:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 12.31.2007 ::

:: A very trashy year ::

Calif. Man Saves Year's-Worth of Trash

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) — Ari Derfel leads a trashy life. He just wants to remind everyone else that they do, too.

The 35-year-old Berkeley caterer said he has saved every piece of trash he has generated over the past year to see how much garbage one person creates. In his case, it was about 96 cubic feet.

The experiment began as a way to examine his own consumption habits, Derfel said, but grew into a statement about consumerism and the environment.

"When we throw something away, what does 'away' mean?" Derfel said. "There's no such thing as 'away.'"

Derfel said he eventually hopes to donate his accumulated waste to a sculptor.

posted by me

:: 7:19:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Benazir Bhutto, 54, Lived in Eye of Pakistan Storm" ::

The New York Times

Charismatic, striking and a canny political operator, Benazir Bhutto, 54, was reared in the violent and turbulent world of Pakistani politics and became the country’s and the Muslim world’s first female prime leader.

A deeply polarizing figure, the “daughter of Pakistan” was twice elected prime minister and twice expelled from office in a swirl of corruption charges that propelled her into self-imposed exile in London for much of the past decade. She returned home this fall, billing herself as a bulwark against Islamic extremism and a tribune of democracy.

She was killed on Thursday in a combined shooting and bombing attack at a rally in Rawalpindi, one of a series of open events she attended in spite of a failed assassination attempt the day she returned to Pakistan in October and of repeated warnings.

A woman of grand ambitions with a taste for complex political maneuvering, Ms. Bhutto was first elected prime minister in 1988 at the age of 35. The daughter of one of Pakistan’s most flamboyant and democratically inclined prime ministers, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, she inherited from him the mantle of the populist People’s Party, which she came to personify.

Even from exile, her leadership was virtually unchallenged. She staged a high-profile return to her home city of Karachi, drawing hundreds of thousands of supporters to an 11-hour rally and leading a series of political demonstrations in opposition to the country’s military leader, President Pervez Musharraf.

But in a foreshadowing of the attack that killed her, the triumphal return parade was bombed, killing at least 134 of her supporters and wounded more than 400. Ms. Bhutto herself narrowly escaped harm.

Her political plans were also sidetracked: she had been negotiating for months with Mr. Musharraf over a power-sharing arrangement, only to see the general declare emergency rule instead.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 12:54:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Huh? ::

Bush scolds Congress, talks Iran and Iraq
President says a new intelligence report on Iran provides 'a warning signal'
AP

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Tuesday that the international community should continue to pressure Iran on its nuclear programs, saying Tehran remains dangerous despite a new intelligence report finding it halted its development of a nuclear bomb.

"I view this report as a warning signal that they had the program, they halted the program," Bush said. "The reason why it's a warning signal is they could restart it."

Bush spoke one day after a new national intelligence estimate found that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003, largely because of international scrutiny and pressure.

That finding is in stark contrast to the comparable intelligence estimate of just two years ago, when U.S. intelligence agencies believed Tehran was determined to develop a nuclear weapons capability and was continuing its weapons development program.

It is also stood in marked contrast to Bush's rhetoric on Iran. At his last news conference on Oct. 17, for instance, he said that people "interested in avoiding World War III" should be working to prevent Iran from having the knowledge needed to make a nuclear weapon.

A L S O

The Iranian Challenge
The Nation

Intel Report Reveals Bush and Cheney's Iran Warnings as Fraudulent
Alternet

Read the NIE report here.

posted by me

:: 2:36:00 PM [+] ::
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:: RE JFK ::

JFK's death 44 years later and the big 'what if?'
Baltimore Sun

Today is not only Thanksgiving but also Nov. 22, 2007, the 44th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination on Dealey Plaza in Dallas.

Like 9/11 or Dec. 7, today is one of those anniversaries in American history that, for those old enough to remember the tragedy itself, still delivers a certain chill and a sadness. Even for many born afterwards there is a sense of loss, like what we feel for Abraham Lincoln.

It is a feeling only intensifed by looking at the webcam image from the "sniper's nest" from the Sixth Floor Museum in what was the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas. Or by this home movie of the president's motorcade made by George Jefferies about 90 seconds before the fatal shot.

Nov. 22 is a day for private remembering. Evidently, the Kennedy family has never wanted large public remembrances of the assassination. Better to remember the president's life than the way he died.

As Dallas Morning News columnist Jacqielynn Ford noted this week, it's also a day for conspiracy theorists to again get ginned up, with something of a spectacle occurring at the site of the assassination.

But for those of old enough to remember, the Kennedy assassination marked the start of the time of tumult that the 1960s were to become. Vietnam. Riots. Anti-war and civil- rights protests. More assassinations.

It is said that America lost its innocence that day 44 years ago. In truth, America was never innocent, could never be innocent.

What America really lost was a chance to see how the Kennedy story, allowed to play out naturally, would've ended. Would he be as highly regarded a president as he is today by so many? Or would his have been another failed presidency?

What would he have done about Vietnam? Would he have done as much for civil rights as his successor, Lyndon Johnson? Would Medicare exist? With his Addison's Disease resulting from adrenal insufficiency, would he have even survived a second term?

Perhaps more than any other event in modern American history, what happened in Dallas forty-four years ago today left us with one of the greatest collective "what if" questions of our time.

A L S O

Newly-discovered Film of JFK Motorcade is Released by Museum
jfk.org
(You can view the film here.

JFK Video: The Dallas Tapes
MyFoxDallas

Museum collects visitors' thoughts on JFK
Dallas Morning News

Anniversary of Kennedy assassination marked quietly
ABC Action News, FL

Thanksgiving falls on anniversary of jfk's assassination
Cheboygan Daily Tribune

Today is November 22
The Baltimore Sun

What JFK Conspiracy Bashers Get Wrong
Huffington Post

Man in motorcade reflects on JFK assassination
The Evening Sun, PA

Secret Agent reveals plot to kill JFK weeks prior to assassination
WHDH-TV, MA

posted by me

:: 11:52:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "A Belated Halloween History - Monsters Edition" ::

From /.

uriah923 writes: "Nick Dilmore has published the second edition in his Snarky Halloween History series, featured on Slashdot last year. This time around, he concentrates on movie monsters: vampires, werewolves and zombies. From the article: '[D]id you know the movie monsters we've all to come to know and love (in a platonic way, of course) have colorful histories stretching back to the earliest civilizations? What, you didn't think some Hollywood hack actually had enough imagination to invent vampires, werewolves, and zombies, did you? Silly, silly non-monster-trivia knowing person.'"

posted by me

:: 1:17:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "IT'S ALL PART OF LIFES RICH PAGEANT" ::

Murmurs of a Reckoning
By Andrew Rice, Slate

This promises to be a week of milestone events—Gen. David Petraeus' testimony to Congress on Monday, and the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on Tuesday—and the Sunday front pages are weighted for the occasions. The New York Times leads with a 4,000-word examination of the American troop "surge" in Iraq, finding modest signs of progress that nonetheless fall far short of the goals President Bush stated when he announced the troop buildup seven months ago. The Washington Post counters with its own 3,700-word surge story, focusing on divisions within the military over strategy, but devotes much of its front page to a picture-laden investigation of the "new al-Qaeda," describing how the terrorist organization has regrouped and reorganized since its near-destruction in the fall of 2001. The Los Angeles Times leads with a story about the ramifications of all these Chinese product recalls—in short, higher prices—but also fronts a profile of Gen. Petraeus.

The NYT's and WP's lead stories on Iraq are both all-hands-on-deck affairs—six reporters share a byline on the Post's story, while a whopping 18 contributed to the Times'—and the differences between the pieces say a lot about the respective papers' personalities.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:55:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Analysis: Court nixes Patriot Act subpoena" ::

A UPI report
A federal judge in New York has ruled that a provision of the Patriot Act allowing the FBI to issue secret subpoenas to Internet service providers and other communications companies is unconstitutional, and has ordered the bureau to cease using them.

The decision was welcomed by American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Anthony Romero, who said he was "thrilled" at what he called "yet another setback for the Bush administration's strategy in the war on terror."

Unless overturned on appeal, the ruling will end one of the FBI's most widely used investigative tools -- and the one that is subject to the least stringent court oversight.

