Don't touch that dial, we've taken control of your comments

We're switching over to a new software for publishing [MT 3.01 for those that are interested], and in the transition theres a new comment spam filter in place.

For now, during the transition, comments to the site are marked for "approval" before being reflected on the post. This will change soon but for now bear with us.

If you post a comment, it will appear just as soon as I can run the approval script on it. Don't think that we didn't get it just because you don't see it. It will arrive -- unless of course you are an evil spammer.

The tireless staff of American Digest is tired and hungry and has much to be thankful for this year.

We'll be taking a break for Thanksgiving and a road trip after. Perhaps we'll check in and then again perhaps we won't.

Either way, may your turkey day include only those on the table.

The brilliant Orson Scott Card is worth more than a glance for his essary in War Watch - November - On Lying

[Excerpt]

[Card] ...I think you confessed something a moment ago when you said, 'You conservatives just can't forget how popular and successful Clinton was.' I think you just confessed your own motive for attacking Bush with such hatred and virulence. The thing you can't forgive him for is that he actually took action after 9/11 -- not just a few token missiles fired at empty training camps, but actual, effective action -- and the army, when it was used for its proper purpose, was extraordinarily successful. You wanted Bush to fail, and you just can't stand it that he hasn't."

[The Anti-Bush] "Hasn't he? Aren't our soldiers still dying over in Iraq?"

[Card ] "Yes, they are. That's because they're still fighting the war in Iraq, and when you fight wars, people die. More people will probably die in the U.S., too, because you can bet that our enemies are doing everything they can to mount another series of terrorist attacks here. But please keep in mind: George W. Bush is not killing our soldiers, our enemies are, and those enemies were killing our soldiers before we invaded Iraq or Afghanistan -- just in case you've forgotten. Bush didn't start this war. He merely carried it to the enemy and started fighting it on their soil, liberating a few oppressed countries along the way."

[The Anti-Bush] "It's another quagmire, like Vietnam."

[Card]"It will only be like Vietnam if a certain party in Congress forbids the President to fight it using the full power of the United States."

[The Anti-Bush] "In other words, you're in George W. Bush's pocket, and he can do no wrong."

[Card]"I'm in nobody's pocket, and if he actually does wrong, I'll be the first to say so -- which I've done on various occasions. But what I'll never do is accuse a man of the kind of vile crimes you've accused him of, on the basis of the same complete lack of evidence that you have for your accusations."

[The Anti-Bush] "You're just naive."

[Card] "You're just partisan. You have no allegiance to truth. You simply tell whatever stories will make your opponents look bad, whether they're true or not."

[The Anti-Bush] "Are you calling me a liar?"

[Card] "That's a funny thing to resent, considering how freely you call George W. Bush a liar. But no, I'm not saying you're a liar. I'm saying you don't actually care about the difference between truth and lies. All you care about is usefulness. All you care about is whether the public might believe your slanderous slogans and send Bush's popularity ratings down. I think that's worse than lying. At least a liar has to keep track of the truth in order to adjust his lies to fit the facts. You simply don't care."

[Pointer via Cold Fury

SO READS THE INSCRIPTION on the Goya etching above. And Goya had a lot of first hand information on the monsters created by sleeping reason. Demospophia also has a bit to say about that when discussing the Dean Campaign's welcome to the odious Ted Rall into their "League of Decency" in The Ram Dass Perspective on Ted Rall's Endorsement of Dean

"If we are really willing to give Dean a pass in order to accommodate his near-term political exigencies then what prevents a Napoleon from shape-shifting his way into office? If our short term memories have become so "Memento-like," that a candidate can openly rejoice at the endorsement of a half-literate unabashedly treasonous fellow like Rall, and not pay a political penalty a few months later, then why don't we all just drop acid and join Ram Dass in "being here now?" And why not just forget what happened in September, 2001, while we're at it? It's so 9/12."

What prevents Napoleon? Given the current sleep of our nation's reason as we stumble unprepared through the war that is already upon us, little or nothing it would seem. But should we lose a city to our enemies, we will have our Napoleon soon enough. His name is now unknown, but he shape can be seen in the wings, or looming in the background of Goya's etching above.

And he will be welcomed because he will be seen, at first, as an avenging angel.

Though bent on speed; so here the Arch-Angel paused;
Betwixt the world destroyed and world restored
      - John Milton, Paradise Lost

ROGER SIMON asks about the financing of Saddam's terror in: SHOW ME THE MONEY!

My question is--where did this money come from? Where did Saddam get the moolah to reward his henchmen for dragging his fellow Iraqis through the streets or dropping them in shredders? I'm not going to say right now it came straight from the UN Oil-for-Food program, but WHERE IS THAT MONEY?

Yes, where is that UN money? Perhaps it went back to the same FOUNTAIN OF FUNDING for the Masters of Terror the world over, the French and German banks.

Yesterday, in the Wall St Journal, Michael Gonzalez wrote: Vive Le Checkbook [It's available to subscribers only, so I'll just reprint a couple of indicative paragraphs.]

"Follow the money" is an old adage, and it means that economic interest will eventually explain much human behavior. That France opposed the removal of Saddam Hussein because he owed millions to French banks is proof of this. Less well known, but much more troubling, are key French financial links with other U.S. enemies. They raise the belief that the Franco-American conflict over Iraq was just one slice of the action. For France was not just Baathist Iraq's largest contributor of funds; French banks have financed other odious regimes. They are the No. 1 lenders to Iran and Cuba and past and present U.S. foes such as Somalia, Sudan and Vietnam.

This type of financing is shared by Germany, France's partner. German banks are North Korea's biggest lenders, and Syria's -- and Libya's. But France is the most active. In Castro's sizzling gulag, French banks plunked down $549 million in the first trimester this year, a third of all credit to Cuba. The figure for Saddam's Iraq is $415 million. But these pale in comparison with the $2.5 billion that French banks have lent Iran. The figures come from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, and were interpreted by Inigo More for a Madrid think-tank, the Real Instituto Elcano. As he says, "one could think that Parisian bankers wait for the U.S. to have an international problem before taking out their checkbooks." French banks seem to be almost anywhere U.S. banks are absent. They lend in 57 such countries, and are the main lenders in 23 of those. (His report can be read at realinstitutoelcano.org.) The report offers reasons why Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin really ought to stop using the phrase "our American friends" every time he talks about the U.S.

The Inigo More report at the Real Instituto ElCano is in Spanish so I am unable to read it, but perhaps those more fluent than I can take a look and illuminate the rest of us.

The Money's Bottom Line, as they say, is that if you want to know of any large, non-Muslim, insititutions that are making it easier for our enemies to kill people of all ilks around the world, you just have to take a look at our 'friends' -- the French and the Germans.

===
UPDATE: As noted in the comments, the Inigo More report is not to be found on the English section of the link above but only on the Spanish side. Those who search the English side of the site will not see it and will have a null search string returned.

"Marketing 101 should tell students that if you are a PR spokesman, and a newspaper reporter calls up to inquire about the propriety of selling KGB-logo merchandise for Christmas, you should nod, express interest at the concerns, note that the item is sold as a historical artifact, et cetera. Leave it at that. If you feel compelled to draw explicit parallels to the CIA and the KGB, realize that you are speaking on behalf of a national retailer not yet known for such political views. That sound you hear on the other end? The clicking sound that goes on while you talk, keeps going when you end, then falls silent? It's called typing."

-- James Lileks

THIS JUST IN from Robert Fulghum's Secret Public Journal -- a host of Frequently and Not-So-Frequently Answered Questions

SIDEWALK NEWS

"I am afraid of Vikings and parrots."
That sentence was written in white chalk on the sidewalk two blocks from my house. Several blocks away I found another message: "I have three dead mittens." And in the street many blocks further one, these words: "My teeth sometimes leave my body at night."

So I bought some chalk . . .

