:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 7.27.2005 ::

:: "Editorial layoffs hit Wired News" ::

By Declan McCullagh
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Lycos has cut back the editorial staff at Wired News as part of a restructuring of the online media company's Web sites.

The layoffs, announced to employees on Monday, leave the iconic technology Web site Wired.com with no employees bearing the title "staff writer." In all, three reporters, an unknown number of production employees and two business-side people lost their jobs. The two remaining staff writers had their titles changed to editor.

The shakeup comes almost a year after Daum Communications, a large South Korean Web firm, bought Lycos for $95 million. Lycos' other U.S. operations include stock market site Quote.com and Tripod user-created Web sites.

Evan Hansen, Wired News editor in chief and a former editor at CNET News.com, said in an e-mailed statement that some management and publishing functions have been "consolidated" from San Francisco to Lycos' offices in Waltham, Mass. "In addition, some editorial positions have been eliminated and others reassigned," Hansen said. "These cost management measures are expected to improve our bottom line without impacting daily Web site operations."

For the last few years, Wired News has relied on numerous freelance contributors and wire service articles for a large part of its daily news coverage, a trend that's likely to continue following this week's layoffs. Wired News retains the exclusive rights to republish content from Wired Magazine, a separate publication owned by New York-based magazine conglomerate Conde Nast.

"They've done a spectacular job of staying afloat through a lot of turbulence over the past few years," said Jon Rochmis, an executive editor at Wired News until 2003. "They let some extraordinarily dedicated and talented people go. The worst part is that any time you lose a unique voice, journalism as a whole suffers."

Wired News is the successor to HotWired.com, a news and commentary site that pioneered dynamically generated Web pages, user subscriptions, online chats and banner ads a decade ago. Wired Ventures eventually sold the print magazine to Conde Nast and its Web sites (including Wired News, Webmonkey and Hotbot.com) to Lycos.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:15:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "We are the Web" ::

All Hail the Awesome Internet
From Wired News
The Netscape IPO wasn't really about dot-commerce. At its heart was a new cultural force based on mass collaboration. Blogs, Wikipedia, open source, peer-to-peer - behold the power of the people. By Kevin Kelly from Wired magazine.

Ten years ago, Netscape's explosive IPO ignited huge piles of money. The brilliant flash revealed what had been invisible only a moment before: the World Wide Web. As Eric Schmidt (then at Sun, now at Google) noted, the day before the IPO, nothing about the Web; the day after, everything.

Computing pioneer Vannevar Bush outlined the Web's core idea - hyperlinked pages - in 1945, but the first person to try to build out the concept was a freethinker named Ted Nelson who envisioned his own scheme in 1965. However, he had little success connecting digital bits on a useful scale, and his efforts were known only to an isolated group of disciples. Few of the hackers writing code for the emerging Web in the 1990s knew about Nelson or his hyperlinked dream machine.

At the suggestion of a computer-savvy friend, I got in touch with Nelson in 1984, a decade before Netscape. We met in a dark dockside bar in Sausalito, California. He was renting a houseboat nearby and had the air of someone with time on his hands. Folded notes erupted from his pockets, and long strips of paper slipped from overstuffed notebooks. Wearing a ballpoint pen on a string around his neck, he told me - way too earnestly for a bar at 4 o'clock in the afternoon - about his scheme for organizing all the knowledge of humanity. Salvation lay in cutting up 3 x 5 cards, of which he had plenty.

Although Nelson was polite, charming, and smooth, I was too slow for his fast talk. But I got an aha! from his marvelous notion of hypertext. He was certain that every document in the world should be a footnote to some other document, and computers could make the links between them visible and permanent. But that was just the beginning! Scribbling on index cards, he sketched out complicated notions of transferring authorship back to creators and tracking payments as readers hopped along networks of documents, what he called the docuverse. He spoke of "transclusion" and "intertwingularity" as he described the grand utopian benefits of his embedded structure. It was going to save the world from stupidity.

I believed him. Despite his quirks, it was clear to me that a hyperlinked world was inevitable - someday. But looking back now, after 10 years of living online, what surprises me about the genesis of the Web is how much was missing from Vannevar Bush's vision, Nelson's docuverse, and my own expectations. We all missed the big story. The revolution launched by Netscape's IPO was only marginally about hypertext and human knowledge. At its heart was a new kind of participation that has since developed into an emerging culture based on sharing. And the ways of participating unleashed by hyperlinks are creating a new type of thinking - part human and part machine - found nowhere else on the planet or in history.

Not only did we fail to imagine what the Web would become, we still don't see it today! We are blind to the miracle it has blossomed into. And as a result of ignoring what the Web really is, we are likely to miss what it will grow into over the next 10 years. Any hope of discerning the state of the Web in 2015 requires that we own up to how wrong we were 10 years ago.

Read the entire story here.

posted by me

:: 10:01:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Iraq Constitution May Erode Women's Rights" ::

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A part of Iraq's draft constitution obtained by The Associated Press gives Islam a major role in Iraqi civil law, raising concerns that women could lose rights in marriage, divorce and inheritance.

The proposal also appears to rule out non-governmental militias, an area addressed Monday by U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. Urging Iraqis to build national institutions, he said there is no place for factional forces that "build the infrastructure for a future civil war."

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 12:51:00 AM [+] ::
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:: Reports from The Nation ::

No Exit Strategy
David Rieff | Two new books examine what went wrong in the planning and conduct of the war in Iraq.

One of the stranger domestic cultural subplots of the war in Iraq has been the confidence with which so many politicians, commentators and journalists alike have felt comfortable claiming, often on the basis of the most fleeting experience there, how postwar Iraq is going to turn out. With his "Mission Accomplished" speech aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Baghdad to American forces, and the Range Rover machismo of his "bring 'em on" response to the first serious signs of a homegrown Iraqi insurgent challenge to the US occupation, President Bush remains the world record-holder for this brand of hubris. But any number of people, from Vice President Cheney down to the most hectoring blowhard on Fox News, have been hard at work making a run for his title.

Mostly, it has been a habit of feeling (and of hype), not of thought. Given the fact that Gen. John Abizaid, who heads the US Central Command, and Gen. George Casey, who commands the multinational forces on the ground in Iraq, have both said publicly that over the past six months the insurgency has remained much the same in terms of its lethality and reach, and that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld has said it could go on for as many as twelve years, it is hard to believe the Vice President really thinks it is in its "last throes." But to the right, it is an article of faith that the United States is winning. The problem is that it has been an article of faith since before the war even began. And by the fall of 2003, six months after Baghdad fell, pro-Administration pundits were already insisting that, as Max Boot, John M. Olin fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and contributing editor to The Weekly Standard, put it at that time, "the world press, which lavished such attention on Iraqi looting back in May, seems largely indifferent to the successful work of rebuilding that has gone on since."

Boot pointed out such supposedly underreported or misrepresented success stories as what was taking place in Iraq's Shiite south around the shrine city of Najaf, controlled by the Marines, and in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, controlled by the Army's 101st Airborne Division. By 2004 Americans had their hands full beating back a rebellion by the militia of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and after Baghdad Mosul is now probably the least secure and most heavily insurgent city in all of Iraq. Apparently undeterred, Boot recently published a column in the Los Angeles Times titled "Why the Rebels Will Lose."

