>>> On a tip, I searched for Fred Rogers, better known as "Mr. Rogers," in the database of individual political contributors at Open Secrets:

2 records found in .19 seconds.

SEARCH CRITERIA:
Donor name: rogers
Donor zip code: 15213
Election cycle(s): 2002 2000 1998 1996 1994 1992 1990

Start another search

Contributor Occupation Date Amount Recipient

ROGERS, FRED
PITTSBURGH, PA 15213 F C I 9/20/1991 $1,000 Thornburgh, Dick

ROGERS, FRED M
PITTSBURGH, PA 15213 10/16/2002 $1,000 Kerry, John

FCI is the late Mr. Rogers' production company.

Searching the database is tons o' fun--give it a try.

Posted 17 May 2003

>>> Here's a list of old, scarce articles from Consumer Reports on cigarettes, as assembled by the Consumers Union:

test, July 1938, p. 5
advertising, September 1943, p. 249
antitrust hearings, Dept Just, CU testimony, September 1941, p. 229
cures, smoking habit, August 1938, p. 18
FTC actions, Avalon, September 1943, p. 249
FTC actions, Camels, May 1950, p. 189
FTC actions, Lucky Strike, September 1942, p.228
FTC actions, Old Gold, April 1943, p. 106; September 1943, p. 249; July 1947, p. 274; May 1950, p. 189
FTC actions, Pall Mall, February 1942, p. 228
FTC actions, Philip Morris, February 1941, p. 55
FTC actions, Raleigh, September 1947, p. 328
FTC actions, Virginia Rounds & others (Benson, Hedges), October 1947, p. 376
favorite brands, sales, 1947, Printers Ink Survey, March 1948, p.131
low-nicotine brands, advice, January 1949, p. 35
low-nicotine brands, and filters, July 1938, p. 8
low-nicotine brands, John Alden brand, CU tests, January 1949, p 35
prices, OPA freeze, January 1942, p. 3
tests, CU, reported at antitrust hearings, September 1941, p. 229
tests, Readers Digest report, Old Gold, July 1942, p. 171; April 1943, p. 166; September 1943, p. 249; October 1948, p.436
tests, 7 brands, June 1952, p. 262
tests, 27 brands, February 1953, p. 67
tests, 37 brands, February 1955, p. 56
tests, 33 brands, March 1957, p. 100
tests, 16 brands, October 1957, p. 460
tests, 16 brands, November 1957, p. 542
tests, 16 brands, Jan 1958, p. 24
February 1958, p. 92
March 1958, p. 126
April 1958, p. 224
December 1958, p. 632
October 1959, p. 514
January 1960, p. 18
April 1961, p. 203
February 1961, p. 62
May 1959, p. 240
August 1958, p. 396
deterrent products, May 1959, p. 236
statement before FTC, May 1964, p. 246
smoking & lung cancer, June 1963, p.265
advertising, August 1963, p. 364
discussion of Surgeon General's report "Smoking & Health," Mar 1964, p. 112
FTC regulations proposed, March 1964, p. 114
"Tobacco bloc" in Congress; MD's vs. AMA controversy, October 1964, p. 464
lobbyists seeking to water down FTC plan to include warnings in ads and on labels, April 1965, p. 167
advertising, May 1965, p. 226; April 1969, p. 170; Sept 1969, p. 516, 519; Nov 1969, p. 624; June 1970, p. 331
cigarette controls, Feb 1968, p. 97
True's article on smoking, June 1968, p. 336
FTC ban on radio & TV ads, Sept 1968, p. 481
more on True's article, Sept 1968, p. 482
tar & nicotine content of 127 brands from FTC, Sept 1968, p. 483
FTC test method, November 1968, p. 570
action on smoking and health, November 1968, p. 633
smoking & gum disease, March 1969, p. 145

posted 17 May 2003

>> Ran HaCohen's Antiwar.com column of 30 September 2002 is titled "Looking Behind Ha'aretz's Liberal Image." Ha'aretz is one of Israel's leading daily newspapers. The most interesting part from a memory hole standpoint is the opening:

A new Israeli web-site, supported by two major settlers' sites from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, is dedicated to the holy cause of "encouraging and supporting the employment of Jews only". It is already listing dozens of Israeli firms that do not employ "Gentiles". In the first months of the Intifada, Israeli racists initiated a boycott of Arab shops and restaurants; now, employment of Arabs is targeted. Let's keep the inevitable historical analogies for another time; the point I want to make now is, that most of you haven't heard of this web-site. Right?

