Similar to grown hippos
Winning the hearts and minds
http://www.mothers-milk.org/IraqUncensored/images/exhibitshow/k02.JPG
In the midst of this discussion of Canada, the Pope abruptly changed the subject and said: "The night before my departure from Canada to New York, which I had never seen, I had a strange dream." But his dream was not of beautiful forests, warm with the summer sun. It was of a crowded city, frigid with the cold of a northern winter. And although he had never been there, his dream captured the way Manhattan looks and feels, after a major snow storm.
"It was a terribly severe winter in New York, the city was completely covered with snow. Inhabitants were well-off and warmly dressed, and walking slowly along roads because cars, due to mountains of snow, could not be operated. I was happy that I could walk on top of the snow on avenues of white.
"All my physical effort was spent on walking. To this day, pictures of huge apartment houses on both sides of the avenue are instilled in my mind, and the doormen quickly closing and opening entrance doors as though trying to prevent humanity and warmth from escaping.
"On top of the snow, I noticed a brown cat emerge from a side street and walk on the snow. I looked closer, and to my surprise, saw that this big cat was being followed by six small brown-and- white kittens, all of them following the big brown cat in a perfect line. The mother cat looked back from time to time to see if her babies were there, but her main concern was to reach the entrance door. I presumed she was trying to find warmth for herself and her children, but as soon as she reached the door, a man in a well-pressed uniform, jumped at her with a broom and chased them away. I followed this procession and prepared to deliver a speech to the doorman. I opened my mouth and tried to complain, 'Where is your proverbial American generosity? Where is your American good heart and fair play? Let them in. Let them in!!
"I tried to speak, but the words would not come out. Maybe I was afraid of the doorman with the broom. I started searching my cassock pockets for a piece of bread, found some crumbs and put them on my palms, calling: 'Kitty, kitty, kitty.' But the words would not come from my supposedly intelligent mouth. Instead, the wind blew the crumbs from my palm and I said, 'what can I do? I can't speak to the cats. I can't speak to the doorman. But there are many hungry birds. They might pick up the crumbs.'
"Again, I walked after the cats, now with a pain in my chest, feeling tremendous cold. On the left I saw a church building and thought, 'There we will find help.' I heard singing and again, the idea occurred to me that it must be a Catholic church. The music grew louder, as though trying to convince God that they were praying to Him.
The mother cat jumped in front of me and climbed the stairs, followed by her kittens. I raised my head and saw a tall Jesuit priest chasing the cats off the steps. But as I was about to shout at the Jesuit 'I am a cardinal!' and give an order to accept the cats, the mother cat and her offspring ran behind the church, because from there came the appetizing aroma of food. Probably there was a kitchen there. But a second Jesuit appeared at the kitchen door and scared the cats away. They returned to the avenue and started walking north.
"They walked on the same side of the avenue as the Jesuit church and I followed. Then they reached an imposing red brick church. An Anglican bishop appeared and said to the cats, 'My dear animal children, please go immediately to the animal shelter. There is food for you there. We Anglican clergy donate lots of money to the animal shelter, every year, at Christmas time.'
"The mother cat and her kittens didn't even meow. They knew the authoritative voice of the Anglican bishop. They walked uptown and gradually the luxurious buildings disappeared, together with the doormen, and we saw drab dilapidated apartments.
"As they walked and the buildings grew shabbier and dirty, a door was opened, not by a doorman but by an old wrinkled woman in a cotton dress. [She saw the cats] and shouted 'Oh, little mother,' and when she opened her mouth I saw she had few teeth. She gently ushered the mother cat and kittens inside, who jumped happily about because the warmth of the house embraced them."
The narrative ended as the cats found a safe haven with the woman who had little enough, herself. When the Pope concluded his dream the author to whom he related it did not make any comment on what had been said. But he did write that "I had never seen such a sad expression on the face of this man." Considering that this was the same man who had related the horrors of his young manhood, under Nazi occupation, the author's remark shows the deep impact this dream had on the Pope.
If the Pontiff offered a commentary on his dream, Anton Gronowicz does not share it with the reader. But we are told that John Paul began to recite the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi. "Lord make me an instrument of thy peace, where there is hatred let me sow love...where there is darkness, light and where there is sadness, joy.
Many years after Cardinal Wojtyla had his dream, and had become Pope John Paul II, he made a pilgrimage to Assisi, the birthplace of St. Francis. In the Message of Reconciliation he delivered there, the Pontiff spoke of the Saint's love for animal, as well as human, beings. And he likened that inclusive love to an anticipation of the Peaceable Kingdom, envisioned by the Prophet Isaiah; a world in which all God's creatures will live in peace with each other.
The Pope also said that the "solicitous care, not only towards men, but also towards animals and nature in general" which St. Francis demonstrated, is "a faithful echo of the love with which God in the beginning pronounced his 'fiat' which brought them into existence." And, the Pope added, "we, too, are called to a similar attitude.
http://www.all-creatures.org/ca/art-thepope.html
[The rebels have gotten a shock in Uzbekistan. I am sure they expected the Uzbek government to roll over like the Kirgiz or the Georgians.
Maybe they could all stop killing each other and work things out a little more peacefully.]
As authorities struggled to restore calm in eastern Uzbekistan on Saturday after a bloody uprising a day earlier, President Islam Karimov defended the decision by his troops to quell the violence by firing into a large crowd, killing up to 300 people by some estimates.
