The Midas Meatball

According¨to Forbes magazine's annual ranking, IKEA’s Ingvar Kamprad has a net worth of 28 billion dollars putting him in 4rth place, behind Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Carlos Slim Helú.

And did you know...he can drink any given Pole or Ruskie under any given table from his catalogue (That damned catalogue of his has overtaken the Bible as the world's most distributed publication.)

I've met a fair share of his American store chieftains and man do they all come across as horrible pricks whereas ol' Ingvar is about as down to earth as they get. Which just goes to prove, even Nazis (alt. link) and neo-Leninist butchers can be fellas one can imagine oneself shooting the shit with over drinks.

BTW. Kamprad is the richest man in the world. Forbes is wrong. Dead wrong. Though Gates would still be richest if he never gave so much away to charities.

Sign of The Meatball Times, Alex Jones?

Oh no. What will Alex Jones make of this ominous news. Big brother one invasive step closer to mind snatching our babies?

Sweden will begin screening all four-year-olds for obesity in an attempt to curb health risks linked to the increased incidence of overweight children, medical professionals said yesterday. Read More at Gulf Times

Used to run into gunrunning Adnan Khashoggi, one of Alex's purported backers, down in Cannes. He had a pad in the same beachfront apartment complex as an ex girlfriend - that is the french gf with the private jet and a penchant for drunken coin fights at the casino on nights when boredom was the mother of our inexcusable antics.

China Cunt Munch...or Sweet & Sour Meatballs

Let's face it. In sheer numbers, the Chinese commy regime is a fucking nightmare when it comes to torture and human rights violations. But none of the concupiscently pandering meatballs attending the China Business Forum in Stockholm this week even made whisper of such frivolities - even whilst mingling in the cachectic manner that prostrate swollen old men tend to dull-assed mingle.

Anyways, SMC's collective impression of the 2 days of nut-numbing seminars was that the proselytizing cocksuckers pitching their wares from the forum's podiums were folks still insecure enough in their own personal lives to do anything for a buck - even a dissident-gulaging Chinaman's wretched buck at that. That makes the Disciples of Mao back home feel real good.

Well fuck 'em all.

Custer Battles The U.S. This Time

Admittedly the American government is an easier target than the Indians at Little Big Horn.

Two Army veterans and their company cheated the U.S. government on a contract to furnish Iraq with a new currency in 2003 and should pay more than $10 million in assorted damages, a federal jury in Alexandria ruled yesterday.

In the first civil fraud verdict arising from the war effort, the eight-member panel decided, after two days of deliberation, in favor of two former workers who claimed in a lawsuit that Custer Battles LLC created phony Cayman Island companies to overcharge the Coalition Provisional Authority that ran Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

"This is a smashing victory for U.S. taxpayers and these whistle-blowers though the Bush administration did nothing to help," said Alan M. Grayson, the attorney for the plaintiffs, Robert Isakson and William Baldwin. Under the federal False Claims Act, citizens can sue on behalf of the government and the Justice Department can then decide whether to join the suit, which it did not in the Custer Battles case.

The company, which had offices in Northern Virginia and Rhode Island, was founded in 2002 by Scott Custer, a former Army Ranger, and Michael Battles, a West Point graduate who also served in the CIA. The war in Iraq brought it meteoric growth, as it picked up CPA contracts to manage security at Baghdad International Airport and help distribute the country's new currency.

Someone pulling a stunt like the following would be greeted to extra-judicial punishment under my command:

During the trial, retired Brig. Gen. Hugh Tant III told jurors that Custer Battles's performance amounted to "probably the worst I've seen in my 30 years in the Army." Tant had been overseeing the firm's work on the currency conversion contract.

He testified that of the 36 trucks the firm supplied, 34 did not work. When he confronted Battles, he said Battles responded: "You asked for trucks and we complied with our contract and it is immaterial whether the trucks were operational."

ABBA Reunites To Rescue Gay Poles

Their band’s demise has been the obsession of pop fans across the globe, along with rumours of self-enforced seclusion and breakdowns, but they had vowed not to work together again.

However, the plight of lesbian and gay people in Poland has motivated Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad to work together for the first time in more than a decade. Read More

Do Da Cha-Cha, Butch

For a man who supposedly proclaims not to be gay, Bolton hasn't missed much of a noticeable step in the choreography of pretexting the smash & grab hit on Iran in Q3 07. Fosse be lookin' down and smilin'. Cha Cha Cha!

White House Cracks Down on Media Leaks

In a development which readers of this well-connected blog network have previously been made aware of (see last week's Is There More Here?), the White House has ordered surveillance of government employees with certain security clearances and the journalists that they are in contact with.

Today's Washington Post has an article about this that omits the really sensitive part of the story, that there apparently exists a classified USSID (United States Signals Intelligence Directive) permitting the NSA to eavesdrop upon a large number of people who are in a position to leak or receive classified information that is embarrassing to the administration.

