carapace – Not your father's america

JPG Magazine

JPG Magazine is about imagemaking without attitude. Join us to share your best photos. Help make the magazine by voting. You might even make a few bucks!

At:

http://jpgmag.com/

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Sector Snap: Ethanol Producers Slide

Houston Chronicle – United States

Sept. 25, 2006, 12:18PM

NEW YORK — Shares of ethanol producers tumbled in Monday afternoon trading, as crude oil prices continue to ease and Prudential cut its earnings estimate for …

Complete article at:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/4212528.html

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#17 of 17 rules to bring you up to speed on what you need to believe to be a Republican.

Support for hunters who shoot their friends and blame them for wearing orange vests similar to those worn by the quail.

Complete article at:

http://sr4001.com/2006/09/04/believe-republican/

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#17 of the Top 25 Censored Stories of 2007

#17 Iraq Invasion Promotes OPEC Agenda

Sources:
Harper’s in coordination with BBC Television Newsnight, October 24, 2005
Title: “OPEC and the economic conquest of Iraq”
Author: Greg Palast

The Guardian March 20, 2006
” Bush Didn’t Bungle Iraq, You Fools: The Mission Was Indeed Accomplished”
Author: Greg Palast

Faculty Evaluator: David McCuan
Student Researcher: Isaac Dolido

According to a report from journalist, Greg Palast, the U.S. invasion of Iraq was indeed about the oil. However, it wasn’t to destroy OPEC, as claimed by neoconservatives in the administration, but to take part in it.

The U.S. strategic occupation of Iraq has been an effective means of acquiring access to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). As long as the interim government adheres to the production caps set by the organization, the U.S. will ensure profits to the international oil companies (IOCs), the OPEC cartel, and Russia.

With the prolonged insurgency following the invasion, along with internal corruption and pipeline destruction, hard line neoconservative plans for a completely privatized Iraq were dashed. According to some administration insiders, the idea of a laissez-faire, free-market reconstruction of Iraq was never a serious consideration. One oil industry consultant to Iraq told Palast he was amused by “the obsession of neoconservative writers on ways to undermine OPEC.”

In December 2003, says Palast, the State Department drafted a 323-page plan entitled “Options for Developing a Long Term Sustainable Iraqi Oil Industry.” This plan directs the Iraqis to maintain an oil quota system that will enhance its relationship with OPEC. It describes several possible state-owned options that range from the Saudi Aramco model (in which the government owns the whole operation) to the Azerbaijan model (in which the system is almost entirely operated by the International Oil Companies).

Implementation of the plan was guided by a handful of oil industry consultants, promoting an OPEC-friendly policy but preferring the Azerbaijan model to the “self-financing” system of the Saudi Aramco, as it grants operation and control to the foreign oil companies (the 2003 report warns Iraqis against cutting into IOC profits). Once the contracts are granted, these companies then manage, fund, and equip crude extraction in exchange for a percentage of the sales. Given the way in which the interests of OPEC and those of the IOCs are so closely aligned, it is certainly understandable why smashing OPEC’s oil cartel might not appeal to certain elements of the Bush administration.

According to the drafters and promoters of the plan, dismantling OPEC would be a catastrophe. The last thing they want is the privatization of Iraq’s oil fields and the specter of competition maximizing production. Pumping more oil per day than the OPEC regulated quota of almost 4 million, would quickly bring down Iraq’s economy and compromise the U.S. position in the global market.

Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, profits have shot up for oil companies. In 2004, the major U.S. oil companies posted record or near record profits. In 2005 profits for the five largest oil companies increased to $113 billion. In February 2006, ConocoPhillips reported a doubling of its quarterly profits from the previous year, which itself had been a company record. Shell posted a record breaking $4.48 billion in fourth-quarter earnings—and in 2005, ExxonMobil reported the largest one-year operating profit of any corporation in U.S. history.

Complete article at:

http://www.projectcensored.org/censored_2007/index.htm

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NLRB Decision Affecting 8 Million Workers Could Happen Any Day

by James Parks, Sep 25, 2006

The definition of one word—”supervisor”—could determine for years to come whether the basic rights of America’s workers are protected.

As early as this week, the Bush-appointed National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is set to decide a trio of cases known as “Kentucky River.” If the NLRB expands the definition of supervisor, that move could take away contract protections from hundreds of thousands of workers represented by unions and deny as many as 8 million workers their freedom to form unions. Federal labor law does not give supervisors the right to join unions or engage in collective bargaining.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) says the decisions could “very well change the basic rights of American workers.” Yet DeLauro points out that such a monumental decision could be made without the groundwork needed by the nation’s labor board.

Given the stakes, the NLRB needs to be as thorough as possible in hearing testimony. The fact that the NLRB has not held hearings shows that the board is not taking this case as seriously as it should. At the heart of the issue is the right of workers to organize, to bargain collectively and to share in decisions.

DeLauro spoke at a Sept. 22 conference sponsored by the Center for American Progress (CAP) Action Fund on the possible impact of the Kentucky River cases.

If the NLRB expands the legal definition of supervisor, DeLauro says she expects congressional Democrats would give “some kind of thought to what legislative remedies are available,” but would not specify any except possibly limiting funds to the NLRB to enforce the ruling.

…

Complete article at:

http://blog.aflcio.org/2006/09/25/nlrb-decision-affecting-8-million-workers-could-happen-any-day/

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More Employers Reduce, Drop Retiree Health Benefits as Costs Increase

Access this story and related links online:

http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=40054

U.S. employers “are increasingly targeting health benefits as a way to save money,” a trend that has left many retirees with “thousands of dollars” in additional health care costs, the Los Angeles Times reports. According to the Times, employers began to reduce retiree health benefits in the 1990s because of changes in accounting standards that required more cost disclosure, and in recent years “the benefits are falling victim to rising health care expenses and corporate cost cutting.” Retirees on average account for 29% of health care costs for large employers that offered such benefits, according to Hewitt Associates. In addition, retiree health care costs for large employers that offered such benefits increased by as much as 10.3% from 2004 to 2005, according to a recent survey conducted by Hewitt and the Kaiser Family Foundation. As a result, many large employers, such as General Motors and AT&T/Lucent Technologies, have “scaled back” health benefits for retirees and have considered additional reductions to benefits for future retirees, the Times reports. Twelve-percent of large employers between 2004 and 2005 said that they will not offer health benefits to future retirees, according to the survey conducted by Hewitt and the Kaiser Family Foundation. Currently, one in three large employers offers retiree health benefits, compared with two in three in the late 1980s, according to survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust.

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Conservative Mag: Voting machines can be hacked on Election Day, votes stolen

At:

http://www.insightmag.com/Media/MediaManager/Elections.htm

From: Poacnewsletter

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Fox News president Ailes accused Pres. Clinton of “assault on all journalists,” overlooking his, Fox’s history of attacking media

During an Associated Press interview, discussing the President Clinton-Chris Wallace Fox News Sunday interview, Fox News chief Roger Ailes accused Clinton of an “assault on Wallace” and an “assault on all journalists,” when Clinton forcefully responded to Wallace’s question about why he did not “do more to put Al Qaeda and bin Laden out of business” when he was president.

Read more

http://mediamatters.org/items/dailyemail/200609280014?src=other

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Borowitz Report – Saddam Judge Shocker

Legal Experts Question Selection of Kangaroo as Saddam’s New Judge

Import From Sydney Zoo Draws Mixed Reviews

Two weeks after the judge in Saddam Hussein’s trial for crimes against humanity was dismissed for displaying leniency towards the former Iraqi dictator, the proceedings became embroiled in controversy once again as legal experts questioned the selection of a kangaroo as the judge’s replacement.

While the dismissal of the previous judge, Abdullah al-Amiri, raised eyebrows in legal circles because it suggested to some that the Iraqi government was trying to predetermine the results of the trial, the selection of a kangaroo from the Sydney Zoo in Australia did little to allay those concerns.

“The new Iraqi government is already facing an uphill struggle to gain any kind of credibility for the trial of Saddam Hussein,” said Hassan El-Medfaai, president of the Iraqi Bar Association. “It is hard to see how putting a kangaroo in charge helps achieve that goal.”

The kangaroo, who was known as Annette during her tenure at the Sydney Zoo, received mixed reviews on her first day in the Baghdad courtroom where Mr. Hussein is being tried.

After one of the former dictator’s trademark outbursts, the kangaroo appeared alarmed, jumped from the bench, and had to be subdued with a tranquilizer dart before the proceedings could continue.

At the White House, President Bush praised Saddam’s new judge and said that he would consider appointing a kangaroo to the U.S. Supreme Court, so long as the kangaroo agreed with him on abortion and prayer in schools.

Elsewhere, a team of French doctors made history by performing surgery in zero gravity on an airplane, but were then arrested for bringing liquids and sharp objects onboard.

http://www.borowitzreport.com/

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three to see

David Horsey: coddle terrorists

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/dayart/20060929/cartoon20060929.gif

Bad Reporter(Don Asmussen): war on girls gone wild and more

http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/pictures/2006/09/29/092906-950×315-badreporter.gif

Matt Bors, Idiot Box: Rumsfeldian dementia

http://www.cagle.com/working/060925/bors.jpg

THE IMPERIALISM EXPERIMENT

Joshua Holland, AlterNet

Historian Greg Grandin explains how ‘militant anti-Communists’ in the Reagan administration developed the model for the Bush doctrine.

