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For a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010. For most of that time, he admits, few took his argument — that an economic and moral collapse will trigger a civil war and the eventual breakup of the U.S. — very seriously. Now he’s found an eager audience: Russian state media.

In recent weeks, he’s been interviewed as much as twice a day about his predictions. “It’s a record,” says Prof. Panarin. “But I think the attention is going to grow even stronger.”

Prof. Panarin, 50 years old, is not a fringe figure. A former KGB analyst, he is dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s academy for future diplomats. He is invited to Kremlin receptions, lectures students, publishes books, and appears in the media as an expert on U.S.-Russia relations.

But it’s his bleak forecast for the U.S. that is music to the ears of the Kremlin, which in recent years has blamed Washington for everything from instability in the Middle East to the global financial crisis. Mr. Panarin’s views also fit neatly with the Kremlin’s narrative that Russia is returning to its rightful place on the world stage after the weakness of the 1990s, when many feared that the country would go economically and politically bankrupt and break into separate territories.

[Quote:]

In SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, the defendant has moved for all court proceedings to be televised over the internet through Courtroom View Network. The motion argues:

Information is the currency of democracy, sunshine laws open government. The federal court is open not only as a court of justice but a forum of civic education. WE the PEOPLE are the ultimate check in our constitutional system of checks and balances, we the people of the integrated media space opened and connected by the net in a public domain. Net access will allow an intelligent public domain to shape itself by attending and engaging in a public trial of issues conflicting our society.

Net access to this litigation will allow an interested and growingly sophisticated public to understand the RIAA’s education campaign. Surely education is the purpose of the Digital Deterrence Act of 1999, the constitutionality of which we are challenging. How can RIAA object? Yet they do, fear of sunlight shone upon them.

Net access will allow demonstration by the parties to the jury of the nature and context of the copyright infringement with which Joel Tenenbaum is charged.

Net access will allow an intelligent public domain to shape itself by attending and engaging a public trial prosecuted by a dying CD industry against a defendant who did what comes naturally to digital kids.

Net access will allow educational and public media institutions to build a digital archive and resource for understanding law akin to Jonathan Harr’s A Civil Action reconceived in execution for legal pedagogy in a digital age, Another Civil Action. The immediacy of net-based access to court opinions already allows lawyers, professors, students, and reporters to better keep abreast of the most recent legal developments, but none with the immediacy the Net allows.

Finally, we could extract soundbites from the RIAA’s lawyers…

… and then digitally mix them over various backing tracks chosen from a wide selection of RIAA-pimped artists.

(you may want to click the picture to see the full size)

[Quote:]

It is regarded as an oasis of calm and tranquility, and the nation’s capital for alternative health therapies and spiritual healing remedies.

But now the residents of Glastonbury, which has long been a favoured destination for pilgrims, are at the centre of a bitter row in which many blame the town’s new wireless computer network – known as wi-fi – for a spate of health problems.

Some healers even hold that electro-magnetic fields (EMFs) generated by the wi-fi system are responsible for upsetting positive energy fields of the body, which are known as chakras, and positive energy fields of the earth, which are known as ley lines.

There are now calls for the project, the first of its kind in Britain, to be “unplugged” and for wi-fi masts in the centre of the Somerset market town to be removed just seven months into its experimental run.

And the cure the article promotes? Orgone science.

Mr Todd has started building small generators which he believes can neutralise the allegedly-harmful radiation using the principles of orgone science. The pyramid-like machines use quartz crystals, selenite (a clear form of the mineral gypsum), semi-precious lapis lazuli stones, gold leaf and copper coil to absorb and recycle the supposedly-negative energy.

“I have given a number of generators to shops in the High Street and hidden others in bushes in the immediate vicinity of the antennae. That way you can bring back the balance,” said Mr Todd.

I have a better idea, Mr Todd – For 30 days, the antenna will be randomly turned off or on all day. You (and a group of your colleagues) keep a diary on whether any of your positive energy fields are upset or not, and at the end of the period we see how accurate your diaries are. If they don’t score clearly better than pure random, we turn the antenna back on and you shut up. And in the unlikely event that you do score better, we remove the antenna.

[Quote:]

As a supervisor at a Washington Mutual mortgage processing center, John D. Parsons was accustomed to seeing baby sitters claiming salaries worthy of college presidents, and schoolteachers with incomes rivaling stockbrokers’. He rarely questioned them. A real estate frenzy was under way and WaMu, as his bank was known, was all about saying yes.

