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"Those who are willing to give up freedom for a little safety deserve neither freedom nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." Theodore Roosevelt
digg links, for the techie:
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| .....Snow Reignites Fight Over Job Outsourcing |
| 03.30.04 (7:15 pm) [edit] |
THIS IS EASY FOR THIS FUCK TO SAY! Let's outsource the Treasury Secretary job....hummm...
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WASHINGTON - Treasury Secretary John Snow reignited the political argument over U.S. companies shipping jobs overseas Tuesday with comments that "outsourcing" was an integral part of a global trading system.
Snow's comments in economically hard-hit Ohio were published as President Bush was delivering a speech defending his free trade policies in Wisconsin, a state that has lost 80,000 manufacturing jobs.
Democrat John Kerry is hoping to capitalize on Americans' concern about an economic recovery in which job growth has lagged badly and the country's manufacturers have suffered more than 3 million lost jobs since mid-2000.
Asked in a newspaper interview whether he thought outsourcing of jobs to other countries made the U.S. economy strong, Snow replied, "It's one aspect of trade and there can't be any doubt about the fact that trade makes ... America strong."
A recent Associated Press poll showed that the economy is the most important issue to voters and 53 percent of those surveyed think Kerry is best suited to create jobs.
Bush told an audience in Appleton, Wis., Tuesday that he understood there was concern about "jobs going overseas. ... For some people looking for work, I understand that."
But Bush said the way to confront the problem was to "make sure America remains the best place in the world to do business" and not to resort to "economic isolationism" by erecting barriers to the U.S. market.
The president has been using the phrase "economic isolationism" to attack Kerry's trade proposals including the Democrat's promise that he will re-examine all the country's trade agreements in his first 120 days as president to make sure they are fair to American workers.
Snow's remarks were similar to comments N. Gregory Mankiw, the president's chief economist, made last month in which he said the outsourcing of jobs would probably be a long-term benefit for the United States. Mankiw later apologized for comments he said were misinterpreted and made him appear to be insensitive to the issue of job losses.
Both Bush and Snow insisted that the administration's policy of pushing for free trade agreements as a way to tear down barriers to American goods around the world was the best approach.
However, they are having to make that argument at a time when worries about outsourcing have grown along with the country's trade deficit, which last year hit an all-time high of $541.8 billion amid continued plant closing announcements.
Just Tuesday, 87-year-old Radio Flyer Inc. announced it was closing its Chicago plant and moving the production of its metal red wagons loved by generations of American children to China, resulting in the expected layoffs of nearly half of its 90 employees.
In his interview with The Cincinnati Enquirer, Snow said the answer to the problem of outsourcing, the movement of jobs to lower-waged countries, was to promote stronger economic growth in the United States.
"If we can keep the American economy strong and growing and expanding, we'll create lots of jobs. We always have," he said, seeking to address fears that many lost manufacturing jobs will never come back.
Economists, who as a group are big supporters of free trade, said the administration appeared to be bungling the politics of trade in a period when many jobs have been lost and there are now worries that high-paid white-collar workers could be vulnerable to having their jobs sent abroad as well.
"There is no difference from an economic standpoint from outsourcing manufacturing jobs, which we have been doing for 20 years, and outsourcing white collar service jobs except college-educated workers whine louder when they lose their jobs," said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's in New York.
For his part, Kerry last week proposed a major change in corporate tax policy that would eliminate a $12 billion annual benefit that U.S. companies receive by being able to defer taxes on income earned from their overseas operations. He referred to "Benedict Arnold" companies that get tax breaks for moving jobs overseas.
Kerry said he wants Congress to halt the tax deferral option for companies producing for sales back into the U.S. market and use the savings to lower the corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 33.25 percent.
Economists have questioned how much impact Kerry's proposal would have in halting job losses, given that other factors including large wage discrepancies between the United States and many other countries play a role in decisions to move production abroad.
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| .....Iraqi Defector's Tales Bolstered U.S. Case for War |
| 03.30.04 (2:00 pm) [edit] |
by Bob Drogin and Greg Miller
Los Angeles Times [US]
March 28th, 2004
Colin Powell presented the U.N. with details on mobile germ factories, which came from a now-discredited source known as 'Curveball.'
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration's prewar claims that Saddam Hussein had built a fleet of trucks and railroad cars to produce anthrax and other deadly germs were based chiefly on information from a now-discredited Iraqi defector code-named "Curveball," according to current and former intelligence officials.
U.S. officials never had direct access to the defector and didn't even know his real name until after the war. Instead, his story was provided by German agents, and his file was so thick with details that American officials thought it confirmed long-standing suspicions that the Iraqis had developed mobile germ factories to evade arms inspections.
Curveball's story has since crumbled under doubts raised by the Germans and the scrutiny of U.S. weapons hunters, who have come to see his code name as particularly apt, given the problems that beset much of the prewar intelligence collection and analysis.
U.N. weapons inspectors hypothesized that such trucks might exist, officials said. They then asked former exile leader Ahmad Chalabi, a bitter enemy of Hussein, to help search for intelligence supporting their theory.
Soon after, a young chemical engineer emerged in a German refugee camp and claimed that he had been hired out of Baghdad University to design and build biological warfare trucks for the Iraqi army.
Based largely on his account, President Bush and his aides repeatedly warned of the shadowy germ trucks, dubbed "Winnebagos of Death" or "Hell on Wheels" in news accounts, and they became a crucial part of the White House case for war — including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's dramatic presentation to the U.N. Security Council just weeks before the war.
Only later, U.S. officials said, did the CIA learn that the defector was the brother of one of Chalabi's top aides, and begin to suspect that he might have been coached to provide false information. Partly because of that, some U.S. intelligence officials and congressional investigators fear that the CIA may have inadvertently conjured up and then chased a phantom weapons system.
David Kay, who resigned in January as head of the CIA-led group created to find illicit weapons in Iraq, said that of all the intelligence failures in Iraq, the case of Curveball was particularly troubling.
"This is the one that's damning," he said. "This is the one that has the potential for causing the largest havoc in the sense that it really looks like a lack of due diligence and care in going forward."
Kay said in an interview that the defector "was absolutely at the heart of a matter of intense interest to us." But Curveball turned out to be an "out-and-out fabricator," he added.
Last May, the CIA announced that it had found two of the suspect trucks in northern Iraq, but the agency later backtracked. However, in the absence of evidence to support many of its prewar claims, the Bush administration has continued to cling to the possibility that biowarfare trucks might still exist.
Vice President Dick Cheney as recently as January referred to the trucks as "conclusive" proof that Iraq was producing weapons of mass destruction. CIA Director George J. Tenet later told a Senate committee that he called Cheney to warn him that the evidence was increasingly suspect.
Tenet gave the first hint of the underlying problem in a speech at Georgetown University on Feb. 5.
"I must tell you we are finding discrepancies in some claims made by human sources" about mobile biological weapons production, he said. "Because we lack direct access to the most important sources on this question, we have as yet been unable to resolve the differences."
U.S. and British intelligence officials have acknowledged since major combat ended in Iraq that lies or distortions by Iraqi opposition groups in exile contributed to numerous misjudgments about Iraq's suspected weapons programs. Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress is blamed most often, but the rival Iraqi National Accord and various Kurdish groups also were responsible for sending dubious defectors to Western intelligence, officials say.
Still, the Curveball case may be especially damaging because no other credible defector has provided firsthand confirmation that Iraq modified vehicles to produce germ agents, and no proof has been found before or after the end of major combat. Iraqi officials interrogated since the war have all denied that such a program existed.
The story of Curveball is now under close review by an internal panel at the CIA, as well as House and Senate oversight committees. All are seeking to determine why so much of the prewar intelligence now appears seriously flawed.
Richard J. Kerr, a former CIA deputy director who is leading the internal review, defended the agency's handling of the case. He said there were strong reasons to believe that the vehicles existed because the defector's information was consistent with years of intelligence on Iraq's covert efforts to obtain chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
"It was detailed and specific and made a lot of sense," Kerr said. He said the CIA believed that Iraq was developing and concealing banned weapons programs in civilian chemical and pharmaceutical facilities. "You get reporting on mobile production facilities … and you say it makes some sense."
Nor did Kerr fault the agency for relying so heavily on an anonymous source whom it could not interview. In this case, Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, known as the BND, repeatedly rejected CIA requests to meet Curveball, saying it needed to protect its source. But U.S. and German officials said the BND furnished its file on the defector to U.S. authorities and at times had him answer specific questions from U.S. intelligence.
"Intelligence is often based on information where you can't go back and talk to the source or verify it," Kerr said. "So you turn to the basic questions. 'Does it make sense? Is it logical? Does it appear he could have been at the right place at the right time to know these things?' " The defector met those tests, he said.
One focus of the ongoing investigations is whether the CIA should have known Curveball was not credible. A former U.S. official who has reviewed the classified file said the BND warned the CIA last spring that it had "various problems with the source." Die Zeit, a German newsweekly, first reported the warning last August.
The official said the BND sent the warning after Powell first described the biowarfare trucks in detail to the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003. It's unclear whether the German warning arrived before the war began on March 20 last year.
"You can imagine the consternation it kicked off," the official said. "It suggested that what [the Germans had] been passing to us was false. They were backing away."
Mark Mansfield, a CIA spokesman, declined to comment Friday on that charge or questions about the case. An official at BND headquarters in Berlin, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also declined to answer questions. "We believed that Iraq had these mobile biological facilities," the official said.
Although previous CIA reports had referred to the biowarfare trucks, Powell's U.N. presentation put them in the spotlight.
Citing "eyewitness accounts," he called them "one of the most worrisome things that emerges from the thick intelligence file we have on Iraq."
"We have firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails," Powell said. He showed what he called "highly detailed and extremely accurate" diagrams of how the trucks were configured, and warned that they could spew enough anthrax or botulinus toxin "in a single month to kill thousands upon thousands of people."
But Kay, who sought to confirm Curveball's claims in Iraq after the end of major combat, said Powell's account was "disingenuous."
Kay added: "If Powell had said to the Security Council: 'It's one source, we never actually talked to him, and we don't know his name,' as he's describing this, I think people would have laughed us out of court."
Powell assured U.N. diplomats that two other Iraqi sources, who he said were "in a position to know," had corroborated the "eyewitness account." The CIA later said those reports arrived in December 2000 and mid-2002.
Kay said the debriefing files on the pair showed that they never had direct contact with the biowarfare trucks. "None of them claimed to have seen them," he said. "They said they were aware of the mobile program. They had heard there was a mobile program."
CIA files showed that another Iraqi defector, an engineer who had worked with Curveball, specifically denied that they had worked on such facilities, Kay said. Powell did not cite that defector.
The CIA acknowledged last month that a fourth defector whom Powell cited at the U.N., a former major in Iraq's intelligence service, had lied when he said that Baghdad had built mobile research laboratories to test biological agents. The Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency twice debriefed that defector in early 2002 and reported his claims. But it then concluded that he did not have firsthand information and probably was coached by Chalabi's exile group.
In May 2002, the agency posted a "fabrication notice" on a classified computer network to warn other U.S. intelligence agencies that the defector had lied. But CIA officials said the notice was overlooked, and his information was cited both in Powell's speech and the CIA's October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate to Congress.
The Curveball case began in 1992, when weapons inspectors from the U.N. Special Commission in Iraq, frustrated at their failure to find Iraq's germ weapon factories, wrote an internal report in which they speculated that Baghdad could have hidden small, mobile versions in modified vans or trucks.
Based on that hypothesis, the U.N. weapons hunters and U.S. intelligence analysts studying U-2 spy plane and high-altitude satellite images of Iraq were instructed to watch for a potential "signature" of a germ factory on wheels — pairs of 35-foot trucks, working in tandem, parked parallel, with communications gear, high security and a water source.
Eavesdropping on Iraqi military communications had already proved that they were moving sensitive documents to avoid detection. U.N. inspectors also knew that Iraq used tanker trucks to fill chemical warheads on the battlefield in the 1980s, raising suspicions that it might also have produced chemical or biological agents in trucks.
In 1994, Israel's military intelligence passed word that Iraq was hiding poison factories in commercial trucks — red-and-white "Tip Top Ice Cream" trucks and green moving vans from "Sajida Transport," named for the dictator's wife.
The U.N. inspectors concluded that neither company existed, and some inspectors were skeptical about the whole idea.
Raymond A. Zilinskas, who helped inspect 61 biological facilities in Iraq in 1994, said he had argued that biowarfare trucks were difficult to build, dangerous to operate and hard to hide. "They just didn't make sense from a technical or a security viewpoint," he said.
But the theory gained new credence when Gen. Amir Saadi, then a senior Iraqi weapons official, told U.N. inspectors in August 1995 that he had proposed building germ-producing trucks and other mobile facilities in 1988, chiefly to avoid air attack, but that regime officials rejected his concept as impractical.
Saadi, who became science advisor to Hussein and chief liaison to U.N. inspectors before the war, turned himself in to U.S. forces in Baghdad on April 12, 2003, after telling German TV that Iraq had no illicit weapons. He remains in U.S. custody.
Saadi's 1995 statement rang alarms at the CIA and elsewhere, however. Intelligence reports soon referred to a possible series of three trucks that would operate as a single biological agent factory. One truck would carry fermenters, another would carry mixing and preparation tanks, and the third, equipment to process and store the product.
U.N. inspectors stepped up their search in response. So did Western spy services.
In 1996, Holland's National Intelligence and Security Agency, known as the BVD, sent word that an informant code-named "Fulcrum," a former Iraqi intelligence officer, had supplied a list of government-issued, blue-and-white, sequentially numbered license plates that supposedly were used on the germ trucks. But the inspectors could never find licenses with those numbers.
Then, in March 1997, a U-2 spy plane that the U.S. government operated for the U.N. photographed three or four large box-type trucks parked outside a garage used by Iraq's intelligence service, the Mukhabarat. U.N. teams swooped in — and found that the trucks were filled with construction material.
The U.N. team members then asked headquarters in New York to let them run random roadblocks in Iraq. They also asked for "hot pursuit" authority, with fast cars and helicopters capable of spraying foam on the roads, in case they had to chase a fleeing germ truck. Officials in New York quickly rejected both proposals.
"We were told that was insane," said Scott Ritter, a former chief U.N. inspector who headed a special investigations unit and who served as the U.N. team's liaison to U.S. intelligence. "And they were right."
But the U.N. inspections operation in New York, then headed by Australian diplomat Richard Butler, did approve another plan.
The inspectors long had relied on intelligence from sympathetic governments and dissident groups. Chalabi had lobbied Washington for years to overthrow Hussein and claimed that he had spies inside the Baghdad regime.
In December 1997, Ritter said, he and his deputy, a former British army major attached to the U.N. team, flew to London to ask Chalabi for help. They met for three hours over dinner at Chalabi's Mayfair residence with the influential Iraqi exile and Ahmed Allawi, who headed intelligence operations for the Iraqi National Congress.
"Chalabi outlined what he could do for us," Ritter recalled. "His intelligence guy outlined their sources and said he had people inside the government. They told us they had the run of Iraq. Just tell them what we needed. So we outlined the gaps in our understanding of the Iraqi program, including the mobile bioweapons labs. Basically, we gave them a shopping list."
"They began feeding us information," Ritter said. "We got hand-drawn maps, handwritten statements and other stuff flowing in. At first blush, it looked good. But nothing panned out. Most of it just regurgitated what we'd given them. And the data that was new never checked out."
Haider Musawi, an INC media liaison in Baghdad, said in a telephone interview Saturday that he could not confirm the meetings had occurred. Asked about INC ties to Curveball, he replied, "I really can't think of such a defector."
U.S. officials say Curveball apparently showed up in Germany in 1998, but it is unclear how he got there. The Times was unable to ascertain Curveball's real name or his current location.
What is clear is that by 2000, Curveball had provided a vast array of convincing detail about the illicit program he claimed to manage.
He outlined how each office was set up and the names on each door. He described how walls were moved to help hide trucks. He identified several dozen fellow team members — even a lowly aide who rented their cars. He provided diagrams showing how stainless steel tanks, pumps, compressors and other parts were configured on nickel-plated flooring in each truck.
U.N. weapons hunters who returned to Iraq in November 2002 considered the trucks a "high priority," said a former inspector who helped supervise more than 70 raids for evidence of germ weapons in the four months before the war.
They checked every site Curveball had identified, as well as others picked by U.S. intelligence. They tested waste lines in food-testing vans, took samples from refrigerator trucks, and searched for truck parts, blueprints, purchase orders or other evidence in factories, laboratories and elsewhere.
"We didn't find anything," the former inspector said.
After Powell's U.N. speech, inspectors demanded that Baghdad identify every mobile facility it owned.
In letters delivered on March 3 and March 15, just days before the war started, Iraqi officials handed over detailed descriptions, backed by 39 photographs and four videotapes, of mobile disease analysis labs, mobile military morgues, X-ray trucks, military bakery vans, mobile ice factories, refrigerated drug and food transport trucks and other special vehicles. Some had stainless steel equipment that appeared similar to the diagrams Powell had shown the U.N.
After major combat ended, the U.S. forces recovered two suspect trailer trucks in northern Iraq. A CIA report last May 28 concluded that two trucks "probably" were designed to produce lethal toxins in liquid slurry, and Bush said U.S. forces thus had "found" Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
But Pentagon analysts warned that the trucks probably produced hydrogen for artillery weather balloons, and the CIA backtracked. It now says there is "no consensus" on the trucks' use.
During the summer, Kay's investigators visited Curveball's parents and brother in Baghdad, as well as his former work sites. They determined that he was last in his class at the University of Baghdad, not first as he had claimed. They learned he had been fired from his job and jailed for embezzlement before he fled Iraq.
"He was wrong about so much," Kay recalled. "Physical descriptions he gave for buildings and sites simply didn't match reality. Things started to fall apart."
Chalabi, now a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, retains strong support in the White House. He was a guest of First Lady Laura Bush at the president's State of the Union address last January, and his organization still receives several hundred thousand dollars a month from the Pentagon to help collect intelligence in Iraq.
Chalabi says he has been unfairly blamed for the failure to find germ trucks or any other unconventional weapons in Iraq since major combat ended. He blames the CIA instead.
"Intelligence people are supposed to do a better job for their country, and their government did not do such a good job," he told CBS' "60 Minutes" in a recent interview. "This is a ridiculous situation."
INC defectors were always accused of having an ax to grind, he said. "So why did the CIA believe them so much?"
http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-curveball28mar2 8" title="http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-curveball28mar2 8" target="_blank"http://www.latimes.com/la-fg-...,1,1470551,print.story
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| .....Court Opens Door To Searches Without Warrants |
| 03.29.04 (2:55 pm) [edit] |
WDSU (New Orleans) [US]
March 26th, 2004
NEW ORLEANS -- It's a groundbreaking court decision that legal experts say will affect everyone: Police officers in Louisiana no longer need a search or arrest warrant to conduct a brief search of your home or business.
Leaders in law enforcement say it will provide safety to officers, but others argue it's a privilege that could be abused.
The decision was made by the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. Two dissenting judges called it the "road to Hell."
The ruiling stems from a lawsuit filed in Denham Springs in 2000.
New Orleans Police Department spokesman Capt. Marlon Defillo said the new power will go into effect immediately and won't be abused.
"We have to have a legitimate problem to be there in the first place, and if we don't, we can't conduct the search," Defillo said.
But former U.S. Attorney Julian Murray has big problems with the ruling.
"I think it goes way too far," Murray said, noting that the searches can be performed if an officer fears for his safety -- a subjective condition.
Defillo said he doesn't envision any problems in New Orleans, but if there are, they will be handled.
"There are checks and balances to make sure the criminal justce system works in an effective manor," Defillo said.
http://www.theneworleanschannel.com/news/2953483/detail.html" title="http://www.theneworleanschannel.com/news/2953483/detail.html" target="_blank"http://www.theneworleanschann...
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| .....OPEC's plan to cut oil production not working |
| 03.28.04 (5:52 pm) [edit] |
By Bruce Stanley, Associated Press
LONDON -- OPEC's plan to cut its oil production target by 4 percent appears to be unraveling, as group members ignore their self-imposed quotas to take advantage of high crude prices and meet the surging demand for oil in China and the United States.
Despite announcing two production cuts in six months, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has boosted its actual output to try to keep pace with the rising market.
OPEC agreed last month to reduce its output ceiling by 1 million barrels a day starting April 1, to try to keep prices from tumbling during a seasonal lull in demand this spring.
