despite the fact that i haven’t had any orders for more than a month, i signed up as a distributor for shoyeido incense (they now have a “resell from internet” policy, which they haven’t in the past), and ordered $125 worth of incense from them, primarily because chris wants more hori-kawa. the added bonus is that i get to order their $100 a box incense at wholesale.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
504
May, 22, 2006
Former AT&T technician Mark Klein is the key witness in the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s class-action lawsuit against the telecommunications company, which alleges that AT&T cooperated in an illegal National Security Agency domestic surveillance program.
In a public statement Klein issued last month, he described the NSA’s visit to an AT&T office. In an older, less-public statement recently acquired by Wired News, Klein goes into additional details of his discovery of an alleged surveillance operation in an AT&T building in San Francisco.
Klein supports his claim by attaching excerpts of three internal company documents: a Dec. 10, 2002, manual titled “Study Group 3, LGX/Splitter Wiring, San Francisco,” a Jan. 13, 2003, document titled “SIMS, Splitter Cut-In and Test Procedure” and a second “Cut-In and Test Procedure” dated Jan. 24, 2003.
AT&T’s Implementation of NSA Spying on American Citizens
31 December 2005
I wrote the following document in 2004 when it became clear to me that AT&T, at the behest of the National Security Agency, had illegally installed secret computer gear designed to spy on internet traffic. At the time I thought this was an outgrowth of the notorious Total Information Awareness program, which was attacked by defenders of civil liberties. But now it’s been revealed by The New York Times that the spying program is vastly bigger and was directly authorized by President Bush, as he himself has now admitted, in flagrant violation of specific statutes and constitutional protections for civil liberties. I am presenting this information to facilitate the dismantling of this dangerous Orwellian project.
AT&T Deploys Government Spy Gear on WorldNet Network
16 January, 2004
In 2003 AT&T built “secret rooms” hidden deep in the bowels of its central offices in various cities, housing computer gear for a government spy operation which taps into the company’s popular WorldNet service and the entire internet. These installations enable the government to look at every individual message on the internet and analyze exactly what people are doing. Documents showing the hardwire installation in San Francisco suggest that there are similar locations being installed in numerous other cities.
The physical arrangement, the timing of its construction, the government-imposed secrecy surrounding it and other factors all strongly suggest that its origins are rooted in the Defense Department’s Total Information Awareness (TIA) program which brought forth vigorous protests from defenders of constitutionally protected civil liberties last year:
“As the director of the effort, Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, has described the system in Pentagon documents and in speeches, it will provide intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials with instant access to information from internet mail and calling records to credit card and banking transactions and travel documents, without a search warrant.” The New York Times, 9 November 2002
To mollify critics, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) spokesmen have repeatedly asserted that they are only conducting “research” using “artificial synthetic data” or information from “normal DOD intelligence channels” and hence there are “no U.S. citizen privacy implications” (Department of Defense, Office of the Inspector General report on TIA, December 12, 2003). They also changed the name of the program to “Terrorism Information Awareness” to make it more politically palatable. But feeling the heat, Congress made a big show of allegedly cutting off funding for TIA in late 2003, and the political fallout resulted in Adm. Poindexter’s abrupt resignation last August. However, the fine print reveals that Congress eliminated funding only for “the majority of the TIA components,” allowing several “components” to continue (DOD, ibid). The essential hardware elements of a TIA-type spy program are being surreptitiously slipped into “real world” telecommunications offices.
In San Francisco the “secret room” is Room 641A at 611 Folsom Street, the site of a large SBC phone building, three floors of which are occupied by AT&T. High-speed fiber-optic circuits come in on the 8th floor and run down to the 7th floor where they connect to routers for AT&T’s WorldNet service, part of the latter’s vital “Common Backbone.” In order to snoop on these circuits, a special cabinet was installed and cabled to the “secret room” on the 6th floor to monitor the information going through the circuits. (The location code of the cabinet is 070177.04, which denotes the 7th floor, aisle 177 and bay 04.) The “secret room” itself is roughly 24-by-48 feet, containing perhaps a dozen cabinets including such equipment as Sun servers and two Juniper routers, plus an industrial-size air conditioner.
The normal work force of unionized technicians in the office are forbidden to enter the “secret room,” which has a special combination lock on the main door. The telltale sign of an illicit government spy operation is the fact that only people with security clearance from the National Security Agency can enter this room. In practice this has meant that only one management-level technician works in there. Ironically, the one who set up the room was laid off in late 2003 in one of the company’s endless “downsizings,” but he was quickly replaced by another.
Plans for the “secret room” were fully drawn up by December 2002, curiously only four months after Darpa started awarding contracts for TIA. One 60-page document, identified as coming from “AT&T Labs Connectivity & Net Services” and authored by the labs’ consultant Mathew F. Casamassima, is titled Study Group 3, LGX/Splitter Wiring, San Francisco and dated 12/10/02. This document addresses the special problem of trying to spy on fiber-optic circuits. Unlike copper wire circuits which emit electromagnetic fields that can be tapped into without disturbing the circuits, fiber-optic circuits do not “leak” their light signals. In order to monitor such communications, one has to physically cut into the fiber somehow and divert a portion of the light signal to see the information.
This problem is solved with “splitters” which literally split off a percentage of the light signal so it can be examined. This is the purpose of the special cabinet referred to above: Circuits are connected into it, the light signal is split into two signals, one of which is diverted to the “secret room.” The cabinet is totally unnecessary for the circuit to perform — in fact it introduces problems since the signal level is reduced by the splitter — its only purpose is to enable a third party to examine the data flowing between sender and recipient on the internet.
The above-referenced document includes a diagram showing the splitting of the light signal, a portion of which is diverted to “SG3 Secure Room,” i.e., the so-called “Study Group” spy room. Another page headlined “Cabinet Naming” lists not only the “splitter” cabinet but also the equipment installed in the “SG3” room, including various Sun devices, and Juniper M40e and M160 “backbone” routers. PDF file 4 shows one of many tables detailing the connections between the “splitter” cabinet on the 7th floor (location 070177.04) and a cabinet in the “secret room” on the 6th floor (location 060903.01). Since the San Francisco “secret room” is numbered 3, the implication is that there are at least several more in other cities (Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego are some of the rumored locations), which likely are spread across the United States.
One of the devices in the “Cabinet Naming” list is particularly revealing as to the purpose of the “secret room”: a Narus STA 6400. Narus is a 7-year-old company which, because of its particular niche, appeals not only to businessmen (it is backed by AT&T, JP Morgan and Intel, among others) but also to police, military and intelligence officials. Last November 13-14, for instance, Narus was the “Lead Sponsor” for a technical conference held in McLean, Virginia, titled “Intelligence Support Systems for Lawful Interception and Internet Surveillance.” Police officials, FBI and DEA agents, and major telecommunications companies eager to cash in on the “war on terror” had gathered in the hometown of the CIA to discuss their special problems. Among the attendees were AT&T, BellSouth, MCI, Sprint and Verizon. Narus founder, Dr. Ori Cohen, gave a keynote speech. So what does the Narus STA 6400 do?
“The (Narus) STA Platform consists of standalone traffic analyzers that collect network and customer usage information in real time directly from the message…. These analyzers sit on the message pipe into the ISP (internet service provider) cloud rather than tap into each router or ISP device” (Telecommunications magazine, April 2000). A Narus press release (1 Dec., 1999) also boasts that its Semantic Traffic Analysis (STA) technology “captures comprehensive customer usage data … and transforms it into actionable information…. (It) is the only technology that provides complete visibility for all internet applications.”
To implement this scheme, WorldNet’s high-speed data circuits already in service had to be rerouted to go through the special “splitter” cabinet. This was addressed in another document of 44 pages from AT&T Labs, titled SIMS, Splitter Cut-In and Test Procedure, dated 01/13/03. “SIMS” is an unexplained reference to the secret room. Part of this reads as follows:
“A WMS (work) Ticket will be issued by the AT&T Bridgeton Network Operation Center (NOC) to charge time for performing the work described in this procedure document…. “This procedure covers the steps required to insert optical splitters into select live Common Backbone (CBB) OC3, OC12 and OC48 optical circuits.”
The NOC referred to is in Bridgeton, Missouri, and controls WorldNet operations. (As a sign that government spying goes hand-in-hand with union-busting, the entire (Communication Workers of America) Local 6377 which had jurisdiction over the Bridgeton NOC was wiped out in early 2002 when AT&T fired the union work force and later rehired them as nonunion “management” employees.) The cut-in work was performed in 2003, and since then new circuits are connected through the “splitter” cabinet.
Another Cut-In and Test Procedure document dated January 24, 2003, provides diagrams of how AT&T Core Network circuits were to be run through the “splitter” cabinet. One page lists the circuit IDs of key Peering Links which were “cut-in” in February 2003, including ConXion, Verio, XO, Genuity, Qwest, PAIX, Allegiance, AboveNet, Global Crossing, C&W, UUNET, Level 3, Sprint, Telia, PSINet and Mae West. By the way, Mae West is one of two key internet nodal points in the United States (the other, Mae East, is in Vienna, Virginia). It’s not just WorldNet customers who are being spied on — it’s the entire internet.
The next logical question is, what central command is collecting the data sent by the various “secret rooms”? One can only make educated guesses, but perhaps the answer was inadvertently given in the DOD Inspector General’s report (cited above):
“For testing TIA capabilities, Darpa and the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM) created an operational research and development environment that uses real-time feedback. The main node of TIA is located at INSCOM (in Fort Belvoir, Virginia)….”
Among the agencies participating or planning to participate in the INSCOM “testing” are the “National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, the DOD Counterintelligence Field Activity, the U.S. Strategic Command, the Special Operations Command, the Joint Forces Command and the Joint Warfare Analysis Center.” There are also “discussions” going on to bring in “non-DOD federal agencies” such as the FBI.
This is the infrastructure for an Orwellian police state. It must be shut down!
503
this is sort of a backhanded compliment… they say that there’s no link between pot and lung cancer, but they still recommend not smoking pot because of problems like “cognitive impairment and chronic bronchitis”, in spite of the fact that there’s no mention of alcohol or other “legal” drugs that have identical, if not more severe problems linked with them. also i’d be willing to bet that they didn’t test pot smoked through a water filtration device like a bong because tobacco isn’t smoked that way… 8/
Baby-boomer research results surprise doctors expecting to find connection
May 23, 2006
LOS ANGELES – Marijuana smoking does not increase a person’s risk of developing lung cancer, according to the findings of a new study at the University of California Los Angeles that surprised even the researchers.
They had expected to find that a history of heavy marijuana use, like cigarette smoking, would increase the risk of cancer.
Instead, the study, which compared the lifestyles of 611 Los Angeles County lung cancer patients and 601 patients with head and neck cancers with those of 1,040 people without cancer, found no elevated cancer risk for even the heaviest pot smokers. It did find a 20-fold increased risk of lung cancer in people who smoked two or more packs of cigarettes a day.
The study results were presented in San Diego on Tuesday at a meeting of the American Thoracic Society.
The study was confined to people under age 60 since baby boomers were the most likely age group to have long-term exposure to marijuana, said Dr. Donald Tashkin, senior researcher and professor at the UCLA School of Medicine.
The results should not be taken as a blank check to smoke pot, which has been associated with problems like cognitive impairment and chronic bronchitis, said Dr. John Hansen-Flaschen, chief of pulmonary and critical care at the University of Pennsylvania Health System in Philadelphia. He was not involved in the study.
Previous studies showed marijuana tar contained about 50 percent more of the chemicals linked to lung cancer, compared with tobacco tar, Tashkin said. In addition, smoking a marijuana joint deposits four times more tar in the lungs than smoking an equivalent amount of tobacco.
“Marijuana is packed more loosely than tobacco, so there’s less filtration through the rod of the cigarette, so more particles will be inhaled,” Tashkin said in a statement. “And marijuana smokers typically smoke differently than tobacco smokers — they hold their breath about four times longer, allowing more time for extra fine particles to deposit in the lung.”
He theorized that tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, a chemical in marijuana smoke that produces its psychotropic effect, may encourage aging, damaged cells to die off before they become cancerous.
Hansen-Flaschen also cautioned a cancer-marijuana link could emerge as baby boomers age and there may be smaller population groups, based on genetics or other factors, still at risk for marijuana-related cancers.
502
May 22, 2006
By James Polk, Drew Griffin and Kate Albright-Hanna
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana — Autopsy results obtained by CNN show a retarded man was shot in the back when he was killed by New Orleans police in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
This contradicts testimony by a police sergeant that the victim had turned toward officers and was reaching into his waistband when shot.
“Clearly he was shot from behind,” said famed New York pathologist Dr. Michael Baden, who examined the body for the family’s lawyer.
A prosecutor said the case will go before a grand jury soon and acknowledged the investigation includes the possibility of police wrong-doing.
Ronald Madison, 40, was mentally retarded and lived at home with his mother. He had no criminal record. He was shot when police responded to a report of gunfire on a bridge over the flooded Industrial Canal on Sunday, September 4, six days after Katrina hit New Orleans last year.
It was a week of dire flooding, rampant looting, death by drowning. Police were strained, beset by suicides and desertion. Four people were killed in confrontations with police that weekend alone.
Madison’s older brother, Lance, said he and Ronald were walking across the Danziger bridge toward another brother’s dental office when teen-agers ran up behind him and opened fire that Sunday morning.
By his account, he and Ronald were running away toward the crest of the bridge when a police team, responding to the report of gunshots, arrived in a rental truck and opened fire on people on the bridge.
Police Superintendent Warren Riley told CNN, “Several of the people were shot and two were killed by our officers in a running gun battle… Most police shoot-outs last somewhere between six and twelve seconds, and it’s over with. This was a running gun battle that went on several minutes.”
One teen-ager, still unidentified, was killed near the base of the bridge. Another was critically wounded. Three other people with them were also shot and were hospitalized.
Lance Madison said a policeman pointed a rifle at Ronald and shot him as the two of them were running up the bridge. Lance said he helped carry his wounded brother to a motel on the other side of the canal and left him there as Lance kept running to seek help.
The Police Department said in a press release last fall that Ronald Madison, whom it called a second unidentified gunman, “was confronted by a New Orleans Police Officer. The suspect reached into his waist and turned toward the officer who fired one shot fatally wounding him.”
Testifying in a preliminary hearing last fall, Police Sgt. Arthur Kaufman said much the same thing: “One subject turned, reached in his waistband, turned on the officers.”
Autopsy results, made available to CNN by a source involved in the investigation, directly contradict that police account.
The findings list five separate gunshot wounds in Ronald Madison’s back. Three went through the body and exited in front. There were two other wounds in his right shoulder. None of the shots entered his body from the front.
CNN had sued the coroner of Orleans Parish to try to get official access to the autopsy report. At a court hearing on that lawsuit in New Orleans a week ago, the coroner, Dr. Frank Minyard, verified the handwritten autopsy report obtained elsewhere by CNN was indeed prepared in his office by a pathologist on his staff who listed the wounds in the victim’s right back.
Under cross-examination by a CNN lawyer, Dr. Minyard testified those five wounds in the back “were entrance wounds, yes.”
Dr. Michael Baden, chief forensic pathologist for the New York State Police, met with CNN in New York City two weeks ago to discuss his own observations when he examined Ronald Madison’s body for the family lawyer last fall. Asked if Ronald could have been facing the police when shot, Dr. Baden said, “Absolutely not.”
No weapon was found on or near Ronald Madison’s body.
Asst. District Attorney Dustin Davis, testifying in the same court hearing on the CNN lawsuit, said a grand jury has been assigned to investigate the Danziger Bridge shootings. However, the grand jury has not yet met on the case because the New Orleans Police Dept. has yet to complete its final report, eight months after those deaths.
The CNN attorney asked Davis, “What you are investigating in that case is whether any of the police officers may be indicted for homicide, is that correct?”
Davis answered, “That’s partially correct. We are also looking at Mr. Madison’s involvement in the incident.”
Lance Madison was arrested on the other side of the bridge where his brother was killed and was accused of shooting at the police officers in the gun battle. He, too, had no weapon when taken into custody. He was released from bail after six months because the District Attorney’s office had not initiated any prosecution, although the investigation remains pending.
Sgt. Kaufman testified at the bail hearing for Lance Madison last fall that another policeman saw Lance throw a gun into the Industrial Canal as he was going over the bridge. Lance Madison denies that. He told CNN correspondent Drew Griffin, “I had no gun, at all.” Asked if Ronald had a gun, Lance answered, “No, he didn’t.”
In a CNN interview earlier this month, Griffin told Police Chief Warren Riley, “We understand Ronald Madison was shot in the back five times.”
Riley said, “Those are things I can’t comment on and no one can comment on until the investigation is concluded.”
Griffin asked Riley if he was concerned about his officers’ actions and Riley replied, “Certainly, we do not condone our officers overreacting, even in the most chaotic time,” but he went on, “We don’t know that they overreacted. From the radio transmission, it sounds like their lives were in danger.”
Riley turned down a request by CNN to interview the officers who were involved.
A 25-year career employee at Federal Express, Lance Madison has no criminal record.
At the end of the CNN interview, Riley conceded the two Madison brothers may not have been connected with the other people on the bridge that day.
“I don’t know if those young men were innocent or not. I really don’t know if they were with that group or not,” Riley said. “I really don’t know.”
501
you know how hard it is to place a coin on it’s edge when you’re trying… you can do it, but it’s difficult, and especially so when the surface is uneven. i wasn’t paying attention, and wasn’t trying to put this penny down in any particular way, and it came to rest like this anyway.
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500
urgh… depressed…
in the past four days, i’ve updated
499
| You Are Lightning |
 Beautiful yet dangerous. People will stop and watch you when you appear even though you’re capable of random violence You are best known for: your power Your dominant state: performing |
498
okay, i’ve been looking for a version of this meme that i can do with minimal effort, and i found one yesterday. i would have done it yesterday except for the fact that i was depressed and cleaned up the house instead of listening to music.
- Turn on your favorite media player and turn your shuffle feature on.
- Hit “play” and keep track of the next 10 songs that come up.
- Post your 10 shuffled songs, along with these instructions. You are not allowed to lie, omit tracks or otherwise try to make your musical taste seem hipper than it actually is.
- Tag five people on your friends list to do the same. horseshit. tag yourselves.
- Hollowmusic – St. Fred, Hollow Music — yeah, listening to music that you, yourself, created is a guaranteed way to move up on the “hip” list… 8/
- Fantastic Voyage – David Bowie, Lodger
- Bulky Rhythm – The Bobs, My I’m Large
- Under Wraps #1 – Jethro Tull, Under Wraps
- Kill Him! – The Residents, Wormwood
- Loss Of Innocence – The Residents, Commercial Album
- Francisco – Brian Eno, The Shutov Assembly
- Catholic Girls – Frank Zappa, You Can’t Do That On Stage Anymore vol. 6
- African Reggae – Nina Hagen, Nunsexmonkrock
- The Attack – Roger Wateres, When The Wind Blows
497
okay, i’m depressed again.
there have been no hybrid elephant orders for over a month, since that guy who runs an oriental medicine practice in nevada was talking about ordering $1,000 worth of incense, and then decided that he only wanted $400 worth, and then – after i had already ordered it – he decided that he wasn’t going to order from me at all, so i had to send $400 worth of incense back to the supplier. not only do i not know where he’s getting it from, but since then i have had no orders of any kind. i’m getting concerned, and i don’t know what to do.
i have decided that i’ve got to have a workshop… i’m going crazy not having anything to do. so i’m looking into buying a 8’x8.5’x20′ shipping container and transforming it into a workshop… but i get the very strong impression that moe would much rather i get a more building-like “shed”. the problem is that i have exactly enough money to buy either one or the other, and at this point, i don’t have any money to make the “improvements” necessary to make both into a functioning workshop. i get the very strong impression that, of the two, the shipping container would come in a state that is much more workshop-ready – all i’d have to do is put in some overhead lights and run a couple of extension cords, but, as i said, i get the very strong impression that moe would much rather i get something other than a shipping container, and at this point, i feel like if i don’t do what she wants, there’s likely to be bigger problems.
the other option, if i decide that i’m not buying a workshop structure, is that i could buy a new computer. if i were to do so, it would very likely be either a mac book, or a G5 mac mini. however, if i get a new computer, a workshop of any kind is going to be completely out of the question for at least another year, unless the hybrid elephant market does an amazing turnaround.
i replied to a post whose subject was “seattle’s most fabulous horn players” about a month ago, and it turned out to be someone i know from bellingham, 25 years ago. well, it turns out that, like 25 years ago, the guy has grandiose dreams of stuff he’d like to do, but he doesn’t have the talent or the organisational skills to do it the way he wants to. the third rehearsal is coming up on saturday, and this week he emailed me to say that he hasn’t been able to get any other horn players (unlike last week when i showed up only to find that i was the only horn player out of three people at the rehearsal), so “in case you don’t want to be the only horn again” i can cancel… what i’m going to tell him is that when he’s ready for horn players to show up, that he can give me a call, but i’m not expecting a call any time soon.
496
Dell is apparently putting hardware keyloggers in their laptops at the behest of the Department of Clownland Security,although when asked about it, they say “the intregrated service tag identifier is there for assisting customers in the event of lost or misplaced personal information” and hang up. the only thing i know for sure is that the guy who submitted a FOIA request for an explanation of why his new laptop had a device that can and is used to spy on terrorists (among other, less legal uses) got a reply that included the following statement from DHS: “the requested records are exempt from being disclosed under FOIA”… dude, i’m not getting a dell!!! (and here’s evidence that the whole thing is a hoax, but i’m not getting a dell anyway, i’m getting a mac, if i’m getting a computer at all)
CIA Nominee Gen. Michael Hayden Insists NSA Warrantless Surveillance Program Is Legal
By KATHERINE SHRADER
May 18, 2006
WASHINGTON — CIA nominee Gen. Michael Hayden insisted on Thursday that the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program was legal and that it was designed to ensnare terrorists not spy on ordinary people.
“Clearly the privacy of American citizens is a concern constantly,” the four-star Air Force general told the Senate Intelligence Committee at his confirmation hearing. “We always balance privacy and security.”
Hayden was peppered by as many questions about the National Security Agency, the super-secret agency that he headed from 1999-2005, as about his visions for the CIA.
Senators grilled him on the NSA’s eavesdropping without warrants on conversations and e-mails believed by the government to involve terrorism suspects, and reports of the tracking of millions of phone calls made and received by ordinary Americans.
After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush decided that more anti-terrorism surveillance was necessary than the NSA had been doing, said Hayden.
Hayden said he decided to go ahead with the then-covert surveillance program, which has been confirmed by Bush, believing it to be legal and necessary.
“When I had to make this personal decision in October 2001 … the math was pretty straightforward. I could not not do this,” Hayden said.
He said the surveillance program used a “probable cause” standard that made it unlikely that information about average Americans would be scrutinized.
But he declined to openly discuss reports that the NSA was engaged in even broader surveillance, including a story in USA Today that the NSA has been secretly collecting phone-call records of tens of millions of U.S. citizens.
Under questioning from Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, Hayden said he would only talk about the part of the program the president had confirmed.
“Is that the whole program?” asked Levin.
“I’m not at liberty to talk about that in open session,” Hayden said. A closed-door session was planned for later in the day.
Hayden was asked about reported friction between him and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld over how the NSA and other intelligence agencies would work with the Pentagon, which has the lion’s share of intelligence dollars.
Had they disagreed, he was asked by Levin? “Yes sir,” said Hayden.
Some critics have suggested that Hayden, 61, who remains an active general, is too closely aligned with the Pentagon to objectively run the civilian CIA.
Hayden declined to answer a string of questions by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., saying he would answer them later in a closed-door session.
They included whether he believed that “waterboarding,” in which prisoners are strapped to a plank and dunked in water until nearly drowning, was an acceptable form of interrogation. He also declined to say publicly how long he believed the United States could hold terror suspects without a trial.
“He didn’t answer any of them,” Feinstein said into an open mike as the hearing recessed for lunch.
Meanwhile, White House spokesman Tony Snow expressed the president’s full confidence in Hayden. “The guy’s got a record of trying to take on big reform tasks and carrying them out,” Snow told reporters.
Hayden acknowledged a series of intelligence failures in the run-up to the U.S. decision to invade Iraq and promised to take steps to guard against a repeat of such errors.
“We just took too much for granted. We didn’t challenge our basic assumptions,” he told the Senate Intelligence Committee at his confirmation hearing.
He said that since launching the surveillance program a month after the terror attacks, targeting decisions have been made by NSA experts on al-Qaida.
Asked by Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., whether a NSA analyst could intentionally look at information unrelated to suspected terrorist activity, Hayden said, “I don’t know how that could survive.”
Committee Chairman Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas complained about the CIA’s performance on Iraq. While “nobody bats 1,000 in the intelligence world,” Roberts cited “a terribly flawed trade craft” in the CIA’s intelligence suggesting the presence of weapons of mass destruction there.
At the same time, Roberts complained that the discussion among lawmakers had not been over Hayden’s long intelligence-services resume “but rather the debate is focused almost entirely” on controversy over NSA surveillance and eavesdropping programs.
Hayden, as expected, drew the most fire from Democratic members. “I now have a difficult time with your credibility,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.
In an opening statement, Hayden said that intelligence-gathering has become “the football in American political discourse” since the terror attacks of Sept. 11.
He said the embattled agency “must be transformed, without slowing the high tempo under which it already operates, to counter today’s threats.”
“Yes, there have been failures, but there have also been many great successes,” Hayden said.
If confirmed, “I would reaffirm the CIA’s proud culture of risk-taking,” said Hayden, who was selected by President Bush to succeed Porter Goss, who was forced out after serving for 18 months.
Hayden’s hearing before the Intelligence Committee was much different than a year ago, when the panel approved him unanimously to be the nation’s first principal deputy director of national intelligence.
Bush chose Hayden as CIA director-nominee after consultation with Hayden’s current boss, National Intelligence Director John Negroponte. Goss announced his retirement earlier this month after disputes with Hayden and Negroponte about the CIA’s direction.
Robertson says warning was for this year; tsunami might hit Northwest
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. – In another in a series of notable pronouncements, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson says God told him storms and possibly a tsunami will hit America’s coastline this year.
Robertson has made the predictions at least four times in the past two weeks on his news-and-talk television show “The 700 Club” on the Christian Broadcasting Network, which he founded.
Robertson said the revelations about this year’s weather came to him during his annual personal prayer retreat in January.
“If I heard the Lord right about 2006, the coasts of America will be lashed by storms,” Robertson said May 8. On Wednesday, he added, “There well may be something as bad as a tsunami in the Pacific Northwest.”
Robertson has come under intense criticism in recent months for suggesting that American agents should assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s stroke was divine retribution for Israel’s pullout from the Gaza Strip.
not to mention blaming 9/11 on gays and "liberal" groups”…
495
today i spent 9 hours working on Ganesha The Car. if i had it to do all over again i would make all the writing the size of the new red & black lines, but it’s pretty good the way it is.
494
okay, this is strange…
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Black and white twins
By LUCY LAING
21st February 2006
When Kylie Hodgson gave birth to twin daughters by caesarean section, she was just relieved that they had arrived safely.
It was only when the midwife handed them over for her to hold that she noticed the difference between them.
Remee, who weighed 5lb 15oz, was blonde and fair skinned. Her sister Kian, born a minute later weighing 6lb, was black.
‘Our two gorgeous little girls’
“It was a shock when I realised that my twins were two different colours,” said Kylie, 19. “But it doesn’t matter to us – they are just our two gorgeous little girls.”
The amazing conception happened after two eggs were fertilised at the same time in the womb.
Both Kylie and her partner Remi Horder, 17, are of mixed race. Their mothers are both white and their fathers are black.
According to the Multiple Births Foundation, baby Kian must have inherited the black genes from both sides of the family, whilst Remee inherited the white ones.
Kylie, from Nottingham, discovered she was pregnant in the summer of 2004 and a scan at the Queen’s Medical Centre revealed that twins were on the way.
“It was a shock at first to discover I was expecting as we hadn’t been trying for a family,” she said I had my 14-week scan and the sonographer ran the scanner over my stomach and announced that I was carrying twins.
“We couldn’t believe it. Neither of us could take our eyes off the scanner – you could just see two of everything, even the outline of their little noses. We were both overwhelmed.”
The twins were born by caesarean in April last year because one of the girls was lying in an awkward position in the womb.
“I didn’t see them at first,” added their mother. “They were both whisked away to be checked over and then the midwife came back and placed them both in my arms.
“I noticed that both of them had beautiful blue eyes, but whilst Remee was blonde, Kian’s hair was black and she had darker skin.
“It seemed strange, but I was feeling so ill that I didn’t really take it in at that stage.”
The next day she mentioned the colour difference to her mother, who told her that Remee’s skin would darken as she grew older.
But as the weeks passed, Remee became lighter still while Kian went darker. And while Remee’s eyes stayed blue, Kian’s turned brown.
“There are some similarities between them,” said their mother. “They both love apples and grapes, and their favourite television programme is Teletubbies.
“If they haven’t seen each other for a few hours, they are so pleased to see each other and will hold out their arms, wanting to hug each other. And their smiles just light up their faces.
“I’ll explain it all to them when they get older about why they look so different.”
Million to one odds
The odds against of a mixed race couple having twins of dramatically different colour are a million to one.
Skin colour is believed to be determined by up to seven different genes working together.
If a woman is of mixed race, her eggs will usually contain a mixture of genes coding for both black and white skin.
Similarly, a man of mixed race will have a variety of different genes in his sperm. When these eggs and sperm come together, they will create a baby of mixed race.
But, very occasionally, the egg or sperm might contain genes coding for one skin colour. If both the egg and sperm contain all white genes, the baby will be white. And if both contain just the versions necessary for black skin, the baby will be black.
For a mixed-race couple, the odds of either of these scenarios is around 100 to one. But both scenarios can occur at the same time if the woman conceives non-identical twins, another 100 to one chance.
This involves two eggs being fertilised by two sperm at the same time, which also has odds of around 100 to one.
If a sperm containing all-white genes fuses with a similar egg and a sperm coding for purely black skin fuses with a similar egg, two babies of dramatically different colours will be born.
The odds of this happening are 100 x 100 x 100 – a million to one.
493
By Brian Ross and Richard Esposito
May 15, 2006
A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we (Brian Ross and Richard Esposito) call in an effort to root out confidential sources.
“It’s time for you to get some new cell phones, quick,” the source told us in an in-person conversation.
ABC News does not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.
Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation.
One former official was asked to sign a document stating he was not a confidential source for New York Times reporter James Risen.
Our reports on the CIA’s secret prisons in Romania and Poland were known to have upset CIA officials. The CIA asked for an FBI investigation of leaks of classified information following those reports.
People questioned by the FBI about leaks of intelligence information say the CIA was also disturbed by ABC News reports that revealed the use of CIA predator missiles inside Pakistan.
Under Bush Administration guidelines, it is not considered illegal for the government to keep track of numbers dialed by phone customers.
The official who warned ABC News said there was no indication our phones were being tapped so the content of the conversation could be recorded.
A pattern of phone calls from a reporter, however, could provide valuable clues for leak investigators.
and
By Brian Ross and Richard Esposito
May 15, 2006
The FBI acknowledged late Monday that it is increasingly seeking reporters’ phone records in leak investigations.
“It used to be very hard and complicated to do this, but it no longer is in the Bush administration,” said a senior federal official.
The acknowledgement followed our blotter item that ABC News reporters had been warned by a federal source that the government knew who we were calling.
The official said our blotter item was wrong to suggest that ABC News phone calls were being “tracked.”
“Think of it more as backtracking,” said a senior federal official.
But FBI officials did not deny that phone records of ABC News, the New York Times and the Washington Post had been sought as part of a investigation of leaks at the CIA.
In a statement, the FBI press office said its leak investigations begin with the examination of government phone records.
“The FBI will take logical investigative steps to determine if a criminal act was committed by a government employee by the unauthorized release of classified information,” the statement said.
Officials say that means that phone records of reporters will be sought if government records are not sufficient.
Officials say the FBI makes extensive use of a new provision of the Patriot Act which allows agents to seek information with what are called National Security Letters (NSL).
The NSLs are a version of an administrative subpoena and are not signed by a judge. Under the law, a phone company receiving a NSL for phone records must provide them and may not divulge to the customer that the records have been given to the government.
 |
492
how to build a HandySwipe portable magnetic card reader for less than $20.
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more information about my (new) icon can be found here and here… interesting, no?
491
May 14, 2006
HARTFORD, Conn. – U.S. military troops with severe psychological problems have been sent to Iraq or kept in combat, even when superiors have been aware of signs of mental illness, a newspaper reported for Sunday editions.
The Hartford Courant, citing records obtained under the federal Freedom of Information Act and more than 100 interviews of families and military personnel, reported numerous cases in which the military failed to follow its own regulations in screening, treating and evacuating mentally unfit troops from Iraq.
In 1997, Congress ordered the military to assess the mental health of all deploying troops. The newspaper, citing Pentagon statistics, said fewer than 1 in 300 service members were referred to a mental health professional before shipping out for Iraq as of October 2005.
Twenty-two U.S. troops committed suicide in Iraq last year, accounting for nearly one in five of all non-combat deaths and the highest suicide rate since the war started, the newspaper said.
Some service members who committed suicide in 2004 and 2005 were kept on duty despite clear signs of mental distress, sometimes after being prescribed antidepressants with little or no mental health counseling or monitoring, the Courant reported. Those findings conflict with regulations adopted last year by the Army that caution against the use of antidepressants for “extended deployments.”
“I can’t imagine something more irresponsible than putting a soldier suffering from stress on (antidepressants), when you know these drugs can cause people to become suicidal and homicidal,” said Vera Sharav, president of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, a New York-based advocacy group. “You’re creating chemically activated time bombs.”
Although Defense Department standards for enlistment disqualify recruits who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, the military also is redeploying service members to Iraq who fit that criteria, the newspaper said.
“I’m concerned that people who are symptomatic are being sent back. That has not happened before in our country,” said Dr. Arthur S. Blank, Jr., a Yale-trained psychiatrist who helped to get post-traumatic stress disorder recognized as a diagnosis after the Vietnam War.
The Army’s top mental health expert, Col. Elspeth Ritchie, acknowledged that some deployment practices, such as sending service members diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome back into combat, have been driven in part by a troop shortage.
“The challenge for us … is that the Army has a mission to fight. And, as you know, recruiting has been a challenge,” she said. “And so we have to weigh the needs of the Army, the needs of the mission, with the soldiers’ personal needs.”
Ritchie insisted the military works hard to prevent suicides, but said that is a challenge because every soldier has access to a weapon.
Commanders, not medical professionals, have final say over whether a troubled soldier is retained in the war zone. Ritchie and other military officials said they believe most commanders are alert to mental health problems and are open to referring troubled soldiers for treatment.
“Your average commander doesn’t want to deal with a whacked-out soldier. But on the other hand, he doesn’t want to send a message to his troops that if you act up, he’s willing to send you home,” said Maj. Andrew Efaw, a judge advocate general officer in the Army Reserves who handled trial defense for soldiers in northern Iraq last year.
Mentally Unfit, Forced To Fight – a report in three parts, of which the following is one…
May 14, 2006
By LISA CHEDEKEL And MATTHEW KAUFFMAN
Despite a congressional order that the military assess the mental health of all deploying troops, fewer than 1 in 300 service members see a mental health professional before shipping out.
Once at war, some unstable troops are kept on the front lines while on potent antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs, with little or no counseling or medical monitoring.
And some troops who developed post-traumatic stress disorder after serving in Iraq are being sent back to the war zone, increasing the risk to their mental health.
These practices, which have received little public scrutiny and in some cases violate the military’s own policies, have helped to fuel an increase in the suicide rate among troops serving in Iraq, which reached an all-time high in 2005 when 22 soldiers killed themselves – accounting for nearly one in five of all Army non-combat deaths.
The Courant’s investigation found that at least 11 service members who committed suicide in Iraq in 2004 and 2005 were kept on duty despite exhibiting signs of significant psychological distress. In at least seven of the cases, superiors were aware of the problems, military investigative records and interviews with families indicate.
Among the troops who plunged through the gaps in the mental health system was Army Spec. Jeffrey Henthorn, a young father and third-generation soldier, whose death last year is still being mourned by his native Choctaw, Okla.
What his hometown does not know is that Henthorn, 25, had been sent back to Iraq for a second tour, even though his superiors knew he was unstable and had threatened suicide at least twice, according to Army investigative reports and interviews. When he finally succeeded in killing himself on Feb. 8, 2005, at Camp Anaconda in Balad, Iraq, an Army report says, the work of the M-16 rifle was so thorough that fragments of his skull pierced the barracks ceiling.
In a case last July, a 20-year-old soldier who had written a suicide note to his mother was relieved of his gun and referred for a psychological evaluation, but then was accused of faking his mental problems and warned he could be disciplined, according to what he told his family. Three weeks later, after his gun had been handed back, Pfc. Jason Scheuerman, of Lynchburg, Va., used it to end his life.
Also kept in the war zone was Army Pfc. David L. Potter, 22, of Johnson City, Tenn., who was diagnosed with anxiety and depression while serving in Iraq in 2004. Potter remained with his unit in Baghdad despite a suicide attempt and a psychiatrist’s recommendation that he be separated from the Army, records show. Ten days after the recommendation was signed, he slid a gun out from under another soldier’s bed, climbed to the second floor of an abandoned building and shot himself through the mouth, the Army has concluded.
The spike in suicides among the all-volunteer force is a setback for military officials, who had pledged in late 2003 to improve mental health services, after expressing alarm that 11 soldiers and two Marines had killed themselves in Iraq in the first seven months of the war. When the number of suicides tumbled in 2004, top Army officials had credited their renewed prevention efforts.
But The Courant’s review found that since 2003, the military has increasingly sent, kept and recycled troubled troops into combat – practices that undercut its assurances of improvements. Besides causing suicides, experts say, gaps in mental health care can cause violence between soldiers, accidents and critical mistakes in judgment during combat operations.
Military experts and advocates point to recruiting shortfalls and intense wartime pressure to maintain troop levels as reasons more service members with psychiatric problems are being deployed to the war zone and kept there.
“What you have is a military stretched so thin, they’ve resorted to keeping psychologically unfit soldiers at the front,” said Stephen Robinson, the former longtime director of the National Gulf War Resource Center. “It’s a policy that can do an awful lot of damage over time.”
Army officials confirmed that 22 soldiers killed themselves in Iraq, and three in Afghanistan, in 2005. The Army suicide rate was about 20 per 100,000 soldiers serving in Iraq – nearly double the 2004 rate, and higher than the 2003 rate that had prompted alarm. Three Marines also committed suicide in Iraq last year.
The military does not discuss or even identify individual suicide cases, which are grouped with other non-combat deaths. The Courant identified suicide victims through Army investigative reports and interviews with families.
Although The Courant determined that a spate of six suicides occurred within eight weeks last year, from late May to July, there is no indication that the military took steps to respond to the cluster.
While the 2005 jump in self-inflicted deaths was as pronounced as the 2003 spike that had stirred action, Army officials said last week that there were no immediate plans to change the approach or resources targeted to mental health. They said they had confidence in the initiatives put in place two years ago – additional combat stress teams to treat deployed troops and increased suicide prevention programs.
Col. Elspeth Ritchie, the top psychiatry expert for the Army surgeon general, said that while the Army is reviewing the 2005 suicides as a way to gauge its mental health efforts, “suicide rates go up and down, and we expect some variation.”
Ritchie said the mental health of troops remains a priority as the war enters its fourth year. But she also acknowledged that some practices, such as sending service members diagnosed with PTSD back into combat, have been driven in part by a troop shortage.
“The challenge for us … is that the Army has a mission to fight. And as you know, recruiting has been a challenge,” she said. “And so we have to weigh the needs of the Army, the needs of the mission, with the soldiers’ personal needs.”
But The Courant’s investigation shows that troubled soldiers are getting lost in the balance:
Under the military’s pre-deployment screening process, troops with serious mental disorders are not being identified – and others whose mental illness is known are being deployed anyway.
A law passed in 1997 requires the military to conduct an “assessment of mental health” on all deploying troops. But the “assessment” now being used is a single mental health question on a pre-deployment form filled out by service members.
Even using that limited tool, troops who self-report psychological problems are rarely referred for evaluations by mental health professionals, Department of Defense records obtained by The Courant indicate. From March 2003 to October 2005, only 6.5 percent of deploying service members who indicated a mental health problem were referred for evaluations; overall, fewer than 1 in 300 deploying troops, or 0.3 percent, were referred.
That rate of referral is dramatically lower than the more than 9 percent of deploying troops that the Army itself acknowledges in studies have serious psychiatric disorders.
In addition, despite its pledges in 2004 to improve mental health care, the military was more likely to deploy troops who indicated psychological problems in 2005 than it was during the first year of the war, the data show.
The Courant found that at least seven, or about one-third, of the 22 soldiers who killed themselves in Iraq in 2005 had been deployed less than three months, raising questions about the adequacy of pre-deployment screening. Some of them had exhibited earlier signs of distress.
Also, at least three soldiers who killed themselves since the war began were deployed despite serious mental conditions, including bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
The military relies increasingly on antidepressants, some with potentially dangerous side effects, to keep troops with known psychological problems in the war zone.
Military investigative reports and interviews with family members indicate that some service members who committed suicide in 2004 and 2005 were kept on duty despite clear signs of mental distress, sometimes after being prescribed antidepressants, including a class of drugs known as SSRIs.
In one case, a 26-year-old Marine who was having trouble sleeping was put on a strong dose of Zoloft, an SSRI that carries a warning urging doctors to closely monitor new patients for suicidal urges. Last April, within two months of starting the drug, the Marine killed himself in Iraq.
Some service members who experienced depression or stress before or during deployments to Iraq described being placed on Zoloft, Wellbutrin and other antidepressants, with little or no mental health counseling or monitoring. Some of the drugs carry warnings of an increased risk of suicide, within the first weeks of their use.
Those anecdotal findings conflict with regulations adopted last year by the Army cautioning that antidepressants for cases of moderate or severe depression “are not usually suitable for extended deployments.”
Also, the military’s top health official, Assistant Defense Secretary William Winkenwerder Jr., indicated in testimony to Congress last summer that service members were being allowed to deploy on psychotropic medications only when their conditions had “fully resolved.”
The use of psychiatric drugs has alarmed some medical experts and ethicists, who say the medications cannot be properly monitored in a war zone. The Army’s own reports indicate that the availability and use of such medications in Iraq and Kuwait have increased since mid-2004, when a team of psychiatrists approved making Prozac, Zoloft, Trazodone, Ambien and other drugs more widely available throughout the combat zone.
“I can’t imagine something more irresponsible than putting a soldier suffering from stress on SSRIs, when you know these drugs can cause people to become suicidal and homicidal,” said Vera Sharav, president of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, a patient advocacy group. “You’re creating chemically activated time bombs.”
The military is sending troops back into combat for second and third tours despite diagnoses of PTSD or other combat-related psychological problems – a practice that some mental health experts fear will fuel incidents of suicide and violence among troops abroad and at home.
Although Department of Defense standards for enlistment in the armed forces disqualify recruits who suffer from PTSD, the military is redeploying service members to Iraq who fit that criteria. The practice, which military experts concede is driven partly by pressure to maintain troop levels, runs counter to accepted medical doctrine and research, which cautions that re-exposure to trauma increases the risk of psychological problems.
At least seven troops who are believed to have committed suicide in 2005 and early 2006, and one who has been charged with killing a fellow soldier, were serving second or third tours in Iraq. Some of them had exhibited signs of combat stress after their first deployments, according to family members and friends.
Some soldiers now serving second tours in Iraq say they are wrestling with debilitating PTSD symptoms, despite being placed on medications.
Jason Sedotal, a 21-year-old military policeman from Pierre Part, La., returned home in March 2005 after seven months in Iraq, during which a Humvee he was driving rolled over a land mine, badly injuring his sergeant. After completing his tour, Sedotal was diagnosed with PTSD and placed on Prozac, he said.
Last October, after being transferred to a new unit, he was shipped back to Iraq for a one-year tour. During a short visit home last week, he described being wracked by nightmares and depression and convinced that “somebody’s following me.” When he conveyed his symptoms to a doctor at Fort Polk in Louisiana last Tuesday, he said, he was given a higher dose of medication and the sleeping pill Ambien and told that he was to go back to Iraq.
“I can’t keep going through this mentally. All they do is fill me up on medicine and send me back,” he said. “What’s this going to do to me in the future? I’m going to be 60 years old, hiding under my kitchen table? I’m real scared.”
More than 378,000 active-duty, Reserve and National Guard troops have served more than one tour in Iraq or Afghanistan, representing nearly a third of the 1.3 million troops who have been deployed, according to Department of Defense statistics. That repeat exposure to combat could dramatically increase the percentage of soldiers and Marines who experience PTSD, major depression or other disorders, some experts say.
Recent studies have estimated that at least 18 percent of returning Iraq veterans are at risk of developing PTSD after just one combat tour.
“The [Department of Defense] is in the business of keeping people deployable,” said Cathleen Wiblemo, deputy director for health care for the American Legion. “What the consequences of that are, we haven’t begun to see.
“This is uncharted territory. You’re looking at guys being extended or sent back multiple times into an extremely stressful situation, which is different than past wars. … I think the number of troops that will be affected, it will be a huge number.”
Preserving The Force
Military officials insist they have made aggressive efforts to improve mental health services to troops in Iraq in the past two years. After the spate of suicides in 2003, the Army dispatched a mental health advisory team, which issued a report recommending additional combat-stress specialists to treat troops close to the front lines, and encouraging training and outreach to reduce the stigma associated with mental health problems.
A follow-up report, released January 2005, cited the drop in suicides in 2004 as evidence that the Army’s efforts were successful. It also highlighted a decline in the number of soldiers who were evacuated out of Iraq for mental health problems – from about 75 a month in 2003 to 36 a month in 2004. In 2005, an average of 46 soldiers were evacuated each month, Army data show.
Overall, barely more than one-tenth of 1 percent of the 1.3 million troops who have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan have been evacuated because of psychiatric problems.
Both advisory team reports recommended that soldiers with mental health problems be kept in the combat zone in order to improve return-to-duty rates and help soldiers avoid being labeled unfit.
“If you take people out of their unit and send them home, they have the shame and the stigma,” said Ritchie, the Army’s mental health expert.
But with the suicide rate climbing, the emphasis on treating psychologically damaged soldiers in the war zone is raising new questions.
“You think it’s a stigma to be sent home from the Iraq war? That might be the line they’re using” to justify retaining troops, said Dr. Arthur S. Blank Jr., a psychiatrist who formerly served as national director of the Veterans Administration’s counseling centers. “I wouldn’t say that.”
Mental health specialists who have served in Iraq acknowledge that their main goal, under military guidelines, is to preserve the fighting force. Some have grappled with making tough calls about how much more stress a soldier can handle.
“You have to become comfortable with things we wouldn’t normally be comfortable with,” said Bob Johnson, a psychologist in Atlanta who counseled soldiers last year as chief of combat stress control for the Army’s 2nd Brigade. “If there were an endless supply [of soldiers], the compassionate side of you just wants to get these people out of here. They’re miserable. You can see it in their faces. But I had to kind of put that aside.”
Army statistics show that 59 soldiers killed themselves in Iraq through the end of last year – 25 in 2003, 12 in 2004, and 22 in 2005. Twelve Marine deaths also have been ruled self-inflicted.
The only confirmed Connecticut suicide is that of Army Pfc. Jeffrey Braun, 19, of Stafford, who died in December 2003. His father, William Braun, told The Courant he still did not have a full explanation of what happened to Jeffrey, but said, “I’ve chosen not to pursue it or question it. It’s over and done with.”
Military data show that deaths in Iraq due to all non-combat causes, such as accidents, rose by 32 percent from 2004 to 2005. Of the more than 500 non-combat deaths among all service branches since the start of the war, gunshot wounds were the second-leading cause of death, behind vehicle crashes but ahead of heart attacks and other medical ailments.
While many families of service members who died of non-combat causes say they are not familiar with military deployment policies, some question whether the military knowingly put their loved ones at risk.
Among them are relatives of Army Spec. Michael S. Deem, a 35-year-old father of two, who was deployed to Iraq in January 2005 despite a history of depression that family members say was known to the military. Shortly before Deem deployed, a military psychiatrist gave him a long-term supply of Prozac to help him handle the stress, his wife said.
Just 3½ weeks after he arrived in Iraq, Deem died in his sleep of what the Army later determined was an enlarged heart “complicated by elevated levels of fluoxetine” – the generic name for Prozac.
Family members of some troops whose deaths have been labeled suicides complain that the military has given them limited information about the circumstances of the deaths. Some have had to wait more than a year for autopsies and investigative reports, which they say still leave questions unanswered.
Barbara Butler, mother of Army National Guard 1st Lt. Debra A. Banaszak, 35, of Bloomington, Ill., said she has trouble understanding why her daughter would have taken her own life in Kuwait last October, as the military has determined. She said that while Banaszak, the single mother of a teenage son, was proud to serve her country and had not complained, the stresses of the deployment may have exacerbated her depression.
“She was used to being in charge and being a leader, but never in these circumstances,” said Butler. “If the Army is right that she did this, it was nothing she would have done ordinarily. It was that war that brought it about.”
Recognizing Trouble
Some autopsy and investigative reports obtained by The Courant make clear that service members who committed suicide were experiencing serious psychological problems during deployment.
In the months before Army Pfc. Samuel Lee, of Anaheim, Calif., killed himself in March 2005, an investigative report says, the 19-year-old had talked to fellow soldiers about a dream in which he tried to kill his sergeant before taking his own life, and of kidnapping, raping and killing Iraqi children. Three times, a soldier recounted in a sworn statement, Lee had pointed his gun at himself and depressed the trigger, stopping just before a round fired.
But two of Lee’s superiors gave statements saying they did not realize Lee was having trouble until the day he balanced the butt of his rifle on a cot, put his mouth over the muzzle and fired.
But a number of other reports on 2004 and 2005 suicides indicate that military superiors were aware that soldiers were self-destructing.
Among them was Army Staff Sgt. Cory W. Brooks, 32, of Philip, S.D., who shot himself in the head on April 24, 2004. In sworn statements, a major and first lieutenant acknowledged they had conducted “counseling” with Brooks, and a first sergeant “detailed his knowledge of SSG Brooks’ suicidal ideations.”
Brooks’ father, Darral, said he believes his son’s death stemmed from a combination of personal and combat-related stress, and he does not blame the military for retaining him in Iraq.
“Cory was a dedicated soldier. He wanted to be there,” he said. “If his captain told him to walk off a cliff, he’d do it.”
But in other cases in which superiors retained a soldier who was experiencing mental health problems, families are not so forgiving.
Ann Scheuerman, mother of the soldier who shot himself after his suicide note was discounted by Army officials, said her family has had a frustrating time getting the military to acknowledge mistakes in the way her son was treated.
“We wanted to make sure that whatever protocol they have in place is used, and if it doesn’t work, fix it,” Scheuerman said. “And to date, we’re just not getting anything at all.
“Nothing can bring back my son,” she said. “But if something can be done to prevent any more deaths, then if I offend a couple of people, I’ll go ahead and apologize up front. Go ahead and come after me, but something needs to be done.”
Family members of Jeffrey Henthorn, the Choctaw, Okla., native, are concerned that the Army ignored blatant warnings that Henthorn was suicidal.
An investigative report into Henthorn’s death contains statements indicating that Henthorn’s “chain of command” was aware that he had tried to harm himself in November 2004 – by slashing his arm “intentionally, in a [horizontal] manner” – in the weeks leading up to his second deployment to Iraq, while he was stationed at Fort Riley in Kansas.
Then, soon after his deployment in December, a distressed Henthorn took his gun into a latrine in Kuwait and charged it, in what fellow soldiers feared was a suicide gesture. Although his superiors at the scene grabbed the weapon away, his platoon sergeant returned the gun the same day, after talking to Henthorn for about a half-hour, according to a sworn statement. The platoon’s first lieutenant was notified, but there is no indication that Henthorn was referred for a mental health evaluation or counseling.
Eighteen days later, after crossing into Iraq with his unit, Henthorn finished what he had started.
“If you lock yourself in a latrine for 10 minutes with your gun and threaten to hurt yourself, you don’t just get your gun back. You get relieved of duty and sent home,” said Henthorn’s father, Warren, who is still struggling to understand what happened to his only son.
“It’s the same as Vietnam – all they care about is the numbers in the field,” he said. “That’s all that matters, having the numbers.”
Ritchie insisted the military is working hard to prevent suicides, which she said is a challenge, given that soldiers have access to weapons.
“When you go back, in retrospect, there may be warning signs,” she acknowledged.
Addressing The Courant’s findings, she added, “What you don’t see from that are the other cases that perhaps had the same warning signs and were kept in [the combat] theater and went on to do OK in their job.”
While they would not comment on particular cases, Ritchie and other military officials said they believe most commanders are alert to mental health problems and open to referring troubled soldiers for treatment. It is commanders, not medical professionals, who have final say over whether a troubled soldier is retained in the war zone.
“I think the majority of our commanders are very receptive,” Ritchie said.
But some service members say commanders’ sensitivity to mental health issues varies.
“As a practical matter, the quality … of the military’s mental health care professional is uneven,” said Maj. Andrew Efaw, a judge advocate general officer in the Army Reserve who handled trial defense for soldiers in northern Iraq last year. “Likewise, the understanding of mental health issues by commanders may also be spotty.”
He said commanders weighing whether a service member should be retained have to be mindful of how their troops will perceive the decision.
“Your average commander doesn’t want to deal with a whacked-out soldier. But on the other hand, he doesn’t want to send a message to his troops that if you act up, he’s willing to send you home,” Efaw said.
Some troops and their families say the military has not made good on its pledge to make mental health care easily accessible in the field.
Summer Lipford of Statesville, N.C., said she urged her son, Pfc. Steven Sirko, to talk to a counselor in April of last year, after he complained in a phone call from Iraq that he was having nightmares, losing weight and not sleeping.
“I asked Steven, `If you’re having dreams that are so [messed] up, why don’t you go talk to somebody?'” Lipford recalled. “He said, `Yeah, Mom, like that’s gonna happen.’ He said it was an act of God to get to see somebody.”
Four days later, Sirko, a 20-year-old medic, injected himself with vecuronium, an anesthetic that causes muscular paralysis, and died of an accidental overdose, according to what the military has told Lipford.
Some returning troops acknowledge that their own fear of being stigmatized kept them from seeking psychological help during deployments. Despite the military’s efforts to improve mental health care, soldiers’ perceptions of a stigma associated with seeking such care remained unchanged between 2004 and 2005, with more than half of the soldiers surveyed by Army teams expressing concerns that they would be viewed as weak.
Matthew Denton, a Camp Pendleton Marine and helicopter mechanic, said he spent most of his six-month deployment in 2005 quietly contemplating his own death aboard a ship in the Persian Gulf.
“My head was in a scary place. I remember thinking, `I can’t believe I’m working on a $14 million aircraft. I just don’t care about this,'” he said. “When I’d come out of my daze, I was worried about messing up and endangering the life of my guys.”
Denton, 30, said his depression was easy to keep secret – pre- and post-deployment health screenings were self-reported, and commanders hustling Marines through six-month rotations never probed his mental state.
Now back home, Denton, who is being treated for depression, isn’t sure whether he managed to stay below the radar – or whether there was any radar to stay below.
duh…
May 12, 2006
(CNN) — In a new poll comparing President Bush’s job performance with that of his predecessor, a strong majority of respondents said President Clinton outperformed Bush on a host of issues.
The poll of 1,021 adult Americans was conducted May 5-7 by Opinion Research Corp. for CNN. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Respondents favored Clinton by greater than 2-to-1 margins when asked who did a better job at handling the economy (63 percent Clinton, 26 percent Bush) and solving the problems of ordinary Americans (62 percent Clinton, 25 percent Bush).
On foreign affairs, the margin was 56 percent to 32 percent in Clinton’s favor; on taxes, it was 51 percent to 35 percent for Clinton; and on handling natural disasters, it was 51 percent to 30 percent, also favoring Clinton.
Moreover, 59 percent said Bush has done more to divide the country, while only 27 percent said Clinton had.
When asked which man was more honest as president, poll respondents were more evenly divided, with the numbers — 46 percent Clinton to 41 percent Bush — falling within the poll’s margin of error. The same was true for a question on handling national security: 46 percent said Clinton performed better; 42 percent picked Bush.
Clinton was impeached in 1998 over testimony he gave in a deposition about an extramarital sexual relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinksy. He was later aquitted by the Senate.
490
By DAVID KRAVETS
SAN FRANCISCO – As lawmakers demand answers about warrantless electronic eavesdropping on Americans, the Bush administration says its secretive program’s constitutionality cannot be challenged.
The government is taking that position in seeking the dismissal of a lawsuit filed in federal court here against AT&T Inc. over its alleged involvement in the surveillance program adopted after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.
The federal government is invoking the “state secrets privilege” in arguing that the lawsuit must be thrown out because it threatens to divulge information that is deemed critical to national security.
“The state secrets privilege permits the government to protect against the unauthorized disclosure in litigation of information that may harm national security interests,” the Justice Department wrote to the judge presiding over the lawsuit filed by the San Francisco-based Internet privacy advocate Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The government announced that position in a legal brief late last month and is expected to expand on its arguments in an upcoming filing.
The tactic, first recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court in a McCarthy-era lawsuit, has been increasingly invoked by federal lawyers seeking to shield the government from scrutiny by the courts.
Legal experts say it usually prevails.
“The state secrets privilege is sometimes called the ‘nuclear option,'” said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists. “In almost every case, it terminates the lawsuit.”
He suspects the San Francisco case will meet the same fate.
The government invoked the state secrets privilege to defeat a similar lawsuit in 1979 that accused the National Security Agency of illegally spying on Americans.
Lawmakers erupted Thursday when USA Today reported the NSA was secretly collecting the records of phone calls by millions of ordinary Americans to build a database of all calls within the country.
The revelation renewed debate about whether Americans’ privacy rights were being violated. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., announced he would demand phone companies to appear before the panel.
President Bush quickly weighed in. “We’re not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans,” he said.
The president confirmed in December that the NSA has been conducting warrantless surveillance of calls and e-mails thought to involve al-Qaida terrorists.
Experts said the Bush administration has turned often to the state secrets defense, from espionage cases and patent disputes to routine employment discrimination lawsuits.
On Friday, citing the state secrets defense, the government urged a federal judge in Virginia to block a lawsuit filed by a German national who says he was illegally held in a CIA-run prison in Afghanistan for four months and tortured.
The Supreme Court upheld the defense as recently as January, when it rejected an appeal from a former covert CIA officer who accused the agency of race discrimination.
The high court first recognized the doctrine in 1953, when it dismissed a lawsuit against the government brought by family members of people killed in a plane wreck while testing secret electronic surveillance equipment.
Gregory Sisk, an expert on the state secrets doctrine at the St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis, Minn., said legal precedent dictates that judges should give the “utmost deference” to the government when it raises the privilege.
“The thesis is that the courts lack the competence to second-guess the executive on military needs or national security threats,” he said.
Electronic Frontier Foundation’s lawsuit, filed in January, differs slightly from past cases in that it does not name the government, instead targeting AT&T.
The group accuses the telecommunications giant of cooperating with the NSA to make all communications on AT&T networks available to the spy agency without warrants.
Legal experts suggest it’s possible for the judge to rule on whether the president possesses wartime powers to authorize warrantless eavesdropping in the United States without disclosing any classified or sensitive material.
“I’m not surprised that the defense is being asserted,” said Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law. “There’s no reason necessarily that the case should be dismissed.”
AT&T, the San Antonio-based telecommunications giant, says it is following all applicable laws.
U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker has scheduled a hearing Wednesday to determine whether documents supplied to the Electronic Frontier Foundation by a former AT&T technician should remain under seal.
The case is based largely on the technician’s documents, which the technician and EFF assert show that the NSA is capable of monitoring all communications on AT&T’s network after the NSA installed equipment at AT&T offices in San Francisco and elsewhere.
The case is Hepting v. AT&T Inc., 06-0672.
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thanks to ![[info]](https://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
St. Fred:
This morning, USA Today reported that three telecommunications companies – AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth – provided “phone call records of tens of millions of Americans” to the National Security Agency. Such conduct appears to be illegal and could make the telco firms liable for tens of billions of dollars. Here’s why:
- It violates the Stored Communications Act. The Stored Communications Act, Section 2703(c), provides exactly five exceptions that would permit a phone company to disclose to the government the list of calls to or from a subscriber: (i) a warrant; (ii) a court order; (iii) the customer’s consent; (iv) for telemarketing enforcement; or (v) by “administrative subpoena.” The first four clearly don’t apply. As for administrative subpoenas, where a government agency asks for records without court approval, there is a simple answer – the NSA has no administrative subpoena authority, and it is the NSA that reportedly got the phone records.
- The penalty for violating the Stored Communications Act is $1000 per individual violation. Section 2707 of the Stored Communications Act gives a private right of action to any telephone customer “aggrieved by any violation.” If the phone company acted with a “knowing or intentional state of mind,” then the customer wins actual harm, attorney’s fees, and “in no case shall a person entitled to recover receive less than the sum of $1,000.”
(The phone companies might say they didn’t “know” they were violating the law. But USA Today reports that Qwest’s lawyers knew about the legal risks, which are bright and clear in the statute book.)
- The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act doesn’t get the telcos off the hook. According to USA Today, the NSA did not go to the FISA court to get a court order. And Qwest is quoted as saying that the Attorney General would not certify that the request was lawful under FISA. So FISA provides no defense for the phone companies, either.
In other words, for every 1 million Americans whose records were turned over to NSA, the telcos could be liable for $1 billion in penalties, plus attorneys fees. You do the math.
– Peter Swire and Judd Legum
then, to top everything off…
Officials say machines have ‘dangerous’ holes
By Ian Hoffman
Elections officials in several states are scrambling to understand and limit the risk from a “dangerous” security hole found in Diebold Election Systems Inc.’s ATM-like touch-screen voting machines.
The hole is considered more worrisome than most security problems discovered on modern voting machines, such as weak encryption, easily pickable locks and use of the same, weak password nationwide.
Armed with a little basic knowledge of Diebold voting systems and a standard component available at any computer store, someone with a minute or two of access to a Diebold touch screen could load virtually any software into the machine and disable it, redistribute votes or alter its performance in myriad ways.
“This one is worse than any of the others I’ve seen. It’s more fundamental,” said Douglas Jones, a University of Iowa computer scientist and veteran voting-system examiner for the state of Iowa.
“In the other ones, we’ve been arguing about the security of the locks on the front door,” Jones said. “Now we find that there’s no back door. This is the kind of thing where if the states don’t get out in front of the hackers, there’s a real threat.”
This newspaper is withholding some details of the vulnerability at the request of several elections officials and scientists, partly because exploiting it is so simple and the tools for doing so are widely available.
A Finnish computer expert working with Black Box Voting, a nonprofit organization critical of electronic voting, found the security hole in March after Emery County, Utah, was forced by state officials to accept Diebold touch screens, and a local elections official let the expert examine the machines.
Black Box Voting was to issue two reports today on the security hole, one of limited distribution that explains the vulnerability fully and one for public release that withholds key technical details.
The computer expert, Harri Hursti, quietly sent word of the vulnerability in March to several computer scientists who advise various states on voting systems. At least two of those scientists verified some or all of Hursti’s findings. Several notified their states and requested meetings with Diebold to understand the problem.
The National Association of State Elections Directors, the nongovernmental group that issues national-level approvals for voting systems, learned of the vulnerability Tuesday and was weighing its response. States are scheduled to hold primaries in May, June and July.
“Our voting systems board is looking at this issue,” said NASED Chairman Kevin Kennedy, a Wisconsin elections official. “The states are talking among themselves and looking at plans to mitigate this.”
California, Pennsylvania and Iowa are issuing emergency notices to local elections officials, generally telling them to “sequester” their Diebold touch screens and reprogram them with “trusted” software issued by the state capital. Then elections officials are to keep the machines sealed with tamper-resistant tape until Election Day.
In California, three counties — San Joaquin, Butte and Kern — plan to rely exclusively on Diebold touch screens in their polling places for the June primary.
Nine other counties, including Alameda, Los Angeles and San Diego, will use Diebold touch screens for early voting or for limited, handicapped-accessible voting in their polling places.
California elections officials told those counties Friday that the risk from the vulnerability was “low” and that any vote tampering would be revealed to voters on the paper read-out that prints when they cast their ballots, as well as to elections officials when they recount those printouts for 1 percent of their precincts after the election.
“I think the likelihood of this happening is low,” said assistant Secretary of State for elections Susan Lapsley. “It assumes access and control for a lengthy period of time.”
But scientists say that is not necessarily true.
Preparations could be made days or weeks beforehand, and the loading of the software could take only a minute or so once the machines are delivered to the polling places. In some cases, machines are delivered several days before an election to schools, churches, homes and other common polling places.
Scientists said Diebold appeared to have opened the hole by making it as easy as possible to upgrade the software inside its machines. The result, said Iowa’s Jones, is a violation of federal voting system rules.
“All of us who have heard the technical details of this are really shocked. It defies reason that anyone who works with security would tolerate this design,” he said.
Armed Madhouse, the new book by Greg Palast
May 10, 2006
THE CON
Kerry Won. Now Get Over It . . .
…because they’re putting ’08 in their pocket. Republicans just seem to have that winning spirit. They also have caging lists, felons of the future,
rotting ballots, snuffed canaries, and a lock on the votes of Kissinger- Americans and the undead.
WARNING! There are cranks and kooks and crazies out there on the Internet who say that George Bush lost the 2004 election, like one titled, “Kerry Won” published on the TomPaine.com web site two days after the election. I wrote it.
On November 11, a week after TomPaine.com published it, I received an e-mail from The New York Times Washington Bureau. Hot on the investigation of the veracity of the vote, The Times reporter asked me pointed questions:
Question #1: Are you a “sore loser”?
Question #2: Are you a “conspiracy nut”?
There was no third question. Investigation of the vote was, for The Times at any rate, complete. The next day, the paper’s thorough analysis of the evidence yielded this front-page story, “VOTE FRAUD THEORIES, SPREAD BY BLOGS, ARE QUICKLY BURIED.”
As America’s self-proclaimed Paper of Record had no space for the facts, I thought I’d share some with you here.
“Kerry Won” was not a two-day inquiry à la Times. It was the latest in a series of investigative reports coming out of a four-year team examination, begun for BBC Television’s Newsnight, Britain’s Guardian papers and Harper’s Magazine, dissecting that greasy sausage called American electoral democracy.
And, by the way, the answer to Question #1: I didn’t lose, so I’m not sore. This investigation isn’t about John Kerry. As a journalist, I don’t give a toss which rich white kid won the game. But I’m not so blasé that I don’t care about the disappearance of American democracy. And I really wanted to know how the Bushes swallowed the sausage.
How’d they do it? Again. And how will they do it in ’08? The answer arrived just after midnight on October 8, 2004, three weeks before the official voting, in a series of extraordinary e-mails. The e-mails were intended for the chieftains of the President’s re-election campaign in Washington. Strangely enough, they were misaddressed and ended up in my mailbox. Such things happen.
Night of the Uncounted: How to Disappear Three Million Votes
But the e-mails and their technical attachments won’t mean a thing unless you understand some arcane facts about elections American-style.
First, consider CNN’s Ohio exit polls broadcast just after midnight after the voting ended on Election Day. They show John Kerry defeated George Bush among women voters by 53% to 47%. And among men voters, Kerry defeated Bush 51% to 49%.
So here’s your question, class: What third sex put George Bush over the top in Ohio and gave him the White House?
Answer: The Uncounted.
In Ohio, there were 153,237 ballots simply thrown away, more than the Bush “victory” margin. In New Mexico the uncounted vote was fives times the Bush alleged victory margin of 5,988. In Iowa, Bush’s triumph of 13,498 was overwhelmed by 36,811 votes rejected. In all, over three million votes were cast but never counted in the 2004 presidential election. The official number is bad enough-1,855,827 ballots cast not counted, reported to the federal government’s Election’s Assistance Commission. But the feds are missing data from several cities and entire states too embarrassed to report the votes they failed to count. Correcting for the under-reporting of the undercount, the number of ballots cast but never counted goes to 3,600,380. And there are certainly more we couldn’t locate to tote up.
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Why doesn’t your government tell you this? Hey, they do. It’s right there in black-and-white on a U.S. Census Bureau announcement released seven months after the election-in a footnote to the report on voter turn-out. The Census tabulation of voters voting “differs,” from ballots tallied by the Clerk of the House of Representatives for the 2004 presidential race by 3.4 million votes.
This is the hidden presidential count which, excepting the Census’ whispered footnote, has not been reported.
Unfortunately, that’s not all. In addition to the 3 million ballots uncounted due to technical “glitches,” millions more were lost because the voters were prevented from casting their ballots in the first place. This group of un-votes includes voters illegally denied registration or wrongly purged from the registries.
In the voting biz, most of these lost votes are called “spoilage.” Spoilage, not the voters, picked our president for us.
Joe Stalin, the story goes, said, “It’s not the people who vote that count; it’s the people who count the votes.” That may have been true in the old Soviet Union, but in the U.S.A, the game is much, much subtler: He who makes sure votes don’t get counted decides our winners.
In the lead-up to the 2004 race, millions of Americans were, not unreasonably, panicked about computer voting machines, “black boxes,” that could flip your vote from John Kerry to George Bush. Images abounded of an evil hacker-genius in Dick Cheney’s bunker rewriting code and zapping the totals. But that’s not how it went down. The computer scare was the McGuffin, the fake detail used by magicians to keep your eye off their hands. The new black boxes played their role, albeit minor, but the principal means of the election heist-voiding ballots, overwhelmingly of the poor and Black-went unexposed, unreported and most importantly, uncorrected and ready to roll out on a grander scale in 2008.
I went to sleep election night with the exit polls showing Kerry ahead in swing states. But between 1:05 am and 6:41 am the next morning, goblins went to work. By dawn, the network’s exit poll for Ohio showed Kerry dead even with Bush among women, and down by five percentage points among men.
What happened? Were thousands of Bush voters locked in the voting booths, released at 2am, then queried about their choices? Not quite. The network’s polling company applied a fancy “algorithm,” a mathematical magic wand, to slowly transform the exit polls to match the official count.
And that’s bad. By deliberately contaminating the exit polls, the networks snuffed the canary that would signal that something was deeply wrong about the vote count.
Hunting for a Democrat to defend the Twilight Zone between the exit polls and the “official” polls, media grabbed on Dick Morris, Bill Clinton’s old advisor. An expert at walking that fine line between minor criminality and psychopathic ambition, Morris knows which way his next client’s wind blows.
Morris said:
“Exit polls are almost never wrong. So reliable are the surveys that actually tap voters as they leave the polling places that they’re used as guides to the relative honesty of elections in Third World Countries. To screw up one exit poll is unheard of. To miss six of them is incredible.”
His opening was promising, but then he switches into full Morris:
“It boggles the imagination how pollsters could be that incompetent and invites speculation that more than honest error was at play here.”
So, Dick, you’re telling us there was an evil cabal among six pollsters, competitors who don’t even like each other, conspiring one dark night to make George Bush look like a vote thief.
There’s another explanation: Kerry won.
We’ve got the body (the wounded elections), we’ve got the bullet holes (the missing votes), now where are the smoking guns? How does the GOP disappear the vote? And why do Democratic ballots spoil so much more readily than Republican ballots? How’s it done?
But that little Bill O’Reilly in your head is screaming, Get over it; let’s move on already. That’s the point of investigation. What they tested in 2000 and practiced in 2004, they are preparing to roll out in 2008 big time.
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by the way, today is wesak… happy wesak everyone. may you all achieve enlightenment.
486
oh my god, every time i think bush couldn’t get any stupider, he pulls something like this…
President cites powers of his office
By Charlie Savage
April 30, 2006
WASHINGTON — President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.
Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, “whistle-blower” protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.
Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush’s assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty “to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to “execute” a law he believes is unconstitutional.
Former administration officials contend that just because Bush reserves the right to disobey a law does not mean he is not enforcing it: In many cases, he is simply asserting his belief that a certain requirement encroaches on presidential power.
But with the disclosure of Bush’s domestic spying program, in which he ignored a law requiring warrants to tap the phones of Americans, many legal specialists say Bush is hardly reluctant to bypass laws he believes he has the constitutional authority to override.
Far more than any predecessor, Bush has been aggressive about declaring his right to ignore vast swaths of laws — many of which he says infringe on power he believes the Constitution assigns to him alone as the head of the executive branch or the commander in chief of the military.
Many legal scholars say they believe that Bush’s theory about his own powers goes too far and that he is seizing for himself some of the law-making role of Congress and the Constitution-interpreting role of the courts.
Phillip Cooper, a Portland State University law professor who has studied the executive power claims Bush made during his first term, said Bush and his legal team have spent the past five years quietly working to concentrate ever more governmental power into the White House.
“There is no question that this administration has been involved in a very carefully thought-out, systematic process of expanding presidential power at the expense of the other branches of government,” Cooper said. ”This is really big, very expansive, and very significant.”
For the first five years of Bush’s presidency, his legal claims attracted little attention in Congress or the media. Then, twice in recent months, Bush drew scrutiny after challenging new laws: a torture ban and a requirement that he give detailed reports to Congress about how he is using the Patriot Act.
Bush administration spokesmen declined to make White House or Justice Department attorneys available to discuss any of Bush’s challenges to the laws he has signed.
Instead, they referred a Globe reporter to their response to questions about Bush’s position that he could ignore provisions of the Patriot Act. They said at the time that Bush was following a practice that has “been used for several administrations” and that “the president will faithfully execute the law in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution.”
But the words “in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution” are the catch, legal scholars say, because Bush is according himself the ultimate interpretation of the Constitution. And he is quietly exercising that authority to a degree that is unprecedented in US history.
Bush is the first president in modern history who has never vetoed a bill, giving Congress no chance to override his judgments. Instead, he has signed every bill that reached his desk, often inviting the legislation’s sponsors to signing ceremonies at which he lavishes praise upon their work.
Then, after the media and the lawmakers have left the White House, Bush quietly files “signing statements” — official documents in which a president lays out his legal interpretation of a bill for the federal bureaucracy to follow when implementing the new law. The statements are recorded in the federal register.
In his signing statements, Bush has repeatedly asserted that the Constitution gives him the right to ignore numerous sections of the bills — sometimes including provisions that were the subject of negotiations with Congress in order to get lawmakers to pass the bill. He has appended such statements to more than one of every 10 bills he has signed.
“He agrees to a compromise with members of Congress, and all of them are there for a public bill-signing ceremony, but then he takes back those compromises — and more often than not, without the Congress or the press or the public knowing what has happened,” said Christopher Kelley, a Miami University of Ohio political science professor who studies executive power.
Military link
Many of the laws Bush said he can bypass — including the torture ban — involve the military.
The Constitution grants Congress the power to create armies, to declare war, to make rules for captured enemies, and “to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces.” But, citing his role as commander in chief, Bush says he can ignore any act of Congress that seeks to regulate the military.
On at least four occasions while Bush has been president, Congress has passed laws forbidding US troops from engaging in combat in Colombia, where the US military is advising the government in its struggle against narcotics-funded Marxist rebels.
After signing each bill, Bush declared in his signing statement that he did not have to obey any of the Colombia restrictions because he is commander in chief.
Bush has also said he can bypass laws requiring him to tell Congress before diverting money from an authorized program in order to start a secret operation, such as the “black sites” where suspected terrorists are secretly imprisoned.
Congress has also twice passed laws forbidding the military from using intelligence that was not “lawfully collected,” including any information on Americans that was gathered in violation of the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches.
Congress first passed this provision in August 2004, when Bush’s warrantless domestic spying program was still a secret, and passed it again after the program’s existence was disclosed in December 2005.
On both occasions, Bush declared in signing statements that only he, as commander in chief, could decide whether such intelligence can be used by the military.
In October 2004, five months after the Abu Ghraib torture scandal in Iraq came to light, Congress passed a series of new rules and regulations for military prisons. Bush signed the provisions into law, then said he could ignore them all. One provision made clear that military lawyers can give their commanders independent advice on such issues as what would constitute torture. But Bush declared that military lawyers could not contradict his administration’s lawyers.
Other provisions required the Pentagon to retrain military prison guards on the requirements for humane treatment of detainees under the Geneva Conventions, to perform background checks on civilian contractors in Iraq, and to ban such contractors from performing “security, intelligence, law enforcement, and criminal justice functions.” Bush reserved the right to ignore any of the requirements.
The new law also created the position of inspector general for Iraq. But Bush wrote in his signing statement that the inspector “shall refrain” from investigating any intelligence or national security matter, or any crime the Pentagon says it prefers to investigate for itself.
Bush had placed similar limits on an inspector general position created by Congress in November 2003 for the initial stage of the US occupation of Iraq. The earlier law also empowered the inspector to notify Congress if a US official refused to cooperate. Bush said the inspector could not give any information to Congress without permission from the administration.
Oversight questioned
Many laws Bush has asserted he can bypass involve requirements to give information about government activity to congressional oversight committees.
In December 2004, Congress passed an intelligence bill requiring the Justice Department to tell them how often, and in what situations, the FBI was using special national security wiretaps on US soil. The law also required the Justice Department to give oversight committees copies of administration memos outlining any new interpretations of domestic-spying laws. And it contained 11 other requirements for reports about such issues as civil liberties, security clearances, border security, and counternarcotics efforts.
After signing the bill, Bush issued a signing statement saying he could withhold all the information sought by Congress.
Likewise, when Congress passed the law creating the Department of Homeland Security in 2002, it said oversight committees must be given information about vulnerabilities at chemical plants and the screening of checked bags at airports.
It also said Congress must be shown unaltered reports about problems with visa services prepared by a new immigration ombudsman. Bush asserted the right to withhold the information and alter the reports.
On several other occasions, Bush contended he could nullify laws creating “whistle-blower” job protections for federal employees that would stop any attempt to fire them as punishment for telling a member of Congress about possible government wrongdoing.
When Congress passed a massive energy package in August, for example, it strengthened whistle-blower protections for employees at the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The provision was included because lawmakers feared that Bush appointees were intimidating nuclear specialists so they would not testify about safety issues related to a planned nuclear-waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada — a facility the administration supported, but both Republicans and Democrats from Nevada opposed.
When Bush signed the energy bill, he issued a signing statement declaring that the executive branch could ignore the whistle-blower protections.
Bush’s statement did more than send a threatening message to federal energy specialists inclined to raise concerns with Congress; it also raised the possibility that Bush would not feel bound to obey similar whistle-blower laws that were on the books before he became president. His domestic spying program, for example, violated a surveillance law enacted 23 years before he took office.
David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive-power issues, said Bush has cast a cloud over “the whole idea that there is a rule of law,” because no one can be certain of which laws Bush thinks are valid and which he thinks he can ignore.
“Where you have a president who is willing to declare vast quantities of the legislation that is passed during his term unconstitutional, it implies that he also thinks a very significant amount of the other laws that were already on the books before he became president are also unconstitutional,” Golove said.
Defying Supreme Court
Bush has also challenged statutes in which Congress gave certain executive branch officials the power to act independently of the president. The Supreme Court has repeatedly endorsed the power of Congress to make such arrangements. For example, the court has upheld laws creating special prosecutors free of Justice Department oversight and insulating the board of the Federal Trade Commission from political interference.
Nonetheless, Bush has said in his signing statements that the Constitution lets him control any executive official, no matter what a statute passed by Congress might say.
In November 2002, for example, Congress, seeking to generate independent statistics about student performance, passed a law setting up an educational research institute to conduct studies and publish reports “without the approval” of the Secretary of Education. Bush, however, decreed that the institute’s director would be “subject to the supervision and direction of the secretary of education.”
Similarly, the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld affirmative-action programs, as long as they do not include quotas. Most recently, in 2003, the court upheld a race-conscious university admissions program over the strong objections of Bush, who argued that such programs should be struck down as unconstitutional.
Yet despite the court’s rulings, Bush has taken exception at least nine times to provisions that seek to ensure that minorities are represented among recipients of government jobs, contracts, and grants. Each time, he singled out the provisions, declaring that he would construe them “in a manner consistent with” the Constitution’s guarantee of “equal protection” to all — which some legal scholars say amounts to an argument that the affirmative-action provisions represent reverse discrimination against whites.
Golove said that to the extent Bush is interpreting the Constitution in defiance of the Supreme Court’s precedents, he threatens to “overturn the existing structures of constitutional law.”
A president who ignores the court, backed by a Congress that is unwilling to challenge him, Golove said, can make the Constitution simply ”disappear.”
Common practice in ’80s
Though Bush has gone further than any previous president, his actions are not unprecedented.
Since the early 19th century, American presidents have occasionally signed a large bill while declaring that they would not enforce a specific provision they believed was unconstitutional. On rare occasions, historians say, presidents also issued signing statements interpreting a law and explaining any concerns about it.
But it was not until the mid-1980s, midway through the tenure of President Reagan, that it became common for the president to issue signing statements. The change came about after then-Attorney General Edwin Meese decided that signing statements could be used to increase the power of the president.
When interpreting an ambiguous law, courts often look at the statute’s legislative history, debate and testimony, to see what Congress intended it to mean. Meese realized that recording what the president thought the law meant in a signing statement might increase a president’s influence over future court rulings.
Under Meese’s direction in 1986, a young Justice Department lawyer named Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote a strategy memo about signing statements. It came to light in late 2005, after Bush named Alito to the Supreme Court.
In the memo, Alito predicted that Congress would resent the president’s attempt to grab some of its power by seizing “the last word on questions of interpretation.” He suggested that Reagan’s legal team should “concentrate on points of true ambiguity, rather than issuing interpretations that may seem to conflict with those of Congress.”
Reagan’s successors continued this practice. George H.W. Bush challenged 232 statutes over four years in office, and Bill Clinton objected to 140 laws over his eight years, according to Kelley, the Miami University of Ohio professor.
Many of the challenges involved longstanding legal ambiguities and points of conflict between the president and Congress.
Throughout the past two decades, for example, each president — including the current one — has objected to provisions requiring him to get permission from a congressional committee before taking action. The Supreme Court made clear in 1983 that only the full Congress can direct the executive branch to do things, but lawmakers have continued writing laws giving congressional committees such a role.
Still, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Clinton used the presidential veto instead of the signing statement if they had a serious problem with a bill, giving Congress a chance to override their decisions.
But the current President Bush has abandoned the veto entirely, as well as any semblance of the political caution that Alito counseled back in 1986. In just five years, Bush has challenged more than 750 new laws, by far a record for any president, while becoming the first president since Thomas Jefferson to stay so long in office without issuing a veto.
“What we haven’t seen until this administration is the sheer number of objections that are being raised on every bill passed through the White House,” said Kelley, who has studied presidential signing statements through history. “That is what is staggering. The numbers are well out of the norm from any previous administration.”
Exaggerated fears?
Some administration defenders say that concerns about Bush’s signing statements are overblown. Bush’s signing statements, they say, should be seen as little more than political chest-thumping by administration lawyers who are dedicated to protecting presidential prerogatives.
Defenders say the fact that Bush is reserving the right to disobey the laws does not necessarily mean he has gone on to disobey them.
Indeed, in some cases, the administration has ended up following laws that Bush said he could bypass. For example, citing his power to ”withhold information” in September 2002, Bush declared that he could ignore a law requiring the State Department to list the number of overseas deaths of US citizens in foreign countries. Nevertheless, the department has still put the list on its website.
Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor who until last year oversaw the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel for the administration, said the statements do not change the law; they just let people know how the president is interpreting it.
“Nobody reads them,” said Goldsmith. “They have no significance. Nothing in the world changes by the publication of a signing statement. The statements merely serve as public notice about how the administration is interpreting the law. Criticism of this practice is surprising, since the usual complaint is that the administration is too secretive in its legal interpretations.”
But Cooper, the Portland State University professor who has studied Bush’s first-term signing statements, said the documents are being read closely by one key group of people: the bureaucrats who are charged with implementing new laws.
Lower-level officials will follow the president’s instructions even when his understanding of a law conflicts with the clear intent of Congress, crafting policies that may endure long after Bush leaves office, Cooper said.
“Years down the road, people will not understand why the policy doesn’t look like the legislation,” he said.
And in many cases, critics contend, there is no way to know whether the administration is violating laws — or merely preserving the right to do so.
Many of the laws Bush has challenged involve national security, where it is almost impossible to verify what the government is doing. And since the disclosure of Bush’s domestic spying program, many people have expressed alarm about his sweeping claims of the authority to violate laws.
In January, after the Globe first wrote about Bush’s contention that he could disobey the torture ban, three Republicans who were the bill’s principal sponsors in the Senate — John McCain of Arizona, John W. Warner of Virginia, and Lindsey O. Graham of South Carolina — all publicly rebuked the president.
“We believe the president understands Congress’s intent in passing, by very large majorities, legislation governing the treatment of detainees,” McCain and Warner said in a joint statement. “The Congress declined when asked by administration officials to include a presidential waiver of the restrictions included in our legislation.”
Added Graham: “I do not believe that any political figure in the country has the ability to set aside any… law of armed conflict that we have adopted or treaties that we have ratified.”
And in March, when the Globe first wrote about Bush’s contention that he could ignore the oversight provisions of the Patriot Act, several Democrats lodged complaints.
Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, accused Bush of trying to “cherry-pick the laws he decides he wants to follow.”
And Representatives Jane Harman of California and John Conyers Jr. of Michigan — the ranking Democrats on the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees, respectively — sent a letter to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales demanding that Bush rescind his claim and abide by the law.
“Many members who supported the final law did so based upon the guarantee of additional reporting and oversight,” they wrote. “The administration cannot, after the fact, unilaterally repeal provisions of the law implementing such oversight…. Once the president signs a bill, he and all of us are bound by it.”
Lack of court review
Such political fallout from Congress is likely to be the only check on Bush’s claims, legal specialists said.
The courts have little chance of reviewing Bush’s assertions, especially in the secret realm of national security matters.
“There can’t be judicial review if nobody knows about it,” said Neil Kinkopf, a Georgia State law professor who was a Justice Department official in the Clinton administration. “And if they avoid judicial review, they avoid having their constitutional theories rebuked.”
Without court involvement, only Congress can check a president who goes too far. But Bush’s fellow Republicans control both chambers, and they have shown limited interest in launching the kind of oversight that could damage their party.
“The president is daring Congress to act against his positions, and they’re not taking action because they don’t want to appear to be too critical of the president, given that their own fortunes are tied to his because they are all Republicans,” said Jack Beermann, a Boston University law professor. “Oversight gets much reduced in a situation where the president and Congress are controlled by the same party.”
Said Golove, the New York University law professor: “Bush has essentially said that ‘We’re the executive branch and we’re going to carry this law out as we please, and if Congress wants to impeach us, go ahead and try it.'”
Bruce Fein, a deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration, said the American system of government relies upon the leaders of each branch ”to exercise some self-restraint.” But Bush has declared himself the sole judge of his own powers, he said, and then ruled for himself every time.
“This is an attempt by the president to have the final word on his own constitutional powers, which eliminates the checks and balances that keep the country a democracy,” Fein said. “There is no way for an independent judiciary to check his assertions of power, and Congress isn’t doing it, either. So this is moving us toward an unlimited executive power.”
the only thing that really surprises me about this is that qwest is turning out to be the best possible option, unlike my previous rants about qwest would seem to have indicated… maybe it’s time i re-examined my bias about them…
5/11/2006
By Leslie Cauley
The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.
The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren’t suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.
“It’s the largest database ever assembled in the world,” said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA’s activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency’s goal is “to create a database of every call ever made” within the nation’s borders, this person added.
For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.
The three telecommunications companies are working under contract with the NSA, which launched the program in 2001 shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the sources said. The program is aimed at identifying and tracking suspected terrorists, they said.
The sources would talk only under a guarantee of anonymity because the NSA program is secret.
Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, nominated Monday by President Bush to become the director of the CIA, headed the NSA from March 1999 to April 2005. In that post, Hayden would have overseen the agency’s domestic call-tracking program. Hayden declined to comment about the program.
The NSA’s domestic program, as described by sources, is far more expansive than what the White House has acknowledged. Last year, Bush said he had authorized the NSA to eavesdrop — without warrants — on international calls and international e-mails of people suspected of having links to terrorists when one party to the communication is in the USA. Warrants have also not been used in the NSA’s efforts to create a national call database.
In defending the previously disclosed program, Bush insisted that the NSA was focused exclusively on international calls. “In other words,” Bush explained, “one end of the communication must be outside the United States.”
As a result, domestic call records — those of calls that originate and terminate within U.S. borders — were believed to be private.
Sources, however, say that is not the case. With access to records of billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the communications habits of millions of Americans. Customers’ names, street addresses and other personal information are not being handed over as part of NSA’s domestic program, the sources said. But the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information.
Don Weber, a senior spokesman for the NSA, declined to discuss the agency’s operations. “Given the nature of the work we do, it would be irresponsible to comment on actual or alleged operational issues; therefore, we have no information to provide,” he said. “However, it is important to note that NSA takes its legal responsibilities seriously and operates within the law.”
The White House would not discuss the domestic call-tracking program. “There is no domestic surveillance without court approval,” said Dana Perino, deputy press secretary, referring to actual eavesdropping.
She added that all national intelligence activities undertaken by the federal government “are lawful, necessary and required for the pursuit of al-Qaeda and affiliated terrorists.” All government-sponsored intelligence activities “are carefully reviewed and monitored,” Perino said. She also noted that “all appropriate members of Congress have been briefed on the intelligence efforts of the United States.”
The government is collecting “external” data on domestic phone calls but is not intercepting “internals,” a term for the actual content of the communication, according to a U.S. intelligence official familiar with the program. This kind of data collection from phone companies is not uncommon; it’s been done before, though never on this large a scale, the official said. The data are used for “social network analysis,” the official said, meaning to study how terrorist networks contact each other and how they are tied together.
Carriers uniquely positioned
AT&T recently merged with SBC and kept the AT&T name. Verizon, BellSouth and AT&T are the nation’s three biggest telecommunications companies; they provide local and wireless phone service to more than 200 million customers.
The three carriers control vast networks with the latest communications technologies. They provide an array of services: local and long-distance calling, wireless and high-speed broadband, including video. Their direct access to millions of homes and businesses has them uniquely positioned to help the government keep tabs on the calling habits of Americans.
Among the big telecommunications companies, only Qwest has refused to help the NSA, the sources said. According to multiple sources, Qwest declined to participate because it was uneasy about the legal implications of handing over customer information to the government without warrants.
Qwest’s refusal to participate has left the NSA with a hole in its database. Based in Denver, Qwest provides local phone service to 14 million customers in 14 states in the West and Northwest. But AT&T and Verizon also provide some services — primarily long-distance and wireless — to people who live in Qwest’s region. Therefore, they can provide the NSA with at least some access in that area.
Created by President Truman in 1952, during the Korean War, the NSA is charged with protecting the United States from foreign security threats. The agency was considered so secret that for years the government refused to even confirm its existence. Government insiders used to joke that NSA stood for “No Such Agency.”
In 1975, a congressional investigation revealed that the NSA had been intercepting, without warrants, international communications for more than 20 years at the behest of the CIA and other agencies. The spy campaign, code-named “Shamrock,” led to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which was designed to protect Americans from illegal eavesdropping.
Enacted in 1978, FISA lays out procedures that the U.S. government must follow to conduct electronic surveillance and physical searches of people believed to be engaged in espionage or international terrorism against the United States. A special court, which has 11 members, is responsible for adjudicating requests under FISA.
Over the years, NSA code-cracking techniques have continued to improve along with technology. The agency today is considered expert in the practice of “data mining” — sifting through reams of information in search of patterns. Data mining is just one of many tools NSA analysts and mathematicians use to crack codes and track international communications.
Paul Butler, a former U.S. prosecutor who specialized in terrorism crimes, said FISA approval generally isn’t necessary for government data-mining operations. “FISA does not prohibit the government from doing data mining,” said Butler, now a partner with the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld in Washington, D.C.
The caveat, he said, is that “personal identifiers” — such as names, Social Security numbers and street addresses — can’t be included as part of the search. “That requires an additional level of probable cause,” he said.
The usefulness of the NSA’s domestic phone-call database as a counterterrorism tool is unclear. Also unclear is whether the database has been used for other purposes.
The NSA’s domestic program raises legal questions. Historically, AT&T and the regional phone companies have required law enforcement agencies to present a court order before they would even consider turning over a customer’s calling data. Part of that owed to the personality of the old Bell Telephone System, out of which those companies grew.
Ma Bell’s bedrock principle — protection of the customer — guided the company for decades, said Gene Kimmelman, senior public policy director of Consumers Union. “No court order, no customer information — period. That’s how it was for decades,” he said.
The concern for the customer was also based on law: Under Section 222 of the Communications Act, first passed in 1934, telephone companies are prohibited from giving out information regarding their customers’ calling habits: whom a person calls, how often and what routes those calls take to reach their final destination. Inbound calls, as well as wireless calls, also are covered.
The financial penalties for violating Section 222, one of many privacy reinforcements that have been added to the law over the years, can be stiff. The Federal Communications Commission, the nation’s top telecommunications regulatory agency, can levy fines of up to $130,000 per day per violation, with a cap of $1.325 million per violation. The FCC has no hard definition of “violation.” In practice, that means a single “violation” could cover one customer or 1 million.
In the case of the NSA’s international call-tracking program, Bush signed an executive order allowing the NSA to engage in eavesdropping without a warrant. The president and his representatives have since argued that an executive order was sufficient for the agency to proceed. Some civil liberties groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, disagree.
Companies approached
The NSA’s domestic program began soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to the sources. Right around that time, they said, NSA representatives approached the nation’s biggest telecommunications companies. The agency made an urgent pitch: National security is at risk, and we need your help to protect the country from attacks.
The agency told the companies that it wanted them to turn over their “call-detail records,” a complete listing of the calling histories of their millions of customers. In addition, the NSA wanted the carriers to provide updates, which would enable the agency to keep tabs on the nation’s calling habits.
The sources said the NSA made clear that it was willing to pay for the cooperation. AT&T, which at the time was headed by C. Michael Armstrong, agreed to help the NSA. So did BellSouth, headed by F. Duane Ackerman; SBC, headed by Ed Whitacre; and Verizon, headed by Ivan Seidenberg.
With that, the NSA’s domestic program began in earnest.
AT&T, when asked about the program, replied with a comment prepared for USA TODAY: “We do not comment on matters of national security, except to say that we only assist law enforcement and government agencies charged with protecting national security in strict accordance with the law.”
In another prepared comment, BellSouth said: “BellSouth does not provide any confidential customer information to the NSA or any governmental agency without proper legal authority.”
Verizon, the USA’s No. 2 telecommunications company behind AT&T, gave this statement: “We do not comment on national security matters, we act in full compliance with the law and we are committed to safeguarding our customers’ privacy.”
Qwest spokesman Robert Charlton said: “We can’t talk about this. It’s a classified situation.”
In December, The New York Times revealed that Bush had authorized the NSA to wiretap, without warrants, international phone calls and e-mails that travel to or from the USA. The following month, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group, filed a class-action lawsuit against AT&T. The lawsuit accuses the company of helping the NSA spy on U.S. phone customers.
Last month, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales alluded to that possibility. Appearing at a House Judiciary Committee hearing, Gonzales was asked whether he thought the White House has the legal authority to monitor domestic traffic without a warrant. Gonzales’ reply: “I wouldn’t rule it out.” His comment marked the first time a Bush appointee publicly asserted that the White House might have that authority.
Similarities in programs
The domestic and international call-tracking programs have things in common, according to the sources. Both are being conducted without warrants and without the approval of the FISA court. The Bush administration has argued that FISA’s procedures are too slow in some cases. Officials, including Gonzales, also make the case that the USA Patriot Act gives them broad authority to protect the safety of the nation’s citizens.
The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., would not confirm the existence of the program. In a statement, he said, “I can say generally, however, that our subcommittee has been fully briefed on all aspects of the Terrorist Surveillance Program. … I remain convinced that the program authorized by the president is lawful and absolutely necessary to protect this nation from future attacks.”
The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., declined to comment.
One company differs
One major telecommunications company declined to participate in the program: Qwest.
According to sources familiar with the events, Qwest’s CEO at the time, Joe Nacchio, was deeply troubled by the NSA’s assertion that Qwest didn’t need a court order — or approval under FISA — to proceed. Adding to the tension, Qwest was unclear about who, exactly, would have access to its customers’ information and how that information might be used.
Financial implications were also a concern, the sources said. Carriers that illegally divulge calling information can be subjected to heavy fines. The NSA was asking Qwest to turn over millions of records. The fines, in the aggregate, could have been substantial.
The NSA told Qwest that other government agencies, including the FBI, CIA and DEA, also might have access to the database, the sources said. As a matter of practice, the NSA regularly shares its information — known as “product” in intelligence circles — with other intelligence groups. Even so, Qwest’s lawyers were troubled by the expansiveness of the NSA request, the sources said.
The NSA, which needed Qwest’s participation to completely cover the country, pushed back hard.
Trying to put pressure on Qwest, NSA representatives pointedly told Qwest that it was the lone holdout among the big telecommunications companies. It also tried appealing to Qwest’s patriotic side: In one meeting, an NSA representative suggested that Qwest’s refusal to contribute to the database could compromise national security, one person recalled.
In addition, the agency suggested that Qwest’s foot-dragging might affect its ability to get future classified work with the government. Like other big telecommunications companies, Qwest already had classified contracts and hoped to get more.
Unable to get comfortable with what NSA was proposing, Qwest’s lawyers asked NSA to take its proposal to the FISA court. According to the sources, the agency refused.
The NSA’s explanation did little to satisfy Qwest’s lawyers. “They told (Qwest) they didn’t want to do that because FISA might not agree with them,” one person recalled. For similar reasons, this person said, NSA rejected Qwest’s suggestion of getting a letter of authorization from the U.S. attorney general’s office. A second person confirmed this version of events.
In June 2002, Nacchio resigned amid allegations that he had misled investors about Qwest’s financial health. But Qwest’s legal questions about the NSA request remained.
Unable to reach agreement, Nacchio’s successor, Richard Notebaert, finally pulled the plug on the NSA talks in late 2004, the sources said.
Q: Does the NSA’s domestic program mean that my calling records have been secretly collected?
A: In all likelihood, yes. The NSA collected the records of billions of domestic calls. Those include calls from home phones and wireless phones.
Q: Does that mean people listened to my conversations?
A: Eavesdropping is not part of this program.
Q: What was the NSA doing?
