digital graffiti

Roswell Was Real?

2007-07-02T06:54:00.000-07:00

Last week came an astonishing new twist to the Roswell mystery.

Lieutenant Walter Haut was the public relations officer at the base in 1947 and was the man who issued the original and subsequent press releases after the crash on the orders of the base commander, Colonel William Blanchard.

Haut died last year but left a sworn affidavit to be opened only after his death.

Last week, the text was released and asserts that the weather balloon claim was a cover story and that the real object had been recovered by the military and stored in a hangar.

He described seeing not just the craft, but alien bodies. He wasn't the first Roswell witness to talk about alien bodies. Local undertaker Glenn Dennis had long claimed that he was contacted by authorities at Roswell shortly after the crash and asked to provide a number of child-sized coffins.

When he arrived at the base, he was apparently told by a nurse (who later disappeared) that a UFO had crashed and that small humanoid extraterrestrials had been recovered.

But Haut is the only one of the original participants to claim to have seen alien bodies.

UFO pieces handed around

Haut's affidavit talks about a high-level meeting he attended with base commander Col William Blanchard and the Commander of the Eighth Army Air Force, General Roger Ramey.

Haut states that at this meeting, pieces of wreckage were handed around for participants to touch, with nobody able to identify the material.

He says the press release was issued because locals were already aware of the crash site, but in fact there had been a second crash site, where more debris from the craft had fallen.

The plan was that an announcement acknowledging the first site, which had been discovered by a farmer, would divert attention from the second and more important location.

The clean-up operation

Haut also spoke about a clean-up operation, where for months afterwards military personnel scoured both crash sites searching for all remaining pieces of debris, removing them and erasing all signs that anything unusual had occurred.

This ties in with claims made by locals that debris collected as souvenirs was seized by the military.

Haut then tells how Colonel Blanchard took him to "Building 84" - one of the hangars at Roswell - and showed him the craft itself.

He describes a metallic egg-shaped object around 3.6m-4.5m in length and around 1.8m wide.

He said he saw no windows, wings, tail, landing gear or any other feature.

Haut 'saw the alien bodies'

He saw two bodies on the floor, partially covered by a tarpaulin.

They are described in his statement as about 1.2m tall, with disproportionately large heads.

Towards the end of the affidavit, Haut concludes: "I am convinced that what I personally observed was some kind of craft and its crew from outer space".

What's particularly interesting about Walter Haut is that in the many interviews he gave before his death, he played down his role and made no such claims.

Had he been seeking publicity, he would surely have spoken about the craft and the bodies.

Did he fear ridicule, or was the affidavit a sort of deathbed confession from someone who had been part of a cover-up, but who had stayed loyal to the end?

The US government came under huge pressure on Roswell in the '90s.

In July 1994, in response to an inquiry from the General Accounting Office, the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force published a report, The Roswell Report: Fact Versus Fiction In The New Mexico Desert.

Weather balloon 'cover story'

The report concluded that the Roswell incident had been attributable to something called Project Mogul, a top secret project using high-altitude balloons to carry sensor equipment into the upper atmosphere, listening for evidence of Soviet nuclear tests.

The statements concerning a crashed weather balloon had been a cover story, they admitted, but not to hide the truth about extraterrestrials.

A second US Air Force report concluded claims bodies were recovered were generated by people having seen crash test dummies that were dropped from the balloons.

Bush Claims Oversight Exemption

2007-06-22T23:20:00.000-07:00

The White House said Friday that, like Vice President Dick Cheney's office, President Bush's office is exempt from a presidential order requiring government agencies that handle classified national security information to submit to oversight by an independent federal watchdog.

The executive order that Bush issued in March 2003 covers all government agencies that are part of the executive branch and, although it doesn't specifically say so, was not meant to apply to the vice president's office or the president's office, a White House spokesman said.

The order aimed to create a uniform, government-wide security system for classifying, declassifying and safeguarding national security information. It gave the archives' oversight unit responsibility for evaluating the effectiveness of each agency's security classification programs. It applied only to the executive branch of government, mostly agencies led by Bush administration appointees, as opposed to legislative offices such as Congress and judicial offices, including the courts.

Waxman, chairman of the powerful House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, wrote an eight-page letter to Cheney Thursday in which he complained about the vice president's refusal to adhere to the executive order. Waxman, citing the criminal investigation of Cheney's office related to the leak of a CIA agent's identity, suggested that the vice president's office was a national security risk.

He also accused Cheney or his staff of trying to have the archives' watchdog unit abolished after its director, Leonard, pressed for more oversight and for a legal opinion from the Justice Department as to whether the executive order applied to the vice president's office.

In the executive order, Bush stressed the importance of the public's right to know what its government was doing, particularly in the global campaign against terrorism. "Our democratic principles require that the American people be informed of the activities of their government," the executive order said.

Face Of God Appears

2007-06-18T00:03:00.000-07:00

"I was preaching on 'God Knows Where We Are,' and all of a sudden a big bang hit the church," he said. With that, Lowery said, alarms all over the neighborhood started going off, including those at the church. It was then that Lowery's daughter first saw it: The face of God on the church's ceiling. But, there was a catch ... it can't be seen with the naked eye. "She took her camera and took a picture," Lowery said. "That's when the image came through."

Former Arizona Gov Saw UFO

2007-06-17T02:03:00.000-07:00

Ten years after the "Phoenix Lights" UFO incident, former Arizona Gov. Fife Symington, III, now says he saw an unidentified object that night, even though he originally did not say so publicly.

"It was enormous and inexplicable," he said in an exclusive interview from Phoenix. "Who knows where it came from? A lot of people saw it, and I saw it too."

On March 13, 1997, during Symington's second term as governor, thousands saw a vast triangular and V-shaped object, gliding slowly and silently across the Arizona sky. Witnesses throughout the state estimated that the eerie, lighted objects were bigger than many football fields, as much as a mile long.

"We Need Some Attacks On American Soil"

2007-06-03T21:26:00.000-07:00

"At the end of the day, I believe fully the president is doing the right thing, and I think all we need is some attacks on American soil like we had on [Sept. 11, 2001 ], and the naysayers will come around very quickly to appreciate not only the commitment for President Bush, but the sacrifice that has been made by men and women to protect this country," Arkansas GOP Chairman Dennis Milligan said.

Responses from the military include quips such as:

So, "fighting them over there" isn't working out for the GOP? What kind of BS mentality does this Do-Dah have? He also weaseled out on immigration. He owns a "water treatment plant" (read sewage treatment) It fits, he is 'full' of something.

Dennis Milligan was promoted by the Republican State Committee from treasurer to the Chairman of the Arkansas GOP on May 19 to succeed Senator Gilbert Baker of Conway. In 2002 and 2004, Milligan narrowly lost the District 29 state House race to Rep. Janet Johnson, D-Bryant.

Viva la Bush!

2007-06-03T10:35:00.000-07:00

John Dean on Alberto Gonzales

2007-05-18T02:14:00.000-07:00

Lately, a week seldom passes when we are not reminded of the conspicuous contempt that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales holds for Congress, and the damage he is doing to the Department of Justice.

This week, Gonzales was again shown to have lied to Congress; his ineptitude as Attorney General has resurfaced in litigation that is going to damage the government; and after ignoring a subpoena from the Senate, he made a belated but insufficient response following an angry letter from the Senate.

It's been clear for a while - and is becoming ever clearer - that the Attorney General ought to resign, or to be fired. Now, it seems that Congress is determined to force Gonzales from office or send him to jail, whichever they can do first.

This is plainly the right move - and anyone who does not understand why Congress is insisting on getting rid of Gonzales, does not appreciate the important and sensitive role the Department of Justice has in our government. [FULL ARTICLE]

Veteran Gets Wiccan Burial

2007-04-24T17:10:00.000-07:00

New York Times
April 24, 2007

To settle a lawsuit, the Department of Veterans Affairs has agreed to add the Wiccan pentacle to a list of approved religious symbols that it will engrave on veterans’ headstones.

In reviewing 30,000 pages of documents from Veterans Affairs, Americans United said, it found e-mail and memorandums referring to negative comments President Bush made about Wicca in an interview with "Good Morning America" in 1999, when he was governor of Texas. The interview had to do with a controversy at the time about Wiccan soldiers’ being allowed to worship at Fort Hood, Tex.

"I don't think witchcraft is a religion," Mr. Bush said at the time, according to a transcript. "I would hope the military officials would take a second look at the decision they made."

"I was just aghast that someone who would fight for their country and die for their country would not get the symbol he wanted on his gravestone," said John W. Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, which litigates many First Amendment cases. "It's just overt religious discrimination."

Reverend Phelps Will Picket VA Tech Funerals

2007-04-18T18:54:00.000-07:00

Reverend Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church plan to picket the funerals of those killed in the Virginia Tech shootings, according to a message on their website:

"WBC will preach at the funerals of the Virginia Tech students killed on campus during a shooting rampage April 16, 2007. You describe this as monumental horror, but you know nothing of horror -- yet. Your bloody tyrant Bush says he is 'horrified' by it all. You know nothing of horror -- yet. Your true horror is coming. 'They shall also gird themselves with sackcloth, and horror shall cover them; and shame shall be upon all faces, and baldness upon all their heads' (Eze. 7:18).

Why did this happen, you ask? It's simple. Your military chose to shoot at the servants of God today, and all they got for their effort was terror. Then, the LORD your God sent a crazed madman to shoot at your children. Was God asleep while this took place? Was He on vacation? Of course not. He willed this to happen to punish you for assailing His servants."

McCain Sees "No Plan B" for Iraq War

2007-04-15T05:01:00.000-07:00

New York Times
April 15, 2007

Senator John McCain said that the buildup of American forces in Iraq represented the only viable option to avoid failure in Iraq and that he had yet to identify an effective fall-back if the current strategy failed.

"I have no Plan B," Mr. McCain said in an interview. "If I saw that doomsday scenario evolving, then I would try to come up with one. But I cannot give you a good alternative because if I had a good alternative, maybe we could consider it now."

In a discussion of how he would handle Iraq if elected president, Mr. McCain said that the success of the Bush administration’s strategy, which seeks to protect Baghdad residents so Iraqi political leaders have an opportunity to pursue a program of political reconciliation, was essentially a precondition for a more limited American role that could follow.

"I am not guaranteeing that this succeeds," said Mr. McCain, who has long argued that additional troops are needed. "I am just saying that I think it can. I believe it has a good shot."

15 British Troops Were Spies

2007-04-06T03:42:00.000-07:00

SkyNews
April 05, 2007

The captain in charge of the 15 marines detained in Iran has said they were gathering intelligence on the Iranians.

Sky News went on patrol with Captain Chris Air and his team in Iraqi waters close to the area where they were arrested - just five days before the crisis began.

We withheld the interview until now so it would not jeopardise their safety.

And today, former Iranian diplomat Dr Mehrdad Khonsari said if the Iranians had known about it, they would have used it to "justify taking the marines captive and put them on trial".

Captain Air and his team were on an 'Interaction Patrol' where their patrol boats came alongside fishing dhows.

The operation was mainly to investigate arms smuggling and terrorism but Captain Air said it was also to gain intelligence on Iranian activity.

He told Sky Correspondent Jonathan Samuels: "Basically we speak to the crew, find out if they have any problems, let them know we're here to protect them, protect their fishing and stop any terrorism and piracy in the area," he said.

"Secondly, it's to gather int (intelligence). If they do have any information, because they're here for days at a time, they can share it with us. "It's good to gather int on the Iranians," he said.

Fifteen sailors and marines were taken captive nearly two weeks ago after the Iranian government claimed they had strayed into their waters.

Hussein's Prewar Ties To Al-Qaeda Discounted

2007-04-06T02:59:00.000-07:00

Washington Post
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 6, 2007; Page A01

Captured Iraqi documents and intelligence interrogations of Saddam Hussein and two former aides "all confirmed" that Hussein's regime was not directly cooperating with al-Qaeda before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a declassified Defense Department report released yesterday.

The report's release came on the same day that Vice President Cheney, appearing on Rush Limbaugh's radio program, repeated his allegation that al-Qaeda was operating inside Iraq "before we ever launched" the war, under the direction of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist killed last June.

Flying Spaghetti Monster Banned!

2007-03-29T18:49:00.000-07:00

Metro.co.uk
March 29, 2007

The Flying Spaghetti Monster

A student has been suspended from school in America for coming to class dressed as a pirate.

But the disciplinary action has provoked controversy – because the student says that the ban violates his rights, as the pirate costume is part of his religion.

Bryan Killian says that he follows the Pastafarian religion, and that as a crucial part of his faith, he must wear 'full pirate regalia' as prescribed in the holy texts of Pastafarianism.

The school, however, say that his pirate garb was disruptive.

Pastafarians follow the Flying Spaghetti Monster (pictured), and believe that the world was created by the touch of his noodly appendage. Furthermore, they acknowledge pirates as being 'absolute divine beings', and stress that the worldwide decline in the number of pirates has directly led to global warming.

Pastafarianism gained wide attention when its key prophet, Bobby Henderson, wrote to the Kansas School Board during the height of the controversy over 'Intelligent Design' being taught in science classes. His letter, also published on his website, demanded equal time be given to the teachings of the Flying Spaghetti Monster as was given to ID and evolutionary theory.

Since then, the Flying Spaghetti Monster has gained countless followers worldwide, although there are those who remain spagnostic.

The school, in North Buncombe, North Carolina, remains adamant that their decision to suspend Killian for a day has nothing to do with his religion, and quite a lot to do with his repeated refusal to heed warnings against wearing pirate outfits.

My National Security Letter Gag Order

2007-03-23T14:11:00.001-07:00

Washington Post
Friday, March 23, 2007; Page A17

It is the policy of The Washington Post not to publish anonymous pieces. In this case, an exception has been made because the author -- who would have preferred to be named -- is legally prohibited from disclosing his or her identity in connection with receipt of a national security letter. The Post confirmed the legitimacy of this submission by verifying it with the author's attorney and by reviewing publicly available court documents.

The Justice Department's inspector general revealed on March 9 that the FBI has been systematically abusing one of the most controversial provisions of the USA Patriot Act: the expanded power to issue "national security letters." It no doubt surprised most Americans to learn that between 2003 and 2005 the FBI issued more than 140,000 specific demands under this provision -- demands issued without a showing of probable cause or prior judicial approval -- to obtain potentially sensitive information about U.S. citizens and residents. It did not, however, come as any surprise to me.

Three years ago, I received a national security letter (NSL) in my capacity as the president of a small Internet access and consulting business. The letter ordered me to provide sensitive information about one of my clients. There was no indication that a judge had reviewed or approved the letter, and it turned out that none had. The letter came with a gag provision that prohibited me from telling anyone, including my client, that the FBI was seeking this information. Based on the context of the demand -- a context that the FBI still won't let me discuss publicly -- I suspected that the FBI was abusing its power and that the letter sought information to which the FBI was not entitled.

