Things You May Not Know!

Moved to Wordpress

2008-04-04T22:35:00.000-07:00

Forget blogspot. The blog moved here:

http://thingsyoumaynotknow.wordpress.com/

Americans polled realize a U-turn is in order

2008-04-04T16:29:00.000-07:00

News keeps getting worse for the country, and Americans nationwide are being to see the fissures in the way things have been run for the past seven years.

In a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted between March 28 and April 2, 81 percent of Americans thought the country had “pretty seriously gotten off the wrong track.”

The New York Times and CBS News conduct this poll with the same exact questions every month or so. The last time so many people disapproved of the direction of the nation was back in the early 1990s.

Guess who was president then? No really, take a wild guess.

Now, you should always be wary of polls. I mean, what does the average American know? They act on emotion, can be easily swayed by long-winded, impassioned speeches.

Seriously, what is wrong with this country? The liberals would have you think everything is crumbling! Run and hide. And the poll reflects that.

Get this, the most important problem facing the country in this poll is the economy. Give me a break. The economy is fine, even if 66 percent polled think we’re in a recession.

A recession is such a nasty word anyway. Instead, let’s use phrases like, a resting economy, or out-to-lunch economy.

This is so silly, I mean the economy. It’s not like 80,000 people lost their jobs in March or anything, or that the national unemployment rate rose to 5.1 percent – the third month in a row that those numbers are on the rise.

If that doesn’t sell you that this poll is a liberal-created façade, look at this number – 28 percent approve of President George W. Bush’s job.

Come on people! He invaded Iraq and look how safe we are now. Got to give credit you know, we haven’t had a terrorist attack on the American mainland - cough - homeland since the Anthrax scares.

Not that the war or national security cost the country that much. I mean numbers are numbers, and $600 billion is just another number.

Seriously though, to see this kind of concern before the economy really hits the fan should cause concern. This is simply the consequence of cutting taxes, waging wars across the world and subsidizing industries that make tons of money in the first place. Perhaps we should re-evaluate those policies instead of the ingenious “stimulus” package that treats symptoms and not the disease.

Black hole devours Earth, maybe...

2008-04-03T21:15:00.000-07:00

Most tales of apocalypse speak of grand nuclear wars, far-reaching global epidemics and the good old 2012 pole flipping, freeze-the-whole-world-over worry. Well, add one more doomsday scenario to that list: black holes.

Black holes sucking up the Earth seems far-fetched to say the least, but people in the scientific community take the possibility so seriously that two physicists took action.

That's what I'm talking about, get down on that gravity-sucking space anomaly! There's sure as hell nothing else of importance going on.

The issue revolves around a particle accelerator, a device used to smash atoms, outside Geneva due for completion this summer.

Physicists plan to use the $8 billion accelerator, called the Large Hadron Collider to “recreate energies and conditions last seen a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang.”

The project alarmed two physicists who claim that the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) downplayed the risk of this accelerator creating a tiny black hole that could destroy the Earth, and maybe even the universe.

On March 21, physicists Walter Wagner and Luis Sancho filed a lawsuit in Honolulu to seek a temporary restraining order to stop CERN from proceeding with the project until it creates a safety and environmental assessment report.

No this is not a dream or sci-fi movie. The concern over accelerators creating black holes is nothing new in the physics world.

"The possibility that a black hole eats up the Earth is too serious a threat to leave it as a matter of argument among crackpots," said CERN theorist Michelangelo Mangano.

Legal obstacles aside with an American lawsuit against a European organization, there have been reports of these colliders producing what could be called black holes.

A New York-based particle accelerator produced a fireball whose core had “a striking similarity to a black hole.”

Other reports showed that, theoretically, a particle accelerator could be used to create a tiny black hole.

“An astronomical black hole forms when enough matter is squashed into a small enough space to reach a critical density. According to theory, the same critical density could be reached if two particles slam violently together, creating a tiny black hole.”

What the heck would us humans do with a black hole anyway? I guess we could research it. Harness it as an energy source. Go for a ride down the gravity hole. Back to this lawsuit.