Some of the hard left, or what passes for it in the United States and Britain, has not been much better. An equally ideologically based divination of the Iraqi future has been in effect. The new Iraqi government, which Susan Watkins, writing in New Left Review, called "Vichy on the Tigris," could not last (it did). The January elections would be a failure (they weren't). There would be civil war between Shiites and Sunnis (so far not, in no small measure thanks to the Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani).

The fact is, no one really knows how things are going to turn out in Iraq, and the certainty with which those who don't seem to think they do, from President Bush and Paul Wolfowitz to Noam Chomsky and Arundhati Roy, brings to mind Cicero's remark that he cannot understand how, when two soothsayers meet in the street, they both don't burst out laughing.

There is, however, a subset of books and articles on Iraq that are worth taking seriously.

Read more here.

ALSO

Iraq: The Human Toll
David Cortright argues that the humanitarian crisis in Iraq is further evidence of the failure of US policy.

The Iran War Buildup
Michael Klare says the building blocks for an attack on Iran are being put into place.

posted by me

:: 3:24:00 PM [+] ::
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:: So Weird ::

From Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird (.911)

LEAD STORY
A subculture of hip-hop music has developed recently among computer science professionals, who taunt each other in verse much as mainstream rap artists do, according to a June report on Wired.com. "Geeksta" rappers like Ytcracker and MC Plus+ spin verses such as the latter's "I'm encrypting shit like every single day / sending it across a network in a safe way / protecting messages to make my pay / if you hack me you're guilty under DMCA" (referring to a federal copyright law). Explained another, "Monzy": "(I)nstead of boasting about our bitches, blunts, Benzes or Benjamins, maybe we talk about our math skills or the efficiency of our code." A hip-hop journal editor doubted the genre would endure, though, because so far the major artists are males: "You're going to need some females." [Wired.com, 6-23-05]

Pieces of Work
In April, Florida Highway Patrol officers in Miami-Dade County had set up surveillance, including an airplane, to catch a notorious motorcyclist who at least twice before had sped past officers, at speeds up to 140 mph, and escaped. On April 24, he blew by again, going the wrong way in rush-hour traffic, but with the help of the plane, officers tracked him to his apartment and arrested him on six counts. The motorcyclist turned out to be David Carpenter, 24, who was at that time on track to become a Florida Highway Patrol officer, with his physical exam only a week away. (He was advised to forget about the new career.) [Sun-Sentinel, 4-26-05]

In February, a Judicial Conduct Board in Pittsburgh filed charges against District Judge Ernest Marraccini, who apparently was upset one day at having to sit as a substitute traffic judge. ("Well, I'm not spending the day here," he allegedly said in court.) To the 30 people waiting to appeal their tickets, Marraccini reportedly said, "Well, then, let's just find everybody not guilty!" When the stunned appellants didn't immediately react, Marraccini said, "I told you you're all not guilty. ... What are you, a bunch of morons?" [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2-16-05]

Recurring Themes
Gary Moody, 45, was arrested after being pulled by police from a tank underneath a women's outhouse in a park near Albany, N.H., in June. A teenage girl had reported that when she went to use the facility, she saw Moody, standing in the muck below the hole, staring up at her. News of the Weird has reported on others discovered in similar circumstances (and who typically wear raincoats and waders and stand patiently, waiting for a user): in Horsetooth National Park in Colorado in 1998; near Peterborough, Ontario, in 1995; at a state park near Hamden, Conn., in 1990; and near Durango, Colo., in 1990. According to Moody's arrest report, his explanation (which is a familiar one for these situations) was that he accidentally "dropped" a "ring" into the toilet and had to go looking for it. [ABC News-AP, 6-28-05]

Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNewsTips@yahoo.com

posted by me

:: 10:59:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "FBI files are chilling" ::

An Editorial
From The Contra Costa Times

Back in the 1960s, under the guise of fighting communism, the FBI opened thousands of secret files on American citizens whose sole crime was to protest government policies that they found unjust.

Under COINTELPRO, a covert intelligence program, federal agents bugged people's homes, sent anonymous letters to their spouses about alleged marital infidelities and infiltrated pacifist organizations, creating havoc within their ranks.

The goal was to crush public opposition to the Vietnam War and destroy an emerging civil rights movement that J. Edgar Hoover feared might produce a "Black Messiah."

For those old enough to remember those dark times, there is a chilling sense of déjà vu.

Once again, the FBI is spying on anti-war protesters. Only this time, agency officials say it is part of the war on terrorism.

One prime FBI target is the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU has been a sharp critic of the USA Patriot Act, which expands law enforcement's powers of search and seizure at the expense of the individual protections guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.

The notion that the legal advocacy organization poses a threat to national security is absurd. The only weapon in its arsenal is the legal brief. Yet, the FBI has collected more than 1,000 documents on the ACLU's activities. The secret snooping came to light after the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information lawsuit against the agency.

As a result of the lawsuit, FBI officials were forced to admit that they were monitoring the ACLU, Greenpeace and other organizations.

So why is the FBI spending its time spying on these groups? Don't they have more important things to do? Like looking for the real terrorists?

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 3:51:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Oops... ::

CORRECTED - UPDATE 2-House reauthorizes USA Patriot Act
Reuters

In July 21 Washington story headlined "House reauthorizes USA Patriot Act" please read in 1st paragraph ... voted to renew the USA Patriot Act... instead of ...renewed the USA Patriot Act... (reflecting fact that further congressional action, including in Senate, is needed to renew the act).
A corrected story follows.

(Updates with statement from Bush, paragraphs 2-3)

By Alan Elsner

WASHINGTON, July 21 (Reuters) - The House of Representatives, ignoring protests from civil liberties groups, renewed the USA Patriot Act on Thursday mostly along party lines, to make permanent the government's unprecedented powers to investigate suspected terrorists.

Sixteen provisions of the 2001 law, hastily enacted in response to the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, are due to expire at the end of this year unless renewed by Congress. President George W. Bush, who has repeatedly called on lawmakers to make the entire law permanent, commended lawmakers for approving the measure.

"The Patriot Act is a key part of our efforts to combat terrorism and protect the American people, and the Congress needs to send me a bill soon that renews the act without weakening our ability to fight terror," the president said in statement.

Read the entire piece here.

posted by me

:: 3:35:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Ex-CIA Officers Rip Bush Over Rove Leak" ::

By DONNA DE LA CRUZ
The Associated Press
via The Washington Post

WASHINGTON -- Former U.S. intelligence officers criticized President Bush on Friday for not disciplining Karl Rove in connection with the leak of the name of a CIA officer, saying Bush's lack of action has jeopardized national security.

In a hearing held by Senate and House Democrats examining the implications of exposing Valerie Plame's identity, the former intelligence officers said Bush's silence has hampered efforts to recruit informants to help the United States fight the war on terror. Federal law forbids government officials from revealing the identity of an undercover intelligence officer.

"I wouldn't be here this morning if President Bush had done the one thing required of him as commander in chief _ protect and defend the Constitution," said Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst. "The minute that Valerie Plame's identity was outed, he should have delivered a strict and strong message to his employees."

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 3:24:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "House reauthorizes Patriot Act" ::

From a Reuters report
via Wired News

The House of Representatives, ignoring protests from civil liberties groups, renewed the USA Patriot Act on Thursday mostly along party lines, to make permanent the government's unprecedented powers to investigate suspected terrorists.

Sixteen provisions of the 2001 law, hastily enacted in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, are due to expire at the end of this year unless renewed by Congress. President Bush, who has repeatedly called on lawmakers to make the entire law permanent, commended lawmakers for approving the measure.

