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Silent Coup: The Removal of a President - Len Colodny & Robert Gettlin

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STOP TERRORISM

ABBREVIATIONS FOR SITES I OFTEN STEAL NEWS ITEMS FROM:

og = J Orlin Grabbe
u = Progressive Review's Undernews
a = Antiwar

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Vatican Exposed: Money, Murder, and the Mafia

Amazon Light

Just consider what current events will sound like two thousand years from now -- the greatest nation on Earth bombing some of the smallest and weakest for no clear reasons, people starving in parts of the world while farmers are paid not to plant crops in others, technophiles sitting at home playing electronic golf rahter than the real thing, and police forces ordered to arrest people who simply desire to ingest a psychoactive weed. People of that era will also likely laugh it all off as fantastic myths...

It is time for those who desire true freedom to exert themselves -- to fight back against the forces who desire domination through fear and disunity.

This does not have to involve violence. It can be done in small, simple ways, like not financing that new Sport Utility Vehicle, cutting up all but one credit card, not opting for a second mortgage, turning off that TV sitcom for a good book, asking questions and speaking out in church or synagogue, attending school board and city council meetings, voting for the candidate who has the least money, learning about the Fully Informed Jury movement and using it when called -- in general, taking responsibility for one's own actions. Despite the omnipresent advertising for the Lotto -- legalized government gambling -- there is no free lunch. Giving up one's individual power for the hope of comfort and security has proven to lead only to tyranny.

from Rule by Secrecy by Jim Marrs

* * * *

You had to take those pieces of paper with you when you went shopping, though by the time I was nine or ten most people used plastic cards. . .It seems so primitive, totemistic even, like cowry shells. I must have used that kind of money myself, a little, before everything went on the Compubank.

I guess that's how they were able to do it, in the way they did, all at once, without anyone knowing beforehand. If there had still been portable money, it would have been more difficult.

It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time.

Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control.

I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe. The entire government, gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen?

That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on.

. . . Things continued on in that state of suspended animation for weeks, although some things did happen. Newspapers were censored and some were closed down, for security reasons they said. The roadblocks began to appear, and Identipasses. Everyone approved of that, since it was obvious you couldn't be too careful. They said that new elections would be held, but that it would take some time to prepare for them. The thing to do, they said, was to continue on as usual.

from The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

* * * *

By the time Oscar reached the outskirts of Washington, DC, The Louisiana air base had benn placed under siege.

The base's electrical power supply had long since been cut off for lack of payment. The aircraft had no fuel. The desperate federal troops were bartering stolen equipment for food and booze. Desertion was rampant. The air base commander had released a sobbing video confession and had shot himself.

Green Huey had lost patience with the long-festering scandal. He was moving in for the kill. Attacking and seizing an federal air base with his loyal state militia would have been entirely too blatant and straightforward. Instead the rogue Governor employed proxy guerrillas.

Huey had won the favor of nomad prole groups by providing them with safe havens. He allowed them to squat in Louisiana's many federally declared contamination zones. These forgotten landscapes were tainted with petrochemical effluent and hormone-warping pesticides, and were hence officially unfit for human settlement. The prole hordes had different opinions on that subject.

Proles cheerfully grouped in any locale where conventional authority had grown weak. Whenever the net-based proles were not constantly harassed by the authorities, they coalesced and grew ambitious. Though easily scattered by focused crackdowns, they regrouped as swiftly as a horde of gnats. With their reaping machines and bio-breweries, they could live off the land at the very base of the food chain. They had no stake in the established order, and they cherished a canny street-level knowledge of society's infrastructural weaknesses. They made expensive enemies. . .

Louisiana's ecologically blighted areas were ideal for proles. The disaster zones were also impromptu wildlife sanctuaries, since wild animals found chemical fouling much easier to survive than the presence of human beings. After decades of wild subtropical growth, Louisiana's toxic dumps were as impenetrable as Sherwood Forest.

from Distraction by Bruce Sterling

and s-integrator

Saturday, October 12, 2002

"We stress, though, that no spy has ever been caught using the polygraph"

Decades after lie detector testing began -- and then discredited -- it's still widely used

You'd think they'd have come up with something better by now, or trained people to use their intuition at least -- which is undoubtedly more reliable.
Polygraph tests are ineffective in catching spies and have probably tarred thousands of innocent government employees and applicants with unwarranted suspicion, a top scientific panel has concluded.