The uprising's toll became grimly clear at dawn Saturday, as soldiers were seen by witnesses pulling up four trucks and a bus to load the bodies of men, women and children shot to death by Uzbek troops in the eastern city of Andijan.
http://www.rense.com/general65/ubek.htm
Cardinal Ratzinger was echoing official church teachings, as laid out in the Catholic Catechism, which states clearly that “Animals are God’s creatures. He surrounds them with his providential care. By their mere existence they bless him and give him glory. Thus men owe them kindness. We should recall the gentleness with which saints like St. Francis of Assisi or St. Philip Neri treated animals. . . . It is contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly.
http://www.goveg.com/feat/PopeBenedictXVI/
[Hope none of those missiles go off course.]
Israeli Air Force To
Take Part In Canadian
War Games
http://www.rense.com/general65/wrgm.htm
It's being handled through Homeland Security because this is another part of the administration's war against terrorism, although it has been noted the 9/11 hijackers were in the United States legally and had legally issued driver's licenses.
Ostensibly, it also will help control illegal immigration while tightening access to the United States. Literally. Besides identification cards, the measure allows Homeland Security to construct physical barriers wherever it deems appropriate for security, be it on the Mexican border, the Canadian border, around government buildings, maybe even along state lines.
http://www.rense.com/general65/nana.htm
In a stunning blow to the Bush administration, a Navy judge gave Petty Officer 3rd Class Pablo Paredes no jail time for refusing orders to board the amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard before it left San Diego with 3,000 sailors and Marines bound for the Persian Gulf on December 6th. Lt. Cmdr. Robert Klant found Pablo guilty of missing his ship's movement by design, but dismissed the charge of unauthorized absence. Although Pablo faced one year in the brig, the judge sentenced him to two months' restriction and three months of hard labor, and reduced his rank to seaman recruit.
"This is a huge victory," said Jeremy Warren, Pablo's lawyer. "A sailor can show up on a Navy base, refuse in good conscience to board a ship bound for Iraq, and receive no time in jail," Warren added. Although Pablo is delighted he will not to go jail, he still regrets that he was convicted of a crime. He told the judge at sentencing: "I am guilty of believing this war is illegal. I am guilty of believing war in all forms is immoral and useless, and I am guilty of believing that as a service member I have a duty to refuse to participate in this War because it is illegal."
Pablo maintained that transporting Marines to fight in an illegal war, and possibly to commit war crimes, would make him complicit in those crimes. He told the judge, "I believe as a member of the armed forces, beyond having a duty to my chain of command and my President, I have a higher duty to my conscience and to the supreme law of the land. Both of these higher duties dictate that I must not participate in any way, hands-on or indirect, in the current aggression that has been unleashed on Iraq."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/051305X.shtml
[Not even the blakcs? Who should be more offended by this, the American black people or the Mexicans?]
Mexican President Vicente Fox called recent U.S. measures to stem illegal immigration a step back for bilateral relations on Friday and said Mexican migrants do jobs "that not even blacks want to do."
In comments likely to raise the temperature of the immigration debate, Fox defended the role of undocumented Mexican workers in the United States to a group of Texas business people meeting in Mexico.
"There is no doubt that Mexicans, filled with dignity, willingness and ability to work are doing jobs that not even blacks want to do there in the United States," he said in a speech broadcast in part on local radio and reported on newspaper web sites.
http://www.rense.com/general65/imm.htm
Biblical scholars are naturally inclined to be skeptical about the future Beth El temple-site - if indeed they are aware of it at all - because they are conditioned to believe that the Temple Mount sitein Jerusalem is theologically as well as historically or archaeologically axiomatic and any attempt to gainsay such conventional wisdom must be the work of a crackpot, an eccentric or even Satan himself; indeed, they point to II Chronicles 7:1, the dedication of Solomon's temple, to clinch their point about the Temple Mount site:
http://www.rense.com/general65/thresh.htm
Anti US protests
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/051405A.shtml
[This guy Meyers is giving you a hint. The “adversary” is “thinking” and “adapting”, or in order words the adversary is smart.
But then you read “Iraqis blowing up other Iraqis. And I don't how they expect to curry favor with the Iraq population when we have Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence."
Yes, I don’t know either. But this statement presupposes that the “adversary” WANTS to curry favor with the Iraqis. Maybe the “adversary” wants to completely piss off the Iraqis, or maybe it wants to just kill a whole lot of them without being conspicuous as to who is behind it.]
At the Pentagon, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, indicated Thursday that the insurgency could last for many more years.
"This requires patience," he said at a news conference. "This is a thinking and adapting adversary ... I wouldn't look for results tomorrow. One thing we know about insurgencies, that they last from three, four years to nine years."
"What we're seeing is really an attempt to discredit this new cabinet and new government," Myers said. "This is, the most cases, Iraqis blowing up other Iraqis. And I don't how they expect to curry favor with the Iraq population when we have Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence."
http://kcal9.com/topstories/topstories_story_132084529.html
Iraqis blowing up other Iraqis. And I don't how they expect to curry favor with the Iraq population when we have Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence."
