Flexible Reality
Saturday, July 10, 2004
Mozilla says its Web browsers also are accessible to hackers
By David Sheets
Of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch
07/09/2004
A Web browser promoted recently as a safe alternative to Microsoft Corp.'s troubled Internet Explorer appears to have problems of its own.
The Mozilla Organization has confirmed that its Mozilla and Firefox browsers have a security flaw that allows hackers access to users' computers. If exploited, the flaw opens a path for attackers to run computer applications remotely, particularly if the applications haven't been updated to repair their own security risks.
The "shell" problem, as Mozilla calls it in the company's announcement, also could cause computers to freeze. Shells are layers of programs that understand and execute commands entered by users.
Only computers running Microsoft's Windows operating systems are affected. Mozilla's confirmation Thursday followed initial reports of the flaw online at Full Disclosure, a public-security mailing list. Mozilla has posted updates and repair information on its Web site at www.mozilla.org/security/shell.html.
The confirmation comes a day after the U.S. Computer Emergency Response Team - the group chiefly responsible for defending against online threats - urged computer users to find alternatives to Internet Explorer because of its significant vulnerabilities. About 95 percent of all Internet browsing worldwide uses Internet Explorer.
Microsoft acknowledges that its browser has at least one flaw the company has yet to fix. Without a fix, Internet Explorer users are vulnerable to hackers looking specifically for personal information residing on personal computers.
A release date for that repair has yet to be announced.
Reporter David Sheets
E-mail: dsheets@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 314-340-8389
Friday, July 09, 2004
Once and For All: THERE WAS NO LINK BETWEEN IRAQ-QAEDA !! Got That ??
Senate Report Sees No Formal Iraq-Qaeda TiesFri Jul 9, 2004 04:40 PM ET
By Caroline Drees, Security Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda in the 1990s never led to a formal relationship and there is no evidence Iraq helped conduct an al Qaeda attack, a report by a bipartisan Senate committee said on Friday.
The findings by the Senate Intelligence Committee came less than a month after the government-established commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks said there was no evidence of a "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and Osama bin Laden's Islamic militant network.
Assertions that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and could provide chemical or biological agents to al Qaeda for attacks on the United States were a main justification for President Bush's decision to invade and occupy Iraq.
No such weapons have been found, and the Senate panel said most of the U.S. intelligence community's judgments about Iraqi WMD were overstated or unsupported by underlying intelligence.
Bush and his top aides have stood firm on assertions of links between Iraq and al Qaeda, with Vice President Dick Cheney forcefully maintaining that evidence may yet emerge depicting an Iraqi role in the Sept. 11 attacks carried out by al Qaeda.
"The Central Intelligence Agency reasonably assessed that there were likely several instances of contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda throughout the 1990s, but that these contacts did not add up to an established formal relationship," the report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said.
"The Central Intelligence Agency's assessment that to date there was no evidence proving Iraqi complicity or assistance in an al Qaeda attack was reasonable and objective. No additional information has emerged to suggest otherwise," said the committee's "Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq."
Following the Sept. 11 commission's report last month, Cheney suggested in a television interview he might have more information than the panel. The commission issued a terse statement on Tuesday saying the vice president had no more information than commission investigators.
As part of the White House response to the Sept. 11 commission's report, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice also said she believed what the panel was actually saying was that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein did not control al Qaeda. The commission's chairmen flatly rejected her interpretation.
The Senate report, which focused primarily on the intelligence community's reporting on suspected Iraqi WMD, said Saddam might have used al Qaeda to conduct attacks in the event of war if he were sufficiently desperate.
But it said, "No information has emerged thus far to suggest that Saddam did try to employ al Qaeda in conducting terrorist attacks."
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He Sees the Forest and The Trees...
Letters To the Editor:NY Times: July 9th, 2004
Re "Bin Laden Is Said to Be Organizing for a U.S. Attack" (front page, July 9):
After the heavy news coverage of the presumptive Democratic presidential ticket, the government has released yet another terror warning. This warning is so vague that it encompasses a six-month time frame and numerous possible targets. It's so benign that it doesn't even warrant a raising of the terror alert level.
The coincidental timing and utter uselessness of this alert should cause Americans to raise their eyebrows and to ask whether the Bush administration is playing politics with fear.
JONATHAN CAREY
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Thinking about Selling On eBay?
Note: My experience selling on eBay is a mixed bag, especially lately. In general, Sellers expect to receive 60% more than the item usually sells for, and Buyers expect to buy items for 40% less than they actually spend. Combining all the fees associated with selling on eBay, the actual direct selling fees amount to 8.7%, plus an additional 2.6% to PayPal, meaning Sellers can expect to clear 89% of what they sell. Then add in the indirect selling costs, like Online access costs, packaging, etc and a Seller ends up with more like 75-80% of the selling price.When selling the same item in a retail store, a Seller can easily get 15-20% more for their item than what it brings on eBay. Thus instead of eBay being a great sales avenue, it turns out to be roughly equivalent to running a retail store. Actually it probably will be slightly better; but not by more than about 10-15% of Sales.
