Interesting cases if you care. Less so if you don't.

Among our audience, the new OS X 10.5 Leopard has caused some sadness due to outdating of programs and a lag in needed hacks. (you know what I'm talking about). I am not on 10.5 yet, as i need to scrub my computer and erase the main HD, really. On the other hand, it's fast.

How to hack Final Cut Express HD to run on a non-AGP graphics card blessed machine:

Sadly FCP Express jeers you if you try to run it on a MacBook, refusing to boot saying AGP video card required. Which seems like bullshit because the Macbook is fairly modern and "Express" is supposed to be a watered-down FCP anyway. So how do we trick Quartz Extreme into accepting your crappier video card?

The answer is almost the same as a much older hack to force FCP to run on low RAM machines. You can cheat the RAM checking of your computer's specs, by changing the purty settings:

<key>AELMinimumRAMSize</key> <string>512</string>change that pesky 512 MB to something lower. Or whatever. just don't cry when it runs slow or crashes because it ran out.
To activate the non-AGP support:

right-click or control-click on FCP Express and select "Open Package Contents".

Open "Contents" folder.

Open "info.plist" and find where it says "AGP". This is near some stuff like <key>IOPCI</key> or something like that.

Change "AGP" to "PCI" . and reboot yr box.

What you're really doing here is telling the IOPCI to go screw itself and be happy with a regular crappy video hookup, rather than demanding sparkly AGP. Or something like that. We heard the escape key may also let you into FCP at the AGP page.

Monolingual said to work OK for Leopard but beware DANGEROUS default settings!

Leopard installs a ton of crap that no one needs unless: you are personally a stack of all major printers AND you speak more languages than the pissed off bastards building the Tower of Babel, there's about 2-4 GB to be recovered from the gunk.

Apple installs a ton of major global languages by default; the install disc automatically puts in Spanish, Italian, French, Chinese, Japanese and other versions of the bits of the user interface. And also a million printer drivers for Canon, HP and whatever else. The typical user will never need any of this stuff. (admittedly people use some printers and different languages, but installing all of them is just plain wasteful).

I haven't run the Leopard installer, but the "Custom" option has some things you can turn off. But if you never did that, you gotta cut this crap loose.

The useless printer drivers are around /Library/Printers I think. The useless other languages are everywhere, inside of all applications in the form of thousands of tiny files.

There are a few programs that can strip the foreign languages, but are they safe for Leopard? The early word is that it is OK to run these progs, but may defeat the security "signed code" feature by muddling what it's checking against.

Monolingual is the one I have used, BUT YOU NEED TO UNCHECK ALL ARCHITECTURES UNLESS YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU'RE DOING! (by default, it may eat the executable code parts you need. Nice design, guys!)

Macaroni is another program that can do this, and maybe there is an issue with code signing, though the authors strongly deny it.

Leopard Code Signing and Keychain Problems (Switchers' Blog).

Getting more space on your Mac... and my Leopard install experience Computing | Gadget Guy Channel 7 Australia

Snatch back wasted disk space from Leopard's jaws - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

Digg - "Application Slimmers" Cause Havoc with Leopard Code Signing!

Also note that any 'slimmer' program that strips Adobe's useless foreign language help files will cause Adobe to throw a shitfit and refuse to launch until you reinstall. So Monolingual will kill your Adobe progs unless you specifically exclude the Adobe folders via Prefs. (maybe /Library/Application Support/Adobe too?)

I didn't intend for this post to seem dire, but getting your space back is a chancy, permanent hack for the unprepared and the default settings with these programs are annoyingly WRONG. But they seem to be OK on Leopard so far (tho of course Monolingual's sourceforge page says nothing about 10.5!).

Drupal is the engine that runs this site and it's a big deal. I have been making my bucks from Drupal for a while. Fortunately Drupal 6 is getting close to complete, and has just reached beta 3 release.

Also if you are into Drupal development see that Lullabot has released their 50th podcast with 50 tips for Drupal developers, new and old.

Yay Drupal!

I like to have way too many tabs open. But Firefox for OS X doesn't respond too well to that. It tends to get really pokey and start to lock up the whole computer. The CPU meter gets really high when I've got too many tabs.

Here's what's really going on. Many of the pages I'm at have embedded Flash animations. (Many banner ads, and Google Video embeds, etc, are really Flash.) Even when the tab is not in front (selected/in focus), they are still running, absorbing CPU and RAM. Firefox starts to crawl, and I can't even type fast.

So there is an Firefox addon called Flashblock, and it works great! Awesome, way to go. If you want to run the Flash on a site, just click it on.

Right now Firefox has more than a couple dozen tabs and it is still keeping CPU at 12%. That is savings you can bank on. Firefox is much more responsive and the whole computer seems happier.

I saw Loose Change a week ago at the Riverview Theater and I was definitely impressed: they took out the dumber stuff about 9/11, and replaced idle speculation about media clips with quality interviews. The graphics are great, the music is good, (although I liked some of the old music more), and overall it was a much stronger film than Loose Change 2.

This is not a full review; I'll cough that up later. Suffice it to say, Loose Change is a lot more fun to watch in a packed theater.

Anyhow, the new MinnPost operation offered up a relatively positive review from Rob Nelson: MinnPost - Rob Nelson: Spare 'Change'? Film panhandles for 9/11 outrage. Way to go Rob.

