theurbanhermit (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} theurbanhermit) wrote,@ 2008-04-03 00:08:00 |
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3282
seems HUMF tweaking - now that the verizon internet page is no longer the start up internet site, has taken over livejournal, for i opened the journal again and found today's spotlight:
In Spotlight This Week:
Sponsored Community
hpcreate
Can you name that tune? Come test your song knowledge, and share your top songs of all time.
boxbrown
See a comic from artist Box Brown 5 times a week
thinkpositive30
Every day for at least 30 days, come post a positive thought
backyard_birds
Share photos of birds from where you live
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box brown (mother's maiden name - see joe wackrow and manly sims especially herein also); think positiove? the new HU pcych/McLean approach (and Mr. Kelly from salarmy, with ME ties here too - ah, the maybe wanna pull out of the black bull sean kelly?); and backyard birds? I've a lot of three crow pictures . . . I evenee mentioned a three-crow incident at the southern campsite . . . see previous entries. . .
brian got not a wink of response yesterday when he noted that the classical music I was listening to was "elitist" - curiously, that was the same thing I told the Key Bank teller when she demanded a thumbprint to cash the "you did something nice" check at DDs in 2005 . . . see previous entries. . .
boston.com:
20 city pensions hit six figures
Error kept top earners off the list
By Joe Dwinell and Dave Wedge | Thursday, March 27, 2008 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Local Politics
Photo by Lisa Hornak (file)
Due to a gross clerical error, the Boston Retirement Board failed to report this week that 20 former city employees are raking in more than $100,000-plus in annual pensions.
The board, in responding to a Herald public records request, sliced off a digit, incorrectly listing the top earners as taking home a fraction of their allotted pensions.
“The program used to gather the pension amounts truncated the first figure of all six-figure pensions,” the retirement board stated in an e-mail to the Herald.
Basically, a “zero was cut,” said a city aide.
The error was caught by the board yesterday, and high-flying Boston golden parachutes were properly accounted for, including:
• Former Boston school Superintendent Michael Contompasis, who brings home a $139,800-a-year pension while continuing to work as a top aide to Mayor Thomas M. Menino. Contompasis, who retired last fall, serves as Menino’s director of intergovernmental affairs and is paid $65,000 annually.
Asked why Menino would hire Contompasis when he is already the city’s top pension recipient, spokeswoman Dot Joyce said: “He’s a valuable resource to the city of Boston with a lot of contacts and experience.”
• Former Police Commissioner Paul Evans, who earns an annual pension of $118,302.
• Former police superintendent Bobbie Johnson, pulling in a $133,982 pension.
• Former deputy school superintendent Juliette Johnson, with a $100,016 annual check.
For the updated Boston pension report, go to the “Your Tax Dollars at Work” report on bostonherald.com
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/region
Related Articles:
‘Ords’ in Mumbles’ favor for big pension payout
/news/opinion/columnists/view.bg?article
Call MCAS failure
/news/opinion/letters/view.bg?articleid=1
Troopers not to blame
/news/opinion/letters/view.bg?articleid=1
===============
just the people the HUMF'd buy, eh? see previous entries. . .
nytimes.com:
March 27, 2008
Salmon Virus Indicts Chile’s Fishing Methods
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
PUERTO MONTT, Chile — Looking out over the low green mountains jutting through miles of placid waterways here in southern Chile, it is hard to imagine that anything could be amiss. But beneath the rows of neatly laid netting around the fish farms just off the shore, the salmon are dying.
A virus called infectious salmon anemia, or I.S.A., is killing millions of salmon destined for export to Japan, Europe and the United States. The spreading plague has sent shivers through Chile’s third-largest export industry, which has left local people embittered by laying off more than 1,000 workers.
It has also opened the companies to fresh charges from biologists and environmentalists who say that the breeding of salmon in crowded underwater pens is contaminating once-pristine waters and producing potentially unhealthy fish.
Some say the industry is raising its fish in ways that court disaster, and producers are coming under new pressure to change their methods to preserve southern Chile’s cobalt blue waters for tourists and other marine life.
“All these problems are related to an underlying lack of sanitary controls,” said Dr. Felipe C. Cabello, a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at New York Medical College in Valhalla that has studied Chile’s fishing industry. “Parasitic infections, viral infections, fungal infections are all disseminated when the fish are stressed and the centers are too close together.”
Industry executives acknowledge some of the problems, but they reject the notion that their practices are unsafe for consumers. American officials also say the new virus is not harmful to humans.
But the latest outbreak has occurred after a rash of nonviral illnesses in recent years that the companies acknowledge have led them to use high levels of antibiotics. Researchers say the practice is widespread in the Chilean industry, which is a mix of international and Chilean producers. Some of those antibiotics, they say, are prohibited for use on animals in the United States.
Many of those salmon still end up in American grocery stores, where about 29 percent of Chilean exports are destined. While fish from China have come under special scrutiny in recent months, here in Chile regulators have yet to form a registry that even tracks the use of the drugs, researchers said.
The new virus is spreading, but it has primarily affected the fish of Marine Harvest, a Norwegian company that is the world’s biggest producer of farm-raised salmon and exports about 20 percent of the salmon that come from Chile.
Salmon produced in Chile by Marine Harvest are sold in Costco and Safeway stores, among other major grocery retailers, said Torben Petersen, the managing director of Marine Harvest here.
Arne Hjeltnes, the main spokesman in Oslo for Marine Harvest, said that his company recognized that antibiotic use was too high in Chile and that fish pens too close together had contributed to the problems. He said Marine Harvest welcomed tougher environmental regulations.
“Some people have advocated that this industry is too good to be true,” Mr. Hjeltnes said. “But as long as everybody has been making lots of money and it has been going very well, there has been no reason to take tough measures.”
He called the current crisis “eye-opening” to the different measures that are needed.
On a recent visit to the port of Castro, about 105 miles south of Puerto Montt, a warehouse contained hundreds of bags, some weighing as much as 2,750 pounds, filled with salmon food and medication.
The bags — many of which were labeled “Marine Harvest” and “medicated food” for the fish — contained antibiotics and pigment as well as hormones to make the fish grow faster, said Adolfo Flores, the port director.
Environmentalists say the salmon are being farmed for export at the expense of almost everything else around. The equivalent of 7 to 11 pounds of fresh fish are required to produce 2 pounds of farmed salmon, according to estimates.
Salmon feces and food pellets are stripping the water of oxygen, killing other marine life and spreading disease, biologists and environmentalists say. Escaped salmon are eating other fish species and have begun invading rivers and lakes as far away as neighboring Argentina, researchers say.
“It is simply not possible to produce fish on an industrial scale in a sustainable way,” said Wolfram Heise, director of the marine conservation program at the Pumalin Project, a private conservation initiative in Chile. “You will never get it into ecological balance.”
When companies began breeding non-native Atlantic salmon here some two decades ago, salmon farming was seen as a godsend for this sparsely populated area of sleepy fishing towns and campgrounds.
The industry has grown eightfold since 1990. Today it employs 53,000 people either directly or indirectly. Marine Harvest runs the world’s largest “closed system” fish-farming operation at Rio Blanco, near Puerto Montt, where 35 million fish a year are raised until they weigh about a third of an ounce.
As the industry abandons the Lakes region in search of uncontaminated waters elsewhere, local residents are angry and worried about their future.
The salmon companies “are robbing us of our wealth,” said Victor Guttierrez, a fisherman from Cochamó, a town ringing the Gulf of Reloncavi, which is dotted with salmon farms. “They bring illnesses and then leave us with the problems.”
Since discovering the virus in Chile last July, Marine Harvest has closed 14 of its 60 centers and announced it would lay off 1,200 workers, or one-quarter of its Chilean operation. Since the company announced last month that it would move south, to Aysén, the government has said the virus has spread there as well, in two outbreaks not involving Marine Harvest.
Industry officials say Chile is suffering growing pains similar to salmon farming operations in Norway, Scotland and the Faroe Islands, where a different form of the I.S.A. virus struck previously.
Norway, the world’s leading salmon producer, eventually decided to spread salmon farms farther apart, reducing stress on the fish, and responded to criticism of high antibiotic use with stronger regulations and the development of vaccines.
Researchers in Chile say the problems of salmon farming go well beyond the latest virus. Their concerns mirror those of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, which heavily criticized Chile’s farm-fishing industry in a 2005 report.
The O.E.C.D. said the industry needed to limit the escapes of about one million salmon a year; control the use of fungicides like green malachite, a carcinogen that was prohibited in 2002; and better regulate the colorant used to make salmon more rosy, which has been associated with retina problems in humans. It also said Chile’s use of antibiotics was “excessive.”
Officials at Sernapesca, Chile’s national fish agency, declined repeated requests for interviews for this article and did not respond to written questions submitted more than a week ago.
But Cesar Barros, the president of SalmonChile, an industry association, said, “We are working with the government to improve the situation.”
He dismissed the broader criticism of sanitary conditions, saying there was no scientific evidence to support the claims. But researchers charge that the industry has been reluctant to pay for scientific studies, which Chile sorely needs.
Residual antibiotics have been detected in Chilean salmon that have been exported to the United States, Canada and Europe, Dr. Cabello said.
He estimated that 70 to 300 times more antibiotics are used by salmon producers in Chile to produce a ton of salmon than in Norway. But no hard data exist to corroborate the estimates, he said, “because there is almost an underground market of antibiotics in Chile for salmon aquaculture.”
Researchers say that some antibiotics that are not allowed in American aquaculture, like flumequine and oxolinic acid, are legal in Chile and may increase antibiotic resistance for people. Last June the United States Food and Drug Administration blocked the sale of five types of Chinese seafood because of the use of fluoroquinolones and other additives.