The only real way of making worthwhile money on eBay is by either selling stuff where your cost of sales, (what you paid for the item) is less than half what you sell it for on eBay. If it exceeds 50% of the sale price, you're doing a lot of work for almost nothing.
The most unpleasant aspect of the whole online auction landscape is that in years gone by there were websites, (primarily I'm referring to Haggle Online), that did not charge Buyers or Sellers anything for doing almost exactly what eBay does. Haggle Online actually had more transactions at one time than eBay.
Worse yet, the depreciation of assets has snowballed online thanks to eBay's transactions. In the past, new equipment could be sold on eBay for 70-75% of it's street price, on average; but that has now slipped to 60% or less except for select "hot items".
Then a Seller gets to deal with the PITA 1%'ers. Most Sellers "feedback" from transactions is highly favorable with most Sellers achieving 96%+ positive ratings. Yet as in other realms of life, there will be about 1-3% of a Sellers transactions that cause problems, either from Buyer remorse, shipping damages, improperly described items, fraud by Buyers or Sellers, conceit, or just bad luck. It is not uncommon for a "bad transaction" to gobble up hours of time attempting to address the fallout from these dealings. In a retail environment these bad transactions usually end up favoring the Seller; but online with eBay they usually favor the Buyer.
So if you have a bunch of stuff that you paid almost nothing for, and can easily triple your cost of sales as a selling price, you will probably end up being satisfied with eBay. Otherwise, there may be a better alternative such as listings in "Bargain Publications", Flea Markets, or a Co-Op Retail store.
Am I staying with eBay? In brief: yes, for the time being. Am I evangelical about eBay? No. It's just another in a long line of Big Businesses that control a market segment at a point in time. Any company that earns income from transactions with twenty million people or more acts like a utility company; ie: "we have what you need, and we are the only place you can go to get it, so either go with the program, or try to get what you need somewhere else"; "your individual business means almost nothing to us."
I'm Aftraid It's Going to Get Uglier
House GOP Defends Patriot Act PowersPartisan Rancor High as Plan to Soften Anti-Terror Law Is Defeated
By Dan Morgan and Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, July 9, 2004; Page A01
House Republicans, under strong pressure from the White House, narrowly defeated an effort yesterday to water down the Bush administration's signature law to combat domestic terrorism.
By a 210 to 210 tie vote that GOP leaders prolonged for 23 tumultuous minutes while they corralled dissident members, the House rejected a proposed change to the USA Patriot Act that would have barred the Justice Department from searching bookstore and library records. White House officials, citing the nearly three-year-old law's importance as an anti-terrorism tool, warned that an attempt to weaken it would be vetoed.
But the victory came only after GOP tactics infuriated Democrats and a number of Republicans. The vote, scheduled to last 15 minutes, dragged on for 38 minutes despite outraged shouts and a unified chant of "shame, shame, shame" from Democrats across the aisle.
The showdown was the latest in a series of bipartisan challenges this week on the House floor to administration positions on trade sanctions against Cuba, budget cuts in a major loan program of the Small Business Administration, and funding for programs promoting democracy abroad. Last month, the House approved a natural resources bill that slashed many of the Bush administration's initiatives in land conservation and the environment.
Last week, Senate negotiators, defying the White House, insisted on pushing for a six-year transportation bill costing $318 billion -- $62 billion above the administration ceiling.
With President Bush's approval rating slipping as a result of setbacks in the Iraq war, lawmakers in both parties appear emboldened to defy the White House and the House GOP leadership.
"The Republican leadership is out of control," said Rep. Martin T. Meehan (D-Mass.). "Today's vote on the Freedom to Read Protection Act is just the latest example of a growing trend towards abusive, closed-fist partisanship on the part of Republican House leadership."
Rep. C.L. Butch Otter (R-Idaho), a conservative and an advocate of the defeated provision, told reporters after the vote: "You win some, and some get stolen."
At one point the electronic tally board above the visitors' gallery showed the proposal passing, 219 to 201. But as the Republican whip organization went to work to get defectors to switch, the number of those voting for passage dropped steadily.
The final count recorded 18 Republicans joining 191 Democrats and Rep. Bernard Sanders (Vt.), the House's lone Independent and the chief author of the amendment to limit some powers of the Patriot Act. Sanders called the proceedings "an outrage" and "an insult to democracy."
The House has voted in the past to block portions of the Patriot Act, but Congress has never managed to alter any part of it. The law was quickly passed in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It gave the government strong powers and leeway to conduct investigations and detain suspects.
Supporters of the Sanders proposal argued that fighting terrorism did not justify encroachments on basic liberties that are implicit in the broad authority the act gives to law enforcement agencies charged with hunting terrorists.
Addressing the House before the vote, Sanders said: "All of us want to support the law enforcement officials going after terrorists, but we can defeat terrorism without allowing the government to get a secret order from a secret court without any showing of any evidence that the person whose reading records are sought is engaged in any kind of illegal conduct."
His amendment had the support of groups that include the American Booksellers Association, the American Library Association and the PEN American Center, representing writers.
