Bulawayo
For the record I saw three dead rabbits on the sides of different roads this morning. This is possibly significant because I don’t think I have seen three dead rabbits on the side of the road in my whole life up to now, and because it is precisely one week til Easter.
=====
Less than two weeks before the general election in Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe's state-run media are doing all they can to distract voter attention from the country's economic plight.
One newspaper prints a photograph of a dead cow lying in what appear to be the plentiful green pastures of Zimbabwe, where an estimated five million people are at risk of death from starvation.
"A cow dies in Matabeleland North," the caption reads, referring to the province around the second city of Bulawayo, "one of many dead from eating too much grass."
http://www.rense.com/general63/efi.htm
[Now this game was not made in someone’s basement I am sure. Without even looking at the company I can say with some confidence that it is either owned by a big media company or is in some way bankrolled by a big company, even if indirectly. The big media companies in turn are controlled by a very small number of individuals, small enough that you could fit them in a college lecture hall with room to spare.
So when I see something like this, a game that promotes drugs, or a song that promotes killing people or whatever, I have to say to myself, why do those few guys in that room want this out there? What is in it for them?
I am ammending this comment. I just went to look for Midway Games, just in case someone didn't believe me (assuming anyone reads this anyway) and what do you know? Sumner Redstone owns 65 MILLION shares of Midway Games, the creator of this pro-drug video game apparently.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?s=MWY
And if you look at this page, you can see he has been buying up Midway like it was going out of style.
http://biz.yahoo.com/t/19/967.html
And guess what else, Sumner Redstone is the CEO of big media company Viacom.
http://news.corporate.findlaw.com/prnewswire/20050222/22feb2005105327.html
You'll notice back on Midway that the second largest shareholder is National Amusements. Who do you suppose is the CEO of National Amusements?
Yes, that's right. It's Sumner Redstone.
http://www.hoovers.com/free/search/simple/people/index.xhtml?page=1&query_string=sumner+redstone&which=people
So I aks again. Cui bono? Who benefits from promoting drug use?
By the way, if you want to see the webpage for the game, it is here:
"It’s Addictive. Use drugs and get that extra edge, but be careful, a full blown drug addiction can bring a police career to quick and bitter end."
http://www.midway.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?pagename=FutureTense/Apps/Xcelerate/Midway/RSK_GameCont&gameid=ZZZBRD6ICGD&console=midway]
Critics said the game, called Narc, would glamorise drug-taking and undermine respect for the police, who are depicted in the game as taking the drugs to help them to catch criminals.
In the game, which will be released in the United States this week and in Britain in May, the players are elite undercover narcotics officers whose aim is to eliminate an international drugs cartel.
Two police characters take drugs from the dealers and can use them to give themselves a "power boost" to help them to face "tough challenges" in their work.
A spokesman for Sony Playstation in London said: "If an officer finds himself in an extremely difficult or dangerous situation, say surrounded by violent enemies, he can take drugs and that can give him the power to take them on and win."
http://www.rense.com/general63/necomputergameglamor.htm
[I could easily believe this. What they need is someone like this guy they had reform the business law in India a while back. I read an interview with him. He said he sat down with books of all the business laws in the country and a couple of his advisors. And he would open up to a law and say “Why is this here?” and if no one could tell him he ripped it right out of the book. By the time they were done they had cut like 70% of the red tape.]
The police chief of one of Britain's largest forces has complained that his constables are so constrained by bureaucracy that they spend just 10 per cent of their time fighting crime.
http://www.rense.com/general63/UKcopsspend10percent.htm
The analysis also found that the obsessively debated differences between men and women were, at least on the genetic level, even greater than previously thought. As many as 300 of the genes on the X chromosomes may be activated differently in women than in men, says the other author of the paper, Laura Carrel, molecular biologist at the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine.
The newly discovered genetic variation between women might help account for differing gender reactions to prescription drugs and the heightened vulnerability of women to some diseases, experts say.
http://www.rense.com/general63/galaxyofgeneticdifferences.htm
Being kind to farm animals isn't just a moral duty - according to the CIWF Trust delegates; there is something in it for us, too. Cows, for example, produce significantly more milk if their handlers talk to them gently rather than shouting and pushing them around.
"The handlers don't have to be really mean and hit the cows," said Edmund Pajor of Purdue University, US. "It's just a slap on the rump in the way that many farmers would. But the cows don't like it and it makes a real difference.
"It helps send a message about treating animals in a proper way. A number of dairy farms now have signs up saying 'please don't shout at the cows'."
http://www.rense.com/general63/farmanimals.htm
[I will tell you why the ICJ or the UN or the Catholic Church has to be in the sights of the fools in DC. They want ALL allegiance, ALL power, ALL loyalty, ALL matters of judgement, EVRYTHING to go to them, and ONLY to them.
This is literally the definition of totalitarianism. This is why they can not tolerate an International Court of Justice, because what if the court turned out to actually be just? People might pay attention to it. Then if it said something off the DC script the DC people would have a problem trying to get us peons back on the right page. The same with the Pope or the UN or anything else.]
In some cases, respected global organizations seem to be viewed with suspicion. In describing the vulnerabilities of the United States, the document uses strong language to list international forums - such as the International Court of Justice in the Hague, created under a treaty the United States has declined to sign - alongside terrorists.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/031905F.shtml
In that black-and-white classic, Burt Lancaster plays the demonic General Scott, a right-wing lunatic who is frustrated by the humane agenda of a liberal president, played by Frederic March. Kirk Douglas plays the role of the hero, a subordinate of the demented general who alerts the well-meaning president about the coup that is about to take place, and the plot is foiled.
