If there’s one upside to an unnecessary war, it might be its role as catalyst for good music…

Bad War Makes Good Music

“I read the New York Times every day, and watch the news. And I was completely disgusted with it. I just felt like…I just needed to write a song. I really wanted to write a song to piss my dad off because he is a Bush supporter.” ~Pink

“I hope the president is proud of the fact that we live in a country where we can do things like that, where we can have dissent, talk, communicate and share our opinions. I also think it’s pretty narcissistic to think that one of my songs will be heard by the president of the United States, but hey, that would be really cool.” ~Pink

Celebrities and Soapboxes

No doubt somebody is wondering aloud: What gives celebrities the right to climb up on their soapboxes and express their political views?

Humbly speaking on behalf of Pink, I’d guess because she was born in Pennsylvania, that makes her a U.S. Citizen and thus, the employer of the person her song addresses.

I’d also guess that, with 25 million albums sold, the taxes on her personal income are paying a higher percentage of the president’s salary than the average U.S. citizen, as well as funding the Pentagon, the CIA, Dick Cheney’s new branch of dictatorship, a preemptive war sold with lies and fought with depleted uranium, and the demolition of a good portion of Baghdad.

But most of all, I’d guess that celebrities can preach from their soapboxes because they have the same rights the rest of us have to preach from our own respective soapboxes. Yep…I think this oft-heard complaint really boils down to soapbox envy. Hey — if it’s really the size of your soapbox you’re not happy with, don’t knock celebrities for expressing their views; get a bigger soapbox.

Pink’s Dear Mr. President…click below to listen…

Read More: Pink, Dear Mr. President, George W. Bush

If you own a cell phone, The FBI can listen to everything you say, even when your cell phone is turned off.

Take a minute and let the paranoid side of your brain run wild with that…

Imagine it’s late Tuesday night, you toss your cell phone on the nightstand, meet your spouse in bed, and all your intimate actions, discussions, conversations of past sins and future dreams — they’re all performed on a potential open-mic stage in front of the world.

Cell Phones as Bugging Devices

Most cell phone users find it hard to believe they’re carrying around a potential bugging device. But it’s true, and it’s been very public knowledge for several years.

Just as people fail to comprehend or acknowledge the existence of the Echelon spy system that is currently using voice recognition capabilities to filter billions of electronic communications around the world, people also tend to bury their heads in the sand when it comes to cell phone spying.

John Ardito, high-ranking member of the Genovese crime family, knows what that ignorance can get you…

FBI Cell Phone Bugs Used Against the Mob

After the Genovese crime family discovered they were being monitored by conventional bugs, they conducted business elsewhere.

But, as court testimony revealed, the FBI simply turned on John Ardito’s cell phone from a remote location. Without his knowledge, the FBI used Ardito’s cell phone microphone as a listening device, even when his phone was turned off.

ABC News reported the story about FBI cell phone spying:

“The FBI can access cell phones and modify them remotely without ever having to physically handle them,” James Atkinson, a counterintelligence security consultant, told ABC News. “Any recently manufactured cell phone has a built-in tracking device, which can allow eavesdroppers to pinpoint someone’s location to within just a few feet,” he added.

According to the recent court ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan, “The device functioned whether the phone was powered on or off, intercepting conversations within its range wherever it happened to be.”

Now, bear in mind: if an FBI agent can do this, there’s almost certainly a mischievous kid down the street who can do it better…

Fircrest Cell Phone Terrorism

Three families in Fircrest, Washington, have recently validated that truth. For four months, they’ve been harassed and threatened by cell phone stalkers who seem to know their every move and leave menacing voice-mails.

What’s more, some of the messages contain recorded snippets of private conversations that occurred when all cell phones in the area were turned off. The pranksters even sent messages that appeared to originate from cell phones that weren’t in use at the time of the message.

Cell Phones as Tracking Devices

Even if somebody in incapable of hijacking your cell phone microphone, it’s easy to track your cell phone’s whereabouts to within 50 meters.

Just enter the cell phone number at a site like World Tracker. The first time you try to track a phone, a reply from the phone is necessary to enable the tracking, but this is easily hacked around…especially if you supplied the phone to your spouse, child, or employee.

Laser Microphones

If cell phone bugging hasn’t tickled your paranoid neural networks yet, maybe laser microphones will.

Unlike a cell phone, a laser microphone is a very expensive and highly technical piece of equipment to operate.

In simple terms, a laser beam is bounced off a window (or any other object that sound waves will cause to vibrate, however minutely…a picture on a wall, for example…) Electronics are used to convert the minute variances in the laser beam back into sound waves, thus reproducing the sound, voices, and conversations taking place nearby.

As demonstrated by the Apollo 11 Lunar Laser experiment, lasers can be used from a point hundreds of thousands of miles away, so if you really need to talk in private, turn up the AC/DC, draw the curtains, and whisper.

Read More: cell phones, fbi, spying, eavesdropping, Echelon, laser microphones, Genovese, Fircrest

When the Connecticut students in Wilton High School’s advanced theater class decided on creating an original play about real Iraq soldiers for their April production, they didn’t count on it being banned by the school principal.

For their play, titled “Voices in Conflict,” students read through letters sent home from Iraq soldiers, including a very sad letter from a 19-year-old Wilton High graduate who died in Iraq last September.

The students also read the blogs of civilians living in Iraq, and watched footage of American troops who’d returned from the war. The teenagers, unaware of the true price of war, said the project was what education should be: an eye-opening experience.

