Opinions, Perspectives and Thought Provoking Stuff

Joe Stack Hero or Villain - Joe’s last entry to his blog.

February 20th, 2010 by admin

This is Joe Stack’s last communication before he did what he did. Read it and decide for your self was he a hero or a vilain, or just plain sick and tired of it.

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If you’re reading this, you’re no doubt asking yourself, “Why did this have to
happen?” The simple truth is that it is complicated and has been coming for a long
time. The writing process, started many months ago, was intended to be therapy in
the face of the looming realization that there isn’t enough therapy in the world that
can fix what is really broken. Needless to say, this rant could fill volumes with
example after example if I would let it. I find the process of writing it frustrating,
tedious, and probably pointless… especially given my gross inability to gracefully
articulate my thoughts in light of the storm raging in my head. Exactly what is
therapeutic about that I’m not sure, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
We are all taught as children that without laws there would be no society, only
anarchy. Sadly, starting at early ages we in this country have been brainwashed to
believe that, in return for our dedication and service, our government stands for
justice for all. We are further brainwashed to believe that there is freedom in this
place, and that we should be ready to lay our lives down for the noble principals
represented by its founding fathers. Remember? One of these was “no taxation
without representation”. I have spent the total years of my adulthood unlearning that
crap from only a few years of my childhood. These days anyone who really stands
up for that principal is promptly labeled a “crackpot”, traitor and worse.
While very few working people would say they haven’t had their fair share of taxes
(as can I), in my lifetime I can say with a great degree of certainty that there has
never been a politician cast a vote on any matter with the likes of me or my interests
in mind. Nor, for that matter, are they the least bit interested in me or anything I
have to say.

Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities
(and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it’s time for
their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming
stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid
within days if not hours? Yet at the same time, the joke we call the American
medical system, including the drug and insurance companies, are murdering tens of
thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple,
and this country’s leaders don’t see this as important as bailing out a few of their vile,
rich cronies. Yet, the political “representatives” (thieves, liars, and self-serving
scumbags is far more accurate) have endless time to sit around for year after year
and debate the state of the “terrible health care problem”. It’s clear they see no crisis
as long as the dead people don’t get in the way of their corporate profits rolling in.
And justice? You’ve got to be kidding!
How can any rational individual explain that white elephant conundrum in the middle
of our tax system and, indeed, our entire legal system? Here we have a system that
is, by far, too complicated for the brightest of the master scholars to understand.
Yet, it mercilessly “holds accountable” its victims, claiming that they’re responsible for
fully complying with laws not even the experts understand. The law “requires” a
signature on the bottom of a tax filing; yet no one can say truthfully that they
understand what they are signing; if that’s not “duress” than what is. If this is not the
measure of a totalitarian regime, nothing is.
How did I get here?

My introduction to the real American nightmare starts back in the early ‘80s.
Unfortunately after more than 16 years of school, somewhere along the line I picked
up the absurd, pompous notion that I could read and understand plain English.
Some friends introduced me to a group of people who were having ‘tax code’
readings and discussions. In particular, zeroed in on a section relating to the
wonderful “exemptions” that make institutions like the vulgar, corrupt Catholic Church
so incredibly wealthy. We carefully studied the law (with the help of some of the
“best”, high-paid, experienced tax lawyers in the business), and then began to do
exactly what the “big boys” were doing (except that we weren’t steeling from our
congregation or lying to the government about our massive profits in the name of
God). We took a great deal of care to make it all visible, following all of the rules,
exactly the way the law said it was to be done.
The intent of this exercise and our efforts was to bring about a much-needed reevaluation
of the laws that allow the monsters of organized religion to make such a
mockery of people who earn an honest living. However, this is where I learned that
there are two “interpretations” for every law; one for the very rich, and one for the
rest of us… Oh, and the monsters are the very ones making and enforcing the laws;
the inquisition is still alive and well today in this country.
That little lesson in patriotism cost me $40,000+, 10 years of my life, and set my
retirement plans back to 0. It made me realize for the first time that I live in a country
with an ideology that is based on a total and complete lie. It also made me realize,
not only how naive I had been, but also the incredible stupidity of the American
public; that they buy, hook, line, and sinker, the crap about their “freedom”… and
that they continue to do so with eyes closed in the face of overwhelming evidence
and all that keeps happening in front of them.

