Anne: the world's richest woman

Anne Getrude Wilson, the great great grandaughter, of the late President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, is the "unknown" richest woman in the world. She was born in the United States in the year 1965. But since 1974, Anne has lived in Malaysia; she did came back to her original country, the United States of America, in the years 1986-1987, as well as 1994....but since then she has never travelled back to the USA.

The "secret" of Anne's wealth is related to the "secret" will of the richest man of the 19th. Century, Andrew Carnegie. This will of Andrew Carnegie is rather obscure, and known only to its "keepers". I myself first knew of this will of Andrew Carnegie after meeting Anne' s parents, who are named as "Papa Hasan" and "Mama Mary (Wilson)" in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, sometime in 1974.

Mama Mary is a former "academician", and has a PhD in Arab political history from Oxford University. She told me that the will of Andrew Carnegie could be found in the "archives" of Princeton University, New Jersey. Prof. Mary Wilson had formerly taught "Middle Eastern Studies: studies and methods" at New York University, New York City, USA, when I had studied there in 1986-1987, as a post-graduate student at the Hagop Kevorkian Center of Middle Eastern Studies, at NYU.

"Papa Hasan" is a rather "mysterious" dad of Anne Wilson. He told me back in 1987 at NYU, that he was an "American expatriate" working and living in Malaysia....he was unsure whether to live in America or Malaysia, but I got him convinced to "emigrate" to Malaysia.

I only had "more in depth" knowledge regarding the "secret will of Andrew Carnegie" during Anne's meeting with the famous "richest man in the world" , that is "Bill Gates" of Microsoft in the year 1994, at a bulilding in Virginia, USA. Anne had met Bill Gates in 1987 at NYU, and again in 1994 at Virginia, USA. I learnt from both Bill Gates and Anne, that Andrew Carnegie had an "adopted daughter", but this "daughter" of his died before he did. Anne told me that Andrew Carnegie was an "impotent" and that he had no children of his own, except that "adopted daughter" of his.Because of this he had a "secret will" written regarding his inherited wealth. He willed that the man to whom his inheritance will be inherited must be a person who fully understood the "Laws of Success' written by his (now) famous student and writer of "motivational books" by the name of Napoleon Hill. Napoleon Hill had interviewed Andrew Carnegie, as well as other materially sucessful people in the USA during his time, and figured out his now famous "laws of success"....Now, Andrew Carnegie made this full understanding of Napoleon Hill's writings as a pre-condition for the one person to whom his inheritance will be inherited...such as the principles of the "master-mind" as well as the rather "mysterious" concept of "telepathy".

But there was also another "very important " condition outlined by Andrew Carnegie's will....that the future inheritor of his inheritance upon his death must be a "Muslim man married to his Christian spouse"....now this leaves us a question, was Andrew Carnegie a Muslim upon his death....nothing is known regarding this matter, and all biographical sketches of him as can found in the "internet" showed that he had lived as a Christian, and most probably died also as a Christian....but it is interesting that he made the above as a precondition for the couple who would inherit his wealth, upon his death...as if he knew the Quranic teaching allowing a "Muslim man" to marry a "Christian girl"....

The conditions prescribed by Andrew Carnegie was not fulfilled by anyone until sometime in the 1970s. All this while, his wealth was managed by a group of people closely related to the ideas of Napoleon Hill.....Bill Gates told me that one of those person responsible of taking charge "of the secret wealth" of the inheritance of Andrew Carnegie, was his own mother.....but the matter is now closed, and it is now just a matter of "business history" only, because the couple fitting in the description "conditioned" by Andrew Carnegie's will, had already been found, and thus the "will of Andrew Carnegie" had been fulfiulled.....the Christian lady mentioned in Andrew Carnegie's will is "Anne Getrude Wilson" who got married to me in an Islamic marriage in the village of Tal Tujuh, in the state of Kelantan in the then "developing" nation of Malaysia in 1979.

So since the middle 1970s, Anne has been the "unknown" keeper of the wealth of the inheritance of Andrew Carnegie, and had lived most of her life in Malaysia. Anne continued to be its keeper, as agreed in the meeting of this "unknown business empire" at NYU, New York City in 1987....

So it was Anne and her father Papa Hasan who was responsible for the magnificient leaps of "economic development" that Malaysia had experianced espescially since 1977 till now. Anne too is the "unknown" majority share-holder of the Coca-cola stocks which she had bought through an Islamic mutual fund called the Amana Trust Fund, in the year 1987, when the "Black Monday" of October 1987, struck the NYSE to its greatest fall, since the Great Depression happened in the United States in the early 1930s.

Anne also has personal business contacts with Bill Gates's "Microsoft" agreeing to invest in that company, in their meeting in 1994, in Virginia, somewhere in a building related to "Napoleon Hill" and Coca-Cola. Since 1994, Bill Gates became a house-hold name all over the world, as the "richest man in the world"; but not much is known that it was Anne who had agreed to Bill Gates being the entrepreneur, by which the "money and stocks" she is entrusted with, will be invested in Bill Gates's "Microsoft". But since Anne as well as her parents now live in Malaysia, the person taking care of those investments of hers in the United States of America, is her also "unknown brother" named Peter......

Dr. Azlan Khalili Shamsuddin

Forbes' 10 Richest People in the World

1. Carlos Slim, $74 billion
2. Bill Gates, $56 billion
3. Warren Buffett, $50 billion
4. Bernard Arnault, $41 billion
5. Larry Ellison, $39.5 billion
6. Lakshmi Mittal, $31.1 billion
7. Amancio Ortega, $31 billion
8. Eike Batista, $30 billion
9. Mukesh Ambani, $27 billion
10. Christy Walton, $26.5 billion

Poll: Hillary Would Crush Obama

http://nation.foxnews.com/hillary-clinton/2010/11/08/poll-hillary-would-crush-obama

November 08, 2010
Poll: Hillary Would Crush Obama

Hillary Clinton would trounce fellow Democrat President Barack Obama by a 20-percentage-point margin in a head-to-head race for the presidency, according to a Newsmax/SurveyUSA poll conducted after Tuesday's midterm elections.

Newsmax conducted the survey to find out how several well-known political and celebrity figures, ranging from Clinton, Sarah Palin, and Bill Gates to Warren Buffett, Donald Trump, and Glenn Beck, would fare if they ran against Obama for the White House.

The survey of 1,000 registered voters was conducted Nov. 3-4, after Republicans won the House and gained six seats in the Senate - results widely interpreted as a rejection of Obama and raising questions about whom the Democrats might field as a candidate in 2012.

In the poll, respondents were asked: "If there were an election for president of the United States today, and the only two names on the ballot were Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, whom would you vote for?"

The poll found that, overall, 60 percent of respondents chose Secretary of State Clinton, while 40 percent chose Obama.

Forbes 400: The super-rich get richer

http://money.cnn.com/2010/09/22/news/companies/forbes_400/

Forbes 400: The super-rich get richer
Julianne Pepitone, staff reporter
September 22, 2010

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The super-rich got even wealthier this year, despite the stumbling economy.

Forbes magazine released its annual list of the 400 richest Americans on Wednesday, and their combined net worth climbed 8% this year, to $1.37 trillion. Wealth rose for 217 members of the list, while 85 saw a decline.

Bill Gates is yet again the richest man in America. The founder of Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, is first on the Forbes list with an estimated fortune of $54 billion, up from $50 billion in 2009. He's followed by billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who is worth $45 billion.

Larry Ellison, chief executive of Oracle, stood at No. 3 with $27 billion.

Christy Walton took the No. 4 spot, while members of her family -- whose fortune comes from Wal-Mart -- took spots 7 through 9.

Charles and David Koch, of private energy conglomerate Koch Industries, tied for No. 5 at $21.5 billion each. Both men saw their wealth skyrocket by $5.5 billion from 2009.

Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City, rounded out the list at No. 10 with $18 billion.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who clocked in at No. 35 on the list, saw his wealth rise 245% over the year -- the largest percentage increase on the list.

Forbes said 16 new members joined the list this year, including Facebook's Dustin Moskovitz and Eduardo Saverin. At 26 -- 8 days younger than Zuckerberg -- Saverin is the new youngest on the list.

By contrast, 34 people fell off the list this year. One notable drop-off is Raj Rajaratnam, founder of the Galleon Group hedge fund, who is facing 185 years in prison,

Despite the recession, finance and investment industries continued to dominate the list; 55 members are from the finance industry, while 54 are from the investments sector.

GMO no, not again

http://www.grist.org/article/gates-foundation-ignores-reality-hypes-latest-gmo-vaporware-instead/

GMO no, not again
Gates Foundation ignores reality, hypes latest GMO ‘vaporware’ instead
Tom Laskawy
19 Feb 2010

Another day, another misguided announcement from the Bill Gates Foundation. This time, it's hyping a new GMO press release project from DuPont's biotechnology arm, Pioneer Hi-Bred (via the Des Moines Register):

Pioneer Hi-Bred is joining with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to help scientists in Africa develop genetically engineered corn varieties that would allow poor farmers increase their yields with less fertilizer.

The aim of the project is to increase corn yields by 50 percent over the average now reached by African varieties, said Paul Schickler, president of Pioneer, a Johnston-based unit of DuPont.

... Pioneer's arch-rival Monsanto Co. is two years into a similar project with the Gates foundation to develop drought-tolerant corn that is to be made available to small-scale farmers in eastern and southern Africa.

Both Pioneer and Monsanto have agreed to make the seeds available royalty-free to small-scale farmers.


Wow, that sounds great! Those magic seeds should be getting into the hands of farmers any day now. Or not:

Monsanto hopes to have its drought-tolerant seeds to small-scale farmers in Africa by 2016, four years after the projected release of a commercial variety in the United States.


As for Pioneer, they will first use advanced conventional breeding techniques to improve yields, and then add their genetically engineered genes later. The conventional version should be ready by 2014. The transgenic version? Eventually.

From his years as CEO of Microsoft, Bill Gates knows well the name for this kind of product: vaporware. It's hard not to think that Monsanto, Dupont and their ilk are turning into the Bernie Madoff of agriculture. Convince gullible foundations along with the federal government to send billions in research dollars their way based on a promise of magically awesome results. Sometime down the road, of course.

Meanwhile, if African farmers want improved seeds, they should look in their own backyard. Because they already exist (from Science Daily):

Maize production in West and Central Africa is set to get a much-needed boost with the release of improved varieties by the Nigeria National Variety Release Committee. The improved varieties address many of the major constraints to maize production such as drought, low soil fertility, pests, diseases, and parasitic weeds.

Researchers developed the varieties through conventional plant breeding by tapping naturally-available traits.


This is not a coincidence. Even Pioneer and Monsanto admit that much of the yield improvement of their own seeds will come through traditional techniques. But sex sells and right now, sex in ag-speak is spelled G-M-O.

If only Bill Gates, not to mention USDA Chief Tom Vilsack or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, would spend some of their money getting those Nigerian seeds into farmers' hands today. Instead, they'd prefer to funnel billions of dollars to biotech giants because, well, 2016 isn't really so long to wait. Dupont and Monsanto promise that the payoff will be worth the wait. And here in America, corporations never, ever lie.

Homes of the Billionaires

http://finance.yahoo.com/real-estate/article/109053/homes-of-the-billionaires
Homes of the Billionaires
Sunday, March 14, 2010

Warren Buffett epitomizes living modestly in today's tough economic climate. Despite a $47 billion fortune, the legendary investor -- and the world's third-richest man -- lives in the same five-bedroom, gray stucco house he bought in Omaha, Neb.'s Happy Hollow suburb in 1958 for $31,500.

This folksiness is in line with his famous investing philosophy. "If you don't feel comfortable owning something for 10 years," he once told a reporter, "then don't own it for 10 minutes."

