Beware of men with different size feet or one ear smaller than the other… Independent/UK

“If we are not alone in the Universe, why have we never picked up signals from an extraterrestrial civilisation? This long-standing puzzle, known as the Fermi paradox after physicist Enrico Fermi, who first posed the question, is still one of the strongest arguments against the existence of intelligent aliens.

But two physicists have come up with an intriguing solution. They suggest a way in which aliens could send messages to each other across space that not only disguises their locations but also makes it impossible for a casual observer to even distinguish the messages from background noise. Messages sent by this method could be criss-crossing our Galaxy without us ever knowing.

At first glance, sending a message without giving away your location appears impossible. If a signal – a stream of photons – comes from a single source, its origin can always be determined by measuring the direction of recoil of a detector struck by the photons. But Walter Simmons and his colleague Sandip Pakvasa from the University of Hawaii at Manoa have come up with a cunning way around this.” New Scientist [via EurekAlert!]

[It doesn’t seem very plausible to me; read the article. “I want to believe…”]

‘And so a fashionably technologically illiterate groupthink replaces reason in the corridors of power. Questioning the existence of Iraqi WMD at the Pentagon in mid-March 2003 was a good way to get yourself called “French”, even though the whole idea of WMD production by Iraq had become technologically preposterous.’

— Jonathan Larson, author of Elegant Technology, Asia Times [via walker]

2000: director of a company which wins $200m contract to sell nuclear reactors to North Korea

2002: declares North Korea a terrorist state, part of the axis of evil and a target for regime change

Rumsfeld’s spokesperson says the Defense Secretary just “does not recall” the issue coming before the board back then. ‘ “One could draw the conclusion that economic and personal interests took precedent over non-proliferation,” said Steve LaMontagne, an analyst with the Centre for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington.’ Guardian/UK

Who do you hire to police a country recently ruled by a neo-Stalinist dictator, whose cops were little more than thugs with badges, and whose army was recently at war with the very forces now issuing their marching orders? If you’re the U.S. State Department looking to police Iraq, you hire Dyncorp, a scandal-ridden U.S. military contractor with ties to the CIA and the NYPD.

Much controversy surrounds the recent $22 million contract awarded to Dyncorp Aerospace Operations (UK) Ltd. to “re-establish police, justice, and prison functions” in Iraq. Over the past decade, Dyncorp has been accused of everything from running an illegal sex ring in Bosnia to killing children in Equador as part of “Plan Colombia.”

The company is also under fire for its connections to the strife-wracked NYPD.

According to the New York Post, “The State Department is looking for present and former NYPD cops willing to help restore order to Iraq by rebuilding and training new police departments.” Though the search is nationwide, the article reports that Dyncorp, which is spearheading the search, is “especially interested in [hiring] present and former Big Apple law enforcers.” The estimated salary for the officers is $80,000 a year.

Yet an NYPD deployment to Iraq would be only the latest international adventure for what is rapidly becoming the world’s leading globalized police force. Indypendent

“The insistent claim of traditionally secretive Saudi authorities that a series of violent incidents across the Kingdom in recent months was the work of criminal gangs is becoming extremely threadbare.

With the assassination of a district police chief in the northern province of al-Jawf, a hotbed of Islamic opposition to the monarchy, on 20 April it seems to be increasingly clear that the violence is politically motivated, in all likelihood by supporters of Osama bin Laden.” Foreign Report [via Jane’s]

‘North Korea belongs in the axis of evil.’ Not. “North Korea is not crazy, near collapse, nor about to start a war. But it is dangerous, not to mention dangerously misunderstood. Defusing the threat that North Korea poses to its neighbors and the world will require less bluster, more patience, and a willingness on the part of the United States to probe and understand the true sources of the North’s conduct.” Foreign Policy Debunks the platitudes and myths one after another.

From Cursor:

“As autopsy findings indicate that a British cameraman killed last week was shot dead by Israeli soldiers, the Israeli military begins requiring foreigners entering the Gaza Strip to sign waivers absolving the army from responsibility if it shoots them Guardian/UK. They must also declare that they are not peace activists and are not part of the International Solidarity Movement.

Antonia Zerbisias asks: ‘Where is the outrage over activists’ death?’ A Google News search of Rachel Corrie (dead), Tom Hurndall (clinically dead) and Brian Avery (face shot off), shows that almost all of the coverage is coming from outside of America’s mainstream media.”

As some others see us: “(European writer) Stefan Straub reads the biggest syndicated columnists in the US, and is very, very afraid.” openDemocracy

“Clear Channel Communications, the radio broadcasting and concert promotion giant, plans to introduce a venture today that will sell live recordings on compact disc within five minutes of a show’s conclusion. The venture, Instant Live, will enable a band’s still-sweating fans to leave with a musical souvenir instead of say, a pricey T-shirt or a glossy program.” NY Times

Related: HearItAgain.net ‘offers offer high quality, unedited recordings of various concerts from throughout the world. HearItAgain.net was created by fans for fans so concert goers can literally “Take The Concert Home”.’ Concerts are offered in mp3 format. It looks like, so far, their catalogue consists only of two Frank Black and the Catholics shows, which are priced at $11.95.

How Democrats Can Beat Bush in 2004:

Michael S. Dukakis served with honor in the U.S. Army for two years. Three decades later, he was ridiculed for riding in a tank while wearing a helmet and a goofy grin. George W. Bush, a simian-faced draft dodger, hitches a ride to an aircraft carrier decked out in full “Top Gun” regalia and CNN calls dubs him our “warrior president.”

Life isn’t fair to the Democrats. No matter how much they suck up to corporate CEOs, they can’t compete for contributions with Republicans who invite their backers to write legislation. Most registered voters are Democrats, but too many are disloyal swing voters and apathetic no-shows to assure victory. And even when Dems do win the most votes, cheating Republicans bully their way into office.

As things stand, Dems seem poised to get their collective ass kicked in ’04. While unified Republicans aren’t even bothering to hold presidential primaries next year, nine small-time Democrats are vying for the chance to take on a ruthless incumbent with bottomless pockets. Democratic frontrunners include Joe Lieberman, a wet-lipped whiner, right-wing even by Republican standards; John Kerry, a wild-eyed, helmet-haired war waffler doomed to Dukakian disaster in November; and John Edwards, a rich southerner capable of beating Bush if DNC insiders could see past his dark trial lawyer past. But it’s still early. Hard as it is to believe now, one of these guys could win. After all, Bill Clinton emerged from a similar clutch–the “seven dwarves”–in 1992. — Ted Rall, Yahoo!

Also: The Moral Imperative: “(UCBerkeley linguistics professor) George Lakoff says that conservatives know how to influence voters, and Democrats haven’t a clue. It’s all in their language.” TomPaine

“The United States of America that we thought we knew is gone, finished, kaput and we only have ourselves to blame.

Most of our fellow citizens, who continue to mouth platitudes to freedom and democracy, have not yet been bitten by the police state that grows more powerful by the day with the blessings of Republicans and Democrats alike.

We no longer have a country that operates on the consent of the governed, if, indeed, we ever did. But we did have the illusion, perhaps foolishly so in the face of the reality that has come to pass. We the people are now superfluous to the decisions made by the ruling elite in Washington, the state houses and city hall…” — Bev Conover, Online Journal

With Saddam Hussein’s regime in ashes and Syria threatened into at least temporary compliance, Iran is simply next on the list. And, say what you want about the neocons and their bid to remake the Middle East, they are nothing if not methodical.

