Undernews For Feb 7 2011

Since 1964, the news while there's still time to do something about it

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Air Force claims just reading Wikileaks website constitutes espionage
Secrecy News - Americans who have accessed the WikiLeaks web site may have violated the Espionage Act, under an extreme interpretation of the law advanced by Air Force officials last week.

Many government agencies have instructed their employees not to download classified materials from the WikiLeaks web site onto unclassified computer systems. The government's position is that although the material is in the public domain, its classification status is unaffected. Therefore, to preserve the integrity of unclassified systems, the leaked classified information should not be accessed on such systems. If it is accessed, it should be deleted.

But on February 3, Air Force Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base issued startling new guidance stating that the leaked documents are protected by the Espionage Act and that accessing them under any circumstances is against the law, not simply a violation of government computer security policy.

"According to AFMC's legal office, Air Force members -- military or civilian -- may not legally access WikiLeaks at home on their personal, non-governmental computers, either. To do so would not only violate the [Secretary of the Air Force] guidance on this issue,... it would also subject the violator to prosecution for violation of espionage under the Espionage Act," the AFMC legal office said.

Then, in an astounding interpretive leap, the AFMC went on to say that similar prohibitions apply to the relatives of Air Force employees.

"If a family member of an Air Force employee accesses WikiLeaks on a home computer, the family member may be subject to prosecution for espionage under U.S. Code Title 18 Section 793."

This is a breathtaking claim that goes far beyond any previous reading of the espionage statutes.

"That has to be one of the worst policy/legal interpretations I have seen in my entire career," said William J. Bosanko, director of the Information Security Oversight Office, by email.

If taken seriously for a moment, the AFMC guidance raises a host of follow-on questions. What if a family member accessed WikiLeaks on a computer outside the home? What if a non-family member accessed WikiLeaks on the home computer? What if one learns that a neighbor has accessed WikiLeaks in the neighbor's home? Is the Air Force employee obliged to intervene or to report the violation to authorities? And how could any of this possibly be constitutional?

Since the AFMC guidance is not based in existing case law or past practice, these questions have no immediate answers.

Last December, a Department of Homeland Security official complained to Secrecy News that government policy on WikiLeaks produced the incongruous result that "my grandmother would be allowed to access the cables but not me." But if the new Air Force guidance can be believed, this is incorrect because the official's grandmother would be subject to prosecution under the Espionage Act.

Morning Line: The Huffington-AOL deal
Sam Smith

The collapse of liberalism as a strong political voice got a new shove with Arianna Huffington selling her liberal readers to the corporate conglomerate AOL.

The news came just about two weeks after the New Yorker revealed that 80% of AOL's profits come from subscriptions and, as Consumerist put it, "75% of those users are people who subscribe to the dial-up service and don't need. Basically we're talking about folks who have another kind of ISP and don't realize that you don't need to pay AOL anymore if you're just using it for email. The group can be further divided into two sub-groups, the old, and the lazy."

Consumerist then went on to give a step by step process for canceling AOL "and saving some cash while still keeping access to your AOL email account."

In Daily Beast, Dan Lyons adds to the story, quoting Nick Denton of Gawker: "Is this a fearsome Internet conglomerate or simply a roach motel for once lively websites?"

Lyons continues:

|||| Much of AOL’s dysfunction was laid bare just one week ago when Business Insider, a blog, got hold of a leaked AOL memo called “The AOL Way,” which purports to instruct AOL’s hacks on how to practice their craft. It’s all about making stories based on traffic potential and profit potential. It’s all about numbers¬and volume. It’s a depressing, sickening, embarrassing document. AOL’s hacks are expected to write five to 10 articles a day. . . Business Insider quoted one AOL 'journalist' as saying, “AOL is the most fucked up, bullshit company on earth,” and then adding that joining AOL was “the worst career move I’ve ever made.” ||||

This development also seems like another step in turning the Internet into something more resembling closed door cable TV - which has, for example, saved Americans from the curse of Al Jazeera - than the free and open system that cyberspace was supposed to be. AOL - like its younger version, Facebook - basically aims at keeping readers away from the full glory of the web and on its limited pages instead.

