There are 4 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. The Pipeline To War
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>
2. Why You Should Oppose the USDA's Mandatory Property and Animal Surveillance Program
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>
3. [Surveillance] The New Security: Cameras That Never Forget Your Face
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>
4. Flash Mobs: an experiment in social networking (history)
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
Message: 1
Date: Sat, 11 Feb 2006 17:07:06 -0500
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>
Subject: The Pipeline To War
www.barrychamish.com
THE PIPELINE TO WAR by Barry Chamish
Imagine a dozen cartoons serving the same purpose as Pearl Harbor or Sarajevo, being the final straw that led the planet into world war. Now imagine the cartoons were a staged event, designed purposely to drag us into unimaginable violence. If that is the case, then those who foisted the plot on an unsuspecting world, would be guilty of super-mass-murder.
And what if the latest candidate for the Attila the Hun award goes to Daniel Pipes? That is precisely what is being claimed throughout the world wide web at this moment. Though you will not be happy with the sources and sites, read them seriously, no matter how much you've been trained to believe they must be lying.
The world is upside down. Israel's highest-level "friends and allies" are selling us down the river. And our "enemies" may yet become our allies when they realize that Israelis and Jews have been had.
I personally, am no defender of Islam. I consider it a culture of immense repression. I do, however, believe their sensitivities are being exploited with the goal of creating a world war. In this war, like the last, Jews will be on the front line and will be the biggest losers of all.
I have long proved that the Council On Foreign Relations (CFR) is intent on getting the war started. To do so, fear and resentment against Islam must be spread persuasively. For that purpose, they have chosen a leading member, Daniel Pipes.
Too many Jews have fallen for the enemy of my enemy line and believe by fomenting anti-Arab attacks that Daniel Pipes is their ally. In fact, his work has nothing whatsoever to do with defending Israel and a lot to do with involving her in the first line of a world war.
Pipes is not a "radical" advocate of Israel as his critics believe. He is, in fact, the worst kind of enemy of the Jewish state. It is about time that Israelis and her critics figured out the real game plan.
And Pipes, sadly, has a few allies working with him to incite Arabs into a frenzy through any means of deceit and deception. The pathetic deeds of his little Israeli adjunct are found at the end of this article.
Now you decide if, in this vast world, Pipes' direct ties to the Danish editor who first published the cartoons, are mere coincidence:
http://breakfornews.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=58
Cartoon Madness is an NWO Plot
By Fintan Dunne, BreakForNews.com 7th February, 2006
There is evidence of deliberately inflammatory publication by European
newspapers, and a campaign to inflame Muslims --as well as a deception
operation to downplay the links between the Danish editor who first
published the cartoons and leading Neoconservative Daniel Pipes.
And now here comes Neocon guru Daniel Pipes, weighing into the 'toon madness,
to identifying it with the Clash of Civilizations ideaology he professes not to
personally espouse. It's now-or-never, "no compromise" language:
Quote:
Stand With Denmark in Cartoon Dispute
by Daniel Pipes Feb 07, 2006
The key issue at stake in the battle over the twelve Danish cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad is this: will the West stand up for its customs and mores, including freedom of speech, or will Muslims impose their way of life on the West? Ultimately, there is no compromise; Westerners will either retain their civilization, including the right to insult and blaspheme, or not.
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=12215
You get the spin, don't you? Europe stands with the Danes. So come time
to vote on the EU Constitution the Danes must stand with Europe. Slick.
Even as he takes this stand, Pipes is carefully covering his back against
journalists uncovering the link between him and Flemming Rose, the
Danish magazine's cultural editor:
Quote:
(Our Emphasis)
My role in the Danish cartoon affair
Posted by Daniel Pipes on Feb. 6, 2006
There's a conspiracy theory developing about myself and Flemming Rose, the Jyllands-Posten cultural editor who published the famous twelve cartoons of the Muslim prophet. I'll begin with the conspiracy theory (but without providing links or even quotes, as I don't want to send readers to these crackpot websites), and then provide the facts.
The conspiracy theory: Rose came to Philadelphia in October 2004 to see me and we developed a close bond. Then, as a result of this visit, Rose decided to publish the cartoons.
The facts: Rose visited me in my office on October 25, 2004, when he interviewed me for a feature piece on me that he published on October 29 in Jyllands-Posten. The resulting article, "Truslen fra islamismen," can be found on my website, as can a translation of it into English, "The Threat of Islamism." It was a standard interview in which Rose inquired about my views on a variety of questions pertaining to radical Islam. It contains, for example, my signature statement, translated into Danish: "Hvis militant islam er problemet, så må modsætningen, moderat islam, være løsningen." Flemming Rose and I have not written, spoken, or seen each other since that one meeting. I had nothing to do with the decision to commission or publish the cartoons eleven months later and only learned of their existence from press coverage of them. http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/166
That's called getting your denial in first --even before any mainstream
media get hold of this angle. Isn't it sooooo fortunate that someone
has written a "conspiracy theory" article on this very sensitive issue, and
published it on what Pipes ironically calls "crackpot websites."
So, when/if any journalist approaches Pipes on this issue, he can laugh it
off as "old news" and "crackpot conspiracy theory." Which is a vitally
convenient smokescreen --because there is a clear connection and a
commonality of interests between Pipes and the Danish editor.
In the BreakForNews.com Forum, poster CaptainW draws another link
--this time to the Bildebergers:
Quote:
What is not being mentioned in the Media is that the Editor of the Danish Paper has links to both US Neocons & The Bilderbergers...
MERETE ELDRUP, managing director of company that published the cartoons (JP/Politikens Hus) is married to ANDERS ELDRUP, who has attended the last FIVE Bilderberg meetings. Link
http://breakfornews.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=53
Coincidentally Pipes has just decided to drag up all his best conspiracy
material in a new "best of" revisiting of the issue on Feb 2nd:
Quote:
Bibliography - Conspiracy Theories
Posted by Daniel Pipes on February 2, 2006
With the conspiracist mindset seemingly on the perpetual rise these years, I thought it useful to gather my various writings on this topic in a single place, to be updated as needed. http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/575
And who had so conveniently provided Pipes with this smokescreen?
We warned you about this guy:
Quote:
Cartoons are a purposeful provocation
American Free Press
Rose traveled to Philadelphia in October 2004 to visit Daniel Pipes, the Neo-Con ideologue who says the only path to Middle East peace will come through a total Israeli military victory. Rose then penned a positive article about Pipes, who compares "militant Islam" with fascism and communism.
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m20341&l=i&size=1&hd=0
http://www.rense.com/general69/moh.htm
The editor of Jyllands Posten who ordered the publication of the cartoons is Flemming Rose, who has extensive connections to Daniel Pipes, another neocon fascist madman who runs Campus Watch, a neo-McCarthyite witch-hunting organization which vilifies American professors who criticize Israel or show sympathy for the Palestinians. President Bush wanted to name Daniel Pipes to the board of the US Institute of Peace, a government-funded arm of the State Department which organizes conferences and publishes books. When the raving extremist Pipes turned out to be too widely discredited to obtain Senate confirmation for this post, Bush forced his nomination through with a summer 2003 recess appointment to a temporary term at USIP without Senate approval. Daniel Pipes is the nepotist son of Richard Pipes, a Sovietologist who was a leading figure in George H.W. Bush's 1976 Team B, the incubator of today's neocon clique. At the time of his recess appointment, Daniel Pipes was accused by the very moderate Arab-American Institute of "hatred and bigotry" in the context of his "bizarre obsession with all things Arab and Muslim." (http://www.aaiusa.org/pr/release08-14-03.htm) This is the sick, racist point of view embraced by Jyllands Posten.
