Saturday, October 26, 2002

Wellstone is the 19th congressional member or governor to die in a plane crash since 1928

10:42 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Then again. . .

Who knows -- Wellstone's plane might have just malfunctioned.

But he sure was opposed to everything Bush was for, and this happened at the same time in the campaign as Carnahan's crash -- the Missouri candidate running against Ashcroft in '00. And then there are the land mines discovered near the Colombian airport where his airplane landed in November '01.

I'm just a suspicious guy. Especially when something that Bush and his neo-cons would love to have happen, happens. And the margin in the Senate being what it is. [Sylvain at Temple Furnace, who's even more skeptical than me I think]

On the other hand, Wellstone was not the saint in terms of standing up to some of his his party's less admirable stands (being against military actions for instance) as some people are saying now.

So it's hard to say.

What a day for bad news though: the Russian theater fiasco, the Japanese politico stabbed to death, Hurricane Kenna, Richard Harris passing (though that was expected), Israel sucking as usual, New York in love with another rich businessman running for office.

At least the sniper thing is over (What jokers the media look like, eh?). And France and Russia are putting up some resistance to the Iraq thing (though who knows what game they might be playing).

2:52 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Friday, October 25, 2002

In case you haven't heard about how reliable the mass media's memory is about the Iraq inspections um closure process 4 years ago [u]
But the most recent irritant was Mr. Butler's quick withdrawal from Iraq on Wednesday of all his inspectors and those of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors Iraqi nuclear programs, without Security Council permission. Mr. Butler acted after a telephone call from Peter Burleigh, the American representative to the United Nations, and a discussion with Secretary General Kofi Annan, who had also spoken to Mr. Burleigh.

--New York Times, 12/18/98

America's goal should be to ensure that Iraq is disarmed of all unconventional weapons.... To thwart this goal, Baghdad expelled United Nations arms inspectors four years ago.

--New York Times editorial, 8/3/02

11:44 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Bear times past [u]
American history since 1792 consists of nine bullish eras averaging 10� years and eight bearish eras averaging 14� years. The eight bearish eras -- 1802-29, 1835-42, 1847-59, 1872-77, 1881-96, 1902-21, 1929-42, and 1966-82 -- yielded average annual returns of minus 5.88%, before dividends, but also before inflation. This occurred in what -- so far -- has been the most successful national economy in history. If our first eight bull markets were followed by eight horrible multi- year declines and our ninth bull market was by far the greatest of them all, in terms of total percentage gain, could a new bullish era be starting already? Only if human nature has changed.

11:33 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Surprise Surprise file:

An Italian forensics team has said the death of "well-connected" banker Roberto Calvi in 1982 was not suicide

Associated with the proto-fascist Masonic group P2, the Italian Socialist Party, The Mafia and the Vatican -- a lot of people apparently wanted him out of the picture.

Boy, would I like to have had a talk with him. . .

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

The CIA used NASA in a weak scam to claim the U2 that went down in Russia in 1960 was a research craft [FAS newsletter]

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) has a good newsletter on government secrecy issuesthat comes out several times a week. You can sign up for the free email here.

They're not too sympathetic to claims the US government is hiding info on UFOs, though:
The UFO cult that is fixated on the notion that "secret government documents" contain "the truth" about otherwise "unexplained aerial phenomena" is, on balance, no friend of freedom of information or government accountability.

Neverending requests for documentation on UFOs, the remains of Noah's Ark, and similar obsessions clog up the narrow channels of public access to government information and make a mockery of the Freedom of Information Act. [same as first link above]
Too bad that. Big blind spot.

Even though it may be true about clogging the pipes, this is more because we have a government that refuses to allow information like the CIA's 1947 budget to be made public (which the FAS is suing them about) than that UFO info isn't being held back. We "can't handle it" you see.

Either the FAS is deciding to ignore the evidence, or they share the "paternal" attitude of the government on this issue.

