Computergate: Let's play dodgeball! (UPDATES 1, 2 and 3)

Copmputergate -- or emailgate, or what-have-you -- has been quiescent these past few days. But now we learn more about the White House effort to bypass scrutiny by running emails through private RNC servers.

The Chattanooga Times Free Press has a story called "Morphing a conspiracy?", which reveals that the photo of Karl Rove carrying a Coptix brochure (Coptix being one of the Tennesee companies involved) was faked.

"It's easy for people to plant disinformation and misinformation out there," said Josiah Roe, executive vice president of Coptix, based in St. Elmo.

Mr. Roe said the company altered the photo and placed it on the Internet after bloggers implied that Coptix was involved in a "vast right-wing conspiracy" because the company -- along with another local firm, SmarTech -- provides an Internet service for the Republican National Committee.

Cute, Josiah. You've done your country a real service.

Now here's the juiciest part of the story:

Internet bloggers also have alleged that Chattanooga-based SmarTech is involved in the case of e-mails sent on a nongovernment account that relate to the firing of the eight U.S. attorneys.

Jeff Averbeck, president of SmarTech, said the company hosts a server for the RNC that translates Internet domain names into numerical addresses. He said Coptix also holds an additional copy of that information -- which he said is like a "telephone book" -- for the RNC.

Mr. Averbeck said his firm does more for the RNC but he declined to elaborate, citing client confidentiality. But he said that SmarTech does not have access to RNC e-mail records.

Mr. Roe, with Coptix, said his company also does not have access to that RNC information.

RNC spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt said the committee "is not a client of Coptix."

Perhaps one of our readers with a knowledge of how such companies operate can make something comprehensible of this statement. Here's how I see it:

The White House has released copies of emails in which officials doing (shady) government business use the GWB43.com email address instead of the .gov addresses which is stored as mandated by the Presidential Records Act. That address, GSB43, traces back to SmarTech and Coptix. SmarTech merged some years ago with a company run by a Bush family friend; the company handles everything Republican.

But SmarTech now says it has NO access to RNC email records.

And SmarTech makes this announcement just after Henry Waxman, Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, issues a formal demand to the Republican Party to turn over emails -- because either the Presidential Records Act (which mandates a historical record) or the Hatch Act (which forbids White House workers from doing party business on the taxpayer's dime) has been broken here.

No records here, sayeth SmarTech -- and SmarTech sayeth no more.

Looks to me like what we got here is one hell of a game of dodgeball.

UPDATE: So just how easy -- or difficult -- would it be to erase all record of those emails? Geek-speak translated into human-speak, after the jump...

(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)

The best explanation comes from a tech guy named meldroc, who posted over on Democratic Underground (with paragraph breaks added for increased readability):

Let me clarify how much I know about computers. I am a software engineer. I do this for a living. I used to work for a major hard disk manufacturer, and I've also worked for a major computer manufacturer on two occasions, working with high end servers and mainframes. I know a lot of the technicalities about what happens when you delete stuff.

Traces would remain. To start with, deleting a file such as an email usually consists of removing the directory entry in the file system pointing to the file and marking the disk sectors where the file resides as free. The contents are still there, and frequently can be recovered by undelete utilities. If we're talking about a database or a mail server file, removing an email there will also leave traces behind.

Let's say you go all the way - format the disk. That will still leave data behind that can be recovered with forensics tools. Go a step further and wipe the entire hard disk. Now you're getting somewhere - you overwrite the entire hard disk. But... For one, it's now obvious to everyone with enough neurons to form a synapse what you've just done. What do you think Waxman and the rest of Congress are going to do if they hand you a subpoena and you hand them a hard disk containing nothing but random data? If you do that, you're going to jail.

Also, that server's not the only place where those emails are stored. You have routers on the Internet where those emails passed through - those may have logs showing that those emails existed. You have the copies of emails saved on individual people's workstations. There may be hundreds of workstations out there with copies of some of the emails.

In the DOJ document dumps we've already seen are references to some of the emails on gwb43.com - when those servers are subpoenaed, they'd better produce those emails if they know what's good for them. And those emails may reference other emails - better produce those too.