Why not get into this person's game? Are they crazy or poetic or imaginative or looking for someone like them or just confused about the messages the world needs to be getting? I don't know. Maybe it's a secret code between members of a non-sequitur club or a message from an alien. Who cares? It would be interesting to know. Why miss the opportunity?

Ah, but what to write? Maybe some questions? This morning early I wandered around Queen Anne Hill on the standard walker's route and wrote close by the Unknown Chalker's statements, these inquiries:

Will I ever learn?

Whatever became of me?

If you love me still, will you love me moving?

Who knew?

There's more right here.

The tech boom busted, but according to ALEX STEFFEN
the Tech Bloom is in full flower

The conventional wisdom, during the Tech Boom, was that what drove innovation was the lure of giant piles of cash. That idea now rubs shoulders with the Berlin Wall. What makes creative people tingle are interesting problems, the chance to impress their friends and caffeine. Freed from the pursuit of paper millions, geeks are doing what geeks, by nature, really want to be doing: making cool stuff.

Not just making it, but giving it away. Saying the Tech Bloom is not commercially driven is like saying Mother Teresa had an interest in the poor.

Which may be why the media haven't quite gotten the magnitude of what's happening here: It's not about investments. If the Tech Boom had a graven image, it was the bull on Wall Street. The Tech Bloom is more likely to be found dancing around the desert at Burning Man, the annual festival where money is taboo, everything's a gift and creative participation is synonymous with cool.

While we're deeply suspicious of any activity flagged as "synonymous with cool," we have to admit he's got a point.

To my mind, this observation by David Brooks is the most lucid thing said to date on the subject of gay marriage in particular and marriage in general: The Power of Marriage

"Some conservatives may have latched onto biological determinism (men are savages who need women to tame them) as a convenient way to oppose gay marriage. But in fact we are not animals whose lives are bounded by our flesh and by our gender. We're moral creatures with souls, endowed with the ability to make covenants, such as the one Ruth made with Naomi: "Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried."

"The conservative course is not to banish gay people from making such commitments. It is to expect that they make such commitments. We shouldn't just allow gay marriage. We should insist on gay marriage. We should regard it as scandalous that two people could claim to love each other and not want to sanctify their love with marriage and fidelity.

"When liberals argue for gay marriage, they make it sound like a really good employee benefits plan. Or they frame it as a civil rights issue, like extending the right to vote.

"Marriage is not voting. It's going to be up to conservatives to make the important, moral case for marriage, including gay marriage. Not making it means drifting further into the culture of contingency, which, when it comes to intimate and sacred relations, is an abomination."

On Slaughter, Bad Americans, and Vile Iraqis.

Before he became a simpering dottard the once lucid Norman Mailer wrote a book entitled: “Why Are We in Vietnam?” The snide defeatism of that title and the content spewed after it are, for the moment, out of fashion with the majority of Americans. But should the apologists and appeasers among us have their way, this will not always be the case. Still, that will be then and this is the now.

For now, were I to take the time to pen a short treatise in the Mailer vein, mine would be titled, “Why Are We Not Killing More of Our Enemies Wholesale?”

It is not as if we do not know who they are and where they are. Rather it is the case that we are still in the fastidious and polite phase of this war; the phase where little or nothing is asked of Americans at home while nothing short of everything is required from our American troops on the ground in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Everything that is, except the freedom to bring the war home to our enemies with every means at our command.

To watch our troops killed day by day fills me, day by day, with a growing rage both at our enemies and at our policies that offer these men and women up for slaughter without a full committment from our government and ourselves.

Listening to those spineless excuses for "Candidates" fielded by the abominable crawling thing that the once noble Democratic Party has become fills me with a quiet rage as well. In a very real sense, they are one of the homefront's reasons that our troops continue to die. Their carping and despicable pursuit of the President and their own cheap ambitions embolden our enemies and encourage the slow war of attrition.

How many times can one listen, after all, to a Kerry or a Dean or their lesser partners in vile ambition stress that they “Support the troops” and at the same time listen to their message that the war those troops fight is stupid, misguided, a lie, and a crime. Is this not like saying to each and every American soldier, “I’m behind you 100 percent and am sad that your life and your efforts are an idiotic, confused, and criminally false mission?” This is not support. This is subversion.

I’ve long accepted that as career politicians grow more desperate they grow more craven and despicable, but of late this acceptance is becoming more

Continued...

Click for Larger Image

The astute Wretchard of The Belmont Club takes up the question of "The New Committee for a Free World" in a seriously unserious manner. While some of his assumptions are premature, his points concerning names and the other accouterments of organizations are well taken:

This is an unserious post about a very serious subject. The American Digest understands that the battle for domestic public opinion is the decisive theater of operations in the War on Terror. It is trying to organize a nucleus of eminent thinkers -- called the New Committee for a Free World -- who can provide a rallying point for the ideas that must illuminate our journey into the perilous new century,....

I had rather hoped for a more resounding name than 'the New Committee for a Free World', because it lacks the magnificence this larger than life struggle calls for.... We need a name with the sonority of the "Justice League of
America", "The Avengers" or at least "The Four Just
Men". Perhaps nothing quite so Stan Lee-ish, but a name that will bear the freight of its task.

And it needs an oath, a pledge that will appeal to the heart, uplift the spirit and give us strength when we are too tired, weary and heartbroken to go further. It is said that when Chesty Puller's men walked into the relief lines after battling their way past ten times their number at the Chosin River, they pulled themselves erect, dusted off their dungarees and sang the Marine Corps Hymn, so that the Dogfaces might remember them laughing as they emerged from the jaws of death and before they marched into legend. We are their heirs must sing our own song.

"In brightest day, in blackest night,
no evil shall escape my sight!
Let those who worship evil's might,
beware my power.. Green Lantern's light!"

While I'm not ready to run over to Cafe Press and start whipping up the mugs and t-shirts, we have been discussing the name game in the comments to the original article. So far, my own thoughts as stimulated by the comments are:

"That said, perhaps we can look towards a something that is not a "Committee for a Free World" That was something that made sense in the 20th Century when confronted with the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China and client states such as Cuba. The first is history, the second is in the midst of a transformation to another state entirely, and the third is a museum exhibit.

"Perhaps what we need to look for is a Committee for World Freedom. A small change in terms of semantics, but a larger one in terms of potential.

Freedom, after all, is a concept that encompasses many things -- a spiritual outlook, an economic system, an evolving set of social and individual values under the rule of law, a representative republic, an enhancement of the individual, and a method and series of policies designed to insure and advance freedom on all fronts."

From the page that I call "Robert Fulghum's Secret Journal".

"What, in the name of God, have you done?"

This is one of three great "Mother Questions."

The second great question is, "What on earth are you doing?"

The third is, "And what will you think of next?"

Children know these questions have no reasonable answers. Any child who has half a brain will go mute, mumbling ,"Nothing, nothing." Or resort to pity-invoking snorking sobs protesting innocence, ignorance and helplessness. "I don't know, (snork) I don't know (snork) . . ."

Now, at some distance from childhood and parenting, I begin to understand that these "Mother Questions" are, in fact, quite profound. They are Life Questions.

I ask myself, at age 66, "Well, Fulghum, what on earth ARE you doing?" After all these years -- what? From a self-critical point of view I think it useful to enquire of myself regarding the quality of my existence and question my contribution to the commonweal.

Likewise, "What, in the name of God, have you done?" raises concerns about my actions on behalf of all that I believe and hold sacred.

Never mind what I say I believe. What HAVE I DONE?

And, finally, the question with ongoing relevance: "What will you think of next?" Excellent question. Is my mind a stagnant cesspool of worn-out notions or am I mentally active -- still exchanging archaic information for new and better ideas? Am I still thinking -- still asking -- still learning?

When my mother asked me those questions I hated her.

Looking back now I think what I really hated was knowing there were no acceptable answers. She wasn't really asking. She was declaring, in different ways, that I was a klutz, an idiot, and a pain in the ass.

I suppose I was, at least some of the time.

But, then, so was she. Some of the time.

Now I think better of her. And me. And the questions.

