:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 7.31.2004 ::

:: Blue Moon ::

...Appears in Sky Saturday Night
/.
("from the blue-moon-you-saw-me-standing-alone dept.")

ArbiterOne writes "Tonight a rare spectacle can be seen: the second full moon in a month, which is sometimes called the "blue moon", according to CNN. Don't be disappointed if it isn't actually blue, though; the blueness is caused by increased density of smoke or ash in the air, such as after a volcanic eruption."

posted by me

:: 8:13:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "A.C.L.U. Board Is Split Over Terror Watch Lists" ::

From The New York Times
via The Lakeland Ledger
By ADAM LIPTAK

The American Civil Liberties Union is in turmoil over a promise it made to the government that it would not knowingly hire people whose names appear on watch lists of suspected supporters of terrorism. Those lists are the very type it has strongly opposed in other contexts.

In April, for instance, the group filed suit to block the use of "no fly" lists of people barred from air travel or subject to heightened scrutiny, saying the lists were often inaccurate and violated the constitutional rights of some people.

The group made the promise not to employ people it knew to be on similar terrorism lists so that it could continue participating in a program that allows federal employees to make charitable contributions through payroll deductions.

That promise, several members of the A.C.L.U. board said, is at odds with the group's core principles and calls to mind an episode in 1940, when the board passed a resolution purging its staff of people who supported communism. With that history in mind, A.C.L.U. officials said, they had made the commitment in name only and did not intend to consult the lists.

"We oppose 'no fly' lists," said Michael Meyers, a member of the group's executive committee. "Now we have a 'no hire' list that we've signed onto. We're in the midst of an organizational cultural crisis of enormous size."

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 8:07:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Vote Data Lost in Space -- Next Door" ::

Elections Chief Tries to Explain Latest Twist in Fla. Series
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 31, 2004; Page A07


MIAMI, July 30 -- Florida's patented electoral circus bounded into the realm of the surreal Friday with a messy airing of gripes and an embarrassing discovery.

Constance Kaplan, director of the largest elections office in the state, spent the day trying to explain why the 2002 election data that she had been telling everyone were irretrievably lost were not lost after all. In fact, the data -- audits of the troubled 2002 governor's primary and general election -- were on a computer disk in a folder among "books and bookcases and old reports" in the conference room next to her office.

"It's like watching Laurel and Hardy," said Bobbie Brinegar, president of the Miami-Dade County League of Women Voters. "I don't know why anyone needs to watch these reality TV shows; they could just as easily watch voting issues in Florida."

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:36:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "First Review of Guantanamo Prisoner Set" ::

AP report July 30, 2004 04:23 PM EDT
WASHINGTON - For the first time in the nearly three years since the Sept. 11 attacks, a prisoner picked up as a potential terrorist and held nearly incommunicado at a Cuban prison got a chance Friday to persuade his jailers that he should go free.

The U.S. military said it had scheduled a hearing Friday afternoon into whether the Navy is properly holding an unidentified prisoner as an "enemy combatant." The hearing was closed to the press and the public. The Pentagon said it expected no immediate word on the outcome.

The hearing, the first of about 600 inquiries the Pentagon plans to hold over the coming months, is the government's most visible response since a groundbreaking Supreme Court ruling last month on behalf of about 600 foreign-born men held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 5:14:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "JOHNNIE BEEN GOOD?" ::

From a Greg Palast e-newsletter
[Boston] The millionaires are dancing now. The balloons are falling on John Kerry, John Edwards and their nuclear families.
by Greg Palast

They're playing "Johnnie B. Goode" over the loudspeakers. Democrats are hopping up and down like JFK never went to Dallas; like Bill Clinton didn't blow it for us; like there's a chance to bring the boys home alive; like America can crawl out of Dick Cheney's bunker and look at the sun again.

But has Johnnie Kerry been good so far?

He told us tonight about some poor bastard in Ohio whose job evaporated when his company unbolted the equipment and sent it south. Hey, Johnnie, didn't you vote for NAFTA?

I applauded when he said the White House should stop treating teachers and school kids like fugitives from justice and help them out. But, Johnnie, didn't you vote for George Bush's "No Child's Behind Left" assault on public education?

Then there was that little story meant to show us all he is a Man for All Seasons, above party politics. "I broke with many in my own party," he said, "to vote for a balanced budget, because I thought it was the right thing to do." No, John, it wasn't. It was craven political cowardice, going with the anti-government hysteria that put a knife into the heart of the programs you cried over tonight.

He told us the sad story of the poor homeless guy huddled in front of the White House. Is this the same John Kerry that voted for Clinton's welfare "reform"? That put a five-year limit on food stamps, making child starvation the law of the USA. At least Ronald Reagan offered ketchup as a vegetable.

Kerry made good use of the cash he saved on feeding the poor. "I fought to put a 100,000 cops on the street." Hey, thanks, John.

But my absolute favorite of the night was when Kerry told us, "Saying there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq doesn't make it so. As President, I will ask hard questions and demand hard evidence."

But, as Senator, you didn't. No questions asked: you just closed your eyes and voted for the lie. I know it, and you sure as hell know it.

And you mentioned a time or two tonight that you served your country. Got yourself a medal for it, too. I'm sorry, but shooting a Vietnamese teenager in the back who was defending his country doesn't make you a hero.

Yesterday, my buddy Michael Moore and I held a press conference in Boston. Some joker of a reporter asked Mr. Fahrenheit about Kerry's gung-ho keep'm-in-Baghdad position. Michael fudged and fidgeted. I felt bad for him as he faked the answer, "President Kerry would not have sent us to war." But as Senator, Kerry did.

I've got an easier job than Michael: as a journalist I don't have to defend any candidate. Nevertheless, I know that my Democratic Party friends will want to ship me to Guantanamo for asking, "You believe in Kerry, but does he believe in you?"