The site is neither confidential nor is it my discovery: I simply read about it in the Hebrew Ha'aretz a few days ago (24.9.02). But most of you could not. Why? Because this item was left out of Haaretzdaily.com, the English version of Ha'aretz.

Haaretzdaily.com is not Ha'aretz

Is this a mistake? An exception? No it is not. Ha'aretzdaily.com is not a full translation of the Hebrew paper; it's a selection. It often omits certain items, certain columns, that Ha'aretz does not find "suitable" for foreign eyes, like the report I just mentioned.

Another way to achieve the same hidden bias is by "nationalistically correct" translations. For example, when Hebrew Ha'aretz read (2.7.02): "Recent reports about Egyptian intentions to develop nuclear weaponry WERE APPARENTLY THE RESULT OF ISRAELI PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE AND do not match intelligence information in Jerusalem, according to a senior Israeli official", the English translation simply omitted the words I've capitalised.

Or, quoting an Israeli officer on the use of Palestinians as "human shields", the English version read (16.8.02): "Before the search [in a Palestinian house] we go to a neighbour, take him out of his house and tell him to call the people we want out of the next door house. [...] The neighbour does not have the option to refuse to do it. He shouts, knocks on the door and says the army's here. If nobody answers, he comes back and we go to work." Sounds pretty harmless? – Just because the last sentence is a "nationalistically correct" translation of the following Hebrew sentence: "If nobody answers, we have to tell the neighbour that he will be killed if no one comes out."

posted 13 May 2003

>>> MIT research scholar Frank J. Sulloway writes:

A specter haunts the reputation of Sigmund Freud, and its name is Wilhelm Fliess. Freud airbrushed Fliess--his intimate friend from 1887 until the turn of the century--out of his autobiography (SE, 20: 7-74), destroyed Fliess's letters to him, and tried unsuccessfully to get his own letters to Fliess burned as well. When those letters were finally issued by Anne Freud and two other analysts (Freud, 1950), it was in an abridged "damage control" edition whose omitted passages, later restored by a psychoanalytic rebel (Masson, 1985), proved to be as revealing as its content. The complete letters show, first, an extreme credulity on Freud's part toward the Berlin neurologist's bizarre notions about such topics as numerology, male sexual periodicity, and the intimate relation between nasal and genital disorders; second, collusion with Fliess in submitting a patient of Freud's, Emma Eckstein, to a pointless and disfiguring operation whose aftermath, once known, shattered the myth of Freud's diagnostic astuteness and objectivity; and third, a significant "Fliessian" component to ideas that Freud would eventually appropriate as his own discoveries from "clinical experience."

For those who are interested, the work by the "psychoanalytic rebel" is The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904. Translated and edited by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (Harvard University Press, 1985).

The above excerpt is from "The Rhythm Method" by Frank J. Sulloway, in Unauthorized Freud: Doubters Confront a Legend, edited by Frederick Crews (Penguin, 1998).

posted 13 May 2003

In his history of capital punishment in the US, law professor Stuart Banner writes:

There have been only two known photographs of the electric chair in use. The first was taken by Thomas Howard of the New York Daily News, who captured Ruth Snyder's 1928 electrocution on film by strapping a miniature camera to his ankle and running a shuttle release wire up his pants to a bulb in his pocket. The blurry photograph, run on the front page of the next day's Daily News, caused a sensation. New York officials were so angry that they threatened to exclude members of the press from future execution, and then replaced the frosted lamps in Sing Sing's execution chamber with glaring light intended to make photography impossible. In 1949 Joe Migon of the Chicago Herald-American hid a miniature camera in his shoe to get a front-page shot of the electrocution of James "Mad Dog" Morelli. But apart from these two incidents the public could not see an electrocution even in the press.

The photo of Ruth Snyder is online in several places (including here), but the photo of Morelli is nowhere to be found.

Excerpted from The Death Penalty: An American History by Stuart Banner (Harvard University Press, 2002), pp 195-6.

posted 13 May 2003

>>> The person who runs the War (of Words) With Syria blog has caught United Press International yanking a story and replacing it with an altered version. Around 5 PM Eastern on 02 May 2003, UPI ran a story headlined "Rice Blocked Plan for Raids on Syria" on its Website. But that link now brings up a story headlined "Rice Actions on Syria Disputed," which is datelined 02 May at 7:54 PM. [Here's the link]. The two outlets that pick up many of UPI's stories—the Washington Times and Newsmax—quickly pulled the original story and replaced it with the new one.

