Tuesday, December 30, 2003

THINGS FALL APART -- OR INCOMPETENT, LYING BASTARDS. About that headline: I told you I was done being polite with these unbelievably incompetent bastards (and with their defenders) -- with all those most significant achievements to date are to increase the dangers to national security and further to infringe upon all our liberties. And I've discussed the following before (and here too, from the beginning of September), but you take a look at this story and then tell me how you feel: Two years after American troops arrived in Kabul, how... [The Light of Reason] A look at the current situation in Afghanistan (which the Crusaders were presenting as a success when pushing for the conquest of Iraq). 1:03:24 PM    comment () The Globe and Mail - U.S. blurs high-tech images of Washington. WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government is selectively blurring some of its highest-quality aerial photographs of Washington to hide objects in plain view on the roofs of the White House, Capitol and Treasury Department. Deferring to Secret Service worries about terrorists, the government also obscured aerial views of the Naval Observatory compound where Vice-president Dick Cheney lives. It made no effort to blur detailed photographs showing the Pentagon, Supreme Court, CIA headquarters, Justice Department or FBI headquarters. Experts said they feared the unusual decision reflects a troublesome move toward new government limits on commercial satellite and aerial photography, a booming industry driven by recent technology advances and including some major companies based outside the United States. Some commercial satellites already can snap photographs almost as detailed as those images shot from airplanes ordered blurred by the government. Some experts also questioned the effectiveness of blurring one set of government-financed photographs. Tourists can see the roofs of the White House and U.S. Capitol from dozens of tall buildings downtown, and the Web site for the National Park Service shows a June 2002 photograph of the White House from atop the Washington Monument. [Privacy Digest] Of course it doesn't make sense, but then it didn't make sense when the Soviet Union did silly things like that either. I'm not surprised that current administration is once again following the example of the Soviet empire which they seem so determined to emulate. 11:45:49 AM    comment ()

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