Supporters of the Patriot Act say authorities need to track potential al Qaeda members who communicate using Internet facilities in public libraries.
Under the current law, authorities need a special court order to require libraries and other venues to provide records on the sale or borrowing of books and on Internet sites used.
Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), who chairs the subcommittee that drafted the underlying spending legislation before the House yesterday, said, "I believe the Patriot Act has helped" safeguard the safety of Americans.
Other Republicans said there were few examples of the act being used to invade the privacy of library users.
Yesterday's battle was over an amendment to a $39.8 billion bill financing the departments of Commerce, Justice and State for next year, which passed 397 to 18. The Senate has not taken up its version of the spending measure.
The floor fight was reminiscent of November's vote on a Medicare prescription drug program, when GOP House leaders kept the vote going for nearly three hours while they persuaded reluctant members to support passage of the bill.
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CIVIL LIBERTIES
Trampling Democracy To Protect It?
In a dramatic scene on the floor of the U.S. House yesterday, the White House and Republican leadership rigged a key vote on a bill that would have reformed the Patriot Act by requiring "law enforcement to go to a regular court instead of a secret court to get permission to demand library and Internet access records of people it is investigating."
The reform, sponsored by Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and broadly supported by 332 local governments, at one point was winning 219-201, and when the official voting time ran out "appeared to have been approved by a 213-206 vote." But even as House members screamed "Shame!," Republican leaders abused their power by indefinitely extending voting time, using the extra time to force nine of their colleagues to switch their votes and defeat the bill on a tie vote 210-210. Rep. Butch Otter (R-ID), a top sponsor of the bill who voted for it, said "You win some, and some get stolen."
See the video of Rep. Sanders' admonishing House leaders after they rigged the process and subverted democracy. And see how lawmakers who supported yesterday's legislation are today attempting to shut down the House in protest.
IGNORING THE PROTEST OF DICK CHENEY: In rigging the vote, House leaders ignored the timeless protest of Vice President Dick Cheney. In 1987, then-Rep. Dick Cheney (R-WY) criticized the practice of holding open votes to overturn bills, calling the maneuver "the most heavy-handed, arrogant abuse of power in the 10 years I've been here.''
VOTING DOWN A BILL THEY CO-SPONSORED: Rep. Zach Wamp (R-TN) and Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), both co-sponsors of Sanders's underlying legislation, refused in the waning moments to support the bill. Lofgren, who voted "present," argued the Sanders bill was too broad. What she refused to acknowledge, however, is that House rules precluded him from offering more limited legislation, and that his measure would have likely been modified in House-Senate negotiations to ultimately become the very bill she co-sponsored in the first place. But because she and Wamp cast the deciding votes against the measure, there will be no Patriot Act reform at all.
SPREADING A MYTH TO DEFEAT A BILL: The Bush administration, which threatened to veto the measure if passed, resorted to outright misinformation to confuse wavering Members of Congress. Just before the vote, the Justice Department sent a letter to House members saying that at least twice in recent months "a member of a terrorist group closely affiliated with al Qaeda used Internet services provided by a public library."
What they failed to say was that the Sanders legislation would not have precluded law enforcement from obtaining those library records – it would have merely forced them to obtain a warrant from a judge (which, if the threat was as critical as they said, should not have been difficult). Rep. Wamp, the co-sponsor who voted against his own legislation, cited the Justice Department letter as the reason he switched his vote.
CLAIMING PATRIOT ACT OPPONENTS DON'T CARE ABOUT 9/11 DEATHS: During the floor debate on the bill, Rep. Chris Shays (R-CT) had the nerve to argue that those supporting the bipartisan legislation were disregarding those killed on September 11. Referring to those in his district who died, Shays said, "I have 70 constituents who lost their rights on September 11; and to hear this debate, I am not sure [you] seem to care about that." Incredibly, Shays made his comments just moments after an impassioned speech in support of the bill by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), who represents the Manhattan district encompassing Ground Zero. Rep. Jose Serrano (D-NY), who also represents New York City and supported the bill, immediately stood up after Shays and said "to have a New Yorker hear that we somehow do not care for the victims of September 11 is really the cheapest kind of blow... I knew people that died there. I was friends with people who died there...[But] in the process of caring for the victims of September 11, no one said we were supposed to throw away the Constitution."
A PATTERN OF INTIMIDATION: Republicans have abused their power and extended votes before in order to get their way. As the NYT reports, when the controversial Medicare bill appeared headed for defeat last year, Republican leaders "held the vote open for three hours to get colleagues to switch their votes." Currently, the House ethics committee is looking into accusations that one lawmaker, Mr. Smith (who also switched his vote on the Patriot Act measure yesterday), was offered a bribe on the House floor for his vote.
Rep. Sanders' noted just how obscene yesterday's behavior was saying, "I find it ironic that, on an amendment designed to protect American democracy and our constitutional rights, the Republican leadership in the House had to rig the vote and subvert the democratic process in order to prevail." Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) said the tactics "have turned [Congress] into a laughingstock," while other lawmakers "suggested wryly that the United Nations needs to send in election observers to monitor the House."
