Warner Music Settles With Spitzer on Radio Payoffs – New York Times

By JENNIFER BAYOT
Published: November 22, 2005
The Warner Music Group, the country’s No. 3 record company, agreed today to cease using pricey gifts and promotional giveaways to buy radio airtime for its artists. It was the second settlement to emerge from the New York attorney general’s investigation into such pay-for-play arrangements.

Home to more than a dozen record labels, including Atlantic, Bad Boy and Lava, Warner Music said that as part of the agreement it would give $5 million to New York music charities and pay the state’s $50,000 in legal expenses. It said it would disclose any valuable items given to radio stations in the future.

” Warner Music Group Corp. acknowledges that various employees pursued some radio promotion practices on behalf of the company that were wrong and improper, and apologizes for such conduct,” the company said in a statement.

“What has been described generically as ‘payola’ for spins has continued to be an unfortunately prevalent aspect of radio promotion,” Warner said, adding that it “looks forward to defining a new, higher standard in radio promotion.”

Eliot Spitzer, the New York attorney general, described the pay-for-play deals as bribes that violate state and federal law while duping listeners into thinking that songs are selected for their popularity or artistic merit. “Unfortunately, other companies continue to engage in them,” Mr. Spitzer said in a statement.

The incentives typically include personal benefits offered directly to radio programmers who decide which songs will receive airtime. Warner offered the programmers electronics, airfare and tickets to major sporting events like the Super Bowl and World Series, Mr. Spitzer said.

Other payments help radio stations cover operational expenses or provide prizes for the stations’ giveaways, like iPods, digital cameras and tickets to events like the Grammy Awards, the MTV Video Music Awards and the American Music Awards.

“Z100 has approached us for a Linkin Park Flyaway to L.A. or Glasgow for a grand prize in their big match game contest on the morning show,” says an internal promotions message dated Feb. 28, 2004. “Can we approve this??” The sender and recipient of the message were obscured.

By increasing a song’s radio presence – described by Mr. Spitzer as the single-biggest driver of music sales – the practices are designed to inflate profits and manipulate a song or album’s ranking on record charts.

Warner’s settlement follows a similar agreement in July by Sony BMG Music Entertainment, a unit of Bertelsmann and one of the country’s largest record companies. The investigation by Mr. Spitzer’s office is continuing, and he has encouraged other music companies to step forward and abandon similar incentives.

The settlement statement released by Mr. Spitzer’s office described many of the practices at Warner in detail. It said the company used independent promoters as a conduit for illegal payments to the radio stations and hired outside venders to call radio stations posing as listeners requesting Warner artists’ songs.

In the 45 years since federal statues banned similar, if less elaborate, inducements, the record industry’s promotional tactics have evolved along with the structure of radio stations, Mr. Spitzer said. As disk jockeys’ power to choose songs has dwindled, radio programmers and the station’s day-to-day expenses have become targets.

For instance, David Universal, a former program director at WKSE in Buffalo, received a trip to Miami, a laptop and several other perks, Mr. Spitzer said. “We all had to do business with Dave if we were going to get our records on,” a promotion manger with Atlantic Records was quoted as saying. “It was a game that you either played or you didn’t have a shot at getting your records on the air.”

Another Warner promotions employee urged colleagues to be aggressive in demanding “spins,” or song plays. “We need to jump into spins immediately this morning,” said an Oct. 13, 2003, e-mail message tagged as high priority. “No one should be less than 21x per week. Will send you a list of offenders. Close the holes!!!”

