American International Group (AIG), the world’s largest insurer, delayed publishing its annual results for a second time yesterday and admitted that inaccurate accounting might have falsely inflated its finances by $1.7bn

Nice euphemism that, “inaccurate accounting.”

The news was the latest bombshell to come from AIG, which said this week that Hank Greenberg, its domineering chairman of almost four decades, was retiring. Mr Greenberg was personally involved in the negotiation of a major reinsurance contract which is being investigated by Eliot Spitzer, New York’s attorney general.

His apparently forced retirement might be thrown a bit askew by his probable coming indictment.

Tell me, are ANY large corporations even vaguely honest any more?

No Comments »

From the admin of flag.blackened.net, a major anarchist site. The FBI “requested” IP logs from him and, after an agonizing decision, he turned them over. Here’s why.

I have been ordered to submit IP info on two separate incidents having to do with subdomains hosted on flag. Both of these are in regard to claimed or threatened responsibility for acts of propaganda by the deed.

That’s oddly stilted language, “acts of propaganda by the deed”, must be anarchist-ese. Anyone know?

Both incidents involve topics which are completely out of line for consideration here at flag and really I can only view them in two ways. Either people are simply ignorant about the murderous history of the FBI, or, as is my belief in one case, they are trying to make flag vulnerable to government intrusion.

He’s not paranoid. Flag has been a target by the Feds in the past.

At this point let me say, in all honesty and conviction, that if I end up dead by strange means - suicide, overdose, drunk driving accident (I never, ever, ever drink and drive), “accidental” gunshot to the back of the head while sleeping ala Fred Hampton, car jacking, or anything else reasonably suspicious, contact the FBI in Chico, California for more details.

It was an obvious suicide, he shot himself in the back ten times.

Really, I am not left with much of a choice. Here are my two choices as I see them:

1. Do not comply with the wishes of the FBI. This will most likely lead to the seizure of flag and a compromise of all the sites and information online. It will probably also lead to me being imprisoned, I would guess. I personally do not fear this, but I am the sole support for my wife and infant daughter. There can be no doubt we would probably lose our home as a result.

2. Comply with the wishes of the FBI, provide the IP addresses, and count on the fact that I will catch a lot of heat and hatred from my comrades in the anarchist movement worldwide.

Though it pains me to comply with the State in any manner, I have to choose option #2. The people who have foolishly compromised us all will shoulder the burden for their selfish actions. Frankly folks, they know better - we all know better.

It is by far the most agonizing decision I’ve been faced with in relation to my anarchist opinions.

This is why we do not discuss certain things as if they are a legitimate part of anarchism. Resist the extra y-chromosome influenced urge to sound more hardcore than the guy next to you. Nobody is impressed and the powers that be are sitting on the edges of their seats waiting for an excuse to shut down flag. Freedom of speech does not exist, don’t try to test it. They will come bust down your door - for real - point a gun to your head and pull the trigger if you refuse to comply.

Believe it.

Your admin,

Dave

I’m not anarchist. If you wish to gain political power, you will force someone else out. They wiill probably regroup and come back after you. Therefore, you need to be organized, and the amorphous structures favored by anarchists aren’t strong enough to combat such counter-attacks. The other side will be seriously well-organized, the anarchists will not be.

None of which has anything to do with the above. The Admin made a coerced gut-wrenching choice. Judging from his words it’s obvious someone posted way over the line stuff, probably deliberately, which endangered his entire site and maybe his freedom.

Yikes. Be careful out there, folks. And as someone pointed out in the overwhelmingly supportive comments to his post, why log IP addresses at all?

No Comments »

Podcasting has quickly caught the eye of traditional broadcasters who want “in” on what appears to be a great way to reach new listeners or at least old listeners who somewhere along the way became disenfranchised. Now another company has jumped into the Podcasting fray.

Enter Loyal Ears, a media rewards company, which has announced the first independent podcasting platform that marries radio’s huge audience penetration with the rapidly emerging download technology.

DrizzleCast optimizes podcast downloads

NuParadigm DrizzleCast is a new tool for easily downloading podcasts whil preserving network bandwidth. DrizzleCast is currently available as a free download on NuParadigm.com

Podcasting: Art versus Commerce

The two people who are generally acknowledged as the fathers of podcasting, Adam Curry and David Winer, are still at the center of its evolution. But now they’re at odds over podcasting as a business model. Winer, a prominent software developer who wrote the RSS 2.0 specification that powers podcasting, is against commercialization of podcasts. Curry, best known as one of the first MTV VJs, sees a big opportunity and has launched a company to pursue it.