Yet even by WaMu’s relaxed standards, one mortgage four years ago raised eyebrows. The borrower was claiming a six-figure income and an unusual profession: mariachi singer.

Mr. Parsons could not verify the singer’s income, so he had him photographed in front of his home dressed in his mariachi outfit. The photo went into a WaMu file. Approved.

“I’d lie if I said every piece of documentation was properly signed and dated,” said Mr. Parsons, speaking through wire-reinforced glass at a California prison near here, where he is serving 16 months for theft after his fourth arrest — all involving drugs.

While Mr. Parsons, whose incarceration is not related to his work for WaMu, oversaw a team screening mortgage applications, he was snorting methamphetamine daily, he said.

“In our world, it was tolerated,” said Sherri Zaback, who worked for Mr. Parsons and recalls seeing drug paraphernalia on his desk. “Everybody said, ‘He gets the job done.’ ”

Bankers are such fine, upstanding members of the community…

[Quote:]

After a federal jury in New York swiftly convicted a major Afghan heroin trafficker and Taliban supporter named Haji Bashir Noorzai, the government promptly issued the usual celebratory news release thanking the men and women of the DEA and FBI for their “countless sacrifices” in making the case.

Left out was any credit to the party most responsible for the government’s victory: an unusual three-man private intelligence firm called Rosetta Research and Consulting.

[..]

Noorzai’s capture should have been Rosetta’s finest hour. Instead, it led to the company’s downfall. A close examination of the case reveals how a spy firm trafficking in sensitive intelligence for profit got sandwiched between conflicting government goals: Noorzai, one of the company’s best sources, was considered an asset by the intelligence side of the government, even as the law enforcement side considered him a criminal.

The tale reveals some of the rivalries, ugly choices and ironies that permeate this shadowy world. The company that thought it might get a $2 million reward was dragged into an internal Justice Department investigation. The FBI employees who helped the firm ended up in trouble with their own agency.

Rosetta, which spent lavishly in its pursuit of Noorzai, got nothing for arranging his capture and ended up going broke. Investors thought their money was going toward building an anti-terrorism database, not to helping the government snare a drug kingpin.

Who on Earth thinks private-sector law enforcement is a good investment idea? Prisons in the USA are already for-profit companies, if getting you into them turns out to be profitable as well it will only be a matter of time before everybody is in jail.

And don’t get me started on intelligence agencies running criminal organizations..

[Quote:]

Things are looking really good for the Swedish Pirate Party. Running up to the 2009 European Parliament elections more than half of all Swedish men under 30 are considering voting for them. Thanks to the Internet, its membership has grown 50% during the last quarter, surpassing that of the well established Green Party.

When the Swedish Pirate Party was launched three years ago, the majority of the mainstream press viewed them with skepticism, with some simply laughing them away. Times have changed though. As the government works to introduce harsher copyright laws and others that threaten the privacy of Sweden’s citizens, the party is growing stronger and stronger.

[Quote:]

A coal ash spill in eastern Tennessee that experts were already calling the largest environmental disaster of its kind in the United States is more than three times as large as initially estimated, according to an updated survey by the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Officials at the authority initially said that about 1.7 million cubic yards of wet coal ash had spilled when the earthen retaining wall of an ash pond at the Kingston Fossil Plant, about 40 miles west of Knoxville, gave way on Monday. But on Thursday they released the results of an aerial survey that showed the actual amount was 5.4 million cubic yards, or enough to flood more than 3,000 acres one foot deep.

And if you wonder why they lied about this: 1) they expect the news to have moved on to other items, and 2) they were covering up for an earlier lie, which is probably part of permits and such as well:

The amount now said to have been spilled is larger than the amount the authority initially said was in the pond, 2.6 million cubic yards.

[Quote:]

Christopher Cox, the embattled chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, is defending his restrained approach to the financial crisis, saying he has provided steady leadership as Wall Street’s main regulator at a time when other federal regulators have responded precipitously to upheaval in the markets.

[..]

“The public might not understand that that wasn’t the SEC’s job,” he said, adding that the agency was not responsible for preventing investment banks from collapsing but rather for sheltering their securities trading units from problems in the broader corporation. “The SEC is not a safety and soundness regulator,” he said.