At:

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/42073/

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The Amnesty-for-Torturers Act?

NAT HENTOFF, http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/nhentoff.htm

Hentoff writes in his column in today’s Washington Times: “Little attention is being paid to Section 6 of this Warner-McCain-Graham bill that denies the right to a habeas-corpus hearing not only to Guantanamo Bay prisoners, but to any alien detainee outside the United States designated by the president as an ‘enemy combatant.’ …

“Nine retired federal judges have tried to awaken Congress to this constitutional crisis. Among them are such often-honored jurists as Shirley Hufstedler, Nathaniel Jones, Patricia Wald, H. Lee Sarokin and William Sessions (who was head of the CIA and the FBI). They write, particularly with regard to Mr. McCain’s concerns about torture, that without habeas petitions, how will the judiciary ensure that ‘Executive detentions are not grounded on torture’?”

From: Institute for Public Accuracy

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#16 of 17 rules to bring you up to speed on what you need to believe to be a Republican.

What Bill Clinton did in the 1960s is of vital national interest, but what Bush did in the ’80s is irrelevant.

Complete article at:

http://sr4001.com/2006/09/04/believe-republican/

 

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#16 of the Top 25 Censored Stories of 2007

#16 Ecuador and Mexico Defy US on International Criminal Court

Sources:

Agence France Press News (School of the Americas Watch), June 22, 2005
Title: “Ecuador Refuses to Sign ICC Immunity Deal for US Citizens”
Author: Alexander Martinez

Inter Press Service, November 2, 2005
Title: “Mexico Defies Washington on the International Criminal Court”
Author: Katherine Stapp

Faculty Evaluator: Elizabeth Martinez
Student Researchers: Jessica Rodas, David Abbott, and Charlene Jones

Ecuador and Mexico have refused to sign bilateral immunity agreements (BIA) with the U.S., in ratification of the International Criminal Court (ICC) treaty. Despite the Bush administration’s threat to withhold economic aid, both countries confirmed allegiance to the ICC, the international body established to try individuals accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

On June 22, 2005 Ecuador’s president, Alfredo Palacios, vocalized emphatic refusal to sign a BIA (also known as an Article 98 agreement to the Rome Statute of the ICC) in spite of Washington’s threat to withhold $70 million a year in military aid.

Mexico, having signed the Rome Statute, which established the ICC in 2000, formally ratified the treaty on October 28, 2005, making it the 100th nation to join the ICC. As a consequence of ratifying the ICC without a U.S. immunity agreement, Mexico stands to lose millions of dollars in U.S. aid—including $11.5 million to fight drug trafficking.

On September 29, 2005 the U.S. State Department reported that it had secured 100 “immunity agreements,” although less than a third have been ratified.

“Our ultimate goal is to conclude Article 98 agreements with every country in the world, regardless of whether they have signed or ratified the ICC, regardless of whether they intend to in the future,” said John Bolton, former U.S. Undersecretary for Arms Control and current U.S. ambassador to the United Nations—and one of the ICC’s staunchest opponents.

The U.S. effort to undermine the ICC was given teeth in 2002, when the U.S. Congress adopted the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act (ASPA), which contains provisions restricting U.S. cooperation with the ICC by making U.S. support of UN peacekeeping missions largely contingent on achieving impunity for all U.S. personnel. The ASPA prohibits U.S. military assistance to ICC member states that have not signed a BIA.

Legislation far more wide-reaching, however, was signed into law by President Bush on December 2004. The Nethercutt Amendment authorizes the loss of Economic Support Funds (ESF) to countries, including many key U.S. allies, that have not signed a BIA. Threatened under the Nethercutt Amendment are: funds for international security and counterterrorism efforts, peace process programs, antidrug-trafficking initiatives, truth and reconciliation commissions, wheelchair distribution, human rights programs, economic and democratic development, and HIV/Aids education, among others. The Nethercutt Amendment was readopted by the U.S. Congress in November 2005.1

In spite of severe U.S. pressure, fifty-three members of the ICC have refused to sign BIAs.

Katherine Stapp asserts that if Washington follows through on threats to slash aid to ICC member states, it risks further alienating key U.S. allies and drawing attention to its own increasingly shaky human rights record. “There will be a price to be paid by the U.S. government in terms of its credibility,” Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch’s International Justice Program, told IPS.\But criticism of the administration’s hard line has also come from unlikely quarters.

Testifying before Congress in March, Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, the commander of U.S. military forces in Latin America, complained that the sanctions had excluded Latin American officers from U.S. training programs and could allow China, which has been seeking military ties with Latin America, to fill the void.

“We now risk losing contact and interoperability with a generation of military classmates in many nations of the region, including several leading countries,” Craddock told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Experts say it is particularly notable that Mexico, which sells 88 percent of its exports in the U.S. market, is defying pressure from Washington.

“It’s exactly because of the geographic and trade proximity between Mexico and the United States that Mexico’s ratification takes on greater significance in terms of how isolated the U.S. government is in its attitude toward the ICC,” Dicker told IPS.

…

Complete article at:

http://www.projectcensored.org/censored_2007/index.htm

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“Values Voter Summit”

Features Attack on “Faggots,” Claim That Gay Rights Movement Inspired “From The Pit Of Hell Itself”. When did “values” become synonymous with hate?

At:

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/09/26/anti-gay-summit/

From: Poacnewsletter

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Media ignored Dick Armey’s attack on Dobson and his “gang of thugs”

A Media Matters for America review of cable and broadcast networks and major newspapers showed no coverage of recent criticism by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX) of the “embarrassing spectacle of the Republican Party’s “blatant pandering” to the Christian right and James Dobson, founder and chairman of Focus on the Family. Armey asserted that “Dobson and his gang of thugs are real nasty bullies.” Armey’s comments appeared in a September 23 op-ed (subscription required) in The Wall Street Journal and in an interview with author Ryan Sager, which was excerpted on September 15, on the weblog RealClearPolitics.com and on Sager’s blog. Sager interviewed Armey in 2005 for Sager’s book The Elephant in the Room: Evangelicals, Libertarians and the Battle for the Soul of the Republican Party (Wiley, August 2006).

Read more

http://mediamatters.org/items/dailyemail/200609260013?src=other

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Peek at NSA’s Secret Reading List

By Ryan Singel

02:00 AM Sep, 27, 2006

The tantalizing tables of contents to the best spy magazines you’ll probably never get to read have been posted online, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request that pried open four classified National Security Agency publications.

Written specifically for NSA employees, the articles listed in the online indexes date back as far as 1956. Stories include an analysis of the TRS-80 Model 1′s password-encryption algorithm, accounts of how Soviet codes were broken, analyses of bad management techniques within the sprawling eavesdropping agency, and an insider’s view of North Korea’s capture of the spy boat U.S.S. Pueblo in 1968.

The Memory Hole, a website dedicated to ferreting out and publishing government documents, posted the indexes from Cryptologic Quarterly, Cryptologic Almanac, Cryptologic Spectrum and NSA Technical Journal on Monday. The lists were obtained following a smartly targeted FOIA request filed by researcher Michael Ravnitzky in 2003.

At:

http://www.thememoryhole.org/nsa/bibs.htm

“This is one of the first glimpses we have had into NSA’s own library — and it’s a safe bet there are some gems in there,” said Secrecy News editor Steven Aftergood.

Titles include “NSA in the Cyberpunk Future: A Somewhat Educated Guess at Things to Come” (1996), “I Was a Cryptologic Corporal” (1983), “Inference and Cover Stories” (1993), “Handy-Dandy Field Site History: Fifty Years of Field Operations, 1945-1995,” “The Fallacy of the One-Time-Pad Excuse” (1969), “Meteor Burst Communications: An Ignored Phenomenon?” (1990) and “KAL 007 Shootdown: A View From (redacted)”.

Secret spy programs such as Milkbush, Interrograph, Bourbon, Team Spirit, Ratbag, Tidytips III and Purple Dragon show up on the tables of contents. The listings also reveal the NSA’s traffic analyst of the year award, called Gold Nugget.

While a few of these articles have been released before — including one called “Communication With Extraterrestrial Intelligence” (.pdf) by NSA Technical Journal founder Lambros D. Callimahos — the newly released indexes offer a “wealth of leads,” according to Aftergood.

“The titles are tantalizing,” he said. “You see them and you want to know more, but whether the reports themselves are equally intriguing or deadly dull or merely historical curiosities is impossible to say.”

The indexes also give researchers details they can use to target specific documents rather than making blanket requests for all papers about a certain subject. The extra info could help streamline the processing of FOIA requests, according to Jeffrey Richelson, senior fellow at The National Security Archive.

While Richelson has gotten his hands on Cryptologic Spectrum articles in the past and said he would probably request a few more based on the now-public indexes, he said he doubts the documents will contain any big secrets.

“There are likely no great news stories in here, especially when you take into account what you are getting compared to what is in the articles before redactions (by NSA FOIA officials),” he said.

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“A Comprehensive Strategy to Fight Al-Qaeda”?

