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Saturday, June 28, 2003 The telephone is ringing, is that my mother on the phone? The FTC has established it's Do Not Call Registry which will put your name on a list that telemarketers are not allowed to call from. They have to cross-reference their lists with this one and purge all the numbers that show up. If they call those numbers, they're fined by the FTC. If you sign up now, telemarketers have to stop calling you by October, 2003. The registration lasts for 5 years, so you don't have to worry about doing it every year. Sign up here and enjoy a telemarketer-free phone life. posted by chris at 12:27 PM   ------------------ Friday, June 27, 2003 MoveOn.org primary results Here are the results. No one candidate had 50% of the votes, so MoveOn won't be officially endorsing anyone at this time. Just as well, since it will allow them to continue to build themselves as an activist force rather than get too closely tied into one campaign. I also read someone's suggestion (I forget who it was now) that MoveOn sponsor a debate or two between the Democratic candidates, which I think is a fantastic idea. It would be a great venue for debate among people who are really interested in the outcome. BRAUN 7021 votes 2.21% DEAN 139360 votes 43.87% EDWARDS 10145 votes 3.19% GRAHAM 7113 votes 2.24% KERRY 49973 votes 15.73% KUCINICH 76000 votes 23.93% GEPHARDT 7755 votes 2.44% LIEBERMAN 6095 votes 1.92% SHARPTON 1677 votes 0.53% OTHER 6121 votes 1.93% UNDECIDED 6378 votes 2.01% Details at MoveOn.org posted by chris at 6:33 PM   UN still doesn't find Iraq/Al-Queda link Nowhere in the 42-page draft is there any mention of Iraq or claims that it served as a safe haven for al-Qaida. "Nothing has come to our notice that would indicate links between Iraq and al-Qaida," said Michael Chandler, the committee's chief investigator. The committee first heard of alleged ties during Secretary of State Colin Powell's February presentation to the Security Council ahead of the Iraq war. "It had never come to our knowledge before Powell's speech and we never received any information from the United States for us to even follow-up on," said Abaza Hassan, a committee investigator. Here's the rest. posted by chris at 3:49 PM   ------------------ Thursday, June 26, 2003 Warning! Hard Hat Area! Making a few changes here at Sugar Conspiracy.com: adding a links page cause I'm compiling too many to put on the main page, playing with the fonts, and other stuff i'm still working on. If you either love or hate the new look, let me know. All others, read on . . . posted by chris at 7:20 PM   Lawrence 2, Texas 0 The Supreme Court struck down Texas' ban on private consensual sex between adults of the same sex today, in a landmark ruling that enshrined for the first time a broad constitutional right to sexual privacy. A five-justice majority of the court ruled that the state intruded on the "liberty of the person both in its spatial and more transcendent dimensions" when it fined two Houston men, John Geddes Lawrence and Tyron Garner, for engaging in anal sex in Lawrence's apartment almost five years ago. The case involved not minors or prostitutes, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the court, but "two adults who, with full and mutual consent from each other, engaged in sexual practices common to a homosexual lifestyle. The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives. The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime." Story everywhere, but just in case you didn't see it. posted by chris at 6:12 PM   The Mother of All Lawsuits The American recording industry yesterday threatened to take legal action against individuals for illegal file sharing of music, opening a new front in the war against online piracy. The threat will send a chilling message that the industry is no longer content with chasing file-sharing services such as Napster and Kazaa. The first suits could take place as early as mid-August. The move underlines how desperate the music industry has become to staunch the flow of illegal downloads, which are beginning to devastate compact disc sales. In 2000, the 10 top-selling albums in the US sold a total of 60m copies. In 2001 that dropped to 40m, and last year it was 34m. Revenues for the industry in the US have dropped from $14.6bn (£8.8bn) in 1999 to $12.6bn last year. Although some critics have blamed a dearth of quality new music, the dramatic increase in people downloading music is widely held as the chief cause. Story here. posted by chris at 6:07 PM   More money than you or I will ever see The Bush re-election campaign has estimated that they will spend at least $426,640 a day, seven days a week, every week from now until November 2004. Read that number again. Now compare it with your salary. Now compare it with the salary of a single working mom trying to make ends meet by working part-time at McDonald's. And this is the amount they're going to spend ON A DAILY BASIS! Kinda makes you sick, doesn't it? via August. posted by chris at 9:32 AM   ------------------ Tuesday, June 24, 2003 Operation Tribute to Freedom God, could these Operation