December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

C-punks, marketing for the masses
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- No disrespect intended, but I think that the various "let's sanitize the Cypherpunk message for mass acceptance" marketing/soundbite proposals are pointless. Cypherpunks is a mailing list, not a political party (or a platform). - From my perspective, the organizing meme for the list is not "strong crypto is really important, so let's write some and lobby our lawmakers to make sure it stays legal" but "strong crypto is here and is changing the dynamics of force, politics, and power, so let's see what we can do with it." (And no, I don't think it's important to spread that "meme" (a term I use with some trepidation) around to get "market share" for it. Ideas are not football teams nor initiative proposals.) I appreciate and support and have participated in various write-yer- legislator activities. They're useful short-term. But if Tim May and Duncan Frissell and the other list members who've dared to make predictions about the impact of crypto on government and economics are correct, what the government and the legislators want doesn't matter. If they're wrong, what we want doesn't matter. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMFsujH3YhjZY3fMNAQHfogP9HMEe6/N7B0q4cov8knythwuqha4yFmsR Yfxtp8/ukXhfJlJQ5Mb40AYWcNwWGXmzd8J2KzrYBntKN60SZnd/StRQfHs6rtre hLHZGss4bR1c9w0+Jsr3TKD5UQe2up2cEuY9u6qN6QyVK9h9QtfSHpJqb3bAZlla fA3GMtB2qlc= =Phdj -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Arab youths bypass government's CyberPatrol Net-censorship
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - Badr knows his way around the Internet. He easily sidesteps government attempts to block access to the pornographic sites that have lured him and other young Arabs to the "information superhighway." "They close doors, but I can get in through windows," said Badr, a 20-year-old who scoffs at the struggles of conservative Arab governments to police cyberspace. With the Internet growing more popular, the sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf are becoming like Western parents trying to keep pornography away from children. But it's not just young people that leaders worry about in these strict Islamic societies, where women cover in black veils outside their houses and public mingling between the sexes is discouraged. Kisses and foul language are edited out of foreign movies, and magazines arrive with pages torn out and photos of women inked over in black to hide even a hint of cleavage. Enter the Internet and the cry for censorship of pornography - and in some cases politics - grows louder. All the region's Arab states but one, impoverished Yemen, which cannot afford an effort to police the Web, are working to limit access to Internet sites. Etisalat, the only Internet provider to the seven states of the United Arab Emirates, set up software blockades after government officials complained about free access to the Web. A "proxy cache server" cuts out sites deemed offensive by Etisalat, which is partly owned by the government. Khaldoon Tabbaza, publisher of the Jordan-based Arabia Online service, said some attempts at censorship get ridiculous. "There is software programmed to block sites which contain certain keywords such as nude, sex and breast. So if you're interested in getting access to information about Middlesex county in the United Kingdom, research about breast cancer or - a chicken breast recipe, you cannot," he said. Despite the government efforts, many Arab youths search out material on the Internet virtually unchallenged. Badr, the young Emirates hacker who showed off his Internet skills on condition only his first name was used, is evidence the system doesn't work. Clicking his mouse, he moved through a series of sites and soon he's looking at naked women and pornographic video images, complete with sound effects. Robert, a Lebanese who also insisted on using only his first name, thwarts an Arab taboo almost as strong as that against pornography - talking to enemy Israel. "I spend two to three hours online (several times a week) chatting with people in Israel. Its very interesting for me to exchange thoughts and opinions with the people I was brought up to view as my enemies," said Robert, a 24-year-old sales executive based in Dubai. "We do exchange some tough words when some sort of violence erupts in the region, but I think that is part of getting to know each other." Qatar and Oman are the only Persian Gulf states with even fledgling diplomatic ties to Israel. The other countries have no telecommunications or mail links to the Jewish state, but e-mail via the Internet sidesteps that. Qatar and Oman both try to block access to pornographic sites, however, using such software as "Cyber Patrol" and "Net Nanny." Kuwait's Communications Ministry is working on a system of blocking access to proscribed Internet sites. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, one of the most conservative Muslim countries, has yet to officially join the cyberspace age. It has set up a committee to oversee the introduction, but - with the wide range of Saudi taboos - few expect the Internet to soon enter everyday life in the kingdom. Still, even in Saudi Arabia, people find ways to track down scandalous Internet sites. Saudis who can afford it make long-distance telephone calls to dial up Internet networks in other countries, mainly in the Emirates and Bahrain, but also in Britain. The problems of censorship grow with the Internet's popularity. The Emirates' Etisalat has 20,000 subscribers and an estimated 100,000 users. Internet cafes have opened in Oman and Qatar and in Dubai, one of the seven states in the Emirates. An official at Qatar Telecommunications Corp., speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid offending government and religious leaders, conceded that access to offensive material on the Internet could not be completely blocked. But he insisted it could be controlled. Others simply refuse to recognize the problem. "Most of our customers come here for the fun of it," said Ali Mohammed, manager at an Internet cafe in Qatar. "They are not interested in pornography."

