Slashdot Mirror

The origin of this wierd myth is probably as described here.

Initially the number of Jewish dead was estimated according to the occupancy of the towers. As many people weren't at work yet or managed to escape, the actual numbers of both total deaths and Jewish deaths was much lower. Someone noticed that suddenly there were a lot less Jewish dead then in the first estimate and came up with an absurd theory.

Anyway here is a list of victims - I see quite a number of jewish names on it: list

How much research did you do on this, exactly?

This is a result of previous government directives to start looking at Linux solutions in the government. This is something that has not trickled down all the officials to get as far as being a policy announcement in the left wing press here (of which the Observer is just one example.

Obviously this is a better situation than before, when government directives insisted that Microsoft solutions be looked at first, so far as anyone can tell simply because Tony Blair did not understand computers but did enjoy Bill Gates' company when they met - they are a similar age, and see themselves as similar global figures, and I personally think they have a similar contemptable attitude to people who are ultimately their paymasters. Now Tony Blair is politically weaker, following the recent Gulf war not being popular within the Labour Party, but really it would be better if this was happening according to other reasons.

...but outside the Empire, Linux desktop usage is gaining an incredible momentum. Not only in Germany, France and all over Europe, but - and that's really interesting - in Asia and Latin America. No wonder the article tells about a next year turn; all those Linux deployments in India, China, Germany and Brazil will start to appear in 2004-5.

According to this article they're currently dna testing remains. We'll know in the next few days.

I'm sure Syria has been made aware of its options. I don't think money is involved, except maybe offering sweetners to the Assad exile package.

Nothing like paying the government to provide a free service which they then charge you for.

At the risk of sounding repetitive,
Where are the weapons of mass delusion?

Have a propaganda-free day,
W00t

/* Start Quote */
Since the Second World War, the US has bombed China, Korea, Guatemala, Indonesia, Cuba, Guatemala (again), Peru, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Guatemala (third time lucky), Grenada, Lebanon, Libya, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Iran, Panama, Iraq, Kuwait, Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia - in that order - and in not a single case did the bombing produce a democratic government as a direct result.
/* End Quote */

And that is scary.

Where would Europe be without the USA pumping BILLIONS in foreign aid into Europe? [...] We'll just go and call all of our loans to European nations as "Due and Immediately Payable" - your economy would crumble to nothing in a single day.

What planet are you from? The US is $2.7 trillion in debt to the rest of the world, much of it to Europe and Japan. The entire US economy is built on foreign debt and foreign investments.

And the US is one of the stingiest nations when it comes to foreign aid, to the point that it really is offensive. And the notion that Europeans receive "foreign aid" from the US is absolutely laughable.

You want to be on your own and without the support of the USA? Fine - when the next border skirmish or "ethnic cleansing" spat happens, you can fscking be on your own..Go figure it out yourself...and go fight your own wars.

I think that's actually what the Europeans are asking for.

Yeah, and Terry Jones would get really impatient with his neighbors! ;-)

(If you think that doesn't happen, look at the past.)

Or here, or here, or here, or even here!

Every piece of technology, whether it's an advanced microprocessor or sharp wooden stick can be used for either good or evil purposes. The shear fact that the human race isn't yet extinct is due to the fact that technology is used constructively more often than it's used destructively.

These arguments aren't new to DARPA. That's why DARPA funds outside technology projects to begin with (OpenSource or not,) instead of doing them internally.

In any case, nation-states need better encryption to protect themselves from people doing bad things to them, and THAT'S why OpenBSD should be funded.

Now, every educated person knows that HIV is not limited to gay people, or to drug users, or to people who have anal sex. HIV is out there, and everybody is at risk of contracting it, though for the vast majority of people that risk is statistically insignificant.

But the notion, correct or incorrect, that HIV is confined to a particular group or that it's only transmitted by a particular illegal or socially unacceptable activity gives one pause. Is it really right to spend $X on AIDS research when one hundred times more people die of cancer or heart disease or stroke every year?