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=2025031&PageNum=0
After hearing this, I gave a simple demand to WECT: "Rest assured I am ready to prove everything I wrote in my book. I hope you are ready and able to prove your claims made on TV. I give you three weeks for further investigation, and then I will move forward aggressively on my lawsuit against you. At that time, I will seek not only an apology, but substantial monetary damages." Just under three weeks from the date of my ultimatum, attorneys from Atlantic Telecast contacted me and stated that they had done further investigation and acknowledged that now they, not I, were in trouble. Shortly thereafter, a settlement agreement was reached which stipulated: (1) WECT TV would broadcast a retraction and public apology to me on its news broadcasts, and would issue a press release to the same effect; (2) WECT would pay me money damages and other financial benefits; (3) All other details of the settlement, other than those stated above, would be kept confidential for the benefit of the TV station. I accepted the settlement offer, and dismissed my lawsuit.
http://www.sianews.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2307
Pakistan denied on Saturday U.S. media reports that a senior al Qaeda leader was killed in a missile attack by an unmanned U.S. intelligence Predator aircraft on Pakistani territory near the Afghan border. ABC News, one of several U.S. news networks reporting the U.S. strike, said sources from unnamed intelligence agencies identified the man as Haitham al-Yemeni.
"Nothing has happened in Pakistan. If something happened in Afghanistan, we don't know," Information Minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed told Reuters.
http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5783907
[Support those troops. Maybe instead of throwing your money away on magnets from the gas station, you could take that same amount of money and put it into a fund to actually support real life actual troops? Just an idea.]
Now, even on good days, too much noise or light brings on the headaches. Just the clanking of the weights at a fitness center on Fort Bragg makes him nauseated. His short-term memory constantly fails him, forcing him to have simple questions repeated. He has a constant ringing in his ears.
"I don't feel like a man anymore. I can't do normal stuff," Twohig said.
He is unable to work and, like many injured veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was counting on the Army to provide him and his family with medical benefits. But lawyers representing some of those soldiers said the Army is making it difficult.
The Army determined that Twohig was less than 30 percent disabled. In order to maintain his Defense Department benefits, he had to meet the 30 percent level.
The difference is significant: If he loses the benefits, he gets a taxable $12,000 severance payment from the Army and health care through the Department of Veterans Affairs. His family has no health care coverage. If he is 30 percent disabled, though, he gets a monthly military retirement check and he and his family are eligible for health care at military hospitals.
...
"I think the Army Physical Evaluation Board is broken," Waple said. "The DoD would rather buy another cruise missile than medically retire someone. Systemically, what we've seen in the last seven years, they just seem to give a zero, 10, 20 percent disability so they are no longer on the DoD payroll. It is almost like a fix is in somewhere.
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/ncwire_news/story/2405710p-8783765c.html
[I think it is instructive to know that the people who constantly drone on about Hitler and WWII actually know nothing about it and can’t even recognize well known events of the Nazi era.
These people know so little, how can they say that there are positively no parallels between America today and Germany back then? They wouldn’t recognize the parallels if they literally hit over the head by them.]
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said yesterday that it made a "terrible" mistake in approving a recent newspaper advertisement that equated a proposed Arizona zoning ordinance with Nazi book-burning.
The full-page advertisement included a 1933 photo of people throwing books on a pyre at Berlin's Opernplatz. It was run as part of a campaign against a Flagstaff ballot proposal that would restrict Wal-Mart from expanding a local store to include a grocery.
The accompanying text read "Should we let government tell us what we can read? Of course not . . . So why should we allow local government to limit where we shop?" The bottom of the advertisement announced that the ad was "Paid for by Protect Flagstaff's Future-Major Funding by Wal-Mart (Bentonville, AR)."
The ad, which ran May 8 in the Arizona Daily Sun, was "reviewed and approved by Wal-Mart, but we did not know what the photo was from. We obviously should have asked more questions," said Daphne Moore, Wal-Mart's director of community affairs. She said the company will also issue a letter of apology to the Arizona Anti-Defamation League.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/13/AR2005051301423.html
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The U.S. military has the right to keep soldiers in the service beyond their original contracted time by issuing so-called emergency stop-loss orders, a U.S. appeals court said on Friday.
The U.S. 9th Circuit of Appeals said the military acted within its rights when it ordered Emiliano Santiago, an Army National Guard sergeant, to remain in the service after his eight-year contract expired as his unit was being mobilized for active duty.
Santiago, now in Afghanistan, had argued stop-loss orders could only apply to reserve units on active duty.
The San Francisco-based court disagreed, backing the "plain language" of federal law authorizing the executive branch to "implement a stop-loss policy in order to prevent retirement or separation of reserve members who are essential to national security."
http://www.globalnewsmatrix.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=955
Let me introduce you to our presidents new best friend, President Karimov of Uzbekistan.
President Karimov government was awarded $500m in aid from the Bush administration in 2002. The SNB (Uzbekistan's security service) received $79m of this sum.
The U.S. State Department web site states "Uzbekistan is not a democracy and does not have a free press. Many opponents of the government have fled, and others have been arrested." and "The police force and the intelligence service use torture as a routine investigation technique."
Now I would like to introduce you to Muzafar Avazov, a 35-year old father of four. Mr Avazov had a visit from our presidents friends security force (SNB), the photographs below detail the brutality and inhuman treatment our tax dollars subsidize, with the full knowledge of our president and his administration.
Muzafar Avazov, body showed signs of burns on the legs, buttocks, lower back and arms. Sixty to seventy percent of the body was burnt, according to official sources. Doctors who saw the body reported that such burns could only have been caused by immersing Avazov in boiling water. Those who saw the body also reported that there was a large, bloody wound on the back of the head, heavy bruising on the forehead and side of the neck, and that his hands had no fingernails
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3943.htm
Americans regard themselves as "the world's only superpower," but the pattern of American job growth in the 21st century is that of a third world economy. The US economy has ceased to create jobs in high tech sectors and in export and import-competitive sectors. Offshore outsourcing of manufacturing and of engineering and professional services is dismantling the ladders of upward mobility that made the American Dream possible.