Now I finally understand the importance of the questions. Now I know how to answer the questions. Now I am asking me. And now I have some pretty fine answers.

With all this in mind, I hurried around the fence this morning to explain all this to the mother who had been whip-sawing her kid. The kid was gone. The mother was sitting in the car weeping and beating both hands on the steering wheel and talking to herself.

I remember those moments. Bad timing for the appearance of the Unknown Wise Man to explain to this vexed lady the deeper meaning of the Mother Questions. One of the things I also know now is when to mind to my own business. And I didn't want to have to answer another great Mother Question: "Just who the hell do you think you are?"

But, now that I think about it, that's another truly profound question.

Yesterday, we thought it might be time for a New Committee for the Free World and wondered who might be part of the core.

Thanks to the The Professor the suggestions were not long in coming. Here's the off the top of the keyboard thinking from the comments to the original post.

As I said before, I have some of my own thoughts on the who and the how of this, but this list certainly broadens my original one. In order, the names to date are:
===
Bill Hobbs suggests: "Victor Davis Hanson, Michael Ledeen," and... Bill Hobbs. Not at all a bad quartet.

Salamantis lists: "Daniel Pipes, Michael J. Totten, Andrew Sullivan, Daniel W. Drezner, Charles Johnson, Glenn Reynolds, Christopher Hitchens, Bill Whittle, Steven Den Beste and James Lileks." All of whom qualify in terms of insight, intelligence, connectivity and committment.

Roger L. Simon adds,"John Podhoretz, Larry Miller and Daniel Pipes."

Perry R Bransonsays "Mark Steyn, Andrew Sullivan, and David Horowitz."

Stephen observes, "To such a list I would seek to add the name (or names) of an Imam or two who demonstrate an understanding, and perhaps a plan, of how to begin to guide Islam through the same changes made by Christianity".

While Lexington Green rightly states that "... some actual expertise would be nice," and offers up:
"Richard Pipes. He is an old Cold Warrior who is skeptical about spreading democratization in the Islamic world. He'll be a good check on any unreasonable enthusiasm.
Bernard Lewis. The smartest guy on the subject.
David Hackworth. A bit of a crank, but good on the boots-on-ground practicalities.
Bruce Hoffman. Major expert on terrorism."

Hovigtacks on:
And Will Baude (http://www.crescatsententia.org/) and Daniel Moore (http://dfmoore.mu.nu/)

AST asks, wisely, "Where's the funding? It has to be more than a mailing list."

To which, without meaning to be glib at all, I would say: If you build it, they will come." Funding follows content and committment. Many things were started by the use of a "mailing list" from the American Revolution to the Dean Campaign. See "multiplying effect of the internet" (above).

Martin Lindeskog points us to "... my blogroll and the different categories."

...while Dean Esmay just steps up to the plate with: "You could certainly count me in for such a project."

Ah, our first volunteer. Mr. Esmay evidently missed the part of Basic Training where they tell you to never volunteer for anything.

If you have anyone to add, please do. More tomorrow.

Open Secrets has an illuminating page on presidential candidates, their contributions, and the nature of those contributions. Here's how George Bush and Howard Dead currently stack up in: 2004 Presidential Election

G.W. Bush -- Campaign Funds, September, 2003:
Raised: $84.5 Million
Spent: $15 Million
On Hand: $ 73 Million

Howard Dean -- Campaign Funds, September, 2003:
Raised: $25 Million
Spent: $13 Million
On Hand: $12 Million

In the current Atlantic Monthly, P. J. O'Rourke has written an extensive analysis of Iraq and Kuwait up until last April. In this Atlantic Unbound | Interview he gets a bit more up to date:

This mob mentality points to something I don't think has been given enough consideration about Iraq: the Baath Party is a Fascist party. It's like the Falange, it's like the Italian Fascists. I won't say that it's like the Nazi Party -- that's going too far. But it's got that same mass movement sort of thing.

The ideology is exceedingly cloudy. The purpose of it is entirely for the people at the top of the party to hold power. It's not like Marxism. It's a sort of omnium gatherum of watered-down modern ideas and Social Darwinism and garbage that's really all about power. Fascism is very much a mob movement. It's been very successful in Iraq. It has created a mob mentality and a mob nation.

This is one of the big problems that we're facing. That was a pretty benign mob I was looking at out there in the countryside out in Safwan, but obviously they're not always so benign.

"All Dean's "he gets it!" cheerleaders are gonna have some crow to digest if somebody really repellant uses all these tools to get elected in the future."

From: Why Dean matters

You do a good work, keep it going

I admire this grasshopper in front of me. Not only
is he good at going up, he's good at coming down.
He lands well. That's the secret of getting high and going far.
Landing well.
-- Robert Fulghum

There's a long story I could tell about Robert Fulghum, but I'll save it for another time and another place. Actually, there are many stories about Fulghum, but not all can be told, not all should be told, and some, if told, would result in a visit from "Vinnie, Leg Breaker to the Stars."

No matter, the news right now is that Fulghum, author of "Everthing I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten" (New, Expanded Edition Here) and numerous other best sellers, is online at :Robert Fulghum's Journal.

What's it about? It's about living and noticing life as you move on down the road. It is about: bumper stickers seen on the street, things overheard in line at the store, factoids and fantasies, the parts we play in life and our disguises, films seen and American icons... and all manner of things considered in a certainl slant of light.

Here's an excerpt about aging that is as true and as straight as they come:

FIFTIETH GRASSHOPPER

I seem to have wandered unaware into the Era of Endgame Events. Invitations appear now for golden wedding anniversary celebrations, retirement dinners, big-number birthday parties, class reunions, funerals, and the placing of memorial plaques. All these events honor people who are my age. Now, I am not old. But there are people my age who are old. And I can see Old from where I am.

Others call attention to this fact in a well-meaning way. A child of a child of mine recently offered to take me for ride in her car. I remember doing that for my grandmother -- just to get the old lady out and about. Is it my turn in the passenger seat now?

My wife nudges me in the back at a theater box office when a senior discount is offered and I don't take advantage of it. Being both cheap and younger than I am, she sees me now as the front-man for a discount scam.

And there was that phone call in May. "Bobby? Bobby Lee?" Anybody who calls me that is calling from Waco, Texas. And I know why. Fifty years ago I walked down the aisle, across the stage, and out of high school and into whatever came next.

"Are you coming to the fiftieth class reunion?"

"I don't know. I'll think about it."

I was thinking about it when I was in Crete this summer. Hot. Humid. Still.
Hunkered down in a small patch of shade in an afternoon stupor, I was motionless and mindless. Out of nowhere a big yellow grasshopper landed on the sunlit stone wall in front of me, like a tiny circus acrobat suddenly leaping into the spotlight at center ring. TA-DAA! Then he jumped again -- about twenty times his length and about ten times his height landing further along the wall in front of me. TA-DAA. Amazing. I felt like applauding. He's very good at what he does. I wonder what it would be like to be able to do that. The equivalent for someone my size would be about 120 feet, reaching 60 feet up at the top of the arc. A leap over a five-story building. If I could do that I would want to think about it before doing it even once. Maybe once is all I would ever do it. I suppose I could do it. Take a running leap off a five-story building on the edge of a cliff. Nothing to it. The jumping, I mean. It's the coming down that would concern me. Landing.

I wonder how it was the first time for the grasshopper on my porch. Some grasshoppers can also fly, you know. I don't know about him, but, personally, I would want to be one of those. That would be nice. I imagine the novice grasshopper would suddenly feel the uncontrollable urge to push off. "WOW, I'm really up here! WOW, I can fly!" The grasshopper must have been pleased. I suppose there are klutz grasshoppers who fly themselves into the ground and land on their heads or who get so excited they forget to flap their wings. But I've never seen one. I would probably be one.

I admire this grasshopper in front of me. Not only is he good at going up, he's good at coming down. He lands well. That's the secret of getting high and going far. Landing well.

