I posted a link to a streaming video of a news report on Dr. Cosby's presentation last week because after the buzz the first speech caused (and I still can't find a transcript) I thought it would be good if folks are going to talk about it, they should know what he said.

The snippets that made it into the press last time were pretty brutal…and they were just what folks wanted to hear. I know it's sort of against the Cosby spirit to talk about how non-Black folks are responding to all this. Oh well. It's just for one installment anyway, and it's necessary because that reaction is part of the environment we have to deal with. So I searched for "Cosby" in Google News early this morning. I wanted the first reactions.

I found a lot of that AP release with a word changed here and there. Basically I grabbed that and the first few that, judging from the excerpt, looked like they were trying to write something.

Frederick Douglass on the Fourth of July

July 4, 1852
Rochester, New York

Fellow Citizens: Pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called
to speak here today? What have I or those I represent to do with
your national independence? Are the great principles of political
freedom and natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of
Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to
bring our humble offering the national altar, and to confess the
benefits, and express devout gratitude for the blessings
resulting from your independence to,us?

Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative
answer could be truthfully returned to these questions. Then would
my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is
there so cold that a nation's sympathy could not warm him? Who so
obdurate and dead to claims of gratitude, that would not
thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and
selfish that would not give his voice to swell the halleluiahs of
a nation's jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn
from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb
might eloquently speak, and the "lame man leap like a hare."

But such is not the state of the case.

Here's a news report out of NBC5 in Chicago on the latest discussion Dr. Cosby had at Rainbow/PUSH. It's video, so you can get much of it out of his own mouth.

Every self-respecting race guy on the planet is feeling called out by Dr. Cosby right about now. And some of y'all think I'm talking about what you might think of as the Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton types, but I'm also talking about what you might think of as your Rush Limbaugh or Jesse Paterson types.

Naturally I'll write something, but what would be more than beating the same drums as everyone else?

I'm working on it. And I want to share the occasional thing I find on the path, stuff I think will lay the groundwork at best and be interesting enough to read at worst. So when you check out the article below you'll find it's about Israel, not Black folks…yet I'm thinking about Black folks as I present it.

The Politics of Self-Criticism: Cosby Gets Cheers, Lerner Gets Threats

Quote of note:

But Zebari welcomed an offer by Yemen, which does not share a border with Iraq, to send peacekeeping troops provided they were under United Nations or Arab League command.

"With regard to Yemen's proposal, we are in principle for the participation of Arab peacekeeping troops from beyond the immediate neighbors," Zebari said.

Iraq Declines Jordan's Offer to Send Troops
Sat Jul 3, 2004 09:34 AM ET

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq declined Jordan's offer to send troops to help stabilize the country on Saturday, but said it would welcome peacekeeping forces from Arab countries that do not share its borders.
King Abdullah said on Thursday Jordan was willing to send the first Arab troops to Iraq if the interim government, which formally took over sovereignty this week, requested it.

"We welcome the support of Arab and Islamic countries...but there are many ways for these counties to stand with the Iraqi people and offer a helping hand," Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari told a news conference.

"There are sensitivities over the participation of neighboring countries in peacekeeping forces, but these countries can back United Nations activities."

Brought to you by Fox News, of course.

Colin Powell Sings Village People's 'YMCA'
Friday, July 02, 2004

JAKARTA, Indonesia — U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell donned a hard hat and tucked a hammer in his belt Friday to perform a version of the Village People's hit "YMCA" at the conclusion of Asia's largest security meeting — which tradition says ends with a night of skit and song.

Powell danced alongside five other U.S. officials dressed in fancy dress and blasted out a version of the 1970s disco classic to the delight of foreign ministers from across the Asia-Pacific and Europe.

"President Bush, he said to me, Colin I need you to run the department of state. We are between a rock and a hard place," Powell and his colleagues sang to the tune of the disco classic.

