From: Bill Vance Subject: The mess in Canada, and an interesting theory on why it's happening (fwd) Date: 02 Jul 2002 10:07:38 -0700 (PDT) ----------------------- begin forwarded message from Charles Riggs --------------------- Article in the Washington Times about how the attempt to force a gun registration scheme on Canadians may very well be an act by proxy of the U.S., a 'test bed' for the schemes of antigunners and animal-rights fanatics in this country - http://www.washtimes.com/sports/20020630-18981054.htm Worth reading - watch six - Charles. Charles Riggs Gunsite 1991 - DVC! "Fight Crime - Be armed - Fight back!" GOA-NRA-SAF ********************************* The Kentucky IDPA Studies Group: http://www.kyidpa.org ********************************* A parable for our times: http://www.kc3.org/sheep.htm ********************************* ----------------------- end forwarded message from Charles Riggs --------------------- -- RKBA! ***** Blessings On Thee, Oh Israel! ***** 4-19! ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- An _EFFECTIVE_ | Insured | All matter is vibration. | Let he who hath no weapon in every | by COLT; | -- Max Plank | weapon sell his hand = Freedom | DIAL | In the beginning was the | garment and buy a on every side! | 1911-A1. | word. -- The Bible | sword.--Jesus Christ ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- Constitutional Government is dead, LONG LIVE THE CONSTITUTION!!!!! - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bill Vance Subject: Great Brit site (fwd) Date: 03 Jul 2002 11:12:59 -0700 (PDT) ;-) For a great Brit site, go to: http://www.guncontrolnetwork.org/ Bill -- RKBA! ***** Blessings On Thee, Oh Israel! ***** 4-19! ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- An _EFFECTIVE_ | Insured | All matter is vibration. | Let he who hath no weapon in every | by COLT; | -- Max Plank | weapon sell his hand = Freedom | DIAL | In the beginning was the | garment and buy a on every side! | 1911-A1. | word. -- The Bible | sword.--Jesus Christ ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- Constitutional Government is dead, LONG LIVE THE CONSTITUTION!!!!! - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bill Vance Subject: It's time for new owners (fwd) Date: 05 Jul 2002 17:26:04 -0700 (PDT) ----------------------- begin forwarded message from Rich Martin, Editor Sick eZine ----------------------- Whatever happened to devolution? Why not issue one share of common stock to every tax payer for every acre of land the fedl govt retains title to unconstitutionally? Rich Martin Editor, Slick eZine http://slickplus.spunge.org/list/ ----- Original Message ----- *****It's time for new owners *****By Henry Lamb *****web posted July 1, 2002 http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0702/0702landown.htm It's too late to ask why the west is burning, everyone already knows it is the result of absurd environmental policies that have prevented logging to thin the fuel; the "roadless" policy that prevents firefighters from having access to the forests; and the Endangered Species Act, that won't allow heavy equipment in critical habitat to cut firebreaks. When volunteers brought their own equipment to help fight the Colorado fire, Kim Martin, the Incident Commander for the Forest Service, told the volunteers, "The equipment is too heavy. It will tear up the land." The volunteers could do nothing but watch the forests burn. Every environmental organization that has sued, or lobbied to prevent logging, and to close forest roads, should be required to man the front lines against every wildfire that burns. The smoke rising from West of the Mississippi raises another, bigger question: why does the federal government own most of the land in the West in the first place? America was built on the principle of free enterprise, which begins with private ownership of land and resources. Nearly half of America is now owned by the government - federal, state, and local. How can free enterprise exist if government owns the land and resources? Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution sets forth clearly the purposes for which the federal government may purchase land "...with the consent of the Legislature" of the state in which the land is located, "for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dock-yards, and other needful buildings;" There's not a word in the Constitution about the 400,000 scorched acres in Arizona, or the 200,000 acres wasted in Colorado, or the two million acres that have burned this year. Why does the federal government own it? Until early in the 20th century, the land owned by the federal government was the object of divestiture. The prevailing view was to acquire land for U.S. citizens, but to get it into private hands as quickly as possible. That's why we had a Homestead Act that encouraged people to move west. Green groups, notably, the Wilderness Society, caught up in fashionable socialism, agitated for the nationalization of all forests, and continued pressing government to end the land give-away, and finally, to lock up all the land that remained in the federal estate. Why? Years ago, the reason given was to ensure that U.S. citizens would have the wood, minerals, and other resources needed by a growing nation. No more. Green groups have all but stopped logging, mining, and even grazing on federal land. Wilderness and Monument designations have locked out humans from hundreds of millions of acres of this so-called public land. Now, the fashionable excuse for federal ownership is "to protect biodiversity." The biodiversity in Arizona and Colorado, and the rest of the West, can not afford to be protected by the feds. There is no legitimate reason for the federal government to own a third of all the land in the United States. If it is right and good for the feds to own 83 percent of Nevada, why, then, should the feds not own 83 percent of New York, or Pennsylvania? It makes no sense. States can manage their own land better than the feds. Private owners can manage their land better than any government. Divestiture of the federal estate is not a new idea. Many fine politicians have met their doom by trying to promote this idea. Politicians, though, tend to sway in the breeze of public opinion. In the last half of the 20th century, hot air emissions from green extremists have increasingly kept the political tiller turned toward the absurd. Looking at the charred ruin of wasted forests and roasted wildlife, to say nothing of the ashes of hundreds of homes, it's time to step back and seriously ask, why do we continue to allow the federal government to hold title to our land? The federal land in which private citizens have a property right - either water, grazing, logging, mining, or whatever, should be offered for sale first, to those individuals. All other federal land, which does not qualify under Article I, Section 8, should be relinquished to the state in which the land lies, for disposition by the state. The rush to acquire more and more land for "open space," should be halted, and reversed. In a free enterprise society, the market will provide the open space that the people want. Green pressure groups have been successful in their efforts to transform America from a free enterprise society, into the socialist society envisioned by the Wilderness Society in the 1930s. It's no longer called a socialist vision, it's now called a vision of sustainability. Call it what you will. A society in which government owns the sources of production, and controls the use of private land is not a free society. It's time for government to get out of the real estate business. Jack Perrine | Athena Programming | 626-798-6574 _________________| 1175 N Altadena Dr | ____________ Jack@Minerva.com | Pasadena CA 91107 | FAX-398-8620 Cut out the middlemen. Send donations to: Boys Scouts of America National HQ 1329 Walnut Hill Ln. Irving, TX 75162 http://www.SaveOurScouts.com ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ----------------------- end forwarded message from Rich Martin, Editor Sick eZine ----------------------- -- RKBA! ***** Blessings On Thee, Oh Israel! ***** 4-19! ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- An _EFFECTIVE_ | Insured | All matter is vibration. | Let he who hath no weapon in every | by COLT; | -- Max Plank | weapon sell his hand = Freedom | DIAL | In the beginning was the | garment and buy a on every side! | 1911-A1. | word. -- The Bible | sword.