about 600 locations
[I just wanted to throw this in before I forget about it. Some few years ago I knew this Turkish guy who was all on fire to get Turkey into the EU, and I kept telling him, “Don’t be in such a rush to get in, because right now the way they are doing things they are building a civil war, and if you get in, you’ll get mixed up in that when it happens.”
So why did I say that? It’s because of how they have built the EU up to now, there has been hardly popular discussion or popular approval of the notion of closer European integration for a long time, probably for over a generation. When I was over there around 2000 all these people in England were in a snit because some guy got sent to jail for selling bananas by the pound or some fool thing like that. According to EU law he was only supposed to sell them by metric weights or something, and there was a big hullaballoo over that because apparently no one in England _really_ realized that when they signed up for the EU they wouldn’t be able to use familiar ewights and measures. It seems that no one thought that is what they were signing up for.
So that was one little example. Then around the same time I think it was the Treaty of Nice was being peddled around and they had the Irish vote on it. Well so they voted to reject it because they had some different concerns about it they wanted addressed. So what happened? Did the government say “o sorry, lt’s go back and address those concerns”? No. Did it say “we stand by the verdict of our people over here”? No, didn’t do that either.
Instead what happened was that it was like a scandal within the European elite, how could the Irish elite let their people get so out of control and unruly like that as to not vote for this treaty? So the top Irish people were all embarrassed in front of their Euro-elite friends and swore to go back and straighten things out.
So what did they do? They sent back the same exact treaty for the Irish people to vote on again, without any changes, and they basically said they were oging to keep beating people over the head with the same treaty until they approved it. So of course, no one wanted to dragged out to vote on the same treaty every month til the next government elections, so the treaty narrowly passed on the second try as I recall. And there was a lot of kind of anger and resentment over that.
So I said to my friend, look what is happening with this European project already. Already people are grumbling and unhappy over how things are going. They rightly are complaining that democ goes up to the national level, and then above that the rest of the EU gets progressively less and less democratic as you go along. They’re complaining that the EU level people don’t pay attention to the needs of actual people all around the EU [also true]. They’re complaining that the EU is trying to undermine the national governments [also true, think of “a Europe of Regions”], and people don’t like all this stuff.
I actually do support _A_ European Union, so don’t get me wrong on that. I just don’t tihnk they are going about it the right way.
Well so anyway, I said to my friend if things keep on like this all these countries are going to get very tightly bound together, almost without people realizing it, and someday a bunch of people are going to wake up one morning thinking they are French or German or whatever and that they have their own countries and can do their own things, and they are going to be told very forcefully that that is not the case, and all of a sudden they’ll be a panic when they realize what has been put over on them, and there will be a civil war in Europe, and I don’t think you want Turkey mixed up in that. Europe’s civil wars are always incredibly destructive.
So for that reason I think the French and Dutch rejections of the European Constitution are a good thing. I really think that they have very possibly saved their own children or grand-children from war. And after all ins’t that what the European Union project was started for in the first place? To avoid another war?
So I salute the French and the Dutch for seeing moe clearly than their own leaders and doing the right thing.
I hope this will be the wake up call that finally gets the Euro-elite to go back the people and actually re-involve them in the process. This is really something that should have happened back when Denmark and England decided they weren’t interested in the Euro currency, or even when people were grumbling about the Nice Treaty. Wake up EU.]
A big cat is being blamed for an attack on a cow at a farm near Plymouth.
There have been a series of alleged sightings of big cats in the area around Langage Farm.
The cow's owners say they have no other explanation for the animal's injuries and say vets have agreed they are consistent with a big cat attack
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/4599441.stm
A tempestuous clash between the National Weather Service and private weather companies is prompting an influential senator to intervene to protect AccuWeather, WeatherBank and other firms that package forecasts for public use.
http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/local/11771045.htm
A little man living in every ballot box
The Diebold optical scan system uses a dangerous programming methodology, with an executable program living inside the electronic ballot box. This method is the equivalent of having a little man living in the ballot box, holding an eraser and a pencil. With an executable program in the memory card, no Diebold opti-scan ballot box can be considered "empty" at the start of the election.