Bush Moves on Kerry to Keep Campaign 'Terror' Lead
Fri Jul 2, 2004 05:46 PM ET
By David Morgan

Analysts said the real message is that the terrorism issue has emerged as a vital asset for Bush and Kerry in a race that has them running neck and neck.

"The president is continuing to fall both in overall approval ratings and on most of the major issues with the exception of fighting the war on terror," said Calvin Jillson, political science professor at Southern Methodist University.

"This suggests that Kerry is leading the president by various amounts on most of the domestic policy issues and the war in Iraq had now turned negative. But the war on terror continues to be a strong suit."

A recent New York Times/CBS News poll showed Bush's overall approval rating at a new low of 42 percent, while 45 percent of respondents had an unfavorable view of the president.

Yet Americans were still more likely to believe Bush would do a better job in steering the United States through a foreign crisis and protecting it from future attacks.

---

I have asked a number of people who feel Bush handled Iraq better than Kerry would have, exactly what could have turned out worse than it did? Don't tell me we could have had higher casualties; not with our weapons technology. What could have been handled worse than Bush's handling of this whole War on a Noun thing?

So far, no one has given me an answers other than "Kerry would suck" of "he'd give up out sovereignty," which is nonsense.

But I think I know the real answer. I think people realize foreigner leaders think Bush is batshit crazy, that he controls too much physical force (and is too anxious to use it) to risk flipping him out.

A clear victory for privacy rights
-
Friday, July 2, 2004

FEDERAL Judge Morrison England was unequivocal: States have a right to stop banks from selling or sharing personal financial information without customer permission.

His ruling, in U.S. District Court in Sacramento, thus allowed California's landmark financial privacy law to take effect Thursday.

"Finally, in a court of law, the interests of everyday consumers prevailed over the big banks," said Shelley Curran, a lobbyist for Consumers Union. "This is the first time in a long while."

California's financial privacy law was signed last August after a more than three-year struggle in the Legislature. England's ruling pierced one of the financial-services industry's main arguments against the measure -- that regulation of privacy, as with most aspects of interstate banking, is a matter for Congress.

The federal judge noted that the Financial Modernization Act, passed by Congress in 1999, explicitly gave states the right to "enact more stringent privacy regulations" than the weak federal rules on the sharing of confidential information.

After a determined battle that tested the fortitude of legislators and Gov. Gray Davis to stand up to a powerful industry -- with timidity often reigning, unfortunately -- the California measure finally got traction last fall when a citizens' initiative on financial privacy gained enough signatures for the March ballot. The initiative threat caused the banking and insurance industry lobbyists to withdraw their opposition, and the legislation by Sen. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, breezed through both houses of the Legislature in near-record time.

Under the new law, financial companies will be required to obtain customers' permission before selling or sharing phone numbers, account balances, spending patterns or other personal information with telemarketers and other third parties. The new state law also requires companies to give customers an opportunity to restrict information sharing within a family of companies, a process known as "opt out."

Quote of note:

It is not clear yet what other action Google will take to police GMail accounts and whether it will confiscate or close accounts that flout the policy change.

Despite the policy change Google still seems happy for invitations for accounts to be swapped and traded.

Google bans GMail sales
GMail sellers beware, Google wants to stop people profiting from the trade in popular e-mail addresses.

Search giant Google has updated the program policy for GMail on Monday adding clauses that ban the sale, trading, reselling or exploiting of GMail accounts for commercial purposes.

Like the early days of the domain name boom some people have been creating GMail accounts that could be snapped up by speculators.

The change is aimed at those wanting to cash in on the scarcity of GMail accounts rather than those swapping invitations to open a new account.

Domain boom

GMail debuted on 1 April but the numbers using it remain relatively low because new accounts can only be opened via an invitation from an existing user.

The scarcity has meant that GMail accounts are being coveted by many net users.

Accounts are being sold on ebay and exchanged on sites such as GMail Swap.

The mechanics of things are such that a change in the standards of judging Black folks is coming. There's a couple of reasons for this; one would probably think Bill Cosby's recent…I reach for "rant" or "outburst" but not only do those term have more negativity attached to them than I feel toward his statement I do NOT feel the were unplanned…but I think Dr. Cosby's new aggressiveness has an underlying reason.

