Mental illness
[Read this whole article.]
I reached a point recently where the feeling that I had missed some fork in the road, some crucial turning point, overtook me. I started considering the possibility that I might not be as smart or as well informed as I once considered myself to be. The world around me no longer made any sense. I mean, no sense at all. The things I was observing and experiencing had no connection to what I was being told by the mass media actually exists out there, none of it added up.
For example, last year at this time I was paying about a $1.70 for a gallon of regular unleaded now the price is $2.30; I’ve done the math and that is about a 35% increase. Home prices where I live in southern Arizona have been rising steeply, more than 20% annually for several years. In the state I formerly lived in Nevada, they shot up 36% just in 2004. In my experience over the past five years every time I go shopping, whether for food, gas, clothing, etc, I do not see nearly stable or slightly rising prices.
I see prices of everything moving up quite steeply.
So I have been wondering, how is it that the government economists, the people crunching the numbers have come up with such low Consumer Price Inflation numbers in recent years? This is what has been confusing me. I put gas in my car, pay attention to the real estate section of the newspaper, go the doctor, buy all the stuff that everyone else does; I swear that prices have been rising across the board; and rising much higher than 3 percent. But no, the ‘experts’ tell me that I am wrong.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/runawayeconomy.html
It's enough to make you sick isn't it?
Some $40 billion spent on "Homeland Security" in 2004 and another $50 billion going into the same sinkhole in 2005, with billions of those dollars specifically targeting "bio terror," and a mistake (or stupid decision) by a biological lab made last fall had a deadly flu virus capable of creating a global pandemic getting mailed out to several thousand unsuspecting testing labs.
If just one of those test kits were to infect just one person who then went home on a rush-hour bus or subway, we could in no time have millions of people dying of flu-against which most people have zero immunity.
And how was this accidental terror "device" detected?
Not by the alert folks at Tom Ridge's or Mike Chertoff's Homeland Security Department, but by an alert technician working for the "socialist health care system" in Manitoba, Canada, who tested the virus in the kit and determined that it was the same strain of flu virus that caused a worldwide flu pandemic in 1957 and who immediately alerted the World Health Organization and the U.S. Center for Disease Control.
http://mparent7777.blog-city.com/read/1197319.htm
[Accident. Sure. It’s just a coincidence they they accidentally sent out a highly virulent strain, instead of say, a very weak strain.
Actually this doesn’t even sound like an accident if you read further down.]
The virus that caused the 1957 “Asian flu” pandemic has been accidentally released by a lab in the US, and sent all over the world in test kits which scientists are now scrambling to destroy.
There are fears the virus could escape the labs, as the mistake was discovered after the virus escaped from a kit at a high-containment lab in Canada. Such an escape could spread worldwide, as demonstrated in Russia in the 1970s.
...
The CAP kits - prepared by private contractor Meridian Bioscience in Cincinnati, US - were to contain a particular strain of influenza A - the viral family that causes most flu worldwide. But instead of choosing a strain from the hundreds of recently circulating influenza A viruses, the firm chose the 1957 pandemic strain.
...
“If this incident doesn't cause a major reassessment of the safety of flu research, a lab-sponsored pandemic may well be the only thing that induces sobriety,” comments Ed Hammond of the Sunshine Project, a biosafety pressure group
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7261
[Just $50 a barrel. Why not buy two?]
Oil prices dropped to their lowest level in nearly two months on Wednesday after the U.S. government released data that showed rising supplies of crude oil and gasoline.
Light, sweet crude for May delivery fell $1.64 to settle at $50.22 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It was the lowest closing price since Feb. 18, when crude traded at $48.35. Oil prices remain 35 percent higher than a year ago.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/050413/oil_prices.html?.v=15
In short, the Israelis have devised a few fake photos to lay on Bush since Iran does not actually have "nuclear installations," as the International Atomic Energy Agency reported late last year. Israel wants the United States to bomb the daylights out of Iran, a possibility that will grow more and more remote as time passes, a fact that really freaks out Sharon and his Jabotinskyite partners in international crime who want every Arab or Muslim nation in the Middle East bombed or at least cowed by the same sort of shock and awe Bush used against Iraq.
Gallan, who accompanied Sharon in his summit with Bush at his Texas ranch, presented the photos together with information the Israeli intelligence services gathered on the Islamic Republic's nuclear programme, the Israeli radio added, without mentioning how the photos were taken. It just said that the images showed that the Iranian nuclear programme was at a "very advanced" stage.
...
Here's a novel idea... if the flipping Israelis are so hot to invade (or at minimum bomb) Iran, let them do it themselves. Of course they will not do this since there are around 66 million Iranians and about 6 million Israelis, including a couple hundred thousand rabid settlers in the West Bank, Gaza, and the land Israel filched from Syria. Better to get the stupid Americans to do it, although it appears the Pentagon is not exactly chomping at the bit to invade Iran considering the mess in Iraq.
http://www.counterpunch.org/nimmo04132005.html
Greenberg, who arrived and exited the building via an underground tunnel, made no comments after the meeting. His lawyer had indicated on Monday that his client likely would refuse to answer questions because he had not had sufficient time to prepare.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=&e=20&u=/ap/20050413/ap_on_bi_ge/aig_probe_greenberg
[I have a simple solution to this problem. make it illegal for private interests [other than your employer] to maintain files of your social security number. Problem solved. All of this would disappear over night.]
Reed Elsevier said the data stolen does not include "personal credit histories, medical records or financial records on individuals."
"The information concerned relates to names and addresses and other personal identifying information such as Social Security and driver's license numbers," Reed Elsevier said today.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-041205lexis_lat,0,6757042.story?coll=la-home-headlines
[All very good questions. Those Dutch are smart.]
Dutch airline KLM has demanded the US explain how it gained insight into passenger details of a flight US authorities turned back from its airspace despite the fact it was not scheduled to land on American territory.
KLM said on Monday US authorities are not allowed to have access to passenger details on flights that do not land in America. The airline said US authorities are only given restricted access to details on US-bound flights.
...
The other 276 passengers were given accommodation in an Amsterdam hotel on Saturday before boarding another flight for Mexico. They arrived on Sunday, a day later than originally planned.
The incident could cost KLM hundreds of thousands of euros.
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=1&story_id=18915&name=KLM%20in%20showdown%20with%20US%20over%20banned%20flight
A second Indonesian volcano has sprung to life after a series of terrifying
quakes, intensifying fears that the archipelago's violent geological forces will
unleash a new disaster.
Tangkuban Perahu, a smouldering 2,076-metre (6,933 foot) mountain near the city
of Bandung on Java island, began rumbling overnight, prompting scientists to
raise the alarm and declare the summit around the open crater off limits.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/050413/323/fg93k.html
A commercial produced by an organization fighting for the freedom of Iran that
depicts a nuclear terror attack in America ñ the kind many experts believe is
possible should Tehran get the bomb ñ will run in 20 markets across the country
this month.
Titled "An Atomic 9-11: When Evil is Appeased," the spot, sponsored by
the Iran Freedom Foundation, is based on a scenario described in the new WND
Books release "Atomic Iran: How the Terrorist Regime Bought the Bomb and
American Politicians," by Jerome R. Corsi, co-author of the best-selling
"Unfit for Command."