But Buffet, who also professes a love for pub fare like burgers and Cherry Coke, is the exception. Few billionaires are as frugal. Even in these tough times, modesty is a relative term among the superrich.

Computer mogul Michael Dell is a prime example. Dell claims to live simply, yet his Austin, Texas, residence built in 1997 is a 33,000-square-foot manse -- a home that locals call "the castle" because of its high walls and tight security that guard the 20-acre estate.

Megamansions

With an estimated billion-dollar cost, Mukesh Ambani's under-construction 27-story Mumbai skyscraper eclipses previous records for the world's most expensive homes.

No two floor plans for the inside of the lavish tower -- known as Antilla--are alike and each space uses different materials, such as one bathroom's Gingko-leaf sinks with stems guiding the running water into their leaf basins.

In the U.K., Russian-Israeli diamond magnate Lev Leviev owns the Palladio, an extravagant 17,000-square-foot manor outside London, which he bought for $65 million in January 2008. (That works out to $3,824 per square foot.) The home has a bulletproof front door, a gold-plated pool, an indoor cinema and a hair salon for good measure.

Nifty amenities like these drive up a home's price, something steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal knows all about. In 2004 he shelled out $124 million to buy his 12-bedroom spread in London's posh Kensington neighborhood, replete with extravagant Turkish baths and garage space for 20 cars.

American Estates

On this side of the Atlantic, Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison built a 23-acre, 10-building, Japanese-inspired imperial villa in Woodside, Calif.

But he didn't stop there. In recent years Ellison has spent an estimated $200 million more snapping up a dozen commercial and residential properties to create his own compound in the ritzy beachside enclave of Malibu, Calif.

The West Cost is also home to Bill Gates' 66,000-square-foot compound in Medina, Wash. Visitors to this estate have the option of climbing 84 stairs to get to the ground floor or simply riding the personal elevator.

Some billionaires, such as Star Wars director George Lucas, put their mansions to good use by both living in and working from them. Lucas' 5,156-acre Skywalker Ranch in Marin County, Calif. houses his personal residence as well as Skywalker Sound, a postproduction outfit that even has its own fire brigade.

Star sightings are the norm here. In 2000 Tom Hanks taped sound effects for Cast Away and Sean Penn paid a visit before releasing Into the Wild in 2007. Hollywood memorabilia, such as Charlie Chaplin's cane, a prop whip used by Rudolph Valentino and Indiana Jones' Holy Grail, can also be found in the main house.

Of course, no list of billionaire homes would be complete without mention of real estate magnate Donald Trump. His penthouse apartment in Manhattan's Trump Tower is a monument to marble and gold and has an entire floor designated to Trump's fifth child, Barron. This floor's decor is inspired by -- who else? -- Louis XIV.

Despite the costly details, Trump might say his apartment's best feature is its location, which allows him to ride the elevator to his offices in the same skyscraper. That's the true luxury of being a billionaire: an extravagant home and a short commute.

Warren Buffett
Omaha, Neb.
Net Worth: $47 billion
Rank: 3

The world's third-richest man still resides in the 6,000-square-foot, five-bedroom gray stucco home he bought in 1958 for $31,500. The home has everything the 79-year-old needs, including his very own handball court that he uses to keep fit. An intruder armed with a fake gun tried to break into the modest, ungated property in 2007 but was ultimately thwarted by security.

Bill Gates
Medina, Wash.
Net Worth: $53 billion
Rank: 2

Gates' 66,000-square-foot compound is built into a hillside on the edge of Lake Washington, near Seattle. Its enviable amenities include: a 60-foot swimming pool with an underwater music system, a 2,500-square-foot gym and a 1,000-square-foot dining room, which seats 24. For a personal touch, out-of-shape visitors can skip the 84-step hike to the ground floor and opt for an elevator ride instead.

Lakshmi Mittal
London, England
Net Worth: $28.7 billion
Rank: 5

In 2004 Mittal paid $128 million for his 12-bedroom townhouse in London's luxe Kensington district. Mittal's mansion, tucked between Kensington Palace and the Sultan of Brunei's spread, has an indoor pool, Turkish baths and garage space for 20 cars. The super-home is also embellished with marble taken from the same quarry that supplied the Taj Mahal.

Larry Ellison
Woodside, Calif.
Net Worth: $28 billion
Rank: 6

Over the last few years the Oracle co-founder has dropped $200 million by some estimates on near a dozen properties in Malibu to create a custom compound. His 23-acre estate in Woodside, pictured here, is inspired by the Japanese city of Kyoto and is reminiscent of a 16th-century imperial Japanese palace. It reportedly cost upward of $200 million to build.

Michael Dell
Austin, Texas
Net Worth: $13.5 billion
Rank: 37

Built in 1997, Dell's 33,000-square-foot hilltop manse sits on a 20-acre spread close to where he founded his eponymous computer company. The eight-bedroom house equipped with a conference room and both indoor and outdoor pools is known locally as "the castle" thanks to its high walls and tight security.

Slim Overtakes Gates, Buffett to Become Forbes Richest Person

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-11/slim-overtakes-gates-buffett-to-become-forbes-richest-person.html
Slim Overtakes Gates, Buffett to Become Forbes Richest Person
March 11, 2010
Chris Dolmetsch and Crayton Harrison

March 11 (Bloomberg) -- Mexico’s Carlos Slim beat Bill Gates and Warren Buffett for the top spot on Forbes magazine’s annual list of billionaires, becoming the first person from outside the U.S. to lead the rankings in 16 years.

The net worth of Slim, 70, who built a telecommunications empire after buying Mexico’s state-run phone monopoly two decades ago, rose $18.5 billion to $53.5 billion. Gates, 54, chairman of Microsoft Corp., fell to second as his net worth increased $13 billion to $53 billion. Buffett, 79, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., was third with $47 billion, a rise of $10 billion.

Slim is the first person other than Gates, last year’s richest person, or Buffett to top the list since 1994, which was also the last time a billionaire from outside the U.S. led the ranking: Japanese real estate tycoon Yoshiaki Tsutsumi.

“We’ve been watching Slim for a while and kind of wondered when the stars would align and he would take over,” Forbes senior editor Luisa Kroll said in an interview yesterday.

More than 80 percent of Slim’s holdings are held in five public stocks, she said. “His net worth really reflects how well those stocks are doing. Everything that he owns has done very, very well this year.”

Mexican shares of America Movil SAB, the wireless carrier controlled by Slim, have gained more than 56 percent in the last year, according to Bloomberg data. The company’s reach extends to 18 countries in the Western hemisphere, including Mexico, Brazil and the U.S., where it is the biggest carrier of prepaid wireless service.

Market Dominance

Slim’s Telefonos de Mexico SAB remains the biggest landline phone company in the country, with about 80 percent of the lines. His Telmex Internacional SAB, which America Movil is planning to buy, controls Brazil’s biggest long-distance and cable TV companies as well as phone and video carriers in Colombia, Peru and other South American countries.

Slim’s holdings in Mexico extend from retail, with the Sanborns department store chain, through banking and construction. Through his holding companies and investment vehicles, he holds stakes in U.S. companies including the New York Times Co., Saks Inc. and Bronco Drilling Co.

“His management of America Movil, which I believe is the principal reason for his wealth, has been exceptional,” said Jose Miguel Garaicochea, who helps manage 10 billion pesos ($793 million) in stocks, including the wireless carrier, at Banco Santander SA. “And when he has gone outside of Mexico, he has also done very well.”

Asia’s Richest

Asia’s richest person, Mukesh Ambani, 52, of India, chairman of Mumbai-based refiner and energy explorer Reliance Industries Ltd., was ranked fourth with $29 billion, up from $19.5 billion last year, when he was seventh.

Lakshmi Mittal, 59, also of India, the chief executive officer of the world’s biggest steelmaker, ArcelorMittal, rose to fifth from eighth. Mittal’s net worth increased $9.4 billion to $28.7 billion as shares of his company have almost doubled in the past year.

Larry Ellison, 65, chief executive of Oracle Corp., fell to sixth from fourth as his net worth increased $5.5 billion to $28 billion. Bernard Arnault, 61, of France, chairman and chief executive of luxury goods maker LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA, rose to seventh from 15th as his net worth jumped $11 billion to $27.5 billion.

Batista’s Climb

Brazilian mining magnate Eike Batista, 53, had the biggest increase in net worth, rising to $27 billion from $7.5 billion and boosting his rank to eighth from 61st. Spain’s richest man, Amancio Ortega, 73, chairman and founder of clothing retailer Inditex SA, rose to ninth from 10th as his net worth jumped $6.7 billion to $25 billion.

Karl Albrecht, a co-founder of discount retailer Aldi Group, rounded out the list’s top 10, falling to 10th from sixth place as his net worth rose $2 billion to $23.5 billion.

The number of billionaires climbed to 1,011 from 793 last year, although still below the rankings’ high of 1,125 in 2008. Their cumulative net worth increased to $3.6 trillion from $2.4 trillion, and the average jumped $500 million to $3.5 billion as the world economy began to rebound from its worst slump since the Great Depression.

The list includes billionaires from 55 countries. The U.S. has the most with 403, up from 359 last year, while Europe follows with 248. The Asia-Pacific region has 234 people in the rankings, up from 130 in 2009, including 62 newcomers.

“The global boom that we experienced from the 1980s, particularly since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which was temporarily derailed in 2007, now looks like it’s beginning to get back on track,” the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Steve Forbes, said at a press conference in New York yesterday. “But Asia and a handful of others are surging, relatively the United States and western Europe are lagging.”

The Forbes rankings are based on information including stakes in publicly traded and privately held companies; real estate holdings; and investments in items such as art, gems and yachts; and compiled as of the close of U.S. markets on Feb. 12.

--Editors: Mark Schoifet, Don Frederick

To contact the reporters on this story: Chris Dolmetsch in New York at cdolmetsch@bloomberg.net; Crayton Harrison in Mexico City at tharrison5@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jim Kirk at jkirk12@bloomberg.net

Bill Gates’ $10 billion vaccine scam

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_5618.shtml
Bill Gates’ $10 billion vaccine scam
By Thomas C. Mountain
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Feb 24, 2010

ASMARA, Eritrea -- The “richest man in the world,” Microsoft’s Bill Gates, recently announced that he was making a $10 billion donation towards finding vaccines to prevent some of the world’s worst diseases.

Malaria is the number one killer in Africa. From what I’m hearing about $1 billion of BIll Gates donation/tax write-off is for research to find a vaccine to prevent malaria.

The African country of Eritrea, where I live, has reduced malaria mortality by 85 percent in the last seven years. How? By using basic public health methods. By distributing pesticide treated mosquito nets and organizing the pesticide retreatment every three months of mosquito nets. By habitat eradication. And by community medical clinics for immediate treatment.

Malaria is a parasite-based disease noted for its variety and quick development of resistance to medication. Any “vaccine,” if even a billion dollars is able to produce such, would have a limited lifetime and new, patented medications would have to be bought by Africa’s poor every few years.

So “donating” a billion dollars to develop a malaria “vaccine” could turn into tens of billions of dollars in drug sales in Africa alone, and Bill Gates, through his drug company investments, will quietly pocket more African blood money.

All the while a very successful malaria mortality reduction program is operating, effectively, safely and affordably, in Eritrea.

Why isn’t this being publicized internationally? Could it be that such a program is not going to put billions into the pockets of the drug lords of Western finance?

Bill Gates and other assorted financial terrorists through their control of the Western media and “aid” organizations are suppressing implementation of a successful malaria mortality program while investing in a malaria drug addiction for Africa’s people.

These financial terrorists are perfectly willing to see millions die in Africa while they search for their next highly profitable “wonder drug” to cure malaria, all the while deliberately ignoring, worse, engineering a white out/cover up of what could prevent millions of deaths, let alone uncounted suffering.

