Very Large
Fraudulent
So the man responsible for investigating fraud in the Pentagon in the Bush administration is going to jail.
For fraud.March 19 (Bloomberg) -- Richard T. Race, the Pentagon inspector general's chief investigator of procurement fraud and official misconduct, quit his job and pleaded guilty last month to violating U.S. banking laws.
The whole situation seems fishy to me. Why are they going after a man this hard for a simple structuring case? For that matter, why did he go to this trouble?
The previously unpublicized case was filed Feb. 26 in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, according to court papers. Race, 61, admitted he made cash deposits at the Pentagon's credit union on three straight days in March 2007 that were designed to evade laws that track large currency transactions. The government seized the total of $20,000 in deposits as part of the plea deal.
Race, who will be sentenced May 2, faces as long as five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. He voluntarily retired Feb. 16, the inspector general's office said in a statement.He told a credit union teller that he had sold a car for $20,000 and reported that on his tax returns, according to court papers. Race told the teller he was making three separate deposits -- two for $9,000 and one for $2,000 -- that were ``to avoid generating a report to the government, which he believed could result in tax being assessed twice on the same sale,'' the papers said.
It makes no sense. Something else is going on here. I bet the car sale was cover for a bribe of some sort, the way he received money for services rendered. Either that, or a complete fiction cover story.
Race pleaded guilty to one count of structuring cash transactions to evade reporting requirements. Federal law requires that banks tell the Treasury Department about any single-day deposit of at least $10,000.
Source: Bloomberg
Cartoonish
Osama Bin Loser is up to his old tricks again.In a new audio message purportedly from Osama Bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader threatens the EU over the re-printing of a cartoon offensive to Muslims.
Hehe. Awww, a cartoon makes him mad.
The voice on it says the cartoon, re-published recently in all major Danish newspapers, was part of a crusade involving Pope Benedict XVI.
The drawing, first published in 2005, depicts the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban.
Actually, the article suggests he doesn't give a damn. It's just a good way to remain 'relevant', hip with today's younger, trendier bomb throwers.
Or something like that.
Source: BBC News
Hep Cat
So the investigation into the Chinese heparin that's sickened a bunch of people continues.A modified form of a cheap and widely used dietary supplement sold to relieve joint pain was identified as the contaminant found in tainted and at times lethal heparin produced in China for American patients, Food and Drug Administration officials said yesterday.
Ahh, the Bush administration. Making you less safe since January 2001.
Agency officials said they were investigating whether the compound, chemically modified chondroitin sulfate, was intentionally added to cut costs and boost profits or was mixed in by mistake. In either case, they said, it was not part of the prescribed manufacturing process.
"This is a biological compound that is not found in nature," said Janet Woodcock, director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. "At this point, it's still to be determined if it was introduced intentionally or by accident."
The announcement drew an immediate and worried response from members of Congress and drug experts, who said the tainted heparin is a sign of a much larger problem.
"I have no doubt that there are other contaminated or counterfeit drugs like heparin coming into the country, because there's really no system in place to stop them," said William Hubbard, a top official at the FDA until 2005 and part of a consumer and industry group lobbying -- so far unsuccessfully -- to get more resources for the agency to address the dangers of foreign-made drugs.
Source: The Washington Post
Limits at Fox?
It would seem that some of the tools working for Fox News have ethical limits after all. Who knew?Veteran journalist Chris Wallace admonished Fox & Friends over their characterization of a comment in which Obama referred to his grandmother as a "typical white person."
Meanwhile, as Wallace was forced to take his own network to task on air, another host was driven to walk off the set in protest.
"I love you guys, but I want to take you to task if I may respectfully for a moment," Wallace began. "I have been watching the show..., and it seems to me that two hours of Obama-bashing on this 'typical white person' remark is somewhat excessive, and frankly, I think you're somewhat distorting what Obama had to say."
As the F&F hosts began grinning and shifting around in their seats, Wallace continued, "What he said was, 'The point I was making was not that my [grandmother] harbors any racial animosity--she doesn't--but she is a typical white person...,'" which is where you generally have clipped it."
As co-host Steve Doocy denied the charge, Wallace continued, "But what he went on to say is, '...who, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know, there's a reaction that's been bred into our experiences that don't go away and that sometimes comes out in the wrong way, and that's just the nature of race in our society.'"
Added Wallace, "I'm not saying that's the most felicitous remark that anybody ever made, but I think it's a little more complicated than we've been portraying."This morning on "Fox and Friends," Brian Kilmeade walked off the set after a dispute with his co-hosts Gretchen Carlson (she who celebrates deadly floods) and Steve Doocy over Obama's comment that his grandmother is a "typical white person." Kilmeade argued that the remark needed to be taken in context and eventually got so fed up with his co-hosts that he walked off set.
Amazing.
Still, they'll always have Bill-O, to express his astonishment that black people can sit down to a meal without gunfire.
Sources: Raw Story
The Huffington Post
Ignorance is Bliss
For rapper DMX, at any rate. (reformatted to make it easier to distinguish questions and answers in this format)Q-Are you following the presidential race?
Right, because the PRESIDENT doesn't have any power.
Not at all.
Q-You’re not? You know there’s a Black guy running, Barack Obama and then there’s Hillary Clinton.
His name is Barack?!
Q-Barack Obama, yeah.
Barack?!
Q-Barack.
What the fuck is a Barack?! Barack Obama. Where he from, Africa?
Q-Yeah, his dad is from Kenya.
Barack Obama?
Q-Yeah.
What the fuck?! That ain’t no fuckin’ name, yo. That ain’t that nigga’s name. You can’t be serious. Barack Obama. Get the fuck outta here.
Q-You’re telling me you haven’t heard about him before.
I ain’t really paying much attention.
Q-I mean, it’s pretty big if a Black…
Wow, Barack! The nigga’s name is Barack. Barack? Nigga named Barack Obama. What the fuck, man?! Is he serious? That ain’t his fuckin’ name. Ima tell this nigga when I see him, “Stop that bullshit. Stop that bullshit” [laughs] “That ain’t your fuckin’ name.” Your momma ain’t name you no damn Barack.
Q-So you’re not following the race. You can’t vote right?
Nope.
Q-Is that why you’re not following it?
No, because it’s just—it doesn’t matter. They’re gonna do what they’re gonna do. It doesn’t really make a difference. These are the last years.
Q-But it would be pretty big if we had a first Black president. That would be huge.
I mean, I guess…. What, they gon’ give a dog a bone? There you go. Ooh, we have a Black president now. They should’ve done that shit a long time ago, we wouldn’t be in the fuckin’ position we in now. With world war coming up right now. They done fucked this shit up then give it to the Black people, “Here you take it. Take my mess.”
Q-Right, exactly.
It’s all a fuckin’ setup. It’s all a setup. All fuckin’ bullshit. All bullshit. I don’t give a fuck about none of that.
Q-We could have a female president also, Hillary Clinton.
I mean, either way it doesn’t matter. I don’t care. No one person is directly affected by which president, you know, so what does it matter.
Q-Yeah, but the country is.
I guess. The president is a puppet anyway. The president don’t make no damn decisions.
Q-The president…they don’t have that much authority basically?
Nah, never.
Q-But Bush pretty much…
You think Bush is making fuckin’ decisions?
Q-He did, yeah, he fucked up the country.
He act like he making decisions. He could barely speak! He could barely fuckin’ speak!
Can’t be serious. He ain’t making no damn decisions.
Q-Well Barack has a good chance of winning so that might be something.
Good for him, good for him.
Wow. Lol. What a moron. El Presidente and his handlers have killed between 350k-1 million people in Iraq, but they don't affect anything.
Sure. Sure.
Now, given that this man is an ignorant tool, should I take the obvious cheap shot?
Sure I will!Q-There’s talk of a new album for you. When’s that coming out, like what’s up with that? Can you tell me what stage you’re at as far as recording?
Religion and ignorance, religion and ignorance. I don't even need to make jokes here anymore!
Well, I’m bout to start working on the gospel album.
QW-Yeah, the gospel album. It’s like a double album right?
It’s two different albums. Two albums, separate albums. I got a couple more tracks to do on it and that’s done. It’s the first time anybody did anything like this—two separate albums on the same day.
Q-What made you want to release a gospel album now?
I’ve done gospel songs on every album. I figured I’d just dedicate a whole album to it.
Source: XXLmag.com
Nuke Cat
Uncovering the terrifying story of a NUCLEAR CAT.The unsettling thing about living in a surveillance society isn't just that you're being watched. It's that you have no idea.
Now that they've caught this veterinary menace, the DHS can rest easy.
That's what struck me about a story told last week by a border agent at a meeting of 200 San Juan Islanders. He was there to explain why the federal government is doing citizenship checks on domestic ferry runs.But near the end, while trying to convince the skeptical audience that the point is to root out terrorists, not fish for wrongdoing among the citizenry, deputy chief Joe Giuliano let loose with a tale straight out of "Dr. Strangelove."
It turns out the feds have been monitoring Interstate 5 for nuclear "dirty bombs." They do it with radiation detectors so sensitive it led to the following incident.
