The following story from ZDNet caught my eye today:

The New Zealand secret service has suggested the Chinese government was behind attacks on the country’s networks…The allegations come only a week after the Chinese foreign ministry denied that the Chinese government had endorsed attacks on the computer networks of Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom.

“Any accusation of Chinese military force attacking computer systems of foreign governments is groundless, irresponsible and out of ulterior motives,” Chinese foreign-ministry representative Jiang Yu said in a recent press conference.

So the US, Canada, the UK, Germany and New Zealand are all claiming that the Chinese are engaged in heavy cyber-spying operations within each of their systems. A few years back we also had the whole Titan Rain incident, and there have been other allegations since.

Additionally, we have reports of Russian planes having to be turned away from NATO airspace by the RAF and the Norwegians, and Putin’s showing of his shiny new bombs.

Finally we have a building political block between Russia and China which is not only increasingly hostile against US foreign policy (understandably so, since US policy has gotten so horribly forceful since 2001), but also increasingly outspoken in rhetoric against NATO.

China and Russia are on the move, and not in the good way. Russia’s been itching to get back into World Superpower status, and general consensus seems to be that the 21st century will be “The Chinese Century” (in like manner to the 20th century being often referred to as “The American Century”). In the informational front, China’s been making a lot of moves, as the quoted article above tells. In the military front, Russia’s been starting to make waves again, but they’re not the only ones: by some accounts, China has greatly increased their military spending, while underreporting what they’re spending. (This, of course, is disputed, and countered with the fact that the US spends at least 5 times more than China, including a larger portion of its GDP in military spending.)

With a weakening US, drained by years of wasteful wars, horrific economic management, and deficit-spending (debt which was bought by China), the two may be poising themselves to capitalize on the US’s seeming economic (and politically influential) demise, especially since China now pulls so many of the economic strings. In fact, economics is their third game. When you consider the facts — that China owns now over $1-trillion of US debt, that it has just bought a major stake in Barclay (a major world bank), and that within the next ten years it will have finally caught up with the economic management of the West (currently, the Chinese don’t have the knowledge to compete with Western banking systems, but they’re quickly catching up) — a picture starts to come together which puts China, and a quickly re-emerging Russian political system, which is quickly returning to its Soviet roots, along with an economy beginning to model itself on the new Chinese mixed economic model, in the forefront of US opposition.

Now, I’m not much for political and historical analysis– Alright, that’s a lie. I am, so here’s some Tom Clancy-like speculation:

On one side we have US and its allies: NATO, which is starting to split over various issues so that the EU is on one side of things and the US, Canada, and England on the other; and Australia. On the other side we have Russia and China, who are building major economic bridges all over the place, especially in Africa and Central/South America. (If you didn’t know, the Chinese have been building schools to teach people Chinese for free in many of the Caribbean and Central American countries, as well as helping the governments build infrastructure.)

What’s interesting is how all of these economic blocks are being put together. And note that they are economic blocks, and not necessarily political ones. This may be the thing which stops all out war, and may be the reason why China has taken to cyber-espionage. What interest would they have in harming any of their major economic partners, at least just yet?

Now, this is important, take note at the wild cards in all of this: South Korea and Japan, both of which own hundreds of billions in US debt, both of which are US allies; and the sleeping cultural and economic giant that is India.

Putting this picture together doesn’t necessarily spell doom for any side. Indeed, it may be a hopeful sign, than free enterprise can rising wave towards war, like it did during the India/Pakistan nuclear crisis. But from the looks of it, China’s looking for their place in the sun, and they’re doing a hell of a lot of maneuvering — through Russia, Latin-America, Africa, computer networks and via the banking system — to make sure it happens.

Students of eschatology must be loving this.

She gave me a look only a mother could, telling me without words, but in no uncertain terms, “I gave birth to you so you could get me my newspaper.” Gotcha. Also, Dixie the dog was still sleeping.

I fetched the newspaper and plopped it on the table. Since I’m once again contemplating a move back to the Tampa Bay area, I thought I’d look through the paper’s pages to see what’s been going on in the town.

Front page, St. Pete Times: a story about the Largo mayor who wanted a sex change operation. “Presenting Susan”, I think it was titled.

Wait… what? The front page story is about a sex change operation? Was this the St. Pete Times or The Onion?

Maybe this was a fluke, maybe page two held the real story, because page two always… err… nevermind.

It didn’t get better from there.