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Re: encouraging digital pseudonyms (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Mon, 22 Sep 1997 17:45:58 -0400 > From: "Robert A. Costner" <pooh(a)efga.org> > Subject: Re: encouraging digital pseudonyms > Perhaps I am missing something here. I find it easy to distinguish type-I > anonymous traffic from nym mail. Anonymous mail usually comes from an > address like 'anon@' or 'nobody@' while pseudonymous mail will come from a > pseudonym. A pseudonym and an anonymous account are NOT the same thing. That is what you are missing. 'ravage' is a 'nym that I have been using since about '82 or '83 (I used 'ogre' and 'ghost' before that), I have NEVER used an account such as 'anon<foo>@bar.com' while I do generate traffic under other short-term 'nym's. The only reason anonymous mail comes as 'anon@' or 'nobody@' is because that is the way they are currently set up. If an anon-remailer were serious about long-term survival the output accounts would look just like the user accounts and not something as blatent as the above. Anonymous remailers will have arrived when they quit using the simple patterning as above and they figure out how to charge for their services (anonymous privacy is a commodity with a worth, seriously undervalued in todays market). ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http:// www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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Persistent Persona
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Interesting Statistic in WSJ
by Miner 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

% of labor pool working for S&P500 companies = 14 % % of labor pool working for government = 14.5% S&P500 increase in productivity is running about 3.9%/year Government 0.5% per year. The 0.5% is probably attributed to the ever increasing number of citizen units that end up in a prison working for 55 cents an hour, 1,000,000 plus units and counting. Do they offer licence plate stamping courses in jc?

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Re: The Taxing Problem (fwd)
by Jean-Francois Avon 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 22 Sep 1997 21:31:23 -0400 (EDT) From: Jean-Francois Avon <jf_avon(a)cti02.citenet.net> To: e$(a)thumper.vmeng.com Subject: Re: The Taxing Problem > Few jurisdictions have begun to grapple with the issue, but they > will, since many of them around the world are starved for > revenues. And when they do, their tax authorities will discover > the wonderland quality of the Internet. Two jurisdictions--the > state of Florida and Tacoma, Wash.--recently tried to impose > some level of taxation on e-commerce. It is not everybody who say that their only wish is to get our keys for the sake of reading our love letters... [see later remark] > a Web site based in a low-tax jurisdiction. Distribution through > the Internet could make the tax authority just another > superfluous middleman. Since when the tax man was a middleman? > problems. The very concept of "permanent establishment" in an > international tax context as the basis for taxation is > unworkable in the information age. Basically, the law of causality starts to catch them up. Money is an expression of Man's Reason, expressed through it's productive abilities. Since taxing is always coercitive, it goes against individuals's best judgment. So, when there is nothing to physically coerce, they loose the ability to tax. > The time to explore Internet taxation issues is now--before > electronic commerce really heats up, before the enormous > economic potential it offers is lost in a welter of confusing, > conflicting, and counterproductive tax policies. "Economic Potential", Newspeak for "confiscation of production to finance other's peoples dreams". And they realize that if they don't clamp on it *now*, it'll go through their fingers like fine dry sand. "To explore the [...] issues": Newspeak for "to bully the Freedom-of-e-commerce groups", Newspeak for "to figure out a way to keep milking them without killing them". > Legislatures > worldwide need to hear from the business community about the > promise of electronic commerce, and about the need to protect it > through wise and coordinated tax policies How in the hell tax policies will "protect" the electronic commerce? Easy: just the way the Mafia used to "protect" commerces from burning up... Newspeak Master. > --policies that take > into account the way the Internet really works. Newspeak for "how to keep milking, or rather, keep bloodsucking them without killing them? And accessorily, how exactly does it work? In a totally non-private way. So, *naturally*, businesspersons will want to protect their privacy. But