"Vehicle goes by at 70 miles per hour," Giuliano told the crowd. "Agent is in the median, a good 80 feet away from the traffic. Signal went off and identified an isotope [in the passing car]."
The agent raced after the car, pulling it over not far from the monitoring spot (near the Bow-Edison exit, 18 miles south of Bellingham). The agent questioned the driver, then did a cursory search of the car, Giuliano said.
Did he find a nuke?
"Turned out to be a cat with cancer that had undergone a radiological treatment three days earlier," Giuliano said.
Seriously, wow. Talk about a useless toy. Imagine all the cancer patients fresh from their radiation treatments at the hospital who are going to end up stopped, searched and humiliated over this.
Big Brother can do no wrong though, naturally.
Source: The Seattle Times
Show Us Your Papers
We really are living in a Proto-Soviet state here.WASHINGTON — Millions of residents of three states will soon face tougher and longer screening at airport checkpoints if their governors defy a federal law requiring new, more-secure driver's licenses.
So in other words, if your state doesn't comply with the new State Security Apparatus' demand for a National ID card, they'll randomly pat-down search and harass you if you try to travel.
Maine, New Hampshire and South Carolina have until March 31 to say whether they plan to comply with the law, which they say is costly and will inconvenience residents by forcing them to get new licenses.
If the states don't comply, the Homeland Security Department will bar travelers from using those state's licenses and ID cards to board airplanes starting May 11.
"We are not bluffing," department spokeswoman Amy Kudwa said.
Some fear massive confusion and delays at the 15 airports in the three states. Passengers showing unacceptable licenses will be pulled aside for additional screening, possibly including pat-downs.
Ahh, isn't Democracy grand?
Source: USA Today
Bridges and the GOP
Yet another thing they can't get right.ld photos of the Interstate 35W bridge show two steel connecting plates were visibly bent as early as 2003 — four years before the span collapsed into the Mississippi River, killing 13 people.
Republicans and government do not mix.
Minnesota Department of Transportation officials declined to say when the state first knew about the bending in the pieces of steel, called gusset plates.
Two photos, part of a report issued earlier this month by the National Transportation Safety Board, reveal slight bends in gusset plates that hold beams together at two separate connecting points. The plates are in areas believed to be among the first points of failure when the span collapsed.
...
The two photos are believed to have been taken by URS Inc., a San Francisco consulting firm the state hired to examine the bridge from 2003 to 2007.
"URS and the state have both got a lot of explaining to do as far as why (the bending) was not observed, and if it was observed, why that was not immediately investigated," James Schwebel, an attorney representing a group of victims, told the AP on Sunday. "How could it possibly have been missed?"
...
Since the bridge's construction during the 1960s, the state highway department had increased weight on the bridge by adding a layer of concrete to the deck in 1977 and by installing concrete barriers in 1998. And the NTSB said last week that, at the time of the collapse, more than 191 tons of construction material had been piled over the bridge's weakest areas.
Source: Raw Story
Diplomacy in the Bush Era
Seems to consist of threats and espionage.On March 14, 2003, less than one week before the eventual invasion, Chile hosted a meeting of diplomats from the six undecided governments to discuss its proposal. But U.S. ambassador John D. Negroponte and then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell moved quickly to quash the initiative, warning their governments that the effort was viewed as "an unfriendly act" designed to isolate the United States. The diplomats received calls from their governments ordering them to "leave the meeting immediately," Muñoz writes.
Ahh. Nothing like bugging the UN and harassing member countries.
Muñoz said subsequent ties remained tense at the United Nations, where the United States sought support for resolutions authorizing the occupation of Iraq. He said that small countries met privately in a secure room at the German mission that was impervious to eavesdropping. "It reminded me of a submarine or a giant safe," Muñoz said in an interview.
The United States, he added, expressed "its displeasure" to the German government every time they held a meeting in the secure room. "They couldn't listen to what was going on."
Any wonder the whole world hates us now?
Source: Raw Story
Stoned
Well well well. Turns out the Spitzer investigation really was shady after all.In the 1970s, he was on the payroll of Richard Nixon's now-infamous Committee to Reelect the President. In the 1980s, he helped George Bush Sr. trounce Michael Dukakis by floating a racially charged ad about the Democratic governor's role in furloughing a black inmate. And in 2000, he organized the so-called "Brooks Brothers" riot, forcing the shutdown of a recount in Miami-Dade County, Florida, that may have turned the election to George W. Bush.
So it looks like the FBI may have whitewashed a political hit-job on Spitzer.
Last November, his lawyer wrote a letter to the FBI. In it, GOP political operative Roger Stone's attorney, Paul Rolf alleged that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer "used the services of high-priced call girls" while in Florida, basing his information on a "social contact."
The letter, dated Nov. 19, said Stone gleaned the information from "a social contact in an adult themed club."
"The governor has paid literally tens of thousands of dollars for these services," Rolf wrote. "It is Mr. Stone's understanding that the governor paid not with credit cards or cash but through some pre-arranged transfer."
It continued, including particular detail -- Stone's lawyer wrote that the governor hadn't taken off his calf-length socks "during the sex act."
It's unclear whether Stone's letter sparked the investigation: court papers say the investigation began "in or about October 2007."
...
The missive's timing -- in November -- was preceded by contact from the FBI. The Miami Herald, which first reported on Stone's lawyer's letter, said the letter was written in response to contact from federal investigators.
"His lawyer wrote the letter containing the call-girl allegations after FBI agents had asked to speak to Stone, though he says the FBI did not specify why he was contacted," Herald reporter Amy Driscoll wrote Friday.
Subsequent reports shed little light on why the FBI sought to speak to Stone before the letter was sent. The Times speculated that the bureau might have wanted to talk to Stone about a threatening message he allegedly left for Spitzer's father, which resulted in his being fired by New York's top Senate Republican.
Of course, Stone wasn't wrong; the Governor really WAS seeing prostitutes.
Still, they probably figured a hollywood story about Honest, Hard-Working Agents Uncovering Corruption would sell better than 'Longtime Hack Takes Down Longtime Sleaze'.
Source: Raw Story
Nightmare
The Austin-American Statesman has an interview with James Yee, the former Army chaplain at Guantanamo who got too uppity defending his charges and as a result was arrested for, err, treason.
After harassing him for 76 days of sensory deprivation and confinement, along with a quarter million in legal bills, they let him go with an honorable discharge.
It's the 'softly, softly' approach, in the Bush administration.One year after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. Army Chaplain James Yee — a converted Muslim, born and raised in America — was sent to the Guantánamo Bay detention facility with the assignment of a lifetime. His job: to minister to the prisoners there, in service to the United States.
And that's just the introduction.
It was harrowing work.
"We say that the war on terror is not a war against Islam, but that's not how it felt most days at Guantánamo," Yee writes in "For God and Country: Faith and Patriotism Under Fire," his 2006 memoir. The environment at Guantánamo "excused, if not encouraged, open hostility toward Islam."
By almost every measure, Yee's tour at Guantánamo was a nightmare, offending his sensibilities as an American and a Muslim. For 10 months, from November 2002 to September 2003, Yee says, he bore witness to man's inhumanity to man as the Guantánamo prisoners were systematically beaten and humiliated by U.S. military police and interrogators.
Yee says he was horrified to see "religion used as a weapon" against Guantánamo detainees — as prisoners told him of detainees being forced to bow down in the middle of a satanic circle in an interrogation room and profess that Satan was their god, not Allah. Detainees were mocked during prayer and taunted or teased sexually by American women while chained. At first, Yee thought it an act of compassion that Guantánamo detainees were allowed to keep a Quran in their cells. But the detainees begged Yee to have them taken away, he says, for American MPs took such delight in mishandling the books or breaking their bindings during random searches.
"I was not willing to silently stand by and watch U.S. soldiers abuse the Quran, mock people's religion, and strip men of their dignity — even if those men were prisoners," wrote Yee, who became an in-house human rights advocate for the detainees. "It was my job to stop those behaviors — it was my duty, even, since the day I took my oath as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army."
The whole thing's worth a read. Man's inhumanity to man indeed.
Source: The Austin-American Statesman
This is How You Do It
In light of China's Tibet crackdown (which I need to write up here at some point) and their continued oppression of, well, everyone, the decision to host the Olympics there was a bit dicey.
Fortunately for the Chinese government, the Olympics people have been very accomodating with their own repression of civil rights and free speech, to try and quell protests against the Chinese government before the games reach Chinese soil, aka 'Base', where protestors can be quietly thrown in a dark hole forever.
How's that working out?Protests against China's rights record and crackdown in Tibet disrupted ceremonies on Monday to light the Olympic flame for the Beijing Games.
Yes, Democracy is such a sad thing, isn't it Rogge?
Three French men from a media rights group breached tight security around Ancient Olympia to unfurl a flag demanding a boycott of the Olympics. Later 10 Tibetan activists staged their own protest in the town's main street before they were detained or chased by police.
...