Sure, there were stories about the shortages in national guard levels causing problems for Kansas, Florida and California, but those were all in the middle of the news paper. To the paper’s credit, they managed mark the importance of those stories by putting huge pictures of beautiful, busty women in the can-we-make-them-any-less-sexy granny bra advertisements newspapers have been relying on since time began. Sex sells, and these sexy undergarments are aimed squarely at the over-60 crowd, even with the models being in their 30′s. That’ll get ‘em.

I’ll admit, the whole Largo mayor story was important to the region, especially when you look at the various civil rights angles, but how do you justify a front page story on a follow up when so much else is happening? What editor got drunk and landed a dart on this with his “cover story” picker? Damn liberal media. (Seriously, the St. Pete Times is a pretty liberal newspaper.)

Later on in the newspaper, in the Mother’s Day stories section, there was a wonderful story about a mother/daughter stripper team. The mother always knew one of her three daughters would follow in her high-heel steps, or so the story said. She’s planning to write a book about it, to tell us her inspiring tale.

At this point I put the paper down. I might as well have been reading The National Enquirer or The World. Seriously, when did the St. Pete Times become such a rag?! Of course, it’s really not all that bad. I mean, at least it’s a well written rag.

The morning’s Tampa Tribune was better, but not by much. (It used to be that the reporting was supposed to be better in the Times. What happened? In what bizzaro world have I landed?) The front page story was about how people in Cuba are often paid under the table and take foreign money, like American dollars. I think this story came from the U.S. Department of the Blindingly Obvious, though I’ll have to check my sources on that. The rest of the paper stuck to other news of national and local interest, most in better taste than the St. Pete Times, and most in the paper’s traditionally conservative vein, but nothing I’d bother to read if it hadn’t been right in front of my face.

I’ll put it succinctly, I wouldn’t pay for either of these. If I got one for free, it’d probably be the Trib. But I’d happily pay for the New York Times or the Washington Post, and instead check the online versions of both the Times and the Trib for Bay area specific news.

For any Tampa and Tampa-at-heart readers, maybe you can tell me which newspaper do you choose and why? Am I missing something here? Given the level of journalism I remember from not all that long ago, before I was transplanted to south Florida, I’ll be willing to bet that, sadly, I’m not.

Looks like I’m not the only one on a comic book kick.

“They said the reason they hadn’t covered the stories was that they only had a limited amount of time and space, and that I was an academic, sitting there, criticizing.”

But Jensen had an answer: There was plenty of time and space. It was just being filled with fluff.

So, in reply, Jensen started the Project-Censored, which lists the stories which should have gotten more coverage, but were bumped off by things like Anna Nicole’s baby and son’s death investigation, and John Mark Karr’s claims about JonBenet Ramsey, who died at 6 years old and would have been almost 20 already.

Anyway, so here’s a list of the top headlines you probably didn’t read about for the past year:

• The feds and the media muddy the debate over Internet freedom
• Halliburton charged with selling nuclear technology to Iran
• World oceans in extreme danger
• Hunger and homelessness increasing in the United States
• High-tech genocide in Congo
• Federal whistleblower protection in jeopardy
• U.S. Operatives torture detainees to death in Afghanistan and Iraq
• Pentagon exempt from Freedom of Information Act
• World Bank funds Israel-Palestine wall
• Expanded air war in Iraq kills more civilians

With this being an election year (and with this being the month before an election, hence all the political stuff on the site lately), you may be interested in the Internet Freedom, Halliburton, Whistleblower, Torture, Freedom of Information, and Iraq stories. (Wow… that’s a lot of stories.) In fact, if you’ve gotten down this far I’m guessing you’re the type to be interested in this sort of article. For you, I submit the following link from the Tucson Weekly: Censored Stories.

Honestly, I’m not a big news guy. I’m not! I’m not interested in that guy that jumped off that bridge, or that bus that crashed into a pole, or who Paris Hilton slept with, fought with, or punched. I’ll pray for them, OK, but that’s about it. Heck, if you want a real taste of what people are talking about, here are the top searches in Technorati as of this article’s writing:

• Cory Lidle
• Youtube
• Project Runway
• Plane Crash
• New York
• Lost

Unlike this list, most of the news presented in the Censored Stories article revolve around the way our government and country (The US*) is being run, and by who. Sometimes — most of the time — news is junk. Once in a while, however, it’s time to start listening. Sometimes things, no matter how negative they might seem, are indeed important, because they affect all of us. Political bickering isn’t one of these things. Political policy is.

(* Note: I know I have, for some strange reason, a lot of Canadian and European readers (even some Asian, Australians, and Africans!), and some of this affects you guys, too. But I’m an American and as such I want to make sure my house is clean, if you know what I mean. I’ll cover International news too, I promise, especially Canadian, since I’ve thought about moving up there more than a few times.)