So let's get this straight: what you're implying is, that since AIDS is contracted mostly by poeple conducting "socially unaceptable" activities it's better to spend the money on curing cancer, heart diseases, etc.

So you're discriminating parts of the population based on your moral assumptions about acceptable/unacceptable behaviour and decide that the folks not living after your moral codex are less worthy of a cure for their illness (or an illness they're more likely affected by) than the rest. I don't know if that's what you intended to say, but that's the basic assumption that is part of your argument.

So unding or not funding AIDS-research is suddenly based on the moral views of those who decide where the funding goes. Well, maybe you're not the only one thinking along those lines, and the Bush administration is just pushing their moral views by basically hindering funding for AIDS-related research, or, to be more precise, for any research dealing with people engaged in "socially unacceptable behaviour".

Fire
Rocks
Sharp sticks
Screw drivers
Cars
Planes
Rocks dropped from planes

Rocks? How about bowling balls, easter eggs, and a 2,600lb rubberband ball?

-

Naughton's article in "The Observer"

But then, reading most of the stuff there, looking around, checking other sources, it seems that PNAC is actually an organization that seems to have these guys as founders, and that their goals are pretty much as stated on the website.

It could still be that the website is a hoax that just exaggerates the propositions of the real PNAC. I just find it very hard to believe that anyone who has grown up in a democracy can go to the extreme lengths that are being proposed on this website.

But then, researching it, it really seems like this website does represent the politics of the Bush administration. And that's really, really scary.

Roadmap for War on Iraq and the New American Empire brought to by:

Elliott Abrams , Gary Bauer
William J. Bennett, Jeb Bush
Dick Cheney , Eliot A. Cohen
Midge Decter, Paula Dobriansky
Steve Forbes , Aaron Friedberg
Francis Fukuyama, Frank Gaffney
Fred C. Ikle, Donald Kagan
Zalmay Khalilzad, I. Lewis Libby
Norman Podhoretz, Dan Quayle
Peter W. Rodman, Stephen P. Rosen, Henry S. Rowen
Donald Rumsfeld , Vin Weber, George Weigel, Paul Wolfowitz

xyzzyxyzzyxyzzyxyzzyxyzzyxyzzyxyzzyxyzzyxyzzy

Troll... may I ask why?

Cheney was CEO of Halliburton. When he stated he was going to be running for VP of the US he stepped down to being Halliburton's chairman of the Board. Then left Halliburton in August of 2000. What's interesting is Halliburton was super nice to him and awarded him $20,000,000.00 (despite his origional severence package required he be awarded only $2,100,000.00 and required him to stay until he was 62. He's 59.) He owns more than a million shares (over $10,000,000.00 worth) of this commpany. Why was Halliburton so nice to Cheney despite his leaving before he was supposed to? Large companies aren't really known for being nice guys to anyone (especially former employees) unless it's in their best interest.
http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/08/12/ cheney.parachute.ap/

You'll also note than Halliburton was busted for extremely fishy and illegal accounting in July of 2002.
http://money.cnn.com/2002/07/10/news/cheney_lawsui t/

Well somewhere this vanished and accoring to http://www.judicialwatch.org/2221.shtml the whitehouse stopped the court order illegally. I'm not sure if I believe that story, but I haven't heard anything about this case since July of 2002. Anyone know anything about what happened to the charges?

Since Bush was elected (or placed in office by Florida's Supreme Court, rather) Halliburton has been handed many federal contracts worth many billions of dollars.

I simply can't stand the thought of my tax dollars and my friends in the military are being abused for the profit of someone who already has more money than anyone could need.

For more interesting articles concerning Halliburton and Cheney:

http://www.observer.co.uk/bush/story/0,8224,759141 ,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,912515 ,00.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/13/business/13HALL. html

The governments who support the US do it mainly since they don't want to piss of the US. They know what the US does to countries that piss them off.

