The Government of Canada says passport photos are no laughing matter: In fact, you're not even supposed to crack a smile.

. . . Canada Passport Office issued new specifications for passport photos and wants serious faces only. But not too serious. Not actually frowning or scowling or glaring or grimacing.

To get a valid passport, Canadians must now send in two photos with "neutral expressions." That means a closed-mouth, straight-ahead gaze into the camera.

Suzanne Meunier, a spokeswoman with the passport office, said the government is complying with recommendations of the International Civil Aviation Organization, the United Nations agency responsible for aviation issues . .
[...]
The Civil Aviation Organization is pushing for standardized photo specifications around the world to facilitate the introduction of biometric security devices, Ms. Meunier said.

The organization's goal is to have face-recognition scanners in airports around the world in the not too distant future. Some security experts are arguing for fingerprinting or iris-scanning, but the ICAO believes those are too intrusive.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY of the Technical Report on ICAO Work on Selection and Testing of a Biometric Technology for Identity Confirmation with Machine Readable Travel Documents (MRTDS)
[...]
evaluate each currently available biometric technology from a comprehensive system requirements perspective, applying seven (7) categories of criteria, as follows:

– compatibility with MRTD enrollment requirements
– compatibility with MRTD renewal requirements
– compatibility with MRTD machine-assisted identity verification requirements
– redundancy
– global public perception
– storage requirements
– performance

4. FINDINGS
[...]
The six (6) generic biometric technologies currently available can be separated into three (3) groups based on their overall ability to meet the comprehensive set of requirements defined for machine-assisted identity confirmation with MRTDs, as follows:

Group 1: Face achieves the highest compatibility rating (greater than 85%);
Group 2: Finger(s) and eye(s) emerge with a second-level compatibility rating (near 65%); and
Group 3: Signature, hand and voice emerge with a third-level compatibility rating (less than 50%).
[...]

20 years ago, a Boeing 747 was shot out of the sky by a Soviet fighter jet, a U.S. Congressman on-board. Dr. Lawrence Patton McDonald was also simultaneously Chairman of the John Birch Society.

Rense.com has issued an incendiary retrospective of evidentiary articles and documents of the assassination of McDonald, the State Department cover-up of the investigation and a document which, perhaps, led to the decision to "take McDonald out." We urge you to visit Rense.com and enlighten yourself of this long-buried tragedy.

. . . classified spending next fiscal year will reach about $23.2 billion of the Pentagon's total request for procurement and research funding. When adjusted for inflation, that is the largest dollar figure since the peak reached during President Ronald Reagan's defense buildup 16 years ago. . .

. . . Traditionally, Pike said, much of the funding for the CIA is hidden in Air Force weapons procurement accounts.

But unlike the 1980s, when it was widely known that the "black" budget was going to the development of stealth aircraft such as the B-2 bomber and F-117 fighter, the uses of the classified accounts today are far murkier, Pike said.

Some black spending in the Pentagon budget is designated for code-named programs such as the Army's "Tractor Rose" and the Navy's "Retract Larch." But sources said some names may be accounting fictions that do not stand for actual programs.

Other classified spending is accounted for under such bland headings as "special activities."

Air Force's classified weapons procurement budget has jumped from $7 billion in 2001 to almost $11 billion . . .

. . . In the case of the new defense budget, it is anybody's guess where most of the classified money is going, Pike said. But he said it is a good bet that some of it is going to programs that the administration is known to strongly favor, such as missile defense and the development of hypersonic planes that can fly beyond Earth's atmosphere. . .

DETROIT (Reuters) - A room packed with police officers failed to shield Attorney General John Ashcroft on Thursday from a protester who accused him of lying about the Sept. 11 attacks on America and Washington's declared war on terror.
[...]
"Mr. Ashcroft . . . We would like to know which of your terrorists are going to be used for a new 9/11 . . .

"Tell them how you lie to the American people," he added.

Ashcroft and more than one red-faced police officer were visibly angered by the outburst from the man, who then left the convention center unescorted and joined dozens of anti-government demonstrators outside.

The Port Authority said yesterday it will not appeal a New Jersey state judge's order to release transcripts of World Trade Center emergency calls on Sept. 11, 2001.
[...]
. . . the transcripts must be released by 5 p.m. Thursday.

The {New York Times} asked Moses to enforce a deal in which the Port Authority would release the transcripts in exchange for the newspaper dropping its open records lawsuit. When the Port Authority changed its mind July 30, the newspaper went back to court.

There has been, of late, an interest in the artwork of the late Viktor IV (Walter Karl Gluck)--American dadaist artist, who emigrated to Amsterdam in 1964 and drowned beneath his "Ship 'Henry David Thoreau' in 1986 [a heart attack, whilst fixing underwater repairs, scuba-diving].

