The fact that a situation Michel Chossudovsky, the author of the international bestseller America’s”War on Terrorism” Global Research, 2005. [21] , refers to as

“The most serious crisis in modern history which in a very real sense
threatens the future of humanity.”

has been all but completely ignored by the mainstream press should give you pause.

Why is none of this making headlines in any newspaper or on any major news show?

Why, even, do the avant garde Internet news sites appear to have completely missed what may well prove to be the most critical story to take place during our lifetimes?

In fact, skimming Google doesn’t even yield substantially relevant results until you go far down the first page and find a site called Newstim that contains links to a comprehensive report by Chossudovsky on what is happening in the region and why, as well as how certain other key world events (like the sudden conflict in Georgia) have been preemptively manufactured in an apparent effort to reduce Russia’s ability to respond to a serious military action taking place against their ally, Iran.

According to the very detailed analysis that Chossudovsky has prepared this has been a part of the Neocon “Project for a New American Century” since at least 2003.  As if this isn’t terrifying enough by itself, Chossudovsky goes on to say that a resolution to enforce a naval blockade against Iran was approved by both parties.  Did we  learn anything from the Iraq debacle?  Apparently not.

Or perhaps, as I am now beginning to believe, our government has been so completely subverted by the military industrial complex that it possibly resembles a junta more than it does the democratic government we believe it to be.

Further, it seems to me that whomever is pulling the strings at the top of the power pyramid - be it Bush, Cheney or some shadowy third party operating from behind the scenes - whomever it is, they can only be insane.

As inconceivable as it sounds these people are actually speaking of the possibility of a third world war as if this is a strategic consideration and not what it really would be which is likely the end of all life on this planet.

In order to grasp at even the most rudimentary level the outline of this very complcated picture you really must spend a half an hour reading Chossudovsky’s site that provides the situational analysis as well as the historical perspective that makes this grand chessboard somewhat understandable.  Understandable but incomprehensible.

The option to use nuclear weapons as a premptive first strike is even discussed.  I can’t believe that this is a sentence that I could possibly write truthfully but I kid you not.  Our country, the USA, land of the free, home of the brave is actually considering the option of using tactical nuclear weapons as a “peacekeeping mechanism”.  Forgive me for being obtuse but how in the world nuking a sovereign nation is a peacekeeping initiative doesn’t make the least bit of sense to me.

The “limited capability tactical nukes” which have only six times the power of the weapon we detonated on Hiroshima (six times more!) are said to “not impact civilians” because they are detonated under ground.  Okay, can someone please explain to me how this works?  Are we assuming that all Iranian soliders are sequestered away in deep underground facilities or that our accuracy with these WMDs is so perfect that we won’t have one rad of extra radiation hitting even one civilian?? Please.

I have been sick to my stomach ever since I read this report and began looking into this to see if the facts were really accurately stated (they are).

We need to stop for a moment and consider what is about to take place here.  The US is attempting to position itself as the controling body with the dominant position astride 2/3 of the world’s remaining oil reserves.  This, in spite of the fact that every bit of evidence we drum up supports the fact that out of control burning of hydrocarbons is causing escalating and unpredictable damage to our global ecosystem.  Damage that has the potential to threaten our way of life if not our very lives themselves.

So why are they spending hundreds of billions and perhaps even trillions of dollars to attempt to commandeer the last of the oil when they could be spending a fraction of that money to develop other renewable resources that would sustain us in a clean, environmentally responsible way?

The only reason I can come up with is that the people in power suffer from a form of greed that is so pervasive and so pathalogical that it is beyond all forms of reason, rational assessment or outside comprehension.  It is an all encompassing fervor that seems to put the fervor of the religious zealot to shame.

Such is the pervasive and diabolical groupthink that appears to grip the regime that is destroying our country that they don’t seem to care if they poison the planet, don’t seem to care that their actions may sentence their own families to the same hideous fate as the rest of us, and don’t even care that their plans may yield a future so brief and so terrible that all the money in the world won’t make one bit of difference where they are likely going.

