http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/08/31/BU226337.DTL&type=printable


Good thing we have FBI and Gates on case
Alan T. Saracevic
Sunday, August 31, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/info/copyright/
http://www.sfgate.com/feedback/

http://webmail.aol.com/msgview.adp?folder=SU5CT1g=&uid=7452394

The FBI arrested an 18-year-old in Minnesota this week for being a "key
player" in the Blaster worm fiasco, which infected more than 500,000
computers this month.

How can the FBI stand there with a straight face and pat itself on the
back for busting this loser? In reality, agents caught an extremely
uninspired script-kid wannabe who allegedly copied and renamed the
original Blaster code. And they did it by acting on a tip that turned
the youngster over like a pancake. And it took 'em 10 days to do that!

As U.S. Attorney John McKay, who is taking credit for this sleuthing
coup, put it: "I find it difficult sometimes to click the on button."

Best part is they put this 6-foot-4-inch, 320-pound fellow under home
detention. From what I can tell, doesn't sound like young Jeffrey Lee
Parson got out much in the first place.

$ $ $

Oh, wait. Even better than that was the actual complaint filed
electronically by federal prosecutors Friday. It wasn't very legible,
because the super cybersleuths who chased down this menace to society
had scanned the legal document sideways. The PDF files that folks were
trying to read on this matter showed only half of each page, laid out
vertically across the horizontal format.

Now, if these geniuses can't scan a document right, how did they ever
corner a mastermind like Parson? They had help from Bill Gates. That's how.

$ $ $

Indeed, the real heroes here were the vigilant engineers at Microsoft
Corp.,

who worked hand-in-hand with the FBI to bring this elusive hacker to
justice.

Once again, I find myself grasping for answers. How, oh how, can
Microsoft stand right next to the FBI and pat itself on the back for
working with law enforcement to bust this poor patsy? Har.

It's been a year and a half since Bill Gates promised he would commit
his entire company to security issues. In that time, my blue screens of
death have been outnumbered only by penis enlargement e-mails and worm
viruses.

Get it together, Bill. Your Windows are holier than the Dalai Lama.
Speaking of which . . .

$ $ $

Goodbye Dalai. Hello snark.

S.F. dot-com Salesforce.com was busy wiping a four-egg omelet off its
face this week for mistakenly using an image of the Dalai Lama to
promote its suite of office software applications. When the Dalai's
people balked, CEO Marc Benioff had to cancel invites to 500 people he'd
asked to come see the Tibetan holy man speak.

It should be noted that our pumped-up candidate for governor, Arnold
Schwarzenegger, had no qualms shilling Salesforce.com products a month
earlier at a "Terminator 3" party sponsored by the dot-com. But anyway,
this is about the Dalai Lama, so lemme say this.

Benioff is normally a genius of self-promotion. Doesn't he know that
Steve Jobs already cornered the market on using the good Dalai to pimp
technology? Think different, dude.

Adding insult to injury, the shame wasn't cold before Salesforce.com's
chief competitor was making digs. NetLedger, an Oracle partner that
competes with Benioff for small-business customers, immediately sent out
the following invite for a product launch:

"Although the Dalai Lama, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Moses are unable to
attend, you will hear from the leading visionaries and companies that
are delivering on the promise of an intelligent, complete, simple and
integrated application for mid-sized businesses."

Love it.

$ $ $

And I love beer. But we've gone over that ground before. I'd like to
take some time out on this Labor Day weekend to pay respects to the beer
industry, which not only provides us with beer but also does more for
the economy than Arnold Schwarzenegger did for Speedos.

The National Beer Wholesalers Association, representing more than 2,200
beer distributors nationwide, and the Beer Institute, representing
America's brewers, recently released its 2003 Beer Industry Economic
Impact study.

According to the study's findings, the beer industry provides 182,860
jobs for California residents and generates more than $6 billion in
annual wages.

Now I know why we call it the Golden State.

Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium

Killer Trees. After opining in August 1980 that "trees cause more pollution than automobiles do," Reagan arrived at a campaign rally to find a tree decorated with this sign: "Chop me down before I kill again."

California is the world's 5th largest economy, outranking the country of France.

Wal-Mart is the 19th largest economy in the world ranking between the countries of Belgium and Sweden. Yet Wal-Mart only pays its workers an average of $7.50 an hour. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50881-2003Aug26.html

From Claudia:

Darwin Awards 2003

Darwin Awards 2003...They are finally out again. You all know about the
Darwin Awards - it's an annual honor given to the persons who did the gene
pool the biggest service by killing themselves in the most extraordinarily
stupid way.

Last year's winner was the fellow who was killed by a Coke machine which
toppled over on top of him as he was attempting to tip a free soda out of
it.

And the nominees for 2003 are:

9.. A young Canadian man, searching for a way of getting drunk cheaply
because he had no money with which to buy alcohol, mixed gasoline with milk.
Not surprisingly, this concoction made him ill, and he vomited into the
fireplace in his house. This resulting explosion and fire burned his house
down, killing both him and his sister.

8. A 34-year-old white male found dead in the basement of his home died of
suffocation, according to police. He! was approximately 6' 2" tall and
weighed 225 pounds. He was wearing a pleated skirt, white bra, black and
white saddle shoes, and a woman's wig. It appeared that he was trying to
create a schoolgirl's uniform look. He was also wearing a military gas mask
that had the filter canister removed and a rubber hose attached in its
place. The other end of the hose was connected to one end of a hollow wooden
tube approx. 12" long and 3" in diameter. The tube's other end was inserted
into his rectum for reasons unknown, and was the cause of his suffocation.
Police found the task of explaining the circumstances of his death to his
family very awkward.

7. Three Brazilian men were flying in a light aircraft at low altitude when
another plane approached. It appears that they decided to moon the occupants
of the other plane, but lost control of their own aircraft and crashed. They
were all found dead in the wreckage with their pants around their ! ankles..

6. A police officer in Ohio responded to a 911 call. She had no details
before arriving, except that someone had reported that his father was not
breathing. Upon arrival, the officer found the man face down on the couch
naked. When she rolled him over to check for a pulse and to start CPR, she
noticed burn marks around his genitals. After the ambulance arrived and
removed the man - who was declared dead on arrival at the hospital - the
police made a closer inspection of the couch, and noticed that the man had
made a hole between the cushions. Upon flipping the couch over, they
discovered what had caused his death.
Apparently, the man had a habit of putting his penis between the cushions,
down into the hole and between two electrical sanders (with the sandpaper
removed, for obvious reasons). According to the story, after his orgasm the
discharge shorted out one of the sanders, electrocuting him.

5. A 27-year-old French woman lost control of her car on a highway near
Marseilles and crashed into a tree, seriously injuring her passenger and
killing herself. As a commonplace road accident, this would not have
qualified for a Darwin nomination, were it not for the fact that the
driver's attention had been distracted by her Tamagotchi key ring, which had
started urgently beeping for food as she drove along.. In an attempt to press
the correct buttons to save the Tamagotchi's life, the woman lost her own.

4. A 22-year-old, Glade Drive, Reston, VA, man was found dead after he tried
to use octopus straps to bungee jump off a 70-foot railroad trestle. Fairfax
County police said Eric Barcia, a fast-food worker, taped a bunch of these
straps together, wrapped one end around one foot,
anchored the other end to the trestle at Lake Accotink Park, jumped and hit
the pavement. Warren Carmichael, a police spokesman, said investigators
think Barcia was alone because his car was found nearby. The length of the
cord that he had assembled was greater than the distance between the trestle
and the ground" Carmichael said. Police say the apparent cause of death was
"Major trauma."

3. A man in Alabama died from rattlesnake bites. It seems that he and a
friend were playing a game of catch, using the rattlesnake as a ball. The
friend, no doubt a future Darwin Awards candidate, was hospitalized.

2. Employees in a medium-sized warehouse in west Texas noticed the smell of
a gas leak. Sensibly, management evacuated the building extinguishing all
potential sources of ignition; lights, power, etc...
After the building had been evacuated, two technicians from the gas company
were dispatched. Upon entering the building, they found they had difficulty
navigating in the dark. To their frustration, none of the lights worked.
Witnesses later described the sight of one of the technicians reaching into
his ! pocket and retrieving an object that resembled a cigarette lighter. Upon
operation of the lighter like object, the gas in the warehouse exploded,
sending pieces of it up to three miles away. Nothing was found of the
technicians, but the lighter was virtually untouched by the explosion. The
technician suspected of causing the blast had never been thought of as
'bright' by his peers.

And.....the #1 Nominee

1. Based on a bet by the other members of his threesome, Everitt Sanchez
tried to wash his own "balls" in a ball washer at the local golf course.
Proving once again that beer and testosterone are a bad mix, Sanchez managed
to straddle the ball washer and dangle his scrotum in the machine.. Much to
his dismay, one of his buddies upped the ante by spinning the crank on the
machine with Sanchez's scrotum in place, thus wedging them solidly in the
mechanism. Sanchez, who immediately passed his thr! eshold of pain, collapsed
and tumbled from his perch. Unfortunately for Sanchez, the height of the
ball washer was more than a foot higher off the ground than his testicles
are in a normal stance, and the scrotum was the weakest link. Sanchez's
scrotum was ripped open during the fall, and one testicle was plucked from
him forever and remained in the ball washer, while the other testicle was
compressed and flattened as it was pulled between the housing of the washer,
and the rotating machinery inside. To add insult to injury, Sanchez broke a
new $300..00 driver that he had just purchased from the pro shop, and was
using to balance himself. Sanchez was rushed to the hospital for surgery,
and the remaining threesome were asked to leave the course.