Then there are backup tapes. If we're talking about a halfway competent ISP here, there will be an entire system in place for doing backups. In a typical environment, you'll have seven tapes, one for each day of the week, used for differential backups (where you only back up stuff that's changed or added since the previous day's backups.) You'll have four tapes containing full backups of everything, one backup done each Sunday, so those four tapes will keep the state of the systems for the entire previous month. Then you'll have a permanent backup for each month that goes into storage.

In short, not only can you bring back the data on the email server as it was today, you can see what was on the machine yesterday, or last week, or six months ago, or three years ago.

On top of that, you'll have off-site backups - you'll make a backup onto a tape once a month, and that tape's stored elsewhere, like in a safety deposit box, just in case the building burns down. Depending on how badly the ISP wants to be able to put itself back together quickly in case of a disaster, there may be a couple dozen backup tapes containing those emails.

On top of that, we won't be talking about one server. There may be two, or even more servers, operating in parallel to ensure that email service is up and running at all times. And those servers won't have just one hard disk. They'll be running a RAID array with a whole bunch of hard disks (anything from four to dozens, depending on the scale), designed with redundancy in mind so if a hard disk, or even several hard disks fail, the data will still be there.

In short, if Waxman subpoenas the entire contents of gwb43.com's email system, saying "Oops, we lost a few messages." is NOT going to fly. Nobody who knows how these things work will believe that the email equivalent of Nixon's 18 1/2 minute gap can be produced unintentionally. Those emails are in that system, and if the RNC is following the law, they'll be able to produce them in a matter of minutes. If they say they can't they are LYING.

That said, I think there is still room for an "Oops" factor -- as in "Oops, we were a terribly incompetent ISP and we did not keep backups." Obviously, if someone tries to "oops" his way out of this mess, anyone with any brains will know that heavy-duty hugger-mugger has happened. But we still won't have the damn emails. And as long as the oops-er comes up with a story that a jury might find remotely plausible, then he can escape obstruction of justice charges.

Or so I presume.

And why do I make that presumption? Because right now, Jeff Averbeck seems to be acting awfully damn smug.

Oh -- and please read ViViDVeW's commentary below. We have a pressing need now for the full email headers. And if Averbeck says he can't get that...

UPDATE 2: Here's what ViViDVeW has to say...

While the DNS records for GWB43 may point to SMARTech servers this does not mean ANY emails reside there.

As I have stated before, their servers have all of the appearance of being only mail gateways. Think of them as mail relay agents. The technical term is MTA (Mail Transfer Agent).

When an email is sent to a gateway, it looks up the domain (the part after @) to see if it is one that they control. If so, it then simply forwards the email to the IP address listed for that domain which goes to another relay or its final stop, the MUA (Mail User Agent). The MUA is the place where all emails are stored. The clients download their email from the MUA. The MUA may not even handle outgoing mail for the clients – if so, even headers from an email sent from this domain may only show you the server that sends email, not the one that stores them.

I have checked the document dumps from the Judiciary Committee and none that I can find have email headers or even email addresses. They are all scans of printouts in a “presentable” format with none of the needed technical stuff showing.

This is really a load of crap.

A look at ANY email delivered to this domain or even the email settings for a client computer of this domain will tell you what server stores the emails.

Okay, so if SmarTech is just a the go-between, which company has physical possession of all those backup tapes?

Allow me to offer two suggestions:

1. A company owned by Bush family friend Mercer Reynolds. One of his tech firms merged with SmartTech. See the expanded version of my first piece on this scandal, here. (The expanded version was published on another site; the Cannonfire version did not discuss Reynolds.)

2. A company owned by Michael L. Connell; see here.

UPDATE 3: Those cocky guys at Coptix bray about their photo retouch work and show how it was done. They also say that the photo was reprinted on this site, which is not true (although I did provide a link to the Corrente site). The bug-eyed monster shot was a nifty touch, fellows. I know a thing or two about Photoshop myself, and now that I look at the piece more closely, the overly dark arm shadow does seem wrong. It is fitting, Josiah, that you chose a restaurant scene -- because, as you may have heard, certain dishes are best served cold.

Be seeing you!

What do Israel and Chiquita have in common? Terror

Both Israel and Chiquita Brands International stand accused, in recent stories, of aiding the Colombian terror group AUC, a right-wing paramilitary group drenched in blood.