But huge numbers of fish go uninspected. The F.D.A. inspected only 1.93 percent of all imported seafood in 2006, Food and Water Watch said, citing F.D.A. data.
Stephanie Kwisnek, a spokeswoman for the F.D.A., said that she did not know the percentage inspected. But she said the F.D.A. tested 40 samples of the 114,320 net tons of salmon imported from Chile in 2007. None of them tested positive for malachite green, oxolinic acid, flumequine, Ivermectin, fluoroquinolones or drug residues, she said.
The F.D.A. is planning an inspection trip to assess Chile’s overall controls on its farmed salmon, she added.
Mr. Petersen, the managing director of Marine Harvest in Chile, said the company planned to return to the Lakes region in a few years, once the area had become free of contamination. In the longer term, he said, Marine Harvest will leave Chile’s fresh-water lakes and produce more older salmon in closed systems where it can maintain “biological control.”
Meanwhile, neighboring fishermen who have been affected by the fish-farming industry can only hope for better days. Mr. Guttierrez, 33, said that just six years ago he and his fishing partner would haul in 1,100 pounds of robalo on a typical day. On a recent day he pointed to that morning’s catch of only 88 pounds in a cooler in the bed of a pickup truck.
He lamented the changes he had observed in the fish: they are rosier than before, and their skin is flabbier. He said he suspected that the wild fish were eating the same food pellets that the salmon were being fed, which he said were falling to the sea floor.
“If the water continues to be contaminated, we will simply have to go to another area to find our fish,” he said. “But it is getting harder and harder.”
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bees, bats, salmon . . . hmmmm . . .
nytimes.com:
March 27, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
Equal Alliance, Unequal Roles
By ROBERT D. KAPLAN
Stockbridge, Mass.
WITH NATO set to hold its annual summit next week in Bucharest, there is concern that the failure of Germany and other members to carry a larger share of the burden in Afghanistan is threatening the alliance’s future. Critics complain that it has become an unequal, two-tiered alliance, with the troops of the United States, Britain, Canada and Holland taking the combat role while Germany, Italy, Spain and other members take refuge in the safe areas, refusing to put their soldiers in danger.
It certainly isn’t fair. Yet predictions of NATO’s decline hold it to an impossible cold war standard. Then, a direct mortal threat to Central Europe in the form of Red Army divisions led to an all-for-one and one-for-all mentality. Now that the threat is more subtle and diverse, NATO’s mandate, structure and personality need to change accordingly.
NATO, two-tiers or not, potentially holds as much value to the United States in the multipolar future as it did in the cold war past. Indeed, as we look at the possibility of a “Pacific Century” featuring the rise of China as a great power, combined with a resurgent Russia across Eurasia, we should see that an American-European alliance is imperative.
Let’s face it, the threat of a Taliban comeback in Afghanistan is not of the same order as the threat Germany faced from the Soviet Union, so is it any wonder that Germany’s attitude has changed? Rather than bully the Germans into doing what they’re not very good at — counterinsurgency — in the violent south of Afghanistan, we should be grateful that they’re doing something they are good at — nation-building — in the relatively peaceful north.
The same holds for countries like Italy and Spain, whose troops are also restricted to northern Afghanistan. In the post-cold-war world, individual NATO members can’t be expected to automatically take part in missions outside the alliance’s traditional European sphere. Participation will be contingent on specific circumstances. And that will lead to an increasingly stratified alliance.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, NATO’s mandate has been a work in progress: from a sole focus on the defense of the European homeland to a three-dimensional engagement in global issues like terrorism, human rights abuses, military partnerships with fledgling democracies, energy security, nuclear proliferation and outbreaks of chaos.
This changing focus has necessitated a shift in structure, toward mobile rapid-reaction forces as opposed to cumbersome, conventional infantry units. Unfortunately, the future of the NATO Response Force, proposed in 2002 by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to serve just these needs, is now in some doubt because of the twin burdens of NATO deployments in Afghanistan and Kosovo and the inability of most alliance members to spend at least two percent of their gross domestic products on their militaries.
In these circumstances, countries like the United States and Britain will simply have to carry a heavier burden than others. But what of it? NATO has always operated as a multi-tiered organization. During the cold war, northern countries essentially ran the show while the southern ones went meekly along (except for Greece, which often protested loudly). France, in a fit of Gaullist pique, pulled out of NATO’s unified military structure in 1966, although it remains part of the alliance and took a place on the military committee in 1995.
Had there ever been a land war in Europe, American forces would have done the overwhelming amount of the fighting, so why should Afghanistan and future armed clashes be any different? NATO forces were never deployed in a war zone during the cold war, so the inequalities within the organization were masked. Now that its forces are taking the field, those inequalities are exposed. And especially as it expands to include smaller, weaker countries in Eastern and Central Europe, it is natural that NATO should be a multi-layered enterprise, to reflect the great differences in military capabilities and public opinion among its many members.
In fact, a two-tiered NATO has certain advantages for the United States. Eastward expansion acts as a bulwark against a neo-czarist Russia. Countries close to Russia like Poland and Romania feel NATO is every bit as vital as it was to Western Europe during the cold war, which is the real reason they’ve helped us in Iraq and Afghanistan. NATO membership represents a seal of good-product approval for former east bloc states seeking investment and stabilization.
The very fact that we’re even talking about Georgia and Ukraine joining NATO shows how dynamic the alliance still is on a political level. A two-tiered NATO still keeps a retrograde Serbia in a box; this reduces Russian interference in the Balkans to the level of a significant irritant rather than a strategic threat. NATO membership sets parameters for Turkey’s democratic experiment with Islamic rule, making it more likely to succeed in ways that the West can tolerate. NATO’s Partnership for Peace program, in which second-tier members like Germany participate, gives former Soviet republics in the Caucasus and Central Asia access to NATO training programs, which helps keep them from slipping closer into the Kremlin’s orbit.
The fact that NATO forces don’t fight nearly as impressively as the American military doesn’t make the alliance useless. Even without a legitimate rapid-reaction force, it is still by world standards a well-oiled, Western political-military machine with command and control protocols honed by six decades of existence. And it is certainly superior to anything the United Nations can muster.
In fact, through its ability to participate in out-of-area humanitarian emergencies, NATO still holds the key to a potential global constabulary force that could be led by the United States while at the same time relieving the American military of the burden of going it alone.
For now, however, we must also look to expand appropriate roles for NATO members not inclined toward combat. One option is sea power. Navies make port visits, they protect sea lanes, they allow for access during humanitarian emergencies. The French, Dutch, Norwegians, Germans and Spanish have all been making serious investments in new ships, especially frigates. With the United States Navy concentrating on competition from China in the Pacific, NATO could become the primary naval force to patrol the North Atlantic and Mediterranean.
NATO is never going to be a rubber stamp for American proposals like in the darkest days of the cold war. By getting bogged down in Iraq and consequently neglecting Afghanistan, the Bush administration has forced NATO members to bear a military responsibility that many in their heart of hearts do not feel is vital to their interests.
Embryonic European pacifism needs to be carefully managed, not just condemned. That is why we must push harder for the NATO Response Force. Europe’s aversion to conflict — and its tendency to reduce geopolitics to negotiations and regulatory disputes — has not prevented all 26 NATO members from taking part in some capacity in Afghanistan. Europe, merely because of its economic weight, is going to be a significant military power in the 21st century. Our goal should be for that military power to be expressed as much as possible through an American-led alliance.
The United States will have to forge plenty of other military alliances in the 21st century: area-specific ones for the Pacific and Indian oceans; and culturally specific ones, namely the core group of Anglo-Saxon nations that have borne the brunt of responsibility in Iraq and Afghanistan. But simply because NATO cannot be an alliance of equals does not mean that it won’t play a significant role in our grand strategy: to create a web of global arrangements and liberal institutions that will allow America to gradually retreat from its costly and risky position of overbearing dominance.
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on the china thing earlier. . . how many prominent HU folk herein ventuyre there? ah - and "The Day after tomorrow" and washington;s "manchuroan candidate" have been on of late . . .bothwere in the theaters when I first arrived in ME exile 07/05/04. . .
see previus entries. . .
washingtonpost.com:
Tupac Papers Were Phony, L.A. Times Says in Apology
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 28, 2008; C01
After spending months digging into the 1994 shooting of Tupac Shakur, the Los Angeles Times took just over 13 hours to admit that it had been duped.
The newspaper apologized yesterday for relying on what it now acknowledges were apparently bogus FBI documents that the Times reporter never attempted to verify with the bureau. The story, which tied the 1994 wounding of Shakur to associates of another major rap figure, Sean "Puffy" Combs, prompted threats of legal action from attorneys for Combs and a talent manager implicated in the piece.
"In relying on documents that I now believe were fake, I failed to do my job," Chuck Philips, the story's Pulitzer Prize-winning author, said in a statement. "I'm sorry." Deputy Managing Editor Marc Duvoisin also took responsibility, saying: "We should not have let ourselves be fooled. . . . I deeply regret that we let our readers down."
William Bastone, a veteran journalist who runs the Smoking Gun Web site, told Philips a day after the story was published last week that he had misgivings about the authenticity of the purported FBI document. "I'm hoping they're going to do some kind of detailed after-action report because there are still very significant questions about how this happened," said Bastone, whose report led to the apology.
Philips told his paper that he tried to check out the documents with the U.S. attorney's office in New York, which declined to comment, and a retired FBI agent, who said the papers looked legitimate, but he did not put the question directly to bureau officials.