Three members of Reporters Sans Frontieres (Reporters Without Borders -- RSF) staged the first protest as the chief Chinese Olympics organiser, Liu Qi, who is Beijing's communist party chief, made a speech before the flame was lit.
One man unfurled a flag declaring "Boycott the country that tramples on human rights." Another tried to grab the microphone from Liu and shouted "freedom! freedom!" in front of Rogge and other top officials were sat.
Security officers quickly dragged all three away. Greek police had imposed heavy security, including armed police watching down on the site from nearby hills.
Greek state television cut its live broadcast away from the protesters. China's state broadcaster also quickly changed and did not mention the demonstrators.
Actors in ancient Greek costume then carried out the traditional ceremony, lighting the torch using a parabolic mirror to focus the sun's rays.
But as dignatories dispersed, about 10 Tibetan activists, covered in red paint, marched out of a hotel in Olympia and lay down in the town's central street, shouting slogans against China's rule in Tibet. At least two were detained by police and the rest ran away.
"I think it's always sad when there are protests, but they were not violent and that's the most important thing," IOC president Rogge told reporters after the first incident.
Go suck a goat.Speaking before the ceremony, Rogge said that "the major political leaders don't want a boycott." He added: "There is no momentum for a boycott."
Aww, your pointless little spectacle might be marred by that silly quest for human rights and freedom.
"Bush doesn't want a boycott, Sarkozy doesn't want a boycott, Brown doesn't want a boycott," Rogge said, referring to US President George W. Bush, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
But he acknowledged that the torch relay across 20 countries - and Mount Everest and Tibet - might be hijacked.
"Of course it's a concern," he said. "I would hope that potential protesters will understand that public opinion would not want the torch relay painted by political protests. It would be counterproductive."
POOR LITTLE YOUA crackdown on anti-Chinese protests in Tibet, which exiled Tibetans say have left at least 130 dead, has overshadowed the buildup to the Games.
Yes, there's no momentum for a boycott at all.
Various rights groups have drawn up plans aiming to galvanise opposition to China's record on Tibet, Darfur, human rights, religious freedom and other issues in the run-up to the Beijing Games.
The Falungong group is running a rival torch relay to highlight the plight of its followers in China, who it says are subject to brutal persecution.
Dream for Darfur, an organisation set up to pressure China into helping end the bloodshed in the western Sudanese region, is planning protests along the torch relay route.
Thai environmental activist Narisa Chakrabongse, chosen to carry the Olympic torch when it crosses Thailand next month, has declined in protest against Beijing's crackdown.
Except amongst much of the free world.
Source: Raw Story
El Presidente and the POWs
So El Presidente has found yet another new way to screw over veterans groups.The facts:
Seriously, what the hell? We could have easily paid for the POW's suit out of the Trillion Dollar Waste Fund that is Iraq. We did destroy the government that had them tortured; we could assume its debt here without any logical contradiction. It's not like Saddam can pay up; we sort of killed him in a ghoulish hanging.
In the first Gulf War, 17 American prisoners of war, held by Saddam Hussein's Iraq, were viciously tortured while in captivity.
On April 4, 2002, the former prisoners filed suit in federal court, seeking remuneration for their ordeal. They had sought to avoid litigation by offering to arbitrate their claims before an international tribunal. Iraq refused.
The United States State Department served process on Iraq; in July 2003, a Federal District Court ruled in favor of the American troops.
The court found that "there must be a premium on protecting POWs because POWs are uniquely disadvantaged and deterring torture of POWs should be of highest priority."
The Bush administration intervened to absolve Iraq of responsibility for torturing the American POWs. The President blocked the POWs from collecting on their judgment.
For over four years the POWs have tried, again and again, to meet with the administration in an effort to come to some kind of resolution. Their efforts have been futile. The administration has didn't even bother to refuse the POW’s humble entreaties... Each and every attempt by the POWs to meet with the administration has been callously and unforgivably ignored. Their letters go unanswered.
During Alberto Gonzalez's confirmation hearings, the issue was raised. He promised to consider meeting with the POWs. The POWs contacted him. He refused to meet.
The Federal District Court urged the government to settle. Several Congress members wrote letters to the administration on the POW’s behalf. The Senate voted unanimously (even the Republicans!!) to urge the administration to work out a solution. Every single effort has been ignored.
The administration won't stand up for the POWs, but they are making every effort to reconcile the claims of foreign corporations that took losses as a result of the Iraq War.
The latest war funding authorization included a provision that would have provided for the POWs. On Christmas Day 2007, George W. Bush announced his attention to veto the bill.
Congress bent to the President's will and passed a new war funding bill without the POW provision.
Source: Daily Kos
JP Morgan and Bear-Stearns Cont.
So when the Fed bailed out JP Morgan's takeover of Bear-Stearns, it was with the understanding that, you know, SOMEONE had to take the blame for this colossal fuckup. That group of someones ended up being the shareholders at Bear, who were going to get one-fifteenth of its worth. A third of the shareholders at Bear are employees, so a lot of people were losing, well, everything. Though they were the same people who sold a pack of lies to cities that now have to lay off teachers and such, so I can't feel too badly for the hucksters.
But, then of course, once the 30 Billion in taxpayer money goes through, why, the bailout gets sweeter and the pay cut for Bear isn't as bad as, well, it was supposed to be.JPMorgan Chase was in talks on Sunday night for a deal that would quintuple its offer for Bear Stearns, the beleaguered investment bank, in an effort to pacify angry Bear shareholders, according to people involved in the negotiations.
Gee, I wonder why people would think that, given that Bear was trading at like 5 bucks a share when this deal was negotiated.
The sweetened offer is intended to win over stockholders who vowed to fight the original fire-sale deal, struck only a week ago at the behest of the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department.
Under the terms being discussed, JPMorgan would pay $10 a share in stock for Bear, up from its initial offer of $2 a share — a figure that represented a mere one-fifteenth of Bear’s going market price.
The Fed, which must approve any new deal, was balking at the new offer price on Sunday night after several days of frantic, secret negotiations, these people said. As a result, it was still possible the renegotiated deal might be postponed or collapse entirely, said these people, who were granted anonymity because of their confidentiality agreements.
If the Fed were to reject the new proposal, it could set off a furor among shareholders of both firms that the government was preventing them from making a fair deal.
In an unusual move, Bear’s board was seeking to authorize the sale of 39.5 percent of the firm to JPMorgan in an effort to move closer to majority shareholder approval. Under state law in Delaware, where the companies are incorporated, a company can sell up to 40 percent without shareholder approval.
The renegotiation, which would set a sale price of more than $1 billion, comes after a tumultuous week on Wall Street and in Washington because of the near collapse of Bear and the hastily devised deal to save it.
While the initial agreement appeared to have defused the financial crisis of confidence that undid Bear, the initial terms of the deal — and the government’s controversial role in reaching them — drew criticism from those who say the takeover amounts to a government bailout of Bear, a firm at the center of the mortgage meltdown.
A new deal could raise even more questions about the Fed’s involvement in the negotiations. As part of the original deal, the Fed guaranteed to take on $30 billion of Bear’s most toxic assets. The central bank also directed JPMorgan to pay no more than $2 a share for Bear to assure that it would not appear that the Bear shareholders were being rescued, according to people involved in the negotiations.
In television interviews last week, the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., who has been closely involved in the negotiations, sought to portray the agreement not as a rescue effort but as a way to provide stability for the entire financial markets.
“Let me say that the Bear Stearns situation has been very painful for the Bear Stearns shareholders,” Mr. Paulson said on Monday on the NBC “Today” show, referring to the $2 a share price. “So I don’t think that they think that they’ve been bailed out here.”
If the price is increased, however, some critics could have more ammunition to complain that taxpayers are helping to bail out a Wall Street firm that should be responsible for its own risky behavior. That is one reason the Fed was hesitant on Sunday night to approve the transaction at $10 a share, people briefed on the talks said.
Once again, the public pays, the private sector gains. Privatize profits, socialize losses.
Sigh.
Source: The New York Times
This is Not the Way to Do It
So the website for an upcoming film criticizing the Quran has been pulled by its provider.A Web site where a Dutch lawmaker was promoting an upcoming film that criticizes the Quran has been suspended by its U.S. hosting service.
Look, I can see pulling hate sites that advocate violence, though the White Power people seem to have no trouble finding hosts. But this? This is just a crank exercising his free speech, and you're yanking his site because you don't want to make waves.
The site had shown Geert Wilders' film's title, "Fitna," the words "Coming Soon" and an image of a gilded Quran. Now it shows a note that the company is investigating whether the site violates the firm's terms of service.
Wilders has not described the 15-minute movie, due to be released by March 31, in detail but has said it will underscore his view that Islam's holy book is "fascist."
Dutch officials fear the movie could spark violent protests in Muslim countries, similar to those two years ago after the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper.
Wilders said he would release his movie on the Internet after television stations refused to air it.
"In this situation with the dialogue that's happening throughout the world we've made the choice to suspend the site as of last night," said Susan Wade, spokeswoman for Network Solutions. "This site is suspended so people can't see the content right now but the customer still has access to their site. They can make whatever changes are necessary as we complete our investigation."
