Howard Carmack, known as the "Buffalo Spammer," received the maximum sentence for 14 counts of identity theft and forgery, a spokesman for New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said.
Carmack sent out 825 million bulk e-mail messages using stolen identities and forged addresses, the court found, and was the first defendant to face charges under the state's new identity-theft statute.
Roger L. Simon calls it the mother of all coverups. It appears nobody is really interested in getting to the bottom of UNSCAM, the UN oil for food palaces scandal. Least of all, strangely enough, the US government and governor Bremer.
American Shias urge coalition to stand firm in Iraq
Around 5,000 US and Canadian Shia Muslims are right now gathering for their second annual convention in Washington DC, organised by the Universal Muslim Association of America (UMAA). However, since the majority of attendants are firm supporters of the coalition's effort in Iraq, we should not expect much media coverage, even as the organisers request media presence to help address misconceptions about Shiites.
They have many concerns, based on what relatives and friends in Iraq tell them, one of their primary ones being that extremist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is crushed.
"Our people view Moktada al-Sadr as a dangerous renegade and adventurer, who threatens the safety of every Shia Muslim in Iraq," Jafri said. "We do not want the Coalition forces to inflict harm on the holy sites in Najaf or Karbala, but we want al-Sadr firmly defeated. The best action would be to support the Iraqi Shias in combating him. Give them the power and they will get rid of the problem."
The second concern is to make sure that the coalition does not give up.
Jafri said Iraqi Shias are "terrified that if the U.S. in Iraq leaves, the Wahhabis concentrated in Falluja and Tikrit will begin a wholesale genocide of Shias, repeating the earlier actions of the Saddam regime."
One curious fact: last year's Shia convention had Paul Wolfowitz as a speaker, and he won multiple standing ovations from the audience.
The Iraqi Governing Council nominated one of its own members, Iyad Allawi, as prime minister of the Iraqi interim government. The White House supported him, and UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi also gave him the nod. Allawi is a Shiite, a UK trained neurologist, a military officer who turned against Saddam in the 80s and were forced into exile, and he has strong ties with US intelligence.
The United Nations acknowledged the timing of the council's announcement was a surprise, but said Brahimi would work with Allawi on the makeup of the government, due to be announced in the coming days.
Allawi had been "high on (Brahimi's) list" of possible premiers," spokesman Fred Eckhard said at U.N. headquarters in New York. The announcement "is not how we expected it to happen ... but the Iraqis seem to agree on this candidate."
The press is understandably playing up the differences between the UN and the US over this choice. So far he appears to be the Iraqis' choice, not the US government's. A person with strong security background appears to be preferrable to deal with the situation in Iraq right now.
Update:Glenn just pointed out an interesting debate: Mickey Kaus thinks that Brahimi picked Allawi because his lack of grassroots support in Iraq ensures he will not be elected. But the Beeb says (as do others) that Brahimi only grudgingly accepted the choice because the IGC was united behind him.
Initially a UN spokesman in the region said Mr Brahimi welcomed the choice.
But later in New York, chief UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said: "Mr Brahimi respects the decision and is prepared to work with this person on the selection of the other posts in this interim government".
Mr Eckhard insisted there was no discrepancy between the two statements - but he conceded that the decision had not been announced in the way expected.
Still, nobody is suggesting that Allawi is a bad choice, so far.
Polly Toynbee's Guardian article is far and away the most stupid I've seen on the topic of obesity and diet, and saying that is saying a lot indeed.
The argument is that social inequality creates obesity. Obviously, it is not being poor, because richer countries have more of an obesity problem than the poor ones. Yet, in rich countries, the poor are more often obese than the rich. Ergo, Polly quips, it is inequality that causes obesity. When a poor guy sees a rich person drive past in his Mercedes Benz, he gets so depressed that he supersizes his Big Mac.
And, like all nonsense arguments that are extremely popular in Europe, 1) it puts Americans in a bad light; and 2) there is statistics to back it up. And if not real statistics, at least Polly can parrot back some popular misconceptions.
The inequality/obesity link is mirrored internationally. America has by far the most unequal society and by far the fattest. Britain and Australia come next. Europe is better and the Scandinavian countries best of all. No doubt there are also social policy reasons for this: the best social democracies pick up family problems earliest and offer most support, putting people back on their feet, preventing social exclusion. But the narrower the status and income gap between high and low, the narrower the waistbands.
Previously, some right wing nut used Scandinavia as a hellish example on how gay marriage allegedly destroys the institution. Now, suddenly, Scandinavia is thin & fit socialist heaven, proving the marxist truth about obesity.
But, sorry, no go. Norwegian men are actually the fattest in Europe (ahem, this blogger excepted).
As Thomas Huxley said, "The great tragedy of science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact." But in leftist journalism, facts are rarely allowed to disturb a politically correct theory.
A simple sanity check should be sufficient to discard the idea that the cause of obesity is social unequality. People are much less equal in developing countries than in the west.
Update: The Daily Ablution has a serious, comprehensive fisking and debunking of the column, with statistics and even a graph to demonstrate how far out to (diet) lunch Polly Toynbee is. Thanks to Joseph for link.
