The Best War Ever

Sunday, December 25, 2005

Yet more lyrics

Jesus, Jesus help me
I'm alone in this world
And a fucked up world it is too
Tell me, tell me the story
The one about eternity
And the way it's all gonna be

Wake up, wake up dead man
Wake up, wake up dead man

Jesus, I'm waiting here boss
I know you're looking out for us
But maybe your hands aren't free
Your father, He made the world in seven
He's in charge of heaven
Will you put in a word in for me

Wake up, wake up dead man
Wake up, wake up dead man

Listen to your words they'll tell you what to do
Listen over the rhythm that's confusing you
Listen to the reed in the saxophone
Listen over the hum of the radio
Listen over sounds of blades in rotation
Listen through the traffic and circulation
Listen as hope and peace try to rhyme
Listen over marching bands playing out of time

Wake up, wake up dead man
Wake up, wake up dead man

Jesus, were you just around the corner
Did You think to try and warn her
Or are you working on something new
If there's an order in all of this disorder
Is it like a tape recorder
Can we rewind it just once more

Wake up, wake up dead man
Wake up, wake up dead man

Friday, December 23, 2005

Merry Holidays and Happy Christmas to you all.



Thoughts to leave you with on this weekend of "peace, love, and happiness."

Take this for what you will

I cry everytime I hear this song:

How can u c in2 my eyes
Like open doors?
Leading u down into my core
Where it Bcomes so numb?
Without a soul
My spirit's sleeping somewhere cold
Until u find it there and lead it back
Home

chorus
(wake me up)
Wake me up inside
(I can't wake up)
Wake me up inside
(save me)
Call my name and save me from the dark
(wake me up)
Bid my blood to run
(I can't wake up)
Before I come undone
(save me)
Save me from the nothing I've become

Now that I know what I'm without
U can't just leave me
Breathe into me and make me real
Bring me to life

chorus

Frozen inside without your touch
Without your love, darling
Oh, only u r the life among the dead

speak sentences
sing again
I've been sleeping a thousand years it seems
Got to open my eyes to everything
Bring me to life

chorus

Bring me to life..

Thursday, December 22, 2005

Top 10 reasons the FISA incident will go away

The Dynamic of a Bush Scandal: How the Spying Story Will Unfold (and Fade) - The third button on the Daou Report's navigation bar links to the U.S. Constitution, a Constitution many Americans believe is on life support - if not already dead. The cause of its demise is the corrosive interplay between the Bush administration, a bevy of blind apologists, a politically apathetic public, a well-oiled rightwing message machine, lapdog reporters, and a disorganized opposition. The domestic spying case perfectly illuminates the workings of that system. And the unfolding of this story augurs poorly for those who expect it to yield different results from other administration scandals.

Here's why: the dynamic of a typical Bush scandal follows familiar contours...

1. POTUS circumvents the law - an impeachable offense.

2. The story breaks (in this case after having been concealed by a news organization until well after Election 2004).

3. The Bush crew floats a number of pushback strategies, settling on one that becomes the mantra of virtually every Republican surrogate. These Republicans face down poorly prepped Dem surrogates and shred them on cable news shows.

4. Rightwing attack dogs on talk radio, blogs, cable nets, and conservative editorial pages maul Bush's critics as traitors for questioning the CIC.

5. The Republican leadership plays defense for Bush, no matter how flagrant the Bush over-reach, no matter how damaging the administration's actions to America's reputation and to the Constitution. A few 'mavericks' like Hagel or Specter risk the inevitable rightwing backlash and meekly suggest that the president should obey the law. John McCain, always the Bush apologist when it really comes down to it, minimizes the scandal.

6. Left-leaning bloggers and online activists go ballistic, expressing their all-too-familiar combination of outrage at Bush and frustration that nothing ever seems to happen with these scandals. Several newspaper editorials echo these sentiments but quickly move on to other issues.

7. A few reliable Dems, Conyers, Boxer, et al, take a stand on principle, giving momentary hope to the progressive grassroots/netroots community. The rest of the Dem leadership is temporarily outraged (adding to that hope), but is chronically incapable of maintaining the sense of high indignation and focus required to reach critical mass and create a wholesale shift in public opinion. For example, just as this mother of all scandals hits Washington, Democrats are still putting out press releases on Iraq, ANWR and a range of other topics, diluting the story and signaling that they have little intention of following through. This allows Bush to use his three favorite weapons: time, America's political apathy, and make-believe 'journalists' who yuck it up with him and ask fluff questions at his frat-boy pressers.

8. Reporters and media outlets obfuscate and equivocate, pretending to ask tough questions but essentially pushing the same narratives they've developed and perfected over the past five years, namely, some variation of "Bush firm, Dems soft." A range of Bush-protecting tactics are put into play, one being to ask ridiculously misleading questions such as "Should Bush have the right to protect Americans or should he cave in to Democratic political pressure?" All the while, the right assaults the "liberal" media for daring to tell anything resembling the truth.

9. Polls will emerge with 'proof' that half the public agrees that Bush should have the right to "protect Americans against terrorists." Again, the issue will be framed to mask the true nature of the malfeasance. The media will use these polls to create a self-fulfilling loop and convince the public that it isn't that bad after all. The president breaks the law. Life goes on.

10. The story starts blending into a long string of administration scandals, and through skillful use of scandal fatigue, Bush weathers the storm and moves on, further demoralizing his opponents and cementing the press narrative about his 'resolve' and toughness. Congressional hearings might revive the issue momentarily, and bloggers will hammer away at it, but the initial hype is all the Democratic leadership and the media can muster, and anyway, it's never as juicy the second time around...

Rinse and repeat.

It's a battle of attrition that Bush and his team have mastered. Short of a major Dem initiative to alter the cycle, to throw a wrench into the system, to go after the media institutionally, this cycle will continue for the foreseeable future.

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

go have fun

http://www.2atoms.com/comedy/build-a-better-bush.htm

Saturday, December 17, 2005

The sickness that is me

my love for you
spills out over my hands
like badly written lies
like a twisted truth

I feel a sickness within me
and they call this happiness
you lied
the liars truth
the beggars promise
love me for what you see on the inside
but inside I'm diseased

Sick and fucked up
words without meaning
clean without the cleanup
dirty with scabs
medicated with illness

I'm a dream of your future
a disease within your skull
a need to be whole

Your puppet on a short string
hang me with your words
castrate me with your eyes
sickness and sick inside

They say I dont support the troops .... I say they dont know the truth

Taken from http://www.traprockpeace.org/benderman_blog/ .... yeah it seems that my HTML links on here are broken ..... get over it.

His name was Earl. He spent his days in a wheel chair, hand propelled, sitting along the sidewalks of the seawall in a Victorian city along the coast. He kept all of his possessions in a shopping cart, while his valuables hung from the handles of his chair. I met him one night while walking on the beach. I walked past a hollowed out part of the rocky seawall, and something moved. It was Earl, and a blanket. After going across the street and returning with cups of coffee, I sat and listened while Earl talked. He was a Viet Nam veteran. He’d done three tours in Viet Nam; he was an honorable man, torn by his experiences and yet sure of himself and what he believed.