Remember, comrades, I'm only asking questions, here. I'm sorry if the answers make you uncomfortable about your favorite rich guy.

I know what you're going to say. "Isn't Bush worse?"

By a long shot. Asking if Kerry is as bad as Bush is like asking if a slap in the face is as painful as a brick to the skull.

But don't you get tired of being slapped around by privileged politicos on hypocrisy hyper-drive -- then having to applaud? It can't be pleasant, no matter how many pretty balloons they drop on your head.

posted by me

:: 9:38:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Moore Takes Beantown" ::

From AlterNet.org
Michael Moore's July 27 speech (with an introduction by AlterNet's Executive Editor, Don Hazen).

I don't know what it is with right-wingers and Republicans. They seem to have hijacked over the years the word "patriotism", the American flag, these things. And it's an odd thing. I have been thinking about this lately. Because the true patriots are those who believe the important thing is to ask questions, you know. To dissent when necessary. And I know a lot of people have seen my film and the obvious bad guy in the movie is George W. Bush. But there's the unstated villain in the film. And that's our national media.

Read Moore here.

ALSO, for those visiting Boston for the convention this week, here's a guide (in the form of a faq).
Sample:
Was there really a killer molasses flood?
Yes. On Jan. 21, 1919, 21 people died when a large molasses tank exploded in the North End. See The Wicked Good Guide to Bizarro Boston for more details.

posted by me

:: 8:26:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Defiling My Pet Goat" ::

From The Weekly Dig, Boston
An Interview with The Daily Show's Rob Corddry
by Joe Keohane

Is it true that there are actually hidden political agendas behind these conventions?

Hidden political agendas? Like some evil genius trying to take over the world, or ... ?

I don't know. Maybe. Though when I don't understand something, I just assume it's the work of an evil genius.

(laughs) The only secret they're trying to keep is that the convention process has become completely irrelevant. And [that] it's just like a four-day-long commercial. But that secret is out, and they're just trying to stifle it now.

Finish this sentence for me, Rob: "If I, Rob Corddry, am elected your president, I will ... “

Always be naked.

Reade more here.

posted by me

:: 8:18:00 PM [+] ::
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:: QuickVote ::

From a poll @ cnn.com/HLN

Electronic voting:

Is a great idea, go for it 9% 31 votes

I don't trust it, tampering possible 70% 233 votes

The wave of the future, accept it 21% 69 votes
Total: 333 votes

Nice to be in the majority once in a blue moon (which technically will be on the 31st =).

posted by me

:: 2:59:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Stepping on Big Brother's Toes" ::

From Wired News
By Michelle Delio

Cars that report your every false move to local law authorities. Huge databases with detailed information on every citizen. Companies that only honor privacy guidelines when it's profitable for them to do so.

These were some of the winners of Privacy International's sixth annual U.K. Big Brother Awards, announced Wednesday. The awards are an annual attempt to publicly name and shame the government and private-sector organizations that have done the most to invade personal privacy in Britain.

The winners of Worst Public Servant, Most Invasive Company, Most Appalling Project, Most Heinous Government Organization and Lifetime Menace were selected by a panel of experts consisting of lawyers, academics, consultants, journalists and civil rights activists.

Winners were chosen from roughly 300 people and organizations nominated by the public. They receive a lovely gold statue of a boot stamping on a human head, which is usually mailed to the winners, as none has never shown up to collect its award.

Big Brother Awards are now held as an annual event in 17 countries. Each event typically focuses on privacy violations in the host country.

But Privacy International opted to make an exception this year by including in the U.K. awards a U.S. initiative, US-Visit. This security program requires that most foreign visitors traveling to the United States on a visa have their index fingers digitally scanned and a digital photograph taken, so that immigration officers can verify their identity before the visitors are allowed entry into the United States.

"The scheme is offensive and invasive, and has been undertaken with little or no debate or scrutiny," said Simon Davies, director of Privacy International. "Nor has the requirement taken any account of the 'special relationship' between the U.K. and the U.S. The U.K. government has been silent about the program and has capitulated every step of the way."

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 2:36:00 PM [+] ::
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:: We won't get fooled again? ::

From a Greg Palast e-newsletter
MICHAEL MOORE, GREG PALAST, REPS. BROWN AND DEUTSCH:
"DON'T LET THEM STEAL FLORIDA AGAIN!"

(Boston) Author-filmmakers Michael Moore and Greg Palast joined with Representatives Corrine Brown (D-Jacksonville) and Peter Deutsch (D-Ft. Lauderdale) to demand steps, as Palast said, "To prevent Republican hacks in Florida swiping the election of 2004 as they did four years ago."

At a press conference Wednesday morning before the Florida delegation to the Democratic Convention in Boston, Moore endorsed a bill introduced by Brown to make it easier for Congress to challenge an election tainted by apparent fraud.

"Don't let them steal Florida again," said Palast, the investigative reporter who in 2000 first uncovered for BBC Television that Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush had wrongly removed tens of thousand of Black citizens from voter rolls. Palast's reports on the theft of the elections are featured in Moore's film "Fahrenheit 9/11."

Palast has discovered that current lists of 47,000 "felon" voters which Florida has targeted for removal is at least 90% wrong. "

"These so-called criminals' only crime," said Palast, "is VWD - voting while Democratic." The "purge" list contains four Democrats for every Republican.

Palast pointed out such names on the lists as Thomas Cooper whose date of conviction is entered as January 30, 2007, "a criminal of the future."

Earlier this month, after Palast testified before the US Civil Rights Commission in Washington, the CRC voted to ask the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation of the State of Florida's handling of voter rolls.