In many ways, the worst part about all this is the feeling of complete powerlessness that grips me.  What can I do?  I can see where this awful path is leading and I am certain that others could too but what can we do against the massive and powerful war machine that Bush’s despotic regime controls?

I can ony come up with one answer to that question and it is this:

We must say “NO MORE” to Bush and his criminal cabal.  We must say “NO MORE” to these wars of aggression on foreign soil that are being brought about under false pretenses.  We must say “NO MORE” to the raping of this planet’s resources for the benefit of a few at the expense of many more.  We must say “NO MORE” to alliances that foster hatred and breed fear and distrust.

American’s are facing a critical decision here and we had better wake up and take a look around because if we don’t mobilize and mobilize quickly there’s a good chance that our next wake up call will be our last one.  Ever.

Please don’t let the media blackout on this information succeed.  Please repost this in full or in part or use it as the basis for your own posts.  Please email your friends and families and please, please speak up.  We must not be silent on this issue.  Even if we fail to get the attention of our own government the fact that the people of the United States of America do not support the continued aggression of our government upon other sovereign nations must be made known to the world.  We need to take action to remove from power the criminals that have corrupted our democracy, shredded our constitution, laughed in the face of international law and committed high crimes and treason here and  by their actions abroad.
By now it should be clear that every event that has taken place over the last eight years has been manufactured by Bush and his colleagues and we, the people of the US have been suckered and deceived again and again.

This time, though the truth is in the open and we’ll have only ourselves to blame if we fail to take action to preempt the disaster unfolding an ocean away.

Yahoo is reporting that Steve Jobs has admitted to the fact that Apple has installed a “kill switch” on the new iPhone that allows the company to take action to remotely remove an application from the device.

According to the story Jonathan Zdziarski, author of the books iPhone Open Application Development and iPhone Forensics Manual, discovered a URL buried in Apple’s firmware that  links to a file dubbed “unauthorized Apps” where malicious or simply bad apps might go once they disappear from the App Store.

Apple has already pulled several applications that were initially approved form the App Store including a tethering application called NetShare, a frivolous and stupid application called I Am Rich (if anyone bought this and you know them, please do us all a favor and take them out behind the chemical shed and shoot them for treason, sedition and really bad taste), and another application called BoxOffice.

It’s one thing to remove an application from the store but it seems to me to be altogether different to remove an application from someone’s device - particularly an application that someone paid for.

Jobs claims that the function is only there in case a malacious application is somehow distributed through the store but there have been many stores selling applications for years and never before has a kill switch been necessary to protect the consumer.

Of perhaps even greater concern is the fact that Apple didn’t admit this up front but only came clean when this was discovered by Zdziarski.  One has to wonder if they ever would have revealed this sneaky inclusion in the firmware had the enterprising developer not done such a good job investigating the device.

Further it begs the question what else has Apple hidden in the iPhone 3G that we haven’t discovered yet?  Are their invasive elements to the phone that make it easier to tap than another device?  Is the device secretly logging history and reporting it back to Apple for contextual advertising?  Is it logging my every step with the gps and figuring out where I go and when both to advertise more efficiently as well as for the more neferaious purposes of Homeland security.

The scary thing is that we can’t possibly be sure WHAT Apple has hidden in the code and we certainly can’t trust them to tell us the truth.  They’ve already lied to us so many times that you think we’d be used to it by now and perhaps maybe we are.  After all, no one bothered to delve into the bricking of the iPhones in much detail last year and Apple had another dirty secret that time around that I won’t even print for fear of reprisals.

Of course this also reaffirms Apple’s position as god - how many companies could get away with this and have a customer base left the following day.  If someone found this kind of code in a Microsoft application or a Sony device (the rootkit debacle anyone?) we’d all be screaming bloody murder.

I love Apple gear as much as the next guy but isn’t it time we wiped the smug smile of their faces when they pull crap like this?

Remember when this was Apple’s image? 

Since when did they go from anti-establishment to being “big brother”?

I was just speaking with my friend Andy Abramson and he mentioned in passing that he’d just written a post that discusses AT&T Mobility’s strange use of the word now as it relates to the availability of the new iPhone 3G.