names get any worse?? How about Operation Pull the Wool Over the Citizenry's Eyes and Laugh Maniacally? Operation Lie, Cheat and Steal? Operation Don't Give a Damn What the People Say? This one, Operation Tribute to Freedom is all about drumming up even more public support for the imperialist military, especially with the 4th of July right around the corner. The Department of Defense is actually encouraging city officials around the country to tie in the Attack on Iraq with their traditional Independence Day activities. [Rumsfeld's] staffers have been phoning city officials, including some in Orange County, and strongly urging them to structure Fourth of July celebrations around the war in Iraq. "I got the impression that they had a list of every city in the nation that had applied for a pyrotechnics permit, and were calling them to persuade them to be part of the program," said one OC city official. Unvelievable. posted by chris at 9:53 PM   20 Questions The Globe and Mail's correspondent, Mark MacKinnon, answers 20 questions about Iraq. Is the electricity back on in Baghdad? What happened to the Shia revolution? Who's living in Saddam Hussein's palaces? Are government workers getting paid? etc. posted by chris at 9:36 PM   Killing brain cells Bob Harris points out, on Tom Tomorrow's site, that the American Journal for Public Health published their research findings stating that cigarette smokers are more likely to suffer memory loss in middle age. Smoking more than 20 cigarettes a day can cause memory loss and other cognitive problems in middle age, according to a study of almost 2,000 British adults. The study participants were tested on verbal memory, speed and concentration at age 43 and again at age 53. Researchers found that heavy smokers suffered the largest decline in these cognitive functions. All smokers were susceptible to memory loss regardless of sex, race or socioeconomic status. And while heavy smokers often die younger than non-smokers from such illnesses as cancer and heart disease, those who do survive into old age are more likely to suffer from memory loss and dementia, or what the study's authors called "clinically significant cognitive decline." Bob continues with a particularly good rant that you should just go read. posted by chris at 9:20 PM   ------------------ Monday, June 23, 2003 The Boys Club Sunday's New York Times had an interesting article on Kellogg, Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary which won an open-ended contract to restore Iraq's oil fields. It's probably best summed up with this sentence: "KBR/Halliburton, then, has rounded the bases when it comes to Iraq. It got rich doing business with Iraq, it got rich preparing to destroy Iraq and it's now getting rich rebuilding Iraq." But here are a couple excerpts as well: The Army says KBR got the Iraqi oil-field contract without having to compete for it because, according to the Army's classified contingency plan for repairing Iraq's infrastructure, KBR was the only company with the skills, resources and security clearances to do the job on short notice. Who wrote the Army's contingency plan? KBR. It was in a position to do so because it holds another contract that is poorly understood yet in many ways more important, and potentially bigger, than the one to repair the oil fields: the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, or Logcap, which essentially turns KBR into a kind of for-profit Ministry of Public Works for the Army. Under Logcap, which KBR won in open bidding in 2001, KBR is on call to the Army for 10 years to do a lot of the things most people think soldiers do for themselves -- from fixing trucks to warehousing ammunition, from delivering mail to cleaning up hazardous waste. K.P. is history; KBR civilians now peel potatoes, and serve them, at many installations. KBR does the laundry. It fixes the pipes and cleans the sewers, generates the power and repairs the wiring. It built some of the bases used in the Iraq war. -clip- In 1992 the Defense Department, under Dick Cheney, hired Brown & Root to write a classified report detailing how private companies could help the military logistically in the world's hot spots. Not long after, the Pentagon awarded the first five-year Logcap -- to Brown & Root. Then Bill Clinton won the election, and Cheney, in 1995, became C.E.O. of Halliburton, Brown & Root's parent company. A lot of Halliburton's business depends on foreign customers getting loans from U.S. banks, which are in turn guaranteed by the government's trade-promoting Export-Import Bank. In the five years before Cheney took the helm, the Ex-Im Bank guaranteed $100 million in loans so foreign customers could buy Halliburton's services; during Cheney's five years as C.E.O., that figure jumped to $1.5 billion. Full article here, thanks to Dan B. posted by chris at 5:45 PM   Your child's education, sponsored, in part, by . . . The year-end school party in Catherine Poling's third-grade class this week was a bit unusual: It had a corporate sponsor. Dunkin' Donuts sent four dozen doughnuts and a representative to help celebrate the class's $6,000 grand prize victory in the company's