Thursday, May 08, 2003

U.S., Canada clash on pot laws

The Bush administration is hinting that it could make it more difficult for Canadian goods to get into this country if Canada's Parliament moves ahead with a proposal to drop criminal penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana.
The proposal, part of an effort to overhaul Canada's anti-drug policies, essentially would treat most marijuana smokers there the same as people who get misdemeanor traffic tickets. Violators would be ticketed and would have to pay a small fine, but they no longer would face jail time.




Canada's plan isn't that unusual: 12 U.S. states and most of the 15 nations in the European Union have eased penalties on first-time offenders in recent years. That's a reflection of how many governments have grown weary of pursuing individual marijuana users.

But U.S. officials, while stressing that they aren't trying to interfere in Canada's affairs, are urging Canadians to resist decriminalizing marijuana.( What? You mean by telling the Canadians what they should or should not do, concerning laws governing Canad is not interferring? Just more Bush administration muscle flexing)

In a lobbying campaign that has seemed heavy-handed to some Canadians, U.S. officials have said that such a change in Canada's laws would undermine tougher anti-drug statutes in the USA, lead to more smuggling and create opportunities for organized crime. Bush administration aides note that marijuana is an increasing problem along the Canadian border, where U.S. inspectors seized more than 19,000 pounds of the leaf in 2002, compared with less than 2,000 pounds four years earlier.

In December, U.S. anti-drug czar John Walters stumped across Canada, criticizing the decriminalization plan. He told business groups in Vancouver, where police allow public pot-smoking in some areas, that they would face tighter security at the U.S. border if Canada eased its marijuana laws.

The backlash was immediate across Canada, where surveys have shown that nearly 70% of the country believes that possessing a small amount of marijuana should be punishable only by a small fine. Canadian newspapers accused the USA of being arrogant and called Walters paranoid.

For years, the USA and Canada have squabbled over border issues like longtime friends with a few habits that annoy each other. U.S. officials dislike Canada's looser immigration laws and limited regulation of prescription drugs, particularly pseudoephedrine, used to make methamphetamine.

Canadian officials complain that Colombian cocaine and Mexican heroin often enter Canada via the USA. Canadians argue that the USA should do more to curb Americans' demand for illegal drugs, because restricting the supply only increases prices.

Canada's full Parliament is likely to consider a decriminalization proposal soon.

Committees in the House of Commons and the Senate have issued reports that say police should not arrest people for smoking marijuana, adding momentum to the decriminalization effort. Early versions of the proposal say those caught with no more than 30 grams — about an ounce — of marijuana for personal use would be ticketed and fined an undetermined amount.

'Drug tourist' penalties

Marijuana possession in Canada now is a criminal offense that can carry jail time. Although people convicted of such an offense rarely are sent to jail, they do end up with a criminal record. In the USA, states generally prosecute marijuana-possession offenses, and sentences vary from mandatory jail time to fines. Under federal sentencing guidelines, a person conviction of possession could be sentenced to a year in jail.

Canada would keep criminal penalties for marijuana offenses that pose a significant danger to others, such as illegal trafficking, selling to minors or driving while under the influence of the drug. To prevent "drug tourists," Canadian officials say they would consider special penalties for sales to non-Canadians.

Walters and other U.S. officials said they are worried that such a policy change would make marijuana more available in Canada, leading to more smuggling. They say drug gangs, sensing a more tolerant climate, probably would move their operations near the Canadian-U.S. border, and more American teens would cross the border to smoke pot.

Looser marijuana laws in Canada would make it "probable we will have to do more restrictive things at the border," Walters said.

For Canadians who have been slowed by security checks imposed by the USA since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, that would mean more delays in crossing the border, he said. That could damage Canadian business; trade with the USA accounts for 70% of Canada's exports.

Canadian Sen. Pierre-Claude Nolin, head of the panel that released the Senate report and a supporter of eased penalties, doubts that a new marijuana policy in Canada would lead U.S. officials to hinder trade.

Walters "should have respect for our courts and our public," Nolin says. "He cannot stop 8,000 semitrailers at the Windsor (Detroit) border every day. He's saying that, but he will not do that."

Marijuana use in the USA has risen during the past decade. A 2001 study by U.S. government and university researchers indicated that 49% of high school seniors had smoked pot, up from 32.6% in 1992.

In Canada, authorities say their studies indicate that about 30% of Canadians ages 12 to 64 have used marijuana at least once. Although drug use generally is presumed to be rising, Canadian officials say they do not have accurate data they could use to plot a trend.

Canadians say America's rising demand for marijuana makes smuggling appealing to criminal organizations. They also cite the dozen U.S. states that have cut penalties for marijuana possession in recent years — Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Oregon — and say the U.S. government should focus more attention on them.

"It is up to each country to get its own house in order before criticizing its neighbor," a Canadian Senate report said. In the USA, state and local prosecutors handle most marijuana cases. Federal prosecutors usually handle cases that involve large amounts of the leaf or that involve suspects who cross state or national borders.

Asa Hutchinson, a former head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration who now is a top official at the Department of Homeland Security, said last year that "we have to accept responsibility, and we're trying to reduce demand. But without being critical of Canada, we're simply stating a reality: The decision of the Canadian government will have a consequence in this country."

More from Mexico

U.S. Customs agents say the amount of marijuana entering the USA from Canada is dwarfed by that from Mexico. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police says 800 tons of marijuana circulates in Canada each year. It's grown mostly in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec — all of which border the USA. Canadian and U.S. officials say they do not know how much Canadian pot reaches the USA.

"B.C. Bud," the potent, hydroponically grown marijuana from British Columbia, and its eastern counterpart, "Quebec Gold," sell for as much as $4,500 a pound, the DEA says.

If Canada decriminalizes marijuana, U.S. Customs officials expect to see more marijuana coming over the northern border, Customs spokesman Dean Boyd says. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to come to that conclusion."

Canadian Justice Minister Martin Cauchon, who soon will present the government's plan for decriminalization, says he wants to bring Canadian law in line with public opinion and with judicial rulings favoring lighter penalties for marijuana possession. "We're not talking about being weak. We want to have tougher law enforcement. Our policy toward trafficking will remain the same."

Wednesday, May 07, 2003

THIS ARTICLE SHOWS, YES I WILL SAY IT, THE RACISM THAT EXISTS AMONG NBA OWNERS. THE HORNETS FIRED PAUL SILAS, THE WINNINGEST COACH IN HORNET HISTORY, AFTER HE FAILED TO TAKE THE TEAM PAST THE FIRST ROUND OF THE NBA PLAYOFFS, DISREGARDING THA FACT THAT DURING THE PLAYOFF SERIES, BOTH OF THEIR STAR PLAYERS, BARON DAVIS AND JAMAL MASHBURN, MISSED GAMES DUE TO INJURY. THEN TO BRING IN TIM FLOYD, WHO HAS ONE OF THE WORST NBA COACHING RECORDS EVER AND WAS ONLY AN OK COLLEGE COACH, IS JUST OUT AND OUT RACIST.



NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- The New Orleans Hornets, looking for a new head coach after declining to renew Paul Silas' contract, plan to interview former Chicago Bulls coach Tim Floyd, a team source confirmed Tuesday.

Floyd will be the first candidate interviewed since the Hornets on Sunday essentially fired Silas, the winningest coach in franchise history.

When Floyd resigned as Bulls coach in December of 2001, his record in a little more than three seasons was 49-190, one of the worst records ever for an NBA coach.

However, Floyd had little to work with in Chicago when he replaced Phil Jackson. Floyd was assigned to rebuild after then-general manager Jerry Krause's demolition of the dynasty that revolved around Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen.

Floyd could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Before taking over at Chicago, Floyd was 81-47 in four seasons as head coach at Iowa State, with three of those teams going to the NCAA tournament. His 1996-97 team reached the NCAA midwest regional final before losing 74-73 in overtime to UCLA.

Floyd coached at the University of New Orleans for six season, compiling a 127-58 mark, including NCAA berths in 1991 and 1993. Floyd is 243-130 overall as a college coach with five NCAA tournament appearances.

Floyd is expected to meet with the Hornets next week and is not necessarily a leading candidate. Team officials have said they expect to meet with several candidates, although they have not named any others. One possible candidate is Mike Fratello, who coached in Atlanta and Cleveland and is a friend of Hornets minority owner Ray Wooldridge, who also once lived in Atlanta.

Former New York Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy could be another candidate but the Knicks have yet to allow him to meet with other teams before his contract with them expires Aug 1.

Hornets owners George Shinn and Ray Wooldridge still have yet to specify why they let go of Silas, who was popular among players and fans and had taken the team to the playoffs four times in five seasons, twice getting to the second round.

Team spokesman Harold Kaufman said Tuesday that the owners just wanted to "go in a different direction."

"They feel Bob Bass is the architect of one of the best teams in the Eastern Conference and they feel they owe it to the fans to help get the team to next level," Kaufman said. "They think the talent is there."


A Great Global SCAM

by Leonard G. Horowitz, D.M.D., M.A., M.P.H.

Introduction

My name is Dr. Leonard Horowitz, and I will be your SARS tour guide on this website. As a Harvard graduate in public health, and expert in the fields of medical sociology, behavioral science, and emerging diseases, I am best known for my work exposing the man-made origin of HIV/AIDS in the national bestselling book, Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola-Nature, Accident or Intentional? (Tetrahedron Press, 1998; 1-888-508-4787; http://www.healthyworlddistributing.com/detail.aspx?ID=4) This was my tenth book that American grassroots activists, medical physicians and scientists included, made a national bestseller. U.S. Government documents that I reprinted for the first time for the world to see were strong endorsements for this work. Included here are stunning and tragic contracts under which numerous AIDS-like and Ebola-like viruses were bioengineered by the U.S. Army's 6th leading biological weapons contractor-Litton Bionetics-a medical subsidiary of the mega-military weapons contractor called Litton Industries. You can get free information on this man-made vaccine-transmitted theory of AIDS at http://www.originofAIDS.com. Here I focus your attention on SARS, and what mainstream sources of information are withholding about this new pandemic.