The heavily-rewritten new article reiterates the high points of its spiked predecessor, but the whole thing is framed as a probable media misfire. The headline says that Rice's actions are being disputed, and the article opens with a vehement three-paragraph denial by a White House communications counselor, who calls the meeting a "complete fabrication."

Here's a screenshot of Google News showing the article on the Websites of UPI and the Washington Times:

Here's a screenshot of the original article on the Times' Website:

For the record, here's the complete text of the deleted article:

Rice blocked plan for raids on Syria

By Richard Sale
UPI Terrorism Correspondent

WASHINGTON, May 2 (UPI) -- Key White House advisers, ignoring pressure from Pentagon hawks and senior Israeli officials, abruptly shut down proposed U.S. plans to expand the Iraqi ground war to Syria in the closing days of combat, administration officials have told United Press International.

The US strikes on Syria would have taken the form of brief across-the-border forays under "hot pursuit" rules of engagement, these sources said.

Contingency plans for such raids were being drawn up by Doug Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, after the approval of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, these sources said on condition of anonymity.

But the stern refusal to expand US military actions in Iraq to another country came from national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, backed by the president's chief domestic adviser, Karl Rove, and Secretary of State Colin Powell, according to the sources.

One proponent of the plans disagreed: "I saw no reason why we shouldn't have gone in. Powell wanted to return to regular bilateral relations with states in the area, but the balance of power (in the region) had changed, and we had the troops and we had the momentum.

"Rice's message was quite succinct: There will be no further military adventures during the remainder of the president's first term," one senior administration official said.

Another source with close knowledge of the White House meetings said: "The hawks didn't understand the emphasis had all changed: Everything was focused, not on the war any more, but on the president's re-election."

This official added that Rove had handled the elections of 2002 on the basis that "the American public knew the economy was a disaster, but the president asked them to put the war on terror first, and to vote Republican. And the public voted Republican. We think he felt any movement into Syria was pushing his luck."

Government spokesmen did not return calls from UPI seeking comment.

The hawks proposed punitive raids because Syria and the United States already were bristling at each other, and the war simply took an unfortunate series of circumstances and brought them to a point of crisis, administration sources said.

In spite of Syria's heightened cooperation in the war on terror, with Syria giving the United States much useful information about al-Qaida, it was still supporting Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in the war.

In an April 13 Washington Post report, Powell issued a harsh warning to Syria against giving safe haven to Iraqi officials fleeing Baghdad. At a Pentagon press conference, Rumsfeld charged, "We are getting scraps of intelligence saying that Syria has been cooperating in facilitating the move (of senior members of Saddam Hussein's regime) from Iraq to Syria."

He warned that arms and supplies were moving into Iraq from Syria as well. Syria replied strongly that such charges were "baseless."

In an interview with The Washington Times, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was quoted as saying: "Syria is shipping killers into Iraq to kill Americans."

There was some truth to this, say serving and former U.S. intelligence officials.

Former senior CIA officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told UPI that U.S. combat forces in Iraq detained at least 700 Lebanon-based Hezbollah fighters who came in buses over the Syrian border to fight against the U.S. coalition.

In one incident, a bus filled with Lebanese Hezbollah militants stopped in Iraq included two dozen Chechen terrorists, a very former senior agency official said.

He added that another 100 members of Hezbollah are being detained at a camp at Tanaa in Iraq. After stern U.S. warnings, Syria tightened up scrutiny at checkpoints, but more Hezbollah and jihadis "simply went over the border" with weapons and explosives, he said.

"We were seeing some very disturbing signs of plans for anti-U.S. activity" on the part of the Hezbollah, another administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

(Naim Qassem, Hezbollah's deputy secretary general, told UPI's Claude Salhani in an interview in Beiurt last week, "We are not a threat to anyone." Qassem said that although now he felt Hezbollah was stronger politically and militarily than ever, it was not to attack anyone, "but only to defend ourselves.")

The hawks also saw Syria as the only remaining military threat to Israel.

Former CIA Middle East expert Bob Baer told UPI that Syria possesses "a chemical arsenal that is much more lethal than anything Saddam has," and explained that "in Israeli strategic thought, the most dangerous threat is the geographically closest" -- which would mean Syria.

According to an April 18 report in Middle East International, Israeli intelligence chief Gen. Rossi Kupperwasser told a Knesset committee, "It is possible that Iraq has transferred missiles and weapons of mass destruction into Syria."