A: The NSA collected “call-detail” records. That’s telephone industry lingo for the numbers being dialed. Phone customers’ names, addresses and other personal information are not being collected as part of this program. The agency, however, has the means to assemble that sort of information, if it so chooses.
Q: When did this start?
A: After the Sept. 11 attacks.
Q: Can I find out if my call records were collected?
A: No. The NSA’s work is secret, and the agency won’t publicly discuss its operations.
Q: Why did they do this?
A: The agency won’t say officially. But sources say it was a way to identify, and monitor, people suspected of terrorist activities.
Q: But I’m not calling terrorists. Why do they need my calls?
A: By cross-checking a vast database of phone calling records, NSA experts can try to pick out patterns that help identify people involved in terrorism.
Q: How is this different from the other NSA programs?
A: NSA programs have historically focused on international communications. In December, The New York Times disclosed that President Bush had authorized the NSA to eavesdrop — without warrants — on international phone calls to and from the USA. The call-collecting program is focused on domestic calls, those that originate and terminate within U.S. borders.
Q: Is this legal?
A: That will be a matter of debate. In the past, law enforcement officials had to obtain a court warrant before getting calling records. Telecommunications law assesses hefty fines on phone companies that violate customer privacy by divulging such records without warrants. But in discussing the eavesdropping program last December, Bush said he has the authority to order the NSA to get information without court warrants.
Q: Who has access to my records?
A: Unclear. The NSA routinely provides its analysis and other cryptological work to the Pentagon and other government agencies.
USA Today reports NSA building massive phone records database
May 11, 2006
WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Bush said Thursday the government is “not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans” with a reported program to create a massive database of U.S. phone calls.
“Our efforts are focused on links to al Qaeda and their known affiliates,” Bush said. “The privacy of ordinary Americans is fiercely protected in all our activities.”
Bush’s comments came after USA Today reported Thursday that three telecommunication firms provided the National Security Agency with domestic telephone call records from tens of millions of Americans beginning shortly after the attacks on September 11, 2001.
According to the report, Qwest, a Denver-based telecommunications company, refused to cooperate with the program.
Bush did not specifically mention the newspaper’s report.
In response to the USA Today article, NSA spokesman Don Weber issued a statement saying, “Given the nature of the work we do, it would be irresponsible to comment on actual or alleged operational issues; therefore, we have no information to provide.
“However, it is important to note that NSA takes its legal responsibilities seriously and operates within the law.”
The report comes at an awkward time for CIA director nominee Gen. Michael Hayden, whom President Bush named this week to replace Porter Goss as head of the spy agency. Hayden, whose confirmation hearings are to begin next Thursday, headed the NSA from March 1999 to April 2005. Hayden on Thursday met with Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican whip, about his nomination.
Afterward, Hayden refused to comment about the report when meeting with reporters but said, “Everything that NSA does is lawful and very carefully done, and the appropriate members of the Congress — both House and Senate — are briefed on all NSA activities.”
The report comes months after the Bush administration came under criticism on Capitol Hill for ordering an NSA surveillance program, that allowed communication to be monitored between people in the United States and terrorism suspects overseas without a court order.
Hayden headed the NSA when the wiretapping program was launched in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks.
Lawmakers concerned
Members of Congress expressed concern Thursday about the report. (Watch angry senator say, “Shame on us” — 3:56)
“It’s our government, government of every single American — Republican, Democrat or independent,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. “… Those entrusted with great power have a duty to answer to Americans what they are doing.”
In the House, Majority Leader Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, said, “I’m concerned about what I read with regard to the NSA database of phone calls. … I’m not sure why it’s necessary to us to keep and have that kind of information.”
Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, said he would call on representatives from the companies named in the USA Today story; AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth; to testify.
However, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tennessee, told reporters he “strongly” agrees that the program is necessary, and said, “We’ll discuss whether hearings are necessary.”
In the House, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California, asked Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Illinois, for hearings into the program during a Thursday afternoon meeting.
Pelosi said the hearings should be conducted by the House Intelligence Committee because “those people have the clearance.”
Pelosi declined to say how Hastert responded to her request.
Conservatives defend program
During a morning session, Republican members of the committee defended the legality and necessity of such a database.
The USA Today report said the program did not involve the NSA “listening to or recording conversations,” a point that Sen. Jeff Sessions touched on.
“No recordings and no conversations were intercepted here, so there was no wiretapping here,” the Alabama Republican said.
Republican Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona also faulted the revelation of the program as harmful to national security.
“This is nuts,” Kyl said. “We are in a war and we’ve go to collect intelligence on the enemy, and you can’t tell the enemy in advance how you are going to do it. And discussing all of this in public leads to that.”
Hayden nomination to proceed
Despite the controversy, the White House intends to go “full steam ahead” with Hayden’s nomination, Reuters reported.
“I think General Hayden has had a really good start to his confirmation process. He’s met with several members, the feedback is positive and we’re full steam ahead on his nomination,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters while traveling with President Bush to Mississippi.
Facing Senate confirmation hearings before the Senate Intelligence Committee on May 18, Hayden’s meeting today with Republican Sens. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska were canceled.
The meeting with Santorum has been tentatively rescheduled for Tuesday afternoon, said Santorum aide Robert Traynham. “But the White House called it very tentative,” Traynham said.
Investigation dropped
The Justice Department has been denied security clearances for access to information, which prompted it to drop an investigation into the domestic spying program revealed late last year by the New York Times.
The Democrats’ No. 2 member of the Senate, Sen. Richard Durbin, called the development “evidence of a cover-up.”
“The fact … that the Department of Justice has abandoned their own investigation of this administration’s wrongdoing because there’s been a refusal to give investigators security clearances is clear evidence of a cover-up within the administration.”
by the way… that doesn’t make it any more legal, or excuse the nastiness of having to view everyone as suspects until proven otherwise, which is sort of like the ideas that this country was founded to get away from… 8/
Sen. Trent Lott tells Hardball he would ‘not be supportive’ of the candidacy
May 10, 2006
ORLANDO, Fla. – President Bush suggested Wednesday that he’d like to see his family’s White House legacy continue, perhaps with his younger brother Jeb as the chief executive.
The president said Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is well-suited for another office and would make “a great president.”
“I would like to see Jeb run at some point in time, but I have no idea if that’s his intention or not,” Bush said in an interview with Florida reporters, according to an account on the St. Petersburg Times Web site.
The president said he had “pushed him fairly hard about what he intends to do,” but the younger Bush has not said.
“I have no idea what he’s going to do. I’ve asked him that question myself. I truly don’t think he knows,” Bush said.
Jeb Bush, 53, will end his second term as governor in January. His brother George ends his second presidential term in January 2009. Neither can seek re-election because of term limits.
Lott to ‘Hardball’: Not a good idea
Jeb Bush has repeatedly said he is not going to run in 2008. And one veteran Republican Party leader suggested Wednesday that it wouldn’t be a good idea.
Just hours after President Bush endorsed a presidential run someday by his brother, Sen. Trent Lott, the Mississippi Republican, flatly rejected the idea in an interview with Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews.”
Lott, whose ouster from the Senate Republican leadership in 2002 was helped in part by the Bush administration, offered a swift assessment of another Bush presidential campaign.
“I would not be supportive of Jeb Bush running for president, but I certainly understand why the president would say that about his own brother,” Lott said.
Lott has previously said he is supporting fellow Sen. John McCain of Arizona for the 2008 Republican nomination.
Asked if Gov. Bush could beat Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York in a 2008 matchup, Lott said, “I don’t think so. No.”
Lott went on to say that “the Republican nominee will eventually be able to win, will be able to beat Hillary Clinton or any Democrat.” But he repeated that the president’s brother would not be the right choice in his mind.
“I don’t think he’d be the best candidate for the nomination. You know, I’ve said that before, and I’m not backing off of that,” Lott said.
Dad: Jeb would be ‘awfully good’
Former President George H.W. Bush told CNN’s “Larry King Live” last year that he would like Jeb Bush to run one day and that he would be “awfully good” as president.
The Florida governor laughed when asked about his father’s comments last June. “Oh, Lord,” he said and shook his head no. “I love my dad.”
The brothers Bush appeared together Tuesday during the president’s visit to the Tampa area. Gov. Bush was waiting on the tarmac when Air Force One arrived and greeted the president with a politician’s handshake and “Welcome to Florida.” The president brushed aside the formality and playfully adjusted his younger brother’s necktie.
Jeb Bush introduced his brother at a retirement community in Sun City Center, where the president touted the new Medicare prescription drug benefit as the governor watched intently from a politically appropriate seat stage right.
Brotherly love
They had a private lunch together with political supporters, then visited a fire station and appeared together before television cameras to express concern about wildfires that were blazing across the state.
The governor was not with the president during his visit to the Puerto Rican Club of Central Florida in Orlando on Wednesday — the president’s final stop on a three-day trip to the state. But the president was sure his brother still got some attention.
“Yesterday I checked in with my brother,” President Bush said as he took the stage. “Make sure everything’s going all right. I’m real proud of Jeb. He’s a good, decent man, and I love him dearly.”
and finally
Bush Ratings Hit New Low
which i’m too lazy to copy, but goes right along with everything else…
485
wouldn’t you know it… the bush administration is afraid of what an inquiry into the domestic spying issue might uncover, so…
NSA won’t grant Justice Department lawyers required security clearance
WASHINGTON – The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the necessary security clearance to probe the matter.
The inquiry headed by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, or OPR, sent a fax to Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., on Wednesday saying they were closing their inquiry because without clearance their lawyers cannot examine Justice lawyers’ role in the program.
“We have been unable to make any meaningful progress in our investigation because OPR has been denied security clearances for access to information about the NSA program,” OPR counsel H. Marshall Jarrett wrote to Hinchey. Hinchey’s office shared the letter with The Associated Press.
Jarrett wrote that beginning in January 2006, his office has made a series of requests for the necessary clearances. Those requests were denied Tuesday.
“Without these clearances, we cannot investigate this matter and therefore have closed our investigation,” wrote Jarrett.
Hinchey is one of many House Democrats who have been highly critical of the domestic eavesdropping program first revealed in December.
In February, the OPR announced it would examine the conduct of their own agency’s lawyers in the program, though they were not authorized to investigate NSA activities.
Bush’s decision to authorize the largest U.S. spy agency to monitor people inside the United States, without warrants, generated a host of questions about the program’s legal justification.
The administration has vehemently defended the eavesdropping, saying the NSA’s activities were narrowly targeted to intercept international calls and e-mails of Americans and others inside the U.S. with suspected ties to the al-Qaida terrorist network.
can we say “watergate”?
can we even remember watergate?
8/
Recruiting Abuses Mount as Army Struggles to Meet Goals
BY MICHELLE ROBERTS
May 7, 2006
PORTLAND, Ore. — Jared Guinther is 18. Tall and lanky, he will graduate from high school in June. Girls think he’s cute, until they try to talk to him and he stammers or just stands there — silent.
Diagnosed with autism at age 3, Jared is polite but won’t talk to people unless they address him first. It’s hard for him to make friends. He lives in his own private world.
Jared didn’t know there was a war raging in Iraq until his parents told him last fall — shortly after a military recruiter stopped him outside a Portland strip mall and complimented his black Converse All-Stars.
“When Jared first started talking about joining the Army, I thought, `Well, that isn’t going to happen,”‘ said Paul Guinther, Jared’s father. “I told my wife not to worry about it. They’re not going to take anybody in the service who’s autistic.”
But they did. Last month, Jared came home with papers showing that he had not only enlisted, but signed up for the Army’s most dangerous job: cavalry scout. He is scheduled to leave for basic training Aug. 16.
Officials are now investigating whether recruiters at the U.S. Army Recruiting Station in southeast Portland improperly concealed Jared’s disability, which should have made him ineligible for service.
What happened to Jared is a growing national problem as the military faces increasing pressure to hit recruiting targets during an unpopular war.
Tracking by the Pentagon shows that complaints about recruiting improprieties are on pace to again reach record highs set in 2003 and 2004. Both the active Army and Reserve missed recruiting targets last year, and reports of recruiting abuses continue from across the country.
A family in Ohio reported that its mentally ill son was signed up, despite rules banning such enlistments and the fact that records about his illness were readily available.
In Houston, a recruiter warned a potential enlistee that if he backed out of a meeting he’d be arrested.
And in Colorado, a high school student working undercover told recruiters he’d dropped out and had a drug problem. The recruiter told the boy to fake a diploma and buy a product to help him beat a drug test.
Violations such as these forced the Army to halt recruiting for a day last May so recruiters could be retrained and reminded of the job’s ethical requirements.
The Portland Army Recruiting Battalion Headquarters opened its investigation into Jared’s case last week after his parents called The Oregonian and the newspaper began asking questions about his enlistment.
Maj. Curt Steinagel, commander of the Military Entrance Processing Station in Portland, said the papers filled out by Jared’s recruiters contained no indication of his disability. Steinagel acknowledged that the current climate is tough on recruiters.
“I can’t speak for Army,” he said, “but it’s no secret that recruiters stretch and bend the rules because of all the pressure they’re under. The problem exists, and we all know it exists.”
* * *
Jared lives in a tiny brown house in southeast Portland that looks as worn out as his parents do when they get home from work.
Paul Guinther, 57, labors 50- to 60-hour weeks as a painter-sandblaster at a tug and barge works. His wife, Brenda, 50, has the graveyard housekeeping shift at a medical center.
The couple got together nearly 16 years ago when Jared was 3. Brenda, who had two young children of her own, immediately noticed that Jared was different and pushed Paul to have the boy tested.
“Jared would play with buttons for hours on end,” she said. “He’d play with one toy for days. Loud noises bothered him. He was scared to death of the toilet flushing, the lawn mower.”
Jared didn’t speak until he was almost 4 and could not tolerate the feel of grass on his feet.
Doctors diagnosed him with moderate to severe autism, a developmental disorder that strikes when children are toddlers. It causes problems with social interaction, language and intelligence. No one knows its cause or cure.
School and medical records show that Jared, whose recent verbal IQ tested very low, spent years in special education classes. It was only as a high school senior that Brenda pushed for Jared to take regular classes because she wanted him to get a normal rather than a modified diploma.
Jared required extensive tutoring and accommodations to pass, but in June he will graduate alongside his younger stepbrother, Matthew Thorsen.
Last fall, Jared began talking about joining the military after a recruiter stopped him on his way home from school and offered a $4,000 signing bonus, $67,000 for college and more buddies than he could count.
Matthew told his mother that military recruiting at the school and surrounding neighborhoods was so intense that one recruiter had pulled him out of football practice.
Recruiters nationwide spend several hours a day cold-calling high school students, whose phone numbers are provided by schools under the No Child Left Behind Law. They also prospect at malls, high school cafeterias, colleges and wherever else young people gather.
Brenda phoned her two brothers, both veterans. She said they laughed and told her not to worry. The military would never take Jared.
The Guinthers, meanwhile, tried to refocus their son.
“I told him, `Jared, you get out of high school. I know you don’t want to be a janitor all your life. You work this job, you go to community college, you find out what you want. You can live here as long as you want,”‘ Paul said.
They thought it had worked until five weeks ago. Brenda said she called Jared on his cell phone to check what time he’d be home.
“I said Jared, `What are you doing?’ `I’m taking the test’ — he said the entrance test. I go, `Wait a minute.’ I said, `Who’s giving you the test?’ He said, `Corporal.’ I said, `Well let me talk to him.”‘
Brenda said she spoke to Cpl. Ronan Ansley and explained that Jared had a disability, autism, that could not be outgrown. She said Ansley told her he had been in special classes, too — for dyslexia.
“I said, `Wait a minute, there’s a big difference between autism and your problem,”‘ Brenda said.
Military rules prohibit enlisting anyone with a mental disorder that interferes with school or employment, unless a recruit can show he or she hasn’t required special academic or job accommodations for 12 months.
Jared has been in special education classes since preschool. Through a special program for disabled workers, he has a part-time job scrubbing toilets and dumping trash.
Jared scored 43 out of 99 on the Army’s basic entrance exam — 31 is lowest grade the Army allows for enlistment, military officials said.
After learning Jared had cleared this first hurdle toward enlistment, Brenda said she called and asked for Ansley’s supervisor and got Sgt. Alejandro Velasco.
She said she begged Velasco to review Jared’s medical and school records. Brenda said Velasco declined, asserting that he didn’t need any paperwork. Under military rules, recruiters are required to gather all available information about a recruit and fill out a medical screening form.
“He was real cocky and he says, `Well, Jared’s an 18-year-old man. He doesn’t need his mommy to make his decisions for him.”‘
* * *
The Guinthers are not political activists. They supported the Iraq war in the beginning but have started to question it as fighting drags on. Brenda Guinther said that if her son Matthew had enlisted, she “wouldn’t like it, but I would learn to live with it because I know he would understand the consequences.”
But Jared doesn’t understand the dangers or the details of what he’s done, the Guinthers said.
When they asked Jared how long he would be in the Army, he said he didn’t know. His enlistment papers show it’s just over four years. Jared also was disappointed to learn that he wouldn’t be paid the $4,000 signing bonus until after basic training.
During a recent family gathering, a relative asked Jared what he would do if an enemy was shooting at him. Jared ran to his video game console, killed a digital Xbox soldier and announced, “See! I can do it!”
“My concern is that if he got into a combat situation he really couldn’t take someone’s back,” said Mary Lou Perry, 51, longtime friend of the Guinthers. “He wouldn’t really know a dangerous thing. This job they have him doing, it’s like send him in and if he doesn’t get blown up, it’s safe for the rest of us.”
Steinagel, the processing station commander, told The Oregonian that Jared showed up after passing his written exam. None of his paperwork indicated that he was autistic, but if it had, Jared almost certainly would have been disqualified, he said.
On Tuesday, a reporter visited the U.S. Army Recruiting Station at the Eastport Plaza Shopping Center, where Velasco said he had not been told about Jared’s autism.
“Cpl. Ansley is Guinther’s recruiter,” he said. “I was unaware of any type of autism or anything like that.”
Velasco initially denied knowing Jared, but later said he’d spent a lot of time mentoring him because Jared was going to become a cavalry scout. The job entails “engaging the enemy with anti-armor weapons and scout vehicles,” according to an Army recruiting Web site.
After he’d spoken for a few moments, Velasco suddenly grabbed the reporter’s tape recorder and tried to tear out the tape, stopping only after the reporter threatened to call the police.
With the Guinthers’ permission, The Oregonian faxed Jared’s medical records to the U.S. Army Recruiting Battalion commander Lt. Col. David Carlton in Portland, who on Wednesday ordered the investigation.
The Guinthers said that on Tuesday evening, Cpl. Ansley showed up at their door. They said Ansley stated that he would probably lose his job and face dishonorable discharge unless they could stop the newspaper’s story.
Ansley, reached at his recruiting office Thursday, declined to comment for this story.
S. Douglas Smith, spokesman for the U.S. Army Recruiting Command, in Fort Knox, Ky., said he could not comment on specifics of the investigation in Portland. But he defended the 8,200 recruiters working for the active Army and Army Reserve.
Last year, the Army relieved 44 recruiters from duty and admonished 369.
“Everyone in recruiting is let down when one of our recruiters fails to uphold the Army’s and Recruiting Command’s standards,” Smith said.
The Guinthers are eager to hear whether the Army will release Jared from his enlistment. Jared is disappointed he might not go because he thought the recruiters were his friends, they said. But they’re willing to accept that.
“If he went to Iraq and got hurt or killed,” Paul Guinther said, “I couldn’t live with myself knowing I didn’t try to stop it.”
484
have you ever wondered what that long stick with a ball on the end of it that sign painters use to steady their hands when they’re lettering is called? i know i have… for a long time… i’ve known what it is used for, and i’ve actually made a couple of them (the most recent one is a piece of dowl with a rubber ball on the end, that i made to assist with the Ganesha the car project), but i didn’t know what it was called before yesterday. it’s called a mahlstick (also called a “maulstick”, from the dutch malen – to paint. definition here), and here is the next logical step in mahlstick evolution, which is a pretty slick idea indeed. now we both know.
Seattle Art Car Blowout – i went to a “djazz djam” at gasworks park on saturday, and when i went back to my car, there was a thing that looked, at first, like a ticket on the window, which i thought was strange since i parked in a public, no-pay parking lot… but when i looked at it more closely, it was an invitation to be a part of this… which, it turns out, will be very convenient, as i need to find a place close to the center of the universe to park while i’m playing with the fremont philharmonic at the solstice parade. the “djazz djam”, by itself, was really interesting… i went to it as the result of responding to someone in a LJ community (i don’t remember if the actual post was in
i posted yesterday from edinburgh, tristan de cunha, and what came up when i clicked the “Location” link was edinburgh, scotland, which is not the same place… edinburgh, tristan de cunha is 37° 4′ south latitude, 12° 19′ west longitude, and it is the largest city (which isn’t saying much) on the most remote island in the world. livejournal, if you’re going to post locations, then at least make them in the correct hemisphere… 8/
finally,
Dolphins communicate like humans by calling each other by name, scientists in Fife have found.
The mammals are able to recognise themselves and other members of the same species as individuals with separate identities.
St Andrews University researchers studying in Florida discovered bottlenose dolphins used names rather than sound to identify each other.
The three-year-study was funded by the Royal Society of London.
Dr Vincent Janik, of the Sea Mammal Unit at St Andrews University, said they conducted the research on wild dolphins.
He said: “We captured wild dolphins using nets when they came near the shore.
“Then in the shallow water we recoded their whistles before synthesising them on a computer so that we had a computer voice of a dolphin.
“Then we played it back to the dolphins and we found they responded. This showed us that the dolphins know each other’s signature whistle instead of just the voice.
“I think it is a very exciting discovery because it means that these animals have evolved the same abilities as humans.
“Now we know they have labels for each other like we do.”
The research was conducted in Sarasota Bay off Florida’s west coast.
The findings are published in the US journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
483
[As if any further argumentation were needed, this merely underlines the great truth of this war. There is no enemy in Iraq. There never was any enemy in Iraq. The common enemies of the U.S. troops and the Iraqis are to be found in Washington DC, running their Imperial government for their own personal private profit.
[“Traitors” is too mild a term to describe them. At a certain point, rhetoric becomes exhausted, and only bright, white rage remains. A government that would do this, on top all the greed, lies, and stupidity that have characterized this war, has long outlived its usefulness, and has become a mere collection of incompetent cancerous predators.
[Of all the reasons to bring all the troops home now, immediately, one reason begins to tower above all the rest: we need them here to protect us against the filth in command at every level of power in this society. Our troops have the power to sweep that filth away, forever. Payback is overdue.]
02 MAY 06 By BOB KERR, The Providence Journal
The Iraq war has been the war fought on the cheap: not enough body armor, not enough armor on vehicles, not enough night vision equipment.
It has been the war in which packages from back home have had to fill some crucial needs.
Now, we have chow call at the Greenwood Credit Union in Warwick, R.I. It’s the latest in home-front intervention. It’s partially in response to the unthinkable image of U.S. Marines approaching Iraqi citizens and asking for food because they do not have enough.
There’s a big barrel in the lobby of the credit union on Post Road in Warwick. It’s decorated with ribbons and it’s there because Karen Boucher-Andoscia’s son, Nick Andoscia, called and asked his mother to send food.
Nick’s a Marine corporal. He was in Afghanistan last year, where there was enough to eat. He’s in Iraq now even though his enlistment was up last year.
He’s one of those Marines who can’t walk away. His unit, the 3rd Battalion of the 3rd Marines, was headed for Iraq and he just couldn’t head for civilian life while those he had served with were heading to their second war.
“He extended,” says Karen. “He told me, ‘I really have to go. I can’t let my guys go alone.’”
There are a lot of stories like that. We don’t hear them much. They’re kind of personal.
So Nick Andoscia went to Iraq. And hunger soon followed.
“I got a letter,” says Karen. “And he had called me before that. He said, ‘Send lots of tuna.’”
Nick told his mother that he and the men in his unit were all about 10 pounds lighter in their first few weeks in Iraq. They were pulling 22-hour patrol shifts. They were getting two meals a day and they were not meals to remember.
“He told me the two meals just weren’t cutting it. He said the Iraqi food was usually better. They were going to the Iraqis and basically saying, ‘feed me.’”
Karen started packing in that wartime tradition as old as mothers and sons. She packed a lot of the packaged tuna, not the canned.
She happened to mention her hungry son to people she works with at Greenwood Credit Union, where she is a teller and has worked for 30 years.
Pounds and pounds of food started showing up amid the daily business of loans and deposits and withdrawals. Marianne Barao, the branch manager, said it could be done, the credit union could become the place where people help feed hungry Marines who are risking their lives on a skimpy diet.
“We sent out 51 pounds this week,” says Karen. “There are customers coming in saying, ‘What do you need?’”
The credit union is paying the cost of packing and shipping.
Any packaged food is welcome. So are baby wipes because showers are even rarer than a full meal. And foot powder.
Nick Andoscia, who is 22, is due to come home later this year. He wants to study criminal justice, his mother says, then go to work for a fire or police department.
But for the next few months he will be on patrol in western Iraq, dealing with the heat and the dirt and the danger.
The last thing he should have to worry about is an empty stomach. The last thing he should have to do is approach Iraqis and ask for food.
You have to wonder what the gracious hosts must think when a fighting man from the richest country on earth comes to their door in search of something to eat.
A. Way too much
A simple airline stub, picked out of a bin near Heathrow, led Steve Boggan to investigate a shocking breach of security
Wednesday May 3, 2006
The Guardian
This is the story of a piece of paper no bigger than a credit card, thrown away in a dustbin on the Heathrow Express to Paddington station. It was nestling among chewing gum wrappers and baggage tags, cast off by some weary traveller, when I first laid eyes on it just over a month ago.
The traveller’s name was Mark Broer. I know this because the paper – actually a flimsy piece of card – was a discarded British Airways boarding-pass stub, the small section of the pass displaying your name and seat number. The stub you probably throw away as soon as you leave your flight.
It said Broer had flown from Brussels to London on March 15 at 7.10am on BA flight 389 in seat 03C. It also told me he was a “Gold” standard passenger and gave me his frequent-flyer number. I picked up the stub, mindful of a conversation I had had with a computer security expert two months earlier, and put it in my pocket.
If the expert was right, this stub would enable me to access Broer’s personal information, including his passport number, date of birth and nationality. It would provide the building blocks for stealing his identity, ruining his future travel plans – and even allow me to fake his passport.
It would also serve as the perfect tool for demonstrating the chaotic collection, storage and security of personal information gathered as a result of America’s near-fanatical desire to collect data on travellers flying to the US – and raise serious questions about the sort of problems we can expect when ID cards are introduced in 2008.
To understand why the piece of paper I found on the Heathrow Express is important, it is necessary to go back not, as you might expect, to 9/11, but to 1996 and the crash of TWA Flight 800 over Long Island Sound, 12 minutes out of New York, with the loss of 230 lives. Initially, crash investigators suspected a terrorist bomb might have brought down the aircraft. This was later ruled out, but already the Clinton administration had decided it was time to devise a security system that would weed out potential terrorists before they boarded a flight. This was called Capps, the Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-screening System.
It was a prosaic, relatively unambitious idea at first. For example, in highly simplistic terms, if someone bought a one-way ticket, paid in cash and checked in no baggage, they would be flagged up as an individual who had no intention of arriving or of going home. A bomber, perhaps.
After 9/11, the ambitions for such screening grew exponentially and the newly founded Department of Homeland Security began inviting computer companies to develop intelligent systems that could “mine” data on individuals, whizzing round state, private and public databases to establish what kind of person was buying the ticket.
In 2003, one of the pioneers of the system, speaking anonymously, told me that the project, by now called Capps II, was being designed to designate travellers as green, amber or red risks. Green would be an individual with no criminal record – a US citizen, perhaps, who had a steady job and a settled home, was a frequent flyer and so on. Amber would be someone who had not provided enough information to confirm all of this and who might be stopped at US Immigration and asked to provide clearer proof of ID. Red would be someone who might be linked to an ever-growing list of suspected terrorists – or someone whose name matched such a suspect.
“If you are an American who has volunteered lots of details proving that you are who you say you are, that you have a stable home, live in a community, aren’t a criminal, [Capps II] will flag you up as green and you will be automatically allowed on to your flight,” the pioneer told me. “The problem is that if the system doesn’t have a lot of information on you, or you have ordered a halal meal, or have a name similar to a known terrorist, or even if you are a foreigner, you’ll most likely be flagged amber and held back to be asked for further details. If you are European and the US government is short of information on you – or, as is likely, has incorrect information on you – you can reckon on delay after delay unless you agree to let them delve into your private details.
“That is inconvenient enough but, as we tested the system, it became clear that information was going to be used to build a complete picture of you from lots of private databases – your credit record, your travel history, your criminal record, whether you had the remotest dubious links with anyone at your college who became a terrorist. I began to feel more and more uncomfortable about it.”
Eventually, he quit the programme.
All of this was on my mind as I sat down with my computer expert, Adam Laurie, one of the founders of a company called the Bunker Secure Hosting, to examine Broer’s boarding-pass stub. Laurie is known in cyber-circles as something of a white knight, a computer wizard who not only advises companies on how to make their systems secure, but also cares about civil rights and privacy. He and his brother Ben are renowned among web designers as the men who developed Apache SSL – the software that makes most of the world’s web pages secure – and then gave it away for free.
We logged on to the BA website, bought a ticket in Broer’s name and then, using the frequent flyer number on his boarding pass stub, without typing in a password, were given full access to all his personal details – including his passport number, the date it expired, his nationality (he is Dutch, living in the UK) and his date of birth. The system even allowed us to change the information.
Using this information and surfing publicly available databases, we were able – within 15 minutes – to find out where Broer lived, who lived there with him, where he worked, which universities he had attended and even how much his house was worth when he bought it two years ago. (This was particularly easy given his unusual name, but it would have been possible even if his name had been John Smith. We now had his date of birth and passport number, so we would have known exactly which John Smith.)
Laurie was anything but smug.
“This is terrible,” he said. “It just shows what happens when governments begin demanding more and more of our personal information and then entrust it to companies simply not geared up for collecting or securing it as it gets shared around more and more people. It doesn’t enhance our security; it undermines it.”
Just over $100m had been spent on Capps II before it was scrapped in July 2004. Campaigners in the US had objected to it on grounds of privacy, and airlines such as JetBlue and American faced boycotts when it emerged that they were involved in trials – handing over passenger information – with the Department of Homeland Security’s Transportation Security Administration. Even worse, JetBlue admitted it had given the private records of 5 million passengers to a commercial company for analysis – and some of this was posted on the internet.
But the problems did not end with the demise of Capps II. Earlier that month, after 18 months of acrimonious negotiation, the EU caved in to American demands that European airlines, too, should hand over passenger information to the United States Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, BCBP, before their aircraft would be allowed to land on US soil. The BCBP wanted up to 60 pieces of information routinely gathered by booking agencies and stored as a Passenger Name Record, PNR. This included not only your flight details, name, address and so on, but also your travel itinerary, where you were staying, with whom you travelled, whether you booked a hire car in the US, whether you booked a smoking room in your hotel, even if you ordered a halal or kosher meal. And the US authorities wanted to keep it all for 50 years.
At first, the European Commission argued that surrendering such information would be in breach of European data protection law. Eventually, however, in the face of huge fines for airlines and cancelled landing slots, it agreed that 34 items from PNRs could be handed over and kept by the US for three and a half years.
Capps II was superseded by a new system called Secure Flight in August 2004. Later, in October last year, the BCBP demanded that airlines travelling to, or through, the US should forward “advance passenger information”, including passport number and date of birth, before passengers would be allowed to travel. It called this the advance passenger information system, or APIS. This is the information that Laurie and I had accessed through the BA website.
“The problem here is that a commercial organisation is being given the task of collecting data on behalf of a foreign government, for which it gets no financial reward, and which offers no business benefit in return,” says Laurie. “Naturally, in such a case, they will seek to minimise their costs, which they do by handing the problem off to the passengers themselves. This has the neat side-effect of also handing off liability for data errors.
“You can imagine the case where a businessman’s trip gets delayed because his passport details were incorrectly entered and he was mistaken for a terrorist. Since BA didn’t enter the data – frequent flyers are asked to do it themselves – they can’t be held responsible and can’t be sued for his lost business.”
By the time I found the ticket stub and went to Laurie, he had already reported his suspicions about a potential security lapse to BA (on January 20) by email. He received no response, so followed up with a telephone call asking for the airline’s security officer. He was told there wasn’t one, so he explained the lapse to an employee. Nothing was done and he still has not been contacted.
Three months ago, after further objections in the US, but before our investigation, Secure Flight was suspended after costing the US taxpayer $144m. At the time, Kip Hawley, transportation security administrator, said: “While the Secure Flight regulation is being developed, this is the time to ensure that the Secure Flight security, operational and privacy foundation is solid.”
The TSA said it would continue its passenger pre-screening programme in yet another guise after it had been audited and added that it had plans to introduce more security, privacy and redress for errors – confirming critics’ suspicions that no such systems were yet in place. To the consternation of privacy activists in Europe, the TSA also spelled out plans for its desire for various US government departments to share information, including yours and mine.
Dr Gus Hosein, a visiting fellow specialising in privacy and terrorism at the London School of Economics, is concerned about where the whole project will go next.
“They want to extend the advance passenger information system [APIS] to include data on where passengers are going and where they are staying because of concerns over plagues,” he says. “For example, if bird flu breaks out, they want to know where all the foreign travellers are. The airlines hate this. It is a security nightmare. Soon the US will demand biometric information [fingerprints, retina scans etc] and they will share that around.
“But what the BA lapse shows is that companies cannot be trusted to gather this information without it getting out to criminals who would abuse it. The potential for identity theft is huge, but the number of agencies among which it will be shared is just growing and growing.”
And that is where concern comes in over the UK’s proposed ID cards, which may one day be needed to travel to the US. According to the Home Office, the identity cards bill currently going through Parliament allows for up to 40 pieces of personal information to be held on the proposed ID card, with digital biometric details of all of your fingerprints, both your irises and your face, all of which can be transmitted to electronic readers. The cards will contain a microchip the size of a grain of sand linked to a tiny embedded antenna that transmits all the information when contacted by an electronic reader.
This readable system, known as Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, has recently been installed in new British passports. The Home Office says the information can be transmitted across a distance of only a couple of centimetres because the chips have no power of their own – they simply bounce back a response to a weak signal sent from passport readers at immigration points.
However, the suspicion is that the distance over which the signal can be read relates only to the weakness of the signal sent out by the readers. What if the readers sent out much stronger signals? Potentially, then, criminals with powerful readers could suck out your information as you passed by. The Government denies that this scenario is viable, but, in January, Dutch security specialists Riscure successfully read and de-encrypted information from its country’s new biometric passports from a distance of about 30ft in just two hours.
“The Home Office says British passport information is encrypted, but it’s a pretty basic form of encryption,” says Hosein. “Everyone expects the ID cards to be equally insecure. If the government insists they won’t be cracked, read or copied, they’re kidding themselves and us.”
BA has now closed its security loophole after being contacted by the Guardian in March, but that particular lapse is beside the point. Because of the pressure being applied to airlines by the US, breaches will happen again elsewhere as our personal data whizzes around the globe, often without our knowledge or consent.
Meanwhile, accountability remains lamentable. Several calls to the US Transportation Security Administration were not returned.
Perhaps the last word should go to Mark Broer, the man whose boarding pass stub started off this virtual paper chase. He is aged 41 and is a successful executive with a pharmaceutical recruitment company. When I told him what we had done with his boarding pass stub, he was appalled.
“I travel regularly and, because I go to the US, I submitted my personal information and passport number – it is required if you are a frequent flyer and want to check yourself in,” he says. “Experienced travellers today know that they have to give up information for ease of travel and to fight terrorism. It is an exchange of information in return for convenience. But as far as I’m concerned, having that information leaked out to people who could steal my identity wasn’t part of the deal.”
482
those who frequent the LJ pic feed sites may have noticed pics from this site. it’s a rather amusing little site that takes you through a quick 25-question “IQ” test, and give you a quick thumbnail sketch of your “real” IQ.
unfortunately, there’s a catch. here’s what I see as my results on my home computer
but here’s what everyone else sees
apparently, the site uses some sort of script that shows your IP one graphic and shows everyone else another. a rather juvenile (but funny, in a really nasty way) trick that seems to have nailed hundreds (myself included).
by the way, the person who foisted this off on all of us (which is easily available to the general public by typing
whois iq-challenge.com
) is:
Kevin Kelm, otherwise known as
8240 Lighthouse Court
970- -0967
and the stooge he used as an artist is
481
what do you know… today is 6/6/06 5/6/06… brain injury… 8/
By DON THOMPSON
SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Federal prosecutors will retry an ice cream vendor on charges that he lied to the FBI about his son’s attendance at a terrorist training camp, authorities announced Friday.
Umer Hayat’s first trial ended with the jury deadlocked last month. The same day, a separate jury convicted his son, Hamid Hayat, of supporting terrorism by attending an al-Qaida camp in Pakistan.
U.S. District Court Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. set June 5 to begin selecting a new jury for the father’s retrial.
“This case is simply too serious to walk away after one hung jury,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Larry Brown said Friday as he left the courthouse.
Brown said prosecutors interviewed jurors in the first trial, and found that “there was not a lot of dispute about whether or not Umer Hayat lied to the FBI. Still, there were some jurors who looked down upon the investigative techniques that were used by agents.”
During the nine-week trial, jurors heard separate videotaped confessions the father and son made to FBI agents. The defense said the two were worn down by hours of questioning and were merely responding to leading questions by agents.
Umer Hayat, a 48-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen, was released from federal custody Monday after Burrell lowered his bail from $1.2 million to $390,000. He will remain under house arrest in the Central Valley town. If convicted of the charges, he could face up to 16 years in prison.
His 23-year-old son, also a U.S. citizen, was working at a cherry-packing shed when he was arrested. Hamid Hayat faces up to 39 years in prison at sentencing July 14.
The FBI began focusing on the 2,500-member Pakistani community in Lodi shortly after the September 2001 terrorist attacks.
Agents initially were interested in pursuing a tip that Lodi businesses were sending money to terror groups abroad. They recruited a 32-year-old former Lodi resident of Pakistani descent who was then living in Oregon.
The informant soon befriended Hamid Hayat and secretly recorded their conversations. In some of those discussions, the younger Hayat said he planned to attend a terrorist training camp in Pakistan during a visit there from 2003 to 2005.
Hamid Hayat’s attorney, Wazhma Mojaddidi, said her client never actually attended the camp and argued that prosecutors had no direct evidence that he had. She has requested a new trial for her client.
The Hayats were arrested in June, shortly after Hamid Hayat returned from Pakistan, along with two Muslim clerics who later were deported for immigration violations.
U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott said lying to the FBI during a terrorism investigation could cause them to lose valuable time that would be better spent foiling deadly plots.
“Seven citizens serving as jurors in the Umer Hayat trial found beyond a reasonable doubt that he had lied to the FBI about his son’s attendance at a terrorist training camp,” Scott said in a statement Friday.
By Stephanie Nebehay
May 5, 2006
GENEVA – The United States on Friday defended its treatment of foreign terrorism suspects held abroad, telling a U.N. committee it backed a ban on torture and stressing there had been “relatively few actual cases of abuse.”
John Bellinger, the U.S. State Department’s top legal adviser, said Washington was “absolutely committed to uphold its national and international obligations to eradicate torture.”
Human rights groups this week accused the United States of mistreating detainees through cruel interrogation methods including “water-boarding,” a form of mock drowning.
Bellinger, who heads the American delegation to the U.N. Committee Against Torture, said allegations of U.S. abuse had been greatly exaggerated.
“This committee should not lose sight of the fact that these incidents are not systemic,” he told the 10-member panel at the start of a two-day review of U.S. compliance with the Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment.
“Relatively few actual cases of abuse and wrongdoing have occurred in the context of U.S. armed conflict with al Qaeda,” he said.
The United States is holding hundreds of terrorism suspects, most arrested since al Qaeda’s September 11 attacks in 2001, at its prisons in
Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Barry Lowenkron told the committee the “notorious” abuses that occurred at
Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq “inexcusable and indefensible.”
“We know that the image of Abu Ghraib and questions about Guantanamo have been damaging to the reputation of the United States,” Bellinger told a news briefing after the session.
“That is one reason the U.S. government is trying very hard to set things on the right course through investigations that have been conducted and through our appearance at the committee today,” he said.
CHAIN OF COMMAND
The 10-member U.N. committee grilled the U.S. delegation on whether criminal responsibility has been established for known abuses, and challenged the U.S. definition of torture.
“We would like to have more details regarding the chain of command,” said Andreas Mavrommatis, the committee’s chairman.
Vice-chairman Wang Xuexian from China asked: “Where would you put such methods as interrogation by mock drownings — as torture or as other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment?”
“Are there measures to monitor CIA operations to ensure they are not violating the Convention Against Torture?”
The panel also asked about “extraordinary renditions” whereby prisoners are moved to other countries where, critics say, they can face torture, and asked whether seeking “diplomatic assurances” from governments was enough to prevent abuse of those moved.
“I would like to emphasize that the United States has not transported detainees to countries for purposes of interrogation using torture and will not,” Bellinger said in response, adding diplomatic assurances were relied on only “sparingly.”
Speaking after the session, Jennifer Daskal of Human Rights Watch decried what she called “a continued attempt by the U.S. to say that the abuse we see in Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan was just limited to a few bad apples.”
“The (Bush) administration is unwilling to assume responsibility for policies and practices that were promulgated at a high level, which allow a climate of abuse to flourish,” she said.
apparently, now the movie of flight 93 has become “the official history”, and the war against terror has officially become “world war III”… he said it, i didn’t… 8/
May 05, 2006
US President George W. Bush said the September 11 revolt of passengers against their hijackers on board Flight 93 had struck the first blow of “World War III.”
In an interview with the financial news network CNBC, Bush said he had yet to see the recently released film of the uprising, a dramatic portrayal of events on the United Airlines plane before it crashed in a Pennsylvania field.
But he said he agreed with the description of David Beamer, whose son Todd died in the crash, who in a Wall Street Journal commentary last month called it “our first successful counter-attack in our homeland in this new global war — World War III”.
Bush said: “I believe that. I believe that it was the first counter-attack to World War III.
“It was, it was unbelievably heroic of those folks on the airplane to recognize the danger and save lives,” he said.
Flight 93 crashed on the morning of September 11, 2001, killing the 33 passengers, seven crew members and four hijackers, after passengers stormed the cockpit and battled the hijackers for control of the aircraft.
The president has repeatedly praised the heroism of the passengers in fighting back and so launching the first blow of what he usually calls the “war on terror”.
In 2002, then-White House spokesman Ari Fleischer explicitly declined to call the hunt for Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda group and its followers “World War III.”
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very weird situation: i went to the bank to deposit my (substantially more than i expected it to be) check from the moisture festival, and the ATMs were acting strangely, wouldn’t let me make deposits, and said my balance is $2,700… the computer says the account has $233 in it, which is a lot closer to what i expected, but i can always hope… and if nothing else, it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to deposit anything in the machine until they get the machines straightened out anyway.
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Literszámra nyakalták és vitték haza a jóféle rumot a pincében álló 300 literes hordóból egy szegedi családi ház felújításán dolgozó melósok. Amikor az utolsó csepp szesz is elfogyott, odébb akarták tenni a kiivott fahordót, de még kotyogott benne valami. Szétbontották, egy összeaszalódott holttest d?lt ki bel?le.
A rémregénybe ill? történet több évtizedes múltra tekint vissza. A Szeged kertvárosában lév? régi ház els? tulajdonosa egy nyolcvanas éveiben járó özvegyaszszony volt, aki csendes öregségben, magányosan éldegélt. A zárkózott, úri all?rökkel megáldott nénikér?l keveset tudtak a szomszédok.
Sajátos íz
Az a hír járta, hogy a matróna valaha nagyvilági életet élt a Karib térségben diplomataként dolgozó urával, ám egyedül tért haza a mesés tengerentúlról. Egyetlen távoli rokona volt, akinek annyit mondott, hogy a férje meghalt, azt azonban senki nem firtatta, hol nyugszik a szebb napokat idéz? fotókon fest?i szépség? nejét átkaroló, daliás ember. Az otthonából ki sem mozduló, ?sz öregasszony egy nap nem nyitott ajtót a nála kopogtató szomszédoknak, akik rosszat sejtvén rend?rt hívtak. A behatoló zsaruk az ágyban találtak rá a holttestére, halálát végelgyengülés okozta. A titokzatos házat néhány hónap múlva egy fiatal pár vette meg, és elkezdték felújíttatni új otthonukat. Az átépítési munkálatok azonban kissé elhúzódtak, mert a melósok rájártak a pincében talált 300 literes, rummal teli hordóra. Sajátos íze volt, osztályozták kés?bbi vallomásaikban a jóféle szeszt, amivel hetekig locsolgatták a torkukat. Még haza is vittek bel?le néhány flaskával, s csodájára járt, aki belekóstolt.
Konzervált ember
? Fél év sem telt el az id?s asszony halála óta, amikor ismét riasztottak minket a házhoz ? emlékezett a felejthetetlen eseményekre Pénzes Zoltán százados. ? Egy meztelen férfi holttestre bukkantak a munkások a rumos hordóban, amit azért szedtek szét, mert bár elfogyott bel?le a szesz, mégis kotyogott benne valami, ahogy mozgatták. Az összeaszalódott halott embriópózban helyezkedett el a hordósírban. Külsérelmi nyom nem volt rajta, a boncolás megállapította, hogy természetes halállal halt meg. A rum, amiben a munkások megjelenéséig információink szerint legalább 20 éven keresztül ázott, tartósította, így csupán valamelyest összetöpörödött. A helyszíni szemlét végz? szegedi zsaruk szerint a múmiát megtaláló brigád tagjainak arcáról lerítt, hogy jó id?re elment a kedvük az ismeretlen eredet? szeszes hordók megcsapolásától. A tanúkihallgatások során többen rosszul lettek, amikor szóba került, hogy ittak a konzerválóléb?l.
Pincesírból temet?be
A rend?rségi vizsgálat kiderítette, hogy az elhunyt a ház egykori asszonyának diplomata ura, akit Jamaica partjainál ért a végzet. A holttest hivatalos hazahozatása azonban túl költséges és a szükséges okmányok beszerzése miatt körülményes is lett volna, ezért a találékony özvegy a kurrens jamaicai rummal teli hordóban, hajón csempészte haza az urát. Azt azonban senki sem tudja, hogy kés?bb miért nem temettette el, és titkolta a pincében lév? hordósírt. Az öregurat végül a szegedi köztemet?ben helyezték végs? nyugalomra.
Body at bottom of barrel shocks rum-drinking workers
Budapest, May 4 – Workers renovating an empty house in Szeged, SE Hungary, dipped deep into a 300 litre barrel of rum they found in the basement, but the drinking came to a screeching halt when they discovered a long-dead body at the bottom of the barrel, the website of a police magazine reported.
The house had been owned by an elderly lady who had spent many years in the Caribbean region with her diplomat husband before returning home alone some 20 years ago, Zsaru Magazine wrote. Her husband had died abroad, she said.
The lady herself died recently and the house was sold to a young couple who ordered a basement-to-attic renovation.
Workers soon discovered that a 300-litre barrel left behind by the former owner was filled with rum, and they took it upon themselves to empty it, commenting on its unusual bouquet. The rum tasting lasted some six months before the body was discovered, preserved in the alcohol. Stunned by the discovery, they called police.
Yes, the body was that of the diplomat husband, but no, he had not met with foul play, police found. An autopsy revealed that death had been due to natural causes, and a bit of investigation found that he had died in or around Jamaica over 20 years earlier. The widow, on learning how expensive and complicated it was to return a corpse to Hungary, avoided officialdom by having him packaged in a barrel of rum, which she brought home and kept in her basement until her own death.
The man was finally buried in Szeged cemetery.
By Cathy Hayden
May 4, 2006
Jackson Mayor Frank Melton said he impulsively asked his police escort to pull four Callaway High buses over on I-220 on Friday afternoon because he needed a hug.
The buses were taking students home from school, about 4:30 p.m.
“It’s been such a stressful two weeks,” Melton said. “I wanted to shake their hands. I wanted to touch them. That’s all it was. … I went through the buses and shook their hand and hugged them and told then how proud I was of them.”
Melton said students saw him out their windows and waved before he had the buses stopped. “I told the kids to have a great weekend and a safe weekend,” he said. “I didn’t do anything stupid or illegal.”
He said there was no safety hazard. The drivers pulled the buses off the interstate on the right median.
Jackson school officials learned about Melton’s actions from a television video clip and called his office to see if there was a problem on any of the buses.
Superintendent Earl Watkins was out of town.
“It is certainly unorthodox,” Watkins said Wednesday. “Unless there is an issue occurring on a bus, it is always better not to prevent bus drivers from transporting their kids.”
Watkins said something like this opens up “unintended problems and consequences.”
“We don’t want to get into a negative conversation with the mayor,” said Michael Thomas, deputy superintendent for operations. “Our concern was purely perception – people thinking buses had done anything wrong.”
Melton has long been known to interact with students, going into schools unannounced when he was director of the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics and touring schools when he was a member of the state Board of Education.
“I reserve the right to go into our schools. I reserve the right to encourage kids. I reserve the right as the mayor,” he said.
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BY FRANK MAIN
May 1, 2006
The Gangster Disciples, Latin Kings and Vice Lords were born decades ago in Chicago’s most violent neighborhoods. Now, their gang graffiti is showing up 6,400 miles away in one of the world’s most dangerous neighborhoods — Iraq.
Armored vehicles, concrete barricades and bathroom walls all have served as canvasses for their spray-painted gang art. At Camp Cedar II, about 185 miles southeast of Baghdad, a guard shack was recently defaced with “GDN” for Gangster Disciple Nation, along with the gang’s six-pointed star and the word “Chitown,” a soldier who photographed it said.
The graffiti, captured on film by an Army Reservist and provided to the Chicago Sun-Times, highlights increasing gang activity in the Army in the United States and overseas, some experts say.
Military and civilian police investigators familiar with three major Army bases in the United States — Fort Lewis, Fort Hood and Fort Bragg — said they have been focusing recently on soldiers with gang affiliations. These bases ship out many of the soldiers fighting in Iraq.
“I have identified 320 soldiers as gang members from April 2002 to present,” said Scott Barfield, a Defense Department gang detective at Fort Lewis in Washington state. “I think that’s the tip of the iceberg.”
Of paramount concern is whether gang-affiliated soldiers’ training will make them deadly urban warriors when they return to civilian life and if some are using their access to military equipment to supply gangs at home, said Barfield and other experts.
‘They don’t try to hide it’
Jeffrey Stoleson, an Army Reserve sergeant in Iraq for almost a year, said he has taken hundreds of photos of gang graffiti there.
In a storage yard in Taji, about 18 miles north of Baghdad, dozens of tanks were vandalized with painted gang symbols, Stoleson said in a phone interview from Iraq. He said he also took pictures of graffiti at Camp Scania, about 108 miles southeast of Baghdad, and Camp Anaconda, about 40 miles north of Baghdad. Much of the graffiti was by Chicago-based gangs, he said.
In civilian life, Stoleson is a correctional officer and co-founder of the gang interdiction team at a Wisconsin maximum-security prison. Now he is a truck commander for security escorts in Iraq. He said he watched two fellow soldiers in the Wisconsin Army National Guard 2nd Battalion, 127th Infantry, die Sept. 26 when a roadside bomb exploded. Five of Stoleson’s friends have been wounded.
Because of the extreme danger of his mission in Iraq, Stoleson said he does not relish the idea of working alongside gang members, whom he does not trust. Stoleson said he once reported to a supervisor that he suspected a company of soldiers in Iraq was rife with gang members.
“My E-8 [supervising sergeant] told me not to ruffle their feathers because they were doing a good job,” he said.
Stoleson said he has spotted soldiers in Iraq with tattoos signifying their allegiance to the Vice Lords and the Simon City Royals, another street gang spawned in Chicago.
“They don’t try to hide it,” Stoleson said.
Army doesn’t see significant trend
Christopher Grey, spokesman for the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command, did not deny the existence of gang members in the military, but he disputed that the problem is rampant — or even significant.
In the last year, the Criminal Investigation Command has looked into 10 cases in which there was credible evidence of gang-related criminal activity in the Army, Grey said. He would not discuss specific cases.
“We recently conducted an Army-wide study, and we don’t see a significant trend in this kind of activity, especially when you compare this with a million-man Army,” Grey said.
‘Lowering our standards’
“Sometimes there is a definition issue here on what constitutes gang activity. If someone wears baggy pants and a scarf, that does not make them a gang member unless there is evidence to show that person is involved in violent or criminal activity,” Grey said.
Barfield said Army recruiters eager to meet their goals have been overlooking applicants’ gang tattoos and getting waivers for criminal backgrounds.
“We’re lowering our standards,” Barfield said.
“A friend of mine is a recruiter,” he said. “They are being told less than five tattoos is not an issue. More than five, you do a waiver saying it’s not gang-related. You’ll see soldiers with a six-pointed star with GD [Gangster Disciples] on the right forearm.”
Fort Lewis offers free tattoo removal, but few if any soldiers with gang tattoos have taken advantage of the service, Barfield said.
In interviews with the almost 320 soldiers who admitted they were gang members, only two said they wanted out of gangs, Barfield said.
None has been arrested for a gang-related felony on the base, Barfield said. But some are suspected of criminal activity off base, he said.
“They’re not here for the red, white and blue. They’re here for the black and gold,” he said, referring to the gang colors of the Latin Kings.
Barfield said most of the gang members he has identified are black and Latino. He has linked white soldiers to racist groups such as the Aryan Nations.
Barfield acknowledged that the soldiers he pegged as gang members represent a tiny fraction of the tens of thousands of soldiers based at Fort Lewis in the period he reviewed. But he stressed that he only investigates a fraction of the soldiers on base.
Barfield said he normally identifies gang members during barracks inspections requested by unit commanders. He interviews them about possible gang affiliation when he sees gang graffiti in their rooms, photos of a soldier flashing gang hand signals or a soldier with gang tattoos.
Learning urban warfare
“I know there is a lot more going on here,” he said. “I don’t inspect off-base housing or married soldiers’ housing.”
The Gangster Disciples are the most worrisome street gang at Fort Lewis because they are the most organized, Barfield said.
Barfield said gangs are encouraging their members to join the military to learn urban warfare techniques they can teach when they go back to their neighborhoods.
“Gang members are telling us in the interviews that their gang is putting them in,” he said.
Joe Sparks, a retired Chicago Police gang specialist and the Midwest adviser to the International Latino Gang Investigators Association, said he is concerned about the military know-how that gang-affiliated soldiers might bring back to the streets here.
“Even though they are ‘bangers, they are still fighting for America, so I have to give them that,” Sparks said. “The sound of enemy gunfire is nothing new to them. I’m sure in battle it’s a truce — GDs and P Stones are fighting a common enemy. But when they get home, forget about it.”
Barfield said he knows of an Army private who fought valiantly in Iraq but still maintained his gang affiliation when he returned home.
The private, a Florencia 13 gang member from Southern California, spoke to Barfield of battling a 38th Street Gang member when they were civilians.
Then the 38th Street Gang member became a sergeant in the Army and the Florencia 13 member became a private. They served in Iraq together, Barfield said.
“They had exchanged blows in Inglewood [a city near Los Angeles], but in the Army, they did get the mission done,” he said. “The private is a decorated war veteran with a Purple Heart.”
The private still has his gang tattoos and identifies himself as a Florencia 13, Barfield said.
Marine killed cop in California
Barfield said a big concern is what such gang members trained in urban warfare will do when they return home.
He pointed to Marine Lance Cpl. Andres Raya, a suspected Norteno gang member who shot two officers with a rifle outside a liquor store in Ceres, Calif., on Jan. 9, 2005, before police returned fire and killed him. One officer died, and the other was wounded by the 19-year-old Raya, who was high on cocaine. Raya had spent seven months in Iraq before returning to Camp Pendleton near San Diego.
Photos of Raya wearing the gang’s red colors and making gang hand signs were reportedly found in a safe in his room.
Hunter Glass, a Fayetteville, N.C., police detective, said he has seen an increase in gang activity involving soldiers from nearby Fort Bragg. A Fort Bragg soldier — a member of the Insane Gangster Crips — is charged with a gang-related robbery in Fayetteville that ended in the slaying of a Korean store owner in November, said Glass, a veteran of the elite 82nd Airborne based at Fort Bragg.
He estimated that hundreds of gang members are stationed at the base as soldiers.
“I have talked to guys who say ‘I’m a SUR 13 [gang member], but I am a soldier,’ ” Glass said. “Although I see the [gang] problem as a threat, I do believe the majority of the military are good people and that many of those [military officials] that I have made aware of the situation have expressed concern in dealing with it. It is safe to say that I am less worried about a gang war in the sand box [Iraq] but more about the one on our streets upon its end.”
Glass has given presentations to military leaders in Washington, D.C., about gang members in the military.
Sending flak jackets home
A law enforcement source in Chicago said police see some evidence of soldiers working with gangs here. Police recently stopped a vehicle and found 10 military flak jackets inside. A gang member in the vehicle told investigators his brother was a Marine and sent the jackets home, the source said.
Barfield said he knows of civilian gang members in the Seattle area who also have been caught with flak jackets that he suspects were stolen from Fort Lewis.
Barfield said he has documented gang-affiliated soldiers’ involvement in drug dealing, gunrunning and other criminal activity off base. More than a year ago, a soldier tied to a white supremacy group was caught trying to ship an assault rifle from Iraq to the United States in pieces, he said.
In Texas, the FBI is bracing for the transfer of gang-connected soldiers from Fort Hood in central Texas to Fort Bliss near El Paso as part of the nation’s base realignments. FBI Special Agent Andrea Simmons said gang-affiliated soldiers from Fort Hood could clash with civilian gang members in El Paso.
“We understand that [some] soldiers and dependents at Fort Hood tend to be under the Folk Nation umbrella, including the Gangster Disciples and Crips,” Simmons said. “In El Paso, the predominant gang, without much competition, is the Barrio Azteca. We could see some kind of turf war between the Barrio Aztecas and the Folk Nation.”
FBI agents have visited Fort Hood to learn about the gang activity on the base, Simmons said.
“We found most of the police departments say they do see gang activity due to the military — soldiers and dependents,” she said. “Our agents also have been in contact with Fort Bliss to discuss the issue.”
Simmons said investigators may conduct background checks on soldiers relocating from Fort Hood to Fort Bliss to assess the level of the potential gang problem.
Barfield said he welcomes the FBI’s scrutiny of gang members in the Army.
“Investigators as a whole across the military aren’t getting the support to remove gang members from the ranks,” he said.
But Grey, the spokesman for the Criminal Investigation Command, said the unit is open to any tips about gang activity in the Army.
“If anyone has any information, we strongly recommend they bring it to our attention,” he said.
Producer says song not meant to discourage learning English
April 28, 2006
WASHINGTON — The national anthem should be sung in English — not Spanish — President Bush declared Friday, amid growing restlessness over the millions of immigrants here illegally.
“One of the things that’s very important is, when we debate this issue, that we not lose our national soul,” the president exclaimed. “One of the great things about America is that we’ve been able to take people from all walks of life bound as one nation under God. And that’s the challenge ahead of us.”
A Spanish language version of the national anthem was released Friday by a British music producer, Adam Kidron, who said he wanted to honor America’s immigrants.
When the president was asked at a Rose Garden question-and-answer session whether the anthem should be sung in Spanish, he replied: “I think the national anthem ought to be sung in English, and I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English and they ought to learn to sing the national anthem in English.”
He made his remarks during a wide-ranging briefing with reporters.
“The intention of recording ‘Nuestro Himno’ (Our Anthem) has never been to discourage immigrants from learning English and embracing American culture,” Kidron said in a statement issued after the president spoke.
“We instead view ‘Nuestro Himno’ as a song that affords those immigrants that have not yet learned the English language the opportunity to fully understand the character of the Star-Spangled Banner, the American flag and the ideals of freedom that they represent,” Kidron said.
The president’s comments came amid a burgeoning national debate — and congressional fight — over legislation pending in Congress, and pushed by Bush, to overhaul U.S. immigration law.
Bush called on lawmakers to move forward on legislation — now stalled — that would revamp immigration laws.
“I want a comprehensive bill,” Bush said, that includes enforcement as well as giving temporary worker status to some illegal immigrants.
Large numbers of immigrant groups have planned an economic boycott next week to dramatize their call for legislation providing legal status for millions of people in the United States illegally.
“You know, I’m not a supporter of boycotts,” Bush said. “I am a supporter of comprehensive immigration … I think most Americans agree that we’ve got to enforce our border. I don’t think there’s any question about that.”
The president’s remarks followed the release of the Spanish language version of the song.
May 4, 2006
WASHINGTON — President Bush likes to drop a few words of Spanish in his speeches and act like he’s proficient in the language. But he’s really not that good, his spokesman said Thursday.
“The president can speak Spanish but not that well,” White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. “He’s not that good with his Spanish.”
McClellan’s comment was noticeable because presidential press secretaries usually boast about a president’s ability rather than talk about any shortcomings. McClellan is in the last days of his job, leaving the White House next week.
McClellan made his remark in response to a report that Bush had sung the Star-Spangled Banner in Spanish during the 2000 campaign. Just last week Bush said the national anthem should be sung in English, not Spanish.
“It’s absurd,” McClellan said of the report, suggesting that Bush couldn’t have sung it in Spanish even if he had wanted to.
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this is a test of my new icon…
all kinds of sexual goodies, with no exception for foot fetishists, although i’ve got to wonder what if the foot fetishist was female…
By Noel Randewich
May 2, 2006
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexico’s president will approve a law that decriminalizes possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and other drugs to concentrate on fighting violent drug gangs, the government said on Tuesday.
President Vicente Fox will not oppose the bill, passed by senators last week, presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar told reporters, despite likely tensions with the United States.
“The president is going to sign that law. There would be no objection,” he said. “It appears to be a good law and an advance in combating narcotics trafficking.”
Public Security Minister Eduardo Medina-Mora said Mexico’s legal changes are in line with other countries and warned drug users they should not expect lenient treatment from the police if they are caught.
The approval of the legislation, passed earlier by the lower house of Congress, surprised Washington, which counts on Mexico’s support in its war against gangs that move massive quantities of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamines through Mexico to U.S. consumers.
Under the federal law, police will not criminally prosecute people or hand out jail terms for possessing up to 5 grams of marijuana, 5 grams of opium, or 25 milligrams of heroin. Nor does the law penalize possession of 500 milligrams of cocaine — enough for a few lines.
The legal changes will also decriminalize the possession of limited quantities of LSD, hallucinogenic mushrooms, amphetamines, ecstasy and peyote — a psychotropic cactus found in Mexico’s northern deserts.
STILL ILLEGAL
But city and state governments may pass their own misdemeanor laws against drug possession, levying fines, forcing law-breakers to spend up to 48 hours in police station holding cells or even making them accept medical treatment for substance addiction, Medina-Mora told reporters.
“International practice, including in the United States, in many cases dictates that possession of small amounts of drugs does not require a penal sanction,” he said.
Hundreds of people, including many police officers, have been killed in Mexico in the past year as drug cartels battle for control of lucrative smuggling routes into the United States.
The violence has raged mostly in northern Mexico but in recent months has spread south to cities such as vacation resort Acapulco.
Medina-Mora warned that vacationing college students and other foreigners caught with even with small amounts of drugs could be breaking municipal or state misdemeanor laws and could easily be shown to the airport or the border.
Vacation cities including Cancun, Acapulco, Tijuana and Mazatlan already have their own laws against drug possession, he said.
The legislation is expected to make the rules clearer for local judges and police, who currently decide on a case-by-case basis whether people should be criminally prosecuted for possessing small quantities of drugs, often leading to corruption.
While likely to complicate relations with the U.S. government, the legislation has drawn relatively little attention from the media in Mexico, where drug use is less common than in the United States.
Medina-Mora said Fox has until September to sign the bill, but neither he nor Aguilar could say more specifically when it might be signed.
By Rossella Lorenzi
May 3, 2006 — King Tutankhamun’s rediscovered penis could make the pharaoh stand out in the shrunken world of male mummies, according to a close look into old pictures of the 3,300-year-old mummified king.
The formerly missing sex organ has been just another puzzle in the story of the best-known pharaoh of ancient Egypt.
Photographed intact by Harry Burton (1879-1940) during Howard Carter’s excavation of Tut’s tomb in 1922, the royal penis was reported missing in 1968, when British scientist Ronald Harrison took a series of X-rays of the mummy.
Speculation abounded that the penis had been stolen and sold.
“Instead, it has always been there. I found it during the CT scan last year, when the mummy was lifted. It lay loose in the sand around the king’s body. It was mummified,” Zahi Hawass, chief of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, told Discovery News.
At first look, Burton’s pictures may seem to indicate that King Tut could have been a little better endowed. But according to mummy expert Eduard Egarter Vigl, the pharaoh was normally built.
Caretaker of Ötzi the Iceman, the world’s oldest and best-preserved mummy, Egarter was also a member of the Egyptian-led research team that examined King Tut’s CT scan images.
“The pharaoh’s sex organ is clearly visible in Burton’s pictures. All was normal in King Tut. The penis is a highly vascularized organ and shrinks when it is mummified. Actually, King Tut has been flattered by the embalmers’ work. There is no comparison with Ötzi’s penis,” Egarter told Discovery News.
Ötzi’s natural mummification and dehydration in an Alpine glacier produced a “collapse of the genitalia,” which left the Iceman with an almost invisible member.
“He would not make a bella figura today,” Egarter said.
According to the mummy expert, it is not possible to see if King Tut was circumcised or not.
Eugene Cruz-Uribe, professor of history at Northern Arizona University and an expert on Tutankhamun, told Discovery that some earlier documents mention circumcision at King Tut’s time.
“It was probably done for hygienic reasons, but some ritual issues may have occurred as well,” Cruz-Uribe said.
Tut.ankh.Amun, “the living image of Amun,” ascended the throne in 1333 B.C. at the age of nine, and reigned until his death in 1325 B.C., aged 19.
He married 13-year-old Ankhesenpaaten, who was probably his stepsister, on his accession to the throne. During their marriage, Ankhesenpaaten, who had changed her name to Ankhesenamun, gave birth to two stillborn girls.
Keith Richards, a guitarist of Rolling Stones British Rock Group, is still nursing a sore head in an Auckland hospital after falling out of a tree in Fiji last week. The English Guitarist, 62, was airlifted brought from Fiji to Auckland by air and admitted to the Ascot Hospital with mild concussion.
Richards suffered a head injury and concussion after falling from a coconut tree at a luxurious resort in the Fiji Islands on April 29, where Richards and fellow band member, Ron Wood, 58, were apparently climbing the tree.
After initial treatment in Suva-the capital of Fiji, he was airlifted to a private hospital in Auckland, New Zealand, where he was given a brain scan to check for neurological damage.
However, neither the Hospital nor the air ambulance company which transported him to Auckland from Fiji said anything about his fall or his condition. During the treatment his wife, Patti Hansen, was beside him at the hospital. They had been staying at the luxury Club Resort on Wakaya.
Richards-the songwriter, best recognized for his work with The Rolling Stones, is better known for his drug-related outlaw image than for his songwriting contributions, to the general public.
Richards is no stranger to unforeseen injuries as in 1998 the Stones had to delay a tour after he fell off a ladder while trying to find a book in the library of his Connecticut residence. He needed treatment for rib and chest injuries and there were even fears he had punctured a lung when he fell while stretching amid the library’s floor-to-ceiling shelves. In another incident, according to band mate Ron Wood, he once slipped on a frankfurter lobbed on stage while playing a concert in Frankfurt, Germany.
The fall story of the guitarist is on the top of Newspapers and news networks throughout America and the United Kingdom, who are giving the story a good airing. An American newsreader tried to conceal her laugh as she asked, after reading the story, why was the Stone up a tree in the first place.
According to the overseas reports, the reformed heroin addict and one-time hell raiser – who still smokes and drinks – was halfway up the five-meter tree when he slipped and fell, hitting his head.
Richards, who once kicked a serious heroin habit by having his entire blood supply replaced in a Swiss clinic, fell out of the tree on Wednesday but refused to go to hospital until his holiday ended on Friday.
The rock star, who is nearly into his seventh decade, does not let the age come between him and his good time.
more than i’d care to speculate, apparently… i suppose that could be a good thing or a bad thing…
| Outcast Genius 60 % Nerd, 56% Geek, 69% Dork |
| For The Record:
A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia. Outcast geniuses can be very lonely, due to their being outcast from most normal groups and too smart for the room among many other types of dorks and geeks, but they can also be the types to eventually rule the world, ala Bill Gates, the prototypical Outcast Genius. Congratulations! |
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My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:
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| Link: The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test written by donathos on Ok Cupid. |
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this is the “disguise” i came up with for the swastika, but to me it still looks enough like a swastika that i wonder what other people see… especially when they see the car from the outside, as it is travelling down the street…
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i’ve decided to “disguise” the swastika on Ganesha the car. i think i can do a pretty good job of it by duplicating it in different colours, and rotating it. after the incident with
Thanks for supporting the swastika. It can be trying and even dangerous. I have been very close to people getting very violent in their denial of the perceived violence of the swastika.
I would not paint one on my car because, I fear that sooner or later some angry person will do society a favor by vandalising it. People see a swastika and it is like waving a red flag in front of a bull, rationality goes out the window.
I honor you for your vision and understanding around the sacredness of the symbol. Please do not martyr yourself needlessly. I need you in the world, quietly educating others about its vast sacred history.
— ManWoman
it is really depressing to realise that even someone with as much notariety as manwoman would not put a swastika on his car. every time i read about some neo-nazi horseshit in the newspaper or see them on TV i shudder to think about how many people still buy their crap and equate the swastika with them instead of what the swastika really means. the swastika has been around as a symbol of auspiciousness and good luck for thousands of years and the nazis have only been around for less than one hundred years, and yet the majority of people completely reject the swastika’s thousands of years of history and focus on the wrong stuff that has only been around for a comparitively short period of time… which strikes me as just about as ridiculous a way of doing things as any that i can think of…
but then again, it’s the same group of people, more or less, which “elected” george w. bush into office, so i guess i may be expecting too much from these folks… 8/
UPDATE: pictures are available.
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i knew there was a reason i was avoiding signing up for a myspace account… myspace is owned by faux news, and if you post your videos, text, artwork, music or what-have-you on your myspace account, the people at faux news can alter it, edit it, sell it, etc. WITHOUT giving you credit…
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April 30, 2006
by Cindy Sheehan
May 1st, 2006 will be the 3rd Anniversary of the end of “major combat” in Iraq. It was a glorious day when George Bush flew onto the deck of the Abraham Lincoln and was hailed by the rapturous throngs of toadie “news” persons such as Chris Matthews (“And that’s the president looking very much like a jet, you know, a high-flying jet star,” Hardball, May 1, 2003) and Bob Schieffer (“As far as I’m concerned, that was one of the great pictures of all time. And if you’re a political consultant, you can just see campaign commercial written all over the pictures of George Bush.” Meet the Press, May 4, 2003). What a fast and clean war! G. Gordon Liddy was enthralled with the president’s package (“all those women who say size doesn’t count — they’re all liars.” Hardball, May 7, 2003) and a new era free from terrorism was ushered in.
This is the faith based fable of what happened almost exactly three years ago. The reality based scenario goes something like this:
*Over 2400 American soldiers (including my son who was killed almost a year after Mission Accomplished Day) have come home in cardboard boxes in cargo areas of planes in the secrecy of the night.
*Thousands of our young people wounded, many grievously also bused into Walter Reed and other hospitals in the dark of the night.
*Tons of rubble upon rubble in Iraq with inconsistent electrical power still and not much clean water or chance of future power and clean water.
*Hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians are dead, being punished for the sins of a leader who was propped up, armed and supported by many US Regimes.
The Mission Accomplished Day (or, Operation Codpiece) public relations’ dream for the presidential pelvic zone has turned into a frighteningly real nightmare for so many people around the world who have had sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and oftentimes entire families wiped out and devastated by the strutting and smirking terrorist who was feeling mighty “chipper” last night at the Washington Correspondent’s annual dinner as the 2400 th soldier was being killed and as the 2400th Gold Star Mother was falling on the floor screaming for her child. There are hundreds of thousands of people on our planet who will have a hard time ever feeling chipper again because of George Bush, no matter how good he looks in a flight suit.
Now that BushCo has done such a fantastic job with the invasion and occupation of Iraq that never should have happened, but now that it has happened is extraordinarily evil in its scope and tactics, he is warning Iran that if it doesn’t shape up the US is going to come and impose freedom and democracy on that country. The rah-rah, “yes, sir” Congress who has an easy job of approving everything that George Bush does, thereby eliminating critical thinking, debate, or any semblance of rational discussion has voted for sanctions that will lead to an attack on Iran which will be devastating for our troops in Iraq and for that poor region that had the unfortunate luck to be built upon tremendous oil and natural gas reserves.
Only 21 Congress people voted “nay” on the Iran Freedom Support Act which is incredible considering what happened when they voted “yea” to give George Bush the green light for every sanction against Iraq and to invade it. I ran into one of the “yea” voters on the Iran Freedom Support Act, Rep. Major Owens, and I asked him why he voted that way. He said it was because he hated the “evil” regime of Iran. I asked him about our own evil, irresponsible regime! The radical President of Iran says very irresponsible and inflammatory things, but by all accounts is over a decade away from a nuclear weapon and is reigned in by the mullahs and the young population of Iran that is very westernized. We are in trouble with our one party system of government, which is the War Party.
Before we the people need to be subjected to another swaggering spectacle from George after he has bombed Iran back into the stone ages and has made we the people of the United States of America even more hated around the world, it is time to rein him in ourselves. Congress won’t do it and the media is falling into lockstep behind the murder again.
It is time to fire the warniks whose bloodlust cannot be slated and hire people who will finally use their wisdom, integrity, and non-violence to solve problems, and won’t create imaginary problems out of smoke and mirrors. We need a Congress that will hold George accountable not one that is complicit in the war crimes.
Martin Luther King, Jr. said: “We must live together as brothers, or perish together as fools.” God protect us from the fools that we elected to protect us!
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Friday, April 28, 2006
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Rush Limbaugh and prosecutors in the long-running painkiller fraud case against him have reached a deal calling for the only charge against the conservative commentator to be dropped if he continues treatment, his attorney said Friday.
Limbaugh was booked on a single charge that was filed Friday, said Teri Barbera, a spokeswoman for the Palm Beach County Jail. He left about an hour later, after Limbaugh was photographed and fingerprinted and he posted $3,000 bail, Barbera said.
The radio giant’s agreement to enter a diversionary program ends a three-year state investigation that began after Limbaugh publicly acknowledged being addicted to pain medication and entered a rehabilitation program.
Prosecutors accuse him of “doctor shopping,” or illegally deceiving multiple doctors to receive overlapping prescriptions. They learned that he received about 2,000 painkillers, prescribed by four doctors in six months, at a pharmacy near his Palm Beach mansion.
Limbaugh pleaded not guilty Friday to a charge of fraud to conceal information to obtain prescriptions. Though he steadfastly denies doctor shopping, the charge will be dismissed in 18 months if Limbaugh complies with court guidelines, his lawyer Roy Black said.
“Mr. Limbaugh and I have maintained from the start that there was no doctor shopping, and we continue to hold this position,” Black said in an e-mailed statement.
Limbaugh spokesman Tony Knight said the commentator signed the agreement Thursday, and that it called for him to enter the not guilty plea. “It’s not in the system moving toward trial. It was all a formality. It’s a concluded deal,” Knight said.
Mike Edmondson, a spokesman for the state attorney’s office, said prosecutors had not yet received the signed agreement.
“I am not disputing the facts, the conditions that Black represented, but until his client signed the agreement, we don’t have a full agreement,” Edmondson said. “I am sure it’s just a timeline issue.”
He refused to comment further.
As a primary condition of the dismissal, Limbaugh must continue to seek treatment from the doctor he has seen for the past 2 1/2 years, Black said. Among other provisions, he also has agreed to pay the state $30,000 to defray its investigative costs, Black said.
The warrant alleges that sometime between February and August 2003, Limbaugh withheld information from a medical practitioner from whom he sought to obtain a controlled substance or a prescription for a controlled substance.
Prosecutors began investigating Limbaugh in 2003 after the National Enquirer reported his housekeeper’s allegations that he had abused OxyContin and other painkillers. He soon took a five-week leave from his radio show to enter a rehabilitation program and acknowledged he had become addicted to pain medication. He blamed it on severe back pain.
Before his own problems became public, Limbaugh had decried drug use and abuse and mocked President Clinton for saying he had not inhaled when he tried marijuana. He often made the case that drug crimes deserve punishment.
“Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. … And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up,” Limbaugh said on his short-lived television show on Oct. 5, 1995.
Prosecutors seized Limbaugh’s medical records after learning about the painkillers he had received at the Palm Beach pharmacy. The investigation was held up as the prosecutors and Black battled in court over whether the records were properly seized.
Limbaugh reported five years ago that he had lost most of his hearing because of an autoimmune inner-ear disease. He had surgery to have an electronic device placed in his skull to restore his hearing. But research shows that abusing opiate-based painkillers also can cause profound hearing loss.
Rush’s mugshot and other interesting information…
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By JULIANA BARBASSA
Apr 28, 2006
FRESNO, Calif. – A jury awarded $500,000 Friday to a woman who was spanked in front of her colleagues in what her employer called a camaraderie-building exercise.
The jury of six men and six women found that Janet Orlando, 53, was subjected to sexual harassment and sexual battery when she was paddled on the rear end two years ago at Alarm One Inc., a home security company in Fresno. The jury said Orlando did not suffer from sexual assault, as she had alleged.
Alarm One was ordered to pay her damages for lost wages, medical costs and pain and suffering. She had asked for at least $1.2 million.
The next phase of the trial — to determine whether she should receive punitive damages — was scheduled to begin Friday afternoon.
Orlando’s attorney, Nicholas “Butch” Wagner, said of the verdict: “It’s in the ballpark.”
K. Pancho Baker, an attorney for Alarm One, said it was excessive. “I think the jury was so upset at Alarm One that they went overboard,” Baker said. “Not to say that what Alarm One did was right, but this allows her to manipulate the system.”
Orlando quit in 2004, less than a year after she was hired, saying she was humiliated during the company’s camaraderie-building exercises.
Sales teams were encouraged to compete, and the losers were made fun of, forced to eat baby food, required to wear diapers and spanked with a rival company’s yard signs, according to court documents.
Lawyers for the company said Orlando and others took part in the exercises willingly. The company has since abandoned the practice.
During the trial, company attorneys revealed that Orlando had sued a previous employer, also claiming that she had been sexually harassed.
Birth Erotica – i know, some of you are going to say either “eeewww! that’s gross” or “giving birth is very definitely NOT sexy” but it has a strong scientific basis: the orgasm is an analgesic that is 10 times more powerful than any drug, and the orgasm is also exactly equal to a very powerful uterine contraction. it aids the birthing process in two very profound physical ways, plus getting it on also guarantees that the baby will be born into an even more intimate, loving environment than it would be already, so i say, without being facetious (although it is a nice pun) what the fuck?
It’s Just A Plant – even if you’re not a parent, YOU MUST BUY THIS BOOK!
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i suppose it was too good to be true…
i went over to
i hate hatred just as much as he does, if not more, but when hatred is directed at me, particularly when i don’t deserve it, then i just want to get out of there. i packed up my keyboards and left as quickly as possible. of course, i had the small car, so i couldn’t get both keyboards, but i’ll go back on sunday (i’m going to bellingham tomorrow to fix a saxophone for warren) with the big car to get it.
people shouldn’t be angry with the swastika because of the nazis, they should be angry at the nazis because of the swastika.
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April 5, 2006
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A local school employee said a rough run-in with a couple of Homeland Security officers has left him with a strong sense of insecurity. Leander Pickett says he was handcuffed, roughed up and humiliated by two Homeland Security officers who refused to move their car from the path of waiting school buses.
Leander Pickett, a teacher’s assistant at Englewood Elementary, said he was manhandled and handcuffed by two plain clothed Homeland Security officers in front of the school Tuesday for no reason at all.
“I would like to treat people the way I would want to be treated, and yesterday I wasn’t treated that way,” Pickett said.
Pickett has been working at Englewood for two years, and his principal and colleagues told Channel 4 they have never met a harder worker or nicer guy.
“He’s well loved by everyone because he’s willing to do anything to help children,” said the Englewood Elementary Principal Gail Brinson.
However, Tuesday afternoon Pickett’s niceness turned to anger, disappointment, and betrayal when, as Pickett was directing bus traffic, he said he was handcuffed and roughed up and humiliated by the very people that were supposed to protect him.
“I walked up to him and said, ‘Sir, you need to move.’ That’s when he said ‘I’m a police officer. I’m with Homeland Security … I’ll move it when I want to.’ That’s when he started grabbing me on my arm,” Pickett said.
However, Homeland Security tells a different story.
The department said the only reason the officers were at the school was because they pulled over to look at a map.
The department also said it’s looking into what happened, and that Pickett’s version is wrong. It claims he was antagonizing the officers.
Several people were outside of the school, watching the incident take place, and those witnesses agree with Pickett’s story.
“Mr. Pickett asked the guy blocking the bus loading zone to move, and the guy told him he would move his car when he got ready to move it,” said Englewood coach Alton Jackson.
“At that point I intervened and I went up to the gentleman and said, ‘Mr. Pickett is an employee here,’ and they said that didn’t matter,” said Englewood media specialist, Terri Dreisonstok.
“‘We’re with Homeland Security,’ and on and on they went, and pretty soon, before you know it, he’s handcuffed and slammed against a car,” Brinson said. “All the children are watching, they’re all upset.”
After about 30 minutes, the men released Pickett.
“The part that really upsets me is all these students were watching, and that and it isn’t good,” Jackson said.
Pickett said he plans to sue.
“You now you hear these stories everyday and say, ‘This will never happen to me,’ but yesterday it happened to me,” Pickett said.
“If this is Homeland Security, I think we ought to be a little afraid,” Brinson said.
The central office of Homeland Security contacted Channel 4 about the incident and stated that it considers all allegations seriously and the matter has been referred to a neutral investigative entity.
By David Montgomery
April 28, 2006
Oh say can you see — a la luz de la aurora?
The national anthem that once endured the radical transformation administered by Jimi Hendrix’s fuzzed and frantic Stratocaster now faces an artistic dare at least as extreme: translation into Spanish.
The new take is scheduled to hit the airwaves today. It’s called “Nuestro Himno” — “Our Anthem” — and it was recorded over the past week by Latin pop stars including Ivy Queen, Gloria Trevi, Carlos Ponce, Tito “El Bambino,” Olga Tañon and the group Aventura. Joining and singing in Spanish is Haitian American artist Wyclef Jean.
The different voices contribute lines the way 1985’s “We Are the World” was put together by an ensemble of stars. The national anthem’s familiar melody and structure are preserved, while the rhythms and instrumentation come straight out of Latin pop.
Can “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and the republic for which it stands, survive? Outrage over what’s being called “The Illegal Alien Anthem” is already building in the blogosphere and among conservative commentators.
Timed to debut the week Congress returned to debate immigration reform, with the country riven by the issue, “Nuestro Himno” is intended to be an anthem of solidarity for the movement that has drawn hundreds of thousands of people to march peacefully for immigrant rights in Washington and cities across the country, says Adam Kidron, president of Urban Box Office, the New York-based entertainment company that launched the project.
“It’s the one thing everybody has in common, the aspiration to have a relationship with the United States . . . and also to express gratitude and patriotism to the United States for providing the opportunity,” says Kidron.
The song was being prepared for e-mailing as MP3 packages to scores of Latino radio stations and other media last night, and Kidron was calling for stations to play the song simultaneously at 7 Eastern Time this evening.
Rejecting assimilation?
However, the same advance buzz that drew singers to scramble for inclusion in the recording sessions this week in New York, Miami, Texas, Mexico, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic has also spurred critics who say rendering the song in Spanish is a rejection of assimilation into the United States.
Even some movement supporters are puzzled by the use of Spanish.
“Even our Spanish media are saying, ‘Why are we doing this, what are you trying to do?’ ” said Pedro Biaggi, the morning host with El Zol (99.1 FM), the most popular Hispanic radio station in the Washington area. “It’s not for us to be going around singing the national anthem in Spanish. . . . We don’t want to impose, we don’t own the place. . . . We want to be accepted.”
Still, Biaggi says he will play “Nuestro Himno” this morning if the song reaches the station in time. But he will talk about the language issue on the air and solicit listeners’ views. He says he accepts the producers’ explanation that the purpose is to spread the values of the anthem to a wider audience. He adds he will also play a version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” in English — as he aired the Whitney Houston version earlier this week, when the controversy was beginning to brew.
In the Spanish version, the translation of the first stanza is relatively faithful to the spirit of the original, though Kidron says the producers wanted to avoid references to bombs and rockets. Instead, there is “fierce combat.” The translation of the more obscure second stanza is almost a rewrite, with phrases such as “we are equal, we are brothers.”
An alternate version to be released next month includes a rap in English that never occurred to Francis Scott Key:
Let’s not start a war
With all these hard workers
They can’t help where they were born
“Nuestro Himno” is as fraught with controversial cultural messages as the psychedelic “Banner” Hendrix delivered at the height of the Vietnam War.
Pressed on what he was trying to say with his Woodstock performance in 1969, Hendrix replied (according to biographer Charles Cross), “We’re all Americans. . . . It was like ‘Go America!’ . . . We play it the way the air is in America today.”
Now the national anthem is being remade again according to the way the air is in America, and the people behind “Nuestro Himno” say the message once more is: We’re all Americans. It will be the lead track on an album about the immigrant experience called “Somos Americanos,” due for release May 16. One dollar from each sale will go to immigrant rights groups, including the National Capital Immigration Coalition, which organized the march on the Mall on April 10.
But critics including columnist Michelle Malkin, who coined it “The Illegal Alien Anthem” nickname say the rendition crosses a line that Hendrix never stepped over with his instrumental version. Transforming the musical idiom of “The Star-Spangled Banner” is one thing, argue the skeptics, but translating the words sends the opposite message: We are not Americans.
“I’m really appalled. . . . We are not a bilingual nation,” said George Taplin, director of the Virginia Chapter of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, part of a national countermovement that emphasizes border control and tougher enforcement, and objects to public funding for day-laborer sites. “When people are talking about becoming a part of this country, they should assimilate to the norm that’s already here,” Taplin said. “What we’re talking about here is a sovereign nation with our ideals and our national identity, and that [anthem] is one of the icons of our nation’s identity. I believe it should be in English as it was penned.”
Yet, even in English, 61 percent of adults don’t know all the words, a recent Harris poll found.
Appealing to such symbols of national identity to plug into their profound potency is how new movements compete for space within that identity. During the rally on the Mall, the immigrants and their supporters also waved thousands of American flags and recited the Pledge of Allegiance. But they didn’t translate the pledge into Spanish. They said it in English.
Juan Carlos Ruiz, the general coordinator of the National Capital Immigration Coalition, said there’s not a contradiction. The pledge was printed phonetically for Spanish speakers, and many reciting the sounds may not have understood the meaning. Putting the anthem in Spanish is a way to relay the meaning to people who haven’t learned English yet, Ruiz said.
“It’s part of the process to learn English,” not a rejection of English, he said.
‘A communal shout’
While critics sketch a nightmare scenario of a Canada-like land with an anthem sung in two languages, immigrant rights advocates say they agree learning English is essential. Studies of immigrant families suggest the process is inevitable: Eighty-two percent to 90 percent of the children of immigrants prefer English.
“The first step to understanding something is to understand it in the language you understand, and then you can understand it in another language,” said Leo Chavez, director of Chicano/Latino Studies at the University of California at Irvine. “What this song represents at this moment is a communal shout, that the dream of America, which is represented by the song, is their dream, too.”
Since its origins as the melody to an English drinking song called “To Anacreon in Heaven,” circa 1780, “The Star-Spangled Banner” has had a long, strange trip. Key wrote the poem after watching the bombardment of Fort McHenry in 1814. It became the national anthem in 1931.
At least 389 versions have been recorded, according to Allmusic.com, a quick reference used by musicologists to get a sense of what’s on the market. Now that Hendrix’s “Banner” has mellowed into classic rock, it’s hard to imagine that once some considered it disrespectful. The other recordings embrace a vast musical universe: from Duke Ellington to Dolly Parton to Tiny Tim. But musicologists cannot name another foreign-language version.
“America is a pluralistic society, but the anthem is a way that we can express our unity. If that’s done in a different language, that doesn’t seem to me personally to be a bad thing,” said Michael Blakeslee, deputy executive director of the National Association for Music Education, which is leading a National Anthem Project to highlight the song and the school bands that play it in every style, from mariachi to steel drum.
‘A noble intent’
“I assume the intent is one of making a statement about ‘we are a part of this nation,’ and those are wonderful sentiments and a noble intent,” said Dan Sheehy, director of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.
Benigno “Benny” Layton wonders. He’s the leader of Los Hermanos Layton, a band of conjunto- and Tejano-style musicians in Elsa, Tex., 22 miles from Mexico. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he recorded a traditional conjunto version of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It was instrumental.
“I’m a second-generation American,” Layton said. “I love my country, and I love my [Mexican musical] heritage, and I try to keep it alive. But some things are sacred that you don’t do. And translating the national anthem is one of them.”
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House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Ill., center, gets out of a Hydrogen Alternative Fueled automobile, left, as he prepares to board his SUV, which uses gasoline, after holding a news conference at a local gas station in Washington, Thursday, April 27, 2006 to discuss the recent rise in gas prices. Hastert and other members of Congress drove off in the Hydrogen-Fueled cars only to switch to their official cars to drive the few blocks back to the U.S. Capitol.
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i have to say this:
on september 11, 2001, the united states was the victim of a crime. if we are to follow “the rules,” the victim of a crime cannot be involved in the investigation or prosecution of whoever committed that crime, apart from giving evidence. any other way of doing it makes the probability of the victim mentality creeping in and affecting the outcome very high, and, as we all know, justice is blind.
the united states has no right to declare war on, or to extract legal justice from afghanistan, iraq, iran, or any other place that may have been involved in the commission of the crime on september 11, 2001, regardless of what you might think. to do so would be just as much an act of terrorism as the crime itself.
i don’t know what the solution to the problem is, but the current situation is so far beyond fucked that i don’t even have an appropriate way to describe it.
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 Find your own pose! |
| Ernie You scored 33% Organization, 73% abstract, and 54% extroverted! |
| This test measured 3 variables.
First, this test measured how organized you are. Some muppets like Cookie Monster make big messes, while others like Bert are quite anal about things being clean. Second, this test measured if you prefer a concrete or an abstract viewpoint. For the purposes of this test, concrete people are considered to gravitate more to mathematical and logical approaches, whereas abstract people are more the dreamers and artistic type. Third, this test measured if you are more of an introvert or an extrovert. By definition, an introvert concentrates more on herself and an extrovert focuses more on others. In this test an introvert was somebody that either tends to spend more time alone or thinks more about herself. You are more sloppy, more abstract, and bothintroverted and extroverted. Here is why are you Ernie. You are both sloppy. You might not always know where everything you need is. Perhaps you don’t even care. Ernie sure doesn’t. Hey, when you got a best friend that is anal about cleaning you can afford to not worry about it. Sure Ernie likes taking baths, but that’s just to spend time with his ducky. You both can be abstract thinkers. Ernie is a dreamer by nature, always making up songs while he plays. He comes up with fanciful adventures. You definitely are not afraid to take chances in life. You only live once. You may notice others around you playing it safe, but you are more concerned with not compromising your desires, and getting everything you can out of life. This is a very romantic approach to life, but hopefully you are also grounded enough to get by. You are both somewhat introverted. Ernie enjoys spending time with others, but he is also quite content to be in his own fantasy world with his duckies. Unlike Bert, he has other friends to spend time with. Like Ernie, you probably like to have some time to yourself, but you do appreciate spending time with your friends, and you aren’t scared of social situations. The other possible characters are |
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My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:
|
| Your SESAME STREET Persona Test written by greencowsgomoo on Ok Cupid |
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the bush administration has got to be stopped. at this point, we’ve moved far beyond funny, ridiculous, ironic, and even tragic… the bush administration has got to be stopped!
they’re going to release about a third of the detainees in gitmo, because they pose no threat to the united states.
these are the people bush & co. said were “the worst of the worst” terrorists… even though only 10 have ever been charged with a crime.
The Guantanamo prison detainees pose no threat, an official says. Most of those still in custody have no charges pending against them.
By Carol J. Williams
April 25, 2006
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL STATION, Cuba — The Pentagon plans to release nearly a third of those held at the prison for terrorism suspects here because they pose no threat to U.S. security, an official of the war crimes tribunal said Monday.
Charges are pending against about two dozen of the remaining prisoners, the chief prosecutor said. But he left unclear why the rest face neither imminent freedom nor a day in court after as many as four years in custody.
Only 10 of the roughly 490 alleged “enemy combatants” currently detained at the facility have been charged; none has been charged with a capital offense.
That leaves the majority of the U.S. government’s prisoners from the war on terrorism in limbo and its war crimes tribunal exposed to allegations by international human rights advocates that it is illegitimate and abusive.
The decision to release 141 detainees — the largest group to be reclassified and moved off the island — follows a yearlong review of their cases in which interrogators also determined that they could provide no further intelligence. It was unclear when or where the detainees would be released.
About 250 detainees have been released since the prison camps were established in 2002.
Longtime critics of the Guantanamo facility said the announcement of the planned release marked a milestone in the four years the base had held suspected terrorists.
The prison has been dogged by allegations of torture and has brought choruses of international condemnation, including calls from a United Nations panel and the European Parliament to shut it down.
The detainees determined by last year’s Administrative Review Boards to pose no threat to U.S. national security are “no longer enemy combatants,” explained Lt. Cmdr. Chito Peppler of the Pentagon office in charge of reviewing detainee status.
He contended that the men’s detention had been justified. Battlefield commanders in Afghanistan and Pakistan had determined when the men were arrested that they were a threat to U.S. forces in the region, he said.
“Every detainee who came to the Combatant Status Review Tribunals went though multiple reviews” before their arrival at Guantanamo, Peppler said.
Although Peppler said the majority would be leaving the island “in the near future,” he noted that some detainees who had been cleared might remain until an appropriate release site could be found. The government decided, for example, that minority Muslim Uighurs from China should not be handed over to their governments because they could face persecution, torture or execution.
Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director of Human Rights Watch, said the full significance of freeing the detainees could not be assessed until their fates were clear. Because of pressure from their governments, most European nationals have been released or transferred.
Many of the remaining detainees are from Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, Malinowski said.
Afghanistan has a process for granting amnesty to low-level Taliban members and prosecuting senior leaders of the old regime, making it an appropriate place to release the prisoners, he said.
“If they have committed crimes, we support their prosecution,” Malinowski said. “If their crime was that they were Taliban, then they should be sent back to Afghanistan.” Officials in Guantanamo would not release any information about the nationalities of the men cleared for release.
Pentagon officials have said previously that most of the men being held here were likely to be freed.
The former chief of interrogations, Steve Rodriguez, said in January 2005 that the majority held no further intelligence value.
Officials in Washington indicated last week that a group of about 120 Saudi prisoners could be released to their government.
A defense lawyer for one Saudi suspect said the government in Riyadh was doing little to expedite repatriation of its nationals.
“I believe the Saudi government could do much more like the British government has done” to take its citizens home, said Lt. Col. Bryan Boyles, whose client, Jabran Said bin Al-Qahtani, was to make his first appearance before the tribunal today.
The Army defense lawyer said Riyadh was being “unhelpful” by refusing to get involved.
He noted that the British government’s activism had resulted in the transfer and release of all British suspects who had passed through the prison network created by President Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Malinowksi of Human Rights Watch said transferring detainees into Saudi custody was troublesome.
“Saudi Arabia is not a struggling democracy,” he said. “Anyone sent to a Saudi prison … is in a worse place than Guantanamo.”
Announcement of the pending releases coincided with a considerable drop in the number of detainees likely to be charged, suggesting that the U.S. government either lacks the evidence to convict more or — as defense lawyers and human rights monitors contend — feels little pressure to accord the terror suspects a speedy trial or due process.
Air Force Col. Morris Davis, the chief prosecutor, said earlier this month that the government was actively pursuing charges against about 70 additional prisoners.
But in a meeting with journalists on Monday, he said charges would be forthcoming on “about two dozen” other jailed suspects, including some who would face the death penalty.
Davis was responding to media questions as to why so few of the detainees — all described by defense attorneys as “small fry” — have been formally charged as the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks approaches.
“We’re working on about two dozen additional cases,” Davis said.
“I anticipate some of these will certainly present the possibility of death penalty cases.”
The man steering the government’s cases against war-crimes suspects insisted that some big fish had been ensnared in the U.S. counter-terrorism net.
“I think it’s pretty significant when you’re specifically training to build bombs to kill coalition forces,” he said of three men who will appear before the tribunal this week on charges of having plotted to build remote-controlled explosive devices at an alleged Al Qaeda safe house in Faisalabad, Pakistan.
Davis conceded, though, that “they’re certainly not Osama bin Laden, if you look at that as the top of the pyramid.”
Boyles, Al-Qahtani’s lawyer, expressed bafflement at the government’s proceedings.
“I can’t for the life of me figure out how they picked the people they’ve picked,” he said. “If these are the worst of the worst, as the secretary of Defense alleges, then someone other than Osama bin Laden’s chauffeur would be here.”
He was referring to Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemen native whose challenge of the Guantanamo tribunal’s legality is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court and is expected to be decided in late June.
The high court could take one of three paths, Davis noted: uphold the whole process, order modifications or deem the entire Guantanamo tribunal illegitimate.
but don’t let the fact that they’re releasing some of them lull you into thinking that they don’t torture prisoners at gitmo…
G.I. Attacked During Training
Nov. 3, 2004
(CBS) Pictures from Abu Ghraib prison tell a story that has shocked the world.
There are no pictures of what happened in the prison camp at Guantanamo last year. But Correspondent Bob Simon has a shocking story — and it’s not about what Americans did to foreign detainees. It’s about what Americans did to a fellow American soldier, Sean Baker. Sean Baker has seizures an average of four times a week. 60 Minutes Wednesday went to see him a few weeks ago in a New York hospital.
Baker, a National Guardsman, was working last year as a military policeman in the Guantanamo Bay prison when other MPs injured him during a training drill. It was a drill during which Baker was only obeying orders.
“I was assaulted by these individuals,” says Baker. “Pure and simple.”
It’s all the more bizarre because Baker was considered a model soldier and he had served as an MP in Saudi Arabia during the First Gulf War.