While lie detectors may have some utility in criminal investigations, where subjects can be tested on specific questions about a crime, they tend to be unreliable in countering espionage, where large numbers of people are asked general questions about whether they have done anything wrong, the scientists said in a report.

"Too many loyal employees may be falsely judged as deceptive, or too many major security threats could go undetected," the scientists said, warning against reliance on the tests.

The study was commissioned by the Department of Energy in the wake of controversy over the case of scientist Wen Ho Lee, who was wrongly accused of passing U.S. secrets to China. Lee was subjected to polygraph testing, and controversy has swirled around how the tests were administered.

Polygraph tests have long been controversial; they are largely rejected by the courts and most countries, the scientists said. Still, investigators use them routinely, in part because of the belief that simply administering the tests make subjects more compliant and amenable to making confessions.
So basically it's psyops, and not even very good psyops.

11:46 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

This ain't no Love Boat:

Belowdecks, some cruise ships are floating sweat shops according to this article [u]
...The report shows that as ships get bigger the passenger to crew ratio[ ] will grow from 2:1 to 3:1 in a bid to cut costs. The "Sweatships" report describes how some cruise liners have become a floating hell for thousands of workers. Below deck, hundreds of workers from Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America staff engine rooms, laundries, kitchens and restaurants. Wages can be as low as US$45 per month for waiters and waitresses and contracts are short and insecure.

An ITF survey of 400 cruise ship employees showed that 95 per cent are working seven days a week with time off restricted to turnaround in port. Over a third surveyed worked up to 12 hours a day while just under a third worked up to 14 hours. Holidays are not included during the contract period. Instead, workers return home and wait for two or three months for the next contract.

11:27 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

One year anniversary yesterday

Forgot to note this -- "charging the canvas" (formerly "fifteen foot italian shoe" and originally "Keoha Pint") was a year old yesterday.

Seems like a lot longer.

I've been exhausted lately for several reasons, so some stuff I've wanted to post hasn't made it up here. And I haven't even got all the links etc. up on my sister site planing lakes that I started on Sep 22 -- lots more to do there.

But all in all, it's been a pretty good year; and I like doing this a lot, for myself and the few who visit.

Thanks for stopping by. It's always nice to know you're out there, so comment or email if you have the notion, whatever you have to say.

I have an attitude but hey, I grew up in Jersey. Don't be shy.

10:57 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Looks like General Ripper was right about one thing. . .

Canadian Dental Association advises against fluoride toothpaste for kids before permanent teeth emerge (6 or 7)
"Studies show that tooth decay is declining in both fluoridated and non-fluoridated areas while dental fluorosis (white spotted, yellow or brown stained and sometimes crumbly teeth) is increasing, more so in fluoridated areas," says lawyer Paul Beeber, President of the New York State Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation. "Furthermore, fluoride poses harmful systemic damage as well as dental damage," says Beeber.

[...]

"Fluoride's enamel strengthening effects are primarily topical, or when fluoride touches the outside of the tooth," says [dentist Hardy] Limeback, [head of the Department of Preventive Dentistry, University of Toronto, and past-president of the Canadian Association for Dental Research]. "Fluoride's adverse effects occur upon ingestion. Fluoride gets into every cell of the body and can especially damage the bones and teeth."

"Half of all ingested fluoride remains in the skeletal system and accumulates with age," says Limeback. "Studies have linked fluoridation to hip fractures and high levels of naturally-occurring water fluoride to crippling skeletal fluorosis, a bone deforming arthritic-type disease endemic to India," says Limeback.

A study by Limeback shows that residents of fluoridated Toronto have twice as much fluoride in their hip bones as residents of non- fluoridated Montreal. "Worse, we discovered that fluoride is actually altering the basic architecture of human bones," says Limeback. Ironically, "Here in Toronto we've been fluoridating for 36 years. Yet Vancouver, which has never fluoridated, has a cavity rate lower than Toronto's," says Limeback.

[...]

The American Dental Association (ADA) still recommends fluoride supplements for children from 6 months to 16 years old in non or low- fluoridated communities.

