Playing Whack-A-Mole With Data: The Pirate Bay Lives On

by J.J. King

Responses have been overwhelmingly negative to the news that The Pirate Bay will soon be sold to Global Gaming Factory. But what if there is a method to the apparent Pirate Bay madness — one that, as Peter Sunde has hinted, could actually be good for the P2P community?

Like everyone else I've been reading, talking to friends and thinking about this for the last couple of days. What I'm about to say is the result of that — my own opinion and nothing more.

Let's start with a great fact: that, as Rasmus Fleischer of Piratbyran points out, the entire Pirate Bay could fit on a single USB stick. This got me thinking: what if someone was to simply scrape and copy all The Pirate Bay's torrents over to a new tracker and Mininova and all the other indexes currently using the TPB tracker were to change their listings to point to that? OpenBitTorrent.com for example, an independent open tracker which started recently.

What if someone else — it could be anyone; it could be you! — decided to make a new index of these torrents. Call it 'The Pirate Ship', 'Brand New Pirate', whatever. I'm sure someone has already got a domain ready and waiting for this.

This new index would be functionally equivalent to The Pirate Bay. By the magic of copy-and-paste, TPB would have transplanted itself somewhere new. The corporate 'buyers' are free to run the old site into the ground with whatever specious business models they care to waste their shareholders' money on, while The Pirate Bay's new foundation uses it to fund interesting, new projects.

Think about it for a moment. What would be the downside of the sale here?

Privacy, possibly — a serious concern. Had The Pirate Bay been keeping logs of seeders and leechers, the acquiring company could — after flailing about for a few months trying to sell bits and bandwidth — auction this to the highest bidder. But TPB have been scrupulously failing to keep such logs. So provided people switch at the right time — as I'm sure they'll have the intelligence to — there will simply be nothing to sell.

Let's not be glib about it: after the shenanigans with insider trading, who knows if the deal goes through. But if it does, those behind TPB may have managed to square the circle, sliding out from behind the old, compromised identity while handing-off everything of value (tracker, torrents, users) to the community.

The very fact that this is possible should give those backing business models based on copy-restriction something serious to think about. Not only is this not a blow for P2P, it's a signal of something very worrying for the MPAA and Co. Spend years going after the world's most prominent pirate site, only to find that when you get it, it dematerializes and by the magic of copy-and-paste, reappears elsewhere in a different guise. It's like Whack-A-Mole with infinite holes, infinite moles, and just one hammer. Your odds: not good.

The feelings of betrayal and being 'sold out' by the TPB founders are natural. We believe(d) in The Pirate Bay; The Pirate Bay was 'forever'. But in one way, an important way, this belief was right: what made The Pirate Bay possible is forever.Even if I'm wrong, and a service like OpenBittorrent doesn't immediately get populated with all the torrents from the old database, the 'community' should learn some lessons from this:

(1) Big != Good

Let's face it: The Pirate Bay itself had become a huge focus of attention for those trying to preserve the old copy-restriction model of the culture industries. By some accounts TPB's tracker has been responsible for 50% of all Internet traffic, and its founders have been looming larger and larger, waving their pirate flags more and more visibly, for quite a few years. They are international celebrities and, love them as we might, that made them and TPB targets. It's not a secret that quite a few peers on the TPB trackers today are 'spies', there to gather data on legitimate peers — a real danger to Bittorrent users. And as well being feted, Brokep, Anakata and Tiamo have been followed, spied on, raided, arrested, maligned, sentenced and, now live under a real threat of imprisonment.

The bigger we get, the more of a target we are. Mininova, isoHunt and TPB have all been under siege these last years. We need to stop thinking about 'one stop shops' for our media. Distribution and aggregation point the way: think 'separation of powers'. Clients like Miro can aggregate feeds from a variety of sources according to the needs of the user. TPB may have represented the needs of the community for half a decade or more, but we don't need them. We are our own media infrastructure!

(2) We are all The Pirate Bay now…

… and this is why we have to amend our idea about what being a 'pirate' is. In the P2P world, as in that of Web 2.0, it's us and our sharing that makes the value. Hopefully some of the indignation leveled at The Pirate Bay in the last few days will cause us to think not only about the weirdness of entrusting all this value to TPB, but about all those corporate behemoths — Facebook, say, or Twitter or YouTube — who play fast and loose with the value that we create for them every day. Make no mistake, we'll wait a thousand years for the Mark Zuckerbergs of this world to start a foundation with the billions they have made from us and our interactions.

We're all The Pirate Bay now because we all make media; we all copy media, we all redistribute media and because the 'war against piracy' has criminalized us. Young or old, middle or working class, any of us could expect that letter from the RIAA or MPAA at any moment. Our online activities are routinely surveilled in the attempt to preserve a paradigm that is manifestly outdated. That fits well with the totalitarian mentality of many of our governments and it isn't to be accepted casually.

http://torrentfreak.com/playing-whack-a-mole-with-data-the-pirate-bay-lives-on-090703/

Street Fighting Men

by Robert Birnbaum

I actually lived through and participated in the era unimaginatively referred to as the Sixties—there was war and drugs and madness and dancing in the streets, assassinations and a presidential resignation and Woodstock and Watts, the Black Panthers, the White Panthers, the Grey Panthers, and, well, you know, a lot of action. And there were some heroes and villains. Recently, a few books have been published that add some small pieces to the incomplete historical jigsaw puzzle. In 1968, Mark Rudd, author of Underground: My Life With S.D.S. and the Weathermen (William Morrow, excerpt) was a Columbia undergraduate and a member of the radical Students for a Democratic Society. Rudd soon transmogrified into a more militant radical—one who founded the S.D.S. splinter group Weather Underground, which was responsible for the post-1968 "Days of Rage" and a string of bombings.


The Baader-Meinhof gang (Red Army Faction) were '60s era radical Germans-turned-lethal terrorists who continued operating into the '70s and '80s, keeping various European intelligence agencies fully occupied. The monograph Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the R.A.F. by Stefan Aust and Anthea Bell (Oxford University Press) fills in the huge blank spaces behind the newspaper accounts.


Chesa Boudin's parents were radicals who were imprisoned in the early 1980s and entrusted his upbringing to Weatherman William Ayers (you know who he is) and Bernardine Dohrn. As a response to his parents' (real and surrogate) beliefs on issues of economic and labor justice, Boudin crisscrossed Latin America. In Gringo: A Coming of Age in Latin America (Scribner, excerpt), Boudin travels through 25 countries and melds his personal hegira with perceptive observations of the ongoing ecological devastation, intermittent economic crises, and the development and struggles of various indigenous movements.

 

http://birnbaum.themorningnews.org/2009/07/01/street-fighting-men.php

Senator Franken

Bush Library Foundation President: Saddam’s Gun A Symbol That Bush ‘Disarmed Him Literally’

The New York Times reports today that when President Bush opens his library at Southern Methodist University in 2013, "visitors will most likely get to see one of his most treasured items: Saddam Hussein's pistol."