Rice versus Clinton on January 2001 Clarke Memo

For more information contact:
Thomas Blanton
202/994-7000

At:

http://www.nsarchive.org
Washington, DC, September 27, 2006 – In a series of recent public statements, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has again denied that the Clinton administration presented the incoming administration of President George W. Bush with a “comprehensive strategy” against al-Qaeda. Rice’s denials were prompted by a September 22 Fox News interview with Bill Clinton in which the former president asserted that he had “left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy” with the incoming Bush administration in January 2001. In a September 25 interview, Rice told the New York Post, “We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al-Qaida,” adding that, “Nobody organized this country or the international community to fight the terrorist threat that was upon us until 9/11.”
The crux of the issue is a January 25, 2001, memo on al-Qaeda from counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, the first terrorism strategy paper of the Bush administration. The document was central to the debate over pre-9/11 Bush administration policy on terrorism and figured prominently in the 9/11 hearings held in 2004. A declassified copy of the Clarke memo was first posted on the Web by the National Security Archive in February 2005.
Clarke’s memo “urgently” requested a high-level National Security Council review on al-Qaeda and included two attachments: a declassified December 2000 “Strategy for Eliminating the Threat from the Jihadist Networks of al-Qida: Status and Prospects” and the September 1998 “Pol-Mil Plan for al-Qida,” the so-called Delenda Plan, which remains classified.
These documents and excerpts from the recent Rice and Clinton statements are now available on the Web site of the National Security Archive.

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Borowitz Report – Doomed Mayan Shocker

Mel Gibson Apologizes to Doomed Mayans for Latest Remarks

Embattled Actor Reaches Out to Doomed Mayan Community

After comparing the United States to the doomed Mayan civilization while promoting his new movie at a film festival in Texas this week, actor Mel Gibson today offered a heartfelt apology for offending doomed Mayans with his remarks.

At a press conference in Los Angeles, the embattled actor took great pains to explain that it was in no way his attention to offend doomed Mayans with his remarks.

“Yesterday, when I compared the United States to the doomed Mayan civilization, I had no idea that there were any doomed Mayans still around,” Mr. Gibson said. “I was basically going on the assumption that since they were doomed a long time ago, I was pretty much in the clear.”

Mr. Gibson’s apology came just hours after an angry statement was made by the National Coalition of Doomed Mayans, a watchdog group that monitors the portrayal of doomed Mayans in the media.

“We Mayans may be doomed, but we have feelings,” said a representative of the group, which is urging all doomed Mayans to boycott Mr. Gibson’s latest film.

According to Buddy Schlantz, a veteran talent agent and longtime observer of the Hollywood scene, mending fences with the doomed Mayan community is “absolutely essential” to preserving what is left of Mr. Gibson’s career.

“Doomed Mayans are a small but vocal part of the Hollywood community,” Mr. Schlantz said. “Pissing them off isn’t as bad as pissing off the Jews, but it doesn’t help.”

Elsewhere, Osama bin Laden is dead and “I was with him when he died,” according to a confession by John Mark Karr.

http://www.borowitzreport.com/

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three to see

Slowpoke: Nation debates ‘terror grinding’

http://www.workingforchange.com/webgraphics/WFC/js092406.gif

Mike Keefe: New Generation Terrorists

http://www.intoon.com/toons/2006/KeefeM20060926.jpg

Pat Oliphant: they’ve bought it

http://www.uclick.com/feature/06/09/27/po060927.gif

Specter Denounces Presidential Signing Statements

Sen. Arlen Specter this afternoon challenged the constitutionality of the president’s practice of adding signing statements to legislation.

Specter, who is chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the practice “is inappropriate under the Constitution, which provides that when Congress passes legislation, the legislation is presented to the president and if the president doesn’t like the legislation, he vetoes it and if he likes the legislation, he passes it. But that he’s not able to pick and choose from among various positions which he wants to not follow.”

The senator went on to discuss how this practice has affected the PATRIOT Act and other legislation and to outline possible solutions.

Specter’s remarks were made at the National Press Club’s “Luncheon Speakers” event in response to a question submitted by Sam Husseini of the Institute for Public Accuracy;

video of the event is available via

http://c-span.org .
CHRISTOPHER KELLEY, kelleycs@muohio.edu,

http://www.sunypress.edu/details.asp?id=61253

A leading expert on bill-signing statements and the “unitary executive,” Kelley is author of a dissertation on the unitary executive and the presidential signing statement

PDF:

http://www.ohiolink.edu/etd/send-pdf.cgi?miami1057716977

and editor of the just-released book “Executing the Constitution: Putting the President Back into the Constitution” as well as numerous papers on the strategic importance of the signing statement.

Kelley said today: “President Bush has used a little more than 100 signing statements to make over 950 distinct challenges, by my count, to provisions of law, and I would assume when he finally gets the bill regarding the treatment of detainees, he will continue to add to the number of challenges.” Kelley is currently a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Miami University in
Oxford, Ohio.

From: Institute for Public Accuracy

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More Employers Reduce, Drop Retiree Health Benefits as Costs Increase

Access this story and related links online:

http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=40054

U.S. employers “are increasingly targeting health benefits as a way to save money,” a trend that has left many retirees with “thousands of dollars” in additional health care costs, the Los Angeles Times reports. According to the Times, employers began to reduce retiree health benefits in the 1990s because of changes in accounting standards that required more cost disclosure, and in recent years “the benefits are falling victim to rising health care expenses and corporate cost cutting.” Retirees on average account for 29% of health care costs for large employers that offered such benefits, according to Hewitt Associates. In addition, retiree health care costs for large employers that offered such benefits increased by as much as 10.3% from 2004 to 2005, according to a recent survey conducted by Hewitt and the Kaiser Family Foundation. As a result, many large employers, such as General Motors and AT&T/Lucent Technologies, have “scaled back” health benefits for retirees and have considered additional reductions to benefits for future retirees, the Times reports. Twelve-percent of large employers between 2004 and 2005 said that they will not offer health benefits to future retirees, according to the survey conducted by Hewitt and the Kaiser Family Foundation. Currently, one in three large employers offers retiree health benefits, compared with two in three in the late 1980s, according to survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust.
Comments

Ralph Craviso, senior director of workforce effectiveness for the human resources department at Yale University, said, “As these costs are shifted, the ability of retirees to access health care will be compromised, and that will result in pressure on the federal government.” He added, “Then it will become a national political issue. I believe it is a crisis in waiting.” Rusty Dunn — a spokesperson for Caterpillar, which recently increased health insurance premiums for retirees — said, “We’re not cutting back. But we are looking at ways under today’s realities to share some of the burden.” He added, “Failure to make prudent, market-based adjustments would be irresponsible. We feel we would be jeopardizing the competitiveness of the company” (Peterson, Los Angeles Times, 9/26).

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The ethanol humbug

Bill Bonner

Published : Thu 17 Aug, 2006 

So many humbugs; so little time!

We don’t know where to begin. So we take up a small fraud – ethanol – as we work our way up to a bigger one.

Ethanol is a well-known boondoggle. But a great boondoggle it is, agreeable to several constituencies of parasites at once. The farmers like it because it boosts grain prices. The politicians like it because it gives them a chance to hand out other peoples’ money while pretending to ‘do something’ about a major national problem. And all the fuzzy environmentalists, unripe greens and addled world improvers like it too; mostly because they are too lazy and thick to think about it very much.

Ethanol makes a wonderful public spectacle. It rests on a lie – that energy from grain is somehow better than energy that comes out of the ground. It progresses easily and quickly to farce – just read the news, dear reader. And it will end in disaster. But how? We have so far only imagined the billions of dollars lost…along with the billions of watts of energy squandered.

But along comes Lester Brown in US Fortune magazine, with a further plot twist. We always took Lester Brown for an idiot. But we haven’t heard from him in so long, we can’t remember why. Ah yes, now we recall that he is the author of endless tracts about the environment and the founder and president of something called the Earth Policy Institute in Washington. Yes dear readers. Not content with confining himself to merely one nation, he wants to write policy for the entire planet. A stupendous, a world-historical meddler. But on ethanol, Brown turns out to have a relatively sane view.

He writes that ethanol is not only a waste of money; if taken up widely, it would actually mean starvation for many of the world’s poor people.

“The grain required to fill a 25-gallon tank (with ethanol) would feed one person for a year,” he writes.

Once again, the cure is worse than the disease. If only the meddlers would take note.

The problem with the American way of life, adds our friend Byron King, is that few people can afford it. It requires a lot of energy. Now, you can get energy from grain by converting the energy of the sun – that makes plants grow – into liquid fuel and thence into energy to power a car or heat a house. But since the sun only has so much energy in it, you would have to use a lot of grain – and a lot of space to grow it – to produce the kind of energy that the average American consumes.

Of course, the American lifestyle was not built on energy from grain at all but on energy from the earth. Oil, according to most geologists, represents the condensed energy of many, many years’ worth of sunshine, raising up many, many thousands of acres of grains and leaves which were subsequently packed down into the ground and stored for millions more years. But in the space of only a couple of lifetimes, we have used up these millions of years worth of natural inventory of saved-up solar energy. And what’s left is getting more and more expensive – because there are more and people who want it – with more and more money to buy it.