"The ADA is clinging to outmoded ideas," says Beeber. "And they are trailing behind the CDA by failing to protect our children." "Fluoride supplements and water fluoridation must stop immediately," says Beeber.
Better to stay away from it completely, methinks.

2:08 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

US Drought update

1:18 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

~~Big-time loan sharks~~ Respected 125-year old lender Household Finance smirks, throws victims a bone

9:57 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Preserving uh security:

US troops to rule Iraq, erect pyramid with neon ChevronMobil logo

Think that scene in Blade Runner in which Deckerd's flying police car approaches the Tyrrell pyramid, over flaring refinery pipes in the smoky orange twilight. . .

9:44 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Pakistani election more crooked than Florida's

9:37 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Friday, October 11, 2002

Anti-American parties gain control of 2 Pakistani provinces adjacent to Afghanistan

Which may make searching for the Taliban problematic for Americans -- and contribute to the instability of Musharraf's coalition government.

7:14 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Proposal to prove US selflessness and purity of motive re Iraq

A modest proposal from a reader of Undernews.
LLOYDYBOY - There are a lot of cynics out there who doubt the motives behind president Bush's case for war against Iraq. Bush says that, if the US goes to war, it will be to: remove a tyrant who attacks his neighbors and abuses his own people; neutralize Iraq's WMD threat; and, clear out a terrorist haven -- Bush has cast the US as, essentially, a selfless actor. The cynics are not impressed -- they say that the coming war is all about the US' grabbing Iraq's oil. In order to defeat this cynicism, assure the world of his noble intentions and further secure support for action against Iraq (if needed), it is imperative that President Bush immediately propose, and congress approve, a bill that would ban US oil companies (and oil service companies, like Halliburton, Inc.) from doing business in a post war Iraq for a period of at least 10 years.

5:25 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

India and Israel in plot to destabilize Pakistan?
It has been learned from highly placed intelligence sources that India's Reasearch and Analysis Wing (RAW) and Israel's Mossad are collaborating to train several hundred militants to be used in an attempt to destabilize the administration of President General Pervez Musharraf.

The sources say that training camps have been established near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, and the eastern city of Jalalabad, which lies close to Pakistan's western tribal areas. It is said that RAW has arranged most of the "human resources", while training is the responsibility of the Special Operations Division (Metsada) of Mossad. Metsada generally conducts highly sensitive assassination, sabotage, paramilitary and psychological warfare projects.

Once trained, the recruits will infiltrate the border areas of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Balochistan Province, where they will attempt to forge links with local tribespeople and militants in an effort to rally support for an uprising against Musharraf, who is widely discredited in these regions for abandoning the Taliban and siding with the US in its war on terror. These provinces have a strong pro-Taliban history.

11:24 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Good Doonesbury today

10:57 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

For the record:

~~Today~~ Yesterday Congress caved on Iraq

Wayne, your clock's 4 minutes fast. . .

12:01 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, October 10, 2002

IHT piece on hackers punching holes in national firewalls
...Hacktivismo, a two-year-old group of about 40 programmers and computer security professionals scattered across five continents ... is just one of a handful of grass-roots organizations and small companies that are uniting politically minded programmers and technologically astute dissidents to combat Internet surveillance and censorship by governments around the globe, including those of Saudi Arabia, Burma, Laos, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates as well as China.

Some protect the identities of computer users in countries where Internet use is monitored closely. Others are creating peer-to-peer networks that allow for anonymous file sharing. Some have taken established techniques for encrypting data and made them easier to use. Still others are adopting techniques used by commercial e-mail spammers to send political e-mail messages past restrictive filters.