Despite all of the war and tragedy in the world, these two physicists chose to fight the black hole battle. It will be interesting to see where the lawsuit goes, and whether this particle accelerator goes online.

And you can't blast someone for doing what they love, no matter how crazy it is. Let this be an inspiration to all those peoples out there who are wary of taking action. If you're that passionate about a cause, go for it, especially before a black hole eats you up.

Photo illustration by yours truly.

Brace yourselves! Bush lied about Iraq!

2008-01-23T19:07:00.000-08:00

It may be hard to believe, but more evidence points to President Bush and his crew lying about why the U.S. should go to war with Iraq. No seriously. The opposite of truth. You know, when you tell people something so they go along with you, even if what you want to do is illegal and not in those people's interests. Yeah that's it.

The blow this time came from a non-profit investigative journalism group called The Center for Public Integrity. The group decided to create a huge database packed with all the statements Bush and his crew told the media, and Americans, that have since been proven false.

The study found at least 935 false statements made between Sept. 11, 2001 and Sept. 2003. That's about 380,000 words. All this in at least 532 occasions, ranging from speeches, briefings, etc.). Bush alone made 232 false statements about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and 28 false statements about links between al Qaeda and Iraq. Others in the Bush crew added this, one of the country's largest attempts by government to deceive the public into war.

This group should get a round of drinks for digging through hundreds of interviews, speeches, video, and what-have-you to compile this one-stop shop of on-the-record lies by Bush, by Cheney, by Rice, Powell, Wolfowitz, Fleischer and McClellan. Seriously, you ever try to listen to Bush speak?

To cover all the lies in detail would take more space than had here at the moment. But, the two biggest lies worth looking into is the WMD claim and the al Qaeda/Iraq connection. So why would an American president lie to the public. That can't happen! This is a democracy...

Well, even in democracies, people lie. And who benefits? Ask oil companies like Exxon-Mobil that broke the world record for profits earned in 2005 - $39.5 billion! Just four-years earlier, when oil was $20 a gallon (those were the days), oil companies were struggling to make profits. With oil floating around $100/gallon, wonder who benefits.

Not just Big Oil. Every bullet is pressed from the defense industry. Every stealth bomber is crafted from the aircraft industry. Every military base needs a logistics company like Kellogg, Brown and Root. This is not a conspiracy. This is capitalism. And when you follow the money trail, people like Bush, Cheney and Rice are connected with these industries.

So you're the president of the U.S. and you want to invade an oil-rich country under U.N. sanctions for more than 10 years. Many of your advisers are former Big Oil execs. That oil-rich country is negotiating oil contracts with other countries like China and Russia. Attacking that oil-rich country would make billions for your friends, and possibly your crew. That country is not a threat. What do you tell the public...you tell them this.

Big Brother is watching you, and you, and you..

2008-01-06T20:16:00.000-08:00

Sometimes getting an award is a good thing. Something to celebrate. A trophy to display to your friends. Bragging rights. Well, some awards should be swept under the carpet, never to be found. One such award was given to the U.S. at the end of 2007, and it isn't something to brag about.

The U.S. joined the ranks of such stars as Russia, the United Kingdom and China when it comes to privacy rights. The U.S. received the worst rank for privacy rights - getting an award as an "endemic surveillance society." Its rank dropped from "extensive surveillance society" after Congress further eroded privacy rights, and it was revealed that the FBI is creating the largest biometric database in the world.

The English-based privacy rights group Privacy International has highlighted, since 1997, the status of many countries when it comes to protecting a person's privacy. The group looks into things like a country's constitutional guards to privacy and surveillance on its own people.

In a country that acts as a leader of freedom, the lack of privacy protections doesn't fall in line with the rhetoric. Since President Bush took office in 2001, civil liberties and individual rights have slowly been eroded by laws like the Patriot Act. On August 4, 2007, Congress gave the government a blank check to wiretap all telephone and electronic communication from the U.S. to another country without a warrant.

That's not all. The FBI will be creating the world's largest biometric database at the cost of $1 billion. Biometrics include fingerprints, DNA and physical descriptions. The database would give the FBI the ability to easily identify Americans whether a criminal or not. Moves by the government like this helped to add to the "deteriorating" privacy rights in the U.S.