Flemming Rose provided details of his conversation with Daniel Pipes in a later article. They talked about the need to mobilize Europe for the war of civilizations against the Moslem world. Rose wrote: "Pipes is surprised that there isn't greater alarm in Europe over the challenge that Islam represents thanks to falling rates of fertility and a weakened sense for its own history and culture." (Flemming Rose, "The Threat from Islamism, Jyllands-Posten, October 29, 2004)
*
How long have I warned that when the war comes to Israel's "settlers," it will be vicious, cruel and fought largely by anti-semitic troops imported into the country for the purpose of inflicting the kind of violence any moral Jew would find too appalling to enact?
Here is today's report about Amona last Wednesday:
One girl was picked up by a policeman and held up high against a wall, while the other policeman shoved his club up her vagina.
"How do I know it is true?" the young man telling the story echoed his mother's question. [I told her that I needed to know how the stories she told me yesterday were true, what the sources were.]
"Because my friend just came from her house. The girl is hysterical. She has locked herself in her bedroom. She won't come out, she's screaming and wailing, her family is hysterical, their friends can't find a way to comfort them, can't get her to come out or to talk to anybody. She's screaming and won't come out.
Another girl was grabbed by two riot policemen who were shoving her into a paddywagon. One held her flat on her back at the edge of the paddywagon and held her legs spread open, and the other policeman rammed his club up her vagina so hard and so far that the whole club was inside of her, up to his fist.
****************************************
2 boys lost an eye --
1 is being flown to huz'laretz to try to save his eye. I'm not sure if he is one of the 2, or a 3rd boy.
4 girls have no womb anymore
40 serious head injuries
20 boys whose testicles were crushed so badly that they don't know if they can save them.
3 of those 20 for sure are permanently ruined, they will never be able to father children.
Following are two reports confirming the use of foreign troops. The first is from former Prisoner of Zion, Ida Nudel.
Barry, shalom!
Yesterday, Russian language's TV by name RTVi in its Saturday's evening program
At 21.00. show an interview with a young man by name Eliahu Levin.
Mr. Levin was standing on a roof of one of houses in Amona. When people of the army and police came up to clean the roof and began pushing and attacking those who stayed there, among them Levin noted one looking as Russian. Levin told him in Russian language:"Brother, we should be on the same side",
The man in Israeli uniform answered in a proper Russian: "I am not your brother, jidovsky morda (in slang - face)
Nobody had an identification tags on the uniform.
The station RTVi has internet site
HYPERLINK "http://www.RTVi"
*
Just yesterday I read that the police who took part in the events in Amona, were not Jewish but Arab, Druze and non-Jewish Russians..."
I read it too. People were reading the name tags on the police uniforms and a lot of the names were Arab and Russian.
Let us now look at the Council On Foreign Relations and its members' latest economic and diplomatic plots, all aimed at strengthening Israel's enemies and embroiling the nation in a war it will tragically lose.
http://www.geocities.com/benribqqq/cfr2005roster.html
February 10th, 2006
At a time when the Foreign Minister of Israel condemns the Russian government for inviting Hamas to Moscow, the Israeli government will not renounce the promise of Mr. Stanley Fisher,the governor of Israel, to provide funds for a Hamas-led Palestinian government.
Please note:
http://www.nfc.co.il/NewsPrintVersion.asp?docId=93339&subjectID=1
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1138622562807&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter
Quartet envoy James Wolfensohn is scheduled to go to the Persian Gulf later in the week to raise funds for the financially strapped Palestinian Authority, amid concern in some western capitals that if the money is not raised, Iran may step in and fund the PA to get a strong foothold in Gaza.
Wolfensohn is scheduled to come to Israel before going to the Persian Gulf, to discuss the critical Palestinian financial situation with both Israel and Palestinian officials.
*
ACTING PM OLMERT WILL TOMORROW (WED), 8.2.06, AT 13:30, AT IND.,
TRADE & EMPLOY. MIN., ATTEND CEREMONY MARKING TRANSFER OF DISCOUNT BANK
OWNERSHIP TO CHARLES BRONFMAN GROUP.
Which brings us to the Bronfmans' organization, the World Jewish Congress. On Feb. 1, thanks to the courageous efforts of longtime reader Isi Leibler, Israel Singer, the WJC's former Chairman of the Board, was found culpable, by the NY State Attorney General, of transferring $1.2 million of WJC funds into his own pocket. He was banned from all financial duties in the organization.
Instead, Edgar Bronfman (CFR) immediately appointed him head of the new WJC Policy council, which according to the Jerusalem Post, 2/2/06 includes Vatican agent Shimon Peres and former German foreign minister Joschka Fischer. The following is Singer's first assignment:
http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=59824
World Jewish Congress' Israel Singer Meets Senior Vatican Officials in Rome; Joint Initiative for Talks With Muslim World Discussed
VATICAN CITY, Jan. 26 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Israel Singer, the Chairman of the Policy Council of the World Jewish Congress, has held talks in Rome with senior Vatican officials. He met (for the first time) with Archbishop Leonardo Sandri, Substitute for General Affairs at the Secretariat of State of the Holy See, and Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, Secretary for Relations with States (foreign minister). Singer also met with Cardinal Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity; and Archbishop Michael L. Fitzgerald, president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue.
The main points of discussions were ways to intensify dialogue between the two religions, and specific possibilities to expand inter-faith talks to also include high level Muslim clergy. The modalities will now be discussed, both in bilateral and multilateral meetings, according to Singer.
After his meetings at the Vatican, Singer said: "It is important to enter into discussions with the third 'Son of Abraham'.
It is entirely obvious that the CFR and the Vatican are working together towards Israel's end, even if it takes a world war to get the job done. It is just as obvious that Daniel Pipes is playing a cynical role in preparing his public to fight and die in that war.
end
Two useful sites:
http://jewishwhistleblower.blogspot.com/2005/05/sabbateans-doenmeh-and-frankists.html#comments
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/columnists/13760721.htm
My new DVD, ZION FIRST - THE VATICAN'S NEW CRUSADE FOR ISRAEL is now being received by the first people to order. Reaction is wonderful:
Dear Barry
I just loved the DVD that you sent to us and will certainly pass it around.
First we are going to hold a meeting with those that are in our group.
There are about 149 people in our group ( JPS ) and we are going to play this at our house with refreshments for all to see and hear.
*
Dear Barry,
It it such a great honor and pleasure to "meet" you on video! I do hope to meet you face to face someday soon- with the help of God.
I am humbled by the breadth and depth of your knowledge, passion and, yes, godliness.
You are warm, funny, likeable, authoritative and highly respectable. And you do Israel's God and Israel proud. God bless you.
Some DVD players had trouble reading the disc, and I immediately manufactured a CD ROM replacement for such cases. Thus, you may now order either a CD Rom or DVD of ZION FIRST:
The DVD or CD ROM is available at chamish@netvision.net.il
are my English books; Shabtai Tzvi, Labor Zionism And The Holocaust; Save Israel!; Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin; Israel Betrayed; The Last Days of Israel;
Please send payment, either before or after receipt of the DVD to:
Barry Chamish
POB 1682
Reut 71908 Israel
$20 Am. including postage. NIS 50 for Israelis.
