On the march
Moscow's weather has been catching people off guard recently: snow in spring, a flood in summer, a hurricane closer to fall, sun in winter.
Russians thrive on their four seasons, but Moscow's mayor doesn't like surprises.
To ensure it doesn't rain on his parade on City Day, Mayor Yuri Luzhkov dispatches cloud-seeding planes to the skies.
Now he's taking accountability to new heights -- proposing fining the city-funded weathermen when their forecasts are wrong.
"The situation is crazy, just crazy," he told his Cabinet. "They say lah, lah, lah, we can do the job, we always do. If instead, we get -- excuse my non-parliamentary parlance -- crap, they should pay a fine."
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/03/02/moscow.weather/index.html
Adventurer Steve Fossett landed in Kansas Thursday completing an epic 23,000-mile solo, non-stop flight around the earth without refueling.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/aerospace-4zf.html
[Just $4B to make something so useful. Meanwhile the war in Iraq has cost probably 10 times that much to no useful end.]
Two aerospace consortia have been retained to bid on operating the European satellite navigation system Galileo, a 20-year deal worth three billion euros (four billion dollars), the EU commission said Tuesday.
http://www.spacedaily.com/2005/050301193822.daibzi9o.html
iNavSat, a consortium led by the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), has been chosen to operate the European Union's new satellite navigation system Galileo, the daily Die Welt reported on Tuesday
http://www.spacedaily.com/2005/050301083351.2smfzh8d.html
Police on the Indonesian resort island of Bali are hard-pressed to explain the sudden proliferation of white markings at hundreds of temples across the deeply superstitious Hindu island.
Local residents view the signs as a divine warning.
http://www.spacedaily.com/2005/050302020341.iap37kz6.html
The world's airlines must make cuts of 12 percent in nitrogen oxide emissions blamed for depleting the ozone layer, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) said Tuesday.
The pact, adopted unanimously among the 36-member council of the UN body, comes amid growing concern that the expansion of budget airlines and global air travel poses serious environmental risks.
http://www.spacedaily.com/2005/050302185554.bjk2nlr4.html
[I think NASA should be de-funded and replaced by a more focussed organization or family of organizations. If it were up to me there would be a big main organization dedicated to colonizing the solar system. Then there could be a couple of smaller, independent organizations for say launching satellites, and conducting orbital missions. As it is now NASA has become a 2,000 pound dog in the manger. They don’t want to do anything, but they don’t want anyone else doing anything either.]
NASA officials have claimed they performed a risk analysis before deciding to cancel the last space-shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, but no such analysis was ever done.
Worse, sources told UPI's Space Watch that NASA also has ignored at least one proposal to reduce the risk of sending a shuttle crew to Hubble -- in order to justify its decision.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/hubble-05j.html
A few years ago, NASA researcher Watson Gregg published a study showing that tiny free-floating ocean plants called phytoplankton had declined in abundance globally by 6 percent between the 1980s and 1990s. A new study by Gregg and his co-authors suggests that trend may not be continuing, and new patterns are taking place.
Why is this important? Well, the tiny ocean plants help regulate our atmosphere and the health of our oceans. Phytoplankton produce half of the oxygen generated by plants on Eart
http://www.spacemart.com/news/eo-05y.html
Singapore will introduce biometric passports to citizens in October, the government said Thursday, ensuring Singaporeans will continue to be allowed visa-free entry into the United States.
Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng told parliament the new passport, which will contain the holder's unique facial and fingerprint information, is part of the city-state's efforts to tighten security against terrorist threats.
http://www.spacedaily.com/2005/050303094519.ska8t9e2.html
[I bet you this is some kind of planned or unplanned electromagnetic effect, maybe from a new cell phone tower or something like that. Maybe it resonates or interferes with something in the bridge or something like that.]
But can it have affected Dumbarton so badly that even the dogs have lost the will to live?
Animal experts admitted yesterday they had no explanation for a spate of what appear to be canine suicides – all from the same spot.
At least five dogs have jumped to their deaths from a bridge over a burn at Overtoun House in the past six months.