Palast's expos? of the "fake felon purge" for Harper's Magazine was nominated for a National Magazine Award in 2002.

posted by me

:: 4:21:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "The Blogger Circus" ::

From washingtonpost.com
By Robert MacMillan

The press is making plenty of hay lately about the Democratic Party's decision to treat a small list of Web loggers ("bloggers" for the stubbornly uninitiated) just like real journalists at this week's presidential nominating convention in Boston. Most of the coverage of the Boston bloggers has been pretty straightforward, while here and there you can discern a whiff of shock from professional journalists, something along the lines of, "Who are these thieves in our temple?"

But a press pass is not the same thing as a party pass. As sleep-deprived, overcaffeinated, grouchy journalists already know, covering events like a national convention is all about spending hour after tedious hour enduring boring politico-speak and being kept away from the stars of the show while a couple of top-dog columnists exchange bon mots with the real glitterati somewhere else. And it seems like some of the bloggers have realized this -- though they're taking it in stride.

There's evidence to this end at The Providence Journal's blog site, where Sheila Lennon in her "Subterranean Homepage News" (nice Bob Dylan nod there) reports straight from Blogger's Boulevard at the Democratic National Convention. As she notes, the bloggers may be the talk of the town, but that hardly translates into front seats; they sit "way up in the rafters of the Fleet Center, just below the CNN booth." Lennon uses the words of Jesse Taylor, author of the Pandagon blog: "Okay, so as virtual nobodies, we've learned a valuable lesson. Knowing about parties does not garner you a way in to parties. Perhaps the most important lesson of this convention, bar none. I really need to get in someone important's pants by Tuesday in order to actually meet people -- at this rate, I'm going to be reduced to hoping that someone shows up at one of the events I've already been invited to. I'll even take a Utah Democrat, I swear!"

And another interesting thought from Pandagon on why the bloggers have been getting so much coverage: "We are kinda new, making us newsesque. We're a good destination point for young journalists needing to file a story. But here on the inside, used to and comfortable with being ignored, the attention seems astounding -- are they covering anything else!? Well, yeah; of course they are. We're just getting some much undeserved coverage as well. People are fascinated by bloggers (ooh, what a strange word!), but a lot is filed in a day and our obsessive notation of every media mention (60 seconds here, two paragraphs there) makes small but plentiful references seem like major stories occupying huge chunks of the media's resources. They aren't. It's just that those stories are occupying a disproportionate amount of our -- my self-googling ass included -- minds."

Back at the Providence Journal, Lennon notes the character of much of the blog coverage at the convention in a single phrase: "Show it, don't tell it." As she reported yesterday afternoon, "Reports from the The Bloggers Breakfast this morning range from 'We had breakfast and Barack Obama and Howard Dean spoke' to good, you-are-there reports."
• The Providence Journal: Bottom-up' Journalism From the Pros

National Public Radio correspondent Robert Smith covered the bloggers in a report that aired Tuesday morning. He noted that their "sometimes quirky, often shrewd novelty made them media stars." Smith took note of the special breakfast where convention chief executive Rod O'Connor greeted the famous 35 personally. NPR followed up with some more analysis of what it means to be a blogger -- and the "definite coolness factor attached to it" -- citing New York University journalism department head Jay Rosen (himself a blogger) as saying that "their impact may be exaggerated" but they provide a nice change from "jaded journalists."
• National Public Radio: Bloggers Offer Intimate View of Convention

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 4:31:00 PM [+] ::
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:: RE the 911 report ::

From Wired News
Techies Reshape 9/11 History
By Staci D. Kramer

Instant PDF and print availability of the 9/11 Commission Report wasn't enough for some Internet users, who quickly bent the public report to their will. Within hours, versions of the long-awaited document in Notepad, HTML and enhanced PDF sprouted online as people sought to make the information even more accessible and usable.

PDF versions of the report (PDF) and an executive summary were published online simultaneously July 22 at 11:30 a.m. EST by the commission and the Government Printing Office. At the same time, printed versions published by W.W. Norton and the GPO went on sale. The book quickly became a bestseller.

Blogger and Web designer Jason Kottke used a free conversion tool to translate the executive summary into HTML. He then cleaned it up, added permanent links and popped it on his site. "I wanted to whip up something people could actually link to so bloggers could comment on it," Kottke explained. He decided converting the entire report to HTML would take too much time. As of Sunday afternoon, he had about 10,000 pageviews, fewer than he expected.

Michele Catalano remembers trying to read the Starr Report online in 1998 and giving up in frustration. This time she went in a different direction, getting help to produce a text version about one-sixth the size of the 7.5-MB PDF report and posting it on her blog, A Small Victory. It's been downloaded 348 times, as of Sunday, a number that doesn't disappoint Catalano considering the variety of formats available.

"I hate PDF," said Catalano. "You can't refer someone to the exact part. Ideally, the best thing would be to have the entire thing in HTML and searchable." She praised the commission for getting the information out fast. "I think that's a hallmark of democracy, making all of this information public immediately," Catalano said.

Now she wants government to take another big step by recognizing the different ways people use technology, and by publishing versions of important documents in multiple formats, such as text and HTML.

For some, the report offered a chance to shine a little light on their own abilities. Search company Vivisimo, which specializes in making information searchable at the paragraph level, indexed the report and organized it into groups or clusters according to topic. Clusters are then labeled, for example, "Saudi" or "Taliban." Users can also create their own clusters. More than 20,000 searches took place in the first three days, according to a spokesman. The most frequent "non-canned queries" were "Berger Clinton Iraq Bush Iran."

Read more here.

ALSO from Wired News
Free Speech Behind the Razor Wire
By Mark Baard

BOSTON -- The estimated 5,000 protesters at the Democratic National Convention this week have so far bumped heads over their political differences. In some cases, they have even barred one another from their scheduled (and permitted) events.