Available at chamish@netvision.net.il
are my English books; Shabtai Tzvi, Labor Zionism And The Holocaust; Save Israel!; Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin; Israel Betrayed; The Last Days of Israel;
Now imagine a professor who fabricates e-mail addresses, websites, letters and user names to spread Pipes' slanders in Israel. Imagine a professor who boasts about stealing his university's e-mail list. Soak in the lies and never even try to justify the immorality of the deceit no matter who it was aimed against:
http://student.cs.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/authors.php?auid=2095
Plaut's spoofing and spamming activities
Messages posted on 13 April 2004 to the ALEF electronic discussion forum (which is based at the University of Haifa) seem to indicate something about Plaut's mentality. These messages, which were posted to ALEF by somebody else and which seem to report on an email conversation that Plaut had with someone who was banned from the ALEF forum for excessive spamming, seem to indicate that Plaut boasted about stealing the ALEF membership list so that messages could be sent to ALEF members without being passed through the ALEF system. Specifically, Plaut seems to have written the following. The typographical errors appeared in the original:
I stoll their membership list. If you want to sen dthings to the whole list,
use any email and send to: (via BCC so they do not know what you are doing):
..
Put the alef address in the header and write (alef) before
subject and they will think it is coming thru their list!
He also seemed to be connected with somebody called Rocky who, pretending to be a pro-Zionism Palestinian living in the West Bank, used the pseudonym "Yusuf" to plague the ALEF list with racist emails until he was excluded from the forum. Look at Rocky's description to see how Rocky finally made a mistake which spilled the beans.
http://student.cs.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/authors.php?auid=5008
Rocky
Rocky, apparently a friend of Steven Plaut (certainly a fellow conspirator), is a Zionist idiot who harassed the ALEF electronic discussion forum for a period during the Autumn of 2004.
Rocky masqueraded as a pro-Zionist Palestinian Arab living in the West Bank, using the pseudonyms "Yusuf Abdullah" and "Yusuf Chouri" for this invented persona.
Unfortunately for himself and for Plaut, Rocky screwed up, as he confesses in the first email quoted below, which he sent to Plaut but which he accidentally copied to all the people named in the cc (carbon-copy distribution) list for the message. One of the recipients, Yael Korin, copied it to the ALEF forum. Rocky must have been very het up when he sent this email, because, when sending it, he repeated the same error that he admits in the email -- that is, he copied what was intended to be a private conspiratorial message to many of the people who were the intended victims of his conspiracy.
Incidentally, Rocky's repeated use of the acronym "BBC" below is incorrect -- it should be "BCC" or "bcc" (blind carbon-copy distribution). Coming on top of the fact that his attempted scam was based on the use of bcc distribution, Rocky's not knowing the correct name for the feature is is just one more indication of the fact that he is a schmuck. Dr. Plaut really should choose his fellow conspirators more carefully.
The emphasis on blind carbon-copy (bcc) is especially interesting because it is reminiscent of an instruction that Plaut had given a few months earlier: in April 2004, Plaut had boasted that he had stolen the ALEF emailing list and said that the best way to fool ALEF subscribers into believing that they were receiving messages from the ALEF server was to use bcc when sending out mass-mailings -- see the biographical entry for Plaut.
Anyhow, here is the email in which Rocky confesses his mistake to Steven Plaut. The typographical errors appeared in the original:
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 15:47:58 -0800 (PST)
From: Yusuf Jones
Subject: Ohhhh, Nooooooo
To: Steven_Plaut@yahoo.com
Cc: tikva20@zahav.net.il, tiyaron@hazorea.org.il, trn1@zahav.net.il,
tuviab@013.net, tuviab@013.net.il, tzfati@cc.huji.ac.il,
uridavis@actcom.co.il, urih@babel.ling.upenn.edu,
weltmann@techunix.technion.ac.il, wokoeck@post.tau.ac.il,
wollin@netvision.net.il, yamitay@gvulot.org.il,
ye_harel@netvision.net.il, ykorin@ucla.edu, yossida@oumail.openu.ac.il,
zaid@pioneersofchange.net, zalman.amit@concordia.ca, zapata@xs4all.nl,
ziegler@techunix.technion.ac.il, zviwir@swipnet.se,
a_barzilai@haaretz.co.il, ag@omsoft.com, agora@algonet.se,
ahfiras@swissonline.ch, ariehnyc@prodigy.net
X-Probable-Spam: no
X-Spam-Hits: 0.986
X-Scanned-By: smtp.ucla.edu
Steven,
It just happened. I may have ****ed up royally. I just sent out my
first batch of "[ALEF] Get that monkey off my back" emails. My first
attempts at sending them as BBC all failed. I got the message "There
was a problem. Your BBC contains too many addresses." In the past I
was able to have up to 25 BBCs per each mailing. SO I reducedc it to
20... then 15... then a dozen and still got the error message. So I
transferred the addresses from BBC to CC and was able to send off all
25 of them.
Then it hit me! I forgot to remove YOUR name from the list so your
email went out with those first 25. I'm usually very careful about
things like that which is why I generally only use BBC. But my mind
is pre-occupied with so many other things that need to be done that I
got careless.
I havonly sent out those first 25 emails. I won't send out the
remainder. I hope this will not cause a problem.
Sorry, Rocky
Apparently, Rocky's above email was triggered by the mistake that he had made, a few minutes earlier, when he sent the following email. Again, the typographical errors appeared in the original:
Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 15:41:00 -0800 (PST)
From: Yusuf Jones
Subject: [ALEF] Get That Monkey Off My Back!
To: steven_Plaut@yahoo.com
Cc: tikva20@zahav.net.il, tiyaron@hazorea.org.il, trn1@zahav.net.il,
tuviab@013.net, tuviab@013.net.il, tzfati@cc.huji.ac.il,
uridavis@actcom.co.il, urih@babel.ling.upenn.edu,
weltmann@techunix.technion.ac.il, wokoeck@post.tau.ac.il,
wollin@netvision.net.il, yamitay@gvulot.org.il,
ye_harel@netvision.net.il, ykorin@ucla.edu, yossida@oumail.openu.ac.il,
zaid@pioneersofchange.net, zalman.amit@concordia.ca, zapata@xs4all.nl,
ziegler@techunix.technion.ac.il, zviwir@swipnet.se,
a_barzilai@haaretz.co.il, ag@omsoft.com, agora@algonet.se,
ahfiras@swissonline.ch, ariehnyc@prodigy.net
X-Probable-Spam: no
X-Spam-Hits: 1.051
X-Spam-Score: *
X-Scanned-By: smtp.ucla.edu
I strongly suspect that my Hotmail account was sabotaged by Ran
HaCohen. You know. The Ran HaCohen who endorses Hizbollah attacks on
Northern Israel. The help prevent this from
happening again, the good people at Yahoo have installed a security
wall (actually, it's an
electronic fence) around my new account. They agree that an
Israel-supporting Arab's voice
is a terrible thing to waste.
Re: Arab Fiddle While Nablus Burns"
I know there's plenty of accusatory middle fingers pointed at the IDF
for making that Arab
play "Chopsticks" on his fiddle. From what I can see, they only
wanted to be sure there
were no rocket launchers, small nuclear devices or perhaps a half
dozen Arab midgets with
rocks inside his case. This was a defensive move, pure and simple.
But the pro-Arab
propagandists and certain Jewish intellectual professors connected
the dots and saw a
similarity between Jews made to play at death camps.