But as OPEC representatives prepare to meet Wednesday in Vienna to review the oil market, some are no longer treating next month's cut as inevitable and are suggesting instead that all options -- even an increase in output -- are open.
That could mean cheaper and more plentiful crude, but it probably wouldn't be enough to comfort American motorists. U.S. gasoline prices have risen to a record national average of $1.75 a gallon due mostly to a robust domestic demand, limited refining capacity and concerns about possible shortages in blending components for reformulated gasoline. Some analysts say that any foreseeable increase in oil supplies probably wouldn't translate into bigger gasoline inventories in time for the peak summer driving season.
Crude prices have risen by about $6 a barrel since OPEC announced its latest cut Feb. 10. U.S. prices have bumped uncomfortably close to the psychologically important threshold of $40, though they've backed off somewhat in recent days on evidence of a build-up in crude inventories. Futures contracts of U.S. light, sweet crude for May delivery were trading Friday afternoon at $35.68 in New York.
"You'd have to be a complete idiot to cut production when prices are at these levels," said Adam Sieminski of Deutsche Bank in London.
Excluding Iraq, which doesn't participate in the group's quota agreements, OPEC has pumped an estimated 26 million barrels a day so far in March. The logistics of reducing crude shipments now would make it impossible for the group to comply with its new ceiling of 23.5 million barrels even if it wanted to, said Leo Drollas of the Center for Global Energy Studies in London.
Costlier crude is a political issue in major importing countries. White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card urged OPEC to increase its production and said the Bush administration would be talking to its "allies" in the group to ensure that they kept supplies flowing, he told MSNBC.
OPEC's 11 members supply about one-third of the world's oil.
The group's president, Purnomo Yusgiantoro, said this week that OPEC would discuss three possible strategies Wednesday: trimming the output target as planned, leaving it unchanged at its current level of 24.5 million barrels a day, or raising it.
Purnomo's newfound flexibility attests to the mixed signals coming from the oil market. Although crude prices are high, some analysts insist there is no real shortage.
They point instead to futures markets, where an unusually large number of "long" positions have helped drive the market upward. A long position is one in which a trader pays a fixed price for a paper contract of crude in the expectation that prices will rise and let him cash in his contract later for a profit.
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| ....Letter from Bush Redneck Country |
| 03.25.04 (5:22 pm) [edit] |
by Joe Bageant
News From Babylon [US]
March 24, 2004
Howling in the belly of the Confederacy
--Letter from Blue Ridge Bush Country
How can the region of America that gave us lynching, Jim Crow, Harry Byrd, George Wallace, Taliban Christianity, David Duke, the KKK, Bible hair, Tammy Fay Bakker, congregational snake handling, the poll tax, inbreeding, and chitterlings possibly take another step back down the stairs of human evolution? Beats the hell out of me. But somehow here in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia we have managed it.
Like most modern Southerners who’ve fled their native states for long periods of time, I have the standard love/hate relationship with my home town--Winchester, Virginia. On one hand, it is a backward and mostly irrelevant place where the question of whether Stonewall Jackson had jock itch at the Battle of Chancellorsville still rages right alongside evolution and abortion. To be sure, it is the standard venal Southern place, where poverty and ugliness are thrust into one's face daily, with all the gothic family melodramas of greed and intrigue so often written about Southern novels. On the other hand, it is the place that made me who I am, a moralizing, preachy and essentially lazy bastard who likes to drink. I was raised a Pentecostal Baptist, steeped in the gloomy ultra-Protestant assumption that man is a worthless, evil thing from birth and only goes downhill from there. And I still managed to become a raving, godless, socialist heathen. Which proves there's hope for everyone.
But something new and more ominous is afoot down here. Something that scares even a hardened tobacco-stained old toad like me--a clammy, repressive chill. One that not only dampens all political conversation not Pro-Bush, but can even cost you your job in a small town like this one. I’m serious. When I invite likeminded people for cocktails, the atmosphere is distinctly that of a “safehouse,” as the few local liberals all but whisper their opinions and eye one another, judging just how safe it is to speak one’s mind. It’s spooky, so spooky almost none of us is willing to admit it.
I can remember back in the 1960s when we still had a left, right and center in politics, even here in Virginia. Gawd I feel old. Remembering liberalism here is like being able to remember scrap paper drives and ration tickets during World War II. It feels so long ago. Anyway, contrary to neocon revisionist history, neither left, right or center was particularly seen as some sort of evil booger. The left may not have been popular, but it wasn’t particularly demonized either. My kids do not believe me when I tell them that even during the Vietnam War protests America was not so dangerously polarized as now, because there was only one issue at hand--the war. Now nearly everything is at issue. Whatever the case, today in the Shenandoah we have only a right and a far right, with some very limp moderates that pass for a left.
OK, so we do have a few liberals here--mostly transplants and retirees from “up North,” old ones whose fires have long since dimmed. They come here for the cheap historic homes and easy retirement in a low tax state where you can still get domestic “help” four times a month, four hours a crack, to clean your house for less than 180 bucks. Bear in mind, however, that we set a pretty low bar for liberalism around here. If you don’t say nigger out loud, have ever voted for a Democrat, and can spell latte, you qualify as a gold plated liberal. Unfortunately, even the miniscule new generation of Southern “liberals” cannot imagine speaking up on anything, muchless taking to the streets in 1960s fashion. Hell, Southern liberals didn’t even do it back then. But these younger Virginia liberals see members of their generation who demonstrated at the WTO talks over in D.C. as dog strangling homo kooks. For the most part, their generation of Virginians has been reduced to being either brown shirts or light brown shirts. And when they see a green shirt, well… you gotta be queer to like green at all.
Ask practically any Winchester native. They’ll tell you like it is. And it’s like this: “Everyone is America‘s enemy these days because we Americans have the guts to stand up for what is right.” That is the neocon party line down here, and it is served up with lots of patriot sauce and fear. Even the Europeans are now our enemies. We must become super-militarized because we have the greatest life style in the world and everyone else is jealous of our personal weaponry, our lack of health insurance and our sheer obesity.
Americans love to believe that their gut level but uninformed opinions are some sort of unvarnished foundational political truths. Nowhere is this more true than here in the Valley, where the “Screw a bunch of pointy headed multi-cultural “librul types” is scriptural, and there is a special place in hell for those operating on the reckless assumption that some people are wiser than others and that their opinion just might be worth listening to. “Europeans are gutless. The U.N. is helpless,” goeth the litany, “And it is up to us to run the world.” If I’ve heard this once, I’ve heard it a dozen times. Five dozen times. The real question here is whether being down-in-the-dirt ignorant makes you a bad person. It’s the never ending conundrum of the South. The jury has been out on that one for 200 years. Longer than that in our town, which even George Washington called one of the most ignorant, mean spirited and predatory places in all the colonies. Later however, Washington rolled out the barrels of rum on main street and the same mean spirited lot who had been preying on his soldiers elected him to the Virginia House of Burgesses.
Since then, predation has been institutionalized. Down at city hall rich slumlords, which own 56% of Winchester, roam like grazing animals, picking up properties from the elderly widow or the bankrupt redneck who lost his job at the styrofoam peanut factory for mentioning the word union. We are an anti-union state, therefore we earn only three-quarters of the national average and can be fired tomorrow if we even fart wrong. Local companies maintain a pro-union blacklist. Our city and county governments consists mostly of car dealers who put their homely daughters in TV commercials, and millionaire real estate hotwires and landlords setting up fixes and business connections within the city government.
All this while our girthsome, ill-educated polity hoots, cheers and guffaws at a Fox network made-for-the masses political movie called "America, the Baddest Dog on the Block,” as the power elite pick every pocket in the audience through regressive taxes, stopping only to loot the local treasury on their way out the back door to that money insulated estate they bought for a song. They are safe from prosecution because their crimes were codified into law down here during and after the reconstruction era. It’s the newest “New South” ladies and gentlemen, much like the old one, but with three more layers of lawyers and realtors. Free market capitalism, Dixie fried. Now from your vantage point up north or out west, you might well observe that we are getting exactly the government and society we deserve. But then, if we Southerners long ago got the government we deserve, the rest of America is now getting a dose of the same beefed up predatory Darwinism.
Contrary to all logic, it is the blue collar NASCAR dads, the ones who get screwed at every turn on the track, who are the staunchest defenders of this feudal system; They are also the most rabid fans of our current national belligerence toward the rest of the world. Said belligerence is particularly manifest in the Virginian’s love of personal firearms. Deeply insecure because it seems we can control nothing these days, kids, job security, health care, retirement, the goddam goat roasting Mexican neighbors… Personal weaponry makes us feel at least a little more potent and able to defend against who knows what. “Long as I got my gun…”
Meanwhile, the very same polical/corporate syndicate that screws NASCAR daddy blue is also gouging him bloody for healthcare. Which is a big deal here because we are a very unhealthy people. (Ugly too, but that doesn’t count.) Our huge new regional medical center is by far the largest cause of local bankruptcies. So finally, when the local Styrofoam peanut factory--the one that makes our cancer risk over 100 times the national average--says the hell with it and cuts workers, NAASCAR loses his house and the slumlord is right there at the sale. At least he managed to save the Dale Earnhardt commemorative beer cooler and a couple of other family heirlooms.
When a local plant moves kit and kaboodle to Asia, its marginal white male employee, like a tireless but not very smart gun dog, freezes on point and barks “Asians! The sumnabitches stole our jobs!" But lest even a slow dog catch on to a bad point, the Republican politicos wave him toward Iraq: "Over there! A swarthy bad guy called Saddam done hauled off and killed all them New Yorkers!” Git ‘um boys!” HYYYYYEEEEEE! The rebel yell goes up down at down at Bo’s Belly Barn—honest to god, it’s a real place--and the marginal white males again turn dogs of war. They didn’t do all that paintball practice in the woods for nothing.
Down here, the military is second in reverence only to Christian fundamentalism; War is an honor bound duty. In fact, the military is hardwired in with the fundamentalist Christain madrasses up and down the Shenandoah Valley cranking out 18-year-old Rambos for Jesus on a production line. These are the ones presently rotating into Iraq, who will return to get their community college certificates in law enforcement (maybe). Those like my nephews, one of whom keeps his .357 Glock in the nightstand and the Bible on the nightstand with the personal weapons permit for the Glock inside the Bible. To him, I’m sure there is a fundamental Christian symmetry in this. Just as there is to my other nephew who just completed, along with his wife yet, study of criminology and the Bible at Bob Jones University. Like their parents, they know what has gone wrong in America, who is responsible and how to correct the situation. Just ask yourself: Who would Jesus kill? Muslims are always hollerin’ to meet Allah, and they’re more than happy to provide.45 caliber cab fare to heaven. Imagine their Christian faces when they get to heaven and find out the Muslim’s next door got all the virgins. Conversely, there are plenty of radical Muslims more than happy to help them enjoy the Rapture. Fundamentalists on both sides are apocalyptic, both pack a lot of heat.
They’ve got the heat. They’ve got the meat, they’ve got the motion. All Virginia’s neocons lack is a truly inspired and brilliant leader. Thankfully, they elected a gibbon to the White House, because there is nearly enough politically in place down here to create a scenario such as we have not seen since 1936 Germany. Like I tell the ole boys down at the Royal Lunch Tavern: “Try not to be too impressed by the purty brown shirts when they hand them out. You ain’t seen the price tag yet.”
OK then, how to survive all this? Well, it helps to have been born here. So does age. And at my age, having seen many elections and as many wars, I no longer bother to entertain opposing views. Screw Southern politeness, most of which is just avoidance anyway. I rant my commie screed. No problemo. I don’t work in this town. Nor do I go to church, at least not frequently enough to be recognized. I have a full bar in my home, and my memory is still good. Good enough to summon up memories of old lovers and sun struck days of an LSD besotted hippie youth, when the very earth murmured its love for my sheer existence, for everyone’s really. And I would have you know that the lone brain cell I have been operating on since 1965 is still working just fine, thank you. It's one helluva BIG cell. Doctors tell me it's a double-yolker, weighs about two pounds and responds primarily these days to red meat, gin and sex, even the internet kind. I couldn't be happier with the situation.
Nevertheless, I’m here to tell you this: You goddam Yankee liberals, gays and other malignant types had better get out and vote. Every last one of you. Otherwise, there’s no telling what all this beer, guns and inbreeding might lead to.
I’m done ranting. You can go now. And while you are up, fetch me my gin.
Joe Bageant is a senior editor at Primedia History Magazine Group who has trained his dog to drink and to bark when “Law and Order” comes on TV.
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| .....Welcome to Armageddon |
| 03.24.04 (5:09 am) [edit] |
by Miles Harvey
Salon.com [US]
March 23rd, 2004
NEWPORT, Tenn. -- Say you were a terrorist in the late 1990s, around the time Osama bin Laden was planning the attack on the World Trade Center, and you wanted to get your hands on some weapons of mass destruction. You could have tried to track them down in Iraq, at one of the chemical-weapons facilities that the Bush administration accused Saddam Hussein of operating. Of course, neither the United Nations nor the U.S. military has managed to find a single chemical weapon in Iraq, so you probably would have come away empty-handed.
Or you could have just paid a visit to Newport, Tenn., population 7,242. There, east of town, past the Pigeon River and the True Gospel Free Will Baptist Church and the county dump, you would have stopped near a gated drive that led up a steep slope known as Rock Hill. Beyond that gate, in a small wooden shed, you would have found what you were after. No intricate alarm system to disable, not even a padlock on the shed's door -- just a thin pine branch jammed in the hasp. And behind that door, canisters filled with PFIB, a deadly, lung-attacking gas restricted under the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention.
Invisible, odorless and lethal even in minute concentrations, PFIB -- or "p-fib," as some arms-industry insiders call it -- kills slowly and brutally. At first victims experience a headache, a cough, a fever, a tightness in the chest. But after six to eight hours, as fluids flood their lungs, they start to feel as though they're choking. It's known as "air hunger" -- a desperate desire for oxygen -- and for some victims it only gets worse. Soon they begin making pitiful gurgling sounds, coughing up phlegm and blood, unable to get enough air to form words. Within six to 48 hours they are dead, suffocated from within by what doctors sometimes call "dry-land drowning."
Yet despite the dangers of PFIB -- short for perfluoroisobutylene -- you would have had little trouble stealing enough of the deadly gas to wreak havoc in a subway or an office building. "If bin Laden had known that there were 23 cylinders of this stuff, all he had to do was hop a fence to get it -- literally," says Dean Ullock, an official with the Environmental Protection Agency. "A lot of this stuff was stored in a little garden shack in the back of the property, and all you would have had to do is walk in."
EPA officials stumbled across the shed packed with PFIB in 2000, when they were called in to shut down a private chemical laboratory on Rock Hill. As an on-scene coordinator for the EPA's Emergency Response and Removal Branch, the federal government's SWAT team for chemical disasters, Ullock has had to clean up some of the worst toxic hazards in the United States. But even he was horrified by what awaited him on that isolated hilltop in Tennessee. The lab contained about 7,000 gas cylinders and other containers -- many of them unlabeled and leaking -- filled with hundreds of potentially deadly chemicals. Among them were phosgene, the gas responsible for 80 percent of the chemical-warfare casualties during World War I, and PFIB, 10 times more deadly than phosgene. The PFIB, it turned out, had been manufactured for the U.S. Army a decade earlier for chemical-defense research. But such security risks, the Army insists, are not its problem. "Safety and security at private chemical facilities are the responsibility of that company," the Army's Research, Development and Engineering Command said in a statement issued to Salon and Rolling Stone.
One of the Bush administration's main pretexts for invading Iraq was to keep such lethal substances away from terrorists -- a possibility that posed "the danger of a catastrophe that could be orders of magnitude worse than Sept. 11," in the words of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. But chemical weapons made for the Pentagon itself often have wound up in the wrong place -- or disappeared completely. The Army Corps of Engineers is currently investigating some 200 sites in 35 states where the military and its contractors cannot account for missing chemical-warfare agents. Among the weapons already uncovered is a long-lost stash of deadly mustard gas buried less than five miles from the White House.
"One of the ultimate ironies is that for all of the U.S. government's finger-pointing at Iraq and other countries -- nations we're challenging to account for every one of their weapons of mass destruction -- our country is riddled with similar weapons that our government itself can't even find," says Elizabeth Crowe, an organizer for the Chemical Weapons Working Group, a coalition of citizens living near chemical-weapons sites.
And those 200 military sites represent only a small fraction of the U.S. facilities where chemicals with the potential to inflict mass casualties are manufactured. According to the Army's surgeon general, industrial chemicals in the United States are second only to bioterrorism as a threat to national security. By the government's own estimate, there are 15,000 chemical plants that contain large quantities of potentially deadly compounds. Many of the facilities have been shown to employ little security, offering terrorists easy access to chemicals that could be used as weapons of mass destruction.
The tale of how the U.S. government lost track of its own PFIB on a hilltop in Appalachia begins with a brilliant chemist. He wasn't a mad scientist, say those who knew him, but he was so consumed with his research, so confident in his own skills, that he never paused to consider the consequences of his recklessness. "He was just like your next-door neighbor, your friend, your buddy, your pal," says a former employee. "He didn't want to hurt anyone."
It begins in a place called Armageddon.
EPA: "One of the five worst sites" in the Southeast
Edward Tyczkowski doesn't look like someone who would leave a bunch of chemical warfare agents lying around. Distinguished, courteous and soft-spoken, he has a shock of brushed-back white hair that is amazingly thick for a man of 79 years. With a Ph.D. in chemistry from Duke, Tyczkowski seems more like a tweedy retired professor than the guy responsible for creating the dangerous mess in Tennessee -- a place that an EPA official has called "one of the five worst sites in the history of the southeast United States."
Even his harshest critics agree that Tyczkowski is a first-rate scientist with an impressive résumé. Over the past half-century, he has conducted groundbreaking research for private industry, made rocket propellants for the U.S. military, and supplied blue-chip corporate clients with exotic chemicals, many of them unavailable from any other source in the world. But his extraordinary intelligence has never extended to public relations. The warning signs were evident as far back as 1970, when Tyczkowski opened a chemical company in a poor neighborhood of Durham, N.C. The company's name, he says, was "sort of a joke between my wife and me." He called it Armageddon Chemical.
What Armageddon produced was no joke. Tyczkowski specialized in producing compounds made with fluorine, a versatile element that has helped scientists prevent tooth decay, make medicines, manufacture computer chips and create Teflon. It is also very reactive and corrosive and can be extremely toxic. That's why fluorine is often used to make chemical weapons, including PFIB and Sarin, the nerve gas released in Tokyo's subways in 1995 by members of a religious cult, killing 12 and injuring more than 5,000. Company records indicate that Armageddon's many government clients included the U.S. Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground, the nation's principal research and development center for chemical and biological defense.
But according to those who knew him, Tyczkowski's main motivation was neither patriotism nor profits. "Ed just wanted to make chemicals," says a former employee. "He was happy in the lab." Even after years in his profession, he was like a brainy kid with a brand-new chemistry set: just as excited and perhaps just as heedless of the risks. "I got the impression from him that no one was as smart as he was about anything, particularly when it came to chemistry," says Dan Hawkins, an official with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation who spent years investigating Tyczkowski. "And in a way, that's right -- he probably knew more about fluorine than anyone else in the country. It was like he was above it all -- that he was so intelligent that the laws didn't apply to him."
The trouble at Armageddon started with a side business that Tyczkowski spun off to investors while maintaining an operational role. Located in a residential neighborhood just yards from family homes, the plant -- which recycled industrial solvents -- was essentially a large metal shack. Stacked high in the dusty yard outside were hundreds of barrels of hazardous waste, some rusting, some leaking, some spray-painted with question marks because the exact chemical identity of their contents was unknown. "There were kids running through the site with open barrels around," recalls Steve Unruhe, a local high school teacher who campaigned against the facility. "It was unbelievable." Then, in 1983, a cloud of toxic vapor escaped from the recycling plant. Residents were evacuated for more than five hours and two firefighters were overcome by fumes, even though they were wearing masks and air packs. It's not clear the release posed any real danger to the community -- but the company did little to cooperate with city officials, and Tyczkowski's imperious attitude only helped galvanize opposition to the plant. "Life is hazardous," he said at the time, dismissing the risks. Under pressure from the city and state, the recycling facility was forced to close two years later.
But the controversy did nothing to dampen the U.S. military's enthusiasm for Tyczkowski. Armageddon Chemical continued to receive defense contracts. In a letter to the scientist dated Feb. 11, 1987, August J. Muller, a research chemist at Aberdeen, praised his "excellent service in the past" and predicted he would receive a new contract "in the near future."