Because of the upcoming holiday I'll likely be in slacker mode, but I will be pulling together some stuff for early next week.

In the mean time, anyone who'd like to say something on Dr. Cosby's message or methods can log into Prometheus 6 using "On Cosby" as user name and password. I have no idea what sort of response I'll get, if any. I will delete posts that have nothing to do with the topic, though I don't mind links to folks' sites and and shout-out as long as they are in addition to the topic.

Drugs Prices Outpace Medicare Discounts

Summary: The AARP (American Association for Retired Persons) has issued a report indicating that manufacturers' prices for prescription drugs rose 3.4% during the first quarter of 2004. That is nearly 3 times the rate of inflation. Significantly, these drug price increases came AFTER the Medicare prescription drug benefit was signed into law and before the consumer could benefit from using the Medicare discount cards.

Comment: It is small comfort that a pharmaceutical industry spokesman, commenting on the AARP report, said that hospital costs rose by a much higher percentage than the costs of prescription drugs.

Barbara K. Hecht, Ph.D.
Frederick Hecht, M.D.
Medical Editors, MedicineNet.com

Louis at LatinoPundit hipped me to the Associated Press' new weblog. They have an RSS feed, which isn't like Reuters, but there are a couple of interesting things on the site.

This is like 300K, a GIF animation of Saturn rotating.

But I really like this one. The full resolution original is 1824 x 1360. I resized it for my desktop wallpaper.

Implored to 'Offshore' More
U.S. Firms Are Too Reluctant to Outsource Jobs, Report Says
By Paul Blustein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 2, 2004; Page E01

A report by an influential consulting firm is exhorting U.S. companies to speed up "offshoring" operations to China and India, including high-powered functions such as research and development.

In blunt terms, the report by the Boston Consulting Group warns American firms that they risk extinction if they hesitate in shifting facilities to countries with low costs. That is partly because the potential savings are so vast, but the report also cites a view among U.S. executives that the quality of American workers is deteriorating.

"The largest competitive advantage will lie with those companies that move soonest," the report states. "Companies that wait will be caught in a vicious cycle of uncompetitive costs, lost business, underutilized capacity, and the irreversible destruction of value."

Boston Consulting, which counts among its clients many of the biggest corporations in the United States, admonishes them that they have been too reluctant rather than too eager to outsource production to "LCC's," or low-cost countries.

It's a cable channel that will be running a three-part series called "The N-Word", starting Sunday.

It's going to be FASCINATING, and if you don't believe me they got trailers up.

Point being, I want these suckers on tape. So if anyone has Trio and is willing to risk three blank video tapes until I mail them a check, please holla.

Quote of note:

So what's the catch? If you have to ask, this shows why inflation tends to happen once a generation. It's been about a generation since the last round in the late 1970s, and many people have forgotten or never knew what it was like.

To start, it is like a tax on anybody living on a fixed income, or any investor with a fixed return. It makes economic transactions difficult and planning impossible. And inflation feeds on itself, as everybody tries to beat it. You cannot have inflation of 11% very long. Either it will soar until the currency is destroyed, or it will be brought painfully back under control.

Then-Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker administered the pain the last time. For almost two decades now, with tremendous skill, Volcker's successor, Alan Greenspan, has preserved that expensive victory without choking off prosperity (or at least not for very long). On Tuesday, the Fed raised short-term interest rates by a quarter of a percent. On Wednesday, all the experts were saying that's not enough.

But Bush has put Greenspan in a terrible bind. By heedlessly running up the deficit, he has goosed the economy in the short term. And by chipping away at the tax base, he has made it harder to restore fiscal responsibility. There's a drunk at the wheel, and all Greenspan's got is the brake. But he doesn't want to slam it on. Can you blame him?

Oh! Kinsley is unfairly bashing ODP (Ol' Dirty Our Dear President) over his youthful indiscretions!