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/34553.html
The head of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards has warned that 190,000 US troops stationed close to the Islamic republic could be targetted if Iran were attacked, a report said Wednesday.
"More than 190,000 members of American forces are scattered in Afghanistan and Iraq. If the US carries out its threats against Iran, they nust know that all these forces will be within our reach," Yahya Rahim Safavi told the ultra-hardline Ya Lessarat newspaper.
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050302112226.vkg8el8p.html
[The best way to avoid getting a missile dropped on your head is to have no one WANT to drop a missile on your head. Then no matter how many missiles there are, or what kind they are, it doesn’t matter, because the people with them are not going to shoot them at you.
Impossible you say? Is anyone planning on dropping missiles on the Dominican Republic? Or Costa Rica? Or even Brazil? Probably not. They’re missiles defense is minding their own business.]
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Tuesday that Moscow was creating a nuclear weapon capable of thwarting any defense system in the world, Interfax news agency reported.
"There is not now and will not be any defense from such missiles," the news agency quoted Ivanov as saying.
It was not immediately clear what type of weapon Ivanov was referring to. He has however said in the past that Russia's future nuclear defenses will be based on the mobile, Topol-M rocket.
http://www.spacewar.com/news/nuclear-doctrine-05i.html
Big Brother is on the march. A plan to subject all children to mental health screening is underway, and the pharmaceutical firms are gearing up for bigger sales of psychotropic drugs.
Like most liberal, big-spending ideas, this one was slipped into the law under cover of soft semantics. Its genesis was the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health (NFCMH), created by President George W. Bush in 2002.
The NFCMH recommends "routine and comprehensive" testing and mental health screening for every child in America, including preschoolers. Bush has instructed 25 federal agencies to develop a plan to implement the commission's recommendations.
...
Parental rights are unclear or nonexistent under these mental health screening programs. What are the rights of youth and parents to refuse or opt out of such screening? Will they face coercion and threats of removal from school, or child neglect charges, if they refuse privacy-invading interrogations or unproved medications? How will a child remove a stigmatizing label from his records?
A Columbia University pilot project for screening students, called TeenScreen, resulted in one-third of the subjects being flagged as "positive" for mental health problems. Half of those were turned over for mental health treatment. If that is a preview of what would happen when 52 million public school students are screened, it would mean hanging a libelous label on 17 million American children and forcibly putting 8 million children into the hands of the psychiatric/pharmaceutical industry.
http://www.rense.com/general63/medi.htm
The most recent bill introduced in the U.S. Senate (S. 3) is aimed at liability protection of drugs and vaccines and to prevent state legislation to ban Thimerosal (mercury) in vaccines. This bill is worse than the Eli Lilly provision of the Homeland Security Act and is a direct "gift" to the pharmaceutical companies. The pharmaceutical industry gave almost $45 million in campaign contributions for Presidential and Congressional elections since 2002 (www.opensecrets.org) and the health care/pharmaceutical industry has over 600 lobbyists in Washington, D.C. alone. If constituents do not weigh in on this horrendous bill, the American people will suffer; having their civil rights violated and state autonomy will be compromised. It is an insult to every state elected official and every American.
http://www.rense.com/general63/vacc.htm
In a small but startling preliminary new study, Texas researchers have found that after just three months, every one of a dozen children treated for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) with the drug methylphenidate experienced a threefold increase in levels of chromosome abnormalitiesóoccurrences associated with increased risks of cancer and other adverse health effects.
http://www.rense.com/general63/chrom.htm
[If the Japanese keep on like this they will just get pushed up next to the Ainu and someone else will come and take over their country.]
The list of solutions is short and complicated. The most obvious -- opening Japan to more immigration -- is enormously controversial in a society that is 98.8 percent ethnically homogeneous and, in many respects, still markedly xenophobic. Some farmers in Nishiki who have failed to find Japanese women willing to live traditional lives in rural villages have sought brides in China instead. But village officials said several of the Chinese women fled after they failed to win the acceptance of their new in-laws.