The day I graduated from high school my daddy told me that I was too young to know what I wanted and to not be in a hurry to decide. He said success in life is wanting what you finally get -- no matter what you think you want now or how far away or how high up you go. The goal is being satisfied with how you end up.

Fifty years from now I intend that my grandchildren shall say of their long-dead grandfather. "He went high, he went far, and he landed well."

US begins hypersonic weapons program

 The US military has begun development of an ultra-high speed weapons system that would enable targets virtually anywhere on Earth to be hit within two hours of launch from the continental US.

Ten companies have been given grants by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Pentagon for six-month "system definition" studies. If the Pentagon likes the results, a three-year design and development phase will begin.

The ultimate aim, slated for around 2025, is a reusable Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle (HCV) that can take off from a conventional runway in the US and strike targets up to 16,700 kilometres (10,350 miles) away.

From: New Scientist

...[P]opular ideologies like multiculturalism and utopianism have become embedded in the postwar Democratic party. Both notions tend to characterize the American military not as a force for good, but as an extension of American pathology that legitimizes if not promotes an oppressive globalism, racism, sexism, colonialism, and economic oppression.

If one finds that stereotype unfair, remember the pathetic scene of a Gen. Clark during the recent Democratic debate, who castigated the president of the United States at a time of war while deferring to the wisdom of Al Sharpton. Take out a mass murderer, free 26 million, and you will earn charges of incompetence if not treason; slander a DA, fabricate a crime, and fan the flames of riot and racial hatred, and you will win respect from a Democratic frontrunner. For Republicans who must resort to war, the primary challenge will not be the fighting itself, but rather the perception that the United States was inherently wrong to have fought in the first place.

Victor Davis Hanson on U.S. Power

"I Just Want To Lay Next To You
For Awhile
You Look So Beautiful Tonight
Your Eyes Are So Lovely
Your Mouth Is So Sweet

"A Lot Of People
Misunderstand Me
That's Because They Don't
Know Me At All

"I Just Want To Touch You
And Hold You
I Need You
God I Need You
I Love You So Much"

-- Michael Jackson: I Just Can't Stop Loving You

"Bad" Misheard Lyrics:

"I'm bent, I'm bent, you know it."
Correct Lyrics:
"I'm bad, I'm bad, you know it."

"Billie Jean" Misheard Lyrics:

"Billie Jean is not my lover
She's just a girl who says I am the one
Who slept with her young son."
Correct Lyrics:
"Billie Jean's not my lover
She's just a girl who says I am the one
But the kid is not my son"

-- Misheard Lyrics, Michael Jackson

Microsoft Launches Google News Competitor

Now that Google has spurned Microsoft's takeover bid, it can expect the Redmond giant to start rolling out directly competitive services one by one, and building them into the Windows operating system. The first of the lot is a competitor to Google's new and popular News service called MSN NewsBot. Here's the beta version, which was launched in the UK. [Mike's List: The Raw Feed]

Speaking in London today, President Bush used visual aids
such as the one pictured above to clarify the current foreign policy
of the United States.

"We must shake off decades of failed policy in the Middle East. Your nation and mine, in the past, have been willing to make a bargain, to tolerate oppression for the sake of stability....Yet this bargain did not bring stability or make us safe....

As recent history has shown, we cannot turn a blind eye to oppression just because the oppression is not in our own backyard. No longer should we think tyranny is benign because it is temporarily convenient....

Now we're pursuing a different course, a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East. We will consistently challenge the enemies of reform and confront the allies of terror.

From:President Bush Discusses Iraq Policy at Whitehall

Two novelists, Mark Helprin and Orson Scott Card, the first an ex-soldier and the latter a science fiction visionary, are of one mind when it comes to the need to shake off our sleepwalking state and face the reality of what confronts this nation.

Halprin in War in the Absence of Strategic Clarity reminds us that:

The enemy must and can be defined. That he is the terrorist himself almost everyone agrees, but in the same way that the United States extended blame beyond the pilots who attacked Pearl Harbor, it must now reach far back into the structures of enablement for the sake of deciding who and what must be fought.

And given the enormity of a war against civilians, and the attacks upon our warships, embassies, economy, capital, government, and most populous city, this determination must be liberal and free-flowing rather than cautious and constrained, both by necessity and by right.

The enemy has embarked upon a particular form of warfare with the intent of shielding his center of mass from counterattack, but he must not be allowed such a baseless privilege. For as much as he is the terrorist who executes the strategy, he is the intelligence service in aid of it, the nation that harbors his training camps, the country that finances him, the press filled with adulation, the people who dance in the streets when there is a slaughter, and the regime that turns a blind eye.

Not surprisingly, militant Islam arises from and makes its base in the Arab Middle East. The first objective of the war, therefore, must be to offer every state in the area this choice: eradicate all support for terrorism within your borders or forfeit existence as a state. That individual terrorists will subsequently flee to the periphery is certain, but the first step must be to deny them their heartland and their citadels.

Card is even less sanguine when he examines our present situation in light of the Anarchist movment of the 19th and 20th centuries in Fanatic Terrorism from the Past :

I fear that the only thing that will cure the Muslim people of their current love affair with terrorism (for even though the terrorists are few, those who openly sympathize with their barbarities are many and their critics are virtually silent) is the savagery of total war.

The only alternative is the kind of limited, surgical war that America has been waging in Afghanistan and Iraq. The cost of such a war is not trivial, but it is also not total.

But if America and Britain lose heart and do not complete this kind of war, the terrorists will regard our retreat as proof that they were right and Allah supports their actions. More terrorism will surely follow, and the war we failed to complete now our children will have to complete later -- and under far less advantageous circumstances.

... Giving more aid or support to Muslim nations will not be seen as generosity, it will be seen as tribute or ransom money, and the credit will go to the terrorists ... thereby inviting further acts of terror. (This is the pattern that the Palestinian terrorists have already demonstrated for years.)

That is the thing that the advocates of "peace" just don't seem to understand: Peace cannot be achieved unilaterally. When an enemy is determined to make war -- even a pathetically weak and under-armed enemy -- then a war will be fought ... or the enemy will become your conqueror.

It seems that the thugs of Iraq are not limited to the criminals and terrorists, some of them work for the New York Times. Here's an extract from a letter from an Iraqi to the eternally boyish publisher of the Times:

My family has a property in the green zone in down town Baghdad on Abi-Nuas street. The New York Times rents the adjacent property. For several weeks now my brother Ali Al Ali has been denied automobile access to our property by security guards. Until two days ago we thought this was a coalition security measure. Now we known these guards are not coalition personal but are instead the private security force employed by your news paper.

The family property has two store fronts. Yesterday (Saturday November 15, 2003) my brother and two hired men were in one of the stores installing shelves. My brother lost his livelihood in the war and needs to open this store to make a living. His efforts were interrupted by several of the security guards employed by your paper. He was knocked roughly to the floor and threatened. Your guards pointed there AK-47 rifles and my brother and his work men and told them they would be shot if they did not leave immediately.

I feel sure if learned the United States Army was responsible an incident such as this you would feel obligated to publish the story and condemn the act.

From a letter to the Publisher of the New York Times viaInstapundit.com:

Commenting on Bush in London, David Warren uses an analogy to the life of the late Fitz Cramer:

The monocle-wearing Prof. Kraemer, a curious survival of Wilhelmine Germany, and an accomplished scholar of international law, political philosophy, and history, died of kidney failure at age 95 in Washington on Sept. 8, as I just learned... From a small office in the Pentagon, he taught a generation of U.S. officers not only the principles of geostrategic warfare; but the reasons why it must be fought and won.

Kraemer grasped .... that the great weakness of the United States and the West, after the defeat of Nazism, was identical with the great weakness of Germany that had allowed the rise of Hitler. In each case, it is the existence of an intellectual elite who think about abstractions instead of realities, and whose instinct to appease a mortal enemy is founded in a lazy, cowardly, and conceited moral relativism. Kraemer was father to the phrase, "provocative weakness" -- in two words, the reason why the West is under attack today from such terror networks as Al Qaeda....