...
Network Solutions' terms of service contain a sweeping prohibition against "objectionable material of any kind or nature."
A Dutch court will hear a complaint lodged by Muslim groups seeking to bar Wilders from releasing the film March 28, but there is no legal barrier preventing Wilders from releasing his film before then.
That is a jackass thing to do.
As for the Dutch government? Blocking a film whose point of view you don't like? For shame, for even considering it. For shame.
Source: Raw Story
It's Pat!
Pat Buchanan, a regular on MSNBC, made the following remarks recently.Barack says we need to have a conversation about race in America.
Give me a break. Seriously. Black people should be GRATEFUL for slavery? White people have it so much harder than blacks?
Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to.
This time, the Silent Majority needs to have its convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these:
First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.
Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.
Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up blacks than white Americans. Untold trillions have been spent since the '60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.
Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against white folks - with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas -- to advance black applicants over white applicants.
Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for blacks.
We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude?
Barack talks about new “ladders of opportunity” for blacks.
Let him go to Altoona and Johnstown, and ask the white kids in Catholic schools how many were visited lately by Ivy League recruiters handing out scholarships for “deserving” white kids.
Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of white America? Is it really white America’s fault that illegitimacy in the African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent?
Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost, a failure of the black community itself?
As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and especially interracial crimes of violence. Is Barack Obama aware that while white criminals choose black victims 3 percent of the time, black criminals choose white victims 45 percent of the time?
Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade as the reverse?
We have all heard ad nauseam from the Rev. Al about Tawana Brawley, the Duke rape case and Jena. And all turned out to be hoaxes. But about the epidemic of black assaults on whites that are real, we hear nothing.
Sorry, Barack, some of us have heard it all before, about 40 years and 40 trillion tax dollars ago.
I'd love to know where he gets his statistics on crime. I don't ever recall seeing uniform stats on the racial characteristics of criminals and their victims, but there is no way, just no way that his lunacy on rapes and robberies are correct. It's absurd. For one thing, there's no way to collect stats like that on rape; 85% or more of rapes go unreported. Rape statistics are a shadowy netherworld in CJUS reporting; there's no way to accurately gauge demographics from the slim percentage of victims who come forward.
I plan to look into this a bit more in depth later, but wow.
Also, Jena was a hoax? Excuse me? So those were fake nooses in that tree? That was fake violence against black students? That was not the mayor of town who sided with the Klan over civil rights protestors?
Give me a damn break. This man is a thug.
Source: African American (Black) Opinion
Beardy
So the other night on Countdown we watched Richardson's endorsement of Obama and the interview he gave on the subject, and I noticed he had a shiny new beard. I commented to my roommate on how sharp said beard looked, and lamented that my own is so terrible. We both observed that Hispanic men can often grow really nice facial hair, and thought that was a good thing, and good for Richardson, since he apparently likes said beard.
Who knew that some people would take this grooming decision and turn it from a very minor racial plus to some kind of radical statement in their heads.Summary: While discussing on Fox News' The Live Desk New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson's endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama, Philadelphia radio host Dom Giordano said of Richardson's beard: "I don't know if it's playing into the ethnic card, or whatever." Host Martha MacCallum stated, "[Richardson] said, you know, 'It's hard for me,' he said to me once, 'people don't even know I'm Hispanic,' " and then asked, "So is that part of what he is ... cultivating here?" Giordano replied, "I think so."
Or, he could just be growing a beard. He looks better with one; so did Lincoln.
Nobody accuses Lincoln of trying to pander to white beard wearers; everyone just accepts it as a personal choice.
Yeesh.
Source: Media Matters
Dobbs
While we're on the subject of racist assholes, we have Lou Dobbs.Summary: Lou Dobbs introduced the March 21 edition of CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight by announcing: "Tonight, Senator [Barack] Obama wins the endorsement of the nation's only Hispanic governor, Bill Richardson. Is Obama pandering to ethnocentric special interests again? We'll have complete coverage." The subsequent report included no discussion of whether Obama is "pandering to ethnocentric special interests."
Because all those wetbacks stick together! He's only governor of a major state because he's a lousy border hopping member of the Reconquista!
God, someone get this hack off the air, please.
Source: Media Matters
Halliburton Once Again
This time they were poisoning people en masse.Hallburton subsidiary KBR told employees at a water injection plant in Iraq a sand-like substance scattered around the plant was just a "mild irritant," workers recall.
Ahh, Halliburton. They are scum.
It turns out to be sodium dichromate -- a highly toxic chemical which can lead to cancer even with limited exposure.
Now nine Americans are suing KBR, according to a report in Tuesday's Boston Globe. They say they spent 2 1/2 months covered in the substance as they rushed to get the plant online, a key component in Iraq's oil infrastructure.
"Many of the 22 Americans and 100-plus Iraqis began to complain of nosebleeds, ulcers, and shortness of breath," the Globe's Farah Stockman writes. "Within weeks, nearly 60 percent exhibited symptoms of exposure, according to the minutes of a meeting of project managers from KBR, the Houston-based construction company in charge of the repairs."
According to Oxford University, sodium dichromate is a "NTP human carcinogen and IARC human Group I carcinogen. Inhalation, ingestion or skin absorption are harmful, and may be fatal. Exposure may cause cancer."
A material safety data sheet at Fisher Scientific says chronic exposure may lead to ulcers, asthma, cancer and infertiliy.The workers, however, face a daunting task in court. Under a World War II-era law, KBR isn't obliged to pay damages unless workers can prove the exposure was malicious.
Sounds like a plan!
But KBR isn't out of the woods. Because the company hired the workers through subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying Social Security and Medicare taxes, the workers' lawyers say they shouldn't be protected as a federal contractor.
"KBR's lawyers argued in a legal brief that the workers should be considered employees of KBR because they were part of a corporate subsidiary that was working on a KBR team," Stockman writes. "The company's spokeswoman, Heather Browne, pointed out that the company's projects in Iraq take place in a 'dangerous, unpredictable environment,' but said the firm maintains an 'unwavering commitment to safety.'"
...
The workers say KBR's managers discouraged them from raising safety concerns.
"What was done to us, I believe, it's criminal," Danny Langford , a motor specialist from Texas who worked in the most contaminated room in the facility, told the Globe. "I think it was deliberate. They wanted this six month job - get you in, get you out, and send you on your way, and 10 years later you start dying of cancer."
So what is this stuff anyway?Sodium dichromate is the chemical compound with the formula Na2Cr2O7. Usually, however, the salt is handled as its dihydrate Na2Cr2O7·2H2O. Its chemistry, appearance, and behaviour are very similar to those of the more widely encountered potassium dichromate. This chemical is around twenty times more soluble in water than the potassium salt (49 g/L at 0 °C) and its equivalent weight is also lower, which is often desirable.[1]
Hexavalent chromium, where have I heard of that before...
...
Safety
Like all hexavalent chromium compounds, sodium dichromate is considered hazardous, possibly carcinogenic.Hexavalent chromium is the substance against which Erin Brockovich campaigned. It was found in drinking water in the Southern California town of Hinkley. Chromium(VI) is carcinogenic in groundwater,[5] and the 0.58 ppm in the groundwater in Hinkley exceeded the Maximum Contaminant Level of 0.10 ppm currently set by the United States Environmental Protection Agency.[6] A similar case was discovered in 2007 in Asopos River, near Oinofyta, Greece and Brockovich is again focusing on it. [7]
Oh right! It's that really nasty stuff from the movie that gives you all sorts of cancer and eats you alive.
Wonderful!Toxicity
(genotoxic == alters DNA in a bad way)
In an organism's cells, hexavalent chromium undergoes reduction, first to metastable pentavalent chromium, then to trivalent chromium. Trivalent chromium binds to proteins and creates haptens which trigger immune system reaction. Once developed, chrome sensitivity becomes fairly persistent; in such cases, even contact with chromate-dyed textiles or wearing of chromate-tanned leather shoes can cause or exacerbate contact dermatitis.
Hexavalent chromium compounds are genotoxic carcinogens. Chronic inhalation of hexavalent chromium compounds increases risk of lung cancer (lungs are especially vulnerable, followed by fine capillaries in kidneys and intestine).
...
Researchers have recently reported discovering that vitamin C reacts inside human lung cells with chromium(VI), causing massive DNA damage. Low doses of chromium(VI), combined with vitamin C, produce up to 15 times as many chromosomal breaks and up to 10 times more mutations, compared with cells lacking vitamin C. Outside cells, vitamin C actually protects against the cellular damage caused by hexavalent chromium.[4]
So you get massive amounts of genetic mutation, cancer, and damage to your digestive tract, lungs and brain.
Thanks Halliburton!
Sources: Raw Story
Wikipedia (Hexavalent Chromium)
Wikipedia (Sodium Dichromate)
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Ultra Post
Sunday, March 9, 2008
War on Cursing and Other Randomess
Also, 'Cuss' Isn't a Word, You Ignorant Half-Wits
Curses!