UPI previously reported that U.S. intelligence agencies believe that rogue elements of Syria's ruling elite have accepted millions of dollars in bribes in return for providing a safe haven for some of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, according to U.S. administration officials, both former and serving.

Chemical and biological weapons were taken by truck to a Syrian munitions compound near a military base near Khan Abu Shamet, about 50 miles northeast of Damascus, these officials told UPI. The chief suspects in the operation are Bushra Assad, the sister of Syrian President Bashar Assad, and her husband, Gen. Assaf Chawkat, No. 2 in Syria's military intelligence organization, the Mukhabarat.

The latest Pentagon press for action against Damascus was bolstered by the visit of Israeli National Security Adviser Efrian Halevy, who visited Washington on April 12-14, invited by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, according to Israeli Embassy officials.

According to a Haaretz report of April 13, Halevy and another senior aide to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Dov Weisglass, were visiting Washington to "suggest that the United States take care of Iran and Syria because of their support for terror and pursuit of weapons of mass destruction."

The report added: "Israel will point out the support of Syria and Iran for Hezbollah."

The meeting with Halevy took place in the president's conference room with only top NSC officials and White House advisers in attendance, administration sources said.

In response to Halevy's entreaties for action, Rice repeated her assertion of no more military adventures for the rest of Bush's first term, according to sources with knowledge of the meeting. They said Rumsfeld objected, and, at one point, turned to Rove and asked his opinion. Rove said the president agreed with Rice, and the meeting came to an end.

On April 15, the Washington Post quoted Rice as saying of Syria, "The president has made clear that every problem in the Middle East cannot be dealt with in the same way."

A side-by-side comparison of the two articles is here.

News article copyright 2003 UPI/News World Communications/Rev. Sun Myung Moon. Reprinted here for the purposes of education, media criticism, and political comment.

posted 06 May 2003 | thanks to Mark

>>> In "'Good American' Revisionism" (Christian Science Monitor, 29 April 2003), David Kirby writes:

Curiously, recent revelations show that the very architects of the Vietnam war were opposed to it.

In 1995, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara confessed in his memoirs that he had known the war was wrong.

And from Michael Beschloss's "Reaching for Glory: The Secret Lyndon Johnson Tapes, 1964-1965," we learn that, very early in the war, Johnson confessed, "I don't think it's worth fighting for, and I don't think we can get out."

Now they tell us? Now, after more than 200,000 American casualties and countless more on the other side? After the scarring at home, the destruction of whole families, the carving of a division that still hasn't healed?

posted 06 May 2003

>>> NASA has a very good track record for complying with Freedom of Information Act requests, and its Inspector General's Office—which is extremely cooperative—has recently released a lot of files. However, it declined to declassify these five reports:

G-00-010: Management Alert, Network Operations Centers

G-00-018: Management Alert, Data Remaining on Loaner Laptop Hard Drives

G-98-011: Letter to the Administrator, Information: Flight Termination Systems Assessment

G-98-019: Management Alert: Improper Disposal of Secure Equipment

G-99-007: Assessment of NASA's Automated Systems Incident Response Capability

posted 02 May 2003

>>> The New York Post is reporting on Larry Flynt's efforts to snatch a rumored videotape from the memory hole:

TALE OF BUSH TWIN IN THE BUFF
Richard Johnson with Paula Froelich and Chris Wilson

April 29, 2003 -- HUSTLER magazine honcho Larry Flynt is hunting for a videotape rumored to show First Daughter Barbara Bush in the nude.
Flynt's cronies are scouring the New Haven, Conn., campus of Yale University, where Barbara, 21, is a student, in hopes of buying a video supposedly made at one of Yale's notorious "naked parties."

"We definitely have heard the story and we definitely have a rep over there but so far we have not been able to substantiate anything - yet," Flynt told PAGE SIX yesterday. "But usually where there's smoke, there's fire, so we're still looking."

A source says Barbara has attended plenty of the bare-all bacchanals, a Yale tradition in which overworked Ivy Leaguers relieve stress by doffing their duds and drinking some suds.

The footage in question was allegedly taken at a naked party several months ago, and Flynt's foot soldiers have been in talks with a student who says he is friends with the guy who has the tape.

"Flynt offered the person $1 million," says our source. "But he doesn't have it - he says his friend does. So it's kind of in limbo."

The full article—which will probably be quickly moved into the pay-archives—is here.

posted 02 May 2003

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