Kraemer was a man who believed in fighting for the truth, regardless of consequences; and of fighting with no option of surrender or even compromise with evil. He was no "mere conservative". Donald Rumsfeld is his true protege in the U.S. government today, and to a lesser extent President Bush.

These are men who realize the U.S., and all free peoples, have a mortal enemy in ideological Islamism, and that it must be defeated rather than accommodated. This has made them deeply unpopular with the intelligentsia of our time, and especially with that half-educated reflection of it in the mass media. Europe and Canada are much farther gone down the rat-hole to surrender, but the U.S. itself also teeters....

As I write, the anti-Bush demonstrations are cranking up in the London streets.... A little knowledge is a dangerous thing -- and those with little knowledge of how the world unfolds, demand that America and Britain give up defending themselves against the menace made visible in the morning of 9/11/01.

To what is apparently a majority of polling respondents on the European continent, little democratic Israel is the world's most dangerous country, and George W. Bush its most dangerous man....

As in the 1930s, leftists and pacifists on the streets of Europe directly advanced the triumphs of Nazism, so today the demonstrators work to advance the triumphs of Islamism. For they refuse to acknowledge the consequences of ignoring such an enemy.

And so the bombing of synagogues in Istanbul draws, from e.g. Britain's Stop the War Coalition, no whimper of distress. But the arrival in England of the Western world's pre-eminent statesman ignites a self-righteous outcry....

In their own subjective world of illusions, the demonstrators demand not surrender, but an unobtainable "peace". However, in the objective world of cause and effect, they are the reliable allies of the people who flew airplanes into the World Trade Centre, who blow up Jews in synagogues and supermarkets, who tortured and murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and bulldozed their bodies into mass graves.

Better ideas require better arguments. And who can make a better argument for the destruction of America and the rise of Islam as a world government than Allah Himself? Nobody, that's who.

It is time, once again, to check in with the god of our enemies as he tracks Western Civilization's compulsion to off itself on a daily basis:

Anyway, come now, Jews! Come, let us cleanse our palates of western decadence together with a few glorious quotations from today's news. First:

"Dear President Bush, I'm sure you'll be having a nice little tea party with your fellow war criminal, Tony Blair. Please wash the cucumber sandwiches down with a glass of blood, with my compliments. Harold Pinter Playwright"

And second:

"Germans attribute [Michael] Moore's popularity to his mirroring of what is popular thinking in Europe, particularly after opposition grew in France and Germany to the US-led war in Iraq. . . . [A] fan said he gave legitimacy to negative images of the United States and an outlet for frustration with Washington's policies. 'He reinforces all the stereotypes we have of America,' said Stefan Baumann. 'We can point to him and say, see, even Americans are saying that about themselves.' "

Kufr, if this is the famed "European open-mindedness" that Allah has heard so much about, then fucking sign Allah up. Actually, Allah has already signed up: Recently he felt himself doubting whether the Jew really is a baby-eating subhuman species, so he watched "Jew Suss" again and his doubts evaporated. The film, like, totally reinforced his stereotypes. That is European logic in a nutshell, infidels, which is why you are so profoundly silly to be talking to them about fighting a war on terror. To be sure there are still a few pockets of free-thinkers here and there, but even among the holdouts it is only a matter of time. Look at it this way: Where else but in Europe would a government convene an emergency cabinet meeting about anti-Semitism and conclude it by giving $8 billion to Muslims? Where else would your president be compared unfavorably with fucking cancer? Oho! It is going to be another long century, isn't it, kufr?

From:Allah Is In The House:

Kaanapali Coast,
Maui, Hawaii
March 1978
John Pfahl

From: George Eastman House

"Respect the worthy and employ the capable; put talented people in key positions, then all the best of the realm will be pleased and will want to be members of your court."

"In the market-places, charge land-rent, but don't tax the goods; or make concise regulations and don't even charge rent. Do this, and all the merchants in the realm will be pleased, and will want to set up shop in your markets."

"At the borders, make inspections but don't charge tariffs, then all the travelers in the realm will be pleased and will want to traverse your highways."

"If the farmers merely have to help each other with the fields, and do not have to pay an additional tax, then all the farmers in the realm will be pleased, and will want to till the fields."

"If you do not charge fines to the unemployed in your marketplaces, then all the people in the realm will be pleased, and will want to become your subjects."

"If you are really able to put these five points into practice, then the people from the neighboring states will look up to you as a parent. Now, there has never been a case of someone being able to consistently succeed in making children attack their own parents. This being the case, you will have no enemies in the realm. The one who has no enemies in the realm is the vicegerent of Heaven. There is no case of one who attained to this level, and who did not attain to true kingship."

Mencius

"I pose you your question:
shall you uncover honey / where maggots are?
I hunt among stones"
--Charles Olson, The Kingfishers

It is always good to take a step back from the on rushing churn of our days and try to find some touchstones to steady us in the current.

In 1977 Paul Johnson published Enemies of Society which is now out of print. The central argument of that prescient book concerned the nature of civilization and the absolute necessity for its preservation and advancement. Like any other loaded term in our confused era, “civlization” is often put into play as a dubious concept, one we can jettison in our quest for whatever new personal freedoms we have come to regard as indispensible to our nature.

But as wise men always remind us, there is no freedom without civilization, only the rule of force and the tyranny of the one or the faction over the many. Because of this it is refreshing and reinvigorating to come back to Johnson’s credo. Below is a “condensed” version of these truths. The essay from which they are derived, "A New Deuteronomy," is found in the extended entry.

Civilization will always be at risk, and every age is prudent to regard the threats to it with unique seriousness. All good societies breed enemies whose combined hostility can prove fatal. There is no easy defensive formula, and the most effective strategy is to identify the malign forces quickly, as and when they appear.

At the same time, there are certain salient principles, valid always but of special relevance today, which we should take particular care to uphold. They are the Ten Pillars of our Civilization:

1. The first, and perhaps the most important, is to reassert our belief in moral absolutes. It is not true that all codes of human conduct are relative, and reflect cultural assumptions and economic arrangements which do not necessarily possess any authority. It is not true that there is no such thing as absolute right, and absolute wrong.

2. Certain acts are intrinsically, always and everywhere wrong.

3. Democracy is the least evil, and on the whole the most effective, form of government.

4. Free institutions will only survive where there is the rule of law.

5. Always, and in all situations, to stress the importance of the individual.

6. There is nothing morally unhealthy about the existence of a middle class in society.

7. When the claims of freedom conflict with the pursuit of other desirable objects of public policy, freedom should normally prevail.

8. The correct and honourable use of words is the first and natural credential of civilized status.

9. Trust science. Science, properly defined, is an essential part of civilization. To be anti-science is not the mark of a civilized human being, or of a friend of humanity.

10. No consideration should ever deflect us from the pursuit and recognition of truth, for that essentially is what constitutes civilization itself.

The entire essay can be found at..

Continued...

"I went on to test the program in every way I could devise. I strained it to expose its weaknesses. I ran it for high-mass stars and low-mass stars, for stars born exceedingly hot and those born relatively cold. I ran it assuming the superfluid currents beneath the crust to be absent -- not because I wanted to know the answer, but because I had developed an intuitive feel for the answer in this particular case. Finally I got a run in which the computer showed the pulsar's temperature to be less than absolute zero. I had found an error. I chased down the error and fixed it. Now I had improved the program to the point where it would not run at all."

--George Greenstein,
Frozen Star: Of Pulsars, Black Holes and the Fate of Stars

Ah, those AP photo editors. They look but they do not see.