Rather than turn over the information, I contacted lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union, and in April 2004 I filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the NSL power. I never released the information the FBI sought, and last November the FBI decided that it no longer needs the information anyway. But the FBI still hasn't abandoned the gag order that prevents me from disclosing my experience and concerns with the law or the national security letter that was served on my company. In fact, the government will return to court in the next few weeks to defend the gag orders that are imposed on recipients of these letters.

Living under the gag order has been stressful and surreal. Under the threat of criminal prosecution, I must hide all aspects of my involvement in the case -- including the mere fact that I received an NSL -- from my colleagues, my family and my friends. When I meet with my attorneys I cannot tell my girlfriend where I am going or where I have been. I hide any papers related to the case in a place where she will not look. When clients and friends ask me whether I am the one challenging the constitutionality of the NSL statute, I have no choice but to look them in the eye and lie.

I resent being conscripted as a secret informer for the government and being made to mislead those who are close to me, especially because I have doubts about the legitimacy of the underlying investigation.

The inspector general's report makes clear that NSL gag orders have had even more pernicious effects. Without the gag orders issued on recipients of the letters, it is doubtful that the FBI would have been able to abuse the NSL power the way that it did. Some recipients would have spoken out about perceived abuses, and the FBI's actions would have been subject to some degree of public scrutiny. To be sure, not all recipients would have spoken out; the inspector general's report suggests that large telecom companies have been all too willing to share sensitive data with the agency -- in at least one case, a telecom company gave the FBI even more information than it asked for. But some recipients would have called attention to abuses, and some abuse would have been deterred.

I found it particularly difficult to be silent about my concerns while Congress was debating the reauthorization of the Patriot Act in 2005 and early 2006. If I hadn't been under a gag order, I would have contacted members of Congress to discuss my experiences and to advocate changes in the law. The inspector general's report confirms that Congress lacked a complete picture of the problem during a critical time: Even though the NSL statute requires the director of the FBI to fully inform members of the House and Senate about all requests issued under the statute, the FBI significantly underrepresented the number of NSL requests in 2003, 2004 and 2005, according to the report.

I recognize that there may sometimes be a need for secrecy in certain national security investigations. But I've now been under a broad gag order for three years, and other NSL recipients have been silenced for even longer. At some point -- a point we passed long ago -- the secrecy itself becomes a threat to our democracy. In the wake of the recent revelations, I believe more strongly than ever that the secrecy surrounding the government's use of the national security letters power is unwarranted and dangerous. I hope that Congress will at last recognize the same thing.

Iraqi Lawmaker Is U.S. Embassy Bomber

2007-02-22T18:43:00.000-08:00

CNN
February 22, 2007

A man sentenced to death in Kuwait for the 1983 bombings of the U.S. and French embassies now sits in Iraq's parliament as a member of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's ruling coalition, according to U.S. military intelligence.

Jamal Jafaar Mohammed's seat in parliament gives him immunity from prosecution. Washington says he supports Shiite insurgents and acts as an Iranian agent in Iraq.

U.S. military intelligence in Iraq has approached al-Maliki's government with the allegations against Jamal Jafaar Mohammed, who it says assists Iranian special forces in Iraq as "a conduit for weapons and political influence."

Repeated efforts by CNN to reach Jamal Jafaar Mohammed for comment through the parliament, through the ruling Shiite Muslim coalition and the Badr Organization -- the Iranian-backed paramilitary organization he once led -- have been unsuccessful.

A Kuwaiti court sentenced Jamal Jafaar Mohammed to death in 1984 in the car bombings of the U.S. and French embassies the previous December. Five people died in the attacks and 86 were wounded.

He had fled the country before the trial.

Western intelligence agencies also accuse Jamal Jafaar Mohammed of involvement in the hijacking of a Kuwaiti airliner in 1984 and the attempted assassination of a Kuwaiti prince.

Jamal Jafaar Mohammed won a seat in Iraq's Council of Representatives in the U.S.-backed elections of December 2005. He represents Babil province, south of Baghdad, in parliament.

A U.S. Embassy spokesman said officials are actively pursuing Jamal Jafaar Mohammed's case with Iraqi officials. Al-Maliki has urged American intelligence officials to share their information with Iraqi lawmakers, who could strip Jamal Jafaar Mohammed of his parliamentary immunity.

"We don't want parliament to be a shelter for outlaws and wanted people," al-Maliki told CNN. "This is the government's view, but the parliament is responsible. I don't think parliament will accept having people like [him] or others currently in the parliament."

Memo: Stop Teaching Evolution

2007-02-14T13:52:00.000-08:00

DallasNews.com
February 14, 2007

The second most powerful member of the Texas House has circulated a Georgia lawmaker's call for a broad assault on teaching of evolution.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Warren Chisum, R-Pampa, used House operations Tuesday to deliver a memo from Georgia state Rep. Ben Bridges.

The memo assails what it calls "the evolution monopoly in the schools."

Mr. Bridges' memo claims that teaching evolution amounts to indoctrinating students in an ancient Jewish sect's beliefs.

"Indisputable evidence – long hidden but now available to everyone – demonstrates conclusively that so-called 'secular evolution science' is the Big Bang, 15-billion-year, alternate 'creation scenario' of the Pharisee Religion," writes Mr. Bridges, a Republican from Cleveland, GA. He has argued against teaching of evolution in Georgia schools for several years.

He then refers to a web site, FixedEarth.com, that contains a model bill for state Legislatures to pass to attack instruction on evolution as an unconstitutional establishment of religion.

Mr. Bridges also supplies a link to a document that describes scientists Carl Sagan and Albert Einstein as "Kabbalists" and laments "Hollywood's unrelenting role in flooding the movie theaters with explicit or implicit endorsement of evolutionism."

Mr. Chisum was asked if Mr. Bridges' memo reflects his own views.

"No, absolutely, although I'm a Christian, and I believe in creation," he said. Creation science is the idea that the Earth was created in six days some 6,000 years ago.

US Soldiers Throw Rocks At Injured Dog

2007-02-07T23:00:00.000-08:00

Where's Rumsfeld?

2007-01-25T17:58:00.000-08:00

Washington Times
January 25, 2007

Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has left the Pentagon, but not the Defense Department.

On Jan. 4, Mr. Rumsfeld opened a government-provided transition office in Arlington and has seven Pentagon-paid staffers working for him, a Pentagon official said. The Pentagon lists Mr. Rumsfeld as a "nonpaid consultant," a status he needs in order to review secret and top-secret documents, the official said.

The Pentagon official said former secretaries are entitled to a transition office to sort papers, some of which can be taken with them for a library, for archives or to write a book.

The transition office has raised some eyebrows inside the Pentagon. Some question the size of the staff, which includes two military officers and two enlisted men. They also ask why the sorting could not have been done from the time Mr. Rumsfeld resigned Nov. 8 to when he left the building Dec. 18.

Sexy ... But Not Kosher

2007-01-25T17:43:00.000-08:00

The producer of an all-Israeli porn flick is under attack from rabbis who say his use of a food-certification symbol ain't kosher.

Yesterday, Tight Fit Productions of Van Nuys, California, the purveyors of "Assraelis," which was shot entirely in Israel with all-local talent, received a cease-and-desist order letter from a lawyer representing Rabbi Yehuda Rosenbaum of KOF-K Kosher Certification, a New Jersey company that puts its stamp of approval on Kosher goods. Tight Fit's DVD cover (see above) claim of Israeli authenticity is accompanied by a Hebrew letter normally reserved for rabbi-ordained meats, grains, and other foodstuffs.

KOF-K's lawyer says that Tight Fit is using the symbol "illegally" in violation of State and Federal Law, and plans to sue "if the situation is not rectified as quickly as possible." Oren Cohen, the owner of Tight Fit, finds the action "funny," but will modify the cover art before the film's release next week -- to satisfy what he calls the "very nice" rabbis.

50 Most Loathsome People in America of 2006

2007-01-22T01:43:00.000-08:00

Our friends at the Buffafo Beast have published their list of the fifty most loathsome people in America. Each entry is described, supported by (at least) one reason for being put on the list and a recommended punishment is given. Lots of great caricatures too! Fun stuff!

FedEx Flips Out

2007-01-13T19:04:00.000-08:00

This late breaking news just in from our friends at putative.typepad.com...

This, I think, is rich: I just got back from the FedEx on Queen Anne, where I had been trying to ship a box of products from Greenwood Space Travel Supply to a potential client, just as samples of my packaging work.

I had them in a paper bag, mostly a collection of metal pint cans and a couple of brown apothecary jars. I was worried about how to pack them so they wouldn't break, so I went up to the FedEx guy with the bag and asked him what kind of box I should use. He immediately pulled out—I think just by chance—the bottle of "Rocket Fuel," which has a label that looks like this:

FedEx guy: Is this really what this is? Rocket fuel?

Me [laughing, used to this reaction from being at the space-travel supply store]: Oh, no, no, no. Of course not. It's... made-up. Kind of a joke. It's actually full of sugar, which I just put in to give it some weight, but that's all it is.

FedEx guy: You can't ship this.

Me: But... it's just sugar! What, uh, what if I empty it out? It doesn't really need to have sugar in it.

FedEx guy: No. They would still x-ray it, and then you'd get a call when it was en route. I don't think it would make it.

Me: Hmmm. I really need to get this out... but I guess I don't have to ship the "Rocket Fuel" can. What about the rest?

The FedEx guy then grabs cans of nitrogen (N2) and neon (Ne), with their store-advertised "purity" of 78.084% and 0.0018% respectively (which was our way of being clever about selling cans of normal air, since that's their percentage in the atmosphere—which, of course, was our way of making more money for 826 Seattle by selling products that cost almost nothing to produce). Here's what the atmospheric gas cans look like on the shelf:

FedEx guy: Nope. You can't ship these either.

Me: But... they're empty! It's just air. And... nitrogen? It's, like, almost 80% of the atmosphere. There's nothing dangerous about nitrogen, even if it were pure.

FedEx guy: They look too much like bomb-making materials.

Me [going into dumbfounded mode]: Bomb... Neon? What? Is there anything here I can legally ship? How about this bottle of tap water?

I hand him a bottle of Certainty (tagline, "For when it's preferable to think you know more"), which looks like this:

FedEx guy: Nope. It still looks too suspicious, too much like bomb-making materials.

Me: But it's "Certainty." That's not even a thing. I just made that up. [That's not strictly true. It's a scientific term/idea, and we sell it alongside bottles of "Uncertainty." But it's like having a bottle labeled "Friendship."]

FedEx guy: It's just too suspicious.

[long pause]

Me [going into post-9/11, TSA-style super-dumbfounded mode]: So what you're saying is you can't ship any sort of containers, even if they're empty? You know that we originally ordered these empty cans and jars from a company, and *they* shipped them to *us*.

FedEx guy: They must have used a different vendor ["vendor"? I can't remember, some word like that, like a "service"].

Which I imagine he said because he couldn't bring himself to say, "It's the *words* that are *on* the containers that are dangerous"—even after I had opened them all and demonstrated the utter harmlessness/emptiness of the containers themselves.

I sympathize with people who aren't making very much and are probably forced to comply with arcane corporate rules and who have to deal with weirdoes coming in with cans labeled "Rocket Fuel." I really do. But... c'mon. How much effort is involved in *not* being part of the common-sense-negating, spirit-crushing, Bush-era fear-slash-stupidity machine? The terrorists win again.

Hopefully, actual terrorists won't learn to wrap their packages at home first. Long story short, I packed them up there at the FedEx counter, with their scissors and tape and some extra bubble wrap I bought, and then I walked down the street to the U.S. Post Office and mailed them from there, all sealed up. We'll see how they fare. I hope they don't have snark-sniffing dogs.

God Told Me To Do It

2007-01-13T09:22:00.000-08:00

A San Mateo woman is getting messages from God and painting them in five-foot-tall letters on the roof of her house.The city wants her to stop doing it. Her neighbors want her to stop doing it. But Estrella Benavides says she can't do that."If the city wants to put me in jail, what can I do?" she said. "I am God's servant." "I am going to keep going, because it is all I can do," she said. "God chose me to be His servant. There is such a thing as freedom of speech.'' Anyway, she said, the size of the roof letters are not particularly large. "The signs at Costco are a lot bigger than the ones on my roof," she said.

Ms. Benavides said she first began receiving messages from God through a statue at her church. Now, she said, she gets the special messages when she reads the Bible. Sometimes she broadcasts the messages from a loudspeaker mounted on the roof of her car.

The messages are a barely intelligible garble involving cloning, abuse, rape, the Mafia, Castro, Hitler, the Constitution, hurricane Katrina, Watergate and President Bush. Ms. Benavides, a 48-year-old woman who lives alone in her yellow house on Cottage Grove Avenue, began painting the giant messages about a year ago, about the time her husband moved out and she lost custody of her son. Last month, she had two large pins inserted through her lips, to keep her from eating as part of a religious fast. God told her to do that, too.

Not long ago, the city of San Mateo posted a sign of its own on Benavides' front door, informing her that her signs violated city rules. The city said her signs are too big, too numerous and cannot be on the roof. It scheduled a hearing before the Community Improvement Commission for January 17. If Benavides loses, she could be fined up to $10,000 a day and lose her home.

Jef Jaisun

2007-01-07T17:38:00.000-08:00

I was fortunate enough to spend a couple hours with the icon/oclast Jef Jaisun this afternoon at Seattle's legendary Blue Moon. I'd been a huge fan of Jef's since 1973 or so when I first heard his Friendly Neighborhood Narco Agent. It was a whole lot of fun to hear what Jef's been up to, especially his adventures as a photographer over the past 40 years or so.

An interesting account about Jef's recording career is chronicled by Corry Arnold, an historian of the Jabberwock on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley: "At 1:45 am on June 4, 1966, twenty year old aspiring musician and photographer Jef Jaisun walked in to The Jabberwock for the first time, Perry Lederman was playing. Jaisun would go on to work for Max Scheer's Berkeley Barb and later become immortal in the Bay Area for producing the much-played and fondly remembered record Friendly Neighborhood Narco Agent. This record, independently released as an EP by Jaisun in 1969, was later picked up Dr. Demento, and the song reached an audience outside the Bay Area. Jef recalls "The entire package was patterned after Country Joe's Rag Baby EPs, right down to using Sierra Sound as the recording studio. I figured if it worked for him, well ... not to mention that people in the Bay Area, and Berkeley in particular, had become accustomed to that type of EP packaging, thanks mostly to Joe. Several other folkies released similar EPs about the same time."