Before even having to make a shaky recovery from the sting of the first lesson on
what justice really means in this country (around 1984 after making my way through
engineering school and still another five years of “paying my dues”), I felt I finally had
to take a chance of launching my dream of becoming an independent engineer.
On the subjects of engineers and dreams of independence, I should digress
somewhat to say that I’m sure that I inherited the fascination for creative problem
solving from my father. I realized this at a very young age.
The significance of independence, however, came much later during my early years
of college; at the age of 18 or 19 when I was living on my own as student in an
apartment in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. My neighbor was an elderly retired woman
(80+ seemed ancient to me at that age) who was the widowed wife of a retired steel
worker. Her husband had worked all his life in the steel mills of central Pennsylvania
with promises from big business and the union that, for his 30 years of service, he
would have a pension and medical care to look forward to in his retirement. Instead
he was one of the thousands who got nothing because the incompetent mill
management and corrupt union (not to mention the government) raided their pension
funds and stole their retirement. All she had was social security to live on.
In retrospect, the situation was laughable because here I was living on peanut butter
and bread (or Ritz crackers when I could afford to splurge) for months at a time.
When I got to know this poor figure and heard her story I felt worse for her plight
When I got to know this poor figure and heard her story I felt worse for her plight
than for my own (I, after all, I thought I had everything to in front of me). I was
genuinely appalled at one point, as we exchanged stories and commiserated with
each other over our situations, when she in her grandmotherly fashion tried to
convince me that I would be “healthier” eating cat food (like her) rather than trying to
get all my substance from peanut butter and bread. I couldn’t quite go there, but the
impression was made. I decided that I didn’t trust big business to take care of me,
and that I would take responsibility for my own future and myself.
Return to the early ‘80s, and here I was off to a terrifying start as a ‘wet-behind-theears’
contract software engineer… and two years later, thanks to the fine backroom,
midnight effort by the sleazy executives of Arthur Andersen (the very same folks who
later brought us Enron and other such calamities) and an equally sleazy New York
Senator (Patrick Moynihan), we saw the passage of 1986 tax reform act with its
section 1706.

For you who are unfamiliar, here is the core text of the IRS Section 1706, defining
the treatment of workers (such as contract engineers) for tax purposes. Visit this link
for a conference committee report
(http://www.synergistech.com/1706.shtml#ConferenceCommitteeReport) regarding
the intended interpretation of Section 1706 and the relevant parts of Section 530, as
amended. For information on how these laws affect technical services workers and
their clients, read our discussion here (http://www.synergistech.com/ic-taxlaw.shtml).

SEC. 1706. TREATMENT OF CERTAIN TECHNICAL PERSONNEL.
(a) IN GENERAL - Section 530 of the Revenue Act of 1978 is amended by adding
at the end thereof the following new subsection:
(d) EXCEPTION. - This section shall not apply in the case of an individual who
pursuant to an arrangement between the taxpayer and another person, provides
services for such other person as an engineer, designer, drafter, computer
programmer, systems analyst, or other similarly skilled worker engaged in a
similar line of work.
(b) EFFECTIVE DATE. - The amendment made by this section shall apply to
remuneration paid and services rendered after December 31, 1986.

Note:
! “another person” is the client in the traditional job-shop relationship.
! “taxpayer” is the recruiter, broker, agency, or job shop.
! “individual”, “employee”, or “worker” is you.

Admittedly, you need to read the treatment to understand what it is saying but it’s not
very complicated. The bottom line is that they may as well have put my name right in
the text of section (d). Moreover, they could only have been more blunt if they would
have came out and directly declared me a criminal and non-citizen slave. Twenty
years later, I still can’t believe my eyes.
During 1987, I spent close to $5000 of my ‘pocket change’, and at least 1000 hours
of my time writing, printing, and mailing to any senator, congressman, governor, or
slug that might listen; none did, and they universally treated me as if I was wasting
their time. I spent countless hours on the L.A. freeways driving to meetings and any
and all of the disorganized professional groups who were attempting to mount a
campaign against this atrocity. This, only to discover that our efforts were being
easily derailed by a few moles from the brokers who were just beginning to enjoy the
windfall from the new declaration of their “freedom”. Oh, and don’t forget, for all of
the time I was spending on this, I was loosing income that I couldn’t bill clients.
After months of struggling it had clearly gotten to be a futile exercise. The best we
could get for all of our trouble is a pronouncement from an IRS mouthpiece that they
weren’t going to enforce that provision (read harass engineers and scientists). This
immediately proved to be a lie, and the mere existence of the regulation began to
have its impact on my bottom line; this, of course, was the intended effect.
Again, rewind my retirement plans back to 0 and shift them into idle. If I had any
sense, I clearly should have left abandoned engineering and never looked back.
Instead I got busy working 100-hour workweeks. Then came the L.A. depression of
the early 1990s. Our leaders decided that they didn’t need the all of those extra Air
Force bases they had in Southern California, so they were closed; just like that. The
result was economic devastation in the region that rivaled the widely publicized
Texas S&L fiasco. However, because the government caused it, no one gave a shit
about all of the young families who lost their homes or street after street of boarded
up houses abandoned to the wealthy loan companies who received government
funds to “shore up” their windfall. Again, I lost my retirement.
Years later, after weathering a divorce and the constant struggle trying to build some
momentum with my business, I find myself once again beginning to finally pick up
some speed. Then came the .COM bust and the 911 nightmare. Our leaders
decided that all aircraft were grounded for what seemed like an eternity; and long
after that, ‘special’ facilities like San Francisco were on security alert for months.
This made access to my customers prohibitively expensive. Ironically, after what
they had done the Government came to the aid of the airlines with billions of our tax
dollars … as usual they left me to rot and die while they bailed out their rich,
incompetent cronies WITH MY MONEY! After these events, there went my business
but not quite yet all of my retirement and savings.