It seems, based upon Andy’s experience, that AT&T believes that “now available” actually means  some time in the next ten days to three weeks.  Andy goes on to provide a number of dictionary.com definitions for the word “now”.  Not surprisingly, none of these definitions have any mention of a delay of ten days to three weeks or anything even remotely like it.  In fact they all pretty clearly indicate that now is a term that should be reserved for an action occurring at that moment.  Not in ten minutes and certainly not in ten days.

So what is the deal with AT&T?  Why do they believe that they can be so liberal with their choice of words and furthermore why should we, as consumers, not take exception to their use of this term as a misleading - in fact even fraudulent statement upon which we may detrimentally rely?

As a point of fact, Andy also pulled the Wikipedia definition of “False Advertising” and from that information it is exceedingly obvious that AT&T is engaging in a false and deceptive practice with respect to their marketing of a device as now available when in fact it isn’t available anything like “now” and won’t be avaible for as long as 3/4 of a month.

Most intersting (or ironic) is the fact that (as Andy observes) AT&T certainly wouldn’t appreciate it if all of its customers adopted AT&T’s version of “now” when it came to the terms of payment on all of our phone bills.

After all, I’m sure none of us would object to AT&T’s new definition of “now” if it also applied to the “now” on our bills where we see an amount outstanding and the words “now due”.  Somehow though I doubt if AT&T’s collection department would be nearly so understanding if we were to adopt AT&T’s marketing department’s version of “now”.  Nope. I’m sure that they would tell us that now does not mean in three weeks no matter what the posters in their store windows say.  Anyone want to file a class action?

The blanket of lies our government has used to cover up the truth about extraterrestrials is apparently starting to wear thin and even unravel entirely in some spots. The latest hole in the government’s story comes from Clark McClelland a retired space ship operator for NASA.

In a post that appeared on his website on the 29th of July of this year, McClelland stated:

“I, Clark C. McClelland, former ScO [Spacecraft Operator], Space Shuttle Fleet, personally observed an 8 to 9 foot tall ET on his 27 inch video monitors while on duty in the Kennedy Space Center, Launch Control Center (LCC). The ET was standing upright in the Space Shuttle Payload Bay having a discussion with TWO tethered US NASA Astronauts! I also observed on my monitors, the spacecraft of the ET as it was in a stabilized, safe orbit to the rear of the Space Shuttle main engine pods. I observed this incident for about one minute and seven seconds. Plenty of time to memorize all that I was observing. IT WAS AN ET and Alien Star Ship!”

When added to the statements made just the other day by Dr Edgar Mitchell, the prior remarks by Bob Lazar (which perhaps should be reevaluated given these recent revelations), and the mounting body of evidence that contradicts NASA and our government’s words on the topic it is starting to look more and more likely that what was once thought to be fertile ground for those with only a thin grasp on reality might be more or less the truth of the situation.

In my opinion one of two things is happening; either this is simply a continuation of our Government’s plan of action which requires that the public be gradually desensitized before a full disclose can take place or else these individuals have reached a point where they feel that they are no longer at risk of certain reprisals that the powers that be might inflict upon them for their breach of certain security oaths and their consciences - perhaps due to their advancing age - has compelled them to come clean before it is too late.

There are some things that I am certain about. One is that this trend is only going to continue at an ever increasing pace until all the facts are out on the table and/or two, that an irrefutable extraterrestrial visitation event takes place such that no further denial is possible.

In either case, those of us that have steadfastly believed that we were not alone and have been resolute in that belief in spite of scorn, ridicule and the derision of our peers will ultimately be vindicated by what I think are now becoming more and more obvious facts.

The truth has been a long time coming - one can only hope that when it finally does come all the way out that those that have lied, deceived and taken advantage of their privileged positions for their own personal material benefit will be forced to account for their transgressions and that they will in some way pay for their crimes against the people of this and other planets.
On another note, you might have missed it since they appeared to have tried to minimize what is perhaps the most significant news ever received from a Martian rover lander; Phoenix has confirmed the presence of water ice on the surface of mars. As the mission scientists put it: “We’ve touched and tasted water on Mars”.