Japan knows it will need help with North Korea later, and do what they have to, etc.

While they were trying to get a vote through the security council and get Turkey's support, a lot money was also thrown around, coining the phrase "The Coalition of the Billing". That's apart from the dirty tricks.

I'm not aware of any democratic country where the public is not against the war, except perhaps Poland.

The governments who support the US do it mainly since they don't want to piss of the US. They know what the US does to countries that piss them off.

Japan knows it will need help with North Korea later, and do what they have to, etc.

While they were trying to get a vote through the security council and get Turkey's support, a lot money was also thrown around, coining the phrase "The Coalition of the Billing". That's apart from the dirty tricks.

I'm not aware of any democratic country where the public is not against the war, except perhaps Poland.

An obscure Jewish sect in New York has been gripped in awe by what it believes to be a mystical visitation by a 20lb carp that was heard shouting in Hebrew, in what many Jews worldwide are hailing as a modern miracle.

Many of the 7,000-member Skver sect of Hasidim in New Square, 30 miles north of Manhattan, believe God has revealed himself in fish form.

According to two fish-cutters at the New Square Fish Market, the carp was about to be slaughtered and made into gefilte fish for Sabbath dinner when it suddenly began shouting apocalyptic warnings in Hebrew.

Many believe the carp was channelling the troubled soul of a revered community elder who recently died; others say it was God. The only witnesses to the mystical show were Zalmen Rosen, a 57-year-old Hasid with 11 children, and his co-worker, Luis Nivelo. They say that on 28 January at 4pm they were about to club the carp on the head when it began yelling.

Nivelo, a Gentile who does not understand Hebrew, was so shocked at the sight of a fish talking in any language that he fell over. He ran into the front of the store screaming: 'It's the Devil! The Devil is here!' Then the shop owner heard it shouting warnings and commands too.

'It said "Tzaruch shemirah" and "Hasof bah",' he told the New York Times, 'which essentially means that everyone needs to account for themselves because the end is near.'

The animated carp commanded Rosen to pray and study the Torah. Rosen tried to kill the fish but injured himself. It was finally butchered by Nivelo and sold.

However, word spread far and wide and Nivelo complains he has been plagued by phone calls from as far away as London and Israel. The story has since been amplified by repetition and some now believe the fish's outburst was a warning about the dangers of the impending war in Iraq.

Some say they fear the born-again President Bush believes he is preparing the world for the Second Coming of Christ, and war in Iraq is just the opening salvo in the battle of Armageddon.

Local resident Abraham Spitz said: 'Two men do not dream the same dream. It is very rare that God reminds people he exists in this modern world. But when he does, you cannot ignore it.'

Others in New Square discount the apocalyptic reading altogether and suggest the notion of a talking fish is as fictional as Tony Soprano's talking-fish dream in an episode of The Sopranos .

Stand-up comedians have already incorporated the carp into their comedy routines at weddings. One gefilte company has considered changing it's slogan to: 'Our fish speaks for itself.'

Still, the shouting carp corresponds with the belief of some Hasidic sects that righteous people can be reincarnated as fish. They say that Nivelo may have been selected because he is not Jewish, but a weary Nivelo told the New York Times : 'I wish I never said anything about it. I'm getting so many calls every day, I've stopped answering. Israel, London, Miami, Brooklyn. They all want to hear about the talking fish.'

A devout Christian, he still thinks the carp was the Devil. 'I don't believe any of this Jewish stuff. But I heard that fish talk.'

He's grown tired of the whole thing. 'It's just a big headache for me,' he added. 'I pull my phone out of the wall at night. I don't sleep and I've lost weight.'

I agree with everything you say, except the part about Microsoft and Enron. While Microsoft is certainly a rather unpleasant entity, Enron actually killed people.

Shouldn't you at least acknowledge your source?

There's more of the same here and here.

Shouldn't you at least acknowledge your source?

