EPA Gags Staff

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has directed staff to "refrain from answering” media calls in order to "prevent EPA management from being surprised by news coverage,” according to an agency memo obtained by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. The Mid-western region acting administrator Bharat Mathur told staff that in the interest of "open communication" and "shaping consistent messages" they were not to work with or talk to the press. "If you receive any request for information or an interview from a member of the media, you should refer the caller to [EPA's Office of Public Affairs]," Mathur wrote. "Please refrain from answering such inquires directly. OPA will determine the appropriate response - and who should respond - after consultation with program staff, and if necessary, after elevating issues for senior-level attention." Inside EPA reports similar instructions being given to staff in the Mountain and Plains region. "EPA is instructing its employees not to discuss political issues with reporters, citing fears that such interactions could inappropriately characterize Bush administration policies just weeks before the November elections," Inside EPA reports. Source: Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, September 22, 2004

When Office Supplies Attack

Web Deprivation Causes Withdrawals

The "Internet Deprivation Study" released Wednesday by Yahoo and media group OMD found many experienced life offline more difficult than they expected, because tools and services the Internet offers were firmly ingrained in their daily lives.

Man Legally Changes His Name to 'They'

A Branson man has put a face to the anonymous references people often make to "they" by changing his name to just that: "They."
The former Andrew Wilson, a 43-year-old self-employed inventor, was granted legal permission last week by a circuit judge to change his name.
It's just They, no surname.
He also has changed his driver's license to reflect his new name.
They said he did it for humor to address the common reference to "they."
"'They do this,' or 'They're to blame for that.' Who is this 'they' everyone talks about? 'They' accomplish such great things. Somebody had to take responsibility," he said.
Now, his friends are getting used to his new name.
"They call up and say, 'Is They there?'"
He acknowledged the name could drive grammarians crazy.

New EPA Regulations on Mercury Match Wording from Industry

For the third time, environmental advocates have discovered passages in the Bush administration's proposal for regulating mercury pollution from power plants that mirror almost word for word portions of memos written by a law firm representing coal-fired power plants.
The passages state that the Environmental Protection Agency is not required to regulate other hazardous toxins emitted by power plants, such as lead and arsenic. Several attorneys general, as well as some environmental groups, have argued that the Clean Air Act compels the EPA to regulate these emissions as well as mercury.

Grouper: New P2P Software Creates Mini-Networks

Grouper - a temporarily stealth software project - has gone up for download and instantly created a confusing divide between the old world and the new. Unlike most P2P software that shares music and other files with world+dog, Grouper focuses on sharing files between friends. Users can set up mini-P2P networks and open up their photos, music, movies and documents. This approach seems much more similar to old-style content swapping where friends handed each other a mixed CD or recording of the UT versus Texas A&M football game, just with a techie twist.

Voted Machine Flaws Demonstrated to National Press Club

Using a laptop, (Bev Harris) demonstrated what she said were easy hacks to software by Diebold, which is used in central tabulators that will count votes in some 1,000 counties in November. Harris contended that hackers could easily change vote totals by entering the database through a backdoor method. She also claimed hackers could enter the standard way after obtaining passwords, then manipulate vote totals and cover their tracks.

Baghdad: Year Zero by Naomi Klein

This is one of the best articles you can find about the theories and practices behind Iraqi reconstruction. --ed.

"On one side were "the pragmatists," who favored getting rid of Saddam and his immediate entourage, securing access to oil, and slowly introducing free-market reforms. Many of these exiles were part of the State Department's Future of Iraq Project, which generated a thirteen-volume report on how to restore basic services and transition to democracy after the war. On the other side was the "Year Zero" camp, those who believed that Iraq was so contaminated that it needed to be rubbed out and remade from scratch. The prime advocate of the pragmatic approach was Iyad Allawi, a former high-level Baathist who fell out with Saddam and started working for the CIA. The prime advocate of the Year Zero approach was Ahmad Chalabi, whose hatred of the Iraqi state for expropriating his family's assets during the 1958 revolution ran so deep he longed to see the entire country burned to the ground - everything, that is, but the Oil Ministry, which would be the nucleus of the new Iraq, the cluster of cells from which an entire nation would grow."

Deal in Congress extends tax cuts

"I wish we could pay for them, but this is a political problem and we have people up for re-election," said Representative Charles Rangel, Democrat of New York and his party's senior member on the House Ways and Means Committee. "If you have to explain that you voted for these tax cuts because they benefit the middle class and against them because of the deficit, you've got a problem."

Canada to Implement Iris Scanning

The Canada Border Service Agency, which is working on a Registered Traveler-style pilot program with the U.S. Homeland Security Department, is implementing iris-scanning technology at Canadian airports to verify the identity of travelers. The program, called Nexus Air, will begin in November at Vancouver International Airport, Vancouver, British Columbia, before rollout at other Canadian airports for a yearlong trial.