But the salient feature of the movie is Lancaster's (the general's) behavior. He is a classic Patriot, focused on enemies and without compassion or understanding. Even more astounding from the perspective of forty years later is that he sounds exactly like our current criminal president, George W. Bush.
In the early 1960s, Lancaster's role was excoriated by both reviewers and audiences for its over-the-top portrayal of an obviously compulsive maniac. Yet today, President Bush's virtually identical performance is depicted by today's prostituted media as a legitimate leader with valid religious convictions.
I find this observation to be a perfect description of the difference between the conscious culture of the 1960s and the comatose culture of the first decade of the 21st century, as well as a confirmation of the trend in American movies that principled heroism is no longer a trait to be practiced.
http://www.rense.com/general63/cropslt.htm
People can get almost anything on the black market—drugs, passports, even human organs. Now add Web sites to the list. Inside many authoritarian regimes that closely monitor and censor the Internet, access to blocked Web sites has become a black market commodity like any other. Typically, the process is simple: Savvy black marketers in cybercafes, universities, private homes, and elsewhere exploit technological loopholes to circumvent government filters and charge fees for access. According to the OpenNet Initiative (ONI) (www.opennetinitiative.net), a research organization devoted to tracking blocked Web sites, black market access to filtered pages in Saudi Arabia runs anywhere from $26 to $67 per Web site.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=2787
Scary, no? But here’s the clincher. Dialynas considers it key that the “U.S. standard of living must decline substantially.” Yeah, read that again and let it sink in. Your standard of living and mine must “decline substantially.” It is clear Dialynas intends the vast majority of Americans to become much, much poorer for his global economic recovery schemes to work.
http://twains_ghost.typepad.com/my_blog/
The revelations are mind-boggling. Almost daily, men once revered as paragons of virtue have been exposed as lascivious money-grabbers. Recorded conversations of eminent clerics engaging in 'love talk' have been broadcast on television, secret bank accounts revealed, and malfeasance unearthed, with priests emerging as central players in activities as disparate as trial-fixing, antiquities smuggling and election rigging. Highlighting a raft of lurid sexual claims, one newspaper splashed what was purported to be a 91-year-old priest in bed with a woman across its front page.
'In many ways, the Greek Orthodox Church has been revealed for what it is: a completely amoral and unethical multinational company,' said Nikos Dimou, author of the best-selling book The Misery of Being Greek .
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1441811,00.html
The principle of demanding apology from the Vatican germinated following Pope Jean Paul II's visit to Syria and Egypt a few years ago, and the apologies the Catholic Church presented to the Jewish and some other Christian doctrines, explained Sheikh Zafzaf. “Al-Azhar is only asking for a similar treatment,” he added.
The Vatican's ambassador to Egypt has abstained from commenting, saying that Al-Azhar's request is now being considered by the Holy See.
http://www.moroccotimes.com/news/article.asp?id=4815
The passage goes on to detail how foreigners may face unlimited detention without trial and accuses the UK of failing to live up to its obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights. To emphasise the point, it includes contact numbers for Amnesty and FIDH.
Fears that people of Muslim or Arab origin or appearance will be targeted by the authorities are especially relevant in France - more than five million people with connections to France’s former North African and Middle Eastern colonies live in the country.
http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=299372005&20050320123459
Cries of outrage over broadcast “indecency” have occupied political center stage ever since Janet Jackson’s wardrobe famously malfunctioned at last year’s Super Bowl. It has been fun to joke about this “tempest in a C cup,” but now Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, with a host of supporters, is pushing through legislation that would extend the federal government’s dubious power of censorship over the airwaves to cable television as well. Only an occasional maverick, like Vermont’s Congressman Bernie Sanders, has dared to oppose this ill-considered idea.
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0316-30.htm
[This is a good article, I just happened to stubmle across it. A lot of people can’t quite seem to acept how deep the rot goes around the US. Even if they grant that someone somewhere is doing something bad, they kind of seem to think of it as “out there” somewhere.
But here it is right in your face. The sae jet used by the Boston Red Sox apparently being used to kidnap people off the streets and haul them away to USG torture chambers.
Impossible you say? Not here in sleepy Massachusetts? Recall this other news story, apparently about a DIFFERENT Gulf Stream jet.
“But the inconspicuous office above a Sovereign Bank [in Dedham, MA], across from the red, white, and blue flags of a used car lot called Patriot Motors, is also the address of a shadowy company that owns a Gulfstream jet that secretly ferried two Al Qaeda suspects from Sweden to Egypt.”
and note this also from the same article:
“The identities of the company's owners are obscure at best.
The most recent records at the Massachusetts secretary of state's office list Bryan P. Dyess as the president and member manager and Mary Anne Phister as treasurer. No Massachusetts address could be found for Phister. The only Bryan P. Dyess that a Globe reporter could locate receives his mail at a post office box in Arlington, Va., on North George Mason Drive, 7 miles from the Pentagon.
Records with the Federal Aviation Administration list the current vice president as Colleen A. Bornt, whose only address appears to be a post office box in Chevy Chase, Md. Records indicate that both Dyess, 48, and Bornt, 54, received their Social Security numbers in the mid-1990s.
People who receive Social Security numbers late in adulthood are either recent immigrants or people given a new identity, said Beatrice Gaines, a spokeswoman for the Social Security Administration.”
http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2004/11/29/terror_suspects_torture_claims_have_mass_link?pg=full
And here is an update on the above plane:
“Leonard T. Bayard--whoever he may or may not be--became the sole owner of the mysterious Gulfstream jet on Nov. 16, according to public records compiled by the Federal Aviation Administration.