The Smoking Gun said the phony documents were created by a con man, James Sabatino, now serving an 11 1/2 -year prison term for fraud, who, oddly enough, was implicated in the story as having been at a New York recording studio when Shakur was wounded. Sabatino was 18 at the time. Shakur was murdered two years later. Like the earlier shooting, that case has never been solved.
The story represents the biggest debacle at the Times since 1999, when the paper damaged its credibility by sharing profits with the Staples Center from a special magazine issue on the sports arena. It is also the most prominent blunder involving unverified documents since CBS News retracted its 2004 report about President Bush's National Guard service.
The Tupac piece was published a month after Russ Stanton took over as editor, in the wake of the parent Tribune Co. firing the paper's top editor for the second time in 15 months during disputes about budget cuts. Bob Steele, a scholar at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, said newsroom cutbacks may have had an impact, noting that the Times account said the story was read only by Duvoisin and two copy editors.
"For a paper like the L.A. Times to blow it, on what appear to be fake documents, is a very grievous journalistic error," Steele said. He credited the paper with quickly making amends but said "that doesn't erase the error."
Michael Parks, who was editor of the Times during the Staples controversy, said he always insisted that he and another top editor read all front-page stories in addition to the primary editor. While praising Philips as a usually thorough reporter, "they should have done more checking," said Parks, now director of the University of Southern California's School of Journalism. "Fake documents are not new, as CBS found out. . . . This calls into question in readers' minds whether they can believe things in the paper."
Stanton, who had been the paper's innovation editor, declined interview requests for the second straight day.
Howard Weitzman, a lawyer for Combs, now a businessman with his own clothing and fragrance lines, said yesterday: "The Los Angeles Times apology is, at best, a first step. But it doesn't undo the false and defamatory nature of the story, or the suspicion and innuendo that Mr. Combs has had to endure due to these untruthful allegations and the irresponsible conduct of this particular reporter."
In a letter to the Times publisher, Weitzman said he believes the "sole source" for the article was Sabatino, the imprisoned con man, and that the paper published the allegations either knowing that the allegations "were false or in 'reckless disregard' for the truth" -- the legal definition of "actual malice," a condition to establish libel. He said Combs may sue the Times.
Jeffrey Lichtman, a lawyer for rap-industry manager James "Jimmy Henchman" Rosemond, said the Times acted with "actual malice" and that his client is considering a lawsuit. The story said Rosemond and Sabatino set up Shakur in the attack.
In a letter to the Times late last year, Lichtman recalled, "I told them, publish it and you're going to get sued." He said the story "has done lasting damage, put Rosemond's life in danger," and called the Times "an arrogant, ridiculous, garbage, yellow-journalism newspaper."
Times spokeswoman Nancy Sullivan said the paper is investigating its mistakes in the matter but that yesterday's apology amounts to a retraction.
Bastone, by consulting former law-enforcement officials, quickly determined that the purported documents were typewritten; the FBI switched to computers three decades ago. He also found the papers filled with acronyms not generally used by the FBI and misspellings that matched errors in a lawsuit against Combs that Sabatino filed from prison.
A major unanswered question, Bastone said, is the identity of the confidential source who provided the documents to Philips. "Did that person actually exist," he asked, "or was it some kind of straw person that Jimmy Sabatino enlisted in this con he pulled off?"
Philips told the Times that he believed the purported summaries of FBI interviews were authentic because he had heard many of the same details in his reporting. Philips said in his statement that he "approached this article the same way I've approached every article I've ever written: in pursuit of the truth. I now believe the truth here is that I got duped."
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My bnotes aren;t fake, and that;'s why they were constantly stolen form the fake St. J. summer shelter . . . see previous entries. . .
boston.,com:
TJX settles with government over data breach, avoids fines
Email|Print| Text size – + March 27, 2008 04:18 PM
More than a year after millions of T.J. Maxx and Marshalls customers found out their credit card information had been hacked into, the discount stores' operator agreed to have its information audited but avoided paying federal fines.
TJX Cos. was one of three firms that agreed to settle charges that each "failed to provide reasonable and appropriate security for sensitive consumer information," federal regulators said today in two unrelated data-breach decisions. A copy of the TJX settlement can be viewed here.
Data broker Reed Elsevier PLC and its Seisint subsidiary also avoided fines but have agreed to obtain third-party audits biennially for 20 years under a separate settlement with the Federal Trade Commission.
The agreements, which will be finalized after a 30-day public comment period, also require the companies to implement comprehensive information security programs.
"These cases bring to 20 the number of complaints in which the FTC has charged companies with security deficiencies in protecting sensitive consumer information," FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras said in a release.
TJX said last March that at least 45.7 million cards were exposed to possible fraud in a breach of its computer systems. Court filings by banks that sued TJX estimated the number of cards affected at more than 100 million.
Sherry Lang, TJX's senior vice president for investor and public relations, said the company disagreed with the FTC's allegations, but agreed to the settlement "which is consistent with the agreements between the FTC and other retailers that have been victimized by cyber crime."
The Framingham, Mass.-based company's 2,500 stores include the T.J. Maxx and Marshalls chains.
"We have been at work for over a year implementing a comprehensive, improved information security program designed to protect the security, confidentiality and integrity of our customers' personal information," Lang said in a statement.
The FTC did not impose financial penalties against the companies because it lacks the authority to do so. The commission has asked Congress for such authority since 2005.
The breach is believed to have begun in mid-2005 but wasn't detected until December 2006. A judge on July 15 will consider whether to approve the settlement reached last September. The FTC said it coordinated its investigation of TJX with 39 state attorneys general, lead by Massachusetts.
(AP)
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headlines form boston.com a few days ago:
Barking Crab restaurant reopens
One dead, one injured, in Attleboro crash
Boston area 10th in US population | Sun Belt grows
Fright can be heard in engineer's voice on tapes
Lawmakers: Replace police with flagmen at work sites Discuss Police details needed at constructon sites?
Comcast to stop hampering file-sharing
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Comcast and file sharing - does this mean this computer? see previous entries on the comcast truck and employee running security for barbara wackrow that day . . .
boston.com:
Raytheon wins $203.3M Army contract
March 27, 2008
WASHINGTON --A Raytheon Co. business has won a $203.3 million contract to supply sighting and tracking systems to the Army, the Defense Department said late Wednesday.
Raytheon Network Centric Systems will supply the Army with "Improved Target Acquisition Systems," which are electro-optical systems that can be used to track targets. The systems are a component of the "Tube-Launched, Optically Tracked, Wire-Guided" -- or TOW -- weapon, a missile built by Raytheon.
The system greatly increases the accuracy of a successful missile hit. The Improved Target Acquisition System can also be used for surveillance.
Shares of Raytheon, based in Waltham, Mass., fell 70 cents to $64.15 Thursday.
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See previous entries for Raytheon connections (even the mother unit and the photographer at the museum offering cocceina. . . ). ..
oy . . .
boston.com:
McNamee warns students about his mistake
By Jimmy Golen, AP Sports Writer | March 27, 2008
EVERETT, Mass. --Former New York Yankees trainer Brian McNamee resurfaced to give a brief motivational speech to a small group of workout buffs on Thursday but refused to comment on the steroid scandal that landed him and his famous former client in front of Congress.
In his first public comments since testifying that he injected seven-time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone, McNamee gave about 25 high school athletes, coaches and parents a warning about mistakes that can tarnish one's reputation.
"My lifetime of actions can be defined by one singular monumental mistake," he said in a 12-minute talk at a friend's supplement store. "I believe firmly that everyone deserves a second chance. Every second chance needs a first step. Today, I'm taking that first step."
McNamee canceled sit-down interviews with a local television station and Associated Press reporter, saying, "I've got to think about my kids."
He did not elaborate, walking away and leaving through the back door as the lights were turned off.
McNamee was a key source for the Mitchell Report that laid bare the prevalence of steroids in baseball. Among those he admitted helping obtain steroids or HGH were Clemens and Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte.
Pettitte has admitted using HGH, but Clemens has denied the allegations.
McNamee did not mention steroids, the Mitchell Report or his Congressional testimony. He referred only indirectly to Clemens and their bizarre, recorded telephone conversation, joking at the start that he should probably ask for tape recorders to be turned off "because I'm not too fond of that lately."
Although McNamee said he was trying to learn from his mistakes, he did not say what they were. But he began his talk by acknowledging that he had not made his name the way he intended.
"Everyone knows who I am," he said. "I wish it was for better reasons."
Benches and folding chairs were laid out between chest-high stacks of supplements offering fat burners, horny goat weed, progesterone and darker tans -- the better to show off one's muscles in competition. In a glass case by the counter was a home test for cocaine.
The walls were covered with pictures of bodybuilders, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, and autographed photos of New England Patriots like Tedy Bruschi and the retired Doug Flutie. Former Boston Bruins goalie Gerry Cheevers was there in person.
On the ceiling were custom weightlifting belts bearing the brand of store owner Steve Cardillo, who said he first met McNamee when he was making belts for pro athletes and they've remained friends. McNamee decided to make his first public appearance as a favor and in an effort to raise money for a juvenile diabetes charity; a sign for "Brian's Buddies" was on the counter when McNamee spoke, but he did mention the cause in his talk.
Instead, he offered advice on how often and how long athletes in different sports should work out. He stressed the importance of school, and told the students in the store that they can learn from his mistakes, too.
"You have to be careful what you get yourself involved in," he said. "The best guide is to go with your gut feeling. If it doesn't feel right, you probably shouldn't be going."
McNamee gave tips on specific workouts and demonstrated the technique of a modified sit-up called "power abs" on Frankie Nuzzo, a 22-year-old linebacker at Brown University and former Everett High School player.