This is the program that AG Alberto Gonzales was dancing around to avoid acknowledging in his Senate Judiciary Committee testimony of Feb. 6.

From today's Post article:

The Bush administration, seeking to limit leaks of classified information, has launched initiatives targeting journalists and their possible government sources. The efforts include several FBI probes, a polygraph investigation inside the CIA and a warning from the Justice Department that reporters could be prosecuted under espionage laws.

In recent weeks, dozens of employees at the CIA, the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies have been interviewed by agents from the FBI's Washington field office, who are investigating possible leaks that led to reports about secret CIA prisons and the NSA's warrantless domestic surveillance program, according to law enforcement and intelligence officials familiar with the two cases.

Numerous employees at the CIA, FBI, Justice Department and other agencies also have received letters from Justice prohibiting them from discussing even unclassified issues related to the NSA program, according to sources familiar with the notices. Some GOP lawmakers are also considering whether to approve tougher penalties for leaking...

Some media watchers, lawyers and editors say that, taken together, the incidents represent perhaps the most extensive and overt campaign against leaks in a generation, and that they have worsened the already-tense relationship between mainstream news organizations and the White House...

Disclosing classified information without authorization has long been against the law, yet such leaks are one of the realities of life in Washington -- accounting for much of the back-channel conversation that goes on daily among journalists, policy intellectuals, and current and former government officials.

You heard it here first, folks.

Wayne's World

Wayne buddy saved me at least 37 hours, 2 bottles of Absolut Vodka, and countless bruises by eloquently laying out what I had heard from other sources and wanted to share with kindred cirrhotics. "Wayne you bastard, you took the words right outta my atheist arse!"

March 5, 2006 -- Bush trip to South Asia a disaster. The corporate media won't tell you this -- but the Bush trip to South Asia was nothing less than a disaster, according to direct and uncensored reports from India and Pakistan. Street protests against Bush in India were not in the "thousands," as reported by the media, but in the "hundreds of thousands." And they involved more than Muslims, but included protestors from left-wing and regional parties, as well as labor unions and student organizations.

The safest place Indian authorities could find for Bush to give his keynote speech was the New Delhi zoo and boat club Purana Quila complex. Indian legislators threatened a noisy reception for Bush if he address parliament.

Indians remained miffed that another noted Indian scientist was crudely denied a visa to visit the United States. Agro-scientist P. C. Kesavan was invited to attend a scientific conference in the United States this month. However, Kesavan said he was forced to wait in line for three hours at the U.S. Consulate in Chennai and was then handed a 14-item questionnaire and told to return in two days. Kesavan told the Press Trust of India, "It is an insult to the Indian scientific community. It always happens to Indian scientists whenever they apply for a visa to visit the US." Two Indian nuclear scientists were also denied visas to attend conferences in the United States: Dr. Placid Rodriguez, the former director of the Indira Gandhi Center for Atomic Research (IGCAR) and former Indian Institute of Science head Goverdhan Mehta. All three scientists were denied visas by the US Consulate in Chennai, Kesavan said he would never again step foot on American soil and said that the US visa officer at the Chennai consulate did not know what DNA, genetics, radiation biology, and sustainable development meant. President Bush announced during his trip that his administration would open yet another US consulate in Hyderabad -- perhaps staffing it with additional US foreign service personnel who will continue to represent the incompetence and ignorance of Condoleezza Rice and George W. Bush.

In his speech at the New Delhi zoo, Bush said, "I believe that a prosperous, democratic Pakistan will be a steadfast partner for America, a peaceful neighbor for India and a force for freedom and moderation in the Arab world." Since Pakistan is not an Arab nation, Indians and Pakistanis, alike, were confused about what Bush was talking about.

Don't Happy, Be Worry

As long as Swedish media continues to deploy their journalistic resources to near exclusively cover reality TV developments, review cellphone breakthroughs, and stalk Ericsson's stock price fluctuations in absurdum then the 4rth estate's spectacular investigative reporters of celebrity orgasms will continue to have nothing like the ominous American experience to fear. You'd be forgiven for thinking they couldn't make waves if it was to keep a Spanish beach resort turd from floating into their commonlaw spouse's frolicking mouth. (God they were a pushover to media map into Yankee-Doodle-luvin' submission back in the day.)

Perhaps that's why Swedish standup comedians are about as pas de funny as British cuisine is pas de tasty - one night they're playing to a night club of tobacco chewing quarter-generation metropolites to pay their child support arrears and the next evening they're entertaining a hungover half of that same crowd at a Social Democratic Party team building function. It's an eensy weensy country and the options for salaried employment for rockers de boats just ain't that rosy. Play it safe and joke about poop and burps.

Out of sight, out of mind. That's part of the recipe for a meatball's paradise, baby.