Then, minutes after the attack on the Pentagon on Sept. 11, Baker made a phone call from the auto repair shop in Lexington, Ky., where he was working. “I had to get back in the military right then,” recalls Baker. “I had to go back then. I had to do something.”
And he did. At 35, married and with a child, Baker volunteered to join the 438th Military Police Company in Murray, Ky., because it was about to be deployed overseas.
Ron England was Baker’s first sergeant. “He seemed to like being a soldier,” says England. “He loved being a soldier. He was always more than willing to give his part and somebody else’s, or to pitch in for somebody else.”
In November 2002, Baker’s unit was sent to Guantanamo Bay, home to what the Pentagon called the most vicious terrorists in the world. Spc. Baker’s job was to escort prisoners and walk the causeways of the prison block.
He was the new guy on the block, and he says he got special treatment from the detainees: “They wanna try the new guy. See how much they can push you. You know? How much water they can throw on you. How much urine they can throw on you. How much feces they can dump on you.”
His unit was on duty at 2 a.m. on Jan. 24, 2003, when his squad leader got a message. “‘Someone needs to go for training,'” says Baker. “And I looked around the room. I couldn’t believe that everyone had not stood up, and said, ‘I’ll go.’ But I said, ‘Right here, Sarg.'”
Baker was always the first to volunteer. This time, it was to go to the block where the most dangerous detainees were kept in isolated cells. There, Baker was met by Second Lt. Shaw Locke of the 303rd Military Police Company from Michigan. Locke, who was in charge of an IRF (Immediate Reaction Force) team, briefed Baker about the training drill he was planning.
“‘We’re going to put you in a cell and extract you, have their IRF team come in and extract you. And what I’d like you to do is go ahead and strip your uniform off and put on this orange suit,'” says Baker, who was ordered to wear an orange jumpsuit, just like the ones worn by the detainees at Guantanamo.
“I’d never questioned an order before. But, at first I said, my only remark was, ‘Sir?’ Just in the form of a question. And he said, ‘You’ll be fine,’” recalls Baker. “I said, ‘Well, you know what’s gonna happen when they come in there on me?’ And he said, ‘Trust me, Spc. Baker. You will be fine.’”
Drills to practice extracting uncooperative prisoners took place every day, with a U.S. soldier playing the role of a detainee, but not in an orange jumpsuit, and not at full force.
“You always train at 70 percent. Never 100 percent,” says Michael Riley, who was Baker’s platoon sergeant. “Seventy percent means you want to practice and be proficient, but not get anybody hurt.”
Baker says his orders that night were to get under a bunk on a steel floor in a dark cell, and wait: “I said, ‘Sir, you’re going to tell that IRF team that I’m a U.S. soldier?’ He said, ‘Yes, you’ll be fine, Spc. Baker. Trust me.'”
But in fact, Locke later acknowledged in a sworn statement that he did not indicate “whether the scenario was a drill or not a drill to the IRF team.” Locke did, however, tell the team the detainee had not responded to pepper spray.
“They wanted to make training a little more realistic,” says Baker. “Put this orange suit on.”
Locke gave Baker a code word – red – to shout out in case of trouble. From under the bunk, Baker heard the extraction team coming down the causeway. In sworn statements, however, four members of the team said they thought they were going after a real detainee.
“My face was down. And of course, they’re pushing it down against the steel floor, you know, my right temple, pushing it down against the floor,” recalls Baker. “And someone’s holding me by the throat, using a pressure point on me and holding my throat. And I used the word, ‘red.’ At that point I, you know, I became afraid.”
Apparently, no one heard the code word ‘red’ because Baker says he continued to be manhandled, especially by an MP named Scott Sinclair who was holding onto his head.
“And when I said the word ‘Red,’ he forced my head down against the steel floor and was sort of just grinding it into the floor. The individual then, when I picked up my head and said, ‘Red,’ slammed my head down against the floor,” says Baker. “I was so afraid, I groaned out, ‘I’m a U.S. soldier.’ And when I said that, he slammed my head again, one more time against the floor. And I groaned out one more time, I said, ‘I’m a U.S. soldier.’ And I heard them say, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ you know, like he wanted to, he was telling the other guy to stop.”
Bloodied and disoriented, Baker somehow made it back to his unit, and his first thought was to get hold of the videotape. “I said, ‘Go get the tape,'” recalls Baker. “‘They’ve got a tape. Go get the tape.’ My squad leader went to get the tape.”
Every extraction drill at Guantanamo was routinely videotaped, and the tape of this drill would show what happened. But Baker says his squad leader came back and said, “There is no tape.”
“That was the only time that I heard that a tape had gone missing,” says Riley, Baker’s platoon sergeant.
“Of all the tapes, this was probably the most important one that we should have kept,” adds England.
Baker started having a seizure that morning and was whisked to the Naval Hospital at Guantanamo. “[He looked like] he’d had the crap beat out of him. He had a concussion. I mean, it was textbook,” says Riley. “[His face} was blank. You know, a dead stare, like he was seeing you, but really looking through you.”
Baker was airlifted to the Portsmouth Naval Medical Center in Virginia, where doctors determined he had suffered an injury to the right side of his brain. He was released after four days, and Baker says he requested to go back to Cuba.
“I wanted to go back and perform my duties,” says Baker. “I wanted to be back with my unit.”
Baker got back to Guantanamo, and hoped no one would notice he was having seizures, but they got to the point where he says he couldn’t hide them: “I was shaking and convulsing around people.”
Some days, he says, he was having 10 to 12 seizures per day.
What does he think would have happened if he had been a real detainee? “I think they would have busted him up,” says Baker. “I’ve seen detainees come outta there with blood on ’em. …If there wasn’t someone to say, ‘I’m a U.S. soldier,’ if you were speaking Arabic or Pashto or Urdu or some other language in the camp, we may never know what would have happened to that individual.”
Baker was finally taken off Guantanamo and sent to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he was put in a psychiatric ward. His diagnosis: traumatic brain injury. After 47 days, he was ordered to report to a medical hold unit at Fort Dix, N.J. But the seizures continued.
“He was shaking all over his whole body. It just looked like he was — you ever seen ‘The Exorcist?’ That’s what it looked like. It was pretty freaky,” says Spc. Sean Bateman, who saw Baker. “He had plenty [of seizures]. I can’t count them all is pretty much what I’m saying. He had some so often, it was pretty much expected.”
But back at Guantanamo, a promised investigation into what happened to Baker wasn’t getting anywhere.
“There was what was called a commander’s inquiry. It doesn’t really tell me anything,” says England. “And after that it more or less seemed like, least said the best said. That was my opinion of it.”
Riley says he and England approached Capt. Judith Brown, the commander of the Kentucky National Guard at Guantanamo, and asked her what was going on with that investigation. What did the captain say? “I’ll paraphrase. It’s something like, it’s being looked into, but we really don’t wanna get anybody in trouble,” says Riley.
Nobody got into trouble because the Army didn’t conduct a serious investigation into what happened to Spc. Baker — not for 17 months. Only then, and only after word of Baker’s beating got leaked to the media, did the Pentagon launch a criminal investigation into how he got so badly hurt that January morning in Guantanamo.
The criminal investigation is still going on. 60 Minutes Wednesday wanted to talk to someone at the Pentagon about the Baker case, but was told no one would talk about it.
Despite repeated calls, Capt. Judith Brown refused to speak to 60 Minutes Wednesday. Crews tried to interview Shaw Locke, the man in charge that night, and Scott Sinclair, the man Baker accused of bashing his head, but they wouldn’t meet with 60 Minutes Wednesday either. Sinclair did write in a sworn statement after the incident that Baker was resisting and that Sinclair merely placed his head back on the floor of the cell.
Meanwhile, Baker was stuck in bureaucratic limbo at Fort Dix for 10 months, long after Locke, Sinclair and the 303rd returned home to Michigan to a celebration in September 2003.
Baker was left to fight the Pentagon for a disability check, and he says it took four months to get his first check. Meantime, he says drew unemployment insurance, about half of what he was accustomed to making, to get by.
“These are our American veterans,” says England. “Sean Baker was one that wasn’t taken care of. In my own personal opinion, Sean Baker wasn’t taken care of.”
When Baker got home to Kentucky, he didn’t complain. But he needed help just to get his disability check. Attorney Bruce Simpson agreed to help Baker, pro bono. But Baker is unable to sue because of a 1950 Supreme Court ruling that bars members of the military from suing the government.
“He’ll not get a dime from what happened to him through the court system because the doors to the federal courthouse as to Sean Baker are closed,” says Simpson, who adds that no one has paid a price for what happened to Baker that night. “He’s been destined to a life of walking in a minefield of unexploded seizures. He doesn’t know when they’re gonna come. And he doesn’t know when they are gonna bring him to his knees.”
“It’s as if they just went on living their lives, as if they’ve done nothing. Nothing wrong,” adds Baker, who now takes nine medications a day, can’t get a job, has put on 50 pounds and has constant nightmares.
At the end of September, Baker went to Columbia University Medical Center in New York to consult with Dr. Carl Bazil, a seizure specialist, and one of the top neurologists in the country.
While undergoing testing, Baker suffered a seizure in front of Bazil, who believes Baker has intractable epilepsy – which means his seizures are difficult to control.
Is it an injury Baker could have received as a result of having his head repeatedly knocked against a steel floor? “Oh, absolutely. That is the kind of injury that would be severe enough to result in epilepsy,” says Bazil, who believes that with better treatment, Baker’s condition could improve. “If he doesn’t get better treatment, that will probably continue indefinitely.”
“So, if you got your health back, I take it, after your experience with the Army, you’d never serve again,” Simon asks Baker.
“I’d be in,” says Baker. “Till the day I die.”
and if that wasn’t enough, the neocons have stooped to making sexual slurs and death threats to a 15-year-old peace activist who has had the temerity to make an animation that implies that
the animation can be seen here.
Animation Producer Gets Ugly Slurs
By Matthew Rothschild
April 24, 2006
Ava Lowery is a fifteen-year-old who lives in Alabama. She calls herself a peace activist, and for the past year, she’s been producing her own short animations on her website, peacetakescourage.com. All in all, she’s made about seventy of them, she says, and most of them oppose Bush and his Iraq War.
“I was just so mad about it,” she explains. “And the media are not showing the real images of the war, so I did a lot research and started my own website.”
She submitted one of her latest creations, “WWJD,” to the monthly “contagious” contest that huffingtonpost.com is running. (It’s an open contest that ranks the number of viewers for each submission.)
“WWJD” (“What Would Jesus Do”) is a powerful animation that features a soundtrack of a child singing “Jesus loves me, this I know” while one picture after another of a wounded, bloody, or screaming Iraqi child fills the screen.
“The object of the animation,” says Lowery, is “to get the following point across: Jesus loves Iraqis, too.”
Lowery ends the video with quotations from Beatitudes, including, “Blessed are they who mourn” and “Blessed are the meek” and “Blessed are the merciful” and “Blessed are the peacemakers.”
She says she’s received a lot of positive feedback in short messages back to her site. And she understands that the fact that “people are on the web, and they just let loose.” But she was unprepared for the viciousness of the negative feedback—especially the ugly sexual slurs similar to those that Cindy Sheehan has faced. (If you can’t stand foul language, stop reading now.)
“It’s people like you who need to fucking die and get raped while your corpse rots in the sun,” said one e-mail Lowery shared with me. “Fuck you, I would jack off on your parents if I could. If you don’t like the team, get out of the park. That means take ur small dick and get the fuck off of my homeland you faggot chocolate gulper.”
“You are a TRAITOR to your country and should be executed for treason,” another one said. “All you do is bitch about the US. If you hate it so much, why don’t you GET THE FUCK OUT.”
“Why don’t you go masterbate [sic] to a pic of Sheehan and fuck off,” said a third.
“Are you a muslem [sic] terrorist?” asked another.
She says there was a threat against her that was circulating “on the conservative underground.” And she says she received one e-mail from someone who said, “Contact me ASAP. It concerns a danger to your life.”
When her mom called the number, the person who answered denied any knowledge of the threat, Lowery says.
She adds: “I was really weirded out by it.”
and finally, to top it all off,
Jagger wins suite war against Dubya
Asian News International
London, April 24, 2006
It was the battle of the hotel room for George W Bush and Rolling Stone frontman Mick Jagger, when the singer refused to give up his suite to the US President.
Jagger hired the luxury Royal Suite at the five-star Imperial Hotel in Vienna, Austria, which is rated to be among the top 100 hotel rooms in the world, where the Stones are due to perform in June.
In doing so, he beat Bush’s aides to the punch, when they tried to book it to tie in with a summit meeting.
A source said that Jagger, an out-spoken Bush critic, had refused to budge from the 3,600 a night suite when the US President’s aides came calling.
“White House officials had wanted to reserve the suite and all the other rooms on the first floor. But Mick and the Stones had already booked every one of them. Bush’s people seemed to be under the impression that they would just hand over the suites but there was no way Mick was going to do that,” The Sun quoted the source, as saying.
And, it was Bush throwing in the towel first, for the hotel confirmed that he would no longer be staying there.
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from
"Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose — and you allow him to make war at pleasure. . . . If, today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, ‘I see no probability of the British invading us’; but he will say to you, ‘Be silent; I see it, if you don’t.’"
— Rep. Abraham Lincoln, explaining his opposition to the Mexican War
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i just got a very strange call which i assume to be a sales call…
the phone rang and i answered it and it was a recording. i’ve noticed that it’s a recording under one of two different circumstances: either it’s somebody really important to talk to, like the utility company, the phone company or the cable company, who wants to tell us that, if we don’t pay our bill immediately, some essential service is going to be disconnected, or it’s a sales call.
i didn’t catch what the guy was saying at first, but as i was realising that it was a recording, i did hear that it was concerning our “private line retail service”, which sounded important enough that i held on rather than hanging up immediately… but after keeping me waiting for five minutes, the recording apologised for taking my time, said they would call back later, and hung up.
W. T. F.???
oh, this as well…
HJ0125 LRB094 20306 RLC 58347 r 1 HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION 2 WHEREAS, Section 603 of Jefferson's Manual of the Rules of 3 the United States House of Representatives allows federal 4 impeachment proceedings to be initiated by joint resolution of 5 a state legislature; and 6 WHEREAS, President Bush has publicly admitted to ordering 7 the National Security Agency to violate provisions of the 1978 8 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a felony, specifically 9 authorizing the Agency to spy on American citizens without 10 warrant; and 11 WHEREAS, Evidence suggests that President Bush authorized 12 violation of the Torture Convention of the Geneva Conventions, 13 a treaty regarded a supreme law by the United States 14 Constitution; and 15 WHEREAS, The Bush Administration has held American 16 citizens and citizens of other nations as prisoners of war 17 without charge or trial; and 18 WHEREAS, Evidence suggests that the Bush Administration 19 has manipulated intelligence for the purpose of initiating a 20 war against the sovereign nation of Iraq, resulting in the 21 deaths of large numbers of Iraqi civilians and causing the 22 United States to incur loss of life, diminished security and 23 billions of dollars in unnecessary expenses; and 24 WHEREAS, The Bush Administration leaked classified 25 national secrets to further a political agenda, exposing an 26 unknown number of covert U. S. intelligence agents to potential 27 harm and retribution while simultaneously refusing to 28 investigate the matter; and 29 WHEREAS, The Republican-controlled Congress has declined HJ0125 - 2 - LRB094 20306 RLC 58347 r 1 to fully investigate these charges to date; therefore, be it 2 RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE 3 NINETY-FOURTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, THE 4 SENATE CONCURRING HEREIN, that the General Assembly of the 5 State of Illinois has good cause to submit charges to the U. S. 6 House of Representatives under Section 603 that the President 7 of the United States has willfully violated his Oath of Office 8 to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United 9 States; and be it further 10 RESOLVED, That George W. Bush, if found guilty of the 11 charges contained herein, should be removed from office and 12 disqualified to hold any other office in the United States.
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blatantly stolen from
- was 24 years old.
- was a soon-to-be ex-student of the Renton Vocational Technical Institute in their Musical Instrument Repair program
- thought i was going to graduate, move back to bellingham (which is where my girlfriend and our four-year-old son lived), get the ideal job as a musical instrument repair technician and live happily ever after
10 years ago I…
- was 34 years old
- was working as a technical support engineer for mac products at microsoft (so much for technical school training and the “ideal” job)
- was living in a tiny, 1-room apartment in the basement of a building in downtown seattle, and was in the middle of an intense legal battle over custody of my fourteen-year-old son.
5 years ago I…
- was 39 years old
- was working as a test lead at STLabs
- started Hybrid Elephant, the business that moe and i had been playing around with for 3 years or so.
3 years ago I…
- was 41 years old
- was working as a graphic artist at a minuteman press shop, from which i was fired for having a brain injury instead of showing up for work for two months
- was two months away from having a brain injury, but had no clue that it was going to happen
1 year ago I…
- was working as a graphic artist at a different minuteman press shop, very quickly getting fed up with the owner who is a mental midget… and this opinion is coming from a person who doesn’t have a complete brain!
- was living in a RV in juanita, because we still hadn’t figured out where we were going to move to after having to move out of our big house in renton because i was unable to find a steady job after my injury
- was getting really fed up with having to have a job in order to survive, and was actively looking for alternatives
So far this past year I…
- have decided that i don’t really need a traditional job
- put a shopping cart on the Hybrid Elephant web site
- discussed the details of a large grafitti art project with my 24-year-old son
Yesterday I…
- finished painting my car… i am now driving an art-car! 8)
- met with my press operator and discussed whether or not he could print a business card for my acupuncturist
- stayed up until 3:00 in the morning watching TV because i was so depressed
Today I…
- slept until noon
- got my replacement tent poles in the mail
- logged a bug with the LJ rich text editor, which i fully expect to be ignored
Tomorrow I will…
- attend my 2nd rehearsal of the Ballard Sedentary Sousa Band
- probably still be depressed… it’s getting really tiring
- do something else which i haven’t yet figured out, and probably won’t until just before i do it
In the next year I will…
- completely recover and develop new, unusual, super-powers because of the extra space i now have in my skull
- learn sanskrit
- permanently move to uranus
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okay, i’m going to see if i can actually post pictures without having to delete everything and start over, like i had to yesterday… by the way, for anybody who cares, LJ has in mind converting to “rich text” editing by defalt, rather than the “plain text” editing that they currently have, and the rich text editor currently sucks big fat rancid donkey dicks. regardless of where you want to put <lj-cut> tags, it has the tendency to put them where it thinks they should go, which means around the text instead of around the pictures, regardless of how big they are, and the “edit source” button lets you edit the raw html, but when you click the “Okay” button on the source window, the “rich text” editor goes back to the same, incorrect html code that it had before, and there doesn’t appear to be any way to go back to plain text once you’ve chosen the rich text editor. it reminds me very much of the HTML editor i worked on at micro$lop a few years ago, which didn’t recognise HTML standards and had a number of bugs which it still has because micro$lop developers decided that, despite the fact that i logged several bugs against it, “nobody would notice”…
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 |
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now that’s the way HTML code should look, and it displays the way i want it to…
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i finished painting my car. pictures to come eventually.
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whee! 8)
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by the way, if you commented on this previously and your comment was deleted, it was because i was having some problems with the update page not allowing me to input HTML that i am familiar with, not putting in <lj-cut>s where they were supposed to go, and displaying an annoying HTML toolbar which didn’t do all of the things that a HTML toolbar should do… so i deleted it and started over again, and i did so before any comments had shown up from my point of view… but i think i got at least one comment shortly afterward and it wasn’t on this version, so i have to wonder…
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Ron Brynaert
Saturday April 15, 2006
During an interview on CNN Friday night, retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner claimed that U.S. military operations are already ‘underway’ inside Iran, RAW STORY has found.
“I would say — and this may shock some — I think the decision has been made and military operations are under way,” Col. Gardiner told CNN International anchor Jim Clancy (as noted by Digby at the blog Hullabaloo).
Gardiner, who designed a war game in November of 2004 for Atlantic Magazine (“Will Iran be next?”) which simulated “preparations for a U.S. assault on Iran,” also claimed that Aliasghar Soltaniyeh, the Iranian ambassador to the United Nation’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told him a few weeks ago that units who had attacked the Revolutionary Guard had been captured and confessed to working with Americans.
“The secretary point is, the Iranians have been saying American military troops are in there, have been saying it for almost a year,” Gardiner said. “I was in Berlin two weeks ago, sat next to the ambassador, the Iranian ambassador to the IAEA. And I said, ‘Hey, I hear you’re accusing Americans of being in there operating with some of the units that have shot up revolution guard units.'”
“He said, quite frankly, ‘Yes, we know they are. We’ve captured some of the units, and they’ve confessed to working with the Americans,'” said the retired Air Force colonel.
Last Thursday, Raw Story’s Larisa Alexandrovna reported (On Cheney, Rumsfeld order, US outsourcing special ops, intelligence to Iraq terror group, intelligence officials say) that, according to former and current intelligence officials, the Pentagon has been using a right-wing terrorist organization known as Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK) as an operational asset “to create strife in Iran in preparation for any possible attack.”
“[I]nstead of securing a known terrorist organization, which has been responsible for acts of terror against Iranian targets and individuals all over the world – including US civilian and military casualties – Rumsfeld under instructions from Cheney, began using the group on special ops missions into Iran to pave the way for a potential Iran strike,” Larisa reported.
“They are doing whatever they want, no oversight at all,” an intelligence source told Larisa.
Larisa reported that the MEK soldiers were told to “quit” their organization and were “renamed” in accordance with a plan conceived by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld so that they could be “converted” into a military special ops team.
According to a UN official close to the Security Council whom Larisa interviewed, the “newly renamed MEK soldiers” were being employed in the place of U.S. military advance teams to commit “acts of violence in hopes of staging an insurgency of the Iranian Sunni population.”
“We are already at war,” the UN official told RAW STORY.
One of America’s leading historians assesses George W. Bush
SEAN WILENTZ
George W. Bush’s presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace. Barring a cataclysmic event on the order of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, after which the public might rally around the White House once again, there seems to be little the administration can do to avoid being ranked on the lowest tier of U.S. presidents. And that may be the best-case scenario. Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history.
From time to time, after hours, I kick back with my colleagues at Princeton to argue idly about which president really was the worst of them all. For years, these perennial debates have largely focused on the same handful of chief executives whom national polls of historians, from across the ideological and political spectrum, routinely cite as the bottom of the presidential barrel. Was the lousiest James Buchanan, who, confronted with Southern secession in 1860, dithered to a degree that, as his most recent biographer has said, probably amounted to disloyalty — and who handed to his successor, Abraham Lincoln, a nation already torn asunder? Was it Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, who actively sided with former Confederates and undermined Reconstruction? What about the amiably incompetent Warren G. Harding, whose administration was fabulously corrupt? Or, though he has his defenders, Herbert Hoover, who tried some reforms but remained imprisoned in his own outmoded individualist ethic and collapsed under the weight of the stock-market crash of 1929 and the Depression’s onset? The younger historians always put in a word for Richard M. Nixon, the only American president forced to resign from office.
Now, though, George W. Bush is in serious contention for the title of worst ever. In early 2004, an informal survey of 415 historians conducted by the nonpartisan History News Network found that eighty-one percent considered the Bush administration a “failure.” Among those who called Bush a success, many gave the president high marks only for his ability to mobilize public support and get Congress to go along with what one historian called the administration’s “pursuit of disastrous policies.” In fact, roughly one in ten of those who called Bush a success was being facetious, rating him only as the best president since Bill Clinton — a category in which Bush is the only contestant.
The lopsided decision of historians should give everyone pause. Contrary to popular stereotypes, historians are generally a cautious bunch. We assess the past from widely divergent points of view and are deeply concerned about being viewed as fair and accurate by our colleagues. When we make historical judgments, we are acting not as voters or even pundits, but as scholars who must evaluate all the evidence, good, bad or indifferent. Separate surveys, conducted by those perceived as conservatives as well as liberals, show remarkable unanimity about who the best and worst presidents have been.
Historians do tend, as a group, to be far more liberal than the citizenry as a whole — a fact the president’s admirers have seized on to dismiss the poll results as transparently biased. One pro-Bush historian said the survey revealed more about “the current crop of history professors” than about Bush or about Bush’s eventual standing. But if historians were simply motivated by a strong collective liberal bias, they might be expected to call Bush the worst president since his father, or Ronald Reagan, or Nixon. Instead, more than half of those polled — and nearly three-fourths of those who gave Bush a negative rating — reached back before Nixon to find a president they considered as miserable as Bush. The presidents most commonly linked with Bush included Hoover, Andrew Johnson and Buchanan. Twelve percent of the historians polled — nearly as many as those who rated Bush a success — flatly called Bush the worst president in American history. And these figures were gathered before the debacles over Hurricane Katrina, Bush’s role in the Valerie Plame leak affair and the deterioration of the situation in Iraq. Were the historians polled today, that figure would certainly be higher.
Even worse for the president, the general public, having once given Bush the highest approval ratings ever recorded, now appears to be coming around to the dismal view held by most historians. To be sure, the president retains a considerable base of supporters who believe in and adore him, and who reject all criticism with a mixture of disbelief and fierce contempt — about one-third of the electorate. (When the columnist Richard Reeves publicized the historians’ poll last year and suggested it might have merit, he drew thousands of abusive replies that called him an idiot and that praised Bush as, in one writer’s words, “a Christian who actually acts on his deeply held beliefs.”) Yet the ranks of the true believers have thinned dramatically. A majority of voters in forty-three states now disapprove of Bush’s handling of his job. Since the commencement of reliable polling in the 1940s, only one twice-elected president has seen his ratings fall as low as Bush’s in his second term: Richard Nixon, during the months preceding his resignation in 1974. No two-term president since polling began has fallen from such a height of popularity as Bush’s (in the neighborhood of ninety percent, during the patriotic upswell following the 2001 attacks) to such a low (now in the midthirties). No president, including Harry Truman (whose ratings sometimes dipped below Nixonian levels), has experienced such a virtually unrelieved decline as Bush has since his high point. Apart from sharp but temporary upticks that followed the commencement of the Iraq war and the capture of Saddam Hussein, and a recovery during the weeks just before and after his re-election, the Bush trend has been a profile in fairly steady disillusionment.
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How does any president’s reputation sink so low? The reasons are best understood as the reverse of those that produce presidential greatness. In almost every survey of historians dating back to the 1940s, three presidents have emerged as supreme successes: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt. These were the men who guided the nation through what historians consider its greatest crises: the founding era after the ratification of the Constitution, the Civil War, and the Great Depression and Second World War. Presented with arduous, at times seemingly impossible circumstances, they rallied the nation, governed brilliantly and left the republic more secure than when they entered office.
Calamitous presidents, faced with enormous difficulties — Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Hoover and now Bush — have divided the nation, governed erratically and left the nation worse off. In each case, different factors contributed to the failure: disastrous domestic policies, foreign-policy blunders and military setbacks, executive misconduct, crises of credibility and public trust. Bush, however, is one of the rarities in presidential history: He has not only stumbled badly in every one of these key areas, he has also displayed a weakness common among the greatest presidential failures — an unswerving adherence to a simplistic ideology that abjures deviation from dogma as heresy, thus preventing any pragmatic adjustment to changing realities. Repeatedly, Bush has undone himself, a failing revealed in each major area of presidential performance.
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THE CREDIBILITY GAP
No previous president appears to have squandered the public’s trust more than Bush has. In the 1840s, President James Polk gained a reputation for deviousness over his alleged manufacturing of the war with Mexico and his supposedly covert pro-slavery views. Abraham Lincoln, then an Illinois congressman, virtually labeled Polk a liar when he called him, from the floor of the House, “a bewildered, confounded and miserably perplexed man” and denounced the war as “from beginning to end, the sheerest deception.” But the swift American victory in the war, Polk’s decision to stick by his pledge to serve only one term and his sudden death shortly after leaving office spared him the ignominy over slavery that befell his successors in the 1850s. With more than two years to go in Bush’s second term and no swift victory in sight, Bush’s reputation will probably have no such reprieve.
The problems besetting Bush are of a more modern kind than Polk’s, suited to the television age — a crisis both in confidence and credibility. In 1965, Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam travails gave birth to the phrase “credibility gap,” meaning the distance between a president’s professions and the public’s perceptions of reality. It took more than two years for Johnson’s disapproval rating in the Gallup Poll to reach fifty-two percent in March 1968 — a figure Bush long ago surpassed, but that was sufficient to persuade the proud LBJ not to seek re-election. Yet recently, just short of three years after Bush buoyantly declared “mission accomplished” in Iraq, his disapproval ratings have been running considerably higher than Johnson’s, at about sixty percent. More than half the country now considers Bush dishonest and untrustworthy, and a decisive plurality consider him less trustworthy than his predecessor, Bill Clinton — a figure still attacked by conservative zealots as “Slick Willie.”
Previous modern presidents, including Truman, Reagan and Clinton, managed to reverse plummeting ratings and regain the public’s trust by shifting attention away from political and policy setbacks, and by overhauling the White House’s inner circles. But Bush’s publicly expressed view that he has made no major mistakes, coupled with what even the conservative commentator William F. Buckley Jr. calls his “high-flown pronouncements” about failed policies, seems to foreclose the first option. Upping the ante in the Middle East and bombing Iranian nuclear sites, a strategy reportedly favored by some in the White House, could distract the public and gain Bush immediate political capital in advance of the 2006 midterm elections — but in the long term might severely worsen the already dire situation in Iraq, especially among Shiite Muslims linked to the Iranians. And given Bush’s ardent attachment to loyal aides, no matter how discredited, a major personnel shake-up is improbable, short of indictments. Replacing Andrew Card with Joshua Bolten as chief of staff — a move announced by the president in March in a tone that sounded more like defiance than contrition — represents a rededication to current policies and personnel, not a serious change. (Card, an old Bush family retainer, was widely considered more moderate than most of the men around the president and had little involvement in policy-making.) The power of Vice President Dick Cheney, meanwhile, remains uncurbed. Were Cheney to announce he is stepping down due to health problems, normally a polite pretext for a political removal, one can be reasonably certain it would be because Cheney actually did have grave health problems.
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BUSH AT WAR
Until the twentieth century, American presidents managed foreign wars well — including those presidents who prosecuted unpopular wars. James Madison had no support from Federalist New England at the outset of the War of 1812, and the discontent grew amid mounting military setbacks in 1813. But Federalist political overreaching, combined with a reversal of America’s military fortunes and the negotiation of a peace with Britain, made Madison something of a hero again and ushered in a brief so-called Era of Good Feelings in which his Jeffersonian Republican Party coalition ruled virtually unopposed. The Mexican War under Polk was even more unpopular, but its quick and victorious conclusion redounded to Polk’s favor — much as the rapid American victory in the Spanish-American War helped William McKinley overcome anti-imperialist dissent.
The twentieth century was crueler to wartime presidents. After winning re-election in 1916 with the slogan “He Kept Us Out of War,” Woodrow Wilson oversaw American entry into the First World War. Yet while the doughboys returned home triumphant, Wilson’s idealistic and politically disastrous campaign for American entry into the League of Nations presaged a resurgence of the opposition Republican Party along with a redoubling of American isolationism that lasted until Pearl Harbor.
Bush has more in common with post-1945 Democratic presidents Truman and Johnson, who both became bogged down in overseas military conflicts with no end, let alone victory, in sight. But Bush has become bogged down in a singularly crippling way. On September 10th, 2001, he held among the lowest ratings of any modern president for that point in a first term. (Only Gerald Ford, his popularity reeling after his pardon of Nixon, had comparable numbers.) The attacks the following day transformed Bush’s presidency, giving him an extraordinary opportunity to achieve greatness. Some of the early signs were encouraging. Bush’s simple, unflinching eloquence and his quick toppling of the Taliban government in Afghanistan rallied the nation. Yet even then, Bush wasted his chance by quickly choosing partisanship over leadership.
No other president — Lincoln in the Civil War, FDR in World War II, John F. Kennedy at critical moments of the Cold War — faced with such a monumental set of military and political circumstances failed to embrace the opposing political party to help wage a truly national struggle. But Bush shut out and even demonized the Democrats. Top military advisers and even members of the president’s own Cabinet who expressed any reservations or criticisms of his policies — including retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni and former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill — suffered either dismissal, smear attacks from the president’s supporters or investigations into their alleged breaches of national security. The wise men who counseled Bush’s father, including James Baker and Brent Scowcroft, found their entreaties brusquely ignored by his son. When asked if he ever sought advice from the elder Bush, the president responded, “There is a higher Father that I appeal to.”
All the while, Bush and the most powerful figures in the administration, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, were planting the seeds for the crises to come by diverting the struggle against Al Qaeda toward an all-out effort to topple their pre-existing target, Saddam Hussein. In a deliberate political decision, the administration stampeded the Congress and a traumatized citizenry into the Iraq invasion on the basis of what has now been demonstrated to be tendentious and perhaps fabricated evidence of an imminent Iraqi threat to American security, one that the White House suggested included nuclear weapons. Instead of emphasizing any political, diplomatic or humanitarian aspects of a war on Iraq — an appeal that would have sounded too “sensitive,” as Cheney once sneered — the administration built a “Bush Doctrine” of unprovoked, preventive warfare, based on speculative threats and embracing principles previously abjured by every previous generation of U.S. foreign policy-makers, even at the height of the Cold War. The president did so with premises founded, in the case of Iraq, on wishful thinking. He did so while proclaiming an expansive Wilsonian rhetoric of making the world safe for democracy — yet discarding the multilateralism and systems of international law (including the Geneva Conventions) that emanated from Wilson’s idealism. He did so while dismissing intelligence that an American invasion could spark a long and bloody civil war among Iraq’s fierce religious and ethnic rivals, reports that have since proved true. And he did so after repeated warnings by military officials such as Gen. Eric Shinseki that pacifying postwar Iraq would require hundreds of thousands of American troops — accurate estimates that Paul Wolfowitz and other Bush policy gurus ridiculed as “wildly off the mark.”
When William F. Buckley, the man whom many credit as the founder of the modern conservative movement, writes categorically, as he did in February, that “one can’t doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed,” then something terrible has happened. Even as a brash young iconoclast, Buckley always took the long view. The Bush White House seems incapable of doing so, except insofar as a tiny trusted circle around the president constantly reassures him that he is a messianic liberator and profound freedom fighter, on a par with FDR and Lincoln, and that history will vindicate his every act and utterance.
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BUSH AT HOME
Bush came to office in 2001 pledging to govern as a “compassionate conservative,” more moderate on domestic policy than the dominant right wing of his party. The pledge proved hollow, as Bush tacked immediately to the hard right. Previous presidents and their parties have suffered when their actions have belied their campaign promises. Lyndon Johnson is the most conspicuous recent example, having declared in his 1964 run against the hawkish Republican Barry Goldwater that “we are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.” But no president has surpassed Bush in departing so thoroughly from his original campaign persona.
The heart of Bush’s domestic policy has turned out to be nothing more than a series of massively regressive tax cuts — a return, with a vengeance, to the discredited Reagan-era supply-side faith that Bush’s father once ridiculed as “voodoo economics.” Bush crowed in triumph in February 2004, “We cut taxes, which basically meant people had more money in their pocket.” The claim is bogus for the majority of Americans, as are claims that tax cuts have led to impressive new private investment and job growth. While wiping out the solid Clinton-era federal surplus and raising federal deficits to staggering record levels, Bush’s tax policies have necessitated hikes in federal fees, state and local taxes, and co-payment charges to needy veterans and families who rely on Medicaid, along with cuts in loan programs to small businesses and college students, and in a wide range of state services. The lion’s share of benefits from the tax cuts has gone to the very richest Americans, while new business investment has increased at a historically sluggish rate since the peak of the last business cycle five years ago. Private-sector job growth since 2001 has been anemic compared to the Bush administration’s original forecasts and is chiefly attributable not to the tax cuts but to increased federal spending, especially on defense. Real wages for middle-income Americans have been dropping since the end of 2003: Last year, on average, nominal wages grew by only 2.4 percent, a meager gain that was completely erased by an average inflation rate of 3.4 percent.
The monster deficits, caused by increased federal spending combined with the reduction of revenue resulting from the tax cuts, have also placed Bush’s administration in a historic class of its own with respect to government borrowing. According to the Treasury Department, the forty-two presidents who held office between 1789 and 2000 borrowed a combined total of $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and financial institutions. But between 2001 and 2005 alone, the Bush White House borrowed $1.05 trillion, more than all of the previous presidencies combined. Having inherited the largest federal surplus in American history in 2001, he has turned it into the largest deficit ever — with an even higher deficit, $423 billion, forecast for fiscal year 2006. Yet Bush — sounding much like Herbert Hoover in 1930 predicting that “prosperity is just around the corner” — insists that he will cut federal deficits in half by 2009, and that the best way to guarantee this would be to make permanent his tax cuts, which helped cause the deficit in the first place!
The rest of what remains of Bush’s skimpy domestic agenda is either failed or failing — a record unmatched since the presidency of Herbert Hoover. The No Child Left Behind educational-reform act has proved so unwieldy, draconian and poorly funded that several states — including Utah, one of Bush’s last remaining political strongholds — have fought to opt out of it entirely. White House proposals for immigration reform and a guest-worker program have succeeded mainly in dividing pro-business Republicans (who want more low-wage immigrant workers) from paleo-conservatives fearful that hordes of Spanish-speaking newcomers will destroy American culture. The paleos’ call for tougher anti-immigrant laws — a return to the punitive spirit of exclusion that led to the notorious Immigration Act of 1924 that shut the door to immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe — has in turn deeply alienated Hispanic voters from the Republican Party, badly undermining the GOP’s hopes of using them to build a permanent national electoral majority. The recent pro-immigrant demonstrations, which drew millions of marchers nationwide, indicate how costly the Republican divide may prove.
The one noncorporate constituency to which Bush has consistently deferred is the Christian right, both in his selections for the federal bench and in his implications that he bases his policies on premillennialist, prophetic Christian doctrine. Previous presidents have regularly invoked the Almighty. McKinley is supposed to have fallen to his knees, seeking divine guidance about whether to take control of the Philippines in 1898, although the story may be apocryphal. But no president before Bush has allowed the press to disclose, through a close friend, his startling belief that he was ordained by God to lead the country. The White House’s sectarian positions — over stem-cell research, the teaching of pseudoscientific “intelligent design,” global population control, the Terri Schiavo spectacle and more — have led some to conclude that Bush has promoted the transformation of the GOP into what former Republican strategist Kevin Phillips calls “the first religious party in U.S. history.”
Bush’s faith-based conception of his mission, which stands above and beyond reasoned inquiry, jibes well with his administration’s pro-business dogma on global warming and other urgent environmental issues. While forcing federally funded agencies to remove from their Web sites scientific information about reproductive health and the effectiveness of condoms in combating HIV/AIDS, and while peremptorily overruling staff scientists at the Food and Drug Administration on making emergency contraception available over the counter, Bush officials have censored and suppressed research findings they don’t like by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Department of Agriculture. Far from being the conservative he said he was, Bush has blazed a radical new path as the first American president in history who is outwardly hostile to science — dedicated, as a distinguished, bipartisan panel of educators and scientists (including forty-nine Nobel laureates) has declared, to “the distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends.”
The Bush White House’s indifference to domestic problems and science alike culminated in the catastrophic responses to Hurricane Katrina. Scientists had long warned that global warming was intensifying hurricanes, but Bush ignored them — much as he and his administration sloughed off warnings from the director of the National Hurricane Center before Katrina hit. Reorganized under the Department of Homeland Security, the once efficient Federal Emergency Management Agency turned out, under Bush, to have become a nest of cronyism and incompetence. During the months immediately after the storm, Bush traveled to New Orleans eight times to promise massive rebuilding aid from the federal government. On March 30th, however, Bush’s Gulf Coast recovery coordinator admitted that it could take as long as twenty-five years for the city to recover.
Karl Rove has sometimes likened Bush to the imposing, no-nonsense President Andrew Jackson. Yet Jackson took measures to prevent those he called “the rich and powerful” from bending “the acts of government to their selfish purposes.” Jackson also gained eternal renown by saving New Orleans from British invasion against terrible odds. Generations of Americans sang of Jackson’s famous victory. In 1959, Johnny Horton’s version of “The Battle of New Orleans” won the Grammy for best country & western performance. If anyone sings about George W. Bush and New Orleans, it will be a blues number.
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PRESIDENTIAL MISCONDUCT
Virtually every presidential administration dating back to George Washington’s has faced charges of misconduct and threats of impeachment against the president or his civil officers. The alleged offenses have usually involved matters of personal misbehavior and corruption, notably the payoff scandals that plagued Cabinet officials who served presidents Harding and Ulysses S. Grant. But the charges have also included alleged usurpation of power by the president and serious criminal conduct that threatens constitutional government and the rule of law — most notoriously, the charges that led to the impeachments of Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, and to Richard Nixon’s resignation.
Historians remain divided over the actual grievousness of many of these allegations and crimes. Scholars reasonably describe the graft and corruption around the Grant administration, for example, as gargantuan, including a kickback scandal that led to the resignation of Grant’s secretary of war under the shadow of impeachment. Yet the scandals produced no indictments of Cabinet secretaries and only one of a White House aide, who was acquitted. By contrast, the most scandal-ridden administration in the modern era, apart from Nixon’s, was Ronald Reagan’s, now widely remembered through a haze of nostalgia as a paragon of virtue. A total of twenty-nine Reagan officials, including White House national security adviser Robert McFarlane and deputy chief of staff Michael Deaver, were convicted on charges stemming from the Iran-Contra affair, illegal lobbying and a looting scandal inside the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Three Cabinet officers — HUD Secretary Samuel Pierce, Attorney General Edwin Meese and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger — left their posts under clouds of scandal. In contrast, not a single official in the Clinton administration was even indicted over his or her White House duties, despite repeated high-profile investigations and a successful, highly partisan impeachment drive.
The full report, of course, has yet to come on the Bush administration. Because Bush, unlike Reagan or Clinton, enjoys a fiercely partisan and loyal majority in Congress, his administration has been spared scrutiny. Yet that mighty advantage has not prevented the indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, on charges stemming from an alleged major security breach in the Valerie Plame matter. (The last White House official of comparable standing to be indicted while still in office was Grant’s personal secretary, in 1875.) It has not headed off the unprecedented scandal involving Larry Franklin, a high-ranking Defense Department official, who has pleaded guilty to divulging classified information to a foreign power while working at the Pentagon — a crime against national security. It has not forestalled the arrest and indictment of Bush’s top federal procurement official, David Safavian, and the continuing investigations into Safavian’s intrigues with the disgraced Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, recently sentenced to nearly six years in prison — investigations in which some prominent Republicans, including former Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed (and current GOP aspirant for lieutenant governor of Georgia) have already been implicated, and could well produce the largest congressional corruption scandal in American history. It has not dispelled the cloud of possible indictment that hangs over others of Bush’s closest advisers.
History may ultimately hold Bush in the greatest contempt for expanding the powers of the presidency beyond the limits laid down by the U.S. Constitution. There has always been a tension over the constitutional roles of the three branches of the federal government. The Framers intended as much, as part of the system of checks and balances they expected would minimize tyranny. When Andrew Jackson took drastic measures against the nation’s banking system, the Whig Senate censured him for conduct “dangerous to the liberties of the people.” During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln’s emergency decisions to suspend habeas corpus while Congress was out of session in 1861 and 1862 has led some Americans, to this day, to regard him as a despot. Richard Nixon’s conduct of the war in Southeast Asia and his covert domestic-surveillance programs prompted Congress to pass new statutes regulating executive power.
By contrast, the Bush administration — in seeking to restore what Cheney, a Nixon administration veteran, has called “the legitimate authority of the presidency” — threatens to overturn the Framers’ healthy tension in favor of presidential absolutism. Armed with legal findings by his attorney general (and personal lawyer) Alberto Gonzales, the Bush White House has declared that the president’s powers as commander in chief in wartime are limitless. No previous wartime president has come close to making so grandiose a claim. More specifically, this administration has asserted that the president is perfectly free to violate federal laws on such matters as domestic surveillance and the torture of detainees. When Congress has passed legislation to limit those assertions, Bush has resorted to issuing constitutionally dubious “signing statements,” which declare, by fiat, how he will interpret and execute the law in question, even when that interpretation flagrantly violates the will of Congress. Earlier presidents, including Jackson, raised hackles by offering their own view of the Constitution in order to justify vetoing congressional acts. Bush doesn’t bother with that: He signs the legislation (eliminating any risk that Congress will overturn a veto), and then governs how he pleases — using the signing statements as if they were line-item vetoes. In those instances when Bush’s violations of federal law have come to light, as over domestic surveillance, the White House has devised a novel solution: Stonewall any investigation into the violations and bid a compliant Congress simply to rewrite the laws.
Bush’s alarmingly aberrant take on the Constitution is ironic. One need go back in the record less than a decade to find prominent Republicans railing against far more minor presidential legal infractions as precursors to all-out totalitarianism. “I will have no part in the creation of a constitutional double-standard to benefit the president,” Sen. Bill Frist declared of Bill Clinton’s efforts to conceal an illicit sexual liaison. “No man is above the law, and no man is below the law — that’s the principle that we all hold very dear in this country,” Rep. Tom DeLay asserted. “The rule of law protects you and it protects me from the midnight fire on our roof or the 3 a.m. knock on our door,” warned Rep. Henry Hyde, one of Clinton’s chief accusers. In the face of Bush’s more definitive dismissal of federal law, the silence from these quarters is deafening.
The president’s defenders stoutly contend that war-time conditions fully justify Bush’s actions. And as Lincoln showed during the Civil War, there may be times of military emergency where the executive believes it imperative to take immediate, highly irregular, even unconstitutional steps. “I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful,” Lincoln wrote in 1864, “by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution, through the preservation of the nation.” Bush seems to think that, since 9/11, he has been placed, by the grace of God, in the same kind of situation Lincoln faced. But Lincoln, under pressure of daily combat on American soil against fellow Americans, did not operate in secret, as Bush has. He did not claim, as Bush has, that his emergency actions were wholly regular and constitutional as well as necessary; Lincoln sought and received Congressional authorization for his suspension of habeas corpus in 1863. Nor did Lincoln act under the amorphous cover of a “war on terror” — a war against a tactic, not a specific nation or political entity, which could last as long as any president deems the tactic a threat to national security. Lincoln’s exceptional measures were intended to survive only as long as the Confederacy was in rebellion. Bush’s could be extended indefinitely, as the president sees fit, permanently endangering rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution to the citizenry.
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Much as Bush still enjoys support from those who believe he can do no wrong, he now suffers opposition from liberals who believe he can do no right. Many of these liberals are in the awkward position of having supported Bush in the past, while offering little coherent as an alternative to Bush’s policies now. Yet it is difficult to see how this will benefit Bush’s reputation in history.
The president came to office calling himself “a uniter, not a divider” and promising to soften the acrimonious tone in Washington. He has had two enormous opportunities to fulfill those pledges: first, in the noisy aftermath of his controversial election in 2000, and, even more, after the attacks of September 11th, when the nation pulled behind him as it has supported no other president in living memory. Yet under both sets of historically unprecedented circumstances, Bush has chosen to act in ways that have left the country less united and more divided, less conciliatory and more acrimonious — much like James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson and Herbert Hoover before him. And, like those three predecessors, Bush has done so in the service of a rigid ideology that permits no deviation and refuses to adjust to changing realities. Buchanan failed the test of Southern secession, Johnson failed in the face of Reconstruction, and Hoover failed in the face of the Great Depression. Bush has failed to confront his own failures in both domestic and international affairs, above all in his ill-conceived responses to radical Islamic terrorism. Having confused steely resolve with what Ralph Waldo Emerson called “a foolish consistency . . . adored by little statesmen,” Bush has become entangled in tragedies of his own making, compounding those visited upon the country by outside forces.
No historian can responsibly predict the future with absolute certainty. There are too many imponderables still to come in the two and a half years left in Bush’s presidency to know exactly how it will look in 2009, let alone in 2059. There have been presidents — Harry Truman was one — who have left office in seeming disgrace, only to rebound in the estimates of later scholars. But so far the facts are not shaping up propitiously for George W. Bush. He still does his best to deny it. Having waved away the lessons of history in the making of his decisions, the present-minded Bush doesn’t seem to be concerned about his place in history. “History. We won’t know,” he told the journalist Bob Woodward in 2003. “We’ll all be dead.”
Another president once explained that the judgments of history cannot be defied or dismissed, even by a president. “Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history,” said Abraham Lincoln. “We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.”
also:
The Past is Over – Can you imagine a speech given by president Bush that would convince you that he has had a change of heart and could actually be the president of your dreams? A group of five students, ages 7-10, from Rooftop Elementary in San Francisco accepted the challenge, and have written speeches, which were then recorded by Jim Meskimen, a professional impersonator.
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there has been a whole bunch of things that have been causing a bit of distress, but there have also been a lot of good things happening that have been offsetting the distress to the point where it’s more like a minor irritation. scott mcclellan is resigning, the “president” of china, hu jintao visited seattle with the requisite protests by tibetans, taiwanese, and chinese falun gong, and was here at the same time cheney was, which caused much uproar and confusion in seattle for two or three days. and other things that are precisely why i don’t read the newspaper that often…
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F.D.A. Dismisses Medical Benefit From Marijuana
By GARDINER HARRIS
April 21, 2006
WASHINGTON, April 20 – The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday that “no sound scientific studies” supported the medical use of marijuana, contradicting a 1999 review by a panel of highly regarded scientists.The announcement inserts the health agency into yet another fierce political fight.
Susan Bro, an agency spokeswoman, said Thursday’s statement resulted from a past combined review by federal drug enforcement, regulatory and research agencies that concluded “smoked marijuana has no currently accepted or proven medical use in the United States and is not an approved medical treatment.”
Ms. Bro said the agency issued the statement in response to numerous inquiries from Capitol Hill but would probably do nothing to enforce it.
“Any enforcement based on this finding would need to be by D.E.A. since this falls outside of F.D.A.’s regulatory authority,” she said.
Eleven states have legalized medicinal use of marijuana, but the Drug Enforcement Administration and the director of national drug control policy, John P. Walters, have opposed those laws.
A Supreme Court decision last year allowed the federal government to arrest anyone using marijuana, even for medical purposes and even in states that have legalized its use.
Congressional opponents and supporters of medical marijuana use have each tried to enlist the F.D.A. to support their views. Representative Mark Souder, Republican of Indiana and a fierce opponent of medical marijuana initiatives, proposed legislation two years ago that would have required the food and drug agency to issue an opinion on the medicinal properties of marijuana.
Mr. Souder believes that efforts to legalize medicinal uses of marijuana are a front for efforts to legalize all uses of it, said Martin Green, a spokesman for Mr. Souder.
Tom Riley, a spokesman for Mr. Walters, hailed the food and drug agency’s statement, saying it would put to rest what he called “the bizarre public discussion” that has led to some legalization of medical marijuana.
The Food and Drug Administration statement directly contradicts a 1999 review by the Institute of Medicine, a part of the National Academy of Sciences, the nation’s most prestigious scientific advisory agency. That review found marijuana to be “moderately well suited for particular conditions, such as chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting and AIDS wasting.”
Dr. John Benson, co-chairman of the Institute of Medicine committee that examined the research into marijuana’s effects, said in an interview that the statement on Thursday and the combined review by other agencies were wrong.
The federal government “loves to ignore our report,” said Dr. Benson, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. “They would rather it never happened.”
Some scientists and legislators said the agency’s statement about marijuana demonstrated that politics had trumped science.
“Unfortunately, this is yet another example of the F.D.A. making pronouncements that seem to be driven more by ideology than by science,” said Dr. Jerry Avorn, a medical professor at Harvard Medical School.
Representative Maurice D. Hinchey, a New York Democrat who has sponsored legislation to allow medicinal uses of marijuana, said the statement reflected the influence of the Drug Enforcement Administration, which he said had long pressured the F.D.A. to help in its fight against marijuana.
A spokeswoman for the Drug Enforcement Administration referred questions to Mr. Walters’s office.
The Food and Drug Administration’s statement said state initiatives that legalize marijuana use were “inconsistent with efforts to ensure that medications undergo the rigorous scientific scrutiny of the F.D.A. approval process.”
But scientists who study the medical use of marijuana said in interviews that the federal government had actively discouraged research. Lyle E. Craker, a professor in the division of plant and soil sciences at the University of Massachusetts, said he submitted an application to the D.E.A. in 2001 to grow a small patch of marijuana to be used for research because government-approved marijuana, grown in Mississippi, was of poor quality.
In 2004, the drug enforcement agency turned Dr. Craker down. He appealed and is awaiting a judge’s ruling. “The reason there’s no good evidence is that they don’t want an honest trial,” Dr. Craker said.
Dr. Donald Abrams, a professor of clinical medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said he had studied marijuana’s medicinal effects for years but had been frustrated because the National Institutes of Health, the leading government medical research agency, had refused to finance such work.
With financing from the State of California, Dr. Abrams undertook what he said was a rigorous, placebo-controlled trial of marijuana smoking in H.I.V. patients who suffered from nerve pain. Smoking marijuana proved effective in ameliorating pain, Dr. Abrams said, but he said he was having trouble getting the study published.
“One wonders how anyone” could fulfill the Food and Drug Administration request for well-controlled trials to prove marijuana’s benefits, he said.
Marinol, a synthetic version of a marijuana component, is approved to treat anorexia associated with AIDS and the nausea and vomiting associated with cancer drug therapy.
GW Pharmaceutical, a British company, has received F.D.A. approval to test a sprayed extract of marijuana in humans. Called Sativex, the drug is made from marijuana and is approved for sale in Canada. Opponents of efforts to legalize marijuana for medicinal uses suggest that marijuana is a so-called gateway drug that often leads users to try more dangerous drugs and to addiction.
But the Institute of Medicine report concluded there was no evidence that marijuana acted as a gateway to harder drugs. And it said there was no evidence that medical use of marijuana would increase its use among the general population.
Dr. Daniele Piomelli, a professor of pharmacology at the University of California, Irvine, said he had “never met a scientist who would say that marijuana is either dangerous or useless.”
Studies clearly show that marijuana has some benefits for some patients, Dr. Piomelli said.
“We all agree on that,” he said.
but at the same time, i’ve got my keyboards set up over at
also, i’m now a member of the Ballard Sedentary Sousa Band, which is something for which i’ve been looking, for longer than i have been a member of the fremont philharmonic, which is 5 years, more or less.
Phony doctor gives free breast exams
Apr 20
MIAMI (Reuters) – A 76-year-old man claiming to be a doctor went door-to-door in a Florida neighborhood offering free breast exams, and was charged with sexually assaulting two women who accepted the offer, police said on Thursday.
One woman became suspicious after the man asked her to remove all her clothes and began conducting a purported genital exam without donning rubber gloves, investigators said.
The woman then phoned the Broward County Sheriff’s Office and the suspect fled. He was arrested at another woman’s apartment in the same Lauderdale Lakes neighborhood on Wednesday, a sheriff’s spokesman said.
The white-haired suspect, Philip Winikoff, carried a black bag and claimed to be visiting on behalf of a local hospital.
“He told the woman that he was in the neighborhood offering free breast exams,” sheriff’s spokesman Hugh Graf said in a statement.
At least two women, both in their 30s, let him into their homes and he fondled and sexually assaulted them, the investigators said.
Winikoff was not a doctor, Graf said. He worked as a shuttle driver for an auto dealership.
| You Passed the US Citizenship Test |
 Congratulations – you got 8 out of 10 correct! |
453
i got a chance to play my keyboards for the first time in almost a year. i need to do that more often… like tomorrow.
452
April 14, 2006
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — In a move decried by some as state-sponsored segregation, the Legislature voted Thursday to divide the Omaha school system into three districts — one mostly black, one predominantly white and one largely Hispanic.
Supporters said the plan would give minorities control over their own school board and ensure that their children are not shortchanged in favor of white youngsters.
Republican Gov. Dave Heineman signed the measure into law.
Omaha Sen. Pat Bourne decried the bill, saying, “We will go down in history as one of the first states in 20 years to set race relations back.”
“History will not, and should not, judge us kindly,” said Sen. Gwen Howard of Omaha.
Attorney General Jon Bruning sent a letter to one of the measure’s opponents saying that the bill could be in violation of the Constitution’s equal-protection clause and that lawsuits almost certainly will be filed.
But its backers said that at the very least, its passage will force policymakers to negotiate seriously about the future of schools in the Omaha area.
The breakup would not occur until July 2008, leaving time for lawmakers to come up with another idea.
“There is no intent to create segregation,” said Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers, the Legislature’s only black senator and a longtime critic of the school system.
He argued that the district is already segregated, because it no longer buses students for integration and instead requires them to attend their neighborhood school.
Chambers said the schools attended largely by minorities lack the resources and quality teachers provided others in the district. He said the black students he represents in north Omaha would receive a better education if they had more control over their district.
Coming from Chambers, the argument was especially persuasive to the rest of the Legislature, which voted three times this week in favor of the bill before it won final passage on the last day of the session.
Omaha Public Schools Superintendent John Mackiel said the law is unconstitutional and will not stand.
“There simply has never been an anti-city school victory anywhere in this nation,” Mackiel said. “This law will be no exception.”
The 45,000-student Omaha school system is 46 percent white, 31 percent black, 20 percent Hispanic, and 3 percent Asian or American Indian.
Boundaries for the newly created districts would be drawn using current high school attendance areas. That would result in four possible scenarios; in every scenario, two districts would end up with a majority of students who are racial minorities.
Apr 17
NGLEWOOD, Calif. – A principal trying to prevent walkouts during immigration rallies inadvertently introduced a lockdown so strict that children weren’t allowed to go to the bathroom, and instead had to use buckets in the classroom, an official said.
Worthington Elementary School Principal Angie Marquez imposed the lockdown March 27 as nearly 40,000 students across Southern California left classes that morning to attend immigrants’ rights demonstrations. The lockdown continued into the following morning.
Marquez apparently misread the district handbook and ordered a lockdown designed for nuclear attacks.
Tim Brown, the district’s director of operations, confirmed some students used buckets but said the principal’s order to impose the most severe type of lockdown was an “honest mistake.”
“When there’s a nuclear attack, that’s when buckets are used,” Brown told the Los Angeles Times. The principal “followed procedure. She made a decision to follow the handbook. She just misread it.”
In some cases teachers escorted classmates to regular restroom facilities, students said.
Telephones rang unanswered Monday at Worthington Elementary School because of spring break and messages left for Marquez and Brown at school district headquarters were not returned.
Appalled parents have complained to the school board. Brown said the school district planned to update its emergency preparedness instructions to give more explicit directions.
Parents and community activists asked the school board at its April 5 meeting to explain the principal’s decision. They also sought promises that the lockdown wouldn’t be repeated.
“There was no violence at the protests, so this was based on what?” activist Diane Sambrano asked. “It was unsanitary, unnecessary and absolutely unacceptable.”
ALSO:
Guidelines for Abstinence Curricula from the Administration for Children & Families – scroll down until you find the heading “Additional Guidance Regarding Curriculum Content” and peruse that section… “choosing not to engage in sexual activity until marriage” and “marriage” being defined as “only a legal union between one man and one woman” stick out in my mind as aggravating and contentious terms…
and, for my “friend”
By Jeff Minerd
April 14, 2006
GLASGOW, Scotland, April 14 – The rate of suicide attempts and self-mutilation-is high among those in the Goth youth subculture, researchers here reported.
More than half of 19-year-olds who self-identified as Goth reported self-harming behavior, and nearly half reported a suicide attempt, said Robert Young, a research associate at the University of Glasgow.
But whether participation in Goth culture leads to self-destructive behavior or whether adolescents with those tendencies gravitate to Goth is not clear, Young and colleagues said online today in BMJ, formerly the British Medical Journal.
Goth is a subgenre of punk culture characterized by “a dark and sinister aesthetic, with aficionados conspicuous by their range of distinctive clothing and makeup and tastes in music,” the investigators said. There is a Goth subculture in the U.S., reportedly inspired by fantasy games such as Dungeons and Dragon.
Self-harming behavior is “a maladaptive coping strategy intended to relieve negative emotions such as anger, anxiety, frustration, or guilt,” the investigators said. “It is usually unrelated to an immediate suicide attempt.”
The researchers surveyed 1,258 young people during their final year of primary school (age 11) and again at ages 13, 15, and 19. The study participants were asked about self-harm and identification with a variety of youth subcultures.
The study found that belonging to the Goth subculture was strongly associated with a lifetime prevalence of self harm (53%) and attempted suicide (47%). For comparison, the rate of self-harming behavior among the general youth population in the United Kingdom is 7% to 14%, and the rate of suicide attempts is about 6%, the authors said.
Furthermore, identifying oneself as Goth was associated with a 14-fold increase in risk for self harming behavior (odds ratio=14.16; 95% confidence interval=4.42-45.39) and a 16-fold increase in risk for suicide attempt (OR=16.37; 95% CI=4.93-54.35) compared with non-Goth youth, the study found.
Even after adjusting for other known predictors such as being female, having divorced or separated parents, smoking, drug use, and depression, Goth identification remained the single strongest predictor of self-harm or suicide attempt, the study found.
Some other youth subcultures, such as Punk and Mosher, were also associated with self-harm, but the association was strongest for Goth.
“Although only fairly small numbers of young people identify as belonging to the Goth subculture, rates of self-harm and attempted suicide are very high among this group,” Young said.
“One common suggestion is they may be copying subcultural icons or peers,” he said. “But since our study found that more reported self-harm before, rather than after, becoming a Goth, this suggests that young people with a tendency to self-harm are attracted to the Goth subculture.”
“Rather than posing a risk, it’s also possible that by belonging to this subculture young people are gaining valuable social and emotional support from their peers,” he suggested. “However, the study was based on small numbers and replication is needed to confirm our results.”
451
Take the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society SaniTest.
now that i’ve gotten that out of the way and there should be no doubt left about who you’re actually dealing with here…
Anatomy of a Revolt
What made a chorus of ex-generals call for the SecDef’s head? The war over the war—and how Rumsfeld is reacting.
By Evan Thomas and John Barry
April 24, 2006
Gen. Eric Shinseki, former chief of staff of the Army, says he is “at peace.” But reached last week, he didn’t sound all that peaceful. In the winter of 2003, alone among the top brass, Shinseki had warned Congress that occupying Iraq would require “several hundred thousand troops.” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, had rewarded Shinseki for his honesty by publicly castigating and shunning him.
Last fall, Shinseki went to the 40th reunion of the class of ’65 at West Point. It has been reported that his classmates were wearing caps emblazoned RIC WAS RIGHT. Last week NEWSWEEK e-mailed Shinseki to ask about the reports. Shinseki called back to say he had heard “rumors” about the caps. But, NEWSWEEK asked, wasn’t he there? “Well,” he replied, “I saw a cap.”
Shinseki, who has retired to Hawaii, was clearly uncomfortable with the role of martyr. He had no desire to join the chorus of retired generals calling for Rumsfeld’s resignation. He was circumspect about criticizing Rumsfeld at all, but he seemed to be struggling to disguise his feelings. He pointedly said that the “person who should decide on the number of troops [to invade Iraq] is the combatant commander”—Gen. Tommy Franks, and not Rumsfeld.
Some critics have argued that Shinseki should have banged on the table, pushed harder to stop Rumsfeld from going into Iraq with too few troops. How does Shinseki respond? “Probably that’s fair. Not my style,” said the old soldier, who nearly lost a foot in combat in Vietnam. There was, he added cryptically, “a lot of turmoil” at the Pentagon in the lead-up to the war. Was that Rumsfeld’s fault? “Partly,” said Shinseki. Did Rumsfeld bully General Franks, the overall invasion commander? “You’ll have to ask Franks,” said Shinseki, who indicated that he had talked long enough. “I walked away from all this two and a half years ago,” he said.
The former four-star general appeared to be torn between his strong sense of duty and an uneasy conscience. The moral dilemma is as old as the republic. When does a military officer stand up to—and push back against—his civilian masters? And when does he just salute and say, “Can do, sir”?
It’s a question of enormous consequence for a democracy with the world’s most powerful military. The balance between the civilian and military is precarious. The model may be Lincoln, firing his commanders until he found one (Ulysses S. Grant) who would fight. But the modern reality is messier. It is generally forgotten that Franklin Roosevelt rejected the recommendation of his sainted Army Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Marshall to invade Europe in 1942—which would have been a fiasco. Harry Truman was widely vilified for—wisely—recalling the great Gen. Douglas A. MacArthur when MacArthur wanted to widen the Korean War by attacking China. On the other hand, Lyndon Johnson overreached when he stayed up at night picking bombing targets during the Vietnam War. In 1997, Army Gen. Hugh Shelton, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, assigned the top brass to read “Dereliction of Duty,” a classic study accusing Vietnam-era generals of failing to stand up to their civilian bosses.
Somehow, the lesson did not sink in. Before the Iraq invasion, the senior military did not force a discussion of what to do after the war was won. Rumsfeld was obsessed with the plan of attack, but not the aftermath. The consequences are by now a familiar litany: Rumsfeld demanded a swift, lean force that worked superbly to depose Saddam Hussein—but was woefully inadequate to take over the more onerous task of securing and rebuilding Iraq. Only now are the retired generals coming forth to complain of Rumsfeld’s bullying and demanding his resignation.
The Revolt of the Retired Generals has created considerable discomfort in the E-Ring of the Pentagon and at the White House. President George W. Bush felt compelled last week to issue a written statement expressing his “full support” for the SecDef. For now, Bush has no intention of firing Rumsfeld. “He likes him,” says a close friend of the president’s, who requested anonymity in discussing such a sensitive matter. “He’s not blind. He knows Rumsfeld sticks his foot in it.” Adds a senior Bush aide, who declined to be named discussing the president’s sentiments: “I haven’t seen any evidence that their personal rapport is at all diminishing. They see each other often and talk often.” Rumsfeld says he has twice offered his resignation to Bush, who has declined it.
The old generals can be quite biting about Rumsfeld; retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni wrote an op-ed calling the secretary of Defense “incompetent strategically, operationally, and tactically.” But their criticisms are probably best understood as “the first salvos in the war over ‘Who Lost Iraq’,” says Douglas Macgregor, a retired U.S. Army colonel whose book “Breaking the Phalanx” was influential in inspiring the military’s blitzkrieg assault on Baghdad. “Yes, Rumsfeld should go,” says Macgregor. “But a lot of the generals should be fired, too. They share the blame for the mess we are in.”
Rumsfeld is the chief villain of a very influential new book, “Cobra II,” by retired Marine Corps Gen. Bernard Trainor and New York Times reporter Michael Gordon. In their detailed, thorough accounting of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Rumsfeld is shown badgering the reluctant but mostly quiescent generals into attacking with as few troops as possible. Despite all the talk of the war’s being hatched by a neoconservative cabal, Rumsfeld himself appears indifferent to ideology; he was profoundly suspicious of the notion that America could bring democracy to Iraq. Rather, he focused on forcing a transformation of the hidebound, heavy-laden, slow-moving Army. Rumsfeld disdains “nation-building” and blithely counts on the Iraqis to rebuild their own country. But right after the invasion he signed off on orders by the American proconsul, Paul Bremer, to disband the Iraqi Army and fire most of the top civil servants—leaving the country vulnerable to chaos and a growing insurgency.
The publication of “Cobra II,” plus talk-show comments from Zinni, the former chief of CENTCOM who was promoting his own book, “The Battle for Peace,” appear to have encouraged retired generals to attack Rumsfeld in public. “There was a lot of pent-up agony,” says Trainor. “The dam broke.”
One of the most powerful indictments came from Marine Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, who was chief of operations for the Joint Staff during the early planning of the Iraq invasion. Writing in Time magazine, Newbold declared, “I now regret that I did not more openly challenge those who were determined to invade a country whose actions were peripheral to the real threat—Al Qaeda.” Actually, it was not the job of a uniformed officer, even a high-ranking one like Newbold, to challenge the president’s decision to invade Iraq. That’s a political judgment: it’s up to the president and Congress to decide whom to fight. The military’s job is to win the fight.
Still, Newbold has a point when he writes that the decision “was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions—or bury the results.” The real responsibility for Iraq, of course, lies with President Bush. Together with Vice President Dick Cheney (draft-deferred in Vietnam) and Rumsfeld (Navy jet pilot who did not see combat), Bush (Texas National Guard pilot) seemed determined to brush past or roll over the cautious national-security bureaucracy. Bush made little or no effort to prod his national-security staff to ask tough questions, such as how the Sunnis and Shiites would bury centuries of resentment when Saddam was gone. (Bush has said he listens to the generals, but it does not appear he heard any words of caution.) The get-tough trio essentially cut out Gen. Colin Powell, the secretary of State and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was regarded as too squishy, too much a creature of the go-slow bureaucracy.
Powell has come in for some criticism for not trying harder to slow the Bush juggernaut into Iraq. And the various generals have taken talk-show grief for not speaking out until their pensions were safely vested in retirement. But it is important to understand the military culture to appreciate why more soldiers do not cross their civilian bosses. It is true enough that “political generals” get ahead by never rocking the boat. And it is fair to say that Rumsfeld’s shabby treatment of Shinseki—the secretary did not bother to attend the retirement ceremony of the Army chief of staff, whose replacement was leaked 14 months before his term was up—had a chilling effect on other officers.
But it is unlikely that senior military officers go to sleep at night thinking that if only they kowtow a little more they will win that next star on their shoulder. They are far more likely to believe that their duty is to do the best they can with what they’ve got: the military culture breeds a “can do” attitude in its most successful officers. They are acutely conscious that squabbling at the top can be a morale-crusher for troops who must risk their lives in battle.
Rumsfeld’s persona and management style are grating to many buttoned-up, by-the-book officers. He constantly asks questions, often with sarcasm and in-your-face one-upmanship. Briefing the secretary can be an intimidating exercise. Rumsfeld has been known to get so hung up on a single slide, peppering some hapless colonel or general with antagonistic queries, that the briefer never gets a chance to finish his tidy, orderly presentation. Some soldiers like the macho give-and-take, or at least get used to it. “When you walk in to him, you’ve got to be prepared, you’ve got to know what you’re talking about,” says Marine Gen. Mike DeLong, deputy CENTCOM commander from 2000 to 2003. “If you don’t, you are summarily dismissed. But that’s the way it is, and he’s effective.”
Other officers, particularly those with less exposure, just find Rumsfeld to be an impatient meddler who jumps around, nosing into subjects he knows nothing about and should leave to the professionals. Rumsfeld himself seems impervious to criticism. Last week, at a Pentagon news conference, confronted by reporters quoting from embittered retired generals, he dismissively shot back, “There’s nothing wrong with people having opinions … you ought to expect that. It’s historic. It’s always been the case, and I see nothing really very new or surprising about it.”
But in fact, Rumsfeld is bothered by the furor. “He’s concerned about the impact on the institution,” says Lawrence DiRita, Rumsfeld’s counselor. The controversy, DiRita says, can “make generals clam up around civilians, and civilians wonder, ‘Is this the next general who is going to leak to The New York Times?’ ” Rumsfeld worries that the whole concept of civilian control is “turned on its head” by the revolt of the generals. “Conceptually, institutionally, that a handful of disgruntled generals could determine who will lead the Department of Defense—that’s not the way it’s supposed to work,” says DiRita.
As a practical matter, the rebellion may secure Rumsfeld’s job. “No president is going to be bullied by a bunch of retired general officers into firing a secretary of Defense,” says Thomas Donnelly, the editor of Armed Forces Journal. Of course, by defending Rumsfeld, the president has “moved into the target area,” notes General Trainor. “Now the Democrats can say, ‘Look, the president’s defending an incompetent’.”
Rumsfeld is not the sort to fall on his sword, at least willingly. He liked being teased as “Matinee Idol” by President Bush after he held forth so confidently (and, to many Americans, reassuringly) about “killing the enemy” in the traumatic months after 9/11. He has only retirement to look forward to, a boring prospect for a vigorous 73-year-old. His advisers do not expect him to quit any time soon. For many months, on a shelf behind DiRita’s desk in his old Pentagon office, stood a Rumsfeld doll that was sold in PXes on military bases after the war in Afghanistan. Pull a string on the backside and a mechanical version of Rumsfeld’s rich voice intones, “I don’t do diplomacy.” DiRita attached a slip of paper near the doll’s mouth with his boss’s mantra. It reads faster. DiRita’s not sure what happened to the doll. But his boss, he says, is still charging forward, trying to change an institution that sometimes resists change. In the weeks ahead, he is sure to meet more resistance from old soldiers who think he is not so much a change agent as a wrecking ball.
He is country rock’s biggest icon, and he is angry. Recorded in secret, his forthcoming album savages the war in Iraq. One track says it all: ‘Impeach the President’
By Andrew Buncombe
17 April 2006
It started as a rumour – gossip shared by fans on internet chat sites. Could it true, they asked? Could Neil Young, a cultural lodestone for a generation of country rock fans, really be turning his attention to President George Bush and the war in Iraq? Now Young himself has confirmed it. Not only has he recorded an entire album about the conflict, but in one of the songs he spells out who he thinks is to blame for the ongoing chaos and violence and what the consequences for that person should be. That track is called “Impeach the President”.
“I just finished a new record – a power trio with trumpet and 100 voices,” the 60-year-old says in a ticker-tape message posted at the bottom of his official website. “Metal folk protest? It’s called Living with the War.”
Further details about the album came from Jonathan Demme, the film maker who produced the recently released documentary Heart of Gold about the singer-songwriter. “Neil just finished writing and recording – with no warning – a new album called Living With War,” he told the music magazine Harp by e-mail. “It all happened in three days … It is a brilliant electric assault, accompanied by a 100-voice choir, on Bush and the war in Iraq … Truly mind blowing. Will be in stores soon.”
Those who have followed Young’s twisting career, stretching over more than four decades – from the psychedelia-tinged rock of the folk-rock band Buffalo Springfield in the Sixties, his joining up with Crosby, Stills, and Nash, his huge solo success in 1972 with Harvest, as well as the experimentation of the Eighties and finally his return to country rock – may be a little surprised by Young’s decision to launch such a blunt political assault against the Bush administration.
Indeed, in the aftermath of the al-Qa’ida attacks on the US of 11 September 2001, it seemed that Young had taken the side with the President and supported the steps he was taking in the so-called “war on terror”. Having written a song, “Let’s Roll”, to honour the passengers on board United Airlines’ Flight 93 who apparently fought with the hijackers and forced the plane to crash-land in rural Pennsylvania rather than letting them use it to target the White House, he announced his support for the Patriot Act. The Act, which gave law-enforcement bodies a whole range of new powers, was condemned by many campaigners as an assault on civil liberties. Young said at the time he thought the legislation was necessary.
Speaking at an awards banquet in Hollywood where he had received the Spirit of Liberty award by the liberal campaign group People for the American Way, Young announced: “To protect our freedoms it seems we’re going to have to relinquish some of our freedoms for a short period of time.” But now it appears that for whatever reason, the Canadian-born singer’s support for President Bush has run it’s course and that his latest incarnation is as a protest singer. He has joined list of musicians such as the Dixie Chicks, Lou Reed, Dave Matthews, Steve Earle and REM who have used their platforms to speak out against the war or the administration in general. His song urging that Mr Bush be impeached reportedly accuses him of “lying” and features a rap with the President’s voice set against the choir singing “flip-flop” – an accusation Mr Bush and other Republicans aimed at John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, during the 2004 election campaign.
Meanwhile the lyrics to the new album’s title track include the words: “I’m living with war right now, And when the dawn breaks I see my fellow man, And on the flat screen we kill and we’re being killed again, And when the night falls I pray for peace, Try to remember peace.”
Whilst details of the 10-song recording are still incomplete – it is known that he is accompanied by Chad Cromwell on drums, Rick Rosas on bass and Tommy Bray on trumpet – a further insight into what to expect has come from the California-based musician Alicia Morgan, who was recruited to be part of the 100-strong choir. In an entry on her blog on Friday she wrote: “Have you, like me, been recalling the great protest songs of the Sixties, and wondered where the new protest songs are? Yesterday, I found out.” She said she and the other singers read off the lyrics as they flashed onto a giant screen, with cheers of approval coming up from the choir. With the main tracks having been previously recorded, Young himself directed the backing singers. “Turns out the whole thing is a classic beautiful protest record. The session was like being at a 12-hour peace rally,” she said.
“Every time new lyrics would come up on the screen, there were cheers, tears and applause. It was a spiritual experience … We finished the session by singing an a cappella version of “America the Beautiful” and there was not a dry eye in the house.” She added: “I’ve never been at a recording session that was more like being at church. Heck, I’ve never been to a church that was more like a church than that session.” Speaking from Sherman Oaks, California, yesterday Morgan told The Independent that many people liked Neil Young because he “pisses everybody off”.
She said: “I have always enjoyed his music and respected him. People have told me he used to be a Reagan supporter but I don’t think he is bound by any ideology other than his own. He writes and sings about whatever is going on in his life. Sometimes it’s political – sometimes it’s not.”
Asked if she thought Young had enjoyed the 12-hour session, at which they completed the 10 tracks, she added: “Very much so.” Young, who has served on the board of Farm Aid, fellow singer Willie Nelson’s project to help rural Americans, for more than 20 years, is not the first person to have suggested the impeachment of Mr Bush. With his approval ratings in the low 30s, Democratic Senator Russ Feingold has sought to have Congress pass a motion to censure the President, though the effort has received only limited support from Mr Feingold’s Democratic colleagues.
Meanwhile Mr Bush can apparently do nothing to shift his ratings, the worst for a president in second term since the days of Richard Nixon, for whom, incidentally, Young also wrote a song. Young, who has said he has previously voted for the Republicans, was apparently inspired to write the words for the song “Campaigner” – originally called “Requiem for a President” – after watching television news about Nixon’s wife suffering a stroke and seeing the broken president arrive at the hospital. In the song he wrote: “I am a lonely visitor, I came too late to cause a stir, Though I campaigned all my life towards that goal.”
Songs of shame
By Geneviève Roberts
* ROLLING STONES
Despite being famously apolitical, the band launched an attack on George Bush in their latest album, A Bigger Bang. The track “Sweet Neo Con” contains the lyrics: “You call yourself a Christian, I call you a hypocrite/You call yourself a patriot, Well I think you’re full of shit.”
Despite Jagger saying: “It’s not aimed personally at President Bush. It wouldn’t be called ‘Sweet Neo Con’ if it was,” Stones fans were not convinced, especially as Jagger had previously said of the tune: “It is direct. Keith said: ‘It is not really metaphorical. I think he’s a bit worried because he lives in the US. But I don’t.”
* EMINEM
In 2004, rap artist Eminem urged fans to vote against George Bush in the US election by issuing a music video specifically to criticise the Iraq war. The lyrics for “Mosh”: “Let the President answer on high anarchy, strap him with an AK-47, let him go fight his own war,” accompanied a video depicting a US soldier arriving home from Baghdad, to be told he must return.
* DIXIE CHICKS
“Not Ready to Make Nice”, to be released in the US in May, is an attack on people who sent the Texan band death threats after they criticised Mr Bush. Singer Nathalie Maines, performing in London on the eve of the Iraq war, said: “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas.” Many US radio stations dropped the band and their CDs were smashed.
* GEORGE MICHAEL
In 2002, he released the single “Shoot the Dog”, which featured a cartoon video of Tony Blair and Mr Bush’s poodle on the White House lawn. The backlash was so forceful – the New York Post called him a “past-his-prime pop pervert” – that Michael feared he would not be able to return to the US.
Apr 17
By TOM HAYS
NEW YORK – Along a gritty stretch of street in Brooklyn, police this month quietly launched an ambitious plan to combat street crime and terrorism. But instead of cops on the beat, wireless video cameras peer down from lamp posts about 30 feet above the sidewalk.
They were the first installment of a program to place 500 cameras throughout the city at a cost of $9 million. Hundreds of additional cameras could follow if the city receives $81.5 million in federal grants it has requested to safeguard Lower Manhattan and parts of midtown with a surveillance “ring of steel” modeled after security measures in London’s financial district.
Officials of the New York Police Department _ which considers itself at the forefront of counterterrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks _ claim the money would be well-spent, especially since the revelations that al-Qaida members once cased the New York Stock Exchange and other financial institutions.
“We have every reason to believe New York remains in the cross-hairs, so we have to do what it takes to protect the city,” Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said last week at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
The city already has about 1,000 cameras in the subways, with 2,100 scheduled to be in place by 2008. An additional 3,100 cameras monitor city housing projects.
New York’s approach isn’t unique. Chicago spent roughly $5 million on a 2,000-camera system. Homeland Security officials in Washington plan to spend $9.8 million for surveillance cameras and sensors on a rail line near the Capitol. And Philadelphia has increasingly relied on video surveillance.
Privacy advocates say the NYPD’s camera plan needs more study and safeguards to preserve privacy and guard against abuses like racial profiling and voyeurism.
The department “is installing cameras first and asking questions later,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
Police officials insist that law-abiding New Yorkers have nothing to fear because the cameras will be restricted to public areas. The police commissioner recently established a panel of four corporate defense lawyers to advise the department on surveillance policies.
“The police department must be flexible to meet an ever changing threat,” Kelly said. “We also have to ensure whatever measures we take are reasonable as the Constitution requires. That’s the only way to retain public support and preserve individual freedoms.”
Lieberman concedes cameras can help investigators identify suspects once a crime has been committed, but argues they can’t prevent crime. She cited a 2002 study which concluded that surveillance cameras used in 14 British cities had little or no impact on crime rates _ just as they didn’t keep terrorists from bombing the London subway system last year.
“The London experience shouldn’t be misconstrued that the ‘ring of steel’ prevents terrorism,” she said. “But that’s how it’s being pitched.”
Still, New York police were impressed that their British counterparts drew on 80,000 videotapes to identify and retrace the routes of the subway system suicide bombers and the suspects in a failed follow-up attack.
Timothy Horner, a specialist with the Kroll security firm and a former NYPD captain, said the measures make sense.
“It’s not a cure-all, and the department is not thinking that way,” he said. “But we really want law enforcement to use whatever tools they can to keep us safe.”
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moe and i took the dogs here yesterday, as the weather was nice, we both had the day off, and we haven’t gone anywhere like this for a long time. on our way back, we went past the south end of paine field and there were about half a ton of state patrol and king county sheriffs on motorcycles, hanging around looking official and trying to guard the perimeter… i guess this is at least part of the reason why…
i ordered replacement poles for the tent, so that this year i won’t have to make do with rope and duct-tape at OCF.
449
wurf.
i took my keyboards over to
also i have to get my workshop set up. i got email yesterday from the National "Tobacco" Alliance who “are looking for new suppliers for churchwarden style tobacco pipes.” and also i got email from Pakataş Pipes who are looking for someone to sell their pipes…
Based on the lj interests lists of those who share my more unusual interests, the interests suggestion meme thinks I might be interested in
1. krishna score: 82
2. ayurveda score: 44
3. hare krishna score: 44
4. bhakti score: 43
5. krsna score: 42
6. iskcon score: 39
7. radharani score: 39
8. krishna consciousness score: 36
9. japa score: 35
10. a.c. bhaktivedanta swami prabhupada score: 34
11. bhajans score: 33
12. srila prabhupada score: 32
13. kirtan score: 31
14. om score: 30
15. prema score: 30
16. mantras score: 30
17. hermeticism score: 30
18. tulasi score: 29
19. hindu score: 28
20. durga score: 28
changed by
it seems to think that i have no clue who the founder of the vaisnava cult in the united states is, because two of them actually are the founder of the vaisnava cult in the united states, five of them are directly related to the vaisnava cult, and ten of them are indirectly related to the vaisnava cult… for a total of 17 out of 20. if i didn’t know who that person was, i might be tempted to find out more about him, but since i already know who he is and what the cult he founded is all about, i think i’ll ignore them instead.
besides which, i already have 150 interests anyway, and can’t put up more without deleting some of the ones i have, and considering that i’m already listing interests in the bio section of my profile, i think i’ll pass for now.
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448
13 April 2006
By Peter Aldhous
SITTING in a culture dish, a layer of chicken heart cells beats in synchrony. But this muscle layer was not sliced from an intact heart, nor even grown laboriously in the lab. Instead, it was “printed”, using a technology that could be the future of tissue engineering.
Gabor Forgacs, a biophysicist at the University of Missouri in Columbia, described his “bioprinting” technique last week at the Experimental Biology 2006 meeting in San Francisco. It relies on droplets of “bioink”, clumps of cells a few hundred micrometres in diameter, which Forgacs has found behave just like a liquid.
This means that droplets placed next to one another will flow together and fuse, forming layers, rings or other shapes, depending on how they were deposited. To print 3D structures, Forgacs and his colleagues alternate layers of supporting gel, dubbed “biopaper”, with the bioink droplets. To build tubes that could serve as blood vessels, for instance, they lay down successive rings containing muscle and endothelial cells, which line our arteries and veins. “We can print any desired structure, in principle,” Forgacs told the meeting.
Other tissue engineers have tried printing 3D structures, using modified ink-jet printers which spray cells suspended in liquid (New Scientist, 25 January 2003, p 16). Now Forgacs and a company called Sciperio have developed a device with printing heads that extrude clumps of cells mechanically so that they emerge one by one from a micropipette. This results in a higher density of cells in the final printed structure, meaning that an authentic tissue structure can be created faster.
Cells seem to survive the printing process well. When layers of chicken heart cells were printed they quickly begin behaving as they would in a real organ. “After 19 hours or so, the whole structure starts to beat in a synchronous manner,” says Forgacs.
Most tissue engineers trying to build 3D structures start with a scaffold of the desired shape, which they seed with cells and grow for weeks in the lab. This is how Anthony Atala of Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and his colleagues grew the bladders which he successfully implanted into seven people (New Scientist, 8 April 2006, p 10). But if tissue engineering goes mainstream, faster and cheaper methods will be a boon. “Bioprinting is the way to go,” says Vladimir Mironov, a tissue engineer at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.
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Guys With Pies… sort of like Big Bois With Poise, but with a web site.
Condom Education for the Bored
ProTools Free for Os9
other Os9 audio tools
- http://www.kvraudio.com/get.php?mode=results&st=q&s=12
- http://www.audibleoddities.com/twerk/software/drool_string_ukelele_v1.5.sit
- http://www.audibleoddities.com/twerk/software/CamelToe_v1.1-Twerk.sit
- http://www.audibleoddities.com/twerk/software/BurntToast1.2ns.sit
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By Ryan Singel
Apr, 12, 2006
AT&T is seeking the return of technical documents presented in a lawsuit that allegedly detail how the telecom giant helped the government set up a massive internet wiretap operation in its San Francisco facilities.
In papers filed late Monday, AT&T argued that confidential technical documents provided by an ex-AT&T technician to the Electronic Frontier Foundation shouldn’t be used as evidence in the case and should be returned.
The documents, which the EFF filed under a temporary seal last Wednesday, purportedly detail how AT&T diverts internet traffic to the National Security Agency via a secret room in San Francisco and allege that such rooms exist in other AT&T switching centers.
The EFF filed the class-action lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Northern California in January, seeking damages from AT&T on behalf of AT&T customers for alleged violation of state and federal laws.
Mark Klein, a former technician who worked for AT&T for 22 years, provided three technical documents, totaling 140 pages, to the EFF and to The New York Times, which first reported last December that the Bush administration was eavesdropping on citizens’ phone calls without obtaining warrants.
Klein issued a detailed public statement last week, saying he came forward because he believes the government’s extrajudicial spying extended beyond wiretapping of phone calls between Americans and a party with suspected ties to terrorists, and included wholesale monitoring of the nation’s internet communications.
AT&T built a secret room in its San Francisco switching station that funnels internet traffic data from AT&T Worldnet dialup customers and traffic from AT&T’s massive internet backbone to the NSA, according to a statement from Klein.
Klein’s duties included connecting new fiber-optic circuits to that room, which housed data-mining equipment built by a company called Narus, according to his statement.
Narus’ promotional materials boast that its equipment can scan billions of bits of internet traffic per second, including analyzing the contents of e-mails and e-mail attachments and even allowing playback of internet phone calls.
While AT&T’s open filings did not confirm the details of Klein’s statement, they did not dispute the legitimacy of his claims, and the company’s filing included a sealed affidavit attesting to the sensitivity of the documents.
The company asked for a hearing Thursday to determine whether the documents could be used in the class-action lawsuit, whether they would be unsealed or whether the EFF would have to return them. The EFF filed a rebuttal, calling that time frame unworkable and accusing AT&T of not following normal court rules.
AT&T’s lawyers also told the court that intense press coverage surrounding the case, including Wired News’ publication of Klein’s statement, was revealing the company’s trade secrets, “causing grave injury to AT&T.” The lawyers argued that unsealing the documents “would cause AT&T great harm and potentially jeopardize AT&T’s network, making it vulnerable to hackers, and worse.”
The EFF filed the documents last week under a temporary seal when it asked the judge to force AT&T to stop the alleged internet spying until the case goes to trial.
Klein’s statement and documents are the only direct evidence filed so far by the EFF, and without them its case could be weakened.
It is not clear whether AT&T has served legal papers to Klein.
As of last week, Klein was represented by Miles Ehrlich, who until January served as a U.S. attorney in San Francisco, prosecuting white-collar crime. Klein is now also represented by two lawyers from the powerhouse law firm Morrison & Foerster, including James J. Brosnahan, who is best known for representing John Walker Lindh, the Marin County, California, man found fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The EFF declined to comment on the filing, while AT&T did not return a call seeking comment. The case is Hepting v. AT&T.
By CAROLINE ERVIN
April 12, 2006
ATF agents are always on alert for anything suspicious — including ninjas.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearm agents, on campus Tuesday for Project Safe Neighborhoods training, detained a “suspicious individual” near the Georgia Center, University Police Chief Jimmy Williamson said.
Jeremiah Ransom, a sophomore from Macon, was leaving a Wesley Foundation pirate vs. ninja event when he was detained.
After being held in investigative detention, he was found to have violated no criminal laws and was not arrested.
“It was surreal,” Ransom said. “I was jogging from Wesley to Snelling when I heard someone yell ‘freeze.’”
Ransom said he thought a friend was playing a joke before he realized officers had guns drawn and pointed at him.
ATF agents had noticed Ransom’s suspicious behavior and clothing and gave chase, apprehending him, Williamson said.
“Agents noticed someone wearing a bandanna across the face and acting in a somewhat suspicious manner, peeping around the corner,” said ATF special agent in charge Vanessa McLemore.
Ransom was wearing black sweatpants and an athletic T-shirt with one red bandanna covering the bottom half of his face and another covering the top of his head, Williamson said.
“Seeing someone with something across the face, from a federal standpoint — that’s not right,” McLemore said, explaining why agents believed something to be amiss.
Agents noticed Ransom peering around a corner and said when police sirens sounded, he took off running.
After chasing Ransom and identifying themselves, ATF agents detained him, turning him over once University Police arrived, McLemore said.
Ransom said Williamson told him the incident should not have been handled in such a manner and he would file a complaint with the ATF.
“I was in shock, to say the least,” Ransom said.
and, from a spurrious news source,
I was going to post this in the “Expose the big lie” thread but after I wrote it I thought it was interesting enough to merit a thread of its own. This is all good information, personally verified or witnessed by none other than me, but I will not answer any questions about it or go into any detail other than what I’ve already typed out. I may reply with more information or anecdotes if I see fit, but I’ve pretty much already scraped the barrel of my experiences.
These are some facts I have witnessed and learned through my employment. Take it at face value, believe it or don’t believe it, because I’m not providing corroborating pictures, details, or evidence beyond my own testimony.
Homeland security buys in bulk and at great premium millions of dollars of useless personal appliances from China, such as rice cookers, nose hair trimmers, massage wands, and heating pads, boxes them up, and buries them in railroad shipping containers in the Arizona desert for no reason whatsoever other than to spend its budget and prevent sub-agencies from getting the funds. I suspect that the money goes to a middleman in order to secretly siphon funds into foreign organizations which we can’t support over the table, but this is just me trying to find a justification for this massive and intentional government waste.
Donald Rumsfeld needs to wear iced underwear because of some medical condition, and he has his secret service detail hold his spares. He was recently getting uncontrollable long-term erections and had to change up his medical treatments. The underwear and the erections is why he uses a standing desk, not because he is some super-man. He also wears nylon stockings, not because he’s gay, but to control some vascular problem with his legs which causes him intense pain.
President Bush uses anti-depressant medication, a lot of it, at a stupendous dosage, and he is hiding it from the American public. This is the real reason he stopped drinking. Because of the dosage, he is also impotent.
Tom Ridge carries 20 credit cards with him at all times, each one with a very low limit. I have never heard of him using one, ever, but he has them. He also wears his socks inside-out, and will flip the fuck out and walk strangely if he is forced to wear them properly, because it drives him crazy. All of his socks must be laundered right side in and then turned inside out before they are returned to him. He gave specific instructions about handling his food, and not allowing his vegetables to touch any other food item on the plate. His utensils must be steamed over boiling water. He will not eat soup which hasn’t been boiled within the past 20 minutes or which he has not prepared himself. If any of these rules are violated, he flies into a rage, turns beet red, and will not eat a single thing. He has his personal attendants confirm over and over that the food is as he likes it. He also shaves his forearms and hands because he can’t stand the idea of body hair on his arms. He demands that his bedsheets are bleach white and changed fresh every night and he sleeps in a separate bed in a big, tight, body-length nylon sleeve, with a fan blowing over him at full power. He is terrified of animals which have fur or hair longer than one inch, and will not go near curly hair of any kind, even on people. At one time he ran from his office and demanded that someone look under everything for a rodent which did not and could not exist, then he had the entire place wiped down with disinfectant and vacuumed twice. While this was done he couldn’t even bear to look at the door, or come within 20 feet of his office. He was in hysterics.
President Bush, when dining at the white-house, does not eat any item of food which has not been first sniffed by a trained dog before being prepared. Think about that.
Word among the staff is that Cheney was drunk when he shot that lawyer, and secluded himself for a day to sober up and avoid felony firearms charges. I don’t have any direct information on this because the guys with him at the time are not talking. This is totally unconfirmed, but I think it is plausible.
Dick Cheney has chronic gum problems and his breath smells like shit as a result. He is also a CLOSE TALKER. He keeps a small bottle of diluted hydrogen peroxide which he rinses with every hour on the hour, and he swallows it instead of spitting. He also picks his nose vigorously (violently) and hums loudly and tunelessly to himself while taking shits.
There is a sealed room in the whitehouse which once held a half-ton block of cheese for about 30 years.
The White house is planting its own men among the press agents at press conferences.
The white house lawn is mowed every other day by the same man humming the same tune.
Despite all of this craziness, there is nothing strange whatsoever about Condoleeza Rice. She is completely balanced and normal, if slightly robotic in her personal demeanor. She smells very nice at all times. She does, however, constantly check her investments online from her office when she thinks that nobody is looking, and she has slept at her desk on multiple occasions.
There is an administrative law judge who sits in an office in a building near the white-house, earns around 200k per year and has a secretary, and he does nothing except sit, read, and listen to classical music all day. His secretary likewise does nothing. He gets meals taken to him from the White-house kitchen, and is so lonely that he latches on to whoever gets sent and talks to them for hours about the korean war. His family is all dead and his secretary hates him. In a drawer in his desk he has an old revolver, which he got in there somehow despite that he shouldn’t have been able to bring it in. I think he will shoot himself one day.
The “undisclosed location” is usually a local police officer training ground or state trooper college. Shh.
445
Many codes intended to protect gays from harassment are illegal, conservatives argue.
By Stephanie Simon
April 10, 2006
ATLANTA — Ruth Malhotra went to court last month for the right to be intolerant.
Malhotra says her Christian faith compels her to speak out against homosexuality. But the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she’s a senior, bans speech that puts down others because of their sexual orientation.
Malhotra sees that as an unacceptable infringement on her right to religious expression. So she’s demanding that Georgia Tech revoke its tolerance policy.
| FOR THE RECORD: Religious expression: An article in Monday’s Section A said Gregory S. Baylor of the Christian Legal Society viewed homosexuality as a lifestyle choice. In fact, he does not have a stance on that issue. As the article noted, he supports policies that protect people from discrimination based on race, gender and other inborn traits. He asserts that antidiscrimination policies regarding homosexuality are different because they protect people based on conduct. Baylor’s organization seeks to exempt religious groups from those policies. |
With her lawsuit, the 22-year-old student joins a growing campaign to force public schools, state colleges and private workplaces to eliminate policies protecting gays and lesbians from harassment. The religious right aims to overturn a broad range of common tolerance programs: diversity training that promotes acceptance of gays and lesbians, speech codes that ban harsh words against homosexuality, anti-discrimination policies that require college clubs to open their membership to all.
The Rev. Rick Scarborough, a leading evangelical, frames the movement as the civil rights struggle of the 21st century. “Christians,” he said, “are going to have to take a stand for the right to be Christian.”
In that spirit, the Christian Legal Society, an association of judges and lawyers, has formed a national group to challenge tolerance policies in federal court. Several nonprofit law firms — backed by major ministries such as Focus on the Family and Campus Crusade for Christ — already take on such cases for free.
The legal argument is straightforward: Policies intended to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination end up discriminating against conservative Christians. Evangelicals have been suspended for wearing anti-gay T-shirts to high school, fired for denouncing Gay Pride Month at work, reprimanded for refusing to attend diversity training. When they protest tolerance codes, they’re labeled intolerant.
A recent survey by the Anti-Defamation League found that 64% of American adults — including 80% of evangelical Christians — agreed with the statement “Religion is under attack in this country.”
“The message is, you’re free to worship as you like, but don’t you dare talk about it outside the four walls of your church,” said Stephen Crampton, chief counsel for the American Family Assn. Center for Law and Policy, which represents Christians who feel harassed.
Critics dismiss such talk as a right-wing fundraising ploy. “They’re trying to develop a persecution complex,” said Jeremy Gunn, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief.
Others fear the banner of religious liberty could be used to justify all manner of harassment.
“What if a person felt their religious view was that African Americans shouldn’t mingle with Caucasians, or that women shouldn’t work?” asked Jon Davidson, legal director of the gay rights group Lambda Legal.
Christian activist Gregory S. Baylor responds to such criticism angrily. He says he supports policies that protect people from discrimination based on race and gender. But he draws a distinction that infuriates gay rights activists when he argues that sexual orientation is different — a lifestyle choice, not an inborn trait.
By equating homosexuality with race, Baylor said, tolerance policies put conservative evangelicals in the same category as racists. He predicts the government will one day revoke the tax-exempt status of churches that preach homosexuality is sinful or that refuse to hire gays and lesbians.
“Think how marginalized racists are,” said Baylor, who directs the Christian Legal Society’s Center for Law and Religious Freedom. “If we don’t address this now, it will only get worse.”