He had been told that he was fighting for freedom, the freedom of his country. But with every tour it seemed that he, and his country, were a little less free. He gave with honor; he fought because he had been told it was right. He fulfilled his duty to his country, but he sacrificed his duty to himself in the process.

Earl returned from the war to his family and to work in the oil industry. No matter whom he was with, he never felt whole. No matter what he did, he never felt free. He gave and gave, a generous man, but everything was taken and never replaced, and the aching grew more painful. No matter how hard he tried, the world seemed to take advantage of him, and he couldn’t say no because he thought giving would be the way to redeem his actions in the hidden swamps of Viet Nam.

Earl had lived on the beach for ten years. The pain grew too great and he could no longer face those who demanded his life. He’d given all that he had.

I returned for many nights, and between sips of coffee and nibbles on dark chocolate, Earl told me his feelings and showed me his world.

I asked him one night if he thought Peace would ever come. Earl responded, “It’s here, people just can’t see it because of all the traffic lights.”

Earl, like the soldiers who fight in Iraq today, served his country believing that it was the highest duty he could perform, that of keeping us free. But he learned, like so many of the soldiers of today are coming to understand, freedom doesn’t come at the end of a gun. War – soldiers sent to kill those we fear. But all that does is give us more to fear. Once we’ve killed many, there will be those who seek retribution, and we will have more to kill. Shall we just blast away until they’re all gone? Then what will be left - people who will then turn on themselves out of fear? What is the point?

America is not free. We are owned by our possessions, by our drive for success, by our need to be superior, by our belief that our way is right. As long as we have material wealth, we will live in fear of someone coming to take it away. How does that make us free?

America will never know peace or freedom as long as Americans believe that monetary wealth is what defines a person’s success. We lock our doors, our cars have alarms, and our businesses have security guards. We have air marshals, and now train and bus marshals. Our travel bags are checked and every purchase we make is done after we present valid identification. How can anyone think we are free? Americans will blame the terrorists, but it is not the terrorists that confine us. We confine ourselves by placing crazy values on ridiculous possessions that have no meaning to life, except as a way to give our neighbors the impression that we have actually made something of ourselves.

We live in fear of thieves stealing away our possessions in the night, “identity theft.” Without the fancy accoutrements we are empty, exposed for the frauds we are.

Americans are all actors in a carefully scripted play. We wear expensive makeup so no one can see our faces. We dress in fine costumes pretending to be something other than what we are. We watch our words and plan our conversations, re-write letters to “friends” until they sound just right. We treat new relations to fancy dinners and extravagant dates, only to have the relationship sour when we can no longer keep up the pretense and the truth is revealed.

Our soldiers can’t win our freedom. Our soldiers will die; more soldiers will fill their ranks. This war will end and a new one will begin, just as soon as another country’s leaders start to see through the threadbare cloak of illusory success that our next administration hides behind under the guise of leading the greatest country on earth.

Until Americans see the truth and face themselves our soldiers will sacrifice for what they believe is a worthy cause. They will return home and try to find their peace with families who tell these veterans that they are honorable as they lovingly try to help ease the inner turmoil that comes from combat. They will try to feel fulfilled in unfulfilling work that pays the bills but confines them even more. They will look at themselves in the mirror and wonder how much more they have to give before they will have won their freedom, and their country finally pays them back by actually making a commitment as strong as theirs in defending peace.

One night during the winter, I visited Earl one last time.

We sat in the rocks and looked out over the waves crashing on the jetties extending into the night. Earl said, “Look out there past the stars, and beyond the white caps. See where the darkest part of the sky touches the darkest part of the sea?” I looked and the two came together touching and seemed to extend beyond the night and it was easy to imagine someone sitting on the opposite shore, thousands of miles away, thoughts in a different language but with the exact same meaning.

Earl put his coffee down and raised both hands. He said, “When I look out at the place where the darkness comes together, that’s when I know that I am finally whole.” He took a breath, and closed his eyes. Quietly he finished, “And it is living here where nothing controls me, and the sound of the surf rocks me to sleep that I know that I am finally free.”

Friday, December 16, 2005

Smells like more bush*t to me

The CEO of Diebold, a maker of electronic voting systems and automated teller machines, stepped down on Monday, the day before a Connecticut law firm filed a shareholder lawsuit alleging, among other charges, that the company's execs downplayed voting system problems in the last election.

The lawsuit, filed by Scott + Scott, alleges that Diebold was unable to keep control the quality of its voting machines, lacked necessary oversight of its business processes and misled shareholders about its condition.

The events come a week after the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a lawsuit against North Carolina's election officials, alleging that by certifying voting systems--including systems from Diebold--for the last election, the officials violated a state law that requires the voting-machine makers to escrow all source code for software included in the systems.

In Florida, researchers allied with the Black Box Voting project were invited to test the security of the systems there and found that a poll worker could use a pre-modified memory card to change the vote tally undetectably.

Despite avoiding critical missteps in the last major election, electronic voting system continue to be under intense scrutiny in regards to their security. Computer scientists have questioned both the reliability and security of the systems, as well as pointing out that the confusing and secretive certification process made testing of the systems is essentially meaningless.

Thursday, December 15, 2005

Intelligence

Washington - A $300 million Pentagon psychological warfare operation includes plans for placing pro-American messages in foreign media outlets without disclosing the US government as the source, one of the military officials in charge of the program says.

Run by psychological warfare experts at the US Special Operations Command, the media campaign is being designed to counter terrorist ideology and sway foreign audiences to support American policies. The military wants to fight the information war against al-Qaeda through newspapers, websites, radio, television and "novelty items" such as T-shirts and bumper stickers.

The program will operate throughout the world, including in allied nations and in countries where the United States is not involved in armed conflict.

The description of the program by Mike Furlong, deputy director of the Joint Psychological Operations Support Element, provides the most detailed look to date at the Pentagon's global campaign.

The three companies handling the campaign include the Lincoln Group, the company being investigated by the Pentagon for paying Iraqi newspapers to run pro-US stories. (Related story: Contracts for Pro-US Propaganda)

Military officials involved with the campaign say they're not planning to place false stories in foreign news outlets clandestinely. But the military won't always reveal its role in distributing pro-American messages, Furlong says.

"While the product may not carry the label, 'Made in the USA,' we will respond truthfully if asked" by journalists, Furlong told USA TODAY in a videoconference interview.

He declined to give examples of specific "products," which he said would include articles, advertisements and public-service announcements.

The military's communications work in Iraq has recently drawn controversy with disclosures that Lincoln Group and the US military secretly paid journalists and news outlets to run pro-American stories.

White House officials have expressed concern about the practice, even when the stories are true.

National security adviser Stephen Hadley said President Bush was "very troubled" by activities in Iraq and would stop them if they hurt efforts to build independent news media in Iraq. The military started its own probe.

It's legal for the government to plant propaganda in other countries but not in the USA The White House referred requests for comment about the contracts to the Pentagon, where officials did not respond.

Special Operations Command awarded three contracts worth up to $100 million each for the media campaign in June. Besides the Lincoln Group, the contractors are Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) of San Diego and SYColeman of Washington.