It has long been held that were there is water there is usually (in fact so far as we know there is always) life. Don’t be too surprised if the next news coming from the red planet is that they have found living organisims (but not by Phoenix nor any of the current rovers that don’t have the equipment required to make a definitive detection of living material).

This is also part of the desensitization process. First microbes, then plants, then lower life forms and before you know it we’ll be meeting our new nine foot tall overlords in their anti-gravity super-luminal craft.

Actually I agree with Dr Mitchell on this one. If the extraterrestrials we’ve encountered so far were hostile we’d either be gone already or else we’d be in their form of the galley of some Ben Hur ship or chipping away for some sort of ore in huge underground caverns.

No. They are our friends. Or at least we are so insignificant to them that they can’t be bothered to destroy us. Either way is fine by me. Just so long as they’re not like the aliens in “Mars Attacks”. That would be a real disappointment.

Today is a critical day in the history of US democracy.  Either we will vote to honor our constitution and penalize those who disregard its basic tenets no matter how high their office.

Last Friday the House Judiciary Committee met to discuss the Bush Administration’s abuse of executive power and for the first time the case for Impeachment was discussed in front of a Congressional
committee, in depth, at length and with authority.

Twenty members of the Judiciary Committee attended the six hour hearing, during which twelve witnesses, including myself and four members of Congress testified. In this hearing Congressman Dennis Kucinich called for the Impeachment of the President for misrepresenting a case for war.

This week Congressman Kucinich will present  will present members of Congress with Impeachment petitions submitted by those of us who have signed the on-line impeachment form. If we are to see this impeachment process through to fruition, the Congressman needs our help.

If you have not yet done so, please visit http://kucinich.us and sign the online petition.  It takes less than 30 seconds and every signature makes a difference.  We have suffered enough at the hands of the cabal that have usurped our democracy, ruined our economoy, devalued our currency and made us the target of massive and justified hatred and desire for retaliation.  We the people must act to restore our country to its former greatness.  The process will be long and it will not be easy but it can be done if we have the will.

The first step in this process is to show the world that we recognize the wrongs committed by our current administration.  The best way we can do this is by removing them from office and holding them accountable for the crimes that they have committed.  Please help us to help ourselves.  Our place in the world and the security of this nation for generations to come may depend upon those few of us with conviction sufficient to take action today.

Thank You.

Dr. Edgar Mitchell, NASA Astronaut and the 6th Man to Stand on the moon recently made the above statement during a live interview on Kerrang Radio.

He went on to say that the Roswell crash - he actually called it the “Roswell Incident” took place and stated that he was not the only man to have stood on the moon who was in the know on this topic.  As you can hear in the YouTube clip of the actual interview (below), the host is shocked nearly speechless at Mitchell’s revelation.

Having listened to the interview as well as having followed this topic with keen interest for most of my life I have to say that this is one of the most credible, high-profile disclosures of extra-terrestrial visitation that has ever been made.

Beyond his stature as an Astronaut, Dr Mitchell is a well-known scientist with a reputation that is beyond reproach.  It is difficult - if not impossible - to repudiate his remarks.

As responsible journalists the host of the show as well as his producer attempt to get a response from someone within NASA - this clip is also below.  NASA’s response - both that of the public relations officer that fielded the call as well as the written response the show also received were suprising in the first case and predictable in the second.

The telling quote from the PR person:

“I can try to do that for you [get someone to comment]. Let me see who would be willing to dispute what an Astronaut said - if he said it…”

By itself this statement is fairly curious but in the context of his pauses, umms, ahs and weak attempts to refute the possibility that Mitchell did in fact make these statements it would seem to speak volumes in relatively few words.

The written reply they received was not nearly so surprising:

“Dear Alex, NASA does not track UFOs.  NASA is not involved in any cover-up.  Dr Mitchell is a great American but we do not share his opinion on this issue.  Thanks for the opportunity to comment.”

During the interview the host and Dr Mitchell discuss the timing of an “official disclosure” - by which one would assume they mean a duly authorized government or military official holding a press conference and stating publicly that we have been in contact with entities from outside of our solar system, that they are intelligent, possess vastly advanced technology and are clearly not hostile towards humans.