The Israeli connection comes to us by way of the BBC:

Yair Klein, Melnik Ferry and Tzedaka Abraham are accused of giving military training in the 1990s to landowners' and drug-traffickers' private armies.

Prosecutors say those trained went on to carry out some of the country's most notorious political assassinations.

Some of the fighters went on to form a right-wing paramilitary group, the AUC.

Prosecutors have also accused the three men of working for the then powerful Medellin drugs cartel to create a personal army for its leader, Pablo Escobar.

The BBC account does not clarify why Israel took such a keen interest in Colombia and the Medellin cocaine cartel.

The Chiquita connection is better-known. The company has had to pay massive fines after it was revealed that they had delivered $1.7 million to AUC. Here's a detail you may have missed:

Colombia might also seek the extradition of eight Chiquita officials on charges that the company used one of its own ships to smuggle weapons to the same paramilitary group.

According to documents made available to the National Security Archives, the payments were made through the Colombian government.

Back to the Israeli connection: Carlos Castaño, head of the AUC, has been quoted as saying "I copied the concept of paramilitary forces from the Israelis." He was not speaking metaphorically.

Colombian intelligence agents arrested Yar Klein, a former Israeli Army Colonel, in 2000, when he tried to deliver a massive number of guns to the terrorists. He was convicted of similar charges by an Israeli court in 1991, and had to pay a nearly inconsequential fine.

The history of the partnership goes back to the early 1980s:

The AUC paramilitaries are a fighting force that originally grew out of killers hired to protect drug-running operations and large landowners. They were organised into a cohesive force by Castao in 1997. It exists outside the law but often coordinates its actions with the Colombian military, in a way similar to the relationship of the Lebanese Phalange to the Israeli army throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

According to a 1989 Colombian Secret Police intelligence report, apart from training Carlos Castao in 1983, Israeli trainers arrived in Colombia in 1987 to train him and other paramilitaries who would later make up the AUC.

Fifty of the paramilitaries' "best" students were then sent on scholarships to Israel for further training according to a Colombian police intelligence report, and the AUC became the most prominent paramilitary force in the hemisphere, with some 10,000-12,000 men in arms.

The Colombian AUC paramilitaries are always in need of arms, and it should come as no surprise that some of their major suppliers are Israeli. Israeli arms dealers have long had a presence in next-door Panama and especially in Guatemala.

In May of last year, GIRSA, an Israeli company associated with the Israeli Defence Forces and based in Guatemala was able to buy 3000 Kalashnikov assault rifles and 2.5 million rounds of ammunition that were then handed over to AUC paramilitaries in Colombia.

This long-established pattern of interaction forces us to conclude that, despite his 1991 conviction in Israel, Yar Klein operated at the behest of the Israeli power structure. Throughout the 1980s,Israel worked with right-wing elements -- and even with outright Nazis -- in many parts of Latin America.

What interests me is the dichotomous treatment the two stories have received. Chiquita says that AUC demanded "protection" payments in order to operate in Colombia -- an argument which may have some merit. (Incidentally, AUC also murdered employee organizers for Coca Cola, although the company strongly denies that it knew of or encouraged the murders.) Yet the Chiquita scandal has received fairly wide coverage. As for the Israeli connection to AUC...

Admit it: Is this post the first time you've heard about it?

Those captured British sailors

Over at Democrats.com, Heather Wokusch has a terrific overview of the UK/Iran stand-off. A highlight:

Headlines about the captured sailors have conveniently buried reports on Prime Minister Tony Blair’s role in a domestic political scandal, which had him threatening to resign as recently as last week...

The UK’s Sunday Telegraph reported on March 26th: "Detectives have spent a year looking into allegations that Labour promised peerages in return for £14 million in secret loans to fight the 2005 general election ... Police officers investigating the cash-for-honours scandal wanted to interview Tony Blair under caution but backed off after being warned that it could lead to his resignation."

"Under caution" means that Blair would have been "treated as a suspect, rather than simply as a witness."

I'm sure you've already seen the instantly-famous article by Patrick Cockburn, claiming that the seizure functions, in part, as retaliation for a botched attempt by the United States to capture Mohammed Jafari (deputy head of the Iranian National Security Council) and General Minojahar Frouzanda, head of Iranian military intelligence.