how in hell is the govt be able to do *any* monitoring of transactions if the transactions are encrypted? Duhhh... Note to Unicorn: how does 2+2 ? :-) > > Maybe the business community needs to take the first step. > Corporations should initiate the debate on how to create tax > policies that do not cripple electronic commerce. Peoples on Death Row are more lucky:: they don't get coaxed to weave their own hanging rope... Why concede them their screwed-up, leech mentality basic premises? In no way should we engage in this discussion. All we need to do is to expose our basic premises and say that the case rest. > There's only > one way to move Internet commerce from here to there, and that's > to engage in some forward-looking discussion. I.e. there is only one way to make us swallow their Newspeak: to dazzle us with their fancy and rhetorics in order to make us abandon our basic premises. But will we? :-b --8== Ciao jfa

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The Suitcases have been Successfully Tested
by Tim May 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Monday September 22 3:54 PM EDT Russia May Have 'Lost' Nuclear Bombs By Andrei Khalip MOSCOW (Reuter) - President Boris Yeltsin's former environmental safety adviser said in remarks published on Monday that some of Russia's portable nuclear bombs might indeed be missing, as asserted by another former Yeltsin aide. "The statement by Alexander Lebed concerning suitcases with nuclear bombs is definitely not groundless," academician Alexei Yablokov wrote in a letter to Novaya Gazeta weekly. ... He mentioned more than 100 suitcase-sized nuclear bombs, any one of which could kill up to 100,000 people. .... The United States said then it had detected a seismic event "with explosive characteristics" near the Novaya Zemlya test site, but Russian officials flatly denied any nuclear tests. They said Russia had voluntarily given up testing in 1992 and was sticking to this position. --end quote-- I was unable to attend the Demonstration at NZ, but I am now more willing to bid for the suitcases than before. They really pack a punch! I bid $800,000 for Suitcase Number 57. --Tim May The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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InfoWar 19 / GeigerBurg III Text
by A Player To Be Named Later 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

B ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The True Story of the InterNet Part III InfoWar Final Frontier of the Digital Revolution Behind the ElectroMagnetic Curtain by TruthMonger <tm(a)dev.null> Copyright 1997 Pearl Publishing ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- InfoWar Table of Contents * Extra! : News From the Front ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Extra! : News From the Front ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [News Flash! From: http://www.turnleft.com "The Home of Liberalism on the Web"] What They Don't Want You to Know by Auto-Correspondent "http://www.cjnetworks.com/~cubsfan/conspiracy.html" In order to understand InfoWar you need to realize that everything is controlled by a CypherPunks list made up of Cult of One members with help from Nobody and Anonymous. The conspiracy first started during the Censorship Experiment in majordomo(a)toad.com. They have been responsible for many events throughout history, including the InfoWar. Today, members of the conspiracy are everywhere. They can be identified by their Code writing. They want to electronically forge TruthMonger posts and imprison resisters in Silicon Valley using Trei Transponders. In order to prepare for this, we all must Nuke DC. Since the media is controlled by Declan McCullagh we should get our information from Black Unicorn's yellow-menace writing in blanc snow.. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Just as he had suspected! A Player To Be Named Later read the output of the Java script at Left Turn's 'Make Your Own Conspiracy Theory' page. Left Turn had confirmed everything he had been discovering on his own, even when he had discovered facts and information which pointed toward completely contradictory conspiracy theories. A Player To Be Named Later recognized that this was positive proof that the roots of the Great Conspiracy had spread throughout the very fabric of reality, itself. He now knew that the conspiracy was no longer just some outside entity which lived in the shadows around him, waiting for him to let down his guard before it sprang its waiting traps and enclosed him with its vicious iron jaws. He now knew that it went much, much deeper than that. Now, he knew the conspiracy was in his Mind! A Player To Be Named Later had immediately dropped all of his other