US Army soldiers take rest during patrol in Baghdad suburb, Monday Nov. 17, 2003. U.S. forces have reacted to the increasing attacks in which dozens of Americans and their allies have died by mounting a massive show of force in central and northern Iraq. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)

From the always admirable: lgf

I pledge (on a revocable basis)
A smidgen of my attention
To The Rainbow of Diversity,

And to The United Planet of Well Meaning Persons,
And to The Elite of Technosavvy, Highly Educated Nice People
For which it stands (sometimes),

And to All Global Cultures and Ethnic Traditions
(Each one just as good as the next), divisible,
Under a Nothing as big as the Universe

With Liberty,
Plus License,
Plus Free cable TV,
Plus Unlimited Weekend Minutes,
And JustUs for All
Those that agree
One hundred percent with Me.

Maria: "I can't believe it, it's like a dream. What's wrong?"
Arnold: "I just had a terrible thought: what if this is a dream?"
Maria: "Well then kiss me quick before you wake up."
-- Total Recall

We’ve just seen the remake Total Recall, and we know what that looks like. Not bad. Exciting. Multimedia. Real time. With a bit of sex, drugs and rock and roll thrown in to keep you interested. But what, just what, will come next? It is puzzling Punditland to no end, but then it is their nature to be puzzled. We’re here explain it all with a simple formula.

Granted it is difficult to tell what a political wild-card will do once he ascends to power. Who could have known 2 days after Ronald Reagan was elected Governor of California that he’d one day be President of the United States (other than Nancy and her astrologer, that is)? Who could have known that Jesse Venture would spend the better part of his tenure as Governor of Minnesota body-slamming himself into the tarmac at every opportunity (other than James Lileks and 145,252 bloggers locked inside Live Journal, that is)?

But with Arnold, we can see what he is about to do by looking at his past. Now that his Life Achievement Oscar is in like Flynn for 2015, he can relax and use his office to relive, revitalize and remake his movies in real life. Hey, wouldn’t you?

Yup, the best way to figure out what’s about to happen is to amble down to your local video store and check out every Schwarzenegger film they’ve got for an at-home Arnold festival. If you do, you’ll be in a Vulcan mind-meld with the new governor and nothing that’s about to happen will surprise you. After all, he knows the scripts and if his opponents do not, well they’d better scramble over to scripts.com and start boning up.

Let’s go to the video tape and see what’s in store for California.

Conan the Barbarian:
Long held by those with exquisite taste in films to be the best Arnold movie ever. A film in which the essential Arnold is first exposed (in more ways than one) to the world at large. A film that has too long been allowed to languish in B-movie purgatory as a two-fer-one with "Bucket of Blood" at Amazon.com. With the inaugural moment, Arnold will signal the touchstone of his political philosophy during a photo-op with the President:

George W Bush: Arnold, what is best in life?
Arnold: To crush Democrats, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the feminists!

Predator:
Wherein Arnold plays last man standing and uses primitive weapons to destroy an invasive alien species.

This film telegraphs that the borders down Mexico way are about to get a bit more dangerous to cross. Nobody sneaking into California can now really be sure that there isn’t some very large and heavily spiked tree trunk set to unload on them as they crawl through culverts. Flaming arrows following blood-curdling battle screams are going to keep San Diego up nights for some time to come.

Dillon: Simple set-up. One day operation. We pick up their trail at the border, run 'em down, grab ‘em and bounce them back across the border before anybody knows they were here.
Arnold: Whaddya mean "we"?

Look for razor wire bouquets from the Pacific to Nevada. Get long on companies that manufacture land mines.

Batman & Robin’s Mr. Freeze:
This is an easy one. Those “essential” programs essential only to about one half of one percent of the population?

Freeze: I'm afraid my condition has left me cold to your pleas of mercy

As for the Indian casinos getting to keep their all their money?

Freeze: Tonight, hell freezes over!

Kindergarten Cop:

“Oh come on... STOP WHINING! You teachers are soft! You lack discipline! WELL I'VE GOT NEWS FOR YOU, YOU ARE MINE NOW! YOU BELONG TO ME!”

Arnold has sworn to sift the crap out of the fouled sandbox that passes for public education in California.

Well, it is time to pass a note over the head of the local teachers’ union that says: JOKE TIME IS OVER.

Teachers’ Union: So who are you, man?
Arnold loads his shot-gun
Arnold: I'm the party pooper.

Prepare to hear the massive wails of tens of thousands of teachers working six hours a day and effectively seven months a year that they just don’t get ENOUGH MONEY for this part-time career.

Look for legions of underemployed and underbrained school administrators to start filing for early retirement at full pay before the frost is on the pumpkin.

Arnold’s tactics here will be simple and straightforward: The kids get the money

Continued...

As a company created to scam, Infotel can't afford shame. But it can afford a nifty Beverly Hills lawyer, Mr. Wayne Brosman,(of Ryan, Brosman, Hammers & Bozo) who evidently takes kindly to the representation of companies even more reprehensible than law firms. His 'demand' letter reproduced by damnum absque injuria makes for some interesting reading.

Infotel Demand Letter
Below is the text of the letter sent by Infotel attorney Wayne Brosman of Ryan, Brosman & Hammers. A scanned version of the letter will follow:
...The California Constitution includes a right to privacy, which requires that you take affirmative steps to stop this threat from being consummated. In addition, you have already violated California law by allowing other postings of personal information, as well as express directions to Infotel's customers to breach their contracts. Enclosed please find my prelimnary analysis of the actionable statements appearing on your website.

Unless your message page is taken down by the close of business today, November 14, 2003, Infotel Publications and the individuals being harmed with [sic] file suit against you and your agents for invasion of privacy, misrepresentation, and interference with economic relations."

The table of "wrongs" that Brosman heaps up following his text are instructive to say the least.

Why is this man smiling?

I'm sorry, but the fix is in at Rolling Stone. A USA today report on Rolling Stone's 100 Best Albums (It's certainly a thrill: 'Sgt. Pepper' is best album) is at pains to tell us how this list was arrived at -- special group, large sample, people from all over the music industry, Ernst & Young point system, etc. But it is all balderdash. Anybody who has spent any time watching publsher Jann Wenner over the years knows that the following list is derived from Jann and Jann alone. After all, that's one of the things you can do when you're a publisher. Here we call a cigar a cigar and this is:

Jann Wenner's Best Album List
1. The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
2. The Beach Boys, Pet Sounds
3. The Beatles, Revolver
4. Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited
5. The Beatles, Rubber Soul
6. Marvin Gaye, What's Going On
7. The Rolling Stones, Exile on Main Street
8. The Clash, London Calling
9. Bob Dylan, Blonde on Blonde
10. The Beatles, The Beatles (The White Album)

Cynical types might also observe that this list is top-loaded with the unrequited loves of Jann, but we're not that cynical.

...we've got to locate that person and stop him.

For the last few weeks I've noticed that Technorati has been crumbling, but I didn't know why. On my 3rd or 4th email to them I must admit I got a bit testy. But then I hadn't heard about what they were up against. Dave Sifry lays it out in Technorati Growing Pains:

Allow me to give you some growth statistics: One year ago, when I started Technorati on a single server in my basement, we were adding between 2,000-3,000 new weblogs each day, not counting the people who were updating sites we were already tracking. In March of this year, when we switched over to a 5 server cluster, we were keeping up with about 4,000-5,000 new weblogs each day. Right now, we're adding 8,000-9,000 new weblogs every day, not counting the 1.2 Million weblogs we already are tracking. That means that on average, a brand new weblog is created every 11 seconds. We're also seeing about 100,000 weblogs update every day as well, which means that on average, a weblog is updated every 0.86 seconds.

Fairly stunning numbers. I just want to say that I apologize for sending Dave a "What Is Happening!?" flame and promise to ease up on his servers by posting less. Except for this one which will now consume .86 seconds of update time.

