Don't know *how* I missed this, lol!

'Poppy Quarter' Behind Spy Coin Alert

By TED BRIDIS
The Associated Press
Monday, May 7, 2007; 3:56 PM

WASHINGTON -- An odd-looking Canadian quarter with a bright red flower was the culprit behind a false espionage warning from the Defense Department about mysterious coins with radio frequency transmitters, The Associated Press has learned.

The harmless "poppy quarter" was so unfamiliar to suspicious U.S. Army contractors traveling in Canada that they filed confidential espionage accounts about them. The worried contractors described the coins as "filled with something man-made that looked like nano-technology," according to once-classified U.S. government reports and e-mails obtained by the AP.

The silver-colored 25-cent piece features the red image of a poppy _ Canada's flower of remembrance _ inlaid over a maple leaf. The unorthodox quarter is identical to the coins pictured and described as suspicious in the contractors' accounts.

The supposed nano-technology on the coin actually was a protective coating the Royal Canadian Mint applied to prevent the poppy's red color from rubbing off. The mint produced nearly 30 million such quarters in 2004 commemorating Canada's 117,000 war dead.

"It did not appear to be electronic (analog) in nature or have a power source," wrote one U.S. contractor, who discovered the coin in the cup holder of a rental car. "Under high power microscope, it appeared to be complex consisting of several layers of clear, but different material, with a wire-like mesh suspended on top."

The confidential accounts led to a sensational warning from the Defense Security Service, an agency of the Defense Department, that mysterious coins with radio frequency transmitters were found planted on U.S. contractors with classified security clearances on at least three separate occasions between October 2005 and January 2006 as the contractors traveled through Canada.

"We'll have a good laugh over it," said John Regitko, who writes a newsletter for a leading coin-collecting organization, the Canadian Numismatic Association. "We never suspected there was such a thing (as spy coins) anyway."

Regitko predicted the quarter will become especially popular among collectors because of its infamy as the culprit behind the spy warning, despite the quarter's wide availability. "Everybody has some in their drawer at home," he said.

One contractor believed someone had placed two of the quarters in an outer coat pocket after the contractor had emptied the pocket hours earlier. "Coat pockets were empty that morning and I was keeping all of my coins in a plastic bag in my inner coat pocket," the contractor wrote.

The Defense Department subsequently acknowledged it could never substantiate the espionage warning, but until now it has never disclosed the details behind the embarrassing episode.

In Canada, senior intelligence officials had expressed annoyance with the American spy-coin warnings as they tried to learn more about the oddball claims.

"That story about Canadians planting coins in the pockets of defense contractors will not go away," Luc Portelance, now deputy director for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, wrote in a January e-mail to a subordinate. "Could someone tell me more? Where do we stand and what's the story on this?"

Others in Canada's spy service also were searching for answers. "We would be very interested in any more detail you may have on the validity of the comment related to the use of Canadian coins in this manner," another intelligence official wrote in an e-mail. "If it is accurate, are they talking industrial or state espionage? If the latter, who?" The identity of the e-mail's recipient was censored.

Intelligence and technology experts were flabbergasted over the warning when it was first publicized earlier this year. The warning suggested that such transmitters could be used surreptitiously to track the movements of people carrying the coins.

"I thought the whole thing was preposterous, to think you could tag an individual with a coin and think they wouldn't give it away or spend it," said H. Keith Melton, a leading intelligence historian.

But Melton said the Army contractors properly reported their suspicions. "You want contractors or any government personnel to report anything suspicious," he said. "You can't have the potential target evaluating whether this was an organized attack or a fluke."

The Defense Security Service disavowed its warning about spy coins after an international furor. The U.S. said it never substantiated the contractors' claims and performed an internal review to determine how the false information was included in a 29-page published report about espionage concerns.

The Defense Security Service never examined the suspicious coins, spokeswoman Cindy McGovern said. "We know where we made the mistake," she said. "The information wasn't properly vetted. While these coins aroused suspicion, there ultimately was nothing there."

A numismatist consulted by the AP, Dennis Pike of Canadian Coin & Currency near Toronto, quickly matched a grainy image and physical descriptions of the suspect coins in the contractors' confidential accounts to the 25-cent poppy piece.

"It's not uncommon at all," Pike said. He added that the coin's protective coating glows peculiarly under ultraviolet light. "That may have been a little bit suspicious," he said.

Some of the U.S. documents the AP obtained were classified "Secret/Noforn," meaning they were never supposed to be viewed by foreigners, even America's closest allies. The government censored parts of the files, citing national security reasons, before turning over copies under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.

Nothing in the documents _ except the reference to nanotechnology _ explained how the contractors' accounts evolved into a full-blown warning about spy coins with radio frequency transmitters. Many passages were censored, including the names of contractors and details about where they worked and their projects.

But there were indications the accounts should have been taken lightly. Next to one blacked-out sentence was this warning: "This has not been confirmed as of yet."

The Canadian intelligence documents, which also were censored, were turned over to the AP for $5 under that country's Access to Information Act. Canada cited rules for protecting against subversive or hostile activities to explain why it censored the papers.

___

Associated Press writer Beth Duff-Brown contributed to this story from Toronto.

© 2007 The Associated Press

Hattip to Siege ♥

Love this!

Do click title for source: Great Blog!

Subterranean Homesick Blues

While you were gone
sometimes I'd just sit in the dark
holding the shell in my hand
feeling the sea moving there
a subtle purple wave
feeling your soul
moving like a tide
in my body

So Thankful

Today's trip to town, feeling blue and down,
body hurting, wishing I wasn't going.
Wishing only to sleep the pain away
on a tide of sleep that will not come.