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43766
The region is now on top alert as ash rises as high as a kilometre above the
volcano's crater, Indonesia's Directorate of Volcanology and Geophysics said
Wednesday.
http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2005/04/13/volcano-indonesia050413.html
The US trade deficit in international goods and services is now increasing at an
annualized rate of more than $200 billion per year. The accelerating trade gap
is the primary reason that the US economy has been able to maintain its growth
and shrug off higher energy prices. In the past few years, foreigners (mostly
foreign central banks (FCBs)) have been willing to finance the expansion of the
trade deficit.
...
As the current account deficit (which is mostly the trade deficit plus
interest/dividend payments on international investments and debt) moves past the
$800 billion annualized rate, it will be increasingly difficult to finance the
current account without ever higher interest rates. That is because the total
current account deficit is now quickly approaching a theoretical limit of free
total world savings - the kind of limit which could be like a brick wall to any
further expansion of the economy.
http://wallstreetexaminer.com/?itemid=677
Targeting a Caterpillar Inc. shareholder resolution set for a vote today, many
California Jewish leaders are intensely mobilizing against efforts to use stock
market pressure as a tool against Israel's occupation of Palestinian
territories.
California Jews representing such organizations as the American Jewish Congress
and StandWithUs plan to attend a meeting at Caterpillar Inc.'s corporate
headquarters in Peoria, Ill., to speak out today against a shareholder
resolution that would direct the firm to investigate the use of its bulldozers
by the Israeli army to demolish Palestinian homes.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-divest13apr13,0,7335396.story?coll=la-home-local
Iran has outpaced the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia to become Germany's
number one trading partner in the Near and Mideast region, a leading German
trade official announced in an Iran investment conference, hosted by the Iranian
embassy in Berlin on Tuesday.
http://www.irna.ir/irnewtest/en/news/view/line-22/0504131043161614.htm
His private remarks to Senate Republicans were in keeping with the response
frequently offered on his behalf by House Republicans: Blame the Democrats and
occasionally the news media for the scrutiny he faces. House Republicans intend
to follow the script later in the week, hoping to showcase passage of bankruptcy
legislation and estate tax repeal as a counterpoint to Democratic charges that
they are merely power-hungry.
Several Republicans stressed that DeLay's appearance at the senators' lunch was
routine, noting that GOP leaders of one house have begun attending meetings of
the rank and file of the other house in recent weeks.
A U.S. Army statement said the CBS cameraman was being held because he might
pose ìan imperative threat to the coalition forces.î The U.S. military suspects
him of links to the rebels because video footage found in his camera shows he
was on the scene of several bombings shortly after they took place.
ìWe call on the U.S. Army to release him very quickly if no evidence is produced
to support his alleged collaboration with the insurgency,î the press freedom
organization said.
http://www.gnn.tv/headlines/2128/Cover_the_Insurgents_Go_to_Prison_or_Worse
[Get ready for a surprise. People with no money can't buy anything.]
U.S. retail sales rose 0.3 percent in March, the Commerce Department said on
Wednesday, falling short of expectations after a sharp downturn in department
store and clothing sales
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050413/bs_nm/economy_retail_dc
Last Thanksgiving, an Oxford clinician writing in the prestigious British scientific magazine _Nature_ presented another startling hypothesis: that the disease may have sprung from scientific experiments that lasted into the Fifties in which chimpanzee and monkey blood was directly injected into human beings to see if people could carry the form of the malaria parasite that infests those primates.
...
In recent decades, some scientists believe, live-virus vaccines may have actually helped transfer viruses across species lines. Perhaps the classic example is canine parovirus, or CPV, which abruptly appeared in dogs in 1977 and within months had become a widespread animal epidemic -- or epizootic -- on virtually every continent, causing entirely new dog diseases of the intestines and heart muscle. CPV is intriguingly similar in its genetic structure to a cat disease called feline panleukopenia virus (FPLV), but it's even more similar to to the vaccine for this disease. This has lead several virologists to suggest that by accident or design, the cat virus most likely was introduced into dog cells in the laboratory, where the strain adapted itself to the new host.
http://www.whale.to/vaccines/curtis.htm
A report to the UN human rights commission in Geneva has concluded that Iraqi children were actually better off under Saddam Hussein than they are now.
This, of course, comes as a bitter blow for all those of us who, like George Bush and Tony Blair, honestly believe that children thrive best when we drop bombs on them from a great height, destroy their cities and blow up hospitals, schools and power stations.
It now appears that, far from improving the quality of life for Iraqi youngsters, the US-led military assault on Iraq has inexplicably doubled the number of children under five suffering from malnutrition. Under Saddam, about 4% of children under five were going hungry, whereas by the end of last year almost 8% were suffering.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8519.htm
Now, the participatory panopticon is rendering the events of those days more transparent. Thanks to citizen video efforts, often organized by free speech activists such as I Witness Video [PDF of an organizing flyer], visual records are proving that people were swept up without cause and didn't resist, that police officers have misrepresented the events at trial, and that prosecutors have selectively edited the video record to prove their cases. According to today's New York Times, of the 1,670 cases that have proceeded, 91 percent have ended with charges dropped or a verdict of not guilty:
A sprawling body of visual evidence, made possible by inexpensive, lightweight cameras in the hands of private citizens, volunteer observers and the police themselves, has shifted the debate over precisely what happened on the streets during the week of the convention.
For [Dennis] Kyne
[arrested while he walked down the steps of the New York Public Library] and 400 others arrested that week, video recordings provided evidence that they had not committed a crime or that the charges against them could not be proved, according to defense lawyers and prosecutors.
Among them was Alexander Dunlop, who said he was arrested while going to pick up sushi. Last week, he discovered that there were two versions of the same police tape: the one that was to be used as evidence in his trial had been edited at two spots, removing images that showed Mr. Dunlop behaving peacefully. When a volunteer film archivist found a more complete version of the tape and gave it to Mr. Dunlop's lawyer, prosecutors immediately dropped the charges and said that a technician had cut the material by mistake.
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/002519.html
But they didn't expect two U.S. Secret Service agents would be among the show's first visitors.
The agents turned up Thursday evening, just before the public opening of "Axis of Evil, the Secret History of Sin," and took pictures of some of the art pieces -- including "Patriot Act," showing President Bush on a mock 37-cent stamp with a revolver pointed at his head.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-axis12.html
Battle plans" and "weapons": how odd a clergyman and a supposedly "Christian" organization would use such murderously warlike rhetoric. But "war" does derive from and inspire "hate," and those are perfect descriptors for the Rev. Sheldon and the TVC, as well as for some others in the movement to recreate America in their own image.
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/041205Seesholtz/041205seesholtz.html
In the words of ESA Inc (Boston), the US's leading energy security analysts: "One of the best things for our supply security would be liberate Iraq"; words echoed by William Kristol, the Republican party ideologist, in testimony to the House Subcommittee on the Middle East on May 22 2002 that as far as oil was concerned, "Iraq is more important than Saudi Arabia".
So when, according to the former head of ExxonMobil's Gulf operations, "Iraqi exiles approached us saying, you can have our oil if we can get back in there", the Bush administration decided to use its overwhelming military might to create a pliant - and dependable - oil protectorate in the Middle East and achieve that essential "opening" of the Gulf oilfields.