(heh heh heh)

Bush's Secret Deficit-Reduction Plan
Michael Kinsley

July 2, 2004

The plan was: a $400-billion federal budget surplus this year, and a national debt of $2.1 trillion heading rapidly to zero. That was the plan in January 2001, when President Bush took office. And not just the plan: that was the official prediction of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Now we have a new plan. Instead of a $400-billion surplus, Bush's budget calls for a $500-billion deficit. The national debt is $4.4 trillion and headed to more than $6 trillion over the next 10 years, according to the CBO. Interest on that debt will cost $156 billion this year. Bush says he'll cut the deficit by half in four years. The deficit, not the debt. It's a remarkably modest brag. And even so, almost nobody believes him.

There are four ways to deal with a gigantic government debt. One is to live with it. But this is not a stable situation. Even if you're living within your means and borrowing only to cover the interest payments, your debt will compound. When deficits turned into surpluses in the late 1990s, the achievement was especially impressive since it required the government to not just cover its expenses but pick up retroactively a lot of the expenses of the spendthrift '80s.

That is the second way to deal with a soaring national debt: fiscal discipline. The third way is through an economic miracle: an explosion of productivity that increases tax revenues painlessly.

In the late 1990s, fiscal discipline and a booming economy both helped. But you cannot count on another economic miracle like that one. As for the prospect of fiscal discipline: No one looking at the last four years can reasonably expect that from Bush, and it hasn't exactly been a major theme for John Kerry either.

Luckily — or not — there is a fourth way to deal with the national debt. That is inflation. Inflate the debt away. The temptation is enormous: The United States government is a debtor that can borrow any amount of money and pay it back in a currency whose value the debtor controls. Other governments are forced to borrow in dollars, not in their own currencies, when lenders start getting suspicious. But Uncle Sam remains preapproved.

Cheney Unrelenting on War Policy
The vice president repeats assertions of Hussein-Al Qaeda ties and implies that Clinton repeatedly failed to punish terrorists.
By Peter Wallsten and Josh Meyer
Times Staff Writers

July 2, 2004

NEW ORLEANS — Returning to the controversy about Saddam Hussein's links with Al Qaeda terrorists, Vice President Dick Cheney on Thursday repeated his assertion that "long-established ties" existed between the former Iraqi dictator and the terrorist network.

Speaking hours after Hussein's appearance in a Baghdad courtroom on charges of mass killings and other crimes against humanity, Cheney offered a broad assessment of the Bush administration's fight against terrorism, saying that President Bush had made the world safer by taking "relentless action" and launching "a broad and sustained war on terrorist networks around the globe."

Cheney, addressing Republican supporters at the National D-Day Museum, also leveled implicit criticism at Bush's predecessor, former President Clinton.

The Rainbow/PUSH coalition just wrapped their annual conference, and Dr. Cosby was a presenter at the sessions on parenting.

The Chicago Sun-Times had a staff reporter there and gave a much more nuanced report than the AP story you will see everywhere today. For instance, Ms. Jackson of the Sun-Times adds this bit at the end:

In his NAACP remarks in May, Cosby had spoken of the high percentage of black males in low-income households who drop out of school, the high numbers of black men in prison and the large numbers of black teenagers who become pregnant.

"I was not talking about 'all,' " Cosby said. "I just took for granted that it would be understood that, if you talk about 50 percent, you can't be talking about all."

which information exactly none of the reports with titles like "Bill Cosby has more harsh words for black community" includes. No, they's rather go here:

CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- Bill Cosby went off on another tirade against the black community Thursday, telling a room full of activists that black children are running around not knowing how to read or write and "going nowhere."

I felt the need to juxtapose the two approaches to the exact same event. AP knows what its audience want and so spins accordingly and nationwide newspapers suck it down and regurgitate it with a snappy headline.

Bush Marks 40th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Act
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

Published: July 2, 2004

WASHINGTON, July 1 - President Bush marked the 40th anniversary of the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on Thursday, telling an audience at a White House ceremony that the United States has been a better place since the law was passed but that the problem the legislation addressed has yet to be eradicated.