Unfortunately, the Army apparently didn't bother to monitor how Tyczkowski disposed of the dangerous chemicals he used and produced. In 1995, a customer who was getting his car fixed at an auto shop next door to Armageddon wandered through an open gate at the site, by then abandoned, and discovered barrels of toxic chemicals -- including cyanide, mercury, lead and various acids -- strewn inside and outside the building. When city officials demanded that Tyczkowski clean up the mess, he simply packed up many of the chemicals and shipped them to a new lab he had set up in Newport, Tenn.
Amazingly, the federal government helped pay for his move. His new company, the Flura Corp., was located on the edge of the Cherokee National Forest in a poverty-stricken area of Appalachia that Esquire magazine labeled "the acknowledged moonshine capital of the world." Tyczkowski promised to create dozens of jobs in a county where unemployment was running at more than 17 percent. In return, the feds financed a state-administered $225,000 loan to help him buy Rock Hill Laboratory, an abandoned facility in Newport that had previously conducted research on chemical weapons for the military. Tyczkowski didn't bother to mention his troubles at Armageddon on his loan application, and even some state regulators weren't sure what he was doing on the hill outside of town. "I knew that they made gases," recalls Hawkins, "but I thought they probably just sold oxygen or dental gases or something." Hawkins soon learned otherwise. As laid-back as Tyczkowski is aloof, Hawkins projects a frazzled, regular-guy demeanor -- think Columbo with a Tennessee twang. On March 3, 1997, he and a co-worker arrived at Flura to investigate toxic wastes that had been dumped on the property by the lab's previous occupants -- a formidable environmental problem in itself. Among the compounds known to have been manufactured at the lab was BZ, an extremely potent chemical-warfare agent that attacks the central nervous system. From the 1960s through the 1980s, the U.S. military maintained weaponized stocks of BZ -- also known as "agent buzz" because its effects on the brain, which include hallucinations and memory loss, are thought to be even more powerful than those of LSD or mescaline.
Not taking any chances, Hawkins and his co-worker had brought along protective moonsuits. The two men were standing in the parking lot of the lab, about to climb into the bio-gear, when they heard a loud pop, followed by a hiss. They looked up to see a cloud of yellowish gas leaving the facility and heading their way.
"We thought it was steam at first, but then it didn't dissipate like steam would," Hawkins says. "By the time we realized that it wasn't steam, there was nothing we could do about it. We had nowhere to run." Within seconds, the two men were engulfed by a sulfury-smelling cloud.
After it drifted past, Hawkins set out in search of Tyczkowski to find out what had happened. He was alarmed to discover that the gas might have been sulfur tetrafluoride -- potentially fatal when inhaled -- and equally disturbed by the chemist's dismissive response.
"You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time," Hawkins remembers Tyczkowski telling him.
Even more unsettling was what Hawkins observed inside the lab that day. Entering by a back door, he found the facility in disarray, its storage areas overcrowded with containers showing obvious signs of rust and decay. Realizing there was "a tremendous problem" at the facility, Hawkins began keeping a close watch on Flura. In March of 1999, having received reports of worsening conditions at the lab, he returned for an unscheduled inspection.
What he found terrified him. There were leaks in a 20,000-gallon storage tank filled with hazardous wastes. There were highly toxic gases stored in containers that were about to breach. There were explosive chemicals that had been allowed to recrystalize, ready to detonate at the slightest shock. And perhaps most alarmingly, there were canisters of PFIB that "looked like they had been laying out rusting for about 100 years."
Although the military initially denied to local media that it had done business with Tyczkowski, an investigation by Salon and Rolling Stone confirms that the Army awarded him a $137,000 contract in 1990 to produce the PFIB for what was then known as the Chemical and Biological Defense Command. The purpose of the gas remains classified -- but at the time it was purchased, U.S. military officials were concerned that the Russians, and possibly other former Eastern Bloc states, had developed PFIB as a weapon. One Tennessee official who has investigated the sale says Army scientists used it to study how to protect U.S. soldiers. "They probably killed a lot of lab rats with the stuff," the official said. After completing the Army's order, Tyczkowski simply held on to surplus canisters of PFIB, selling it as a research chemical.
Hawkins was no stranger to toxic substances, but in 20 years of environmental work, he had never seen anything that frightened him as much as Tyczkowski's lab. "Nothing ever came close to this from a purely 'this will hurt you today' standpoint," he says. "I was shocked. I was scared. I was in a state of disbelief at all the things that he had. Some of this stuff was so far off the chart as far as being dangerous. It was just the worst of all nightmares."
The military insists terrorists won't find lost chemical weapons
The military has a terrible track record at keeping tabs on chemical weapons stored outside its nine official stockpiles. From World War I through the 1970s, according to the Army Corps of Engineers, chemical weapons were manufactured, stored or dumped at scores of military bases, private contractors and other "non-stockpiled" facilities across the country. Because of poor record-keeping, most of the sites are dangerous question marks: The military simply doesn't know what's there.
The military insists that it's unlikely that terrorists would be able to locate any of the lost chemical weapons, many of which were buried in unmarked and unmapped dumps, but the prospect of such a discovery is horrifying. Less than five miles from the White House, in an affluent neighborhood of Washington, investigators have dug up 75 shells and other containers filled with chemical warfare materiel since the 1990s. Some of these munitions contained mustard agent, an oily liquid that can cause severe blistering to the skin, blindness and death. Although the munitions were manufactured at a research facility that stood on the site during World War I, tests on some of the samples showed that the deadly compound "had not degraded at all over the course of 90 years," says Chuck Twing of the Army Corps of Engineers.
Mustard gas, of course, was one of the deadly chemicals that the Bush administration accused Baghdad of possessing prior to the invasion of Iraq. Another was nitric acid, a colorless, highly corrosive poisonous liquid that gives off suffocating fumes when exposed to air (although nitric acid itself is not listed on the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention). In October of 2002, a U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency analyst warned that "a large new chemical complex" in northern Iraq "will produce nitric acid, which can be used not only in explosives and missile fuel, but also for the purification of uranium." In fact, a far more immediate security threat came from Nitrochem, a military contractor in Newell, Penn. In 2002, the EPA included Nitrochem on a list of more than 100 chemical plants across the country that could each place a million or more people at risk if attacked. Despite the danger, a reporter for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review who investigated security at the plant had no problem entering the grounds and walking around for more than an hour without encountering a single guard or employee. Just outside the plant, he found children strolling alongside huge rail cars filled with nitric acid and other deadly chemicals.
Like the chemicals at Tyczkowski's laboratories in North Carolina and Tennessee, some of the substances in Pennsylvania were manufactured for the U.S. military. According to federal records obtained by Salon and Rolling Stone, Nitrochem and its predecessor at the site, Welland Chemical, were longtime chemical suppliers for the U.S. Navy's Naval Surface Warfare Center at Indian Head, Md. Even more frightening, such sites make up a tiny fraction of U.S. chemical plants where deadly compounds are made.
The 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention -- ratified by 161 nations, including the United States -- bans a small number of chemicals, such as sarin and mustard gas, which have been employed as military weapons in the past, and restricts the use of several other substances, including PFIB. But there are hundreds of other potentially deadly chemicals, used every day by American industry, which are not covered by the convention. Such "ethyl-methyl bad stuff" constitutes a real terrorist threat, says Amy Smithson, a chemical-weapons expert for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, an influential think tank in Washington, D.C. "An attack employing industrial chemicals would be easier to pull off than one with classic chemical warfare agents, such as sarin," she says. "And the results would sadly be much the same if this took place in a major metropolitan area."
George F. Mick, who helped spearhead the cleanup at Tyczkowski's lab in Tennessee, puts it even more bluntly. "Go to the waste-water treatment facility nearest you," he says. "You're going to see things like one-ton cylinders of phosgene or chlorine. If you take one of those one-tonners in a box truck and release it in a populated area, you're going to kill thousands. That stuff is readily available."
The Bush administration acknowledges the pressing nature of such risks -- yet it has done almost nothing to improve security at chemical plants. If anything, it has made matters worse. Last year, under pressure from the chemical industry, the White House transferred oversight of the industry from the EPA -- which was attempting to toughen security -- to the new Department of Homeland Security. As chemical lobbyists and administration officials are well aware, Homeland Security does not have the regulatory authority to require the industry to adopt stricter measures.
The Republican-dominated Congress has been equally unwilling to act. Sen. Jon Corzine, D-N.J., introduced a bill last year to improve safety and enhance security oversight at chemical facilities. But in the face of a formidable lobbying effort against the legislation, Corzine's bill has languished. In October, a Senate committee passed a loophole-ridden measure -- written with the support of the Bush administration -- that allows industry to self-regulate without any new hazard-reduction requirements. But even that watered-down legislation has stalled.
"The industry has just completely stonewalled the involvement of the government in this whole process," says a frustrated Corzine. "We've been looking all over God's green acre for chemical weapons in Iraq and other nations while largely ignoring chemical security at home."
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Ed Tyczkowski doesn't see what all the fuss was about. To him, the problem was government officials meddling in something they didn't understand. For months after officials discovered his stockpile on Rock Hill, Tyczkowski resisted orders to clean it up. State and federal regulators, he told the local media, were exaggerating the dangers at his lab to "justify their jobs."
Then, on April 3, 2000, Tyczkowski met EPA officials on the front steps of his lab. His finances, it turned out, were in as big a mess as his chemicals. Forced into bankruptcy, he had decided to give up. "He literally handed us the keys and walked away," says Dean Ullock, who coordinated the team that took over the site.
Ullock is something of a natural-born troubleshooter. In January of 1982, when he was a 21 years old and serving as a diver for the Army, he was given the gruesome assignment of pulling corpses from the submerged fuselage of an Air Florida jet that had plunged into the Potomac River after taking off from Washington's National Airport. Ullock can still describe how some people died holding tight to their seats and how he had to peel back their fingers so that he could carry them up through the icy green water to their loved ones. It was grim and exhausting work, but something about the mix of danger and do-goodism hooked Ullock. Crisis became a career.
The Air Florida disaster, caused by inadequate de-icing, also taught Ullock that small oversights can lead to horrific consequences. He called Tyczkowski's lab "the sleeping giant" because of its potential for a deadly fire or a toxic release, and he went to great lengths to make sure the beast wasn't awakened. His team established a "hot zone" on top of the hill, sealed off by two rows of barbed wire fencing, which no one could enter without a protective suit. They put rescue teams on standby and erected a huge warning siren to alert hundreds of local residents that they might have only minutes to save their lives. They removed some 1,500 tons of contaminated dirt -- most of it from dump sites left by earlier occupants -- and razed Tyczkowski's lab. They established a remote air-monitoring system, designed to detect escaping toxins, that was later replicated at the World Trade Center cleanup, and they created an innovative system for neutralizing PFIB on-site. And because the possibility that the deadly chemicals might fall into the wrong hands "was considered a pretty overwhelming hazard," according to an official familiar with the site, the EPA posted guards around the clock to monitor the gate and patrol the perimeter.
These days, Tyczkowski finds himself back in Durham, where, a few weeks shy of his 80th birthday, he is attempting to make a new start. Although he declined to discuss the specifics of the Flura debacle, he agreed to meet for a beer in an empty Mexican restaurant one afternoon. He and his wife, he explains, are living on their Social Security and whatever he can scrounge together from his latest entrepreneurial enterprise -- one far different than those of the past. "Right now I've got a book business. I buy and sell used books on eBay and Amazon," Tyczkowski explains. "I have to make a living since the EPA put me out of business."
In the end, the state of Tennessee had to write off $125,000 of Tyczkowski's $225,000 loan. Of the 35 jobs he promised to create, only a fraction ever materialized. The EPA's cleanup cost $8.5 million. No matter how you look at it, what happened on Rock Hill was a tragedy -- though perhaps one inspired less by greed than by old-fashioned hubris. Dean Ullock, for one, thinks that after half a century as a chemist, Tyczkowski simply became overconfident in his skills: "He's a brilliant man. He just had absolutely no regard for environmental laws, for storage and disposal laws and for worker safety. He was so comfortable around these chemicals that he may have taken them for granted."
Unfortunately, the Pentagon also seems to be taking the risks posed by the case for granted. A federal criminal probe of Tyczkowski's activities had to be abandoned -- in part because the U.S. Army was less than cooperative, according to a source familiar with the investigation. Civil penalties against the scientist are expected to be announced in the near future.
If you travel east of Newport today, past the Pigeon River, the True Gospel Free Will Baptist Church and the county dump, you'll find yourself at that same gated drive leading up the steep forested slope. Beyond that gate, however, you'll be hard-pressed to believe that not long ago this was one of the most dangerous places in the United States. Wildflowers grow where Tyczkowski's cluttered laboratory used to stand. Oaks, pecans, walnuts and hickories tower over ground once inhabited by men and women in vulcanized orange bio-suits.
The top of the hill is still fenced up, but that's mostly a formality. The EPA now considers the land up there so safe that it has allowed a Boy Scout troop to take the place over as a campground. The scouts have dug a fire pit, and on warm nights, they sit around it, cooking burgers and singing songs. Then they roll out their sleeping bags, stare into the sky, and wait for sleep, listening to the crackle of the fire. And sometimes, just before it comes, there's a moment when the night is so still and the air tastes so pure and the heavens seem so close that those boys might suddenly feel as though they live in a world where nothing bad can ever happen.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/03/ 23/armageddon/" title="http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/03/ 23/armageddon/" target="_blank"http://www.salon.com/news/fea...
Related stories:
US weapons secrets exposed - by Julian Borger, The Guardian [UK], October 29th, 2002
Sarin Nerve Agent Leaks From Alabama Bunker - Associated Press [US] - March 3rd, 2004
Mustard leak detected at Blue Grass Army Depot - Associated Press [US], Jan. 06, 2003
Terror Alert at Utah Chemical Depot - By Paul Foy, Associated Press [US] Thursday, September 5, 2002
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| ....Supreme Court to Decide Mandatory ID Case |
| 03.22.04 (5:25 pm) [edit] |
by Gina Holland
Associated Press [US]
March 23rd, 2004
WASHINGTON - Do you have to tell the police your name? Depending on how the Supreme Court rules, the answer could be the difference between arrest and freedom.
The justices heard arguments Monday in a first-of-its kind case that asks whether people can be punished for refusing to identify themselves.
The court took up the appeal of a Nevada cattle rancher who was arrested after he told a deputy that he had done nothing wrong and didn't have to reveal his name or show an ID during an encounter on a rural road four years ago.
Larry "Dudley" Hiibel, 59, was prosecuted, based on his silence, and finds himself at the center of a major privacy rights battle.
"I would do it all over again," Hiibel, dressed in cowboy hat, boots and a bolo tie, said outside the court. "That's one of our fundamental rights as American citizens, to remain silent."
The case will clarify police powers in the post-Sept. 11 era, determining if officials can demand to see identification whenever they deem it necessary.
Nevada senior deputy attorney general Conrad Hafen told justices that "identifying yourself is a neutral act" that helps police in their investigations and doesn't — by itself — incriminate anyone.
But if that is allowed, several justices asked, what will be next? A fingerprint? Telephone number? E-mail address? What about a national identification card?
"The government could require name tags, color codes," Hiibel's lawyer, Robert Dolan, told the court.
At the heart of the case is an intersection of the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unreasonable searches, and the Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. Hiibel claims both of those rights were violated.
Justice Antonin Scalia (news - web sites), however, expressed doubts. He said officers faced with suspicious people need authority to get the facts.
"I cannot imagine any responsible citizen would have objected to giving the name," Scalia said.
Justices are revisiting their 1968 decision that said police may briefly detain someone on reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing, without the stronger standard of probable cause, to get more information. Nevada argues that during such brief detentions, known as Terry stops after the 1968 ruling, people should be required to answer questions about their identities.
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (news - web sites) pointed out the court never has given police the authority to demand someone's identification, without probable cause they have done something wrong. But she also acknowledged police might want to run someone's name through computers to check for a criminal history.
The encounter in this case, which was videotaped, shows Hiibel by a pickup truck parked off a road near Winnemucca, Nev., on May 21, 2000.
An officer, called to the scene because of a complaint about arguing between Hiibel and his daughter in the truck, asked Hiibel 11 times for his identification or his name.
Hiibel refused, at one point saying, "If you've got something take me to jail" and "I don't want to talk. I've done nothing. I've broken no laws."
Hiibel never acted in a threatening manner and cooperated when handcuffed. His daughter, a teenager at the time, was thrown to the ground and arrested when she protested his arrest, the video shows. She was not convicted of any crime.
Hiibel was convicted of a misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest. He was fined $250.
Nevada is supported by the Bush administration and two criminal justice groups. Organizations backing Hiibel include the American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites), the Cato Institute, privacy groups and advocates for the homeless.
Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said if Hiibel loses, the government will be free to use its extensive data bases to keep tabs on people.
"A name is now no longer a simple identifier; it is the key to a vast, cross-referenced system of public and private databases, which lay bare the most intimate features of an individual's life," Rotenberg told the court in a filing.
The case is Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of the state of Nevada, 03-5554.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=5 14..." title="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=5 14..." target="_blank"http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
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| .....100,000 at NYC rally against the war |
| 03.20.04 (9:43 pm) [edit] |
by Verena Dobnik
Associated Press [US]
March 20th, 2004
NEW YORK (AP) Anti-war protesters turned out nationwide Saturday to mark the first anniversary of the U.S.-led war on Iraq, with tens of thousands marching through Manhattan to call for the removal of American troops from the Middle East country.
''It is time to bring our children home, and declare this war was unnecessary,'' said the Rev. Herbert Daughtry, addressing the crowd at the New York rally. It was one of 250 anti-war protests scheduled around the country by United for Peace and Justice.
Similar sentiments were expressed at rallies from Augusta, Maine, to Atlanta, from Nebraska to New Hampshire. ''The whole justification for the war in Iraq was a fabrication,'' said Andy Sunshine, 19, carrying a ''Bush Lied'' sign in Atlanta.
In New York, police in riot gear walked calmly past metal barricades holding the demonstrators on Madison Avenue as speakers mounted a stage to address the crowd on a sunny afternoon. But unlike a similar march last year, the event was peaceful.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly stopped by the protest, but didn't speak to demonstrators or participate. ''Fascists!'' yelled one protester as the pair walked past.
In the early afternoon, Bloomberg estimated the crowd at about 30,000. But organizers said later that number had grown to more than 100,000 people, stretching for more than a dozen blocks through Manhattan.
In Cincinnati, several hundred people gathered in a downtown park in support of U.S. troop withdrawal. Claire Mugavin, clad in a biohazard suit, pretended to look for weapons of mass destruction beneath benches and garbage cans.
''We figure they're not in Iraq,'' said the 24-year-old Cincinnati resident. ''So we figured we'd come look for them in Fountain Square.''
In Omaha, Neb., about 30 people turned out, with one holding a sign that read, ''Support our troops. Bring them home.''
In Manhattan, protesters filled a long section of Madison Avenue before they walked through the city.
''I thank you for bringing your bodies to defend peace,'' said Ray Laforest of the Haiti Support Network. ''I'm here to stand with the Palestinian people, and to condemn the occupation of Iraq.''
Laforest was one of the first speakers to address the crowd. Many in the audience carried signs expressing their opposition to American involvement in Iraq.
''Money for jobs, not war,'' read one sign; another called on the Bush administration to ''Stop the 9/11 coverup.'' One contingent of artists dressed as a U.S. version of the ''Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse'': President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft.
A heavy police presence was obvious at the rally, a reaction to an event last March that drew 100,000 demonstrators and produced several clashes between protesters and police officers.
This rally coincided with the first bombings in Baghdad last year. Although President Bush ordered the attacks on March 19, the time difference made it March 20 in Iraq.
Protesters raised their voices around much of the globe as well, urging an end to the coalition occupation some blame for international terrorism.
Thousands marched through central London, and demonstrators held a huge rally in Rome. Germany, Greece, the Netherlands and other European countries also saw protests, while demonstrations took place earlier in Japan, Australia and India.
Demonstrators in Cairo vastly outnumbered by riot police burned copies of the U.S. flag. Hundreds of people gathered in other Middle Eastern capitals to denounce the war.
Associated Press Writer Donna De La Cruz contributed to this report.
http://www.boston.com/dailynews/080/region/ 100_000_at_NYC_rally_agai nst_t" title="http://www.boston.com/dailynews/080/region/ 100_000_at_NYC_rally_agai nst_t" target="_blank"http://www.boston.com/dailyne...:.shtml
Note: Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly stopped by the protest, but didn't speak to demonstrators or participate. ''Fascists!'' yelled one protester as the pair walked past.
