Facebook = CIA

Who needs an intrusive, prying Big Brother nowadays, when people are willing to share the most minute, private details of their lives to marketers and the CIA?

Well, duh!

From NPR:

The White House and Pentagon are under increasing pressure from Congress and the public to end U.S. military involvement in Iraq. But the Pentagon is considering maintaining a core group of forces in Iraq, possibly for decades.

And with gas prices approaching an all-time record, champagne corks are popping in petro/military/industrial complex boardrooms everywhere.

For the Bush Cultists, it doesn't get any better than this.

America's Fortress Embassy

America's embassy in Baghdad. $529 million. 104 acres—the size of the Vatican. The biggest and most expensive U.S. embassy on Earth.

From The Progress Report:

The new U.S. embassy to Iraq being built inside the Green Zone in Baghdad is "destined, at $592 [million], to become the biggest and most expensive US embassy on earth when it opens in September," the Guardian reports. The compound at 104 acres, an area roughly the size of the Vatican, will "include 27 separate buildings and house about 615 people behind bomb-proof walls." In addition, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, will enjoy a 16,000 square foot "high-security home" complete with a pool and gym. Critics fear, however, "that the compound will not be large enough to house hundreds of diplomats and military personnel likely to remain in Iraq for some time" and that the embassy will "become an enormous, heavily targeted white elephant." Such fears were compounded twice in recent days as a mortar attack interrupted British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Saturday meeting with Iraqi leaders and again this morning as a mortar struck the Iraqi parliament. One former diplomat in Iraq asked, "What kind of embassy is it when everybody lives inside and it's blast-proof, and people are running around with helmets and crouching behind sandbags?"

Terence McKenna -- Shamanic Approaches to the UFO

Terence discusses the shamanic approach to UFOs.

Damn, I miss that guy.

Then again, he promised to revisit us, right?

"I'll try to be around and about. But if I'm not, then you know that I'm behind your eyelids, and I'll meet you there."

--Kona, September 1999

Attorney gets copy of Hosanna suspect’s confession

Attorney gets copy of suspect’s confession

By DEBRA LEMOINE
Advocate Florida parishes bureau
Published: May 10, 2007 - Page: 4b

AMITE — Prosecutors have turned over a videotaped confession by Austin “Trey” Bernard III — one of seven people accused in the Hosanna Church of Ponchatoula child-rape case — to Bernard’s defense attorney, according to court officials and court documents.

Defense Attorney Al Benzabet told 21st Judicial District Court Judge Doug Hughes in a pre-trial hearing Wednesday he received the videotaped statement made by Bernard, 38, who is accused of one count of aggravated rape.

After the hearing, Assistant District Attorney Don Wall said that for more than a year he sifted through a voluminous amount of evidence before he could complete this phase of the prosecution.

Bernard’s trial is scheduled Aug. 27.

Trial dates for the other six defendants, indicted for aggravated rape and other sexual crimes, have not been set.

Bernard’s pending trial comes more than two years after fellow church member and pastor Louis D. Lamonica, 47, allegedly walked into the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office and confessed to raping three children as part of an occult ritual.

Following Lamonica’s arrest, eight other members of the now-defunct church were arrested; two of whom have not been charged by the District Attorney’s Office.

Bernard confessed to the crime in that taped statement, according to written reports from the Sheriff’s Office filed in the court record.

Benzabet told the judge he plans to file motions to suppress evidence at the next hearing, set for Aug. 14.

Bernard, who was released from the Tangipahoa Parish Jail on Nov. 22, 2006, in lieu of a $50,000 bond, is being monitored by an electronic-tracking device, court records show.

He had been given permission by the court to go to Florida, the minutes of a Feb. 12 court hearing indicate.

Bernard was present in court Wednesday, dressed in khaki slacks, tie and a blue sports coat.

D.C. Madam Scandal -- Fizzle or Coverup?

From the Center for American Progress:

"There are thousands of names, tens of thousands of phone numbers, and there are people there at the Pentagon, lobbyists, others at the White House, prominent lawyers -- a long, long list."
—ABC correspondent Brian Ross, 4/28/07, reporting on the D.C. Madam list

VERSUS

"As usually is the case in Washington, much of it is dull. There are no members of Congress we can find in these phone numbers, no White House officials. Quite frankly, but for the few exceptions, most of the men on this list just aren't newsworthy."
—Ross, 5/4/07