Grand Jury Indicts 32 In DeLay-Related Probe

Warren RoBold, 48, a Washington consultant who helped raise money for both PACs, was accused of unlawful acceptance of corporate political contributions.
The eight companies were charged with making illegal political contributions. They include Sears, Roebuck and Co., the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain, Bacardi USA and Westar Energy. Each company donated at least $20,000.

Antarctic Glaciers Melting Faster

Glaciers once held up by a floating ice shelf off Antarctica are now sliding off into the sea -- and they are going fast, scientists said on Tuesday.
Two separate studies from climate researchers and the space agency NASA show the glaciers are flowing into Antarctica's Weddell Sea, freed by the 2002 breakup of the Larsen B ice shelf.

40 percent of Army reservists fail to report to Fort Jackson

As of Tuesday, 186 of the 309 members of the Individual Ready Reserve ordered to report to the Columbia base had arrived, said Lt. Col. Burton L. Masters, spokesman for the Army's Human Resources Command.
"We're not surprised by those numbers at all," Masters said.
Most of those who have not reported are seeking exemptions from active duty or delays in reporting, he said.
Those who have not reported or applied for a delay or exemption will be considered deserters if they do not show up within seven days of the date they were told to report for duty, Masters said.

Russ Meyer Dies at 82

Russ Meyer, a master of sexploitation filmmaking who was called "king of the nudies" or "King Leer" for such soft-core pornography classics as "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" and "Vixen," has died. He was 82.
Meyer, who also directed the major studio release "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls," died Saturday at his home in the Hollywood Hills, according to his company, RM Films International Inc. Spokeswoman Janice Cowart said Meyer had suffered from dementia and died of complications of pneumonia.

Before and After Shots of Ivan's Damage

See examples of extreme coastal change in the photo pairs below. For each pair, the upper photo was taken by the USGS (US Geological Survey) on July 17, 2001 and the lower photo was taken by the USGS on September 17 after Ivan’s landfall.

The Former Cat Stevens Gets Plane Diverted

A London-to-Washington flight was diverted to Maine on Tuesday when it was discovered passenger Yusuf Islam - formerly known as singer Cat Stevens - was on a government watch list and barred from entering the country, federal officials said.

Pentagon blocks site for voters outside U.S.

In a decision that could affect Americans abroad who are not yet registered to vote in the Nov. 2 presidential election, the Pentagon has begun restricting international access to the official Web site intended to help overseas absentee voters cast ballots.

“If You Harbor Terrorists, You Are a Terrorist”

While delegates to the GOP convention were congratulating themselves for their candidate’s tough stand against terrorism, the Bush administration was creating an international incident—little publicized in the United States—by harboring a notorious group of international terrorists on U.S. soil.

Rationales for Iraq Invasion, 27 and growing

1. War on Terror
2. Prevention of the proliferation of WMD
3. Lack of Inspections
4. Remove Saddam Hussein regime
5. Saddam Hussein is evil
6. Invading Iraq would allow us to gain favor in the Middle East
7. Example to other terror states
8. Liberate the Iraqi people
9. Broken Promises - Iraq had made commitments to the UN and the world
10. Revenge for Iraq's attempt on the life of President H.W. Bush
11. Threat Saddam posed to the region
12. Because We Can - There would be little conflict or struggle, little price to pay for entering the country, the war would be easy.
13. Cleaning up unfinished business in Iraq from the first Gulf War
14. War for Oil - The US' oil interests in the Middle East and Iraq serve as a reason for wanting to invade the state and topple its leader.
15. Sake of History - Pres. Bush claimed history had called on the US to take action against Iraq
16. Disarmament - total elimination of ALL weapons in Iraq
17. Safety of the World - Iraq as a terrorist nation could sell weapons to other terrorists and thus posed a threat to the entire world
18. Commitment to the Children - America should give its children and the world's children a better future.19. Imminent Threat - The uncertainty of Iraq's weapon power and future plans.
20. Preserve Peace - Iraq posted a threat to the peace of the world by its continued terrorist involvement and its increased tension in the Middle East
21. Threat to Freedom - By oppressing its people and threatening the world with possible terror acts, freedom was prevention from spreading through the Middle East and was lessened in those nations that feared terror in their backyards.
22. Link to al Qaeda
23. Iraq Unique - Rumsfeld declared that Saddam Hussein in combination with the weapons potential in Iraq made Iraq different than the other "axis of evil" countries, and therefore a great immediate threat.
24. Relevance of UN - The UN was put on notice that it would face illegitimacy if it did not support the cause of the United States.
25. Iraq had broken international law - Colin Powell said that violations of UN resolutions broke international laws established in the UN Charter.I would also add 2 more that Bush announced in the past few days:
26. Saddam "hopes" to "some day" get WMD (as compared to he "has" WMD).
27. Saddam had an "ability to work with terrorist organizations" (as compared to actually "working" with terrorist orgs).

