Martini Republic » Hate speech sells too: "Ann Coulter calls Arabs ‘ragheads,’ winks at the idea of assassinating Clinton

It’s not her fault—it’s the fault of those who pay her. We do indeed protect free speech in America. But giving Ann Coulter a magazine cover was the single most irresponsible thing Time magazine has done in the past decade."

And it's true, it's been over 12 years since they darkened OJ's photo for the cover.

(Via Martini Republic.)

Aljazeera.Net - Danish diplomats leave three countries: "The Danish ambassadors to Iran, Syria and Indonesia and other diplomatic staff have left those countries after threats against them over the publication of cartoons of the Muslim prophet.

The ambassador in Tehran and his staff left after being informed of 'concrete and serious threats against the ambassador', the Danish foreign ministry said in a communique on Saturday.

Finland's embassy in Iran has taken charge of Denmark's consular affairs until further notice.

In Jakarta, the ambassador and his aides left after receiving 'credible and concrete threats against the security of embassy personnel' and the Dutch embassy will provide consular cover."

(Via Aljazeera.)

Many Guantanamo Detainees Not Tied to 'Hostile Acts': "More than half of the US 'war on terror' detainees at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba prison camp never committed any 'hostile acts' against the United States, two lawyers said in a report.

    

Based on an analysis of government documents regarding the more than 500 people held at the US naval prison facility, lawyers Mark Denbeaux and Joshua Denbeaux estimated that 55 percent 'are not determined to have committed any hostile acts against the United States or its coalition allies'."

(Via t r u t h o u t.)

Ex-CIA Official: Intelligence 'Misused' to Justify War: "The former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year has accused the Bush administration of 'cherry-picking' intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, and of ignoring warnings that the country could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

    

Paul R. Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, acknowledges the U.S. intelligence agencies' mistakes in concluding that Hussein's government possessed weapons of mass destruction. But he said those misjudgments did not drive the administration's decision to invade.

    

'Official intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs was flawed, but even with its flaws, it was not what led to the war,' Pillar wrote in the upcoming issue of the journal Foreign Affairs. Instead, he asserted, the administration 'went to war without requesting - and evidently without being influenced by - any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq.'"

(Via t r u t h o u t.)

US General Admits Troops Are Destabilizing Middle East: "A senior US officer admitted yesterday that the presence of more than 300,000 foreign troops in the Middle East, most of them American, was a 'contributory factor' to instability in the region.

    

The admission was made by Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt - a key strategist in the US central command covering the Middle East - as he spelled out the American military's plan to 'reposture' its forces over an area stretching from Egypt in the west to Pakistan in the east, and from Kazakhstan in the north to Uganda in the south.

    

The US would 'not maintain any long-term bases in Iraq' he said in a major speech to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. 'Our position is when we leave we will not have any bases there.'

    

He did not speculate when that might be, though he said the US could not stay in the region for as long as its forces have remained in Germany or Japan. American troops are still deployed there 60 years after the end of the second world war."

(Via t r u t h o u t.)

Slashdot | 7.5 Micron Thick RFID Tag: "The EETimes is reporting that Hitachi has a breakthrough in RFID technology that they are planning to show at this years ISSCC (International Solid-State Circuits Conference). The new RFID chip is their newest mu-chip that, measuring in at 7.5 microns, is ten or more times thinner than a sheet of paper and comes complete with 128-bit identifying goodness.'"

(Via /.)

CNN.com - The price to pay for VIP status - Oct 6, 2004: "The much-hyped radio frequency identification (RFID) technology has found its way into the clubbing scene. CNN reporter Robyn Curnow had her arm micro chipped -- and then unchipped -- in the name of research.

...

Hola! Welcome to the Baja VIP club.

My microchip has a barcode and it emits small radio frequency identification (RFID) signals.

The Baja Beach Club can identify me by scanning my upper left arm -- exactly the same way as you would scan a bag of frozen peas at a supermarket."

(Via Schneier on Security.)

t r u t h o u t - NSA's Vast Spying Yields Few Suspects: "Valuable information remains valuable even if it comes from one in a thousand intercepts. But government officials and lawyers said the ratio of success to failure matters greatly when eavesdropping subjects are Americans or U.S. visitors with constitutional protection. The minimum legal definition of probable cause, said a government official who has studied the program closely, is that evidence used to support eavesdropping ought to turn out to be 'right for one out of every two guys at least.' Those who devised the surveillance plan, the official said, 'knew they could never meet that standard - that's why they didn't go through' the court that supervises the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA."

(Via t r u t h o u t.)