:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 3.25.2005 ::

:: "Brouhaha Over Kazaa Means Nada" ::

From Wired News
As the case against Sharman Networks, maker of the Kazaa peer-to-peer software, wraps up, P2P technology continues to flourish. What effect will the ruling in this case really have on the music industry? Commentary by Patrick Gray.

ALSO from Wired

A CAPPS by Any Other Name
Much is riding on a report about the Secure Flight passenger-screening system that the Government Accountability Office is expected to release next week. Critics hope it will identify significant faults with the system. By Kim Zetter.

Hybrids, Movies and Tanks, Oh MyEver trying to whet drivers' appetite for new cars with the latest gizmos, automakers display their latest wares -- from gas-sipping hybrids to silvery behemoths sporting interior movie theaters -- at the International Automobile Show. Rachel Metz reports from New York.

Researchers Recover T. Rex Tissue
A broken Tyrannosaurus thighbone gives scientists a rare glimpse into the prehistoric lizard's cellular makeup. Can isolating dinosaur DNA à la Jurassic Park be far behind?

posted by me

:: 11:20:00 AM [+] ::
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:: RE Google News ::

All the news robots pick
By Stefanie Olsen and Evan Hansen
From CNET News.com

Chalk it up to a difficult week for Google's automated news service, which aims to best traditional newspapers with mathematical algorithms and robots crawling the Web.

The Web search giant was hit with a lawsuit from French news agency Agence France Presse, forcing it to start to pull thousands of photos and news stories from its service. Then critics lashed out over its decision to include reports from National Vanguard, a publication that espouses white supremacy. In response, Google said it will remove the publication from its index.

Both are black eyes to Google's theory that computers virtually unassisted by human editors can pick the top stories of the day and beat traditional media at its own craft.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 11:13:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Yahoo's free-speech appeal gets hearing" ::

From CNET News.com
By Dawn Kawamoto

Yahoo is set to go before a U.S. appeals court in a case to determine whether a foreign court can censor speech that originated in the United States.

posted by me

:: 10:46:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "It's the Content, Not the Source" ::

From Wired News -- Media Hack » The Apple lawsuit really boils down to the definition of a trade secret, not the definition of a journalist. Commentary by Adam L. Penenberg

posted by me

:: 10:41:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Groups Fight Patriot Act Reauthorization" ::

By Jesse J. Holland
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Conservative and liberal groups normally at each other's throats over the direction of government are finding common cause in wanting to gut major provisions of the government's premier anti-terrorism law.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the American Conservative Union, Americans for Tax Reform and the Free Congress Foundation are among several groups that formed a coalition — Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances — to lobby Congress to repeal three key provisions of the USA Patriot Act.

Having people from all sides of the political spectrum working together will keep politicians from calling Patriot Act opponents un-American or willing to help terrorists, which happened during the original debate over the law, the groups said.

"We don't want this argument to be obscured by those who would suggest that anyone who is for more and more government power is somehow on the side of the right, and those who are against it or are skeptical of such grants are on the side of the wrong," said David Keene of the American Conservative Union. "This is an important question of all Americans on the left, the right or in the middle."

For liberals, partnering with conservatives will ensure that the GOP-dominated Congress and the Bush administration will have to listen to their concerns, said Laura W. Murphy, outgoing director of the ACLU's Washington legislative office.

"Given the number of people in this room wearing elephant lapel pins, I don't think it will be easy for the administration to discount our message," she said at the news conference Tuesday announcing the coalition.

The coalition wants Congress to repeal or let expire prosecutors' Patriot Act ability to easily obtain records in terrorism-related cases from businesses and other entities, including libraries; the provision that allows "sneak and peek" searches conducted without a property owner's or resident's knowledge and with warrants delivered afterward; and what they called an overbroad definition of "terrorists" that could include non-terrorism suspects.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 8:45:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Freak of Nature?" ::

Documentary Confirms Hogzilla's Existence
ALAPAHA, Ga. (AP) - A team of National Geographic experts has confirmed south Georgia's monster hog, known to locals as Hogzilla, was indeed real - and really, really big.

posted by me

:: 1:23:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Scientists may use mammoth cells for cloning" ::

From IOL

A frozen mammoth dug up from the Siberian tundra has been unveiled in central Japan in a preview of the six-month World Exposition, which is expected to draw millions of tourists.