NB: This last one wouldn't normally count, because the idiot didn't die. But
because he cannot reproduce as a result of his qualifying act of stupidity,
we have allowed his entry!

From Claudia: Oh, sure, no global warming at all says Bush....um hum....

Glacial Retreat
Scientists Say Glaciers Are Melting at Alarming Rate
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/US/glaciernatlpark_030901.html#

By Bill Redeker


G L A C I E R N A T I O N A L P A R K, Mont., Sept. 1 —

On the fabled Going-to-the-Sun Road, which clings to the mountainside here and provides breathtaking views of the Continental Divide, Glacier National Park looks as healthy as ever.

Snow and glaciers can be viewed as far as the eye can see. But for scientists who study glaciers, all they see are remnants of glaciers, which are melting and shrinking at an alarming rate.

"Predictions are that within 30 years, almost all the glaciers will be gone from Glacier," said Blase Reardon, a biological sciences technician with the U.S. Geological Survey.

"One of the problems of the last 10 years is that the glaciers have been fragmenting into smaller pieces," he added.

Now there's proof of just how fast the massive blocks of moving ice are retreating. For the first time in 35 years, the USGS has conducted an exhaustive photographic evaluation of the million-acre park. By comparing historic photos taken around the turn of the 20th century, scientists can point to a rapidly diminishing number of glaciers.

Park records reveal there were about 150 glaciers 100 years ago.

"We estimate there's about 26 ice bodies that still qualify as glaciers," said Dan Fagre, who headed the project for the USGS. "Since there were about 37 named glaciers in 1968, we've lost 11 glaciers."

Scientists agree that global warming and a reduction in precipitation are to blame. But they disagree whether man is the source.

Steve Thompson, glacier program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, says all the data he's reviewed points to carbon dioxide from factories and automobiles.

"The cause seems to be very clear," he said. "It is the burning of fossil fuels. We've dramatically increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and that's not happening here in Montana per se. It happens globally and it affects our national park right here."

Fagre disagrees.

"What you cannot do is make a direct link between the cause of the current warming we are experiencing and the retreat of the glaciers," he said. "The glaciers don't respond to CO2 [carbon dioxide] directly; they only respond to the temperatures."

Warming Has Long-Term Effects

The impact of warming on Glacier National Park is both profound and long-lasting. The tree line is moving up the mountains, adding fuel for future fires.The stream flows will eventually become a trickle and food sources for trout and grizzly bears will eventually be eliminated.

"Unless we get some significant changes in our current rates of warming," said Fagre, "the glaciers of this park are pretty much doomed."

There is one other, more subjective impact: the loss of beauty.

As Renold and Marjorie Masters from Wenatchee, Wash., toured Lake McDonald, they could not help but notice the changes since they last visited in 1953.

"I stood right here at Lake McDonald and took the same picture 50 years ago," said Renold.

And today? "The glaciers are gone!" he marveled.

Some 7,000 years after glaciers scoured the mountains and sculpted the landscape here, they have all but disappeared. And it is happening in our lifetime.


Copyright © 2002 ABC News Internet Ventures.


Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium

Killer Trees. After opining in August 1980 that "trees cause more pollution than automobiles do," Reagan arrived at a campaign rally to find a tree decorated with this sign: "Chop me down before I kill again."

California is the world's 5th largest economy, outranking the country of France.

Wal-Mart is the 19th largest economy in the world ranking between the countries of Belgium and Sweden. Yet Wal-Mart only pays its workers an average of $7.50 an hour. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50881-2003Aug26.html

Dust and Deception
By PAUL KRUGMAN


Last week a quietly scathing report by the inspector general of the Environmental Protection Agency confirmed what some have long suspected: in the aftermath of the World Trade Center's collapse, the agency systematically misled New Yorkers about the risks the resulting air pollution posed to their health. And it did so under pressure from the White House.

The Bush administration has misled the public on many issues, from the budget outlook to the Iraqi threat. But this particular deception seems, at first sight, not just callous but gratuitous. It's only when you look back at budget politics in 2001 that you see the method in the administration's mendacity.

A draft E.P.A. report released last December conceded that 9/11 had led to huge emissions of pollutants. In particular, releases of dioxins — which are carcinogens and can also damage the nervous system and cause birth defects — created "likely the highest ambient concentrations that have ever been reported," up to 1,500 times normal levels. But the report concluded that because the outdoor air cleared after a couple of months, little harm had been done.

In fact, the main danger comes from toxic dust that seeped into buildings and remains in carpets, furniture and air ducts. According to a recent report in Salon, businesses that did environmental assessments of their own premises found alarming levels not just of dioxins but also of asbestos and other dangerous pollutants. So the most shocking revelation from the new report is that under White House direction, the E.P.A. suppressed warnings about indoor pollution. Scattered evidence suggests that as a result, hundreds of cleaning workers and thousands of residents may be suffering chronic health problems.

Why was crucial information withheld from the public? The report mentions "the desire to reopen Wall Street and national security concerns." Maybe — though the national security benefits of failing to remove toxic dust escape me. I suspect that there was another reason: budget politics.

Immediately after 9/11 there was a great national outpouring of sympathy for New York, and a natural inclination to provide generous help. President Bush quickly promised $20 billion, and everyone expected the federal government to assume the burden of additional security. Yet hard-line Republicans never wanted to help the stricken city. Indeed, according to an article by Michael Tomasky in New York magazine, Senators Phil Gramm and Don Nickles attempted to slash aid to New York within hours of Mr. Bush's promise.

Matters were patched up sufficiently so Mr. Bush could make his triumphant appearance at ground zero the next day. But then the backtracking began. By February 2002, only a fraction of the promised funds had been allocated — and Mitch Daniels, the White House budget director, accused New York's lawmakers of playing "money-grubbing games."

Why this stinginess? A source told Mr. Tomasky that "Gramm just doesn't like spending money. And Nickles . . . he's just anti-New York." That sums it up: even after 9/11, hard-line conservatives opposed any spending, no matter how justified, that wasn't on weapons or farm subsidies, while some people from America's "red states" just hate big-city folk.

What does all this have to do with toxic dust? Think how much harder it would have been to stiff New York if the public had understood the extent to which Lower Manhattan had become a hazardous waste site. I can't prove that was what administration officials were thinking, but otherwise their efforts to play down the risks seem incomprehensible.

In the end, New York seems to have gotten its $20 billion — barely. As for the additional help everyone expected: don't get me started. There wasn't a penny of federal aid for "first responders" — like those firefighters and police officers who cheered Mr. Bush at ground zero — until a few months ago, and much of it went to sparsely populated states. The federal government spends much more protecting the average resident of Wyoming from terrorists than it spends protecting the average resident of New York City.

All in all, the people running Washington, while eager to invoke 9/11 on behalf of whatever they feel like doing, have treated the city that bore the brunt of the actual attack very shabbily. In September 2004 the Republicans will hold their nominating convention in New York. Will New Yorkers take the occasion to remind them about how the city was lied to and shortchanged?

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/26/opinion/26KRUG.html

I thought the East Coast blackout was symptomatic of a "blackout in consciousness." A mass denial of what's really happening in this country. Electricity? Well, electro-chemical impulses fire brain synapses. That's another kind of "grid", isn't it? Something is seriously wrong with a body politic that unconsciously colluded to allow someone like George Bush to get into the White House. He stands for everything the American people profess as being opposite their core "values." If that's really the case, how is it that he was allowed to became president? -- Claudia D. Dikinis, August 19, 2003


Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium

SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS FOR CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR!

I thought the East Coast blackout was symptomatic of a "blackout in consciousness." A mass denial of what's really happening in this country. Electricity? Well, electro-chemical impulses fire brain synapses. That's another kind of "grid", isn't it? Something is seriously wrong with a body politic that unconsciously colluded to allow someone like George Bush to get into the White House. He stands for everything the American people profess as being opposite their core "values." If that's really the case, how is it that he was allowed to became president? -- Claudia D. Dikinis, August 19, 2003

Sad . . . .

U.S. Troops Shoot Dead Reuters Cameraman in Iraq
Sun August 17, 2003 07:08 PM ET
By Andrew Marshall

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. troops shot dead an award-winning Reuters cameraman while he was filming on Sunday near a U.S.-run prison on the outskirts of Baghdad.

Eyewitnesses said soldiers on an American tank shot at Mazen Dana, 43, as he filmed outside Abu Ghraib prison in western Baghdad which had earlier come under a mortar attack.

Dana's last pictures show a U.S. tank driving toward him outside the prison walls. Several shots ring out from the tank, and Dana's camera falls to the ground.

The U.S. military acknowledged on Sunday that its troops had "engaged" a Reuters cameraman, saying they had thought his camera was a rocket propelled grenade launcher.

"Army soldiers engaged an individual they thought was aiming an RPG at them. It turned out to be a Reuters cameraman," Navy Captain Frank Thorp, a spokesman for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Reuters in Washington.