SAIC and Lincoln Group spokesmen declined to comment on the contract. Rick Kiernan, a spokesman for SYColeman, says its work for Special Operations Command is "more in the world of advertising."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has emphasized that Washington must promote its message better. "The worst about America and our military seems to so quickly be taken as truth by the press and reported and spread around the world," he said last week.

The Iraq example may cause Arabs to doubt any pro-American messages, says Jumana al-Tamimi, an editor for the Gulf News, an English-language newspaper published in the United Arab Emirates.

Placing pro-US content in foreign media "makes people suspicious of the open press," says Ken Bacon, a Clinton administration Pentagon spokesman who heads the non-profit group Refugees International.

No contractor for the global program has made a final product, Furlong says. Approval will come from Rumsfeld's office and regional commanders. Some of the development work is classified.

"Sometimes it's not good to signal ... what your plans are," he says.

The Program:

* Cost: Up to $100 million per contractor, $300 million total.

* Contractors: SYColeman of Washington; Lincoln Group of Washington; Science Applications International Corp. of San Diego.

* Awarded: June 7.

* Length: Five years.

* Purpose: "For media approach planning, prototype product development, commercial quality product development, product distribution and dissemination, and media effects analysis."

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Ok this is a LONG story but worth the read

WASHINGTON - A year ago, at a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Fla., a small group of activists met to plan a protest of military recruiting at local high schools. What they didn't know was that their meeting had come to the attention of the U.S. military.

A secret 400-page Defense Department document obtained by NBC News lists the Lake Worth meeting as a “threat” and one of more than 1,500 “suspicious incidents” across the country over a recent 10-month period.

“This peaceful, educationally oriented group being a threat is incredible,” says Evy Grachow, a member of the Florida group called The Truth Project.

“This is incredible,” adds group member Rich Hersh. “It's an example of paranoia by our government,” he says. “We're not doing anything illegal.”

The Defense Department document is the first inside look at how the U.S. military has stepped up intelligence collection inside this country since 9/11, which now includes the monitoring of peaceful anti-war and counter-military recruitment groups.

“I think Americans should be concerned that the military, in fact, has reached too far,” says NBC News military analyst Bill Arkin.

The Department of Defense declined repeated requests by NBC News for an interview. A spokesman said that all domestic intelligence information is “properly collected” and involves “protection of Defense Department installations, interests and personnel.” The military has always had a legitimate “force protection” mission inside the U.S. to protect its personnel and facilities from potential violence. But the Pentagon now collects domestic intelligence that goes beyond legitimate concerns about terrorism or protecting U.S. military installations, say critics.

Four dozen anti-war meetings
The DOD database obtained by NBC News includes nearly four dozen anti-war meetings or protests, including some that have taken place far from any military installation, post or recruitment center. One “incident” included in the database is a large anti-war protest at Hollywood and Vine in Los Angeles last March that included effigies of President Bush and anti-war protest banners. Another incident mentions a planned protest against military recruiters last December in Boston and a planned protest last April at McDonald’s National Salute to America’s Heroes — a military air and sea show in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

The Fort Lauderdale protest was deemed not to be a credible threat and a column in the database concludes: “US group exercising constitutional rights.” Two-hundred and forty-three other incidents in the database were discounted because they had no connection to the Department of Defense — yet they all remained in the database.

The DOD has strict guidelines (.PDF link), adopted in December 1982, that limit the extent to which they can collect and retain information on U.S. citizens.

Still, the DOD database includes at least 20 references to U.S. citizens or U.S. persons. Other documents obtained by NBC News show that the Defense Department is clearly increasing its domestic monitoring activities. One DOD briefing document stamped “secret” concludes: “[W]e have noted increased communication and encouragement between protest groups using the [I]nternet,” but no “significant connection” between incidents, such as “reoccurring instigators at protests” or “vehicle descriptions.”

The increased monitoring disturbs some military observers.

“It means that they’re actually collecting information about who’s at those protests, the descriptions of vehicles at those protests,” says Arkin. “On the domestic level, this is unprecedented,” he says. “I think it's the beginning of enormous problems and enormous mischief for the military.”

Some former senior DOD intelligence officials share his concern. George Lotz, a 30-year career DOD official and former U.S. Air Force colonel, held the post of Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Oversight from 1998 until his retirement last May. Lotz, who recently began a consulting business to help train and educate intelligence agencies and improve oversight of their collection process, believes some of the information the DOD has been collecting is not justified.

Make sure they are not just going crazy
“Somebody needs to be monitoring to make sure they are just not going crazy and reporting things on U.S. citizens without any kind of reasoning or rationale,” says Lotz. “I demonstrated with Martin Luther King in 1963 in Washington,” he says, “and I certainly didn’t want anybody putting my name on any kind of list. I wasn’t any threat to the government,” he adds.

The military’s penchant for collecting domestic intelligence is disturbing — but familiar — to Christopher Pyle, a former Army intelligence officer.

“Some people never learn,” he says. During the Vietnam War, Pyle blew the whistle on the Defense Department for monitoring and infiltrating anti-war and civil rights protests when he published an article in the Washington Monthly in January 1970.

The public was outraged and a lengthy congressional investigation followed that revealed that the military had conducted investigations on at least 100,000 American citizens. Pyle got more than 100 military agents to testify that they had been ordered to spy on U.S. citizens — many of them anti-war protestors and civil rights advocates. In the wake of the investigations, Pyle helped Congress write a law placing new limits on military spying inside the U.S.

But Pyle, now a professor at Mt. Holyoke College in Massachusetts, says some of the information in the database suggests the military may be dangerously close to repeating its past mistakes.

“The documents tell me that military intelligence is back conducting investigations and maintaining records on civilian political activity. The military made promises that it would not do this again,” he says.

Too much data?
Some Pentagon observers worry that in the effort to thwart the next 9/11, the U.S. military is now collecting too much data, both undermining its own analysis efforts by forcing analysts to wade through a mountain of rubble in order to obtain potentially key nuggets of intelligence and entangling U.S. citizens in the U.S. military’s expanding and quiet collection of domestic threat data.

Two years ago, the Defense Department directed a little known agency, Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, to establish and “maintain a domestic law enforcement database that includes information related to potential terrorist threats directed against the Department of Defense.” Then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz also established a new reporting mechanism known as a TALON or Threat and Local Observation Notice report. TALONs now provide “non-validated domestic threat information” from military units throughout the United States that are collected and retained in a CIFA database. The reports include details on potential surveillance of military bases, stolen vehicles, bomb threats and planned anti-war protests. In the program’s first year, the agency received more than 5,000 TALON reports. The database obtained by NBC News is generated by Counterintelligence Field Activity.

CIFA is becoming the superpower of data mining within the U.S. national security community. Its “operational and analytical records” include “reports of investigation, collection reports, statements of individuals, affidavits, correspondence, and other documentation pertaining to investigative or analytical efforts” by the DOD and other U.S. government agencies to identify terrorist and other threats. Since March 2004, CIFA has awarded at least $33 million in contracts to corporate giants Lockheed Martin, Unisys Corporation, Computer Sciences Corporation and Northrop Grumman to develop databases that comb through classified and unclassified government data, commercial information and Internet chatter to help sniff out terrorists, saboteurs and spies.