Read more here.

A L S O

Judge Gags Patriot Act Provision
Huffington Post

Judge Strikes Down Part of Patriot Act
Slashdot

posted by me

:: 8:42:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Who's profiting from the Iraq war?" ::

Military contractors that set up utilities, prepare food or make bulletproof vests are getting a big boost from the conflict. Here's who's getting the most money.
MSNBC.com
By Michael Brush

In a few weeks, Gen. David Petraeus and the Bush administration will report to Congress on the progress of the U.S. military's troop surge in Iraq.

But some of the war's winners are already clear: military contractors who supply everything from bodyguards to bombs, clean socks to ready-to-eat meals. "For the companies involved, this has been a real gravy train," says William Hartung, who tracks defense spending for the New America Foundation.

The White House has proposed military spending of $647 billion in 2008. Adjusted for inflation, that would be the highest level since World War II -- topping even expenditures during Vietnam and the Reagan years, calculates Hartung. The current request for Iraq-related spending for 2008 is $116 billion, which would raise total Iraq war spending to $567 billion.

Who's getting all that money?

Read more here.

More info:

The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments

The Top 10

- KBR Inc., a division of Halliburton
- Veritas Capital Fund
- Washington Group International
- Environmental Chemical
- International American Products
- Fluor
- Perini
- Parsons
- First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting
- L-3 Communications

"At the time of publication, Michael Brush did not own or control shares of companies mentioned in this column."

posted by me

:: 3:33:00 PM [+] ::
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:: The V-word ::

This is a war for credibility
Commentary by Martin Woollacott
Guardian UK
His motives are suspect but in certain crucial respects Bush is right to compare Iraq to Vietnam.

So, Bush has finally used the V-word. He has drawn the parallel he has in the past refused to draw between Iraq and Vietnam. His avoidance of it had two obvious causes, personal and political: a bystander in the first war and the instigator of the second, he did not want to remind Americans that he was a man who sent others to fight but had never fought himself. And he has not wanted, until now, to suggest that the US faces a disaster in Iraq as big as that represented by defeat in Vietnam.

Why has he invoked Vietnam in this way? Desperation is one answer. Bush paints the spectacle of national humiliation, tragic results for allies and friends, and the emboldening of America's enemies in order to strengthen his weak hold on the allegiance and attention of the American people. Alibi is another: if the war is to be lost, he wants to be on the record that he warned of the consequences if defeatists had their way. That way, Republicans could return to power at some future point claiming that the decline in American influence in the world, to which Iraq will almost certainly lead, came about because Democrats ran out on the war.

Belief is a third answer. The political school to which Bush and his key advisers on Iraq belong believe the Vietnam war was lost because America did not persevere, not because the war was unwinnable. The rift between them and those in their generation who came to see the Vietnam war as a terrible mistake or even as an act of imperialist folly has persisted through the years. This is the longstanding argument that shaped the minds of those who took the decision to invade Iraq.

But what of the parallel itself?

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 12:48:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Secret Spy Court To Consider ACLU Request For Bush Spying Orders ::

A report from Wired News
By Ryan Singel

In a surprising move, a secret spying court ordered the Bush Administration to respond to the ACLU's request for the court to reveal the legal pinnings behind its decisions that gave legal blessing to the government's warrantless wiretapping program.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ordered (.pdf) the government to respond by August 31 to the ACLU's request to see the court's orders, which the court described as an "unprecedented request that warrants further briefing." The court's own unprecedented response writes the latest strange chapter in the ongoing secret spying saga.

Those orders reportedly include a still-secret decision curtailing the government's spying that led the Administration to successfully press Congress to hurriedly expand the government's spying authority before the summer recess.

The Administration said the nation was at risk because of a "surveillance gap," and a Republican Congressman let slip on Fox News that the secret spying court had made a secret ruling against the Administration. The nature of the so-called "surveillance gap" remains a mystery to the public and even the large majority of Congress.

ACLU attorney Jameel Jaffer says this knowledge gap is exactly why the ACLU decided, on August 8, to petition the secret court (.pdf):

"Congress has just granted the president sweeping new surveillance authorities, yet no one knows why or whether that was needed," Jaffer said. "The point of this motion is to make the orders public."

Read more here.

A L S O

The Slashdot community's discussion.

posted by me

:: 11:46:00 AM [+] ::
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:: Gettin' Wiki ::

See Who's Editing Wikipedia - Diebold, the CIA, a Campaign
Wired News
By John Borland

On November 17th, 2005, an anonymous Wikipedia user deleted 15 paragraphs from an article on e-voting machine-vendor Diebold, excising an entire section critical of the company's machines. While anonymous, such changes typically leave behind digital fingerprints offering hints about the contributor, such as the location of the computer used to make the edits.

In this case, the changes came from an IP address reserved for the corporate offices of Diebold itself. And it is far from an isolated case. A new data-mining service launched Monday traces millions of Wikipedia entries to their corporate sources, and for the first time puts comprehensive data behind longstanding suspicions of manipulation, which until now have surfaced only piecemeal in investigations of specific allegations.

Wikipedia Scanner -- the brainchild of Cal Tech computation and neural-systems graduate student Virgil Griffith -- offers users a searchable database that ties millions of anonymous Wikipedia edits to organizations where those edits apparently originated, by cross-referencing the edits with data on who owns the associated block of internet IP addresses.

Inspired by news last year that Congress members' offices had been editing their own entries, Griffith says he got curious, and wanted to know whether big companies and other organizations were doing things in a similarly self-interested vein.

"Everything's better if you do it on a huge scale, and automate it," he says with a grin.

This database is possible thanks to a combination of Wikipedia policies and (mostly) publicly available information.

The online encyclopedia allows anyone to make edits, but keeps detailed logs of all these changes. Users who are logged in are tracked only by their user name, but anonymous changes leave a public record of their IP address.

The organization also allows downloads of the complete Wikipedia, including records of all these changes.

Griffith thus downloaded the entire encyclopedia, isolating the XML-based records of anonymous changes and IP addresses. He then correlated those IP addresses with public net-address lookup services such as ARIN, as well as private domain-name data provided by IP2Location.com.

The result: A database of 34.4 million edits, performed by 2.6 million organizations or individuals ranging from the CIA to Microsoft to Congressional offices, now linked to the edits they or someone at their organization's net address has made.

Some of this appears to be transparently self-interested, either adding positive, press release-like material to entries, or deleting whole swaths of critical material.

Voting-machine company Diebold provides a good example of the latter, with someone at the company's IP address apparently deleting long paragraphs detailing the security industry's concerns over the integrity of their voting machines, and information about the company's CEO's fund-raising for President Bush.

The text, deleted in November 2005, was quickly restored by another Wikipedia contributor, who advised the anonymous editor, "Please stop removing content from Wikipedia. It is considered vandalism."

A Diebold Election Systems spokesman said he'd look into the matter but could not comment by press time.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 11:24:00 AM [+] ::
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:: Surveillance Nation ::

The FBI's data mining initiatives go beyond fighting terrorism.
A slideshow - Check it out.
eWeek

This data-mining initiative isn't operational yet, but it will be designed to help FBI analysts prioritize the risks associated with individuals who have already been identified as persons of interest in connection with a specified terror threat. The initiative will not label anyone a terrorist, but is designed to save time in helping to narrow the field of individuals who may potentially merit further scrutiny with respect to a specific terrorist threat. How closely will this initiative stick to its mandate? You decide ...

A L S O

The Slashdot view

posted by me

:: 5:14:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Live Earth ::

:: 11:53:00 PM [+] ::
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RE 7.7.07 ::

Music's the Messenger at Live Earth
AP via The Washington Post
By REBECCA SANTANA

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- In a global series of concerts featuring aboriginal dancing, imitation chimpanzee cries and a lot of reunited rock bands, musicians and celebrities called for fans to take action against global warming.

A 24-hour music extravaganza stretching from Sydney, Australia, to New Jersey wrapped up Saturday at Giants Stadium with a performance by the newly reunited Police after a series of concerts spanning seven continents and showcasing more than 100 musical acts.

The concerts, with shows in London, Sydney, Tokyo, Kyoto, Shanghai, Hamburg, Johannesburg, Rio de Janeiro, were designed to raise awareness about global warming. Organizers described it as the biggest musical event ever staged, even larger than Live 8 or Live Aid.

