MemeStreams user terratogen has posted up some thoughts about the Arby's logo on his other blog.

I hate Arby's. I've only eaten there twice, and both times I've gotten food poisoning. First time I thought it was a fluke..

frottage. | The Arby's Logo...

Internet traffic in Zimbabwe has come close to a standstill after an international satellite firm slashed its bandwidth because the cash-starved government failed to pay the bill.

The Zimbabwe Internet Service Providers Association (ZISPA) said on its Web site that TelOne's connection had been severed, causing an "almost collapse" of the Internet in the country. It said ZISPA would lobby the government to help it pay the debt.

Chingwaru said TelOne had asked the government for permission to charge big companies in foreign currency to avoid being cut off in the future.

Truly amazing... Mugabe is running such a poor show over there, that companies want permission to charge customers in foreign currency, because the central banking system is broken. One of Stratfor's recent podcasts suggested that Mugabe's government is close to collapse, so this is not that shocking.

Zimbabwe's Net crawls due to unpaid debt | Tech News on ZDNet

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday that Congress should require Internet service providers to preserve customer records, asserting that prosecutors need them to fight child pornography.

This has nothing to do with child pornography... That's just the ball it's easiest to play the game with.

Gonzales Wants New Web Rules, Attorney General: ISPs Should Preserve Customer Info To Help Fight Kid Porn - CBS News

Willie Nelson and several members of his band were issued misdemeanor citations for drug possession early today during a traffic stop in Saint Martin Parish.

The traffic stop was conducted on Interstate 10 near Breaux Bridge.

Trooper Willie Williams says troopers smelled a strong odor of marijuana when the driver opened the bus door.

Lay off Willie, seriously. It's not like he is going around doing bumps of cocaine and drinking while destroying hotels.. He is traveling America and singing songs about freedom. I can easily see how having a pound and a half of marijuana on the tour bus fits into that equation... He spends almost all his time on the road, bringing joy to millions, and putting his power behind causes that help people. I have trouble thinking of any artist who deserves to be an American cultural icon more.

Did you know Willie Nelson has a company that develops biodiesel?

Willie Nelson cited for drug possession (again)

President Bush is urging Congress to let the CIA keep using "alternative" interrogation procedures -- which include, according to published accounts, forcing prisoners to stand for 40 hours, depriving them of sleep and use of the "cold cell," in which the prisoner is left naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees and doused with cold water.

He might begin with Robert Conquest's classic work on Stalin, "The Great Terror." Conquest wrote: "When there was time, the basic [Soviet Secret police] method for obtaining confessions and breaking the accused man was the 'conveyor' -- continual interrogation by relays of police for hours and days on end. As with many phenomena of the Stalin period, it has the advantage that it could not easily be condemned by any simple principle. Clearly, it amounted to unfair pressure after a certain time and to actual physical torture later still, but when? . . . At any rate, after even twelve hours, it is extremely uncomfortable. After a day, it becomes very hard. And after two or three days, the victim is actually physically poisoned by fatigue. It was as painful as any torture."

Conquest stated: "Interrogation usually took place at night and with the accused just roused -- often only fifteen minutes after going to sleep. The glaring lights at the interrogation had a disorientating effect." He quoted a Czech prisoner, Evzen Loebl, who described "having to be on his feet eighteen hours a day, sixteen of which were devoted to interrogation. During the six-hour sleep period, the warder pounded on the door every ten minutes. . . . If the banging did not wake him, a kick from the warder would. After two or three weeks, his feet were swollen and every inch of his body ached at the slightest touch; even washing became a torture."

Conquest quoted a Polish prisoner, Z. Stypulkowski, from 1945: "Cold, hunger, the bright light and especially sleeplessness. The cold is not terrific. But when the victim is weakened by hunger and sleeplessness, then the six or seven degrees above the freezing point make him tremble all the time. . . . After fifty or sixty interrogations with cold and hunger and almost no sleep, a man becomes like an automaton -- his eyes are bright, his legs swollen, his hands trembling. In this state, he is often convinced he is guilty."

Tom Malinowski - Call Cruelty What It Is - washingtonpost.com

This article in the New York Times contains a fair amount of information not previously known about HP's surveillance activities against their board members. According this this article, the California AG said last week that they have enough evidence to indict people both inside and outside of the company. The House will be holding hearings this week related to this situation as well.

Those briefed on the internal review said that at various times, questions were raised about the legality of the methods used. They did not identify who raised the questions, when, or to whom they were addressed. But a crucial legal opinion, its origins previously undisclosed, was supplied by a Boston firm that shares an address and phone number with a detective firm on the case.