contest to develop a one-minute commercial on "selling" the importance of homework. The school, two-year-old Oakdale Elementary in Frederick County, is getting used to receiving large corporate checks. Last year, it won $10,000 for performing the best interpretation of Oscar Mayer's well-known wiener song. This year it won another $10,000 from Oscar Mayer for singing its bologna song and two other melodies, written by music teacher Lori Bower, praising Oscar Mayer Lunchables, complete with children dressed up as dancing pieces of bologna, ham and cheese. Oakdale is the beneficiary of business's new efforts to market products inside schools, encouraging students to influence their parents' purchases. One way they're reaching kids is by offering cash prizes to schools. Nestle offers a $10,000 grand prize for the most creative art using SweeTarts. It also awards five, $5,000 first-place awards. Angel Soft toilet paper sponsors "Angel in Action," awarding $10,000 to the school with the best community service program, along with another $1,000 for the teacher. While companies say they are filling a gap left by school funding deficits, some experts decry the trend. "It's a very dangerous thing for a corporation to have this kind of presence in school," said advertising critic Jean Kilbourne. Children are more susceptible in school, she said, because they tend to believe that what they learn there is valid. So a commercial message in schools, no matter how subtle, "gives an aura of responsibility and truth," Kilbourne said. Companies acknowledge they are trying to reach their current and future customers, but say their programs promote goodwill and help cash-strapped schools. The rest of the article offers a sickening display of the companies' barely veiled attempts to capture a lucrative audience by claiming it's for the good of the students and the school districts blaming a lack of funds for their acquiesence to such a program. The companies and school officials try to play this off as a "creative" way to teach children. But there are a million "creative" methods of education that don't kowtow to corporate sponsorship. The other issue here is that schools ARE criminally underfunded - we need to force legislators to recognize the vast importance of public education. Write your congressperson today. posted by chris at 11:29 AM   What part of "non-governmental organization" don't you understand? Naomi Klein, author of No Logo: Taking Aim at Brand Bullies writes this disturbing report: On May 21 in Washington, Andrew Natsios, the head of USaid, gave a speech blasting US NGOs for failing to play a role many of them didn't realise they had been assigned: doing public relations for the US government. According to InterAction, the network of 160 relief and development NGOs, Natsios was "irritated" that starving and sick Iraqi and Afghan children didn't realise that their food and vaccines were coming to them courtesy of George Bush. From now on, NGOs had to do a better job of link ing their humanitarian assistance to US foreign policy and making it clear that they are "an arm of the US government". If they didn't, InterAction reported, "Natsios threatened to personally tear up their contracts and find new partners". For aid workers, there are even more strings attached to US dollars. USaid told several NGOs that have been awarded humanitarian contracts that they cannot speak to the media - all requests from reporters must go through Washington. Mary McClymont, CEO of InterAction, calls the demands "unprecedented" and says: "It looks like the NGOs aren't independent and can't speak for themselves about what they see and think." More. posted by chris at 11:22 AM   ------------------ Sunday, June 22, 2003 The newest excuse With still no WMD found, the Bush administration is coming up with excuse after excuse as to why their investigators have turned up nothing. The latest one, in order to cover their asses for the attack on Iraq, qoes as follows: President Bush, trying again to explain the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, said on Saturday that suspected arms sites had been looted in the waning days of Saddam Hussein's rule. "For more than a decade, Saddam Hussein went to great lengths to hide his weapons from the world. And in the regime's final days, documents and suspected weapons sites were looted and burned," Bush said in his weekly radio address. It is believed to be the first time Bush has cited looting to explain the inability of U.S. forces to uncover chemical or biological weapons in Iraq, a U.S. official said. Bush had previously said weapons may have been destroyed before the war. The U.S. military has been criticized for failing to prevent looting at an Iraqi nuclear facility. Bush has been widely criticized for misleading the public by asserting that Saddam had stockpiles of unconventional weapons that menaced the world. The allegations were Bush's main justification for bypassing the United Nations and ordering the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Story here. posted by chris at 10:31 PM   ------------------

    

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