Although it is a national problem, depopulation is most severe in rural areas such as Nishiki, a proud farming and forestry town 248 miles north of Tokyo where the population peaked at 9,180 in 1956. Over the years, families left Nishiki, seeking better fortunes in Japanese cities. The population stabilized in the 1980s, but the birthrate began declining in the 1990s.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2548-2005Mar2?language=printer
[The OKC bombing.]
http://www.forteantimes.com/articles/189_whitenoise1.shtml
Bradley Smith says that the freewheeling days of political blogging and online punditry are over.
In just a few months, he warns, bloggers and news organizations could risk the wrath of the federal government if they improperly link to a campaign's Web site. Even forwarding a political candidate's press release to a mailing list, depending on the details, could be punished by fines.
Smith should know. He's one of the six commissioners at the Federal Election Commission, which is beginning the perilous process of extending a controversial 2002 campaign finance law to the Internet.
In 2002, the FEC exempted the Internet by a 4-2 vote, but U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly last fall overturned that decision. "The commission's exclusion of Internet communications from the coordinated communications regulation severely undermines" the campaign finance law's purposes, Kollar-Kotelly wrote.
http://news.com.com/The%20coming%20crackdown%20on%20blogging/2008-1028_3-5597079.html?tag=sas.email
Have you ever seen an old photo of yourself and been embarrassed at the way you looked? Did we actually dress like that? We did. And we had no idea how silly we looked. It's the nature of fashion to be invisible, in the same way the movement of the earth is invisible to all of us riding on it.
What scares me is that there are moral fashions too. They're just as arbitrary, and just as invisible to most people. But they're much more dangerous. Fashion is mistaken for good design; moral fashion is mistaken for good. Dressing oddly gets you laughed at. Violating moral fashions can get you fired, ostracized, imprisoned, or even killed.
http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
U.S. Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan issued one of his toughest warnings yet to Congress yesterday about the danger of letting the country's giant budget deficits persist, saying "the consequences for the U.S. economy of doing nothing could be severe."
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1109803811510&call_pageid=970599119419
The Padilla Ruling Is a Victory for Freedom
by Jacob G. Hornberger, March 2, 2005
As I have been writing for the past two years, it is impossible to overstate the importance of the Jose Padilla case. The power assumed by the U.S. military and the Bush administration in the Padilla case constitutes what is arguably the most ominous and dangerous threat to the freedom of the American people in our lifetime. Fortunately, this past Monday a U.S. district court in South Carolina put the quietus to the assumption and exercise of such power. The court’s ruling was a major victory for freedom, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the rule of law. Unfortunately, however, the government is appealing, hoping to overturn the district court’s judgment.
(Underscoring the vital importance The Future of Freedom Foundation has placed on the Padilla case and the threat that it poses to the American people, we have published more than 40 original articles and commentaries on Padilla since his arrest and we have linked to countless editorials and op-eds on Padilla from other publications in our FFF Email Update. A list of FFF’s orginal articles and commentaries is posted at the end of this article. )
...
But make no mistake about it: If the Pentagon’s power to arrest Americans for terrorism and punish them without federal court interference is upheld by the courts, the floodgates will be open to omnipotent military power in America. American life will never be the same again. Life will be transformed by such power in ways unimaginable. No one will be safe from military arrest, including newspaper editors, government critics, and dissidents. Any person — any person — deemed to be an “enemy combatant” and taken into military custody will have no recourse to avoid punishment, except for the “good faith” of the Pentagon, the government organization that is responsible for plunging this nation into one of the most shameful torture, sex abuse, rape, and murder scandals in its history, not to mention the resulting cover-up.
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0503a.asp
A federal investigation into an alleged $180 million bribery scandal in Nigeria involving a Halliburton Co. subsidiary and other companies has expanded to examine whether former employees may have illegally coordinated bidding on other foreign construction projects as early as the mid-1980s, long before Halliburton acquired the subsidiary.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/050302/halliburton_nigeria_2.html
[Indeed, indeed.]
"Mom, there's this test we're supposed to take tomorrow," my daughter told me one night last year, "but I have a funny feeling about it. Our guidance counselor came in and said that the school would be giving all juniors a special career-aptitude test, to show us where our talents are. It sounded good, but then a military recruiter came in and said that this test, called the ASVAB, could help us choose the best career path.
