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When are they going to launch an MTV version of politician-real-world so people know wtf is really going on.

Don't miss Dog poop girl, South Korea's hateful version of Star Wars Kid! This one was covered in the Washington Post.

this and farm run off gets you egg producting male bass in the Potomac River.

According to Microsoft, "innovation" and "R&D" are all about training CS students to use Microsoft software instead of all of those old-fashioned languages and operating systems.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40000-20 03Aug24

At least *some* of the universities had the foresight to turn down Microsoft's bribe.

Read here, here and here.

Read about Pimentel here: http://www.pacificviews.org/archives/000653.html

Read about both here: http://www.ilcorn.org/Ethanol/Tribune_/tribune_.ht ml

Sounds more like the dictatorship Equatorial Guinea in west Africa, not Mozambique.

Neither of those are monarchies, though. (Moz is even a democracy) Perhaps you're thinking about Lesotho or Swaziland, both south African monarchies.. Although they don't have any significant oil AFAIK.

While no political group like PETA is above suspicion or critisim, either for matters of policy for the actions of it's members, readers should be aware the 'petakillsanimals.com' is in fact funded by commercial special interest groups in order to spread what can best be described as FUD.

It is run by a professional Washington lobbiest (and lawyer) named Richard Berman, and funded by companies that sell and produce animal products. They have been outed by the Washington Post, as well as by special interest groups on the other side of the fence.

To quote the Post:

The group was founded about 10 years ago with tobacco-company and restaurant money to fight smoking curbs in restaurants. Back then, the group called itself Guest Choice Network. But it changed its name in 2001, as it shifted its focus to food and beverage issues, raised by concerns about obesity, mad cow disease and genetically modified products.

The group in question has access to vast sums of money, clearly enough to cover the errection of billboards in Times Square to advertise the site, not to mention being able to afford the services of Mr Berman. It seems fairly clear it's rather more money than PETA have access to (dispite them being more of the most profile chariable organisations in the US). If this is in doubt, it's worth pointing out that a cheif founder of Berman's group is the worlds largest tabbaco company, the notorious multi billion dollar Philip Morris.

Bizzare that people should feel the need to defend a fake 'grass roots' campaign run by a special interest food, alchohol and tobbacoo lobbyist and lawyer, but it takes all sorts.

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With regard to the article, I thought the military have had this sort of thing for decades. IIRC early versions going back at least to the Vietnam war and were in use up until fairly recently (if not still in use today - which I would think they they probably are) basically used treated bandages with 'supeglue' to hold people together at least till they reached a medevac point.

I can only imagine the reason why the use of this sort of bandage might not be more mainstream, is that it's it's not as useful in a civilian urban enviornment where most people are within reach of emergency services and hospitals, making the need for this sort of 'stop gap' approach somewhat redundant.

Though the specific element aimed at speeding clotting could be useful (assming it doesn't kill you if your allergic to shellfish, or cause a blood clot which travels to your arteries and then kills you) I can't see actual ground up shrimp being a very economic way to meet demand, and have to think it would be far cheaper to synthasize a similar compound in the long run.

With all of the talk about Karl Rove's involvement in the leak of Valerie Plame's job at the CIA and postition as a NCO, why is the real damage caused not being discussed again?

The cover company that Mrs. Plame worked for - Brewser-Jennings & Assoc. - was also identified by this leak. What damage has THAT caused by potentially revealing other secret agents and contacts???

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40012-20 03Oct3?language=printer

http://opensecrets.org/indivs/search.asp?NumOfThou =0&txtName=wilson%2C+valerie&txtState=DC&txtZip=&t xtEmploy=&txtCand=&txt2000=Y&txt1998=Y&Order=N

Wilson originally donated $2000 to the Gore campaign, but like any good CIA agent who plays both sides, he also gave $1000 to the Bush primary campaign.
Leak of Agent's Name Causes Exposure of CIA Front Firm (washingtonpost.com)

"Wilson was originally listed as having given $2,000 to Gore during the primary campaign in 1999, but the donation, over the legal limit of $1,000, was "reattributed" so that Wilson and Plame each gave $1,000 to Gore. Wilson also gave $1,000 to the Bush primary campaign, but there is no donation listed from his wife."

Let's just agree he should have said "releasing" instead of "creating".

David J Farber suggests "instrumental in the development of" would be more accurate.

Given the hostile and partisan way Gore's words have been misinterpreted, I doubt if Gore's critics are interested in his actual contribution to the creation of the Internet, however he might have phrased it.

