Discussion of Formula One racing

Hi, my name is Daniel Geoghegan.

Today I finally launched my website – www.motobb.com.

The site contains a directory of bed and breakfasts located near to UK
motorsport circuits. From research I have conducted, many active
motorsport fans have said they would find the site very useful and I
hope that you too will also find Moto-BB useful.

At present, my directory is only small but I will be looking to expand
it over the next couple of months. If anybody could suggest any good
bed and breakfasts near to a circuit, inparticular Donington Park,
Cadwell Park, Mallory Park, Knockhill and Mondello Park, or would like
 to see a circuit added to the site, I would be hugely grateful.

Kind regards,
Daniel Geoghegan

We have been down this road before.

U.S. troops sent to war half a world away. American foreign policy
controlled by an arrogant elite, bent on projecting military power
around the globe. A public misled into supporting an unconstitutional
war founded on deceit and fabrications.

As the death toll mounts, we hear claims that the war is nearly won,
that victory is just around the corner. But victory never arrives.

As the public loses confidence in the government, the government
questions the patriotism of any who express doubt about the war.

When a presidential election arrives, both the Democrat and Republican
nominees embrace the policy of continued war.

The military draft comes to dominate the lives of America’s young, and
vast numbers who believe the war to be a senseless blunder are faced
with fighting a war they do not believe in, or facing exile or prison.

The year was 1968. Because voters had no choice that November, the
Vietnam War continued for another six years. Hundreds of thousands of
Americans like you died, were maimed, or suffered from diseases like
malaria. A far greater number of Vietnamese died.

Today, the war is in the quicksands and alleys of Iraq. Once again,
under the pressure of a determined resistance, we see an American war
policy being slowly torn apart at the seams, while the candidates urge
us to "stay the course" in this tragic misadventure. Today’s
Presidential candidates are not Nixon and Humphrey, they are now Bush
and Kerry.

Once again, there is one overriding truth: If war is the only choice in
this election, then war we will have.

Today enlistments in the Reserves and National Guard are declining. The
Pentagon is quietly recruiting new members to fill local draft boards,
as the machinery for drafting a new generation of young Americans is
being quietly put into place.

Young Americans need to know that a train is coming, and it could run
over their generation in the same way that the Vietnam War devastated
the lives of those who came of age in the sixties.

I am running for President, and have been against this war from the
beginning. We must not waste lives in order to control and waste more
oil. Stand with us and we may yet salvage your future and Americas’
future from this looming disaster.

Sincerely,
Ralph Nader

HTTP://WWW.VOTENADER.ORG

–
Movement once again reaffirms its unwavering
support .and calls on all revolutionary and progressive people to step up
their actions on (the Palestinians’) behalf." Another edition advised
Palestinians to "link up with .the parties and organizations that make up
the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement. With the weapon of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and its military strategy, people’s war, the
Palestinian people’s fight will surely become .more integral part of the
world revolution, hastening the day when imperialism, Zionism .meet their
doom."

These Maoist terrorist organizations are financing their activities by
trafficking in controlled substances. According to December 13, 2000,
testimony by Frank Cilluffo, to the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary
Subcommittee on Crime, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) " is heavily
involved in the European drug trade, especially in Germany and France.
French law enforcement estimates that the PKK smuggles 80 percent of the
heroin in Paris." Cilluffo is

Just read an interesting article on the PA news wires about research being
done into helmets. The research seems to have been focused on cricket, but I
can’t help thinking that it might be relevant to motor sport too.

The gist of the research is that encasing the head causes the core
temperature of the brain to rise, which makes it less efficient – so the
sportsman cannot make descisions as quickly or accurately as they would
without the helmet.

The report does of course go on to stress the benefits of wearing helmets in
such dangerous situations };*)

One has to wonder if cutting ventilation slots into the helmets would
improve driver reaction times…?

    Paul

Hey, Corporate America! Show Taxpayers Some Appreciation!
By Ralph Nader

If you work for a corporation, ask your own employer to support
Taxpayer Appreciation Day. (We?ve included contact information at the
end of the article.)