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| .....Poll Finds Hostility Hardening Toward U.S. Policies |
| 03.20.04 (2:31 pm) [edit] |
by Susan Sachs
New York Times [US]
March 17th, 2004
During the first year of the United States occupation of Iraq, antagonism toward American foreign policy in some European and Muslim countries has hardened, with public opinion overseas swinging sharply in favor of charting a course independent of Washington, a new poll has found.
The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press conducted the survey before the terrorist attack last week in Madrid and the subsequent revolt by Spanish voters against the political party that had embraced American policy toward Iraq.
But the survey found that a majority of people interviewed in France and Germany, two other traditional American allies, already believed that the Iraq war had undermined the struggle against terrorists and doubted the Bush administration's sincerity in trying to combat terror.
"The wounds have not healed among the allied publics since the end of the war and, in fact, things are a little worse," said Andrew Kohut, the director of the Pew Center. "And there are trends that speak to a more long-term and continuing disconnect between the old allies."
The poll was conducted in Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, Turkey and the United States.
In some predominantly Muslim countries, where negative attitudes toward American policy have prevailed for years, disapproval of the United States persisted over the past year, although at a less intense level that Mr. Kohut described as anger rather than hatred.
Still, the survey found, people in Jordan, Pakistan and Morocco tended to view other outsiders with almost the same degree of ill will and distrust as they did the United States. Opinions about the European Union and the United Nations were generally unfavorable or ambivalent at best, a sharp contrast to opinion in Europe and Russia where attitudes toward those institutions were positive.
A clear majority of people polled in the three countries also said that the suicide bombings against Americans and other Westerners in Iraq were justified.
On most foreign policy questions, the Americans interviewed expressed far more positive attitudes toward the war on Iraq, the Bush administration's approach to fighting terrorism and collaboration with Europe. While only 21 percent of French people surveyed wanted to maintain as close a relationship with the United States as in the past, 55 percent of Americans favored maintaining a partnership with Europe.
One question that was not asked by the Pew pollsters was whether foreigners considered it dangerous for their countries to be allied with the United States and its Iraq policy. After the Madrid bombings last week, many Spaniards expressed the belief that their government's closeness to the Bush administration had made their country a terrorist target.
The pollsters did, however, look at whether the strong foreign opposition to the war on Iraq had dissipated in the year since major combat was declared over. The answer was a definitive "no."
That hardening of views was echoed in the view held by a majority of foreigners that the Bush administration's "war on terror" was actually an effort to control the Middle East's oil wealth or to dominate the world.
Only in Britain and the United States did a majority of people believe that the American-led campaign against global terrorism was sincere.
"We do know that support has been flagging and more Germans and French think we're exaggerating this thing," Mr. Kohut said. "I think this reflects a general disenchantment with America."
Similar surveys in 2002 and 2003 had shown that foreign empathy with the United States, relatively strong after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington began to evaporate fairly quickly.
Compared with results in May of 2003, more people in France and Germany believed their countries had made the right decision in not supporting the war. Slightly more also expressed an unfavorable view toward the United States, although the five-point increase fell within the poll's margin of error. At the same time, public opinion in those countries mellowed toward Americans as a people.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/17/interna..." title="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/17/interna..." target="_blank"http://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...
Note: That hardening of views was echoed in the view held by a majority of foreigners that the Bush administration's "war on terror" was actually an effort to control the Middle East's oil wealth or to dominate the world.
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| ....FCC Cites Stern, Bono for Indecency |
| 03.19.04 (2:36 am) [edit] |
Ok, since when did the FCC become a little "Bitch"? Oh yea, thanks Janet Jackson and your breasts...HAHAHAHA. WHAT A JOKE!'
P.S....Could we see a few more assisinations, car bombs, building bombings, etc? I haven't seen enough violance today!
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By JONATHAN D. SALANT, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Federal regulators opened a new front in their crackdown on offensive broadcasts Thursday, saying that almost any use of the F-word on over-the-air radio and television would be considered indecent.
The Federal Communications Commission (news - web sites) overruled its staff and said an expletive uttered by rock singer Bono on NBC was both indecent and profane. It marked the first time that the FCC (news - web sites) cited a four-letter word as profane; the commission previously equated profanity with language challenging God's divinity.
The FCC on Thursday also proposed maximum fines for the broadcast of the Howard Stern radio show and for a program on two Florida radio stations owned by a Clear Channel Communications subsidiary.
Commissioners said they did not propose a fine for Bono's expletive during the 2003 Golden Globe Awards (news - web sites) because they had never before said that virtually any use of the F-word violated its rules. The FCC specifically rejected earlier findings that occasional use of the F-word was acceptable.
"Given that today's decision clearly departs from past precedent in important ways, I could not support a fine retroactively against the parties," said FCC Chairman Michael Powell (news), who had asked his fellow commissioners to overturn the agency's enforcement bureau's finding.
"Prospectively, parties are on notice that they could now face significant penalties for similar violations," Powell said.
NBC issued a statement that said: "We believe the commission made the right decision in not fining us over the regrettable Bono incident. As we've previously said, Bono's utterance was unacceptable and we regret it happened."
A publicist for U2 said Bono was in the studio in Ireland and was not immediately available for comment.
But the decision was criticized by the Parents Television Council, a conservative advocacy group whose complaints led to the FCC's review.
"Bono may have used the F-word as an adjective, but today's FCC ruling turned it into a verb directed at American families," council president L. Brent Bozell III said. He said the decision "does nothing to hold NBC accountable for this obvious breach of commonsense decency standards."
The FCC received hundreds of complaints about the Golden Globes broadcast after Bono, the lead singer of the Irish rock group U2, said, "This is really, really, f------ brilliant." The enforcement bureau said last October that Bono's comment was not indecent or obscene because he did not use the word to describe a sexual act.
To avoid a repeat incident, NBC aired this year's Golden Globes broadcast on a 10-second delay. ABC did the same with its telecast of the Academy Awards (news - web sites) show.
In another decision Thursday, the FCC proposed fining Infinity Broadcasting the maximum $27,500 for a Stern show broadcast July 26, 2001, on WKRK-FM in Detroit. The FCC received a complaint from a Detroit listener about a show that featured discussions about sexual practices and techniques.
Infinity Broadcasting failed to immediately return a call seeking comment. The Center for Responsive Politics, a watchdog group, said fines against Stern accounted for almost half of the $4 million in penalties proposed by the FCC since 1990.
The commission also affirmed a $7,000 fine for indecency first leveled in 2000 against Infinity station WLLD in Holmes Beach, Fla., for a live hip-hop concert featuring references to oral sex.
The FCC also proposed fining a subsidiary of Clear Channel, the nation's largest radio station chain, the maximum $55,000 for a broadcast on two Florida radio stations, WAVW in Stuart and WCZR in Vero Beach, where the host conducted an interview with a couple allegedly having sex.
Commissioners noted that they acted against Clear Channel on the complaint of a listener who did not have a transcript or tape, a departure from past practice. "Complaints should no longer be denied because of a lack of tape, transcript or significant excerpt," Commissioner Kevin Martin said.
Commissioner Michael Copps dissented from the decision, saying the commission should have moved to revoke the stations' licenses. "The time has come for the commission to send a strong message that it is serious about enforcing the indecency laws of our country," he said.
Clear Channel executive vice president Andrew Levin said, "We're as determined as ever to make sure that we don't have any violations in the future."
Federal law bars radio stations and over-the-air television channels from airing references to sexual and excretory functions between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., when children may be tuning in. The rules do not apply to cable and satellite channels or satellite radio.
The House earlier this month voted to increase the maximum fine for indecency to $500,000. Similar legislation is pending in the Senate.
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Oh yea, while you're "fining" and "arresting" folks...grab those South Park kids and Comedy Central...they show that movie "Uncut" over there on that channel....have for about a year now.
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| ....yea, we're not aggressors....*Whatever* |
| 03.18.04 (6:44 pm) [edit] |
Soldiers put Iraq 'war trophies' on eBay
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- A year after the U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq, items touted as having come from Saddam's palaces have turned up for sale on the auction Web site eBay.
The seller of one secondhand rug lists the previous owner of the roughly 6-by-9-foot piece of carpet as ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Customers can also bid on silverware embossed with the Iraqi army's crest and a copy of the Koran, the Muslim holy book, which is purported to be from a Baghdad compound.
A spokesman for U.S. Central Command told CNN that U.S. troops should have been prohibited from bringing such items home from Iraq. But the men selling the items say they had no trouble bringing them back.
Spc. Adam Dearinger, who is asking a minimum of $850 for the rug, is among those who brought home war trophies with no problems.
"We didn't think we were going to be able to get them home, but they said we could take 10 items," Dearinger said.
He and other members of his unit at first took rugs from one of Saddam's many palaces to soften their quarters in a hangar at Baghdad International Airport, he said.
Dearinger, 21, was part of the 3rd Forward Support Battalion -- part of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, which led the advance on the Iraqi capital from the west.
"We went through about 15 or 20 different palaces," he said. In one, "There were 15 rugs there, and every one of us grabbed one and we took them."
Another Iraq war veteran, Brian Cramer, is asking $150 for a Koran he said he found in one Baghdad compound.
Cramer's unit, the 519th Military Police Battalion, followed the 3rd Infantry Division into the Iraqi capital as Saddam's government collapsed.
"We got up there to Baghdad International Airport, and then we went around -- the guy told us it was sort of palace hunting. We were looking for a place to stay," he said.
"I went in there and there was this room that was all blown up," he added. "I found this Koran and I found, like, a prayer robe -- that's what the Iraqis told me it was."
Cramer, who now lives in Pennsylvania, said he found two copies of the book in a section of the palace hit by a precision-guided bomb during the three-week invasion. He said he is saving the other copy for his 5-month-old son.
Both Cramer and Dearinger said the items they're now selling were declared and cleared by U.S. Customs upon their return home.
"They didn't say anything bad about taking the rugs home, or artifacts. They considered them war trophies," Dearinger said.
But Cmdr. Dan Gage, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command, said soldiers are not allowed to bring back "war trophies" -- only legally purchased souvenirs.
"Would this fall under that? I don't know," Gage said.
Dearinger said decisions about what was a legitimate souvenir were left up to individual commanders. But Gage said the regulations covering war trophies don't appear to leave much to an officer's discretion.
"How strictly that's enforced, I really couldn't speak for these units," he said.
Cramer, 24, was sent home in August after he re-tore a previously injured knee ligament while on patrol in Baghdad. He left the Army in October and is now studying to be a civilian police officer.
He said Customs classified his copies of the Koran "as a piece of history."
Dearinger is still in the Army, stationed at Fort Stewart, Georgia. He's also offering silverware from an Iraqi palace for sale.
He said he brought home numerous items from the palaces, including crystal and a teapot with a woman's figure inlaid in colored glass -- "different little things I thought would be nice to take home to the wife."
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| ....Patriot Games |
| 03.18.04 (4:18 am) [edit] |
Gail Repsher Emery
In February, when Eleanor Holmes Norton, a congressional delegate for the District of Columbia, traveled between Washington and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, she changed planes in Miami. There she took a test drive of the new U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator System, or US-VISIT.
The US-VISIT system, now in operation at 115 airports and 14 seaports to the tune of $330 million, requires that everyone who enters the country with a visa be fingerprinted and digitally photographed so the government can keep track of them. Getting cleared through the system took Norton longer than the 15 seconds advertised by the Department of Homeland Security, but she told a congressional hearing on March 4 that she was impressed with how quickly the system worked.
"I don't envy those who have to come up with a system that keeps us secure and also keeps commerce and tourism going," Norton told Congress.
Another challenge is protecting the privacy of average citizens.
Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the U.S. government has taken a variety of steps to safeguard citizens and keep terrorists out of the country. The Patriot Act, enacted soon after the attacks, gives the government considerable leeway in how it investigates potential criminals. US-VISIT and other new Homeland Security initiatives use technology to weed out bad guys; but in doing so, they collect personal data about millions of law-abiding citizens. Some privacy advocates worry that data could be abused; but not everyone is fretting.
They'll Know All About You
US-VISIT is designed to verify travelers' identities by comparing biometric identifiers such as fingerprints, confirming the authenticity of travel documents, and checking personal information against law enforcement and intelligence databases. It's supposed to flag visitors who may be security threats while speeding along those who are simply traveling for work, pleasure, or education.
There's another, more controversial, system in development: the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System II, known as CAPPS II. The new system will check passengers' full names, birth dates, home phone numbers, and home addresses against information in government and commercial databases before allowing passengers to board U.S. flights. Passengers flagged as security risks will be subject to questioning or search.
These and other initiatives have raised the hackles of groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation. At stake are passengers' rights to privacy and to travel without giving up constitutionally protected freedoms, according to the San Francisco nonprofit group. The EFF is fighting the implementation of the CAPPS II system.
Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney at the EFF, says systems like the CAPPS II start society down a slippery slope toward even greater government oversight. He points outs that the scope of the program has already expanded beyond improving aviation security and catching potential terrorists to identifying wanted criminals and immigration violators.
"It might not seem like a really big deal to force people to go through more and more screening, but it does matter," Tien says. "Once you put a social surveillance in place, it's really easy to find other uses. I'm concerned about a whole world where everywhere we go looks like the airport."
For its part, the Department of Homeland Security says it's working to ensure that people's personal information remains private. Nuala O'Connor Kelly, the department's chief privacy officer, says the data collected by CAPPS II will be thrown out within hours of a flight taking off or arriving. The Department also promises that government employees will never see commercial data that flows into CAPPS II, and intelligence data will remain behind a firewall.
Will the government's safeguards work? Time will tell. Kelly says that before CAPPS II is launched, it will be thoroughly tested to make sure it flags people who truly are security risks and not those who have recently moved or changed their names. But testing alone could prove a challenge. First, the government needs data--and JetBlue Airways and Northwest Airlines have been hit with class-action lawsuits for secretly giving the government passenger information so it could test the system.
Do Most Folks Care?
Although it's true the government is taking steps to collect more and better information about us, many people think the ends justify the means. According to a March 2003 Harris poll, 26 percent of U.S. residents believe they've lost much of their personal privacy and don't want to give up any more. But most people surveyed--64 percent--say that while they are concerned about privacy, they are willing to allow use of their personal information when they understand the benefits of doing so and believe the data will not be misused.
A study published in February by the Ponemon Institute, a privacy think tank in Tucson, Arizona, found similar sentiments among more than 6000 people surveyed about the privacy protections of 60 government agencies. The group was trying to measure the extent to which people trust government institutions to protect their privacy. The average Privacy Trust Score for government agencies was 52 percent, meaning that just over half of respondents trusted government agencies to protect their privacy.
Larry Ponemon, who chairs the institute, says that although that score isn't stellar, it doesn't reflect strong negative opinions of government privacy protections. Ponemon says that debriefings after the survey revealed that many people believe the use of personal information in the name of homeland security is appropriate if the information is shared with a small number of people.
"One elderly lady said 'I really don't want the Department of Homeland Security or the CIA (news - web sites) to get an A+ rating in privacy, because it's not their mission. I want them to protect my family. Probably a C level is good enough for them,'" Ponemon said.
The EFF's Tien says the problem is that the government has rushed into using biometrics and other security technologies without adequately measuring the pros and cons.
"Ostensibly, the use of biometrics is to prevent terrorists from entering the country," Tien says. "But it doesn't do you any good to know who someone is. What you really want is to know is whether he is a terrorist. For that, you rely on good watch lists and good intelligence outside the United States."
Tom Conaway is a contractor at Unisys, which is evaluating technologies for the U.S. Transportation Security Administration that will protect restricted areas at the nation's 429 airports. The TSA is the arm of the Department of Homeland Security that handles airport security. Conaway says biometrics can catch suspected terrorists, even though the technology's success might not be obvious to average citizens.
"If the government does catch a bad guy, they won't tell us how they did it," he says.
What's important now is that the government communicates to citizens what information is being collected and how it is being used, says Amy Santenello, a senior analyst at the META Group in Stamford, Connecticut.
"Constituents need to understand where that collection takes place and how data is being used, which they don't right now," she says.
Ponemon agrees. His survey found that many people overestimate the technology used in the airport screening process.
"People would say 'When I'm going through the TSA line at the airport, they take a scan of my body shape.' While those technologies do exist, they really aren't being rolled out," Ponemon says. "I still think there are risks and the privacy advocates have valid concerns, but the public doesn't need to think they are in an episode of the TV program 24."
Gail Repsher Emery covers the federal government for Washington Technology, a magazine for government IT readers. She also teaches journalism at American University in Washington, D.C.
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| ....Wal-Mart puts out the word, paper does too |
| 03.17.04 (2:32 pm) [edit] |
By Glen Warchol
The Salt Lake Tribune [US]
March 13th, 2004
Oh, the power of Wal-Mart.
Besides crushing small retailers across the nation, the gargantuan discount chain has flexed its economic muscle to force rockers to sanitize their compact discs of objectionable language and images. In a controversial example, Wal-Mart banned a Sheryl Crow CD because she used a lyric to question the store's wisdom in selling guns.
But you don't have to be a rock star to get the Arkansas-based behemoth's attention. Wal-Mart recently bared its iron fist in Utah to tame the would-be edgy and irreverent Salt Lake City Weekly.
Three weeks ago a self-proclaimed Christian came upon the "f-word" in the paper, which is distributed at Wal-Mart, along with hundreds of other locations. The man complained to the City Weekly, its advertisers and, more effectively, he took his case to Wal-Mart regional managers.
According to City Weekly publisher Jim Rizzi, the use of the word was an anomaly that cost the paper a week's distribution at Wal-Mart. "Frankly, the paper that week wasn't typical," he said.
"We were briefly kicked out and reinstated because we used the f-bomb in our paper," editor Ben Fulton said.
After reiterating the City Weekly's policy of using the word only in quotes, under the most exceptional circumstances, Wal-Mart lifted the ban, Rizzi said. "We again have a great relationship with them -- once they got the whole story." Wal-Mart spokeswoman Karen Burk said she was unaware of the Utah incident, but added, "We are always trying to strike a balance [in good taste] with our customers."
It would appear that the City Weekly agrees.
"The f-bomb has to be used for a very good reason," Fulton said. "I don't want to see it used casually in any of our stories."
Though Fulton said "this isn't a case of City Weekly being brought to its knees" by Wal-Mart, he acknowledged the incident increased his vigilance on the language in the paper. "It took Wal-Mart and a Christian person to get my attention that I wasn't watching it thoroughly."
From now on, Fulton said, unless the word is in a direct quote, "I'd like to see dashes there."
Other words also will be "out of bounds," Fulton said, including "bitch," when not applied to canines.
City Weekly owner John Saltas said that like all so-called alternative newspapers, City Weekly has grown up. "We did everything 10 years ago that could be done," Saltas said. "Today, we don't need [profanity] to strengthen our alternativeness."
This is the same Saltas who once proclaimed in print: "It's bullshit to put asterisks in place of letters as a ruse to make people believe a given paper is setting some kind of language standard because everyone knows that words like 'flip' mean the same thing."
Now, an apparently more mature Saltas says, "If we are offensive, we end up losing distribution, which defeats the cause. If we prove we can use the word, but nobody sees it, what's the point?"
http://www.sltrib.com/2004/Mar/03132004/bus iness/147269.asp" title="http://www.sltrib.com/2004/Mar/03132004/bus iness/147269.asp" target="_blank"http://www.sltrib.com/2004/Ma...
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| ....Tennesee County Wants to Charge Homosexuals |
| 03.17.04 (2:31 pm) [edit] |
Associated Press [US]
March 17th, 2004
DAYTON, Tenn. - The county that was the site of the Scopes "Monkey Trial" over the teaching of evolution is asking lawmakers to amend state law so the county can charge homosexuals with crimes against nature.
The Rhea County commissioners approved the request 8-0 Tuesday.
Commissioner J.C. Fugate, who introduced the measure, also asked the county attorney to find a way to enact an ordinance banning homosexuals from living in the county.
"We need to keep them out of here," Fugate said.
The vote was denounced by Matt Nevels, president of the Chattanooga chapter of Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.
"That is the most farfetched idea put forth by any kind of public official," Nevels said. "I'm outraged."
Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Texas' sodomy laws as a violation of adults' privacy.