--Jesus Christ ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- Constitutional Government is dead, LONG LIVE THE CONSTITUTION!!!!! - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Lew Glendenning Subject: American Stasi Date: 15 Jul 2002 13:15:18 -0700 Prediction: This program will be immediately be abused by EVERYONE, especially the government. For example, were I someone who wanted to get rid of Moslems, I would start sending a lot of letters to people with Moslem names. These could have pro-OBL literature and a diskette with random numbers (a code that couldn't be broken). Implicate the poor innocent via the letter carrier and the feds will find a good reason to get them out of the country. If I were a pro-OBL type, I could do the same thing to a) whip up a backlash and b) distract the feds. If I were any person, gov or citizen, with a grudge against any non-native, easy to use the TIPS program to exact some kind of revenge, if only harassment. Our foreign policy is leading directly to the destruction of our Constitution and the Republic. Lew ==================================================================== US planning to recruit one in 24 Americans as citizen spies By Ritt Goldstein July 15 2002 The Bush Administration aims to recruit millions of United States citizens as domestic informants in a program likely to alarm civil liberties groups. The Terrorism Information and Prevention System, or TIPS, means the US will have a higher percentage of citizen informants than the former East Germany through the infamous Stasi secret police. The program would use a minimum of 4 per cent of Americans to report "suspicious activity". Civil liberties groups have already warned that, with the passage earlier this year of the Patriot Act, there is potential for abusive, large-scale investigations of US citizens. As with the Patriot Act, TIPS is being pursued as part of the so-called war against terrorism. It is a Department of Justice project. Highlighting the scope of the surveillance network, TIPS volunteers are being recruited primarily from among those whose work provides access to homes, businesses or transport systems. Letter carriers, utility employees, truck drivers and train conductors are among those named as targeted recruits. A pilot program, described on the government Web site www.citizencorps.gov, is scheduled to start next month in 10 cities, with 1 million informants participating in the first stage. Assuming the program is initiated in the 10 largest US cities, that will be 1 million informants for a total population of almost 24 million, or one in 24 people. Historically, informant systems have been the tools of non-democratic states. According to a 1992 report by Harvard University's Project on Justice, the accuracy of informant reports is problematic, with some informants having embellished the truth, and others suspected of having fabricated their reports. Present Justice Department procedures mean that informant reports will enter databases for future reference and/or action. The information will then be broadly available within the department, related agencies and local police forces. The targeted individual will remain unaware of the existence of the report and of its contents. The Patriot Act already provides for a person's home to be searched without that person being informed that a search was ever performed, or of any surveillance devices that were implanted. At state and local levels the TIPS program will be co-ordinated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which was given sweeping new powers, including internment, as part of the Reagan Administration's national security initiatives. Many key figures of the Reagan era are part of the Bush Administration. The creation of a US "shadow government", operating in secret, was another Reagan national security initiative. Ritt Goldstein is an investigative journalist and a former leader in the movement for US law enforcement accountability. He has lived in Sweden since 1997, seeking political asylum there, saying he was the victim of life-threatening assaults in retaliation for his accountability efforts. His application has been supported by the European Parliament, five of Sweden's seven big political parties, clergy, and Amnesty and other rights groups. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Harry Barnett Subject: Re: American Stasi Date: 15 Jul 2002 13:47:08 -0700 (PDT) "Ritt Goldstein"? Just three questions. Does he really exist? Does he wear a tin-foil hat? Did he scribble off this hoax in between choruses of, "They are coming to take me away!"? Success beyond his wildest dreams... Harry On 15 Jul 2002, Lew Glendenning wrote: > Date: 15 Jul 2002 13:15:18 -0700 > From: Lew Glendenning > Reply-To: roc@lists.xmission.com > To: ROC > Subject: American Stasi > > > Prediction: This program will be immediately be abused by EVERYONE, > especially the government. > > For example, were I someone who wanted to get rid of Moslems, I would > start sending a lot of letters to people with Moslem names. These could > have pro-OBL literature and a diskette with random numbers (a code that > couldn't be broken). Implicate the poor innocent via the letter carrier > and the feds will find a good reason to get them out of the country. > > If I were a pro-OBL type, I could do the same thing to a) whip up a > backlash and b) distract the feds. > > If I were any person, gov or citizen, with a grudge against any > non-native, easy to use the TIPS program to exact some kind of revenge, > if only harassment. > > Our foreign policy is leading directly to the destruction of our > Constitution and the Republic. > > Lew > > ==================================================================== > > US planning to recruit one in 24 Americans as citizen spies > > By Ritt Goldstein > July 15 2002 > > > The Bush Administration aims to recruit millions of United States > citizens as domestic informants in a program likely to alarm civil > liberties groups. > > The Terrorism Information and Prevention System, or TIPS, means the US > will have a higher percentage of citizen informants than the former East > Germany through the infamous Stasi secret police. The program would use > a minimum of 4 per cent of Americans to report "suspicious activity". > > Civil liberties groups have already warned that, with the passage > earlier this year of the Patriot Act, there is potential for abusive, > large-scale investigations of US citizens. > > As with the Patriot Act, TIPS is being pursued as part of the so-called > war against terrorism. It is a Department of Justice project. > > Highlighting the scope of the surveillance network, TIPS volunteers are > being recruited primarily from among those whose work provides access to > homes, businesses or transport systems. Letter carriers, utility > employees, truck drivers and train conductors are among those named as > targeted recruits. > > > > A pilot program, described on the government Web site > www.citizencorps.gov, is scheduled to start next month in 10 cities, > with 1 million informants participating in the first stage. Assuming the > program is initiated in the 10 largest US cities, that will be 1 million > informants for a total population of almost 24 million, or one in 24 > people. > > Historically, informant systems have been the tools of non-democratic > states. According to a 1992 report by Harvard University's Project on > Justice, the accuracy of informant reports is problematic, with some > informants having embellished the truth, and others suspected of having > fabricated their reports. > > Present Justice Department procedures mean that informant reports will > enter databases for future reference and/or action. The information will > then be broadly available within the department, related agencies and > local police forces. The targeted individual will remain unaware of the > existence of the report and of its contents. > > The Patriot Act already provides for a person's home to be searched > without that person being informed that a search was ever performed, or > of any surveillance devices that were implanted. > > At state and local levels the TIPS program will be co-ordinated by the > Federal Emergency Management Agency, which > > was given sweeping new powers, including internment, as part of the > Reagan Administration's national security initiatives. Many key figures > of the Reagan era are part of the Bush Administration. > > The creation of a US "shadow government", operating in secret, was > another Reagan national security initiative. > > Ritt Goldstein is an investigative journalist and a former leader in the > movement for US law enforcement accountability. He has lived in Sweden > since 1997, seeking political asylum there, saying he was the victim of > life-threatening assaults in retaliation for his accountability efforts. > His application has been supported by the European Parliament, five of > Sweden's seven big political parties, clergy, and Amnesty and other > rights groups. > > > - > - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Neil Dickey Subject: Re: American Stasi Date: 15 Jul 2002 16:51:59 -0500 (CDT) Harry Barnett wrote: >"Ritt Goldstein"? Just three questions. > >Does he really exist? Who knows? I've never met him. >Does he wear a tin-foil hat? Can't say. >Did he scribble off this hoax in between choruses of, "They are coming >to take me away!"? Maybe, but it's irrelevant. Here's what he was looking at: http://www.citizencorps.gov/ Click on the link labelled "Tips" on the left side of the page. It's for real. >Success beyond his wildest dreams... Now it's your turn. Put on your tinfoil hat and go sit in the corner. Gibber at random intervals. ;-) The opinions which I have expressed herein are entirely my own, unless other- wise noted. No-one else should be held responsible for what I think. | | | | D. N. Dickey | Virtuous motives, trammeled by inertia and | | Research Associate | timidity, are no match for armed and | | Northern Illinois Univ. | resolute wickedness. | | neil@earth.geol.niu.edu | - W. S. Churchill | | | | - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Harry Barnett Subject: Re: American Stasi Date: 15 Jul 2002 15:14:17 -0700 (PDT) That reference says nothing to justify the alarmist Chicken Little "the sky is falling" rhetoric pandered about by the article. The guy is clearly a nut-case. And the reference is SO short, why did't you just copy it in its entirety, so we could talk about FACTS, about what was really said by the government, not what somebody said was said? Hey, you want to get your panties all in a bunch because of "Goldstein's Hoax", knock yourself out. Helluva way to spend the time between birth and death, if you ask me, but you didn't. Trying to stop a hoax when people want to believe is like trying to dip out the ocean with a sieve. --Harry On Mon, 15 Jul 2002, Neil Dickey wrote: > Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2002 16:51:59 -0500 (CDT) > From: Neil Dickey > Reply-To: roc@lists.xmission.com > To: roc@lists.xmission.com > Subject: Re: American Stasi > > Harry Barnett wrote: > > >"Ritt Goldstein"? Just three questions. > > > >Does he really exist? > > Who knows? I've never met him. > > >Does he wear a tin-foil hat? > > Can't say. > > >Did he scribble off this hoax in between choruses of, "They are coming > >to take me away!"