This narrative was written immediately following my return from Total Health 2003-an alternative medical conference in Toronto, Canada, held March 27-30, 2003. I landed in Toronto the day that SARS began dominating front page headlines in every major newspaper in the country. Five consecutive days of unprecedented media blitz in Canada's largest city over the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome left the entire population frightened and bewildered.

Having been well-trained in media health promotion and persuasion methods from my behavioral science studies at Harvard University, I concluded that something akin to a social experiment was underway. With SARS, people were being frightened beyond reason, I realized. The classic definition of phobia was being manifested on a social, if not global, scale.

Surely the SARS death rate, approximately 3%, was insufficient cause for such widespread panic. The media successfully whipped the Canadian population into a trembling mass of masked and quarantined "sheeple." Officials were forced to direct the closing of hospitals, restaurants, schools, and workplaces with only two deaths reported at the onset of the media onslaught. Within a few days, more than a thousand healthcare workers volunteered for home quarantine because of SARS. Otherwise, they faced legal arrest and incarceration as advised by the World Health Organization. You will find many of these reports from Canada's daily newspapers, documenting these facts, as well as incoming American press reports, in the archive files of this website.

Mission

I have dedicated this website to examining the social and political implications, as well as the correlates (i.e., things related to) and antecedents (i.e., factors or events that predated or precipitated) this new SARS pandemic. By examining this illness's etiology, which lies more in the realm of global politics, corporate profits, and population control, than elsewhere, this information offers educated people an alternative to the fright and irrational behaviors promulgated by "mainstream" propagandists including news sources and health officials better known as "spin doctors."

Most intelligent persons will conclude from the following information that this new microbial attack was premeditated and precedent-setting. In other words, SARS is a well orchestrated social experiment.

Who is behind this SARS madness? I accept the risk of triggering your "conspiracy theory" buttons by identifying the widely recognized "global military-medical-petrochemical-pharmaceutical cartel" as the only suspect that can wield the powers necessary to effect these frightening outcomes.

Although you may find it comforting to simply consider this a conspiracy theory, I view SARS is a huge conspiracy with very few witting villains. Clearly, what you are witnessing is a well organized terror campaign carried out by mostly well-meaning, yet grossly ignorant, "authorities"-medically indoctrinated and virtually hypnotized "Manchurian candidates" if you will allow me to postulate.

Indeed, people are dying from SARS. Yet, I diagnose this illness, by medical-sociological parameters, as a grotesque scam perpetrated for a greater purpose than simply fueling a multi-billion dollar "cottage health industry," as some analysts have written.

Alternatively, I propose that Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, may be best diagnosed by SARS's telltale dependence on the propaganda used to herald its presence, prompt hysteria, and broadly engage social and economic resources. In military intelligence circles this is called standard "psychological operations" (PSYOPs).

I further suggest this fright's likeliest purpose is in facilitating evolving economic and political agendas that ultimately include targeting approximately half the world's current population for elimination. Much of this will be accomplished, not with SARS, but quite effectively and efficiently by the widely anticipated "Big One" discussed later on this website in a feature article written for the Associated Press by Emma Ross.

"[T]here's fame, fortune, and big budgets in sounding the Ôemerging infection' alarm and warning of our terrible folly in being unprepared." -- Michael Fumento, National Post, March 28, 2003

This concept of a microbiological Armageddon is not new to most readers. "Experts" have been predicting the arrival of a super-plague for decades. What is HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS about the mysterious and terrifying arrival of SARS is its timing. It arrived virtually synchronous with the global war on terrorism, and the Anglo-American war with Iraq. This is pathognomonic (i.e., symptomatic and characteristic) of what is predicted and explained in the book, Death in the Air: Globalism, Terrorism and Toxic Warfare (Tetrahedron Publishing Group, 2001; http://www.healthyworlddistributing.com/detail.aspx?ID=3), a prophetically-titled text that predated the 9-11 attacks on America by several months, and provides a contextual analysis of this current condition and spreading plague of phobic deception.

This work, and this SARS website, in essence, offers insight into the broad application of a new form of institutionalized "bioterrorism" consistent with state sponsored biological warfare. Saddam Hussein is said to have exposed populations in his and adjacent lands with biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction. These advancing infectious disease attacks in North America are sanctioned by medical-pharmaceutical and allied military industrialists. They complement the global "War on Terrorism," and bioterror-influenced culture, as additionally profitable, population-controlling, threats.

Perceiving Harsh Reality Versus Generally Promoted Myths

What lay persons view as ever increasing madness in the world around them, is eerily consistent with earlier globalist think tank recommendations for the development and deployment, in the new millennium, of "conflicts short of war," and "economic substitutes for standard militarization." These developments were adequately detailed and referenced in Death in the Air: Globalism, Terrorism, and Toxic Warfare (http://www.healthyworlddistributing.com/detail.aspx?ID=3). As compared with the first and second world wars, these smaller, more manageable, and better controlled conflicts, orchestrated events, and state sponsored threats, were consistently selected options among foreign policy makers and government officials beginning in the late 1960s.

Henry Kissinger, for instance, as National Security Advisor (NSA) under Richard Nixon, oversaw foreign policy while considering Third World population reduction "necessities" for the U.S., Britain, Germany, and other allies. This Bush nominee to direct the 9-11 conspiracy investigation, a reputed war criminal, then selected the option to have the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) develop biological weapons, according to the U.S. Congressional Record of 1975. Among these biologicals were germs far deadlier than the SARS agent (thought to be a strain of coronavirus). Under Kissinger's watch as NSA, influenza and para-influenza viruses were, for example, recombined with quick acting leukemia viruses (acute lymphocytic leukemia) to deliver a weapon that potentially spread cancer like the flu. (More on this later.) These incredible realities have been generally neglected, if not officially secreted.

Weapons selections like these continue to the present day not simply by radical terrorist groups, but also among a handful of military cartel industrialists that continue to sell weapons of mass destruction to those who can afford them.

These conflicts short of major wars like WWI and WWII, and war economy substitutes (such as the "War on AIDS," "War on Crime," "War on Drugs," "War on Terrorism," "War on Cancer," the environmental protection movement, and the "Star Wars" Strategic Defense Initiative, all require sophisticated propaganda programs employing fear campaigns for social acceptance and popular support. These PSYOPS for command and control warfare (C2W), military and behavior experts correctly advise, best support a well-defined rapidly evolving "Revolution in Military Affairs" (RMA) which is synonymous to a the evolution into "a form of human slavery" in which the captives-the world's population, including you and your loved ones-would not perceive this enslavement.

The RMA incorporates the use of debilitating biological weapons and incapacitating chemicals, similar to the toxic carcinogenic organophosphate pesticides deployed against mosquitoes in the "War Against the West Nile Virus." These are often called "non-lethal warfare" agents, yet are indeed deadly. Death results slowly along with advancing mortality from such toxic exposures. Larger profits are made by allied pharmaceutical and medical industrialists as victims of the "non-lethal" exposures die slowly, commonly in expensive hospitals and long-term care facilities, from chronic debilitating diseases. Most of these ailments, including the plethora of autoimmune diseases and newer cancers, were virtually non-existent 50 years ago. This fact, alone, strongly suggests a modern socio-economic and political conspiracy. Unless you simply wish to believe it is God's will or man's greed that has brought these conditions to bear upon humanity.

"People are all too willing to relinquish their civil rights and personal freedoms in the wake of such engineered frights."

In recent decades, military think tanks prescribed options for "conflicts short of war" that included novel population control policies and methodologies. These provided for:

1) The establishment of new profit centers as traditional large-scale wars were phased out by the new millennium. Examples here include the many multi-billion dollar "homeland security" programs that emerged from post-9/11 legislation, such as those securing air travel and mail delivery. These are just two examples of myriad evolving profit centers fueled by frights and institutionalized terror campaigns;

2) The development of advanced persuasion and population control programs, with high tech methods of support, to facilitate "a form of slavery" in which humanity would not realize it had become conditioned into relinquishing personal and social freedoms for the mirage of health, safety, and security. These provided other profit centers and population control options. Once habituated to modern lifestyle restrictions, such as enforced health and travel restrictions, the general population might become virtually "enslaved" with little effective resistance, widespread pharmaceutical dependence (particularly using anti-depressant drugs), through the use of PSYOPs. Media distractions and manipulations were considered essential in achieving this objective; and

3) Lucrative depopulation methods to be employed, including the conditions and resources necessary for culling "excess populations."

SARS, when considered in light of these social and political impositions, can be clearly understood.

SARS for Profit

By Friday, March 28, 2003, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, Michael Fumento, published a thesis in Toronto similar to the one I advance here. This well regarded author of The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS: How a Tragedy Has Been Distorted by the Media and Partisan Politics (Regnery Gateway, 1990) provided an editorial titled "Super-bug or Super Scare" published in the National Post (p. A16.). This included the following:

It's "an incident of unprecedented scope and magnitude," according to Toronto health officials, who warn Canadians to "quarantine themselves," wear masks, and in some cases stay home. Ontario Health Minister Tony Clement has declared a "health emergency." The media have dubbed it the "mysterious killer pneumonia" or "super-pneumonia."

But a bit of knowledge and perspective will kill this panic.

Start with those scary tags, "Mysterious" in modern medicine usually means we haven't yet quite identified the cause, although we have now done so here. What's been officially named Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) is one or more strains of coronavirus, commonly associated with colds. "Killer pneumonia" is practically a redundancy, since so many types of pneumonia (there are more than 50) do kill.

The real questions are: How lethal, how transmissible, and how treatable is this strain? And the answers leave no grounds for excitement, much less panic.

Super?

At this writing, SARS appears to have killed 54 people out of almost 1,400 afflicted according to the World Health Organization, a death rate of less than 4%. But since this only takes into account those ill enough to seek medical help, the actual ratio of deaths to infections is certainly far less. [This is a tremendous understatement.]

In contrast, the 1918-1919 flu pandemic killed approximately a third of the 60 million afflicted.

Further, virtually all of the deaths have been in countries with horrendous medical care, primarily mainland China. In this country, three people have died out of 28 afflicted according to Health Canada, but that may say more about Canada's vaunted national health-care system than about SARS. In the United States, 40 people have been hospitalized with SARS with zero deaths.

Conversely, other forms of pneumonia kill more than 40,000 North Americans yearly.

