Blinded me with science
A donkey has been released after being detained for three days as a suspect in a road traffic accident in Colombia.
Police held on to Pacho after a motorcyclist crashed into him in the north-eastern town of Arauca on Sunday.
Local police chief Diana Rojas justified the unusual arrest saying a "man was injured".
Since his brush with the law, which has sparked a national debate on animal rights, Pacho has become a Colombian television star.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4334877.stm
[This is good, they are looking for ways to preserve the essence of their culture even even while radically transforming it. Progress.]
The joint US-Malaysian research project is designed to decide how best to handle traditional South East Asian delicacies in zero gravity.
The programme is called roti canai in space - named after the flaky griddle-cooked pancake that Malaysians love to eat for breakfast.
...
Meanwhile religious scholars will be asked to tackle other problems, such as finding ways to help Muslim astronauts face Mecca as they pray while in orbit.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4331979.stm
[I didn’t evenk now it was possible to treat shellfish. Maybe they pry them open and take out the perl and put an aspirin in instead.]
South Korea will soon have its first fully licensed fish hospital with specialists trained to treat trout with fin fungus and grouper with gill infections.
The Yosu Fisheries Clinic will open on Saturday on South Korea's southern coast, operated by a husband and wife team of marine biologists who are among the first to pass a Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries exam to treat fish and shellfish.
http://reuters.excite.com/article/20050310/2005-03-10T154332Z_01_SEO295718_RTRIDST_0_ODD-ODD-KOREA-FISH-DC.html
[Well that certainly sounds like conclusive proof. Of crouse if this was a man the Indians would probably give him a parade instead. I don’t even think there is a word for a male nymphomaniac.]
To make matters worse, Shastriji also held Usha responsible for the murder of a 5-year-old whose body was discovered in a pond some days ago. Claiming that he had seen the gruesome killing reenacted in a tumbler of mustard oil, the tantrik convinced everyone of Usha's guilt. She was subsequently denounced as a witch.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/7242_1269811,00180008.htm
[Got this in an email.]
I have some wonderful news: God has answered your prayers--our
prayers--for the situation in Assam. But this news comes with the
warning that the danger has not passed.
The leaders of the most powerful insurgent force in far-northeastern
India had set yesterday, March 10, as the deadline to meet their
extortion demand. They threatened to totally destroy our ministry in
Assam if their demand was not met.
Immediately, hundreds of thousands of believers like you around the
world--possibly millions--began to pray for the situation. You
joined others in praying for the safety of our leaders, Bible
colleges, churches, and believers in Assam. You also prayed that God
would touch the hearts of those making these terrible demands.
And God has answered your prayers!
The official Hierarchy of this insurgent group--one that has never
backed down in the past and has enforced its demands in blood--told
our leaders in Assam that they were giving more time so they could
"study" our work and ministry among their people.
Praise God! Everyone is safe for now. We don't know whether "more
time" is a few more days or perhaps a few weeks, but it is clear that
God has intervened and touched their hearts in a favorable way for
now.
You and I know that the future is in God's powerful hands--not in the
hands of these men. So please continue to pray that He will protect
our brothers and sisters in Assam, and that He will soften the hearts
of these men even more--to the extent that they will come to
understand that God's work in Assam is for the good of all the
people, including them.
I pray that God will open the hearts of these men to the message of
salvation, and that they will turn from serving the god of this world
to serving the God who died to save them.
I also ask you to pray that God will keep His angels surrounding our
people and our work in Assam.
Thank you for praying with us.
Prayerfully rejoicing in Him,
K.P. Yohannan
President - Gospel for Asia
[The decision not to fix the hubble was also done without a formal science review. I will tell you why. This administration doesn’t believe in science. A lot of people in [and out of] the Congress don’t believe in science. So why would they bother to get science’s opinion on something? Is this because they are stupid? No. I am not saying they might not also be stupid. The problem is that scientists have become like the early savants in the Christian Church in the Middle East who would get into fist fights over how many angels could dance on the head of a pin or went and sat on a pole for 20 years doing nothing or told people to do things that were harmful and unnecessary because they thought the religion commanded it.
IN the 19th century science was popular because people could see it was working for them. Now people see it is workign against them- making tracking devices and torture machines and threatening to create half human monsters and so on.]
A little over 13 hours out from Sol, a veteran of the first space age - Voyager 1 - is working quietly in the depths of space as it travels away from our Sun at 17.163 kilometers per second. But now, NASA has told scientists working on these and other older missions that their missions may be terminated in October to save money, reports Nature.
The decision - which NASA officials say is not yet final - has angered space scientists, who are calling calling the moves penny-wise and pound-foolish, and that it is being done without a usual formal science review.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/voyager1-05a.html
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez offered his support for Iran's nuclear development plans Friday while attacking Washington for trying to "impose its doctrine, its politics and its interests on the world".
...
The Venezuelan president spoke after signing some 20 agreements with Khatami on cooperation on the oil and petrochemical industries, taxes, commerce and construction.
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050311183954.7tzexx2x.html
[This is why people have a problem with science.]
Indeed, the idea of releasing GE trees into the wild sends shudders through Alyx Perry of the Southern Forests Network, a coalition of loggers, landowners, and environmentalists. "Our conclusion is that the genetically engineered trees will inevitably contaminate nongenetically engineered stands of trees."