"The Patriot Act is a key part of our efforts to combat terrorism and protect the American people, and the Congress needs to send me a bill soon that renews the act without weakening our ability to fight terror," the president said in statement.

The House reauthorized the act by 257-171 with several changes designed to increase judicial and political oversight of some of its most controversial provisions. In the Republican-controlled chamber, 44 Democrats supported the bill while 14 Republicans opposed it.

Republicans repeatedly argued throughout the 11-hour debate that the latest explosions in London showed how urgent and important it was to renew the law.

"Passage of the...act is vital to maintaining the post-9/11 law enforcement and intelligence reforms that have reduced America's vulnerability to terrorist attack," Wisconsin Republican James Sensenbrenner told lawmakers.

Republicans also added a new provision to apply the federal death penalty for terrorist offenses that resulted in death and another establishing a new crime of narco-terrorism to punish people using drug profits to aid terrorism. These offenders will now face 20-year minimum prison sentences.

The original act allowed expanded surveillance of terror suspects and gave the government the ability to go to a secret court to seize the personal records of suspects from bookstores, libraries, businesses, hospitals and other organizations--the so-called "library clause."

House Republicans agreed last week that this clause--perhaps the most contentious--and another allowing so-called roving wiretaps, which permits the government to eavesdrop on suspects as they switch from phone to phone, would be renewed for only 10 years instead of being made permanent.

The Senate judiciary committee voted unanimously to recommend its own version of the act on Thursday, which included only four-year renewals of these two clauses. The full Senate is expected to take its bill up in the fall.

The House also passed an amendment requiring the director of the FBI to personally approve all requests for library or bookstore records and a number of other amendments designed to add civil liberty safeguards to the bill.

'Grave threat'
However, Democrats who mostly supported the original law in 2001, were not mollified and said the law still posed a potentially grave threat to personal freedoms.

"The bill before us fails to assure accountability," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. "Today, we are deciding whether the government will be accountable to the people, to the Congress and to the courts for the exercise of its power."

Republicans said there had been no documented instances of civil liberty abuses since the act was originally passed in 2001. However Democrats said the government had requested individuals' library records more than 200 times.

Democrats also complained that the Republican leadership refused to allow debate on several of their key amendments and opted instead to ram the law through on a party-line vote.

"This is an abuse of power by the Republican majority which has deliberately and purposely chosen to stifle a full debate," said Maryland Democrat Steny Hoyer.

A coalition of liberal and conservative civil liberties groups, formed to oppose reauthorization of the law in its current form, this week called on lawmakers not to rush to reauthorize the bill without further debate.

"Certain sections of the law extend far beyond the mission of protecting Americans from terrorism and violate ordinary citizens' constitutional rights, especially the right to privacy," said former Republican Rep. Bob Barr.

Leading opposition from the left, the American Civil Liberties Union said the bill gave the FBI extraordinary power to obtain personal records, search individuals' homes or offices without their knowledge and to use a secret court to obtain personal date on ordinary Americans.

Story Copyright © 2005 Reuters Limited.

posted by me

:: 10:59:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "The Patriot Act: Section 215" ::

From NPR.org, Taking Issue
The Patriot Act widened the government's surveillance powers in an effort to fight terrorism. But many contend it also put civil liberties at risk.

Among the act's most controversial provisions is Section 215. It allows investigators broad access to library, bookstore, rental car and many other records, and it prevents the recipient of such an order from disclosing the request for records. As Section 215 comes up for renewal, Taking Issue asks whether it strikes the right balance between law and liberty or needs amendment.

ALSO
In Depth: Section 215 Explained

:: "JANE, YOU IGNORANT SLUT" ::
ADDTL. NPR COVERAGE

Let Investigators Do Their Job
By Heather MacDonald
"Preemptive terror investigations cannot be conducted in the news media. Telling a Mohammad Atta that the government wants to see his airline reservations is a sure-fire way to torpedo any chance of unraveling his plot."

Checks Are Needed to Protect Rights
By James Dempsey
"Intelligence investigations are broader and more secret, and are not subject to after-the-fact scrutiny. We need to build in protections at the beginning."

posted by me

:: 9:51:00 PM [+] ::
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:: RE George & Karl ::

Bush Sets Lawbreaking Standard on Leak
From The Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON -- President Bush said Monday that he would fire any member of his administration who is found to have broken the law in revealing information about a covert CIA operative."I would like this to end as quickly as possible so we know the facts, and if someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration," Bush said at a news conference with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The president's statement was the latest iteration of his stance on the conditions under which he would dismiss a member of his staff for any role in leaking the CIA operative's identity. Federal prosecutors are investigating how the identity of the undercover operative, Valerie Plame, made its way into the news media in July 2003 and whether anyone in the Bush administration leaked information about her in violation of a federal law that protects covert agents' identities.

Prosecutors have obtained testimony from Bush's senior political adviser, Karl Rove, and from other administration officials.

Prosecutors have obtained testimony from Bush's senior political adviser, Karl Rove, and from other administration officials.

By saying Monday that committing a crime would trigger dismissal, Bush appeared to be setting a narrower standard than he did in a statement on June 10, 2004. On that day, Bush answered "yes" when he was asked: "Do you stand by your pledge to fire anyone found" to have leaked the CIA operative's name? Bush's spokesman, Scott McClellan, said on Sept. 29, 2003: "The president ... has made it very clear to people in his administration that he expects them to adhere to the highest standards of conduct. If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration."

Democrats said Bush, with his statement Monday, had lowered the ethical standards for working at the White House.

"The standard for holding a high position in the White House should not simply be that you didn't break the law," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y. Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, in a written statement, accused Bush of having "lowered the ethics bar."

But Bush has said in the past that an aide would be fired if found to have broken a law, language similar to his statement on Monday.

"There are too many leaks of classified information in Washington," he said on Sept. 30, 2003. "There's leaks at the executive branch; there's leaks in the legislative branch. There's just too many leaks. And if there's a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of."

On Monday, McClellan rejected the idea that Bush had changed his stance on what would prompt him to fire a staff member.

Read more here.

ALSO
Roving justice
Salon.com

AND
from Alternet.org

Robert Scheer:
The Real Rove Scandal
Rove's leak exposed the depravity of the administration's deliberate use of a false WMD threat and its willingness to go after anyone willing to tell the truth about it.

Will Durst:
Roving Target
'The reporters won't get off the Karl Rove-Valerie Plame story. They're like rabid wolverines and I'm the wounded bunny.'

posted by me

:: 11:34:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Archaeologists Unveil Pompeii Treasure" ::

ROME (AP) - Decorated cups and fine silver platters were once again polished and on display Monday as archaeologists unveiled an ancient Roman dining set that lay hidden for two millennia in the volcanic ash of Pompeii.

In 2000, archaeologists found a wicker basket containing the silverware in the ruins of a thermal bath near the remains of the Roman city, said Pietro Giovanni Guzzo, head of Pompeii's archaeological office.

The basket was filled with the volcanic ash that buried the city when Mount Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79. When experts X-rayed it, they saw the objects preserved in the ash, which killed thousands of people but kept the town almost intact, providing precious information on domestic life in the ancient world.

The pieces will go on display in 2006 at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, 18 miles north of Pompeii, he said.

Read the entire story here.