But activists have been largely united in one civil action: their boycott of the so-called free-speech zone carved out by the U.S. Secret Service and local authorities, the only spot where protesters will be able to shout their messages to the delegates arriving on buses in a nearby parking lot.

The protesters are also coordinating actions outside the free-speech zone by sending text messages on their wireless phones. Some protesters for a short time Monday converted the zone into a mock prison camp by donning hoods and marching in the cage with their hands behind their backs.

The protest zone, which most people here simply call "the cage," is beneath an elevated section of disused subway tracks near a newly paved bus parking lot.

Activists say the zone resembles the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

The zone, surrounded by two layers of chain link fences mounted on Jersey barriers, draped with black mesh and topped with razor wire, violates the protesters' free-speech rights, said a legal observer for the Boston chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.

"You can't have free speech inside a prison," said the observer, Tony Naro, a recent college graduate who plans to start law school this fall.

Observers like Naro attend rallies and marches to record incidents where the authorities appear to be violating the protesters' constitutional rights.

Naro noted that when the Boston Police union was planning to protest at the DNC over a contract dispute with Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, "there was no talk of putting them into a free-speech zone. It's the people with the guns who get to have free speech."

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 2:35:00 PM [+] ::
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:: HOWLing @ the doom ::

Report: Saddam Writing Poetry in Prison
LONDON (AP) - Saddam Hussein appears depressed and demoralized in solitary confinement, spending his time writing poetry, tending a garden and reading the Quran, according to a report published Monday in The Guardian newspaper.

One of Saddam's poems is about George Bush, though the report did not specify whether that referred to President Bush or his father, Saddam's foe in the 1991 Gulf War.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 12:57:00 PM [+] ::
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:: So Weird ::

From Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird
The Litigious Society
In 1999, a federal judge in Syracuse, N.Y., rejected another in a series of lawsuits by Donald Drusky of East McKeesport, Pa., in his 30-year battle against USX Corp. for ruining his life by firing him in 1968. Furthermore, Drusky sued "God ... the sovereign ruler of the universe" for taking "no corrective action" against any of Drusky's enemies and demanded that God compensate him with professional guitar-playing skills and the resurrection of his mother. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 3-15-99]

posted by me

:: 12:49:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Sept. 11 Panel Addresses Lewinsky Scandal" ::

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Sept. 11 commission's final report says there's no evidence suggesting President Bill Clinton ordered airstrikes on Osama bin Laden targets to distract attention from his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

But the report says the affair, coupled with other issues, likely affected later discussions about using force against the terrorist leader.

Following U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, the Clinton administration planned and launched cruise missile strikes on alleged terrorist assets of bin Laden in Sudan and Afghanistan. The report said reaction to the Aug. 20, 1998, strikes included "scalding criticism" that the action was "too aggressive."

"At the time, President Clinton was embroiled in the Lewinsky scandal, which continued to consume public attention for the rest of that year and the first months of 1999," the report said. "As it happened, a popular 1997 movie, 'Wag the Dog,' features a president who fakes a war to distract public attention from a domestic scandal. Some Republicans in Congress raised questions about the timing of the strikes."

In testimony, Clinton aides told the commissioners that their advice to Clinton about the airstrikes was based solely on national security considerations. "We have found no reason to question their statements," the commissioners said.

The commission's final report treads lightly on Clinton's affair with the one-time White House intern, which led to his impeachment and later acquittal by the Senate. Although only tiny sections of the report refer to the affair, the commissioners spent a lot of time discussing how and whether to discuss it in the report, deciding, in the end, that it was important to do so.

"The language was carefully chosen," Philip Zelikow, the commission's executive director, said Friday. "We wanted to flag it and note its significance."

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 6:01:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "9/11 report points to US failures" ::

From The Guardian UK
Simon Jeffery and agencies
The success the September 11 plotters scored by inflicting almost 3,000 deaths on the US represented a failure of "policy, management, capability and imagination" in government and intelligence agencies, a US report said today.
Thomas Kean, the chairman of a commission investigating the attacks, said the US government had been "simply not active enough" at combating the terrorist threat before September 11 2001.

But Mr Kean said it was not his place to direct blame at a sole individual or establishment. Instead, he identified the failure of agencies to share information or leads, and made specific mention of the failure to act on the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui, an alleged member of the plot, at a US flight school.

Read more here.
ALSO, here's the full text of the report (in pdf).
posted by me

:: 5:33:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Tux vs. sco update ::

Judge dismisses SCO suit against DaimlerChrysler
By Bob Mims
The Salt Lake Tribune

A Michigan judge on Wednesday dealt The SCO Group a blow, dismissing the Utah software company's controversial claims that DaimlerChrysler had violated its Unix contract through its use of the Linux operating system.

Michigan Circuit Judge Ray Lee Chabot granted the automaker's motion for dismissal on all but one minor matter. The decision effectively scuttled SCO's suit claiming DaimlerChrysler had refused to certify it was not, by using Linux, violating its Unix contract. SCO, in a $50 billion lawsuit against IBM and other litigation, claims its Unix code has been illegally incorporated into the freely distributed Linux.

However, Chabot rejected the argument, leaving only one point of contention to be resolved: whether DaimlerChrysler missed a 30-day deadline for responding to SCO's initial demands.

SCO initially demanded the certification in December 2003. On April 6, a month after SCO had filed its suit, DaimlerChrysler confirmed that none of its computers was using the SCO software in question.