…

Complete article at:

http://dailyreckoning.co.uk/article/170820063.html

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Two retired Army major generals and a former Marine colonel demand Rumsfeld’s resignation:

Rumsfeld’s Dismal Strategic Decisions Resulted In The Unnecessary Deaths Of American Servicemen And Women, Our Allies, And The Good People Of Iraq?.

At:

http://tinyurl.com/ezwf8

Bush unavailable for a “heck of a job” comment.

From: Poacnewsletter

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GMA left unchallenged O’Reilly’s falsehoods — both on the air and in his book

ABC’s Diane Sawyer let Bill O’Reilly misleadingly defend President Bush’s efforts to pursue Osama bin Laden and to put forward without challenge the dubious claim that the so-called “traditionalist” cause O’Reilly champions in his book is “not a religious movement.” Sawyer also failed to challenge O’Reilly on the numerous falsehoods, distortions, and misrepresentations in his new book.

Read more

http://mediamatters.org/items/dailyemail/200609260004?src=other

                          ==========

#15 of 17 rules to bring you up to speed on what you need to believe to be a Republican.

Supporting “Executive Privilege” for every Republican ever born, who will be born or who might be born (in perpetuity.)

Complete article at:

http://sr4001.com/2006/09/04/believe-republican/

                          ==========

#15 of the Top 25 Censored Stories of 2007

#15 Chemical Industry is EPA’s Primary Research Partner
Sources:
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, October 5, 2005
Title: “Chemical Industry Is Now EPA’s Main Research Partner”
Author: Jeff Ruch

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, October 6, 2005
Title: “EPA Becoming Arm of Corporate R&D”
Author: Jeff Ruch

Community Evaluator: Tim Ogburn
Student Researcher: Lani Ready and Peter McArthur

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) research program is increasingly relying on corporate joint ventures, according to agency documents obtained by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The American Chemical Council (ACC) is now EPA’s leading research partner and the EPA is diverting funds from basic health and environmental research towards research that addresses regulatory concerns of corporate funders.

Since the beginning of Bush’s first term in office, there has been a significant increase in cooperative research and development agreements (CRADAs) with individual corporations or industry associations. During Bush’s first four years EPA entered into fifty-seven corporate CRADAs, compared to thirty-four such agreements during Clinton’s second term.

EPA scientists claim that corporations are influencing the agency’s research agenda through financial inducements. One EPA scientist wrote, “Many of us in the labs feel like we work for contracts.” In April 2005, EPA’s Science Advisory Board warned that the agency was no longer funding credible public health research. It noted, for example, that the EPA was falling behind on issues such as intercontinental pollution transport and nanotechnology.

Furthermore, in April 2005, a study by the Government Accountability Office concluded that EPA lacks safeguards to “evaluate or manage potential conflicts of interest” in corporate research agreements, as they are taking money from companies and corporations that they are supposed to be regulating.

According to Rebecca Rose, the Program Director of PEER, “Under its current leadership, EPA is becoming an arm of corporate R&D.” She also notes that the number of corporate CRADAs under the Bush administration outnumbered those entered into with universities or local governments, adding, “Public health research needs should not have to depend upon corporate underwriting.”

In October 2005 President Bush nominated George Gray to serve as the Assistant Administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency Office of Research and Development (ORD). At that time George Gray ran
a Center for Risk Analysis at Harvard University where the majority of the funding came from corporate sources. Gray indicated upon nomination that he intends to continue and expand his solicitation of corporate research funds in his position with ORD.

PEER’s Executive Director Jeff Ruch warns, “Injecting outside money into a public agency research program, especially when it is tied to particular projects, has a subtle but undeniable influence on not only what work gets done but also how that work is reported.” He adds, “As what was one of the top public health research programs slides toward dysfunction, nothing about the background, attitude or philosophy of Mr. Gray suggests that he is even remotely the right person for this job.”

In 2004 & 2005, EPA was plagued by reports of political suppression of scientific results on important health issues such as asbestos and mercury regulation (see Censored 2005, Story #3). In response ORD launched a public relations campaign, entitled “Science for You,” using agency research funds to clean up its image.

Comments: George M. Gray was sworn in as the Assistant Administrator of Research and Development at EPA on November 1, 2005, with unanimous consent of the U.S. Senate.

…

Complete article at:

http://www.projectcensored.org/censored_2007/index.htm

                          ==========

CONGRESS’S GROWTH INDUSTRY

Volume XI No. 13 – September 26, 2006

With Election Day just six short weeks away, at-risk Republicans and hopeful Democrats finally found a cause worthy of bipartisan agreement—using this summer’s record heat and record rains and anything in between as an excuse to heap enormous piles of new handouts on politically important farmers.

In just three months, the price tag for this political payoff jumped to $6.5 billion.  In June, when the price tag was a mere $4 billion, the President already opposed the giveaways.  First, they are excessive, seeing that farmer’s stand to bring in record prices with this year’s harvest.  Second, the proposed package is little more than bonus checks for the privileged class of big business farmers who already receive most of the $20 billion a year in government handouts.  Even worse, farmers who weren’t even affected by a disaster can qualify for payments.

After spending the August recess reading the political tea leaves, farm state lawmakers on both sides of the aisle returned clamoring for emergency aid.  Now, as Congress prepares to adjourn at the end of the week to hit the campaign trail, House Democrats are trying to use a parliamentary maneuver that would force the Republican leadership to allow debate and a vote this week.  It’s hard to say exactly what the emergency is, other than a political one.

Read the rest of this week’s Wastebasket

http://www.taxpayer.net/TCS/wastebasket/agriculture/2006-09-26growthindustry.htm

Going on at Taxpayer.net This Week

TCS Urges House to Oppose $6.5 Billion Emergency Farm Subsidy Package — In a Congress with all eyes on the election, taxpayers may get left in the cold if Congress passes this bill to pander to special interests.

At:

http://www.taxpayer.net/TCS/letterstocongress/2006-09-26farmsubsidy.pdf

TCS in the News

Big bucks going to little towns (Rocky Mountain News, Colorado)
Renouncing Sleaze For Election (New York Sun)
Senators Try to Break “Secret Hold” (Newhouse News Service)
Rumors of reform (Sarasota Herald-Tribune)
Reform advocates: Earmarking rules change a start (Mobile Register)
All Aboard Fiscal Conservatism (National Review Online)
Senator won’t get response out of USM (Hattiesburg American, Mississippi)
Federal agencies grow leery of S. Utah land sale proposal (Salt Lake Tribune)
Wyden tries to unlock ‘secret hold’ (The Oregonian)
House Takes a Cautious Step on Ethics (Los Angeles Times)
In lieu of lobbying reform, Congress approves more disclosure (Gannett News Service)
Government Workers on Taxpayer Subsidized Vacations (ABC News)

Notable Quote

“The Administration strongly opposes the Committee’s agricultural assistance proposal, totaling nearly $4 billion. The 2002 Farm Bill was designed, when combined with crop insurance, to eliminate the need for ad hoc disaster assistance. In 2005, many crops had record or near-record production, and U.S. farm sector cash receipts were the second highest ever. Furthermore, the proposed level of assistance is excessive and may over-compensate certain producers for their losses.”

–Statement of Administrative Policy, April 25, 2005

From:  Taxpayers for Common Sense  

www.taxpayer.net

                          ==========

Peek at NSA’s Secret Reading List

By Ryan Singel

02:00 AM Sep, 27, 2006

The tantalizing tables of contents to the best spy magazines you’ll probably never get to read have been posted online, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request that pried open four classified National Security Agency publications.

Written specifically for NSA employees, the articles listed in the online indexes date back as far as 1956. Stories include an analysis of the TRS-80 Model 1′s password-encryption algorithm, accounts of how Soviet codes were broken, analyses of bad management techniques within the sprawling eavesdropping agency, and an insider’s view of North Korea’s capture of the spy boat U.S.S. Pueblo in 1968.

The Memory Hole, a website dedicated to ferreting out and publishing government documents, posted the indexes from Cryptologic Quarterly, Cryptologic Almanac, Cryptologic Spectrum and NSA Technical Journal on Monday. The lists were obtained following a smartly targeted FOIA request filed by researcher Michael Ravnitzky in 2003.

At:

http://www.thememoryhole.org/nsa/bibs.htm

“This is one of the first glimpses we have had into NSA’s own library — and it’s a safe bet there are some gems in there,” said Secrecy News editor Steven Aftergood.

Titles include “NSA in the Cyberpunk Future: A Somewhat Educated Guess at Things to Come” (1996), “I Was a Cryptologic Corporal” (1983), “Inference and Cover Stories” (1993), “Handy-Dandy Field Site History: Fifty Years of Field Operations, 1945-1995,” “The Fallacy of the One-Time-Pad Excuse” (1969), “Meteor Burst Communications: An Ignored Phenomenon?” (1990) and “KAL 007 Shootdown: A View From (redacted)”.

Secret spy programs such as Milkbush, Interrograph, Bourbon, Team Spirit, Ratbag, Tidytips III and Purple Dragon show up on the tables of contents. The listings also reveal the NSA’s traffic analyst of the year award, called Gold Nugget.