11:50 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Qatar Coup Plot May Thwart U.S. War Plans [a]

9:00 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

CIA not finding "right information" to justify Iraq War, special team assigned by ~~desperate neo-con policy-makers~~ the Pentagon's civilian leadership
...the effort comes against a backdrop of persistent differences between the Pentagon and CIA over assessments of Iraq. Rumsfeld and senior aides have argued that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has strong links to international terrorism, poses an imminent threat and cannot be constrained from eventually unleashing weapons of mass destruction. The CIA's publicly released reports have painted a murkier view of Iraq's links to al Qaeda, its weapons capabilities and the likelihood that Hussein would use chemical or biological weapons unless attacked.

"The Pentagon is setting up the capability to assess information on Iraq in areas that in the past might have been the realm of the agency," said Reuel Gerecht, a former CIA case officer who has met with the people in the new Pentagon office. "They don't think the product they receive from the agency is always what it should be."

"They are politicizing intelligence, no question about it," said Vincent M. Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief. "And they are undertaking a campaign to get George Tenet [the director of central intelligence] fired because they can't get him to say what they want on Iraq."

7:33 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, October 24, 2002

Dividing up high schools into smaller units where students learn instead of just making a passing grade
"Small schools" of the type Mr. Schoales advocates have been linked to significant improvements, including reduced school violence, better grades, and increased graduation and college-attendance rates -- but they're not just about reducing the number of students. Manual may have taken the biggest leap when it started its separation into three schools last year, but the more substantive changes -- how teachers teach, how students' needs are met, how curriculums are designed -- are just beginning.

"It's no longer courses and credit -- it's the ability to really understand proficiency," explains Nancy Sutton, the principal who ushered Manual through the reforms until she left this year to join the Colorado Small Schools Initiative. "It's a slower environment. It's more deliberate. It's less teacher centered.... That's something that some members of the faculty got immediately -- but others didn't."

11:04 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

"Smart" bombs killing more civilians

10:58 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Now you have to call your credit card issuer ahead of time when you travel or your card might be declined
Creditors become suspicious when charges are made in states or countries where cardholders have never been before... Fraud also is often suspected when cards are used to buy gasoline and then electronics or jewelry. At a gasoline station, a thief can swipe a stolen card at the pump to determine if it is active. If the card works, the criminal often buys other goods that can be sold and turned into cash. Large dollar amounts, a quick number of purchases in succession, and transactions at odd times of day also raise eyebrows.

[...]

"Your individual spending patterns are learned by the network so that when you make a purchase outside of your spending pattern, a red flag goes up," says David Robertson, publisher of The Nilson Report, an Oxnard, Calif.-based credit-card research firm.

Attempted purchases are given a score of zero to 100 in less than a second. The higher the score, the more likely the purchase is fraudulent. Each credit-card company sets a number that, if exceeded, will cause a purchase to be blocked.

10:52 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Alternate Economies file:

"Love", "peanuts" and dan dan in Japan
The rabu ["love"] is the most recent and ambitious of 130 community currencies that are springing up in regions across Japan to boost local economies and encourage closer ties between residents.

There are similar programs in about 50 North American towns and cities. But Japan -- for reasons of culture and circumstance -- is emerging as a global leader in the concept.

The new tokens of exchange are unlikely to challenge the yen any time soon, but they are fostering a new way of thinking about money and barter in Japan that stands in sharp contrast to the rise of megacurrencies like the euro or impersonal electronic transactions carried out over the Internet.

10:42 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Marines to invade Colombia in February?
Two battalions of US Marine Jungle Expeditionary Forces have recently received deployment orders for insertion into Colombia this coming February, 2003.

According to reliable sources, the battalions, which with support will total roughly 1,100 men, will rotate in and out of southern Colombia, with orders to eliminate all high officers of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), scattering those who escape to the remote corners of the Amazon. The FARC hierarchy has been the subject of intensive US intelligence scrutiny for several years.

[...]

The US troops will probably operate out of both the US base at Manta on the coast of Ecuador as well as at a base built deep in the Peruvian jungle near the Putumayo river -- Peru's border with Colombia -- in 1998-1999. That secret base was intended for joint use by both Peru and the US in the event of a Colombian military offensive that would push the FARC south to the Putumayo, but on its completion, then-president Alberto Fujimori ordered the US to leave it. That slap in the face of the US by the US-bought-and-paid-for Fujimori led directly to the coup arranged by the US which forced him into exile.
Can't find verification so far of the US being behind Fujimori's exit, but I'll let it stand for now.

