Wampum

this is only a test.

that is only an image.

Posted by EBW at 04:01 AM | Permalink

Written on the 19th. No updates. Just publishing to move it out of (overlooked) draft.

Today Ebrahim Yazdi said in an interview, In this election not only did people vote but also ghosts and fairies.

The paramilitary (Basji) and Revolutionary Guards did run GOTV efforts, beneficiary the 2nd-Gen Conservative (or Facist) appointed Mayor of Tehran. They also voted the dead.

The Great Satan Himself ran a media placement in all the satellite TV markets, which was picked up by the Iranian State TV as "news" during the last 48 hours of the campaign.

Karrubi did very well in the smaller cities, so the $62 offer and the fact that he is 1st-Gen revolutionary clergy, as well as a reformist, had traction.

Written by Eric, etc.

Posted by MB Williams at 08:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

First it was Rep. Dan Burton's grandson. Then Rep. Dave Wheldon's best friend's son. Now conservative MSNBC host, Joe Scarborough, joins the fray:

SCARBOROUGH: Let's talk about Thimerosal. ... There are a lot of people, a lot of Americans very concerned about the impact of this drug, which is found in vaccines, and how it causes autism. Talk about that.

KENNEDY: That's right. Thimerosal is a preservative that was put in vaccines back in the 1930s. Almost immediately after it was put in, autism cases began to appear. Autism had never been known before. It was unknown to science. Then the vaccines were increased in 1989 by the CDC and by a couple of other government agencies.

SCARBOROUGH: OK, let me stop you there. That's an important date. And I will tell you why. My son, born in 1991, has a slight form of autism called Asperger`s. When I was practicing law and also when I was in Congress, parents would constantly come to me and they would bring me videotapes of their children, and they were all around the age of my son or younger. So, something happened in 1989.

KENNEDY: Exactly. What happened was the vaccine schedule was increased. We went up from receiving about 10 vaccines in our generation to these kids receive 24 vaccines. And they all had this Thimerosal in them, this mercury. And nobody bothered to do an analysis of what the cumulative impact of all that mercury was doing to kids. As it turns out, we are injecting our children with 400 times the amount of mercury that FDA or EPA considers safe. A child on his first day that he is born is injected with a Hepatitis B shot. Under EPA guidelines, he would have to be 275 pounds to safely absorb that shot.

SCARBOROUGH: And yet, we are just constantly pumping our kids with these vaccines. Where is the federal government in all of this?

KENNEDY: What happened was that, in 1988, one in every 2,500 American children had autism. Today, one in every 166 children has autism. And, plus, one in six have other kinds of learning disorders, other kinds of neurological disorders, speech delay, language disorders, ADD, hyperactivity, that all seem to be connected, that are all connected, the science shows are all connected to autism — to Thimerosal.

SCARBOROUGH: You know, Bobby, what we've always found, you and could debate 1,000 different issues, whether it's Terri Schiavo or the environment. I think we would agree on the environment. But, in this case, you have got the federal government coming in saying, well, there's no good science. And, of course, in politics, science always gets diluted. Why hasn't the federal government stepped up and worked more, because listen, Bobby, I can't prove it tonight. You can't prove it, but, intuitively, you look at the spike. You look at what happened with Thimerosal. There's no doubt in my mind — maybe it's two years from now. Maybe it's five years from now. Maybe it's 10 years from now. We are going to find out Thimerosal causes, in my opinion, autism.

KENNEDY: You know what? The science is out there today for anybody who bothers to read it. And I have read it. Actually, on my Web site this week, RobertFKennedyJr.com, I am publishing an article that goes through all of the science. But the science is clear. And what happens is, I read the science at first. And there's literally hundreds and hundreds of studies that connect Thimerosal to these disastrous neurological disorders. Then I went, I talked to the scientists. Then I went and I talked to the federal bureaucrats who are defending Thimerosal. And I said, what are you relying on? And I looked at the science they are relying on. And I can tell you, Joe, it is so weak. And you and I have seen, in the legal practice, junk science. And we know what these phony scientists are who create this stuff.

SCARBOROUGH: It happened in big tobacco.

KENNEDY: Right. Tobacco.

SCARBOROUGH: It happens in big oil. It's happening in global warming. And now it's happening in a way that is impacting our kids` lives.

KENNEDY: This is classic tobacco science. It is junk science. And I was looking at these reports and saying, this is the best? This is what you are relying on? They know it's fraudulent. And now we have the transcripts.

SCARBOROUGH: Explain. Explain it to me, Bobby, OK? Explain it to me. If that's the case — I mean, you and I both know about politics, obviously. Politicians like to get reelected. Why are they sitting back — if our children are being poisoned, if the science is there. Why are they sitting back and letting our children be poisoned?

KENNEDY: Because the same regulatory bureaucrats that green-lighted Thimerosal originally are now trying to cover their tracks.

SCARBOROUGH: It's a CYA operation.

KENNEDY: Right. Are they are working with the pharmaceutical industry. And we now have the transcripts of the secret meeting that they did in Simpsonwood, Georgia, in the year 2000. And it's the most horrifying thing that you can read, Joe. There are scientists there from the government who are saying — who are reading the reports and saying, this is undeniable. There's no way we can ever deny this. I am not going to give this to my children, but now let's hide this from the American people. And it's that clear.

And this is what I write about. It's this language that I write about in the "Rolling Stone" and the "Salon" piece that is so shocking, where we have the guys who are supposed to be protecting Americans` health who are actually conspiring to keep this stuff in the vaccines.

SCARBOROUGH: You know, and I can't say what lawsuit we were both involved in. I don't want to say it. But it reminds me of a lawsuit we were involved in a couple years ago regarding water quality, where you know the people that polluted in our community and then left our community would have never drank the water that our children grew up drinking. And it's a disaster. It's a disgrace.

So, hey, Bobby, thanks for being here tonight. If you can come back, we need to talk more about this. And I also want to talk about -- and I am going to hold up the book now. We actually lured Bobby in to say that we were going to talk to him about this book. But, actually, he said he wanted to talk about this instead. I appreciate you being here, Bobby, as always. And let's get you back.