"He said, 'any personal information will be kept strictly confidential.' I asked if the military would keep our names and numbers, and he just repeated that it's 'confidential.' That was when I knew something was wrong – why make such a big deal about getting our personal information, unless that's the point of the whole thing?"
Indeed.
...
Kids are so much easier than mature adults to dupe with glorious words of manhood, honor, sacrifice, and heroism. That's why the military is focusing so heavily on getting them at school, where their parents can't see what's going on.
http://www.antiwar.com/whitehurst/?articleid=5049
The House on Wednesday approved a job-training bill that would allow faith-based organizations receiving federal funds to consider a person's religious beliefs in making employment decisions.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2026&ncid=2026&e=4&u=/latimests/20050303/ts_latimes/houseoksbillonfaithbasedjobs
[Now people in England will be able to enjoy all the fun of living under the repressive military regime in Burma without ever leaving home. Thanks Tony!]
The government's anti-terrorism plans, which will be discussed by the Lords this week, include a number of proposals to monitor the behaviour of suspected terrorists such as "house arrest". But how would the plans work in practice?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4308033.stm
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan on Thursday embraced the notion of overhauling the nation's tax system and said that some form of a consumption tax - such as a national sales tax - could spur greater economic growth.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050303/D88JI49G0.html
[I like how the CHinese get their information about the US human rights situation from USA Today.]
Following is the full text of the Human Rights Record of the United States in 2004, released by the Information office of China's State Council Thursday.
The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2004
By the Information Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China
March 3, 2005
In 2004 the atrocity of US troops abusing Iraqi POWs exposed the dark side of human rights performance of the United States. The scandal shocked the humanity and was condemned by the international community. It is quite ironic that on Feb. 28 of this year, the State Department of the United States once again posed as the "the world human rights police" and released its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2004. As in previousyears, the reports pointed fingers at human rights situation in more than 190 countries and regions (including China) but kept silent on the US misdeeds in this field. Therefore, the world people have to probe the human rights record behind the Statue of Liberty in the United States.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-03/03/content_2642607.htm
Russians thrive on their four seasons, but Moscow's mayor doesn't like surprises.
To ensure it doesn't rain on his parade on City Day, Mayor Yuri Luzhkov dispatches cloud-seeding planes to the skies.
Now he's taking accountability to new heights -- proposing fining the city-funded weathermen when their forecasts are wrong.
"The situation is crazy, just crazy," he told his Cabinet. "They say lah, lah, lah, we can do the job, we always do. If instead, we get -- excuse my non-parliamentary parlance -- crap, they should pay a fine."
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/03/02/moscow.weather/index.html
Adventurer Steve Fossett landed in Kansas Thursday completing an epic 23,000-mile solo, non-stop flight around the earth without refueling.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/aerospace-4zf.html
[Just $4B to make something so useful. Meanwhile the war in Iraq has cost probably 10 times that much to no useful end.]
Two aerospace consortia have been retained to bid on operating the European satellite navigation system Galileo, a 20-year deal worth three billion euros (four billion dollars), the EU commission said Tuesday.
http://www.spacedaily.com/2005/050301193822.daibzi9o.html
iNavSat, a consortium led by the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), has been chosen to operate the European Union's new satellite navigation system Galileo, the daily Die Welt reported on Tuesday
http://www.spacedaily.com/2005/050301083351.2smfzh8d.html
Police on the Indonesian resort island of Bali are hard-pressed to explain the sudden proliferation of white markings at hundreds of temples across the deeply superstitious Hindu island.
Local residents view the signs as a divine warning.
http://www.spacedaily.com/2005/050302020341.iap37kz6.html
The world's airlines must make cuts of 12 percent in nitrogen oxide emissions blamed for depleting the ozone layer, the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) said Tuesday.
The pact, adopted unanimously among the 36-member council of the UN body, comes amid growing concern that the expansion of budget airlines and global air travel poses serious environmental risks.
http://www.spacedaily.com/2005/050302185554.bjk2nlr4.html
[I think NASA should be de-funded and replaced by a more focussed organization or family of organizations. If it were up to me there would be a big main organization dedicated to colonizing the solar system. Then there could be a couple of smaller, independent organizations for say launching satellites, and conducting orbital missions. As it is now NASA has become a 2,000 pound dog in the manger. They don’t want to do anything, but they don’t want anyone else doing anything either.]