Another organisation of note, The Blues Foundation, gives considerable detail in recounting Jef's accomplishments as a Blues Photographer and also his humanitarian work: "Jef Jaisun has been actively photographing the Blues for over 30 years. Whether he’s working the Jazz Fest main stage or hanging out at the Back Porch in Chicago, or sitting in your favorite Blues joint, Jef can always be found where the music is. He is staff photographer for Blue Suede News and Blues ToDo Monthly, two long time Northwest music publications. Since 1980, his work has been featured in every major American Blues magazine and on the covers of numerous CDs. In 2004, he donated more than 250 photos to the Blues Music Archives at the Chicago Public Library. His rare 1985 photo of B.B. King embracing Luther Allison at Switzerland’s Nyon Festival was a highlight of 2006’s KBA-winning book, The B.B. King Treasures. Since Hurricane Katrina, Jaisun has worked closely with the New Orleans Musicians Clinic and other organizations, both as photographer and fund-raiser."

It was an honor to actually sit down and spend some time with Jef. He's a great guy and I admire his vision in photographing blues and rock & roll artists. I hope the readers of this will encourage him to publish a photo book some day soon. The world would be enriched by such a project.

Why Mommy Is A Democrat

2007-01-07T14:23:00.000-08:00

I ran across this kid's book while surfing the web and thought it was really funny. It has inestimable kitsch value and the price is only $10. You can even use PayPal to buy it. Here follows the publisher's description of the book:

Why Mommy Is A Democrat brings to life the core values of the Democratic party in ways that young children will easily understand and thoroughly enjoy. Using plain and non-judgmental language, along with warm and whimsical illustrations, this colorful 28-page paperback depicts the Democratic principles of fairness, tolerance, peace, and concern for the well-being of others. It's a great way for parents to gently communicate their commitment to these principles and explain their support for the party.

Why Mommy Is A Democrat may look like a traditional children's book, but it isn't just for children. With numerous subtle (and not-so-subtle) satirical swipes at the Bush administration and the Republican party, Why Mommy Is A Democrat will appeal to Democrats of all ages! Finally, a portion of the profits will be donated to Democratic candidates and party organizations, so your purchase will help make an immediate difference!

Israel Plans Nuclear War on Iran

2007-01-06T19:23:00.000-08:00

Times Online
January 7, 2007

Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear "bunker-busters", according to several Israeli military sources.

The attack would be the first with nuclear weapons since 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Israeli weapons would each have a force equivalent to one-fifteenth of the Hiroshima bomb.

Under the plans, conventional laser-guided bombs would open "tunnels" into the targets. "Mini-nukes" would then immediately be fired into a plant at Natanz, exploding deep underground to reduce the risk of radioactive fallout.

"As soon as the green light is given, it will be one mission, one strike and the Iranian nuclear project will be demolished," said one of the sources.

The plans, disclosed to The Sunday Times last week, have been prompted in part by the Israeli intelligence service Mossad’s assessment that Iran is on the verge of producing enough enriched uranium to make nuclear weapons within two years.

Israeli military commanders believe conventional strikes may no longer be enough to annihilate increasingly well-defended enrichment facilities. Several have been built beneath at least 70ft of concrete and rock. However, the nuclear-tipped bunker-busters would be used only if a conventional attack was ruled out and if the United States declined to intervene, senior sources said.

Israeli and American officials have met several times to consider military action. Military analysts said the disclosure of the plans could be intended to put pressure on Tehran to halt enrichment, cajole America into action or soften up world opinion in advance of an Israeli attack.

Some analysts warned that Iranian retaliation for such a strike could range from disruption of oil supplies to the West to terrorist attacks against Jewish targets around the world.

Israel has identified three prime targets south of Tehran which are believed to be involved in Iran's nuclear programme:

Natanz, where thousands of centrifuges are being installed for uranium enrichment

A uranium conversion facility near Isfahan where, according to a statement by an Iranian vice-president last week, 250 tons of gas for the enrichment process have been stored in tunnels

A heavy water reactor at Arak, which may in future produce enough plutonium for a bomb

Israeli officials believe that destroying all three sites would delay Iran's nuclear programme indefinitely and prevent them from having to live in fear of a "Second Holocaust".

Suicide Cult Waiting to Happen

2007-01-04T05:51:00.000-08:00

Washington Post
January 4, 2007

Parishioners of the The Falls Church and neighboring Truro Church -- which in Colonial times belonged to a single parish -- say it happens quietly, unobtrusively: As the sick make their way to the altar, some worshipers begin speaking in tongues. Occasionally, one is "arrested in the spirit," falling unconscious into the arms of a fellow congregant.

Dean Miller, pastor of the young adult ministry at The Falls Church, said some members also have "visions of the Lord" during healing services. "I don't. I'm not gifted that way. But there are people in the community who do," he said.

For more than 30 years, Truro and The Falls Church have been part of a "charismatic revival" within mainline Protestantism, said the Rev. Robert W. Prichard, professor of Christianity in America at the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria.

Charismatic, in this case, refers to an ecstatic style of worship that includes speaking in tongues, a stream of unintelligible syllables signifying that the Holy Spirit has entered the worshiper. It is a hallmark of the fast-growing Pentecostal movement but unusual for Episcopalians, who are so thoroughly associated with solemnity and tradition that they are sometimes referred to teasingly as "the frozen chosen."

The Falls Church are two of the Washington area's most wealthy, historic and prestigious congregations. Their pews are studded on Sunday mornings with such regulars as Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and former CIA director Porter J. Goss.

Evangelist Predicts "Mass Killing"

2007-01-02T22:35:00.000-08:00

New York Times
January 2, 2007

In what has become an annual tradition of prognostications, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson said Tuesday God has told him that a terrorist attack on the United States would result in "mass killing" late in 2007. "I'm not necessarily saying it's going to be nuclear," he said during his news-and-talk television show "The 700 Club" on the Christian Broadcasting Network. "The Lord didn't say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that." Robertson said God told him during a recent prayer retreat that major cities and possibly millions of people will be affected by the attack, which should take place sometime after September.

Robertson said God also told him that the U.S. only feigns friendship with Israel and that U.S. policies are pushing Israel toward "national suicide."

Robertson suggested in January 2006 that God punished then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with a stroke for ceding Israeli-controlled land to the Palestinians.

The broadcaster predicted in January 2004 that President Bush would easily win re-election. Bush won 51 percent of the vote that fall, beating Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.

In 2005, Robertson predicted that Bush would have victory after victory in his second term. He said Social Security reform proposals would be approved and Bush would nominate conservative judges to federal courts.

Lawmakers confirmed Bush's 2005 nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. But the president's Social Security initiative was stalled.

"I have a relatively good track record," he said. "Sometimes I miss."

In May, Robertson said God told him that storms and possibly a tsunami were to crash into America's coastline in 2006. Even though the U.S. was not hit with a tsunami, Robertson on Tuesday cited last spring's heavy rains and flooding in New England as partly fulfilling the prediction.

Constitutional Crisis!

2007-01-01T23:04:00.000-08:00

John G. Roberts Jr. & President George W. Bush
New York Times
January 1, 2007

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. made judicial pay the sole topic of his second annual report, issued on Sunday, declaring that the failure by Congress to raise federal judges’ salaries in recent years has become a “constitutional crisis” that puts the future of the federal courts in jeopardy.

By statute, federal district judges receive the same salaries as members of Congress, now $165,200 a year. Judges on the federal appeals courts receive $175,100; associate justices of the Supreme Court, $203,000; and the chief justice $212,100. The linkage of district judges’ and Congressional salaries means that judges pay the price when members of Congress discern that it would be politically unpopular to raise their own pay.

My God! I don't know how they can afford to live on these wages! $165,000.00 a year works out to $82.60 an hour, assuming they work 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year. And $212,100 per annum works out to $106.05 per hour. No wonder the food banks are constantly having shortages.

UFO Sighting at O'Hare Airport

2007-01-01T22:31:00.000-08:00

Chicago Tribune
January 1, 2007

A flying saucer-like object hovered low over O'Hare International Airport for several minutes before bolting through thick clouds with such intense energy that it left an eerie hole in overcast skies, said some United Airlines employees who observed the phenomenon. Was it an alien spaceship? A weather balloon lost in the airspace over the world's second-busiest airport? A top-secret military craft? Or simply a reflection from lights that played a trick on the eyes?

Officials at United professed no knowledge of the Nov. 7 event--which was reported to the airline by as many as a dozen of its own workers--when the Tribune started asking questions recently. But the Federal Aviation Administration said its air traffic control tower at O'Hare did receive a call from a United supervisor asking if controllers had spotted a mysterious elliptical-shaped craft sitting motionless over Concourse C of the United terminal.

Some of the witnesses, interviewed by the Tribune, said they are upset that neither the government nor the airline is probing the incident. Whatever the object was, it could have interfered with O'Hare's radar and other equipment, and even created a collision risk, they said.

The Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (the term that extraterrestrial-watchers nowadays prefer over Unidentified Flying Object) was first seen by a United ramp worker who was directing back a United plane at Gate C17, according to an account the worker provided to the National UFO Reporting Center.

The sighting occurred during daylight, about 4:30 p.m., just before sunset.

All the witnesses said the object was dark gray and well defined in the overcast skies. They said the craft, estimated by different accounts to be 6 feet to 24 feet in diameter, did not display any lights. Some said it looked like a rotating Frisbee, while others said it did not appear to be spinning. All agreed the object made no noise and it was at a fixed position in the sky, just below the 1,900-foot cloud deck, until shooting off into the clouds.

"I tend to be scientific by nature, and I don't understand why aliens would hover over a busy airport," said a United mechanic who was in the cockpit of a Boeing 777 that he was taxiing to a maintenance hangar when he observed the metallic-looking object above Gate C17. "But I know that what I saw and what a lot of other people saw stood out very clearly, and it definitely was not an [Earth] aircraft," the mechanic said.

One United employee appeared emotionally shaken by the sighting and "experienced some religious issues" over it, one co-worker said.

Happy New Year Digital Graffiti!

2006-12-31T21:33:00.000-08:00

Wishing you a very Happy New Year with abundance and good fortune!

Saddam Hussein's Final Statement

2006-12-29T21:05:00.000-08:00

December 29, 2006

In the past, I was, as you all know, in the battlefield of jihad and struggle.

God, exalted by He, wished that I face the same again in the same manner and the same spirit in which we were before the revolution but with a problem that is greater and harsher.

Oh beloved, this harsh situation, which we and our great Iraq are facing, is a new lesson and a new trial for the people by which to be judged, each depending on their intention, so that it becomes an identifier before God and the people in the present and after our current situation becomes a glorious history.

It is, above all, the foundation upon which the success of the future phases of history can be built.

In this situation and in no other, the veritable are the honest and faithful and the opposing are the false.

When the insignificant people use the power given to them by the foreigners to oppress their own people, they are but worthless and lowly. In our country only good must result from what we are experiencing.

To the great nation, to the people of our country, and humanity: Many of you have known the writer of this letter to be faithful, honest, caring for others, wise, of sound judgment, just, decisive, careful with the wealth of the people and the state… and that his heart is big enough to embrace all without discrimination.

His heart aches for the poor and he does not rest until he helps in improving their condition and attends to their needs.

His heart contains all his people and his nation, and he craves to be honest and faithful without differentiating between his people except on the basis of their efforts, efficiency, and patriotism.

'Sacrifice'

Here I am speaking today in your name and for your eyes and the eyes of our nation and the eyes of the just, the people of the truth, wherever their banner is hoisted.

You have known your brother and leader very well and he never bowed to the despots and, in accordance with the wishes of those who loved him, remained a sword and a banner.

This is how you want your brother, son or leader to be… and those who will lead you (in the future) should have the same qualifications.

Here, I offer my soul to God as a sacrifice, and if He wants, He will send it to heaven with the martyrs, or, He will postpone that… so let us be patient and depend on Him against the unjust nations.

In spite of all the difficulties and the storms which we and Iraq had to face, before and after the revolution, God the Almighty did not want death for Saddam Hussein.

But if He wants it this time, it (Saddam’s life) is His creation. He created it and He protected it until now.

Thus, by its martyrdom, He will be bringing glory to a faithful soul, for there were souls that were younger than Saddam Hussein that had departed and had taken this path before him. If He wants it martyred, we thank Him and offer Him gratitude, before and after.

'The enemies'

The enemies of your country, the invaders and the Persians, found that your unity stands as a barrier between them and your enslavement.

They planted and grounded their hateful old and new wedge between you.

The strangers who are carrying the Iraqi citizenship, whose hearts are empty or filled with the hatred that was planted in them by Iran, responded to it, but how wrong they were to think that they could divide the noble among our people, weaken your determination, and fill the hearts of the sons of the nation with hatred against each other, instead of against their true enemies that will lead them in one direction to fight under the banner of God is great: The great flag of the people and the nation.

Remember that God has enabled you to become an example of love, forgiveness and brotherly co-existence…

I call on you not to hate because hate does not leave a space for a person to be fair and it makes you blind and closes all doors of thinking and keeps away one from balanced thinking and making the right choice …

I also call on you not to hate the peoples of the other countries that attacked us and differentiate between the decision-makers and peoples…

'Forgiveness'

Anyone who repents - whether in Iraq or abroad - you must forgive him…

You should know that among the aggressors, there are people who support your struggle against the invaders, and some of them volunteered for the legal defence of prisoners, including Saddam Hussein…

Some of these people wept profusely when they said goodbye to me…

Dear faithful people, I say goodbye to you, but I will be with the merciful God who helps those who take refuge in him and who will never disappoint any faithful, honest believer… God is Great… God is great… Long live our nation… Long live our great struggling people…

Long live Iraq, long live Iraq… Long live Palestine… Long live jihad and the mujahideen.

[signed]
Saddam Hussein
President and Commander in Chief of the Iraqi Mujahid Armed Forces

[Additional note:]

I have written this letter because the lawyers told me that the so-called criminal court - established and named by the invaders - will allow the so-called defendants the chance for a last word.

But that court and its chief judge did not give us the chance to say a word, and issued its verdict without explanation and read out the sentence - dictated by the invaders - without presenting the evidence.

I wanted the people to know this.

Read My Lips: No Nation Building

2006-12-27T10:27:00.000-08:00

George W. Bush, Oct. 3, 2000:

"If we don't have a clear vision of the military, if we don't stop extending our troops all around the world and nation building missions, then we're going to have a serious problem coming down the road, and I'm going to prevent that."

"The vice president (Al Gore) and I have a disagreement about the use of troops. He believes in nation building. I believe the role of the military is to fight and win war and therefore prevent war from happening in the first place."

George W. Bush, Oct. 11, 2000:

"I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation-building."

"I think what we need to do is convince people who live in the lands they live in to build the nations. Maybe I'm missing something here. I mean, we're going to have kind of a nation-building corps from America? Absolutely not."

"I'm not so sure the role of the United States is to go around the world and say this is the way it's got to be. I want to help people help themselves, not have government tell people what to do. I just don't think it's the role of the United States to walk into a country and say, we do it this way, so should you."

Bush's Time Table Flip Flop

2006-12-26T02:16:00.000-08:00

In 1999, George W. Bush criticized President Clinton for not setting a timetable for exiting Kosovo:

George W. Bush, 4/9/99:

"Victory means exit strategy, and it’s important for the president to explain to us what the exit strategy is."