Last week, a Nevada court stayed a similar lawsuit SCO filed against Autozone pending the outcome of the IBM suit being tried in Salt Lake City's U.S. District Court. IBM, too, is seeking dismissal; a hearing in that case is set for Aug. 4.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 9:56:00 AM [+] ::
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:: RE Stephen's Wonderment ::

Physicist Rethinks Theory on Black Holes
DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) - After 29 years of thinking about it, Stephen Hawking says he was wrong about black holes. The renowned Cambridge University physicist formally presented a paper Wednesday arguing that black holes, the celestial vortexes formed from collapsed stars, preserve traces of objects swallowed up and eventually could spit bits out "in a mangled form."

Last week, in an interview with the British Broadast Corp., Hawking revealed he had changed his long-held thinking on black holes.

Hawking's radical new theory caps his three-decade struggle to explain a paradox in scientific thinking: How can objects really "disappear" inside a black hole and leave no trace, as he long believed, when subatomic theory says matter can be transformed but never fully destroyed?

Hawking had previously insisted that black holes destroy all molecular fingerprints of their contents and emit only a generic form of radiation.

But on Wednesday at the 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation, Hawking presented mind-boggling new calculations that suggest black holes are able to cast out their contents - and that there's only one way in and one way out.

Hawking, 62, said he no longer believes a 1980s theory that black holes might offer passage into another universe, a rival explanation for identifying where matter and energy go when consumed by a black hole.

Hawking now sides with particle physicists who have long insisted that any matter swallowed by a black hole can't just disappear but must eventually generate a specific output. The latest theory offers hope that scientists one day may identify the history of what a black hole has taken in over the eons - by decoding what it emits.

"There is no baby universe branching off (inside a black hole), as I once thought. The information remains firmly in our universe," Hawking said in a speech to about 800 physicists and other scientists from 50 countries. "I'm sorry to disappoint science fiction fans, but if information is preserved, there is no possibility of using black holes to travel to other universes.

"If you jump into a black hole, your mass energy will be returned to our universe, but in a mangled form, which contains the information about what you were like, but in an unrecognizable state."

Hawking's new theory produced waves of skepticism and puzzlement ...

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 5:15:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "US exploring Iranian 9/11 role" ::

From BBC News Online
President George W Bush has said the US is exploring whether Iran had a role in the 11 September 2001 terror attacks.

"We're digging into the facts to see if there was one," Mr Bush told reporters at the White House.

His comments come after the CIA's acting chief said some of the hijackers passed through Iran, but there was no evidence Iran was officially involved.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 1:01:00 AM [+] ::
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:: Bush's Swingin' 'Nam Daze? ::

AP Seeks Release of Bush Military Records
Associated Press
& The Miami Herald
WASHINGTON - The Associated Press asked a federal judge Friday to order the Pentagon to quickly turn over a full copy of President Bush's military service record.

The White House has released partial documentation of Bush's military service in the Texas Air National Guard but has not complied with the news service's Freedom of Information Act request for any record archived at a state library records center in Texas, the AP said in a court filing.

Records released so far do not put to rest questions over whether Bush fulfilled his National Guard service for a period during the Vietnam War, the AP argued in papers filed in federal court in New York.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 9:26:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Watching the detectives... er, spies? ::

 "9/11 Panel to Seek Cabinet Intel Post" WASHINGTON (AP) - The commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks will recommend a new Cabinet-level post to oversee the nation's 15 intelligence agencies and control their budgets, say two people familiar with the panel's final report.

The report to be released Thursday makes the case for a director of national intelligence by detailing intelligence failures by the CIA and the FBI that enabled the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to occur, they say. The two would only speak on condition of anonymity because the report has not been made public.

Putting in place a Cabinet official for intelligence would be the most drastic step in structuring the intelligence agencies since the CIA was created after World War II.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 9:05:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Arianna: More fun w/ e-newsletters ::

"An amazing thing happened in the presidential contest of 2004: For the first time in my life, maybe the first time in history, a candidate lost but his campaign won."

That's from Joe Trippi's just-released book, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything." Much has been written about how the Dean campaign catalyzed a major grassroots
movement in our country, which in turn lit a long overdue wake-up firecracker under the Democratic party and under American politics. Joe Trippi's book captures the passion of that moment in
history and looks ahead to its continuing impact. I just finished reading it and I highly recommend it.
---------------------

GEORGE W. BUSH: PRESIDENTIAL OR PATHOLOGICAL?
By Arianna Huffington

That is the highly provocative question being asked in "Bush on the Couch," a new book in which psychoanalyst and George Washington University professor Dr. Justin Frank uses the president's public pronouncements and
behavior, along with biographical data, to craft a comprehensive psychological profile of Bush 43.

It's not a pretty picture, but it goes a long way in explaining how exactly our country got itself into the mess we are in: an intractable war, the loss of allies and international goodwill, a half-trillion-dollar deficit.

Poking around in the presidential psyche, Frank uncovers a man suffering from megalomania, paranoia, a false sense of omnipotence, an inability to manage his emotions, a ifelong need to defy authority, an unresolved love-hate relationship with his father, and the repercussions of a history of untreated alcohol abuse.

Other than that, George Bush is the picture of psychological health.

One of the more compelling sections of the book is Frank's dissection of what he calls Bush's "almost pathological aversion to owning up to his infractions" — a mindset common to individuals Freud termed "the Exceptions," those who feel "entitled to live outside the limitations that
apply to ordinary people."

Limitations like, for instance, not driving while drunk. Or the limitation of having to report for required Air National Guard duty. Or the limitation of having to adhere to international law.

And it doesn't help one outgrow this sense of entitlement when Daddy and his pals are always there to rescue you when you get in trouble — whether it's keeping you out of Vietnam by bumping you to the top of the National
Guard waiting list or bailing you out of lousy business deals with cushy seats on corporate boards or making sure the votes in Florida (just another limitation) aren't properly counted.

But you don't make it as far as W. has without some psychological defenses of your own — especially when it comes to insulating yourself against your own fears and insecurities.