The events were inspired and backed by Al Gore, who has made educating the world about global warming his main priority since leaving politics after his losing presidential run. Gore appeared at a number of the events _ in one form or another.

In Sydney, he talked to the crowd by video. In Tokyo he appeared in a hologram. And in New Jersey, the former vice president took the stage in person.

Gore called on fans to adhere to a seven-point pledge to tackle global warming including demanding more renewable energy and helping to preserve forests.

"Put all of this energy in your heart and help us solve the climate crisis," said the former vice president, appearing on stage at the end of the New Jersey concert with his wife Tipper.

The theme at many of the concerts seemed to be that fighting global warming was not about sacrifice as much as it was about making little changes such as buying low-energy light bulbs or unplugging electrical outlets when they are not in use.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:53:00 AM [+] ::
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:: Withdrawal::

W.House debate over troop withdrawal deepens
Reuters via The New York Times

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A debate is intensifying inside the White House over whether President George W. Bush should try to prevent more Republican defections by announcing intentions for a gradual withdrawal of troops from high-casualty Iraqi areas, the New York Times said on Monday.

Citing administration officials and consultants, the newspaper said these officials fear the last pillars of political support among U.S. Senate Republicans for Bush's Iraq strategy are "collapsing around them."

The president and his aides had thought they could wait to begin discussions about any change in strategy after September 15, when the U.S. commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, must present a much-anticipated report on Iraq's security and political progress.

But these aides acknowledge it appears that forces are converging against Bush just as the Senate prepares this week to begin what promises to be a contentious debate on the war's future and financing, the newspaper said.

On Sunday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates canceled a long-planned trip to Latin America to help prepare a report for the U.S. Congress on the war, according to the Pentagon.

The administration must deliver an interim report to Congress by July 15 on Iraq. The report has gained significance as an increasing number of both Republican and Democratic lawmakers call for a change in Bush's strategy in Iraq.

Four more Republican senators, including Pete Domenici of New Mexico last week, have recently declared they can no longer support the strategy.

As a result, the newspaper said, aides are telling Bush that if he wants to forestall more defections, it would be wiser to announce plans for a far more narrowly defined mission for U.S. troops that would allow for a staged pullback.

That strategy was proposed by the Iraq Study Group late last year, but the president rejected it.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:40:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Day of Silence" ::

Internet Radio Goes Dark
From The Washington Post
By Marc Fisher

If you listen to music, news or other programming via the Internet, you're likely to find a soundstream of silence today. The Day of Silence is a one-day protest being staged by big corporate web radio outlets, innovative smaller companies that are trying to invent a new kind of showcase for recorded music, and individuals who've been flexing their creative muscles by starting up their own web radio stations.

The idea is to focus attention on a startlingly sharp increase--in many cases, more than double the current rates-- in the royalty payments that the Librarian of Congress and the Copyright Royalty Board have decided web radio stations must pay to artists and record labels for the right to play their tunes.

Webcasters from big music providers such as Yahoo and Rhapsody.com to webradio pioneers Pandora.com and Live365 to local broadcast radio stations that have found new audiences on the web--eclectic kcrw.com from southern California, acoustic WXPN in Philadelphia, or bluegrass and alternative rock on Washington's WAMU.org are all rolling down the aural shutters for the day.

Why should you care? In many cases, the new royalty rates will exceed the total annual revenue of the web stations. That means, obviously, that those stations would cease to exist when the new rates kick in on July 15. And pandora.com, which creates a unique radio station for every one of its many thousands of visitors (the service uses a recommendation engine to select music based on your existing preferences), would face the prospect of having to pay separate royalties for each of its customers--an immediate death knell. All protest-related hype aside, thousands of web stations would vanish virtually overnight.

Why is the government doing this? Largely because the recording industry wants to stuff the genie back in the bottle and roll back the extraordinary blossoming of music programming available on the web.

Read more here.

A L S O

Internet Radio Will go Silent on June 26
Slashdot

posted by me

:: 10:56:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Michael Moore blasts president over federal probe into documentary's Cuba trip" ::

By David Germain
The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — Filmmaker Michael Moore has asked the Bush administration to call off an investigation of his trip to Cuba to get treatment for ailing Sept. 11 rescue workers for a segment in his upcoming health-care expose, "Sicko."

Moore, who made the hit documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" assailing President Bush's handling of Sept. 11, said in a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Friday that the White House may have opened the investigation for political reasons.

"For five and a half years, the Bush administration has ignored and neglected the heroes of the 9/11 community," Moore said in the letter, which he posted on the liberal Web site Daily Kos. "These heroic first responders have been left to fend for themselves, without coverage and without care.

Read Moore here.

A L S O

Moore's response:

Friday, May 11th, 2007
Open Letter from Michael Moore to U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson

Secretary Henry Paulson
Department of the Treasury
1500 Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington, DC 20220

May 11, 2007

Secretary Paulson,

I am contacting you in light of the document sent to me dated May 2, 2007, which was received May 7, 2007 indicating that an investigation has been opened up with regards to a trip I took to Cuba with a group of Americans that included some 9/11 heroes in March 2007 related to the filming of my next documentary, on the American Healthcare system. SiCKO, which will be seen in theaters this summer, will expose the health care industry’s greed and control over America’s political processes.

I believe that the decision to conduct this investigation represents the latest example of the Bush Administration abusing the federal government for raw, crass, political purposes. Over the last seven years of the Bush Presidency, we have seen the abuse of government to promote a political agenda designed to benefit the conservative base of the Republican Party, special interests and major financial contributors. From holding secret meetings for the energy industry to re-writing science findings to cooking the books on intelligence to the firing of U.S. Attorneys, this Administration has shown time and time again that it will abuse its power and authority.

There are a number of specific facts that have led me to conclude that politics could very well be driving this Bush Administration investigation of me and my film.

First, the Bush Administration has been aware of this matter for months (since October 2006) and never took any action until less than two weeks before SiCKO is set to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival and a little more than a month before it is scheduled to open in the United States.

Second, the health care and insurance industry, which is exposed in the movie and has expressed concerns about the impact of the movie on their industries, is a major corporate underwriter of President George W. Bush and the Republican Party, having contributed over $13 million to the Bush presidential campaign in 2004 and more than $180 million to Republican candidates over the last two campaign cycles. It is well documented that the industry is very concerned about the impact of SiCKO. They have threatened their employees if they talk to me. They have set up special internal crises lines should I show up at their headquarters. Employees have been warned about the consequences of participating in SiCKO. Despite this, some employees, at great risk to themselves, have gone on camera to tell the American people the truth about the health care industry. I can understand why that industry's main recipient of its contributions -- President Bush -- would want to harass, intimidate and potentially prevent this film from having its widest possible audience.

And, third, this investigation is being opened in the wake of misleading attacks on the purpose of the Cuba trip from a possible leading Republican candidate for president, Fred Thompson, a major conservative newspaper, The New York Post, and various right wing blogs.

For five and a half years, the Bush administration has ignored and neglected the heroes of the 9/11 community. These heroic first responders have been left to fend for themselves, without coverage and without care. I understand why the Bush administration is coming after me -- I have tried to help the very people they refuse to help, but until George W. Bush outlaws helping your fellow man, I have broken no laws and I have nothing to hide.

I demand that the Bush Administration immediately end this investigation and spend its time and resources trying to support some of the real heroes of 9/11.

Sincerely,
Michael Moore

posted by me

:: 11:58:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Encyclopedia of Life..." ::

To Catalog All Species on Earth
John Roach
for National Geographic News

Scientists announced plans today to put descriptions, pictures, video, and sounds of the world's estimated 1.8 million named species on the Internet for free.

The effort, called the Encyclopedia of Life, will standardize the presentation of "information about the plants and animals and microorganisms that share this planet with us," said James Edwards, the project's executive director.

The information will be accessible to scientists, policymakers, educators, and the general public, who have all clamored for the encyclopedia for years, Edwards said.

Peter Raven is president of the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, which is participating in the project. He said information about species today is widely scattered in scientific literature, museum collections, and databases.