Take Action Now! April 15 is just around the corner. Please let us know
what action you?ve taken and what type of response you receive at
tax…@votenader.org

I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that April 15th of each
year be designated Taxpayer Appreciation Day, a day when corporations
receiving taxpayer subsidies, bailouts, and other forms of corporate
welfare can express their thanks to the citizens who provide them.

Though it may not be evident, quite a few industries — and the profits
they generate — can be traced back to taxpayer-financed programs whose
fruits have been given away to (mostly) larger businesses.

Taxpayer dollars have often funded discoveries made by NASA, the
Department of Defense, and the National Institutes of Health and other
federal agencies. In many instances the rights to those discoveries were
later given away to companies that brag about them as though they were
the fruits of their own investments. Taxpayer dollars have played a
major role in the growth of the aviation and aerospace, biotechnology,
pharmaceutical, and telecommunications industries — to name only a few.

Though corporate America insists it must file yearly income taxes just
like everyone else, it is responsible for a sharply decreasing portion
of federal tax dollars — despite record profits. Despite record
profits, corporate tax contributions to the federal budget have been
steadily declining for fifty years and now stand at a mere 7.4% of the
federal government income because of the loopholes they driven into our
tax laws. The average citizen pays more than four to five times that in
federal income tax revenues (with the single exception of payroll
taxes).

Clearly corporations that believe they are self-reliant are often, in
fact, dependent on taxpayer funds to maintain their financial viability.
The least they could do is thank us. Which is why we need something like
Taxpayer Appreciation Day. Consider the following:

General Electric bought RCA (which owned NBC) in the mid-1980s with
funds it was able to save by using an outrageous tax loophole passed by
Congress in 1981. That loophole allowed GE to pay no federal taxes on
three years of profits, totaling more than $6 billion dollars. It also
gave them a $125 million refund! That gave GE the money to buy RCA. GE
should arrange a media extravaganzas on NBC to say "Thank you,
taxpayers.? Pharmaceutical companies constantly ballyhoo their
discoveries in advertisements. What they don’t tell us is that many of
the important nonredundant therapeutic drugs — including most
anticancer drugs — were developed, in whole or in part, with taxpayer
money and then given to them by the NIH and the Defense Department.
Bristol-Meyers Squibb, for example, controls the rights to Taxol, an
anticancer drug developed all the way through human clinical trials at
the National Institutes of Health with $31 million of taxpayer moneys.

Pharmaceutical companies spend billions on advertisements each year.
Perhaps they should consider a big "Thank You, Taxpayers" ad campaign
every April 15, if only to remind them where their drug research and
development subsidies come from.

Mining companies often receive vast sweetheart deals from taxpayers.
Under the 1872 Mining Act hard rock mining companies are allowed to
purchase mining rights to public land for only $5 an acre, no matter how
valuable the minerals on (or in) that land might be. A Canadian company
recently mined $9 billion in gold on federal land in Nevada after using
the Mining Act to purchase the mining rights to it for about $30,000.
Mining companies owe the taxpayers their gratitude.

Television broadcasters were given free license to use public airwaves
(worth around $70 billion) by a supine Congress in 1997. They too should
thank us. What about all those professional sports corporations that
play and profit in taxpayer-funded stadiums and arenas? The owners and
players should thank the fans/taxpayers who — in spite of their largess
— still must pay through the nose for tickets. For years McDonalds
received taxpayer subsidies to promote its products overseas as part of
a foreign market access program. Now McDonalds is a ubiquitous brand
name worldwide, but has it ever thanked the taxpayers who underwrote its
efforts? Then there are the HMOs, hospitals, and defense contractors
that have had their legal fees reimbursed by the taxpayers when our
government prosecutes them for fraud or cost overruns. Those companies
have great public relations firms that can help them show us their
gratitude. Corporate America has taken too much from us for too long.
It’s time it shows us a little bit of appreciation.

