Verizon Says Phone Record Disclosure is Protected Free Speech
May 8th, 2007Via: Arstechnica:
Verizon is one of the phone companies currently being sued over its alleged disclosure of customer phone records to the NSA. In a response to the court last week, the company asked for the entire consolidated case against it to be thrown out—on free speech grounds.
The response also alleges that the case should be thrown out because even looking into the issue could violate state secrets, of course, but a much longer section of the response tries to make the case that Verizon has a First Amendment right to “petition” the government. “Based on plaintiffs’ own allegations, defendants’ right to communicate such information to the government is fully protected by the Free Speech and Petition Clauses of the First Amendment,” argue Verizon’s lawyers.
Oil Company CEO to Alaska Republican: “I Own Your Ass”
May 8th, 2007Via: Reuters:
The chief executive and part owner of Alaska’s largest oil-field services company and one of his vice presidents pleaded guilty on Monday to charges that they tried to bribe Alaska legislators to secure favorable state oil policies.
VECO Corp. Chief Executive Bill Allen and Richard Smith, vice president for community affairs and government relations, pleaded guilty to charges of bribery, extortion and conspiracy.
If convicted on all counts, each face as much as 20 years in prison and fines of $750,000.
The officials entered their guilty pleas in federal court in Anchorage on Monday after reaching plea agreements last week.
Arrested last Friday in Juneau were a current state legislator, Rep. Vic Kohring, and two former legislators — Rep. Bruce Weyhrauch and former House Speaker Pete Kott. All three Republicans were charged with seeking money and jobs from Anchorage-based VECO in exchange for pushing the company’s preferred version of an oil-tax bill.
If convicted on all charges, the legislators each could face as maximum of 70 years in prison and fines of up to $1 million.
“I own your ass,” Allen told Kott, the former house speaker, according to the indictment released last Friday.
Venezuela Criticizes DEA as ‘New Cartel’
May 8th, 2007I don’t know about new…
Via: Yahoo / AP:
Venezuela on Monday said it will not allow U.S. agents to carry out counter-drug operations in the country, accusing the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration of being a “new cartel” that aids traffickers.
Justice Minister Pedro Carreno said the South American nation suspended cooperation with the agency in 2005 after determining that “they were moving a large amount of drugs.” President Hugo Chavez at the time also accused the DEA of spying.
“The United States with its DEA monopolizes the shipping of drugs like a cartel,” Carreno told reporters. “We determined that we were evidently in the presence of a new cartel.” He did not elaborate.
Organic Food Production Could Secure Global Food Supplies with Reduced Environmental Impacts
May 8th, 2007Here’s one for your No-Shit-Rocket-Science-Brain-Surgery file.
The problem, of course, is getting there from here. Conventional farmers walk a fine line that is so close to ruin that it’s mostly unthinkable for them to switch to organic methods. They are under incredible pressure to perform because they often don’t own the land that they’re farming and a bank has a collar around their necks. Any failure could spell ruin. Of course, single crop or animal farming (monoculture) is impossible without dangerous poisons, expensive fertilizers and energy hungry equipment. Without these Myths of the Machine, monocropping would end within months. If you’re smart, you won’t wait for conventional farmers to figure this out. This transition has to be done voluntarily and gradually by people who are not held hostage by banks and debt.
In any sane system, most people would produce, trade, buy and sell small amounts of a large variety of unprocessed fruit, vegetables and other foods. This system would be decentralized, localized and in balance. In other words, the opposite of what we see today.
The importance of biodiversity CANNOT be overstated. Increasing biodiversity in your system increases your food security. Becky and I have experienced partial and total crop failure (late blight took out some of our tomatoes and ALL of our carrot seedlings, on two different plantings, just disappeared; we don’t even know what ate them). It wasn’t a big deal because we were growing lots of other food crops.
The thing I find most fascinating about the article below is how “experts” are just starting to figure out some of the things that those of us on the fringes of this hideous and obscene system have known for a very long time. Of course, we were right, they were wrong, and it’s too late to change the system now. What will vary are the actions that you will take to help yourself, your family and your community face what is upon us.
Via: Yahoo / AP:
Organic food has long been considered a niche market, a luxury for wealthy consumers. But researchers told a U.N. conference Saturday that a large-scale shift to organic agriculture could help fight world hunger while improving the environment.