Raised in a family steeped in privilege and secrecy, and prone to the intense aversion to introspection and denial of responsibility that are the hallmarks of a so-called dry drunk — one who has kicked the bottle without dealing with the root causes of the addiction — Bush has become a
master of the psychological jiu-jitsu known as Freudian Projection.

For those of you who bailed on Psych 101, Freudian Projection is, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a defense mechanism in which "the individual deals with emotional conflict
or internal or external stressors by falsely attributing to another his or her own unacceptable feelings, impulses or thoughts."

In layman's terms, it's the soot-stained pot calling the kettle "black."

On the 2004 campaign trail, it’s the pathologically inconsistent Bush attempting to portray John Kerry as a two-faced flip-flopper.

It's become the Bush-Cheney campaign mantra. GOP talking points 1 through 100. The president's go-to laugh and applause line:

"Senator Kerry has been in Washington long enough to take both sides on just about every issue," chided Bush at a spring fundraiser. "My opponent clearly has strong beliefs, they just don't last very long." Ba-da-bum!
(Incidentally, how is this consistent with Bush's other contention, that Kerry is a rock-ribbed liberal?)

Or as Dick "Not Peaches and Cream" Cheney ominously put it at a Republican fundraiser: "These are not times for leaders who shift with the political winds, saying one thing one day and another the next."

I couldn't f---ing agree more, Mr. Cheney. But it's your man George W. who can't seem to pick a position and stick to it. He's reversed course more times than Capt. Kirk battling Khan in the midst of the Mutara Nebula. Gone back on his word more times than Tony Blundetto. Flip-flopped more frequently than a blind gymnast with an inner-ear infection.

The list of Bush major policy U-turns is as audacious as it is long. Among the whiplash-inducing lowlights:

In September 2001, Bush said capturing bin Laden was "our number one priority." By March 2002, he was claiming, "I don't know where he is. I have no idea and I really don't care. It's not that important."

In October 2001, he was dead-set against the need for a Department of Homeland Security. Seven months later, he thought it was a great idea.

In May 2002, he opposed the creation of the 9/11 Commission. Four months later, he supported it.

During the 2000 campaign, he said that gay marriage was a states' rights issue: "The states can do what they want to do." During the 2004 campaign, he called for a constitutional ban on gay marriage.

Dizzy yet? No? OK:

Bush supported CO2 caps, then opposed them. He opposed trade tariffs, then he didn't. Then he did again. He was against nation building, then he was OK with it. We'd found WMD, then we hadn't. Saddam was linked to Osama,
then he wasn't. Then he was … sorta. Chalabi was in, then he was out. Way out.

In fact, Bush's entire Iraq misadventure has been one big costly, deadly flip-flop:

We didn't need more troops, then we did. We didn't need more money, then we did. Preemption was a great idea — on to Syria, Iran and North Korea! Then it wasn't — hello, diplomacy! Baathists were the bad guys, then Baathists were our buds. We didn't need the U.N., then we did.

And all this from a man who, once upon a time, made "credibility" a key to his appeal.

Now, God knows, I have no problem with changing your mind — so long as you admit that you have and can explain why. But Bush steadfastly — almost comically — refuses to admit that there's been a change, even when the entire world can plainly see otherwise. He's got his story and he's
sticking to it. But that darn Kerry, he keeps shifting his positions!

At the end of his analysis, Dr. Frank offers the following prescription: "Having seen the depth and range of President Bush's psychological flaws … our sole treatment option — for his benefit and for ours — is to remove
President Bush from office."

You don't need to be a psychiatrist to heartily second that opinion.

© 2004 ARIANNA HUFFINGTON.
DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

posted by me

:: 7:53:00 PM [+] ::
...

:: Impending Blast from Palast ::

Received from a Grag Palast e-newsletter:
The US Civil Rights Commission has asked Greg Palast to testify before a special commission hearing Thursday, July 15th at 11am, to discuss his continuing investigative reports for BBC Television on Florida and other states' cleansing of Black voters from voter rolls. Palast's reports provide the basis for the story on the vote fix in Florida featured in Michael Moore's “Fahrenheit 9/11.”

The Commission requested that the Florida Secretary of State testify jointly with Palast before the Commission.

The hearings are open to the public to and the media.

Palast's latest investigation has uncovered new attempts by the State of Florida to take away the votes of African-Americans - this includes a fix in registries and in ballot counting methods and racial bias in the computerization of the ballot box. "Florida put Jim Crow in cyberspace in 2000 ... and it's looking worse in 2004."

The Democratic Caucus of Congress has also asked Palast to appear Thursday morning before the hearings to explain the latest from his investigations of vote fixes and the Bush-bin Laden family connection. Palast will also be a panelist on a joint Minority Outreach Forum sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus and Senator Hillary Clinton. "I'm happy to speak to Republicans, too,” said journalist Palast, "but I haven't received a request to drop by Dick Cheney's bunker."

C-Span is expected to provide coverage of this event.

Those interested in bringing more public attention to Palast's appearance may want to go to Common Cause’s Action Center, select the media outlets in DC that you think should cover this event, scroll to the bottom of the screen and press the button “compose message.” Then, type up an announcement of this event in the box including the relevant info:

ELECTION 2004: IS AMERICA READY TO VOTE? COMMISSION EXAMINES PURGE LISTS, VOTER DISENFRANCHISEMENT, FLORIDA REGISTRATION PROCESS

WHO:
U.S. Commission on Civil Rights; an independent, bipartisan agency charged with monitoring and protecting voting rights.