After speaking, McNamee signed certificates with the slogan, "A lifetime of achievements can be defined by a singular monumental mistake." The listeners eagerly lined up for his autograph.
"It's kind of sad that one mistake can make a perception change," Nuzzo said. "But you could tell he's a good guy, and he's ready to make amends."
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See previus entries. . . I thought it interesting his accident with the bus . . .
on th4e following, i sent myself this note:
"martinique? 203 777? how many sevens before the decimal point?" referring to the man lookng for coity hall a while back. . .
boston.com:
Ralph Martin says he will not run for mayor of Boston
March 27, 2008 01:55 PM
By Stephanie Ebbert and Sacha Pfeiffer, Globe Staff
Former Suffolk District Attorney Ralph C. Martin II today ended his flirtation with a campaign for mayor, instead accepting a promotion to run the Boston office of his international law firm.
His ascension appears to make him the first black managing partner of a major Boston law firm, a historic milestone in the city's legal community, where minorities have historically struggled to rise in the ranks. The management committee of Bingham McCutchen voted Tuesday to name Martin managing partner and announced the decision internally this afternoon.
"I've been joking with Ralph that I see his new job as mayor of the firm's Boston office," said Bingham McCutchen's chairman, Jay S. Zimmerman. "What that means is he's charged with listening to people, understanding their needs and concerns, and making sure our Boston office remains a vibrant internal community."
In choosing not to run for mayor, Martin, 55, said he could not get past concerns that politics would consume the next decade of his life, crowding out other interests until he was ready to retire.
"I’m way too ambivalent about it and if you’re ambivalent you shouldn’t do it," said Martin, who is married and has three children.
"They don’t give the jobs away. You’ve got to be willing to run for it. Running for it was not nearly as difficult a concept as spending the next 10 years of your life doing it," Martin said.
Zimmerman said he concluded several months ago that Martin would be ideal for the job, but didn't raise the issue with him because Martin was still weighing a run for mayor. It was only when Martin told him he would not become a mayoral candidate, Zimmerman said, that he raised the idea of Martin running the Boston office.
"I was not going to do it unless it was the right person," Zimmerman added, "and I can honestly say that if Ralph had made the decision to run for mayor, I wouldn't be filling the job right now."
In his new job, which is effective immediately, Martin will be responsible for a sweeping array of administrative duties, including overseeing the firm's move later this spring from 150 Federal Street to new offices at One Federal St.
He will continue to practice law -- his specialties are business litigation, white collar defense, and internal corporate investigations -- and he will remain the managing principal of Bingham Consulting Group, which does government relations work.
With his decision to forgo a campaign, Martin is effectively giving up politics. Once a rising star on the political scene, Martin left a decade of work as district attorney for a lucrative post at the law firm and the chairmanship of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. But with his atypical profile -- an African-American with ties to the business community who was elected in Suffolk County as a Republican -- he was always eyed for a comeback. And he had often said that the mayor's post would be the job that could lure him back into the political arena.
"Am I shutting the door on politics? Yeah, I think I probably am," Martin said.
Menino, who worked closely with Martin after he was appointed district attorney and who he put his political machine to work to help him reclaim the job in the next election, called Martin a friend who would continue to be involved in the city.
"I told him I'll keep on asking him to help us make this city a better city," Menino said.
The charismatic Martin had the potential to enliven the 2009 mayor's race after embarrassingly weak showings in two prior elections by challengers from city council. Two current city councilors -- Michael Flaherty and John Tobin -- are considering waging campaigns this year but face difficult odds if the mayor remains in the running, as did Martin.
"Mayor Menino is invincible at this point," said Jeffrey Berry, a professor of political science at Tufts University. "There is no candidate on the horizon who can effectively challenge him."
=========
I thought this of interest for the timing of his leaving the DAs . . . and also for the question of hte man in the 203 777 temp plate . . . martinique? could he have meant Martin Eek . . . Eek as in scared? as in the scare tactics of (bad) law enforcement? reinforces the thugs hereeabouts, Ed's continuously increasing insertion into my private life (with the aid of the HUMFers, see previous entries) . . . and so is law enforcement trying to coerce me? recall Ed's last choreographed walk by? the day the Jr. Pease here in Rockland passed with the "[Traffic noise] your back." Would fit wioth the owners chacking to see if I;d been scared off, the Travis and Val references to Gotti (Ogletree?), and the Nancxy/Brian high fives when I left work early two Thursday's ago. . . Internation Law? the Lewis building at HLS? see previous entries . . . that's scott;'s building . .
(and the 97 777 ME plate passed today . . . and there's a 7777 ME plate about, too . . . -- recall, 1977 was the year of the Church Committee - see previous entries). . .
I miss the boston globe sports pages (from boston.com):
DAN SHAUGHNESSY
Back to US in no time
By Dan Shaughnessy, Globe Columnist | March 27, 2008
LOS ANGELES - It is 6:50 Wednesday night in Los Angeles and I am thinking about Marvin Barnes.
You remember Marvin. Providence College. Final Four. Wasted potential. Bob Costas tells a story of his days with Marvin when both worked for the Spirits of St. Louis of the old ABA. There were a lot of short flights on small planes throughout the Midwest and one morning Marvin came at Costas, boarding pass in hand, and noted with some concern that the Spirits were taking off from Louisville at 8 a.m. and arriving at their destination (might have been Indianapolis) at 7:59 a.m.
"Ain't no way I'm getting on board no [expletive] time machine!" said Marvin.
The Red Sox, drive-time warriors of the Far East, know exactly how this feels. Without the aid of a flux capacitor, the Sox lost to the Oakland A's in Tokyo last night, flew out of Japan early this morning, and landed in Los Angeles early last evening. Marty McFly meets Manny Delcarmen.
"This trip was the best and the worst," said owner John Henry as he waited for baggage. Henry was one of the few who didn't sleep on the 12-hour flight from Tokyo to Los Angeles.
"I'm looking forward to having my first hamburger," added team chairman Tom Werner.
"There's still 10 minutes to get a bet down on last night's game," added a member of the traveling party who shall remain nameless.
So, Japan is over. Just about the time we were finally learning how to say konnichiwa (hello) it was time to say sayonara.
With Tokyo in the rearview mirror and the Sox returning to spring training for three games against the Dodgers, including Saturday's history-making Coliseum-palooza, which is expected to draw in excess of 115,000 fans, here's a look back at some of the memorable moments from Japan:
-- Highlight of the trip, hands down, was EMC CEO Joe Tucci having a catch with Hideki Okajima at a fancy reception at the Sox' New Otani Hotel headquarters Monday. While 2007 World Series clips were shown on a Green Monster-sized LED screen, assorted clients and dignitaries - most of them Japanese - feasted on sushi and fine wines. After a few speeches and interviews with Mike Lowell, Dustin Pedroia, Kevin Youkilis, and Terry Francona, a couple of fielding mitts were produced and Tucci lined up to play catch with the Sox' second-most-famous Japanese hurler. Standing in front of the giant screen, Okajima softly tossed to Tucci, who was about 20 feet away. Tucci made the catch, and before you could say, "Nuke LaLoosh," gunned a wild heater that sailed far high and wide of a sprawling Okajima and punctured the precious LED screen. I will never look at the EMC logo (which was on the Sox uniforms for the Japan games) without thinking of this.
-- Ballplayers' lives are different from yours and mine. Here's a snippet of a conversation overheard between two A's wives who were waiting for an elevator at the New Otani:
Wife No. 1: "I just don't think my husband gets much respect from the organization."
Wife No. 2: "You think you've got it bad? My husband doesn't even have his own bobblehead."
When was the last time your wife said that to anyone?
-- Ex-Red Sox pitchers fared pretty well in the two games. Keith "I Hate Baseball" Foulke and Alan Embree each pitched twice without giving up anything, and Lenny DiNardo was not scored upon in the opener. Embree fanned Jason Varitek to end last night's (or was it yesterday morning's?) game. Less than an hour later, while buses waited to take the teams to the airport, Embree strolled past the Sox' entourage and stopped to give Varitek a bear hug.
-- David Ortiz (0 for 7) looks frustrated. Tuesday he hit a one-hop bullet - a single to right by anyone else - that was nullified by the shift. Once in each game he hit a towering pop that was caught in the vast acreage of foul territory beyond the third base dugout. On any field other than Oakland and Tokyo, Ortiz's sky-high pops would have been in the stands.
-- Cadillac Manny already has five RBIs, an extra million yen, and a new Ricoh color copier ("Gonna put it in my house, man") from his MVP performance in the opener, but his posing at home plate is out of control. A price would have been paid in the old days. Not now. But prepare for some 400-foot singles.
-- The Sox brought 31 cases of baseballs (six dozen balls per case) to Japan, but were down to six cases going into yesterday's game and have ordered more for Los Angeles.
"With that fence [190 feet to left with a 62-foot-high net] in the Coliseum, we're going to need a lot of cases just to get through batting practice," said equipment czar Joe Cochran.
-- JFK speechwriter Dick Goodwin, and his historian wife, Doris Kearns Goodwin, flew to Japan with the commissioner of baseball and enjoyed the games from the commish's box. Not immune from Jerry Remy phobia (never leave the hotel when in a foreign land), they were seen dining at Trader Vic's.
-- Tokyo trains were still crowded and there was a traffic jam in a city tunnel when the Sox bused to Haneda Airport after 11 o'clock at night.
-- Still not sure what Schill was doing in Tokyo. I mean, how could he not have been on the trip to the US Embassy on Opening Day? Going for the Pulitzer in lieu of the Cy, Schill made every deadline with his blog, but I bet he'll never produce Tokyo and Los Angeles datelines in the same edition of the Boston Globe.