Journalists had gone to the prison after the U.S. military said a mortar bomb attack there a day before had killed six Iraqis and wounded 59 others.

Recounting the moments before the shooting, Reuters soundman Nael al-Shyoukhi, who was working with Dana, said he had asked a U.S. soldier near the prison if they could speak to an officer and was told they could not.

"They saw us and they knew about our identities and our mission," Shyoukhi said. The incident happened in the afternoon in daylight.

The soldier agreed to their request to film an overview of the prison from a bridge nearby.

"After we filmed we went into the car and prepared to go when a convoy led by a tank arrived and Mazen stepped out of the car to film. I followed him and Mazen walked three to four meters (yards). We were noted and seen clearly," Shyoukhi said.

"A soldier on the tank shot at us. I lay on the ground. I heard Mazen and I saw him scream and touching his chest.

"I cried at the soldier, telling him you killed a journalist. They shouted at me and asked me to step back and I said 'I will step back, but please help, please help and stop the bleed'.

"They tried to help him but Mazen bled heavily. Mazen took a last breath and died before my eyes."

AWARD-WINNING JOURNALIST

Dana's death brings to 17 the number of journalists or their assistants who have died in Iraq since war began on March 20. Two others have been missing since the first days of the war.

Dana is the second Reuters cameraman to be killed since the U.S.-led force invaded Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein.

On April 8, Taras Protsyuk, a Ukrainian based in Warsaw, died when a U.S. tank fired a shell at the 15th floor of the Palestine Hotel, the base for many foreign media in Baghdad.

"Mazen was one of Reuters finest cameramen and we are devastated by his loss," said Stephen Jukes, Reuters global head of news.

"He was a brave and award-winning journalist who had worked in many of the world's hot spots," Jukes said.

"He was committed to covering the story wherever it was and was an inspiration to friends and colleagues at Reuters and throughout the industry. Our thoughts and deepest sympathies are with his family."

Dana, a Palestinian, had worked for Reuters mostly in the West Bank city of Hebron.

Paul Holmes, former Reuters bureau chief in Jerusalem, recalled a towering, chain-smoking bear of a man with a ruddy complexion and expansive heart.

"The amazing thing about him was he was like the king of Hebron. Every journalist in the city looked up to him and any journalist who covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will know and love Mazen," he said.

Reuters Chief Executive Tom Glocer said he hoped there would be "the fullest and most comprehensive investigation into this terrible tragedy."

Married with four young children, Dana was one of the company's most experienced conflict journalists and had worked in Baghdad before, shortly after U.S. troops entered the city.

He was awarded an International Press Freedom Award in 2001 by the Committee to Protect Journalists for his work in Hebron where he was wounded and beaten many times. (additional reporting by Charles Aldinger in Washington)

http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=3291033

:: how jedi are you? ::

Claudia sent me this link in an email earlier:


Read the top story re Jack van Impe and Bush.

This is why we need to invoke the 25th Amendment.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/943879.asp?0si=-#BODY


Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium

SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS FOR CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR!

"Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on 'I am not too sure.' " -- H.L Menken



I say:

BULLSHIT! (to Van Impe that is, lol)

“I believe he is a wonderful man,” Van Impe responded, and goes on to say, “I was contacted a few weeks ago by the Office of Public Liaison for the White House and by the National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to make an outline. And I’ve spent hours preparing it. I will release this information to the public in September, but it’s in his hands. He will know exactly what is going to happen in the Middle East and what part he will have under the leading of the Holy Spirit of God. So, it’s a tremendous time to be alive.”

heh . . .sorry guys . . .I almost lost this whole blog! I changed my username and my backup files only went up to mid-May. Thanks to the people here at Blogger, I found that they had all of my files too!

Thanks Blogger!

Here is a good one that Clauida just sent in:

EXTRA EXTRA!


http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/06/266752.shtml

A DOD whistleblower detail an attempt by a covert U.S. team to plant weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The team was later killed by friendly fire due to CIA incompetence.
Pentagon Whistleblower Reveals CIA/ DoD Fiascos
20.06.2003 [08:07]

In a world exclusive, Al Martin Raw.com has published a news story about a Department of Defense whistleblower who has revealed that a US covert operations team had planted “Weapons of Mass Destruction” (WMDs) in Iraq – then “lost” them when the team was killed by so-called “friendly fire.”

Claudia has some ancient wisdom for us all:

Indian wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead
horse, the best strategy is to dismount. However, in this ever
competitive world, companies we often try other strategies with
dead horses, including the following:

1. Buying a bigger whip.

2. Changing riders.

3. Saying things like "This is the way we always have ridden this
horse."

4. Appointing a committee to study the horse.

5. Hire a consultant to study the horse.

6. Arranging to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses.

7. Increasing the standards to ride dead horses.

8. Appointing a tiger team to revive the dead horse.

9. Creating a training session to increase our riding ability.

10. Comparing the state of dead horses in today's environment.

11. Change the requirements declaring that "This horse is not dead."

12. Hire contractors to ride the dead horse.

13. Harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed.

14. Declaring that "No horse is too dead to beat."

15. Providing additional funding to increase the horse's performance.

16. Do a CA Study to see if contractors can ride it cheaper.

17. Purchase a product to make dead horses run faster.

18. Declare the horse is "better, faster and cheaper" dead.

19. Form a quality circle to find uses for dead horses.

20. Revisit the performance requirements for horses.

21. Say this horse was procured with cost as an independent variable.

22. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.

23. Claim that "The other guys' horse is deader than ours."

24. Outsource the dead horse riding to India.

Clauida sent this one in!

Arnold's Nazi Problem
Why won't he repudiate Kurt Waldheim?
By Timothy Noah
Posted Thursday, August 7, 2003, at 3:46 PM PT



A slight Waldheim problem

Here's a question Jay Leno forgot to ask Arnold Schwarzenegger when he
announced his candidacy for governor of California on last night's Tonight
Show: "Will you renounce your support for Kurt Waldheim?"

A little refresher course may be in order. Kurt Waldheim, a widely esteemed
former secretary general of the United Nations, was running for president of
Austria in March 1986 when it came to light that he had participated in Nazi
atrocities during World War II. Waldheim had always maintained that he had
served in the Wehrmacht only briefly and that after being wounded early in
the war, he had returned to Vienna to attend law school. In fact, Waldheim
had resumed military service after recuperating from his injury and had been
an intelligence officer in Germany's Army Group E when it committed mass
murder in the Kozara region of western Bosnia. (Waldheim's name appears on
the Wehrmacht's "honor list" of those responsible for the atrocity.) In
1944, Waldheim had reviewed and approved a packet of anti-Semitic propaganda
leaflets to be dropped behind Russian lines, one of which ended, "enough of
the Jewish war, kill the Jews, come over." After the war, Waldheim was
wanted for war crimes by the War Crimes Commission of the United Nations,
the very organization he would later head. None of these revelations
prevented Waldheim from winning the Austrian election, but after he became
president, the U.S. Justice Department put Waldheim on its watch list
denying entry to "any foreign national who assisted or otherwise
participated in activities amounting to persecution during World War II."
The international community largely shunned Waldheim, and he didn't run for
re-election. (This information comes from the1992 book Betrayal: The Untold
Story of the Kurt Waldheim Investigation and Cover-Up, by Eli M. Rosenbaum
and William Hoffer.)


One month after these revelations began to splash across the front pages of
newspapers worldwide, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver exchanged
wedding vows at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport, Mass. Schwarzenegger, a
native of Austria, had invited Waldheim to the wedding, which of course
can't be held against him because the invitations surely went out well
before the war crimes story broke. (Schwarzenegger, who held dual
citizenship in Austria and the United States, had also endorsed Waldheim.)
Waldheim didn't attend, but he sent a gift-a statue of Arnold, in
lederhosen, bearing off Maria, who wore a dirndl. Admiring it,
Schwarzenegger offered a tribute that stunned the assemblage into shocked
silence (this is reported in Arnold: An Unauthorized Biography, by Wendy
Leigh):

My friends don't want me to mention Kurt's name, because of all the recent
Nazi stuff and the U.N. controversy, but I love him and Maria does too, and
so thank you, Kurt.

Schwarzenegger's name remained on Waldheim's campaign posters. After
Waldheim was elected, Schwarzenegger paid him a visit and was photographed
with him. According to the New York Post's "Page Six" gossip column,
Schwarzenegger was seen sitting beside Waldheim as recently as 1998, when
the two attended the second inauguration of Waldheim's successor as
president, Thomas Klestil.

In 1988, Schwarzenegger was asked in a Playboy interview what he thought of
Waldheim. He replied:

I hate to talk about it, because it's a no-win situation. Without going
into details, I can say that being half-Austrian and half-American, I don't
like the idea that these two countries that mean so much to me are in such a
disagreement. Austria is a very important place for Americans, because it is
a neutral country. With a little bit of good will, the problem will be
straightened out. I think it's well on the way.