? > > Maybe, but it's irrelevant. Here's what he was looking at: > > http://www.citizencorps.gov/ > > Click on the link labelled "Tips" on the left side of the page. > It's for real. > > >Success beyond his wildest dreams... > > Now it's your turn. Put on your tinfoil hat and go sit in > the corner. Gibber at random intervals. ;-) > > The opinions which I have expressed herein are entirely my own, unless other- > wise noted. No-one else should be held responsible for what I think. > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > | | | > | D. N. Dickey | Virtuous motives, trammeled by inertia and | > | Research Associate | timidity, are no match for armed and | > | Northern Illinois Univ. | resolute wickedness. | > | neil@earth.geol.niu.edu | - W. S. Churchill | > | | | > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > - > - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Neil Dickey Subject: Re: American Stasi Date: 15 Jul 2002 18:44:50 -0500 (CDT) Harry Barnett wrote: >That reference says nothing to justify the alarmist Chicken Little "the >sky is falling" rhetoric pandered about by the article. The guy is >clearly a nut-case. You're welcome to believe anything you like, as are the rest of us. >And the reference is SO short, why did't you just copy it in its >entirety, so we could talk about FACTS, about what was really said by >the government, not what somebody said was said? Oooooh! Poor Baby. Widdums is too tired to cwick a wink? It must be 'way past nappie-time. It seemed to me worthwhile to give readers of the list a link to the U.S. Government site where they could get firsthand information. You yourself didn't seem too enthusiastic about forwarded information a post or so ago. >Hey, you want to get your panties all in a bunch because of >"Goldstein's Hoax", knock yourself out. Helluva way to spend the time >between birth and death, if you ask me, but you didn't. No, I didn't, and I'm rapidly becoming profoundly indifferent to anything you think. >Trying to stop a hoax when people want to believe is like trying to dip >out the ocean with a sieve. hoax n. a mischievous trick, especially a made-up story. So my dictionary has it. It's a fact that the U.S. Government is actively soliciting citizens to sign up as informants assigned to report any activity they think is suspicious. It's also a fact that government agents can now search your home without your knowledge or even telling you they ever did it, can bug your home, can tap your telephone, if they think they have reason to believe you may be doing something suspicious. So, where exactly is the hoax, and where might the government get the idea you were doing something suspicious? It is by no means far-fetched to suggest that neighbors, relatives, co-workers, may decide to get in a lick by playing the snitch. Do any of you go to the range regularly, perhaps carrying a long skinny box from the house out to the car? There are people around who think that's not only suspicious but patently evil. How'd you like to have your house turned inside-out because you happen to enjoy Cowboy Action Shooting? Do you really think that the law prevents law-enforcement officers from abusing their power? Most don't, fortunately, but a significant fraction do. The opinions which I have expressed herein are entirely my own, unless other- wise noted. No-one else should be held responsible for what I think. | | | | D. N. Dickey | Virtuous motives, trammeled by inertia and | | Research Associate | timidity, are no match for armed and | | Northern Illinois Univ. | resolute wickedness. | | neil@earth.geol.niu.edu | - W. S. Churchill | | | | - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Harry Barnett Subject: Re: American Stasi Date: 15 Jul 2002 18:00:36 -0700 (PDT) On Mon, 15 Jul 2002, Neil Dickey wrote: > No, I didn't, and I'm rapidly becoming profoundly indifferent to > anything you think. Ditto. [Kerplonk.] - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Tsuma@aol.com Subject: Re: American Stasi Date: 15 Jul 2002 21:44:33 EDT In a message dated 7/15/02 6:01:07 PM, harryb@hbbse.com writes: << On Mon, 15 Jul 2002, Neil Dickey wrote: > No, I didn't, and I'm rapidly becoming profoundly indifferent to > anything you think. Ditto. [Kerplonk.] >> I hate to say it, but I think we conservatives are way too willing to eat our own. At least the libs 'play' nice. Maybe we should send the fire where it belongs; to the other side. Just a thought from a simple mind.... Regards, Vanze Lum - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Harry Barnett Subject: Re: American Stasi Date: 15 Jul 2002 20:10:06 -0700 (PDT) On Mon, 15 Jul 2002 Tsuma@aol.com wrote: > Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2002 21:44:33 EDT > From: Tsuma@aol.com > Reply-To: roc@lists.xmission.com > To: roc@lists.xmission.com > Subject: Re: American Stasi > > > In a message dated 7/15/02 6:01:07 PM, harryb@hbbse.com writes: > > << On Mon, 15 Jul 2002, Neil Dickey wrote: > > > No, I didn't, and I'm rapidly becoming profoundly indifferent to > > anything you think. > > Ditto. > > [Kerplonk.] >> > > I hate to say it, but I think we conservatives are way too willing to eat our > own. At least the libs 'play' nice. Maybe we should send the fire where it > belongs; to the other side. > Just a thought from a simple mind.... > > Regards, > Vanze Lum Everyone is free to speak their mind. Everyone is free to ignore anyone they choose. I certainly demand that right for myself. I wouldn't have it any other way. The merit of people's words speak for themselves. In this type of forum, all you have is the written word to persuade or convince. And the forum is far larger than a single, personal interaction. "Eating our own" is the exact opposite of "spitting them out". As for me, I stop trying to teach a pig to sing as soon as I figure out that is what I am doing. It won't work, and it annoys the pig. -H. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bill Vance Subject: Babs caves to the pilots (fwd) Date: 16 Jul 2002 09:09:54 -0700 (PDT) Well what do you know; Anti-gunner Babs Boxer supports arming airline pilots. Heard on the Ken Hamblin, "the Black Avenger", Radio show. He was interviewing the head of an airline pilots association, and an airlines pilot. Bill -- RKBA! ***** Blessings On Thee, Oh Israel! ***** 4-19! ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- An _EFFECTIVE_ | Insured | All matter is vibration. | Let he who hath no weapon in every | by COLT; | -- Max Plank | weapon sell his hand = Freedom | DIAL | In the beginning was the | garment and buy a on every side! | 1911-A1. | word. -- The Bible | sword.--Jesus Christ ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- Constitutional Government is dead, LONG LIVE THE CONSTITUTION!!!!! - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bill Vance Subject: GUNS, CRIME, AND SAFETY - in the E-JLE (fwd) Date: 16 Jul 2002 22:51:33 -0700 (PDT) ----------------------- begin forwarded message from hes@unity.ncsu.edu --------------------- That's the electronic version of the Journal of Law & Economics. The contents of this issue: Guns, Crime, and Safety: Introduction By JOHN R. LOTT, JR. Violence, Guns, and Drugs: A Cross-Country Analysis By JEFFREY A. MIRON The Impact of Gun Laws on Police Deaths By DAVID B. MUSTARD Safe-Storage Gun Laws: Accidental Deaths, Suicides, and Crime By JOHN R. LOTT, JR., AND JOHN E. WHITLEY The Impact of Banning Juvenile Gun Possession By THOMAS B. MARVELL Guns, Crime, and Academics: Some Reflections on the Gun Control Debate By JEFFREY S. PARKER Privately Produced General Deterrence By BRUCE L. BENSON AND BRENT D. MAST Right-to-Carry Concealed Weapon Laws and Homicide in Large U.S. Counties: The Effect on Weapon Types, Victim Characteristics, and Victim-Offender Relationships By DAVID E. OLSON AND MICHAEL D. MALTZ Does the Right to Carry Concealed Handguns Deter Countable Crimes? Only a Count Analysis Can Say By FLORENZ PLASSMANN AND T. NICOLAUS TIDEMAN Testing for the Effects of Concealed Weapons Laws: Specification Errors and Robustness By CARLISLE E. MOODY Full text of this issue is available at http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JLE/journal/contents/v44nS2.html --henry schaffer P.S. Thanks to Prof. Lott for bringing this to my attention. ----------------------- end forwarded message from hes@unity.ncsu.edu --------------------- -- RKBA! ***** Blessings On Thee, Oh Israel! ***** 4-19! ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- An _EFFECTIVE_ | Insured | All matter is vibration. | Let he who hath no weapon in every | by COLT; | -- Max Plank | weapon sell his hand = Freedom | DIAL | In the beginning was the | garment and buy a on every side! | 1911-A1. | word. -- The Bible | sword.