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We need to balance respect for the environment, and individual privacy, against company’s needs to promote their products and services. Allowing the expensive waste of natural resources (trees and oil) used to produce and deliver useless mail which gets tossed in the trash without anyone ever looking at it, also encourages large-scale pollution of our environment. Moving unwanted junk mail makes a huge impact on erosion of the ozone layer and the quality of the air we breathe.

Opt-out of catalogue mail

There are several services you can now use to opt-out of junk catalogue mail.

The DMA [Direct Marketing Association] has a recently-upgraded service of its own which allows you to opt out of individual catalogues. They used to charge a fee for using it but have yielded to consumer pressure and the service is now free.

DMA Choice

Catalog Choice (www.catalogchoice.org) is a not for profit service run by The Ecology Center. It’s endorsed by the National Wildlife Federation and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Catalogue Choice

Do Not Call Registration Now Permanent

Now when you register your home or cellphone number with the Do Not Call registry your preference remains in effect until you remove the restriction. This change is thanks to the Do-Not-Call Improvement Act of
2007 signed into law in February 2008. More information at the EPIC website. EPIC is one of the consumer privacy organization which lobbied to get this bill passed.

Get on new and improved the donotcall.gov”>Do-Not-Call List by following the instructions at this website.

Stop all kinds of junk soliciting how-tos

Some fantastic resources are available at these websites:

Do-it-yourself: Stop junk mail, email and phone calls. Some of the information here is a bit out of date, but it’s still the best resource on this subject I’ve ever seen.

Ecofuture.org which cautions “The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is not your friend when it comes to junk mail. It makes significant revenue by promoting bulk mail and is geared toward servicing that industry.”

A colleague alerts me that illegal wiretapping began before 911, and I located a well-written article on this very subject at Truthout. Truthout is a great resource for well-documented articles on matter which doesn’t get looked at in depth in the major news media outlets.

The NSA’s vast data-mining activities began shortly after Bush was sworn in as president and the document contradicts his assertion that the 9/11 attacks prompted him to take the unprecedented step of signing a secret executive order authorizing the NSA to monitor a select number of American citizens thought to have ties to terrorist groups.

. . . On orders from Defense Department officials and President Bush, the agency kept a running list of the names of Americans in its system and made it readily available to a number of senior officials in the Bush administration, these sources said, which in essence meant the NSA was conducting a covert domestic surveillance operation in violation of the law.

James Risen, author of the book State of War and credited with first breaking the story about the NSA’s domestic surveillance operations, said President Bush personally authorized a change in the agency’s long-standing policies shortly after he was sworn in in 2001.

“The president personally and directly authorized new operations, like the NSA’s domestic surveillance program, that almost certainly would never have been approved under normal circumstances and that raised serious legal or political questions,” Risen wrote in the book. “Because of the fevered climate created throughout the government by the president and his senior advisers, Bush sent signals of what he wanted done, without explicit presidential orders” and “the most ambitious got the message.”

This same colleague points out that the firing of the nine United States prosecutors in 2006 is linked, in her mind, to questions they were asking about the legality of this practice, which were considered not politically correct. Yesterday’s NY Times article wonders about this as well,

The inspector general is investigating other issues related to accusations of politicization in the Justice Department, including the central question of why the United States attorneys were dismissed in late 2006.

Full Truthout article

Congress last week reversed its March decision to not allow immunity to telecomunications providers who have allowed phone wiretapping without court orders and voted to approve S2248, the FISA Amendment Act 2008. The senate vote is expected as soon as today. Yesterday a test vote showed strong support in the senate to approve the FISA bill with the amendment granting immunity to telecom providers for 6 years of wiretapping without the knowledge or approval of a secret court which was set up expressly for the purpose of reviewing and approving applications for surveillance.

If you wish your senator to vote against telecom immunity make a call and send an email today to your senator.

BERKELEY, CA-Last week, on June 20, the House of Representatives approved a compromise bill to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA). The bill sets new electronic surveillance rules that effectively shield telecommunications companies from lawsuits resulting from the government’s warrantless eavesdropping on phone calls and viewing of emails of private citizens in the U.S. Approximately 40 lawsuits have been filed with potential damages totaling in the billions of dollars.

On March 14 of this year the House passed an amendment that rejected retroactive immunity for phone carriers who helped the National Security Agency carry out the illegal wiretapping program without proper warrants. Ninety-four House Democrats voted in favor of this measure–rejecting immunity–on March 14, then ‘changed’ to vote in favor of the June 20 House bill–approving immunity . . .

House Dems who changed their vote to support FISA bill, giving immunity to telcos, received, on average, $8,359 in PAC contributions from Verizon, AT&T and Sprint.

More at Maplight, Salon and Daily Kos.

It isn’t terrorists or peak oil driving up gas prices. According to this news report it’s trading speculation which was made legal at the same time the price of gas began to skyrocket a few years ago. And experts testifying to Congress say the hikes can stop right away if the legal loophole that allows profiteers to milk the public for billions of dollars of speculation profit on oil futures, is closed up. In fact, the price of gas could be cut 25% or more immediately if the “Enron loophole” is closed.