ALSO
Rare Pompeii dinner set unveiled
By David Willey
BBC News Rome

Elsewhere...
Ancient Woolly Mammoth Tusk Found
PIXLEY, Calif. (AP) - The fossilized tusk of an ancient woolly mammoth has been discovered near a dairy farm in Tulare County. The 10-foot-long curved tusk is estimated to be 100,000 years old, according to Roger LaJeunesse, an anthropology professor at California State University in Fresno.

posted by me

:: 10:55:00 AM [+] ::
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:: Cointelpro 2k5? ::

Large Volume of FBI Files Alarms US Activist Groups
From The New York Times
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON - The Federal Bureau of Investigation has collected at least 3,500 pages of internal documents in the last several years on a handful of civil rights and antiwar protest groups in what the groups charge is an attempt to stifle political opposition to the Bush administration.

The F.B.I. has in its files 1,173 pages of internal documents on the American Civil Liberties Union, the leading critic of the Bush administration's antiterrorism policies, and 2,383 pages on Greenpeace, an environmental group that has led acts of civil disobedience in protest over the administration's policies, the Justice Department disclosed in a court filing this month in a federal court in Washington.

The filing came as part of a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act brought by the A.C.L.U. and other groups that maintain that the F.B.I. has engaged in a pattern of political surveillance against critics of the Bush administration. A smaller batch of documents already turned over by the government sheds light on the interest of F.B.I. counterterrorism officials in protests surrounding the Iraq war and last year's Republican National Convention.

F.B.I. and Justice Department officials declined to say what was in the A.C.L.U. and Greenpeace files, citing the pending lawsuit. But they stressed that as a matter of both policy and practice, they have not sought to monitor the political activities of any activist groups and that any intelligence-gathering activities related to political protests are intended to prevent disruptive and criminal activity at demonstrations, not to quell free speech. They said there might be an innocuous explanation for the large volume of files on the A.C.L.U. and Greenpeace, like preserving requests from or complaints about the groups in agency files.

But officials at the two groups said they were troubled by the disclosure.

"I'm still somewhat shocked by the size of the file on us," said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the A.C.L.U. "Why would the F.B.I. collect almost 1,200 pages on a civil rights organization engaged in lawful activity? What justification could there be, other than political surveillance of lawful First Amendment activities?"

Protest groups charge that F.B.I. counterterrorism officials have used their expanded powers since the Sept. 11 attacks to blur the line between legitimate civil disobedience and violent or terrorist activity in what they liken to F.B.I. political surveillance of the 1960's. The debate became particularly heated during protests over the war in Iraq and the run-up to the Republican National Convention in New York City last year, with the disclosures that the F.B.I. had collected extensive information on plans for protests.

In all, the A.C.L.U. is seeking F.B.I. records since 2001 or earlier on some 150 groups that have been critical of the Bush administration's policies on the Iraq war and other matters.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:51:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Top Aides Reportedly Set Sights on Wilson" ::

Rove and Cheney chief of staff were intent on discrediting CIA agent's husband, prosecutors have been told.
From The Los Angeles Times
via ktla
By Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten

WASHINGTON -- Top aides to President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were intensely focused on discrediting former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV in the days after he wrote an op-ed article for the New York Times suggesting the administration manipulated intelligence to justify going to war in Iraq, federal investigators have been told.

Prosecutors investigating whether administration officials illegally leaked the identity of Wilson's wife, a CIA officer who had worked undercover, have been told that Bush's top political strategist, Karl Rove, and Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, were especially intent on undercutting Wilson's credibility, according to people familiar with the inquiry.

Although lower-level White House staffers typically handle most contacts with the media, Rove and Libby began personally communicating with reporters about Wilson, prosecutors were told.

A source directly familiar with information provided to prosecutors said Rove's interest was so strong that it prompted questions in the White House. When asked at one point why he was pursuing the diplomat so aggressively, Rove reportedly responded: "He's a Democrat." Rove then cited Wilson's campaign donations, which leaned toward Democrats, the person familiar with the case said.

The disclosures about the officials' roles illustrate White House concern about Wilson's July 6, 2003, article, which challenged the administration's assertion that Iraq had sought to purchase nuclear materials. Wilson's article appeared as Rove and other Bush aides were preparing the 2004 reelection campaign strategy, which was built largely around the president's response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

It is not surprising that White House officials would be upset by an attack like Wilson's or seek to respond aggressively. But special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald is examining whether they or others crossed the legal line by improperly disclosing classified information, or whether they perjured themselves in testifying later about their actions. Both Rove and Libby have testified.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:32:00 AM [+] ::
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:: So Weird ::

From Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird (.910)

LEAD STORY
The Jordan River, considered by believers to have been the gateway to the Garden of Eden (and by Christians to have been where Jesus was baptized), is now more than 50 percent raw sewage and agricultural runoff, according to a Middle East conservation group spokesman interviewed by Reuters in June. Together, Israel, Jordan and Syria have diverted away from the river (and then treated) about 90 percent of the water flow over the years for their own uses, though part of Jordan's diversion was to create a clean-water baptismal site for pilgrims (some of whom, nonetheless, still bathe in the greenish, polluted part). [Reuters, 6-24-05]

Government in Action
In May, Councilman Manfred Juraczka in Vienna, Austria, proposed, in order to alleviate the city's growing problem with pet droppings, to collect DNA samples from all registered dogs so that the soilers can be identified and their owners fined. According to an Associated Press report, a similar proposal was made in Dresden, Germany, in March, and News of the Weird reported another, in 1996, in the English village of Bruntingthorpe, which at the time had a population of 200 people and 30 dogs. (Vienna has about 50,000 registered dogs.) [Sydney Morning Herald-AP, 5-25-05]

News That Sounds Like a Joke
(1) The support group for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in Nelson, New Zealand, announced that it would support in principle the illness-publicizing International Awareness Day on May 12 even though its members would probably not participate in the commemorative activities because they are often too tired for such things. (2) The Rotary Club of Chatham, New Brunswick, announced in May that the grand prize in its raffle to help build a new environmental awareness center would be a Hummer. (3) Federal agents who were interviewing Gerald T. Williams, 34, about possible child pornography at his home in St. Louis, said that in the course of the interview, a screen saver featuring child-sex images happened to appear on Williams's computer. (Williams pleaded guilty in June.) [Nelson Mail, 5-11-05] [Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 6-22-05] [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 7-1-05]

Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNewsTips@yahoo.com

posted by me

:: 10:59:00 PM [+] ::
...

:: Trinity Site 60 Years Later ::

Thousands Mark World's First Atomic Blast

WHITE SANDS MISSLE RANGE, N.M. (AP) - Thousands of people gathered Saturday at Trinity Site, a restricted area of the White Sands Missile Range, to mark the 60th anniversary of the world's first test of an atomic weapon.

Scientists working at Trinity site as part of The Manhattan Project created the nuclear device used in the test on July 16, 1945. That successful detonation led to the construction of the two atomic bombs that killed hundreds of thousands of people in Japan in August 1945, essentially stunning Japan into surrender and ending World War II.

The depression created by the blast at ground zero on what is now the White Sands Missile Range is marked by an obelisk with a simple inscription: "Trinity Site, Where the World's First Nuclear Device Was Exploded on July 16, 1945."

A long stretch of dirt road leads to a chain-link fence surrounding the monument. On the fence hang photographs of Manhattan Project scientists from Los Alamos assembling the device and of the brilliant mushroom cloud.

