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Sunday, June 09, 2002 |
An Actual Internet Success Story. The great value of the Web is to match supply and demand in scattered markets. It did that in the unlikely business of used books. [New York Times: Technology]
Yikes! No mention of Alibris?
Just before I read this piece, I was reading a review of a book by this author in the SF Chronicle. It's called Drake's Fortune and is about a con man who, among other things, during the depression, "convinced 80,00 Midwestern investors that England owed them title to, among other baubles, all of the United States west of the Mississippi and north of the Rio Grande." The book isn't in my library's database yet. Maybe I'll see if I can find a used copy on ABE.
11:52:28 AM Permalink
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A Comedy of Eros [Marijuana.Com] "For more than 13 months, the Justice Department has conducted a major investigation of this bordello, producing hundreds of pages of surveillance transcripts and reports by 10 FBI agents. With considerable fanfare, the Justice Department touted its "catch" in a news conference: 12 prostitutes."
Of course, when they were "too busy" to take proper note of the 9/11 hijackers.
In some parts of New Orleans, a "sting operation" for prostitutes requires the simple opening of a car door.
Of course, when the Justice Department convinced an unwitting judge to sign this surveillance order, it had promised something far more alluring. It insisted that the bordello would reveal mob dealings as well as criminal activities by an infamous gang. It further assured the judge that the bordello was a hot spot for major drug transactions.
Ultimately, the surveillance failed to nail a single mobster or gang member
It's clear that instead of new powers or a vast new spying beauracracy, what we need is for the cops to do to their jobs right and obey the laws.
11:46:02 AM Permalink
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Reagan, Hoover, and the Red Scare
Those who have been telling us "not to worry" about the changes that will alllow the FBI to spy on us again with no justifiable cause are whistling in the dark. The San Francisco Chronicle, after a 17-year effort, exposes the way that the FBI spied on college students in the 60s, destroyed the career of Clark Kerr and vaulted Ronald Reagan to the presidency (on the back of "small gummit" rhetoric).
11:40:46 AM Permalink
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© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.
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