--Jesus Christ ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- Constitutional Government is dead, LONG LIVE THE CONSTITUTION!!!!! - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Neil Dickey Subject: Suspicious activities Date: 17 Jul 2002 09:50:40 -0500 (CDT) There is an article in today's Nando Net, under "Nation," which illustrates exactly why I am most skeptical regarding networks of civilian informers. The title is "Military jets escort plane to LaGuardia airport." Here's the URL: http://www.nando.net/nation/story/468688p-3747590c.html There will be, and have been, *many* more false alarms than genuine warnings of "terrorist" activities from alarmed members of the public. Those military jets were there to blow the airliner out of the sky if they got the signal to do so. Never mind for the moment that they might do it in response to a genuine attack, how about what happens in the event of miscommunication? Add to this the cranks, the disgruntled, the vengeful, the bigots, the ignorant, and the simply stupid, and the potential for mischief is immense when the government signs up its citizens as snitches and arrogates to itself the power to act without restraint from the courts. The opinions which I have expressed herein are entirely my own, unless other- wise noted. No-one else should be held responsible for what I think. | | | | D. N. Dickey | Virtuous motives, trammeled by inertia and | | Research Associate | timidity, are no match for armed and | | Northern Illinois Univ. | resolute wickedness. | | neil@earth.geol.niu.edu | - W. S. Churchill | | | | - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Lew Glendenning Subject: Re: Suspicious activities Date: 17 Jul 2002 09:18:12 -0700 The various failings of the informers among us isn't the big danger. The big danger is 'mission creep'. Today TIPS is concerned about terrorists among us. Tomorrow, it may well be concerned about many other types of 'anti-Americanism'. The DOJ's description of the TIPS program is very reasonable. I bet the description of the Stasi's goals were just as reasonable. Our 'terrorism problem' is problem with our foreign policy: all empires create injustice and injustice fuels terrorism. We could solve the great majority of the US's problems by merely putting our government back inside the original constraints of the Constitution: abrogate all treaties, bring all the troops home, end the income tax, ... Switzerland doesn't have a terrorism problem. Lew On Wed, 2002-07-17 at 07:50, Neil Dickey wrote: > There is an article in today's Nando Net, under "Nation," which > illustrates exactly why I am most skeptical regarding networks of > civilian informers. The title is "Military jets escort plane to > LaGuardia airport." Here's the URL: > > http://www.nando.net/nation/story/468688p-3747590c.html > > There will be, and have been, *many* more false alarms than genuine > warnings of "terrorist" activities from alarmed members of the public. > Those military jets were there to blow the airliner out of the sky if > they got the signal to do so. Never mind for the moment that they > might do it in response to a genuine attack, how about what happens in > the event of miscommunication? > > Add to this the cranks, the disgruntled, the vengeful, the bigots, > the ignorant, and the simply stupid, and the potential for mischief is > immense when the government signs up its citizens as snitches and > arrogates to itself the power to act without restraint from the courts. > > The opinions which I have expressed herein are entirely my own, unless other- > wise noted. No-one else should be held responsible for what I think. > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > | | | > | D. N. Dickey | Virtuous motives, trammeled by inertia and | > | Research Associate | timidity, are no match for armed and | > | Northern Illinois Univ. | resolute wickedness. | > | neil@earth.geol.niu.edu | - W. S. Churchill | > | | | > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > - > - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Neil Dickey Subject: Re: Suspicious activities Date: 17 Jul 2002 11:29:00 -0500 (CDT) Lew Glendenning wrote in response to me: >The various failings of the informers among us isn't the big danger. > >The big danger is 'mission creep'. That was what I was alluding to in my statement "when the government ... arrogates to itself the power to act without restraint from the courts." We are in substantial agreement. >Switzerland doesn't have a terrorism problem. There's just no substitute for minding your own business. The opinions which I have expressed herein are entirely my own, unless other- wise noted. No-one else should be held responsible for what I think. | | | | D. N. Dickey | Virtuous motives, trammeled by inertia and | | Research Associate | timidity, are no match for armed and | | Northern Illinois Univ. | resolute wickedness. | | neil@earth.geol.niu.edu | - W. S. Churchill | | | | - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Lew Glendenning Subject: "Freedom Corps" and TIPS -- Reason editorial Date: 18 Jul 2002 05:22:56 -0700 An American Stasi By Brian Doherty It's like they aren't even trying to pretend anymore. Sure, even since the launching of the War on Terrorism, lip service has been paid to American traditions of civil liberties and freedom. Of course, sometimes that lip service to freedom is spookily Orwellian, such as dubbing President Bush's plan to have every American devote two years of their lives in service to the state the "Freedom Corps." (Even more disturbingly, this scheme encourages people to create a "record of service" documenting what they've done for the state in a "private journal" maintained on the government's Freedom Corps Web site.) Making news this week is the latest wrinkle in George Bush's Citizen Corps -- a program known as the Terrorism Information and Prevention System, or Operation TIPS. (Our allegedly civilian homeland is becoming lousy with new "corps" these days.) The East Germans had a more stylish and nakedly sinister name for the same idea: the formerly feared, and apparently now fondly missed, Stasi. TIPS in essence deputizes 1 million Americans in 10 cities as government informants. (That's just the beginning for its August debut -- the program will be expanded next year.) The announcement names "American truckers, letter carriers, train conductors, ship captains, utility employees, and others" as potential members of this proud army of snoops and busybodies. A Washington Times story on the program points out that a common denominator for at least a couple of those categories is that their "jobs allow them access to private homes." These TIPS soldiers have been given the mission to go where the police can't necessarily go, see what the police can't necessarily see, and then report findings to the Justice Department, which will maintain a database of tips. It remains to be seen whether this will save the country from attack, or simply bury bureaucrats in thousands of vague, frightened, meaningless reports that sully the reputations of the innocent. But we have already seen the effects of creating a system of omnipresent government informants who treat all fellow citizens as potential enemies. It used to be called "living behind the Iron Curtain." Many Americans seem to have forgotten the days (less than a decade ago) when you didn't need to show a government-issued identification to travel by air. It seems likely that with more programs like Operation TIPS in effect, the very spirit of a free people that should be viscerally disgusted by such programs will be reduced to a half-remembered ghost. The banner in the eagle's mouth on the back of the Great Seal of the United States might as well change from reading "E Pluribus Unum" to "The innocent have nothing to fear." Brian Doherty is an associate editor of Reason. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bill Vance Subject: A good cause - raffle to assist gun-owning burn victims (fwd) Date: 18 Jul 2002 10:43:50 -0700 (PDT) ----------------------- begin forwarded message from Charles Riggs --------------------- This is a raffle for a good cause, to help out some folks who were badly burned in a fire and explosion at their home/shop, and are still in hospital for treatment. If you don't already know this, burn treatment costs a TON, and these folks have no health insurance. Para-Ordnance has donated the gun of YOUR choice to the winner of this drawing! See: http://www.idpa.com/raffle.htm for info on how to buy tickets and the full scoop on this situation. Please also spread around the word on this one to everyone you know who might be interested, and thanks for your help - Charles. Charles Riggs Gunsite 1991 - DVC! "Fight Crime - Be armed - Fight back!" GOA-NRA-SAF ********************************* The Kentucky IDPA Studies Group: http://www.kyidpa.org ********************************* A parable for our times: http://www.kc3.org/sheep.htm ********************************* ----------------------- end forwarded message from Charles Riggs --------------------- -- RKBA! ***** Blessings On Thee, Oh Israel! ***** 4-19! ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- An _EFFECTIVE_ | Insured | All matter is vibration. | Let he who hath no weapon in every | by COLT; | -- Max Plank | weapon sell his hand = Freedom | DIAL | In the beginning was the | garment and buy a on every side! | 1911-A1. | word. -- The Bible | sword.