Rhea County is one of the most conservative counties in Tennessee. It holds an annual festival commemorating the 1925 trial at which John T. Scopes was convicted of teaching evolution. The verdict was thrown out on a technicality. The trial became the subject of the play and movie "Inherit the Wind."
In 2002, a federal judge ruled unconstitutional the teaching of a Bible class in the public schools.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid= 519&u=/ap/20040317/ap_on_ re_us/county_gay_ban_1&pr inter=1" title="http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid= 519&u=/ap/20040317/ap_on_ re_us/county_gay_ban_1&pr inter=1" target="_blank"http://news.yahoo.com/news?tm...
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| ....U.S. Videos, for TV News, Come Under Scrutiny |
| 03.16.04 (5:12 pm) [edit] |
by Robert Pear, New York Times [US]
March 15th, 2004
WASHINGTON, March 14 — Federal investigators are scrutinizing television segments in which the Bush administration paid people to pose as journalists praising the benefits of the new Medicare law, which would be offered to help elderly Americans with the costs of their prescription medicines.
The videos are intended for use in local television news programs. Several include pictures of President Bush receiving a standing ovation from a crowd cheering as he signed the Medicare law on Dec. 8.
The materials were produced by the Department of Health and Human Services, which called them video news releases, but the source is not identified. Two videos end with the voice of a woman who says, "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting."
But the production company, Home Front Communications, said it had hired her to read a script prepared by the government.
Another video, intended for Hispanic audiences, shows a Bush administration official being interviewed in Spanish by a man who identifies himself as a reporter named Alberto Garcia.
Another segment shows a pharmacist talking to an elderly customer. The pharmacist says the new law "helps you better afford your medications," and the customer says, "It sounds like a good idea." Indeed, the pharmacist says, "A very good idea."
The government also prepared scripts that can be used by news anchors introducing what the administration describes as a made-for-television "story package."
In one script, the administration suggests that anchors use this language: "In December, President Bush signed into law the first-ever prescription drug benefit for people with Medicare. Since then, there have been a lot of questions about how the law will help older Americans and people with disabilities. Reporter Karen Ryan helps sort through the details."
The "reporter" then explains the benefits of the new law.
Lawyers from the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, discovered the materials last month when they were looking into the use of federal money to pay for certain fliers and advertisements that publicize the Medicare law.
In a report to Congress last week, the lawyers said those fliers and advertisements were legal, despite "notable omissions and other weaknesses." Administration officials said the television news segments were also a legal, effective way to educate beneficiaries.
Gary L. Kepplinger, deputy general counsel of the accounting office, said, "We are actively considering some follow-up work related to the materials we received from the Department of Health and Human Services."
One question is whether the government might mislead viewers by concealing the source of the Medicare videos, which have been broadcast by stations in Oklahoma, Louisiana and other states.
Federal law prohibits the use of federal money for "publicity or propaganda purposes" not authorized by Congress. In the past, the General Accounting Office has found that federal agencies violated this restriction when they disseminated editorials and newspaper articles written by the government or its contractors without identifying the source.
Kevin W. Keane, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said there was nothing nefarious about the television materials, which he said had been distributed to stations nationwide. Under federal law, he said, the government is required to inform beneficiaries about changes in Medicare.
"The use of video news releases is a common, routine practice in government and the private sector," Mr. Keane said. "Anyone who has questions about this practice needs to do some research on modern public information tools."
But Democrats disagreed. "These materials are even more disturbing than the Medicare flier and advertisements," said Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey. "The distribution of these videos is a covert attempt to manipulate the press."
Mr. Lautenberg, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and seven other members of Congress requested the original review by the accounting office.
In the videos and advertisements, the government urges beneficiaries to call a toll-free telephone number, 1-800-MEDICARE. People who call that number can obtain recorded information about prescription drug benefits if they recite the words "Medicare improvement."
Documents from the Medicare agency show why the administration is eager to advertise the benefits of the new law, on radio and television, in newspapers and on the Internet.
"Our consumer research has shown that beneficiaries are confused about the Medicare Modernization Act and uncertain about what it means for them," says one document from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Other documents suggest the scope of the publicity campaign: $12.6 million for advertising this winter, $18.5 million to publicize drug discount cards this spring, about $18.5 million this summer, $30 million for a year of beneficiary education starting this fall and $44 million starting in the fall of 2005.
"Video news releases" have been used for more than a decade. Pharmaceutical companies have done particularly well with them, producing news-style health features about the afflictions their drugs are meant to cure.
The videos became more prominent in the late 1980's, as more and more television stations cut news-gathering budgets and were glad to have packaged news bits to call their own, even if they were prepared by corporations seeking to sell products.
As such, the videos have drawn criticism from some news media ethicists, who consider them to be at odds with journalism's mission to verify independently the claims of corporations and governments.
Government agencies have also produced such videos for years, often on subjects like teenage smoking and the dangers of using steroids. But the Medicare materials wander into more controversial territory.
Bill Kovach, chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, expressed disbelief that any television stations would present the Medicare videos as real news segments, considering the current debate about the merits of the new law.
"Those to me are just the next thing to fraud," Mr. Kovach said. "It's running a paid advertisement in the heart of a news program."
Jim Rutenberg contributed reporting for this article.
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| ....White House takes aim at obesity |
| 03.15.04 (3:58 pm) [edit] |
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don't smoke, eat, etc....but you can drink like a fish, that's cool and while you're at it, climb inside a car and kill an innocent to boot! yay.
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Bush administration Friday announced a campaign to combat the epidemic of obesity in the United States through improved product labels, health education, and a partnership with restaurants to help steer people toward healthier menu choices.
"It reflects our commitment to reversing this tragic obesity trend, in which far too many Americans are literally eating themselves to death," Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said at a news conference unveiling the campaign.
Thompson's comments were timed with a report from the Obesity Working Group of the Food and Drug Administration, stressing a theme of "calories count."
The FDA, in accepting the group's recommendations, plans to take a variety of actions in response.
They include:
Reviewing the dietary information panel on packaged food products to underscore the estimated calories in a serving;
Defining what it means when a product is described as being "low," "reduced" or "free" in carbohydrates;
Encouraging restaurants to include and emphasize nutritional information;
Boosting research into obesity and the development of healthier foods.
In a written statement, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, commended the effort, but said it falls short.
"More aggressive steps to curb obesity and give consumers the tools to make healthy decisions are necessary to address this growing crisis," he said.
Harkin called on Thompson to support his efforts to require that restaurant chains publish the nutritional information of their food and to give the Federal Trade Commission authority over marketing of "junk food" to children.
Federal figures released this week showed that poor diet -- including obesity and physical inactivity -- is fast approaching tobacco as the top underlying preventable cause of death.
Researchers looking at data from 2000 found that obesity caused 400,000 U.S. deaths -- more than 16 percent of all deaths. Obesity and inactivity contribute to the risks for some of the top killers: heart disease, cancer, stroke and diabetes.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 64 percent of adults are obese or overweight. Even more alarming, officials say the number of overweight and obese youth has nearly doubled in the past two decades, and data suggests the levels are still on the rise.
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| ....From Henry Miller to Howard Stern |
| 03.12.04 (6:32 am) [edit] |
by Patti Davis
Newsweek [US]
March 9th, 2004
The FCC should take a page from history: censorship in America doesn’t work
March 9 - In 1938, the U.S. Government banned Henry Miller’s novel “Tropic of Cancer,” saying it dealt too explicitly with his sexual adventures and challenged models of sexual morality. To further drive the point home, the government went on to ban all of Miller’s works from entering the United States. In 1961, the ban was lifted, but his work continued to be labeled “obscene” by the Citizens for Decent Literature.
I’m not exactly sure who the Citizens for Decent Literature were, but I suspect they had many children and raised them all to think the same way. Whatever they’re called now, they seem to be a powerful lobby and certainly have unbridled support from the White House. But why stop at literature? Let’s do a sweep of television and radio as well. Not only are four-letter words being slapped with hefty fines, but one now must be very careful in talking about the human anatomy. God help the oncologist who goes on a morning talk show to discuss b---st cancer.
Getting back to Henry Miller for a moment… Sometime in the early 1960s (I was probably in 7th or 8th grade) a classmate slipped me a tattered paperback copy of a “Tropic of Cancer.” The fact that it had been banned made the whole transaction delicious. Also delicious was my clever smuggling of this supposedly lewd book into my bedroom where I hid it beneath the mattress and took it out late at night. For a week, I huddled under the covers with a flashlight reading the book that an entire nation had banned. My apologies to the Citizens for Decent Literature, but I was neither sullied, corrupted, tarnished nor ruined by the book. I was instead inspired by Miller’s artistic genius and his bold, muscular writing.
I have actually never met anyone who was thrown into life-threatening debauchery by reading Henry Miller. It’s too bad Miller isn’t still with us; he’d probably have some interesting things to say about the FCC’s threats to make Howard Stern the sacrificial lamb for decency on the air waves. Stern has already been dropped in six markets by Clear Channel Communications, apparently to appease the federal censors. Stern predicts the government, meanwhile, is preparing to issue whopping fines for “indecency” against Infinity Broadcasting, his syndicator.
I know it seems like all this started with the revealing three-second shot of Janet Jackson’s b---st. But consider these news stories.
In January, 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft ordered the Justice Dept. to spend $8,000 on drapes to cover a semi-nude statue in the department's ornate Great Hall where news conferences are often held. The female, art-deco "Spirit of Justice" statue had one b---st exposed.
In August, 2003 Wes Miller who owns an art gallery in Pilot Point, Texas, was told by police to cover a mural of a nude woman, in particular her b---sts. Apparently he was in violation of Texas Penal Code 43.24. The artist who painted the mural (which is reminiscent of Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam”) put a bright yellow strip of canvas across Eve’s chest and painted the words “crime scene” on it. This satisfied the authorities. At least the children in Pilot Point, Texas are safe.
In January, 2003 a tapestry of Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica” which has hung outside the U.N. Security Council since 1985, was covered with drapes during the days the Security Council met to discuss Iraq. Someone apparently decided that the painting, showing the wounded and dying civilians of Guernica being slaughtered by Generalissimo Franco’s fascist regime might make the Security Council ponder the human faces of war. God, we wouldn’t want to do that.
And then we come to the new broader guidelines given to the FBI to monitor Internet sites, libraries, religious institutions, etc, even in the absence of criminal activity.
Starting to notice a trend? I have never considered myself a conspiracy theorist, but I think I’m becoming one. I would like to ask the entire Bush administration one question: What the are you scared of? Is Howard Stern going to topple Western Civilization as we know it? Has he ever suggested that people should take up firearms or any other kind of weapon? If you want to ban someone, ban Ted Nugent—he thinks it’s fun to go out and shoot Bambi.
Believe me, people are already collecting tapes of Stern’s radio show and kids will be listening to him under the covers at night just like I read Henry Miller.
What will really be sad is when kids have to hide beneath the covers to read the First Amendment.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4489463/" title="http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4489463/" target="_blank"http://msnbc.msn.com/id/44894...
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| .....CIA says Cheney was wrong |
| 03.11.04 (4:53 am) [edit] |
by Jonathan S. Landay
Knight Ridder Newspapers [US]
March 10th, 2004
Facts misread, Tenet contends
“I'm not going to sit here and tell you what my interaction was … and what I did and didn't do, except that you have to have confidence to know that when I believed that somebody was misconstruing intelligence, I said something about it.”
--George Tenet, director of central intelligence
WASHINGTON — CIA Director George Tenet on Tuesday rejected recent assertions by Vice President Dick Cheney that Iraq had cooperated with the al-Qaida terrorist network.
Tenet also rejected Cheney's statements that the administration had proof of an illicit Iraqi biological warfare program.
Tenet's comments to the Senate Armed Services Committee were expected to fuel friction between the White House and intelligence agencies over the failure to find any of the banned weapons stockpiles that President Bush, in justifying his case for war, charged Saddam Hussein with concealing.
Tenet at first appeared to defend the administration, saying that he did not think the White House misrepresented intelligence provided by the CIA. The administration's statements, he said, reflected a prewar intelligence consensus that Hussein had stockpiled chemical and biological weapons and was pursuing nuclear bombs.
But under sharp questioning by Sen. Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, Tenet reversed himself, saying there had been instances when he had warned administration officials that they were misstating the threat posed by Iraq.
“I'm not going to sit here and tell you what my interaction was … and what I did and didn't do, except that you have to have confidence to know that when I believed that somebody was misconstruing intelligence, I said something about it,” Tenet said. “I don't stand up publicly and do it.”
Tenet acknowledged to Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the committee's senior Democrat, that he had told Cheney that the vice president was wrong in saying that two truck trailers recovered in Iraq were “conclusive evidence” that Hussein had a biological weapons program.
Cheney made the assertion in a Jan. 22 interview with National Public Radio.
Tenet said that U.S. intelligence agencies disagree on the purpose of the trailers. Some analysts think they were mobile biological weapons facilities. Others think they may have been for making hydrogen gas for weather balloons.
Levin also questioned Tenet about a Jan. 9 interview with the Rocky Mountain News of Denver, in which Cheney cited a November article in The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine, as “the best source of information” on cooperation between Hussein and al-Qaida.
The article was based on a leaked top-secret memorandum. It purportedly set out evidence, compiled by a special Pentagon intelligence cell, that Hussein was in league with al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. It was written by Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, the third-highest Pentagon official and a key proponent of the war.
“Did the CIA agree with the contents of the Feith document?” Levin asked.
“Senator, we did not clear the document,” Tenet replied. “We did not agree with the way the data was characterized in that document.”
Tenet, who pointed out that the Pentagon, too, had disavowed the document, said he learned of the article Monday night, and he planned to speak with Cheney about the CIA's view of the Feith document.
In building the case for war, Bush, Cheney and other top officials relied in part on assessments by the CIA and other agencies. But they concealed disputes and dissents over Iraq's weapons programs and links to terrorists that were raging among analysts, U.S. diplomats and military officials.
They also used exaggerated and fabricated information from defectors and former Iraqi exile groups that was fed directly into Cheney's office and the Pentagon. Those groups included the Iraqi National Congress, whose leader, Ahmad Chalabi, was close to hawks around Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the White House, but who was distrusted by the CIA and the State Department.
Adm. Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the military's intelligence arm, said that “some” information provided by defectors had checked out, but that they also gave material that was “fabricated or embellished.”
Bush has appointed a bipartisan commission to investigate what the CIA and other intelligence agencies knew about prewar Iraq, but would not permit the commission to examine how the White House and the Pentagon used the intelligence. Information from Iraqi defectors and exile groups, who contended that Hussein was a great threat, also was ruled off-limits.
Politics pervaded Tuesday's hearing. Democrats sought to prove that Bush and his top aides overstated prewar intelligence assessments of the threat Hussein posed. Republicans insisted that the administration's arguments reflected the CIA's judgment, the views of most lawmakers and those of the Clinton administration.
“Members of this committee, members of the Senate, as well as past and present administrations reached the same conclusions: Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction,” said the panel's chairman, Sen. John Warner, a Virginia Republican.
Sen. John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat who is the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, and other critics are linking the issue to Bush's credibility as the election campaign heats up and the toll of dead and injured U.S. soldiers rises.
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/814644 7.htm" title="http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/814644 7.htm" target="_blank"http://www.kansascity.com/mld...
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| ....Bush campaign to challenge ads |
| 03.10.04 (10:33 am) [edit] |
HAHAHA..he's a good one to talk about campaign ads!!! Doesn't his violate some new law he and Cheny and Ashcroft ran past the constitution? Oh wait, no, it's freedom of speech if he does it...a violate of laws if others do it...yea, I get it. :(
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Bush-Cheney re-election campaign plans to file a complaint Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission, charging that a $5.1 million anti-Bush ad campaign in key battleground states violates the new campaign finance reform law, spokesman Terry Holt said.
The complaint alleges that the group running the ads, the Media Fund, is using so-called "soft" money contributions from deep-pocketed donors to pay for the ads, which is illegal under the new law because the ads seek to influence a race for federal office.
The Bush campaign is demanding that the FEC take "rapid action" and impose "severe sanctions" against the group, which was created by former Clinton adviser Harold Ickes and aided by Jim Jordan, the former campaign manager of the presumptive Democratic nominee, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.
Jordan left the Kerry camp last November, when the Massachusetts senator decided to shake up his then-moribund campaign and bring in new leadership.
The complaint also maintains that the new law, as well as a recent opinion from the FEC, requires the Media Fund to register as a federal political committee and abide by fund-raising restrictions, which limit individual contributions to no more than $5,000. (How it works: A look at '527s')
Any ad that "promotes, supports, attacks or opposes" a candidate for federal office has to be funded with those limited "hard" money contributions, the complaint says.
A spokeswoman for the Media Fund, Sarah Leonard, called the charge that the ads are illegally funded "ridiculous" and said it was an effort "to silence the voices of progressives in the grass roots across the country."
"The Bush campaign is simply trying to scare our donors," she said, noting that the president's campaign is not complaining about similar ads being run by conservative groups attacking Kerry. "This is just politics, not surprising in an election year, and should not be taken any more seriously than that."
The Media Fund will spend $5.1 million to run the ad for two weeks, starting Wednesday, in 17 battleground states, Leonard said.
The group has not released the content of the ad. But the Bush campaign's complaint says the spot says Bush's "priorities are eroding the American dream" and that "it's time to take our country back from corporate greed and make America work for every American."
On Friday, the Republican National Committee sent a letter to TV stations around the country, warning them that another group working for Bush's defeat, the MoveOn.org Voter Fund, was funding a similar ad by with illegal soft money. The RNC asked the stations to stop running the ads.
Both MoveOn and the Media Fund have received contributions from controversial billionaire financier George Soros, a Hungarian immigrant who has said ousting Bush this year is now the "central focus of my life."
Republicans have charged that Soros and other wealthy liberal donors are trying to circumvent the new campaign finance law -- which Kerry and most Democrats in Congress supported -- to help Kerry compete against the president's fund-raising advantage.
Like the Media Fund, the MoveOn.org Voter Fund maintains the ads are financed legally.
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| .....`Trusted Computing' Frequently Asked Questions |
| 03.09.04 (10:27 am) [edit] |
1. What is TC - this `trusted computing' business?
The Trusted Computing Group (TCG) is an alliance of Microsoft, Intel, IBM, HP and AMD which promotes a standard for a `more secure' PC. Their definition of `security' is controversial; machines built according to their specification will be more trustworthy from the point of view of software vendors and the content industry, but will be less trustworthy from the point of view of their owners. In effect, the TCG specification will transfer the ultimate control of your PC from you to whoever wrote the software it happens to be running. (Yes, even more so than at present.)
The TCG project is known by a number of names. `Trusted computing' was the original one, and is still used by IBM, while Microsoft calls it `trustworthy computing' and the Free Software Foundation calls it `treacherous computing'. Hereafter I'll just call it TC, which you can pronounce according to taste. Other names you may see include TCPA (TCG's name before it incorporated), Palladium (the old Microsoft name for the version due to ship in 2004) and NGSCB (the new Microsoft name). Intel has just started calling it `safer computing'. Many observers believe that this confusion is deliberate - the promoters want to deflect attention from what TC actually does.
2. What does TC do, in ordinary English?
TC provides a computing platform on which you can't tamper with the application software, and where these applications can communicate securely with their authors and with each other. The original motivation was digital rights management (DRM): Disney will be able to sell you DVDs that will decrypt and run on a TC platform, but which you won't be able to copy. The music industry will be able to sell you music downloads that you won't be able to swap. They will be able to sell you CDs that you'll only be able to play three times, or only on your birthday. All sorts of new marketing possibilities will open up.
TC will also make it much harder for you to run unlicensed software. In the first version of TC, pirate software could be detected and deleted remotely. Since then, Microsoft has sometimes denied that it intended TC to do this, but at WEIS 2003 a senior Microsoft manager refused to deny that fighting piracy was a goal: `Helping people to run stolen software just isn't our aim in life', he said. The mechanisms now proposed are more subtle, though. TC will protect application software registration mechanisms, so that unlicensed software will be locked out of the new ecology. Furthermore, TC apps will work better with other TC apps, so people will get less value from old non-TC apps (including pirate apps). Also, some TC apps may reject data from old apps whose serial numbers have been blacklisted. If Microsoft believes that your copy of Office is a pirate copy, and your local government moves to TC, then the documents you file with them may be unreadable. TC will also make it easier for people to rent software rather than buy it; and if you stop paying the rent, then not only does the software stop working but so may the files it created. So if you stop paying for upgrades to Media Player, you may lose access to all the songs you bought using it.
For years, Bill Gates has dreamed of finding a way to make the Chinese pay for software: TC looks like being the answer to his prayer.