Not only is the US economy creating third world jobs, according to analysis by Edwin S. Rubenstein (vdare.com, April 2, 2005), it is creating the jobs for Hispanic immigrants. Rubinstein examined job growth by ethnicity and found that Hispanics (13 percent of the work force) are gaining 60 percent of the new service jobs
http://prisonplanet.com/articles/may2005/130505jobshype.htm
[Then those supposedly secret grand jury proceedings can be passed to military intelligence.]
So far, the reporters are being approached on a voluntary basis, which means they are under no legal obligation to answer questions. But reporters could be subpoenaed by a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., that has been convened in the case.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/14/politics/14inquire.html?ei=5070&en=af75c8eaaa980e59&ex=1116734400&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1116129685-FGLLxJd9+agSykt9WKtHdQ
Innocent Iraqis and Our Own Troops are suffering from Bush’s Lies, and this Senate is has failed to do anything to about it. They’ve done nothing to bring the troops home, and nothing to hold Bush accountable. Congress failed to investigate the missing $9 billion, the 52 warnings, and now The Memo. The United States Congress is a dysfunctional failure (good deal of corruption too).
Bush and Blair planned the war and "fixed the facts", even though the "case was thin" against Saddam. They had no choice, Iraq was "swimming on a sea of oil."
“http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=6037”>http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=6037
British Memo Indicates Bush Made Intelligence Fit Iraq Policy
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0506-01.htm
One may probably distinguish two major reasons, which make the US administration develop active cooperation with the regime of the incumbent Azeri President, Ilham Aliyev. It is worth mentioning, though, that Mr Aliyev does not match the "democratic standards" of the US Department of State.
The first reason includes the transportation of the Caspian oil and the security of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, which is directly connected with Mr Rumsfeld's department.
Secondly, the USA is interested in establishing mobile army bases on the territory of Azerbaijan, which is stipulated in the plan to re-deploy US troops in Europe and Asia.
As for the oil pipeline is concerned, there has been a certain plan elaborated for the implementation of security measures. The USA is ready to assign not less than $ 100 mm during the coming ten years for the development of the so-called Caspian Guard (founded in the autumn of 2003). Guaranteeing security to the pipeline, which is currently undergoing the construction process, will be the prime goal of the Caspian Guard.
The Caspian Guard will represent a network of police detachments and special military units in the Caspian region. These troops will be capable of showing efficient reaction to states of emergency, including attacks against oil objects. The European command of the Defence Department in Stuttgart, Germany, coordinates the efforts of various departments and provides the training for military men to defend the new pipeline.
http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/news/ntm51989.htm
U.S. officials believe they have "rock solid" evidence that Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi (search), once a darling of the American government, passed secrets to Iran, Fox News has learned.
"There is no need for an investigation because we're quite certain he did it," one senior Bush administration official said.
The official first described the evidence against Chalabi as "pretty solid" and then characterized it as "rock solid."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,120535,00.html
[So we have “rock solid” information that this guy is an Iranian operative and we let him run the oil ministry in Iraq? Meanwhile some guy we claim has something to do with Al-Qaeda supposedly gets a missile up his backside based on bla bla bla hearsay.
What more do people need to know beyond this kind of thing? Are they waiting for the brass band to come marching through the center of town with a big banner saying “the fix is in” or “the USG is working both side of the street” or something like that?
Come on people. Support our troops indeed.]
Ahmad Chalabi, the one-time Pentagon favorite who fell from grace in Washington amid accusations that he gave U.S. intelligence to Iran, has received a congratulatory call from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about his new Iraqi Cabinet posts.
U.S. officials said Rice called the secular Shi'ite politician on Tuesday to congratulate him on becoming deputy prime minister and acting oil minister in Iraq's first elected government since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N04590774.htm
The Draize tests for eye and skin irritancy are equally horrifying. In the Draize test for eye irritancy, solutions of products are applied directly into the eyes of conscious rabbits. During the test period, which usually lasts at least seven days, the rabbits may suffer extreme pain while being restrained, and blindness often occurs. At the end of the test period, all the animals are killed in order to determine the internal effects of the toxic substances. The Draize test for skin irritancy consists of immobilizing an animal while test substances are applied to shaved and abraded skin.
http://www.navs.org/testing/testing_main.cfm?SectionID=Testing
Tsunami Friends: Owen and Mzee
The tsunami in south Asia reached as far as the east coast of Africa.
Newspapers picked up the story of a baby hippo who was washed out to sea with his mom and the rest of his herd. The baby hippo washed back up on shore but his mom and the others didn't. (To enlarge the photo of Owen and Mzee, click on the photo or link)
Given the name Owen, he's now being cared for at a Mombasa, Kenya wildlife sanctuary, where he has adopted a new "mom" -- Mzee, a male, 120-year-old giant tortoise.
Here's one news account:
A 120-year-old giant tortoise living in a Kenyan sanctuary has become friends with a baby hippo that was rescued by game wardens. Owen, the year-old hippo rescued last month, suffered from dehydration after being separated from his herd in a river than drains into the Indian Ocean. (To enlarge the photo of Owen and Mzee, click on the photo or link)
When Owen made it to the sanctuary, he headed toward the tortoise which has a dark gray color similar to grown hippos. Wardens said Owen would not have survived alone in the wild.
http://www.all-creatures.org/gcm/articles-tsunami.html
http://www.mothers-milk.org/IraqUncensored/images/exhibitshow/k02.JPG
In the midst of this discussion of Canada, the Pope abruptly changed the subject and said: "The night before my departure from Canada to New York, which I had never seen, I had a strange dream." But his dream was not of beautiful forests, warm with the summer sun. It was of a crowded city, frigid with the cold of a northern winter. And although he had never been there, his dream captured the way Manhattan looks and feels, after a major snow storm.