The award mentioned in the post that started this thread speaks for itself.

Well, Karl Rove's lawyer Robert Luskin was making public claims that saying "Joseph Wilson's wife is a CIA agent" doesn't actually reveal that her name is "Valerie", and so isn't illegal.

You and Lazarus should get together and offer him googling lessons, y'know?

Of course it's not that hard to find out where someone is working (in this case, the existence of Brewster-Jennings wasn't a secret, but the fact that it was a CIA front was).

But the CIA would have had more time to make sure its agents and assets were secure if the company hadn't been listed on her election contribution records. You can see them at Open Secrets

I'm not saying that campaign contribution disclosure is a bad thing. It's essential to the media and bloggers investigating governmental corruption.

But this is more pathetic evidence that Karl Rove, and everyone else involved at the White House, just didn't care. They were far more interested in retaliation and their own political gain than in the lives that were endangered, and the millions of dollars that were wasted.

Seems the guys in the last SCO article had a point. When the Bush administration leads by example with it's Neo-Morality business leaders follow.

The tragedy embedded in these memos is that the Brits were mistaken in their two most basic premises: first, that Saddam Hussein really had WMD and really posed a threat; second, that just because Bush needed Blair's support, Blair could somehow influence him...
At least the Brits clearly saw the difficulties ahead and tried to engage Bush on their implications. Had he listened, our biggest problems in Iraq today might be a great deal smaller. This is another lesson to be gleaned from the Downing Street memos.

"Similar charges have been made about U.N. missions in Sierra Leone and Liberia, as well as Kosovo and Bosnia in Europe."

And now they're already talking about taxing domain names. Oh yes, please let the UN take control of the Internet I'm sure it will run oh so much smoother with incompetent, corrupt political officers running it.

A man in Virginia was convicted of advocating jihad against the U.S. by "inspiring his followers to attend terrorist training camps abroad" He was sentenced to 25 years.

Conceivably, a Web site that linked to one of his speeches would also be guilty of something.

linky

The external fuel tank was blamed for the Columbia accident, so they've extensively redesigned it this time round. The problem isn't that the tank is getting old: It's that it's new and untested.

And, Lord knows, this was a slashdot-specific story, and you certainly couldn't have gotten details anywhere else before you opened your mouth.

I went to a private ("faith-based," in modern lingo) school for grades 1-12, so my personal experience with public schools is a little limited, but my school was in the same town as a public school that routinely turned out kids with 1600s on the SAT. (I got a comparatively paltry 1450.)

Newsweek magazine publishes a periodic list of the "best" high schools, measured by how many Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate tests are given at the school each year, divided by the number of graduating seniors. The theory is that schools administering those tests are exposing their students to a more rigorous academic experience that will better prepare them for university.

The top schools in any given year have ratios of something like 6-10 AP/IB tests per graduate. That's a lot... and I doubt they suck.

According to latest PISA studies, Finnish education system is one of the best. There's some interesting posts from the American point of view about Finnish schools in Robert Kaiser's Finland Diary in Washington Post. One should also read Kaiser's answers to readers questions, many of those are related to education.

According to latest PISA studies, Finnish education system is one of the best. There's some interesting posts from the American point of view about Finnish schools in Robert Kaiser's Finland Diary in Washington Post. One should also read Kaiser's answers to readers questions, many of those are related to education.

Is Grand Inquisitor Gonzales going to torture these suspects personally? Or will he "render" them to one of our "allies"?

Is Grand Inquisitor Gonzales going to torture these suspects personally? Or will he "render" them to one of our "allies"?

We have companies like New Generation Motors, which is owned by the former advisors of the George Washington University solar car team, and they used equiptment that had been bought for the project tax exempt. (and when I tried asking for the stuff back, I got bitched out and told that our faculty advisor could store the stuff whereever he wanted, even if it meant we couldn't use it on the project) -- although he was kind enough to give us stuff with 'property of NASA' tags on it, where two of them also worked.

They claimed the work of students as that of the company, and they made axial flux motors that are used in many of the solar cars today.

I reported this to the Dean of GW's engineering school in 1995 (right after the success of GW at the World Solar Rallye), and was threatened with expulsion to shut me up. (I didn't know he was bringing in a $3mil grant to the university, and they'd rather have that, than ethics).

Of course, the faculty advisor kept being greedy, and was finally charged with embezzlement for a completely unrelated grant last year.