This obsession with identity by the U.S. government can be connected with the state of its prisons. In 2005, 1 in 136 Americans were behind bars. The U.S. also has the gold metal for the most amount of its own people in prison in the world. This obsession with security raises fears by critics of an impending police state.

So is Big Brother watching you? You bet. Stay tuned for May when the REAL ID Act comes into full effect, a law that will require state IDs to fall into federal standards, including a "common readable technology" that includes RFID chips. These constant attacks on privacy will only leave all Americans naked, exposed and shaking in the wind.

Map from privacyinternational.org.

Right to a fair trail...DENIED!

2007-12-30T16:55:00.001-08:00

How far will a country go to fight terrorism? Will it start terrorizing its own citizens? Well, history has shown that, yes, a country is willing to do that, and more. In one of the top 25 censored stories identified by Project Censored for 2006-07, one story was about a bill passed by Congress, signed by Bush, that puts the most basic rule of a democratic society at severe risk - habeas corpus.

Habeas what? It's one of those Latin terms still floating around since 1215. That's right, for almost 900 years, this revolutionary idea helped shape democracies across the world. The Magna Carta, a set of laws created by King John of England under threat of civil war, took much power away from dictator governments by stating “no free man shall be…imprisoned or disseised [dispossessed]…except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.”

In other words, you have the right to a fair trial. You have the right to not be swept up by a government net and thrown in prison for no reason. You have the right to defend yourself in court. Innocent until proven guilty. That is habeas corpus. That is what is threatened now for every American by the passing of the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

Mainstream media, like the New York Times, did report on the act, but they only reported on one part of the bill. That part deals mainly with non-U.S. citizens labeled "enemy combatants" by the Bush Administration. These are the people being swept up in the "War on Terror," and thrown into secret prisons around the world, including Guantanamo Bay. There, these people, who aren't being charged with any crimes, are being held without access to lawyers or trial. Now with this law, they have no rights in U.S. courts to a fair trial, or a trial for that matter. The Times wrote in their editorial:

"The law does not apply to American citizens, but it does apply to other legal United States residents. And it chips away at the foundations of the judicial system in ways that all Americans should find threatening."

What mainstream media didn't report on was a part of the bill that does affect U.S. citizens. When defining what crimes can be tried by a military tribunal, it states "any person is punishable as a principal under this chapter who commits an offense punishable by this [bill], or aids, abets, counsels, commands, or procures its commission." Any person. Unless the word "any" has changed in meaning to mean something else, it sounds like the bill is talking about any, and all, people including U.S. citizens.

Some of the crimes triable by the military include murder, hijacking, rape, spying and terrorism. One of the crimes, wrongfully aiding the enemy, clearly implies that it is for no less than U.S. citizens. That crime states that "Any person subject to this chapter who, in breach of an allegiance or duty to the United States, knowingly and intentionally aids an enemy of the United States...shall be punished as a military commission under this chapter may direct."

As pointed out by Robert Parry's article, who else other than a U.S. citizen would be in breach of violating their allegiance to the U.S. Unless Al'Qaeda now has some deep seeded allegiance to the country.

These vague, broad words and statements in the bill are cause for alarm for U.S. citizens. The government has shown itself in the past, especially with the Patriot Act, to misuse broadly stated parts of a bill to target U.S. citizens. Most frightening about this bill is the possibilities that come with it. Any chipping of habeas corpus, even if minor, should trigger some sort of alarm for any U.S. citizen that loves to have a lawyer present if the law comes down on them.

If that's not enough for you to be worried, listen to the statement made by Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez on Jan. 18, 2007 before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, where he public says that "there is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution. There is a prohibition against taking it away." What!!1! Even the senators did a double take with that one. And just in case the senators didn't understand what he said, he added:

"I meant by that comment, the Constitution doesn’t say, 'Every individual in the United States or every citizen is hereby granted or assured the right to habeas.' It doesn’t say that. It simply says the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended."