So there's a town in California that really, really wants to feel my wrath, assuming I ever get any.What the @$%#? This community on the edge of Los Angeles has become a cuss-free zone.
Define 'better'. Is it better to use the non-word 'cuss' than to curse, an integral part of the English language since before there WAS a proper English language?
So if you're headed to South Pasadena this week, be sure to turn down the volume on that Snoop Dogg CD, and, if the little old lady from Pasadena cuts you off in traffic, don't even think about flipping her the bird.
Not that police will slap cuffs on you and haul your sorry, er, butt off to jail in light of the proclamation passed Wednesday by the City Council. But you could be shamed into better behavior by the unsettling glares of residents who take their reputation for civility seriously.
What kind of numbskull would think that this intrusion, meaningless as it is, of government into private speech is a good idea? What sort of slope-foreheaded nitwit would waste public time and money with this tripe? What kind of inbred, demi-human, chromosomally deficient mental defective?
Oh, this one."That's one of the purposes of this," Mayor Michael Cacciotti said of his city's proclamation designating the first week of March as No Cussing Week. "It provides us a reminder to be more civil, to elevate the level of discourse."
Ahh, public officials.
The proclamation will be in effect until Friday, and then the first week of every March hereafter.
Sometimes they make you long for a brutal autocracy, just to teach people the value of liberty.
Speaking of people who need time to learn, we have a whole slew of these whackos. The leader in South Pasadena, in particular, should pay more attention in school.South Pasadena, a tranquil city of tree-shaded cottages at the base of a mountain range eight miles north of downtown Los Angeles, isn't the first to try to rein in potty mouths. Earlier this year, the St. Louis suburb of St. Charles, Mo., proposed banning swearing in bars. Last year, hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons called for an industrywide ban on racially and sexually charged epithets.
I'm not gonna lie to you, kid. You're a goddamned retard.
But what's different about the latest push to stop saying in public the words that Jane Fonda and Diane Keaton recently discovered we still can't say on television is that it was proposed by a 14-year-old boy.
"My mom and dad always taught me good morals, good values, and not cussing was one of them," said McKay Hatch, the founder of South Pasadena High School's No Cussing Club, during a recent break between study hall and tennis practice.
"I've cussed before, I'm not gonna lie to you," Hatch quickly added. "But I try not to cuss any more."He was in junior high school when he became fed up with all the blue language around him.
This is how temperance movements start, folks. Some kid with no friends starts a movement for other kids with no friends and no lives and the next thing you know, the Mob's running Chicago because the rest of us aren't legally allowed to have a good time.
He understood why his friends use foul language: "They just want to fit in like everybody else and they don't know how. They figure if they cuss maybe it's an easy way to do that."
But it wasn't for him.
"I finally told my friends, `I don't cuss.' And I said, `If you want to hang out with me, you don't cuss.'"
It took a couple of years, but enough friends finally came around that Hatch formed a 50-member club, handed out fliers and called the group's first meeting, held June 1.
Nine months later, the No Cussing Club has a Web site, claims a membership of 10,000 and boasts chapters in several states and countries. Hatch considers his greatest achievement, though, to be getting his hometown of 25,000 to become a cuss-free zone.
Cacciotti, the mayor, isn't surprised that South Pasadena started the movement. He noted that the city broke off from its much bigger neighbor 120 years ago when residents unhappy with the saloon trade in downtown Pasadena voted 85-25 to go their own way.For his part, Hatch hopes his No Cussing Club will lead to cuss-free zones in other cities. He believes it could be a quality-of-life issue, and that there may be less violence if people behave better.
Yep. Prohibition typically brings about a reduction in violence. That's why prohibiting alcohol lead to the Golden Age, and the War on Drugs brought about the earthly nirvana we see today.
"You have to start with the little things," he said.
Oh, wait a second.
FUCK NO!
Source: Raw Story
Oh God, Here We Go
So the governmental body that pays out damages to people injured by vaccines has cut a check to one girl's family, after a vaccine apparently triggered a pre-existing metabolic condition and ruined her brain.
Autism anti-vaccine fanatics start raving in 3, 2, 1...Government health officials have conceded that childhood vaccines worsened a rare, underlying disorder that ultimately led to autism-like symptoms in a Georgia girl, and that she should be paid from a federal vaccine-injury fund.
Oh, it doesn't matter what the FACTS are, Renzi. They'll say you did anyway.
Medical and legal experts say the narrow wording and circumstances probably make the case an exception — not a precedent for thousands of other pending claims.
The government "has not conceded that vaccines cause autism," said Linda Renzi, the lawyer representing federal officials, who have consistently maintained that childhood shots are safe.Studies repeatedly have discounted any link between thimerosal and autism, but legal challenges continue. The issue even cropped up in the presidential campaign, with Republican John McCain asserting on Friday that "there's strong evidence" autism is connected to the preservative.
So the girl had some crippling condition with her mitochondria, and vaccines that are harmless to healthy people triggered them to malfunction.
The girl has a disorder involving her mitochondria, the energy factories of cells. The disorder — which can be present at birth from an inherited gene or acquired later in life — impairs cells' ability to use nutrients, and often causes problems in brain functioning. It can lead to delays in walking and talking.
Federal officials say the law bars them from discussing the case or releasing documents without the family's permission. However, The Associated Press obtained a copy of the concession by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services officials.
According to the document, five vaccines the girl received on one day in 2000 aggravated her mitochondrial condition, predisposing her to metabolic problems that manifested as worsening brain function "with features of autism spectrum disorder." In the 1990s, the definition of autism was expanded to take in a group of milder, related conditions, which are known as autism spectrum disorders.
Tragic. But that doesn't make the vaccines the cause of autism unless all autistic kids have this exceedingly rare condition, and even then, they're not really the cause, any more than sugar causes diabetic comas; rather, it TRIGGERS a malfunctioning system that's already in place.The Health Resources and Services Administration, which is in charge of the fund, said: "HRSA has maintained and continues to maintain the position that vaccines do not cause autism."
So what this really says is that, maybe, 7% of autistic kids aren't really autistic; they have a mitochondiral disorder. And perhaps, MAYBE, vaccines contribute to that disorder worsening.
A Portuguese study suggested that 7 percent of autistic children might also have the mitochondrial disorder, versus one in 5,000 people — or 0.02 percent — in the general population, said Dr. Marvin Natowicz, a Cleveland Clinic geneticist.
Maybe.
The other 93%? Completely unrelated.
This is why disease definitions getting overly broad can be such a nuisance.Reported cases of autism have been rising in the U.S., even after thimerosal was removed from most childhood vaccines. However, some experts believe the rise is due to an expansion of the definition of autism and related conditions, and a desire to diagnose children so they qualify for special services and aid.
Enough said.
Source: Raw Story
And With Strange Aeons, Even Death May Die
This story's been around a lot the last week, but for posterity:BORDEAUX, France (Reuters) - The mayor of a village in southwest France has threatened residents with severe punishment if they die, because there is no room left in the overcrowded cemetery to bury them.
The really sad thing is, this officially ends the old legal riddle, 'What is the only crime for which there is no punishment?'. Until now, suicide worked as the answer.
In an ordinance posted in the council offices, Mayor Gerard Lalanne told the 260 residents of the village of Sarpourenx that "all persons not having a plot in the cemetery and wishing to be buried in Sarpourenx are forbidden from dying in the parish."
It added: "Offenders will be severely punished."
But thanks to a small town in France, there's an exception.
Source: Yahoo News
Eat Circuitry
Nom nom.
Death of English Culture
Yes, that greatest symbol of England is under attack.
No, not the Queen.According to the British Beer and Pubs Association, 27 pubs a week closed in 2007 – seven times faster than the previous year and 14 times faster than 2005. This means that four pubs a day are closing.
IT CANNOT BE!
The figures have been released a week before The Budget. The Government has run out of money, and the pub industry is anxious that the Government does not put up beer taxes. "Beer sales in pubs – the backbone of the trade – are now at their lowest level since the Great Depression of the 1930s," says the BBPA. "
Apparently white wine and health consciousness are doing what the Gerrys could not.Pubs without the room to provide an attractive outside areas for smokers, and those that are not big on food have faced particular difficulties. The move towards spirits and wine has hit the beery pub. Research shows that there has been a marked trend in the rise of "pre-loading", where drinkers, young adults mostly, buy booze from a shop and down it at home before groggily wandering off to a pub or bar, thereby spending less money on binge drinking.
What a sad, sad state of affairs.
But perhaps the clincher is that we seem to be drinking less overall, not just in pubs but everywhere from the park bench to the House of Commons. Although the Office for National Statistics cannot be sure that people are being truthful about how much they say they drink, it thinks alcohol consumption peaked in 2000 and has fallen every year since. According to the BBPA, average consumption is down 15 per cent on 2000.What is the Government doing?
Curse you, Governmental Inaction!
With heavy drinking placing a burden on the police and hospitals, there is no early prospect of a "save our pubs" campaign from Downing Street.
It's time to promote heavy beer drinking once more!