But there are political implications as well. As we have pointed out for a couple of decades, American liberalism has been in steady decline, trading in past goals for the illusion of power - e.g. Clinton and Obama - and becoming far more an elite iconography than a broad-based ideology.

Key to the shift has been the desertion of the former emphasis on economic concerns of most Americans in favor of a pseudo admiration of social equality that in fact mainly favors those well enough off to break glass ceilings but not those of the same gender or ethnicity stuck with cleaning wooden floors.

For example, the Huffington-AOL merger was announced just a few days after Arianna Huffington returned from participating in the Davos conference, perhaps the largest annual gathering on those most culpable for the world's problems. Or consider the fact that liberals went wild over Obama becoming president and didn't even notice that the Senate ended up without a single black member.

Huffington Post has some very progressive contributors and readers, but the overall tone of the operation has become increasingly merged in soul with the sort of people with which it has now become merged in legal agreement.

The sooner we recognize the true difference between today's liberalism and that of true populist, progressive, socialist and Green movements we will begin to recreate a left of meaning rather than of merely nice words.

Department of Good Stuff: New book on cooperatives
Humanizing the Economy shows how co-operatives can create a more equitable, just, and humane future. With over 800 million members in 85 countries and a long history linking economics to social values, the co-operative movement is the most powerful grassroots movement in the world. Its future as an alternative to corporate capitalism is explored through a wide range of real-world examples. By John Restakis who has been active in the co-op movement for 15 years and is executive director of the BC Co-operative Association.

Now Texas has more Indians to oppress
LA Times - Thousands of immigrants from India have crossed into the United States illegally at the southern tip of Texas in the last year, part of a mysterious and rapidly growing human-smuggling pipeline that is backing up court dockets, filling detention centers and triggering investigations.

The immigrants, mostly young men from poor villages, say they are fleeing religious and political persecution. More than 1,600 Indians have been caught since the influx began here early last year, while an undetermined number, perhaps thousands, are believed to have sneaked through undetected, according to U.S. border authorities. Hundreds have been released on their own recognizance or after posting bond. They catch buses or go to local Indian-run motels before flying north for the final leg of their months-long journeys.

125 communities take on corporate personhood
Allen D. Kanner, Common Dreams - The citizens of Mt. Shasta [CA] have developed an extraordinary ordinance, set to be voted on in the next special or general election, that would prohibit corporations such as Nestle and Coca-Cola from extracting water from the local aquifer. But this is only the beginning. The ordinance would also ban energy giant PG&E, and any other corporation, from regional cloud seeding, a process that disrupts weather patterns through the use of toxic chemicals such as silver iodide. More generally, it would refuse to recognize corporate personhood, explicitly place the rights of community and local government above the economic interests of multinational corporations, and recognize the rights of nature to exist, flourish, and evolve. Citizens of Mt. Shasta, California have developed an ordinance to keep corporations from extracting their water.

Mt. Shasta is not alone. Rather, it is part of a (so far) quiet municipal movement making its way across the United States in which communities are directly defying corporate rule and affirming the sovereignty of local government.

Since 1998, more than 125 municipalities have passed ordinances that explicitly put their citizens' rights ahead of corporate interests, despite the existence of state and federal laws to the contrary. These communities have banned corporations from dumping toxic sludge, building factory farms, mining, and extracting water for bottling. Many have explicitly refused to recognize corporate personhood. Over a dozen townships in Pennsylvania, Maine, and New Hampshire have recognized the right of nature to exist and flourish (as Ecuador just did in its new national constitution). Four municipalities, including Halifax in Virginia, and Mahoney, Shrewsbury, and Packer in Pennsylvania, have passed laws imposing penalties on corporations for chemical trespass, the involuntary introduction of toxic chemicals into the human body.