This surfer dude apparently defeated string theory with a great and simple theory which places all subatomic particles on a 248-point structure dubbed E8. This is great because the theory can easily be proven: missing E8 particles should be discoverable:

Telegraph, U.K. Telegraph, U.K. - An out-of-work surfer with a Ph.D. in astrophysics has published a paper entitled An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything that has caught the attention of the scientific community as a possible explanation of the four basic forces of the cosmos. Physicists from Einstein and on have long sought a "theory of everything" but have been stymied by the inability to include gravity in a simple, workable approach.Garrett Lisi, 39, of Nevada, believes he has uncovered a model that not only incorporates gravity, but also requires no complex mathematics and relies on only one dimension of time and three of space, corresponding to the dimensions humans experience in daily life. Standard cosmological theories of the universe, especially string theory, require ten or more dimensions of space that are difficult to imagine.

The mathematics behind Lisi's model are based on a geometric structure known since the 19th century as E8. The structure of E8 consists of 248 points, and the formulas necessary to understand the interrelationships among these points were recently worked out in detail. Lisi believes all sub-atomic particles fit on these points and that the observed groupings of these particles correspond to defined sections of E8. His theory posits new sub-atomic particles that allow his theory to be tested, much like Einstein's General Theory of Relativity provided certain tests that could be determined in nature as a means of proving his theory.

Several prominent cosmologists have lauded Lisi's paper, though the bulk of the scientific community remains skeptical and cautious. Even Lisi cautions that his theory, while beautiful in construction, has many hurdles to overcome. If correct, the theory would not only overthrow the work of scientists for the past three or more decades, and upset the current Standard Theory, it would like the General Theory of Relativity be another major physics breakthrough that comes from an outsider and loner in the scientific community.
Lisi spends his time surfing and snowboarding, and conducts hiking guides for a living. Lisi's theory was first published in New Scientist. Popular notice of his theory has arisen because of an article published by the science editor of the U.K. Telegraph.

More about that here: Penniless Surfer Devises Intriguing Cosmological Theory of Everything | The Agonist.

Obama has a really good technology plan, which supports net neutrality and other awesome ways to open the government to public participation via the Internets! WhiteHouse.gov having public comment threads for legislation. Awesome!! This alone is prolly enough to swing me over to Obama at this stage. VentureBeat » Exclusive: Barack Obama to name a “Chief Technology Officer”.

You can get a gold-plated MacBook Pro. Really. When you've got that Marie Antoinette kinda feeling. MA896LL/A-GOLD | 24 Karat Gold MacBook Pro: 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 15.4" TFT display | PowerMax.

Some interesting stuff from The Agonist if you're interested in quality international affairs coverage. The "Hitler Comparison". On the one hand, Bush started killing people a lot faster than Hitler did. On the other hand, he doesn't really seem to throw his full lot in with it. But rationalized annihilation runs strong with both these figures, and the political movements they head definitely both have some fascist traits, which I won't elaborate on here.

Time to drop the U.S. militarized economy meme. I added a positive plan to shut off the military industrial complex:

existing military-industrial job conversion is best

In Chalmers Johnson's Nemesis he talked about how the U.S. is headed for bankruptcy because of 'military Keynsianism.' i.e. juicing the economy by pumping in the mil cash. But unlike regular keynsianism, where you quit adding so much money on the boom side, with military keynsianism it's a perpetual motion machine, with the consequent expanding of foreign wars.

the best solution is to tally up all the jobs salaried from the machine, and make a goal of no Net job loss, while splitting up and non-profitizing the corporate entities like Boeing. You convert the profit war jobs to non profit green energy institute jobs, preferably at a 1:1 ratio. The result is that all the whizbang stuff is devoted to finding new sustainable energy stuff, and therefore you would be able to capitalize on new tech methods and provide a legitimate, economically viable foundation for the future. (while avoiding the dislocation from mass firings and Falling Down Michael Douglas psychos running the streets.) All these salaries could still be paid straight outta debt like they are now, but at least produced widgets would be economically productive!

The Biofuels Situation Hits Close to Home. Benazir Bhutto: Grade-A Scum. No Immunity In the FISA Bill. That's all for now!

I wondered what "res ipsa loquitur" meant. HS Thompson used it a lot. Now I see why: it means "the thing speaks for itself."

So behold this Scalia joke:

Not all of the justices admit to being so nervous, however. Asked to assess his prospects for losing his virginity within the next two months, a confident Scalia lifted his judicial robe and quipped, "Res ipsa loquitur."

Other funny stuff for today: Cracked.com has actually got a pretty good deal going for good humor stuff. Consider the actually quite disconcerting 10 Ways Online Gaming Will Change the Future.

Also, The 8 Least-Threatening Comic Book Villains, The Ultimate War Simulation Game, The Best (Worst) Fantasy & Science Fiction Book Covers.

Some more really good stuff included: The Next 9 Children's Characters That Should Come Out of the Closet, The 25 Most Baffling Toys From Around the World, and finally, The 9 Most Racist Disney Characters. Great!

Eh that's all for now. I finally got the heat fixed in my apartment. Turned out the radiator pipes were full of air. Now it's hot as hell in here. The door to my barely-insulated porch can even be left open with no ill effect!

It's the red light hour folks, and FOX News Porn is there for you. (and now Fox Business Porn). What? Well basically they love to show tasty young strippers and whatnot, in an effort to maintain viewership among the vaunted Lecherous Old Men Who Hate Arabs niche.

This video got tagged by Digg as "adult content" despite the fact that it is nothing but 100% Fox News footage, with transitions and mocking titles added. This is surely unrelated to Digg starting some kind of partnership with News Corp.