It's time for more Democrats to follow Bobby Kennedy, Jr. and start demanding an investigation into these issues. We need to focus as much attention on the leaked "Simpsonwood" memos, documenting a conspiracy between government agencies and BigPharma to cover-up the poisoning of 30 million US children, as we do on the Downing Street memos. We Progressives battle the Right over so-called "family values"; here's our opportunity to show how much we value families devasted by thimerosal poisoning.

As Scarborough said, Big Tobacco. Big Oil. Now Big Pharma. What does is take for activists to catch up to the mainstream media?

Posted by MB Williams at 06:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

We are at Cayuga Lake State Park, a few miles from Seneca Falls. Our satellite engineer, Ms. Mary Beth Williams, has provided us with internet access.

Yesterday morning we awoke in a forest to rain and turned on the TV to catch the weather ... In two hours of morning news, CBS didn't mention Iraq or Bush or ... there was a brief moment of Condi Rice as Moses exhorting Pharoh to embrace Democracy, but the rest of the "serious" news on a regional MSM broadcast outlet was ... an 11 year old boy, lost, and found again, in Utah. That story must have gotten over 30 minutes of air time in those two hours.

Maybe Bush has resigned and Iraq has ... converted to Mormonism.

Written by Eric using MB's lovely lovely zd7000.

Posted by MB Williams at 09:29 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Kezzie is casting bread onto the waters, to the considerable appreciation of a duck and her raft of ducklings. Jonah is sitting next to me, warming up after a long stretch in the water, working his way through tortilla chips and juice. Sam is playing with a boy a few years older in a pick-up game of splash-and-dash. Grace is giving a few chocolate cookies the once-over, also warming up after a logn session of lakeside piracy and brigandage.

Its Father's Day, and a rather nice one at that.

Sam plays with another. Jonah plays parallel with, and only tangentially so, his sibs.

Jonah evaded the perimeter and was apprehended on the road. A moment of fear and palipitations.

Written by Eric using MB's lovely lovely zd7000.

Posted by MB Williams at 03:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Thursday was the 19th anniversary of nomination of William Rehnquist to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. There is much speculation about whether nor not this will be Rehnquist’s last term on the court. The AP reports:

William H. Rehnquist was tapped to be chief justice 19 years ago Friday, and while conventional wisdom says his combination of age and cancer won't allow him to stay around for a 20th, some court watchers are not so sure.

They point out that he looks better than he had been, is keeping a regular schedule and, maybe most important of all, still loves his work. All that adds up to the possibility - still slim - that he'll confound everyone and stay put, perhaps for another full term...

Many people who study the court still say the most likely scenario has Rehnquist stepping down, probably at the very end of the term...

But with Rehnquist back working full-time at the court and even making social engagements, some are scaling back their predictions. Several people with close ties to Rehnquist and other justices say privately that they aren't sure what he'll do.

In the mid-1950’s, William Rehnquist was a law clerk for Justice Robert Jackson. The civil rights cases including Brown vs. Board of Education were before the Court.

To hold segregation of the public schools unconstitutional, the Court would have to overturn the precedent of Plessy v. Ferguson. Plessy was the post civil war case that had enabled the Jim Crow laws by holding the doctrine of “separate but equal” to be constitutional.

As the law clerk for Justice Jackson, Rehnquist wrote a legal memorandum about the upcoming case. In that memorandum, entitled A Random Thought on the Segregation Cases, Rehnquist wrote:

I realize that it is an unpopular and unhumanitarian position for which I have been excoriated by ‘liberal’ colleagues, but I think Plessy v Ferguson was right and should be reaffirmed.

it’s about time the Supreme Court faced the fact that the white people of the South don’t like the colored people.

Lito Pena is sure of his memory. Thirty-six years ago he, then a Democratic Party poll watcher, got into a shoving match with a Republican who had spent the opening hours of the 1964 election doing his damnedest to keep people from voting in south Phoenix.

"He was holding up minority voters because he knew they were going to vote Democratic," said Pena.

The guy called himself Bill. He knew the law and applied it with the precision of a swordsman. He sat at the table at the Bethune School, a polling place brimming with black citizens, and quizzed voters ad nauseam about where they were from, how they'd lived there -- every question in the book. A passage of the Constitution was read and people who spoke broken English were ordered to interpret it to prove they had the language skills to vote.

By the time Pena arrived at Bethune, he said, the line to vote was four abreast and a block long. People were giving up and going home.

Pena told the guy to leave. They got into an argument. Shoving followed...

Pena went on to serve 30 years in the Arizona State Legislature…. The guy Pena remembers tossing out of Bethune School prospered, too. Bill Rehnquist, now better known as William H. Rehnquist, chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States…

Mr. Nixon had the opportunity to appoint a number of Supreme Court Justices. Nixon was adamant that he wanted “strict constructionist” judges. What exactly was a strict constructionist? Mr. Rehnquist wrote a memo to Attorney General John Mitchell in which Rehnquist said that:

A judge who is a 'strict constructionist' in constitutional matters will generally not be favorably inclined toward claims of either criminal defendants or civil rights plaintiffs.

Posted by Dwight Meredith at 11:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

The "FYN?" SMS message appears to have converged to "Y" during the quiet period and it is possible that Moeen may place 2nd, or even 1st, over Rafsanjani. That would be a mega-wow, enabled by the Downing Street Memos -- since an attack by the US is made less likely the DSM's outing, making Rafsanjani no longer the prudent choice in a defense scenario, but something of an encumberance in a more domestic political context.

The least of the conservative dwarves -- the twice promissed and passed over guy dropped out Thursday morning, and the Conservatives may consolidate around Qualibaf (he shoots students and horses).

Updates as they come in.

Remember, this was the next American War, scheduled for 2005 up until Rep. Conyers bit down on the DSM bone.

Update: It is Rafsanjani and Moeen. Recall that Moeen polled at 4%, at the same level as each of the four Conservative dwarves, and Rafsanjani at three times that only eight weeks ago.

Update: Exit polls and candidates may not always be precient. IRNA reported from the headquarters that of the 29,317,042 votes cast Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani and Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad drew the most votes and will contest in a run-off election on Friday.