But in the words of another US oil company executive, "it all turned out a lot more complicated than anyone had expected". Instead of the anticipated post-invasion rapid expansion of Iraqi production (an expectation of an additional 2m b/d entering the world market by now), the continuing violence of the insurgency has prevented Iraqi exports from even recovering to pre-invasion levels.
In short, the US appears to have fought a war for oil in the Middle East, and lost it. The consequences of that defeat are now plain for all to see
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/a0bb7970-aa25-11d9-aa38-00000e2511c8.html
[So if you see something funny out in the middle of nowhere, don’t think it isn’t anything just because of the deserted location.]
A former South Korean intelligence agency chief who disappeared in 1979 was killed at a chicken farm in the suburbs of Paris by a team of South Korean agents, a weekly news magazine here reported Monday.
Sisa Journal quoted a former agent who allegedly led the team at the time as saying that his team abducted Kim Hyung-wook, who was then chief of the Korea Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), at a restaurant near a casino in downtown Paris on Oct. 7, 1979.
...
Lee said he killed Kim in a team with an agent called Kwak, who was sent to Israel's Mossad intelligence agency and trained to be a special assassin.
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/nation/200504/kt2005041121480911990.htm
A new breed of lawmakers has lumbered onto Capitol Hill. They represent no one. They ignore their constituencies. They are blind to the issues that confront the nation. They cast their votes with no regard for the will of the people.
Their voting pattern is a window into their mindset and philosophy: They don’t vote with their hearts and they don’t vote with their heads. They vote only in lockstep and only as directed. One for all, and all for one, they dutifully vote with their party.
They are the new, mindless and obedient herd of George W. Bush Republicans.
Totally submissive, the GWB Republican herd methodically falls in line. Not unlike the suicidal terrorists they are taught to loathe, they follow their leader even if it means their own demise. They protect the corporations that poison the very air they have to breathe. They vote to eliminate the civil rights that are rightfully theirs. They vote billions of their own tax dollars to the Halliburtons of the world, even as they watch the quality of life around them crumble.
http://tvnewslies.org/html/the_new_republican.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/12/nyregion/12video.html?ex=1270958400&en=46f3604d0befb92f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2005/04/12/nyregion/20050412video_graphic.html
One of the last claims in Colin Powell's presentation to the UN Security Council on February 5, 2003 blew away like dust in the wind late last week in the Old Bailey, London's central criminal court.
The trial of the infamous "UK poison cell," a group portrayed by Secretary of State Powell as al Qaida-associated operatives plotting to launch ricin attacks in the United Kingdom and in league with Muhamad al Zarqawi in Iraq, found nothing of the sort. The jury did find "the UK poison cell," known as Kamel Bourgas and others (Sidali Faddag, Samir Asli, Mouloud Bouhrama, Mustapha Taleb, Mouloud Sihali, Aissa Kalef), not guilty of conspiracy to murder by plotting ricin attacks and, generally speaking, not guilty of conspiracy to do anything. Kamel Bourgas had been previously convicted of murder of a British policeman in an unpublicized trial.
Months earlier and behind the scenes, the British government had seen its claims, that the group had the capability to produce ricin and that materials on a ricin recipe found in their belongings could be linked to al Qaida, rupture. And equally startling, it was confirmed that a preliminary positive finding of the poison in a residue tested in a raid on their apartment in Wood Green in January of 2003 was false but that through bureaucratic bungling, just the opposite news was presented to British authorities.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/nsn/nsn-050411.htm
Twenty Iraqis have been killed and 22 injured after US helicopters and heavy artillery bombed houses in al-Rummana village, north of al-Qaim city, Aljazeera reported.
Seven children, six women and three old men were among the dead,
witnesses said, while the injured included 13 children, seven women and two old men.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/09413EAB-D8E4-4C03-A52C-BD7118AC9946.htm
[I recently read a book that talked about Montreal as being kind of the organizaed crime capital of Canada. This seems to lend some weight to that.
This could also help explain the strange trend in Canada I have been picking up on this blog.]
Alfonso Gagliano has held titles in Canada that include labor minister, deputy House leader, ambassador to Denmark and minister of public works.
In New York he held a different kind of title, according to secret FBI documents obtained by the Daily News: "made" member of the Bonanno crime family.
Gagliano was identified as a longtime soldier in the Bonanno crime family by Frank Lino, a former Mafia capo-turned-informer.
...
Gagliano's name surfaced as Lino described the Bonanno family's operations in Montreal, which has served as an outpost for the Brooklyn-based group for decades.
He said he and a group of top Bonanno gangsters traveled to Montreal in the 1990s to let the northern branch office know the family had a new boss, Joseph Massino.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime_file/story/253857p-217343c.html
Using revenue from its candy and soda sales, Model High School plans to pay up to $100 for information about thefts and drug or gun possession on campus.
"It's not that we feel there are any problems here," said Principal Glenn White. "It's a proactive move for getting information that will help deter any sort of illegal activity."
Under the new policy, a student would receive $10 for information about a theft on campus, $25 or $50 for information about drug possession, and $100 for information about gun possession or other serious felonies.
...
No Model High students have received the reward yet, but some questioned the logic behind it. Jaime Parris, a senior, said that most students already would tell faculty about anything that threatened student safety.
http://www.wftv.com/news/4366400/detail.html
It hurts to write and know that we have done unto others much more than they have done unto us – this includes 9/11, I'm afraid. No one "deserved" to die on 9/11, nor will anyone "deserve" to die in a future terror attack in the United States. But then, no one "deserved" to die, as we sat transfixed in our living rooms, under the bombs of "Shock & Awe,"* That's "moral equivalence" too – all human life is precious.
The explanation on offer by amoralists like William Bennett is that our motives are pure, which of course they aren't. And, again and again, we're "the greatest democracy in the history of the world." Why, we're Americans; don't people know that we're a good people? We "work hard and play by the rules"; we try (and mostly fail) to raise upstanding citizens. Sorry, self-regard doesn't cut it. Non-Americans around the world want to see some actual evidence of these alleged values and morals that the president prattles on about.
What We've Become
The question should be asked: are we a good people anymore? We are not a great people – that much is certain. Not in a land where more people watch "American Idol" than the State of the Union address. In reality, we are still, as Martin Luther King pointed out nearly four decades ago, "the greatest purveyors of violence in the world." One day, if we are not careful, we will choke on our myths.
...
Working class whites all over the country were singing Charlie Daniels ("this ain't no rag, it's a flag / and we don't wear it on our head") songs, while sending their sons and daughters off to meaningless deaths in Iraq. Your son or daughter died for the right of Muqtada al-Sadr and Ali al-Sistani to treat women like cattle, kill Christians, ban alcohol and whip and lacerate themselves freely with chains.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/bender/bender10.html
[Maybe that's because there are no office or factory jobs out there for people
to get experience at.]
"You'd think people would know to call in sick when they're not coming to
work, but that's not always the case," said Michael Kauffman, an executive
at Anoplate Corp., a 175-person metal manufacturer in Syracuse. "We're
having many more problems than in the past getting people who understand what it
means to work in an office or a factory."
http://www.rense.com/general63/69.htm
Two Dutch legislators demanded Monday that the government provide details about
why a KLM Royal Dutch Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Mexico City was blocked
mid-flight by U.S. authorities for having two undesirable people on board.
...
