullfiling viewpoint that the fact that this quote only appears in extreme fringe publications is simply proof of total Jewish control of the major media. I prefer to apply Occam's Razor. Peter Trei ============================================================================ ================ This e-mail, its content and any files transmitted with it are intended solely for the addressee(s) and are PRIVILEGED and CONFIDENTIAL. Access by any other party is unauthorized without the express prior written permission of the sender. If you have received this e-mail in error you may not copy, disclose to any third party or use the contents, attachments or information in any way, Please delete all copies of the e-mail and the attachment(s), if any and notify the sender. Thank You. ============================================================================ ================

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Is George W. Bush God's President?
by Jei 11 Jan '02

11 Jan '02

http://www.observer.com/pages/conason.asp January 10, 2002|2:05 PM Rudolph Giuliani, a devout but not excessively rigorous Catholic, announced that `there was some divine guidance in the President being elected.' Is George W. Bush God's President? by Joe Conason Do tax cuts for the wealthy represent the will of God? What might normally be an impertinent and perhaps offensive question suddenly seems entirely reasonable after hearing George W. Bush's ungrammatical but passionate pledge to defend the tax cuts his administration provided to the richest, smallest segment of American citizens, at the cost of his own life if need be. The vow he uttered during his town-hall meeting in California over the weekend - "Not over my dead body will they raise your taxes!" - was the strongest he's made on any subject since his promise to deliver Osama bin Laden to justice "dead or alive." Even allowing for hyperbole, such edgy remarks indicate what matters most to Mr. Bush. For the moment, however, he appears more capable of fulfilling the former promise than the latter. And since it has lately become respectable to discuss his elevation to the nation's highest office as a matter of divine will, Mr. Bush's deep determination to empty the Treasury into the pockets of friends and supporters may likewise signify the unknowable agenda of the Almighty. Unbelievers will scoff at such notions, but in the wake of Sept. 11, the idea that a higher power ordained the inauguration of Mr. Bush is no longer confined to the loonier fringes of the religious right. While the President and the First Lady modestly demur whenever this topic comes up, others around the Oval Office assert that they are convinced. "I think President Bush is God's man at this hour," a top White House aide told a religious publication not long ago. Ralph Reed, the former director of the Christian Coalition who now chairs the G.O.P. in Georgia, says his fellow evangelicals believe God selected the President because "He knew George Bush had the ability to lead in this compelling way." Nor is this revelation confined solely to Protestant conservatives. Two days before Christmas, Rudolph Giuliani, a devout but not excessively rigorous Catholic, announced his own opinion that "there was some divine guidance in the President being elected." In this sentiment, the Time magazine "Man of the Year" was swiftly seconded by a Catholic bishop. (Again, a skeptic might impiously wonder why the Lord didn't simply bless Mr. Bush with the actual majority of votes. But faith is nothing without mystery.) The implications of all this are obviously profound. If the President is indeed guided by Providence in lavishing additional billions upon those who already enjoy so much material abundance - even while the numbers of unemployed, uninsured and homeless soar - then his ascension may represent a millennial reversal of heavenly policy. Until now, few directives have been clearer than the guidance enunciated by prophets of both the Old and New Testaments regarding earthly greed. "Woe to you who are rich," Jesus told his disciples, "for you have already received your comfort." The impoverished carpenter also reportedly informed a well-heeled acquaintance that it is "easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." His best-known speech included the admonition that "you cannot serve both God and Mammon." Universally familiar as those statements are, they are reliably among the most widely ignored. Entire schools of theology, across all ecumenical lines, have long been devoted to parsing a convenient loophole in such injunctions. They aren't the sort of Biblical quotations that politicians try to post in public schools, or that televangelists cite as evidence that Republicans are the party of God. What a relief it would be if the tax policy of the Bush administration means that we no longer have to worry about worshipping the golden calf. Divine inspiration may not be a persuasive explanation for Mr. Bush's fiscal schemes, which are pushing the government into deficit and threatening to prolong the recession. It is indeed hard to imagine that any omniscient power would prefer a $254 million tax break for Enron to a cut in payroll taxes for the working poor. But it's just as difficult to credit any of the more earthly justifications emanating from the White House press office. In any case, not all branches of the federal government have awakened yet to the new dispensation. On the same day that Mr. Bush made his "dead body" remark, a report issued by the Congressional Budget Office disparaged his tax cuts as useless for reviving the economy. According to the C.B.O. analysis, better results would ensue from more progressive cuts in payroll and sales taxes. While the nonpartisan report appropriately said nothing about theology, its recommendations were highly reminiscent of that old-fashioned scriptural preference for the poor and the toilers. So perhaps Mr. Bush's supporters should reconsider their political epiphany. The followers of the last public figure who claimed to be executing God's will are now dodging daisy-cutters. You may reach Joe Conason via email at: jconason(a)observer.com. This column ran on page 5 in the 1/14/2002 edition of The New York Observer. Joe Conason is the author of The Hunting of the President: the Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton Get it today: COPYRIGHT © 2001 THE NEW YORK OBSERVER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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Olympic Jewells: Utah = UK
by Major Variola (ret) 11 Jan '02

11 Jan '02

[Brinworld, domestic surveillance] Monitoring nearly everything will be hundreds of surveillance cameras, some able to scan an Olympic identification badge from 1,000 feet away. "The Secret Service is one agency that hangs its hat on security that is discreet," Camillo said. "There will be a visual presence because of magnetometers and fencing. What you won't see is what I'll describe as a police state." http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-011102oly.story ..... Sounds like the British visitors will feel right at home...

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