==============
seems HUMF tweaking - now that the verizon internet page is no longer the start up internet site, has taken over livejournal, for i opened the journal again and found today's spotlight:
In Spotlight This Week:
Sponsored Community
hpcreate
Can you name that tune? Come test your song knowledge, and share your top songs of all time.
boxbrown
See a comic from artist Box Brown 5 times a week
thinkpositive30
Every day for at least 30 days, come post a positive thought
backyard_birds
Share photos of birds from where you live
-------
box brown (mother's maiden name - see joe wackrow and manly sims especially herein also); think positiove? the new HU pcych/McLean approach (and Mr. Kelly from salarmy, with ME ties here too - ah, the maybe wanna pull out of the black bull sean kelly?); and backyard birds? I've a lot of three crow pictures . . . I evenee mentioned a three-crow incident at the southern campsite . . . see previous entries. . .
brian got not a wink of response yesterday when he noted that the classical music I was listening to was "elitist" - curiously, that was the same thing I told the Key Bank teller when she demanded a thumbprint to cash the "you did something nice" check at DDs in 2005 . . . see previous entries. . .
boston.com:
20 city pensions hit six figures
Error kept top earners off the list
By Joe Dwinell and Dave Wedge | Thursday, March 27, 2008 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Local Politics
Photo by Lisa Hornak (file)
Due to a gross clerical error, the Boston Retirement Board failed to report this week that 20 former city employees are raking in more than $100,000-plus in annual pensions.
The board, in responding to a Herald public records request, sliced off a digit, incorrectly listing the top earners as taking home a fraction of their allotted pensions.
“The program used to gather the pension amounts truncated the first figure of all six-figure pensions,” the retirement board stated in an e-mail to the Herald.
Basically, a “zero was cut,” said a city aide.
The error was caught by the board yesterday, and high-flying Boston golden parachutes were properly accounted for, including:
• Former Boston school Superintendent Michael Contompasis, who brings home a $139,800-a-year pension while continuing to work as a top aide to Mayor Thomas M. Menino. Contompasis, who retired last fall, serves as Menino’s director of intergovernmental affairs and is paid $65,000 annually.
Asked why Menino would hire Contompasis when he is already the city’s top pension recipient, spokeswoman Dot Joyce said: “He’s a valuable resource to the city of Boston with a lot of contacts and experience.”
• Former Police Commissioner Paul Evans, who earns an annual pension of $118,302.
• Former police superintendent Bobbie Johnson, pulling in a $133,982 pension.
• Former deputy school superintendent Juliette Johnson, with a $100,016 annual check.
For the updated Boston pension report, go to the “Your Tax Dollars at Work” report on bostonherald.com
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/region
Related Articles:
‘Ords’ in Mumbles’ favor for big pension payout
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Call MCAS failure
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Troopers not to blame
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===============
just the people the HUMF'd buy, eh? see previous entries. . .
nytimes.com:
March 27, 2008
Salmon Virus Indicts Chile’s Fishing Methods
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
PUERTO MONTT, Chile — Looking out over the low green mountains jutting through miles of placid waterways here in southern Chile, it is hard to imagine that anything could be amiss. But beneath the rows of neatly laid netting around the fish farms just off the shore, the salmon are dying.
A virus called infectious salmon anemia, or I.S.A., is killing millions of salmon destined for export to Japan, Europe and the United States. The spreading plague has sent shivers through Chile’s third-largest export industry, which has left local people embittered by laying off more than 1,000 workers.
It has also opened the companies to fresh charges from biologists and environmentalists who say that the breeding of salmon in crowded underwater pens is contaminating once-pristine waters and producing potentially unhealthy fish.
Some say the industry is raising its fish in ways that court disaster, and producers are coming under new pressure to change their methods to preserve southern Chile’s cobalt blue waters for tourists and other marine life.
“All these problems are related to an underlying lack of sanitary controls,” said Dr. Felipe C. Cabello, a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at New York Medical College in Valhalla that has studied Chile’s fishing industry. “Parasitic infections, viral infections, fungal infections are all disseminated when the fish are stressed and the centers are too close together.”
Industry executives acknowledge some of the problems, but they reject the notion that their practices are unsafe for consumers. American officials also say the new virus is not harmful to humans.
But the latest outbreak has occurred after a rash of nonviral illnesses in recent years that the companies acknowledge have led them to use high levels of antibiotics. Researchers say the practice is widespread in the Chilean industry, which is a mix of international and Chilean producers. Some of those antibiotics, they say, are prohibited for use on animals in the United States.
Many of those salmon still end up in American grocery stores, where about 29 percent of Chilean exports are destined. While fish from China have come under special scrutiny in recent months, here in Chile regulators have yet to form a registry that even tracks the use of the drugs, researchers said.
The new virus is spreading, but it has primarily affected the fish of Marine Harvest, a Norwegian company that is the world’s biggest producer of farm-raised salmon and exports about 20 percent of the salmon that come from Chile.
Salmon produced in Chile by Marine Harvest are sold in Costco and Safeway stores, among other major grocery retailers, said Torben Petersen, the managing director of Marine Harvest here.
Arne Hjeltnes, the main spokesman in Oslo for Marine Harvest, said that his company recognized that antibiotic use was too high in Chile and that fish pens too close together had contributed to the problems. He said Marine Harvest welcomed tougher environmental regulations.
“Some people have advocated that this industry is too good to be true,” Mr. Hjeltnes said. “But as long as everybody has been making lots of money and it has been going very well, there has been no reason to take tough measures.”
He called the current crisis “eye-opening” to the different measures that are needed.
On a recent visit to the port of Castro, about 105 miles south of Puerto Montt, a warehouse contained hundreds of bags, some weighing as much as 2,750 pounds, filled with salmon food and medication.
The bags — many of which were labeled “Marine Harvest” and “medicated food” for the fish — contained antibiotics and pigment as well as hormones to make the fish grow faster, said Adolfo Flores, the port director.
Environmentalists say the salmon are being farmed for export at the expense of almost everything else around. The equivalent of 7 to 11 pounds of fresh fish are required to produce 2 pounds of farmed salmon, according to estimates.
Salmon feces and food pellets are stripping the water of oxygen, killing other marine life and spreading disease, biologists and environmentalists say. Escaped salmon are eating other fish species and have begun invading rivers and lakes as far away as neighboring Argentina, researchers say.
“It is simply not possible to produce fish on an industrial scale in a sustainable way,” said Wolfram Heise, director of the marine conservation program at the Pumalin Project, a private conservation initiative in Chile. “You will never get it into ecological balance.”
When companies began breeding non-native Atlantic salmon here some two decades ago, salmon farming was seen as a godsend for this sparsely populated area of sleepy fishing towns and campgrounds.
The industry has grown eightfold since 1990. Today it employs 53,000 people either directly or indirectly. Marine Harvest runs the world’s largest “closed system” fish-farming operation at Rio Blanco, near Puerto Montt, where 35 million fish a year are raised until they weigh about a third of an ounce.
As the industry abandons the Lakes region in search of uncontaminated waters elsewhere, local residents are angry and worried about their future.
The salmon companies “are robbing us of our wealth,” said Victor Guttierrez, a fisherman from Cochamó, a town ringing the Gulf of Reloncavi, which is dotted with salmon farms. “They bring illnesses and then leave us with the problems.”
Since discovering the virus in Chile last July, Marine Harvest has closed 14 of its 60 centers and announced it would lay off 1,200 workers, or one-quarter of its Chilean operation. Since the company announced last month that it would move south, to Aysén, the government has said the virus has spread there as well, in two outbreaks not involving Marine Harvest.
Industry officials say Chile is suffering growing pains similar to salmon farming operations in Norway, Scotland and the Faroe Islands, where a different form of the I.S.A. virus struck previously.
Norway, the world’s leading salmon producer, eventually decided to spread salmon farms farther apart, reducing stress on the fish, and responded to criticism of high antibiotic use with stronger regulations and the development of vaccines.
Researchers in Chile say the problems of salmon farming go well beyond the latest virus. Their concerns mirror those of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, which heavily criticized Chile’s farm-fishing industry in a 2005 report.
The O.E.C.D. said the industry needed to limit the escapes of about one million salmon a year; control the use of fungicides like green malachite, a carcinogen that was prohibited in 2002; and better regulate the colorant used to make salmon more rosy, which has been associated with retina problems in humans. It also said Chile’s use of antibiotics was “excessive.”
Officials at Sernapesca, Chile’s national fish agency, declined repeated requests for interviews for this article and did not respond to written questions submitted more than a week ago.
But Cesar Barros, the president of SalmonChile, an industry association, said, “We are working with the government to improve the situation.”
He dismissed the broader criticism of sanitary conditions, saying there was no scientific evidence to support the claims. But researchers charge that the industry has been reluctant to pay for scientific studies, which Chile sorely needs.
Residual antibiotics have been detected in Chilean salmon that have been exported to the United States, Canada and Europe, Dr. Cabello said.
He estimated that 70 to 300 times more antibiotics are used by salmon producers in Chile to produce a ton of salmon than in Norway. But no hard data exist to corroborate the estimates, he said, “because there is almost an underground market of antibiotics in Chile for salmon aquaculture.”
Researchers say that some antibiotics that are not allowed in American aquaculture, like flumequine and oxolinic acid, are legal in Chile and may increase antibiotic resistance for people. Last June the United States Food and Drug Administration blocked the sale of five types of Chinese seafood because of the use of fluoroquinolones and other additives.