This was not the case at that checkpoint. If you were to look closely
at photos, you'd see
quite clearly that there was a hat [with "Go Red Socks" on it] at
this Arab's dusty sandals
and inside that hat was quite a significant collection of Israeli
sheckels. The man was not
there being humiliated. He was there trying to make a few bucks! What
next? Perhaps Ran
HaCohen at the end of a monkey chain playing Richard Wagner tunes?
Peace. Shalom. Salam.
Yusuf, your token Arab who adores Israel.
The email just quoted was triggered by the fact that Ran HaCohen had complained to Microsoft about the use of a hotmail account, , to send the racist email quoted below to the ALEF forum. Microsoft disabled that account on 8 December 2004, because it violated the Hotmail Terms of Use. This upset Rocky, leading to the sequence of emails from Rocky to Plaut quoted above.
Two days before Rocky sent the sequence of emails quoted above, he had sent the following piece to his list of ALEF subscribers. This email, which was sent by Rocky using the pseudonym "Yusuf Abdullah", was prompted by the fact that, after repeated violations, his previous "Yusuf Chouri" persona had been excluded from the ALEF forum.
From: "Yusuf Abdullah"
To: dseps@yahoo.com
Subject: [ALEF] Arabs 4 Israel .. Including Me
Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 23:40:50 -0500
I nearly s**t out my Arab pancreas when I was sent a link to this page!
"Arabs for Israel"
http://www.arabsforisrael.com/pages/1/
I hate to say this but these guys make most of the [ALEF] crew look like [PFLP] supporters.
Hey, don't take this remark personally for I truly wish to have my [ALEF] membership
re-established [ASAP]. I ask that you please put in a few good words for me.
Peace. Shalom. Salam,
Yusuf
A few days earlier, Rocky, still using his earlier "Yusuf Chouri" persona, had sent the following email to Avraham Oz, moderator of the ALEF forum, complaining abut the fact that, finally, "Yusuf" had been excluded from the forum, after ignoring repeated requests to abide by the rules of the forum. Again, the typographical errors appeared in the original:
From: "yusuf chouri"
Date: 03:03:59 GMT+02:00 2 =E3=F6=EE=E1=F8 2004
To: alef@list.haifa.ac.il
Subject: [ALEF] "How Dare You!"
How dare ALEF terminate my membership as a free Arab man and scholar
and deny me the right to post commentary onto the ALEF site!
Do you not like what a free-thinking, educated Arab has to say? Must
I agree and march lockstep with your anti-Zionist views? Can I not
admire brave Jews who struggle daily against both external
treats and threats by its very own citizens?
Yesterday, a certain Yael Korin wrote the following message to ALEF
members. "I do believe that this address [yusef_chouri@hotmail.com]
belong to a provocateur, that has taken up a middle eastern sounding
name, so they could pretend to be someone they are not."
First of all, I use the name, Yusuf Chouri, to keep my true identity
secret for I live in what you call the "occupied territories" and
would certainly be branded as a collaborator. You see, I see it
differently than my fellow Palestinians. I see Arab murderers and
thieves as occupying=A0your land. Further, were it not for Arab thugs,
my famil;y and I would be fully employed and living more comfortably
than we are now under Fatah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas.
Secondly, who does Yael Korin think she is lecturing me about
pretending to be someone I are not? I have attached a photo of Yael
Korin pretending to be an Arab when, in fact, she was born a Jew!
She even wrapped on a kaffiya! And you think I am the one with a problem!
You think I am the one with a sick, dual personality. You think I am
the enemy?
There are others among you that deserve to be investigated. People
like that flunky Marxist, anti-Semite, anti-Zionist professor Ran
Greenstein at some backwater South African university. Now that
he's abandoned Israel, moved thousands of miles away and married a
shvastse, does he have the right to cast shame on Israel?
Shouldn't he more concerned about trying not to be eaten by
the local cannibals? And, speaking of local cannibals, do any of his students
know how to read? Why is he allowed to spew hatred against Israel while
I cannot spew love and admiration for the Israeli people?
What, may I ask, is ALEF's purpose? To make Israel safer or
to denegrate her at every turn?
In conclusion, I ask that you reinstate me onto your ALEF
group. I also appeal directly to Avraham "Oz", the wizard
who created the ALEF group. Without his personal efforts to
bring together Jews for Jihad, how would the world
understand why more Jews are in therapy than any other
group on the face of the earth. Continuing along this line
of thought, I cannot help wonder if they make explosive
belts in his size.
I look forward to my re-instatement into ALEF. A letter of
apology would be appreciated but not expected.
Peace. Shalom. Salam.
Yusuf Chouri
The email above, which reeks of racism, is a good example of the kind of stuff that Rocky, using the pseudonym "Yusuf Chouri", had been previously sending to the ALEF forum and for which he had been removed from the forum. Its use of the word "shvastse" (presumably a typo for "shvartse", Yiddisch for "black") is just yet another giveaway of that fact that, while he pretends to be a Palestinian Arab, he is basically someone whose English is laced with Yiddisch -- he would appear to be a Jewish American.
Now try and understand that the Jewish Press of Brooklyn and Americans For A Safe Israel have been taken over by these liars, crooks and deceivers:
[http://www.jewishpress.com/page.do/22/About_The_Jewish_Press.html]
At The Jewish Press website you have a Search the Site button.
Yours Truly did some searches, typing in the names of various of your editors and columnists, including every person mentioned under "About the Jewish Press" to see how many references there were to each person on The Jewish Press website.
Here are the results of those searches:
#1 Jason Maoz (Senior Editor) 250
#2 Steven Plaut 117
#3 Louis Rene Beres 113
#4 Joseph Schick 40
#5 Arnold Fine 35
#6 Naomi Mauer 34
(Naomi Mauer 20/Naomi Klass Mauer 14)
Surprise! Surprise! The Jewish Press website looks like a Jason Maoz and Steven Plaut newsletter.
Kudos To Plaut
I visit The Jewish Press's online edition virtually every day and I refer hundreds of people to your site and your excellent articles. I maintain a large e-mail list of people with interest in Israel.
Recently I sent around Steven Plaut's "Israel's Plague of Conspiracism" (front-page essay, Jan. 27) and got dozens of e-mails commending the article, Professor Plaut, and The Jewish Press for running it.
Controversy seems epidemic among Israel's supporters and conspiracy theorists are dangerous because they obfuscate our real goals. Steven Plaut and Daniel Pipes perform a valuable service to our cause. Barry Chamish and his acolytes do serious damage.
I am one of the contributing editors of Outpost, the monthly publication of Americans for a Safe Israel, and a member of the executive committee of the organization.
Ruth King
(Via E-Mail)
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Message: 2
Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2006 07:11:43 -0500
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>
Subject: Why You Should Oppose the USDA's Mandatory Property and Animal Surveillance Program
There is startlingly little time, since this is all supposed to be mandatory by 2008.
There are still going to be some who have drunk so much of the kool aid that they will excuse it, but surely most will be appalled.
Why You Should Oppose the USDA's Mandatory Property and Animal Surveillance Program
by herdsire
Sun Oct 16, 2005 at 10:12:23 PM PDT
(reprint of article by Mary Zanoni, Ph.D., contact info at the end)
Poultry fanciers and keepers of small flocks are facing a grave threat from a proposed government intrusion into their innocent choice of pastimes and way of life.