Visitors stooped to pick up pieces of trininite, a radioactive, turquoise crystal-like material that was created by the blast. About a dozen people walked over the site with Geiger counters that beeped sporadically.

Missile Range officials tell visitors not to fear radiation. On average, an American is exposed to 360 millirem of radiation from natural and medical sources every year. In an hour at the Trinity site, visitors are exposed to one half millirem, according to a brochure distributed by the missile range.

Emmett Hatch, who visited Trinity Site on Saturday, recalled how his grandmother ordered him to drop to his knees and pray on July 16, 1945, shortly after the atomic blast.

She was awake at 5:29:45 Mountain War Time that morning in Portales to make breakfast and saw the explosion from more than 220 miles away.

"She thought it was the coming of the Lord, because the sun rose in the west that day," said Hatch, who was 8 years old at the time.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 9:22:00 AM [+] ::
...

:: RE The Penguin & the [censored] ::

SCO e-mail: No 'smoking gun' in Linux code
By Ina Fried
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

update A 2002 e-mail suggests that an investigation commissioned by The SCO Group failed to produce any evidence that Linux contained copyrighted Unix code.

The e-mail, which was sent to SCO Group CEO Darl McBride by a senior vice president at the company, forwards on an e-mail from a SCO engineer. In the Aug. 13, 2002, e-mail, engineer Michael Davidson said "At the end, we had found absolutely nothing ie (sic) no evidence of any copyright infringement whatsoever."

The e-mail was posted Thursday to Internet law site Groklaw.

SCO sued IBM in 2003 for more than $1 billion, alleging that IBM had misappropriated Unix technology to which SCO claimed intellectual property rights.

A SCO representative told CNET News.com that the e-mail was authentic, but noted that the e-mail doesn't say when the SCO investigation took place or what tools were used.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:11:00 AM [+] ::
...

:: RE George & Karl ::

Bush says he will not comment on Rove's role in leak during the investigation

WASHINGTON (AP) - President George W. Bush said Wednesday he will withhold judgment about top aide Karl Rove's involvement in leaking the identity of a CIA operative until a federal criminal investigation is complete. The lack of an endorsement surprised some Bush advisers who expected the president to speak up.

posted by me

:: 8:59:00 PM [+] ::
...

:: Another Palast Report ::

MR. ROVE AND THE ACCESS OF EVIL
Tell Us Your "Source," Judy
Not published in The New York Times
By Greg Palast

The only thing more evil, small-minded and treacherous than the Bush Administration's jailing Judith Miller for a crime the Bush Administration committed, is Judith Miller covering up her Bush Administration "source."

Judy, Karl Rove ain't no "source." A confidential source -- and I've worked with many -- is an insider ready to put himself on the line to blow the whistle on an official lie or hidden danger. I would protect a source's name with my life and fortune as would any journalist who's not a craven jerk (the Managing Editor of Time Magazine comes to mind).

But the weasel who whispered "Valerie Plame" in Miller's ear was no source. Whether it was Karl Rove or some other Rove-tron inside the Bush regime (and no one outside Bush's band would have had this information), this was an official using his official info to commit a crime for the sole purpose of punishing a REAL whistleblower, Joseph Wilson, Plame's husband, for questioning our President's mythological premise for war in Iraq.

New York Times reporter Miller and her paper would rather she go to prison for four months than identify their "source." Why?

Part of her oddball defense is that The Times never ran the story about Wilson's wife. They get no points for that. The Times SHOULD have run the story with the headline: BUSH OPERATIVE COMMITS FELONY TO PUNISH WHISTLEBLOWER. The lead paragraph should have been, "Today, Mr. K--- R--- [or other slime ball as appropriate] attempted to plant sensitive intelligence information on The New York Times, a felony offense, in an attempt to harm former Ambassador Joseph Wilson who challenged the President's claim regarding Iraq's nuclear program."

A Karl Rove or Rove-like creature peddling a back-door smear doesn't make him a source. Miller's real crime is not concealing a source, but burying the story. A reporter should never, ever give notes to a grand jury, but this information is something The Times owes the PUBLIC, not the prosecutors.

Why didn't The Times run this story? Why not now? Who are they covering for and why?

Maybe the problem for The Times is that this is the same "source" that used Miller to promote, as fact, her ersatz report before the invasion of Iraq that Saddam truly had nukes and bugs and chemicals he could launch at Los Angeles. That "source" too needs publication, Judy.

Every rule has an exception. My mama always told me to "compliment the chef" at dinner. But that doesn't apply when the chef pees in your soup. Likewise, there's an exception to the rule of source protection. When officialdom uses "you-can't-use-my- name" to cover a lie, the official is not a source, but a disinformation propagandist -- and Miller and The Times have been all too willing to play Izvestia to the Bush's Kremlinesque prevarications.

And that is what Miller is protecting: the evil called "access."

The great poison in the corpus of American journalism is the lust for tidbits of supposedly "inside" information which is more often than not inside misinformation parading as hot news.

And thus we have Miller sucking on the steaming sewage pipe of White House lies about Iraq and spitting it out in the pages of The Times as "investigative reporting," for which The Times has apologized. Likewise, we had the embarrassment of Bob Woodward's special access to the Oval Office after the September 11 attacks when Woodward reported the exclusive news that the President was a flawless commander in chief in the war on terror -- for which Woodward has yet to apologize.

While reporting from the Potemkin village of decision-making set up for him at the White House, Woodward missed the real story that, in the words of the Downing Street memo, our leaders were losing track of Osama while they spent their time "fixing the intelligence" on Iraq. Even if Woodward learned of it, would he have reported it at the risk of losing his access to evil?

As Karl Rove chuckles and Judy does time, we are left to ask, What are Miller and The New York Times doing: protecting the name of a source or covering up their conduit to the Bush gang's machinery of deception?

One can only be sympathetic to Miller for choosing jail over bending to the power of the State. But as T.S. Eliot said,

"The last temptation is the greatest treason,
To do the right deed for the wrong reason."

---
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Subscribe to his commentaries or view his investigative reports for BBC Television at GregPalast.com.

posted by me

:: 7:59:00 AM [+] ::
...

:: The Palast Report ::

George and Tony Get their al-Qaeda Fix
From an e-newsletter
By Greg Palast

The tooth fairy, Santa Clause, WorldCom profits, the Easter Bunny, al-Qaeda.

The cruel, evil jerks who blew up the London subway last week, despite appropriating al-Qaeda's name for their website and T-shirts, have about as much to do with al-Qaeda as a Beatles tribute band has to do with the Fab Four.

For all the horror, hoopla and hair-pulling, this was no September 11. Timmy McVeigh slaughtered a heck of a lot more people in Oklahoma City with his cow-poop bomb.

I'm not belittling the heartbreaking hideousness of this crime, but let's get the facts straight. If al-Qaeda is the Panzer Division of terrorism, these London bombers were terrorism's Cub Scouts. We're talking a few pounds of nitro wired to a clock -- a design badly copied off the Internet.

A witness watched some Arabic-looking teenager nervously checking his bag on a bus which, London's un-hysterical police now believe, he accidentally triggered, blowing apart himself and a bunch of unlucky commuters.

Al-Qaeda this ain't. All the evidence is that this half-assed attack was the work of some poor young Muslim schmucks, possibly whipped into a frenzy by the mewling mullah of Finsbury Park, Omar Bakri Mohammed, a cleric who enjoyed the comfortable middle-class dullness of England during the week while on weekends preaching, "a 9/11, day after day after day" to punish his Western hosts.