By this time, I’m thinking that it might be good for a change. Bye to California, I’ll try
Austin for a while. So I moved, only to find out that this is a place with a highly
inflated sense of self-importance and where damn little real engineering work is
done. I’ve never experienced such a hard time finding work. The rates are 1/3 of
what I was earning before the crash, because pay rates here are fixed by the three
or four large companies in the area who are in collusion to drive down prices and
wages… and this happens because the justice department is all on the take and
doesn’t give a fuck about serving anyone or anything but themselves and their rich
buddies.
To survive, I was forced to cannibalize my savings and retirement, the last of which
was a small IRA. This came in a year with mammoth expenses and not a single
dollar of income. I filed no return that year thinking that because I didn’t have any
income there was no need. The sleazy government decided that they disagreed.
But they didn’t notify me in time for me to launch a legal objection so when I
attempted to get a protest filed with the court I was told I was no longer entitled to
due process because the time to file ran out. Bend over for another $10,000 helping
of justice.

So now we come to the present. After my experience with the CPA world, following
the business crash I swore that I’d never enter another accountant’s office again.
But here I am with a new marriage and a boatload of undocumented income, not to
mention an expensive new business asset, a piano, which I had no idea how to
handle. After considerable thought I decided that it would be irresponsible NOT to
get professional help; a very big mistake.
When we received the forms back I was very optimistic that they were in order. I had
taken all of the years information to Bill Ross, and he came back with results very
similar to what I was expecting. Except that he had neglected to include the contents
of Sheryl’s unreported income; $12,700 worth of it. To make matters worse, Ross
knew all along this was missing and I didn’t have a clue until he pointed it out in the
middle of the audit. By that time it had become brutally evident that he was
representing himself and not me.
This left me stuck in the middle of this disaster trying to defend transactions that
have no relationship to anything tax-related (at least the tax-related transactions
were poorly documented). Things I never knew anything about and things my wife
had no clue would ever matter to anyone. The end result is… well, just look around.
I remember reading about the stock market crash before the “great” depression and
how there were wealthy bankers and businessmen jumping out of windows when
they realized they screwed up and lost everything. Isn’t it ironic how far we’ve come
in 60 years in this country that they now know how to fix that little economic problem;
they just steal from the middle class (who doesn’t have any say in it, elections are a
joke) to cover their asses and it’s “business-as-usual”. Now when the wealthy fuck
up, the poor get to die for the mistakes… isn’t that a clever, tidy solution.
As government agencies go, the FAA is often justifiably referred to as a tombstone
agency, though they are hardly alone. The recent presidential puppet GW Bush and
his cronies in their eight years certainly reinforced for all of us that this criticism rings
equally true for all of the government. Nothing changes unless there is a body count
(unless it is in the interest of the wealthy sows at the government trough). In a
government full of hypocrites from top to bottom, life is as cheap as their lies and
their self-serving laws.