Christians are fighting back in a case involving Every Nation Campus Ministries at California State University. Student members of the ministry on the Long Beach and San Diego campuses say their mission is to model a virtuous lifestyle for their peers. They will not accept as members gays, lesbians or anyone who considers homosexuality “a natural part of God’s created order.”
Legal analysts agree that the ministry, as a private organization, has every right to exclude gays; the Supreme Court affirmed that principle in a case involving the Boy Scouts in 2000. At issue is whether the university must grant official recognition to a student group that discriminates.
The students say denying them recognition — and its attendant benefits, such as funding — violates their free-speech rights and discriminates against their conservative theology. Christian groups at public colleges in other states have sued using similar arguments. Several of those lawsuits were settled out of court, with the groups prevailing.
‘We just found the chain of evolution, the continuity through time’
By Seth Borenstein
April 12, 2006
WASHINGTON – The latest fossil unearthed from a human ancestral hot spot in Africa allows scientists to link together the most complete chain of human evolution so far.
The 4.2 million-year-old fossil discovered in northeastern Ethiopia helps scientists fill in the gaps of how human ancestors made the giant leap from one species to another. That’s because the newest fossil, the species Australopithecus anamensis, was found in the region of the Middle Awash — where seven other human-like species spanning nearly 6 million years and three major phases of human development were previously discovered.
“We just found the chain of evolution, the continuity through time,” study co-author and Ethiopian anthropologist Berhane Asfaw said in a phone interview from Addis Ababa. “One form evolved to another. This is evidence of evolution in one place through time.”
The findings were reported Thursday in the scientific journal Nature.
The species anamensis is not new, but its location is what helps explain the shift from one early phase of human-like development to the next, scientists say. All eight species were within an easy day’s walk of each other.
Until now, what scientists had were snapshots of human evolution scattered around the world. Finding everything all in one general area makes those snapshots more of a mini home movie of evolution.
“It’s like 12 frames of a home movie, but a home movie covering 6 million years,” said study lead author Tim White, co-director of Human Evolution Research Center at University of California at Berkeley.
“The key here is the sequences,” White said. “It’s about a mile thickness of rocks in the Middle Awash and in it we can see all three phases of human evolution.”
Modern man belongs to the genus Homo, which is a subgroup in the family of hominids. What evolved into Homo was likely the genus Australopithecus (once called “man-ape”), which includes the famed 3.2 million-year-old “Lucy” fossil found three decades ago. A key candidate for the genus that evolved into Australopithecus is called Ardipithecus. And Thursday’s finding is important in bridging — but not completely — the gap between Australopithecus and Ardipithecus.
In 1994, a 4.4 million-year-old partial skeleton of the species Ardipithecus ramidus — the most recent Ardipithecus species — was found about six miles from the latest discovery.
“This appears to be the link between Australopithecus and Ardipithecus as two different species,” White said. The major noticeable difference between the phases of man can be seen in Australopithecus’ bigger chewing teeth to eat harder food, he said.
While it’s looking more likely, it is not a sure thing that Ardipithecus evolved into Australopithecus, he said. The finding does not completely rule out Ardipithecus dying off as a genus and Australopithecus developing independently.
The connections between Ardipithecus and Australopithecus have been theorized since an anamensis fossil was first found in Kenya 11 years ago. This draws the lines better, said Alan Walker of Penn State University, who found the first anamensis and is not part of White’s team.
Rick Potts, director of the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program, agreed: “For those people who are tied up in doing the whole human family tree, being able to connect the branches is a very important thing to do.”
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By David E. Sanger and David Johnston
WASHINGTON – From the beginning days of the CIA leak investigation in 2003, the Bush White House has insisted there was never an effort to discredit Joseph C. Wilson, the man who emerged as the most damaging critic of the administration’s case that Saddam Hussein was seeking to build nuclear weapons.
But now the White House – and specifically President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney – have been pitched back into the center of the nearly three-year controversy, this time because of a prosecutor’s court filing in the case that asserts there was “a strong desire by many, including multiple people in the White House,” to undermine Wilson.
The new assertions by the special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, has put White House officials on the spot in a way they have not been for months, as attention in the leak case seems to be shifting away from the White House to the pretrial procedural skirmishing in the perjury and obstruction charge against Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr.
Fitzgerald’s court filing talks not of an effort to level with Americans but of “a plan to discredit, punish or seek revenge against Mr. Wilson.” It concludes, “It is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to ‘punish Wilson.'”
With more filings expected from Fitzgerald, the prosecutor’s work has the potential to keep the focus on Bush and Cheney at a time when the president is struggling with his lowest approval ratings since he came to office.
Even on Monday, Bush found himself in an uncomfortable spot during an appearance at a Johns Hopkins University campus in Washington, when a student asked him to address Fitzgerald’s assertion that the White House was seeking to retaliate against Wilson.
Bush stumbled for a moment as he began his response before settling on an answer that sidestepped the question. He said he had ordered the formal declassification of the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq July 2003 because “it was important for people to get a better sense for why I was saying what I was saying in my speeches” about Iraq’s efforts to reconstitute its weapons program.
Bush said nothing about the earlier, informal authorization that Fitzgerald’s court filing revealed for the first time. The prosecutor described testimony from Libby, who said that Bush told Cheney that it was permissible to reveal some of the information in the intelligence estimate, which described Saddam’s efforts to acquire uranium.
But on Monday, Bush was not talking about that. “You’re just going to have to let Mr. Fitzgerald complete his case, and I hope you understand that,” Bush said. “It’s a serious legal matter that we’ve got to be careful in making public statements about it.”
Every prosecutor strives not just to prove a case, but to tell a compelling story. It is now clear that Fitzgerald’s account of what was happening in the White House that summer of 2003 is very different from the Bush administration’s narrative, which suggested that Wilson was regarded as a minor figure whose criticisms could be answered perfectly well by simply disclosing the underlying intelligence upon which Bush relied.
It turned out that much of the information about Saddam’s search for uranium was questionable at best, and it became the subject of dispute almost as soon as it was included in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq.
The answer to the question of whose recounting of events is correct – Bush’s or Fitzgerald’s – may not be known for months or years, if ever.
January 9 2006
John Yoo publicly argued there is no law that could prevent the President from ordering the torture of a child of a suspect in custody – including by crushing that child’s testicles.
This came out in response to a question in a December 1st debate in Chicago with Notre Dame professor and international human rights scholar Doug Cassel.
What is particularly chilling and revealing about this is that John Yoo was a key architect post-9/11 Bush Administration legal policy. As a deputy assistant to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, John Yoo authored a number of legal memos arguing for unlimited presidential powers to order torture of captive suspects, and to declare war anytime, any where, and on anyone the President deemed a threat.
It has now come out Yoo also had a hand in providing legal reasoning for the President to conduct unauthorized wiretaps of U.S. citizens. Georgetown Law Professor David Cole wrote, “Few lawyers have had more influence on President Bush’s legal policies in the ‘war on terror’ than John Yoo.”
This part of the exchange during the debate with Doug Cassel, reveals the logic of Yoo’s theories, adopted by the Administration as bedrock principles, in the real world.
Cassel: If the President deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no law that can stop him?
Yoo: No treaty.
Cassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo.
Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.
Yoo argues presidential powers on Constitutional grounds, but where in the Constitution does it say the President can order the torture of children ? As David Cole puts it, “Yoo reasoned that because the Constitution makes the President the ‘Commander-in-Chief,’ no law can restrict the actions he may take in pursuit of war. On this reasoning, the President would be entitled by the Constitution to resort to genocide if he wished.”
What is the position of the Bush Administration on the torture of children, since one of its most influential legal architects is advocating the President’s right to order the crushing of a child’s testicles?
This fascist logic has nothing to do with “getting information” as Yoo has argued. The legal theory developed by Yoo and a few others and adopted by the Administration has resulted in thousands being abducted from their homes in Afghanistan, Iraq or other parts of the world, mostly at random. People have been raped, electrocuted, nearly drowned and tortured literally to death in U.S.-run torture centers in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantánamo Bay. And there is much still to come out. What about the secret centers in Europe or the many still-suppressed photos from Abu Ghraib? What can explain this sadistic, indiscriminate, barbaric brutality except a need to instill widespread fear among people all over the world?
It is ironic that just prior to arguing the President’s legal right to torture children, John Yoo was defensive about the Bush administration policies, based on his legal memo’s, being equated to those during Nazi Germany.
Yoo said, “If you are trying to draw a moral equivalence between the Nazis and what the United States is trying to do in defending themselves against Al Qaieda and the 9/11 attacks, I fully reject that. Second, if you’re trying to equate the Bush Administration to Nazi officials who committed atrocities in the holocaust, I completely reject that too… I think to equate Nazi Germany to the Bush Administration is irresponsible.”
If open promotion of unmitigated executive power, including the right to order the torture of innocent children, isn’t sufficient basis for drawing such a “moral equivalence,” then I don’t know what is. What would be irresponsible is to sit by and allow the Bush regime to radically remake society in a fascist way, with repercussions for generations to come. We must act now because the future is in the balance. The world cannot wait. While Bush gives his State of the Union on January 31st, I’ll find myself along with many thousands across the country declaring “Bush Step Down And take your program with you.”
White House pushed Iraq bioweapons claim despite evidence to contrary
By Joby Warrick
April 12, 2006
On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile “biological laboratories.” He declared, “We have found the weapons of mass destruction.”
The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.
A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq — not made public until now — had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president’s statement.
Report shelved while claim went forth
The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped “secret” and shelved. Meanwhile, for nearly a year, administration and intelligence officials continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories.
The authors of the reports were nine U.S. and British civilian experts — scientists and engineers with extensive experience in all the technical fields involved in making bioweapons — who were dispatched to Baghdad by the Defense Intelligence Agency for an analysis of the trailers. Their actions and findings were described to a Washington Post reporter in interviews with six government officials and weapons experts who participated in the mission or had direct knowledge of it.
None would consent to being identified by name because of fear that their jobs would be jeopardized. Their accounts were verified by other current and former government officials knowledgeable about the mission. The contents of the final report, “Final Technical Engineering Exploitation Report on Iraqi Suspected Biological Weapons-Associated Trailers,” remains classified. But interviews reveal that the technical team was unequivocal in its conclusion that the trailers were not intended to manufacture biological weapons. Those interviewed took care not to discuss the classified portions of their work.
“There was no connection to anything biological,” said one expert who studied the trailers. Another recalled an epithet that came to be associated with the trailers: “the biggest sand toilets in the world.”
Primary piece of evidence
The story of the technical team and its reports adds a new dimension to the debate over the U.S. government’s handling of intelligence related to banned Iraqi weapons programs. The trailers — along with aluminum tubes acquired by Iraq for what was believed to be a nuclear weapons program — were primary pieces of evidence offered by the Bush administration before the war to support its contention that Iraq was making weapons of mass destruction.
Intelligence officials and the White House have repeatedly denied allegations that intelligence was hyped or manipulated in the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. But officials familiar with the technical team’s reports are questioning anew whether intelligence agencies played down or dismissed postwar evidence that contradicted the administration’s public views about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Last year, a presidential commission on intelligence failures criticized U.S. spy agencies for discounting evidence that contradicted the official line about banned weapons in Iraq, both before and after the invasion.
Spokesmen for the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency both declined to comment on the specific findings of the technical report because it remains classified. A spokesman for the DIA asserted that the team’s findings were neither ignored nor suppressed, but were incorporated in the work of the Iraqi Survey Group, which led the official search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The survey group’s final report in September 2004 — 15 months after the technical report was written — said the trailers were “impractical” for biological weapons production and were “almost certainly intended” for manufacturing hydrogen for weather balloons.
“Whether the information was offered to others in the political realm I cannot say,” said the DIA official, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.
Others thought trailers had weapons use
Intelligence analysts involved in high-level discussions about the trailers noted that the technical team was among several groups that analyzed the suspected mobile labs throughout the spring and summer of 2003. Two teams of military experts who viewed the trailers soon after their discovery concluded that the facilities were weapons labs, a finding that strongly influenced views of intelligence officials in Washington, the analysts said. “It was hotly debated, and there were experts making arguments on both sides,” said one former senior official who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.
The technical team’s findings had no apparent impact on the intelligence agencies’ public statements on the trailers. A day after the team’s report was transmitted to Washington — May 28, 2003 — the CIA publicly released its first formal assessment of the trailers, reflecting the views of its Washington analysts. That white paper, which also bore the DIA seal, contended that U.S. officials were “confident” that the trailers were used for “mobile biological weapons production.”
Throughout the summer and fall of 2003, the trailers became simply “mobile biological laboratories” in speeches and press statements by administration officials. In late June, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell declared that the “confidence level is increasing” that the trailers were intended for biowarfare. In September, Vice President Cheney pronounced the trailers to be “mobile biological facilities,” and said they could have been used to produce anthrax or smallpox.
Doubts creep in
By autumn, leaders of the Iraqi Survey Group were publicly expressing doubts about the trailers in news reports. David Kay, the group’s first leader, told Congress on Oct. 2 that he had found no banned weapons in Iraq and was unable to verify the claim that the disputed trailers were weapons labs. Still, as late as February 2004, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet continued to assert that the mobile-labs theory remained plausible. Although there was “no consensus” among intelligence officials, the trailers “could be made to work” as weapons labs, he said in a speech Feb. 5.
Tenet, now a faculty member at Georgetown’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, declined to comment for this story.
Kay, in an interview, said senior CIA officials had advised him upon accepting the survey group’s leadership in June 2003 that some experts in the DIA were “backsliding” on whether the trailers were weapons labs. But Kay said he was not apprised of the technical team’s findings until late 2003, near the end of his time as the group’s leader.
“If I had known that we had such a team in Iraq,” Kay said, “I would certainly have given their findings more weight.”
A defector’s tales
Even before the trailers were seized in spring 2003, the mobile labs had achieved mythic stature. As early as the mid-1990s, weapons inspectors from the United Nations chased phantom mobile labs that were said to be mounted on trucks or rail cars, churning out tons of anthrax by night and moving to new locations each day. No such labs were found, but many officials believed the stories, thanks in large part to elaborate tales told by Iraqi defectors.
The CIA’s star informant, an Iraqi with the code name Curveball, was a self-proclaimed chemical engineer who defected to Germany in 1999 and requested asylum. For four years, the Baghdad native passed secrets about alleged Iraqi banned weapons to the CIA indirectly, through Germany’s intelligence service. Curveball provided descriptions of mobile labs and said he had supervised work in one of them. He even described a catastrophic 1998 accident in one lab that left 12 Iraqis dead.
Curveball’s detailed descriptions — which were officially discredited in 2004 — helped CIA artists create color diagrams of the labs, which Powell later used to argue the case for military intervention in Iraq before the U.N. Security Council.
“We have firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails,” Powell said in the Feb. 5, 2003, speech. Thanks to those descriptions, he said, “We know what the fermenters look like. We know what the tanks, pumps, compressors and other parts look like.”
The trailers discovered in the Iraqi desert resembled the drawings well enough, at least from a distance. One of them, a flat-bed trailer covered by tarps, was found in April by Kurdish fighters near the northern city of Irbil. The second was captured by U.S. forces near Mosul. Both were painted military green and outfitted with a suspicious array of gear: large metal tanks, motors, compressors, pipes and valves.
Photos of the trailers were quickly circulated, and many weapons experts were convinced that the long-sought mobile labs had been found.
Yet reaction from Iraqi sources was troublingly inconsistent. Curveball, shown photos of the trailers, confirmed they were mobile labs and even pointed out key features. But other Iraqi informants in internal reports disputed Curveball’s story and claimed the trailers had a benign purpose: producing hydrogen for weather balloons.
Crack team dispatched to Iraq
Back at the Pentagon, DIA officials attempted a quick resolution of the dispute. The task fell to the “Jefferson Project,” a DIA-led initiative made up of government and civilian technical experts who specialize in analyzing and countering biological threats. Project leaders put together a team of volunteers, eight Americans and a Briton, each with at least a decade of experience in one of the essential technical skills needed for bioweapons production. All were nongovernment employees working for defense contractors or the Energy Department’s national labs.
The technical team was assembled in Kuwait and then flown to Baghdad to begin their work early on May 25, 2003. By that date, the two trailers had been moved to a military base on the grounds of one of deposed president Saddam Hussein’s Baghdad palaces. When members of the technical team arrived, they found the trailers parked in an open lot, covered with camouflage netting.
The technical team went to work under a blistering sun in 110-degree temperatures. Using tools from home, they peered into vats, turned valves, tapped gauges and measured pipes. They reconstructed a flow-path through feed tanks and reactor vessels, past cooling chambers and drain valves, and into discharge tanks and exhaust pipes. They took hundreds of photographs.
By the end of their first day, team members still had differing views about what the trailers were. But they agreed about what the trailers were not.
“Within the first four hours,” said one team member, who like the others spoke on the condition he not be named, “it was clear to everyone that these were not biological labs.”
News of the team’s early impressions leaped across the Atlantic well ahead of the technical report. Over the next two days, a stream of anxious e-mails and phone calls from Washington pressed for details and clarifications.
The reason for the nervousness was soon obvious: In Washington, a CIA analyst had written a draft white paper on the trailers, an official assessment that would also reflect the views of the DIA. The white paper described the trailers as “the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program.” It also explicitly rejected an explanation by Iraqi officials, described in a New York Times article a few days earlier, that the trailers might be mobile units for producing hydrogen.
But the technical team’s preliminary report, written in a tent in Baghdad and approved by each team member, reached a conclusion opposite from that of the white paper.
Crucial components lacking
Team members and other sources intimately familiar with the mission declined to discuss technical details of the team’s findings because the report remains classified. But they cited the Iraqi Survey Group’s nonclassified, final report to Congress in September 2004 as reflecting the same conclusions.
That report said the trailers were “impractical for biological agent production,” lacking 11 components that would be crucial for making bioweapons. Instead, the trailers were “almost certainly designed and built for the generation of hydrogen,” the survey group reported.
The group’s report and members of the technical team also dismissed the notion that the trailers could be easily modified to produce weapons.
“It would be easier to start all over with just a bucket,” said Rod Barton, an Australian biological weapons expert and former member of the survey group.
The technical team’s preliminary report was transmitted in the early hours of May 27, just before its members began boarding planes to return home. Within 24 hours, the CIA published its white paper, “Iraqi Mobile Biological Warfare Agent Production Plants,” on its Web site.
After team members returned to Washington, they began work on a final report. At several points, members were questioned about revising their conclusions, according to sources knowledgeable about the conversations. The questioners generally wanted to know the same thing: Could the report’s conclusions be softened, to leave open a possibility that the trailers might have been intended for weapons?
In the end, the final report — 19 pages plus a 103-page appendix — remained unequivocal in declaring the trailers unsuitable for weapons production.
“It was very assertive,” said one weapons expert familiar with the report’s contents.
Then, their mission completed, the team members returned to their jobs and watched as their work appeared to vanish.
“I went home and fully expected that our findings would be publicly stated,” one member recalled. “It never happened. And I just had to live with it.”
also…
i went over to
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i’ve made a decision, which, for me, is pretty monumental, and it’s been brought about by spending the past month doing gigs 5 days a week. the fact is, i enjoy doing gigs. i don’t enjoy going to “work” five days a week as a tester, and i can tolerate doing 5 days a week as a graphic artist and typesetter, but i’d rather be playing. the problem previously has been that i don’t get paid (as much, if at all) for playing, and i do get paid for being a tester or a typesetter, but at this point, i don’t care any more. beau bonds as “the naked puppet” (“i’ve got nothing to hide, i’m naked!”) said, “sometimes you don’t need a job, sometimes you need a life.” i remember when i was in the tech school i couldn’t imagine getting paid for playing (which includes doing the things that i was trained to do at the tech school), but that’s what i wanted, and now, finally, i’ve figured out that playing is what i want to do, regardless of whether i get paid or not. i had a near-death experience and survived, so i’ve been given a second chance at life, and i don’t want to screw it up again. fuck work. i’m through with working.
it’s kind of a scary decision, but it’s also kind of an exciting one.
441
the 3rd annual fremont moisture festival, the largest comedie/varieté festival in the world(!), ended yesterday. the time to beat for next year’s marathon is 4 hours and 46 minutes (last year’s record was 4’20”, heh heh heh). the last show was supposed to have an encore performance by johnny jetpack, but it got censored at the last moment because “there were kids in the audience”, which i think is a lame excuse – it was only johnny jetpack getting a blow job from a 12,000 gallon per minute milking machine, and it didn’t even show anything truly obscene, although i can understand why a guy like mike hale (the notorious “christian” who is the reason why the burlesque nights were held at a different venue) would see it that way. Big Bois With Poise opened the 3rd half of the show, but instead of fire poi, we had water balloons. it was really funny, because there were two people directly in front of where i was spinning who were obviously not particularly interested in getting wet at all, and were shying away from my spinning poi, and one of my water-balloons had sprung a leak, so that every time i spun it, they got showered with water. and then, after we were done chanting, we broke the water balloons on our heads, but for some reason mine wouldn’t break (who ever heard of a sturdy water balloon?), so i ended up biting them. and in spite of how well it went, i sure hope that they have a new person organising music next year, because the person that was doing it this year (RB?) couldn’t organise his way out of a wet paper sack (which is an obscure reference to rhys thomas’ act).
the fremont phil has an unexpected in with the folklife festival this year. apparently the lady who is also the leader of the Ballard Sedentary Sousa Band is on the selection committee for folklife, and she came to fred with an offer of getting us a stage without having to go through the normal application procedures. i just heard about the BSSB during the moisture festival, from the tuba player for the Fighting Instruments of Karma, and it turns out tha they need a new trombone player, so i’m now more or less officially playing for the sedentary sousa band. i figure that it will be perfect for me, because i don’t like marching anyway.
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In the Beginning was the Command Line – in particular, the story about the OS wars is about as accurate a description as i’ve found anywhere.
Oh my god! There’s an axe in my head
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Sat Apr 8
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The administration of President George W. Bush is planning a massive bombing campaign against Iran, including use of bunker-buster nuclear bombs to destroy a key Iranian suspected nuclear weapons facility, The New Yorker magazine has reported in its April 17 issue.
The article by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said that Bush and others in the White House have come to view Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a potential Adolf Hitler.
“That’s the name they’re using,” the report quoted a former senior intelligence official as saying.
A senior unnamed Pentagon adviser is quoted in the article as saying that “this White House believes that the only way to solve the problem is to change the power structure in Iran, and that means war.”
The former intelligence officials depicts planning as “enormous,” “hectic” and “operational,” Hersh writes.
One former defense official said the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government,” The New Yorker pointed out.
In recent weeks, the president has quietly initiated a series of talks on plans for Iran with a few key senators and members of the House of Representatives, including at least one Democrat, the report said.
One of the options under consideration involves the possible use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, to insure the destruction of Iran’s main centrifuge plant at Natanz, Hersh writes.
But the former senior intelligence official said the attention given to the nuclear option has created serious misgivings inside the military, and some officers have talked about resigning after an attempt to remove the nuclear option from the evolving war plans in Iran failed, according to the report.
“There are very strong sentiments within the military against brandishing nuclear weapons against other countries,” the magazine quotes the Pentagon adviser as saying.
The adviser warned that bombing Iran could provoke “a chain reaction” of attacks on American facilities and citizens throughout the world and might also reignite Hezbollah.
“If we go, the southern half of Iraq will light up like a candle,” the adviser is quoted as telling The New Yorker.
president bush views president mahmoud ahmadinejad as a potential adolph hitler, i view president bush as a potential adolph hitler. i wonder which one of us will have our views proved right in the long term…
TRANSCRIPT
BLITZER: And you’re saying that some senior military officers are prepared to resign?
HERSH: I’m saying that, if this isn’t walked back and if the president isn’t told that you cannot do it — and once the chairman of the joint chiefs or some senior members of the military say to the president, let’s get this nuclear option off the table, it will be taken off. He will not defy the military in a formal report. Unless something specific is told to the White House that you’ve got to drop this dream of a nuclear option — and that’s exactly the issue I’m talking about — people have said to me that they would resign.
Hersh: …And then, of course, nobody in their right mind would want to use a nuclear weapon in the Middle East, because it would be, my God, totally chaotic. When the JCS, the joint chiefs, and the planners wanted to walk back that option, what happened is about three or four weeks ago, the White House, people in the White House, in the Oval Office, the vice president’s office, said, no, let’s keep it in the plan. They refuse to take it out. And what I’m writing here is that if this isn’t removed — and I say this very seriously. I’ve been around this town for 40 years — some senior officers are prepared to resign. They’re that upset about the fact that this plan is kept in. Again, let me make the point, you’re giving a range of options early in the planning. To be sure of getting rid of it, you give that option.
JACK STRAW, BRITISH FOREIGN SECRETARY: The idea of a nuclear strike on Iran is completely nuts.
BLITZER: He didn’t mince any words: “completely nuts” in his words. You want to react to that?
HERSH: Well, what he didn’t say — he didn’t deny that there’s serious planning about the military strike is the point. I mean, he’s absolutely right about a nuclear option, but there is serious planning for a conventional war.
Monday, April 10, 2006
By LARRY MARGASAK
WASHINGTON — Key figures in a phone-jamming scheme designed to keep New Hampshire Democrats from voting in 2002 had regular contact with the White House and Republican Party as the plan was unfolding, phone records introduced in criminal court show.
The records show that Bush campaign operative James Tobin, who recently was convicted in the case, made two dozen calls to the White House within a three-day period around Election Day 2002 – as the phone jamming operation was finalized, carried out and then abruptly shut down.
The national Republican Party, which paid millions in legal bills to defend Tobin, says the contacts involved routine election business and that it was “preposterous” to suggest the calls involved phone jamming.
The Justice Department has secured three convictions in the case but hasn’t accused any White House or national Republican officials of wrongdoing, nor made any allegations suggesting party officials outside New Hampshire were involved. The phone records of calls to the White House were exhibits in Tobin’s trial but prosecutors did not make them part of their case.
Democrats plan to ask a federal judge Tuesday to order GOP and White House officials to answer questions about the phone jamming in a civil lawsuit alleging voter fraud.
Repeated hang-up calls that jammed telephone lines at a Democratic get-out-the-vote center occurred in a Senate race in which Republican John Sununu defeated Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, 51 percent to 46 percent, on Nov. 5, 2002.
Besides the conviction of Tobin, the Republicans’ New England regional director, prosecutors negotiated two plea bargains: one with a New Hampshire Republican Party official and another with the owner of a telemarketing firm involved in the scheme. The owner of the subcontractor firm whose employees made the hang-up calls is under indictment.
The phone records show that most calls to the White House were from Tobin, who became President Bush’s presidential campaign chairman for the New England region in 2004. Other calls from New Hampshire senatorial campaign offices to the White House could have been made by a number of people.
A GOP campaign consultant in 2002, Jayne Millerick, made a 17-minute call to the White House on Election Day, but said in an interview she did not recall the subject. Millerick, who later became the New Hampshire GOP chairwoman, said in an interview she did not learn of the jamming until after the election.
A Democratic analysis of phone records introduced at Tobin’s criminal trial show he made 115 outgoing calls – mostly to the same number in the White House political affairs office – between Sept. 17 and Nov. 22, 2002. Two dozen of the calls were made from 9:28 a.m. the day before the election through 2:17 a.m. the night after the voting.
There also were other calls between Republican officials during the period that the scheme was hatched and canceled.
Prosecutors did not need the White House calls to convict Tobin and negotiate the two guilty pleas.
Whatever the reason for not using the White House records, prosecutors “tried a very narrow case,” said Paul Twomey, who represented the Democratic Party in the criminal and civil cases. The Justice Department did not say why the White House records were not used.
The Democrats said in their civil case motion that they were entitled to know the purpose of the calls to government offices “at the time of the planning and implementation of the phone-jamming conspiracy … and the timing of the phone calls made by Mr. Tobin on Election Day.”
While national Republican officials have said they deplore such operations, the Republican National Committee said it paid for Tobin’s defense because he is a longtime supporter and told officials he had committed no crime.
By Nov. 4, 2002, the Monday before the election, an Idaho firm was hired to make the hang-up calls. The Republican state chairman at the time, John Dowd, said in an interview he learned of the scheme that day and tried to stop it.
Dowd, who blamed an aide for devising the scheme without his knowledge, contended that the jamming began on Election Day despite his efforts. A police report confirmed the Manchester Professional Fire Fighters Association reported the hang-up calls began about 7:15 a.m. and continued for about two hours. The association was offering rides to the polls.
Virtually all the calls to the White House went to the same number, which currently rings inside the political affairs office. In 2002, White House political affairs was led by now-RNC chairman Ken Mehlman. The White House declined to say which staffer was assigned that phone number in 2002.
“As policy, we don’t discuss ongoing legal proceedings within the courts,” White House spokesman Ken Lisaius said.
Robert Kelner, a Washington lawyer representing the Republican National Committee in the civil litigation, said there was no connection between the phone jamming operation and the calls to the White House and party officials.
“On Election Day, as anybody involved in politics knows, there’s a tremendous volume of calls between political operatives in the field and political operatives in Washington,” Kelner said.
“If all you’re pointing out is calls between Republican National Committee regional political officials and the White House political office on Election Day, you’re pointing out nothing that hasn’t been true on every Election Day,” he said.
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LAW CHIEF GAGS THE MIRROR ON BUSH LEAK
23 November 2005
By Kevin Maguire
THE Daily Mirror was yesterday told not to publish further details from a top secret memo, which revealed that President Bush wanted to bomb an Arab TV station.
The gag by the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith came nearly 24 hours after the Mirror informed Downing Street of its intention to reveal how Tony Blair talked Bush out of attacking satellite station al-Jazeera’s HQ in friendly Qatar.
No 10 did nothing to stop us publishing our front page exclusive yesterday.
But the Attorney General warned that publication of any further details from the document would be a breach of the Official Secrets Act.
He threatened an immediate High Court injunction unless the Mirror confirmed it would not publish further details. We have essentially agreed to comply.
The five-page memo – stamped “Top Secret” – records a threat by Bush to unleash “military action” against the TV station, which America accuses of being a mouthpiece for anti-US sentiments.
Following the Mirror’s revelations, there were calls for the transcript of the memo to be released.
Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesman Sir Menzies Campbell said: “If true, then this underlines the desperation of the Bush administration.
“On this occasion, the Prime Minister may have been successful in averting political disaster, but it shows how dangerous his relationship with President Bush has been.”
The White House yesterday said of the Mirror’s report: “We are not going to dignify something so outlandish with a response.”
Downing Street said: “We don’t comment on leaked documents.”
The memo turned up last year at the Northampton office of then-Labour MP Tony Clarke.
Civil servant David Keogh, 49, is now accused of passing the memo to Leo O’Connor, who once worked for Mr Clarke.
Both Mr Keogh and Mr O’Connor are due to appear in court next week on charges under the Official Secrets Act.
Mr Clarke returned the memo to Downing Street.
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| Disorder | Your Score |
|---|---|
| Major Depression: | Very High |
| Dysthymia: | High-Moderate |
| Bipolar Disorder: | Slight |
| Cyclothymia: | Slight |
| Seasonal Affective Disorder: | Very Slight |
| Postpartum Depression: | N/A |
| Take the Depression Test | |
this is interesting, because i’ve actually been in treatment for bipolar disorder, and, in fact, a PhD psychiatrist "diagnosed" me with bipolar II a few years ago… now admittedly, she based her "diagnosis" on nothing more than an hour’s conversation with me (which is why i put "diagnosis" in quotation marks), but still…
|
Your personality type is RLUAI
|
| You are moderately reserved, moody, unstructured, accommodating, and intellectual, and may prefer a city which matches those traits. |
|
The largest representation of your personality type can be found in the these U.S. cities: Washington DC, Portland/Salem, Richmond, New Orleans, Norfolk, Denver, Albuquerque/Santa Fe, Kansas City, St. Louis, New York City, Indianapolis, San Antonio and these international countries/regions Slovenia, Croatia, Caribbean, Czech Republic, Netherlands, Belgium, Guam, Ukraine, Argentina, Greece, Brazil, Israel, Wales, Finland, Germany, Poland |
What Places In The World Match Your Personality?
City Reviews at CityCulture.org
now why would i want to live in a city or region of the world where a majority of other people are all like me? while it may be okay politically, my impression is that such a place would be extremely depressing…
| You Belong in Amsterdam |
 A little old fashioned, a little modern – you’re the best of both worlds. And so is Amsterdam. Whether you want to be a squatter graffiti artist or a great novelist, Amsterdam has all that you want in Europe (in one small city). |
now amsterdam is an actual possibility. i’ve thought a lot about emigrating recently, and i’ve pretty much decided that it’s going to be either the netherlands or new zealand… but it’s all just a fantasy until something financial happens. 8/
also…
Clone-A-Willy
Penis Moulding – the story of Cynthia Plaster-Caster comes full circle…
and finally, from The Simplified Spelling Society we have Poems showing the absurdities of English spelling… just what i always wanted!
436
President Defends Warrantless Spying Program After Criticism at Open-Forum Event
By Peter Baker
April 7, 2006
CHARLOTTE, April 6 — Harry Taylor got the chance Thursday to do what frustrated liberals across the country have wanted to do for a long time: He stood up and told off the president.
And in its own way, that’s just what the White House wanted.
President Bush flew here for the latest of his open-forum events, an innovation for a leader who until recently stuck to scripted meetings with screened audiences. At a time of dwindling public support and of charges of Bush’s being isolated, the idea was to put him in front of crowds for spontaneous exchanges to show he is not afraid of criticism.
By the time Bush landed in Charlotte, these audience-participation sessions had produced some skeptical questions, some interesting back-and-forth, and even a few off-script comments by a famously disciplined president.
But until Taylor came along, no one had really gotten in Bush’s face. No one had really confronted him so directly on the issues of war and liberty that are at the heart of both his presidency and his political troubles. And no one had given him the opportunity to look unbothered by dissent.
“I would hope, from time to time, that you have the humility and the grace to be ashamed of yourself,” Taylor told Bush after rattling off a litany of grievances.
Bush responded only to Taylor’s complaint about warrantless eavesdropping. “You said, would I apologize for that?” he said. “The answer is absolutely not.”
The dialogue interrupted a love fest here in a state Bush carried in both elections. Microphone in hand, Bush dispensed with the podium and text to wander the stage like a talk-show host. He presented himself as a reluctant warrior struggling with sending young men and women into harm’s way.
“It’s a decision I wish I did not have to make,” he said. In a nod to public frustration, he added: “If I didn’t think we could win, I’d pull them out. You just got to know that.”
The president boasted of building democracy and rebuilding infrastructure in Iraq, without mentioning that his administration is scaling back funding for both goals. And he seemed eager to re-litigate the original reasons for the invasion.
“I fully understand that the intelligence was wrong, and I’m just as disappointed as everybody else is,” he said. But he added: “Removing Saddam Hussein was the right thing for world peace and the security of our country.”
The audience cheered boisterously as he slipped off his coat to take questions. The forum was sponsored by the nonpartisan World Affairs Council of Charlotte at Central Piedmont Community College, and the two institutions invited nearly 1,000 people.
Most of those who stood had only polite inquiries or statements of support. One man told Bush he prayed for him. A woman asked to have her picture taken with him and predicted “you will be vindicated.” Asked by another man what he would do differently, Bush mentioned the detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib. “I wish that could be done over,” he said. “It was a disgraceful experience.”
Then came Taylor, 61, a commercial real estate broker, who got Bush’s attention from the balcony.
“You never stop talking about freedom, and I appreciate that,” Taylor told him. “But while I listen to you talk about freedom, I see you assert your right to tap my telephone, to arrest me and hold me without charges, to try to preclude me from breathing clean air and drinking clean water and eating safe food.”
Bush interrupted with a smile. “I’m not your favorite guy,” he joked, provoking laughter.
“What I want to say to you,” Taylor continued, “is that I, in my lifetime, I have never felt more ashamed of, nor more frightened by, my leadership in Washington.”
Many in the audience booed.
“Let him speak,” Bush said.
“I feel like, despite your rhetoric, that compassion and common sense have been left far behind during your administration,” Taylor added.
Bush took it in stride but offered no regrets. In response, he dealt only with the National Security Agency program to eavesdrop without court approval on telephone calls and e-mails between people inside the United States and people overseas when one person is suspected of terrorist ties.
“I’m not going to apologize for what I did on the terrorist surveillance program, and I’ll tell you why,” Bush said, launching into his explanation of how he approved the program to avoid another Sept. 11. “If we’re at war,” he said, “we ought to be using tools necessary within the Constitution on a very limited basis, a program that’s reviewed constantly, to protect us.”
What made the exchange intriguing was its rarity. Bush is almost never confronted with strong, polite criticism. Hecklers sometimes make it into a speech, but when they stand up to shout, security agents remove them. Three Bush critics sued after they were ejected from an event in Denver.
In an interview afterward, Taylor said he had become an activist in recent years out of discontent with Bush and was pleasantly surprised he was allowed to challenge the president. “I didn’t think I’d be let in the room,” he said.
Bush hardly won him over, though. “I didn’t care about his response,” Taylor said. “I wanted to say what I wanted to say and I wanted him to know that despite being in a room with a thousand people who love him . . . there are plenty of people out there who don’t agree with him in any way, shape or form.”
what alarms me the most is that, in spite of bush repeatedly lying to the american public about everything from 9/11 to weapons of mass destruction, to sweetheart deals with corporate cronies to torturing prisoners to spying on american citizens to outing valerie plame, there are still people who would boo when a guy gets up and tells the president how he feels…
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from
Go to Wikipedia and look up your birth day (excluding the year). List three neat facts, two births and one death in your journal, including the year.
FACTS
- 1405 – Chinese fleet commander Zheng He sets sail to explore the world for the first time.
- 1893 – The first cultured pearl is obtained by Kokichi Mikimoto.
- 1960 – To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is first published.
BIRTHS
- 1274 – Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland (d. 1329) – my namesake!
- 1899 – E. B. White, American writer (d. 1985)
DEATH
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i’m a geek, what can i say?
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Apr 6, 2006
WASHINGTON – President George W. Bush authorized the leak to the media of classified material about Iraq, a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney said according to court papers filed by prosecutors and made public on Thursday.
The aide, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, also testified that he was specifically directed by Cheney to speak to the media about the intelligence information and about Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador who had criticized Bush’s Iraq policy, according to the papers.
Libby has been charged with perjury and obstruction of justice after an investigation into the leaking to the media of the fact that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA agent, which Wilson says was done to pay him back for his criticisms.
The court documents made public on Thursday emerged from that investigation.
The reported authorization by Bush of disclosure of secret material in 2003 came at a time when the March 2003 Iraq invasion was being challenged after U.S. forces failed to find weapons of mass destruction, cited by Bush as the main reason for the action.
Bush had the authority to declassify and allow publication of the material. But the court papers said Libby noted “it was unique in his recollection” to get approval from the president, via the vice president, to discuss material with a reporter that would be classified if it were not for this approval.
The documents showed that Libby, testifying before a federal grand jury before his indictment, said that he got approval from Bush through Cheney to discuss the classified Iraq material with then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller.
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The former head of the Star Wars missile defense program under Presidents Ford and Carter has gone public to say that the official version of 9/11 is a conspiracy theory and his main suspect for the architect of the attack is Vice President Dick Cheney.
Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret. flew 101 combat missions in Vietnam. He is the recipient of the Eisenhower Medal, the George F. Kennan Peace Prize, the President’s Medal of Veterans for Peace, the Society of Military Engineers Gold Medal (twice), six Air Medals, and dozens of other awards and honors. His Ph.D. is in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering from Caltech. He chaired 8 major international conferences, and is one of the country’s foremost experts on National Security.
Bowman worked secretly for the US government on the Star Wars project and was the first to coin the very term in a 1977 secret memo. After Bowman realized that the program was only ever intended to be used as an aggressive and not defensive tool, as part of a plan to initiate a nuclear war with the Soviets, he left the program and campaigned against it.
In an interview with The Alex Jones Show aired nationally on the GCN Radio Network, Bowman stated that at the bare minimum if Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were involved in 9/11 then the government stood down and allowed the attacks to happen. He said it is plausible that the entire chain of military command were unaware of what was taking place and were used as tools by the people pulling the strings behind the attack.
Bowman outlined how the drills on the morning of 9/11 that simulated planes crashing into buildings on the east coast were used as a cover to dupe unwitting air defense personnel into not responding quickly enough to stop the attack.
“The exercises that went on that morning simulating the exact kind of thing that was happening so confused the people in the FAA and NORAD….that they didn’t they didn’t know what was real and what was part of the exercise,” said Bowman
“I think the people who planned and carried out those exercises, they’re the ones that should be the object of investigation.”
Asked if he could name a prime suspect who was the likely architect behind the attacks, Bowman stated, “If I had to narrow it down to one person….I think my prime suspect would be Dick Cheney.”
Bowman said that privately his military fighter pilot peers and colleagues did not disagree with his sentiments about the real story behind 9/11.
Bowman agreed that the US was in danger of slipping into a dictatorship and stated, “I think there’s been nothing closer to fascism than what we’ve seen lately from this government.”
Bowman slammed the Patriot Act as having, “Done more to destroy the rights of Americans than all of our enemies combined.”
Bowman trashed the 9/11 Commission as a politically motivated cover-up with abounding conflicts of interest, charging, “The 9/11 Commission omitted anything that might be the least bit suspicious or embarrassing or in any way detract from the official conspiracy so it was a total whitewash.”
“There needs to be a true investigation, not the kind of sham investigations we have had with the 9/11 omission and all the rest of that junk,” said Bowman.
Asked if the perpetrators of 9/11 were preparing to stage another false-flag attack to reinvigorate their agenda Bowman agreed that, “I can see that and I hope they can’t pull it off, I hope they are prevented from pulling it off but I know darn good and well they’d like to have another one.”
A mainstay of the attack pieces against Charlie Sheen have been that he is not credible enough to speak on the topic of 9/11. These charges are ridiculed by the fact that Sheen is an expert on 9/11 who spends hours a day meticulously researching the topic, something that the attack dogs have failed to do, aiming their comments solely at Sheen’s personal life and ignoring his invitation to challenge him on the facts.
In addition, from the very start we have put forth eminently credible individuals only for them to be ignored by the establishment media. Physics Professors, former White House advisors and CIA analysts, the father of Reaganomics, German Defense Ministers and Bush’s former Secretary of the Treasury, have all gone public on 9/11 but have been uniformly ignored by the majority of the establishment press.
Will Robert Bowman also be blackballed as the mainstream continue to misrepresent the 9/11 truth movement as an occupation of the fringe minority?
Bowman is currently running for Congress in Florida’s 15th District.
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By DAVID ESPO
WASHINGTON – Succumbing to scandal, former Majority Leader Tom DeLay said Tuesday he will resign from Congress in the face of a tough re-election race, closing out a career that blended unflinching conservatism with a bare-knuckled political style.
“I have no fear whatsoever about any investigation into me or my personal or professional activities,” DeLay said in a statement to constituents. At the same time, he said, “I refuse to allow liberal Democrats an opportunity to steal this seat with a negative, personal campaign.”
He said the voters of his Houston-area district “deserve a campaign about the vital national issues that they care most about … and not a campaign focused solely as a referendum on me.”
DeLay relinquished the post as House majority leader last fall after his indictment in Texas as part of an investigation into the allegedly illegal use of funds for state legislative races. He decided in January against trying to get the leadership post back as an election-year corruption scandal staggered Republicans and emboldened minority Democrats.
Last week, former DeLay aide Tony Rudy pleaded guilty to conspiring with lobbyist Jack Abramoff and others to corrupt public officials, and he promised to help the broad federal investigation of bribery and lobbying fraud that already has resulted in three convictions.
Neither Rudy, Abramoff nor anyone else connected with the investigation has publicly accused DeLay of breaking the law, but Rudy confessed that he had taken actions while working in the majority leader’s office that were illegal. DeLay has consistently denied any wrongdoing.
Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), R-Ariz., a major player in congressional investigations of Abramoff and the lobbyist’s involvement with Indian tribes, said Tuesday that he respects DeLay’s decision to step down, and added, “I think there are other aspects of the Abramoff scandal that will be unfolding in the weeks ahead.”
McCain spoke to reporters following a speech to a Hispanic conference. President Bush said Tuesday that DeLay had informed him of his decision Monday afternoon.
“I wish him all the best,” Bush told reporters during a brief White House session, adding, “It had to have been a very difficult decision for someone who loved representing his district in the state of Texas.”
Bush said the Republican Party won’t suffer from DeLay’s decision to resign from Congress. “My own judgment is that our party will continue to succeed because we are the party of ideas.”
DeLay, an 11-term Texas lawmaker who turns 59 on Saturday, said he would make his resignation effective sometime before mid-June but contingent on the congressional calendar.
“He has served our nation with integrity and honor,” said Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, who succeeded DeLay in his leadership post earlier this year.
But Democrats said the developments marked more than the end to one man’s career in Congress.
“Tom Delay’s announcement is just the beginning of the reckoning of the Republican culture of corruption that has gripped Washington for too long,” said Karen Finney, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee. “From DeLay to Scooter Libby to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, to Duke Cunningham, to Bob Ney, to David Safavian, the list of goes on and on.”
DeLay portrayed his decision to resign as a fatal blow for the fortunes of his opponent, Democrat Nick Lampson, who has garnered national attention – and financial support.
“As difficult as this decision has been for me, it’s not going to be a great day for liberal Democrats, either,” DeLay said. “My loyalty to the Republican Party, indeed my love for the Republican Party, has played no small part in this decision.”
Last month, DeLay capped a triumph in a contested GOP primary with a vow to win re-election.
It was not clear whether Texas Gov. Rick Perry would call a special election to fill out the unexpired portion of DeLay’s term, or whether the seat would remain vacant until it is filled in November.
Either way, DeLay’s concern about the potential loss of a Houston-area seat long in Republican hands reflected a deeper worry among GOP strategists. After a dozen years in the majority, they face a strong challenge from Democrats this fall, at a time when President Bush’s public support is sagging, and when the Abramoff scandal has helped send congressional approval ratings tumbling.
Until scandal sent him to the sidelines, DeLay had held leadership posts since the Republicans won control of the House in a 1994 landslide. DeLay quickly established himself as a forceful presence – earning a nickname as “The Hammer” – and he easily became majority leader when the spot opened up.
DeLay was the driving force behind President Clinton’s impeachment in 1999, weeks after Republicans lost seats at the polls in a campaign in which they tried to make an issue of Clinton’s personal behavior.
His trademark aggressiveness helped trigger his downfall, when he led a drive to redraw Texas’ congressional district boundaries to increase the number of seats in GOP hands. DeLay was soon caught up in an investigation involving the use of corporate funds in the campaigns of legislators who had participated in the redistricting.
Brian J. Doyle faces 23 charges
Wednesday, April 5, 2006
WASHINGTON (CNN) — A deputy press secretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security was arrested Tuesday at his Maryland home on charges he used his computer in an attempt to seduce a child and transmitted harmful materials to a minor, according to the Polk County, Florida, Sheriff’s Office.
Brian J. Doyle, 55, is charged with seven counts of use of a computer to seduce a child and 16 counts of transmission of harmful material to a minor, according to a sheriff’s office statement.
In interviews with police, Doyle confessed and has agreed to waive extradition to Florida, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said.
On March 12, according to a police statement, Doyle contacted a Polk County computer crimes detective posing online as a 14-year-old girl “and initiated a sexually explicit conversation with her … Doyle knew that the ‘girl’ was 14 years old, and he told her who he was and that he worked for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.”
Judd said that Doyle, in the first conversation, told the detective his position with DHS and “started immediately into pretty vulgar language. He explained in graphic detail the sexual acts he wanted to perform with this 14-year-old.”
As the two continued chatting online, police said, Doyle gave her his home and office phone numbers, and the number to his government-issue cell phone. He also had explicit telephone conversations with a detective posing as the girl, authorities said.
In addition, he used the Internet to send “hard-core pornographic movie clips” to her, and also used an America Online instant-messaging service to have explicit online conversations with her.
“The investigation revealed that the phone numbers given to the detective were in fact Doyle’s, and that the AOL account was registered to him,” police said.
Doyle also sent photos of himself that were not sexually explicit, but said he would send nude photos if the “girl” would buy a Web camera and send him nude photos of herself. In one photo, Judd said, Doyle’s DHS security tag is clearly visible.
“Many of the conversations he initiated … are too extraordinary and graphic for public release,” a statement from the sheriff’s office said.
“I read the transcripts,” Judd said. “I wanted to see if this was just as outrageous as the detectives depicted it … It shocked all of us who have worked vice, narcotics, organized crime, homicides.”
A DHS spokesman said the agency would cooperate in the probe.
“We take these allegations very seriously,” Russ Knocke said, “and we will cooperate fully with the ongoing investigation.”
Doyle, Judd said, is divorced and has children. Authorities believe he could have held similar conversations online with others, Judd said, because at some points during online chats he would address the detective by the wrong name.
Doyle never attempted to arrange a visit, Judd said, but did mention knowing someone in the region.
Before Doyle was arrested Tuesday night at his home in Silver Spring, Judd said, the detective had told him that she had access to a Web camera and that her mother would be away, so “he was eager to rush home from work.”
As he was online, detectives from agencies including the U.S. Secret Service and the Montgomery County, Maryland, Police Department knocked on his door and served the arrest warrant, Judd said. They also executed a search warrant for his residence.
“We found his communication still on his computer with our undercover detective,” he said. “Had we not been posing as a 14-year-old, Brian Doyle would have been grooming someone, some young lady, for a sexual encounter.”
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i’m still half asleep from yester two-days-ago performance (that ended yesterday), and i was hoping for a couple of days off, but apparently one of the zebra kings has requested a rehearsal for the burlesque nights today, so i’m going to haul my ass back to seattle for that. hopefully i will have caught up on sleep before wednesday, because it starts all over again (although my understanding is that the thursday and friday performances are only circus contraption shows, and won’t require us).
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from Bunger Mulkin! we have the ultimate accessory for the computer, and computer-geek who has absolutely everything else…
… what?
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some of these are probably april fools jokes, but some probably aren’t…
CHAIRBOY! – a freak show act from the late 19th century? an act from the moisture festival? a web design company? we may never know…
Mar 30th 2006
With luck, you may soon be able to buy a mythological pet
PAOLO FRIL, chairman and chief scientific officer of GeneDupe, based in San Melito, California, is a man with a dream. That dream is a dragon in every home.
GeneDupe’s business is biotech pets. Not for Dr Fril, though, the mundane cloning of dead moggies and pooches. He plans a range of entirely new animals—or, rather, of really quite old animals, with the twist that even when they did exist, it was only in the imagination.
Making a mythical creature real is not easy. But GeneDupe’s team of biologists and computer scientists reckon they are equal to the task. Their secret is a new field, which they call “virtual cell biology”.
Biology and computing have a lot in common, since both are about processing information—in one case electronic; in the other, biochemical. Virtual cell biology aspires to make a software model of a cell that is accurate in every biochemical detail. That is possible because all animal cells use the same parts list—mitochondria for energy processing, the endoplasmic reticulum for making proteins, Golgi body for protein assembly, and so on.
Armed with their virtual cell, GeneDupe’s scientists can customise the result so that it belongs to a particular species, by loading it with a virtual copy of that animal’s genome. Then, if the cell is also loaded with the right virtual molecules, it will behave like a fertilised egg, and start dividing and developing—first into an embryo, and ultimately into an adult.
Because this “growth” is going on in a computer, it happens fast. Passing from egg to adult in one of GeneDupe’s enormous Mythmaker computers takes less than a minute. And it is here that Charles Darwin gets a look in. With such a short generation time, GeneDupe’s scientists can add a little evolution to their products.
Each computer starts with a search image (dragon, unicorn, gryphon, etc), and the genome of the real animal most closely resembling it (a lizard for the dragon, a horse for the unicorn and, most taxingly, the spliced genomes of a lion and an eagle for the gryphon). The virtual genomes of these real animals are then tweaked by random electronic mutations. When they have matured, the virtual adults most closely resembling the targets are picked and cross-bred, while the others are culled.
Using this rapid evolutionary process, GeneDupe’s scientists have arrived at genomes for a range of mythological creatures—in a computer, at least. The next stage, on which they are just embarking, is to do it for real.
This involves synthesising, with actual DNA, the genetic material that the computer models predict will produce the mythical creatures. The synthetic DNA is then inserted into a cell that has had its natural nucleus removed. The result, Dr Fril and his commercial backers hope, will be a real live dragon, unicorn or what have you.
Readers with long memories may recall GeneDupe’s previous attempt to break into the pet market, the Real Goldfish (see article). This animal was genetically engineered to deposit gold in its skin cells, for that truly million-dollar look. Unfortunately Dr Fril, a biologist, neglected to think about the physics involved. The fish, weighed down by one of the heaviest metals in existence, sank like a stone, as did the project. He is more confident about his new idea, though. Indeed, if he can get the dragons’ respiration correct, he thinks they will set the world on fire.
For an undisclosed sum reputed to be in the billions, Microsoft’s Bill Gates has personally bought the leading open-source desktop project. Saying he “was sick and tired of open-source eating away at his profits,” the world’s richest man decided to put an end to the nuisance and simply buy OpenOffice.org. It will form part of a growing list of Microsoft acquisitions, including several erstwhile competitors, a considerable number of prominent politicians, and a few small governments.
The initially stunned OpenOffice.org community–a happy-go-lucky international band numbering in the hundreds of thousands–later turned to champagne to celebrate their newfound wealth. “Bless Bill!” one happy Torontonian exclaimed, bubbly in hand. “With all this money, I can beat Mark’s time in orbit!”
Gates has assured all current OpenOffice.org users that their future migration path to Microsoft Office is guaranteed thanks to OpenOffice.org’s faultless support of MS Office files formats. Users can further rest assured that the full functionality currently provided by OpenOffice.org 2.0 will be available in MS-Office 2020 – or possibly 2030.
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hurray, hurray, it’s the first of may,
outdoor fornication starts today.
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it’s 9:00 10:00 and moe still isn’t home from work. she called me at 7:00 to say that she was working late because they had an emergency dog-ate-two-foreign-bodies-connected-by-a-ton-of-string… sort of like what happened to ziggy when he ate the needle and 5 feet of thread, only worse. at least i know she’s not stranded somewhere or worse.
EDIT: she called at 10:15 to say that she’s on her way home, and her emergency dog survived.
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another, more recent acid trip.
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| Disorder | Rating |
| Paranoid Disorder: | Very High |
| Schizoid Disorder: | Very High |
| Schizotypal Disorder: | Very High |
| Antisocial Disorder: | High |
| Borderline Disorder: | Moderate |
| Histrionic Disorder: | Moderate |
| Narcissistic Disorder: | Moderate |
| Avoidant Disorder: | High |
| Dependent Disorder: | Moderate |
| Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: | High |
— Personality Disorder Test – Take It! — — Personality Disorders — |
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bleh…
okay, now that internet works again – need i say it? QWEST SUCKS RANCID DONKEY DICKS!!! because they disconnected our DSL service without warning or provocation on saturday. they said that we hadn’t paid our bill, in spite of the fact that we have the confirmation numbers that say we did. when we told them so, the IMBECILES took 48 hours to do nothing… and when i finally called again this morning, suddenly, we had internet service again within 15 minutes, which indicates to me that we could have had internet service within 15 minutes, TWO DAYS AGO but they couldn’t be bothered to fix their own mistake… grumble, mutter…
an interesting update to the stuff that’s going on here, apparently bill breeze, otherwise known as hymenaeus beta, erstwhile OHO of the caliphate OTO, and the complainant in the DMCA notification that was filed against me and my ISP, is apparently no longer a member of the caliphate OTO. he is now head of a “splinter group” and the caliphate OTO is, apparently, without an outer head, at least for the moment. i don’t expect the caliphate people can confirm any of this, and even if they can, i’m not sure they’d want to, but the whole thing is terrifically amusing, as the caliphate OTO have maintained that they are the only “real” OTO and all the others are “fakes” for a long time, while i have maintained that they’re all fighting like children over who is more important, and who was authorised by whom to do what, and ignoring The Great Work. here is an excellent example of what i am talking about.
the first weekend of drunk puppet night went more or less without a hitch, although whether i am going to be able to run lights and sound for them in the future is sort of questionable, as the current fixed lights in the theater are all on one two-position switch, and the guy who runs the columbia city theater is a snob and won’t let me touch the sound equipment. the good news is that the meat play impressed josh enough, and was well enough received that he’s going to include it as part of the show, so even if i don’t get to run lights and sound, i’ll still get paid for two more weeks of performances. also my understanding is that we have sold approximately 15 buttons, which isn’t a lot, but every little bit helps.
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i’m going to an acupuncture appointment, then i’m going over to mercer island to pick up a business card from the vet clinic (they need two or three new cards, and i don’t have the original in a place where i can find it easily), then i’m going to opening night of drunk puppet night, where, at the last minute, i got 3 other people together and we’re going to do the meat play.
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we got the car back from the body shop on monday. it was all shiny and new-looking, which is pretty dramatically different from what it looked like the last time i saw it… hopefully it will stay like this for a while… i expect it to collect road dirt, but not a deer.
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this is weird. i’m sitting here waiting for an autosave, so that i can switch platforms and get the updated version of this post on a different platform… and it worked. very strange indeed.
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thanks to
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i haven’t heard anything from christian hartman (the owner of tokerlounge dot com), but i heard from his host provider, which requests me to file a “formal DCMA notification” before they will do anything… typical bureaucracy… 8/ so i changed the graphic, and i got a link to the Comprehensive guide to .htaccess, which should give me some ideas about how i can deal with this without having to pay a lawyer to write me a “formal DCMA notification”.
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this goes in the “who couldn’t see that coming?” department…
WASHINGTON, Feb. 21 — The Supreme Court, at full strength with Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. on the bench for the first time, opened the next chapter in its long-running confrontation with abortion today by agreeing to decide whether the first federal ban on a method of abortion is constitutional.
The court accepted, for argument next fall, the Bush administration’s appeal of a decision invalidating the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. The law makes it a crime for a doctor to perform an abortion during which a portion of the fetus, either the “entire fetal head” or “any part of the fetal trunk past the navel,” is outside the woman’s uterus at the time the fetus is killed.
While the law’s supporters maintain that this technique is used only late in pregnancy, and that the law therefore does not present an obstacle to most abortions, abortion-rights advocates say the statute’s description applies to procedures used to terminate pregnancies as early as 12 or 13 weeks.
The law makes an exception for instances in which the banned technique is necessary to save a pregnant woman’s life, but not for preservation of her health, as the Supreme Court found necessary six years ago when it overturned a similar law from Nebraska.
In omitting a health exception, the federal law presents a direct threat to that precedent. In the federal statute, Congress included a “finding” that “partial-birth abortion is never medically indicated to preserve the health of the mother” and that “there is no credible medical evidence that partial-birth abortions are safe or are safer than other abortion procedures.”
The four doctors who went to Federal District Court in Lincoln, Neb., to challenge the federal law, including Dr. Leroy Carhart, who had brought the earlier challenge to the Nebraska state law, disputed the Congressional findings. They said the method was safer under some conditions and could preserve some women’s fertility by avoiding such complications as punctures from bone fragments inside the uterus.
The trial judge, Richard G. Kopf, who had earlier found the Nebraska law unconstitutional, said the plaintiffs had demonstrated that the Congressional findings were “unreasonable.” He declared the federal law unconstitutional in a 269-page opinion, issued in September 2004. The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, in St. Louis, upheld that decision last July, leading to the administration’s Supreme Court appeal, Gonzales v. Carhart, No. 05-380.
Last month, two other federal appeals courts, the Second Circuit in New York and the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, declared the statute unconstitutional in separate lawsuits. All three courts issued injunctions barring enforcement of the law.
Ever since Roe v. Wade and its companion case, Doe v. Bolton, in 1973, the court has required exceptions for health as well as life in any regulation of abortion. But the vote in the Nebraska case, Stenberg v. Carhart, was 5 to 4, with Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in the majority. It is highly likely, therefore, that her successor, Justice Alito, will be in the position to cast the deciding vote. The dissenters in the Nebraska case were Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony M. Kennedy, along with Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who has since been replaced by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
After the court’s announcement this morning, groups on both sides of the abortion debate tried to attach some significance to the decision to accept the case. In fact, it would have been highly unusual for the court to turn down the appeal. A lower court’s invalidation of a federal statute has an almost automatic claim on the justices’ attention, even those justices who may view the decision as correct or those who may not necessarily agree in this instance with the Bush administration’s description of the case as “extraordinarily important” and requiring immediate review.
The court had the administration’s appeal under review since early January. It may have deferred action as a courtesy to Justice Alito, who participated in his first closed-door conference with the other justices last Friday.
Or, equally likely, the justices set the case aside while they finished work on a New Hampshire abortion case that also raised a question about a medical exception to an abortion regulation, in that instance a requirement that a teenage girl notify a parent and then wait 48 hours before obtaining an abortion.
In what proved to be Justice O’Connor’s final opinion before retirement, that case, Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, was decided on Jan. 18. The unanimous opinion restated the court’s longstanding insistence on an exception for medical emergencies but, in its list of precedents, pointedly omitted reference to the Nebraska case from six years ago, its most recent treatment of the subject.
In the Bush administration’s brief in the new case, Solicitor General Paul D. Clement said the appeals court should have given “substantial deference” to the Congressional findings on the lack of need for a health exception. Such deference was not at issue in the Supreme Court’s earlier case, he said, because that case concerned a state rather than federal law.
Representing the plaintiffs, who include Drs. William G. Fitzhugh, William H. Knorr, and Jill L. Vibhakar, in addition to Dr. Carhart, the Center for Reproductive Rights told the justices in its brief that the Congressional findings were not entitled to the deference that courts usually apply when evaluating legislation.
“The facts at issue here involve the current state of medicine, physicians’ testimony about patients they have cared for, medical conditions they have treated and the impact of abortion techniques on the health of these patients,” the brief said, adding that Congress does not have “a particular expertise in the area of medicine, as it does in the area of nationwide economic regulatory schemes.”
The organization, based in Manhattan, was known as the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy when it represented Dr. Carhart in the earlier case.
and this one goes in the “if alito had been presiding over this case, it would have come out entirely differently” department… 8/
Justices unanimously rule that N.M. congregation can drink illegal drug
Feb. 21, 2006
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Tuesday that a small congregation in New Mexico may use hallucinogenic tea as part of a four-hour ritual intended to connect with God.
Justices, in their first religious freedom decision under Chief Justice John Roberts, moved decisively to keep the government out of a church’s religious practice. Federal drug agents should have been barred from confiscating the hoasca tea of the Brazil-based church, Roberts wrote in the decision.
The tea, which contains an illegal drug known as DMT, is considered sacred to members of O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal, which has a blend of Christian beliefs and South American traditions. Members believe they can understand God only by drinking the tea, which is consumed twice a month at four-hour ceremonies.
New Justice Samuel Alito did not take part in the case, which was argued last fall before Justice Sandra Day O’Connor before her retirement. Alito was on the bench for the first time on Tuesday.
Roberts said that the Bush administration had not met its burden under a federal religious freedom law to show that it could ban “the sect’s sincere religious practice.”
The chief justice had also been skeptical of the government’s position in the case last fall, suggesting that the administration was demanding too much, a “zero tolerance approach.”
The Bush administration had argued that the drug in the tea not only violates a federal narcotics law, but a treaty in which the United States promised to block the importation of drugs including dimethyltryptamine, also known as DMT.
“The government did not even submit evidence addressing the international consequences of granting an exemption for the (church),” Roberts wrote.
The justices sent the case back to a federal appeals court, which could consider more evidence.
Roberts, writing his second opinion since joining the court, said that religious freedom cases can be difficult “but Congress has determined that courts should strike sensible balances.”
The case is Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao Do Vegetal, 04-1084.
By Joanna Glasner
Feb, 21, 2006
The planet’s population is projected to reach 6.5 billion at 7:16 p.m. EST Saturday, according to the U.S. Census Bureau and its World Population Clock.
Thomas Malthus, the 18th-century thinker who famously predicted the human population would outrun its food supply, would be astounded.
Back in 1798, when Malthus penned his classic An Essay on the Principle of Population, barely a billion Homo sapiens roamed the planet. Today, Earth’s population teeters on the brink of a new milestone: 6.5 billion living, breathing humans.
“Malthus would be astonished not only at the numbers of people, but at the real prosperity of about a fifth of them and the average prosperity of most of them,” said demographer Joel Cohen, a professor of populations at Rockefeller and Columbia universities. “He wouldn’t be surprised at the abject poverty of the lowest quarter or third.”
The clock, which operates continuously, estimates that each second 4.1 people are born and 1.8 people die. The clock figures are estimates, subject to error, given the difficulties of maintaining an accurate global population count.
However, the key concept — that population levels are growing, but at a slower rate than in the past few decades — reflects the consensus view of demographers. The current growth of world population, estimated by Cohen at 1.1 percent a year, has slowed significantly from its peak of 2.1 percent annual growth between 1965 and 1970.
“That’s a phenomenal decline,” said Cohen, who probed the question of whether population growth is sustainable in his book, How Many People Can Earth Support?. (The short answer: It depends.)
Today, a large portion of the world’s population lives in nations that are at sub-replacement fertility, meaning the average woman has fewer than two children in her lifetime. Countries in this camp include former members of the Soviet Union, Japan and most of Europe.
Demographers attribute the slowing rate of global population growth in part to more-widespread availability of birth control and to people in developed nations choosing to have fewer children. But low-birthrate countries are counterbalanced by nations like Yemen, where the average woman has seven children in her lifetime.
The highest population growth rates emanate disproportionately from the poorest regions of Africa, the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent.
U.S. population is also growing at a steady clip, augmented by high numbers of immigrants. It is projected to hit 300 million later this year. Earth’s population is expected to reach 7 billion in 2012, according to the Census Bureau.
Carl Haub, a demographer with the Population Reference Bureau, sees urbanization contributing to slowing growth, because urban areas typically have lower birthrates than rural areas. In 1950, less than 30 percent of people lived in areas defined as urban. Next year, the United Nations projects that more than half the world’s population will be urban.
As population growth marches forward, debate continues in academia — as it has since Malthus’ time — over how many people the Earth can realistically support.
Certainly individual countries, such as Bangladesh or Rwanda, can be characterized as overpopulated, said Haub. But in other places, such as India, it’s harder to determine the extent to which overpopulation — rather than other social and economic factors — contributes to poverty.
Some turn to mathematical models for estimating maximum sustainable population levels.
One metric modeled on the Census Bureau’s population clock compares world population to the finite supply of arable land.
For his part, Cohen estimates that if we want to support individuals indefinitely — allotting each person 3,500 calories per day from wheat and 247,000 gallons per year of fresh water — the planet has room for only about 5 billion people.
But such formulas are subject to tinkering. Changes in agricultural practices, more efficient water-desalination technologies and a host of other factors can increase the number of people the planet can support. Shifts in behavior — such as acceptance of new food sources that are cheap to produce — can have a similar effect, noted Cohen.
“What most of this commentary neglects is the role of culture in defining wheat as food but not, let’s say, cultured single-cell algae,” he said.
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22% Combativeness, 60% Sneakiness, 64% Intellect, 72% Spirituality Sneaky, cunning, and spiritual: You are a Druid Druids work with nature to cast their spells and favor balance over extremes. They’re shapeshifters, capable of taking the forms of natural creatures. While they don’t always deal well with people, they do have animal companions to come to their aid. You are probably intelligent, spiritual, and more than a little deceptive. Fortunately, your lack of violent tendencies means you are also likely to be level-headed. |
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My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:
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| Link: The RPG Class Test written by MFlowers on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test |
| the Romantic Test finished! |
you chose BY – your Enneagram type is FOUR.
“I am unique”Romantics have sensitive feelings and are warm and perceptive. How to Get Along with Me
What I Like About Being a Four
What’s Hard About Being a Four
Fours as Children Often
Fours as Parents
Renee Baron & Elizabeth Wagele The Enneagram Made Easy You are not completely happy with the result?! Would you rather have chosen: |
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My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:
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| Link: The Quick and Painless ENNEAGRAM Test written by felk on Ok Cupid, home of the 32-Type Dating Test |
and, courtesy of
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i’m not sure whether to be annoyed or amused or what, but i discovered that one of my pipe graphics is being used, without my permission, by tokerlounge dot com. i was going through my web stats and i noticed that the objects directory was consistently higher hit rate than the incense directory, despite the fact that i’ve essentially taken the pipes offline since i don’t have a worshop… i’m inclined to be annoyed, since they used the graphic from my web page on their web page, without providing a link or any clue that the graphic wasn’t theirs, and then had the balls to post “dont copy or redistribute any content on this site, without giving proper credit to tokerlounge” at the bottom of the page. i wrote to the administrative contact for the domain, and i also wrote to the host service for the web site… and i just got an email back from the web host service… now we’ll see what happens next.
it’s obvious that other people probably will end up writing to this guy as well. there’s another graphic that is not resident on tokerlounge dot com on the same page with my pipe, and i’m going to bet that, judging by the skillz of the guy who coded the HTML, there are a few other graphics that he stole from other web sites on other pages of his web site as well. if he would link to my site, and copy the graphic on to his web host, i wouldn’t have anywhere near as much of a problem with this, but as it is currently, i’m pretty pissed off at this guy.
also, if you’re ever looking for sound effects, a good place to avoid is soundrangers dot com, in spite of the fact that they are located here in seattle. i ordered some sound effects from them recently, and without giving me an option not to recieve spam from them, they sent me spam. it is my understanding that such behaviour is illegal in the state of washington, and it may well be illegal under federal statute as well, but one way or the other, i don’t do business with spammers, so i’m no longer a customer of theirs.
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okay, now that i’m done venting about that asshat majid, i have finally calmed down enough to write about the opening weekend of drunk puppet night.
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the opening was in the winningstad theatre, where it was last year… unfortunately there are no actual pictures of the puppet shows because i was too busy running sound. i stayed with lance, who is the guy whose job is to run the technical aspects of this theatre… which means from top to bottom if you want some kind of theatre magic, lance is the guy to ask. they have 300 hanging lights, and another 100-200 in a room backstage in case that wasn’t enough, that are all controlled by a board in the booth, which also houses all the audio gear and a separate board for that. josh needed a piece of gel for one of his shadow puppet sets and lance took us into a back room where they have every colour gel imaginable, all classified according to the catalogue number. we decided that the winningstad is where we want to do all of our performances, but lance says that “menopause: the musical” has bought the theatre for the next year, with options to extend another year, so next year we’re probably going to have drunk puppet night in portland in a different theatre. i got there with no clue where i was going to stay, so i was grouped with a couple of other folks from seattle who were supposed to stay at the emcee’s house, but there was only enough room for two, so i actually got to stay with lance. he and his wife both work for tears of joy puppet theatre, which was our sponsor, and they have a futon in their basement. they also have huge quantities of a wide variety of geckos and skinks in their basement, apparently lance also breeds them – for what… i didn’t ask… just the fact that they were there was cool enough for me – and, thus, they have crickets in their basement as well, which are gecko food. they also have a parrot and an iguana and a dog named dozer who was apparently starved for attention.
the first night was kind of sparse, but al franken was appearing in the theatre next door, and everybody apparently went to see him instead (slobs), but the second night there was actually a full house, which was a lot better than we expected, considering that (or because of, we weren’t able to determine which) the emcee, a guy named rale sidebottom, was smoking and drinking on stage during the performance, and was actually “fired” from his job as emcee by someone in the audience.
i got up sunday morning and left portland by 9:30 and drove straight to port townsend for the lantern festival. i arrived in port townsend at around 1:00 and spent a couple hours wandering around and re-acquainting myself with fort worden. there have been some changes at the cistern which lead me to believe that somebody official has gained access for some official purposes, but has restricted all other access. the whole area has been mowed, and the two tanks full of concrete that used to be over the access hole have been moved to the side, and a new access hole, with a steel door and a lock, has been added. because of the fact that the area was mowed, i actually discovered a second, and, potentially, a third and a fourth access point that leads to the cistern which i didn’t know about previously. one of them has a similar door and lock, and the other two can probably be accessed with a pry bar and some muscle. it’s good that someone has been looking after the space, in spite of the fact that i couldn’t get in myself. i did some harmonic singing in one of the mortar batteries, underground in the powder room, to make up for, once again, not being able to access the cistern.
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around 3:30 or so i went down to the jefferson county municipal field, which is where the lantern festival was being held. it was fairly sunny in port townsend yesterday, but when the sun went down (which, coincidentally, was when we started to play) it was suddenly evident that it was the pacific northwest in the middle of february. fortunately i had my burnoose, and my tuba was as good as a camel, as long as i was playing. unfortunately there were a lot of breaks at first, and when i stopped playing, and especially when i (frequently) had to put my horn down to get a piece of music that fred came up with on the spur of the moment, but wasn’t in the line up, it got really cold, really fast. the performance itself went surprisingly well considering that only 6 of the 25 people in the show were at the dress rehearsal last weekend. nobody caught fire that wasn’t supposed to.
it was all over, finally, around 8:30, and i drove through tacoma and got home by 10:30… whereas if i had gone through bremerton, it would have meant a 3 hour wait for the ferry to seattle, and then another 45 minutes from seattle. and i did it all without a map, despite the fact that i haven’t driven up the olympic peninsula since before my injury. i shouldn’t have worried about it… the roads tell me where to go… 8)
then, when i came home, our blindingly cute little doggie was in the bedroom, with her nose under the door, and i had to share the blinding cuteness with all of you…
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ergh… i got back from portland drunk puppet night, and the port townsend lantern festival last night, but before i write about that, i’ve got to vent about majid again… in spite of the fact that he fired me in october!!!
i was working on the photos for the afore mentioned show when i got email from majid. he needs my help… apparently his server went down, and when it came up again there was no font directory on the macs. i know exactly what happened, and could probably fix it without any difficulty whatsoever, within about 10 minutes, but i don’t know if i want to… after all, he fired me in october!!!
what i would like to do is two different things, which are, unfortunately, mutually exclusive. the first thing i want to do is delete the email and ignore any further requests from him. the other thing is that i want to tell him that i can fix it for $125 an hour, with an hour minimum, and then go in, fix it, and leave again without saying anything to anyone, including majid. actually there’s a third thing, which is also mutually exclusive of the other two, which is ream majid a new asshole via email.
unfortunately, i’ll probably end up doing the “professional” thing and doing the 2nd option, but it really gets to me that i can’t do either the first or the third options without seeming like i am the one who is an asshole… 8/
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for those of you with appropriate technology, there is a 1963 video of frank zappa on the steve allen show which i’ve heard the audio for, but never actually seen…
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Find Your Warped Personality
this quiz was made by mysti
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the washington quarter is due to be minted next year. there are currently 3 candidates, of which i, personally, feel that #3 is the preferable one. if you’re a resident of the state of washington, maybe you’ll get a vote in the final decision. if not… stay away, ’cause we’ve already got far too many people from other states here, and they’re clogging traffic and contributing to smog.
the latest in a long, involved and complicated string of lies,
Cheney says he has power to declassify information
Vice president stays mum on case involving aide Libby
Thursday, February 16, 2006
WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Dick Cheney said Wednesday that an executive order gives him the authority to declassify secret documents, but he would not say whether he authorized an indicted former aide to release classified information.
Cheney’s former chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, told a grand jury he was “authorized by his superiors” to disclose classified information from an intelligence estimate on Iraq to reporters, the special prosecutor investigating the 2003 leak of a CIA agent’s identity told Libby’s attorneys. The prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, did not identify who those “superiors” are.
In an interview Wednesday with Fox News, Cheney said the case was “nothing I can talk about.” But he said he had the authority to declassify material under an executive order that “focuses first and foremost on the president, but also includes the vice president.”
He would not disclose whether he had exercised that authority, however.
Libby was indicted in October on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements to investigators probing the July 2003 exposure of CIA agent Valerie Plame. Plame’s husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, had just emerged as a critic of the pre-war intelligence underpinning the invasion of Iraq when her identity was disclosed.
According to Fitzgerald, Libby met on July 8, 2003, with New York Times reporter Judith Miller to give her information regarding the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. The document included much of the information used to justify the invasion of Iraq earlier that year.
But a legal source involved in the case tells CNN that Libby has never suggested and did not testify that anyone in the administration — including Cheney — authorized outing Plame.
Cheney declined to discuss the investigation but said he had “cooperated fully” with the special prosecutor. And he suggested he may have to testify in Libby’s trial, now tentatively set for January 2007.
“Scooter is entitled to the presumption of innocence,” the vice president said. “He’s a great guy. I’ve worked with him for a long time, have enormous regard for him. I may well be called as a witness at some point in the case and it’s, therefore, inappropriate for me to comment on any facet of the case.”
Cheney’s remarks came during an interview in which he accepted responsibility for the weekend shooting of a companion during a south Texas quail hunt.
The wounded man, 78-year-old Harry Whittington, remained in intensive care in a Corpus Christi hospital on Wednesday.
The incident’s belated disclosure left the White House fending off questions for three days and fueled renewed criticism of the vice president, with Democrats calling it symbolic of an administration obsessed with secrecy.
now let me get this straight… in an investigation to discover who outed plame, i seem to recall cheney vowing that whoever was responsible would face extreme and dire consequences… but when it turns out that he is the one who was actually responsible, suddenly he has the power to declassify information and nothing was done wrong… including his shooting “his friend”, harry whittington…
does that make sense to you, or does it sound like more back-pedalling and ass-covering?
Happy St. Valentines Day… 8P
By Denise Royal
February 14, 2006 10:23 a.m. EST
Chicago, IL (AHN) – The American Bar Association objects to President Bush’s domestic spying program. The lawyers’ group accuses the White House of exceeding his power, and is calling for special court warrants for similar spying in the future.
The Bush Administration says warrant-less eavesdropping is legal under the President’s constitutional powers as commander-in-chief and congressional authorization for the use of military force adopted days after the September 11 attacks. The program bypassed secret courts created under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (or FISA) that grant warrants.
The ABA’s resolution calls on Mr. Bush “to abide by the limitations which the Constitution imposes on a President” to make sure national security is protected in a way that is consistent with constitutional guarantees. It opposes “any future electronic surveillance inside the United States by any U.S. government agency for foreign intelligence.”
Tuesday 14 February 2006, 4:37 Makka Time, 1:37 GMT
An investigation into the prison at Guantanamo Bay says the US committed acts amounting to torture, including force-feeding and prolonged periods of solitary confinement.
The report by five human rights experts from the UN accused the US of violating the detainees’ rights to a fair trial, to freedom of religion and to health.
It recommended that the US close the detention centre and revoke all special interrogation techniques authorised by the US Department of Defence.
The draft report said: “The apparent attempts by the US administration to reinterpret certain interrogation techniques as not reaching the threshold of torture in the framework of the struggle against terrorism are of utmost concern.”
US officials rejected the report, saying it was riddled with errors and treated statements from detainees’ lawyers as fact.
Its most significant flaw, officials said, was that it judged US treatment of detainees according to peace-time human rights laws.
US position
The US contends that it is in a state of conflict and should be judged according to the laws of war.
An official from the US State Department said: “Once you fail to even acknowledge that as the legal basis for what we’re doing, much of the legal analysis that follows just doesn’t hold.”
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the US has not formulated an official public response.
The draft report was delivered to the US on 16 January. It was first disclosed late on Sunday by the Los Angeles Times, and a copy was obtained by journalists.
The five experts have mandates that cover torture, freedom of religion, health, independent judiciary and arbitrary detention. They started working together in June 2004 to monitor conditions at Guantanamo Bay.
Important UN group
They were appointed to their three-year terms by the 53-nation UN Human Rights Commission, the global body’s rights watchdog.
The US holds about 500 people on suspicion of links to al-Qaida or Afghanistan’s ousted Taliban government at the base in Guantanamo. It has filed charges against 10 detainees.
The draft report, which will be presented to the next session of the commission, dismissed the US claim that the “war on terror” constitutes an armed conflict.
It also said the detainees at Guantanamo Bay had a right to challenge their detention, and that right was being violated.
Criticism
The report said: “In the case of the Guantanamo Bay detainees, the US executive operates as judge, as prosecutor, and as defence counsel. This constitutes serious violations of various guarantees of the right to a fair trial.”
The five experts had sought invitations from the United States to visit Guantanamo Bay since 2002. When it was offered last year, they turned it down because they were told they would not be allowed to interview detainees.
On Monday, US officials faulted the experts for rejecting the invitation, saying it undermined the accuracy of their findings.
Uighur case
Meanwhile, lawyers for two Chinese Muslims held at Guantanamo Bay want a federal appeals court to order their release inside the US.
In court papers filed on Monday, lawyers for Abu Bakker Qassim and A’Del Abdu al-Hakim, captured in Pakistan in 2001, said they should be released because the US military found that they are not “enemy combatants”.
The lawyers want the appellate court to overturn a ruling by U.S. District Judge James Robertson, who ruled in December that the men are being detained illegally but said he could not force the U.S. government to release them.
The two men, along with several other Uighurs, have been held at Guantanamo Bay since 2002 because the US government has been unable to find a country willing to accept them. US officials cannot send them back to China because of the possibility they would be tortured or killed.
Treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay constitutes torture in some cases and violates international law, a leaked UN draft report says.
The document, seen by the Los Angeles Times, suggests that investigators will recommend the prison camp is shut down.
It also questions the legal status of the camp and the classification of detainees as enemy combatants.
The US State Department has criticised the draft report as “hearsay”.
‘Force-fed’
The Los Angeles Times published the draft report in its paper on Monday and spoke to one of the authors, the UN special raporteur on torture, Manfred Novak.
“We very, very carefully considered all of the arguments posed by the US government. There are no conclusions that are easily drawn. But we concluded that the situation in several areas violates international law and conventions on human rights and torture,” Mr Nowak told the LA Times.
The report suggests some of the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay meets the definition of torture under the UN Convention Against Torture.
This includes the force-feeding of hunger strikers through nasal tubes and the simultaneous use of several interrogation techniques such as prolonged solitary confinement and exposure to extreme temperatures, noise and light.
The UN team also questions the legal status of the Guantanamo camp.
It says insufficient effort has been made to prove that the inmates really are enemy combatants.
It also recommends the prison camp is shut down.
“The US government should close Guantanamo Bay detention facilities without further delay,” the report says. “The US government should either expeditiously bring all Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial … or release them without further delay.”
‘Spurious claims’
Mr Nowak was one of five UN envoys who interviewed former prisoners, detainees’ lawyers and families during the past 18 months.
nvestigators rejected an invitation to tour the base in Cuba because they would not have been allowed to interview the prisoners directly.
The US State Department has criticised the findings.
“Just because they decided not to take up the US government on the offer to go to Guantanamo Bay does not automatically give [them] the right to publish a report that is merely hearsay and not based on fact,” spokesman Sean McCormack said.
UN officials will include responses from the US government before the report is officially released at the end of the week.
Mr Nowak says that nothing of substance will be altered when the final report is issued.
The investigation was ordered by the UN Commission on Human Rights.
The camp at Guantanamo Bay was set up in 2002 to hold foreign terror suspects, many of them captured in Afghanistan.
It currently houses around 500 suspects.
By Larisa Alexandrovna
February 13, 2006
The unmasking of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson by White House officials in 2003 caused significant damage to U.S. national security and its ability to counter nuclear proliferation abroad, RAW STORY has learned.
According to current and former intelligence officials, Plame Wilson, who worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran.
Speaking under strict confidentiality, intelligence officials revealed heretofore unreported elements of Plame’s work. Their accounts suggest that Plame’s outing was more serious than has previously been reported and carries grave implications for U.S. national security and its ability to monitor Iran’s burgeoning nuclear program.
While many have speculated that Plame was involved in monitoring the nuclear proliferation black market, specifically the proliferation activities of Pakistan’s nuclear “father,” A.Q. Khan, intelligence sources say that her team provided only minimal support in that area, focusing almost entirely on Iran.
Plame declined to comment through her husband, Joseph Wilson.
Valerie Plame first became a household name when her identity was disclosed by conservative columnist Robert Novak on July 14, 2003. The column came only a week after her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, had written an op-ed for the New York Times asserting that White House officials twisted pre-war intelligence on Iraq. Her outing was seen as political retaliation for Wilson’s criticism of the Administration’s claim that Iraq sought uranium from Niger for a nuclear weapons program.
Her case has drawn international attention and resulted in the indictment of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, on five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and making false statements. Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who is leading the probe, is still pursuing Deputy Chief of Staff and Special Advisor to President Bush, Karl Rove. His investigation remains open.
The damages
Intelligence sources would not identify the specifics of Plame’s work. They did, however, tell RAW STORY that her outing resulted in “severe” damage to her team and significantly hampered the CIA’s ability to monitor nuclear proliferation.
Plame’s team, they added, would have come in contact with A.Q. Khan’s network in the course of her work on Iran.
While Director of Central Intelligence Porter Goss has not submitted a formal damage assessment to Congressional oversight committees, the CIA’s Directorate of Operations did conduct a serious and aggressive investigation, sources say.
Intelligence sources familiar with the damage assessment say that what is called a “counter intelligence assessment to agency operations” was conducted on the orders of the CIA’s then-Deputy Director of the Directorate of Operations, James Pavitt.
Former CIA counterintelligence officer Larry Johnson believes that such an assessment would have had to be done for the CIA to have referred the case to the Justice Department.
“An exposure like that required an immediate operational and counter intelligence damage assessment,” Johnson said. “That was done. The results were written up but not in a form for submission to anyone outside of CIA.”
One former counterintelligence official described the CIA’s reasons for not seeking Congressional assistance on the matter as follows: “[The CIA Leadership] made a conscious decision not to do a formal inquiry because they knew it might become public,” the source said. “They referred it [to the Justice Department] instead because they believed a criminal investigation was needed.”
The source described the findings of the assessment as showing “significant damage to operational equities.”
Another counterintelligence official, also wishing to remain anonymous due to the nature of the subject matter, described “operational equities” as including both people and agency operations that involve the “cover mechanism,” “front companies,” and other CIA officers and assets.
Three intelligence officers confirmed that other CIA non-official cover officers were compromised, but did not indicate the number of people operating under non-official cover that were affected or the way in which these individuals were impaired. None of the sources would say whether there were American or foreign casualties as a result of the leak.
Several intelligence officials described the damage in terms of how long it would take for the agency to recover. According to their own assessment, the CIA would be impaired for up to “ten years” in its capacity to adequately monitor nuclear proliferation on the level of efficiency and accuracy it had prior to the White House leak of Plame Wilson’s identity.
A.Q. Khan
While Plame’s work did not specifically focus on the A.Q. Khan ring, named after Pakistani scientist Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the network and its impact on nuclear proliferation and the region should not be minimized, primarily because the Khan network was the major supplier of WMD technology for Iran.
Dr. Khan instituted the proliferation market during the 1980s and supplied many countries in the Middle East and elsewhere with uranium enrichment technology, including Libya, Iran and North Korea. Enriched uranium is used to make weaponized nuclear devices.
The United States forced the Pakistan government to dismiss Khan for his proliferation activities in March of 2001, but he remains largely free and acts as an adviser to the Pakistani government.
According to intelligence expert John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org, U.S. officials were not aware of the extent of the proliferation until around the time of Khan’s dismissal.
“It slowly dawned on them that the collaboration between Pakistan, North Korea and Iran was an ongoing and serious problem,” Pike said. “It was starting to sink in on them that it was one program doing business in three locations and that anything one of these countries had they all had.”
After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Pakistan became the United States’ chief regional ally in the war on terror.
The revelation that Iran was the focal point of Plame’s work raises new questions as to possible other motivating factors in the White House’s decision to reveal the identity of a CIA officer working on tracking a WMD supply network to Iran, particularly when the very topic of Iran’s possible WMD capability is of such concern to the Administration.
By Allan Sloan
Wednesday, February 8, 2006
If you read enough numbers, you never know what you’ll find. Take President Bush and private Social Security accounts.
Last year, even though Bush talked endlessly about the supposed joys of private accounts, he never proposed a specific plan to Congress and never put privatization costs in the budget. But this year, with no fanfare whatsoever, Bush stuck a big Social Security privatization plan in the federal budget proposal, which he sent to Congress on Monday.
His plan would let people set up private accounts starting in 2010 and would divert more than $700 billion of Social Security tax revenues to pay for them over the first seven years.
If this comes as a surprise to you, have no fear. You’re not alone. Bush didn’t pitch private Social Security accounts in his State of the Union message last week.
First, he drew a mocking standing ovation from Democrats by saying that “Congress did not act last year on my proposal to save Social Security,” even though, as I said, he’d never submitted specific legislation.
Then he seemed to be kicking the Social Security problem a few years down the road in typical Washington fashion when he asked Congress “to join me in creating a commission to examine the full impact of baby boom retirements on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid,” adding that the commission would be bipartisan “and offer bipartisan solutions.”
But anyone who thought that Bush would wait for bipartisanship to deal with Social Security was wrong. Instead, he stuck his own privatization proposals into his proposed budget.
“The Democrats were laughing all the way to the funeral of Social Security modernization,” White House spokesman Trent Duffy told me in an interview Tuesday, but “the president still cares deeply about this. ” Duffy asserted that Bush would have been remiss not to include in the budget the cost of something that he feels so strongly about, and he seemed surprised at my surprise that Social Security privatization had been written into the budget without any advance fanfare.
Duffy said privatization costs were included in the midyear budget update that the Office of Management and Budget released last July 30, so it was logical for them to be in the 2007 budget proposals. But I sure didn’t see this coming – and I wonder how many people outside of the White House did.
Nevertheless, it’s here. Unlike Bush’s generalized privatization talk of last year, we’re now talking detailed numbers. On page 321 of the budget proposal, you see the privatization costs: $24.182 billion in fiscal 2010, $57.429 billion in fiscal 2011 and another $630.533 billion for the five years after that, for a seven-year total of $712.144 billion.
In the first year of private accounts, people would be allowed to divert up to 4 percent of their wages covered by Social Security into what Bush called “voluntary private accounts.” The maximum contribution to such accounts would start at $1,100 annually and rise by $100 a year through 2016.
It’s not clear how big a reduction in the basic benefit Social Security recipients would have to take in return for being able to set up these accounts, or precisely how the accounts would work.
Bush also wants to change the way Social Security benefits are calculated for most people by adopting so-called progressive indexing. Lower-income people would continue to have their Social Security benefits tied to wages, but the benefits paid to higher-paid people would be tied to inflation.
Wages have typically risen 1.1 percent a year more than inflation, so over time, that disparity would give lower-paid and higher-paid people essentially the same benefit. However, higher-paid workers would be paying substantially more into the system than lower-paid people would.
This means that although progressive indexing is an attractive idea from a social-justice point of view, it would reduce Social Security’s political support by making it seem more like welfare than an earned benefit.
Bush is right, of course, when he says in his budget proposal that Social Security in its current form is unsustainable. But there are plenty of ways to fix it besides offering private accounts as a substitute for part of the basic benefit.
Bush’s 2001 Social Security commission had members of both parties, but they had to agree in advance to support private accounts. Their report, which had some interesting ideas, went essentially nowhere.
What remains to be seen is whether this time around Bush follows through on forming a bipartisan commission and whether he can get credible Democrats to join it. Dropping numbers onto your opponents is a great way to stick your finger in their eye. But will it get the Social Security job done? That, my friends, is a whole other story.
Sat Feb 11, 10:08 AM ET
CAMBRIDGE, Md. – The eavesdropping tables were turned on President Bush on Friday. The president apparently believed he was speaking privately when he talked about listening in without a warrant on domestic communications with suspected al-Qaida terrorists overseas. But reporters were the ones doing the listening in this time.
The incident happened at a House Republican retreat. After six minutes of public remarks by the president, reporters were ushered out. “I support the free press, let’s just get them out of the room,” Bush said, intending to speak behind closed doors with fellow Republicans and take lawmakers’ questions.
When reporters left, Bush spoke about the National Security Agency program that he authorized four years ago and which has drawn criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike.
However, the microphones stayed on for a few minutes. That allowed journalists back at the White House to eavesdrop on Bush’s defense of the eavesdropping. His private statements were basically no different from what he’s said in public.
“I want to share some thoughts with you before I answer your questions,” Bush began. “First of all, I expect this conversation we’re about to have to stay in the room. I know that’s impossible in Washington.”
He was right.
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this is a stereogram. to view it, let your eyes cross, so that there appears to be three images, and focus your gaze on the image in the middle… something interesting will happen in the center of the middle image. if you need a hint, take a look here and try again… if you still can’t see it, the answer is here.
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more updates to various picture galleries. more to come as time goes on.
went to a “rehearsal” for sunday’s performance last night. of the 25 people that have confirmed that they are going to be in the performance, only six showed up for what looks like it’s going to be the only rehearsal that we’re going to have before then, which isn’t too encouraging, particularly since we’re going to be performing in the dark with fire… this morning i got up, took moe to work, shipped stuff out, and came home before 9:00. we bought a collapsible dog crate from costco, that broke over the weekend, so i called and made arrangements to take it back, but i don’t know if i’ll get another one or if they don’t have any more in stock… and i probably won’t know until i actually get there.
Religious Discrimination
For the second time in as many months, Starbucks management has kicked SWU member Suley Ayala out of the workplace for wearing her modest Pentagram necklace. Ms. Ayala is a practicing Wiccan and as a religious observance never takes off the necklace. She wore the necklace at Starbucks without interruption for three years until the company started harassing her after she and a group of her co-workers went public as members of the Starbucks Workers Union on November 18, 2005. Since then various management officials have badgered her and sent her home for refusing to take off the necklace. Ms. Ayala is extremely distraught and understandably angry.
Management can’t even get its story straight, sometimes saying no religious symbols are allowed and other times saying the necklace is too distracting. All the while, baristas wearing crosses of the same modest size have never been disciplined. Our opinion is that Starbucks is exploiting Suley’s non-traditional religion to retaliate against her for union activity.
The Fight Back
As a mother of four working hard to make ends meet, being disrespected by the company and losing a day’s earnings are the last things Ms. Ayala needs. We’re asking people of good will from all religions or no religion at all to join our fight. An indigenous Ecuadorian, Suley has struggled hard to win material gains on the job for her family and she’s not about to back down on her right to freely practice her religion.
Last Tuesday after Suley was sent home following a lull in the harassment, a co-worker and fellow union member asked her for the necklace. Tomer Malchi, a
Jew, put the necklace on and he too was confronted by management. In a moving act, Mr. Malchi refused to take off the Pentagram in solidarity with his sister worker. He was ousted from the workplace. Since then SWU members and supporters have been leafleting in front of the store to get the word out about Starbucks’ reprehensible conduct. Suley Ayala has filed a religious discrimination complaint against Starbucks with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. However, the government won’t win this fight for us, grassroots action will. In response to the union’s outrage, Starbucks has backed down a bit. Management now says that Ms. Ayala can wear a miniature version of the Pentagram. But that’s not enough. Suley wore her Pentagram without incident for three years. Why should she be arbitrarily disciplined now that she is a union member? We demand that she be allowed to wear her original Pentagram and receive compensation for the days she was sent home early.
Take Action
Before we formed the Starbucks Workers Union, the tyrants at the company could treat us like servants and we had no recourse to fight back. No longer. We will not tolerate religious discrimination against any of our members whether Wiccan, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist or atheist, or any other world view. Please take a stand with us for religious liberty in the workplace. Together we can create a truly global labor movement.
Call Starbucks District Manager Kim Vetrano NOW and demand that Suley be allowed to freely observe her religion while at work and that she be compensated for the work hours she missed:
Phone: (646) 256-9929
E-Mail: [email protected]
Fax: (917)591-8599
Seattle, 24 – 25 February, 3 – 4, 10 – 11 March, 2006
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here’s my johari window, which is really more of a “meme” than the other things that people call memes. let’s see what it does…
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Welcome to the Community of Dildo.
Our community of Dildo is situated in a deep narrow cove at the entrance point of Dildo Arm, Dildo and South Dildo. It is at the South side of Trinity Bay, some 96 km. from St. John’s. This community is close to good fishing grounds and the cod fishery was always the basis for this community. Later in the twentieth century, this community became a flourishing whaling community. A museum in the nearby town of South Dildo shows the history of whaling. Our school is in Dildo. There is another school called Woodland Junior High located here, too. However, we have other buildings here. There is the Interpretation Centre for our town, which has fishery-related artifacts from the past. Outside this museum there is a large giant squid, of actual size, made from fiberglass. There is also a tepee made with sticks and covered with seal skin.
Our commmunity also has a Lion’s Center, which has a large playground where boys and girls can go to play safely. We can play field hockey, soccer, tennis, and volleyball. The Lions Club also sponsors many activities for our community such as parities, dances, and suppers. This building is used by many groups throughout the community.
Dildo, today with a population of about 700 people is a very interesting community to visit.
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1. (left) a gallery of black and white pictures that were taken during an acid trip in approximately 1983. these photos are on fading negatives that have never been printed, so the quality is a little poor, but it definitely catches the feelings that i was having at the time. location is downtown seattle, and the sea tac airport (this was a long time before 11 september, 2001…
2. (right) a gallery of various pictures of ezra from 1984 to 1989 or thereabouts.
3. (below) a gallery of photos from the past, including one that may be NSFW, so beware. also includes at least one that won’t be of any meaning to you unless you were there.
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4. (left, small) a gallery of some of the more interesting musical instruments and some of the more difficult jobs that have been repaired by Nataraja Music Service, and some of it’s different locations since 1986.
most of these galleries will expand as time goes on. i just discovered that i have the ability to process regular negatives into reasonably acceptible digital photos, and i have a huge quantity of negatives of a variety of subjects that have never been printed before, and plenty of time to scan them.
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huge photo update coming… wait for it.
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took moe to work so that i can have the car today. shipped stuff out. bought some screens. did some grocery shopping, but didn’t find what i wanted. i suspect that i won’t find it out here in the boonies, in spite of the fact that safeway is supposed to be more or less the same store regardless of where you find it. they had what i was looking for when we lived in renton, which is a lot closer to seattle, but far enough out that they could be pretty well assured of some indians coming in to the store, but out here in “unincorporated” king/pierce county, they’re not as likely to get people who want indian food, and i doubt they will carry an item that only one of their customers wants… it’s time to start making the rounds of the numerous small asian markets along highway 99, which i’ve been avoiding because the signs are in chinese or korean and i suspect that their knowledge of english is minimal at best… ’cause they’re bound to have something similar, and potentially a lot better…
we still haven’t heard anything new about the van, which is making me nervous since i have to use the car on wednesday during the time when i know moe will be wanting to use it, and even if that works out, i’m going to portland next friday and saturday, and then going directly to port townsend on sunday, so i’m going to need my car, more-or-less with no strings attached, and i’ve gotten no indication that those strings are going to be adequately attached to someone else’s car for that period of time. moe said that she was going to call them today, so i won’t start worrying about it just yet.