Note: I probably need to stop reading about NeoCon Republican's or I'm going to be forced into more direct action against them. A majority of my extended family are solid Republican's, and I only have problems with two close relatives who have not a single problem with anything the NeoCon's have done or proposed.
Whatever has brought us to such a vicious religious and political divide is obscene, and should be resisted. Brute force, character assasinations, innuendo, dishonesty, lying, corruption, graft, inhumane treatment, deprivation of basic legal rights under international law, and outright hatred of others by citizens of any country are injurious to the human condition. It just hurts that much more when those engaged in such activities can call themselvers Americans. Absolute, blind faith combined with contempt for the other in either politics or religion is the ultimate social disease!
Thursday, July 08, 2004
Curiouser and Curiouser
Pentagon Says Bush Records of Service Were DestroyedBy RALPH BLUMENTHAL
NY Times
Published: July 9, 2004
HOUSTON, July 8 - Military records that could help establish President Bush's whereabouts during his disputed service in the Texas Air National Guard more than 30 years ago have been inadvertently destroyed, according to the Pentagon.
It said the payroll records of "numerous service members," including former First Lt. Bush, had been ruined in 1996 and 1997 by the Defense Finance and Accounting Service during a project to salvage deteriorating microfilm. No back-up paper copies could be found, it added in notices dated June 25. The destroyed records cover three months of a period in 1972 and 1973 when Mr. Bush's claims of service in Alabama are in question.
The disclosure appeared to catch some experts, both pro-Bush and con, by surprise. Even the retired lieutenant colonel who studied Mr. Bush's records for the White House, Albert C. Lloyd of Austin, said it came as news to him.
The loss was announced by the Defense Department's Office of Freedom of Information and Security Review in letters to The New York Times and other news organizations that for nearly half a year have sought Mr. Bush's complete service file under the open-records law.
There was no mention of the loss, for example, when White House officials released hundreds of pages of the President's military records last February in an effort to stem Democratic accusations that he was "AWOL" for a time during his commitment to fly at home in the Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.
Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director who has said that the released records confirmed the president's fulfillment of his National Guard commitment, did not return two calls for a response.
The disclosure that the payroll records had been destroyed came in a letter signed by C. Y. Talbott, chief of the Pentagon's Freedom of Information Office, who forwarded a CD-Rom of hundreds of records that Mr. Bush has previously released, along with images of punch-card records. Sixty pages of Mr. Bush's medical file and some other records were excluded on privacy grounds, Mr. Talbott wrote.
He said in the letter that he could not provide complete payroll records, explaining, "The Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) has advised of the inadvertent destruction of microfilm containing certain National Guard payroll records."
He went on: "In 1996 and 1997, DFAS engaged with limited success in a project to salvage deteriorating microfilm. During this process the microfilm payroll records of numerous service members were damaged, including from the first quarter of 1969 (Jan. 1 to March 31) and the third quarter of 1972 (July 1 to Sept. 30). President Bush's payroll records for these two quarters were among the records destroyed. Searches for backup paper copies of the missing records were unsuccessful."
Mr. Talbott's office would not respond to questions, saying that further information could be provided only through another Freedom of Information application.
But Bryan Hubbard, a spokesman for Defense finance agency in Denver, said the destruction occurred as the office was trying to unspool 2,000-foot rolls of fragile microfilm. Mr. Hubbard said he did not know how many records were lost or why the loss had not been announced before.
For Mr. Bush, the 1969 period when he was training to be a pilot, is not in dispute. But in May 1972, he moved to Alabama to work on a political campaign and, he has said, to perform his Guard service there for a year. But other Guard officers have said they had no recollection of ever seeing him there. The most evidence the White House has been able to find are records showing Mr. Bush was paid for six days in October and November 1972, without saying where, and the record of a dental exam at a Montgomery, Ala., air base on Jan. 6, 1973.
On June 22, The Associated Press filed suit in federal court in New York against the Pentagon and the Air Force to gain access to all the president's military records.
The lost payroll records stored in Denver might have answered some questions about whether he fulfilled his legal commitment, critics who have written about the subject said in interviews.
"Those are records we've all been interested in," said James Moore, author of a recent book, "Bush's War for Re-election," which takes a critical view of Mr. Bush's service record. "I think it's curious that the microfiche could resolve what days Mr. Bush worked and what days he was paid, and suddenly that is gone."
But Mr. Moore said the president could still authorize the release of other withheld records that would shed light on his service record.
Among the issues still disputed is why, according to released records, Mr. Bush was suspended from flying on Aug. 1, 1972. The reason cited in the records is "failure to accomplish annual medical examination."
Mr. Bartlett, the White House spokesman, said in February that Mr. Bush felt he did not need to take the physical as he was no longer flying planes in Alabama. Mr. Lloyd, the retired colonel who studied the records, gave a similar explanation in an interview.
But Mr. Lloyd said he was surprised to be told of the destruction of the pay records that might have resolved some questions.
What Part of Political Manipulation of Scientific Enquiry by the Bush Administration Do You Not Understand?