"The work of equality is not done, because the evil of bigotry is not finally defeated," Mr. Bush said. "Yet the laws of this nation and the good heart of this nation are on the side of equality, and as Dr. King reminded us, we must not rest until the day when 'justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.' "

Ain't you learn nothing from the Hemingses?

---

Thurmond's Biracial Daughter Seeks to Join Confederacy Group
By SHAILA K. DEWAN and ARIEL HART

Essie Mae Washington-Williams, a biracial woman who stepped forward last year to acknowledge that she was the daughter of the late Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, now wants to join the United Daughters of the Confederacy, an organization of descendants of soldiers who fought for the South in the Civil War.

Evidently she is eligible: Senator Thurmond, once a fierce segregationist, was a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a similar group for men. Ms. Washington-Williams, a 78-year-old retired teacher who lives in Los Angeles, also plans to apply for membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Black Patriots Foundation, which honors black Revolutionary War fighters. One of her two sons will apply to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, her lawyer said.

The announcement, which was made this week, was in keeping with the confounding nature of a story that some said was emblematic of racist hypocrisy in the South, but which produced no apparent bitterness on the part of Ms. Washington-Williams. Her mother, Carrie Butler, was a maid in the Thurmond family home in South Carolina and was 16 when she gave birth to Ms. Washington-Williams. Mr. Thurmond saw her about once a year and gave her financial support, she has said.

Out of a desire to protect her father, Ms. Washington-Williams waited until after his death a year ago to come forward about her parentage, and put an end to decades of silence with a simple dignity, saying, "At last, I feel completely free."

On Thursday, her name was added to a monument to Senator Thurmond on the statehouse grounds in Columbia, S.C., joining the names of the senator's other children.

Ms. Washington-Williams is joining the Confederate organization not to honor the soldiers that fought for a Southern way of life dependent on slavery, but to explore her genealogy and heritage, her lawyer, Frank K. Wheaton, said yesterday. In applying, she claims an honor that can be bestowed only on someone of her lineage, he said, and she hopes to encourage other blacks in a similar position to do the same.

---

To be honest, it looks like the Thurmonds are more accepting of all this than the Jefferson descendants. Goven all the testable DNA laying around, that might not be optional but adding her name to the monument (after gagging on the very concept of a monument to ol' Strom) was definitely optional. Unless she asked for it.

But you know, there's no need to join the Confederates to explore your heritage and geneology.

The Dunovant family was deep into the Confederacy, and I'm honestly not as sure about how I connect to those two guys as I am about these two, but I'm trying to picture what it would take to get me to apply for membership to the Sons of Confederate Veterans and nothing comes to mind.

Got another one of those online political sites for ya. Alliance for Justice.

The Alliance for Justice is a national association of environmental, civil rights, mental health, women's, children's and consumer advocacy organizations. Since its inception in 1979, the Alliance has worked to advance the cause of justice for all Americans, strengthen the public interest community's ability to influence public policy, and foster the next generation of advocates.

They focus on judicial, nonprofit, foundation and student advocacy

One really fun thing they do is track all the nominees for the federal bench at Independent Judiciary (and they've been at it since 1985…when they say independent, they mean it). For instance, in late March this year 60 Minutes did an interview with Charles Pickering they found offensively misleading—unbalanced is how they phrased it; here's one and a half of five pages:

In Sixty Minutes Mike Wallace and Judge Charles W. Pickering, Sr., tried to erase Pickering’s forty-year record of hostility to civil rights. In last night’s story, Wallace allowed to go unanswered a number of misstatements made by Pickering and his supporters regarding his role in reducing the sentence of a convicted cross burner and omitted an extensive list of actions Pickering has taken over the course of his legal and judicial career that, considered collectively, present a devastating portrait of insensitivity to and ignorance of issues of race.