I know I’m hardly the first one to decide I have had all I can stand. It has always
been a myth that people have stopped dying for their freedom in this country, and it
isn’t limited to the blacks, and poor immigrants. I know there have been countless
before me and there are sure to be as many after. But I also know that by not
adding my body to the count, I insure nothing will change. I choose to not keep
looking over my shoulder at “big brother” while he strips my carcass, I choose not to
ignore what is going on all around me, I choose not to pretend that business as usual
won’t continue; I have just had enough.
I can only hope that the numbers quickly get too big to be white washed and ignored
that the American zombies wake up and revolt; it will take nothing less. I would only
hope that by striking a nerve that stimulates the inevitable double standard, knee-jerk
government reaction that results in more stupid draconian restrictions people wake
government reaction that results in more stupid draconian restrictions people wake
up and begin to see the pompous political thugs and their mindless minions for what
they are. Sadly, though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn’t so, but
violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer. The cruel joke is that the really
big chunks of shit at the top have known this all along and have been laughing, at
and using this awareness against, fools like me all along.
I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over
and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different. I am finally ready to
stop this insanity.

Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take
my pound of flesh and sleep well.

The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to
his need.

The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according
to his greed.

Joe Stack (1956-2010)
02/18/2010

Category: Current Events, Humanity, Politics, Reports, Social Commentary | No Comments »

Police Harassment - In Defense of the Police

December 5th, 2009 by admin

I received this email forward from a friend, after reading it, I had to admit it got me thinking and I found it to be very funny and most likely true.

Subject: Police Harassment

Recently, the Chula Vista Police Department ran an e-mail forum (a question and answer exchange) with the topic being, “Community Policing.” One of the civilian email participants posed the following question, “I would like to know how it is possible for police officers to continually harass people and get away with it?”

From the “other side” (the law enforcement side) Sgt. Bennett, obviously a cop with a sense of humor replied:

“First of all, let me tell you this…it’s not easy. In Chula Vista, we average one cop for every 600 people. Only about 60% of those cops are on general duty (or what you might refer to as “patrol”) where we do most of our harassing.

The rest are in non-harassing departments that do not allow them contact with the day to day innocents. And at any given moment, only one-fifth of the 60% patrollers are on duty and available for harassing people while the rest are off duty. So roughly, one cop is responsible for harassing about 5,000 residents.

When you toss in the commercial business, and tourist locations that attract people from other areas, sometimes you have a situation where a single cop is responsible for harassing 10,000 or more people a day.

Now, your average ten-hour shift runs 36,000 seconds long. This gives a cop one second to harass a person, and then only three-fourths of a second to eat a donut AND then find a new person to harass. This is not an easy task. To be honest, most cops are not up to this challenge day in and day out. It is just too tiring. What we do is utilize some tools to help us narrow down those people which we can realistically harass.

The tools available to us are as follows:

PHONE: People will call us up and point out things that cause us to focus on a person for special harassment. “My neighbor is beating his wife” is a code phrase used often. This means we’ll come out and give somebody some special harassment.

Another popular one is, “There’s a guy breaking into a house.” The harassment team is then put into action.

CARS: We have special cops assigned to harass people who drive. They like to harass the drivers of fast cars, cars with no insurance or no driver’s licenses and the like. It’s lots of fun when you pick them out of traffic for nothing more obvious than running a red light. Sometimes you get to really heap the harassment on when you find they have drugs in the car, they are drunk, or have an outstanding warrant on file.

RUNNERS: Some people take off running just at the sight of a police officer. Nothing is quite as satisfying as running after them like a beagle on the scent of a bunny. When you catch them you can harass them for hours.

STATUTES: When we don’t have PHONES or CARS and have nothing better to do, there are actually books that give us ideas for reasons to harass folks. They are called “Statutes”; Criminal Codes, Motor Vehicle Codes, etc… They all spell out all sorts of things for which you can really mess with people.

After you read the statute, you can just drive around for awhile until you find someone violating one of these listed offenses and harass them. Just last week I saw a guy trying to steal a car. Well, there’s this book we have that says that’s not allowed. That meant I got permission to harass this guy. It is a really cool system that we have set up, and it works pretty well.

We seem to have a never-ending supply of folks to harass. And we get away with it. Why? Because for the good citizens who pay the tab, we try to keep the streets safe for them, and they pay us to “harass” some people.

Next time you are in my town, give me the old “single finger wave.” That’s another one of those codes. It means, “You can harass me.”

It’s one of our favorites.

Category: Favorite Forwards, Humanity, Humour, Social Commentary, Thought | No Comments »

Finally Some One Making Sense, Thank you Mr Kucinich!

November 15th, 2009 by admin

Kucinich: Why Is It We Have Finite Resources for Health Care but Unlimited
Money for War?