"No one can really get it together in an edited form and know what's going on, and without that, there's no hope of using it for all the purposes where it could be applied," he said.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 12:48:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "U.S. fight over Iraq war funds to enter new phase" ::

U.S. fight over Iraq war funds to enter new phase
By Caren Bohan
Reuters

WASHINGTON, April 28 (Reuters) - A fierce political battle over a Democratic plan to pull U.S. troops from Iraq triggered a veto promise from President George W. Bush, but negotiations on a new bill have quietly begun.

The Democratic-led Congress plans to send Bush a bill on Tuesday that gives $124 billion for the war in Iraq but requires a pullout to begin by Oct. 1. The White House has said Bush will waste no time in vetoing it and may do so the day he gets it.

Debate on the bill has been marked by escalating rhetoric, with Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada saying Bush has already lost the war and Republicans labeling him a defeatist.

Read more here.

Meanwhile...

Poppies fuel Taliban’s return in Afghanistan
MSNBC

posted by me

:: 12:25:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Bush veto may come 4 years after 'victory' speech" ::

President expected to receive -- and reject -- bill ordering troop withdrawal
By Anne Flaherty
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON // President Bush next week is expected to receive, and swiftly reject, legislation ordering U.S. troops to begin coming home from Iraq this fall. The veto could fall on the fourth anniversary of the president's Iraq "victory" speech.

The House on a 218-208 vote Wednesday passed a $124.2 billion supplemental spending bill that contains the troop withdrawal timetable. The Senate was expected to follow suit today.

Advertisement
The legislation is the first binding challenge on the war that Democrats have managed to execute since they took control of both houses of Congress in January.

"The sacrifices borne by our troops and their families demand more than the blank checks the president is asking for, for a war without end," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said.

Democrats said the bill was on track to arrive on the president's desk on Tuesday, the anniversary of Bush's announcement aboard the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln that major combat operations in Iraq had ended.

"The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on Sept. 11, 2001, and still goes on," Bush said on May 1, 2003, in front of a huge "Mission Accomplished" banner.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 12:02:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Love Your Mother ::

This Earth Day, Corporate Accountability is the Inconvenient Truth
The Huffinston Post

The great green bandwagon that has come of age this Earth Day has been a very long time coming. With Rachel Carson's 1963 Silent Spring and Earth Day 1970 and the first arrests at the Seabrook Nuke in 1976 and the decades of writing and marching and organizing and fundraising, the landmarks to a growing green consciousness are epic.

The past fifty years have seen the rise of the movements for civil, gay, and women's rights; for an end to nuclear bomb testing and atomic power plants; for peace in Vietnam, central America and Iraq; for the right to open access and accurate vote counts in elections that cannot again be stolen, and much much more.

These national and global campaigns have been accompanied by never-ending battles at the grassroots, against Jim Crow, for equal housing, against local polluters, for paper ballots, and for an ever-growing range of vital causes that demand human attention if we are to retain our rights and dignity.

This on-going grassroots fervor is the essence of democracy, the lifeblood of our ability to survive and grow.

Today, another specific cause---this time the environment---has finally become fashionable.

But this moment has been long delayed by big corporations that profit immensely from the destruction of the Earth, and that intend to continue.

It comes with a classic hijack---the theft of imagery. It's now the height of corporate fashion to be painted green.

Many companies have indeed come around, and deserve their new badge of honor. But some paint themselves green no matter how much harm they do.

From Exxon to Ford, from Mobil to Monsanto, the world's worst polluters buy fuzzy, feel-good advertising with an environmental message. Columnists and politicians who have pushed catastrophic policies like utility deregulation and the war in Iraq now genuflect at the media's green altar. Without a hint of irony, some even claim authorship of a movement they've scorned for decades.

To be sure, we can be thankful for genuine progress. But some of this advertising costs more than what the companies spend to actually save the planet.

It is absolutely true that individual behavior is a core element of our eco-crisis. Each of us bears some guilt for our part in fouling our global nest.

We consume too much. We waste with impunity. So at its finale, Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" rightly lists individual steps we can take for saving the planet. We all must do our individual part.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 8:09:00 PM [+] ::
...

:: RE Mr. Bill ::

Open source protester crashes Bill Gates speech at Chinese university
InfoWorld

A protester calling for free computer software and open source programming crashed a speech Friday by Bill Gates at Beijing University.

Gates had just finished a speech at Beijing University and was handing out prizes to students when a man walked on stage and unveiled a banner with "free software, open source" written on it.

Here is a Reuters photo.

posted by me

:: 7:55:00 PM [+] ::
...

:: "Emailgate puts White House under siege" ::

By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
The Independent UK

The White House is locked in a new battle with the Democrat-controlled Congress - this time over charges it is withholding, and may have destroyed, compromising emails that Congress is seeking as it investigates alleged wrongdoing by the Bush administration.

The new battle between the executive and legislative branches stems from the row over the eight federal prosecutors who were dismissed last November, in what Democrats say is a blatant example of political meddling in the judicial system by the White House.

The affair already threatens to bring down Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney General, accused of turning a blind eye as Karl Rove - the influential political adviser to President George Bush - and other White House officials schemed with their opposite numbers at the Justice Department to have the prosecutors removed.

But the affair has gained a new dimension with evidence that Mr Rove and some of his colleagues may have deliberately used Republican party email accounts instead of the White House system to send messages relating to the attorneys and other controversial issues. These messages, Democrats suspect, may have been deleted - thus circumventing rules that White House and government emails must be preserved.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 8:58:00 PM [+] ::
...

:: "Pope: 'Nothing Positive' From Iraq" ::

By FRANCES D'EMILIO
The Associated Press

VATICAN CITY -- In an Easter litany of the world's suffering, Pope Benedict XVI lamented that "nothing positive" is happening in Iraq and decried the unrest in Afghanistan and bloodshed in Africa and Asia.

"How many wounds, how much suffering there is in the world," the pontiff told tens of thousands gathered Sunday at St. Peter's Square on what is Christianity's most joyful feast day.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 11:41:00 AM [+] ::
...

:: "Catholics outraged by chocolate Jesus" ::

By Nicole Lyn Pesce and Gina Salamone
New York Daily News
via Pittsburgh Post Gazette

NEW YORK -- A controversial artist outraged New York City Catholics yesterday with plans to display a nude 6-foot chocolate Jesus during Holy Week.

Cosimo Cavallaro's anatomically correct candy Christ, titled "My Sweet Lord," was made from almost 200 pounds of dark chocolate. The sculpture is to be displayed in a street-level window at the Roger Smith Hotel's Lab Gallery starting Monday.

"It's an all-out war on Christianity," fumed William Donohue, a former sociology professor at La Roche College who is now president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. "They wouldn't show a depiction of Martin Luther King Jr. with genitals exposed on Martin Luther King Day, and they wouldn't show Muhammed depicted this way during Ramadan. It's always Christians, and the timing is deliberate."

Mr. Cavallaro, who is best known for slathering both a Hell's Kitchen hotel room and model Twiggy with melted cheese, insisted that the timing was purely coincidental. "The choice of Easter was that there was availability in the gallery now," he said.

posted by me

:: 1:26:00 AM [+] ::
...

:: RE Iraq ::

Senate Passes War-Spending Bill With Iraq Deadline
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and CARL HULSE
The New York Times

WASHINGTON, March 29 — The Senate narrowly approved a war-spending bill today that calls for most American combat troops to be out of Iraq by March 31, 2008, and in so doing defied a veto threat by President Bush.

A L S O
Message to the Man in the Bunker
from The Nation

William Greider writes that by voting to set a deadline for exiting Iraq, the House and Senate have heeded the American people's call to end the war. But will the man in the White House bunker get the message?

posted by me

:: 11:29:00 AM [+] ::
...

:: "Bush vents fury at Congress demand for troop withdrawal" ::

Rupert Cornwell
The Independent UK

Besieged as never before during his six years in the White House, George Bush lashed out yesterday at his Democratic foes in Congress, accusing them of making reckless "political statements" by insisting a deadline for a US force withdrawal is a condition of any further funding for the war in Iraq.

The President's tirade - delivered in the somewhat incongruous setting of an address to the National Cattlemen's Beef Association - came the day after the Senate, hitherto a usually reliable bulwark in his defence, had followed the House of Representatives in setting a mid-2008 date for the departure of the bulk of US combat troops from Iraq.