(…)

For now, though, Ledeen and his compatriots in the White House don’t seem to be contemplating an invasion of Iran. Rather, they’ve discovered that the United Nations may have its uses after all. Now, US officials are pressing the UN to declare Iran in breach of a global nuclear arms treaty, alleging that Iran has been secretly producing enriched uranium at one of its power plants. The US is pushing for enhanced inspections that would rein in Iran’s program. In fact, while much about Iran’s weapons program is still unknown, it does appear to be farther along in its quest for nuclear arms than Iraq ever was during the last decade. As the New York Times Steven Weisman reports, that’s cause for alarm in Washington and Tel Aviv.

(…)

The US has also been trying to convince erstwhile allies Russia, France, and Germany to put pressure on Iran. Not surprisingly, Washington hasn’t had much luck with this tactic yet. “Very sound evidence is needed to accuse anyone. So far, neither the United States nor any other countries can present it,” a Russian official said yesterday. Mother Jones

Gamble on Buddha:

A casino may seem a strange place for a Buddhist epiphany.

But for David Everard now known as the Venerable Kelsang Lodro, a teacher of Kadampa Buddhism at the Heruka Buddhist Centre in Woodstock Road, Golders Green the time he spent as a croupier was instrumental in his journey of spiritual enlightenment.

“It was about 15 years ago, when I was 32. I was a croupier and a gaming inspector in casinos. Obviously, when you come into contact with the incredibly rich, you soon realise money doesn’t bring happiness some of the most miserable people in the world are very rich,” he said.

…Can you think of anything more preposterous – and dangerous – than determining matters of war and peace based on public opinion surveys? Yet all indications are that Bush and chief strategist Rove are chronic poll watchers and takers. A scary thought when you consider how consistently unreliable polls turn out to be.

(…)

(W)ith their plummeting response rates, laughably small samplings and precision-flouting margins of error, these things are becoming less reliable than Rob on “Survivor: The Amazon” – and take a closer look at the latest numbers. You’ll see that the president isn’t flying anywhere near as high as Karl Rove would like us to believe. — Arianna Huffington, AlterNet

“For weeks, we have been hearing breathless media reports of possible discoveries of chemical and biological weapons by U.S. and British troops in Iraq. Within hours or days, if one scours the back pages of the newspaper, he finds that it was merely another false alarm. But what is never mentioned is that these weapons, made five, ten or fifteen years ago, are almost certainly unusable, having long since passed their stable shelf-life, according to the Department of Defense’s own documents based on a decade of international inspections, electronic surveillance and information supplied by spies and defectors.” — Cliff Montgomery, AlterNet

but do you really want to hear what’s on it? “Do celebrated pop stars really have better, more revealing, or more wide-ranging taste than a run-of-the-mill music fan?”

It’s the sort of stuff you might hear playing in the background at Walgreens—or maybe these are themes from several generations of eighth-grade dances. Scan the list of titles and artists, and you feel as if you’d heard it without even putting the disc on. Sort of like Crow’s music.

Slate

The headline doesn’t hint at what makes this newsworthy. Among others, the judge ruled that Saddam Hussein and the government of Iraq were liable for the damages given evidence they had responsibility for the terrorist attacks. Do you suppose the judge sees this case as a stepping stone to higher political aspirations in a GOP Washington?

I’m not talking about SUVs. Even though they’ve become so politically incorrect, especially after Arianna Huffington tied them to American imperialist urges Salon, many people who consider themselves Green justify — or don’t even try to — driving them (although I had to give Huffington’s thesis a second glance when I saw the pitiful stories profiling Hummer owners’ — mostly with cowboy hats, if I remember correctly — chauvinistic hauteur about driving the vehicle in which the U.S. forces were tearing across the sands toward Baghdad…).

But to gush over this, more Cadillac than Cadillac, as Mickey Kaus does here Slate, surely shows one’s true stripes. They even boast that it has rear-wheel drive. Kaus (when did he add gearheading to his political commentator resumé?) wrote this column last month touting the superior performance of rear-wheel drive, which seems almost entirely based on how a car feels when you muscle it through a power turn too fast and whether it is better to lose control front-first or rear-first. Would a neo-con, however, be troubled by the fact that we’re talking here about a Chrysler? You know, controlled by those antiwar Germans at Daimler? Coming full circle, Kaus’ RWD column suggests that the SUV boom has been due to the fact that they are RWD. By the way, some people (31 at last count) are so incensed about Kaus’ automotive writing they’ve mounted an online petition to shut him up.

Apparently incensed by the GOP’s lack of adamant support for Rick Santorum, some prominent evangelists are talking of withholding support from Bush’s reelection efforts. We could all live with that. The folks at NewsMax, the source of this story, don’t let on, but I’m sure they’re pulling out hair over it. [via American Samizdat]

Protesters planning to demonstrate during President Bush’s visit to Santa Fe this weekend can make a reservation with Santa Fe police ahead of time for their arrest.

“Should a person choose to be arrested in order to make their statement, we can arrange that upfront,” said Police Chief Beverly Lennen.

By reserving arrest times, Lennen believes people can avoid getting hurt because authorities won’t be caught off guard. Santa Fe New Mexican [via dangerousmeta]

‘Google is to create a search tool specifically for weblogs, most likely giving material generated by the self-publishing tools its own tab.

–snip–

It isn’t clear if weblogs will be removed from the main search results, but precedent suggests they will be. After Google acquired Usenet groups from Deja.com, it developed a unique user interface and a refined search engine, and removed the groups from the main index.’ The Register

“Europe, it seems, is a magnet for cat and dog fur. Cat blankets, so the aficionados say, are good for rheumatism.” BBC

“Groundbreaking, FDA-approved feasibility trial of an intraocular retinal prosthesis that appears to be able to restore some degree of sight to the blind.” EurekAlert!

“No one in American public life has become so much a pariah, so ready a punching bag, as the liberal. He can trace his lineage to Franklin D. Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln (a Republican, no less) and Thomas Jefferson all he wants. He’s still a libril, and for that reason hounded from elective office, hammered on talk radio and — as if injury needed insult — hung out to dry in best-selling books.

The titles and subtitles of these volumes betray more than an adversarial point of view. They drip with bile.” Washington Post

Also: <a href=”http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_2_up_from_liberalism.html

“>Up from Liberalism: “Living with European socialism turned this Berkeley girl into a conservative.” —

Janet Daley, City Journal

“In our democratic age, experts are scorned as elitists. When did having standards and expertise become a bad thing?” — Sarah Bryan Miller, classical music critic, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Researchers propose a mathematical model of marriage. Chronicle of Higher Education

“An Arabic weekly is reporting an interview with a purported new spokesman for al-Qaeda who claims the terror network has completely reorganized. He says old operatives have been replaced by new ones who are planning an attack against the United States on the scale of Sept. 11.