That, in turn, could lead to millions of acres of infertile private timber, possibly lacking enough lignin (a wood-strengthening substance) needed to be saw timber, Ms. Perry says. Combined with internal pesticide production in pine and poplar trees in the wild, it could lead to forests unable to reproduce, produce food for animals, or create marketable timber.
http://www.rense.com/general63/prro.htm
[People in DC love to start up new organizations because then you can “The Army” and “The CIA” came to an agreement, as if some strange creature “the Army” and some other strange creature “The CIA” sat down somewhere, possibly in outer space, and came to an agreement.
In reality, actual people with actual names and faces sat down and hashed this out. But who were those people? We will never know because they hide behind their organizations’ skirts.]
Top military intelligence officials at the Abu Ghraib prison came to an agreement with the CIA to hide certain detainees at the facility without officially registering them, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. Keeping such "ghost" detainees is a violation of international law.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25239-2005Mar10?language=printer
But another key pillar of global jurisprudence - laws concerning individual liberty, dignity and human rights - is proving harder for Washington to ignore: like a sheriff with a posse of deputies, international law is slowly catching up with the Bush administration.
Despite its hostility to the international criminal court, the US may soon be forced by a UN security council majority to refer war crimes prosecutions in Sudan to the ICC. Diplomats say that would represent a big boost for supranational criminal justice.
Last week's US supreme court decision to abolish the death penalty for offenders under the age of 18 was partly a response to global opposition to capital punishment which the Bush administration has refused to heed. But from an internationallegal standpoint, the ruling in effect dragged the US into line with a key provision of the 1990 UN convention on the rights of the child.
In another test case, concerning Mexican citizens held on death row in Texas, the White House bowed this month to a ruling by the world court in The Hague, whose authority it has rejected in the past. The court said that the denial of consular assistance to the defendants, in breach of the 1969 Vienna convention, could have prejudiced their trials.
Despite its distaste for any international legal body or instrument that presumes to overrule the US constitution, the Bush administration has now belatedly ordered a judicial review.
Areas in which the US government or its agents have traditionally assumed legal immunity when acting in the national interest are also coming under challenge.
http://www.rense.com/general63/hgl.htm
[It’s nice that they are at least raking the government over the coals a little bit now. But it would have been better still if they had inquired more closely before going off to war in the first place. It is hard to believe the people in the English parliament [or the US Congress] were really so foolish as to believe what Blair and Bush was saying was really entirely sincere and reliable. Of all the people in the world these lawmakers should know the most well that their chief executives are NEVER 100% sincere and NEVER 100% reliable.]
The cabinet secretary yesterday astonished politicians by disclosing that Britain went to war against Iraq on just one page of legal advice from Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general.
The disclosure by Sir Andrew Turnbull to MPs was described as "beggaring belief" by Charles Kennedy, the Liberal Democrat leader, and "a new twist in the spin over the war" by Clare Short, the cabinet minister who quit after hostilities had begun.
Labour backbenchers who opposed the war said the disclosure amounted to "gross maladministration" by the government while the Tory shadow home secretary, David Davis, described the revelation as "another example of Blair's government by whim".
Article continues Sir Andrew's disclosure came after questioning by Tony Wright, Labour chairman of the Commons public administration committee and Gordon Prentice, a Labour backbencher. He kept repeating that Lord Goldsmith had presented his conclusions to the cabinet which had been summarised in a parliamentary answer.
Finally, after repeated questioning, he said: "There is not a longer version of that advice. This is the definitive statement of his views.
"He gave his definitive view at the time. He has said that that was not a summary. It was his view that he had formed at the time. He does not regard the statement in the parliamentary question as a summary. He regards it as his conclusive view."
http://www.rense.com/general63/toomf.htm
The Health Ministry is probing suspicions that two elderly patients died last year at Gedera's Hartzfeld Geriatric Hospital after undergoing an illegal invasive medical experiment.
The patients allegedly died from a severe urinary tract infection caused by the extraction of urine by puncturing their bodies.
One of the two died of the infection in February. The experiment allegedly was conducted about two weeks after she had undergone surgery for removing part of her small intestine. After her death, hospital management allegedly advised its doctors not to recruit any more patients for the experiment.
The Health Ministry suspects that at least two types of experiments were illegally conducted at the hospital in 2003-2004 on dozens of patients aged 70 to 90. One experiment was invasive, consisting of urine extraction by puncturing the patient's stomach. The other involved administering iron to hospital in-patients.
The ministry suspects that both experiments were conducted without obtaining the patients' full consent, and without providing them with all the pertinent information and advising them of the risks involved, as required by law.
At least four geriatric doctors from the hospital are implicated in the affair.
http://www.rense.com/general63/ileg.htm
[I’ll tell you what’s happening. They are easing the market into the new reality. As everyone knows people in the stock market, and particularly the currency markets, are among the most irrational people on Earth.I think the Asians are deliberately easing them off the dollar by making a little statement agains the dollar, and then half pulling it back, then they make another statement and half pull it back. After a while the currency traders will get used to it and the idea will sink in that the dollar is being eased out and hopefully there won’t be a big panic.]
Once again, an Asian country -- this time, Japan -- hinted that its appetite for U.S. dollars might be waning. And once again, that prospect roiled global currency markets, highlighting concerns that the United States has grown too dependent on foreign capital.