Intelligence in Nature
by Jeremy Narby
Hardcover: 267 pages
Publisher: Tarcher (March 3, 2005)

From Publishers Weekly:

In The Cosmic Serpent, anthropologist Narby hypothesized that Amazonian shamans can “gain access in their visions to information related to DNA” comparable to what molecular biologists know. In this intriguing treatise, he carries his project of syncretizing all forms of knowledge a step further, arguing that animals and plants exhibit intelligence comparable in many ways to that of humans. His shaman friends heartily endorse the idea, regaling him, over a friendly pot of hallucinogenic ayahuasca brew, with conversations they have had in the trance state with animal and plant spirits. For further confirmation, he talks to Western scientists who have done remarkable research on cases of nonhuman intelligence, like bees with abstract reasoning, crows that manufacture standardized tools, pigeons that distinguish between the works of Van Gogh and Chagall about as well as college students do, octopuses that break out of and into their tanks and slime molds that solve mazes. Scientists may find Narby’s ongoing efforts to assimilate shamanic mysticism to Western science – he associates, for example, Amazonian legends about humans turning into jaguars with Darwin’s theory of evolution – naÔø?ve and illogical. But Narby has done his homework – the endnotes themselves make excellent reading – and his well-researched and engagingly presented account of the “braininess” of even literally brainless creatures raises fascinating questions about the boundaries between man and nature.
Copyright Ôø? Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Book Description
Anthropologist Jeremy Narby has altered how we understand the shamanic cultures and traditions that have undergone a worldwide revival in recent years. Now, in one of his most extraordinary journeys, Narby travels around the globe-from the Amazon basin to the Far East-to probe what traditional healers and pioneering researchers perceive about the intelligence present in all forms of life.

Intelligence in Nature offers overwhelming illustrative evidence that independent intelligence is not unique to humanity. Indeed, bacteria, plants, animals, and other forms of nonhuman life display an uncanny proclivity for self-deterministic decisions, patterns, and actions. The Japanese possess a word for this universal knowing: chi-sei. For the first time, Narby presents an in-depth anthropological study of this concept in the West. He not only uncovers a mysterious thread of intelligent behavior within the natural world but also probes the question of what humanity can learn from nature’s economy and knowingness in its own search for a saner and more sustainable way of life.

By Thomas Bell in Bara District, Nepal

Thousands of pilgrims are pouring into the dense jungle of southern Nepal to worship a 15-year-old boy who has been hailed as a new Buddha.

Devotees claim that Ram Bomjon, who is silently meditating beneath a tree, has not eaten or drunk anything since he sat down at his chosen spot six months ago.

Ram Bomjon maintains his vigil in the shade of his pipal tree
Witnesses say they have seen light emanating from the teenager’s forehead.

“It looks a bit like when you shine a torch through your hand,” said Tek Bahadur Lama, a member of the committee responsible for dealing with the growing number of visitors from India and elsewhere in Nepal.

Photographs of Ram Bomjon, available for five rupees (4p) from his makeshift shrine, have become ubiquitous across the region. “Far and wide, it’s the only topic of conversation,” said Upendra Lamichami, a local journalist.

He said no allegation had yet emerged of Ram breaking his fast or moving, even to relieve himself.

Santa Raj Subedi, the chief government official in Bara district, appealed to the capital, Kathmandu, for assistance in dealing with the influx of visitors, and for a team of scients to examine the case.

Local doctors failed to reach a final conclusion, although they were allowed no closer than five yards from the boy mystic, declaring that they could confirm no more than that he was alive.

The popularity of the phenomenon is partly because it resembles an episode in the life of the historical Buddha, who was born 160 miles away around 543 BC. The Buddha achieved enlightenment when he meditated beneath a sacred pipal tree for 49 days.

Ram Bomjon is also sitting beneath a pipal tree, in the same posture as the Buddha is depicted, but his vigil has already taken longer.

Ram’s mother, who is called Maya Devi, like the Buddha’s mother, admits to anxiety, particularly at meal times. But she tells herself: “God took him to the forest and I have faith that God will feed him.”

She said: “He’s definitely got thinner. Early in the morning he looks sunken, like there’s no blood in him, but as the sun rises he seems to get brighter and brighter.”

The fervour increased last week when a snake is said to have bitten Ram, and a curtain was drawn around him.