The Black Box Voting team proved that the Diebold optical scan program, housed on a chip inside the voting machine, places a call to a program living in the removable memory card during the election. The demonstration also showed that the executable program on the memory card (ballot box) can easily be changed, and that checks and balances, required by FEC standards to catch unauthorized changes, were not implemented by Diebold -- yet the system was certified anyway.
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/5921.html
Trust in a bottle? It sounds like a marketer's fantasy, like the fabled fountain of youth or the wild claims of fad diets.
Yet that's what Swiss and American scientists demonstrate in new experiments with a nasal spray containing the hormone oxytocin. After a few squirts, human subjects were significantly more trusting and willing to invest money with no ironclad promise of a profit.
http://www.rense.com/general65/scisa.htm
A stunned European Union warned against panic on Thursday after the Dutch joined France in a resounding "No" to the bloc's constitution, putting both further expansion and decision-making in jeopardy.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=8680522
Nonfarm payrolls increased by 78,000, the lowest since the job expansion began in August 2003, according to a survey of business establishments
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?siteid=mktw&guid=%7b538EAC95-0D09-404B-87D7-40DF2D9660C5%7d&dist=bnb
Garden Grove? Long Beach? Home to terrorists? That's right. During the past year, Time magazine and several other mainstream publications have identified organizations -- with home offices in the Golden State -- that are plotting coups, planting bombs in other countries and raising money for more of these activities. And they're not your usual Cuban exile groups.
Two organizations -- the Long Beach-based Cambodian Freedom Fighters (CFF), and the Garden Grove-based Government of Free Vietnam (GFV) -- are finally drawing some attention from the U.S. government these days.
http://www.alternet.org/story/12073
Thailand said it will pursue terrorists described by Burma as CIA-trained, because "maybe someone did something along the border," resulting in a synchronized triple-bombing in Burma which killed 19 people.
"Thailand does not harbor terrorists, and the Thai government will not allow terrorists to shelter on the Thai soil," said Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who hopes to maintain Bangkok's lucrative business relations with Burma, also known as Myanmar
http://scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0505/S00219.htm
U.N. inspectors have been blocked from returning to Iraq since the U.S.-led war in 2003 so they have been using satellite photos to see what happened to the sites that were subject to U.N. monitoring because their equipment had both civilian and military uses.
In the report to the U.N. Security Council, acting chief weapons inspector Demetrius Perricos said he's reached no conclusions about who removed the items or where they went. He said it could have been moved elsewhere in Iraq, sold as scrap, melted down or purchased.
He said the missing material can be used for legitimate purposes. "However, they can also be utilized for prohibited purposes if in a good state of repair."
He said imagery analysts have identified 109 sites that have been emptied of equipment to varying degrees, up from 90 reported in March.
The report also provided much more detail about the percentage of items no longer at the places where U.N. inspectors monitored them.
From the imagery analysis, Perricos said analysts at the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission which he heads have concluded that biological sites were less damaged than chemical and missile sites.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050603/ap_on_re_mi_ea/un_weapons_inspectors
Two Israeli soldiers have come forward to describe how they took part in what they say was an officially ordered "revenge" operation to kill Palestinian police officers among them several unarmed men.
In graphic testimony, one soldier has confessed that he "really enjoyed" a chase in which he shot an unarmed Palestinian in the head who was trying to escape during a series of reprisal raids ordered the day after the killing of six Israeli soldiers in an ambush by militant gunmen three years ago.
In what may be the first inside account of such an operation, the soldiers from two reconnaissance units say they were among troops ordered by their commanders to "liquidate" the police officers at a series of Palestinian West Bank checkpoints even though they were given no evidence they had been involved in the killing of the Israelis.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=643659
And no self-respecting Bush clansman would ever let some uppity little black girl and her foster mother make him look bad, no matter how egregious his failures.