11:34 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Vietnam all over again?
From the early 1950s onward, CIA's assessments in the main proved more accurate than those of any other US Government entity, and CIA's analytic record on Vietnam compares favorably with its endeavors in the counterinsurgency field. CIA officers fairly consistently insisted their analyses showed that military force alone would not win the war; that our South Vietnamese creation, the GVN, was not proving adequate to the political-military task; that we should not underestimate the enemy's covert presence throughout South Vietnamese society; that we should not underestimate the enemy's staying power; that US bombing efforts were not appreciably slowing the enemy's progress in the South; that the enemy would try to match US escalation rather than meaningfully negotiate; and that ill-founded official claims of great progress distorted reality to the detriment of policy objectives. CIA's record of candor is all the more remarkable because CIA officers often had to brave pressures from senior political and military officers to "get on the team" and to support the war effort with more optimistic findings and estimates.
This CIA document pertains to CIA failures re Vietnam, but the intro paragraph excerpt above matches my sense (after reading about Des FitzGerald's (Chief of the Far East Division in the late 50s) opinion in The Very Best Men... and what I remember of the Pentagon Papers material) of the agency's prescience in the 50s, which was largely ignored by the military and White House.

9:20 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Now Russia has joined the chorus of world powers haggling over Iraq oil like it's a prize bull ready to be carved up [a]

11:05 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

In the face of 20-30% occupancy, a Jerusalem hotel lets some customers set their own rates
The hotel's troubles are symptomatic of the broader picture.

In 2001, 1.2 million tourists visited Israel, down 54% from the year before and translating into a $1.7bn loss of tourism receipts.

Two dozen restaurants and at least four hotels have closed in Jerusalem alone since the fighting started in October 2000.

And even the banking sector is suffering the after-effects, according to Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz.

In July, the paper reported that banks may have to set aside a "large" if unspecified sum to cover "doubtful" debts incurred by the country's hotel chains of up to 2.5bn shekels.

10:43 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Line-provisioning technology shrinks dorm room pipes to stop file-sharing from overwhelming college networks

Understandable I guess.

2:11 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Immanuel Wallerstein and the end of US hegemony -- in 1974 [u]
"The United States has been fading as a global power since the 1970s, and the U.S. response to the terrorist attacks has merely accelerated this decline." So says Immanuel Wallerstein, the Yale University political scientist who is by far the most outspoken member of this camp. A gravelly old contrarian with little time for the orthodoxies of the left or the right, he may have gained his remove by teaching at McGill University in the 1970s.

In a forthcoming book, to be titled Decline of American Power,he describes his country as "a lone superpower that lacks true power, a world leader nobody follows and few respect, and a nation drifting dangerously amidst a global chaos it cannot control."

In his view, America gave up the ghost in 1974, when it admitted defeat in Vietnam and discovered that the conflict had more or less exhausted the gold reserves, crippling its ability to remain a major economic power. It has remained the focus of the world's attention partly for lack of any serious challenger to the greenback for the world's savings, and because it has kept attracting foreign investments at a rate of $1.2-billion (U.S.) per day.

[...]

This is how great powers end: Not by suddenly collapsing, but by quietly becoming Just Another Country. This happened to England around 1873, but it wasn't until 1945 that anyone there noticed.

Outsiders do notice. Spend some time talking to a currency trader or a foreign financier, and you'll glimpse the end of the almighty dollar: Right now, about 70 per cent of the world's savings are in greenbacks, while America contributes about 30 per cent of the world's production -- an imbalance that has been maintained for the past 30 years only because Japan collapsed and Europe took too long to get its house together.

A Japanese CEO told me this in blunt terms the other day: "It was Clinton's sole great success that he kept the world economy in dollars for 10 years longer than anyone thought he would. But nobody's staying in dollars any more."

1:27 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sobering Sam Smith on the police riot no one noticed in D.C. last week
...approximately 650 peaceful protesters were arrested in Washington on one day, the third largest mass arrest in the city's history and the second greatest on a single day. The offenses with which they were charged were almost all minor misdemeanors that in a civilized society would have been handled with a ticket or a summons. Instead the protesters were manhandled, assaulted, dragged, handcuffed and then incarcerated under conditions that constituted deliberate mistreatment in some cases bordering on - as in the case of those left cuffed long hours from hand to foot - a form of torture.

Many, if not most, of the protesters had committed no offense at all. They had simply been at the wrong place at the wrong time when the DC police decided to cor[r]al anyone within a certain area and take them off to jail.

[...]

The media has made sure, however, that most people don't understand this. Through endless TV police shows and the blas� manner in which the press covers police brutality and misconduct, the media has encouraged the public to accept criminal excesses by the police and has encouraged the cops to engage in them. In the Washington example, the Washington Post prior to the demonstrations beat the drums for a police crackdown and afterwards, the so-called alternative weekly, City Paper ridiculed the protesters and had no substantive criticism of the police.