The turbulence erupted yesterday when Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi asserted that Japan ought to consider diversifying the foreign currencies, mostly dollars, held by its central bank, which currently total about $840 billion. "I think it's necessary to have diversity," Koizumi told a parliamentary committee in response to a question.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25310-2005Mar10?language=printer
[This is just like the airlines with 9/11. Everyone in the world knew that airline security was a joke. Seinfeld even had a comedy bit about how bad the screeners are.
Here we see the electricty industry has put themselves into a position where there are about 50 million ways to screw them over via computer. And they are essentially doing nothing about it.
Keep in mind that the electric grid in this country had already been roughed out before the invention of the computer and long before the Internet.
So these are not fundamental vulnerabilities in the grid. These are problems they let creep in as they migrated to computer control and then to internet control. Why do they even need internet control at all? I bet it was just to save money instead of having their own dedicated system.]
Hackers have caused no serious damage to systems that feed the nation's power grid, but their untiring efforts have heightened concerns that electric companies have failed to adequately fortify defenses against a potential catastrophic strike. The fear: In a worst-case scenario, terrorists or others could engineer an attack that sets off a widespread blackout and damages power plants, prolonging an outage.
...
Wood declined to comment on specifics of what he saw. But an official at the lab, Ken Watts, said the simulation showed how someone could hack into a utility's Internet-based business management system, then into a system that controls utility operations. Once inside, lab workers simulated cutting off the supply of oil to a turbine generating electricity and destroying the equipment.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25738-2005Mar10?language=printer
The researchers also classified people as sceptical if they disagreed with the official reason given for war, ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).
The results showed there were far fewer sceptics in the US than in Germany and Australia. And that such sceptics were less likely to believe statements that they knew had been retracted than those people classified as non-sceptical.
"The main finding about suspicion is confirming what we have known for quite a while from laboratory studies," says Lewandowsky.
"People do not discount corrected information unless they are suspicious about it or unless they are given some other hypothesis with which to interpret the information."
http://abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1316359.htm
[There is some quote from back in the Reagan days, some government official saying “neutrality doesn’t make any sense. Who are they neutral AGAINST?”
I think multi-culturalism either is or is becoming something like that. You are multi-cultural against Christianty and European civilization.
They have to re-name the Easter Bunny and say “season’s greetings” instead of “Merry Christmas”. But no one is calling a menorah a “candlestick holder” or something like that to be sensitive to other people who might not be comfortable with that. And “multi-cultural” proponents have no problem saying “Happy Kwanzaa” etc etc.]
"Because we're such a multicultural community, it's good just to remain neutral," mall General Manager Sam Hosen said.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/search/content/local_news/epaper/2005/03/11/s3b_bunny_0306.html
Federal authorities have opened an investigation into a rash of mysterious $30 and $40 charges appearing on consumer credit cards around the country, MSNBC.com has learned. The charges are for the purchase of DVDs and CDs from a company named "Pluto Data Ltd." Thousands of complaints about the charges have appeared on a Web site devoted to the mystery, with consumers saying they've never heard of the company.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7150531/
[This immediately occurred to me when I heard this. I have read some otehr comments to the same effect. Whatever was behind this, I am sure the government is going to use it to claim that ordinary courts are not suitable for conducting trials of “dangerous terrorists” because they are “just fundamentally too insecure” they will say. They will say they need special trials with limited access in secure locations without public access and whatever else they think they can get away with.
They ned something to be able to make this argument since there is a growing momentum to bring all this government tomfoolery back into the regular and lawfully prescribed channels.
I think it would be interesting in both this case and in the white supremcist judge case to know if the killers ever served in the armed forces.]
A man being escorted into court for his rape trial Friday stole a deputy's gun, killed the judge and two other people and carjacked a reporter's vehicle to escape, setting off a massive manhunt and creating widespread chaos across Atlanta, police said.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-03-11-atl-shooting_x.htm?POE=click-refer
[The talking heads professed ignorance of any reason why the Spanish people wouldn;t vote to re-elect Aznar’s government at the time he was defeated in the elections. They swore up and down that the Spanish people had been stampeded by the terrorists and that voting Aznar out of office was a victory for terrorism and sent a dangerous message and bla bla bla.
Well now see for yourself. Who knew better the fools on American TV or the Spanish people?]
Aznar 'purged all records in Madrid bombings cover-up'
Spain's socialist Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, condemned his conserva- tive predecessors yesterday for carrying out a "massive deception" in blaming the 11 March train bombings on Eta Basque separatists
Jose Maria Aznar's team: destroyed all computer records dealing with the March 11 Madrid bombings before leaving office
Jose Maria Aznar's team also destroyed all computer records dealing with the bombings before leaving office, Mr Zapatero stated.
Mr Zapatero told a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the tragedy that killed 192 that those responsible were international Islamic terrorists, and he rejected any possibility that Eta Basque separatists might have been involved. "Responsibility for preparing and carrying out the blasts rests exclusively with international terrorism of a radical Islamist type," Mr Zapatero told Spanish MPs. "There was never any line of investigation that pointed to Eta."
Government efforts to implicate Eta up to election day on 14 March were fraudulent, he said. From the moment on the afternoon of 11 March when police found a tape of Koranic verses in a van near the station where the trains started their deadly journey, "the only line of investigation pointed to Islamic terrorists", Mr Zapatero said.