Transmissibility?

Each year millions of North Americans alone contract the flu. Compare that with those 64 SARS cases diagnosed thus far and, well, you can't compare them. Further evidence that SARS is hard to catch is that health care workers and family members of victims are by far the most likely to become afflicted.

Treatability?

"There are few drugs and no vaccines to fight this pathogen," one wire service panted breathlessly. But there are also few drugs to fight any type of viral pneumonia, because we have very few antiviral medicines. . . . [Consider also approximately 97% of cases naturally defended themselves successfully against this plague. What did they, or their immune systems do right? Why is this rarely, if ever, mentioned or investigated by any mainstream source? Alternatively, Mr. Fumento mentions "Ribovirin," which he states, "appears to be effective against SARS."

[Is this another form of medically-sanctioned institutionalized bias that even the well- intentioned Fumento expresses? Consider the fact that SARS only existed a few weeks prior to Fumento's editorial. In fact, the coronavirus had been questionably cultured from SARS patients only days before Fumento's wrote the above. Surely no clinical trials matching Ribovirin with SARS had ever been conducted. At best, then, this statement reflects either drug company propaganda and/or health official speculations.]

Fumento continued: "So why all the fuss over this one strain of pneumonia?

First, never ignore the obvious: It does sell papers.

But an added feature to this scare is the cottage industry that's grown up around so-called "emerging infectious diseases." Some diseases truly fit the bill, with

AIDS the classic example. Others, like West Nile Virus in North America, are new to a given area.

But there's fame, fortune, and big budgets in sounding the "emerging infection" alarm and warning of our terrible folly in being unprepared. The classic example is Ebola virus . . . [Mr. Fumento downplays the Ebola threat here.]

Yet, you'd almost swear that every out break of Ebola is actually taking place in Toronto or New York. . .

. . . The U.S. government and various North American universities have also seen these faux plagues as budget boosters. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publishes a journal called Emerging Infectious Diseases, though in any given issue it's hard to find an illness that actually fits the definition.

The U.S. Institute of Medicine just issued a report warning that the United States is grossly unprepared to deal with emerging pathogens. Soothingly, however, it adds that it's nothing that an injection of tax dollars can't cure.

Meanwhile, a disease that emerged eons ago called malaria kills up to 2.7 million people yearly. Another, tuberculosis, kills perhaps three million more. Both afflict North Americans, albeit at very low rates.

The big money and headlines may be in the so-called Ôemerging diseases,' but the cataclysmic illnesses come from the same old boring killers. In fact, there may be no fatal illness that will cause fewer deaths in North America this year than SARS."

Michael Fumento concluded by asking, and challenging you to consider: "How do our priorities get so twisted? There's your mystery?"

Favored Economic Victims of SARS and Other SCAMS in the RMA

Contrary to Mr. Fumento's well considered conclusion that SARS boosts budgets of those who sound alarms loudest, the mainstream media has consistently attempted to have you think otherwise. One article in Canada's leading financial newspaper, the Financial Post, on March 31, 2003, heralds, "SARS virus begins to take toll on global economy."

With no mention of the far larger number of people and industries that profit from such plagues, and the fears surrounding them, reporter Jacqueline Thorpe's editor assigned her to focus on the airline and tourism industries that are "particularly hard hit." She wrote:

"Businesses in Singapore have shut down, planes over Hong Kong are empty and thousands of people in Toronto have been forced into quarantine as a deadly pneumonia virus adds yet another strain to the beleaguered global economy.

"While severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) may not be as debilitating as war in Iraq, slumping stock markets or a weak U.S. labor market, it is already starting to take its toll on some Asian economies and the long-suffering tourism industry. . . .

"In Hong Kong, where the number of infections leapt by 60 to 530 over the weekend and 13 people have died, economists at JPMorgan Chase estimate the economy could lose 0.2% to 0.5% of gross domestic product every month from the drop in tourism and private consumption. . . .

"Businesses in many Chinese shopping districts [in Toronto] have reported a sharp drop in business.

"Dennis Yuent, a merchant in Pacific Mall in Toronto -- North America's largest shopping mall - said his sales have dropped by about 70% since the SARS scare began."

Notice that the expert bankers at JPMorgan Chase, and Ms. Thorpe, failed to mention the stunning growth in medical/pharmaceutical/security/and law enforcement sectors, and the increase in "gross domestic product" due to SARS and similar scams.

In the weeks and months following the 9-11 attacks on America, I traced the widely publicized anthrax mailings "mystery" to U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) commissioned biological weapons contractors with ties to Britain's MI6, Porton Down, the Anglo-American pharmaceutical cartel, including the Bayer, Hoecsht, Baxter and Merck Corporations, and ultimately to George Soros-a global banking and investment industrialist and chief money manager for Europe's wealthiest oligarchy-owners of the Genomic Institute that performed the DNA sequencing on behalf of the anthrax vaccine maker/British Porton Down subsidiary, Bioport. A complete exposŽ on this topic is provided at http://www.tetrahedron.org/articles/anthrax/anthrax_espionage.html.

China's Threat and the Anglo-American RMA

It seems suspiciously convenient that the travel industry, and Asian travel in particular, would be the greatest victims at a time when globalists (i.e., global industrialists including members of the ultra-rich) have directed military and political policies consistent with the RMA and "conflicts short of war" agenda. Reducing travel helps to secure wide ranging RMA objectives.

Think about it. Less mobile populations, and less people in general, are easier to control, especially with increased exposure to television while having to waste their time at home. This is entirely consistent with the "Changing Images of Mankind" advanced by Willis Harmon for Anglo-American military and business interests. The effect of this similar to forced "quarantine." Isn't this consistent with a "form of slavery in which humanity would not know it had become enslaved?"

People are all too willing to relinquish their civil rights and personal freedoms in the wake of such engineered frights. The passage of the infamous "Homeland Security Act" in America, and its counterpart in Canada, are classic examples of this societal direction, forced legislation, and egregious manipulation.

How convenient that Asia, and China in particular, is said to be the origin of this North American scourge at a time when Chinese-Anglo-American relations are strained to say the least.

In the days preceding the emergence of the first SARS cases, American raced to the Pacific Rim to impact escalating aggressions on the Korean peninsula. Communist China-a "most favored" trading partner with America, is politically allied with several American enemies, including those said to possess weapons of mass destruction, including Iraq. Coincidental? Not likely when viewing the larger political picture involving the Anglo-American oligarchy's RMA and instigated "conflicts short of war."

Ultimately, "We the People" have become the greatest victims of this latest fright, and the larger political agendas it serves.

The Media's Role in SARS: Setting a Precedent

Consider the fact the media's mainstream has been heavily influenced, if not entirely controlled, by multi-national corporate sponsors protecting and advancing the interests of a relatively small number of global industrialists (I have called "globalists;" and others say the "ruling elite," or "European oligarchy"). Also recall that the focus of news providers, on any given day or hour, results from intelligence agency directives, according to reputable authorities including myriad retired news officials and intelligence officers. So ask and answer the following intelligent questions:

Why have American military officials, beginning with Secretary of Defense William Cohen during the Clinton years, publicized America's greatest vulnerability lies in the realm of biological weapons wielded by terrorists? Is this not a form of treason against the United States to relay such sensitive intelligence to potential enemies through the mainstream press? During the McCarthy era, Hollywood producers were persecuted for having the slightest liberal or Communist sympathies. What has changed to allow the Hollywood production of "Black Hawk Down" to be used by Saddam Hussein and his military and intelligence commanders to educate and inspire his troops?

Why does the mainstream media continue to foretell of the expected arrival of the "Big One"-an influenza virus that will produce a super-flu that will kill billions of people, like the "Spanish flu" did between 1918-19, while totally disregarding the individuals, organizations, and laboratories that have labored to produce these weapons of mass destruction? Even the devastating Spanish Flu virus has been, literally, unearthed for further study and, do you suppose, deployment?

Why was the "Spanish flu" influenza virus called the "Spanish flu" when it originated, by historic accounts, in Tibet in 1917? It is said that Spanish newspapers were the only ones reporting on the great plague due to their neutrality over World War I politics. However, Spain was as dear to America then as Communist China is to the United States today. The "Spanish flu" was named such following two decades of disputes between America and Spain over colonization of the Caribbean Islands, Hawaii and the Philippines beginning with the Spanish American war that ended in the Philippines in 1902. Does this history appear to be repeating with the advent of SARS, allegedly from China?

If the legions of recognized authorities herald the coming of the "Big One," why do the same persons disregard this author's publication of U.S. Government, National Institutes of Health, and National Cancer Institute documents showing that the U.S. Army's 6th top biological weapons contractor in 1969-1970 prepared mutants of influenza and para-influenza viruses recombined with acute lymphocytic leukemia viruses? In other words, how would you like to have a strain of the flu that spreads cancer by sneezing? Can you even rationalize the development of such a virus-lymphocytic leukemia that kills most victims in just a few weeks following airborne transmission?

These have been shown clearly on page 452 of the national bestselling book, Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola-Nature, Accident or Intentional? (http://www.healthyworlddistributing.com/detail.aspx?ID=4) in circulation since 1996. A copy of this "menu" of infectious agents, potential biological weapons, listing several mutant recombinants involving flu viruses is posted below for your inspection.

Why haven't you previously heard about these developments? Especially since these documents have been extensively circulated throughout newsrooms and government offices, particularly those engaged in public health, since 1996?

Finally, how, if I published this information, and definitive documentation, and sent this critical intelligence along with urgent pleas to approximately 8,500 members of the mainstream media (as I have done this week and on dozens of previous occasions for the past seven years) can you turn on your television sets and gain nothing but the "same old song?"

If you have considered and answered the above questions, doesn't it make sense that America is being manipulated, if not targeted, for the purpose of advancing a global population reduction agenda, if not World War III?

The "Big One" is Coming

The U.S. Army's 6th top biological weapons contractor in 1969-1970 prepared mutants of influenza and para-influenza viruses recombined with acute lymphocytic leukemia viruses. In other words, how would you like to have a strain of the flu that spreads quick killing cancer by sneezing?

According to most emerging disease experts and government health officials the ÔBig One" might arrive at any time.

