November 12, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SPECIAL TIMES EDITION BLANKETS U.S. CITIES, PROCLAIMS END TO WAR

• PDF: http://www.nytimes-se.com/pdf
• For video updates: http://www.nytimes-se.com/video
• Contact: mailto:writers@nytimes-se.com

Early this morning, commuters nationwide were delighted to find out that while they were sleeping, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had come to an end.

If, that is, they happened to read a “special edition” of today’s New York Times.

In an elaborate operation six months in the planning, 1.2 million papers were printed at six different presses and driven to prearranged pickup locations, where thousands of volunteers stood ready to pass them out on the street.

Articles in the paper announce dozens of new initiatives including the establishment of national health care, the abolition of corporate lobbying, a maximum wage for C.E.O.s, and, of course, the end of the war.

The paper, an exact replica of The New York Times, includes International, National, New York, and Business sections, as well as editorials, corrections, and a number of advertisements, including a recall notice for all cars that run on gasoline. There is also a timeline describing the gains brought about by eight months of progressive support and pressure, culminating in President Obama’s “Yes we REALLY can” speech. (The paper is post-dated July 4, 2009.)

“It’s all about how at this point, we need to push harder than ever,” said Bertha Suttner, one of the newspaper’s writers. “We’ve got to make sure Obama and all the other Democrats do what we elected them to do. After eight, or maybe twenty-eight years of hell, we need to start imagining heaven.”

Not all readers reacted favorably. “The thing I disagree with is how they did it,” said Stuart Carlyle, who received a paper in Grand Central Station while commuting to his Wall Street brokerage. “I’m all for freedom of speech, but they should have started their own paper.”

Is Ms. Suttner claiming Carter wasn’t hell? What about LBJ?  I’m not so sure I can be “all for freedom of speech” for individuals who have no desire to extend me freedom of speech (pretty sure they support campaign regulation), or freedom of association (CEO pay, lobbying), or freedom from aggression by the majority (mandatory national healthcare.) The Yes Men are state socialists / anti-big business. They aren’t concerned with individual freedoms. They don’t bother reading history. They likely have little understanding of economics or how these plans of theirs would work in theory or practice. They have an incredibly shallow view of the world and it’s problems, ignore human tendency, and prescribe solutions equally as shallow and ignorant. Their proposed solutions however are far worse then the existing problems.

The one thing I hope comes from acts like this is that the participants get so worked up that when Obama fails to deliver their faith in their all powerful god Government will be diminished. Unlikely, but possible. Maybe if more bridges are built between the anarcho-capitalist and anarcho-socialists these state socialist types can be more easily convinced.

UPDATE:

Since their servers aren’t very responsive here are the PDFs: Without spreads | With spreads

http://ap.google.com/…

The U.S. military, with help from Seattle startup Delve Networks, has launched a video-sharing Web site for troops, their families and supporters, a year and a half after restricting access to YouTube and other video sites.

TroopTube, as the new site is called, lets people register as members of one of the branches of the armed forces, family, civilian Defense Department employees or supporters. Members can upload personal videos from anywhere with an Internet connection, but a Pentagon employee screens each for taste, copyright violations and national security issues.

Part of Delve’s work was to build speedy tools for approving and sorting incoming videos. Its technology also crunches video files into several sizes and automatically plays the one that best suits viewers’ Internet connection speeds.

But the startup’s real forte is making sure searches on the site turn up the best video results. Delve’s system turns a video’s sound into a text transcript. It pares unimportant words like “this” and “that,” then compares what’s left against a massive database of words commonly uttered in proximity to each other, collected from crawling hundreds of millions of Web pages.

The result: Even if speech recognition software trips on the one word someone is searching for, there’s a good chance Delve can still deliver relevant results.

In May 2007, the Defense Department banned employees and soldiers from accessing sites including YouTube and MySpace, citing security and bandwidth issues. Delve Chief Executive Alex Castro called TroopTube a “retention tool” aimed at a generation of soldiers who bring laptops to the front lines.

“A lot of people are excited in the company to be doing something for the people who make sacrifices,” said Castro, his eyes tearing. “We’re proud of this.”

So to fix bandwidth issues they introduced a new system which while providing multiple streams is still a heavy when compared to regular traffic? My guess is it’s those things listed in the title which were the real problem.

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/…

As Ted Galen Carpenter has noted, the War on Drugs is active in Afghanistan. Below is a photo from the DEA website of Special Agents burning a bunker of hashish in Afghanistan. Repeat: These guys are DEA agents, not U.S. soldiers.

