February 2008 archive

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I just watched and want to recommend an excellent documentary entitled “The Secret”.  From this documentary’s web-site, they describe this film as…

The Secret reveals the most powerful law in the universe. The knowledge of this law has run like a golden thread through the lives and the teachings of all the prophets, seers, sages and saviors in the world’s history, and through the lives of all truly great men and women. All that they have ever accomplished or attained has been done in full accordance with this most powerful law.

Without exception, every human being has the ability to transform any weakness or suffering into strength, power, perfect peace, health, and abundance.

I rented the DVD from Netflix, so while the kids were at school today, I sat and took notes while pausing and going back so as to not miss one iota of information.  My life and my husband’s life are in the midst of transformation and I knew I needed to listen to what was being presented to me.  My husband was getting ready for a job interview when I started the video, he was very impressed immediately and took with him just a small piece of the larger puzzle.  And with that alone, he was offered an excellent job, because of his enthusiasm.  We watched the movie twice today, I’ve reread my notes, now I am retyping my thoughts about this and the phone rings, job number two on the line.  Which is amazing in and of itself, if you knew our current financial status, you’d agree.

“The ideas we build will determine the vibration we’re in and the vibration we’re in will dictate the energy that we attract to us.  Now think about what you really want.”

If you want to watch this amazing documentary, you can pay $4.95 to view it online on their web-site.  But, you can watch the first twenty minutes on youtube for free.  I recommend EVERYONE see this film, these are things we know deep down to be true, but to hear it again reinforces our knowledge of life.  I know these things to be true, but have not recognized it’s full potential.

“Your life is a physical manifestation of the thoughts that go on in your mind.”

Which seems to be the norm for this country, just look at the leadership that’s allowed to continue,

across the board, on any subject one might pick!

A Los Angeles man with mental problems,

who spent three months lost in Mexico after being deported despite being a U.S. citizen, sued homeland security

and immigration officials on Wednesday.

William F. Buckley, Jr. died today. For those of you too young to ‘know’ Buckley, he was one of the Godfathers of the conservative movement. He helped lead us to Nixon, Reagan, and the Bushes.  

Three Palestinian children aged 10, 12 and 14 were killed this evening in an Israeli air-strike in northern Gaza, bringing today’s Palestinian death toll to 12. Five members of Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades were killed this morning in two targeted assassinations in Gaza, while this afternoon two Palestinian farmers were killed by Israeli tank fire.

In retaliation for the killing of its activists, Hamas fired at least 30 Qassam rockets into Israel, killing a student in Sderot and wounding several others. Olmert indicated that the campaign of assassinations will continue, declaring that “no one in Hamas, not the low-level officials nor the highest echelon, will be immune against this war.” To prove his sincerity, Israeli jets bombed the Hamas Interior Ministry (again), killing a six-month old baby and wounding at least 14 bystanders.

Speaking of Huge Manatees ….

The Florida Marlins baseball team held tryouts last weekend for their new x-large male cheerleading squad – the Manatees.

This is a both hilarious and sad illustration of why we are losing the “war on terror”:

Whitey Bulger has found himself at the center of another “mandatory kill,” though this one was ordered by a photo agency seeking to delete an image from their archives. The alert was prompted by the F.B.I.’s admission that they misidentified a German couple vacationing in Sicily as the reputed Boston crime boss and his girlfriend, Catherine Greig.

Despite no apparent problems with the law, the couple somehow evaded the F.B.I.’s global manhunt for months. Indeed, they delivered themselves to the authorities after seeing themselves on Aktenzeichen XY … ungelöst, a German show about fugitives that preceded “America’s Most Wanted.”

After seeing one of their best leads dissolve, the F.B.I. remained determined. “We’re going to continue our worldwide media outreach to arrest Mr. Bulger and his companion,” Gail Marcinkiewicz, a spokeswoman, told The Boston Globe. An alleged audio clip of Mr. Bulger speaking on the phone to “Tammy,” who dialed the wrong number, and others was released in January.

Emphasis added.

For those of you who don’t know, James “Whitey” Bulger is the Boston crime boss who served as the basis for Jack Nicholson’s character in “The Departed”.