For several years, the USDA has been working with the largest-scale animal industry organizations (for example, the National Pork Producers, Monsanto Company, and Cargill Meat) to develop a mandatory "National Animal Identification System" ("NAIS").
However, most small scale livestock producers, people who raise animals for their own food, and people who keep horses or livestock as companion animals do not know about the USDA's plans.
The NAIS will drive small producers out of the market, will make people abandon raising animals for their own food, will invade Americans' personal privacy to a degree never before tolerated, will violate the religious freedom of Americans whose beliefs make it impossible for them to comply, and will erase the last vestiges of animal welfare from the production of animal foods.
The Problem
On April 25, 2005, the USDA released "Draft Program Standards" ("St.") and a "Draft Strategic Plan" ("Plan") concerning the NAIS. If you think the description below sounds too bizarre to be true, please go here , read the Standards and Plan, and check the citations.
By January 1, 2008, the NAIS will be mandatory. (Plan, pp. 2, 10, 17.)
Every person who owns even one horse, cow, pig, chicken, sheep, pigeon, or virtually any livestock animal, will be forced to register their home, including owner's name, address, and telephone number, and keyed to Global Positioning System coordinates for satellite monitoring, in a giant federal database under a 7-digit "premises ID number." (St., pp. 3-4, 10-12; Plan, p. 5.)
Every animal will have to be assigned a 15-digit ID number, also to be kept in a giant federal database. The form of ID will most likely be a tag or microchip containing a Radio Frequency Identification Device, designed to be read from a distance. (Plan, p. 10; St., pp. 6, 12, 20, 27-28.)
The plan may also include collecting the DNA of every animal and/or a retinal scan of every animal. (Plan, p.13.)
The owner will be required to report: the birthdate of an animal, the application of every animal's ID tag, every time an animal leaves or enters the property, every time an animal loses a tag, every time a tag is replaced, the slaughter or death of an animal, or if any animal is missing. Such events must be reported within 24 hours. (St., pp. 12-13, 17-21.)
Third parties, such as veterinarians, will be required to report "sightings" of animals. (St., p. 25.) In other words, if you call a vet to your property to treat your horse, cow, or any other animal, and the vet finds any animal without the mandatory 15-digit computer-readable ID, the vet may be required to report you.
If you do not comply, the USDA will exercise "enforcement" against you. (St., p. 7; Plan, p. 17.) The USDA has not yet specified the nature of "enforcement," but presumably it will include imposing fines and/or seizing your animals.
There are no exceptions -- under the USDA plan, you will be forced to register and report even if you raise animals only for your own food or keep horses for draft or for transportation.
The Negative Effects
Eradication of Small Farms - People with just a few meat animals or 40-cow dairies are already living on the edge financially. The USDA plan will force many of them to give up farming.
Loss of the True Security of Organic and Local Foods - The NAIS is touted by the USDA and agricorporations as a way to make our food supply "secure" against diseases or terrorism. However, most people instinctively understand that real food security comes from raising food yourself or buying from a local farmer you actually know. The USDA plan will only kill off more local sources of production and further promote the giant industrial methods which cause many food safety and disease problems.
Extreme Damage to Personal Privacy - Legally, livestock animals are a form of personal property. It is unprecedented for the United States government to conduct large-scale computer-aided surveillance of its citizens simply because they own a common type of property. (The only exceptions are registration of motor vehicles and guns, due to their clear inherent dangers - but they are registered at the state level, not by the federal government.) The NAIS would actually subject the owner of a chicken to far more surveillance than the owner of a gun. Surveillance of small-scale livestock owners is like the government subjecting people to surveillance for owning a couch, a TV, a lawnmower.
What about non-livestock animals?
Will the government next want to register all cats, dogs, and parakeets, and demand the global positioning coordinates of their owners' houses and apartments?
Insult to Animal Welfare - The NAIS is the ultimate objectification of higher, sensitive living creatures, treating individual animals as if they were cans of peas with a bar code. Many people who raise their own animals or buy from small, local producers do so because they are very troubled by industrial-scale production of chickens, cattle, and pigs. These people will be forced either to sacrifice their personal privacy to government surveillance, or to stop raising their own food by humane standards.
Burden on Religious Freedom - Many adherents of plain (and other) faiths raise their own food animals and use animals in farming and transportation because their beliefs require them to live this way. Such people obviously cannot comply with the USDA's computerized, technology-dependent system. The NAIS will force these people to violate their religious beliefs.
What You Can Do
Small-scale keepers of poultry and other livestock can take action to create an effective movement in opposition to the USDA/agricorporate plan. First, small-scale livestock owners should not participate in any so-called "voluntary" state or federal program to register farms or animals. The USDA is using farmers' supposed willingness to enter a "voluntary" program as a justification for making the program mandatory. (See Plan, "Executive Summary" and pp. 7-8.)
Small farmers and livestock owners can also help inform and organize others. The USDA presently does not plan to finalize its rules for mandatory ID until the summer of 2006. There is still time to oppose this plan.
Several farmers and other concerned citizens have joined together to form FARM for LIFETM, a public-interest organization to support the rights of small and subsistence farmers and consumers of organic, natural, and local foods. FARM for LIFE's first project is to stop the USDA plan for mandatory animal ID.
The organization will publish a newsletter three times a year (first publication scheduled for November 1, 2005), to inform citizens of developments concerning animal ID and other issues vital to the small farming and natural/organic food communities. Newsletter subscribers will also be sent information at appropriate times on how to contact lawmakers and the USDA to oppose animal ID. In addition, FARM for LIFETM will coordinate with other existing interest groups to mount an effective campaign against animal ID.
Please help STOP animal ID and support FARM for LIFETby subscribing to the newsletter: $25 Individual Subscription (1 year), $40 Institutional Subscription (1 year), Please help with an additional donation in any amount. Make your check payable to "Farm for Life" and mail to: Farm for Life, PO Box 501, Canton, New York 13617.
---------------------------------------------
I have reprinted this article by:
Mary Zanoni, Ph.D. (Cornell), J.D. (Yale), Executive Director of Farm for LifeTM
P.O. Box 501, Canton, New York 13617
Email: mlz@slic.com
Tags: USDA, NAIS, biodiversity, monsanto, privacy, disease control (all tags)
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/10/17/01223/213
this is HUGE
Keep a chicken, go to jail?
This hits anyone who intends to keep livestock for reasons of self-sufficiency, or use horses instead of tractors after peak oil when energy prices take off.
It's a direct assault on small-scale farming, organic agriculture, and any departure from corporate-scale factory farming.
You can be sure this will be touted as a way of dealing with avian flu and mad cow disease. But it's BS in the worst way; there are better ways to deal with both.
This needs to be front-page news, now!
This will = extinction of livestock
In studies of the factory-type varieties of turkeys, raised in farm-yard conditions, they all died, unable to survive outdoor, un-medicated conditions. This law will lead to the end of most, if not all, non-agribusiness breeds of poultry, beef, pork etc., a narrowing of the gene pool, and eventual death from some future 'avian flu'.
I believe the EU has already outlawed growing non-patented vegetable varieties, if you can believe it. This takes 'global hegemony' to a whole new level. The ultimate 'dominionism.'
Dominique Guillet and Association Kokopelli
My original source for my assertion is not online. It is an article in 'Seed Savers Exchange 2004 Harvest Edition' titled 'Kokopelli in Europe', a transcript of a speech by Dominique Guillet given to the 2004 annual convention of the Seed Savers Exchange of which I am a member.