Rumsfield implies Bush pulled Iraq invasion out of the blue
Russ Baker, Who What Why - Just 15 days after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush invited his defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, to meet with him alone in the Oval Office. According to Mr. Rumsfeld's new memoir, the president leaned back in his leather chair and ordered a review and revision of war plans - but not for Afghanistan, where the Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington had been planned and where American retaliation was imminent.

"He asked that I take a look at the shape of our military plans on Iraq," Mr. Rumsfeld writes.

"Two weeks after the worst terrorist attack in our nation's history, those of us in the Department of Defense were fully occupied," Mr. Rumsfeld recalls. But the president insisted on new military plans for Iraq, Mr. Rumsfeld writes. "He wanted the options to be 'creative.' "

When the option of attacking Iraq in post-9/11 military action was raised first during a Camp David meeting on Sept. 15, 2001, Mr. Bush said Afghanistan would be the target. But Mr. Rumsfeld's recollection in the memoir, "Known and Unknown," to be published Tuesday, shows that even then Mr. Bush was focused as well on Iraq.

What Rumsfeld seems to be saying, without saying it explicitly, is hugely important: that Bush's rush to war with Iraq seemed to make no sense. More than that, it was downright fishy.

Department of Good Things: A new campaign against mass incarceration
Black Agenda Report:

The U.S., with 4.5 % of the world's population, has 25% of the planet's prisoners.

African Americans, who are one eighth the nation's population, are almost half it's 2.3 million prisoners, and Latinos, also an eighth of the U.S., are more than a quarter of the locked down.

Incarceration rates do not match rates of crime or drug use. Whites, blacks and Latinos have nearly identical rates of drug use, but the "war on drugs" is almost exclusively prosecuted in nonwhite and poor neighborhoods. Local police funding is often tied to drug arrests, and nonwhites are universally charged with more serious crimes, convicted more frequently, and sentenced more harshly than whites.

Former prisoners are viciously and almost universally discriminated against in housing, employment, health care and the right to vote for the rest of their lives.
End mass incarceration campaign

Obama birth puzzle cont'd
Progressive Review - As noted here before, we are not in the slightest worried about Barack Obama's actual birthplace, but remained fascinated by how the factual pieces of the story don't seem to fit together and why Obama has failed to clarify things, such as requesting that his original certificate be released. One explanation: at some point, Hawaii destroyed or lost Obama's birth certificate along with others and doesn't want to admit it. But this, from Hill Buzz, is the most interesting theory we've seen and seems to fit fairly well with the known facts. The major error is in suggesting without evidence that Obama used "Soetoro" to apply to Columbia University or to seek financial aid. Certainly Obama was Obama for a portion of his college time:

But this error does not invalidate the rest of the theory which is:

* Obama was indeed born in Hawaii in 1961

* Obama was indeed adopted by Lolo Soetoro in the 1970s

* Obama’s name was indeed changed to Barry Soetoro in the 1970s

* Obama’s birth certificate was altered per Hawaiian law to reflect his new name in the 1970s

* Obama never changed his name back to “Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.” - most likely because he used “Barry Soetoro” on all of his student aid applications for college, and probably received foreign student grants and admissions assistance playing off his years living in Indonesia

* All the records, transcripts, documents, and paperwork Obama continues to hide from the public is all hidden because it lists his name as “Barry Soetoro” on all of it.

* Obama will not allow his birth certificate to be released because it lists the “wrong” name on it: Barry Soetoro

83 percent of prostitutes have Facebook pages
All Facebook - About 83 percent of prostitutes have Facebook pages, and many turned to the social network before Craigslist got rid of the “adult services” category, according to Columbia University sociology professor Sudhir Venkatesh. Venkatesh found that only one out of every four prostitutes get regular clients from Facebook in 2008, while escort agencies provided about 31 percent.

Hillary Clinton doesn't understand basics of drug trade
Jacob Sullum, Reason - Last week, while visiting Mexico, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was interviewed by Denise Maerker of Televisa, who asked her opinion of proposals to address black-market violence by repealing drug prohibition:

Maerker: In Mexico, there are those who propose not keeping going with this battle and legalize drug trafficking and consumption. What is your opinion?

