|
|
LearnToTradeFutures.com Conferences
This is educational material and should not be construed as financial advice.
You are deemed to have read the risk warning here.
"oversold si"
|
Duncan |
03-Nov-05, 12:51 PM (GMT)
|
|
4. "wiltshire pain" |
Global EyePhilosopher's Stone By Chris Floyd
Published: November 3, 2005 Last week, a legal thunderbolt struck at the heart of the grubby conspiracy that led the United States and Britain into an illegal war of aggression against Iraq. But this searing blow didn't fall in Washington, where a media frenzy raged over a White House indictment, but in southern England, in a military courtroom, where a lone soldier stood against the full force of the great war-crime enterprise, armed only with a single, rusty, obsolete weapon: the law. While Potomac courtiers were reading the entrails of the cooked goose of Scooter Libby -- the first Bushist honcho caught in the slow-grinding gears of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation -- in Wiltshire, Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith faced a court martial after declaring that the Iraq war was illegal and refusing to return for his third tour of duty there, The Guardian reports.
He has been charged with four counts of "disobeying a lawful command." But Kendall-Smith, a decorated medical officer in the Royal Air Force, says that his study of the recently revealed evidence about the lies, distortions and manipulations used to justify the invasion has convinced him that both the war and the occupation are "manifestly illegal." Thus any order arising from this criminal action is itself an "unlawful command," The Sunday Times reports. In fact, the RAF's own manual of law compels him to refuse such illegal orders, Kendall-Smith insists. The flight lieutenant is no ordinary war protester, and no shirker of combat -- unlike, say, the pair of prissy cowards at the head of the U.S.-British "coalition." Kendall-Smith, who has dual New Zealand-British citizenship -- and a pair of university degrees in medicine and Kantian moral philosophy -- has served three tours at the front in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is not claiming any conscientious objections against war in general, nor do religious scruples play any part in his stance. It is based solely on the law. Central to his case are the sinister backroom legal dealings between London and Washington in the days before the invasion. Less than two weeks before the initial "shock and awe" bombings began slaughtering civilians across Iraq, Lord Goldsmith, the British attorney general, gave Prime Minister Tony Blair a detailed briefing full of doubts and equivocations about the legality of the coming war, adding that Britain's participation in an attack unsanctioned by the United Nations would "likely" lead to "close scrutiny" by the International Criminal Court for potential war crimes charges, The Observer reports. But Blair and Goldsmith withheld this report from Parliament, the Cabinet and British military brass, who were demanding a clear-cut legal sanction for the impending action. Then, just three days before the bloodletting began, Goldsmith suddenly produced another paper, this time for public consumption: a brief, clear, unequivocal statement that the invasion would be legal. This statement was almost certainly crafted in Washington, where Goldsmith had recently been "tutored" by the Bush gang's consiglieres, including the legal advisers to Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice. Leading this pack of war-baying legal beagles was George W. Bush's top counsel, Alberto Gonzales, who had overseen the White House's own efforts to weasel out of potential war crimes charges by declaring -- without any basis in Anglo-American jurisprudence or the U.S. Constitution -- that Bush was not bound by any law whatsoever in any military action he undertook: a blank check for aggression, murder and torture that Bush has gleefully cashed over and over. Alberto and the boys leaned hard on Goldsmith, who finally caved in and replicated the Americans' contorted and specious legal arguments for launching the attack. Of course, Kendall-Smith knew none of this during his first two tours in Iraq: Goldsmith's Bush-induced backflip was only divulged in April 2005. Nor did he know then of the "Downing Street Memos," the "smoking gun" minutes that record Blair's inner circle dutifully lining up behind Bush's hell-bent drive for war -- as far back as 2002 -- and their conspiracy with the Bush gang to manipulate their countries into war. The memos, which emerged in May 2005 and have never been denied or repudiated by the British government, show Blair's slavish acquiescence in Bush's criminal scheme to "fix the facts and the intelligence around the policy" of