There's more of the same here and here.

Shouldn't you at least acknowledge your source?

There's more of the same here and here.

I'm losing patience with my neighbours, Mr. Bush

Once again, breaking news from a non-U.S. source:

U.S. Dirty Tricks At The U.N.

Combined with the daily changes in the
U.S. positions (Powell's statement on
French radio that the U.S. will pursue
peaceful resolution (?-very consistent
with the ranting of Rumsfeld, Bush, and
the rest of the psychopaths), the above
news will finally turn the tide totally
against the U.S. position.

George W. Bush can kiss the 2004
presidential race good-bye.

Cheers,
W00t

Breaking News:

Read about U.S. dirty tricks (spying, bugging,
communication interceptions) at the U.N. Security
Council:

Fascism 2001-2003: A Work In Progress

Cheers,
W00t

...oh, and even if you don't agree I think you'll agree this is funny.

like danny glover said at a rally "the Iraqi people should have the power to choose their own leader. the US should not choose one for them!!!"

movie stars and rock stars are so smart!!!

Yeah, just like those stupid dumbfuck Iraqis...

Read "Our Hopes Betrayed", by an Iraqi who would like to have a say in his new government, since he didn't have a say in his old one. Duh.

This whole "attacking a country that hasn't attacked you without a U.S. peacekeeping mandate" thing just smacks of U.S. imperialism/Manifest Destiny stuff, which makes me extremely queasy. On the other hand, Bush could do a *lot* that would increase my support for his little pet war, but it would enatail admitting he, his father, and Presidents Reagan and Clinton were wrong occasionally. Ie., it'll take some moral backbone; I'm not holding my breath.

Here's what I want to see from Bush, Jr. before we go to war:

1. Recognition that the U.S. helped make Saddam the monster he is. (The U.S. government withdrew support not once but *twice* from Iraqi insurrections. That's why there's so little opposition in Iraq anymore -- they all got killed. Not only that, we gave him chemical and biological agents, and didn't give a damn when he used them on the Kurds. The only reason Bush cares now is that it makes for a nice soundbite.)

2. The admission that Saddam doesn't have provable ties to September 11th or al-Quaeda.

3. Fulfillment of our obligations to Afghanistan, and doing something similar with regard to Iraq. (ie., "sorry General Franks, but we want an Iraqi leading the Iraqi government.")

4. A formal declaration of war would be nice... as if it'll happen. This isn't necessary, but these undeclared wars (*cough*Vietnam*cough*Korea*cough*Gulf-War-I*cough ) get on my nerves.

5. I know this last one is a long shot, and if the first three happen it matters less to me. Still, I'd appreciate it if Bush wouldn't "go it alone", since if he fucks it up we're in for six (or ten or twenty) more years of Anti-Americanism from the rest of the world, especially our former allies (France, Germany, etc.). If *anything* goes wrong, anyone who supported him (Blair, et al.) is going to be politically dead come next election, and someone who is virulently anti-American will take his place.

The UN only becomes a "toothless debating society" if Bush refuses to abide by their resolution, and the blackmail he's engaging in with Mexico and other countries that are still undecided doesn't bode well. He could also show some good faith by ratifying one of those 11 international treaties he's blown off since becoming President. Tit-for-tat, Mr. Bush; if you want their support you need to give them a bone.

It takes a big man to admit he is wrong occasionally, but that's just what Bush needs to do.