Emma Ross of the Associated Press reported on SARS as the World Health Organization (WHO) launched its "crisis plan to attack" the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. WHO, as you may recall, is a U.N. sponsored organization that is rumored to have helped spread AIDS to Africa by way of contaminated hepatitis B and/or polio vaccinations. There is a reasonable amount of evidence to support this contention.

More disconcerting, the U.N. is known to be heavily influenced by Rockefeller family members and corporate interests. History shows Rockefeller fortunes built the U.N. building in New York City. During WWII, the Rockefeller family and their Standard Oil Company supported Hitler more than they did the allies according to court records. One federal judge ruled Rockefeller committed "treason" against the United States. Following WWII, according to attorney John Loftus-an official Nazi war crimes investigator-Nelson Rockefeller persuaded the U.N.'s South American voting block to favor Israel's creation only to assure secrecy regarding his support for the Nazis. Earlier that century, John D. Rockefeller joined Prescott Bush and the British Royal Family in sponsoring the eugenics initiatives that gave rise to Hitler's racial hygiene programs. During the same period the Rockefeller family virtually monopolized American medicine, American pharmaceutics and the cancer and genetics industries. Today, the Rockefeller family, foundation, U.N. and WHO remain at the forefront of administering "population programs" designed to reduce world populations to more manageable levels. As per a recent advertisement Foreign Affairs-a prestigious political periodical published by the David Rockefeller directed Council on Foreign Relations-the U.S. population is being targeted for a 50% reduction.

"We've never faced anything on this scale with such a global reach,'" said Dr. David Heymann, of the WHO, regarding SARS.

"This is the first time that a global network of laboratories are sharing information, samples, blood, pictures," added Dr. Klaus Stohr, a WHO virologist coordinating labs internationally. "Basically overnight, there are no secrets, there is no jealousy, there is no competition in the face of a global health emergency. This is a phenomenal network.

In one week, the Associated Press reported, the WHO's lab network had "isolated the SARS virus, produced a preliminary diagnostic test, and narrowed the virus' identity down to two candidates - neither one a new strain of influenza. In the following week, various antiviral drugs were tested as possible treatments.

"Meanwhile, doctors were also sharing information. . . . WHO coordinated exchanges of symptoms, case histories and possible treatments. . . . Asian doctors talked about various therapies they were trying; later, the Europeans and North Americans conferred.

"In eastern Asia - at government invitation - expert field teams of WHO staffers and scientists from international institutes were sent to Vietnam, Hong Kong and China to figure out how the disease was spread, to help treat patients and advise how to control it.

"Aileen Plant, an infectious disease epidemiologist from Curtin University in Australia, led a dozen experts in Hanoi, one of the hard-hit areas. Her international team focused on the Hanoi French Hospital, which closed its doors to new patients and quarantined those inside. Many of the sick were doctors and nurses. . . .

"With newly released figures from China, there have been more than 1,500 cases and slightly more than 50 deaths worldwide, including three in Canada. The WHO believes the disease is generally under control, but Hong Kong remains a challenge. In mainland China, the picture is somewhat murky. . . .

"Many inside the WHO see the SARS operation as a kind of dress rehearsal - Ôgood practice,' Heymann said - for the Big One, the inevitable killer flu pandemic that experts say could come at any time.

"'This isn't the Big One, because I think it's being contained.'"

What You Should Do

The above information has been meticulously documented and referenced in this author's two previous works, Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola-Nature, Accident or Intentional? and Death in the Air: Globalism, Terrorism and Toxic Warfare. It begs the question of what to do? There are personal and socio-political directions for a rational response. Here are my recommendations.

1. Personally, you and your loved ones are encouraged to do everything in your power to lift your natural immunity to beyond the 3rd percentile that is apparently necessary to prevent your death from SARS, or other more pathogenic agents. For instructions in this regard, I recommend learning from various alternative medical websites, including www.healingcelebrations.com. These are dedicated to helping you improve your health naturally.

There are five practical steps you can take that are detailed therein, and in my Healing Celebrations: Miraculous Recoveries Through Ancient Scripture, Natural Medicine and Modern Science (Tetrahedron Publishing Group, 2000). These include: 1) detoxification, 2) deacidification/alkalinization, 3) immunity boosting, 4) oxygenation, and 5) bioelectric/energetic methods.

2. Socially, you should alert your family and friends regarding these matters in an effort to prevent their victimization, media manipulation, and continued confusion.

3. Politically, you may wish to become active in an effort to bring greater public attention to these appalling realities. "We the People" can make a difference in halting the ongoing genocides being conducted under the guises of "medical science" and "public health." This was recently demonstrated when our revealing light of truth illuminated the risks and myths surrounding the deadly smallpox vaccine. Grassroots publications like Smallpox Alert, published by the Idaho Observer, and the affiliated website at www.allaboutsmallpox.com, created a massive backlash bringing the entire program to an embarrassing halt. By forwarding this article and related website, www.SARSscam.com, to as many people as possible, we can affect the same successful result.

About the Author

Leonard G. Horowitz, D.M.D., M.A., M.P.H., is an internationally known authority in the overlapping fields of public health, behavioral science, emerging diseases, and bioterrorism. He received his doctorate in medical dentistry from Tufts University School of Dental Medicine in 1977, was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship in behavioral science at the University of Rochester, earned a Master of Public Health degree from Harvard University, and another Master of Arts degree in health education from Beacon College, all before joining the research faculty at Harvard. Dr. Horowitz is best known for his national bestselling book, Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola-Nature, Accident or Intentional? (Tetrahedron Press, 1998; 1-888-508-4787; http://www.healthyworlddistributing.com/detail.aspx?ID=4) which recently resulted in the United Stated General Accounting Office investigating the man-made origin of AIDS theory. (See: http://www.healingcelebrations.com/gao.htm)

Dr. Horowitz's work in the field of vaccination risk awareness has prompted at least three Third World nations to change their vaccination policies. His recent stunning testimony before the United States Congress' Government Reform Committee, literally brought the hearing to a halt. (See: http://www.healingcelebrations.com/Disease%20Deities%20on%20
Capitol%20Hill%20Address%20Autism.htm) Dr. Horowitz questioned government health officials regarding a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) secreted report showing a definitive link between the mercury ingredient (i.e., Thimerosal), common to most vaccinations, and the skyrocketing rates of autism and behavioral disorders affecting our children and the future our nation.
Incredibly, Dr. Horowitz alerted the FBI, in writing and in person, one week before the first anthrax mailing was announced in the press, that a "major anthrax fright" was in the process of unfolding that demanded the FBI's urgent attention. Needless to say they did not heed Dr. Horowitz's prophetic warning.







WASHINGTON (AFP) - A US Marine sergeant is under investigation for possible war crimes committed in Iraq based on statements he made to his hometown newspaper, military officials said.




Gunnery Sergeant Gus Covarrubias became the target of the preliminary inquiry after he described for the Las Vegas, Nevada, Review-Journal daily how he had hunted down and shot two Iraqi soldiers after a firefight.
"A preliminary inquiry has been initiated by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service to examine the circumstances surrounding the statements made by Gunnery Sergeant Covarrubias," the Marine Forces Reserve command said in a statement.

"The preliminary inquiry will determine if the actions described by Gunnery Sergeant Covarrubias during combat operations met the established rules of engagement and complied with the law of war." A command spokeswoman refused further comment, referring media inquiries to naval investigators. A Naval Criminal Investigative Service spokesman could not be reached for comment.


In the interview published Friday, Covarrubias, 38, said he was searching for the source of a grenade attack during the April 8 battle and found an Iraqi soldier in a nearby home with a grenade launcher next to him. Covarrubias told the daily he ordered the man to stop and to turn around. "I went behind him and shot him in the back of the head -- twice," he was quoted as saying.
Covarrubias said he noticed another Iraqi soldier trying to escape and also shot him, then grabbed their identification cards, a rifle and one of their berets for souvenirs.

Covarrubias, a 20-year veteran and former sniper, is assigned to the Second Battalion, 23rd Marines, a reserve unit from the western United States. He suffered a concussion in the firefight and has since returned home, the Review-Journal said.


In the interview, he was quoted as saying the killings were "justice." A military expert, however, suggested the first could have been a war crime. John Pike, director of globalsecurity.org, said the investigation likely would center on whether Covarrubias shot the first Iraqi soldier after he had surrendered. "The initial newspaper report made it sound as though he had captured the guy and he had executed a (prisoner of war), which is illegal," Pike said. "In this case there seemed to be an element of premeditation."
Failure to accept surrender -- though a war crime -- is more common than generally thought in close infantry combat, he said.
"Surrendering's hard to do," he said. "It's dangerous because everybody's real charged up, everybody's real confused ... and it can be real hard to stop shooting."
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- A deputy used pepper spray on a 12-year-old girl and wrestled her to the ground when she ignored repeated orders to stop jaywalking, the sheriff's office said Friday.
Broward County sheriff's deputy Michael Roberto was issuing jaywalking tickets to students crossing a busy highway Thursday when he asked the girl to stand next to his motorcycle so he could give her a citation, the deputy's report said.

But the girl, who was not immediately identified, became upset and began to curse, Roberto said in the report. The girl also walked away and ignored four more orders to stop and put her hands behind her back, he said.

The girl, who is 5 feet 1 inch and 134 pounds, threatened to hit Roberto and rolled her hand in a fist, the report said. The deputy repeatedly warned her that he would use pepper spray if she didn't listen.

"After the last warning and order, it became apparent that I had to choose between a physical fight and using the pepper spray," Roberto wrote. "I sprayed her in the face."

The girl then knocked the spray can out of Roberto's hand, so the deputy wrestled the girl to the ground and handcuffed her, the report said. The girl, who was not injured, was charged with failure to use a crosswalk and resisting arrest without violence, both misdemeanors. She was released to her mother.

The girl likely won't face any jail time on the charges, sheriff's spokesman Jim Leljedahl said.

Leljedahl said there is no age policy for the use of pepper spray. The police report and witness accounts suggest Roberto acted within the sheriff's office's rules, Leljedahl said.

"Pepper spray is an appropriate response when we meet with defensive resistance," Leljedahl said Friday. "In this case, she was belligerent and aggressive, even."