George W. Bush, 6/5/99:

"I think it’s also important for the president to lay out a timetable as to how long they will be involved and when they will be withdrawn."

Yet, more recently...

George W. Bush, 6/24/05:

"It doesn’t make any sense to have a timetable. You know, if you give a timetable, you’re — you’re conceding too much to the enemy."

James Brown 1933-2006

2006-12-25T03:31:00.000-08:00

Reuters
December 25, 2006

Singer James Brown, the "Godfather of Soul," who billed himself as the hardest working man in show business, died on Monday at age 73, his manager said. James Brown died at 1:45 a.m. (0645 GMT) at Emory Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta after being admitted there on Saturday for treatment of severe pneumonia, his manager, Frank Copsidas, said. Charles Bobbit, Brown's longtime friend and personal manager, was at his side, he said.

James Brown was born on May 3, 1933 in Macon, Georgia and was raised in Augusta. The singer, also known as "Mr. Dynamite," is credited with bringing the word "funk" into mainstream musical vernacular and influencing a new generation of black music. Rap and hip hop artists revered him for the grooves he was able to produce as a band leader and used his beats extensively as the backdrop to their own songs. He had more than 119 charting singles and recorded over 50 albums, was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame and received a lifetime achievement award from the Grammys in 1992. He even played the role of a manic preacher in the hit 1980 movie "The Blues Brothers."

His first Top 40 hit was "Think" which entered the charts on May 30, 1960 and was released on the now legendary Federal label. It was to be his last single to chart on the Federal label though, as he was moved over to Federal's sister label King, where he continued to chart until 1971 before moving to Polydor Records.

Every record he made during 1960-77 reached the top 100. Big hits included "Please, Please, Please," "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," "I Got You (I Feel Good)" "Get Up (I feel like being a Sex Machine)" and "It's a Man's World." His 1985 monster hit "Living in America," which was featured in the movie "Rocky IV," brought him a whole new generation of fans and his first Grammy.

He combined his soul-rending music with a theatrical delivery. He also developed a trademark routine in which he would keep coming back on stage after a show and sing a few lines of "Please, Please, Please" with the sweat pouring from his bare-chested body. This routine was copied in tribute by Micky Dolenz of the Monkees during the group's 1967 tours. His stage crew would throw a cape over his back and he would leave, only to reappear seconds later on his knees, moaning the song into the microphone. The routine would sometimes go on for 30-40 minutes and send his fans delirious.

"Ninety percent of the stuff you see on television is all sex, and they kill 30 people in a 30 minute show, almost before you see the title of the show. They worried about me? I was trying to make people happy."

Dick Cheney To Testify In CIA Leak Trial

2006-12-19T16:34:00.000-08:00

Reuters
December 19, 2006

Vice President Dick Cheney will be called to testify as a defense witness at the trial of his former top aide who is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice in the CIA leak case, a defense lawyer said on Tuesday. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff, is accused of lying to investigators as they sought to find out who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame in 2003 after her diplomat husband accused the Bush administration of manipulating intelligence to build its case for invading Iraq.

"We're calling the vice president," defense lawyer Theodore Wells said at a hearing ahead of the trial, which is scheduled to start on January 16. Wells disclosed the defense plan after special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald told U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton that the prosecution did not intend to call Cheney.

"We've cooperated fully in this matter and we'll continue to do so," said Lea Anne McBride, a spokeswoman for the vice president, declining further comment on the proceedings. Cheney would be the most eagerly anticipated witness of the trial, which is expected to last up to six weeks with testimony likely from a number of other current or former top administration officials. Both Cheney and President George W. Bush were interviewed by prosecutors as part of the investigation by Fitzgerald into who in the Bush administration leaked Plame's identity to the news media. In May, Fitzgerald said in court papers that Cheney could be called to testify because his hand-written notes appeared on a July 6, 2003, article written by Plame's husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson, that accused the administration of twisting intelligence before the war in Iraq.

Fitzgerald gave no explanation at the hearing of why he had decided not to call Cheney as a prosecution witness. According to the indictment, Libby learned from Cheney himself on June 12, 2003, that Wilson's wife worked in the counterproliferation division of the CIA. Libby has pleaded not guilty to the five counts that accuse him of obstructing justice, perjury and lying. His main defense is that he was so busy in Cheney's office working on important national security issues that he simply did not remember all details of his conversations with reporters about Plame.

Woman Beaten By Israelis On Jerusalem Bus

2006-12-18T14:59:00.000-08:00

Haaretz.com
December 18th, 2006

A woman who reported a vicious attack by an ad-hoc "modesty patrol" on a Jerusalem bus last month is now lining up support for her case and may be included in a petition to the High Court of Justice over the legality of sex-segregated buses.

Miriam Shear says she was traveling to pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City early on November 24 when a group of ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) men attacked her for refusing to move to the back of the Egged No. 2 bus. She is now in touch with several legal advocacy and women's organizations, and at the same time, waiting for the police to apprehend her attackers.

In her first interview since the incident, Shear says that on the bus three weeks ago, she was slapped, kicked, punched and pushed by a group of men who demanded that she sit in the back of the bus with the other women. The bus driver, in response to a media inquiry, denied that violence was used against her, but Shear's account has been substantiated by an unrelated eyewitness on the bus who confirmed that she sustained an unprovoked "severe beating."

Shear, an American-Israeli woman who currently lives in Canada, says that on a recent five-week vacation to Israel, she rode the bus daily to the Old City to pray at sunrise. Though not defined by Egged as a sex-segregated "mehadrin" bus, women usually sit in the back, while men sit in the front, as a matter of custom.

"Every two or three days, someone would tell me to sit in the back, sometimes politely and sometimes not," she recalled this week in a telephone interview. "I was always polite and said 'No. This is not a synagogue. I am not going to sit in the back.'"

But Shear, a 50-year-old religious woman, says that on the morning of the 24th, a man got onto the bus and demanded her seat - even though there were a number of other seats available in the front of the bus.

"I said, I'm not moving and he said, 'I'm not asking you, I'm telling you.' Then he spat in my face and at that point, I was in high adrenaline mode and called him a son-of-a-bitch, which I am not proud of. Then I spat back. At that point, he pushed me down and people on the bus were screaming that I was crazy. Four men surrounded me and slapped my face, punched me in the chest, pulled at my clothes, beat me, kicked me. My snood [hair covering] came off. I was fighting back and kicked one of the men in his privates. I will never forget the look on his face."

Shear says that when she bent down in the aisle to retrieve her hair covering, "one of the men kicked me in the face. Thank God he missed my eye. I got up and punched him. I said, 'I want my hair covering back' but he wouldn't give it to me, so I took his black hat and threw it in the aisle."

'Stupid American'

Throughout the encounter, Shear says the bus driver "did nothing." The other passengers, she says, blamed her for not moving to the back of the bus and called her a "stupid American with no sechel [common sense.] People blamed me for not knowing my place and not going to the back of the bus where I belong."

According to Yehoshua Meyer, the eyewitness to the incident, Shear's account is entirely accurate. "I saw everything," he said. "Someone got on the bus and demanded that she go to the back, but she didn't agree. She was badly beaten and her whole body sustained hits and kicks. She tried to fight back and no one would help her. I tried to help, but someone was stopping me from getting up. My phone's battery was dead, so I couldn't call the police. I yelled for the bus driver to stop. He stopped once, but he didn't do anything. When we finally got to the Kotel [Western Wall], she was beaten badly and I helped her go to the police."

Shear says that when she first started riding the No. 2 line, she did not even know that it was sometimes sex-segregated. She also says that sitting in the front is simply more comfortable. "I'm a 50-year-old woman and I don't like to sit in the back. I'm dressed appropriately and I was on a public bus."

"It is very dangerous for a group of people to take control over a public entity and enforce their will without going through due process," she said. "Even if they [Haredim who want a segregated bus] are a majority - and I don't think they are - they have options available. They can petition Egged or hire their own private line. But as long as it's a public bus, I don't care if there are 500 people telling me where to sit. I can sit wherever I want and so can anyone else."

Meyer says that throughout the incident, the other passengers blamed Shear for not sitting in the back. "They'll probably claim that she attacked them first, but that's totally untrue. She was abused terribly, and I've never seen anything like it."

Word of Shear's story traveled quickly after she forwarded an e-mail detailing her experience. She has been contacted by a number of groups, including Shatil, the New Israel Fund's Empowerment and Training Center for Social Change; Kolech, a religious women's forum; the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), the legal advocacy arm of the local Reform movement; and the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA).

In the coming month, IRAC will be submitting a petition to the High Court of Justice against the Transportation Ministry over the issue of segregated Egged buses. IRAC attorney Orly Erez-Likhovski is in touch with Shear and is considering including her in the petition.

Although the No. 2 Jerusalem bus where the incident occurred is not actually defined as a mehadrin line, Erez-Likhovski says that Shear's story is further proof that the issue requires legal clarification. About 30 Egged buses are designated as mehadrin, mostly on inter-city lines, but they are not marked to indicate this. "There's no way to identify a mehadrin bus, which in itself is a problem," she said.

"Theoretically, a person can sit wherever they want, even on a mehadrin line, but we're seeing that people are enforcing [the gender segregation] even on non-mehadrin lines and that's the part of the danger," she said.

On a mehadrin bus, women enter and exit through the rear door, and the seats from the rear door back are generally considered the "women's section." A child is usually sent forward to pay the driver.

A spokesperson for the Jerusalem police said the case is still under investigation.

Bigfoot Sasquatch Yeti Photographed

2006-12-17T02:06:00.000-08:00

Rumors of a human-chimpanzee hybrid have abounded for centuries. Chimps and humans are so genetically similar as to be nearly indistinguishable, appearances aside. Science estimates that about 95-99% of our genetic code is identical to that of a chimpanzee. The similarity is roughly equivalent to the difference between donkeys and horses.

The most widely discussed "humanzee" sighting was a critter named "Oliver." Oliver was a sideshow star, but he wasn't like the other chimps in the traveling circus circuit. He was said to have come from somewhere in the Congo, although that claim is somewhat shrouded in mystery at this late date. Oliver didn't like hanging out with his own alleged species and preferred the company of humans. He walked upright, he sat in chairs. He helped around the house with chores, and eventually he began hitting on the circus owner's wife, which led to his sale in 1976 to a New York lawyer named Michael Miller.

According to Miller, blood tests revealed Oliver had 47 chromosomes — one more than a human and one less than a chimp. The odd number of chromosomes would also strongly suggest hybridization of some sort. (The claim was later disproved.)

Fortunately, perhaps due to a surplus of cute little bunnies, Oliver was never required to test the effects of eating eyeliner or having suntan lotion intravenously injected. Oliver probably didn't see the bright side of this, as he was confined for seven years in a 5-by-7 cage until his muscles atrophied for lack of ability to move.

Oliver was retired from the lab in 1996 and sent to a chimp retirement home. He was finally called in for credible scientific testing, which insisted that he was really just a "normal chimp" with 48 chromosomes, an explanation which satisfied absolutely no one except a bunch of killjoy skeptics. Other scientists have continued to push for more research.

In a related story, a sasquatch was hit by a car...

TURNER, Maine -- In this photo provided by Michelle O'Donnell, a creature that was found dead after apparently being hit by a car in Turner, Maine, is shown. For the past 15 years, residents across Androscoggin County have reported seeing and hearing a mysterious animal with chilling monstrous cries and eyes that glow in the night. Now, residents are wondering if the animal found dead over the weekend may be the mysterious creature that has mauled dogs, frightened residents and been the subject of local legend for half a generation. (08/21/06 AP Photo/Courtesy of Michelle O'Donnell via The Sun Journal)

Ahmet Ertegun 1923-2006

2006-12-16T01:53:00.000-08:00

Reuters
December 14, 2006

Ahmet Ertegun, whose passion for America's black music inspired him to launch Atlantic Records and the careers of acts ranging from Ray Charles to Aretha Franklin, died in New York on Thursday, the record label said. He was born in Istanbul, Turkey, on July 31, 1923. His father, a lawyer, served as Turkish ambassador in Switzerland, France, England and the United States.

With his older brother Nesuhi, he explored black neighborhoods in Washington and they amassed more than 20,000 78 rpm records. Realizing that he knew more about music than most label owners, he co-founded Atlantic in 1947 with blues expert Herb Abramson and a $10,000 loan from a Turkish dentist. Its first smash was a 1948 rerecording by bluesman Stick McGhee of the novelty ditty "Drinking Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee." Nesuhi came aboard in 1956, and established the jazz division, producing the likes of John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, and the Modern Jazz Quartet.

Ertegun and his second wife, Romanian-born interior designer Mica had no children. The avid collectors had homes in Manhattan, the Hamptons, Paris and Turkey. He will be buried during a private ceremony in Turkey, and a memorial service will be held in New York next year. Atlantic said the tireless socialite and deal-maker had been in a coma at Weill Cornell Medical Center since October, when he slipped backstage at a New York concert by the Rolling Stones, who recorded for the label during the 1970s.

One key to Atlantic's early success was its artist-friendly nature. When Ray Charles, who signed to Atlantic in 1953, was on the road and felt inspired to record, Ertegun and producer Jerry Wexler would fly out to him. Thus were born such gems as "I've Got A Woman" and "What'd I Say." Atlantic solidified its status as the dominant label of its time when it partnered in the 1960s with Memphis-based Stax Records to bring southern soul musicians such as Redding, Sam & Dave, Isaac Hayes and Booker T. & the MGs to worldwide fame.Atlantic's roster included huge stars: Professor Longhair, the Drifters, Led Zeppelin, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Cream, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Dusty Springfield, Genesis, AC/DC, the Bee Gees, Bette Midler, the Allman Brothers Band, the Three Tenors and Hootie and the Blowfish.

One night he would hobnob with high-powered friends like Henry Kissinger and David Geffen and speak in his aristocratic accent. The next, he would relate unprintable anecdotes to impressionable young rock stars he was trying to sign to the label, outdrinking them in the process. He was one of the first recording executives to sell music by black artists to white youngsters looking for something exciting in the conformist Eisenhower era of the 1950s, and in so doing, he helped pioneer rock 'n' roll.

"From gospel, blues and jazz emerged R&B and rock & roll, the most popular music of all time," Ertegun wrote in 1997. "No music of any other country travels worldwide. Thanks to Black America for our great art form."

Rabbi Demands Christmas Trees Removed

2006-12-10T00:30:00.000-08:00

KING5.com
December 10, 2006

All of the Christmas trees inside the terminal at Seattle-Tacoma Airport have been removed in response to a complaint by a Jewish Rabbi.