Looks like they are putting their domestic training of busting down people’s doors to good use.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/…

Northcom has announced that two more U.S. military units will be assigned for domestic homeland security missions, bringing the total number of combat ready service members operating inside the U.S. to around 4,700, as fears grow about the increasing militarization of law enforcement.

The announcement follows the controversy surrounding a September 8 Army Times report (revised on September 30), which revealed that the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team, fresh from combat duties in Iraq, would be operating inside America for tasks including “civil unrest and crowd control,” a detail that was later denied by Northcom despite the concession that forces would be armed with both non-lethal and lethal weapons as well as having access to tanks.

“In the next three years the military plans to activate and train an estimated 4,700 service members for specialized domestic operations, according to Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, commander of U.S. Northern Command, which was created in 2002 for homeland defense missions,” reports the Colorado Independent.

“It’s to help us manage the consequences of a large-scale event,” said Renuart. “We have one [unit] now trained and equipped and assigned to the Northern Command. We’ll grow a second one this calendar year of 2009 and a third one in the calendar year 2010 so we can provide the nation three sets of capabilities that could respond to an event of the size of 9/11 or larger.”

But as Mike German, national security counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union’s legislative office in Washington., D.C., points out, “This isn’t a military police brigade or a civil affairs brigade. This is actually a combat brigade being assigned a domestic mission.”

With these stories… combined with Biden and Powell saying shortly into the Obama presidency he will face a great test… well the conspiracy theorists sound less crazy. Lets hope they aren’t.

http://www.breitbart.com/…

The US Senate Saturday approved 25 billion dollars in loan guarantees for the financially strapped US auto industry, intended to spark a wave of automotive innovation.

The loan guarantees were included in a continuing resolution that included funding for the US government and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

President George W. Bush has indicated that he intends to sign the bill.

“We’re very pleased Congress has chosen to act at this critical time,” said Greg Martin, director of communications for General Motors Corp’s Washington office.

GM had been subject of much speculation that it could be forced into bankruptcy.

The bill, which was approved by the House of Representatives on Wednesday, are the first loan guarantees for US carmakers since Congress approved a similar 675 million dollar measure for Chrysler Corp. in 1980.

Chrysler Chairman Robert Nardelli, however, said this week the loan guarantees should not be considered a rescue package for struggling carmakers. “This is not a bailout,” he said.

Under provisions of the new legislation, not only US carmakers are eligible for the guarantees but also suppliers and foreign automakers with plants in the United States that are more than 20 years old — Nissan and Honda’s US operations qualify.

Not a bailout?

Bailout in economics and finance is a term used to describe a situation where a bankrupt or nearly bankrupt entity, such as a corporation or a bank, is given a fresh injection of liquidity, in order to meet its short term obligations. Often bailouts are by governments, or by consortia of investors who demand control over the entity as the price for injecting funds.

Obviously Mr. Robert Nardelli and I have different definitions of ‘bailout.’

How about we let them burn just like the banks? The unions want to complain about it? Let’em! They have brought this on themselves by using the guns of government to minipulate and regulate the auto industry out of competitiveness. Though luck.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/…

With America fighting two wars, the 9/11 terrorists still at large, Iran pursuing nuclear weapons

and Russia in Georgia, America needs a president who gets it right the first time. That president will be Barack Obama. With a vision of foreign policy that has ranged far beyond Iraq, Barack Obama has found a kindred spirit in another leader of great strength and wisdom Joe Biden.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe we must fight the terrorists not where we imagine them to be, but where we know them to belike Afghanistan and Pakistan. We must lead a global effort to secure loose nuclear materials, not where we imagine them to be, but where we know them to be, in Russia, and the countries of the former Soviet Union.

It’s time we had a president committed to fighting poverty in the Third World and ending the genocide in Darfur; who leads international efforts to stop global warming, strengthens our friendship with Mexico and Latin America, and stands behind Israel with full-time diplomacy to achieve peace in the Middle East; a president who ends the global scourge of AIDS in our time and sets an example of moral leadership by following our constitution, shutting down Guantanamo, and ending torture.

They don’t care that we are trampling around the global like a kid hyped up on sugar and a baseball bat. They just want to make sure we do it in a softer manner. They want to make sure the public doesn’t see it so obviously. They are all on the same team though. They all pepetrate the lie about Russia, Georgia and South Ossetia. They all wish to make enemies of people who pose no harm to us and in cases where they may its deserved in that they have been threating them. They all want larger government both domestically and internationally. When the USA sumbles as a result of it’s global adventures and money minipulation don’t be supprised when the rest of the world gangs up on us and gives us (unfortunately they won’t differenciate between the public and the government, just as our government doesn’t) some of our own medicine.