What we should realize is that this is EXACTLY what happened in the interview.  Our government - either willingly, or perhaps as a result of the inexorable pressure being exerted by other countries’ disclosures - is trickling this information to us in ever greater depth and from persons of ever increasing credibility.

While there are probably still people at the highest levels inculcated with the fear the Brookings Report engendered, it would seem that others have realized that the truth of this matter will ultimately be revealed whether they like it or not.  Given this fact, the only way they can retain any credibility is to leak this information a little at a time ahead of finally acknowledging the facts while at the same time blaming  previous administrations for their cover-up and the decades of lies and denials.

Dr Mitchell is unquestionably patriotic and I find it difficult to believe that he would make these statements so casually.  Personally I suspect that his remarks on Kerrang Radio are simply a next phase in the disclosure process that is taking place even as I write this.  Similarly, NASA’s statements of denial are also part of the process - they are intended to give those people who NASA believes may find this information difficult to accept a refuge in the form of contradictory statements from an “official source”.

If I am correct in my assessment you can expect more of this type of disclosure/ refuted disclosure over the next couple of months with the source doing the disclosing becoming ever more public, and ever more “official” while the part doing the refuting will likewise diminish in credibility and stature during the same period.

I know some people won’t believe any of this until there’s a press conference complete with UFOs on the Whitehouse lawn but for the rest of us this is a very exciting time.  Hopefully there’s much more to come!

Some of you might remember Foldera (FDRA).  The company enjoyed a brief moment of prominence and seemed poised to be a Web 2.0 darling that was breaking the rules and suceeding brilliantly.  So charmed was the company that at one point they could even boast that the “Don of Web 2.0″ Michael Arrington was on their board of directors. (Disclosure: I was the SVP of Business Development and Chief Mobility Officer for Foldera from Jan 2006 to July 2007)

Alas, twas not to be.  The combination of an audacious goal, a talented but immature senior engineer who had never shipped a product, overblown promises and slipping deadline after deadline turned the company from darling to deadpool candidate in less than a year.

Over the past 12 months the company has been languishing with a $0.02 to $0.03 stock price, no sales, no product to sell, no real deals in the pipeline and what seemed to be little in the way of any prospects.  All this has apparently changed with a completely surprising letter to the shareholders that the company released yesterday.

It looks as if the company is mainly just providing a shell for an entirely new organization.  CEO Hugh Dunkerely - now being referred to as Interim CEO, although when they announced his promotion to CEO a few months ago the word “Interim” was conspicuously absent from the press releases - has stepped down and slid back into his prior  role  as SVP of Investor Relations.

It appears that Reid Dabney, Foldera’s CFO will retain his position in the new entity leading me to believe that he had some significant role in this new deal.

Aside from those two familiar faces - everything else about the reconstituted organization looks piosed to change.  No longer about collaboration and organization software, the company will now be the developer of software and hardware for the carrier class 10 Gigabit switch market.

Along with the new management team and new direction the company is adopting a new name; CeCors, an acronym for Carrier Ethernet Core Switch and pronounced ‘SeaCores.’ This will become effective in the coming weeks as the Company’s legal name, registrations, trading symbol and marketing materials are changed.

Another change looks to be the capitalization structure of the company.  According to the letter they say they sent, the company intends to do a 10 for 1 reverse split of the stock which could have very significant repercussions for those people that purchased stock when the share price was several dollars as well as for those employees now sitting on fully vested options that have been left un-exercised because they have been worth less than the strike price established to exercise them.

At present I’m not sure what to make of this information.  There are a lot of unanswered questions that I’m sure are shared by the hundreds - perhaps thousands of shareholders that were left holding the bag when the brokerage firm that underwrote this security, Brookstreet Securities abruptly folded do to unregulated trading of CMO’s in mid 2007.

There are certainly a lot of hard feelings among the investors that feel that they were screwed by  Brookstreet and in particular by Neal Dabney and Steve Kerr, two savvy Wall Street raiders that managed to bank tens of millions apiece while allowing the people that made that possible- both the early investors and the employees of the original Foldera to take it in the shorts while they sold the stock right out from under us.