Administration Tries to Rein In ScientistsHealth and Human Services Department orders vetting of experts on panels convened by the U.N.'s health agency.
LA Times Headlines
By Tom Hamburger, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration has ordered that government scientists must be approved by a senior political appointee before they can participate in meetings convened by the World Health Organization, the leading international health and science agency.
A top official from the Health and Human Services Department in April asked the WHO to begin routing requests for participation in its meetings to the department's secretary for review, rather than directly invite individual scientists, as has long been the case.
FOR THE RECORD: Scientists —The headline on Saturday's Section A article about Bush administration efforts to control the participation of government scientists in World Health Organization meetings said "White House Tries to Rein In Scientists." The article correctly reported that the Department of Health and Human Services took that action.
Officials at the WHO, based in Geneva, Switzerland, have refused to implement the request thusfar, saying it could compromise the independence of international scientific deliberations. Denis G. Aitken, WHO assistant director-general, said Friday that he had been negotiating with Washington in an effort to reach a compromise.
The request is the latest instance in which the Bush administration has been accused of allowing politics to intrude into once-sacrosanct areas of scientific deliberation. It has been criticized for replacing highly regarded scientists with industry and political allies on advisory panels. A biologist who was at odds with the administration's position on stem-cell research was dismissed from a presidential advisory commission. This year, 60 prominent scientists accused the administration of "misrepresenting and suppressing scientific knowledge for political purposes."
The president's science advisor, Dr. John Marburger, has called the accusations "wrong and misleading, inaccurate."
The newest action has drawn fresh criticism, however, as the request has circulated among scientists.
"I do not feel this is an appropriate or constructive thing to do," said Dr. D.A. Henderson, an epidemiologist who ran the Bush administration's Office of Public Health Preparedness and now acts as an official advisor to Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson. "In the scientific world, we have a generally open process. We deal with science as science. I am unaware of such clearance ever having been required before."
Henderson worked for the WHO for 11 years directing its smallpox eradication program. He said he could not recall having to go through government bureaucrats to invite scientists to participate in expert panels, except in the case of small Eastern European countries. In 2002, Henderson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and was praised by Bush as "a great general in mankind's war against disease."
A few scientists have been worried about the department's vetting demand since April, but concerns heightened this week when Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) complained in a letter to Thompson. "The new policy … politicizes the process of providing the expert advice of U.S. scientists to the international community," Waxman wrote.
Thompson's spokesman, Tony Jewell, called Waxman's criticism "seriously misguided."
"No one knows better than HHS who the experts are and who can provide the most up-to-date and expert advice," Jewell said. "The World Health Organization does not know the best people to talk to, but HHS knows. If anyone thinks politics will interfere with Secretary Thompson's commitment to improve health in every corner of the world, they are sadly mistaken."
The WHO, founded in 1947, is the United Nations agency dedicated to health. It is governed by 192 member states and conducts forums, recommends international health and safety standards and draws leading scientists from around the world to expert panels that review the latest literature on chemical, biological, industrial and environmental threats.
The organization traditionally insists on picking experts to sit on official scientific review panels.
"It's an important issue for us," Aitken said. "We do need independent science. If we want government positions, we have government meetings. We have many, many of these government assemblies, but they address a separate set of concerns" than the scientific gatherings.
Scientists who attend the meetings are reminded that they are invited to offer their scientific views, not to represent their government or financial interests.
The letter to Aitken declaring the new vetting policy was signed by William R. Steiger, special assistant to Thompson. He came to Washington with Thompson from Wisconsin, and is the son of a congressman and the godson of former President George H.W. Bush.
"Except under very limited circumstances, U.S. government experts do not and cannot participate in WHO consultations in their individual capacity," Steiger wrote. Civil service and other regulations "require HHS experts to serve as representatives of the U.S. government at all times and advocate U.S. government policies."
The letter asserts that "the current practice in which the WHO invites specific HHS officials by name to serve in these capacities has not always resulted in the most appropriate selections."
The letter provided no specifics. But WHO panels sometimes have disagreed with positions taken by the administration. A WHO panel met in Lyons, France, this month and declared formaldehyde a known carcinogen — relying on studies that Bush administration political appointees in the Environmental Protection Agency had rejected as inconclusive.
Voting members of the panel included scientists from the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health who had been authors of the studies.
Several leading scientists said the new policy would undermine scientific deliberations.
"This is really tampering with a process that has worked very well," said Linda Rosenstock, the dean of the UCLA School of Public Health who directed the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health under President Clinton. "To have this micromanaged at the HHS departmental level raises the specter that political considerations rather than scientific considerations will determine who is allowed to go" to the world's most important scientific meetings.
Rosenstock said that some WHO divisions — including the one reviewing cancer threats — have become targets of industry groups. "There is real concern that science could be trumped by politics and vested interests."
For Waxman, a frequent critic of the administration, the department's letter to the WHO is part of a pattern of mixing politics with science — and one he contends diminishes U.S. stature internationally.