Caught then in the web of beauty
of green, and flowers, and life.
Stopped to let a spotty fawn cross,
and counted flowers in bloom just now,
and pondered love, and why it is so hard
when it is so natural, and is all we wish.

In town, smiles and courtesy
sweet country people that I love
who love me back so easily. Then

Coming home, counting flowers again,
knowing so many are in bloom I have
no hope of remembering them all and

The first black cohosh. For which I live
from year to year just to see for its brief weeks
Radiant candles in the green light.
And took that road, slowly, watching for its spots
its beloved corners. White luminous spikes in the
understory. Always in shade. Taller, often than
I am. Seeks no company. A subtle flower, that.
A woman's plant, in all ways.

And slowing for the white-tail mother, still
clad in summer red, and the small fat gray
Whistlepig, remember also, for once, to say:


Thank you
Thank you
Then tears of joy
not sorrow

LOVE IS ALL YOU NEED

I'm looking through you

Come and Get It

HEY JUDE

Faded Love

Redline Blues

The irony here, of course, is that this man is not interested in you. He's not interested in women at all. He's interested in mirrors. . . .

This is my favorite. . . .

I am with you on Midsummer's Eve. . . .

Poor Boys of Alabama

Down by the Riverside

Wabash Cannonball

Here I Am Baby

What I did whilst the phone was out. . . .

Pome from a Daddy's Girl

I used to climb in your lap
and say Daddy, don't be sad.
And you'd always smile and say
I'm not.

But you were. After you were
gone, Mama gave me some of your
war letters to me.
You worried about what we'd do
after the war, to the losers.

The only fight you ever got into
was trying to stop a neighbor from
flying us around by our arms --
afraid of dislocation.

And I remember the family of eight
you brought home to live with us for months
because they needed us to do that.

And the little boys you escorted
through the shop so they could sell
pop to the workers. And then you stayed
an hour later to make up the time.

After more than forty years,
I still miss you.


.

So. The world won't end this year: Someone saved some bears.

SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) - After a lifetime of brutal treatment, including walking on burning embers, Bulgaria's last three dancing bears will get to rest their paws at a mountain sanctuary, in an apparent end to the centuries-old performance tradition in the Balkans.

Activists on Friday bought the freedom of Mima, 8, Misho, 19, and Svetla, 17.

A member of Bulgaria's Stanev gypsy family plays with the family owned 19-year-old male bear called Misho in their home yard in the village of Getsovo some 400 kms. (250 miles) east of the Bulgarian capital Sofia, Friday. "The three bears dubbed Misho, Svetla and Mima will not dance on hot surfaces anymore. (AP Photo/Petar Petrov)

Bulgaria is believed to have been the last country in the Balkans where dancing bears still performed, even though the practice was outlawed in 1993, when there were 20 to 30 such bears in the country.

The three bears will join another 20 brown bears on Mount Rila at a 12-hectare sanctuary for former dancing bears about 180 kilometres south of Sofia.

Click title for the rest.

Google your name plus "wants"

Julie wants to meet 26 people.

Julie wants to have complete control over cross-domain connections for the farm

Julie wants to prove herself

Julie says she just wanted to enslave him and ultimately got bored.

Julie wants to do everything she can to help you spend more time with your family

Julie Wants No Gender.

Julie wants to forget all about Neil. To do that and start a new life, she comes to Mumbai where she stays with Dinky, her childhood friend. ...

Julie wants attention ...

Julie wants to come with us

JULIE wants to return to her roots

Julie wants the little children to grow up to be big and strong, ...

The pleasures of a morning google stumbled upon

An aside on food insanity. I just read the article in this week's New York Times Magazine on Raw Foodism, and so this is no amazing observation, but Jesus Christ!! Two things strike me about this unfathomably ignorant trend. The first is, how male it is somehow, how Fast and Furious. "You're a vegan. Big fucking deal -- I don't heat my food. Take that!" And wow, the power of self-righteousness. The guy says he's never felt so good -- well, yeah, because nothing feels better than being better than everybody else. And the third thing is -- yeah, I decided I had three points -- My God, how sad. There is precious little comfort in this world. Why take food, one of the very few simple comforts, and turn it into an obstacle? Why rob yourself of one of the few honest pleasures you'll ever know?

Thanks Julie!

Somewhere,

. . . . .sigh. . . . .

http://www.sculptures-by-bjh.com/Hawks.htm

Totem, Teacher

You spoke often of the hawks

When chemo was killing you
your teacher sent the hawk feather
straight to your heart

Who asked, for you, a gift
and the hawk reached down
and plucked a breast feather,
for you

I have them still
And when I find your place
opened earth
Will drop them in,
after you

closing prayer
om mani padme hung

♥

http://digitalchocolate.org/index.htm

Gift of a Feather

you needed flight
free as the red tail
to sail

is it as you imagined?
the gentle breeze that lifts
in spring it is a transcient thing
that breath

we are all such
and wishing much
settle for the glimpse
and waft

Phil

you might have this one from the blog but it fits your mood?

11:21 AM, June 11, 2007

Still in love with this man

Finding the way home

Last couple of days have been toughies, to say the least.

I've told Godde that I wish to come home. She simply sez, Not yet. So I must abide.

Looking for pictures to post in lieu of words found a wonderful website, full of wisdom, and wonderful pictures. And copyrighted up the kazoo. The insistence on copyright in total opposition to everything the website is supposedly about, lol! I tried to email the owner to point this out, but those links don't work.


Peace out.

New and improved titsling

Hubcap Diamond Star Halo