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it’s things like this that make me wonder how long it’s going to have to be before we, the people, take action to preserve this democracy against those who would take it from us, whether those people are our leaders or not.
Rove counting heads on the Senate Judiciary Committee
2/6/2006
The White House has been twisting arms to ensure that no Republican member votes against President Bush in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation of the administration’s unauthorized wiretapping.
Congressional sources said Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has threatened to blacklist any Republican who votes against the president. The sources said the blacklist would mean a halt in any White House political or financial support of senators running for re-election in November.
“It’s hardball all the way,” a senior GOP congressional aide said.
The sources said the administration has been alarmed over the damage that could result from the Senate hearings, which began on Monday, Feb. 6. They said the defection of even a handful of Republican committee members could result in a determination that the president violated the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Such a determination could lead to impeachment proceedings.
Over the last few weeks, Mr. Rove has been calling in virtually every Republican on the Senate committee as well as the leadership in Congress. The sources said Mr. Rove’s message has been that a vote against Mr. Bush would destroy GOP prospects in congressional elections.
“He’s [Rove] lining them up one by one,” another congressional source said.
Mr. Rove is leading the White House campaign to help the GOP in November’s congressional elections. The sources said the White House has offered to help loyalists with money and free publicity, such as appearances and photo-ops with the president.
Those deemed disloyal to Mr. Rove would appear on his blacklist. The sources said dozens of GOP members in the House and Senate are on that list.
So far, only a handful of GOP senators have questioned Mr. Rove’s tactics.
Some have raised doubts about Mr. Rove’s strategy of painting the Democrats, who have opposed unwarranted surveillance, as being dismissive of the threat posed by al Qaeda terrorists.
“Well, I didn’t like what Mr. Rove said, because it frames terrorism and the issue of terrorism and everything that goes with it, whether it’s the renewal of the Patriot Act or the NSA wiretapping, in a political context,” said Sen. Chuck Hagel, Nebraska Republican.
Q: Does the president think he should obey the law? He put his hand on the Bible twice to uphold the Constitution. Wiretapping is not legal under the circumstances without a warrant.
MR. MCCLELLAN: Well, I guess you didn’t pay attention to the attorney general’s hearing earlier today, because he walked through very clearly the rationale behind this program.
Q: There is no rationale —
MR. MCCLELLAN: And Helen, I think you have to ask —
Q: — (inaudible) — the law.
MR. MCCLELLAN: I think you have ask are we — well, he’s not — are we a nation at war.
Q: That’s not the question.
MR. MCCLELLAN: No, that is the issue here.
Q: The question is, the point is, there are means for him to go to — get a warrant to spy on people.
MR. MCCLELLAN: Enemy surveillance is critical to waging and winning war. It’s one of the traditional tools of war.
Q: But he says he doesn’t have running room —
MR. MCCLELLAN: The attorney general outlined very clearly today how previous administrations have used the same authority —
Q: That doesn’t make it legal.
MR. MCCLELLAN: — and cited the same — and cited the very same authority.
Q: (Inaudible) — they broke the law, that’s too bad.
MR. MCCLELLAN: And we’re going to continue doing everything we can —
Q: You know what happened to Nixon when he broke the law.
MR. MCCLELLAN: — within our power to protect the American people. This is a very different circumstance, and you know that.
Q: No, I don’t.
By Andrew Gumbel
08 February 2006
President George Bush led a crowd of 10,000 mourners at yesterday’s funeral for Coretta Scott King, one of the icons of the civil rights movement, only to squirm in his seat as one speaker after another invoked Mrs King’s spirit to lambast his administration on everything from the Iraq war to the response to last year’s Hurricane Katrina.
The lavish occasion, bringing together civil rights veterans, three former presidents, more than a dozen senators, musicians and poets at a megachurch in the suburbs of Atlanta, was both a tribute to the woman who carried on the campaigning legacy of her assassinated husband, Martin Luther King Jr, for almost 40 years and also an opportunity to invoke some of the Kings’ passionately outspoken rhetoric.
President Bush called Mrs King, who died 10 days ago at the age of 78, “one of the most admired Americans of our time”.
Her nearest and dearest pointedly did not return the compliment. “We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there,” said Joseph Lowery, who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Dr King more than 40 years ago, “but Coretta knew and we knew that there are weapons of misdirection right down here.”
The Rev Lowery issued a searing indictment of the Bush administration’s economic priorities. “For war billions more,” he said, “but no more for the poor.”
Far better received than President Bush was Bill Clinton, who won an enthusiastic ovation as he described how Mrs King might easily have given up the civil rights struggle after her husband’s assassination in 1968. Instead, he said, she asked herself “What am I going to do with the rest of my life?”
U.S. policy appears to be "we don’t torture unless it serves our purpose, and then we don’t admit it, or, preferably, let our ‘allies’ take care of it so that we can say it doesn’t reflect negatively on us"… 8/
By MARK SHERMAN
WASHINGTON – The U.S. government wants an Iraqi court to handle criminal charges against a naturalized American citizen who is being held in Iraq on suspicion that he is a senior operative of insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The man’s lawyers said he is innocent and likely to be tortured if he is handed over to the Iraqis.
The case is the first known instance in which the government has decided to allow an American to be tried in the new Iraqi legal system. At least four other U.S. citizens suspected of aiding the insurgency had been held in Iraq, the Pentagon has said.
Shawqi Omar, 44, who once served in the Minnesota National Guard, has been held since late 2004 in U.S.-run military prisons as an enemy combatant. He has not been charged with a crime or been given access to a lawyer, said Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer representing Omar’s family in the United States.
The government said Omar, who also holds Jordanian citizenship, was harboring an Iraqi insurgent and four Jordanian fighters at the time of his arrest and also had bomb-making materials. He is described in court papers as a relative of Zarqawi who was plotting to kidnap foreigners from Baghdad hotels.
Separately, Omar, Zarqawi and 11 others have been indicted by a Jordanian court on charges they plotted a chemical attack against Jordan’s intelligence agency.
Omar’s family said he is a businessman who was seeking reconstruction contracts in Iraq.
The family is asking a U.S. judge to step in and force the government to charge Omar with a crime and put him on trial in the United States, or release him. They also are seeking to prevent Omar’s transfer to Iraqi custody, which they said would subject the Sunni Muslim to torture by Shiite-dominated authorities.
U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina last week issued an order in Washington temporarily blocking Omar’s transfer to Iraqi custody. The order is set to expire on Monday, but the judge could extend it.
The Justice Department weighed in on Tuesday, arguing that Urbina has no business intervening on Omar’s behalf and denying that Omar is even in U.S. custody.
Instead, the department said in court papers, Omar was captured by the U.S.-led multinational force in Iraq and remains in its custody, the department said in court papers. The multinational force is independent of the U.S. government, the department said.
In any event, Omar would not be handed over to the Iraqis unless he is convicted in an Iraqi court, the government said.
Hafetz, a lawyer at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, said the government is resorting to a legal gimmick to keep Omar’s case out of American courts. “It’s legally incorrect and factually incorrect to say the U.S. does not have control of him,” Hafetz said.
In July, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said five unnamed Americans, including one who also had Jordanian citizenship, were in U.S. military custody in Iraq. Whitman said then that the government had not decided whether their cases would be turned over to the Justice Department or to the new Iraqi legal system, which has handled the prosecution of other foreign fighters who came to Iraq to fight the U.S.-led occupation and Iraqi government.
In March, Matthew Waxman, the Pentagon’s deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, said a panel of three U.S. officers determined the Jordanian-American was an enemy combatant and not entitled to prisoner-of-war status under the Geneva Convention. The description provided by Waxman and other officials matches Omar’s biography as contained in the government’s court papers.
In its filing Tuesday, the Justice Department said the officers were part of the multinational force.
Omar became a U.S. citizen in 1986, two years after he served in the National Guard. Omar spent about 11 months in the Guard before being discharged in November 1984 without completing his training, said Shannon Purvis, a spokesperson for the Minnesota National Guard. Omar received an “uncharacterized discharge,” meaning he was discharged for such things as health problems or poor performance, Purvis said.
Non-citizens can serve in the Guard as long as they obtain citizenship within eight years of joining, Purvis said.
also:
U.S. Navy constructs permanent bases in Iraq
Top 10 ‘Conspiracy Theories’ about George W. Bush Part I & Part II
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more updates for Seattle Agility Center including a new EAT page, and pictures for another, plus a surreptitious update to two more EAT pages in an attempt to start organising their web site a little more logically. more updates for Capitol Hill Neighborhood Acupuncture, including changing the message, link and order on a javascript rollover that i didn’t create, which is pretty good considering that i never really learned javascript. all in all, they came out pretty well, in that you can’t tell that they’re not original unless you really look, but the fact that his site doesn’t validate really bugs me and i want to change it… unfortunately that means totally replacing the whole site, and not just chris’ part of it, so for now i’m keeping my hands to myself. got an order for bhutanese temple incense today that i was able to prepare for shipping within 5 minutes of receiving the order. i like it when that happens.
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when i had my injury, i lost consciousness on the way to the hospital, and regained consciousness 10 days later. during that period of time i was apparently conscious and responding to commands, but i don’t remember any of it. instead
opening my skull and performing surgery is like opening the hood and performing maintenance. the surgeon and the auto mechanic perform the same services, only on a different level.
a big show-piece with a large chorus of men and women dressed in 50’s-style, white uniforms. this also features a young, eager person of indetermite sex, all in a white 50’s-syle uniform, although different from the rest of them, buying an alchohol-powered tow-truck from a somewhat-sleazy car dealer in a white, pin-striped suit.
open with the imression that it’s going to be a musical about cars, then morph into psychedelic brain-surgery with oversized, flashing backgroud of angiogram graphics, then finish with explanation of how brain surgery and auto mechanics are the same thing.
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introduction: about cars and trucks, how they are used every day, how they break down and who the people are who fix them. music is ragtime/dixieland/marching band style.
the chorus is in white tuxedos with hats and canes and are doing complicated dance steps in a grid pattern, on multiple levels
introduction of the young, eager, idealistic person of indeterminate sex: how s/he wants to be one of these people.
the person should be clean-shaven, with a blonde pageboy bob, and slightly chubby, in a white uniform with a tie, and a floppy uniform hat with a bill. throughout the performance, it should not be made obvious whether the person is male or female.
the song of the somewhat-sleazy used-truck salesman.
the somewhat-sleazy used-truck salesman should be a short, skinny person with a pencil-thin moustache and greased back hair in a grey pinstriped suit that’s slightly too big, and shoes that would match if they weren’t clown-sized.
duet between the person of indeterminate sex and the somewhat-sleazy used-truck salesman: combining his/her interest with becoming a tow-truck driver, lack of skill and desire to learn with the somewhat-sleazy used-truck salesman’s desire to sell something, anything to anyone at all.
an alcohol-powered truck appears: alcohol versus gasoline – the differences and similarities, whether gas or alcohol has more power.
the truck is sold, much to the amazement of everyone. the person of indeterminate sex is seen driving down a dirt road lined with trees.
we are left with an image of the truck lumbering off into rolling hills in the distance, on a dirt farm road, lined with trees, with the person of indeterminate sex waving their uniform hat out the window.
we need some repair: the truck is put to use, much to the amazement and delight of everyone… or could it be that the tow-truck itself needs repair? we may never know, because:
psychedelic morph: the music changes, the uniform and tuxedos change from white to red and everything is overlayed with movies of angiograms.
the music changes gradually from ragtime/dixieland/marching band style music to heavy rock with screaming guitars
introduction of the two repair men: one is a doctor, with bag, mask, occulus and stethescope, the other is a car mechanic in a grease stained, pin-striped coverall (the return of the somewhat-sleazy used truck salesman?) and cap, with a wrench and hand rag, but for the most part they move and act as one person.
the repair: the hood goes up and we tinker with the engine. the skull opens up and we tinker with the brain. the movies change to stills of angiograms but there is still an overall red cast to everything.
the repairmen: auto-mechanics and brain-surgeons are the same thing; both make things go.
the repairmen part 2: auto-mechanics perform brain-surgery on a car while brain-surgeons perform engine maintenance on a human. complex, indian-style pas-de-deux with repairmen.
finale: has this performance been about auto maintenance or brain surgery?
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Army demanded $700 from man who was wounded
By Eric Eyre
February 07, 2006
The last time 1st Lt. William "Eddie" Rebrook IV saw his body armor, he was lying on a stretcher in Iraq, his arm shattered and covered in blood.
A field medic tied a tourniquet around Rebrook’s right arm to stanch the bleeding from shrapnel wounds. Soldiers yanked off his blood-soaked body armor. He never saw it again.
But last week, Rebrook was forced to pay $700 for that body armor, blown up by a roadside bomb more than a year ago.
He was leaving the Army for good because of his injuries. He turned in his gear at his base in Fort Hood, Texas. He was informed there was no record that the body armor had been stripped from him in battle.
He was told to pay nearly $700 or face not being discharged for weeks, perhaps months.
Rebrook, 25, scrounged up the cash from his Army buddies and returned home to Charleston last Friday.
"I last saw the [body armor] when it was pulled off my bleeding body while I was being evacuated in a helicopter," Rebrook said. "They took it off me and burned it."
But no one documented that he lost his Kevlar body armor during battle, he said. No one wrote down that armor had apparently been incinerated as a biohazard.
Rebrook’s mother, Beckie Drumheler, said she was saddened – and angry – when she learned that the Army discharged her son with a $700 bill. Soldiers who serve their country, those who put their lives on the line, deserve better, she said.
"It’s outrageous, ridiculous and unconscionable," Drumheler said. "I wanted to stand on a street corner and yell through a megaphone about this."
Rebrook was standing in the turret of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle when the roadside bomb exploded Jan. 11, 2005. The explosion fractured his arm and severed an artery. A Black Hawk helicopter airlifted him to a combat support hospital in Baghdad.
He was later flown to a hospital in Germany for surgery, then on to Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital in Washington, D.C., for more surgeries. Doctors operated on his arm seven times in all.
But Rebrook’s right arm never recovered completely. He still has range of motion problems. He still has pain when he turns over to sleep at night.
Even with the injury, Rebrook said he didn’t want to leave the Army. He said the "medical separation" discharge was the Army’s decision, not his.
So after eight months at Fort Hood, he gathered up his gear and started the "long process "to leave the Army for good.
Things went smoothly until officers asked him for his "OTV," his "outer tactical vest," or body armor, which was missing. A battalion supply officer had failed to document the loss of the vest in Iraq.
"They said that I owed them $700," Rebrook said. "It was like ‘thank you for your service, now here’s the bill for $700.’ I had to pay for it if I wanted to get on with my life."
In the past, the Army allowed to soldiers to write memos, explaining the loss and destruction of gear, Rebrook said.
But a new policy required a "report of survey" from the field that documented the loss.
Rebrook said he knows other soldiers who also have been forced to pay for equipment destroyed in battle.
"It’s a combat loss," he said. "It shouldn’t be a cost passed on to the soldier. If a soldier’s stuff is hit by enemy fire, he shouldn’t have to pay for it."
Rebrook said he tried to get a battalion commander to sign a waiver on the battle armor, but the officer declined. Rebrook was told he’d have to supply statements from witnesses to verify the body armor was taken from him and burned.
"There’s a complete lack of empathy from senior officers who don’t know what it’s like to be a combat soldier on the ground," Rebrook said. "There’s a whole lot of people who don’t want to help you. They’re more concerned with process than product."
Rebrook, who graduated with honors from the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., spent more than four years on active duty. He served six months in Iraq.
Now, Rebrook is sending out resumes, trying to find a job. He plans to return to college to take a couple of pre-med classes and apply to medical school. He wants to be a doctor someday.
"From being an infantryman, I know what it’s like to hurt people," Rebrook said. "But now I’d like to help people."
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If there is someone on your friends list who makes your world a better place just because they exist and who you would not have met (in real life or not) without the internet, then post this same sentence in your journal.
you know who you are… 😉
oh, by the way… i have an interview today. i was feeling really discouraged the other day, so i went to the martin luther king center web site and found a volunteer position at a local center, helping people who lack computer skills gain them. i don’t know whether this will be in the form of teaching classes, or just being overseer for a computer lab somewhere, and i’m not sure how long i will last before i go nuts, but it’s better than doing nothing.
EDIT: barring anything negative on my background check (which i can’t imagine, but anything is possible, especially these days) i will have a five-hour-per-week volunteer position on or about the 20th. whee.
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Hybrid Elephant report: i shipped out two orders on saturday, got one ready to ship out today, and, if fedex gets here before i have to leave, i’ll have one to ship out tomorrow. average successful requests per day is 988, and has been going up steadily during the past few weeks, but average successful requests for pages per day is only 347, which is fewer than it was last week or the week before, which tells me that i’ve been getting a ton of hits from robots, but fewer actual people… which is good in a way, i suppose, but i’d rather have paying customers than lookie-loo robots, especially when the robots have been looking places that they shouldn’t recently anyway… 8/ i got a big order from aroma harbor of franklin, georgia, which i had to refund because they need the fragrance right away and i am completely out of stock of almost everything they ordered. i’m probably still going to order it, but now it can wait until i actually have need of it.
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Grandpa Al Lewis, actor/politician/restaurant owner, dies at 95
Larry Mcshane, Canadian Press
Saturday, February 04, 2006
NEW YORK (AP) – Al Lewis, the cigar-chomping patriarch of The Munsters whose work as a basketball scout, restaurateur and political candidate never eclipsed his role as Grandpa from the television sitcom, died after years of failing health. He was 95.
Lewis, with his wife at his bedside, passed away Friday night, said Bernard White, program director at WBAI-FM, where the actor hosted a weekly radio program. White made the announcement on the air during the Saturday slot where Lewis usually appeared.
“To say that we will miss his generous, cantankerous, engaging spirit is a profound understatement,” White said.
Lewis, sporting a somewhat cheesy Dracula outfit, became a pop culture icon playing the irascible father-in-law to Fred Gwynne’s ever-bumbling Herman Munster on the 1964-66 television show. He was also one of the stars of another classic TV comedy, playing Officer Leo Schnauzer on Car 54, Where Are You?
But Lewis’ life off the small screen ranged far beyond his acting antics. A former ballplayer at Thomas Jefferson High School, he achieved notoriety as a basketball talent scout familiar to coaching greats like Jerry Tarkanian and Red Auerbach.
He operated a successful Greenwich Village restaurant, Grandpa’s, where he was a regular presence – chatting with customers, posing for pictures, signing autographs.
Just two years short of his 90th birthday, a ponytailed Lewis ran as the Green party candidate against incumbent Governor George Pataki. Lewis campaigned against draconian drug laws and the death penalty, while going to court in a losing battle to have his name appear on the ballot as Grandpa Al Lewis.
He didn’t defeat Pataki, but managed to collect more 52,000 votes.
Lewis was born Albert Meister in upstate New York before his family moved to Brooklyn, where the 6-foot-1 teen began a lifelong love affair with basketball. He later became a vaudeville and circus performer, but his career didn’t take off until television did the same.
Lewis, as Officer Schnauzer, played opposite Gwynne’s Officer Francis Muldoon in Car 54, Where Are You? – a comedy about a Bronx police precinct that aired from 1961-63. One year later, the duo appeared together in The Munsters, taking up residence at the fictional 1313 Mockingbird Lane.
The series, about a family of clueless creatures plunked down in middle America, was a success and ran through 1966. It forever locked Lewis in as the memorably twisted character; decades later, strangers would greet him on the street with shouts of Grandpa!
Unlike some television stars, Lewis never complained about getting typecast and made appearances in character for decades.
“Why would I mind?” he asked in a 1997 interview. “It pays my mortgage.”
Lewis rarely slowed down, opening his restaurant and hosting his WBAI radio program. At one point during the ’90s, he was a frequent guest on the Howard Stern radio show, once sending the shock jock diving for the delay button by leading an undeniably obscene chant against the Federal Communications Commission.
He also popped up in a number of movies, including the acclaimed They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? and Married to the Mob. Lewis reprised his role of Schnauzer in the movie remake of Car 54, and appeared as a guest star on television shows such as Taxi, Green Acres and Lost in Space.
But in 2003, Lewis was hospitalized for an angioplasty. Complications during surgery led to an emergency bypass and the amputation of his right leg below the knee and all the toes on his left foot. Lewis spent the next month in a coma.
A year later, he was back offering his recollections of a seminal punk band on the DVD Ramones Raw.
He is survived by his wife, Karen Ingenthron-Lewis, three sons and four grandchildren.
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| You Are Gonzo the |
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“almost” any stunt?
although i get the impression that it was a close race between gonzo and animal.
we just lost the super bowl…
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the electricity was out yesterday… it’s what we get, i suppose, for living at the end of a rural gravel road that you have to drive down another gravel road to get to. i suppose the idea of a generator wouldn’t be too out of the question, but not until i can afford a workshop.
the weather was fairly nice today, so i put up the tarp over the holes in the roof, and put roofing goo on the leaky spots near the chimney. woo hoo.
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hrmph!
i was forced to take down a section of the web that has been there for at least 5 years that i can recall, and probably a lot longer than that, because the Caliphate O.T.O.’s web crawler finally figured out where i had stashed Liber CDXIV. in spite of all their bluster, they haven’t been able to prove that they actually own the copyright to a piece that should be in the public domain by now anyway, but i’ve had to take it down because i can’t afford to defend myself against a group who thinks it’s okay to violate uncle al’s specific request that people involved in the great work not file lawsuits against one another… feh!
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here it is, three days after the SOTU, and already bush has broken two of his promises already… so bush lied. who is surprised? what surprises me is that we’re not in the middle of an impeachment already. don’t any of you remember NIXON? what is so different about bush?
Feb, 02, 2006
By Ryan Singel
President Bush has moved slowly to fill top civil liberty and privacy posts.
The powerful Office of the Director of National Intelligence, created by the Intelligence Reform Act, must have a civil liberties protection officer who is charged with ensuring that the "use of technologies sustain, and do not erode, privacy protections," according to the law. But it took the Bush administration a full year after passage of the bill to fill the position last Dec. 7.
The current DNI is former U.S. ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte. His deputy is ex-National Security Agency chief Gen. Michael Hayden, who, for the last month, has been vigorously defending the NSA eavesdropping program that circumvented federal wiretapping laws. Alexander W. Joel was appointed to the civil liberties post days before The New York Times revealed that the NSA was spying on Americans’ overseas communications.
Bush mentioned the spy plan in his State of the Union address Tuesday, calling it a "terrorist surveillance program to aggressively pursue the international communications of suspected al-Qaida operatives and affiliates to and from America."
The White House has also failed to nominate a replacement chief privacy officer for the Department of Homeland Security, a post that’s been vacant since September when Nuala O’Connor Kelly left the administration to become General Electric’s privacy officer. The office is currently being run by O’Connor Kelly’s former deputy, Maureen Cooney.
Congress, too, has been slacking in the privacy arena. A five-member Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board mandated by law in 2004 remains in limbo as board members await congressional confirmation. The board is supposed to report to Congress yearly and oversee antiterrorism policies.
The privacy board was also created by the Reform Act, which translated the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations into law. According to the 9/11 Commission report, the board should make sure that antiterrorism powers "actually materially enhance security and that there is adequate supervision of the executive’s use of the powers."
"The civil liberties board is supposed to be the first contact for the president to talk about privacy and intelligence matters," says Ari Schwartz, associate director of the Center for Democracy and Technology. "We didn’t know about the NSA piece when the intelligence-reform bill was put forward, but it would have been helpful to have the experts at the civil liberties board involved at the beginning."
Bush named the board’s members in June, but did not forward the nominations to the Senate until late September.
Carol E. Dinkins, a former deputy attorney general under President Reagan and a partner at Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ former law firm, is slated to head the commission, while Alan Charles Raul, who served under President George H.W. Bush, will be the vice chairman.
Both had confirmation hearings in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Nov. 8, but the committee will not likely vote on their nominations until at least early February, according to a commission staffer.
The Senate should move quickly, according to Peter Swire, an Ohio State University law professor and former chief counselor for privacy in the Clinton administration.
"Recent revelations show even more clearly why the board is needed," Swire said. "The White House has had no privacy officials, and having privacy expertise in the White House will reduce the chance of mistakes going forward."
The White House did not return a call for comment.
hmmm… this is odd… why do you suppose that nobody noticed this when it was happening back in july and august of last year!!
and while we’re at it, somebody needs to remind those people in china and iran that…
There is no such thing as a dirty word, nor is there a word so powerful that it’s going to send the listener to the lake of fire upon hearing it.
–Frank ZappaInformation doesn’t kill you.
–Frank Zappa
August 01, 2005
By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos
WASHINGTON – The Department of Defense has developed a new strategy in counterterrorism that would increase military activities on American soil, particularly in the area of intelligence gathering.
The move is sparking concern among civil liberties advocates and those who fear an encroaching military role in domestic law enforcement.
In an argument that eerily foreshadowed the July London terror attacks, the Pentagon in late June announced its "Strategy for Homeland Defense and Support," which would expand its reach domestically to prevent "enemy attacks aimed at Americans here at home."
The strategy, approved by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England on June 24, argues that the government needs a multi-layered, preventive approach to national defense in order to combat an unconventional enemy that will attack from anywhere, anytime and by any conceivable means.
"Transnational terrorist groups view the world as an integrated, global battlespace in which to exploit perceived U.S vulnerabilities, wherever they may be," reads the 40-page document that outlines the new plans.
"Terrorists seek to attack the United States and its centers of gravity at home and abroad and will use asymmetric means to achieve their ends, such as simultaneous mass casualty attacks," it said.
Critics say the fears raised by the Pentagon are being used as a justification for the military to conduct wider, more intrusive surveillance on American citizens.
"Do we want, as a free people, with the notion of privacy enshrined in the Constitution and based on the very clear limits and defined role of government, to be in a society where not just the police, but the military are on the street corners gathering intelligence on citizens, sharing that data, manipulating that data?" asked former Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., a constitutional law expert and civil libertarian.
"This document provides a blueprint for doing just that."
Barr said the new strategy is a back-door means of following through with a 2002 plan to create a massive, centralized information database using public and private records of individuals, called "Total Information Awareness." Congress killed TIA in 2003 because of civil liberties and privacy concerns.
Critics say they believe much of TIA lives on in some form through smaller, undisclosed military contracts. This latest plan, they say, is one way of jump-starting TIA’s initial goals.
"This is TIA back with a vengeance," said Barr. "What they have come up with here is a much vaguer and much broader concept that sounds more innocuous. [The Pentagon] is getting much smarter in how to sell these things."
The Defense Department report says its increased surveillance capabilities at home will adhere to constitutional and privacy protections, even though it emphasizes enhancing current "data mining" capabilities.
"Specifically, the department will develop automated tools to improve data fusion, analysis, and management, to track systematically large amounts of data and to detect, fuse and analyze aberrant patterns of activity, consistent with U.S. privacy protections," the report reads.
It will also develop "a cadre of specialized terrorism intelligence analysts within the defense intelligence community and deploy a number of these analysts to interagency centers for homeland defense and counter-terrorism analysis and operations," states the report.
Some national security experts agree that emboldened surveillance on domestic soil is necessary in the global War on Terror, and that such intelligence could prevent the kind of attacks perpetuated by homegrown terrorists in England on July 7 and 21.
"The Defense Department has always done intelligence operations in the United States. They have the legal right to do that. There is nothing new here," James Carafano, a homeland security analyst with The Heritage Foundation, told FOXNews.com. "There are no new threats to privacy or constitutionality. I just think it’s about doing [intelligence] more efficiently and effectively."
But John Pike, founder of GlobalSecurity.org , a clearinghouse of available intelligence and national security information, says it’s not so clear how much data the Pentagon will be collecting on citizens and whether it will be retaining, sharing and building individual dossiers. So far, the lack of detail leaves as many question as answers, he said.
"The bad news is there is certainly the possibility of a return to the sort of domestic surveillance that we saw in the 1950s and 1960s," Pike said.
Pentagon officials declined to comment on the variety of data it would gather and share, or how long it would retain files on individuals under the new homeland defense plan.
The Washington Post reported recently that among the databases being built by the Pentagon is a military recruitment list of individual high school and college students culled from commercial data brokers and other sources. The military is planning to share the database with federal and state law enforcement agencies if necessary, the Post reports.
A Defense Department spokesman said the military’s domestic role in homeland security will remain a supportive one, and the Pentagon will only provide resources when local, state and federal resources and capabilities "have been exceeded or do not exist."
"We have expanded activities in order to better execute support missions, but we are extremely sensitive to the historically restricted, limited role of the Defense Department," the spokesman told FOXNews.com in an e-mailed response to questions.
The Pentagon’s new strategy appears to dovetail with a recent report by The New York Times, that said the upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review, which outlines the future vision of the military and is due to Congress in February, will reflect a new approach in which the Defense Department will prepare to fight in one war theater at a time while putting the bulk of its resources into homeland defense.
The strategy approved by military officials in June also increases joint training exercises with first responders and other agencies as well as the creation of National Guard-staffed teams in case of a catastrophic attack.
The president would have to authorize the actual use of troops on military soil in order to adhere to the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits military involvement in domestic law enforcement. Pentagon officials say the new strategy won’t require that authorization.
But the strategy does includes more collaboration with law enforcement in "support" roles on all levels of counter-terrorism efforts as well as the monitoring of terrorist threats along the borders, in the air and on water.
"If they find information in the course of their business that might help other agencies, then they can share it. If other agencies in their own intelligence gathering find information that can help the Defense Department, they can share that," said Carafano. "I really don’t see any legal or constitutional issues here."
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos
WASHINGTON – Free speech advocates are frustrated with a host of American companies they say have been collaborating with oppressive regimes in countries like China, Iran and Saudi Arabia, to help them filter and monitor the Internet activity of their citizens.
Big technology names like Microsoft, Yahoo! and Cisco Systems have been criticized roundly in recent years for providing foreign governments with the tools they need to crack down on Internet use, but critics say they have not been able to do much more than complain.
"These companies’ lack of ethics is extremely worrisome," said Lucie Morillon, the Washington representative of Reporters Without Borders, an international advocacy group for journalists that monitors government repression of the Internet worldwide, documenting dissidents charged with breaking their country’s Internet laws. For instance, the organization reports that an estimated 60 "cyber-dissidents" are in Chinese jails today.
"It’s the role of watchdog organizations like ours — and any citizen who is willing — to let these companies know that this is a matter of human rights," Morillon said. "Write to these companies and make them feel bad."
Critics last month blasted Microsoft, the largest software company in the world, when it acknowledged that it was working with the Chinese government to censor its new Chinese-language Web portal and new free Web log tool, MSN Spaces.
In addition to the vigilant filtering of content transmitted through Web sites, e-mail, message boards, chat rooms and blogs, the Communist government in Beijing announced in June that everyone in China publishing a blog would have to register it with the government by the end of the month.
Already, anyone who opens a Web account in China must register it with police, according to the Open Net Initiative, a collaborative effort by the University of Toronto, Harvard University and the University of Cambridge.
"China’s Internet filtering regime is the most sophisticated effort of its kind in the world," ONI authors declared in a recent report on China. "The implications of this distorted online information environment for China’s users are profound, and disturbing."
According to the ONI, about 15 to 20 nations across the globe are actively filtering their citizens’ Internet access. In June, the group announced that Iran’s filtering efforts are reaching the sophisticated status of China.
"Iran is also one of a growing number of countries, particularly in the Middle East region, that rely upon commercial software developed by for-profit United States companies to carry out the core of its filtering regime," ONI’s report on Iran reads. "In effect, Iran outsources many of the decisions for what its citizens can access on the Internet to a United States company, which in turn profits from its complicity in such a regime."
ONI reported that Iran relies on filtering software designed by U.S.-based Secure Computing, called "SmartFilter." It helps block a range of banned words, topics and images — most of which Tehran says contradict the country’s strict Muslim beliefs.
Unlike China, selling technology to Iran is illegal because of U.S. sanctions. David Burt, spokesman for Secure Computing, said that the big Iranian Internet service providers, which are controlled by the government, are using SmartFilter illegally.
"We have no contracts with any ISPs in Iran. A couple of the biggest ones are illegally using our software," said Burt. "I think our options of going after these foreign companies are limited."
But Secure Computing legally provides its software to other countries that filter Internet content, including Saudi Arabia. "We sell to ISPs all over the world," acknowledged Burt. "It’s really up to the customer on how they use the product."
Representatives from Nortel and Cisco said they do not specifically design their technology for regimes like China to repress Internet access. They say they cannot control the use of the technology once it is enabled. For instance, the firewall that Cisco designed to combat viruses can also be used to block political content that the government does not like.
"Cisco has been and will continue to be a key driver of Internet growth worldwide," said spokesman John Earnhardt. "Cisco Systems has not specially designed any products for any government, or any regional market, to block or filter content. The products that Cisco Systems sells in the U.S., China, India, Pakistan, France, Mexico, etc. are the same products that we sell worldwide."
The fact that U.S. companies like Nortel Networks and Cisco Systems have been silent on what they consider the misuse of their technology by governments creating back doors into monitoring Internet use and filtering capabilities, has angered many.
"I think that companies chartered in free countries ought to ask the question, ‘What is our technology being used for in authoritarian [countries], and is it a purpose that we want to be behind?’" said Jonathan Zittrain, co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and assistant professor of law at Harvard University.
Dick D’Amato, chairman of the U.S-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which has held hearings on the Chinese Internet filtering issue, called the companies’ explanations a "copout."
"They know what’s being done with [the technology]," he said. "They need to be held accountable for what they are doing."
Western companies providing technology to authoritarian governments say that playing by the rules of the host country is the price they pay for doing business there.
"MSN (Microsoft Network) abides by the laws and regulations of each country in which it operates," an MSN spokesperson told FOXNews.com.
Yahoo! made a similar argument two years ago, and continues to do so as critics complain that the regime censors its Yahoo! China portal.
"Just like any other global company, Yahoo! must ensure that its local country sites must operate within the laws, regulations and customs of the country in which they are based," Yahoo! said in a statement to FOXNews.com.
But the watchdogs don’t buy it — especially, they say, when the Chinese government prohibits any political dissent, even to the point of blocking out searches that include words like "democracy," as well as international news sites of which the government does not approve.
D’Amato said the commission, which reports to Congress, hopes to put pressure on these companies by bringing them in for hearings, soon.
"I’m not so sure they’ll come," he said. "They’re running for cover."
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 |
You scored as Discordian. You are a Discordian! That makes you a real oddball, and this is a fact in which you take great pride! Everything is funny, and really, who cares anyway? Synchronicity is the Great Cosmic Comedy, and meaning is where you find it! Have you hugged your paradigm today?
What Subversive Alternative Paradigm Are You? |
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i put a favicon on The Seattle Agility Center, but i’m not gonna tell anyone about it and see how long it takes until somebody associated with the center (other than moe, who reads this journal occasionally) notices and says something about it.
the shipment of murtis came in on monday and i shipped out murtis on tuesday. another shipment of incense is supposed to be here tomorrow, and i’ve got another shipment of incense that i don’t know when it’s supposed to get here, and the suppliers haven’t called me back, so i’m getting a little worried. steven has been flaky – as usual – but he’s apparently back in reality for the moment, so i’m probably going to order some stuff from him within a week or so. i’m considering putting some more “hippie-type” stuff (meaning “less spiritual-type stuff”) on Hybrid Elephant, but i have been hesitating because i don’t have a very clear idea of what the market is, whether it is more hippy-type people that are looking for spiritual-type stuff, or whether it is more spiritual-type people. i wouldn’t want to drive away what customers i have…
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thanks to
i didn’t watch the SOTU because i believed it was all going to be lies, and i wasn’t wrong. they’re already starting to backpedal…
By Kevin G. Hall
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON – One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America’s dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn’t mean it literally.
What the president meant, they said in a conference call with reporters, was that alternative fuels could displace an amount of oil imports equivalent to most of what America is expected to import from the Middle East in 2025.
But America still would import oil from the Middle East, because that’s where the greatest oil supplies are.
The president’s State of the Union reference to Mideast oil made headlines nationwide Wednesday because of his assertion that “America is addicted to oil” and his call to “break this addiction.”
Bush vowed to fund research into better batteries for hybrid vehicles and more production of the alternative fuel ethanol, setting a lofty goal of replacing “more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025.”
He pledged to “move beyond a petroleum-based economy and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past.”
Not exactly, though, it turns out.
“This was purely an example,” Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said.
He said the broad goal was to displace foreign oil imports, from anywhere, with domestic alternatives. He acknowledged that oil is a freely traded commodity bought and sold globally by private firms. Consequently, it would be very difficult to reduce imports from any single region, especially the most oil-rich region on Earth.
Asked why the president used the words “the Middle East” when he didn’t really mean them, one administration official said Bush wanted to dramatize the issue in a way that “every American sitting out there listening to the speech understands.” The official spoke only on condition of anonymity because he feared that his remarks might get him in trouble.
Presidential adviser Dan Bartlett made a similar point in a briefing before the speech. “I think one of the biggest concerns the American people have is oil coming from the Middle East. It is a very volatile region,” he said.
Through the first 11 months of 2005, the United States imported nearly 2.2 million barrels per day of oil from the Middle East nations of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq. That’s less than 20 percent of the total U.S. daily imports of 10.062 million barrels.
Imports account for about 60 percent of U.S. oil consumption.
Alan Hubbard, the director of the president’s National Economic Council, projects that America will import 6 million barrels of oil per day from the Middle East in 2025 without major technological changes in energy consumption.
The Bush administration believes that new technologies could reduce the total daily U.S. oil demand by about 5.26 million barrels through alternatives such as plug-in hybrids with rechargeable batteries, hydrogen-powered cars and new ethanol products.
That means the new technologies could reduce America’s oil appetite by the equivalent of what we’re expected to import from the Middle East by 2025, Hubbard said.
But we’ll still be importing plenty of oil, according to the Energy Department’s latest projection.
“In 2025, net petroleum imports, including both crude oil and refined products, are expected to account for 60 percent of demand … up from 58 percent in 2004,” according to the Energy Information Administration’s 2006 Annual Energy Outlook.
Some experts think Bush needs to do more to achieve his stated goal.
“We can achieve energy independence from the Middle East, but not with what the president is proposing,” said Craig Wolfe, the president of Americans for Energy Independence in Studio City, Calif. “We need to slow the growth in consumption. Our organization believes we need to do something about conservation” and higher auto fuel-efficiency standards.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos
WASHINGTON — A new provision tucked into the Patriot Act bill now before Congress would allow authorities to haul demonstrators at any “special event of national significance” away to jail on felony charges if they are caught breaching a security perimeter.
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sponsored the measure, which would extend the authority of the Secret Service to allow agents to arrest people who willingly or knowingly enter a restricted area at an event, even if the president or other official normally protected by the Secret Service isn’t in attendance at the time.
The measure has civil libertarians protesting what they say is yet another power grab for the executive branch and one more loss for free speech.
“It’s definitely problematic and chilling,” said Lisa Graves, senior counsel for legislative strategy at the American Civil Liberties Union , which has written letters to the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, pointing out that the provision wasn’t subject to hearings or open debate.
Some conservatives say they too are troubled by the measure.
“It concerns me greatly,” said Bob Barr, former U.S. prosecutor and Republican representative from Georgia. “It clearly raises serious concerns about First Amendment rights.”
But not everyone agrees that rights are being trampled on by the additional provision. In fact, some say the ACLU is the problem when it comes to protecting national security.
Rocco DiPippo, a freelance writer for the conservative FrontPageMagazine.com and editor of The Autonomist Web log , said the ACLU has fought the government every step of the way over security measures following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
“Its opposition to Specter’s reasonable proposal is simply more of the same,” he said. “I can understand the concern that we should be suspicious of government, but we shouldn’t adopt this mindset: ‘government is evil.’ This is just more hatred of (President) Bush.”
Under current law, the Secret Service can arrest anyone for breaching restricted areas where the president or a protected official is or will be visiting, but the new provision would allow such arrests even after those VIPs have left the premises of any designated “special event of national significance.” The provision would increase the maximum penalty for such an infraction from six months to one year in jail.
In a post-Sept. 11 world many non-political events have been designated National Special Security Events and would rise to the higher status. Examples of possible NSSEs are the Olympics or the Super Bowl. In 2004, the presidential inaugural balls and President Ronald Reagan’s June funeral procession in Washington, D.C., were designated NSSEs.
According to government sources with knowledge of the legislation, Secret Service protection and law enforcement authority would extend beyond protecting a specific person, rather the event itself would become the “protectee.”
Currently, non-violent demonstrators who enter restricted areas at such events previously would be arrested and charged by local law enforcement with simple trespassing, said Graves. Under the provision included in the new law, they will be charged with felonies by the Secret Service.
“It’s a different consequence to people,” she said.
“You are talking about giving the executive branch broader authority to create these exclusion zones which could cover broad areas and last for days [during an event],” David Kopel, a constitutional expert with the Cato Institute, told FOXNews.com.
A spokesman at Specter’s office said the senator was surprised by the clamor over the provision, which merely makes a technical change to clear up legal confusion over who has arresting authority at NSSEs. His office had no further comment on the provision. Committee Ranking Member Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., also declined comment. Republican and Democratic House Judiciary Committee leaders did not return calls for comment.
White House sources say the measure was not instigated by the administration and pointed out that it was a stand-alone bill that was rolled into the Patriot Act by Specter’s office during House-Senate conference negotiations. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told FOXNews.com that the White House would not comment on the intent of the measure, but that the president is concerned with preserving individual rights.
“President Bush is committed to protecting the American people’s national security as well as their civil liberties,” she said.
Secret Service representatives said the agency does not comment on pending legislation.
The Bush administration has been criticized in the past for what many say are tactics that keep protesters far away from official events and by employing stringent policies to ensure favorable audiences for the president.
Last year, three ticket-holding audience members at one of the president’s Social Security events in Denver, Colo., were apprehended by a man who they said identified himself as Secret Service. The three were forced away from the event because of an anti-war sticker on the driver’s car.
“[The administration] has certainly demonstrated a desire to have carefully-controlled events,” said Graves.
John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, an Alexandria, Va.-based clearinghouse for domestic and international security information, said he “could certainly understand why the Secret Service would want that legal authority,” given the enormous burden of making venues safe for VIPs today.
“However, I think many people have concluded that the way it is being used has nothing to do with protecting the president from Usama bin Laden and everything to do with suppressing dissent and making sure the protesters don’t get on TV,” Pike said.
Bush is not the first president to flex his authority in this area, said Kopel, who pointed out that beginning with Reagan, presidents have created a larger security bubble and greater distance between themselves and dissenters at public events. The 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States just intensified the situation, he said.
“I think the concerns about free speech in areas where the president is speaking long pre-date Bush. They were an issue in the Clinton administration, the first Bush administration and began as an issue during Reagan,” Kopel said. “I do think the ACLU has legitimate concerns about the breadth of the new language and how it could be applied.”
Graves points out that conservative “pro-life” groups will be the target of the new provisions, too, a scenario that could raise the concerns for those who are typically critical of the ACLU, which she said is necessarily concerned about other provisions in the bill that impinge on civil liberties.
House and Senate leaders, who return to Capitol Hill this week, are trying to renew the Patriot Act by Friday. Democrats and four Republicans in the Senate who filibustered a final vote in December after raising concerns about preserving civil liberties instituted a short-term extension of the previous bill, which was set to expire on Dec. 31.
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about three and a half years ago i saw a protestor by the side of the road with a handmade sign that said “IRAQ IS A WEAPON OF MASS DISTRACTION”… it seems that only now are our “leaders” starting to get the same idea…
Wednesday February 1, 2006
The Honorable George W. Bush
President of the United States of America
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
This March will mark the beginning of the 4th year of the war in Iraq. In contrast, U.S. involvement in WWI came to an end after 19 months. Victory in Europe was declared in WWII after 3 years 5 months. In the Korean War, a cease-fire was signed after 3 years and 1 month. But after more than three and a half years into the war in Iraq, your administration finally produced what is called a “Plan for Victory” in Iraq.
Iraq is not the center for the global war on terrorism. I believe Iraq has diverted our attention away from the fight against global terrorism and has depleted the required resources needed to wage an effective war. It is estimated that there are only about 750 to 1,000 al-Qaeda in Iraq. I believe the Iraqis will force them out or kill them after U.S. troops are gone. In fact, there is now evidence that Iraqi insurgent groups are increasingly turning against al-Qaeda and other foreign terrorists.
Our country needs a vigorous and comprehensive strategy for victory against global terrorism. The architect of 9/11 is still out there but now has an international microphone. We must get back to the real issue at hand – we have to root out and destroy al-Qaeda’s worldwide network.
There are 4 key elements that I recommend to reinvigorate our global anti-terrorism effort: Redeploy, Replace, Reallocate, and Reconstitute.
Redeploy
The war in Iraq is fueling terrorism, not eliminating it. Our continued military presence feeds the strong anti-foreigner fervor that has existed in this part of the world for centuries. A vast majority of the Iraqi people now view American troops as occupiers, not liberators. Over 80% of Iraqis want U.S. forces to leave Iraq and 47% think it is justified to attack Americans. 70% of Iraqis favor a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. forces, with half favoring a withdrawal in the next six months. In fact, 67% of Iraqis expect day-to-day security for Iraqi citizens will improve if U.S. forces withdraw in six months and over 60% believe violent attacks, including those that are ethnically motivated, will decrease. Our military presence is the single most important reason why the Iraqis have tolerated the foreign terrorists, who account for less than 7 percent of the insurgency. 93% of the insurgency is made up of Iraqis. Once our troops are re-deployed, the Iraqis will reject the terrorists and deny them a safe haven in Iraq. The Iraqis are against a foreign presence in Iraq of any kind.
The steadfast and valiant efforts of the United States military and coalition partners have provided the Iraqi people with the framework needed to self govern. The Iraqis held elections that have been touted as highly successful, based primarily on the accounts of Iraqis who went to the polls. But our continued military presence in Iraq, regardless of the motives behind it, is seen by Iraqis as interfering in Iraq’s democratic process and undercuts the chances for the newly elected government to be successful. Recently, Iraq’s National Security Adviser accused U.S. negotiators of going behind the back of the Iraqi government on talks with insurgents, saying the process could encourage more violence. He said, “Americans are making a huge and fatal mistake in their policy for appeasement and they should not do this. They should leave the Iraqi government to deal with it… The United States should allow the new Iraqi government to decide on how to quell the insurgency.”
In December 2005, an ABC News poll in Iraq produced some noteworthy results. 57% of Iraqis identified national security as the country’s top priority. When asked to rate the confidence in public institutions, they gave Iraqi police a 68% confidence level, the Iraqi army 67%, religious leaders 67%. But the U.S./U.K. forces scored the lowest, a mere 18%.
The longer our military stays in Iraq, the more unwelcome we will be. We will be increasingly entangled in an open-ended nation building mission, one that our military can not accomplish amidst a civil war. Our troops will continue to be the targets of Iraqis who see them as interfering occupiers.
Redeploying our forces from Iraq and stationing a mobile force outside of the country removes a major antagonizing factor. I believe we will see a swift demise of foreign terrorist groups in Iraq if we redeploy outside of the country. Further, our troops will no longer be the targets of bloody attacks.
Replace
The ever-changing justifications of the war in Iraq, combined with tragic missteps, have resulted in a worldwide collapse of support for U.S. policies in Iraq.
The credibility of the United States of America will not be restored if we continue down the path of saying one thing and doing another. We must not lower our standards and tactics to those of the terrorists. In order to keep our homeland secure, we must hold true to the values that molded our American democracy, even in the face of adversity. Former Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, said it best during a speech in March 2004 to the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies: “America knows we cannot seek a double standard. And, America knows we get what we give. And so we must and will always be careful to respect people’s privacy, civil liberties and reputations. To suggest that there is a tradeoff between security and individual freedoms — that we must discard one protection for the other — is a false choice. You do not defend liberty to forsake it.”
Restoring the world’s confidence in America as a competent and morally superior world leader is essential to winning the war on global terrorism.
A recent pubic opinion poll, conducted jointly with Zogby International and taken in Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, found that 81% said the war in Iraq had brought less peace to the Middle East. A majority of the respondents said they view the United States as the biggest threat to their nations.
Mr. President, I believe in order to restore our credibility, you must hold accountable those responsible for so many missteps and install a fresh team that demonstrates true diplomatic skill, knowledge of cultural differences and a willingness to earnestly engage other leaders in a respectful and constructive way. This would do much to reinvigorate international participation in a truly effective war on global terrorism.
Reallocate
The Department of Defense has been allocated $238 billion for the war in Iraq, with average monthly costs growing significantly since the beginning of the war. In 2003 the average monthly war cost was $4.4 billion; by 2005 the average monthly cost had reached $6.1 billion.
Despite the urgent homeland security needs of our country, the bipartisan 9/11 Commission issued a dismal report card on the efforts to improve our counter-terrorist defenses. Even the most basic of recommendations, such as the coordination of fire and police communication lines, still have not been accomplished.
In the face of threats from international terrorists, we need to reallocate funds from the war in Iraq to protecting the United States against attack. A safe and swift redeployment from Iraq will allow us to do just that.
Reconstitute
The U.S. army is the smallest it’s been since 1941. It is highly capable. But this drawn out conflict has put tremendous stress on our military, particularly on our Army and Marine Corps, whose operations tempo has increased substantially since 9/11.
The Government Accountability Office issued a report in November 2005 addressing the challenges of military personnel recruitment and retention and noted that the Department of Defense had been unable to fill over 112,000 positions in critical occupational specialties. This shortfall includes intelligence analysts, special forces, interpreters, and demolition experts– those on whom we rely so heavily in today’s asymmetric battlefield.
Some of our troops have been deployed four times over the last three years. Enlistment for the regular forces as well as the guard and reserves are well below recruitment goals. In 2005, the Army missed its recruitment goal for the first time since 1999, even after offering enlistment bonuses and incentives, lowering its monthly goals, and lowering its recruitment standards. As Retired Army officer Andrew Krepinevich recently warned in a report to the Pentagon, the Army is “in a race against time” to adjust to the demands of war “or risk ‘breaking’ the force in the form of a catastrophic decline” in recruitment and re-enlistment.
The harsh environment in which we are operating our equipment in Iraq, combined with the equipment usage rate (ten times greater than peacetime levels) is taking a heavy toll on our ground equipment. It is currently estimated that $50 billion will be required to refurbish this equipment.
Further, in its response to Hurricane Katrina, the National Guard realized that it had over $1.3 billion in equipment shortfalls. This has created a tremendous burden on non-deployed guard units, on whom this country depends so heavily to respond to domestic disasters and possible terrorist attacks. Without relief, Army Guard units will face growing equipment shortages and challenges in regaining operational readiness for future missions at home and overseas.
Since 9/11, Congress has appropriated about $334 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, while the insurgents have spent hundreds of thousands. We have seen reports estimating that the total cost of the wars may reach as high as $1 trillion. These estimates are said to include such costs as providing long-term disability benefits and care for injured service members. It is estimated today that over 16,000 U.S. troops have been wounded in Iraq, 10,481 of whom have been wounded by “weaponry explosive devices.”
But while war costs continue to climb, cuts are being made to the defense budget. As soon as the war is over there will be pressure to cut even more. This year, even while we are at war, 8 billion dollars was cut from the base defense spending bill. You ordered another $32 billion in cuts to the defense budget over the next five years, with $11.6 billion coming from the Army. The Pentagon told Congress only last year that it needed 77 combat brigades to fulfill its missions, but now insists it only needs 70. In fact, 6 of the 7 combat brigades will be cut from the National Guard, reducing its combat units from 34 to 28. Even though all of the National Guard combat brigades have been deployed overseas since 9/11, your Administration has determined that, because of funding shortfalls, our combat ground forces can be reduced. Not only will these cuts diminish our combat power, but our ability to respond to natural disasters and terrorist threats to our homeland will be adversely affected. It is obvious that the cost of the war, in conjunction with the Army’s inability to meet recruitment goals, has impacted this estimate. My concern is that instead of our force structure being based on the future threat, it is now being based on the number of troops and level of funding available.
I am concerned that costly program cuts will lead to costly mistakes and we will be unable to sustain another deployment even if there is a real threat. The future of our military and the future of our country could very well be at stake. The high dollar forecasts of our future military weapons systems and military health care add pressure to cut costs on the backs of these programs. As our weapons systems age, the concern becomes even greater.
During a time of war, we are cutting our combat force, we have not mobilized industry, and have never fully mobilized our military. On our current path, I believe that we are not only in danger of breaking our military, but that we are increasing the chances of a major miscalculation by our future enemies, who may perceive us as vulnerable.
Sincerely,
JOHN P. MURTHA
Member of Congress
343
This piece is called “Your Television Will Not Be Revolutionized” because despite what our so-called leaders of technology and communications may tell you, the chances are slim that your quality of life will be enhanced by further dependence on a device which has throughout its history been referred to as the “idiot box” or “boob tube.” After Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.”
—–
Your Television Will Not Be Revolutionized
by
You will not be able to site back in your recliner and experience
the sights and smells of an actual African safari with Marlon Perkins
because your television will not be revolutionized.
You will not have the option to view programming that reflects
actual facts, opinions and situations of real people in real jobs doing real work
because your television will not be revolutionized.
You will not have more information at your disposal,
but a great deal more disposable information;
you will not experience a reduction in the amount of subliminal messaging
or an increased exposure to the fully explored viewpoints
of persons with alternative outlooks on the world and ways of life;
nor will you have the ability to selectively choose shows and entertainment
that will best equip you to face other human beings
who may have differing and conflicting methods of dealing with everyday existence
because, despite your ability to earn a Ph.D.
by absorbing the litany of T&A, S&M, B&D and R&R
on CBS, NBC, ABC and CNN,
people who have important things to say
regarding the fragility of relying on modern convenience
will not be able to set up independent broadcast towers
because the FCC, FBI and CIA will make sure
that you do not find these programs included as part of “Must See TV,”
and they will certainly not be sponsored
by Mobil Oil Corporation and the Fortune 500.
You will not be able to immediately gain access
to the viewing public without waiting nine months
on a list for new programs, waiting only to be passed over
by a Committee for Fairness in Television
because your views are not deemed interesting enough
to command a favorable Nielson share.
Nor will you be able to select features for your viewing pleasure
that have not been hand-picked by the owners of the airwaves
and their supporting advertisers.
Your television will not be revolutionized.
Your television will not be revolutionized.
Your television will not be revolutionized.
You will continue to experience a decrease in rapid eye movement,
increasing cases of attention deficit disorder among your babies and children,
and on-going, invasive modifications to your DNA
caused by the barrage of an electron machine gun
you have invited into your home to expose “viewers like you”
to a thousand points of artificial light.
You will continue to form images subconsciously inside your physical brain
without the benefit of seeing them outside your head,
and without the ability to blink and shut them out or slow them down
so as to maintain the facility to selectively choose
the sound bytes and sound tracks and sound effects and
hypnotic waves of electricity that will influence
your spending patterns, your methods of recreation, your opinions on procreation,
your impression of reality and
your overall sense of physical health and well-being.
Your television will not be revolutionized.
Your retention of information will continue to decrease,
while the available percentage of brain cells at your disposal
will continued to be used up by phrases from sitcom theme songs,
by deductive meanderings on who shot J.R., and
by images of politicians wrapped in flags and kissing babies,
eating chitterlings, slicing pizza and
spreading lox on bagels.
You will not be able to take your message to the streets
or distribute pamphlets questioning the party line
at union meetings or city council sessions,
because your fellow citizens will be safe at home,
unified only in the respect that they are all watching re-runs
of the same shows so it can be assured there will be a topic of conversation
when we are all turned loose to exercise
our First Amendment rights
assisted by a new and improved level of communication
brought to you by the Association for the Preservation of Technological Megalomaniacs.
You will not be able to tell the difference between an embrace
offered by a virtual reality image of your dead father
and the gentle purring of a live kitten grasping your shoulder;
but you will continue to be able to anesthetize your sense of boredom
vicariously, whether through the war game simulation of professional sports,
or candid interviews with starvation victims
in a country of which you were not even aware “prior to this newscast,”
and may be convinced exists
only thanks to the believability score of the on-the-scene commentator,
or by gripping the edge of your seat while watching
carnage and bloodshed and laying on of hands
resulting in cures for leprosy, AIDS, infantile paralysis,
sickle cell anemia, and that awful bloated feeling,
all of which may or not be created using special effects.
Your television will not be revolutionized.
You will continue to trust in a world that has been edited for television,
in situations that will be re-enacted based on circumstantial evidence
and the imagination of financial advisors to the producers during “sweeps” week,
and in actors who are paid to tell you their headache disappeared in minutes
or that they actually spent time at their last dinner party discussing yeast infections
or wash-and-go shampoos.
You will be able to see inside the minds and hear the thoughts
of Richard Nixon, of Jeffrey Dahmer, of Charles Manson and Mother Theresa,
but you will see them being asked the same questions, things like,
“When did you first realize that you were different from other children?”
and you will see the same one-liners being used to promote their causes
in between paid advertisement programs
showcasing the efficiency and pleasure provided by shopping at home,
and they will be given equal air-time,
and each will be gently disclaimed:
“The opinions expressed by guests on this program
do not necessarily reflect the views of this network,
do not support the philosophy or political leanings of the majority of our viewers,
and are not intended to stimulate, educate or otherwise affect anyone at all.”
You will continue to find yourself in a world
that has an increasing number of methods for communication,
and alarmingly less and less to say.
You will find it true, as Marshall McLuhan once said, that
“the medium is the message,”
and that its sweet velvet voice is crooning,
“Learn to consume as you have taught me to consume,”
and reminding us in the words of Jello Biafra
that the conveniences we have requested are now mandatory.
Your television will not be revolutionized.
342
as you are probably aware at this point, i am a terrorist in the same way Cindy Sheehan is a terrorist, which is why i didn’t watch shrubby junior’s state of the republican "christian" radical-right-wing part of the country that he currently calls "the union", although i can pretty much guarantee that whatever he said, with the exception of mentioning that coretta scott king died, was 100% lies. this is a pretty good characterisation of how i feel about the whole thing:
January 31, 2006
WASHINGTON, D.C. – President Bush set energy self-sufficiency goals Tuesday night that would still leave the country vulnerable to unstable oil sources. He also declared he is helping more people get health care, despite a rising number of uninsured.
Whether promoting a plan to "save Social Security" or describing Iraqi security forces as "increasingly capable of defeating the enemy," Bush skipped over some complex realities in his State of the Union speech.
ENERGY:
By identifying only Mideast oil imports for reductions, Bush was ignoring some of the largest sources of U.S. petroleum, among them Canada, Mexico, Nigeria and Venezuela. The U.S. considers Venezuela a source of political instability in the region; relations with Mexico have been strained over immigration; and violence has curbed nearly 10 percent of Nigeria’s oil output.
Imports of oil and refined product from the Persian Gulf make up less than a fifth of all imports, according to the government.
Bush has spoken of reducing reliance on foreign oil in every State of the Union speech, if not as explicitly as in this one, and presidents back to Richard Nixon outlined similar goals, to little or no effect.
Nixon announced Project Independence in 1973, setting a goal of energy self-sufficiency in seven years. Then, the U.S. imported 35 percent of its oil; now it’s close to 60 percent. This, despite substantive steps taken by Nixon and Jimmy Carter to spur both supply and conservation, including construction of the Alaskan oil pipeline and reduction in the highway speed limit to 55 mph for many years.
HEALTH CARE:
Noting that the government must help provide health care for the poor and elderly, Bush asserted, "We are meeting that responsibility."
It is true that a new prescription drug benefit took effect this year, a new entitlement for up to 42 million disabled and older people. But implementation has been rocky: Mark McClellan, the administration’s top Medicare official, recently acknowledged that tens of thousands of recipients probably didn’t get medicine due to confusion and computer glitches, prompting some lawmakers to seek an extension of the May 15 signup deadline to work out the snafus.
An incomplete picture also emerges on health care for the poor.
The number of uninsured has increased nearly 5 million since Bush took office in 2001, to 45.5 million in 2004, two-thirds of the total from low-income families, according to the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.
And while total federal spending on the health care "safety net" for the uninsured edged up from 2001 to 2004 – adjusted for inflation, slightly more than 1 percent – spending actually decreased from $546 to $498 per uninsured person due to the jump in uninsured, the Kaiser group said.
Bush actually is expected to propose curbing the growth of benefit programs such as Medicare and Medicaid in his 2007 budget request next week.
SOCIAL SECURITY:
Bush said Congress did not act last year on his "proposal to save Social Security." In fact, his plan does not take care of Social Security’s future solvency; instead, he wants to let younger workers divert some of their Social Security payroll taxes into private investment accounts to take advantage of the possibilities for a better return.
IRAQ:
Bush’s upbeat account of progress in Iraq, coupled with an acknowledgment that "our enemy is brutal," left unstated a variety of setbacks in turning control over to Iraqi forces, including Iraqi Army desertions in the volatile west.
KATRINA:
Addressing Hurricane Katrina aid, Bush said a hopeful society "comes to the aid of fellow citizens in times of suffering and emergency" and the government is meeting New Orleans’ "immediate needs."
Federal money is indeed being used to build stronger levees and provide business loans and housing assistance. But the government has declined to rebuild levees strong enough to sustain a Category 5 hurricane, and it recently rejected as unnecessary a $30 billion redevelopment plan for Louisiana that state officials considered the cornerstone of their hopes for rebuilding.
HOMELAND SECURITY:
Bush urged Americans to back his secretive domestic spy program, saying he was using his "authority given to me by the Constitution and by statute" and noting that "appropriate members of Congress have been kept informed."
Bush did not address the counterarguments that he failed to heed a separate 1978 law that specifically calls for court approval to conduct the surveillance. Some lawmakers have also questioned why Bush did not brief more than eight members of Congress about the program, which has been in effect since 2001.
EDUCATION:
On the theme of improving math and science education, Bush boasted, "We have made a good start in the early grades with the No Child Left Behind Act, which is raising standards and lifting test scores across our country."
In 2005, fourth-graders and eighth-graders posted their highest-ever math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and black and Hispanic children narrowed their achievement gap with whites in both math and reading. But the fourth-grade reading performance was essentially flat, and in eighth grade, reading scores dropped.
SPENDING:
The president said that "every year of my presidency, we have reduced the growth of non-security discretionary spending." That doesn’t tell the full story because the category he cited omits big-ticket spending items like Iraq, natural disasters such as Katrina and homeland security.
He spoke of saving taxpayers $14 billion next year if his budget proposals are adopted, not mentioning some of those savings would come from health care programs such as Medicaid.
meanwhile, once again this is appropriate, and although i’ve said it before, it bears repeating again, as those who do not learn from history are CONDEMNED to repeat it…
When they took the fourth amendment,
I was quiet because I didn’t deal drugs.
When they took the sixth amendment,
I was quiet because I was innocent.
When they took the second amendment,
I was quiet because I didn’t own a gun.
Now they’ve taken the first amendment,
and I can say nothing about it.
… and there go our first amendment rights… 8(
By Cindy Sheehan
Wednesday 01 February 2006
As most of you have probably heard, I was arrested before the State of the Union address last night.
I am speechless with fury at what happened and with grief over what we have lost in our country.
There have been lies from the police and distortions by the press (shocker). So this is what really happened:
This afternoon at the People’s State of the Union Address in DC, where I was joined by Congresspersons Lynn Woolsey and John Conyers, Ann Wright, Malik Rahim and John Cavanagh, Lynn brought me a ticket to the State of the Union address. At that time, I was wearing the shirt that said: 2245 Dead. How many more?
After the PSOTU press conference, I was having second thoughts about going to the SOTU at the Capitol. I didn’t feel comfortable going. I knew George Bush would say things that would hurt me and anger me, and I knew that I couldn’t disrupt the address because Lynn had given me the ticket, and I didn’t want to be disruptive out of respect for her. I, in fact, had given the ticket to John Bruhns, who is in Iraq Veterans Against the War. However, Lynn’s office had already called the media, and everyone knew I was going to be there, so I sucked it up and went.
I got the ticket back from John, and I met one of Congresswoman Barbara Lee’s staffers in the Longworth Congressional Office building and we went to the Capitol via the underground tunnel. I went through security once, then had to use the rest room and went through security again.
My ticket was in the 5th gallery, front row, fourth seat in. The person who in a few minutes was to arrest me, helped me to my seat.
I had just sat down and I was warm from climbing 3 flights of stairs back up from the bathroom so I unzipped my jacket. I turned to the right to take my left arm out, when the same officer saw my shirt and yelled, "Protester." He then ran over to me, hauled me out of my seat, and roughly (with my hands behind my back) shoved me up the stairs. I said something like "I’m going, do you have to be so rough?" By the way, his name is Mike Weight.
The officer ran with me to the elevators, yelling at everyone to move out of the way. When we got to the elevators, he cuffed me and took me outside to await a squad car. On the way out, someone behind me said, "That’s Cindy Sheehan." At which point the officer who arrested me said, "Take these steps slowly." I said, "You didn’t care about being careful when you were dragging me up the other steps." He said, "That’s because you were protesting." Wow, I got hauled out of the People’s House because I was "Protesting."
I was never told that I couldn’t wear that shirt into the Congress. I was never asked to take it off or zip my jacket back up. If I had been asked to do any of those things … I would have, and written about the suppression of my freedom of speech later. I was immediately and roughly (I have the bruises and muscle spasms to prove it) hauled off and arrested for "unlawful conduct."
After I had my personal items inventoried and my fingers printed, a nice Sgt. came in and looked at my shirt and said, "2245, huh? I just got back from there."
I told him that my son died there. That’s when the enormity of my loss hit me. I have lost my son. I have lost my First Amendment rights. I have lost the country that I love. Where did America go? I started crying in pain.
What did Casey die for? What did the 2244 other brave young Americans die for? What are tens of thousands of them over there in harm’s way for still? For this? I can’t even wear a shirt that has the number of troops on it that George Bush and his arrogant and ignorant policies are responsible for killing.
I wore the shirt to make a statement. The press knew I was going to be there, and I thought every once in awhile they would show me, and I would have the shirt on. I did not wear it to be disruptive, or I would have unzipped my jacket during George’s speech. If I had any idea what happens to people who wear shirts that make the neocons uncomfortable, that I would be arrested … maybe I would have, but I didn’t.
There have already been many wild stories out there.
I have some lawyers looking into filing a First Amendment lawsuit against the government for what happened tonight. I will file it. It is time to take our freedoms and our country back.
I don’t want to live in a country that prohibits any person, whether or not he/she has paid the ultimate price for that country, from wearing, saying, writing, or telephoning any negative statements about the government. That’s why I am going to take my freedoms and liberties back. That’s why I am not going to let BushCo take anything else away from me … or you.
I am so appreciative of the couple of hundred of protesters who came to the jail while I was locked up to show their support. We have so much potential for good. There is so much good in so many people.
Four hours and 2 jails after I was arrested, I was let out. Again, I am so upset and sore it is hard to think straight.
Keep up the struggle … I promise you, I will too.
late breaking word is that they’re dropping the charges against sheehan, but i think she should go ahead with her first amendment lawsuit in spite of this… she doesn’t have to be arrested to have her civil rights trampled upon.
GOP congressman says his wife was also ordered to leave
Wednesday, February 1, 2006; Posted: 12:32 p.m. EST (17:32 GMT)
WASHINGTON — Peace activist Cindy Sheehan was arrested Tuesday in the House gallery after refusing to cover up a T-shirt bearing an anti-war slogan before President Bush’s State of the Union address.
According to a blog post on Michael Moore’s Web site attributed to Sheehan, the T-shirt said, "2,245 Dead. How many more?" — a reference to the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq.
"She was asked to cover it up. She did not," said Sgt. Kimberly Schneider, U.S. Capitol Police spokeswoman.
On Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Bill Young, R-Florida, spoke on the House floor saying his wife, Beverly, had been "ordered to leave" the gallery during the speech for wearing a shirt that said, "Support Our Troops."
Young, an 18-term congressman, held up his wife’s shirt during his remarks, speaking with anger and emotion about her treatment.
"She has a real passion for our troops, and she shows it in many, many ways," Young said.
"And most members in this House know that, but because she had on a shirt, that someone didn’t like, that said, ‘Support Our Troops,’ she was kicked out of this gallery while the president was speaking and encouraging Americans to support our troops. Shame. Shame."
Sheehan held 4 hours
Sheehan was arrested around 8:30 p.m. ET Tuesday on charges of unlawful conduct, a misdemeanor that carries a maximum penalty of a year in jail, Capitol Police said.
She was handcuffed and held in the Capitol building until she was driven to the Capitol Police headquarters for booking. According to her blog, she was released about four hours after her arrest.
Sheehan, who became a vocal war opponent after her son was killed in Iraq, was an invited guest of Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-California. Woolsey has called for a withdrawal of troops in Iraq and supports legislation for the creation of a Department of Peace.
Sheehan gained national attention in August when she and hundreds of other protesters camped outside Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, and demanded an audience with the president.
She also recently penned a book, "Not One More Mother’s Child."
In April 2004, Sheehan and other relatives of troops killed in Iraq met with Bush during a visit to Fort Lewis, Washington, shortly after the death of her son, Army Spc. Casey Sheehan, 24.
Sheehan later said that the president wouldn’t look at pictures of her son and "didn’t even know Casey’s name."
The Vacaville, California, resident has said she’d like to meet with Bush again to discuss her opposition to the war.
The president has declined another meeting and has taken issue with Sheehan’s calls for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq.
"She expressed her opinion; I disagree with it," Bush said in August. "I think immediate withdrawal from Iraq would be a mistake."
Republican congressman’s wife also removed for ‘Support the Troops’ shirt
WASHINGTON – Cindy Sheehan, mother of a fallen soldier in Iraq, wasn’t the only one ejected from the House gallery during the State of the Union address for wearing a T-shirt with a war-related slogan that violated the rules. The wife of a powerful Republican congressman was also asked to leave.
Beverly Young, wife of Rep. C.W. Bill Young of Florida — chairman of the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee — was removed from the gallery because she was wearing a T-shirt that read, "Support the Troops — Defending Our Freedom."
"Because she had on a shirt that someone didn’t like that said support our troops, she was kicked out of this gallery," Young said on the House floor Wednesday morning, holding up the gray shirt.
"Shame, shame," he scolded.
Mrs. Young was sitting about six rows from first lady Laura Bush and asked to leave. She argued with police in the hallway outside the House chamber.
"They said I was protesting," she told the St. Petersburg Times. “I said, ‘Read my shirt, it is not a protest.’ They said, ‘We consider that a protest.’ I said, ‘Then you are an idiot.’"
They told her she was being treated the same as Sheehan, a protester ejected before the speech Tuesday night for wearing a T-shirt with an antiwar slogan. Sheehan wrote in her blog Wednesday that she intends to file a First Amendment lawsuit.
"I don’t want to live in a country that prohibits any person, whether he/she has paid the ultimate price for that country, from wearing, saying, writing, or telephoning any negative statements about the government," Sheehan wrote.
Capitol Police took Sheehan, invited as a guest of Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., away in handcuffs and charged her with unlawful conduct, a misdemeanor. She later was released on her own recognizance.
Capitol Police Sgt. Kimberly Schneider said police warned her that such displays were not allowed in the House chamber, but Sheehan did not respond.
Woolsey gave Sheehan her only ticket earlier in the day — Gallery 5, seat 7, row A — while Sheehan was attending an "alternative state of the union" news conference by CODEPINK, a group pushing for an end to the Iraq war.
In her blog, Sheehan wrote that her T-shirt said, "2245 Dead. How many more?" — a reference to the number of soldiers killed in Iraq.
She said she felt uncomfortable about attending the speech.
"I knew George Bush would say things that would hurt me and anger me and I knew that I couldn’t disrupt the address because Lynn had given me the ticket," Sheehan wrote. "I didn’t want to be disruptive out of respect for her."
She said she had one arm out of her coat when an officer yelled, “Protestor.”
"He then ran over to me, hauled me out of my seat and roughly (with my hands behind my back) shoved me up the stairs," she wrote. She was then cuffed and driven to police headquarters a few blocks away.
"I was never told that I couldn’t wear that shirt into the Congress," Sheehan wrote. "I was never asked to take it off or zip my jacket back up. If I had been asked to do any of those things… I would have, and written about the suppression of my freedom of speech later."
Sheehan was arrested in September with about 300 other anti-war activists in front of the White House after a weekend of protests against the war in Iraq. In August, she spent 26 days camped near Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, where he was spending a working vacation.
a "working vacation"… riiiiiiight… how many of us "real people" have ever had a "working" vacation?
341
You are Rule 8, the most laid back of all the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. While your forefather in the Federal Rules may have been a stickler for details and particularity, you have clearly rebelled by being pleasant and easy-going. Rule 8 only requires that a plaintiff provide a short and plain statement of a claim on which a court can grant relief. While there is much to be lauded in your approach, your good nature sometimes gets you in trouble, and you often have to rely on your good friend, Rule 56, to bail you out.
Which Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
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340
i went to bed at 10:30 last night. when i woke up this morning at 5:30, when the alarm clock went off, i looked over to the other side of the bed and moe wasn’t there. it’s not too uncommon for her to fall asleep in the recliner, so i got up and went into the living room to wake her up, but she wasn’t there either. now i’m starting to panic. i called her, but there was no response, so i looked out the front door to see if she had already left for work – which i was certain she hadn’t, but she wasn’t anywhere else, but the car was still in the driveway. now i’m really starting to panic. i called out her name again… and she responded??? from the bedroom???????? i went back to the bedroom and she was wondering why i was banging around and yelling… BLOWN HEAD GASKET!! apparently she went to bed, in the bedroom, shortly after i did last night, around 11:00 or so. normally i wake up when she comes to bed, but in spite of the fact that i apparently turned off the light, which is on my side of the bed, i didn’t wake up. i still don’t know why she wasn’t there when i woke up, because she said she hadn’t moved…
now i’m back home after taking moe to work, shipping out a package for hybrid elephant and getting the oil changed in the car, feeling like i didn’t get any sleep at all, and i find out that coretta scott king died last night, and
Senate confirms Alito to the Supreme Court
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
WASHINGTON (CNN) — The Senate confirmed Judge Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court on Tuesday by a vote of 58-42, a day after an attempt by some Democratic senators to block his nomination fizzled.
Alito, who will be the court’s 110th justice, will be sworn into office across the street from the Capitol at the Supreme Court, just hours before President Bush’s State of the Union address. He will then join Chief Justice John Roberts in the House chamber for Tuesday night’s speech.
Judge Alito will be ceremonially sworn into office Wednesday in the East Room of the White House.
Alito watched the Senate vote from the Roosevelt Room of the White House with President Bush and his wife, Martha-Ann Bomgardner.
Only one of the Senate’s 55 Republicans voted against Alito’s confirmation — Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, a moderate facing re-election this fall in an overwhelmingly Democratic state.
The four Democrats who broke party ranks and voted for Alito are Sens. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Tim Johnson of South Dakota, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Kent Conrad of North Dakota. All four of the states represented by the senators were carried by Bush in both 2000 and 2004.
Alito’s supporters in the Senate, as expected, cleared the final roadblock Monday when senators, by a vote of 72-25, decided to cut off debate and proceed to a final vote, rebuffing an attempt by a cadre of liberal senators to talk the nomination to death.
The vote easily exceeded the 60 votes needed to pass the motion.
In the end, only 24 of the chamber’s 44 Democrats went along with the filibuster, a maneuver allowed under Senate rules to block a vote by extending debate indefinitely. It was also supported by the chamber’s lone independent, Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont.
Arguing against cutting off debate, Sen. John Kerry — who spearheaded the filibuster effort with his fellow Massachusetts Democrat, Sen. Ted Kennedy — said Alito’s record during his 15 years on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has given “the extreme right wing unbelievable public cause for celebration.”
“That just about tells you what you need to know,” Kerry said. “The vote today is whether or not we will take a stand against ideological court-packing.”
But Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said the move to cut off debate fulfilled a “very straightforward principle — a nominee with the support of a majority of senators deserves a fair up-or-down vote.”
“The sword of the filibuster has been sheathed because we are placing principle before politics, and results before rhetoric,” Frist said.
The motion to cut off debate drew the support of 53 Republicans and 19 Democrats, including all 14 senators who signed on to an agreement last year that ended a series of Democratic filibusters of Bush’s judicial nominations.
The so-called Gang of 14 included seven Democrats and seven Republicans.
The Democrats agreed not to support judicial filibusters except under “extraordinary circumstances,” which would be up to each senator to define. In return, the GOP members agreed not to support any attempt by Republican leaders to change Senate rules to permanently end the practice.
Among the 24 Democrats who supported the filibuster were five senators being mentioned as possible 2008 White House contenders — Kerry, who lost to Bush in 2004; Hillary Clinton of New York; Evan Bayh of Indiana; Russ Feingold of Wisconsin; and Joe Biden of Delaware.
The Senate’s top two Democrats, Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, also supported the Kerry-Kennedy filibuster effort.
Alito, 55, replaces retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, a moderate swing vote and the first woman appointed to the high court.
if it weren’t tuesday, i would swear that it was monday… 8/
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nam june paik died yesterday… 8(
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Fnord is evaporated herbal tea without the herbs.
Fnord is that funny feeling you get when you reach for the
Snickers bar and come back holding a slurpee.
Fnord is the 43 1/3rd state, next to Wyoming.
Fnord is this really, really tall mountain.
Fnord is the reason boxes of condoms carry twelve instead of ten.
Fnord is the blue stripes in the road that never get painted.
Fnord is place where those socks vanish off to in the laundry.
Fnord is an arcade game like Pacman without the little dots.
Fnord is a little pufflike cloud you see at 5pm.
Fnord is the tool the dentist uses on unruly patients.
Fnord is the blank paper that cassette labels are printed on.
Fnord is where the buses hide at night.
Fnord is the empty pages at the end of the book.
Fnord is the screw that falls from the car for no reason.
Fnord is why Burger King uses paper instead of foam.
Fnord is the little green pebble in your shoe.
Fnord is the orange print in the yellow pages.
Fnord is a pickle without the bumps.
Fnord is why ducks eat trees.
Fnord is toast without bread.
Fnord is a venetian blind without the slats.
Fnord is the lint in the navel of the mites that eat the lint in the navel of the mites that eat the lint in Fnord’s navel.
Fnord is an apostrophe on drugs.
Fnord is the bucket where they keep the unused serifs for H*lvetica.
Fnord is the gunk that sticks to the inside of your car’s fenders.
Fnord is the source of all the zero bits in your computer.
Fnord is the echo of silence.
Fnord is the parsley on the plate of life.
Fnord is the sales tax on happiness.
Fnord is the preposition at the end of sixpence.
Fnord is the feeling in your brain when you hold your breath too long.
Fnord is the reason latent homosexuals stay latent.
Fnord is the donut hole.
Fnord is the whole donut.
Fnord is an annoying series of email messages.
Fnord is the color only blind people can see.
Fnord is the serial number on a box of cereal.
Fnord is the Universe with decreasing entropy.
Fnord is a naked woman with herpes simplex 428.
Fnord is the yin without yang.
Fnord is a pyrotumescent retrograde onyx obelisk.
Fnord is why lisp has so many parentheses.
Fnord is the the four-leaf clover with a missing leaf.
Fnord is double-jointed and has a cubic spline.
Fnord never sleeps.
Fnord is the “een” in baleen whale.
Fnord is neither a particle nor a wave.
Fnord is the space in between the pixels on your screen.
Fnord is the guy that writes the Infiniti ads.
Fnord is the nut in peanut butter and jelly.
Fnord is an antebellum flagellum fella.
Fnord is a sentient vacuum cleaner.
Fnord is the smallest number greater than zero.
Fnord lives in the empty space above a decimal point.
Fnord is the odd-colored scale on a dragon’s back.
Fnord is the redundant coin slot on arcade games.
Fnord was last seen in Omaha, Nebraska.
Fnord is the founding father of the phrase “founding father”.
Fnord is the last bit of sand you can’t get out of your shoe.
Fnord is Jesus’s speech advisor.
Fnord keeps a spare eyebrow in his pocket.
Fnord invented the green hubcap.
Fnord is why doctors ask you to cough.
Fnord is the “ooo” in varooom of race cars.
Fnord uses two bathtubs at once.
I cannot escape them
No matter how I try
They wait for me everywhere
I cannot pass them by.
Driving down the street
I see “Jesus Is Lord”
And then immediately after
I hear the word “FNORD!”
Innocuous sayings and parables
And on the evening news
I hear the word “FNORD!”
And suddenly I’m confused
I sit alone in my room
And I’m feeling rather bored
I turn on the tube and guess what
I hear the word “FNORD!”
“Don’t see the fnords and they won’t eat you”
That’s what I’ve heard the wisemen say
But I can’t get away from those beasties
There’s just no fucking way.
Dear Cecil:
Two related questions: As a cat owner, I’ve been a little concerned recently about rumors that cat poop can cause schizophrenic behavior in people who are overexposed to the waste. How much truth is in this–and if there is any truth to it, what amount can possibly count as overexposure? I’m also bothered by the supposed risk to pregnant women that changing the litter box can cause–not so much to them as to the fetus, through bacteria and whatnot. If that’s really true, then with a third of all Americans owning cats, why don’t we see higher rates of these dreadful birth defects? Certainly some of these women must get pregnant sometime, and I doubt they all know the dangers posed to them by cleaning up what Puss left behind. What gives?
–Onnie in Baltimore
Cecil replies:
Buckle up, friend. This one’s bizarre.
While you’re surely right that not everyone has gotten the word, the medical profession and hopefully most women of childbearing age know that if you’re pregnant you don’t want to get near cat feces. The problem is the protozoan Toxoplasma gondii, for which cats are the principal host. The microscopic parasites reproduce in the cat’s gut, the eggs are excreted, and by a process I’m not about to describe the critters wind up in your brain and muscles, where they create tiny cysts, leading to a condition known as toxoplasmosis. Unpromising as this sounds, the symptoms of toxoplasmosis are generally mild to nonexistent in adults, which is good, because roughly a third of all humans are infected, with the rate in some tropical countries approaching 100 percent.
For some, though, things are less benign. If a woman initially becomes infected while pregnant, there’s a fair chance the T. gondii will migrate across the placenta to her unborn child, with ghastly results ranging from cerebral palsy, seizures, and mental retardation to death. Women infected prior to pregnancy don’t run the same risk, which no doubt explains why we haven’t seen an epidemic of toxo-induced birth defects–the parasite’s ubiquitousness confers a sort of immunity. I’ve seen no research suggesting there’s a threshold exposure below which there’s no danger, and in my opinion it’d be foolish to assume there is one. Besides, you’ll never get a better excuse to make somebody else clean the litter box.
Here’s where things get strange. While the link between toxoplasmosis and birth defects has long been recognized, scientists now suspect that T. gondii may cause schizophrenia too. That in itself represents a major change in thinking–till recently the assumption, based on twin studies and the like, has been that schizophrenia is transmitted genetically. No way, scoffers say: schizophrenia is so profoundly disabling that sufferers tend not to reproduce. Germs are a likelier candidate. Studies typically have found T. gondii antibodies occurring in schizophrenics at twice the rate seen in control groups.
But get this. Forty-five percent of schizophrenics tested positive in one study for both T. gondii and D-lysergic acid diethylamide, better known as LSD. To quote a recent paper: “These results support the hypothesis that T. gondii may cause schizophrenia and may do so by producing or triggering the production of an hallucinogenic chemical” (“Genes, Germs, and Schizophrenia,” Ledgerwood et al, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 2003). Mindful that rodents are often an intermediate host for the parasite, the authors go on to say, “Production of such a compound may have been favored by natural selection because an infected, hallucinating rodent would be more easily captured by a cat.” In other words, schizophrenia in humans may be a side effect of T. gondii’s attempt to set cats up with a steady supply of tripping mice, the better to ensure its own reproductive success. Told you this was bizarre.
A word of caution: our authors’ impressive theoretical edifice is built on some pretty thin evidence. It’s simplistic to say T. gondii works by triggering the production of LSD–among other problems with the idea, acid mainly gives rise to visual hallucinations, whereas the delusions of schizophrenics are primarily auditory (e.g., hearing voices). No doubt genetics plays some role in schizophrenia, if only by establishing a predisposition to the condition. Still, even without the hallucinogen angle, this is a promising line of research. If germs are in fact a cause of schizophrenia, which afflicts more than two million Americans, there’s a better chance we’ll be able to come up with a method of prevention if not a cure.
–CECIL ADAMS
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BLUES are motivated by INTIMACY, seek opportunities to genuinely connect with others, and need to be appreciated. They do everything with quality and are devoted and loyal friends and employers/employees. Whatever or whomever they commit to are their sole (and soul) focus. They love to serve and will give freely of themselves in order to nurture others lives.
BLUES, however, do need to be understood. They have distinct preferences and occasionally the somewhat controlling (but always fair) personality of a confident leader. Their code of ethics is remarkably strong and they expect others to live honest, committed lives as well. They enjoy sharing meaningful moments in conversation as well as remembering special life events (i.e., birthdays and anniversaries). BLUES are dependable, thoughtful, nurturing, and can also be self-righteous, a bit worry-prone, and emotionally intense. They are like sainted pit-bulls who never let go of something once they are committed. When you deal with a BLUE, be sincere, make an effort to truly understand them, and truly appreciate them.
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At some point, it all becomes unbelievable.
President George W. Bush has not made many moves more unethical than offering Noel L. Hillman, the Abramoff prosecutor, a federal judgeship. Hillman has apparently been talking with Bush’s representatives since last year, and on last Thursday, he publicly announced he was accepting the appointment.
Let me make this perfectly clear.
At the same time that Mr. Hillman was conducting a grand jury and submitting evidence aimed at Bush’s allies and perhaps Bush himself, he was meeting with Bush, who was, in effect, offering him a bribe.
Mr. Hillman, Bush is saying, leave the job, let me put someone else in your stead, someone I want. Forget, says Mr. Bush, that you have been in charge of the investigation for two years, that you have been involved on a day-to-day basis, and that your leaving seriously impedes the investigation.
All this had been kept quiet until Thursday, January 26, 2006. Neither the Bush administration nor Mr. Hillman thought it appropriate to let anyone know what was going on until the deal was done. Secrecy, the modus operandi of this administration, kept the information from the public.
President Richard Nixon was the last one who tried something like this, but he didn’t get away with it. In 1971, he invited a California federal trial judge, Matthew Byrne, then sitting on the criminal prosecution of Daniel Ellsberg for his release of the Pentagon Papers, to Nixon’s San Clemente home, to offer Byrne the job of heading the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Byrne accepted the invitation. A limousine sent by Nixon picked Byrne up after the court. The next morning, at 7am, John Ehrlichman sent a limousine to Byrne to get his answer.
Neither Nixon nor Byrne nor Ehrlichman released information about any of the meetings. But secrecy, the modus operandi of that administration, did not work.
That day, the story leaked. Leonard Weinglass, one of the attorneys for the defense, virtually cross-examined the judge in the courtroom. The judge confirmed the meetings and then turned down the job.
Byrne then denied a recusal motion, continuing with the case. Byrne, then totally aware of his impropriety, ultimately dismissed the case, in part, because of the storm created by his secret Nixon meetings.
Both Matthew Byrne and Noel Hillman have good reputations. Byrne recognized that he was offered a bribe and turned it down.
I do not personally know Mr. Hillman. Thus far, his public actions seem to warrant only applause. But Hillman’s boss is Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Neither has said a word about the offer and its acceptance. The public is entitled to know more.
But Bush is getting away with it. There’s been very little press coverage. Alito, Hamas, Iraq, and Oprah Winfrey have buried the story.
The Democrats should insist on the appointment of a special prosecutor to fill Mr. Hillman’s position. Attorney General Gonzales should not be permitted to designate Hillman’s successor.
This, unlike the botched up Alito hearings, is a war we can win. We should not let Bush appoint his own person, someone like Harriet Miers, Samuel Alito, or the man Bush’s father said was the best person qualified for a Supreme Court seat, Clarence Thomas.
It is nearly impossible to have faith in any of America’s governing personnel or institutions. This administration’s total disregard for law and ethics continues to shock even though we thought we were by now unshockable.
but according to my democratically elected, democratic congressional representative, there is enough of a question about whether his actions are impeachable or not that “more investigations” are necessary before we jail this bastard…
big surprise…
Jan. 26 (Bloomberg) — A majority of Americans said the presidency of George W. Bush has been a failure and that they would be more likely to vote for congressional candidates who oppose him, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll.
Fifty-two percent of adults said Bush’s administration since 2001 has been a failure, down from 55 percent in October. Fifty- eight percent described his second term as a failure. At the same point in former President Bill Clinton’s presidency, 70 percent of those surveyed by Gallup said they considered it a success and 20 percent a failure.
In a poll conducted in January of 2002, after Bush was president for one year, 83 percent of those surveyed said his presidency was a success.
In the new poll, conducted Jan. 20-22, fifty-one percent of those surveyed said they would be more likely to vote for congressional candidates who do not support Bush’s policies.
The percentage of Americans who called Bush ‘honest and trustworthy’ fell 7 percentage points in the last year to 49 percent, the poll found.
The new poll also found that 62 percent of Americans said they are ‘dissatisfied’ with ‘the way things are going’ in the U.S., unchanged from a December survey. The percentage of ‘dissatisfied’ Americans reached its peak in October of 2005 when 68 percent of those surveyed agreed.
The survey interviewed 1,006 U.S. adults and has a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points. For the questions about whether Bush’s presidency is a success, about 500 U.S. adults were surveyed and the margin for error is plus or minus 5 percentage points.
if that’s the case then why isn’t there more action towards getting him out of office and into a jail uniform? 8/
by the way, in a typical republican move, they moved up the vote for alito’s confirmation from tomorrow to today but didn’t tell anyone in hopes that the democrats won’t get behind a filibuster. i heard about the possibility on friday, and sure enough, today it’s announced.
tomorrow is too late!
ACLU sues Homeland Security for arresting, spying on vegans who protested ham
The American Civil Liberties Union today filed a federal lawsuit in Atlanta on behalf of two vegan protesters who were subjected to imprisonment, arrest and harassment by Homeland Security officials.
The lawsuit stems from a Dec. 2003 incident, when vegans Caitlin Childs and Christopher Freeman were protesting on public property outside a Honey Baked Ham store in Georgia’s DeKalb County.
After the protest, the duo noticed they were being watched and photographed by a man in an unmarked car. They approached the car and wrote down the make, model, color and license plate number on a piece of paper. They then noticed the unmarked car was following them.
According to the ACLU suit, the car contained both a uniformed police officer and an undercover detective, later identified as Homeland Security Detective D.A. Gorman. The two pulled in behind Childs and Freeman and ordered them to exit their car.
Gorman then demanded that she turn over the piece of paper on which she had copied his license tag number. Childs refused to hand the paper over, and was handcuffed.
She was searched a male officer, despite her request to be searched only by a female officer, the ACLU says.
Both Childs and Freeman were arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. Police confiscated the piece of paper and Childs’ house keys. Both were released from custody, but neither the piece of paper nor the keys were returned. The county has not pursued a criminal case.
To view the surveillance photos taken by Homeland Security, go to http://www.aclu.org/spyfiles/honeyham/1.html.
More from the ACLU’s release:
“All across the country, the ACLU is uncovering information about Americans engaged in peaceful protest being spied on by Homeland Security, the FBI and local police,” said Debbie Seagraves, Executive Director of the ACLU of Georgia. “It is deeply disturbing that the government would use resources intended to protect national security to instead spy on innocent Americans who do nothing more than express their opinions on social and political issues.”
The ACLU argues that by stopping and detaining Childs and Freeman for no legal reason and then refusing to tell them why they had been pulled over, Detective Gorman and the DeKalb County Police Department deprived them of their right to be secure in their person and to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. The officials’ actions violated the First, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments of the federal and state constitutions, charged the ACLU.
“People of this country need to realize that our basic human rights are being whittled away on a daily basis,” Freeman said. “I hope this case brings to light the fact that anyone can come under government security and pay the price.”
In addition to the lawsuit, the ACLU has filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests on behalf of Childs and Freeman to uncover any surveillance files kept on the activists by Homeland Security or other law enforcement agencies. ACLU affiliates in 15 other states have filed similar requests with the FBI on behalf of more than 100 groups and individuals, as part of a nationwide effort to expose unlawful domestic spying.
Last month, the ACLU of Michigan obtained an FBI report summarizing a meeting that was intended to keep local, state and federal law enforcement agencies apprised of planned protests and activities by various groups and individuals. Among the groups discussed at the meeting were an affirmative action advocacy group and a peace and justice group.
The ACLU launched its national “Spy Files” effort last year in response to widespread complaints from students and political activists who said they were questioned by FBI agents in the months leading up to the political conventions. The FOIA requests seek two kinds of information: 1) the actual FBI files of groups and individuals targeted for speaking out or practicing their faith; and, 2) information about how the practices and funding structure of joint task forces between the FBI and local police may be encouraging rampant and unwarranted spying.
no, it’s not the war on vegetarians, it’s the war on terrorists… this just goes right along with bush and his unwarranted domestic wiretaps, and it’s another reason why we need to revolt and oust these people from power… and people think it’s dangerous for me to wear a button that says "I Am A Terrorist!"… 8/
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Hybrid Elephant report:
i’ve been somewhat more than usually busy the past couple of weeks. i got an order for two ardhanarisvara murtis (why two i will probably never know, but what the hell, right?), and an order for a narada sivalingam, which i had to send out for and which should be arriving tomorrow or tuesday, and another order for a whole bunch of different fragrances from sarathi, and an order for auroshikha cedar, and an order for a whole bunch (like six 80-stick boxes) of bharath darshan, which i have to send out for tomorrow. i’m also working with ezra on his “Bald Man” t-shirts, and i’ve got more html maintenance to do for chris. on top of everything else, i’m making 100 buttons for Drunk Puppet Night (which opens in portland in 3 weeks) if i could just be this busy all the time, i wouldn’t need to look for another job.
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Thank you for contacting me in regards to President Bush’s authorization of a National Security Agency (NSA) program to conduct domestic wiretaps without judicial oversight. I appreciate hearing from you on this critical issue.
I share your concerns about the legality of President Bush’s authorization of domestic surveillance. As you may know, President Bush authorized the NSA to conduct domestic wiretaps on U.S. citizens shortly after September 11, 2001. Under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), surveillance requires a warrant from a special FISA court or the authorization of the Attorney General which must then be reported to the court within 72 hours. It appears that the President authorized the NSA to conduct domestic surveillance without going through those critical checks. Like you, I am very concerned about these revelations, and am doing everything I can to make sure this is fully investigated.1
I have joined my colleagues in sending several letters citing our concerns and requesting investigations and actions to be taken to bring this program tolight. These include a letter to the Inspectors General of the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense, as well as the Government Accountability Office (GAO), calling for them to contuct immediate investigations. My colleagues and I also sent a letter to the leadership of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence calling for immediate investigations.2
I also joinced Congressman John Conyers (D-Mi) in sending a letter to President Bush expressing our concern about the apparent illegality of this program and urging the President to propose to Congress any legislative changes that may be needed so that Congress can excersise its Constitutiona authority to oversee the Executive Branch’s actions. Specifically, the letter requests that the President submit legislative changes to the Congress and disclose to Congress information about the program such as how many people have been monitored under this authority and for what reasons.3
I am also a co-sponsor of H.Res. 643 introduced by Congressman John Conyers (D-Mi). This resolution of inquiry directs the Attorney General to submit to the House of Representatives all documents relating to the NSA’s warrantless electronic surveillance of telephone conversations and electronic communications of U.S. persons. This important measure would allow the House to scrutinize the Attorney General’s legal advice and justification for the wiretapping program.
Due to questions of legality surrounding the authorization of the NSA program, many have raised the question of whether or not the President has committed an impeachable offense. Certainly, impeachment cannot be ruled out as a possibility should it become clear that the President or other members of the Adminmistration have committed impeachable offenses.4 However,5 before considering such an option, much more would have to be known about the President’s authorization of the NSA program.6 Impeachment is a very serious step to take,7 and I strongly believe that it is something that should only be undertaken in a deliberate and thoughtful manner.8 That is why we must have robust congressional oversight and investigations as soon as possible.9 At this time, I am not yet ready to prejudge the outcome of any investigation by suggesting impeachment must be a component in the proceedings. There is still much to be learned about how this program has been used.10
As you know, impeachment involves the legislative branch of our government bringing accusations against officials such as cabinet members, judges and the President. The power to impeach resides solely with the House of Representatives; the power to try an impeachment case resides solely with the Senate. The Chief Justice of the United States presides over the inquiry in case of impeachment of the President. Impeachable acts cited in the Constitution are “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
One of the most difficult questions raised by this Constitutional provision is: What are high crimes and misdemeanors? The conclusion reached by most scholars11 is that clear criminal law violations represent impeachable offenses, whereas misconduct that is not necessarily criminal but undermines the integrity of the office (such as disregard of constitutional responsibilities) may rise to the level of an impeachable offense.12 Partly because of this, impeachment has taken place infrequently. By making impeachment difficult, the Constitution guards against the intrusion of the legislature into the business of the judiciary and executive brances. It also ensures that impeachmenmt remains primarily a legal, or judicial, procedure, rather than a political process.
I hope that I have sufficiently explained my position on these important issues.13 Once again, thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. Please be assured that i’ll keep pushing for thorough investigations so that Congress can exercise its oversight on this serious matter. If you have any further questions, comments, or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact me again.
Sincerely,
Adam Smith
Member of Congress
Translation:
- i wish you people would stop bothering me and go away.
- i’m tired from all this letter-writing… let me sit and catch my breath for a minute…
- he might have learned something that i can use to be able to stay in office, so i don’t want to discount anything without “investigating” further.
- let me see… president getting a blow job, that’s an impeachable offense. president lying, deliberately misleading, flagrantly violating national and international law, and admitting it… we’ll have to think about that.
- nope… not impeachable offense… sorry.
- see note #3.
- and i have a 2:00 tee time…
- so we’ll think about it and we’ll let you know what we come up with… eventually… if we feel like it.
- more investigations… you would think that bush’s admitting that he broke the law would be enough, but no… there have to be more investigations…
- see note #3.
- any statistic that starts out with “‘most’ something” cannot be proven.
- president getting a blowjob, impeachable offense. president lying, intentionally misleading, flagrantly violating national and international law and admitting it, not impeachable offense.
- i might just be able to make that 2:00 tee off…
and this is a democrat, supposedly the “opposition” party in congress at this time… my solution? depopulate the country. it’s a lost cause. the administration has been corrupt for so long that it’s what people expect now. they don’t see that the foundations upon which this country was built are being taken away, piece by piece. if you don’t leave now, tomorrow may be too late.
AAARRGGHH! VEGETABLE SACRIFICE CANCELLED!