NASA officials have claimed they performed a risk analysis before deciding to cancel the last space-shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, but no such analysis was ever done.
Worse, sources told UPI's Space Watch that NASA also has ignored at least one proposal to reduce the risk of sending a shuttle crew to Hubble -- in order to justify its decision.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/hubble-05j.html
A few years ago, NASA researcher Watson Gregg published a study showing that tiny free-floating ocean plants called phytoplankton had declined in abundance globally by 6 percent between the 1980s and 1990s. A new study by Gregg and his co-authors suggests that trend may not be continuing, and new patterns are taking place.
Why is this important? Well, the tiny ocean plants help regulate our atmosphere and the health of our oceans. Phytoplankton produce half of the oxygen generated by plants on Eart
http://www.spacemart.com/news/eo-05y.html
Singapore will introduce biometric passports to citizens in October, the government said Thursday, ensuring Singaporeans will continue to be allowed visa-free entry into the United States.
Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng told parliament the new passport, which will contain the holder's unique facial and fingerprint information, is part of the city-state's efforts to tighten security against terrorist threats.
http://www.spacedaily.com/2005/050303094519.ska8t9e2.html
[I bet you this is some kind of planned or unplanned electromagnetic effect, maybe from a new cell phone tower or something like that. Maybe it resonates or interferes with something in the bridge or something like that.]
But can it have affected Dumbarton so badly that even the dogs have lost the will to live?
Animal experts admitted yesterday they had no explanation for a spate of what appear to be canine suicides – all from the same spot.
At least five dogs have jumped to their deaths from a bridge over a burn at Overtoun House in the past six months.
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/34553.html
The head of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards has warned that 190,000 US troops stationed close to the Islamic republic could be targetted if Iran were attacked, a report said Wednesday.
"More than 190,000 members of American forces are scattered in Afghanistan and Iraq. If the US carries out its threats against Iran, they nust know that all these forces will be within our reach," Yahya Rahim Safavi told the ultra-hardline Ya Lessarat newspaper.
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050302112226.vkg8el8p.html
[The best way to avoid getting a missile dropped on your head is to have no one WANT to drop a missile on your head. Then no matter how many missiles there are, or what kind they are, it doesn’t matter, because the people with them are not going to shoot them at you.
Impossible you say? Is anyone planning on dropping missiles on the Dominican Republic? Or Costa Rica? Or even Brazil? Probably not. They’re missiles defense is minding their own business.]
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said Tuesday that Moscow was creating a nuclear weapon capable of thwarting any defense system in the world, Interfax news agency reported.
"There is not now and will not be any defense from such missiles," the news agency quoted Ivanov as saying.
It was not immediately clear what type of weapon Ivanov was referring to. He has however said in the past that Russia's future nuclear defenses will be based on the mobile, Topol-M rocket.
http://www.spacewar.com/news/nuclear-doctrine-05i.html
Big Brother is on the march. A plan to subject all children to mental health screening is underway, and the pharmaceutical firms are gearing up for bigger sales of psychotropic drugs.
Like most liberal, big-spending ideas, this one was slipped into the law under cover of soft semantics. Its genesis was the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health (NFCMH), created by President George W. Bush in 2002.
The NFCMH recommends "routine and comprehensive" testing and mental health screening for every child in America, including preschoolers. Bush has instructed 25 federal agencies to develop a plan to implement the commission's recommendations.
...
Parental rights are unclear or nonexistent under these mental health screening programs. What are the rights of youth and parents to refuse or opt out of such screening? Will they face coercion and threats of removal from school, or child neglect charges, if they refuse privacy-invading interrogations or unproved medications? How will a child remove a stigmatizing label from his records?