We have companies like New Generation Motors, which is owned by the former advisors of the George Washington University solar car team, and they used equiptment that had been bought for the project tax exempt. (and when I tried asking for the stuff back, I got bitched out and told that our faculty advisor could store the stuff whereever he wanted, even if it meant we couldn't use it on the project) -- although he was kind enough to give us stuff with 'property of NASA' tags on it, where two of them also worked.

They claimed the work of students as that of the company, and they made axial flux motors that are used in many of the solar cars today.

I reported this to the Dean of GW's engineering school in 1995 (right after the success of GW at the World Solar Rallye), and was threatened with expulsion to shut me up. (I didn't know he was bringing in a $3mil grant to the university, and they'd rather have that, than ethics).

Of course, the faculty advisor kept being greedy, and was finally charged with embezzlement for a completely unrelated grant last year.

In addition, the subcommittee acted to eliminate within two years all federal money for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting -- which passes federal funds to public broadcasters -- starting with a 25 percent reduction in CPB's budget for next year, from $400 million to $300 million.

(emphasis added)

It might not work so well: the EV1 was leased too much to the dismay of owners (well, leasees) when GM killed it. Green-minded people might prefer to buy the Hondas outright, in the light of Californian EV1 owners' experiences.

Apparently, there were objections from Microsoft when DHS started to point out that Microsoft was the problem. What's left of the "National Cyber Security Division" actually seems to be CMU's CERT plus a front man, Andy Purdy, in Washington.

was his regime worse than Saddam's?

I agree with Litvinov, I think her use of the word was wrong. I also maintain their description of SAVAK and the Shah's regime was accurate. You clearly still haven't read about it, or you would be much quieter.

The most biased of all screaming "bias!" at others seems to be the hallmark of our time.

Do you think you can discount all of AI's history and work from that one comment? Do you like to use a single gaffe to discredit an entire organization? Someone has told you that you can, maybe by example. They were playing you for a huge fool.

How about a presidential candidate, for instance, who speaks haughtily and with great fanfare about restoring dignity to the whitehouse, shortly before calling a reporter as an "asshole?"

I deliberately picked the most innocuous example I could think of. Bush has no credibility either, by your standard.

I'm just waiting for you to crack open that source material. There is no republican party cheat sheet on the Shah's Iran. Just cold hard facts... When we are done here, you'll realize "gulag of our time" is nothing to what you've done, and you'll be caught in your own trap. Or will you not be man enough to admit it?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/07/07/AR2005070700698.html
The article is quite informative, actually. They even mention Firefox by name, and a big picture of the logo!, tho they managed to not make that nice logo link to Firefox.

But note the last 2 paragraphs:
The St. Petersburg Times did an interview with Reed Freeman, chief privacy officer at Claria. That company, once known as Gator, took a licking in the public forum over its adware deliveries, but Freeman told the paper that the company has changed its practices:
"Consumers shouldn't have to go hunt for disclosure of that nature," he said. "Adware companies that are interested in broad consumer acceptance ought to be putting their disclosures in the download process as they are getting the product so they can make an informed decision about what they're getting."

This is The Post, after all, so you can be Absolutely Certain that 'Claria' has, indeed, changed its spots.

Now, where the hell do I find (a big enough check to retain) that PR firm?

> I would run up and give every Pakistani soldier I
> saw a big wet smooch on the cheek.

Yeah, don't forget that the mustard gas was sold to Bush by Pakistan. That "comerce" took place for many years, until something happened, then Bush was no longer a friend and guess what? There was lots of bussineses to be made invading the US, which would mean more money,so they give you a little democracy, they liberate you, of course in the process of it they kill part of your family because they mistakenly bombed your house instead of the insurgent militia, who cares? Now you go and kiss every Pakistan soldier... I suppose you would have lots of dinamite stripped around your body when you kiss them!!

and Rush Limbaugh types CONTINUE to promote such a story: The Saddam-9/11 Link Confirmed" By Laurie Mylroie, FrontPageMagazine.com / May 11, 2004 but the FACT is that the US government intelligence community (apart from the administration's loyalty-oathers) was already very skeptical of the meeting way back in 2002. And as far as Bush himself never saying it, you are monstrously false. What part of these statements is unclear to you? See also: June 18th radio address appearing to link the two: "We went to war because we were attacked, and we are at war today because there are still people out there who want to harm our country and hurt our citizens. Some may disagree with my decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, but all of us can agree that the world's terrorists have now made Iraq a central front in the war on terror"

The issue here is not what triggered the attack, the issue is why Al Qaeda was allowed to escape.