Speaking of the destroyed computer records Mr Zapatero said: "Everything that happened, notes received, meetings or decisions between 11 and 14 March - there's nothing in the PM's office. All that remained was a bill for this massive purge to be settled from public funds," Mr Zapatero told MPs.
El Pais newspaper reported yesterday that the bill was €12,000 (£8,000) for a specialist computer company hired to expunge all computer records, not just the hard drive but the back-up security copies too.
http://www.w3ar.com/a.php?k=1801
China cut the share of its foreign reserves held in U.S. dollar assets last year, suggesting that the United States might no longer be able to rely on Asia to finance growing deficits, investment bank Lehman Brothers said in a report this week.
http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/ap/2005/03/11/ap1878397.html
[So even though the dollar is now worth the same as a bag of trash, we still couldn’t sell anything to any other country. From December to January our exports increased by only $400M, meanwhile our imports went up by nearly $3B
When Bush’s brain trust decided to explicitly let the dollar slide,t hey said that this would be good because a lower dollar would make American stuff more attractive to buyers on the world market. At the time I was immediately able to pick out the flaw in that plan, which these numbers bear out.
-We don’t have anything anyone else wants to buy. We have virtually no industry, we have virtually no services we can offer to anyone else, our food is all contaminated with genetically modified ingredients and no one wants to buy it. What WOULD we sell other countires? Even if they came to us and begged to buy our stuff, what could we sell them?]
The Nation’s international deficit in goods and services increased to $58.3 billion in January from $55.7 billion (revised) in December, as imports increased more than exports.
...
Exports increased to $100.8 billion in January from $100.4 billion in December
Imports increased to $159.1 billion in January from $156.2 billion in December.
http://www.census.gov/indicator/www/ustrade.html
[“I don’t care if we’re holding 15,000 innocent civilians”. I bet he really meant that too.]
A boy no older than 11 was among the children held by the Army at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, the former U.S. commander of the facility told a general investigating abuses at the prison.
...
Karpinski said Maj. Gen. Walter Wodjakowski, then the No. 2 Army general in Iraq, told her in the summer of 2003 not to release more prisoners, even if they were innocent.
``I don't care if we're holding 15,000 innocent civilians. We're winning the war,'' Karpinski said Wodjakowski told her. She said she replied: ``Not inside the wire, you're not, sir.''
http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/story.jsp?idq=/ff/story/0001%2F20050311%2F0351929671.htm&sc=1107&photoid=20040622BAG121
The LA Times reports that the state used taxpayer money to produce a "mock news story" that pushes a government-backed, corporation-friendly proposal that would kill mandatory lunch hours for worker. The report comes days after the GAO warned federal agencies against producing similar propaganda videos.
Eighteen stations ran the spots as news reports, complete with a positive promo text for the local anchors to read.
http://propagandamatrix.com/articles/march2005/110305fakestories.htm
Vietnamese plaintiffs have condemned a US court's decision to dismiss their legal action against manufacturers of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.
"It is a wrong decision, unfair and irresponsible," said Nguyen Trong Nhan, vice president of Vietnam's Association of Agent Orange (VAVA).
A Vietnamese girl who suffers from Agent Orange effects is seen here in 2004. A federal judge in New York dismissed a lawsuit filed on behalf of millions of Vietnamese people who were harmed by the herbicide Agent Orange, used widely during the Vietnam War. (AFP/File/Hoang Dinh Nam)
He said his group was thinking of filing an appeal.
The judge in the case said allegations the chemical caused birth defects and illness had not been proved.
"There is no basis for any of the claims of plaintiffs under the domestic law of any nation or state or under any form of international law. The case is dismissed," said US District Judge Jack B Weinstein.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0311-10.htm
“Guatemala? Why would you want to go there?”
The U.S. customs official’s voice dripped with contempt as he grilled my daughter at Toronto airport. Only minutes before, we had bade her a heartfelt farewell as she headed to Guatemala to study Spanish and do volunteer work, full of excitement.
The official scowled when Rosie told him she planned to spend four months in Guatemala. He told her to empty her carry-on bag, and examined every item carefully. A female officer frisked her from head to toe. This is how the United States welcomes an 18-year-old woman who wants to experience a developing nation.
Might the Cuba stamp in her passport from our trip there last year have had anything to do with it?
Was I ever relieved when Rosie emailed me that night to say she had arrived safely in Guatemala City.
After I got over my anger at her rude treatment, I told myself: that’s it. Time to hit the Yanks where it hurts, the only place they care about it: their wallets. From now on, I’m going to boycott U.S. products as much as possible and will not travel there, until they show they are a civilized nation.
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0311-30.htm
Eat your dinner, they told me as a boy, think about the poor starving children in India.
In those far-off days the concern of the adult world was for Asia. It had a huge population and gloomy prospects in the eyes of economists.
The people of Africa were poor, too, but they had riches in the form of gold, diamonds and copper - and ground so fertile that plants grew overnight wherever you dropped a seed the day before. Africans earned double what Asians did. Africa would be all right.
Forty years on and things are not all right. Africa has stagnated while Asia has seen an astonishing turnaround. First the tiger economies of east Asia leapt ahead. Now India and Bangladesh have followed. Today Asians earn double what Africans do. And life expectancy in Africa is now 17 years less than in India. Why has Africa fallen so far behind?
