AT&T Spying? Suddenly It’s A “State Secret”!

THIS IS WHAT THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION thinks of due process, and specifically it represents what’s going to probably happen to the AT&T spying investigation in the USA. It will get the finger, pure and simple.

Back in January Mark Klein, a retired AT&T communications technician, submitted an affidavit in support of the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s lawsuit against AT&T accusing the telecom company of violating federal laws by collaborating with the government’s secret, warrantless wiretapping of American citizens’ phone and internet usage.

It is alleged that AT&T provided National Security Agency (NSA) eavesdroppers with full access to its customers’ phone calls, and shunted its customers’ internet traffic to data-mining equipment installed in a secret room in its San Francisco switching center. In other words – full on state santioned domestic spying.

The Bush administration formally said last Friday that it will try to halt a lawsuit that accuses AT&T of helping the National Security Agency spy on Americans illegally. The U.S. Justice Department said it will intervene in the lawsuit and try to have it tossed out of court. The Justice Department said in its filing that the “United States intends to assert the military and state secrets privilege” and have the case dismissed.

Orwell would be proud, so very proud.

Once more it’s a case of “Do what I say” rather than “Do what I do”. And unless something completely unexpected happens, the sheep will have the wool pulled over their eyes again and will continue to blindly allow themselves to be herded between fear and ignorance for their own good.

Anyone care to put a caption on that wonderful image of “el presidente”?

Mother, Daughter, Sister… Suicide Bomber

IT’S A HARD THING TO IMAGINE, sitting in your comfortable chair, browsing the Internet and catching up on news about places thousands of miles distant, but try this one on for size if you can. A female suicide bomber was pregnant when she killed 10 people and injured 27 others in Sri Lanka earlier this week. It was originally thought she used a ‘fake’ pregnancy to conceal explosives in her “bump”, and was reported as such, but it has since emerged she was indeed with child.

Her name was Anoja Kugenthirasah, 21, from the northern government-held garrison town of Vavuniya. Let that sink in for a bit. A pregnant 21 year old women carried out a suicide bombing.

Female suicide bombers are nothing new; it’s been going on for a while now and there are many papers and discussions on the subject which attempt to explain why these people are driven to such extreme acts. Typically such people are driven by a combination of hatred, ideology, coercion, and fear that is born out of helplessness, disempowerment and rage. If life on Earth is so hellish – then why not take out your enemy and become a hero in the process, in the hope of a better afterlife?

The first female suicide attack occurred on March 10, 1985, when 18 year old Sumaya Sa’ad attacked an Israeli military position in South Lebanon, killing 12 soldiers. Another example of a young person choosing death. This was the first, but many such attacks have taken place since 1985, but this one in Sri Lanka this week has just tipped the scales (at least as far as I’m concerned). I believe this is the first example of a pregnant suicide bomber.

Imagine knowing you are pregnant, knowing you are still young, but also knowing with absolute certainty that there is no other course of action left open to you than to strap a bunch of explosives onto your body and to then intentionally seek out and destroy your target. It’s just beyond my capability to understand. That fatal certainty at such a young age is the most difficult thing for me to grasp, at least from my comfortable western middle class distance.

Personally, this instance of desperation has indicated to me that we (as a species) have gone beyond some invisible line; we’ve crossed into uncharted territories and I have a horrible feeling the path out (if we ever find it) is going to be littered with lost souls, and unrealised lives.

I say this not to sensationalise or diminish either side in these conflicts, rather I bring this topic up because until this moment I (probably like many of you) listened with great interest to the news bulletins, the soundbites and the progress of the various hot spots around the world… and at some level, although I am constantly flumaxed by the frequent viciousness (of both sides)… I’d become sort of immune to the reality. I suppose when you hear enough sad stories and see enough war footage you become numb to some extent.

This story, this specific attack and it’s circumstances has shattered any such numbness, and instead leaves behind a kind of deep sadness and nagging worry that we have indeed crossed some line, that we have ‘gone too far’ into realms of insanity and pure desperation.

Bouncy Bush

IT’S A POOR SUBSTITUTE for actually grabbing the real “el presidente” by the scruff of his neck and slapping him around (for being such an asshole and generally pushing the world closer to an Orwellian landscape); still this excellent diversion does provide some amusement.

Many thanks to SusiQ for sending this little gem on to me. This will run in your browser window – no downloads or installs required -  just click on the link above, sit back and enjoy the show! Let’s face it; how often do you get the chance to smash the worlds most dangerous man around on your PC screen, just for shits and giggles?

Hint: You can sit back and just watch ol’ Dubya fall and fall and well, fall even further – as he bounces off every object along the way, however when you get bored with that, try using your mouse to ‘grab’ him throw him around a bit.