The number of votes cast for each candidate is the following:
1. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani 6,159,452
2. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 5,710,354
3. Mehdi Karroubi 5,066,316
4. Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf 4,075,189
5. Mostafa Moin 3,054,204
6. Ali Larijani 1,740,162
7. Mohsen Mehralizadeh 1,289,223
The report added that over 1,221,940 ballets were invalidated.

Out of a total of 26,484,370 votes counted throughout the country by 15:45 hours Saturday, Rafsanjani and Karroubi have gained the highest number of votes.

The following table shows the latest vote count announced by the elections headquarters of the Interior Ministry Saturday afternoon:

1. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani 5,474,885
2. Mehdi Karroubi 4,924,731
3. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 4,810,079
4. Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf 3,766,444
5. Mostafa Moin 3,635,990
6. Ali Larijani 1,609,029
7. Mohsen Mehralizadeh 1,185,797

Out of a total of 23,592,703 votes counted throughout the country by 13:45 Saturday, Rafsanjani and Karroubi have gained the highest number of votes.

1. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani 5,017,283
2. Mehdi Karroubi 4,686,642
3. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 4,396,923
4. Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf 3,522,228
5. Mostafa Moin 3,364,979
6. Ali Larijani 1,636,779
7. Mohsen Mehralizadeh 1,072,776

Out of a total of 19,708,424 votes counted throughout the country by 10 am Saturday, Rafsanjani and Karroubi have gained the highest number of votes.

1. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani 4,289,973
2. Mehdi Karroubi 4,086,709
3. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 3,449,697
4. Mostafa Moin 2,846,216
5. Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf 2,738,432
6. Ali Larijani 1,365,279
7. Mohsen Mehralizadeh 932,118

During the 7th Majlis electin crisis 15 months ago, when the Guardian Council disqualified nearly all reform candidates, then-President of the Majlis, Mahdi Karroubi said «Etes-vous loyaux à l'égard de l'Islam si vous priez quotidiennement mais que vous bafouez ensuite les droits du peuple?» [Are you loyal to Islam if you pray daily but flaut the rights of the people?]. Karroubi did something else laudible, he called for investigating the series of murders of journalists, in the Majlis.

Update: IRNA is reporting as "URGENT" that unofficially that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Conservative) has edged out Mahdi Karroubi (Independent), so the run-off will be between Rafsanjani (Pragmatic) and one of the four dwarfs.

One man, more than any other outside of Iran, is responsible for the elevated turn-out by threatened voters who turn to the Conservatives ... George "Loose Lips" Bush. He may get his 3rd war after all.

Update: Both Karroubi and Moeen have made statements on irregularities in the vote counting. The late-count catapult-to-second of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the two-years-from obscurity appointed mayor of Tehran, is a potential blot on the election process.
Written by Eric, using MB's lovely zd7000.

Posted by MB Williams at 07:21 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The following is an interesting institutional development, but it is unlikely to involve Eastern or Southern or Western or Alaskan (or Hawai'ian) claims that arise from the American claim of a Trust relationship towards Tribes.

HISTORIC UNION OF NATIVE AMERICAN LEADERS TO RELEASE
SETTLEMENT PRINCIPLES FOR
TRUST REFORM AND RESOLUTION OF COBELL V. NORTON

WHEN: Monday, June 20, 2005 at 1:30 PM Eastern

WHERE: National Press Club
13th Floor, Murrow Room
529 14th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C.

WHAT: Prominent national Native American leaders will join the lead plaintiff in the landmark Cobell v. Norton case to announce a set of principles intended to be the basis of legislation that could end the contentious, nine-year court battle over the government’s breach of its fiduciary duty to account for the property of individual Indians, held in trust and managed by the government.

NCAI President Tex G. Hall, and ITMA Chairman Chief Jim Gray of the Osage Nation joined with Elouise Cobell, lead plaintiff in the watershed Cobell lawsuit, and formed a national working group that developed these Principles that also would reform the government's trust practices that affect hundreds of Indian tribes.

In the course of the Cobell proceedings, cabinet secretaries of both parties have been held in contempt. A settlement would avoid accounting costs that the government claims could total $14 billion. The trust funds belong to an estimated 500,000 individual Indians – monies that are the proceeds from the government's sale and lease of resources from the Indians' own lands. The courts and Congress have found that the government has mismanaged the trust for over a century, breached its duty, and never accounted for the monies in the trust. This lack of accounting and trust mismanagement continues today.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND), vice-chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA), chairman of the House Resources Committee, and Rep. Nick Rahall (D-WV), ranking member of the House Resources Committee, have asked Indian Country to speak with a unified voice and provide a set of principles that would guide the lawmakers' drafting of legislation that would provide a fair and just resolution to this most critical issue facing Native Americans. They have said they plan to introduce such legislation this summer. The legislation would reform the federal government's inept Indian trust management system.

WHO: Tex G. Hall, "Red Tipped Arrow",� President of National Congress of American Indians and Chairman of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation of North Dakota

Jim Gray, Chairman of the Inter-Tribal Monitoring Association and Principal Chief of the Osage Nation of Oklahoma

Elouise Cobell, lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, founder and Executive Director of the Native American Community Development Corporation and a member of the Blackfeet Tribe of Montana

Sharon Clahchischilliage, Executive Director of the Navajo Nation Washington, D.C. office

John Echohawk, Executive Director of the Native American Rights Fund and a member of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma

Written by Eric, using MB's lovely zd7000.

Posted by MB Williams at 07:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

From David Kirby writing at the Huffington Post:

One year ago, the esteemed Institute of Medicine rejected the theory that the mercury-based vaccine preservative thimerosal might be linked to autism and other childhood disorders. Opponents of the theory – and they are plentiful – assumed that would shut the books once and for all on this disturbing, potentially catastrophic idea.

The opponents, it turns out, were sorely mistaken. They underestimated the tenacity of some really pissed off parents, who refused to be dismissed as litigious fruit loops who wouldn’t recognize scientific evidence if it landed on their front lawn.

Consider this. In recent months, the thimerosal-autism controversy has begun to pierce a major-media bubble seemingly transfixed on serving up daily doses of Michael, Martha and the Runaway Bride, while ignoring the potential poisoning of a generation of American children:

Don Imus – continues to champion this cause on his show “like a dog on a bone,” as they say.