WASHINGTON - November 6 - Following a statement on the Floor of the House
of Representative, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today made the
following statement:

“Why is it we have finite resources for health care but unlimited money for
war?

“The inequities in our economy are piling up: trillions for war, trillions
for Wall Street and tens of billions for the insurance companies. Banks and
other corporations are sitting on piles of cash of taxpayer’s money while
firing workers, cutting pay and denying small businesses money to survive.

“People are losing their homes, their jobs, their health, their
investments, their retirement security; yet there is unlimited money for
war, Wall Street and insurance companies, but very little money for jobs on
Main Street.

“Unlimited money to blow up things in Iraq and Afghanistan, and relatively
little money to build things in the US.

“The Administration may soon bring to Congress a request for an additional
$50 billion for war. I can tell you that a Democratic version of the wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan is no more acceptable than a Republican version of
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Trillions for war and Wall Street, billions for insurance companies…
When we were promised change, we weren’t thinking that we give a dollar and
get back two cents.”

Category: Favorite Forwards, Humanity, Politics, Reports, Social Commentary, Thought | No Comments »

Madoff the Sacrificial Pig

June 30th, 2009 by admin

With Madoff’s sentencing comes the relief that the culprit is caught, and those who were duped by him and his henchmen are at least, to some degree, relieved to see some kind of justice. I know that those who suffered thier loss because of him will never have their lives back and with all due respect to the victims of Madoff, there is another side to all of this. Has it not occured to anyone that perhaps Madoff was offered up to the sacrifice? Is it not possible that what Madoof has done is only a small part of a much larger whole and we as a country have yet to feel the effects of the greates ponzi scheme ever perpetrated.

Let’s look at Wikipedia’s definition of a Ponzi Scheme:

“A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to separate investors from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors rather than from any actual profit earned. The Ponzi scheme usually offers returns that other investments cannot guarantee in order to entice new investors, in the form of short-term returns that are either abnormally high or unusually consistent. The perpetuation of the returns that a Ponzi scheme advertises and pays requires an ever-increasing flow of money from investors in order to keep the scheme going.

The system is destined to collapse because the earnings, if any, are less than the payments. Usually, the scheme is interrupted by legal authorities before it collapses because a Ponzi scheme is suspected or because the promoter is selling unregistered securities. As more investors become involved, the likelihood of the scheme coming to the attention of authorities increases.”

Could it be that the “bailouts” are a sort of Ponzi Scheme and the investors are destined to lose. Who are the investors. All Americans, everyone of us and our children. We have no idea what the effects of the Bailouts will have until we begin to see the returns and I am convinced of one thing, there will be no return!! We will never see the money our government has freely given to multi-national banks and corporations. Our tax dollars are gone and I guarantee you and I and our children will be paying for this scheme for a long time!

Madoff is nothing compared to the people who have ripped off the coffers of the United States, our money, your money, the money that should have been used for the betterment of our country not to line the pockets of multinationals who have no allegiance to our country. These people only have one allegiance, Profit! Yes Madoff was a distraction, a dumb show for those of us who have not yet realized the greatest ponzi scheme ever perpetrated on a Nation.

Category: Economics, Humanity, Politics, Social Commentary, Thought | No Comments »

Emergency Broadcast - New World Order Ahead

April 4th, 2009 by admin

I did not make this video, important information please pass along.

Category: Covert Activity, Economics, Humanity, Politics, Reports, Social Commentary, Thought | No Comments »

China’s hi-tech ‘death van’ where criminals are executed and then their organs are sold on black market

March 29th, 2009 by admin

By Andrew Malone Last updated at 11:14 PM on 27th March 2009

Death will come soon for Jiang Yong. A corrupt local planning official with a taste for the high life, Yong solicited money from businessmen eager to expand in China’s economic boom.

Showering gifts on his mistress, known as Madam Tang, the unmarried official took more than £1 million in bribes from entrepreneurs wanting permission to build skyscrapers on land which had previously been protected from development.

But Yong, a portly, bespectacled figure, was caught by the Chinese authorities during a purge on corrupt local officials last year.

He confessed and was sentenced to death. China executed 1,715 people last year, so one more death would hardly be remarkable.

Disguised: the death van looks like a plain police van

But there will be nothing ordinary about Yong’s death by lethal injection. Unless he wins an appeal, he will draw his final breath strapped inside a vehicle that has been specially developed to make executions more cost-effective and efficient.