It is my  understanding that there is already a class action lawsuit that has been filed against Brookstreet although I don’t know at this time if Dabney or Kerr (Not sure of the spelling; please correct me if you know it) have been named in this suit or in which court it has been filed.

It is interesting as well that this leader was released via PR  Newswire before it had even reached the shareholders whose money has been paying the salaries of Reid and Hugh for more than two years now.  You’d think that such a major change in direction - particularly when accompanied by a complete management change and a ten for one reverse stock split is the sort of thing that the shareholders deserve to hear about directly rather than from a Google alert turning up the “Letter to the Shareholders” on Yahoo Finance.  Classy guys.  Off to a great start.  Are you going to write to those of us holding worthless options to explain our rights given this turn of events or has that somehow slipped off the radar too?
What a costly and frustrating experience. One I am sure is shared by more of you than I even want to think about.  For what it’s worth, while I was AT Foldera I did my best to make something happen but it is awfully tough to generate deals that produce any revenue when you never have a product that is ready for sale.

And, as Forrest Gump says; “that’s all I have to say about that”.

I’m sitting in on a panel right now discussing what “Open” means in the context of mobile.  We’ve got representatives from Frog Design (Mark Rolston), Verizon (Anthony Lewis), Kleiner Perkins (Matt Murphy), Nokia (David Rivas) and Google (Rich Miner).

Google's Version of Open Mobile

Listening to this “talking head” from Verizon is pretty amazing.  Typical for a big carrier, this guy says one thing and then the company behaves in a fashion totally contrary to their line.  For example, Verizon has service marked the term “Mobile Web 2.0″.  This demonstrates the amazing audacity that only a big company like Verizon exhibits.  In this case, Verizon is usurping a term that they didn’t even coin; what’s more their version of Mobile Web 2.0 bears about as much semblance to the real definition of Mobile Web 2.0 as double entry bookkeeping has to philosophy.

Here’s an example of how “Open” verizon is acting.  Saying they’ve “launched” “Mobile Web 2.0″ is a bit like saying that by putting a satellite in orbit Hughes created geosynchronus orbits.

By comparison, here’s Google’s version of open: Android.

If you haven’t seen this video before you are likely going to find it difficult to believe what you are seeing.  This little girl from South Korea who has been blind since birth makes her debut on a South Korean television show called Star King and stuns the judges, guest and studio audience.

Yoo Ye Eun has had no formal training in music, yet, according to her adoptive mother, she can hear a piece just once and immediately find the melody and principal chords on the piano.  Watching her tiny hands find the keys is truly remarkable.  How often in one’s life do you truly get to “see” genius in such a visible and graphic fashion?

Editor’s Note: Here’s the long-awaited third installment to my series on Floyd Landis and his epic Tour de France and subsequent doping controversy. While I don’t claim to have all the answers, I do have a unique perspective that is based in part upon my career as a professional cyclist and in part upon my education and work in biochemistry and exercise science. If you’re just finding this article for the first time, you might want to read Part I and Part II first. You might also find my views on pharmacological sport performance enhancement interesting or amusing. That post is here.

In part two we talked a bit about doping in cycling and how it is a systematic program and not a fly-by-the-seat of your pants (or fly with the help of a needle more accurately) athlete-as-physician circus act such as the press and the sports governing bodies would like to, and would also like the public to believe. We discussed the stage and how hard the GC contenders had to go on the final climb and finally we saw a quote from Floyd that I believe was an overlooked but enormously important indication of why what happened next well…happened next.

TDF Stage 17 a Miracle on Two Wheels or Something Else?

The 200 kilometer stage 17 from St. Jean de Maurienne to Morzine was the final day in the Alps and represented the last chance any serious TDF contender had of making a significant move in the overall general classification.

On paper this stage didn’t look like a monster.  Unless, of course your perspective was colored by the fact that you’d already raced sixteen previous stages including monster climbs in the Pyrenees and the Alpes, and particularly if you’re perspective was also determined by the fatigue you’d added to your already acumulated fatigue by virtue of a leg shattering, lung searing effort on the final climb to the finish at La Toussuire.