The beast, believed to have lived 18 000 years ago, has been preserved in a giant refrigerator. It is a key exhibit at the Expo, which will open next Friday and largely feature modern wonders such as robots.

Full-bodied mammoths have been unearthed in the past, but this exhibit is billed as the most successful attempt yet to display the animal almost fully.

The mammoth on display has tusks, a front leg and a nearly intact, soil-coloured head covered with muscle tissue and some woolly hair.

“This is not a mere pavilion but a laboratory, as we will do scientific research here,” Toshio Nakamura, secretary-general of the exposition, told the opening ceremony of the “Mammoth Lab”.

Visitors can view the mammoth, which was excavated in 2002, from windows at the lab, where the temperature and humidity are controlled by computers.

A group of Russian and Japanese scientists hope to clone mammoths from the animal’s remains by using elephant egg cells.

The multimillion-dollar project between Russia and Japan to examine the beast is intended to find out why mammoths became extinct in the Ice Age.

“The sad fact that mammoths became extinct is telling an important thing to us,” said Alexander K Akimov, vice-president of the Sakha region in the Russian Federation, which owns the animal.

“We have to cherish the Earth and we should not forget about fostering all kinds of lives.”

posted by me

:: 1:13:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Extrasolar ::

Light Spotted From Beyond Solar System

(AP) A NASA telescope peering far beyond our solar system has for the first time directly measured light from two Jupiter-sized gas planets closely orbiting distant stars, adding crucial features to astronomy's portrait of faraway worlds.

Studies of the infrared light streaming from the two giant planets suggest they are made of hot, swirling gases that reach a broiling 1,340 degrees Fahrenheit or higher.

"It's an awesome experience to realize we are seeing the glow of distant worlds," said astronomer David Charbonneau of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., whose team captured light from a planet in the constellation Lyra. "The one thing they can't hide is their heat."

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 1:01:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Downloading for Dollars" ::

P2P: Music's Death Knell or Boon?
From Wired News
Technology optimists and pessimists duke it out at the South by Southwest conference. While some music insiders have high hopes for new revenue streams, others say peer-to-peer song sharing continues to wreak havoc. Michael Grebb reports from Austin, Texas

posted by me

:: 10:27:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "AFP sues Google over news copyright" ::

By Rhys Blakely, Times Online

The future of aggregated news sites supplied by internet companies such as Google was called into question today when it emerged Agence France-Presse had sued the world’s most popular search engine for alleged copyright infringement.

AFP, which charges its customers for using the work produced by its global network of reporters and editors, claims that the internet search engine has used its headlines, news summaries and photographs without permission.

In a suit filed in a Washington court, AFP sought damages and interest of at least $17.5 million dollars (£9m) and an interdiction on the publication of its text and photos without prior agreement.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 1:16:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "How Not to Google Yourself" ::

From Wired News
Business: In Brief » A startup offers a way to fight against personal misinformation on the web. Also: Ask Jeeves bought up by internet conglomorate…. China blocks public access to internet forum …. and more.

posted by me

:: 12:58:00 PM [+] ::
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:: So Weird ::

From Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird

Names in the News
From the crime column of the Lewisville (Texas) Leader, Feb. 14: arrested on charges of drug possession, driving while intoxicated, and driving without a license: Mr. Fred Flintstone, 34. And taken into custody in February in Miami to begin serving a one-year sentence on alien-smuggling charges: a Chinese national whose given name is King Kong. And an obituary from the Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram, Dec. 2: Mr. Dom Perigion Champagne, whose parents were Mr. Jeron Champagne and Ms. Perfect Engelberger. [Lewisville Leader, 2-14-05] [Tampa Tribune, 2-6-05] [Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 12-2-04]

Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net

posted by me

:: 1:23:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Tsunami Reveals Ancient Ruins in India" ::

MAHABALIPURAM, India - For a few minutes, after the water had receded far from the shore and before it came raging back as a tsunami, the fishermen stood along the beach and stared at the reality of generations of legends.