Crop yields initially can drop as much as 50 percent when industrialized, conventional agriculture using chemical fertilizers and pesticides is converted to organic. While such decreases often even out over time, the figures have kept the organic movement largely on the sidelines of discussions about feeding the hungry.
Researchers in Denmark found, however, that food security for sub-Saharan Africa would not be seriously harmed if 50 percent of agricultural land in the food exporting regions of Europe and North America were converted to organic by 2020.
While total food production would fall, the amount per crop would be much smaller than previously assumed, and the resulting rise in world food prices could be mitigated by improvements in the land and other benefits, the study found.
A similar conversion to organic farming in sub-Saharan Africa could help the region’s hungry because it could reduce their need to import food, Niels Halberg, a senior scientist at the Danish Research Center for Organic Food and Farming, told the U.N. conference on “Organic Agriculture and Food Security.”
Farmers who go back to traditional agricultural methods would not have to spend money on expensive chemicals and would grow more diverse and sustainable crops, the report said. In addition, if their food is certified as organic, farmers could export any surpluses at premium prices.
…
“These models suggest that organic agriculture has the potential to secure a global food supply, just as conventional agriculture today, but with reduced environmental impacts,” Scialabba said in a paper presented to the conference.
Cryptogon Readers Contribute $100, $30 and $25
May 7th, 2007Many thanks to these Cryptogon contributors for adding some exclamation points on Dagobaz’s opening statement in May:
Anonymous $100
AS $30
RW $25
Wow!
And on Amazon… A generous soul remembered to order his or her exercise bike via Cryptogon. I don’t know who you are, but thanks!
Man, I wonder if there would be a way to hook up a bike like that to our Country Living Grain Mill. Don’t get me wrong, I love having bread made from freshly ground wheat, but when Becky delivers an order for flour… Well, let’s just say that I could get the grinding done much faster if that mill was rigged for pedal power.
* I went away and searched for a minute… *
As is often the case, if you can think it up, someone has already done it. In this case, lots of someones. In fact, it’s embarrassing to have to admit that I haven’t done this already! Well, I’m adding this project to the list: Connecting Your Mill To An Exercise Bike.
China Exporting Antifreeze Component as Common Sweetener
May 7th, 2007Via: Bloomberg:
Regulators in the U.S. are warning drugmakers, suppliers and health professionals to be on the alert for counterfeit medicine additives that substitute a poison used in antifreeze for a common sweetener.
The Food and Drug Administration knows of no contamination cases in the U.S. like those that caused deaths in Panama, Haiti and elsewhere in recent years, the agency said in a statement posted on its Web site.
Some Chinese suppliers have used poisonous diethyline glycol, or DEG, as a substitute for glycerin, a more expensive sweet syrup, in cough medicine, fever medication and injectable drugs, the New York Times reported today. Researchers estimate that thousands of deaths worldwide have been caused by drugs contaminated by DEG, an industrial solvent and an ingredient in some antifreeze, the newspaper said.
The FDA “is emphasizing the importance of testing glycerin for DEG due to the serious nature of this potentially fatal problem in combination with the global nature of the pharmaceutical supply chain and problems that continue to occur,” the agency said in the statement released May 4.
Tainted cough syrup caused more than 40 deaths in Panama in 2006, and at least 80 children in Haiti died of tainted acetaminophen syrup in late 1995 and early 1996, the FDA said. Similar poisonings were reported in the 1990s in Argentina, Bangladesh, India and Nigeria.
Research Credit: KL
Please Lord, Not the Bees
May 6th, 2007Everything you didn’t want to know about Colony Collapse Disorder…
Via: GNN:
Among the various mythologies of the apocalypse, fear of insect plagues has always loomed larger than fear of species loss. But this may change, as a strange new plague is wiping out our honey bees one hive at a time. It has been named Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD, by the apiculturalists and apiarists who are scrambling to understand and hopefully stop it. First reported last autumn in the U.S., the list of afflicted countries has now expanded to include several in Europe, as well as Brazil, Taiwan, and possibly Canada.
Apparently unknown before this year, CCD is said to follow a unique pattern with several strange characteristics. Bees seem to desert their hive or forget to return home from their foraging runs. The hive population dwindles and then collapses once there are too few bees to maintain it. Typically, no dead bee carcasses lie in or around the afflicted hive, although the queen and a few attendants may remain.