And HIV/AIDS, Africa’s N0.2 killer? Bill Gates is said to be providing over a billion dollars for research into developing an AIDS vaccine. AIDS, a virus based disease, has already shown to have varieties and to have developed resistance to the medications developed to treat it. Like the flu vaccine, a new AIDS vaccine would most likely have to be developed every few years to combat the latest strain of the AIDS virus; another gold mine of new, patented medications for sale to Africa’s sick.

Eritrea has reduced HIV/AIDS infection rates by 40 percent, according to Physicians for Peace, and is the only country in Africa to reduce HIV/AIDS. How? By using public health education promoting condom use everywhere in the country. Over a billion for a “vaccine” that may never work while an effective program that can reduce HIV/AIDS infection by 40 percent, safely and affordably can be immediately implemented?

Remember, Western billionaires didn’t get that way by being out to really help anyone. Millions die in Africa as the Western drug lords and their financial terrorist stockholders reap their billions in blood money. All the while real heroes in the Eritrean public health service struggle to save people’s lives.

So don’t believe that BIll Gates is up to any good when he donates $10 billion to vaccine research, just the opposite. And don’t forget that as far at the USA is concerned in Africa, no good deed goes unpunished, and, once again, Eritrea is subject to UN Security Council sanctions.

Stay tuned to Online Journal for more news from Africa’s Horn that the so called free press in the west refuses to cover.

Thomas C. Mountain was, in a former life, an educator, activist and alternative medicine practitioner in the USA. Email thomascmountain@yahoo.com.

Six Flags Files for Chapter 11

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124489639859012503.html

BUSINESS JUNE 13, 2009
Six Flags Files for Chapter 11
By MIKE SPECTOR

Six Flags Inc., one of the largest regional amusement-park companies, filed for bankruptcy protection Saturday.

The theme-park company, shouldering more than $2 billion in debt, had been negotiating with lenders, selling parks and laying off staff in a race to restructure outside of bankruptcy court. But it couldn't outrun the deteriorating economy and a looming $288 million payment due preferred shareholders this August, along with $31 million in unpaid dividends.

Six Flags hopes to exit bankruptcy quickly through a prearranged reorganization plan. It struck a deal with senior secured lenders that would allow it convert $1.8 billion in debt to equity.

The plan was backed by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., the agent for the facility, and a steering committee of lenders, according to court documents. The support represents half the facility's obligations, the company said. The plan would also wipe out more than $300 million in preferred stock obligations.

Six Flags listed assets of $3 billion and liabilities of $3.4 billion, including $2.4 billion in debt at the end of March. Among its largest unsecured creditors were HSBC Bank USA with $400 million in bond debt and Bank of New York Mellon, holding more than $500 million in the company's debt.

The filing marked another highly-leveraged company falling victim to the deep recession. Six Flags' 20 parks dot North America, with operations in Chicago, San Antonio and Mexico City. Revenue in the first quarter fell 24% and the company delayed certain debt payments. Several of the park company's subsidiaries also filed for protection from creditors.

The Chapter 11 filing is a setback for investor Daniel Snyder, the Washington Redskins football team owner who took control of the theme-park company in a contentious proxy fight in 2005 and installed his own management team. The bankruptcy would likely wipe out Mr. Snyder's 6% stake.

In the midst of his battle to wrest control of the company, Mr. Snyder wrote a letter to Six Flags stockholders saying they "would have been better off hiding their money under a mattress" than investing in the company under its prior management.

"The current management team inherited a $2.4 billion debt load that cannot be sustained, particularly in these challenging financial markets," said Mark Shapiro, Six Flags' chief executive, in a statement. He said operations of the company's parks would be unaffected by the filing and that Chapter 11 protection was sought solely to "clean up the balance sheet."

Also losing out on Six Flags' financial rollercoaster: Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates, whose Cascade Investment LLC owned about 10.2 million shares, or an 11% stake. Other big equity holders include Dwight Schar, a Six Flags board member and part-owner of the Redskins alongside Mr. Snyder with a 5% stake; Citigroup Inc. with 9%; Barclays PLC with 6.7%; and hedge fund Renaissance Technologies LLC with 5.5%.

Six Flags warned earlier this year it could file for bankruptcy if it failed to reap concessions from lenders. Since April, it had been in discussions with lenders about a debt-for-equity swap, but failed to get enough takers.

A deadline for debt holders to swap certain notes for equity expired Friday night. Six Flags had extended that deadline by more than two weeks after falling well short of a 95% targeted acceptance rate.

Mr. Snyder's team, led by Mr. Shapiro, a former ESPN executive, had made some progress of late. Six Flags sold 10 parks and laid off about 300 workers. It tried to make its parks more family friendly, banning smoking in most areas.

Last year, Six Flags brought in more cash than it spent for the first time. Its losses narrowed in 2008 to $112.9 million, about half those of a year earlier. Sales nudge 5% higher to about $1.02 billion.

But last summer's record fuel prices, plunging consumer confidence and deteriorating credit markets weighed on Six Flags' balance sheet. The company lost even more money when the recent swine flu outbreak forced a temporary closure of its park in Mexico City.

A few months ago, Six Flags hired law firm Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker LLP to prepare for a bankruptcy filing. It also hired Houlihan Lokey Howard & Zukin to negotiate with creditors.

Write to Mike Spector at mike.spector@wsj.com

The World's Billionaires

http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/11/worlds-richest-people-billionaires-2009-billionaires_land.html

The World's Billionaires
Edited by Luisa Kroll, Matthew Miller and Tatiana Serafin
03.11.09

The richest people in the world have gotten poorer, just like the rest of us. This year the world's billionaires have an average net worth of $3 billion, down 23% in 12 months. The world now has 793 billionaires, down from 1,125 a year ago.

After slipping in recent years, the U.S. is regaining its dominance as a repository of wealth. Americans account for 44% of the money and 45% of the list's slots, up seven and three percentage points from last year, respectively. Bill Gates lost $18 billion but regained his title as the world's richest man. Warren Buffett, last year's No. 1, saw his fortune decline $25 billion as shares of Berkshire Hathaway fell nearly 50% in 12 months. Mexican telecom titan Carlos Slim Helú maintains his spot in the top three but lost $25 billion.

THE BILLIONAIRES

William Gates III
Warren Buffett
Carlos Slim Helú
Lawrence Ellison
Ingvar Kamprad
Karl Albrecht
Mukesh Ambani
Lakshmi Mittal
Theo Albrecht
Amancio Ortega
Jim Walton
Alice Walton
Christy Walton
S Robson Walton
Bernard Arnault
Li Ka-shing
Michael Bloomberg
Stefan Persson
Charles Koch
David Koch

When a Rock Star CEO Leaves the Stage

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/17/AR2009011700356.html

When a Rock Star CEO Leaves the Stage
Sunday, January 18, 2009; Page F02
Frank Ahrens

Companies run by charismatic, high-profile chief executives are exciting to follow, but are they a good investment? Can too much of the company's value depend on one person?

An example to look at is Apple and its founder and rock star chief executive, Steve Jobs.

Jobs, a pancreatic-cancer survivor, has lost a great deal of weight and has appeared less frequently over the past year, stoking rumors of poor health.

Last week, Jobs said his health problems turned out to be "more complex" than previously revealed. He's taking a five-month leave of absence from Apple, turning over day-to-day operations to Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook.

Shares of Apple took a hit. Maybe no American chief executive is perceived as being more crucial to his company's future than Jobs is to Apple's.

Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976 but was ousted in a power struggle in 1985. Apple's results were mixed without him, and the company wandered strategically. In late 1997, Jobs returned. Apple's share price immediately began climbing as Jobs focused his company.

It soared when he introduced the revolutionary iPod and iTunes in 2001 and kept rising with the rollout of the innovative iPhone, hitting nearly $200 per share in December 2007, from about $3 in 1997, adjusted for splits and dividends. It has dropped by more than half since that peak, closing yesterday at $82.33 per share, clearly hurt by the recession. Its losses over the past half-year have been comparable in percentage to those at Dell and Microsoft, but analysts speculate that the stock would be trading higher were Jobs healthy and visible.

If you're an Apple shareholder, you're wondering how deep Apple's bench is.

If you're not, you may be looking around at other "cult of personality" companies with a wary eye.

Consider Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. -- a vast media and entertainment empire that includes movies, newspapers and satellite networks. All of which the 77-year-old Murdoch will turn over to his 36-year-old son James at some point.

World's Richest Man Warren E. Buffett is inextricably linked to his Berkshire Hathaway investment firm. The 78-year-old Buffett has said he has identified potential successors.

An example of a cult stock that has managed the exit of its leader while keeping a relative handle on investor value is Microsoft. Shares of the company's stock held fairly steady in the upper $20s throughout the beginning and middle of last year as founder and icon Bill Gates stepped aside to make way for the company's new chief executive, Steve Ballmer.

Steve Jobs, tech's last celebrity CEO

http://money.cnn.com/2008/12/19/technology/fortt_tech_ceos.fortune/

Steve Jobs, tech's last celebrity CEO
With the Apple chief's decision to step out of the spotlight at next month's Macworld Expo, an era comes to an end.
By Jon Fortt, writer
December 19, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO (Fortune) -- Where have all the high-flying tech CEOs gone?

This week the tech world lost another headliner when Apple CEO Steve Jobs made it known that he'll no longer deliver his signature keynote speech at next month's Macworld Expo trade show.

Since the announcement comes the same year that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates gave up his traditional keynote at another high-tech extravaganza, the Consumer Electronics Show, it underscores the fact that there aren't many superstars left who can rally big crowds and carry the banner for tech.

It had to happen eventually. The sun is setting on the first generation of rebellious whiz kids who invented the PC, commercialized the Internet and grew their companies into powerhouses.

In bygone days, Gates regularly talked up his plans for world domination. Scott McNealy, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems, led a defiant rebellion against Gates and his Redmond, Wash., juggernaut. Craig Barrett, the outspoken former CEO of Intel, ushered the chipmaker's glorious entrance into the age of mobile and wireless computer.

Today, all three have stepped back from operational roles, and are more likely to champion education policy than to unveil the next must-have gadget or service. Even the sole remaining old-school tech CEO, Oracle's Larry Ellison, is keeping a lower profile these days; he's in the news for his yachts and planes as much as anything else.

Help Wanted: A few geeky CEOs

The rest of today's crop of CEOs is a different breed. As innovators like Intel and Microsoft have grown into corporate giants, they haven't looked for clones of their iconoclastic founders to take over; instead, they've looked to manager/salesmen like Intel's Paul Otellini, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, Hewlett-Packard's Mark Hurd and IBM's Sam Palmisano.

These guys are uber managers, not tech visionaries. They may be business-school rock stars, but engineers don't line up for their autographs.

Given the way companies mature, perhaps it's only natural that the current crop of CEOs looks different from the last. It takes one set of skills to think up a brilliant new idea, motivate starry-eyed recruits and inspire investors. It takes an entirely different set to manage thousands of employees, glad-hand customers and placate Wall Street; and it's rare to find all those skills in one person.

Are there any leaders left with geek cred? Sure - Web 2.0 celebrities like Google's Eric Schmidt, Sergey Brin, and Larry Page, and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg have plenty - but none of them could be mistaken for inspirational speakers. Likewise, Adobe's Shantanu Narayen and AMD's Dirk Meyer have impressive engineering chops, but they seem more comfortable in the lab than on the stage.

In the end, the guy best suited to draw a crowd and speak for tech is probably Michael Dell - but Dell Inc. is in such rough shape that he won't have much time for speeches.

Which brings us back to Steve Jobs. So as long as he remains at the helm of Apple and its products stay popular, we're not likely to miss his Macworld keynote too much - when he has something to say, he'll figure out ways to draw a crowd. The question is what happens when His Steveness steps away from the company, or when its products are no longer the toast of the town.