Once again, Mr Bush repeated his threat to veto any bill that linked a deadline to the $122bn of new funding he has requested for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan - even though without it, the White House maintains, money for the two wars will run out next month.

posted by me

:: 10:50:00 PM [+] ::
...

:: "Congress passes war funding bill with controversial timetable" ::

wacotrib.com
By David Doerr

The U.S. House of Representatives narrowly approved a spending bill Friday that would set a timetable to begin pulling troops out of Iraq and to redirect the primary mission of American forces’ fight against terrorism in the Middle East.

Ignoring a veto threat from President Bush, lawmakers voted 218-212, mostly along party lines, for a $124 billion war spending bill that requires combat operations to cease before September 2008, or earlier if the Iraqi government doesn’t meet certain requirements.

The vote marks the first time Congress has used its budget power to try redirecting the course of the war, now entering its fifth year.

“What we’re trying to do in this legislation is force the Iraqis to fight their own war,” said Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who helped write the bill.

Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, voted to support the resolution, saying it was the first step in pressuring Iraqi political leaders to take responsibility of their nation’s future.

“I believe that in a war that has now lasted longer than America’s involvement in World War II, it is time to send a clear message to Iraqi politicians that they must take more responsibility to protect their nation from what is increasingly becoming a religious civil war,” he said in a statement.

“Now the future of Iraq depends on Iraqi political leaders’ willingness to end their corruption, to stop religious infighting and to start using their vast oil wealth to improve their economy.”

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 12:32:00 AM [+] ::
...

:: RE Iraq ::

Bush and Congress at odds over Iraq war
By JENNIFER LOVEN

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Iraq war lumbered into its fifth year Monday with President Bush pleading for patience to let his revised battle plan work and Congress' new Democratic leaders retorting that no patience remains.

"The new strategy will need more time to take effect," Bush said in remarks televised from the White House to mark the four years since he ordered the invasion. He challenged Congress to send him a war funding bill "without strings and without delay."

He got a swift response from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

"The American people have lost confidence in President Bush's plan for a war without end in Iraq," said Pelosi, D-Calif. "That failed approach has been rejected by the voters in our nation and it will be rejected by the Congress."

Four years in, the war has claimed the lives of more than 3,200 members of the U.S. military. Predictions about the cost and length of the war have been far surpassed. The public overwhelmingly opposes the war, and Bush's approval rating stands near his all-time low. Trying to halt spiraling sectarian bloodshed, Bush has ordered nearly 30,000 more combat and support troops to Iraq, mostly to stabilize Baghdad.

Read more here.

A L S O
Reports from The Nation


Conscience and the War
Stephen F. Cohen

The Non-withdrawal Withdrawal Proposal
Tom Engelhard

Congress, End the War
The Editors

posted by me

:: 3:27:00 PM [+] ::
...

:: "Iraq war's anniversary sparks protests" ::

AARON CLARK
Associated Press Writer
The Houston Chronicle

PORTLAND, Ore. — The fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq brought thousands of anti-war marchers into the streets for largely peaceful protests over the weekend, though a large rally in Portland ended in with scuffles and police using pepper spray.

"This is a war to establish U.S. hegemony," said Susan Hay, a high school teacher, who marched Sunday in Portland with her two children and husband. "This is a war to be able to consume everyone else's resources."

The clashes with police started after the march, when a small group broke off in scuffles and a standoff that lasted into the evening. At least half a dozen protesters were detained and police used pepper spray at one point.

Some said the police overreacted. "They showed a huge amount of force," said Jake Fagan, 21, who said he had lost two friends in Iraq. "But we are just trying to march."

Organizers said there might have been as many as 15,000 people at the staging point for the march. Police did not give a crowd estimate.

In San Francisco, about 3,000 people closed Market Street, a major downtown thoroughfare in an anti-war demonstration Sunday. In New York, more than 1,000 protesters converged in a park near the United Nations headquarters. Protesters also gathered during the weekend in Washington, Los Angeles, San Diego and Hartford, Conn.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:50:00 AM [+] ::
...

:: "Cheney on Trial" ::

The Nation
By David Corn

It was fall 2003. The news had broken that the Justice Department, at the request of the CIA, was investigating the leak that outed Valerie Wilson as an undercover intelligence officer, and FBI investigators were targeting White House officials. With a firestorm under way, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, went to see his boss. Libby hadn't passed any information about Valerie Wilson to right-wing columnist Robert Novak, who first published the leak in a July 14, 2003, column. But he had talked to other reporters about Valerie Wilson and her CIA connection before the leak occurred. And he also knew that Karl Rove, White House über-strategist, had spoken to Novak about her days before the leak column. That is, Libby knew a fair bit about the episode.

Libby told Cheney he had not been one of Novak's two Administration sources for the leak, and he offered to disclose to the Vice President everything he knew. But Cheney did not want to hear it; Libby said no more.

Shortly after that, Libby, responding to a request from investigators, came across a note in his files indicating that in early June 2003--weeks before the Wilson affair began--Cheney had told him that the wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson worked at the CIA's Counterproliferation Division, a unit of the agency's clandestine operations directorate. (At that point, the former envoy had spoken only privately to two reporters about his CIA-sponsored trip to Niger, during which he had concluded there was not much to the intelligence report that Iraq had been uranium-shopping there.) The note was a significant discovery. A key issue in the investigation was who in the Bush Administration had spread information about Wilson's wife to undermine Wilson's charge that the White House had twisted the prewar intelligence (a criticism Wilson made public in a July 6, 2003, New York Times op-ed). And Libby had uncovered evidence showing that Cheney had conducted his own research on Joseph Wilson early on, learned about Valerie Wilson's CIA job and shared the information with Libby. Cheney apparently was the first White House official to discuss Valerie Wilson's specific place of work.

With a criminal investigation in full force, Libby told Cheney, I first heard about Valerie Wilson from you. From me? Cheney replied. The Vice President then tilted his head and, as Libby later said, "that was that." The two discussed it no further.

These vignettes of how Cheney does business--in a mob-boss sort of way--emerged from the recently completed obstruction of justice trial of Scooter Libby.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 11:58:00 AM [+] ::
...

:: "Bush: FBI Addresses Patriot Act Problems" ::

By DEB RIECHMANN
Associated Press

President Bush said the FBI has addressed the problems that led to illegal prying into personal information on people in the U.S., but "there's more work to be done."

Bush, at a news conference after meeting with Uruguay's president, said he was briefed last week on the report from the Justice Department's internal watchdog that disclosed the FBI's transgressions involving a subpoena known as national security letters.

"My question is, `What are you going to do solve the problem and how fast can you get it solved?'" the president said.

A L S O
Audit Finds FBI Abused Patriot Act
Slashdot

happyslayer writes to mention that according to Yahoo! News a recent audit shows that the FBI has improperly and in some cases illegally utilized the Patriot Act to obtain information. "The audit by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine found that FBI agents sometimes demanded personal data on individuals without proper authorization. The 126-page audit also found the FBI improperly obtained telephone records in non-emergency circumstances. The audit blames agent error and shoddy record-keeping for the bulk of the problems and did not find any indication of criminal misconduct. Still, 'we believe the improper or illegal uses we found involve serious misuses of national security letter authorities,' the audit concludes."

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:18:00 AM [+] ::
...

:: "World riveted to full lunar eclipse" ::

Moon bathed in reddish light
The Boston Globe

LONDON -- A dark red shadow crept across the moon yesterday during the first total lunar eclipse in nearly three years, thrilling stargazers and astronomers around the world.

Partly visible on every continent, residents of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East had the best view of the phenomenon, weather permitting.

About a dozen people gathered at the Croydon Observatory in southeast London to watch the start of the eclipse.

"It's starting to go!" said Alex Gikas, 8, a Cub Scout who was studying for his astronomy badge. "I've never seen anything like it before. I'm really excited."

The eclipse was clearly visible, thanks to clear, crisp weather in southern England. Overcast skies prevented an ideal view of the eclipse in the Boston area.

Lunar eclipses occur when Earth passes between the sun and the moon, an uncommon event because the moon spends most of its time either above or below the plane of Earth's orbit.

Sunlight still reaches the moon during total eclipses, but it is refracted through Earth's atmosphere, bathing the moon in an eerie reddish light.