Sen. Joe Lieberman – told Imus on the air that this is “a fight worth fighting.”
Rolling Stone & Salon – published RFK Jr.’s article.

FOX – local affiliates have covered this story with exceptional dedication, and the Fox News Channel is mulling over a special report.

The New York Times – is working on a major investigation of the controversy

The Associated Press – is also working on a feature.

Montel Williams – will air an entire segment on the controversy on June 21.

The Virginia Conference of the United Methodist Church – made news today by demanding the removal of mercury from vaccines; efforts are afoot to ask the national church to follow suit.

Generation Rescue – purchased full page ads in USA Today and The New York Times promoting the mercury-autism link.

Unlocking Autism – Is placing a series of hardball ads reminding George W. Bush of his 2004 campaign statement that thimerosal should be removed from childhood vaccines, and bearing the tag-line “Giving Mercury to Children on Purpose is Stupid.”

Our children were injected with the second most toxic substance in the world (after plutonium). Our kids are now brain damaged. How could we possibly let the issue rest?

This issue will not just go away.

Posted by Dwight Meredith at 02:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Today is my younger son, Bobby’s, tenth birthday. This morning was my turn to change Bobby’s diaper. Bobby is autistic and despite Herculean effort on his part and ours, he has not yet been toilet trained. As I changed his diaper, I noticed that our diaper supply was low. Off I went to the drug store to purchase a new supply.

While I was gone, Bobby broke one of his favorite CDs. He snapped it into several pieces. That particular disc was very precious to Bobby. As Bobby’s autism prevents him from talking, he communicated in the only way available to him. He took the pieces to his 11 year old brother and held them out hoping that my older son could fix the problem. Bobby's brother took the pieces and, not unreasonably, threw them in the trash can.

Bobby fished the pieces out of the trash and again presented them to his brother. The older boy patiently tried to explain that the CD was broken and could not be fixed. He suggested that because it was Bobby’s birthday, perhaps he would get a replacement as a present. He then threw the pieces away again.

When Bobby presented the pieces a third time, his brother, quickly losing patience, raised his voice in explaining that he could not fix the CD.

That caused Bobby to go into a tantrum. He hit, kicked, scratched, and pinched his brother while wailing loudly.

My older son is experienced at dealing with extreme autistic behaviors. He is under strict and difficult rules of engagement. He is permitted to defend himself but he is not to hurt Bobby in the process.

As I walked in the door carrying diapers, I heard Deb’s footsteps on the stairs heading for the trouble and also heard my older son screaming at Bobby. He was holding Bobby by the wrists while trying to dodge Bobby’s kicks.

I hustled Bobby off to his room to calm down, suffering only one superficial scratch in the process, and retuned downstairs to find out what happened. My older son was nursing two long red scratches on his forearm and a large bruise on his leg. He was not in a mood to be understanding of his brother.

My older son has had to live with his brother’s autism for most of his life. While he is generally accepting of the situation, he has a number of ways to express frustration. “Why do I have to live in the United States of Bobby?” is one of his favorites. “I am tired of Bobby being the sun while I am just a planet orbiting him,” is another. Today, he simply asked, “Why did I have to have an autistic brother?”

The answer to that question is not simple. I have never known how to answer it. Perhaps part of the answer is below.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in Salon, suggests that much of the autism epidemic is caused by mercury in vaccines. He argues that the epidemic was preventable but that government agencies were asleep at the switch. In addition, he argues that those same government agencies, along with Big Pharma, and the vaccination community hid the fact that mercury in vaccines has caused tens of thousands of children to suffer brain damage. ( Seeing the Forest and Susie are also writing about the Kenney article).

In the early 1990s, additional vaccinations were added to the normal childhood regimen. Kennedy writes:

Before 1989, American preschoolers received only three vaccinations -- for polio, diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis and measles-mumps-rubella. A decade later, thanks to federal recommendations, children were receiving a total of 22 immunizations by the time they reached first grade.

As the number of vaccines increased, the rate of autism among children exploded. During the 1990s, 40 million children were injected with thimerosal-based vaccines, receiving unprecedented levels of mercury during a period critical for brain development. Despite the well-documented dangers of thimerosal, it appears that no one bothered to add up the cumulative dose of mercury that children would receive from the mandated vaccines.

The EPA standard is 0.1 micrograms of mercury per kilogram of body weight per day. The FDA set its standard at 0.3 micrograms per kilogram per day. The CDC set the bar at 0.4.

In 1991, the Hepatitis B vaccine was added to the schedule. Each of those shots (a total of three injections) contained 12.5 micrograms of mercury. The first of those shots was given within 24 hours of birth. Thus, a newborn baby weighing 4 kilograms (almost 9 pounds) had more than than 31 times the EPA mercury limit, 10 times the FDA limit, and 7 times the CDC limit of mercury injected into his or her body on their first day of life.

It was even worse when a baby was two months old. A combination of vaccines exposed each two-month old baby to 62.5 micrograms of mercury. If the baby weighed 5 kilograms (11 pounds) at two months, he or she received 125 times the EPA limit, 41 times the FDA limit, and 31 times the CDC limit in one day. Forty million American infants were exposed to those doses of mercury. Kennedy notes:

Infants who received all their vaccines, plus boosters, by the age of 6 months were being injected with levels of ethylmercury 187 times greater than the EPA's limit for daily exposure to methylmercury, a related neurotoxin.

Although the vaccine industry insists that ethylmercury poses little danger because it breaks down rapidly and is removed by the body, several studies -- including one published in April by the National Institutes of Health -- suggest that ethylmercury is actually more toxic to developing brains and stays in the brain longer than methylmercury.

Epidemiological evidence also exists. Kennedy writes:

Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young infants -- in one case, within hours of birth -- the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children.

Some argue that the apparent increase in the prevalence of autism is not the result of an actual increase in incidence, but, rather, is the result of changing definitions and better diagnosis. That argument, however, fails to answer one obvious question. With the current definition of the spectrum and the current diagnostic criteria, where are all the autistics born before we increased the mercury exposure in vaccines? Kennedy writes:

Some skeptics dispute that the rise in autism is caused by thimerosal-tainted vaccinations. They argue that the increase is a result of better diagnosis -- a theory that seems questionable at best, given that most of the new cases of autism are clustered within a single generation of children. "If the epidemic is truly an artifact of poor diagnosis," scoffs Dr. Boyd Haley, one of the world's authorities on mercury toxicity, "then where are all the 20-year-old autistics?"