When that happens - and it's a matter of when, not if - we may all get wistful about the good old days of the Macworld keynote, when the techies of the world huddled like kids on Christmas, and expected to be blown away.

The World's Richest People

http://www.forbes.com/home/billionaires/2008/03/05/buffett-worlds-richest-cx_mm_0229buffetrichest.html

The World's Richest People
Gates No Longer World's Richest Man
Matthew Miller
03.05.08

Warren Buffett is the richest man on the planet.

Riding the surging price of Berkshire Hathaway stock, America's most beloved investor has seen his fortune swell to an estimated $62 billion, up $10 billion from a year ago. That massive pile of scratch puts him ahead of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who was the richest man in the world for 13 straight years.

Gates is now worth $58 billion and is ranked third in the world. He is up $2 billion from a year ago, but would have been perhaps as rich--or richer--than Buffett had Microsoft not made an unsolicited bid for Yahoo! at the beginning of February.

Microsoft shares fell 15% between Jan. 31, the day before the company announced its bid for the search engine giant, and Feb. 11, the day we locked in stock prices for the 2008 World's Billionaires list. More than half of Gates' fortune is held outside of Microsoft shares.

Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim Helú is the world's second-richest man, with an estimated net worth of $60 billion. His fortune has risen $11 billion since last March.

Buffett, whose fortune is estimated based on his stake in Berkshire Hathaway and assets he holds outside the company, refused to comment on his net worth.

The race for the title of World's Richest Man has been extremely competitive in recent months. Class A shares of Berkshire Hathaway soared 25% between the middle of July and the day we priced our list. The stock hit an all-time high of $150,000 a share in December. At that time, Buffett was worth roughly $65 billion.

Berkshire Hathaway shares closed at $137,100 per share on Tuesday, down 2% since the announcement last Friday that the company's net earnings fell 18% in the fourth quarter of last year.

Gates' fortune also swelled massively last fall. Shares of Microsoft jumped 30% between late October and early November to $37 a share, only to fall after the company announced its intentions to buy Yahoo! for $45 billion on Feb. 1.

Slim's fortune has doubled in the past two years. Stock in his most significant holding, telecom outfit America Movil, has risen 120% since the beginning of 2006. Helú also owns stakes in Carso Global Telecom, Grupo Carso and Grupo Financiero Inbursa.

The son of a Nebraska politician, Buffett delivered newspapers as a boy. He filed his first tax return at age 13, claiming a $35 deduction for his bicycle. He moved on to study under value investing guru Benjamin Graham at Columbia University.

Buffett began buying shares in textile firm Berkshire Hathaway in 1962 and purchased a controlling stake in 1965. He began buying insurance companies and astutely investing those companies' cash reserves.

Today, Berkshire is invested in insurance (GEICO, General Re), jewelry (Borsheim's), utilities (MidAmerican Energy Holdings) and food (Dairy Queen, See's Candies). It also has noncontrolling stakes in Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola and Wells Fargo. Recently, the company disclosed it owns a significant stake in Kraft Foods.

In December, the company purchased a 60% stake in the Pritzker family's manufacturing and services group, Marmon Holdings, for $4.5 billion. The privately held Marmon owns businesses across wire and cable, transportation services and industrial products.

Despite Buffett's meteoric rise, his days as the World's Richest Man are almost certainly numbered. He had long promised to give away his fortune posthumously. But in the summer of 2006 he irrevocably earmarked the majority of his Berkshire shares to charity, most going to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

At the time, the gift was valued at $31 billion. However, assuming that Berkshire shares continue to rise, the final amount of the donation will far exceed that sum. Buffett gives 5% of his shares to charity every July.

In October, Buffett issued a challenge to members of the Forbes 400 richest Americans list, saying he would donate $1 million to charity if the collective group (or a significant number of them) would admit they pay less taxes, as a percentage of income, than their secretaries.

Days after issuing the challenge, Buffett appeared before Congress to encourage it to keep the estate tax. Armed with a few Forbes 400 issues, he told the hearing that "dynastic wealth, the enemy of a meritocracy, is on the rise."

What an Annoying Year!

http://newsforreal.com/

December 19, 2007
What an Annoying Year!
Stephen P. Pizzo

Whew, has this been an annoying year, or what! I figure 2007 has been the most annoying year of my 62. I even did up a list of just the top 20 things I became sick and tired of during the past year.

Here they are, in no particular order:

1) I'm sick and tired of being bombarded by TV ads with American Indians telling me that their casinos are making life better for everyone, not just the ten members of their tribe. Have you ever been in one of those casinos? Just how are casinos making life better for the bus loads of gray-haired codgers who upload their meager Social Security checks into Chief Wampum's slots? And what about all those already over-extended, mortgage-poor, credit card maxed out working stiffs so desperate their last remaining hope to hit a progressive-slot jackpot? How is the spreading plague of Indian casinos helping those folks?

So knock it off with those phony feel-good ads and replace them with something that at least approximates the truth. Something like this would be more tolerable:

"We had a sweet thing going before Europeans showed up, uninvited, and mugged the living crap out of Indian tribes from coast to shinning coast. Well that hunk of Karma has come home to roost at our Indian Casinos where we are now happily, and profitably, doing the same thing to you. We even have a name for you... The White Buffalo."

Now, that's at least true, and defensible. I can live with that. But even white-guilt has its limits and those spoken-with-forketh-tongue, Indian-casinos-are-good-for-us TV ads have pushed that limit well beyond the breaking point.

2) I'm sick and tired of all things bimbo. Paris, Britney, Lohan...and all those like them. The only time such appaulingly stupid people should appear on my evening news is if they should stumble in front of the Presidential limo, get run over but survived and, once out of a coma, scribble out the solution to Einstein's unified field theory. Otherwise I never want to hear their names or see their vacant faces on the news again. They are nature's most useless and annoying creatures. CNN and MSNBC -- don't waste another electron reporting on these people because electrons have more important things to do -- and so do you.

3) I'm sick and tired of having to pretend that Christian fundamentalists are entirely sane when they announce with straight faces that the earth was created in six days, and is not billions of years old but actually just 6000 years old. And that dinosaurs and humans coexisted because, "In fact, at Answers in Genesis, we call dinosaurs 'missionary lizards.' No sane literate person would -- could -- hold such utter nonsense to be true. Such pronouncements should be treated for what they are -- evidence of ignornace, mental illness or both.

Because they are provably false. They are NOT a equally valid scientific theory. They are the product of mass-hysterical-crazy thinking -- viral nonsense. People who believe such things, and try to get others to believe them, should be treated the exactly how we treat people who walk city streets shouting at things only they can see. And when one of these zombies shows up at a school board meeting demanding religious mythology be taught in science class, they should be politely asked to either shut up or leave. If they refuse then someone needs to call the cops to remove them to the nearest psychiatric facility and placed on a 36-hour hold. (Except in Texas, which we all know is a lost cause.)

4) I'm sick and tired of every politician running for election or re-election testifying that they, too, "believe." Believe what? Well, they keep that kinda of fuzzy. Politicians understand that, when you're seeking the votes of people who believe crazy things, you've gotta stay vague. That's because metaphysical-crazy comes in more flavors than Baskin-Robbins. No two crazies are the same, but they do all have one thing in common; they believe crazies of a different flavor are ... well, crazy. Which is why politicians play their "crazy belief cards" close to the vest. Instead of risking losing crazy votes by getting specific about precisely what kind of metaphysical things they may or may not believe in, they vaguely reasure them with a wink, wink, nudge, nudge -- "Just trust me folks. I'm at least as crazy as you."

5) I'm sick and tired of my country listing among our "friends and allies" creepy, unsavory, smarmy, self-indulgent, utterly despicable regimes -- to wit -- Saudi Arabia and the Saudi "royal" family. John Gotti's family had more royal blood in it than the 7000-odd dictatorial, misogynistic sheiks that run Saudi Arabia. If they weren't squatting atop lakes of oil the only kingdom they'd be lording over would have horns and require milking twice a day. If there's a more despicable bunch of mobsters masquerading as leaders today, I can't think of it. And I'm sick of seeing our moron of a President walking hand in hand with these cross-dressing, lying, cheating, terrorist-financing, rape-victim-lashing Arab home-boys, at the same time we continue embargoing Cuba and shaking a threatening fist at Iran.

6) I'm sick and tired of hearing about how Pakistan is a "valuable ally in the war on terror." No they're not. Hell, they're not even a real democracy anymore. Also everyone knows that the Pakistan army and intelligence services are lousy with al Qaida and Taliban sympathizers. Calling Pakistan an ally is like declaring George W. Bush one of America's most accomplished Presidents. The day Pervez Musharraf fired the whole Supreme Court and replaced them with handpicked Clarence Thomas' and Anthony Scalia's, we should have given NATO troops in Afghanistan the green light go into Pakistan's tribal regions and do whatever needed doing there. The other thing we should have done a long time ago is to dispatch a team of Navy Seals to snatch A.Q. Khan -- the guy who spread nuclear bomb technology from North Korea, to Lybia and Iran. Khan is currently under "house arrest" in Pakistan. Snatching him and bringing him to justice would send a message to anyone thinking of peddling nukes that they'll never live to spend the money.

7) I'm sick and tired of "Billery." Bill and Hillary Clinton have worn out their welcome in my head. I appreciate Bill's accomplishments as President. But fine, can we move on now? I didn't appreciate the Bill and Hillary soap operas the first time around. But now the nation and world are too much in crisis to restart that kind of unhelpful diversions. Hillary is a smart and viciously accomplished pol. But rather than president, her skills could be put to better use as Senate Majority Leader. Ditch the nearly comatose Harry Reid and put Hillary in that important post. Because, unlike Reid, Hillary knows how to jerk leashes -- and actually likes it.

8) I'm sick and tired of the global warming deniers. They should be treated with the same sense of anger and disgust as Holocaust deniers... just more so. Denying the Holocaust only denies the murder of six million humans. Denying global warming and it's causes threatens to sentence hundreds of millions, maybe billions, of humans to slow, painful untimely deaths. I can't punch global warming deniers, though I'd like to. But if they persist they and their families should all be required to relocate to the lowest laying atoll in the Pacific.

9) I'm sick and tired of Wall Street and government "economists" blowing smoke up my ass about the state of the economy. I cut my journalistic teeth on financial crisis, so I know one when I see one coming. And one is coming. In fact, it's just now arriving. Don't tell me the "underlying strength of the US economy is strong." Bullshit. Consumer spending accounts for 70% of the US economy, and those consumers are tapped out. They can't even mug another dime of equity out of their now over encumbered homes. Even those usurious credit card companies won't lend them anymore until they pay off their overdue balances. Hello.....

The truth is we are heading into the worst case of stagflation in a quarter century. So, economists, spare me the happy talk. That crap might buy you some time by creating sucker rallies on Wall Street, but you are about to run out of suckers. Do you have a plan for that? If so, that's what what I want to hear from you... and quickly please.

10) I'm sick and tired of defense contractors, like Lockheed, running TV ads trying to convince me that everything they do is "for our troops in harms way." Gag me with a rocket launcher! Everything defense contractors do is in pursuit of billions of defense tax dollars. That's why they do it --- the ONLY reason they do it. They never seem to mention in their ads that every year... without exception...every year, they are each one caught red handed lying, cheating and stealing hundreds of millions of dollars more. And that, even when caught, not one of them has spent a day in the slammer for it. So, shut up with the "we do it all for our troops," crap, will ya? It makes me wanna reach through the TV and Blackwater your asses.