After five days it was opened and he spoke. “Tell the people not to call me a Buddha. I don’t have the Buddha’s energy. I am at the level of rinpoche [lesser divinity].

“A snake bit me but I do not need treatment. I need six years of deep meditation.”

Despite his protestations, “Buddha boy” is famous.

A thriving market has grown in the once pristine forest, supplying pilgrims with everything from chewing tobacco and bicycle repairs to incense and sacred amulets. The ground is covered in litter.

A fence was built around Ram’s tree to prevent pilgrims prodding him, then a second, and now a third is planned, as well as a bus park, leaving Ram at the centre of an ever growing circle of rubbish.

Prakash Lamsal, a businessman said: “Some people are selling 2,500 rupees [Ôø?20] worth of tea a day.

“These lamas [monks] are going to build mansions out of this. If I wasn’t a bit embarrassed I’d take a van down there and set up a stall.”

Nov. 19, 2005 – Los Angeles Times

An intelligence unit helped make the case for invading Iraq, saying the CIA overlooked links to Al Qaeda — claims now largely discredited.

By Greg Miller and Mark Mazzetti, Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON Ôø? The Defense Department’s inspector general’s office said Friday it had begun investigating a Pentagon team that former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith used to build the U.S. case against Saddam Hussein and to plan the war in Iraq.

The investigation is likely to call new attention to the Bush administration’s case for war as the White House faces criticism that it exaggerated Baghdad’s threat. House and Senate Democrats held news conferences Friday to criticize the administration’s prewar claims that Iraq had stockpiles of banned weapons and ties to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

Shelton R. Young, the Pentagon’s acting deputy inspector general for intelligence, told senior Pentagon officials Wednesday that his office would investigate whether Feith’s operation “conducted unauthorized, unlawful or inappropriate intelligence activities.”

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, a senior Democrat on the panel, requested the investigation. The Pentagon released Young’s memo Friday evening describing the inquiry.

The investigation is expected to focus on the work of analysts who spent months before the U.S. invasion of Iraq sifting intelligence reports for evidence that Hussein’s government had ties to Al Qaeda — a claim administration officials used in making the case for war.

A Pentagon spokesman refused to comment Friday on the investigation.

As the Pentagon’s third-ranking civilian official, Feith was one of the administration’s most influential advocates of toppling Hussein’s regime. His advocacy of a hard line toward Hussein turned his office into the nerve center for U.S. policy toward Iraq. Feith resigned this year.

This month, newly declassified documents cast doubt on the credibility of a source whom administration officials had cited in arguing that Iraq provided training to members of Al Qaeda. Similarly, FBI and CIA investigations have concluded that it was unlikely that an alleged 2001 meeting between one of the Sept. 11 hijackers and an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague, Czech Republic, ever occurred.

President Bush acknowledged in 2003: “We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the Sept. 11 attacks.”

Roberts, the intelligence committee chief, has said in recent weeks that his panel would delay its examination of Feith’s office until the inspector general’s report was completed.

As the administration began building its case for war in late 2002, Feith enlarged the office of Middle Eastern analysts working for him and renamed it the Office of Special Plans. It became the primary office in Washington for planning the war and the reconstruction efforts.

A graduate of Harvard University and Georgetown University Law, Feith worked on the staff of the Reagan administration’s National Security Council and in the Defense Department.

Feith’s office has also faced scrutiny for sending representatives shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks to a meeting with Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian exile and discredited figure involved in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s.

A Senate Intelligence Committee examination found “nothing improper” about the meeting, a committee aide said.

November 17, 2005
Influential House Democrat Wants Immediate Iraq Withdrawal

By DAVID STOUT
WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 – An influential House Democrat called the Iraq campaign “a flawed policy wrapped in illusion” today as he called for the immediate withdrawal of United States troops.