Source: The Independent
DuhhhA message sent to all Defense Department bases and installations around the country late last week told officials to not allow the popular mapping Web site from taking panoramic views inside the facilities.
Michael Kucharek, spokesman for U.S. Northern Command, told The Associated Press on Thursday that the decision was made after crews were allowed access to at least one base. He said military officials were concerned that allowing the 360-degree, street-level video could provide sensitive information to potential adversaries and endanger base personnel.
His comments came just a few days after published reports suggested that protesters used Google Earth to help plot their access to the roof of the Parliament building in London.
Yeah. You guys didn't see this coming?
Source: Raw Story
No Heat, No Justice
The hiliarious tale of what happens when getting design accolades for a building matters more than anything else.Thomas Mayne’s new George H.W. Bush Federal Building now looms over midtown San Francisco. While people have sharply divergent reactions to its unique exterior design -- I happen to like it -- the verdict on the structure’s function as a office space for federal employees is nearly unanimous: it is a disaster.
So you see, they knew it would suck. They just thought that the peons could in turn suck it up.
Not that architectural critics care. Bedazzled by unusual design features and its focus on energy conservation, reviews of Mayne’s latest work seem to ignore whether it fulfills its functional role as a federal office building.
Based on what I have been told, it clearly does not.
The first fact about the building that may cause surprise is its lack of air conditioning or heat. According to Mayne, “a bike rack and air conditioning get you the same point. I’d much rather see BTU and CO2 requirements and let the professional community solve the problem.”
I apparently lack sufficient understanding of green technology, as it does not seem that a bike rack would “get you to the same point” in terms of keeping workers cool. In the real world on the 15th floor of the Federal Building, workers seek to relieve the heat by opening windows, which not only sends papers flying, but, depending on their proximity to the opening, makes creating a stable temperature for all workers near impossible.
When I spoke with a Labor Department worker at the building (who noted that she is encountering the type of bad work conditions that her agency is supposed to enforce against), she confirmed what might have been an urban legend: that some employees must use umbrellas to keep the sun out of their cubicles.
The lack of internal climate controls has left some workers too cold and others too hot. A happy medium has proved elusive. And while the managers’ offices do have heat and air conditioning -- a two-tiered approach fitting in a building named for Bush -- the “green” design apparently has messed with the effectiveness of these systems, leaving these top staff as physically uncomfortable as the line workers.
Riiiiight. Only managers need to have a comfortable work environment!According to my source, architect Mayne has stated that federal office workers do not get enough exercise. To address this, he installed elevators in the building that only stop at every third floor. This requires employees to walk up or down one or two flights of metal stairs.
Yes, that's right. He intentionally broke the elevators. To force people to use the stairs.
Persons with physical disabilities who cannot use stairs can use a separate elevator that stops at every floor. The foreseeable result is that employees seeking to avoid stairs use the disabled access elevator, leaving this car crammed with people and making the ride to the top extremely slow.
I am told that when the freight elevator is out of service, deliveries must use the disabled access elevator. It seems only a matter of time until a disabled worker sues the General Services Administration for providing inadequate disabled elevator access in the building.
Instead of course, they use the elevator for the handicapped. Screwing them over royally.
I'm not sure why this idiot thinks that people should be getting their daily exercise in suits and ties in the stairwells at work anyway. That's hardly ideal clothing or timing.
Source: Beyond Chron
Waaaahmbulance!
Poor little China feels bullied by all those non-violent Tibetan Buddhists. Again.BEIJING (Reuters) - China's top official in Tibet on Friday accused the Himalayan region's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, of seeking to sabotage the Beijing Olympics.
Also, a neologism, or odd translation, out of China:
The Dalai Lama, who fled to India in 1959 after an abortive uprising against Communist rule, told Britain's ITV network in January that during the Games Tibet supporters should protest peacefully in China against Beijing's rule.
...
Zhang's lieutenant, Qiangba Puncog, the top government official in Tibet, said the activities of the Dalai Lama "clique were the main factors of instability in Tibet."
"They will not succeed. We are fully prepared and have full confidence. We will definitely ensure the Olympics and Olympic-related events in Tibet proceed smoothly," Qiangba Puncog said, apparently referring to the Tibet leg of the Olympic torch relay that is due to scale Mount Everest.
...
Critics say China continues to repress Tibetans' religious aspirations, especially their veneration for the Dalai Lama, who won Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. Periodic rioting by monks has been brutally crushed."The Beijing Olympics is the focus of world attention and the people are exalted ... but even a grand gathering like this, he is engaging in sabotage and threatening to cause trouble," Zhang Qingli, Communist Party boss of Tibet, said without elaborating.
Easy. That's not a word. It's hard to be accused of something that doesn't exist.
"How can this not be called engaging in splittism?" Zhang told a news conference on the sidelines of parliament when asked by Reuters why China will not believe the Dalai Lama does not advocate independence and what he needs to do to convince China.
Do you mean 'agitation'? 'Disruption'? 'Anarchy'? 'Chaos'? 'Insurgency'? Or perhaps the grand bugaboo of our times, 'terrorism'?
Source: Raw Story
Pirate Day
Speaking of the Beijing Olympics, it turns out that they stole content for their website from a Flash game designer.Flash game theft is nothing new. I’m actually quite used to having my games taken without my permission, and without receiving compensation. The difference here is that this is not some crappy no-name portal. This is The Olympics.
Well, duh. It's the Chinese government after all.
I’d also like to point out that this is not just a clone of my game. They didn’t see my game and set out to make a similar game. They actually stole my game. I’ll say it again:
The Olympics stole my game.
They downloaded the swf file from my site, decompiled it, swapped out the little guy for the Fuwa characters, took my name off of it and republished it as their own. I can tell this is what happened because they are still using some of my original art from Snow Day (the clouds and the ice cube are exactly the same). I also took the liberty of decompiling their game and actually found it still contains the sound files from Snow Day, even though they aren’t being used in the Olympic version. It even still has the splash sound effect from The Lake (I used the engine from The Lake to make Snow Day and must have forgot to delete this file).
...
The Beijing Olympic Committee has also not been lenient with copyright infringers. Back in October the director of the State Intellectual Property Office, Tian Lipu, pledged to prevent Olympic piracy. Indeed, the Olympic web site even has a page set up where you can report infringement of intellectual property rights. Evidently, they are slightly less concerned when The Olympics infringes on the rights of others.
On the other hand, they HATE to be embarassed, especially in relation to the Olympics. They'll throw someone under the bus for sure if this story catches on. Maybe even execute them.
Of course, it may or may not be someone who was even involved.
Source: The Pencil Farm
Take-Down
So, under the odious DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act), you can mail out so-called 'Takedown Notices' to anyone you suspect of infringing your copyright, and they have to take down the offending content or they're in trouble.
Of course, these notices are very, very frequently abused to harass critics and stifle Fair Use of copywritten materials.
Sometimes though, it just gets bizarre.It's cyber war! Lawyers representing the Air Force's elite electronic warriors have sent YouTube a DMCA takedown notice demanding the removal of the 30-second spot the Air Force created to promote its nascent Cyber Command. We'd uploaded the video to share with THREAT LEVEL readers.
Oops.
How quickly alliances shift in the murky new world of Cyberarmageddon. It was just last month that the Air Force sent us the ad, and thanked THREAT LEVEL for agreeing to run it. The spot shows earnest airmen deftly thwarting a hacker attack on the Pentagon using Minority Report-type touch-and-drag screens. I'm certain hundreds, if not thousands, of geeks have already enlisted as a result of our patriotic shilling for the Air Force.
Now, though, it seems we're just another cyber enemy to be squashed like so many Chinese DDoSers or unsanctioned blogs. Was it something I said?
But Air Force marketing chief Keith Lebling, who sent us the spot in the first place, says any intellectual property claim should have gone through his office, and none did.
U.S. Government works aren't even copyrightable. YouTube doesn't know that -- presumably because it has no lawyers -- and it's taken down the video. A spokeswoman said in an e-mail that the Google-owned service has no choice but to comply with DMCA notices. That's not quite right, though. YouTube has no legal obligation to remove non-infringing content.
The right hand literally does not know what the left is doing.Update: YouTube has sent along the DMCA notice (.pdf). It's signed by Meredith Pikser, an attorney with international law firm Reed Smith LLP, on behalf of the Air Force.
So, there you have it. Bizarrely, an ad that the Air Force sent out to media outlets, thanked them for putting up on Youtube and discussing, has now been the subject of an anti-infringement campaign, unauthorized, that it isn't even legally eligible for, and even if it had been, they already waived any rights to it in writing on their website.
Kurt Opsahl at EFF notes that, notwithstanding Pikster's sworn statement, the Air Force website promoting the video contains this language in its privacy policy: "Information presented on the Air Force Recruiting website is considered public information and may be distributed or copied."
Yeah. Wow.
Source: Wired (Threat Level)
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Bushworld Security
Is It Safe?
The Kurds
So apparently Turkey has gone from invading Northern Iraq on foot to bombing it.
We're doing nothing to stop them of course.
