Calling Dalton48!

How the Ness Mess was Found, Courtesy of the NYT

NYT article here.

It's the Tax Man who always gets you:

The rendezvous that established Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s involvement with high-priced prostitutes occurred last month in one of Washington’s grandest hotels, but the criminal investigation that discovered the tryst began last year in a nondescript office building opposite a Dunkin’ Donuts on Long Island, according to law enforcement officials.

There, in the Hauppauge offices of the Internal Revenue Service, investigators conducting a routine examination of suspicious financial transactions reported to them by banks found several unusual movements of cash involving the governor of New York, several officials said.

The investigators working out of the three-story office building, which faces Veterans Highway, typically review such reports, the officials said. But this was not typical: transactions by a governor who appeared to be trying to conceal the source, destination or purpose of the movement of thousands of dollars in cash, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The money ended up in the bank accounts of what appeared to be shell companies, corporations that essentially had no real business.

The transactions, officials said, suggested possible financial crimes — maybe bribery, political corruption, or something inappropriate involving campaign finance. Prostitution, they said, was the furthest thing from the minds of the investigators.

Soon, the I.R.S. agents, from the agency’s Criminal Investigation Division, were working with F.B.I. agents and federal prosecutors from Manhattan who specialize in political corruption.

The inquiry, like many such investigations, was a delicate one. Because the focus was a high-ranking government official, prosecutors were required to seek the approval of the United States attorney general to proceed. Once they secured that permission, the investigation moved forward.

At the outset, one official said, it seemed like a bread-and-butter inquiry into political corruption, the kind of case the F.B.I. squad, known internally by the designation C14, frequently pursues.

But before long, the investigators learned that the money was being moved to pay for sex and that the transactions were being manipulated to conceal Mr. Spitzer’s connection to payments for meetings with prostitutes, the official said.

Sure. And if you believe that.... But the real twist here is where Ness got Capone, here, Wall Street gets Eliot (or at least it could seem that way). In any event, I still blame FDR for taking US off the Gold Standard in '33.

I Almost Forgot: It Was 125 Years Ago Today that Marx Shook off his Mortal Coil

Unhappily:

Beijing - Work in China on the first direct translation from the German of the complete works of Karl Marx has hit a hurdle as the world marks the 125th anniversary of the death of the 'father of communism.'

The 60 volumes of the second Chinese-language edition of 'The Complete Works of Marx and Engels' won't be completed in the foreseeable future because of shortages of staff and young personnel, said Jiang Renxiang, a department head in the Communist Party's translation office in Beijing.

'Progress is slow,' Jiang said 125 years after Marx died on March 14, 1883.

Persians Head to the Polls; Too Bad the Athenians Beat Them to It 2500 Years Ago

I like this quote from the BBC story here:

Voting has begun in Iran's elections, with conservatives expected to win after opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were barred from running.

The authorities in Tehran have called for a big turnout in the parliamentary polls, to defy the US and other countries they say are Iran's enemies.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad flew in from an Islamic summit in Senegal to cast his vote.

He announced that the world had chosen Iran as its "role model and saviour".

This is like the video from 'The Onion' about how the results of the 'forthcoming' US Presidential Election were due to a computer glitch prematurely. The thing is though, this is a a story that even 'The Onion' writers could not make up.

Would JPK Please Start Blogging Again!

This is why I hate Coach

Click here:

Hat Tip Paul at Mock Turtle

Such Fun at the Lager

The handy thing about these gay frauleins is that they had already been vetted for racial purity. So if one were in wont of a wife or a girlfriend, the typist pool was (racially speaking) Kosher.

A Good Day for Gold Buggers

Gold surpasses (if even for a brief moment) the magical US$ 4 digit mark. The barbarous relic would appear to have some life left in it, alas. What next, shells?

France Loses Its Last World War I Veteran

Italian-born Lazare Ponticelli was feted at the National History of Immigration Museum in Paris last Dec. 16, shortly after his 110th birthday.

The link that provided us an unbroken chain between France today and France of the First World War is now broken.

The Zimmerman Telegram

The decrypt and translation:

On the first of February, we intend to begin unrestricted submarine warfare. In spite of this, it is our intention to endeavor to keep the United States of America neutral.

In the event of this not succeeding, we propose an alliance on the following basis with Mexico: That we shall make war together and make peace together. We shall give generous financial support, and an understanding on our part that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona. The details of settlement are left to you.

You are instructed to inform the President [of Mexico] of the above in the greatest confidence as soon as it is certain that there will be an outbreak of war with the United States and suggest that the President, on his own initiative, invite Japan to immediate adherence with this plan; at the same time, offer to mediate between Japan and ourselves.

Please call to the attention of the President that the ruthless employment of our submarines now offers the prospect of compelling England to make peace in a few months.

More info on this great story here.

The National Cryptography Museum; Don't Feel Bad You Didn't Know About It. I think that's the point.

No. It's not a museum about the CRY-baby of a company cryptologic, but of Cryptography, an ever fascinating, fiendishly complex, and ever necessary practice. The farthest I have ever gotten into the subject was a visit to Bletchley Park and reading Alan Turing's harrowing biography. But when I am next at the NSA, I'll be sure to give a look in. Directions can be found here. In an unrelated matter, I met someone who had actually met Sir. William Stephenson and not just his biographer William Stephenson.