The Role of Cumulative Fatigue and Superlative Effort

On the other hand, if your perception was colored by the facts above the seventeenth stage looked like one to be survived - to be endured - it was a perfect stage to let a bunch of no-hopers role on up the road and gain fifteen minutes and suck up all the points for the KOM and the Green Jersey along the way.  It looked like the perfect stage to have your lieutenants ride “tempo” all day - just fast enough that no one got any ideas but not so fast that the leaders would have to call upon those weary legs to do anything more than the minimum required to just finish the day in the same GC position as from the day before.

If you’ll recall in Part II of this series I wrote about the effort that the leaders must have made up the final climb to La Toussuire.  As you might imagine you pay a price for an effort of this magnitude, a price that is made all that much steeper by the previously acumulated fatigue, by the fact that it was made at the end of a long, hot stage, by the fact that every rider was dehydrated before the effort began and of course by the fact that the following day they had to get back on the bikes and race once more.

You might also recall that I pointed to Floyd’s statement the he could “only go one speed that wasn’t very fast” on that final climb.  In other words his bad day - whether he was bonking, fighting a virus, or whatever - so limited his performance that even though he was trying as hard as he possibly could he simply didn’t have the strength or the energy to go any faster or - and this is important- to hurt himself very much.

This last may seem counterintuitive so let me try to help you understand it.  Lets say you lift weights.  Lets also say you have a coach that is a few points shy of having a genius IQ and he has you do biceps curls every day for a month.  Then, on the 31st day he has you try and do your 5 rep maximum.

Now you might try very hard, but if your arms are trashed from the 30 prior days of lifting your five-rep max isn’t going to be all that impressive.  What’s more, since you’re probably sore as hell already you’re not going to be able to push yourself so hard that you’d make yourself all that much sorer.  In fact, the impact of your five-rep-max effort would probably be so minimal that on the 32nd day you wouldn’t be any more sore than you were on the 31st day, follow?

Now on the other hand, lets say you have a coach that’s a bit more capable and he has you train biceps only once every five days - he knows that your maximum strength and recovery capabilities are going to be on the fifth or sixth day post your last effort. So he has you train biceps only five times during that same month and then on the 30th day (which will be five days after your most recent biceps workout) he has you do a five-rep-max.  I can guarantee that you will absolutely crush your five rep max from the prior coach.  Your arms will have been fresh, but well trained and totally recovered.

Fresh enough and well enough recovered in fact that they’ll be strong enough to allow you to do an awful lot of damage to yourself in those five reps. I can also promise that you’ll be sore beyond belief on the first and second days after your big effort.

This same principle is at work in the tour.  Floyd was too fatigued and flat on the stage to La Toussuire to do himself much physical damage, but the other riders, the ones that were taking it to Floyd on that final climb felt better and they had the adrenaline of a cracking tour leader coursing through their veins.  They buried themselves.  In fact they did themselves so much damage that I am surprised that more of them didn’t crack completely the following day.

To Drink or To Chase, That Was the Question

But that’s not all by a long shot.  If you look at the route on the seventeenth stage you’ll see that it was tailor made for a long break by a small group or an individual.  The course was serpentine and undulating with small, winding roads that make it especially hard for a team to get a big chase organized and rolling.  It’s also tough on a course like that to see what is happening up the road.

The old saying “out of sight, out of mind” is really true and on a course like the seventeenth stage it was possible to get out of site almost right away and from then on the peloton never saw the leaders again the whole day.

The other thing that the seventeenth stage made difficult was for the riders in the peloton to get enough to drink.  With the small narrow roads the cars couldn’t come up next to the peloton which meant that the domestiques had to keep dropping back and ferrying water to their respective team leaders.

This was also a difficult situation - if the same guys that you need to be up front chasing are constantly going back to fetch water they aren’t going to have enough left in their legs to mount an effective chase.

Plus, with that many riders packed together and people getting nervous about the rider up the road the pace was probably very uneven which meant that there were likely brief accelerations where everyone was going nearly flat out followed by extended lulls where the pace dropped to barely 22 miles per hour.