Read more here.

A L S O

"Stargazers aglow over stunning eclipse"
Scotsman.com

Key quote: "Saturday's eclipse was probably the best I've ever seen. The Moon was spectacularly red, and the shadow of the Earth cast on its surface was extremely sharp" - Douglas Cooper, secretary of the Scottish Astronomer's Group

IT WAS, experts agreed, the most spectacular lunar eclipse they had ever seen. As the skies across most of Scotland cleared, the surface of the full Moon first darkened before turning a brilliant coppery-red as the Earth's shadow was cast across its surface.

Slowly the shadow passed across the face of the Moon, before a brilliant white crescent appeared at its edge as the eclipse passed.

posted by me

:: 9:28:00 PM [+] ::
...

:: 'Zodiac' ::

A frightening, engrossing account of the hunt for a notorious Bay Area killer
Seattle P-I

As a rule, movies about real-life, unsolved murders tend to be -- by their unresolved nature -- not very satisfying, which is probably why none of the dozens of films based on the Jack the Ripper story over the years have been particularly memorable.

We had a perfect example of this last fall with "The Black Dahlia," Brian De Palma's historically reckless and disastrously over-the-top film-noir fabrication based on Los Angeles' most celebrated unsolved murder of the '40s.

But "Zodiac," David Fincher's scrupulously factual drama about the determined serial killer who eluded Northern California police for more than two decades, manages to be an absorbing and fulfilling experience -- even though it ends with a question mark.

Its story begins July 4, 1969, with a terrifying scene right out of "Bonnie and Clyde," as a young couple parked in a lonely spot near the town of Vallejo is attacked by a gunman who unleashes a hail of bullets, killing the girl and wounding the boy.

The next day, letters arrive at the San Francisco Chronicle and other newspapers from a man claiming responsibility and calling himself "Zodiac." He includes a coded message and instructions that the letter be printed on the front page, or more murders will follow.

Thus begins a saga that will cover decades and include 20 more letters taunting the police (and threatening mass murder of children), 47 possible victims (no one knows for sure how many) and enough clues and suspects to fill a 10-hour miniseries.

The film's first half, which dramatizes Zodiac's more famous killings, his cat-and-mouse interplay with Chronicle reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr.) and the crisis his crimes create in the Chronicle board room, makes for the best newspaper movie since "All the President's Men."

The second half takes place in later years, as Zodiac becomes inactive, the police lose interest and the case becomes the personal obsession of two men: S.F. cop Dave Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and Chronicle political cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal).

Graysmith, who spent 30 years researching the case and wrote two books about it that were the basis of the script, gradually puts all the information of the competing Bay Area police departments together, finds clues of his own and makes a convincing case for Zodiac's identity.

... overall, it works. Fincher has crafted a true-crime epic: a sprawling, ambitious, no-nonsense drama that rejects most of the cliches of the serial-killer formula and comes together as a mystery, an ensemble character study and a "Da Vinci Code"-like puzzle movie.

posted by me

:: 1:58:00 AM [+] ::
...

:: "McCain Says U.S. Lives 'Wasted' in Iraq" ::

Associated Press
By LIZ SIDOTI

Republican presidential contender John McCain, a staunch backer of the Iraq war but critic of how President Bush has waged it, said U.S. lives had been "wasted" in the four-year-old conflict. Democrats demand the Arizona senator apologize for the comment as Sen. Barack Obama did when the Democratic White House hopeful recently made the same observation.

"Americans are very frustrated, and they have every right to be," McCain said Wednesday on CBS'"Late Show With David Letterman.""We've wasted a lot of our most precious treasure, which is American lives."

McCain, who repeated his assertion that U.S. troops must remain in Iraq rather than withdrawing early, made the "wasted" remark after confirming to Letterman what has been clear for at least a year or more — that he's in the running for the 2008 Republican nomination.

"I am announcing that I will be a candidate for president of the United States," he said — and added that he would officially enter the race by giving a formal announcement speech to that effect in April after a visit to Iraq.

Hours after the taped appearance aired, the Democratic National Committee called on McCain to take back the "wasted" lives remark.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 11:43:00 AM [+] ::
...

:: "Filmmaker shows relics from disputed Jesus tomb" ::

Reuters.UK
By Christine Kearney

NEW YORK - The director of the movie "Titanic" presented on Monday what he said was evidence the tomb of Jesus had been uncovered but scholars greeted the assertion with scepticism, some dismissing it as a publicity stunt.

James Cameron and a team of scholars showed two stone ossuaries, or bone boxes, that he said might have once contained the bones of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. The findings are the subject of a documentary he produced called "The Lost Tomb of Jesus" and a book "The Jesus Family Tomb."

The two small caskets were part of 10 found in 1980 during construction in South Jerusalem. Several had inscriptions translated as Jesus, Mary Magdalene and "Judah, son of Jesus," Cameron told a news conference at the New York Public Library surrounded by scholars and archaeologists.

"This is the beginnings of an ongoing investigation," Cameron said. "If things come to light that erode this investigation, then so be it."

The filmmakers said that statistically there was a 1 in 600 chance that the names found on the inscriptions were not the family of Jesus.

They also argued that the name "Mariamene e Mara," the only inscription written in Greek, translated to Magdalene's real name.

If this was the tomb of Jesus, the revelations are likely to raise the ire of Christians because the discovery would challenge the belief that Jesus was resurrected and ascended to heaven.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 1:24:00 PM [+] ::
...

:: "Colombia circus performers protest shooting of clowns" ::

The Associated Press
Published: February 23, 2007
via International Herald Tribune

BOGOTA, Colombia: Some 50 acrobats, harlequins, animal trainers and other circus performers marched through the streets in eastern Colombia to protest the killing of two clowns with during a performance this week.

The clowns were shot dead in the middle of a nighttime performance Tuesday in Cucuta, about 400 miles (650 kilometers) from Bogota near the border with Venezuela.

During Thursday's protest, the performers chanted, "Justice for the assassins of laughter."

posted by me

:: 10:19:00 AM [+] ::
...

:: "Dems Mull Plan To Change Iraq Resolution" ::
Guardian Unlimited

WASHINGTON (AP) - Senate Democrats pledged renewed efforts Sunday to curtail the Iraq war, suggesting they will seek to limit a 2002 measure authorizing President Bush's use of force against Saddam Hussein.

The top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said the proposal had little chance of succeeding. ``I think the president would veto it and the veto would be upheld,'' said Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana.

A day after Republicans foiled a Democratic bid to repudiate Bush's deployment of 21,500 additional combat troops to Iraq, Senate Democrats declined to embrace measures - being advanced in the House - that would attach conditions to additional funding for troops.

Sen. Carl Levin, who chairs the Armed Services Committee, said Democratic senators would probably seek to capitalize on wavering Republicans to limit the ``wide-open authorization'' Congress gave Bush in 2002.

``We will be looking at a modification of that authorization in order to limit the mission of American troops to a support mission instead of a combat mission, and that is very different from cutting off funds,'' said Levin, D-Mich.

A L S O

Defending Nation’s Latest War, Bush Recalls Its First
New York Times

posted by me

:: 12:33:00 AM [+] ::
...

:: "31 indicted in Italian rendition case" ::

International Herald Tribune
AP. MILAN: An Italian judge indicted 26 Americans and 5 Italians on Friday for what will be the first criminal trial over the CIA's rendition program for suspected terrorists.

posted by me

:: 11:38:00 AM [+] ::
...

:: "The House Debate: A Sampling" ::

From The New York Times

Since Tuesday, the House has been debating a nonbinding resolution that would express disapproval of President Bush’s plan to send an additional 21,500 troops to Iraq.

It declares the House to be resolved that ‘’Congress and the American people will continue to support and protect the members of the United States Armed Forces who are serving or who have served bravely and honorably in Iraq'’ and that ‘’Congress disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush announced on January 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq.'’

A vote is expected later today.

Here’s a sampling, compiled by Jack Begg of The Times, of what House members have had to say from the floor:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California:

“Friday’s vote will signal whether the House has heard the American people: no more blank checks for President Bush on Iraq. Our taxpayer dollars must go to protect our troops, to keep our promises to our veterans, and to provide for the safety of the American people. In light of the facts, President Bush’s escalation proposal will not make America safer, will not make our military stronger, and will not make the region more stable; and it will not have my support.”

