Mr Mahatma--who is a Mr in real life--lives in the valleys of Southern California with his wife, a herd of Dears, and an impressive collection of books. Pnorny!
He is reachable at:
littlemrmahatma@yahoo.com

All writings are copyrighted 2003-2008 and trademarked: Little Mr. Mahatma

tBlog Mirror

Some fun links:
Little Miss Attila - polar opposite and origin of LMM.

Critical Sites:
Dr. Forbush Thinks
Slashdot
Games Slashdot
UserFriendly
James Randi
Snopes
Home of the Underdogs
The Sun Online

For those generous in spirit, heart, and wallet:

The Piracy Price Wars

By Don Lee, Times Staff Writer

Last fall Time Warner Inc. quietly began selling cut-rate DVDs in China to better compete with cheap bootleg copies of its movies. But the bootleggers were already a step ahead.

Even before Warner Home Video got its low-priced movies on the market, merchants along Wenmiao Road — a hot spot here for pirated goods — started peddling DVDs that compress four or five movies onto a single disc.

Although their picture quality is far from perfect, they are watchable. And priced at 5 yuan — or 60 cents — a disc, they are helping steer buyers away from the cheapest legitimate alternatives on the market, including DVD movies from Warner, which start at $2.65.

Wow! $2.65 for a DVD. Why I can go to my local Best Buy and get the latest DVDs for $18-$20. I've said it before - we are getting ripped when it comes to DVD pricing. That Time Warner can put out DVDs in China for $3 and make a profit on the sales means they can do the same here. A long time ago I suggested that $8 per DVD is a better price since that's how much discs cost in those multi-disc sets. But perhaps $5 per disc is a more accurate price point.

Get a clue DVD Producers! You want sales, lower the damn prices. Don't whine that you're losing money to pirates. You're not making money because the high prices keep buyers away. If you can compete in China, you can compete here.

Get another clue. Maybe people are willing to buy lower quality DVDs with multiple movies on them. The pirates aren't producing top quality but have a market. How about a two tier system. High quality DVDs for $5 or lower quality for much less. The lower quality ones could be downloaded from your web sites...hint, hint.

Indignation Grows in U.S. Over British Prewar Documents
# Critics of Bush call them proof that he and Blair never saw diplomacy as an option with Hussein.

By John Daniszewski, Times Staff Writer

LONDON — Reports in the British press this month based on documents indicating that President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair had conditionally agreed by July 2002 to invade Iraq appear to have blown over quickly in Britain.

But in the United States, where the reports at first received scant attention, there has been growing indignation among critics of the Bush White House, who say the documents help prove that the leaders made a secret decision to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein nearly a year before launching their attack, shaped intelligence to that aim and never seriously intended to avert the war through diplomacy.

The documents, obtained by Michael Smith, a defense specialist writing for the Sunday Times of London, include a memo of the minutes of a meeting July 23, 2002, between Blair and his intelligence and military chiefs; a briefing paper for that meeting and a Foreign Office legal opinion prepared before an April 2002 summit between Blair and Bush in Texas.

The picture that emerges from the documents is of a British government convinced of the U.S. desire to go to war and Blair's agreement to it, subject to several specific conditions.

Since Smith's report was published May 1, Blair's Downing Street office has not disputed the documents' authenticity. Asked about them Wednesday, a Blair spokesman said the report added nothing significant to the much-investigated record of the lead-up to the war.

"At the end of the day, nobody pushed the diplomatic route harder than the British government…. So the circumstances of this July discussion very quickly became out of date," said the spokesman, who asked not to be identified.

The leaked minutes sum up the July 23 meeting, at which Blair, top security advisors and his attorney general discussed Britain's role in Washington's plan to oust Hussein. The minutes, written by Matthew Rycroft, a foreign policy aide, indicate general thoughts among the participants about how to create a political and legal basis for war. The case for military action at the time was "thin," Foreign Minister Jack Straw was characterized as saying, and Hussein's government posed little threat.

Labeled "secret and strictly personal — U.K. eyes only," the minutes begin with the head of the British intelligence service, MI6, who is identified as "C," saying he had returned from Washington, where there had been a "perceptible shift in attitude. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and [weapons of mass destruction]. But the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy."

Straw agreed that Bush seemed determined to act militarily, although the timing was not certain.

"But the case was thin," the minutes say. "Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capacity was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."

Straw then proposed to "work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam" to permit United Nations weapons inspectors back into Iraq. "This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force," he said, according to the minutes.

Blair said, according to the memo, "that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the U.N. inspectors."

"If the political context were right, people would support regime change," Blair said. "The two key issues were whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan the space to work."

In addition to the minutes, the Sunday Times report referred to a Cabinet briefing paper that was given to participants before the July 23 meeting. It stated that Blair had already promised Bush cooperation earlier, at the April summit in Texas.

"The U.K. would support military action to bring about regime change," the Sunday Times quoted the briefing as saying.