Or so they say. Spread across nearly a mile, the site was encrusted with barnacles and covered in mud. But the fishermen insist they saw the remains of ancient temples and hundreds of refrigerator-sized blocks, all briefly exposed before the sea swallowed them up again.

"You could see the destroyed walls covered in coral, and the broken-down temple in the middle," said Durai, a sinewy fisherman who, like many south Indians, uses only one name. "My grandfathers said there was a port here once and a temple, but suddenly we could see it was real, we could see that something was out there."

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 11:23:00 AM [+] ::
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:: The Palast Report ::

SECRET U.S. PLANS FOR IRAQ'S OIL
From an e-newsletter
By Greg Palast
Reporting for BBC Newsnight
17 March 2005

The Bush administration made plans for war and for Iraq's oil before the 9/11 attacks sparking a policy battle between neo-cons and Big Oil, BBC's Newsnight has revealed.

Two years ago today - when President George Bush announced US, British and Allied forces would begin to bomb Baghdad - protestors claimed the US had a secret plan for Iraq's oil once Saddam had been conquered.

In fact there were two conflicting plans, setting off a hidden policy war between neo-conservatives at the Pentagon, on one side, versus a combination of "Big Oil" executives and US State Department "pragmatists."

"Big Oil" appears to have won. The latest plan, obtained by Newsnight from the US State Department was, we learned, drafted with the help of American oil industry consultants.

Insiders told Newsnight that planning began "within weeks" of Bush's first taking office in 2001, long before the September 11th attack on the US.

An Iraqi-born oil industry consultant Falah Aljibury says he took part in the secret meetings in California, Washington and the Middle East. He described a State Department plan for a forced coup d'etat.

Mr Aljibury himself told Newsnight that he interviewed potential successors to Saddam Hussein on behalf of the Bush administration.

Secret sell-off plan

The industry-favored plan was pushed aside by yet another secret plan, drafted just before the invasion in 2003, which called for the sell-off of all of Iraq's oil fields. The new plan, crafted by neo-conservatives intent on using Iraq's oil to destroy the Opec cartel through massive increases in production above Opec quotas.

The sell-off was given the green light in a secret meeting in London headed by Ahmed Chalabi shortly after the US entered Baghdad, according to Robert Ebel. Mr. Ebel, a former Energy and CIA oil analyst, now a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, flew to the London meeting, he told Newsnight, at the request of the State Department.

Mr Aljibury, once Ronald Reagan's "back-channel" to Saddam, claims that plans to sell off Iraq's oil, pushed by the US-installed Governing Council in 2003, helped instigate the insurgency and attacks on US and British occupying forces.

"Insurgents used this, saying, 'Look, you're losing your country, your losing your resources to a bunch of wealthy billionaires who want to take you over and make your life miserable," said Mr Aljibury from his home near San Francisco.

"We saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities, pipelines, built on the premise that privatization is coming."

Privatization blocked by industry

Philip Carroll, the former CEO of Shell Oil USA who took control of Iraq's oil production for the US Government a month after the invasion, stalled the sell-off scheme.

Mr Carroll told us he made it clear to Paul Bremer, the US occupation chief who arrived in Iraq in May 2003, that: "There was to be no privatization of Iraqi oil resources or facilities while I was involved."

The chosen successor to Mr Carroll, a Conoco Oil executive, ordered up a new plan for a state oil company preferred by the industry.

Ari Cohen, of the neo-conservative Heritage Foundation, told Newsnight that an opportunity had been missed to privatize Iraq's oil fields. He advocated the plan as a means to help the US defeat Opec, and said America should have gone ahead with what he called a "no-brainer" decision.

Mr Carroll hit back, telling Newsnight, "I would agree with that statement. To privatize would be a no-brainer. It would only be thought about by someone with no brain."

New plans, obtained from the State Department by Newsnight and Harper's Magazine under the US Freedom of Information Act, called for creation of a state-owned oil company favored by the US oil industry. It was completed in January 2004, Harper's discovered, under the guidance of Amy Jaffe of the James Baker Institute in Texas. Former US Secretary of State Baker is now an attorney. His law firm, Baker Botts, is representing ExxonMobil and the Saudi Arabian government.