Some say he was superior to Warhol. Nobody in America knows his name, as he returned to the U.S. only twice in 20 years.

Of 12 paintings, you decide.

[Aug. 18, 2003]Suspected saboteurs exploded an oil pipeline from Iraq to Turkey on August 16, choking efforts by occupied Iraq to export the resource. Official word says the pipeline, which runs from Kirkuk in Iraq’s north to the Turkish port city of Ceyhan, will resume deliveries within ten days. But the attack reveals how long Turkey’s wait for oil profits after the fall of Saddam Hussein may be.

Before the most recent attack, another pipeline, from Kirkuk to Yumurtalik, had blown up on multiple occasions after United States-led forces laid claim to Iraq in April. The Kirkuk-Yumurtalik pipeline resumed deliveries on August 14, though looting remains a problem........

From the Ceyhan port, one can see big pipes being towed away by boats and hammered down under the sea to build a new terminal for the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, next to the Kirkuk-Ceyhan terminal. An official with Botas, Turkey’s state pipeline company, presents Ceyhan as the "junction of Middle Eastern and Caspian energy basins" and calls the forked path from Azerbaijan and Iraq "the Silk Road of oil."

"For more than 25 years Vinnell Corp has held the extremely lucrative contract to train Saudi Arabia's national guard. It has done so using former US special forces...
Briody claims that one former Vinnell board member said the company had "been a cover for the CIA for decades".

[August 22, 2003] A U.S. intelligence report claims a Saudi humanitarian organization that operates in Canada has funded "militant training camps," shipped weapons to Afghanistan and had ties to Osama bin Laden.

The International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) is named in the 1996 document as one of 15 organizations that "employ members or otherwise facilitate the activities of terrorist groups in Bosnia."........

The report also claims the Bosnian and Swedish offices of the Ottawa-based charity Human Concern International were connected to terrorism and weapons smuggling, but a spokesman said the group never had offices in either country.

The report was obtained from the law firm Motley Rice, which has filed a class-action suit on behalf of family members of those killed in the Sept. 11 attacks. The suit targets dozens of Islamic charities and Saudi officials for their alleged roles in financing al-Qaeda......

At the time, Yugoslavia was the focus of radical Islamic organizations because of the war between Serbs and Bosnian Muslims.

"We have information that nearly one third of the Islamic NGOs [non-governmental organizations] in the Balkans have facilitated the activities of Islamic groups that engage in terrorism, including the Egyptian Al-Gamaat Al Islamiyya, Palestinian Hamas, Algerian groups and Lebanese Hezbollah," the report says. "Some of the terrorist groups have access to credentials for the UN High Commission for Refugees and other UN staffs in the former Yugoslavia."

http://law.about.com/library/911/blcharities.htm "Al-Haramain took part in a committee of charitable organizations that formed the Saudi Joint Relief Committee (or “SJRC”). Along with al-Haramain, the SJRC is comprised of the IIRO [International Islamic Relief Organization], WAMY [World Assembly of Muslim Youth], the Saudi Red Crescent, and the Muslim World League, among others....."

A lawsuit on behalf of over 100,000 Gulf War veterans has the Bush administration on edge and businesses running for cover.

The class action suit names 11 companies and 33 banks alleged to have helped Iraq with its chemical weapons program in the 1980's, despite knowledge Saddam Hussein was actively using WMD against both Iranians and his own people.

At the time, Reagan's Middle East envoy was one Donald Rumsfeld, hard at work opening doors for Hussein's regime to purchase millions in aircraft, hardware and other potential weaponry . . .

In the 1991 air war against Iraq, coalition forces bombed weapons production facilities and ammunition dumps, subjecting themselves to widespread and unexpected fallout; in one disastrous case, over 100,000 service members were exposed to sarin nerve gas when the U.S. military improperly blew up chemical weapons sites in Khamisiyah. . . .

More than 130 people in civil suits have claimed Mr. Geoghan sexually abused them as children while a priest. . . .

Boston lawyer Carmen L. Durso, who represents some Geoghan victims, said, "I think most of the victims would rather that he be alive . . . He was supposed to go through two more trials."

The inmate [Joseph L. Druce] accused of strangling John Geoghan, 68, in his prison cell hated homosexuals and began plotting the attack on the child-molesting former priest weeks ago . . . District Attorney John J. Conte said. . .

Conte did not address why two inmates with such criminal histories were living in the same cell block at the maximum security Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley.

. . . the attack . . . lasted between seven and nine minutes. Druce had recently been released from segregation, the rough equivalent of solitary confinement, Conte said. . . .