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0311-28.htm
Police held on to Pacho after a motorcyclist crashed into him in the north-eastern town of Arauca on Sunday.
Local police chief Diana Rojas justified the unusual arrest saying a "man was injured".
Since his brush with the law, which has sparked a national debate on animal rights, Pacho has become a Colombian television star.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4334877.stm
[This is good, they are looking for ways to preserve the essence of their culture even even while radically transforming it. Progress.]
The joint US-Malaysian research project is designed to decide how best to handle traditional South East Asian delicacies in zero gravity.
The programme is called roti canai in space - named after the flaky griddle-cooked pancake that Malaysians love to eat for breakfast.
...
Meanwhile religious scholars will be asked to tackle other problems, such as finding ways to help Muslim astronauts face Mecca as they pray while in orbit.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4331979.stm
[I didn’t evenk now it was possible to treat shellfish. Maybe they pry them open and take out the perl and put an aspirin in instead.]
South Korea will soon have its first fully licensed fish hospital with specialists trained to treat trout with fin fungus and grouper with gill infections.
The Yosu Fisheries Clinic will open on Saturday on South Korea's southern coast, operated by a husband and wife team of marine biologists who are among the first to pass a Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries exam to treat fish and shellfish.
http://reuters.excite.com/article/20050310/2005-03-10T154332Z_01_SEO295718_RTRIDST_0_ODD-ODD-KOREA-FISH-DC.html
[Well that certainly sounds like conclusive proof. Of crouse if this was a man the Indians would probably give him a parade instead. I don’t even think there is a word for a male nymphomaniac.]
To make matters worse, Shastriji also held Usha responsible for the murder of a 5-year-old whose body was discovered in a pond some days ago. Claiming that he had seen the gruesome killing reenacted in a tumbler of mustard oil, the tantrik convinced everyone of Usha's guilt. She was subsequently denounced as a witch.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/7242_1269811,00180008.htm
[Got this in an email.]
I have some wonderful news: God has answered your prayers--our
prayers--for the situation in Assam. But this news comes with the
warning that the danger has not passed.
The leaders of the most powerful insurgent force in far-northeastern
India had set yesterday, March 10, as the deadline to meet their
extortion demand. They threatened to totally destroy our ministry in
Assam if their demand was not met.
Immediately, hundreds of thousands of believers like you around the
world--possibly millions--began to pray for the situation. You
joined others in praying for the safety of our leaders, Bible
colleges, churches, and believers in Assam. You also prayed that God
would touch the hearts of those making these terrible demands.
And God has answered your prayers!
The official Hierarchy of this insurgent group--one that has never
backed down in the past and has enforced its demands in blood--told
our leaders in Assam that they were giving more time so they could
"study" our work and ministry among their people.
Praise God! Everyone is safe for now. We don't know whether "more
time" is a few more days or perhaps a few weeks, but it is clear that
God has intervened and touched their hearts in a favorable way for
now.
You and I know that the future is in God's powerful hands--not in the
hands of these men. So please continue to pray that He will protect
our brothers and sisters in Assam, and that He will soften the hearts
of these men even more--to the extent that they will come to
understand that God's work in Assam is for the good of all the
people, including them.
I pray that God will open the hearts of these men to the message of
salvation, and that they will turn from serving the god of this world
to serving the God who died to save them.
I also ask you to pray that God will keep His angels surrounding our
people and our work in Assam.
Thank you for praying with us.
Prayerfully rejoicing in Him,
K.P. Yohannan
President - Gospel for Asia
[The decision not to fix the hubble was also done without a formal science review. I will tell you why. This administration doesn’t believe in science. A lot of people in [and out of] the Congress don’t believe in science. So why would they bother to get science’s opinion on something? Is this because they are stupid? No. I am not saying they might not also be stupid. The problem is that scientists have become like the early savants in the Christian Church in the Middle East who would get into fist fights over how many angels could dance on the head of a pin or went and sat on a pole for 20 years doing nothing or told people to do things that were harmful and unnecessary because they thought the religion commanded it.
IN the 19th century science was popular because people could see it was working for them. Now people see it is workign against them- making tracking devices and torture machines and threatening to create half human monsters and so on.]
A little over 13 hours out from Sol, a veteran of the first space age - Voyager 1 - is working quietly in the depths of space as it travels away from our Sun at 17.163 kilometers per second. But now, NASA has told scientists working on these and other older missions that their missions may be terminated in October to save money, reports Nature.
The decision - which NASA officials say is not yet final - has angered space scientists, who are calling calling the moves penny-wise and pound-foolish, and that it is being done without a usual formal science review.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/voyager1-05a.html
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez offered his support for Iran's nuclear development plans Friday while attacking Washington for trying to "impose its doctrine, its politics and its interests on the world".
...
The Venezuelan president spoke after signing some 20 agreements with Khatami on cooperation on the oil and petrochemical industries, taxes, commerce and construction.
http://www.spacewar.com/2005/050311183954.7tzexx2x.html
[This is why people have a problem with science.]
Indeed, the idea of releasing GE trees into the wild sends shudders through Alyx Perry of the Southern Forests Network, a coalition of loggers, landowners, and environmentalists. "Our conclusion is that the genetically engineered trees will inevitably contaminate nongenetically engineered stands of trees."