Corporate Contacts:

General Electric (NBC):
   David Frail
   Financial Communications
   1–203-373-3387
   david.fr…@corporate.ge.com

Bristol-Meyers Squibb:
   Peter R. Dolan, CEO
   345 Park Avenue
   New York, New York, USA 10154-0037
   1-212-546-4000
   peter.do…@bms.com

Viacom (CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon, VH1, BET, Paramount Pictures, Viacom Outdoor, Infinity, UPN, Spike TV, TV Land, CMT: Country Music Television, Comedy Central, Showtime, Blockbuster, and Simon & Schuster):
   Sumner M. Redstone , Chairman and CEO
   1515 Broadway
   New York, NY 10036
   1-212-258-6000
   (refused to provide email addresses)

Walt Disney Co. (ABC):
   David Eisner, CEO
   500 S. Buena Vista Street
   Burbank, CA 91521 ABC, Inc.
   1-818-460-7477
   neta…@abc.com

McDonalds USA:
   Jim Cantalupo, Chairman and CEO
   McDonald?s Plaza
   Oak Brook, IL 60523
   1-800-244-6227
   Email on-line form.

Halliburton (Kellogg Brown & Root):
   David J. Lesar, Chairman, President & CEO
   5 Houston Center
   1401 McKinney, Suite 2400
   Houston, TX 77010
   1-713-759-2600
   communityrelati…@halliburton.com

In addition to these, pursue your favorite and let us know what they say!

–
pro-Castro factions, though.  Its
management maintains relationships with extremist Islamist groups as well.
Walker travels frequently to Iraq, usually alongside Ramsey Clark. IFCO is a
member of ANSWER Steering Committee.) Bernstein is a member of the American
Muslim Council’s campaign against the use of secret evidence. Clement met
with Palestinians during a WILPF "solidarity" conference in May 2002. IFCO
is also a fiscal sponsor of the National Coalition to Protect Political
Freedom (NCPPF). The co-founder of NCPPF was the recently indicted terrorist
financier Sami Al-Arian.

However, NION’s links with Muslim terrorists are not just indirect, through
IFCO. NION invited both Sami Al-Arian and Lynne Stewart to address their
October 6, 2002 rally in Central Park. Stewart was indicted for passing
messages on behalf of her terrorist client Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman.

One of the members of NION’s Advisory Board, Abdeen Jabara, is a member of
the legal advisory board for the American Muslim Council. He is a past
president of the Arab-American Ant-Discrimination Committee, a board member
of William Kunstler’s Center for Constitutional Rights, and a co-counsel
with Lynne Stewart for Sheik Rahman, the terrorist convicted for the 1993
World Trade Center bombing.

The American Muslim Council is one of the current members of Al-Arian’s
NCPPF (the same group to which IFCO’s Bernstein belongs). Leaders of the AMC
have been quoted as praising Hamas and Hezbollah. Jabara’s AMC advisory
board colleagues include Fakhri Al-Barzinji. Al-Barzinji is involved in
Mar-Jac Poultry, which was raided last year by the FBI for links to Sami
Al-Arian.

Bashir Ahmad is another of Jabara’s AMC advisory board colleagues. Ahmad is
a member of the SAMAD Group (a financial operation) and Justice Taqi Usmani
works for the SAMAD Group. Taqi Usmani is a suspected major player in the
Muslim Brotherhood International money laundering network of Dallah

Call for an Impeachment Inquiry of Bush and Cheney,
Get Congress to Take Action

Sign our online Petition and read below for more information:

   http://www.votenader.org/get_involved/impeach.php

HEY DUDE WHERE’S MY BUDDY!!!???
COME BACK HOME MICHAEL!!!