WHAT:
Briefing on Purge List and Florida Voter Disenfranchisement;
National Voter Empowerment

WHEN:
THURSDAY, JULY 15, 2004 AT 11:00 AM PANEL:
Ion Sancho, Supervisor of Elections, Leon County, FL;
Gracia Hillman, Vice-Chair, U.S. Election Assistance Commission;
Greg Palast, Author, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy..."
Voting Rights Advocates, Election Experts, and Others

WHERE:
Commission Headquarters
624 9th Street, NW
Room 540
Washington, DC

For more information contact Laura Hart at the commission at 202/833-9771 202/352-8755

Palast is author of the Expanded Election Edition of the New York Times bestseller, “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.” And Thursday, 7 Stories Press will release Palast's, "Joker's Wild: George Bush's House of Cards" - the game with the stacked deck.

posted by me

:: 7:48:00 PM [+] ::
...

:: "Take off, eh!" ::

Canadian record labels appeal P2P ruling
Last modified: July 12, 2004, 3:23 PM PDT
By John Borland
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

The Canadian Recording Industry Association on Monday appealed a court ruling in which a judge ruled that peer-to-peer file sharing was legal in Canada.

Like its American counterparts, the Canadian group is trying to sue file-swappers who are trading copyrighted music online. But in March, a court blocked the label's trade group from obtaining the identities of alleged file traders, saying that trading music over programs like Kazaa did not appear to be illegal.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:24:00 AM [+] ::
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:: McPerformance Art? Fries with that? ::

Ronald McDonald Impostor Delivers Diatribe

OSLO, Norway (AP)- This Ronald McDonald was in no mood to clown around. Diners at a crowded McDonald's in southern Norway were stunned when a man dressed as Ronald came in Thursday and launched into a tirade criticizing the Oak Brook, Ill.-based chain's policies, the outlet's owner said.

The impostor - a performance artist - refused to leave and had to be taken away in handcuffs as the restaurant's patrons, including several children, looked on. The incident made national news in Norway on Friday.

"He was screaming and yelling. It was very unpleasant," said Alf Floernes, owner of the restaurant in the southern town of Kristiansand. "It was supposedly some sort of art. If that is art, I'm a truck."

The stunt was organized by a troupe of artists as "sort of a demonstration against McDonald's," Norwegian media reported.

posted by me

:: 11:04:00 PM [+] ::
...

:: The Case for War update ::

Report: War Rationale Based on CIA Error

WASHINGTON (AP) - In a scathing indictment of the nation's intelligence services, a Senate report concluded Friday the CIA provided false and unfounded assessments of the threat posed by Iraq that the Bush administration relied on to justify going to war.

Following release of the findings of a yearlong inquiry by the Senate Intelligence Committee, the panel's Republican chairman said Congress might not have approved the Iraq war had lawmakers known the truth.

The committee's top Democrat said he had no doubt: There resolution authorizing war would not have gotten the sweeping approval, if the threat had been understood.

The report, which was highly critical of departing Director George Tenet, said the CIA kept key information from its own and other agencies' analysts, engaged in "group think" by failing to challenge the assumption that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and allowed President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell to make false statements.

"Most, if not all of these problems, stem from a broken corporate culture and poor management" - which won't be fixed simply by giving the agency more money or people, the report said.

Although senators from both parties agreed in harshly criticizing the CIA, Democrats and Republicans clashed over whether Bush administration officials had pressured intelligence analysts to overplay the Iraq threat. Democrats said there was pressure; Republicans said there were tough questions but no inappropriate influence.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 7:24:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Report: CIA Gave False Info on Iraq" ::

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. intelligence agencies fell victim to false "group think" when assessing Iraq's weapons capabilities and ended up giving the Bush administration overstated or incorrect conclusions before the 2003 invasion, a scathing Senate Intelligence Committee report says.

Many factors contributing to those failures are ongoing problems within the U.S. intelligence community which cannot be fixed with more money alone, concluded a bipartisan report released Friday.

MY INPUT: Try regime change @ home.

posted by me

:: 10:28:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Michael Moore’s War" ::

From Time Magazine
New York -- “I don’t like this film being reduced to Bush vs. Kerry,” Fahrenheit 9/11 director Michael Moore tells TIME’s Richard Corliss in this week’s cover story. Moore tells TIME, “When Clinton was president I went after him. And if Kerry’s president, on Day Two I’ll be on him.”

This election year, with stakes and tempers high, a potent non-fiction genre is emerging: the agit-doc, dealing with high-octane political issues, often in a confrontational tone, Corliss writes. Trailing on Moore’s box office clout, they are surging into the mainstream. One agit-doc, The Hunting of the President, co-directed by Clinton pal Harry Thomason, was originally to go to 30 theaters; now its distributor has revved the number to 125, and has put the film’s trailer on many screens showing Fahrenheit 9/11. The Army and Air Force Exchange Service, which books films to be shown on military bases around the world, has contacted Fahrenheit’s distributor to book the film, TIME reports.

“We’ve underestimated the audience’s desire to see (political) material,” says Robert Greenwald, director of Uncovered: The War on Iraq, a sober and devastating critique of Bush foreign policy. “I don’t think it’s about hating the President. It’s that politics has been brought home to the deepest part of ourselves. People now feel ‘Politics is Me’.”

Today people get their news and, just as important, their attitudes from more rambunctious sources: from the polarized polemicists on talk radio and cable news channels, from comedians and webmasters. That’s poli-tainment, and as practiced by Rush Limbaugh and a host of right-wing radio hosts, and by Matt Drudge on the internet, it hounded Bill Clinton’s presidency while spicing and coarsening the standards of political discourse, Corliss writes.