Robert Parry makes this noteworthy observation:

So, in December and January, when Bush ordered raids against Iranian government offices inside Iraq and had five Iranian military officials detained indefinitely, there was barely a peep in the Western news media about violations of international law. Though the Iranians weren’t formally charged, their plight elicited little sympathy.

There were expectations that the Iranians might be released on March 21, the start of the Iranian new year. After that date passed, some observers believe Iran may have opted for a tit-for-tat response in seizing the 15 British sailors.

Of course, it isn't a violation of international law when Bush does it.

Poison pet food: The conspiracy theory

It took a while -- but at last, the poisoned pet food scandal has given rise to a decent conspiracy theory. This writer has noted a rash of stories from China exposing restaurants that have attacked competitors by spiking their food with -- wait for it -- rat poison. See here and here. Back in 2001, one disgruntled cook at a middle school in Shanxi province used this method to send 86 students to the hospital.

Could such madness operate at a higher level? Does this theory explain how rat poison made its way into the wheat gluten?

Even if you view this theory with skepticism, the afore-linked stories on the Chinese poisoning "craze" make for pretty frightening reading on their own. I should note that the rat poison in those cases was tetramine, which is apparently a lot easier to come by in Asia than it is here.

We don't really know what caused renal failure in cats and dogs in the U.S.; aminopterin, previously identified, may not actually be involved, and melamine may be just a marker. Tests on mice indicate that tetramine ingestion can cause "reduced renal cytoplasmatic vacuolization," along with a lot of other nasty effects. This medical article reveals that one human victim of tetramine poisoning suffered "rapid deterioration in renal and liver function" among other symptoms.

You should know, Arianna...

Arianna Huffington today:

What is it with the media and the Clintons? Something about Bill and Hillary just seems to throw off the instrumentation of reporters. It's not that the reporting is consistently too negative, or consistently too positive, just that it's so often not the truth -- or at least, not the whole truth.

Agreed. But I recall the less-than-whole "truths" Arianna Huffington would spout about Bill Clinton while he was in office. One cannot erase all memory of the past.

Mind you, I'm glad she's on our side now, since she is a fine writer. Hitchens and Dennis Miller as a trade for an Arianna? Now that was a deal. Jeez, if only we could have thrown in Alexander Cockburn and James Carville...

Noted...

What's past is present: Ace investigator down under, Nick Possum -- a long-time friend to this humble blog -- dug up some old flooring in his home to discover a cache of newspapers from 1935. The big news: Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia. The details reveal striking similarities to recent headlines out of Iraq. (And check out the American reaction...!)

Brad Friedman had a few critical words to say about Barack Obama, so Fox News' Brit Hume quoted those words on Fox. Hume's intention was to create the impression that Obama had lost the left-wing bloggers. My take? If Brad Friedman is worth quoting on the air -- and he certainly is -- Fox should let its viewers know what he has to say about election fraud.

Kamikaze Brits: The U.K. is strongly hinting that its pilots should, you know, sort of...er...kill themselves in order to kill terrorists. But only as a last resort.

Bush family friend and Republican "turncoat" Vic Gold has crafted the words by which Dick Cheney will be known to history: "A vice president in control is bad enough. Worse yet is a vice president out of control."

The pet food recall: Xuzhou Anying may not be the only source of tainted wheat gluten, we now learn.

Impeach Bush! The argument for impeachment proceedings based on the mis-use of signing statements.

Sell your stuff and help the earth. Check out the new auction site:

A new free ongoing benefit auction called classifiedcircles.org is ready to channel funds, globally, to help critical charities such as Stop Global Warming, Free Press, Fisher House military services, Verified Voting, New Orleans Musicians Fund and many more.

Speaking of John McCain -- which we weren't -- here are two stories worth your perusal. Joy Tomme doesn't mince her words:

It’s hard to imagine what McCain thought he was doing. Did he not know he was being photographed wearing a bulletproof vest? Did he not realize journalists, generals and shop owners would be interviewed who would tell the real story? Does he, like George W. Bush, think he is the Great Oz and therefore his word will be believed in spite of proof positive that he’s lying?

Meanwhile, we now learn that it was McCain -- not anyone in Kerry's camp -- who floated the idea of a Kerry/McCain ticket in 2004! McCain's ambition is not just Playboy naked -- it's Hustler naked.