Why on Earth didn't Schwarzenegger take this opportunity to speak out
against Waldheim? It surely isn't because Schwarzenegger himself had any
Nazi sympathies (though during the filming of the documentary Pumping Iron,
he reportedly once made a foolish comment praising Hitler). Rather,
Schwarzenegger was likely playing politics-to be more specific, Austrian
politics and family politics. For years it was rumored that if
Schwarzenegger didn't run for governor of California, he would run for
president of Austria. Because Austrians have long resented what they see as
Waldheim's pointless scapegoating, any firm denunciation would have ruled
the latter possibility out. In addition, Schwarzenegger's mother had for
many years lived with Alfred Gerstl, a prominent Austrian politician who
rose to the top post in the upper house of Austria's parliament.
Schwarzenegger reportedly addressed him as "Uncle." (Schwarzenegger's
father, who died three decades ago, was a police official who had belonged
to the Nazi party.)

Rather than confront his Waldheim problem head-on, Schwarzenegger has
proclaimed his disgust for Nazism, raised money for education about the
Holocaust, traveled to Israel (where he met with then-Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin), and given generously to the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles,
which in 1997 bestowed on him its National Leadership Award. "He wants no
truck with . Waldheim," the Wiesenthal Center's Rabbi Marvin Hier told the
Jerusalem Post. "He probably did not have any clue as to the seriousness of
the allegations against Waldheim at that time [i.e., 1986]. To suggest that
Arnold's an anti-Semite is preposterous. He's done more to further the cause
of Holocaust awareness than almost any other Hollywood star."

Clearly, though, that won't be enough. If Schwarzenegger doesn't renounce
Waldheim in a highly public way, he can forget about ever becoming governor
of California.

And on another channel:



That's All Folks!

Some "Out of The Word" Stuff"

Perseid Meteor Shower Begins Slow Crawl to Aug. 12 Peak
By Joe Rao
Special to SPACE.com
And Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 07:00 am ET
25 July 2002



The annual Perseid meteor shower has begun in modest fashion and will soon start building toward a peak Aug. 12, when as many as 60 or more shooting stars could be visible each hour from the Northern Hemisphere.

The Perseids are not as spectacular as the November Leonids, but they are dependable. Nearly every year they generate a shooting star per minute at their peak.

Weather permitting, this will be a good year to look for the Perseids, because the Moon will be near its new phase, leaving the skies at their darkest. The best viewing times run from Aug. 11 through Aug. 13.

For city dwellers whose view is hampered by bright lights, only the brightest meteors can be seen, so a trip to the country is the only way to get the full effect of the Perseids


Perseids are tiny things, ranging in size from sand grains to peas. The material was shed long ago by a comet named Swift-Tuttle. This comet, like all others that pass through the inner solar system on their orbits around the Sun, is slowly disintegrating. Over the centuries, the comet’s crumbly remains have spread all along its orbit to form a moving river of rubble millions of miles wide and hundreds of millions of miles long.

Earth’s orbit carries it through this stream every August. When a particle strikes the planet’s upper atmosphere, air friction vaporizes it in a quick, white-hot streak.

Technically, the peak occurs in the afternoon of Aug. 12 in North America. Meteors can only be seen at night, however. The best views will come late Sunday, Aug. 11 into the early hours of Monday. The shower should remain strong Monday night and into dawn on Tuesday, Aug. 13.

"Rates from rural observing sites should approach and perhaps even surpass 60 Perseids per hour during the last few hours before dawn on Aug. 12," said Robert Lunsford of the American Meteor Society.

For Europe, the peak comes near or soon after midnight on Aug. 13. Few Perseids are ever visible from the Southern Hemisphere.

The Perseids are considered active from about July 25 through Aug. 18, though hourly rates usually do not rise above 10 until about Aug. 8. Rates fall off much more rapidly after the peak, dropping again to below 10 per hour after about Aug. 14.

Early morning hours are best, astronomers say, because the part of Earth on which you stand is then facing the oncoming debris as the planet plunges through space on its orbit around the Sun. Experts suggest going out around 2 a.m. and staying until dawn breaks. Allow at least 15 minutes for your eyes to adjust to the darkness. Then face northeast, because Perseids radiate from a point in the constellation Perseus, which is high in the northeast during pre-dawn hours.

Since this year's best viewing is on a Monday morning, Lunsford offers strategies for working people.

"I would suggest watching during the last hour or two before dawn," Lunsford advises. "This will allow you to see the most Perseid activity from your particular location."

He also recommends doing some practice observing beginning around Aug. 8. By then, the Moon is gone from the morning skies, leaving dark conditions.

Finally, Lunsford has advice for the worst-case scenario -- a cloudy Aug. 12: "If anyone is clouded out Monday morning," he says, "rates on Tuesday will also be impressive, much better than those seen the day before maximum."

Perseid meteors are typically white or yellowish with some glowing trains and an occasional very bright meteor called a fireball. Up to 10 shooting stars per hour not associated with the Perseids grace the sky this time of year. These other meteors can approach from any direction in the sky.

Joe Rao is SPACE.com's backyard astronomy columnist. Robert Roy Britt is SPACE.com's senior science writer.

Top Ten Arnold Schwarzenegger Campaign Slogans

10. "Monosyllabic Answers To Questions Will Help Speed Up Press Conferences"
9. "Governor Schwarzenegger or 'Kindergarten Cop 2.' You Choose."
8. "Just Close Your Eyes And You'll Swear I'm Henry Kissinger"
7. "Vote For Me And One Day I Might Be Able To Fight Off Robots That Are Trying To Wipe Out Human Race!"
6. "My Role As The 'Terminator' Has Prepared Me For A Career As A Soul-Less, Unfeeling Politician"
5. "Say Hello To Attorney General Lou Ferrigno"
4. "I'm Practically A Kennedy!"
3. "Ask Yourself: Are You Better Off Now, Than You Were Four Terminators Ago?"
2. "Vote For Me, If You Want To Live"
1. "You Thought Bush Mispronounced Words..."


Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium

Dick Rosengarten, editor and publisher of California Political Week, told CNN Wednesday that the California race was drawing so many people, it was in danger of becoming a farce.
"You know what they say about politics," Rosengarten said. "It's show business for ugly people."

Where's the tacos?



Actor Calls for Overhaul of State Economic Engine
By CHARLIE LeDUFF


NORWALK, Calif., Aug 7 — Arnold Schwarzenegger took the second step in his fledgling campaign for governor this afternoon, stopping to pick up his application papers.

It was a scene similar to a Hollywood premiere, with Mr. Schwarzenegger signing T-shirts and photo albums for shrieking fans. Some said they were voters, some said they were not, others said they just wanted their car tax cut.

In a short news conference on the steps of the Los Angeles County Registrar building, Mr. Schwarzenegger, the hulking 56-year-old movie star, was skimpy on details about how he would conduct his two-month campaign or how he might conduct business in California should he unseat Gov. Gray Davis.

"I have a very, very good agenda," Mr. Schwarzenegger promised. "We have to overhaul our economic engine in California. We have to bring back businesses to California and to make sure that everyone in California has a great job, a fantastic job."

He said he would reveal a comprehensive plan in the next few weeks to balance the budget, cure an ailing educational system and encourage business back into the state while protecting the environment. He also said that as governor he would not negotiate with the special interests or special-interest politicians he said infested the state capital.

Asked about his lack of credentials or political experience, Mr. Schwarzenegger said there were more important things than qualifications.

"The most important thing when you run a state is leadership," he said. "Governor Davis has said his is experience you can't buy. Well, look what it's gotten us."

"In everything I ever did, I showed great leadership," he added and then launched into what is shaping up to be his stump speech, about a penniless farm boy from Austria who went to America and became the highest-paid entertainer in the world.

"The rags-to-riches story plays well in a state with so many immigrants," said a top Californian Republican strategist. "But at some point he has to make the transition. In a few weeks people will start to get sick of the bikini-wax jokes and the general circuslike atmosphere. He'll have to become a politician."

Mr. Schwarzenegger made his announcement Wednesday evening on the "Tonight" show. It was part high drama, part "Simpsons," with him reciting his famous movie lines, like "I'll be back" and saying the hardest decision he faced before this was the time he got a bikini wax.

His surprising plunge into political life propelled him into this morning's headlines, but the metamorphosis is not yet complete. Mr. Schwarzenegger's first one-on-one interview was not with a member of the political press corps, but with Pat O'Brien, host of "Access Hollywood."

Mr. Schwarzenegger could become a caricature of himself if he falls back on this strategy, some political veterans believe.

"The media, the scrutiny, it's going to be a new world for him," said Sheri Annis, who advised Mr. Schwarzenegger last fall when he was the sponsor of Proposition 49, a successful ballot initiative for after-school programs.

"He's extraordinarily smart, and extremely savvy, but he has to be careful," Ms. Annis said in an interview before Mr. Schwarzenegger entered the race. "When the press looks at an actor in Hollywood who doesn't do Shakespeare, they don't think there is a lot upstairs. So if he's protected too much from the political media, he'll have trouble."

Mr. Schwarzenegger's handlers said today that his first business was completing the paperwork, and second was touring the morning talk shows. Then he would begin to make himself available for substantive questions, they said. He plans to barnstorm the state. "The public will not be disappointed," said Sean Walsh, a spokesman for Mr. Schwarzenegger. "The public will see a lot of Arnold in the coming weeks."

Not only will his inexperience be an issue, but unflattering accusations are sure to surface, like the tabloid accounts of groping and boorish behavior on movie sets that surfaced when Mr. Schwarzenegger considered a run for governor two years ago. He said after his television announcement last night that he was expecting as much.