A number of issues have emerged as potential contributors to the attack, Conte said, citing the simultaneous opening of all 22 cells and the fact that only one of the two guards was on the block. The other had taken a prisoner to the nurse's station.

Iraq weapons expert Dr David Kelly predicted his own death six months ago, telling a British diplomat that if Baghdad were attacked he would be found "dead in the woods", the inquiry into his death has been told.

Later the inquiry heard that the British Government went to extraordinary lengths to gag Dr Kelly because of fears that he would expose fundamental flaws in its case for war. Documents released yesterday by the Hutton inquiry into the scientist's death reveal that the Ministry of Defence was even prepared to block a police investigation into a secrets leak.
[...]
[Diplomat David] Broucher said Kelly, who was the source for a BBC reporter's claim that Blair's government "sexed up" a dossier making the case for war, believed British intelligence services had come under pressure to produce compelling evidence. . . .

. . . according to Mansoor Ijaz, a financier who has spent years tracking his movements and operations. In the small world of international terrorism analysts, Mr Ijaz, an American of Pakistani origin knows al-Qaida better than most. He has close contacts in Pakistan's intelligence agencies and has worked, behind the scenes, as negotiator over Bin Laden in the past. In 1997 he was involved in negotiating attempts by Sudan to provide crucial information on the Saudi exile and worked on an attempt to have him extradited from Afghanistan through the United Arab Emirates in 2000.
[...]
. . . Pakistani authorities saw the difficulties from the start and, although they publicly stressed their commitment to the hunt for Bin Laden, in private they had a different strategy.

Mr Ijaz believes an agreement was reached between Gen Musharraf and the American authorities shortly after Bin Laden's flight from Tora Bora.
[...]
"There would still be the ability to get him at a later date when it was more appropriate."

The Americans, according to Mr Ijaz, accepted the argument, not least because of the shift in focus to the impending war in Iraq. So the months that followed were centred on taking down not Bin Laden, but the "retaliation infrastructure" of al-Qaida.

It meant that Gen Musharraf frequently put out remarkably conflicting accounts of the status of Bin Laden, while the US administration barely mentioned his name. . . .

Christiania is the Permanent Autonomous Zone in Copenhagen: an old military base that has been successfully squatted for decades now. It's most notorious for the open-air cannabis market at its center, but thinking of Christiania as a pot-market does it a terrible disservice. Christiania is a living proof of the possibility of life outside of the constraints of traditional govenrment, of the possibility of having a neighborhood secede from civil society and a city, and still remain an integral part of it. From the beautiful collage buildings to the brilliant blacksmiths who hammer out the Christiania Bikes that are prized throughout Europe, Christiania is fragile, beautiful and inspiring.

The Danish government, in an uncharacterstic show of extremely poor sense, has decided that it must "normalize" Christiania -- that is, raze it and kill it. Danes are not happy about this. If you're within rail-distance of Copenhagen on August 30th, you can help shame the Danish government into taking its hands off of Christiania at a mass demonstration.

HAMBURG - In its second revelation in as many weeks, the German magazine Stern reports in its latest issue that the Central Intelligence Agency CIA had two of the September 11 terror pilots on its files well ahead of the terror attacks.

In its edition to appear on Thursday, Stern said that in addition to Marwan Alshehhi, the CIA also must have known that Lebanese national Ziad Jarrah was connected to el-Qaeda but that the US let him enter the country anyway for pilot training.

The report comes after Stern last week said that in March 1999 the CIA had been tipped off by German security services about Alshehhi, who piloted the Boeing plane which struck the south tower of the World Trade Center.

In the Netherlands a company named Campina was being blackmailed by a suspect hiding his tracks using www.anonymizer.com. The dutch police worked together with the FBI and anonymizer.com to track the blackmailer. www.anonymizer.com handed over account information of the suspect to the FBI without a warrant. The lawyer of the suspect plans to sue www.anonymizer.com for breaking their own privacy policy:

1. SURFOLA.com will not give out your name, residence address, or e-mail address to any third parties without your permission, for any reason, at any time, ever.

The original author of this story claimed that the anonymity service provider was anonymizer.com. This is incorrect. The provider in question is called "Surfola". The story has been edited to reflect this.

Sally Baron hailed as hero by many

The story of Sally Baron, a Stoughton woman whose obituary asked that memorial funds go toward the removal of President Bush, was catching hold across the country as her family held memorial services Friday.

Dozens of people from around the United States have written to The Capital Times saying they will make donations to various organizations in her name, and the request was aired on national TV Thursday night.

Baron's story is also being hotly discussed on online bulletin boards, among both liberals and conservatives.

Baron "has become a sort of poster girl for all of us who despise George Bush," wrote Nancy Tonies of Appleton.