What can you say?  The F.B.I. misidentified a random German man as one of its ten most wanted criminals, and then couldn’t find this innocent German man who wasn’t trying to hide from them for six months, and only eventually found him because he turned himself in.

At this point, I’m thinking we’re going to find the Lindberg baby before Osama bin Laden.

1. The Exxon Valdez oil spill has finally reached the Supreme Court. Bloomberg News reports The Damage award amount is questioned. “U.S. Supreme Court justices questioned the $2.5 billion punitive damage award assessed against Exxon Mobil Corp. for the 1989 Valdez oil spill, the largest in American history.” Not unsurprisingly, but still disappointingly Chief Justice John Roberts said “I don’t see what more a corporation can do,” indicating Exxon’s “prohibition on alcohol use by on-duty vessel officers.” Of course, I doubt it occurred to Roberts that Exxon could have used double-hulled oil tankers, for example.

   Exxon is arguing, according to Reuters, that “it should not be punished for the mistakes of the ship’s captain. But the lawyer for about 33,000 commercial fishermen and others harmed by the nation’s worst tanker spill replied that Exxon Mobil for three years had overlooked reports that Captain Joseph Hazelwood had a drinking problem. Attorney Walter Dellinger said the record award was necessary to punish the huge Texas-based oil company, which earlier this month reported the highest-ever quarterly profit for a U.S. company of $11.7 billion.” Obviously, at $11.7 billion a quarter, Exxon is about to go out of business.

   The Los Angeles Times reports the Exxon Valdez oil spill lingers in Alaska.

   When the Exxon Valdez spilled its oil in March 1989, the world saw images of blackened seabirds and otters and seals, of bloated whale carcasses and once-pristine beaches covered with crude. Hardly anything was said about the herring.

   No one at the time understood the fish’s central place in the ecosystem, nor did anyone know the herring’s demise would lead to years of hardship for the people here…

   The herring disappeared four years after the spill — long after intense public scrutiny had faded and the story line had devolved into squabbling between lawyers.

   Exxon claimed the region recovered quickly. Government scientists, however, said oil remained and was still working its way through the ecosystem in a process that would last decades. At the back of a local tavern, hand-scrawled graffiti expresses a common sentiment here: “Oil spills are forever.”

   In December, nearly 19 years after the spill, scientists published the most definitive study of its kind linking Exxon oil with the collapse of the herring population. Oil killed adult herring, but more significantly, it damaged eggs and larvae.

   Surviving fish developed lesions in their livers. Larvae hatched prematurely and never grew to their full 8 or 9 inches. They showed depressed immune systems, which made them susceptible to disease.

   The population, which used to be scooped up by the millions of tons, never recovered and, from indications, may never return.

   $2.5 billion in punitive damages is too small of a fine against this eco-terrorist company and environmental mass-murderer.

Here comes the cavalry:

San Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California (ACLU-Northern California) Tuesday filed a motion to intervene in a lawsuit where a federal judge ordered the disabling of one of the domain names associated with “Wikileaks,” a website designed to give whistleblowers a forum for posting materials of public concern.

For those who may be unfamiliar with this case: the Swiss bank Julius Baer sued the whistleblower site Wikileaks and its Internet host Dynadot to remove documents related to the bank’s alleged money laundering activities in the Cayman Islands.

In a highly unusual ruling, the District Court, per a secret agreement between Dynadot and Julius Baer, granted the bank’s motion for a permanent injunction to both disable the Wikileak’s domain name and prevent its transfer to another registrar. The Court also ordered Dynadot to divulge all of Wikileak’s private client information and ruled it illegal for anyone (apparently anywhere in the world) to link to the documents at issue.  

Indeed, what makes this case even more unusual is that Wikileaks was informed of the bank’s motion by email only hours before the hearing, and when a Wikileaks attorney showed up informally to find out what was going on, she was ordered to leave the courtroom.

For more on this case, see Valtin’s excellent essay (also check out the comments) as well as this summary over at Wired.

The court’s injunction has far reaching implications for free speech on the Internet, because if allowed to stand, it means that anyone who doesn’t like what you post on the Internet can simply sue your host to shut you down.