1 – A human being monitoring all dog breeding supply store phone lines, in real time, all the time? Unlikely.

2 – All calls being automatically recorded and also automatically analyzed, perhaps on a delayed basis, for key spoken words like “potassium permaganate”, kicking the hits out to a human for listening & transcribing? Much more likely.

Recall the other day we figured out it would be very practical nowadays to record literally all phone calls in the US.

geesh!

here’s the youtube video where “everday angelinos” explain how they’re going to do their part to watch for the terrorists roaming our streets:

cue the parody videos in 3…2.. -

Here are examples of behaviors and activities to report:

* People drawing or measuring important buildings.
* Strangers asking questions about security or building security procedures.
* Briefcase, suitcase, backpack, or package left behind.
* Cars or trucks left in No Parking zones in front of important buildings.
* Intruders in secure areas where they are not supposed to be.
* Chemical smells or fumes that worry you.
* People asking questions about sensitive information such as building blueprints, security plans, or VIP travel schedules without a right or need to know.
* Purchasing supplies or equipment that can be used to make bombs or weapons or purchasing uniforms without having the proper credentials.

Important Places to Watch

* Government buildings
* Religious facilities
* Amusement parks
* Sports/Entertainment venues
* High-rise buildings
* Mass-gathering locations—parades, fairs, etc.
* Schools
* Hotels
* Theaters
* Shopping malls
* Bridges
* Public transportation

but remember kids, “…the iWATCH program is about behaviors and activities, not individuals.”

ah, yes, potassium permanganate.

a teenage friend and i used to make bombs -

using potassium permanganate as a “fuse”.

we would use those small brown glass bottles with a cork-and-metal top and a wick sticking out.

the recipe called for potassium permanganate, and i believe sulfur and saltpeter, and maybe charcoal. all ingredients were available from our local drug store.

you put the latter three ingredients in the bottle and then put drops of potassium permanganate (a beautiful purple liquid as i recall) on the cotton “fuse”.

place the bottle on a sewer or manhole cover and run like hell.

the permanganate caused some kind of rapid oxidation reaction i suppose which was the explosion.

if we were lucky our bomb went off.

problem was, ofttimes it would not go off. bummer.

then we had to make adult-like decisions, e.g., how long to wait to investigate so we could improve our tradecraft vs what would happen if we went up to the bottle just as a delayed explosion occurred.

a fascinating and exciting intro to chemistry (as it turned out, the only thing i ever really enjoyed about chemistry, except cooking.)

We have a friend, a female, widowed, 75-yo retired math professor who retired from Gaulladet after 30 years. She has two hobbies, gardening and breeding the occasional show-class Irish Terrier. This year before the Westminster Dog Show, she ordered .17 oz (5 grams) of a color chemical potassium permaganate from a dog breeding supply co in Colorado. She ordered by telephone. She has been a customer with the company for more than 20 years. She typically buys this amount every 5 years.

Voila the tapped phone. She received a letter from Homeland Security demanding her presence at a court hearing. She called and said there must be an error. The next day three FBI SUVs showed up at her house demanding a search. Trembling, she told them to get a search warrant. The following day, the UPS delivery van was intercepted on her street by the FBI. She had to hire an attorney. She contacted Sen. Mikulski and Chris Van Hollen, who actually tracked down the source: a DHS “listener” who wrote 500 kilograms on the wire tap report.

This poor woman lost many nights of sleep with untold anxiety. What have we wrought?

an afghani lad, apparently legally resident in the u.s., decides he wants to go to pakistan – for a conjugal visit. man, talk about all night long!

to leave the u.s. and eventually travel to pakistan, this afghani needs a visa (or two or three).

presumably he got that (those) visa.

he stays a while with wifie, or whomever, and then returns to the u.s. to his family’s home in denver, CO.

he then wanders the country buying hydrogen peroxide and acetone.

do i understand this correctly?

a guy who is a citizen of afghanistan living in the u.s. legally is allowed to go to pakistan and then come, back no questions asked (by visa officials)?

what is going on?

did the fbi decide to play dice with americans flying on airplanes?

we don’t dare let “criminals” from gitmo go to american high-security prisons to spend the rest of their natural lives,

but we can let a young, muslim male living in denver go to pakistian and come back to denver without any hindrance to his travel by our gov.

at a time when, for example, university graduate departments of science and engineering are having to fight – and fight hard – to get highly competent grad students from other countries admitted with u.s. visa in time for fall classes to start?

zazi must have been a very privileged lad indeed.

we are told it was the pakistani govt who told the u.s. about zazi i doubt it. i suspect he was allowed to go and was watched throughout his journey.

so zazi is a political red herring.

then, what is it that does in fact motivate difi, and leighy, and (i can’t believe this) sen whitehouse to support the expansion of sect 215 and other parts of the odious patriot act?

central question:

how come i am not allowed to know the answer to the question i just asked?

i’m a citizen.

i keep up with things in the media (sort of).

am i not entitled to know whatever it is that feinstein and leighy and whitehouse and holder and obama “know” about why it is critical that sect 215 (and many other parts) of the PATRIOT act MUST be extended?

allow me to point this out:

whenever the nation is not permitted to know information about a national security issue, one or the other (or both) of two things is happening:

- politics, not national security, is the central issue

and/or

- criminal activity by federal officials is involved in some way.

these two propositions are as certain and solid as any two propositions about american politics can be.

BTW, has Dana Peroxide been shipped to Gitmo yet ?