By the way, note that no “Tribute” videos were included here, other than the Jay Leno, CNN, and Chanel 7 ones.

“God put me on this planet with a mission. And my mission, is to educate people about conservation.” – Steve Irwin

Mission accomplished. I just hope heaven has a wild life area where he can hang out for the rest of eternity.

This morning, as I walked in the office, I couldn’t help but notice that not one Cuban was sitting. Every single one of them was standing up and talking about last night’s developments.

“It’s too early to celebrate –”
” — but it’s a step in the right direction.”
“Another chapter in our history.”
“I wonder what’s going to happen now?”
“I was at the gym last night and after hearing the news, I decided to go down to 49th. I got there at 9:10 and the streets were packed, so I joined the party!”

Since about half of the people here are Cuban (and most of the others Latin American), I’m sure you can imagine the level of conversation going on. Frankly, I’m surprised more people didn’t take the day off to party a bit more, but I guess they got that out of their system last night, as the block parties went on well past midnight in some places.

I’ll keep on this story because — well, frankly, I’m surrounded by this. That said, the prospect of a Castro-Free Cuba (and yes, this includes Raul) is a rather good one. History’s proven that in communist countries, generations not directly associated with the original “revolution” usually move towards capitalism and some form of democracy rather quickly. (Russia and China are perfect examples.)

Finally, in honor of this event, I bring you “Castro About to be Stepped On by God”:

“Por favor, noooooooo…”

• Man walks into a car dealership and buys a truck at $8,100, paying cash. The deal is checked by the sales person and sales manager. Papers are signed, and the buyer goes home.
• Man who bought the truck receives a call from the dealership that night telling him that they made a mistake and he needs to pay an extra $10,000. Man refuses on the grounds that he’s already paid and all parties involved have already signed the paperwork.
• Dealership takes the truck back in the middle of the night. (Repo or steal — you decide which word to use.)
• Dealership calls man back the next morning, offers to re-sell the car to him for just $11,000 more. The man says “No way. Give me my truck back.” He goes back to the dealership, only to find another customer and sales person looking at it.

Here’s the company’s statement on the issue (from the article):

After we tried to get their side for days, Bill Heard faxed us a statement just before air time, saying that Kieselhorst “should have known” that the deal he got was too good to be true. The company says:”It is not reasonable or fair to expect for Bill Heard Chevrolet … to be bound by a sale where a clear and material mistake was made, and the customer was aware that it was a mistake.”

Because, as we all know, if the customer had instead paid too much for the truck, he should have been able to go into the Bill Heard Chevrolet dealership and take the money back, right? Right?

Here’s the reason police gave to stay out of this:

As for the police investigation, the DA says this is a civil case, not a criminal case. He says Kieselhorst is free to take the dealer to court…

How this doesn’t constitute grand theft auto, I have no idea.

Apparently, this isn’t the first time this dealership has done something like this:

Kathleen Calligan says the Better Business Bureau has received literally hundreds and hundreds of similar complaints about the Bill Heard dealership — more complaints by far than any other auto dealer in all of Middle Tennessee.

It should be noted that Bill Heard dealerships are all over the country. In fact, they were recently found guilty of price fixing in Arizona.

You can read the entire article here.

Seeing as I’m in the process now of looking for a new car — and highly considering a Chevy Malibu — this kind of information is priceless.

ScienceBlog.com — Drunks Don’t See the Monkey: “It’s pretty difficult to overlook the proverbial 800-pound gorilla, or even an average-size person dressed in a gorilla suit. But a new study indicates that people who were given a simple visual task while mildly intoxicated were twice as likely to have missed seeing the person in a gorilla suit than were people who were not under the influence of alcohol.” Lesson: never try to spot a man in a gorilla suit while tipsy. Because if you can’t spot the gorilla, what good are you?

Engadget — Korea to test 1,000 remote-controlled domestic robots: “The Ministry of Information and Communication … will begin placing 1,000 wheeled, cell-phone controlled automatons — dubbed URCs, or ubiquitous robotic companions — into households and kindergartens this fall as a trial run for new robot technologies. The URCs will do the usual handling of domestic tasks as we might expect (and some … like cleaning rooms and reading books to children), as well the usual hanging out, taking care of pets, [and more] … The only thing at all disconcerting about any of this is the fact that unlike normal household droids, these URCs will be operated wirelessly from a central computing center ala I, Robot.” Having just watched that movie agan, the thought of a remote controled robot companion isn’t one I’m at all too comfortable with.