Cast member Devon Fontaine, 16, had this to say:

“In Wilton, most kids only care about Britney Spears shaving her head or Tyra Banks gaining weight,” said Devon Fontaine, 16, a cast member. “What we wanted was to show kids what was going on overseas.”

Play Gets Banned by Principal

But before the students could bring the play to Wilton High’s state-of-the-art, $10 million auditorium, principal Timothy H. Canty banned the production.

The principal has said that he was concerned the play lacked context and political balance (sort of like the whole Invasion of Iraq.) He said the production might upset the community (sort of like the reaction to the whole Invasion of Iraq thing.)

The Show Must Go On

But, clouds in theater often have silver linings, and this cloud was no exception.

The students were offered a new stage…the stage at New York City’s Public Theatre, Off Broadway, in the Big Apple. Take that, Mr. Principal.

The first performance was standing room only, including one of the characters in the play: real-life Iraqi war veteran Lt. Charles Anderson.

The students received a standing ovation. Since that first performance, the play has won the first ever MUSIC THEATRE INTERNATIONAL COURAGE IN THEATER AWARD, and the students have taken the play on the road to other theaters.

Read more about the play at the production’s website here: Voices in Conflict

Read More: Iraq, resistance, students, war, Voices in Conflict

The Topsy Turvy Bus was commissioned by Ben of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream fame and built by car artist Tom Kennedy.

The point the bus makes is that we Americans spend enough money each year to blow up all the major cities on the planet about 12 times.

What if we only gave the Pentagon enough money to blow up all the major cities only 6 times, and put the savings into something like education? Naaaa…that’s crazy! ;-)

Another point graphically depicted on the inside roof of the bus is how our military budget compares to the budgets of other countries in billions of dollars spent each year:

Read More: topsy turvy bus, budget, military, pentagon

The 33rd Group of Eight (G8) summit wrapped up last Friday in Heiligendamm, Germany. A proud and pleased host, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, said: “It was a successful summit.”

And why shouldn’t she arrive at that conclusion? In addition to eight of the world’s most powerful heads of state agreeing to agree, and agreeing to not agree, on such heavier-than-ununoctium conundrums as climate protection and aid for Africa, the German police prevented a possible terrorist attack.

Terrorists Thwarted by German Police

Pardon me if I’m being a fear monger, but these terrorists weren’t run-of-the-mill hooligans being enticed to give their shoe sizes to an undercover FBI agent so they could get free military boots to help them blow up the Sears Tower.

Nope. These terrorists were smuggling real live bonafide genuine and verifiably authentic C4 plastic explosives in a suitcase in a car through a G8 checkpoint.

As one might expect, the captured terrorists were radical Muslim Islamofascists whose hatred of American freedom knows no bounds.

Uhhhh…wait…wait a second…hold the phone. That’s not correct…

The forestalled terrorists were not radical Islamofascists. They were, in fact, U.S. security men.

And lemme tellya, they had one helluva clever alibi, too. Get this: the U.S. Security personnel who were caught smuggling C4 into the G8 summit claimed they were just testing the capability of German G8 security.

One wonders what would have transpired had the C4 smugglers NOT been caught. Would there have been, perhaps, a G8 “terrorist” attack? An attack, perhaps, blamed on…oh, I dunno…maybe Iran? Might a false-flag assassination have given Congressional neocons like estranged-from-all-parties-but-AIPAC Joseph Lieberman enough free leash to lob a weak American nuke or two at Tehran?

I can’t say. I can only make an educated and justly paranoid guess based on known history…

British SAS in Iraq

In 2005, two British SAS were caught attempting to stage a terror attack in Iraq. The two British soldiers, wearing Arab garb, wigs, and headdress, drove a car towards a group of Iraq police. Then they shot at the police, killing one policeman and injuring another. When they were finally caught, it was discovered that their car contained explosives.

As a reward for the Iraqi police force, who finally stepped up to the plate and used our training, the British military blew open a Basra jail and freed the captured British insurgents…insurgents who were not really insurgents because, like, they were only pretending to be insurgents in order to catch more insurgents. You dig? (You’d actually need a fleet of nuclear steam shovels to dig the amount of spinning bull excrement the British dumped on top of this story…)

London 7/7 Drill

A consultancy agency with government and police connections admitted that it was running an exercise for an unnamed company that revolved around the London Underground being bombed at the exact same times and locations where bombs were detonated in London on July 7th.

New York 9/11 Drill

While real hijackers were waving box cutters in northeastern airspace, Operation Vigilant Guardian had NORAD and the Air Force shouting at false radar blips that simulated hijacked planes.

Some of these fake hijack blips corresponded to real military aircraft in the air posing as hijacked aircraft. That’s why when NORAD’s airborne control officer, Lt. Col. Dawne Deskins, heard Boston claim it had a hijacked airliner, her first words were, “It must be part of the exercise.”

Cheers to a Successful Summit

In light of history, I echo Chancellor Merkel’s positive appraisal of the summit.

After all, with Senator Lieberman begging like a freaked-out mad dog on his paws and knees to see a preemptive nuclear war fry Persian babies to grease spots in his own time, every week that goes by without fake Iranian terror — even if little else is accomplished — is a rousing success.

Cheers!

Read More: G8, C4, terrorists, German police, 7/7, 9/11, Iran, Lieberman