In chilling echoes of the ‘gas-wagon’ project pioneered by the Nazis to slaughter criminals, the mentally ill and Jews, this former member of the China People’s Party will be handcuffed to a so-called ‘humane’ bed and executed inside a gleaming new, hi-tech, mobile ‘death van.’

After trials of the mobile execution service were launched quietly three years ago - then hushed up to prevent an international row about the abuse of human rights before the Olympics last summer - these vehicles are now being deployed across China.

The number of executions is expected to rise to a staggering 10,000 people this year (not an impossible figure given that at least 68 crimes - including tax evasion and fraud - are punishable by death in China).

Developed by Jinguan Auto, which also makes bullet-proof limousines for the new rich in this vast country of 1.3 billion people, the vans appear unremarkable.

They cost £60,000, can reach top speeds of 80mph and look like a police vehicle on patrol. Inside, however, the ‘death vans’ look more like operating theatres.

Executions are monitored by video to ensure they comply with strict rules, making it possible to describe precisely how Jiang Yong will die. After being sedated at the local prison, he will be loaded into the van and strapped to an electric-powered stretcher.

This then glides automatically towards the centre of the van, where doctors will administer three drugs: sodium thiopental to cause unconsciousness; pancuronium bromide to stop breathing and, finally, potassium chloride to stop the heart.

Death is reputed to be quick and painless - not that there is anyone to testify to this. The idea for such a ‘modern’ scheme is rooted in one of the darkest episodes in human history.

The Nazis used adapted vans as mobile gas chambers from 1940 until the end of World War II. In order to make the best use of time spent transporting criminals and Jewish prisoners, Hitler’s scientists developed the vehicles with a hermetically sealed cabin that was filled with carbon monoxide carried by a tube from the exhaust pipes.
The vans were first tested on child patients in a Polish psychiatric hospital in 1940. The Nazis then developed bigger models to carry up to 50 prisoners. They looked like furniture removal vans. Those to be killed were ordered to hand over their valuables, then stripped and locked inside.

As gas was pumped into the container and the van headed towards graves being dug by other prisoners, the muffled cries of those inside could be heard, along with banging on the side.

With the ‘cargo’ dead, all that remained was for gold fillings to be hacked from the victims’ mouths, before the bodies were tipped into the graves.

Now, six decades later, just like the Nazis, China insists these death vans are ‘progress’.

The vans save money on building execution facilities in prisons or courts. And they mean that prisoners can be executed locally, closer to communities where they broke the law.

The Nazi gas van: It killed up to 50 prisoners at a time

‘This deters others from committing crime and has more impact,’ said one official.

Indeed, a spokesman for the makers of the ‘death vans’ openly touted for trade this week, saying they are the perfect way to ‘efficiently and cleanly’ dispatch convicts with lethal injections. Reporting steady sales throughout China, a spokesman for Jinguan Auto - which is situated in a green valley an hour’s drive from Chongqing in south-western China - said the firm was bucking the economic trend and had sold ten more vans recently.

The exact number in operation is a state secret. But it is known that Yunnan province alone has 18 mobile units, while dozens of others are patrolling in five other sprawling provinces. Each van is the size of a specially refitted 17-seater minibus.

‘We have not sold our execution cars to foreign countries yet,’ beamed a proud spokesman. But if they need one, they could contact our company directly.’

Officials say the vehicles are a ‘civilised alternative’ to the traditional single shot to the head (used in 60 per cent of Chinese executions), ending the life of the condemned quickly, clinically and safely - proving that China ‘promotes human rights now,’ says Kang Zhongwen, designer of the ‘death van’.

It seems a perverse claim, but certainly the shootings can be gruesome. Once carried out in public parks, these executions -sometimes done in groups - have seen countless cases of prisoners failing to die instantly and writhing in agony on the ground before being finished off.

There are other concerns: soldiers carrying out the shooting complain that they are splashed with Aids-contaminated blood. After the shooting, relatives are often presented with the bullet hacked from the condemned’s body - and forced to pay the price of the ammunition.

While posing as a modernising force in public, Chinese leaders remain brutal within their own borders. They are, however, anxious to be seen to be moving away from violence against their own people, stressing that all judicial decisions have been taken out of the hands of vengeful local officials and must be ruled on from Beijing.

China has traditionally always taken a ruthless, unemotional view of crime and punishment. Before injections and bullets, the most chilling sentence was death by Ling Chi - death by a thousand cuts - which was abolished only in 1905.

The condemned man was strapped to a table and then, in what was also known as ’slow slicing’, his eyes were gouged out.

