Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Blackwater...their fraud has been rewarded with continuing contracts in the billions, despite fraudulent billing, armed forces endangerment, defective parts in military equipment, overcharges, double-billing, murder, etc.

Travelers arriving at U.S. borders may soon be confronted with their laptops, PDAs, and other digital devices being searched, copied and even held by customs agents -- all without need to show suspicion for cause. A 51-page Privacy Impact Assessment also supported the right of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to copy, download, retain or seize any content from these devices, or the devices themselves, without assigning any specific reason for doing so.

The Obama administration will largely preserve Bush-era procedures allowing the government to search (and copy) -- without suspicion of wrongdoing -- the contents of a traveler's laptop computer, cellphone or other electronic device, although officials said new policies would expand oversight of such inspections.\n\nThe policy, disclosed Thursday in a pair of Department of Homeland Security directives, describes more fully than did the Bush administration the procedures by which travelers' laptops, iPods, cameras and other digital devices can be searched and seized when they cross a U.S. border. And it sets time limits for completing searches.\n\nBut representatives of civil liberties and travelers groups say they see little substantive difference between the Bush-era policy, which prompted controversy, and this one.\n\n"It's a disappointing ratification of the suspicionless search policy put in place by the Bush administration," said Catherine Crump, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. "It provides a lot of procedural safeguards, but it doesn't deal with the fundamental problem, which is that under the policy, government officials are free to search people's laptops and cellphones for any reason whatsoever."

Travelers arriving at U.S. borders may soon be confronted with their laptops, PDAs, and other digital devices being searched , COPIED and even HELD by customs agents -- all WITHOUT NEED to SHOW SUSPICION for CAUSE! .

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is expanding beyond its traditional fingerprint-focused collection practices to develop a new biometrics system that will include DNA records, 3-D facial imaging, palm prints and voice scans, blended to create what's known as "multi-modal biometrics." "The FBI today is announcing a rapid DNA initiative," said Louis Grever, executive assistant director of the FBI's science and technology branch, during his keynote presentation at the Biometric Consortium Conference in Tampa.

"Closing the 'Collapse Gap': the USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US"

G.W. Bush, 2006, National Strategy to Internationalize Efforts Agaiinst Kleptocracy, Pledging to Congront High-Level, Large-Scale Corruption by Public Officials and Target the Proceeds of their Corrupt Acts (!! hypocrisy !!)

Includes videos of debate between Senators Rockefeller and Bingham over how much of a premium dollar should be used to pay for healthcare; discussions of Inginex fraud; debate over unwarranted subsidies given to health insurers; lack of federal oversight of insurers; etc.

Reconstructing the Ruined Tower. The Discursive and Social Power of News Discourse (The Case of Al-Jazeera vs. BBC + CNN). Genealogy, Capitalism as False Consciousness. Eduscapes: Knowledge Capital + Cultures. Ideology, and Counter-Terrorism: Writing Wars on Terrorism from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush Jr.

Many Eyes is a bet on the power of human visual intelligence to find patterns. Our goal is to "democratize" visualization and to enable a new social kind of data analysis. The magic is when an unwieldy, unyielding data set is transformed into an image on the screen, and suddenly the user can perceive an unexpected pattern. Information visualization is a catalyst for discussion and collective insight about data. We all deal with data that we'd like to understand better. It may be as straightforward as a sales spreadsheet or fantasy football stats chart, or as vague as a cluttered email inbox. But a remarkable amount of it has social meaning beyond ourselves. When we share it and discuss it, we understand it in new ways.

"Powerful Senate leaders on Thursday bowed to FBI concerns that adding privacy protections to an expiring provision of the Patriot Act could jeopardize "ongoing" terror investigations."

"The government, and the politicians who pretend to represent ordinary Americans, are a wholly owned and operated subsidiary of the corporate state. " Corporations, as they endlessly scheme for complete control over the planet's finite resources, will order the planet's social order into whatever structure is necessary to insure corporate dominance over the individual. Orwell recognized the corporate entities driven ambition to abolish represenative government in favor of corporate oligarchy. For anyone who isn't blind it's easy to recognize that representative democracy in the U.S. has been cast aside

Michael Moore addresses press on Barack Obama and Blue Dog Democrats' approach to health care reform at Public Citizen headquarters in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, September 29th, 2009.

Global Voices aggregates, curates, and amplifies the global conversation online - shining light on places and people other media often ignore.

"Quasi-Corporatism: America's Homegrown Fascism". By Robert Higgs. The Freeman and The Independent Institute. January 31, 2006.

"Quasi-Corporatism: America's Homegrown Fascism". By Robert Higgs. The Freeman and The Independent Institute. January 31, 2006.