"I know they're going to throw everything at me and say I have no experience, that I'm a womanizer, that I'm a terrible guy," he said. "All these things are going to come my way. But this is why you have a great team together, a great staff. You fight these things off."

Mr. Schwarzenegger is not a student of the bond market, but he does have a correspondence degree in business from the University of Wisconsin. He won the Mr. Olympia bodybuilding title six years in a row beginning in 1970. He was the national fitness guru for the first President Bush and has devoted his life to promoting education and nonviolence among children. He has committed more than 500 on-screen murders, according to a Web site that tracks such things.

The election will be 59 days from Saturday. The filing deadline and the shortened format should help Mr. Schwarzenegger, said Karal Ann Marling, professor of pop culture and the University of Minnesota.

"If I was running his campaign, I'd have him say nothing," Ms. Marling said. "A 60-day election is a popularity contest. And in today's society, Arnold is the winner."

he he

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/08/national/08ARNO.html

And now for a change of scenery:

Hollywood Is All Eyes as One of Its Own Takes a New Stage
By BERNARD WEINRAUB


HOLLYWOOD, Aug. 7 — George Butler, the producer and director of the 1977 documentary that helped make an Austrian immigrant bodybuilder named Arnold Schwarzenegger a star, today recalled the early days when he met Mr. Schwarzenegger in Brooklyn.

"He was enormously intelligent and enormously crude, and he said then that he had a recurring dream that he would be King of the Earth," Mr. Butler said. "He had a master plan. He wanted to be a movie star, a millionaire and have enormous power."

Advertisement


Across Hollywood, the one word on people's lips is "Arnold." A former Mr. Universe turned action hero whose movie career was ebbing, Mr. Schwarzenegger, 56, has this largely Democratic community greeting his bid for governor of California with a blend of fascination and, in some cases, derision.

"Ludicrous," said Larry Gelbart, a top film and television comedy writer. "This whole thing has taken on farcical dimensions. He has no experience in governing anything his own career.

"This is the world's fifth-largest economy. Some part of me resents being in California and being a laughingstock, that we would have this Wild West political show here. Larry Flynt is running, too. You can't satirize this. The headlines are satire."

Mr. Gelbart's view seems, at least in Hollywood, unusually dissident. Mr. Schwarzenegger and his wife, Maria Shriver, the television reporter and member of the Kennedy family, are central players in the elite world of West Side Los Angeles — Beverly Hills, Brentwood and the Pacific Palisades. It is a world of rich, sometimes politically engaged and frequently self-important Democrats who have met Mr. Schwarzenegger over the years, seem to like him personally but are now perplexed about what to do next.

"He's a very serious, very smart, very determined guy," David Geffen, the billionaire mogul and Democrat, said of Mr. Schwarzenegger. "I think he'd be very formidable."

Barbara Howar, a novelist who has known Ms. Shriver for years, said the entertainment elite seemed to know four of the major players in the recall election of Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat — Mr. Davis himself; former Mayor Richard J. Riordan of Los Angeles, who is expected not to join the race; Arianna Huffington, the commentator running as an independent, and Mr. Schwarzenegger.

"People are in a quandary," Ms. Howar said. "It's overlapping into their social world and it's hard for them to split their allegiances even along party lines. Riordan and Huffington and Arnold are all at dinner together. They've known each other for years. Their friends and money sources are identical. They're all tap dancing to the same crowd and the same money."

Even his message, voiced on NBC's "Tonight" show with Jay Leno, has a Hollywood ring. Discussing the election, scheduled for Oct. 7, Mr. Schwarzenegger was hardly original. "We're mad as hell and we're not taking it anymore," he said. It paraphrased the line by Peter Finch, as a television commentator having a nervous breakdown, from the 1976 film "Network."

Those who have worked with Mr. Schwarzenegger in recent years said they were not surprised by his announcement. Jonathan Mostow, director of "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines," his current movie, said that Mr. Schwarzenegger had showed an unusual interest in electoral politics during filming.

"An endless line of political figures came to the set," Mr. Mostow said. "We had mayors, governors, senators, City Council people from Iowa, Bill Clinton."

As a Republican in the mostly Democratic world of west Los Angeles, Mr. Schwarzenegger is clearly a political aberration, but he seems to have handled it well.

Lionel Chetwynd, a writer and director who is a Republican, said Mr. Schwarzenegger had avoided the stigma of "having identified himself as a Republican — he's very deft at that." Mr. Chetwynd recalled attending a Christmas party with actors like Warren Beatty and others Democrats. "Arnold was the star," Mr. Chetwynd said. "He's made Republicans who have been hiding in Hollywood feel good. He's outed us."

As reported in the book "Pumping Iron," in the early 1970's, Mr. Schwarzenegger said: "I will go into movies as an actor, producer and eventually director. By the time I am 30, I will have starred in my first movie and I will be a millionaire." He also said, "I will marry a glamorous and intelligent wife."

Mr. Butler, the producer and director, met Mr. Schwarzenegger in 1972 at a Mr. America contest in Brooklyn. "Arnold was naïve and ingenuous," he recalled. "He was crafty as all get out. His idea was that money was power. He never looked over his shoulder, he had no sentiment for the past. He was the biggest greenhorn you could ever imagine, but he was very smart and the quickest read I've ever met."

"Running for office?" Mr. Butler added. "Being powerful? For those who knew him back then, we expected this to happen, and it has."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/08/national/08HOLL.html

All Hail Bob, All Hail Bob!

Prewar statements by Cheney under scrutiny
Chicago Tribune

WASHINGTON -- Unlike CIA Director George Tenet and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who have taken responsibility and ex-pressed regret for allowing President Bush to make an erroneous claim in his State of the Union address, Vice President Dick Cheney in recent days has staked out an unapologetic defense of the war in Iraq.

Last week, the president took personal responsibility for the claim that Iraq sought to buy uranium from Africa, an assertion that rested partly on forged documents. But a day later, Cheney was basking in applause during a speech to conservative state legislators with a line suggesting little doubt about the war's justifications or results.

"In Iraq, a dictator with a deep and bitter hatred of the United States -- who built, possessed and used weapons of mass destruction and cultivated ties to terrorists -- is no more," Cheney said.


As the White House fends off questions about whether the administration misused prewar intelligence, lawmakers and analysts are increasingly scrutinizing the role played by Cheney. Some are asking if Cheney, one of the most powerful figures in the administration and perhaps the most influential vice president in history, went too far in making the case for war.

Cheney has drawn attention for several reasons, among them his prewar visits to CIA analysts, which some say pressured those analysts to exaggerate the Iraqi threat; his involvement in the claim that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium from Niger; and his strong prewar statements, some of which are now in question, on Iraq's weapons programs.

Critics say Cheney's role may have helped mask significant disputes within the U.S. intelligence community. Those disputes have been raised anew given the failure to find chemical or biological weapons in Iraq or evidence of a reconstituted nuclear weapons program.

Officials at the CIA and the vice president's office have explained Cheney's personal visits to CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., as a healthy indication of his attention to their work, and not an attempt to skew conclusions to fit a policy goal of toppling Saddam Hussein.

The vice president was accompanied by his chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on the visits, which supplemented the daily intelligence briefings for Cheney and those he attends with Bush.

"He's got a deep interest in intelligence and engages actively with our folks on it," one CIA official said. "That is something which we welcome."

But Greg Thielmann, who retired in September as director of strategic, proliferation and military affairs in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, said he saw no similar curiosity from Cheney about the State Department's intelligence shop, known as INR.

That agency was far more skeptical than the CIA about claims that Iraq possessed threatening weaponry.

"One would think if Cheney was on some sort of noble pursuit of the truth and really wanted to get into details, he would have noticed that INR had very loud and lengthy dissents on some critical pieces of Iraq intelligence," Thielmann said.

"You'd think he might want to hear from us," he added. "It never happened, of course, because Cheney wasn't engaged in an academic search for truth."

The State Department bureau concluded last October that there was no compelling evidence Iraq had rebuilt its nuclear weapons program, according to recently declassified portions of a National Intelligence Estimate, a top-level synthesis of U.S. intelligence reports.

INR also characterized as "highly dubious" claims that Iraq sought to buy uranium from Africa. "We thought the nuclear section of the estimate was so flawed that we thought we needed to have a whole special treatment of it to explain our views," Thielmann said.

An official in Cheney's office said CIA analysts offered the government's most authoritative information on Iraq and other intelligence matters, and dismissed the State Department's dissent as a small minority view in the intelligence community. Cheney's office also declined to specify how many times the vice president visited with analysts, or to describe what was discussed.

But some say Cheney's visits contributed to an atmosphere that pressured the CIA to conform with an administration policy bent on regime change in Iraq.

"These visits were unprecedented," wrote three Democratic members of Congress in a July 21 letter to Cheney. "Normally, vice presidents, yourself included, receive regular briefing from (the) CIA in your office and have a CIA officer on permanent detail. There is no reason for the vice president to make personal visits to CIA analysts."

Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, said two weeks ago at a hearing of the House Intelligence Committee that he knew of "at least three" intelligence analysts who said they felt pressured to draw dramatic conclusions about Iraq.

A senior intelligence official said Cheney may have not intended to apply pressure. "But whatever (Cheney) was saying, analysts certainly felt there was pressure," the official said. "There was an outcome, and they were being driven to get stuff to support that outcome."