While a few of these articles have been released before — including one called “Communication With Extraterrestrial Intelligence” (.pdf) by NSA Technical Journal founder Lambros D. Callimahos — the newly released indexes offer a “wealth of leads,” according to Aftergood.

“The titles are tantalizing,” he said. “You see them and you want to know more, but whether the reports themselves are equally intriguing or deadly dull or merely historical curiosities is impossible to say.”

The indexes also give researchers details they can use to target specific documents rather than making blanket requests for all papers about a certain subject. The extra info could help streamline the processing of FOIA requests, according to Jeffrey Richelson, senior fellow at The National Security Archive.

While Richelson has gotten his hands on Cryptologic Spectrum articles in the past and said he would probably request a few more based on the now-public indexes, he said he doubts the documents will contain any big secrets.

“There are likely no great news stories in here, especially when you take into account what you are getting compared to what is in the articles before redactions (by NSA FOIA officials),” he said.

                          ==========

Three to see

David Horsey: the more we can claim success

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/dayart/20060927/cartoon20060927.gif

Steve Sack: terrorist recruiting station

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/24503/

Ted Rall: ann coulter photo

http://picayune.uclick.com/comics/trall/2006/trall060925.gif

SnapBits

SnapBits is a free service that may be used to securely store, search, sort and easily retrieve “Bits of information. These “Bits” may be anything you wish to remember or keep a note of. You may store as many as you like and unlike conventional paper notes, you will never lose or fail to find your information.

At:

http://www.snapbits.com/

                          ==========

Ethanol is a gimmick, not an answer to high gas prices

San Jose Mercury News – CA, USA

… The latest Capitol Hill darling is ethanol, which supporters claim will reduce dependence on foreign oil — because the fuel is derived from corn — and also …

Complte article at:

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opinion/15547090.htm

                          ==========

#14 of 17 rules to bring you up to speed on what you need to believe to be a Republican.

Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you’re a conservative radio host. Then it’s an illness and you need our prayers for your recovery.

Complete article at:

http://sr4001.com/2006/09/04/believe-republican/

                          ==========

#14 of the Top 25 Censored Stories of 2007

#14 Homeland Security Contracts KBR to Build Detention Centers in the US
Sources:
New America Media, January 31, 2006
Title: “Homeland Security Contracts for Vast New Detention Camps”
Author: Peter Dale Scott

New America Media, February 21, 2006
Title: “10-Year US Strategic Plan for Detention Camps Revives Proposals from Oliver North”
Author: Peter Dale Scott

Consortiium, February 21, 2006
Title: “Bush’s Mysterious ‘New Programs’”
Author: Nat Parry

Buzzflash
Title: “Detention Camp Jitters”
Author: Maureen Farrell

Community Evaluator: Dr. Gary Evans
Student Researchers: Sean Hurley and Caitlyn Peele

Halliburton’s subsidiary KBR (formerly Kellogg, Brown and Root) announced on January 24, 2006 that it had been awarded a $385 million contingency contract by the Department of Homeland Security to build detention camps in the United States.

According to a press release posted on the Halliburton website, “The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs. The contingency support contract provides for planning and, if required, initiation of specific engineering, construction and logistics support tasks to establish, operate and maintain one or more expansion facilities.”

What little coverage the announcement received focused on concerns about Halliburton’s reputation for overcharging U.S. taxpayers for substandard services.

Less attention was focused on the phrase “rapid development of new programs” or what type of programs might require a major expansion of detention centers, capable of holding 5,000 people each. Jamie Zuieback, spokeswoman for ICE, declined to elaborate on what these “new programs” might be.

Only a few independent journalists, such as Peter Dale Scott, Maureen Farrell, and Nat Parry have explored what the Bush administration might actually have in mind.

Scott speculates that the “detention centers could be used to detain American citizens if the Bush administration were to declare martial law.” He recalled that during the Reagan administration, National Security Council aide Oliver North organized the Rex-84 “readiness exercise,” which contemplated the Federal Emergency Management Agency rounding up and detaining 400,000 “refugees” in the event of “uncontrolled population movements” over the Mexican border into the U.S.

North’s exercise, which reportedly contemplated possible suspension of the Constitution, led to a line of questioning during the Iran-Contra Hearings concerning the idea that plans for expanded internment and detention facilities would not be confined to “refugees” alone.

It is relevant, says Scott, that in 2002 Attorney General John Ashcroft announced his desire to see camps for U.S. citizens deemed to be “enemy combatants.” On February 17, 2006, in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spoke of the harm being done to the country’s security, not just by the enemy, but also by what he called “news informers” who needed to be combated in “a contest of wills.”

Since September 11 the Bush administration has implemented a number of interrelated programs that were planned in the 1980s under President Reagan. Continuity of Government (COG) proposals—a classified plan for keeping a secret “government-within-the-government” running during and after a nuclear disaster—included vastly expanded detention capabilities, warrantless eavesdropping, and preparations for greater use of martial law.

Scott points out that, while Oliver North represented a minority element in the Reagan administration, which soon distanced itself from both the man and his proposals, the minority associated with COG planning, which included Cheney and Rumsfeld, appear to be in control of the U.S. government today.

Farrell speculates that, because another terror attack is all but certain, it seems far more likely that the detention centers would be used for post-September 11-type detentions of rounded-up immigrants rather than for a sudden deluge of immigrants flooding across the border.

Vietnam-era whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg ventures, “Almost certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next September 11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters. They’ve already done this on a smaller scale, with the ‘special registration’ detentions of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantánamo.”

Parry notes that The Washington Post reported on February 15, 2006 that the National Counterterrorism Center’s (NCTC) central repository holds the names of 325,000 terrorist suspects, a fourfold increase since fall of 2003.
Asked whether the names in the repository were collected through the NSA’s domestic surveillance program, an NCTC official told the Post, “Our database includes names of known and suspected international terrorists provided by all intelligence community organizations, including NSA.”

As the administration scoops up more and more names, members of Congress have questioned the elasticity of Bush’s definitions for words like terrorist “affiliates,” used to justify wiretapping Americans allegedly in contact with such people or entities.

…

Complete article at:

http://www.projectcensored.org/censored_2007/index.htm

                          ==========

Florida getting set to buy $46 million of unappraised swampland from close friend of Jeb Bush.

At:

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/15600887.htm
From: Poacnewsletter

                          ==========

NY Times, Wash. Post reported Bush’s attack on Democratic tax policies, failed to note budgetary effects

The New York Times and The Washington Post highlighted President Bush’s recent attack on the Clinton administration’s tax increases and his touting of the tax cuts he passed in his first term, but did not compare the effects of these policies. In fact, after President Bill Clinton’s 1993 tax bill passed, deficits declined and budgets were in surplus within five years, while the federal budgets approved under Bush have produced record deficits.

Read more

http://mediamatters.org/items/dailyemail/200609240001?src=other

                          ==========

QUASHED REPORT ON TV NEWS FINALLY MAKES NEWS

At:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/politics/4187090.html

A lawyer formerly with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission said agency officials ordered “every last piece” destroyed of a report linking greater concentration of media ownership to reduced news coverage. “The report, written in 2004, came to light during the Senate confirmation hearing for FCC Chairman Kevin Martin,” reports John Dunbar. The report’s findings include that “local ownership of television stations adds almost five and one-half minutes of total news to broadcasts and more than three minutes of ‘on-location’ news. The conclusion is at odds with FCC arguments made when it voted in 2003 to increase the number of television stations a company could own in a single market.” Current FCC chair Martin and former chair Michael Powell say they knew nothing of the report. Senator Barbara Boxer, who publicly revealed the report, has asked Martin to investigate what happened and to determine if the report was “shelved because the outcome was not to the liking of some of the commissioners and/or any outside powerful interests,” reports TV Week.
SOURCE: Associated Press, September 14, 2006

For more information or to comment on this story, visit:

http://www.prwatch.org/node/5183

                          ==========

Legacy of ballot chads hangs on

By Jim Spencer
Denver Post Staff Columnist

One of the expert witnesses mentioned “Landslide Lyndon Johnson,” for whom dead voters often provided an overwhelming margin of victory.

I think it is Barely Elected Bush whose spirit hangs over the ongoing legal battle in Denver District Courtroom 1.

A group of plaintiffs claiming to represent all Coloradans wants Judge Lawrence Manzanares to throw out every new electronic voting machine scheduled for use in the Nov. 7 election.

This is necessary, the plaintiffs argue, because of accessibility and security issues. Either it’s too hard for the disabled to vote on handicapped-accessible machines or no one – disabled or otherwise – can be certain his or her vote will be counted correctly.

Take your pick. Both arguments signal the politics of cynicism that have become epidemic since the country elected a president who lost the popular vote.

Dueling experts testifying before Manzanares won’t restore the faith shaken by George W. Bush’s 2000 election any more than a Florida recount, which showed that Bush probably did win that contested state and, therefore, an Electoral College majority.

In Denver, a judge’s decision on the suitability of voting machines will bring nothing but more recrimination.

…

Complete article at:

http://www.denverpost.com/spencer/ci_4377040

Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-954-1771 or

jspencer@denverpost.com.
 