Baron raised six children, one of whom died of leukemia at age 21, in the timber and mining country of Iron County. Her husband was crushed and nearly killed in a 1969 mining accident and died seven years ago, shortly before Baron moved to Stoughton.

Her family described how their mother - a waitress, cook and factory assembly worker - was furious with Bush for what she saw as a stolen election and dishonest statements. Baron's favorite nickname for Bush, which she used to shout at the TV, was "whistle ass."

We have a runaway Government, folks. Time to start fighting back.

Outrageous news report from Portland TV station here.

Aug. 24 - International computer chip giant Intel has recently made the strategic decision that Israel will serve as one of its research hubs, alongside the U.S., Britain and Spain, Ha'aretz reported. Senior executives at Intel Israel called the decision substantial for the future of the Israeli branch's operation. According to the executives, this will strengthen Israel's standing in competition with India, China and Russia, for the development and manufacture of future Intel product lines. Former Intel Israel communications division chief Yossi Levy has been appointed to lead Israel's research activity.

"This is a major change for global Intel. Israel has advantages in MEMS and nanotechnology that are very interesting to Intel," Intel vice president and research director David Tennenhouse explained last week during a visit to Israel.

ALBANY -- A recent report from a team of Johns Hopkins University computer-security experts that detailed how easily electronic voting machines could be manipulated has triggered a minor panic as states prepare to overhaul the voting system.
[...]
But in New York, officials say they're not troubled -- they still plan to push for phasing out mechanical lever-style machines. . . .
[...]
New York is trying to implement the ''Help America Vote Act,'' which was triggered by the 2000 presidential election problems in Florida. It directs the states to shore up the election process in many ways, including developing a unified voter-registration database and ensuring polling places and machines are accessible to the handicapped.

HANOI - Ahmad Chalabi, the Pentagon erstwhile protege, leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), member of the American-appointed Iraqi interim government in Iraq and a convicted criminal in Jordan, went on record in Baghdad saying that he had received intelligence on Thursday, August 14, that "a large-scale act would take place ... against a soft target, such as Iraqi political parties or other parties, including the UN". He even learned that the attack would be a truck bombing - by means of a suicide bomber or a remote-controlled detonator. Chalabi also made clear that according to this intelligence, "neither the Coalition Provisional Authority nor coalition troops" would be attacked.

Chalabi is usually not recognized as a reliable source. But if this startling piece of information is true, it means two things: 1) The Americans in Iraq knew about an attack, and did nothing to try to prevent it. 2) The UN itself didn't know anything about it, according to Fred Eckhard, spokesman for secretary general Kofi Annan: "To my knowledge, that information was not relayed to the United Nations." . . .

The media would have us all believe the New York fairy tale that, “a suicide bomber driving a large blue cement truck drove inside the UN Building in Baghdad, came to an abrupt halt directly under the office of Sergio de Mello, where he [the suicide bomber] detonated the charge, killing 24 people”. Some media networks misread their common script and said “yellow truck” instead of “blue truck”, but hey, anyone can mistake one primary color for another can’t they? . . .

Unfortunately for the dream weavers in New York, there is enough raw video around on this bombing to expose every one of the weavers as obsequious disinformation whores . . .
[...]
. . . a UN official was addressing a packed media briefing not more than fifty feet away from Sergio de Mello’s office. The windows of the briefing room were partly open, because the air conditioning was not working . . .
[...]
The sound of a large Kamaz “cement truck” is missing. . .

Many years ago I actually drove one of these Eastern European Kamaz monsters, and people could hear the gears crashing nearly a mile away. Now imagine how much noise a Kamaz makes when it crashes through the steel railings outside the UN Headquarters [formerly the Canal Hotel], before attacking the glass, windows frames and double brickwork below Sergio de Mello’s office. In reality the noise would have been so loud it would have stopped the UN media briefer dead in mid-sentence, but failed to do so.
[...]
. . . surface weapons like an invisible cement truck, cannot and do not make craters in the ground. . . .

. . .Because there was no Kamaz truck, we know that the weapon was not introduced into the UN compound in a vehicle driven by a “terrorist” of any particular religion or creed. Because we know how difficult it is for visitors to get beyond the front desk in UN buildings, we also know that placing a large [or exotic] weapon in the sub-basement of the old Canal Hotel was essentially an “inside” job.

The list of candidates capable of placing this weapon will be very short . . .

. . .From the hard physical evidence we now know that Sergio de Mello was deliberately targeted for assassination, an assassination conducted by remote-detonated sub-surface weapon, in all probability planted days in advance by the perpetrators. Whoever did this job was thoroughly professional, and whoever did this job had easy access to the United Nations building and sub-basement cellars. . . .