One of the CIFA-funded database projects being developed by Northrop Grumman and dubbed “Person Search,” is designed “to provide comprehensive information about people of interest.” It will include the ability to search government as well as commercial databases. Another project, “The Insider Threat Initiative,” intends to “develop systems able to detect, mitigate and investigate insider threats,” as well as the ability to “identify and document normal and abnormal activities and ‘behaviors,’” according to the Computer Sciences Corp. contract. A separate CIFA contract with a small Virginia-based defense contractor seeks to develop methods “to track and monitor activities of suspect individuals.”

“The military has the right to protect its installations, and to protect its recruiting services,” says Pyle. “It does not have the right to maintain extensive files on lawful protests of their recruiting activities, or of their base activities,” he argues.

Lotz agrees.

“The harm in my view is that these people ought to be allowed to demonstrate, to hold a banner, to peacefully assemble whether they agree or disagree with the government’s policies,” the former DOD intelligence official says.

'Slippery slope'
Bert Tussing, director of Homeland Defense and Security Issues at the U.S. Army War College and a former Marine, says “there is very little that could justify the collection of domestic intelligence by the Unites States military. If we start going down this slippery slope it would be too easy to go back to a place we never want to see again,” he says.

Some of the targets of the U.S. military’s recent collection efforts say they have already gone too far.

“It's absolute paranoia — at the highest levels of our government,” says Hersh of The Truth Project.

“I mean, we're based here at the Quaker Meeting House,” says Truth Project member Marie Zwicker, “and several of us are Quakers.”

The Defense Department refused to comment on how it obtained information on the Lake Worth meeting or why it considers a dozen or so anti-war activists a “threat.”

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

What they are saying about you (part 19)

Summary: Pat Robertson said that Democratic criticism of the war in Iraq "amounts to treason."

On the December 7 edition of Christian Broadcasting Network's The 700 Club, host Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition of America, said Democratic criticism of the Iraq war "amounts to treason" and that "carping criticism ... just doesn't cut it."

From the December 7 edition of Christian Broadcasting Network's The 700 Club:

ROBERTSON: We've won the war already, and for the Democrats to say we can't win it -- what kind of a statement is that? And furthermore, one of the fundamental principles we have in America is that the president is the commander in chief of the armed forces and attempts to undermine the commander in chief during time of war amounts to treason. I know we have an opportunity to express our points of view, but there is a time when we're engaged in a combat situation that carping criticism against the commander in chief just doesn't cut it. And I think that yes, we have freedom of speech -- of course we do -- but this has gone over the top and I think the Republicans are -- well, they've taken advantage.

And this somehow made sense today

Sunday, December 11, 2005

Its CLASS War I tell you

NEW YORK - They partied and protested, then grew up to dominate America with their chutzpah and sheer numbers. Yet now, as the oldest of the baby boomers prepare to turn 60, there are glimmers of doubt within this "have it all" generation about how they will be judged by those who come next.


The ferment of the '60s and '70s — when boomers changed the world, or thought they did — faded long ago. Nostalgic pride in the achievements of that era now mixes with skepticism: Have the boomers collectively betrayed their youthful idealism? Have they been self-centered to the point of shortchanging their children?

Anthony DeCurtis, one of the boomers' pre-eminent rock 'n' roll journalists, hears the occasional barb from his creative writing students at the University of Pennsylvania and it gives him pause.

"There's a fear that there's going to be nothing left — that they're going to be picking up the pieces for this six-decade party we had, cleaning up the mess," said DeCurtis, 54. "There's some truth to that, I guess."

The boomers — 78 million of them born from 1946 to 1964 — are wealthier and more numerous than any generation before or since. They have controlled political power long enough to stack the financial deck in their favor.

"It's economic and policy imperialism," said University of Oklahoma historian Steve Gillon, 48, author of "Boomer Nation."

"The boomers have set up institutions that will continue to benefit them, at the expense of other groups, as they grow old and live longer than any other generation," Gillon said. "It's spend what you want, cut your own taxes — the ultimate baby boom philosophy of 'We want to have it all.' We're not a generation that's had to deal with the reality of sacrifice."

Among the boomers turning 60 next year — along with George W. Bush and
Bill Clinton — is Ron Kovic, who became an anti-war activist after being paralyzed by a combat wound in Vietnam in 1968. His autobiographical book "Born on the Fourth of July" became a hit film.

Unlike some of his contemporaries, Kovic sees no reason for guilt or embarrassment as boomers take stock. "We have every reason to be proud," he said. "We were brash and bold and beautiful."

Now, Kovic says, his generation will revolutionize a different kind of '60s.

"Often when people get older, they say to the younger generation, 'Well, it's your turn now,'" he said. "I feel very differently. Rather than just passing the torch, and saying we did our best, this generation — which dreamed such big, impossible dreams — refuses to step aside. It sees itself as part of change that it still passionately believes will occur."

Reluctance to step aside could be a formidable phenomenon in coming years as many boomers seek self-fulfillment and civic engagement deep into old age. Listen to Dr. Terry Grossman, author of "The Baby Boomers' Guide to Living Forever" and operator of a Denver anti-aging clinic.

"As an official member of the boomer generation, I do not believe it was intended for us to die," said Grossman, 58. "We were special right from the get-go — dying wasn't part of our script."

Grossman believes medical advances that will extend lifespans by several decades are perhaps 20 years away. Boomers, he said, are turning to fitness gurus, special diets and vitamin megadoses in hopes of staving off aging long enough to benefit.

A particularly assertive breed of boomers dominates in Washington, D.C., according to Michael Franc, who works there for the conservative Heritage Foundation.

"Boomers always struck me as very self-centered and self-important, because there are so many of us," said Franc, 48. "We're always in the middle of the next fun moment at some everlasting party, and we're not able to defer the gratification to tackle the long-term problems."

Other boomers feel similar doubts about their generation's track record — and they want their new cause to be a shot at redemption. Boomer-led initiatives such as Civic Ventures are encouraging people over 50 to consider socially productive jobs and volunteer work rather than easing into traditional "golden years" retirement.

"We've been killing ourselves working for hours on end for decades, caught up in the work-and-spend dynamic," said Marc Freedman, 47, Civic Ventures' founder.

"But there's a chance for the boomers to reclaim their earlier legacy, and not be a drain on society," he said. "They could have a second coming in terms of social idealism, and find ways to contribute that mean something beyond themselves."

In some realms, boomers already take pride in what they have bequeathed. Boomer women, for example, broke into many male-dominated fields on a broad scale and expanded options for those who follow.

Susan Lapinski, editor of Working Mother magazine, cited her own two daughters, both in their 20s.

"My heart lifts when I think about them," she said. "They see meaningful work as one of the ingredients of a happy life. They just assume their partner will be there to assist them."

Lapinski, 47, credits the boomers with starting the process of equalizing marriage, convincing fathers to help more with household affairs and child-raising.

"Even if it's imperfect, it's a leap forward from the previous generation where dad went behind his newspaper after dinner and mom did all the bedtime rituals," she said.

Some boomer parents may have taken matters too far — obsessing over their children's education, activities and college prospects.

"Did some of us try to create trophy kids? In some families, you'd have to say yes," Lapinski said. "In other families, though, there was a nice new emphasis on getting to know your kids, finding fun ways to spend time with them."