Fahrenheit 9/11 may be the watershed event that demonstrates whether the empire of poli-tainment can have decisive influence on a presidential campaign, Corliss writes. If it does, we may come to look back on its hugely successful first week the way we now think of the televised presidential debate between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon, as a moment when we grasped for the first time the potential of a mass medium to affect American politics in new ways. In which case, expect the next generation of campaign strategists to precede every major election not only with the traditional TV ad buys but also with a scheme for the rollout of some thermonuclear book or movie or CD or even video game, all designed to tilt the political balance just in time, Corliss writes.

Andrew Sullivan asks: Is Michael Moore Actually Mel Gibson’s Alter Ego? In a related essay, Sullivan writes, “There are times when the far right and the far left are so close in methodology as to be indistinguishable. And both movies are not just terrible as movies—crude, boring, gratuitous; they are also deeply corrosive of the possibility of real debate and reason in our culture. They replace argument with feeling, reasoned persuasion with the rawest of group loyalties.”

Read more on Moore here.

posted by me

:: 1:07:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Ashcroft mistakes Performance Art for Bioterror" ::

Found @ AlternativeTentacles.com
Here's the latest installment in a bizarre investigation in which members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force have mistaken an art project for a biological weapons laboratory. The Critical Art Ensemble's publisher, Autonomedia, has been served with a subpeona. While most observers have assumed that the Task Force would realize the absurd error of its initial investigation of the CAE's perfomance art, the subpoenas indicate that the feds have instead chosen to press their "case."

Two of the subpoenaed artists--Beatriz da Costa and Steve Barnes--are members of the internationally-acclaimed Critical Art Ensemble (CAE), an artists' collective that produces artwork to educate the public about the politics of biotechnology. They were served the subpoenas by federal agents who tailed them to an art show at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art... The artists involved are at a loss to explain the increasingly bizarre case. "I have no idea why they're continuing (to investigate)," said Beatriz da Costa, one of those subpoenaed. "It was shocking that this investigation was ever launched. That it is continuing is positively frightening, and shows how vulnerable the PATRIOT Act has made freedom of speech in this country." Da Costa is an art professor at the University of California at Irvine.

According to the subpoenas, the FBI is seeking charges under Section 175 of the US Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, which has been expanded by the USA PATRIOT Act. As expanded, this law prohibits the possession of "any biological agent, toxin, or delivery system" without the justification of "prophylactic, protective, bona fide research, or other peaceful purpose." Even under the expanded powers of the USA PATRIOT Act, it is difficult to understand how anyone could view CAE's art as anything other than a "peaceful purpose." The equipment seized by the FBI consisted mainly of CAE's most recent project, a mobile DNA extraction laboratory to test store-bought food for possible contamination by genetically modified grains and organisms; such equipment can be found in any university's basic biology lab and even in many high schools (see Lab Tour for more details).

posted by me

:: 1:39:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "It's Fun for Powell at the YMCA" ::

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell donned a hard hat and tucked a hammer in his belt Friday, performing a version of the Village People's hit "YMCA" at the conclusion of Asia's largest security meeting.

Tradition dictates that the meeting wrap up with a night of song and dance, provided by the diplomats themselves.

In 1997 Madeleine Albright, then secretary of state, bowled over the ministers when she performed a musical skit dressed as Evita Peron.

On Friday, Powell danced alongside five other U.S. officials sporting costumes that included an Indian headdress.

The group blasted out a version of the 1970s disco classic, to the delight of foreign ministers from across the Asia-Pacific and Europe.

"President Bush, he said to me: 'Colin, I need you to run the Department of State. We are between a rock and a hard place," Powell and his colleagues sang to the tune of the disco classic.

posted by me

:: 9:14:00 PM [+] ::
...

:: Download this! ::

From CNET News.com
Fahrenheit 9/11 sparks file-sharing flare-up

The political firestorm surrounding filmmaker Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" has found its way into the file-sharing world.

The controversial film--like virtually every new release--has been circulating online for days. Early in the week, anti-Moore Web site MooreWatch.com posted a link to a pirated version of the film available elsewhere on a file-sharing network, noting that the director himself has publicly backed downloading the movie online.

The result has been a torrent of criticism from Moore supporters and his distribution company, Lions Gate Entertainment. The site was even the target of a denial-of-service attack a few days ago. But MooreWatch co-founder Jim Kenefick, a Web programmer in Hamden, Conn., is taking it in stride.

"Moore has said on many cases that he doesn't care if people download his movies or steal his book or sneak into his movies," Kenefick said. "If I can use his own words against him to be a bee in his bonnet, then I will."

The online flap may say more about the often-conflicting desires of creators and their business agents than it does about the political debate over Moore's film. While studios and record labels have uniformly excoriated unauthorized sharing of movies and music online, many artists--particularly those eager for the propagation of their political messages--have sent more mixed messages.

Moore's own comments came in an interview, clips of which have been floating around the Net at least since January. Kenefick said he was not able to verify the original source.

"I don't agree with copyright laws, and I don't have a problem with people downloading the movie and sharing it...as long as they're not trying to make a profit off my labor," Moore said in that interview, comparing file sharing to a person sharing a purchased DVD with a friend. "I make these movies and books and TV shows because I want things to change, and so the more people who get to see them, the better."

The downloadable version of "Fahrenheit 9/11" linked to by MooreWatch.com was on the BitTorrent file-sharing system, a popular peer-to-peer tool that is designed for the rapid, efficient distribution of large files. While the technology is used by software companies including Linux distributors as a way to circulate their products, it is also widely used to distribute first-run movies and TV shows.

Like many early pirated releases, the copy was shot by a handheld camcorder, with poor-quality audio and shaking visuals, Kenefick said.


Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:10:00 AM [+] ::
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:: Weirdness & Iraq ::

From an ad found on Google:
1 Million New Iraqi Dinar
"Buy Iraq Dinar Currency, Make Money Invest In Iraq's Rapid Growth!"

posted by me

:: 10:24:00 PM [+] ::
...