The trees became an issue after Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky, affiliated with the Central Organization for Jewish Education Lubavitch, asked the airport to display an 8-foot tall menorah in the arrival hall beside the holiday tree and to allow a ceremony for the lighting of the menorah. Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky (with the Central Organization for Jewish Learning) hired an attorney and threatened to sue if the airport did not erect an eight-foot menorah wasn't put up, and gave a two-day deadline to remove the trees.

For more than 25 years, the airport has celebrated the holidays with Christmas trees over its entrances. But overnight, the Port of Seattle ordered all 15 trees removed. The Port of Seattle says it had little choice, given the threat of legal action. According to airport spokeswoman the two sides could not reach an agreement before the lawsuit was to be filed, so the trees were removed instead.

"You know, our focus is on customer service, getting our passengers through the airport, and we thought if we could take the trees down and avoid litigation because we don't want to litigate with this individual," Sea-Tac public affairs manager Terri-Ann Betancourt said.

Four-Year-Old Improperly Touches Teacher

2006-12-09T10:22:00.000-08:00

KXXV-TV News
December 9, 2006

A four-year-old hugged his teachers aide and was put into in-school suspension, according to the father. But La Vega school administrators have a different story. Damarcus Blackwell's four-year-old son was lining-up to get on the bus after school last month, when he was accused of rubbing his face in the chest of a female employee.

The prinicipal of La Vega Primary School sent a letter to the Blackwells that said the pre-kindergartener demonstrated "inappropriate physical behavior interpreted as sexual contact and/or sexual harassment."

Blackwell says it's ridiculous that the aide would misread a hug from a four-year-old. Blackwell wrote to administrators demanding that the whole incident be expunged from his son's academic file because his son is too young to know what it means to act sexually.

David Davis, the executive director of the Advocacy Center in Waco tends to agree with Blackwell. He says assuming the boy has not had sexual encounters, or been inappropriately exposed to pornography, most four-year-olds are sexually innocent.

Blackwell got a response from the La Vega administration. The sexual references on the discipline referral were removed. But the thing that makes Blackwell most upset is they told him "your request for an apology by the aide and removal of all paperwork regarding this incident is denied." Now the young student's file will refer to the incident as "inappropriate physical contact" and Blackwell says he will continue to fight the district.

Congress To Work 5 Days a Week

2006-12-06T14:21:00.000-08:00

Washington Post
December 6, 2006

Forget the minimum wage. Or outsourcing jobs overseas. The labor issue most on the minds of members of Congress yesterday was their own: They will have to work five days a week starting in January. The horror!

Rep. Steny H. Hoyer, the Maryland Democrat who will become House majority leader and is writing the schedule for the next Congress, said members should expect longer hours than the brief week they have grown accustomed to. Next year, members of the House will be expected in the Capitol for votes each week by 6:30 p.m. Monday and will finish their business about 2 p.m. Friday, Hoyer said.

"I have bad news for you," Hoyer told reporters. "Those trips you had planned in January, forget 'em. We will be working almost every day in January, starting with the 4th." The reporters groaned. "I know, it's awful, isn't it?" Hoyer empathized.

"It's long overdue," said Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.), who lives in Napa Valley and will have to leave his home at 3 a.m. on Sundays to catch a flight to Washington in time for work Mondays. "I didn't come here to turn around and go back home."

"Keeping us up here eats away at families," said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), who typically flies home on Thursdays and returns to Washington on Tuesdays. "Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families -- that's what this says."

Iraq Study Group Report

2006-12-06T09:38:00.000-08:00

Guardian Unlimited
December 6, 2006

Skip all the commentary & spin; read the actual Iraq Study Group Report.

GOP Official Arrested For Child Rape

2006-12-04T19:51:00.000-08:00

Seattle Times
December 1, 2006

Fifty four year old Larry Corrigan, who was the Director of Operations and Budget of the King County Prosecutor's Office for 25 years and a close friend and the driver of Prosecuting Attorney Norm Maleng, allegedly used internet chat rooms to solicit sex from an officer posing as a 13-year-old girl.

Larry Corrigan was arrested Wednesday and booked into King County Jail for investigation of attempted child rape and communicating with a minor for immoral purposes. Seattle police said Corrigan used two America Online screen names to chat with an undercover officer in the Internet Crimes Against Children Unit who was posing as a 13-year-old girl. Police said Corrigan asked the girl to meet him and perform a particular sex act and bragged that he'd had sex with another teen.

Police also allege that Corrigan sent the fictitious girl pornography and arranged to meet her at a video store on Capitol Hill Wednesday, where police arrested him. Court documents say Corrigan bragged he'd already "had sex with a 14-year-old girl from Kansas."

Corrigan was active in the election campaigns of numerous local Republican officials including Norm Maleng, U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert, former City Attorney Mark Sidran and judges Mary Yu, Bobbe Bridge and Faith Ireland. Larry Corrigan also was the Deputy Treasurer in Dave Reichert's 1997 and 2001 runs for King County sheriff. He was also a supporter without an official role in Reichert's congressional campaigns. Neither Corrigan nor Norm Maleng could not be reached for comment.

Larry Corrigan was released on his own recognizance; it helps to be friends with Dave Reichert.

Child Molestor Blames Bingo For Crimes

2006-12-04T19:31:00.000-08:00

Associated Press
December 4, 2006

A man who pleaded guilty to molesting two girls told a judge he did it because of his wife's excessive bingo playing. "My wife was never home," Floyd Kinney Jr. said during his plea hearing Friday. Kinney's explanation did not sit well with Northampton County Judge F.P. Kimberly McFadden.

"Some people, when their wives are not home, decide to do other things, like clean their living rooms," McFadden said. "Your behavior is beyond the pale." Kinney, 49, said his wife would sometimes argue with him over money and that he was angry she was spending too much on bingo.

"She would be going to bingo three, four times a week. I told her to stop going to bingo, and she said, 'If they had bingo every day, I'd go every day,'" he said.

Records say Kinney molested one of the girls, now 26, from 1992-97. He sexually assaulted the second girl, now 17, for a year beginning in January 2005, records show. Kinney pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated indecent assault. The felony charges carry a combined maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $50,000 fine.

Defense attorney Richard Yetter said his client was not articulate and may not have been doing a good job of conveying his rationale to the judge. But McFadden said she found Kinney capable of explaining himself. "I think he is telling me exactly what was going on," the judge said. "His wife was not home so he was going to perpetrate on someone and he picked these two children."

AIPAC Case Update

2006-12-04T15:50:00.000-08:00

Washington Times
November 30, 2006

The judge has set a high bar for conviction in the AIPAC secrets case, telling prosecutors that they must show the two lobbyists charged under espionage laws knew that the U.S. would be hurt by disclosure of the material that they are accused of passing to reporters and Israeli officials.

The defendants, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, two lobbyists for the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, are charged with conspiring with a Department of Defense intelligence analyst to leak U.S. secrets in an apparent effort to influence U.S. policy toward Iran.

In a transcript of a recent pretrial hearing, made available Tuesday, the judge in the case makes it clear that prosecutors must prove intention, or what lawyers call "mens rea" -- Latin for "a guilty mind" -- for every element of the conspiracy.

"The Court imposed the requirement that the government prove that the defendant knew the information ... would harm the United States," Judge Thomas Ellis told the Nov. 16 hearing.

That matters, explains government transparency advocate Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, because it "distinguishes the activities with which they are charged from the routine activities of reporters and advocates who may made trade in classified information," but don't do so with the intention of harming U.S. security.

In a statement announcing the indictment, prosecutors charged that since at least April 1999, Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman had "use• their contacts within the U.S. government ... to gather sensitive U.S. government information, including classified information ... for subsequent unlawful communication, delivery, and transmission to persons not entitled to receive it."

The case has raised the hackles of civil liberties advocates who charge that overzealous prosecutors are abusing an overbroad statute designed to punish spies to criminalize the everyday behavior of reporters, lobbyists and researchers, all of whom occasionally trade in secrets -- the stock in trade of Washington's backroom policy process.

Jonathan Turley, professor of law at George Washington University, said the prosecution had "radically expanded the practical scope of national security law." He said it had always been understood that government employees who leaked were in criminal jeopardy, but not the reporters -- or in this case, lobbyists -- to whom they were leaking. He said the case was an effort to "criminalize the act of simply receiving classified information." [Read More]

Good Ole Fashioned American Terrorism

2006-12-02T13:39:00.000-08:00

Jackson Sun

Demetrius "Van" Crocker of McKenzie, convicted in April of attempting to obtain a chemical weapon and possession of stolen explosives, was sentenced to 30 years in prison Tuesday by U.S. District Judge James Todd in Jackson. Crocker, who told undercover FBI agents of his desire to explode a briefcase bomb while Congress was in session, was found guilty by a jury in about 90 minutes in April.

The 40-year-old farmhand and father of two was convicted of accepting what he thought were ingredients to make Sarin nerve gas and a block of C-4 explosive from undercover agents in October 2004. The maximum penalty Crocker could have faced for the convictions would have been a life sentence. Todd did order lifetime supervised release for Crocker once he gets out of prison.

In all, Crocker was convicted on five charges: one count of attempted possession of a chemical weapon, one count of inducing another person to acquire a chemical weapon, one count of possession of stolen explosives, one count of possession of explosive material with intent to harm an individual or damage or destroy a building, and one count of possession of an unregistered destructive device.

During the trial, prosecutors introduced video- and audio-taped conversations that Crocker had with undercover agents, laced with profanity, racial slurs and Crocker's open hatred of all things to do with the government.

If you want to learn more, the Memphis Flyer and the Bluelight have excellent coverage of the case.

Online Database of Informants & Agents

2006-12-02T08:45:00.000-08:00

Sure, they charge for their service but if you really need to know if that guy who's acting suspiciously and asking too many questions or keeps 'running into you' at places you rarely go to is an informant, traitor, spy, undercover cop, etc. then here's a helpful service that may be worth the price of a membership.

FBI Taps Cell Phone In Eavesdropping

2006-12-02T08:28:00.000-08:00

CNET News.com
December 1, 2006

The FBI appears to have begun using a novel form of electronic surveillance in criminal investigations: remotely activating a mobile phone's microphone and using it to eavesdrop on nearby conversations. The technique is called a "roving bug," and was approved by top U.S. Department of Justice officials for use against members of a New York organized crime family who were wary of conventional surveillance techniques such as tailing a suspect or wiretapping him.

The surveillance technique came to light in an opinion published this week by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan. He ruled that the "roving bug" was legal because federal wiretapping law is broad enough to permit eavesdropping even of conversations that take place near a suspect's cell phone. Kaplan's opinion said that the eavesdropping technique "functioned whether the phone was powered on or off." Some handsets can't be fully powered down without removing the battery; for instance, some Nokia models will wake up when turned off if an alarm is set.

The U.S. Commerce Department's security office warns that "a cellular telephone can be turned into a microphone and transmitter for the purpose of listening to conversations in the vicinity of the phone." An article in the Financial Times last year said mobile providers can "remotely install a piece of software on to any handset, without the owner's knowledge, which will activate the microphone even when its owner is not making a call."

Nextel and Samsung handsets and the Motorola Razr are especially vulnerable to software downloads that activate their microphones, said James Atkinson, a counter-surveillance consultant who has worked closely with government agencies. "They can be remotely accessed and made to transmit room audio all the time," he said. "You can do that without having physical access to the phone." Because modern handsets are miniature computers, downloaded software could modify the usual interface that always displays when a call is in progress. The spyware could then place a call to the FBI and activate the microphone--all without the owner knowing it happened.

The FBI declined to comment. [Read More]

Ancient Computer Surprises Scientists

2006-11-29T12:24:00.000-08:00

New York Times
November 29, 2006

Fragments of the Antikythera Mechanism, shown above, have now been examined with the latest in high-resolution imaging systems and three-dimensional X-ray tomography. But a century ago, pieces of a strange mechanism with bronze gears and dials were recovered from an ancient shipwreck off the coast of Greece.

Historians of science concluded that this was an instrument that calculated and illustrated astronomical information, particularly phases of the Moon and planetary motions, in the second century B.C.

The Antikythera Mechanism, sometimes called the world’s first computer, has now been examined with the latest in high-resolution imaging systems and three-dimensional X-ray tomography. A team of British, Greek and American researchers was able to decipher many inscriptions and reconstruct the gear functions, revealing, they said, “an unexpected degree of technical sophistication for the period.”

The researchers, led by Tony Freeth and Mike G. Edmunds, both of the University of Cardiff, Wales, are reporting the results of their study in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature.

They said their findings showed that the inscriptions related to lunar-solar motions and the gears were a mechanical representation of the irregularities of the Moon’s orbital course across the sky, as theorized by the astronomer Hipparchos. They established the date of the mechanism at 150-100 B.C.

The Roman ship carrying the artifacts sank off the island of Antikythera around 65 B.C. Some evidence suggests that the ship had sailed from Rhodes. The researchers speculated that Hipparchos, who lived on Rhodes, might have had a hand in designing the device.

America's First Gay President

2006-11-27T21:20:00.000-08:00

Doctors Refuse To Examine Man's Cervix

2006-11-27T10:07:00.000-08:00

Telegraph
By Celia Hall, Medical Editor

A family doctor has been summoned to a formal hearing over his refusal to put a 34-year-old male patient on the list for screening for cervical cancer. The man, who has fathered a child, believes he is a hermaphrodite although his doctors have examined him and can find no evidence for this. However, they did agree to his request to be re-registered with a female name.

He first wanted a cervical examination and was refused because he did not have a cervix. He then asked to be put on the list for regular screening. One doctor in the practice said: "We are worried that the PCT is so falling over backwards to be patient-friendly, that it has gone too far the other way. Silly things are starting to happen."

The wife of one of the GPs, told The Telegraph she had every sympathy for people who believe they had the body of the wrong gender but the decision to investigate the refusal was political correctness taken to extremes. She said her husband, who has been a GP for 30 years and who trains young doctors would be "pleased to hear from anyone, medical or otherwise, who could teach him the correct way to carry out a cervical smear on a 34-year-old male".

Ambien Can Cure Vegetative States

2006-11-24T04:39:00.000-08:00

Guardian Unlimited
September 12, 2006

For three years, Riaan Bolton has lain motionless, his eyes open but unseeing. After a devastating car crash doctors said he would never again see or speak or hear. Now his mother, Johanna, dissolves a pill in a little water on a teaspoon and forces it gently into his mouth. Within half an hour, as if a switch has been flicked in his brain, Riaan looks around his home in the South African town of Kimberley and says, "Hello." Shortly after his accident, Johanna had turned down the option of letting him die.

Three hundred miles away, Louis Viljoen, a young man who had once been cruelly described by a doctor as "a cabbage", greets me with a mischievous smile and a streetwise four-move handshake. Until he took the pill, he too was supposed to be in what doctors call a persistent vegetative state.

It all sounds miraculous, you might think. And in a way, it is. But this is not a miracle medication, the result of groundbreaking neurological research. Instead, these awakenings have come as the result of an accidental discovery by a dedicated - and bewildered - General Practitioner. They have all woken up, paradoxically, after being given a commonly used sleeping pill (marketed as Ambien).