The records show that Bayard Foreign Marketing purchased the plane, for an undisclosed sum, from Premier Executive Transport Services, whose address is the same as that of a Dedham, Mass., law firm that incorporated Premier Executive in January 1994.
The Massachusetts law firm's address is shared by a second company, Crowell Aviation Technologies Inc., which according to Dun & Bradstreet claims to have only a single employee and $65,000 in annual revenue.
Government records show, however, that Crowell is one of only nine companies, along with Premier Executive, that has Pentagon permission to land aircraft at military bases worldwide. “
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0108-06.htm
And what’s this in the below article about the Red Sox torture jet being owned by an obscure religious organization. Does that sound strange? Maybe it shouldn’t.
Recall this article also:
“The money man behind two Florida flight schools which trained an as-yet undisclosed number of terrorist pilots has ties with the Evangelical Christian Right, including having loaned televangelist Jerry Falwell a reputed $1 million to bailout his failing religious enterprises a decade ago, and serving as Director of an avowedly Christian aeronautics company planning to manufacture a new business jet in Israel, the MadCowMorningNews has learned.”
http://www.madcowprod.com/mc412004.html
And this:
“As you recall, a previously-unknown company with no assets housed inside of Huffman Aviation inexplicably won a big bid from the city of Lynchburg to run a facility at the Lynchburg Regional Airport over a much-larger local Lynchburg aviation company which had then cried foul.
Britannia Aviation had no expertise running an aircraft maintenance hanger facility, but they won a 5-year lease from the city of Lynchburg anyway. Some wondered whether this strange circumstance owed anything to the million dollar loan Lynchburg’s most famous resident, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, had received and then neglected to repay from Huffman Aviation owner Wally Hilliard, where Britannia Aviation had been hiding unnoticed.
In the brouhaha which followed it was learned that Britannia Aviation was a dummy front company which nonetheless had friends in high places not just in Lynchburg but in Venice as well. Britannia had a “green light” from the DEA in Venice, authorities there were told, and local police had been warned to leave them alone.
Earlier this year Britannia folded, and its five-year lease was assigned to another company in Lynchburg, with one slight modification which permits the offering of “flight school services.”
The proud new lease-ee is Falwell Aviation.
It is unknown at press time whether Falwell Aviation at the Lynchburg Airport belongs to Lynchburg televangelist Jerry Falwell. At least one reporter following the case has been heard muttering that we might all be better off not knowing.
“
http://www.madcowprod.com/mc6222004.html
I should point out this article below does not SAY the Red Sox are in on torturing people, just possibly their plane. If not then it is just yet another incredible coincidence.]
Last June, the Boston Red Sox chartered an executive jet to help their manager make a quick visit home in the midst of the team's championship season.
But what was the very same Gulfstream - owned by one of the Red Sox's partners, but presumably without the team's logo on its fuselage - doing in Cairo on Feb. 18, 2003?
Schenectady, N.Y., Aug. 23, 2003
Perhaps by coincidence, Feb. 18, 2003, was the day an Islamic preacher known as Abu Omar, who had been abducted in Italy the previous day and forced aboard a small plane, also arrived at the Cairo airport.
Omar, whose given name is Osama Nasr Mostafa Hassan, was imprisoned by the Egyptians and, he claims, brutally tortured. The public prosecutor in Milan, Armando Spataro, who is investigating Omar's apparent kidnapping, expects to file charges within a few days, according to an Italian official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Spataro made headlines last month when, attempting to identify the plane that transported Omar from Italy to Egypt, he served a warrant on the Italian commander of the air base at Aviano, Italy, which is home to the U.S. Air Force's 31st Fighter Wing.
Spataro declines to say whether the Gulfstream that landed in Cairo, which bore the tail number N85VM, departed from Aviano around the time of Omar's disappearance.
...
According to FAA records, the Gulfstream's owner is not Richmor but Assembly Point Aviation, a company with an address in Albany, N.Y., but no telephone number. Dun & Bradstreet describes Assembly Point as a "religious organization" that is somehow involved with "churches, temples and shrines."
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0320-04.htm
http://fotodj.com/pages/schenectady2003/CA042D.htm
[I have often wondered what happened to the submarine. It seems that way back there were actually cargo subs, and here we have an air craft carrier sub.
It seems like there is a lot of room to grow in the field of submarining. For example, an underwater cargo ship would not have to bother with surface weather conditions. Why doesn’t anyone want to take advantage of anything like that?
It seems odd to me.]
The deep-diving scientists of the University of Hawaii have discovered another monster lurking in the waters off Oahu.
During test dives Thursday, the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory's Pisces submarines found the remains of the Imperial Japanese Navy's I-401 submarine, a gigantic underwater aircraft carrier built to bomb the Panama Canal.
http://starbulletin.com/2005/03/20/news/index1.html
In the Israel Defense Forces, pilots hold an elite status above that of other soldiers. The concept of "a Jewish air force," which brought tears of joy to many eyes when it was first uttered in 1948, still elicits an outpouring of pride from Israeli and American Jewish hearts alike.
It was thus heartening to see, one week ago, that this proud, courageous and quintessentially Jewish spirit lives on in Yonatan Shapira and in the 26 of his fellow pilots who, in 2002, co-signed a letter refusing to fly on attack missions into civilian population centers.
Shapira, a second-generation pilot and a grandson of Holocaust survivors who has rescued battlefield casualties and terror-bombing victims, spoke this month at two Madison synagogues and on campus. His soft-spoken demeanor, nuanced message and clearly stated love for Israel earned the respect of listeners from across the political spectrum.
