Welcome to Massachusetts This little item never made it into the Boston Globe, wasn't reported on TV or radio, and landed fairly deep in the Boston Herald. For those of you from outside the area, a little background might help. The whole thing is recounted in the book Black Mass (and I don't get anything from Amazon, thanks). The synopsis is this:
The FBI recruited Whitey Bulger, the brother of the then State Senate President, as an informant. Whitey was not just any informer -- he was the head of "the Irish Mob." His needs and those of the FBI dovetailed nicely since they both wanted to eliminate the Mafia in the area. Bulger was given a free pass to do as he pleased, up to and including murder. One of the corrupt FBI agents, John Connolly, was recently sent to jail. Connolly was obliging enough to finger victims for some of Whitey's killings, and tipped him off in time to evade arrest (he is still missing). There was rumored involvement with the State Police (one of them went to jail, too), the US District Attorney's office, and all other sorts of law enforcement agencies. The legendary Paul Rico, the FBI guy credited with bringing down the Angiulo and Patriarca families, may have been Whitey's original patron, but didn't recall much of anything when called before Congress to testify. In any event, even as far back as 1965, law enforcement was obliging enough to send 3 men to prison (originally sentenced to death!) for a murder committed by one of their informants.
Against that backdrop, the prosecuting attorney against Connolly's lookalike brother-in-law and fellow felon (doppelgangsters?) Arthur Giannelli forgot to call his star witness in an extortion trial. He didn't issue a subpoena. Instead, he sent a letter to the witness's former addresss -- in Arizona. (Didn't notice the 617 area code on the phone number, huh?) The witness found out about it when a reporter for the Herald called him the day of the hearing to find out why he hadn't appeared. No subpoena, no witness. No witness, no case. Case dismissed. The DA's spokesman described it as "an innocent mistake." Call it what you want, but "innocent" is not the first term that occurs to me. John Connolly was not the only rat in the barn.
The Telegraph has an article on a missile Iraq was developing, with a range of 600 miles and the potential to carry chemical warheads. This information was apparently gotten from one of the captured Iraqi generals. It looks like we're picking up some great deals in the Baath going out of business sales.
You may have noticed that I have inserted pictures into the free version of Blogger. It's not hard, really. Your ISP probably gives you a free website with some unintelligible URL, as mine does. All you need to do is stick your pictures there and use a little HTML magic to refer to them. Nothing says your text and pictures have to be on the same server. Haggai, Vegard -- let me know if you need help or space for images.
France has accused the US of an orchestrated disinformation campaign designed to stir up bad feelings toward them. <sarcasm>Well, it looks to me like the Bush administration has decided to spare their feelings by burying this story on the Saturday of a 3-day weekend.</sarcasm> US intelligence has found a dozen French passports. There's no word on their provenance -- they could be forgeries or they could be genuine.
Merde in France is probably the only source in France where this news will be reported. Maybe Radio Free Europe (I think it's Radio Liberty now) should start broadcasting in French.
One should approach a sixth marriage with the conviction that this time it's for real. Just like the previous five.
The leading causes of death among affluent Americans are murder, car accidents, and airplane crashes in remote tropical areas. Death by this third method is rarely permanently fatal.
Most of the planet is populated by models, doctors, tycoons, and randy teenagers. There are also a few policemen to arrest them and clergymen to marry and bury them.
You should not be surprised if previously unsuspected children show up from time to time.
Many people have twins they do not know about. This can be handy.
When in trouble, lie. You will always get caught at it, but this should not stop you.
I've been a bad boy lately, posting on other peoples' comments sections without doing anything on my blog. I've still been writing, you just have to look for it all over the place. Here's one I wrote in response to an article in The Edge of England's Sword.
Kris, speaking as a CPA, nothing would please me more than tax simplification and a general reduction of rates. My area of practice was taxation of investments and investors. Ever try reading the IRS code and regulations dealing with orginal issue discount (sec. 1272) or foreign currency transactions (sec. 988)? It's more scary than anything Stephen King ever wrote.
The underlying assumption in far too many tax arguments is that taxation has legitimate objectives beyond the collection of revenue needed for legitimate government functions. On the left, this leads to tax policies that are alleged to favor the poor by creating income transfers from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. On the right, it leads to such nonsense as "trickle down" and "job creation."
What is wrong with the notion that tax policy should be essentially neutral? That is to say, taxation should be structured so that the decision to spend or invest, hire or buy machinery, work overtime or go fishing, should not be influenced by the tax consequences of the decision? As a good capitalist, would you agree that the butcher and the baker, acting in their own self-interest, would notmake the most sensible decision for themselves? As a libertarian, would you argue that central planning through tax policies that favor or discourage one activity or another of leads to greater economic efficiency?
The insidious nature of tax policy is that not only does the government get to allocate the money it collects and spends, it also influences the spending of the pitiful remainder it leaves in private hands.
Dawn Breaks over Marblehead It looks like the French are starting to realize that opposing the #1 military power and excluding #2 may not be as good an idea as it seems on its face. Here is today's le Monde editorial:
Le Monde Editorial
Blair against Chirac
Crises have the advantage of clarifying things. The deep division across the European Union on the war in Iraq forces Europeans to answer a question long posed but always avoided: What do they want to do together?
In a space of two days, Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac have given opposing answers.
This no longer a controversy between European integrationists and Eurosceptics, as it was when the British Conservatives were in power. Tony Blair is the most "European" prime minister that Great Britain has had in a long time. He has stated repeatedly that he favors building Europe. He regrets the chances his predecessors missed. He wants his country to adopt the Euro as soon as possible so that it might play a full role in the Union. He has – to take the expression de Gaulle applied to France – "a certain idea of Europe." The problem for French diplomacy is that his idea does not correspond to theirs.
Tony Blair has just repeated this in public. He does not want a multi-polar world in which Europe would constitute one pole, along with the United States and other regional groupings. This is the vision that the French president repeated at the mini-summit on European defense, which took place April 29 in Brussels: a world with the United States, Europe, China, India, and Latin America. (Jacques Chirac curiously omitted mentioning Russia, either because it might be integrated with the European group, or because by itself it might be too weak to constitute a pole.)
Tony Blair finds this idea not only unrealistic but dangerous. He sees in it a revival of the "balance of power" system which produced the wars of the 19th and 20th centuries. He advocates a unipolar world in which the United States and Europe would be on the same side, that of the liberal democracies, ranged against the dangers represented by fundamentalism and terrorism.
Between Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac, which one has the means to make his views prevail? Having faced down hostile public opinion, Blair has doubtlessly been reinforced by the test of Iraq. Chirac has made progress with the idea of a "pioneer group," bringing Germany, Belgium, and Luxembourg along with him. However, Blair's concept is held by the majority in the expanded Union, as shown by the indignant or ironic reactions to the Brussels mini-summit.
The debate is not yet resolved. The "gang of four" will have a hard time imposing its views for the simple reason that there cannot be a European defense without the British, and therefore without a partnership with the United States. To be partners, there must be a mediator. The destructive attitude of the Bush administration is not a favorable omen.
It looks like the US Army confiscated several Kalashnikovs from the unarmed Iraqi demonstrators in Fallujah, according to the Times. Also in that article, one of the rocks the peaceful demonstrators were tossing had the bad luck to mistake itself for a grenade and detonate, injuring 7 soldiers.
