The World. Well some of it.

So the Sunni and Shia Muslims in Iraq are finally agreeing on something. They both blame the USA for blowing up the al-Askari shrine . If you didn't know the shrine houses one of two tombs in Samarra for revered Shia imams. It has been hit before, and the chances are it will be levelled before all this is over.

Reprisals have naturally occurred, ssuspected Shia Muslim militants have destroyed three Sunni mosques near the Iraqi capital.

The overnight attacks bring to six the number of Sunni mosques targeted since suspected Sunni militants toppled the two minarets of the Samarra shrine.

If this is not to paraphrase Jack Sparrow, the opportune moment, I don't know what is. To get out I mean. If they are blaming the US for all their troubles, then leaving should solve all the issues. I predict the very next day, peace will erupt spontaneously all over Iraq, and the people will live happily ever after.

Er. Not.

Zombie News

Why is it that I just do not believe this. If the FBI needs an excuse (which it doesn't anymore) to search and seize peoples PCs, could they not have created a more reasonable one?

The FBI is contacting more than one million PC owners who have had their computers hijacked by cyber criminals.

The initiative is part of an ongoing project to thwart the use of hijacked home computers, or zombies, as launch platforms for hi-tech crimes.

The FBI has found networks of zombie computers being used to spread spam, steal IDs and attack websites.

The agency said the zombies or bots were "a growing threat to national security".

Signs of trouble

The FBI has been trying to tackle networks of zombies for some time as part of an initiative it has dubbed Operation Bot Roast.

This operation recently passed a significant milestone as it racked up more than one million individually identifiable computers known to be part of one bot net or another.

The law enforcement organisation said that part of the operation involved notifying people who owned PCs it knew were part of zombie or bot networks. In this way it said it expected to find more evidence of how they are being used by criminals.

"The majority of victims are not even aware that their computer has been compromised or their personal information exploited," said James Finch, assistant director of the FBI's Cyber Division.

Many people fall victim by opening an attachment on an e-mail message containing a virus or by visiting a booby-trapped webpage.

Many hi-tech criminals are now trying to subvert innocent webpages to act as proxies for their malicious programs.

Once hijacked, PCs can be used to send out spam, spread spyware or as repositories for illegal content such as pirated movies or pornography.

Those in charge of botnets, called botherders, can have tens of thousands of machines under their control.

Operation Bot Roast has resulted in the arrest of three people known to have used bot nets for criminal ends.

One of those arrested, Robert Alan Soloway, could face 65 years in jail if found guilty of all the crimes with which he has been charged.

In a statement about Operation Bot Roast the FBI urged PC users to practice good computer security which includes using regularly updated anti-virus software and installing a firewall.

For those without basic protections anti-virus companies such as F Secure, Trend Micro, Kaspersky Labs and many others offer online scanning services that can help spot infections.

The organisation said it was difficult for people to know if their machine was part of a botnet.

However it said telltale signs could be if the machine ran slowly, had an e-mail outbox full of mail a user did not send or they get e-mail saying they are sending spam.

So, basically you have no way to know if you have been infected, unless the FBI comes crashing through your front door, and they 'bots' do nothing to your computer to alert you that you are part of this 'botnet'. Riiight.

Kenny's Key West

Nope, not a tale about some guy called Kenny. A tale of a truly low-life bar in Jefferson Parish New Orleans. Boy oh boy it sounds like it was modeled on the Key West of 75 years ago. It is in actuality a nightclub, with a very expensive sound system and all the other goodies required by decent to good dj's these days. The clientele however, leave much to be desired.

Here's a little history.

A Metairie bar a little more than a block from Lakeside Shopping Center exploded with gunfire early Sunday, leaving five patrons injured -- two critically, including a 17-year-old Harvey girl.

The shootings might be the worst violence linked to Kenny's Key West since Ivory Joe Guy, 20, of Westwego died May 2005 of multiple gunshot wounds in the hallway of the nightclub at 3012 N. Arnoult Road. In February 2004, Steven Stanford, 23, was shot dead across the street from the nightclub after an altercation.

Unlike black-owned establishments in the city, Kenny's Key West is white owned. It also has three video poker machines, which means the place puts $2000-$4000 cash into the pockets of the owners each week. That sort of revenue stream is hard to ignore, and also gives bar owners a lot of money to make political contributions.

This bar remains open despite its sordid past possibly because it provides a gathering point for lowlife. Without it, the folks who patronize Key West might scatter to other locations, shooting those up instead. I hesitate to adopt a "blame the victim" position on these shootings, but when you go to a bar that's had two fatal shootings on the premises in as many years, you do so at greater risk to your person than a more sedate establishment.

A top Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office official described Kenny's Key West as the top trouble spot in the parish among clubs and lounges.

Deputy Chief Tom Gorman, head of the Sheriff's Office Investigations Bureau, made the comment at a press conference called by Sheriff Harry Lee to discuss the early morning shooting outside the club in which two people were injured and 50 shots were fired.

And the latest buzz about this funky little death dive..