                          ==========

Exposing The War Profiteers

Isaiah J. Poole
September 18, 2006

  Isaiah J. Poole is the executive editor of TomPaine.com.

The only correct response to the waste, mismanagement, theft and, yes, death that have been endemic among private contractors in Iraq is the kind of outrage that makes heads roll and forces sweeping change. Bringing this sordid tale into the limelight are the combined forces of documentary producer Robert Greenwald and congressional Democrats, who are pursuing the kind of oversight that the majority party is refusing to do. As a result, the Bush administration and the Republican Congress may soon find themselves on the wrong side of what looks to be a wave of white-hot anger over Iraq war-profiteering.

The impact of Greenwald’s new documentary and intrepid Senate Democrats are converging powerfully today in Washington. The Senate Democratic Policy Committee scheduled the latest in a series of hearings to examine the behavior of Halliburton and other contractors handed billions of taxpayer dollars for reconstruction after the fall of Saddam Hussein. After that hearing, Greenwald will appear as a guest at the Washington premiere of “Iraq for Sale,” a jaw-dropping account of the squandered dollars and lost lives as a result of Bush administration cronyism, bumbling and ideological blindness. The movie premiere and panel discussion , which is open to the public, is being hosted by the Campaign for America’s Future.

Each week seems to add new counts to the indictment against the administration’s reconstruction quagmire. The Campaign for America’s Future has compiled the basic case in a damning report  it is making public today. That report chronicles “a procurement process that rewards cronies and condones widespread abuse.” It describes how half of the $270 billion spent on the reconstruction effort between the fall of Hussein and 2005 was distributed without competitive bidding and reveals that the government can’t even track the distribution of more than $20 billion.

Complete article at:

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/09/18/exposing_the_war_profiteers.php

                          ==========

three to see

This Modern World: Danger man

http://www.workingforchange.com/webgraphics/WFC/TMW09-27-06.jpg

David Horsey: on second thought …

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/dayart/20060926/cartoon20060926.gif

Wondermark: In which Reality factors

http://www.wondermark.com/comics/233.gif

Milblogging

Milblogging.com – the world’s largest index of military blogs

At:

http://www.milblogging.com/

                          ==========

Entropia Universe

The Entropia Universe is a massive online Virtual Universe. Set in a distant Sci-Fi future, participants assume the roles of colonists who must develop the untamed planet of Calypso. Populated with fierce and dangerous creatures, the wilderness on Calypso is also rich in minerals and ore, all of which can be lucrative sources of income for would-be colonists.

The Real Cash Economy means that the Entropia Universe currency, the PED, is connected to the real world economy through a fixed exchange rate with the US dollar, where 10 PED = 1US$.

Real funds can easily be deposited and exchanged for PEDs; the currency that allows participants to acquire virtual land and equipment in order to develop their virtual character (avatar) inside the Entropia Universe. The outposts, cities and auction on the planet Calypso serve as trading hubs where a multitude of virtual items such as tools, weapons and minerals are bought and sold by colonists. The wide range of professions available to colonists makes the accumulation of skills and resources a lively business on Calypso. All your economic data is securely contained in your own personal account and withdrawals of your accumulated funds can be easily made according to the exchange rate mentioned above

At:

http://www.entropiauniverse.com/en/rich/5000.html

                          ==========

#13 of 17 rules to bring you up to speed on what you need to believe to be a Republican.

The public has a right to know about Hillary’s cattle trades, but George Bush’s driving record is none of our business.

Complete article at:

http://sr4001.com/2006/09/04/believe-republican/

                          ==========

#13 of the Top 25 Censored Stories of 2007

#13 New Evidence Establishes Dangers of Roundup

Sources:

Third World Resurgence, No. 176, April 2005
Title: “New Evidence of Dangers of Roundup Weedkiller”
Author: Chee Yoke Heong

Faculty Evaluator: Jennifer While
Student Researchers: Peter McArthur and Lani Ready

New studies from both sides of the Atlantic reveal that Roundup, the most widely used weedkiller in the world, poses serious human health threats. More than 75 percent of genetically modified (GM) crops are engineered to tolerate the absorption of Roundup—it eliminates all plants that are not GM. Monsanto Inc., the major engineer of GM crops, is also the producer of Roundup. Thus, while Roundup was formulated as a weapon against weeds, it has become a prevalent ingredient in most of our food crops.

Three recent studies show that Roundup, which is used by farmers and home gardeners, is not the safe product we have been led to trust.

A group of scientists led by biochemist Professor Gilles-Eric Seralini from the University of Caen in France found that human placental cells are very sensitive to Roundup at concentrations lower than those currently used in agricultural application.

An epidemiological study of Ontario farming populations showed that exposure to glyphosate, the key ingredient in Roundup, nearly doubled the risk of late miscarriages. Seralini and his team decided to research the effects of the herbicide on human placenta cells. Their study confirmed the toxicity of glyphosate, as after eighteen hours of exposure at low concentrations, large proportions of human placenta began to die. Seralini suggests that this may explain the high levels of premature births and miscarriages observed among female farmers using glyphosate.

Seralini’s team further compared the toxic effects of the Roundup formula (the most common commercial formulation of glyphosate and chemical additives) to the isolated active ingredient, glyphosate. They found that the toxic effect increases in the presence of Roundup ‘adjuvants’ or additives. These additives thus have a facilitating role, rendering Roundup twice as toxic as its isolated active ingredient, glyphosate.

Another study, released in April 2005 by the University of Pittsburgh, suggests that Roundup is a danger to other life-forms and non-target organisms. Biologist Rick Relyea found that Roundup is extremely lethal to amphibians. In what is considered one of the most extensive studies on the effects of pesticides on nontarget organisms in a natural setting, Relyea found that Roundup caused a 70 percent decline in amphibian biodiversity and an 86 percent decline in the total mass of tadpoles. Leopard frog tadpoles and gray tree frog tadpoles were nearly eliminated.

In 2002, a scientific team led by Robert Belle of the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) biological station in Roscoff, France showed that Roundup activates one of the key stages of cellular division that can potentially lead to cancer. Belle and his team have been studying the impact of glyphosate formulations on sea urchin cells for several years. The team has recently demonstrated in Toxicological Science (December 2004) that a “control point” for DNA damage was affected by Roundup, while glyphosate alone had no effect. “We have shown that it’s a definite risk factor, but we have not evaluated the number of cancers potentially induced, nor the time frame within which they would declare themselves,” Belle acknowledges.

There is, indeed, direct evidence that glyphosate inhibits an important process called RNA transcription in animals, at a concentration well below the level that is recommended for commercial spray application.

There is also new research that shows that brief exposure to commercial glyphosate causes liver damage in rats, as indicated by the leakage of intracellular liver enzymes. The research indicates that glyphosate and its surfactant in Roundup were found to act in synergy to increase damage to the liver.

…

Complete article at:

http://www.projectcensored.org/censored_2007/index.htm

                          ==========

SCARY EVIDENCE

At:

http://web.bcnewsgroup.com/portals/monday/

British Columbia’s Deputy Minister of Health, Gordon Macatee, ordered a lunchtime presentation on disease mongering cancelled until a drug industry speaker could be added. University of Victoria health researcher Alan Cassels was surprised that the ministry was so sensitive about a discussion on the book he co-authored, Selling Sickness: How the World’s Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients. A ministry spokesperson, Marisa Adair, said the change “was all in the interest of presenting a balanced viewpoint.” Cassels is unpersuaded: “I think my viewpoint is evidence-based. If they have a problem with the evidence-based viewpoint, what’s the opposite? It’s the marketing-based viewpoint?”

Monday Magazine journalist Andrew MacLeod reported that an earlier presentation on obesity was given by a doctor who had received funding from the soft drink lobby group Refreshments Canada. MacLeod wryly noted that it was unclear “whether the ministry had anyone in representing the salad industry to balance his views.”
SOURCE: Monday Magazine (Canada), September 13, 2006

For more information or to comment on this story, visit:

http://www.prwatch.org/node/5178

                          ==========

UN Official Warns of Possible Afghanistan Collapse

At:

http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-09-20-voa77.cfm

From: Poacnewsletter

                          ==========

ENOUGH WITH THE ‘ONE GOD’ STUFF

James Foley, AlterNet

In the world today, one ancient religious ideology, monotheism, stands out as especially dangerous, repressive and loony.

At:

http://www.alternet.org/story/42025/

                          ==========

Doomed international

Kenneth Anderson

Francis Fukuyama
AFTER THE NEOCONS
America at the crossroads
226pp. Profile. £12.99.
1 861 97922 3

The neoconservative influence on American foreign policy has not had an enthusiastic response outside the United States. Its failure to bring peace and democracy to Iraq has now resulted in a spate of critiques in America itself, even from within the policy establishment. The highest-level defection has been that of Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History and the Last Man (1992), the paean to the triumph of capitalism that became a canonical neoconservative text of the 1990s, articulating the transition from the Clinton administration to that of George W. Bush. In his new book, After the Neocons, Fukuyama argues that key neoconservative tenets were systematically violated in making the case for the war in Iraq, and, further, that the broader attempt to combat terror is ill-served not only by the war but also by the neoconservative project of democratic reform in the Middle East. The failure of these projects, he argues, is a phenomenon less of the Middle East than of the disoriented modernity of Muslims in the West – Western Europe particularly. In conclusion, he offers a replacement for neoconservative foreign policy, something that he calls “realistic Wilsonianism”.