"It was a terribly severe winter in New York, the city was completely covered with snow. Inhabitants were well-off and warmly dressed, and walking slowly along roads because cars, due to mountains of snow, could not be operated. I was happy that I could walk on top of the snow on avenues of white.
"All my physical effort was spent on walking. To this day, pictures of huge apartment houses on both sides of the avenue are instilled in my mind, and the doormen quickly closing and opening entrance doors as though trying to prevent humanity and warmth from escaping.
"On top of the snow, I noticed a brown cat emerge from a side street and walk on the snow. I looked closer, and to my surprise, saw that this big cat was being followed by six small brown-and- white kittens, all of them following the big brown cat in a perfect line. The mother cat looked back from time to time to see if her babies were there, but her main concern was to reach the entrance door. I presumed she was trying to find warmth for herself and her children, but as soon as she reached the door, a man in a well-pressed uniform, jumped at her with a broom and chased them away. I followed this procession and prepared to deliver a speech to the doorman. I opened my mouth and tried to complain, 'Where is your proverbial American generosity? Where is your American good heart and fair play? Let them in. Let them in!!
"I tried to speak, but the words would not come out. Maybe I was afraid of the doorman with the broom. I started searching my cassock pockets for a piece of bread, found some crumbs and put them on my palms, calling: 'Kitty, kitty, kitty.' But the words would not come from my supposedly intelligent mouth. Instead, the wind blew the crumbs from my palm and I said, 'what can I do? I can't speak to the cats. I can't speak to the doorman. But there are many hungry birds. They might pick up the crumbs.'
"Again, I walked after the cats, now with a pain in my chest, feeling tremendous cold. On the left I saw a church building and thought, 'There we will find help.' I heard singing and again, the idea occurred to me that it must be a Catholic church. The music grew louder, as though trying to convince God that they were praying to Him.
The mother cat jumped in front of me and climbed the stairs, followed by her kittens. I raised my head and saw a tall Jesuit priest chasing the cats off the steps. But as I was about to shout at the Jesuit 'I am a cardinal!' and give an order to accept the cats, the mother cat and her offspring ran behind the church, because from there came the appetizing aroma of food. Probably there was a kitchen there. But a second Jesuit appeared at the kitchen door and scared the cats away. They returned to the avenue and started walking north.
"They walked on the same side of the avenue as the Jesuit church and I followed. Then they reached an imposing red brick church. An Anglican bishop appeared and said to the cats, 'My dear animal children, please go immediately to the animal shelter. There is food for you there. We Anglican clergy donate lots of money to the animal shelter, every year, at Christmas time.'
"The mother cat and her kittens didn't even meow. They knew the authoritative voice of the Anglican bishop. They walked uptown and gradually the luxurious buildings disappeared, together with the doormen, and we saw drab dilapidated apartments.
"As they walked and the buildings grew shabbier and dirty, a door was opened, not by a doorman but by an old wrinkled woman in a cotton dress. [She saw the cats] and shouted 'Oh, little mother,' and when she opened her mouth I saw she had few teeth. She gently ushered the mother cat and kittens inside, who jumped happily about because the warmth of the house embraced them."
The narrative ended as the cats found a safe haven with the woman who had little enough, herself. When the Pope concluded his dream the author to whom he related it did not make any comment on what had been said. But he did write that "I had never seen such a sad expression on the face of this man." Considering that this was the same man who had related the horrors of his young manhood, under Nazi occupation, the author's remark shows the deep impact this dream had on the Pope.
If the Pontiff offered a commentary on his dream, Anton Gronowicz does not share it with the reader. But we are told that John Paul began to recite the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi. "Lord make me an instrument of thy peace, where there is hatred let me sow love...where there is darkness, light and where there is sadness, joy.
Many years after Cardinal Wojtyla had his dream, and had become Pope John Paul II, he made a pilgrimage to Assisi, the birthplace of St. Francis. In the Message of Reconciliation he delivered there, the Pontiff spoke of the Saint's love for animal, as well as human, beings. And he likened that inclusive love to an anticipation of the Peaceable Kingdom, envisioned by the Prophet Isaiah; a world in which all God's creatures will live in peace with each other.
The Pope also said that the "solicitous care, not only towards men, but also towards animals and nature in general" which St. Francis demonstrated, is "a faithful echo of the love with which God in the beginning pronounced his 'fiat' which brought them into existence." And, the Pope added, "we, too, are called to a similar attitude.
http://www.all-creatures.org/ca/art-thepope.html
[The rebels have gotten a shock in Uzbekistan. I am sure they expected the Uzbek government to roll over like the Kirgiz or the Georgians.
Maybe they could all stop killing each other and work things out a little more peacefully.]
As authorities struggled to restore calm in eastern Uzbekistan on Saturday after a bloody uprising a day earlier, President Islam Karimov defended the decision by his troops to quell the violence by firing into a large crowd, killing up to 300 people by some estimates.