View segments of Iraq oil plans at
www.GregPalast.com/opeconthemarch.html

Questioned by Newsnight, Ms Jaffe said the oil industry prefers state control of Iraq's oil over a sell-off because it fears a repeat of Russia's energy privatization. In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, US oil companies were barred from bidding for the reserves.

Jaffe said "There is no question that an American oil company ... would not be enthusiastic about a plan that would privatize all the assets with Iraq companies and they (US companies) might be left out of the transaction."

In addition, Ms. Jaffe says US oil companies are not warm to any plan that would undermine Opec, "They [oil companies] have to worry about the price of oil.”

"I'm not sure that if I'm the chair of an American company, and you put me on a lie detector test, I would say high oil prices are bad for me or my company."

The former Shell oil boss agrees. In Houston, he told Newsnight, "Many neo-conservatives are people who have certain ideological beliefs about markets, about democracy, about this that and the other. International oil companies without exception are very pragmatic commercial organizations. They don't have a theology."

Greg Palast's film - the result of a joint investigation by BBC Newsnight and Harper's Magazine - will broadcast on Thursday, 17 March, 2005.

You can watch the program online - available Thursday, March 17 after 7pm EST for 24hrs - from the Newsnight website.

You can also read the story in greater detail in the latest issue of Harper's Magazine - now available at your local newsstand.
============================================

posted by me

:: 12:31:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "6 U.S. Banks Held Pinochet's Accounts" ::

Senate Report Details 'Secret Web'
By Terence O'Hara
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 16, 2005; Page E03

Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet had more than 125 accounts at a half-dozen U.S. banks, including Citibank, during the 1990s, according to a Senate report.

Pinochet, whose 17-year military rule of Chile was marked by the murder and torture of political opponents in Chile and elsewhere, maintained "a secret web of accounts" at U.S. banks and U.S. subsidiaries of foreign banks, said the report, to be released today by the Senate permanent subcommittee on investigations. Using fake names and often-suspect and secret money transfers, Pinochet moved millions of dollars through the U.S. banking system without attracting the notice of bank officials or regulators, it said.

ALSO
'Death squad' verdict upheld
From The Miami Herald

An appellate panel upheld a crimes against humanity finding in the case of a former Chilean officer who served during Gen. Pinochet's regime.

BACKGROUND
From Virtual Truth Commission

CHILE: 1970-September 11, 1973 The United States and Allende
CHILE: -- Pinochet Coup and Atrocities
CHILE & U. S., 1973 - 1998
Pinochet 1998
Impact: Letter from a political prisoner in Chile

AND
From the CIA Web site
SUBJECT: CIA Activities in Chile
CIA Machinations in Chile in 1970

posted by me

:: 11:56:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Congress OKs Bill on Nazi War Crime Papers" ::

From Newsday, NY
By MALIA RULON, AP

WASHINGTON -- The public soon will have access to reams of closely held U.S. government secrets about former Nazi war criminals hired by the CIA after World War II.

A bill to give a government group more time to declassify a new batch of documents from the Central Intelligence Agency passed the House 391-0, with 44 members not voting, on Monday, sending the measure to President Bush for his signature.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., the bill's House sponsor, said it has been 10 years since she first proposed legislation seeking information about the U.S. government's involvement with former Nazis, and it's time to finish the job.

"History, and the memory of the millions who perished in the Holocaust, deserve nothing less than full disclosure," Maloney said.

Her bill led to a 1998 public disclosure law that required the release of all U.S. government papers related to the Holocaust and Nazi war crimes. So far, more than 8 million pages of documents have been brought to light, including 1.25 million from the CIA.

This information revealed for the first time that the CIA and its predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services, had sought former Nazi officials to provide expertise on the former Soviet Union during the Cold War.

For example, the documents revealed that German Gen. Reinhard Gehlen, who served as one of Adolf Hitler's most senior military intelligence officers during World War II, later became a key U.S. intelligence resource after the war, Maloney said.

However, until an agreement reached last month, the CIA had refused to give up specific information about what the former Nazis it hired did for the United States. The agency had also refused to provide information on former Nazi SS officers who worked for the CIA.

The agency is now ready to release this information.

Read more here.

The bill is S.384.