No Comments »

“Any further action by our court or the district court would be improper,” the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote. “While the members of her family and the members of Congress have acted in a way that is both fervent and sincere, the time has come for dispassionate discharge of duty.”

And in a scathing attack on politicians who got involved in the case, the court added that the White House and lawmakers “have acted in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers blueprint for the governance of a free people, our Constitution.”

Meanwhile, the Rev, Jesse Jackson parachuted in well after the battle was over to pray with the parents and hog some media time. Hey, if he cared so much, why wasn’t he there during the battle? Not one of his finer moments, you ask me.

No Comments »

Human activities ‘threaten earth’

The most comprehensive survey ever into the state of the planet concludes that human activities threaten the Earth’s ability to sustain future generations.

It reports that humans have changed most ecosystems beyond recognition in a dramatically short space of time.

No Comments »

U.S. holds about 10,500 prisoners in Iraq 

The United States is holding about 10,500 prisoners in Iraq, more than double the number held in October, the military says.

No Comments »

And after 25 years, he succeeded in doing just that.

Although the Simpson case might have been Cochran’s bravura moment on the public stage, he did not consider it his most important case. It was the long and twisted legal saga of Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt that for Cochran marked, at different points, the nadir and the pinnacle of his career.

Cochran said his biggest disappointment was watching his client, Pratt, convicted of murder in 1972.  And his greatest triumph came when a judge in Orange County reversed that conviction 25 years later.

Pratt told The Times on Tuesday that Cochran was “truly a soldier fully dedicated to making sure that the rights of the oppressed be defended.”

As for OJ, “the LA DA always blows the big cases.”

No Comments »

Saturday, May 7
Washington DC

Bush has launched a taxpayer funded campaign, complete with a strategizing “war room,” to push through his plan to privatize Social Security. Bush and his corporate advisors are falsely crying “crisis” to scare younger workers into accepting “reforms.” What is really going on is a scheme to channel hundreds of billions of dollars to the big Wall Street banks and investment firms at our expense. Currently Bush is on a 60-day, 60-city tour to convince people around the country to support his plan to destroy this vital social program.

The Bush administration intends to slash virtually all remaining social services, including Social Security, to fund unlimited war and occupation in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Haiti and more. They continue to spend more than $200 million a day on the war in Iraq, while targeting over 150 vital health, housing, education and jobs programs for complete elimination in this year’s budget. The impact would be devastating for millions of people, and we must stop them in their tracks.

More

This is part of the new national ANSWER Coalition campaign opposing the Bush planned theft of Social Security,  linking it to the neocons endless wars and planned destruction of the social net created in the 30’s.

Here in LA, we have two events planned.

Saturday, May 7
Community Meeting Sunset Hall Retirement Home
2830 Francis Avenue, LA
(This is a retirement home for retired lefties!)

Saturday, May 21
People’s Assembly and Speak-Out Rally
Pershing Square (532 S. Olive Street), LA

No Comments »

The Colorado Supreme Court yesterday threw out the death penalty in a rape-and-murder case because jurors had studied Bible verses such as “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” during deliberations.

During oral arguments before the Supreme Court last month, defense attorney Kathleen Lord said the jurors had gone outside the law. “They went to the Bible to find out God’s position on capital punishment,” she said.

No Comments »

Vicks VapoRub (this was confirmed to me by an MD)

No Comments »

Today’s LA Times has a full page ad today, replete with huge headlines and manic text for a real estate seminar promising “one weekend can make you a millionaire” with a featured speech by Donald Trump, some of whose properties I believe are in bankruptcy. But no matter, you can get $50 off the price if you register fast - but the ad neglects to say what the price is.

As I said in the post below, once the mainstream believes they can get rich forever on some new investment scheme, then it’s already peaked, and the crash is nigh.

No Comments »

LA Times on the housing bubble, complete with unsophisticated buyers using their retirement funds to buy speculative property sight unseen.

They’re cashing in retirement funds, selling stock and taking out second mortgages. They’re pouring the money into real estate, often in distant states, often without seeing the property.

One sight-unseen buyer went to his property

He went to visit his dirt.

It wasn’t quite the way he imagined. “It was steeper. And there’s a lot of rocks. Big rocks.”

Well duh.