Of course, not all boomers welcomed the women's movement, just as the generation remains divided over abortion and gay rights.

"What the boomers did is expand the range of individual choices of how people live," said Gillon, the historian from Oklahoma. "The division today between conservatives and liberals is really a debate over the boomers' legacy."

Lisa Crooms, a Howard University Law School professor, is 43 and technically a boomer, though she doesn't feel like one. She was barely a toddler when the 1963 March on Washington inspired older black boomers.

"The group before me and the group after me clash in certain ways," she said. "A lot of the people older than me take themselves much too seriously, a lot of the people younger than me have a sense of irreverence."

Of boomers, she said, "Their control-freak aspect is too high. They're going to orchestrate how the legend is written, make the history books and say no one will need to revise them afterward."

Nothing illustrates that boomer headlock on modern life quite like rock 'n' roll.

Boomers didn't invent the genre, but they were the fans who made it so durable. Even as music remains youth-oriented, today's young people couldn't escape the 60-something Rolling Stones if they wanted to; Mick Jagger and the boys are even playing the Super Bowl. Long-gone idols such as Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison remain popular both with boomers and their kids.

And wasn't that 40-something Madonna on top of the Billboard charts with her new album?

Franc, the Heritage Foundation official, has tried to broaden his tastes, sampling new music recommended by a colleague in his 20s. "My kids don't like that I listen to their stuff," he said. "Their comfort level is higher when I frown at their music."

DeCurtis, author of many memorable Rolling Stone profiles of rock stars, enjoys good camaraderie with his students at Penn and tries to stay to open to young people's music — but he's quick to defend the old favorites.

"The Stones are tremendous," he said. "Someone tells me the Rolling Stones suck, they can't play, I tell them, 'Go see the show.'"

But no matter how many classic rockers they see, DeCurtis and other boomers to have to admit that both the performers and the times have changed. The explosion of energy that began in the '60s is just a memory.

"Even as a kid, there really was a sense that things were getting better and we were part of it," DeCurtis said. "There was something about being out there protesting the war and thinking you were going to stop the government that made you grow up."

Howard Mechanic, a former Vietnam War activist who lived as a fugitive for 28 years, fondly remembers the adrenaline rush of full-bore protest.

"Now the urgency isn't there," said Mechanic, 57, of Prescott, Ariz. "A lot of people in college, they haven't had to change to be where they are. ... We had to change our lives to do what we wanted to do."

Some boomers, like Calvin Street — a 55-year-old Naval veteran who runs an inner-city youth program in Baltimore — wonder what happened to that can-do attitude and optimism.

"When did the war on poverty end?" he asked. "Maybe things just fizzled out, and we got to the point where we said, 'Well, we didn't change as much as we could, but it's OK,' and we walked away."

Friday, December 09, 2005

All I can say is

Only in Dallas:

In Dallas, people sometimes blame the chamber of commerce, the convention bureau, and other organizations for failing to shake the city's stigma -- being identified, first and foremost, with the JFK assassination.

But I don't fault any of those groups. It's an open wound that may stay open for a very long time. The most recent evidence:

On Wednesday, police closed Dealey Plaza to morning traffic "after a passer-by found a plywood rat maze scrawled with prophetic messages and attached to a kitchen timer, police said ... The 4-foot-square maze contained a live mouse or rat in an exercise ball ... Written on the maze were messages such as, 'There's never enough time,' and 'Open your eyes before it's too late.'"

This comes almost exactly two years after a man killed himself on the "X" that is said to mark the spot where the president was shot.

Thursday, December 08, 2005

John ... we miss you

God is a concept
By which we measure
Our pain
I'll say it again
God is a concept
By which we measure
Our pain

I don't believe in magic
I don't believe in I-ching
I don't believe in Bible
I don't believe in tarot
I don't believe in Hitler
I don't believe in Jesus
I don't believe in Kennedy
I don't believe in Buddha
I don't believe in Mantra
I don't believe in Gita
I don't believe in Yoga
I don't believe in kings
I don't believe in Elvis
I don't believe in Zimmerman
I don't believe in Beatles
I just believe in me
Yoko and me
And that's reality

The dream is over
What can I say?
The dream is over
Yesterday
I was the Dreamweaver
But now I'm reborn
I was the Walrus
But now I'm John
And so dear friends
You'll just have to carry on
The dream is over

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

What they say and what they mean

From the December 6 edition of Fox News' which also featured co-hosts Steve Doocy and E.D. Hill: (the Muller stated here is no other than Erich "Mancow" Muller)

MULLER: Guys, I do want to do one serious thing today. Howard Dean ought to be kicked out of America.

KILMEADE: Absolutely.

MULLER: He ought to be tried for treason. He is the enemy. These people, these Dummy-crats -- I'm not a Republican. I'm a Libertarian --

DOOCY: What did he say, Mancow, this time?

MULLER: He said yesterday -- it was late-breaking news -- I, -- I've never done this before in my life -- I was calling radio shows. I've never done that. I called Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes last night [saying]: "You guys gotta get on this. Howard Dean said we're going to lose the war."

KILMEADE: Yeah.

MULLER: This is the head of the Democrats!

HILL: Hey, Mancow --

MULLER: These people want every boy to die. They're bloodthirsty animals. Howard Dean is a vile human being. I can't believe it.

KILMEADE: Many people can't. His quote was: "The idea that the U.S. will win the war in Iraq is plain wrong."

DOOCY: Mancow, we have invited Howard Dean on this program many times and he has declined.

MULLER: Because you'll ask him questions. You'll ask him real questions -- and if I sound like I'm ranting and raving and furious, well, it's because I am. But this guy, this guy is bloodthirsty. He is evil. I'm telling you, I really think every time you report another dead body in Iraq, they go, "Hoo hoo, it's perfect!"

HILL: Well, that's it. You get the sense that people are rooting for the U.S. to lose the war.

DOOCY: For political purposes.

MULLER: We know the enemy is watching the news.

DOOCY: Mancow, thanks very much.

Did you know that???? The enemy are watching the NEWS???? How can this be???? Are they watching FOX or CNN or MSNBC? Does someone have their Neilsen numbers? What are their demographics? .... I say this with tongue planted FIRMLY in cheek. You know, I read this and had to re-read it because in all honesty, I just cant imagine what kinds of sychophants are listening to this and nodding their heads. Personally I didnt know that Howard Dean was like an animated zombie like figure walking the face of the earth. I will say this again because I think it bears repeating, for ANYONE to suggest that because a citizen of the US wants the troops to come home means that we want them to die or that we dont support the troops is ludicrious.

MS outsourcing to India

W orld's largest software maker Microsoft on Wednesday said it will scale up its India operations by increasing the local headcount by 3,000 over three to four years, taking the total strength to 7,000.

"We depend on India for manpower that is why we are scaling operations here. We have 4,000 people today and we will be 7,000 over the next three to four years. We are hiring as fast as we can," Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates said in New Delhi at the CII-CEO Forum.

The percentage increase in employees would be the highest in India, he said.

"They will play a key part in product development, research and support services," Gates said.

Microsoft currently has three centres in the country -- India Development Centre at Hyderabad, an R&D and Global Technical Support Centre in Bangalore.