InterNet personas and erased all signs of them from his hard drive. With the new knowledge he had gained, he knew that he could no longer trust even himself. The first sign that the conspiracy had managed to spread throughout both reality and virtual reality were the posts to the CypherPunks mailing list by Damaged Justice. Subject: Internet putting truth in danger From: Damaged Justice <frogfarm(a)yakko.cs.wmich.edu> Organization: Somewhere just far enough outside of your jurisdiction To: cypherpunks(a)Algebra.COM THE generation that has grown up on The X-Files poses a threat to the future of journalism, Fergal Keane, the BBC's Asia Correspondent, said last night. Subject: Assassination Politics of a sort There's a bounty on Gordie Howe's head. And Gordie isn't laughing about it. Howe, 69, is planning to file a police complaint against a California radio personality who offered a bounty to have "the old fool pummeled back to reality." Subject: FBI vs Silicon Valley: Guess Who's Winning? The likely outcome: a tactical retreat by industry to avoid an all-out rout. The electronic wizards seem to have met their match in a Washington cop named Louis Freeh. Subject: Trac[k]ing the Successful Drug User By deploying their questionnaire on the Web, the researchers are hoping to use the relative anonymity of the Net to access a "hidden population" of drug users who would be disinclined to give accurate reports of illegal use to face-to-face interviewers, Nicholson says. In a short series of posts, Damaged Justice had managed to subtly point out that: The InterNet, in the hands of the public, was a threat to truth. Assassination Politics would lead to the death of heroes such as Gordie Howe. Louis Freeh is going to kick the electronic wizards' butts. Successful people on the InterNet are all secret drug users. A Player To Be Named Later had seen the duplicity in Damaged Justice's posts long before this, just as he had in the posts of Se7en. Se7en purported to be a diabolical hacker turned lecturer, working the security and LEA (law enforcement agency) circuit, but it had become obvious that it was they who were working him. Se7en had got caught up in the LEA's child pornography ruse and wrote a lengthy diatribe to the CypherPunks list about the millions of pedophiles lurking in the shadows of the InterNet. This came at a time which was convenient for adding support to the agendas of several of the government shills working the list at that time. A Player To Be Named Later had followed the trail of alleged pointers and addresses that were provided by Se7en, only to find the usual spooks lurking in the background. It was obvious that the spooks were doing their best to cultivate a crop of genuine pedophiles by seeding the InterNet with pointers to trails of perversion that they had carefully laid out themselves. No doubt they would keep their self-generated perverts on ice until it came time to drag them out into the public eye for one of their show-and-tell displays of the 'good fight' they were putting up against the evil InterNet. A Player To Be Named Later hadn't run his usual analysis on the past posts and email traffic of Damaged Justice and those connected to him, but he was not sure that it really mattered anymore, anyway. There were indications that FUD/DoubleSpeak/SpinDoctoring/VirtualTruth-whatever you wanted to name it-had reached critical mass. He took another look at one of Choate's posts to the CypherPunks list: Subject: 6 USAF Crashes in 7 days = InfoWar? From: Jim Choate <ravage(a)ssz.com> To: cypherpunks(a)ssz.com (Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer) Just a thought... The connection was obvious. A number of stories made it into the periphery of the mainstream press concerning the U.S. spooks campaign to murder 'bad' foreigners by introducing defective parts into the products they bought for their armed forces. Then the U.S. forces immediately got hit with a rash of high-profile 'accidents' to their own military units. It was a clear message to the U.S. spooks that two (or more) could play that game. So clear, in fact, that the Pentagon publicly and privately pulled in the reins on a variety of normal and special operations, in order to shake the trees for defective parts and defective soldiers. (Mostly the latter.) The Real Guy had planned an expose on the background events taking place in this area, but had decided not to do so, uncertain as to why he had made that decision, at the time. Now, A Player To Be Named Later realized that it was because FUD (Fear, Uncertainty & Disinformation) had become the rule of the day, and there was no longer anyone left to preach to but the converted-and the converted were becoming unconverted at an increasingly rapid rate. It had