The sheriff's office was reviewing the arrest, though most pepper spray incidents are not investigated, Leljedahl said. A formal investigation would be launched if the girl's family files a complaint, he said.

Deputies seeking to stop accidents along busy Federal Highway have been ticketing Olsen Middle School students for the past several weeks.


Scorpion bites latest drug craze


THE trendy and the elite in India's wealthy western state of Gujarat, bored with mundane drugs, are turning to the sting of a scorpion to get their kicks, a press report said.

The Times of India said the affluent head in their cars to tribal areas near the coastal town of Bharuch, where scorpions abound, seeking their fixes.

Locals have put up stalls under trees and keep a number of the arachnids in tin cans with perforated lids.

After the customer pays a fee of 150 to 200 rupees (about $A5-7) the scorpion is produced and placed on the body of the thrill-seeker, who is then viciously stung.

Users say after the initial pain the venom produces an illusionary, floating feeling.

"You won't die," promises one vendor, named in the report only as Nathu. "You should try it at least once ... a lifetime experience."

Nathu insists customers pay upfront -- to make sure he doesn't get stung himself.

Agence France-Presse



Davey D FNV Top 30 Chart


March 11 2003

01-MURS 'God's Work [Def Jux]
02-TALIB KWELI 'Get By' [MCA/Rawkus]
03-NAS 'I Can'- [Columbia]
04-KILLER MIKE 'Adidas'- [Columbia]
05-EMINEM, DMX OBIE TRICE 'Go To Sleep' [Def Jam]
06-AKROBATIC 'Hypocrite' [Coup D'etat]
07-MICHAEL FRANTI & SPEARHEAD 'Bomb The World to Pieces'
08-LITTLE BROTHER 'Whatever You Say' [ABB]
09-BOOM BAP PROJECT 'The Trade Remix' [Stuck Records]
10-LIL KIM 'The Jump Off' [Elektra]

11-PHARAOH MONCH 'Ghetto World' [Rawkus]
12-DEAD PREZ 'Turn Off The Radio'- [Holla Black]
13-50 CENT 'Backdown' [Shady/Aftermath]
14-DMX 'X Is Gonna Give It To Ya'
15-ZION I 'Cheeba Cheeba' [Raptivism]
16-EMINEM 'Superman' [Aftermath]
17-MR LIF 'Return of the B-Boy' [Def Jux]
18-BEATNUTS 'Buying Out The Bar' [Landspeed]
19-THE CLICK w/ E-40 "bossin' - [Shot Records]
20- MOP 'Live From Ground Zero' [Columbia]

21-JAY-Z 'Bounce' [Roc-a-fella]
22-GANG STARR 'Natural' - [Virgin]
23-FOREIGN LEGION 'Voodoo' -98 [?]
24-MISSY ELLIOT 'Funky Fresh Dressed' [ Elektra]
25-TONY TOUCH 'Hold Up' [ Sequence]
26-SMOKE BULGA 'Smoke Did It' [Epic]
27-ERICK SERMON 'Love Iz' [J records]
28-SKILLZ 'The Rap Up 2002' [Rawkus]
25-CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED 'Flashback' rmx
27-COMMON 'Come Close'
28-NAS w/ Ludacris. Jadakiss 'Made u Look' rmx
29-FAB 'He's Sicc'
30-STREET LORDZ 'Bently's and Money Counters'

List courtesy www.daveyd.com


According to Fox 5 News in NY, Ken Biggs, a Roc-A-Fella Records executive, was busted when it was discovered that he was growing pot in his penthouse apartment in Manhattan... According to the news story, his stash was discovered when a downstairs neighbor complained about a water leak. When authorities came to the apartment they had to enter Bigg's residence where they discovered a number of pot plants... More details on this bust to follow as they become available...
DJ Fredwreck slams Bush with all-star anti-war crew

The South Bay has been blessed with many stellar DJs who have left indelible marks on hip-hop culture. The pioneers include DJam Hassan, Assassin and Grand Diva Kim Collette. Others, including Peanut Butter Wolf, DJ King Tech, DJ Kevvy Kev and Kutmasta Kurt, have built national reputations.

Another South Bay artist who has quietly been moving mountains is Farid Nasir, a.k.a. DJ Fredwreck. Folks may recall his early stints as a mixer on KMEL-FM in San Francisco. Before that, he was at San Jose's Oak Grove High School. He made a lot of folks proud when he served as the DJ for rap star Xzibit.

Over the past five years, Fredwreck has become a prolific and sought-after producer. Everyone from Snoop Dogg to WC to Kurupt has gone to Fredwreck for infectious beats that move a crowd and keep a dance floor packed.

Now Fredwreck has given hometown fans, at least the doves among us, something else to be proud of: He has produced and released one of the strongest anti-war songs out there.

``STOP (Stop The Oppressive Politics)'' is a monster six-minute cut that features an all-star lineup of West Coast artists, including Everlast, Daz, Bad Azz, Dilated Peoples, Defari, J-Ro, Tray Dee of the Eastsidaz, WC, RBX, Soopafly and Mac Minister.

Fredwreck says ``STOP,'' which took two months to lay down, came about because many of the artists he hangs with in Southern California were frustrated by what he calls ``the media's blind cheerleading'' for President Bush and his policies.

``We were . . . watching the news and seeing how things were unfolding and saw that he wasn't being consistent with his reasons for us going to war,'' says Fredwreck. ``So we decided to make a statement.''

``STOP'' is a strong statement indeed. Fredwreck points out that everyone on the project has a unique viewpoint, and many wanted to make connections between the war in Iraq and the ones that takes place daily in many of our neighborhoods over poverty, police brutality and drugs. He also says the participants considered our foreign policy hypocritical.

``First, Bush was saying there were weapons of mass destruction,'' notes Fredwreck. ``Then he said Osama was hooked with Saddam. Now he's saying we had to `liberate' the poor Iraqi people. . . . George Bush don't care about no Iraqi people. He's over there trying to liberate their oil for the U.S. corporations.

``There are all sorts of countries around the planet that have oppressive regimes that are far worse then Iraq's, and we're not liberating them.''

Fredwreck's points are underscored in the opening chorus:

There's nowhere to hide, nowhere to run/ The sins of the father fall on the son/ The bigger the problem, the bigger the gun/ U don't wanna know what your government's done.

The chorus is followed by some incredible rhymes that question whether Bush was really dealing with his father's old grudges and why we can find money to rebuild Iraq but not the dilapidated streets in the 'hood. Such ideas definitely will resonate in the hip-hop community.

Fredwreck explains that many other rappers, including Snoop Dogg, Nate Dogg, Xzibit and B-Real, wanted to be involved in the project but couldn't because of scheduling problems.

He adds that the song can be downloaded from his Web site, www.fredwreck.com , in two versions -- a clean version that would work on radio and an instrumental.

As for whether radio stations will play the clean version, Fredwreck says, ``Many stations have no problem playing us when we rap about smoking, drinking and street stuff. Why not play us when we make a positive or political statement?''




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A law-abiding Bronx doorman who spent five days in jail after a bank gave cops the wrong surveillance tape has been cleared, his lawyer said yesterday.
Ralphie Salas, 33, turned himself in last November after his picture - from a security camera outside a Parkchester bank - was shown in newspapers and on television.

But it took nearly five months - and an ATM receipt - for Salas to prove he was not the thug who robbed several elderly women after offering to help them carry groceries.

"Life is very scary to me now," said Salas, who was officially cleared last month. "I was an innocent guy who got caught up in the system.... I'm still traumatized."

The time-stamped ATM receipt from Sept. 10, 2002, showed Salas used the machine moments before Tyrone Felton, the man now under arrest in the robberies, made a withdrawal using a stolen debit card. Once prosecutors saw Salas' receipt, they soon discovered the bank gave them the wrong tape - leading them to the wrong man.

"Luckily for Ralphie, he's a pack rat," said Salas' attorney, Howard Levine. "He had kept every ATM receipt he ever received."

Instead of handing over tape from the camera at the ATM, the Parkchester HSBC branch gave police tape from an outside camera that showed Salas as he paused to make a cell phone call. Cops released a still from the tape to find Salas.

"My parents saw my picture in the Daily News," said Salas. "They called me at work. I thought someone in my family had a problem, but I had no idea it was me."

After he surrendered, Salas was charged with robbery and assault and held at Rikers Island on $35,000 bail. Prosecutors agreed to a reduction of his bail after seeing the receipt but did not officially clear him until April 22.

Despite being exonerated, Salas, who lost his job as a doorman, has only found work stocking shelves and waiting tables since the ordeal.










Memo to the Bush twins: The next time you hang out with a cute Hollywood actor, pick someone more discreet than Ashton Kutcher. Barbara and Jenna Bush, 21, are the subject of three paragraphs in the next Rolling Stone that they better hope their father, the commander-in-chief, doesn't read.
Kutcher, 25, recounts how he met the First Daughters at a Los Angeles party a year and a half ago. A friend drew his attention to one of the Presidettes with a lustful (and unprintable) remark that drew glares from their Secret Service agents.

Kutcher thereupon introduced himself to the ladies, who asked what he was doing after the party. Everyone ended up back at Kutcher's place, though the host asked the Secret Service to stay outside.

No wonder.

"The Bushes were underage-drinking at my house," Kutcher tells interviewer Gavin Edwards. Stepping outside at one point, Kutcher recalls that "one of the Secret Service guys asked me if [the twins would] be spending the night."

Fortunately, Mr. President, the star of "That '70s Show" said, "No."

But that's the end of the good news.

Kutcher continues, "And then I go upstairs to see another friend and I can smell the green wafting out under his door. I open the door, and there he is, smoking out the Bush twins on his hookah."

The star of the upcoming "Seriously, Dude, Where's My Car?" says he thinks the Secret Service has been tapping his phone ever since.

The actor has lately found success with "Punk'd," an MTV show in which he plays practical jokes on celebrities. He says he'd like to "punk" President Bush by sending Saddam Hussein doubles to the White House.

A Bush spokeswoman returned a call but had no immediate comment.




WASHINGTON - Questioning the motives of a "desk-bound president who assumes the garb of a warrior," Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd on Tuesday reproached President Bush for flying onto an aircraft carrier last week to declare an end of major fighting in Iraq.