Stating that applications for local use should be done by local developers, he said that with regard to handwriting and speech recognition software Microsoft would work with local experts to make sure it applies to all broadly used languages.

Gates was emphatically impressed with India's human resource saying, "India has a fantastic pool of software professionals. The world needs to benefit from this. I never thought with so little product companies software services sector will grow so strong as it has grown here."

The Microsoft chairman was also appreciative of India's 'decreasing digital divide.' "Digital divide is nowhere today as bad as it was few years ago in India," he said.

Gates said that both government and the industry had a role to play in digital inclusion with focus on low-cost computing.

"We created the fourth research centre in India. We have one each in the United States, Europe and China. We said the there will be low-cost computers and this will lead the way to make breakthroughs," he said.

Earlier, speaking on 'Realising India's Potential,' he outlined four factors, including leadership, productivity, digital inclusion and innovation, as determining factors.

_-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Seems ironic that MS would do this but at the same time it makes sense. I bitch about companies that export their staff overseas but I really cant do that in good conscience. The company I work for sends a majority of their software and hardware development to Yerevan Armenia and the workers there make 1/3 of what their American counterparts would make. I was also talking to a friend of mine yesterday who was doing some research on companies that process tax returns. She told me that she has found that a majority of them send some of their work to India and that the people there make $100 a month for full time work. She then continued and said something that I've said before, that if they're paying these workers SO little then one of two things would have to happen. Because so many more businesses are moving into places like India where the standard salary for most people is $12,000 or less, with all of this wealth moving into that country, the salaries will either have to increase or they'll start offshoring offshoring. In other words Indian firms, in a struggle to get the lowest cost for their growing economy, have to send their work to yet another country where the annual salary is even lower. The far reaching implications to the US and consumers are pretty evident. Eventually there will be a backlash (which we've seen to some degree.... how many times have you called for support and talked to someone who barely speaks english) or the price of labour in the US will continue on a downward spiral and yet the span between the working poor and the non-existent middle class and the top 2% of the wealth in the world will just continue to grow. Its like looking into the gaping maw that is the future, only this one we can stop, if we so choose.

The Wal-Mart(ing) of Amerikkka

Anyone want to hear my "rendition" of Fulsom Prison Blues?

The robust defence of rendition offered yesterday by the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, marks the export to a European audience of a position on torture that is becoming increasingly uncomfortable for the Bush administration.

Ms Rice's arguments yesterday hinge on her insistence that rendition was a legitimate and necessary tool for the changed circumstances brought by the war on terror. "The captured terrorists of the 21st century do not fit easily into traditional systems of criminal or military justice," she said.

Ms Rice went on to note that the practice had been deployed "for decades" before the terror attacks of September 11 2001. "Its use is not unique to the United States, or to the current administration," she said.

However, her assurances that spiriting terror suspects away to clandestine prisons is a legitimate tactic did not carry much weight with human rights organisations or legal scholars yesterday.

They argued that the sole use of extraordinary rendition was to transport a suspect to a locale that was beyond the reach of the law - and so at risk of torture.

"The argument makes no sense unless there is an assumption that the purpose of rendition is to send people to a place where things could be done to them that could not be done in the United States," said David Luban, a law professor at Georgetown University who is presently a visiting professor at Stanford University.

"Rendition doesn't become a tool in the war against terror unless people are being sent to a place where they can be interrogated harshly."

In her statement yesterday, Ms Rice said rendition was necessary in instances where local governments did not have the capacity to prosecute a terror suspect, or in cases where al-Qaida members were operating in remote areas far from an operational justice system.

However, the majority of the two dozen or so terror suspects known to have been subjected to rendition were captured in urban areas. Some were taken in Europe.

"Most of the ghost detainees on the list were captured in major cities like Bangkok and Karachi," said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch.

Amid the outrage in Europe over the secret prisons, the administration faces calls at home from Democrats for an investigation into the treatment of so-called "ghost detainees". The vice-president, Dick Cheney, meanwhile, has been criticised for resisting efforts to include the CIA in a ban on "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of detainees.

However, in her remarks yesterday, Ms Rice appeared to offer repeated and firm assurances that al-Qaida suspects transported to clandestine prisons for interrogation would not be subjected to torture. "The US does not permit, tolerate or condone torture under any circumstances," she said.

Critics say that depends on one's definition of torture. During the last four years, they say the Bush administration has adopted an exceedingly narrow definition of torture, allowing interrogators to use a variety of harsh techniques such as stress positions, sleep deprivation, and waterboarding, where suspects are strapped to a board and plunged into water.

"The reason she is able to say that the United States does not engage in torture is that the administration has redefined torture to exclude any technique that they use," said Tom Malinowski, Washington director of Human Rights Watch. "What makes this awkward for Secretary Rice is that the state department has continued to condemn as torture techniques such as waterboarding when they are used by other countries - in other words the very techniques the CIA has used against these high level detainees."

Other critics noted yesterday that the utility of information gathered under duress was also unclear. Some intelligence gathered from such suspects has proved unreliable most notoriously in the case of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who told his interrogators before the war in Iraq that Saddam Hussein's regime was training al-Qaida terrorists in the use of chemical and biological weapons.

Al-Libi later recanted, but the flawed intelligence was used by the then secretary of state, Colin Powell, in March 2003 to make his case for war to the United Nations.

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

You wonder "why...", crawling aimlessly through lost faith....religion...beliefs, plagued by continued misunderstandings and allowing yourself to sit idly in wasted time sucking up the words you want so badly to be Truth. You cling to your feeble justifications of what is socially acceptable....yet ache for that which is NOT...and angry for the reasons. You meld into the depth of illusion within your head...the sickeningly sweet lustful lure....stories...exaggerations...misleading yourself purposely, and following protocol. You gag violently on the faith shoved down your gullet by none other than your own hands, grinning through broken sweat at the ease of convincing.The inadequacy of your path led by indifference and armed with apathy...you feel it slipping from your grip...a settled minority. Silly child.....you sorry fuckin example of polluted freedom wallowing in your own anger and tipped precariously towards insanity...this is what you are. Lost ....trapped in your own structured imprisonment...suffocating...asphyxiated...left to rot and let it eat you alive. You wonder "why...", I say keep on falling.

Monday, December 05, 2005

Ode to Deja

I was gonna post something important about the Iraqi policy today but I wrote this for someone who is VERY important to me. I hope she enjoys it:

Sometimes I feel like the gun is me
The pain at the end of the bullet
ripe in my shell
remove my skin
this is who I really am
remove my sin
and this is who you are afraid of

Unsafe
Unsane
and sick beyond diseased

Rape my reality
and tv turns into my soundtrack
Murder corruption
Darkness leaking out of my pores
Five fingers on my trigger

I want all of your pain
Ten feet tall
beg for my forgiveness
lay your soul at my feet

Sick and scabbed
lost in the silence
you're just here in the dark
wrap yourself in my illness

Top 10 tech support truths

Ok someone much more clever than myself wrote this but I wanted to post it anyway:

I figure with enough time and effort, anyone could be a System Administrator. Really, it’s not hard, it just takes practice, methodology, and trial and error. A lot of trial and error. These truths will certainly get you on your way. Let’s get started.