Excerpts from the paper, which Smith provided to the Los Angeles Times, said Blair had listed conditions for war, including that "efforts had been made to construct a coalition/shape public opinion, the Israel-Palestine crisis was quiescent," and options to "eliminate Iraq's WMD through the U.N. weapons inspectors" had been exhausted.

The briefing paper said the British government should get the U.S. to put its military plans in a "political framework."

"This is particularly important for the U.K. because it is necessary to create the conditions in which we could legally support military action," it says.

In a letter to Bush last week, 89 House Democrats expressed shock over the documents. They asked if the papers were authentic and, if so, whether they proved that the White House had agreed to invade Iraq months before seeking Congress' OK.

"If the disclosure is accurate, it raises troubling new questions regarding the legal justifications for the war as well as the integrity of our own administration," the letter says.

Translation: Bush wanted to invade Iraq but not for the reasons he told us and the World. He had an agenda and skewed reality to justify his actions. This is impeachable.

Still don't think so? Please continue reading.

Bush Signs Bill on War Funds for Iraq, Afghanistan
From Reuters

WASHINGTON — President Bush signed legislation Wednesday that would provide more funding this year to the U.S. military for combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the White House said.

The administration had been pushing Congress to approve the $82 billion spending bill.

The Pentagon contended it would run out of funding for some war accounts by the middle of this month without the legislation.

Of the total amount, about $76 billion would go to the Pentagon to buy armor for soldiers and combat vehicles, ammunition, missiles and other war materials. The legislation also increased death benefits for families of soldiers killed in combat.

Democrats unanimously supported the measure but had complained that Bush had failed to give Congress long-range estimates of the cost of the Iraq war.

The White House has argued that future war costs and troop strength will depend on unpredictable conditions in Iraq.

Much of this money has disappeared, untraced, unaccountable. Remember that Bush said - REPEATEDLY! - that Iraq oil would help pay for the costs of the invasion. Fine, how much has it paid? Very little, if any. The Iraq Invasion has cost us dearly and will continue to cost us because there's no end planned. Bush has never mentioned a definitive withdrawal plan and the "Iraqi Government" doesn't want us to leave BECAUSE WE'RE GIVING THEM BILLIONS. Folks, we've wasted a third of a freaking TRILLION dollars in Iraq. How do you think that money could have helped, say, the "Social Security Crisis" or the Health Crisis or Education? Let me repeat that. A third of a TRILLION dollars.

You should be beyond outraged. We need to remove Bush and his ilk from Office. We can't afford his kind. We don't want his kind. We're America dammit and we can do better than Bush!!!

The quote below is from a report regarding a speech Bush delivered in Georgia (not the U.S. Georgia).

...But Bush stopped short of offering concrete help in getting Russia to withdraw two military bases and said the United States cannot impose a solution on the separatist issue. He also hinted at the difficult tasks ahead, warning his Georgian hosts that "building a free society is the work of generations."

So we can't impose on Georgia in the name of Democracy but we can on Iraq. In the name of Iraqi Democracy, Bush can lie about the motivations for invasion, spend one-third TRILLION (that's TRILLION) dollars without accountability, condemn our troops to a presence for an indefinite period of time, hold political prisoners for an indefinite period of time, and likely end up killing far more Americans than from 9/11.

Bush-style Democracy is a bitch!

Jacko Gets Off
Giving odds here. 3-1 that Jacko is found innocent. You think a civil suit will follow?

Evolution Isn't a Natural Selection Here

By P.J. Huffstutter, Times Staff Writer

CLAY CENTER, Kan. — In this rural swath of northern Kansas, where the grass rolls thick and green to the horizon, a white cross dominates the landscape.

Kathy Martin, a member of the state board of education, and her family built it on their farm this spring, gathering weathered chunks of limestone from the horse pasture and laying them on a hillside.

The cross is a proud expression of Martin's faith. And as hearings challenging the role of evolution in the state's school science curriculum began Thursday, that cross left little doubt about where she stood in the debate.

"Evolution is a great theory, but it is flawed," said Martin, 59, a retired science and elementary school teacher who is presiding over the hearings. "There are alternatives. Children need to hear them…. We can't ignore that our nation is based on Christianity — not science."

Reading Kathy Martin's quote above demonstrates, to me, how scarily narrow-minded this country is becoming. With the ultra-religious Rightwing on a Crusade to destroy American ingenuity and critical thinking, it's only a matter of time before we lapse into becoming a third-rate nation with a first-rate nuclear capability run by zealots with itchy trigger fingers. In short, we're becoming the very terrorist enemy we're fighting against.

But back to Martin's quote. Every statement of hers is either flat-out wrong or shows a complete lack of logic.