From Angy Bear, quoting a Miami broker

In Miami, Ron Shuffield, president of Esslinger-Wooten-Maxwell Realtors, predicted that a limited supply of land coupled with demand from baby boomers and foreigners would prolong the boom indefinitely.

“South Florida,” he said, “is working off of a totally new economic model than any of us have ever experienced in the past.”

This is precisely the same snake oil manic bullshit we heard just before the dot coms tanked and took the stock market with it. Much of that money (what was left of it anyway) went into real estate, fueling this new bubble. And it’s about to pop. Interest rates are rising, and in the surest sign of all, when mainstream investors are flocking to new investments and people are saying this is different, it’ll go on forever, then it’s a given that 1) the peak has already been reached and 2) the savvy investors are selling to the incoming rubes.

No Comments »

Poison gas, that is. Which can be created by teflon frying pans.

DuPont studies show that the Teflon offgases toxic particulates at 446 F. At 680 F Teflon pans release at least six toxic gases, including two carcinogens, two global pollutants, and MFA, a chemical lethal to humans at low doses.

It gets worse.

At temperatures that DuPont scientists claim are reached on stovetop drip pans (1000 F), non-stick coatings break down to a chemical warfare agent known as PFIB, and a chemical analog of the WWII nerve gas phosgene.

And don’t use teflon around Tweety, either.

Avian veterinarians have known for decades that Teflon-coated and other non-stick cookware can produce fumes that are highly toxic to birds.

No Comments »

After remarks by Randall Terry — an anti-abortion activist who has been acting as a spokesman for Terri Schiavo’s family, the Schindlers — members of a group calling itself the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigades seized control of the microphones and blasted Terry as a “Christian fascist thug” trying to interfere in “the most intimate affairs of life and death.”

“[Terri Schiavo’s] brain is not functional. It’s not going to recover. Let her die in peace,” pleaded Sunsari Taylor, a member of the group.

Ever notice how the media sometimes won’t even respect the name of a group? They didn’t say Randall Terry was a member of a group “calling itself” Operation Rescue, but did so with the RCP Youth Brigade, when a 30 second Google would have shown them to be an actual group.

No Comments »

McDonalds is experimenting with outsourcing their drive-up windows, so when you order a burger at one, you might be talking to someone in India.
 
With entry level jobs vanishing in the U.S., how do those new to the job market get that first job which then allows them to move up?

No Comments »

UK lawmakers accuse US of grave rights violations

The United States has committed “grave violations of human rights” against prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan and Iraq, the Foreign Affairs Committee of Britain’s parliament said in a report on Friday.

Pentagon will not try 17 G.I.’s implicated in prisoners’ deaths

Despite recommendations by Army investigators, commanders have decided not to prosecute 17 American soldiers implicated in the deaths of three prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2003 and 2004, according to a new accounting released Friday by the Army.

No Comments »

Tom Delay, who has been foaming at the mouth in support of Terry Shiavo staying alive, joined with his family and plugged the plug on their ailing father in 1988. For me to be outraged by his hypocrisy, I’d have to believe he believes what he says about Shiavo. And I don’t. Or if he does, it’s a secondary motive. The neocons are using Shiavo as a ploy to energize their hard right lunatic base. Whether or not any of them actually believe what they say is irrelevant. Whether it’s WMD in Iraq, saying the US doesn’t torture detainees or sanctimoniously supporting Shiavo, they’ve shown they will distort and lie whenever they need to. It never was about compassion for Schiavo, and always about cynical political calculation.

I mean, Terry Schiavo’s parents spokesperson is anti-abortion extremist Randall Terry. what else do you need to know?   

In 1988, there was no . . . fiery rhetoric as the congressman quietly joined the sad family consensus to let his father die. “There was no point to even really talking about it,” Maxine DeLay, the congressman’s 81-year-old widowed mother, recalled in an interview last week. “There was no way [Charles] wanted to live like that. Tom knew — we all knew — his father wouldn’t have wanted to live that way.”

Doctors advised that he would “basically be a vegetable,” said the congressman’s aunt, JoAnne DeLay.

When his father’s kidneys failed, the DeLay family decided against connecting him to a dialysis machine. “Extraordinary measures to prolong life were not initiated,” said his medical report, citing “agreement with the family’s wishes.” His bedside chart carried the instruction: “Do not resuscitate.”

On Dec. 14, 1988, the DeLay patriarch “expired with his family in attendance.”