“It is time for a change in direction,” Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania, the leading Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee, said as the debate over the war intensified by the hour. “Our military is suffering, the future of our country is at risk.”

Mr. Murtha, a conservative who voted in 2002 for the resolution authorizing use of force in Iraq and who supported the Persian Gulf war in 1991, called for “the immediate redeployment of American forces.”

“It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interests of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf region,” Mr. Murtha said during an emotional news conference on Capitol Hill.

Mr. Murtha, a 73-year-old Marine Corps veteran of Vietnam combat, lashed back at Vice President Dick Cheney, who in a speech to a conservative group on Wednesday night condemned critics of the Iraq war. “The president and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone, but we’re not going to sit by and let them rewrite history,” Mr. Cheney said in an address to the group, Frontiers of Freedom, in Washington.

Mr. Murtha was disdainful of the vice president’s remarks, saying that “people with five deferments” had no right to make such remarks. Mr. Cheney, like millions of other young men of the era, avoided military service during the Vietnam war.

Mr. Murtha’s remarks were termed “reprehensible and irresponsible” by a Republican member of the Appropriation’s defense subcommittee, Representative Kay Granger of Texas.

“It shows the Democratic Party has chosen a policy of retreat and defeatism which will only encourage the terrorists and threaten the stability of Iraq,” she said, according to The Associated Press.

House Republicans were expected to issue a general denunciation of Mr. Murtha this afternoon.

Mr. Murtha’s demeanor and personal history as well as his status on the Appropriations Committee may lend extra weight to his words. He generally shuns publicity and does not often speak on the House floor.

After serving in the Marines in the early 1950’s, he re-enlisted in 1966, at the age of 34, and served in Vietnam, earning a Bronze Star, two Purple Hearts and the Vietnamese Cross for Gallantry, according to The Almanac of American Politics. When he won his House seat in a special election in February 1974 he became the first Vietnam veteran to serve in Congress.

Mr. Cheney’s speech came a day after the Senate overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling for the Bush administration to make regular progress reports on the war and for 2006 to be a “transition year” in which the Iraqis will assume responsibility for security of their own country.

The vice president’s assertions that some politicians want to rewrite history was aimed at those who voted in 2002 to authorize force against Saddam Hussein but have more recently become critics of Iraq campaign, charging that the Bush administration manipulated pre-war intelligence to exaggerate the threat posed by the old Baghdad regime.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, said Mr. Cheney’s speech of Wednesday night as well as President Bush’s recent remarks on Iraq show that they have “shamlessly decided to play politics.”

“We’re at war,” Mr. Reid said. “We need a commander in chief, not a campaigner in chief.”

At his Capitol news conference, Mr. Murtha became emotional as he spoke of hospital visits to wounded troops. “What demoralizes them is going to war with not enough troops and equipment to make the transition to peace,” he said.

“Our troops have become the primary target for the insurgency,” Mr. Murtha said. Insurgents, he said, “are united against U.S. forces, and we have become a catalyst for violence.” He went on to say that, before the Iraqi elections in December, the country’s people and its emerging government “must be put on notice that the United States will immediately redeploy.”

“All of Iraq must know that Iraq is free,” he said. “Free from United States occupation.”

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Senior Democrat calls for U.S. troops to leave Iraq

Rep. Murtha: ‘U.S. and coalition troops have done all they can’

Thursday, November 17, 2005; Posted: 12:10 p.m. EST (17:10 GMT)

Senior Democrat Rep. John Murtha told the Bush administration “lashing out at critics doesn’t help a bit.”

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Warning that other global threats “cannot be ignored,” Rep. John Murtha, D-Pennsylvania, a leading adviser on defense issues, called on Thursday for the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

“U.S. and coalition troops have done all they can in Iraq,” the senior lawmaker said. “It’s time for a change in direction.”

He said he believes all the forces could be redeployed over a six-month period.