Video report by Keith Olbermann on Countdown.

In the majority ruling on the right of Guantamo prisoners to have their day in court to challenge the legality of their arrest, Kennedy writes:

The Framers viewed freedom from unlawful restraint as a fundamental precept of liberty, and they understood the writ of habeas corpus as a vital instrument to secure that freedom.

I love that statement. To be free, a person cannot be subject to unrightful restraint.

Glen Greenwald expands on the supreme court decision at Salon.

I came across this informed article on the dangers of aspartame. Stop imbibing this poison!

BRAIN CELL DAMAGE FROM
AMINO ACID ISOLATES:

A PRIMARY CONCERN FROM ASPARTAME-BASED
PRODUCTS AND ARTIFICIAL SWEETENING AGENTS

NutraSweet ~ Equal ~ “Sugar Free” ~ Neotame

By James Bowen, M.D.
And
Arthur M. Evangelista, former FDA Investigator
(c) 06 May 2002

FORWARD
This article is an accumulation of long-standing intensive research into the brain chemistry-altering effects of a toxic, artificial sweetener consumed daily by hundreds of millions of unsuspecting individuals.

We acknowledge the countless and unnecessary suffering, illness, and deaths, associated with the marketing of a trio of neurotoxic ingredients, collectively known as ASPARTAME [ L- aspartyl - L - phenylalanine methyl ester ], also called: NutraSweet, Equal, “Sugar Free”, and Neotame, et al. …a food additive in over 8,000 + food products worldwide.

The three toxic ingredients of Aspartame are methanol (wood alcohol), and phenylalanine and aspartic acid; both the latter are amino acid isolates.

This article is for the education of the public at large, the physicians and health specialists who have the integrity and intellect to understand the implications of aspartame’s ingredients and the biochemical and pathological effects upon brain nerve cells and tissues, resulting in serious neuro-endocrine disorders and other symptomologies.

Additionally, we hold accountable the U.S. Food and Drug Administration; G.D. Searle, the original maker of aspartame; Monsanto; and the numerous corrupted politicians, government officials, physicians, and health care organizations that have literally sold themselves for greed of wealth and power. This was done knowingly, at the expense of the health of millions of infants, children, and adults who needlessly suffer the debilitating effects of this known neurotoxin.

More . . .

Dave Winer writes

Her political career is over”
Strike 4. Suggesting she should stay in the race because Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in 1968.

Too much benefit of the doubt. Bringing assassination into political discourse as an “issue” is too much . . . Screwing around with life and death is over the top.

So true, Dave. I found a video clip of Hillary’s comment here. I think she realized as soon as she said it, that she’d gone where no candidate ought to go, but it was done.

. . . scientists now say the planet itself is generating a constant, deep thrum of noise. No mere cacophony, but actually a kind of music, huge, swirling loops of sound, a song so strange you can’t really fathom it, so low it can’t be heard by human ears, chthonic roars churning from the very water and wind and rock themselves, countless notes of varying vibration creating all sorts of curious tonal phrases that bounce around the mountains and spin over the oceans and penetrate the tectonic plates and gurgle in the magma and careen off the clouds and smack into trees and bounce off your ribcage and spin over the surface of the planet in strange circular loops, “like dozens of lazy hurricanes,” as one writer put it.

. . . . Me, I like to think of the Earth as essentially a giant Tibetan singing bowl, flicked by the middle finger of God and set to a mesmerizing, low ring for about 10 billion years until the tone begins to fade and the vibration slows and eventually the sound completely disappears into nothingness and the birds are all, hey what the hell happened to the music? And God just shrugs and goes, well that was interesting.

More . . .

Twitter enhancers . . .

Tiago Doria tipped me off about The Wall Tweet Journal, giving up to the minute news about the microblogging portal. Tiago also likes to play with TweetLater. Lets him archive his tweets for delivery later. Is that fun, or what?

So, which are the Twitteratii that you follow who also follow you? Just as importantly, who isn’t following? My friend Dossy Shiobara created an app calledTwitter Karma just to give a simple answer this question. Give it a whack.

Want to see photographs turned into mosaics using fotos representing Twitter users? Sure you do. Twittermosaic.com.

The link Raymmmondo posted this morning on a local give-away list [like freecycle, but not] brings me to his websitepackratmom.com where he starts off telling his mother’s eBay saga with the phrase, “My mother is insane.” Raymmmondo proves that statement with pictures showing every room in the house where he lives with his mom overflowing - just filled to bursting point - with boxes, paperweights, dead plants, empty bird cages and a few years of saved junk mail. Everything, bought from eBay.

Shades of the Collyer brothers who up to now, held the pack-rat world record. Maybe they’re going to have to move over.

Here’s a sample look at Ray’s home life

Into the kitchen. Underneath the center pile is the dining room table, and underneath the dining room table is more boxes. A bunch of the food in here is several years old, and from a dollar store, but my mom still won’t throw it away.