11) I'm sick and tired of teachers absolving themselves of any responsibility for the dismal state of American education. When I sat on a school board I suggested we grant teachers even more in pay raises than they were requesting. I only had one condition; that we be allowed to bypass teacher union roadblocks when we wanted to reward exceptional teachers and could promptly fire the well known loser teachers on our staff. Their response -- "No way Jose." You would have thought I'd asked them to undress or something. No personal accountability for teachers, not even if we paid them for it. If private industry had those kind of rules America would look like Somalia today -- which is why our education system nearly does.

12) I'm sick and tired of hearing that the US has "the best health care in the world." First of all my wife is a health care professional, which means I hear the real scoop every day she returns from work. Tales that curl the blood. We don't have the best health care in the world, we just have the most expensive health care in the world. It's a system run by a bunch of blood sucking private insurance companies that cherry pick the actuarial pool. They insure only those unlikely to need medical care, and reject anyone who just might. Those they refuse to insure eventually end up getting medical care on the public nickel. Wouldn't you love a business deal like that, one where you get to shove your risks off on the government allowing you to pocket all that low/no risk gravy? I sure would. I'm sick of it... pun intended.

13) I'm sick of paying a higher percentage of my adjusted gross income than Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. The Bush tax cuts have been a bonanza for the already super rich, and a big lump of coal for everyone else. For our national infrastructure the Bush tax cuts were a "who needs public infrastructure anyway!" The truth is that the rich got rich largely thanks to Americas generous, reliable and efficient taxpayer funded infrastructure -- roads, bridges, airports, ports and such. Therefore they should pay taxes that adequately reflect and reimburse the nation for that. At the end of the day, every road is a toll road, and the rich are nolonger paying their fair share of tolls.

14) On the same subject, I'm also sick and tired of hearing Republicans spout the nonsense that if you cut a rich person or corporation's taxes they will use that extra money to "create jobs for working Americans." No they won't. And no, they haven't.

What they have done with their Bush's tax cut bonanza is sock it away in tax-protected family trusts and then lobby Congress to eliminate the estate tax so their heirs can keep every dime of it. If any of that extra money does end up getting invested in a job-creating enterprise you can bet your low-wage bippy those jobs end up in China or someplace like China. So, spare the "trickle down" crapola fellas.

15) I'm sick and tired of spending $60 billion a year on intelligence services that aren't.

16) I'm sick and tired of Neo-con, lap-dog Republicans who have defended and aided administration officials who openly champion views of governance so un-American they border on neo-fascism.

17) I'm sick and tired of conniving, weaselly, cowardly Democrats who could have obstructed our nations slide toward totalitarianism -- but didn't -- and still haven't.

18) I'm sick and tired of hearing American auto makers whine about how they can't possibly meet higher fuel economy standards while the Japanese clean up doing just that. The last time this happened, back in the 1970s, the Japanese whipped Detroit's sorry ass by making higher mileage small cars while Detroit keep spitting out 8-cylinder behemoths. Then Uncle Sam ended up having to bail out Chrysler and put import quotas on Japanese cars so we didn't have to bailout the out GM and Ford as well. The Big Three dinosaurs are at it again, addicted to selling Hummers and gas-guzzling SUVs and fighting every effort to get them to switch to higher millage and alternative fuel vehicles. Maybe if we hadn't bailed them out of their last self-inflicted wounds they'd have come out with a Prisus before the Japanese this time. If GM had an ounce of sense it would change it's name from General Motors to Green Machines and get with the frigging program. I'm sick and tired of rewarding and enabling such stubborn, corporate stupidity and public and social malfeasance.

19) I'm sick and tired of soap-opera news stories that have runs longer than most Broadway plays. The next time some guy's wife goes missing, and authorities suspect he killed her and dumped her body someplace, don't tell me about -- at least until they solve the crime and actually know what happened. Even then such stories are for local news, so why are they on the national news in the first place? I'm sick and tired of these long, drawn out tales of dysfunctional relationships turned deadly. Nothing about these tales matters to anyone except the poor people directly involved, their families and immediate neighbors. There's absolutely no national news value to running these stories night after night, except a sick "entertainment" value. So, unless these sad cases are being caused by some communicable virus that's spreading at an alarming rate and heading my way, I don't want to hear about them -- it's not "news I need" -- or even want.

20) I'm sick and tired of these new "Christians are being persecuted" TV ads. You know, the ones where some Chinese kid narrates how she was forced to walk barefoot through the snow to a detention center because she wrote stuff about Jesus ... blah, blah, blah. The truth is the overly religious thrive on claims of persecution, real or Madison Avenue-imagined. Nothing stirs up the religiously enthralled like a ripping, tear-jerking tale of persecution. More importantly, nothing opens up the wallets of the herd faster either. One might suggest to them that maybe if fundamentalist Christians tried to be a little less "up everyone's nose," every time we turn around these days they might face less persecution. That assumes, of course, they really are being "persecuted" every time they make the claim -- which I doubt. Often what they view as persecution is simple, non-violent, rhetorical push-back from those of us who've heard quite enough about their supernatural pretend friend(s) of choice. They consider such push back "persecution." We call it self-defense.

So there, my top 20 list of things I got sick and tired of in 2007. Send me your list and I'll add it in the best ones in days ahead. Listing them probably won't change anything, but it's very cathartic.

How Slim Got Huge

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3991&print=1

How Slim Got Huge
By Brian Winter
November/December 2007

Bill Gates is no longer the world’s richest man. That honor now goes to Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim. But Slim’s incredible fortune—$59 billion and climbing—is more than a story of one man’s rise to riches. He is one of a growing list of tycoons from countries like China, India, and Russia who represent a new wave of wealth, power, and influence. Many are skilled businesspeople. But, in these fast-developing economies, being able to seize a political opportunity may count for a lot more.

Come back, Bill Gates! After some initial misgivings, the world had largely grown comfortable with the Microsoft founder as the closest thing capitalism has to a mascot—the No.1 spot on Forbes magazine’s list of the world’s wealthiest people. We liked that Gates was a self-made Harvard dropout; that he helped make computers easier to use; that, due largely to him, it was suddenly cool to be a geek. Anger over Microsoft’s near monopoly status had subsided in recent years due in part to Gates’s stunning philanthropy and the emergence of Apple as a hip corporate alternative. Having Gates atop the Forbes list told us a lot about the world we lived in—that we were all part of a “new economy,” an ideas-driven society where technology, innovation, and intellectual capital were the keys to getting filthy rich.

What, then, to make of the man who in the summer of 2007 appears to have replaced Gates as the world’s richest person? His name is Carlos Slim Helú. Today, his fortune stands at more than $59 billion—and grew, on average, more than $1 billion a month last year. What kind of world are we living in now? Slim has been widely accused of monopolistic practices; he catapulted himself to the top spot on the back of his company Teléfonos de México, or Telmex, which has a 92 percent stranglehold on his country’s local fixed-line market. Slim’s business empire, the scope of which is largely unprecedented in modern economic history, ranges from cigarettes to airlines, from electric cables to floor tiles. In all, Slim’s net worth is equivalent to a stunning 6.6 percent of Mexico’s gross domestic product (GDP), easily eclipsing Gates (0.4 percent of U.S. GDP) and even John D. Rockefeller at his peak (slightly less than 2 percent in 1937). Although it may be unsurprising to see such gross wealth disparity in Latin America, what do we make of the growing list of billionaires in countries such as China, India, and Russia that supposedly represent the global economy’s future? Are we entering a new era of robber barons? Does the shift of investment and production to emerging markets herald a rise in “crony capitalism” worldwide? Or does the rapidly accumulating wealth of Slim and his ilk merely signify an undesirable byproduct of a very desirable process—the spread of free-market capitalism around the globe?

The Numbers Game

Recently, Slim has behaved a bit bashfully, like a man who knows he is not popular. Described by some who have met him as disarming, austere, and even humble, he seems to be aware that much of the world isn’t exactly thrilled to have an alleged monopolist in the No.1 spot. Long scornful of charity—he once criticized Gates and others for acting like Santa Claus because they gave away too much money—Slim recently announced plans that will make him one of the world’s leading philanthropists. Meanwhile, Slim has gone out of his way to be understated. Other Latin American tycoons tend to ride around in black SUVs with tinted windows and security details, even when they’re abroad. On a recent trip to Washington, Slim rented a modest Ford sedan at Ronald Reagan National Airport and chauffeured himself around D.C.—alone—while dropping in, unannounced, on business leaders and bureaucrats. Some of this is due to Slim’s apparently genuine frugality; he has lived in the same relatively modest house for three decades (Gates, for the record, lives in a 66,000-square-foot waterfront compound with a pool that has an underwater sound system). Yet when you hear Slim repeatedly brag that he owns no homes outside Mexico, he does sound a bit defensive. Then again, if your net worth on paper had increased by a rate of more than $2 million an hour during the past year, you’d probably be looking over your shoulder, too.

To that end, Slim only this year has given up a long habit of cultivating anonymity. He has even begun talking regularly to the press. Perhaps he realized his ascension to Forbes’ No.1 spot would fan public interest; perhaps he has grown less protective of his privacy as he retires and bequeaths his business interests to his children; or, perhaps, as with so much else with Slim, he just acted on a rather eccentric whim. When Slim granted an interview to USA Today in April, he made the reporter promise he would deliver to his editors an “improved” baseball box score design that Slim had specially created for the newspaper’s sports pages. Whatever his motives, Slim worked the media circuit like a Hollywood star this summer, detailing his passion for baseball (favorite team: the New York Yankees), showcasing his art collection (he owns several Rodin sculptures and Renoir paintings), and talking proudly of how he inherited his business acumen from his father (a Lebanese immigrant named Yusef Salim who invested in real estate and opened a general store at the height of the Mexican Revolution). Above all, Slim loudly professes one obsession: “I like numbers,” he says. “Words speak to some people; to others of us, it’s numbers.” He credits this trait with his success as a financier. Slim buys up companies on the cheap, manages them intelligently, and turns them into cash cows; his operating philosophy is less Bill Gates than Warren Buffet (now likely the world’s third richest person). Indeed, at this advanced, almost incomprehensible stage, it would seem that Slim is accumulating wealth not out of greed but just to make the numbers dance in his head.

It comes as no surprise, then, that the numbers Slim knows best are the ones that he says acquit him of accusations that he is a monopolist; that he unfairly uses his clout to suffocate the competition; and that he exploited his close relationship with former President Carlos Salinas to acquire Telmex from the Mexican government in 1990. Interestingly, Slim defends the monopoly charges by comparing himself to Gates (Microsoft has a 95 percent market share, compared to 92 percent for Telmex); Slim complains that he is held to a different standard because he hails from the developing world. Meanwhile, the controversy over Telmex has less to do with the sale price—Slim and his partners, Southwestern Bell and France Telecom, paid $1.76 billion for a more than 20 percent controlling stake, which was widely considered reasonable at the time—than the sweetheart terms granted by the government, which essentially handed Telmex six years of exclusivity in Mexico’s fixed-line market during a time when other companies were seeking to expand. The deal was so good, in fact, that shortly after the privatization, the opposition Democratic Revolutionary Party demanded that Salinas be impeached. A congressional committee (controlled by Salinas’s party) found no wrongdoing. Slim dismisses the whole controversy as irrational. “We won because we paid more,” he says, by about 8 cents per share. Reporters receive a statistical breakdown of this and other numbers on their way out the door; they are also available on Slim’s slick new Web site, CarlosSlim.com.