In the year preceding the war, unclassified CIA intelligence assessments provided to Congress went from expressing low-level concern about Iraq's weapons capability to expressing the same information in "alarmist" terms, said Joseph Cirincione, director of the nonproliferation project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

At the same time, officials including Cheney began voicing their views of Iraq's illegal weapons in more certain terms.

Regarding nuclear weapons, Cheney said in a speech last August to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, "We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons." Yet that was a less-than-unanimous view in the intelligence community.

Cheney's role in the controversial uranium claim began in early 2002, when his aides acknowledge that he asked the CIA about sketchy intelligence reports indicating that Iraq may have sought the material from Niger for a nuclear bomb.

Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson was sent by the CIA to check out the report and was told of Cheney's interest. He concluded that there was too much oversight from an international consortium for the sale to have occurred, and that is what he reported back.

"The vice president's office asked a serious question," Wilson wrote in a newspaper account last month. "I was asked to help formulate the answer."

Tenet and Cheney's office said the vice president was never briefed on the results of Wilson's trip, or even of the CIA's doubts about the claim.

Cheney also apparently did not know that Tenet had telephoned a Bush aide and sent two memos to White House officials asking them to remove the uranium reference from a speech Bush gave in Cincinnati on Oct. 7. The White House revealed the existence of the memos on July 22.

"I don't think he was aware the CIA had pulled that out of the Cincinnati speech," the Cheney aide said.

Cheney was among those who reviewed the president's State of the Union address before Bush delivered it Jan. 28. But Cheney knew nothing of the CIA's doubts about the uranium claim so it raised no red flags, the official said.

Some outside the administration find it hard to believe Cheney could be so deeply enmeshed in intelligence issues but be left out of the loop regarding the uranium claim, especially because it was a subject in which Cheney took interest.

"The vice president became very interested in this whole story of (uranium) coming from Africa to Iraq," said Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee who is seeking the Democratic nomination for president. "I can't believe that the CIA did not provide to the vice president, since he was the one that requested it, all the information that they gathered about Niger."

Before the war, Cheney also emphasized as a "fact" that Iraq had imported high-strength aluminum tubes needed for a restarted nuclear weapons program. The same day last September that The New York Times ran a story on the tubes, attributed to unnamed Bush administration officials, Cheney appeared on "Meet the Press."

Citing the newspaper story, Cheney said: "It's now public that, in fact, (Saddam) has been seeking to acquire ... the kinds of tubes that are necessary to build a centrifuge" needed to enrich uranium for a bomb.

But according to information declassified last month, the State Department's INR cited technical experts at the Energy Department "who have concluded that the tubes Iraq seeks to acquire are poorly suited for use in gas centrifuges to be used for uranium enrichment."

The "alternative view" expressed in a National Intelligence Estimate last year said it was "far more likely" the tubes were intended for the production of artillery rockets.

Cheney's backers say he never misled the public or went beyond the majority views of the intelligence community at the time of his comments. And they insist that the use or misuse of intelligence to justify war will likely fizzle as an issue with voters.

And Cheney has been adept in defending the administration politically. In a speech to the conservative American Enterprise Institute two weeks ago, he emphasized the point that a murderous dictator had been stopped.



Copyright © The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises.

OMG . . .Claudia just sent me a good one! You must have Shockwave Flash to view this: http://www.ericblumrich.com/swf/idiot.swf

Thanks Claudia

BTW . . .for more please go visit http://www.ericblumrich.com and check out some of the cool animations and commentaries.


A short bio of the this creative artist by himself:

Hmn- as I sit before my keyboard, I find it kinda tough to come up with much to say about myself...

I'm a 32-year-old freelance illustrator/animator/web developer residing in the beautiful town of Montclair, New Jersey with two cats, a roomie and two ferrets.

Although I have no formal education in political affairs, I have been studying history, politics, and sociology for the past 16 years. While it's not much, it's more experience than Rush Limbaugh, Michael "Savage" Wiener, and Sean Hannity had, combined, before they began spewing their filth into the vox populi.

Somewhere in the middle of March, moved by the anger and frustration I felt at the unelected government that currently runs the show here in the United States, I created a little piece of flash called antiwar2. Within days, it had been featured on Buzzflash. The next thing I knew I was getting hundreds of e-mails, and my webserver was overloaded to the point that I had to move it to a new host.

Since then, I've been creating further animations, and building a new site to house them.

When I'm not married to the computer, I spend my time reading, drawing, and trying to stay sane in a country gone mad.


Have a nice day everybody,

http://www.salon.com/mwt/wire/2003/07/24/cat/index.html
This cat burglar is really a cat

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Associated Press


July 24, 2003 | SIMI VALLEY, Calif. (AP) -- A cat burglar's booty is
being hoarded in a Ventura County home.

A marauding feline named Midnight -- now dubbed Klepto Cat -- has been
sneaking off in the dark to raid neighbors' homes, garages, sheds and
patios, bringing home shoes, hats, shirts, socks and even a wrapped
Christmas present.

It's stressful for pet owners Richard and Sue Boyd.

"We get so embarrassed by this," Sue Boyd said. "We wake up in the
morning and go out and there's stuff under the truck. The cat leaves
things all over. We don't want these things."

"He's a klepto cat," her husband said.

Each day, Midnight's owners leave a bag with the purloined goods hanging
from their mailbox so neighbors can reclaim missing items.

It is unclear why Midnight prefers wearables.

Gary Sampson, an Indianapolis-based veterinarian who specializes in cat
behavior, said the 13-year-old cat is probably drawn to body odors.

"He's obviously a hunter," Sampson said. "He's doing this at night. This
is when they can get prey. It's just an extension of that."

Police Sgt. Paul Fitzpatrick said there isn't anything the police could
do about Midnight's crimes, except refer the complaint to animal control.

Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium

"If the freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter." -- George Washington

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." -- Theodore Roosevelt 1918.

Did George W. Bush Invade Iraq by Lying?

Why did Bush start a war that:

Has killed hundreds of American servicemen and women, and seriously
injured hundreds more?

Has killed thousands of Iraq civilians, many of them women and children
Will cost American Tax payers more than $100 Billion, of money desperately
needed here at home?

Has destroyed America's credibility around the world?

Has already significantly damaged morale, confidence, and the readiness of
the US armed forces?

For the a chart of what Bush said, his claims, and the reality, go to:
http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/03/07/22_lies.html

Liar! Liar! Speech on Fire!

by The Angry Liberal

On Tuesday, the White House finally came clean and admitted what everybody else already knew: George W. Bush lied about Iraq's alleged attempt to purchase uranium from the African nation of Niger in order to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program. Here's what the White House statement said about Bush's inclusion of this lie in his 2003 State of the Union message:

Knowing all that we know now, the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union speech.

The problem with this statement is that the White House did know then all that they know now.

MORE: http://www.buzzflash.com/theangryliberal/03/07/14.html

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

Bigger Trouble than Thought

by P.M. Carpenter

An appreciable thickness of skin is required to wear the garb of an online correspondent, especially one still inhabiting America's shrinking isle of sensible progressivism. Write anything on a regular basis that challenges the regnant curiosities of modern conservatism -- itself a 40-year-old admixture of scripture-thumping hypocrites, vapid economic terrorists and taunting man-boy jingoists -- and you'll become a target for every brow-protruding reactionary who's learned to manipulate a keyboard without benefit of opposing thumbs.

MORE: http://www.buzzflash.com/carpenter/03/07/14.html

BuzzFlash directs your attention to this story from the Independent

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

20 Lies About the War

Falsehoods ranging from exaggeration to plain untruth were used to make the case for war. More lies are being used in the aftermath. By Glen Rangwala and Raymond Whitaker

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=424008

13 July 2003

1. Iraq was responsible for the 11 September attacks

A supposed meeting in Prague between Mohammed Atta, leader of the 11 September hijackers, and an Iraqi intelligence official was the main basis for this claim, but Czech intelligence later conceded that the Iraqi's contact could not have been Atta. This did not stop the constant stream of assertions that Iraq was involved in 9/11, which was so successful that at one stage opinion polls showed that two-thirds of Americans believed the hand of Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks. Almost as many believed Iraqi hijackers were aboard the crashed airliners; in fact there were none.

2. Iraq and al-Qa'ida were working together

Persistent claims by US and British leaders that Saddam and Osama bin Laden were in league with each other were contradicted by a leaked British Defence Intelligence Staff report, which said there were no current links between them. Mr Bin Laden's "aims are in ideological conflict with present-day Iraq", it added.

Another strand to the claims was that al-Qa'ida members were being sheltered in Iraq, and had set up a poisons training camp. When US troops reached the camp, they found no chemical or biological traces.

3. Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa for a "reconstituted" nuclear weapons programme

The head of the CIA has now admitted that documents purporting to show that Iraq tried to import uranium from Niger in west Africa were forged, and that the claim should never have been in President Bush's State of the Union address. Britain sticks by the claim, insisting it has "separate intelligence". The Foreign Office conceded last week that this information is now "under review".

4. Iraq was trying to import aluminium tubes to develop nuclear weapons

The US persistently alleged that Baghdad tried to buy high-strength aluminum tubes whose only use could be in gas centrifuges, needed to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. Equally persistently, the International Atomic Energy Agency said the tubes were being used for artillery rockets. The head of the IAEA, Mohamed El Baradei, told the UN Security Council in January that the tubes were not even suitable for centrifuges.