We could find only one mainstream journalist - Adrienne Washington of the Washington Times - who spoke up for the First amendment and one local law professor who wrote an op ed piece criticizing the police.

In such ways has the media deeply enabled the sociopathy of contemporary law enforcement, the end of constitutional government, and the growing and completely rational fear of law-abiding citizens that speaking up for one's rights has become too dangerous to attempt.

1:13 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

FBI warrant and civil rights abuses, blunders and illegal surveillance far worse than indicated by unprecedented intelligence court citing a few months ago

Which is scary when you realize this refers to early 2000, and you think about the boosted budget and expansion of powers the FBI has enjoyed since the PATRIOT Act.

12:31 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Official Colombian human rights defender slams US-backed fumigation program as threat to people's health

Guess he just doesn't get that Drugs Are Evil and people's health and civil rights just don't figure in the equation. We're at War here, buster.

Clearly a coke-sniffing terrorist sympathizer.

The bastard. He'll get his. . .

12:15 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, October 09, 2002

Harvard students pissed off at the university's ties to shrub's Harken debacle
The Harken Anadarko Partnership, formed by the ailing Harken Energy Company and its then largest shareholder, Harvard University, propped up the troubled company with endowment money and may have deeply misled investors, students found and today's Wall Street Journal and Boston Globe reported. HarvardWatch has announced a new campaign to reform Harvard's ties to the corporate world. As a first step, it is calling upon the university to disclose all information related to its investment in Harken.

"When you have the California legislature investigating Harvard's ties to Enron, the Justice Department suing Harvard for fraudulent management of development aid to Russia, and now this, you know something's rotten in Cambridge," said Roona Ray, a Harvard senior. "We need to ensure nothing like this ever happens again." The partnership, created with George W. Bush's express approval, bears strong resemblance to the widely-condemned Enron partnerships, controlled by insiders and disguising the dismal prospects of the company. Students' findings prompted stories in the Wall Street Journal and Boston Globe, and students and alumni are now calling on Harvard President Laurence Summers to open an investigation.

5:59 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

U.S. Conducted Open-Air Biological, Chemical Weapons Tests, Records Show
The United States secretly tested chemical and biological weapons on American soil during the 1960s, newly declassified Pentagon reports show.

The tests included releasing deadly nerve agents in Alaska and spraying bacteria over Hawaii, according to the documents obtained Tuesday.

The United States also tested nerve agents in Canada and Britain in conjunction with those two countries.

The summaries of more than two dozen tests show that biological and chemical tests were much more widespread than the military has acknowledged previously.

2:08 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Also from Scoop: the Jason Leopold story concerning his Gary Webb-like rabbit-hole experience's with salon and the New York Times after publishing an article showing how the soon-to-be US Army Secretary Thomas White cooked the books for Enron
But White, the only Enron executive who seemed liked by almost everyone who knew him, played a much more crucial role in the day-to-day operations at Enron, according to the documents, which include EES memos and interoffice e-mails.

In one February 2001 e-mail, as panic about EES's mounting losses began to spread among White's employees, an EES employee reported to ESS chairman Lou Pai and to White that the division was losing more than $3 million a month on other contracts signed because of rising wholesale energy costs.

"Close a bigger deal to hide the loss," White responded in the e-mail.

White's word choice is illuminating, because at that point, EES's primary concern became how to "hide" growing losses behind new contracts that, through a questionable use of an accounting loophole, allowed it to claim profits that were wildly speculative in order to give the appearance that the company was actually making money. That false image, of course, would be shattered in the fall, when Enron became the country's biggest bankruptcy ever and 4,500 employees lost their jobs.

1:59 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Blair chokes off British press coverage of Shayler trial

Scoop is featuring an interesting story about former MI5 agent David Shayler's defense testimony in the trial that's just begun in London
Tony Blair has tonight ordered a D-Notice on British media reporting government officials signing court gag orders. This regards the case of former MI5 officer David Shayler, who has evidence to prove MI6 gave �100,000 to bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, arms to Iraq and had prior knowledge of several terrorist attacks on London in the 1990's.