Cliff Schecter shares the latest FoxPorn news with the Agonist crowd:

For this entry, I come bearing more gifts than than a coal/oil/auto/baby seal poacher lobbyist meeting with Mitch McConnell. It's more of your favorite Fox fun! Yes, we at Brave New Films, after our Fox Attacks Decency video went over so well, used the remaining, 457,927 hours of smutty Fox coverage to embark on a more sober project.

It's called Fox News Porn!, and the video is hot (well, not as hot as Rush-Limbaugh-with-a-cornucopia-of-little-red-pills-in-the-red-light-district-of-Bangkok hot, but of ample degree). In fact, it was so risque, apparently, that Digg flagged it as porn (or could it be that they are in takeover talks with News Corp.?), YouTube makes you promise to be 18 and spam filters in emails across the land are working harder than Pat Robertson to justify his lusty-lipped love-in with Rudy Giuliani.

So let's go to the videotape (back up above)! And as a side note, we promise no "wide stances," prostitutes with the same name as your wife or acohohol-blamed, Congressional Page binges. Fair is fair, and the GOP has already staked their claim to this territory. We do, however, give you the video that over 167,000 peole watched in one day. Fox News Porn!

Here's the main video, but there are more:

It was a tough week for News Corp after Bernie Kerik's ex-paramour Judith Regan (who would boff that guy - yuck!) sued News Corp for $100 million, claiming Fox executives pressured her to lie to the Feds investigating Kerik's formidable record of graft, corruption, mob favors and other delicious New York treats:

In a suit filed Tuesday in the Supreme Court of New York, Regan alleges that "a senior executive" at News Corp. asked her to lie to federal investigators about information she may have obtained about ex-New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik because it might do harm to former mayor Rudolph Giuliani's campaign for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.

(Let's not forget, "No new radios" Giuliani wanted to make this towering pile of grease America's Homeland Security chief.)

On a related note, the horrible Nancy Grace gets pissed off when the 'wrong' Paris Hilton clips run, and then apparently the control room staff veers off and starts playing clips of.. other stuff. Short but funny.

How about this? A surprise from NYmag.com and being trumped around the UnderNet.

What do you think about OiNK being shut down?

Trent: I'll admit I had an account there and frequented it quite often. At the end of the day, what made OiNK a great place was that it was like the world's greatest record store. Pretty much anything you could ever imagine, it was there, and it was there in the format you wanted. If OiNK cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn't the equivalent of that in the retail space right now. iTunes kind of feels like Sam Goody to me. I don't feel cool when I go there. I'm tired of seeing John Mayer's face pop up.

I feel like I'm being hustled when I visit there, and I don't think their product is that great. DRM, low bit rate, etc. Amazon has potential, but none of them get around the issue of pre-release leaks. And that's what's such a difficult puzzle at the moment.

If your favorite band in the world has a leaked record out, do you listen to it or do you not listen to it? People on those boards, they're grateful for the person that uploaded it — they're the hero.

They're not stealing it because they're going to make money off of it; they're stealing it because they love the band. I'm not saying that I think OiNK is morally correct, but I do know that it existed because it filled a void of what people want.

One of my secret agent types sent me a note that Apple will release a super-light laptop, perhaps with a kind of Flash-drive based hard drive (NAND style). AppleInsider reports it and rounding it out with other field reports, Mac Rumors: Ultra-Portable Mac Expected at Macworld Expo 2008. Nifty.

First: This is (also) why the Minnesota right-wing blogosphere is sad. I met Wedge at the 331 blogger thingy and he's a nice guy. Yeesh.

Over at work we have cancelled any links to the rightwing AntiStrib blog because they are really quite racist towards Native Americans on a regular basis. Another horrible anti-Indian rant ticked off the guy at Minnesota Democrats Exposed enough to cancel all links to the 'vile and racist' postings:

Doug whines that we tried to educate the Indians, but what choice did we have? Their acts of terrorism against the settlers and the military assured that they could no longer be allowed to roam at random over other people’s lands. Their poverty-based societies filled Indians with a deep desire to steal and kill at will. The only alternative to integration was extermination. Andrew Jackson reached this conclusion and rode this issue to the White House. He was veteran of the many wars with the Indians and had no illusions about the Indians.

So skip the noble savage crap. American Indians were domestic terrorists permanently stuck in the Stone Age. Even the God Damned French contributed more and managed to create a better society than the humanoid animals that once roamed our continent.

Wow, someone is angry with many spirits. The banner below is hosted from the more reeled-in freedomdogs blog. Hm. The vast network, etc.

not complete assholes, but hosted @ http://www.freedomdogs.com/images/AntiStribBanner.jpg.

Side note: Ecto 3 Beta 7, the nifty blogging tool for OS X (and earlier tools) just came out. I keep noting this because this version seems to incorporate a feature I asked for in the feedback forum: a default plain text style option. And getting the "add link" a keyboard shortcut again: ⌘-U. Ok maybe it wasn't really my big idears that got it in. But I am trying to help!

On a completely unrelated subject, Kanye West's mom was killed by plastic surgery. Another horrible sign of the times. A tough lady who evidently told her son about a few tricks of language:

After 31 years rising through the teaching ranks to chair the English Department at Chicago State, Donda West retired in 2004 to manage her son's burgeoning career. She also headed up Super Good, the parent company of the emcee's fast-growing business empire, which includes apparel, accessories and other lifestyle products, and was the chairwoman of the Kanye West Foundation, a nonprofit devoted to increasing literacy and preventing youths from dropping out of school.