10:05 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Local Fox video of UFO at Albany NY apparently confiscated by FBI, certified by forensic video analyst [David Icke]

9:49 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

One of the few somewhat balanced reports on Venezuela in the mainstream press

It's only superficial though.

10:34 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

"A very confused field"

Italian study finds cellphone-like radiation first begins to kill leukemia cells, then accelerates their growth

9:31 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Oil expert Colin Campbell on the end of the game
From The Wilderness: Will Central Asian-Caspian pipelines have an impact on the crisis? How long will it take them to come on line?

Campbell: There was talk of the place holding over 200 Gb [billion barrels] (I think emanating from the USGS [U.S. Geological Survey]), but the results after 10 years of work have been disappointing. The West came in with high hopes. The Soviets found Tengiz onshore in 1979 with about 6 Gb of very deep, high sulfur oil in a reef. Chevron took over and is not producing it with difficulty. But offshore they found a huge prospect called Kashagan in a similar geological setting to Tengiz. If it had been full, it could have contained 200 Gb, but they have now drilled three deep wells at huge cost, finding that instead of being a single reservoir it, like Tengiz, is made up of reefs. Reserves are now quoted at between 9 Gb and 13 Gb. BP-Statoil has pulled out. Caspian production won't make any material difference to world supply. There is however a lot of gas in the vicinity.

To put it in perspective this would supply the world for a little over a year, but it is broadly the same as U.S. potential

It is quite possible that the Afghan war was about securing a strong point in this area. But interest in it has now dwindled along with Caspian prospects as the U.S. turns to Iraq, which does have some oil. It is curious that these two U.S. military exercises had different pretexts

A) Afghanistan was to find the supposed architect of Sept. 11 -- in which it failed; and

B) Iraq is about a sudden and unexplained fear that it might develop some objectionable weapons that might pose a threat to someone in the future. North Korea, which already has nuclear weapons and long range missiles -- and isn't exactly a friendly place -- is not deemed a threat. The cynic can be forgiven for thinking there is some other motive for these military moves: could it be oil?

[...]

FTW: How soon before we start to feel the effects of dwindling oil supplies?

Campbell: We already are -- in the form of the threatened U.S. invasion of the Middle East. The U.S. would be importing 90 percent of its oil by 2020 to hold even current demand and access to foreign oil has long been officially declared a vital national interest justifying military intervention. Probable actual physical shortage of all liquid hydrocarbons worldwide won't appear for about 20 years, especially if deepening recession holds down demand. But people are coming to appreciate that peak is imminent and what it means. Some places like the U.S. will face shortage sooner than others. The price is likely to soar as shortage looms, which itself may delay peak.

If the U.S. does invade there will likely be a repeat of Vietnam with many years of fruitless struggle in which the U.S. will be seen as a tyrant and an oppressor, killing all those Arabs. It can't hope to subjugate the place in perpetuity as the people don't surrender easily -- as the Palestinians have shown. So when the U.S. has finally gone, Russia and China will likely be welcomed there to produce whatever is left in the ruins.

3:16 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Appeals court OKs drug tests of Michigan welfare recipients [u]

12:59 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Surprise Surprise file:

Government Lawyers Say They Haven't Read All Cheney Documents They Argued Should Be Kept Secret [u]
Government attorneys admitted Thursday they haven't completely reviewed documents from Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force, despite claiming that they "all involve sensitive communications between and among the president and his closest advisers" that should be kept secret.

U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan ordered task force documents to be made public by Nov. 5 and said he was shocked the Justice Department attorneys had not examined all the documents after asserting for more than a year that each of them involved confidential information.

"That is a startling revelation," Sullivan said, after rejecting the Bush administration's claim that he lacks authority to order the release of the task force papers.

12:50 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

States ranked by how well they protect citizens' privacy [u]

12:40 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

The Oct 13 Boondocks strip that compared Bush to Hitler was pulled by the Washington Post [u]

Someone replied to Undernews that in point of fact Hitler was not democratically elected, as the strip and Paul Krassner's original comment implied.

So I guess we can deduce that there really is no difference between them.