"It is essential to note that everything that is eaten from the plate of a European citizen is registered in one of the National Vegetable Lists of the European Community. That is another way of saying that it is strictly against the law to grow, either for consumption or for seed production, a vegetable or cereal variety that has not been noted on one of these National Lists."
The speech gave a history of 'Terre de Semences' the organization that he formed in 1994 to sell organic heirloom seeds, and how he was put out of business by the new EU regulations. He then goes on to describe his current work with 'Association Kokopelli'.
"You do not realize that you still have so much freedom in this country [US]. You have no National List and anyone can sell or exchange or give seeds of whatever variety he wants, because there is no regulation to prevent it. In Europe each country has a National List, and you're not supposed to sell a variety of wheat, eggplant, tomato, whatever, for food or for seed if the variety is not registered on the National List."
The 'same effect' is that F1 varieties will be patented and proprietary.
This reminds me of the Monsanto 'killer gene'.
There is startlingly little time, since this is all supposed to be mandatory by 2008.
There are still going to be some who have drunk so much of the kool aid that they will excuse it, but surely most will be appalled.
----
The link between aspartame and brain tumors: What the FDA never told you about artificial sweeteners
http://www.newstarget.com/z011804.html
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Message: 3
Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2006 09:07:08 -0500
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>
Subject: [Surveillance] The New Security: Cameras That Never Forget Your Face
These Cameras Don't Forget a Face
By NOAH SHACHTMAN
Published: January 25, 2006
I've got a story in today's New York Times. Here's how it starts:
Management at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco had been suspicious for weeks. James, a houseman on the graveyard shift was not the most productive worker, and trying to reach him on his walkie-talkie was usually a lost cause. So when James (not his real name) could not be found one summer night, his bosses went to their new video surveillance system.
The camera network - using software from 3VR Security Inc., a San Francisco company that makes surveillance technology - already knew what James looked like; facial recognition algorithms had built a profile of him over time. With a couple of mouse clicks, managers combed through hours of videotape taken that night by the hotel's 16 cameras, and found every place he had been - including the back entrance he slipped out of, three hours into his shift. He never came back to work; the next day, James became one of 10 employees dismissed from the hotel since 3VR's surveillance package was installed last June.
Until recently, the only place where an employee could have been caught that easily was in a Hollywood script. Digital spy cameras can instantly pick people out of crowds on "24." Real-world video surveillance was stuck in the VCR age, taking countless hours to sift through blurry black-and-white tapes. Stopping a problem in progress was nearly impossible, unless a guard just happened to be staring at the right video monitor.
But surveillance companies, using networks of cheap Web-connected cameras and powerful new video-analysis software, are starting to turn the Hollywood model into reality. Faces and license plates can now be spotted, in almost real time, at ports, military bases and companies. Security perimeters can be changed or strengthened with a mouse click. Feeds from hundreds of cameras can be combined into a single desktop view. And videotape that used to take hours, even days, to scour is searched in minutes.
Some experts question the effectiveness of such "intelligent video" systems, which are sold by ObjectVideo, Verint and VistaScape as well, and worry about the privacy implications. But Brian Russell, chief of the Drake's engineering and maintenance departments, is happy with the results. "People know we're watching," he said. "Word travels fast. Fear travels as well."
Click on over here to read the rest of the piece -- it's part of a big package in today's Circuits section on surveillance. Johnathan Glater writes about surfing anonymously. Katie Hafner talks about getting spooked by searches. And David Shenk takes a broad look at the erosion of privacy.
Today's story is one of a bunch I've written on video surveillance, over the years. Check out London's cracking panopticon, Chicago's spycam police force, and the Pentagon's simple plan to track everything that moves.
http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002114.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/25/technology/techspecial2/25video.html?ei=5070&en=4fcc602749861565&ex=1139893200&pagewanted=all
Comments:
I like the comment, "fear spreads as well." I think this neatly sums up the modern relationship between authority and the individual. The American Experiment rested on the theory that people were equals, that they were fundamentally capable of mutually beneficial behavior, and that fear did not enter into the equation. Liberty was the absence of fear.
That's gone from us now. What is being implanted into our minds is the unfocused, amorphous dread that we are being watched, everywhere, all the time. "If you don't break the law, you have nothing to be afraid of," except, of course, fear itself. That fear, the sense that the "nail that stands up will be beaten down," will put a chill on future generations. This generation has turned its back on America. That country is receding from us, and we're living in a squiggle on a map.
Posted by: James at January 25, 2006 12:40 PM
Amen James. You hit the nail on the head (pun intended). This is EXACTLY what needs to be brought up every time we hear "if you aren't breaking the law, you have nothing to worry about."
It isn't about whether or not these cameras have the capability of capturing real criminals on film (or the digital equivalent thereof), it's about each of our rights to a certain degree of privacy, even in public places. If we are whispering, for instance, we should feel safe that our secrets are secret, and not being picked up by uber-sensitive microphones or lip reading cameras.
Or that we aren't going to be arrested for the actions of that mythical "double" with similar eyes and hair we are all rumored to have.
Posted by: Jeremy at January 26, 2006 11:09 AM
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Message: 4
Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2006 07:38:15 -0500
From: "norgesen" <norgeson@hotmail.com>
Subject: Flash Mobs: an experiment in social networking (history)
The Short Life of Flash Mobs
Who'd have thought a single email designed to mock New York scenesters would have turned into an international craze? The founder of flash mobs talks to Stay Free! about his experiment in social networking.
[ by Francis Heaney ]
Someday, I'll be talking to my grandchildren (which is what my wife and I will call the creatures cloned from our genetic material, grown in a vat, and raised by robots) and they'll say, "Tell us again about flash mobs!" And I'll say, "You lazy kids, why don't you just read that interview I did with the guy who came up with flash mobs?" "You mean the one where you started with that tortured introduction and where it sounded like you were never going to explain what the hell flash mobs were?"
This is why I don't want children.
Anyway, a flash mob is an event where a large group of people, having received instructions in advance, converge upon a place, do something odd there, and leave peaceably within minutes. For instance, at an early flash mob in Manhattan, participants descended upon Macy's rug department and claimed to be members of a commune in Williamsburg shopping for a "love rug." Sounds amusing, yes? Enough people evidently agreed that what started out as a single forwarded email inviting people to join an "inexplicable mob" turned into a sprawling, global fad practically overnight--and then largely faded away almost as quickly as it appeared.
To find out how and why it all happened, Stay Free! talked to the fellow who sent out the first email, Bill--or, as he is often known to journalists, "Bill." -- Francis Heaney
STAY FREE!: How did you first come up with the idea for flash mobs?
BILL: Basically, it started with an email. I created an email address--themobproject@yahoo.com--and forwarded an email to myself, and then I forwarded it to about forty or fifty friends on the premise that they would think, "Oh, Bill's heard about this interesting thing."
STAY FREE!: I didn't realize it had started out as kind of a con job.
BILL: Yeah, I wanted it to appear like one of those things circulating around the internet.
STAY FREE!: If you'd just sent it from the Mob Project, they would wonder: how did they get my email address?
BILL: Exactly. The original idea was to create an email that would get forwarded around in some funny way, or that would get people to come to a show that would turn out to be something different or surprising. I eventually came up with a lazy idea, which was that the thing would just have one simple, in-your-face aspect to it--there wouldn't be any show, and that the email would be upfront about the fact that it was inviting people to do basically nothing at all.