The claims were based on e-mail interviews conducted this week by the London-based magazine Al Majalla with al-Qaeda spokesman Thabet bin Qais, the magazine reports in an issue to appear Friday.” USA Today

W.House Denies Bush’s Ship Landing a Costly Stunt ABC News , and Despite criticism, Bush ‘glad’ he jetted to aircraft carrier. CNN Furthermore, Iraq weapons proof ‘will be found’: ‘The commander of UK forces in the Iraq conflict has “no doubt” that evidence of weapons of mass destruction will be found.’ BBC It is all so darned entertaining that it brings tears to my eyes.

When Customer Profiling Goes Wrong: “More and more websites are trying to “get to know their customers” by tracking your purchases and asking you to rate the items you’ve bought. Of course the quintessential example of this is Amazon.com, who will offer up recommendations based on things you only thought of looking at.

This is a place to record some of strange recommendations you have received, from Amazon or others.”

Also: Your TV is watching you. “Advertisers want to use new technology to monitor your every click — and prevent you from tuning out their ads. And don’t even think of trying to escape.” Both from Salon

with its permanent “War on Terrorism”: “(Democrats) are hoping that a collapsing economy will doom Bush like it did his father. But his dad didn’t have Osama bin Laden in his corner — or Karl Rove…”

Also: Ariana Huffington: The 77-percent solution: “While Karl Rove crows over Bush’s postwar approval rating, the latest numbers are lower than you’d think.” Both from Salon

“The most interesting part of this is getting into the hardwiring of morality and free will,” Swerdlow said. “It raises the question, how free is free will?”

This philosophical question is being investigated by doctors across the country. And the answers they find through their research could have serious implications – not just for individual treatment but for the criminal justice system as well.

Brain scans conducted on murderers, for example, show that there is sometimes damage or poor function of the prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain that lies just behind the forehead and eyes.

Such scans and other scientific studies of the mind may one day be widely used in courts as evidence for the defense, as it was for Swerdlow’s patient.

“This guy was going to go to prison and what he needed was an operation, not incarceration,” Swerdlow said. WMBB (Florida)

Brilliant man in an asylum fights doctors to top court:

‘Physics expert with bipolar disorder tells judges he’d rather stay locked up for life than be forced to take medication.

–snip–

Mr. Starson is adamant that forcible medication would slow his thinking, dull his inspiration and make him appear disoriented.

“Our species is making every effort possible to communicate with your species and explain a situation to you,” he said in articulate, yet frequently disconnected, bursts of speech. ” ‘ The Globe and Mail

Of course, this case points out that, tragically, mental illness does not spare the brilliant. The article touts the ‘endorsements’ he receives from other physicists who “consider him a peer”, which misses the point. The tragedy is that, if he indeed has bipolar disorder, it is (unlike the chronic deteriorating course of the schizophrenic condition that affected mathematician John Nash) episodic, with preservation of intellect and personality between episodes; episodes are controllable; and relapses are largely preventable. Furthermore, contrary to his beliefs, controlling his illness will not rob him of his mercurial intelligence. Creativity, which is indeed often correlated with mental illness and bipolar disorder in particular, is unfettered rather than impaired by stabilizing the disorder.

Bipolar patients and schizophrenics, to generalize, resist admitting their illness and need for treatment for different reasons. In schizophrenia, as your mind’s ability to tell what is real deteriorates further and further, you cling all the more to the insistence that you can trust your ability to make sense as your only refuge against the terror. On the other hand, mania is just too self-aggrandizing and, well, downright pleasant for bipolar patients to give up willingly. It is hard to convince someone that their feeling of limitless energy, confidence and ability are symptoms of an illness, and that a more realistic appraisal would find them, like everyone else, fallible and constrained. Moreover, preventative medicines stabilize the manic side of the bipolar disorder better than the depressive side, so they are often left not with normalcy but distress when they are robbed of their mania. Nevertheless, a bipolar patient should have the right to make a shambles of his life if he wants to, as long as he does not represent a danger to himself or others. I hope that is the guiding principle in the Canadian litigation as it would be here in the US. It sounds as if it is; he apparently was hospitalized after making death threats against a neighbor. Mr. Starson is exceedingly unlucky, however, if this is indeed bipolar disorder. Episodes usually remit spontaneously after some time measured in weeks or months even without medication. But four years??

Mr. Starson, who repeatedly insisted that he be called “Professor Starson” and that the word “if” not be used in questioning him, said he is confident that he will prevail.

Breaking off a train of thought involving moon-walking astronauts, his claim to have invented the modular telephone and his plans for a team of 200 lawyers scattered worldwide, Mr. Starson addressed his case:

“Here, I’m basically dealing with the bottom of your species,” he said. “Your species deals with force so much. Force is not the way science operates. And the worst religion on the planet is psychiatry.”

this version of FmH… Curious?

“In the early 80’s the CIA published a sabotage manual and distributed it throughout Nicaragua. The anti-Sandanista pamphlet is full of tips on bringing down the infrastructure of the country. “The Freedom Fighter’s Manual” is illustrated with childlike cartoons and brief captions. Your tax dollars at work!” smog.net

“A Museum of Ambient Disorders originated as a gallery installation by the artist, Rosamond Casey, at the McGuffey Art Center in Charlottesville, Virginia in March 2003. The artist has created ten works of visual fiction, which are ‘collaborations’ with imaginary characters. The works are psychological portraits that begin with the ‘art’ or visual material her characters have left behind as a residue of a peculiar turn of mind: a worry, a craving, a secret wish or loss.

A Museum of Ambient Disorders is a collection of a collection of books, photographs, collages, sculptures, and paintings. Each piece suggests, through narrative clues and the urgency of the character’s mark, the conditions which have driven each individual to produce the work exhibited. The artist plays the role of collector and curator in addition to straddling the line between self and other.” Archipelago

… by tranquilising the aging brain.

“It is counterintuitive to say that in order to make Grandpa faster, slow down his brain. Nobody was really thinking about giving tranquillisers to an 85-year-old to perk him up – which is the implication of the study,” he says. But he cautions that the team has done no research in humans and that people should not start taking the drugs themselves.

Peter Tyrer, a community psychiatrist at Imperial College London, thinks the findings are “very interesting and novel”. He adds that doctors have sometimes observed a paradoxical effect of benzodiazepine drugs in which rather than calming down, people had become more alert and aggressive. “It is counterintuitive to say that in order to make Grandpa faster, slow down his brain. Nobody was really thinking about giving tranquillisers to an 85-year-old to perk him up – which is the implication of the study,” he says. But he cautions that the team has done no research in humans and that people should not start taking the drugs themselves.

Peter Tyrer, a community psychiatrist at Imperial College London, thinks the findings are “very interesting and novel”. He adds that doctors have sometimes observed a paradoxical effect of benzodiazepine drugs in which rather than calming down, people had become more alert and aggressive. New Scientist

Experts See Mind’s Voices in New Light

Auditory hallucinations are a hallmark of schizophrenia: 50 percent to 75 percent of the 2.8 million Americans who suffer from the illness hear voices that are not there. Like John, whose schizophrenia was diagnosed in 1981 and who spoke on the condition that he not be identified, many people with schizophrenia spend years pursued by verbal tormentors as relentless as the furies of Greek mythology. Suicide is sometimes the result, death seeming the only escape from unending harassment.

Yet psychiatrists who study schizophrenia have traditionally shown little interest in the voices their patients hear, often dismissing them as simply a byproduct of the illness, “crazy talk” not worthy of study.