Glad that's all cleared up.

12:33 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Secret settlements [u]
Sealing settlements once found favor on all sides of the bar and judicial system. Some plaintiffs liked the option of downplaying their newly acquired wealth, and some attorneys found they could exact bigger settlements by caving in on confidentiality. Corporate defendants, their lawyers and their insurers liked sealed settlements because they protected their tangible trade secrets (such as how much they pay to employees' widows) and their intangible corporate reputations. Judges even liked them and rarely turned down a joint request to seal a settlement because it meant one more case removed from their overburdened docket.

Consumer groups and most plaintiffs' lawyers never have liked sealed settlements. Valuable health and safety facts are removed from the public eye and from plaintiffs' arsenals. The public is forbidden from seeing the documents underlying the case, which sometimes reveal reprehensible conduct. And because gag orders also are routinely included within the settlement terms, the plaintiff can't tell similar plaintiffs or the public about his experience.

Now judges are falling out of love with court-approved secret settlements because of public safety issues.

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

Wednesday, October 23, 2002

"Hunter/Seeker" from Dune becoming reality [a]
Bat...is an autonomous munition that uses a combination of passive acoustic and IR sensors to seek, identify and destroy moving armored targets deep in enemy territory.
Don't you feel safer now?

1:33 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

How rapacious lawyers fleece taxpayers in class action suits against companies for medical compensation
It has come to this: Lawyers for real victims who are sick and dying have been forced to join corporate defendants in seeking reforms to fight the rapacity of trial lawyers who round up claims that often appear to involve "fraud, physician incompetence, or failure of recollection by claimants," as Kazan said in a letter to colleagues last October. According to estimates by other experts, fewer than 10 percent of new asbestos claimants have asbestos-induced cancer and at least 60 percent to 70 percent have no medical impairment at all, just chest X-rays purporting to show scarring of the pleural membrane.

The other development was the September 24 opening of a mass trial in Charleston, W.Va., that shows how utterly our judicial system has abandoned any pretense of fairness in resolving asbestos claims, as judges force defendants who did little or nothing wrong to "compensate" claimants, many of whom are neither sick nor likely to become sick from asbestos.
You've no doubt seen the big ads in the media baiting people into suits against companies. This is where that leads, even though legitimate claims are being filed too.

Clearly, some other method than litigation demanding responsibility from corporations that harm people is necessary.

I'm sure Congress will get on that right away, as they stuff the checks from their corporate "citizen" benefactors into their suits.

10:52 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Clinton chief of staff Podesta forms group to press government on UFO info

10:21 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

The line between organized crime and extremist nationals dissolving completely, threatening Balkan stability

Or so says the EastWest Institute, a non-profit think tank with elderbush and Helmut Kohl as its Honorary Chairmen. Don't have time right now to research this group, but I wouldn't take their word without running their support down.

Still, the Balkan situation was likely to deteriorate, especially with a global economy as shaky as this one.

1:47 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Massive "denial of service" attack on main Net routers fails to disrupt Net

Smart asses or black ops?

1:02 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

This is what I mean about the Times

New York Times "Newpapers in Education" office publishes anti-pot pamphlet for the White House

Of course TNYT learned about disinformation from the folks at the CIA years ago, so this isn't a surprise.

I couldn't find anything on the Marijuana Poicy Project's site, but there's a response here.

12:33 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tuesday, October 22, 2002

Sam Smith on the irrelevance of the "left" that Chris Hitchens is so publicly "leaving"
NEWS THAT CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS had discovered his inner imperial self was greeted exuberantly by the Washington Post, which gave him Kissingeresque space to lash out at his former comrades on the left. Coincidentally with proclaiming the Birth of Chris (although so far with no disciples in sight), the paper devoted even more space to a desperate but ultimately futile examination into how anyone could possibly be as morally consistent as Scott Ritter. The Post simply couldn't understand it.