Wow! These are the people running our country! With such blatant disregard for the Constitution, one has to wonder what they're doing behind closed doors. The debate, as if there should be one, over habeas corpus and how the Military Commissions Act could be used caused one of the only outspoken senators about the constant assault on our civil liberties, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, to fight back with the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act of 2007. The bill passed the Judiciary Committee on June 8, 2007, but awaits its performance before the Senate floor.

Photo of detainee at Guantanamo Bay prison being taken in shortly after it opened on Jan. 2002. Photo from the www.latimes.com/media/photo/2007-12/23854197.jpg

Geroge Orwell rolls in his grave...again

2007-12-28T15:14:00.000-08:00

Come one, come all! Let the hording begin...now! Have you been a struggling newspaper salivating at the thought of owning your very own television or radio station? Well now you can. Thanks to the Federal Communication Commission ruling on Dec. 18, newspaper companies can tap into a 32-year-old banned market of broadcast stations, and vice-versa, and start gobbling those suckers up!

The FCC ruled 3-2, along party lines (Republicans voted yes), to remove the ban. It used to be that cross-ownership, as it's called, was a threat to allowing independent media voices time on the airwaves. Now, media companies in the top 20 media markets in the U.S. - big cities like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago - can buy one another up regardless if they're print or broadcast companies. There are a few exceptions that allow merging outside of the top 20 markets.

Republican FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said the move was a "relatively minor loosing" of restrictions, while Democratic FCC Commissioner Micheal Copps said the decision was "one that would make George Orwell proud." Well, not really. Orwell feared information being in the hands of a few in his book, "1984," with such memorable catch phrases as "Big Brother is watching." This ruling paves the way for just that.

First, some context. The passing of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 allowed the FCC to start dropping the restrictions on broadcast stations to buy one another up. What resulted was a feeding frenzy, a gorge if you will. In 1995, there were 29 big media corporations, not including newspapers. In 2006, that number shrank to eight - News Corporation, Disney, TimeWarner, Viacom, NBC Universal (owned by General Electric), Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google. Now most of the media so regular in our lives, like MySpace.com, CNN, FOX, Time magazine and YouTube, are owned by one of these eight giants.

Together, these eight corporations had a market value of about 1.2 trillion in 2006. That's a hell of a lot of buying power! With money like that, those corporations can buy stations and newspapers like college students buy coffee.

The main argument for this media consolidation revolves around profit and efficiency. But there are plenty of reasons to be alarmed. For one, media turned into a business, focusing on profit rather than content. Also, corporations are not agents of a democratic society, they're businesses. Why would a business sell a product nobody likes, or rather, thinks is too out there for their tastes? Well they don't, cause a business can't make money that way.

In that vein, more is better. More choices for people wanting to watch television, listen to the radio, pick up newspaper. As the big eight continue to gobble up media, the message becomes less diverse and access becomes restricted to people with views that may hurt the business. And with newspapers and broadcast stations allowed to buy one another up, who knows what feeding frenzy may endure in the coming years.

The first of it came July 31, when News Corp bought one of the few national newspapers left, The Wall Street Journal, for $5 billion. Since it served a national market, it did not fall in the now-dismantled ban.

Back to the FCC. In 2003 it made the same ruling only it removed the ban for the top 170 media markets. Congress and the courts said hell no, and the ruling was, well, overruled. The courts did say that the ban itself wasn't necessary anymore, and that was a major reason Martin said he went ahead with removing the ban yet again.

All this in the name of local media. Martin thinks that removing the ban will benefit local news coverage. Yet, in a 2004 report by the FCC, which it destroyed, it turns out that locally owned media does a better job at local news coverage. Locally owned television stations provide more time for news than when its not locally owned. Interesting.

So what's the real motivation behind this ruling? One can speculate, but this move is not going to create more access to diverse ideas and information. It isn't going to be good for democracy either. The Senate and the courts could strike down this ruling like they did the 2003 one. Poor Orwell, dead for 27 years and he's still not getting the rest he deserves.

Photo: Kevin Martin, FCC Chairman. Taken from http://www.fcc.gov.