US Government Domain Names

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the General Services Administration has refused to release the list of names in the dot-gov domain (eg, whitehouse.gov, fbi.gov, etc.). They claim that such information is "Sensitive but Unclassified," but they are not giving a specific reason for this determination, much less citing a FOIA exemption, as required under federal law.
But a fairly recent (12 Sept 2002) list of government domain names and servers is already available, thanks to the University of Toronto Network Development and Implementation Website. We're presenting it below. (from TheMemoryHole.org)

Photos and Videos From Inside New York's Pier 57 Detention Center

Images from inside the facility are rare. The photos and videos featured here come from Jacob Richards and Connie Murillo, who were arrested that day. A couple of these photos were posted to NYC Indymedia, but Richards and Murillo have kindly allowed The Memory Hole to post more photos and several videos.

Hidden Agenda: A National Draft in the Future? by Howard Dean

President Bush will be forced to decide whether we can continue the current course in Iraq, which will clearly require the reinstatement of the draft. The Pentagon has objected to a draft but, the President has ignored other Pentagon recommendations in the past.
American families and young people are owed an explanation about the President's plans. Will the President withdraw from some of our military commitments or will he reinstate the draft? We need to know that before we vote, not afterwards.

A Strident Minority: Anti-Bush US Troops in Iraq

"[For] 9 out of 10 of the people I talk to, it wouldn't matter who ran against Bush - they'd vote for them," said a US soldier in the southern city of Najaf, seeking out a reporter to make his views known. "People are so fed up with Iraq, and fed up with Bush."

A New Hope for Patent Reform

Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, and two public interest organizations, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Public Knowledge, filed a friend-of-the-court brief today with the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, DC, arguing that ambiguous patent claims should be invalidated and that claim terms should be interpreted as narrowly as possible by the courts to protect the public. Currently, courts uphold patent claims unless they are deemed too ambiguous, and the courts interpret vague claim terms as broadly as possible. These rules often result in improper patents of uncertain scope and lead to overzealous threat letters and lawsuits brought by patentees that chill innovation and deter beneficial competition.

PBS Adds Insult to Injury

The far right's decades-long campaign to falsely brand PBS a leftist conspiracy--one that apparently included giving shows to such commies as William F. Buckley, Louis Rukeyser, Ben Wattenberg and Fortune magazine--has really hit pay dirt this year, first in creating a show around CNN's conservative talking head Tucker Carlson, and now, far more egregiously, in creating a program for the extremist editorial board of the Wall Street Journal.
...But perhaps what is most offensive about PBS's decision to fund and broadcast Carlson (who already has a show on CNN five evenings a week) and the Journal editors (whose preaching is subsidized and distributed by the Dow Jones Corporation, whose profit last year topped $1.5 billion) is that it is being portrayed by its sponsor, New York's WETA, as "balance" for the program Now With Bill Moyers. In fact, these conservative opinion programs are in no way comparable to Moyers's show. Though Moyers is unarguably a liberal, his show is not a program of ideological advocacy but of public journalistic investigation. Its primary function is to air reports of corporate and governmental abuses that appear nowhere else in the media, and to explore all sides of contentious issues. When Moyers does an interview, you are just as likely to get a Robert Bartley, a Grover Norquist or a Paul Gigot as anyone on the liberal side of the aisle. When Moyers retires at the end of the year (at which time PBS will reduce the show to a half-hour), his chosen replacement will be David Brancaccio, a reporter who comes from that hotbed of anticapitalist agitation, NPR's Marketplace.

In the Shadow of No Towers

For Art Spiegelman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Maus, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were both highly personal and intensely political. In the Shadow of No Towers, his first new book of comics since the groundbreaking Maus, is a masterful and moving account of the events and aftermath of that tragic day. Spiegelman and his family bore witness to the attacks in their lower Manhattan neighborhood: his teenage daughter had started school directly below the towers days earlier, and they had lived in the area for years. But the horrors they survived that morning were only the beginning for Spiegelman, as his anguish was quickly displaced by fury at the U.S. government, which shamelessly co-opted the events for its own preconceived agenda.

FOXBlocker

FOXBlocker is an innovative new product that filters out the FOX News network. Simply screw the filter into the back of your TV and never be exposed to right wing propaganda again (at least through FOX News). Using a proprietary technology, the FOXBlocker works to filter out FOX News from your cable lineup. Protect yourself and your family, or send one to a misguided right wing friend.
...With every order placed, FOXBlocker.com will send an e-mail in your name to the TOP 10 advertisers at FOX News letting them know that yet another subscriber has opted out of FOX News.