Sheriff calls bar in Fat City 'hellhole'
Bid to yank license unfair, owner says
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
By Michelle Hunter

Jefferson Parish officials are poised to drop the hammer on Kenny's Key West and other businesses with a history of attracting unruly patrons. But Kenneth Vincent, owner of the Fat City nightclub that authorities call "a hellhole," said their proposal to strip liquor licenses is unfair to business owners.

"How do you hold them responsible for what other people do?" Vincent said Tuesday, two days after more than 50 gunshots were fired outside Kenny's Key West.

Two people were wounded in the frenzy: a security guard who was shot by an off-duty deputy sheriff, and a 21-year-old Marrero man who was shot in the foot while standing in line to enter the club.

For the full story The Times-Picayune

Tuesday tidbits and stuff.

WW3

In interesting news, President Bush is seeking to calm Russian fears by telling them that his new RADAR defense system will not only protect the entire continent of Europe and naturally the United States, but will also protect Russia. Yeah right, whatever.

This proposal of Bush's actually has both the Russian President and the Czech and Polish people on the same side! Congrats! That side of course being of mistrust, and in some cases seething hatred, of all things Bushy.

Mr Bush cannot grasp the concept that almost all of Europe believes he is a liar, and that he will lie to get what he wants, no matter who is killed in the process. The fact that Putin is threatening to point nukes at Europe is of absolutely no concern to Bush. He wants his missile silos in Eastern Europe and he will have it. To hell with anyone who opposes him.

Mr Putin quite naturally feels that US missile bases on his backdoor is unacceptable and will not tolerate it. This is going to be an interesting tug of war, an unfortunate use of word but appropriate I think. Will Bush not be satisfied until he has pushed the entire planet to the brink of annihilation?

Nigerian Hidden Bank Accounts.

In other news, the government of Nigeria has threatened pharmaceutical mega overlord Pfizer, over what it alleges are illegal drug trials the company carried out in Nigeria decades ago. These trials may have led to deaths and injury of the people involved so the government are suing.

This is far from the first time a Nigerian government has tried this. The evidence is almost non existence and any trials done, were done within the normal boundaries applied to any drug trial and with the full permission of the then government. Nigeria has just had a very dodgy election and yet another President is in place. Looking for a bit of cash he is playing the same game as many of his predecessors.

What I do not understand is why, with all the billions of dollars hidden away in secret bank accounts, the Nigerian government does not just write a couple of emails and ask a foreigner to transfer the funds for them?

Local Bits

Tattoo OK could come Tuesday

Jim McAlhaney, owner of Key West Ink on Duval Street, awaits Tuesday’s City Commission meeting on whether tattoo shops can operate within the city’s limits. If the city allows it, McAlhaney is ready to start business. If not, he will continue his lawsuit against the city.

Parlors already renting space in anticipation

The Key West City Commission is expected to decide Tuesday to either take a step closer to allowing tattoo parlors in the city proper or freeze the body artists' dreams of moving their businesses to the island.

Four potential parlor owners have plans to open up shop in Key West - some of which have current locations on Stock Island, like Paradise Tattoo and Goldie's.

According to owner Doreen Eppy, Paradise Tattoo, which already has space at 627 Duval St., is ready for action. The Stock Island location has been operating for 15 years, she said. Whatever the commission decides, she will keep that location.

Eppy's 2,000-square-foot parlor offers body piercing and a variety of body jewelry, along with tattoo-themed merchandise.

Another hopeful business is Key West Ink.

“We're ready, right now,” owner Jim McAlhaney said while he toyed with a new high-definition television already hung in his 717 Duval St. location. “We put $500,000 in expenses [for the parlor] so far.”

Painted on the walls of the vacant shop are scenes of Key West historical or cultural value - Ernest Hemingway, the southernmost buoy and old pirate ships, to name a few.

Five empty leather seats await their hopeful customers. Two would be used for appointments, two for locals and one for guest artists. A private room is tucked away on the second floor for customers wanting privacy.

McAlhaney said he already has appointments booked for two years, as he takes five or six appointments a day - though locals get first priority, he said with a grin.

After being turned down from the city in October, Key West Ink sued the city, citing a violation of First Amendment rights, McAlhaney said.

Paradise followed suit, literally, and the two groups have consolidated, Eppy said.

Key West Ink has postponed the suit until July, but it will be dropped altogether, McAlhaney said, if the ordinance lifting the band on the facilities passes. Tuesday marks the first reading; the second should come at the following City Commission meeting.

According to historian Tom Hambright, the ban on tattoo parlors in the city was implemented in the 1950s as an effort from the U.S. Navy to stop sailors from getting hepatitis from the old shops' unsanitary procedures.

Those days are long gone, McAlhaney said, revealing a fully stocked sanitation room.

All equipment is sterilized and needles are used only once. He's taken classes on blood-born pathogens, HIV training and cardiopulmonary resuscitation. And his employee Bo Mencarli worked 10 years in the U.S. Army as a sterilization technician, he added.

He also said the kind of people getting tattoos has developed into what people in the past might've called an unlikely crowd.

“They're a different breed of people now,” he said. “About 32 percent of people getting tattoos are middle-aged, higher-class women with families.” He added that professionals like doctors and lawyers are also warming up to body art.

