This looks like the start of a new craze, or maybe its been going on for a long time? Arresting 100's of people and putting them through hell for over 24 hours (sometimes allot over 24 hours) to basically give them an on-the-spot jail term. and make an example out of them. This wasn't just arresting people for real reasons, an entire dirty warehouse was set-up (pier 57) for it, its not like they just sat there for 24 hours to get them off the streets and out of trouble. Not that they even caused any trouble which luckily for their court case is well documented. They were cuffed much? of the time and given conditions people in real prisons would look down on! They were marched around dozens of cells and processing rooms and were never given lawyers. Ever had to wait a couple of hours at an airport, or train station with only some crappy paper to read and all the shops shut? now that's pretty shitty, i cant even imagine what this must be like.

Now yes I agree its true, they did break the law, but is but is beating the crap out of them right? is it really going to solve anything? no. Instead they should be sued, they all have insurance, let that cover it and let them all - every last police officer in New York who was involved stand up one-by-one on live TV and say "Im sorry, im sorry i voilated your rights, im sorry i broke the law, im sorry i played a part in this unlawful judge-dred style punishment, as people of this city please don't fire me" and lets not forget the mayor and anyone else who decided that terrorism was ok as long as it didn't involve killing people.

Oh I love to see governments squirm and get pissed off when theres nothing they can do about it. I was loosing hope for the BBC since Fame Academy 2 (when you copy a crap show like pop-idol but take out the best part thats what you get) but this was brilliant! they managed to get an interview with this guy and used an Israeli interviewer to get past the rule that he couldnt talk to foreign press! They got raided half way through and had tapes confiscated but still managed to smuggle the whole thing back to London, just like in good old 1986! Of course the Israeli government was as pissed as shit claiming that the interview revealed more secrets (which of course are very very dangerous secrets that would allow anyone full access to Israels nuclear weapons) and even more brilliantly said that the BBC was a:

"communications organization whose goal is to undermine the legitimacy of the state of Israel. It promotes hostile coverage of Israel... and the Vanunu affair proves that the BBC is a communications entity which shows complete disregard for journalistic standards and ethics. Their journalistic culture can be compared to that of media outlets in Arab states, or in the Palestinian Authority." source

Lets just take a look at that:

• communications organization - check, its still a free-speech world right?
• goal is to undermine the legitimacy of the state of Israel - your goal is to undermine the legitimacy of the state of Palestine - snap!
• complete disregard for journalistic standards and ethics - OH REALLY!? you can talk about ethics when you kidnap someone from another country and treat them like shit for 18 years.
• Comparable to Arab media and Palestinian Authority - now your just being mean

So of course they begged the BBC to not show the interview, they got down on their knees and started sucki.. oh wait got carried away there, basically they're pissed off to the max and I was worried that maybe the show would be cancelled and replaced with a repeat of The Good Life but no it went on. This thing needs to be seen and this guy frankly needs to be rescued by the Brits. Id like to think that if he decided to leg it to the British embassy we would help him and fly him out.

And lastly all these people who think he gave away dangerous secrets - WTF are you smoking? how was the information dangerous? how did it give terrorists access to nuclear weapons? Dimona was _known_ to be a _reactor_ it had a big fucking dome on it and radiation signs around it, if a terrorist wanted to blow it up they would do it because of that and no, blowing it up would not cause a nuclear detonation it would be like a normal reactor blowing up which they already knew! Secondly the nuclear stockpile will not be stored there and he did not know or reveal the locations of those weapons. What he did say was a confirmation of what US inspectors had suspected in the 60's - in their own report which is publicly availiable now they believed that they wern't being told the whole truth, Vanunu helped America and yet even Americans consider him a traitor!? .. And still the Israeli government neither denies or confirms their nuclear arsenal, an act which really buggers up nuclear non-proliferation treaties which of course they don't sign. As of December 2000, there are 187 parties to the NPT.

I really did try to have a fair and balanced argument before but, Israeli government - go fuck yourselves, you kidnap, censor, treat like shit, then censor again, then arrest our journalists and get away with it! And for what its worth, if he was revealing nuclear secrets about my country I would still call him a hero.

Im doing media technology (no its not media studies damn you!) and the deadline to come up with a final year project is looming (which means about 2 days) any ideas (apart from smell-o-vision) welcome, generally it can be either a hardware or software based one-year project which should have roughly something to do with media, video, image processing, audio or something like that. Software projects preferred (cheaper :P) should be reasonably interesting :P

so far ive come up with the wild selection of:

"some sort of image recognition do-da but i dont know what it should do"

"the security and privacy issues involved with electronic voting (and implement a secure and private system)" (not sure if this one is media related enough)

"Video editing software... erm... thats er just video editing software"

any ideas anyone?