Number of Convicted Terrorists: 0

The Department of Justice has detained more than 5,000 individuals since 9/11. With the reversal of the convictions in Detroit of three men improperly prosecuted for terrorism, Ashcroft has shown his tactics have been less than precise. Perhaps the attorney general might read Senator Bob Graham's new book, which points to some more promising suspects: Saudis. (from TomPaine.com)

The Official God FAQ

Press Reports on U.S. Casualties: About 17,000 Short, UPI Says

The Pentagon has reported 1,019 dead and 7,245 wounded from Iraq. The military has evacuated 16,765 individual service members from Iraq and Afghanistan for injuries and ailments not directly related to combat, according to the U.S. Transportation Command, which is responsible for the medical evacuations. Most are from Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The Pentagon's public casualty reports, available at www.defenselink.mil, list only service members who died or were wounded in action. The Pentagon's own definition of a war casualty provided to UPI in December describes a casualty as, "Any person who is lost to the organization by having been declared dead, duty status/whereabouts unknown, missing, ill, or injured."

State Department Site Shows Where bin Laden has been Active

Iraq is truthfully omitted (though perhaps not for long).

Stan Ridgeway talks about music and life

Ridgway's style has often been described as cinematic -- he originally envisioned that Wall of Voodoo would produce soundtracks for low-budget Hollywood films. When no such work materialized, life as a band seemed like the next best option.

FTC OKs Bounty System, $100K to Catch a Spammer

As provided in CAN-SPAM, 15 U.S.C.A. § 7710(1) (West Supp. 2003), the FTC has issued a report to Congress about bounties to enforce CAN-SPAM provisions. The FTC has given a green light to the bounties, estimated at $100,000 to $250,000. However, the FTC has thrown in some interesting suggestions such as not tying the bounties to civil suits, not collecting the bounties from civil suit damages, and exempting the FTC's decision about who deserves (or doesn't deserve) a bounty from judicial or administrative review. Even the most ardent bounty supporter should balk at the suggestion of no review, especially considering the FTC decision to limit the bounty to "high-value" information.

Name the October Surprise

I invite readers to submit entries to the "Name the October Surprise" contest by answering this question: "What do you think is a possible October Surprise that Bush will announce in order to try to win a close election?"
This contest emerges out of history -- political history and Bush history.
First, a president or party in power with the ability to create reality or affect events has in the past tried to influence elections with late revelations. The best modern example occurred in 1972 when then National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger announced at the end of the Nixon-McGovern campaign that "peace is at hand" with Vietnam. This was near-perfect example of an O.S. because it provided an upbeat answer to a vexing problem for the incumbent...and couldn't be disproven by Election Day.

Louisiana Golf Course Made by Prisoners

Lester Wright, who is serving a life sentence, says watching golfers as he mows is a bittersweet pleasure.
"When I look at them, I look at all the hard work that we done trying to fix this thing for them," Wright said. "It's like, man, we did all this here and look at them dudes out there playing — sometimes I do want to play."

The Problem with Polls

"Something has methodologically gone awry when polls are swinging about this wildly," writes David Price, about presidential campaign polling. "We Americans simply don't answer our phones like we used to." Because of caller ID and cell phones, "those profiled as being most prone to answering phone surveys tend to be: (more) White, (more) older, and (more) male." The Wall Street Journal reports that how likely (as opposed to registered) voters are identified may also skew results. "Those models tend to [tilt to] a little older, a little more white, a little more affluent and a little more Republican voters," said GOP pollster Bill McInturff. Source: CounterPunch, September 20, 2004 (from PRWatch)

Bill Moyers: Journalism Under Fire

Part biography, part reprimand, part love letter to the promise of his profession—this speech, given by Bill Moyers at a Society of Professional Journalists conference on Sept. 11, 2004, will be referred to for years to come by those who are worried about the state of journalism. It’s a true classic: “I believe democracy requires ‘a sacred contract’ between journalists and those who put their trust in us to tell them what we can about how the world really works.”

Hasbro Sends Cease and Desist Letter to GI Joe PSA Pranksters

"...it is likely to cause confusion or mistake as to Hasbro's authorization or sponsorship of or association with the derivative PSA's."

1954 Image of What a 2004 Home Computer Might Look Like

I like the steering wheel!

Illinois preventing group from distributing asbestos safety pamphlets at beach next to Superfund Site

The Illinois Dunesland Preservation Society lawsuit challenges this month's decision to prohibit the group from posting leaflets at the park's headquarters, lodge and nature preserve area, warning people about the park's well-documented asbestos problems and how to avoid exposure to the cancer-causing agent.