In contrast Floyd, alone in front, had a car right there feeding him water whenever he wanted it.  In fact you saw on the coverge that he was actually dowsing himself with water - you won’t see any footage of the guys in the peloton doing that.  They needed every ounce of water they had just to keep minimally hydrated.

The same thing goes for food.  When you’re alone or in a small break, it is a lot easier to get the food you want and to eat it without worrying about someone crashing next to you or someone attacking just as you grabbed a musette bag full of snacks.

Floyd was also able to ride at a steady tempo.  No huge accelerations, no big lulls, just a steady, AT effort for several hours.

These Guys Forgot Who They Where Dealing With

It’s important to mention something else here too.  Did all the guys in the peloton forget Floyd’s background?  A moutain bike world cup race is basically a two kilometer sprint flat out, followed by blowing up and then scraping yourself together and riding at your AT for the next three to four hours.  Funny, that sounds a lot like the way Floyd rode the seventeenth stage, doesn’t it?

When you take all these factors and add them up, it doesn’t take illegal drugs to balance the equation - it seems to me that it balances pretty nicely all by itself.

Let’s examine it in summary, shall we:

1. The riders that rode away from Floyd on stage 16 nuked themselves in the process
2. Floyd was so flat on the final climb of stage 16 that he couldn’t hurt himself nearly so much
3. The peloton rode a very uneven pace on stage 16 while Floyd was able to ride steadily
4. It was nearly impossible for riders in the peloton to stay hydrated during the 17th stage
5. Floyd was able to hydrate very effectively during the 17th stage
6. Floyd was able to get and stay out of sight easily on the 17th stage
7. The domestiques that had to fetch water were also the ones that were supposed to be mounting a chase on the 17th stage, a task that was all but impossible given their own fatigue, the small winding roads and their leader’s need for water that they had to fetch from the cars following the race
8. Floyd was a pro mountain biker, very familiar with and exceptionally well-suited for an effort just like the one he made on the 17th stage.

In summary it seems to me that when you take all these facts and lay them out before you on the table, any rational person is going to see that there are  plenty of reasons to explain the respective performances of Floyd and the other riders in the Tour.

Yes, it was an exceptional effort. But was also the culmination of a series of factors and events that created a “perfect storm” for a miraculous solo win.  Also, don’t underestimate the fact that this was an enormous tactical blunder on the part of all the teams that should never have let Floyd gain so much time.  By the time  these guys realized that they had an emergency on their hands it was already too late to do anything about it.

Honestly - and I hope by now you can see that I really do call it the way I see it - I don’t see how you need doping to explain Floyd’s results on this stage.  Far from it.  I think that the facts that are readily apparent to all concerned, facts that can be conclusively demonstrated to be true, definitively prove that Floyd’s performance can be completely explained without resorting to speculation about doping.

Needles?  We Don’t Need No Stinking Needles

I’ll save the lengthy explanation about why using testosterone would have been one of the most ludicrous decisions imagineable for another post as I’m sure I’ve given you plenty to think about already today.  Before we wrap this up though let me remind you of what I said before: that on a Tour team of the caliber of Floyd’s the doping is not left up to the riders.  The doctors know this stuff as well as anyone - certainly as well as I do so I am absolutely certain that no one on Floyd’s team stuck him with testosterone before the stage.  I think that Floyd would have had a pretty tough time finding testosterone to shoot up with too.  Remember that in previous tours teams and riders had been raided in the middle of the night - recall people even going through the garbage in Lance’s room after he departed from motels during his final tour.

I hardly think that Floyd (as the American leader who was clearly under the microscope) would have been wandering around with syringes and testosterone in his bag or some tube of transdermal testosterone gel in his personal effects. Puhlease.  Why didn’t the “investigation” into his alleged doping ask any of these sensible questions?

Anyway, I’ll delve into the myriad reasons why only a moron would have used testosterone in my final post on this topic.  I hope you’ve enjoyed this one.  Please let me know what you think in the comments.

Oh- and I promise I won’t take another four months to write the final installment.  Oliver