"I am loath to think of an aircraft carrier being used as an advertising backdrop for a presidential political slogan, and yet that is what I saw," Byrd said on the Senate floor.


Byrd, 85, of West Virginia, is the Senate's most senior member and was one of the most outspoken critics of the Iraq war.


Dressed in a flight suit, Bush was flown onto the USS Abraham Lincoln on Thursday, his small S-3B Viking jet making a tailhook landing. The ship was near San Diego on its return from action in the Persian Gulf.


With the sea as his backdrop, Bush announced that the United States and its allies had prevailed against Saddam Hussein.
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Byrd's criticisms are "a disservice to the men and women of our military who deserved to be thanked in person."
"Senator Byrd did not support the president at the beginning of this, and it is no surprise that he does not support the president at the end," Fleischer said. "Senator Byrd is a patriot, but on this we disagree."

Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman (news, bio, voting record) of California asked the General Accounting Office , Congress's investigative arm, to find out the cost of the president's trip.
The event "had clear political overtones," yet taxpayers footed the bill, wrote Waxman, the ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, to the GAO.


Byrd contrasted the speech with the "simple dignity" of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address during the Civil War.
"I do not begrudge his salute to America's warriors aboard the carrier Lincoln, for they have performed bravely, ... but I do question the motives of a desk-bound president who assumes the garb of a warrior for the purposes of a speech," he said.
He said American blood has been shed defending Bush's policies. "This is not some made-for-TV backdrop for a campaign commercial," he said.
"To me, it is an affront to the Americans killed or injured in Iraq for the president to exploit the trappings of war for the momentary spectacle of a speech," he said.


Fleischer has rejected any suggestion that the landing was intended to provide campaign footage for Bush's re-election campaign. ( So, if we see this phot-op in Bush's re-election campaign, we'll have even further proof of the deceit and lies coming from this administration)

Earlier Tuesday, he also said Bush decided to land on the carrier on a jet instead of his usual helicopter because the president wanted "to see an aircraft landing the same way that the pilots saw an aircraft landing. He wanted to see it as realistically as possible."


Waxman said Fleischer had provided conflicting accounts of the reasons for the president's trip by jet, initially indicating that the carrier would be hundreds of miles offshore, too far from land to be reached by helicopter.


MORE BUSH ADMINISTRATION LIES



NASIRIYA, Iraq-The fog of war comes sometimes with a certain odour, and cutting through its layers, like cutting through an onion, can bring tears to the eyes.

Such is the case with what is far and away the most oft-told story of the Persian Gulf War II - the saga of Saving Private Lynch.

Branded on to our consciousness by media frenzy, the flawless midnight rescue of 19-year-old Private First Class Jessica Lynch hardly bears repeating even a month after the fact.

Precision teams of U.S. Army Rangers and Navy Seals, acting on intelligence information and supported by four helicopter gunships, ended Lynch's nine-day Iraqi imprisonment in true Rambo style, raising America's spirits when it needed it most.

All Hollywood could ever hope to have in a movie was there in this extraordinary feat of rescue -except, perhaps, the truth.

So say three Nasiriya doctors, two nurses, one hospital administrator and local residents interviewed separately last week in a Toronto Star investigation.

The medical team that cared for Lynch at the hospital formerly known as Saddam Hospital is only now beginning to appreciate how grand a myth was built around the four hours the U.S. raiding party spent with them early on April Fool's Day.

And they are disappointed.

For Dr. Harith Houssona, 24, who came to consider Lynch a friend after nurturing her through the worst of her injuries, the ironies are almost beyond tabulation.

"The most important thing to know is that the Iraqi soldiers and commanders had left the hospital almost two days earlier," Houssona said. "The night they left, a few of the senior medical staff tried to give Jessica back. We carefully moved her out of intensive care and into an ambulance and began to drive to the Americans, who were just one kilometre away. But when the ambulance got within 300 metres, they began to shoot. There wasn't even a chance to tell them `We have Jessica. Take her.'"

One night later, the raid unfolded. Hassam Hamoud, 35, a waiter at Nasiriya's al-Diwan Restaurant, describes the preamble, when he was approached outside his home near the hospital by U.S. Special Forces troops accompanied by an Arabic translator from Qatar.

"They asked me if any troops were still in the hospital and I said `No, they're all gone.' Then they asked about Uday Hussein, and again, I said `No,'" Hamoud said. "The translator seemed satisfied with my answers, but the soldiers were very nervous."

At midnight, the sound of helicopters circling the hospital's upper floors sent staff scurrying for the x-ray department — the only part of the hospital with no outside windows. The power was cut, followed by small explosions as the raiding teams blasted through locked doors.

A few minutes later, they heard a man's voice shout, "Go! Go! Go!" in English. Seconds later, the door burst open and a red laser light cut through the darkness, trained on the forehead of the chief resident.

"We were pretty frightened. There were about 40 medical staff together in the x-ray department," said Dr. Anmar Uday, 24. "Everyone expected the Americans to come that day because the city had fallen. But we didn't expect them to blast through the doors like a Hollywood movie."

Dr. Mudhafer Raazk, 27, observed dryly that two cameramen and a still photographer, also in uniform, accompanied the U.S. teams into the hospital. Maybe this was a movie after all.

Separately, the Iraqi doctors describe how the tension fell away rapidly once the Americans realized no threat existed on the premises. A U.S. medic was led to Lynch's room as others secured the rest of the three-wing hospital. Several staff and patients were placed in plastic handcuffs, including, according to Houssona, one Iraqi civilian who was already immobilized with abdominal wounds from an earlier explosion.

One group of soldiers returned to the x-ray room to ask about the bodies of missing U.S. soldiers and was led to a graveyard opposite the hospital's south wall. All were dead on arrival, the doctors say.

"The whole thing lasted about four hours," Raazk said. "When they left, they turned to us and said `Thank you.' That was it."

The Iraqi medical staff fanned out to assess the damage. In all, 12 doors were broken, a sterilized operating theatre contaminated, and the specialized traction bed in which Lynch had been placed was trashed.

"That was a special bed, the only one like it in the hospital, but we gave it to Jessica because she was developing a bed sore," Houssona said.

What bothers Raazk most is not what was said about Lynch's rescue, so much as what wasn't said about her time in hospital.

"We all became friends with her, we liked her so much," Houssona said. "Especially because we all speak a little English, we were able to assure her the whole time that there was no danger, that she would go home soon."

Initial reports indicated Lynch had been shot and stabbed after emptying her weapon in a pitched battle when her unit, the U.S. Army's 507th Ordnance Maintenance Company, was ambushed after its convoy became lost near Nasiriya.

A few days after her release, Lynch's father told reporters none of the wounds were battle-related. The Iraqi doctors are more specific. Houssona said the injuries were blunt in nature, possible stemming from a fall from her vehicle.

"She was in pretty bad shape. There was blunt trauma, resulting in compound fractures of the left femur (upper leg) and the right humerus (upper arm). And also a deep laceration on her head," Houssona said. "She took two pints of blood and we stabilized her. The cut required stitches to close. But the leg and arm injuries were more serious."

Nasiriya's medical team was going all out at this point, due to the enormous influx of casualties from throughout the region. The hospital lists 400 dead and 2,000 wounded in the span of two weeks before and during Lynch's eight-day stay.

"Almost all were civilians, but I don't just blame the Americans," Raazk said. "Many of those casualties were the fault of the fedayeen, who had been using people as shields and in some cases just shooting people who wouldn't fight alongside them. It was horrible."

But they all made a point of giving Lynch the best of everything, he added. Despite a scarcity of food, extra juice and cookie were scavenged for their American guest.

They also assigned to Lynch the hospital's most nurturing nurse, Khalida Shinah. At 43, Shinah has three daughters close to Lynch's age. She immediately embraced her foreign patient as one of her own.

"It was so scary for her," Shinah said through a translator. "Not only was she badly hurt, but she was in a strange country. I felt more like a mother than a nurse. I told her again and again, Allah would watch over her. And many nights I sang her to sleep."

In the first few days, Houssona said the doctors were somewhat nervous as to whether Iraqi intelligence agents would show any interest in Lynch. But when the road between Nasiriya and Baghdad fell to the U.S.-led coalition, they knew the danger had passed.

"At first, Jessica was very frightened. Everybody was poking their head in the room to see her and she said `Do they want to hurt me?' I told her, `Of course not. They're just curious. They've never seen anyone like you before.'

"But after a few days, she began to relax. And she really bonded with Khalida. She told me, `I'm going to take her back to America with me."

Three days before the U.S. raid, Lynch had regained enough strength that the team was ready to proceed with orthopaedic surgery on her left leg. The procedure involved cutting through muscle to install a platinum plate to both ends of the compound fracture. "We only had three platinum plates left in our supply and at least 100 Iraqis were in need," Raazk said. "But we gave one to Jessica."

A second surgery, and a second platinum plate, was scheduled for Lynch's fractured arm. But U.S. forces removed her before it took place, Raazk said.

Three days after the raid, the doctors had a visit from one of their U.S. military counterparts. He came, they say, to thank them for the superb surgery.

"He was an older doctor with gray hair and he wore a military uniform," Raazk said.

"I told him he was very welcome, that it was our pleasure. And then I told him: `You do realize you could have just knocked on the door and we would have wheeled Jessica down to you, don't you?'

"He was shocked when I told him the real story. That's when I realized this rescue probably didn't happen for propaganda reasons. I think this American army is just such a huge machine, the left hand never knows what the right hand is doing."

What troubles the staff in Nasiriya most are reports that Lynch was abused while in their case. All vehemently deny it.

Told of the allegation through an interpreter, nurse Shinah wells up with tears. Gathering herself, she responds quietly: "This is a lie. But why ask me? Why don't you ask Jessica what kind of treatment she received?"

But that is easier said than done. At the Pentagon last week, U.S. Army spokesman Lt.-Col. Ryan Yantis said the door to Lynch remains closed as she continues her recovery at Washington's Walter Reed Army Medical Centre.