On the Net: Interagency Working Group

posted by me

:: 11:00:00 AM [+] ::
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:: RE Iraq ::

Bush: No Timetable for Troops Coming Home
San Francisco Chronicle

President Bush said Wednesday he understands the desire of U.S. coalition partners to withdraw troops from Iraq, but he declined to set a timetable for bringing American forces home and said he hoped others would also stay the course.

From BBC News

Italy confirms Iraq troop plans

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has confirmed that he intends to begin withdrawing Italian troops from Iraq as soon as possible.

Iraq corruption 'at record level'

The reconstruction of post-war Iraq is in danger of becoming "the biggest corruption scandal in history", Transparency International has warned.

ALSO from BBC News
Q&A: Iraqi election
Iraq post-elections: Reader views

posted by me

:: 10:47:00 AM [+] ::
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:: FYC (For your consideration) ::

Ted K., the CIA & LSD
Free Press International, Texas

[The following piece excerpted here is from COUNTERPUNCH & dated 7.15.1999. I found it by accident while searching Google News. Posted @ the FPI blog by Greg Ericson.]

It turns out that Theodore Kaczynski, a.k.a. the Unabomber, was a volunteer in mind-control experiments sponsored by the CIA at Harvard in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Michael Mello, author of the recently published book, "The United States of America vs. Theodore John Kaczynski," notes that at some point in his Harvard years--1958 to 1962--Kaczynski agreed to be the subject of "a psychological experiment." Mello identifies the chief researcher for these only as a lieutenant colonel in World War II, working for the CIA's predecessor organization, the Office of Strategic Services. In fact, the man experimenting on the young Kaczynski was Dr. Henry Murray, who died in 1988.

Murray became preoccupied by psychoanalysis in the 1920s, drawn to it through a fascination with Herman Melville's "Moby Dick," which he gave to Sigmund Freud, who duly made the excited diagnosis that the whale was a father figure. After spending the 1930s developing personality theory, Murray was recruited to the OSS at the start of the war, applying his theories to the selection of agents and also presumably to interrogation.

As chairman of the Department of Social Relations at Harvard, Murray zealously prosecuted the CIA's efforts to carry forward experiments in mind control conducted by Nazi doctors in the concentration camps. The overall program was under the control of the late Sidney Gottlieb, head of the CIA's technical services division. Just as Harvard students were fed doses of LSD, psilocybin and other potions, so too were prisoners and many unwitting guinea pigs.

Sometimes the results were disastrous. A dram of LSD fed by Gottlieb himself to an unwitting U.S. army officer, Frank Olson, plunged Olson into escalating psychotic episodes, which culminated in Olson's fatal descent from an upper window in the Statler-Hilton in New York. Gottlieb was the object of a lawsuit not only by Olson's children but also by the sister of another man, Stanley Milton Glickman, whose life had disintegrated into psychosis after being unwittingly given a dose of LSD by Gottlieb.

What did Murray give Kaczynski?

Read the rest of the piece here.

[Incidentally, Olson was allegedly "dosed" at a house on Deep Creek Lake in Western Maryland. You can find more info about the story here.]

posted by me

:: 9:31:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Move On MoveOn" ::

A ZNET column
By Norman Solomon

Sadly, it has come to this. Two years after the invasion of Iraq, the online powerhouse MoveOn.org is not pushing for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

ALSO
From Iraq Occupation Watch
Two Years Later: Iraq Continues to Bleed and Suffer

As the second anniversary of the US/British invasion of Iraq approaches, Occupation Watch seeks to highlight articles that assess the current situation in occupied Iraq. While the world seemingly holds its collective breath in anticipation of the formation of an Iraqi government and news of Iraq steadily disappears from the media, the events in Iraq continue to point to a steady deterioration of everyday life (and death). And, no one is ever far from the most immediate question as to when, if ever, the US/British forces will leave.

posted by me

:: 9:13:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Crystal Power' ::

Are Nanobacteria Making Us Ill?
From Wired News
Med-Tech » More studies implicate the tiny particles in a variety of diseases, from kidney stones to atherosclerosis. But the debate continues over whether the particles are life forms. By Amit Asaravala.