The Times notes that when visitors came to the White House, Bush often liked to show off the gun, which was found on Saddam when he was captured by U.S. special forces in December 2003. Referring to the gun's historical value, Bush Library Foundation President Mark Langdale presented an interesting twist on its symbolism:

Mark Langdale, the president of the George W. Bush Foundation, said the library would use items to highlight 25 of Mr. Bush's presidential decisions. "The gun is an interesting artifact, and it tells you that the United States captured Saddam Hussein and disarmed him literally," Mr. Langdale said. "How we fit that into the decision to go to war, we haven't gotten to that point yet."

"Disarmed him literally"? Saddam was already disarmed before the U.S.-led invasion. Maybe if the U.N. team that disarmed Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War had possession of the gun, then Langdale's metaphor would make sense. Moreover, when Bush said he wanted to "disarm" Saddam, he was referring to the Iraqi dictator's non-existent WMD — not his personal handgun.

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/06/saddam-gun-disarmed/

'Aye' for getting more Americans registered to vote

 

by Keith Myers

Here's how voter registration should work: You move, your registration moves with you. You turn 18, you're added to the voters' logs. You pay taxes, get a license, sign up for state or federal benefits, and registration is automatic.

But here's a dose of sad reality on the heels of another Independence Day: America, the world's shining beacon of democracy, does about as bad a job registering voters as any democracy on Earth.

A study released this week by the New York University's Brennan Center for Justice studied voter registration, rating 17 democracies. The nations surveyed had available information and "face the same fundamental challenges in maintaining accurate voter rolls."

America was dead last.

The United States registers 68 percent of the voting age population. All but three nations studied register 91 percent or better, including France and Burundi. That's right — despite being a new democracy, surviving a period of genocide, facing massive AIDS death tolls — this central African country was able to register 23 percent more of its voting population.

http://www.kansascity.com/340/story/1307316.html

 

Medals

Exclusive Clip From Palin Press Conference

http://www.drawger.com/stevebrodner/

 

A Plan to End the Wars

By David Swanson

There are a million and one things that people can do to try to end the U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and to prevent new ones in Iran and elsewhere, as well as to close U.S. military bases in dozens of other nations around the world. Certain people are skilled at or interested in particular approaches, and nobody should be discouraged from contributing to the effort in their preferred ways. Far too often proposals to work for peace are needlessly framed as attacks on all strategies except one. But where new energy can be created or existing resources redirected, it is important that they go where most likely to succeed.

In my analysis, we should be focusing on three things, which for purposes of brevity and alliteration I will call: Communications, Congress, and Counter recruitment / resistance. Communications encompasses all public discussion of the wars and impacts all other approaches, including targets I consider far less likely to be influenced by us than Congress, such as the president, generals, the heads of weapons companies, the heads of media companies, the people of Afghanistan, your racist neighbor, etc. If our communications strategy can change the behavior of any of these targets, terrific! We should be prepared to take advantage of such opportunities should they arise. But the first place we are likely to be able to leverage successful communications will be the House of Representatives. Counter-recruitment / resistance is another area that overlaps with communications but involves much else as well, and it is a strategy that we continue to underestimate.

COMMUNICATIONS

Our task is to communicate that:
--the wars are ongoing and will not end without our efforts,
--the wars must be ended,
--the peace movement has had many successes already and should by no means give in to frustration,
--the wars can be ended if a small fraction of the majority that wants them ended makes an effort,
--we have to choose between warfare and healthcare / other social goods,
--minimizing U.S. casualties will not satisfy the demands of the U.S. public,
--neither maximizing nor minimizing foreign casualties will satisfy the demands of the U.S. public,
--there is a personal cost to those who support wars and war crimes,
--Congress members will face opposition through negative communications, disruption of their lives, and electoral challenges if they fund wars.

We don't have to communicate all of that in one interview on cable television, or violate any other laws of physics, but we DO have to communicate ALL of that. And getting our spokespeople on TV has to be part of how it is done. But primarily we need to create our own media and work with decent independent media outlets. Online media has developed to the point where it can influence broadcast and print media. And yet we are still quite capable of creating powerful online media. We cannot overlook the need to work with communities that lack internet access, or the need to use the internet to generate offline activities. But it is very hard to overestimate the importance to our efforts of the internet, and working to get more people access to it might be one of the most helpful efforts we can make.

We stopped Bush-Cheney from invading Iran. They intended to do so, and we prevented it -- largely by exposing the grounds for invading Iraq to be lies. There was no press conference at the White House to announce this failure of theirs and success of ours, but that should have no impact on our claiming a victory and making it known to those who require encouragement and optimism.

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/plan

Ctrl Alt Del

Sarah Palin Turns Pro

by Paul Begala

 

I wish Hunter S. Thompson had lived to see this.

As Hunter said, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." Sarah Palin makes Mark Foley, the congressman who sent filthy emails to pages look almost normal. She makes David Vitter, the senator who was hanging out with hookers, look almost boring. She makes Larry Craig, caught hitting on a cop in a men's room, look almost stable. She makes John Ensign, the senator who was having an affair with a staffer, look almost humdrum (and compared to the rest of the GOP whack-jobs, he is). And she makes Mark Sanford, the governor with the Latin lover, look positively predictable.

It was an almost impossible mission, but in resigning from office with 17 months to go in her first term, Sarah Palin has made herself the bull goose loony of the GOP.

Let's stipulate that if there is some heretofore unknown personal, medical or family crisis, this was the right move. But Gov. Palin didn't say anything like that. Her statement was incoherent, bizarre and juvenile. The text, as posted on Gov. Palin's official website (here), uses 2,549 words and 18 exclamation points. Lincoln freed the slaves with 719 words and nary an exclamation; Mr. Jefferson declared our independence in 1,322 words and, again, no exclamation points. Nixon resigned the presidency in 1,796 words -- still no exclamation points. Gov. Palin capitalized words at random - whole words, like "TO," "HELP," and "AND," and the first letter of "Troops."

Gov. Palin's official announcement that she is resigning as chief executive of the great state of Alaska had all the depth and gravitas of a 13-year-old's review of the Jonas Brothers' album on Facebook. She even quoted her parents' refrigerator magnet. (Note to self: if one of my kids becomes governor, throw away the refrigerator magnet that says: "Murray's Oyster Bar: We Shuck Em, You Suck Em!") She put her son's name in quotations marks. Why? Who knows. She writes, "I promised efficiencies and effectiveness!?" Was she exclaiming or questioning? I get it: both! And I don't even know what to make of a sentence that reads:

*((Gotta put First Things First))*

Ponder the fact that Rupert Murdoch's Harper Collins publishing house is paying this, umm, writer $11 million for a book. Ponder that and say a prayer for Ms. Palin's editor.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-begala/sarah-palin-turns-pro_b_225633.html

Sarah Palin, via Twitter: God told me to sue the internet

by Xeni Jardin

 

Wonkette has a post up about @AKGovSarahPalin's crazy late-night twitter bender. She's gonna have to give up that handle, no? Anyway, after you slog through all the crazy ungrammatical Palinglish rambling, the point seems to be that a "higher calling" has directed her to file anti-defamation lawsuits against a number of news websites for having reported the news that she quit her post as governor of Alaska (her "news conference" to that effect is embedded above). From Wonkette:

[A]fter crazily quitting her elected position as governor of Alaska, via an alarming backyard last-minute press conference void of any explanation , at the classic 4 p.m. hour of the Friday-Holiday news dump, Sarah Palin is now twatting on the twitter about how her Anchorage attorneys are going to SUE THE AMERICAN MEDIA, for saying "WTF?" Honestly, this is what Sarah Palin twatted on Saturday Night, July 4th, Independence Day, in America.