I check out slashdot, anandtech and other tech and science links. Also news.google.com and csmonitor.com (Christian Science Monitor). These to get an idea of the mainstream. I can't stand CNN and such so I skip those. Then I move on to my far left political links:

From the Wilderness http://www.fromthewilderness.com/
What Really Happened http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/
Centre for Research on Globalization http://www.globalresearch.ca/
Center for Cooperative Research http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/home.htm
Independent Media Center http://www.indymedia.org
Emperor's New Clothes http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/911page.htm
9-11 the people's investigation http://www.911pi.com/
Guerrilla News Network http://www.guerrillanews.com
International A.N.S.W.E.R. http://www.internationalanswer.org/
UK: The Observer (John Pilger) http://www.observer.co.uk/
UK: Independent (Robert Fisk) http://argument.independent.co.uk/

As a side note, I rarely use browser bookmarks; I keep my own index.html that I update daily, putting in references to articles I like and updating the top portion, of which the above are a subset. Then I can keep a copy of this on the internet in case I ever need it from a remote location.

I'd still go for weed, though. Now that's natural :)

And you want sales up? Stoners can help!

Disregarding the various arguments for and against the "congestion zone" and its implementation for the purposes of decreasing traffic... there's an interesting alternate purpose, apparently. This weekend's Observer describes the dual-use, not only to reduce congestion but also apparently to "protect the city from terrorist attack". Seems to me such a system generates way too much information to be able to "protect" in anything close to real-time.

Can't tell you how much I wished that Saddam would have been taken out 1991. Unfortunately history never repeats. This Gulf war will operate in a very different environment.

There are a lot of good reason to not oppose the coming war, mainly because the removal of Saddam is a noble goal (best summarized here).

Yet, the current administration and Blair for all their combined talents did not motivate this well enough. If the majority of Europeans (not talking governments here but polls) think that this is about Oil, the Muslim media (most of them government controlled) will never buy into it.

That is why many European governments take the stance that more patience could very well pay off. It's not like only many Europeans see it that way, some former CIA analysts put together this open letter to Bush very much advising the same.

The UN is by its very design a fragile entity with one simple objective: Keep the status quo, try to make open war on a world wide scale impossible. Its design as a result of the collective experience of the death toll of WWII. This framework worked pretty well for a very long time. To scrap it just to hasten to get Saddam removed is ill conceived. The UN will have to become something else over time or perish, but such processes take a long time and have to be managed carefully. It'll take many little steps and compromises. The EU process has shown how different countries can merge to something bigger and better. In essence such a process could serve as a template to truely unite all civilized countries.

I lived in the states and I lived (mostly) in Germany (for my wife it's the other way around).

I do nor share you view regarding our politics. The EU is an achievement of many generations of European politicians. The economic integration has worked for a long time, even the euro seems to do just fine, there are no borders any longer, a EU constitution is on the horizon, and if Rumsfeld continues his rants we will have a EU army much quicker than I anticipated.

Please do not confuse communism with socialism or social-democracy. The latter is about well balanced welfare, and this balance will continuously have to be adjusted. In an open society these adjustments are always a political struggle and cause some friction and bad press. The welfare societies have managed for more than half a century. The concept as such is deeply ingrained in Europe, well across the political spectrum. In fact what qualifies as conservative in my country would be considered a die heart liberal in the states.

I always wondered about this differences. The only explanation that I came up with is somewhat sad: Americans don't like the idea that their tax money goes to support other American's in need, because in an country of such diverse ethnic mix the solidarity between the citizens is just way lower than in older more homogeneous nation states.

Eventually, Van Riper got so fed up with all this cheating that he refused to play anymore.

Notice how the two credits are both British? The whole article lacks a, uh, how should I say, sense of authenticity. Maybe an interesting read, but so was this.

Lieutenant General Van Riper (read: LtGen = O-9, second highest rank he can attain = he knows how to make himself look good + actually does) "refused to play" ? Please. By refusing to play, especially in the army, he's risking not only his career, but his retirement (and at LtGen, he's almost certainly gotten his 20 years in), prison (especially if its as high scale and high profile of an exercise as this article makes it seem) and eventually a dishonorable discharge that'd make it hard for him to get another job anywhere.