ALSO from Wired News
CLICK OR MISS
Biodiesel Gets Legit
This could be the first year in which thousands of drivers fill their tanks with the alternative fuel, thanks to a network of public stations.

posted by me

:: 11:03:00 AM [+] ::
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:: So Weird ::

From Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird

LEAD STORY
Producers announced in February that they were still planning to bring the 3-year-old London stage show "Jerry Springer, The Opera" to America in early 2006, despite increasingly vituperative protests of religious groups. The show features "Jerry" mediating confessions in hell between Satan, God, Jesus, Mary, and various biblical characters, complete with a raucous audience periodically chanting "Jer-ree! Jer-ree!" Reportedly, 300 to several thousand curse words are in the script (depending on who counts), and the show's Jesus is a pudgy, diaper-wearing gay man who is apparently coprophilic (among the many alleged points of blasphemy). When the BBC televised a showing, it reported 50,000 complaints, with some physical threats directed to the station's staff and their families. [BBC News, 1-10-05]

Update
At the annual Muslim "stone the devil" ritual near Mecca in January, clerics had feared a repeat of 2004, when more than 250 people were trampled to death (among the 2 million in attendance), but fatalities dropped to the average level this year (just three, according to one report) after larger targets were installed so that participants did not have to get so close to stone them. On the other hand, in the same week, an annual Hindu goddess-worship ritual in Maharashtra state in India resulted in as many as 300 deaths when a fire broke out in a roadside stall near the Mandhar Devi temple, provoking a stampede. [The Australian, 1-24-05] [BBC News, 1-25-04]

Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net

posted by me

:: 10:59:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Palast on Dan's Farewell ::

I'D RATHER NOT SAY GOOD-BYE, DAN
Wednesday, March 9, 2005
By Greg Palast

Without his make-up, Dan looked like hell warmed over: old, defeated, yet angry. And he told our television audience something that just blew me away. Dan Rather said that American reporters may not ask tough questions about George Bush or his wars.

"It's an obscene comparison," Rather said, "but there was a time in South Africa when people would put flaming tires around peoples' necks if they dissented. In some ways, the fear is that you will be neck-laced here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck."

Talking to another reporter, Dan told it straight about the careerism that keeps US journalists in line. "It's that fear that keeps [American] journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions and to continue to bore-in on the tough questions so often."

Silence as patriotism. Ugh. He confessed, "One finds oneself saying, ?I know the right question, but you know what, this is not exactly the right time to ask it." It was making him ill and he was ready to say, BASTA, enough. Suddenly, there was fire in those eyes: "It's extremely dangerous and cannot and should not be accepted and I'm sorry to say that, up to and including this moment of this interview, that overwhelmingly it has been accepted by the American people. And the current Administration revels in that, they relish and take refuge in that."

Of course, Dan said all these things to a British audience. But back in the USA, Dan had promised America he would be a good boy, a trained press puppy who would poop on the paper set down for him. He told his US audience, "George Bush is the President. He makes the decisions. He wants me to line up, just tell me where."

But CBS' million-dollar man was about to step out of line.

In 2003, BBC Television questioned George Bush's career as Viet Nam era Top Gun fighter pilot. In the British broadcast, I held up a confidential letter from Justice Department files stating that Poppy Bush had put in the fix to get Junior Bush out of 'Nam and into the Texas Air Guard. George could spend the war protecting Houston from Viet Cong attack.

A year after the BBC broadcast, the I'm-going-to-be-a-real-journalist-now Rather decided to run the same story on 60 Minutes. And just as he predicted, the press-police at the network and in the White House seized him and lit the tire around his neck.

What was Dan's mistake? Yes, yes, he shouldn't have embellished the story with a document he couldn't fully source. But that memo (not the one in the BBC report) was about a side issue, not the key accusation, that Senior Bush got Junior out of the draft. Despite not a jot of evidence that the main story of draft-dodgin' George was wrong (BBC never withdrew it), CBS cited Rather's insistence on the veracity of that report as grounds to crush his career and his reputation.

Rather was convicted by a corporate kangaroo court. Dickie Thornburgh, who had been Poppy Bush's Attorney General and owed his big salaries and career to the Bush family, ran an "independent" investigation which concluded -- surprise! -- the Bushes had done no wrong. It was Dan that committed the evil. That whacky conclusion went along just fine with the diktat of Sumner Redstone, CEO of Viacom, CBS' owner, that a "Republican administration is better for media companies."