This was designed to heighten the terror of not being able to see what part of his body would suffer next. Using a sharp knife, the executioner sliced at the condemned’s body - chopping off the ears, fingers, nose and toes, before starting to cut off whole limbs.

Traditionalists insisted that exactly 3,600 slices were made. The new mobile execution vans may, indeed, be more humane than this, but their main advantage in official eyes is financial.

Gordon Brown and China's President Hu Jintao meet in China in 2008

According to undercover investigations by human rights’ groups, the police, judiciary and doctors are all involved in making millions from China’s huge trade in human body parts.

Inside each ‘death van’ there is a dedicated team of doctors to ‘harvest’ the organs of the deceased. The injections leave the body intact and in pristine condition for such lucrative work.

After checking that the victim is dead, the medical team first remove the eyes. Then, wearing surgical gowns and masks, they remove the kidney, liver, pancreas and lungs.

Little goes to waste, though the heart cannot be used, having been poisoned by the drugs.

The organs are dispatched in ice boxes to hospitals in the sprawling cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, which have developed another specialist trade: selling the harvested organs.

At clinics all over China, these organs are transplanted into the ailing bodies of the wealthy - and thousands more who come as ‘organ tourists’ from neighbouring countries such as Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan.

Chinese hospitals perform up to 20,000 organ transplants each year. A kidney transplant in China costs £5,000, but can rise to £30,000 if the patient is willing to pay more to obtain an organ quickly.

With more than 10,000 kidney transplants carried out each year, fewer than 300 come from voluntary donations. The British Transplantation Society and Amnesty International have condemned China for harvesting prisoners’ organs.

Laws introduced in 2006 make it an offence to remove the organs of people against their will, and banned those under 18 from selling their organs.

But, tellingly, the law does not cover prisoners.

‘Organs can be extracted in a speedier and more effective way using these vans than if the prisoner is shot,’ says Amnesty International.

‘We have gathered strong evidence suggesting the involvement of Chinese police, courts and hospitals in the organ trade.’
The bodies cannot be examined. Corpses are driven to a crematorium and burned before independent witnesses can view them.

A police official, who operates a ‘multi-functional and nationwide, first-class, fixed execution ground’ where prisoners are shot, confirmed to the Mail that it is always a race against time to save the organs of the executed - and that mobile death vans are better equipped for the job.

‘The liver loses its function only five minutes after the human cardiac arrest,’ the officer told our researcher.

‘The kidney will become dysfunctional 30 minutes after cardiac arrest. So the removal of organs must be completed at the execution ground within 15 minutes, then put in an ice box or preservation solution.’

While other countries worry about the morality of the death penalty, China has no such qualms.

For the Beijing regime, it is not a question of whether they should execute offenders, but how to do it most efficiently - and make the most money from it.

Category: Covert Activity, Humanity, Politics, Reports, Social Commentary | No Comments »

Canadians Find Vast Computer Spy Network: Report

March 29th, 2009 by admin

Saturday 28 March 2009Looking through Computer by Jared Rodruguez

Washington - Canadian researchers have uncovered a vast electronic spying operation that infiltrated computers and stole documents from government and private offices around the world, including those of the Dalai Lama, The New York Times reported on Saturday.

In a report provided to the newspaper, a team from the Munk Center for International Studies in Toronto said at least 1,295 computers in 103 countries had been breached in less than two years by the spy system, which it dubbed GhostNet.

Embassies, foreign ministries, government offices and the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan exile centers in India, Brussels, London and New York were among those infiltrated, said the researchers, who have detected computer espionage in the past.

They found no evidence U.S. government offices were breached.

The researchers concluded that computers based almost exclusively in China were responsible for the intrusions, although they stopped short of saying the Chinese government was involved in the system, which they described as still active.

“We’re a bit more careful about it, knowing the nuance of what happens in the subterranean realms,” said Ronald Deibert, a member of the Munk research group, based at the University of Toronto.

“This could well be the CIA or the Russians. It’s a murky realm that we’re lifting the lid on.”

A spokesman for the Chinese Consulate in New York dismissed the idea China was involved. “These are old stories and they are nonsense,” the spokesman, Wenqi Gao, told the Times. “The Chinese government is opposed to and strictly forbids any cybercrime.”

The Toronto researchers began their sleuthing after a request from the office of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, to examine its computers for signs of malicious software, or malware.

The network they found possessed remarkable “Big Brother-style” capabilities, allowing it, among other things, to turn on the camera and audio-recording functions of infected computers for potential in-room monitoring, the report said.