A Columbia University pilot project for screening students, called TeenScreen, resulted in one-third of the subjects being flagged as "positive" for mental health problems. Half of those were turned over for mental health treatment. If that is a preview of what would happen when 52 million public school students are screened, it would mean hanging a libelous label on 17 million American children and forcibly putting 8 million children into the hands of the psychiatric/pharmaceutical industry.
http://www.rense.com/general63/medi.htm
The most recent bill introduced in the U.S. Senate (S. 3) is aimed at liability protection of drugs and vaccines and to prevent state legislation to ban Thimerosal (mercury) in vaccines. This bill is worse than the Eli Lilly provision of the Homeland Security Act and is a direct "gift" to the pharmaceutical companies. The pharmaceutical industry gave almost $45 million in campaign contributions for Presidential and Congressional elections since 2002 (www.opensecrets.org) and the health care/pharmaceutical industry has over 600 lobbyists in Washington, D.C. alone. If constituents do not weigh in on this horrendous bill, the American people will suffer; having their civil rights violated and state autonomy will be compromised. It is an insult to every state elected official and every American.
http://www.rense.com/general63/vacc.htm
In a small but startling preliminary new study, Texas researchers have found that after just three months, every one of a dozen children treated for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) with the drug methylphenidate experienced a threefold increase in levels of chromosome abnormalitiesóoccurrences associated with increased risks of cancer and other adverse health effects.
http://www.rense.com/general63/chrom.htm
[If the Japanese keep on like this they will just get pushed up next to the Ainu and someone else will come and take over their country.]
The list of solutions is short and complicated. The most obvious -- opening Japan to more immigration -- is enormously controversial in a society that is 98.8 percent ethnically homogeneous and, in many respects, still markedly xenophobic. Some farmers in Nishiki who have failed to find Japanese women willing to live traditional lives in rural villages have sought brides in China instead. But village officials said several of the Chinese women fled after they failed to win the acceptance of their new in-laws.
Although it is a national problem, depopulation is most severe in rural areas such as Nishiki, a proud farming and forestry town 248 miles north of Tokyo where the population peaked at 9,180 in 1956. Over the years, families left Nishiki, seeking better fortunes in Japanese cities. The population stabilized in the 1980s, but the birthrate began declining in the 1990s.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2548-2005Mar2?language=printer
[The OKC bombing.]
http://www.forteantimes.com/articles/189_whitenoise1.shtml
Bradley Smith says that the freewheeling days of political blogging and online punditry are over.
In just a few months, he warns, bloggers and news organizations could risk the wrath of the federal government if they improperly link to a campaign's Web site. Even forwarding a political candidate's press release to a mailing list, depending on the details, could be punished by fines.
Smith should know. He's one of the six commissioners at the Federal Election Commission, which is beginning the perilous process of extending a controversial 2002 campaign finance law to the Internet.
In 2002, the FEC exempted the Internet by a 4-2 vote, but U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly last fall overturned that decision. "The commission's exclusion of Internet communications from the coordinated communications regulation severely undermines" the campaign finance law's purposes, Kollar-Kotelly wrote.
http://news.com.com/The%20coming%20crackdown%20on%20blogging/2008-1028_3-5597079.html?tag=sas.email
Have you ever seen an old photo of yourself and been embarrassed at the way you looked? Did we actually dress like that? We did. And we had no idea how silly we looked. It's the nature of fashion to be invisible, in the same way the movement of the earth is invisible to all of us riding on it.
What scares me is that there are moral fashions too. They're just as arbitrary, and just as invisible to most people. But they're much more dangerous. Fashion is mistaken for good design; moral fashion is mistaken for good. Dressing oddly gets you laughed at. Violating moral fashions can get you fired, ostracized, imprisoned, or even killed.
http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
U.S. Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan issued one of his toughest warnings yet to Congress yesterday about the danger of letting the country's giant budget deficits persist, saying "the consequences for the U.S. economy of doing nothing could be severe."