The arguments over Fukuyama’s new book have not just been among conservative think-tank intellectuals. Soon after publication the White House itself entered the brawl, sending emails citing contradictions between Fukuyama’s past statements and the positions taken in his new book, particularly his support in 1988 for the forcible overthrow of Saddam Hussein. As Tod Lindberg, Editor of the Hoover Institution’s Policy Review, put it, the Bush administration has been “more influenced by Mr. Fukuyama’s work than by that of any other living thinker”.

On the sidelines, liberal commentators and reviewers in the United States have watched with a mixture of righteousness and glee the long-awaited conservative crackup over the ideological basis of the Bush administration’s foreign policy.

The End of History and the Last Man began as an article written while Fukuyama was at the Rand Corporation, the quintessential Cold War think tank. Written in the flush of victory and the collapse of Soviet Communism, it argued that the world was at a historical moment in which history itself – at least “history” in the sense of fundamental arguments over political ideology – was essentially over. Liberal democracy, market capitalism, and the welfare state had won, both because they were right in principle and because they had been proven right in practice, while their twentieth-century totalitarian, collectivist competitors – Communism, Nazism and Fascism – had all been seen off. The End of History was, then, a disquisition on the end of alternatives to liberal democratic capitalism, at least those alternatives that sprang from the modernizing project. The book did not consider the possibility of a challenge from outside the realm of modernity as understood in the West. Islam is mentioned only in passing.

Much of the anger directed at Fukuyama by neoconservatives and by Bush administration intellectuals since the publication of After the Neocons arises from the perception that he intended The End of History to be a universal pronouncement, applicable across the span of world history, not limited merely to the ideologies of modernity. In his new book Fukuyama makes no retraction; he claims rather to have been misread. His argument was never meant to be universal, he says, and it is the fault of the neocons for not recognizing the limits of what a policy of promoting democracy and liberalism in the Middle East can – and cannot – get you.

…

Complete article at:

http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25346-2367095,00.html#

                          ==========

Borowitz Report – A Shocking Letter From Andy Borowitz

A Letter From Andy Borowitz

Shocking News about the Future of the Borowitz Report

Dear Reader,

If you’re a regular reader of The Borowitz Report, you’ve probably asked yourself, “Andy writes these reports five days a week, totally for free — what can I do to pay him back?”

Or maybe you’ve never asked yourself that. Well, I sure have. A lot. And now I have an answer: you can buy my new book, THE REPUBLICAN PLAYBOOK, which goes on sale today.

THE REPUBLICAN PLAYBOOK is full of 100% new material never before seen anywhere. It’s a collection of the super-secret dirty tricks and scams that the Republicans use to win elections, plus it contains notes and doodles in the margins by its owner, President George W. Bush.

Publishers Weekly called it “timely,” “hilarious,” and “devastating.” Let me add another adjective: “cheap.” It’s only $11.53 at Amazon.com, and if you buy three copies, shipping is free. A small price to pay for keeping The Borowitz Report up and running.

Now, I’m not saying that if you don’t buy my book I’ll stop writing The Borowitz Report. But why take that kind of unnecessary risk? Isn’t $11.53 a small price to pay to sleep well at night, secure in the knowledge that The Borowitz Report will be there tomorrow morning? When you think about it, not buying my book is an act of insanity.

So click on the book banner at the top of the page, or go to Amazon.com, Bn.com, or your local bookseller, and buy THE REPUBLICAN PLAYBOOK today.

http://www.borowitzreport.com/books.asp

And remember: without The Borowitz Report, your only source of fake news would be Fox.

Love,

Andy

P.S. If you forward The Borowitz Report to your friends, forward this letter to them, too — they shouldn’t be getting a free ride.

P.S.S. For those of you in the New York area, please come to my show tonight at Mo Pitkin’s House of Satisfaction (34 Avenue A between 2nd and 3rd) at 8:30 and get an autographed copy of the book. That’s not even available on eBay. Yet.

http://www.borowitzreport.com/

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three to see

Ted Rall: shot by a 40 cent bullet, sent back in a $4000 coffin

http://picayune.uclick.com/comics/trall/2006/trall060923.gif

Dan Wasserman: keep pumping up the government

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Dwane Powell: Gas Price Setter

http://editorialcartoonists.com/cartoon/display.cfm/24310/

Relativity drive: The end of wings and wheels?

08 September 2006

Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition.

Justin Mullins

Look, no wings! The trip from London to Havant on the south coast of England is like travelling through time. I sit in an air-conditioned train, on tracks first laid 150 years ago, passing roads that were known to the Romans. At one point, I pick out a canal boat, queues of cars and the trail from a high-flying jet – the evolution of mechanised travel in a single glance.

But evolution has a habit of springing surprises. Waiting at my destination is a man who would put an end to mechanised travel. Roger Shawyer has developed an engine with no moving parts that he believes can replace rockets and make trains, planes and automobiles obsolete. “The end of wings and wheels” is how he puts it. It’s a bold claim.

Read Shawyer’s theory paper here (pdf format).

At:

http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/av/shawyertheory.pdf

Of course, any crackpot can rough out plans for a warp drive. What they never show you is evidence that it works. Shawyer is different. He has built a working prototype to test his ideas, and as a respected spacecraft engineer he has persuaded the British government to fund his work. Now organisations from other parts of the world, including the US air force and the Chinese government, are beating a path to his tiny company.

The device that has sparked their interest is an engine that generates thrust purely from electromagnetic radiation – microwaves to be precise – by exploiting the strange properties of relativity. It has no moving parts, and releases no exhaust or noxious emissions. Potentially, it could pack the punch of a rocket in a box the size of a suitcase. It could one day replace the engines on almost any spacecraft. More advanced versions might allow cars to lift from the ground and hover. It could even lead to aircraft that will not need wings at all. I can’t help thinking that it sounds too good to be true.
…

Complete article at:

http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/mg19125681.400;jsessionid=NMGHKBGMCGMM

From issue 2568 of New Scientist magazine, 08 September 2006, page 30-34

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NET NEUTRALITY POLL FAR FROM NEUTRAL ITSELF

At:

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2006/09/18/stevens-embraces-telephone-poll/

“Pollsters hired by Verizon Communications Inc. presented a study today that suggests consumers overwhelmingly reject ‘net neutrality’ … but they support Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens’s voluminous bill that rewrites many of the nation’s communications laws,” writes Amy Schatz. The U.S. Senate Commerce committee, which Stevens chairs, issued a press release claiming the study shows “American voters favor video choice over onerous ‘Net Neutrality’ regulations.” The study was conducted by the PR firm Glover Park Group, in conjunction with Public Opinion Strategies. Glover Park Group has worked for the U.S. Telecom Association and News Corporation, founding an Astroturf group for the latter. The net neutrality poll questions are leading, asking participants which is more important: “the benefits of new TV and video choice” and “lower prices for cable TV,” or “barring high, speed internet providers from offering specialized services … for a fee.” On MyDD, Matt Stoller compares the poll questions to, “Do you want lots of pie or would you like a kidney infection?”
SOURCE: Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire blog, September 18, 2006

For more information or to comment on this story, visit:

http://www.prwatch.org/node/5190

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#12 of 17 rules to bring you up to speed on what you need to believe to be a Republican.

Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet.

Complete article at:

http://sr4001.com/2006/09/04/believe-republican/

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#12 of the Top 25 Censored Stories of 2007

#12 Pentagon Plans to Build New Landmines
Source:

Inter Press Service, August 3, 2005
Title: “After 10-Year Hiatus, Pentagon Eyes New Landmine”
Author: Isaac Baker

Human Rights Watch website, August 2005
Title: “Development and Production of Landmines”

Faculty Evaluator: Scott Suneson
Student Researchers: Rachel Barry and Matt Frick

The Bush administration plans to resume production of antipersonnel landmine systems in a move that is at odds with both the international community and previous U.S. policy, according to the leading human rights organization, Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Nearly every nation has endorsed the goal of a global ban on antipersonnel mines. In 1994 the U.S. called for the “eventual elimination” of all such mines, and in 1996 President Bill Clinton said the U.S. would “seek a worldwide agreement as soon as possible to end the use of all antipersonnel mines.” The U.S. produced its last antipersonnel landmine in 1997. It had been the stated objective of the U.S. government to eventually join the 145 countries signatory to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, which bans the use, production, exporting, and stockpiling of antipersonnel landmines.

The Bush administration, however, made an about-face in U.S. antipersonnel landmine policy in February 2004, when it abandoned any plan to join the Mine Ban Treaty, also known as the Ottawa Convention. “The United States will not join the Ottawa Convention because its terms would have required us to give up a needed military capability,” the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Political-Military announced, summing up the administration’s new policy, “The United States will continue to develop non-persistent anti-personnel and anti-tank landmines.”

HRW reports that, “New U.S. landmines will have a variety of ways of being initiated, both command-detonation (that is, when a soldier decides when to explode the mine, sometimes called ‘man-in-the-loop’) and traditional victim-activation. A mine that is designed to be exploded by the presence, proximity, or contact of a person (i.e., victim-activation) is prohibited under the International Mine Ban Treaty.”