Ok Michael, you’ve had your realpolitik fling with ex-General Wesley
Clark. Your endorsed Presidential candidate in the Democratic Primaries
has withdrawn. It is time for you to come home, to join your buddies and
resume your only genuine role which is that of defiance and resistance.
Compliance and assistance with the Democrats does not accord with your
past, your character, your bold writings and, most memorably, your long
corrosive assaults on the Party that betrayed the working classes and
plunged our country into corporate globalization. Remember, Michael,
you’re the flinty man from Flint, Michigan. You’ve never forgotten your
roots. The heady Hollywood, Manhattan scene with the celebrities and
Academy Awards have never gotten to your head but rather have gotten
into your deserving pockets. How we all recall your standing before one
billion people in Los Angeles at the televised Academy Awards in 2003
and, breaking the customary cant of the awardees, throwing the gauntlet
down to George W. Bush and his "fictitious" war mongering.

Now the War has become a quagmire, with both Republicans and Democrats
complicit (check the votes in Congress). The Draft may be on the way. So
what are you doing going on the Al Franken Show very nearly breaking
down when Al Gore (he of the pro NAFTA/GATT, anti-worker, regime-change,
Iraq-bombing, lethal sanctions on half a million children
Administration) called and thought you were apologizing. You have
nothing to apologize for, Michael. Gore has a lot to apologize
for-blowing the election he won in Florida and the country as a whole
and for blowing, with Bill Clinton, the many opportunities the
rich-booming Nineties and the collapse of the Soviet Union gave this
country to turn a peace dividend into a pro-worker, pro-environment,
pro-consumer and anti-poverty resurgence.

Come back and join our Presidential campaign, Michael. Talk to those
"Reagan Democrats"-those 35% of union members who still vote Republican
and against their own interests-as only you can. Michael, if you go
pumping for the Democratic Party this year, just what are you going to
say to the unemployed steelworkers near Sparrows Point in Maryland? To
the megathousands of laid off textile and furniture workers in North and
South Carolina? To the abandoned auto workers waiting and waiting near
their empty factories that went to repressive countries? To the millions
of blue-collar workers, who fought our wars, only to learn that the two
parties won’t fight for their company pensions and health insurance? Are
you going to tell them how the Democratic Party pushed through the WTO,
let their pensions erode or disappear, were too busy collecting checks
from the corporate bosses to pay attention to the corporate crime wave
that looted and drained trillions of dollars from millions of workers,
their retirement and small investments? Will you tell them that the
cowardly Democrats, who couldn’t win the fewer elections they are now
not losing without the labor vote, won’t even mount a determined drive
to repeal the notorious, union-blocking Taft Hartley Act?

How can you be free to be what you are, or to depress Bush’s vote, to
jolt into consciousness the moribund Democratic Party?

Hey Dude, join your real buddies! The ones you may be thinking about
just don’t fit either your message, your vision, or our website
VoteNader.org.

Come back home Michael. The workers and the youth of America are looking
for you.

Best regards,
Ralph Nader

P.S. Will you put this invitation on your website and see how your fans
     react to Michael Moore returning to the Nader 2004 presidential
     campaign? Patti Smith will reserve a big singing spot, for you, on the
     stage for the customary finale, PEOPLE HAVE THE POWER.

Wednesday April 14, 2004

Join the Call for an Impeachment Inquiry of Bush and Cheney
Help us Get Congress to Take Action

You can help the call for an impeachment inquiry of President Bush and
Vice President Dick Cheney. Sign our online Petition.

   http://www.votenader.org/get_involved/impeach.php

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney should be impeached for two reasons:

   They led the United States into an illegal, unconstitutional war in Iraq.
   They misled the Congress and the American people with five falsehoods that led to war.

All it takes is one Member of the House of Representatives to call for
an Impeachment Inquiry to start the process to investigate the two
grounds. If the House then votes by a simple majority for Articles of
Impeachment, the Senate would then undertake a trial of the President
and Vice President. They would only be convicted, and impeached, if
two-thirds of the Senate agrees.

–
Party (RCP), through such luminaries as C. Clark
Kissinger and Mary Lou Greenberg, both of whom are Directors of NION and
members of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). Clark Kissinger,
co-director of NION and the RCP, was quoted as saying that when the RCP took
over, "it would be necessary to shoot everyone who didn’t agree with them."