Akihabara News — The Wonderbra powered USB keyboard: Ok, uhm… hmm. How do I… err… geez, oh man… heh… I mean… Hmm. So, like, anyways, I uhmm… hmm… How do I put this? Uhm… What?

USB powered keyboard bra with USB powered camera tail that can be switched out with other USB powered items, such a lights and memory sticks. You have to see this for yourself [Angelkitty.jp]. I guess what I’m wondering is where exactly that thing is supposed to be plugged.

KurzweilAI — Frozen Brains Awaiting Resurrection Day in Storage: (From St. Petersburg, Russia) “Kriorus, the world’s first cryonics company outside the United States, located in Alabushevo village in Russia, has two brains in cryonics storage so far. The price: $9,000.” Just what we need, Russian discount cryonics. “You want better brain? Lie down. We do operation, take out brain now. Give you new brain next week. We freeze brain now so if you want back later, you have. ”

My Heart’s in Accra — Book review: “Globalization and its Enemies”: “This is the basic question development economists try to answer. It’s a question with profound practical implications – if we could suggest strategies that consistently helped nations grow wealth, we could address a huge range of problems in education, public health and state stability. It’s also a question that both development economists and political commentators are surprisingly bad at answering.” A very thorough book review and critique by Ethan Zuckerman. Good reading for anyone involved in economics or business.

The New Yorker — How can someone live with only half a brain?: This week’s New Yorker features a particularly interesting article about the hemispherectomy operation. In this procedure, an entire side of the brain is removed as a treatment because of cancer or chronic seizures. The incredible thing is that if the hemispherectomy is done when a patient is very young, the remaining hemisphere does double duty and the child often develops normally. (This one also came by way of My Heart’s in Accra.)

Index of 1,000 Full Length Anime On YouTube: (via Digg) “There are no ads or garbage clips to weed through, just 1000 anime episodes and movies. This index includes The Animatrix, Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell, Samurai Champloo, Serial Experiments Lain, Ultimate Avengers, and more.” Not weird and not news, but I’ll be damned if I don’t put this link up.

Subject: Cell Phone Do Not Call List

Effective in 18 days, telemarketers will be able to get access to your cell phone number and they will be allowed to call you. This can cause a lot of wastage of minutes. And for people using their cell phones regularly for business, this can be a HUGE distraction.

If you would like your phone number added to the DO NOT CALL registry, simply call 1 888 382 1222 from your cell phone. It will take about 1 minute and 15 seconds, but it will give you peace of mind. Then, you only have to do this once every 5 years.

Be sure to forward this message to as many people as you can.

There. Now, if I have your email, I won’t have to swamp your inbox with FWD’s. You can thank me later, by commenting on this message or buying me dinner.

Trillion: The numeral trillion refers to one of two number values, depending on the context of where and how it is being used. It is the largest numerical value in everyday non-scientific use in the English language. It comes between a billion and a quadrillion. Examples of usage:

1. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will cost the U.S. over $1-trillion dollars.
2. The reason George Bush settled on $2.2-trillion for the budget is because someone told him “ten-bajillion” wasn’t a real number.
3. The US deficit is at $9-trillion. Suddenly my student loan payment doesn’t seem quite as bad.

Remember: If you vote anything other than Republican in this midterm election then the Republicans won’t have two more years to fix this mess. They’ve spent the past six years fixing all of Clinton’s mistakes. Also, you eat human fetuses after you happily abort them, then throw a baby-eating abortion party.

In other words, “We, the Republican congress, have decided not to investigate the President’s violations of FISA and the 4th Amendment, and instead have chosen to make his actions legal retroactively.” Man, what if Clinton had as lap-dog of a congress as this one? He wouldn’t have been impeached! Oh, but wait: cheating on your wife and then lying about it is much, MUCH worse than running illegal wiretap programs (yes, as in “multiple” — there’s more than one) against innocent Americans.

I’m sure Nixon was praying for spineless lap-dogs like these just before he resigned. But Bush? He has them! Except for a few exceptions, the entire Republican congress is made up of nothing but criminals protecting a corrupt administration.

The Culture of Corruptions created by the Republicans make me ashamed of ever having been affiliated with the party. (Yes, I am a registered Republican. Not for long, thought. These criminals have done a great job in pushing me to the not-quite-as-dark-side of the force.)

More sources: Daily Kos, The Moderate Voice. Information as I find it.

Update: More from Unclaimed Territory:

The Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday rejected Sen. Rockefeller’s motion to hold hearings to investigate the President’s warrantless eavesdropping program by an 8-7, strict party line vote. Yet again, every Senate Republican followed White House instructions not to investigate the President, and this time did so despite the statements of several of those GOP Senators just within the last 8 weeks that such an investigation was urgent and necessary.