As I read Hitchens' piece, two things came to mind. The first was Elmer Davis' comment about those on the hard left who had taken a hard right turn: it never seemed to occur to them that they might be wrong both times. The second thought was of a Sunday long ago when one of my sons was being confirmed in the Episcopal Church so he would not later, as my friend Warren Myers once said, miss the exquisite pleasure of losing one's faith. The bishop did his job perfunctorily and then turned towards the altar. Just a moment, our minister said, "We also have one to be received." The bishop suddenly brightened because those simple words signified true triumph: he was about to grab for his church a former servant of the Pope. It is one thing to get little boys to pretend for a morning that they understand the Apostles' Creed; quite another for a real Catholic to defect. The editor of the Post Outlook section probably felt the same joy.

11:45 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

The New York Times muscles the Washington Post out of their 36 year-old International Herald Tribune partnership

Hopefully this doen't mean that IHT will lose its independence, but I fear the worst. I don't trust the Times at all. . .

And I hope the quirky IHT webpage stays the same. The Times site sucks. The registration sucks and the ad-choked pages suck. They have managed to keep their character, unlike most papers due to the conglomerization of the media. But the last year has vividly shown how "independent" these papers are of the government line, when the screws are applied.

OK, I'm rambling.

10:11 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

New bin Laden book by al-Jazeera journalist Ahmed Zeidan seems to have new information

What you can believe about him from any media source at this point I don't know.

4:55 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

oooohhh chilly. . .

Doonesbury started a dis-bloggers theme yesterday

12:19 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, October 21, 2002

Surprise "blow to political establishment"

Former leader of the 2000 Indian coup in Ecuador gets most votes in presidential election
Former coup leader Lucio Gutierrez, who won the most votes in the first round of Ecuador's presidential election, appealed for national unity on Monday, but the businessman he will face in a Nov. 24 runoff called him a dangerous communist who would wreck the economy.

[...]

The outcome dealt a blow to Ecuador's political establishment The country is rich in oil, but more than half of its 12 million people live in poverty.

It has a history of political turbulence and economic chaos as a Spanish-descended elite has failed to create prosperity for an overwhelmingly mixed population. Two past presidents were overthrown amid massive protests.

7:42 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Justice Dept kills lawsuit brought by fired FBI whistleblower
Edmunds was an FBI wiretap translator. She claims that another FBI translator was working for the Mossad and that the Mossad also tried to recruit Edmonds to make phony translations for the purpose of misdirecting investigations. When agent Edmonds refused, the Mossad threatened her safety! When she brought these allegations to the attention of her superiors, she was fired for being "disruptive". The Washington Post briefly reported this story without mentioning the name of nation that tried to recruit Edmonds. But The Post did reveal that Edmonds and the other translator "trace their ethnicity" to this certain "Middle Eastern" country. Agent Sibel Edmunds is not an Arab. Edmonds is [J]ewish. Therefore we know that the "Middle Eastern" nation which the Post chose not to name is Israel. (No big surprise there!) Sibel Edmonds deserves a lot of credit for defying the Mossad and blowing the whistle to her superiors. Instead, she was fired for her patriotic efforts, proving once again that Zionists are willing to hurt innocent jews. [what really happened]

12:25 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Brasscheck has a modest page of resources on 9/11-related material which features the e-text of Yossef Bodansky's Target America: Terrorism in the US Today from 1993

Bodansky is a well-respected analyst for Congressional Republicans, associated with Johns Hopkins, and has written extensively on Arab terror organizations. The book might be worth reading, but his US neo-con/far-right Israeli slant is obvious here.

The rest of the links on the brasscheck page hardly fit in that category, so I thought the featuring of Bodansky's book there was interesting, and might mean it's worthy of attention.

11:03 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

One version of fiasco of Czech report linking Iraq and al-Qaeda [a]
Through extensive interviews with key Czech figures, it emerges as a complex Central European tale of political infighting among Czech leaders and feuding between rival intelligence services, topped off by a series of simple blunders and overheated statements that inadvertently fueled an American debate involving war and peace.
Illustrating how easily you can cobble together the reality you want out of the shadowy, Hollywood-grade backbiting and betrayal medium of international intelligence.

10:11 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

"Military Is Easing Its War on Drugs"? [a]

A decision which threatens the anti-drug infrastructure, natch.

But the military are so busy Mobilizing Against Terror, a much larger and more profitable target - hell, they can even deploy here at home under this rubric, why bother with piddly drug stuff?