#1 – Users Lie

Oh yes, they do. Don’t think you’re immune either. Have you ever been on a tech support call, convinced that you know the problem and the guy on the phone says something like “Would you put in the recovery CD, restart, and scan your memory?” “Oh, I’ve tried that,” you say with eyes rolling. Believe it or not, sometimes we crazy admin peeps suggest these fixes because they work. When a user is protesting my assessment, the best is to politely insist them to do what was asked until the doing is done.

#2 – Email is the Lifeblood of Non-Techies

I love my non-techie bretheren—I mean, how else would I know what happened on the OC and Gilmore Girls?—but at the end of the day, email is #1 in their book. Now a lot of it is business related, and certainly that shouldn’t be taken lightly, but most likely they were waiting on a warm, fuzzy message from their daughter or sister and really needed their email back up ASAP (“I’m waiting on a proposal!” they screech — see #1)

#3 – Printers Suck

Ever had to clean a laser or, God forbid, an inkjet printer? It’s like stabbing yourself in the eye. It’s not just the grime either—it’s the fallacy that a little chunk of ink could make the machine just stop working. 90% of the time (or better), this isn’t the case (instead, check the fuser/print heads). In terms of network troubles, HPs Jetdirect cards have a pretty solid reputation of failing every few years, so expect to shell out $200+ for those on a semi-regular basis, depending on what kind of printers you run in your office. For those with network cards integrated into the printer mainboard—what were you thinking?

#4 – Cleanliness is Godliness

Ever open up a PC and see the Ghost Of Dust Bunny’s Past in there? It’s scary stuff, I tell you. I’ve seen some PCs begin to lock up “for absolutely no reason” while the innards tell you different. Sure Peggy in Accounting wasn’t stuffing her machine full of cloth, but that blanket she keeps at her feet will slowly shed and the PC fans suck that stuff right up. When you’re completely stumped, make sure there isn’t something inside gunking up the works.

#5 – Backups are Crucial

This needs to be said. I’ve been caught with my pants down on this one a few times myself. Backup, Backup, Backup! Nothing (and I mean nothing) will bite you in the ass like a piss-poor backup schema. If your server dies right now as you read this post, what are you going to do about it? Do you know where the install discs are, do you have a configuration backup, do you know who to contact regarding tech support on that box? If not, you need to get your act together before you have a disaster and a lot of excuses and apologies following it. I use Retrospect at my job and consider it better than Backup Exec. It has amazing Macintosh support and is cheaper too.

#6 – Switches and Hubs (Usually) Die One Port At A Time

You can spend hours tracking down a bad network card or cable just to figure out that a port in a switch has died. You’re pinging and pinging and looking, the lights are on but there’s nobody home. The trick here is to know that a single port doesn’t spell the end of the hardware, quite the contrary. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. If a port does go out, that hub or switch may work for years without another outage, but do be sure to stuff an RJ45 connector in that bad port so you don’t forget (and chase down phantom problems) in the future.

#7 – No One Ever Got Fired For Buying Microsoft

So sad but so true. This old saying used to reference IBM, but oh how times have changed. Linux may be powerful, but the command prompt and configuration files and filesystem obscurity will just as soon get you a pink slip if something goes wrong and no one knows how to fix it but yourself. Even so, with as much stupid crap as we admins have to put up with on a daily basis, configuring some of the ‘high end’ Microsoft software is enough to drive you insane. Ever tried installing Exchange Server or, worse, installing Exchange Server and migrating a 5.5 install to Exchange 2000? I feel your pain, oh how I feel your pain.

#8 – Politeness > Brevity

You can come up with all sorts of analogies for this one. You’ll get more bees with honey, a spoonful of sugar, etc. But generally, you probably have very little day-to-day contact with end users. This means that when you do finally get to speak to one of those souls fortunate enough to login to your domain (both figuratively and literally), you should be sure to be as polite as possible about it. Even if the network is down. Even if the server is having weird, irrational problems. Use please, thank you, I’m sorry, and don’t be too proud to apologize or ‘make nice’ with those who may ultimately influence your career path down the line. The peon you insult today with a “I sent an email about this, do you not check your own email?” could very well climb the corporate ladder and let your rude ass go in a few years. Mind your manners, peeps.

# 9 – Know Your Needs

This one could also be called “Learn Linux.” Many admins get wooed into the idea that “managed solutions” are always the correct ones. A web interface on a switch is cute, but rarely useful. A huge Cisco router may not always be necessary, sometimes a ‘lo-fi’ approach is best. When you want a spam solution, before looking at $5,000 servers and huge licensing fees for Windows Server software take a look at one of those old ‘junk’ PCs you have in the closet, download your favorite distro of Linux, and install procmail and spamassassin. You (and your budget) will thank me later.

#10 – The Holy Grail of Tech Support

…is the reboot. Rebooting can cure ailments of all sorts, can stop network troubles, crashing computers, find missing documents, and rescue cats in trees. System admins all over the world have, by and large, trained their users to reboot before even calling support. I mean, when’s the last time you didn’t reboot to see if it cured a problem? If you’re not, then you’re either stubborn or you’re an admin who knows better. Rebooting doesn’t cure all ailments, but it cures so many of them it’s hard to not throw out a “Can you reboot for me?” to the end user when they call with some off-the-wall issue. Use and abuse as necessary.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

Winning hearts and minds

WASHINGTON, Nov. 30 - Titled "The Sands Are Blowing Toward a Democratic Iraq," an article written this week for publication in the Iraqi press was scornful of outsiders' pessimism about the country's future.

"Western press and frequently those self-styled 'objective' observers of Iraq are often critics of how we, the people of Iraq, are proceeding down the path in determining what is best for our nation," the article began. Quoting the Prophet Muhammad, it pleaded for unity and nonviolence.

But far from being the heartfelt opinion of an Iraqi writer, as its language implied, the article was prepared by the United States military as part of a multimillion-dollar covert campaign to plant paid propaganda in the Iraqi news media and pay friendly Iraqi journalists monthly stipends, military contractors and officials said.

The article was one of several in a storyboard, the military's term for a list of articles, that was delivered Tuesday to the Lincoln Group, a Washington-based public relations firm paid by the Pentagon, documents from the Pentagon show. The contractor's job is to translate the articles into Arabic and submit them to Iraqi newspapers or advertising agencies without revealing the Pentagon's role. Documents show that the intended target of the article on a democratic Iraq was Azzaman, a leading independent newspaper, but it is not known whether it was published there or anywhere else.

Even as the State Department and the United States Agency for International Development pay contractors millions of dollars to help train journalists and promote a professional and independent Iraqi media, the Pentagon is paying millions more to the Lincoln Group for work that appears to violate fundamental principles of Western journalism.

In addition to paying newspapers to print government propaganda, Lincoln has paid about a dozen Iraqi journalists each several hundred dollars a month, a person who had been told of the transactions said. Those journalists were chosen because their past coverage had not been antagonistic to the United States, said the person, who is being granted anonymity because of fears for the safety of those involved. In addition, the military storyboards have in some cases copied verbatim text from copyrighted publications and passed it on to be printed in the Iraqi press without attribution, documents and interviews indicated.