It's ridiculous to think that Iraq could win a war against the US. In the first 12 hours of the Gulf War, Iraq's chances of winning were gone. In 10 years, things have changed, but not that much. Iraq does potentially have the ability to hurt us (through casualties, if hey have any of these weapons of mass destruction we've heard so much about), but other than that, what do you think they could do? They can't even fly planes in the southern half of their country, let alone far enough to do anything to 1) a US military base, or even 2) one of the regional bases US forces are using.

That said, it'd be nice if something happened to prevent a war altogether.

FYI, the link is without the space

(B)Regarding preserving your own voices and/or self-images, check out this and this.

Well, this one appeared quite recently. It turns out that sparrows don't like to live near cellphone towers, and that fact is being blamed for a large reduction in the British sparrow population.

At the present time, the scientists who believe that cell phone radiation causes health effects in humans are a small minority. However, everyone agrees that cell phone use can be hazardous, for example, as a distraction while driving.

The thing I was thinking of appeared, I believe, in a print copy of Reader's Digest that I was going through. I'm trying to remember the specifics...they were talking about how vacations intended to reduce stress weren't doing so because people frequently carry their cell phones and check email during the time. However, when they took away all contact, after an initially producing more tension ("I don't know what's going on back at the company!"), stress dropped. I don't remember the date on the thing though, and they weren't trying to identify what particular type of communication (phone/email) was the problem.

Here's the result of a quick Google search mentioning email. [shrug]

This , from the same search, show that email/phones are stressors, though not as harsh as the RD thing I was originally thinking of.

The IMF is a vehicle for implementing a policy that is designed to make poor nations poorer, and the US based financial world richer.

The IMF has a standard approach of privatization, deregularization, more taxes and less government spending. In practice, state assets are sold off to foreign investors, and capitals markets are deregulated to open the gates for speculation. At some point the price of basic living (cooking, heating, taxes) is raised, causing massive civil unrest, and collapse of the economy. In the ensuing turmoil, foreign corporations can buy the remaining assets of a country at garage-sale prices.

Don't take my word for it. Read about Joseph Stiglitz (Nobel laureate, former IMF economist and former director of the worldbank)

• salon
• The Observer
• The new republic online.

I'm pro-genetic engineering, but we've gotta be careful while we tamper with the forces of nature. Genes CAN apparently jump species barriers, see for example this...

Can this explain it?:

"A planet's magnetosphere is provided through its magnetic field. To create a magnetic field, a planet or moon must have magnetic material such has iron, which is warm enough to move around to form currents within the planet."

And isn't earth(s core) cooling down? - Can't this affect our magnetosphere? If the magnetic materail stop flowing?


My imaginary plot (IMHO):

Now I'm thinging that when earth switched poles, the core coold down, reversal happened, sometime after that earth got hit by a large enough meteor to restart our core (how elese could the core be restarted? there wasn't atomic weapons and the like back in those days, no! Good ol' fashion meteors had to suffice : )). Then earth keept it's (reverse) position till it coold down again, and re-reversed itself again. Sometime after, BAda'BOOM eine large enough meteor struck again, restarted our engine, and we keept on ticking.... untill soon enough (if we think 1000 year or more is soon..) when our core will stop flowing.

Can someone please look up how long ago earth was struck by a large enough meteor to turn earth in to a giant blob of lava? : )
I put my money on lets say 780 000 to one millon years ago :) (when the last revelsal was presumed to have happened.)


Earth cooling down:

Here's the tricky part; How much must the earth's core cool down for reversal to happen? Because for it to cool down entirilely it will take more than 1000 years.


Reference:
http://www.seismo.unr.edu/ftp/pub/louie/class/100/ interior.html
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/earth/moon/ moon_magnetic_field.html&edu=high
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/physical_sc ience/magnetism/magnetic_materials.html&edu=hi gh
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 92152
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,69 03,837058,00.html

Read about the plans to carve up Iraq's Oil Riches

Thanks for nothing.

Regime change begins at home!

Your argument: "He deserved his pay. Everyone knows he worked hard." Well, so did lots of people. You need to argue that he deserved what he got. Kenneth Lay probably worked his ass off.