The uprising's toll became grimly clear at dawn Saturday, as soldiers were seen by witnesses pulling up four trucks and a bus to load the bodies of men, women and children shot to death by Uzbek troops in the eastern city of Andijan.
http://www.rense.com/general65/ubek.htm
Cardinal Ratzinger was echoing official church teachings, as laid out in the Catholic Catechism, which states clearly that “Animals are God’s creatures. He surrounds them with his providential care. By their mere existence they bless him and give him glory. Thus men owe them kindness. We should recall the gentleness with which saints like St. Francis of Assisi or St. Philip Neri treated animals. . . . It is contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly.
http://www.goveg.com/feat/PopeBenedictXVI/
[Hope none of those missiles go off course.]
Israeli Air Force To
Take Part In Canadian
War Games
http://www.rense.com/general65/wrgm.htm
It's being handled through Homeland Security because this is another part of the administration's war against terrorism, although it has been noted the 9/11 hijackers were in the United States legally and had legally issued driver's licenses.
Ostensibly, it also will help control illegal immigration while tightening access to the United States. Literally. Besides identification cards, the measure allows Homeland Security to construct physical barriers wherever it deems appropriate for security, be it on the Mexican border, the Canadian border, around government buildings, maybe even along state lines.
http://www.rense.com/general65/nana.htm
In a stunning blow to the Bush administration, a Navy judge gave Petty Officer 3rd Class Pablo Paredes no jail time for refusing orders to board the amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard before it left San Diego with 3,000 sailors and Marines bound for the Persian Gulf on December 6th. Lt. Cmdr. Robert Klant found Pablo guilty of missing his ship's movement by design, but dismissed the charge of unauthorized absence. Although Pablo faced one year in the brig, the judge sentenced him to two months' restriction and three months of hard labor, and reduced his rank to seaman recruit.
"This is a huge victory," said Jeremy Warren, Pablo's lawyer. "A sailor can show up on a Navy base, refuse in good conscience to board a ship bound for Iraq, and receive no time in jail," Warren added. Although Pablo is delighted he will not to go jail, he still regrets that he was convicted of a crime. He told the judge at sentencing: "I am guilty of believing this war is illegal. I am guilty of believing war in all forms is immoral and useless, and I am guilty of believing that as a service member I have a duty to refuse to participate in this War because it is illegal."
Pablo maintained that transporting Marines to fight in an illegal war, and possibly to commit war crimes, would make him complicit in those crimes. He told the judge, "I believe as a member of the armed forces, beyond having a duty to my chain of command and my President, I have a higher duty to my conscience and to the supreme law of the land. Both of these higher duties dictate that I must not participate in any way, hands-on or indirect, in the current aggression that has been unleashed on Iraq."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/051305X.shtml
[Not even the blakcs? Who should be more offended by this, the American black people or the Mexicans?]
Mexican President Vicente Fox called recent U.S. measures to stem illegal immigration a step back for bilateral relations on Friday and said Mexican migrants do jobs "that not even blacks want to do."
In comments likely to raise the temperature of the immigration debate, Fox defended the role of undocumented Mexican workers in the United States to a group of Texas business people meeting in Mexico.
"There is no doubt that Mexicans, filled with dignity, willingness and ability to work are doing jobs that not even blacks want to do there in the United States," he said in a speech broadcast in part on local radio and reported on newspaper web sites.
http://www.rense.com/general65/imm.htm
Biblical scholars are naturally inclined to be skeptical about the future Beth El temple-site - if indeed they are aware of it at all - because they are conditioned to believe that the Temple Mount sitein Jerusalem is theologically as well as historically or archaeologically axiomatic and any attempt to gainsay such conventional wisdom must be the work of a crackpot, an eccentric or even Satan himself; indeed, they point to II Chronicles 7:1, the dedication of Solomon's temple, to clinch their point about the Temple Mount site:
http://www.rense.com/general65/thresh.htm
Anti US protests
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/051405A.shtml
[This guy Meyers is giving you a hint. The “adversary” is “thinking” and “adapting”, or in order words the adversary is smart.
But then you read “Iraqis blowing up other Iraqis. And I don't how they expect to curry favor with the Iraq population when we have Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence."
Yes, I don’t know either. But this statement presupposes that the “adversary” WANTS to curry favor with the Iraqis. Maybe the “adversary” wants to completely piss off the Iraqis, or maybe it wants to just kill a whole lot of them without being conspicuous as to who is behind it.]
At the Pentagon, Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, indicated Thursday that the insurgency could last for many more years.
"This requires patience," he said at a news conference. "This is a thinking and adapting adversary ... I wouldn't look for results tomorrow. One thing we know about insurgencies, that they last from three, four years to nine years."
"What we're seeing is really an attempt to discredit this new cabinet and new government," Myers said. "This is, the most cases, Iraqis blowing up other Iraqis. And I don't how they expect to curry favor with the Iraq population when we have Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence."
http://kcal9.com/topstories/topstories_story_132084529.html
Iraqis blowing up other Iraqis. And I don't how they expect to curry favor with the Iraq population when we have Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence."