TWINE: Here is an interesting one for people to see. Twine is in early development stage. It is an attempt at "web 3.0" but perhaps remains at "Web 2.5" in the judgment of experts. Here is what their About page says:

Twine Ties it all Together: Twine is a new service that intelligently helps you share, organize and find information with people you trust.

Share more productively. In Twine you can safely share information and knowledge, and collaborate around common interests, activities and goals. Twine helps you better leverage and contribute to the collective intelligence of your network. Use Twine to share more productively with friends, colleagues, groups and teams.

Get more organized. Twine provides one place to tie everything together: emails, bookmarks, documents, contacts, photos, videos, product info, data records, and more. And, because Twine actually understands the meaning of any information you add in, it helps you organize all your stuff automatically. Finally, you can search and browse everything and everyone you know, about anything, in one convenient place.

Find and be found. You are like a snowflake – you are totally one-of-a-kind. Twine recognizes what makes you special: your unique interests, personality, knowledge and relationships, to help you find and discover things, and be found by others, more relevantly.

Who is Twine For?

Friends. Colleagues. Groups. Teams. Anyone who needs help dealing with the growing array of information and relationships on the Web today. Whether you just need to organize and share with friends, or you need to collaborate better with teams, Twine provides the smartest way to tie it all together.

How Does Twine work?

We thought you’d never ask! Well, in a nutshell Twine uses the Semantic Web, natural language processing, and machine learning to make your information and relationships smarter. But if that’s all Greek to you, just think of Twine as your very own intelligent personal Web assistant, working for you behind the scenes so you can be more productive.

Here is Radar Networks' list of articles about Twine. Basically you can put in all your stuff and RSS feeds, etc, and the website pulls out all the keywords. Then you can share with your friends/team etc and everything works nicely. So far the gurus are a bit skeptical because the front page is really not exciting. This was a thoughtful review of the potential. Here is one from Tim O'Reilly, the big guru of the O'Reilly tech books and related schemes. I signed up for the Twine beta review, and will check it out.

On a related note, there's a good review of Web2.0 vs Web1.0 and what Google is trying to do in the Big Picture, now with this new "Open Social" protocol. They say it's a 'kind big brother' for providing services, and that is a little bit questionable.

Note from HongPong: I have talked with Lukery and he told me a while ago that I could repost material from his various nifty and methodical blogs about the Sibel Edmonds case, which remains stuck mostly in a dormant state. Sibel just announced she was willing to get slammed for the gag order if a national network will air her case. Tellingly, no one wants to bother so far. All of this was posted on Lukery's blog Let Sibel Edmonds Speak a while ago.
Source: http://letsibeledmondsspeak.blogspot.com/2007/11/sibel-edmonds-case-unte...
Nice work Lukery. Also be sure to check out the ever-solid BradBlog.com for GOP voting machine hacking and other whistle-blower stuff.

Please look at my special basic collection of stuff about the case too.Though indeed that area of this site could be much better.
*******

Last week, former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, announced that she was willing to tell everything that she knows if any of the major networks are willing to give her airtime, without airbrushing the essence of her case. Bradblog will have an update on the progress, or lack of it, next week.

Of course, Sibel would prefer to testify under oath in congress, but apparently our Democratic Congresscritters (I'm looking at you, Waxman) don't care about the treason, bribery, and corruption that has hijacked US foreign policy.

Meanwhile, last week we learnt that the judge in the AIPAC case has allowed subpoenas to be issued to 15 current and former high-level officials. Many of us are excited about the prospect of the trial - but Sibel assures us that the case, as it stands, is just the tip of the iceberg.

'AIPAC' is at the core of Sibel's case, and Sibel’s story needs to be heard - either in Congress, or in the media.

****

Those of you who have been following Sibel's case will be familiar with the American Turkish Council (ATC) - the 'mini-AIPAC' that (ostensibly) exists to promote Turkey's military interests in the US.

As it happens, the ATC is a creation of AIPAC (and other Israeli lobbying interests) - and there is significant overlap in the membership, goals and activities of both AIPAC and the ATC. This is perhaps not surprising given the long-standing tri-lateral military (and military 'defense' spending) relationship between the three countries. In fact, Sibel refers to AIPAC and the ATC as 'sister organizations.'

Not only were the ATC and AIPAC 'sister organizations,' they also had something else in common: there have been 'sister investigations' into both organizations. And of course, both investigations uncovered serious criminality at the highest levels of the US administration - Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department.

Sibel described the overlap in this interview with Antiwar's Chris Deliso in 2005:

SE: Look, I think that that [the AIPAC investigation] ultimately involves more than just Israelis – I am talking about countries, not a single country here. Because despite however it may appear, this is not just a simple matter of state espionage. If (Patrick) Fitzgerald and his team keep pulling, really pulling, they are going to reel in much more than just a few guys spying for Israel.

CD: A monster, 600-pound catfish, huh? So the Turkish and Israeli investigations had some overlap?

SE: Essentially, there is only one investigation – a very big one, an all-inclusive one. Completely by chance, I, a lowly translator, stumbled over one piece of it.

But I can tell you there are a lot of people involved, a lot of ranking officials, and a lot of illegal activities that include multi-billion-dollar drug-smuggling operations, black-market nuclear sales to terrorists and unsavory regimes, you name it. And of course a lot of people from abroad are involved. It's massive. So to do this investigation, to really do it, they will have to look into everything.