Clinton: I don't think that will work. I mean, I hear the same debate. I hear it in my country. It is not likely to work. There is just too much money in it, and I don't think that¬you can legalize small amounts for possession, but those who are making so much money selling, they have to be stopped.

Clinton evidently does not understand that there is so much money to be made by selling illegal drugs precisely because they are illegal. Prohibition not only enables traffickers to earn a "risk premium" that makes drug prices much higher than they would otherwise be; it delivers this highly lucrative business into the hands of criminals who, having no legal recourse, resolve disputes by spilling blood. The 35,000 or so prohibition-related deaths that Mexico has seen since the current government began its crackdown on drugs in 2006 are one consequence of the volatile situation created by the government's arbitrary dictates regarding psychoactive substances. The way to "stop" the violent thugs who profit from prohibition is not to mindlessly maintain the policy that enriches them

Stupid high school principal tricks
Teacher forced out because of Facebook picture of her drinking wine on vacation.

Top ten worst renditions of the Star Spangled Banner
Time - A law recently passed in the Lower House of the Philippines Congress has made those who sing the country's national anthem off-key or irregularly liable to a $2,000 fine and potential jail time. Time looks at 10 American performers who are lucky no such law exists on the books in Washington

Maine fighting over what's for dessert
The Review moved its headquarters to Maine a year and a half ago and we launched a new local edition called the Coastal Packet, which has scored its first hit by helping to build opposition to the whoopie pie as the official Maine dessert. We were the first to suggest the blueberry pie would be a better choice and the war is now fully underway. . .

Jenn Abelson, Boston Globe - In Europe, countries are consumed by debt. In Washington, the health care debate rages on. And in Maine, the whoopie pie is under attack.

Efforts to anoint the traditional Maine sweet as the official state dessert have divided Down Easters and raised ire among the nutrition-conscious, who say that the state is beset with obesity as it is without venerating two mounds of chocolate cake bound by a sugary, creamy filling. And now another renowned Maine treat ¬ the blueberry pie ¬ has been dragged into the fray.

The kitchen kerfuffle comes as a surprise to whoopie pie makers, who handed out dozens of the cakey treats to lawmakers at a legislative hearing on the matter this week and testified to the virtue of the confection as a local economic engine and beloved part of Maine’s heritage for decades.

But the whoopie pie’s swift ascension to the official Maine dessert hit a snag when state Representative Donald Pilon withheld support and derided the confection as a “frosting delivery vehicle.’’

“At a time when 31.3 percent of Maine’s children are considered overweight or obese, do we want to glorify a dessert that lists lard as its primary ingredient?’’ Pilon asked his fellow lawmakers at the hearing on Monday.

Instead, Pilon suggested what he sees as a healthier alternative: wild blueberry pie.

Fourth graders from a Maine elementary school are also challenging whoopie pies on several grounds. In a letter to the legislative committee, they maintained that the whoopie is a snack, not a dessert. They also recommended using Maine’s native blueberries (a $250 million industry) in an official state dessert because they are more nutritious.

The editorial board of the Patriot-News in Central Pennsylvania recently urged the state’s new governor, Tom Corbett, to take up the issue as one of his first causes.

“Few foods are considered more Pennsylvania-centric than whoopie pies and yet Maine is moving forward with plans to make our cakey, sugary treat the official state dessert,’’ the Patriot-News said. “This makes no sense since [Maine] already has the market cornered on lobster pie and blueberry pie.’’

Here's the story that helped to get things rolling. . .

Coastal Packet, January 19 - The Coastal Packet is firmly opposed to making the whoopie pie the official dessert of Maine, as is being proposed in the state legislature, for a number of reasons:

1. It doesn't taste all that good. If you're going to eat stuff that bad, let's go with the official southern breakfast: two Twinkies and a can of Coke. As a Maine farmer who had gone with his wife to the Pritikin Institute spa said of its food, "Gawd, I wouldn't feed that stuff to my hawgs."