(was this reactionary soundin'? Sorry)

Wanna Be A Troll, Do'ya? Try Some TGN 1412

Sell TeGenero, I tell you! Sell!

(Their evil shit will make dying trolls out of your darlings)

The Iceman Stayeth Cool

Rumour and inuendo has it that Björn Borg is as close to broke as broke can be and is therefore auctioning of his heyday trofies and gear to raise a little cash for porridge and posterity.

SMC is here to tell you that never has a rumour been further from the meatball. He's still rolling in it - and rolling in it in the most serious of ways. The auction is just a diversionary maneuver to throw the Swedish tax man off his scent. Cross my heart! He files his tax returns as a pauper and uses Dutch sandwiches to hide and insulate his stashes from the ever vigilent taxman.

Dutch sandwiches were quite popular with the Iran Contra boyz too now that I come to think about it.

Cartoon Corral

Class, we're going on a field trip to behead some infidels... GOP Vixen

Lack of respect sparked cartoon violence The Times-Tribune

Danish Cartoons International The Brussels Journal

Fingerpointing between government and business continues The Copenhagen Post

Key Egyptian clerics at odds over cartoon dialogue The Daily Star

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark... and Saudi Arabia... and the United States... and... Total Drek

Danish lecturer talks of cartoon Gainesville Times

An open letter to the Prime Minister of Denmark Yemen Times

Dane-in-the-street view of cartoon issue The Manilla Times

Russia and the 'war of civilizations' Asia Times

Denmark Toons, Islamic Caricatures: 6 of 1 or 1/2 Dozen Of The Other The Post Chronicle

Danes Swing Naziward...Again.

(Bloomberg) Support for Denmark's anti-immigration Danish People's Party has soared in the wake of Muslim protests against cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, an opinion poll shows....

...The 11-year-old DPP, which in 2002 compared Islam to a ``plague,''...

....``We're witnessing a shift in the Danish political landscape,'' Buch said. ``This can, without a doubt, be attributed to the whole Muhammad cartoon debate.''...

`...`The Danish People's Party has been able to tell people, just look, we were right all along,'' said Lars Bille, associate professor at Copenhagen University in a Feb. 14 interview....

...The DPP has a history of insulting Islam. Parliamentarian and priest Jesper Langballe in 2002 compared it with Nazism, calling it a ``plague'' in Europe....

...Finance spokesman Kristian Thulesen Dahl in 2001 called Islam ``the greatest threat to freedom since communism,'' while Kjaersgaard in 1999 said immigrants arrive in Denmark ``with male chauvinism, ritual slaughtering, female circumcision and clothes that subjugate women, all of which belong in the darkest middle ages.''...

Read the whole article at Bloomberg

Da' NSA...Exposé (Now That! Rhymes)

How to keep shocking news simple. Well how about this failed attempt:

The NSA and its programme affiliates in the CATCH ALL project (SMC's nomenclature) are building the infrastructure of steady-state capture and storage of absolutely every volley of electronic communication generated within or sent to the U.S.A. The establishment of that infrastructure is well under way and much of it is already in plodding place.

Added to that are various novel and evolving tools and covert programmes that focus on trawling about in this huge repository of stored communications for whatever one might feel the need to be in search of for the moment - or for the party.

So the poetry of this is: one need not target a person or a group for wiretapping to monitor the webbing of their tattlings - everyone is already monitored (or targeted to soon be). All one need do is mine the gargantuan, and growing at that , repository of collected communications with the correct mining tools. One slick aspect of all this is that collection of communications is seperated from the analysis of the collected communications. It's no longer a matter of simultaneous collect & listen. Nifty. You better believe Gonzalez likes that!

In odd lot instances, old-fashioned targeted wiretaps are indeed still necessitated when all the content components of a particular communication exchange are required or when the targeted individuals' communication network is not yet incorporated into the CATCH ALL collection infrastructure. The huge CATCH ALL project does not yet record and store all of the anecdotal content in any given collected communication - this primarily due to purely technical limitations facing the project to date. But for now the vacuuming of near all transactional data will do quite nicely indeed.

We'll just keep on trying to explain this baby with meatballish mumblings as the days grind on. Our 15 minutes of rolling meatballs are up.

Le Hamas dans Les Pyjamas...(Doesn't really rhyme, does it!)

...and while we're at, why let the Frogs have the only word on men in pyjamas. Here's Phyllis Bennis, fellow at Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.

There has been no functioning Middle East peace process for years now. Israel has instead pursued a strategy of unilateral action to redraw borders, annex Palestinian land, and impose its own version of a "solution" to the conflict.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was moving one-sidedly in the occupied territories -- "disengaging" from Gaza, expanding settlements and the separation wall, and preparing to annex huge swaths of Palestinian land. The moves are all aimed at consolidating an expanded Israeli state, including all major West Bank settlement blocs as part of Israel, and walling off the Palestinians into a set of divided cantons.