It's not al-Qaeda, but for George and Tony, it's good enough. Blair's Foreign Secretary dramatically dashed out to tell us that the explosions had the "hallmarks of al-Qaeda." Our Commander in Chief, looking as commanding as possible (no reading of kiddie stories this time), could not have been more satisfied.

The "hallmarks of al-Qaeda"? That's not true and Blair knows it. And Bush knows it. And that's no little matter, my friends.

Because Blair and Bush are al-Qaeda junkies. They've sold us on everything from fingerprinting five-year olds to invading Baghdad to tolerating plummeting paychecks all on the slick line that we are under attack by a well-trained, well-armed, well-funded hidden army called al-Qaeda.

But our War President and War Prime Minister are having a little problem with their war on terror. The enemy's gone AWOL. Except when we go LOOKING for trouble -- as in invading a Mesopotamian country -- trouble pretty much stopped looking for us.

Even September 11. Forgive me for pointing this out, but no matter how horrific, it was in the end the deed of a couple dozen fundamentalist fruitcakes with box-cutters hankering for a hot time with virgins in the next life who got "lucky."

Yes, unlike the London attack, the "luck" of the September 11 hijackers required the sick genius of monied operatives and a Washington administration that operated with eyes wide shut toward Saudi gangsterism.

But now al-Qaeda's luck's run out, not because Bush has us taking off our shoes in airports, but because, overwhelmingly, Muslims in this world really have no attraction to killing kids or commuters.

For Bush and Blair, organized terror's diminishing powers was a political problem -- until last week, when the al-Queda addicts of the White House and Downing Street got a new terror fix. Even if it wasn't the real al-Qaeda, it was enough for them to mainline into the body politic a big, fat dose of fear.

Now, with world media all jumped up on its latest fear high, Bush and Blair can resume their sales pitch: more weaponry, less liberty.

FDR calmed a nation when he said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." But the Bush and Blair slogan is, "We have nothing to sell but fear itself."

****
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Subscribe to his commentaries or view his investigative reports for BBC Television here.

posted by me

:: 8:59:00 AM [+] ::
...

:: RE The London Blasts ::

Blair: Islamic Extremists Responsible
KRON 4, CA

LONDON (AP) -- Prime Minister Tony Blair says it seems probable the London attacks were carried out by Islamic extremist terrorists.

At the same time amid new security jitters, commuters returned to work Monday in London, the start of the first full week since bombers killed at least 52 people on a bus and subway trains.

Many travelers said they would defy the attackers by using public transportation as normal, but some were too afraid and took taxis instead.

"I ... will not let the attacks put me off," said computer consultant Paul Williams, 42, as he prepared to board an underground train in central London. "As far as I am concerned, it is just a normal day at work."

But Ted Wright, chairman of the British Poultry Council, said he was taking a taxi to avoid the subway system. "In light of what has happened, I have decided to take a taxi. It will probably cost an extra six pounds ($10.70), but should hopefully put my wife's mind at rest," he said.

Three bombs that exploded Thursday on subway cars and one that ripped apart a bus killed at least 52 people and injured 700, as authorities continued the laborious process of retrieving remains.

Scotland Yard said Monday it had identified the first of the victims -- Susan Levy, 53, of Hertfordshire, outside London. Later Monday, London's University College said one of its cleaning service employees, whom it identified as Gladys Wundowa, 51, also was among the dead.

Forensics experts have warned that it could take days or weeks to put names to the bodies, many of which were mangled in the blasts.

Transit officials said the number of passengers using the system Monday morning was back to normal. However, a few sections of the underground rail system affected by the attacks remained closed, and the number of shoppers in central London has fallen by about 25 percent since the attacks, the British media reported.

Underscoring how tense London remained, police closed several streets where most government offices are located -- including Parliament, the Foreign Office, and 10 Downing St., where Prime Minister Tony Blair lives and works -- for about a half-hour Monday after a suspicious package was found. It contained no explosives.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:49:00 AM [+] ::
...

:: "Bush's adviser Rove revealed as exposing CIA agent" ::

From The Sydney Morning Herald
By Mark Coultan

The US President's closest political adviser has been revealed to be the source that Time magazine tried to keep secret from an inquiry into who revealed the identity of the CIA agent Valerie Plame.

Time's rival, Newsweek, has obtained the internal emails between the journalist who was threatened with prison last week and his bureau chief, Michael Duffy, that named Karl Rove as the source.

Matthew Cooper narrowly avoided imprisonment for refusing to reveal his source when Mr Rove released him from his promise of confidentiality hours before a court hearing. A reporter for The New York Times, Judith Miller, is serving up to four months in jail for refusing to reveal her source for the same story.

In his email, Cooper wrote: "Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation."

Newsweek says Cooper asked Rove what to make of the controversy over an op-ed article by Ms Plame's husband, the former US ambassador Joseph Wilson, which revealed that the Administration had been warned that a crucial claim in the case for war with Iraq - that it had tried to buy uranium from Niger - was false.

In what appears to be a classic case of spinning the story, Mr Rove gave Mr Cooper a "big warning" not to "get too far out on Wilson".

Mr Rove alleged that Mr Wilson's investigative visit to Niger had not been authorised by the director of the CIA, George Tenet, or the Vice-President, Dick Cheney.

The email recounts: "it was, KR [Karl Rove] said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip". (sic)

The email is significant because it refers to a conversation before Ms Plame was publicly named by the conservative columnist Robert Novak a few days later.

Read more here.

ALSO
Rove and his Rovian lawyer
AlterNet

"What Karl Rove told Matthew Cooper"
News Hounds

posted by me

:: 10:33:00 AM [+] ::
...

:: "London: Bush's Flypaper Theory is Blown to Pieces" ::

From an e-newsletter
By Arianna Huffington

Well, there goes that theory...

Odds are we probably won't be hearing for a while the Bush mantra that the reason we're fighting them over in Iraq is so we don't have to fight them here at home. For the last few months, this ludicrous shibboleth has been the president's go-to line -- his latest rationale for slogging on in Iraq.

Here he was on July 4th: "We're taking the fight to the terrorists abroad so we do not have to face them here at home."

And during his primetime speech to the nation on June 28th, there he was again, this time quoting the commander on the ground in Iraq: "We either deal with terrorism and this extremism abroad, or we deal with it when it comes to us."

The attacks in London proved how absurd this either/or logic is when fighting this kind of hydra-headed enemy.

Not only was this flypaper theory empirically disproved by the London carnage, it directly contradicts the president's other most often used justification for the war -- that we invaded to liberate the Iraqi people. So let me get this straight: we invaded them to liberate them... and to use them as bait to attract terrorists who we could fight on the streets of Baghdad rather than the streets of London and New York?

Of course, it didn't take the London bombings to reveal this premise as a sham. The presence of American forces in Iraq didn't keep the enemies of western culture from attacking Madrid. And it didn't keep them from planting explosives in London's tubes. And it won't, in and of itself, keep them from striking here. Indeed, it's helping terrorists recruit new followers -- and hone their deadly skills.

How pathetic is it to keep arguing that fighting Baathist Sunni insurgents in Iraq is keeping us safe from Al Qaeda terrorists and their offshoots on our soil?