“The situation faced by the congressman’s family was entirely different than Terri Schiavo’s,” said a spokesman for the majority leader.

There were also these similarities: Both stricken patients were severely brain-damaged. Both were incapable of surviving without medical assistance. Both were said to have expressed a desire to be spared from being kept artificial means. And neither of them had a living will.

No Comments »

Hours after a judge ordered that Terri Schiavo was not to be removed from her hospice, a team of state agents were en route to seize her and have her feeding tube reinserted — but they stopped short when local police told them they would enforce the judge’s order, The Herald has learned.

For a brief period, local police, who have officers at the hospice to keep protesters out, prepared for what sources called “a showdown.”

“The FDLE called to say they were en route to the scene,” said an official with the city police who requested anonymity. “When the sheriff’s department and our department told them they could not enforce their order, they backed off.”

“It was kind of a showdown on the part of the locals and the state police,” the official said. “It it was not too long after that Jeb Bush was on TV saying that, evidently, he doesn’t have as much authority as people think.” via ProRev

Editorial cartoon via Lefti on the News who comments, “Iraqis have (or had) lives too.”

No Comments »

My friend Joe Delaplaine has done a quite funny, witty sendup of Fox News, complete with idiot announcers, inept reporters in the field, and non-stop ticker “news.” Good stuff indeed.

View the movie. (Quicktime, 3 min, 45 MB )

Email Joe.

PS The Quicktime  file has to download completely first before streaming, anyone know how to tell Quicktime to start streaming as it’s downloading?

No Comments »

One of the Vatican’s more definitive statements on the end of life is a 1951 document by Pope Pius XII, declaring that the Catholic Church holds that a person is obliged to always preserve life, but that obligation was not “absolute.” Pius wrote that a person should accept “ordinary means” to save his or her life, but not “extraordinary means.”

More to the point, bioethicists will also tell you that this case is about the right to refuse medical treatment — chemotherapy, blood transfusions, or, yes, food and water. Can we make that decision, and if not, who can? Decades of hard cases have established our right to say no, and state legislation has determined that our spouses, adult children, parents — in that order — can act for us. In Florida, the courts determined that Michael Schiavo knew what his wife wanted and spoke for her.

Megadox Advance Health Care Directives. Download the form for $10, fill it out. Then there’s no confusion at all what your wishes are and no court in the world can block it.

No Comments »

Police arrest teenager for selling marijuana-laced brownies

80-year-old man arrested for selling crack and meth

Colombian police find drugs sub. A nearly complete eight-metre fibreglass submarine, capable of carrying 10 tonnes cocaine, worth $200m, was found in the Pacific port of Tumaco. Via Adam Curry’s Weblog

No Comments »

Bush hits a new low in polls for job approval

President Bush’s job-approval rating has sunk to 45 percent, the worst of his presidency, amid public opposition at his intervention in the Terri Schiavo case and growing concern over gasoline prices.

No Comments »

Sue is planting giant pumpkins again this year (yes, it’s planting time here in L.A.) Last year, she grew a 300 pounder, not bad for a first year attempt experts say, and saved seeds for this year.

How fast do giant pumpkins grow? She put a seed in a 12 ounce paper cup to germinate. A few days later, the seed was cracking with a little green appearing but no leaves as yet. I transplanted it into a larger pot and noticed it was already root-bound. This for a seed just turning green with no leaves.

Today, just 2-3 days later, the leaves are three inches long.

No Comments »

I’ve posted a bunch of photos from various antiwar demos and other protests to Flickr, a photo posting site recently bought by Yahoo. You can upload 10 MB a month for free, unlimited bandwidth.

Polizeros Flickr photos

No Comments »

A board hearing Canada’s refugee cases rejected a bid Thursday for asylum by a U.S. Army deserter who refused to go to Iraq, raising legal roadblocks to the growing trickle of American servicemen fleeing north of the border.

The board ruled that Jeremy Hinzman, 26, could not argue that he would be unfairly persecuted in the United States for refusing to serve in what he said was an illegal war.

The antiwar candidate who wasn’t

The second anniversary of the Iraq war came and past, yet the most popular “antiwar” Democrat remains speechless. Dean has said nothing about Bush’s potential forays in Iran and Syria. He has not muttered a single word about ending the US occupation of Iraq. Should we be surprised?

Nope. Howard Dean’s “antiwar” convictions haven’t vanished — they never existed to begin with.

No Comments »