Wednesday, June 21, 2006

"A Very Late Checkout"

"This winter, FEMA put up over 300 Hurricane Katrina evacuees in New York City hotels. Almost all of them have gone back to their lives, their jobs. But not Theon Johnson. He's currently sprawled out watching Halloween 5 on one of the two full-size beds in his room at the JFK Airport Holiday Inn. He is one of four evacuees still living in a hotel in the city.

The others left in February and March, when, after spending more than $500 million, FEMA stopped paying for hotel rooms housing some 40,000 evacuees across the country. That left many scrambling for places to live. But thanks to the city's squatters-rights law, evacuees here were safe. Their rooms weren't paid for, but since they'd been in them for more than 30 days, the hotels couldn't just kick them out. Only a judge's order could evict them."


Full Article: New York Metro

Monday, June 19, 2006

"Government Orders Spy Blimp"

"The government has hired defense subcontractor Lockheed Martin to design and develop an enormous blimp that will be used to spy on Americans, according to the Athens News. Government agencies such as the NSA are anticipating that as early as 2009 the blimp will be operational and begin supporting new ways of monitoring everything that happens in the country.

A prototype of the blimp is already being developed at a cost of $40 million. The spy ship, called the High Altitude Airship, will be seventeen times larger than the Goodyear Blimp and hover 12 miles above the ground. Although it is very large it will be invisible to both the naked eye and ground radar because of its distance from the earth. Fuel economic and self sufficient, it will be powered by solar energy and will be able to fly for years at a time.

The U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command has already conducted a study to determine some of the uses of the spy ship. It has the capability of monitoring an area 600 miles in diameter at a time with surveillance equipment, such as high-resolution cameras. The government has ordered 11 of them - enough to monitor every parcel of land in the U.S."

Source Article: Free Market News

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Save the Internet!

The Internet is at risk, private corporations hope to decide what YOU read and see, despite you paying a monthly subscription fee. Save the Internet is a grassroots campaign to keep the internet neutral and free of control. At this site you can write your representatives in Congress and get involved in saving the internet from people who want to control your thoughts.

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Field commanders: Iraq war is lost!

Military leaders in reported to the Pentagon that there is no way to stem the rising tide of violence in Iraq and that all hopes of winning the Iraq war are completely lost.

"We are in trouble in Iraq," says retired army general Barry McCaffrey. "Our forces can't sustain this pace, and I'm afraid the American people are walking away from this war."


They also reported that the murder of Iraqi civilians at Haditha is "just the tip of the iceberg" with battle fatigue and stress building amongst the ranks of the U.S. soldiers.

As the resistance mounts and daily violence escalates, the overstressed U.S. units are unable to control the mounting violence and conclusions escalate that the war is lost.


Article: Capitol Hill Blue

"Genetic HIV Resistance Deciphered"

"Throughout the history of the AIDS epidemic, a few lucky people have avoided infection despite being exposed again and again. Now, researchers are traveling back in evolutionary time to understand why some people are resistant -- and in some cases virtually immune -- to the AIDS virus.

Studies released this week and last year suggest that the roots of AIDS immunity extend back for centuries, long before the disease even existed. Our ethnic backgrounds and the illnesses suffered by our distant ancestors appear to play a crucial role in determining whether our genes will allow HIV to take hold in our bodies."


Article: Wired News

Long story short, a small population of northern Europeans seem to be immune or at least resistant to HIV.

"Red Cross Evacuated After Bomb Threat"

"A bomb threat has put some Savannah Red Cross employees on edge. Police say an angry woman called in Saturday and told employees she was a Hurricane Katrina victim. She was upset that the Red Cross had done nothing for her and said there was a bomb in the building.

The Red Cross immediately evacuated staff, volunteers and donors while police searched the premises. About an hour later, after the search turned up nothing of concern, everyone was allowed back in.

"It's surprising," said the group's Dean Smith. "I mean we try as hard as we can to provide the level of service that everybody expects. It's surprised me."

If you know who's responsible for making the bomb threat, you can call CrimeStoppers anonymously at 234.2020."

Article: "WTOC 11


Sunday, June 04, 2006

"BACK TO THE BUNKER"

"On Monday, June 19, about 4,000 government workers representing more than 50 federal agencies from the State Department to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission will say goodbye to their families and set off for dozens of classified emergency facilities stretching from the Maryland and Virginia suburbs to the foothills of the Alleghenies. They will take to the bunkers in an "evacuation" that my sources describe as the largest "continuity of government" exercise ever conducted, a drill intended to prepare the U.S. government for an event even more catastrophic than the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The exercise is the latest manifestation of an obsession with government survival that has been a hallmark of the Bush administration since 9/11, a focus of enormous and often absurd time, money and effort that has come to echo the worst follies of the Cold War. The vast secret operation has updated the duck-and-cover scenarios of the 1950s with state-of-the-art technology -- alerts and updates delivered by pager and PDA, wireless priority service, video teleconferencing, remote backups -- to ensure that "essential" government functions continue undisrupted should a terrorist's nuclear bomb go off in downtown Washington."


Article: Washington Post

Duck and Cover!

Thursday, June 01, 2006

"Lawyer: Border Patrol should be investigated for racial profiling"

"LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A civil rights lawyer on Wednesday demanded authorities investigate a roundup of hundreds of undocumented
immigrants in what he called a desert dragnet based on racial profiling.

In a letter to the Department of Homeland Security, attorney Luis Carrillo claimed U.S. Border Patrol agents only pulled over people with brown skin in the five-day operation known as "Operation Desert Denial.""

Article: Fox 11 News

Duh! If we are guarding the Mexican border, we won't be looking for illegal dutch and Russians, we will be looking for Mexicans!