--Jesus Christ ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- Constitutional Government is dead, LONG LIVE THE CONSTITUTION!!!!! - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bill Vance Subject: USE FEDEX, PAY CASH (fwd) Date: 22 Jul 2002 18:33:48 -0700 (PDT) He's got me wondering about other outfits, too, but isn't Fed-ex the one that does firearms now? Bill ----------------------- begin forwarded message from Carl F. Worden ----------------------- Ladies & gentlemen: With all the revelations about corporate greed and wrongdoing, you would think a large corporation like Federal Express would be minding their P's & Q's, but I am sorry to report that is not the case. I have documented and filed a formal complaint against Fedex with the Oregon State Attorney General's Office, alleging consumer and bank fraud to wit: That Federal Express Corporation routinely accepts credit and debit cards for payment, issues a receipt for the amount to be charged the consumer, and then arbitrarily and capriciously charges the credit or debit card more than the amount listed on the charge receipt. For example, on April 18, 2002 I sent a shipment via Fedex by dropping a package off at the Fedex counter near the Medford, OR airport. The debit card receipt shows that my account would be charged $15.40. On my bank statement, Fedex charged my account $22.98. or $7.58 more than I authorized. I have now documented three such fraudulent transactions recently, and I have others going back two years. Upon examination of my charge receipt, Fedex placed the following weasel words: "Subject to additional charges in Terms & Conditions of Fedex Service Guide" Funny thing is, I've never seen a Fedex Service Guide, and I've never been offered one. I'll bet you have never been offered one either. That's not going to fly. So on 7/18/02, I dropped off another package for shipment at the Medford Fedex counter, and placed the charge on my debit card, as usual. The receipt shows I will be charged $15.63. Even though the counter person weighed the package, I asked her to weigh it again. My shipping receipt shows 1 package at 1.0 lb, and the charge at $15.63, but the credit card charge with those weasel-words on it shows a weight of .50 lb. Hmmm.... So I asked the counter lady about this, and she plainly stated that if the package is found to weigh more by Fedex than it is checked in at, my debit card charge would be adjusted without my authorization. I pointed out that if I paid by check or cash Fedex could do nothing about it, and to my utter amazement, all three counter persons agreed!!!! Can you believe this??? So what we have here is a Federal Express Corporation license to steal, and I am about to rescind it. There is no way for the consumer to know how much their package actually weighed after it is dropped off, so Fedex can say it weighed whatever they want, and I should point out here that at no time has Fedex ever charged my account LESS than the amount noted on my receipt. The lesson here is that if you ship by Fedex, pay by cash or check. Do not use a credit or debit card, and do not maintain a Fedex account that utilizes a debit or credit card. Fedex cannot be trusted, and I know they didn't just pick on Carl Worden. This is clearly a corporate policy that affects everyone. Carl F. Worden ----------------------- end forwarded message from Carl F. Worden ----------------------- -- RKBA! ***** Blessings On Thee, Oh Israel! ***** 4-19! ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- An _EFFECTIVE_ | Insured | All matter is vibration. | Let he who hath no weapon in every | by COLT; | -- Max Plank | weapon sell his hand = Freedom | DIAL | In the beginning was the | garment and buy a on every side! | 1911-A1. | word. -- The Bible | sword.--Jesus Christ ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- Constitutional Government is dead, LONG LIVE THE CONSTITUTION!!!!! - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bill Vance Subject: Million Morons of Allegheny get "swindled" (fwd) Date: 25 Jul 2002 16:39:18 -0700 (PDT) ----------------------- begin forwarded message from Jim Zoes --------------------- This article is a beaut! The Million Moron Moms chapter in Allegheny County, PA ceased to exist, and the members didn't anything about it! The dues paying members want to know why, and what happened to their dues. >From the article: "About two months ago, local MMM members received e-mails stating that CeaseFire PA, a Philadelphia-based group, was taking over the chapter, said Nathaniel Glosser of Highland Park, who attended Thursday's meeting at Southminster Presbyterian Church. Before that meeting, he sent out e-mail messages to former MMM members, saying in the message field, "Our MMM Chapter Has been Hijacked." Glosser referred to the Oct. 1, 2001, merger of MMM with another high-profile group to form the Brady Campaign United with the Million Moms March. "Your money is with the Brady campaign," Miller said in answer to Dreyfuss' question about dues." http://www.post-gazette.com/neigh_south/20020724s19ceasefire0724p4.asp It appears that the 90 Commie Mommies of the chapter are out of luck! The word "SUCKER" came flashing through my mind when I read those paragraphs. They can only say "bub-bye" to their dues. And it couldn't have happened to a nicer group of assholes than these nascent Stalinists. The 90 toadies seems to have gotten swindled, and all I hear is the world's smallest violin playing "My heart pumps peanut butter for you" in the background. Music to my ears..... "Cease Fire" is trying to find 2 or 3 districts where then can elect one of their minions. Can't you just hear the sound of desperation? The article notes that at least one such gungrabber was at the meeting prostituting himself: "Former County Councilman Mike Crossey, who attended Thursday's meeting as a candidate in the 42nd Legislative District, said in a position statement that his gun-safety platform includes mandatory child-safety locks with all gun sales, a ban on the sale of semiautomatic weapons to persons under 21 and required registration of sales for people who buy more than one gun a month. "My gun-safety proposals do not restrict or hamper hunters, sportsmen or collectors in any manner," his statement says." I'm sure the 90 Commie Mommies feel soooo much better now. Needless to say, this article rather made my day. CONFUSION TO OUR ENEMIES! ----------------------- end forwarded message from Jim Zoes --------------------- -- RKBA! ***** Blessings On Thee, Oh Israel! ***** 4-19! ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- An _EFFECTIVE_ | Insured | All matter is vibration. | Let he who hath no weapon in every | by COLT; | -- Max Plank | weapon sell his hand = Freedom | DIAL | In the beginning was the | garment and buy a on every side! | 1911-A1. | word. -- The Bible | sword.--Jesus Christ ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- Constitutional Government is dead, LONG LIVE THE CONSTITUTION!!!!! - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bill Vance Subject: Dr. Pepper Cans (fwd) Date: 27 Jul 2002 10:11:07 -0700 (PDT) ----------------------- begin forwarded message from Capzpsyche@aol.com ----------------------- Subj: Dr. Pepper Cans BCC: CALPatton: FreedomJournal We called on God on 9-11 so what's wrong with him now? > > > > > > > > > > For those who have not heard, the bottlers/manufacturers of Dr. Pepper > and > > their other products, have started a "new" can campaign. > > > > > > > > > > They are putting patriotic scenes on them. One, is the Empire State > Bldg. > > with the pledge of allegiance...but... they left off the words..."under > > God". > They felt it might "offend" some. I don't know about you, but as a > > Christian, I am boycotting their products! They said they didn't "have > room" > > for those words, but yet they had room for indivisible" on the can! > > > > > > > > > > Please pass this along to others and see if we can get a message out to > > Dr.Pepper ....if having "under God" on cans offends them, then they don't > > need our money with "in God we trust" on it !!!! > > > > > > > > > > PLEASE PASS THIS INFORMATION ON TO YOUR FRIENDS! > > ----------------------- end forwarded message from Capzpsyche@aol.com ----------------------- -- RKBA! ***** Blessings On Thee, Oh Israel! ***** 4-19! ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- An _EFFECTIVE_ | Insured | All matter is vibration. | Let he who hath no weapon in every | by COLT; | -- Max Plank | weapon sell his hand = Freedom | DIAL | In the beginning was the | garment and buy a on every side! | 1911-A1. | word. -- The Bible | sword.--Jesus Christ ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- Constitutional Government is dead, LONG LIVE THE CONSTITUTION!!!!! - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "iwilsker" Subject: Re: Dr. Pepper Cans Date: 27 Jul 2002 12:43:26 -0500 This is partially an URBAN LEGEND: Details: http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bldrpepper.htm > Subject: Dr. Pepper Cans > > Subject: Fw: PLEASE READ > > > We called on God on 9-11 so what's wrong with him now? > > > > > > > > > > > For those who have not heard, the bottlers/manufacturers of Dr. Pepper > and > - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Bill Vance Subject: AOL In Freefall - Ted Turner Has Lost $9.3 Billion (fwd) Date: 27 Jul 2002 22:15:27 -0700 (PDT) ----------------------- begin forwarded message from Bruce Chesley ----------------------- Welcome to AOHELL;-))))) Bruce Chesley Truth is a terrible cross to bear. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.". Thomas Paine Treason for $$$: ALL "pro 2A" orgs. --------- Forwarded message ---------- Source: NY Post http://www.nypost.com/ AOL IN FREEFALL http://www.nypost.com/business/45742.htm [ Photo ] Ted Turner Has Lost $9.3 Billion http://www.nypost.com/photos/web07260233.jpg July 26, 2002 -- The stock collapse of AOL Time Warner yesterday is dragging a virtual who's who of media moguls into pikersville. A growing accounting scandal sent shares of the world's largest media company to their lowest level since the early 1990s. To make matters worse, analysts are trashing the historic, $106 billion merger of old-line media giant Time Warner and Internet high-flyer AOL as a total disaster. Investigators are expected to expand their probe of AOL's books beyond several questionable accounting practices that were first detailed in a Washington Post report last week about the 2001 merger. One analyst said the mess won't get better due to AOL's deepening problems and internal weaknesses, raising more concerns that AOL might be spun off to save the sinking ship. "Despite a depressed valuation, we do not believe the Time Warner businesses will be strong enough to overcome AOL division issues," said Goldman Sachs' Richard Greenfield, who has kept a "market perform" rating on the stock. When AOL shares skidded yesterday to a new intra-day low of $8.50, it wiped out more than $36 billion of shareholder value. But worse, it put the shares in the dreaded low-rent district of stocks valued in the single digits. Big mutual funds usually won't touch shares below $10. AOL managed to recover late in the day to $9.64, off $1.76 in a sell-off of 150.4 million shares. "From a