This Man Needs a Job in the New Adminstration. Maybe Not Attorney General; but Secretary of State Would Be Fitting...
Transcript of an address to the American Constitution Society For Law and Policy at Georgetown University, June 24th, 2004 by Former VP Al Gore.Alternatives to Internet Explorer
By Robert Vamosi (July 6, 2004) Cnet Reviews
This isn't Microsoft's best moment. Because of the many security risks present in Internet Explorer--not the least of them the current attacks using the Browser Helper Object (BHO)--the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team recommends that Windows users move away from Microsoft's Internet browser. Mac and Linux users aren't affected by the latest security flaws, but where can Windows users turn? Here's a quick overview of IE alternatives available today.
Although it's still in beta, Mozilla's new Firefox browser has so far lived up to the buzz surrounding it. Created by the programmers who originally programmed Netscape, Firefox returns to a very simple yet powerful design that made Netscape an early leader in the browser space.
If you want a browser that's been thoroughly vetted, Mozilla itself is an option. Designed primarily for Web designers, Mozilla has a friendly enough interface for even the occasional Internet surfer.
Netscape isn't dead yet, either. Once the market leader in Internet browsing, the latest version isn't the must-have it once was, but it's stable and secure, which is more than we can say about Internet Explorer.
Finally, from Norway, comes Opera, a robust alternative to Internet Explorer. Despite its somewhat cluttered interface and the occasional requirement for a security patch, Opera has held its own for several years and has its own following. There are free and paid versions of Opera available.
Whichever browser you choose, you'll probably need to reset some cookies and save your favorites all over again to get back to the surfing speed you're used to from IE. Nonetheless, it'll be worth the time sacrifice to keep your personal data safe.
Two other alternative browsers, NetCaptor 7.5.2 and MyIE2 0.9.26, offer features and usability enhancements you can't get with Internet Explorer. However, since these browsers use Microsoft's Internet Explorer engine, they may be vulnerable to some of the attacks that also work on IE.
No Safety at the Top For Corporate Leaders
By Carrie Johnson and Ben White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, July 9, 2004
Yesterday's triple score by federal prosecutors -- the unsealed indictment of former Enron Corp. chief executive Kenneth L. Lay, the conviction of Adelphia Communications Corp. chief executive John J. Rigas for corporate looting, and the denial of a new trial for Martha Stewart -- marks the opening years of the 21st century as a period of unprecedented peril for once-highflying corporate leaders.
Compared with previous cycles of boom and bust, more high-profile chief executives have been indicted and convicted of more serious charges than ever before. Prosecutors are going after executives at the highest levels, seeking redress for the millions of middle-income families, many of whom were new to the stock market, whose mutual funds and retirement savings accounts were hurt when prices collapsed amid charges of wrongdoing and puffery.
"This was the greatest period of malfeasance since the 1930s, and the only reason we didn't have indictments in the '30s was we didn't have the laws yet," said Charles Geisst, a business historian at Manhattan College. "This is obviously the greatest round, there was more money lost than ever before," Geisst added. "And prosecutors can't get away with going only for the mid-level guys, they have to go to the top."
Consider the prosecutorial scorecard in the 949 days since Enron filed for bankruptcy protection in December 2001.
Convicted: chief executives at Adelphia, ImClone Systems Inc., Martha Stewart Living Inc. and Rite Aid Corp.
Indicted: chief executives at Enron, WorldCom Inc., HealthSouth Corp., Tyco International Ltd. and Westar Energy Inc.
Forced from office: Dick Grasso at the New York Stock Exchange, Jean-Marie Messier at Vivendi Universal SA, Joseph P. Nacchio at Qwest Communications International Inc., Gary Winnick at Global Crossing Ltd. and Charles Conaway at Kmart Corp.
The image of Lay being led away in handcuffs yesterday followed similarly humiliating "perp walks" by Tyco's L. Dennis Kozlowski, Adelphia's Rigas, ImClone's Samuel Waksal and others. The message, legal experts say, has gotten through: No chief executive is safe.
World Court to Rule Against Israel's Barrier
Thu Jul 8, 2004 08:10 PM ET
LONDON (Reuters) - The World Court will rule on Friday that Israel's West Bank barrier contravenes international law and must be dismantled, Israel's Haaretz newspaper reported. The paper, quoting documents it had obtained, said the barrier infringed Palestinian rights.
"The construction of such a wall accordingly constitutes breaches by Israel of its various obligations under the applicable international humanitarian law and human rights instruments," Haaretz quoted the documents as saying.
The paper said on its Web site that 14 out of the 15 judges voted in favor of the ruling, with only American Thomas Buerghenthal dissenting. Shi Jiuyong of China, the court's head judge, will start reading the ruling at 1300 GMT.
Israel has said it will not accept what is expected to be among the most watched rulings in the 58 years of the World Court, based in The Hague. The Jewish state says the network of fences, ditches and walls has already improved security, but Palestinians call it a land grab.