"Until such time as she wants to talk-and that's going to be no time soon, and it may be never at all-the press is simply going to have to wait."
WHAT'S IN MY CD PLAYER



RED CAFE -SHAKEDOWN MIXTAPE VOL. 1

MITCHY SLICK- TRIGGERATION STATION

SEX, MONEY & DRUGS ( ICE-T, SMOOTHE DA HUSTLA, TRIGGA THA GAMBLA) REPOSESSION

SUNZ OF MAN- SAVIORZ DAY

MILITARY MINDED- GHETTO VIETNAM
BOSTON (AP) — Boston Globe sports columnist Bob Ryan was suspended for one month without pay after saying on television that the wife of New Jersey Nets guard Jason Kidd, who was allegedly the victim of domestic abuse, needed someone to "smack her."
"Bob Ryan's comments were a clear and egregious violation of the standards of The Boston Globe," editor Martin Baron said in a statement. "Bob has been told in no uncertain terms that his remarks were offensive and unacceptable."

The columnist was also barred from appearing on radio or television for one month.

Ryan, who has since expressed regret, made the comments Sunday night during a segment on WBZ-TV's Sports Final show.

Kidd said Boston fans insulted his wife and 3-year-old son during Game 4 of the 2002 Eastern Conference finals at the FleetCenter. Fans taunted Kidd with chants of "wife beater," referring to 2001 charges, later dropped, that he had struck his wife, Joumana.

The Celtics and Nets began another playoff series on Monday, prompting Ryan and host Bob Lobel to discuss whether Kidd and his family will receive similar treatment when the teams come to Boston for Game 3 on Friday.

During the show, Ryan said Kidd should expect taunts from the crowd, then criticized the Kidds for using their son "as a prop" and called Joumana Kidd an "exhibitionist"

Then, in a comment that was not picked up clearly on tape, he said: "Oh great. I mean she needs (inaudible) to smack her."

Lobel immediately interrupted Ryan, asking him to retract the statement.

"You just don't want to smack her, you don't mean to say that. No, do you, really? Tell me you don't?" Lobel said.

"Why should I say anything different then I said all last playoffs last year," Ryan said.

In a statement Tuesday, Ryan apologized to Joumana Kidd for the "inappropriate and offensive remark."

"It was, of course, atrocious judgment on my part," he said. "I wish to state clearly that I am aware of the very real problem of violence against women in our society, and that in no way is it a joking matter."

Nets players and coaches called for Ryan's dismissal. Speaking during practice Tuesday, New Jersey coach Byron Scott said Ryan "should be out of a job."

"Just tell him to come right in here and he can say that in front of me and Jason and some of our players," he told reporters. "He'll see how well he'll be received."

Kidd called the comments "unfortunate" and said his wife "felt sorry if she offended (Ryan) in any way."

I know if I ever see that fuckin' Irish racist, I'm going to smack him in the mouth.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Monday, May 05, 2003

Tacoma Police Ignored Rumors on Chief



Associated Press



TACOMA, Wash. - Rumors of violence had haunted Police Chief David Brame's career, but the department and city officials stood by him and he rose through the ranks.



By the time Brame shattered the silence with two quick shots from his service weapon, it was too late for anyone to hear the cries for help.


Crystal Brame, his estranged wife, lay on the pavement of a suburban parking lot, barely clinging to life after being shot in the head. With their two young children just steps away, Brame then turned the gun on himself.


In the week since the shootings that killed Brame and fatally wounded his wife, who died Saturday, disturbing new information has emerged almost daily about the late chief and what the department knew about his violence.


Brame was hired by the police department in 1981 even though he failed a psychology test and a police psychologist deemed him unfit for the job. He was accused of rape in 1989; no charges were filed, although his fellow officers at the time believed the accuser.


Just days before the April 26 shooting, Tacoma's power elite had closed ranks around Brame in the face of media reports about his wife's allegations of spousal abuse.


In divorce filings made public April 25, Crystal Brame said her husband had choked her, threatened her with a gun and tried obsessively to control her.


"He's been an outstanding chief," Mayor Bill Baarsma said when asked about the allegations.


"He's doing a great job," said City Manager Ray E. Corpuz, Jr., who appointed Brame as chief. "I'm not interested in exploring David's personal life at this time."


Even after his death, Catherine Woodard, who was briefly appointed acting police chief, called Brame "a good friend" and "a perfect choice" for the job. She said she knew of Crystal Brame's abuse allegations, but said: "Allegations made during contentious divorce proceedings frequently are found to be false."


On Thursday, Woodard was placed on paid administrative leave. According to 911 tapes released that day, Crystal Brame had reported on April 11 that Woodard had been intimidating and threatening her.


The State Patrol is investigating Woodard for possible criminal misconduct.


The Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, meanwhile, is investigating Brame's rise through the Tacoma Police Department.


The investigation will look into the hiring, promotions and Brame's on- and off-duty conduct, including a report that the city's human resources manager recommended a day before the shootings that Brame's gun and badge be taken away.


The city manager said he didn't know about the recommendation, The News Tribune of Tacoma reported Sunday.


While Tacoma's population of nearly 195,000 makes it Washington's third-largest city, it retains a small-town feeling. That clubbiness may have contributed to Brame's unchecked rise to power, said China Fortson, domestic violence specialist for the city's Human Rights Department.


"People say, 'He seems like a nice guy.' They don't hear the victims behind him. It's easier to see the good stuff," Fortson said. "There's a lot of politics, a lot of families that grew up together and know each other."





Brame's father and brother were both police officers. When he was appointed chief in 2001, Corpuz called him "a trusted insider."

However, three former or current police officers told The News Tribune that they believed Brame raped a woman on a date when he was a patrol officer in 1988.

Nothing came of the woman's complaint because she didn't go to authorities until months later, there were no witnesses, and Brame told police investigators she consented to having sex. A few months later, she said she got a letter from the then-chief saying her complaint was "not sustained," meaning it could not be proved, and that Brame would be sent to see a police psychologist, The News Tribune reported.

According to the newspaper, one of the officers told the woman in mid-March that the department was looking into Brame's actions, including the woman's allegations.

When Brame took over as chief in 2001, one of his first acts was to create a professional responsibility bureau to police the department.

"Our badge of office is a symbol of public faith," Brame wrote in a June 26, 2002, memo to his department. When a Tacoma officer was charged with rape and domestic violence last year, Brame said: "As police officers, we can never compromise our values and principles."

John Hathaway, who runs an Internet newspaper in the area, was the first to publish accounts of Crystal Brame's abuse allegations.

Afterward, Hathaway said, he got an e-mail from police union president Patrick Frantz that said, in part: "If you want to throw stones, you had better live in a bulletproof glass house." Frantz was placed on paid administrative leave last week pending an investigation into the e-mail.

"You're either with them, or they're against you," Hathaway said of the department.

On Saturday, the day Brame's wife died, Tacoma City Council members met to discuss the controversy surrounding police department and its support of Brame. They decided not to place City Manager Corpuz on administrative leave during the investigation.


























Marijuana a part of 'extreme' lifestyle

Bob Burnquist might be the world's greatest skateboarder, and he is certainly its greatest innovator, considered an artist whose flair and imagination have stretched the boundaries of his sport.
Jen O'Brien is his girlfriend, and she's one of skateboarding's top female competitors. They live together near San Diego with their young daughter, Lotus, in a home with a skateboard park and an organic vegetable garden in the yard.

Most pro athletes flee from anything that smacks of controversy, but Burnquist, 26, and O'Brien, 24, feel compelled to stand up for marijuana. Legalize it, they say - marijuana can be used for fuel, for medicine, even for food. Oh yeah, they add, it also makes people feel good. "There is so much we can do with it," Burnquist says.

It's hard to imagine NBA and NFL stars publicly embracing marijuana. The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws has tried to coax pro athletes to speak out for pot legalization, but the only player who has stepped forward is former Dallas Cowboy All-Pro center Mark Stepnoski, now the president of NORML's Texas chapter.

Skateboarders and other extreme or action sports athletes, including those in motocross, snowboarding and surfing, don't feel so inhibited. O'Brien even appeared on the cover of High Times magazine last year, holding a big, fat bud. "I believe it's God's gift to us," says O'Brien, who won't say if she actually smokes pot. Burnquist says he's an occasional toker.

"We smoke all the time," says motocross rider Beau Manley. "It's part of what we do - ride and get stoned with our bros."

Burnquist supports O'Brien's decision to pose for High Times, but he says he isn't entirely comfortable with his own position on pot. He knows he's a role model for a lot of kids. He knows pot advocates have been targeted by cops.

But Burnquist is also a vegetarian and a committed environmentalist. He refuses to endorse junk food, even though companies have offered big-money deals. Marijuana, he says, is an environmentally sound source of many products, and its benefits to society outweigh the risks to his career. "I feel like I have to fight for what I believe in," he says.

One reason athletes in action sports are more comfortable with pot is that they emerged from the punk rock scene of the 1980s, driven by counterculture kids who wanted nothing to do with regimented drills and authoritarian coaches. Drug laws didn't matter to kids who were jumping fences to skateboard in empty swimming pools.

"The ski areas wouldn't even allow us on the mountain," says Ross Rebagliati, the Canadian snowboarder whose 1998 Olympic gold medal was briefly yanked after he tested positive for marijuana. "Snowboarding was cool because adults didn't like it."

The TV networks and corporate sponsors who have fueled action sports' phenomenal growth in recent years don't seem to know what to make of these outlaw roots. Steve Astephan, who is Burnquist and O'Brien's agent, reacted strongly when the Daily News asked him about his clients' views on marijuana. "There is no acceptance of marijuana in action sports," he said, apparently unaware that one of his clients had appeared in High Times.

Roxy, a clothing company that is one of O'Brien's sponsors, expressed displeasure after she appeared in High Times. Josh Krulewitz, a spokesman for ESPN, which created and broadcasts the X-Games, claims that he's never seen evidence that action sports athletes use marijuana. Meanwhile, Scott Bowers, the vice president of sports marketing for Oakley, the sunglasses company that is one of Burnquist's sponsors, acknowledges weed is part of the scene. "Is illegal drug use something we advocate? No," he says. "But are we going to try to control it? No."

Motocross rider Jeremy (Twitch) Stenberg, 21, says some of his sponsors even called to congratulate him after he appeared, alongside O'Brien, in High Times.