But huge numbers of fish go uninspected. The F.D.A. inspected only 1.93 percent of all imported seafood in 2006, Food and Water Watch said, citing F.D.A. data.
Stephanie Kwisnek, a spokeswoman for the F.D.A., said that she did not know the percentage inspected. But she said the F.D.A. tested 40 samples of the 114,320 net tons of salmon imported from Chile in 2007. None of them tested positive for malachite green, oxolinic acid, flumequine, Ivermectin, fluoroquinolones or drug residues, she said.
The F.D.A. is planning an inspection trip to assess Chile’s overall controls on its farmed salmon, she added.
Mr. Petersen, the managing director of Marine Harvest in Chile, said the company planned to return to the Lakes region in a few years, once the area had become free of contamination. In the longer term, he said, Marine Harvest will leave Chile’s fresh-water lakes and produce more older salmon in closed systems where it can maintain “biological control.”
Meanwhile, neighboring fishermen who have been affected by the fish-farming industry can only hope for better days. Mr. Guttierrez, 33, said that just six years ago he and his fishing partner would haul in 1,100 pounds of robalo on a typical day. On a recent day he pointed to that morning’s catch of only 88 pounds in a cooler in the bed of a pickup truck.
He lamented the changes he had observed in the fish: they are rosier than before, and their skin is flabbier. He said he suspected that the wild fish were eating the same food pellets that the salmon were being fed, which he said were falling to the sea floor.
“If the water continues to be contaminated, we will simply have to go to another area to find our fish,” he said. “But it is getting harder and harder.”
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bees, bats, salmon . . . hmmmm . . .
nytimes.com:
March 27, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
Equal Alliance, Unequal Roles
By ROBERT D. KAPLAN
Stockbridge, Mass.
WITH NATO set to hold its annual summit next week in Bucharest, there is concern that the failure of Germany and other members to carry a larger share of the burden in Afghanistan is threatening the alliance’s future. Critics complain that it has become an unequal, two-tiered alliance, with the troops of the United States, Britain, Canada and Holland taking the combat role while Germany, Italy, Spain and other members take refuge in the safe areas, refusing to put their soldiers in danger.
It certainly isn’t fair. Yet predictions of NATO’s decline hold it to an impossible cold war standard. Then, a direct mortal threat to Central Europe in the form of Red Army divisions led to an all-for-one and one-for-all mentality. Now that the threat is more subtle and diverse, NATO’s mandate, structure and personality need to change accordingly.
NATO, two-tiers or not, potentially holds as much value to the United States in the multipolar future as it did in the cold war past. Indeed, as we look at the possibility of a “Pacific Century” featuring the rise of China as a great power, combined with a resurgent Russia across Eurasia, we should see that an American-European alliance is imperative.
Let’s face it, the threat of a Taliban comeback in Afghanistan is not of the same order as the threat Germany faced from the Soviet Union, so is it any wonder that Germany’s attitude has changed? Rather than bully the Germans into doing what they’re not very good at — counterinsurgency — in the violent south of Afghanistan, we should be grateful that they’re doing something they are good at — nation-building — in the relatively peaceful north.
The same holds for countries like Italy and Spain, whose troops are also restricted to northern Afghanistan. In the post-cold-war world, individual NATO members can’t be expected to automatically take part in missions outside the alliance’s traditional European sphere. Participation will be contingent on specific circumstances. And that will lead to an increasingly stratified alliance.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, NATO’s mandate has been a work in progress: from a sole focus on the defense of the European homeland to a three-dimensional engagement in global issues like terrorism, human rights abuses, military partnerships with fledgling democracies, energy security, nuclear proliferation and outbreaks of chaos.
This changing focus has necessitated a shift in structure, toward mobile rapid-reaction forces as opposed to cumbersome, conventional infantry units. Unfortunately, the future of the NATO Response Force, proposed in 2002 by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to serve just these needs, is now in some doubt because of the twin burdens of NATO deployments in Afghanistan and Kosovo and the inability of most alliance members to spend at least two percent of their gross domestic products on their militaries.
In these circumstances, countries like the United States and Britain will simply have to carry a heavier burden than others. But what of it? NATO has always operated as a multi-tiered organization. During the cold war, northern countries essentially ran the show while the southern ones went meekly along (except for Greece, which often protested loudly). France, in a fit of Gaullist pique, pulled out of NATO’s unified military structure in 1966, although it remains part of the alliance and took a place on the military committee in 1995.
Had there ever been a land war in Europe, American forces would have done the overwhelming amount of the fighting, so why should Afghanistan and future armed clashes be any different? NATO forces were never deployed in a war zone during the cold war, so the inequalities within the organization were masked. Now that its forces are taking the field, those inequalities are exposed. And especially as it expands to include smaller, weaker countries in Eastern and Central Europe, it is natural that NATO should be a multi-layered enterprise, to reflect the great differences in military capabilities and public opinion among its many members.
In fact, a two-tiered NATO has certain advantages for the United States. Eastward expansion acts as a bulwark against a neo-czarist Russia. Countries close to Russia like Poland and Romania feel NATO is every bit as vital as it was to Western Europe during the cold war, which is the real reason they’ve helped us in Iraq and Afghanistan. NATO membership represents a seal of good-product approval for former east bloc states seeking investment and stabilization.
The very fact that we’re even talking about Georgia and Ukraine joining NATO shows how dynamic the alliance still is on a political level. A two-tiered NATO still keeps a retrograde Serbia in a box; this reduces Russian interference in the Balkans to the level of a significant irritant rather than a strategic threat. NATO membership sets parameters for Turkey’s democratic experiment with Islamic rule, making it more likely to succeed in ways that the West can tolerate. NATO’s Partnership for Peace program, in which second-tier members like Germany participate, gives former Soviet republics in the Caucasus and Central Asia access to NATO training programs, which helps keep them from slipping closer into the Kremlin’s orbit.
The fact that NATO forces don’t fight nearly as impressively as the American military doesn’t make the alliance useless. Even without a legitimate rapid-reaction force, it is still by world standards a well-oiled, Western political-military machine with command and control protocols honed by six decades of existence. And it is certainly superior to anything the United Nations can muster.
In fact, through its ability to participate in out-of-area humanitarian emergencies, NATO still holds the key to a potential global constabulary force that could be led by the United States while at the same time relieving the American military of the burden of going it alone.
For now, however, we must also look to expand appropriate roles for NATO members not inclined toward combat. One option is sea power. Navies make port visits, they protect sea lanes, they allow for access during humanitarian emergencies. The French, Dutch, Norwegians, Germans and Spanish have all been making serious investments in new ships, especially frigates. With the United States Navy concentrating on competition from China in the Pacific, NATO could become the primary naval force to patrol the North Atlantic and Mediterranean.
NATO is never going to be a rubber stamp for American proposals like in the darkest days of the cold war. By getting bogged down in Iraq and consequently neglecting Afghanistan, the Bush administration has forced NATO members to bear a military responsibility that many in their heart of hearts do not feel is vital to their interests.
Embryonic European pacifism needs to be carefully managed, not just condemned. That is why we must push harder for the NATO Response Force. Europe’s aversion to conflict — and its tendency to reduce geopolitics to negotiations and regulatory disputes — has not prevented all 26 NATO members from taking part in some capacity in Afghanistan. Europe, merely because of its economic weight, is going to be a significant military power in the 21st century. Our goal should be for that military power to be expressed as much as possible through an American-led alliance.
The United States will have to forge plenty of other military alliances in the 21st century: area-specific ones for the Pacific and Indian oceans; and culturally specific ones, namely the core group of Anglo-Saxon nations that have borne the brunt of responsibility in Iraq and Afghanistan. But simply because NATO cannot be an alliance of equals does not mean that it won’t play a significant role in our grand strategy: to create a web of global arrangements and liberal institutions that will allow America to gradually retreat from its costly and risky position of overbearing dominance.
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on the china thing earlier. . . how many prominent HU folk herein ventuyre there? ah - and "The Day after tomorrow" and washington;s "manchuroan candidate" have been on of late . . .bothwere in the theaters when I first arrived in ME exile 07/05/04. . .
see previus entries. . .
washingtonpost.com:
Tupac Papers Were Phony, L.A. Times Says in Apology
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 28, 2008; C01
After spending months digging into the 1994 shooting of Tupac Shakur, the Los Angeles Times took just over 13 hours to admit that it had been duped.
The newspaper apologized yesterday for relying on what it now acknowledges were apparently bogus FBI documents that the Times reporter never attempted to verify with the bureau. The story, which tied the 1994 wounding of Shakur to associates of another major rap figure, Sean "Puffy" Combs, prompted threats of legal action from attorneys for Combs and a talent manager implicated in the piece.
"In relying on documents that I now believe were fake, I failed to do my job," Chuck Philips, the story's Pulitzer Prize-winning author, said in a statement. "I'm sorry." Deputy Managing Editor Marc Duvoisin also took responsibility, saying: "We should not have let ourselves be fooled. . . . I deeply regret that we let our readers down."
William Bastone, a veteran journalist who runs the Smoking Gun Web site, told Philips a day after the story was published last week that he had misgivings about the authenticity of the purported FBI document. "I'm hoping they're going to do some kind of detailed after-action report because there are still very significant questions about how this happened," said Bastone, whose report led to the apology.
Philips told his paper that he tried to check out the documents with the U.S. attorney's office in New York, which declined to comment, and a retired FBI agent, who said the papers looked legitimate, but he did not put the question directly to bureau officials.
The Smoking Gun said the phony documents were created by a con man, James Sabatino, now serving an 11 1/2 -year prison term for fraud, who, oddly enough, was implicated in the story as having been at a New York recording studio when Shakur was wounded. Sabatino was 18 at the time. Shakur was murdered two years later. Like the earlier shooting, that case has never been solved.