In "Darkness at Noon," Arthur Koestler explained why old Communists, brought up for trial by Stalin, still sang the system's praises -- just before they were shot. To do otherwise would have been to cast doubt on the cause to which they sacrificed their lives. Now, Dan Rather, like those soon-to-be executed victims of Stalin, has bowed his head in silence in the face of the evil purge. To do otherwise, I suppose, would be to acknowledge that his career has been a path of increasing salaries and celebrity bought by increasing toady-dom.

Imagine if Edward R. Murrow, after having exposed Joe McCarthy, replied to criticism by bowing his head for the noose-man.

Rather died as a journalist years ago by accepting the evil gag orders of the media moguls. Still, I applaud his attempt with the Bush story to kick his way out of his professional coffin. Unfortunately, his current silence simply gives aid and comfort to the censoring corporate news-killers.

Last night, Rather read off his last "news" broadcast, if you can call it that. To Dan the newsman, and to American journalism, all I can say is, rest in peace.

*****

posted by me

:: 10:59:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Disturbing pattern" ::

An Army investigation of abuse by U.S. soldiers -- involving alleged rape of Iraqi women -- ends for lack of evidence.
By Suzanne Goldenberg

Soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Brigade -- the same military unit whose troops fired on the car carrying freed Italian hostage Giuliana Sgrena -- were under investigation last year for raping Iraqi women, U.S. Army documents reveal. Four soldiers were alleged to have raped two women while on guard duty in a Baghdad shopping precinct. A U.S. Army investigator interviewed several soldiers from the military unit, the 1-15th battalion of the 3rd Infantry Brigade, but did not locate or interview the Iraqi women involved before shutting down the inquiry for lack of evidence.

Transcripts of the investigation, obtained by the Guardian from the American Civil Liberties Union, show only the most cursory attempts by the investigator to establish whether the women were raped. The soldiers claimed the women were prostitutes, or denied any knowledge of anyone in their unit having sex while deployed in Iraq. The statements went largely unchallenged. "I know the women were Iraqi. I however don't know if they were raped, or were prostitutes, or just wanted sex," one soldier told investigators.

[Warning: registration required. But you can get a 1-day pass if you can stomach a commercial. "This is indeed a disturbing universe." ;]

See also

Pentagon faces PR disaster
Australian, Australia

US troops 'made Iraq abuse video'
BBC News, UK

posted by me

:: 10:11:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Bloggers at the White House--and in court" ::

From CNET News.com

White House approves pass for blogger
The New York Times
Garrett M. Graff may be the first person to be granted a daily White House pass for the specific purpose of writing a blog.

Tentative ruling favors Apple in blog case
California judge issues a tentative ruling that would force three blogging sites to divulge their sources to Apple.

The coming crackdown on blogging
newsmaker The FEC's Bradley Smith says that the freewheeling days of political blogging and online punditry are over.

posted by me

:: 8:59:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Outsourcing Interrogation 'Legal'" ::

From CBS News
A secret CIA program to transfer suspected terrorists to foreign countries that use torture during interrogations was approved at the highest levels of the U.S. government, one of the agents who helped set it up tells 60 Minutes.

Mike Scheuer, the former head of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit and one of the agents who helped set up the program, tells 60 Minutes it was authorized by Clinton's National Security Council and officials in Congress - and all understood what it meant to send suspects to those countries.

"They don't have the same legal system we have. But we know that going into it," says Scheuer. "And so the idea that we're gonna suddenly throw our hands up like Claude Raines in 'Casablanca' and say, 'I'm shocked that justice in Egypt isn't like it is in Milwaukee,' there's a certain disingenuousness to that."