Update: McCain is advertising on Talking Points Memo. Mr. Zig-Zag is still trying to sell himself as Mr. Straight Talk.

A (belated) April Fool's poem

It comes to us by way of reader Bob Boldt. While this is not a poetry blog, BB is a good friend to this site, and I liked his insights here -- which come to us down a circuitous path first marked out by Geoffrey Chaucer. Besides, you can get a college education from his footnotes alone.

Follow the jump...

(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)

Song of the April Fool

By Bob Boldt

“Whan that Aprille, with hise shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour
Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heath
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne
And smale foweles maken melodye
That slepen al the nyght with open eye-
So priketh hem Nature in hir corages-
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Caunturbury they wende”

Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1343 –1400) From Canterbury Tales

Lover of the devious
The hoax
And celebrator of the artful deception
I rarely pass an April’s first
Without some fool’s taking-in.

Today, there being no lack of this daily feed
Abundantly spread for friends and fools alike
I choose to make no new fraud
To add to that abundant store
But prefer instead to be this April
Behind those holy and profane
Pilgrims
Who brave the early spring storms
On the road to Canterbury.

Reading those song like rhymes
That sprung so joyfully from Chaucer’s heart
I find myself again at one
With all seekers of
Delight
Love
Healing
Forgiveness
Redemption
Ecstasy
Fornication
And
Adventure
On that road to Canterbury.

We who in our time have lost
Not only the connection to
The hurtling of our planet ‘round
The brilliant fire
That so rules worms and kings
But also any traffic with the preternatural
That is why this year
I pilgrimage back to the source
Seeking it in Canterbury

As our ancestors
And even our simian uncles knew
When future paths are blocked
By torrent and avalanche
It requires us to find older courses
That lead to green pastures
And maps that guide to ways
That reaffirm the roots
From which creation springs
And the clear sure voices of the gods.[1.]
Reluctantly we turn from
The superhighway and follow the
Barely legible sign that points
To Canterbury.

This magical pile of stones
Rests in gothic repose
In the center of a town of
Less than 50,000 souls
Still the hub of modern pilgrims
Who drawn like floating
Grains of iron to the magnet’s core
File half in wonder
Half in idle curiosity
Beneath the cathedral arches
In Canterbury.

There they marvel at the meddlesome priest’s
Foully martyred blood[2.]
And meditate on Augustine’s [3.]
First footfalls seeking
The pagan foundation tracings
Among the buttercups and the marigold
Surrounding the city of the new god
Of Canterbury

This pilgrimage is no retreat
But a gathering in
Of all that has been lost
In the mad rush for the
Distraction and constipation of
Power
Conquest
And
Greed
That now would make the earth a dung heap.
We pass beneath this
Architecture of praying stones
Not as a shuddering refuge
But as a doorway
A leading prospect that lies before us
A dedication to our lineage from
Lucy of Africa
To Lucy in the sky [4.]
We repose our pilgrimage beneath these stones
Not as a sanctuary so much as
A querencia [5.] from which to launch a
Future for our exalted little band of apes
Our holy duties done
We retrace our pious tracks
Back to a world transformed
By our pilgrimage to Canterbury.


Footnotes:

[1.] According to Julian Jaynes, “The Origin of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind”. consciousness, as we know it today, is a relatively new faculty, one that did not exist until as recently as 2000 B.C. To ancient man, God was not a mental image or a deified thought but an actual voice heard when one was presented with a situation requiring decisive action. http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf043/sf043p18.htm

[2.] St. Thomas Becket (c 1118 – December 29, 1170) was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1162 to 1170. He is venerated as a saint and martyr by both the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Church. He engaged in a conflict with King Henry II over the rights and privileges of the Church and was assassinated by followers of the king in Canterbury Cathedral. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Becket

Henry’s exclamation "Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?" is said to be one of the earliest examples of plausible deniability and was interpreted by the assassins as an irrefutable, if indirect, royal command.

[3.] Augustine (not to be confused with the more famous Saint Augustine of Hippo - 354 – 430 CE) was the first Archbishop of Canterbury. he was sent to Ethelbert of Kent one of the Merovingian kings by Pope Gregory the Great in 597. Ethelbert himself was a pagan, but allowed his wife to worship God her own way. Probably under influence of his wife, Bertha, Ethelbert asked the Pope to send missionaries. The church of Canterbury was built on a site sacred since Roman times.