Murtha, a former Marine Corps colonel and veteran of the Vietnam war, is the first senior lawmaker to call for an immediate withdrawal. Other critics of the war have asked President Bush to set up a timetable for withdrawal.

Murtha’s call for a withdrawal may have a significant impact on the debate over the future of the Iraq war, as both Democrats and Republicans seek his advice on military and veterans’ issues.

Murtha, who has served in the House for over three decades, is the senior Democrat and former chairman of the Defense Appropriations Committee and voted in favor of the Iraq war. Now, he said, the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq are “uniting the enemy against us.”

“Our military has accomplished its mission and done its duty,” he said. “Our military captured Saddam Hussein, captured or killed his closest associates, but the war continues to intensify.”

He said the redeployment will give Iraqis the incentive to take control of their country.

The statement comes amid increased debate over the Iraq war and the intelligence leading up to the March 2003 invasion.

On Wednesday, Vice President Dick Cheney dismissed Democratic critics, calling allegations that the administration misled the country as “one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city.” (Full Story)

Murtha took issue with the administration’s counter-criticism, specifically President Bush’s Veterans Day speech in which he said it is “deeply irresponsible to rewrite how that war began.”

“I resent the fact that on Veterans Day, they criticized Democrats for criticizing them,” Murtha said. “This is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion. The American public knows it, and lashing out at critics doesn’t help a bit. You’ve got to change the policy. That’s what’s going to help the American people. You need to change direction.”

Murtha — who recently visited Iraq’s Anbar province — said it is Congress’ responsibility to speak out for the “sons and daughters” on the battlefield, and relayed several emotional stories from soldiers recovering at Bethesda’s Walter Reed Medical Center.

“I tell you, these young folks are under intense activity over there, I mean much more intense than Vietnam,” he said. “You never know when it’s going to happen.”

U.S. Has Detained 83,000 in War on Terror
Nov 16 2:56 PM US/Eastern

By KATHERINE SHRADER
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON

The United States has detained more than 83,000 foreigners in the four years of the war on terror, enough to nearly fill the NFL’s largest stadium. The administration defends the practice of holding detainees in prisons from Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay as a critical tool to stop the insurgency in Iraq, maintain stability in Afghanistan and get known and suspected terrorists off the streets.

Roughly 14,500 detainees remain in U.S. custody, primarily in Iraq.

The number has steadily grown since the first CIA paramilitary officers touched down in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001, setting up more than 20 facilities including the “Salt Pit,” an abandoned factory outside Kabul used for CIA detention and interrogation.

In Iraq, the number in military custody hit a peak on Nov. 1, according to military figures. Nearly 13,900 suspects were in U.S. custody there that day _ partly because U.S. offensives in western Iraq put pressure on insurgents before the October constitutional referendum and December parliamentary elections.

The detentions and interrogations have brought complaints from Congress and human-rights groups about how the detainees _ often Arab and male _ are treated.

International law and treaty obligations forbid torture and inhumane treatment. Classified memos have given the government ways to extract intelligence from detainees “consistent with the law,” administration officials often say.

On Capitol Hill, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is leading a campaign to ban cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody. The administration says the legislation could tie the president’s hands. Vice President Dick Cheney has pressed lawmakers to exempt the CIA.

“There’s an enemy that lurks and plots and plans and wants to hurt America again. And so you bet we will aggressively pursue them. But we will do so under the law,” President Bush said last week.

Some 82,400 people have been detained by the military alone in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to figures from officials in Baghdad and Washington. Many are freed shortly after initial questioning.

To put that in context, the capacity of the Washington Redskins’ FedEx Field, the NFL’s largest, is 91,704. The second largest, Giants Stadium, holds 80,242.

An additional 700 detainees were sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Just under 500 remain there now.

In Iraq, the Defense Department says 5,569 detainees have been held for more than six months, and 3,801 have been held more than a year. Some 229 have been locked up for more than two years.