technical standpoint, the stock looks like a falling anvil," said Uri Landesman, of Arlington Capital. Several analysts cut their ratings on the company, which last week completed a management shake-up that returned control back to Time Warner veterans. Investors are revolting over its 70-percent slide this year. The darkest day for the merged company's share price came the same day it reported its first net profit since AOL completed its takeover of Time Warner in January 2001. Wall Street ignored that good news, and focused on the Securities and Exchange Commission's probe of alleged cooked books that AOL brought to the merger table. A week before the merger was first announced in January 2000, Time Warner was trading at $92.25, making most of its major shareholders very rich. A huge stake held by John Malone's Liberty Media was valued at $10.5 billion, while Vice Chairman Ted Turner's shares were valued at around $10.5 billion. But in the year-long effort to close the merger, the shares slid to $50, and it's been downhill ever since. Two of the biggest victims from the merger's downside are Turner, who's lost $9.3 billion and Malone's Liberty, which lost $10 billion. Turner has managed to unload millions of his shares in the last two months of the stock-price slide. He sold $365.1 million worth of his shares, less than 10 percent, before the worst hit. In the old days, his stake was worth a stunning $1.96 billion. His ex-wife Jane Fonda was much luckier and escaped major damage from the wipeout. In her prenuptial pact with Ted, she got a maximum of $10 million in AOL stock, but in the past year she gave away most of it to environmental causes and liberal Democrats running for public office. Gerald Levin has become a tragic figure over the magnitude of his losses. His 29-years at the company gave him a stock and option nest egg valued at around $529 million at the time of the merger. Today it's worth just $24.5 million. ----------------------- end forwarded message from Bruce Chesley ----------------------- -- RKBA! ***** Blessings On Thee, Oh Israel! ***** 4-19! ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- An _EFFECTIVE_ | Insured | All matter is vibration. | Let he who hath no weapon in every | by COLT; | -- Max Plank | weapon sell his hand = Freedom | DIAL | In the beginning was the | garment and buy a on every side! | 1911-A1. | word. -- The Bible | sword.--Jesus Christ ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- Constitutional Government is dead, LONG LIVE THE CONSTITUTION!!!!! - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Tsuma@aol.com Subject: Re: AOL In Freefall - Ted Turner Has Lost $9.3 Billion (fwd) Date: 28 Jul 2002 11:43:34 EDT In a message dated 7/27/02 10:16:41 PM, roc@xpresso.seaslug.org writes: << Two of the biggest victims from the merger's downside are Turner, who's lost $9.3 billion and Malone's Liberty, which lost $10 billion. >> Now ain't that a damn shame?? Gosh, that was the amount he was supposed to give the UN isn't it? Oh well, easy come, easy go. All nine miners rescued and now this; how much good news can you stand? ;-) God Bless America! Vanze Lum - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Lew Glendenning Subject: WOD is a failure everywhere Date: 28 Jul 2002 12:00:08 -0700 If the WOT is half as successful as the WOD, the price of Semtex will be $5/kg in the near future. =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D Ecstasy as cheap as a bar of chocolate for children By Sophie Goodchild Home Affairs Correspondent 28 July 2002 The price of the drug ecstasy has fallen to a record low of =C2=A31.25 for = a tab =E2=80=93 about the same as a medium-sized bar of chocolate. New statistics show that the cost of the drug has more than halved across the country. The average street price is now =C2=A33 for a tablet compared with =C2=A36.24 last year. However, in certain parts of the country dealers have dropped their prices even lower to just over =C2=A31, especially in the north west of England. The alarming drop in the cost of the drug is already fuelling concerns that the drug is becoming increasingly accessible to young people, especially children. Dealers have drastically reduced their ecstasy prices in an attempt to get children on to "E" as what used to be known as a "dance drug" declines in popularity among club-goers. The new figures come from the Independent Drug Monitoring Unit which produces statistics on which the Government bases its drugs policy. They will be officially released in January next year when the IDMU publishes its latest statistics on the street price of illegal drugs including ecstasy, cocaine and heroin. Last week the Government released statistics that revealed illegal drug taking among children has nearly doubled in four years. The Department of Health survey said 6 per cent of 11-year-olds in England and Wales had taken drugs last year compared with only 1 per cent in 1997. There has also been a spate of deaths and incidents recently involving young people and children taking ecstasy. A three-year-old child from Islington, north London, was taken to hospital after swallowing an ecstasy pill last week. Police are still investigating the death of Jade Slack, 10, who died after taking up to five tablets in Lancashire. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Lew Glendenning Subject: Charlie Reese on Lindh vs Fonda Date: 28 Jul 2002 14:13:21 -0700 Thinking About Lindh, Fonda Whenever you think of John Walker Lindh, who just entered a plea bargain with the U.S. government, also think of Jane Fonda and ask yourself, "What's the deal here?" Jane Fonda, for those of you of recent birth, was an actress who gave 10,000 times more aid and comfort to the enemy, North Vietnam, during the Vietnam War than Lindh ever could have given to the Taliban. Please note that Fonda was never anti-war; she was always pro-North Vietnam and Viet Cong. Yet Lindh, who joined the Taliban before it was our enemy, has been vilified, arrested and darn near lynched for being an alleged traitor. There is no evidence that Lindh, during the two months he was in the Taliban after the United States decided to shift sides and join the Northern Alliance, ever harmed a single American. Not so with Jane Fonda. She was aiding an enemy that killed about 57,000 Americans and wounded another quarter of a million. She went to Hanoi and posed for propaganda pictures on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun. She made broadcasts to American soldiers urging them to desert. American POWs who refused to meet with her were beaten, and when those who did meet with her tried to slip her a note so she could tell their families they were still alive, she turned the notes over to the North Vietnamese, who punished those POWs with further beatings and torture. At least that's what some of the POWs say about her. When American POWs got the word out that they were being tortured, Fonda used her celebrity to publicly brand them liars, and after the war, when genuine anti-war people like Joan Baez tried to raise money to condemn communist brutalities, Fonda flatly refused, saying at one point that she would never utter a word of criticism of a socialist government. Yet, for all that, Fonda was never arrested, never, so far as I know, even questioned, never vilified by journalists with the exception of a few hard cases like me (I wrote at that time that I wouldn't spit on the woman if she were on fire, and I still wouldn't). Fonda, a mediocre actress, was quickly given an Academy Award by the left-wingers in Hollywood and made a millionaire by stupid, airhead Americans who bought her exercise tapes. I marveled at the time that there could not be much of a future for a country that made a heroine out of a traitor and villains out of its own soldiers. I just thought that all of you super-patriots who are so eager to lynch a young man whose religious beliefs put him in the wrong place at an unlucky time should be reminded that when it comes to prosecuting treason, there is no greater hypocrite than the U.S. government. Apparently, people who provide aid and comfort to left-wing enemies get a free pass, there being so many leftists ensconced in this country in various entertainment-journalistic-government nests. It's always been fashionable to support Fidel Castro, never the anti-communist Cubans. Americans have made the Chilean communist Salvador Allende a martyred hero, while the true hero of Chile, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, is vilified. You should note that when Nazism collapsed, there was a worldwide hunt and attempt to punish Nazis. When the communist empires collapsed, no such hunt or punishment was attempted, yet communists murdered millions more people than the Nazis. Just where are those red killers? Where is the communist Auschwitz? Lindh is no enemy of America, and even Osama bin Laden is more of a nasty annoyance than a threat. The threat to America's future will come from within, from all those people who think that Jane Fonda was greater than white bread and that Castro is George Washington with a Spanish accent. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "Boyd" Subject: RE: Charlie Reese on Lindh vs Fonda Date: 28 Jul 2002 21:37:53 -0700 Jane Fonda is a "religious" issue with vets and I respect their views of her actions during the war. I agree that the greatest threat to our country is from within and that there's a surplus of hypocrisy to go around with especially high concentrations of it -in- the federal government right now. BUT: John Walker Lindh is, as you imply, a different story (not comparable to Jane). To say "There is no evidence that Lindh... ever harmed a single American." strikes me as bizarre. Unless your investigation beat the combined forces of the US Justice system assisting the US military the facts are not in evidence yet and you do not -know- what evidence exists. Superficially, it appears he was wandering around a battlefield identifying himself as a member of our opponents military force and carrying military tools (hand grenades and a Kalashnikov) but in terms of -evidence- none of that has been presented publicly yet. That's what trials are for. All IMHO Boyd Kneeland -----Original Message----- [mailto:owner-roc@lists.xmission.com]On Behalf Of Lew Glendenning Sent: Sunday, July 28, 2002 2:13 PM Thinking About Lindh, Fonda Whenever you think of John Walker Lindh, who just entered a plea bargain with the U.S. government, also think of Jane Fonda and ask yourself, "What's the deal here?" Jane Fonda, for those of you of recent birth, was an actress who gave 10,000 times more aid and comfort to the enemy, North Vietnam, during the Vietnam War than Lindh ever could have given to the Taliban. Please note that Fonda was never anti-war; she was always pro-North Vietnam and Viet Cong. Yet Lindh, who joined the Taliban before it was our enemy, has been vilified, arrested and darn near lynched for being an alleged traitor. There is no evidence that Lindh, during the two months he was in the Taliban after the United States decided to shift sides and join the Northern Alliance, ever harmed a single American. Not so with Jane Fonda. She was aiding an enemy that killed about 57,000 Americans and wounded another quarter of a million. She went to Hanoi and posed for propaganda pictures on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun. She made broadcasts to American soldiers urging them to desert. American POWs who refused to meet with her were beaten, and when those who did meet with her tried to slip her a note so she could tell their families they were still alive, she turned the notes over to the North Vietnamese, who punished those POWs with further beatings and torture. At least that's what some of the POWs say about her. When American POWs got the word out that they were being tortured, Fonda used her celebrity to publicly brand them liars, and after the war, when genuine anti-war people like Joan Baez tried to raise money to condemn communist brutalities, Fonda flatly refused, saying at one point that she would never utter a word of criticism of a socialist government. Yet, for all that, Fonda was never arrested, never, so far as I know, even questioned, never vilified by journalists with the exception of a few hard cases like me (I wrote at that time that I wouldn't spit on the woman if she were on fire, and I still wouldn't). Fonda, a mediocre actress, was quickly given an Academy Award by the left-wingers in Hollywood and made a millionaire by stupid, airhead Americans who bought her exercise tapes. I marveled at the time that there could not be much of a future for a country that made a heroine out of a traitor and villains out of its own soldiers. I just thought that all of you super-patriots who are so eager to lynch a young man whose religious beliefs put him in the wrong place at an unlucky time should be reminded that when it comes to prosecuting treason, there is no greater hypocrite than the U.S. government. Apparently, people who provide aid and comfort to left-wing enemies get a free pass, there being so many leftists ensconced in this country in various entertainment-journalistic-government nests. It's always been fashionable to support Fidel Castro, never the anti-communist Cubans. Americans have made the Chilean communist Salvador Allende a martyred hero, while the true hero of Chile, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, is vilified. You should note that when Nazism collapsed, there was a worldwide hunt and attempt to punish Nazis. When the communist empires collapsed, no such hunt or punishment was attempted, yet communists murdered millions more people than the Nazis. Just where are those red killers? Where is the communist Auschwitz? Lindh is no enemy of America, and even Osama bin Laden is more of a nasty annoyance than a threat. The threat to America's future will come from within, from all those people who think that Jane Fonda was greater than white bread and that Castro is George Washington with a Spanish accent. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Lew Glendenning Subject: Fed gov data mining in WOT Date: 29 Jul 2002 15:27:42 -0700 Your Grocery List Could Spark a Terror Probe Buying Trouble by Erik Baard July 24 - 30, 2002 (illustration: Marc Phares) =20 hey thought they were making routine purchases=97the innocent, everyday pickups of charcoal and hummus, bleach and sandwich bags, that keep the modern household running. Regulars at a national grocery chain, these thousands and thousands of shoppers used the store's preferred-customer cards, in the process putting years of their lives on file. Perhaps they expected their records would be used by marketers trying to better target consumers. Instead, says the company's privacy consultant, the data was used by government agents hunting for potential terrorists. The saga began with a misguided fit of patriotism mere weeks after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, when a corporate employee handed over the records=97almost literally, the grocery lists=97to federal investigators from three agencies that had never even requested them. In a flash, the most quotidian of exchanges became fodder for the Patriot Act. When the company's legal counsel discovered the breach, she turned for advice to Larry Ponemon, CEO of the consulting firm Privacy Council and a former business ethics professor at Babson College and SUNY. "I told her it's better to be transparent," Ponemon recalls. "Send a notice to loyalty cardholders telling them what happened. She agreed and presented that to the board but they said, 'No, we don't want to hand a smoking gun to litigators.' " The attorney, who has since resigned from the grocery chain, declined through Ponemon to be interviewed or to identify herself or her former employer. To this day, the customers haven't been informed. "It wasn't a case of law enforcement being egregiously intrusive or an evil agency planting a bug or wiretap. It was a marketing person saying, 'Maybe this will help you catch a bad guy,' " Ponemon says. As John Ashcroft's Citizens Corps spy program prepares for its debut next month, it seems scores of American companies have already become willing snitches. A few months ago, the Privacy Council surveyed executives from 22 companies in the travel industry=97not just airlines but hotels, car rental services, and travel agencies=97and found that 64 percent of respondents had turned over information to investigators and 59 percent had lowered their resistance to such demands. In that sampling, conducted with The Boston Globe, half of the businesses said they hadn't decided if they'd inform customers of the change, and more than a third said outright that they wouldn't. Only three said they would go public about the level of their cooperation with law enforcement. The final destination of all that data scares Ponemon and other civil libertarians, defenders of the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable search and seizure. Ponemon, for one, suggests federal authorities are plugging the information into algorithms, using the complex formulas to create a picture of general-population trends that can be contrasted with the lifestyles of known terrorists. If your habits match, expect further scrutiny at the least. "I can't reveal my source, but a federal agency involved in espionage actually did a rating system of almost every citizen in this country," Ponemon claims. "It was based on all sorts of information=97public sources, private sources. If people are not opted in"=97meaning they haven't chosen to participate=97"one can generally assume that information was gathered through an illegal system." After crunching those numbers through the algorithm, he says, its creators fed in the files of the 9-11 terrorists as a test. "The model showed 89.7 percent accuracy 'predicting' these people from rest of population," Ponemon reports. Oddly enough, "one of the factors was if you were a person who frequently ordered pizza and paid with a credit card," Ponemon says, describing the buying habits of a nation of college students. "Sometimes data leads to an empirical inference when you add it to other variables. Whether this one is relevant or completely spurious remains to be seen, but those kinds of weird things happen with data." The thirst for consumer records is bipartisan. In April, Bill Clinton told the BBC that when it comes to fighting terrorism, "more than 95 percent of the people that are in the United States at any given time are in the computers of companies that mail junk mail, and you can look for patterns there." Katherine Albrecht, a crusader against grocery loyalty cards and invasive marketing, notes in a paper to be published in the Denver Law Review, "Virginia Congressmen Jim Moran (D-VA) and Tom Davis (R-VA) recently introduced legislation that would require all states' driver's licenses and ID cards to contain an embedded computer chip capable of accepting 'data or software written to the license or card by non-governmental devices.' " The mandatory "smart chips" would carry bank and debit card data so that citizens could use their ID cards "for a variety of commercial applications." Even library records, shopping coupons, and health records could be stored on the chips. Adding to this vision of technological dystopia, companies are already developing cameras and other scanners that can seamlessly trace individuals as they wander through stores, going so far as to zoom in on their faces should they linger over an item, to provide retailers with ever more data. The problem is that, as with the link between take-out pizza and terrorism, statistics don't always prove cause and