He cited both the Jewish values of his upbringing and an Israel Defense Forces policy requiring soldiers to refuse illegal orders as justification for his actions, and is ready to risk jail time in order to defend his decisions in court. So far, the Israel Defense Forces has declined to prosecute, choosing instead to duck the issue of whether these attacks are illegal by dismissing him and his colleagues for "unauthorized use of flight suits" at a press conference announcing their stand.
...
Nowadays, when the word "Israel" conjures for many images of tanks and bulldozers, rubble and fleeing children, Shapira's message is needed to dispel the new anti-Semitic caricature and to demonstrate that Israel's spirit of tolerance and "purity of arms" lives on in every generation. He told stories of European and Palestinian audiences who, upon hearing him speak, saw Israelis humanized for the first time.
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0319-28.htm
The US deputy defense secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, has been summoned to Brussels to explain to an angry Europe how he would run the World Bank, in an escalation of the international row over his nomination to head the world's most important development body.
Anger is rising both at the nomination itself and Mr Bush's arrogance in making it, after initial soundings had met with widespread opposition around the world. One senior British figure privately described it as an "abuse" of power by Mr Bush last week.
European countries are furious both at President George Bush's naming of an enemy of multilateralism and by the unilateral way it was done, and are considering whether to block it. But there are strong indications that, although Tony Blair knew of the appointment in advance, he did not inform his Secretary of State for International Development, Hilary Benn.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0320-02.htm
Joseph Stiglitz, the former chief economist of the World Bank and one of the world's most influential economic thinkers, has launched a savage attack on US plans to appoint Paul Wolfowitz as the World Bank's new president.
In an exclusive interview, the American Nobel laureate said: "The World Bank will once again become a hate figure. This could bring street protests and violence across the developing world." He described President Bush's determination to appoint his deputy defense secretary to the important post as "either an act of provocation or an act so insensitive as to look like provocation". Wolfowitz is widely regarded as the creator of the policy that led to the US war in Iraq.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0320-01.htm
It may sound gruesome, but it turns out that maggots are remarkably efficient at cleaning up infected wounds by eating dead tissue and killing off bacteria that could block the healing process.
Maggot medicine, in fact, has a long history. Napoleon's battle surgeon wrote of the healing powers of maggots 200 years ago, and they were put to work during the American Civil War and in the trenches in World War One.
With the arrival of modern antibiotics in the 1940s, however, maggots were consigned to the medical dustbin.
Now a new generation of physicians, keen to cut back on antibiotic use, is waking up to the creatures' charms. Some believe maggots are one of the most effective ways of treating wounds infected by the superbug methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).
http://www.rense.com/general63/hospf.htm
[As ye sow, so shall ye reap.]
Britain's blackmail of Croatia in nine points
Nacional reveals the scandalous contents of the report (so called "no-paper") submitted by Geoffrey Lungley (British SIS agency [MI6] and first secretary of the British Embassy in Croatia) to Tomislav Karamarko, director of POA, on 1 February, which ordered the government what to do in the Gotovina case.
BRITS AT WORK
Dennis McShane, Britain's Minister for Europe and John Ramsden, British Ambassador to Croatia, in a recent visit to the Croatia government Nacional is in possession of a document which proves that Great Britain, through its intelligence agencies, is directly blackmailing the Croatian government relating to the Gotovina case and the start of negotiations for Croatia's accession to the EU, scheduled to begin on 17 March. This confirms suspicions of the very disputable role of Great Britain in Croatia's accession process, and the unacceptable encroachment on the sovereignty of this state. And the events that unfolded in POA headquarters on 1 February only prove that the policies chosen by Ivica Racan and Ivo Sanader, in terms of the relationship with the ICTY prosecution and relations with Great Britain, were completely off the mark.
http://cryptome.org/mi6-nine.htm
The Homeland Security Council (HSC) – in partnership with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the federal interagency, and state and local homeland security agencies – has developed fifteen all-hazards planning scenarios for use in national, federal, state, and local homeland security preparedness activities. These scenarios are designed to be the foundational structure for the development of national preparedness standards from which homeland security capabilities can be measured. While these scenarios reflect a rigorous analytical effort by federal, state, and local homeland security experts, it is recognized that refinement and revision over time may be necessary to ensure the scenarios remain accurate, represent the evolving all-hazards threat picture, and embody the capabilities necessary to respond to domestic incidents.
This document includes executive summaries for the fifteen scenarios, and a separate document contains the complete scenario text.
http://cryptome.org/15-attacks.htm
Yvon Neptune, Haiti’s prime minister under President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, on a hunger strike since Feb. 20, has fallen into critical condition and was rushed to a hospital by U.N. soldiers Thursday evening, according to sources in Port-au-Prince. Neptune and Interior Minister Jocelerme Privert have been refusing food to protest their illegal detention as well as the imprisonment of hundreds of Aristide supporters who have not been charged with any crime.
Prime Minister Neptune was taken to the MINUSTAH hospital — run by the UN Argentinian soldiers — across the highway from the main airport. He was not forced to leave against his will, but was occasionally unconscious.
“It has been a crime for people to express their solidarity with President Aristide in Haiti since the coup d’état against President Aristide Feb. 29,” said Pierre Labossiere, a founding member of the Haiti Action Committee. “It’s a crime punishable by summary execution in thousands of cases. Those who aren’t killed are put in jail just for expressing their support for Lavalas [Aristide’s party], even wearing Aristide t-shirts in peaceful demonstrations. This is the situation that has kept Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, Minister of the Interior Jocelerme Privert, folk singer Annette Auguste (So Anne) jailed in miserable conditions.
http://www.haitiaction.net/News/HAC/3_11_5.html
=====
Less than two weeks before the general election in Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe's state-run media are doing all they can to distract voter attention from the country's economic plight.