There are many other possibilities. Governments will be able to arrange things so that all Word documents created on civil servants' PCs are `born classified' and can't be leaked electronically to journalists. Auction sites might insist that you use trusted proxy software for bidding, so that you can't bid tactically at the auction. Cheating at computer games could be made more difficult.
There are some gotchas too. For example, TC can support remote censorship. In its simplest form, applications may be designed to delete pirated music under remote control. For example, if a protected song is extracted from a hacked TC platform and made available on the web as an MP3 file, then TC-compliant media player software may detect it using a watermark, report it, and be instructed remotely to delete it (as well as all other material that came through that platform). This business model, called traitor tracing, has been researched extensively by Microsoft (and others). In general, digital objects created using TC systems remain under the control of their creators, rather than under the control of the person who owns the machine on which they happen to be stored (as at present). So someone who writes a paper that a court decides is defamatory can be compelled to censor it - and the software company that wrote the word processor could be ordered to do the deletion if she refuses. Given such possibilities, we can expect TC to be used to suppress everything from pornography to writings that criticise political leaders.
The gotcha for businesses is that your software suppliers can make it much harder for you to switch to their competitors' products. At a simple level, Word could encrypt all your documents using keys that only Microsoft products have access to; this would mean that you could only read them using Microsoft products, not with any competing word processor. Such blatant lock-in might be prohibited by the competition authorities, but there are subtler lock-in strategies that are much harder to regulate. (I'll explain some of them below.)
3. So I won't be able to play MP3s on my computer any more?
With existing MP3s, you may be all right for some time. Microsoft says that TC won't make anything suddenly stop working. But a recent software update for Windows Media Player has caused controversy by insisting that users agree to future anti-piracy measures, which may include measures that delete pirated content found on your computer. Also, some programs that give people more control over their PCs, such as VMware and Total Recorder, are not going to work properly under TC. So you may have to use a different player - and if your player will play pirate MP3s, then it may not be authorised to play the new, protected, titles.
It is up to an application to set the security policy for its files, using an online policy server. So Media Player will determine what sort of conditions get attached to protected titles. I expect Microsoft will do all sorts of deals with the content providers, who will experiment with all sorts of business models. You might get CDs that are a third of the price but which you can only play three times; if you pay the other two-thirds, you'd get full rights. You might be allowed to lend your copy of some digital music to a friend, but then your own backup copy won't be playable until your friend gives you the main copy back. More likely, you'll not be able to lend music at all. Creeping digital lockdown will make life inconvenient in many niggling ways; for example, regional coding might stop you watching the Polish version of a movie if your PC was bought outside Europe.
This could all be done today - Microsoft would just have to download a patch into your player - but once TC makes it hard for people to tamper with the player software, and easy for Microsoft and the music industry to control what players will work at all with new releases, it will be harder for you to escape. Control of media player software is so important that the EU antitrust authorities are proposing to penalise Microsoft for its anticompetitive behaviour by compelling it to unbundle Media Player, or include competing players in Windows. TC will greatly increase the depth and scope of media control.
4. How does TC work?
TC provides for a monitoring and reporting component to be mounted in future PCs. The preferred implementation in the first phase of TC emphasised the role of a `Fritz' chip - a smartcard chip or dongle soldered to the motherboard. The current version has five components - the Fritz chip, a `curtained memory' feature in the CPU, a security kernel in the operating system (the `Nexus' in Microsoft language), a security kernel in each TC application (the `NCA' in Microsoft-speak) and a back-end infrastructure of online security servers maintained by hardware and software vendors to tie the whole thing together.
The initial version of TC had Fritz supervising the boot process, so that the PC ended up in a predictable state, with known hardware and software. The current version has Fritz as a passive monitoring component that stores the hash of the machine state on start-up. This hash is computed using details of the hardware (audio card, video card etc) and the software (O/S, drivers, etc). If the machine ends up in the approved state, Fritz will make available to the operating system the cryptographic keys needed to decrypt TC applications and data. If it ends up in the wrong state, the hash will be wrong and Fritz won't release the right key. The machine may still be able to run non-TC apps and access non-TC data, but protected material will be unavailable.
The operating system security kernel (the `Nexus') bridges the gap between the Fritz chip and the application security components (the `NCAs'). It checks that the hardware components are on the TCG approved list, that the software components have been signed, and that none of them has a serial number that has been revoked. If there are significant changes to the PC's configuration, the machine must go online to be re-certified: the operating system manages this. The result is a PC booted into a known state with an approved combination of hardware and software (whose licences have not expired). Finally, the Nexus works together with new `curtained memory' features in the CPU to stop any TC app from reading or writing another TC app's data. These new features are called `Lagrande Technology' (LT) for the Intel CPUs and `TrustZone' for the ARM.
Once the machine is in an approved state, with a TC app loaded and shielded from interference by any other software, Fritz will certify this to third parties. For example, he will do an authentication protocol with Disney to prove that his machine is a suitable recipient of `Snow White'. This will mean certifying that the PC is currently running an authorised application program - MediaPlayer, DisneyPlayer, whatever - with its NCA properly loaded and shielded by curtained memory against debuggers or other tools that could be used to rip the content. The Disney server then sends encrypted data, with a key that Fritz will use to unseal it. Fritz makes the key available only to the authorised application and only so long as the environment remains `trustworthy'. For this purpose, `trustworthy' is defined by the security policy downloaded from a server under the control of the application owner. This means that Disney can decide to release its premium content only to a media player whose author agrees to enforce certain conditions. These might include restrictions on what hardware and software you use, or where in the world you're located. They can involve payment: Disney might insist, for example, that the application collect a dollar every time you view the movie. The application itself can be rented too. The possibilities seem to be limited only by the marketers' imagination.
5. What else can TC be used for?
TC can also be used to implement much stronger access controls on confidential documents. These are already available in a primitive form in Windows Server 2003, under the name of `Enterprise rights management' and people are experimenting with them.
One selling point is automatic document destruction. Following embarrassing email disclosures in the recent anti-trust case, Microsoft implemented a policy that all internal emails are destroyed after 6 months. TC will make this easily available to all corporates that use Microsoft platforms. (Think of how useful that would have been for Arthur Andersen during the Enron case.) It can also be used to ensure that company documents can only be read on company PCs, unless a suitably authorised person clears them for export. TC can also implement fancier controls: for example, if you send an email that causes embarrassment to your boss, he can broadcast a cancellation message that will cause it to be deleted wherever it's got to. You can also work across domains: for example, a company might specify that its legal correspondence only be seen by three named partners in its law firm and their secretaries. (A law firm might resist this because the other partners in the firm are jointly liable; there will be many interesting negotiations as people try to reduce traditional trust relationships to programmed rules.)
TC is also aimed at payment systems. One of the Microsoft visions is that much of the functionality now built on top of bank cards may move into software once the applications can be made tamper-resistant. This leads to a future in which we pay for books that we read, and music we listen to, at the rate of so many pennies per page or per minute. The broadband industry is pushing this vision; meanwhile some far-sighted people in the music industry are starting to get scared at the prospect of Microsoft charging a percentage on all their sales. Even if micropayments don't work out as a business model - and there are some persuasive arguments why they won't - there will be some sea-changes in online payment, with spillover effects for the user. If, in ten years' time, it's inconvenient to shop online with a credit card unless you use a TC platform, that will be tough on Mac and GNU/linux users.
The appeal of TC to government systems people is based on ERM being used to implement `mandatory access control' - making access control decisions independent of user wishes but based simply on their status. For example, an army might arrange that its soldiers can only create Word documents marked at `Confidential' or above, and that only a TC PC with a certificate issued by its own security agency can read such a document. That way, soldiers can't send documents to the press (or email home, either). Such rigidity doesn't work very well in large complex organisations like governments, as the access controls get in the way of people doing their work, but governments say they want it, and so no doubt they will have to learn the hard way. (Mandatory access control can be more useful for smaller organisations with more focused missions: for example, a cocaine smuggling ring can arrange that the spreadsheet with this month's shipment details can be read only by five named PCs, and only until the end of the month. Then the keys used to encrypt it will expire, and the Fritz chips on those five machines will never make them available to anybody at all, ever again.)
6. OK, so there will be winners and losers - Disney might win big, and some smartcard makers might go bust. But surely Microsoft and Intel are not investing nine figures just for charity? How will they make money out of it?
For Intel, which started the whole TC thing going, it was a defensive play. As they make most of their money from PC microprocessors, and have most of the market, they can only grow their company by increasing the size of the market. They were determined that the PC will be the hub of the future home network. If entertainment is the killer application, and DRM is going to be the critical enabling technology, then the PC has to do DRM or risk being displaced in the home market.
Microsoft, who are now driving TC, were also motivated by the desire to bring entertainment within their empire. But they also stand to win big if TC becomes widespread. There are two reasons. The first, and less important, is that they will be able to cut down dramatically on software copying. `Making the Chinese pay for software' has been a big thing for Bill; with TC, he can tie each PC to its individual licenced copy of Office and Windows, and lock bad copies of Office out of the shiny new TC universe.
The second, and most important, benefit for Microsoft is that TC will dramatically increase the costs of switching away from Microsoft products (such as Office) to rival products (such as OpenOffice). For example, a law firm that wants to change from Office to OpenOffice right now merely has to install the software, train the staff and convert their existing files. In five years' time, once they have received TC-protected documents from perhaps a thousand different clients, they would have to get permission (in the form of signed digital certificates) from each of these clients in order to migrate their files to a new platform. The law firm won't in practice want to do this, so they will be much more tightly locked in, which will enable Microsoft to hike its prices.
Economists who have studied the software industry concluded that the value of a software business is about equal to the total costs of its customers switching out to the competition; both are equal to the net present value of future payments from the customers to the software vendor. This means that an incumbent in a maturing market, such as Microsoft with its Office product, can grow faster than the market only if it can find ways to lock in its customers more tightly. There are some ifs and buts that hedge this theory around, but the basic idea is well known to software industry executives. This explains Bill G's comment that `We came at this thinking about music, but then we realized that e-mail and documents were far more interesting domains'.
7. Where did the technical ideas come from?
The TC concept of booting a machine into a known state is implicit in early PCs where the BIOS was in ROM and there was no hard drive in which a virus could hide. The idea of a trusted bootstrap mechanism for modern machines seems to have first appeared in a paper by Bill Arbaugh, Dave Farber and Jonathan Smith, ``A Secure and Reliable Bootstrap Architecture'', in the proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (1997) pp 65-71. It led to a US patent: ``Secure and Reliable Bootstrap Architecture'', U.S. Patent No. 6,185,678, February 6th, 2001. Bill's thinking developed from work he did while working for the NSA on code signing in 1994, and originally applied to rebooting ATM switches across a network. The Microsoft folk have also applied for patent protection on the operating system aspects. (The patent texts are here and here.)
There may be quite a lot of prior art. Markus Kuhn wrote about the TrustNo1 Processor years ago, and the basic idea behind a trustworthy operating system - a `reference monitor' that supervises a computer's access control functions - goes back at least to a paper written by James Anderson for the USAF in 1972. It has been a feature of US military secure systems thinking since then.
8. How is this related to the Pentium 3 serial number?
Intel started an earlier program in the mid-1990s that would have put the functionality of the Fritz chip inside the main PC processor, or the cache controller chip, by 2000. The Pentium serial number was a first step on the way. The adverse public reaction seems to have caused them to pause, set up a consortium with Microsoft and others, and seek safety in numbers. The consortium they set up, the Trusted Computer Platform Alliance (TCPA), was eventually incorporated and changed its name to TCG.
9. Why call the monitor chip a `Fritz' chip?
It was named in honour of Senator Fritz Hollings of South Carolina, who worked tirelessly in Congress to make TC a mandatory part of all consumer electronics. (Hollings' bill failed; he lost his chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Trasportation, and he's retiring in 2004. But the Empire will be back. For example, Microsoft is spending a fortune in Brussels promoting a draft Directive on IP enforcement which is seriously bad stuff.)
10. OK, so TC stops kids ripping off music and will help companies keep data confidential. It may help the Mafia too, unless the FBI get a back door, which I assume they will. But apart from pirates, industrial spies and activists, who has a problem with it?
A lot of companies stand to lose out directly, such as information security vendors. When it first launched TC as Palladium, Microsoft claimed that Palladium would stop spam, viruses and just about every other bad thing in cyberspace - if so, then the antivirus companies, the spammers, the spam-filter vendors, the firewall firms and the intrusion detection folk could all have their lunch stolen. That's now been toned down, but Bill Gates admits that Microsoft will pursue the computer security market aggressively: "Because it's a growth area, we're not being that coy with them about what we intend to do."
Meanwhile, the concerns about the effects on competition and innovation continue to grow. The problems for innovation are well explained in a recent New York Times column by the distinguished economist Hal Varian.
But there are much deeper problems. The fundamental issue is that whoever controls the TC infrastructure will acquire a huge amount of power. Having this single point of control is like making everyone use the same bank, or the same accountant, or the same lawyer. There are many ways in which this power could be abused.
11. How can TC be abused?
One of the worries is censorship. TC was designed from the start to support the centralised revocation of pirate bits. Pirate software won't run in the TC world as TC will make the registration process tamper-resistant. But what about pirated songs or videos? How do you stop someone recording a track - if necessary by putting microphones next the speakers of a TC machine, and ripping it into an MP3? The proposed solution is that protected content will contain digital watermarks, and lawful media players that detect a watermark won't play that song unless it comes with an appropriate digital certificate for that device. But what if someone hacks a Fritz chip and does a transaction that `lawfully' transfers ownership of the track? In that case, traitor tracing technology will be used to find out which PC the track was ripped from. Then two things will happen. First, the owner of that PC will be prosecuted. (That's the theory, at least; it probably won't work as the pirates will use hacked PCs.) Second, tracks that have been through that machine will be put on a blacklist, which all TC players will download from time to time.
Blacklists have uses beyond music copying. They can be used to screen all files that the application opens - by content, by the serial number of the application that created them, or by any other criteria that you can program. The proposed use for this is that if everyone in China uses the same copy of Office, you do not just stop this copy running on any machine that is TC-compliant; that would just motivate the Chinese to use normal PCs instead of TC PCs. You also cause every TC-compliant PC in the world to refuse to read files that have been created using this pirate program. This will put huge pressure on the Chinese. (The precedent is that when spammers started using Chinese accounts, many US ISPs simply blackholed China, which forced the government to crack down on spam.)
The potential for abuse extends far beyond commercial bullying and economic warfare into political censorship. I expect that it will proceed a step at a time. First, some well-intentioned police force will get an order against a pornographic picture of a child, or a manual on how to sabotage railroad signals. All TC-compliant PCs will delete, or perhaps report, these bad documents. Then a litigant in a libel or copyright case will get a civil court order against an offending document; perhaps the Scientologists will seek to blacklist the famous Fishman Affidavit. A dictator's secret police could punish the author of a dissident leaflet by deleting everything she ever created using that system - her new book, her tax return, even her kids' birthday cards - wherever it had ended up. In the West, a court might use confiscation doctrine to `blackhole' a machine that had been used to make a pornographic picture of a child. Once lawyers, policemen and judges realise the potential, the trickle will become a flood.
The modern age only started when Gutenberg invented movable type printing in Europe, which enabled information to be preserved and disseminated even if princes and bishops wanted to ban it. For example, when Wycliffe translated the Bible into English in 1380-1, the Lollard movement he started was suppressed easily; but when Tyndale translated the New Testament in 1524-5, he was able to print over 50,000 copies before they caught him and burned him at the stake. The old order in Europe collapsed, and the modern age began. Societies that tried to control information became uncompetitive, and with the collapse of the Soviet Union it seemed that democratic liberal capitalism had won. But now, TC has placed at risk the priceless inheritance that Gutenberg left us. Electronic books, once published, will be vulnerable; the courts can order them to be unpublished and the TC infrastructure will do the dirty work.
The Soviet Union attempted to register and control all typewriters and fax machines. TC similarly attempts to register and control all computers. The problem is that everything is becoming computerised. We have absolutely no idea where ubiquitous content control mechanisms will lead us.
12. Scary stuff. But can't you just turn it off?
Sure - unless your system administrator configures your machine in such a way that TC is mandatory, you can always turn it off. You can then run your PC as before, and use insecure applications.
There is one small problem, though. If you turn TC off, Fritz won't hand out the keys you need to decrypt your files and run your bank account. Your TC-enabled apps won't work as well, or maybe at all. It will be like switching from Windows to Linux nowadays; you may have more freedom, but end up having less choice. If the TC apps are more attractive to most people, or are more profitable to the app vendors, you may end up simply having to use them - just as many people have to use Microsoft Word because all their friends and colleagues send them documents in Microsoft Word. By 2008, you may find that the costs of turning TC off are simply intolerable.
This has some interesting implications for national security. At a TCG symposium in Berlin, I put it this way: in 2010 President Clinton may have two red buttons on her desk - one that sends the missiles to China, and another that turns off all the PCs in China - and guess which the Chinese will fear the most? (At this point, a heckler from the audience said, `What about the button that turns off the PCs in Europe?') This may be an exaggeration, but it's only a slight one. Technology policy and power politics have been intertwined since the Roman empire, and prudent rulers cannot disregard the strategic implications of TC. It would be rather inconvenient for a government to have to switch all its systems from Windows to GNU/linux, and at the height of an international crisis.
13. So politics and economics are going to be significant here?
Exactly. The biggest profits in IT goods and services markets tend to go to companies that can establish platforms and control compatibility with them, so as to manage the markets in complementary products. A very topical example comes from computer printers. Since the Xerox N24 appeared in 1996, printer makers have been putting authentication chips in ink cartridges, so that printers can recognise third-party or refilled cartridges and refuse to work with them. Cartridge tying is now leading to trade conflict between the USA and Europe. In the USA, a court has granted Lexmark an injunction preventing the sale of cartridges with chips that interoperate with Lexmark's printers. Meanwhile, the European Commission has adopted a Directive on waste electrical and electronic equipment which will force member states to outlaw, by the end of 2007, the circumvention of EU recycling rules by companies who design products with chips to ensure that they cannot be recycled.
This is not just a printer issue. Some mobile phone vendors use embedded authentication chips to check that the phone battery is a genuine part rather than a clone. The Sony Playstation 2 uses similar authentication to ensure that memory cartridges were made by Sony rather than by a low-price competitor. The Microsoft Xbox is no different. But up until now, everyone who wanted to engage in product tying had to come up with his own hardware technology. This could be cheap for hardware product vendors, but was too expensive for most software companies.
TC will enable application software vendors to engage in product tying and similar business strategies to their hearts' content. As the application vendor will control the security policy server, he can dictate the terms under which anyone else's software will be able to interoperate with his own. In the old days, software innovation was fast and furious because there were millions of PCs out there, with data in formats that were understood. So if you thought up a cool new way to manipulate address books, you could write an app that would deal with the half-dozen formats common in PCs, PDAs and phones, and you were in business: you had millions of potential clients. In the future, the owners of these formats will be very strongly tempted to lock them down using TC (`for your privacy') and charge third parties rental to access them. This will be bad for innovation. It's possible because the app policy server enforces arbitrary rules about which other applications will be allowed to use the files a TC app creates.
So a successful TC application will be worth much more money to the software company that controls it, as they can rent out access to their interfaces for whatever the market will bear. So most software developers will enable their applications for TC; and if Windows is the first operating system to support TC, it in turn will get a further competitive advantage over GNU/Linux and MacOS with the developer community.
14. But hang on, doesn't the law give people a right to reverse engineer interfaces for compatibility?
Yes, and this is very important to the functioning of IT goods and services markets; see Samuelson and Scotchmer, ``The Law and Economics of Reverse Engineering,'' Yale Law Journal, May 2002, 1575-1663. In Europe, the EU Software Directive allows EU companies to reverse engineer their competitors' products in order to produce compatible, competing products. But such laws in most cases just give you the right to try, not to succeed. Back when compatibility meant messing around with file formats, there was a real contest - when Word and Word Perfect were fighting for dominance, each tried to read the other's files and make it hard for the other to read its own. But with TC that game is over; without access to the keys, you've had it.
Locking competitors out of application file formats was one of the motivations for TC: see a post by Lucky Green, and go to his talk at Def Con to hear more. It's a tactic that's spreading beyond the computer world. Congress is getting upset at carmakers using data format lockout to stop their customers getting repairs done at independent dealers. And the Microsoft folk say they want TC everywhere, even in your watch. The economic consequences could be globally significant.