Kennedy summarizes some of the other evidence of causation:

Dr. Mark Geier, president of the Genetics Center of America, and his son, David, spent a year battling to obtain the medical records from the CDC. Since August 2002, when members of Congress pressured the agency to turn over the data, the Geiers have completed six studies that demonstrate a powerful correlation between thimerosal and neurological damage in children. One study, which compares the cumulative dose of mercury received by children born between 1981 and 1985 with those born between 1990 and 1996, found a "very significant relationship" between autism and vaccines. Another study of educational performance found that kids who received higher doses of thimerosal in vaccines were nearly three times as likely to be diagnosed with autism and more than three times as likely to suffer from speech disorders and mental retardation. Another soon-to-be-published study shows that autism rates are in decline following the recent elimination of thimerosal from most vaccines.

In April, reporter Dan Olmsted of UPI undertook one of the more interesting studies himself. Searching for children who had not been exposed to mercury in vaccines -- the kind of population that scientists typically use as a "control" in experiments -- Olmsted scoured the Amish of Lancaster County, Penn., who refuse to immunize their infants. Given the national rate of autism, Olmsted calculated that there should be 130 autistics among the Amish. He found only four. One had been exposed to high levels of mercury from a power plant. The other three -- including one child adopted from outside the Amish community -- had received their vaccines.

The story of how government health agencies colluded with Big Pharma to hide the risks of thimerosal from the public is a chilling case study of institutional arrogance, power and greed.

There is no doubt that vaccines are one of the great advances of modern medicine and that the development of vaccines has eliminated an untold amount of illness, death and suffering from the world. I am very pro-vaccination.

Nonetheless, truth carries its own reward. The fear caused by admitting that vaccines caused autism but noting that the mercury has now been removed from the shots is nothing compared to what will happen if the public learns that the public health community caused brain damage to our kids and then tried to cover it up. Credibility is a fragile commodity.

The damage has already been done. My son, and tens of thousands like him, are autistic and will remain so. If mercury exposure in vaccines causes autism, the public health community should simply admit it, note that it has removed the mercury, and try to help those kids who have suffered brain damage.

Why does my older son have to have an autistic brother? I do not think I will tell him just yet. Eleven years old is a bit young to learn that he his brother's autism might have been caused because we were conscientious in taking Bobby to the Doctor to get all of his shots but the government was not conscientious in protecting Bobby from brain damage caused by injecting large amounts of poison into his small body.

If that is the case, I expect that such a revelation will cause him, like his mother and me, to alternate between being very, very angry and being very, very sad. No eleven year old boy should have to go through that.

Note: This post has been edited since it was originally posted. Thanks Eric for posting it when I could not. Thanks also for fixing the site.

Update:

Salon has issued some corrections to its article. The paragraph concerning infants receiving 187 times the EPA limits has been corrected to read:

Infants who received all their vaccines, plus boosters, by the age of six months were being injected with a total of 187 micrograms of ethylmercury -- a level 40 percent greater than the EPA's limit for daily exposure to methylmercury, a related neurotoxin.

With regard to mercury in infant vaccines, it makes little sense to average the exposures across a long period of time. If mercury exposure from vaccines causes autism, it will likely be the result of bolus doses.

Consider, for instance, a person who drinks 180 glasses of wine over a six month period. If that wine is consumed one glass per day, the person is a moderate drinker and the wine is likely to have beneficial health effects. If the drinker consumes all 180 glasses in one night, he is a binge drinker and is likely to die from alcohol poisoning.

Averaging mercury exposure acquired in a few large doses over an extended period of time may well miss the harmful effects.

Posted by Dwight Meredith at 06:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

During the driveby on a Salon (social pages) writer and former blogger, who wrote about her children and their (and her) primary school experience and the "game" of dodgeball, I was too busy to write, and besides, it happend in another blog, and besides, the wench is read.

But I did think about it, and decided that dodgeball contains no internal lesson worth finite teaching time, and that ragging on a parent for looking at dodgeball critically was ... a big step down the slippery slope towards NCLB worship and rejecting parental involvement, critical involvement, in pedagogy, theory and practice.

But this week a Federal Magistrate ruled that School Administrative District 55 (Western York Co., Maine) has no duty to provide services to a sixth grader with Asperger's -- because her disability "does not interfere with her ability to learn."

As Phelan's parent (step-father, the role usually cast for Bella Legosi) I went to her schools (numerous social crash-and-burns), in particular, her last school before her diagnosis, and her flight from diagnosis and the wicked step-'rent and poxy sibs narratives. I recall going to Sister Edward Mary Kelleher at Catherine McCally High School, and to the Sister who taught math, and explaining that I'd no concerns about Phelan's academic abilities, only her social abilities. I recall doing just about the same at Troy Howard Middle School when we lived in Belfast, and the same at the Francis W. Parker Charter Essential School when we lived in Pepperell. Phelan's time at Pepperell's unremarkable K-6, and again at Portland's equally unremarkable Lincoln Middle School, was profoundly painful for her, and not something to repeat for want of thought.

As the parent of a bright, really bright social non-adapt, not yet diagnosed, or understood to be on the spectrum -- we were struggling to understand a deaf-or-autistic two-year-old -- schools existed only for social development, for peer modeling and interaction. Everything else was wasted, or simply irrelevant. On our walks Phelan reasoned through the standard diagnalization argument for the equivalent cardinality of the integers and the rationals, and discovered first and second countability -- the non-equivalence of, and vastly greater size of, the irrationals. She read Shakespeare. She sang like a lark. I hope she still does. We lost sight of Phelan two months into her 10th grade year.

As a parent of an Aspie, I don't think public schools exist for the purposes of running up good NCLB, or Maine Learning Results numbers. I don't think public schools exist to deliver content to kids who read encylopedias. I think public schools exist to deliver critical thinking skills, which isn't contained in encylopedias and a heck of a lot of adults and pre-adults, and one of the really important applications of critical thinking, right up there with gravity, sharp objects, moving bodies and consequences is thinking critically about social interactions.