One newspaper prints a photograph of a dead cow lying in what appear to be the plentiful green pastures of Zimbabwe, where an estimated five million people are at risk of death from starvation.
"A cow dies in Matabeleland North," the caption reads, referring to the province around the second city of Bulawayo, "one of many dead from eating too much grass."
http://www.rense.com/general63/efi.htm
[Now this game was not made in someone’s basement I am sure. Without even looking at the company I can say with some confidence that it is either owned by a big media company or is in some way bankrolled by a big company, even if indirectly. The big media companies in turn are controlled by a very small number of individuals, small enough that you could fit them in a college lecture hall with room to spare.
So when I see something like this, a game that promotes drugs, or a song that promotes killing people or whatever, I have to say to myself, why do those few guys in that room want this out there? What is in it for them?
I am ammending this comment. I just went to look for Midway Games, just in case someone didn't believe me (assuming anyone reads this anyway) and what do you know? Sumner Redstone owns 65 MILLION shares of Midway Games, the creator of this pro-drug video game apparently.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?s=MWY
And if you look at this page, you can see he has been buying up Midway like it was going out of style.
http://biz.yahoo.com/t/19/967.html
And guess what else, Sumner Redstone is the CEO of big media company Viacom.
http://news.corporate.findlaw.com/prnewswire/20050222/22feb2005105327.html
You'll notice back on Midway that the second largest shareholder is National Amusements. Who do you suppose is the CEO of National Amusements?
Yes, that's right. It's Sumner Redstone.
http://www.hoovers.com/free/search/simple/people/index.xhtml?page=1&query_string=sumner+redstone&which=people
So I aks again. Cui bono? Who benefits from promoting drug use?
By the way, if you want to see the webpage for the game, it is here:
"It’s Addictive. Use drugs and get that extra edge, but be careful, a full blown drug addiction can bring a police career to quick and bitter end."
http://www.midway.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?pagename=FutureTense/Apps/Xcelerate/Midway/RSK_GameCont&gameid=ZZZBRD6ICGD&console=midway]
Critics said the game, called Narc, would glamorise drug-taking and undermine respect for the police, who are depicted in the game as taking the drugs to help them to catch criminals.
In the game, which will be released in the United States this week and in Britain in May, the players are elite undercover narcotics officers whose aim is to eliminate an international drugs cartel.
Two police characters take drugs from the dealers and can use them to give themselves a "power boost" to help them to face "tough challenges" in their work.
A spokesman for Sony Playstation in London said: "If an officer finds himself in an extremely difficult or dangerous situation, say surrounded by violent enemies, he can take drugs and that can give him the power to take them on and win."
http://www.rense.com/general63/necomputergameglamor.htm
[I could easily believe this. What they need is someone like this guy they had reform the business law in India a while back. I read an interview with him. He said he sat down with books of all the business laws in the country and a couple of his advisors. And he would open up to a law and say “Why is this here?” and if no one could tell him he ripped it right out of the book. By the time they were done they had cut like 70% of the red tape.]
The police chief of one of Britain's largest forces has complained that his constables are so constrained by bureaucracy that they spend just 10 per cent of their time fighting crime.
http://www.rense.com/general63/UKcopsspend10percent.htm
The analysis also found that the obsessively debated differences between men and women were, at least on the genetic level, even greater than previously thought. As many as 300 of the genes on the X chromosomes may be activated differently in women than in men, says the other author of the paper, Laura Carrel, molecular biologist at the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine.
The newly discovered genetic variation between women might help account for differing gender reactions to prescription drugs and the heightened vulnerability of women to some diseases, experts say.
http://www.rense.com/general63/galaxyofgeneticdifferences.htm
Being kind to farm animals isn't just a moral duty - according to the CIWF Trust delegates; there is something in it for us, too. Cows, for example, produce significantly more milk if their handlers talk to them gently rather than shouting and pushing them around.
"The handlers don't have to be really mean and hit the cows," said Edmund Pajor of Purdue University, US. "It's just a slap on the rump in the way that many farmers would. But the cows don't like it and it makes a real difference.
"It helps send a message about treating animals in a proper way. A number of dairy farms now have signs up saying 'please don't shout at the cows'."
http://www.rense.com/general63/farmanimals.htm
[I will tell you why the ICJ or the UN or the Catholic Church has to be in the sights of the fools in DC. They want ALL allegiance, ALL power, ALL loyalty, ALL matters of judgement, EVRYTHING to go to them, and ONLY to them.
This is literally the definition of totalitarianism. This is why they can not tolerate an International Court of Justice, because what if the court turned out to actually be just? People might pay attention to it. Then if it said something off the DC script the DC people would have a problem trying to get us peons back on the right page. The same with the Pope or the UN or anything else.]
In some cases, respected global organizations seem to be viewed with suspicion. In describing the vulnerabilities of the United States, the document uses strong language to list international forums - such as the International Court of Justice in the Hague, created under a treaty the United States has declined to sign - alongside terrorists.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/031905F.shtml
In that black-and-white classic, Burt Lancaster plays the demonic General Scott, a right-wing lunatic who is frustrated by the humane agenda of a liberal president, played by Frederic March. Kirk Douglas plays the role of the hero, a subordinate of the demented general who alerts the well-meaning president about the coup that is about to take place, and the plot is foiled.
But the salient feature of the movie is Lancaster's (the general's) behavior. He is a classic Patriot, focused on enemies and without compassion or understanding. Even more astounding from the perspective of forty years later is that he sounds exactly like our current criminal president, George W. Bush.