Mordechai Vanunu is a traitor to the Israeli government, and probably a traitor to Israel itself. But to the rest of the world hes a hero. Now if he had revealed his secrets inside Israel it would be an internal affair, but he didnt, he left the country and was then taken back against his will. Now I dont know if the Italian government agreed to it - i.e extradited him, maybe they did? but if they didnt its most certainly kidnap. This man then spent the next 18 years in prision, most of that time in solitary confinement. Now hes out but not allowed to talk to the press or leave Israel.

That alone is warrent enough for some serious bitch slapping to the Israeli government, but lets take a look at their other affairs shall we?

The United States, Russia, The United Kingdom, France, China, India and Pakistan. They all have one thing in common, they officially admit to having nuclear weapons. This basically means they can have grown-up discussions about their weapons and sign treaties promising not to test or strike first etc. So these countries can say "Hey, I have nukes, you have nukes, lets chill out ok?". In politics this is called a declared nuclear state. The opposite of this is a country that says "Er no we dont have nuclear weapons, that thing? oh thats a textile factory!" Does this sound like a responsible country to you? Is this not one of the main reasons cited for the invasion of Iraq and maybe even Iran? Well this is a pretty good description of Israel, infact afew decades ago, that big dome shaped building in Dimona was officially known as.. a textile factory!

Ok so they came out and admitted that they had lied, the Dimona plant wasn't making clothes, it was a nuclear reactor, but only a peacful one!

Now im not qualified to say Vanunu is telling the truth or not, i have no idea. Fact is, he has photographic evidence which was published in the Sunday Times in 1986 to say that this plant produces nuclear weapons. In the 60's, after the revalation of the plants existance the US government was allowed an inspection. Guess what they concluded?

We remain concerned that Israel may have succeeded in concealing a decision to develop nuclear weapons. [The team findings must be weighed against the following facts (see link)] - Source: The Jewish Virtual Library

Vanunu claims that during this inspection the lower ground parts of the complex were hidden, and lifts and stairwells were bricked over! I have no idea if this is true or not, and if anyone has evidence for or against then please comment.

Also, i think its a common misconception that the secrets he revealed were dangerous and could have allowed terrorist access to nuclear weapons, im pretty sure they were not dangerous.

Anyone want to comment? please give links if you can. This is pretty much a separate issue from the debate on Israel's legitimacy as a state, thats off-topic for this journal.

Since the recent black-outs in America, i just wondered if it would be possible to electrocute yourself using say a bicycle powered generator. This would prove vital if there were any executions scheduled during the blackout.

Of course if you had several generators and people to power them you could easily kill someone. Thats pretty boring though - im talking about one generator, one person, a self contained execution.

If you used some sort of storage device eg. a capacitor, you could charge up for a certain amount of time and then be able to enjoy your stored up energy, this is also pretty straight forward.

So the main question is, given a choice of generators - AC or DC, and no energy storage, is it possible to kill yourself?

Looking around the net gives varying quotes on lethal current, i will settle at about 100mA. Resistance is another question - it varies allot, ive seen figures from as low as 400 ohms to 1Mohm.

The average human can hand crank about 50W, peddle constantly at 100-150W, and just about manage to get up to 400-500W for a short period of time. This is all guessing and bad estimation. It doesnt seem to far out that 400W could kill you (step up transformers are allowed btw).

Any ideas? This would be a boon to 3rd world countries that want electrocution without the fuss!

The original article, USAF Readies Laser of Death was where i wrote them.

The message they replaced the comments with reads (with the first line in red):

"This comment has been removed since it was clearly in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 871 (Threats Against The President) and / or Section 875 (Interstate Communications: Extortions / Threats). You can Read More Here. We're sorry to have to do this, and while we don't necessarily agree with this, it is still the law. When the Secret Service gets involved, we don't have many options. We appreciate your understanding in the matter. Please call (202) 406-5000 if you have any questions."

Its all still there for you to look at! This is so cool, am i the only person to have comments deleted? Im not in the USA so i didnt call the number or really give a shit about breaking the law there.

Now i have the urge to fuck bush with an AK-47, no thats not a threat, im just horney!

Dear Diary,

Today, I purchased a small quantity of weapons grade plutonium off eBay. The guy I bought it from was happy to be rid of it, even though my bid was very small. I sent my payment, noting that the address was somewhere in Asia. "Oh well, it shouldn't take more than a few months," I thought to myself. So it came as a pleasant surprise when my doorbell rang and a man from Parcel-Force was there with a big heavy box. It turned out that the man I bought the plutonium from had a friend over here who was looking after it. I love eBay.

On next weeks episode:

- My door is knocked down at 3am and the police storm my house with semi-automatics and flash-bangs and extradite me to America. It seems they also read slashdot (read = monitor and scan for keywords). God damn it Bush and Blair suck.

- I write the code for a tcp/ip based detonation system that comes with a neat web interface. You can even have the nuclear codes send to your email address should you forget them.

- My /. Account gets deleted.

- no-one reads this.