Ehm, sorry, Cox, read your own web site:]

The mission of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation.

You see that word “protect” in there?

[Quote:]

This isn’t a secret or anything, but Hook & Ladder #8 has been dressed for the season and looks great, especially in the snow storm that hit today (click the picture and look at the biggest size on Flickr for the full effect).

You probably recognize this iconic Manhattan firehouse from a number of films and TV shows, including Ghostbusters, Hitch, Seinfeld (when Kramer gets to drive the fire truck), and many, many others.

[From the "about":]

I work as a film location scout in New York City. My day is basically spent combing the streets for interesting and unique locations for feature films. In my travels, I often stumble across some pretty incredible sights, most of which are ignored every day by thousands of New Yorkers in too much of a rush to pay attention.

As it happens, it’s my job to pay attention, and I’ve started this blog to keep a record of what I see.

[Quote:]

After nearly a year of flagging sales, low gas prices and fat incentives are reigniting America’s taste for big vehicles.

Trucks and SUVs will outsell cars in December, according to researchers at the automotive Website Edmunds.com, something that hasn’t happened since February.

Meanwhile the forecast finds that sales of hybrid vehicles are expected to be way down.

[Quote:]

When an earthen wall holding back 525 million gallons of ash slurry gave way at the coal-fired Kingston Fossil Plant in Tennessee in the wee hours of Monday morning, the resultant flood ruined a picturesque rural landscape, inundated more than a dozen houses, and blanketed as much as 400 acres of land with potentially toxic muck.

Fortunately, no one was hurt. And initial tests by officials at the Tennessee Valley Authority suggest the Clinch and Tennessee Rivers, major sources of drinking water for the denizens of Knoxville, Tenn., escaped major contamination.

But the mud has done much more than just sully a countryside. Americans’ energy consumption habits are a top-tier political issue, and as we look for new ways to curtail global warming, wean ourselves from oil, and find sources of clean energy, coal’s role is still unclear.

So the accident raises a serious question: Is there such a thing as “clean coal”?

No. Next question.

Clean Coal only exists in coal-plant advertising, and the fact that discovery.com feels it is a “serious question” is very worrying.

[Thursday, 06 November 2008:]

“Yesterday the voters spoke. We prevailed,” Coleman said Wednesday at a news conference. He noted Franken could opt to waive the recount.

“It’s up to him whether such a step is worth the tax dollars it will take to conduct,” Coleman said, telling reporters he would “step back” if he were in Franken’s position. Secretary of State Mark Ritchie said the recount would cost 3 cents per ballot, or almost $90,000.

[But now that he's actually in that position:]

The state Supreme Court unanimously denied Coleman’s request for a temporary restraining order to block the votes, which the Republican senator’s campaign contended were duplicates that mostly favored Democratic rival Al Franken. The court upheld the state Canvassing Board’s ruling on the matter.

The court’s decision leaves Coleman with fewer ways to make up ground in the recount, in which he now trails Franken by 47 votes. But Associate Justice Alan Page made it clear the issue of duplicate ballots was unresolved and said the court’s ruling was not binding in a future lawsuit.

Coleman’s attorneys, who said the campaign was “deeply disappointed” by the decision, added that it virtually guaranteed the recount would end in litigation and delay the seating of a Minnesota senator past Jan. 6, when the next Congress convenes.

[Quote:]

Federal regulators will permit the financing arm of General Motors to become a bank and gain access to billions of dollars in government aid, a crucial step that will help ensure the survival of the company.

In a 4 to 1 vote, the Federal Reserve Board approved GMAC’s application to transform itself into a bank holding company “in light of the unusual and exigent circumstances” affecting the financial markets. The move will allow GMAC to tap as much as $6 billion in government bailout money. The approval came as GMAC bondholders were facing a Friday deadline to vote to approve a complex transaction that would significantly reduce the company’s outstanding debt.

[Quote:]

President George W. Bush on Wednesday revoked a pardon he had granted only a day before — a step unheard of in recent memory — after learning in news reports of political contributions to Republicans by the man’s father and other information.

Bush pardoned 19 people on Tuesday, including Isaac Robert Toussie of Brooklyn, N.Y., who had been convicted of making false statements to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and of mail fraud. On Wednesday, the White House issued an extraordinary statement saying the president was reversing his decision in Toussie’s case.