In an illuminating response to Chris Bowers' hapless argument for the the "inevitability" of Howard Dean, Demosphia presents The Centrifugal Politics of "Little Democracy". Unlike the Bower's meditation on how wishes become horses, Demosophia does not demolish as much as instruct Bowers on the importance of being lucid rather than a Lotus Eater:

The flaw in [Bower's] reasoning is that it assumes Republicans did something deliberate to increase their vote and support base, when what actually happened is that the electorate was simply returning to the ideological consensus of the founding. It is precisely those founding principles that have worked successfully to produce the electoral resource available to the Republican Party. The reason for the shift of the public to the right, and the decline in the fortunes of Democrats is, I'm afraid, far more serious than any Republican strategy to increase the clout of their constituent groups. It is the failure of many Democrats to understand their own country. They have simply been led to regard the founding values as subversive, and so fewer and fewer voters are willing to entrust the care and maintenance of the nation to them. There may still be a wing of the Democratic Party that remains sensitive to these values, but it may be on the verge of becoming completely coopted by the Republicans.

The sad thing here is that not only will nobody in the Democtratic party recognize this, they cannot recognize it. The sadder thing is not that nobody in the Democratic party will do anything about this, but that there is nothing they can do.

There's a lot of talk about the ultimate candidate "tacking back to the center" after obtaining the nomination and I do not doubt that will happen. But a political party is not a tiny little sailboat but more like a supertanker. Yes, you can change direction and even come to a complete halt, but it takes a good deal of time and foresight. And those two things are no longer resources held by the Democratic party.

"If you're not in the Infotel Business Directories, how will they find you?"
Infotel;"Making the world just a little smaller"
-- Slogans on Infotel Web Site

Over the last few days a lot of attention has been given to a shabby con run out of Canada by the Frank family called "Infotel." Essentially, this is one of those "get the company to pay" bits of sleaze that run as low-level infections throughout the corporate world. It only usually falls apart when the scamsters try to shakedown a small company that knows what it orders and what it doesn't.

Canada, long a haunt for fly-by-night telemarketing con-artists and shabby porn peddlars, gives companies like this shelter from US laws. I guess because Canada needs every sort of business it can bet these days.

At any rate, there hasn't been a lot of detail on how the scam or scams of Infotel are done until now when a 'former employee' has detailed them. The details are fascinating reading [Brackets = Added Information]:

Posted by a "former employee" in the comments section of "damnum absque injuria"

AMERI CORP aka INFOTEL PUBLICATIONS aka CBSI

Hey I worked there in Sales; this is [how the scams work]……

Categorized as a Legal Counterfeit Company because the products are real it is still a Telemarketing Scam because of the way the products are sold and there is no way of knowing how many are distributed.

Infotel/CBSI Products: (as seen at www.mediacorp.com )

DIRECTORY OF AMERICAN BUSINESS [Price: $379.95]
INFOTEL TOLL FREE DIRECTORY [Price: $379.95]
BRITISH BUSINESS DIRECTORY [Price: £189.95]
ANNUAIRE NATIONAL DES ENTERPRISE FRANCAIS Or FRENCH BUSINESS DIRECTORY (FRANCE) [Price: €304.14]
CANADIAN BUSINESS DIRECTORY [Price: $379.95]
AT & T NATIONAL BUSINESS BUYER’S GUIDE [Price: $12.95]
PAPER ROLLS*

These are National Business to Business Directories. Because they are National (ex. all the U.S. in one book) they are ... worthless. Nevertheless, they are what they are and are sold as that and no more.

The only illegal premise is the falsifying of the fact that the company was previously listed. This is fraud and the BBB knows it.

The *Paper Rolls are for Credit Card machines etc. This nickel & dime Scam starts with the sales pitch “You are running out of paper etc.” The paper is sold by weight. Again the products do exist. This time around the small fry is caught thinking it’s his supplier calling. Nothing illegal here, just gullible employees.

Part 1 (Directories)

The Scam starts with the Sales Pitch directed at the unknowing small fry at a company: "Would you like to continue your listing in the 2xxx Directory of American Business, it's the National Business to Business Directory, Yellow and White pages."

The Yellow and White pages draw them in. It's a Phone Book to the small fry. They were previously listed? (This is the Scam, they were not)

The Scam continues with a Shipping Department call: "This is so and so from the Shipping Department of Infotel Publications", I am calling to confirm the details..." The Scam here is to get the small fry to admit he/she is authorized to make the purchase. This call is taped.

If yes, the Scam is set in motion. If no, then it is returned to the sales where it may be pitched again to the same company.

With the Scam set in motion, the company is listed in the directory and on the website www.mediacorp.com. The directory is sent by UPS to the company.

Part 2 (Directories)

The collection department (known in telemarketing as The BOILER room) handles the non paid invoices which make up a large % of the take. The monitored call, the proof of purchase, the authorized small fry, all contributes to the success of the Scam.

The BOILER room rotates the unpaid invoices trying to keep the calls to companies at the US legal debt collecting limit avoiding BBB & Attorney General Complaints. The goal is to get to the Owner, President, or V.P. etc. This is the turn point of the Scam. The Owner, President, V.P. etc. will pay the Full Invoice price, Partial or a Lower Fee or Nothing.

REMEMBER: YOUR INVOICE SAYS 2 YR LISTING, IF YOU PAY, THAT WILL BE FOR THE FIRST YEAR, AND ANOTHER INVOICE WILL FOLLOW NEXT YEAR!

FAQ

Who do they target?
Any and all Businesses including Non-Profit Organizations even Churches (But no Synagogues)

Do I have to pay?
No

How do I stop the Calls?
Call the Better Business Bureau

But Better…..
Alert the Attorney General

Who are these guys?
Canadian Telemarketers aimed at the US and Europe

The Owners
Gordon Frank, Ted Frank, Sean Frank

Even the ... mother (Rosalyn Cobrin) of these CROOKS works there, it’s a FAMILY BUSINESS!

Locations:
Montreal, Toronto

More info......

http://www.ripoffreport.com/report42956.htm

http://archive.mail-list.com/ukpmln/msg04014.html

http://www.state.vt.us/atg/press03212002.htm

http://www.atg.state.vt.us/display.php?pubsec=4&curdoc=171

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2003/07/ambus.htm

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2002/11/handson.htm

http://news.spamcop.net/pipermail/spamcop-list/2002-September/017322.html

http://www.consumersgroup.com/crimewatch/yellowpages.htm

http://www.nclnet.org/top10telemarketingscams.html

http://www.oag.state.ny.us/telecommunications/scams.html

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/menu-tmark.htm

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/telemarketing/

http://www.courttv.com/archive/legalcafe/lifestyle/telemarket/telemarket_links.html

http://www.newstepsolutions.com/telemarketing.htm

http://www.fraud.org/tips/telemarketing/general.htm

Posted by: FORMER EMPLOYEE at October 31, 2003 04:46 PM

Inviting the carping critics of the Iraq- al Qaeda Connection to step-off, is a detailed examination the reality as contained in:Case Closed published in the Weekly Standard.

OSAMA BIN LADEN and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda--perhaps even for Mohamed Atta--according to a top secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

The memo, dated October 27, 2003, was sent from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was written in response to a request from the committee as part of its investigation into prewar intelligence claims made by the administration. Intelligence reporting included in the 16-page memo comes from a variety of domestic and foreign agencies, including the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency. Much of the evidence is detailed, conclusive, and corroborated by multiple sources. Some of it is new information obtained in custodial interviews with high-level al Qaeda terrorists and Iraqi officials, and some of it is more than a decade old. The picture that emerges is one of a history of collaboration between two of America's most determined and dangerous enemies.

What follows is a detailed profile of the memo and the links it exposes. Worth reading and reading widely.

Overcoming several painful years of toil on the auto show circuit (after his original show was canned in 1968), Space Ghost rallied to become the talk show legend that he is today. Celebrate his achievements while carving out a few of your own behind this custom desk inspired by the kidney-shaped fixture that has been on the set of Space Ghost Coast to Coast for almost ten years.

The gracefully curved desk is constructed with a brushed aluminum body and a frosted plexiglass inlayed top. Mood lighting is built into the front overhang and the desktop is self-illuminated.

A 15" Philips LCD television pops up seamlessly from the desktop. A Sony Dream System supplies the built-in sound and a mini-fridge is furnished. The desk includes ports for computer hook-ups and AC power outlets. A cordless telephone is also provided.

