BIG BIRD

Huge, scary bird sighting in Manchester

Pat Grether is a skeptical person. The 53-year-old mother and grandmother doesn't believe in ghosts or aliens. She's not crazy, nor does she drink or partake in the kinds of substances that would result in a person seeing a huge, scary bird in her backyard. Which happened last Monday morning, she said.
Her dog, a 6-month-old chow named Bear, was in the backyard of her home. It was about 10 when she heard Bear yelping and barking.
Grether went outside to see what the problem was. It sounded like something had frightened Bear, she said, something big, scary and weird.

Pat saw it as soon as she walked out the door. At first, she thought it was one of those big kites kids sometimes fly in the field. But it wasn't. It was a huge bird.
"It looked like a Cadillac," she said. By her estimation, the bird had a wingspan of 18 to 20 feet.

[In the following weeks, about a dozen people called and e-mailed to report that they, too, may have seen the giant bird that Grether reported. Story here.]

UP IN SMOKE

Tobacco shares concern confounds State premier

New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma says he cannot understand concerns about Government money being invested in a tobacco company.
NSW Treasury has bought a stake in the owner of Phillip Morris, which makes a number of high-selling cigarette brands.
The head of the Cancer Council, Dr Andrew Penman, says it the Government is hypocritical to convey strong anti-smoking messages at the same time it is profiting from shares.
The Opposition's health spokeswoman, Jillian Skinner, also says it is unacceptable for Mr Iemma to try and defend the investment.

[Putting their money wher our mouth is?]

MONEY SHOT

Kevin Andrews ... 'dickhead'

NSW Nationals Leader backs away from insult of Kevin Andrews


Grant Lee is the head of the Macleay Teachers' Association in country New South Wales. He organised a meeting of the group earlier this week, attended by State Nationals Leader Andrew Stoner, to discuss the industrial relations reforms.

The Discussion centred around Australian Workplace Agreements and the Federal Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews.

Grant Lee, head of the Macleay Teachers' Association, NSW: Andrew [Stoner] was making the point, several times, that the no-disadvantage clause would make it so that the AWAs (Australian Workplace Agreements) would be protecting Australian workers.
I had to point out to him that under the Howard Government's IR laws, the no-disadvantage clause has actually been abolished.
He was surprised by this. He disagreed at first, but then he said: I'll have to check with my Federal colleagues about that and get back to you. Then he went on to say: but if the no-disadvantage clause has gone, I've got a problem as well.
And then several minutes later into the meeting he actually said to us: if Kevin Andrews got rid of that, frankly he's a dickhead.

[Labor says NSW Nationals Leader Andrew Stoner was right on the money with his description.]

OUR GALAXY

Laser images of Milky Way centre

UCLA astronomers and colleagues have taken the first clear picture of the center of our Milky Way galaxy, including the area surrounding the supermassive black hole, using a new laser virtual star at the W.M. Keck observatory in Hawaii.
"Everything is much clearer now," said Andrea Ghez, UCLA professor of physics and astronomy, who headed the research team. "We used a laser to improve the telescope's vision — a spectacular breakthrough that will help us understand the black hole's environment and physics."
Astronomers are used to working with images that are blurred by the Earth's atmosphere. However, a laser virtual star, launched from the Keck telescope, can be used to correct the atmosphere's distortions and clear up the picture.
This new technology, called Laser Guide Star adaptive optics, will lead to important advances for the study of planets in our solar system and outside of our solar system, as well as galaxies, black holes, and how the universe formed and evolved, Ghez said.
"We have worked for years on techniques for 'beating the distortions in the atmosphere' and producing high-resolution images," she said.

[Ghez and her colleagues took "snapshots" of the center of the galaxy, targeting the supermassive black hole 26,000 light years away, at different wavelengths. This approach allowed them to study the infrared light emanating from very hot material just outside the black hole's "event horizon," about to be pulled through.]

SUFFER THE CHILDREN

Australlian Attorney General Philip Ruddock and shadow AG Nicola Roxon.

Shadow AG points out another promise crushed under Government jackboots


Nicola Roxon: About 12 months ago the Government went through very detailed negotiations ... to ensure ... that children wouldn't be kept in detention but now these new changes are saying it's OK to keep children in detention as long as they're in Nauru but not here in Australia.

SECRET CENSORSHIP

Stuff you don't hear about on the tv

Top stories include news of accelerating government secrecy, massive civilian deaths in Iraq, continuing election fraud, environmental destruction, police state surveillance, and pending wars over geopolitical policies.

MORALITY SQUAD

US broadcasters have been under pressure to clean up the airwaves since Janet Jackson's breast exposure during a dance routine at the 2004 Super Bowl.


Hefty rise in US indecency fines

US broadcasters transmitting indecent material face a tenfold increase in maximum fines, to $325,000 per violation, under new legislation.
President George Bush, signing the law, said, "This law will ensure that broadcasters take seriously their duty to keep the public airwaves free of obscene, profane and indecent material."

[The FCC defines indecency as "language or material that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium, sexual or excretory organs or activities."]