In the early 1960s, Lancaster's role was excoriated by both reviewers and audiences for its over-the-top portrayal of an obviously compulsive maniac. Yet today, President Bush's virtually identical performance is depicted by today's prostituted media as a legitimate leader with valid religious convictions.
I find this observation to be a perfect description of the difference between the conscious culture of the 1960s and the comatose culture of the first decade of the 21st century, as well as a confirmation of the trend in American movies that principled heroism is no longer a trait to be practiced.
http://www.rense.com/general63/cropslt.htm
People can get almost anything on the black market—drugs, passports, even human organs. Now add Web sites to the list. Inside many authoritarian regimes that closely monitor and censor the Internet, access to blocked Web sites has become a black market commodity like any other. Typically, the process is simple: Savvy black marketers in cybercafes, universities, private homes, and elsewhere exploit technological loopholes to circumvent government filters and charge fees for access. According to the OpenNet Initiative (ONI) (www.opennetinitiative.net), a research organization devoted to tracking blocked Web sites, black market access to filtered pages in Saudi Arabia runs anywhere from $26 to $67 per Web site.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=2787
Scary, no? But here’s the clincher. Dialynas considers it key that the “U.S. standard of living must decline substantially.” Yeah, read that again and let it sink in. Your standard of living and mine must “decline substantially.” It is clear Dialynas intends the vast majority of Americans to become much, much poorer for his global economic recovery schemes to work.
http://twains_ghost.typepad.com/my_blog/
The revelations are mind-boggling. Almost daily, men once revered as paragons of virtue have been exposed as lascivious money-grabbers. Recorded conversations of eminent clerics engaging in 'love talk' have been broadcast on television, secret bank accounts revealed, and malfeasance unearthed, with priests emerging as central players in activities as disparate as trial-fixing, antiquities smuggling and election rigging. Highlighting a raft of lurid sexual claims, one newspaper splashed what was purported to be a 91-year-old priest in bed with a woman across its front page.
'In many ways, the Greek Orthodox Church has been revealed for what it is: a completely amoral and unethical multinational company,' said Nikos Dimou, author of the best-selling book The Misery of Being Greek .
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1441811,00.html
The principle of demanding apology from the Vatican germinated following Pope Jean Paul II's visit to Syria and Egypt a few years ago, and the apologies the Catholic Church presented to the Jewish and some other Christian doctrines, explained Sheikh Zafzaf. “Al-Azhar is only asking for a similar treatment,” he added.
The Vatican's ambassador to Egypt has abstained from commenting, saying that Al-Azhar's request is now being considered by the Holy See.
http://www.moroccotimes.com/news/article.asp?id=4815
The passage goes on to detail how foreigners may face unlimited detention without trial and accuses the UK of failing to live up to its obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights. To emphasise the point, it includes contact numbers for Amnesty and FIDH.
Fears that people of Muslim or Arab origin or appearance will be targeted by the authorities are especially relevant in France - more than five million people with connections to France’s former North African and Middle Eastern colonies live in the country.
http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=299372005&20050320123459
Cries of outrage over broadcast “indecency” have occupied political center stage ever since Janet Jackson’s wardrobe famously malfunctioned at last year’s Super Bowl. It has been fun to joke about this “tempest in a C cup,” but now Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, with a host of supporters, is pushing through legislation that would extend the federal government’s dubious power of censorship over the airwaves to cable television as well. Only an occasional maverick, like Vermont’s Congressman Bernie Sanders, has dared to oppose this ill-considered idea.
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0316-30.htm
[This is a good article, I just happened to stubmle across it. A lot of people can’t quite seem to acept how deep the rot goes around the US. Even if they grant that someone somewhere is doing something bad, they kind of seem to think of it as “out there” somewhere.
But here it is right in your face. The sae jet used by the Boston Red Sox apparently being used to kidnap people off the streets and haul them away to USG torture chambers.
Impossible you say? Not here in sleepy Massachusetts? Recall this other news story, apparently about a DIFFERENT Gulf Stream jet.
“But the inconspicuous office above a Sovereign Bank [in Dedham, MA], across from the red, white, and blue flags of a used car lot called Patriot Motors, is also the address of a shadowy company that owns a Gulfstream jet that secretly ferried two Al Qaeda suspects from Sweden to Egypt.”
and note this also from the same article:
“The identities of the company's owners are obscure at best.
The most recent records at the Massachusetts secretary of state's office list Bryan P. Dyess as the president and member manager and Mary Anne Phister as treasurer. No Massachusetts address could be found for Phister. The only Bryan P. Dyess that a Globe reporter could locate receives his mail at a post office box in Arlington, Va., on North George Mason Drive, 7 miles from the Pentagon.
Records with the Federal Aviation Administration list the current vice president as Colleen A. Bornt, whose only address appears to be a post office box in Chevy Chase, Md. Records indicate that both Dyess, 48, and Bornt, 54, received their Social Security numbers in the mid-1990s.
People who receive Social Security numbers late in adulthood are either recent immigrants or people given a new identity, said Beatrice Gaines, a spokeswoman for the Social Security Administration.”
http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2004/11/29/terror_suspects_torture_claims_have_mass_link?pg=full
And here is an update on the above plane:
“Leonard T. Bayard--whoever he may or may not be--became the sole owner of the mysterious Gulfstream jet on Nov. 16, according to public records compiled by the Federal Aviation Administration.
The records show that Bayard Foreign Marketing purchased the plane, for an undisclosed sum, from Premier Executive Transport Services, whose address is the same as that of a Dedham, Mass., law firm that incorporated Premier Executive in January 1994.