Recently, however, a small group of scientists has begun studying auditory hallucinations more intensively. Aided by new brain imaging techniques, they have begun tracking such hallucinations back to abnormalities in the brain, finding that certain brain regions “light up” on brain scans when patients are actively hallucinating. And the experts are listening far more carefully to what patients say about their hallucinatory experiences.

(…) What everyone who studies hallucinations agrees on is that schizophrenic patients misperceive signals generated inside the brain. But scientists are still debating what is being misinterpreted and how this occurs. NY Times

Two theories are highlighted in the article as if they are diametrically opposed. Some mental health researchers think hallucinations represent a misconstrual of inner dialogue as if it were outer. (In my own psychiatric work, I focus on the breakdown in one sort of schizophrenia of mechanisms which maintain the boundaries between the self and the world. Among other things, this results in a confusion between the inner and the outer, self and not-self.) Other researchers think that cerebral tissue loss in schizophrenia results in a closer neural connection between the speech production and speech reception centers in the cerebral cortex. This is the cause, they feel, of there being no barriers to internal dialogue being experienced as if it were externally perceived speech. But, if we get beyond the artificial split between the neural and the psychological, are these really as distinct as they are made out to be?

The article also makes much of the success of transcranial magnetic stimulation in treating refractory hallucinatory symptoms.

In the treatment, an electromagnetic coil shaped like a Figure 8 is held to the patient’s head. The coil produces a quarter-size magnetic field that is then rapidly turned on and off, inducing an electrical field in the cerebral cortex’s gray matter.

Scientists do not know exactly how the treatment works, but they believe it dampens the reactivity of neurons, an effect that is then passed on to other connected brain regions.

Unlike electroshock therapy, long used for severe depression, transcranial magnetic stimulation does not induce seizures at the levels used in the studies and has a far more selective effect on the brain. Nor does the treatment appear to have the serious side effects, like memory loss, of electroshock therapy.

I think the verdict is still out on TMS. The new research about the meaning of hallucinations has far more interesting implications than simply rationalizing the use of another technology that, while appearing more subtle than others in the history of psychiatry, follows in a long tradition of disrupting and ablating mental activity because, imperfectly understood, it is distressing to the patient or — far more troubling — to the treaters.

“A cold virus genetically engineered to help it sneak into cancer cells can kill inoperable brain tumors in mice, U.S. scientists reported on Tuesday.

The effects were so stunning that the National Cancer Institute and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are rushing to test the approach in people with brain tumors.

If it works, it will be the first treatment for malignant glioma, the deadliest form of brain cancer.” CNN

Nicholas Kristof: “The C.I.A. was terribly damaged when William Casey, its director in the Reagan era, manipulated intelligence to exaggerate the Soviet threat in Central America to whip up support for Ronald Reagan’s policies. Now something is again rotten in the state of Spookdom.” NY Times op-ed

The Bush administration has admitted that Saddam Hussein probably had no weapons of mass destruction.

Senior officials in the Bush administration have admitted that they would be ‘amazed’ if weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were found in Iraq.

According to administration sources, Saddam shut down and destroyed large parts of his WMD programmes before the invasion of Iraq. Sunday Herald

“The frenzy surrounding Bush’s speech last week affirmed how easy it remains to manipulate the major media.” LA Times

US insistence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction is based on dubious intelligence from a shadowy Pentagon committee that now dominates US foreign policy.

By late last year, the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans (OSP) had grown to become President George W. Bush (news – web sites)’s main intelligence source, particularly over Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and the country’s links to al-Qaeda, the New Yorker reported in its May 12 edition.

But the OSP, the brainchild of US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, relied on questionable intelligence from the Iraqi National Congress (INC), the exile group headed by Ahmad Chalabi.

“You had to treat them with suspicion. The INC has a track record of manipulating intelligence because it has an agenda. It’s a political unit, not an intelligence agency,” a former senior CIA official specialising in the Middle East said in the article written by Seymour Hersh. Yahoo! News

Meanwhile:

Rep. Waxman asks Defense Secretary Rumsfeld about evidence that Halliburton has profited from business with countries that sponsor terrorism. Here’s the letter in .pdf format.

Thomas Pynchon’s introduction to a forthcoming edition of Orwell’s 1984. “George Orwell’s final novel was seen as an anticommunist tract and many have claimed its grim vision of state control proved prophetic. But, argues Pynchon, Orwell – whose centenary is marked this year – had other targets in his sights and drew an unexpectedly optimistic conclusion.” Guardian UK

[props to mousemusings]

about this Honda advertisement, viewable if you have Flash6. “Yes, everything in the ad did happen as shown. There was no computer generation involved.” As this Slate commentary points out, what I’m really doing by blinking to this is helping Honda spread its message ‘virally’ far more efficiently than if it were just a television commercial. It sticks in my craw but, just this once, I’ll tell you this is worth viewing. I won’t make a habit of it.

creates a poem from the content found at a URL. Here’s what feeding it this page gave me:

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Software Bullet Is Sought to Kill Musical Piracy: “Some of the world’s biggest record companies, facing rampant online piracy, are quietly financing the development and testing of software programs that would sabotage the computers and Internet connections of people who download pirated music, according to industry executives.” NY Times

Kurzweil and Meyer: “We’re entering an age of acceleration. The models underlying society at

every level, which are largely based on a linear model of change, are

going to have to be redefined. Because of the explosive power of

exponential growth, the 21st century will be equivalent to 20,000 years of

progress at today’s rate of progress; organizations have to be able to

redefine themselves at a faster and faster pace.”

“(Concord, NH) The Old Man of the Mountain, the enduring symbol of New Hampshire is no more. Sometime between Friday evening and Saturday morning the stone profile that draws hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, collapsed. On Saturday, May 3 at approximately 7:30am, two Franconia Notch State Park employees noticed that the Old Man of the Mountain had collapsed. At this time it appears as though the forehead and the nose are missing.” NH Parks & Recreation

Grieving for the passing of the Old Man is widespread. Concord (NH) Monitor. Some point out, rightly, that we should take it as an object lesson in the mutability of the natural grandeur we too easily take for granted. The rock had been rotten and shored up with cables and netting to hold its familiar profile intact for a long time; while some are surprised it crumbled, it was an accident waiting to happen. There is talk about rebuilding it, which I think would be a profanity. Instead, go deep into the mountains and, if you must, find other ‘rock faces’ with whose visages you can commune as intently. They are out there…

In a related vein, does anyone else know and delight in the “Simulacra Corner” feature of Fortean Times? Readers regularly send in photos of natural features that resemble faces, beings, etc. Spirits surely move across the face of the wild…

And: The Folklorist’s Pareidolia Collection: “I have recently uploaded my collection of hundreds of pareidolic images (pareidolia / simulacra) for everyone to view. The data includes images, articles, bibliographic information and other articles and links that I have found relevant to the study of this phenomena. [ Pareidolia: Misperception of an ambiguous stimulus as something specific (e.g.- seeing Jesus in the burn marks of a tortilla, or the face of Satan in the World Trade Center smoke)].”

Related to pareidolia is the concept of apophenia:

Apophenia is the spontaneous perception of connections and meaningfulness of unrelated phenomena. The term was coined by K. Conrad in 1958 (Brugger).