Cross-Burning Case
Wallace attempted to recast Pickering’s actions in pushing prosecutors to drop an arson charge against Daniel Swan, a convicted cross burner, that carried a mandatory five-year penalty. Judge Pickering stated on the program that he was appalled by the sentence he would be forced to impose on Swan compared with the lenient plea-bargain deals to the two he regarded as the main culprits of the crime. But in giving Pickering the microphone without refutation, Sixty Minutes omitted that:

The other two defendants pled guilty, while Swan, the defendant for whom Pickering went to bat, decided to take his chances on going to trial. Disparate sentences routinely result when one party opts to plea and the other goes to trial.
• The other two defendants were differently situated from Swan. One was a minor, and the other had diminished mental capacity. Swan was the only competent adult involved in the commission of the crime.
• Swan played a key role in executing the crime. Among other salient facts, he obtained the wood, built the cross, carried the cross in his truck, doused the cross with gasoline, and burned the cross in the couple's yard. He did not actually light the cross because he had gasoline on his hands.

Pickering asserted on the show last night that he acted appropriately in seeking leniency for Swan. Far from singling out a cross burner for leniency, Pickering argued, he was showing the sort of leniency he has demonstrated in other cases in which he lowered sentences for African-Americans who have been convicted of crimes.

• In fact, in imposing lower sentences on defendants convicted in other cases, Pickering was acting within the discretion given him by federal law. In the cross-burning case, however, Pickering went beyond what he is permitted to do under the law. Pickering tried to circumvent the mandatory minimum through off-the-record threats and ex parte phone calls to force prosecutors to drop the most serious charge against Swan. There is no relationship between the actions he took in other cases to reduce sentences under the sentencing guidelines and the extraordinary, extra-legal actions he took on behalf of a convicted cross-burner.

Pickering testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on February 2002 that when he approved the plea agreement of the minor, who was sentenced
home confinement and probation, he did not know that the minor had fired
gun three months earlier into the home of the victims.

• But according to the Washington Post (May 27, 2003), “the record makes clear that Pickering approved [the minor’s] sentence on Aug. 24, 1994, three months after Swan’s trial aired the allegations against all three men. In addition, the sentencing document—which bears Pickering’s signature—included [the minor’s] admission of guilt for the shooting.”

I'd be less than honest, though, if I didn't let you know what brought them to my attention was a Flash animation.

Read Our Baby.

Because we already know Cheney is on drugs.

---

Cheney Tries to Turn War Success Into Political Advantage
By Carol Giacomo
Reuters
Thursday, July 1, 2004; 3:51 PM

---

I read that headline, and I'm like "Success???"

r@d@r at ex-lion tamer gave up th elink to the transcript of the whole speech. This is what Common Dreams saw as the Quote of Note…and I agree.

---

This is the Fight of Our Lives
by Bill Moyers
Keynote speech
Inequality Matters Forum
New York University
June 3, 2004

"The middle class and working poor are told that what's happening to them is the consequence of Adam Smith's 'Invisible Hand.' This is a lie. What's happening to them is the direct consequence of corporate activism, intellectual propaganda, the rise of a religious orthodoxy that in its hunger for government subsidies has made an idol of power, and a string of political decisions favoring the powerful and the privileged who bought the political system right out from under us."
-- Bill Moyers, Keynote speech, June 3, 2004

San Francisco Homeless Program Could Be National Model
By Lee Romney
Times Staff Writer

July 1, 2004

SAN FRANCISCO -- City officials Wednesday unveiled an ambitious 10-year plan aimed at one of the United States' most intractable homelessness problems, saying they hope to "abolish chronic homelessness" by replacing emergency shelters with permanent housing that includes supportive services.

The new plan, which Bush administration officials have praised as a potential national model, would try to move the most desperate street people out of shelters and into permanent housing where they could receive treatment for addiction, mental illnesses and other chronic health problems.

"It's a significant day in San Francisco," said Mayor Gavin Newsom, who campaigned last year on a pledge to attack the problem aggressively. "We're moving ... toward a goal and desire not to manage but to end homelessness. It's brilliant in its simplicity, if we have the courage to change."