David Cohen, employed as a Magistrate Judge by the U.S., isn't an Aspie 'rent, and he ruled that SAD 55 can watch without duty, other than offer a slot in their Gifted and Talented program, a student take her own life.

Maine's highest court takes up the case of a Falmouth Aspie who only sought access to the playground and socialization from that school district, which banned him for ... basically not being normal.

Do Aspies even have a right to try and figure out social dodgeball? Apparently not.

Written by Eric, using MB's lovely zd7000.

Posted by MB Williams at 12:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

FYN? Friday, Yes or No? To vote or to not? To legitimize the current electoral regime -- the Guardian Council's elimination of competitive Reform candidates from the 7th Majlis and the 9th Presidential (two restored by order of the Supreme Leader) -- or to withhold legitimacy from it?

The message is circulating via SMS very widely in metro-Iran. All campaigning is now ended and there is a one-day quiet period before the polls open.

During the last week campaign rallies and field offices for Moeen (aka "Moin", the Reform candidate) have been attacked by ... gangs. There have been dumpster bombings in Tehran (no injuries), and a fast food outlet was bombed this morning in Zahedan City, injuring three.

Iranians in Afganistan are voting at the embassy in Kabul and consulates in the cities of Herat to the west, Mazari-Sharif to the north and Qandahar to the south.

Sean Penn is in Tehran as a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. He'll have to be there for another week, since Art. 117 of the Constitution calls for a second-round the Friday following between the two highest vote getters if no candidate receives an absolute majority in the first round. That's how I decode the non-withdrawal of three of the four Conservative candidates, they're running in a parallel universe primary. Of course it may not be the two highest vote getters, since they can withdraw allowing the next highest vote getter(s) to stand in the two-candidate final round a week from tomorrow. Christian Amanpour is covering the election for CNN. She's Farsi-speaking with some recent time in Iran, so her coverage may be the best available in the North American media market, modulo the CNN "news and content" filter(s).

Another SMS message making the rounds:

Do you know there's now a nineth candidate?

Who is it?

Dr. Mohsen Qalijaninejad.

There is something profoundly important in the boycottage question. Iranian women are much more likely to withhold their sufferage because their issues are "outside of politics". Here in the US, both parties are testosterone-driven, and the largest non-voting demographic is women between the ages of 18 and 30. MB will post on the domestic (US) piece of this in the near future.

The Interim Friday Prayers Leader of Tehran Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati in an address to thousands of worshipers at Tehran University Campus last Friday criticized unnamed presidential election candidates and said they are using "illegal" techniques in their campaigns. He accused some of the candidates of acts that "violate laws" in order to win the election and promissed them judicial prosecution unless they cease violating election laws. He then qualified the unnamed candidates -- "Now that these people do not have any official post, they are ignoring law. What would they do when they get the presidential post?" He clearly means "Dr. Mohsen Qalijaninejad" since each recently resigned from official posts (National Police, Mayor of Tehran, National Broadcasting, and maybe something else I've forgotten for the me-too-forgotnik Reza�e). Moeen and Rafsanjani have not held official posts for quite some time. He also advised the next president to avoid nepotism in selecting his colleagues and choose the officials on their merits. Merit alone. He mentioned no other ideological litmus test for the cabinet, which has a nuance in the advise-and-consent role of the (Guardian Council selected) overwhelmingly Conservative 7th Majlis.

So much for the simple Mullahs vs secular reform critique.

So, Rafsanjani and who? Moeen (Reform) or one of the four (Conservative to Fundamentalist) dwarfs? Then who next week? Rafsanjani (?) and which of the four dwarfs? And what turnout? And what turnout??

Written by Eric, using MB's lovely zd7000.

Posted by MB Williams at 08:28 AM | Permalink

Unbeknownst to management at all levels, Ms. Gracie just finished reading Tom Sawyer and upon demand by an incredulous management, recited the plot. Not too shabby for 2nd grade ejecta.

Posted by MB Williams at 07:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The kids and I are listening to WMPG's Radio Junk Drawer, one of my favorite eclectic radio moments. Gracie's reading to Sam and Kezzie and Jonah is building words out of letters and organizing objects into visual stim-trails, and water is heating on the stove. Outside it is cool and damp and green and grey, and MB is off registering our new vehicle and the travel trailer. Sam and Jonah both lost a lower front tooth within days -- Sam one on Saturday and a second on Sunday, and Jonah one on Monday. Twins, but for the 18 months between their births.

Sunday we pulled away from our home of seven years, having completed our move-out one day over budget in a heat wave. By afternoon I'd the kids in a lake and the new owner shut down the nameserver I'd left for Mid-Maine to pick up along with their DSL modem -- taking down wampum and everything else I'd left depending on the home nameservers.

Monday was Sam's birthday. He's now 7, and he spent the day happy as a duck splashing about in the lake, roaring and splashing. MB made him a chocolate G/F cake and in the evening we watched The Incredibles that Sam had surprised us by asked for. Tuesday the heat wave broke. Sweaters replaced aloe vera and sunscreen, and more showings of The Incredibles. In the afternoon I went to Kennebunk and started rebuilding our facility, so now the blog URLs resolve to the host.

Just to make it more challenging, MB's purse, wallet and cell phone are in a box unknown, or left hanging on the back of a door of a house we no longer own.

The adjustment from a 2,800 square foot two-story to a 30' trailer, in effect a studio, is a challenge. Every day boxes go from storage to the trailer and boxes go from the trailer to storage and entropy (order) gradually increases. One of the two cats was very, very iffy on Moving Day, finding a hiding place minutes after we parked the trailer above the driveshaft under the car and spending the next hour wailing its fate.

However, all problems seem tractible, and life goes on, changed, which is how we distinguish it from non-life.

Written by Eric, using MB's lovely zd7000.

Posted by MB Williams at 03:46 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Well, not really, but this morning Le Monde reports that La secrétaire d'Etat américaine Condoleezza Rice a laissé la porte ouverte à d'éventuelles négociations entre responsables irakiens et groupes liés aux insurgés. That's Rice has indicated that the US will, via puppets, negociate with terrorists anti-occupation nationalists.