That strategy, based on separating Israel from the Palestinians physically and economically, and negotiating only with Washington, remains unchanged since Sharon's stroke.

Read More at Florida's The Sun Sentinel

Don't Screw...With Tele2

Fredrik Berglund suddenly disappeared from Tele2 in January of this year due to corporately alleged family reasons - just on the back of his recent promotion in the company.

The Skankanavian telecom industry (and its salivating analysts) has been as abuzz with speculation about the details of his mysterious exit as Tele2 and its holding company Kinnevik have been tightlipped on releasing any further details on the matter.

First outta da' insiders box, SMC has learned that family reasons would be a most prude euphemism for what in fact is the underlying matrix of salacious circumstances precipating his less than wished-upon departure from Tele2. C'mon, do we have to spell it out for you and post pix of bagged & tagged dress stains and soggy cigars? Suffice it to say that Swedish underlings can be quite formidable as inadvertent temptresses.

But of course there's an even deeper story to all this where the above is nuthin' but saucy pretext for deeper currents to be dealt with later...

SMC Told You So

BRUSSELS, Feb. 24 (UPI) -- The European Union agreed to allow the United States freer access to its airspace to move unwanted people around the world in 2003 -- and then tried to cover up the deal, according to censored EU documents seen by United Press International. Read More at UPI

Their Oil for Us and Your Ports For Them - Get It, Meatballs?

This UAE-Port biz is much white trash ado about nothing other than 6 of our major ports being swapped with the UAE in exchange for their government allowing US oil firms to increase their ownership in UAE oil projects from minority to majority stakes. Get it?


Forget jeopardizing U.S. security. The UAE deal doesn't jeopardize U.S. Heimatsicherheit any more than does bringing home our screwed-over troops in shambles to live among our Disney-fied children and their Green Day listening hot kindergarten teachers. (But that's another story)

Wariness of undemocratic (or even democratic for that matter) Muslims only applies when used as a pretext for diverting the tax dollars of numbnuttedly patriotic blue-collar voters from programs that would really make their lifes a bit less anxiety ridden and doling it out instead as equity owner subsidies and kick backs - and of course as military investment that aids in shoring up far-flung market penetration activities for our Big Cap cowboys. Let our overworked and retarded electorate hate the olive-hued heathen...just don't let that reliably pliant and zomboid hatred get in our way of getting a good piece of tax-subsidized A-grade ass....ahum, A-rab windfall.

So why is this convenient Prez de Presenile Dementia of ours getting all blowhardy defensive about a UAE-port deal he claimed to have little earlier noesis of? I mean, it's just a run of the mill duplicitous swap, girlfriend. Some might deprecatively coin it as a brazen swap of electorate credulousness for even more Big Oil giveaways. (But let's keep matters non-conspiratorial for my younger wives out there. Bush et al really means to phase out oil and run cars on hydrogen after being flabbergasted and incensed by Big Oil's record windfalls - cross my heart. No more giveaways.)

The UAE is a few multiples the size of Cheney's Wyoming retreat yet it harbors some 10 % of the world's oil reserves and represents the planet's 6th largest reserve of natural gas. Documentation stemming from both US oil corporations and the US trade negotiation representation from a few years back show full agreement that We need to allow US oil companies to own bigger stakes in UAE oil fields than the 49% chokehold allotment to date. The US #1 priority in pushing for a free trade agreement is to allow US oil to own bigger shares in UAE projects.

So the Bush Admin is agreeing to let a company controlled by the government of UAE take over 6 large US ports in exchange for the relaxing and liberalizing of rules so as to allow US oil companies to take bigger shares of oil drilling activities in the UAE.

US oil companies operate without many restrictions in the UAE but are stopped shy from owning crucial majority stakes in any assets or projects. That's where a free trade agreement comes in...we give up our ports for US oil company ownership of UAE oil fields. That's why it's cute to hear Bush et al scrambling to defend this back room deal with the 'Not all Arabs are bad' defence. Slick is as Slick tells him to say.

This appears to be all about delivering the hot Arabian goods to their oil industry task masters by fencing off our ports - and that in flagrant contradiction of security concerns the Admin itself raises whenever opportune for their various tax revenue transferance schemes.

(Note the rather marked difference between the Bush Admin's reaction to the proposed sale last year of the California-based company Unocal to a company controlled by the Chinese government and the sale of 6 large US port contracts to a company controlled by a Middle Eastern company. Maybe those stingy Chinese commies should've sweetened the deal with decisive mainland concessions to our Big Oil or Mega Pharma.Then they could've received a 100 year lease on running the Statue of Liberty's elevator - and got exclusive first pick options on our caucasian runaway roundups for the white slave sex industry that services their whale dick chomping horny nomenklatura.)