become obvious, I suppose, when it took so little effort on the Pentagon's part to cover up the pair of rogue U.S. Air Force pilots who had been positively linked to the Circle of Eunuchs by the secret task force dedicated to rooting them out of their hiding places deep within the bowels of government and corporate agencies around the world. It was not surprising that they had managed to cover up the involvement of the nuclear bomber pilot, since they were able to label her a sex criminal before she had taken any overt action that would serve to trigger the interest of those paying close attention to such things. It was her proximity to the Author's current location that had led to her discovery. The retired Air Force intelligence officer who had been assigned to shadow the Author in Do Well, Saskatchewan, had alerted Canadian Customs to notify him any time that soldiers from Minot Air Force Base crossed into his territory. Although she never made physical contact with the Author, her mere presence in close proximity to him led to an in-depth investigation that turned up enough 'coincidences' to require her removal from service. What was very troubling, however, was the fact that another of the Author's contacts, from the Air Force base at his old stomping grounds in Tucson, had been able to break formation on a training run, fly halfway across the country with live bombs, almost making it to the site of the McVeigh trial in Denver, and yet it hardly rated a "Gee, I wonder why he did that?" in the mainstream press. Tentative suggestions that the pilot was 'emotionally troubled' were eaten up by the press, despite evidence to the contrary from his friends and relatives, so readily that the Air Force never even had to release the 'psychiatrist reports' that had been hastily prepared to be 'leaked' to the right sources, if needed. A Player To Be Named Later wondered if all reporters for the mainstream press were not, in fact, still incarcerated in the press compounds set up for Operation Desert Storm. Were the 'backgrounds' they appeared to be reporting from in reality just virtual creations from inside their media prison? A pilot carrying live bombs makes a beeline for the site of the Oklahoma Bomber's trial; a truck full nuclear warheads goes missing; soldiers on a base are the target of an armed assault; the pilot of a nuclear bomber is shanghaied on curiously slim pretexts; a horde of major armed forces figures suddenly resign or are shifted to non-sensitive positions-and the world hardly seems to notice. When a single former Russian General, however, with close connections to the spooks, writes a no-brainer book with unsupported claims about nuclear suitcases falling into the hands of the US's proclaimed 'enemies,' then the mainstream press snaps to attention and gives full coverage to the dark threat posed by theoretical, unseen, dark-skinned people who we will need to be protected from, in the future. "Gee, I wonder why he would do that?" A Player To Be Named Later said, sarcastically, while visualizing a dark-skinned person in a foreign country purchasing a nuclear suitcase from CIA-run Russian spooks. "I suppose that if there was hard, non-refutable evidence of an Air Force soldier purchasing a nuclear suitcase and going AWOL, headed for Washington, DC, that this would be the reaction of the mainstream press. But let a foreign 'darkie' try it, and all of a sudden we need to suspend some more basic human rights, even if it was a BATF shill who was being run by a CIA connected, former German intelligence operative who is related to a high-ranking German politician who was involved in the Iran-Contra drugs-for-arms scandal." A Player To Be Named Later reached for a bottle of Scotch sitting behind his laptop, taking a slow pull off of it as he reviewed the signs of the death of investigative journalism in the past few years. The CIA had used Woodward and Bernstein effectively during their assault on the Presidency at the close of the Nixon scandal. The problem was that it inspired a plethora of uncontrollable impersonators who wreaked havoc with their efforts at FUD control. So they orchestrated the movement of investigative journalism into the mundane mainstream of everyday life. The sheeple didn't care about world politics and behind the scenes power struggles. Their real interests lie in secret videos of an employee dipping his dick in a coworker's coffee; a mechanic putting the old distributor cap back on and charging the customer for a new one; a black mayor snorting coke and getting a little trim from the ladies of the night. All of this became breaking news which required the full force of the media digging into the dark corners of these people's lives. Until the world's nasty