In many cases, the material prepared by the military was given to advertising agencies for placement, and at least some of the material ran with an advertising label. But the American authorship and financing were not revealed.

Military spokesmen in Washington and Baghdad said Wednesday that they had no information on the contract. In an interview from Baghdad on Nov. 18, Lt. Col. Steven A. Boylan, a military spokesman, said the Pentagon's contract with the Lincoln Group was an attempt to "try to get stories out to publications that normally don't have access to those kind of stories." The military's top commanders, including Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, did not know about the Lincoln Group contract until Wednesday, when it was first described by The Los Angeles Times, said a senior military official who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Pentagon officials said General Pace and other top officials were disturbed by the reported details of the propaganda campaign and demanded explanations from senior officers in Iraq, the official said.

When asked about the article Wednesday night on the ABC News program "Nightline," General Pace said, "I would be concerned about anything that would be detrimental to the proper growth of democracy."

Others seemed to share the sentiment. "I think it's absolutely wrong for the government to do this," said Patrick Butler, vice president of the International Center for Journalists in Washington, which conducts ethics training for journalists from countries without a history of independent news media. "Ethically, it's indefensible."

Mr. Butler, who spoke from a conference in Wisconsin with Arab journalists, said the American government paid for many programs that taught foreign journalists not to accept payments from interested parties to write articles and not to print government propaganda disguised as news.

"You show the world you're not living by the principles you profess to believe in, and you lose all credibility," he said.

The Government Accountability Office found this year that the Bush administration had violated the law by producing pseudo news reports that were later used on American television stations with no indication that they had been prepared by the government. But no law prohibits the use of such covert propaganda abroad.

The Lincoln contract with the American-led coalition forces in Iraq has rankled some military and civilian officials and contractors. Some of them described the program to The New York Times in recent months and provided examples of the military's storyboards.

The Lincoln Group, whose principals include some businessmen and former military officials, was hired last year after military officials concluded that the United States was failing to win over Muslim public opinion. In Iraq, the effort is seen by some American military commanders as a crucial step toward defeating the Sunni-led insurgency.

Citing a "fundamental problem of credibility" and foreign opposition to American policies, a Pentagon advisory panel last year called for the government to reinvent and expand its information programs.

"Government alone cannot today communicate effectively and credibly," said the report by the task force on strategic communication of the Defense Science Board. The group recommended turning more often for help to the private sector, which it said had "a built-in agility, credibility and even deniability."

The Pentagon's first public relations contract with Lincoln was awarded in 2004 for about $5 million with the stated purpose of accurately informing the Iraqi people of American goals and gaining their support. But while meant to provide reliable information, the effort was also intended to use deceptive techniques, like payments to sympathetic "temporary spokespersons" who would not necessarily be identified as working for the coalition, according to a contract document and a military official.

In addition, the document called for the development of "alternate or diverting messages which divert media and public attention" to "deal instantly with the bad news of the day."

Laurie Adler, a spokeswoman for the Lincoln Group, said the terms of the contract did not permit her to discuss it and referred a reporter to the Pentagon. But others defended the practice.

"I'm not surprised this goes on," said Michael Rubin, who worked in Iraq for the Coalition Provisional Authority in 2003 and 2004. "Informational operations are a part of any military campaign," he added. "Especially in an atmosphere where terrorists and insurgents - replete with oil boom cash - do the same. We need an even playing field, but cannot fight with both hands tied behind our backs."

Two dozen recent storyboards prepared by the military for Lincoln and reviewed by The New York Times had a variety of good-news themes addressing the economy, security, the insurgency and Iraq's political future. Some were written to resemble news articles. Others took the form of opinion pieces or public service announcements.

One article about Iraq's oil industry opened with three paragraphs taken verbatim, and without attribution, from a recent report in Al Hayat, a London-based Arabic newspaper. But the military version took out a quotation from an oil ministry spokesman that was critical of American reconstruction efforts. It substituted a more positive message, also attributed to the spokesman, though not as a direct quotation.

The editor of Al Sabah, a major Iraqi newspaper that has been the target of many of the military's articles, said Wednesday in an interview that he had no idea that the American military was supplying such material and did not know if his newspaper had printed any of it, whether labeled as advertising or not.

The editor, Muhammad Abdul Jabbar, 57, said Al Sabah, which he said received financial support from the Iraqi government but was editorially independent, accepted advertisements from virtually any source if they were not inflammatory. He said any such material would be labeled as advertising but would not necessarily identify the sponsor. Sometimes, he said, the paper got the text from an advertising agency and did not know its origins.

Asked what he thought of the Pentagon program's effectiveness in influencing Iraqi public opinion, Mr. Jabbar said, "I would spend the money a better way."

The Lincoln Group, which was incorporated in 2004, has won another government information contract. Last June, the Special Operations Command in Tampa awarded Lincoln and two other companies a multimillion-dollar contract to support psychological operations. The planned products, contract documents show, include three- to five- minute news programs.

Asked whether the information and news products would identify the American sponsorship, a media relations officer with the special operations command replied, in an e-mail message last summer, that "the product may or may not carry 'made in the U.S.' signature" but they would be identified as American in origin, "if asked."

Oh the lovely sounds of gunshots

I'm pissed. Let me explain why. I live in Dallas (well more specifically Addison, Texas.) What I consider an affluent suburb of Dallas. The corner of Addison that I live in is close to the border of Dallas (and in fact if you look at the zoning for my little corner of the world, you'll see that even though I live in Addison, I have a Dallas address and when I vote, I vote in Dallas NOT Addison.) So I live in what was once a nice apartment complex but it has recently (about 4 months ago) undergone an property management change. If you've ever lived in an apartment complex, you know that that phrase can often spell doom. I had heard horror stories about how the complex was going down hill for months before the management ever changed hands, about how people would complain to the then management about "questionable" tenants and nothing would get done. I know for a fact that the apartment beneath me until recently was living quarters to not just 1 but THREE illegal immigrants and a mysterious white male who was selling drugs. Now before you call this the ramblings of a paranoid white surburbanite, let me explain something to shed some light on how I know he was dealing drugs without ever seeing it transpire. Many years ago (when I was making just under 20K a year) I lived across the street from a known crack house (the police informed me of this after I was robbed at gunpoint and advised by the same police that my safest bet would be to MOVE.) I am not shy or ignorant about drugs and the culture around it. Most of the adults in my life at one point or another has had SOMEONE in our group who was a user. So I know how people can not say a lot but tell you everything because of their behaviour. With that out of the way, let me go back to explain about my immigrant neighbors. There was always traffic pulled up outside the apartment at pretty much any hour of the day and night, and it was never the same car or vehicle twice. Anyway, I digress. Since this new management has taken over, there has been 3 seperate instances where I have heard gunshots at night. The second of these was loud enough to wake me up from a sound sleep at 2:15 in the morning. I have complained to my complex management and was told crime was "something that happened." This really doesnt fill me with any kind of sense of security. If you've ever been robbed or been told that someone came to your house to kill you (see above story about getting robbed at gunpoint) then you hear gunshots and get a bit freaked out. I have a feeling that when I report last night to the management today (which I will be doing) that I will be told the same thing. Anyone know of anyone hiring in Austin?

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