When Iraq Really Was Preparing Weapons of Mass Destruction

The reporting is a bit jingoistic (in a way that still, I am afraid, raises deep Zionist feelings in me) but the story is the most part 'true.' Give me a bunch of overladen fighter jets any day over a ground invasion.

A Trillion here and a Trillion There and the Million Millions start to add up

Stiglitz does some counting:

The cost of direct US military operations - not even including long-term costs such as taking care of wounded veterans - already exceeds the cost of the 12-year war in Vietnam and is more than double the cost of the Korean War.

And, even in the best case scenario, these costs are projected to be almost ten times the cost of the first Gulf War, almost a third more than the cost of the Vietnam War, and twice that of the First World War. The only war in our history which cost more was the Second World War, when 16.3 million U.S. troops fought in a campaign lasting four years, at a total cost (in 2007 dollars, after adjusting for inflation) of about $5 trillion (that's $5 million million, or £2.5 million million). With virtually the entire armed forces committed to fighting the Germans and Japanese, the cost per troop (in today's dollars) was less than $100,000 in 2007 dollars. By contrast, the Iraq war is costing upward of $400,000 per troop.

The Times article is here:

I had rather thought if you owned the shop you would get a deal on the goods: i.e. the oil. Evidently not. And that Koran, written in Saddam's own blood, so they used to say. So much so for a secularist Bathist regime then.

What I Think is Interesting About The Eliot Ness Mess is How Spitizer Paid for it All

Nice article from the WSJ here. What has to be the real story is where the Governor found the spare US$80k it is suggested he spent. Word has it that they're chuckling from one end of Wall Street to the Other. Makes a change these days I suppose. I bet the Dr. is smarting though.

The Japanese Really Are Different: Van Gogh in Raw Fish and Properly Made Rice

Where the rice hits the nori can be found here.

The Glee Club at Auschwitz

This photograph, taken at Auschwitz, shows “nearly a hundred officers arrayed like a glee club up the side of a hill. The accordion player stands across the road,” Wilkinson writes. “All the men are singing except those in the very front, who perhaps feel too important for it.” The group includes Richard Baer; Rudolf Hoess, who had supervised the building of Auschwitz and had been its first commandant; and Josef Mengele, the doctor who performed infamous medical experiments on twins and other prisoners. This album contains eight pictures of Mengele—the only known photographs of him at Auschwitz.

From the New Yorker Online this week.

Love These Stamps: Laika

Must Read for You Floydians Who Are Still Out There

From the blurb:

A behind-the-scenes, in-depth look at the making of one of the greatest studio masterpieces and most commercially successful albums ever recorded—fully illustrated with many never-before-seen photos.

Feels Good Doesn't It with Oil at an All Time High

While I do not defend the Hummista, the Pristas ought to know that a Hummer, over its lifetime, creates about half the pollution of a Prius. And if we really wanted to be environmentally friendly, we ought all to be driving Nanos.

March 7, 2007

Prius Outdoes Hummer in Environmental Damage
By Chris Demorro
Staff Writer

The Toyota Prius has become the flagship car for those in our society so environmentally conscious that they are willing to spend a premium to show the world how much they care. Unfortunately for them, their ultimate ‘green car’ is the source of some of the worst pollution in North America; it takes more combined energy per Prius to produce than a Hummer.

...

Building a Toyota Prius causes more environmental damage than a Hummer that is on the road for three times longer than a Prius. As already noted, the Prius is partly driven by a battery which contains nickel. The nickel is mined and smelted at a plant in Sudbury, Ontario. This plant has caused so much environmental damage to the surrounding environment that NASA has used the ‘dead zone’ around the plant to test moon rovers. The area around the plant is devoid of any life for miles.

The plant is the source of all the nickel found in a Prius’ battery and Toyota purchases 1,000 tons annually. Dubbed the Superstack, the plague-factory has spread sulfur dioxide across northern Ontario, becoming every environmentalist’s nightmare.

“The acid rain around Sudbury was so bad it destroyed all the plants and the soil slid down off the hillside,” said Canadian Greenpeace energy-coordinator David Martin during an interview with Mail, a British-based newspaper.

All of this would be bad enough in and of itself; however, the journey to make a hybrid doesn’t end there. The nickel produced by this disastrous plant is shipped via massive container ship to the largest nickel refinery in Europe. From there, the nickel hops over to China to produce ‘nickel foam.’ From there, it goes to Japan. Finally, the completed batteries are shipped to the United States, finalizing the around-the-world trip required to produce a single Prius battery. Are these not sounding less and less like environmentally sound cars and more like a farce?

When you pool together all the combined energy it takes to drive and build a Toyota Prius, the flagship car of energy fanatics, it takes almost 50 percent more energy than a Hummer - the Prius’s arch nemesis.

Original article here.

While the numbers may be a little suspect, Sudbury is still not a beacon of Environmental Enlightenment, though the big stack has done much to put the pollution into the upper atmosphere and out of the surrounding area. And as one wag said it, do miners not count as life?

There's Counterfeiting and there's Counterfeiting and This is Counterfeiting: A Counterfeit Ferrari

"I think this all maybe started with the DVDs and music being pirated and it has just exploded, basically, into something quite different," said model Yasmin Le Bon, an anti-counterfeit campaigner.
-- Sorry to hear that Mrs. Bowie

Built in the back streets of Bangkok, and powered by a Subaru engine, we should be worried about this stuff? What I would really like to be able to do is buy this stuff. The P4 was, is, and will always be a beaut. More info here.