2. It doesn't come from here. Worst, on its way north from Amish Pennsylvania, it spent considerable time in the dubious state of Massachusetts. Do we really want a state desert foisted on us from Roxbury?

3. To be sure Labadie's Bakery in Lewiston has been selling them since 1925 but a check with the classic Maine recipe book - What's Cooking Down in Maine - published in 1965 doesn't even mention whoopie pies, suggesting that they're really from away.

4. There are plenty of alternatives, the best probably being blueberry pie or blueberry buckle or even Margaret Chase Smith's blueberry cake. Blueberries have the added advantage, according to recent scientific research, of lowering blood pressure which whoopie pies are unlikely to do.

5. Another possibility would be Mr. Bean's Camp Desert which only needs 1/2 cup of powdered sugar, one cup of butter and 2 cups of sifted flour.

What's Cooking America - The recipe for whoopie pies has its origins with the Amish, and in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, it is not uncommon to find roadside farm stands offering these desserts. Amish cooking is about old recipes that have fed families for generations, with no trendy or cross-cultural fusions or mixtures. These cake-like whoopie pies were considered a special treat because they were originally made from leftover batter. According to Amish legend, when children would find these treats in their lunch bags, they would shout "Whoopie!". .

The question of how the Amish dessert got to be so popular in New England probably is addressed in a 1930s cookbook called Yummy Book by the Durkee Mower Company, the manufacturer of Marshmallow Fluff. In this New England cookbook, a recipe for Amish Whoopie Pie was featured using Marshmallow Fluff in the filling.

According to the Marshmallow Fluff website:

"The origins of Marshmallow Fluff actually go back to 1917. Before WWI, a Sommerville MA man named Archibald Query had been making it in his kitchen and selling it door to door, but wartime shortages had forced him to close down. By the time the war was over, Mr Query had other work and was uninterested in restarting his business, but he was willing to sell the formula. Durkee and Mower pooled their saving and bought it for five hundred dollars. Having just returned from France, they punningly renamed their product "Toot Sweet Marshmallow Fluff" but "Toot Sweet" didn't stay on the label for long. The situation of "no customers, but plenty of prospects" didn't last long either.

"An early receipt still in the company's scrap books records the sale in April, 1920 of three one-gallon cans to a vacation lodge in New Hampshire. The price at the time was $1.00 a gallon! The door to door trade gained a reputation among local housewives that eventually placed Fluff onto local grocers shelves. Retail trade spread from there to the point where in 1927 they were advertising prominently in Boston newspapers.

"Durkee-Mower became a pioneer in radio advertising when in 1930 they began to sponsor the weekly "Flufferettes" radio show on the Yankee radio network, which included twenty-one stations broadcasting to all of New England. The fifteen minute show, aired on Sunday evenings just before Jack Benny, included live music and comedy skits, and served as a steppingstone to national recognition for a number of talented performers. The show continued through the late forties.

"Each episode ended with a narrator reporting that Boswell had disappeared to continue work on his mysterious book, which was assumed to be a historical text of monumental importance. On the last episode the Book-of-the-Moment was revealed. It was a collection of recipes for cakes, pies, candies, frostings and other confections that could be made with Marshmallow Fluff, appropriately entitled the Yummy Book. The book has been updated many times since then, and the most recent version is thirty-two pages long."

The real Ronald Reagan cont'd
Reagan conducted one of the most absurd invasions of American history, targetting the tiny island of Grenada.

As president of the Screen Actors Guild, Ronald Reagan informed on fellow actors to the FBI.

The Reagan admininstration was one of the most corrupt in American history, including by one estimate 31 Reagan era convictions, including 14 because of Iran-Contra and 16 in the Department of Housing & Urban Development scandal. By comparison 40 government officials were indicted or convicted in the wake of Watergate. 47 individuals and businesses associated with the Clinton machine were convicted of or pleaded guilty to crimes with 33 of these occurring during the Clinton administration itself.