Her link goes to (of course) Scientologist nut and sub-literate weirdo Greta Van Susteren's blog on FoxNews.com, where Greta has helpfully (?) posted seven pages of legal threats from Palin's lawyers, although you can't actually read beyond the first vague page of whining bullshit, because Greta/Fox can't figure out how to operate the Internet.

But, from other websites, we gather Palin's lawyers plan lawsuits against MSNBC, the New York Times, the Huffington Post, the Washington Post, individual bloggers in Alaska, and other such anti-Palin forces such as "rain on your wedding day" and static cling.

Related reading: Anchorage Daily News article, hilarious. Vanity Fair article: It Came from Wasilla (and "Don't Blame Us"). (via @Andrew Baron)

On his excellent "nedslist" mailing list, Ned Sublette wrote this concise and spot-on appreciation of the official text of Palin's goodbye speech:

[W]hat Roland Barthes would have called the pleasure of this text has to be savored in full to draw out its pure nuttiness. It's hard to know what to appreciate more: the all-caps prepositions; the sentence fragments that begin the fifth and sixth paragraphs, the run-on sentences, the frequent exclamation points!, the quotation from her parents' refrigerator magnet, the basketball analogy, the proposed logic of quitting so as not to be a quitter, or the grammatically incorrect final sentence framing the misattributed punchline, which was actually said not by General Douglas MacArthur but by General Oliver P. Smith. I especially like the capital O of "Outside" in "Outside special interests," which reminds us that the world consists of two parts: Alaska, and Outside.

But what I most enjoy is the authenticity of this text; there can be no question that Governor You Betcha wrote it herself {wink}.

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/07/05/sarah-palin-god-told.html

Left out of the will

http://www.grimmy.com/editorials.php

KBR might seek federal funds in truck driver case

By BRETT CLANTON

Uncle Sam could soon be writing another big check to a U.S. company, this time not for recession-related troubles but for civilian casualties five years ago in Iraq.

KBR may ask the U.S. government to reimburse it for legal bills if a jury decides the company failed to protect KBR truck drivers during a deadly April 2004 roadside attack, a lawyer for the Houston-based government contractor said.

Though no final decision has been made, lawyer Robert Meadows said, if the cases go to trial and result in a jury award, "it's conceivable that KBR would look to the government to accept responsibility under its contract" with the company.

Such a prospect does not sit well with plaintiffs' attorneys, who argue the government contractor should pay its own bills if held liable in the cases.

"It would be extremely rare for anybody to be able to turn the cost of their own negligence over to any other individual, much less the U.S. government," said Tobias Cole, a Houston attorney representing Kevin Smith-Idol, a KBR contractor shot in the knee and hip during the attack.

But the idea is only hypothetical at the moment. KBR lawyers are preparing to file motions that will ask U.S. District Court Judge Gray Miller in Houston to dismiss the cases before they go to trial, Meadows said.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/6510878.html

Unmanned drones could be banned, says senior judge

Unmanned drones could be banned from use in conflicts, Lord Bingham, one of Britain's most senior judges has suggested.

By Murray Wardrop

Lord Bingham, who retired last year as a senior law lord, said the aircraft could follow other weapons considered "so cruel as to be beyond the pale of human tolerance" in being consigned to the history books.

He likened drones, which have killed hundreds of civilians in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Gaza, to cluster bombs and landmines.

Lord Bingham made the comments to the British Institute of International and Comparative Law in an interview which addressed the issue of the state being bound by the rule of law.

"Are there, for example, and this goes to conflict, not post-conflict situations, weapons that ought to be outlawed?" he said.

"From time to time in the history of international law various weapons have been thought to be so cruel as to be beyond the pale of human tolerance. I think cluster bombs and landmines are the most recent examples.

"It may be – I'm not expressing a view – that unmanned drones that fall on a house full of civilians is a weapon the international community should decide should not be used."

His comments are likely to lead to further calls for new international rules to protect civilians from attacks by the pilotless aircraft.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/defence/5755446/Unmanned-drones-could-be-banned-says-senior-judge.html

Pentagon’s Robo-Hummingbird Flies Like the Real Thing

By Noah Shachtman

Military-backed researchers have built a tiny drone that looks and flies like a hummingbird, flapping its little robotic wings to stay in the air. So far, the mock bird, built for Pentagon mad-science division Darpa, has only stayed aloft for 20 seconds at a time. But that short flight was enough to show the potential of a whole new class of miniature spies, inspired by nature. Darpa just handed AeroVironment, makers of the winged "nano air vehicle," another $2.1 million to build a hummingbot 2.0.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/07/video-pentagons-robo-hummingbird-flies-like-the-real-thing/

The Art of the Prank

From coast to coast, intrepid bands of merrymakers are staging hoaxes, stunts, and practical jokes like never before. Welcome to the Golden Age of the Prank.

by Spencer Morgan

This is for participants only," announces a heavily bundled Charlie Todd through his trusty gray bullhorn. "If you didn't come to take your pants off today, you're in the wrong spot." It's a frigid January afternoon in New York City's Foley Square, and hundreds of fearless pranksters are braving the elements to get together and shed their trousers for the eighth annual "No Pants! Subway Ride."

Todd, a baby-faced 30-year-old from Columbia, South Carolina, is the mastermind behind this gathering, and on his command the assembled crowd scatters for the nearest subway entrances…and collectively drops trou. Even in a city like New York, riding the subway sans pants is a guaranteed eye-opener, and today is no exception: Straphangers stare, chuckle, even take photos. Around 1,200 men and women have come out clad in boxers, briefs, boxer-briefs, and bloomers, not just in New York, but in 21 cities across the globe. ("Three hundred take to the subway—shameless and pantless," the Toronto Sun would inform its readers soberly the next day.) The mission ends with a group of agents celebrating in Union Square, making snow angels, still pantless. Improv Everywhere has struck again. Mission accomplished.