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=2025031&PageNum=0
After hearing this, I gave a simple demand to WECT: "Rest assured I am ready to prove everything I wrote in my book. I hope you are ready and able to prove your claims made on TV. I give you three weeks for further investigation, and then I will move forward aggressively on my lawsuit against you. At that time, I will seek not only an apology, but substantial monetary damages." Just under three weeks from the date of my ultimatum, attorneys from Atlantic Telecast contacted me and stated that they had done further investigation and acknowledged that now they, not I, were in trouble. Shortly thereafter, a settlement agreement was reached which stipulated: (1) WECT TV would broadcast a retraction and public apology to me on its news broadcasts, and would issue a press release to the same effect; (2) WECT would pay me money damages and other financial benefits; (3) All other details of the settlement, other than those stated above, would be kept confidential for the benefit of the TV station. I accepted the settlement offer, and dismissed my lawsuit.
http://www.sianews.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2307
Pakistan denied on Saturday U.S. media reports that a senior al Qaeda leader was killed in a missile attack by an unmanned U.S. intelligence Predator aircraft on Pakistani territory near the Afghan border. ABC News, one of several U.S. news networks reporting the U.S. strike, said sources from unnamed intelligence agencies identified the man as Haitham al-Yemeni.
"Nothing has happened in Pakistan. If something happened in Afghanistan, we don't know," Information Minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed told Reuters.
http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5783907
[Support those troops. Maybe instead of throwing your money away on magnets from the gas station, you could take that same amount of money and put it into a fund to actually support real life actual troops? Just an idea.]
Now, even on good days, too much noise or light brings on the headaches. Just the clanking of the weights at a fitness center on Fort Bragg makes him nauseated. His short-term memory constantly fails him, forcing him to have simple questions repeated. He has a constant ringing in his ears.
"I don't feel like a man anymore. I can't do normal stuff," Twohig said.
He is unable to work and, like many injured veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was counting on the Army to provide him and his family with medical benefits. But lawyers representing some of those soldiers said the Army is making it difficult.
The Army determined that Twohig was less than 30 percent disabled. In order to maintain his Defense Department benefits, he had to meet the 30 percent level.
The difference is significant: If he loses the benefits, he gets a taxable $12,000 severance payment from the Army and health care through the Department of Veterans Affairs. His family has no health care coverage. If he is 30 percent disabled, though, he gets a monthly military retirement check and he and his family are eligible for health care at military hospitals.
...
"I think the Army Physical Evaluation Board is broken," Waple said. "The DoD would rather buy another cruise missile than medically retire someone. Systemically, what we've seen in the last seven years, they just seem to give a zero, 10, 20 percent disability so they are no longer on the DoD payroll. It is almost like a fix is in somewhere.
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/ncwire_news/story/2405710p-8783765c.html
[I think it is instructive to know that the people who constantly drone on about Hitler and WWII actually know nothing about it and can’t even recognize well known events of the Nazi era.
These people know so little, how can they say that there are positively no parallels between America today and Germany back then? They wouldn’t recognize the parallels if they literally hit over the head by them.]
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said yesterday that it made a "terrible" mistake in approving a recent newspaper advertisement that equated a proposed Arizona zoning ordinance with Nazi book-burning.
The full-page advertisement included a 1933 photo of people throwing books on a pyre at Berlin's Opernplatz. It was run as part of a campaign against a Flagstaff ballot proposal that would restrict Wal-Mart from expanding a local store to include a grocery.
The accompanying text read "Should we let government tell us what we can read? Of course not . . . So why should we allow local government to limit where we shop?" The bottom of the advertisement announced that the ad was "Paid for by Protect Flagstaff's Future-Major Funding by Wal-Mart (Bentonville, AR)."
The ad, which ran May 8 in the Arizona Daily Sun, was "reviewed and approved by Wal-Mart, but we did not know what the photo was from. We obviously should have asked more questions," said Daphne Moore, Wal-Mart's director of community affairs. She said the company will also issue a letter of apology to the Arizona Anti-Defamation League.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/13/AR2005051301423.html
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The U.S. military has the right to keep soldiers in the service beyond their original contracted time by issuing so-called emergency stop-loss orders, a U.S. appeals court said on Friday.
The U.S. 9th Circuit of Appeals said the military acted within its rights when it ordered Emiliano Santiago, an Army National Guard sergeant, to remain in the service after his eight-year contract expired as his unit was being mobilized for active duty.
Santiago, now in Afghanistan, had argued stop-loss orders could only apply to reserve units on active duty.
The San Francisco-based court disagreed, backing the "plain language" of federal law authorizing the executive branch to "implement a stop-loss policy in order to prevent retirement or separation of reserve members who are essential to national security."
http://www.globalnewsmatrix.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=955
Let me introduce you to our presidents new best friend, President Karimov of Uzbekistan.
President Karimov government was awarded $500m in aid from the Bush administration in 2002. The SNB (Uzbekistan's security service) received $79m of this sum.
The U.S. State Department web site states "Uzbekistan is not a democracy and does not have a free press. Many opponents of the government have fled, and others have been arrested." and "The police force and the intelligence service use torture as a routine investigation technique."
Now I would like to introduce you to Muzafar Avazov, a 35-year old father of four. Mr Avazov had a visit from our presidents friends security force (SNB), the photographs below detail the brutality and inhuman treatment our tax dollars subsidize, with the full knowledge of our president and his administration.
Muzafar Avazov, body showed signs of burns on the legs, buttocks, lower back and arms. Sixty to seventy percent of the body was burnt, according to official sources. Doctors who saw the body reported that such burns could only have been caused by immersing Avazov in boiling water. Those who saw the body also reported that there was a large, bloody wound on the back of the head, heavy bruising on the forehead and side of the neck, and that his hands had no fingernails
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3943.htm
Americans regard themselves as "the world's only superpower," but the pattern of American job growth in the 21st century is that of a third world economy. The US economy has ceased to create jobs in high tech sectors and in export and import-competitive sectors. Offshore outsourcing of manufacturing and of engineering and professional services is dismantling the ladders of upward mobility that made the American Dream possible.