15. Can't TC be broken?
The early versions will be vulnerable to anyone with the tools and patience to crack the hardware (e.g., get clear data on the bus between the CPU and the Fritz chip). However, in a few years, the Fritz chip may disappear inside the main processor - let's call it the `Hexium' - and things will get a lot harder. Really serious, well funded opponents will still be able to crack it. But it's likely to go on getting more difficult and expensive.
Also, in many countries, cracking Fritz will be illegal. In the USA the Digital Millennium Copyright Act already does this, while in the EU we will have to deal with the EU Copyright Directive and (if it passes) the draft enforcement directive. (In some countries, the implementation of the Copyright Directive already makes cryptography research technically illegal.)
Also, in many products, compatibility control is already being mixed quite deliberately with copyright control. The Sony Playstation's authentication chips also contain the encryption algorithm for DVD, so that reverse engineers can be accused of circumventing a copyright protection mechanism and hounded under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The situation is likely to be messy - and that will favour large firms with big legal budgets.
16. What's the overall economic effect likely to be?
The content industries may gain a bit from cutting music copying - expect Sir Michael Jagger to get very slightly richer. But I expect the most significant economic effect will be to strengthen the position of incumbents in information goods and services markets at the expense of new entrants. This may mean a rise in the market cap of firms like Intel, Microsoft and IBM - but at the expense of innovation and growth generally. Eric von Hippel documents how most of the innovations that spur economic growth are not anticipated by the manufacturers of the platforms on which they are based; and technological change in the IT goods and services markets is usually cumulative. Giving incumbents new ways to make life harder for people trying to develop novel uses for their products is a bad idea.
By centralising economic power, TC will favour large companies over small ones; and TC apps will enable large companies to capture more of the spillover from their economic activities, as with the car companies forcing car-owners to have their maintenance done at authorised dealerships. As most employment growth occurs in the small to medium business sector, this could have consequences for unemployment.
There may also be distinct regional effects. For example, many years of government sponsorship have made Europe's smartcard industry strong, at the cost of crowding out other technological innovation in the region. Senior industry people to whom I have spoken anticipate that once the second phase of TC puts the Fritz functionality in the main processor, this will hammer smartcard sales. Senior TC company people have admitted to me that displacing smartcards from the authentication token market is one of their business goals. Many of the functions that smartcard makers want you to do with a card will instead be done in the Fritz chips of your laptop, your PDA and your mobile phone. If this industry is killed off by TC, Europe could be a significant net loser. Other large sections of the information security industry may also become casualties.
17. Who else will lose?
There will be many places where existing business processes break down in ways that allow copyright owners to extract new rents. For example, I recently applied for planning permission to turn some agricultural land that we own into garden; to do this, we needed to supply our local government with six copies of a 1:1250 map of the field. In the old days, everyone just got a map from the local library and photocopied it. Now, the maps are on a server in the library, with copyright control, and you can get a maximum of four copies of any one sheet. For an individual, that's easy enough to circumvent: buy four copies today and send a friend along tomorrow for the extra two. But businesses that use a lot of maps will end up paying more money to the map companies. This may be a small problem; mutiply it a thousandfold to get some idea of the effect on the overall economy. The net transfers of income and wealth are likely, once more, to be from small firms to large and from new firms to old.
One well-known UK lawyer said that copyright law is only tolerated because it is not enforced against the vast majority of petty infringers. And there will be some particularly high-profile hard-luck cases. I expect that copyright regulations due out later this year in Britain will deprive the blind of the fair-use right to use their screen scraper software to read e-books. Normally, a bureaucratic stupidity like this might not matter much, as people would just ignore it, and the police would not be idiotic enough to prosecute anybody. But if the copyright regulations are enforced by hardware protection mechanisms that are impractical to break, then the blind may lose out seriously. (There are many other marginal groups under similar threat.)
18. Ugh. What else?
TC will undermine the General Public License (GPL), under which many free and open source software products are distributed. The GPL is designed to prevent the fruits of communal voluntary labour being hijacked by private companies for profit. Anyone can use and modify software distributed under this licence, but if you distribute a modified copy, you must make it available to the world, together with the source code so that other people can make subsequent modifications of their own.
IBM and HP have apparently started work on a TC-enhanced version of GNU/linux. This will involve tidying up the code and removing a number of features. To get an evaluation certificate acceptable to TCG, the sponsor will then have to submit the pruned code to an evaluation lab, together with a mass of documentation showing why various known attacks on the code don't work. (The evaluation is at level EAL3 - expensive enough to keep out the free software community, yet lax enough for most commercial software vendors to have a chance to get their lousy code through.) Although the modified program will be covered by the GPL, and the source code will be free to everyone, it will not work in the TC ecosystem unless you have a certificate for it that is specific to the Fritz chip on your own machine. That is what will cost you money (if not at first, then eventually).
You will still be free to make modifications to the modified code, but you won't be able to get a certificate that gets you into the shiny new TC world. Something similar happens with the linux supplied by Sony for the Playstation 2; the console's copy protection mechanisms prevent you from running an altered binary, and from using a number of the hardware features. Even if a philanthropist does a not-for-profit secure GNU/linux, the resulting product would not really be a GPL version of a TC operating system, but a proprietary operating system that the philanthropist could give away free. (There is still the question of who would pay for the user certificates.)
People believed that the GPL made it impossible for a company to come along and steal code that was the result of community effort. This helped make people willing to give up their spare time to write free software for the communal benefit. But TC changes that. Once the majority of PCs on the market are TC-enabled, the GPL won't work as intended. The benefit for Microsoft is not that this will destroy free software directly. The point is this: once people realise that even GPL'led software can be hijacked for commercial purposes, idealistic young programmers will be much less motivated to write free software.
19. I can see that some people will get upset about this.
And there are many other political issues - the transparency of processing of personal data enshrined in the EU data protection directive; the sovereignty issue of whether copyright regulations will be written by national governments, as at present, or an application developer in Portland or Redmond; whether TC will be used by Microsoft as a means of killing off Apache; and whether people will be comfortable about the idea of having their PCs operated, in effect, under remote control - control that could be usurped by courts or by government agencies without their knowledge.
20. But hang on, isn't TC illegal under antitrust law?
In the USA, maybe not. Intel has honed a `platform leadership' strategy, in which they lead industry efforts to develop technologies that will make the PC more useful, such as the PCI bus and USB. Their modus operandi is described in a book by Gawer and Cusumano. Intel sets up a consortium to share the development of the technology, has the founder members put some patents into the pot, publishes a standard, gets some momentum behind it, then licenses it to the industry on the condition that licensees in turn cross-license any interfering patents of their own, at zero cost, to all consortium members.
The positive view of this strategy was that Intel grew the overall market for PCs; the dark side was that they prevented any competitor achieving a dominant position in any technology that might have threatened their dominance of the PC hardware. Thus, Intel could not afford for IBM's microchannel bus to prevail, not just as a competing nexus of the PC platform but also because IBM had no interest in providing the bandwidth needed for the PC to compete with high-end systems. The effect in strategic terms is somewhat similar to the old Roman practice of demolishing all dwellings and cutting down all trees close to their roads or their castles. No competing structure may be allowed near Intel's platform; it must all be levelled into a commons. But a nice, orderly, well-regulated commons: interfaces should be `open but not free'.
This consortium approach has evolved into a highly effective way of skirting antitrust law. So far, the FTC and the Department of Justice do not seem to have been worried about such consortia - so long as the standards are open and accessible to all companies. They may need to become slightly more sophisticated.
As for Europe, the law does explicitly cover consortia, and is being tightened up. There was a conference on TC in Berlin, organised by the German ministry for economics and labour, which heard speakers from the pro- and anti-TC camps state their cases. If you read German, there is a very thorough analysis of the competition policy aspects by Professor Christian Koenig; the executive summary is that TC appears to break European competition law on a number of grounds. Standards groups are allowed as an exemption to cartel law only if they're non-binding, open and non-discriminatory. TCG isn't. It discriminates against non-members; its high membership fees make it hard for small businesses to join; and its use of paid rather than free licensing discriminates against free software. There are also many issues with market power and market interdependence. The EU is about to find Microsoft guilty of trying to extend its monopoly in PCs to servers by keeping interfaces obscure. If interfaces can be locked down by TC mechanisms, that will be worse. TC may also enable Microsoft to extend its monopoly in operating systems to the provision of online music services, or to mobile phone software.
However, law is one thing, and enforcement another. By the end of 2003, the EU should have convicted Microsoft of anti-competitive behaviour over Netscape and over server interfaces. This judgement will come too late to restore Netscape to life or create competition in the browser market. By the time the EU gets round to convicting Microsoft over TC, it will be 2008. By then our society may be addicted to TC, and it may not be politically possible to do anything effective.
21. When is TC going to hit the streets?
It has. The version 1.0 specification was published in 2000. Atmel is already selling a Fritz chip, and you have been able to buy it installed in the IBM Thinkpad series of laptops since May 2002. Some of the existing features in Windows XP and the X-Box are TC features: for example, if you change your PC configuration more than a little, you have to re-register all your software with Redmond. Also, since Windows 2000, Microsoft has been working on certifying all device drivers: if you try to load an unsigned driver, XP will complain. The Enterprise Rights Management stuff is shipping with Windows Server 2003. There is also growing US government interest in the technical standardisation process. TC developers' kits will be available in October 2003, or so we're told. The train is rolling.
22. What's TORA BORA?
This seems to have been an internal Microsoft joke: see the Palladium announcement. The idea is that `Trusted Operating Root Architecture' (Palladium) will stop the `Break Once Run Anywhere' attack, by which they mean that pirated content, once unprotected, can be posted to the net and used by anyone. It will do so by traitor tracing - the technology of ubiquitous censorship.
They seem to have realised since then that this joke might just be in bad taste. At a talk on traitor tracing I attended on the 10th July 2002 at Microsoft Research, the slogan had changed to `BORE-resistance', where BORE standards for `Break Once Run Everywhere'. (By the way, the speaker there described copyright watermarking as `content screening', a term that used to refer to stopping minors seeing pornography: the PR machine is obviously twitching! He also told us that it would not work unless everyone used a trusted operating system. When I asked him whether this meant getting rid of linux he replied that linux users would have to be made to use content screening.)
23. But isn't PC security a good thing?
The question is: security for whom? You might prefer not to have to worry about viruses, but TC won't fix that: viruses exploit the way software applications (such as Microsoft Office and Outlook) use scripting. You might get annoyed by spam, but that won't get fixed either. (Microsoft claimed that it will be fixed, by filtering out all unsigned messages - but you can already configure mail clients to filter out mail from people you don't know and putting it in a folder you scan briefly once a day.) You might be worried about privacy, but TC won't fix that; almost all privacy violations result from the abuse of authorised access, and TC will increase the incentives for companies to collect and trade personal data on you. The medical insurance company that requires you to consent to your data being shared with your employer and with anyone else they can sell it to, isn't going to stop just because their PCs are now officially `secure'. On the contrary, they are likely to sell it even more widely once computers are called `trusted computers'. Economists call this a `social choice trap'. Making something slightly less dangerous, or making it appear less dangerous, often causes people to use it more, or use it carelessly, so that the overall harm increases. The classic example is that Volvo drivers have more accidents.
A mildly charitable view of TC was put forward by the late Roger Needham who directed Microsoft's research in Europe: there are some applications in which you want to constrain the user's actions. For example, you want to stop people fiddling with the odometer on a car before they sell it. Similarly, if you want to do DRM on a PC then you need to treat the user as the enemy.
Seen in these terms, TC does not so much provide security for the user as for the PC vendor, the software supplier, and the content industry. They do not add value for the user, but destroy it. They constrain what you can do with your PC in order to enable application and service vendors to extract more money from you. This is the classic definition of an exploitative cartel - an industry agreement that changes the terms of trade so as to diminish consumer surplus.
24. So why is this called `Trusted Computing'? I don't see why I should trust it at all!
It's almost an in-joke. In the US Department of Defense, a `trusted system or component' is defined as `one which can break the security policy'. This might seem counter-intuitive at first, but just stop to think about it. The mail guard or firewall that stands between a Secret and a Top Secret system can - if it fails - break the security policy that mail should only ever flow from Secret to Top Secret, but never in the other direction. It is therefore trusted to enforce the information flow policy.
Or take a civilian example: suppose you trust your doctor to keep your medical records private. This means that he has access to your records, so he could leak them to the press if he were careless or malicious. You don't trust me to keep your medical records, because I don't have them; regardless of whether I like you or hate you, I can't do anything to affect your policy that your medical records should be confidential. Your doctor can, though; and the fact that he is in a position to harm you is really what is meant (at a system level) when you say that you trust him. You may have a warm feeling about him, or you may just have to trust him because he is the only doctor on the island where you live; no matter, the DoD definition strips away these fuzzy, emotional aspects of `trust' (that can confuse people).
During the late 1990s, as people debated government control over cryptography, Al Gore proposed a `Trusted Third Party' - a service that would keep a copy of your decryption key safe, just in case you (or the FBI, or the NSA) ever needed it. The name was derided as the sort of marketing exercise that saw the Russian colony of East Germany called the `German Democratic Republic'. But it really does chime with DoD thinking. A Trusted Third Party is a third party that can break your security policy.
25. So a `Trusted Computer' is a computer that can break my security?
That's a polite way of putting it.
http://www.againsttcpa.com/" title="http://www.againsttcpa.com/" target="_blank"http://www.againsttcpa.com/
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| ......Black and brown juveniles sentenced to death three times more often than whites |
| 03.08.04 (3:45 am) [edit] |
by Hazel Trice Edney
San Francisco Bay View [US]
March 3rd, 2004
Washington (NNPA) – Although Black and Brown juveniles represent 21 percent of the 16- to 17 year-olds in America, they represent more than triple that proportion - 66 percent - of all death row inmates sentenced as juveniles.
“Why is this?” David Elliott, spokesman for the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, asks rhetorically. “It’s because the death penalty preys upon the most vulnerable in our society.”
The question of whether 16- and 17-year-olds should receive the death penalty is receiving increased scrutiny now that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a Missouri case – Simmons v. Roper - challenging the pending execution of a man who was 17 at the time of his crime.
If the decision is overturned later this year, it could spare the lives of 34 African-Americans (45 percent); 24 Whites (32 percent); 14 Latinos (19 percent); and 2 Asians (2 percent) currently on death row for crimes committed when they were juveniles, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, based in Washington, D.C.
“You already start off having a racial disparity with the people on death row (of all ages) being 55 percent people of color,” says Elliott of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. “Then, when you look at the marginalized groups – the mentally retarded, juveniles – you find increased evidence of racial bias.”
Across the country, anti-death penalty organizations have been energized by the Supreme Court’s decision to hear the Missouri case. The defendant, Christopher Simmons, now 27, was 17 when he murdered a woman who recognized him when he and a 15-year-old companion burglarized her house. The Missouri Supreme Court ruled 4-3 to overturn his death sentence because of his age, noting that the executions of juveniles have become so rare that they constitute cruel and unusual punishment, a violation of the 8th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
‘’Individuals under the age of 18 cannot vote, cannot serve in the military without their parents’ permission, cannot purchase liquor, and, in the state of Louisiana, they cannot witness an execution unless they are the one being put to death,” says William F. Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA. “Society recognizes the diminished accountability of those under the age of 18 in (every) aspect of civil life but this one.’’
Society traditionally does not kill the young, because the general belief is that they may not know the difference between right and wrong. In 1988, the Supreme Court ruled it illegal to execute anyone under the age of 16. In 1989, the court declined to extend the same rule to 16- and 17-year-olds, leaving that decision up to states.
The U.S. is the minority among nations for continuing to execute juveniles. Several anti-juvenile death penalty treaties, including the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, have been signed by U.S. presidents, but not ratified by the U.S. Senate. The U.N. resolution, signed in 1999 by President Clinton, prohibited the use of the death penalty for juvenile offenders.
Every nation in the world ratified the treaty, except the U.S. and Somalia. Only four other countries – Iraq, Iran, Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia – allow the execution of juveniles.
Over the past 10 years, Pakistan, China, Yemen and Zimbabwe have abolished the death penalty for juveniles. Many other countries have severely curtailed juvenile executions, including Saudi Arabia and Nigeria.
Amnesty International began a global campaign last month to abolish the death penalty for juvenile offenders, calling it a “heinous” practice.
Anti-death penalty activists hope that if enough states abolish the juvenile death penalty before the court’s decision, that might create the same level of opposition that the court observed two years ago when it banned executions of mentally retarded people. The court said then that growing public sentiment against the execution of the mentally retarded indicated changing standards of decency.
At this time, 17 states have no death penalty for juveniles. Fifteen states have it but have not used it since 1976 when the death penalty moratorium was lifted.
A Supreme Court decision resulted in a national moratorium in 1972, because the court ruled that laws governing the death penalty in some states were arbitrary and capricious and therefore constituted cruel and unusual punishment. The Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that 54 percent of the nearly 4,000 death row inmates between the 1930s and 1960s were Black.
After death penalty laws were tightened at the state level, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty in 1976. Legal executions resumed the following year.
Speaking at a hearing last week during the Virginia General Assembly, National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty Executive Director Brian Roberts pleaded, “We realize that minors are not as capable as adults in making responsible decisions. So we place restrictions on them. … Yet there is one area where we fall woefully short in the protection and nurturance of our children. That is the criminal justice system.”
It was the Virginia case of convicted sniper Lee Boyd Malvo that gained national attention when Malvo was spared the death penalty. He was 17 at the time of his crimes. His adult co-conspirator, John Muhammad, was sentenced to death.
Since 1976, 22 juvenile offenders have been executed in seven states: Texas, Virginia, Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma and South Carolina. Texas alone carried out 13 executions, almost two-thirds of the total.
The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty reports:
· Of the 10 female juvenile offenders executed in the United States since 1976, eight were African American and one was Native American. In each of those cases, the victim was White.
· Southern states account for 84 percent of all death sentences imposed on juvenile offenders since 1976. Three states – Texas, Florida and Alabama – account for half of those sentences.
· Over the past decade, only three states have executed any juvenile offenders: Texas, Virginia and Oklahoma. Those three states account for 18 of the 22 executions of juvenile offenders that have been carried out since 1976.
The constitutional question the court will be exploring in the Missouri case is whether the execution of juveniles has evolved into a violation of the 8th Amendment, which states, “Excessive bail shall not be required; nor excessive fines imposed; nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”
The court has been split over the issue of juvenile executions. In a case last fall, Stanford v. Kentucky, a dissenting Justice John Paul Stevens wrote, ‘’The practice of executing such offenders is a relic of the past and is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency in a civilized society.’’ He was joined by Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer in declaring juvenile executions a “shameful practice.” However, the other five justices disagreed.
Activists refuse to give up hope that a majority of the court will finally agree.
“Thankfully, momentum against this practice is building,” said Roberts at the Virginia hearing. “The time has come to end the odious use of the death penalty against children. … The evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society demand no less.”
http://www.sfbayview.com/021104/juveniles02110 4.shtml" title="http://www.sfbayview.com/021104/juveniles02110 4.shtml" target="_blank"http://www.sfbayview.com/0211...
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| ....Bush campaign says it won't pull 9/11 ads |
| 03.07.04 (3:51 pm) [edit] |
well...of course he won't...why would he give a shit?!?!?
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Despite public calls from some firefighters and relatives of victims of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign said Sunday it is not considering pulling or changing television ads that include images of devastation from the attacks.
"This is an entirely appropriate effort on our part, we believe, to recall a memory and to recognize what it is that it's going to take in terms of leadership to lead the war on terror," campaign chairman Marc Racicot said on "Fox News Sunday." "That's precisely what the ads were designed to do. And we are very comfortable with how the public has reacted to them.
"We have not thought about pulling the ads," he said.
Racicot's comments come as the Republican National Committee is warning television stations across the country not to run ads from the MoveOn.org Voter Fund that criticize President Bush, arguing that the group is paying for them with "soft money" contributions, raised in violation of the new campaign-finance law.
"As a broadcaster licensed by the Federal Communications Commission, you have a responsibility to the viewing public, and to your licensing agency, to refrain from complicity in any illegal activity," said the RNC's chief counsel, Jill Holtzman Vogel, in a letter sent to about 250 stations Friday.
But MoveOn.org's lawyer, Joseph Sandler, said in a statement that the ads were funded legally, calling the RNC's letter "a complete misrepresentation of the law." (Full story)
MoveOn.org and other groups trying to defeat Bush have been raising money to help the Democratic nominee compete with the president's vast war chest in the period between the end of the Democratic primaries and the nominating conventions. The Bush-Cheney campaign, with more than $100 million, is spending $10 million in an initial advertising wave that includes the ads with the September 11 clips.