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1109803811510&call_pageid=970599119419
The Padilla Ruling Is a Victory for Freedom
by Jacob G. Hornberger, March 2, 2005
As I have been writing for the past two years, it is impossible to overstate the importance of the Jose Padilla case. The power assumed by the U.S. military and the Bush administration in the Padilla case constitutes what is arguably the most ominous and dangerous threat to the freedom of the American people in our lifetime. Fortunately, this past Monday a U.S. district court in South Carolina put the quietus to the assumption and exercise of such power. The court’s ruling was a major victory for freedom, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the rule of law. Unfortunately, however, the government is appealing, hoping to overturn the district court’s judgment.
(Underscoring the vital importance The Future of Freedom Foundation has placed on the Padilla case and the threat that it poses to the American people, we have published more than 40 original articles and commentaries on Padilla since his arrest and we have linked to countless editorials and op-eds on Padilla from other publications in our FFF Email Update. A list of FFF’s orginal articles and commentaries is posted at the end of this article. )
...
But make no mistake about it: If the Pentagon’s power to arrest Americans for terrorism and punish them without federal court interference is upheld by the courts, the floodgates will be open to omnipotent military power in America. American life will never be the same again. Life will be transformed by such power in ways unimaginable. No one will be safe from military arrest, including newspaper editors, government critics, and dissidents. Any person — any person — deemed to be an “enemy combatant” and taken into military custody will have no recourse to avoid punishment, except for the “good faith” of the Pentagon, the government organization that is responsible for plunging this nation into one of the most shameful torture, sex abuse, rape, and murder scandals in its history, not to mention the resulting cover-up.
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0503a.asp
A federal investigation into an alleged $180 million bribery scandal in Nigeria involving a Halliburton Co. subsidiary and other companies has expanded to examine whether former employees may have illegally coordinated bidding on other foreign construction projects as early as the mid-1980s, long before Halliburton acquired the subsidiary.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/050302/halliburton_nigeria_2.html
[Indeed, indeed.]
"Mom, there's this test we're supposed to take tomorrow," my daughter told me one night last year, "but I have a funny feeling about it. Our guidance counselor came in and said that the school would be giving all juniors a special career-aptitude test, to show us where our talents are. It sounded good, but then a military recruiter came in and said that this test, called the ASVAB, could help us choose the best career path.
"He said, 'any personal information will be kept strictly confidential.' I asked if the military would keep our names and numbers, and he just repeated that it's 'confidential.' That was when I knew something was wrong – why make such a big deal about getting our personal information, unless that's the point of the whole thing?"
Indeed.
...
Kids are so much easier than mature adults to dupe with glorious words of manhood, honor, sacrifice, and heroism. That's why the military is focusing so heavily on getting them at school, where their parents can't see what's going on.
http://www.antiwar.com/whitehurst/?articleid=5049
The House on Wednesday approved a job-training bill that would allow faith-based organizations receiving federal funds to consider a person's religious beliefs in making employment decisions.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2026&ncid=2026&e=4&u=/latimests/20050303/ts_latimes/houseoksbillonfaithbasedjobs
[Now people in England will be able to enjoy all the fun of living under the repressive military regime in Burma without ever leaving home. Thanks Tony!]
The government's anti-terrorism plans, which will be discussed by the Lords this week, include a number of proposals to monitor the behaviour of suspected terrorists such as "house arrest". But how would the plans work in practice?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4308033.stm
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan on Thursday embraced the notion of overhauling the nation's tax system and said that some form of a consumption tax - such as a national sales tax - could spur greater economic growth.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20050303/D88JI49G0.html
[I like how the CHinese get their information about the US human rights situation from USA Today.]
Following is the full text of the Human Rights Record of the United States in 2004, released by the Information office of China's State Council Thursday.
The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2004
By the Information Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China
March 3, 2005
In 2004 the atrocity of US troops abusing Iraqi POWs exposed the dark side of human rights performance of the United States. The scandal shocked the humanity and was condemned by the international community. It is quite ironic that on Feb. 28 of this year, the State Department of the United States once again posed as the "the world human rights police" and released its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2004. As in previousyears, the reports pointed fingers at human rights situation in more than 190 countries and regions (including China) but kept silent on the US misdeeds in this field. Therefore, the world people have to probe the human rights record behind the Statue of Liberty in the United States.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-03/03/content_2642607.htm
posted by abu nakba at 3/04/2005 06:21:00 AM
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