At least one reporter, Dawn Kawamoto of the online technology news service CNET, may have been followed as part of the 2006 investigation, said a person briefed on the investigation. Ms. Kawamoto was a co-author of an article on a senior management meeting in January.

The detectives also tried to plant software in the computer of an unspecified CNET reporter that would communicate back to the detectives, people briefed on the company review said. Ms. Kawamoto said in an interview this month that prosecutors had told her that such a ploy may have been used, but said she was not aware of any surveillance.

Representing themselves as an anonymous tipster, the detectives e-mailed a document to a CNET reporter, according to those briefed on the review. The e-mail was embedded with software that was supposed to trace who the document was forwarded to. The software did not work, however, and the reporter never wrote any story based on the bogus document.

On Saturday, the company identified one of two employees who it said had been a target of scrutiny in the internal operation. It said the private phone records of the employee, Michael Moeller, director of corporate media relations, were taken.

Within 60 days [of the second leak], the investigation into the leaks was up and running, according to those briefed on the company review. Responsibility for the investigation was delegated to the company’s global investigations unit, based in the Boston area. Those company officials turned the effort over to Security Outsourcing Solutions, a two-person agency that hires specialists for investigations.

That firm hired Action Research Group, an investigative firm in Melbourne, Fla. The actual work of obtaining the phone records was given to other subcontractors, one of which is said to have worked in or near Omaha. The methods were said to have included the use of subterfuge, a practice known as pretexting, in which investigators pose as those whose records they a... [ Read More (0.1k in body) ]

Hewlett Review Is Said to Detail Deeper Spying - New York Times

If confessed murderer Daryl Keith Holton gets his way, on Tuesday he will become the first prisoner to die in Tennessee's electric chair in 46 years.

Holton, who confessed to shooting to death his three young sons and his ex-wife's daughter with a semiautomatic assault rifle, is scheduled to be executed because he quit appealing his death sentence. He also chose the electric chair over the state's preferred method of lethal injection.

Under Tennessee law, death row inmates can choose between the electric chair and lethal injection if their crimes were committed before 1999.

"It's disfiguring. The family will end up with the body and frequently find burns on the scalp, leg and neck," Webster said. For witnesses "it's unpleasant to see someone shocked and responding to a shock. The odor and the air smells of burning pork."

His lawyers maintain Holton has a long history of mental illness and may suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder from his military service in the 1991 Gulf War.

"Hardcore"

CNN.com - Tennessee set to execute prisoner in electric chair - Sep 17, 2006

How many right wing blogs are gunna link this one?

I was locked up and mistreated for being in the wrong place at the wrong time during America’s war in Afghanistan. Like hundreds of Guantánamo detainees, I was never a terrorist or a soldier. I was never even on a battlefield. Pakistani bounty hunters sold me and 17 other Uighurs to the United States military like animals for $5,000 a head. The Americans made a terrible mistake.

It was only the country’s centuries-old commitment to allowing habeas corpus challenges that put that mistake right — or began to. In May, on the eve of a court hearing in my case, the military relented, and I was sent to Albania along with four other Uighurs. But 12 of my Uighur brothers remain in Guantánamo today. Will they be stranded there forever?

Like my fellow Uighurs, I am a great admirer of the American legal and political systems. I have the utmost respect for the United States Congress. So I respectfully ask American lawmakers to protect habeas corpus and let justice prevail. Continuing to permit habeas rights to the detainees in Guantánamo will not set the guilty free. It will prove to the world that American democracy is safe and well.

I am from East Turkestan on the northwest edge of China. Communist China cynically calls my homeland “Xinjiang,” which means “new dominion” or “new frontier.” My people want only to be treated with respect and dignity. But China uses the American war on terrorism as a pretext to punish those who peacefully dissent from its oppressive policies. They brand as “terrorism” all political opposition from the Uighurs.

The View From Guantánamo

He spent a typical day watching movies, going to class and playing football. He was fascinated to learn about the solar system, and now enjoys reciting the names of the planets, starting with Earth.

An interesting perspective on GitMo that I hadn't seen before. On the other hand I'm a little concerned that they have him reciting the planets starting from Earth. He ought to be starting from Mercury. I hope GitMo didn't teach him to be geocentric. :)

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Cuba? It was great, say boys freed from US prison camp

Frank Black is going to be rocking out the Mercy Lounge next month. I have already ordered a ticket.

Most excellent...

Frank Black - Mercy Lounge - Nashville, TN - 10/04/2006