Peter Brugger of the Department of Neurology, University Hospital, Zurich, gives examples of apophenia from August Strindberg’s Occult Diary, the playwright’s own account of his psychotic break:

He saw “two insignia of witches, the goat’s horn and the besom” in a rock and wondered “what demon it was who had put [them] … just there and in my way on this particular morning.” A building then looked like an oven and he thought of Dante’s Inferno.

He sees sticks on the ground and sees them as forming Greek letters which he interprets to be the abbreviation of a man’s name and feels he now knows that this man is the one who is persecuting him. He sees sticks on the bottom of a chest and is sure they form a pentagram.

He sees tiny hands in prayer when he looks at a walnut under a microscope and it “filled me with horror.”

His crumpled pillow looks “like a marble head in the style of Michaelangelo.” Strindberg comments that “these occurrences could not be regarded as accidental, for on some days the pillow presented the appearance of horrible monsters, of gothic gargoyles, of dragons, and one night … I was greeted by the Evil One himself….”

According to Brugger, “The propensity to see connections between seemingly unrelated objects or ideas most closely links psychosis to creativity … apophenia and creativity may even be seen as two sides of the same coin.” Some of the most creative people in the world, then, must be psychoanalysts and therapists who use projective tests like the Rorschach test or who see patterns of child abuse behind every emotional problem. Brugger notes that one analyst thought he had support for the penis envy theory because more females than males failed to return their pencils after a test. Another spent nine pages in a prestigious journal describing how sidewalk cracks are vaginas and feet are penises, and the old saw about not stepping on cracks is actually a warning to stay away from the female sex organ.

Brugger’s research indicates that high levels of dopamine affect the propensity to find meaning, patterns, and significance where there is none, and that this propensity is related to a tendency to believe in the paranormal. New Scientist

In statistics, apophenia is called a Type I error, seeing patterns where none, in fact, exist. It is highly probable that the apparent significance of many unusual experiences and phenomena are due to apophenia, e.g., EVP, numerology, the Bible code, anomalous cognition, ganzfeld “hits”, most forms of divination, the prophecies of Nostradamus, remote viewing, and a host of other paranormal and supernatural experiences and phenomena. SkepDic

And so to William Gibson:

“…(He) had treated paranoia as though it were something to be domesticated and trained. Like someone who’d learned how best to cope with chronic illness, he never allowed himself to think of his paranoia as an aspect of self. It was there, constantly and intimately, and he relied on it professionally, but he wouldn’t allow it to spread, become jungle. He cultivated it on its own special plot, and checked it daily for news it might bring: hunches, lateralisms, frank anomalies.

Is (this) a frank anomaly?

Only, she decides, if she thinks of herself as the center, the focal point of something she doesn’t, can’t understand. That had always been (his) first line of defense, within himself: to recognize that he was only a part of something larger. Paranoia, he said, was fundamentally egocentric, and every conspiracy theory served in some way to aggrandize the believer.

But he was also fond of saying, at other times, that even paranoid schizophrenics have enemies.

The danger, she supposes, is a species of apophenia…”

— William Gibson, Pattern Recognition

Gibson is fond of the concept, as a Google search reveals.

Related:

Counselling and Help for People with Unusual Experiences, Dr. Martina Belz-Merk, Outpatient Clinic (Ambulanz) of the Psychological Institute at the University of Freiburg

A review: Hauntings and Poltergeists: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, James Houran & Rense Lange, (eds.), Macfarlane & Co, 2001, ISBN 0 7864 0984 3.

In this meaty tome, 19 writers – some accepting the existence of the paranormal, others denying it – approach the subject of hauntings and poltergeists from the points of view of physics, physiology, psychology, sociology, history and cultural studies. John Beloff in his Forword quotes from Gauld and Cornell’s 1979 work, Poltergeists, and the quotation deserves to be repeated here more fully:

“One cannot deny that, logically speaking, undetected trickery, undetected natural causes, undetected malobservation and undetected lying may lie behind all reports of poltergeist phenomena. But to assume without supporting evidence, and despite numerous considerations [..] to the contrary, that they do lie behind them, is to insulate one’s beliefs in this sphere from all possibility of modification from the cold contact of chastening facts. It is to adopt the paranoid stance of the flat-earther or the religious fanatic, who can ‘explain away’ all the awkward facts which threaten his system of delusions.”

Fortean Times

Bush’s self-proclaimed adherence to Christianity (during one of the presidential debates he said Jesus Christ was his favorite “philosopher”) and his constant reference to a new international structure bypassing the United Nations system and long-standing international treaties are worrying the top leadership of the Roman Catholic Church. Well-informed sources close to the Vatican report that Pope John Paul II is growing increasingly concerned about Bush’s ultimate intentions. The Pope has had experience with Bush’s death fetish. Bush ignored the Pope’s plea to spare the life of Karla Faye Tucker. To show that he was similarly ignorant of the world’s mainstream religions, Bush also rejected an appeal to spare Tucker from the World Council of Churches – an organization that represents over 350 of the world’s Protestant and Orthodox Churches. It did not matter that Bush’s own Methodist Church and his parents’ Episcopal Church are members of the World Council.

Bush’s blood lust, his repeated commitment to Christian beliefs, and his constant references to “evil doers,” in the eyes of many devout Catholic leaders, bear all the hallmarks of the one warned about in the Book of Revelations – the anti-Christ. People close to the Pope claim that amid these concerns, the Pontiff wishes he was younger and in better health to confront the possibility that Bush may represent the person prophesized in Revelations. John Paul II has always believed the world was on the precipice of the final confrontation between Good and Evil as foretold in the New Testament. Before he became Pope, Karol Cardinal Wojtyla said, “We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel.” The Pope, who grew up facing the evils of Hitler and Stalin, knows evil when he sees it. — Wayne Madsen, CounterPunch [via walker]

“The Hartford Courant‘s recent move ordering a reporter to shut down his independent Weblog has stirred up a heated debate over how much control a media organization should have over its employees’ outside activities In a pair of point-counterpoint essays for CyberJournalist.net (springing in part from a discussion on Poynter’s Online-News e-mail list), blogger and online journalism columnist J.D. Lasica argues that The Courant’s decision was unfair, while University of Illinois journalism professor Eric Meyer defends The Courant’s actions.”

Pinned for five days by 1,000-lb. boulder, 48 hrs. after running out of water and determining he would die if he remained where he was, the 27-year-old hiker used a pocket knife to cut his arm off below the elbow, applied a tourniquet, rappelled 60 ft. to the bottom of the canyon, and was discovered while hiking out. He remained in serious condition at a Grand Junction hospital. NY Times One wonders whether the arm was irreparably injured already; whether he was able to feel pain by the time he did it; indeed, whether it was a rational decision or one made in inanition (and whether there is any point in asking these questions). [thanks, abby]

U.S. says Canada cares too much about liberties to successfully assist in the WoT®. canada.com network

Computing in the Real World, i.e. in the loo: visitors to portapotties at the Glastonbury (UK) festival this summer will be treated to broadband access and six-channel surround sound via a wireless waterproof keyboard and adjustable plasma screen, all courtesy of Microsoft. The duration of visits to the WC might be expected to grow, with a proportional expansion of the lengths of the lines for the potties. But never fear, there will be Internet terminals outside as well. PC Pro

“The administration is clearly right that a new arms control cannot rest entirely on the illusory safety of talks and treaties and U.N. resolutions“, says Bill Keller. “The autocrats most likely to be dangerous to us if they get nuclear weapons are the leaders least likely to care about staying in the good graces of the ”international community,” whatever that is. A new arms-control regime should distinguish among threats and offer a menu of options appropriate to the danger, from inspection to coercion. It would draw on military pressure and economic sanctions, along with the softer diplomacy that the counterproliferators scorn. It would not disdain international agreements but would demand smarter treaties, backed by intrusive inspections and rigorous enforcement.