Gonna keep that beachhead in Colombia though -- there's commies gettin' 'lected down theah in South America!

9:59 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

A Clockwork Orange was probably inspired by Burgess' participation in CIA mind-control experiments at Fort Bliss (El Paso, TX) [the null device]
The ex-spy's most compelling claim was that a sequence of capital letters seen on Alex's bedroom wall in Chapter 3 of the novel and supposedly lifted from Alex's school trophies is actually an encryption for the location of a US military base where "psychotronic warfare" experiments took place. The coded wording reads: "SOUTH 4; METRO COR-SKOL BLUE DIVISION; THE BOYS OF ALPHA."

According to the spy, the figure 4 refers to the conjunction of four US states, Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. To the south of this is a military reservation, based in a metropolitan location. The base is a training school (skol in Russian), initially supervised by the US Navy's Blue Division, which experimented with the Alpha waves of the human unconsciousness. Its name was Fort Bliss; the word "bliss" appears repeatedly in the chapter.
Fort Bliss was also where Operation Paperclip scientists from Nazi Germany were stationed.

3:08 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Siege mentality in DC Metro area shifts billions in consumer spending
Residents in one of the most affluent and generally safe regions of the country are bunkering down, avoiding trips to the mall, and buying their gasoline far outside the region. To economists, this shift of billions of dollars in buying power is an indication of how edgy the nation remains after 9/11.

"It suggests that if there is any other terrorist attack of any significance, the consequences would cause us to pull back and stop spending as aggressively and do the things we normally do," says Mark Zandi, chief economist at The Economy.com.

1:26 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, October 20, 2002

A 1997 overview of the abuses of the Posse Comitatus Act (created in response to Grant's deployment of troops to be used if necessary at the polls in the 1876 election) and the need to renew it
The need to fight "the war" on drugs, to combat terrorism, and to deter illegal immigration are long-term problems that are currently high on the public agenda and will not go away without long-term solutions. Tight budgets and the desire for a quick- fix do not create an emergency justifying the conversion of martial rhetoric to reality. Relegating these problems to a military solution poses dangers to our individual rights and to the history and underlying structure of the United States that should not be ignored.

11:50 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

There's a new bill that's been introduced in the Senate (co-authored by AZ's own Jon Kyl, who's usually so far to the right he makes McCain look like a Yippie) "to combat state-sponsored Internet jamming and persecution of Internet users."

Strange post-9/11 bedfellows, us.

11:39 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

The FAS index of world intelligence and security agencies

Check out the creepy MI6 logo.

11:32 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Here's a real link to the story about the White House cutting the SEC budget to police the corporatocracy
Less than three months ago, President George W. Bush, with great fanfare, signed sweeping corporate anti-fraud legislation that called for a big increase in the budget of the Securities and Exchange Commission to police Corporate America and clean up Wall Street.

Now the White House is backing away from that budget provision and urging Congress to provide the agency with 27 percent less money than the new law authorized.

Administration officials say that their proposed increase is enough and that other budgetary needs, such as domestic security and the military, make it impossible to afford more.

The decision has angered commission officials and Democratic lawmakers, who say it reflects the administration's calculation that corporate scandals have begun to recede as a political issue.

They say that the administration's more modest increase will not be able to pay for the expanded role of the agency, bring salaries up to levels at other financial regulatory agencies, finance the start-up costs of an accounting oversight board and significantly expand a staff that is already overwhelmed.
Sorry about the mix-up yesterday.

If the Democrats don't jump on this, it only proves they're as much in the pocket of Big Business as the Republicans.

Any bets?

11:23 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Chart

"18 Ways to Hate Your Neighbor: Europe's Lesson to the World" [u]

5:48 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

US threatens border slowdown if pot legalized in Canada [u]

5:42 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

The Libertarian Free State Project [u]
"If 20,000 Libertarian activists moved to Delaware, they would already have between 11 and 17 percent of the necessary votes in a three-way race. Twenty thousand Libertarian activists should be able to persuade the remaining necessary voters to vote for a Libertarian candidate. If that's not doable, then none of the Libertarian races are. In any event, Libertarians would certainly achieve some political power.

[...]