The Massachusetts law firm's address is shared by a second company, Crowell Aviation Technologies Inc., which according to Dun & Bradstreet claims to have only a single employee and $65,000 in annual revenue.
Government records show, however, that Crowell is one of only nine companies, along with Premier Executive, that has Pentagon permission to land aircraft at military bases worldwide. “
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0108-06.htm
And what’s this in the below article about the Red Sox torture jet being owned by an obscure religious organization. Does that sound strange? Maybe it shouldn’t.
Recall this article also:
“The money man behind two Florida flight schools which trained an as-yet undisclosed number of terrorist pilots has ties with the Evangelical Christian Right, including having loaned televangelist Jerry Falwell a reputed $1 million to bailout his failing religious enterprises a decade ago, and serving as Director of an avowedly Christian aeronautics company planning to manufacture a new business jet in Israel, the MadCowMorningNews has learned.”
http://www.madcowprod.com/mc412004.html
And this:
“As you recall, a previously-unknown company with no assets housed inside of Huffman Aviation inexplicably won a big bid from the city of Lynchburg to run a facility at the Lynchburg Regional Airport over a much-larger local Lynchburg aviation company which had then cried foul.
Britannia Aviation had no expertise running an aircraft maintenance hanger facility, but they won a 5-year lease from the city of Lynchburg anyway. Some wondered whether this strange circumstance owed anything to the million dollar loan Lynchburg’s most famous resident, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, had received and then neglected to repay from Huffman Aviation owner Wally Hilliard, where Britannia Aviation had been hiding unnoticed.
In the brouhaha which followed it was learned that Britannia Aviation was a dummy front company which nonetheless had friends in high places not just in Lynchburg but in Venice as well. Britannia had a “green light” from the DEA in Venice, authorities there were told, and local police had been warned to leave them alone.
Earlier this year Britannia folded, and its five-year lease was assigned to another company in Lynchburg, with one slight modification which permits the offering of “flight school services.”
The proud new lease-ee is Falwell Aviation.
It is unknown at press time whether Falwell Aviation at the Lynchburg Airport belongs to Lynchburg televangelist Jerry Falwell. At least one reporter following the case has been heard muttering that we might all be better off not knowing.
“
http://www.madcowprod.com/mc6222004.html
I should point out this article below does not SAY the Red Sox are in on torturing people, just possibly their plane. If not then it is just yet another incredible coincidence.]
Last June, the Boston Red Sox chartered an executive jet to help their manager make a quick visit home in the midst of the team's championship season.
But what was the very same Gulfstream - owned by one of the Red Sox's partners, but presumably without the team's logo on its fuselage - doing in Cairo on Feb. 18, 2003?
Schenectady, N.Y., Aug. 23, 2003
Perhaps by coincidence, Feb. 18, 2003, was the day an Islamic preacher known as Abu Omar, who had been abducted in Italy the previous day and forced aboard a small plane, also arrived at the Cairo airport.
Omar, whose given name is Osama Nasr Mostafa Hassan, was imprisoned by the Egyptians and, he claims, brutally tortured. The public prosecutor in Milan, Armando Spataro, who is investigating Omar's apparent kidnapping, expects to file charges within a few days, according to an Italian official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Spataro made headlines last month when, attempting to identify the plane that transported Omar from Italy to Egypt, he served a warrant on the Italian commander of the air base at Aviano, Italy, which is home to the U.S. Air Force's 31st Fighter Wing.
Spataro declines to say whether the Gulfstream that landed in Cairo, which bore the tail number N85VM, departed from Aviano around the time of Omar's disappearance.
...
According to FAA records, the Gulfstream's owner is not Richmor but Assembly Point Aviation, a company with an address in Albany, N.Y., but no telephone number. Dun & Bradstreet describes Assembly Point as a "religious organization" that is somehow involved with "churches, temples and shrines."
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0320-04.htm
http://fotodj.com/pages/schenectady2003/CA042D.htm
[I have often wondered what happened to the submarine. It seems that way back there were actually cargo subs, and here we have an air craft carrier sub.
It seems like there is a lot of room to grow in the field of submarining. For example, an underwater cargo ship would not have to bother with surface weather conditions. Why doesn’t anyone want to take advantage of anything like that?
It seems odd to me.]
The deep-diving scientists of the University of Hawaii have discovered another monster lurking in the waters off Oahu.
During test dives Thursday, the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory's Pisces submarines found the remains of the Imperial Japanese Navy's I-401 submarine, a gigantic underwater aircraft carrier built to bomb the Panama Canal.
http://starbulletin.com/2005/03/20/news/index1.html
In the Israel Defense Forces, pilots hold an elite status above that of other soldiers. The concept of "a Jewish air force," which brought tears of joy to many eyes when it was first uttered in 1948, still elicits an outpouring of pride from Israeli and American Jewish hearts alike.
It was thus heartening to see, one week ago, that this proud, courageous and quintessentially Jewish spirit lives on in Yonatan Shapira and in the 26 of his fellow pilots who, in 2002, co-signed a letter refusing to fly on attack missions into civilian population centers.
Shapira, a second-generation pilot and a grandson of Holocaust survivors who has rescued battlefield casualties and terror-bombing victims, spoke this month at two Madison synagogues and on campus. His soft-spoken demeanor, nuanced message and clearly stated love for Israel earned the respect of listeners from across the political spectrum.