The RCP is a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist group that practices Lenin’s "vanguard"
philosophy, which states that a vanguard of intellectuals is needed to lead
the proletariat in establishing a worker’s utopia. It fosters the worldwide
revolution through its membership in the Revolutionary International
Movement (RIM). It is through this affiliation that the RCP is related to
two organizations listed by the State Department as terrorist organizations;
the Communist Party of Peru (Shining Path/Sender Luminoso) and the Kurdish
Workers Party (PKK) are are closely associated with RIM. (The PKK is no
longer a formal member of RIM; however, it was one of RIM’s founders. The
Shining Path is still a member.) Other groups that comprise the
Revolutionary Internationalist Movement are the Communist Party of
Turkey/Marxist-Leninist, the Union of Iranian Communists (Sarbedaran)and the
Nepal Communist Party.

The RIM via its publication A WORLD TO WIN declared its belief in the
Palestinian intifada. The February 28, 2002, edition stated "the
Revolutionary Internationalist Movement once again reaffirms its unwavering
support .and calls on all revolutionary and progressive people to step up
their actions on (the Palestinians’) behalf." Another e

I thought this group was moderated to prevent political speeches…..
Come on guys, lets stay with Formula 1 topics.

Thirty years today since Peter Revson was killed testing his Shadow at
Kyalami.

Initially more famous for his rich family background, Peter grew into
one of the most competitive drivers of the early Seventies.

Peter arrived in Europe in the early sixties and became part of the
FJunior and F3 circus, travelling around on a shoestring, and graduated
to F1 in ’64 with a Parnell Lotus. This did little for Peter’s career
and he returned to the States (after the death of his FJunior teammate
and friend Timmy Mayer) to rebuild a career mostly in Can-Am. Occasional
outings for Tyrrell in ’71 led to him returning to McLaren in 72-3 where
he established himself as a top-line F1 driver. Peter found his
relationsip with Teddy Mayer (brother of Timmy) difficult and so moved to
the promising Shadow team for ’74, but sadly only started two races for
the team before crashing fatally in testing prior to the South African GP.

Well worth reading Peter’s biography, "Speed With Style" –
it alternates sections written by Peter with those by his friend Leon
Mandel. Peter comes across as one of the most eloquent and erudite
drivers to have put his thoughts about racing onto paper.

pete
—
p…@fenelon.com "there’s no room for enigmas in built-up areas"

Am I the only one who finds this a bit distasteful?

http://www.autosport.com/newsitem.asp?id=26488&s=5

Dupasquier blamed the teams his company supplies for the shortfall in
performance between them and Ferrari, and said Michelin is doing just
as good a job as Bridgestone.

"Bridgestone will never be ahead of us," he declared. "Do not confuse
Ferrari and Bridgestone. If they had Michelin tyres on their car,
there would be no championship any more. We are not at fault, but
everyone has to push. It is a total. If you have one weak point
anywhere, it doesn’t work."

—
Sylvan Smyth
syl…@islandnet.com
Victoria, BC, Canada

Since at least a couple of drive-through penalties were assessed in
Malaysia I conclude that Max Mosley’s remarks of 16 January (". . .we
will no longer have drive-through or stop-go penalties. . .") are
inoperative.  This would also explain why they’re not reflected in the
2004 Sporting Regulations.  I’ll fix the FAQ; anyone have any further
details on when and how this played out?

–
Mark Jackson – http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~mjackson
    The supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips performance.
                                – Leonardo da Vinci

Okay, finally watched the race today, so I may be behind.

How likely is the rumor about Ralf going to Toyota next year?  And do
you think Dixon actually has a shot at a drive at Williams, or did
Frank just take Tony’s money to make a quick buck and get some
entertainment (and hopefully not a broken car).  And, of some
relevancy to F1, Toyota leaving the IRL (nothing more to do there) to
concentrate on F1 and NASCAR?
—
dillon

Life is always short, but only you can make it sweet