"Evolution is a great theory, but it is flawed," - Evolution - the natural process like gravity - is fact and one well documented, researched, and validated. The Theory of Evolution - the explanation of the process - is near perfect but is still subject to the scientific process and therefore open to revision. But, it's beyond a hypothesis. It's gained enough scientific support through experimentation that the hypothesis is considered a theory. Martin and like-minded folks can't grasp that science doesn't put forth facts as explanations of natural processes, that theories are the top echelon of explanation. Martin etc. think theories aren't good enough. They want black and white - fact or fraud. Sadly, the bible thumpers can't even see the gray in their own dogma.

"There are alternatives." - Sure, there are, as many as there are people in this world. *BUT* the Theory of Evolution is the best supported description of the process of Evolution. Other alternatives, including Creationism, have failed the scientific rigor to grow beyond hypotheses. Or, to put it another way, even if Evolution were severely flawed doesn't validate other hypotheses. You can't say that Intelligent Design (I.D.) is right because Evolution is wrong. Science doesn't work that way. Intelligent Design has to pass its own muster. The problem with I.D. is that there's nothing to test, nothing to predict, nothing to replicate. It's simply "God did it" and that's it. Well, there is one thing to test. Show that God exists and do so beyond spewing quotes from the Bible... But how can Science show that God exists when Philosophy has yet to do it. God is a concept, not a testable entity or process.

"Children need to hear them..." like children need to hear about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Sure, it's cute and fun as a kid to believe in such myths and fairy tales but at some point you have to grow up. I've said this before, children are born scientists. They test the environment, make hypotheses, and learn from their experiments. As parents, we try to instill what we've learned from our life's experiments into our kids, if anything, to keep them from harming themselves. Crap like Creationism, Intelligent Design, or whatever it's being called this week, bypasses critical thinking. It tells our kids: "Don't think, just believe!" Well, sure, we could teach our kids that the answer to everything is simply God but our civilization would return to the Dark Ages with superstition and the High Priests ruling our lives. It'd be a step backwards.

"We can't ignore that our nation is based on Christianity — not science." - What?!? Our nation is not based on Christianity. Our Constitution makes no mention of Christianity and, more importantly, specifically mentions that there should be a gap between Church and State. Again, Martin and her ilk are confusing the personal beliefs of our Founders with their public stance, like saying that the film studio MGM was founded by a Jew therefore the film studio is Jewish. It's not true! More importantly this statement of hers clearly shows that Martin and the like want to destroy Science, plain and simple. They want to convert our public schools into Christian schools, turn our nation of many into a Christian nation of only those who believe.

Creationism, Intelligent Design - however it's called - is religion and has no place in Science classes. These hypotheses don't and can't pass scientific rigor, which doesn't give them a free pass into our science classes!

America is already suffering from poor education. Classes are getting larger. Education dollars are shrinking. Kids aren't learning how to think and as a result America is no longer the great bastion of invention. The Religious Right wants control. If they gain oversight of our kids education, we'll end up a nation of Christian goosesteppers willing to go forth and convert the heathen even if it means strapping on the boom-boom vests, for when it comes to converting the heathen those who perish in the attempt are surely going to heaven...

Another thought: Since God is responsible for everything, he must also be responsible for Evolution. Therefore Evolution should be taught in all religious classes as a valid alternative to the biblical explanation...

U.S. Can't Account for $100M Spent in Iraq

By MATT KELLEY, Associated Press Writer 49 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - U.S. government mismanagement of assets in
Iraq, from the lack of proper documentation on nearly $100 million in cash to millions of dollars worth of unaccounted-for equipment, are setting back efforts to fight corruption in the fledgling democracy, auditors and critics say.

Iraq became awash in billions of dollars in cash after the U.S. invasion two years ago, often with few or no controls over how that money was spent and accounted for. From the $8.8 billion provided to Iraq's interim government to millions provided to U.S. contractors, investigations have detailed a system ripe for abuse.

And I'll bet there's plenty more abuse, missing money, and unaccountability. Re-read the above news next time Bush calls on Congress to approve billions more for Iraq, and ask who's really getting rich off this.

And, as for Abu Ghraib, you think there's some major ass-covering going on? Rumsfeld won't get touched, that's for sure.

Let's see what happening in politics...looks like acts of terrorism is down or up whether you side with the Bushies or not. Georgy is taking a page out of Hollywood accounting and is fudging with the numbers. You see, the number of terrorist acts has risen dramatically since the invasion of Iraq but Georgy & Co. have said that any acts occurring in Iraq are part of the insurgence and don't count. So, they say, the number of terrorist acts is down. That and the War in Iraq is over, except for this small sweep-up problem.

And since God has yet to see fit to show him/her/itself in an obvious, non-interpretable-by-dumbshit-mortals way, his emissaries (preachers and fanatics all) keep the blood and gore going. All these rightwing loonies saying that the troubles in our times are caused by not enough religion - bullshit! - quite the reverse. Remove religion from politics, put it back in the home, and things will start to improve. Remove it entirely and we can, as a world civilization, start to figure things out as an equal global people.

Gah! I'm such a Liberal. Where's my tree to hug?