"Of course we know who they are. But there was no reason to arrest
them," he said. "There was also no request to arrest them from the
U.S. side."
http://www.rense.com/general63/klm.htm
German prosecutors have provoked outrage by ruling that the 1945 RAF bombing of
Dresden can legally be termed a "holocaust".
The decision follows the refusal by the Hamburg public prosecutor's office to
press charges against a Right-wing politician who compared the bombing raids to
"the extermination of the Jews".
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/04/12/wdres12.xml
Iran said on Monday it plans to take legal action against the United States
government for funding the Islamic republic's opposition forces, AFP reported.
"The American government has been allocating funds for interference in
Iran's domestic affairs for years," government spokesman Abdollah
Ramezanzadeh told reporters.
http://www.rense.com/general64/fund.htm
A woman was struck by lightning, the N1 freeway was closed twice and roofs were
ripped off 10 houses during the thunderstorm and high winds that lashed the
Western Cape on Sunday.
Parts of Bellville were left without electricity as a hailstorm caused flooding.
The houses that lost their roofs are in Greenfields, a residential area near the
University of the Western Cape. No one was reported injured.
http://www.rense.com/general64/town.htm
[Camp Gannon? named for Jeff Gannon?]
Insurgents claiming links to al Qaeda tried to overrun a U.S. Marine base near
the Syrian border Monday using gunmen, suicide car bombs and a firetruck loaded
with explosives, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.
The assault was the second time in less than two weeks that foreign insurgents
have massed an organized, military-style offensive, U.S. officials said.
Insurgents typically have staged smaller-scale bombings and attacks.
...
The raid Monday was on Camp Gannon, a U.S. base at Husaybah, a few yards from
the Syrian border near the Euphrates River.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43621-2005Apr11?language=printer
A strange metamorphosis has taken place in America, especially among
conservatives. From its original definition of love of country, especially love
for the founding principles of the country, patriotism has morphed into a love
for bigger and bigger government. It seems that to most conservatives today, if
anyone dares speak against any federal program or initiative, he or she is
categorized as being unpatriotic or even ungodly. Many conservatives even equate
a person's support or lack thereof for our President as being a major
determinant of his or her spirituality
http://www.rense.com/general64/audd.htm
Pervasive problems plague the control of radioactive waste at the nation's
nuclear power plants, in part because the federal government has been sluggish
in instituting and enforcing safeguards, according to a federal report issued
yesterday.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44916-2005Apr11?language=printer
A Washington DC construction supervisor told Jerry Kammer of the San Diego
Tribune that since the surge in illegal immigration from Central America to the
Washington, DC area began roughly 20 years ago, the pay for installing 4 x 8
panels has dropped from $4.50 per panel to $3.00.
After adjusting for inflation, that's a stunning 60% decline in wages.
And over the last 20 years, while these already low-end jobs were in their 60%
freefall, what did we hear from the Wall Street Journal, Alan Greenspan, and the
immigration lawyer industry?
Why, America has been in the grip of a desperate labor shortage this whole
time!
http://projectusa.org/ezine/2005/04-06-AGCA.html
[For the first time in 14 years? Come on. this is an annual event.
As to the second quote, my employer is apparently making history by exhibiting
no interest in pay/morale equation whatsoever]
For the first time in 14 years, the American workforce has in effect gotten an
across-the-board pay cut.
The growth in wages in 2004 and the first two months of this year trailed
inflation, compounding the squeeze from higher housing, energy and other costs.
...
Historically, periods when wage growth is outpaced by inflation rarely last more
than 18 months. That's partly because businesses don't want their employees'
living standards to fall, as that injures morale, said Trewman Bewley, a Yale
University economist who has studied wage activity during economic downturns.
ome-headlines”>http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-wages11apr11%2C0%2C5092199.story?coll=la-h
ome-headlines
Jeff Bezos, founder of amazon.com, has bought a huge tract of land just outside
Van Horn and declared it will be his base for a private project to develop
commercial spaceflight. If he succeeds, Van Horn will be home to a fleet of
space rockets taking tourists far above the blue Texas sky into the black of
space.
http://www.rense.com/general63/tdown.htm
Everyone in the world should have their genetic profile stored on a database,
but the information should be held independently of the authorities, according
to the pioneer of DNA fingerprinting.
Current practice means that only the DNA of criminals is stored in most
countries and the information is held by government agencies.
At a lecture on Saturday to mark the 20th anniversary of the discovery of DNA
fingerprinting, Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys, of Leicester University, said a
global DNA database would have been invaluable in attempting to identify victims
of the recent tsunami. Instead, investigators faced endless searches through
incomplete records, or having to cause further distress to relatives of the
victims.
http://www.rense.com/general63/dna.htm
In an earlier study on malignant melanoma incidence in Sweden, Norway, Denmark
and the USA, we found a strong association between the introduction of FM radio
broadcasting at full-body resonant frequencies and increasing melanoma
incidence. The purpose of the current study was to review mortality and
incidence data for malignant melanoma of the skin in Sweden and its temporal
relation to increased ìsun-travelingî, and to the introduction of FM and TV
broadcasting netúworks.
ry&id=4321”>http://www.medscimonit.com/medscimonit/modules.php?name=Current_Issue&d_op=summa
ry&id=4321
[Ho Ho! Here’s a new one indeed. Watch for this to spread. Maybe you need some kind of forced medication to combat this condition. “Holocaust fatigue” the newest mental illness.]
But those close to Mr Tamihere said it was part of a smear campaign and he was unlikely to bow to those conditions.
A Sunday newspaper reported that in an interview with Investigate magazine, Mr Tamihere said he was "sick and tired of hearing how many Jews got gassed", not because he was not revolted or violated by it, but because he already knew.
"How many times do I have to be told and made to feel guilty?" he said.
...
A director of Jewish human rights organisation the Simon Wiesenthal Centre suggested he seek psychological assistance to help him empathise with the victims of genocide.
"Holocaust fatigue is simply a new form of mental illness, which is a condition which should disqualify him from public service," Efraim Zuroff said from Jerusalem.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/manawatustandard/0,2106,3245069a6407,00.html
Israeli reaction to John Tamihere's Holocaust comments has been swift, with one newspaper quoting the director of a Nazi hunting organisation as saying the MP needed psychological assistance.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3244737a10,00.html
[This is a funny car review.]
This is my circuitous way of saying that the Cherokee is one of the worst-handling cars I've ever driven. The problem is the suspension, as if the designers replaced the springs and dampers you get on other cars with Laura Ashley cushions filled with marshmallows. The Cherokee lurches when you accelerate, it lurches when you brake, and the body roll on corners is so pronounced you feel you have to brace your elbows against the door. In fact, whatever movement the driver makes, even so much as lifting an index finger from the wheel to acknowledge another driver's courtesy, sets in motion an unstoppable chain of events that invariably ends up with your passengers turning green. You can't cough in this thing without feeling like a hippo on a waterbed.
http://motoring.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=627577&host=32&dir=1092
[Keep in mind this is a country well stocked with nuclear bombs.]