Many have been questioned by military officials trained at the main U.S. interrogation school, Fort Huachuca in Arizona. Pentagon officials say those mistreated are relatively few when the sheer numbers are considered.

Yet human rights groups say they don’t know the extent of the abuse. “And there is no way anyone could, even if the military was twice as conscientious. It is unknowable, unless you assume that every act of abuse is immediately reported up the chain of command,” said Tom Malinowski, Washington director for Human Rights Watch.

As of March, 108 detainees were known to have died in U.S. military and CIA custody, including 22 who died when insurgents attacked Abu Ghraib and others who died of natural causes. At least 26 deaths have been investigated as criminal homicides.

Last week, Senate Armed Services Chairman John Warner, R-Va., said that more than 400 criminal investigations have been conducted and 95 military personnel have been charged with misconduct. Seventy-five have been convicted.

Through the CIA, a much smaller prison population is maintained secretly by the agency and friendly governments. A network of known or suspected facilities _ some of which have been closed _ have been located in places including Thailand, Central Asia and Eastern Europe.

The governments of Thailand and a number of Eastern Europe countries have denied the CIA operated prisons within their borders. The agency consistently declines to comment.

About 100 to 150 people are believed to have been grabbed by CIA officers and sent to their home countries or to other nations where they were wanted for prosecution, a procedure called “rendition.” Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt are known to cooperate.

The practice has taken on a negative connotation, but that wasn’t always the case. In a December 2002 speech touching on intelligence successes, former CIA Director George Tenet said the agency and FBI had “rendered 70 terrorists to justice.”

While officials won’t confirm the number, another two to three dozen “high-value” detainees are also believed to be in CIA custody. Among them, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, an alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

As House Intelligence chairman in 2004, CIA Director Porter Goss took a strong stand on some of the gray areas of detention practices. In an AP interview, he said, “Gee, you’re breaking my heart” in response to complaints that Arab men found it abusive to have women guards at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

Before Goss took over the agency, its inspector general completed a report on the treatment of detainees, following investigations into at least four prisoner deaths that may have involved CIA personnel. To date, one agency contractor has been charged.

The inspector general’s report discussed tactics used by CIA personnel _ called “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.” Former intelligence officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the practices are classified, say some interrogation techniques are well-known: exposing prisoners to cold, depriving them of sleep or forcing them to stand in stressful positions.

Perhaps the most publicly controversial technique is waterboarding, when a detainee is strapped to a board and has water run over him to simulate drowning.

___

AP Military Writer Robert Burns contributed to this report.

“A second Cope album for ’05, DARK ORGASM is a violent sequence of outcast broadsides levelled at the coming new 21st-century conservatism. Dressed in 8 songs of guitar-heavy hard rock split into two short CDs for maximum enjoyment, you can drain your brain to the seven shorter songs of Disc One, then feed your head with the 21-minute garage blitz of Disc Two’s ‘The Death & Resurrection Show’. The 16-page booklet of poetry and lyrics is all wrapped up in a delightful iron cross-inscribed box.”

“EDIBLE ESTATES

An ongoing series of projects to replace the American lawn with edible garden landscapes responsive to local culture, climate and landscape.

The next regional prototype in the Edible Estates series will be established in Los Angeles in spring 2006 and become the basis for an exhibition the following autumn. We are currently seeking the skilled, eager and adventurous occupants of one conventional American house on a typical street of endless sprawling lawns. These L.A. citizens should be brave enough to break this toxic uniformity, by having their entire front lawn removed and replaced by an edible landscape. As role models they will then proudly devote themselves to the indefinite cultivation of fruits, vegetables, grains and herbs for all neighbors and car traffic to see. This once hostile front yard will become the southwest regional prototype for the Edible Estates series. We will work in collaboration to create the layout, design and plant specifications. All costs associated with establishing the garden for the first season will be covered. If you or someone you know of would be interested you will find the complete list of parameters and specifications here and then contact us at info(at)edibleestates.org.”