And it would accept the solemn responsibility — a particularly American responsibility — to restore the special stigma of nuclear explosives. The destructive power of these weapons is unique and breathtaking, and almost impossible to confine to military targets. Chemical and biological weapons, horrible as they are, cannot match them as agents of catastrophe. A strategy that focuses exclusively on regimes and not on weapons themselves has several flaws, and the most obvious one is this: when regimes change, weapons remain.” NY Times Magazine. Adorned with three pictures of mushroom clouds from U.S. above-ground nuclear tests (before they were banned) of an obscene beauty that provides a visceral analogue of the seductive appeal these unholy armaments offer.

“This, then, is the promise — and the hype — of nutritional genomics, the second wave of personalized medicine to come rolling out of the Human Genome Project (after pharmacogenomics, or designer drugs). The premise is simple: diet is a big factor in chronic disease, responsible, some say, for a third of most types of cancer. Dietary chemicals change the expression of one’s genes and even the genome itself. And — here’s the key — the influence of diet on health depends on an individual’s genetic makeup.” NY Times

Two researchers, Jerrold M. Post and Amatzia Baram, concluded in a psychological profile of Mr. Hussein that he was more accurately described as a malignant narcissist, a label that has also been applied to Stalin and Hitler. Dr. Post, a psychiatrist at George Washington University, and Dr. Baram, an expert on Iraq at the University of Haifa in Israel, wrote the profile for the United States Air Force Counterproliferation Center. Dr. Post was also the founding director of the Central Intelligence Agency’s political profiling program.

Malignant narcissism, as defined by psychiatrists, is a severe form of narcissistic personality disorder. Like classic narcissists, malignant narcissists are grandiose, self-centered, oversensitive to criticism and unable to feel empathy for others. They cover over deep insecurities with an inflated self-image.

But malignant narcissists also tend to paranoia and aggression, and share some features of the antisocial personality, including the absence of moral or ethical judgment, said Dr. Otto Kernberg, a psychiatry professor at Cornell University and an expert on personality disorders.

Far from being psychotic, malignant narcissists are adept at charming and manipulating those around them. Political leaders with this personality, Dr. Kernberg said, are able to take control “because their inordinate narcissism is expressed in grandiosity, a confidence in themselves and the assurance that they know what the world needs.” NY Times

Pinned for five days by 1,000-lb. boulder, 48 hrs. after running out of water and determining he would die if he remained where he was, the 27-year-old hiker used a pocket knife to cut his arm off below the elbow, applied a tourniquet, rappelled 60 ft. to the bottom of the canyon, and was discovered while hiking out. He remained in serious condition at a Grand Junction hospital. NY Times One wonders whether the arm was irreparably injured already; whether he was able to feel pain by the time he did it; indeed, whether it was a rational decision or one made in inanition (and whether there is any point in asking these questions). [thanks, abby]

Nat Hentoff can scarcely conceal his enthusiasm that Conservatives Rise for the Bill of Rights! “A significant development in the movement to resist the Ashcroft-Bush dismembering of the Bill of Rights is the growing coalition between conservative groups and such organizations as the American Civil Liberties Union and People for the American Way.

This has been going on—with only marginal attention from the media—since the ACLU organized a broad-based, though unsuccessful, fight to defeat the first USA Patriot Act toward the end of 2001. And it was the conservative Republican libertarian, Dick Armey, then majority leader in the House, who stripped the Orwellian “Operation Tips” out of the Department of Homeland Security bill.” Village Voice

Children’s Defense Fund: “Number of black children in extreme poverty hits record high; tax cuts for the rich will erode safety nets for children even further.” Read the .pdf of the full report here.

“During this crisis patriotism as practiced in the United States reached alarming levels of intolerance and violence. The right of the other to dissent was unceremoniously thrown aside. If we take what happened to the Dixie Chicks as an example, one is hard-pressed to justify or even comprehend the incident. One of the ladies said she was ashamed of Bush being from her home state of Texas. She said it while performing on a stage in London. Had the Chicks been living under Saddam, we know a priori what would have happened. But knowing they lived in the United States one thought that the debate would have maintained a semblance of civility.

Instead, they were attacked, taken off radio stations, and callers to the same stations spewed so much venom that it inevitably culminated in on-the-air death threats. Obviously, democracy is skin deep. I thought it was just foreigners like me who received death threats and viruses through their emails. I was wrong. This raises another issue: Could the Homeland security people tell the world why such people were not apprehended? Those who threaten to kill someone for reasons of ideology or a point of view are terrorists. No argument there. In this time of high security alert, it is amazing that such people get away with it. In all honesty, it is not very different from any petty dictatorship where the party clique and those close to power can do what they like when the rest are robbed of their basic rights.” — Mohammed al-Rasheed, Arab News (Saudi Arabia)

Unicast introduces screen-filling online ad format designed to open between same-site page views. Ad Age

Play it online for endless hours of fun.

Terrible name, intriguing idea — ride your bicycle on the water with an ‘inflatable bicycle boat’ that fits in a backpack, weighs 25 lbs., and installs in 10-15 minutes, allowing you to clock 6 mph in the water. It basiclly consists of two inflatable pontoons and a propeller-rudder assembly operated by the bicycle’s steering and pedals. The floats inflate with pedal power.

It is proposed by a British psychiatrist in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (Maltby J, Houran J, McCutcheon LE.: A clinical interpretation of attitudes and behaviors associated with celebrity worship. J Nerv Ment Dis. 2003 Jan;191(1):25-9) that excessive worship of celebrities be afforded disease status in its own right.AlterNet Unsurprisingly, he attributes this trend to the dominance of media culture and the breakdown of family structure in modern society. I would just point out, hater of proliferating idiosyncratic diagnostic categories that I am, that there are a number of existing psychiatric diagnoses of which this would more properly be considered a subset — in cases where it deserves being called psychopathology rather than a societal problem at all.

Reactor experts around the country hope that there is something unique about Reactor No. 1 at the South Texas Project here. If not, the little crust of white powder that technicians found at the bottom of the reactor vessel, a discovery that has brought operations here to a halt for the indefinite future, could be the beginning of a broad problem for the nuclear power industry. NY Times

Not to mention anyone living in the vicinity of one of these plants.