"A lot of people in the motocross industry smoke," says Twitch. "Even the guys in the three-piece suits."

Pro sports tests easy to pass

The NFL and NBA both test their athletes for marijuana - but athletes and drug experts agree that they mostly measure brainpower, not cannabis use.

You have to be a dope to get caught, they say, since professional athletes generally know when they will be tested. Most jocks who smoke pot abstain for a month or two before they are asked for a urine sample.

"If you know when the tests are going to be done, only those who don't have the intelligence not to get caught get caught," says Andrea Barthwell, deputy director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

For those who fail to abstain before the big test, there is a cornucopia of products they can take to mask use. "For anyone with $100 and half a brain, these tests are easy to beat," says an employee of Pass It, a Las Vegas company that sells synthetic urine over the Internet.

But as drug-testing labs become more adept at identifying fake urine, other products are rising in popularity. Sold as liquids or capsules, they change the appearance of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, and are so effective that a handful of states, including New Jersey, ban their sale.

Anti-drug critics say athletes will continue to smoke pot until pro sports increases the number of tests it conducts, and makes them random. Marijuana traces remain in the bodies of heavy smokers for up to 120 days, and players who failed to lay off would be playing Russian roulette with their careers.

Drug testing, however, has to be negotiated during collective bargaining with players unions, and only the NFL and NBA test with any seriousness. Major League Baseball only tests for pot if there's probable cause.

"We don't believe your employer has a right to ask you to prove you haven't done anything wrong," says MLB Players Association official Gene Orza.

The NFL, which began testing for marijuana in 1987, screens every player for marijuana and other drugs between May and July, when training camps begin. Those who test positive are subject to random testing and required to undergo counseling; a second positive means a four-game suspension without pay, and a third positive brings a minimum one-year suspension.

Mark Stepnoski was tested throughout his college and NFL careers, but the five-time Pro Bowl center says he never tested positive, even though he's been a regular pot-smoker since high school. Stepnoski, who played for 13 years with the Cowboys and Oilers, would quit for several weeks before the beginning of the testing season.

"It's really kind of demeaning," says Stepnoski, who became the president of the Texas chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws after he hung up his pads in 2001. "But I think the NFL is very conscious of its image. ... They don't want to be associated with anything involved in drugs."

The NBA began testing in 1999 after a number of high-profile players, including Allen Iverson, Marcus Camby and Isaiah Rider were charged with marijuana possession, and in the wake of a New York Times article that estimated that 60%-70% of players smoke. The tests are conducted at the beginning of training camp, and players who come up positive are required to enter the league's substance-abuse program. A second positive means a $15,000 fine; players who test positive after that are slapped with a five-game suspension for each violation.

"Players know when they will be tested," Queens basketball consultant Rob Johnson says. "They smoke pot all season and quit just before the tests."

The NHL, like MLB, doesn't test for pot unless there's probable cause, such as an arrest. The NCAA tests players for drugs at most Division I championships but otherwise leaves drug testing up to individual schools. About half its members conduct drug screening, and almost all of those test for marijuana.

"I think most of these drug-testing programs are a joke," says the Pass It employee. "They just do them for the public relations."

How athletes really score

For many athletes, going on the road means hostile fans, cramped visitors' locker rooms, jet lag and uncomfortable hotel rooms.

But at least they don't have to go without their marijuana.

Security at airports, of course, is much tighter than it was before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and many Americans who once didn't think twice about sticking their stash in a bathroom kit are now suffering the heartbreak of sobriety and leaving their marijuana at home.

But most pro teams take charter flights, and athletes bypass the stringent security checks other travelers go through. When possible, teams often return home immediately after a game, so players can puff on a post-game joint in the privacy of their own living room.

"You don't stay in the city after a game and hang out the way you used to," says former Cleveland Cavaliers coach John Lucas, a recovering substance abuser. "You don't find people on the road getting into trouble."

Athletes who are on the road for longer trips give their weed to friends or clubhouse guys. "That way if anybody gets busted, it is the hanger-on, not the player," says Queens basketball consultant Rob Johnson.

The aides and hangers-on rarely carry more than a half-ounce: In many states, small amounts are treated like traffic offenses, not trafficking offenses. For extended trips, Johnson says, players have their aides drive their cars - and their dope - if the city where they are playing is close enough.

Then again, many visiting players know dealers in opposing cities, or get connected by guys on other teams. They may be foes on the court, but that all goes out the window when it's time to chill. "A lot of guys prefer pot over alcohol," Johnson says. "After a game, it takes the edge off."

Police blotter

Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Randy Moss took unsportsmanlike conduct to a whole new level on Sept. 24, 2002.

After making an illegal turn in downtown Minneapolis, a traffic control officer (on foot) whistles and motions for Moss to comply with the traffic laws. Instead, the volatile football player points his car at the officer, Amy Zaccardi, and begins "pushing her down the street a half block, attempting to run her over," according to a complaint filed by Zaccardi in Hennepin County court.

In addition to four different counts of traffic violations, Moss is also charged with marijuana possession after a gram of pot is found in his Lexus sedan. The incident comes a year after Moss failed the NFL's mandated drug test and entered the league's substance abuse program.

Moss pleads guilty in December 2002 and is sentenced to 30 days in jail (serving only two days), a $1,200 fine and 40 hours community service. Moss also issues an apology of sorts: "The incident also may have detracted from some of the enjoyment the fans are entitled to. I hope that is not so, but it will never happen again. The fans deserve better."

The only person who did not get an apology? Officer Zaccardi.

Here is a look at some athletes who were arrested in 2002-03 for marijuana possession:

JANUARY, 2002

Muhsin Muhammad, Carolina Panthers wide receiver; Derek Watson, South Carolina running back; Michael Moody, Zephyrhills (Fla.) High School running back

MARCH

David Boston, Ariz. Cardinals wide receiver

APRIL

Cedric Benson, Texas running back; Hunter Wall, Oklahoma quarterback

MAY

Duane John, Missouri guard

JUNE

Derreck Robinson, Iowa defensive end

JULY

Marvel Smith, Pittsburgh Steelers offensive tackle; Sean Sonderleiter, Iowa center

AUGUST

Keon Clark, Sacramento Kings forward; Montrell Jones, Tennessee wide receiver

SEPTEMBER

Brandy Reed, Phoenix Mercury forward; Shem Hardnette, Montana State running back; Quinn Faino, Montana wide receiver

OCTOBER

Randy Moss, Minnesota Vikings wide receiver; Matt Corcoran, Lock Haven (Pa.) College wrestler

NOVEMBER

Lee Evans, Wisconsin wide receiver; Jermaine Brooks, Arkansas defensive lineman; Cedric Cobbs, Arkansas running back

DECEMBER

Damon Stoudamire and Rasheed Wallace, Portland Trail Blazers; Justin Lavasseur, Arizona tight end

2003

Jeffrey Collins, UAB guard; Donta Chandler, Utah State wide receiver; Brandon Everage, Oklahoma safety; Jimarr Gallon and Michael Robinson, Arkansas football players; Qyntel Woods, Portland Trail Blazers forward; Anthony Tumminia, Jupiter (Fla.) HS linebacker.


Sunday, May 04, 2003

London, May 1 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. and U.K. went to war against Iraq because of the Middle East country's oil reserves, an adviser to British Prime Minister Tony Blair said.

Sir Jonathan Porritt, head of the Sustainable Development Commission, which advises Blair's government on ecological issues, said the prospect of winning access to Iraqi oil was ''a very large factor'' in the allies' decision to attack Iraq in March.

"I don't think the war would have happened if Iraq didn't have the second-largest oil reserves in the world,'' Porritt said in a Sky News television interview.

Opponents of the war, including some members of Blair's Labour Party, have said that the conflict was aimed at securing Iraqi reserves to benefit Western economies and oil companies. U.S. and U.K. leaders have repeatedly rejected that, saying the war began because Iraq held illegal weapons and threatened other countries.

Blair has said he wants Iraqi oil revenues to be held in a United Nations-run trust fund and spent on rebuilding Iraq. Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday the U.S. may encourage Iraq to set up an oil revenue-sharing system that would distribute some proceeds from what he called the ''marvelous treasure'' to Iraqi citizens.

Oil production in Iraq was halted before the U.S.-led attack that toppled President Saddam Hussein. According to UN data, the nation is losing about $55 million a day in oil revenue as the U.S., the European Union and the Iraqi people debate postwar reconstruction plans.

Porritt's commission was set up in 2000 to advise the U.K. government on making economic and business activity compatible with environmental-protection policies. The body reports directly to Blair.

This isn't the first time Porritt has criticized the U.K. government. In October 2000, he said Blair and his ministers had failed to fulfill election promises on ecological issues.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Some of the world's largest record labels are quietly financing the creation of programs by small software firms that, if deployed, would sabotage the computers and Internet connections of people who download pirated music, a newspaper reported Sunday.

The New York Times, citing industry executives, said that the efforts include attacking a computer's Internet connection to slow or halt downloads, and overwhelming distribution networks with programs that masquerade as music files. Some experts questioned whether some of the programs' tactics would be legal, according to the report.

"There are a lot of things you can do -- some quite nasty," the newspaper quoted Marc Morgenstern, chief executive of software company Overpeer, as saying. The company receives support from several large media companies, it said.

If large record labels roll out the programs, it would be the most aggressive tactic yet in the music piracy wars by the recording industry, which has claimed that music piracy costs it more than $4 billion in annual sales worldwide.

Last month a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled that file-sharing services Grokster and Morpheus were not guilty of copyright infringement.

The industry's big five labels -- Vivendi's Universal Music Group, AOL Time Warner's Warner Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Bertelsmann's BMG and EMI Group -- have all backed the development of counterpiracy programs, according to industry executives, but none would discuss details publicly, the paper reported.

(For a look at how the record companies have responded with music downloading services that they support or are backing, click here).

The newspaper said approaches under development range from relatively modest in degree to quite severe.

One method is a "Trojan horse" program that simply redirects users to Web sites where they can legitimately buy the songs they had tried to download.

Another locks up a computer for a certain amount of time, minutes or hours, risking the loss of data that was not saved if the user restarts the computer, the paper reported.