effect. Mathematician Karen Kafadar of the University of Colorado at Denver explains that such a finding is "a proxy. It just happened to have something that correlated. There's actually something else going on but it's an indicator, like drinking beer and lung cancer might be. Beer doesn't cause lung cancer, but people drinking a lot of beer might also be smoking." Ponemon is more concerned about process than the data itself. "Total privacy does shelter bad guys, there's no question about that. But transparency is also good," he argues. "There should be some labeling or notice." In theory, consumers and investors could punish offending companies by channeling their money elsewhere. Without honest managers, though, the free market's self-correcting mechanism never gets a chance to kick in. Librarians have filled their listservs with e-mails sharing strategies for resisting law enforcement attempts to grab hold of their users' book lists. But the corporate world doesn't foster that kind of purist culture. When the Federal Bureau of Investigation came knocking for the names of scuba divers this spring, the Professional Association of Diving Instructors forked over a roll of more than 2 million certified divers without so much as being served a subpoena. The feds were acting on no specific threat, just a hunch that someone might attack that way. And again, these data dumps are just attempts to do good. Would Attorney General John Ashcroft's new TIPS campaign=97the Terrorism Information and Prevention System=97encourage people like the mole at the grocery store chain to spill info into the tanks of unethical investigators? The Department of Justice, which seeks informants in utility, cable, and other such industries operating in communities, denies that it will cultivate sources placed in data-mining operations. "This makes TIPS sound so much more sophisticated than it's going to be," says spokesperson Charles Miller. "This is still in development but it's nothing more than something to make people more aware of what's going on around them, and most people do that now anyway." Likewise, both the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Central Intelligence Agency denied roles in any sweeping algorithm to measure citizens' potential terrorist leanings. If anything, the FBI has recently been taken to task for being a tin-cans-and-string Luddite organization. But the FBI is a client of the consumer data aggregator ChoicePoint. And a U.S. official tells the Voice, "Can I categorically deny anybody in government is doing it? No." An admission that the government is combing through purchase records certainly would help explain why, according to the Naples Daily News, federal agents reviewed the shopper-card transactions of hijacker Mohammed Atta's crew to create a profile of ethnic tastes and terrorist supermarket-shopping preferences. Algorithms are already used to search for things as diverse as credit card fraud and ideal college applicants. Since 1998, airline ticket buyers have been sifted at the reservations desk by the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, or CAPPS, a net championed by Al Gore and set to expand dramatically. The group overseeing the algorithm, the Transportation Security Administration, won't comment on what new data might be added to create CAPPS 2. "At a conceptual level, the work that these algorithms do is not much different than the work that a detective undertakes in assessing whether an individual is a suspect in a crime," explains Christy Joiner-Congleton, CEO of Stone Analytics, a leading developer of such programs. "Good algorithms sort through mountains of outcomes and possible contributing factors and identify relationships for very rare events, like terrorism. The more exotic the outcome, the more data is needed to discover it, and the more sophisticated the algorithm must be to discover it." Academic mathematicians and statisticians who design algorithms have also called for broader databases. Among them are Kafadar and Max D. Morris of Iowa State University, co-authors of a new paper titled "Data-Based Detection of Potential Terrorist Attacks on Airplanes." They note that "[a]fter the fact, some common elements of the suspected terrorists are obvious: None were U.S. citizens, all had lived in the U.S. for some period of time, all had connections to a particular foreign country, all had purchased one-way tickets at the gate with cash. The statistical odds that five out of 80 revenue passengers (in the case of one of the four hijacked flights on September 11) fit this profile might, by itself, be unusual enough to warrant concern." Racial profiling finds quasi-acceptance in the hunt for terrorists, as it does in the drug war or the pursuit of serial killers, who tend to be middle-aged white men. But Kafadar and Morris argue that the "historical data must be relevant to a specific flight. For example, a United flight leaving San Francisco for Seoul, Korea, could be expected to carry a much larger fraction of Asian passengers than one might see on a flight from, say, Des Moines to Denver," the authors write. A trip like Atta's, Kafadar tells the Voice, "wasn't a flight coming from Saudi Arabia. There were a disproportionately high number of Arabic names given about 80 people to choose from." But the algorithm method didn't fail on 9-11=97the human response did. When the screening program spotted something unusual about at least one of the flights, the people in charge elected only to reinspect the luggage. According to The Wall Street Journal, CAPPS tagged hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Al-Midhar because they'd reserved their tickets by credit card, but paid in cash. The right-wing National Review slammed CAPPS for failing to include race, religion, and national origin in its calculations or to tie the system into manual searches of passengers, and not just baggage. MIT mathematician David R. Karger says harassing individuals is foolhardy, but so is refusing to consider sensitive demographics. "This is just making your predictive capability worse," he writes in an e-mail interview. "Much more appropriate is to use the best data you've got, but to remember that probability doesn't mean certainty." Joiner-Congleton writes, "Fundamentally, the algorithms themselves (if created in a technically correct fashion) are not the thing to fear. Rather, as in life, the things to fear are the conclusions drawn and the subsequent actions taken. Nevertheless, drawing conclusions from data is a necessary thing in life. People must do this to survive. Imagine the havoc that would be wreaked on the roads of America if we ignored the sounding of a horn on the freeway. Horn-blowing is usually associated with a dangerous event. We ignore it at our peril." She even conceives of developing algorithms so advanced that society might intervene, to get people liable to be recruited into cells back on track before they can be seduced by elements like Al Qaeda. "There is a possibility that with sufficient information about known terrorists we could evolve to the point where we could spot terrorists in the making," she argues. "We believe that individuals can be at risk of becoming drug addicts, or joining gangs, or having affairs, or any number of things at certain times and under certain conditions in their lives. . . . Thorough and continued algorithmic investigation of terrorist behavior is very likely to shed light on their origins, and possibly lead to proactive efforts." But there's a truly slippery slope here. We live in a nation that for months has held at least 700 people=97and possibly hundreds more=97incommunicado, with no more solid connection to terrorism than that they were born in Middle Eastern countries. Privacy may seem like a luxury in a nation at war, but that moral concept lies at the heart of constitutionally guaranteed liberties. That's why so many people are willing to fight for it. A lawsuit filed by John Gilmore, an early employee of Sun Microsystems, aims to restore the anonymity central to the freedom to travel in America. He names Ashcroft, FBI director Robert Mueller, and security czar Tom Ridge as defendants, among other officials, along with two airlines. Gilmore wants to prevent security at airports from demanding identification from him, or subjecting him to arduous and invasive searches when he refuses to provide a photo ID. The emphasis, he says, should be on strengthening cockpits and developing "fly by wire" systems to automatically land planes under threat. But our terrorism fears extend well past airlines to water-tainting, dirty bombs, suicide bombers, conventional bombing, or even simply opening fire with an assault weapon in Grand Central Station=97the kinds of attacks that are difficult to prevent in an open society. For now, we rely on tools like algorithms, and algorithms make mistakes. Albrecht notes that in a three-month test period, the Department of Defense investigated 345 employees after a program falsely fingered them for abusing shopping privileges. In another case, an elderly woman was repeatedly stopped and questioned in airports because her name matched that of a young man already in prison for murder=97a glitch that may indicate CAPPS or another algorithm is using data illegally, for basic criminal investigation and not anti-terrorism. Further, supermarket records have been seized by Drug Enforcement Agency investigators looking for purchases of small plastic baggies, often used in the drug trade, Albrecht observes. "I am not a number!" shouted Patrick McGoohan, star of the British TV show The Prisoner, when he rejected life in an idyllic village where he was held and constantly monitored. "I am a free man." Now that this nation is at war with terror, perhaps you'll remain free as long as your "Potential Terrorist Quotient" remains low enough. -