CD: But you can start from anywhere –

SE: That's the beauty of it. You can start from the AIPAC angle. You can start from the Plame case. You can start from my case. They all end up going to the same place, and they revolve around the same nucleus of people. There may be a lot of them, but it is one group. And they are very dangerous for all of us.

In 2004, Knight Ridder's Warren Strobel and Jonathon Landay confirmed that the 'AIPAC case' was much more serious than anything that has seen the light of day so far:

"Several U.S. officials and law-enforcement sources said yesterday that the scope of the FBI probe of Pentagon intelligence activities appeared to go well beyond the Franklin matter.

FBI agents have briefed top White House, Pentagon and State Department officials on the probe. Based on those briefings, officials said, the bureau appears to be looking into other controversies that have roiled the Bush administration, some of which also touch Feith's office.

They include how the Iraqi National Congress, a former exile group backed by the Pentagon, allegedly received highly classified U.S. intelligence on Iran; the leaking of the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame to reporters; and the production of bogus documents suggesting that Iraq tried to buy uranium for nuclear weapons from the African country of Niger. Bush repeated the Niger claim in making the case for war against Iraq.

"The whole ball of wax" was how one U.S. official privy to the briefings described the inquiry."

Keep in mind that the FBI operation against AIPAC et al goes back to at least 1999 - so they were watching all of the relevant characters throughout this period. In fact, you'll note that Strobel refers to "the FBI probe of Pentagon intelligence activities" - apparently the Pentagon, particularly Doug Feith's Office of Special Plans, was itself the 'target' of the investigation.

Investigations shut down.
What happened to that Pentagon investigation? Why aren't Doug Feith, Richard Perle and others in prison? I can only presume that this particular investigation was shut down, just like so many other investigations into these criminals.

In a recent interview Sibel described some cases that were shut down. The case referred to in this excerpt is apparently an Israeli counter-intelligence case:

"There are other cases we are not hearing about that I'm aware of that have to do with similar cases, maybe having to do with other countries. For example, again this is another relevant case, an outside case, the Larry Franklin case, with the espionage case that they pursued with AIPAC. And what the American public doesn’t know is the fact that there were other counter-intelligence operations within the FBI that obtained far more information not only limited to Mr. Franklin, that were similarly shut down in 2000 and 2001 because they ended up going to higher levels and involving maybe way too many people, US persons. I’m talking about individuals who are breaking the law, misusing the trust and abusing their power, and in some cases I would even say engaging in treason."

And here Sibel describes the same thing taking place within Turkish counter-intelligence:

Now the same thing was about to take place with Turkish counter-intelligence. In the main portion of the documented — wiretapped or paper — operations that I translated verbatim (not only for the Washington Field Office but also for the Chicago and New Jersey offices), they were obtained before 2001. If we were to put a date on it you’re looking at end of 1996 to 2001. Now, in 1998 and 1999, there were so many pieces of evidence of U.S. individuals’ involvement. We’re talking about people with official positions, whether they were in the State Department or the Pentagon or the U.S. Congress that forced the Justice Dept, and the good agents who did the right thing, they started a parallel investigation that targeted these individuals who were possibly committing acts of treason.

However, as I was told by first-source agents I was working with, this was put on hold in 1999 because President Clinton was then going through the Lewinsky scandal. After the current administration came into power and after I was working there, the agents were told to shut down.

Similar allegations
Sibel isn't the only person who claims that investigations like this have been shut down. For example, in Kill The Messenger, ex-CIA agent Phil Giraldi says:

All of these people (Richard Perle, Doug Feith) have been investigated by the FBI at one point or another for passing secret information to Israel. In no cases, were any of them convicted. The prosecutions were dropped… in my opinion because of political pressure not to get into this kind of case that involves Israel and espionage.

Similarly, Laura Rozen and Jason Vest reported in Prospect:

"Since the Pollard case, U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement sources have revealed to the Prospect that at least six sealed indictments have been issued against individuals for espionage on Israel's behalf. It's a testament to the unique relationship between the United States and Israel that those cases were never prosecuted; according to the same sources, both governments ultimately addressed them through diplomatic and intelligence channels rather than air the dirty laundry. A number of career Justice Department and intelligence officials who have worked on Israeli counterespionage told the Prospect of long-standing frustration among investigators and prosecutors who feel that cases that could have been made successfully against Israeli spies were never brought to trial, or that the investigations were shut down prematurely."

Sibel often makes the same point. The FBI agents in the field are doing a great job, however:

The people who made that decision (to shut down the investigation) were not the Justice Department or the FBI, and that’s what I try to emphasize all the time — they were pressured, they were forced by higher-up forces within the Pentagon and the State Department.

That is, the guilty parties at the Pentagon and State Dept have the power to stomp on investigations into their own illegal activities. And as Sibel says, these people were involved in criminal activity, not just simple state-based espionage.

As reported in Vanity Fair:

"In fact, much of what Edmonds reportedly heard seemed to concern not state espionage but criminal activity. There was talk, she told investigators, of laundering the profits of large-scale drug deals and of selling classified military technologies to the highest bidder."

Once we understand that simple fact, this report from Washington Post makes more sense:

"Reports on the investigation have baffled foreign policy analysts and U.S. officials because the Bush administration and the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon already cooperate on intelligence matters and share policy views. Despite some rocky moments, the relationship has been among the United States' closest in both policy and intelligence sharing since Israel was founded almost six decades ago."