That's fairly surprisng, considering how many signatories there are to the sidebar link.

Next week's surprise guest will be Donald Rumsfeld, who will doing a two-fur -- first, that the apolitical BRAC is in fact just politics, and second, that the "revolution in military affairs" is just a switch from (national) defense to (colonial) offense.

Posted by EBW at 05:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Yola Monakhova managed to get into Andijan (Andizhan) on May 16th. Her write-up appears here. No Islamo-Funda Booger Men. None. Russian spoken by security forces command and control.

If I'd time I'd post those happy happy joy joy pictures the DoD published of singing competitions and soccer matches at Kamp Kollaboration. Happy to be serving their country US troops (and happy to be employed) K&R contractor employees and the smiling local inhabitants. They're on the web. Just google.

Posted by EBW at 06:20 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

This is recommended reading. The Pimping of the President, Jack Abramoff and Grover Norquist Billing Clients for Face Time with G.W. Bush, by Lou Dubose. link.

There is a second story here. Six Tribal Governments contributed over $10,000,000 to Republicans, because it is a waste of time to talk to Democrats about gaming. States have lotteries (some don't), States have casinos (many don't), and all of those benefit governments and franchise elites, some the successors-in-interest to criminal enterprises, and Tribal Governments have to find the means to deliver governmental services to their citizens.

Via triballaw.

Posted by EBW at 01:38 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Susan Collins and Joe Lieberman are trying to pry data out of Secretary Rumsford's black bag. Either they think they can derail this BRAC round on procedural grounds -- no data ergo no action, or they think they can deflect the bullet by charm -- turn one of the "military value" variables and some other mole is whacked. They faxed a subpoena over to the SecDef's offices today.

Neither of them are prepared to point out that the Executive Branch does not appropriate. Should the Executive Branch choose to paint everything pink, it may, but it may not choose to double every other line in the appropriations, and zero out those between. The Executive Branch may not tranform the Navy into the Persian Gulf Yacht Club without Congressional consent, nor may it fund the land-based nuclear missile forces, the sea-based nuclear missile forces, and the nuclear bomber forces without Congressional consent, just as it may not send the Army on a snipe hunt without Congressional consent.

To win this one for the New England delegation, they're going to have to stop providing Congressional consent, and Susan Collins and Joe Lieberman both make a point of providing their consent, so its not likely to get down to beanballs and spikes.

Posted by EBW at 09:18 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I've been waiting for this [HWR's website update] since it [news of the report] first appeared in Pravda and the Turkish press yesterday. Human Rights Watch has published a report on the killing of unarmed protesters by the Uzbek government in Andijan last month. The report is here.

It doesn't support the claims of the Karimov regime -- a death toll was 173 people — law enforcement officials and civilians killed by the attackers, along with the attackers themselves, or the claims of the Bush regime -- symmetric equivalent actors that should exercise mutual restraint, and shadowy connections to the Bush adventure in Iraq.

It looks like the mass death will go over one thousand, closer to the Hizb ut-Tahrir's assertions on the core facts than the Karimov/Bush regimes. Coordinated kill zones, executions of wounded, everything a vampire could hope for.

Posted by EBW at 06:05 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

In 1996 Aleksandr Nikitin, a former naval captain, was arrested and accused of treason after preparing a report with Norway's Bellona Foundation on nuclear dangers in Russia's northern submarine fleet. That's the post-Soviet Russian equivalent of working with both hands to disclose and derail the (LEU) reactor projects at Seabrook, New Hampshire, Diablo Canyon, California, and the (HEU and Pu) reactor projects at Rocky Flats, Colorado.

Russia's Supreme Court cleared him of all charges in 2000. Yesterday's gathering of Greens elected Aleksandr Nikitin and two others deputies, as well as Aleksei Yablokov, head of the Center for Russian Environmental Policy, as party leader, of "Union of Greens".

It is tbd, and there is, predictably, even in the former USSR, complications with "liberals", but an ecology defined, weapons-aware political party now exists in the former Union.

Posted by EBW at 10:42 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I spent the years 1984/1985 working at an ICL facility in Bracknell, and at a Siemens facility in Munich. I was writing the European Unix Specification, mostly by myself, spending nights reading my way through about 20 variations on the v7, Xenix, System III and 4bsd implementations that were offered by my client -- Bull (France), ICL (UK), Siemens (W. Germany), Olivetti (Italy) and Nixdorff (W. Germany) -- to find "vanilla", the comon computational surface they could provid, at acceptable engineering cost. Every system call, every library routine, every file format, every logical device.

I made one mistake. Nixdorff was selling Sequent's multi-processor, and wanted to shave bits off of the PID (process id) to identify which processor a process was bound to. For two or four processor SMP systems this was just one or two -- or three if the challenge of an eight-way system was attempted -- bits subtracted from a 16 bit object, and at run-time the system would have to roll-over the process ids after 16,384 or 8,192 or (worst case) 4,096 processes had been created and ended ...

Of course, if anyone ever built an SMP with say, lots of processors, process id roll-over would take place before the system completed the boot sequence. Here's a note I sent to the Linux kernel list -- note.

The point of this trip down memory lane isn't that I wrote an external or programmer's specification of an operating system, I've written more than one of those. It is this: compiled languages like C abstract away the specifics of the underlying instruction set (processor architecture), and make programmers fungible. Where there was a market of assembly language programmers for Remington-Rand or Sperry-Univac or IBM or ... there was a market for FORTRAN or ALGOL or ... C programmers. Ultimately, as the Unix and Linux projects manifest, operating systems (as applications of processor architects) become economially processor-independent.

Deep breath: All systems programmers are therefor C programmers, or in really wierd niche markets (things that go "bang" or "buzz") or unemployed.

I spent the years 1992/1993 working at the Locus facility in Los Angeles. I was writing Spec 1170, which is now known as the Single Unix Specification with Greg Thiel and another guy, approaching the problem from the question "which APIs actually are used (and by whom)?" This time my client was IBM and HP. The number of thingiees specified was ... 1170.