MISSION: No Pants! Subway Ride DESCRIPTION: Countless agents ride the New York subway system in tighty-whities and less. DATE: Every January

The largest network of pranksters ever assembled, Improv Everywhere is the leading light in what might be called the Golden Age of the Prank. All across America and beyond, groups are gathering to pull off practical jokes, hoaxes, and ruses of all kinds, blurring the line between prank and guerrilla theater, and using the Internet to share their work with audiences far and wide. The prank, of course, has a long and illustrious history going back to…well, Adam and the serpent: "Ha! You actually ate the apple!" Summer camps and college campuses have long been jokesters' playgrounds, while avant-gardists like Marcel Duchamp and the Dadaist movement elevated the prank to an art form. Borat and (coming soon) Bruno have taken squirm-inducing hoaxing to the big screen. But it's the Internet—and groups like Improv Everywhere who have learned how to exploit it—that has been the primary mover in the prank renaissance. More than seven million people have watched the 2009 "No Pants!" clip on YouTube, and copycat groups have sprung up around the world.

"The use of video has spread like crazy, so pranks are getting more and more popular," says CollegeHumor.com's Amir Blumenfeld, whose online "Prank War" series with colleague Streeter Seidell went viral this spring. No group has demonstrated the power of YouTube and the Internet better than Saturday Night Live's masters of the digital short, the Lonely Island. Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, and Akiva Schaffer (whose debut album, Incredibad, was released in February) got their start by posting their sketches, songs, and goofs on their Web site. "When we started back in 2001, most people's computers weren't fast enough to watch video, but slowly technology caught up," notes Schaffer. Now the group's clips regularly draw millions of viewers online.

MISSION: Human Mirror DESCRIPTION: Eight pairs of twins take the subway. DATE: 4/26/08

While they may not have the muscle of SNL behind them, Improv Everywhere has pulled more than 80 stunts, involving thousands of so-called "agents," resulting in countless headlines and enough TV news spots to fill a season's worth of Punk'd episodes. Their own videos have generated more than 55 million views online. But their insidious influence has no doubt infected a far larger audience: Count literally hundreds of Improv Everywhere–inspired groups across the globe, to say nothing of the masses of bewildered, babbling "victims" each prank leaves in its wake. According to legendary prankster Alan Abel—whose Citizens Against Breastfeeding nonprofit group famously condemned what they called "an incestuous relationship between mother and baby that manifests an oral addiction leading youngsters to smoke, drink, and even become a homosexual"—"Pretty soon we'll have as many groups pulling pranks as we have church choirs."

 

http://www.maxim.com/humor/articles/82558/art-prank.html?p=1

Buy Robert Anton Wilson's medical marijuana card

by David Pescovitz

The medical marijuana card belonging to bOING bOING patron saint Robert Anton Wilson (RIP) is up for auction on eBay. It's one of many of RAW's personal items that his daughter, Christina, is auctioning to help pay off her father's large debts. From the medical marijuana card auction listing:

As we all know (or should) RAW was a great champion of decriminalizing marijuana. In his late sixties, when his post-polio syndrome started getting bad, he really found great relief and was a staunch supporter of WAMM. WAMM is Wo/Man's Alliance for Medical Marijuana, located in Santa Cruz. His doctor gave him the necessary paperwork and here is his official WAMM card granting him the right to use marijuana medicinally. He is of course, patient # 2323. There is no signature, but his picture is emblazoned on the front with a twinkle in his eye...

Robert Anton Wilson's Medical Marijuana Card

 

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/07/05/buy-robert-anton-wil.html

Conspiracy fever: As rumours swell that the government staged 7/7, victims' relatives call for a proper inquiry

By Sue Reid

Today almost four years on, the images of that dreadful morning are etched into our minds: the woman in the haunting white burns mask being helped to safety; the shell-shocked businessman in a suit with his hair and shirt matted with blood; the crippled No 30 bus with its roof blown off; the mangled wreckage of smouldering Tube trains.

The country's worst-ever terrorist atrocity during London's morning rush hour on July 7, 2005, shattered for ever the heady euphoria in which the capital was basking the morning after winning the bid for the 2012 Olympics.

That afternoon, Tony Blair - who was hosting the G8 summit on global poverty in Gleneagles, Scotland - returned to Downing Street to pronounce that the attack was an act in the 'name of Islam'.

Fateful day: The iconic image of a 7/7 Tube victim wearing a burns mask

Later, at a meeting of the Government's national emergency committee COBRA, London's anti-terror police chief Andy Hayman told senior ministers that he suspected suicide bombers.

And so the story of 7/7 that we have come to accept was pieced together: four British Muslims - Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, Shehzad Tanweer, 22, Jermaine Lindsay, 19, and Hasib Hussain, 18 - blew themselves up using home-made explosives, killing 56 and injuring 700 on three Tube trains and a double-decker bus.

They had travelled on a mainline train from Luton into King's Cross Thameslink Station in London, each carrying a heavy rucksack of explosives.

It is a version of events that has been endorsed by a high-level Parliamentary inquiry and a government report, both published in May 2006 ten months after the event, based on 12,500 statements, a police examination of 142 computers and 6,000 hours of CCTV footage.

The report insisted that the bombers acted on their own, constructing explosives from chapatti flour and hair bleach mixed in the bath at a flat in Leeds, Yorkshire, where all four had family and friends.

It concluded that the Muslim bombers were not controlled by a terrorist mastermind, but inspired by Al Qaeda ideology picked up on extremist websites.

But families of the dead victims and an increasing number of 7/7 survivors claim there are inconsistencies and basic mistakes in the official accounts that need explanation.

And they are demanding a full public inquiry to answer key questions about what the Intelligence Services and the police did and did not know before the bombings.

Meanwhile, the Government's determined refusal to meet their demands is having a very dangerous side-effect - fuelling myriad conspiracy theories about 7/7. Books, blogs and several video documentaries point to oddities in the official accounts.

Messages left for the victims of the London bombings at the site of the bus explosion in Tavistock Square

Alarmingly, some of the conspiracy videos are being hawked around mosques throughout the country to whip up anti-British sentiment.

For the most outlandish and offensive of them suggest that the attacks were not the work of Muslim terrorists at all, but were carried out by the Government to boost support for the Iraq war.

The survivors are so intent on an independent inquiry that they are now taking legal action in the High Court to try to force the Home Secretary Alan Johnson to authorise it.

Campaigner Diana Gorodi, whose sister Michelle Otto, 46, was one of those killed, explains: 'It's just very hard for us to believe four people got up in the morning, put bombs together on the basis of information from the internet and managed to throw London into chaos and to create a tragedy. It's impossible for me to believe those four individuals acted on their own.'

Rachel North, a 39-year-old strategy director who survived the King's Cross Tube bombing, adds: 'We need a public inquiry. It was the public, after all, not the politicians, who were attacked. Let the public know what risks they run and tell them why there are those living among them who seek to kill for an ideal.'

Central to the puzzle is which train the four Muslims caught from Luton to London on the morning of the bomb blasts - bearing in mind that the three separate Tube explosions at Edgware Road, Aldgate and King's Cross occurred together at exactly 8.50am, followed by the red bus an hour later near Tavistock Square.