Current AIPAC case
As I've demonstrated, the current 'AIPAC' case involving Keith Weissman and Steve Rosen receiving information from Larry Franklin barely scratches the surface of the underlying crimes that these investigations have yielded, and even this very limited case may never see the light of day. In an apparent greymail attempt, the defense has called 15 current and former government officials to testify - including Condi Rice, Douglas Feith, Stephen Hadley, Elliott Abrams and Richard Armitage. In fact, in Judge Ellis' opinion last week, he gave the admistration this offer ultimatum:

"The government's refusal to comply with a subpoena in these circumstances may result in dismissal or a lesser sanction"

Surely the administration won't refuse that offer ultimatum.

There was, however, one interesting piece of news in the judge's ruling last week. In footnote 8, page 7, Judge Ellis wrote

"The government does not object to the issuance of subpoenas to Franklin, Satterfield, Pollack, or Makovsky."

JTA, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, reported, without elaboration, that:

"The government did not raise objections to the four subpoenas for officials who were identified in the indictment."

If this is correct, then one of the mysteries of the case has apparently (nearly) been solved. In the original indictment, the unindicted co-conspirators were addressed using codewords. We now know that Ken Pollack was USGO-1, David Satterfield was USGO-2 but we didn't know the identities of two others: "DoD employee A" and "DoD employee B."

"DoD employee A" played the trivial, and quite possibly innocent, role of telling Rosen that Larry Franklin was an expert on Iran. On the other hand, "DoD employee B" was a willing participant in at least one espionage-related meeting with Rosen, Weissman and Franklin.

Michael Makovsky, one of Larry Franklin's co-workers at the OSP is apparently either "DoD employee A" or "DoD employee B." If he is "DoD employee B," why hasn't he been indicted?

One Remaining Mystery
Given all this history, the one remaining mystery is how on earth this current 'AIPAC' trial has come as far as it has. Laura Rozen and Jason Vest reported:

This history (of shutting down investigations) had led to informed speculation that the FBI -- fearing the Franklin probe was heading toward the same silent end -- leaked the story to CBS to keep it in the public eye and give it a fighting chance.

Three and a half years later, it appears that the fight is over. Larry Franklin has pled guilty, but even if the AIPAC case goes forward, most of the underlying crimes, and most of the criminal perpetrators, will go unpunished.

One Last Chance
Sibel has evidence of the underlying crimes. She knows who the criminals are. She wants to testify under oath in Congress but the spineless Democrats, particularly Henry Waxman, want her to keep quiet about these issues.

In an act of desperation, Sibel has bravely offered to tell all, at great personal (both legal and physical) risk, if one of the major networks will air her story. Given the history, Sibel's offer is the only chance we'll have to hear any of these remarkable allegations.

Waxman can be contacted in DC:(202)225-3976 and LA:323 651-1040. The toll free Capitol switchboard number is 800-828-0498. See if you can shame him into doing something.

The blog We Can Change The World has put together a list (with contact details) of journalists and media outlets that have (partially) covered Sibel's story in the past. If you contact those journalists, perhaps they'll be willing to at least write about Sibel's offer - which might put pressure on either Waxman or one of the networks to actually take up the offer.

******

cross-posted at Let Sibel Edmonds Speak

(Email me if you want to be added to my Sibel email list. Subject: 'Sibel email list')

Image source DeesIllustration.com / Rense.com :

Play to the Base! You gotta hand it to the Ron Paul campaign, they are cashing in directly on Guy Fawkes and 'V for Vendetta'! Paul blew away the GOP single-day fundraising record, and now he's sitting pretty.

Meanwhile, it is quite likely that New Hampshire independents will wander into the Republican primary and vote for Ron Paul. This is also the plan in Minnesota, I have been told by a top MN-Ron Paul organizer. New York Times:

Candidate’s Pleased to Remember This Fifth of November

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

Historians and British schoolchildren remember Guy Fawkes as the Roman Catholic, anti-Protestant rebel who on Nov. 5, 1605, tried to assassinate King James I by blowing up the Parliament. Supporters of the Republican primary campaign of the libertarian Representative Ron Paul may remember Fawkes as a wildly successful fund-raising gimmick.

On Monday, a group of Paul supporters helped raised more than $4.07 million in one day — approaching what the campaign raised in the entire last quarter — through a Web site called ThisNovember5th.com, a reference to the day the British commemorate the thwarted bombing.

Many fans of Mr. Paul know of the day primarily through a movie based on the futuristic graphic novel “V for Vendetta,” by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, in which a terrorist modeled after Fawkes battles a fascist government that has taken over Britain.

The Paul campaign has raised more than $6.84 million in the first five weeks of this quarter, more than the $5 million it raised from July 1 to Oct. 1. Many of the contributions appeared to come through the independent Fawkes effort, but how much was unclear.

On Monday alone, the campaign signed up more than 21,000 new donors, said Jesse Benton, a campaign spokesman.

Among 2008 presidential candidates, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York holds the record for raising the most in a single day: $6.2 million on June 30. But Mr. Paul has surpassed the best day of Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, who raised $3.14 million on Jan. 8.

ThisNovember5th.com includes video clips and the text of a speech by Mr. Paul, a 10-term Texas congressman. In it, Mr. Paul declares, “The true patriot challenges the state when the state embarks on enhancing its power at the expense of the individual.”

Mr. Paul has stood out from the Republican field for his opposition to the war in Iraq. In the speech he argues that the fight against terrorism is threatening American democracy.