STAY FREE!: Well, it wasn't nothing. It was inviting people to have the opportunity to confuse other people.
BILL: That's true. But the idea was that the people themselves would become the show, and that just by responding to this random email, they would, in a sense, create something.
STAY FREE!: They become the show and the audience.
BILL: Exactly. I had conceived it specifically as a New York thing. People in New York are always looking for the next big thing. They come here because they want to take part in the arts community, they want to be with other people who are doing creative stuff, and they will come out to see a reading or a concert on the basis of word-of-mouth. Partly they want to find out what everybody else is so excited about, but partly they just want to be a part of the scene. You have this in other places too, but I feel like there's something in New York that makes it kind of a city-wide pastime. Part of what I liked about this idea was that it would be very frank about the pure scenesterism of it. What is it that would make people come to the flash mob? Well, it would be the fact that if it went off as planned, lots of other people would be coming. The desire to not be left out was part of what would grow it. I didn't have all of these grandiose notions about it at the time; I mostly just thought it was funny. But I thought of it as a stunt that would satirize scenester-y gatherings.
STAY FREE!: In a lot of ways it's so much better than other scenester activities because you don't get stuck in a club for an hour and a half. You're in and out in five minutes.
BILL: True. There was something purposely cynical even about the five-to-ten minute constraint, in that I wanted the thing to be readily consumable. "Oh, I can do that, it's only ten minutes, it's right after work, and it's near a major subway line . . . . "
STAY FREE!: They were all in the midtown Manhattan area?
BILL: Some of them were downtown near Broadway-Lafayette; they were all really accessible. The first mob was going to be at Claire's Accessories at Astor Place. I used to walk by places and think: where would it be really funny if one day there just happened to be a mob of people there? And Claire's Accessories fit that description. It's just this little sleepy store, kind of a hole in the wall. So I picked that place.
STAY FREE!: And then you got ratted.
BILL: About ten minutes before the first mob, I get a call from Eugene, and he's like, "There are seven cops and a police wagon out in front of Claire's Accessories." So I get there and they're not letting anybody stand in front of the store. They made it look as if a terrorist had threatened to wage jihad against Claire's Accessories.
STAY FREE!: Which, in a way, is just as funny.
BILL: But it made me mad. The first email said "Mob #1" and at the bottom I wrote, "Await instructions for Mob #2," or something like that. But at the time, I wasn't necessarily convinced that there would ever be a Mob #2. But now I see the cops, and I'm like, "I've got to find a way to get around this, because we've got to get a future thing." So for Mob #2, I hit on the notion of meeting in pre-mob locations, and then people would come through at the last minute and hand out flyers with the mob location. That worked fine for the second mob, which was at Macy's.
STAY FREE!: It's like debugging. You run it through the first time, and you see how it can be broken, and then you make sure it can't be broken that way.
BILL: I was sad, though, because I had hoped that the thing could be run anonymously. It's not so much because I cared if people knew who had come up with the idea. The bigger issue is that I didn't want it to seem like there was a leader. The project grew when people took it on as their own and forwarded the emails; that was what made the idea work. So it was sad having to resort to the pre-mob-location, because then there had to be people who were clearly in on the planning, walking around with the flyers. If I had figured out text-messaging . . .
STAY FREE!: . . . then you could've had text messages arriving.
BILL: Yeah, but by and large, the thing worked well and, in a way, the fact that the first one got broken up by the cops helped the project as a whole, because it felt like there was something actually at stake.
Other than when we handed out the flyers, the mobs basically did become leaderless. Sometimes I wouldn't even get there in time to participate. One flash mob was at a shoe store in SoHo. The idea was that people would suddenly swamp the store and get on their cell phones and pretend to be calling their friends and talking about how awesome the shoes were. But by the time I got there, the store was completely full. The sales clerks eventually shut the doors and the rest of us were all stuck out on the sidewalk, looking in. But that's the way that it should be; I'm not really any more inside to the project than anybody else.
STAY FREE!: So eventually it took off in other cities as well?
BILL: Yeah. Wired News wrote a story about the first successful one, Mob #2, and bloggers picked it up, and the email account started getting messages, people saying, "I'm in Chicago, are you gonna do this here?" You know, "I'm in L.A.--Can I steal your idea?" I was like, "It's not really much of an idea. Go ahead!" I had imagined it as kind of a parody of New York insiderness, and I didn't anticipate the fact that it would take off other places.
STAY FREE!: But all the places you're naming are big urban areas, and certainly they have something in common with New York--that drive toward insiderness. At least in Los Angeles.
BILL: Yeah, but there's such a big creative group in New York that you can make a living just making fun of the group around you--whether you're a writer or comedian or artist. In the art world, for example, there are all of these art projects that make fun of the art world. In New York, you can sort of do that. But one of the first places was in Minneapolis, for example, at a mall. The sensibility of the participants seemed very much to be: we're here to show all you people here in the Mall of America that we're thinking on a different plane. So it was much less of a cynical in-joke on scenesterism and much more of a genuine self-expression. The New York mob was, in a certain way, about anti-expression. It was kind of like, we're all just going to show up and we're going to chant and be a big physical presence for no reason other than we think that it's funny. Whereas in other places it took on almost a "happening" kind of vibe, to express a certain kind of commonality, and to express, say, a certain opposition to corporate space. It was taken up almost entirely in a politically tinged way, even though it was never explicitly political. When it spread to other cities, there always seemed to be a sense of ,"This is a movement." Like, we know this is absurd, but by taking part we're making a statement about the right of the people to peaceably assemble wherever they want.
As it started to spread and as I saw how people were responding to it, it became clear that it meant something different to them. I might have been the only cynical guy from the beginning! I sort of became persuaded about the political relevance of the idea.
STAY FREE!: And the potential for getting a message across?
BILL: I didn't know how they were going to become genuinely political, but I could tell that everybody wanted them to, and, in a way, I became a sort of sociologist just like anybody in the media who was writing about the phenomenon. I had to ask myself, "What is it that so many people are responding to?" To a certain extent, I became an outsider almost the moment the thing took off. I kept doing them, and I kept putting them on, and I kept trying to intuit my way towards ideas for flash mobs that I thought people would find funny.
STAY FREE!: Why do you think flash mobs took off in so many other places? What need was it fulfilling?
BILL: People have been spending a lot of time in virtual communities since the internet took off, and I think people liked the flash mobs because they had an internet component, yet allowed you to see this virtual community made literal and physical.
STAY FREE!: The net made flesh?
BILL: Yeah. If, after you get a funny email and forward it along, you asked yourself, "I wonder what would happen if all the people who got this thing showed up at the same place for five minutes?" you'd want to go just to see how many people there were.
STAY FREE!: I have a theory about why it took off as a vehicle for political statement. I used to go out with someone who was much more politically active, and so I'd go to meetings, and--Christ Almighty!--those things are boring; nothing ever gets decided. The flash mob affords an opportunity for doing something and yet completely sidesteps the whole process of discussing how it's going to happen. It's just, "Here's this opportunity, and if you agree with it, you can come be in on it, and it's going to be very quick."
BILL: I think that's true. When people asked me for advice on doing a flash mob in their city, I was basically, like, "Look. It should spread around through email. The gatherings should be less than ten minutes long. And they should be absurd or funny, they shouldn't be explicitly political." But then, people still saw the absurd things as being political.