See also...
CIA got OK to send terror suspects abroad
London Free Press, Canada

US sent hundreds of terror suspects to foreign prisons
Independent, UK

posted by me

:: 8:40:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Internet Radio 101" ::

From BW Online
By Heather Green
Want to podcast your own "station" or listen to the new medium's pioneers? Here's a guide to the Net's exploding choices

See also...
The New Radio Revolution

posted by me

:: 8:13:00 PM [+] ::
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:: So Weird ::

From Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird

LEAD STORY
Homaro Cantu (described by one customer as Chicago's "mad-scientist" gourmet chef) creates his signature dishes with the help of cutting-edge technology, such as fishless sushi made with edible, fish-flavored paper containing designs produced on an inkjet printer. Among the projects planned for his Moto restaurant: baking with a "class IV" laser (the kind used in welding and surgery) that will cook the center but not the outside; using helium and superconductors to make food levitate; and developing edible utensils, tables and chairs. Said Cantu, to a New York Times reporter in February, "Gastronomy has to catch up to the evolution in technology." [San Francisco Chronicle-New York Times, 2-13-05]

In Their Own Words
"This is so embarrassing. We had never done that before, and now she's in the hospital, and my cat's dead" (said a name-withheld New York City man in January, after he and a neighbor decided to have sex but then accidentally ignited a comforter with a candle, starting a major fire in his apartment). And, said Elaine Edwards of Mink, La., one of the last remaining places in the country to be without telephone service, until lines were installed in January: "It wasn't 15 minutes after that phone was in before a telemarketer called me." [New York Daily News, 1-15-05] [Tuscaloosa News-AP, 1-31-05]

More Scenes of the Surreal
(1) In January, Felipe Rose, a member of the Village People musical group and who is part Lakota Sioux, said he felt so remorseful at missing the opening last year of the National Museum of the American Indian that he donated his gold record the group received for the 1978 song "Y.M.C.A.," which is ostensibly about gay men looking for sex in the big city. (2) In late 2004, officials of the Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris said they were forced to cordon off the statue of 19th-century journalist Victor Noir (who was reputed to be quite a ladies' man) because too many visitors were rubbing Noir's clothed crotch for good luck. [Washington Post, 1-13-05] [BBC News, 11-2-04]

Can't Possibly Be True
Harvey Kash, 69, and Carl Lanzisera, 65, were arrested while standing in line at the courthouse in Hempstead, N.Y., in January, only because, said court officials, they were telling anti-lawyer jokes, to the irritation of a lawyer within earshot. Charges against Lanzisera were dropped, but prosecutors actually referred Kash's case to a grand jury, which, three weeks later, refused to indict him. (Said Kash's attorney, "Crime must be at a record low in Nassau County for the grand jury to have time for this.") [New York Post, 2-9-05; Newsday, 1-12-05]

The Continuing Crisis
The City Council of Sweetwater, Fla., decided to raise money by selling a dealer all the guns confiscated by its police, but the dealer chosen was Lou's Gun Shop in Hialeah, Fla., identified by authorities as the nation's leading retail source of the guns eventually used in crimes (January). And a committee of the New York State Bar Association proposed in January to expand the civic work lawyers could get professional credit for ("pro bono" activities) to include political lobbying, including lobbying to cut back on required pro-bono work. [WPLG-TV (Miami), 1-10-05] [New York Law Journal, 1-18-05]

Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net

posted by me

:: 10:23:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "US display marks 1,500 war dead" ::

From BBC News

Portraits of nearly all of the 1,500 US troops killed in Iraq are going on display at a New York state university.

The pictures, mostly painted by art students, stare down from a 60m (200ft) wall at Syracuse University.

"It's not about the war or politics. It's about these people who have given their lives," said Stephen Zaima, a professor at the university.

According to AP news agency, the number of US servicemen and women killed in Iraq reached 1,500 on Thursday.

ALSO
Portrait exhibit gives faces to soldiers killed in Iraq
Newsday, NY

The exhibit, called "To Never Forget: Faces of the Fallen," is a continuation of a project started last year by students and faculty at The College of Marin in California, who produced the first 1,109 portraits. The Marin portraits also are on exhibit at Syracuse. The show runs through April 1.

The 374 5-inch-by-7-inch images created at Syracuse are war casualties from September 2004 to Feb. 19. The combined portraits are arrayed in seven rows along a 200-foot long stretch of wall in the Shaffer Art Building.

The portraits come in various mediums: pencil, ink, oil paint, water colors, prints, even a few computer-altered images. More than 250 students, faculty and staff, and local artists volunteered to help create the new portraits.

AND
A tribute to dead soldiers, on hundreds of canvasses
Syracuse.com

posted by me

:: 10:51:00 AM [+] ::
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