[4.] Lucy - Australopithecus afarensis Female 3.9 to 3 million years ago discovered in Ethiopia on November 30, 1974, near the Awash River by anthropologist Donald Johanson and one of his students, Tom Gray. Both were on the hot arid plains surveying the dusty terrain when a fossil caught Gray's eye; an arm bone fragment on a slope in a gulley. Near it lay a fragment from the back of a small skull. As they looked further, more and more bones were found, including jaw, arm bone, thighbone, ribs, and vertebrae. They carefully analyzed the partial skeleton and calculated that an amazing 40% of a hominin skeleton was recovered, which, while sounding generally unimpressive, is astounding in the world of anthropology. Usually, only fossil fragments are discovered; rarely are skulls or ribs found intact.

The skeleton AL 288-1 was nicknamed Lucy, after the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds", which was played repeatedly on a tape recorder at the camp as they celebrated all night after finding the first bones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_%28Australopithecus%29

[5.] “In Spanish, la querencia refers to a place on the ground where one feels secure, a place from which one’s strength of character is drawn. It comes from the verb "querer", to desire, but this verb also carries the sense of accepting a challenge, as in a game. In Spain, querencia is most often used to describe the spot in a bullring where a wounded bull goes to gather himself, the place he returns to after his painful encounters with the picadors and the banderilleros. It is unfortunate that the word is compromised in this way; for the idea itself is quite beautiful – a place in which we know exactly who we are. The place from which we speak our deepest beliefs. Querencia conveys more than “hearth”. And it carries this sense of being challenged – in the case of a bullfight, by something lethal, which one may want no part of. I would like to take this word querencia beyond its ordinary meaning and suggest that it applies to our challenge in the modern world, that our search for a querencia is both a response to threat and a desire to find out who we are. And the discovery of a querencia, I believe, hinges on the perfection of a sense of place.”

Barry Lopez, The Rediscovery of North America, p39-40

Larisa Alexandrovna

The web's best investigative reporter is facing a serious health concern. Her many admirers will want to send her the proverbial "good vibrations;" you can discover more here.

Blair v. Iran: Was the map faked?

Did Tony Blair rely on a fake map when he made the case that those 15 Royal Navy personnel were taken in Iraqi -- not Iranian -- waters? Yep.

Is Archer-Daniels Midland involved with the poisoned pet food scandal?

Kos pulled the plug on a post dealing with this possibility, but we can freely discuss such things elsewhere -- like here. (And here.)

The pet food scandal threatens to turn into a human food scandal, since the Chinese supplier had labeled its wheat gluten "human grade." The great mystery: Who imported the stuff? All major news stories have kept mum about the American corporation which functioned as the middleman between China and Menu Foods, the Canadian pet food company.

We do not have a massive number of firms engaged in such trade. According to this Bloomberg article, two of those firms -- MGP Ingredients and Manildra Group -- deny involvement.

The only other major U.S. producer of gluten is Archer- Daniels-Midland Co., Steve Pickman, MGP Ingredients vice president for corporate relations, said in a telephone interview. The ingredients may have come from outside the U.S. because about half of the U.S. supply is now imported, he said.

A receptionist at Archer-Daniels Midland, of Decatur, Illinois, said no one was available to comment.

(Emphasis added.) It may well be a coincidence that ADM sold off its bakery division quite recently. Cynics will argue that ADM, thought its contributions to politicians of both parties, has purchased a certain amount of -- well, "protection" may be too strong a word; let us say "good will in Washington." See here; see also this report, "Archer Daniels Midland: A Case Study In Corporate Welfare". A check from ADM literally helped to finance the Watergate break-in, although that was surely not the intended purpose. ADM has also been named in a little-known court case accusing the company (and Nestle) of employing child slave labor in Africa. (Coincidentally, Nestle is also the company behind Alpo, involved in the recall.)

Please note that I am NOT claiming that ADM is responsible for importing the wheat gluten. But I do advise you to keep an eye on the "whodunnit" angle.

And now this: Unrelated to the wheat gluten scandal, we learn today that various pet treats have been recalled due to salmonella poisoning.

Who is Michael L. Connell?