5. Iraq still had vast stocks of chemical and biological weapons from the first Gulf War

Iraq possessed enough dangerous substances to kill the whole world, it was alleged more than once. It had pilotless aircraft which could be smuggled into the US and used to spray chemical and biological toxins. Experts pointed out that apart from mustard gas, Iraq never had the technology to produce materials with a shelf-life of 12 years, the time between the two wars. All such agents would have deteriorated to the point of uselessness years ago.

6. Iraq retained up to 20 missiles which could carry chemical or biological warheads, with a range which would threaten British forces in Cyprus

Apart from the fact that there has been no sign of these missiles since the invasion, Britain downplayed the risk of there being any such weapons in Iraq once the fighting began. It was also revealed that chemical protection equipment was removed from British bases in Cyprus last year, indicating that the Government did not take its own claims seriously.

7. Saddam Hussein had the wherewithal to develop smallpox

This allegation was made by the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, in his address to the UN Security Council in February. The following month the UN said there was nothing to support it.

8. US and British claims were supported by the inspectors

According to Jack Straw, chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix "pointed out" that Iraq had 10,000 litres of anthrax. Tony Blair said Iraq's chemical, biological and "indeed the nuclear weapons programme" had been well documented by the UN. Mr Blix's reply? "This is not the same as saying there are weapons of mass destruction," he said last September. "If I had solid evidence that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction or were constructing such weapons, I would take it to the Security Council." In May this year he added: "I am obviously very interested in the question of whether or not there were weapons of mass destruction, and I am beginning to suspect there possibly were not."

9. Previous weapons inspections had failed

Tony Blair told this newspaper in March that the UN had "tried unsuccessfully for 12 years to get Saddam to disarm peacefully". But in 1999 a Security Council panel concluded: "Although important elements still have to be resolved, the bulk of Iraq's proscribed weapons programmes has been eliminated." Mr Blair also claimed UN inspectors "found no trace at all of Saddam's offensive biological weapons programme" until his son-in-law defected. In fact the UN got the regime to admit to its biological weapons programme more than a month before the defection.

10. Iraq was obstructing the inspectors

Britain's February "dodgy dossier" claimed inspectors' escorts were "trained to start long arguments" with other Iraqi officials while evidence was being hidden, and inspectors' journeys were monitored and notified ahead to remove surprise. Dr Blix said in February that the UN had conducted more than 400 inspections, all without notice, covering more than 300 sites. "We note that access to sites has so far been without problems," he said. : "In no case have we seen convincing evidence that the Iraqi side knew that the inspectors were coming."

11. Iraq could deploy its weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes

This now-notorious claim was based on a single source, said to be a serving Iraqi military officer. This individual has not been produced since the war, but in any case Tony Blair contradicted the claim in April. He said Iraq had begun to conceal its weapons in May 2002, which meant that they could not have been used within 45 minutes.

12. The "dodgy dossier"

Mr Blair told the Commons in February, when the dossier was issued: "We issued further intelligence over the weekend about the infrastructure of concealment. It is obviously difficult when we publish intelligence reports." It soon emerged that most of it was cribbed without attribution from three articles on the internet. Last month Alastair Campbell took responsibility for the plagiarism committed by his staff, but stood by the dossier's accuracy, even though it confused two Iraqi intelligence organisations, and said one moved to new headquarters in 1990, two years before it was created.

13. War would be easy

Public fears of war in the US and Britain were assuaged by assurances that oppressed Iraqis would welcome the invading forces; that "demolishing Saddam Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk", in the words of Kenneth Adelman, a senior Pentagon official in two previous Republican administrations. Resistance was patchy, but stiffer than expected, mainly from irregular forces fighting in civilian clothes. "This wasn't the enemy we war-gamed against," one general complained.

14. Umm Qasr

The fall of Iraq's southernmost city and only port was announced several times before Anglo-American forces gained full control - by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, among others, and by Admiral Michael Boyce, chief of Britain's defence staff. "Umm Qasr has been overwhelmed by the US Marines and is now in coalition hands," the Admiral announced, somewhat prematurely.

15. Basra rebellion

Claims that the Shia Muslim population of Basra, Iraq's second city, had risen against their oppressors were repeated for days, long after it became clear to those there that this was little more than wishful thinking. The defeat of a supposed breakout by Iraqi armour was also announced by military spokesman in no position to know the truth.

16. The "rescue" of Private Jessica Lynch

Private Jessica Lynch's "rescue" from a hospital in Nasiriya by American special forces was presented as the major "feel-good" story of the war. She was said to have fired back at Iraqi troops until her ammunition ran out, and was taken to hospital suffering bullet and stab wounds. It has since emerged that all her injuries were sustained in a vehicle crash, which left her incapable of firing any shot. Local medical staff had tried to return her to the Americans after Iraqi forces pulled out of the hospital, but the doctors had to turn back when US troops opened fire on them. The special forces encountered no resistance, but made sure the whole episode was filmed.

17. Troops would face chemical and biological weapons

As US forces approached Baghdad, there was a rash of reports that they would cross a "red line", within which Republican Guard units were authorised to use chemical weapons. But Lieutenant General James Conway, the leading US marine general in Iraq, conceded afterwards that intelligence reports that chemical weapons had been deployed around Baghdad before the war were wrong.

" It was a surprise to me ... that we have not uncovered weapons ... in some of the forward dispersal sites," he said. "We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there. We were simply wrong. Whether or not we're wrong at the national level, I think still very much remains to be seen."

18. Interrogation of scientists would yield the location of WMD

" I have got absolutely no doubt that those weapons are there ... once we have the co-operation of the scientists and the experts, I have got no doubt that we will find them," Tony Blair said in April. Numerous similar assurances were issued by other leading figures, who said interrogations would provide the WMD discoveries that searches had failed to supply. But almost all Iraq's leading scientists are in custody, and claims that lingering fears of Saddam Hussein are stilling their tongues are beginning to wear thin.

19. Iraq's oil money would go to Iraqis

Tony Blair complained in Parliament that "people falsely claim that we want to seize" Iraq's oil revenues, adding that they should be put in a trust fund for the Iraqi people administered through the UN. Britain should seek a Security Council resolution that would affirm "the use of all oil revenues for the benefit of the Iraqi people".

Instead Britain co-sponsored a Security Council resolution that gave the US and UK control over Iraq's oil revenues. There is no UN-administered trust fund.

Far from "all oil revenues" being used for the Iraqi people, the resolution continues to make deductions from Iraq's oil earnings to pay in compensation for the invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

20. WMD were found

After repeated false sightings, both Tony Blair and George Bush proclaimed on 30 May that two trailers found in Iraq were mobile biological laboratories. "We have already found two trailers, both of which we believe were used for the production of biological weapons," said Mr Blair. Mr Bush went further: "Those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons - they're wrong. We found them." It is now almost certain that the vehicles were for the production of hydrogen for weather balloons, just as the Iraqis claimed - and that they were exported by Britain.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=424008

What not to wear to the fair:



No way Jose!

It's about time:

July 11, 2003


The "Bush Knew Iraq Info Was False" Headline That Changed on CBSNews.com

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

In case you were wondering about the change in the CBSNews.com headline from "Bush Knew Iraq Info Was False" to "Bush Knew Iraq Info Was Dubious," none other than the right wing bad boy and charter member of the vast right wing conspiracy, Brent Bozell, takes note of the original CBS headline that ran until this morning.

(For the article in question, go to: LINK)

The following is an excerpt from Bozell's Media Research Center's (a right wing "prove the media is liberal" organization) July 11th news alert:

***Media Research Center CyberAlert***

11am EDT, Friday July 11, 2003 (Vol. Eight; No. 129)
The 1,536th CyberAlert. Tracking Liberal Media Bias Since 1996

> "Bush Knew Iraq Info Was False," CBSNews.com Distorts Story

####

Distributed to more than 14,000 subscribers by the Media Research Center, bringing political balance to the news media since 1987. The MRC is the leader in documenting, exposing and neutralizing liberal media bias.

When posted, this CyberAlert will be readable at:[LINK]

####


1) Exaggerating its own story. "Bush Knew Iraq Info Was False," declared the headline over a posting on the CBSNews.com Web site and John Roberts opened Thursday's CBS Evening News by announcing: " President Bush's false claim about Iraqi weapons. He made it despite a CIA warning the intelligence was bad." In fact, in the actual story CBS's David Martin reported something far short of the "Bush knew" summary or that the CIA said "the intelligence was bad.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

* * *

BuzzFlash Note: Actually, CBS news is the best national mainstream broadcast news provider. The change of the headline was probably due to caution. They realized that they could prove that Bush was told that the Niger uranium claim was highly doubtful. But they might not be able to prove that he was told that it was categorically false, at this time, anyway.