It's still not clear who was responsible for the London bombings, but let's assume for a moment that the initial reports turn out to be true, and that it was an offshoot of Al Qaeda. No one can seriously argue that if the U.S. and Britain had spent the last 46 months -- and over $200 billion -- focusing on Al Qaeda rather than Iraq these attacks would not have happened. But we can say without a doubt that spending that time and money in Iraq did not prevent them.

If Iraq is like flypaper, it unfortunately looks like we're the ones who are stuck there. Any predictions of what Bush's rewrite boys will come up with next?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Approve the Bush Agenda... or the Terrorists Win!
Posted July 8, 2005

Don't you love the way many in the media are trying to spin the London bombings? Instead of focusing on the bloody deconstruction of Bush's "fight them there so we don't have to fight them here" strategy, they are using it to promote Bush's failing agenda.

For an outrageous example, check out today's Wall Street Journal , where Dan Henninger tries to make the case that what happened in London proves the need for keeping our troops in Iraq, keeping the Patriot Act intact, keeping Guantanamo open, and -- I kid you not -- confirming John Bolton (supposedly because of his expertise in dealing with nuclear proliferation).

Here's Henninger's money quote: "If the U.S. Senate wanted to send a signal of resolve and seriousness to whoever bombed London, Democrats would join with Republicans their first day back to dispatch proven anti-terror warrior John Bolton straight to the U.N."

It's a 2005 spin on that popular 2001 fill-in-the-blanks game "If You Don't [insert pet issue here] the Terrorists Win." Now instead of "get back to normal," "go shopping," and "travel to Disney World," it's "If you don't confirm John Bolton, the terrorists win!" Shameless.

Then there was Stuart Varney on Fox, making the case that what happened in London "puts the number one issue right back on the front burner right at the point where all these world leaders are meeting. It takes global warming off the front burner. It takes African aid off the front burner."

So, Stuart, when exactly did global warming become a front-burner issue and the war on terror a back-burner one? Was it after the vice president spent the entire campaign trying to convince voters that another terrorist attack in America was imminent?

How convenient for the president's apologists to use the attacks to absolve him of his responsibility to deal with thorny issues he doesn't really want to. "Global warming? Africa? Sorry, boys, no time for them, the war on terror's back on the front burner!"

Wait a minute, if we let terrorists set the international agenda doesn't that mean, you know, that they win?

The London bombings will not make global warming go away. The London bombings will not make the crises in Africa go away. They also won't make it okay for Bush to appoint right-wing extremists to the Supreme Court or make his plan to privatize Social Security acceptable or make John Bolton a good choice for the UN.

And they sure as hell don't make Bush's lack of a plan for Iraq any less of a disaster for America.

Indeed, it's precisely because the war on terror is -- and was, even before the London bombings -- the number one issue that we have to have an exit strategy for Iraq. If Bush and his backers in the media are really serious about the war on terror, they need to admit that we can no longer afford all the resources -- human and monetary -- being devoted to Iraq.

Because if we don't keep the real war on terror on the front burner, and go after al-Qaeda, and capture bin Laden, and secure our ports, railways, airports, and roadways, to say nothing of the world's loose nukes... then the terrorists really will have a shot at winning.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Online vs. Print: A Front Page Pic Tells the Whole Story
Posted July 7, 2005

Obviously, the big news today is all about London. And, sure enough, when I picked up this morning's New York Times there was a headline about London. Except that the above-the-fold, front-page story was about London landing the 2012 Olympics, and came complete with a big color picture of jubilant Londoners... an image that had ben completely surpassed by the much bigger news out of London today.

If one needed more proof of the ascendancy of online news, this morning put the Internet vs. print battle into stark relief -- and foretold the Net's inevitable victory.

Over 30 percent of Americans between the ages of 30-49 already say the Internet is their main source of news, and nearly a quarter of people in their 20s and 50s get news online every day.

News happens every second of the day -- it doesn't stop after the next day's newspaper is put to bed -- and blogs and Internet news sites are clearly better equipped to keep up with this never-ending news cycle.

So as this tragic story continues to unfold, I know exactly where I'll be getting my up-to-the-second news from -- and it won't be from the old-before-it's-new paper sitting on my doorstep tomorrow morning. Is there any doubt that more and more millions will be doing the same?
© 2005 TheHuffingtonPost.com, LLC

posted by me

:: 10:11:00 AM [+] ::
...

:: Dubya on Tour ::

Protesters march on G8 hotel in Scotland
From Wired News

GLENEAGLES, Scotland (Reuters) - Protesters clashed on Wednesday with police protecting the world's most powerful leaders who arrived for a Group of Eight summit still divided over tackling climate change and helping Africa.

Hooded activists smashed car windows and fought with riot police in the nearby town of Stirling while others set up impromptu barricades on the roads around the heavily guarded complex hosting the summit of G8 leaders.

Police made 60 arrests as anti-capitalist, anarchist and environmentalist groups sought to capture the protest limelight that has until now been occupied by thousands of campaigners pressing for an end to poverty in Africa.

G8 leaders were flown by helicopter to the luxury Gleneagles hotel complex over the heads of hundreds of demonstrators who rallied against a steel fence protected by mounted police.

Inside, celebrity anti-poverty campaigners pressed British Prime Minister Tony Blair to overcome opposition from other leaders to doubling aid to Africa to $50 billion a year, opening world markets to African goods and cancelling debt.

Read more here.

Hundreds protest against Bush visit
From Scotsman.com

Bush defends US policies in Iraq
BBC News, UK

I understand that people aren't going to agree with decisions I make," Mr Bush said after meeting Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

"I truly believe we're laying the foundation for peace."

posted by me

:: 3:51:00 PM [+] ::
...

:: "Chilean Court Strips Pinochet of Immunity" ::

By EDUARDO GALLARDO
From The Guardian UK

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) - A Chilean court stripped Gen. Augusto Pinochet of immunity from prosecution Wednesday for his alleged role in the killing of 119 dissidents in the early years of his dictatorship.

The Santiago Court of Appeals voted 11-10 to strip the 89-year-old former dictator of the legal immunity he enjoys as former president for a case known as ``Operation Colombo'' during his 1973-90 regime.

The ruling can be appealed before the Supreme Court. Pinochet's lawyer, Pablo Rodriguez, did not immediately announce his plans.

The case, which involved the killing of 119 people in 1975, was complicated and the Pinochet regime contends the victims died in clashes in Argentina involving rival armed groups opposed to his rule. The opposition says they were dissidents.

To support its claim, the regime cited an Argentine magazine called Lea, which published details of the alleged clashes and the names of the victims. The magazine, however, never really existed - it was a one-time publication with the case of the Chilean victims.

Pinochet also faces court battles in a number of other lawsuits arising from human rights abuses during his long reign, and has been four times stripped of his immunity and the courts have twice blocked his trial on health grounds.

Two cases are still pending, including Operation Colombo. The Chilean law requires people who enjoy of immunity to have it lifted separately in each suite they may face.

A report prepared by an independent commission for the civilian government that succeeded Pinochet said 3,197 people died or disappeared during his 17-year regime.

Last month, the same court also stripped him of his immunity in a tax evasion case stemming from multimillion-dollar bank accounts he held in the United States, as disclosed by a U.S. Senate investigative committee.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 3:44:00 PM [+] ::
...

:: "Reporter for New York Times sent to jail" ::

By Pete Yost
Seattle Times

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge today jailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller for refusing to divulge her source to a grand jury investigating the Bush administration's leak of an undercover CIA operative's name.