To sidestep international opposition, the Pentagon proposes development of the “Spider” system, which consists of a control unit capable of monitoring up to eighty-four hand-placed, unattended munitions that deploy a web of tripwires across an area. Once a wire is touched, a man-in-the-loop control system allows the operator to activate the devices.
The Spider, however, contains a “battlefield override” feature that allows for circumvention of the man-in-the-loop, and activation by the target (victim).

A Pentagon report to Congress stated, “Target Activation is a software feature that allows the man-in-the-loop to change the capability of a munition from requiring action by an operator prior to being detonated, to a munition that will be detonated by a target. The Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Service Chiefs, using best military judgment, feel that the man-in-the-loop system without this feature would be insufficient to meet tactical operational conditions and electronic countermeasures.”

The U.S. Army spent $135 million between fiscal years 1999 and 2004 to develop Spider and another $11 million has been requested to complete research and development. A total of $390 million is budgeted to produce 1,620 Spider systems and 186,300 munitions. According to budget documents released in February 2005, the Pentagon requested $688 million for research on and $1.08 billion for the production of new landmine systems between fiscal years 2006 and 2011.

Steven Goose, Director of HRW Arms Division, told Project Censored that Congress has required a report from the Pentagon on the humanitarian consequences of the “battlefield override” or victim-activated feature of these munitions for review before approving funds. Though production was set for December of 2005, Congress has not, as of June 2006, received this preliminary Pentagon report.

If the Spider or similar mine munitions systems move forward, a frightening precedence will be set. At best the 145 signatories to the Ottawa Convention will be beholden to the treaty, which forbids assistance in joint military operations where landmines are being used. At worst, U.S. production will legitimize international resumption of landmine proliferation.

Steven Goose warns, “If one doesn’t insist on a comprehensive ban on all types and uses of antipersonnel mines, each nation will be able to claim unique requirements and justifications.”
…

Complete article at:

http://www.projectcensored.org/censored_2007/index.htm

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GOP-funded registration drives under scrutiny for producing incomplete and other suspicious voter-registration cards.

Dozens of voters were switched to Republican without their knowledge

At:

http://tinyurl.com/ksen2

From: Poacnewsletter

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Bill O’Reilly’s enemies list, available in hardback for $26

“My goal,” Bill O’Reilly writes in the introduction to his latest book, Culture Warrior, which is published by Random House’s Broadway Books imprint and will go on sale September 25, “is to expose and defeat people who have the power to do you great harm. My weapons will be facts and superior analysis based on those facts” (Page 5).

Read more

http://mediamatters.org/items/dailyemail/200609220010?src=other

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U.S. Intelligence on Russian and Chinese Nuclear Testing Activities, 1990-2000

National Security Archive Update, September 22, 2006

U.S. Intelligence on Russian and Chinese Nuclear Testing Activities, 1990-2000

Prospects of Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Led China to Acceclerate Testing Schedule

For more information contact:
Jeffrey Richelson
202/994-7000

At:

http://www.nsarchive.org

Washington, DC, September 22, 2006 – The prospects of a Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in the early 1990′s led China to accelerate its testing schedule and discuss differences within the Russian government over testing, according to documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and archival research and posted on the Web today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. The documents illustrate the efforts of the U.S. Intelligence Community to understand developments at Russian and Chinese nuclear test sites–Novaya Zemlya and Lop Nur–from 1990 to 2000.

Today’s posting includes 33 documents–many originally classified Top Secret–produced under the auspices of the Director of Central Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency. The records were obtained by Archive Senior Fellow Jeffrey T. Richelson while conducting research for his recently-published book, Spying on the Bomb: American Nuclear Intelligence from Nazi Germany to Iran and North Korea. (W.W. Norton).

The documents include assessments of the link between nuclear and sub-critical tests and weapons modernization programs in Russia and China–both strategic and tactical nuclear weapons programs.

Of particular interest is the report of an outside review panel appointed by Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet after detection of a seismic event in the vicinity of Novaya Zemlya on August 16, 1997. That detection, combined with satellite reconnaissance showing unusual activity at the test site, led to concerns within the Intelligence Community that Russia had conducted a nuclear test despite its pledge to abide by the terms of the CTBT.

http://www.nsarchive.org

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Bush’s options on Iran

Boston Globe – United States

… As Seymour Hersh has reported in The New Yorker, Vice President Dick Cheney and other ultras in the administration have been actively promoting the option of …

Complete article at:

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/09/23/bushs_options_on_iran

Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and a senior fellow at Demos. His column appears regularly in the Globe.

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BUSH RETIREMENT PLANS  What a great idea!!!!!

Knight Ridder Newspapers  Salt Lake Tribune      6/16/2006     

     Every great career eventually comes to an end, and when you’re the president of these United States, you only get eight years (at most) to accomplish everything you set out to do.   Then you’re an ex-president for the rest of your life.  I’ll bet that ex-presidents, like most retired people, find it to be something of a shock to have all that time on their hands when they leave the working world. So they find things to do. They work on their memoirs. They build libraries.They give speeches. They support their favorite charitable causes.    

     But what about our current president? His term will be up before he knows it, and then it’s back to private life. I’m afraid the trans ition will be especially difficult for Dubya. He is a man of action, and I worry about how he’ll adjust to a life out of the spotlight.   

     I think that we, as a nation, owe Bush more than the customary parting gifts of an enormous pension and round-the-clock Secret Service protection when he leaves off ice. I think we can do better for him. I think we should put him to work, and I know just where he ought to go. Iraq. There is no question that Iraq will be the legacy of President Bush’s tenure, and there is also no doubt that there will still be a lot of work to do there when he leaves office. I believe we should allow Bush an opportunity to stick with the job even after his term expires.  

     The next president should appoint George W. Bush to be a special envoy to Iraq and charge him with the  responsibility to oversee all American interests there, advise the n ew Iraqi government, and maintain the morale of American troops who are carrying out the war effort.  

     The position should be a permanent one, and he would not leave until the “hard work” of helping Iraq to  establish a working democratic government has been accomplished. Or until he leaves this mortal coil.  Whichever comes first.   

     But I do not believe Bush should go to Iraq alone. He needs some trusted advisors by his side at all times, and the first two names that immediately spring to mind are Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld. These men have been instrumental in the planning and execution of the Iraq campaign from the beginning, and I can only imagine how much more effective their work could be if they were onsite 24/7 right where the action is, getting their hands dirty in the cause of spreading freedom to that dark corner of the world.    

    I know this assignment would be dangerous.The three senior freedom fighters would be huge targets for the  forces of evil in Iraq, and there is a real possibility that one or more of them might meet with an untimely demise in that chaotic environment. But as Bush has reminded us time and again, the price is high but our cause is just. Freedom is not free. I expect that all three men would be ready and willing to undertake their assignments in the battle zone despite the extreme danger they would face. This would be a chance to show the world that they are willing to put their own lives, and not just the lives of others, on the line for what they know to be right.

So let’s start a campaign to send the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld team to Iraq in 2008. They deserve the opportunity to “finish the job” in Iraq, and I think that the sight of the three of them tooling around the streets of Baghdad in a lightly armored Humvee would do a lot to improve the morale of all Americans.

 

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Borowitz Report – John Bolton Floor Removal Shocker

Bolton Removes Ten Floors from U.N. While President of Iran Is Speaking
Annan Demands Return of Floors ‘At Once’

United Nations ambassador John Bolton used the President of Iran’s speech to the General Assembly on Tuesday as a distraction in order to fulfill his longstanding dream of removing ten floors from the U.N. building in New York.

Mr. Bolton had made no secret of his desire to remove ten floors from the world body’s headquarters, but few in the international community believed that he had the audacity or the wherewithal to pull off such a stunning operation.

But on Tuesday, as Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad launched into a scathing anti-American tirade to the General Assembly, Mr. Bolton successfully removed floors 14 through 23 from the U.N.’s fabled New York home.

Hours after the unprecedented floor-removal procedure, a spokesman for Mr. Bolton revealed that the U.S. ambassador accomplished the astonishing feat by using something called “a matter transporter beam.”

Mr. Bolton’s excision of ten stories from the United Nations building drew an instant rebuke from U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, who demanded that the U.S. ambassador return the ten floors to the world body “at once.”

“Those ten floors contain many facilities that are necessary to the continuing operation of the U.N., including twenty bathrooms,” Mr. Annan said. “Also, the storage closet where my son hides his cash kickbacks is on 16.”

Mr. Bolton said that Mr. Annan would have an opportunity to reacquire the ten floors later this week, when they go on sale at eBay.

Elsewhere, responding to widespread criticism, President Bush said today that the United States’ practice of torturing innocent Canadian photojournalists was “under review.”

http://www.borowitzreport.com/

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three to see

Tom Toles: i’ll tell you whatever you want to hear

http://www.buffalonews.com/graphics/2006/09/21/0921toles.jpg

Ted Rall: shot by a 40 cent bullet, sent back in a $4000 coffin

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Pat Oliphant: spinach iraq, spinach ala afhgan …

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