White House press secretary Dana Perino said the new decision was “based on information that has subsequently come to light,” including on the extent and nature of Toussie’s prior criminal offenses. She also said that neither the White House counsel’s office nor the president had been aware of a political contribution by Toussie’s father that “might create an appearance of impropriety.”

[Quote:]

It is a bit early to tell how this will play out, but suppose Toussie goes to federal court to claimed “once a pardonee, always a pardonee” and loses. In other words, supposes the courts rule that if President’s have to power to pardon, they also have the power to revoke a pardon. That could have implications if President Bush pardons members of his administration on his last day in office and then incoming President Barack Obama revokes the pardons. This is definitely uncharted territory.

[Quote:]

(much more at the link)

[Quote:]

Made in 1898, G.A. Smith’s ‘Santa Claus’ is a film of considerable technical ambition and accomplishment for its period. It uses pioneering visual effects in its depiction of a visit from St. Nicholas.

A former magic lanternist and hypnotist, Smith was one of the first British film-makers to make extensive use of special effects to create fantastical scenes. It comes as little surprise that Smith corresponded with the French pioneer Georges Méliès at about this time, as the two men shared a common goal in terms of creating an authentic cinema of illusion. (Michael Brooke)

[Quote:]

Will IT spending take further hits in 2009? An announcement today from the US-based mattress maker Select Comfort could be a sign of tech spending on the chopping board – but it also could just be another case of an enterprise software adoption gone out of control.

Select Comfort has announced a new cost-cutting scheme that includes a complete freeze of its SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software roll-out, as well as laying off approximately 120 workers.

The company blames the need for reductions on “further slowing of sales after Thanksgiving and in anticipation of continued macro-economic challenges in 2009.” The move is expected to save $15m annually beginning in the first quarter next year, the company said.

But according to letters sent to the Select Comfort’s board of directors by a major shareholder, New York-based investment firm Clinton Group, the SAP implementation had been a burden on the company for some time. The filings were first spotted by Computerworld.

A Clinton Group letter filed by the US Securities and Exchange Comission dated March 6, 2008 claims the SAP system installation “is behind schedule and is significantly over running its original cost estimates”

The investment firm estimated Select Comfort had already spent $12m on the SAP implementation and expected to spend another $8m in 2008.

Twenty mil for a piece of software for a mattress maker? Who thought that was a good idea? Has anybody ever seen a working SAP implementation come in on time and under budget? Scrap that, has anybody ever seen a working implementation?

SAP is a typical “if the disease doesn’t kill you, the cure will” piece of software…

[Quote:]

Last year, NORAD’s Santa tracking center answered 94,000 calls and responded to 10,000 e-mails. About 10.6 million visitors went to the Web site, which can be viewed in English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Japanese and Chinese.

NORAD’s holiday tradition can by traced to 1955, when a Colorado Springs newspaper printed a Sears, Roebuck & Co. ad telling children of a phone number to talk to Santa. The number was one digit off, and the first child to get through reached the Continental Air Defense Command, NORAD’s predecessor.

Col. Harry W. Shoup answered.

Shoup’s daughter, Terri Van Keuren, said her dad, now 91, was surprised to hear that the little voice on the other end thought he was Santa.

“Dad thought, `What the heck? This must be some kind of code,’” said Van Keuren, 59.

Shoup, described by his daughter as “just a nut about Christmas,” didn’t want to break the boy’s heart, so he sounded a booming “Ho, ho, ho!” and pretended to be Santa Claus.

Enough calls followed that Shoup assigned an officer to answer them while the problem was fixed. But Shoup and the staff he was directing to “locate” Santa on radar ended up embracing the idea. NORAD picked up the tradition when it was formed 50 years ago.

[Quote:]

“I never said the Taliban was eliminated.” — Bush 12.15.08

VERSUS

…“The Taliban’s ability to brutalize the Afghan people and to harbor and support terrorists has been virtually eliminated.” — Bush 9/02
…“With the Taliban eliminated and al-Qaida badly damaged, we have moved into the second stage of our war on terror.” — Bush April 2002
…“And as a result of the United States military, Taliban no longer is in existence. And the people of Afghanistan are now free.” — Bush 9/04

[Quote:]

Watch as grownups – and government officials – discuss lizard people and the FSM for 9 minutes. it’s a fine moment in American democracy. remember, there is a senate seat on the line.