If you want to know -- and you should -- check out ePluribus Media's two part investigation, here and here. Michael J. Connell is the GOP tech guru who was allowed to work "behind the firewall," setting up telecommunications for the House of Representatives.

GovTech -- founded in April of 2000 by Connell's wife Heather and Synhorst (with Connell as registered agent) -- quickly distanced itself from New Media's reputation as the "Bell Labs of the Republican Party." Instead, GovTech claimed instead to be a "non-partisan" and "woman-owned IT solutions firm." But GovTech fortunes depended entirely on New Media, and how the remainder of the year played out.

This "woman owned" runaround has got to stop. Connell's background should be kept in mind as you re-read this piece about Kenny "the Kapo" Blackwell in Ohio: "Ohio's election website still sent real-time results to GOP mirror server."

By the way -- the proverbial "little birdie" has told me that Smartech president Jeff Averbeck has refused to talk to journalists trying to get a foothold on this story. Seems to me we need a congressional investigation...

Wheat gluten from China

The poison pet food scare threatens to become a poison people scare, now that we know that the toxic Chinese wheat gluten was human grade. The best "home-spun" research into the matter can be found on this D.U. page, where we learn that the Chinese company in question, Xuzhou Anying, advertises wheat gluten for sale on this site, using these words:

It is a good soluble protein, containing fifteen amino acid essential for human body. After all, it can yet be regarded as a plant protein food looking good, smelling good and tasting good.

And leaving good-looking corpse. After all.

One D.U. commentator suggests that the tainting is intentional: "They have our jobs. They own our paper. They might just want us off of THEIR property."

Fill in the blank: "______ Christ"

Years ago, the proverbial firestorm of controversy surrounded the photograph "Piss Christ." Mere days ago, controversy erupted over a (rather well-executed) "Chocolate Christ," which struck me as no more blasphemous than are the plastic Jesi we see everywhere. And now we have Fox News giving a ton of free publicity to a (not very good) sculpture of Barack Obama as Christ.

Okay. Now I get it. A pattern emergeth. Anyone who wants to establish himself as a serious artist, or at least as a famous artist, needs to churn out a novelty JC.

Any suggestions as to materials?

Hand me a decent airbrush and a compressor and I can whip ya up a "Geiger" in about a week. You think an Alien Christ would go over well? I was thinking of a "chest-burster" crucifixion, but that might be in poor taste.

My ladyfriend has suggested a "Mary Lactan" modified like so:

Ann Coulter, the penis photos: An analysis

For quite a while now, I have received, on a daily basis, some highly unusual messages in my inbox. (If truth be told, most of them have to do with business opportunities in Africa.) But I may never have received a message quite so unusual as this one, sent via an anonymous remailing service:

I have had the unusual privilege if it can be called that of seeing Ann Coulter in the nude. In fact I have photographic proof of the encounter. I do not expect you to believe me especially since the photo does not contain her face but rest assured that this is real and all other features such as hands etc should match. I can also assure you that I was made fully aware, what shocked me were her comments about john edwards hence the reason I send this to you.

I present his photo here for what it is worth, and I apologize beforehand for the graphic nature of this image. (Clicking on the picture should reveal a larger version -- and before you dismiss too quickly, please scroll down to the other photos.)

Obviously, without the facial features, this image is nearly worthless as evidence. I have presented the image "as is" without attempting to smooth over the jpg artifacts, which, unfortunately, may hide some telling details. The general morphology, and the veins visible in the hands and arm, do match other Coulter images. The picture would appear to have been taken with a digital camera in a diffused, low-light situation. Beyond that, one can say no more.

Based on such "evidence" -- if it can be called evidence -- one can hardly conclude that Ann Coulter is a hermaphrodite. Of course, others have discerned what some consider sexual abnormality in Coulter's appearance and demeanor. You have no doubt already seen the image below, displaying what appears to be a very male Adam's apple.

Again, I consider the data insufficient. Even so, we must ask the question: If Coulter were a hermaphrodite, what characteristics should we expect to see?