"We could end state redistribution of wealth, repealing state taxes and wasteful government programs," Helfield says. "We could privatize education and utilities. We could repeal laws regulating guns, drugs and other victimless crimes. We could abolish asset forfeiture, abuses of eminent domain, inefficient regulations and state monopolies."
Their symbol is the porcupine, and here is their website.

"And Sheriff Dillon is the law hereabouts, podner. . ."

Of course, some other politically unified group could conceivably do this too. . .

5:33 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Go ahead -- make my vaccine

"Among members of the main scientific committee that provides advice to the federal government on the use of vaccines, there is little or no support for the idea of making smallpox vaccine available to the general public." [u]
If a smallpox vaccination campaign runs into unexpected problems, the damage could be more than just monetary, numerous members observed. Government credibility and confidence in the medical system could also be eroded.

5:20 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

So what if the Fight for Freedom and Democracy requires martial law?
"The president cannot order things that are inconsistent with Posse Comitatus, because one of the things that [it] provides for is [for] the president to essentially waive Posse Comitatus. "There's plenty of laws on the books that allow whatever type of military action would be necessary inside the United States," Verga said. [from Undernews Oct 18 and aerospace.daily, which is by subscription, so I can't link it]

5:13 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Post-9/11 economics hit the Big Apple
IF Osama bin Laden's goal was to end New York's reign as America's World Trade Center, he's just gotten a big boost from the U.S. Customs Service.

Two weeks ago, Kathleen Haage-Gaynor, New York/New Jersey Seaport Area Director for the U.S. Customs Service, sent a memo to employees announcing that she is "moving forward" to relocating the entire U.S. Customs Service from its former home at Six World Trade Center to 1100 Raymond Blvd. in downtown Newark.

* * *

The problem: The city is facing a budget gap of as much as $6 billion in the next fiscal year, the largest such deficit in its history as measured in dollars.

And with the state staring at a towering deficit of its own next year - as much as $12 billion - Albany will need to put its own fiscal house in order, limiting its ability to bail out the city.

Think of the gaps as giant black holes at the heart of Mayor Bloomberg's $42 billion budget and Gov. Pataki's $60 billion spending plan.

The bottom line: The average man or woman who works for a living is about to take it on the chin as the city and state scramble to plug those yawning gaps.

"Everything is on the table," Bloomberg has said repeatedly.

Put bluntly, the quality of municipal services is about to head south - while taxes, fees, fines, tolls, tickets and nuisance charges are expected to head north.

4:58 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

PCBs and dioxin don't just cause immunological and neurological damage to children -- they also cause gender-reversed behavior [drudge]

4:03 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Local sex offender webpage creates panic, witch hunt atmosphere in San Diego

3:25 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Russian census doesn't show effect of last ten years on women
For many women, especially single mothers, the post-Soviet period has meant harsh impoverishment. "Large numbers of women lost their jobs in the '90s and were forced into unemployment or the gray economy," says Nadezhda Ozhgikhina, cochair of the Russian Association of Women Journalists. "As long as this situation remains hidden, doing something about it is not on the agenda of our authorities."

There is some good news, but it may not affect census results. "Our studies show there are many more well-off women in Russia these days," says Svetlana Aivazova, an expert with the Institute of Comparative Politics in Moscow. "Women are finding ways, often unorthodox ones, to improve their lives. The census is unlikely to reflect any of this."

Nor, like its Soviet predecessors, will it do much to reveal the sexism that still keeps women from most top jobs in business, government, and public service. Experts say widespread sexist practices also include firing women first whenever staffs are reduced, and paying them less -- surveys show Russian females earn on average between half and two-thirds of what males receive.

3:10 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Significant evidence found linking solar winds/cosmic rays to cloud formation and climate change

This screamed for the Joni Mitchell lyric, so be grateful for my Canadian restraint.

2:44 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Afhganistan one year later

Exactly what you'd expect: terrorism is more likely and diffused more widely; over a thousand civilians were killed; aid for women has been trickling in at a laughable rate; the "election" of Karzai was a travesty of democracy; humanitarian aid is a sick joke; and bin Laden's whereabouts are no more certain than a year ago.

Another war won.

12:02 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