DON’T go to the vegetable sacrifice today… the pass is closed due to avalanche control work, and they’re turning people around at edgewick road, which is one or two exits *west* of eXit-38…
once again, the vegetable sacrifice is CANCELLED for today, however it will be rescheduled before october, so if you have a suggestion for when (springtime would be good if you want it to be at eXit-38) write to me and we’ll work something out.
TINA CHOPP IS GOD!
PRAISE HER OR DIE!!
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it’s almost over, but in case there’s anybody who didn’t know…
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January 27th is the Second Annual
LiveJournal Rabbit Hole Day! Conquer Greenland. Sprout some extra limbs. Walk on water. Marry an insect. |
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The Church of Tina Chopp proudly announces a
PUBLIC RITUAL VEGETABLE SACRIFICE
In Honour of Tinite New Year
Saturday, 28 January, 2006
at HIGH Noon
the place is the usual spot, eXit-38, at the Change Creek Bridge. map here –
http://snurl.com/hrue
questions and/or carpool arrangements, contact The Church –
[email protected]
for those of you who haven’t been to a Ritual Vegetable Sacrifice before, full
details can be found here –
http://www.ebeneezer.org/ritual/vegetable/public.html
we hope to see you there!
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DRUNK PUPPET NIGHT
In Portland’s Winningstad Theatre
17th & 18th February
1111 SW Broadway (at Main St.)
8:00 pm, $15 (21+ only)
In Seattle’s Columbia City Theatre
24th & 25th February, 3rd, 4th, 10th & 11th March
4619 Rainier Ave. S.
8:30 pm, $15 (21+ only)
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|
January 27th is the Second Annual
LiveJournal Rabbit Hole Day! Conquer Greenland. Sprout some extra limbs. Walk on water. Marry an insect. |
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delocator dot net is an online database of coffee houses that are independently owned and not under the watchful thumb of starbucks or any of the other transnational coffee corporations… and there’s one by my house which i didn’t know about before finding it on delocator. help them grow!
Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie or Shielded Cap… take your pick… although the first link contains a very specific warning about businesses like the one represented in the second link (although it’s definitely more fashionable), so beware…
thanks to
Political bias affects brain activity, study finds
Democrats and Republicans both adept at ignoring facts, brain scans show
Democrats and Republicans alike are adept at making decisions without letting the facts get in the way, a new study shows.
And they get quite a rush from ignoring information that’s contrary to their point of view.
Researchers asked staunch party members from both sides to evaluate information that threatened their preferred candidate prior to the 2004 Presidential election. The subjects’ brains were monitored while they pondered.
The results were announced today.
"We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," said Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory University. "What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and circuits known to be involved in resolving conflicts."
Bias on both sides
The test subjects on both sides of the political aisle reached totally biased conclusions by ignoring information that could not rationally be discounted, Westen and his colleagues say.
Then, with their minds made up, brain activity ceased in the areas that deal with negative emotions such as disgust. But activity spiked in the circuits involved in reward, a response similar to what addicts experience when they get a fix, Westen explained.
The study points to a total lack of reason in political decision-making.
"None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged," Westen said. "Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones."
Notably absent were any increases in activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain most associated with reasoning.
The tests involved pairs of statements by the candidates, President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry, that clearly contradicted each other. The test subjects were asked to consider and rate the discrepancy. Then they were presented with another statement that might explain away the contradiction. The scenario was repeated several times for each candidate.
A brain-scan technique known as functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, revealed a consistent pattern. Both Republicans and Democrats consistently denied obvious contradictions for their own candidate but detected contradictions in the opposing candidate.
"The result is that partisan beliefs are calcified, and the person can learn very little from new data," Westen said.
Other relatively neutral candidates were introduced into the mix, such as the actor Tom Hanks. Importantly, both the Democrats and Republicans reacted to the contradictions of these characters in the same manner.
The findings could prove useful beyond the campaign trail.
"Everyone from executives and judges to scientists and politicians may reason to emotionally biased judgments when they have a vested interest in how to interpret ‘the facts,’" Westen said.
The researchers will present the findings Saturday at the Annual Conference of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.
thanks to
By E&P Staff
January 23, 2006 10:05 PM ET
NEW YORK The former national director of the National Security Agency, in an appearance today before the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., today, appeared to be unfamiliar with the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution when pressed by a reporter with Knight Ridder’s Washington office — despite his claims that he was actually something of an expert on it.
General Michael Hayden, principal deputy director of National Intelligence with the Office of National Intelligence, talked with reporters about the current controversy surrounding the National Security Agency’s warrantless monitoring of communications of suspected al Qaeda terrorists. Hayden has been in this position since last April, but was NSA director when the NSA monitoring program began in 2001.
As the last journalist to get in a question, Jonathan Landay, a well-regarded investigative reporter for Knight Ridder, noted that Gen. Hayden repeatedly referred to the Fourth Amendment’s search standard of "reasonableness" without mentioning that it also demands "probable cause." Hayden seemed to deny that the amendment included any such thing, or was simply ignoring it.
Here is the exchange, along with the entire Fourth Amendment at the end.
***
QUESTION: Jonathan Landay with Knight Ridder. I’d like to stay on the same issue, and that had to do with the standard by which you use to target your wiretaps. I’m no lawyer, but my understanding is that the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution specifies that you must have probable cause to be able to do a search that does not violate an American’s right against unlawful searches and seizures. Do you use —
GEN. HAYDEN: No, actually — the Fourth Amendment actually protects all of us against unreasonable search and seizure.
QUESTION: But the —
GEN. HAYDEN: That’s what it says.
QUESTION: But the measure is probable cause, I believe.
GEN. HAYDEN: The amendment says unreasonable search and seizure.
QUESTION: But does it not say probable —
GEN. HAYDEN: No. The amendment says —
QUESTION: The court standard, the legal standard —
GEN. HAYDEN: — unreasonable search and seizure.
QUESTION: The legal standard is probable cause, General. You used the terms just a few minutes ago, "We reasonably believe." And a FISA court, my understanding is, would not give you a warrant if you went before them and say "we reasonably believe"; you have to go to the FISA court, or the attorney general has to go to the FISA court and say, "we have probable cause."
And so what many people believe — and I’d like you to respond to this — is that what you’ve actually done is crafted a detour around the FISA court by creating a new standard of "reasonably believe" in place of probable cause because the FISA court will not give you a warrant based on reasonable belief, you have to show probable cause. Could you respond to that, please?
GEN. HAYDEN: Sure. I didn’t craft the authorization. I am responding to a lawful order. All right? The attorney general has averred to the lawfulness of the order.
Just to be very clear — and believe me, if there’s any amendment to the Constitution that employees of the National Security Agency are familiar with, it’s the Fourth. And it is a reasonableness standard in the Fourth Amendment. And so what you’ve raised to me — and I’m not a lawyer, and don’t want to become one — what you’ve raised to me is, in terms of quoting the Fourth Amendment, is an issue of the Constitution. The constitutional standard is "reasonable." And we believe — I am convinced that we are lawful because what it is we’re doing is reasonable.
***
Here’s the Fourth Amendment: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
A new Gallup poll released Monday showed that 51% of Americans said the administration was wrong to intercept conversations involving a party inside the U.S. without a warrant. In response to another question, 58% said they support the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the program.
i’ve said it before, but it bears repeating, especially since even the government isn’t exactly sure about what rights they are stealing from us…
When they took the fourth amendment,
I was quiet because I didn’t deal drugs.
When they took the sixth amendment,
I was quiet because I was innocent.
When they took the second amendment,
I was quiet because I didn’t own a gun.
Now they’ve taken the first amendment,
and I can say nothing about it.
but at the same time…
Bush: Bin Laden Should Be Taken Seriously
FORT MEADE, Md. – President Bush, defending the government’s secret surveillance program, said Wednesday that Americans should take Osama bin Laden seriously when he says he’s going to attack again.
"When he says he’s going to hurt the American people again, or try to, he means it," Bush told reporters after visiting the top-secret National Security Agency where the surveillance program is based. "I take it seriously, and the people of NSA take it seriously."
It was Bush’s first comment about bin Laden since the al-Qaida leader warned in a tape aired last week that his fighters are preparing new attacks in the United States. Bin Laden offered a truce, without specifying the conditions, and the White House responded that the United States would never negotiate with the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Bush’s NSA visit was part of an aggressive administration effort to defend the surveillance program. Experts and lawmakers from both parties have questioned whether it’s legal for the government to listen to conversations in the United States without a warrant, which the administration could get through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Four leading Democratic senators wrote Bush Wednesday saying they support efforts to do everything possible within the law to combat terrorism, but that the NSA program is an "apparent violation of federal law."
"If you or officials in your administration believe that FISA, or any law, does not give you enough authority to combat terrorism, you should propose changes in the law to Congress," wrote Sens. Harry Reid, Edward Kennedy, Richard Durbin and Russ Feingold. "You may not simply disregard the law."
Reporters traveling with the president were only allowed to see a few minutes of Bush’s NSA tour, as he walked through the high-tech Threat Operations Center where intelligence experts monitor Internet traffic. He spoke to reporters from a podium set up in a hallway after completing his tour, but did not take questions.
In keeping with the NSA’s secrecy, reporters were required to leave their cell phones, pagers, laptops and wireless e-mail devices outside the complex. The White House negotiated so that the journalists could bring in cameras and video equipment, but they were allowed only to take photos of the president, not the inside or outside of the facility itself.
Bush said the NSA program is limited to communications between the United States and people overseas who are linked to al-Qaida. He said it has helped prevent terrorist attacks and save American lives, although the government has not given any specifics.
Bush urged that people "listen to the words of Osama bin Laden and take him seriously."
His critics say the law requires him to get permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to eavesdrop on communications involving Americans.
"Obviously, I support tracking down terrorists," Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., said in a speech Wednesday. "I think that’s our obligation. But I think it can be done in a lawful way."
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said the administration should have asked Congress to change the law if it wanted additional surveillance powers.
"Instead, a top lawyer in the Bush administration did just the opposite," Leahy said Wednesday, circulating 2002 testimony from a Justice Department official who said the administration had no position on a bill that would have made it easier to get warrants from the FISA court.
Bush said he had the legal right to do whatever he could to prevent further attacks and that the NSA program "is fully consistent with our nation’s laws and Constitution."
"I’ll continue to reauthorize this program for so long as our country faces a continuing threat from al-Qaida and related groups," Bush said.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said he’s eager to learn more. Asked on NBC’s "Today" show, if Bush broke the law, McCain replied: "I don’t know. I want to be perfectly clear. I don’t know the answer."
New York company is accused of deception
By TODD BISHOP AND JOHN COOK
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTERS
Washington’s attorney general has filed his first lawsuit under the state’s new anti-spyware law — alleging that a New York company’s software claiming to rid personal computers of spyware actually deposits a nefarious program instead.
The suit, which was filed Tuesday against Secure Computer LLC of White Plains, N.Y., alleges that the company’s spyware-scanning software falsely labels ordinary Windows system keys as spyware to induce computer users to pay $49.95 for the company’s Spyware Cleaner program. That program doesn’t actually clean spyware from the PC but rather modifies the computer’s security settings, the suit alleges.
Attorney General Rob McKenna is expected to announce the suit at a news conference today in Seattle along with Nancy Anderson, deputy general counsel from Microsoft Corp., which also has filed suit against Secure Computer.
"This lawsuit is intended to send a message to spyware perpetrators and to hucksters who market phony products that play on the public fear of spyware," McKenna said Tuesday night. He called the alleged tactics, especially the changing of security settings, "quite startling."
Microsoft’s lawsuit was prompted in part by complaints from the company’s customers, Anderson said. At the same time, online promotions for the Spyware Cleaner program allegedly capitalized on the company’s name, with phrases such as "Microsoft spyware cleaner" and "Microsoft anti-spyware."
Anderson described the case as an "important milestone in making sure consumers understand that they will be protected if they are preyed upon by deceptive practices." Microsoft previously cited the state’s anti-spyware law in a separate lawsuit against an unnamed defendant.
The law, which was enacted last year, made it illegal to illicitly install software on someone else’s computer to modify settings, collect information or perform other deceptive acts.
Both suits also make claims under anti-spam laws, alleging deceptive practices in e-mails used to promote the product. McKenna’s suit names defendants including Paul E. Burke, Secure Computer’s president, who didn’t return a message left on his phone in New York.
The suit alleges that Secure Computer, Burke and another defendant, Gary T. Preston of Jamaica, N.Y., made more than $100,000 by selling Spyware Cleaner through a network of affiliates. The suit, which also names some of those affiliates, asks the court to enjoin the defendants from deceptive practices and assess financial penalties.
Ben Edelman, an expert who has testified in anti-spyware suits, said he was familiar with Secure Computer and its tactics. He described it as "a deplorable practice" that "takes advantage of users in their moment of weakness." Edelman said there are other companies engaged in similar practices.
According to the attorney general’s suit, the defendants marketed the Spyware Cleaner product to computer users through pop-up advertisements and e-mails that told them their machines had been infected with spyware. The pop-up messages, which mimicked the appearance of Microsoft security boxes and used the Redmond company’s trademarked font, then asked users to perform a computer scan.
The messages were designed to alarm computer users, with one reading: "Warning — Your computer may be infected with harmful spyware programs," the suit says. Those consumers who followed through with the scan were then told that they had spyware on their computers.
"Deceived into believing that dangerous spyware is on their computer and there is no time to waste, the user is induced to purchase Spyware Cleaner," the suit says.
Washington State’s Anti-Spyware Statute in case there was any question about this…
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In light of recent events, to confustibulate federal examiners, I hereby propose a National Google Child Porn and Al Qaeda Day. (I already Googled Al Qaeda once just to check my spelling. Look, I am a terrorist!)
I arbitrarily propose noon on January 31st as a good time to do this, so that in case the feds ever do get their grubby hands on Google’s (our) data, they find a nice fat spike of activity that will keep them federal investigators tied up with useless searches for years to come!
Pass the word! Noon on January 31st is National Google Child Porn and Al Qaeda Day!
and for those of you who wonder what time zone, who the hell cares… a spike will be a lot more significant the longer it goes on… 8)
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by Paul Craig Roberts
A provision in the “PATRIOT Act” creates a new federal police force with the power to violate the Bill of Rights. You might think that this cannot be true, as you have not read about it in newspapers or heard it discussed by talking heads on TV.
Go to House Report 109-333 USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005 and check it out for yourself. Sec. 605 reads:
“There is hereby created and established a permanent police force, to be known as the ‘United States Secret Service Uniformed Division.'”
This new federal police force is “subject to the supervision of the Secretary of Homeland Security.”
The new police are empowered to “make arrests without warrant for any offense against the United States committed in their presence, or for any felony cognizable under the laws of the United States if they have reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing such felony.”
The new police are assigned a variety of jurisdictions, including “an event designated under section 3056(e) of title 18 as a special event of national significance” (SENS).
“A special event of national significance” is neither defined nor does it require the presence of a “protected person” such as the president in order to trigger it. Thus, the administration, and perhaps the police themselves, can place the SENS designation on any event. Once a SENS designation is placed on an event, the new federal police are empowered to keep out and arrest people at their discretion.
The language conveys enormous discretionary and arbitrary powers. What is “an offense against the United States”? What are “reasonable grounds”?
You can bet the Alito/Roberts court will rule that it is whatever the executive branch says.
The obvious purpose of the act is to prevent demonstrations at Bush/Cheney events. However, nothing in the language limits the police powers from being used only in this way. Like every law in the U.S., this law also will be expansively interpreted and abused. It has dire implications for freedom of association and First Amendment rights. We can take for granted that the new federal police will be used to suppress dissent and to break up opposition. The Brownshirts are now arming themselves with a Gestapo.
Many naïve Americans will write to me to explain that this new provision in the reauthorization of the “PATRIOT Act” is necessary to protect the president and other high officials from terrorists or from harm at the hands of angry demonstrators: “No one else will have anything to fear.” Some will accuse me of being an alarmist, and others will say that it is unpatriotic to doubt the law’s good intentions.
Americans will write such nonsense despite the fact that the president and foreign dignitaries are already provided superb protection by the Secret Service. The naïve will not comprehend that the president cannot be endangered by demonstrators at SENS at which the president is not present. For many Americans, the light refuses to turn on.
In Nazi Germany, did no one but Jews have anything to fear from the Gestapo?
By Stalin’s time, Lenin and Trotsky had eliminated all members of the “oppressor class,” but that did not stop Stalin from sending millions of “enemies of the people” to the Gulag.
It is extremely difficult to hold even local police forces accountable. Who is going to hold accountable a federal police protected by Homeland Security and the president?
US Secret Service Uniformed Division and National Special Security Events – it’s not just scare tactics. at this rate it won’t be long until we have our own, modern version of the gestapo and schutzstaffel… 8/
Impeachment hearings: The White House prepares for the worst
The Bush administration is bracing for impeachment hearings in Congress.
“A coalition in Congress is being formed to support impeachment,” an administration source said.
Sources said a prelude to the impeachment process could begin with hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee in February. They said the hearings would focus on the secret electronic surveillance program and whether Mr. Bush violated the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Administration sources said the charges are expected to include false reports to Congress as well as Mr. Bush’s authorization of the National Security Agency to engage in electronic surveillance inside the United States without a court warrant. This included the monitoring of overseas telephone calls and e-mail traffic to and from people living in the United States without requisite permission from a secret court.
Sources said the probe to determine whether the president violated the law will include Republicans, but that they may not be aware they could be helping to lay the groundwork for a Democratic impeachment campaign against Mr. Bush.
“Our arithmetic shows that a majority of the committee could vote against the president,” the source said. “If we work hard, there could be a tie.”
The law limits the government surveillance to no more than 72 hours without a court warrant. The president, citing his constitutional war powers, has pledged to continue wiretaps without a warrant.
The hearings would be accompanied by several lawsuits against the administration connected to the surveillance program. At the same time, the Electronic Privacy Information Center has filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that demands information about the NSA spying.
Sen. Arlen Specter, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman and Pennsylvania Republican, has acknowledged that the hearings could conclude with a vote of whether Mr. Bush violated the law. Mr. Specter, a critic of the administration’s surveillance program, stressed that, although he would not seek it, impeachment is a possible outcome.
“Impeachment is a remedy,” Mr. Specter said on Jan. 15. “After impeachment, you could have a criminal prosecution. But the principal remedy under our society is to pay a political price.”
Mr. Specter and other senior members of the committee have been told by legal constitutional experts that Mr. Bush did not have the authority to authorize unlimited secret electronic surveillance. Another leading Republican who has rejected the administration’s argument is Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas.
On Jan. 16, former Vice President Al Gore set the tone for impeachment hearings against Mr. Bush by accusing the president of lying to the American people. Mr. Gore, who lost the 2000 election to Mr. Bush, accused the president of “indifference” to the Constitution and urged a serious congressional investigation. He said the administration decided to break the law after Congress refused to change the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
“A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government,” Mr. Gore said.
“I call upon members of Congress in both parties to uphold your oath of office and defend the Constitution,” he said. “Stop going along to get along. Start acting like the independent and co-equal branch of American government that you are supposed to be under the constitution of our country.”
Impeachment proponents in Congress have been bolstered by a memorandum by the Congressional Research Service on Jan. 6. CRS, which is the research arm of Congress, asserted in a report by national security specialist Alfred Cumming that the amended 1947 law requires the president to keep all members of the House and Senate intelligence committees “fully and currently informed” of a domestic surveillance effort. It was the second CRS report in less than a month that questioned the administration’s domestic surveillance program.
The latest CRS report said Mr. Bush should have briefed the intelligence committees in the House and Senate. The report said covert programs must be reported to House and Senate leaders as well as the chairs of the intelligence panels, termed the “Gang of Eight.”
Administration sources said Mr. Bush would wage a vigorous defense of electronic surveillance and other controversial measures enacted after 9/11. They said the president would begin with pressure on Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Mr. Bush would then point to security measures taken by the former administration of President Bill Clinton.
“The argument is that the American people will never forgive any public official who knowingly hurts national security,” an administration source said. “We will tell the American people that while we have done everything we can to protect them, our policies are being endangered by a hypocritical Congress.”
Q: My name is Tiffany Cooper. I’m a sophomore here at Kansas State and I was just wanting to get your comments about education. Recently 12.7 billion dollars was cut from education. I was just wondering how is that supposed to help our futures?
Bush: Education budget was cut — say it again. What was cut?
Q: 12.7 billion dollars was cut from education. I’m wanting to know how is that supposed to help our futures?
Bush: At the federal level?
Q: Yes.
Bush: I don’t think we’ve actually — for higher education? Student loans?
Q: Yes, student loans.
Bush: Actually, I think what we did was reform the student loan program. We are not cutting money out of it. In other words, people aren’t going to be cut off the program. We’re just making sure it works better as part of the reconciliation package I think she’s talking about? Yeah — It is a form of the program to make sure it functions better. In other words, we’re not taking people off student loans. We’re saving money in the student loan program because it’s inefficient. So I think the thing to look at is whether or not there will be fewer people getting student loans. I don’t think so.
<reality>
Student Loans: On Dec. 21, 2005, the Senate passed $12.7 billion in cuts to education programs — “the largest cut in student college loan programs in history.” Vice President Cheney cast the deciding vote in favor of the cuts. The bill also fixed the interest rate on student loans at 6.8 percent, “even if commercial rates are lower.” Despite Bush’s claims, students will be left off the program.
</reality>
Secondly, on Pell Grants, we are actually expanding the number of Pell grants through our budget. Great question. The key on education is to make sure that we stay focused on how do we stay competitive into the 21st century, and I plan on doing some talking about math and science and engineering programs so that people who graduate out of college will have the skills necessary to compete in this competitive world. But I think i’m right on this. I will check when I get back to Washington, but thank you for your question.
<reality>
Pell Grants: Pell Grants have been frozen or cut since 2002; they are now stuck at a maximum of $4,050. In his 2000 election campaign, President Bush promised to increase the maximum Pell Grant amount to $5,100. “From 2004 to 2005, 24,000 students lost their Pell grants, according to a report pre-pared by the Congressional Research Service. This was the first drop in the number of students receiving the grants in several years; the number had been growing steadily since 1999.”
</reality>
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the car is close enough that they left it up to us whether they fix it or they total it… but we apparently only had “gap insurance” for the first year, and it just recently expired, so if we total it, they will just give us a check for what it’s worth now, not the total replacement cost, so we decided to fix it… but that was before we discovered that if the body shop goes over the estimate by more than a few hundred dollars (which is likely), the insurance company suddenly decides that it’s a total loss and automatically issues us a check for what it’s worth now, with no further questions asked. either way, it looks like we’re going to end up with a car, and if the insurance company give us a check instead, then we’ll not only end up with a far less expensive, but equally functional car, but we will also have enough money to fix our leaky roof and/or buy a shed, so it’s not all bad news.
i did some web design work for chris in exchange for all the acupuncture treatments he’s been giving me, but unfortunately, without totally redesigning his entire site, i won’t be able to get it to validate, because the previous “web designer” put everything in <table background=…>s and <font …>s rather than using css… <grumble><mutter>
i recently made a comment in the
Woman Becomes Quadruple Amputee After Giving Birth
ORLANDO, Fla. — A Sanford mother says she will never be able to hold her newborn because an Orlando hospital performed a life-altering surgery and, she claims, the hospital refuses to explain why they left her as a multiple amputee.
The woman filed a complaint against Orlando Regional Healthcare Systems, she said, because they won’t tell her exactly what happened. The hospital maintains the woman wants to know information that would violate other patients’ rights.
Claudia Mejia gave birth eight and a half months ago at Orlando Regional South Seminole. She was transported to Orlando Regional Medical Center in Orlando where her arms and legs were amputated. She was told she had streptococcus, a flesh eating bacteria, and toxic shock syndrome, but no further explanation was given.
The hospital, in a letter, wrote that if she wanted to find out exactly what happened, she would have to sue them.
“I want to know what happened. I went to deliver my baby and I came out like this,” Mejia said.
Mejia said after she gave birth to Mathew last spring, she was kept in the hospital with complications. Twelve days after giving birth at Orlando Regional South Seminole hospital, she was transported to Orlando Regional Medical Center where she became a quadruple amputee. Now she can not care for or hold her baby.
“Yeah, I want to pick him up. He wants me to pick him up. I can’t. I want to, but I can’t,” she said. “Woke up from surgery and I had no arms and no legs. No one told me anything. My arms and legs were just gone.”
Her 7-year-old son, Jorge, asks his mother over and over what happened to her. Neither she nor her husband has the answer.
“I love her, so I’ll always stick with her and take it a day at a time myself,” said her husband, Tim Edwards.
The couple wants to know how she caught streptococcus, during labor or after. She doesn’t know. She knows she didn’t leave the hospital the same.
“And why, I want to know why this happened,” she said.
Her attorney, Judy Hyman wrote ORHS a letter saying, according to the Florida statute, “The Patients Right To Know About Adverse Medical Incidents Act,” the hospital must give her the records.
“When the statute is named ‘Patients Right To Know,’ I don’t know how it could be clearer,” Hyman said.
The hospital’s lawyers wrote back, “Ms. Mejia’s request may require legal resolution.” In other words, according to their interpretation of the law, Mejia has to sue them to get information about herself.
That’s the sticking point, the interpretation of the Patients Right To Know act, a constitutional amendment Florida voters passed a little more than a year ago.
Mejia’s other attorney, E. Clay Parker, said the hospital is not following the law
“We were forced to file this and ask a judge to interpret the constitutional amendment and do right,” Parker said.
Mejia hopes the right thing is done. She said not knowing exactly why it happened is unbearable. She only hopes she’ll be able to soon answer her little boy’s question, ‘What happened?’
“He told me everyday, ‘What happened,’ and I don’t have any answers for that,” she said.
ORMC said Mejia is requesting information on if there were other patients or someone on her floor with the streptococcus. They said, if they release that to her, that would be a violation of other patients’ rights.
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By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer
MANHATTAN, Kan. – President Bush pushed back Monday at critics of his once-secret domestic spying effort, saying it should be termed a “terrorist surveillance program” and contending it has the backing of legal experts, key lawmakers and the Supreme Court.
Several members of Congress from both parties have questioned whether the warrantless snooping is legal. That is because it bypasses a special federal court that, by law, must authorize eavesdropping on Americans and because the president provided limited notification to only a few lawmakers.
“It’s amazing that people say to me, ‘Well, he’s just breaking the law.’ If I wanted to break the law, why was I briefing Congress?” asked Bush. One of those who had been informed, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., was sitting behind Bush during his appearance at Kansas State University.
Bush’s remarks were part of an aggressive administration campaign to defend the four-year-old program as a crucial and legal terror-fighting tool. The White House is trying to sell its side of the story before the Senate Judiciary Committee opens hearings on it in two weeks.
Back in Washington, Gen. Michael Hayden, the former National Security Agency director who is now the government’s No. 2 intelligence official, contended the surveillance was narrowly targeted. He acknowledged that the program established a lower legal standard to eavesdrop on terror-related communications than a surveillance law implemented in 1978.
Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, government officials had to prove to a secretive intelligence court that there was “probable cause” to believe that a person was tied to terrorism. Bush’s program allows senior NSA officials to approve surveillance when there was “reason to believe” the call may involve al-Qaida and its affiliates.
Hayden maintained that the work was within the law. “The constitutional standard is reasonable. … I am convinced that we are lawful because what it is we are doing is reasonable,” he said at the National Press Club.
Hayden also rejected suggestions that the NSA rank-and-file had problems with the electronic monitoring, saying that the agency’s independent watchdog told him Friday that “not a single employee” had registered a concern with that office about the program.
Democrats countered that many important questions remain.
“We can be strong and operate under the rule of law,” said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. “These are not mutually exclusive principles — they are the principles upon which our nation was founded.”
In his remarks, Bush said that allowing the NSA to monitor the international phone calls and e-mails of Americans with suspected ties to terrorists can hardly be considered “domestic spying.”
“It’s what I would call a terrorist surveillance program,” Bush said at Kansas State. “If they’re making a phone call in the United States, it seems like to me we want to know why.”
He said he “had all kinds of lawyers review the process” to ensure it didn’t violate civil liberties or the law.
And he insisted that a recent Supreme Court decision backs his contention that he had the authority to order the program through a resolution Congress passed after the 2001 terrorist attacks that lets him use force in the anti-terror fight.
PAY ATTENTION PEOPLE – THIS IS YOUR GOVERNMENT TRYING TO TALK YOU OUT OF THE RIGHTS THAT ARE RIGHTFULLY YOURS!
“I’m not a lawyer, but I can tell you what it means: It means Congress gave me the authority to use necessary force to protect the American people, but it didn’t prescribe the tactics,” Bush said.
um… WRONG!!…
Bush and Hayden sought to paint the program as vital to national security. “Had this program been in effect prior to 9/11, it is my professional judgment that we would have detected some of the al-Qaida operatives in the United States,” Hayden said.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is to deliver a speech on the program Tuesday. And Bush was going to NSA headquarters outside Washington on Wednesday.
Last week, Gonzales sent congressional leaders a 42-page legal defense of the program. Vice President Dick Cheney defended it in New York last Thursday and briefed congressional leaders at the White House on Friday.
Bush’s top political adviser, Karl Rove, meanwhile, has put Democrats on notice that the White House regards the issue as a political winner for Republicans in this year’s congressional elections.
Bush’s nearly two-hour appearance at Kansas State wasn’t all serious. Returning to a more casual format that he has used throughout his presidency to sell his policies, he fielded questions that ranged from Iran’s geopolitical ambitions to the sort of advice he gets from his wife, Laura.
um… WRONG!!…
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i got an order for 2 ardhanarishvara murtis, but because of a mismatch in the html code for the web site, the person only paid $50, instead of the $64 that the web site says. of course the first thing i did when i realised it was to adjust the html code, but it’s too late for this order. i’m just going to eat the $14, and i’ve already made sure it won’t happen again… i guess this is a lesson i had to learn.
they were supposed to have an estimate ready on the car on friday, but it didn’t happen, so now they’re shooting for monday. the car is only worth $17k, and there’s approximately $13.5k worth of damage, but it’s close enough that they aren’t going to say whether they’re going to total it or fix it without some more hassle.
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today is moe’s 29th birthday… i originally met her in physical reality when she was 19, soon to be 20 – i had known her as “josie” online for about 4 years before that, but there was never any inkling that we would be married and spend the rest of our lives together, or even a hint of online “romance” before we met in meatspace. we’re going to have dinner with a bunch of moe’s friends at maneki later on… happy birthday moe! 8)
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they decided that the estimate to fix the car wouldn’t happen until today. if they decide to fix it, then they’ll already have it taken apart, and if they decide to total it, we’re going to end up with an equivalent car in either of the two situations that we’ll end up in, so the stress is off, somewhat… but nobody’s 100% sure of anything yet, because it’s apparently that close.
i got an order for a narmada sivalingam yesterday. i got a huge order about a week ago… $125 worth of murtis, a rudraksha mala and one package of incense, for good measure. hopefully UPS will show up today, because i called it in on thursday of last week, and it was sent out on friday of last week, and then i can get this huge order taken care of. i’ve got an acupuncture appointment this afternoon. i’m probably going to go to howling league with moe this evening.
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Arabic TV station al-Jazeera has broadcast an audio tape it says is by the al-Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden.
In it, the speaker says new attacks on the US are being planned, but offers a “long-term truce” to the Americans.
CIA analysts have concluded the voice on the tape was that of Bin Laden, making it the first time he has been heard from since December 2004.
However, other analysts familiar with Bin Laden’s voice are divided as to whether the voice really is his.
The US quickly rejected the truce offer made on the tape.
“We do not negotiate with terrorists. We put them out of business,” said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.
The speaker on the tape said the reason there had not been an attack in the US since 11 September 2001 was not because of superior US security, but because the group had been engaged in activities in Iraq – and because operations in the US “need preparations”.
“The operations are happening in Baghdad and you will see them here at home the minute they are through (with preparations), with God’s permission,” he said.
US officials have said they believe Bin Laden hiding in a mountainous area on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
There is no clear indication of when the tape was recorded.
Last month, al-Jazeera aired a videotape it said dated back to September, showing al-Qaeda’s deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.
In it, Zawahiri declared that, despite a prolonged absence and rumours about ill-health or possible injury, Bin Laden was alive.
Truce offer
Despite the warning of renewed attacks, the speaker also offered the US the chance of a long-term truce in light of the fact that US public opinion polls showed growing opposition to the war in Iraq.
“We have no objection to responding to this with a long-term truce based on fair conditions,” the speaker said.
“We do not mind offering you a truce that is fair and long-term… so we can build Iraq and Afghanistan… there is no shame in this solution because it prevents wasting of billions of dollars.
“Your president is misinterpreting public opinion polls which show that the vast majority of you support the withdrawal of your forces from Iraq.”
Bin Laden made Europe a similar truce offer following the Madrid train bombings of March 2004.
Correspondents say it is an attempt to frighten the public and drive a wedge between them and their governments, which say it is necessary to stay to distance in Iraq, not pull out troops.
The BBC’s Justin Webb in Washington says that in the US the immediate political effect of the tape will probably be to boost support for President George W Bush.
now i have no idea whether this is a “for-real” recording of bin laden or not, but the transcript of the tape sounds like a person who is more reasonable than we’ve been lead to believe. that it’s fabricated is extremely likely, especially considering that there was news that the immediate response to this was to say that we should reinstate the “patriot” act… we’ll just have to wait and see whether bush is lying again… 8/
My message to you is about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the way to end it.
I had not intended to speak to you about this issue, because, for us, this issue is already decided on: diamonds cut diamonds.
Praise be to God, our conditions are always improving and becoming better, while your conditions are to the contrary of this.
However, what prompted me to speak are the repeated fallacies of your President Bush in his comment on the outcome of the US opinion polls, which indicated that the overwhelming majority of you want the withdrawal of the forces from Iraq, but he objected to this desire and said that the withdrawal of troops would send a wrong message to the enemy.
Bush said: It is better to fight them on their ground than they fighting us on our ground.
In my response to these fallacies, I say: The war in Iraq is raging, and the operations in Afghanistan are on the rise in our favour, praise be to God.
The Pentagon figures indicate the rise in the number of your dead and wounded, let alone the huge material losses, and let alone the collapse of the morale of the soldiers there and the increase in the suicide cases among them.
So, just imagine the state of psychological breakdown that afflicts the soldier while collecting the remnants of his comrades’ dead bodies after they hit mines, which torn them. Following such situation, the soldier becomes between two fires. If he refuses to go out of his military barracks for patrols, he will face the penalties of the Vietnam butcher, and if he goes out, he will face the danger of mines.
So, he is between two bitter situations, something which puts him under psychological pressure – fear, humiliation, and coercion. Moreover, his people are careless about him. So, he has no choice but to commit suicide.
What you hear about him and his suicide is a strong message to you, which he wrote with his blood and soul while pain and bitterness eat him up so that you would save what you can save from this hell. However, the solution is in your hand if you care about them.
The news of our brother mujahideen, however, is different from what is published by the Pentagon.
This news indicates that what is carried by the news media does not exceed what is actually taking place on the ground. What increases doubts on the information of the White House’s administration is its targeting of the news media, which carry some facts about the real situation.
Documents have recently showed that the butcher of freedom in the world [US President Bush] had planned to bomb the head office of al-Jazeera Space Channel in the state of Qatar after he bombed its offices in Kabul and Baghdad, although despite its defects, it is [Al-Jazeera] one of your creations.
Jihad is continuing, praise be to God, despite all the repressive measures the US army and its agents take to the point where there is no significant difference between these crimes and those of Saddam.
These crimes include the raping of women and taking them hostage instead of their husbands. There is no power but in God.
The torturing of men has reached the point of using chemical acids and electric drills in their joints. If they become desperate with them, they put the drill on their heads until death.
If you like, read the humanitarian reports on the atrocities and crimes in the prisons of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
I say that despite all the barbaric methods, they have failed to ease resistance, and the number of mujahideen, praise be to God, is increasing.
In fact, reports indicate that the defeat and devastating failure of the ill-omened plan of the four – Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz – and the announcement of this defeat and working it out, is only a matter of time, which is to some extent linked to the awareness of the American people of the magnitude of this tragedy.
The wise ones know that Bush has no plan to achieve his alleged victory in Iraq.
If you compare the small number of the dead when Bush made that false and stupid show-like announcement from an aircraft carrier on the end of the major operations, to many times as much as this number of the killed and injured, who fell in the minor operations, you will know the truth in what I am saying, and that Bush and his administration do not have neither the desire nor the will to withdraw from Iraq for their own dubious reasons.
To go back to where I started, I say that the results of the poll satisfy sane people and that Bush’s objection to them is false.
Reality testifies that the war against America and its allies has not remained confined to Iraq, as he claims.
In fact, Iraq has become a point of attraction and recruitment of qualified resources.
On the other hand, the mujahideen, praise be to God, have managed to breach all the security measures adopted by the unjust nations of the coalition time and again.
The evidence of this is the bombings you have seen in the capitals of the most important European countries of this aggressive coalition.
As for the delay in carrying out similar operations in America, this was not due to failure to breach your security measures.
Operations are under preparation, and you will see them on your own ground once they are finished, God willing.
Based on the above, we see that Bush’s argument is false. However, the argument that he avoided, which is the substance of the results of opinion polls on withdrawing the troops, is that it is better not to fight the Muslims on their land and for them not to fight us on our land.
We do not object to a long-term truce with you on the basis of fair conditions that we respect.
We are a nation, for which God has disallowed treachery and lying.
In this truce, both parties will enjoy security and stability and we will build Iraq and Afghanistan, which were destroyed by the war.
There is no defect in this solution other than preventing the flow of hundreds of billions to the influential people and war merchants in America, who supported Bush’s election campaign with billions of dollars.
Hence, we can understand the insistence of Bush and his gang to continue the war.
If you have a genuine will to achieve security and peace, we have already answered you.
If Bush declines but to continue lying and practicing injustice [against us], it is useful for you to read the book of “The Rogue State”, the introduction of which reads: If I were a president, I would halt the operations against the United States.
First, I will extend my apologies to the widows, orphans, and the persons who were tortured. Afterwards, I will announce that the US interference in the world’s countries has ended for ever.
Finally, I would like to tell you that the war is for you or for us to win. If we win it, it means your defeat and disgrace forever as the wind blows in this direction with God’s help.
If you win it, you should read the history. We are a nation that does not tolerate injustice and seek revenge forever.
Days and nights will not go by until we take revenge as we did on 11 September, God willing, and until your minds are exhausted and your lives become miserable and things turn [for the worse], which you detest.
As for us, we do not have anything to lose. The swimmer in the sea does not fear rain. You have occupied our land, defiled our honour, violated our dignity, shed our blood, ransacked our money, demolished our houses, rendered us homeless, and tampered with our security. We will treat you in the same way.
You tried to deny us the decent life, but you cannot deny us a decent death. Refraining from performing jihad, which is sanctioned by our religion, is an appalling sin. The best way of death for us is under the shadows of swords.
Do not be deluded by your power and modern weapons. Although they win some battles, they lose the war. Patience and steadfastness are better than them. What is important is the outcome.
We have been tolerant for 10 years in fighting the Soviet Union with our few weapons and we managed to drain their economy.
They became history, with God’s help.
You should learn lessons from that. We will remain patient in fighting you, God willing, until the one whose time has come dies first. We will not escape the fight as long as we hold our weapons in our hands.
I swear not to die but a free man even if I taste the bitterness of death. I fear to be humiliated or betrayed.
Peace be upon those who follow guidance.
PG County Students, Principals, Teachers Angered by Military Intrusion
By Vincent J. Swanson
Under the No Child Left Behind education law pushed through Congress by President Bush, the Pentagon now requires that high schools nationwide turn over student’s private information for military recruitment purposes, or face education funding cuts.
The lawmakers who drafted the legislation, which was a centerpiece to then Texas Governor George Bush’s election campaign, buried the recruitment language deep within the many layered 680-page law. Once the bill became law on January 8, 2002, high school administrators were surprised by the requirement, and some in Prince George’s County are unclear as to why the Department of Defense and the Department of Education worked together to mandate the requirement.
“I’m still not sure why this was required by law, or why the Department of Education was in on this,” Monica Goldson said, principal at Frederick Douglass High School in Upper Marlboro. “What’s the catch? Why would the Department of Education care about recruiting kids for the military? It almost seems like the ‘No Child Left Behind’ law means that the Pentagon doesn’t want to leave any child left behind for military service.”
According to the canonical 680-page law legislation that was believed to be purely of an educational purpose the Department of Defense has the authority to access student’s private records for military recruitment purposes. The provision reads, “each local educational agency receiving assistance under this Act shall provide, on a request made by military recruiters or an institution of higher education, access to secondary school student names, addresses, and telephone listings.”
The law also notes that students may opt-out of the Pentagon’s right to access their files, but only after they receive notice from the child’s parents stating that the information remains private. Some view the requirements as “financial blackmail” and are angered by the “reverse order of things” regarding the parental notification procedure. School administrators also fear that they could be labeled as unpatriotic and face education funding cuts, so they reluctantly comply with the requirements. In essence, the military can access student records at will, unless they hear otherwise, and according to some, the opt-out policy is a disingenuous stunt
“It doesn’t make sense the way the opt-out process works,” Goldson said. “Under the law, the military has the upper hand, because the vast majority of students and parents are unaware of the [recruitment requirement] in the first place, which gives the Pentagon the ultimate power over our student’s private information.”
The new military recruitment provision appears contentious for many reasons. Firstly, when the bill became public law schools were unaware that the Department of Defense placed the requirement in the law’s language, creating a polarizing environment for some county principals and teachers.
“This is a suspicious piece of legislation,” Andrew Pruski said, a history teacher and advisor for the student government at Frederick Douglass High School in Upper Marlboro. “I teach my students about the Soviet Union and [Joseph] Stalin’s abuse of power in the 1940’s and 1950’s during the Cold War. We openly discuss Nazi Germany, [Soviet] Russia, and other anti-democratic governments in world history and how those governments impact societies,” Pruski explained. “My students have been asking me, ‘How far is [American] government going to go?’ in terms of this military recruitment snooping, the war in Iraq, and other anti-democratic actions taken these last few years.”
The constitutionality of the military’s right to student files under No Child Left Behind has also been a contentious issue. The recruitment section of the law surprised Robert V. Percival, a constitutional law professor at the University of Maryland Law School in Baltimore. “The constitutionality claim could be challenged,” Percival said. He pointed to three areas of law that could potentially undermine military access to student records, including the Commerce Clause, Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution, the 10th Amendment, and case law South Dakota vs. Dole. He also noted a fourth and poignant point that could challenge the military provision, which is the 1974 Buckley Amendment, also known as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
“The [No Child Left Behind Act and the military recruitment section] shows an inconsistency with Congress and its role over the rights of children, their families, and the right to privacy regarding education under the Buckley Amendment passed in 1974,” Percival explained. “The Buckley Amendment gave students power over their records, such as transcripts, standardized test scores, and other private information, including their addresses and names.”
The Buckley Amendment, named after U.S. Republican Senator James Buckley of New York, was designed to ensure that student records would not be disclosed to others without the consent of the student or the student’s parents. The Buckley Amendment has been broadly implemented since its passage to cover “virtually all student-connected records not just academic records.”
David S. Bogen, professor of law at University of Maryland Law School in Baltimore, said that Congress can place “conditions on expenditures” when funding projects, but was concerned about the military’s new legal claim to private records. “I’m shocked by this,” Bogen said. He also voiced concern about the “chilling effects” such regulations would have on speech rights under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
“Schools are for school for education not the military,” Martina Jones said, SBMT Member and Parliamentarian of the Student Government Association of Frederick Douglass High School in Upper Marlboro. Jones and other student government officials met to discuss the No Child Left Behind last Friday on campus, explaining that military recruiters routinely call them at home coining them as “military telemarketers” who continually bother them during dinner, or Spam their e-mail accounts with recruitment pitches. The student roundtable was also quick to point out that even though Congress passed the anti-telemarketing law last year, they were confused as to why military recruiters can continue to call them, blocking their caller ID with a “WIT 2001” message, a practice made illegal by the “Do-Not-Call” law.
“I have no idea how they got my e-mail or my phone number,” Amber Brown said, secretary of student government. “I try not to be rude to them when they call, but I’m firm, and just like telemarketers, I tell them I’m not interested.” Brown explained that she has no interest in joining the military and resents the phone calls and e-mails. “Me and my family don’t have any interests in the military. We use our minds…we’re more creative,” the high school senior said.
Students were also perplexed on how the military gained access to their SAT scores without their consent, a practice illegal under federal law. “A recruiter once called me and said that with my high test scores, that I would be a great military candidate,” Jones said. “How did they know my SAT score?” Jones explained. “How are they accessing my scores without me knowing about it?”
The Frederick Douglass students also theorized that once recruiters learn of their SAT scores, they specifically target students who have low-test scores, whereas students with higher test scores are called less frequently. “I’ve never got a call from the Army,” Jones said. “We have a theory that the military targets the kids with lower scores and continues to call them, hoping that they will sign-up for military duty,” she said. “They know that the students with lower grades and test scores have fewer opportunities, so [the military] preys on them,” Jones added. “Isn’t that leaving children behind?”
also:
Give Me Liberty or Let Me Think About It – What the wiretapping debate says about freedom.
The Impeachment of George W. Bush
Bush Authorized Domestic Spying Before 9/11
1972 Supreme Court precedent against warrantless wiretapping! – what’s it gonna take, folks? he broke the law! at the very least he should be removed from office, and he should be in jail!!
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| this is what having a camera on your cell phone is good for… i went over 155,555 miles on tuesday, while i was headed eastbound on highway 18 just west of auburn, and if it weren’t for the fact that i have a camera on my cell phone, it would be just another mile… |  |
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| The Potion Maker |
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| przxqglium is an opaque, acidic lavender liquid leeched from the belly of an ostrich. |
| Yet another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern |
| przxqgl’s Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 10 | |
|---|---|
| Average number of words per sentence: | 23.66 |
| Average number of syllables per word: | 1.42 |
| Total words in sample: | 4756 |
| Another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern | |
aaarrrrgghhh! which, according to their notation, is a3r4g2h3… for whatever it’s worth…
now this raises all kinds of questions… was she a smoker before her encounter with the dog? if so, why was she chosen for this procedure, especially since they had already determined that she was at risk for suicide? if not, was the woman who was the face donor a smoker? this could also be part of gender reassignment, if you wanted to take it that far: having the face of a donor of the opposite sex… i wonder about the ethics of such a procedure, whether it is cross gender or not, but… bizarre!
Face Transplant Patient Smokes Again
By MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP Medical Writer
TUCSON, Ariz. – The world’s first face transplant recipient is using her new lips to take up smoking again, which doctors fear could interfere with her healing and raise the risk of tissue rejection.
“It is a problem,” Dr. Jean-Michel Dubernard, who led the team that performed the pioneering transplant in France on Nov. 27, acknowledged on Wednesday.
The woman’s French surgeons made their first scientific presentation on the partial face transplant at a medical conference here this week.
The news about her smoking came even as American surgeons said that they were growing more comfortable with the French doctors’ decision to try the operation and that they hoped to offer such transplants to more patients.
The 38-year-old Frenchwoman received a new nose, chin and lips from a brain-dead donor after being mauled by her dog last spring. The woman has been identified only as Isabelle because of French privacy laws.
The woman suffered a tissue-rejection episode last month but is now doing well, her doctors said. However, they said she has resumed smoking, which besides being bad in general for health is especially a problem after surgery because it impairs circulation to tissues and could raise the risk of rejection.
Some doctors have questioned the woman’s psychological fitness for the operation because of reports that she had taken sleeping pills in a possible suicide attempt when the dog attack occurred — an allegation Dubernard repeatedly has denied.
He said she received extensive psychiatric evaluation and counseling before the operation.
Some American doctors at the conference said it is time to stop debating whether the French operation was ethical or wise and focus now on making such transplants as safe and widely available as possible.
“Face transplants can be done and should be done,” said Dr. Warren Breidenbach, the surgeon who did the first hand transplant in the United States, at Jewish Hospital in Louisville, in 1999.
Another Louisville transplant expert, Dr. Suzanne Ildstad, said: “A number of us here are interested in making this a widespread procedure available to the public. It’s the future, and could benefit millions of people.”
Problems with other novel types of transplants surfaced at the medical conference.
Doctors have been encouraged that success rates were roughly 90 percent among the 24 hand transplants performed to date, but a Chinese surgeon surprised the conference by reporting that up to half of the nine or so patients in his country have since rejected the new organs because they couldn’t afford immune-suppressing drugs.
One patient even asked to have the new hand amputated after the one-year period during which the hospital provided free medication ended, said Dr. Guoxian Pei, chief of orthopedics at Nanfang Hospital at Southern Medical University in Guangzhou, China.
Dr. Frederic Schuind, a surgeon at Erasme Hospital in Brussels, Belgium, revealed that a hand transplant recipient in his country had made “a mild suicide attempt.” The patient had been deemed psychologically stable enough to undergo the operation even though he had attempted suicide as a teenager.
The incidents prompted several surgeons to say that no such transplants should be done unless surgeons first make sure patients are psychologically healthy and prepared to take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of their lives.
“We need to alter the risk-benefit balance” before hand or face transplants are done more commonly, said Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, chief of plastic surgery at the University of Pittsburgh.
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the estimate on the car won’t be ready until thursday, because when the insurance adjuster looked at it, he decided that they would have to completely dissasemble the damaged part of the car – which is the entire passenger side – to determine exactly what needs to be replaced… apparently it’s close enough to the line that they want to be absolutely sure, before they total it. another interesting fact: when i dropped it off at the shop, the guy asked me if it was an ’05 or an ’04, and i said i wasn’t sure and called moe… meanwhile he went out to look at the car, and came back and said it was an ’04 at almost exactly the same time that moe was telling me it was an ’05… that we paid for an ’05… so i wonder if it was really a leftover ’04 that they were selling at the ’05 price to naive buyers who didn’t know any better… 8/
bottom line, we can’t afford the rental car, so i’m taking it back.
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from the seattle cacophony yahoo group, this interesting post by pox:
Just wanted to mention that March 14th (3/14) is Pi Day, and for yet another year it will go officially unrecognized at the State and Federal levels.
I’m sure we’re all outraged by the public’s complacence, and the MSM’s refusal to cover pi and other circle-related issues. Someone needs to take a stand. If not now, when? If not we or us, then who or whom?
Imagine hundreds of vampires with hula-hoops, marching through Westlake with round signs, distributing Smartees and old hubcaps, getting our vital message to the people, refusing to let Americans ignore the relationship between diameter and circumference any longer!
If there’s a nearby synagogue, we could just combine our march with the celebration of Purim, which is the same day. I’m sure the Jews won’t mind. I hear they respect geometry as much as anyone.
Ethos. Civics. Math. Yeah.
to which i responded:
i thought Pi Day was 22 july (22/7)…
to which pox responded back:
Heretic.
so now i’m a heretic in the cacophony group… i can’t decide whether that’s a good thing or not…
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moe and the dogs are okay, thank ganesha, but the car has definitely seen better days. we won’t have an estimate until at least tomorrow, but the guy said that he thought it was a total loss. in spite of the fact that our insurance is paying $16 a day towards a rental car, we still might not be able to afford a rental car, because the rental agency wants to charge us $38 a day for their cheapest car. if our car is totalled, then we’re going to return the rental car right away and buy a new car, but if they decide to fix our car i’m not sure what’s going to happen, especially since drunk puppet night and the moisture festival are both coming up soon…
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speaking of which, in the process of cleaning out the car, i found a couple pictures from the moisture festival last year. we’re beginning to gear up for drunk puppet night, which starts in portland this year, on the 17th and 18th of february. as i sort of expected, we’re having a grand total of one rehearsal as a group before we start, and we’re rehearsing in seattle before we start in portland, so there will be no tech rehearsal at all. i don’t even know for sure where it will be in portland, although i sort of hope it will be where it was last year (i just checked – it will be!), because that will mean that the tech stuff will be split, and i’ll only have to worry about the sound. the following three weekends, which will be the last weekend in february and the first two weekends in march, drunk puppet night will be held at the columbia city theater.
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moe got home late from the dog trial… seems she hit a deer and totalled the car… wonderful…
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Ten Top Trivia Tips about Przxqgl!
- Przxqgl is physically incapable of sticking his tongue out.
- Przxqgl is the smallest of Jupiter’s many moons!
- Przxqgl has a memory span of three seconds!
- The liquid inside przxqgl can be used as a substitute for blood plasma.
- Przxqgl is the only metal that is liquid at room temperature!
- Przxqgl cannot swim.
- Originally, przxqgl could not fly.
- The Aztec Indians of Mexico believed przxqgl would protect them from physical harm, and so warriors used him to decorate their battle shields!
- The horns of przxqgl are made entirely from hair.
- Michelangelo finished his great statue of przxqgl in 1504, after eighteen months work.
moe just called from denver… 8)
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moe gets home from orlando at 10:00 tonight, which will be approximately 1:00 am tomorrow according to her internal clock. tomorrow morning, we’re going to a dog agility trial with magick and zorah… we’ve got to be there at 7:00 am… i’m thinking moe intentionally did this to deal with jet lag, but at the same time, i wonder how much sleep she’s going to get. i get so confused when i’m dealing with transcontinental flights… she just called, and they’re boarding in orlando now, but according to her schedule, she’s not supposed to leave until 5:30 pm… now i know that her clock is 3 hours behind mine, but it’s still really confusing, and i have to think about it several times before i’ve got it straight… and then it’s exactly the same routine the next time i have to deal with it. i blame my brain injury, although there’s a good chance i would have had exactly the same problems before the injury.
i went and got water today, but on the way home, one of the bottles spilled about a gallon on the floor of the van, filling my shoe. i had to stop at a light, turn around and right two of the bottles – the other one didn’t spill at all. fortunately the light was still red when i turned back around, but there were some annoying pre-teenagers in a bible-camp bus that were waving and showing “honk for jeezis” signs. if i could, i would have told them that jeezis was a leprauchan, but unfortunately there was no way for me to do so.
there’s a bit of good news… apple has finally gone intel, which means that macs are soon going to be orders of magnitude less expensive, and/or you’ll be able to run mac os on a machine that you built out of spare parts, like my current linux machine. now all i’ve got to do is come up with a way to make the money for one or the other and i’m all set… of course, there’s always the option of installing mac os on the linux box, but then i’d have to convert everything, and, while i’m sure it’s possible and even relatively easy, at this point the other option sounds a lot better to me… i’m a geek, after all…
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Waiver right is reserved
By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | January 4, 2006
WASHINGTON — When President Bush last week signed the bill outlawing the torture of detainees, he quietly reserved the right to bypass the law under his powers as commander in chief.
After approving the bill last Friday, Bush issued a “signing statement” — an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law — declaring that he will view the interrogation limits in the context of his broader powers to protect national security. This means Bush believes he can waive the restrictions, the White House and legal specialists said.
“The executive branch shall construe [the law] in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President . . . as Commander in Chief,” Bush wrote, adding that this approach “will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President . . . of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks.”
Some legal specialists said yesterday that the president’s signing statement, which was posted on the White House website but had gone unnoticed over the New Year’s weekend, raises serious questions about whether he intends to follow the law.
A senior administration official, who spoke to a Globe reporter about the statement on condition of anonymity because he is not an official spokesman, said the president intended to reserve the right to use harsher methods in special situations involving national security.
“We are not going to ignore this law,” the official said, noting that Bush, when signing laws, routinely issues signing statements saying he will construe them consistent with his own constitutional authority. “We consider it a valid statute. We consider ourselves bound by the prohibition on cruel, unusual, and degrading treatment.”
But, the official said, a situation could arise in which Bush may have to waive the law’s restrictions to carry out his responsibilities to protect national security. He cited as an example a “ticking time bomb” scenario, in which a detainee is believed to have information that could prevent a planned terrorist attack.
“Of course the president has the obligation to follow this law, [but] he also has the obligation to defend and protect the country as the commander in chief, and he will have to square those two responsibilities in each case,” the official added. “We are not expecting that those two responsibilities will come into conflict, but it’s possible that they will.”
David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive power issues, said that the signing statement means that Bush believes he can still authorize harsh interrogation tactics when he sees fit.
“The signing statement is saying ‘I will only comply with this law when I want to, and if something arises in the war on terrorism where I think it’s important to torture or engage in cruel, inhuman, and degrading conduct, I have the authority to do so and nothing in this law is going to stop me,’ ” he said. “They don’t want to come out and say it directly because it doesn’t sound very nice, but it’s unmistakable to anyone who has been following what’s going on.”
Golove and other legal specialists compared the signing statement to Bush’s decision, revealed last month, to bypass a 1978 law forbidding domestic wiretapping without a warrant. Bush authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans’ international phone calls and e-mails without a court order starting after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The president and his aides argued that the Constitution gives the commander in chief the authority to bypass the 1978 law when necessary to protect national security. They also argued that Congress implicitly endorsed that power when it authorized the use of force against the perpetrators of the attacks.
Legal academics and human rights organizations said Bush’s signing statement and his stance on the wiretapping law are part of a larger agenda that claims exclusive control of war-related matters for the executive branch and holds that any involvement by Congress or the courts should be minimal.
Vice President Dick Cheney recently told reporters, ”I believe in a strong, robust executive authority, and I think that the world we live in demands it. . . . I would argue that the actions that we’ve taken are totally appropriate and consistent with the constitutional authority of the president.”
Since the 2001 attacks, the administration has also asserted the power to bypass domestic and international laws in deciding how to detain prisoners captured in the Afghanistan war. It also has claimed the power to hold any US citizen Bush designates an ”enemy combatant” without charges or access to an attorney.
And in 2002, the administration drafted a secret legal memo holding that Bush could authorize interrogators to violate antitorture laws when necessary to protect national security. After the memo was leaked to the press, the administration eliminated the language from a subsequent version, but it never repudiated the idea that Bush could authorize officials to ignore a law.
The issue heated up again in January 2005. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales disclosed during his confirmation hearing that the administration believed that antitorture laws and treaties did not restrict interrogators at overseas prisons because the Constitution does not apply abroad.
In response, Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, filed an amendment to a Defense Department bill explicitly saying that that the cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees in US custody is illegal regardless of where they are held.
McCain’s office did not return calls seeking comment yesterday.
The White House tried hard to kill the McCain amendment. Cheney lobbied Congress to exempt the CIA from any interrogation limits, and Bush threatened to veto the bill, arguing that the executive branch has exclusive authority over war policy.
But after veto-proof majorities in both houses of Congress approved it, Bush called a press conference with McCain, praised the measure, and said he would accept it.
Legal specialists said the president’s signing statement called into question his comments at the press conference.
“The whole point of the McCain Amendment was to close every loophole,” said Marty Lederman, a Georgetown University law professor who served in the Justice Department from 1997 to 2002. “The president has re-opened the loophole by asserting the constitutional authority to act in violation of the statute where it would assist in the war on terrorism.”
Elisa Massimino, Washington director for Human Rights Watch, called Bush’s signing statement an “in-your-face affront” to both McCain and to Congress.
“The basic civics lesson that there are three co-equal branches of government that provide checks and balances on each other is being fundamentally rejected by this executive branch,” she said.
“Congress is trying to flex its muscle to provide those checks [on detainee abuse], and it’s being told through the signing statement that it’s impotent. It’s quite a radical view.”
Pentagon Report Set Framework For Use of Torture
Maher Arar: Chronology of events
U.S. Exporting ‘Tools of Torture,’
FBI Considers Torture as Suspects Stay Silent
…
i’m shocked that it would come to this… it’s definitely time to start searching for another country to call home…
now everybody already knows this, but this is the guy who claims to be the source for the original new york times article that set off the whole thing…
NSA Whistleblower Alleges Illegal Spying
Former Employee Admits to Being a Source for The New York Times
By BRIAN ROSS
Jan 10, 2006 — Russell Tice, a longtime insider at the National Security Agency, is now a whistleblower the agency would like to keep quiet.
For 20 years, Tice worked in the shadows as he helped the United States spy on other people’s conversations around the world.
“I specialized in what’s called special access programs,” Tice said of his job. “We called them ‘black world’ programs and operations.”
But now, Tice tells ABC News that some of those secret “black world” operations run by the NSA were operated in ways that he believes violated the law. He is prepared to tell Congress all he knows about the alleged wrongdoing in these programs run by the Defense Department and the NSA in the post-9/11 efforts to go after terrorists.
“The mentality was we need to get these guys, and we’re going to do whatever it takes to get them,” he said.
Tracking Calls
Tice says the technology exists to track and sort through every domestic and international phone call as they are switched through centers, such as one in New York, and to search for key words or phrases that a terrorist might use.
“If you picked the word ‘jihad’ out of a conversation,” Tice said, “the technology exists that you focus in on that conversation, and you pull it out of the system for processing.”
According to Tice, intelligence analysts use the information to develop graphs that resemble spiderwebs linking one suspect’s phone number to hundreds or even thousands more.
Tice Admits Being a Source for The New York Times
President Bush has admitted that he gave orders that allowed the NSA to eavesdrop on a small number of Americans without the usual requisite warrants.
But Tice disagrees. He says the number of Americans subject to eavesdropping by the NSA could be in the millions if the full range of secret NSA programs is used.
“That would mean for most Americans that if they conducted, or you know, placed an overseas communication, more than likely they were sucked into that vacuum,” Tice said.
The same day The New York Times broke the story of the NSA eavesdropping without warrants, Tice surfaced as a whistleblower in the agency. He told ABC News that he was a source for the Times’ reporters. But Tice maintains that his conscience is clear.
“As far as I’m concerned, as long as I don’t say anything that’s classified, I’m not worried,” he said. “We need to clean up the intelligence community. We’ve had abuses, and they need to be addressed.”
The NSA revoked Tice’s security clearance in May of last year based on what it called psychological concerns and later dismissed him. Tice calls that bunk and says that’s the way the NSA deals with troublemakers and whistleblowers. Today the NSA said it had “no information to provide.”
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21:46 Jan 05, ’06 / 5 Tevet 5766
By Ezra HaLevi
Researchers at Hebrew University have found that extracts from the cannabis plant can help strengthen human bones, preventing osteoporosis, according to an Israel21c report.
An article on the Hebrew University research appeared this week in the prestigious American PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A.) journal. The research team, headed by Prof. Itai Bab, worked in Hebrew University’s bone laboratory.
Substances produced mainly in the brain, called endocannabinoids, are made of fatty acids and exist in the bone and elsewhere. The substances bind to and activate two receptors – CB1 in the nervous system and CB2 in the immune system.
A high number of CB2-receptors were found in the bones of the mice and shown to be essential in preserving normal bone density. Mice lacking those receptors were shown to develop osteoporosis as they age.
Osteoporosis, a common ailment in the Western world, can lead to easily broken bones and disabilities.
The study shows that plants such as cannabis, which contain substances that activate CB2 receptors, can be used as a basis of drugs to help those suffering from osteoporosis. The researchers have developed a synthetic compound called HU-308 which succeeds in combatting osteoporosis in mice.
Though the cannabis plant is known mostly for marijuana, which comes from the flowers of the female plants, the extracts have no psychoactive side effects.
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1. Name:
2. Date of birth:
3. Where you live:
4. What makes you happy:
5. Currently listening/the last thing you listened to:
6. Do you read my journal?:
7. If yes, what makes it especially good or bad?:
8. An interesting fact about you:
9. Are you in love/do you have a crush at the moment?:
10. Favourite place to spend time:
11. Favourite lyric:
12. The best time of the year:
RECOMMEND
1. A film:
2. A book:
3. A band, a song, or album:
PLUS
1. One thing you like about me:
2. Two things you like about yourself:
3. Look at my friends-list and tell what you like about one of our mutual friends:
4. Put this in your journal so that I can tell you what I like about you.
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THE FLAG CODE, Title 36, U.S.C., Chapter 10, § 176 (a).
As amended by P.L. 344, 94th Congress, approved July 7, 1976.
I am posting this on my LiveJournal in opposition to The Patriot Act, which represents an extreme danger to the life, property and liberty of all persons living in the United States.
GRR!
i got an order on 22 december which i wasn’t immediately able to fill, but everything had already been ordered and i was expecting it around 15 january, so i wrote to the person, who has an email address at aol dot com, and gave them four options for what i could do.
> 1) send you what we can and wait for the rest
> 2) wait for the rest and send it all when it comes
> 3) refund your order
> 4) other, suggested by you.
i never heard back from them, so i chose option 2, since that’s what i would have wanted myself.
i got email from the same person, only at a different email address than the first one, a couple of days ago, asking where his order was. i responded again, to both addresses, saying that i had responded once already, and giving them the same options as before, only now i said that it would probably be shipping out some time in the coming week.
today i got an email the subject of which was “First Request for Information About Buyer Complaint: Case ID #PP-133-474-425” from paypal. apparently he hasn’t been getting the emails i have sent, and now is threatening my ability to do business because of it. at the same time, his package is sitting here on my desk, all wrapped and ready to ship out tomorrow. instead of sending it normal priority mail, now i have to overnight it to him, and then hope that he has enough knowledge of internet to cancel his complaint with paypal, because the only other option is for me to refund his money, and i’m not particularly inclined to do that when the problem is not mine, and i have lived up to what i said i was going to do.
EDIT: i’m going to do the only thing that makes sense, which is i’m going to overnight the package to him, with a tracking number, and then i’m going to get on paypal and resolve the dispute myself, by saying that i’ve already shipped it with the tracking number as proof…
but it’s still annoying… 8/
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finally, after almost 3 solid days of work, i think i’ve got my entire livejournal tagged… and
- articles – 40 uses
- beards – 1 use
- bellingham – 1 use
- bit torrents – 2 uses
- bizarre – 17 uses
- blasphemy – 3 uses
- brain injury – 20 uses
- burning man – 3 uses
- canadada – 2 uses
- car – 4 uses
- chaos at work – 22 uses
- cirque de flambe – 32 uses
- dead people – 7 uses
- deepavali – 2 uses
- drugs – 4 uses
- existential negation – 2 uses
- ezra – 5 uses
- for sale – 1 use
- fun with the post office – 4 uses
- furries – 1 use
- ganesha chaturti – 1 use
- geek links – 1 use
- house stuff – 3 uses
- hybrid elephant – 34 uses
- i am a terrorist – 65 uses
- intellectual property – 4 uses
- janmaastami – 1 use
- jeezis – 37 uses
- jill – 6 uses
- krampusnacht – 1 use
- late night cabaret – 2 uses
- links – 87 uses
- mahasivaratri – 1 use
- malfunctioning computers – 22 uses
- marijuana – 3 uses
- massoud-isms – 6 uses
- memes – 59 uses
- moe – 7 uses
- moisture festival – 11 uses
- monkeywrench – 17 uses
- moving – 18 uses
- multiple appendages – 1 use
- my music – 2 uses
- no pants day – 2 uses
- ocf – 9 uses
- parents – 2 uses
- personality disorder meme – 2 uses
- phil ager – 1 use
- philharmonic – 19 uses
- pi day – 1 use
- pictures – 12 uses
- players – 10 uses
- pliny keep – 2 uses
- portland – 2 uses
- printing stuff – 1 use
- psycho hose-beast from hell – 2 uses
- ptsd – 13 uses
- public ritual vegetable sacrifice – 13 uses
- qwest sucks – 8 uses
- rabbit hole day – 1 use
- rants – 23 uses
- reasons to quit – 30 uses
- sex – 1 use
- spam – 9 uses
- swastikas – 4 uses
- the bobs – 3 uses
- tina chopp – 6 uses
- trolloween – 2 uses
- vedanta society – 2 uses
- wage slavery – 35 uses
- wedding anniversary – 1 use
- windoesn't – 6 uses
- winter solstice – 2 uses
- wish list – 4 uses
- x-mas – 2 uses
- year in review – 1 use
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i’ve got to say this, in spite of the fact that it’s been said in various ways already, but BUSH IS A TOTAL FUCKING IDIOT!!!
By Declan McCullagh
Published: January 9, 2006, 4:00 AM PST
Annoying someone via the Internet is now a federal crime.
It’s no joke. Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity.
In other words, it’s OK to flame someone on a mailing list or in a blog as long as you do it under your real name. Thank Congress for small favors, I guess.
This ridiculous prohibition, which would likely imperil much of Usenet, is buried in the so-called Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act. Criminal penalties include stiff fines and two years in prison.
“The use of the word ‘annoy’ is particularly problematic,” says Marv Johnson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. “What’s annoying to one person may not be annoying to someone else.”
Buried deep in the new law is Sec. 113, an innocuously titled bit called “Preventing Cyberstalking.” It rewrites existing telephone harassment law to prohibit anyone from using the Internet “without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy.”
To grease the rails for this idea, Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, and the section’s other sponsors slipped it into an unrelated, must-pass bill to fund the Department of Justice. The plan: to make it politically infeasible for politicians to oppose the measure.
The tactic worked. The bill cleared the House of Representatives by voice vote, and the Senate unanimously approved it Dec. 16.
There’s an interesting side note. An earlier version that the House approved in September had radically different wording. It was reasonable by comparison, and criminalized only using an “interactive computer service” to cause someone “substantial emotional harm.”
That kind of prohibition might make sense. But why should merely annoying someone be illegal?
There are perfectly legitimate reasons to set up a Web site or write something incendiary without telling everyone exactly who you are.
Think about it: A woman fired by a manager who demanded sexual favors wants to blog about it without divulging her full name. An aspiring pundit hopes to set up the next Suck.com. A frustrated citizen wants to send e-mail describing corruption in local government without worrying about reprisals.
In each of those three cases, someone’s probably going to be annoyed. That’s enough to make the action a crime. (The Justice Department won’t file charges in every case, of course, but trusting prosecutorial discretion is hardly reassuring.)
Clinton Fein, a San Francisco resident who runs the Annoy.com site, says a feature permitting visitors to send obnoxious and profane postcards through e-mail could be imperiled.
“Who decides what’s annoying? That’s the ultimate question,” Fein said. He added: “If you send an annoying message via the United States Post Office, do you have to reveal your identity?”
Fein once sued to overturn part of the Communications Decency Act that outlawed transmitting indecent material “with intent to annoy.” But the courts ruled the law applied only to obscene material, so Annoy.com didn’t have to worry.
“I’m certainly not going to close the site down,” Fein said on Friday. “I would fight it on First Amendment grounds.”
He’s right. Our esteemed politicians can’t seem to grasp this simple point, but the First Amendment protects our right to write something that annoys someone else.
It even shields our right to do it anonymously. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas defended this principle magnificently in a 1995 case involving an Ohio woman who was punished for distributing anonymous political pamphlets.
If President Bush truly believed in the principle of limited government (it is in his official bio), he’d realize that the law he signed cannot be squared with the Constitution he swore to uphold.
And then he’d repeat what President Clinton did a decade ago when he felt compelled to sign a massive telecommunications law. Clinton realized that the section of the law punishing abortion-related material on the Internet was unconstitutional, and he directed the Justice Department not to enforce it.
Bush has the chance to show his respect for what he calls Americans’ personal freedoms. Now we’ll see if the president rises to the occasion.
When they took the fourth amendment,
I was quiet because I didn’t deal drugs.
When they took the sixth amendment,
I was quiet because I was innocent.
When they took the second amendment,
I was quiet because I didn’t own a gun.
Now they’ve taken the first amendment,
and I can say nothing about it.
unfortunately, this is now the case…
now what this means, for me, (apart from the fact that this is a clear violation of my first amendment rights) is that i have to take down the pages on The Church of Tina Chopp that detail our long, involved, and very amusing interaction with An Evil Anti-Tinite Whose Name We Dare Not Mention (because of previous interactions with her which were annoying, and possibly somewhat more than that as well), because she can now say that the existence of said pages are an annoyance to her, despite the fact that she’s the one who started the whole thing to begin with! furthermore, it’s remotely possible that she, or someone like her, will say that The Church of Tina Chopp, by it’s mere existence, annoys them (after all, that’s one of the most salient features of the organisation), and we will have to take the whole site offline!
before he turns this country into a modern version of Nazi Germany!!!
projects like The Free Network Project are essential at this time, but i’m serious… somebody really needs to look into the possibility of going apeshit on his ass with a semiautomatic!
Highlight:
At an environmental conference in Canada that brought together 189 countries, the United States, represented by Chief U.S. climate negotiator Harlan Watson, refused to make pledges to fight global warming past the year 2012, angering many European countries and activist organizations.
Summary:
- The United States ruled out making extra pledges to fight global warming beyond 2012 on Tuesday, angering environmentalists who accused Washington of blocking a 189-nation conference in Canada.
- “The United States is opposed to any such discussions,” Watson told a news conference of Canadian proposals to launch talks under the U.N.’s climate convention about new actions to combat global warming beyond 2012.
- Environmentalists accused Washington of doing too little to fight a rise in temperatures from human activities that could lead to more storms, expanding deserts and worse floods, and could raise sea levels by up to three feet (one meter) by 2100.
- “The failure of the United States to be willing to discuss future action here is the real issue,” he said, predicting Washington will only join a global pact after Bush leaves office.
- Bush pulled out in 2001 of the U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol, under which about 40 industrial nations have to cut greenhouse gas emissions by about 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.
- At Montreal, Kyoto backers plan to launch talks, likely to last several years, on new commitments beyond 2012.
- Bush branded Kyoto too costly and said it wrongly excluded poor countries.
- Many also hope to start wider parallel talks among all countries, including the United States and developing nations such as China and India, on new ways to fight climate change.
- She said that new tougher measures were urgently needed to combat rising temperatures.
- And British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in a speech earlier on Tuesday that he believed that all major economies would sign up for a binding accord to succeed Kyoto.
- But Watson reiterated that Washington had no plans to adopt Kyoto-style caps on emissions and rejected environmentalists’ predictions that the U.S. was dooming the conference to failure.
now we’ve been over this before… global warming is a fact! it’s not just some scare tactic that has been created by “environmentalists,” scientists and hippy-tree-huggers to get us to pay attention to them, it has been proven… DESPITE WHAT SHRUB AND CRONIES WANT US TO BELIEVE, and if we’re going to do something about it other than IMMANENTIZE THE ESCHATON (which is apparently what the dominionists want to do), we’re going to have to make plans for a lot longer in the future than 2012… have i mentioned recently that it has become necessary to
before he turns this planet into a deserted wasteland!!!
Presidential pronouncements may too-closely reflect a familiar literary style
Tuesday, January 3, 2006
By Steve Young
Lawyers for the estate of George Orwell have announced their intention to sue President Bush for plagiarism.
“We have long believed that this administration has stolen much of its policy from Mr. Orwell’s writings,” said attorney Will Bilyalotz. “Expressly, ‘1984’ and ‘Animal Farm.’ In some cases, like the illegal surveillance of its own citizens, this administration has lifted the passages word for word from ‘1984.’ Just changing the year doesn’t protect the president from copyright laws.”
White House spokesman Scott McClellan, while refusing to comment directly because of the “ongoing investigation,” reminded reporters that the Patriot Act had given the president the power to suspend copyright laws and, anyway, “No one can own words.”
Legal experts believe proving copyright infringement will not be easy. “Even if he is guilty, the president’s propensity for adapting Mr. Orwell’s ‘1984’ newspeak is so effortless, as if he made up the words himself,” said law professor Sue Yu Atdropohat. “Illegal borrowing of words or even fictional characters from published works has a high threshold of proof. The producers of the film ‘Being There’ have had their lawsuit against the Bush campaign tied up in court since 2000. After all, one man’s outright theft of ideas is another man’s malapropos.”
“Personally, I think this so-called intelligentsia is just jealous,” said Newt Gingrich. “Orwell could have only dreamed of great terms like ‘defeatist’ and ‘evil-doer.'”
Bilyalotz differs. “The president’s comments like, ‘This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous. And having said that, all options are on the table,’ is plain and simple, Mr. Orwell’s ‘doublethink’ (the power to hold two completely contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously and accept both of them).”
The president has regularly pointed out that he will do whatever it takes to defeat terrorism, and that those who want to hamstring his ability to steal written material are only aiding the enemy. “9/11 has made us look at our plagiarism in a different way,” said the president. “As long as I am president or king, the American people expect me to do everything in my power under our laws and Constitution to protect them and their civil liberties. And if that takes dissolving the Constitution, then so be it.”
“It was Mr. Orwell in ‘1984’ who first came up with ‘Victory Mansions’ and industrial-grade ‘Victory Gin.’ Now the president calls his book, a ‘National Strategy for Victory in Iraq.’ The president doesn’t go 10 seconds without using the word ‘victory.’ One doesn’t have to be a math whiz to put two and two together. Our greatest concern is not that the president uses Mr. Orwell’s words,” Bilyalotz said, “but that he’s actually using ‘1984’ as a governmental guidebook, and I’m afraid the president hasn’t read how it ends.”
In his weekly radio address, Bush said the “Spy on US” program has been reviewed regularly by the nation’s top legal authorities and Fox talk-show hosts, targeting only those people with “a clear link to these terrorist networks, which include Al-Jazeera and CNN.”
“Freedom is in its last throes,” Vice President Dick Cheney said. “First, they take away torture, now they want to take away spying on our own citizens. What’s next to go, Fox News?”
The revelation of the unauthorized bugging has delayed renewal of the Patriot Act, which includes a provision giving President Bush monarchial powers. “Not only will it make this country safer,” explained the president, “but it will ordain either Jenna or Barb as the country’s first queen without the risk of voter fraud or expensive campaigns.”
“This country is ready for a female queen,” said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, “and we can’t take the chance that the next election could turn out to be a mushroom cloud.”
In other Patriot Act news, the White House has asked historians to remove Ben Franklin’s quote, “They that give up essential liberty for a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety” from history books. “It’s wordy and confusing,” Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez said. “And one thing this country doesn’t need in its fight against terrorism is more confusing words. At least that’s what we feel here in the Ministry of Truth.”
now i’ve been saying essentially the same thing ever since 9/11 but until now, nobody has been listening… hopefully people are starting to get the idea…
ROBERT STEINBACK
One wonders if Osama bin Laden didn’t win after all. He ruined the America that existed on 9/11. But he had help.
If, back in 2001, anyone had told me that four years after bin Laden’s attack our president would admit that he broke U.S. law against domestic spying and ignored the Constitution — and then expect the American people to congratulate him for it — I would have presumed the girders of our very Republic had crumbled.
Had anyone said our president would invade a country and kill 30,000 of its people claiming a threat that never, in fact, existed, then admit he would have invaded even if he had known there was no threat — and expect America to be pleased by this — I would have thought our nation’s sensibilities and honor had been eviscerated.
If I had been informed that our nation’s leaders would embrace torture as a legitimate tool of warfare, hold prisoners for years without charges and operate secret prisons overseas — and call such procedures necessary for the nation’s security — I would have laughed at the folly of protecting human rights by destroying them.
If someone had predicted the president’s staff would out a CIA agent as revenge against a critic, defy a law against domestic propaganda by bankrolling supposedly independent journalists and commentators, and ridicule a 37-year Marine Corps veteran for questioning U.S. military policy — and that the populace would be more interested in whether Angelina is about to make Brad a daddy — I would have called the prediction an absurd fantasy.
That’s no America I know, I would have argued. We’re too strong, and we’ve been through too much, to be led down such a twisted path.
What is there to say now?
All of these things have happened. And yet a large portion of this country appears more concerned that saying ”Happy Holidays” could be a disguised attack on Christianity.
I evidently have a lot poorer insight regarding America’s character than I once believed, because I would have expected such actions to provoke — speaking metaphorically now — mobs with pitchforks and torches at the White House gate. I would have expected proud defiance of anyone who would suggest that a mere terrorist threat could send this country into spasms of despair and fright so profound that we’d follow a leader who considers the law a nuisance and perfidy a privilege.
Never would I have expected this nation — which emerged stronger from a civil war and a civil rights movement, won two world wars, endured the Depression, recovered from a disastrous campaign in Southeast Asia and still managed to lead the world in the principles of liberty — would cower behind anyone just for promising to “protect us.”
President Bush recently confirmed that he has authorized wiretaps against U.S. citizens on at least 30 occasions and said he’ll continue doing it. His justification? He, as president — or is that king? — has a right to disregard any law, constitutional tenet or congressional mandate to protect the American people.
Is that America’s highest goal — preventing another terrorist attack? Are there no principles of law and liberty more important than this? Who would have remembered Patrick Henry had he written, “What’s wrong with giving up a little liberty if it protects me from death?”
Bush would have us excuse his administration’s excesses in deference to the ”war on terror” — a war, it should be pointed out, that can never end. Terrorism is a tactic, an eventuality, not an opposition army or rogue nation. If we caught every person guilty of a terrorist act, we still wouldn’t know where tomorrow’s first-time terrorist will strike. Fighting terrorism is a bit like fighting infection — even when it’s beaten, you must continue the fight or it will strike again.
Are we agreeing, then, to give the king unfettered privilege to defy the law forever? It’s time for every member of Congress to weigh in: Do they believe the president is above the law, or bound by it?
Bush stokes our fears, implying that the only alternative to doing things his extralegal way is to sit by fitfully waiting for terrorists to harm us. We are neither weak nor helpless. A proud, confident republic can hunt down its enemies without trampling legitimate human and constitutional rights.
Ultimately, our best defense against attack — any attack, of any sort — is holding fast and fearlessly to the ideals upon which this nation was built. Bush clearly doesn’t understand or respect that. Do we?
answer… NO!
 |
Doesn’t it seem like the world is getting dumber with every passing year? Well, maybe it is!
In IQ and the Wealth of Nations, Lynn and Vanhanen[1] report large differences, amounting to more than two standard deviations, in the mean IQ of the populations of different countries around the world, and find that these mean population IQ scores correlate more strongly with economic development as measured by gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and long term economic growth than any other single factor.
It has been widely observed that the birthrate of countries tends to fall as they become more wealthy. Most countries in Western Europe now have birthrates below the replacement rate; in the absence of immigration, their populations can be expected to fall in the future.
Putting these two pieces of information together, one might expect that since low IQ countries tend to be less wealthy, they should also be expected to have higher birthrates than countries with high IQ. If population IQ and wealth remain constant, the average IQ of the world should then fall over time, since a larger portion of population growth will occur in low IQ countries. There are a lot of assumptions going into this conclusion, starting out with what IQ measures and what, if anything, it means. See the “Quarrels, Questions, and Answers” section below for discussion of some of these issues.
| Year | Population×109 | Mean IQ |
| 1950 | 2.55 | 91.64 |
| 1975 | 4.08 | 90.80 |
| 2000 | 6.07 | 89.20 |
| 2025 | 7.82 | 87.81 |
| 2050 | 9.06 | 86.32 |
The animation above shows the global histogram of IQ and global mean IQ for the hundred year period from 1950 through 2050. Mean population IQ is taken from Lynn and Vanhanen’s[1] figures and yearly population estimates for each country from the U.S. Census Bureau International Data Base 2003[3]. Taking these figures at face value, we find that world population and mean IQ evolve at 25 year intervals over the century as given in the table at the right.
Methodology
The mean IQ of 185 countries, measured and estimated in Lynn and Vanhanen[1], were taken as the invariant IQ of each country over the 1950-2050 time period. (The figures are given in terms of countries existing as of the year 2000. For countries which came into being in the preceding 50 years due to decolonisation, breakup of the Soviet Union, etc., years prior to independence refer to the territory with borders identical to the present-day country. The list of countries includes Hong Kong and Taiwan, considered in some sense provinces of China, but with large populations, well measured demographically, and economic performance distinctly different from that of the People’s Republic; and Puerto Rico, a United States territory with different demographics than the parent country. The remaining 182 countries include all independent countries with populations greater than 50,000 with the exception of Bosnia and Herzegovina, for which no data were available due to the conflict throughout most of the 1990s.)
The 100 year population history and forecast for the 185 countries with measured or estimated mean IQ was obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau International Data Base 2003[3], using the mid-year population estimate or projection for each year.
For each year in the hundred year period, each country’s estimated population for that year was apportioned into bins of 5 IQ points using a normal distribution with the mean IQ for the country from Lynn and Vanhanen and the 15 point standard deviation defined for IQ scores. These country histogram bins were summed to create a global histogram for each year. Global mean IQ was computed by an average of country IQs weighted by their population.
Quarrels, Questions, and Answers
- Don’t differing IQ figures for various countries simply measure cultural bias in the tests?
- This is a possibility, and in certain cases undoubtedly plays a factor. Yet tests carefully designed to exclude cultural bias (for example, spatial relationship tests based entirely on pictures, memorisation of digit sequences, and pure eye-hand reaction time) produce results comparable to those of traditional IQ tests. Further, if IQ tests embody cultural biases of the largely U.K. and U.S. creators of the tests, it’s odd that populations of East Asian countries, with a variety of very different cultures, all test higher than those of the test makers.
- Won’t economic development reduce the rate of population growth in the low-IQ countries?
- Future population estimates for countries in the Census Bureau database already take this into account. These are, of course, consensus estimates which do not take into effect such impossible-
to- forecast circumstances as environmental crises, plague, bad asteroid days, or, on the other hand, technological breakthroughs which accelerate economic development in third world countries. Looking 50 years ahead, only rapid demographic shifts in the near term will have much impact on the figures for 2050, since the parents of adults of that year are already mostly alive today. - Lynn and Vanhanen only actually have IQ data for 81 countries and they’ve estimated the rest. How reliable are those estimates?
- I don’t know. In most cases their estimates were made by averaging known IQs of adjacent countries with similar demographic mix. In the few cases of countries with ethnically diverse populations, they estimated IQ based on a weighted average of IQs of the country of origin of each group. They tested this process by using it to estimate IQ of several countries with known IQ and the results correspond well with the measured IQs of those countries. Still, one should bear in mind that 56% of the country IQ figures are estimated, and not based on any actual in-country measurement at all.
- And those 81 countries they have IQ data for–there seem to be an awful lot of fudge factors used in computing the numbers they cite in the tables. How trustworthy are they?
- Fudge factors? Indeed. . . . More than 25 pages are devoted to explaining the “adjustments”, “corrections”, “calibrations”, and “weightings” which go into that table of 81 numbers. The state of the raw data is more or less hideous. There is no regular, standardised measurement of IQ in nations of the world. One is forced to use sporadic studies, published at widely spaced intervals, using a variety of tests with more or less cultural bias, on populations which may exhibit a variety of selection effects. (For example, if you only test high school children in a country where 75% of children do not attend high school, you can’t expect your results to be representative of the population as a whole.) Still, if you want to do this research, you have work with the data at hand.
If population mean IQ indeed correlates strongly with economic performance, then measuring IQ figures for developing countries and studying ways to increase IQ could play an important rôle in development assistance. A UNESCO program to regularly measure IQ of, say, 16 year olds in all countries could provide hard data and, potentially, by permitting assessment of the effectiveness of programs such as nutrition aid for mothers and infants, educational initiatives, etc., do a world of good. Alas, this entire topic is so politically radioactive there is little likelihood of this ever happening.
- You’re assuming the mean IQ of countries won’t change over the hundred year period. How valid is that assumption?
- Apart from the Flynn effect (discussed below), which doesn’t seem to have much effect on the relative IQs of countries, in cases where the data are available, national mean IQ does not seem to have varied much over the last 50 years. As long as the population makeup and general circumstances of a country don’t change, it’s reasonable to expect the mean IQ for a given country to remain much the same over the next 50 years. Population migration, however, can have substantial effects and is not taken into account in these data. The Census Bureau population estimates include migration, but the assumption of constant mean IQ may be invalid when the population of a given country consists of a large fraction of immigrants from regions with different mean IQ. This is particularly the case for Western Europe, where the indigenous population has fertility below the replacement rate, and the population includes an increasing proportion of immigrants predominantly from regions with lower mean IQ. To the extent immigrants have more children per family than the original population, the effect is magnified. Whether immigrant populations converge toward the original IQ of their new country as they assimilate is an open question. In all, since most present day and anticipated future population migration is from lower IQ to higher IQ countries, assuming constant IQ probably biases the global mean forecasts toward the high end.
- Won’t the Flynn effect compensate for the downward demographic shift in IQ?
- The Flynn effect is an undisputed yet enigmatic aspect of IQ testing. Shortly after the first IQ tests were standardised, it was observed that the scores of those taking them tended to rise from year to year, as much as 15 points (one standard deviation) per generation. To maintain a mean score of 100 for the population on which IQ tests were standardised, test makers were forced to make their tests increasingly difficult over the years. In other words, to get the same IQ score as your father, you must perform equally well on a substantially tougher test than he took.
If, for whatever reason, everybody were getting smarter, this would be wonderful news indeed. But a glance at the numbers shows that something very curious must be going on here. If IQ were, in fact, rising at a rate of 15 points per generation then, if the mean IQ of today is 100, that of our grandparents’ generation would have been about 70–generally considered the threshold of mental retardation. Clearly, anybody who’s spent time with their grandparents and other folks of that generation knows that’s utter nonsense.
The literature and music of a century or more ago is clearly not the work of marginally retarded minds, and its abundance indicates those who wrote it were not rare exceptions in a generally dull population. Consider genius in the past. Most people considered geniuses have IQs in the vicinity of 150, or 3 1/3 standard deviations above the mean IQ of 100. In a population with a mean IQ of 100, individuals with IQs of 150 occur with a frequency of about one in 2300 people–they’re rare, but every medium-sized town has one or more, and even a small country with a population of one million has more than 425 such geniuses.
Now, in a population with a mean IQ of 70, which naïve interpretation of the Flynn effect would deem our grandparents to have had, genius-level IQs of 150 would be 5 1/3 standard deviations above the mean and occur, on average, in only one out of 20,396,324 people. If we take the Flynn effect as 3 IQ points per decade, then we’d expect a mean IQ of 70 around the year 1900. In 1900, the world population was about 1.7 thousand million, which would imply there were only 80 people with genius-level IQs in the entire world of 1900. The merest glance at the history of that era will reveal how ridiculous a supposition this is.
Adults, whatever their opinion may be of “what’s the matter with kids today”, are most unlikely to cite “they’re just too doggone smart!” So, the Flynn effect is a conundrum: a wide variety of tests which agree with one another and reliably predict outcomes we identify with “intelligence” all indicate that the general population is becoming more intelligent at an almost dizzying rate, while other evidence for this (for example, individuals with Einstein-calibre intelligence being almost 10,000 times more common than a hundred years ago) is notably absent. There is no shortage of hypotheses for what’s going on, but little evidence to support any of them. Flynn himself believes that IQ tests measure test-taking and problem-solving ability, not genuine intelligence, and that this has risen over time as more and more children receive compulsory education and are subjected to ever more tests. Improved nutrition over the 20th century is often cited as a factor, as well as the introduction of egalitarian welfare state systems in developed countries tending to reduce poverty. But all of these are factors which one would expect to eventually reach a plateau, and that doesn’t seem to have happened, at least so far.
This isn’t a document about the Flynn effect (although it risks becoming one unless I wind this up rather soon), and since no solution to this long-standing puzzle is at hand, one can only speculate on what it really means. Since correction for the Flynn effect is substantial in Lynn and Vanhanen’s national IQ estimates, and can be expected to strongly influence IQ scores published in the future, it is essential one bear it in mind in any analysis of population intelligence trends.
- IQ scores are normalised for a mean of 100 and standard deviation of 15 in the populations for which they were originally developed. Is the standard deviation the same in populations with higher or lower mean IQ?
- I don’t know. This is a fascinating question about which I have found no research whatsoever. Absent any information to the contrary, in computing the global IQ histogram in the charts at the top of this document, I assume a standard deviation of 15 points regardless of the mean. Note that this assumption only affects the shape of the histogram; the global mean is independent of the variance of individual country populations.
References
Data Sources for this Page
- Lynn, Richard and Tatu Vanhanen.
IQ and the Wealth of Nations.
Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002.
ISBN 0-275-97510-X. - Lynn, Richard and Tatu Vanhanen.
“Intelligence and the Wealth and Poverty of Nations“.
2000-2002. - U.S. Census Bureau.
International Data Base 2003. - U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
The World Factbook 2003.
IQ Phenomenology: The Flynn Effect
- Neisser, Ulric, ed.
The Rising Curve: Long-Term Gains in IQ and Related Measures.
Washington: American Psychological Association, 1998.
ISBN 1-55798-503-0. - Flynn, J. R.
“The Mean IQ of Americans: Massive gains 1932 to 1978”,
Psychological Bull. 95, 29 (1984). - Flynn, J. R.
“Massive IQ gains in 14 nations: What IQ tests really measure”,
Psychological Bull. 101, 171 (1987). - Flynn, J. R.
“IQ gains over time”, in Sternberg, Robert J.. ed.
Encyclopedia of Human Intelligence.
New York: Macmillan, 1994.
ISBN 0-028-97407-7.
(pp. 617-623)
“IQ Exists and Matters” Arguments
- Herrnstein, Richard J. and Charles Murray.
The Bell Curve.
New York: The Free Press, [1994] 1996.
ISBN 0-684-82429-9. - Jensen, Arthur R.
The g Factor: The Science of Mental Ability.
Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998.
ISBN 0-275-96103-6. - Rushton, J. Philippe.
“Race, Intelligence, and the Brain: The Errors and Omissions of the `Revised’ Edition of S. J. Gould’s
The Mismeasure of Man (1996)“,
Person. individ. Diff. 23, 169 (1997).
“IQ Doesn’t Exist and/or Matter” Arguments
- Gould, Stephen Jay.
The Mismeasure of Man.
New York: W. W. Norton, 1996.
ISBN 0-393-31425-1. - Devlin, Bernie et al., eds.
Intelligence, Genes, and Success: Scientists Respond to The Bell Curve.
New York: Copernicus, 1997.
ISBN 0-387-94986-0. - Fraser, Steven.
The Bell Curve Wars.
New York: Basic Books, 1995.
ISBN 0-465-00693-0.
Economic Development and Population Trends
- Todd, Emmanuel.
Après l’Empire.
Paris: Gallimard, 2002.
ISBN 2-07-076710-8.
English translation:
After the Empire.
New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.
ISBN 0-231-13102-X.
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Channel Bridge over the Elbe, in Magdeburg, Germany
nude australian with enormous penis
303
this post is a long list of links that i’ve collected over the past two years or so, and saved because i thought i’d be able to classify them somehow. i haven’t had anywhere else to put them, so they’re going here.
Swearsaurus – How to insult, swear, and curse in 170 languages! – just what everyone needs!
Your Age In Days – another thing that everyone needs to know…
Kentucky Mountain Bible College Has A New Phone Number! – their old phone number was 666-5000, and every good kentucky bible college needs a phone number that doesn’t invoke satan…
Build your own Klingon disruptor from The Register (my favourite news source)… “An ex-US Navy engineer … for the price of $500… has built a ‘gun’ … can disable almost any piece of electronic equipment from 20 feet away.” “He claims to have built another machine capable of crashing computers, and cars from a distance of 100 feet. That one cost him less than $300.” whee!
Bullets Screen Saver for Windows – if you use windoesn’t, this is definitely the screen saver for you… if you don’t, then it’s an amusing look at how the other half deals with their computer crashing all the time.
along the same lines, there are The top ten reasons Eternal Damnation is better than Windows Software Development – as i said, these are links that i’ve collected over the past year or so, and these two obviously came from when i was working for a windoesn’t development group somewhere.
To Foo or Not Tofu… foo, bar, baz, qux, quux, corge, grault, garply, waldo, fred, plugh, xyzzy, thud. this goes along with Metasyntactic Variables and RFC 3092, and needs no further explanation. if you can’t figure it out, be thankful you’re not a geek.
The Nit Picker’s Guide to the Lord of the Rings – which is why i will never enjoy the movie version anywhere near as much as i enjoyed the books.
yahoo spyware!! – do i need to say anything more?
Badvertising on the Net – which is another link that i found while working for a windows development group… and an idea which, if i were a windoesn’t user, would probably be high on my list of things i need to do.
RFID-Zapper – make friends and influence people at a local mall near you… just don’t get caught, ’cause the people that put RFID tags on things are pretty protective of their stuff… and, for the moment, it is still their stuff…
Omantel Services Domain Name Registration – yes, here is how you get a domain name with a .om TLD…
Time Surfer for Mac OsX – now this is a bizarre bit of coincidence here… i found this, i don’t know, probably a year and a half or two years ago, and didn’t do anything with it, and eventually forgot that i had the link. then, last year at the oregon country fair, i sat down to rest one afternoon and noticed this thing sitting on the hay bale behind me, with a sticky-note attached to it that said “free – for YOU!”, so i picked it up. it was a small square, green package that looked as if it might be a book or something, closed with a zipper, but when i opened it, it was clear that i wasn’t going to be able to make any sense of it where i was, so i zipped it back up and brought it home with me, where i could examine it in detail without having to worry about losing the many little parts that were contained inside. it said “DREAMSPELL – The Journey of Timeship Earth 2013” and contained inside were everything one would need to fortell the future using the ancient mayan calendar… or something like that, i couldn’t figure it out, because the book was written in a teensy font and went on and on and on and on without getting to very much of a point at all. apparently the book contains the basics for reading the mayan calendar, and the other stuff is for using the mayan calendar to fortell the future, or something like that. anyway, i was going through my list of links the other day, and found this one which says “Time Surfer is a unique program for discovering the cyclic interwoven timing frequencies of the Mayan Long Count, Tzokin, Haab and the Dreamspell Calendars.” perhaps the time is right for me to look into this again, especially since the program is free…
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PUBLIC RITUAL VEGETABLE SACRIFICE
In Honour of Tinite New Year
Saturday, 28 January, 2006
at HIGH Noon
the place is the usual spot, eXit-38, at the Change Creek Bridge. map here
questions and/or carpool arrangements, contact The Church
for those of you who haven’t been to a Ritual Vegetable Sacrifice before, full
details can be found here
we hope to see you there!
The 300 Most Common Words In The English Language
the of and a to in is you that it he for was on are as with his they at be this from I have or by one had not but what all were when we there can an your which their said if do will each about how up out them then she many some so these would other into has more her two like him see time could no make than first been its who now people my made over did down only way find use may water long little very after words called just where most know get through back much before go good new write our used me man too any day same right look think also around another came come work three word must because does part even place well such here take why things help put years different away again off went old number great tell men say small every found still between name should Mr home big give air line set own under read last never us left end along while might next sound below saw something thought both few those always looked show large often together asked house don’t world going want school important until 1 form food keep children feet land side without boy once animals life enough took sometimes four head above kind began almost live page got earth need far hand high year mother light parts country father let night following 2 picture being study second eyes soon times story boys since white days ever paper hard near sentence better best across during today others however sure means knew it’s try told young miles sun ways thing whole hear example heard several change answer room sea against top turned 3 learn point city play toward five using himself usually
Source: The American Heritage Word Frequency Book by John B. Carroll, Peter Davies, and Barry Richman (Houghton Mifflin, 1971, ISBN 0-395-13570-2).