Tavistock bombing: The remains of the bus after the terrorist attack

The official reports said the bombers got on the 7.40am train from Luton which would have arrived at King's Cross in good time for them to board the Tube trains.

However, the 7.40am train never ran that morning. It was cancelled.

The Government has since corrected this information - but only after the error was raised by survivors - saying the bombers actually caught an earlier train, the 7.25am from Luton, for the 35-minute journey to King's Cross. It was due to arrive in the capital at 8am.

Yet this throws up more questions than it answers. For this train ran 23 minutes late because of problems with the overhead line which disrupted most of the service between Luton to King's Cross that morning. It arrived in London at 8.23am, say station officials.

According to the July Seventh Truth Campaign - another group calling for a public inquiry - this again places the official version of the bombers' travelling times in doubt.

A still CCTV photo of the four bombers arriving at the station in Luton is the only one of the four men together on July 7. Controversially, no CCTV images, either still or moving, of them in London have ever been released.

The Luton image is also contentious: the quality is poor and the faces of three of the bombers are unidentifiable. The conspiracy theorists say it could be a fake.

This photo is timed at four seconds before 7.22am. But if this were the case, the men would have had just three minutes to walk up the stairs at Luton, buy their £22 day return tickets and get to the platform, which was packed with commuters because of the earlier travel disruptions.

Blown up: A Circle Line train between Liverpool Street and Aldgate stations

The Truth Campaign group is equally sceptical about the bombers' supposed arrival time at King's Cross.

They say it takes seven minutes to walk from the Thameslink line station to the main King's Cross station, where there is an entrance to the Tube network.

Police say the four men were seen on the main King's Cross concourse at 8.26am, although no CCTV footage has ever been made public.

But is this possible? How had the men got there in three short minutes after getting off the Luton train at 8.23am?

And it is such inconsistencies that are fuelling the deepening concerns. This week, a television documentary on BBC2 called Conspiracy Files 7/7 revealed the existence of a conspiracy theorist's 56-minute video called Ripple Effect.

It accuses Tony Blair, the Government, the police, and the British and Israeli Secret Services of murdering the innocent people who died that day to stir up anti-Islamic fervour and create public support for the 'war on terror'.

Fact or fiction? Some theories suggest Mohammad Sidique Khan's video was a forgery

It alleges that the four British Muslims were tricked by the authorities into taking part in what they were told would be a mock anti-terror training exercise. What they weren't told, the video alleges, was that the Government was going to blow them up, along with other passengers, then pretend the four were suicide bombers.

Without any evidence, the Ripple Effect video accuses government agents of setting off pre-planted explosives under the three Tube trains and on the bus.

It suggests that the four Muslims were not, in fact, on any of the Tube trains, claiming that they missed them altogether because of the train delays on the Luton to London line.

It adds, astonishingly, that because the four did not get onto the Tube on time, three of them were murdered by police at Canary Wharf later that morning and the fourth - the bus bomber - ran off.

Outrageous though these claims are, the video has become an internet hit. More worryingly, it is playing on the fears of Britain's Muslim community.

Even some senior Islamists believe the events of 7/7 were fabricated. As Dr Mohammad Naseem, the chairman of Birmingham's Central Mosque, says in the BBC2 documentary: 'We do not accept the government version of July 7, 2005. The Ripple Effect video is more convincing than the official statements.'

Mr. Naseem, a well-educated man, had made 2,000 copies of Ripple Effect for members of his mosque. Research has revealed that even before the contentious video came out, one in four British Muslims thought the Government or the Secret Services were responsible for the 7/7 atrocities. Now the number of doubters is growing.

At Friday prayers recently, Dr Naseem asked the congregation to raise their hands if they did not accept the government version of events. Nearly the entire gathering of 150 men and boys did so. He then urged his audience to collect free copies of Ripple Effect at the back of the mosque.

A victim is taken away from King's Cross station by emergency personnel

The respected chairman has since said that the identities of the bombers were discovered by the police suspiciously quickly. 'When a body is blown up, it is destroyed. How is it that the identification papers found at the bomb scenes of these men were still intact? Were they planted?'

That is another suggestion in Ripple Effect. So who is behind this dangerous video?

He is 60-year-old Yorkshireman Anthony John Hill who lives in Kells, County Meath, Ireland. He is currently under arrest there and fighting extradition to Britain. Police here want to interview him on a charge of perverting the course of justice after he sent a copy of his video to a jury member in a terrorist case.

Mr. Hill made Ripple Effect at his own home and is the narrator.

In many ways, it is an amateurish affair: the dialogue is jumbled and hard to understand. But that begs the question, why is Ripple Effect having such an impact?

The answer is that muddled in with the wild theories of a government plot are some questions that are hard to ignore.

Why did the four bombers get return tickets to London if they were on a one-way suicide mission? Why are there no CCTV images of the four together in London even though the city has thousands upon thousands of such cameras in public places?

Why did so many survivors of the Tube bombings say that the explosions came upwards through the floor of the trains, not down, as would be the case if a backpack blew up inside? And why do no passengers on the London-bound Luton train clearly remember the four bombers with their huge rucksacks on that fateful morning?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1197419/Conspiracy-fever-As-rumours-swell-government-staged-7-7-victims-relatives-proper-inquiry.html

Binyam Mohamed launches legal fight to stop US destroying torture images

British resident says photographs are evidence of abuse at Guantánamo

by Richard Norton-Taylor

Former Guantánamo detainee Binyam Mohamed has launched an urgent legal attempt to prevent the US courts from destroying crucial evidence that he says proves he was abused while being held at the detention camp, the Guardian has learned. The evidence is said to consist of a photograph of Mohamed, a British resident, taken after he was severely beaten by guards at the US navy base in Cuba.

The image, now held by the Pentagon, had been put on his cell door, he says.

Mohamed claims he was told later that this was done because he had been beaten so badly that it was difficult for the guards to identify him.

In a sworn statement seen by the Guardian, Mohamed has appealed to the federal district court in Washington not to destroy the photograph, which neither he nor his lawyers have a copy of, and which is classified under US law.

The US government considered the case closed once Mohamed was released and returned to Britain in February. The photograph will be destroyed within 30 days of his case being dismissed by the American courts – a decision on which is due to be taken by a judge imminently, Clive Stafford Smith, Mohamed's British lawyer and director of Reprieve, the legal charity, said today .

Under US law, evidence relating to dismissed cases must be automatically destroyed. The only way to preserve the photograph is to have it accepted as a court document.

This is the aim of Mohamed's appeal and he says he needs the image as a crucial piece of evidence to fight his case against US authorities for unlawful incarceration and abuse. "That is one piece of physical evidence that I know exists of my abuse," he says in the statement, adding that it was taken in Guantánamo in 2006.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/05/binyam-mohamed-guantanamo-evidence-photographs

Kill the Indian. Save the Man.

by Dahr Jamail and Jason Coppola

Manifest Destiny

In 1845, an American columnist, John O'Sullivan, writing about the proposed annexation of Texas, claimed that it was America's "manifest destiny to overspread the continent." Later in the same year, referring to the ongoing dispute with Great Britain over Oregon, he wrote that the United States had the right to claim "the whole of Oregon."