Representative John Boehner, minority leader, Republican of Ohio:

“What we are dealing with here today isn’t even a resolution to debate the war itself. It is a nonbinding resolution attacking a single strategy in the prosecution of a much larger war. “Nonbinding’’ means nonleadership. It is not accountable, and I don’t think it is the right message for our troops.”

Representative Ike Skelton, Democrat of Missouri:

“The series of irretrievable mistakes is a serious list: the skewed intelligence we received from the Defense Department Office of Special Plans; the postwar phase of conflict that did not have sufficient planning; not enough troops, as pointed out by General Eric Shinseki, the former Army Chief of Staff; allowing the uncontrolled looting and the breakdown of law early on after the occupation began; the dismissal of the Iraqi Army, rather than giving them a paycheck and a shovel or having them do security work that is important to the stability of that country; the deBathification, that put so many thousands of Iraqis out of business, out of work, including thousands of school teachers. The administration has consistently refused to adjust its overall strategy. I take no pleasure in this, but it is a moment of ‘I told you so.’”

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 11:30:00 AM [+] ::
...

:: "Murtha Vows To Stop Surge" ::

Antiwar Democrat Says He'll Use Power Of Purse To Restrict Bush
(The Politico) By The Politico's John Bresnahan.
via cbsnews.com

Rep. Jack Murtha, one of the most vocal congressional opponents of the war in Iraq, is vowing to block President Bush’s plan to send another 21,500 U.S. combat troops to Iraq by restricting the administration’s military options in a new wartime spending bill.

“We’re gonna stop this surge,” the Pennsylvania Democrat declared in an interview posted on the Website MoveCongress.org.

Stepping up his campaign against the White House, Murtha, chairman of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, told Tom Andrews, a former congressman-turned-activist, in the online interview that he would attach so many conditions to an upcoming spending bill for Iraq that the Pentagon would not be able to find enough troops to carry out the president’s “surge” plan.

The Andrews group, the Win Without War Coalition, is part of a larger federation of anti-war groups sponsoring the site.

Murtha will oversee the $93 billion supplemental spending bill for Iraq and Afghanistan that the House will consider in mid-March. And he wants to impose new restrictions on how the president can deploy combat forces from the United States to Iraq, allow combat veterans to have at least one year stateside before returning to the frontlines and prevent the Pentagon from keeping soldiers and Marines already in Iraq in uniform after their enlistments expire.

“This vote will limit the options of the president and should stop the surge,” Murtha predicted of next month’s floor fight over the wartime supplemental appropriation. “We’re trying to force redeployment [of troops outside Iraq], not by taking money away but by redirecting it.”

Murtha is not pushing a total cutoff of funds for the war in Iraq. But he is considering measure to limit the military actions Bush can take against Iran, although the congressman was more cautious than his statements about Iraq.

“We are looking at the possibility of putting language in the bill that says you can’t go into Iran unless you have authorization [from Congress],” Murtha said.

Murtha also intends to push a provision to bar the creation of permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq and to raze the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

The strategy being employed by Murtha and other House Democratic leaders would force Bush and Republican congressional leaders to accept the new troop restrictions, or face the possibility the supplemental spending bill would falter, thus cutting off all funding for the war.

Read more here.

A L S O


The Democrats After November
by Mike Davis
ZNet.com

Was the November 2006 midterm election an epic political massacre or just a routine midterm brawl? In the week after the Democratic victory, partisan spinmeisters offered opinions as contradictory as those of the protagonists in Rashomon, Kurosawa’s famously relativistic account of rape and murder. On the liberal side, Bob Herbert rejoiced in his New York Times column that the ‘fear-induced anomaly’ of the ‘George W. Bush era’ had ‘all but breathed its last’, while Paul Waldman (Baltimore Sun) announced ‘a big step in the nation’s march to the left’, and George Lakoff (CommonDreams.org) celebrated a victory for ‘progressive values’ and ‘factually accurate, values-based framing’ (whatever that may mean). On the conservative side, the National Review’s Lawrence Kudlow refused to concede even the obvious bloodstains on the steps of Congress: ‘Look at Blue Dog conservative Democratic victories and look at Northeast liberal gop defeats. The changeover in the House may well be a conservative victory, not a liberal one.’ William Safire, although disgusted that the ‘loser left’ had finally won an election, dismissed the result as an ‘average midterm loss’.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:30:00 AM [+] ::
...

:: "Creationists defeated in Kansas school vote on science teaching" ::

· Guidelines challenging Darwinism banned
· Decision is latest blow to intelligent design activists

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Guardian UK

School authorities in the American heartland state of Kansas have delivered a rebuff to subscribers to the notion of intelligent design by voting to banish language challenging evolution from new science guidelines.

In a 6-4 vote on Tuesday night, the Kansas state board of education deleted language from teaching guidelines that challenged the validity of evolutionary theory, and approved new phrasing in line with mainstream science.

It was seen as a victory for a coalition of moderate Republicans and Democrats, science educators and parents who had fought for two years to overturn the earlier guidelines.

The decision is the latest in a string of defeats for proponents of creationism, and its modern variant, intelligent design. It reverses the decision taken by the same authorities two years ago to include language undermining Darwinism - on the insistence of conservative parents and activists in the intelligent design movement.

In redrafting guidelines for science teaching, the board removed language suggesting that key concepts such as a common origin for all life on Earth and for species change were seen as controversial by the scientific community.

The board also rewrote the definition of science, limiting it to the search for rational explanations of what occurs in the universe. The move, though limited in its scope, was seen as significant because it rejected a key argument of subscribers to intelligent design: that providing children with arguments for and against evolution merely amounts to fair play.

But Kansas remains a conservative state and many people harbour misgivings about teaching evolution to school children. The school board received a petition with nearly 4,000 signatures opposing Tuesday's decisions.

Overcoming such misgivings will be difficult, said Jack Krebs, a former maths teacher who is president of Kansas Citizens for Science.

"The bigger issue is the cultural divide. The intelligent design people and the anti-evolution people truly believe that science as it is practised is atheistic, and excludes God, and this is really the heart of the cultural battle," Mr Krebs said.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:45:00 AM [+] ::
...

:: "House of Representatives begins Iraq debate" ::

Mark Tran and agencies
Guardian Unlimited

The US House of Representatives today kicked off a debate on Iraq that is expected to lead to a vote of no confidence in George Bush's conduct of the war.

By the end of the week, House members are to vote on a resolution opposing Mr Bush's decision to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq.

With the Democrats holding a 31-seat majority after the November midterm elections, and with the possibility of as many as 20 Republicans defecting, approval is assured, although the resolution is non-binding.

The measure states that the House "will continue to support and protect" troops serving in Iraq, but "disapproves" of the troop build-up.

It marks a nadir for Mr Bush since four years ago when the president, riding high in the polls, received congressional approval for military action.

In the heavily-debated vote in October 2002, the House approved Joint Resolution 114, giving him wide latitude for attacking Iraq, by 296 to 114. The resolution passed by 77 to 23 in the Senate.

The political landscape is now utterly transformed. A Gallup poll earlier this month found that 72% of respondents disapproved of Mr Bush's handling of the war - his highest disapproval rate since the 2003 invasion.

A USA Today/Gallup poll released today showed 60% of Americans opposing Mr Bush's troop "surge".

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 12:28:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Pentagon unit developed "dubious" prewar intel: report" ::

Reuters
By JoAnne Allen

WASHINGTON - Former U.S. defense policy chief Douglas Feith developed and issued "dubious" intelligence that was used to bolster the Bush administration's case for the invasion of Iraq, a Pentagon watchdog agency said in a report to be released on Friday.

The conclusion by Feith's office that there was a "mature symbiotic relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda was inconsistent with the view of the U.S. intelligence community, according to excerpts of the Pentagon inspector general's report released by Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"An alternative intelligence assessment process was established in the office of Under Secretary for Policy Doug Feith ... that was predisposed to finding a significant relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. His staff then conducted its own review of raw intelligence reports, including reporting of dubious quality and reliability," the report said.