The story represents the biggest debacle at the Times since 1999, when the paper damaged its credibility by sharing profits with the Staples Center from a special magazine issue on the sports arena. It is also the most prominent blunder involving unverified documents since CBS News retracted its 2004 report about President Bush's National Guard service.
The Tupac piece was published a month after Russ Stanton took over as editor, in the wake of the parent Tribune Co. firing the paper's top editor for the second time in 15 months during disputes about budget cuts. Bob Steele, a scholar at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, said newsroom cutbacks may have had an impact, noting that the Times account said the story was read only by Duvoisin and two copy editors.
"For a paper like the L.A. Times to blow it, on what appear to be fake documents, is a very grievous journalistic error," Steele said. He credited the paper with quickly making amends but said "that doesn't erase the error."
Michael Parks, who was editor of the Times during the Staples controversy, said he always insisted that he and another top editor read all front-page stories in addition to the primary editor. While praising Philips as a usually thorough reporter, "they should have done more checking," said Parks, now director of the University of Southern California's School of Journalism. "Fake documents are not new, as CBS found out. . . . This calls into question in readers' minds whether they can believe things in the paper."
Stanton, who had been the paper's innovation editor, declined interview requests for the second straight day.
Howard Weitzman, a lawyer for Combs, now a businessman with his own clothing and fragrance lines, said yesterday: "The Los Angeles Times apology is, at best, a first step. But it doesn't undo the false and defamatory nature of the story, or the suspicion and innuendo that Mr. Combs has had to endure due to these untruthful allegations and the irresponsible conduct of this particular reporter."
In a letter to the Times publisher, Weitzman said he believes the "sole source" for the article was Sabatino, the imprisoned con man, and that the paper published the allegations either knowing that the allegations "were false or in 'reckless disregard' for the truth" -- the legal definition of "actual malice," a condition to establish libel. He said Combs may sue the Times.
Jeffrey Lichtman, a lawyer for rap-industry manager James "Jimmy Henchman" Rosemond, said the Times acted with "actual malice" and that his client is considering a lawsuit. The story said Rosemond and Sabatino set up Shakur in the attack.
In a letter to the Times late last year, Lichtman recalled, "I told them, publish it and you're going to get sued." He said the story "has done lasting damage, put Rosemond's life in danger," and called the Times "an arrogant, ridiculous, garbage, yellow-journalism newspaper."
Times spokeswoman Nancy Sullivan said the paper is investigating its mistakes in the matter but that yesterday's apology amounts to a retraction.
Bastone, by consulting former law-enforcement officials, quickly determined that the purported documents were typewritten; the FBI switched to computers three decades ago. He also found the papers filled with acronyms not generally used by the FBI and misspellings that matched errors in a lawsuit against Combs that Sabatino filed from prison.
A major unanswered question, Bastone said, is the identity of the confidential source who provided the documents to Philips. "Did that person actually exist," he asked, "or was it some kind of straw person that Jimmy Sabatino enlisted in this con he pulled off?"
Philips told the Times that he believed the purported summaries of FBI interviews were authentic because he had heard many of the same details in his reporting. Philips said in his statement that he "approached this article the same way I've approached every article I've ever written: in pursuit of the truth. I now believe the truth here is that I got duped."
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My bnotes aren;t fake, and that;'s why they were constantly stolen form the fake St. J. summer shelter . . . see previous entries. . .
boston.,com:
TJX settles with government over data breach, avoids fines
Email|Print| Text size – + March 27, 2008 04:18 PM
More than a year after millions of T.J. Maxx and Marshalls customers found out their credit card information had been hacked into, the discount stores' operator agreed to have its information audited but avoided paying federal fines.
TJX Cos. was one of three firms that agreed to settle charges that each "failed to provide reasonable and appropriate security for sensitive consumer information," federal regulators said today in two unrelated data-breach decisions. A copy of the TJX settlement can be viewed here.
Data broker Reed Elsevier PLC and its Seisint subsidiary also avoided fines but have agreed to obtain third-party audits biennially for 20 years under a separate settlement with the Federal Trade Commission.
The agreements, which will be finalized after a 30-day public comment period, also require the companies to implement comprehensive information security programs.
"These cases bring to 20 the number of complaints in which the FTC has charged companies with security deficiencies in protecting sensitive consumer information," FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras said in a release.
TJX said last March that at least 45.7 million cards were exposed to possible fraud in a breach of its computer systems. Court filings by banks that sued TJX estimated the number of cards affected at more than 100 million.
Sherry Lang, TJX's senior vice president for investor and public relations, said the company disagreed with the FTC's allegations, but agreed to the settlement "which is consistent with the agreements between the FTC and other retailers that have been victimized by cyber crime."
The Framingham, Mass.-based company's 2,500 stores include the T.J. Maxx and Marshalls chains.
"We have been at work for over a year implementing a comprehensive, improved information security program designed to protect the security, confidentiality and integrity of our customers' personal information," Lang said in a statement.
The FTC did not impose financial penalties against the companies because it lacks the authority to do so. The commission has asked Congress for such authority since 2005.
The breach is believed to have begun in mid-2005 but wasn't detected until December 2006. A judge on July 15 will consider whether to approve the settlement reached last September. The FTC said it coordinated its investigation of TJX with 39 state attorneys general, lead by Massachusetts.
(AP)
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headlines form boston.com a few days ago:
Barking Crab restaurant reopens
One dead, one injured, in Attleboro crash
Boston area 10th in US population | Sun Belt grows
Fright can be heard in engineer's voice on tapes
Lawmakers: Replace police with flagmen at work sites Discuss Police details needed at constructon sites?
Comcast to stop hampering file-sharing
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Comcast and file sharing - does this mean this computer? see previous entries on the comcast truck and employee running security for barbara wackrow that day . . .
boston.com:
Raytheon wins $203.3M Army contract
March 27, 2008
WASHINGTON --A Raytheon Co. business has won a $203.3 million contract to supply sighting and tracking systems to the Army, the Defense Department said late Wednesday.
Raytheon Network Centric Systems will supply the Army with "Improved Target Acquisition Systems," which are electro-optical systems that can be used to track targets. The systems are a component of the "Tube-Launched, Optically Tracked, Wire-Guided" -- or TOW -- weapon, a missile built by Raytheon.
The system greatly increases the accuracy of a successful missile hit. The Improved Target Acquisition System can also be used for surveillance.
Shares of Raytheon, based in Waltham, Mass., fell 70 cents to $64.15 Thursday.
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See previous entries for Raytheon connections (even the mother unit and the photographer at the museum offering cocceina. . . ). ..
oy . . .
boston.com:
McNamee warns students about his mistake
By Jimmy Golen, AP Sports Writer | March 27, 2008
EVERETT, Mass. --Former New York Yankees trainer Brian McNamee resurfaced to give a brief motivational speech to a small group of workout buffs on Thursday but refused to comment on the steroid scandal that landed him and his famous former client in front of Congress.
In his first public comments since testifying that he injected seven-time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone, McNamee gave about 25 high school athletes, coaches and parents a warning about mistakes that can tarnish one's reputation.
"My lifetime of actions can be defined by one singular monumental mistake," he said in a 12-minute talk at a friend's supplement store. "I believe firmly that everyone deserves a second chance. Every second chance needs a first step. Today, I'm taking that first step."
McNamee canceled sit-down interviews with a local television station and Associated Press reporter, saying, "I've got to think about my kids."
He did not elaborate, walking away and leaving through the back door as the lights were turned off.
McNamee was a key source for the Mitchell Report that laid bare the prevalence of steroids in baseball. Among those he admitted helping obtain steroids or HGH were Clemens and Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte.
Pettitte has admitted using HGH, but Clemens has denied the allegations.
McNamee did not mention steroids, the Mitchell Report or his Congressional testimony. He referred only indirectly to Clemens and their bizarre, recorded telephone conversation, joking at the start that he should probably ask for tape recorders to be turned off "because I'm not too fond of that lately."
Although McNamee said he was trying to learn from his mistakes, he did not say what they were. But he began his talk by acknowledging that he had not made his name the way he intended.
"Everyone knows who I am," he said. "I wish it was for better reasons."
Benches and folding chairs were laid out between chest-high stacks of supplements offering fat burners, horny goat weed, progesterone and darker tans -- the better to show off one's muscles in competition. In a glass case by the counter was a home test for cocaine.
The walls were covered with pictures of bodybuilders, including Arnold Schwarzenegger, and autographed photos of New England Patriots like Tedy Bruschi and the retired Doug Flutie. Former Boston Bruins goalie Gerry Cheevers was there in person.
On the ceiling were custom weightlifting belts bearing the brand of store owner Steve Cardillo, who said he first met McNamee when he was making belts for pro athletes and they've remained friends. McNamee decided to make his first public appearance as a favor and in an effort to raise money for a juvenile diabetes charity; a sign for "Brian's Buddies" was on the counter when McNamee spoke, but he did mention the cause in his talk.
Instead, he offered advice on how often and how long athletes in different sports should work out. He stressed the importance of school, and told the students in the store that they can learn from his mistakes, too.
"You have to be careful what you get yourself involved in," he said. "The best guide is to go with your gut feeling. If it doesn't feel right, you probably shouldn't be going."
McNamee gave tips on specific workouts and demonstrated the technique of a modified sit-up called "power abs" on Frankie Nuzzo, a 22-year-old linebacker at Brown University and former Everett High School player.