There is a danger of a military coup in Israel if the trend of right-wing figures refusing to serve in the military widens "and more and more religious Jews that answer to rabbis enter the General Staff," Labor MK Danny Yatom warned on Friday.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/562876.html
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/7235393?rnd=1113062695995&has-player=true&version=6.0.12.857
I reached a point recently where the feeling that I had missed some fork in the road, some crucial turning point, overtook me. I started considering the possibility that I might not be as smart or as well informed as I once considered myself to be. The world around me no longer made any sense. I mean, no sense at all. The things I was observing and experiencing had no connection to what I was being told by the mass media actually exists out there, none of it added up.
For example, last year at this time I was paying about a $1.70 for a gallon of regular unleaded now the price is $2.30; I’ve done the math and that is about a 35% increase. Home prices where I live in southern Arizona have been rising steeply, more than 20% annually for several years. In the state I formerly lived in Nevada, they shot up 36% just in 2004. In my experience over the past five years every time I go shopping, whether for food, gas, clothing, etc, I do not see nearly stable or slightly rising prices.
I see prices of everything moving up quite steeply.
So I have been wondering, how is it that the government economists, the people crunching the numbers have come up with such low Consumer Price Inflation numbers in recent years? This is what has been confusing me. I put gas in my car, pay attention to the real estate section of the newspaper, go the doctor, buy all the stuff that everyone else does; I swear that prices have been rising across the board; and rising much higher than 3 percent. But no, the ‘experts’ tell me that I am wrong.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/runawayeconomy.html
It's enough to make you sick isn't it?
Some $40 billion spent on "Homeland Security" in 2004 and another $50 billion going into the same sinkhole in 2005, with billions of those dollars specifically targeting "bio terror," and a mistake (or stupid decision) by a biological lab made last fall had a deadly flu virus capable of creating a global pandemic getting mailed out to several thousand unsuspecting testing labs.
If just one of those test kits were to infect just one person who then went home on a rush-hour bus or subway, we could in no time have millions of people dying of flu-against which most people have zero immunity.
And how was this accidental terror "device" detected?
Not by the alert folks at Tom Ridge's or Mike Chertoff's Homeland Security Department, but by an alert technician working for the "socialist health care system" in Manitoba, Canada, who tested the virus in the kit and determined that it was the same strain of flu virus that caused a worldwide flu pandemic in 1957 and who immediately alerted the World Health Organization and the U.S. Center for Disease Control.
http://mparent7777.blog-city.com/read/1197319.htm
[Accident. Sure. It’s just a coincidence they they accidentally sent out a highly virulent strain, instead of say, a very weak strain.
Actually this doesn’t even sound like an accident if you read further down.]
The virus that caused the 1957 “Asian flu” pandemic has been accidentally released by a lab in the US, and sent all over the world in test kits which scientists are now scrambling to destroy.
There are fears the virus could escape the labs, as the mistake was discovered after the virus escaped from a kit at a high-containment lab in Canada. Such an escape could spread worldwide, as demonstrated in Russia in the 1970s.
...
The CAP kits - prepared by private contractor Meridian Bioscience in Cincinnati, US - were to contain a particular strain of influenza A - the viral family that causes most flu worldwide. But instead of choosing a strain from the hundreds of recently circulating influenza A viruses, the firm chose the 1957 pandemic strain.
...
“If this incident doesn't cause a major reassessment of the safety of flu research, a lab-sponsored pandemic may well be the only thing that induces sobriety,” comments Ed Hammond of the Sunshine Project, a biosafety pressure group
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7261
[Just $50 a barrel. Why not buy two?]
Oil prices dropped to their lowest level in nearly two months on Wednesday after the U.S. government released data that showed rising supplies of crude oil and gasoline.
Light, sweet crude for May delivery fell $1.64 to settle at $50.22 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It was the lowest closing price since Feb. 18, when crude traded at $48.35. Oil prices remain 35 percent higher than a year ago.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/050413/oil_prices.html?.v=15
In short, the Israelis have devised a few fake photos to lay on Bush since Iran does not actually have "nuclear installations," as the International Atomic Energy Agency reported late last year. Israel wants the United States to bomb the daylights out of Iran, a possibility that will grow more and more remote as time passes, a fact that really freaks out Sharon and his Jabotinskyite partners in international crime who want every Arab or Muslim nation in the Middle East bombed or at least cowed by the same sort of shock and awe Bush used against Iraq.
Gallan, who accompanied Sharon in his summit with Bush at his Texas ranch, presented the photos together with information the Israeli intelligence services gathered on the Islamic Republic's nuclear programme, the Israeli radio added, without mentioning how the photos were taken. It just said that the images showed that the Iranian nuclear programme was at a "very advanced" stage.
...
Here's a novel idea... if the flipping Israelis are so hot to invade (or at minimum bomb) Iran, let them do it themselves. Of course they will not do this since there are around 66 million Iranians and about 6 million Israelis, including a couple hundred thousand rabid settlers in the West Bank, Gaza, and the land Israel filched from Syria. Better to get the stupid Americans to do it, although it appears the Pentagon is not exactly chomping at the bit to invade Iran considering the mess in Iraq.
http://www.counterpunch.org/nimmo04132005.html
Greenberg, who arrived and exited the building via an underground tunnel, made no comments after the meeting. His lawyer had indicated on Monday that his client likely would refuse to answer questions because he had not had sufficient time to prepare.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=&e=20&u=/ap/20050413/ap_on_bi_ge/aig_probe_greenberg
[I have a simple solution to this problem. make it illegal for private interests [other than your employer] to maintain files of your social security number. Problem solved. All of this would disappear over night.]
Reed Elsevier said the data stolen does not include "personal credit histories, medical records or financial records on individuals."
"The information concerned relates to names and addresses and other personal identifying information such as Social Security and driver's license numbers," Reed Elsevier said today.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-041205lexis_lat,0,6757042.story?coll=la-home-headlines
[All very good questions. Those Dutch are smart.]
Dutch airline KLM has demanded the US explain how it gained insight into passenger details of a flight US authorities turned back from its airspace despite the fact it was not scheduled to land on American territory.
KLM said on Monday US authorities are not allowed to have access to passenger details on flights that do not land in America. The airline said US authorities are only given restricted access to details on US-bound flights.
...
The other 276 passengers were given accommodation in an Amsterdam hotel on Saturday before boarding another flight for Mexico. They arrived on Sunday, a day later than originally planned.
The incident could cost KLM hundreds of thousands of euros.
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=1&story_id=18915&name=KLM%20in%20showdown%20with%20US%20over%20banned%20flight
A second Indonesian volcano has sprung to life after a series of terrifying
quakes, intensifying fears that the archipelago's violent geological forces will
unleash a new disaster.
Tangkuban Perahu, a smouldering 2,076-metre (6,933 foot) mountain near the city
of Bandung on Java island, began rumbling overnight, prompting scientists to
raise the alarm and declare the summit around the open crater off limits.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/050413/323/fg93k.html
A commercial produced by an organization fighting for the freedom of Iran that
depicts a nuclear terror attack in America ñ the kind many experts believe is
possible should Tehran get the bomb ñ will run in 20 markets across the country
this month.
Titled "An Atomic 9-11: When Evil is Appeased," the spot, sponsored by
the Iran Freedom Foundation, is based on a scenario described in the new WND
Books release "Atomic Iran: How the Terrorist Regime Bought the Bomb and
American Politicians," by Jerome R. Corsi, co-author of the best-selling
"Unfit for Command."