Oily politicians living in a greenhouse

2007-12-27T23:01:00.000-08:00

Politicians can only be trusted as far as one can throw them. And that's not far at all. Just one day after President Bush signed a declawed version of an energy bill that will force automakers to make more use of the evermore-expensive gas going into cars, the Environmental Protection Agency shot down a chance for 17 states that actually want to stop adding to global warming.

Given that the Bush Administration is awash in oil, it's not all that surprising: Bush, a failed Texas oilman whose family is tied to the royal Saudi family; Condi Rice, former director for Chevron; and Dick Cheney, former CEO of Halliburton. Bush threatened to veto the energy bill if Democrats didn't send the bill to the dentist for a major root canal. Big Oil had the same prognosis.

Part of what was scrapped from the bill would have taxed the oil and gas industry to help fund renewable energy research and forced utility companies to have 15 percent of their energy coming from renewable sources.

The United States is a star when it comes to energy and emissions. It won first place in 2006 for devouring the most amount of oil in the world (20.6 million barrels a day), almost three times as much as the next country, China. The United States did lose its first place standing for world's leading polluter to China, picking up the silver metal.

With bedfellows like the auto, oil and gas industry, the U.S. may yet be able to get that gold metal in pollution back from China. But it's going to take more whining from industry about any attempt by any part of the U.S to curb greenhouse gas emissions. It was reported that Chrysler is leading the push to block the EPA from making fuel efficiency standards stricter. And it worked.

While one small bittersweet victory in the fight against U.S. oil addiction and global warming was won, another more important battle was lost. A 2004 California bill wanted to force automakers to reduce car emissions by 30 percent by 2016, starting with the 2009 models. In order to enact the law, the EPA had to grant a wavier to allow California to pollute less. The decision came two years after California asked for it and after the state sued the EPA in November.

The EPA denied the request. EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson provides the groundbreaking reason in a statement:

"The Bush Administration is moving forward with a clear national solution - not a confusing patchwork of state rules."

This wouldn't be as funny if that gutted energy bill wasn't signed into law the day before. Even funnier is how much Johnson echoes what General Motors said in a statement when the EPA ruled against the states. In short, it said without a "patchwork of state-specific regulations that would divert our resources," it could research better technology. Interesting. Maybe Johnson was reading from General Motors' press release when he gave his reason for denying the waiver. General Motors was ranked number 3 in the Fortune 500 for 2006, and donated $1.6 million to Republican politicians since Bush has been in office - almost twice what it gives to Democrats.

This whole sad episode of Big Business and Uncle Sam is strange from the start. Shouldn't it work the other way around, where the EPA should be suing states to make stricter rules. This is the logic of the American political system, and for 17 states, a major drawback to do what most of the world is trying to do, fight global warming.

There are other states that want to follow in California's green footsteps: Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Arizona, Colorado, Utah and Florida. Iowa wants to join the bandwagon as well.

Where California killed the electric car, the EPA killed better controls on pollution. Cough. But the battle isn't over yet. California, and the other states, could appeal to the courts. They could also wait until Bush leaves office and hope a more green-minded, less oily president takes charge. The rest of the world is probably hoping for the same thing.

Photo taken from i.treehugger.com.

I am not addicted, I can stop when I want!

2007-12-27T15:54:00.000-08:00

A bittersweet victory. Now that the elite have moved global warming from myth to fact, Democrats introduced a bill in January to move America away from its oil addiction, an addiction that makes Homer Simpson's Duff Beer binges look responsible.

Seriously. The energy bill signed by President Bush on December 19 does some good for the environment. It also makes strides toward kicking that nasty oil addiction. But the bill visited the dentist before signed into law, and its sharp teeth were dulled down to weak molars.

First, some facts. In 2006, the U.S. gobbled 20.6 million barrels of oil a day, more than any other country in the world. Talk about addiction! Getting the silver metal was China, with 7.3 million barrels a day. Of all that oil the U.S. devoured, 12.2 million of those barrels a day are imported.