unprovoked military aggression. Confronted with this new evidence -- and revelations about the mountain of doubts expressed by U.S. intelligence before the invasion but deliberately ignored by the Bushist war party -- Kendall-Smith took the only honorable course for a soldier who has been duped into serving an evil cause. The moral rigor of his defiance has sent tremors through the British military establishment, already shaken by the strange, unexplained shooting deaths of two military inspectors investigating atrocity allegations in Iraq, The Guardian reports. British brass are panicky about the Goldsmith revelations; indeed, the leader of the British invasion force, Admiral Michael Boyce, said that he now believed his country's military did not have "the legal cover necessary to avoid prosecution for war crimes," The Observer reports. Boyce added that if he and his officers were eventually put on trial for waging aggressive war, he'd make sure that Blair and Goldsmith were in the dock beside them. Bush, Blair and their minions have committed a monstrous crime, and they know it -- hence all the convolutions, before the war and after, to inoculate themselves from prosecution. But with Kendall-Smith and Fitzgerald, the long-moribund figure of the law is re-awakening. It's weak, it's bleary, it certainly might fail. But now the conspirators will have to live cowering in its shadow for the rest of their days. Annotations
RAF Doctor Stands by Decision to Refuse to Serve in 'Illegal' Iraq War
The Guardian, Oct. 28, 2005
Applauding a Military Refusenik
New Statesman, Oct. 31, 2005 Iraq War Objector a Thinker, Friends Say
Sunday Star-Times, Oct. 23, 2005 RAF Officer Faces Jail for Refusing to Return to Iraq
Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Oct. 21, 2005 RAF Officer Faces Jail Over 'Illegal War'
The Sunday Times, Oct. 16, 2005 British Military Chief Reveals new Legal Fears Over Iraq war
The Observer, May 1, 2005 Complete Set of Downing Street Documents
AfterDowningStreet.org, July 18, 2005 British Forces Feel Pressure from Abuse Claims
The Guardian, Oct. 17, 2005 Senior Military Investigator Found Dead in Iraq
The Independent, Oct. 17, 2005 Senior Officers Tried to Block Iraq Killing Investigation'
The Guardian, Oct. 12, 2005 International Court Hears Anti-war Claims
The Guardian, May 6, 2005 The Secret Way to War
New York Review of Books, June 9, 2005 Colin Powell: The Most Honest Man on Earth
A Tiny Revolution, Oct. 11, 2005 Copyright © 2005 The Moscow Times. All rights reserved.
|
|
Remove |
Alert |
Edit |
Reply |
Reply With Quote | Top |
|
Duncan |
03-Nov-05, 01:42 PM (GMT)
|
|
7. "Tell the truth" |
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/Attack of the Blogs Informed Citizens
in Financial Press | Web/Tech | Weblogs In our first discussion of Forbe's folly (Attack of the Blogs), I was reserved in my criticism. Yes, I mocked Daniel Lyon, the column's author, titling my post "Attack of the Blogs Dumb Journalists." Regular readers know that I do not suffer fools gladly. How Ironic that only a few days after Forbes crapped out that cover issue, events would remind us all too well how significant the blogging public has become: not only to the digerati, but to the idea of Democracy and self-rule, and as a counter-balance the powerful monied corporate interests who are the dominant force in America. One couldn't have ever asked for a better example of why blogs provide so crucial a counter-weight than Monday's DRM debacle. On the same day, 2 posts revealed a rather nefarious scheme by Sony: Mark Russinovich posted a detailed takedown of how Sony's DRM installed malware into Windows-based PCs (Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far). Simultaneous to that, my own humble effort was to look at how absurd, inconvenient and pointless Sony's DRM was on a CD I wanted to purchase. The response from the web was fairly swift. Both posts got picked up by many blogs: boing boing, kottke, Atrios, Daily KOS, Good Morning Silicon Valley, ars technica, msnbc, Interesting People, ZD-net, engadget, slyck, digg, businesspundit, infectious greed, nerdlaw, etc. It even became the fourth most popular post tagged by del.icio.us. This blog received over a 100 comments and a dozen trackbacks -- most of which were extremely intelligent, lucid and useful information. So, we have a case where private citizens identify fairly egregious corporate behavior -- towards both consumers as well as another corporate actor. The press was unaware of the issue. Only after the blogosphere erupted did the mainstream media catch on. And the best advice one ignorant journo could muster on the subject was to advise corporate interests to harass, file nuisance lawsuits, dissemble, and deny. Understand: I am in favor of corporations. I think that very often, they can and do make our lives collectively better. However, when they exercise poor judgement, when they lie, when they behave badly, I believe in calling them out on it. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis once said "Sunshine is the best disinfectant," and that's more true than ever today. Think of the blogosphere as millions of intelligent agents, all of whom are busy redirecting sunshine to where its needed most. In George Orwell's 1984, society is a vision of totalitarian repression, with Big Brother everywhere. But in Orwell's nightmare, there is no informed, aggressive citizenry, no Little Brothers. No blogosphere. Over the past 10 years, corporate owned media has seen their budgets slashed. Where there were once many reporters, there are now few. Where there was aggressive investigation, there are now press releases. Where there were once muckrakers, there are now embeds. Too often, News Reporting has become this timid, celebrity-obsessed "infotainment." Ask yourself: How did the media do in their reporting leading up to the Iraq War? There were very few stand outs. Knight-Ridder, the WSJ, and the Christian Science Monitor. Most everyone else was AWOL. Nature hates a vaccuum. And so, that void was filled. The most intelligent and hip members of the 4th Estate have even joined the process. Collectively, citizen journalists can do things that individual members of the media cannot. The blogosphere is simply another 100 million eyes and ears -- watching, listening, speaking, exchanging information and ideas. If it were up to Forbes, none of this would be occuring. Capitalist tools, indeed. Thursday, November 03, 2005 | 06:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
How to Avoid Being BlogBashed:
in Weblogs Following the Forbes article (Attack of the Blogs), Villanova University Law School Prof Jim Maule provides some common sense as a welcome antidote to Forbe's clownish advice. Maule's suggestions as to how not to get "BlogBashed" are smart, simple and straightforward -- pretty much guaranteeing that they will be mostly ignored by those who should instead be paying close attention to his wisdom. Here are Jim's top 10:
<spacer> How to Avoid Being BlogBashed 1. Create quality products and services. 2. Sell what you advertise. 3. Make certain your products and services do what they claim to do. 4. Fully test and study your products and services before offering them for sale. 5. Disclose all risks posed to purchasers of your products and services. 6. Tell the truth. 7. Fulfill your warranty promises. 8. Don't cut corners. 9. Comply with all applicable laws and regulations. 10. Don't try to buy influence.
<spacer> Jim advises: "Follow those principles and the bloggers won't have any reason to bash nor will they have anything or anyone to bash. They might even begin singing your praises without having to be paid to do so. As for the idiot bloggers who in turn lie, take the high road. . . " I would add to Jim's comments: Don't Spam Blog comments, and don't create phony Blogs pretending you are an independent consumer . . .
<spacer>
via Declan McCullaugh's Politech
Wednesday, November 02, 2005 | 08:37 PM |
|
|
Remove |
Alert |
Edit |
Reply |
Reply With Quote | Top |
|
Duncan |
03-Nov-05, 01:42 PM (GMT)
|
|
8. "is shortorlong a hit?" |
D
here are rough stats
Usage Statistics A summary of shortorlong.com site's usage is shown below. Month Sites KBytes Visits Pages Files Hits
Nov 2005 935 156581 3264 8980 16211 19370
Oct 2005 5811 1643172 20928 68120 157637 211868
Sep 2005 5048 1232865 17191 48221 114611 182095
Aug 2005 2767 1271794 5538 43103 81195 114782
Jul 2005 2666 900232 5047 22502 68406 179094
Jun 2005 2483 771321 4526 20151 61920 255278
May 2005 2563 705652 4507 22171 48991 79454
Apr 2005 2711 859733 5459 24465 53750 223578
Mar 2005 2885 745637 5675 22611 56600 205658
Feb 2005 2756 697987 4940 22523 50486 190955
Jan 2005 3259 797286 6507 23397 57561 240477
Dec 2004 2930 783978 6211 23772 45944 248041
|
|
Remove |
Alert |
Edit |
Reply |
Reply With Quote | Top |
|
Duncan |
03-Nov-05, 01:53 PM (GMT)
|
|
9. "due up" |
D
After the nridIt takes out, tops and bots of nrid It engulfs basically mildly Green boxed Then it breaks out, of the mild engulf day, in the true direction; the direction it was plugging, prior too the nrid = up 
|
|
Remove |
Alert |
Edit |
Reply |
Reply With Quote | Top |
|
Duncan |
03-Nov-05, 02:08 PM (GMT)
|
|
10. "gambling may lead to....RUIN" |
http://www.independent.co.uk/
Paper Chase by Karla Adam, Kate Thomas, Léa TeuscherToday's covers: David Blunkett’s resignation trumps all covers and bleeds pages deep into
all the broadsheets today. “Blunkett quits on Blair’s day from hell”, says
The Independent. “Decline and fall,” says The Times.