"There is still a realistic possibility that confinement might cause her to testify," U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan said.

Miller stood up, hugged her lawyer and was escorted from the courtroom.

Earlier, Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, in an about-face, told Hogan that he would now cooperate with a federal prosecutor's investigation into the leak of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame because his source gave him specific authority to discuss their conversation.

Read more here.

ALSO
Reporter Is Ordered to Jail in CIA Leak Investigation (Update2)
Bloomberg

AND
Summary: Some Recent Reporter Court Cases
New York Newsday

posted by me

:: 3:35:00 PM [+] ::
...

:: RE Deep Impact ::

Worldwide telescopes analyze NASA's comet collision
San Diego Union Tribune

LOS ANGELES – The collision of a NASA space probe and a potato-shaped comet hurled a bright cloud of debris into space at the speed of a jetliner, scientists said Tuesday.

The Hubble Space Telescope took a series of pictures of the July 4 impact that initially showed comet Tempel 1 as a fuzzy dot that grew four times brighter 15 minutes after the collision. The fan-shaped cloud of gas and dust flew outward at about 500 mph.

"This is pretty dramatic," said Paul Feldman, a professor of astronomy and physics at Johns Hopkins University, who observed the impact with the Hubble telescope.

The Hubble findings were among observations pouring in from telescopes in space and on the ground that may help scientists better understand the impact process.

Read more here.

ALSO
A murder mystery in reverse
By Tim Radford
The Guardian UK

Nasa's Deep Impact mission was more than a triumph in human patience. It was also a lesson in humility

posted by me

:: 9:05:00 AM [+] ::
...

:: "Will It Take an Act of Thor?" ::

Thorium Fuels Safer Reactor Hopes
From Wired News
The element thorium could make nuclear reactors more efficient and generate a lot less weapons-grade plutonium. But getting the power industry to make changes will be a challenge. By Amit Asaravala.

ALSO
How Nuclear Power Works
Wired News FAQ » Nuclear power has its benefits and dangers. But what's actually going on in a reactor? Amit Asaravala explains.

posted by me

:: 8:59:00 AM [+] ::
...

:: RE Deep Impact ::

NASA probe collides with comet in brilliant blast
Reuters via CNET News.com
A NASA spacecraft collided with a comet half the size of Manhattan late Sunday night, creating a brilliant cosmic smashup that capped a risky voyage to uncover the building blocks of life on Earth.

"We hit it just exactly where we wanted to," said Don Yeomans, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

The spectacular collision, 83 million miles away from Earth, unleashed a spray of below-surface material formed billions of years ago during the creation of the solar system. It was the first time a craft came in contact with a comet's nucleus.

"As of now, I think we have a completely different understanding of our solar system," said laboratory director Charles Elachi. "Its success exceeded our expectations."

Read more here.

ALSO...
SEE SOME PHOTOS
Probe, comet send fireworks for the 4th
Traveling at 23,000 miles per hour, a NASA spacecraft called Deep Impact successfully collided with comet Tempel 1 at 10:52 p.m. PT, July 3. This is what the probe saw sixty seconds before crashing. The picture was taken by the probe's impactor targeting sensor.

AND
Related strange news item:
Astrologer Sues NASA Over Comet Probe
MOSCOW (AP) - NASA's mission that sent a space probe smashing into a comet raised more than cosmic dust - it also brought a lawsuit from a Russian astrologer.

posted by me

:: 10:23:00 AM [+] ::
...

:: "Don't Force the Source" ::

Bloggers Fight for 'Shield' Law
From Wired News
Congress is once again rallying to beef up protections for reporters, but online media might not be included. By Randy Dotinga.

posted by me

:: 9:42:00 PM [+] ::
...

:: Bingo Handjob ::

REM's Michael Stipe Lashes Out At US Government
From GigWise.com
by Lowri Williams

REM frontman Michael Stipe has been airing his political opinions stating that America has "an authority issue".

What he is trying to say is that he believes Americans should treat their government like an employee rather then a boss, just like us Europeans do…

Speaking to Time Out magazine he said: "The relationship with government in the US is different to Europe.

"In Europe, I think it's more common for people to feel that the government are employees of the people. In the US, we do what they tell us to do.

"They are our employers. We are paying them to handle our money and our affairs, and if they fuck it up, they need to be answerable to that. But that dynamic doesn't exist in the US. Why? I can't tell you. Maybe it's because we are such a young country and maybe we have an authority issue."

Politically minded Stipe is still reeling from the fact Bush beat rival John Kerry in the elections last November: "I was surprised that Bush got re-elected, but I feared it. I genuinely thought people would wake up.

"I think it's an abysmal time in history for us as a country. But I am an optimist."

At least someone is…

posted by me

:: 12:41:00 AM [+] ::
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:: So Weird ::

From Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird (.908)

Cultural Diversity
Chinese men smoke cigarettes at twice the rate U.S. men do, according to a June dispatch from Guiyang by Toronto's Globe and Mail, and that includes an estimated 60 percent of male Chinese doctors, with about 90 percent of the men believing that smoking is either not harmful or actually healthful. Implicated in these beliefs is the government, whose cigarette monopoly sells 1.8 trillion units a year (at the equivalent of about 25 cents (U.S.) a pack) and apparently disseminates its own feel-good messages about smoking (e.g., that it enhances brain function, relieves schizophrenia, reduces the risk of Parkinson's disease), despite also requiring small health warnings on the package. [Globe and Mail, 6-11-05]

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

posted by me

:: 7:23:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "All Eyes on Upcoming Comet Crash" ::

From Wired News
By Amit Asaravala

Professional and amateur astronomers will team up this weekend to give the world a look at the upcoming crash between comet Tempel 1 and a washing machine-size projectile launched by NASA.

The 4-mile-wide comet will slam into the Deep Impact projectile at 10:52 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time on July 3. Though scientists don't know exactly what will happen, they hope the collision will kick up enough dust to give them a first-ever look at the material inside a comet.

The impact will be photographed up close by cameras mounted on the spacecraft that released the projectile and on the projectile itself. In addition, the event will be monitored from afar by more than 60 observatories in 20 countries and hundreds, perhaps thousands, of amateur astronomers.

The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft and three NASA space telescopes -- Chandra, Hubble and Spitzer -- will also be focused on the comet.

The public can monitor the progress of the mission and view photos of the impact as they come in by visiting the following websites:

Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Deep Impact
The official mission website features regular updates, photos from the spacecraft and other telescopes, and information about the mission's science goals.

Deep Impact Mission's Small Telescope Science Program
Contains information about how astronomers and space enthusiasts can contribute to the mission. The Observers' Images database contains photos sent in by astronomers not affiliated with the mission.

Kitt Peak National Observatory
Photos of comet Tempel 1 are updated every 45 seconds and an animation refreshed every 15 minutes. The updates will be more frequent beginning an hour before the impact and ending 45 minutes afterward.

Mauna Kea Observatories
The site will provide near real-time images of comet Tempel 1 on July 3, as seen from Hawaii.

European Southern University's Deep Impact Observations
Look at photos from seven major telescopes in Chile.

Deep Impact Amateur Observer's Program
Learn how to find and view comet Tempel 1 yourself with binoculars or a telescope.

Read the entire article here.

posted by me

:: 8:23:00 AM [+] ::
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