The system was focused on the governments of South Asian and Southeast Asian nations as well as on the Dalai Lama, the researchers said, adding that computers at the Indian Embassy in Washington were infiltrated and a NATO computer monitored. The report will be published in Information Warfare Monitor, an online publication linked to the Munk Center.

At the same time, two computer researchers at Cambridge University in Britain who worked on the part of the investigation related to the Tibetans are releasing an independent report, the Times said.

They do fault China and warned that other hackers could adopt similar tactics, the Times added.

——-

Writing by Paul Simao; Editing by Peter Cooney.

Category: Covert Activity, Politics, Social Commentary | No Comments »

Bloggers Unite for Refugees Today!

November 10th, 2008 by admin

Today we start something good, watch this video to hear how you can help Refugees find people who will help them. We need to stop this madness once and for all. Let today mark the beginning of something that will continue world wide!

Category: Humanity, Politics, Social Commentary, Thought | No Comments »

Bloggers Unite for Refugees

November 2nd, 2008 by admin

Well here is something worth sharing, a chance to put your money where your mouth is. This by far is one of the nobelest causes yet, in my opinion. People all over the world are homeless because of wars and inhumanity to their way of life or beliefs and on November 10th bloggers around the world will give a voice to over 40 million refugees. Here is a quote from the site.

“On November 10th over 10,000 bloggers from around the world will unite to raise their voices on behalf of more than 40 million voiceless refugees. To ask the world to face the atrocities so many human beings must endure and to join hearts and minds to help bring forward information, understanding and action.”

For more information and how you can be a part of this go to this link

Bloggers Unite

Bloggers Unite

Category: Humanity, Social Commentary, Thought | No Comments »

The Future Of Our Country Sold To Usury and Anti Christ

October 5th, 2008 by admin

Well there it goes we let our government sell us down the road, we are up the proverbial river without a paddle. Do you really believe this so called bailout will benefit you and your children and their future. People who are losing their jobs as I write this and the ones who already have lost their jobs this month will see nothing in their future from this. People wake up , when in the history of our country has anyone seen a president sign a bill so quickly? What do they have up their sleeve? It’s definitely not your best interest in mind, we the people are in for some very hard times and the only people who will be helped by this boondoggle bill will be the very rich. Don’t kid yourself, you have been sold a bill of goods. I highly suggest you stock up on food and load the guns because you will soon see an America very different that you are use to. More people will lose their jobs more gas shortages will become prevalent, more food shortages will occur, more failure to protect us from our enemies will occur. Bush and his cronies have taken our government hostage and set up the future administrations for failure. The world bank will soon own our country lock stock and barrel, we are faced with globalization on the corporate level as we have never seen before and soon the curtain will fall on this great country. If you don’t believe me then all you have to do is wait and see if I’m wrong.

Does anyone else notice that we are setting ourselves up for the coming of what some call the Anti Christ, yep that’s what I said. An economic crisis on world proportions that will be solved by the coming of a man. Before I go on let’s look at the nature of what Anti Christ really is. Many paint a picture of a man who will be evil and set our world on the course of destruction. In some ways this may be correct but not entirely.

Let’s look at the nature of Christ. Christ was the ultimate sacrifice in the literal sense, a lamb of God, a true blood sacrifice for the good of humanity. Now let’s put anti Christ in this light. A Man who is a true innocent brought to the ultimate sacrifice for all that is evil. Someone who will be killed for the destruction of humanity not the salvation. Now this is Anti Christ, and what will follow the sacrifice of one such person will be the stuffs that horror movies are made of. So it is not the man who will solve the problems of the world that will plunge us in to a tailspin of destruction but the death of this man. The beast that will rise from this death will not be the man but much like the churches that sprang up around the death of Christ it will be the consciousness that will spring up from this death that will be filled with control and evil.

You may think me crazy, I am, you may think me wrong, I don’t believe so. The coming of extreme Islam is only an element of the great war about to befall us all. There is no right side in this realm. We will all be victims of the madness and insanity will act as a purging of our world.

As I said before arm yourself with food and water, if you have guns get them ready (although they will only help for a short time) the best thing you could do is hope, hope that the scenario that seems to be setting itself up is not the one we all seem to fear in some way or another. It sits in our subconscious waiting like a beast to devour our peace of mind. If you are an intelligent free thinking person you will know what I am saying is true. Hope is the only weapon we have, but I fear it’s too late.

Category: Cults and Religions, Economics, Politics, Social Commentary, Thought | No Comments »

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