That, in turn, could lead to millions of acres of infertile private timber, possibly lacking enough lignin (a wood-strengthening substance) needed to be saw timber, Ms. Perry says. Combined with internal pesticide production in pine and poplar trees in the wild, it could lead to forests unable to reproduce, produce food for animals, or create marketable timber.
http://www.rense.com/general63/prro.htm
[People in DC love to start up new organizations because then you can “The Army” and “The CIA” came to an agreement, as if some strange creature “the Army” and some other strange creature “The CIA” sat down somewhere, possibly in outer space, and came to an agreement.
In reality, actual people with actual names and faces sat down and hashed this out. But who were those people? We will never know because they hide behind their organizations’ skirts.]
Top military intelligence officials at the Abu Ghraib prison came to an agreement with the CIA to hide certain detainees at the facility without officially registering them, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. Keeping such "ghost" detainees is a violation of international law.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25239-2005Mar10?language=printer
But another key pillar of global jurisprudence - laws concerning individual liberty, dignity and human rights - is proving harder for Washington to ignore: like a sheriff with a posse of deputies, international law is slowly catching up with the Bush administration.
Despite its hostility to the international criminal court, the US may soon be forced by a UN security council majority to refer war crimes prosecutions in Sudan to the ICC. Diplomats say that would represent a big boost for supranational criminal justice.
Last week's US supreme court decision to abolish the death penalty for offenders under the age of 18 was partly a response to global opposition to capital punishment which the Bush administration has refused to heed. But from an internationallegal standpoint, the ruling in effect dragged the US into line with a key provision of the 1990 UN convention on the rights of the child.
In another test case, concerning Mexican citizens held on death row in Texas, the White House bowed this month to a ruling by the world court in The Hague, whose authority it has rejected in the past. The court said that the denial of consular assistance to the defendants, in breach of the 1969 Vienna convention, could have prejudiced their trials.
Despite its distaste for any international legal body or instrument that presumes to overrule the US constitution, the Bush administration has now belatedly ordered a judicial review.
Areas in which the US government or its agents have traditionally assumed legal immunity when acting in the national interest are also coming under challenge.
http://www.rense.com/general63/hgl.htm
[It’s nice that they are at least raking the government over the coals a little bit now. But it would have been better still if they had inquired more closely before going off to war in the first place. It is hard to believe the people in the English parliament [or the US Congress] were really so foolish as to believe what Blair and Bush was saying was really entirely sincere and reliable. Of all the people in the world these lawmakers should know the most well that their chief executives are NEVER 100% sincere and NEVER 100% reliable.]
The cabinet secretary yesterday astonished politicians by disclosing that Britain went to war against Iraq on just one page of legal advice from Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general.
The disclosure by Sir Andrew Turnbull to MPs was described as "beggaring belief" by Charles Kennedy, the Liberal Democrat leader, and "a new twist in the spin over the war" by Clare Short, the cabinet minister who quit after hostilities had begun.
Labour backbenchers who opposed the war said the disclosure amounted to "gross maladministration" by the government while the Tory shadow home secretary, David Davis, described the revelation as "another example of Blair's government by whim".
Article continues Sir Andrew's disclosure came after questioning by Tony Wright, Labour chairman of the Commons public administration committee and Gordon Prentice, a Labour backbencher. He kept repeating that Lord Goldsmith had presented his conclusions to the cabinet which had been summarised in a parliamentary answer.
Finally, after repeated questioning, he said: "There is not a longer version of that advice. This is the definitive statement of his views.
"He gave his definitive view at the time. He has said that that was not a summary. It was his view that he had formed at the time. He does not regard the statement in the parliamentary question as a summary. He regards it as his conclusive view."
http://www.rense.com/general63/toomf.htm
The Health Ministry is probing suspicions that two elderly patients died last year at Gedera's Hartzfeld Geriatric Hospital after undergoing an illegal invasive medical experiment.
The patients allegedly died from a severe urinary tract infection caused by the extraction of urine by puncturing their bodies.
One of the two died of the infection in February. The experiment allegedly was conducted about two weeks after she had undergone surgery for removing part of her small intestine. After her death, hospital management allegedly advised its doctors not to recruit any more patients for the experiment.
The Health Ministry suspects that at least two types of experiments were illegally conducted at the hospital in 2003-2004 on dozens of patients aged 70 to 90. One experiment was invasive, consisting of urine extraction by puncturing the patient's stomach. The other involved administering iron to hospital in-patients.
The ministry suspects that both experiments were conducted without obtaining the patients' full consent, and without providing them with all the pertinent information and advising them of the risks involved, as required by law.
At least four geriatric doctors from the hospital are implicated in the affair.
http://www.rense.com/general63/ileg.htm
[I’ll tell you what’s happening. They are easing the market into the new reality. As everyone knows people in the stock market, and particularly the currency markets, are among the most irrational people on Earth.I think the Asians are deliberately easing them off the dollar by making a little statement agains the dollar, and then half pulling it back, then they make another statement and half pull it back. After a while the currency traders will get used to it and the idea will sink in that the dollar is being eased out and hopefully there won’t be a big panic.]
Once again, an Asian country -- this time, Japan -- hinted that its appetite for U.S. dollars might be waning. And once again, that prospect roiled global currency markets, highlighting concerns that the United States has grown too dependent on foreign capital.