This much is undeniable: Slim’s share of his homeland’s wealth is truly gargantuan, especially considering that Mexico is in many other respects a modern economy, the world’s 14th largest and one of Latin America’s most prosperous, a manufacturing powerhouse that has signed free trade pacts with the United States and 17 other countries, plus the European Union. Slim owns majority shares in at least 222 companies. Telmex is indisputably the crown jewel of them all, the acquisition that transformed Slim from merely rich to outlandishly wealthy, and here again the numbers are staggering. For Bill Gates to control a share of the U.S. telephone market similar to Slim’s reach in Mexico, Gates would have to own AT&T, MCI, Quest, Sprint, and Verizon—and even then, Gates would still only have less than 80 percent market share, well short of Telmex’s 92 percent. To match Slim’s overall market presence in Mexico, Gates would probably also have to own Alcoa, Phillip Morris, Sears, Best Buy, TGIFriday’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, Marriott, Citibank, and JetBlue. For his wealth to be on a scale in the United States similar to Slim’s in Mexico, Gates would have to be worth $909 billion. That is a number even Carlos Slim might have trouble getting his head around.

The Secret to Slim’s Success?

This kind of enrichment was not what made people tear down the Berlin Wall. Countries from Eastern Europe to Latin America did not undergo painful reforms during the 1990s just so a handful of people could get very wealthy. Study after study has shown that the concentration of economic power in so few hands leads to a slower pace of technological innovation, unequal lending practices, and the stunted development of capital markets—a corruption of the very institutions and practices we believed were so important during the “Gates Era.” For example, Mexican investment in information and communications technologies, a field dominated by Slim, stands at 3.1 percent of GDP, badly lagging developed countries such as Japan (7.4 percent), the United States (8.8 percent), and even regional peers with healthier competition in telecoms such as Chile (6.7 percent) and Brazil (6.9 percent). Economic elites tend to abuse their country’s political systems to retain their privileges; competition is squeezed out or, better yet, is never allowed to enter their home turf in the first place. For example, Vonage and Skype, companies that allow voice conversations to be held over the Internet, accused Telmex in 2005 of intentionally blocking access to their sites so that users in Mexico would have to keep using Telmex’s long-distance services (Telmex denied the accusations). Apply this kind of anticompetitive model across the entire economy, and the rich get dramatically richer; the poor do only slightly better, if at all. Even Slim would probably agree that this is not what the world should be aspiring to.

Some argue that these are just growing pains, a natural phase in the evolution of young capitalist economies. In this sense, Slim may be guilty of nothing more than playing the game by the existing rules with more skill than everyone else. At its peak in the 1890s, Standard Oil held a Slim-like 88 percent market share in the United States. After its founding in 1901, U.S. Steel accounted for 67 percent of steel production. The U.S. economy eventually worked its way through this monopolistic phase, thanks to strong antitrust enforcement (and a crippling depression that brutally illustrated the shortcomings of a purely market-driven economy). Some theories hold that large, state-nurtured conglomerates lay the groundwork for prosperous medium-sized companies that eventually outmaneuver and then topple the titans. Companies that survive the onset of competition later prosper and generate jobs worldwide; Airbus, Telefónica de España, and Daewoo are all global companies that benefited from a period of state protection. Even Slim’s stewardship of Telmex has had some positive effects. Getting a phone line in Mexico now takes a matter of days; prior to its privatization, it often took years and required customers to pore through classified newspaper ads placed by Mexicans selling their own connection. Yet, even if this is just a phase, it’s certainly a painful one, with consequences that extend across the entire economy. Telmex’s business telephone rates (factoring in installation costs, monthly fees, and per-minute rates) are more than three times those of Argentina and four times those of Brazil. More broadly, Mexico’s central bank president, Guillermo Ortiz, has said that Mexico’s annual economic growth rate is 1 percentage point less than it could be with more robust competition in all sectors. For this and other reasons—poor education, crumbling infrastructure, and tax evasion among them—Mexico’s growth has badly lagged behind countries such as China, India, and Chile for nearly a decade. The resulting lack of jobs has driven millions of Mexicans to seek opportunities in the United States.

Whether young, developing-world conglomerates such as Slim’s are good or bad, they’re here, and they’re on the rise. In 1990, there were only a handful of multinationals based in emerging-market countries on the Fortune 500 list of companies; in 2006, there were 52. Their influence and wealth are growing by the day—and not just within the developing world. The Indian tycoon Lakshmi Mittal (No.5 on the Forbes list) is now the biggest steelmaker in North America with 20 percent of production. Cemex, controlled by the Mexican billionaire Carlos Zambrano, has, through acquisitions, become one of the world’s largest cement makers, going from revenues of around $300 million in the mid-1980s to more than $18 billion today. The influence of these companies, and the individuals who run them, grow with each dollar they send abroad; the amount of foreign direct investment coming from emerging economies reached $133 billion in 2005, representing 17 percent of the world’s outward investment flows, an all-time high. The wealth of these emerging-market billionaires is growing, too: The 10 Mexicans on Forbes’ billionaires list in 2007 had a total net worth of $74.1 billion, almost three times the $24.9 billion that Mexican Forbes billionaires had in 2000. Mexico is certainly not alone; the aggregate wealth of a country’s billionaires as a percentage of GDP is even higher in Chile, Kuwait, Malaysia, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. The number of Indian and Chinese billionaires on the Forbes list nearly doubled during the past year; indeed, India now has the second-most billionaires among the top 20, behind only the United States.

How did this happen? Here, again, the case of Mexico and Slim is instructive. A study published last year showed that half of the billionaires in Mexico benefited in some way from the privatization process of the 1980s and 1990s. Indeed, the success of Slim and other new billionaires often seems less attributable to their skill as businessmen than to their bona fides as politicians. In many cases, their true savvy was to move quickly when opportunities presented themselves and to cultivate the connections among bureaucrats, regulators, and politicians that they needed to take advantage of economies that were either in transition or changing fast. In India, Mittal transformed himself from a small-time steel magnate by buying up steel conglomerates in failed communist states from the mid-1990s. Nowhere was the economic liberalization process more famously fraught with peril than in Russia—and, by no coincidence, among the top 20 billionaires on the Forbes list who hail from emerging markets, more than half of them are Russian. Many of them, including Roman Abramovich and Mikhail Fridman, derive their fortunes from oil and gas companies that were ceded to them amid the chaos that reigned shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Not all privatizations around the world were conducted badly, of course, just as there are a great many emerging-market companies such as Orascom, Mittal (now ArcelorMittal), and Infosys that built their fortunes on such old-fashioned pillars as innovation and competitive advantage. However, the same process that produced many of today’s titans has taught us, rather painfully, that starting points matter. In too many countries, it was assumed that embracing free-market capitalism was an end in itself; that the first wave of reforms (slashing tariffs, encouraging foreign investment, privatization) was sufficient to simply coast to broad prosperity.

In the best-case scenario, this means that the world is now witnessing the fallout from mistakes that were made during the 1990s. The other, far more depressing conclusion is that, as the core of the global economy shifts to countries with weak rule of law and institutions, connections to government, rather than entrepreneurial skill, are becoming the quickest and most effective path to wealth.

Creatures of the State

What, if anything, can we do about it? The truth is that most of the tools available to untangle an empire such as Slim’s, or at least encourage more competition, are either too blunt or too susceptible to manipulation and delays. The mechanisms readily available in a market economy can be rather traumatic, even under the most ideal circumstances. Enforcing anti-trust regulations earlier this decade against Microsoft took years of litigation, and that was in the supposedly “mature” economies of the United States and Western Europe. It is unclear whether that model can function in a place like Mexico, against a man like Slim. Theoretically, Telmex could be split up into lots of Baby Telmexes, à la the AT&T breakup; but how do you confront a man who could, on a whim, single-handedly throw your economy into a depression? “There are no miracles,” Fernando Henrique Cardoso, president of Brazil from 1995 to 2003, said in an interview for this article. “The only solution is to put these decisions in the hands of a regulatory system rather than individual people.” Yet, regulators and anti-trust bodies only function if there is political will and a strong, independent judiciary. In Mexico, large companies frequently obtain amparos, or stays, that allow them to indefinitely ignore adverse rulings by regulatory agencies. From 2000 to 2006, Mexico’s minister of communications and transport was a former Telmex employee. As recently as 2004, the World Trade Organization ruled that Mexico’s Federal Telecommunications Commission had looked the other way while Telmex fixed international rates, limited the supply of connections, and gouged U.S. companies trying to route calls to Mexico. Often, the most damaging measures come from the very democratic institutions that are, at least theoretically, supposed to act for the common good. Mexico’s Congress frequently kills legislation that might be hostile to Slim’s interests. It can’t be surprising, though, that the very governments that created many of these billionaires are later unable to rein them in. The only immediate solution, particularly in a country like Mexico, might be to return to where the whole problem started: a smoke-filled room. A high-ranking representative of the Mexican government could informally, but firmly, tell Slim that, while he won’t be targeted, his days of unfettered expansion have come to an end. Several Mexico watchers believe this conversation has already taken place. “Nobody has told Slim to go buy Guatemalan real estate or anything, but apparently he has been very quietly informed that the rules have changed,” said one source who meets frequently with senior Mexican officials. The problem with this approach is that it can be just as unfair and arbitrary as the situation that created the trouble in the first place. Enforcement can be uneven or nonexistent, particularly when weak governments have other, more pressing matters on their minds.

If the “Slim Era” goes on long enough, how much time will pass before society grows tired of it? Nobody is predicting a revolution in Mexico or anywhere else, but change via accepted democratic means can be equally dramatic: Just ask Hugo Chávez. In Mexico, Felipe Calderón won the 2006 election by just 243,934 votes, or .58 percent of the electorate—the other candidate, a leftist former mayor of Mexico City, would surely have taken the country in a very different, more Chávez-like direction. If the Carlos Slims of the world keep getting more powerful, then what will happen in the next election in Mexico? What about other, less mature countries? Data show that, since the Berlin Wall fell, economic inequality has been on the rise in a great many countries, even in the developed world. It is a trend that policymakers seem unable or unwilling to address, and one that is unlikely to change anytime soon: China, one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, is run by an authoritarian, largely unaccountable regime that seems likely to provide ever more lucrative opportunities going forward for “partnerships,” official and unofficial, between government and private enterprise. Meanwhile, it is unclear whether societies will tolerate an eternally expanding gap between rich and poor. Public anger over the concentration of wealth could eventually lead to increased trade protectionism, barriers to foreign investment, more direct state control over key industries, or something altogether more dramatic. Whatever the outcome, it’s possible that the Carlos Slims of the world could lead to one of the first great ideological battles of the 21st century.

At age 67, Slim may not ever see the consequences of such a debate, and he seems determined to ride off into the sunset with no intention of apologizing for his success—not directly, anyway. In March, he pledged to inject $6 billion into his charitable foundations during the next four years. Slim has also given $100 million to the Clinton Global Initiative. This pales in comparison to the roughly $30 billion each pledged by Gates and Buffet to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, but it’s a start. Meanwhile, he has launched a for-profit venture named IDEAL that seeks to build badly needed infrastructure projects such as toll roads and hospitals all over Latin America. That would seem like a noble goal, although some suspect another motive. Slim has quite cleverly parlayed IDEAL into opportunities to meet heads of state and high-ranking officials from around Latin America at just the same time that Telmex and América Movíl, now run on a day-to-day basis by his sons and sons-in-law, are making a big push into the rest of the region. Nobody ever accused Slim of not knowing how to make a deal.

To see what the future really holds, it may be best to watch Mexico itself. For the moment, many in Mexico seem relatively content with a middle class that is quietly, but confidently, expanding. Lost in the hype over the U.S. immigration issue is the expectation of many economists that Mexico will soon produce enough jobs to employ those entering the workforce. And yet, many Mexicans show a disturbing lack of enthusiasm for their own brand of capitalism; it is still unclear whether or when the country will produce the innovators and dynamism that are necessary for a true leap in living standards. For better or worse, almost nobody in Mexico ever tells their children, “One day, you can grow up to be just like Carlos Slim.”

Brian Winter is deputy world editor at USA Today.