Using a looser standard that included resignations, David R. Simon and D. Stanley Eitzen in Elite Deviance, say that 138 appointees of the Reagan administration either resigned under an ethical cloud or were criminally indicted. Curiously Haynes Johnson uses the same figure but with a different standard in "Sleep-Walking Through History: America in the Reagan Years: "By the end of his term, 138 administration officials had been convicted, had been indicted, or had been the subject of official investigations for official misconduct and/or criminal violations."

Four members of the Reagan cabinet came under criminal investiation, as compared with five in the Clinton cabinet. Three top officials of the Harding administration were in indicted in the Teapot Dome scandal.

During the Reagan administration the number of families living below the poverty line increased by one-third.

Reagan's policies led to the greatest financial scandal in American history: the Savings & Loan debacle which cost taxpayers billions of dollars.

Julian Bond, president of the NAACP: "He was a polarizing figure in black America. He was hostile to the generally accepted remedies for discrimination. His appointments were of people as equally hostile. I can't think of any Reagan policy that African Americans would embrace." That was, however, before Barack Obama came along.

Reagan made major cuts in Medicaid, food stamps, aid to families with dependent children, and school lunch programs.

Reagan fired 13,000 air traffic controllers in a devasting blow to government union members from which the labor movement never recovered.

Washington Post: "Reagan, during his 1980 campaign, blamed trees for emitting 93 percent of the nation's nitrogen oxide pollution -- giving rise to jokes about 'killer trees.'"

The national debt tripled under Reagan

The AIDS crisis exploded (with 20,000 deaths) before Reagan could even bring himself to address the issue six years later. In his authorized biography he is quoted as saying that "maybe the Lord brought down this plague," because "illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments."

Washington Post: "The administration in 1984 secretly sold arms to Iran -- which the United States considered a supporter of terrorism -- to raise cash for Nicaraguan contra rebels, despite a congressional ban on support for the Latin American insurgency. An independent investigation concluded that the arms sales to Iran operations "were carried out with the knowledge of, among others, President Ronald Reagan [and] Vice President George Bush," and that "large volumes of highly relevant, contemporaneously created documents were systematically and willfully withheld from investigators by several Reagan Administration officials." . . . Lawrence E. Walsh, the independent counsel who ran the inquiry, said there was "no credible evidence" that Reagan broke the law, but he set the stage for the illegal activities of others. Impeachment, Walsh said, "certainly should have been considered."

His administration was responsible for numerous brutal actions in Latin America, including massacres in El Salvador and the war against Nicaragua.

The claim that Reagan won the Cold War is pure rightwing propaganda. The Soviet Union had long been far weaker than many American leaders knew, or wished to acknowledge, thanks to CIA gross overestimates of its economy. The Soviet Union was brought down by a number of factors including the inherent weaknesses of dictatorship and ethnic divides that eventually forced its breakup.

After a major tax cut, there was a long recession and unemployment that hit ten percent.

Bill Press - "It was Reagan who first proposed a missile defense system -- immediately dubbed "Star Wars" by skeptical reporters -- in a March 23, 1983 speech from the Oval Office. However, as Frances Fitzgerald reveals in her brilliant history "Way Out There in the Blue," Reagan didn't get his plan from the scientists or the generals. The Pentagon wasn't even notified of his speech ahead of time. Reagan stole Star Wars directly from -- the movies.

In 1940, appearing in the Warner Brothers thriller "Murder in the Air," Reagan played an American secret agent charged with protecting a super weapon that could strike all enemy planes from the air. Seed planted in Reagan's brain. Then in 1966, Alfred Hitchcock released a Reagan favorite, "Torn Curtain," in which American agent Paul Newman works on developing an anti-missile missile. In words that must have made Ronnie tingle, Newman's character asserts: "We will produce a defensive weapon that will make all nuclear weapons obsolete, and thereby abolish the terror of nuclear warfare." Sound familiar? Reagan used almost the exact words in selling missile defense from the office, 17 years later.