Flag-O-Rama!:

Before you send me hate mail: I am proud of my country and the freedoms I enjoy. However, ever since the terrorist acts of 9/11, I’m seeing the American Flag being marketed to consumers in every possible way, on every possible item. Bumper stickers, decals, commemorative plates, t-shirts, car antennas, screensavers, e-mails, billboards, grocery bags, toys…the list is endless, and they bear the flag for no other reason than to make money and prey on our patriotic spirit. The Marketing Scum know that consumers are quick to embrace trends, especially if it makes them feel better about themselves, and so it’s no wonder that the flag is being slapped on everything imaginable. (People seem to think that waving a flag makes them better Americans. It doesn’t. Patriotism is more a matter of community than a matter of how many and how high we wave our flags.) So before you send me hate mail for this page, consider sending hate mail instead to those companies who exploit the U.S. Flag to fatten their bank accounts. This site is a satire of this kind of exploitation, and I hope you can appreciate the humor. If not, then there are plenty of other sites out there to look at!

Chad Barlow, in his impassioned support of war [Some War Is Necessary, February 14], repeats the myth that peace activists “SPAT ON our soldiers returning from Vietnam.” It’s a great story, but like many right-wing myths (e.g., the story of feminists burning bras), it is simply not true.

Jerry Lembcke, an associate professor of sociology at Holy Cross College, did an exhaustive search in the process of writing his 1998 book, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam. He found not a single case of a returning Vietnam veteran spat upon by antiwar activists. The relation between Vietnam veterans and the peace movement was generally good, since the antiwar people saw the mostly working class vets as just as much victims of the war machine as the Vietnamese peasants. We should remember that in that war, as many as 550,000 GIs went AWOL or deserted. A Harris Poll in 1971 showed that only 1% of the veterans encountered hostile reactions when they came home, and they did not think the antiwar movement was hostile to them.

The Voice News,

Winsted CT [via Bifurcated Rivets]

“Iranian Sina Motallebi has been held by the authorities on, so far, unspecified charges and now fellow web users are banding together to press for his release.” BBC. Here’s the petition.

“In 1952, a Roundup grocery store closed their doors because of a death in the family and was never opened until a few months ago… Over 50 years have passed! Everything was left, including all the memorabilia you would find in a 50s store… This will be the most interesting collectable auction you may ever attend…” [via boing boing] One of the amazing things about this is how the store ever ended up sealed for so long. Could family members with a long view have figured that they would make a mint on artifactual value one day? Could this start an investment trend if the auction is a success?

Dipping snuff and blowing bubbles in business school: “Of this everyone was certain: George W. Bush would never end up on the East Coast. He was going back to Texas.” Part of a multi-article profile from the Washington Post drawing on the recollections of, among others, his B-school girlfriend.

“France’s leading philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, says that American journalist Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan last year was killed because he knew too much.

In an interview with the BBC, Mr Levy said Mr Pearl had uncovered dangerous secrets about the involvement of Pakistan’s intelligence service with Islamic extremists.”

How does he know? ” Mr Levy, who recently returned from investigating the murder in Pakistan, was French President Jacques Chirac’s special envoy to Afghanistan.” BBC According to the article, Pearl’s captors realized that he recognized how poorly controlled Pakistan’s nuclear armaments were as well.

From Rafe Colburn: “I can say with certainty that I will not vote for John Kerry for the Democratic Presidential nomination because of his pathetic, anti-intellectual hatchet job on Howard Dean. He can feel free to argue with Howard Dean, but to have his flack say that Dean is unfit to serve as Commander in Chief for stating the obvious fact that our position of world primacy is not absolute and eternal is cheap, stupid, and insulting to anyone with half a brain. I realize this is politics we’re talking about here, but in my book, playing for the moron sentiment is a guaranteed vote loser.” rc3

‘To reporters familiar with other documents attributed to Saddam, neither the handwriting nor the signature appeared similar, but Al-Quds Al-Arabi said “sources close to Saddam” confirmed both were genuine.’

“Rise up against the occupier and do not trust those who talk about Sunnis or Shiites,” said the letter dated Monday — Saddam’s 66th birthday. “The only issue for your great Iraq now is occupation.

“There is no priority but to drive the infidel, criminal and cowardly occupier out. No hand has extended to him but those of the traitors and stooges.” NY Times

Chefs no doubt commit many sins, some even in the kitchen. Yet when I spoke recently to Jehangir Mehta, the pastry chef at Aix on the Upper West Side, I was hard pressed to square his easygoing modest manner with the man whose work has been vilified as sadistic and just plain weird.

His crime? Creating challenging desserts. Against the usual multitude of molten chocolate cakes, crème brûlées and apple tarts, Mr. Mehta travels into parts unknown, offering daring couplings that, if nothing else, unleash the Don Rickles fantasies that lurk inside every critic.

One dessert in particular, licorice panna cotta, inspired particular ridicule. “Somebody described it as tasting like tar, and you need to brush your teeth right away,” Mr. Mehta said. “Others have said it tastes like tobacco. NY Times

Nothing Could Have Saved Shuttle. NY Times

“Hong Kong fficials said here tonight that a dozen patients who had seemed to recover from SARS became ill again after leaving the hospital.” NY Times One of the implications is that patients may still be harboring the virus and therefore contagious after they seem to have recorvered and are returned to the community; there is no way of knowing without a diagnostic test for the viral cause. It is widely considered that public health measures such as screening of travellers and quarantine precautions are bringing the outbreak to a halt, but we might be seeing the calm before the storm.

“Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, told Congress today that the economy was poised to grow without further large tax cuts, and that budget deficits resulting from lower taxes without offsetting reductions in spending could be damaging to the economy. Opponents of the large cut favored by President Bush took Mr. Greenspan’s testimony as support for their position.” NY Times

“Ten days before Timothy J. McVeigh was executed for the Oklahoma City bombing, lawyers for F.B.I. laboratory employees sent an urgent letter to the attention of Attorney General John Ashcroft, saying a crucial prosecution witness might have given false testimony about the security of forensic evidence.

The accusations, which involved Steven Burmeister, now the F.B.I. laboratory’s chief of scientific analysis, were never turned over to Mr. McVeigh, though they surfaced as a judge was weighing whether to delay his execution because the government withheld evidence.” NY Times

A Yipster Museum in the Works? “Though it is not the original Yippie outpost in New York — that was on Union Square, where in the Vietnam era Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and others combined outrageous humor, theater and political protest — Mr. Beal’s building has a history. Yipster Times was published on the third floor. Aron Kay, known as Pieman for his preferred manner of greeting political figures, used to live in the basement.” NY Times That’s Saint Abbie, Saint Jerry and Saint Aron to you…

Toll at 12: “I continue to kill people,” he added. “I want to reach the number 20. Then I will feel good that I have completed my duty. Twenty will feel good. But if I kill more it will be even better.” NY Times

Happy May Day.

“The White House is battling to keep a report on the terror attacks secret. Does the 2004 election have anything to do with it?” — Ishkoff & Hosenball, Newsweek

. “Duh?” — FmH.