The turbulence erupted yesterday when Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi asserted that Japan ought to consider diversifying the foreign currencies, mostly dollars, held by its central bank, which currently total about $840 billion. "I think it's necessary to have diversity," Koizumi told a parliamentary committee in response to a question.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25310-2005Mar10?language=printer
[This is just like the airlines with 9/11. Everyone in the world knew that airline security was a joke. Seinfeld even had a comedy bit about how bad the screeners are.
Here we see the electricty industry has put themselves into a position where there are about 50 million ways to screw them over via computer. And they are essentially doing nothing about it.
Keep in mind that the electric grid in this country had already been roughed out before the invention of the computer and long before the Internet.
So these are not fundamental vulnerabilities in the grid. These are problems they let creep in as they migrated to computer control and then to internet control. Why do they even need internet control at all? I bet it was just to save money instead of having their own dedicated system.]
Hackers have caused no serious damage to systems that feed the nation's power grid, but their untiring efforts have heightened concerns that electric companies have failed to adequately fortify defenses against a potential catastrophic strike. The fear: In a worst-case scenario, terrorists or others could engineer an attack that sets off a widespread blackout and damages power plants, prolonging an outage.
...
Wood declined to comment on specifics of what he saw. But an official at the lab, Ken Watts, said the simulation showed how someone could hack into a utility's Internet-based business management system, then into a system that controls utility operations. Once inside, lab workers simulated cutting off the supply of oil to a turbine generating electricity and destroying the equipment.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25738-2005Mar10?language=printer
The researchers also classified people as sceptical if they disagreed with the official reason given for war, ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).
The results showed there were far fewer sceptics in the US than in Germany and Australia. And that such sceptics were less likely to believe statements that they knew had been retracted than those people classified as non-sceptical.
"The main finding about suspicion is confirming what we have known for quite a while from laboratory studies," says Lewandowsky.
"People do not discount corrected information unless they are suspicious about it or unless they are given some other hypothesis with which to interpret the information."
http://abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1316359.htm
[There is some quote from back in the Reagan days, some government official saying “neutrality doesn’t make any sense. Who are they neutral AGAINST?”
I think multi-culturalism either is or is becoming something like that. You are multi-cultural against Christianty and European civilization.
They have to re-name the Easter Bunny and say “season’s greetings” instead of “Merry Christmas”. But no one is calling a menorah a “candlestick holder” or something like that to be sensitive to other people who might not be comfortable with that. And “multi-cultural” proponents have no problem saying “Happy Kwanzaa” etc etc.]
"Because we're such a multicultural community, it's good just to remain neutral," mall General Manager Sam Hosen said.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/search/content/local_news/epaper/2005/03/11/s3b_bunny_0306.html
Federal authorities have opened an investigation into a rash of mysterious $30 and $40 charges appearing on consumer credit cards around the country, MSNBC.com has learned. The charges are for the purchase of DVDs and CDs from a company named "Pluto Data Ltd." Thousands of complaints about the charges have appeared on a Web site devoted to the mystery, with consumers saying they've never heard of the company.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7150531/
[This immediately occurred to me when I heard this. I have read some otehr comments to the same effect. Whatever was behind this, I am sure the government is going to use it to claim that ordinary courts are not suitable for conducting trials of “dangerous terrorists” because they are “just fundamentally too insecure” they will say. They will say they need special trials with limited access in secure locations without public access and whatever else they think they can get away with.
They ned something to be able to make this argument since there is a growing momentum to bring all this government tomfoolery back into the regular and lawfully prescribed channels.
I think it would be interesting in both this case and in the white supremcist judge case to know if the killers ever served in the armed forces.]
A man being escorted into court for his rape trial Friday stole a deputy's gun, killed the judge and two other people and carjacked a reporter's vehicle to escape, setting off a massive manhunt and creating widespread chaos across Atlanta, police said.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-03-11-atl-shooting_x.htm?POE=click-refer
[The talking heads professed ignorance of any reason why the Spanish people wouldn;t vote to re-elect Aznar’s government at the time he was defeated in the elections. They swore up and down that the Spanish people had been stampeded by the terrorists and that voting Aznar out of office was a victory for terrorism and sent a dangerous message and bla bla bla.
Well now see for yourself. Who knew better the fools on American TV or the Spanish people?]
Aznar 'purged all records in Madrid bombings cover-up'
Spain's socialist Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, condemned his conserva- tive predecessors yesterday for carrying out a "massive deception" in blaming the 11 March train bombings on Eta Basque separatists
Jose Maria Aznar's team: destroyed all computer records dealing with the March 11 Madrid bombings before leaving office
Jose Maria Aznar's team also destroyed all computer records dealing with the bombings before leaving office, Mr Zapatero stated.
Mr Zapatero told a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the tragedy that killed 192 that those responsible were international Islamic terrorists, and he rejected any possibility that Eta Basque separatists might have been involved. "Responsibility for preparing and carrying out the blasts rests exclusively with international terrorism of a radical Islamist type," Mr Zapatero told Spanish MPs. "There was never any line of investigation that pointed to Eta."
Government efforts to implicate Eta up to election day on 14 March were fraudulent, he said. From the moment on the afternoon of 11 March when police found a tape of Koranic verses in a van near the station where the trains started their deadly journey, "the only line of investigation pointed to Islamic terrorists", Mr Zapatero said.