Frank Wisner works for law firm that represents Egyptian government
Robert Fisk, Independent,UK - Frank Wisner, President Barack Obama's envoy to Cairo who infuriated the White House this weekend by urging Hosni Mubarak to remain President of Egypt, works for a New York and Washington law firm which works for the dictator's own Egyptian government. Mr Wisner's astonishing remarks – "President Mubarak's continued leadership is critical: it's his opportunity to write his own legacy" – shocked the democratic opposition in Egypt and called into question Mr Obama's judgement, as well as that of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The US State Department and Mr Wisner himself have now both claimed that his remarks were made in a "personal capacity". But there is nothing "personal" about Mr Wisner's connections with the litigation firm Patton Boggs, which openly boasts that it advises "the Egyptian military, the Egyptian Economic Development Agency, and has handled arbitrations and litigation on the [Mubarak] government's behalf in Europe and the US".

Word
Bill Gross, PIMCO - Almost a quarter of the 400 wealthiest people on Forbes annual richest list make their money from money, whereas only 8% could make that claim in its first issue in 1982, and probably close to 0% when I first read my economic primer in 1966… How can bond traders make ten, one hundred, one thousand times more money than an engineer or social worker given their dismal historical performance

Great moments in branding
Tear gas canisters used against Egyptian protesters marked "Made In USA"

Wikileaks: Thai princess shows up topless at party featuring dog, Foo Foo, with rank of Air Chief Marshal
Gordon Rayner, Telegraph, UK - Ralph Boyce, the former head of the US embassy in Bangkok, wrote an extraordinary account of a dinner with Thailand’s Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn and the prince’s dog, Foo Foo, which held the rank of Air Chief Marshal.

Mr Boyce described the dinner in a valedictory dispatch in November, 2007, when he “paid a farewell call” on the 58-year-old Crown Prince. The prince’s consort, Princess Srirasmi, “confirmed that the Crown Prince’s miniature poodle, Foo Foo, currently holds the rank of Air Chief Marshal”, wrote the ambassador.

“Foo Foo was present at the event, dressed in formal evening attire complete with paw mitts, and at one point during the band’s second number, he jumped up on to the head table and began lapping from the guests’ water glasses, including my own."

Under Thai law, criticism of the royal family is forbidden, but the Crown Prince was at the center of a scandal in 2009 when an Australian TV channel obtained a video of a lavish birthday party he had thrown for Foo Foo, during which Princess Srirasmi, 39, sat topless.

The video is here but may not come up because the site apparently is being overwhelmed.

More Wikileaks

Major progressive Democratic site shuts down
Open Left, the best voice of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, is shutting down. Chris Bowers explains in a closing post:

Chris Bowers, Open Left - I have some sad news. After nearly four years in operation, today will be the final day Open Left publishes new content.

The site will not disappear, and all published content will remain online, but after today we will cease producing new content.

As the people who founded the site, myself included, moved on to other projects, we have gradually run out of money to maintain operations. It is a difficult decision, but we kept going for as long as we could.
Obama to slash funds for community services & development
Being a moderate can mean you just sell out faster for more
Why it sucks to be a busker
Reader clips New Orleans

High black on black crime stats are such a joke because the cops don't give a fuck about poor people. A friend of mine shot a guy in St. Louis when he was seventeen because the guy was trying to rob him with a knife. My best friend's dad went to prison for stabbing a guy who tried to rob him. In the hood you have to protect yourself because the cops aren't going to, but if you're poor, self defense is a crime.