The defect, whatever it is, afflicts the adult bee. Larvae continue to develop normally, even as a hive is in the midst of collapse. Stricken colonies may appear normal, as seen from the outside, but when beekeepers look inside the hive box, they find a small number of mature bees caring for a large number of younger and developing bees that remain. Normally, only the oldest bees go out foraging for nectar and pollen, while younger workers act as nurse bees caring for the larvae and cleaning the comb. A healthy hive in mid-summer has between 40,000 and 80,000 bees.
Perhaps the most ominous thing about CCD, and one of its most distinguishing characteristics, is that bees and other animals living nearby refrain from raiding the honey and pollen stored away in the dead hive. In previously observed cases of hive collapse (and it is certainly not a rare occurrence) these energy stores are quickly stolen. But with CCD the invasion of hive pests such as the wax moth and small hive beetle is noticeably delayed.
Research Credit: Life After the Oil Crash and S
The Ghost in Wall Street’s Shell
May 6th, 2007I’ve written several stories about how I’ve dabbled with this stuff. Here are a few colorful examples:
Insider Crimes, Funny Money and Options Rackets
U.S. Dollar Index Breaches Significant Weekly Supports
Now, here’s an interesting article that looks at the efforts of the people who play these games with billions of dollars on the line. Notice a frightening similarity between their antics and my past antics (besides the amounts of money involved)?
For one thing, I don’t have a PhD. And for another, I never showed up to “work” in anything resembling a suit. So there!
Via: Bloomberg:
Way up in a New York skyscraper, inside the headquarters of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Michael Kearns is trying to teach a computer to do something other machines can’t: think like a Wall Street trader.
In his cubicle overlooking the trading floor, Kearns, 44, consults with Lehman Brothers traders as Ph.D.s tap away at secret software. The programs they’re writing are designed to sift through billions of trades and spot subtle patterns in world markets.
Kearns, a computer scientist who has a doctorate from Harvard University, says the code is part of a dream he’s been chasing for more than two decades: to imbue computers with artificial intelligence, or AI.
Note: In case you don’t get the Ghost in the Shell reference:
The setting of Ghost in the Shell is cyberpunk or postcyberpunk, similar to that of William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy and other post/cyberpunk works. However, Shirow’s work is focused more tightly on the ethical and philosophical ramifications of the widespread merging of humanity and technology. The development of artificial intelligence and an omnipresent computer network set the stage for a reevaluation of human identity and uniqueness.
In 2006 Dollars, U.S. Minimum Wage Peaked in 1968
May 5th, 2007Via: Oregon State:
A federal minimum wage was first set in 1938. The graph shows nominal (blue diamonds) and real (red squares) minimum wage values. Nominal values range from $0.25/hr in 1938 to the current $5.15/hr. The graph adjusts these wages to 2006 dollars (red squares) to show the real value of the minimum wage. Calculated in real 2006 dollars, the 1968 minimum wage was the highest at $9.27. The real dollar minimum wage (red squares) rises and falls because of periodic adjustments by Congress. The period 1997-2007, is the longest period during which the minimum wage has not been adjusted. The House, January 10, 2007, voted a minimum wage increase to $5.85, to take effect 60 days after the measure becomes law. The green triangles show the real minimum wage increase in 2006 dollars for the three increments $5.85, $6.85 one year after becoming law (i.e., 2008, assuming the minimum wage increases in 2007) and $7.25 after two years (2009). The real values after 2006 are projected for future decline in purchasing power if the minimum wager is not raised. Many states have departed from the federal minimum wage. Washington has the highest minimum wage in the country at $7.93 as of January 1, 2007.
Bush Wants Phone Companies Immune to Privacy Suits
May 5th, 2007Via: Washington Post:
The Bush administration is urging Congress to pass a law that would halt dozens of lawsuits charging phone companies with invading ordinary citizens’ privacy through a post-Sept. 11 warrantless surveillance program.
The measure is part of a legislative package drafted by the Justice Department to relax provisions in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that restrict the administration’s ability to intercept electronic communications in the United States. If passed, the proposed changes would forestall efforts to compel disclosure of the program’s details through Congress or the court system.
The proposal states that “no action shall lie . . . in any court, and no penalty . . . shall be imposed . . . against any person” for giving the government information, including customer records, in connection with alleged intelligence activity the attorney general certifies “is, was, would be or would have been” intended to protect the United States from terrorist attack. The measure, which has not yet been filed, is contained in a proposed amendment to the fiscal 2008 intelligence authorization bill.
More: Retroactive Immunity for Phone Companies