For years, San Francisco has poured funds into social and medical services for the homeless while dealing separately with the issue of housing. That approach, officials now say, has proven to be inefficient.

The city government spends about $200 million a year on helping the homeless. Of San Francisco's estimated 15,000 homeless, 3,000 who are defined as "chronically homeless" use up about 63 percent of the money, said former San Francisco Supervisor Angela Alioto, who led the effort to develop the new plan.

The care of one chronically homeless person using shelters for housing, hospital emergency rooms for medical treatment or jails, where inmates also receive medical services, costs an average of $61,000 a year, city officials estimate. Permanent supportive housing, including treatment and care, would cost $16,000, they say.

Providing services more efficiently for the chronically homeless would free funds that could then be used to help the other 12,000 people who are homeless for shorter periods of time, officials hope.

A defiant Saddam Hussein appears at hearing, says Bush is 'the real criminal'
HAMZA HENDAWI, Associated Press Writer

Strict pool arrangements severely limited media access to the hearing, and video from the session was cleared by the U.S. military.

The only journalist working for an Iraqi publication, Sadiq Rahman of the newspaper Azzaman, was ordered out of the courtroom by the judge 10 minutes before the hearing began. One Iraqi working for the pan-Arab Shaq al-Awsat newspaper was allowed to attend.

"Unfortunately, they are already being unfair to Iraqi journalists," Rahman said afterward, noting that some U.S. television reporters were allowed inside in addition to the pool.

Defense bill could stifle computer trade
By Robert Lemos
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

In a move that has re-energized the debate over export controls on high-performance computers, the latest version of a defense-spending bill would require companies to seek licenses to export even underpowered desktop computers.

What's new:
The latest version of a defense-spending bill in the House requires companies to obtain licenses to export even low-powered computers.

Bottom line:
The proposed rules are the latest flashpoint in a decades-long tussle between computer companies and national security hawks over the best way to limit the export of technology that could end up in enemy weapons.

The dramatic tightening of export regulations is included in the National Defense Authorization Act, an annual military funding bill that has already passed the U.S. House of Representatives. Though the proposed rules are only a tiny portion of the 630-page bill, they could have a devastating impact on the computer industry.

"It would bring exports to a grinding halt," said Dan Hoydish, director of trade, public policy and government affairs for Unisys and chairman of the Computer Coalition for Responsible Exports, a trade group that counts many major technology companies as members. "We wouldn't be asking for 20 export licenses in a year, we would be asking for 20,000 in a day."

Today, computer sellers are required to get a license to export any computer with performance equal to or greater than a system with 32 Intel Itanium processors. The current version of the defense authorization act would lower that limit to systems deemed "militarily critical" by the Department of Defense. That level is currently set to the equivalent of a computer using a Pentium 3 processor running at 650MHz, state of the art in 1999 but considered feeble today.

Moreover, the proposed rules would apply to exports destined for any country, including U.S. allies.

The controversial section is not included in a U.S. Senate version of the bill that passed last week. That means the fate of the proposed rules, known as Section 1404, will be determined by negotiations between the House and the Senate, currently slated for later this month.

This harkens back to February and the several discussions on pharmaceutical pricing I had with several pharmaceutical industry types. And as usual, I was right…

REALLY LONG Quote of note:

The most important of these laws is known as the Bayh-Dole Act, after its chief sponsors, Senator Birch Bayh (D-Ind.) and Senator Robert Dole (R-Kans.). Bayh-Dole enabled universities and small businesses to patent discoveries emanating from research sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, the major distributor of tax dollars for medical research, and then to grant exclusive licenses to drug companies. Until then, taxpayer-financed discoveries were in the public domain, available to any company that wanted to use them. But now universities, where most NIH-sponsored work is carried out, can patent and license their discoveries, and charge royalties. Similar legislation permitted the NIH itself to enter into deals with drug companies that would directly transfer NIH discoveries to industry.