(this is the first night that moe is in orlando, and i can’t sleep… can you tell?)
300
i discovered this a while ago, but i just got around to checking it out, and it does, indeed, do what they say… first, make a high quality, high contrast scan of the 2D barcode on your driver’s license (according to the site, currently 39 states use 2D barcodes on driver’s licenses, but NC, GA, UT, IL, KY, and older licences from MN are currently non-decodeable for one reason or another) that’s between 1000 and 2000 pixels wide, and between 500kb – 1.5mb, and upload it here and you get to find out how the cops know so much about you after such a short period of time…
except that my license has the information from before we moved, which is why they put “please notify the DOL within 10 days of a change of address” warning on the back…
also, i just had to include a link to everlasting blort…
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by John in DC – 1/02/2006 02:56:00 PM
Tinky Winky, Lenny the shark, and SpongeBob SquarePants move on over. The next child icon caught promoting the homosexual agenda is none other than BARBIE!!
Here is a list of known Toon homosexuals to date:
The religious right is now attacking Barbie for promoting “gender confusion.” According to the men at the Concerned Women for America, Barbie is urging kids to go bi:
“This is directed at children aged four to eight… that’s a really young age to be directing something along the lines of bisexuality.”
Yes, Barbie is making four year olds want to have sex with other four year olds of the same gender. And the Concerned Men would prefer that children have sex with four year olds of the opposite gender, I guess.
What’s really going on here is that the religious right has been attacking Mattel for months, just like they went after Ford and Microsoft and Allstate and Kraft and every other major American company. This is just another way for them to attack Mattel and get Mattel to do something bigoted to make amends.
But claiming that Barbie is promoting bisexuality to four year olds, that’s just whacked.
PS They also attack Barbie for not being a good Christian because good Christian girls only want to serve the Lord, get married, stay at home and have kids. I’m not making this up. I guess if you’re a woman (or a doll) who wants a career, then you’re a dyke.
By DOUG THOMPSON
Publisher, Capitol Hill Blue
Jan 3, 2006, 00:00
It is my belief that President George W. Bush is drinking again. Even worse, he may be mixing alcohol and anti-depressants — a dangerous combination for anyone, let alone the so-called leader of the free world.
No, I don’t have any proof of this, just random events and comments from those who work in and around the Bush administration and who tell me the President has acted in ways that suggest the use of alcohol and drugs. I’m a recovering alcoholic (sober 11 years, six months and 24 days) and I’ve run across a lot of relapsed drinkers who show the same symptoms as the President, including:
- Blacking out while watching television alone;
- Slurred speech and stammering responses to simple questions;
- Anger and hostility in front of staff members;
- Unexplained bruises on his face;
- Trouble remembering recent events or comments.
During his trip to Mongolia last November, Bush openly sampled the local drink Airag, which is fermented milk with an alcohol content ranging from three to twelve percent. In other words, booze.
This was the same trip where Bush tried to evade reporters’ question by attempting to walk out a locked door and then turned sheepishly to the cameras and said he was “jet-lagged.” Some at the event said his stride was unsteady and his speech slurred.
“According to reports, President Bush may be drinking again,” David Letterman said in a late-night monologue. “And I thought, “Well, why not? He’s got everybody else drinking.”
Rumors that Bush was hitting the bottle surfaced in Washington two years ago. Sources told us the President was using anti-depressants in 2004 and we reported the story. The same sources told us last year he was drinking again and we reported it in August. The National Enquirer also ran a front page story on it but no mainstream media outlet picked up on the story.
On August 27 of last year, the Houston Chronicle reported on a party at Bush’s ranch, noting that:
Nothing the president said could be quoted, but it’s rare that reporters get uninterrupted access to him for 90 minutes, particularly when beer is served. Bush, who gave up drinking years ago, drank a non-alcoholic Buckler.
In Alcoholics Anonymous, we are warned to stay away from so-called “non-alcoholic” beers or “near beer” as it is called. The brew does, in fact, contain some alcohol and can trigger a renewed desire for more.
The November issue of the Journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, cites a study by team of California scientists who report that just the smell of non-alcoholic beer may be enough to trigger cravings and a subsequent relapse among certain alcoholics.
In my original articles about Bush’s bouts with anger and depression, I quoted Dr. Justin Frank, a George Washington University psychiatrist and author of the book: Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President.
“Two questions that the press seems particularly determined to ignore have hung silently in the air since before Bush took office,” Dr. Frank says. “Is he still drinking? And if not, is he impaired by all the years he did spend drinking? Both questions need to be addressed in any serious assessment of his psychological state.”
Dr. Frank’s analysis of the President, which is based on watching and reading and not actual treatment of Bush, agrees with those who have told me the President is also taking anti-depressants.
“In writing about Bush’s halting appearance in a press conference just before the start of the Iraq War, Washington Post media critic Tom Shales speculated that ‘the president may have been ever so slightly medicated,’” he said.
Dr. Frank explains Bush’s behavior as all-to-typical of an alcoholic who is still in denial:
“The pattern of blame and denial, which recovering alcoholics work so hard to break, seems to be ingrained in the alcoholic personality; it’s rarely limited to his or her drinking,” he adds. “The habit of placing blame and denying responsibility is so prevalent in George W. Bush’s personal history that it is apparently triggered by even the mildest threat.”
None of this, of course, proves Bush is drinking again or taking anti-depressants. The only evidence we have of Bush drinking is the sampling of a local, alcohol-based drink in Mongolia and his consumption of so-called non-alcoholic beer at a party in Crawford, Texas.
But my instincts tell me he is doing both alcohol and drugs and I believe as both a journalist and a recovering alcoholic that he needs to prove to Americans that he is not attempting to govern while under the influence.
Blogger Mark Kleiman, writing in The Reality Based Community, notes:
Moreover, with rare exceptions (e.g., the John Tower affair) the press seems very reluctant to mention heavy drinking by officials, even when it’s widely known. Ted Kennedy’s drinking gets an occasional mention, but I’d bet that most of Pat Moynihan’s constiuents never knew their brilliant senator faced a permanent battle with the bottle. If Gary Hart’s drinking problem has ever made the newspapers, I’ve missed it, though his behavior in the Donna Rice affair made it pretty obvious. Those in the know understood that the frequent media references to Bill Weld’s “laziness” as Governor of Massachusetts referred to his persistent difficulty in keeping himself vertical after lunch, but again the voters didn’t. Even foreign leaders get the same delicate treatment: Boris Yeltsin’s “erratic” behavior was in fact quite regular and predictable, once vodka was entered into the equation.
Kleiman is right about Moynihan’s drinking. You could find the Senator at Capitol Hill watering holes most any night, lunching in many different directions at once while slurping down his drinks. A number of members of Congress are notorious drunks but their antics are almost never reported by the press unless they get nailed for DUI or caught frolicking nude in the Tidal Basin.
As a journalist, it is my duty to raise questions about the fitness of any elected leader. One may argue over whether or not it is proper to print speculation but, in this case, I believe it is justified.
I’m doing my job. I just wish the so-called “mainstream” media would do theirs.
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
I first suspected I was on the wrong planet round about May 1979 when Margaret Thatcher got elected as prime minister of Great Britain. The election of a more-or-less fascist leader by a more-or-less working class electorate struck me as a form of collective insanity. My fears about the planet were confirmed a year and a half later, when a third-rate B-movie actor in the obvious primary stages of senility got elected as president of the most powerful country in the world.
I was three weeks short of 17 when Thatcher got elected, so my alienation at the time was put down to the raging of hormones; and I was told I would ‘get over it’ and that it was ‘just a stage’ I was going through. Nobody told me that I was alienated because I was, in fact, an alien; that were it not for a cosmic accident two thousand years ago I would have been born on a more beautiful, more peaceful planet than The Earth. This was something I did not come to understand until many years later.
My planet is called Urf, and it’s about 100 billion miles away from Earth, on a different plane of existence: a lighter, happier, more-evolved plane. If you had a big enough telescope you would be able to see it’s mirror incarnation in this plane, and you would assume it’s uninhabitted, as it is coal black, surrounded by dense poisonous gasses. It was once inhabited by many species, including thinking biped, ape-like creatures who quickly learned how to dominate and subjugate the others. They were cleverer than the Earth-humans and became technologically advanced much quicker. You see, there was no dark age on Urf. The Urfians did not suffer from the debilitating effects of religion, as it had never occurred to the first primitive tribes to invent a god. You see, the planet Urf benefited from tectonic stability, so there were no volcanoes or earthquakes. And as it’s sun was less powerful, but nearer, the weather patterns were much kinder. The whole planet basked in late Spring-like temperatures, year round, making for a temperate, warm, fertile planet. There were no storms, no hurricanes, no droughts. The Urfian bipeds didn’t even have to deal with serious predators. The largest carnivorous beast on Urf was a creature called a pratwat, a bit like a pig, but with the teeth of a dog. It could take out an Urfian biped, with some effort, if necessary, but two bipeds with stout sticks could easily whip it’s ass. On Urf there was nothing for the Urfian biped to fear, so there was no need for a god. That’s not to say that they couldn’t have used some celestial guidance, because they most certainly could. Despite living on a fertile planet and having no real needs, like the first Earth humans, they were still spiritually backwards, like all creatures on all the planets on this particular plane of existence. You see, the energy vibration levels on this particular plane of existence are slow and almost treacly compared to the plane I was supposed to be born on, so it is harder to connect with the celestial energy of The One. Therefore the Urfians, like all Earthlings, like every creature on this plane of existence are all, without exception, spiritually stupid. No matter how evolved they are technologically, they are still, essentially, blind. They are incapable of recognising The One, of realising they are a part of The One. And so, they act out their individual roles, believing they are all separate from each other. They are incapable of seeing the finer energies that connect us all: seeing only the dense matter that is their physical bodies. Being blinded by this illusion of separation, the Urfian, like the Earthling, was essentially a self-serving creature. So, just like on Earth, on Urf there was a self-serving acquisitiveness which drove the Urfian; and they were as prone to folly as the Earthlings. They very quickly destroyed their planet, much quicker than the Earthlings are currently doing; and now the planet Urf is a burned out cinder. At least, that’s the way it is on this plane of existence.
Maybe you do not believe that there are more than three-dimensions because of your limited perceptions. The Urfians on this plane of existence also did not believe there were more than three-dimensions until the very end, when they developed the technology to rip through the fabric of their limited reality into another plane of existence, scorching their already seriously damaged planet with a sudden surge of raw celestial energy, wiping out every living being on their planet in the blinking of an eye. Urf, on this plane of existence, was wiped out just over 2,000 years ago; and serious damage was done to the veils that separate the different planes of existence. One day soon, quantum physicists on this planet will discover the multi-dimensional nature of the universe; and the scientists, presidents, generals and company directors will conspire to conquer the vast green planet that is The Earth, but on a fresher, more vibrant plane of existence. And should they use the same technology as their Urfian counterparts, they will succeed only in turning the Earth on this plane into a black, uninhabitable cinder.
Earthlings on this plane of existence, like the Urfians before them, have always suspected that there was something better around them which they could not see. In their very DNA is the knowledge that there are higher planes of existence; and imprinted in the soul is a yearning to transcend this limited, dirty plane of existence. Primitive Earthlings knew this yearning only too well, as their lives were simple, uncluttered and rooted in nature; and the gods that they invented and the religions and mythologies they dreamt up were a melange of their fears and wishes. The paradise which is a central pivot of all religions is the picture of a higher plane of existence imprinted in the mind of the primitive Earthling. It is this vision of heaven that spurs Earthlings on to self-improvement. It is an urge, an urgency, imprinted in every creature’s DNA. But that urge is very often re-routed because of emotional and spiritual stupidity and an inability to comprehend the presence of The One. In these particularly stupid and desperate times the transcendental urge can be sublimated easily by the likes of daemonic entities that incarnate into the almost vacant bodies of advertising executives and marketing directors: so the collective urge to become self-aware in order to reincarnate is tapped into and re-wired by misleading messages played out perpetually through the mass media. Most Earthlings, being stupid and devoid of true discrimination, are incredibly susceptible to these messages. Their desire for things they don’t need is immense. They are constantly dreaming about owning a bigger house, a faster car, a better television, a more powerful computer, a newer kitchen, more fashionable clothes etc; and they are constantly conspiring to find the wherewithal to purchase these goodies. They happily sell out their youthful principles to climb the greasy pole that is a career and increase their buying power. So they buy and buy and buy; and this flurry of purchasing is like a white noise that drowns out the wee, small voice that is true consciousness; the wee small voice which urges them to be good humans, to improve themselves, to reach upwards and magnetise themselves towards the light, so that upon death they are pulled upwards, out of this plane of existence to the next level.
It is cosmic law that you go to where you are drawn; and although the general flow is upwards, as spirits we can still go backwards. Earthlings on this plane can, upon death, be sucked back down to a lower plane of existence. Those who are so avaricious that they will, without conscience, happily destroy the lives of others in order to achieve their own material advancement are drawn back down to an elemental plane of existence after they die. The religious concept of Hell, just like the concept of Heaven, is very much based on the dreams and visions of primitive Earthlings, who, despite their simplicity, were wiser and more connected than those who live in this era of white noise and consumer goodies. These dreams and visions, in which they could see the higher plane that they imagined was paradise, also delivered to them frightening images of the lower, elemental plane.
Just as those on this plane of existence can be drawn back down to the elemental plane, so can those on the level above this one be drawn back down to this one. There are many things about this plane of existence that attract those who exist on the higher plane. Despite their knowledge and wisdom, and despite the peace and happiness enjoyed by all, many higher beings are attracted to this plane of existence. There is a physicality to this plane of existence that is very alluring. Higher beings do not have physical bodies as we understand them. Their ‘bodies’ are made of energy, and everyone’s energy is interconnected. Therefore the simple, physical pleasures that we enjoy are not available to higher beings. They don’t need to eat or drink or excrete waste products. They don’t need to breathe. They don’t even need a sense of smell. And as they do not procreate, they have no genitals. They do not enjoy the consolations that those on the lower planes enjoy. Many of the creatures in the higher plane, especially during their first incarnation, miss the sheer sensuality of the lower realms… and those that cannot tear themselves away from this illusion of yearning become utterly fixated with the lower realms. So much so, that some of them return in spirit bodies, just to observe the lower creatures enjoying the crass pleasures of their dense bodies. You have heard of angels, no doubt? These are not, as you suppose, messengers of God, but bewildered souls from a higher plane. To your eyes they shimmer or have haloes, for they are made of light… but their light is not as bright as those who remain in the higher plane. As soon as they visit the lower realms their bodies start to vibrate at lower energy levels and the light in them fades. Those who remain for a long time lose their shine altogether; and when they pass away, are reincarnated in a lower plane. It is usually lust for sex or fleshy sensuality that is these higher creatures’ undoing. You may even have seen or felt one near you at the height of coitus. They love to watch you all fucking, and they yearn to be inside you as you experience that brief bright love for another. Sometimes they even jump into your bodies as you orgasm, so that they can feel what you are feeling; even though the sheer denseness of your bodies asphyxiates to them; even though this process exhausts and debilitates them; even though they are cast out of your bodies after a mere few minutes. You may have experienced the strange, fleeting pleasure of being entered by one of these etheric voyeurs. The exchange of energy is intense, for you will have sucked up some of their light, just as they have sucked up some of your darkness. For hours or even days afterwards you will be walking on air. Sometimes even, you will fall in love.
Urfians are particularly prone to reincarnating on the lower plane. Because of the untimely destruction of our planet on the lower realm and because of the holes torn in the very fabric of reality, it is easier for us than for any other creature on any other planet to visit the lower realms. The death of our planet filled the higher beings with a strange melancholy, an almost intangible yearning for the lower realm. We were haunted by spectral apparitions of Urf as it had been, and for over 2,000 years, we have felt seized by the desire to visit the lower plane. So dangerous are the holes in reality, even beings from the plane that is above ours are drawn to the physical realm. Jesus was from this highest realm. So were many other prophets and messiahs. They surrendered to incarnation on the physical plane because they were overcome with compassion for the suffering of those who existed there.
As there were no beings on the burnt out planet that was the Urf of the lower realm, the Urfians would visit the nearest inhabited planet. Your planet. It is not by accident that your planet is called The Earth. It was named so by one of your kind who believed he’d had a vision of an angel, but in actuality had only had an encounter with an etheric Urfian tourist.
Just over two thousand years ago when the terrestrial Urfians destroyed their planet and tore holes in reality’s raiment the terrestrial planet Earth was swarming with Urfian etheric tourists. It was a crazy time for the terrestrial Earthlings: angels were seen everywhere and miracles were commonplace. The planet was teeming with beings from both the higher and the highest realms. During the first few centuries of the Christian calendar, the terrestrial planet Earth was like a holiday theme park for the Urfians; and they paid the price of their curiosity by being magnetised, and upon their death in the etheric, being reincarnated on Earth. Reincarnation on Earth soon cured the Urfians of their attraction to the place. One cycle of life on that miserable planet was usually enough to convince them that they should stick to their own realm. After about five centuries, Urfian visitations more or less ceased on Earth; and as a consequence, the nascent spirituality of the Earthlings withered away. A new dark age was ushered in. The angels disappeared; and dark forces ate away at the soul of The Earth’s religious institutions. For the next twelve hundred or so years, no Urfian set foot on the planet Earth, although, from time to time, observation parties would travel there, surrounded by protective shields of light, so that none of the Earth’s magnetic energy could touch them and effect an unwanted reincarnation. Then, some time in the mid-Eighteenth century the Urfian observation teams noticed disturbing changes on The Earth. The Earthlings, finally freed from the yoke of a religion that was rotten to the core, had begun to develop technologically. The invention of the steam engine sent alarm bells ringing all over etheric Urf. The Urfians were suddenly woken up to the fact that the Earthlings, despite their bumbling superstitious minds, might well develop technologically as the Urfians had done before them. Knowing the damage that the Urfians themselves had done to the fabric of reality, they were afraid that the Earthlings might develop sufficient technological skills to blast their way through to another level of reality, maybe even opening up doors to the lower realms, which would wreak havoc with the cosmos… or worse, the veils between all the realms would disintegrate and daemonic entities from the lowest realm would invade the very highest realm, which, on a cosmic level, would be like a super-volcano exploding, throwing up a giant ash cloud, and blanking out the sun. It would be the spiritual equivalent of an ice age, in which hell indeed would freeze over.
The etheric Urfians, guided by Urfian super-souls from the highest realm, knew what they had to do. They had to sacrifice themselves to try to prevent the possible destruction of the universe. Each etheric Urfian had to do a tour of duty on The Earth. One terrestrial Earth incarnation, with the specific purpose of subverting the Earthlings’ relentless drive towards technological advancement and the almost inevitable destruction of their planet. This plan was put into action at the tail end of the nineteenth century. Initially, a million etheric Urfians were dispatched to the terrestrial plane, arriving one by one on the Earth, at three minute intervals, travelling slowly, almost imperceptibly through the Earth’s atmosphere and gradually becoming cloaked in the dark magnetic muck that surrounds the Earth, camouflaging themselves, so that they would be entirely invisible to the Earthlings’ naked eyes. Although invisible, the relatively sudden presence of a million etheric beings on Earth was felt in many other ways. It is no coincidence that the late Victorians were morbidly obsessed with sex. They could feel the eyes of etheric beings upon them as they coupled; and in their ignorance, were certain that God was watching them… and judging them.
The sudden presence of so many invisible etheric Urfians on the terrestrial plane put considerable strain on the cosmos, causing tears in the veils that separate the realities. These tears nearly precipitated the events that the Urfians most feared, for they allowed a leakage of daemonic souls into the terrestrial plane. Daemonic souls are, in general, incredibly stupid, so it is rare that they find doorways into the terrestrial plane, but when they do, they wreak havoc. They instantly incarnate in human form by invading the nearest new-born and gobbling up their souls. Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were the result of the lowest of daemons incarnating on the terrestrial plane.
Once the etheric Urfians incarnated in terrestrial form the rips between the daemonic and the terrestrial sealed up and no more daemons got through. The first daemon incarnates – many of them ordinary, horrible, not-so-powerful citizens – mated with the terrestrial population and caused hideous mutations in the gene pool, which spawned bastard children like Margaret Thatcher and George Bush, who then, in an attempt to fortify the daemon gene, mated with other half-daemons, creating hideous abortions like Mark Thatcher and George Bush Junior. Osama Bin Laden likewise is a half-daemonic abortion. As was Uday Hussain and Baby Doc Duvalier. These daemonic abortions are way more evil than their parents, but fortunately they are very often a lot more stupid, and rarely get into positions of real power. The few that do, like Tony Blair, have a highly evolved and sophisticated conniving gene. Others, like the mental defective, George Bush Jr, have been more-or-less enthroned, as the acceptable, user-friendly figure-head of a daemonic cartel.
After the Urfians became aware of the damage that had been done by their mass exodus to Earth they slowed things down considerably; and with careful monitoring, worked out the optimum number of etheric beings that the terrestrial Earth could bear without damage. Throughout the twentieth century, at any given point in time, there have been just over 100,000 etheric Urfians on the planet Earth. Given that an etheric Urfian can survive for only six months in the poisonous atmosphere of the Earth, a total of twenty million Urfians have incarnated on the Earth in human form.
You would think that twenty million relatively highly evolved souls would have had a totally transformative effect on the terrestrial planet Earth, but sadly that has not been the case. You see, as they were incarnating on a strange planet, they lost all the reference points, which would normally trigger the deeply buried memories of their previous incarnations. The terrestrial planet Earth bore no relationship to the etheric planet Urf, unlike the etheric Earth, which was a lighter, brighter mirror of its terrestrial counterpart. When the Urfians incarnated on the terrestrial Earth, it was like their hard-drives were wiped clean. They completely forgot their previous existence and their purpose. All they had to go on was a feeling that they didn’t belong… and this feeling of not belonging was the motor that drove them on the road to self-discovery. Many incarnate Urfians eventually unravelled some degree of self-knowledge or self-awareness. Some even came to understand something of the nature of their purpose on Earth. Few ever truly realised that they had voluntarily incarnated on the terrestrial planet Earth from the etheric planet Urf, with the specific intention of waking up the Earthlings who were sleepwalking towards their own extinction… and possibly the extinction of the known universe. Despite that, they were driven by feelings, ideas, visions and dreams to subvert the Earthlings’ overwhelming desire to subjugate everything they could for their own ends. The Urfians infiltrated every strata of society and their desire for peace, love and understanding infected the Earthlings like a benign cancer. Without the presence of the Urfians the Earthlings would have managed to destroy the Earth by the year 2000, as Earthling prophets of old had previously predicted. Urfians are responsible for slowing down the march of technology and accelerating the spiritual awakening of the terrestrial Earthling race. They have worked tirelessly, if blindly, towards this end. During the first half of the century they worked slowly and painstakingly in the fields of art, literature, philosophy and politics to try to subvert the status quo of the Earthlings. In the second half of the century – after the unbelievable horrors of the 2nd World War – the Urfians were driven to use less subtle strategies. They infiltrated the light entertainment industries and in less than twenty years took almost complete control. It was Urfians who first mass-manufactured and distributed mind-altering drugs like LSD and Ecstasy. It was Urfians that were in the forefront of all the various hippie and new age movements. It was Urfians that founded pressure groups like the Greenpeace, Amnesty International and CND. It was Urfians that were at the forefront of the feminist movement. It was Urfians that spearheaded campaigns for civil rights and liberties for oppressed minorities. It was Urfians who campaigned for the abolition of the death penalty. It was Urfians who invented the birth control pill. It was Urfians who campaigned against censorship… and barely a one of them knew that they hailed from Urf. The common thread that bound them was a desire to make the Earth a better place.
At present there are approximately fifteen million Urfian souls currently incarnated in Earthling flesh (five million of the early pioneers have now served their tours of duty and are once again enjoying the delights of life on the etheric Urf). Of these fifteen million, few have come to the full realisation of their origins. Only a handful remember that they are from Urf. They work towards the Earth’s greater good because of some inner compulsion they do not quite understand. They work with dedication and vision, but rarely to their fullest potential. If they could be re-awakened to realise who they are and what their mission is they would truly be a force to be reckoned with. If they could open up their etheric eyes and revitalise their spiritual powers they would be able to defeat the daemonic forces that have taken control of the governments and multinational corporations. If they could connect together at an energetic level their power would be twenty times what it is now. If they could realise that they are part of The One they would be able to help the Earthlings learn that they too are part of The One. If they could help the Earthlings realise their true natures all the outposts of the evil empire would crumble: for it is their unwitting participation and cooperation with the system that keeps the wheels of evil turning.
Amongst the fifteen million, more than 75 percent are almost completely asleep. Not only do they have no clue about their origins, they are devoid of even the faintest urge to carry out their mission to improve the Earthlings and the Earth. They are, for all intents and purposes, Earthlings. The only thing that separates them from their Earth cousins is a nagging sense that they don’t belong. They feel different from others. Many feel entirely alienated from their peers, often suffering from attendant mental and emotional stress that Earthling doctors diagnose as mental illness. Others may find some sort of tentative foothold in human society, by choosing to work in fields that are not highly valued by Earthlings and therefore are less competitive, less aggressive environments. There is a very high per capita ratio of unconscious Urfians in the lower ranks of the caring professions. The arts also attract great numbers of Urfians, especially the least attractive, least financially rewarding art forms, like poetry. Few Urfians ever succeed in their chosen professions, not even in poetry. They do not have the determination, the drive or the ruthlessness that is necessary to rise far above the huddled masses. Ted Hughes, for example, was pure Earthling stock, whereas his wife, Sylvia Plath – who only really became truly famous after her suicide – was half Urfian.
There are nearly twelve million Urfians out there sleepwalking through their lives. They are like an army with no guns, no uniforms. They have the potential to help defeat the daemonic forces that have insinuated their way into positions of power on this planet. They have the potential to help awaken Earthlings to their true nature and prevent the destruction of the Earth… and possibly the universe itself. But they have not yet realised this potential.
(If you have read this message and it speaks to you, possibly you are an Urfian too. If you suspect you might be, now is the time to act, to work to prevent the Earth’s destruction. Channel your talents and abilities to help reawaken other unconscious Urfians: give them your love and support; nurture them. Use every means possible to open up Earthling’s eyes: subvert their thinking wherever possible; and where necessary, infiltrate the heart of the daemonic empire and destroy their systems from within. Remember, use only peaceful means; for evil only begets evil and will ultimately make the daemonic empire stronger…. act now, for time is quickly running out!)
Disclaimer: this may not be a work of fiction.
298
hey, check this out… type “baby jesus” into google, and click the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button…
also, a very important announcement concerning International Kermit Hands Day.
Mooning deemed ‘disgusting’ but legal in Md.
Man who exposed his buttocks during an argument walks free
By Ernesto Londoo
The Washington Post
Updated: 9:59 a.m. ET Jan. 4, 2006
WASHINGTON – Acquitting a Germantown man who exposed his buttocks during an argument with a neighbor, a Montgomery County Circuit Court judge ruled yesterday that mooning, while distasteful, is not illegal in Maryland.
“If exposure of half of the buttock constituted indecent exposure, any woman wearing a thong at the beach at Ocean City would be guilty,” Judge John W. Debelius III said after the bench trial, reversing the ruling of a District Court judge.
Debelius made clear his disdain for the defendant, calling the alleged act “disgusting” and “demeaning.” The outcome could have been different, he suggested, if the man had been on trial for “being a jerk.”
The case arose from a June 7 argument between the defendant, Raymond Hugh McNealy, 44, and a neighbor, Nanette Vonfeldt. Vonfeldt pressed charges against McNealy after he allegedly yelled and, according to Vonfeldt, threatened to “blow up my building” as she and her 8-year-old daughter walked out of their apartment, in the 20200 block of Shipley Terrace in Germantown.
“Then, for whatever reason, in full view of my daughter, he mooned us,” Vonfeldt wrote in a court document. The two had a long-standing feud over issues before their homeowners association, which held a heated meeting the night before, McNealy’s attorneys said. McNealy wanted Vonfeldt off the association’s board, his attorneys said.
The case went to trial Sept. 12 before Montgomery District Court Judge Eugene Wolfe, who ruled against the defendant. Indecent exposure in Maryland is punishable by as much as three years in prison and a $1,000 fine.
Victory for ‘beachgoers and plumbers’
McNealy’s attorneys appealed the verdict, arguing that indecent exposure in Maryland constitutes the willful public display of a person’s “private parts” — which, they argued, do not include a person’s buttocks.
Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Dan Barnett said the indecent exposure law in Maryland is ambiguous.
“In our minds, this was not a bathing suit scenario,” said Barnett, who supervises Montgomery County prosecutors who handle cases in District Court. “This was a grown man exposing himself to an 8-year-old girl.”
Defense attorneys cited a 1983 case of a woman who was arrested after protesting in front of the U.S. Supreme Court wearing nothing but a cardboard sign that covered the front of her body. The D.C. Court of Appeals ruled in 1986 that indecent exposure is limited to a person’s genitals.
James Maxwell, one of McNealy’s attorneys, said yesterday’s ruling should “bring comfort to all beachgoers and plumbers” in the state.
| Your Social Dysfunction: Paranoid You show pervasive and unwarranted suspiciousness, and mistrust of others. You are overly sensitive and prone to jealousy. |
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297so i’m researching how to market Hybrid Elephant better than i have been (which is not at all), and i discovered, or, rather, i rediscovered that Hybrid Elephant has a web stats program already installed on the web server, so i decided to have a look. the last time i checked the stats was in november 2003(!), shortly after my injury. since then Hybrid Elephant has been averaging somewhere between 35,000 and 75.000 hits per month, or around 6,000 hits per week (the week of 6 november, 2005 had almost 35,000 hits!), and the weeks starting 11 december, 2005 had an average of 7,500 hits per week! my busiest day is usually tuesday, and the busiest hour of the busiest day is usually 12:00 pm, the most recent of which had 14,172 requests for pages. the large majority of hits (34.56%) come from the .net TLD, followed by 30.93% from the .com TLD, 16.12% from “unresolved numerical addresses”(?), and 2.74% from the .edu TLD… i’ve gotten 10,230 hits from the .uk TLD, 13,601 from the .hr TLD (croatia!), and i’ve even had 332 hits from the .arpa TLD… and i’ve gotten 1 hit each from andorra, macedonia, lichtenstein and cote d’ivoire… strangely enough, though, the most frequently requested directory is the objects directory (probably the murtis or the pipes, which i’ve gotten a bunch of emails about), and the incense directory comes in a disappointing #4… i’m pretty sure i’ll be able to make some use out of this information. what remains to be seen. 296happy new year everyone… moe is going to orlando for a week. she’s attending some veterinary conference and taking some continuing education workshops, but she’s not taking me, because i’ve got to stay at home and take care of the pets. i finally bought some beading needles, and made a sivalingam necklace. there are more to be made (i’ve got 9 more sivalingams) and i hope to be able to sell them on Hybrid Elephant i joined the jew’s harp guild, which i didn’t even know existed before reading St. Gordy of Boenghytte proposed a public ritual vegetable sacrifice some time soon, and i suggested that he nominate some weekend day as “Tinite New Year” with the specific purpose of holding another public ritual vegetable sacrifice on that day. now i’ve got to wait until he actually does it. hopefully it will be some time before october… “It’s pretty stunning that, rather than focus on whether the president broke his oath of office and broke federal law, they are going after the whistleblowers.” 2005 was the year that the president of the United States declared proudly that he had broken the law repeatedly and with full intention, that he had the power to do so whenever he wanted to, and that he would continue to do so whenever he determined it to be desirable. This declaration was met with basic approval from much of the beltway chattering classes, prominent libertarian bloggers, and just about every small government conservative. The issue is simple: Bush has declared that one man has the right to make the law whenever, in his determination, national security warrants it. While even I can understand the necessity of broad executive powers in emergency situations, we aren’t anywhere close to being in one of those. If Bush decides that personally shooting dissident bloggers or pesky journalists in the head is in fact necessary for national security, then no one can object. The fact that he has not, as far as we know, done any such thing does not matter in the slightest. By conferring dictatorial authority on himself Bush has declared that this is, in fact, a dictatorship even if he hasn’t (yet) bothered using such authorities to the fullest of his claimed ability. It’s a mystery why Russert and the gang can giggle over their little roundtables, essentially ignoring what amounts to a military coup by our own president. He’s asserted the authority of commander in chief over the entire country, and not just the military to which the constitution grants him such authority. Yes, we hope and generally assume that this temper tantrum by our boy king will pass in 3 years, that the his overreach will not have long lasting effects, that the crisis will pass. 2005 was the year the president declared he was the law, and few of our elite opinion makers and shapers bothered to notice, or care. well, i guess i’ll accept it… especially since there really is no founder for hinduism… but at the same time, i took the quiz 3 times, and i only got Buddha twice. the other time i got Jesus, and i simply couldn’t put up with that…
295the leap second that was in between 3:59:59 pm, pst, and 4:00:00 pm, pst, came and went without fanfare, but it was there… don’t ask me why. hybrid elephant inventory is done. this year i purchased $1,255.83 worth of stuff for sale at the hybrid elephant web site. 294this is the reason why the laws regarding ownership of intellectual property (specifically music) need to be trashed and re-vamped. i’ve been searching for copies of “Care,” “Big Night Music” and “Jam Science” by Shriekback, but can’t find them. apparently, according to discogs, “Jam Science” is rare because it was never approved for release by the band, and the only place i’ve been able to find it wants $45 for it… i’ve found a copy of “Big Night Music” on ebay that’s currently at $15.50, but it has 3 more days before the auction ends, and there are no shriekback torrents on mininova or isohunt or seedler. at this point, i’m at a loss for where else to look. i don’t even necessarily want the CDs, but the music on them would be good, and, because of the fact that the laws are such as they are, i am unable to find music that was good when it first came out, and even better now because it has so little to compare to. SIGN SENATOR BARBARA BOXER’S PETITION TO STOP SHRUBBY’S ILLEGAL WIRETAPPING — nixon resigned amid allegations of illegal wiretapping, it’s time we encourage shrubby to do the same! Congressman John Conyers has introduced three new pieces of legislation aimed at censuring President Bush and Vice President Cheney, and at creating a fact-finding committee that could be a first step toward impeachment. PETITION YOUR CONGRESS MEMBER TO SUPPORT THESE BILLS
Hoekstra is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. He says he participated in at least six briefings on the spying program since August 2004. Hoekstra said he is comfortable that the surveillance was aimed at al-Qaida terrorists and people associated with al-Qaida inside the US. hurry it up, people! your senators and congresspeople are gullible fools who will go with the crowd! if “We, The People Of The United States” say take emperor shrub junior and his cronies out of office, they’re a lot more likely to take them out than they would be if we do nothing! “Are there no secret prisons? If the poor would rather die than go there, then they’d better hurry up and do it and decrease the surplus population!” Ebeneezer Cheney says “Fuck the poor. Hard.” cheney casts the deciding vote to do just that. George Bush is using the National Security Agency to conduct surveillance on American citizens without the consent of any court. After initially refusing to confirm the story, the President has admitted to personally overseeing this domestic spying program for years. These actions are explicitly against the law. But the administration says that other laws somehow allow for this unprecedented use of a foreign intelligence agency to spy on Americans right here in the United States. According to reports, political appointees in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel wrote still-classified legal opinions laying out the supposed justification for this program. Governor Howard Dean is filing a formal demand that they release these documents. You can add your name to a Freedom of Information Act request. A vet speaks out about Bush Tim Abbott is a Vietnam veteran who lives in the Southwestern Virginia town of Hillsville, a conservative, blue-collar community that tends to vote Republican and bleed red, white and blue. But, like an increasing number of veterans, Abbott is fed up with President George W. Bush. “Bush talks a lot about freedom, courage, transparent government and the rule of law. He talks,” Abbott says. “His speeches are carefully choreographed before audiences of his faithful — often Christian fundamentalists or, to paraphrase Bush, Christian-fascists — and they must sign loyalty oaths to Bush. He speaks before audience after audience of soldiers and sailors who cannot speak except as directed by the White House.” Normally, such comments would be risky in a mountain town where Patriotism rules supreme but Abbott expressed his views this week in an op ed article for The Roanoke Times and found many people agreeing with him. “When I think of Bush, I do not think of liberty and courage, compassion and justice. No, I think of arrogance, greed and lies,” Abbott wrote. “He is a thug, a buffoon and a coward. Not only is he incompetent, he is corrupt.” In normal times, these would be fighting words and Abbott would do well to avoid lunch at the Hillsville Diner, the Main Street eatery where the locals gather to discuss politics. But George W. Bush’s times are not normal times and Abbott is greeted warmly on the streets of Hillsville. “In his Mission Accomplished foray, (Bush) wore a military uniform, something no president has done since Washington, and Washington only wore the uniform to quell a rebellion,” Abbott says. “Around the world he has replaced the Soviet Gulag with the Bush Gulag, where men may be tortured.” Abbott’s comments come when this web site revealed that the Pentagon has ordered soldiers home from Iraq for holiday leave to give pro-war interviews to their hometown newspapers and television station. This does not surprise a veteran who learned about military duplicity in Vietnam. “Others before whom he speaks may ask no questions. He runs from journalists, as we have seen in China, even on those rare occasions that he speaks before them,” Abbott says of Bush. “Even worse, he has paid journalists to say good things about him and his policies. He also produces propaganda from government offices that he offers as news reports. And any protests against his policies are diverted well away from his sight and hearing.” In recent weeks, I’ve spoken with dozens of vets of Vietnam, Desert Storm and the present invasion of Iraq and most speak with anger towards Bush and his policies. Soldiers serve under a code of honor, something they say Bush lacks. “Bush is of a kind with the dictators; a strutting, sanctimonious buffoon who talks democracy but acts like Saddam Hussein,” Abbott says. “Bush might differ in degree from Hussein, not having been in power as long, but in behavior, with torture and the corruption of government, they are of a kind. “While al-Qaida is an enemy of the values and principles of the United States and Western civilization and must be confronted, it can do no more than kill people and destroy property. “Bush can subvert our principles and institutions. He is the greater enemy.”
293a few years ago i did sound effects for a show called “Rock Opera,” which was a musical play (unfortunately it didn’t quite meet the definition of an “opera“) about a geology student who saves the world from republicans, by a friend of mine (the guy with the license plate that said “BE WEIRD”) and featured the vocal talents of the famous person commonly known as david ossman… the only reason that i mention this is because i just found out that david ossman is actually a resident of these parts, whidbey island to be specific. more evidence that only the really cool actually live around here. a gay marriage in oregon that involves a person moe knew. we’re going to see The Bobs at the Triple Door tomorrow night. eat human flesh… now these people say two very different things on their web site which makes me very suspicious of either their motives or their… food. they say “If you’ve never had human flesh before, think of the taste and texture of beef, except a little sweeter in taste and a little softer in texture. Contrary to popular belief, people do not taste like pork or chicken.” and then they say “Hufu™ contains no human or animal products”… which makes me wonder how they know it tastes like human flesh… but not very much. maybe i would try hufu, and it would certainly be a candidate for my “odd food” collection, but i don’t think i want to know about how they know so much about the taste of human flesh. here is a site that i could post from, but so much of what they have to say is postable that i’ll just link to them instead: Censure Bush Power corrupts…
Policy made in the heat of anger and rage is rarely in anyone’s long-term interest. When this policy involves an Administration asking for carte blanche and using 9.11 to justify creating the beginnings of a police state…well, that borders on criminal. Of course, the Bush Adminstration has long since demonstrated that criminality in the pursuit of power is nothing to lose sleep over. After all, when absolute power is the absolute goal, anything that contributes to achieving that goal is acceptable. Congratulations, y’all. 51% of you gave the green light to the creation of a thugocracy that makes the Nixon Adminstration look like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. In the wake of 9.11, no one wanted to be accused of coddling those responsible for killing 3,000 innocent Americans. We all wanted those responsible to pay for their crime. Few of us realized at the time what the government was proposing to do in the name of waging war on terrorists, and few were inclined toward sober and rational long-term thinking. In retrospect, what the Bush Administration was asking for was the ability to wage war on Americans- citizens who may or (most likely) may not be engaging in in terrorist activities. In effect, what Our Glorious Leader and his cabal were asking for was permission to create a system that could, and ultimately would, be used to spy and eavesdrop on their political enemies. Too many within the Administration felt it perfectly justifiable to ask Congress to aquiesce in the erosion of American civil liberties in order to protect them. Yet, in the rush to look as if they were responding decisively and effectively, no one in the Administration stopped to ask the simple questions. Must we kill the patient in order to save it? What will the long-term effect be of allowing government to spy on American citizens? Is reacting in the heat of the moment, fueled by rage and a desire for retribution, really a recipe for sound policy?
In the end, Daschle’s refusal hardly mattered, because this Administration has proven adept at using whatever suits their purpose to argue that they were given Congressional approval to spy on American citizens. Ultimately, Our Glorious Leader and his cabal will use (or create) whatever justification they can latch onto in order to support whatever their position of the moment happens to be. This behavior is something that should offend reasonable and decent people. The idea that in order to protect the law, government must be allowed carte blanche to break the law is a patently absurd and unsupportable position. Creating the trappings of a police state to “protect freedom” and “prevent terrorism” should not be part and parcel of the world’s most successful and powerful democracy. Interesting, isn’t it? A Democratic President has an affair with an intern and finds himself impeached. A Republican President lies his way into a war that has so far killed more than 2,000 Americans and seems to think it perfectly acceptable to break the law in order to “protect” it…yet his party and a majority of Americans see nothing wrong with this? If you can be impeached for getting a blow job in the Oval Office, should you not also be impeached for lying, breaking the law, fudging intelligence, and being responsible for the deaths of more than 2,000 Americans? It’s true, isn’t it? Being a Republican means never having to say you’re sorry…or be held accountable for your actions. I hope the 51% of you who voted to “re-elect” the Prevaricator in Chief are proud of yourselves…because ultimately, you are responsible for allowing this criminal and immoral behavior to continue unchecked. the thing that worries me is the comment directly after the article, which says “I could care less if they have cameras all over my house, office, and wiretaps on my phones. I’m not doing anything wrong, so I’m not really worried about it.” it makes me think of that old song… When they took the fourth amendment,
Recently I have been trying to figure out who President Bush reminded me of. Was it Richard Nixon with his willingness to break the law to hold onto the presidency? Was it FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover who bugged Martin Luther King Jr. and anyone he considered to be a political enemy? And then it struck me. President Bush most closely resembles King George III of England. You remember him — he’s the guy whose high-handed rule led to the American Revolution. I went back and re-read our Declaration of Independence. Our founding fathers cited King George’s various acts of tyranny– including housing foreign troops in the homes of colonials against their will. The American Revolutionary War followed, which eventually led to the adoption of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill or Rights (the first 10 amendments). And there it is in black and white: the fourth amendment. Let’s take a moment to look at the exact words of the fourth amendment to the Constitution adopted more than 200 years ago: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrant shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.” Not bad for a group of farmers who were creating a new country — one that has survived for 216 years and is the oldest continuous democracy in the world. Now the “new King George” would have us believe one of three things: (1) the president’s powers as commander-in-chief supersede the fourth amendment during the war on terror (2) the resolution adopted by Congress shortly after the 9/11 attack can be read to give the president the authority to conduct domestic wiretaps against American citizens without going to court to seek a warrant and (3) modern technology is such that the founding fathers could never have anticipated the need to conduct wiretaps without a warrant. Let’s look at each of these arguments. First, it takes a very broad reading of the commander-in-chief clause to justify any conduct as superseding the constitution. President Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus during the U.S. Civil War, an action that was very controversial at the time; it is hard to equate the ongoing war on terror with the American Civil War, which threatened the very existence of the Republic. Second, I was a member of Congress when we passed the resolution giving the president the authority to use all force necessary against the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. Congress clearly meant this as authorization to go into Afghanistan and find Usama bin Laden. No one ever thought this authorized our government to wiretap American citizens in our own country without court approval. Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle wrote an op-ed piece in the Dec. 23rd Washington Post detailing how the Bush administration proposed last minute language to the 9/11 resolution which would have given the president the power to engage in domestic spying without a search warrant, and that this language was specifically rejected by the bills’ authors. And third, the modern technology argument is an interesting one but is not very persuasive. Congress in 1978 passed legislation permitting spying inside the United States under certain circumstances. That law created a special court that can respond within hours to a request for search warrants. And the law also contained an exception, permitting the Attorney General to authorize wiretaps in an emergency situation and then seek a warrant within 72 hours. And so the question remains, why did the president set up a system of wiretapping of American citizens by the National Security Agency (NSA) without a warrant? Does he simply want dictatorial powers? Does he so mistrust the court system (even a secret one specifically set up to make it easier to wiretap people inside the United States) that he doesn’t want any of the traditional checks on the power of the executive to violate basic civil liberties? Does he just want a political issue that makes him look tough and opponents (Democrats and some Republicans) look weak? I used to think that extreme right wingers out West who wanted to arm themselves and undergo paramilitary training to be ready to resist tyranny in their own country were crazy. An argument now can be made that they were quite sane. Let’s hope that a bipartisan political coalition is able to restrain this administration from actions that are inconsistent with the framework of liberty established by our founding fathers. Let’s don’t leave the defense of our freedoms to self-declared militias. We are a better country than that.
review of 2005In the year 2005 I resolve to: Proclaim Tina Chopp is God! i bought a colour printer yesterday. does anybody else remember these? well, we’re officially moving. i applied for my passport (!) so i can go to canadada (!) today. well, it’s just about over. my primary machine, my linux computer, is broken. a review of the cirque show by a person who reportedly hates shows like that. a few things that i’ve got collected during the past week or so. another short day. yesterday was troll-o-ween. bizarre… firefox just crashed again. 291Reply to this post, and I’ll tell you a reason why I like you. Then put this in your own journal, if you want, and spread the love. also How many songs? Sort by artist Last artist: Sort by song title Last Song: Sort by time Longest Song: Sort by album Last Album: First song that comes up on shuffle: How many songs come up when you search for “sex”? How many songs come up when you search for “death”? How many songs come up when you search for “love”? Most Frequently Played Song: 290returned from portland today. MIL was as dysfunctional as always, although now that she’s got multiple sclerosis as well, she’s even more helpless than before. combine that with the fact that ann, who is her housemate and landlord, started smoking again after having (seemingly) successfully quit, has been in and out of the hospital several times in the past few weeks, and suffered a stroke less than a week ago, and you get a concerned moe, who is sure that her mother can’t come and live with us (!!) but is wondering, at the same time, what she’s going to do if and/or when ann kicks off. it was a typically dysfunctional family x-mas eve dinner, with moe’s father, and his wife, ann, bill (a friend of the family who is somehow connected to ann), and moe’s mother (who is not, and never has been married to moe’s father) gathering for a dinner that was fixed at the last moment by moe, because ann (the traditional cooker of x-mas dinner) was too sick to do it… and then another, somewhat less dysfunctional x-mas day dinner with moe’s mother and step-grandmother… and ann and bill (again), once again gathering to eat a magnificently prepared dinner cooked by moe (again)… all of which was planned on the spur of the moment, since what was planned for both days fell through when ann got sick less than a week ago… all i can say is that i’m glad it wasn’t my family. the following is a bunch of URLs that i collected before x-mas, but didn’t have time to post them before: http://www.WorldPyroOlympics.com/ http://www.FuckThisWebSite.com/ and from the freeway blogger… White House Defends Use of Cannibalism, Pedophilia Shocking Disclosures Stun Many Washington – Already reeling from charges of massive corruption, widespread use of torture and illegal wiretapping, the White House angrily responded to yesterday’s disclosure in the New York Times that top administration officials had participated in numerous acts of cannibalism and sex with minors. “My most important job as President is to protect the American People.” Bush stated emphatically during this morning’s hastily convened press conference, “September 11th changed everything, and I think the people understand that.” While acknowledging that the rape and molestation of young children, as well as the consumption of human flesh might be disturbing to some, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales pointed out that such acts were technically within the law and had been approved by Congress in the broad powers given to the executive branch after the attacks on Sept. 11th, 2001. Officials at the Times acknowledged that they’d known about the program for well over two years but had chosen to withold publishing its details until after the election because it “slipped our minds.” The super-secret program, dubbed “Operation Freedom Patriot Eagle Flag”, was run primarily out of the office of the Vice-President. US authorities have been secretly monitoring radiation levels at Muslim sites amid fears that terrorists might obtain nuclear weapons, it has emerged. Scores of mosques and private addresses have been checked for radiation, the US News and World Report says. A Justice Department spokesman said the programme was necessary in the fight against al-Qaeda. Last week, President George W Bush admitted allowing the wiretapping of Americans with suspected terror links. Mr Bush has defended the covert programme and vowed to continue the practice, saying it was vital to protect the country. No warrants It began in early 2002 and has been run by the FBI and the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Emergency Support Team. The Associated Press news agency said federal law enforcement officials have confirmed the programme’s existence. The air monitoring targeted private US property in the Washington DC area, including Maryland and Virginia suburbs, and the cities of Chicago, Detroit, Las Vegas, New York and Seattle, the magazine said. At its peak, three vehicles in Washington monitored 120 sites a day. Nearly all of the targets were key Muslim sites. “In numerous cases, the monitoring required investigators to go on to the property under surveillance, although no search warrants or court orders were ever obtained, according to those with knowledge of the programme,” the publication said. “The targets were almost all US citizens,” an unnamed source involved in the programme told the magazine. “A lot of us thought it was questionable, but people who complained nearly lost their jobs,” the source said. Muslim anger They also rejected the claim that the programme specifically targeted Muslims. A spokesman for the Department of Justice said the programme was necessary as al-Qaeda remained committed to obtaining nuclear weapons. An FBI spokesman declined to confirm or deny the report. Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the news “comes as a complete shock to us and everyone in the Muslim community”. He added: “This creates the appearance that Muslims are targeted simply for being Muslims. I don’t think this is the message the government wants to send at this time.”
Britain is to become the first country in the world where the movements of all vehicles on the roads are recorded. A new national surveillance system will hold the records for at least two years. Using a network of cameras that can automatically read every passing number plate, the plan is to build a huge database of vehicle movements so that the police and security services can analyse any journey a driver has made over several years. The network will incorporate thousands of existing CCTV cameras which are being converted to read number plates automatically night and day to provide 24/7 coverage of all motorways and main roads, as well as towns, cities, ports and petrol-station forecourts. By next March a central database installed alongside the Police National Computer in Hendon, north London, will store the details of 35 million number-plate “reads” per day. These will include time, date and precise location, with camera sites monitored by global positioning satellites. Already there are plans to extend the database by increasing the storage period to five years and by linking thousands of additional cameras so that details of up to 100 million number plates can be fed each day into the central databank. Senior police officers have described the surveillance network as possibly the biggest advance in the technology of crime detection and prevention since the introduction of DNA fingerprinting. But others concerned about civil liberties will be worried that the movements of millions of law-abiding people will soon be routinely recorded and kept on a central computer database for years. The new national data centre of vehicle movements will form the basis of a sophisticated surveillance tool that lies at the heart of an operation designed to drive criminals off the road. In the process, the data centre will provide unrivalled opportunities to gather intelligence data on the movements and associations of organised gangs and terrorist suspects whenever they use cars, vans or motorcycles. The scheme is being orchestrated by the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) and has the full backing of ministers who have sanctioned the spending of £24m this year on equipment. More than 50 local authorities have signed agreements to allow the police to convert thousands of existing traffic cameras so they can read number plates automatically. The data will then be transmitted to Hendon via a secure police communications network. Chief constables are also on the verge of brokering agreements with the Highways Agency, supermarkets and petrol station owners to incorporate their own CCTV cameras into the network. In addition to cross-checking each number plate against stolen and suspect vehicles held on the Police National Computer, the national data centre will also check whether each vehicle is lawfully licensed, insured and has a valid MoT test certificate. “Every time you make a car journey already, you’ll be on CCTV somewhere. The difference is that, in future, the car’s index plates will be read as well,” said Frank Whiteley, Chief Constable of Hertfordshire and chairman of the Acpo steering committee on automatic number plate recognition (ANPR). “What the data centre should be able to tell you is where a vehicle was in the past and where it is now, whether it was or wasn’t at a particular location, and the routes taken to and from those crime scenes. Particularly important are associated vehicles,” Mr Whiteley said. The term “associated vehicles” means analysing convoys of cars, vans or trucks to see who is driving alongside a vehicle that is already known to be of interest to the police. Criminals, for instance, will drive somewhere in a lawful vehicle, steal a car and then drive back in convoy to commit further crimes “You’re not necessarily interested in the stolen vehicle. You’re interested in what’s moving with the stolen vehicle,” Mr Whiteley explained. According to a strategy document drawn up by Acpo, the national data centre in Hendon will be at the heart of a surveillance operation that should deny criminals the use of the roads. “The intention is to create a comprehensive ANPR camera and reader infrastructure across the country to stop displacement of crime from area to area and to allow a comprehensive picture of vehicle movements to be captured,” the Acpo strategy says. “This development forms the basis of a 24/7 vehicle movement database that will revolutionise arrest, intelligence and crime investigation opportunities on a national basis,” it says. Mr Whiteley said MI5 will also use the database. “Clearly there are values for this in counter-terrorism,” he said. “The security services will use it for purposes that I frankly don’t have access to. It’s part of public protection. If the security services did not have access to this, we’d be negligent.” time for the brits to break out the bicycles… 289i wonder if, when somebody outside of the seattle area can’t figure out where something is supposed to be mailed in washington state, whether seattle isn’t the default place for it to go, regardless of whether it is actually appropriate or not? i’ve had the same PO box in seattle for over 10 years now. i originally rented it when i first moved back to seattle from bellingham in 1995. recently, like within the past 6 months or so, i’ve started getting mail at that box for “G. ‘Skip’ Downing” who is an architect, and for “FRANCISCO PINA CASTELLANO”. the mail for “G. ‘Skip'” has been things like building permits and stuff that i’ve been able to “return to sender – addressee unknown”, for the most part, because they’ve been in stamped, postmarked envelopes, but there’s been a few things that i couldn’t return because they’re presorted, which means there’s no postmark, which means that the post office, instead of returning them, just throws them away (regardless of what they tell you)… so i looked up “G ‘Skip'” on internet, and lo and behold, i found him… in GREEN BANK! (it’s not marked on the map because it’s a really small town, but it’s around lake hancock on the map) which is 56 miles north of seattle, and a different enough place that i can’t figure out how they got the two confused… but i was able to get in touch with the guy, and at this point if i get any more mail for him, i simply call him and we get things straightened out. FRANCISCO PINA CASTELLANO, on the other hand, is a different matter. the most recent item of mail that i recieved that was addressed to him was from bank of america, and it was presorted, and i know from past experience that frequently items from banks that are presorted are commonly advertising, so i opened the envelope… and i was shocked to discover that i was holding a credit card statement. so i went into “find FRANCISCO” mode, and completely struck out… which didn’t surprise me too much, since a number of the charges on the statement were in alaska and idaho, and the farther away from seattle (or anywhere, i suppose) you get, the more difficult it is to find one person with any accuracy. so i immediately called bank of america, and their recommendation was to write “return to sender – addressee unknown” on the envelope… but that won’t work because the mail is presorted and it won’t get “returned to sender,” and i’ll have exactly the same problem next month, besides FRANCISCO PINA CASTELLANO not getting regular credit card statements will (hopefully) make him suspicious… and apart from all that (although i didn’t mention this to the bank of america customer service drone, there were other bits of information that i gave him that i couldn’t have gotten without opening the envelope) i had already opened the envelope anyway, so writing on it and sticking it back in the mail would be kind of pointless. basically i told them to note on his account that the address they had was incorrect, and contact him as soon as possible to get things straightened out, but that doesn’t mean that i won’t get other mail for FRANCISCO, and i’ll be right back where i started from. in other news, we’re going to portland on saturday and coming back monday… which is about as much time as i think i can stand staying with monique’s mother… besides which, her “roommate” (i’ve always wondered about their actual relationship) just had a stroke recently, and, even though she’s a nurse and would, theoretically, know these things, my personal experience with brain trauma combined with what i know of ann, generally, seems to indicate that things are probably a lot worse than she’s letting on. the solstice feast went off without a hitch, from the point of view of the fremont philharmonic anyway, i don’t know about anyone else… and i like it that way. this year the fremont solstice feast was in georgetown (not fremont, surprisingly enough), in a manufacturing warehouse on airport way, which is a lot smaller than the old safeway in ballard, which is where it was held for the past two years. advantages were that it had a backstage area (they called it the “green room,” although it was simply backstage) that was separated from the rest of the feast procedings, where i was able to keep my tuba. i didn’t see any disadvantages apart from the fact that it was on the opposite end of town from fremont, but i didn’t stay that long. my past experience with the feast is that it is put on by a group of people (the fremont arts council?) but apart from getting everything together, it’s really not anywhere near as organised as a community event needs to be, and it’s been that way for long enough that i get the impression that as long as something happens, they don’t really care that much. we were expected to play, but we got no notification that we were going to play, they said that we wouldn’t be able to get in between 4:00 and 6:00, but the place was wide open during that time (in fact, the doors were supposed to open at 6:00, but they didn’t actually open until almost 6:45), they had a scissor lift and a forklift in the space at 6:00, and they had lost the key to the scissor lift so they couldn’t actually move it… more “hippy ineptitude factor” going on here. moe couldn’t be there (she has to work) so i just showed up, played (in the dark, there were no stage lights until after we were done performing), ate dinner and left. thanks to Hwæt, Hrodulf readnosa hrandeor — Explicit
Hussein: White House ‘No. 1 liar in the world’ Thursday, December 22, 2005 BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — The trial of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, which has fallen into a pattern of grim testimony interrupted by theatrical outbursts, adjourned Thursday for more than a month. The trial resumes on January 24. On Thursday, as in previous days, testimony about brutal treatment was interrupted by courtroom tirades by Hussein and his half brother. Hussein charged Thursday that the Bush administration lied when it claimed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, just at it lied by disputing his claims of being beaten. “The White House lies once more,” Hussein said, “the No. 1 liar in the world. They said in Iraq, there is chemicals, and there is a relation to terrorism, and they announced later we couldn’t find any of that in Iraq. “Also, they said that what Saddam Hussein (said) was not true,” he continued in an apparent reference to his claims Wednesday that he and all seven of his codefendants were beaten and tortured by their American captors. Hussein: ‘We don’t lie’ Hussein later appeared to waver, saying the medical teams numbered “two, for sure, unequivocally.” He began to heal after eight months, he said, but bruises remain three years later. “We don’t lie,” he said. “The White House lies.” The U.S. State Department and a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad said Hussein’s claims of beatings and torture were untrue. Meanwhile, defense attorneys requested that the testimony of prosecution witnesses not be broadcast until all the witnesses have testified, saying they are watching each other’s testimonies and repeating them. The court said it would consider that request. A day of disruptions The trial went into a closed session Thursday at the end of an eventful day in which Hussein and his half brother, Barzan Ibrahim Hassan al-Tikriti repeatedly disrupted the proceedings. The judge closed the session after Hassan, the former chief of intelligence, asked to speak to him in private. On Wednesday, Hassan said he wanted time to talk to the judge about his health. Earlier in the day, Hassan launched into long political diatribes, hurling insults at prosecutors, complaining about the conditions of their detention and challenging the legitimacy of the court. Ranting about the food he is being served, Hassan said a New York Times magazine column mentioned that his ribs are showing because of weight loss. Hassan also accused prosecutors of being former Baath Party members, implying they should not be leveling accusations against him. The attorneys threatened to walk out and resign from the case. “This is not justice,” Hassan declared. “This is not democracy.” Asked to stop by prosecutors, Hassan said, “My talk is strengthening the court, and will give it credibility.” Courtroom fracas Hussein also challenged the validity of a witness, the first of two to testify Thursday from behind a curtain to protect his identity. The witness said he was 8 years old at the time of the Dujail killings, but testified his father, his three uncles and his grandmother were arrested and imprisoned. “She complained to us about what had happened to her,” he said of his grandmother, who was released after four years. “They used to torture her before her children and they would torture her children before her. She said, ‘They tortured us, and we did not know for what reason.’ ” Defense attorneys and Hussein complained about the witness because he was a child at the time, was not arrested and did not see any torture or killings personally. “His testimony is documented and accepted, and he’s underage (at the time)?” Hussein asked. “This is something I would like to understand. Is this allowed? Is this permissible?” Hussein claims he was beaten Chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Mousawi said he had visited the defendants in their cells and saw no signs of torture. Christopher Reid, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, said none of the defendants has been tortured or beaten. Also on Wednesday, witness Ali Haj Hussein al-Haydari described more than four years of captivity and torture, and the execution of family members, including several brothers. His brother Hassan, who was among those killed, was one of six men who plotted unsuccessfully to assassinate Hussein. More than 40 of members of his family were taken into custody by government agents. Al-Haydari also talked of “walking through dead bodies” at the headquarters of the Baath Party, the ruling party during Hussein’s regime. Another witness said he was tortured three times with electric shocks during the initial 17-day period and beaten with cables during the time at Abu Ghraib. “Even children were beaten with cables,” he said. “Children died at Abu Ghraib.” 288happy winter solstice everyone! 287from … [S]ince the FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] statute provides a five-year prison term for intentionally engaging in electronic surveillance under the color of law, and the surveillance has been ongoing since 2002 and has been reauthorized every 45 days, then Bush has violated this statute on at least 24 occasions. Since the action was also specifically approved by the Attorney General, then Alberto Gonzales, the current attorney general, has apparently violated this statute at least 7 times, and John Ashcroft, who preceded Gonzales, is responsible for at least 16 violations. What we are seeing is a concerted effort to render the Fourth Amendment ineffective. FISA has been found to be constitutional, and contains an out that Bush has eschewed: this act allows a warrant to be issued if necessary up to 72 hours after the fact. … Bush has become an enemy from which he swore to protect and defend the Constitution. Therefore, Congress must fulfill its obligation to protect and defend the Constitution by removing Bush from office. From what Bush himself has explained, there are at least 24 impeachable offenses just from this policy. from The bottom line is, like so many things the administration does, this is evil and retarded on so many fucking levels it’s hard to pinpoint what exactly I find most repugnant about it. The defenses offered thus far by administration apologists and certain other ignorami have been so poorly thought out and contemptuously asinine that I cannot even believe they are given airtime, let alone taken seriously by the so-called journalists of the American media… These wiretaps are a flagrant affront to the rule of law, and – as with the McCain torture bill – it disgusts me that their legality has even been debated to the extent that it has. What the president has admitted to doing is clearly, facially illegal. God knows he’s done a lot of awful things during his tenure in office, and this probably isn’t the worst of it, but I can think of no other time when he has so openly admitted to what are pretty clearcut impeachable offenses. Any member of Congress who refuses to impeach Bush for this has absolutely no right to ever criticize any president for doing anything, ever again. Bush must be impeached for this. If not next year, then in ’07, hopefully with a congress slightly less detached from reality. But it’s totally on now. There’s no going back. To repeat my oft-spoken mantra: CALL YOUR FUCKING CONGRESSMAN. Call your senators. But especially your congressperson. The House of Representatives as sole authority to impeach officials. It is time they exercise that authority. i did Bush to continue domestic spying President Bush made an unapologetic defense Monday of a controversial program to spy on some Americans’ international phone calls without court warrants, vowing to continue it as long as the nation faces "an enemy that wants to kill American citizens." Bush said during a news conference that the program "has been effective in disrupting the enemy," and is limited to people with "known al-Qaeda ties and/or affiliates." Three Democratic senators called for suspension of the formerly top-secret program until Congress can hold hearings on its legality. "He is the president, not a king," said Sen. Russ Feingold (news, bio, voting record), D-Wis., who was joined by Sens. Carl Levin of Michigan and Jack Reed of Rhode Island. During his 56-minute news conference, the president also hailed last week’s elections in Senators from both parties raised civil liberties concerns about the Patriot Act as well as the domestic spying conducted by the National Security Agency. Four GOP senators joined most Democrats in blocking Senate renewal of the Patriot Act, and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., called the spying "inappropriate" and promised hearings. Bush justified the phone-monitoring program under the constitutional requirement that presidents protect and defend the country; he also cited the 2001 congressional authority permitting military force against al-Qaeda, passed after the 9/11 attacks. He said congressional leaders have been briefed on the program more than a dozen times. In calling for suspension, Feingold, Levin and Reed said the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 already gives the president power to quickly tap phones, intercept e-mails and seek a warrant after the fact. "I’m at a loss to understand why they adopted this extreme legal procedure," Reed said. In speaking with reporters, Bush also: • Declined to say how many American troops he hopes to pull out of Iraq next year, saying it would be based on conditions there. • Acknowledged that the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has hurt U.S. credibility on other intelligence fronts, including allegations of nuclear development in • Called the Senate filibuster of the Patriot Act "inexcusable." He said, "I want senators from New York or Los Angeles or Las Vegas to go home and explain why these cities are safer."
Dec. 19, 2005 – Finally we have a Washington scandal that goes beyond sex, corruption and political intrigue to big issues like security versus liberty and the reasonable bounds of presidential power. President Bush came out swinging on Snoopgate—he made it seem as if those who didn’t agree with him wanted to leave us vulnerable to Al Qaeda—but it will not work. We’re seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator, or in his own mind, no doubt, like Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. No wonder Bush was so desperate that The New York Times not publish its story on the National Security Agency eavesdropping on American citizens without a warrant, in what lawyers outside the administration say is a clear violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. I learned this week that on December 6, Bush summoned Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and executive editor Bill Keller to the Oval Office in a futile attempt to talk them out of running the story. The Times will not comment on the meeting, The problem was not that the disclosures would compromise national security, as Bush claimed at his press conference. His comparison to the damaging pre-9/11 revelation of Osama bin Laden’s use of a satellite phone, which caused bin Laden to change tactics, is fallacious; any Americans with ties to Muslim extremists—in fact, all American Muslims, period—have long since suspected that the U.S. government might be listening in to their conversations. Bush claimed that "the fact that we are discussing this program is helping the enemy." But there is simply no evidence, or even reasonable presumption, that this is so. And rather than the leaking being a "shameful act," it was the work of a patriot inside the government who was trying to stop a presidential power grab. No, Bush was desperate to keep the Times from running this important story—which the paper had already inexplicably held for a year—because he knew that it would reveal him as a law-breaker. He insists he had "legal authority derived from the Constitution and congressional resolution authorizing force." But the Constitution explicitly requires the president to obey the law. And the post 9/11 congressional resolution authorizing "all necessary force" in fighting terrorism was made in clear reference to military intervention. It did not scrap the Constitution and allow the president to do whatever he pleased in any area in the name of fighting terrorism. What is especially perplexing about this story is that the 1978 law set up a special court to approve eavesdropping in hours, even minutes, if necessary. In fact, the law allows the government to eavesdrop on its own, then retroactively justify it to the court, essentially obtaining a warrant after the fact. Since 1979, the FISA court has approved tens of thousands of eavesdropping requests and rejected only four. There was no indication the existing system was slow—as the president seemed to claim in his press conference—or in any way required extra-constitutional action. This will all play out eventually in congressional committees and in the United States Supreme Court. If the Democrats regain control of Congress, there may even be articles of impeachment introduced. Similar abuse of power was part of the impeachment charge brought against Richard Nixon in 1974. In the meantime, it is unlikely that Bush will echo President Kennedy in 1961. After JFK managed to tone down a New York Times story by Tad Szulc on the Bay of Pigs invasion, he confided to Times editor Turner Catledge that he wished the paper had printed the whole story because it might have spared him such a stunning defeat in Cuba. This time, the president knew publication would cause him great embarrassment and trouble for the rest of his presidency. It was for that reason – and less out of genuine concern about national security – that George W. Bush tried so hard to kill the New York Times story.
Looking for an easy way to protest Bush foreign policy week after week? And an easy way to help alleviate global poverty? Buy your gasoline at Citgo stations. And tell your friends. Of the top oil producing countries in the world, only one is a democracy with a president who was elected on a platform of using his nation’s oil revenue to benefit the poor. The country is Venezuela. The President is Hugo Chavez. Call him “the Anti-Bush.” Citgo is a U.S. refining and marketing firm that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company. Money you pay to Citgo goes primarily to Venezuela — not Saudi Arabia or the Middle East. There are 14,000 Citgo gas stations in the US. (click here to find one near you.) By buying your gasoline at Citgo, you are contributing to the billions of dollars that Venezuela’s democratic government is using to provide health care, literacy and education, and subsidized food for the majority of Venezuelans. Instead of using government to help the rich and the corporate, as Bush does, Chavez is using the resources and oil revenue of his government to help the poor in Venezuela. A country with so much oil wealth shouldn’t have 60 percent of its people living in poverty, earning less than $2 per day. With a mass movement behind him, Chavez is confronting poverty in Venezuela. That’s why large majorities have consistently backed him in democratic elections. And why the Bush administration supported an attempted military coup in 2002 that sought to overthrow Chavez. So this is the opposite of a boycott. Call it a BUYcott. Spread the word. Of course, if you can take mass transit or bike or walk to your job, you should do so. And we should all work for political changes that move our country toward a cleaner environment based on renewable energy. The BUYcott is for those of us who don’t have a practical alternative to filling up our cars. So get your gas at Citgo. And help fuel a democratic revolution in Venezuela. Jeff Cohen is an author and media critic (www.jeffcohen.org)
WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 – Counterterrorism agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have conducted numerous surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations that involved, at least indirectly, groups active in causes as diverse as the environment, animal cruelty and poverty relief, newly disclosed agency records show. F.B.I. officials said Monday that their investigators had no interest in monitoring political or social activities and that any investigations that touched on advocacy groups were driven by evidence of criminal or violent activity at public protests and in other settings. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, John Ashcroft, who was then attorney general, loosened restrictions on the F.B.I.’s investigative powers, giving the bureau greater ability to visit and monitor Web sites, mosques and other public entities in developing terrorism leads. The bureau has used that authority to investigate not only groups with suspected ties to foreign terrorists, but also protest groups suspected of having links to violent or disruptive activities. But the documents, coming after the Bush administration’s confirmation that President Bush had authorized some spying without warrants in fighting terrorism, prompted charges from civil rights advocates that the government had improperly blurred the line between terrorism and acts of civil disobedience and lawful protest. One F.B.I. document indicates that agents in Indianapolis planned to conduct surveillance as part of a “Vegan Community Project.” Another document talks of the Catholic Workers group’s “semi-communistic ideology.” A third indicates the bureau’s interest in determining the location of a protest over llama fur planned by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. The documents, provided to The New York Times over the past week, came as part of a series of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. For more than a year, the A.C.L.U. has been seeking access to information in F.B.I. files on about 150 protest and social groups that it says may have been improperly monitored. The F.B.I. had previously turned over a small number of documents on antiwar groups, showing the agency’s interest in investigating possible anarchist or violent links in connection with antiwar protests and demonstrations in advance of the 2004 political conventions. And earlier this month, the A.C.L.U.’s Colorado chapter released similar documents involving, among other things, people protesting logging practices at a lumber industry gathering in 2002. The latest batch of documents, parts of which the A.C.L.U. plans to release publicly on Tuesday, totals more than 2,300 pages and centers on references in internal files to a handful of groups, including PETA, the environmental group Greenpeace and the Catholic Workers group, which promotes antipoverty efforts and social causes. Many of the investigative documents turned over by the bureau are heavily edited, making it difficult or impossible to determine the full context of the references and why the F.B.I. may have been discussing events like a PETA protest. F.B.I. officials say many of the references may be much more benign than they seem to civil rights advocates, adding that the documents offer an incomplete and sometimes misleading snapshot of the bureau’s activities. “Just being referenced in an F.B.I. file is not tantamount to being the subject of an investigation,” said John Miller, a spokesman for the bureau. “The F.B.I. does not target individuals or organizations for investigation based on their political beliefs,” Mr. Miller said. “Everything we do is carefully promulgated by federal law, Justice Department guidelines and the F.B.I.’s own rules.” A.C.L.U officials said the latest batch of documents released by the F.B.I. indicated the agency’s interest in a broader array of activist and protest groups than they had previously thought. In light of other recent disclosures about domestic surveillance activities by the National Security Agency and military intelligence units, the A.C.L.U. said the documents reflected a pattern of overreaching by the Bush administration. “It’s clear that this administration has engaged every possible agency, from the Pentagon to N.S.A. to the F.B.I., to engage in spying on Americans,” said Ann Beeson, associate legal director for the A.C.L.U. “You look at these documents,” Ms. Beeson said, “and you think, wow, we have really returned to the days of J. Edgar Hoover, when you see in F.B.I. files that they’re talking about a group like the Catholic Workers league as having a communist ideology.” The documents indicate that in some cases, the F.B.I. has used employees, interns and other confidential informants within groups like PETA and Greenpeace to develop leads on potential criminal activity and has downloaded material from the groups’ Web sites, in addition to monitoring their protests. In the case of Greenpeace, which is known for highly publicized acts of civil disobedience like the boarding of cargo ships to unfurl protest banners, the files indicate that the F.B.I. investigated possible financial ties between its members and militant groups like the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front. These networks, which have no declared leaders and are only loosely organized, have been described by the F.B.I. in Congressional testimony as “extremist special interest groups” whose cells engage in violent or other illegal acts, making them “a serious domestic terrorist threat.” In testimony last year, John E. Lewis, deputy assistant director of the counterterrorism division, said the F.B.I. estimated that in the past 10 years such groups had engaged in more than 1,000 criminal acts causing more than $100 million in damage. When the F.B.I. investigates evidence of possible violence or criminal disruptions at protests and other events, those investigations are routinely handled by agents within the bureau’s counterterrorism division. But the groups mentioned in the newly disclosed F.B.I. files questioned both the propriety of characterizing such investigations as related to “terrorism” and the necessity of diverting counterterrorism personnel from more pressing investigations. “The fact that we’re even mentioned in the F.B.I. files in connection with terrorism is really troubling,” said Tom Wetterer, general counsel for Greenpeace. “There’s no property damage or physical injury caused in our activities, and under any definition of terrorism, we’d take issue with that.” Jeff Kerr, general counsel for PETA, rejected the suggestion in some F.B.I. files that the animal rights group had financial ties to militant groups, and said he, too, was troubled by his group’s inclusion in the files. “It’s shocking and it’s outrageous,” Mr. Kerr said. “And to me, it’s an abuse of power by the F.B.I. when groups like Greenpeace and PETA are basically being punished for their social activism.” 286By MARTHA RAFFAELE, Associated Press Writer HARRISBURG, Pa. – “Intelligent design” cannot be mentioned in biology classes in a Pennsylvania public school district, a federal judge said Tuesday, ruling in one of the biggest courtroom clashes on evolution since the 1925 Scopes trial. Dover Area School Board members violated the Constitution when they ordered that its biology curriculum include the notion that life on Earth was produced by an unidentified intelligent cause, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III said. Several members repeatedly lied to cover their motives, he said. The ruling will not likely be appealed by the slate of new board members, who in the November election ousted the group that installed intelligent design, the new board president said Tuesday. The school board policy, adopted in October 2004, was believed to have been the first of its kind in the nation. “The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy,” Jones wrote, calling the board’s decision “breathtaking inanity.” “The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources,” he wrote. The board’s attorneys had said members were seeking to improve science education by exposing students to alternatives to Charles Darwin’s theory that evolution develops through natural selection. Intelligent-design proponents argue that the theory cannot fully explain the existence of complex life forms. The plaintiffs challenging the policy argued that intelligent design amounts to a secular repackaging of biblical creationism, which the courts have already ruled cannot be taught in public schools. The judge agreed. “We find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board’s real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom,” he wrote in his 139-page opinion. The Dover policy required students to hear a statement about intelligent design before ninth-grade biology lessons on evolution. The statement said Darwin’s theory is “not a fact” and has inexplicable “gaps.” It refers students to an intelligent-design textbook, “Of Pandas and People,” for more information. Jones wrote that he wasn’t saying the intelligent design concept shouldn’t be studied and discussed, saying its advocates “have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors.” However, he wrote, “our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.” The controversy divided the borough of Dover and surrounding Dover Township, a rural area of nearly 20,000 residents about 20 miles south of Harrisburg. It galvanized voters to oust eight incumbent school board members who supported the policy in the Nov. 8 school board election. The ninth board member was not up for re-election. Said the judge: “It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.” The board members were replaced by a slate of eight opponents who pledged to remove intelligent design from the science curriculum. They also will likely drop the old plan now that the judge has ruled, new board president Bernadette Reinking said. “As far as I can tell you, there is no intent to appeal,” she said. Reinking said the new board will likely move the subject of intelligent design into some undetermined elective social studies class. She said the board will need to talk to its attorney before determining specific actions. Eric Rothschild, lead attorney for the families who challenged the policy, called the ruling “a real vindication for the parents who had the courage to stand up and say there was something wrong in their school district.” Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., which represented the school board, did not return a telephone message seeking comment. It was the latest chapter in a debate over the teaching of evolution dating back to the famous 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, in which Tennessee biology teacher John T. Scopes was fined $100 for violating a state law that forbade teaching evolution. The Tennessee Supreme Court reversed his conviction on a technicality, and the law was repealed in 1967. Jones heard arguments in the fall during a six-week trial in which expert witnesses for each side debated intelligent design’s scientific merits. Other witnesses, including current and former school board members, disagreed over whether creationism was discussed in board meetings months before the curriculum change was adopted. It is among at least a handful of cases that have focused new attention on the teaching of evolution in the nation’s schools. Earlier this month, a federal appeals court in Georgia heard arguments over evolution disclaimer stickers placed in a biology textbooks. A federal judge in January had ordered Cobb County school officials to immediately remove the stickers, which called evolution a theory, not a fact. In November, state education officials in Kansas adopted new classroom science standards that call the theory of evolution into question. 285
SCIENTISTS have for the first time found evidence that polar bears are drowning because climate change is melting the Arctic ice shelf. The researchers were startled to find bears having to swim up to 60 miles across open sea to find food. They are being forced into the long voyages because the ice floes from which they feed are melting, becoming smaller and drifting farther apart. Although polar bears are strong swimmers, they are adapted for swimming close to the shore. Their sea journeys leave them them vulnerable to exhaustion, hypothermia or being swamped by waves. According to the new research, four bear carcases were found floating in one month in a single patch of sea off the north coast of Alaska, where average summer temperatures have increased by 2-3C degrees since 1950s. The scientists believe such drownings are becoming widespread across the Arctic, an inevitable consequence of the doubling in the past 20 years of the proportion of polar bears having to swim in open seas. “Mortalities due to offshore swimming may be a relatively important and unaccounted source of natural mortality given the energetic demands placed on individual bears engaged in long-distance swimming,” says the research led by Dr Charles Monnett, marine ecologist at the American government’s Minerals Management Service. “Drowning-related deaths of polar bears may increase in the future if the observed trend of regression of pack ice continues.” The research, presented to a conference on marine mammals in San Diego, California, last week, comes amid evidence of a decline in numbers of the 22,000 polar bears that live in about 20 sites across the Arctic circle. In Hudson Bay, Canada, the site of the most southerly polar bears, a study by the US Geological Survey (USGS) and the Canadian Wildlife Service to be published next year will show the population fell 22% from 1,194 in 1987 to 935 last year. New evidence from field researchers working for the World Wildlife Fund in Yakutia, on the northeast coast of Russia, has also shown the region’s first evidence of cannibalism among bears competing for food supplies. Polar bears live on ice all year round and use it as a platform from which to hunt food and rear their young. They hunt near the edge, where the ice is thinnest, catching seals when they make holes in the ice to breath. They typically eat one seal every four or five days and a single bear can consume 100lb of blubber at one sitting. As the ice pack retreats north in the summer between June and October, the bears must travel between ice floes to continue hunting in areas such as the shallow water of the continental shelf off the Alaskan coast — one of the most food-rich areas in the Arctic. However, last summer the ice cap receded about 200 miles further north than the average of two decades ago, forcing the bears to undertake far longer voyages between floes. “We know short swims up to 15 miles are no problem, and we know that one or two may have swum up to 100 miles. But that is the extent of their ability, and if they are trying to make such a long swim and they encounter rough seas they could get into trouble,” said Steven Amstrup, a research wildlife biologist with the USGS. The new study, carried out in part of the Beaufort Sea, shows that between 1986 and 2005 just 4% of the bears spotted off the north coast of Alaska were swimming in open waters. Not a single drowning had been documented in the area. However, last September, when the ice cap had retreated a record 160 miles north of Alaska, 51 bears were spotted, of which 20% were seen in the open sea, swimming as far as 60 miles off shore. The researchers returned to the vicinity a few days later after a fierce storm and found four dead bears floating in the water. “We estimate that of the order of 40 bears may have been swimming and that many of those probably drowned as a result of rough seas caused by high winds,” said the report. In their search for food, polar bears are also having to roam further south, rummaging in the dustbins of Canadian homes. Sir Ranulph Fiennes, the explorer who has been to the North Pole seven times, said he had noticed a deterioration in the bears’ ice habitat since his first expedition in 1975. “Each year there was more water than the time before,” he said. “We used amphibious sledges for the first time in 1986.” His last expedition was in 2002, when he fell through the ice and lost some of his fingers to frostbite.
NEW BEDFORD — A senior at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung’s tome on Communism called “The Little Red Book.” Two history professors at UMass Dartmouth, Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Pontbriand, said the student told them he requested the book through the UMass Dartmouth library’s interlibrary loan program. The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand’s class on fascism and totalitarianism, filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents’ home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the professors said. The professors said the student was told by the agents that the book is on a “watch list,” and that his background, which included significant time abroad, triggered them to investigate the student further. “I tell my students to go to the direct source, and so he asked for the official Peking version of the book,” Professor Pontbriand said. “Apparently, the Department of Homeland Security is monitoring inter-library loans, because that’s what triggered the visit, as I understand it.” Although The Standard-Times knows the name of the student, he is not coming forward because he fears repercussions should his name become public. He has not spoken to The Standard-Times. The professors had been asked to comment on a report that President Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to spy on as many as 500 people at any given time since 2002 in this country. The eavesdropping was apparently done without warrants. The Little Red Book, is a collection of quotations and speech excerpts from Chinese leader Mao Tse-Tung. In the 1950s and ’60s, during the Cultural Revolution in China, it was required reading. Although there are abridged versions available, the student asked for a version translated directly from the original book. The student told Professor Pontbriand and Dr. Williams that the Homeland Security agents told him the book was on a “watch list.” They brought the book with them, but did not leave it with the student, the professors said. Dr. Williams said in his research, he regularly contacts people in Afghanistan, Chechnya and other Muslim hot spots, and suspects that some of his calls are monitored. “My instinct is that there is a lot more monitoring than we think,” he said. Dr. Williams said he had been planning to offer a course on terrorism next semester, but is reconsidering, because it might put his students at risk. President George W Bush has admitted he authorised secret monitoring of communications within the United States in the wake of the 2001 terror attacks. The monitoring was of “people with known links to al-Qaeda and related terrorist organisations”, he said. He said the programme was reviewed every 45 days, and he made clear he did not plan to halt the eavesdropping. He also rebuked senators who blocked the renewal of his major anti-terror law, the Patriot Act, on Friday. By preventing the extension of the act, due to expire on 31 December, they had, he said, acted irresponsibly and were endangering the lives of US citizens. The president, who was visibly angry, also suggested that a New York Times report which had revealed the monitoring on Friday had been irresponsible. America’s enemies had “learned information they should not have”, he said in his weekly radio address, which was delivered live from the White House after a pre-recorded version was scrapped. ‘Big Brother’ Senators from both Mr Bush’s Republican party and the opposition Democrats expressed concerns about the monitoring programme on Friday. Senator Arlen Specter, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee , said there was no doubt it was “inappropriate”, adding that Senate hearings would be held early next year as “a very, very high priority”. “This is Big Brother run amok,” was the reaction of Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy. Senator Russell Feingold, another Democrat, called it a “shocking revelation” that “ought to send a chill down the spine of every senator and every American”. But in his address on Saturday, Mr Bush said the programme was “critical to saving American lives”. The president said some of the 11 September hijackers inside the US had communicated with associates outside before the attacks – but the US had not known that until it was too late. “The American people expect me to do everything in my power, under our laws and Constitution, to protect them and our civil liberties,” he said. Monitoring was, he said, a “vital tool in our war against the terrorists”. He said Congressional leaders had been briefed on the programme, which he has already renewed more than 30 times. ‘Illegal leak’ Mr Bush harshly criticised the leak that had made the programme public. “Revealing classified information is illegal. It alerts our enemies,” he said. The New York Times reported on Friday that Mr Bush had signed a secret presidential order following the attacks on 11 September 2001, allowing the National Security Agency to track the international telephone calls and e-mails of hundreds of people without referral to the courts. Previously, surveillance on American soil was generally limited to foreign embassies. American law usually requires a secret court, known as a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, to give permission before intelligence officers can conduct surveillance on US soil. so, spying on americans without warrants is okay, but telling americans that they’re being spied on without warrants is not okay… i don’t often say this, but WHAT THE FUCK??? has anybody else noticed that this is one of the reasons why we are a separate country, and not an extension of great britain? maybe we should start calling him "king" george, instead of president shrub… 8/
WASHINGTON — President Bush held a year-end news conference on Monday, where he defended the use of a domestic eavesdropping program and called for Democrats to stop their “delaying tactics” and reauthorize the controversial Patriot Act. Bush called the leak of the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping program, first reported in The New York Times last Thursday, as a “shameful act” disclosed in a time of war. That report said Bush had authorized the NSA to conduct surveillance of e-mails and phone calls of some individuals in the United States without court warrants. “The fact that we’re discussing this program is helping the enemy,” he said. “This program has targeted those with known links to Al Qaeda.” But the program will continue, Bush said, adding that he has reauthorized it over 30 times. “And I will continue to do so for so long as our nation faces the continued threat of an enemy that wants to kill our American citizens.” The Justice Department likely will investigate who leaked information about the NSA program, the president added. A request for that investigation must come from the NSA itself. The Monday event was Bush’s first full-fledged news conference since October and his ninth of the year. It came just one day after the president spoke to the nation in a prime-time television address from the Oval Office about the war in Iraq, urging patience and declaring that the United States was winning the battle. On the eavesdropping issue, Bush said “absolutely” he has the legal authority to order such surveillance, and cited Article 2 of the Constitution, which he said gives him the responsibility and authority to deal with an enemy that declares war against the United States. After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Congress also gave him the authority to use force against Al Qaeda, he noted, to tackle an “unconventional enemy,” some of whom lived in U.S. cities and communities while planning attacks. “We need to recognize that dealing with Al Qaeda is not simply a matter of law enforcement. It requires dealing with an enemy that declared war against the United States of America,” Bush said. “After Sept. 11, one question my administration had to answer was, how, using the authority I have, how do we effectively detect enemies hiding in our midst and prevent them from striking them again? We know that a two-minute phone conversation from someone linked to Al Qaeda here and to Al Qaeda overseas can cost millions of American lives,” he added, saying some of the Sept. 11 hijackers made several phone calls overseas before the attacks. He said the Sept. 11 commission – charged with probing the intelligence failures surrounding the attacks four years ago that left 3,000 people dead – said the United States intelligence community needs to better “connect the dots” before the enemy can attack again. “So, consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, I authorized the interception of communication with people with known links to Al Qaeda and people linked to known terror organizations,” Bush said. Bush: We’re Protecting Civil Liberties The program is reviewed “constantly” to ensure it is effective and not infringing on Americans’ civil liberties, the president added. He also said congressional leaders have been briefed on the program more than a dozen times and denied the accusation that the program is a classic result of “unchecked power” in the executive branch. He stressed that the program is limited to known Al Qaeda terrorists and for calls made from the United States to somewhere overseas, and vice versa. Calls between two U.S. cities are not monitored, he said, unless an order is granted by a secret court under the provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as they always have been, he said. One of the principal provisions of the Patriot Act permitted the government to gain warrants in cases involving investigations into suspected terrorists in the United States – an expansion of powers previously limited to intelligence cases. “I can fully understand why members of Congress are expressing concerns about civil liberties, I know that, and I share the same concerns,” Bush said. “I want to make sure the American people understand … we have an obligation to protect you and while we’re doing that, we’re protecting your civil liberties.” When asked by one reporter if he could give an example of an attack that was thwarted by the eavesdropping program, Bush said: “No, I’m not going to talk about that because it would help give the enemy notification or perhaps signal them methods and uses and sources. We’re not going to do that.” To highlight the importance of keeping the program details secret, Bush said that before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the U.S. intelligence community was listening to phone conversations with Usama bin Laden. But then details of the intercepts were leaked. “We were listening to him, he was using a type of cell-phone, or a phone … and somebody put it in a newspaper that this was the type of device he was using to communicate with his team and he changed [phones],” Bush said. “I don’t know how to make the point more clear that anytime we give up … revealing sources, methods and what we use the information for, simply says to the enemy: Change.” News of the program caused an uproar in Congress last week, and Democrats and Republicans have called for an investigation into it. “This is just an outrageous power grab,” said Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis. on NBC’s “Today” show. “Nobody, nobody thought when we passed a resolution to invade Afghanistan and to fight the War on Terror … that this was an authorization to allow a wiretapping against the law of the United States.” Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he intends to hold hearings. “They talk about constitutional authority,” Specter said. “There are limits as to what the president can do.” Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., told FOX News on Monday that there’s “no doubt these intercepts can be crucially important to defending America.” He noted that after the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush said he would use every legal power he could to prevent another attack, and there hasn’t been one attack on U.S. soil in four years. “He certainly acted with legal advice” and the Senate Intelligence Committee was briefed on the issue, he added. Added Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala. “I happen to believe that some of the intercepts since Sept. 11 probably have thwarted, saved some lives … we’re at war. We want to protect our constitutional rights … but we’re at war.” Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Monday that the NSA program had yielded intelligence results that would not have been available otherwise in the War on Terror. He stressed that it is not a blanket spying program of ordinary Americans but of overseas communications of potential Al Qaeda suspects in the United States. “This is not a situation of domestic spying,” the attorney general said. “Our position is that the authorization to use military force which was passed by the Congress shortly after Sept. 11 constitutes that authority,” Gonzales continued. It “does give permission for the president of the United States to engage in this kind of very limited, targeted electronic surveillance against our enemy.” Gen. Michael Hayden, the deputy national intelligence director who was head of the NSA when the program began, said, “I can say unequivocally we have got information through this program that would not otherwise have been available.” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Sunday wrote to her Democratic colleagues, saying she expressed her concerns both verbally and in a classified letter to the administration when she was advised of the NSA activities. She said the administration “made clear” it didn’t think congressional notification or approval was required. On Saturday, Pelosi, D-Calif., and other Democrats sent a letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill, requesting hearings on the issue and the appointment of a panel of outside legal experts to assist during those hearings. She said Rep. Jane Harman, the Ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said the administration reversed its decision to brief the committee on the details of the NSA activities to which the President referred in his radio address. “The refusal to provide the committee with the information necessary to discharge its oversight responsibilities is reminiscent of an administration directive in October 2001, which severely restricted the flow of information from the intelligence community to the House and Senate Intelligence committees,” Pelosi said in the letter. “We all agree that the president must have the best possible intelligence to protect the American people. That intelligence, however, must be produced in a manner consistent with our Constitution and our laws, and in a manner that reflects our values as a nation to protect the American people and our freedoms.” Bush on the Patriot Act, Iraq Bush also blasted those senators who held up reauthorization of 16 expiring provisions of the Patriot Act on Friday. Although those senators who filibustered the reauthorization and prevented a vote on them were in the minority, some Republicans were part of that group. Critics of the law say they were willing to extend them for three or six months but will not permanently extend them before they can be further studies and to make sure they are not infringing on individuals’ civil liberties. The provisions under debate, which expire Dec. 31, include: authorization for roving wiretaps, which allow investigators to monitor multiple devices to keep a target from evading detection by switching phones or computers; secret warrants for books, records and other items from businesses, hospitals and organizations such as libraries; expanded abilities to share secret grand jury information with foreign governments; and watching terror suspects longer than other federal laws provide. The rest of the overall act was made permanent in 2001, when Congress first voted on it. Saying the Patriot Act has helped tear down legal and bureaucratic barriers to sharing intelligence information between U.S. agencies, Bush noted that many of the senators now filibustering the act voted for it in 2001. “These senators need to explain why they thought the Patriot Act was a vital tool after the Sept. 11 attacks but now feel it’s no longer necessary,” Bush said, adding that the filibustering lawmakers “must stop their delaying tactics.” “It is inexcusable for the United States Senate to let the Patriot Act expire,” he added. The terrorists want to inflict more damage now than they did before Sept. 11, Bush continued, and “Congress has the responsibility to give our intelligence and law enforcement agencies the tools they need to protect the American people.” He added: “In the War on Terror, we cannot afford to be without this law for a single moment.” On Iraq, Bush again reiterated themes he has voiced in the past two weeks, urging patience with the fledgling democratic progress there. About 11 million Iraqis went to the polls to cast votes for a 275-member parliament last week. The high turnout and relatively low level of violence during the election marked what many say is a new beginning for Iraq. “In a nation that once lived by the whims of a brutal dictator, the Iraqi people now enjoy constitutionally-protected freedom and their leaders now derive their powers from the consent of the governed,” Bush said Monday. “The Iraqi people still face many challenges … the formation of the government will take time as the Iraqis work to build consensus.” He noted that the new government must prioritize the security, reconstruction, economic reform and national uniformity once it assembles. “The work ahead requires the patience of the Iraqi people and the patience and support of America and our coalition partners,” Bush said. When asked again whether he would consider some sort of timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal, Bush again refused to give such a timeframe, saying it shouldn’t the political whims of the hour that dictate U.S. military strategy and he will take his cues from military commanders on the ground. “I can’t think of anything more dispiriting to a kid risking his or her life to see a decision made based on politics,” Bush said. 2. Vice President – Dick Cheney basically we’d have to impeach all those people as well… imagine "president" condoleeza rice, or "president" donald rumsfeld… what we need is another revolution. i hope bush and his minions are spying on me… BOO! YAH! I AM A TERRORIST AND I AM PLANNING A REVOLUTION! feh on “president” shrubby junior! 284the president openly admitted to violating the laws of this country and grossly exceeding his constitutional authority in a way that can only be described as despotic. he not only seems proud of this, he threatened those who exposed it with criminal prosecution. wonderful…
U.S. President George W. Bush has defended his actions in the “war on terror,” amid mounting controversy over allegations that he let intelligence officers eavesdrop without warrants on U.S. soil. Bush refused to confirm or deny a report in Friday’s New York Times, which said he allowed the National Security Agency to secretly intercept telephone calls and e-mails of American citizens and foreigners within the United States. The president said it was against policy to discuss continuing intelligence operations. However, he insisted his administration had stayed within the law while acting to protect Americans since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “I will make this point: that whatever I do to protect the American people – and I have an obligation to do so – that we will uphold the law,” Bush said in an interview broadcast Friday evening on the PBS show The Newshour with Jim Lehrer. “And decisions made are made understanding we have an obligation to protect the civil liberties of the American people.” Senator promises to hold inquiry “There is no doubt that this is inappropriate,” said Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who chairs the Senate judiciary committee. Specter promised to hold hearings in early 2006. Senate rejects extension of Patriot Act provisions Some Republicans believe the provisions are a necessary part of the act, which is considered a key part of Bush’s “war on terror” and gave authorities greater powers to investigate suspects. But the Senate rejected the proposals on a procedural vote. NSA bugged hundreds of people: report The Times story said the National Security Agency began to track communications of hundreds and perhaps thousands of people in the U.S. without judicial oversight after September 2001. Citing secret sources, the paper said some NSA officials refused to work on the surveillance because they believed it to be illegal. Eavesdropping foiled several attack plans: report But the report also said the program uncovered several plots to launch attacks on the United States. “This shocking revelation ought to send a chill down the spine of every senator and every American,” Democratic Senator Russell Feingold said. The Times said it delayed publishing the story for a year to protect continuing investigations, and omitted some information that the White House said could help attackers.
WASHINGTON — A key Republican committee chairman put the administration of President George W. Bush on notice today that his panel would hold hearings into a report that the National Security Agency eavesdropped without warrants on people inside the United States. Senator Arlen Specter said he would make oversight hearings by his panel next year “a very, very high priority.” “There is no doubt that this is inappropriate,” said Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Other key bipartisan members of Congress also called on the administration to explain and said a congressional investigation may be necessary. Senator John McCain appeared annoyed that the first he had heard of such a program was through a New York Times story published today. He said the report was troubling. Neither Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice nor White House press secretary Scott McClellan, asked about the story earlier today, would confirm or deny that the super-secret NSA had spied on as many as 500 people at any given time since 2002. That year, following the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush authorized the NSA to monitor the international phone calls and international e-mails of hundreds — perhaps thousands — of people inside the United States, the Times reported. Before the program began, the NSA typically limited its domestic surveillance to foreign embassies and missions and obtained court orders for such investigations. Overseas, 5,000 to 7,000 people suspected of terrorist ties are monitored at any one time. “We need to look into that,” McCain told reporters at the White House after a meeting on Iraq with Bush. “Theoretically, I obviously wouldn’t like it. But I don’t know the extent of it and I don’t know enough about it to really make an informed comment. Ask me again in about a week.” McCain said it’s not clear whether a congressional probe is warranted. He said the topic had not come up in the meeting with Bush. “We should be informed as to exactly what is going on and then find out whether an investigation is called for,” he said. Senator Joe Lieberman also said he needed more information. “Of course I was concerned about the story,” said Lieberman, who also attended the White House Iraq meeting. “I’m going to go back to the office and see if I can find out more about it.” Other Democrats were more harsh. “This is Big Brother run amok,” declared Senator Edward Kennedy. “We cannot protect our borders if we cannot protect our ideals.” Senator Russell Feingold called it a “shocking revelation” that he said “ought to send a chill down the spine of every senator and every American.” Administration officials reacted to the report by asserting that the president has respected the Constitution while striving to protect the American people. Rice said Bush has “acted lawfully in every step that he has taken.” And McClellan said Bush “is going to remain fully committed to upholding our Constitution and protect the civil liberties of the American people. And he has done both.” The report surfaced in an untimely fashion as the administration and its GOP allies on Capitol Hill were fighting to save provisions of the expiring USA Patriot Act that they believe are key tools in the fight against terrorism. The Times said reporters interviewed nearly a dozen current and former administration officials about the program and granted them anonymity because of the classified nature of the program. Government officials credited the new program with uncovering several terrorist plots, including one by Iyman Faris, an Ohio trucker who pleaded guilty in 2003 to supporting al-Qaida by planning to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge, the report said. Faris’ lawyer, David B. Smith, said today that the news puzzled him because none of the evidence against Faris appeared to have come from surveillance, other than officials eavesdropping on his cell phone calls while he was in FBI custody. Some NSA officials were so concerned about the legality of the program that they refused to participate, the Times said. Questions about the legality of the program led the administration to temporarily suspend it last year and impose new restrictions. Asked about this on NBC’s Today show, Rice said: “I’m not going to comment on intelligence matters.” Caroline Fredrickson, director of the Washington legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the group’s initial reaction to the NSA disclosure was “shock that the administration has gone so far in violating American civil liberties to the extent where it seems to be a violation of federal law.” Asked about the administration’s contention that the eavesdropping has disrupted terrorist attacks, Fredrickson said the ACLU couldn’t comment until it sees some evidence. “They’ve veiled these powers in secrecy so there’s no way for Congress or any independent organizations to exercise any oversight.” Earlier this week, the Pentagon said it was reviewing its use of a classified database of information about suspicious people and activity inside the United States after a report by NBC News said the database listed activities of anti-war groups that were not a security threat to Pentagon property or personnel. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said that while it appears that some information may have been left in the database longer than it should have been, it was not clear yet whether mistakes were made. A written statement issued by the department implied — but did not explicitly acknowledge — that some information had been handled improperly. The administration had briefed congressional leaders about the NSA program and notified the judge in charge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secret Washington court that handles national security issues. Aides to National Intelligence Director John Negroponte and West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, refused to comment. The Times said it delayed publication of the report for a year because the White House said it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. The Times said it omitted information from the story that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists.
