At what point does caring about mankind mean enough to you to at least question the propaganda you have been fed over and over? The subject of 9/11 is horrifying on so many levels. Eleven years later, much more is known about one of the worst events in American history. The mainstream media has grossly neglected critical forensic evidence that contradicts the 9/11 Commission Report's explanation of events. Instead, it has deliberately embarked on a campaign to characterize those who question the official explanation(s) of 9/11 as conspiracy theorists, extremists, or unpatriotic, labeling such skeptics as "Truthers." Well, this editor has been called worse.

"You had to live - did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement was scrutinized." - George Orwell, 1984

Brace yourselves for the next wave in the surveillance state's steady incursions into our lives. It's coming at us with a lethal one-two punch.

To start with, there's the government's integration of facial-recognition software and other biometric markers into its identification data programs. The FBI's Next Generation Identification (NGI) system is a $1-billion boondoggle that is aimed at dramatically expanding the government's current ID database from a fingerprint system to a facial-recognition system. NGI will use a variety of biometric data, cross-referenced against the nation's growing network of surveillance cameras, to not only track your every move but create a permanent "recognition" file on you within the government's massive databases.

By the time it's fully operational in 2014, NGI will serve as a vast data storehouse of "iris scans, photos searchable with face-recognition technology, palm prints, and measures of gait and voice recordings alongside records of fingerprints, scars, and tattoos." One component of NGI, the Universal Face Workstation, already contains some 13-million facial images, gleaned from "criminal mug shot photos" taken during the booking process. However, with major search engines having "accumulated face-image databases that in their size dwarf the earth's population," it's only a matter of time before the government taps into the trove of images stored on social-media and photo-sharing Web sites such as Facebook.

As a company over the past few years, Apple has come a long way in the wrong direction - exactly the opposite direction from that indicated in the seminal, game-changing Macintosh "1984" commercial. As time goes on, Apple seems to rely less and less on its ability to create a groundbreaking product, and more and more on its ability to use the power of government to prevent others from doing likewise.

The verdict in last month's patent lawsuit - in which Apple managed to have Korean electronics firm Samsung sanctioned for, among other things, violating an Apple patent on the shape of tablet computers - is just the tip of an iceberg extending well below the waterline of recent history.

Most people looked at last week's veto by Governor Pat Quinn of the big gaming-expansion bill and saw nothing except defeat for the issue. But the governor appeared to deliberately leave some doors open that you could drive a riverboat through.

For instance, nowhere in his veto message did Quinn mention slots at tracks. Quinn had been an adamant foe of allowing the horse-racing industry to set up "mini-casinos" at their facilities, saying it would result in an over-saturation of the market.