Stones songs censored

The Rolling Stones were censored during their halftime performance at the Super Bowl XL in Detroit this year.
TV censors deemed two lyrics (from Start Me Up and Rough Justice) too sexually explicit to be broadcast and they were cut from the three-song show.

EMPEROR'S CLOTHES

British art gallery displays slate as art

One of Britain's most prestigious art galleries put a block of slate on display, topped by a small piece of wood, in the mistaken belief it was a work of art.
The Royal Academy included the chunk of stone and the small bone-shaped wooden stick in its summer exhibition in London.
But the slate was actually a plinth and the stick was designed to prop up a sculpture.
The sculpture itself - of a human head - was nowhere to be seen.
"I think the things got separated in the selection process and the selectors presented the plinth as a complete sculpture," the work's artist David Hensel told BBC radio.

["Given their separate submission, the two parts were judged independently," the Academy said in a statement. "The head was rejected, the base was thought to have merit and accepted.]

WAR OF WORDS

21-year-old Saudi inmate Yasser al-Zahrani and two other inmates committed suicide at Guantanamo Bay.

US backs away from Guantanamo 'PR stunt' remark

The United States is seeking to distance itself from remarks made by a senior diplomat who described a triple suicide by inmates at the Guantanamo detention camp as "a good PR move".
Colleen Graffy, deputy assistant secretary of state for public diplomacy, told the BBC that the suicides by two Saudi nationals and a Yemeni appeared to be a conscious "strategy".
"It does sound like this is part of a strategy - in that they don't value their own lives, and they certainly don't value ours; and they use suicide bombings as a tactic," Ms Graffy said on BBC's Newshour program.
"Taking their own lives was not necessary, but it certainly is a good PR move."

[Ms Graffy works under special envoy Karen Hughes, a trusted aide of President George W Bush, who is assigned the task of improving the US image abroad, particularly in Islamic countries.]

Hanging oneself in a jail cell could hardly be defended as a "martyrdom operation".

NEW SOUNDS

A Ring tone meant to fall on deaf ears

The young have a new weapon that could change the balance of power on the cellphone front: a ring tone that many adults cannot hear.
In settings where cellphone use is forbidden — in class, for example — it is perfect for signaling the arrival of a text message without being detected by an elder of the species.
A mobile phone ring tone is the offshoot of an invention called the Mosquito, developed last year by a Welsh security company to annoy teenagers and gratify adults, not the other way around.
It was marketed as an ultrasonic teenager repellent, an ear-splitting 17-kilohertz buzzer designed to help shopkeepers disperse young people loitering in front of their stores while leaving adults unaffected.

[Download MP3 audio file.]

PLUMBING THE DEPTHS

Guantanamo suicides a PR move, says US

A top US official has described the suicides of three detainees at the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as a "good PR move to draw attention".
Colleen Graffy told the BBC the deaths were part of a strategy and "a tactic to further the jihadi cause", but taking their own lives was unnecessary.
But lawyers say the men who hanged themselves had been driven by despair. There have been dozens of suicide attempts since the camp was set up four years ago - but none successful until now.

[Ken Roth, head of Human Rights Watch in New York, said the men had probably been driven by despair.
"These people are despairing because they are being held lawlessly. There's no end in sight. They're not being brought before any independent judges. They're not being charged and convicted for any crime." ]

INVISIBLE MAN

Invisibility cloak leaves the realm of magic at last

HIDING objects inside a cloak that channels light around them to make it look as if they aren't there may soon be possible thanks to a breakthrough idea by materials scientists.
It raises the prospect of invisibility shields that could hide objects sitting right under your nose.
Objects are visible simply because light scatters off their surfaces and into your eyes. So in theory, a cloaking device could work by steering light around an object so that you see only the light from behind it, and not the object itself.
Now John Pendry, a theoretical physicist at Imperial College London, and his colleagues have worked out how this could be done with a spherical cloak that channels light around an object hidden at its centre.



FLASHBACK: Alienation News May, 2004: On the battlefield, an invisibility cloak could be just the ticket. Straight out of a Harry Potter adventure, the cloak is covered with tiny light-reflective beads. It appears to be transparent as it's fitted with cameras which project what is in front of the wearer onto the back of the cloak, and vice versa.

GET A MAC

NSA Builds Security Access Into Windows

A careless mistake by Microsoft programmers has shown that special access codes for use by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) have been secretly built into all versions of the Windows operating system.
Computer-security specialists have been aware for two years that unusual features are contained inside a standard Windows driver used for security and encryption functions. The driver, called ADVAPI.DLL, enables and controls a range of security functions including the Microsoft Cryptographic API (MS-CAPI). In particular, it authenticates modules signed by Microsoft, letting them run without user intervention.
At last year's Crypto 98 conference, British cryptography specialist Nicko van Someren said he had disassembled the driver and found it contained two different keys. One was used by Microsoft to control the cryptographic functions enabled in Windows, in compliance with U.S. export regulations. But the reason for building in a second key, or who owned it, remained a mystery.