After speaking, McNamee signed certificates with the slogan, "A lifetime of achievements can be defined by a singular monumental mistake." The listeners eagerly lined up for his autograph.
"It's kind of sad that one mistake can make a perception change," Nuzzo said. "But you could tell he's a good guy, and he's ready to make amends."
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See previus entries. . . I thought it interesting his accident with the bus . . .
on th4e following, i sent myself this note:
"martinique? 203 777? how many sevens before the decimal point?" referring to the man lookng for coity hall a while back. . .
boston.com:
Ralph Martin says he will not run for mayor of Boston
March 27, 2008 01:55 PM
By Stephanie Ebbert and Sacha Pfeiffer, Globe Staff
Former Suffolk District Attorney Ralph C. Martin II today ended his flirtation with a campaign for mayor, instead accepting a promotion to run the Boston office of his international law firm.
His ascension appears to make him the first black managing partner of a major Boston law firm, a historic milestone in the city's legal community, where minorities have historically struggled to rise in the ranks. The management committee of Bingham McCutchen voted Tuesday to name Martin managing partner and announced the decision internally this afternoon.
"I've been joking with Ralph that I see his new job as mayor of the firm's Boston office," said Bingham McCutchen's chairman, Jay S. Zimmerman. "What that means is he's charged with listening to people, understanding their needs and concerns, and making sure our Boston office remains a vibrant internal community."
In choosing not to run for mayor, Martin, 55, said he could not get past concerns that politics would consume the next decade of his life, crowding out other interests until he was ready to retire.
"I’m way too ambivalent about it and if you’re ambivalent you shouldn’t do it," said Martin, who is married and has three children.
"They don’t give the jobs away. You’ve got to be willing to run for it. Running for it was not nearly as difficult a concept as spending the next 10 years of your life doing it," Martin said.
Zimmerman said he concluded several months ago that Martin would be ideal for the job, but didn't raise the issue with him because Martin was still weighing a run for mayor. It was only when Martin told him he would not become a mayoral candidate, Zimmerman said, that he raised the idea of Martin running the Boston office.
"I was not going to do it unless it was the right person," Zimmerman added, "and I can honestly say that if Ralph had made the decision to run for mayor, I wouldn't be filling the job right now."
In his new job, which is effective immediately, Martin will be responsible for a sweeping array of administrative duties, including overseeing the firm's move later this spring from 150 Federal Street to new offices at One Federal St.
He will continue to practice law -- his specialties are business litigation, white collar defense, and internal corporate investigations -- and he will remain the managing principal of Bingham Consulting Group, which does government relations work.
With his decision to forgo a campaign, Martin is effectively giving up politics. Once a rising star on the political scene, Martin left a decade of work as district attorney for a lucrative post at the law firm and the chairmanship of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. But with his atypical profile -- an African-American with ties to the business community who was elected in Suffolk County as a Republican -- he was always eyed for a comeback. And he had often said that the mayor's post would be the job that could lure him back into the political arena.
"Am I shutting the door on politics? Yeah, I think I probably am," Martin said.
Menino, who worked closely with Martin after he was appointed district attorney and who he put his political machine to work to help him reclaim the job in the next election, called Martin a friend who would continue to be involved in the city.
"I told him I'll keep on asking him to help us make this city a better city," Menino said.
The charismatic Martin had the potential to enliven the 2009 mayor's race after embarrassingly weak showings in two prior elections by challengers from city council. Two current city councilors -- Michael Flaherty and John Tobin -- are considering waging campaigns this year but face difficult odds if the mayor remains in the running, as did Martin.
"Mayor Menino is invincible at this point," said Jeffrey Berry, a professor of political science at Tufts University. "There is no candidate on the horizon who can effectively challenge him."
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I thought this of interest for the timing of his leaving the DAs . . . and also for the question of hte man in the 203 777 temp plate . . . martinique? could he have meant Martin Eek . . . Eek as in scared? as in the scare tactics of (bad) law enforcement? reinforces the thugs hereeabouts, Ed's continuously increasing insertion into my private life (with the aid of the HUMFers, see previous entries) . . . and so is law enforcement trying to coerce me? recall Ed's last choreographed walk by? the day the Jr. Pease here in Rockland passed with the "[Traffic noise] your back." Would fit wioth the owners chacking to see if I;d been scared off, the Travis and Val references to Gotti (Ogletree?), and the Nancxy/Brian high fives when I left work early two Thursday's ago. . . Internation Law? the Lewis building at HLS? see previous entries . . . that's scott;'s building . .
(and the 97 777 ME plate passed today . . . and there's a 7777 ME plate about, too . . . -- recall, 1977 was the year of the Church Committee - see previous entries). . .
I miss the boston globe sports pages (from boston.com):
DAN SHAUGHNESSY
Back to US in no time
By Dan Shaughnessy, Globe Columnist | March 27, 2008
LOS ANGELES - It is 6:50 Wednesday night in Los Angeles and I am thinking about Marvin Barnes.
You remember Marvin. Providence College. Final Four. Wasted potential. Bob Costas tells a story of his days with Marvin when both worked for the Spirits of St. Louis of the old ABA. There were a lot of short flights on small planes throughout the Midwest and one morning Marvin came at Costas, boarding pass in hand, and noted with some concern that the Spirits were taking off from Louisville at 8 a.m. and arriving at their destination (might have been Indianapolis) at 7:59 a.m.
"Ain't no way I'm getting on board no [expletive] time machine!" said Marvin.
The Red Sox, drive-time warriors of the Far East, know exactly how this feels. Without the aid of a flux capacitor, the Sox lost to the Oakland A's in Tokyo last night, flew out of Japan early this morning, and landed in Los Angeles early last evening. Marty McFly meets Manny Delcarmen.
"This trip was the best and the worst," said owner John Henry as he waited for baggage. Henry was one of the few who didn't sleep on the 12-hour flight from Tokyo to Los Angeles.
"I'm looking forward to having my first hamburger," added team chairman Tom Werner.
"There's still 10 minutes to get a bet down on last night's game," added a member of the traveling party who shall remain nameless.
So, Japan is over. Just about the time we were finally learning how to say konnichiwa (hello) it was time to say sayonara.
With Tokyo in the rearview mirror and the Sox returning to spring training for three games against the Dodgers, including Saturday's history-making Coliseum-palooza, which is expected to draw in excess of 115,000 fans, here's a look back at some of the memorable moments from Japan:
-- Highlight of the trip, hands down, was EMC CEO Joe Tucci having a catch with Hideki Okajima at a fancy reception at the Sox' New Otani Hotel headquarters Monday. While 2007 World Series clips were shown on a Green Monster-sized LED screen, assorted clients and dignitaries - most of them Japanese - feasted on sushi and fine wines. After a few speeches and interviews with Mike Lowell, Dustin Pedroia, Kevin Youkilis, and Terry Francona, a couple of fielding mitts were produced and Tucci lined up to play catch with the Sox' second-most-famous Japanese hurler. Standing in front of the giant screen, Okajima softly tossed to Tucci, who was about 20 feet away. Tucci made the catch, and before you could say, "Nuke LaLoosh," gunned a wild heater that sailed far high and wide of a sprawling Okajima and punctured the precious LED screen. I will never look at the EMC logo (which was on the Sox uniforms for the Japan games) without thinking of this.
-- Ballplayers' lives are different from yours and mine. Here's a snippet of a conversation overheard between two A's wives who were waiting for an elevator at the New Otani:
Wife No. 1: "I just don't think my husband gets much respect from the organization."
Wife No. 2: "You think you've got it bad? My husband doesn't even have his own bobblehead."
When was the last time your wife said that to anyone?
-- Ex-Red Sox pitchers fared pretty well in the two games. Keith "I Hate Baseball" Foulke and Alan Embree each pitched twice without giving up anything, and Lenny DiNardo was not scored upon in the opener. Embree fanned Jason Varitek to end last night's (or was it yesterday morning's?) game. Less than an hour later, while buses waited to take the teams to the airport, Embree strolled past the Sox' entourage and stopped to give Varitek a bear hug.
-- David Ortiz (0 for 7) looks frustrated. Tuesday he hit a one-hop bullet - a single to right by anyone else - that was nullified by the shift. Once in each game he hit a towering pop that was caught in the vast acreage of foul territory beyond the third base dugout. On any field other than Oakland and Tokyo, Ortiz's sky-high pops would have been in the stands.
-- Cadillac Manny already has five RBIs, an extra million yen, and a new Ricoh color copier ("Gonna put it in my house, man") from his MVP performance in the opener, but his posing at home plate is out of control. A price would have been paid in the old days. Not now. But prepare for some 400-foot singles.
-- The Sox brought 31 cases of baseballs (six dozen balls per case) to Japan, but were down to six cases going into yesterday's game and have ordered more for Los Angeles.
"With that fence [190 feet to left with a 62-foot-high net] in the Coliseum, we're going to need a lot of cases just to get through batting practice," said equipment czar Joe Cochran.
-- JFK speechwriter Dick Goodwin, and his historian wife, Doris Kearns Goodwin, flew to Japan with the commissioner of baseball and enjoyed the games from the commish's box. Not immune from Jerry Remy phobia (never leave the hotel when in a foreign land), they were seen dining at Trader Vic's.
-- Tokyo trains were still crowded and there was a traffic jam in a city tunnel when the Sox bused to Haneda Airport after 11 o'clock at night.
-- Still not sure what Schill was doing in Tokyo. I mean, how could he not have been on the trip to the US Embassy on Opening Day? Going for the Pulitzer in lieu of the Cy, Schill made every deadline with his blog, but I bet he'll never produce Tokyo and Los Angeles datelines in the same edition of the Boston Globe.
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