It was “Blair’s day of calamity,” said The Guardian. The Telegraph said
that “Blair’s power drains away”. Below: -Blair’s alley resigns, again
-Free flights on Ryanair? Maybe with onboard gambling
-Mother sentence after killing Down syndrome son
-Riots flare up again in Paris suburbs
-I ain’t nothing but a hound dog --
Blair’s alley resigns, again
-- David Blunkett resignation created a “day from hell” for Tony Blair when
the influential work and pensions secretary stepped down for a second time
in a year declaring he “made a mistake.” Blunkett gave a resilient speech at the Foreign Press Association where he
said he was “deeply sorry” for the embarassment caused to Tony Blair. Blunkett’s problems over failing to declare paid work as director of DNA
Bioscience had increasingly been rebounded to Tony Blair, who up until
yesterday, had stood by his long-time alley. But the resignation was just
the first incident in a dark day that ended with Blair nearly surviving a
Commons revolt against anti-terror laws. Was it a sacking or a resignation? What do we make of the blind minister
who overcame humble roots only to have his personal life drug through the
headlines? What about that personal life anyways? What does this mean for
Tony Blair? All this and more played out across the pages of all major
papers. Many said the resignation will hurt Tony Blair – it “robbed him of a key
alley” said The Telegraph – while others more pointedly called for Blair to
step down-- “Forget David Blunkett. The resignation we're all waiting for
is Tony Blair's,” said The Times. This was “one of Mr Blair's darkest days” and he needs to “convince his
party he is in the driving seat” warned The Independent. The paper added
that although the “official” version of events was that Mr Blunkett
resigned and Mr Blair was reluctant to see him go, Downing Street's jitters
suggest it was a bit of both. And then there was that confession by Sally Anderson on Sky News who said
that her and Blunkett’s relation “was not platonic”. Blair’s choice of John Hutton to replace Blunkett signals he needs to shore
up support amongst his increasingly rebellious Labour MPs, said The
Financial Times. --
Onboard gambling may lead to free flights on Ryanair
-- Passengers on Ryanair could one day fly for free if revenues from onboard
gambling and other services end the need for it to charge fares, the chief
executive of the airline has predicted, the Independent reports. Michael O’Leary said Ryanair, the second biggest international carrier in
the world, gave away about a quarter of its sears least year and that
figure could rise to 50 or even 100 per cent depending on how successful
in-flight gaming proved. Passengers will be able to gamble using either their mobile phones or
Blackberries supplied by Ryanair. All the calls would be routed through an
onboard mobile “sub-station” enabling Ryanair to get a cut of the call
charge as well as a percentage of the takings. The Guardian reported that Mr O’Leary admitted it could change the image of
airlines but insisted it could only be for the better as the traditional
industry appeared to be built around high-cost tickets and terrible food. "Are we are trying to blow-up the notion that it is some kind of
orgasmic experience rather than a glorified bus service? Yes, we are,"
argued the flamboyant Irish entrepreneur.The BBC said that Ryanair hoped to introduce in-flight gambling and
computer games on its planes by 2007. "Ultimately entertainment will be
where the money is," Mr O'Leary said. "We'll probably announce a gambling
partner in the next two to three months," he added.The airline has previously introduced - but then withdrawn - an onboard
individual video and entertainment system. --
Mother is spared prison after killing Down syndrome son
-- A mother who killed her 36-year-old Down syndrome son by suffocating him
with a plastic bag was spared jail yesterday when a judge said she had been
subject to unbearable pressure, the Independent reports. Wendolyn Markcrow, 67, had been the sole carer of Patrick for the whole of