He cited both the Jewish values of his upbringing and an Israel Defense Forces policy requiring soldiers to refuse illegal orders as justification for his actions, and is ready to risk jail time in order to defend his decisions in court. So far, the Israel Defense Forces has declined to prosecute, choosing instead to duck the issue of whether these attacks are illegal by dismissing him and his colleagues for "unauthorized use of flight suits" at a press conference announcing their stand.
...
Nowadays, when the word "Israel" conjures for many images of tanks and bulldozers, rubble and fleeing children, Shapira's message is needed to dispel the new anti-Semitic caricature and to demonstrate that Israel's spirit of tolerance and "purity of arms" lives on in every generation. He told stories of European and Palestinian audiences who, upon hearing him speak, saw Israelis humanized for the first time.
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0319-28.htm
The US deputy defense secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, has been summoned to Brussels to explain to an angry Europe how he would run the World Bank, in an escalation of the international row over his nomination to head the world's most important development body.
Anger is rising both at the nomination itself and Mr Bush's arrogance in making it, after initial soundings had met with widespread opposition around the world. One senior British figure privately described it as an "abuse" of power by Mr Bush last week.
European countries are furious both at President George Bush's naming of an enemy of multilateralism and by the unilateral way it was done, and are considering whether to block it. But there are strong indications that, although Tony Blair knew of the appointment in advance, he did not inform his Secretary of State for International Development, Hilary Benn.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0320-02.htm
Joseph Stiglitz, the former chief economist of the World Bank and one of the world's most influential economic thinkers, has launched a savage attack on US plans to appoint Paul Wolfowitz as the World Bank's new president.
In an exclusive interview, the American Nobel laureate said: "The World Bank will once again become a hate figure. This could bring street protests and violence across the developing world." He described President Bush's determination to appoint his deputy defense secretary to the important post as "either an act of provocation or an act so insensitive as to look like provocation". Wolfowitz is widely regarded as the creator of the policy that led to the US war in Iraq.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0320-01.htm
It may sound gruesome, but it turns out that maggots are remarkably efficient at cleaning up infected wounds by eating dead tissue and killing off bacteria that could block the healing process.
Maggot medicine, in fact, has a long history. Napoleon's battle surgeon wrote of the healing powers of maggots 200 years ago, and they were put to work during the American Civil War and in the trenches in World War One.
With the arrival of modern antibiotics in the 1940s, however, maggots were consigned to the medical dustbin.
Now a new generation of physicians, keen to cut back on antibiotic use, is waking up to the creatures' charms. Some believe maggots are one of the most effective ways of treating wounds infected by the superbug methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).
http://www.rense.com/general63/hospf.htm
[As ye sow, so shall ye reap.]
Britain's blackmail of Croatia in nine points
Nacional reveals the scandalous contents of the report (so called "no-paper") submitted by Geoffrey Lungley (British SIS agency [MI6] and first secretary of the British Embassy in Croatia) to Tomislav Karamarko, director of POA, on 1 February, which ordered the government what to do in the Gotovina case.
BRITS AT WORK
Dennis McShane, Britain's Minister for Europe and John Ramsden, British Ambassador to Croatia, in a recent visit to the Croatia government Nacional is in possession of a document which proves that Great Britain, through its intelligence agencies, is directly blackmailing the Croatian government relating to the Gotovina case and the start of negotiations for Croatia's accession to the EU, scheduled to begin on 17 March. This confirms suspicions of the very disputable role of Great Britain in Croatia's accession process, and the unacceptable encroachment on the sovereignty of this state. And the events that unfolded in POA headquarters on 1 February only prove that the policies chosen by Ivica Racan and Ivo Sanader, in terms of the relationship with the ICTY prosecution and relations with Great Britain, were completely off the mark.
http://cryptome.org/mi6-nine.htm
The Homeland Security Council (HSC) – in partnership with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the federal interagency, and state and local homeland security agencies – has developed fifteen all-hazards planning scenarios for use in national, federal, state, and local homeland security preparedness activities. These scenarios are designed to be the foundational structure for the development of national preparedness standards from which homeland security capabilities can be measured. While these scenarios reflect a rigorous analytical effort by federal, state, and local homeland security experts, it is recognized that refinement and revision over time may be necessary to ensure the scenarios remain accurate, represent the evolving all-hazards threat picture, and embody the capabilities necessary to respond to domestic incidents.
This document includes executive summaries for the fifteen scenarios, and a separate document contains the complete scenario text.
http://cryptome.org/15-attacks.htm
Yvon Neptune, Haiti’s prime minister under President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, on a hunger strike since Feb. 20, has fallen into critical condition and was rushed to a hospital by U.N. soldiers Thursday evening, according to sources in Port-au-Prince. Neptune and Interior Minister Jocelerme Privert have been refusing food to protest their illegal detention as well as the imprisonment of hundreds of Aristide supporters who have not been charged with any crime.
Prime Minister Neptune was taken to the MINUSTAH hospital — run by the UN Argentinian soldiers — across the highway from the main airport. He was not forced to leave against his will, but was occasionally unconscious.
“It has been a crime for people to express their solidarity with President Aristide in Haiti since the coup d’état against President Aristide Feb. 29,” said Pierre Labossiere, a founding member of the Haiti Action Committee. “It’s a crime punishable by summary execution in thousands of cases. Those who aren’t killed are put in jail just for expressing their support for Lavalas [Aristide’s party], even wearing Aristide t-shirts in peaceful demonstrations. This is the situation that has kept Prime Minister Yvon Neptune, Minister of the Interior Jocelerme Privert, folk singer Annette Auguste (So Anne) jailed in miserable conditions.
http://www.haitiaction.net/News/HAC/3_11_5.html
posted by abu nakba at 3/20/2005 06:15:00 PM
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