The original articles stated that top Labour MP's had signed gag orders, whereby upon mention of this evidence in court, media have to immediately leave the trial. Newspapers all over the country, including the Guardian, the London Evening Standard and the Scotsman have either completely removed or amended their articles. This evidence is damning. The British government is trying to bury the story before it buries them.
Conspiracy theorists will recognize the buzzwords "Bilderberg," "Peter Mandelson," "Rothschild's think tank," and in particular the way certain interests incite conflict for their own purposes behind the veil of policy & media coverage, between supposed adversaries -- and how a key to these strategies is getting the "authorities" to stand down at key moments. Given the current US/British policy on terrorists/al-Qaeda/Iraq etc., and the skepticism/resigned collaboration of other countries in the Bush/Blair world-view since 9/11, I find it ... curious that someone very much doesn't want information like this even reported on in the press.

1:21 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tuesday, October 08, 2002

Pot hysteria in the Battle Born State

Desperate opponents of the pot legalization initiative in Nevada are claiming drug cartels are behind the referendum

Because they're um going to make more ... money when pot is ... wait a minute . . .

In this kahna, The Voice of Reason -- "The Lurch" ... Larrrrryyyy ... Larouche ... and in the otha kahna, The Hero of Dissolute Hedonists around the world -- Jolly ... George ... Soroooooosss . . .

10:24 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, October 07, 2002

Luis A Gomez of Narco News on Lula's near victorious showing in Brazil

Despite an obtuse numerical voting system (which would confuse anyone, never mind the poor and uneducated of Brazil) and funky voting terminals in Rio.

The Socialists have pledged their support for the runoff, so his election seems assured.

We'll see how this goes. I'm sure shrub & co aren't happy about it, which is reason enough to celebrate for now.

4:33 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Corporate-sponsored police cruisers sport billboards

What a perfect symbol of the apotheosis of the corporatocracy.
The city of Springfield, Fla., will soon be getting 15 new squad cars equipped with the latest in computer databases, satellite tracking, and back-seat jail bars. The cost of each vehicle is only $1 ... with a catch.

These aren't traditional "black and white" police cars. Instead, each cruiser will be emblazoned with advertisements that could vary from local services ("Minnie's Beauty Salon" and "Bert's Radiators") to, say, national doughnut or burger chains. Dozens of cash-strapped towns are also considering the idea, an offer made by a marketing company.

While law-enforcement experts see a whole new source of revenue to replace aging, outdated fleets, critics wonder whether this could mean we'll be seeing live TV broadcasts of car chases in which the pursuers sport ads for happy meals next to each siren.

In additions to questions of conflict of interest, some wonder whether this is one step too far in the commercialization of America.
Hey hey hey -- whadda you some kinda Pinko?

I dunno . . . if I were a cop, I'd be a little concerned about the credibility factor. . .

10:24 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

"Sun Microsystems Inc. plans to take a $2.2 billion non-cash goodwill impairment charge if the value of its businesses doesn't recover by next April, The Financial Times reported, citing a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission" [CSM Oct 2]

I know this means the economy sucks, but I just love that phrase -- it sends me. Like a koan or a Zippy toon.

non-cash goodwill impairment charge!
non-cash goodwill impairment charge!
non-cash goodwill impairment charge!

It's one of those mornings. . .

10:18 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Follow-up to the WSJ article I posted about on phone rates:

Cory Doctorow says wireless carrier Nextel has lousy customer service but great rates and connectivity

Nextel isn't mentioned in the article.

12:20 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

This character Dr W David Hager that shrub wants to install as the leader of pivotal FDA committee on women's health is a real corker
[He's]...an obstetrician-gynecologist who also wrote, with his wife Linda, Stress and the Woman's Body, which puts "an emphasis on the restorative power of Jesus Christ in one's life" and recommends specific Scripture readings and prayers for such ailments as headaches and premenstrual syndrome.

[...]

In his private practice, two sources familiar with it say, Hager refuses to prescribe contraceptives to unmarried women. Hager did not return several calls for comment.

12:14 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Apparently that Al Martin piece on the DoD experimenting with Valium gas as a crowd control weapon wasn't a joke

I wasn't sure and played it safe -- I've been fooled before.