Two of the Bush-Cheney campaign commercials show brief images of the wreckage of the World Trade Center and firefighters carrying out a flag-draped victim.
The ads started airing Thursday on local stations in key battleground states and nationally on cable networks, including CNN.
Some relatives of September 11 victims have said they support Bush's use of the imagery, as did former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who led the city through the aftermath of the attacks.
But a group called September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows and other victims' families not affiliated with that group have called on the president to pull the ads immediately, saying they are outraged that the images would be used for partisan political gain.
Rita Lasar, with the Peaceful Tomorrows group, lost a brother in the attacks. Joined by a New York firefighter and a man whose son died in the attack, she told reporters Friday that Bush had promised he would not use the site for political gain.
"To say that we're outraged is the truth, but it's more than outrage. It's a deep hurt and sorrow that any politician, Democrat or Republican, would seek to gain advantage by using that site," she said. Several Democrats, speaking Sunday, echoed the call for Bush to pull the ad.
"This is just the latest example of the way this president has been a divider and not a uniter," Tad Devine, senior adviser to presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry, said on ABC's "This Week." "He ran on a platform of compassionate conservatism said he would bring the country together. And through the course of his presidency, he has consistently divided it.
"And this is just another example where his insensitivity has divided people, and I think it's hurting our country," Devine added.
Bush himself addressed the issue Saturday, speaking to reporters at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Asked whether he would pull the ads, he responded, "I will continue to speak about the effects of 9/11 on our country and my presidency. I will continue to mourn the loss of life on that day, but I'll never forget the lessons. The terrorists declared war on us on that day, and I will continue to pursue this war."
Bush said he has an "obligation to those who died" that day. "I look forward to the debate about who best to lead this country in the war on terror."
But those complaining about the ads said that they objected not to Bush talking about the events, but to his use of the imagery for political purposes.
"That was what crossed the line," Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat, said on CBS' "Face the Nation." He said the images imply that the firefighters support the president, despite the fact that the head of a New York firefighters union supports Kerry for president and has called for the ads to be pulled.
Rendell said the imagery also "reflects an insensitivity to the victims [and] the victims' families."
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| ......RNC tells TV stations not to run anti-Bush ads [WTF?] |
| 03.07.04 (6:30 am) [edit] |
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Republican National Committee is warning television stations across the country not to run ads from the MoveOn.org Voter Fund that criticize President Bush, charging that the left-leaning political group is paying for them with money raised in violation of the new campaign-finance law.
"As a broadcaster licensed by the Federal Communications Commission, you have a responsibility to the viewing public, and to your licensing agency, to refrain from complicity in any illegal activity," said the RNC's chief counsel, Jill Holtzman Vogel, in a letter sent to about 250 stations Friday.
"Now that you have been apprised of the law, to prevent further violations of federal law, we urge you to remove these advertisements from your station's broadcast rotation."
But MoveOn.org's lawyer, Joseph Sandler, said in a statement that the ads were funded legally, calling the RNC's letter "a complete misrepresentation of the law."
"The federal campaign laws have permitted precisely this use of money for advertising for the past 25 years," he said.
And MoveOn.org, which was planning to spend $1.9 million on an ad buy that started Thursday, said Friday that it would spend another $1 million.
'Soft money' targeted
The RNC charges that because the ads are designed to help defeat President Bush, the group cannot pay for them with unlimited "soft money" contributions but only with contributions raised in amounts less than $5,000.
Although MoveOn.org is a so-called "Section 527" organization that is legally allowed to raise soft money in unlimited amounts from donors, the new campaign-finance law prohibits the group from using those funds to pay for ads that directly attack Bush, Vogel said.
And in a bit of political one-upmanship, the letter quotes the presumptive Democratic nominee, Sen. John Kerry, as saying that the objective of the new law "is to eliminate altogether the capacity of soft money to play the role that it does in our politics."
But MoveOn.org says it has raised $10 million for advertising from 160,000 donors, in amounts averaging $50-$60. It is running two ads in 67 TV markets in what its Web site describes as 17 "battleground" states.
"It's not surprising that [RNC Chairman] Ed Gillespie continues to make false claims about the legality of our campaign in order to silence us," Wes Boyd, president of the voter fund, said in a statement. "Our lawyers continue to assure us that our advertising, and the small contributions from tens of thousands of our members that pay for it, conform in every way to existing campaign-finance laws."
The group maintains that a recent ruling from the Federal Election Commission supports the method it is using to fund the ads. But in her letter to the stations, Vogel said that FEC ruling makes it clear that any ad that "promotes, supports, attacks or opposes" a federal candidate comes under the contribution limits, which she charges MoveOn is violating.
One of the ads, called "Worker," ends with the tag line, "George Bush. He's not on our side." The other, called "Child's Play," shows small children working at various jobs and ends with the tag line, "Guess who's going to pay off President Bush's $1 trillion deficit?"
RNC: Problem with funding, not content
Vogel insisted that the RNC's problem with the ads stemmed from their funding, not their content.
"I write not because of the misleading allegations contained in the advertisement, which will be answered in due time, but because running this advertisement breaks the law," Vogel's letter said.
MoveOn.org has been running ads for several months on cable channels, which don't fall under FCC regulations. However, CBS refused to broadcast the group's ads during the Super Bowl, saying the network did not run issue advertising.
MoveOn.org and other groups trying to defeat Bush have been raising money to help the Democratic nominee compete with the president's vast war chest in the period between the end of the Democratic primaries and the political conventions. The Bush-Cheney campaign, which launched its first ad salvo this week, has more than $100 million to spend.
The RNC has complained that though it is no longer allowed to use soft money for campaigning, MoveOn.org is accepting large soft money contributions from a cadre of wealthy donors, including billionaire financier George Soros and film producer Steven Bing, in its quest to defeat the president.
Soros has said ousting Bush this year is now the "central focus of my life."
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| .....WTF? Gates: Buy stamps to send e-mail |
| 03.05.04 (1:51 pm) [edit] |
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An Aside: Instead of this "brilliant" brainstorm by these assholes, why don't they learn to write software that WORKS! ESP, Microsoft products!
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NEW YORK (AP) -- If the U.S. Postal Service delivered mail for free, our mailboxes would surely runneth over with more credit-card offers, sweepstakes entries, and supermarket fliers. That's why we get so much junk e-mail: It's essentially free to send. So Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates, among others, is now suggesting that we start buying "stamps" for e-mail.
Many Internet analysts worry, though, that turning e-mail into an economic commodity would undermine its value in democratizing communication. But let's start with the math: At perhaps a penny or less per item, e-mail postage wouldn't significantly dent the pocketbooks of people who send only a few messages a day. Not so for spammers who mail millions at a time.
Though postage proposals have been in limited discussion for years -- a team at Microsoft Research has been at it since 2001 -- Gates gave the idea a lift in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Details came last week as part of Microsoft's anti-spam strategy. Instead of paying a penny, the sender would "buy" postage by devoting maybe 10 seconds of computing time to solving a math puzzle. The exercise would merely serve as proof of the sender's good faith.
Time is money, and spammers would presumably have to buy many more machines to solve enough puzzles. The open-source software Hashcash, available since about 1997, takes a similar approach and has been incorporated into other spam-fighting tools including Camram and Spam Assassin.
Meanwhile, Goodmail Systems Inc. has been in touch with Yahoo! Inc. and other e-mail providers about using cash. Goodmail envisions charging bulk mailers a penny a message to bypass spam filters and avoid being incorrectly tossed as junk. That all sounds good for curbing spam, but what if it kills the e-mail you want as well?
Consider how simple and inexpensive it is today to e-mail a friend, relative, or even a city-hall bureaucrat. It's nice not to have to calculate whether greeting grandma is worth a cent. And what of the communities now tied together through e-mail -- hundreds of cancer survivors sharing tips on coping; dozens of parents coordinating soccer schedules? Those pennies add up.
"It detracts from your ability to speak and to state your opinions to large groups of people," said David Farber, a veteran technologist who runs a mailing list with more than 20,000 subscribers. "It changes the whole complexion of the net."
Goodmail chief executive Richard Gingras said individuals might get to send a limited number for free, while mailing lists and nonprofit organizations might get price breaks.
But at what threshold would e-mail cease to be free? At what point might a mailing list be big or commercial enough to pay full rates? Goodmail has no price list yet, so Gingras couldn't say. Vint Cerf, one of the Internet's founding fathers, said spammers are bound to exploit any free allotments.
"The spammers will probably just keep changing their mailbox names," Cerf said. "I continue to be impressed by the agility of spammers." And who gets the payments? How do you build and pay for a system to track all this? How do you keep such a system from becoming a target for hacking and scams?
The proposals are also largely U.S.-centric, and even with seamless currency conversion, paying even a token amount would be burdensome for the developing world, said John Patrick, former vice president of Internet technology at IBM Corp.
"We have to think of not only, let's say, the relatively well-off half billion people using e-mail today, but the 5 or 6 billion who aren't using it yet but who soon will be," Patrick said.
Some proposals even allow recipients to set their own rates. A college student might accept e-mail with a one-cent stamp; a busy chief executive might demand a dollar.
"In the regular marketplace, when you have something so fast and efficient that everyone wants it, the price goes up," said Sonia Arrison of the Pacific Research Institute, a think tank that favors market-based approaches.
To think the Internet can shatter class distinctions that exist offline is "living in Fantasyland," Arrison said. Nonetheless, it will be tough to persuade people to pay -- in cash or computing time that delays mail -- for something they are used to getting for free.
Critics of postage see more promise in other approaches, including technology to better verify e-mail senders and lawsuits to drive the big spammers out of business.
"Back in the early '90s, there were e-mail systems that charged you 10 cents a message," said John Levine, an anti-spam advocate. "And they are all dead."
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| .....Bush Ads Use World Trade Center Imagery |
| 03.04.04 (4:03 pm) [edit] |
by Liz Sidoti, Associated Press [US]
March 3rd, 2004
WASHINGTON - With a huge $10.5 million downpayment, President Bush's re-election committee rolled out its first campaign commercials on Wednesday, using images of the destroyed World Trade Center to claim "steady leadership in times of change."
"What sees us through tough times? Freedom, faith, families, and sacrifice," says one commercial, as clips roll of the Sept. 11, 2001, wreckage, a flag being raised, children saying the Pledge of Allegiance, parishioners at a church, parents with a new baby and firefighters.
The ads portray the Republican incumbent as a steward who has led the country through three years of economic woes and terrorism fears and seek to make the case that Bush has emerged as a leader amid foreign and domestic challenges.
"I know exactly where I want to lead this country," Bush says in a different ad. "I'm optimistic about America because I believe in the people of America."
Flush with more than $100 million, the campaign on Thursday begins what is expected to be multimillion-dollar advertising onslaught lasting several months.
The first three ads, unveiled at campaign headquarters in suburban Washington, will run on broadcast channels in about 80 markets in 18 states, most of which are expected to be competitive, and nationwide on select cable networks.
The states are: Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin.
The campaign would not discuss its ad buy. However, it already is spending about $4.5 million on cable networks, including CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC, to run three weeks of ads. It also has bought about $6 million worth of airtime on local broadcast affiliates for one week worth of commercials, according to non-campaign sources familiar with the buys, which are moderate in most of the media markets.
For now, the ads are positive but they will turn sharply critical at some point, contrasting Bush's record with that of Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites), the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
If the ads succeed in boosting Bush's sagging poll numbers, Democrats will have little choice but to respond quickly and substantially on the air. But Bush's huge cash advantage could put a dent in the coffers of Kerry, who just finished an expensive primary season, and the Democratic National Committee (news - web sites), which has $16 million to start its ad campaign.
Liberal outside groups, which can't coordinate with the campaign or the DNC, also plan to spend millions on ads to counter Bush's onslaught. The MoveOn.org Voter Fund was going on the air Thursday in 17 of the states.
Bush-Cheney advisers said the ads are meant to show the country is safer and stronger because of Bush's approach following the terrorist attacks, and to make the case that his economic policies have helped move the nation from a recession toward recovery.
"We thought it important to start with a setting the table of where the country's been over the last three years," said Matthew Dowd, the campaign's chief strategist.
The campaign had said it would not use Sept. 11, 2001, for political reasons, yet footage from the aftermath of the terrorists attacks is shown in the ads.
Campaign manager Ken Mehlman said the day was a defining moment that led to Bush's accomplishments, including passage of the Patriot Act and the war in Afghanistan (news - web sites) that eliminated the Taliban rule. "These are important parts of this administration's record," he said.
Carrying the slogan — "Steady leadership in times of change" — the ads are warm and soothing, not unlike those done for Bush in 2000. Maverick Media, headed by Bush media adviser Mark McKinnon, produced the spots as in 2000.
In a 60-second ad, the Bushes sit together in the White House and talk about what the nation needs in a president. "The strength, the focus, the characteristics that these times demand," Laura Bush says. Interspersed are clips of people doing everyday things, and scenes of Bush.
A 30-second ad that uses mostly text and also was filmed in Spanish marks major milestones in the nation's recent history, starting with Bush's inauguration in January 2001 and moving through images of scrolling stock market numbers, an Internet address, World Trade Center wreckage and firefighters carrying a casket.
The third ad, also at 30 seconds, sandwiches images of Bush around portraits of people of mixed ages and races as it focuses on values of "freedom, faith, families and sacrifice." An announcer tells how "the last few years have tested America in many ways" but how "America rose to the challenge" with Bush at the helm.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=st...." title="http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=st...." target="_blank"http://story.news.yahoo.com/n...
Note: The campaign had said it would not use Sept. 11, 2001, for political reasons, yet footage from the aftermath of the terrorists attacks is shown in the ads.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0423-02.htm" title="http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0423-02.htm" target="_blank"http://www.commondreams.org/h...
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| ....Many U.S. Expatriates Prefer 'Anybody But Bush' |
| 03.02.04 (4:35 pm) [edit] |
by Erik Kirschbaum, Reuters Newswire [UK]
March 1st, 2004
BERLIN (Reuters) - Often caught in the firing line when foreigners vent their anger at George W. Bush, many American expatriates are flocking to Democratic primaries abroad and pinning hopes on a John Kerry election victory in November.
U.S. expatriate voters number more than six million worldwide, but they have long been a nebulous and somewhat neglected bloc whose absentee ballots end up scattered, with limited impact, across 50 states.
But three years of Bush's foreign policies have rattled their adopted countries and shaken into action many expatriates weary of hostile questions on Iraq, the environment and other issues.
Some are brimming with enthusiasm for Kerry, a Massachusetts Senator and the Democratic front-runner ahead of this week's "Super Tuesday" primary races in several states.
Others say any candidate would be better than Bush.
"Bush is one of the biggest threats to world peace and to the standing of the United States in the world community," said Darren Sullivan, 35, a photographer who lives in Amsterdam.
"His reasons for war in Iraq were never convincing," Sullivan said. "It increased hate people feel for America. My vote won't be so much for Kerry as it will be against Bush."
Democrats Abroad leaders have said unusually large numbers are flocking to caucuses being held in about two dozen chapters around the world -- to pick delegates for regional and world caucuses to be held in Edinburgh in late March.
Megan Ceronsky, an Oxford University student, was with 600 other Americans at a record-breaking primary in London recently.
"I'm often asked to explain American foreign policy and domestic politics, but it's a difficult and frustrating task... Bush does not represent what I love about my country," the 26-year-old said. "It was clear everyone was disgusted with what has happened under Bush."
There are still many expatriates who say they will vote for Bush again.
"I don't feel embarrassed by Bush," said Judith Goeke, an American lawyer based in Belgrade. "I'm a Republican. I don't support everything he stands for. But that doesn't mean I'm ready to leap into the Kerry camp."
BUSH MOBILIZES DEMOCRATS ABROAD
Others say it's more than "Anybody But Bush" that has electrified Americans. Kerry's international credentials, his pro-environment record, language skills and having lived abroad himself have cheered expatriates and non-Americans alike.
Kerry, who speaks French and some German, lived for two years in Berlin in the early 1950s, as two German magazines that featured him on covers noted recently.
A Catholic, he also recently learned that a grandfather was an ethnic German Jew born in the Czech Republic who later moved to America at the turn of the last century and converted.
Many Americans in Germany, France and Russia said they were aghast at how Washington slammed allies for opposing the Iraq war and how some back home staged actions like pouring French wine down gutters or renaming French fries "Freedom Fries."
"I'll vote for any Democrat who's nominated -- I just want Bush out," said artist Amaranth Ehrenhalt, who lives in Paris, at another Democrats Abroad caucus packed with more than 500.
Many Americans joined millions marching in anti-war rallies around the world. There were also boycotts of U.S. goods.
"Bush has a knack for manipulating the truth," said Bart Redmond, a Kansas native and former Howard Dean supporter living in Moscow. "I feel confident I will get a straighter story from Kerry than I would from Bush."
Film publicist Gene Rizzo has lived in Italy for 34 years but said he had never wanted to vote more than this year.
"Bush has radicalized me politically," said Rizzo, who has organized an absentee voter registration drive. "A lot of people are going to support whoever the Democrat is, regardless."
In Cairo, writer and researcher Patrick Werr said he had not voted for years but would apply for an absentee ballot in 2004.
"We need a 'regime change' in Washington," said Werr. "Because of Bush's policies there has been a distinct coolness toward Americans in Egypt that I never felt before. I'm not sure Kerry's the greatest, but he couldn't be as bad as Bush."
David Castillo, a businessman and Vietnam veteran living in Saudi Arabia, said he voted for Bush last time but never again.
"I'm definitely going to jump ship," he said. "Bush is quick to draw the gun but hasn't a clue how to make the peace. I would vote for anybody else. I would even vote for Donald Duck." )
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtm...." title="http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtm...." target="_blank"http://www.reuters.com/newsAr...
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| ...what can you say? |
| 03.01.04 (4:25 pm) [edit] |
John Lott
Pro-Gun Researcher/Advocate
On Concealed Weapons in Schools
"Allowing teachers and other law-abiding adults to carry concealed handguns in schools would not only make it easier to stop shootings in progress, it could also help deter shootings from ever occurring."
The Wall Street Journal
On Iraqi Disarmament
"…as we try to protect Iraqis and ensure the safety of our troops, we must ask: Is it really clear that our soldiers are better off by attempting to disarm Iraqi citizens? To the extent that guns are banned and law-abiding citizens disarmed, the jobs for our soldiers actually become more difficult.
" A machine gun can be handy defending oneself when people are being attacked by bands of thugs. Our soldiers are extremely important in creating a stable society, but they cannot protect more than 22 million Iraqis all of the time. Wasting resources on collecting Iraqi guns will only work against efforts to make Iraq eventually a civilized country."
New York Post
On Affirmative Action in Law Enforcement Hiring
“Should racial preferences play a role in government hiring? … My own
research has statistically analyzed the effect of changes in hiring rules
and the composition of police departments on crime, arrest and conviction rates. … Increasing black officers’ share of the police force one percentage point as a result of the new hiring policies increases murders by at least 2%, violent crime by almost 5% and property crimes by 4%.”
Investor’s Business Daily
About Rush Limbaugh’s comments on black quarterback Donovan McNabb
“Limbaugh readily admits that it was just his opinion that ‘the media has
been very desirous that a black quarterback do well.’ But his critics
allowed no possibility for uncertainty, calling his comments "ignorant" or
worse. … To measure positive news coverage, I quickly put ten research
assistants to work on a Nexis search, which is a computerized search of
newspaper stories across the country. … The evidence suggests that Rush is right, though the simplest measures indicate that the difference is not huge. Looking at just the averages, without trying to account for anything else, reveals a ten-percent difference in coverage (with 67 percent of stories on blacks being positive, 61 percent for whites)."
National Review Online
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QUOTE:
Stupidity has a bad habit of getting its way. --"The Day After"
QUOTE: Because I do it with one small ship, I am called a terrorist. You do it with a whole fleet and are called an emperor.
– A pirate, from St. Augustine's "City of God"
QUOTE: War: A wretched debasement of all the pretenses of civilization.
– General Omar Bradley
I hope....that mankind will at length, as they call themselves responsible creatures, have the reason and sense enough to settle their differences without cutting throats...
– Benjamin Franklin
"There must be security for all, or no one is secure. Now this does not mean giving up any freedom, except the freedom to act irresponsibly."-- Klaatu, The Day The Earth Stood Still, 1951.
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