Yes. And the US also slipped up in 1996 as well, and allowed Osama Bin Laden to escape to Afghanistan. It's easy to see what should've been done, in hindsight...

The most amazing part is that Bush himself has said this. In an interview on the Today show last summer, when asked about the "war on terror" Bush said, "I don't think you can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world. Let's put it that way." To be quite honest, when I heard that quotation I thought that was hands down the most intelligent thing I'd ever hear him say. He was absolutely right; however, he backpeddled the next day and everyone (including John Edwards and other democrats) were saying, "He's wrong. We can so win!" It seems the whole country is in a state of denial on the issue.

Now, lest I seem to praise Bush too much, while I think he was right (before he recanted, anyway), I think his idea of the means to make terrorism "less acceptable" is completely wrong, and those means are making matters worse, not better. The problem is that in the end he is talking about winning "hearts and minds", and dropping bombs on people is not a very good way to do that.

They have a "Privacy Commissioner"! In the US, we've got secret police.

"These days it's all secrecy, no privacy."
- The Rolling Stones, Fingerprint File

I must have missed that meeting then. They did denounce the elections in Iraq...

Sure, they denounced that election. But only as a sub-set of democracy in general. Here is the quote from the man himself, Bin Laden's head head-remover in Iraq:

"We have declared a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy and those who follow this wrong ideology," said the speaker, who identified himself as Zarqawi. "Anyone who tries to help set up this system is part of it."

Righto, there you have it. You might also read this Washington Post piece by Fawaz A. Gerges, wherein he discusses the Al Queda position that "democracy is heresy itself." And quote's Bin Laden's take on the new Iraqi provisional constitution, which he says is by its nature, heretical. It's nature, by the way, calls for equality, representative government, freedom of speech... you know, all of those heresies that we (and the newly bloodied UK) also stand for.

All of the head people so far have been former oil industry workers.

Really? Let's see. How about their new Foreign Affairs Minister? Just picked one at random. Point is, even though he hasn't had anything to do with the oil industry, that other than being part of Saddam's military thugocracy, there wasn't much industry in Iraq, so most people with any social clout amount the local establishment/society there are going to have at least some connection to what amounts to the national industry. Pretty hard to avoid. And, since oil revenue is about the only thing (other than the charity of other nations) that will bring Iraq up out the crumbling infrastructure they inherited from Saddam (not counting the palaces he built with skimmed-off "food" money), it's not like it's a bad thing for people who know that business to be involved in the running of a country that depends upon that business.

Perhaps you are confusing Al Qaida with the fundamentalists who run Saudi and Iran?

Um, most of the Al Queda hierarchy is Saudi, or has received a lot of their cash from them. Bin Laden, of course - the founder of the group - is Saudi.

Contrast the likes of Jerry Fallwell with any sane Christian out there. Is it fair to tar all Christians with the same gay-hating "AIDS is a blessing from God" brush? I think not!

Hmmm. Probably not. But it's also reasonable for those very same Christians to be the most vocal people in showing how Falwell is wrong. Likewise, for all the talk of how peaceful most Muslims are, it's Muslims that should be completely non-stop shouting down the extremist members of their culture or explaining over and over how they are not good Muslims. Instead, you get Al Jazeera treating these jerks like heros, and much of the Muslim world tuning in there for their news. You don't see the major western news outlets talking about how wise and brave Falwell is - he's mostly the subject of jokes. But Bin Laden, or his buddies like Zarqawi, are help up as examples of righteousness in the popular Islamic media. To the extent that decent Muslims don't shun and boycott that sort of nonsense, it's pretty hard indeed to separate what you'd hope were just some violent extremists in the minority from the larger majority. But they don't even separate themselves, let alone demonstrate why the rest of the world should think of them that way.

How about this story from the Washington Post (posted in February/March 2002)?

Or, is that all part of the conspiracy, too? Open your eyes a little, and start questioning authority! Was a "shadow government"-like system manipulating the strings for 9/11 to occur? Who knows? One has to wonder though:

• How (and better, WHY?) the USA PATRIOT Act was "just waiting in the wings" all prepared nicely to stomp on our freedoms?
• Why Bush took so damn long to respond and act after knowing about the attacks on that day?
• Why an investigation into the matter after the fact was whitewashed and swept under the carpet so fast?
• Why was the wreckage was carted away so quickly and without investigation or accident reconstruction or forensic work?
• How Bush managed to see video of the first plane hitting (which he noted at least 2 or 3 times in speeches on 9/11) when that video wasn't released to the news and public until the FOLLOWING day?
• Why all the events that have happenned since Bush came to power have seemed to follow the plan set forth on this website?
• What about the membership roster of the people of that website - why does it read like a list of who's who in our federal government?