Not only is the US economy creating third world jobs, according to analysis by Edwin S. Rubenstein (vdare.com, April 2, 2005), it is creating the jobs for Hispanic immigrants. Rubinstein examined job growth by ethnicity and found that Hispanics (13 percent of the work force) are gaining 60 percent of the new service jobs
http://prisonplanet.com/articles/may2005/130505jobshype.htm
[Then those supposedly secret grand jury proceedings can be passed to military intelligence.]
So far, the reporters are being approached on a voluntary basis, which means they are under no legal obligation to answer questions. But reporters could be subpoenaed by a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., that has been convened in the case.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/14/politics/14inquire.html?ei=5070&en=af75c8eaaa980e59&ex=1116734400&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1116129685-FGLLxJd9+agSykt9WKtHdQ
Innocent Iraqis and Our Own Troops are suffering from Bush’s Lies, and this Senate is has failed to do anything to about it. They’ve done nothing to bring the troops home, and nothing to hold Bush accountable. Congress failed to investigate the missing $9 billion, the 52 warnings, and now The Memo. The United States Congress is a dysfunctional failure (good deal of corruption too).
Bush and Blair planned the war and "fixed the facts", even though the "case was thin" against Saddam. They had no choice, Iraq was "swimming on a sea of oil."
“http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=6037”>http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=6037
British Memo Indicates Bush Made Intelligence Fit Iraq Policy
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0506-01.htm
One may probably distinguish two major reasons, which make the US administration develop active cooperation with the regime of the incumbent Azeri President, Ilham Aliyev. It is worth mentioning, though, that Mr Aliyev does not match the "democratic standards" of the US Department of State.
The first reason includes the transportation of the Caspian oil and the security of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, which is directly connected with Mr Rumsfeld's department.
Secondly, the USA is interested in establishing mobile army bases on the territory of Azerbaijan, which is stipulated in the plan to re-deploy US troops in Europe and Asia.
As for the oil pipeline is concerned, there has been a certain plan elaborated for the implementation of security measures. The USA is ready to assign not less than $ 100 mm during the coming ten years for the development of the so-called Caspian Guard (founded in the autumn of 2003). Guaranteeing security to the pipeline, which is currently undergoing the construction process, will be the prime goal of the Caspian Guard.
The Caspian Guard will represent a network of police detachments and special military units in the Caspian region. These troops will be capable of showing efficient reaction to states of emergency, including attacks against oil objects. The European command of the Defence Department in Stuttgart, Germany, coordinates the efforts of various departments and provides the training for military men to defend the new pipeline.
http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/news/ntm51989.htm
U.S. officials believe they have "rock solid" evidence that Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi (search), once a darling of the American government, passed secrets to Iran, Fox News has learned.
"There is no need for an investigation because we're quite certain he did it," one senior Bush administration official said.
The official first described the evidence against Chalabi as "pretty solid" and then characterized it as "rock solid."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,120535,00.html
[So we have “rock solid” information that this guy is an Iranian operative and we let him run the oil ministry in Iraq? Meanwhile some guy we claim has something to do with Al-Qaeda supposedly gets a missile up his backside based on bla bla bla hearsay.
What more do people need to know beyond this kind of thing? Are they waiting for the brass band to come marching through the center of town with a big banner saying “the fix is in” or “the USG is working both side of the street” or something like that?
Come on people. Support our troops indeed.]
Ahmad Chalabi, the one-time Pentagon favorite who fell from grace in Washington amid accusations that he gave U.S. intelligence to Iran, has received a congratulatory call from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about his new Iraqi Cabinet posts.
U.S. officials said Rice called the secular Shi'ite politician on Tuesday to congratulate him on becoming deputy prime minister and acting oil minister in Iraq's first elected government since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N04590774.htm
The Draize tests for eye and skin irritancy are equally horrifying. In the Draize test for eye irritancy, solutions of products are applied directly into the eyes of conscious rabbits. During the test period, which usually lasts at least seven days, the rabbits may suffer extreme pain while being restrained, and blindness often occurs. At the end of the test period, all the animals are killed in order to determine the internal effects of the toxic substances. The Draize test for skin irritancy consists of immobilizing an animal while test substances are applied to shaved and abraded skin.
http://www.navs.org/testing/testing_main.cfm?SectionID=Testing
Tsunami Friends: Owen and Mzee
The tsunami in south Asia reached as far as the east coast of Africa.
Newspapers picked up the story of a baby hippo who was washed out to sea with his mom and the rest of his herd. The baby hippo washed back up on shore but his mom and the others didn't. (To enlarge the photo of Owen and Mzee, click on the photo or link)
Given the name Owen, he's now being cared for at a Mombasa, Kenya wildlife sanctuary, where he has adopted a new "mom" -- Mzee, a male, 120-year-old giant tortoise.
Here's one news account:
A 120-year-old giant tortoise living in a Kenyan sanctuary has become friends with a baby hippo that was rescued by game wardens. Owen, the year-old hippo rescued last month, suffered from dehydration after being separated from his herd in a river than drains into the Indian Ocean. (To enlarge the photo of Owen and Mzee, click on the photo or link)
When Owen made it to the sanctuary, he headed toward the tortoise which has a dark gray color similar to grown hippos. Wardens said Owen would not have survived alone in the wild.
http://www.all-creatures.org/gcm/articles-tsunami.html
posted by abu nakba at 5/15/2005 11:08:00 AM
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