Source: Raw Story
The Colombians
Our proxy state in South America looks to have ignited a possible three-way land war, as Venezuela and Ecuador are both unhappy about their cross-border incursion. Venezuela is moving tanks to the border now.
Source: Raw Story
Rad
Remember Democrats saying that securing our ports would be a nice first priority for national security, as opposed to blowing up Middle Eastern countries?
That would have been nice. Instead we get this.Department of Homeland Security tests of new radiation detection machines last year did not show whether the costly devices performed well enough to be used as planned at ports and borders to protect the country against nuclear attacks or dirty bombs, according to a new report about the process.
Ahh, all that taxpayer money gone.
The performance tests were organized by the department's Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, which has been trying to deploy the machines along the borders and at ports in a $1.2 billion project, despite allegations from government auditors that the office misled Congress about their effectiveness and later conducted flawed tests to show they worked well.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had said the development and purchase of the machines was a "vital priority" for the department. Officials from the nuclear detection office had asserted the tests -- mandated by Congress before the project was allowed to move forward -- showed they worked well.
But Chertoff called for an independent team to review the program last summer after a Washington Post article spelled out questions about the project. Last fall, Chertoff put the project on hold, conceding that the machines were not ready for wide use.
I've never been too sure how this was supposed to work anyway. If you want to transport nuclear material and live, you have to shield it anyway, and if it's shielded, it can't be detected. These devices are essentially big geiger counters. If the uranium or what not is either wrapped in lead or already in a bomb, they wouldn't detect a damn thing.
Source: The Washington Post
Come ON, China!
Yet more wonderful products from our Sino-Industrial Overlords.A blood thinner tied to the deaths of at least 19 people in the U.S. has a "possibly counterfeit ingredient," a federal agency revealed.
Naturally, the Bush administration fell down on the job here too.
Raw components of the drug, heparin, are produced in China, reports The New York Times in a story set to appear on their Thursday front page.
"Routine tests failed to distinguish the contaminant from [heparin]," write Gardiner Harris and Walt Bogdanich for the Times. "Only sophisticated magnetic resonance imaging tests uncovered that as much as 20 percent of the product's active ingredient was a heparin mimic blended in with the real thing."A series of independent assessments, including one by the agency’s own Science Board, have found that the F.D.A. is increasingly overwhelmed by its many responsibilities and is incapable of protecting the public from unsafe drugs, medical devices and food — particularly from China. The Government Accountability Office recently discovered, for example, that over a six-year period, the F.D.A. inspected just 64 of the nearly 700 medical device plants registered in China. Medical devices can include items like stents and spinal screws.
Well, I hope you like being poisoned. It's the status quo, now.
Source: Raw Story
Another Edition of Heartland Values
Go Indiana!
Segregationist Center
So it turns out that one of IU's buildings is named after a staunch segregationist and bigot, one Ora Wildermuth.I bet you’ve passed it a few hundred times, maybe more.
Ooh yeah, that's the old time white power schtick. You can't get hate like that anymore.
It is a sign, small and simple. White words wrap around a dull maroon rectangle with the declaration: Ora L. Wildermuth Intramural Center.
This sign, which stands outside of the School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation building, represents the man, and the man represents the institution.
So who is the man?
One thing Judge Ora Leonard Wildermuth advocated would have made George Wallace proud. For Wildermuth, it was segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever. He put it in his own words on Nov. 19, 1945, in a letter to IU comptroller Ward G. Biddle. Wildermuth, then-president of the IU board of trustees, wrote, “I am and shall always remain absolutely and utterly opposed to social intermingling of the colored race with the white. I belong to the white race and shall remain loyal to it. It always has been the dominant and leading race.”
A bit of an irony for those of us who know Indiana these days too:Wildermuth was one of the first citizens of Gary when he arrived there in 1906. He served as Gary’s first schoolteacher, librarian and municipal judge.
For those of you outside the state, Gary is a very heavily black majority city... with one of the highest per capita levels of violence in the country. Being a white supremacist from Gary these days would buy you a one way ticket to Hell on the Express train.
But back to the asshole.From 1938 to1949, Wildermuth was president of the IU board of trustees. When the school sought funds, the trustees sought a reason. Both reason and racism clashed in the summer of 1948 when IU President Herman B Wells sent out a correspondence to the homes of each board member. Wells specifically requested from the trustee president to spend $60,000 to build new dormitories for the “colored housing situation.”
Much like a white-sheet clad Energizer Bunny, he kept going and going and going!
Wildermuth responded to Wells by writing, “So few of them succeed and the average of the race as to intelligence, economic status and industry is so far below the white average that it seems to me futile to build up hope for a great future.”
So, ok, the man was clearly a bigot, and having a campus building named after him is a disgrace. Right?
We'll surely be seeing some swift action on this point too, right?When former IU President Adam Herbert discovered last April that a campus building bears the name of a known segregationist, he vowed to take speedy action. Almost a year later, with Herbert out of office, the team of faculty and administrators responsible for resolving the issue is still requesting more time.
The way I see it, you have basically two options, Clapacs, you moron. Either take his name off the building, or put on the white sheets yourself.
...
Terry Clapacs, University vice president and chief administrative officer, heads the committee. He said a decision could not be reached last week because the committee members “all wanted to do more individual research.”
“There are a lot of opinions,” Clapacs said. “There were 17 of us that met, and everybody had something to say about it, so it was a very interesting conversation.”
That's about the size of it.
Source: The Indiana Daily Student (original column) (status article)
Midwestern Poison
So as it turns out, Indiana found a way to enrich itself at the trough of Hurricane Katrina: selling the formaldehyde soaked trailers to FEMA.Northern Indiana’s recreational vehicle industry is at the center of a federal inquiry into toxic air found in emergency trailers supplied to victims left homeless in 2005 by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
China too! We should have known.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Monday that it measured the highest levels of formaldehyde in emergency trailers made by three Indiana firms: Gulf Stream Coach, Inc., the largest privately held RV maker in the U.S., based in Nappanee; Pilgrim International, Inc., based in Middlebury; and Keystone R.V. Co., based in Goshen.
...
Officials at plywood industry trade groups in the United States and Canada suggest improperly sealed plywood imported from China might be the culprit. The plywood would have been used to make cabinets and build the structure of the trailers.
American and Canadian plywood makers say they commonly use phenol formaldehyde to make both interior and exterior plywood. The phenol variety’s tight bonding characteristics make it impervious to water, while the other variety, known as urea formaldehyde, can allow gas to escape if it is not sealed properly, said Paul Jaehrlich, technical services director of the Canadian Plywood Association.
So basically, they cut corners (and padded their profit) by using cheap Chinese plywood. What harm could that possibly cause?The results showed 121 Gulf Stream trailers tested had an average formaldehyde level of 0.103 parts per million, 39 Pilgrim units tested had an average of 0.108 parts per million and 38 Keystone units tested had an average of 0.102 parts per million.
Oh, right. It could KILL PEOPLE.
The average exposure level for typical indoor air is 0.01 to 0.03 parts per million.
...
What is Formaldehyde?
It is a colorless gas emitted from many construction materials and can cause breathing problems, itchy eyes and rashes. The gas is also a suspected carcinogen.
Selfish, arrogant, greedy, grasping pricks.
Another lesson in the true meaning of 'Heartland Values'
Source: The Indianapolis Star
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Horror News
The Horror
I've been meaning to put these stories up forever. Oops.
China
In advance of the Olympics, China has decided to ban the noble horror movie.BEIJING (Reuters) - China has added ghosts, monsters and other things that go bump in the night to its list of banned video and audio content in an intensified crackdown ahead of the Beijing Olympics.
Yes, let's make sure people aren't exposed to the ghastly horror of a zombie movie. That might make them unhappy, and if they're unhappy, they won't be nearly as productive in the slave labor factories churning out crap to enrich their masters/owners in the Communist hierarchy.
Producers have around three weeks to look through their tapes for "horror" and report it to authorities, the General Administration of Press and Publications said in a statement posted on the government Web site.
Offending content included "wronged spirits and violent ghosts, monsters, demons, and other inhuman portrayals, strange and supernatural storytelling for the sole purpose of seeking terror and horror," the administration said.
The new guidelines aim to "control and cleanse the negative effect these items have on society, and to prevent horror, violent, cruel publications from entering the market through official channels and to protect adolescents' psychological health."
Source: Reuters
Michael Bay Must Be Stopped
Michael Bay, the man who thought Hawaii should be cleansed of Asian characters for Pearl Harbor, is baaaaaaack.Transformers director Michael Bay and his partners at the Platinum Dunes production company have been tasked by New Line Cinema to "relaunch" the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise.
Oh dear Eris protect us all.
Wes Craven’s 1984 slasher classic gave the world the iconic Freddy Krueger, who haunted a total of nine films and two TV series. According to Variety, the new outing will represent a "complete overhaul" of the Nightmare concept.