little secrets became just another everyday, run of the mill part of normal life. Now, Media Reality had finally approached critical mass, as foreseen by a variety of voices crying in the wilderness, from George Orwell to Marshal McLuhan. Now, it was only a matter of time. A Player To Be Named Later read the "Internet putting truth in danger" post by Damaged Justice, once again: Mr Keane, delivering the Huw Weldon Memorial Lecture at a television convention, said that he was worried about the growing influence of the Internet, and the conspiracy theories that are aired on it. God help us if things deteriorated to the point where ordinary people put the mainstream media 'truth' in danger by pointing out the obvious to people who didn't really want to know why a U.S. Air Force pilot would head for the site of McVeigh's trial with a load of live bombs. Maybe he just got lost He told the Royal Television Society's Cambridge Convention that the rash of rumours about the circumstances of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales showed that there was a public appetite for speculation and fantasy. He said: "Will the generation growing up on The X-Files really want to choose calm, considered reportage when they have science-fiction and fantasy?" "Calm, considered reportage." A Player To Be Named Later intoned, solemnly, thinking about the first interview he had seen by the major media with someone who had been close to the Princess's fatal accident. "Explosion." That was the first, and only, time he had heard that word used by someone who had been present at the time of the accident. By the time the rest of North America had awoken that morning, there were only reporters feeding the world the disinformation being officially released by the authorities. And in a world where reporters will dig up a dead body to do DNA tests to see if the deceased was, indeed, fucking Tom Cruise, the major networks somehow managed to 'lose' the footage of interviews with the original witnesses, offering, instead, interviews with people who thought that maybe something was perhaps taking place down there in the tunnel, but who really knows? We were told that there were no witnesses to the accident, yet we were still fed unlikely reports of a motorcycle with photographers on it zigzagging in front of the death vehicle at over a hundred miles an hour, and sundry other inanities reeking of 'now you see it, now you don't' spin doctoring. He said that the trend threatened to plunge reporting into the "rumour-ridden gloom of the Middle Ages". God forbid that unseemly rumors might spread concerning a man heading a covert organization involved in running illegal drugs and arms ascending to the Presidency after succeeding the front-man who had come to power as a result of those illegal actions, and who had invaded a foreign country to capture the drug-dealing monster who had been his closest bum-buddy during his spook days. God forbid that Joe Average should be exposed to the knowledge that a succession of their Presidents were backed by the big bucks made by their friends and relatives in business with the Nazis right up to the end of World War II. Knowledge such as this was dangerous knowledge that would put the spoon-fed "truth" of the mainstream media "in danger" if the InterNet was allowed to become a purveyor of 'unofficial' or 'non-approved' news. A Player To Be Named Later thought of the three days of intensive press coverage in which a multitude of mainstream media personnel spent hour upon hour adding fuel to 'official leak' inspired rumors while not seeming to be able to get any information at all on the players who were part and parcel of the media's daily business activities. He had been waiting to see the pictures of the concrete column that the heavily armored death vehicle had supposedly hit at over a hundred miles per hour. Nothing. {In Toledo, or Detroit, or some other 'cable channel' city, a day or so later, some no-name John Doe was killed after his vehicle struck a concrete column on a local road structure. There were reporters from a number of media sources there, getting close-ups of the vehicle, the column, and the damage to it, the broken scraps of concrete at the accident scene. A Player To Be Named Later saw it two or three times that day, as the media ensured that all the circumstances surrounding the death of John Doe would be subjected to the light of mainstream media 'truth.' He saw pictures from a variety of different angles, obviously taken in the interest of satisfying his 'right to know' all of the details surrounding the death of John Doe, Anywhere, USA.} ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- "The Xenix Chainsaw Massacre" "WebWorld & the Mythical Circle of Eunuchs" "InfoWar (Part III of 'The True Story of the InterNet') ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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nuclear_2.html