"They arrived at an 'alternative' interpretation of the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship that was much stronger than that assessed by the IC (intelligence community) and more in accord with the policy views of senior officials in the administration," the report concluded.

An unclassified summary of the report is to be published on Friday, when Levin's committee is briefed on its findings.

Top Bush administration officials cited alleged ties between Iraq and al Qaeda as a justification for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The bipartisan commission which investigated the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001 later reported that no collaborative relationship existed between the two.

read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:52:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "27B Stroke 6" ::

RSA Conference Computers So Faux Secured
Blog @ Wired News

One should never trust a public kiosk computer, but at the RSA security conference, one expects the public computers will at least be locked down as well as the public library's boxes.

This year you'd be wrong as Sunbelt Software's president Alex Eckelberry and R&D vice president Eric Sites gleefully demonstrated to 27B by downloading adware from Zango and The Best Offers and by checking Google searches run by previous users.

Seems the Windows XP boxes -- supposedly protected by Sophos -- were actually just Windows XP machines running with full administrative privileges -- meaning any user could install whatever he might like -- including malware and key loggers. The machines didn't even have Sophos's Anti-Virus installed -- instead they used AVG Professional 7.5 (a perfectly good anti-virus program, but its made by Grisoft -- not Sophos).

Eckelberry, who kept muttering "this is so evil," as he added more software to the machine, later said the prank reminded him of his days of messing with computers in Radio Shack as a teen.

Of course, the Sunbelt Software guys -- who the guys who discovered the Microsoft VML exploit in the wild in September and who make software products such as firewalls, anti-spyware and spam killers -- promptly removed their handiwork before running off to an afternoon meeting.

An RSA event employee, contacted by Wired News prior to running this item, said a contractor hired to install the kiosks hadn't done the work to spec and that these computers, along with others, had been fixed.

UPDATE: The Washington Post's computer security correspondent/blogger Brian Kreb's take is here.

posted by me

:: 1:17:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Hackers attack heart of the net" ::

Hackers have attempted to topple key parts of the internet's backbone, in one of the most significant attacks of recent years.

The target was servers that help to direct global internet traffic.

In the early hours of Tuesday three key servers were hit by a barrage of data in what is known as a distributed denial-of-service attack.

There is no evidence so far of damage, which experts are saying is testament to the robust nature of the internet.

Websites unreachable

The so-called root servers involved in the attack act as a kind of global address book for the internet by translating website name information into IP addresses to enable computers to visit particular sites.

The servers involved were each operated by a separate body - the US Defense Department, the net's oversight body ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) and UltraDNS, which manages traffic for websites ending in "org" and some other suffixes.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 12:54:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Feb. 3, 1468 ::

Gutenberg Dies
By Tony Long
From Wired News

1468: Johannes Gutenberg dies in Mainz, Germany, where he was born sometime around 1400 (actual birth date unknown). Gutenberg, a goldsmith by trade, made one contribution to technology in particular and to civilization in general, but it was a doozy: the printing press, which made the mass production of printed material possible and revolutionized human communication.

Although movable type existed in China as early as the 11th century, Gutenberg's printing press began a chain of events that altered the social and scientific history of Europe.

His press, featuring movable letters made of either wood or metal, was inspired by the screw-type wine presses then common in the fertile Rhine Valley. He essentially mechanized the craft of woodblock printing, a painstaking, time-consuming process. His technology continued evolving over the centuries, and with these refinements Gutenberg's invention has remained the cornerstone of printing to this day.

Gutenberg began using his printing press in 1450 after returning to Mainz, and in 1455 he produced what has come down to us as the Gutenberg Bible, a beautifully executed folio that would have taken a talented monk months, if not years, to complete by hand. Copies of this bible sold for 30 florins, an enormous sum of money at the time.

At least 59 copies are known to still exist, including one at the Library of Congress and two at the British Museum.
(Source: About.com, Gutenberg.de)

posted by me

:: 4:17:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Remembering Molly Ivins" :

John Nichols

The Guardian UK

Tony Blair has long been the favourite international leader of a Texan named George Bush. But not all Texans have shared the sentiment. Indeed, the US is in mourning over the passing of a Texan who thought the British prime minister a bit too willing to play the poodle in his relationship with the American president.

Molly Ivins, the wisecracking veteran journalist from the Lone Star State and the most widely-circulated liberal columnist in the United States, succumbed Wednesday evening at age 62 to what she referred to as "a scorching case of cancer". That cancer silenced the Bush administration's sharpest critic at precisely the moment when the rest of the US media is finally rising from bended knee to challenge the president. It also removed from the American discourse one of the few popular commentators who regularly reported on - and frequently reported from - Britain.

Ivins, a small "r" republican, took her shots at regal Brits, just as she did regal Americans, in a column that appeared in almost 400 newspapers several times a week. But she was, like most American liberals, a bit of an anglophile. And she let it be known that she expected an Oxford-educated prime minister, especially one from the Labour Party, to give foreign policy cues to the untraveled and incurious president she anointed Shrub.

She would be disappointed. Aghast at the British leader's inexplicable willingness to go along with Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq, Ivins labeled him "Tony Blair, the first casualty of the war". And as the full folly of that war became evident, and as Blair continued to follow Bush's march into the quagmire, Ivins took to teasing the isolated leaders as "the Axis of Feeble".

Ivins had expected more from Blair, who she assumed would recognize his American friend's frailties, even if the prime minister might have had a hard time comprehending what she referred to as her fellow Texan's "eccentric grasp of English". Reporting on the first 100 days of Bush's presidency, the columnist ticked off a long list of missteps and misdeeds - "gratuitously went out of his way to pronounce the Kyoto treaty dead," "needlessly and uselessly enraged the Chinese through ignorance of Taiwan policy" - and then noted: "On the plus side, after his first meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Great Britain, Bush said, 'we both use Colgate toothpaste.' The Brits spent weeks trying to decipher the meaning of that remark."

When Bush finally began meeting with foreign leaders, Ivins informed her readers that there was "a joke making the rounds in Europe: Bush, Tony Blair, and Jacques Chirac are holding an economic summit. While Chirac maunders on about something, Bush leans over and says to Blair, 'The trouble with the French is that they have no word for entrepreneur.'" At the time, she assumed that Blair would gently set the president straight on such matters. Eventually, however, the caustic commentator came to the conclusion that the prime minister was aiding and abetting the president.

A respected journalist who worked for many years as a New York Times bureau chief - finally writing her way out of the job when she referred to a "community chicken-killing festival" in a small town as a "gang-pluck" - Ivins wrote columns that drew on the absurdities of politics in her native Texas. And when the most absurd Texan of all became president, she found that tens of millions of Americans wanted her take on the new commander-in-chief. She did so in the form of what remains the best biography of the president: Shrub: The Short But Happy Political Life of George W Bush (written with her friend Lou Dubose). She could have settled into an easy career of Bush bashing. Instead, frustrated by the a White House press corps that she said was characterized by "no principle, no guts, no grace", Ivins kept investigating and reporting - often, in the months after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, providing the only skeptical assessment of the president to appear in newspapers across the country.

Ivins traveled to Britain to find fodder for her columns, and she was the first prominent US journalist to write extensively and aggressively about the so-called Downing Street Memo. "I read some of the European press and most of the liberal publications in this country. I read the [New York] Times, the [Washington] Post, the Wall Street Journal and several Texas papers every day. It's my job," she informed readers. "But when I read the first Downing Street Memo, my eyes bugged out and my jaw fell open. I could not believe what I was reading."

To her, the evidence of collusion between the Bush administration and Blair's aides to assure that "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of attacking Iraq was "the smoking gun" and she wrote the hell out of the story in a series of columns. For many Americans, living in communities where their local media reported little or nothing about the memo, Ivins's columns were revelations. As she noted, "The memo was a huge story in Britain, but is almost unreported here."

"I don't know if these memos represent an impeachable offense," she wrote. "But they strike me as a hell of lot worse than anything Richard Nixon ever contemplated. He used the government for petty political vindictiveness. Heck, I'd settle for that again, over what we're looking at now."

Read more here.

A L S O

A voice liberal with wit, passion
Austin American-Statesman

President Bush: Molly Ivins Will Be Missed
Playfuls.com

posted by me

Labels: "Molly Ivins"

:: 6:39:00 PM [+] ::
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