* * *

BuzzFlash Extra:

ADDITIONAL FACTS TO CONSIDER

BUSH CLAIM
"President Bush said today his charge Iraq tried to buy nuclear material from Africa was approved by his 'intelligence services,' and U.S. national security adviser Condoleeza Rice said the specific wording was approved by the CIA" [Reuters, 7/11/03, LINK]

FACTS
"CBS News reported Thursday that senior administration officials say the president's apparently mistaken claim was included in the Jan. 28 speech over the CIA's initial objections...The CIA reportedly did make its objections known to Britain as early as September. And Secretary of State Colin Powell did not repeat the claim in his Feb. 5 testimony to the Security Council." [CBS News, 7/10/03, LINK]. Additionally, "The CIA tried unsuccessfully in early September 2002 to persuade the British government to drop from an official intelligence paper a reference to Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Africa that President Bush included in his State of the Union address four months later, senior Bush administration officials said yesterday." [Washington Post, 7/11/03, LINK]

RUMSFELD CLAIM
"QUESTION: Secretary Rumsfeld, when did you know that the reports about uranium coming out of Africa were bogus? RUMSFELD: Oh, within recent days, since the information started becoming available. QUESTION: So, in other words you didn't, right after the speech, you didn't know that? Or even before the speech, you had no knowledge of that? RUMSFELD: I've just answered the question." [Congressional Hearing, 7/9/03]

FACTS
"Secretary of State Colin Powell told the BBC today 'By [the time I gave my speech to the U.N. in February], there was such controversy about [the Niger document] it did not seem to be the kind of claim that I should take into the U.N." [ABC News, 7/9/03]

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS at http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/03/07/11_cbs.html

Bush Knew Iraq Info Was False
WASHINGTON, July 10, 2003

Senior administration officials tell CBS News the President's mistaken
claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa was included in his State
of the Union address -- despite objections from the CIA.

Before the speech was delivered, the portions dealing with Iraq's weapons
of mass destruction were checked with the CIA for accuracy, reports CBS
News National Security Correspondent David Martin.

CIA officials warned members of the President's National Security Council
staff the intelligence was not good enough to make the flat statement Iraq
tried to buy uranium from Africa.

The White House officials responded that a paper issued by the British
government contained the unequivocal assertion: "Iraq has ... sought
significant quantities of uranium from Africa." As long as the statement
was attributed to British Intelligence, the White House officials argued,
it would be factually accurate. The CIA officials dropped their objections
and that's how it was delivered.

"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought
significant quantities of uranium from Africa," Mr. Bush said.

The statement was technically correct, since it accurately reflected the
British paper. But the bottom line is the White House knowingly included
in a presidential address information its own CIA had explicitly warned
might not be true.

More of this breaking story at:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/06/25/iraq/main560449.shtml

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20030707/en_nm/television_msnbc_dc


MSNBC Fires Michael Savage. Who Ever Hired Him Should be Fired Too.


MSNBC Fires Host Savage for Wishing AIDS on Caller



By Ben Berkowitz

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Cable news channel MSNBC on Monday fired Michael
Savage after the controversial talk show host wished AIDS on a caller whom
he dismissed as "one of the sodomites."

Savage had been under fire from gay rights groups since February when the
network announced it had hired the conservative commentator to host a TV
version of his popular talk radio show.

Saturday's episode of "The Savage Nation," his 15th since the program's
debut in March, featured Savage discussing air travel with callers.


One caller began discussing his experiences, and after an unintelligible
part of the call, Savage asked him "So are you one of those sodomists?"


When the caller said, "Yes I am," Savage, reclining in a chair with his
arms folded and wearing dark sunglasses, responded, "Oh, you're one of the
sodomites! You should only get AIDS and die, you pig!" in a clip of the
show hosted on the Web site of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against
Defamation.


An MSNBC representative was not immediately available to comment, but a
source familiar with the matter confirmed that the show had been canceled.

July 7, 2003

The Middle Road to Extremism

by P.M. Carpenter

A leading conservative strategist recently offered this explanation as to why, going into a reelection campaign, Bush II has right wingers in the bag and Bush I did not: "Every group that this president [keeps] faith with, the previous president double-crossed."

Most would concede the assessment’s overall fairness. Yet, while doing no injury to the strategist's originality, there is a more telling way to phrase it: "Every group that the previous president kept faith with, this president double-crosses."

MORE: http://www.buzzflash.com/carpenter/03/07/07.html

Now HERE'S an idea (from The Boston Globe) that is worth considering. I'm going to find out more about it. Sounds good to me. Turn-about IS fair play!

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/185/business/Website_turns_tables_on_government_officialsP.shtml

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

Website turns tables on government officials

By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff, 7/4/2003

Annoyed by the prospect of a massive new federal surveillance system, two researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are celebrating the Fourth of July with a new Internet service that will let citizens create dossiers on government officials.

The system will start by offering standard background information on politicians, but then go one bold step further, by asking Internet users to submit their own intelligence reports on government officials -- reports that will be published with no effort to verify their accuracy.

''It's sort of a citizen's intelligence agency,'' said Chris Csikszentmihalyi, assistant professor at the MIT Media Lab.

He and graduate student Ryan McKinley created the Government Information Awareness (GIA) project as a response to the US government's Total Information Awareness program (TIA).

Revealed last year, TIA seeks to track possible terrorist activity by analyzing vast amounts of information stored in government and private databases, such as credit card data. The system would use this information to analyze the actions of millions of people, in an effort to spot patterns that could indicate a terrorist threat.

News of the plan outraged civil libertarians and prompted Congress to set limits on the scope of such activity. The Defense Department then renamed the program Terrorist Information Awareness, to ease public concern.

But the controversy gave McKinley the idea for the GIA project. ''If total information exists,'' he said, ''really the same effort should be spent to make the same information at the leadership level at least as transparent -- in my opinion, more transparent.''

McKinley worked with Csikszentmihalyi to design the GIA system. It's partly based on technology used to create Internet indexes such as Google. Software crawls around Internet sites that store large amounts of information about politicians. These include independent political sites like opensecrets.org, as well as sites run by government agencies. McKinley created software that ferrets out the useful data from these sites, and loads it into the GIA database. The result is a one-stop research site for basic information on key officials.

The site also takes advantage of round-the-clock political coverage provided by cable TV's C-Span networks. McKinley and Csikszentmihalyi use video cameras to capture images of people appearing on C-Span, which generally includes the names of people shown on screen. A computer program ''reads'' each name, and links it to any information about that person stored in the database. By clicking on the picture, a GIA user instantly gets a complete rundown on all available data about that person.

The GIA site constantly displays snapshots of the people appearing on C-Span at that moment. If there's a dossier on a particular person, clicking on the picture brings it up. A C-Span viewer watching a live government hearing could learn which companies have contributed to a member of Congress's reelection campaign, before the politician had even finished speaking.

All of the information currently on the site is available from public sources. But GIA will go one step further. Starting today, the site will allow the public to submit information about government officials, and this information will be made available to anyone visiting the site. No effort will be made to verify the accuracy of the data.

This approach to Internet publishing isn't new. It resembles a method known as Wiki, in which a website is constantly amended by visitors who contribute new information. The best known Wiki site, www.wikipedia.org, is an online encyclopedia created entirely by visitors who have voluntarily written nearly 140,000 articles, on subjects ranging from astronomy to Roman mythology. Any Wikipedia user who thinks he has spotted an error or wants to add information can modify the article. Unlike at a standard encyclopedia operation, there is no central authority to edit or reject articles.

The GIA approach, though, raises the possibility that people could post libelous information, or data that unreasonably compromises a person's privacy.

That troubles Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology & Liberty Program of the American Civil Liberties Union. ''We think that there should be some restrictions on the publishing of personally identifiable information, whether it involves government officials or not,'' he said.

But he noted that the public has a right to know some things about a politician that would be properly kept private about an ordinary citizen. For instance, voters have a right to know where a politician sends his children to school, if that politician has taken a strong stand on school vouchers.

''Do they have the right to publish every piece of data they're going to publish?'' Steinhardt asked. ''It's going to depend on what they publish.''

In any case, Steinhardt said, McKinley and Csikszentmihalyi have a First Amendment right to set up the GIA project. And he said that it's a valuable response to the government's TIA surveillance. ''I assume the point of this is, turnabout is fair play.''

On a page of the GIA website, at opengov.media.mit.edu, McKinley and Csikszentmihalyi give their answer to questions about the legitimacy of their actions.

''Is it legal?'' the site reads. ''It should be.''


Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.



This story ran on page C1 of the Boston Globe on 7/4/2003.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

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

Claudia, Jammy and Spongebob

This is great! Claudia just sent me the link:

Blame Bush for California's Budget Woes
His daddy, his appointees at FERC and his old buddies at Enron screwed the state, but good

Have a safe 4th of July!

Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium

Before a new government is established in Iraq, it would behoove the
American people to demand nation building here at home. That would include
establishing a representative Democracy in a free Republic; the rebuilding
of crumbling infrastructure; health care for everyone the rich have used as
their personal footstools; and a public school system that educates rather
than indoctrinates. The United States of America is in serious danger of
collapse. She is crying out for regime change -- liberation from the yoke of
a dry drunk dictator.

Check out this link to an editorial/expose on Buzzflash. Click the suggested
links in the piece as well. Oh, yes. Bush had plenty of warning re 9-11. No
doubt about it. I know I can be a pest with this stuff, but I can't say it
strongly enough: our country has been hijacked by hoodlums.

And I know that you know.....

http://www.buzzflash.com/farrell/03/07/01.html


Claudia D. Dikinis
http://starcats.com
Political & Personal Astrology for a New Millennium