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43766
The region is now on top alert as ash rises as high as a kilometre above the
volcano's crater, Indonesia's Directorate of Volcanology and Geophysics said
Wednesday.
http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2005/04/13/volcano-indonesia050413.html
The US trade deficit in international goods and services is now increasing at an
annualized rate of more than $200 billion per year. The accelerating trade gap
is the primary reason that the US economy has been able to maintain its growth
and shrug off higher energy prices. In the past few years, foreigners (mostly
foreign central banks (FCBs)) have been willing to finance the expansion of the
trade deficit.
...
As the current account deficit (which is mostly the trade deficit plus
interest/dividend payments on international investments and debt) moves past the
$800 billion annualized rate, it will be increasingly difficult to finance the
current account without ever higher interest rates. That is because the total
current account deficit is now quickly approaching a theoretical limit of free
total world savings - the kind of limit which could be like a brick wall to any
further expansion of the economy.
http://wallstreetexaminer.com/?itemid=677
Targeting a Caterpillar Inc. shareholder resolution set for a vote today, many
California Jewish leaders are intensely mobilizing against efforts to use stock
market pressure as a tool against Israel's occupation of Palestinian
territories.
California Jews representing such organizations as the American Jewish Congress
and StandWithUs plan to attend a meeting at Caterpillar Inc.'s corporate
headquarters in Peoria, Ill., to speak out today against a shareholder
resolution that would direct the firm to investigate the use of its bulldozers
by the Israeli army to demolish Palestinian homes.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-divest13apr13,0,7335396.story?coll=la-home-local
Iran has outpaced the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia to become Germany's
number one trading partner in the Near and Mideast region, a leading German
trade official announced in an Iran investment conference, hosted by the Iranian
embassy in Berlin on Tuesday.
http://www.irna.ir/irnewtest/en/news/view/line-22/0504131043161614.htm
His private remarks to Senate Republicans were in keeping with the response
frequently offered on his behalf by House Republicans: Blame the Democrats and
occasionally the news media for the scrutiny he faces. House Republicans intend
to follow the script later in the week, hoping to showcase passage of bankruptcy
legislation and estate tax repeal as a counterpoint to Democratic charges that
they are merely power-hungry.
Several Republicans stressed that DeLay's appearance at the senators' lunch was
routine, noting that GOP leaders of one house have begun attending meetings of
the rank and file of the other house in recent weeks.
A U.S. Army statement said the CBS cameraman was being held because he might
pose ìan imperative threat to the coalition forces.î The U.S. military suspects
him of links to the rebels because video footage found in his camera shows he
was on the scene of several bombings shortly after they took place.
ìWe call on the U.S. Army to release him very quickly if no evidence is produced
to support his alleged collaboration with the insurgency,î the press freedom
organization said.
http://www.gnn.tv/headlines/2128/Cover_the_Insurgents_Go_to_Prison_or_Worse
[Get ready for a surprise. People with no money can't buy anything.]
U.S. retail sales rose 0.3 percent in March, the Commerce Department said on
Wednesday, falling short of expectations after a sharp downturn in department
store and clothing sales
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050413/bs_nm/economy_retail_dc
Last Thanksgiving, an Oxford clinician writing in the prestigious British scientific magazine _Nature_ presented another startling hypothesis: that the disease may have sprung from scientific experiments that lasted into the Fifties in which chimpanzee and monkey blood was directly injected into human beings to see if people could carry the form of the malaria parasite that infests those primates.
...
In recent decades, some scientists believe, live-virus vaccines may have actually helped transfer viruses across species lines. Perhaps the classic example is canine parovirus, or CPV, which abruptly appeared in dogs in 1977 and within months had become a widespread animal epidemic -- or epizootic -- on virtually every continent, causing entirely new dog diseases of the intestines and heart muscle. CPV is intriguingly similar in its genetic structure to a cat disease called feline panleukopenia virus (FPLV), but it's even more similar to to the vaccine for this disease. This has lead several virologists to suggest that by accident or design, the cat virus most likely was introduced into dog cells in the laboratory, where the strain adapted itself to the new host.
http://www.whale.to/vaccines/curtis.htm
A report to the UN human rights commission in Geneva has concluded that Iraqi children were actually better off under Saddam Hussein than they are now.
This, of course, comes as a bitter blow for all those of us who, like George Bush and Tony Blair, honestly believe that children thrive best when we drop bombs on them from a great height, destroy their cities and blow up hospitals, schools and power stations.
It now appears that, far from improving the quality of life for Iraqi youngsters, the US-led military assault on Iraq has inexplicably doubled the number of children under five suffering from malnutrition. Under Saddam, about 4% of children under five were going hungry, whereas by the end of last year almost 8% were suffering.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8519.htm
Now, the participatory panopticon is rendering the events of those days more transparent. Thanks to citizen video efforts, often organized by free speech activists such as I Witness Video [PDF of an organizing flyer], visual records are proving that people were swept up without cause and didn't resist, that police officers have misrepresented the events at trial, and that prosecutors have selectively edited the video record to prove their cases. According to today's New York Times, of the 1,670 cases that have proceeded, 91 percent have ended with charges dropped or a verdict of not guilty:
A sprawling body of visual evidence, made possible by inexpensive, lightweight cameras in the hands of private citizens, volunteer observers and the police themselves, has shifted the debate over precisely what happened on the streets during the week of the convention.
For [Dennis] Kyne
[arrested while he walked down the steps of the New York Public Library] and 400 others arrested that week, video recordings provided evidence that they had not committed a crime or that the charges against them could not be proved, according to defense lawyers and prosecutors.
Among them was Alexander Dunlop, who said he was arrested while going to pick up sushi. Last week, he discovered that there were two versions of the same police tape: the one that was to be used as evidence in his trial had been edited at two spots, removing images that showed Mr. Dunlop behaving peacefully. When a volunteer film archivist found a more complete version of the tape and gave it to Mr. Dunlop's lawyer, prosecutors immediately dropped the charges and said that a technician had cut the material by mistake.
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/002519.html
But they didn't expect two U.S. Secret Service agents would be among the show's first visitors.
The agents turned up Thursday evening, just before the public opening of "Axis of Evil, the Secret History of Sin," and took pictures of some of the art pieces -- including "Patriot Act," showing President Bush on a mock 37-cent stamp with a revolver pointed at his head.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-axis12.html
Battle plans" and "weapons": how odd a clergyman and a supposedly "Christian" organization would use such murderously warlike rhetoric. But "war" does derive from and inspire "hate," and those are perfect descriptors for the Rev. Sheldon and the TVC, as well as for some others in the movement to recreate America in their own image.
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/041205Seesholtz/041205seesholtz.html
In the words of ESA Inc (Boston), the US's leading energy security analysts: "One of the best things for our supply security would be liberate Iraq"; words echoed by William Kristol, the Republican party ideologist, in testimony to the House Subcommittee on the Middle East on May 22 2002 that as far as oil was concerned, "Iraq is more important than Saudi Arabia".
So when, according to the former head of ExxonMobil's Gulf operations, "Iraqi exiles approached us saying, you can have our oil if we can get back in there", the Bush administration decided to use its overwhelming military might to create a pliant - and dependable - oil protectorate in the Middle East and achieve that essential "opening" of the Gulf oilfields.