And that claim is by the right of our Manifest Destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent that Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us.

The westward expansion did not originate with O'Sullivan's theory. In 1803, the United States acquired 23 percent of its existing territory through the Louisiana Purchase. Seeing land as a source of political power, the government began to actively pursue aggressive expansion of its territories through the 19th century. The idea of Manifest Destiny was one component of the process which captured the popular imagination. This was further fueled by the discovery of gold and other minerals in the West attracting Easterners acting on their conviction in their right and duty to expand.

The Mexican-American conflict generated massive casualties, and when it was over, the US controlled all of New Mexico and California, and more of the territory of Texas. When Texas was annexed in 1846 as the 26th state, Col. Ethan Allen Hitchcock wrote, "We have not one particle of right to be here."

Acclaimed historian Howard Zinn told Truthout, "The Mexican War, presented as something we were doing because Mexicans had fired on our soldiers ... no, we were going to Mexico because we wanted to take forty percent of Mexican land. California, Arizona, Nevada ... all of that beautiful land in the Southwest that was all Mexico. I'll bet there are very few Americans today who live in that area and know that it belonged to Mexico. Or they may ask, how come all these names? How come Santa Barbara, Santa Rosa, Santa Ana, how come?"

Perhaps Americans seriously believe that the US was preordained by God to expand and exercise hegemony over all that it surveys? After all, our 25th president, William McKinley, (1897-1901) declared that "The mission of the United States is one of benevolent assimilation."

http://www.truthout.org/070209A?n

Shame

Senator Franken

Priced to Sell

Is free the future?

"In the digital realm you can try to keep Free at bay," Chris Anderson writes, "but eventually the force of economic gravity will win."

by Malcolm Gladwell

At a hearing on Capitol Hill in May, James Moroney, the publisher of the Dallas Morning News, told Congress about negotiations he'd just had with the online retailer Amazon. The idea was to license his newspaper's content to the Kindle, Amazon's new electronic reader. "They want seventy per cent of the subscription revenue," Moroney testified. "I get thirty per cent, they get seventy per cent. On top of that, they have said we get the right to republish your intellectual property to any portable device." The idea was that if a Kindle subscription to the Dallas Morning News cost ten dollars a month, seven dollars of that belonged to Amazon, the provider of the gadget on which the news was read, and just three dollars belonged to the newspaper, the provider of an expensive and ever-changing variety of editorial content. The people at Amazon valued the newspaper's contribution so little, in fact, that they felt they ought then to be able to license it to anyone else they wanted. Another witness at the hearing, Arianna Huffington, of the Huffington Post, said that she thought the Kindle could provide a business model to save the beleaguered newspaper industry. Moroney disagreed. "I get thirty per cent and they get the right to license my content to any portable device—not just ones made by Amazon?" He was incredulous. "That, to me, is not a model."

Had James Moroney read Chris Anderson's new book, "Free: The Future of a Radical Price" (Hyperion; $26.99), Amazon's offer might not have seemed quite so surprising. Anderson is the editor of Wired and the author of the 2006 best-seller "The Long Tail," and "Free" is essentially an extended elaboration of Stewart Brand's famous declaration that "information wants to be free." The digital age, Anderson argues, is exerting an inexorable downward pressure on the prices of all things "made of ideas." Anderson does not consider this a passing trend. Rather, he seems to think of it as an iron law: "In the digital realm you can try to keep Free at bay with laws and locks, but eventually the force of economic gravity will win." To musicians who believe that their music is being pirated, Anderson is blunt. They should stop complaining, and capitalize on the added exposure that piracy provides by making money through touring, merchandise sales, and "yes, the sale of some of [their] music to people who still want CDs or prefer to buy their music online." To the Dallas Morning News, he would say the same thing. Newspapers need to accept that content is never again going to be worth what they want it to be worth, and reinvent their business. "Out of the bloodbath will come a new role for professional journalists," he predicts, and he goes on:

There may be more of them, not fewer, as the ability to participate in journalism extends beyond the credentialed halls of traditional media. But they may be paid far less, and for many it won't be a full time job at all. Journalism as a profession will share the stage with journalism as an avocation. Meanwhile, others may use their skills to teach and organize amateurs to do a better job covering their own communities, becoming more editor/coach than writer. If so, leveraging the Free—paying people to get other people to write for non-monetary rewards—may not be the enemy of professional journalists. Instead, it may be their salvation.

Anderson is very good at paragraphs like this—with its reassuring arc from "bloodbath" to "salvation." His advice is pithy, his tone uncompromising, and his subject matter perfectly timed for a moment when old-line content providers are desperate for answers. That said, it is not entirely clear what distinction is being marked between "paying people to get other people to write" and paying people to write. If you can afford to pay someone to get other people to write, why can't you pay people to write? It would be nice to know, as well, just how a business goes about reorganizing itself around getting people to work for "non-monetary rewards." Does he mean that the New York Times should be staffed by volunteers, like Meals on Wheels? Anderson's reference to people who "prefer to buy their music online" carries the faint suggestion that refraining from theft should be considered a mere preference. And then there is his insistence that the relentless downward pressure on prices represents an iron law of the digital economy. Why is it a law? Free is just another price, and prices are set by individual actors, in accordance with the aggregated particulars of marketplace power. "Information wants to be free," Anderson tells us, "in the same way that life wants to spread and water wants to run downhill." But information can't actually want anything, can it? Amazon wants the information in the Dallas paper to be free, because that way Amazon makes more money. Why are the self-interested motives of powerful companies being elevated to a philosophical principle?

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/07/06/090706crbo_books_gladwell?yrail

Indian Court Overturns Gay Sex Ban

NEW DELHI —In a landmark ruling Thursday that could usher in an era of greater freedom for gay men and lesbians in India, New Delhi's highest court decriminalized homosexuality.

"The inclusiveness that Indian society traditionally displayed, literally in every aspect of life, is manifest in recognizing a role in society for everyone," judges of the Delhi High Court wrote in a 105-page decision, India's first to directly address rights for gay men and lesbians. "Those perceived by the majority as 'deviants' or 'different' are not on that score excluded or ostracized," the decision said.

Homosexuality has been illegal in India since 1861, when British rulers codified a law prohibiting "carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal." The law, known as Section 377 of India's penal code, has long been viewed as an archaic holdover from colonialism by its detractors.

"Clearly, we are all thrilled," said Anjali Gopalan, the executive director and founder of the Naz Foundation, an AIDS awareness group that sued to have Section 377 changed.

"It is a first major step," Ms. Gopalan said during a news conference in Delhi, but "there are many more battles."