There are so many unanswered questions, so many things being kept buried, and some days it seems the entire American populace (though I know that is a broad brush to paint with, and is most certainly untrue) are burying their heads in the sand, hiding and cowering in fear and uncertainty, shamelessly obeying their leaders.

FEAR! OBEY! FEAR! OBEY!

These are the seeming rallying crys of today's American society. It is sickening. It is reprehensible. IT IS A DAMN LIE.

Here

If you're (still) in a frog-bashing mood, don't bother to click the above link. It says good things about the French.

What I gather from this article is that you don't fight terror by invading unrelated countries. You fight terror through boring, tedious and frustrating police and intelligence work. You share resources and information with your allies, you try to outwit the terrorists.

I think it was John Kerry who got bashed for saying something along the lines "I don't think we can ever win the war on terror, but we can reduce it to a mere nuisance". He was spot on. And the guys this article mention are doing just that. Their cost is several orders of magnitude below the cost of the Iraq war and I think they are far more effective.

Invading Iraq was a huge mistake as far as terrorism is concerned. Proponents of this war tend to present a false dichotomy. It was invading Iraq or doing nothing. This is wrong. The choice was between invading Iraq and setting up more of this kind of counter-terrorist cells.

Simple fact is that after attacking Afghanistan after 9/11 and going after terrorists aggressively for a change, the number of terrorist attacks has not risen from normal even during the "jihad against all involved" claims.

You are simply flatly wrong

Now that we have Google there is no need to invent demonstrably false facts like this. My search terms were "number of terrorist attacks", and I tried several permutations and got approximately the same results, so it wasn't a function of the particular terms I used. Try it sometime. Perhaps you were originally misinformed by something having to do with this.

Simple fact is that after attacking Afghanistan after 9/11 and going after terrorists aggressively for a change, the number of terrorist attacks has not risen from normal even during the "jihad against all involved" claims.

You are simply flatly wrong

Now that we have Google there is no need to invent demonstrably false facts like this. My search terms were "number of terrorist attacks", and I tried several permutations and got approximately the same results, so it wasn't a function of the particular terms I used. Try it sometime. Perhaps you were originally misinformed by something having to do with this.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A796 7-2004Oct28.html

I've read too much anecdotal and heard too much from insiders to discount the possibility. And the economic news is right there in the open, it's like people need even bigger clues?? heh. My own nephew walked away from an Army career a few years ago because he didn't want to be used domestically, and he said they were being trained for that eventuality, and it wasn't "foreigners" they were emphasizing according to what he told me. This is appropriate, if you follow their labeling of a lot of things as "terrorist" and read the fine print in the Patriot act, Modern states health powers emergency act,etc.

WA Post has an "enlargeable image" showing the plume from the side. I haven't found a bigger one yet. What I really want is video.

But the cgaracters or other intellectual works within the copyrighted work can have a much longer life. Think mickey mouse. The little blighter has been going on for decades through indidual works. One might make profits from mickey for at least ninety-nine years.

So give the intelectual property within a work 99 years. Give the work overall 30 years.

I wonder if Mexico would have their controversy for a less-known character...

It's shocking to me how little Americans know about corruption in their government and how the corruption has lowered the quality of their lives.

The U.S. government has weak accounting laws that allow hiding the true profitability of a company. That's how so many people lost money in the Merrill Lynch, Enron, Arthur Anderson (28,000 people lost their jobs.), Worldcom, Tyco, Adelphia, HealthSouth, and many other cases. But most people just don't care, and the U.S. government has still done little but prosecute a few of the most open and obvious perpetrators. No effective, fundamental changes have been made.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/07/01/AR2005070100611_2.html

tripmaster made the washington post (online)

Yeah, I'd definitely go for a group whose members have set up enforced prostition rings.

And let's not forget what they do for the children.

Whether someone is allowed to give a speech is not up to me or the government.

I wasn't asking about just "giving a speech". I was asking about giving speeches on government property, as that's one thing George Will was talking about in the op-ed of his that you cited. If giving speeches, talks, etc. in government buildings is not up to the government, that's fine; if it is, however, the government had better allow people to give talks saying , for example, "Christianity is stupid. Communism is good." (to pick an extreme example) on the floor of the house if they're going to allow "two very Christian discourses" there.