But in the words of another US oil company executive, "it all turned out a lot more complicated than anyone had expected". Instead of the anticipated post-invasion rapid expansion of Iraqi production (an expectation of an additional 2m b/d entering the world market by now), the continuing violence of the insurgency has prevented Iraqi exports from even recovering to pre-invasion levels.
In short, the US appears to have fought a war for oil in the Middle East, and lost it. The consequences of that defeat are now plain for all to see
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/a0bb7970-aa25-11d9-aa38-00000e2511c8.html
[So if you see something funny out in the middle of nowhere, don’t think it isn’t anything just because of the deserted location.]
A former South Korean intelligence agency chief who disappeared in 1979 was killed at a chicken farm in the suburbs of Paris by a team of South Korean agents, a weekly news magazine here reported Monday.
Sisa Journal quoted a former agent who allegedly led the team at the time as saying that his team abducted Kim Hyung-wook, who was then chief of the Korea Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), at a restaurant near a casino in downtown Paris on Oct. 7, 1979.
...
Lee said he killed Kim in a team with an agent called Kwak, who was sent to Israel's Mossad intelligence agency and trained to be a special assassin.
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/nation/200504/kt2005041121480911990.htm
A new breed of lawmakers has lumbered onto Capitol Hill. They represent no one. They ignore their constituencies. They are blind to the issues that confront the nation. They cast their votes with no regard for the will of the people.
Their voting pattern is a window into their mindset and philosophy: They don’t vote with their hearts and they don’t vote with their heads. They vote only in lockstep and only as directed. One for all, and all for one, they dutifully vote with their party.
They are the new, mindless and obedient herd of George W. Bush Republicans.
Totally submissive, the GWB Republican herd methodically falls in line. Not unlike the suicidal terrorists they are taught to loathe, they follow their leader even if it means their own demise. They protect the corporations that poison the very air they have to breathe. They vote to eliminate the civil rights that are rightfully theirs. They vote billions of their own tax dollars to the Halliburtons of the world, even as they watch the quality of life around them crumble.
http://tvnewslies.org/html/the_new_republican.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/12/nyregion/12video.html?ex=1270958400&en=46f3604d0befb92f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2005/04/12/nyregion/20050412video_graphic.html
One of the last claims in Colin Powell's presentation to the UN Security Council on February 5, 2003 blew away like dust in the wind late last week in the Old Bailey, London's central criminal court.
The trial of the infamous "UK poison cell," a group portrayed by Secretary of State Powell as al Qaida-associated operatives plotting to launch ricin attacks in the United Kingdom and in league with Muhamad al Zarqawi in Iraq, found nothing of the sort. The jury did find "the UK poison cell," known as Kamel Bourgas and others (Sidali Faddag, Samir Asli, Mouloud Bouhrama, Mustapha Taleb, Mouloud Sihali, Aissa Kalef), not guilty of conspiracy to murder by plotting ricin attacks and, generally speaking, not guilty of conspiracy to do anything. Kamel Bourgas had been previously convicted of murder of a British policeman in an unpublicized trial.
Months earlier and behind the scenes, the British government had seen its claims, that the group had the capability to produce ricin and that materials on a ricin recipe found in their belongings could be linked to al Qaida, rupture. And equally startling, it was confirmed that a preliminary positive finding of the poison in a residue tested in a raid on their apartment in Wood Green in January of 2003 was false but that through bureaucratic bungling, just the opposite news was presented to British authorities.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/nsn/nsn-050411.htm
Twenty Iraqis have been killed and 22 injured after US helicopters and heavy artillery bombed houses in al-Rummana village, north of al-Qaim city, Aljazeera reported.
Seven children, six women and three old men were among the dead,
witnesses said, while the injured included 13 children, seven women and two old men.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/09413EAB-D8E4-4C03-A52C-BD7118AC9946.htm
[I recently read a book that talked about Montreal as being kind of the organizaed crime capital of Canada. This seems to lend some weight to that.
This could also help explain the strange trend in Canada I have been picking up on this blog.]
Alfonso Gagliano has held titles in Canada that include labor minister, deputy House leader, ambassador to Denmark and minister of public works.
In New York he held a different kind of title, according to secret FBI documents obtained by the Daily News: "made" member of the Bonanno crime family.
Gagliano was identified as a longtime soldier in the Bonanno crime family by Frank Lino, a former Mafia capo-turned-informer.
...
Gagliano's name surfaced as Lino described the Bonanno family's operations in Montreal, which has served as an outpost for the Brooklyn-based group for decades.
He said he and a group of top Bonanno gangsters traveled to Montreal in the 1990s to let the northern branch office know the family had a new boss, Joseph Massino.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime_file/story/253857p-217343c.html
Using revenue from its candy and soda sales, Model High School plans to pay up to $100 for information about thefts and drug or gun possession on campus.
"It's not that we feel there are any problems here," said Principal Glenn White. "It's a proactive move for getting information that will help deter any sort of illegal activity."
Under the new policy, a student would receive $10 for information about a theft on campus, $25 or $50 for information about drug possession, and $100 for information about gun possession or other serious felonies.
...
No Model High students have received the reward yet, but some questioned the logic behind it. Jaime Parris, a senior, said that most students already would tell faculty about anything that threatened student safety.
http://www.wftv.com/news/4366400/detail.html
It hurts to write and know that we have done unto others much more than they have done unto us – this includes 9/11, I'm afraid. No one "deserved" to die on 9/11, nor will anyone "deserve" to die in a future terror attack in the United States. But then, no one "deserved" to die, as we sat transfixed in our living rooms, under the bombs of "Shock & Awe,"* That's "moral equivalence" too – all human life is precious.
The explanation on offer by amoralists like William Bennett is that our motives are pure, which of course they aren't. And, again and again, we're "the greatest democracy in the history of the world." Why, we're Americans; don't people know that we're a good people? We "work hard and play by the rules"; we try (and mostly fail) to raise upstanding citizens. Sorry, self-regard doesn't cut it. Non-Americans around the world want to see some actual evidence of these alleged values and morals that the president prattles on about.
What We've Become
The question should be asked: are we a good people anymore? We are not a great people – that much is certain. Not in a land where more people watch "American Idol" than the State of the Union address. In reality, we are still, as Martin Luther King pointed out nearly four decades ago, "the greatest purveyors of violence in the world." One day, if we are not careful, we will choke on our myths.
...
Working class whites all over the country were singing Charlie Daniels ("this ain't no rag, it's a flag / and we don't wear it on our head") songs, while sending their sons and daughters off to meaningless deaths in Iraq. Your son or daughter died for the right of Muqtada al-Sadr and Ali al-Sistani to treat women like cattle, kill Christians, ban alcohol and whip and lacerate themselves freely with chains.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/bender/bender10.html
[Maybe that's because there are no office or factory jobs out there for people
to get experience at.]
"You'd think people would know to call in sick when they're not coming to
work, but that's not always the case," said Michael Kauffman, an executive
at Anoplate Corp., a 175-person metal manufacturer in Syracuse. "We're
having many more problems than in the past getting people who understand what it
means to work in an office or a factory."
http://www.rense.com/general63/69.htm
Two Dutch legislators demanded Monday that the government provide details about
why a KLM Royal Dutch Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Mexico City was blocked
mid-flight by U.S. authorities for having two undesirable people on board.
...