Thursday's decision applies only in the territory of India's capital city, but it is likely to force India's government either to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court, or change the law nationwide, lawyers and advocates said.

Outside the hall where the Naz Foundation news conference was held, dozens of young men and women gathered to celebrate, along with a group of hijras, men who dress and act like women who classify themselves as belonging to neither gender. "It is a victory of human rights, not just of gay rights," said one 22-year-old man who only identified himself as Manish.

Gay men and women have rarely been prosecuted under Section 377 in India in modern times, but it has been used to harass, blackmail and jail people.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/03/world/asia/03india.html

Madoff the God of Plunder

 

by Daniel Bruno Sanz

As a bored pre-teen with nothing to do in the hot summer months between school, I picked up a piston valve, brass BB-flat tuba one day and started to blow. The local youth orchestra loaned instruments and offered morning classes taught by classically trained volunteers, all at no charge. Before long, powerful bass tones belted out by my tuba pierced the thick, sweltering air inside the high school gymnasium where we rehearsed.

A prodigy euphonium player and member of the United States Army Band stationed at Fort Myer, Virginia, befriended me and I was invited to workshops, rehearsals and concerts. I became a protégé of "Pershing's own" United States Army Band and "the President's own" Marine Corps Band. I became one of the best amateur tuba players in the country before I was legally old enough to drive and then got my very own horn: an affordable B&S rotary valve CC tuba handcrafted, ironically, in East Germany.

Convinced that the Army Band was my future, I practiced and performed regularly, and within a few years, learned the bass line to the score of hundreds of military marches, symphonic tone poems, overtures and symphonies. Works like the Planets by Gustav Holst, the Procession of the Sardar, John Philip Sousa's the Washington Post March and the Rakutsky March from the Damnation of Faust by Hector Berlioz. These were the tunes that filled my ears and my favorite composers were those who had written prolifically for my instrument: Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Strauss and Sousa.

At the age of fifteen, I bought a five-dollar, obstructed view ticket to see the National Symphony Orchestra matinee performance of Das Rheingold, Wagner's four hour introduction to the Ring Cycle. I was unfamiliar with Wagner's operas and the German mythology and history surrounding them. With a few exceptions such as the Prelude to Act Three of Lohingrin, which I had performed, his works were too long, expensive and complicated for all except the most determined orchestra companies. Students and amateurs didn't even attempt them. In the RingCycle, Das Rheingold is followed by Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), Siegfried and Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods). These four operas make up the epic fifteen-hour Ring of the Nibelung, intended to be performed over four days.

When composers wanted to speak loudly and deliver a forceful message, they chose my instrument to express themselves. Instead of counting hundreds of rest bars while sweet violins serenaded the listener, I was kept busy projecting baselines and even melodies. Certain composers repeatedly call on the tuba to deliver their message. Stars and Stripes Forever, Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony, Slavianka's Farewell and the incomparable Preobrazhensky March stir powerful emotions in an audience.

The Preobrazhensky March, first performed on Red Square for Peter the Great, was the last music Generalissimo Stalin's troops heard on the night of November 7, 1941, before they were sent to meet their doom against Hitler's invincible Wehrmacht. They smashed it to bits on the outskirts of Moscow.

Then one day it hit me: the more nationalistic the composer, the more active my part. Claude Debussy didn't write for tuba, but Brahms sure did. So did Mahler. Wagner even designed a new tuba for the sole purpose of playing his operas. As unlikely as it may be, the tuba has lessons to teach about nationalism, militarism and geopolitics. Now, viewing Wagner's opera as a non-musician and member of the audience, it speaks to me about the leitmotif of avarice and Bernard Madoff.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-bruno-sanz/madoff-the-god-of-plunder_b_223553.html

Affirmative action vs. New Haven Firefighters

Second-hand smoke is good for you

 

When you drink tequila at a bar, you don't get those around you drunk, but when you smoke pot indoors you DO get those around you high with second-hand smoke. The argument against smoking cigarettes in public is that you're spreading cancer. Inarguably bad for you. Having woken up stoned out of my mind simply because someone smoked pot in my bedroom while I was asleep, I'd argue that getting someone high when they don't want to be, like spiking the punch with LSD, is a rude and potentially dangerous thing to do. However, now that we know marijuana smoke not only doesn't cause cancer but may actually prevent and cure it, the argument could also be made that public tobacco smoking must be accompanied by equal amounts of pot smoking - just to counter the cancer effect.

 

To understand the insane disconnect between science and policy concerning marijuana, just check out these two articles. See if you can figure out which one contains actual science (hint, it's boring).

 

Marijuana Smoking Does Not Cause Lung Cancer, UCLA Expert Dr. Tashkin Concludes Protective Effect "Not Unreasonable"

Marijuana smoking -"even heavy long-term use"- does not cause cancer of the lung, upper airways, or esophagus, Dr. Donald Tashkin reported at this year's meeting of the International Cannabinoid Research Society...

Stephen Sidney examined the files of 64,000 Kaiser patients and found that marijuana users didn't develop lung cancer at a higher rate or die earlier than non-users. Of five smaller studies on the question, only two -involving a total of about 300 patients- concluded that marijuana smoking causes lung cancer. Tashkin decided to settle the question by conducting a large, population-based, case-controlled study."Our major hypothesis," he told the ICRS, "was that heavy, long-term use of marijuana will increase the risk of lung and upper-airways cancers."

The Los Angeles County Cancer Surveillance program provided Tashkin's team with the names of 1,209 L.A. residents aged 59 or younger with cancer (611 lung, 403 oral/pharyngeal, 90 laryngeal, 108 esophageal). Interviewers collected extensive lifetime histories of marijuana, tobacco, alcohol and other drug use, and data on diet, occupational exposures, family history of cancer, and various "socio-demographic factors." Exposure to marijuana was measured in joint years (joints per day x years that number smoked)...

There was time for only one question, said the moderator, and San Francisco oncologist Donald Abrams, M.D., was already at the microphone: "You don't see any positive correlation, but in at least one category, it almost looked like there was a negative correlation, i.e., a protective effect. Could you comment on that?" [Abrams was referring to Tashkin's lung-cancer-only data for marijuana-only smokers in 1-10 j-yrs category.] "Yes," said Tashkin. "The odds ratios are less than one almost consistently, and in one category that relationship was significant, but I think that it would be difficult to extract from these data the conclusion that marijuana is protective against lung cancer. But that is not an unreasonable hypothesis."

http://www.canorml.org/healthfacts/tashkinlungcancer.html

And this one...

State rules marijuana smoke is a carcinogen, may require dispensaries to post warnings

Joints and baggies sold at California's medical marijuana dispensaries will soon carry a new warning label. Next to tags like "Purple Haze" and "White Widow" will be the advisory: Contents may cause cancer when smoked.

On Friday, California added marijuana smoke to its official list of known carcinogens, joining the ranks of arsenic, asbestos and DDT. Pot brownies, lollipops and other non-inhalables are not affected by the new ruling.