Wednesday, July 07, 2004
The Upside Down Economy
Lagging Investment: The Cost of the Upside-Down Economyby Christian E. Weller
July 1, 2004
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
A Real Interview by a Serious Journalist
A transcript of the March 4th, 2003 interview of Donald Rumsfeld in Washington by David Dimbleby of the BBC.Note: Now if we could just get US press reporters to be closer to Mr. Dimbleby's orientation and further from the People Magazine approach when they conduct interviews with administrative personnel we might not have so easily allowed the Bush Administration to get away with lying to us for over three years about the specifics of almost everything they have been involved in.
Few Detainees in Iraq are Foreign
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fewer than 2 percent of the captives held in Iraq as security threats are suspected foreign fighters, undercutting Bush Administration assertions of the big role of non-Iraqis in the insurgency, USA Today said on Tuesday.
Kerry Selects Edwards as Running Mate
PITTSBURGH (Reuters) - Democratic White House hopeful John Kerry on Tuesday chose North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, a man with "guts and determination and political skills," as his vice presidential running mate.
By Lisa Myers
NBC News
Updated: 9:57 a.m. ET July 01, 2004
The Pentagon has already awarded Halliburton Co., the controversial military contractor, deals worth up to $18 billion for its work in Iraq. But now former Halliburton insiders have come forward with new allegations of massive waste of taxpayer money.
Marie deYoung, a former Army chaplain who worked for Halliburton, was so upset by attacks on the company she e-mailed the CEO in December with a strategy on how to fight the "political slurs." But today, after five months inside Halliburton's operation in Kuwait, deYoung has radically changed her opinion. "It’s just a gravy train," she said.
DeYoung audited accounts for Halliburton’s subsidiary KBR. She claims there was no effort to hold down costs because all costs were passed on directly to taxpayers. She repeatedly complained to superiors of waste and fraud. The company's response, according to deYoung was: "We can be as dumb and stupid as we want in the first year of a war, nobody’s going to care."
DeYoung produced documents detailing alleged waste even on routine services: $50,000 a month for soda, at $45 a case; $1 million a month to clean clothes — or $100 for each 15-pound bag of laundry.
"That money could have been used to take care of soldiers," she said.
DeYoung also claims people were paid to do nothing. Mike West says he was one of them. Paid $82,000 a year to be a labor foreman in Iraq, West claims he never had any laborers to supervise. "They said just log 12 hours a day and walk around and look busy," he said. "OK, so we did."
Both deYoung and West have since left the company. Pentagon documents obtained by NBC News support the whistleblowers' charges. In December auditors complained of Halliburton's "serious deficiencies," including "lack of cost control and cost consciousness." Some examples:
The company declined an interview but suggests in an e-mail to NBC News that critics are politically motivated: "When Halliburton succeeds, Iraq progresses. Sadly, a few people don't want either of those results." Halliburton also said the soda problem has been "corrected," and the laundry charges are being investigated, but insists it's "absolutely not true" the company is cavalier about taxpayer money.
Whistleblower deYoung thinks the problem is obvious. "They're using the war as an excuse, but it's not the war," she said. "It was very bad management." Pentagon auditors apparently agree. They're withholding $186 million from the company and threatening to hold back even more unless Halliburton corrects the problems.
Center for American Progress: July 6th
The Economy: We're 'Stuck'
Despite a "disappointing" new report showing "far less than expected" new jobs created in June, President Bush claimed the report proved the economy was "vital and growing." As the Baltimore Sun reported, America's "employment engine sputtered last month, producing half as many new jobs (112,000) as expected." The unemployment rate remained stuck at 5.6 percent - with a "high number of people hav[ing] stopped looking for work" because the job market has become so bleak over the last two years. The report "raised new misgivings about the strength and endurance of the rebounding jobs market."
Although the White House boasts that 1.5 million jobs were added in the last 10 months, columnist Paul Krugman notes, "that figure is barely enough to keep up with a growing working-age population." The New York Times notes that it is "surprising that President Bush would want to play the game" of sugarcoating the economic numbers: "the economy has still lost 1.1 million more jobs than it has gained on his watch, leaving Mr. Bush at risk of being the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over a net loss of jobs." As Economy.com's chief economist Mark Zandi said, the new jobs report means "President Bush can write off hopes of restoring the 1.8 million private-sector jobs lost during his term."
OTHER TROUBLING NUMBERS: Along with the disappointing June numbers, the Labor Department revised the April and May jobs figures to show 35,000 fewer jobs were created than originally reported. Additionally, in a separate report "that implied a leveling off in the pace of the economy," the Commerce Department said new orders at U.S. factories slipped 0.3 percent in May on top of a 1.1 percent decline in April. Economy.com's Zandi also pointed out that statistics prove "if you're unemployed, you're stuck: The duration of unemployment is about as long as it has ever been. In June [the average] was 19.9 weeks -- it doesn't get much longer than that."
THE MYTH THAT GROWTH IS HELPING WORKERS: The president claimed the report showed "steady, consistent growth" which means that "citizens will be able to find a job." But as Bloomberg News reports, record-high corporate profits are not "trickling down to U.S. workers in the form of pay increases." The new Labor Department report showed nominal weekly earnings actually declined by 0.5 percent. Over the last year, wages have only risen by 2.2 percent - a rate "more than offset" by inflation. CATO's William Niskanen, who served as chairman of President Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers, said, "I don't see any substantial increase in average real wages for some time."