Mexican tycoon overtakes Bill Gates

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2117330,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=24

Mexican tycoon overtakes Bill Gates as world's richest man
Fiona Walsh, business editor
Tuesday July 3, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

Carlos Slim has overtaken Bill Gates. Photograph: Roberto Velazquez/AP

Microsoft founder Bill Gates looks to have lost his title as the world's richest man, toppled from top spot by the Mexican telecoms tycoon Carlos Slim.

Three months ago the cigar-chomping Mr Slim quietly slipped past legendary US investor Warren Buffett to take second place in the global wealth league.

Now, thanks to a surge in the shares of his America Movil group, Mr Slim has claimed pole position, according to the Mexican online financial publication, Sentido Común.

It was Sentido Común's founder, Eduardo Garcia, who highlighted Mr Slim's rapidly rising wealth in April, although by his calculations the Mexican had not only beaten Mr Buffett in the wealth stakes by then but also edged past Mr Gates.

Now, however, Mr Garcia says there is no doubt that the little-known Mexican has finally captured the coveted top slot, following a surge in America Movil's shares over the second quarter. This is estimated to have boosted his fortune to an estimated $67.8bn (£33.6bn) - equivalent to 8% of Mexico's gross domestic product - compared with $59.2bn for the Microsoft mogul, putting him in the lead by a decisive $8.6bn.

"When I put Slim ahead three months ago Forbes bumped him up to second place (in world rankings) a few days later," Mr Garcia told Reuters.

"Let's see if the same happens again."

Shares in Mr Slim's mobile phone empire surged by 27% over the second quarter, compared with a 5.7% rise for Microsoft. Mr Slim's bank, Inbursa, also saw its stock jump by 20%.

Mr Gates has headed the Forbes list of the world's wealthiest for more than a decade. But, like Mr Buffett, he is rapidly becoming as well known for giving his money away as he is for accumulating it. Both he and the "Sage of Omaha" have promised to give most of their money to charitable causes.

The Top 25 Web Hoaxes and Pranks

http://msn.pcworld.com/article/id,131340-c,scamshoaxes/article.html

The Top 25 Web Hoaxes and Pranks
Steve Bass
PCWorld.com
Thu May 3, 2007

Whether they take the form of a comic image of a giant cat or a desperate plea from a sick child, chain e-mail messages and Internet frauds are elements of the online landscape that we've all encountered. No topic is off limits: a medical warning, a promise of free money, or a believably (or shoddily) Photoshopped image. But at the end of the day, they're just elaborate hoaxes or clever pranks--and we've collected 25 of the most infamous ones ever to have graced the Internet or our inboxes.

Though some of these deceptions originated years ago, the originals--and dozens of variants--continue to make the rounds. If you keep a patient vigil over your e-mail, you too may eventually spot a message urging you to FORWARD THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!!! And if you haven't had enough when you finish reading this article, take a hoax test at the Museum of Hoaxes, and then hop over to Snopes, the premier myth-dispelling site for coverage of zillions of other falsifications.

Hoaxes 1 Through 5

From the supposed last photo taken at the top of the World Trade Center to the endlessly revised request for assistance from a Nigerian functionary, here are our top five Web and e-mail hoaxes.

1. The Accidental Tourist (2001)

Quite possibly the most famous hoax picture ever, this gruesome idea of a joke traveled around the Web and made a grand tour of e-mail inboxes everywhere soon after the tragedy of September 11. It depicts a tourist standing on the observation deck of one of the World Trade Center towers, unknowingly posing for a picture as an American Airlines plane approaches in the background.

At first glance it appears to be real, but if you examine certain details, you'll see that it's a craftily modified image. For starters, the plane that struck the WTC was a wide-body Boeing 767; the one in the picture is a smaller 757. The approach of the plane in the picture is from the north, yet the building it would have hit--the North tower--didn't have an outdoor observation deck. Furthermore, the South tower's outdoor deck didn't open until 9:30 a.m. on weekdays, more than half an hour after the first plane struck the WTC. The picture is a hoax, through and through--and not a particularly amusing one, under the circumstances.

Image courtesy of Snopes.com.

2. Sick Kid Needs Your Help (1989)

This gem had its roots in reality. It all began in 1989, when nine-year-old cancer patient Craig Shergold thought of a way to achieve his dream of getting into the Guinness Book of World Records. Craig asked people to send greeting cards, and boy, did they. By 1991, 33 million greeting cards had been sent, far surpassing the prior record. Ironically, however, the Guinness World Records site doesn't contain any mention of Craig Sherwood or a "most greeting cards received" record, presumably because the fine folks at the site don't want to encourage anyone to try to break his mark. (Astonishingly, Guinness doesn't have an entry for world's stoutest person, either, but it does honor the World's Largest Tankard of Beer.)

Fortunately, doctors succeeded in removing the tumor, and Craig is now a healthy adult, but his appeal for cards has turned into the hoax that won't die. Variations on the theme include a sick girl dying of cancer, and a little boy with leukemia whose dying wish is to start an eternal chain letter. A recent iteration tells a tragic tale of a girl who supposedly was horribly burned in a fire at WalMart, and then claims that AOL will pay all of her medical bills if only if you forward this e-mail to EVERYONE YOU KNOW!!! Okay, enough already.

Image courtesy of Snopes.com.

3. Bill Gates Money Giveaway (1997)

No, it's true. I thought it was a scam, but it happened to a buddy of mine. It seems that Microsoft is testing some new program for tracing e-mail, and the company needs volunteers to help try the thing out. He forwarded me an e-mail that he received from Microsoft--and get this, from Bill Gates himself! Two weeks later, as a reward for participating, my pal received a check for thousands of dollars! Sure he did. Another version of this hoax claims that AOL's tracking service is offering a cash reward. Tell you what--when you get your check, send me 10 percent as a finder's fee, okay?

4. Five-Cent E-Mail Tax (1999)

"Dear Internet Subscriber," the e-mail starts. "The Government of the United States is quietly pushing through legislation that will affect your use of the Internet." It goes on to reveal that "Bill 602P" will authorize the U.S. Postal Service to assess a charge of five cents for every e-mail sent. Not a bad way to cut down on the number of dopey e-mail chain letters and lame jokes people let loose on the world. But credulous curse averters and connoisseurs of boffo laffs can relax: This e-mail alert, which popped up in 1999 and comes back for a visit every year or so, just isn't true. Still, it sounded plausible enough to fool Hillary Clinton during a 2000 debate when she was running for the Senate.

5. Nigerian 419 E-Mail Scam (2000)

"DEAR SIR," the e-mail starts. "FIRSTLY I MUST FIRST SOLICIT YOUR CONFIDENCE IN THIS TRANSACTION; LET ME START BY INTRODUCING MYSELF PROPERLY..." I'm sure you've received one of these--a confidential, urgent e-mail message promising you a reward of mucho dinero for helping this person convey money abroad. All you need do in return is entrust your name and bank account number to the government bureaucrat (or his uncle, aunt, or cousin, the ostensible "credit offficer with the union bank of Nigeria plc (uba) Benin branch") who needs your help.

It's the Nigerian con, also know as an Advanced Fee Fraud or 419 scam (so called because of the section number of the Nigerian criminal code that applies to it). Ancestors of these scams appeared in the 1980s, when the media of choice were letters or faxes--and they're still wildly successful at snagging people. In fact, Oprah recently featured a victim of the Nigerian scam on her show. And if you think that smart, educated folks couldn't possibly fall for it, you'll be surprised when you read "The Perfect Mark," a New Yorker magazine article profiling a Massachusetts psychotherapist who was duped--and lost a fortune.

To see how the hoax works, visit Scamorama, a fascinating site that features a progression of e-mail messages stringing along 419 scammers, sometimes for months at a time. Finally, check out the 3rd Annual Nigerian E-Mail Conference, an absolutely perfect spoof.

Hoaxes 6 Through 10

The lower half of our top 10 ranges from a kidneynapping scare to a cookie recipe worth its weight in saffron.

6. It's Kidney Harvesting Time (1996)

The subject line is laden with exclamation points: "Travelers Beware!!!" If that's not enough to get your attention, the chilling story certainly will. The message warns that an organ-harvesting crime ring is drugging tourists in New Orleans and Las Vegas, snatching their "extra" kidneys, selling the organs to non-Hippocratic hospitals, and leaving the victims to wake up in a bathtub full of ice and find a brief note that explains the situation and conveniently identifies the phone number of the nearest emergency room. Hey, maybe they'll get lucky and the hospital will have a compatible replacement kidney on hand. But travelers, fear not!!! According to the National Kidney Foundation, this scenario has never actually occurred--though it does have the makings of a great horror flick. (Freddy's Last Harvest, anyone?)

7. You've Got Virus! (1999 and on)

There's isn't a Teddy Bear virus. Nor is there a sulfnbk.exe or A Virtual Card for You ("the "WORST VIRUS EVER!!!...CNN ANNOUNCED IT. PLEASE SEND THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!!!").

The jdbgmgr.exe hoax (also known as Teddy Bear because the jdbgmgr.exe file is represented by a teddy bear icon) warned recipients of the e-mail message that they were at risk of infection from a virus sent via address books or Microsoft Messenger, and that they should delete the file immediately. But in reality there was no virus--and unfortunately, jdbgmgr.exe was a necessary Java file. The sulfnbk.exe hoax nailed even advanced users with its insistence that the file--a legit one that's used for fixing long file names--was a virus. Lots of people removed it.

Similarly, A Virtual Card for You claimed that McAfee had discovered a virus that, when opened, would destroy the hard drive on an infected system and would automatically send itself to everyone on the user's e-mail contacts list. Of course, it didn't do anything except scare people. So before you forward an e-mail virus warning to anyone (especially to me), look it up on Sophos or Vmyths to make sure it isn't a fraud.

8. Microsoft Buys Firefox (2006)

Talk about scaring the entire open-source community. In October 2006, a previously unknown Web site popped up, announcing Microsoft's acquisition of Firefox and promoting the company's new Microsoft Firefox 2007 Professional. The site talks glowingly about the browser's new features and provides a video advertisement for the product. It was a great prank, and the image of the Microsoft Firefox 2007 box was so elaborate and professional looking that the blood pressure of real Firefox users went sky-high.

9. The Really Big Kitty (2001)

There are big cats and then there are even bigger cats. This one, reportedly tipping the scales at almost 90 pounds, was enormous. The claim seemed plausible and even snookered a lot of e-mail cynics (I'm raising my hand)--until they read the accompanying copy, that is. With nonsense about the owner working at Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, and more balderdash about nuclear reactors, the jig was up. Eventually, the cat's owner fessed up to a creative Photoshop session, though he claimed that he never expected anyone to believe the photo was real.

Image courtesy of Snopes.com.

10. $250 Cookie Recipe (1996)
The woman loved the cookie she had just nibbled at a Neiman Marcus cafe in Houston, so she asked her waiter for the recipe. "Two-fifty," he said, and she agreed without hesitation, instructing him to add it to her tab. But when the woman's Visa bill arrived, it read $250, instead of $2.50. Bent on revenge, she proceeded to ask you to blast the recipe to--okay, ready?--EVERYONE YOU KNOW!!! Like many hoaxes, this one predated the Internet, only to resurface in the electronic age. It appeared in a cookbook in the late 1940s as the $25 fudge cake, popped up in the 1960s as the Waldorf-Astoria red-velvet cake recipe, and re-emerged in the 1970s as the Mrs. Fields cookie recipe.

Hoaxes 11 Through 15

This group of five begins with a phoney e-mail message promising money and other prizes from Disney, and ends with the classic deaf-to-reason arguments of the Apollo moon landing deniers.