Speaking of the destroyed computer records Mr Zapatero said: "Everything that happened, notes received, meetings or decisions between 11 and 14 March - there's nothing in the PM's office. All that remained was a bill for this massive purge to be settled from public funds," Mr Zapatero told MPs.
El Pais newspaper reported yesterday that the bill was €12,000 (£8,000) for a specialist computer company hired to expunge all computer records, not just the hard drive but the back-up security copies too.
http://www.w3ar.com/a.php?k=1801
China cut the share of its foreign reserves held in U.S. dollar assets last year, suggesting that the United States might no longer be able to rely on Asia to finance growing deficits, investment bank Lehman Brothers said in a report this week.
http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/ap/2005/03/11/ap1878397.html
[So even though the dollar is now worth the same as a bag of trash, we still couldn’t sell anything to any other country. From December to January our exports increased by only $400M, meanwhile our imports went up by nearly $3B
When Bush’s brain trust decided to explicitly let the dollar slide,t hey said that this would be good because a lower dollar would make American stuff more attractive to buyers on the world market. At the time I was immediately able to pick out the flaw in that plan, which these numbers bear out.
-We don’t have anything anyone else wants to buy. We have virtually no industry, we have virtually no services we can offer to anyone else, our food is all contaminated with genetically modified ingredients and no one wants to buy it. What WOULD we sell other countires? Even if they came to us and begged to buy our stuff, what could we sell them?]
The Nation’s international deficit in goods and services increased to $58.3 billion in January from $55.7 billion (revised) in December, as imports increased more than exports.
...
Exports increased to $100.8 billion in January from $100.4 billion in December
Imports increased to $159.1 billion in January from $156.2 billion in December.
http://www.census.gov/indicator/www/ustrade.html
[“I don’t care if we’re holding 15,000 innocent civilians”. I bet he really meant that too.]
A boy no older than 11 was among the children held by the Army at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, the former U.S. commander of the facility told a general investigating abuses at the prison.
...
Karpinski said Maj. Gen. Walter Wodjakowski, then the No. 2 Army general in Iraq, told her in the summer of 2003 not to release more prisoners, even if they were innocent.
``I don't care if we're holding 15,000 innocent civilians. We're winning the war,'' Karpinski said Wodjakowski told her. She said she replied: ``Not inside the wire, you're not, sir.''
http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/story.jsp?idq=/ff/story/0001%2F20050311%2F0351929671.htm&sc=1107&photoid=20040622BAG121
The LA Times reports that the state used taxpayer money to produce a "mock news story" that pushes a government-backed, corporation-friendly proposal that would kill mandatory lunch hours for worker. The report comes days after the GAO warned federal agencies against producing similar propaganda videos.
Eighteen stations ran the spots as news reports, complete with a positive promo text for the local anchors to read.
http://propagandamatrix.com/articles/march2005/110305fakestories.htm
Vietnamese plaintiffs have condemned a US court's decision to dismiss their legal action against manufacturers of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.
"It is a wrong decision, unfair and irresponsible," said Nguyen Trong Nhan, vice president of Vietnam's Association of Agent Orange (VAVA).
A Vietnamese girl who suffers from Agent Orange effects is seen here in 2004. A federal judge in New York dismissed a lawsuit filed on behalf of millions of Vietnamese people who were harmed by the herbicide Agent Orange, used widely during the Vietnam War. (AFP/File/Hoang Dinh Nam)
He said his group was thinking of filing an appeal.
The judge in the case said allegations the chemical caused birth defects and illness had not been proved.
"There is no basis for any of the claims of plaintiffs under the domestic law of any nation or state or under any form of international law. The case is dismissed," said US District Judge Jack B Weinstein.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0311-10.htm
“Guatemala? Why would you want to go there?”
The U.S. customs official’s voice dripped with contempt as he grilled my daughter at Toronto airport. Only minutes before, we had bade her a heartfelt farewell as she headed to Guatemala to study Spanish and do volunteer work, full of excitement.
The official scowled when Rosie told him she planned to spend four months in Guatemala. He told her to empty her carry-on bag, and examined every item carefully. A female officer frisked her from head to toe. This is how the United States welcomes an 18-year-old woman who wants to experience a developing nation.
Might the Cuba stamp in her passport from our trip there last year have had anything to do with it?
Was I ever relieved when Rosie emailed me that night to say she had arrived safely in Guatemala City.
After I got over my anger at her rude treatment, I told myself: that’s it. Time to hit the Yanks where it hurts, the only place they care about it: their wallets. From now on, I’m going to boycott U.S. products as much as possible and will not travel there, until they show they are a civilized nation.
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0311-30.htm
Eat your dinner, they told me as a boy, think about the poor starving children in India.
In those far-off days the concern of the adult world was for Asia. It had a huge population and gloomy prospects in the eyes of economists.
The people of Africa were poor, too, but they had riches in the form of gold, diamonds and copper - and ground so fertile that plants grew overnight wherever you dropped a seed the day before. Africans earned double what Asians did. Africa would be all right.
Forty years on and things are not all right. Africa has stagnated while Asia has seen an astonishing turnaround. First the tiger economies of east Asia leapt ahead. Now India and Bangladesh have followed. Today Asians earn double what Africans do. And life expectancy in Africa is now 17 years less than in India. Why has Africa fallen so far behind?
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0311-28.htm
posted by abu nakba at 3/11/2005 08:52:00 PM
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