"Of course we know who they are. But there was no reason to arrest
them," he said. "There was also no request to arrest them from the
U.S. side."
http://www.rense.com/general63/klm.htm
German prosecutors have provoked outrage by ruling that the 1945 RAF bombing of
Dresden can legally be termed a "holocaust".
The decision follows the refusal by the Hamburg public prosecutor's office to
press charges against a Right-wing politician who compared the bombing raids to
"the extermination of the Jews".
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/04/12/wdres12.xml
Iran said on Monday it plans to take legal action against the United States
government for funding the Islamic republic's opposition forces, AFP reported.
"The American government has been allocating funds for interference in
Iran's domestic affairs for years," government spokesman Abdollah
Ramezanzadeh told reporters.
http://www.rense.com/general64/fund.htm
A woman was struck by lightning, the N1 freeway was closed twice and roofs were
ripped off 10 houses during the thunderstorm and high winds that lashed the
Western Cape on Sunday.
Parts of Bellville were left without electricity as a hailstorm caused flooding.
The houses that lost their roofs are in Greenfields, a residential area near the
University of the Western Cape. No one was reported injured.
http://www.rense.com/general64/town.htm
[Camp Gannon? named for Jeff Gannon?]
Insurgents claiming links to al Qaeda tried to overrun a U.S. Marine base near
the Syrian border Monday using gunmen, suicide car bombs and a firetruck loaded
with explosives, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.
The assault was the second time in less than two weeks that foreign insurgents
have massed an organized, military-style offensive, U.S. officials said.
Insurgents typically have staged smaller-scale bombings and attacks.
...
The raid Monday was on Camp Gannon, a U.S. base at Husaybah, a few yards from
the Syrian border near the Euphrates River.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43621-2005Apr11?language=printer
A strange metamorphosis has taken place in America, especially among
conservatives. From its original definition of love of country, especially love
for the founding principles of the country, patriotism has morphed into a love
for bigger and bigger government. It seems that to most conservatives today, if
anyone dares speak against any federal program or initiative, he or she is
categorized as being unpatriotic or even ungodly. Many conservatives even equate
a person's support or lack thereof for our President as being a major
determinant of his or her spirituality
http://www.rense.com/general64/audd.htm
Pervasive problems plague the control of radioactive waste at the nation's
nuclear power plants, in part because the federal government has been sluggish
in instituting and enforcing safeguards, according to a federal report issued
yesterday.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44916-2005Apr11?language=printer
A Washington DC construction supervisor told Jerry Kammer of the San Diego
Tribune that since the surge in illegal immigration from Central America to the
Washington, DC area began roughly 20 years ago, the pay for installing 4 x 8
panels has dropped from $4.50 per panel to $3.00.
After adjusting for inflation, that's a stunning 60% decline in wages.
And over the last 20 years, while these already low-end jobs were in their 60%
freefall, what did we hear from the Wall Street Journal, Alan Greenspan, and the
immigration lawyer industry?
Why, America has been in the grip of a desperate labor shortage this whole
time!
http://projectusa.org/ezine/2005/04-06-AGCA.html
[For the first time in 14 years? Come on. this is an annual event.
As to the second quote, my employer is apparently making history by exhibiting
no interest in pay/morale equation whatsoever]
For the first time in 14 years, the American workforce has in effect gotten an
across-the-board pay cut.
The growth in wages in 2004 and the first two months of this year trailed
inflation, compounding the squeeze from higher housing, energy and other costs.
...
Historically, periods when wage growth is outpaced by inflation rarely last more
than 18 months. That's partly because businesses don't want their employees'
living standards to fall, as that injures morale, said Trewman Bewley, a Yale
University economist who has studied wage activity during economic downturns.
ome-headlines”>http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-wages11apr11%2C0%2C5092199.story?coll=la-h
ome-headlines
Jeff Bezos, founder of amazon.com, has bought a huge tract of land just outside
Van Horn and declared it will be his base for a private project to develop
commercial spaceflight. If he succeeds, Van Horn will be home to a fleet of
space rockets taking tourists far above the blue Texas sky into the black of
space.
http://www.rense.com/general63/tdown.htm
Everyone in the world should have their genetic profile stored on a database,
but the information should be held independently of the authorities, according
to the pioneer of DNA fingerprinting.
Current practice means that only the DNA of criminals is stored in most
countries and the information is held by government agencies.
At a lecture on Saturday to mark the 20th anniversary of the discovery of DNA
fingerprinting, Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys, of Leicester University, said a
global DNA database would have been invaluable in attempting to identify victims
of the recent tsunami. Instead, investigators faced endless searches through
incomplete records, or having to cause further distress to relatives of the
victims.
http://www.rense.com/general63/dna.htm
In an earlier study on malignant melanoma incidence in Sweden, Norway, Denmark
and the USA, we found a strong association between the introduction of FM radio
broadcasting at full-body resonant frequencies and increasing melanoma
incidence. The purpose of the current study was to review mortality and
incidence data for malignant melanoma of the skin in Sweden and its temporal
relation to increased ìsun-travelingî, and to the introduction of FM and TV
broadcasting netúworks.
ry&id=4321”>http://www.medscimonit.com/medscimonit/modules.php?name=Current_Issue&d_op=summa
ry&id=4321
[Ho Ho! Here’s a new one indeed. Watch for this to spread. Maybe you need some kind of forced medication to combat this condition. “Holocaust fatigue” the newest mental illness.]
But those close to Mr Tamihere said it was part of a smear campaign and he was unlikely to bow to those conditions.
A Sunday newspaper reported that in an interview with Investigate magazine, Mr Tamihere said he was "sick and tired of hearing how many Jews got gassed", not because he was not revolted or violated by it, but because he already knew.
"How many times do I have to be told and made to feel guilty?" he said.
...
A director of Jewish human rights organisation the Simon Wiesenthal Centre suggested he seek psychological assistance to help him empathise with the victims of genocide.
"Holocaust fatigue is simply a new form of mental illness, which is a condition which should disqualify him from public service," Efraim Zuroff said from Jerusalem.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/manawatustandard/0,2106,3245069a6407,00.html
Israeli reaction to John Tamihere's Holocaust comments has been swift, with one newspaper quoting the director of a Nazi hunting organisation as saying the MP needed psychological assistance.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3244737a10,00.html
[This is a funny car review.]
This is my circuitous way of saying that the Cherokee is one of the worst-handling cars I've ever driven. The problem is the suspension, as if the designers replaced the springs and dampers you get on other cars with Laura Ashley cushions filled with marshmallows. The Cherokee lurches when you accelerate, it lurches when you brake, and the body roll on corners is so pronounced you feel you have to brace your elbows against the door. In fact, whatever movement the driver makes, even so much as lifting an index finger from the wheel to acknowledge another driver's courtesy, sets in motion an unstoppable chain of events that invariably ends up with your passengers turning green. You can't cough in this thing without feeling like a hippo on a waterbed.
http://motoring.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=627577&host=32&dir=1092
[Keep in mind this is a country well stocked with nuclear bombs.]
There is a danger of a military coup in Israel if the trend of right-wing figures refusing to serve in the military widens "and more and more religious Jews that answer to rabbis enter the General Staff," Labor MK Danny Yatom warned on Friday.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/562876.html
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/7235393?rnd=1113062695995&has-player=true&version=6.0.12.857
posted by abu nakba at 4/14/2005 07:38:00 AM
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