The American economy may be teetering on the brink of a recession, but there's an industry our hedge fund gurus believe has an almost limitless future: the Chinese police state.

Harold Meyerson - China's Hot Stock: Orwell Inc. - washingtonpost.com

The New York Times will stop charging for access to parts of its Web site, effective at midnight Tuesday night.

huzzah

Times to Stop Charging for Parts of Its Web Site - New York Times

Well, the legislation Bush promised never materialized, and on Wednesday attempts to arrive at a compromise oil law collapsed.

What's particularly revealing is the cause of the breakdown. Last month, the provincial government in Kurdistan, defying the central government, passed its own oil law; last week, a Kurdish Web site announced that the provincial government had signed a production-sharing deal with Hunt Oil of Dallas, and that seems to have been the last straw.

Now here's the thing: Ray L. Hunt, the chief executive and president of Hunt Oil, is a close political ally of Bush. More than that, Hunt is a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a key oversight body.

Okay, that's comment one from Paul Krugman. I'd like to combine that with this quote from Executive Order issued July 17, 2007

(i) to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of:

(A) threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq; or

(B) undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people;

(ii) to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, logistical, or technical support for, or goods or services in support of, such an act or acts of violence or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order; or

(iii) to be owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.

(b) The prohibitions in subsection (a) of this section include, but are not limited to, (i) the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order, and (ii) the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person.

Now by my interpretation of this, it seems that Hunt Oil's move to create a separate plan with the Kurdish provincial government clearly undermines the efforts to create a unified Iraqi government. That would appear to be in violation of the executive order. Of course since Ray Hunt is a good buddy of W, and part of his Advisory Board, there's no way in hell that's going to go anywhere.

What I can say with 100% certainty however is whether or not any law was broken, this is a HUGE conflict of interest for Hunt to be involved in both sides of this.

San Jose Mercury News - Bush ally's Kurdish oil deal proves the surge has failed

"So that's where 'cut-and-paste' came from!"

The moment neatly captured the gap between the world that boomers grew up in and the inescapably digital world of today.

How Computers Transformed Baby Boomers - Baby Boomers At 60 - MSNBC.com

Russian artists from Moscow presented in London a totally useless but somehow cool device: goggles that you can put on and feel like somebody from "cyberspace."

Click through for the video.

See also HasciiCam.

See the world, Asciified, with The Matrix Goggles

The rush of customers taking money out of Northern Rock has continued for a second day, amid concerns over its emergency Bank of England loan.

Long queues built up outside branches such as Kingston, Surrey, where some 250 people waited to take out money.

Experts insist that customers' money is safe, but banking sources suggest that on Friday alone clients pulled out �1bn - or 4-5% of retail deposits.

Northern Rock has struggled since money markets seized up over the summer.

your sub primes and so we are haing what looks like on old fashioned bank run
welcome to "it's a wonderful life"

BBC NEWS | Business | Rush on Northern Rock continues

The FIA World Motor Sport Council has disqualified McLaren from the 2007 constructors' championship and imposed the largest fine in motorsport history

Any F1 fans on MemeStreams?

McLaren loses all constructors' points

In this video letter to the editor, Charles Ferguson, director of the acclaimed documentary No End in Sight, responds to Paul Bremer's September 6 op-ed, How I Didn’t Dismantle Iraq’s Army.

If you haven't seen No End in Sight, I recommend it. Here's a sampler of review blurbs:

...a sober, revelatory and absolutely vital film.

...the best and saddest film of the year so far...

Someone in the film notes that there were 500 ways to mess things up in Iraq and that the U.S. seems intent on going through them all. After watching No End in Sight, the inescapable conclusion is that that prediction is depressingly, but exactly right.

Masterfully edited and cumulatively walloping, Charles Ferguson's No End in Sight turns the well-known details of our monstrously bungled Iraq war into an enraging, apocalyptic litany of fuckups.

Charles Ferguson, On the Dismantling of the Iraqi Army

What soldiers call the “battle space”... is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army...

In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear....

Two of the authors of this essay were KIA on Monday.

The War as We Saw It - New York Times

The leader of a group of local Sunni tribes cooperating with American and Iraqi forces in fighting extremist Sunni militants in Anbar Province was killed by a bomb today, Iraqi police officials said, in a blow to an effort President Bush has held up as a model of progress.

this could swing either way
either obviously destroy the allance of tribes opposed to AQ
OR
entrench and deepen opposition to AQ

Bomb Kills Sunni Sheik Working With U.S. in Iraq - New York Times