Scientists found the pungent smoke shares many of the same harmful properties as tobacco smoke, warranting its inclusion on the Proposition 65 warning list. The law requires the state to publish a list of chemicals known to cause cancer or reproductive toxicity, and businesses and government agencies must post warnings when they use such chemicals or sell products containing them.

"Marijuana smoke is a mixture of different chemicals, and a number of those were already on the Prop. 65 list," said Allan Hirsch, chief deputy director of the state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, which made the designation.

http://www.mercurynews.com/centralcoast/ci_12654249?nclick_check=1

Okay, that last one was boring too, but it was also absolutely insane. Ignoring the science showing pot may prevent cancer, they declare it a carcinogen because it "shares many of the same harmful properties as tobacco smoke." That doesn't prove anything. Here's how their logic works. You can make orange juice from oranges. Oranges are a fruit. Apples are also a fruit, therefore you can make orange juice out of apples.

Just because two things share properties doesn't make them equal, otherwise Battlefield Earth and Pulp Fiction would be equally bad for you just because John Travolta's in both of them.

 

It can be hard to grasp things that are counterintuitive, the earth going around the sun despite the intuitive fact that the sun obviously goes around the earth. It's got to be explained in a rational manner before anyone will abandon their instincts.

 

It's just common sense that smoke isn't good for your lungs. People die of smoke inhalation all the time. When people die in fires, it's often the smoke that kills them, so it's perfectly rational to presume that the smoke of anything, whether trees or leaves or an occasional book, won't be doing your lungs any good. Smoke anything rolled in paper and you're smoking a bleached and pulverized tree with the tobacco or pot. Throw a book burning and you'll rapidly discover that the smoke you create from Shakespeare is just as toxic as the smoke from Hitler, at least as far as your lungs are concerned.

 

It's perfectly rational to presume if the smoke of one plant causes cancer, the smoke of all plants causes cancer. It's just not logical. There's a perfect kind of smoke that's actually good for you. That's counterintuitive. It's also true.

 

 

http://www.dareland.com

 

 

Pals

Un-American Independence Day

What are Fourth of July celebrations like abroad?

By Meredith Simons

 

Hillary Clinton announced in June that, for the first time since 1979, Iranian diplomats could be invited to July Fourth celebrations at American embassies and consulates. It was all for naught: None of those invitations were accepted, and then the State Department rescinded them in the wake of post-election violence in Tehran. Why all the fuss? What are embassy- and consulate-run July Fourth parties like, anyway?

Like stateside celebrations, more or less. All over the world, American diplomatic posts hold Independence Day events that are designed to mimic traditional celebrations. Revelers eat backyard barbeque staples, listen to patriotic music, and, at the better-financed parties, watch fireworks. A typical menu includes hamburgers, hot dogs, and build-your-own-sundae bars. Lots of red, white, and blue balloons are in evidence, and the ranking American delivers remarks about the value of democracy.

Overseas parties are heavy on pomp and circumstance. Marine security guards present the colors, and someone sings "The Star-Spangled Banner." Embassies near military bases may enlist the services of military bands for even more elaborate performances. In some cities, the July Fourth party is the hot ticket of the summer, and invitees (including local leaders, journalists, and other ambassadors) turn out in elaborate religious regalia or full military dress. A few American expats may be included in the festivities, but the ceremonies are more about promoting the United States to foreigners than celebrating it with citizens.

http://www.slate.com/id/2222022/

Stop motion fireworks

Washington Post cancels lobbyist event amid uproar

By MIKE ALLEN & MICHAEL CALDERONE

Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth said today she was canceling plans for an exclusive "salon" at her home where for as much as $250,000, the Post offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record access to "those powerful few" — Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and even the paper's own reporters and editors.

The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its "health care reporting and editorial staff."

With the Post newsroom in an uproar after POLITICO reported the solicitation, Weymouth said in an email to the staff that "a flier went out that was prepared by the Marketing department and was never vetted by me or by the newsroom. Had it been, the flier would have been immediately killed, because it completely misrepresented what we were trying to do." 

Weymouth said the paper had planned a series of dinners with participation from the newsroom "but with parameters such that we did not in any way compromise our integrity. Sponsorship of events, like advertising in the newspaper, must be at arm's length and cannot imply control over the content or access to our journalists. At this juncture, we will not be holding the planned July dinner and we will not hold salon dinners involving the newsroom. "

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/24441.html#ixzz0KDpXGYVq&C

 

Outrageous!!

New Budget Estimate Of Public Plan Proves It Lowers Cost And Covers More Americans

A couple of weeks ago, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a preliminary score of the health care legislation under consideration in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. The bill was estimated to cost $1 trillion over 10 years, while reducing the number of uninsured by "only" one-third. As many informed bloggers noted at the time, the cost estimate was incomplete because the legislation that the CBO reviewed did not contain language about a public health insurance plan or an employer mandate.

Nevertheless, Republicans seized on the opportunity to engage in merciless political attacks, citing the incomplete CBO score as proof that health care reform is not worth doing:

John McCain: "[The CBO estimate] should be a wake up call for all of us to scrap the current bill and start over in a true bipartisan fashion."

John Boehner: "[T]he public option would cost over $1 trillion, and would cause 23 million Americans to lose their private health care coverage."

Lindsey Graham: "The CBO estimates were a death blow to a government run health care plan."

The HELP Committee has since added language for a public plan option to its legislation, as well as an employer mandate provision. The AP reports the new results:

The plan carries a 10-year price tag of slightly over $600 billion, and would lead toward an estimated 97 percent of all Americans having coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office, Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and Chris Dodd said in a letter to other members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. [...]

The [employer mandate] provision is also estimated to greatly reduce the number of workers whose employers would drop coverage, thus addressing a major concern noted by CBO when it reviewed the earlier proposals.

In other words, the addition of the public plan dramatically reduced the overall cost of the bill and ensured coverage of almost all Americans. So what excuses will McCain, Boehner, Graham, and other Republicans offer now? Their attacks were not only found to be baseless, but their concerns about the costs and coverage have also been addressed.

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/01/new-cbo-score-health-care/

Loudon Wainwright III sings "The Paul Krugman Blues" in Madison Square Park

Chart of the Day: MJ death not as interesting as Princess Diana's

 

Posted by Sharon Hong

Interest in Michael Jackson's death was similar to interest in the deaths of "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert and Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin, a survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press showed Wednesday.

Pew surveyed 1,022 people and asked them to gauge how closely they were following a news story in the past week. Thirty percent said they were following news reports on the death of Michael Jackson very closely -- 28% said fairly closely, 23% not too closely and 19% not at all closely.

For comparison, Pew compiled individuals' responses to the same question that was asked following the death of other stars and well-known figures. Results showed people were most interested in the deaths of Princess Diana in 1997 and John F. Kennedy Jr. in 1999.

Public interest in deaths of stars and well-known figures (in %)

http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/archives/172774.asp?source=pimail

Gone with the Filibuster