Wikipedia informs us that there are, in essence, two forms of hermaphroditism which may appear in human beings:

Asymmetrical Gonadal Dysgenesis versus True Hermaphroditism

Gonadal dysgenesis generally refers to a condition where gonadal development is abnormal. It occurs in about one percent of mammals, including human beings. Asymmetrical Gonadal Dysgensis refers to a condition where the individual has one differentiated gonad (usually testis) and one streak. True Hermaphroditism is rarer in humans and refers to a condition where the individual has both ovarian tissue and testicular elements.[3] It is extremely rare for both sets of organs to be functional; usually neither set is functional. In humans, these manifestations are often altered (sometimes only cosmetically) to resemble standard male or female anatomy shortly after birth.

Alas, we find in this description nothing about the likelihood of a single individual possessing a penis, a vagina, and an Adam's apple.

I did not know how to proceed further with this investigation until I recalled the most intriguing development of the "Bush bulge" controversy, for which this blog was once well-known. As some of you will remember, NASA photo analyst Dr. Robert M. Nelson performed simple, standard photographic enhancements of the strange bulge on Bush's back, as glimpsed during the debates of 2004. His work revealed the unmistakable outline of a still-unexplained device beneath Bush's suit.

The great scientific advantage of Dr. Nelson's presentation is that he reveals his methods, and asks for his work to be replicated. I have therefore attempted to use similar techniques to uncover the truth about Ann Coulter.

We may refer to these photos as the "Coulter bulge."

Before proceeding, I ask any readers who suspect that I am dealing with altered original photos to compare the unenhanced images to the versions available at this Ann Coulter photo gallery, which appears to be the creation of a Coulter fan. You will see that the jpgs are essentially the same. In the enhanced close-ups, I have simply attempted to apply techniques similar to those employed by Dr. Nelson. Any reader with Photoshop is invited to use the same techniques.

The first example uses what I call the "yellow slacks" image:



As you will see, I did not have to apply the sharpening tool very aggressively to discover a shape that I had already suspected was there. (Before using the "sharpen" tool, I did apply a minor blur to soften the jpg artifacts, as is standard procedure when enlarging a small image.)

Our second example has been noted on these pages before, and has also appeared in on other sites. Unfortunately, the larger versions of this image which were once available have all disappeared (mysteriously?) from the net. When I enlarged the version here, the jpg artifacts were so pronounced as to render any enhancement techniques useless. Still, this photo did engender quite a bit of comment when it first made the rounds.

If any reader has a clearer copy, please let me know.

Finally, and most interesting of all, we have a high school photograph of Ann Coulter, originally published by a classmate.

Photographic enhancement proved surprisingly effective in this instance, although the unenhanced original shows the telltale "bulge" signature apparent in most other photographs of this area:

At the end of the day, am I convinced that this photographic evidence proves that Ann Coulter is a hermaphrodite? Hardly. Indeed, I believe that the preponderance of the evidence leads to the opposite conclusion.

Even so, one may posit that the deep-rooted gender confusion issues occasioned by hermaphroditism would go some ways toward explaining Ann Coulter's unusual stance toward gays -- befriending Matt Drudge yet insulting John Edwards as a "faggot."

I ask the readers, especially those with expertise in photographic analysis and/or gender issues, to continue this research.

Ultimately, we will not know the answer with any certainty until we receive a statement from Coulter herself. Perhaps someone can ask her to clarify this issue next time she appears on a listener call-in talk show.

The time has come for Ann Coulter to tell all doubters that she is wholly female and has been so since birth, despite appearances.

More on GWB43

A commenter directs us to this excellent Corrente piece, which presents photographic evidence of Karl Rove carrying a brochure for Coptix, one of the Domain servers for the mysterious GWB43 email addresses, which White House staffers used to hide from the Presidential Records Act.

Coptix and Smartech (about which we have written at length) are both in, or very near, Chattanooga, Tennessee. I still do not know of any link between the companies, but since they both serve that address, a connection seems likely.

Meanwhile, as this Kos diarist notes, no on-camera mainstream media figures have touched this story. You'd think that these journalists would be in an excellent position to leap upon the scoop of this young century.

After all, Karl does 95% of his work on non-official email servers. Karl communicates with journalists often. Those journalists must have records of GWB43 (or other) emails from the White House.

A White House spokesman has said that these accounts were set up to "so that people weren't using their official accounts for political activities." If journalists see the magic string GWB43 anywhere in their inbox folders, then they have prima facie evidence of official use.

Either the Presidential Records Act has been violated or the Hatch Act has been violated. I can't see a third possibility. Can you?