One afternoon over a quiet reflective beer in Palo Alto it came to me. The European thing was a rear-guard action to defend ECMA, the European Computer Manufacturing Association, from IBM. I knew that. The Unix Standards Wars had come and gone and come again, each time in a new costume -- Network File System (Sun et al) vs Andrew File System (IBM et al), pitting local-area network and insecure (connectionless) semantics against wide-area network and secure (connection) semantics, won by NFS, and so on. What was now going on was a rear-guard action to defend everybody except Microsoft, and IBM was now one of the market hemopheliacs. We, with all our diversity of vendors and extensions from the comon model, were being forced off of the general desktop and onto the raised floors. We'd lost the sea of glass and were restricted to islands populated by file servers.

First Deep breath: All programmers are therefor Windows programmers, or in really wierd niche markets (things that go "backend" or "bang/buzz") or unemployed. Mostly unemployed, and trivially outsourced.

Second Deep breath: Operating systems monoculture would event produce instruction set monoculture. We'd lost the Sea of Glass to Microsoft, and in time there would be no economic justification for anyone other than Intel to be making commodity silicon.

So the news that the plan of record at Apple is now to use Intel processors comes to me 11 years after I reasoned that it would. For some things I really do have a working crystal ball.

MB allowed me to specify a Mac for the kids. A nice gray iBook, and OS X.4. And to save space I'm converting the Windows 98 partition on my dual-boot (intel) laptop to ... just another Unix partition.

Posted by EBW at 09:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Mainiacs may have yet another brain-dead Xtian ballot issue to ensure that Maine does discriminate, but the first C-U referenda in Europe just passed by a comfortable margin.

"Homosexuals are not just tolerated, they will now be considered a minority that is recognised by society. That, essentially, is what the vote on registered partnerships this weekend was all about."

La Liberté, a french language daily in Fribourg.

The vote split out with protestant cantons and urban centers in favor, and catholic cantons opposed, Except Fribourg. Both the popular, and the cantonal vote were in favor, so the urban centers (Bâle, Zurich et Genève) were not imposing their majority on the entire federation.

Mainiacs please visit mainewontdiscriminate.com soonest.

Posted by EBW at 04:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Duncan has a good post today.

I recommend everyone read it. You don't have to be a defeatist like I am, or agree that "deedee back several klicks and treat the opfors like WARSAW Pact forces who've temporarily misplaced their leadership" (me, circa 2003/4), or "ask the Iranians to form a caretaker secular government" (me, circa 2003/4), or "all parties conference" (me, circa 2004/5). Duncan is making the point that there is no "victory" for the Democratic opposition in the US through "victory" in Iraq for the actual regime in power.

Posted by EBW at 12:17 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The Socialist Party in France is celebrating the defeat of economic neo-liberalism in Europe by ... purging the leadership of everyone who campaigned against ... economic neo-liberalism in Europe. Laurent Fabius and everyone else who campaigned for the "non" vote appears to be being told to go join the Communists.

Sort of like our happy little post-'00 deck chair exercise, with the DLC leading the Party before, and after, failing to win a fraud-proof majority.

At least on this side of the pond, in the '04 cycle, grass roots won control of the DNC, after the DLC again failed to win a fraud-proof majority.

On a related note, over at Josh Marshall's blog which now has a scoop bolt-on for guest bits, John Edwards winds up a week of writing with a stab at taking the tempurature on the subject of globalization.

Remember, globalization is good, because after you loose your job and your pension and your kids tuition, you'll still be able to shop at K-Mart, where the prices are low because the products were made in non-union sweatshops located "away". Um. That's EBW, not JRE, in case anyone is confused.

Posted by EBW at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

In the two day's of 80 degree weather that we've been gone -- off to St. Albans in northern Vermont, to buy a travel trailer from an Abenaki dealer (yea!) and return -- the enormous American Basswood in our backyard has shot out a canopy of leaves, and this morning some great sub-tropical bird came and invisibly gave voice to the world.

Three more days until we set out, filled with toy pick-up, box parsing and packing, movement of necessities from house to trailor, and trips to the dump.

I'll post on Vermont Yankee and the dry cask issue eventually.

Posted by EBW at 07:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Date: Sat, 04 Jun 2005 18:50:31 -0000
To:
From: "Cook, Robert, CIV, WSO-BRAC" Robert.Cook@wso.whs.mil
Subject: BRAC Commission

Return-Path: Robert.Cook@wso.whs.mil
Delivery-Date: Thu Jun 2 19:21:40 2005
Return-Path:
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2657.72)

part 2 text/plain 529
Press to show content...

I have received your resume and appreciate your taking the time to send it.

Unfortunately all of our positions are currently filled; however, I am
keeping a list of candidates with skill sets we could use in the event a
position becomes open. Your resume is part of that list.

I'm sorry I couldn't provide a job offer, but do thank you for your interest
in the BRAC process.

Bob Cook
Bob Cook
Deputy Director, Review and Analysis
Base Closure and Realignment Commission
2521 Clark Street, Suite 600
Arlington, VA 22202

Posted by EBW at 10:09 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Russian media sources are running "it wasn't us" and "it was Chechens and other non-Uzebeks". Meanwhile the Uzebek dictatorship, a Washington client regime, is still keeping out all the body counters and is sticking with its "173 foreign criminals and terrorists, directed from abroad, killed by heroic forces of law and order" story.

So, there's buzz that some part of the set of actors were non-Uzebeck, and no independent body count is allowed, so my truth-in-sending meter for the Hizb ut-Tahrir higher today than it was when it sailed over the transom the afternoon of May 30th. The human rights observers active in Andijan May 12 -- 15 have stopped transmitting and the wire services are only reporting the Uzbek government, or the Russian (above) or other governmental noise sources.

John Edwards conducted a week of guest posting, opening the experimenal "TPM Cafe" sub-site-cum-b-board, I spent some time commenting. To what end? Ah! I've no idea. At least I got a former Wampum reader who'd lost his/her bookmarks after the heat (or kinetic) death of a machine, from Ohio, interested in the plume that connects Maine and Ohio (and W. Virginia and western Pennsylvania).

And we closed on the house today, picked up the tow, and are off to fetch next year's movable feast. MB will have details on Trip to Wonderful.

Posted by EBW at 03:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)