“The American Republic is in remnant status,” he says. “The stage is set for our country eventually devolving into military dictatorship, and few seem to care.”

Mr. Benton clarified that Mr. Paul did not support blowing up government buildings. “He wants to demolish things like the Department of Education,” Mr. Benton said, “but we can do that very peacefully, in a constructive manner.”

Ron Paul's web traffic continues to zoom away from the pack, the Alex Jones conspiracy guys note with glee:

Regardless of whether it's possible to be polite about it, the reality of contemporary America is that the legal trappings of total tyranny have already been set up. Weird, subjective parameters for declaring you and me 'terrorists' beyond the reach of the Magna Carta have already been drafted into law with little attention.

On the upside, this has inspired $4 million in donations to the Ron Paul campaign yesterday! While I differ with Dr. Paul on many policies, his whole message is anti-police state, and its good to have messaging in that direction today.

Introducing OS X 10.5 Leopard: HOTNESS!

Ok fine, that is really VisiCalc for the Apple II, one of the first Killer Apps in computing history.

(Note: The nifty blogging tool Ecto 3 is now at beta 6. It is still a bit buggy but i am a registered user so i'm giving em feedback on the bugs, crashes etc.)

A correction: someone anonymous added a comment that Apple WebKit, the core engine of Safari, is NOT derived from Gecko, the engine that runs Mozilla Firefox and other Mozilla web renderings (Thunderbird, Camino and SeaMonkey among them). Evidently the WebKit was an in-house project or whatever.

Today I started looking a bit at the history of Apple's OS evolution. It's a pretty arcane area. Chances are, you haven't been sitting around lately wondering "What ever happened to HyperCard or Quickdraw GX? What is the connection between Cocoa and Yellow Box / Rhapsody? Where did the OS X Developer Kit come from?" etc.

The hairy backroads of Apple's circuitous development path since the 1970s are not really that interesting to most people, but with OS X 10.5 just released, it is a good time to review where the Apple Macintosh operating system came from, and thereby getting a more granular sense of its trajectory and future developments.

The big trend I noticed when reading up on the history was how Apple used to have a lot of shoddy in-house technologies that never quite worked smoothly. The core of OS X itself came from the NeXT Corporation, and it's interesting to see how NeXT developer tools (Interface Builder mainly) were ported to OS 9 before X came out, and those sorts of elements became deeply embedded into OS X today.

A kind of plugin structure has been evolving in OS X: Core Audio, Core Graphics and other packages inspired by Quicktime's design will allow app creators to easily make powerful and cool applications.

AppleInsider.com is a damn fine website. So without further ado, a collection of articles which both explore the original history of the Apple, as well as the brand-new features in iCal, Developer Tools, Core Video and other aspects of the new OS X 10.5. Some of these are on the Insider, some on other sites.

Introductory Mac OS X Leopard Review: Present & Future Value. The historic big picture, including the Apple II and BeOS.

Introductory Mac OS X Leopard Review: Core Graphics and the new UI. Nitty Gritty stuff, but also a review of what's happened since OS X 10.0.

RoughlyDrafted.com: Ten myths of Leopard #1 Graphics must be slow. Shorter: It's faster because various drawing bits have finally been set up to run through the graphics card (GPU) instead of the CPU, so you can get purty effects without the pokiness, unlike Windows Vista.

RoughlyDrafted.com: How Apple Keyboards lost a logo and Windows PCs gained one. The true story of where the Command symbol came from: Swedish campground maps!

A look at the old techs: Platform Crisis: the Lazy Dinosaur. Proprietary techs and long term legacy support caused Apple and Microsmish to become "Lazy dinosaurs" at various points. The graphic is awesome.

Adobe to update some CS3 level apps for OS X 10.5. However your CS2 apps may go haywire and were "not designed" for Leopard and therefore may cause problems that eschatonistically "Likely to encounter issues for which there is no resolution." Like the Bush Administration?

An introductory review of 10.5: iCal and Mail. 10.5 Address Book and iChat: looking nifty. Check this out: all the effects available to mutate the looks of images are actually "Quartz composer composition files" and you can make your own. They are available all over Leopard in iChat, Photo Booth and elsewhere, part of Core Graphics. The main ones are in /System/Library/Compositions, but add your own at /Library/Compositions and create new photo filters in the Quartz Composer in the latest Developer Tools (more below). Also Address Book now automatically digs up TIFF files matching email addresses from Library/Images/People , anywhere a person's email address is used.

Both of these are cool elements that basically allow any developers to tie in their apps to an open framework in the system, creating better and more well-integrated applications. Like embedding Quicktime or other common things, new OS X development features seem to have a solid, open orientation that permits applications to use customized services around the whole system. This is the big evolution in OS X operating system design under the hood, and Linux and Windows would be wise to understand what is going on here. Look at the next one:

Strongly recommended for geeks: An introductory Mac OS X Leopard Review: Developer Tools. Includes HyperCard and AppleScript. Bonus: the new Developer Tools include easily deployed versions of key UI parts of iTunes: the iTunes Store heirarchy breadcrumb thingy is included, as well as the iTunes "smart playlist" Rules Editor system.