his life and had been adevoted mother, Oxford Crown Court heard. But the strain became too much as his violent behaviour grew worse,
depriving her of sleep and driving her to despair. The Times reported that Markcrow had, to no avail, begged the authorities
for help in caring for her son who also suffered from autism and
behavioural difficulties. When Markcrow was arrested she told the police: “Something in me snapped
last night. I feel sad, desperate, defeated and ashamed.” The Telegraph said Oxford Crown Court heard that she had never thought to
put her own needs before those of her son and, in the end, "spiralled into
depression". Markcrow, a mother of four, from Long Crendon, Bucks, who admitted
manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility at an earlier
hearing, survived her suicide attempt. Mr Justice Gross sentenced her to two years' prison, suspended for 18
months, and told her: "The pressures you faced were extreme." He said that,
while all human life was sacrosanct, her case had "exceptional factors" and
"the merciful and right course" was to suspend her sentence. --
Riots flare up again in Paris suburbs
-- Dozens of cars were on fire last night after rioting broke out in Paris
suburbs for the seventh successive night, despite an appeal from President
Jacques Chirac for calm and dialogue, the Independent reports. Hundreds of police attempted to control rioters, who also damaged a primary
school and a shopping centre in Bobigny, to the north-east of Paris. The violence in outlying Paris suburbs has provoked a bout of deeply
damaging ministerial infighting. The Times noted that widespread rioting was forcing the French Government
to address its failure to integrate a large immigrant population. Last night gangs of youths again rampaged through nine districts, hurling
stones at police and setting fire to cars and buses. The unrest began after
two teenagers were electrocuted when they climbed into a supply station to
escape a police identity check. M Sarkozy’s provocative tactics and his feuding with Dominique de Villepin,
the Prime Minister, appear to have fed the unrest in districts that are
permanent cauldrons of anger. The Guardian reported that in Aulnay-sous-Bois, a half-hour drive
north-east of Paris, some 15 cars blazed and police fired rubber bullets at
youths from the town's Cité des Trois Mille estate who lobbed petrol bombs
at an annex to the town hall and stoned the fire station. "People here don't want to live in violence, and we're not yobs," said
Amadou, 19, standing at a bus shelter outside the main shopping centre.
"But nobody in Paris knows what it's really like on that estate. There's so
much frustration. All this was just waiting to explode." Another rioter from Aulnay-sous-Bois told Le Monde that “this is just the
beginning, we will continue until Sarlozy resigns.” --
“I ain’t nothing but a hound dog”
-- The internet has spawned a radio station for pets,
The Independent announced yesterday. Pets in need of entertainment while their owners work can now tune into the
Los Angeles based DogCatRadio.com. Jane Harris, the morning presenter, plays catchy tunes and addresses her
four legged listeners as if she were talking to “an elderly relative with
hearing problems” the paper reported. The playlist, which features somewhat of an animal motif, includes such
canine classics as Elvis’ “Hound Dog” and the Baha Men’s “Who let the dogs
out”, as well as the requisite “ liberal sprinkling of barks and miaows”,
the BBC noted. “Since many pets are apparently bilingual”, the Sydney Morning Herald said,
the station also runs a Spanish-language hour. Billed as “the radio station all pets enjoy”, the non-profit station was
founded by record producer Tony Martinez, who noted the positive effect
that music had on his furry friends. It is now broadcast live 17 hours a
day, and (talented) listeners can apparently “phone in with dedications and
requests” the station said.
|
|
Remove |
Alert |
Edit |
Reply |
Reply With Quote | Top |
|
Powered by DCF2000 ©1997-2000 by DCScripts.
All rights reserved. |
|
Email this topic to a friend
Printer-friendly version of this topic
Current Daily Commentary (2005) (Public)