Tuesday's meeting will reveal if commissioners are too.

The city's Planning Board passed a revised ordinance May 30 that requires a 250-foot gap between parlors and libraries, schools, churches or parks. It also restricts the number of shops allowed on the island to 10, and those shops must be at least 150 feet away from each other.

Most commissioners agree that regulation is important when it comes to allowing the shops to spring up.

The City Commission meets Tuesday at 6 p.m. at Old City Hall on Greene Street.

Rossi Skates, By taking a Politics 101 Refresher Course

Charge will be dropped after he takes workshop

Key West City Commissioner Mark Rossi, charged Tuesday with a misdemeanor for allegedly violating the state's Sunshine Law governing open government, on Friday agreed to take a crash course in the law.

“We reached a plea agreement with Mark Rossi. We will drop the charges in exchange for his participation in a Sunshine Law workshop not unlike the workshop that the county commissioners did,” Monroe County State Attorney's Office spokesman Matthew Helmerich said.

“It's our goal to help our government officials learn the importance and the details of the Sunshine Law.”

Al Gore is a little odd, but is also often right

We're the boobs in front of the tube

By ROBYN BLUMNER
Published June 3, 2007

Once again Al Gore is right. He was right about the dangers of climate change, even though no one wanted to listen until now, and he's right in his new book about the danger to our democracy of a citizenry that is underinformed and overtitillated.

"Wake up, America, " Gore calls out in his stuffed-shirt professorial way in The Assault on Reason. You are being manipulated by television news that is feeding you nonstop fear and infotainment. This empty-calorie diet is badly skewing our sense of national priorities and atrophying the "mental muscles of democracy."

Reasoned argument emanating from evidence-based knowledge is disappearing from our national discourse, exacerbated by millions of Americans discarding the habit of daily newspaper consumption, according to Gore. In its stead are the flickering lights of the boob tube that elevate image and aural stimulation over critical thinking and logic.

Gore quotes Dan Rather, who pithily said that television news has been "dumbed down and tarted up." We are bombarded with news 24/7. Yet never has so much been seen by so many to so little import. We know far more about Laci Peterson's disappearance, O.J. Simpson's glove size and Anna Nicole Smith's stomach contents than the financial crisis facing Medicare or the consequences of climate change and America's ongoing contribution to it.

Violent crime rates have plummeted over the last 15 years, but television news gives it outsized coverage, creating a climate of undifferentiated fear. Your probability of dying in a car accident is one in 83, compared with your one in 1, 300 chance of dying in a terror attack - and that's presuming a 9/11-style attack every year. Yet the drumbeat of ephemeral threats from jihadists is what dominates the airwaves.

The Manchurian Citizen emerges from his 4 1/2 hours of daily television, so overstimulated, fearful and flabby of brain that he is easy prey for politicians with simplistic messages.

This is Gore's other main point. A citizenry that abandons the dynamic exercise of reading and the reasoning process it engages, for the passive absorption of emotionally charged television images, is susceptible to choosing the worst kind of leaders. And it has.

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney could never have held on to power and committed the wrongs they have against our constitutional system without a public too wrapped up in the happenings of Natalee Holloway in Aruba to care about domestic warrantless wiretapping.

Gore meticulously documents how Americans have been sleepwalking through their duties as citizens while this administration has been systematically destroying the pillars of our democracy. The Bush administration's torture of prisoners - an approach to war disdained by George Washington. The way it shredded the Geneva Conventions, and our international standing along with them. How it declared the executive branch supreme, emasculating the other branches. And how it used our national treasury as a piggybank for friends and supporters. Halliburton's stock price has doubled since Bush's election.

All this and the citizenry shrugged. I guess the destruction of foundational principles doesn't come with good visuals. Beyond abuses at Abu Ghraib - which the administration successfully blamed on some bad apples, when it was really an animation of its own interrogation policies -- television wasn't adept at telling these stories and didn't really try.

But finally, Bush did something spectacularly wrong, where the pictures could illuminate his arrogance, mendacity and incompetence. Iraq, of course. With television able to depict in a sustained fashion the carnage and chaos of a war without justification, the electorate discovered the real George Bush, calling him to account in 2006.

Right here, though, is the danger of which Gore speaks. If we have to wait for the pictures it's too late.

As if to drive the point home about the superficiality of today's media, Gore recently appeared on ABC's Good Morning America, where he was interviewed by Diane Sawyer. She repeatedly harped on whether the book was a campaign salvo. Gore, who says he is not a candidate for '08 at present and will unlikely be one, chided her on her focus on politics rather than substance.

But even after being admonished, Sawyer, like a drunk with a shot glass, couldn't let it go and asked Gore if he lost any weight, since that might signal entry into the presidential race.

"Listen to your questions, " Gore rejoined sharply, "the horse race, the cosmetic parts of this."

Touche. No one should care about Gore's body weight. Rather, our nation's future rests on the weight of his ideas and whether they can penetrate an anesthetized public. Read them; you'll be impressed. They will make you ponder what might have been.

St Petersburg Times