The desk comes complete with a Custom Executive Desk Chair. Leather with Space Ghost logo appliqu?, this luxurious chair includes multi-tilt positions with push button adjustability and a four-zone, eight-motor massage system.

Price? A mere $39,000. Order now at: Space Ghost Desk and Chair

"At least 40 million Americans every night, it's estimated, watch the network news. ... In Will Roger's observation, what you knew was what you read in the newspaper. Today for growing millions of Americans, it's what they see and hear on their television sets.

"Now how is this network news determined? A small group of men, numbering perhaps no more than a dozen anchormen, commentators, and executive producers, settle upon the 20 minutes or so of film and commentary that's to reach the public....

"They decide what 40 to 50 million Americans will learn of the day's events in the nation and in the world. We cannot measure this power and influence by the traditional democratic standards, for these men can create national issues overnight. They can make or break by their coverage and commentary a moratorium on the war. They can elevate men from obscurity to national prominence within a week. They can reward some politicians with national exposure and ignore others.

"Nor is their power confined to the substantive. A raised eyebrow, an inflection of the voice, a caustic remark dropped in the middle of a broadcast can raise doubts in a million minds about the veracity of a public official or the wisdom of a Government policy...

"Now what do Americans know of the men who wield this power? Of the men who produce and direct the network news, the nation knows practically nothing. Of the commentators, most Americans know little other than that they reflect an urbane and assured presence seemingly well-informed on every important matter. We do know that to a man these commentators and producers live and work in the geographical and intellectual confines of Washington, D.C., or New York City, the latter of which James Reston terms the most unrepresentative community in the entire United States.

"Both communities bask in their own provincialism, their own parochialism.

"We can deduce that these men read the same newspapers. They draw their political and social views from the same sources. Worse, they talk constantly to one another, thereby providing artificial reinforcement to their shared viewpoints. Do they allow their biases to influence the selection and presentation of the news?..."

Answer: Here

"He’d Nexis’d me! I was really impressed." -- Cheryl Tan

Michael Hale and Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan

Met: August 2001
Engaged: October 2002
Projected Wedding Date: Feb. 14, 2004

Michael Hale, 43, the floppy-haired assistant editor of The New York Times’ Sunday Arts and Leisure section, is engaged to Cheryl Tan, 28, a senior fashion writer at InStyle....

The bride plans to wear a halter-topped Narciso Rodriguez gown—the same design that Meg Ryan wore on last April’s cover of InStyle. To secure the frock, Ms. Tan went on a waiting list at Bergdorf Goodman like anyone else. "It was the first dress I tried on and I said to my sister, ‘Oh my God! Am I going to feel like I married the first guy I slept with?’....’"

The couple [met at] an Asian-American Journalists Association event at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco. "This is going to sound a bit dorky," Mr. Hale said, "but you know, we’re both journalists, and we take that very seriously." Ms. Tan, a streak-haired, full-cheeked looker who was born in Singapore and attended Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, was working as a fashion writer for The Baltimore Sun at the time....

They bumped into each other the next day at a cutting-edge panel on how to cover transsexual and transgender communities. Mr. Hale had apparently done a little extracurricular research overnight. "He said ‘Oh, I liked this story, and I liked your treatment of that,’" Ms. Tan said. "And I’m like, ‘Huh? No one reads The Baltimore Sun.’ But then I realized it: He’d Nexis’d me! I was really impressed."

She arrived in New York for Fashion Week in fall 2001 and suddenly found herself covering Ground Zero stories. She was constantly calling Mr. Hale at The Times’ headquarters, and their romance was rapidly expedited. They began commuting between Manhattan and D.C., playing lots of board games ("Never play Trivial Pursuit with this man," she said darkly), watching The X-Files over the phone when they couldn’t be together in the flesh.

From:THE NEW YORK OBSERVER

Freidrich at 2blowhards.com offers a compelling insight into the "tri-polar" nature of some of America's greatest superheroes. In his precise of "Stan Lee and the Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book," he notes:

The collaborative nature of the development of new superhero comics is well illustrated in the case of Spider-Man. According to Raphael and Spurgeon:

"In early 1962, Stan Lee expressed the desire to do a teenage superhero using the spider motif. Jack Kirby had long wanted to do an insect-related superhero…With Lee’s input, Kirby began to craft an introductory tale, rejecting some of the more fantastic Lee story elements, grounding the character in a domestic situation featuring a kindly aunt and uncle, and giving the superhero a secret origin revolving around a neighbor who happened to be a scientist. At Lee’s request, the character was turned over to Steve Ditko who, working from a synopsis and Kirby’s pages, produced an inspired visual take on the character that drove its story for decades—bottle-thick glasses, slumped shoulders, and a homemade costume."

In short, many of the most memorable and human aspects of Spider-Man were actually contributions by Kirby and Ditko. In fact, the 'hybrid' nature of the Marvel comics of the early 1960s led to their most aesthetically distinct feature: Stan Lee's wisecracking dialogue floating over far more serious and, in some cases, even somber art. The tension successfully conveys something of the spirit of being a teenager, but I'm not sure a single 'auteur' could have captured it.

"Something of the spirit?" We'd say that a wisecrack floating on top of a somber spirit is the very essence of a teenager. And it may have a lot to do with the success of Spiderman.

Not the truth that's in it, but the truth of what's outside of it.
Click to enlarge

Today's New York Times, as pointed out by Roger Simon sports a spiffy graphic detailing a number of factors in "Post-War" Iraq. How "Post" the war in Iraq actually is is anybody's guess, but the Times is out, as usual, to control the debate by controlling the Power Point elements.

Powerpoint reasoning has become increasingly popular in the last decade and increasingly stupid, as Edward Tuftes notes: "PowerPoint templates (ready-made designs) usually weaken verbal and spatial reasoning,and almost always corrupt statistical analysis."[Source]

The graphic reproduced above is a classic case of data manipulation. It seems to tell a story about Iraq today, and, in a limited sense, it does. But does it tell the whole story? Of course not. To tell the whole story about Iraq today the very least you'd want to have is a graphic that takes a look at an entire year. After all, that's when we like to get the story about corporations, our lives, and other significant personal and public histories.

Here's an example of what the Times might have done it it was actually dedicated to the a fair and balanced" snapshot of conditions in Iraq. It would have made it for a year and included, perhaps, this list of numbers indicative of Pre-War Iraq:

Some of the figures are easy to ascertain, but it would have been a service to the nation for the Times to put its staff on the project so that all the relevant indicators could be filled in.

Security Indicators in Pre-War Iraq
Top 55 Baathists at large: 55
Total Baathists Killed or Arrested: 0
Iraq citizens in mass graves: +300,000
Top Baathists in graves: 0
U.S. Troops in Iraq: 0
Non-US (Iraqi) Troops in Iraq: 375,000
Number of dictators: 1
Typical number of daily attacks by the state on Iraq citizens: Unknown
Iraq citizens killed by Iraq: Unknown
Annualized State Murder Rate: Unknown
Number of Republican Guards: 80,000
Number of tons unaccounted Anthrax: 17
Iraq citizens killed by gas: +5000
Villages destroyed: +3,000
Iraqi children "killed by sanctions": 500,000

Economic trends in Pre-war Iraq
Non-Baathist Unemployment rate:
Average Government monthly salary: $3.50
Electricity produced nationwide:
Electricity produced Baghdad:
Oil Production:
Diesel and Kerosene Available:
Percentage of GDP controlled by Hussain:
Percentage of GDP controlled by citizens:
Number of independent newspapers:
Number of independent media outlets:
Non-Baathist life expectency:
Internal Deportation of Kurds and Turkomen populations: 900,000
Inflation since 1991: 900%

Just a few of the points that might have been added to give the NYT powerpoint some persuasive power.

DANIEL HENNINGER, in today's Wall Street Journal, proposes applying the metric of television sta