WASHINGTON – A year ago, at a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Fla., a small group of activists met to plan a protest of military recruiting at local high schools. What they didn’t know was that their meeting had come to the attention of the U.S. military. A secret 400-page Defense Department document obtained by NBC News lists the Lake Worth meeting as a “threat” and one of more than 1,500 “suspicious incidents” across the country over a recent 10-month period. “This peaceful, educationally oriented group being a threat is incredible,” says Evy Grachow, a member of the Florida group called The Truth Project. “This is incredible,” adds group member Rich Hersh. “It’s an example of paranoia by our government,” he says. “We’re not doing anything illegal.” The Defense Department document is the first inside look at how the U.S. military has stepped up intelligence collection inside this country since 9/11, which now includes the monitoring of peaceful anti-war and counter-military recruitment groups. “I think Americans should be concerned that the military, in fact, has reached too far,” says NBC News military analyst Bill Arkin. The Department of Defense declined repeated requests by NBC News for an interview. A spokesman said that all domestic intelligence information is “properly collected” and involves “protection of Defense Department installations, interests and personnel.” The military has always had a legitimate “force protection” mission inside the U.S. to protect its personnel and facilities from potential violence. But the Pentagon now collects domestic intelligence that goes beyond legitimate concerns about terrorism or protecting U.S. military installations, say critics. Four dozen anti-war meetings The Fort Lauderdale protest was deemed not to be a credible threat and a column in the database concludes: “US group exercising constitutional rights.” Two-hundred and forty-three other incidents in the database were discounted because they had no connection to the Department of Defense – yet they all remained in the database. The DOD has strict guidelines (.PDF link), adopted in December 1982, that limit the extent to which they can collect and retain information on U.S. citizens. Still, the DOD database includes at least 20 references to U.S. citizens or U.S. persons. Other documents obtained by NBC News show that the Defense Department is clearly increasing its domestic monitoring activities. One DOD briefing document stamped “secret” concludes: “[W]e have noted increased communication and encouragement between protest groups using the [I]nternet,” but no “significant connection” between incidents, such as “reoccurring instigators at protests” or “vehicle descriptions.” The increased monitoring disturbs some military observers. “It means that they’re actually collecting information about who’s at those protests, the descriptions of vehicles at those protests,” says Arkin. “On the domestic level, this is unprecedented,” he says. “I think it’s the beginning of enormous problems and enormous mischief for the military.” Some former senior DOD intelligence officials share his concern. George Lotz, a 30-year career DOD official and former U.S. Air Force colonel, held the post of Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Oversight from 1998 until his retirement last May. Lotz, who recently began a consulting business to help train and educate intelligence agencies and improve oversight of their collection process, believes some of the information the DOD has been collecting is not justified. Make sure they are not just going crazy The military’s penchant for collecting domestic intelligence is disturbing — but familiar — to Christopher Pyle, a former Army intelligence officer. “Some people never learn,” he says. During the Vietnam War, Pyle blew the whistle on the Defense Department for monitoring and infiltrating anti-war and civil rights protests when he published an article in the Washington Monthly in January 1970. The public was outraged and a lengthy congressional investigation followed that revealed that the military had conducted investigations on at least 100,000 American citizens. Pyle got more than 100 military agents to testify that they had been ordered to spy on U.S. citizens – many of them anti-war protestors and civil rights advocates. In the wake of the investigations, Pyle helped Congress write a law placing new limits on military spying inside the U.S. But Pyle, now a professor at Mt. Holyoke College in Massachusetts, says some of the information in the database suggests the military may be dangerously close to repeating its past mistakes. “The documents tell me that military intelligence is back conducting investigations and maintaining records on civilian political activity. The military made promises that it would not do this again,” he says. Too much data? Two years ago, the Defense Department directed a little known agency, Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, to establish and “maintain a domestic law enforcement database that includes information related to potential terrorist threats directed against the Department of Defense.” Then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz also established a new reporting mechanism known as a TALON or Threat and Local Observation Notice report. TALONs now provide “non-validated domestic threat information” from military units throughout the United States that are collected and retained in a CIFA database. The reports include details on potential surveillance of military bases, stolen vehicles, bomb threats and planned anti-war protests. In the program’s first year, the agency received more than 5,000 TALON reports. The database obtained by NBC News is generated by Counterintelligence Field Activity. CIFA is becoming the superpower of data mining within the U.S. national security community. Its “operational and analytical records” include “reports of investigation, collection reports, statements of individuals, affidavits, correspondence, and other documentation pertaining to investigative or analytical efforts” by the DOD and other U.S. government agencies to identify terrorist and other threats. Since March 2004, CIFA has awarded at least $33 million in contracts to corporate giants Lockheed Martin, Unisys Corporation, Computer Sciences Corporation and Northrop Grumman to develop databases that comb through classified and unclassified government data, commercial information and Internet chatter to help sniff out terrorists, saboteurs and spies. One of the CIFA-funded database projects being developed by Northrop Grumman and dubbed “Person Search,” is designed “to provide comprehensive information about people of interest.” It will include the ability to search government as well as commercial databases. Another project, “The Insider Threat Initiative,” intends to “develop systems able to detect, mitigate and investigate insider threats,” as well as the ability to “identify and document normal and abnormal activities and ‘behaviors,'” according to the Computer Sciences Corp. contract. A separate CIFA contract with a small Virginia-based defense contractor seeks to develop methods “to track and monitor activities of suspect individuals.” “The military has the right to protect its installations, and to protect its recruiting services,” says Pyle. “It does not have the right to maintain extensive files on lawful protests of their recruiting activities, or of their base activities,” he argues. Lotz agrees. “The harm in my view is that these people ought to be allowed to demonstrate, to hold a banner, to peacefully assemble whether they agree or disagree with the government’s policies,” the former DOD intelligence official says. ‘Slippery slope’ Some of the targets of the U.S. military’s recent collection efforts say they have already gone too far. “It’s absolute paranoia — at the highest levels of our government,” says Hersh of The Truth Project. “I mean, we’re based here at the Quaker Meeting House,” says Truth Project member Marie Zwicker, “and several of us are Quakers.” The Defense Department refused to comment on how it obtained information on the Lake Worth meeting or why it considers a dozen or so anti-war activists a “threat.” Underlying all of the excesses and abuses of executive power claimed by the Bush Administration is a theory of absolute, unchecked power vested in the Presidency which literally could not be any more at odds with the central, founding principles of this country. As this morning’s New York Times analysis put it in describing the rationale behind the Adminstration’s violations of the Foreign Intelligence Security Act, pursuant to which it has been secretly spying on the commuincations of American citizens without judicial warrants:
As the Times reports, Bush’s claim to absolute executive power has its origins principally in one document:
The notion that one of the three branches of our Government can claim power unchecked by the other two branches is precisely what the Founders sought, first and foremost, to preclude. And the fear that a U.S. President would attempt to seize power unchecked by the law or by the other branches – i.e., that the Executive would seize the powers of the British King – was the driving force behind the clear and numerous constitutional limitations placed on Executive power. It is these very limitations which the Bush Administration is claiming that it has the power to disregard because the need for enhanced national security in time of war vests the President with unchecked power. But that theory of the Executive unconstrained by law is completely repulsive to the founding principles of the country, as well as to the promises made by the Founders in order to extract consent from a monarchy-fearing public to the creation of executive power vested in a single individual. The notion that all of that can be just whimsically tossed aside whenever the nation experiences external threats is as contrary to the country’s founding principles as it is dangerous. It cannot be said that the Founders were unaware of the potential for national emergencies and external threats. They engaged in a war with the British which was at least as much of an existential threat to the Republic as those posed by 9/11 and related threats of Islamic extremism. Notwithstanding those threats, the Founders, in creating an Executive branch, sought first and foremost to ensure that the President could never wield unchecked powers which would exist above and separate from Congressionally enacted laws. Among recent Republican Administrations, this theory of the unchecked President is not new. Digby recalls Richard Nixon’s endorsement of it, and the theory came to life in the Iran-Contra scandal, where the Reagan Administration unilaterally deemed it necessary to U.S. national security to arm the Nicaraguan contras and then asserted for itself the power to circumvent the law enacted by the Congress which prohibited exactly that. But the situation we have now is far more egregious, and far more dangerous, because the Administration is not even bothering to pretend now (as the Reagan Administration at least did) that the Executive acts undertaken really did adhere to Congressional intent, or alternatively, to the extent that such acts violated Congressional mandates, the acts were simply the by-product of overzealous and rogue officials who broke the law without the knowledge or approval of President Reagan. The Bush Administration’s position now is almost the opposite of that posture, in that the Administration is expressly claiming that the President does have the right to violate laws of Congress because his executive power is absolute and thus cannot be restricted by anything. And rather than applying this theory of unchecked executive power to a single case (as the Reagan Administration did in Iran-contra), the Bush Administration has arrogated unto itself this monarchical power as a general proposition, applicable to each and every issue which can be said to relate, however generally, to this undeclared “war” against terrorism. This view of the Presidency – which now exists not just in odious theory but in real, live, breathing form vested in George Bush – is precisely what the monarchy-fearing Founders insisted should never occur and, with the enactment of the U.S. Constitution, would never occur. This absolute power claimed and enthusiastically exercised by George Bush violates not just specific Constitutional limitations, but the core principles of the Constitution: that we are a nation of laws not men; that each branch shall be “co-equal” to the others and checked and limited by the other two; and that the people shall retain ultimate power by vesting in them the right to enact supreme laws through the Congress which shall bind all other citizens, including the President. That the Bush Administration’s claim to unchecked and supra-legal Executive power is squarely inconsistent with basic constitutional principles is conclusively demonstrated by James Madison’s Federalist No. 48, which is devoted to the principle that liberty cannot be maintained unless each branch remains accountable and subordinate to the others:
Similarly, Madison, in Federalist No. 51, defined the central objective for avoiding tyranny as ensuring that no branch be able to claim for itself powers which are absolute and unchecked by the other branches:
In particular, Madison emphasized in Federalist 51 that liberty could be preserved only if the laws enacted by the people through the Congress were supreme and universally binding:
Hamilton made the same point in Federalist No. 73. where he emphasized:
To the Founders, the defining characteristics of the tyrannical British King was that he possessed precisely those powers which the Constitution prohibits but which the Bush Administration is now claiming it can exercise. From Federalist 70:
Based on the fear of such unchecked executive power, Federalist 69 emphasized that unlike the British King, who did possess the absolute power to nullify duly enacted laws , the sole power possessed by the President to negate a law enacted by the Congress — including with regard to matters of national security and war — is the President’s qualified (i.e., override-able) veto power:
An extremely potent demonstration that the Bush Administration’s claim to unchecked Executive Power is fundamentally inconsistent with the most basic constitutional safeguards comes from one of the unlikeliest corners – Antonin Scalia’s dissent in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 124 S.Ct. 2633 (2004):
Many safeguards in the Constitution reflect these concerns. Congress’s authority "or a longer Term than two Years." U. S. Const., Art. 1, §8, cl. 12. Except for the actual command of military forces, all authorization for their maintenance and all explicit authorization for their use is placed in the control of Congress under Article I, rather than the President under Article II. As Hamilton explained, the President’s military authority would be "much inferior" to that of the British King: "It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces, as first general and admiral of the confederacy: while that of the British king extends to the declaring of war, and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies; all which, by the constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature." The Federalist No. 69, p. 357. A view of the Constitution that gives the Executive authority to use military force rather than the force of law against citizens on American soil flies in the face of the mistrust that engendered these provisions. Both the Bush Administration’s theory of its own unchecked power and its indiscriminate and aggressive use of that power to violate Congressional law contradicts every constitutional principle created to ensure that we do not live under unchecked Executive tyranny. If the President is allowed to get away with secretly decreeing that he can violate the law and then doing exactly that, then there really are no remaining checks on Executive power — and we have, without hyperbole, arrived at the very definition of tyranny. The country has, more or less with a quiet complacency, stood by while this Administration imprisoned American citizens with no due process, while the Administration sanctioned torture and then used it to extract “evidence” to justify those detentions, and while the Administration exploited the fear of terrorist acts to bestow onto itself unprecedented powers. If the naked assertion of absolute power by the Bush Administration — and the use of that power to eavesdrop on American citizens without any judicial review — does not finally prompt the public regardless of partisan allegiance to take a stand against this undiluted claim to real tyrannical power, then it is impossible to imagine what would ever prompt such a stand. UPDATE: The more one thinks about the fact that the New York Times was aware of this patently illegal behavior for a full year and concealed it from the public because the Administration told it keep quiet, the more disturbing that complicity becomes.
A congressional report made public yesterday concluded that President Bush and his inner circle had access to more intelligence and reviewed more sensitive material than what was shared with Congress when it gave Bush the authority to wage war against Iraq. Democrats said the 14-page report contradicts Bush’s contention that lawmakers saw all the evidence before U.S. troops invaded in March 2003, stating that the president and a small number of advisers “have access to a far greater volume of intelligence and to more sensitive intelligence information.” The report does not cite examples of intelligence Bush reviewed that differed from what Congress saw. If such information is available, the report’s authors do not have access to it. The Bush administration has routinely denied Congress access to documents, saying it would have a chilling effect on deliberations. The report, however, concludes that the Bush administration has been more restrictive than its predecessors in sharing intelligence with Congress. The White House disputed both charges, noting that Congress often works directly with U.S. intelligence agencies and is privy to an enormous amount of classified information. “In 2004 alone, intelligence agencies provided over 1,000 personal briefings and more than 4,000 intelligence products to the Congress,” an administration official said. The report, done by the Congressional Research Service at the request of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), comes amid allegations by Democrats that administration officials exaggerated Iraq’s weapons capabilities and terrorism ties and then resisted inquiries into the intelligence failures. Bush has fiercely rejected those claims. “Some of the most irresponsible comments — about manipulating intelligence — have come from politicians who saw the same intelligence I saw and then voted to authorize the use of force against Saddam Hussein,” he said this week. Feinstein, who is on the Senate intelligence committee, disagreed. “The report demonstrates that Congress routinely is denied access to intelligence sources, intelligence collection and analysis,” she said. The intelligence panel met yesterday to discuss the second phase of its investigation into the administration’s handling of prewar assertions. In July 2004, the committee issued the first phase of its bipartisan report, which found the U.S. intelligence community had assembled a flawed and exaggerated assessment of Iraq’s weapons capabilities. The second phase, which examines the White House’s role, was agreed to in February 2004 but remains incomplete. Last month, Democrats forced the Senate into a rare closed-door session to extract a promise from Republicans to speed up the inquiry. At the time, committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) said the report was nearing completion. But yesterday, committee aides said it is unlikely the report will be done before spring. Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), a former member of the panel, said the report should not be rushed. But he urged the White House to release more documents to support its claims. “The only way to be is certain is to look at what they saw and what we saw side by side,” he said. 283i’m up to 00 gauge, which is where i wanted to be before we go to portland, so that i can frighten my in-laws. i have a 00 gauge plug with a pentacle on it which i intend to wear. it’s not that unusual as an earring – certainly less unusual than it could be considering that it’s 00 gauge – and i’m wondering if they’ll even notice it, and if they do notice it, if they’ll say anything to me about it. <evil grin> the fremont philharmonic had a very productive recording session last night. we started at 5:00 pm and went until well after midnight, and we recorded about 12 songs, which is 8 more than we did the last time we had a recording session… of course the last time we recorded, the composer of the music, the trombone player, and the recording engineer were the same person (which is guaranteed to result in little, if anything good on tape), and we were recording in his bedroom on the hottest day of the year and all of his recording equipment was malfunctioning because of the heat. this time we had a professional recording engineer whose job it was to get as much on tape as possible without regard to what else the rest of the band was doing, which meant that fred was free to be the composer and the trombone player, we were recording in the hale’s palladium, which is a BIG place that has room for an entire symphony orchestra… when it’s not being a beer warehouse… and it was cold enough last night that we had to take a break about every two hours or so and run the heaters so that the microphones wouldn’t freeze. also, the fact that he is a professional recording engineer means that we’re having a CD release party on sunday(!) instead of farting around “mixing” and “mastering” for more than a year before releasing our current CD at the oregon country fair last year. we’re playing for a private party tonight and we’re playing for the fremont solstice feast (it’s official, although i still haven’t gotten written confirmation) on wednesday… although it’s not in fremont this year, it’s somewhere near alaska way off of airport way, in the south part of seattle. weird. thanks to The spirit of Halloween at Christmas The Christmas display in front of Joel Krupnik’s Manhattan brownstone has all the subtlety of a blood-splattered Santa. Which, in fact, is what it is. A knife-wielding Santa Claus holds a bloody head outside the home of Mildred Castellanos and Joel Krupnik. “It’s horrible, just terrible,” says neighbor Joe Nuccio, 79. “He’s got Santa Claus with a bloody knife in one hand and a doll’s head suspended in the other. That’s bloody, too.” Bloody awful, for sure. But Krupnik, who couldn’t be reached Thursday, told the Associated Press it’s all to make this point: Christmas has become too commercial. Others have made similar points in Orlando (a gutted Rudolph dangling from a tree) and Miami (a hanged St. Nick). And they’ve received similar reviews. Estelle Farnsworth was so upset by the life-size Santa strung up in her Miami neighborhood that she called police. Santa’s hands were bound behind his back, his feet were tied together, and a noose was around his neck. Have yourself a gory little Christmas, it seemed to say. “I was absolutely furious,” says Farnsworth, 65. “Everybody was upset.” A little girl in the neighborhood thought Santa had morphed into Satan and was going to get her, Farnsworth says. Police told Farnsworth that desecrating Santa might be in poor taste but that it was constitutionally protected expression. Like Krupnik, the neighbor who staged Santa’s mock execution wanted to express his dismay with the commercialization of the season, Farnsworth says. Point taken, she says. But she believes it could have been done more tastefully. “Why not put up a beautiful manger scene? He could have put up a sign on it that said, ‘This is the reason for the season of Christmas,’ ” she says. “Instead, he just lynched Santa Claus.” Santa, mercifully, has been taken down in Miami, and Farnsworth’s neighborhood has returned to normal. “It’s very well decorated now,” she says. Not so in Nuccio’s neighborhood. Santa still leers at passersby, and Krupnik has a tree “decorated” with the heads of Barbie dolls. Maybe Krupnik is bothered that Christmas has become too commercial, Nuccio says. “I am, too. All this nonsense about whether you should say ‘Merry Christmas’ or ‘Happy Holidays.’ “But he shouldn’t have done that to Santa.” along the same lines, there’s the Animated Singing Santa Hack… have fun. 8) 282JASON MOTLAGH THE United States has set aside $500 million over the next five years to secure a vast new front in its global war on terrorism: the Sahara Desert. Critics say the region is not the terrorist zone that some senior US military officers assert. They add that heavy-handed military and financial support that reinforces authoritarian regimes in north and west Africa could fuel radicalism where it scarcely exists. The Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Initiative (TSCTI) was begun in June to provide military expertise, equipment and development aid to nine Saharan countries where lawless swathes of desert are considered fertile ground for militant Muslim groups involved in smuggling and combat training. “It’s the Wild West all over again,” said Major Holly Silkman, a public affairs officer at US Special Operations Command Europe, which presides over US security and peacekeeping operations in Europe, former Soviet bloc countries and most of Africa. During the first phase of the programme, dubbed Operation Flintlock, US Special Forces led 3,000 ill-equipped Saharan troops in tactical exercises designed to co-ordinate security more effectively along porous borders and beef-up patrols in ungoverned territories. Maj Silkman said Africa has become the most important concern of the US European Command (EuCom) because of rampant corruption, drug and human trafficking, poverty and high unemployment, which create a significant “potential for instability”, particularly in the Saharan region, where 50 per cent of the population is younger than 15. The head of Special Operations Command Europe, Major General Thomas R Csrnko, said he was concerned that al-Qaeda is assessing African groups for “franchising opportunities,” notably the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat – known as GSPC by its initials in French – cited on the US State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organisations. The Algeria-based GSPC, estimated to have about 300 fighters and said to be linked to al-Qaeda, was accused of kidnapping European tourists in 2003 and has taken responsibility for a spate of attacks in the Sahara this year. General Csrnko considers the group the main threat to security in the region, and has cited the potential for terrorist camps in the Sahara comparable to those once run by al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Eucom officials say there is evidence that 25 per cent of suicide bombers in Iraq are Saharan Africans. Terrorist attacks such as the 11 March, 2004, Madrid train bombings that killed 191 persons have been linked to north African militants. But some observers say terrorism in the Sahara is little more than a mirage and that a higher-profile US involvement could destabilise the region. “If anything, the [TSCTI] … will generate terrorism, by which I mean resistance to the overall US presence and strategy,” said Jeremy Keenan, a Sahara specialist at the University of East Anglia. A report by the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, said that although the Sahara is “not a terrorist hotbed”, repressive governments in the region are using the “war on terror” to tap US largesse and deny civil freedoms. The report said the regime of Mauritanian President Maaouiya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya – a US ally in west Africa deposed on 3 August in a bloodless coup – used the threat of terrorism to legitimise the denial of human rights. Mr Keenan said the government of Algeria is an even worse offender, misleading Washington about the GSPC threat to acquire modern weapons and shed its pariah status. Aside from the 2003 kidnapping issue, US and Algerian authorities have failed to present “indisputable verification of a single act of alleged terrorism in the Sahara”, Mr Keenan said. “Without the GSPC, the US has no legitimacy for its presence in the region,” he added, noting that an escalating American strategic dependency on African oil requires that the United States bolster its presence in the region. Maj Silkman, however, said cultivating security, not oil resources, is the prime objective of the TSCTI. She said it is vital that other members of the international community get involved. “Reducing the threat is not as much about taking direct action as it is in eliminating conditions that allow terrorism to flourish,” she said. “memes” & links
this may be related to “straight edge” culture, but it’s still something worth considering… i’ve seen a number of people who have gotten various different cosmetic implants, and i’ve been considering getting rhinestone implants surrounding my scar, as well as a scalp tattoo… very definitely something worth considering… cute overload is a place that actually wants pictures of our… disgustinly, sickeningly, overwelmingly cute little doggie… i’ll have to get on it. Mice created with human brain cells SAN FRANCISCO – Add another creation to the strange scientific menagerie where animal species are being mixed together in ever more exotic combinations. Scientists announced Monday that they had created mice with small amounts of human brain cells in an effort to make realistic models of neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease. Led by Fred Gage of the Salk Institute in San Diego, the researchers created the mice by injecting about 100,000 human embryonic stem cells per mouse into the brains of 14-day-old rodent embryos. Those mice were each born with about 0.1 percent of human cells in each of their heads, a trace amount that doesn’t remotely come close to “humanizing” the rodents. “This illustrate that injecting human stem cells into mouse brains doesn’t restructure the brain,” Gage said. Still, the work adds to the growing ethical concerns of mixing human and animal cells when it comes to stem cell and cloning research. After all, mice are 97.5 percent genetically identical to humans. “The worry is if you humanize them too much you cross certain boundaries,” said David Magnus, director of the Stanford Medical Center for Biomedical Ethics. “But I don’t think this research comes even close to that.” Researchers are nevertheless beginning to bump up against what bioethicists call the “yuck factor.” Three top cloning researchers, for instance, have applied for a patent that contemplates fusing a complete set of human DNA into animal eggs in order to manufacturer human embryonic stem cells. One of the patent applicants, Jose Cibelli, first attempted such an experiment in 1998 when he fused cells from his cheek into cow eggs. “The idea is to hijack the machinery of the egg,” said Cibelli, whose current work at Michigan State University does not involve human material because that would violate state law. Researchers argue that co-mingling human and animal tissue is vital to ensuring that experimental drugs and new tissue replacement therapies are safe for people. Others have performed similar experiments with rabbit and chicken eggs while University of California-Irvine researchers have reported making paralyzed rodents walk after injecting them with human nerve cells. Doctors have transplanted pig valves into human hearts for years, and scientists have injected human cells into lab animals for even longer. But the brain poses an additional level of concern because some envision nightmare scenarios in which a human mind might be trapped in an animal head. “Human diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease, might be amenable to stem cell therapy, and it is conceivable, although unlikely, that an animal’s cognitive abilities could also be affected by such therapy,” a report issued in April by the influential National Academies of Science that sought to draw some ethical research boundaries. So the report recommended that such work be allowed, but with strict ethical guidelines established. “Protocols should be reviewed to ensure that they take into account those sorts of possibilities and that they include ethically sensitive plans to manage them if they arise,” the report concluded. At the same time, the report did endorse research that co-mingles human and animal tissue as vital to ensuring that experimental drugs and new tissue replacement therapies are safe for people. Gage said the work published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is another step in overcoming one of the biggest technical hurdles confronting stem cell researchers: when exactly to inject the cells into patients. The results suggest that human embryonic stem cells, once injected into people, will mature into the cells that surround them. No known human has ever received an injection of embryonic stem cells because so little is known about how those cells will mature once inside the body. For now, Gage said his work is more geared toward understanding disease than to finding a cure. “It’s a way for us to begin to tease out the way these diseases develop,” Gage said. Human embryonic stem cells are created in the first days after conception and give rise to all the organs and tissues in the human body. Scientists hope they can someday use stem cells to replace diseased tissue. But many social conservatives, including President Bush, oppose the work because embryos are destroyed during research. Stem cell researchers argue that mixing human and animal cells is the only way to advance the field because it’s far too risky to experiment on people; so little is known about stem cells. “The experiments have to be done, which does mean human cells into non-human cells,” said Dr. Evan Snyder, a stem cell researcher at the Burnham Institute in San Diego. “You don’t work out the issues on your child or your grandmother. You want to work this out in an animal first.” Snyder is injecting human embryonic stem cells into monkeys and is convinced that there’s little danger. “It’s true that there is a huge amount of similarity, but the difference are huge,” Snyder said. “You will never ever have a little human trapped inside a mouse or monkey’s body.” growl generallymoe’s purse was stolen from the dog agility arena the other day. she got her credit cards cancelled, but only after whoever stole them tried to use them twice. and the dog agility arena is in a remote enough location that it was very likely one of her students that stole it. she still hasn’t gotten her driver’s license replaced, and social security is being really annoying about the whole thing: they give you a number that you are supposed to use as a formal form of identification, that the local law enforcement drones say you have to be able to prove at a moment’s notice… and then they say that they recommend you not carry your social security card with you (which is exactly the opposite of what the police say), and they don’t take any responsibility for helping you get things sorted out if someone steals it. they say that if someone steals your social security card that you are supposed to “keep an eye” on your social security earnings to see if someone else is reporting earnings, and you are supposed to notify the credit reporting agencies so they won’t just automatically approve credit without “checking with you” first, but you’ve got to do all of this stuff… it’s not something that social security can do for you, despite the fact that they’re the ones that issued the number to you in the first place… 8/ and they won’t issue you a new social security number under any circumstances… as though there are a limited number of combinations or something… and the guy showed up and opened up my car… $141 dollars later, and $17 for the duplicate keys, i’ve already far overspent for this month… merry x-mas… growl…i managed to lock myself out of my car, and i don’t have an extra key anywhere… as soon as the locksmith guy comes to let me into my car, the first place i’m going to go is somewhere to have a couple of duplicate keys made, so that this has no chance of happening again. 278finally some questions from the ask przxqgl anything poll that i posted a few weeks back… didn’t you read the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Universe? the answer is 42. personally, i believe that the real answer is 23, but that’s my personal opinion… i see them, therefor they are real. personally i believe that they’re caused by high-altitude aircraft of some kind, and have observed such phenomenon, complete with resulting chemtrails, on a number of occasions… but, as with just about everything that i perceive, especially these days, it’s a matter of interpretation. 277List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now. Post these instructions in your livejournal along with your seven songs, then tag seven other people to see what they’re listening to. 1. So – Tom Zé, The Best of Tom Zé 1. 276
275girl on the phone: good morning, washington state department of licensing, what can we do for you today? me: i’d like to change the address on my driver’s license please. girl: okay, we can help you with that. hold on… (computer noises in the background) girl: okay, what can i help you with today? me (thinking): ???????? WTF? me: i’d like to change the address on my driver’s license please… girl: all right, can i have your driver’s license number please? me: – gives it to her… (what, do you think that i’d just post it where anyone can see it? come on…) girl: okay, hold on… (more computer noises in the background) girl: okay, now could i get your driver’s license number please? me: ????????????? BLOWN HEAD GASKET … in spite of a bad start, i actually managed to change my address on record. they don’t automatically issue me a new license, but if i wait 15 days, i can order one online.
By Shankar Vedantam The 48-year-old man turned down a job because he feared that a co-worker would be gay. He was upset that gay culture was becoming mainstream and blamed most of his personal, professional and emotional problems on the gay and lesbian movement. These fixations preoccupied him every day. Articles in magazines about gays made him agitated. He confessed that his fears had left him socially isolated and unemployed for years: A recovering alcoholic, the man even avoided 12-step meetings out of fear he might encounter a gay person. “He had a fixed delusion about the world,” said Sondra E. Solomon, a psychologist at the University of Vermont who treated the man for two years. “He felt under attack, he felt threatened.” Mental health practitioners say they regularly confront extreme forms of racism, homophobia and other prejudice in the course of therapy, and that some patients are disabled by these beliefs. As doctors increasingly weigh the effects of race and culture on mental illness, some are asking whether pathological bias ought to be an official psychiatric diagnosis. ‘Ordinary prejudice’ or something more? If it succeeds, it could have huge ramifications on clinical practice, employment disputes and the criminal justice system. Perpetrators of hate crimes could become candidates for treatment, and physicians would become arbiters of how to distinguish “ordinary prejudice” from pathological bias. Thorny discussions about how mental illnesses are defined would get even more prickly. Many urge more research, saying they are unsure whether bias can be pathological. Solomon, for instance, is uncomfortable with the idea. But several experts say that psychiatry has been inattentive to the effects of prejudice on mental health and illness. “Has anyone done a word search for ‘racism’ in DSM-IV? It doesn’t exist,” said Carl C. Bell, a Chicago psychiatrist, referring to psychiatry’s manual of mental disorders. “Has anyone asked, ‘If you have paranoia, do you project your hostility toward other groups?’ The answer is ‘Hell, no!’ ” The proposed guidelines that California psychologist Edward Dunbar created describe people whose daily functioning is paralyzed by persistent fears and worries about other groups. The guidelines have not been endorsed by the American Psychiatric Association, which publishes the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM); advocates are mostly seeking support for systematic study. Fears of a new defense for racism “If you are going to put racism into the next edition of DSM, you would have enormous criticism,” Regier said. Critics would ask, ” ‘Are you pathologizing all of life?’ You better be prepared to defend that classification.” “I think it’s absurd,” said Sally Satel, a psychiatrist and the author of “PC, M.D.: How Political Correctness Is Corrupting Medicine.” Satel said the diagnosis would allow hate-crime perpetrators to evade responsibility by claiming they suffered from a mental illness. “You could use it as a defense.” Psychiatrists who advocate a new diagnosis, such as Gary Belkin, deputy chief of psychiatry at New York’s Bellevue Hospital, said social norms play a central role in how all psychiatric disorders are defined. Pedophilia is considered a disorder by psychiatrists, Belkin noted, but that does not keep child molesters from being prosecuted. “Psychiatrists who are uneasy with including something like this in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual need to get used to the fact that the whole manual reflects social context,” said Belkin, who is planning to launch a study on pathological bias among patients at his hospital. “That is true of depression on down. Pathological bias is no more or less scientific than major depression.” Some extreme cases of paranoia Another patient was a waiter so hostile to black people that he flung plates on the table when he served black patrons and got fired from multiple jobs. A third patient was a Vietnam War veteran who was so fearful of Asians that he avoided social situations where he might meet them, Dunbar said. “When I see someone who won’t see a physician because they’re Jewish, or who can’t sit in a restaurant because there are Asians, or feels threatened by homosexuals in the workplace, the party line in mental health says, ‘This is not our problem,’ ” the psychologist said. “If it’s not our problem, whose problem is it?” Paralyzed by fear of others “They are delusional,” said Alvin F. Poussaint, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who has long advocated such a diagnosis. “They imagine people are going to do all kinds of bad things and hurt them, and feel they have to do something to protect themselves. “When they reach that stage, they are very impaired,” he said. “They can’t work and function; they can’t hold a job. They would benefit from treatment of some type, particularly medication.” Doctors who treat inmates at the California State Prison outside Sacramento concur: They have diagnosed some forms of racist hatred among inmates and administered antipsychotic drugs. “We treat racism and homophobia as delusional disorders,” said Shama Chaiken, who later became a divisional chief psychologist for the California Department of Corrections, at a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association. “Treatment with antipsychotics does work to reduce these prejudices.” Few immune to some level of bias Anthony Greenwald, a psychologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, and Mahzarin R. Banaji, a psychologist at Harvard, developed tests for such biases. By measuring the speed with which people make mental associations, the psychologists found that biases affect even those who actively resist them. “When things are more strongly paired in our minds, we can respond to them more quickly,” Banaji said. “Large numbers of Americans cannot as swiftly make the association between ‘black’ and ‘good’ as they can between ‘white’ and ‘good.’ ” Similarly, psychologist Margo Monteith at the University of Kentucky in Lexington found that people can have prejudices against groups they know nothing about. She administered a test in which volunteers, under time pressure, had to associate a series of words with either “America” or a fictitious country she called “Marisat.” Volunteers more easily associated Marisat with such words as “poison,” “death” and “evil,” while associating America with “sunrise,” “paradise” and “loyal.” “A large part of our self-esteem derives from our group membership,” Monteith said. “To the extent we can feel better about our group relative to other groups, we can feel good about ourselves. It’s likely a built-in mechanism.” ‘100 percent of people are racist’ “I don’t think racism is a mental illness, and that’s because 100 percent of people are racist,” said Paul J. Fink, a former president of the American Psychiatric Association. “If you have a diagnostic category that fits 100 percent of people, it’s not a diagnostic category.” But Poussaint said there is a difference between ordinary prejudice and pathological bias — the same distinction that psychiatrists make between sadness and depression. All people experience sadness, anxiety and fear, but extreme, disabling forms of these emotions are called disorders. While people with ordinary prejudice try very hard to conceal their biases, Solomon said, her homophobic patient had no embarrassment about his attitude toward gays. Dunbar said people with pathological prejudice often lack filtering capabilities. As a result, he said, they face problems at work and home. “Everyone is inculcated with stereotypes and biases with cultural issues, but some individuals not only hold beliefs that are very rigid, but they are part of a psychological problem,” Dunbar said. The psychologist said he has helped such patients with talk therapy, which encourages patients to question the basis for their beliefs, and by steering them toward medications such as antipsychotics. The woman with the bias against Jews did not overcome her prejudice, Dunbar said, but she learned to control her fear response in social settings. The patient with hostility against African Americans realized his beliefs were “stupid.” Balancing understanding with information At those times, she reported in a case study, the patient would say, “I know, I know.” He would recognize that he was not being logical, but then get angry and return to the same patterns of obsession. Solomon did not identify the man because of patient confidentiality. Standing in the central yard of the maximum-security California State Prison with inmates exercising around her, Chaiken explained how she distinguished pathological bias from ordinary prejudice: A prisoner who belonged to a gang with racist views might express such views to fit in with his gang, but if he continues “yelling racial slurs, assaulting others when it’s clear there is no benefit” after he leaves the gang, the behavior was no longer “adaptive.” Prison officials declined to identify inmates who had been treated, or make them available for interviews. Chicago psychiatrist Bell said he has not made up his mind on whether bias can be pathological. But in proposing a research agenda for the next edition of psychiatry’s DSM of mental disorders, Bell and researchers from the Mayo Clinic, McGill University, the University of California at Los Angeles and other academic institutions wrote: “Clinical experience informs us that racism may be a manifestation of a delusional process, a consequence of anxiety, or a feature of an individual’s personality dynamics.” The psychiatrists said their profession has neglected the issue: “One solution would be to encourage research that seeks to delineate the validity and reliability of racism as a symptom and to investigate the possibility of including it in some diagnostic criteria sets in future editions of DSM.” yet another way to force people to think the way you want them to… as long as you’re the doctor. i see this as yet another way to keep “terrorists” and other outcasts in line.
WASHINGTON – Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Sunday he is prepared to strip Democrats of their ability to filibuster if they try to stall Samuel Alito’s nomination to the Supreme Court. “The answer is yes,” Frist said when asked if he would act to change Senate procedures to restrict a Democratic filibuster. “Supreme Court justice nominees deserve an up-or-down vote, and it would be absolutely wrong to deny him that.” Democrats immediately called Frist’s words unhelpful and potentially incendiary. They said Senate Democrats are waiting for the Judiciary Committee to act on Alito’s nomination before they decide what they may do. “Sen. Frist has thrown down the gauntlet at a time when the country least needs it,” said New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Democratic member of the Judiciary Committee. “The American people know that checks and balances are an integral part of our government.” In recent weeks, Senate Democrats have questioned whether Alito, a federal appeals court judge, has the proper judicial temperament and ideology to replace retiring Justice Some have said that Alito’s views on issues such as voting rights and abortion could provoke a filibuster unless he allays their concerns about his commitment to civil rights. Alito’s confirmation hearings begin Jan. 9 before the committee. Frist, R-Tenn., said Alito is qualified for the high court, noting that Alito was confirmed by the Senate for the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. “Sam Alito, who has a modest judicial temperament … is someone who deserves advice and consent by the Senate,” Frist told “Fox News Sunday.” Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said in an interview that senators should be debating Alito’s qualifications on their merits rather than speculating about the possibility of a filibuster. But, he added, once the committee acts, “all procedural options are on the table. But we are months away from facing these kinds of decisions.” The filibuster is a parliamentary tactic whereby senators use their right to virtually unlimited debate to block measures, legislation or nominations. It takes 60 votes to stop a filibuster. Passing a bill or confirming a nominee requires a simple majority — 51 senators if all 100 senators are present. The vice president can break 50-50 ties. Under Frist’s scenario, the GOP would seek a parliamentary ruling that declares filibusters are not permitted against judicial nominees. That ruling ultimately would go before the full Senate for a vote, with a simple majority required to prevail. Republicans hold 55 seats. If that plays out, it then would take a majority of senators present to vote to approve a nominee such as Alito. Such a move carries great risk. Democrats have threatened to retaliate with a fight that could snarl Senate business for months. Also, it could backfire on Republicans if they were to lose majority control of the chamber. after that, i’m in need of some happy news. 274
NASHVILLE, Tenn. – A man who posted false information on an online encyclopedia linking a prominent journalist to the Kennedy assassinations says he was playing a trick on a co-worker. Brian Chase, 38, ended up resigning from his job and apologizing to John Seigenthaler Sr., the former publisher of the Tennessean newspaper and founding editorial director of USA Today. “I knew from the news that Mr. Seigenthaler was looking for who did it, and I did it, so I needed to let him know in particular that it wasn’t anyone out to get him, that it was done as a joke that went horribly, horribly wrong,” Chase was quoted as saying in Sunday editions of The Tennessean. Chase said he didn’t know the free Internet encyclopedia called Wikipedia was used as a serious reference tool. The biography he posted, which has since been replaced, falsely stated that Seigenthaler was linked to the Kennedy assassinations and had lived in the Soviet Union from 1971 to 1984. The entry motivated Seigenthaler to write an op-ed piece for USA Today blasting Wikipedia’s credibility. He described himself as a close friend of Robert Kennedy and said he had worked with President Kennedy. He said “the most painful thing was to have them suggest that I was suspected of their assassination.” Seigenthaler said he doesn’t plan to pursue legal action against Chase. He also said he doesn’t support more regulations of the Internet, but he said that he fears “Wikipedia is inviting it by its allowing irresponsible vandals to write anything they want about anybody.” Chase said he created the fake online biography in May as a gag to shock a co-worker who was familiar with the Seigenthaler family. He resigned as an operations manager at a Nashville delivery company as a result of the debacle. this is primarily for i forsee a big rise in the rate of unemployed people who have nothing better to do than vandalise internet in the near future… 273
Last month, Republican Congressional leaders filed into the Oval Office to meet with President George W. Bush and talk about renewing the controversial USA Patriot Act. Several provisions of the act, passed in the shell shocked period immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, caused enough anger that liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union had joined forces with prominent conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly and Bob Barr to oppose renewal. GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. “I don’t give a goddamn,” Bush retorted. “I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.” “Mr. President,” one aide in the meeting said. “There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.” “Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Bush screamed back. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!” I’ve talked to three people present for the meeting that day and they all confirm that the President of the United States called the Constitution “a goddamned piece of paper.” And, to the Bush Administration, the Constitution of the United States is little more than toilet paper stained from all the shit that this group of power-mad despots have dumped on the freedoms that “goddamned piece of paper” used to guarantee. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, while still White House counsel, wrote that the “Constitution is an outdated document.” Put aside, for a moment, political affiliation or personal beliefs. It doesn’t matter if you are a Democrat, Republican or Independent. It doesn’t matter if you support the invasion or Iraq or not. Despite our differences, the Constitution has stood for two centuries as the defining document of our government, the final source to determine – in the end – if something is legal or right. Every federal official – including the President – who takes an oath of office swears to “uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says he cringes when someone calls the Constitution a “living document.” “‘Oh, how I hate the phrase we have—a ‘living document,'” Scalia says. “We now have a Constitution that means whatever we want it to mean. The Constitution is not a living organism, for Pete’s sake.” As a judge, Scalia says, “I don’t have to prove that the Constitution is perfect; I just have to prove that it’s better than anything else.” President Bush has proposed seven amendments to the Constitution over the last five years, including a controversial amendment to define marriage as a “union between a man and woman.” Members of Congress have proposed some 11,000 amendments over the last decade, ranging from repeal of the right to bear arms to a Constitutional ban on abortion. Scalia says the danger of tinkering with the Constitution comes from a loss of rights. “We can take away rights just as we can grant new ones,” Scalia warns. “Don’t think that it’s a one-way street.” And don’t buy the White House hype that the USA Patriot Act is a necessary tool to fight terrorism. It is a dangerous law that infringes on the rights of every American citizen and, as one brave aide told President Bush, something that undermines the Constitution of the United States. But why should Bush care? After all, the Constitution is just “a goddamned piece of paper.” “Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Bush screamed back. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!” Let us start out with the fact that the Constitution is actually written on parchment, not paper. A trivial point, I grant you, but one that reveals (along with your inability to correctly pronounce the word “nuclear”) a shocking lack of education in a head of state. But to get to the point, the Constitution is not the parchment itself, but the ideas written upon it; ideas which form the foundations of our nation, ideas which would carry equal weight if written on stone, glass, metal, or even paper. These ideas are the soul of the nation. They include the recognition that the people of this nation have certain rights, rights which the government does not have the authority to remove. These rights include freedom of speech, to say what we think about the nation at any and all times, to write that opinion down and share it however we choose to. These rights include the freedom to worship as we choose, free from coercion. These rights include the right to privacy, in our homes and businesses, free from government intrusions other than in very specific and well-defined circumstances. Maybe those rights are inconvenient to you, as such rights are always inconvenient to tyrants, but you are not allowed the choice which rights you will abide by or not. That too is spelled out explicitly in the Constitution. The Constitution isn’t just a piece of paper or parchment. It’s a contract; the original contract with America. It’s the contract you yourself swore an oath to preserve, protect, and defend against all enemies both foreign and domestic. You attached your name to that promise. You swore that oath before a judge of the United States Supreme Court, with your hand on a bible. That isn’t just scenery for the cameras. Swearing an oath before a judge carries legal obligations with that oath, and legal penalties for breaking that oath. The election process by which you claim authority is defined in that Constitution. And as you claim authority by Constitutional process, so too are you limited by Constitutional process. If you act outside the limits of the Constitution, you are no longer acting as the President, but as a private citizen abusing the powers with which you were trusted. A government that acts outside the Constitution ceases to be the legal government of this land. The Constitution exists not only to tell the government what it may do, but more importantly what it may not do. You, as the President, are not allowed to declare wars without the US Congress. You, the President, are not allowed to seize people at random and send them off to be tortured. And most of all, you, the President, and not allowed to lie to the people and to the Congress. Every President before you, including your father, swore that oath to preserve, protect, and defend that Constitution. Millions of Americans died in wars in the firm belief that the form of government describes on that parchment was worth such a sacrifice. To state that the Constitution is just a “dammed piece of paper” is a slap in the face of every American who ever donned the uniform of the military forces of this country. Go over to Arlington National Cemetery. It’s not that far from where you live. Look at those tombstones. By your statement, you have written across and every one the words, “Died for a goddamned piece of paper.” at this point, i think impeachment is too good for bush… rather like how i felt about nixon as well… if he has so little regard for his “contract with america” that he’s capable of calling it a “goddamned piece of paper,” – or so little education that he doesn’t know the difference – someone ought to just shoot him now and put all of us out of his misery. 272the shows went extremely well, in spite of (or, perhaps because of) the chaos and disorganisation involved. we got all of the music cues down for Babes, which is a shame since we probably will not be performing it again. the moisture festival benefit lasted until midnight and had an unexpected, although enjoyable (from my point of view, anyway) “strategic costume failure” on the part of one of the arialistas that resulted in her doing about three-quarters of her act topless. i’m sure mike hale (the owner of the hale’s palladium, where the whole thing was going on, and a notorious “christian” who has said that if the moisture festival features a burlesque night like last year, that we can find another venue for our shows) was mortified, but the audience loved it, and i heard the arialistas talking backstage, afterwards, and from what i understand, it wasn’t even too bad from the performer’s point of view as well. more tonight, and tomorrow night, and, possibly next week, then the winter feast, which we still don’t know whether we’re actually playing or not, but i’ve got it on the schedule anyway. blah! 8/ along the same lines, Reclaim The Swastika is a site which doesn’t have much information, but that which it does have should definitely be paid attention to. from spreznib, what if we played didjeridus for them?
Machines will perform euthanasia on terminally ill patients in Israel under legislation devised not to offend Jewish law, which forbids people taking human life. A special timer will be fitted to a patient’s respirator which will sound an alarm 12 hours before turning it off. Normally, carers would override the alarm and keep the respirator turned on but, if various stringent conditions are met, including the giving of consent by the patient or legal guardian, the alarm would not be overridden. Similar timing devices, known as Sabbath clocks, are used in the homes of orthodox Jews so that light switches and electrical devices can be turned on during the Sabbath without offending religious strictures. Parliamentarians reached a solution after discussions with a 58-member panel of medical, religious and philosophical experts. “The point was that it is wrong, under Jewish law, for a person’s life to be taken by a person but, for a machine, it is acceptable,” a parliamentary spokesman said. “A man would not be able to shorten human life but a machine can.” The bill, which was approved at the third and final reading in the Knesset by 22 votes to three with one abstention, will become law next year. Danny Naveh, the health minister, described the passing of the law as a historic moment, saying: “This is one of the most important laws passed by the Knesset. It represents major moral value for the terminally ill and their families.” It is expected that elderly Israelis will begin to leave “living wills” in which they stipulate whether they would allow the new euthanasia procedure to apply to them if they were to end up in hospital, dependent on a respirator and suffering from a terminal disease. 271The Fremont Players & The Fremont Philharmonic present BABES IN THE WOOD A Farsical Musical Comedy For The Whole Family! Friday, December 9, 2005 7:00 pm Hale’s Palladium, 4301 Leary Way NW, Seattle $10 adults and $5 kids/seniors also, there’s a Moisture Festival Benefit show at the Hale’s Palladium friday and saturday evening. they’re going to be comedie/varieté shows, with a different list of performers every night, and will feature the fremont philharmonic, the zebra kings, the dangerous flares and a variety of bawdy, unseemly fun. leave the kids at home. 270
Rat brain flies jet Florida scientists have grown a brain in a petri dish and taught it to fly a fighter plane. Scientists at the university of Florida taught the ‘brain’, which was grown from 25,000 neural cells extracted from a rat embryo, to pilot an F-22 jet simulator. It was taught to control the flight path, even in mock hurricane-strength winds. “When we first hooked them up, the plane ‘crashed’ all the time,” Dr Thomas DeMarse, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Florida, said. “But over time, the neural network slowly adapts as the brain learns to control the pitch and roll of the aircraft. After a while, it produces a nice straight and level trajectory.” The brain-in-a-dish was DeMarse’ idea. To produce it, 25,000 rat neurones were suspended in a specialised liquid to keep them alive and then laid across a grid of 60 electrodes in a small glass dish. The cells at first looked like grains of sand under the microscope, but soon began to connect to form what scientists call a “live computation device” (a brain). Electrodes monitor and stimulate neural activity in this network, allowing researchers to study how the brain processes and transfers information. The scientists hope that their research will lead to hybrid computers with organic components, allowing more flexible and varied means of solving problems. One potential application is to install living computers in unmanned aircraft for missions too dangerous for humans. It is also hoped that further advances will help in the search for cures for conditions such as epilepsy, The Age reports. “The algorithms that living computers use are also extremely fault-tolerant,” Dr DeMarse said. “A few neurons die off every day in humans without any noticeable drop in performance, and yet if the same were to happen in a traditional silicon-based computer the results would be catastrophic.” The US National Science Foundation has awarded the team a $500,000 grant to produce a mathematical model of how the neurons compute. Mirecki hospitalized after beating Douglas County sheriff’s deputies are investigating the reported beating of a Kansas University professor who gained recent notoriety for his Internet tirades against Christian fundamentalists. Kansas University religious studies professor Paul Mirecki reported he was beaten by two men about 6:40 a.m. today on a roadside in rural Douglas County. In a series of interviews late this afternoon, Mirecki said the men who beat him were making references to the controversy that has propelled him into the headlines in recent weeks. “I didn’t know them, but I’m sure they knew me,” he said. Mirecki said he was driving to breakfast when he noticed the men tailgating him in a pickup truck. “I just pulled over hoping they would pass, and then they pulled up real close behind,” he said. “They got out, and I made the mistake of getting out.” He said the men beat him about the upper body with their fists, and he said he thinks they struck him with a metal object. He was treated and released at Lawrence Memorial Hospital. “I’m mostly shaken up, and I got some bruises and sore spots,” he said. Douglas County Sheriff’s Officials are classifying the case as an aggravated battery. They wouldn’t say exactly where the incident happened, citing the ongoing investigation The sheriff’s department is looking for the suspects, described as two white males between ages 30 and 40, one wearing a red visor and wool gloves, and both wearing jeans. They were last seen in a large pickup truck. Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 843-TIPS or the sheriff’s office at 841-0007. Mirecki recently wrote online that he planned to teach intelligent design as mythology in an upcoming course. He wrote it would be a “nice slap” in the “big fat face” of fundamentalists. The remarks caused an uproar, Mirecki apologized, and KU announced last week the class would be canceled. Bushes’ ‘holiday’ cards ring hollow for some What’s missing from the White House Christmas card? Christmas. This month, as in every December since he took office, President Bush sent out cards with a generic end-of-the-year message, wishing 1.4 million of his close friends and supporters a happy “holiday season.” Many people are thrilled to get a White House Christmas card, no matter what the greeting inside. But some conservative Christians are reacting as if Bush stuck coal in their stockings. “This clearly demonstrates that the Bush administration has suffered a loss of will and that they have capitulated to the worst elements in our culture,” said William A. Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. Bush “claims to be a born-again, evangelical Christian. But he sure doesn’t act like one,” said Joseph Farah, editor of the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily.com. “I threw out my White House card as soon as I got it.” Religious conservatives are miffed because they have been pressuring stores to advertise Christmas sales rather than “holiday specials” and urging schools to let students out for Christmas vacation rather than for “winter break.” They celebrated when House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) insisted that the sparkling spectacle on the Capitol lawn should be called the Capitol Christmas Tree, not a holiday spruce. ‘Sent to people of all faiths’ “Certainly President and Mrs. Bush, because of their faith, celebrate Christmas,” said Susan Whitson, Laura Bush’s press secretary. “Their cards in recent years have included best wishes for a holiday season, rather than Christmas wishes, because they are sent to people of all faiths.” That is the same rationale offered by major retailers for generic holiday catalogues, and it is accepted by groups such as the National Council of Churches. “I think it’s more important to put Christ back into our war planning than into our Christmas cards,” said the council’s general secretary, the Rev. Bob Edgar, a former Democratic congressman. But the White House’s explanation does not satisfy the groups — which have grown in number in recent years — that believe there is, in the words of the Heritage Foundation, a “war on Christmas” involving an “ever-stronger push toward a neutered ‘holiday’ season so that non-Christians won’t be even the slightest bit offended.” One of the generals on the pro-Christmas side is Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association in Tupelo, Miss. “Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether this is sinister — it’s the purging of Christ from Christmas — or whether it’s just political correctness run amok,” he said. “I think in the case of the White House, it’s just political correctness.” Retail boycotts “It bothers me that the White House card leaves off any reference to Jesus, while we’ve got Ramadan celebrations in the White House,” Wildmon said. “What’s going on there?” At the Catholic League, Donohue had just announced a boycott of the Lands’ End catalogue when he received his White House holiday card. True, he said, the Bushes included a verse from Psalm 28, but Psalms are in the Old Testament and do not mention Jesus’ birth. “They’d better address this, because they’re no better than the retailers who have lost the will to say ‘Merry Christmas,’ ” he said. Donohue said that Wal-Mart, facing a threatened boycott, added a Christmas page to its Web site and fired a customer relations employee who wrote a letter linking Christmas to “Siberian shamanism.” He was not mollified by a letter from Lands’ End saying it “adopted the ‘holiday’ terminology as a way to comply with one of the basic freedoms granted to all Americans: freedom of religion.” “Ninety-six percent of Americans celebrate Christmas,” Donohue said. “Spare me the diversity lecture.” Diversity has been a hallmark of White House greeting cards for some time, according to Mary Evans Seeley of Tampa, Fla., author of “Season’s Greetings From the White House.” The last presidential Christmas card that mentioned Christmas was in 1992. It was sent by George H.W. and Barbara Bush, parents of the current president. Seeley said the first president to send out true Christmas cards, as opposed to signed photographs or handwritten letters, was Franklin D. Roosevelt. “Merry Christmas From the President and Mrs. Roosevelt,” said his first annual card, in 1933. Politicization of a holiday Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson continued that tradition for a couple of years, but it required keeping track of Christian and non-Christian recipients. Beginning in 1966, they wished everyone a “Joyous Christmas,” and no president has attempted the two-card trick since. Seeley dates the politicization of the White House Christmas card to Richard M. Nixon, who increased the number of recipients tenfold, to 40,000, in his first year. The numbers since have snowballed, hitting 125,000 under Jimmy Carter, topping 400,000 under Bill Clinton and rising to more than a million under the current Bushes, with each president’s political party paying the bill. The wording, meanwhile, has often flip-flopped. Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter put “Merry Christmas” in their 1977 card and then switched to “Holiday Season” for the next three years. Ronald and Nancy Reagan, similarly, began with a “Joyous Christmas” in 1981 and 1982 but doled out generic holiday wishes from 1983 to 1988. The elder President Bush stayed in the “Merry Christmas” spirit all four years, and the Clintons opted for inclusive greetings for all of their eight years. The current Bush has straddled the divide, offering generic greetings along with an Old Testament verse. To some religious conservatives, that makes all the difference. “There’s a verse from Scripture in it. I don’t mind that at all, as long as we don’t try to pretend we’re not a nation under God,” said the Rev. Jerry Falwell. How the ACLU Didn’t Steal Christmas When the angry phone calls and e-mails started arriving at the office, I knew the holiday season was upon us. A typical message shouted that we at the American Civil Liberties Union affiliate in Indiana are “horrible” and “we should be ashamed of ourselves,” then concluded with an incongruous and agitated “Merry Christmas.” We get this type of correspondence a lot, mostly in reaction to a well-organized attempt by extremist groups to demonize the ACLU, crush religious diversity and make a few bucks in the process. Sadly, this self-interested effort is being promoted in the guise of defending Christmas. For example, the Alliance Defense Fund celebrates the season with an “It’s OK to say Merry Christmas” campaign, implying that the ACLU has challenged such holiday greetings. (As part of the effort, you can get a pamphlet and two Christmas pins for $29.) The Web site, WorldNetDaily, touts a book claiming “a thorough and virulent anti-Christmas campaign is being waged today by liberal activists and ACLU fanatics.” The site’s magazine has suggested there will be ACLU efforts to remove “In God We Trust” from U.S. currency, fire military chaplains and expunge all references to God in America’s founding documents. (Learn more for just $19.95 . . . ) Of course, there is no “Merry Christmas” lawsuit, nor is there any ACLU litigation about U.S. currency, military chaplains, etc. But the facts are not important to these groups, because their real message is this: By protecting the freedom of Muslims, Jews and other non-Christians through preventing government entanglement with religion, the ACLU is somehow infringing on the rights of those with majority religious beliefs. In truth, it is these Web-site Christians who are taking the Christ out of the season. Nowhere in the Sermon on the Mount did Jesus Christ ask that we celebrate his birth with narrow-mindedness and intolerance, especially for those who are already marginalized and persecuted. Instead, the New Testament — like the Torah and the Quran and countless other sacred texts — commands us to love our neighbor and to comfort the sick and the imprisoned. That’s what the ACLU does. We live in a country filled with people who are sick and disabled, people who are imprisoned, and people who hunger and thirst for justice. Those people come to our Indiana offices for help at a rate of several hundred a week, usually because they have nowhere else to turn. The least of our brothers and sisters sure aren’t getting any help from the Alliance Defense Fund or WorldNet Daily. So, as often as we can, ACLU secures justice for those folks for whom Jesus worried the most. As part of our justice mission, we work hard to protect the rights of free religious expression for all people, including Christians. For example, we recently defended the First Amendment rights of a Baptist minister to preach his message on public streets in Southern Indiana. The ACLU intervened on behalf of a Christian valedictorian in a Michigan high school, which agreed to stop censoring religious yearbook entries and supported the rights of Iowa students to distribute Christian literature at their school. There are many more examples, because the ACLU is committed to preserving the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom for all. We agree with the U.S. Supreme Court’s firm rulings that this freedom means that children who grow up in non-Christian homes should not be made to feel like outsiders in their own community’s courthouse, legislature or public schoolhouse. To our “Merry Christmas” correspondents and all other Americans, we wish you happy holidays. Fran Quigley is the executive director of the Indiana Civil Liberties Union, www.iclu.org 269December 7, 2005 – 11:04AM The US is seeking to reassure allies over its handling of terrorism suspects as Germany seeks answers over the treatment of German citizen Khaled el-Masri, who claims he was was jailed by the CIA for five months when mistaken for another man. The issue arose as US President George Bush said the United States did not secretly move terrorism suspects to foreign countries that torture to obtain information. In Italy, prosecutors and judges have issued arrest warrants against 22 alleged CIA operatives, accusing them of kidnapping. The process, known as “rendition”, has come under the spotlight after reports that the CIA was operating secret prisons in Europe for terrorism suspects. “We do not render to countries that torture, that has been our policy and that policy will remain the same,” Bush told reporters. In a rare concession to critics of US policy, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice conceded today that Washington may make mistakes in its war against terrorism and promised to put them right if they happened. But her efforts to present a united front with European allies hit a bump when US officials took issue with comments by German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the sensitive case of a German national who says he was abducted by the CIA. Merkel told a joint news conference with Rice in Berlin that the United States had acknowledged it made a mistake in the case of Khaled el-Masri, who says he was flown to Afghanistan by US agents and jailed for five months last year before being freed. Masri is suing the CIA for wrongful imprisonment but was refused entry to the United States on Saturday. “I’m pleased to say that we spoke about the individual case, which was accepted by the United States as a mistake…,” Merkel said in response to questions about the Masri case, which has caused a furore in Germany. But senior US officials, travelling to Romania with Rice on the next leg of her European tour, said Rice had not admitted a US mistake over Masri. The US government had informed Germany about his detention and release but did not say that was a mistake, one senior administration official told reporters. The differences marred the first stage of a delicate European mission by Rice, under pressure to respond to allegations that the Central Intelligence Agency has run secret prisons in eastern Europe and covertly transferred terrorist suspects across the continent. In a sign that she could expect tough questions from other European nations later in the week, Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot told his lower house of parliament that the US response to the allegations had been unsatisfactory. The answers Rice had given were “not satisfactory” and he expected a “lively discussion with Rice and foreign ministers of NATO member states on Thursday in Brussels”, the Dutch news agency ANP said. Rice refused to publicly discuss individual cases but acknowledged in general that mistakes could happen. “Any policy will sometimes result in errors, and when it happens, we will do everything we can to rectify it,” Rice said. A US civil liberties group on filed a lawsuit on Masri’s behalf today against former CIA director George Tenet and other officials, alleging wrongful imprisonment. The US official with Rice said Masri was released from an Afghan prison after Washington realised it “no longer had evidence or intelligence to justify his continued detention”. Asked if the United States had ever had evidence to hold Masri, he declined to comment further. Rice did not directly address allegations over reports the United States had run secret prisons to hold terrorism suspects in eastern Europe, possibly in Romania and Poland, which Washington has refused to confirm or deny. But she defended US methods in the struggle against militants. “If you don’t get to them before they commit their crimes, they will commit mass murder,” she said. President Bush reiterated that the United States did not torture. “I don’t talk about secret programs, covert programs, covert activities. Part of a successful war on terror is for the United States of America to be able to conduct operations, all aimed to protect the American people covertly,” Bush said. “We abide by the law of the United States, that we do not torture,” he said. “We will try to do everything we can to protect us within the law.” – Reuters and the other side of the argument (which are pages on my own site, so i will refrain from copying them here as well), Delivered Into Hell by US War on Terror and Canadian Sues US for Deporting Him to Syria for Torture. more details at http://www.maherarar.ca/ bush better start getting things right if he wants to remain president for the full term of office… and if that weren’t enough, let’s get the mentally ill involved in the whole stinking miasma… Air Marshal Kills Passenger, Citing Threat December 7, 2005 at 5:29 PM MIAMI (AP) – An agitated passenger who claimed to have a bomb in his backpack was shot and killed by a federal air marshal Wednesday after he bolted frantically from a jetliner that was about to take off, officials said. No bomb was found. The man, identified as Rigoberto Alpizar, a 44-year-old U.S. citizen, was gunned down on a jetway just before the American Airlines plane was about to leave for Orlando, near his home in Maitland. It was the first time since the Sept. 11 attacks that an air marshal had shot at anyone, Homeland Security Department spokesman Brian Doyle said. According to a witness, the man frantically ran down the aisle of the Boeing 757, flailing his arms, while his wife tried to explain that he was mentally ill and had not taken his medication. The passenger indicated there was a bomb in his bag and was confronted by air marshals but ran off the aircraft, Doyle said. The marshals went after him and ordered him to get down on the ground, but he did not comply and was shot when he apparently reached into the bag, Doyle said. The plane, Flight 924, had arrived in Miami from Medellin, Colombia, just after noon, and the shooting occurred shortly after 2 p.m. as the plane was about to take off for Orlando with the man and 119 other passengers and crew, American spokesman Tim Wagner said. Alpizar had arrived in Miami earlier in the day from Ecuador, authorities said. After the shooting, investigators spread passengers’ bags on the tarmac and let dogs sniff them for explosives, and bomb squad members blew up at least two bags. No bomb was found, said James E. Bauer, agent in charge of the Federal Air Marshals field office in Miami. He said there was no reason to believe there was any connection to terrorists. The concourse where the shooting took place was shut down for a half-hour, but the rest of the airport continued operating, officials said. Mary Gardner, a passenger aboard the Orlando-bound flight, told WTVJ-TV in Miami that the man ran down the aisle from the rear of the plane. “He was frantic, his arms flailing in the air,” she said. She said a woman followed, shouting, “My husband! My husband!” Gardner said she heard the woman say her husband was bipolar – a mental illness also known as manic-depression – and had not had his medication. Gardner said four to five shots were fired. She could not see the shooting. After the shooting, police boarded the plane and told the passengers to put their hands on their heads, Gardner said. “It was quite scary,” she told the TV station via a cell phone. “They wouldn’t let you move. They wouldn’t let you get anything out of your bag.” There were only 33 air marshals at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks. The Bush administration hired thousands more afterward, but the exact number is classified. 268this is all that’s left of the site that used to be at crosswalkbuttonhacks dot com (it’s not there any more, which is why there’s no link), which was apparently shut down by the FBI, because – you guessed it – the possiblity that terrorists could use the hacks to cross the street whenever they like… woo. … although it may be a hoax… someone has mentioned, i’m inclined to think rightly, that “3658 item” list looks a little fishy, combined with the hoaxer’s old standby “the FBI shut down my website,” and not only the fact that the mayor of kansas city is kay barnes, not roger gorman, but there’s no mention of the interview with the kansas city mayor that isn’t related to the spreading meme… also, today is Krampusnacht – i hope you haven’t been naughty! Know your xmas elves: Santa vs. The Krampus Also: i’ve always wondered about the similarity between santa and satan…
Take Free Big Five Word Choice Test 267now that they’ve successfully stolen the election with no obvious uprising from the rabble, they’ve decided that they’re going to go one better, and start making anti-american statements to the public media. honestly, if someone had been making left-wing statements as egregious as these right-wing statements are, they would very definitely not be in the positions that these RIGHT WING TERRORISTS are currently. somebody better do something, soon, otherwise we won’t have a country, or a world, to go home to much longer. Ann Coulter Bailey Smith Beverly LaHaye (Concerned Women for America) Bob Dornan (Rep. R-CA) David Barton (Wallbuilders) David Trosch Fob James (Governor of Alabama) Fred Phelps (Westboro Baptist Church) Gary Bauer (American Values) Gary North (Institute for Christian Economics) Gary Potter (Catholics for Christian Political Action) George Bush Sr. (President of the United States) George W. Bush (President of the United States) Henry Morris (Institute for Creation Research) J. B. Stoner (White Supremacist) James Dobson (Focus on the Family) James Kennedy (Center for Reclaiming America) James Watt (Secretary of the Interior) Jay Grimstead (Coalition on Revival) Jerry Falwell Jesse Helms (Sen. R-NC) Jimmy Swaggart (Jimmy Swaggart Ministries) John Ashcroft (Attorney General) John Whitehead (Rutherford Institute) Joseph McCarthy (Sen. R-WI) Joseph Morecraft (Chalcedon Presbyterian Church) Joseph Scheidler (Pro-Life Action League) Kay O’Connor (Kansas Senate Republican) Keith A. Fournier (Catholic Way) Laura Schlessinger Lester Roloff (Texas Homes for Wayward Youth) Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin Pat Buchanan (Presidential Candidate) Pat Robertson (Christian Coalition) Patrick Mahoney (Christian Defense Coalition) Paul Cameron Randall Terry (Operation Rescue) Jerry Vines (Southern Baptist Convention) Rick Santorum* (Sen. R-PA) Robert Simonds (Citizens for Excellence in Education) Robert T. Lee (Society for the Practical Establishment of the Ten Commandments) Ronald Reagan (President of the United States) Roy Moore (Former Alabama Judge) Rush Limbaugh Star Parker (Coalition on Urban Renewal & Education) Tony Evans (Promise Keepers) William Rehnquist (Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court) Michael Savage (Savage Nation) AAAARRRGH!!!Lyn Davis Lear I had a chance to talk to my hero, Frank Rich, a few months ago about election fraud and he claimed he didn’t know much about it. Perhaps he has his plate full unraveling the administration’s lies about Iraq, but with the midterm elections coming up someone has to take this issue on. I was listening to NPR yesterday and they had some young computer hackers on bragging about how easy, embarrassingly easy, it is to switch votes on the Diebold machines. Bill Clinton once mentioned that India has flawless electronic voting while ours is mired in unaccountability. I hope Frank and other journalists and bloggers of his caliber read this article by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman about the GAO report on the 2004 election. Paul Krugman and the NYTimes editorial board have been good on this issue in the past, but it has been a while since anyone has raised the subject. The Government Accountability Office is the only government office we have left that is ethical, non-partisan and incorruptible. They investigate and tell it like it is. Thank God for them. This report is very serious and must get more attention. It has taken years for the mainstream press and Congress to finally understand what we in the blogisphere have known since 2000. This administration will distort and cheat about anything and everything to get its way. If this report got the attention it deserves and broke through the static of our 500-channel universe, it could be the coup de grace of the Bush White House.
WHAT TO DO NOW… it’s obvious that complaining through "appropriate" channels is going to have no effect whatsoever, so why not make use of the CIA’s own training manual for overthrowing a government. i plan to do just that. our sacred cause needs to have more men and women join its ranks in order to perform these sabotage tasks. while the original document was intended to facilitate subversion of the nicaraguan government, the techniques may be applied to any other state or ‘military-industrial complex’ with which the individual is aggrieved. not only are some of these activities illegal, but encouraging people to engage in them is also illegal… big FUCKING deal! 265okay, yesterday i got email from this guy, who had a question about my fëanorian font. from about the third grade until almost all the way through high school i would have loved to have his job, and here he is asking me a question, out of the blue. maybe i’m doing something right after all… i bet he’d like anguish languish… finally, somebody saying something i can agree with about larry the cable guy. generally, when i’m around, the less said the better, but in this case i’m willing to make an exception. Write 10 things that make you happy, in no particular order. Tag 5 people to do the same. 1. being strange enough that people wonder about me 1 So what would our founding fathers think? Dubya claims God put him in office, but what did statesmen of early America have to say? Thomas Jefferson, (1743-1826) 3rd American president, author, scientist, architect, educator, and diplomat. Deist, avid separationist. “Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.” “I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.” “Religions are all alike – founded upon fables and mythologies.” “To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, God, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no God, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But a heresy it certainly is. Jesus told us indeed that ‘God is a spirit,’ but he has not defined what a spirit is, nor said that it is not matter. And the ancient fathers generally, if not universally, held it to be matter: light and thin indeed, an etherial gas; but still matter.” [letter to John Adams, August 15, 1820] “Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined, and imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half of the world fools and the other half hypocrites.” [Notes on Virginia] “History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes” [Letter to von Humboldt, 1813]. “The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as His father, in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.” [Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823] “In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own” [Letter to H. Spafford, 1814]. “But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State.”[in a letter to S. Kercheval, 1810] “…an amendment was proposed by inserting the words, ‘Jesus Christ…the holy author of our religion,’ which was rejected ‘By a great majority in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Mohammedan, the Hindoo and the Infidel of every denomination.'” [ From Jefferson’s biography] James Madison, (1751-1836) American president and political theorist. Popularly known as the “Father of the Constitution.” More than any other framer he is responsible for the content and form of the First Amendment. “During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.” “In no instance have . . . the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.” “Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.” [April 1, 1774] “…the number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the State” [Letter to Robert Walsh, Mar. 2, 1819] “Every new and successful example, therefore, of a perfect separation between the ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance; and I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together” [Letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822]. John Adams 1735-1826, 2nd President of the United States “This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.” [ in a letter to Thomas Jefferson] “The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity.” “The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” “Let the human mind loose. It must be loose. It will be loose. Superstition and dogmatism cannot confine it.” “But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends, have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed.” “Have you considered that system of holy lies and pious frauds that has raged and triumphed for 1500 years.” “The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles. also, for good measure, there’s a link to the Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary (although the barbary states no longer exists), which says, among other things, that “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion” (Article 11) all this is in response to those who believe that this is in any way a "christian" nation. 8/ Judge OKs bag searches on NYC subway By Jonathan Stempel NEW YORK (Reuters) – A federal judge ruled on Friday that police had a constitutional right to randomly search passengers’ bags on the New York City subway to deter terrorist attacks. U.S. District Judge Richard Berman ruled the searches were an effective and appropriate means to fight terrorism, and constituted only a “minimal intrusion” of privacy. “The risk to public safety of a terrorist bombing of New York City’s subway system is substantial and real,” Berman wrote in his opinion. “The need for implementing counter-terrorism measures is indisputable, pressing, ongoing and evolving.” Random bag searches began on July 22 after a second set of bomb attacks on London’s transit system. In a statement, Mayor Michael Bloomberg praised the ruling, calling bag searches a “reasonable precaution” that police would continue to take. The New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), which had sued to stop the searches, plans to appeal, Executive Director Donna Lieberman said in a statement. She said the “unprecedented” bag search program violated a basic freedom. More than 4 million people a day ride the 101-year-old subway system, the nation’s largest. The NYCLU had sued the city and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly in early August, calling the policy of searching thousands of passengers a day without any suspicion of wrongdoing unconstitutional. The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits searches without probable cause. Police had argued random searches were a crucial deterrent to a possible attack. The frequency of searches increased in October after Bloomberg said the FBI alerted him to a specific threat to the subway system. Searches were later reduced after the federal warning passed without incident.
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these photos were all taken in colour, but the last two almost look black-and-white… interesting. 263bizarre… firefox just crashed again. two times in a month, and i’m starting to wonder if something major might be wrong… and because of the fact that firefox crashed, i can only remember a few of the multitude of things that i was going to post about tomorrow. brain injury plus faulty software equals… 8/ i learned that elaeocarpus granitrus is latin for rudraksha… now all i’ve got to do is find a picture of the actual tree, and not just a picture of the seeds… after i went and made a grandiose statement about hinduism’s lack of blasphemy, i was actually called a blasphemer by someone in the for some reason, the fact that they’re building a hindu theme park in haridwar doesn’t worry me anywhere near as much as the fact that jim bakker is back on television, complete with a new wife and everything. i realise it’s all about forgiveness, but didn’t he make a bad enough impression the first time around? and then there’s Falwell fighting for holy holiday Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer Sunday, November 20, 2005 Evangelical Christian pastor Jerry Falwell has a message for Americans when it comes to celebrating Christmas this year: You’re either with us, or you’re against us. Falwell has put the power of his 24,000-member congregation behind the “Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign,” an effort led by the conservative legal organization Liberty Counsel. The group promises to file suit against anyone who spreads what it sees as misinformation about how Christmas can be celebrated in schools and public spaces. The 8,000 members of the Christian Educators Association International will be the campaign’s “eyes and ears” in the nation’s public schools. They’ll be reporting to 750 Liberty Counsel lawyers who are ready to pounce if, for example, a teacher is muzzled from leading the third-graders in “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” An additional 800 attorneys from another conservative legal group, the Alliance Defense Fund, are standing by as part of a similar effort, the Christmas Project. Its slogan: “Merry Christmas. It’s OK to say it.” Fanning the Yule log of discontent against what the Liberty Counsel calls “grinches” like the American Civil Liberties Union are evangelical-led organizations including the 150,000-member American Family Association. It has called for a boycott of Target stores next weekend. The chain’s crime, according to the group, is a ban on the use of “Merry Christmas” in stores, an accusation the chain denies. On his show last week, Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly offered a list of other retailers that he says refuse to use “Merry Christmas” in their store advertising. In signing on to “Friend or Foe” this month, Falwell urged the 500,000 recipients of his weekly “Falwell Confidential” e-mail to “draw a line in the sand and resist bullying tactics of the ACLU and others who intimidate school and government officials by spreading misinformation about Christmas.” Standing on the other side of that sand line are religious, liberal and secular organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, whose national director, Abe Foxman, recently bemoaned the religious right’s efforts to “Christianize” America. “This amped-up effort shows how these groups want to push into the classrooms more,” said Tami Holzman, assistant director of the Anti-Defamation League’s San Francisco office. “There is no war against Christmas,” said Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “There is no jihad against Christians. There is nothing going on around Christmas except these groups’ incessant fundraising.” How the season of ho-ho-ho evolved into “Friend or Foe” shows how the nation’s culture wars have pushed into the season of giving. Each side wants its beliefs accurately represented around the nation’s winter hearth — its public schools and government spaces. And if not, it will sue. “It’s a sad day in America when you have to retain an attorney to say ‘Merry Christmas,’ ” said Mike Johnson, an Alliance Defense Fund attorney in Louisiana who will push the Christmas cause. Organizers of the Christmas campaigns say many Christians feel aggrieved by the secularization of the season. They say teachers feel too intimidated to allow students to sing “Silent Night” in school, and they believe cities have every right to place a nativity scene in a public park. Both activities are constitutionally protected, the Christian groups say, provided that the kids also sing secular songs and the cities put up nonreligious holiday displays as well. Friends, according to “Friend or Foe” campaign sponsor Liberty Counsel, “do not discriminate against Christmas.” Foes are going to get a letter from one of the pro bono lawyers reminding them that “Christmas is constitutional,” not to mention a federal holiday. “We’ll try to educate,” said Mat Staver, president of Liberty Counsel. “But if we can’t, we’ll litigate.” Or boycott. The American Family Association called Thursday for a Thanksgiving weekend shunning of Target stores, saying the chain was refusing to allow the phrase “Merry Christmas” on in-store promotions and advertising. “I don’t know where they’re coming from,” Target spokeswoman Carolyn Brookter replied. “We have no such policy on Christmas. You can see it in our stores.” At one local Target, in Colma, most of the in-store advertising offers a generic “Gatherround.” One of the few advertising mentions of the C-word is above a Christmas card rack that says, “Celebrate Christmas.” That’s not good enough for American Family Association President Tim Wildmon, who wants to see “Merry Christmas” signs displayed prominently “if they expect Christians to come in and buy products during this so-called season.” And he isn’t worried if they offend people who aren’t Christian. “They can walk right by the sign,” Wildmon said. “It’s a federal holiday. If someone is upset by that, well, they should know that they are living in a predominantly Christian nation.” Where’s Wildmon shopping next weekend? “Wal-Mart,” he said. That chain was briefly the target of a boycott called by the Catholic Rights League after an employee described Christmas in an unflattering way in a company e-mail. The employee has since left and the boycott is off, though the Catholic Rights League still criticizes Wal-Mart for tellings its employees to say, “Happy holidays.” Wal-Mart spokesman Dan Fogleman said the “Happy holidays” greeting is “more inclusive. With 130 million customers walking through the door and 1.3 million employees, it’s safe to say there are a lot of different faiths out there.” The ACLU and its supporters believe they’re being drawn into a make-believe war. They say they’ve fielded fewer holiday-season conflicts in recent years and that everybody seems to know the rules, except those trying to make a political point. “People are free to worship in their homes and their houses of worship and if they rent out a hall,” said the ACLU’s Jeremy Gunn, national director of the group’s Freedom of Religion and Belief program. “You have to ask, why do they want to worship in the public schools? “That they’re doing this in the name of religion is very, very sad,” Gunn said. “It would be one thing if they’re talking about consumerism of the season or something, but they’re not.” Other groups are actively countering the Christmas campaigns. The Anti-Defamation League said it would send letters to school administrators nationwide on how to negotiate the “December dilemma,” emphasizing that “schools must be careful not to cross the line between teaching about religious holidays (which is permitted) and celebrating religious holidays (which is not).” The issue is a dilemma for the Anti-Defamation League, too. It commissioned a poll last month of 800 adults, 57 percent of whom said Christianity was under attack. Among evangelicals, the figure was 76 percent. “There’s a lot of fear out there,” said Finn Laursen, a retired school administrator who is now executive director of the Christian Educators Association International. Standing in the middle of the fray are school administrators like Rob Kessler, superintendent of the 24,000-student San Ramon Valley Unified School District. Kessler said it’s OK, for example, for a teacher to bring a menorah into class. “But what’s not OK is if a teacher would begin lighting candles and saying prayers,” he said. “Then it becomes a religious ceremony. But, honestly, we haven’t seen many instances of this in the last few years.” The war has even spread to Bob Norris, head of the Christmas Tree Farmers Association of New York. He lent his organization’s name to the Alliance Defense Fund’s campaign because, he said, “The people who are fighting to save this country are in favor of Christmas.” Sam Minturn, who heads the California Christmas Tree Association, said his group hadn’t taken a position on the issue. In fact, he doesn’t mind the term “holiday tree” — a phrase that angers some “Friend or Foe” campaigners. “I don’t care what people call them, as long as they buy them,” said Minturn, who lives in Merced County. “Go ahead and call them a weed.” the rest of it will have to wait until those particular ideas re-surface in what passes for my brain these days… 8/ 262i’d just like to say that as a news source, there’s nothing that even comes close to The Register. yeah, i know that it’s a geek thing, and a british geek thing at that, but there are a lot of other things they offer that don’t have anything to do with technology and are still a lot more on top of what’s actually going on in the world than anything amerikkka has to offer… and their attitude is priceless. i was browsing along when i came across Intelligent design ‘not science’, says Vatican astronomer, which is almost exactly how i feel about the whole thing, and from there i linked to University of California sued by monkey haters, which is also pretty much exactly how i would respond to such stupid behaviour, and from there i linked to Misconceptions about Evolution, which i actully bookmarked in my “against stupidism” section, specifically to use against the next creationist i come across… in other news, Fairies stop developers’ bulldozers in their tracks By Will Pavia and Chris Windle VILLAGERS who protested that a new housing estate would “harm the fairies” living in their midst have forced a property company to scrap its building plans and start again. Marcus Salter, head of Genesis Properties, estimates that the small colony of fairies believed to live beneath a rock in St Fillans, Perthshire, has cost him £15,000. His first notice of the residential sensibilities of the netherworld came as his diggers moved on to a site on the outskirts of the village, which crowns the easterly shore of Loch Earn. He said: “A neighbour came over shouting, ‘Don’t move that rock. You’ll kill the fairies’.” The rock protruded from the centre of a gently shelving field, edged by the steep slopes of Dundurn mountain, where in the sixth century the Celtic missionary St Fillan set up camp and attempted to convert the Picts from the pagan darkness of superstition. “Then we got a series of phone calls, saying we were disturbing the fairies. I thought they were joking. It didn’t go down very well,” Mr Salter said. In fact, even as his firm attempted to work around the rock, they received complaints that the fairies would be “upset”. Mr Salter still believed he was dealing with a vocal minority, but the gears of Perthshire’s planning process were about to be clogged by something that looked suspiciously like fairy dust. “I went to a meeting of the community council and the concerns cropped up there,” he said. The council was considering lodging a complaint with the planning authority, likely to be the kiss of death for a housing development in a national park. Jeannie Fox, council chairman, said: “I do believe in fairies but I can’t be sure that they live under that rock. I had been told that the rock had historic importance, that kings were crowned upon it.” Her main objection to moving the rock was based on the fact that it had stood on the hillside for so long: a sort of MacFeng Shui that many in the village subscribe to. “There are a lot of superstitions going about up here and people do believe that things like standing stones and large rocks should never be moved,” she said. Half a mile into Loch Earn is Neish Island. From there the Neish clan set forth to plunder the surrounding country, retreating each time to their island. Early in the 17th century, the MacNabs retaliated from the next valley, carrying a boat over the mountains, storming the island and slaughtering most of the Neishes. This summer Betty Neish McInnes, the last of that line in St Fillans, went to her grave — but not before she had imparted the ancient Pict significance of the rock to many of her neighbours. “A lot of people think the rock had some Pictish meaning,” Mrs Fox said. “It would be extremely unlucky to move it.” Mr Salter did not just want to move the rock. He wanted to dig it up, cart it to the roadside and brand it with the name of his new neighbourhood. The Planning Inspectorate has no specific guidelines on fairies but a spokesman said: “Planning guidance states that local customs and beliefs must be taken into account when a developer applies for planning permission.” Mr Salter said: “We had to redesign the entire thing from scratch.” The new estate will now centre on a small park, in the middle of which stands a curious rock. Work begins next month, if the fairies allow. finally, there’s pictures of their levees and our levees, which would be amusing if it weren’t so shocking. 261i just won this! 260i moved up to a 2-gauge and very quickly discovered that i could probably move up to a 0-gauge within a couple of days, as my 4-gauge hole is stretchy enough that 2-gauge makes practically no difference. i’m probably going to get a 0-gauge plug pretty soon, but not this week. i got 20 rudraksha malas in the mail today, along with some other items that are going, as “christmas” gifts, to various people, some of whom might actually be reading this, so i won’t say anything more than that. here is a link to a story about someone whose radical political and queer bumper stickers raised the ire of "christian" vandals to the point where they were destructive enough that the radical political queer’s insurance rates have gone up for the second time this year. the whole idea of "christian" vandalism is enough of an oxymoron that i’m having some difficulty wrapping my admittedly damaged brain around the concept, but that’s beside the point. the police were right up front about the fact that they probably aren’t going to figure out who did this. if they were "christian" bumper stickers which were vandalised by radical, political, queer vandals, i’m positive that the police would be a lot more willing to figure it out. after all, "christians" are fairly difficult to discern, because they are so common, but queer, radical, political vandals are uncommon enough that they stick out and can be picked out of a crowd fairly easily… 8/ reminder that you can ask przxqgl anything… anything at all. i’ll probably even answer… Iraqi Leaders Call for Pullout Timetable By SALAH NASRAWI CAIRO, Egypt — Iraqi leaders at a reconciliation conference reached out to the Sunni Arab community by calling for a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces and saying the country’s opposition had a “legitimate right” of resistance. A day after the communique was finalized by Iraqi Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni leaders, Washington reiterated Tuesday that the United States would stay only as long as it takes to stabilize Iraq. The communique condemned terrorism but was a clear acknowledgment of the Sunni position that insurgents should not be labeled as terrorists if they don’t target innocent civilians or institutions that provide for the welfare of Iraqis. The leaders agreed on “calling for the withdrawal of foreign troops according to a timetable, through putting in place an immediate national program to rebuild the armed forces … control the borders and the security situation” and end terror attacks. The preparatory reconciliation conference, held under the auspices of the Arab League, was attended by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Iraqi Shiite and Kurdish lawmakers as well as leading Sunni politicians. Sunni leaders have been pressing the Shiite-majority government to agree to a timetable for the withdrawal of all foreign troops. The statement recognized that goal, but did not lay down a specific time _ reflecting instead the government’s stance that Iraqi security forces must be built up first. On Monday, Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Jabr suggested U.S.-led forces should be able to leave Iraq by the end of next year, saying the one-year extension of the mandate for the multinational force in Iraq by the U.N. Security Council this month could be the last. “By the middle of next year we will be 75 percent done in building our forces and by the end of next year it will be fully ready,” he told the Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera. On Tuesday, the State Department “the United States supports the ongoing transitional political process in Iraq, and encourages participation by all Iraqis in the political process.” “President Bush has made our position very clear,” department spokeswoman Julie Reside said. “The coalition remains committed to helping the Iraqi people achieve stability and security as they rebuild their country. We will stay as long as it takes to achieve those goals and no longer.” Debate in Washington over when to bring troops home turned bitter last week after decorated Vietnam War vet Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., called for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, and estimated a pullout could be complete within six months. Republicans rejected Murtha’s position. In Egypt, the final communique’s attempt to define terrorism omitted any reference to attacks against U.S. or Iraqi forces. Delegates from across the political and religious spectrum said the omission was intentional. They spoke anonymously, saying they feared retribution. “Though resistance is a legitimate right for all people, terrorism does not represent resistance. Therefore, we condemn terrorism and acts of violence, killing and kidnapping targeting Iraqi citizens and humanitarian, civil, government institutions, national resources and houses of worships,” the document said. The final communique also stressed participants’ commitment to Iraq’s unity and called for the release of all “innocent detainees” who have not been convicted. It asked that allegations of torture against prisoners be investigated and those responsible be held accountable. The statement also demanded “an immediate end to arbitrary raids and arrests without a documented judicial order.” The communique included no means for implementing its provisions, leaving it unclear what it will mean in reality other than to stand as a symbol of a first step toward bringing the feuding parties together in an agreement in principle. “We are committed to this statement as far as it is in the best interests of the Iraqi people,” said Harith al-Dhari, leader of the powerful Association of Muslim Scholars, a hard-line Sunni group. He said he had reservations about the document as a whole, and delegates said he had again expressed strong opposition to the concept of federalism enshrined in Iraq’s new constitution. The gathering was part of a U.S.-backed league attempt to bring the communities closer together and assure Sunni Arab participation in a political process now dominated by Iraq’s Shiite majority and large Kurdish minority. The conference also decided on broad conditions for selecting delegates to a wider reconciliation gathering in the last week of February or the first week of March in Iraq. It essentially opens the way for all those who are willing to renounce violence against fellow Iraqis. Shiites had been strongly opposed to participation in the conference by Sunni Arab officials from the regime of Saddam Hussein or from pro-insurgency groups. That objection seemed to have been glossed over in the communique. The Cairo meeting was marred by differences between participants at times, and at one point Shiite and Kurdish delegates stormed out of a closed session when one of the speakers said they had sold out to the Americans. Nepal Boy Called Reincarnation of Buddha By BINAJ GURUBACHARYA KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) — A teenage boy has been meditating in a Nepalese jungle for six months, and thousands have flocked to see him, with some believing he is the reincarnation of Buddha, police and media said Wednesday. Ram Bahadur Banjan, 15, sits cross-legged and motionless with eyes closed among the roots of a tree in the jungle of Bara, about 100 miles south of the capital, Katmandu. He’s supposedly been that way since May 17 – but his followers have been keeping him from public view at night. A reporter for the Kantipur newspaper, Sujit Mahat, said he spent two days at the site, and that about 10,000 people are believed to visit daily. Soldiers have been posted in the area for crowd control, officials said. A makeshift parking lot and cluster of food stalls have sprung up near Banjan’s retreat, an area not previously frequented by visitors. Many visitors believe Banjan is a reincarnation of Gautama Siddhartha, who was born not far away in southwestern Nepal around 500 B.C. and later became revered as the Buddha, which means Enlightened One. Others aren’t so sure. Police inspector Chitra Bahadur Gurung said officers have interviewed the boy’s associates about their claim that Banjan has gone six months without food or drink. Officers have not directly questioned the boy, who appears deep in meditation and doesn’t speak. “We have a team … investigating the claim on how anyone can survive for so long without food and water,” Gurung said. Local officials have also asked the Royal Nepal Academy of Science and Technology in Katmandu to send scientists to examine Banjan. Mahat said visitors can catch a glimpse of Banjan from a roped-off area about 80 feet away from him between dawn and dusk. Followers then place a screen in front of him, blocking the view and making it impossible to know what he is doing at night, Mahat said. “We could not say what happens after dark,” Mahat said. “People only saw what went on in the day, and many believed he was some kind of god.” Buddhism teaches that right thinking and self-control can enable people to achieve nirvana – a divine state of peace and release from desire. Buddhism has about 325 million followers, mostly in Asia. Thu Nov 24, 7:00 AM ET OTTAWA, CANADA (PRWEB) November 24, 2005 — A former Canadian Minister of Defence and Deputy Prime Minister under Pierre Trudeau has joined forces with three Non-governmental organizations to ask the Parliament of Canada to hold public hearings on Exopolitics — relations with “ETs.” By “ETs,” Mr. Hellyer and these organizations mean ethical, advanced extraterrestrial civilizations that may now be visiting Earth. On September 25, 2005, in a startling speech at the University of Toronto that caught the attention of mainstream newspapers and magazines, Paul Hellyer, Canada’s Defence Minister from 1963-67 under Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Prime Minister Lester Pearson, publicly stated: “UFOs, are as real as the airplanes that fly over your head.” Mr. Hellyer went on to say, “I’m so concerned about what the consequences might be of starting an intergalactic war, that I just think I had to say something.” Hellyer revealed, “The secrecy involved in all matters pertaining to the Roswell incident was unparalled. The classification was, from the outset, above top secret, so the vast majority of U.S. officials and politicians, let alone a mere allied minister of defence, were never in-the-loop.” Hellyer warned, “The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning. He stated, “The Bush administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide.” Hellyer’s speech ended with a standing ovation. He said, “The time has come to lift the veil of secrecy, and let the truth emerge, so there can be a real and informed debate, about one of the most important problems facing our planet today.” Three Non-governmental organizations took Hellyer’s words to heart, and approached Canada’s Parliament in Ottawa, Canada’s capital, to hold public hearings on a possible ET presence, and what Canada should do. The Canadian Senate, which is an appointed body, has held objective, well-regarded hearings and issued reports on controversial issues such as same-sex marriage and medical marijuana, On October 20, 2005, the Institute for Cooperation in Space requested Canadian Senator Colin Kenny, Senator, Chair of The Senate Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, “schedule public hearings on the Canadian Exopolitics Initiative, so that witnesses such as the Hon. Paul Hellyer, and Canadian-connected high level military-intelligence, NORAD-connected, scientific, and governmental witnesses facilitated by the Disclosure Project and by the Toronto Exopolitics Symposium can present compelling evidence, testimony, and Public Policy recommendations.” The Non-governmental organizations seeking Parliament hearings include Canada-based Toronto Exopolitics Symposium, which organized the University of Toronto Symposium at which Mr. Hellyer spoke. The Disclosure Project, a U.S.-based organization that has assembled high level military-intelligence witnesses of a possible ET presence, is also one of the organizations seeking Canadian Parliament hearings. Vancouver-based Institute for Cooperation in Space (ICIS), whose International Director headed a proposed 1977 Extraterrestrial Communication Study for the White House of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who himself has publicly reported a 1969 Close Encounter of the First Kind with a UFO, filed the original request for Canadian Parliament hearings. The Canadian Exopolitics Initiative, presented by the organizations to a Senate Committee panel hearing in Winnipeg, Canada, on March 10, 2005, proposes that the Government of Canada undertake a Decade of Contact. The proposed Decade of Contact is “a 10-year process of formal, funded public education, scientific research, educational curricula development and implementation, strategic planning, community activity, and public outreach concerning our terrestrial society’s full cultural, political, social, legal, and governmental communication and public interest diplomacy with advanced, ethical Off-Planet cultures now visiting Earth.” Canada has a long history of opposing the basing of weapons in Outer Space. On September 22, 2004 Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin declared to the U.N. General Assembly, “Space is our final frontier. It has always captured our imagination. What a tragedy it would be if space became one big weapons arsenal and the scene of a new arms race. Martin stated, “In 1967, the United Nations agreed that weapons of mass destruction must not be based in space. The time has come to extend this ban to all weapons…” In May, 2003, speaking before the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada Lloyd Axworthy, stated “Washington’s offer to Canada is not an invitation to join America under a protective shield, but it presents a global security doctrine that violates Canadian values on many levels.” Axworthy concluded, “There should be an uncompromising commitment to preventing the placement of weapons in space.” On February 24, 2005, Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin made official Canada’s decision not to take part in the U.S government’s Ballistic Missile Defence program. Paul Hellyer, who now seeks Canadian Parliament hearings on relations with ETs, on May 15, 2003, stated in Toronto’s Globe & Mail newspaper, “Canada should accept the long-standing invitation of U.S. Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio to launch a conference to seek approval of an international treaty to ban weapons in space. That would be a positive Canadian contribution toward a more peaceful world.” In early November 2005, the Canadian Senate wrote ICIS, indicating the Senate Committee could not hold hearings on ETs in 2005, because of their already crowded schedule. “That does not deter us,” one spokesperson for the Non-governmental organizations said, “We are going ahead with our request to Prime Minister Paul Martin and the official opposition leaders in the House of Commons now, and we will re-apply with the Senate of Canada in early 2006. “Time is on the side of open disclosure that there are ethical Extraterrestrial civilizations visiting Earth,” The spokesperson stated. “Our Canadian government needs to openly address these important issues of the possible deployment of weapons in outer war plans against ethical ET societies.” MINISTER TOUTS ‘JESUS CONDOMS’ TO END TEENAGE SEX Controversial preacher says teenagers will stop having illicit sex no matter how strong the temptation if parents will make sure they never leave home without one of his trademarked “What Would Jesus Do?” condoms stashed away in their purse or wallet. “WWJD condoms are a divinely inspired idea and they work like a charm,” says the Rev. Dr. Paul Morehead, whose short-wave radio broadcast from Montgomery, Ala., reaches an estimated 16 million listeners worldwide. “Don’t tell me about hormones. Don’t talk to me about unbridled appetites of the flesh. “When a young man and a young woman give in to Satan, when they strip down like animals in the wild and prepare themselves for a lusty round of heavy petting and full-blown sex, what better reminder for them to buck up than a WWJD condom with the image of our Lord and Savior right there on the package, and then, as a fail safe measure, also on the prophylactic itself? “I’ve tested them with my own teenagers and hardly a weekend passes when one of them doesn’t come back home with a WWJD condom completely unrolled and dangling unused from his or her fingertips or pushed up under the seat of the car as a badge of honor. “At the very moment their temptation was strongest, they turned back from sin after seeing the boldly-lettered WWJD logo that signifies, ‘Stop! Think! What would Jesus do in this situation?’ ” Flabbergasted critics couldn’t disagree more. They say putting Jesus Christ on condoms isn’t just tacky, it’s a sacrilege — and they openly wonder if preacher Morehead hasn’t lost his mind. “If you give a child a condom, you’re pretty much telling him that sex is O.K. as long as you use protection,” fumes Marcia Kenderly, a born-again Christian with four daughters ranging in age from 13 to 18. “Rev. Morehead says his own children show him their WWJD condoms as proof that even though they came close to having sex, they didn’t. “But how can he be sure that instead of having sex with the condom, they didn’t have sex without it? I’m a married adult and I wouldn’t let my husband use one of those things. “I feel like I’m committing a sin just thinking about it.” Naysayers aside, Morehead has arranged for a manufacturer to produce 100,000 of the WWJD prophylactics that he plans to sell for $5 a pop over the Internet and through Christian bookstores nationwide. “All the profits will go to a home I’m building for unwed mothers,” says the preacher. “A home that wouldn’t be needed if those girls had been carrying a WWJD condom.” Published on: 02/22/2005 259philately ANY BUSINESS OR SERVICE THAT ADVERTISES USING UNSOLICITED EMAIL!!! I HATE SPAMMERS! i don’t know WHO is encouraging these people, but i wish they would STOP!! 258
also, thanks to the enlightened rantings of a brain damaged freak |