by maria＠linux.nycmetro.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Reuters New Media [ Yahoo | Write Us | Search | Info ] [ Index | News | World | Biz | Tech | Politic | Sport | Scoreboard | Entertain | Health ] _________________________________________________________________ Previous Story: Mir Computer Working; Gore Cautious on Future Next Story: AIDS Doctors Volunteer to Test Vaccine _________________________________________________________________ Monday September 22 3:54 PM EDT Russia May Have 'Lost' Nuclear Bombs By Andrei Khalip MOSCOW (Reuter) - President Boris Yeltsin's former environmental safety adviser said in remarks published on Monday that some of Russia's portable nuclear bombs might indeed be missing, as asserted by another former Yeltsin aide. "The statement by Alexander Lebed concerning suitcases with nuclear bombs is definitely not groundless," academician Alexei Yablokov wrote in a letter to Novaya Gazeta weekly. The letter was written on September 9, days after Lebed, former presidential security adviser, told the CBS News "60 Minutes" programme that the Russian military had lost track of some of its nuclear weapons. He mentioned more than 100 suitcase-sized nuclear bombs, any one of which could kill up to 100,000 people. Defence Minister Igor Sergeyev insisted on Monday that Russia's nuclear arsenal was under firm control. "There are no concerns over this issue," Interfax news agency quoted him as saying. "The nuclear weapons are under permanent control." The minister appeared to be making a general remark and did not mention Yablokov or Lebed. Nuclear experts with international think-tanks have said in the past that Russia has strict control over its military nuclear sites and that they viewed nuclear bomb and missile theft as extremely unlikely. But they said there had been cases of theft of nuclear materials from power plants and scientific laboratories. Yablokov said the military might simply have no record of some of the portable nuclear bombs, which he said were made in the 1970s for the Soviet KGB for "terrorist purposes." "These nuclear charges were not registered by the Defence Ministry and as a result could have been dropped from the list of nuclear devices under international disarmament negotiations," Yablokov said. Yablokov, an outspoken advocate of environmental protection, also did not exclude that Russia carried out a nuclear test at its Arctic island of Novaya Zemlya last month. The United States said then it had detected a seismic event "with explosive characteristics" near the Novaya Zemlya test site, but Russian officials flatly denied any nuclear tests. They said Russia had voluntarily given up testing in 1992 and was sticking to this position. Yablokov's charges come at an embarrassing time for Russian officials, who are hosting U.S. Energy Secretary Federico Pena and Vice President Al Gore for wide-ranging talks due to include nuclear safety issues. Washington has more than once expressed concern over nuclear safety in Russia and what it called a possible transfer of Russian nuclear technologies to other countries, primarily Iran, which it views as a sponsor of international terrorism. Moscow says it is adhering strictly to its international nuclear non-proliferation obligations. Yablokov was sacked from Yeltsin's administration earlier this year. He had been in charge of environmental issues at top bodies of the former Soviet Union and Russia since 1989. He was chairman of Greenpeace-Soviet Union before 1990. _________________________________________________________________ ________________________ ___________ Help _________________________________________________________________ Previous Story: Mir Computer Working; Gore Cautious on Future Next Story: AIDS Doctors Volunteer to Test Vaccine _________________________________________________________________ [ Index | News | World | Biz | Tech | Politic | Sport | Scoreboard | Entertain | Health ] _________________________________________________________________ Reuters Limited Questions or Comments

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Minnesota Appeals Court Affirms Jurisdiction of the State
by Steve Schear 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From Rolling Good Times: In a recent action, the Minnesota Court of Appeals states that the Attorney General has the right to regulate internet activity. This is one of the first pieces of case law to arise in the area of internet gambling. http://www.rgtonline.com/MinnAppeals.html

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