Bay and chums are also gearing up for a May start on resurrecting Jason Voorhees of Friday the 13th in a new film to be helmed by Marcus Nispel. This is apparently up for a "complete overhaul" as well, and movie buffs will remember just what a complete overhaul did for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - remade in 2003 by New Line with Nispel calling the shots and Platinum Dunes lurking in the shadows.
And just to reinforce the feeling that Hollywood has completely lost the ability to come up with an original concept, Variety adds that Platinum Dunes is "prepping an exorcism thriller" for Rogue Pictures, plus a remake of Near Dark to be directed by music vid vet Samuel Bayer.
Oh yes, and the company's filling its spare time "developing a Universal remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds", in which Casino Royale director Martin Campbell will presumably ensure that slated star Naomi Watts will get plenty of unwanted avian attention.
He's remaking Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, The Birds AND Near Dark. As well as an Exorcist ripoff.
THIS MAN IS THE DEVIL I TELL YOU
THE DEVIL
Source: The Register
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Political Update
Politicking
Olympics: No Free Speech Zone
So the problems with holding the Olympics in China continue to roll on in. This time? Free speech for athletes has to go out the window, lest they make noise about Tibet.
Or the people that China is forcing out of their homes to make room for the Olympic complex... nah, what am I saying? Athletes never complain about the damage caused by stadiums. Still, here we go:LONDON -- British Olympic athletes must sign a new clause in their contracts prohibiting politically sensitive remarks or gestures during the Beijing Games.
Hey, Mewsom. The t-shirt thing's already banned. What is this supposed to solve?
"The reality is, given the level of political scrutiny of the world's media on these games and the way China will handle them, the BOA felt it was sensible and proper to flag that rule to our athletes," British Olympic Association communications director Graham Mewson said Sunday.
The International Olympic Committee already has a rule that states that "no kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas."
...
Mewson said the clause will not bar British athletes from "honestly answering" questions they are asked during interviews at the Aug. 8-24 games about "politically sensitive issues."
"An athlete who decides to lift up his team shirt to show a 'Free Tibet' one below it, that's very different," Mewson said.
Oh that's right. They can only speak up if they're directly questioned. And I'm sure the press corps in China will be all about irritating their government during the games... riiiight.
Source: The Washington Post
Insurgency Update
The insurgents are now targeting the gas pipelines that fuel what little power generation Iraq still has with car bombs.
Yeah. No electricity, no potable water, no sewage, cholera outbreaks.. the standard of living was probably higher under the Mongols.
Source: Reuters
The Sons of Iraq!
In other insurgency news, we needed a catchier propaganda term for the Sunni militias that we arm now to act as vigilante police (who used to shoot at us, before they remembered how much they hate their Shiite rivals).
They used to be Concerned Local Citizens... now?
They're the Sons of Iraq.
Wow. Does Bush think he's Lawrence of Arabia or something?
Source: Your New Reality
Putin's Russia: Crazier By the Minute
So the Russkies are buzzing Japanese and US military forces in the Pacific with their bombers.
Yeah, they're not getting out of hand AT ALL.A pair of Russian TU-95 Bear bombers overflew a US aircraft carrier in the western Pacific at an altitude of 2,000 feet (660 meters) over the weekend, prompting US fighter jets to scramble, a US defense official said Monday.
Four F-18 fighters jets intercepted the Russian bombers Saturday morning, but not before they had overflown the USS Nimitz, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Japanese F-15 fighters had earlier scrambled to intercept another pair of Bear bombers, and escorted them out of the area, said a US military official who asked not to be identified.
Yeesh.
Source: Raw Story
Spies Like Us
So apparently the US has been aggressively using the Peace Corps and our embassies in South America to undermine any government to the left of Mussolini... and Bolivia is not happy about it.
Sigh. Can we get any more amatuerish, please? Make any more boneheaded foreign policy mistakes?
Source: Firedoglake
Sure We Can!
By, say, starting an arms race in space!China and Russia challenged the United States at a disarmament debate Tuesday by formally presenting a plan to ban weapons in space — a proposal that Washington has called a diplomatic ploy by the two nations to gain a military advantage.
So now the Russkies are saying that they'll develop satellite killers if we don't stop with this posturing nonsense.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the 65-nation Conference on Disarmament that "weapons deployment in space by one state" — a reference to the U.S. — could cause a "new spiral in the arms race both in space and on Earth."
Lavrov's call came with an implied threat, noting that the Soviet Union caught up with the U.S. after World War II by developing its own nuclear weapons.
"Let us not forget that the nuclear arms race was started with a view to preserving a monopoly of this type of weapon," Lavrov said. "But this monopoly was to last only four years."
Greaaaaaaat. It's not like our economy and military heavily rely on satellites or anything.
Oh wait. Crap.
Source: Raw Story
Saturday, February 9, 2008
The Human Condition
In Sickness and In Health
Heath Ledgerdemain
Well, it looks like Heath Ledger died of Teh Stupid.The actor Heath Ledger died from an accidental overdose of six different drugs — painkillers and sedatives — the medical examiner said Wednesday, leading doctors to warn of the dangers of mixing prescription drugs.
That's right, Heath lovers. He was taking six different prescriptions for downers simultaneously.
Then he died. What. A. Shocker.The medical examiner cited oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam and doxylamine as causing the actor's death. There was no mention of alcohol or illegal drugs.
That wasn't all, of course.Ledger, nominated for an Oscar for his role as cowboy Ennis del Mar in "Brokeback Mountain," had returned to New York from London, where he had been making a Terry Gilliam film, days before his death. He told The New York Times in November that his most recent completed roles in the Batman movie "The Dark Knight" and Bob Dylan biopic "I'm Not There" had taken a toll and caused him to lose sleep.
Dude, if you have such a high tolerance to these drugs, or are already on so many, that Ambien has no effect... you are in seriously bad shape.
"Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night," Ledger told the Times. "I couldn't stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going." He said he had taken two Ambien pills, which only gave him an hour of sleep.
Oh well. Rack another one up for the Darwin Awards.
Source: Raw Story
Oh China, Is There Anything You Won't Poison?
The assault on food safety moves to Japan!A deal to combine the frozen food businesses of Japan Tobacco and Nissin Food Products has been done in by tainted dumplings.
Somebody must have seen Count Rudy on tv though, because they've come up with a convenient scapegoat.
Ten people in Japan fell ill after eating the pesticide-laced dumplings, called gyoza, which were imported from China by a unit of Japan Tobacco. Nissin, known as a pioneer of instant noodles, then scrapped the merger, citing “differences on the issue of safety.”A Chinese food safety official said that the dumplings may have been deliberately contaminated by “a small group who do not wish development of Sino-Japanese friendship.” The Japanese health minister has also raised the possibility of intentional dumpling poisoning, and Japanese police are investigating the case on suspicion of attempted murder.
Yes, that's it. It's not that the Chinese food industry has all the safeguards of a Ford Pinto in a demolition derby, or that this Japanese company did business on the cheap, dirty, quick side, and got into trouble; it's TERRORISTS.
DUH DUH DUH.
Source: Reuters
Theocracy Alliance
I always suspected that one day the religious nuts would realize they have a common enemy (me) and band together.The head of the Anglican church said Thursday the adoption of parts of sharia law in Britain looked "unavoidable", calling for "constructive accommodation" over issues like resolving marriage disputes.
I can think of a pretty easy way to avoid it. When religious people tell you that their church should get to run the government, tell them to go fuck themselves. If they insist, make sure to shoot first, Solo-style.
...
Williams went on to say it would be "quite wrong" to sanction a system which gave people no right of appeal.
"But there are ways of looking at marital disputes, for example, which provide an alternative to the divorce courts as we understand them."
He added: "It seems unavoidable and, as a matter of fact, certain conditions of sharia are already recognised in our society".
Easy-peasy.
Source: Raw Story
Hey Constitution! DART IN YOUR NECK
Sealab reference. Suffice it to say, Mukasey has turned out to be the complete scumbag you would expect of a Bush appointee and Giuliani acquaintance.Attorney General Michael Mukasey is back on the Hill today, testifying to the House Judiciary Committee. Paul Kiel is covering it at TPMmuckraker.
So, we won't get any investigation of illegal wiretaps, illegal torture, etc, from the JUSTICE DEPARTMENT.
So far, he's dropped two big bombshells. DOJ will not be investigating:
(1) whether the waterboarding, now admitted to by the White House, was a crime; or
(2) whether the Administration's warrantless wiretapping was illegal.
His rationale? Both programs had been signed off on in advance as legal by the Justice Department.
Meanwhile they block all civil suits by saying it's a State Secret. So you have no recourse to the law anymore, as Floyd would say.
Not really that big a surprise, as I said. But it still hurts to swallow it down officially.
Source: Talking Points Memo
Sickness
So the Bushies are looking to spindle the Family and Medical Leave Act for their corporate masters.
Amongst other delightful provisions being proposed:
--You have to schedule your medical problems in advance, unless they're 'emergencies'. No points for guessing who gets to define an emergency.
--Your employer can discriminate against you for taking the guaranteed sick time, denying you bonuses and what not.
Ahh, America. Don't get sick. Ever.
Source: Raw Story