Ah yes, sometimes it’s the simplest of pleasures that satisfy the most

Blogging Defeats EA Games Accountants

A WONDERFUL ARTICLE over at The Inquirer notes that the EA Games payout yesterday was started by the fiancé of a developer who was miffed she was not seeing her bloke.The story goes that Erin Hoffman was hardly seeing the man of her dreams, Leander Hasty, because EA games had him working more than 85 hours a week. He wasn’t alone however – EA were working lots of their developers hard over a number of years. You might say it was part of the ‘development culture’.

Young Erin eventually got pissed off enough that the 23 year old penned an anonymous blog under the nickname EA Spouse in November 2004. The blog managed to rally other EA developers so much that it sparked an uprising within the company and resulted in the huge payout.

Things were so bad that Hoffman started bringing spaghetti dinners to his office and dining with him there so they could spend 30 minutes together. Madness? Perhaps – but it took the blogging of a pissed off wife to get things moving before the rest of the developers finally got the balls to confront EA Games Management.

Electronic Arts has had to write a cheque for more than $14.9 million to compensate its software engineers for unpaid overtime. Nice money if you can get it; still the poor sods deserved it if they were working that hard… but I guess we have all done it from time to time.

Maybe it’s time to ask SusiQ to start a blog on my behalf. What do you reckon?

Will Princely Visit Live Up To Expectations?

THE PRINCE OF THE GAFFE, lord of the faux pas, monarch of mispronounciation and general dogsbody of digression is visiting Ireland this week (how will the pointless Monarchy survive without him? Then again, will Britland let him back in?), but the real question is… will his visit live up to expectations? Will Prince Philip deliver one of his world famous gaffes while here?

Let’s face it – his track record is only surpassed by “el presidente” himself, Dubya Bush, and he has been eclipsed by the whole concept of a “Bushism”… but the Prince is not to be dismissed too quickly. A legend in his own mind, he may well deliver the goods while he is visiting our fair shores. We may see mention of the dreaded “mainland” pop up in conversation, it’s even possible he will think we are still part of the Empire, so we will just have to wait and see if he behaves himself or not.

To keep you amused in the interim however I’ve compiled a quick list of some of his more famous conversational fuckups faux pas as follows:-

1. He asked a Scottish driving instructor “How do you keep the natives off the booze, long enough for them to pass their test?”
2. He told a group of deaf school children at a fund raising event standing next to a Jamaican steel drum band, which was clearly not to his liking “Deaf? No wonder you are deaf,  standing so close to that racket”
3. He stirred up a storm in Australia when he asked Aborigines if they still threw spears at each other. On a previous tour of Australia he suggested that tribes in Papua New Guinea were still cannibals, asking one student backpacker: “You managed not to get eaten, then?”
4. He once greeted Helmut Kohl as “Reichskanzler”, the title Hitler gave to himself which has never been used since.
5. He is reported to have told a mother who had recently lost two sons in a house fire that “smoke alarms are a damn nuisance.”
6. On a visit to China he described Beijing as “ghastly” and said that if you stay too long there you will become “slitty eyed”.

Nutrition Blamed For Chinese Storm In D-Cup

IT’S BEING REPORTED THAT bra producers have been forced to offer bigger cup-sizes in China because improved nutrition is busting all previous chest measurement records. Women are increasing in size, it seems, and clothing manufacturers are rushing in to fill the new demand for larger lingerie options for Chinese women.

The Beijing Institute of Clothing Technology released a report last week saying the average chest circumference of Chinese women has risen by nearly 1 cm (0.4 inch) to 83.53 cm (32.89 inches) since the early 1990s. That’s one centimeter in just over a decade!!

Oh well, I suppose that’s what you get when you change the diet of a nation so dramatically. Where as most chinese thus far would have been raised on rice and vegetables, the recent influx of fast food joints and fizzy drinks vendors was bound to have an effect somewhere.

Another example of western culture diluting the east methinks.

Now That’s What I Call A Headache!

NEXT TIME YOU THINK you have a headache, just spare a thought for this poor sod. According to this SKY News article, doctors treating a man who went to a hospital complaining of a headache found 12 nails embedded in his skull from a suicide attempt. It seems that this lad was high as a kite on methamphetamine when he decided to fire 12 two-inch nails into his head with a nailgun. Amazingly enough, he didn’t kill himself!?!

The nails were not initially visible when doctors first examined the man, but subsequent X-rays revealed six nails clustered between his right eye and ear, two below his right ear, and a further four on the left side of his head. Just look at that X-ray FFS!

I don’t think I’ll ever comlpain about a headache again