Streetcars and buses

A transit system that does not run full is not green. I often have the option of taking a bus instead of my car on short trips. I almost always take my car or a cab when a train isn't convenient. The buses are very loud - especially the CNG busses. The diesel busses are quieter, but belch diesel fumes. Buses are much slower and less dependasble than trains. Besides, the drivers are surly jerks - at least in Boston. If you want to make an environmental impact, then offer transportation options that don't suck as badly as the MBTA bus system. - Chris C

On cost: trains, especially light rail is less expensive in the long run than buses. Remember those roads the buses run on are not free - and they have to be repaved a lot more often if buses are running on them than if people are riding trains. Tracks last a lot longer than roads. Trains last a lot longer than buses.

As to disruption of communities - the only way buses don't cause disruption is if there are not too many of them - meaning that really there is not much mass transit and people are mostly driving. Try driving in downtown Portland,Ore. You will get stuck behind buses a whole lot more often and for a lot longer than you will be delayed by the Max. Sure, trains can be done badly. But done right they are far superior to buses for all but the most lightly used routes.

A bit of history. The U.S. used to have extensive streetcars, many owned by electric utilities. Then in 1935 the law changed, forcing those utilities to divest. GM, Firestone and Standard Oil had been targeting streetcars for years, seeking to buy them and replace them with G.M. buses that would use Firestone tires and increase demand for Standard Oil's production. But the utilities had liked having their streetcar subsidiaries as a guaranteed customer for their electricity, and mostly had chosen not to sell. With the new divestment law, where public utilities could no longer own non-utility businesses, that changed and the long running conspiracy became a successful conspiracy that succeeded in dismantling America's first rate mass transit system, replacing it with far inferior buses.

Incidentally. The only "clean" fuel for buses is electricity. Biofuels in practice have proven to mostly be close in carbon intensity to fossil fuels. There just is not that much biomass laying around to convert into fuel that does not have some ecologically sounder use. - Gar

As a life long Portland Oregon resident, I am sick of paying the taxes for rail lines that don't take me anywhere useful, and have disrupted bus service to the point of making most of Trimet useless. Downtown has become a nightmare to both drive and commute in because it has become one big rail transfer station.

In the past before lite rail, buses weren't a problem unless you were determined to travel down 5th and 6th street. If you understood where the main bus routes were they were very easy to avoid. The buses made it very easy to travel around downtown too, but now it is almost impossible to get most places not on the "transit mall" downtown by bus or train.

I worked downtown during the construction of the first MAX line and the number of small businesses that closed because of the years of disruption from construction and never reopened was shameful. The cost overruns of each rail project are another shameful feature we should not forget.

Trolleys can be smaller and lighter, and intelligent systems can even provide door to door service, deliver mail and freight, and replace school buses. The main difference between buses and trolleys is that trolleys do not require human drivers, only robotics. Primitive robotic streetcars are in service in Baltimore right now. Tracks are far cheaper to build and maintain than roads. To say that modernized trolleys would cost more than buses is disingenuous, to say the least.The main thing necessary to get started is well considered federal design standards. For some communities, such a system would pay for itself very quickly. -David Raleigh Arnold

Driving city buses and light rail trains are often union jobs. Robotic trolleys are just another way to break union workforces. I would not like to have robotic trolleys mixing with traffic on the street, because if there is a problem, will the robotic trolley discover it before the problem becomes worse. For example trolley tracks are usually just the right size to grab a bicycle tire and toss the bicyclist onto the pavement, a common problem in my city. Will a robotic trolley see the downed bicyclist and stop, or will it just keep going, maiming or possibly killing the bicyclist. I wouldn't trust someone in a booth far away watching several trolley cameras to react fast enough to save the downed person.

Laying new track in an existing city is quite different from when the old streetcar lines were laid in the early 20th century. Back then the tracks were laid as part of the street paving process or in the conversion from cobbles to pavement, so the infrastructure costs were much less than they are today.

Editor should move to China, Iran or Russia

Just visited your website. I thank you for being professional in your rebuke of Ronald Reagan. After reading for a while I realized you would be better off in China, Iran or Russia. Their governments are much better suited for your life style. In God We Trust - Bill & Diana Ragan US Citizens. . . .Freedom is not free, but the U.S. Marine Corps will pay most of your share. - Ned Dolan

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