[Now, a North Carolina security company has come up with conclusive evidence the second key belongs to the NSA. Like van Someren, Andrew Fernandes, chief scientist with Cryptonym of Morrisville, North Carolina, had been probing the presence and significance of the two keys. Then he checked the latest Service Pack release for Windows NT4, Service Pack 5.
He found Microsoft's developers had failed to remove or "strip" the debugging symbols used to test this software before they released it. Inside the code were the labels for the two keys. One was called "KEY." The other was called "NSAKEY."]

SUFFER THE CHILDREN

The Purpose Driven Life-Takers

Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City.
You are on a mission - both a religious mission and a military mission -- to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state - especially moderate, mainstream Christians. Your mission is "to conduct physical and spiritual warfare"; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice.
You have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years old.

[You are playing a real-time strategy video game whose creators are linked to the empire of mega-church pastor Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life.]

REEFER MADNESS

Study Shows Marijuana Smoke Does Not Raise Cancer Risk

A study presented at a meeting of the American Thoracic Society found that smoking marijuana, even heavily, does not increase the risk of cancer.

Dr. Donald Tashkin, of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, has studied the effects of marijuana on the lungs for years and had expected the study to reveal that heavy marijuana use results in elevated cancer risk.
Past studies have yielded varied results on this question, but most were conducted on a small scale and possibly affected by bias. The large-scale UCLA study focused on 2,200 people, about 1,200 of whom had lung, oral, laryngeal or esophageal cancer.
The findings of the study now have researchers considering the possibility that marijuana may have a protective effect against cancer, perhaps deterring tumor growth.

[Past studies have shown marijuana smoke to contain many of the same carcinogenic chemicals found in cigarette smoke.]

MARK OF THE BEAST

Proposal to Implant Tracking Chips in Immigrants

Scott Silverman, Chairman of the Board of VeriChip Corporation, has proposed implanting the company's RFID tracking tags in immigrant and guest workers. He made the statement on national television on May 16.
Silverman was being interviewed on "Fox & Friends." Responding to the Bush administration's call to know "who is in our country and why they are here," he proposed using VeriChip RFID implants to register workers at the border, and then verify their identities in the workplace. He added, "We have talked to many people in Washington about using it...."

[The VeriChip is a very small Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag about the size of a large grain of rice. It can be injected directly into the body; a special coating on the casing helps the VeriChip bond with living tissue and stay in place. A special RFID reader broadcasts a signal, and the antenna in the VeriChip draws power from the signal and sends its data. The VeriChip is a passive RFID tag; since it does not require a battery, it has a virtually unlimited life span.]

UP GO THE WALLS

The Botswana Zimbabwe border: much of it now fenced.

Botswana, Zimbabwe row over electric border fence

Relations between Botswana and Zimbabwe are reported to be deteriorating as the Batswana government continues to construct an electric fence along the two countries' border. Botswana is fencing out the increasing numbers of Zimbabweans fleeing their country's economic and political collapse.
The Zimbabwean government has claimed that "Botswana is trying to create another Gaza Strip" by constructing an electric fence, according to Zimbabwe's High Commissioner to Botswana, Phelekeza Mphoko. In Harare, the 2.4 metre high fence has caused protest and frustration, as it is seen as a symbol of the growing stigmatisation of Zimbabweans.

[Earlier this year the government of Botswana decided to erect a four metre-high electric fence along the 500km border shortly after an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in that area.]



US border fence plan 'shameful'

The 260-159 voice vote on an amendment to a bill on illegal immigration "mandates the construction of specific security fencing, including lights and cameras, along the Southwest border for the purposes of gaining operational control of the border.

Mexican President Vicente Fox has described a US proposal to build a fence along 1130km of their 3200km border as "shameful".
He said the proposal - which Mexican officials have compared to the Berlin Wall - was a "very bad signal" from a nation of immigrants.
The US House of Representatives passed an immigration bill last week, backing the building of such a fence.




The 'separation barrier".

Israel's 'security wall': the findings

According to Reuters, the leaked report from the international court of justice has condemned Israel's barrier.
"The Court ... finds that the construction of the wall, and its associated regime, are contrary to international law."



Israel's security 'fence' lines are still fluid. Click image for large version (2.5mb).

Despite the fact that Israel has the better arguments regarding both the jurisdiction and merits, the World Court will most likely accept jurisdiction and declare that the fence - at least in its current route - is a violation of international law. The arguments outlined above will likely have little impact on the court, especially since it has previously stated that the political context or implications of an opinion would not affect its decision-making.31 -- Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs






And what is happening in Giza?

Walls Encircle Pyramidal Complex at Giza

Since the beginning of 2002, Dr. J.J. Hurtak and a European team of investigators and explorers have been recording the construction of a massive system of walls being placed around the historic pyramidal sites and the larger unexcavated area of Giza, Egypt — an area covering 8 square km.
The walls have been built in stages. Images taken in February of 2002 reveal the walls extending far out into the desert where, for the most part, they have not been noticeable to the average visitor.

[Are these walls being built for a few experts who are to find an underground sphinx or obelisk, or a connection between Osiris and the constellation of Orion? Are the chambers of the deep being closed in the 21st century to students of world culture history?]