OS X server will run on virtual machines legally. Ok, one key thing for modern web servers is to run numerous 'virtual' operating systems on one server box, which takes a ton of RAM and CPU, but ensures that if you get hacked or otherwise trashed, the one virtual operating system can get chucked like a soda can without fucking up the other virtual OSes. You run like five virtual Linux boxes on one real machine, and they're basically unstoppable because even the worst fuck-ups can be limited to just killing a single virtual machine. Also allows better development because you can make test 'sandboxes' to run self-contained whatever. Apple changed their license policy to allow this, and it's a good thing:

Many of these businesses need to separate programs from the main operating system in the event of a malware infection or a crash, or else need a sandbox to test new software without buying an entirely separate computer. This is already commonplace with Virtual PC, VMware, and similar tools on most operating systems, but until now has been impossible with Apple hardware. This will change in the next several months when SWSoft intends to release Parallels with its first instance of Mac OS X virtualization support, Rudolph says.

All righty, good stuff to check out if it's your kind of thing.

"Countless people will hate the New World Order and will die protesting against it."
--HG Wells - "The New World Order" (1939). This quote opens the flick.

The rich are going to kill everyone, then try to merge with technology and live forever!!!1!!! w0000

Get ready for the Internet Paranoia Movie of the Season, everyone! Texas loud guy Alex Jones has just released Endgame: Blueprint for Global Enslavement! And it's free to copy on the Internet: Get the Word out against the New World Order!! etc!!!

Basically, it goes through history, looking at various evil empires that dominated and killed the masses all along the way. Combine eugenics, false-flag terror, war financing, and the big NWO scheme, confronted by a loud Texas guy with a bullhorn. Result: Pretty good stuff!

There are some fun guerilla video adventures: Jones turns up at the mysterious Bilderberg Group meeting in Ottowa, wherein the Evil Schemers plot their stuff. Jim Tucker, crusading Bilderberg watcher in cowboy hat, knows the ways around their devious schemes. They catch numerous officials, including George Pataki (of the Patakilluminati) violating the Logan Act by meeting in secret with foreign politicians. (someday we gotta nail the neocons with Logan. More later on that).

A major element is how the Global New World Order Microsoft McDonalds Dictatorship will create regional super-governments. First the European Union. Makes the point that the African Union is really the gendarme force of the NWO in Africa. The Asian Union and North American Union are examined. Secret plans for the SPP - Security and Prosperity Partnership - are revealed for all. Secret summits plotting the merging of military and trade, so that more goods may flood into the USA via Mexico from Asia.

Crusty old Texans bitch about how they're going to kill the New World Order and its Trans Texas Corridor schemes first of all. RFID tags will be installed on your car to tax you for the global empire - just like the Romans!

Modern China is the test case for the New World Order, the laboratory if you will. Organ harvesting of prisoners and other total Capitalism police state elements are examined in jarring detail (as is David Rockefeller's enthusiasm for Mao).

Technological sophistication and the secret history of eugenics are examined with great care. An Aldous Huxley clip where he talks about how the "Brave New World" plan was basically real, combined with an ugly Texas bureaucrat explaining how the foster kids need to be pumped full of drugs because they come from a bad gene pool. Excellent work! Margaret Sanger's eugenics schemes financed by the Rockefellers - that's really the nut of it. Points out that the big environmental groups are purchasing all the land, perhaps intending to depopulate rural America, but don't give a damn about genetic engineering.

Lastly, probably my favorite element (besides the choice quotes from Kissinger et al about Total Depopulation of the Third World) was how trans-humanist New Age hippiedom with the synthetic cyborg stuff fits into the Big Plan. The rich are going to kill 80% of everyone, then try to merge with technology and live forever!

Carbon trading is just there to kill the middle class and finance the elite schemes. Police forces and the military are recruiting foreigners to repress the domestic population. Etc!

Well that's about it. I have to say, I was impressed. The visual trimmings are the most sophisticated Jones has released. He doesn't ever bother to even say that 9/11 was staged by the Secret Government, which of course has been his bread and butter for a while. Instead, Jones takes a step back, and his core point is that "Governments are more likely to kill people than anyone else. The elite always do this shit!" Fair enough, sir.

I have been worrying about Rationalized Annihilation for quite a while. Living in these times of war, extreme annihilationist ideologies are very chic. Look at TV for a bit, or listen to the corporate talk radio. People that make a lot of money are telling you to kill, and everyone else to kill.

Say what you will about Alex Jones: he is definitely against the perpetual war agenda, and it takes a guy like him to run around and yell at "those guys", the rich and shady cats that have been fucking everything up.

Better yet: It's free! Legally!

Take a look at your typical BitTorrent sites for downloadable/DVD burnable versions. Also posted on Google Video, but it's too chunky on parts with text. Here is the promo copy:

For the New World Order, a world government is just the beginning. Once in place they can engage their plan to exterminate 80% of the world's population, while enabling the "elites" to live forever with the aid of advanced technology. For the first time, crusading filmmaker ALEX JONES reveals their secret plan for humanity's extermination: Operation ENDGAME.

Jones chronicles the history of the global elite's bloody rise to power and reveals how they have funded dictators and financed the bloodiest wars—creating order out of chaos to pave the way for the first true world empire.

* Watch as Jones and his team track the elusive Bilderberg Group to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III.

* Learn about the formation of the North America transportation control grid, which will end U.S. sovereignty forever.

* Discover how the practitioners of the pseudo-science eugenics have taken control of governments worldwide as a means to carry out depopulation.

* View the progress of the coming collapse of the United States and the formation of the North American Union

Here it is on Google Video: it's two hours long though, I would make a new window and so forth, or find a sharper download somewhere:

All right Alex, way to fuck up the program. Go have a margarita or something, just relax a bit before you get an embolism, dude!