That liberal idiots have managed to convince him to give back that money is a shame.

Yeah, liberal idiots like the Wall Street Journal. Find me a public defender of Jack Welch's compensation package. It stank to high hell. The deal was negotiated in secret and kept secret from investors. It was buried in an obscure place in an SEC filing, and only came out because of his wife's divorce filings. If it was such a clever move for the company financially and if every knows how much he deserves it, then why not allow investors to admire your move?

Here's the big question to the "Go Back To Russia" types. Is there any amount of compensation that is undeserved, if it was negotiated legally? If your answer is "NO", then enjoy your world, this is more about your religion than anything. But even the biggest free-market booster would say, yes, there is, and the market will correct for it. Well, it can't correct for what is kept secret.

Here's a decent more critical summary.

Freeh needs to find a whipping boy for the failures of correlating the various peices intelligence datum, which occurred on his watch. Restricting legal access to crypto will only assist in the illicit observation of constitutionally protected speech by private individuals, and destroy what little competitive advantage is enjoyed by U.S. software industries over their counterparts in Israel and India.

The algorithms and the source will not go "back in the can."

Louis Freeh is responsible, in a large part, for the biggest intelligence failure in modern recollection. None of the failure in this effort was for lack of access to encrypted communications, but from standard failures of organization and communications within the concerned agencies.

The Heritage Foundation - not normally critical of the FBI's mission - has this to say:

But what if FBI intelligence fails to collect, analyze and share this information? This could happen, the commission found, because "the guidelines under which FBI agents operate ... are badly written and confusing. These are guidelines that set out the terms under which the FBI can open a preliminary inquiry against somebody who may be suspected of being a terrorist. All of us read them (they run to about 42 pages) and we had a number of current and former FBI agents testify that they found them confusing."

The commission recommended that then Attorney General Janet Reno and former FBI Director Louis Freeh rewrite the guidelines into "more easily understood English."

Moreover, the FBI had no procedure for disseminating useful information for analysis within the agency or sharing it with other government agencies.

Information which was obtained, in Los Angeles, for example, but did not immediately apply to the case at hand, would simply not leave the regional office, even though it might provide important clues for another investigation, says Ambassador L. Paul Bremer, Ambassador at Large for Counterintelligence during the Reagan Administration and former Managing Director of Kissinger Associates.

An anonymous reader writes "According to an article on the Guardian, the UK Government has been working on a project to use the widely available mobile phone masts as a form of localised radar to track both people and vehicles without their knowledge. Supposedly there is even work underway to give this project the ability to see through walls! Maybe Philip K. Dick was right to be paranoid about governments."

This is almost as good as the Mohammed Al-Fayed VS Neil Hamilton libel case we had here (.uk) a few years ago. General opinion seemed to be "Shame they can't both lose".

That time it was Al-Fayed, who had an interesting past (and the worst decorated shop in central London), even before accusing MI6 and the Royal family of murdering his son (which, oddly enough, cost Harrods one of their royal warrants), and being sued for libel by Neil Hamilton, after Al-Fayed claimed he took bribes to ask questions in Parliment.

Hamilton lost and had to pay a big settlement before going to prison. Al-Fayed won, but I don't think telling a court that he bribed MPs was particularly helpful in his endless quest for British citizenship

So no-one really won

Remember, this is the same country whose leader believes that HIV does not cause AIDS. Their leaders (and by default, government) are quite obviously insane.

This, of course, in stark contrast to our country, whose leader believes that Africans should, under no circumstances, be educated about how AIDS is spread.

This is the same man that believes, down to the letter, in a book that says women and unborn children are property, among other ridiculous assertions

Like when Bush and pals purposefully used technological miscalculations to remove thousands of Democratic Florida voters from the voting pool. That's what I call corruption on a DB admin level.

although the story is a little old, thats still not all http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,69 03,750783,00.html