11. Free Vacation Courtesy of Disney (1998)
Dear Goofy... Forward this e-mail chain letter to everybody under the sun and, once 13,000 people have received it, Walt Disney Jr. will send five grand each to 1,300 lucky people on this list. And "the rest will recieve a free trip for two to Disney for one week during the summer of 1999." Is that Disney World, Disneyland--or Walt's house? The "Jr." after Disney, in reference to a nonexistent person, ought to have been the first clue that this was a hoax. And the misspelling of "receive" was the clincher--remember, hoaxters, "i" before "e" except after "c"). Yet people forwarded the message around the world using the time-honored e-mail chain letter adage: I'm sending it to you... just in case it's true.

12. Sunset Over Africa (2003)
Now that's a dazzling photo of Africa and Europe, taken right around sunset from the Space Shuttle Columbia. What makes the image especially amazing is that, while London remains in daylight, night has fallen in Italy (a little to the southeast) and the bright lights of Rome, Naples, and Venice are blazing. Too bad it's a digitally altered photo, most likely layered from multiple satellite images. To see an accurate, computer-generated illustration, check out the World Sunlight Map.

Image courtesy of Snopes.com.

13. Alien Autopsy at Roswell, New Mexico (1995)
Roswell, New Mexico: ground zero of UFO controversy. It's also where the movie of the Roswell alien autopsy was filmed 60 years ago. The story goes that a UFO crashed at this site, and the U.S. government performed a hush-hush autopsy on the dead alien.In the mid-1990s, unnamed individuals "discovered" the secret film and posted it for the edification of a disinformed public. Looks pretty real, right? Now fast-forward to 2006 and a conspiracy-deflating admission: The movie is a hoax created in 1995 by John Humphreys, the animator famous for Max Headroom, in his apartment in north London....Or was it???

14. Real-Time GPS Cell Phone Tracking (2007)
SunSat Satellite Solutions knows where you are.Have you heard about the Web site that can track the location of your cell phone in real time? It uses satellite GPS in combination with Google Maps, and it's amazingly accurate (not to mention a disturbing invasion of privacy). Go ahead, check it out yourself by going to the SunSat Satellite Solutions site and tracking your own cell phone's location. Select your country, type in your cell phone number, click the Start Searching button, and wait for it. (This is one of the year's best pranks. And I won't give away the ending.)

15. Apollo Moon Landing Hoax (1969)
You're aware that we never landed on the moon, right? It was all just an elaborate hoax designed to score Cold War points for the United States against the Soviet Union in a world of falling dominoes. The whole lunar landing thing? It was a video staged at movie studios and top-secret locations.

Okay, you can stop laughing now, but some sites, such as Apollo Reality and Moon Landing, still insist that the Eagle never landed. Of course, enemies of Flat Earthism will point to the Rocket and Space Technology site, which does an in-depth job of debunking the hoax. But true disbelievers should check out this terrific video spoof, complete with outtakes showing lights and cameras.

Hoaxes 16 Through 20

The world of weird eBay auction items starts off this page, which concludes with a photo hoax purporting to show a 1950s-era vision of the home computer of tomorrow.

16. Sell It on eBay! (1995)
You won't believe what people have sold on eBay--some of the items pranks, some of them for real, and some, well, it's hard to tell. For a sampling of the weird, you need look no further than a haunted tree stump and a pork chop shaped like a grizzly bear. The Internet itself once went on the market at a modest starting bid of a million bucks, as have a dozen spontaneous images of the Virgin Mary (on toast, on windows, and heaven only knows where else). Bidders have also had a shot at someone's soul, a guy's virginity, and a human kidney, with the price of this last item having reached $5.7 million before eBay pulled the plug. (Hey, guys, don't you know that what you lose in Las Vegas is supposed to stay in Las Vegas?)

But my favorite eBay offering involves a tattooed guy who, as a joke, dressed up in his ex-wife's size 12 wedding gown and put it up for auction. Only, the dress ended up selling for $3850, and the guy got five marriage proposals. Nice.

17. Chinese Newspaper Duped (2002)
Information on the Internet may want to be free--but if it's posted by a for-profit publisher, you'd better take it with a grain of salt. That's the lesson learned by China's Beijing Evening News, which was taken in by the Onion's Capitol Dome spoof. Famous for its authentic-sounding but tongue-in-cheek articles steeped in the language of the Associated Press, the Onion reported that Congress had threatened to leave Washington, D.C., and head for Memphis unless the District agreed to erect a new domed Capitol building with a retractable roof and luxury box seating. Having accepted most of the Onion article at face value, the Chinese newspaper at first stood by its source in the face of international derision and refused to back down. When it finally published a retraction, it blamed the Onion for the confusion: "Some small American newspapers frequently fabricate offbeat news to trick people into noticing them with the aim of making money." Right.

18. The Muppets Have Not Already Won (2001)
Osama and Bert: a Sesame Street connection to terrorism?In early October 2001, just prior to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, protesters at an anti-American rally in Bangladesh showed their support for Osama bin Laden by marching, chanting, and waving placards. One of the posters captured on film by Reuters News Agency was a photo-montage of the Al-Qaeda leader, and in one of the shots a yellow felt puppet to his right glowers furiously at the camera. It's...Bert of Sesame Street. Originally a Zelig-inspired creation of San Francisco Webmaster Dino Ignacio, the satirical Web site Bert Is Evil depicted Bert hobnobbing with the worst of the worst in history, tormenting his roommate Ernie, and generally reveling in wickedness. After Ignacio retired from active efforts to expose Bert's career of evil, others filled the Photoshop void, capturing the cone-headed miscreant with all the latest baddies-du-jour.

Evidently, the company responsible for printing the pro-Osama poster found the doctored dual portrait irresistible, although (according to the Urban Legends References Pages) its production manager claims to have produced about 2000 copies of the Osama-and-Bert poster without realizing "what they signified." Well, if you can't trust pictures you find on the Internet, what can you trust?

Image courtesy of Snopes.com.

19. Chevrolet's Not-So-Better Idea (2006)
The ad folks at Chevrolet thought they had a winner: Let site visitors create their own 30-second commercial for the company's 2007 Chevy Tahoe SUV. It'll be fun, they probably thought. We'll give them a choice of video clips and soundtracks, and let them add their own text captions. Yep, viral marketing at its best.

Unfortunately for Chevrolet, a few pranksters decided to use the opportunity to express what they thought of the SUV. One commercial said, "Like this snowy wilderness? Better get your fill of it now. Then say hello to global warming." Another lambasted the SUV as a gas guzzler: "Our planet's oil is almost gone. You don't need G.P.S. to see where this road leads."

20. Rand's 1954 Home Computer (2004)
This intriguing image of a room-size computer made the rounds of the Internet, accompanied by a breathless blurb: "This article is from an issue of 1954 'Popular Mechanics' magazine forecasting the possibility of 'home computers' in 50 years." The steering wheel in the picture is the predecessor to today's mouse, and the keyboard looks like those on teletype machines. It even comes complete with a guy right out of the Eisenhower era.

Cool stuff, and easy to believe--but it's not a 1950s Rand Corporation mockup of what a prototype home computer might look like. It's actually a shot taken of a submarine display at the Smithsonian Institution and subsequently modified for inclusion in a Fark.com image-manipulation competition.

Image courtesy of Snopes.com.

Hoaxes 21 Through 25

Our final five takes you from the ultimate instance of Microsoft hubris to an ill-conceived experiment in Internet democracy (or is that Internet anarchy?).

21. Microsoft Buys Catholic Church (1994)
More than a decade ago, an e-mail press release--from Vatican City, no less--landed in my inbox. Microsoft was announcing that it was in the process of acquiring the Roman Catholic Church in exchange for an unspecified number of shares of Microsoft common stock. The story was a prank, but it sure looked real, circulating for months and perhaps worrying residents of the Holy See.

Just think: If the press release had been true, it might have stopped the Vatican from using Linux. And no, I'm not kidding about the Linux part. Watch this video interview with the woman who helped build the Vatican's Web site.

22. Hercules, the Enormous Dog (2007)
Wow, that dog's almost as big as the horse. That's what I thought when I first looked at this e-mail. The picture depicts a couple, one walking a horse, the other holding the leash of Hercules, a 282-pound English Mastiff and "The World's Biggest Dog Ever According to Guinness World Records."

Horsepucky. Here's my analysis of the Photoshop modifications. First, take a close look at the grass under the people and the animals. The area has been subtly lightened in order to make all of the shadows match and look authentic. Next, examine the shadows and you'll notice two anomalies: First, the shadows of the dog and the man start at their feet, but the same doesn't hold true for the horse. Second, the woman's shadow is missing altogether; instead, the man's shadow extends in front of her. Oh and by the way, the Guinness World Records site doesn't have a listing for Hercules or for the world's biggest dog. Okay, okay, so the pictures of the big kitty and the big dog are both fakes--but have you seen the shot of Craig Sherwood riding the world's largest jackelope?

23. Lights-Out Gang Member Initiation (1998)
People have a tendency to believe e-mail messages that come from authority figures. In 1998, a message purportedly from a police officer working with the DARE program circulated around the Internet. It warned recipients not to flash their lights to inform oncoming cars that their headlamps were off. According to the message, a recently devised gang initiation ritual involved having new gang members drive at night with their headlights turned off until an oncoming car flashed its lights at them; then, in order to become initiated, they were to shoot everyone in that car. It's just another urban myth--and about as silly as the one claiming that gangs mark off their territory by hanging sneakers from power lines.

24. Hurricane Lili Waterspouts (2002)
It's weird, it's disturbing, and it's seemingly plausible--all of the elements necessary for a successful e-mail forward. The image shows three dark waterspouts in the distance. The subject is "here comes lili," and the e-mail began appearing in inboxes at about the same time that Hurricane Lili started battering the Louisiana coastline. But three waterspouts, all neatly lined up? According to About.com, the National Weather Service labeled the picture a hoax and said that it was a modification of a genuine photo taken in 2001 by a crew member of the Edison Chouest Offshore supply boat.

25. Pranks Shut Down Los Angeles Times Wiki (2005)
It seemed like a bright idea. The LA Times' "A Wiki for Your Thoughts" fandango asked readers to chime in on the newspaper's editorials via a Wiki. In their explanation of how it would work, the editors even acknowledged that "It sounds nutty." Yet they went ahead with it--and achieved disastrous results. The Wikitorial (the name was nearly as dumb as the scheme) brought out the best and then the worst in readers. On the first day, an editorial about the war in Iraq prompted civil and thoughtful contributions. On day two, pranksters littered the unmoderated Wiki with rude comments, pornography, and profanity. The Webmaster removed the offending entries, but only after they were available for public viewing. By the next morning, the publisher had dismantled the Wiki.

Hoaxes by Decade
E-mail, Web sites, Photoshop. The digital era has made it easier than ever to pull a fast one on a large audience.

Pre-1990 Apollo Moon Landing Hoax (1969) Sick Kid Needs Your Help (1989)1990-1999 Microsoft Buys Catholic Church (1994) Alien Autopsy at Roswell (1995) eBay Sales (1995 and on) $250 Cookie Recipe (1996) Kidney Harvesting (1996) Bill Gates Money Giveaway (1997) Disney Jr. Free Vacation (1998) Lights-Out Gang Member Initiation (1998) Five-Cent E-Mail Tax (1999) Virus Hoaxes (1999 and on)2000 and on Nigerian 419 E-Mail Scam (2000) Giant Cat Photo (2001) World Trade Center Photo (2001) Bert and Osama bin Laden (2001) Hurricane Lili Waterspouts (2002) Onion Dupes Chinese Newspaper (2002) Sunset Over Africa (2003) Rand's 1954 Home Computer (2004) Los Angeles Times Wiki (2005) User-Created Commercials for Chevy Tahoe (2006) Microsoft Buys Firefox (2006) GPS Cell Phone Tracking (2007) Hercules, the Enormous Dog (2007)