Dr Ralf Clauss, a physician of nuclear medicine - the use of radioactive isotopes in diagnostic scans - at the Medical University of Southern Africa, contacted Nel to suggest carrying out a scan on Louis. "The results were so unbelievable that I got other colleagues to check my findings," says Clauss, who now works at the Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford. "We did scans before and after we gave Louis zolpidem. Areas that appeared black and dead beforehand began to light up with activity afterwards. I was dumbfounded - and I still am." [Read More]

OTO Accused Of Pedophilia & Child Porn

2006-11-21T16:37:00.000-08:00

TheAge.com.au
November 21, 2006

An anti-child sex campaigner accused an occult religious group of hosting parties at which naked children acted as waiters and at which members had sex with and murdered children, a tribunal was told yesterday.

The obscure group Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) claims Dr Reina Michaelson and the Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Program described it in a website article as a satanic cult that sacrificed children and ate their organs and blood.

It has complained under Victoria's religious hatred law that Dr Michaelson and her organisation vilified OTO members, causing revulsion, ridicule, hatred and contempt.

According to OTO's statement of complaint, Dr Michaelson said it was not a religion but a child pornography and pedophile ring, that its members practised trauma-based mind control, sexual abuse and satanic rituals to discourage its victims from complaining to the authorities, and that it condoned kidnapping street children and babies and children from orphanages for sex and sacrifice in religious rituals.

The case began at the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal yesterday, but was adjourned to today to allow a last-ditch attempt to settle out of court.

The article, still accessible on a website run from NSW, suggests senior politicians and television celebrities are part of a top-level pedophile ring and have been protected by some police. It says some members of the ring pretended to support Dr Michaelson's campaign and became board members of her group to subvert it from within.

Adam Paszkowski, for Dr Michaelson, who was named Young Australian of the Year in 1997 for founding the Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Program, said the article was published on the website "without her knowledge or consent or authority".

Dr Michaelson last year called for a royal commission to investigate her claims that Victoria Police did not properly investigate pedophile ring allegations.

Earlier complaints led to a report by the police ombudsman in 2004 that was highly critical of two senior detectives.

IDF Admits Targeting Civilian Areas With Cluster Bombs

2006-11-20T15:57:00.000-08:00

Haaretz
November 20, 2006

The Israel Defense Forces on Monday admitted for the first time to having targeted populated areas with cluster munitions during the recent war in Lebanon. The IDF Spokesman's Office said in a statement that "the use of cluster munitions against built-up areas was done only against military targets where rocket launches against Israel were identified and after taking steps to warn the civilian population." The upper echelons of the IDF ordered the use of cluster munitions during the war in Lebanon and authorized every target north of the Litani River, including those in densely populated areas, a commander in the IDF's Multiple Launch Rocket System unit said Monday.

As a result of this information, Defense Minister Amir Peretz ordered an "extensive inquiry" into the use of these munitions before the war's end.

MK Ran Cohen (Meretz), a reserves colonel who led an artillery support unit in the first Lebanon war, called the use of cluster bombs a "very unusual" measure. He added that in his experience, every such use must receive the approval of the division commander or even the regional general officer. "This is a very grave matter," Cohen said. "If cluster bombs were used in populated areas, it is an indescribable crime. There is no goal that can't be reached without the use of clusters. The massive use the IDF employed during the war testifies to a lack of control, to complete hysteria."

To date, roughly 58,000 unexploded bomblets have been discovered at about 800 different sites in southern Lebanon. Most are near populated areas. According to the officer, in order to compensate for the rockets' lack of precision, they were told to "flood" the area with them. "We have no option of striking an isolated target, and the commanders know this very well," he said. [Read More]

If I Didn't Do It, Here's How It Didn't Happen

2006-11-20T14:44:00.000-08:00

Newsday.com
November 20, 2006

In a surprise move, News Corporation has pulled the plug on both the forthcoming O.J. Simpson book and a scheduled two-part interview special that was to air next week. In a statement released a few minutes ago, News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch said, "I and senior management agree with the American public that this was an ill-considered project. We are sorry for any pain this has caused the families of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown-Simpson."

News of the book, "If I Did It, Here's How It Happened" - one of those as-told-to tomes in which Simpson was reportedly going to muse on how he might have killed his wife and her friend - caused an immediate firestorm, both within Fox and outside. Commentators on the Fox News Channel, like Bill O'Reilly, lambasted the decision to publish as well as air the companion special while there was believed to a considerable amount of teeth gnashing off-screen as well. In a matter of just a few days, the planned TV special had done considerable damage to the Fox network's relationship with affiliates - some of whom had planned to spike the two-part interview, scheduled for Nov. 27 and 29. Tribune's Fox affiliates as well as Sinclair's Fox affiliates were believed close to canceling plans to air the special as well.

Exactly what Simpson was to say in the book - scheduled for release late next week - remains shrouded in mystery. Most observers assumed he would stop short of a confession because that would have him subject to further prosecution (although he can not be charged in criminal court again.) News Corp. publishing unit, Reganbooks, was believed to have paid Simpson $3.5 million; that figure - of course - doesn't' include cost of printing and marketing, which means News Corps' total lost from the double-cancellation will be a multiple of that figure.

Accept Jesus or "You Belong In Hell"

2006-11-18T05:00:00.000-08:00

The Star-Ledger
November 15, 2006

David Paszkiewicz, a Kearny (NJ) high school history teacher who is also a Baptist preacher in town, told students that if they didn't accept Jesus, "you belong in hell." He also dismissed as 'unscientific' the theories of evolution and the "Big Bang." Paszkiewicz, a teacher at the high school since 1992, did not return phone messages left for him at the high school.

On Sept. 14 - the fourth day of class - Paszkiewicz is on tape saying, "He (God) did everything in his power to make sure that you could go to heaven, so much so that he took your sin on his own body, suffered your pains for you and he's saying, 'Please accept me, believe me.'"

He adds, according to the tapes: "If you reject that, you belong in hell. The outcome is your prerogative. But the way I see it, God himself sent his only son to die for David Paszkiewicz on that cross ... And if you reject that, then it really is to hell with you." He also told his class that dinosaurs were on Noah's ark.

Principal Al Somma declined to comment. Superintendent Robert Mooney, who called Paszkiewicz "a wonderful teacher," said he was aware of the issues raised by a student, Matthew LaClair - and recordings made by LaClair - and that "corrective action" would be taken. He refused to elaborate.

USA Enters Into Nuclear Deal with India

2006-11-17T10:01:00.000-08:00

Toronto Daily News
November 17, 2006

The US Senate has adopted a bill on US-India Civilian Nuclear Agreement to co-operate with India over civilian nuclear technology, reversing a 30-year-old ban. US Congress chose to bypass the requirements of the US Atomic Energy Act, which currently prohibits nuclear sales to countries that didn't sign nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty., such as India.

US weapons experts warned that forging Atomic Energy Act would not only make it harder to enforce rules against nuclear renegades Iran and North Korea, but also set a dangerous precedent for other countries with nuclear ambitions.

Under the bill, India would gain access to U.S. nuclear fuel and reactors. In return, India agreed to place its atomic reactors, except India's eight military plants, under global safeguards as part of the deal. Speaking to the media during his visit to Asia US president Bush immediately praised the passage of the deal saying it would bring India into the 'non-proliferation mainstream'.

Bush and Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister, had agreed to the deal in July last year when Singh paid a visit to Washington.

Bush Buys Land in Northern Paraguay

2006-11-15T12:06:00.000-08:00

Prensa Latina

Buenos Aires, Oct 13 (Prensa Latina) An Argentine official regarded the intention of the George W. Bush family to settle on the Acuifero Guarani (Paraguay) as surprising, besides being a bad signal for the governments of the region.

Luis D Elia, undersecretary for the Social Habitat in the Argentine Federal Planning Ministry, issued a memo partially reproduced by digital INFOBAE.com, in which he spoke of the purchase by Bush of a 98,842-acre farm in northern Paraguay, between Brazil and Bolivia.

The news circulated Thursday in non-official sources in Asuncion, Paraguay.

D Elia considered this Bush step counterproductive for the regional power expressed by Presidents Nestor Kirchner, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Evo Morales, Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro.

He said that 'it is a bad signal that the Bush family is doing business with natural resources linked to the future of MERCOSUR.'

The official pointed out that this situation could cause a hypothetical conflict of all the armies in the region, and called attention to the Bush family habit of associating business and politics."

If I Did It, Here's How It Happened

2006-11-15T02:14:00.000-08:00

Seattle Times
November 15, 2006

In what could well be the sleaziest, and certainly the strangest, documentary in the history of television, O.J. Simpson has agreed to a Fox TV interview in which he will discuss how he murdered Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman 12 years ago — if, that is, he had actually murdered them.

Done rubbing your eyes?

Good, because there's more. Simpson will be interviewed by Judith Regan, the founder and chief executive of ReganBooks, which will publish Simpson's "If I Did It" on Nov. 30. ReganBooks is an imprint of HarperCollins, owned by News Corp., parent of Fox.

The interview — "O.J. Simpson: If I Did It Here's How It Happened" — will air Nov. 27 and 29, just before the book goes on sale.

"This is an interview that no one thought would ever happen," said Mike Darnell, Fox chief of reality programs.

Simpson was paid a reported $3.5 million for the book, according to the National Enquirer, which first reported its existence last month.

Not much is known about the book or the interview; ReganBooks hasn't yet posted a description on its Web site, although the Enquirer piece noted that Simpson's account of the murders is "so detailed and so chillingly realistic" readers will likely come to the conclusion that Simpson committed the crimes.

Simpson was acquitted in 1995 after the criminal trial but later found liable for the deaths in a civil trial and ordered to pay $33.5 million to the victims' families.

The Devil Made Me Do It

2006-11-14T11:14:00.000-08:00

Newsday.com
November 14, 2006

A mother has told police she killed her 9-year-old son in their Brooklyn home after being overtaken by 'demons,' police said Tuesday. After allegedly smothering the boy on Monday afternoon, the woman apparently tried to kill herself by throwing herself in front a subway train, but survived. Police withheld her name.

The mother told investigators that the trouble began when a birthday celebration for her son didn't turn out as he expected, police said. Apparently the boy expected food and friends at the party, but there was no food and friends didn't show up.

She said as her son became upset, 'demons overtook her' and she 'smothered the boy with a pillow,' Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said at a new conference.

At about 4:30 p.m., after calling the boy's father and telling him he needed to go home, the woman jumped in front of the subway train in a Coney Island station, police said. She was hospitalized with a broken leg and severed fingers.

The father discovered the child's body about 30 minutes later inside their third-floor apartment in the Crown Heights section, police said.

Church Backs Euthenasia for Crippled Infants

2006-11-14T03:20:00.000-08:00

The Daily Mail
November 12, 2006

The Church of England has broken with tradition dogma by calling for doctors to be allowed to let sick newborn babies die.

Christians have long argued that life should preserved at all costs - but a bishop representing the national church has now sparked controversy by arguing that there are occasions when it is compassionate to leave a severely disabled child to die.

And the Bishop of Southwark, Tom Butler, who is the vice chair of the Church of England's Mission and Public Affairs Council, has also argued that the high financial cost of keeping desperately ill babies alive should be a factor in life or death decisions.

The shock new policy from the church has caused outrage among the disabled.

Bush Revives Espionage Act

2006-11-13T23:13:00.000-08:00

Village Voice
by Nat Hentoff
November 10th, 2006

Not many Americans know about this trial, slated for next January, that could result in future government suppression of news stories—based on classified information—suchas The Washington Post's reports by Dana Priest of CIA secret prisons in Europe and the James Risen–Eric Lichtblau New York Times revelations on the National Security Agency's secret, warrantless spying on Americans.

The defendants, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, are former and dismissed staff members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the leading pro-Israel lobbying organization.

They are accused by the Justice Department of having received classified information from a Defense Department analyst, Lawrence Anthony Franklin, who has since pleaded guilty and been sentenced to prison. Rosen and Weissman are charged with giving the information to an Israeli diplomat—and to a journalist.

"There's little difference between what the defendants are charged with and what reporters and advocates do day-to-day," says Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy. Aftergood says a conviction would put this nation far along the path to having its own Open Secrets law, the British measure that bars public interest as a defense for revealing classified information. "That would mean a fundamental transformation of the American government," he continues. "Retreating from freedom of the press would mean surrender of the principles of self-rule as the best form of government." [Read More]

America Gets Real...

2006-11-12T04:32:00.000-08:00

Times Online
November 12, 2006

The world believes that a new America was born last week. At the flick of a democratic switch out went the wild, warmongering, fundamentalist neocons. Out went the xenophobic fanatics who believe that allies are wimps, that Arabs should be tortured and that dinosaurs inhabited the Ark. European is no longer an American term of abuse and vice versa. Liberals walk free down Fifth Avenue and eat french fries. In short, the great American polity is sane again.

Anyone who criticises America knows that it is among the world’s most paranoid nations. But nothing has more irritated many Americans this past six years than that the world should identify them with George W Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. I once attributed responsibility for Iraq to “America” and was deluged with complaints that the fault lay in Washington, with the Republicans, with the White House, then with the Pentagon, until I was told kindly to restrict my criticism to “Cheney and Rumsfeld”.

Nor have all Americans opposed abortion, homosexuality, stem cell research and evolution, let alone supported Pastor Ted Haggard, extraordinary rendition and biblical truth. As of last Tuesday, Bush’s reincarnation of the Ugly American may be dead, but not all Americans were that ugly nor are all ugly Americans that dead.

Since 9/11 the devil of the apocalypse in American politics has had the best tunes. There is nothing as useful to an insecure leader as fear. But it yielded no consensus. The last two presidential elections were a sign not of a homogeneous America but of a divided one. A bare majority (in 2000 a minority) supported Bush not just because they liked his fundamentalism but because his opponents were unconvincing and his organisation superb.

Nor are all this week’s “neo-Democrats” born-again liberals — far from it.

The election was a clear referendum on six years of Republican rule in Washington, but humility should guide any response to an American election.

A nation does not change its political culture overnight and America is the size of a continent. Reading this election would be like reading a European one in which, God forbid, voters were spread across Andalusia, Bavaria, Sicily and Wales.

The best available guide is the exit polls. Any midterm vote is conditioned by anti-incumbent, anti-Washington sentiment. After 12 years of a Republican Congress that failed to bring either Bill Clinton or Bush to book, outsiders might conclude that the American constitution of checks and balances needs reform. A flurry of scandals during the campaign capped a widespread aversion to the corruption of Bush’s Washington and a sense that something must be done about public spending that has risen faster under Bush than under any president since Johnson. [Read More]

House Resolution 4752

2006-11-12T03:08:00.000-08:00

Library of Congress

109th CONGRESS
2d Session
H.R. 4752

To provide for the common defense by requiring all persons in the United States, including women, between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform a period of military service or a period of civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, and for other purposes. [Read More]

Looks like they're going to bring back the draft...