William Rivers Pitt: “A writer named Kelly Kramer recently compiled a ‘resume’ for George W. Bush. In it, she listed his central accomplishments. Among them are:

• Shattered record for biggest annual deficit in history;
• Set economic record for most private bankruptcies filed in any 12 month period;
• Set all-time record for biggest drop in the history of the stock market;
• First year in office set the all-time record for most days on vacation by any president in US history;
• After taking the entire month of August off for vacation, presided over the worst security failure in US history;
• In his first two years in office over 2 million Americans lost their jobs;
• Cut unemployment benefits for more out of work Americans than any president in US history;
• Appointed more convicted criminals to administration positions than any president in US history;
• Signed more laws and executive orders amending the Constitution than any president in US history;
• Presided over the biggest energy crises in US history and refused to intervene when corruption was revealed;
• Cut healthcare benefits for war veterans;
• Set the all-time record for most people worldwide to simultaneously take to the streets to protest a sitting American President, shattering the record for protest against any person in the history of mankind;
• Dissolved more international treaties than any president in US history;
• First president in US history to have all 50 states of the Union simultaneously go bankrupt;
• Presided over the biggest corporate stock market fraud of any market in any country in the history of the world;
• First president in US history to order a US attack and military occupation of a sovereign nation;
• Created the largest government department bureaucracy in the history of the United States;
• Set the all-time record for biggest annual budget spending increases, more than any president in US history;
• First president in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from the human rights commission;
• First president in US history to have the United Nations remove the US from the elections monitoring board;
• All-time US (and world) record holder for most corporate campaign donations;
• Biggest life-time campaign contributor presided over one of the largest corporate bankruptcy frauds in world history (Kenneth Lay, former CEO of Enron Corporation);
• Spent more money on polls and focus groups than any president in US history;
• First president to run and hide when the US came under attack (and then lied saying the enemy had the code to Air Force 1);
• Took the biggest world sympathy for the US after 911, and in less than a year made the US the most resented country in the world (possibly the biggest diplomatic failure in US and world history);
• With a policy of ‘disengagement’ created the most hostile Israeli-Palestine relations in at least 30 years;
• Fist US president in history to have a majority of the people of Europe (71%) view his presidency as the biggest threat to world peace and stability;
• First US president in history to have the people of South Korea more threatened by the US than their immediate neighbor, North Korea;
• Changed US policy to allow convicted criminals to be awarded government contracts;
• Set all-time record for number of administration appointees who violated US law by not selling huge investments in corporations bidding for government contracts;
• Failed to fulfill his pledge to get Osama Bin Laden ‘dead or alive’;
• Failed to capture the anthrax killer who tried to murder the leaders of our country at the United States Capitol building. After 18 months he has no leads and zero suspects;
• In the 18 months following the 911 attacks he successfully prevented any public investigation into the biggest security failure in the history of the United States;
• Removed more freedoms and civil liberties for Americans than any other president in US history;
• Entered office with the strongest economy in US history and in less than two years turned every single economic category straight down.

(…)

With all of this happening, and with no apparent way to reverse or blunt this course, wouldn’t it just be easier to give up?… The issue here is a simple matter of volume, and of hope. The list above is abridged, and grows exponentially longer by the hour. People of good conscience cannot surrender the struggle against this rising tide with all that is at stake.” truthout

Three weeks on, many in Baghdad feel angry, hopeless

With no law and no government, the people of Baghdad feel alone, afraid and angry.

Three weeks after Saddam Hussein’s overthrow, many parts of the capital still have no water or electricity, there are floods of sewage and only a trickle of convoys have made it through with urgently needed food and medical supplies.

American civilian administrator for Iraq Jay Garner told reporters on Wednesday that the situation was improving every day and that power had been restored to about half of the city. Reuters

“Have we become a country that wears its hypocrisy openly and proudly?” — Robert Steinback, Miami Herald

“So, to figure out why our adversaries are sometimes allies, here is a good rule of thumb. They are members of the axis of evil when they endanger our geopolitical interests. But not when they endanger women’s lives.” — Marie Cocco, Newsday [via walker]

“Congress may vote on the Climate Stewardship Act as early as mid-May when it begins debating energy policy. Introduced by Senate leaders John McCain (AZ) and Joseph Lieberman (CT), this historic bill is one of the most important chances we have to avert dangerous global warming. No environmental goal is more important for the 21st century. Become a Citizen Co-Sponsor.”

“The record industry started another campaign yesterday aimed at making life more uncomfortable for online music-swapping fans.

Thousands of people trading copyrighted music online yesterday saw a message appear unbidden on their computer screens: ‘When you break the law, you risk legal penalties. There is a simple way to avoid that risk: don’t steal music.’

The messages, which seek to turn a chat feature in popular file-trading software to the industry’s benefit, reflect the latest effort among record executives to limit digital copying of their products.

…

The association plans to send at least a million warnings a week to people offering popular songs for others to copy. Operated by a company that industry officials declined to identify, the automated system uses a feature in both KaZaA and Grokster, free software commonly used to share music files, that was designed to let users communicate with one another.” NY Times

“It’s not every day people bet their jobs on the effectiveness of a law–let alone an antispam law. Many U.S. states have already enacted such e-mail laws, and spam keeps flooding in.

But that’s exactly what Larry Lessig, a Stanford University law professor and one of the most prominent liberal voices online, has done. A few months ago, Lessig made an unusual wager: If Congress enacts an antispam law that offers bounties for the reporting of spammers, and the law fails to “substantially reduce the level of spam,” he will resign from his dream job at a top law school.

Lessig is either extremely reckless or incredibly confident. He has asked me to be the judge of whether such a law proves effective in reducing the deluge of unsolicited e-mail that’s clogging our in-boxes, snarling mail servers and driving Internet service providers to distraction. I’ve accepted.” — Declan McCullagh, CNET

If you are into wi-fi, this credit-card size wi-fi detector from iDetect Technology will detect where you have access without turning on your laptop. It should be available this month at $20-25 US.

And: Can you believe it? McDonald’s is starting to offer wireless access at its sites, beginning now in midtown Manhattan but soon to spread nationally.

From The Null Device:

“Anti-US T-shirts seem to be all the rage in Canada, with Canadians eschewing peace signs for angrier statements, of the sort that might get one hospitalised south of the border.

Anti-war slogans seemed to be getting increasingly anti-American, with people going to everything from protests to the gym to trendy parties wearing tops that say Bush is a Terrorist or Twin Terrors above pictures of Bush and Osama Bin Laden.

…You know, one could probably make a killing selling shoes with American flag-patterned soles in the Middle East (where stepping on something is considered the most grievious insult).”

Pick up your very own “American Psycho” teeshirt here.

playing in the Bush leagues:

“He cajoles. He coerces. And when all else fails, he punishes.

President Bush came to the White House promising to change the tone of politics in Washington. In one respect, he has.

Scholars and historians say the Bush administration has set a new presidential standard when it comes to playing hardball politics with Congress.” — Michael Collins, Scripps Howard News Service

If you are interested in in-depth coverage of SARS and related public health, epidemiological and emerging-disease news, look at Tim Bishop’s SARS Watch weblog.

“Syria Detains, Frees 2 British Commandos who had entered the country from Iraq, detaining them for five days before releasing them, a British news agency reported Monday.” Guardian/UK

Day-on, day-off diet boosts health: ” Eating double portions one day and nothing the next delivers the same health benefits to mice as seen in animals whose lifespan has been extended by restricting their calorie intake.

No one is suggesting people adopt such a diet. But the study adds to the evidence that caloric restriction works by activating some kind of protective mechanism, rather than simply being a result of eating less and thus suffering less damage as food is metabolised. If this is the case, there may be ways to switch on the protective mechanism without going on a crazy diet.” New Scientist

Making Money. NY Times

Ben & Jerry’s Free Cone Day, today 12:00-8:00.

The venerable, charismatic, inspiring weblog turned four yesterday. Best wishes for the next four, Rebecca!