Equal parts funny and creepy to me.

Looks like they need it soon too.

12:07 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, October 06, 2002

xymphora posted a long analysis on Sept 9 of a Chaim Kupferberg article at globalresearch.ca on the mysterious journey through the media filter of Omar Saeed (complete article here)

Originally tagged as the paymaster that connected bin Laden with the hijackers, "Saeed" eventually "morphed" into the operative behind the Kashmiri attacks of last winter, and the convicted killer of Daniel Pearl -- while the paymaster "became" bin laden's brother-in-law Shaykh Saiid.

If he's right about the disinformation campaign, you can sense what a deep black hole the architects of 9/11 have surrounded themselves with.

This isn't easy to follow, but it is worth the trouble if you think that maybe there's more to 9/11 than an al-Qaeda terrorist cell operating alone.

I can't bring myself to follow up on all the threads xymphora follows, but this one struck me as interesting.

11:54 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

An ex-Marine intelligence officer has his own take on why the Iraq War is a mistake
"Our national myth showed us that we were good, our technology made us strong, and our bureaucracy gave us standard operating procedures. It was not a winning combination."

So judged a wise historian, Loren Baritz, about how we wandered, open-eyed and fuzzy-minded, into Vietnam. Twenty years ago, when I first read his still-undiscovered masterpiece, "Backfire," I cringed. So this is how we do things. This is us. It's going to happen again.

It's happening again. And of late, I've taken to constituting myself as an anti-war movement of one -- a man of impeccable conservative credentials and long experience in the national-security field, a grumpy old Marine, who has grown infuriated with and appalled by both the conservative embrace of disaster and the enormity of the smallness of what passes for the anti-war movement today.

3:43 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Lindh warns of al-Qaeda attacks mid-November, early '03 [periscope defense email]
CABLE NEWS NETWORK -- John Walker Lindh, cooperating with authorities in exchange for a 20-year prison sentence, told FBI and military questioners that he believed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were only the first of three waves, CNN reports.

In secret documents obtained by CNN giving summaries of the first interrogations of the so-called "American Taliban" last December, Walker Lindh said he declined an offer to take part in suicide attacks against the U.S.

Walker Lindh said a former Al-Qaida training camp instructor told him "[Osama bin Laden] said this was the first attack...the second attack would involve attacking nuclear facilities, oil/gas pipe lines, or some kind of biological attack."

The second wave was supposed to come at the beginning of Ramadan in mid-November 2001, and the third wave was planned for early 2002.

3:04 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Cheap GPS jammers could fox precision bombing in Iraq [periscope defense email]

WALL STREET JOURNAL -- Inexpensive electronic jammers could hamper the accuracy of U.S. satellite-guided precision munitions that could be used to attack Iraq, reports the Wall Street Journal.

As the U.S.becomes more reliant upon GPS technologies, countermeasures are being developed to jam the guidance system.

The Pentagon has increased orders for Global Positioning System-guided munitions, such as the Joint Direct Attack Munition, which were used effectively in Afghanistan.

Some GPS jammers can be purchased on the Internet for $39.99, sparking concerns that Saddam Hussein may have such capabilities and could use jammers that could be used to reduce the precision of U.S. weaponry.

2:40 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Leaked email

Third-largest bank in Germany in trouble
US stock markets have fallen for six consecutive weeks, to their lowest levels in five years. European markets have collapsed even further, wiping out nearly half of the value of European corpora tions in this year alone. Japan is struggling to put together a plan to save its banking system, riddled with bad debt after a decade of recession and falling prices. Now the German economy threatens to follow.

'There are strong parallels to the Thirties after an unsustainable "new era" boom,' says Avinash Persaud managing director for economics and research at State Street Bank. 'Then, the stock market decline was not just steep, it was long, taking three years to reach the bottom.'

12:04 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

CEOs running scared
"Here you have in many cases companies that, through their own shenanigans, have gone bankrupt," Bowman said. Disgraced chiefs walk away with millions, but sliced employees lose their benefits and see their retirement accounts plunge, he said.

"So what've you got? People with no 401k future, no severance and in a recession where jobs are difficult to get," he said. "All it takes is someone with a violence-prone profile to say, 'I'm gonna get him."'