UK MoD Warns Of ET Invasion Danger

2006-11-11T06:14:00.000-08:00

Daily Mail
November 10, 2006

UFO sightings and alien visitors tend to be solely the reserve of sci-fi movies. So when a former MoD chief warns that the country could be attacked by extraterrestrials at any time, you may be forgiven for feeling a little alarmed. During his time as head of the Ministry of Defence UFO project, Nick Pope was persuaded into believing that other lifeforms may visit Earth and, more specifically, Britain.

His concern is that "highly credible" sightings are simply dismissed. And he complains that the project he once ran is now "virtually closed" down, leaving the country "wide open" to aliens. Mr Pope decided to speak out about his worries after resigning from his post at the Directorate of Defence Security at the MoD this week.

"The consequences of getting this one wrong could be huge," he said. "If you reported a UFO sighting now, I am absolutely sure that you would just get back a standard letter telling you not to worry. ''Frankly we are wide open - if something does not behave like a conventional aircraft now, it will be ignored. "The X-Files have been closed down." If these words had come from a sci-fi fanatic, they could be easily dismissed by cynics. But Mr Pope's CV - he was head of the UFO project between 1991 and 1994 - cannot be ignored.

When he began his job, he too was sceptical about UFOs but access to classified files on the subject and investigation of a series of spectacular UFO sightings gradually changed his mind. And while Mr Pope says that there is no evidence of hostile intent, he insists it cannot be ruled out. "There has got to be the potential for that and one is left with the uneasy feeling that if it turned out to be so, there is very little we could do about it," he said. "If you believe these things are extra terrestrial craft then you cannot rule out that what is happening is some kind of covert reconnaissance." [Read More]

Jeez, Give Santorum A Crying Towel!

2006-11-10T18:12:00.000-08:00

Nancy Pelosi's Tough New Rules

2006-11-08T22:34:00.000-08:00

CBC.ca
November 8, 2006

No House member may accept any gift of any value from lobbyists, or any firm or association that hires lobbyists. No free travel.

House members will no longer be able to slip in special-interest projects on unrelated legislation. Further, all bills will be made available to the public a full 24 hours before a final vote.

Under the Pelosi rules, lobbyists will no longer be able to use the House gym (you'd be surprised how much gets negotiated in a sauna). Lobbyists will no longer be allowed onto the House floor or to use the cloakrooms just off the floor, preventing last-minute arm-twisting.

What's more, no member or staffer will be able to negotiate for employment in the public sector without disclosing such contacts to the House Ethics Committee, and within three days of such contact being made.

Finally, all of this will be audited and investigated by a new Office of Public Integrity, and that office reports, directly and only, to the U.S. Attorneys Office. [Read More]

Snake-Handling Christian Dies Of Snake Bite

2006-11-08T15:24:00.000-08:00

FOXNews.com
November 8, 2006

A southeastern Kentucky woman was bitten by a snake during a church service and later died, a law enforcement officer said. Linda Long, 48, of London died Sunday at University of Kentucky Medical Center, said Brad Mitchell, a detective with the Laurel County Sheriff's Office. Long died about four hours after the bite was reported, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported.

Officials said Long attended East London Holiness Church. Neighbors of the church told the newspaper the church practices serpent handling. Lt. Ed Sizemore of the Laurel County Sheriff's Office said friends went with Long to a local hospital Sunday afternoon, and she was taken to UK. "She said she was bitten by a snake at her church," Sizemore said.

Handling reptiles as part of religious services is illegal in Kentucky. Snake handling is a misdemeanor and punishable by a $50 to $100 fine. Police said they had not received reports about snake handling at the church. Snake handling is based on a passage in the Bible, in the Gospel of Mark, that says a sign of a true believer is the power to "take up serpents" without being harmed.

Church officials could not be reached for comment.

Evangelical Church Dumps Gay Leader

2006-11-05T05:08:00.000-08:00

CTV.ca
November 3, 2006

The church of a top U.S. evangelical pastor embroiled in a sex scandal has dismissed him after its investigative board found him guilty of inappropriate sexual acts.

Their statement confirmed that "we, the Overseer Board of New Life church, have concluded our deliberations concerning the moral failings of Pastor Ted Haggard. Our investigation and Pastor Haggard's public statements have proven without a doubt that he has committed sexually immoral conduct."

Ted Haggard, who is 50 years old and married with five children, is also the former president of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE). The NAE is an umbrella group that claims a membership of 45,000 conservative yet very diverse churches. Pastor Haggard was an outspoken opponent of gay marriage and has been a person of political influence among American political conservatives, with regular access to President George W. Bush.

Homosexual Evangelical Leader Resigns

2006-11-02T17:27:00.000-08:00

Myrtle Beach Online
November 2, 2006

The Rev. Ted Haggard, senior pastor at New Life Church, resigned Thursday as president of the 30-million-member National Association of Evangelicals, following allegations he paid a Denver man for sex over the past three years. He also placed himself on administrative leave from New Life Church, pending an investigation of Jones' claims, a move church officials said is standard after allegations of impropriety.

A man who identified himself as Mike Jones, 49, of Denver told The Associated Press Thursday that he has voicemails from Haggard as well as an envelope he said Haggard used to mail him cash. Jones declined to make any of that available to the AP. "There's some stuff on there (the voice mails) that's pretty damning," he said.

Jones alleged on Wednesday he and Haggard had a three-year relationship. Jones told his story to a KHOW radio in Denver and to KUSA. Jones told The Associated Press that Haggard paid him to have sex nearly every month. Jones said he had advertised himself as an escort on the Internet and that a man who called himself Art contacted him. Jones said he later saw the man on television identified as Haggard. He said he last had sex with Haggard in August. He said he did not warn him before making his allegations public this week.

Google In Bed With CIA?

2006-10-31T16:26:00.000-08:00

PrisonPlanet.com
October 31, 2006

A former clandestine services officer for the CIA who also maintains close relationships with top Google representatives says that the company is 'in bed with' the intelligence agency and the U.S. government. "I think that Google has made a very important strategic mistake in dealing with the secret elements of the U.S. government - that is a huge mistake and I'm hoping they'll work their way out of it and basically cut that relationship off," said the ex-CIA man.

Steele's biography is impressive. He was the second-ranking civilian (GS-14) in U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence from 1988-1992. Steele is a former clandestine services case officer for the Central Intelligence Agency.

He is the founder and president of Open Source Solutions, Inc., and is an acknowledged expert on computer and information vulnerabilities. Steele holds graduate degrees in International Relations and Public Administration from Leigh University and the University of Oklahoma. He has also earned certificates in Intelligence Policy from Harvard University and in Defense Studies from the Naval War College.

Before the 2004 election Steele advocated the re-election of George W. Bush and he has been cited by numerous Republican luminaries as a credible source.

Israeli "false flag" Planned For 3 November 2006

2006-10-31T01:05:00.000-08:00

Godlike Productions
October 29, 2006

Israeli 'false flag' attack on the British Gulf Fleet on 3 November -- Please tell the world!

I'm leaking this because I believe my government is about to commit treason. They know, through our signals intelligence, that the Israelis are preparing to strike our fleet in the Gulf on 3/11/6 and pass it off as an Iranian sub attack - yet none of our intercepts have been relayed to the Royal Navy.

Please help the lads out here by getting the word onto your blogs and forums.

Many thanks,

Corporal H.

Mexico, Canada & US "Shadow Government"

2006-10-24T20:05:00.000-07:00

WorldNetDaily.com
October 24, 2006

About 1,000 documents obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request to the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America show the White House is engaging in collaborative relations with Mexico and Canada outside the U.S. Constitution, says WND columnist and author Jerome Corsi.

'The documents give clear evidence that the Bush administration has created a 'shadow government,'' Corsi said.

The documents can be viewed here, on a special website set up by the Minuteman Project.

Bureaucrats from agencies throughout the Bush administration are meeting regularly with their counterpart bureaucrats in the Canadian and Mexican governments to engage in a broad rewriting of U.S. administrative law and regulations into a new trilateral North American configuration, Corsi contends.

Brainwashed

2006-10-17T17:11:00.000-07:00

by George Harrison

Brainwashed in our childhood
Brainwashed by the school
Brainwashed by our teachers
And Brainwashed by all their rules

Brainwashed by our leaders
By our Kings and Queens
Brainwashed in the open and
Brainwashed behind the scenes

God God God
A voice cries in the wilderness
God God God
It was on the longest night
God God God
An eternity of darkness
God God God
Someone turned out the spiritual light

Brainwashed by the Nikkei
Brainwashed by Dow Jones
Brainwashed by the FTSE
Nasdaq and secure loans
Brainwashed us from Brussels
Brainwashing us in Bonn
Brainwashing us in Washington
Westminster in London

God God God
You are the wisdom that we seek
God God God
The lover that we miss
God God God
Your nature is eternity
God God God
You are Existence, Knowledge, Bliss

The soul does not love. It is love itself
It does not exist. It is existence itself
It does not know. It is knowledge itself
How To Know God, page 130*

They brainwashed my great uncle
Brainwashed my cousin Bob
They even got my grandma when she was working for the mob
Brainwash you while you're sleeping
While in your traffic jam
Brainwash you while you're weeping
While still a baby in your pram
Brainwashed by the military
Brainwashed under duress
Brainwashed by the media
You're brainwashed by the press
Brainwashed by computers
Brainwashed by mobile phones
Brainwashed by the satelites
Brainwashed to the bone

God God God
Won't you lead us through this mess
God God God
From the places of concrete
God God God
Nothing's worse than ignorance
God God God
I just won't accept defeat

God God God
Must be something I forgot
God God God
Down on Bullshit Avenue
God God God
If we can only stop the rot
God God God
Wish that you'd brainwash us too

Namah Parvati Pataye Hare Hare Mahadev
Namah Parvati Pataye Hare Hare
Namah Parvati Pataye Hare Hare

Shiva Shiva Shankara Mahadeva
Hare Hare Hare Hare Mahadeva
Shiva Shiva Shankara Mahadeva
Shiva Shiva Shankara Mahadeva

Namah Parvati Pataye Hare Hare
Namah Parvati Pataye Hare Hare
Shiva Shiva Shankara Mahadeva
Shiva Shiva Shankara Mahadeva

*The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali

Slowpoke: Two-Party Monte

2006-10-14T05:39:00.000-07:00

WorkingForChange.com
October 14, 2006

Feds Investigate Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.)

2006-10-14T05:26:00.000-07:00

Chicago Sun-Times
October 14, 2006

Federal prosecutors in Arizona have opened a preliminary investigation into a camping trip that Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) took with two former pages and others in 1996, according to a law enforcement official. Kolbe, 64, is the only openly gay Republican in Congress.

Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.) took the former pages as well as staff members and National Park Service officials on a rafting trip in the Grand Canyon in 1996, said his spokeswoman, Korenna Cline, on Friday. Cline said the rafting party included five current staffers, two former pages and Kolbe's sister. Nothing inappropriate happened on the trip, she said.

An allegation related to the trip was given to the U.S. attorney's office in Phoenix, but it was not clear whether it concerned any contention of improper activity by Kolbe. A second law enforcement official said the 1996 trip may be too old to investigate as a criminal action.

U.S. Gov Released Staged Al-Qaeda Videos

2006-10-09T09:11:00.000-07:00

PrisonPlanet.com
October 5, 2006

Revelations that the US government had been in possession of footage released on Sunday depicting alleged Al-Qaeda hijackers and Osama Bin Laden since 2001 and evidence that the footage itself was filmed by security agencies, went unquestioned by the media - who blindly towed the official line that the tape was released by Al-Qaeda. This is smoking gun proof that the U.S. government is staging the release of alleged Al-Qaeda tapes and it demands an immediate Congressional investigation.

Segments of the video that were interspersed with footage of the 'laughing hijackers,' Jarrah and Atta, showing Bin Laden giving a speech to an audience in Afghanistan on January 8 2000, were culled from what terror experts describe as surveillance footage taken by a 'security agency.'

This explains the lack of a soundtrack in the video and the fact that the tape does not focus solely on Bin Laden but pans around and shows the attendees in the audience. Furthermore, film of the Bin Laden speech, reported by the dominant media as new footage, was previously broadcast in the UK docu-drama The Road to Guantanamo, which was first seen on British television nearly seven months ago in March.

News reports over the weekend contained the admission that the U.S. government had been in possession of the footage since 2002, while others said it was found when the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, and yet it was still bizarrely reported that the tape, bearing all the hallmarks of having been filmed and edited by undercover US intelligence and having admittedly been in US possession for five years, was released over the weekend by Al-Qaeda.

Italian Prosecutors Wrap Up CIA Kidnap Case

2006-10-07T16:34:00.000-07:00

Reuters.com
October 7, 2006

Italian prosecutors have wrapped up an investigation into the 2003 suspected CIA kidnapping of a terrorism suspect in Milan, which could lead to criminal charges being brought against 38 people, most of them CIA agents.

Judicial sources said on Saturday that 26 CIA agents and the head of Italy's Sismi military intelligence agency, Nicolo Pollari, were among the 38 suspects notified at the end of the probe, meaning prosecutors can now ask a judge to order them to stand trial.

The magistrates say a CIA-led team seized Muslim cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, in Milan in 2003 and flew him to his native Egypt. Nasr says he was tortured there while being questioned. Prosecutors believe Sismi helped the CIA in the operation. Pollari says Sismi did nothing wrong. In July, the Milan prosecutors asked Italy's justice minister to request the extradition of the suspected U.S. agents.

Congressional Sex Scandals in US History

2006-10-07T05:11:00.000-07:00

WashingtonPost.com

As the House prepares for a possible investigation of sex-related allegations concerning President Clinton, it's worth taking a look back at how Congress has dealt with the frequent charges of sexual misconduct by its own members.

Here are 21 case studies. In most, Congress took little or no official action, leaving the fate of the accused to the voters.

This history begins in 1974, but not because episodes of sexual impropriety only go back a quarter-century. In the old days, they simply weren't reported. In 1903, for example, the Speaker of the House, David Henderson (R-Iowa), was forced to resign over his sexual relationship with the daughter of a senator. Henderson never said why he was quitting, and neither did the press. But that was then, and this is now. [story continued]

Susan Ralston Quits over Abramoff Scandal

2006-10-07T04:29:00.000-07:00

San Francisco Gate
October 6, 2006

A top aide to White House strategist Karl Rove resigned Friday after disclosures that she accepted gifts from and passed information to now-convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, becoming the first official in the West Wing to lose a job in the influence-peddling scandal.

Susan Ralston submitted her resignation to avoid causing political damage for President Bush a month before the midterm elections, officials said. 'She did not want to be a distraction to the White House at this important time,' White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

A congressional report showed last week that Ralston accepted sometimes-pricey tickets to nine sports and entertainment events from Abramoff while she provided him with inside White House information. The bipartisan report said there was no evidence that Rove knew of or approved of Ralston's actions, and sources said Friday that the White House was surprised by the report's revelations.