Stephen Roach, chief economist for Morgan Stanley & Co., said stagnating wages are "far short of the nearly 10% gains that occurred in the first 29 months of the preceding six cyclical recoveries. This translates into a shortfall of $280 billion in 'missing' real personal income." As the NYT notes, "take-home pay, as a share of the economy, is at its lowest level since the government started keeping track in 1929."
THE HEALTH CARE SQUEEZE CONTINUES: The president of Aetna, one of the nation's biggest health insurers, recently told investors, "It's fair to say that a lot of the jobs being created may not be the jobs that come with benefits." In other words, workers are feeling squeezed not only by stagnant wages, but also by skyrocketing health care costs.
In its two-part series on the health care challenges facing America, the Toledo Blade noted for the average American family with the median household income of $42,409, the Bush administration's refusal to deal with health care "has meant steep increases in what [families] and their employers have paid for health insurance. Last year, the average premium for a family of four was $9,086, up from $6,348 in 2000." Even when companies do offer health insurance, new studies show that many employees can't accept it because premiums are too high. Meanwhile, more than 43 million Americans have no health insurance at all.
Monday, July 05, 2004
The Essential Krugman: July 4th, 2004
Moore's Public ServiceNY Times Op-Ed
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Since it opened, "Fahrenheit 9/11" has been a hit in both blue and red America, even at theaters close to military bases. Last Saturday, Dale Earnhardt Jr. took his Nascar crew to see it. The film's appeal to working-class Americans, who are the true victims of George Bush's policies, should give pause to its critics, especially the nervous liberals rushing to disassociate themselves from Michael Moore.
There has been much tut-tutting by pundits who complain that the movie, though it has yet to be caught in any major factual errors, uses association and innuendo to create false impressions. Many of these same pundits consider it bad form to make a big fuss about the Bush administration's use of association and innuendo to link the Iraq war to 9/11. Why hold a self-proclaimed polemicist to a higher standard than you hold the president of the United States?
And for all its flaws, "Fahrenheit 9/11" performs an essential service. It would be a better movie if it didn't promote a few unproven conspiracy theories, but those theories aren't the reason why millions of people who aren't die-hard Bush-haters are flocking to see it. These people see the film to learn true stories they should have heard elsewhere, but didn't. Mr. Moore may not be considered respectable, but his film is a hit because the respectable media haven't been doing their job.
For example, audiences are shocked by the now-famous seven minutes, when George Bush knew the nation was under attack but continued reading "My Pet Goat" with a group of children. Nobody had told them that the tales of Mr. Bush's decisiveness and bravery on that day were pure fiction.
Or consider the Bush family's ties to the Saudis. The film suggests that Mr. Bush and his good friend Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the ambassador known to the family as Bandar Bush, have tried to cover up the extent of Saudi involvement in terrorism. This may or may not be true. But what shocks people, I think, is the fact that nobody told them about this side of Mr. Bush's life.
Mr. Bush's carefully constructed persona is that of an all-American regular guy — not like his suspiciously cosmopolitan opponent, with his patrician air. The news media have cheerfully gone along with the pretense. How many stories have you seen contrasting John Kerry's upper-crusty vacation on Nantucket with Mr. Bush's down-home time at the ranch?
But the reality, revealed by Mr. Moore, is that Mr. Bush has always lived in a bubble of privilege. And his family, far from consisting of regular folks with deep roots in the heartland, is deeply enmeshed, financially and personally, with foreign elites — with the Saudis in particular.
Mr. Moore's greatest strength is a real empathy with working-class Americans that most journalists lack. Having stripped away Mr. Bush's common-man mask, he uses his film to make the case, in a way statistics never could, that Mr. Bush's policies favor a narrow elite at the expense of less fortunate Americans — sometimes, indeed, at the cost of their lives.
In a nation where the affluent rarely serve in the military, Mr. Moore follows Marine recruiters as they trawl the malls of depressed communities, where enlistment is the only way for young men and women to escape poverty. He shows corporate executives at a lavish conference on Iraq, nibbling on canapés and exulting over the profit opportunities, then shows the terrible price paid by the soldiers creating those opportunities.
The movie's moral core is a harrowing portrait of a grieving mother who encouraged her children to join the military because it was the only way they could pay for their education, and who lost her son in a war whose justification she no longer understands.
Viewers may come away from Mr. Moore's movie believing some things that probably aren't true. For example, the film talks a lot about Unocal's plans for a pipeline across Afghanistan, which I doubt had much impact on the course of the Afghan war. Someday, when the crisis of American democracy is over, I'll probably find myself berating Mr. Moore, who supported Ralph Nader in 2000, for his simplistic antiglobalization views.
But not now. "Fahrenheit 9/11" is a tendentious, flawed movie, but it tells essential truths about leaders who exploited a national tragedy for political gain, and the ordinary Americans who paid the price.