Some dealers are making big bucks off this addiction. Take ExxonMobil, a company that broke its own 2005 global record for the corporation that made the biggest annual profit in history: $39.5 billion, yes, $39.5 billion in 2006! In fact, 3 of the 10 Fortune 500 companies of 2006 were oil companies.

So they're not hurting a bit. America's "War on Terrorism" has done more to enrich the pockets of Big Oil than any other time in history. Continued war in Afghanistan and Iraq, mixed with a oil supply close to peaking and more and more countries demanding the black gold has kept the price of oil high. Good for Big Oil, bad for us addicts.

It's good for Big Oil cause, as shown above, they're making a killing in profits. These are the golden days for Big Oil, and who can blame them for being so damn happy. But they weren't always so. By the end of 2001, the price of oil per barrel slid down to about $20. Big Oil felt powerless. Then the tide turned and prices soared to heights never before seen. Every year, the price got higher and higher, and then oil hit $99 a barrel on Nov. 21.

Now for us poor addicts. As the cost of oil rises, so does gas - if one drives. On Dec. 24, 2001, the average price of gas in the U.S. was $1.11/gallon. The same day in 2007, the price jumped to $3.03/gallon. But it doesn't stop there. Almost everything people rely on in this society uses petroleum: the food we eat, the plastic containers and bags we store stuff in, hell, even vitamin capsules. As oil prices rise, so does the cost of all those products relying on oil. And that doesn't even consider the cost to bring, say, produce from the farm to a supermarket near you.

OK, so the U.S is addicted. To make matters worse, there isn't a rehab clinic yet for oil addicted countries to clean up. So the Democratic-controlled Congress decided it was time to at least try and curb that oil itch. They introduced an energy bill that, among other things, would get more bang out of the gas car's use. It would also improve the amount of ethanol (corn-based fuel) produced.

A 1975 law required cars to squeeze 27.5 miles per gallon, and light trucks (which funny enough, includes SUVs) 22.2 miles per gallon. Now, cars and light trucks must hit an average of 35 miles per gallon by 2020. The auto industry didn't like this at first, but the politician that grabbed the most amount of their campaign cash ($104,350) in the 2006 election cycle, John D. Dingell, prodded them to accept it. Thanks John!

But Big Oil wasn't so willing to back down from their complaints. The version of the bill that passed the House of Representatives had two major differences from the one the Senate voted for, and Bush signed. For one, the bill targeted utility companies to move 15 percent of their energy to renewable sources by 2020. That was a no go for the Edison Electric Institute, a utilities lobby group.

Also, Democrats wanted to increase the tax on oil and gas industry, which would have raised about $13 billion for the development of renewable energy (remember, ExxonMobil alone made $39.5 billion in profit in 2006). Another report put the tax figure at $21 billion.

Big Oil was able to destroy parts of the bill due to the delicate majority the Democrats have in the Senate. They called out all their big Republican guns, and their biggest oil lobbyist, President Bush, to put a halt on messing with them. During the 2006 election cycle, the oil and gas industry gave $16.3 million to Republican politicians, about five times as much as they gave to Democrats.

Small victories are better than no victory. The bill will help reduce the U.S. addiction to oil, dropping five million barrels a day by 2030. It does open the door to making a cleaner fuel source, but ethanol is part of another addiction, which is tied to oil more than most think. Relief to the oil addiction will be a 12-step program with no sponsor. But hey, the U.S. can stop using oil when it wants right...right?

Oh my, another blog!!!!111!1

2007-12-20T20:18:00.000-08:00

Seems like everyone these days are blogging. Newspapers are doing it. Students. Parents. Probably the government too. Whether it's Myspace, Facebook or this site right here, blog is the word. I've fought the blog trend for a while now, but what the hell, why not put all my published articles, opinions and what-have-you in one easily accessible place.

The real question here, especially if you know me, is whether I will keep up with this blogging thing. Figure I give it a try until I get bored so here we go!

This is what you can expect here: news articles I write, satirical babble about modern life (we call it Lumberspoofs at my college paper The Lumberjack, news analysis (cause the political side always wants to play), and much more.

So BOOKMARK MY BLOG and check it out. If you got one of these blog things too, let us make a network.

Blog ya later!