Hastert Could Devastate GOP

2006-10-05T20:29:00.000-07:00

FOXNews.com
October 05, 2006

House Republican candidates will suffer massive losses if House Speaker Dennis Hastert remains speaker until Election Day, according to internal polling data from a prominent GOP pollster, FOX News has learned. 'The data suggests Americans have bailed on the speaker,' a Republican source briefed on the polling data told FOX News. 'And the difference could be between a 20-seat loss and 50-seat loss.'

Frist Says Taliban can't be defeated

2006-10-03T05:57:00.000-07:00

Chicago Tribune
October 3, 2006

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday that the Afghan war against Taliban guerrillas can never be won militarily and called for efforts to bring the Islamic militia and its supporters into the Afghan government. The Tennessee Republican said he learned from briefings that Taliban fighters are too numerous and have too much popular support to be defeated on the battlefield.

'You need to bring them into a more transparent type of government,' Frist said during a brief visit to a U.S. and Romanian military base in the southern Taliban stronghold of Qalat. 'And if that's accomplished, we'll be successful.'

Afghanistan is suffering its heaviest insurgent attacks since a U.S.-led military force toppled the Taliban in late 2001 for harboring Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. According to an Associated Press count, based on reports from U.S., NATO and Afghan officials, at least 2,800 people have been killed nationwide so far this year. The count, which includes militants and civilians, is about 1,300 more than the toll for all of 2005.

Frist said asking the Taliban to join the government is a decision to be made by Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Karzai's spokesmen were not able to be reached for comment.

"A political solution is how it's all going to be solved," he said.

GOP Knew For Months of Foley's Pedophilia

2006-09-30T19:12:00.000-07:00

New York Times
September 30, 2006

Top House Republicans knew for months about e-mail traffic between Representative Mark Foley and a former teenage page, but kept the matter secret and allowed Mr. Foley to remain head of a Congressional caucus on children’s issues, Republican lawmakers said Saturday.

The exchanges began with what Republicans now describe as an "overfriendly" e-mail message from Mr. Foley to the unidentified teenager. But news reports about the exchanges have led to the disclosure of e-mail correspondence with other former pages in which the discussions became more and more sexually explicit. Shortly after he was confronted by ABC News on Friday about the subject, Mr. Foley, who represented a south Florida district, resigned from the House.

The revelations set off a political upheaval, with Democrats and some Republicans alike calling for a full investigation of Mr. Foley's conduct and whether House leaders did enough to look into it. Members of the Republican leadership sought Saturday to detail how they had handled the case in an effort to defuse the matter, even as it was emerging as an issue in Congressional races.

Kentucky National Guard Nudie Cuties

2006-09-29T05:59:00.000-07:00

WKRC 12 Cincinnati
September 29, 2006

U.S. Army officials are investigating allegations that women in a Kentucky National Guard unit posed nude for pictures with their M-16s and other military equipment. Kentucky National Guard spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Phil Miller says the allegations were reported to the commander of the 410th Quartermaster unit about a week to ten days before the company shipped out for Iraq on Aug. 26 from Camp Shelby, Mississippi. The Courier-Journal of Louisville reports that it had been independently provided a compact disc containing 232 photographs of at least a half-dozen nude and seminude women in various poses with military rifles and covering their breasts with American flag decals. An accompanying e-mail said the women photographed were from the Kentucky Guard. Miller said 11 of the 107 soldiers who deployed with the Danville-based unit are women."

Chris Matthews Interview with Bill Clinton

2006-09-23T17:13:00.000-07:00

Think Progress
September 22, 2006

Rough Transcript of Chris Matthews Fox News Sunday, Interview with Ex-President Bill Clinton. What started out as an interview with Clinton over his humanitarian work quickly became an ambush interview regarding Clinton's efforts to get rid of Osama bin Laden. From the looks of it, Chris Matthew wishes he'd stuck with the humanitarian topics.

Bill Clinton seems more than happy to roll up his sleeves and discuss particular points of his presidency, and in particular his failing to kill Osama bin Laden. He dissuaded Matthews' topic-shifting and seems happy to identify the political enemies of the Democrats.

Amazing interview! If the Democrat nominee in 2008 doesn't put Bill Clinton on their campaign staff then they deserve to lose.

Terrorist Aliens Are Raping Your Daughter

2006-09-23T07:00:00.000-07:00

Judicial-Inc

The most thoughtful whacko anti-Zionist, NWO, conspiracy web site I've yet to visit. More adventursome than Rense, better researched than Michael Savage's site, far more interesting than Matt Drudge's little blog.

Polling Company Pleads Guilty to Fraud

2006-09-19T19:18:00.000-07:00

Newsday.com
September 19, 2006

An employee of a company that conducted campaign polls for President George W. Bush, Senator Joe Lieberman and other Republican candidates pleaded guilty Tuesday to making up poll results, according to the U.S. Attorney's office. Darryl Hylton, 42, of Hamden pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Janet C. Hall in Bridgeport to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The Guilford-based company, DataUSA, is now known as Viewpoint USA.

Hylton admitted that he conspired to falsify survey and polling results to meet deadlines or other requirements that DataUSA otherwise could not meet. He also admitted that he directed other DataUSA employees to falsify results in a variety of ways, including changing demographic information, such as gender, to satisfy client requirements. Hylton faces up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 when he is sentenced on Dec. 11th.

How Important Is the Israel Lobby?

2006-09-18T17:29:00.000-07:00

Middle East Quarterly
Vol. XII, No. 4, Fall 2006

Superb article on the effects of the Israel Lobby on US Foreign Policy.

Two well-known academics, Stephen Walt of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, published a working paper in March 2006 arguing that 'the Israel lobby' wields a disproportionate and detrimental influence on U.S. foreign policy. They defined the lobby as mysteriously large, including everything from Washington think-tanks, New York newspapers, and websites, to traditional lobby groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Their study, however flawed, lent an air of academic respectability to a viewpoint of pervasive Israel lobby influence and power that has long preoccupied polemicists and a radical fringe. Read complete article

Bush Refuses To Meet With Ahmadinejad

2006-09-17T12:13:00.000-07:00

YnetNews
September 15, 2006

US President George W. Bush declared Friday that he has no intention of meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during his visit to the United Nations headquarters in New York next week. When asked whether he would take advantage of the opportunity to meet with the Iranian president, he responded unequivocally, "No. No I will not meet with him."

Bush and Ahmadinejad are expected to carry speeches Tuesday in front of the UN General Assembly, with Bush’s oration scheduled for the morning hours and Ahmadinejad's for the evening. Bush addressed the press at the White House’s Rose Garden Friday.

Goat Transformed Into Human Corpse

2006-09-16T23:54:00.000-07:00

CBS News
September 15, 2006

LAGOS (AP) A Nigerian murder suspect accused of killing his brother with an axe told police investigators he actually attacked a goat, which was only later magically transformed into his sibling's corpse, officials said Thursday. The man, whose name wasn't released, offered police his explanation after his arrest on Tuesday in the death of his brother the previous day at Isseluku village in southern Nigeria.

'He said that the goats were on his farm and he tried to chase them away. When one wouldn't move, he attacked it with an axe. He said it then turned into his brother,' Police Commissioner Udom Ekpoudom told the Associated Press. Murder suspects in Nigeria, where many people believe in black magic, sometimes claim spirits tricked them into killing. In 2001, eight people were burned to death after one person in their group was accused of making a bystander's penis magically disappear.

New Report Details Errors Before War

2006-09-14T20:07:00.000-07:00

Washington Post
September 9, 2006

The long-awaited Senate Intelligence Committee report released yesterday sheds new light on why U.S. intelligence agencies provided inaccurate prewar information about Saddam Hussein and his weapons programs, including details on how Iraqi exiles who fabricated or exaggerated their stories were accepted as truthful because they passed Pentagon lie detector tests. The two newly declassified chapters of the report fueled political accusations yesterday that the Bush administration lied to justify invading Iraq.

The report notes that a DIA official who knew that the source was unreliable sat in on two meetings in which the mobile labs information was incorporated into the speech Secretary of State Colin L. Powell delivered in February 2003 to the U.N. Security Council, but that the official did not realize the information was based solely on the word of the untrustworthy source.

One surprising conclusion from the CIA retrospective is that the agency now believes that aggressive U.N. inspections in Iraq in 1991 after the Persian Gulf War led Hussein to what it describes as a "fateful decision." He covertly dismantled and destroyed the undeclared nuclear, chemical and biological facilities, materials and actual weapons he had put together in the preceding decade -- along with "the records that could have verified that unilateral destruction."

As a result, there was no proof in 2002 and 2003 when the Iraqis claimed they had no weapons of mass destruction, and Hussein could not demonstrate he was in basic, if not complete, compliance with U.N. resolutions. Noncompliance with the Security Council's October resolution was the main U.S. public rationale for the invasion of Iraq.

Warrantless Wiretapping Law Changing

2006-09-14T13:39:00.000-07:00

Wired News
September 13, 2006

A bill radically redefining and expanding the government's ability to eavesdrop and search the houses of U.S. citizens without court approval passed a key Senate committee Wednesday, and may be voted on by the full Senate as early as next week.

By a 10-8 vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved SB2453, the National Security Surveillance Act (.pdf), which was co-written by committee's chairman Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) in concert with the White House.

The committee also passed two other surveillance measures, including one from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California), one of the few senators to be briefed on the National Security Agency program. Feinstein's bill, which Specter co-sponsored before submitting another bill, rebuffs the administration's legal arguments and all but declares the warrantless wiretapping illegal.

In contrast, Specter's bill concedes the government's right to wiretap Americans without warrants, and allows the U.S. Attorney General to authorize, on his own, dragnet surveillance of Americans so long as the stated purpose of the surveillance is to monitor suspected terrorists or spies.

Bob Schieffer on National Security

2006-09-14T12:41:00.000-07:00

CBS News
September 13, 2006

In a recent op-ed piece, Bob Schieffer offers this interesting perspective;

"I'm glad they took them out of those secret CIA prisons. For me, it's a matter of national security - ours. Democracies have no business running secret prisons. That's what our enemies do. If we are in a battle for the hearts and minds of people around the world, as the administration says we are, I won't feel very secure if the people around the world believe we are no different than our enemies."

Connecting Iraq To The War on Terror

2006-09-14T12:09:00.000-07:00

CBS News
September 6, 2006

"One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror," Mr. Bush said. "I believe it, but the American people have got to understand that a defeat in Iraq, in other words if this government there fails, the terrorists will be emboldened, the radicals will topple moderate governments. I truly believe that this is the ideological struggle of the 21st century. And the consequences for not achieving success are dire."

Celebrating Banned Books

2006-09-13T14:21:00.000-07:00

Google

To Kill a Mockingbird. Of Mice and Men. The Great Gatsby. 1984. It's hard to imagine a world without these extraordinary literary classics, but every year there are hundreds of attempts to remove great books from libraries and schools. In fact, according to the American Library Association, 42 of 100 books recognized by the Radcliffe Publishing Course as the best novels of the 20th century have been challenged or banned.

Google Book Search is our effort to expand the universe of books you can discover, and this year we're joining libraries and bookstores across the country to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Banned Books Week – a nationwide initiative to help people learn about and explore banned books. You can start by browsing these 42 classics – books we couldn't be more pleased to highlight.

USAF To Test New Weapons on Americans

2006-09-13T14:14:00.000-07:00

CNN.com
September 12, 2006

In a "public relations move" the USAF is going to test battlefield weapons on US citizens?

Nonlethal weapons such as high-power microwave devices should be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations before being used on the battlefield, the Air Force secretary said Tuesday. The object is basically public relations. Domestic use would make it easier to avoid questions from others about possible safety considerations, said Secretary Michael Wynne.

'If we're not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation,' said Wynne. '(Because) if I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think that I would be vilified in the world press.'

The Air Force has paid for research into nonlethal weapons, but he said the service is unlikely to spend more money on development until injury problems are reviewed by medical experts and resolved. Nonlethal weapons generally can weaken people if they are hit with the beam. Some of the weapons can emit short, intense energy pulses that also can be effective in disabling some electronic devices.

Netanyahu Encourages US To Invade Iran

2006-09-11T06:24:00.000-07:00

NY Sun
September 8, 2006

Benjamin Netanyahu, as part of an American tour repositioning himself for a return to the Israeli premiership, told an audience in New York yesterday that President Bush is preparing to ditch the United Nations to take on Iran alone and that American politicians of all parties would do well to stop squabbling about Iraq and join the president in focusing on threat from Tehran.

Israel's one-time ambassador to the United Nations urged Americans of all political persuasions to "not get caught up" arguing about Iraq. Mr. Netanyahu dismissed the argument that fears of Iranian plans for WMD might be false in the way that predictions on Iraq have come under question. Mr. Netanyahu said Israel had told America that claims about Iraq's weapons were based on "conjecture," while with Iran "we're not guessing. We know."

Things In Afghanistan Go Better With Coca-Cola

2006-09-11T05:39:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! News
September 11, 2006

A sniper on the gleaming Coca-Cola factory's roof peers through his gun sight over Kabul's bullet-pocked suburbs, searching for any hint of a terrorist threat. In a parking lot festooned with red Coke flags, an American dog handler barks commands at journalists being frisked by Afghan security agents. In strife-ridden Afghanistan, this is how even the most positive of events — like Sunday's opening of a new $25 million Coca-Cola production plant — are handled. Even more so when pro-U.S. Afghan President Hamid Karzai attends.

But according to Karzai, more business openings and investments of this kind will lead to a downturn in Afghanistan's violence, which has reached its deadliest proportions since U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban in 2001 for harboring Osama bin Laden.

"But now we have no running water, no electricity and no sanitation," local resident Jomaa Gul said as he kicked a dust-covered glass Coca-Cola bottle through a patch of weeds in the loading bay where trucks once took the soft drink away. "Hospitals and security are more worthy investments for $25 million than a soft drink plant."

Nigerian Scambaiters

2006-09-09T14:33:00.000-07:00

419 Eater

How to bait the "Nigerian" email scam artists. Good stuff!

Senate: Still No Al Qaeda-Saddam Link

2006-09-09T00:02:00.000-07:00

ABC News
September 8, 2006

There's no evidence Saddam Hussein had a relationship with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his Al-Qaida associates, according to a Senate report on prewar intelligence on Iraq. Democrats said the report undercuts President Bush's justification for going to war.

The declassified document being released Friday by the Senate Intelligence Committee also explores the role that inaccurate information supplied by the anti-Saddam exile group the Iraqi National Congress had in the march to war.

The report comes at a time that Bush is emphasizing the need to prevail in Iraq to win the war on terrorism while Democrats are seeking to make that policy an issue in the midterm elections.