There have been no reported attacks against current or former executives at notorious energy trader Enron, whose shady deals and subsequent bankruptcy seemed to set off a domino effect of corporate disgraces and collapses.

But a recent drive by the homes of former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling and former CFO Andrew Fastow revealed security guards parked at the ends of the driveways. Those measures appear to be private arrangements.

"Enron is not providing security for former executives," Karen Denne, an Enron spokeswoman, told Reuters. She added that the company does not comment on security procedures for current employees.

9:27 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tide of American resistance to GM foods rising
In a landmark move, Oregon citizens are seeking ... [regulation of GM foods], placing on their November ballot a measure that would require all foods containing at least one-tenth of 1 percent of genetically modified material to be labeled as such.

The measure extends to dairy and meat products derived from animals that have eaten genetically modified corn or other substances.

Opponents of the measure say it would create costly and complicated red tape, and would force senseless situations such as requiring deli operators and restaurants to label the sandwiches and salads they serve up.

"It is meaningless information that would come at a high cost for consumers," said Shannon Troughton, a spokeswoman for Monsanto Co.

Monsanto, a leading U.S. developer of transgenic corn, soybeans and other crops, including a transgenic wheat ready to be rolled out, is a staunch opponent of the proposed law.

The company is working with a group of other biotechnology companies and food industry giants such as General Mills Inc., Procter & Gamble Co. and PepsiCo Inc. to try to stop the labeling law. Together, they have chipped in nearly $4.6 million to the "Coalition Against the Costly Labeling Law."

9:19 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Pro-fascist founder of ultra-conservative cult/lobbying group canonized

Haven't been paying close attention to the pope's saint-making lately, but I've heard about Opus Dei, whose founder was just canonized

Check out #6.10 here on Escriva de Balaguer and here on the agenda of OD.

9:06 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Bill would allow copying of digital media for personal use

8:23 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

10 employees at "troubled" Ukrainian nuke plant used fake diplomas to get jobs

1:48 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thousands march against Iraq War in Italy

12:29 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

That's one of the great things about living in America: moral superiority is so damned cheap.

-- James Crumley

This country is going so far to the right you won't be able to recognize it.

-- John Mitchell, 1973

Those who think history has left us helpless should recall the abolitionist of 1830, the feminist of 1870, the labor organizer of 1890, or the gay or lesbian writer of 1910. They, like us, did not get to choose their time in history but they, like us, did get to choose what they did with it.

-- Sam Smith

REVIEWS

from Sassafrass (9/23/02)
"Unconventional viewpoints at 'charging the canvas'

Opinions that will ruffle feathers, from someone who clearly knows their way around information and the blogosphere."

Blog of the Day
1/18/02

WEEKLY QUOTE

They tell us it's about race, and we believe them. And they call it a "democracy," and we nod our heads, so pleased with ourselves. We blame the Socias [gangsters], we occasionally sneer at the Paulsons [latest crop of craven pols] but we always vote for the Sterling Mulkerns [good old boys]. And in occasional moments of quasi-lucidity, we wonder why the Mulkerns of this world don't respect us. They don't respect us because we are their molested children. They fuck us morning, noon, and night, but as long as they tuck us in with a kiss, as long as they whisper into our ears, "Daddy loves you, Daddy will take care of you," we close our eyes and go to sleep, trading our bodies, our souls, for the comforting veneers of "civilization" and "security," the false idols of our twentieth century wet dream. And it's our reliance on that dream that the Mulkerns, the Paulsons, the Socias, the Phils, the Heroes of this world depend upon. That's their dark knowledge. That's how they win.

-- Dennis Lehane, A Drink Before the War

In the eyes of posterity it will inevitably seem that, in safeguarding our freedom, we destroyed it; that the vast clandestine apparatus we built up to probe our enemies' resources and intentions only served in the end to confuse our own purposes; that the practice of deceiving others for the good of the state led infallibly to our deceiving ourselves; and that the vast army of intelligence personnel built up to execute these purposes were soon caught up in the web of their own sick fantasies, with disastrous consequences to them and us.

-- Malcolm Muggeridge

NOT IN OUR NAME
(link to list against Iraq War)

charging the canvas

The Link Section