In wanting to be a part of a flash mob, you're not really expressing anything with content, you're expressing a vague feeling: "I'm unhappy with the way things are going and I want to be out there with people showing our numbers." If you went to the Iraq war protest, you would see tons of people holding signs that you disagree with. But you want to be out there with these people who on some level feel similarly...
STAY FREE!: You can't stay home because of the nutjobs.
BILL: One thing a lot of people really liked was the fact that the mobs were generally taking place in some kind of commercial space. People wanted the mob to be disruptive.
STAY FREE!: Was that the first inkling of politicizing it--a sort of anticonsumerism?
BILL: I think that was part of it. Commercial space is quasi-public space. You're welcome to come in so long as you are considering buying something.
STAY FREE!: So if you do something crazy--
BILL: Once you try to express yourself in a way that indicates that you're not interested in buying anything, you're suddenly a trespasser. And so, when you think in those terms, the idea that all these people who seem to be shoppers show up at a Toys 'R' Us and do something completely out of their minds . . .
STAY FREE!: Like worshipping a dinosaur.
BILL: Like worshipping a dinosaur--there was a big political component to that, even though the literal statement that was made didn't have one.
STAY FREE!: So flash mobs seem to have mostly quieted, although when the Republican National Convention was here, there were a lot of flash-mob-style protests.
BILL: I've seen two strains of flash mobs that still seem to be persistent. One of them is explicitly political--organizers using flash mobs as a tool for getting people together. They've been doing this First Amendment mob down near Ground Zero--
STAY FREE!: That's Reverend Billy?
BILL: I'm not sure if it's Reverend Billy himself, but somebody in his coterie has been organizing First Amendment mobs.
STAY FREE!: Yeah, they go to various locations and mill around. It looks like they're just talking on their cell phones, but if you walk around, you notice that all these people on cell phones are reciting the First Amendment, and it's sort of subliminal. Then they get louder and louder.
BILL: There are still die-hard flash-mobs-for-the-sake-of-flash-mobs movement people out there. I got an email the other day from a Polish flash mobber who sent me to a website where they're planning a global flash mob day. The idea of flash mob solidarity is fascinating to me. On the one hand, I kind of admire it, because the flash mobs for flash mobs' sake is much closer to my original idea. And yet, I conceived of the flash mobs as a very local phenomenon.
I liked it when people who did flash mobs in other cities would pick places in those cities that made a lot of sense; it would reframe a place as the site of a mob. The idea of a global flash mob does strike me as a little weird. I don't really know what flash mobs mean in other countries, especially in countries with more real public space than we have here.
STAY FREE!: What's an example of a way people reframed a space in a city?
BILL: In San Francisco, they went down into the center of the financial district, on Market Street, and twirled through the crosswalks; they took a show of absurdity to a non-absurd part of town. They also did an event where they rolled out red carpet in front of a BART station and applauded people coming off the subway. That's a funny idea anywhere, but it's even more powerful in San Francisco, because fewer people use the public transportation system there. They're more worthy of applause.
STAY FREE!: This brings us back to the idea of flash mobs as political protest. You can question whether things like this are useful as political protest, but you could say that about any political protest.
BILL: Well, sure. But take, for example, the fact that flash mobs were less than ten minutes long. You don't go and make a political statement and then wilt into the background. That doesn't really work symbolically.
STAY FREE!: True, but to some extent visibility is defined by whether something is covered by the media. And how many more journalists wrote about people buying a "love rug" than some of the political protests that have happened in New York? Groups try their damnedest to get coverage, and often whether they get coverage depends on whether writers consider it interesting.
BILL: I know--in a way, flash mobs became really a media phenomenon above everything else. I had to make the decision early on as to what to do about the media. At the very first mob, the one that got broken up by the cops, an NPR reporter actually tracked me down. It was sort of fateful, because they had somebody on tape saying, "This was organized by my friend Bill." So when they found me at the bar afterward, I gave them an interview. Given that they already had my name on tape, I had to go by Bill, and so that set the tone from the beginning. Then I decided that I was going to give interviews to every single person who wanted to write about flash mobs. I decided that I had to have a rule, because the mob was an experiment and I had to play the thing out to its end, and so the rule was that the mob exists to grow.
STAY FREE!: "And if I do as many interviews as possible, it will grow the mob."
BILL: Exactly, and I developed a slogan: "anything that grows the mob is pro-mob." I would say that sometimes as a joke, but then at a certain point, I would use it in a serious way to my friends. But I also understood that as the Mob Project got bigger, and as it spread to more and more cities, there was inevitably going to be a backlash, and that, in the end, growing the mob was going to make the mobs less cool, and that thereby the mobs would become less popular. But I had to play the thing out to that end.
STAY FREE!: Because if there's never a backlash, were you ever popular enough in the first place?
BILL: Right, and then I would just have to keep doing the things in perpetuity. So if I could play the thing out to the point where it exploded and then became uncool, then I could just stop, which was basically what happened. The backlash took less than two months. All the different wire services had done stories on us--the New York Post did a big story, Time Out did a big story, and the New York Times hadn't. So when the woman from the Times called me, she said, "we've sort of gotten in late on this, so we're going to do a story for the Week in Review about it." We do the interview, and it becomes very clear that she is writing the backlash story . . . The flash mob phenomenon was such a light thing; there wasn't really a movement to begin with! The movement was a creation of the media.
STAY FREE!: But how much was the movement a creation of the media? It was aided by the media, but it wasn't created by them. They didn't create the desire in people, though perhaps they prodded them.
BILL: The media spread the mob. The media said, "This is the next big thing," and then the New York Times ran the first mob backlash story less than two months after the first mob, which I thought was awesome. I knew that there was going to be a backlash story, but I couldn't have dreamed it would happen that fast.
STAY FREE!: And in such a great venue!
BILL: Yeah, and so that was, on some level, the beginning of the end.
STAY FREE!: Did you do the last one thinking, "This is going to be the last one?"
BILL: Yeah, I told everybody it was the last one. And I actually think if I really had wanted to play it out, I should have kept doing it until the mobs were so lame that no one would come, but I guess my pride got in the way. Really, I should have played the experiment out to the point where I was having mobs and it would just be me saying [in a sad voice], "I guess nobody likes flash mobs no more."
STAY FREE!: For the movie version, though, that's a good wrap-up.
BILL: And they pretty much died out soon after that in other places, with the exception of these places overseas.
STAY FREE!: Well, I have to say--good job picking such a self-replicating meme. Lots of people forward email jokes, but nobody knows which one is going to be the next thing.
BILL: True. You come up with these ideas that you think are really going to spread, and nobody picks up on them. Eugene and I tried to do this thing at the Republican Convention called "Conservative Children for America." The premise was to have a bunch of children in three-piece suits handing out bizarre pro-conservative tracts using child-related examples about, for example, not being forced to share. It would be pro-conservative propaganda written by children and distributed by children, but their parents would kind of disavow it: "It's just a phase we hope he grows out of." Anyway, I sent this email around trying to recruit children, or parents with children, and the thing just didn't get anywhere. It didn't even get derided, it just went into the atmosphere and plummeted to earth. I thought it was such a good idea.
STAY FREE!: It is funny, but you've got to have something easy to do. You've got to have a kid and the kid has to have a suit…
BILL: I was prepared to purchase suits for the children. But, yeah, the whole meme-making thing is weird. I have friends who basically make memes for a living--for art projects that involve spreading ideas through the internet. But things spread for reasons that are unknown to all of us.
http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/24/flash-mobs-history.html
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