Sen. [Captain Obvious] Rockefeller stated the obvious: Emerging from a closed-door session in which Democrats lost two party-line votes, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), the vice chairman of the committee, said the outcome pushed the panel “further into irrelevancy” and reflected the influence of the Bush administration.“The committee is, to put it bluntly, basically under the control of the White House,” said Rockefeller.

Irrelevant indeed, Mr. Rockefeller. So when do we officially replace the “c” with a “k” in “America”?

From the AP: In dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could [UPDATE]breach top levees, put lives at risk in New Orleans’ Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage.

SEE THE FOOTAGE HERE, available in QuickTime (.mov) and Windows Media Player (.wmv).

More information can be found here:

• CNN: Transcript shows governments underestimated Katrina (Watch the CNN Video)
• The Moderate Voice (TONS of links and information, highly recommended.)
• AmericaBlog

Updates as I find them. Check out the links for tons more information from people who blog a lot more than I do. Oh, and from news sources as well. (Look, even Faux News got into the act.)

UPDATE: From MSNBC: (Video available here.) It looks like the entire “failure all around” scenario is shaping up to be just that: failure all around, especially at the federal level. Not only did Bush and his cronies screw up the event with their “fog of bureaucracy”, but a new video shifts the blame more to the state (while at the same time not exonerating the federal government in any way).

(It should be noted that this was during the actual hurricane, so any delay in communication should be expected. We have taped evidence that Bush knew the worst case scenario, where Michael Brown basically begged for federal government assistance. But what about the governor? What was she doing all this time? How was she preparing for this worst case scenario?)

My question is, in a city that’s shaped like a bowl, what’s really the difference between a levee getting topped and breached? Severity? In either case the city’s still getting flooded, with water that has no place to go.

According to MSNBC, “[Max Mayfield] warned only that the levees might be topped, not breached, and that on the many conference calls he monitored, ‘Nobody talked about the possibility of a levee breach or failure until after it happened.’”

My question stands. The administration is relying on the whole “topped, not breached/it’s all Brown’s fault” argument as their excuse for not getting help in right away, but doesn’t this seem like — oh I don’t know — relying on a technicality like “depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is”?

This makes for a great spin of events for the Bush, aka “The Teflon President,” aka “Spinmeister W”.

[UPDATE]: The Moderate Voice has a lot more information on this new video. Newsweek has an item about a hastily produced “missing transcript” of a video conference call — a transcript that hadn’t been provided to Congress but was hastily sent to Newsweek by the White House. Although no one knows for sure (yet), it would appear this was shoved forward due to the emergence of the highly damaging video…

News of this phishing scam became public today. To be honest, this one would have got me.

The reason why this phishing scam is so good is that it uses a completely valid certificate for SSL based (read: encrypted) communication with your browser. Most users are educated only to check for the little lock icon in their browser, because phishers were traditionally too lazy to use an SSL certificate. However, for the price of $69.99, a domain, and a MySQL database, anyone can create a decent phishing site

The thing is, very few people check the SSL certificate of their banks…

Take a second to check out Quantum’s post, and from now on also check your bank’s Security Certificates. While you’re at it, stop by the Anti-Phishing.org website and educate yourself on how not to give up your banking information.

I wonder how this will affect our understanding of near-death experiences?

(For more information on cryonics, see The Alcor Life Extension Foundation’s website.)

By the way, if you’re in Fort Lauderdale, or plan to be here during Christmas, there WILL be Christmas-day services at Calvary Chapel. Pastor Bob figured that although most people would be with their family (and would probably have attended one of the 9 services in 5 days before Christmas), some may not have family to go to. For them, he decided to open the church doors for a 10:15 service on Sunday, Christmas Morning. I won’t be there (I wish I could be; I’ll be in Tampa), but if you’re in the area, drop by Christmas morning and say hello. (Or drop by to one of the three Saturday services and enjoy some good ol’ fashioned worship.) Someone you yet don’t know might need you.

Of course, if you’re not in the area and wish to check out services anyway, you can always watch online. I’m not sure if the Sunday Christmas services will be Internetelevised. If you go to their page, http://www.calvaryftl.org, and look at the top banner it’ll tell you whether they’re internetelevising services. No message, no service. Still check out the Active Word page to download some of the services in MP3 form.

Here are the service times over the next few days:

• Dec 21: 6:30pm, 8:30pm
• Dec 22: 7:30pm
• Dec 23: 7:30pm
• Dec 24: 4:30pm, 6:30pm, 8:30pm, 11:00pm
• Dec 25: 10:15am