Jeb had three choices after the verdict. He could have simply accepted responsibility for his agency's horrible neglect and paid the full amount. Or he could have accepted responsibility but asked that the large award be reduced, as often happens in such cases, which would still leave Marissa with enough money to afford the extensive and costly health care she will need for the rest of her life. The first course would have been just and honorable; the second, pragmatic yet not inherently cruel. But honor, justice and responsibility have no place in the Bush clan's ruthless operations. So Jeb picked the third choice, the "nuclear option." He asked an appeals court to throw out the entire award -- even the damages levied against other, non-state parties in the case -- leaving Marissa with absolutely nothing, The Palm Beach Post reports.
http://context.themoscowtimes.com/story/142897/
So, what does it mean? It means that our president and all of his administration are war criminals. It's as simple as that. They lied to the American people, have killed and injured and traumatized thousands of American men and women doing their patriotic duty, killed at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians, destroyed Iraq's infrastructure and poisoned its environment, squandered billions and billions of our tax dollars, made a mockery of American integrity in the world, changed the course of history, tortured Iraqi prisoners, and bound us intractably to an insane situation that they have no idea how to fix because they had no plan, but greed and empire, in the first place.
What does it mean? It means that everyone in this administration should be impeached. It means that our Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins and our Congressmen Tom Allen and Mike Michaud should call for immediate impeachment. They were lied to by their president, voted for war, and are thus complicit in the multiply betrayals of the American people unless they stand up now for the truth.
http://www.bangornews.com/news/templates/?a=114420
Attorneys for the gun distributor, the Valor Corp. of Sunrise, said Wednesday's ruling makes it clear that manufacturers or distributors of non-defective products cannot be held liable for their misuse.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/2005/06/02/c1b_valor_0602.html
Five girls and boys held on suspicion of attempted murder after a missing child is found with a neck injury and bruises
A BOY aged 5 was taken from his garden by an older girl and led to a wood where a gang of children apparently tried to hang him, his cousin said yesterday.
Three boys and two girls aged 11 and 12 have been arrested on suspicion of the attempted murder of the boy, Anthony Brown, who is not related to any of his alleged attackers. Police in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, are looking for two or three more suspects.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1637467,00.html
"The crucial detail is the erasure of the serial numbers. The numbers do not appear to have been physically removed. Instead, the guns seem to have come off the production line without any serial numbers, or they could have been erased with high-tech industrial technology. The lack of serial numbers suggests that the weapons were intended for intelligence operations or terrorist cells with substantial government backing."
These guns are probably from the Mossad or the CIA, or both. What we're seeing in Iraq is a national resistance against the American occupation, a resistance which is directed at the American troops and Iraqi collaborators (which include the Iraqi police). Any civilian deaths or injuries are collateral and accidental. Parallel to the resistance, we also see a concerted action by a major foreign intelligence service or services to create a civil war in Iraq by staging what appear to be sectarian attacks against specific groups in Iraq.
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2005/06/no-serial-numbers.html
http://www.watchingamerica.com/corrieredellasera000005.html
An article published today in the Seattle Post Intelligencer (follow link below) examines the ongoing investigation into several Israeli companies involved in a computer hacking/espionage scandal. While the story is rather big news in Israel--some of the companies are very prominent--it has received scant press here. The reason the article piqued my interest, however, was because one of the companies implicated in the scandal is none other than Amdocs. Who or what is Amdocs you say? According to the article, it is a company "that trades on the New York Stock Exchange..."
If you have not personally heard of Amdocs, however, I would suggest you read this >>> [Article]. In a nutshell, Amdocs is responsible for routing pretty much all of America's public telephone traffic and has been tied to an investigation of Israeli espionage in the United States. The investigation was further alleged to have ties to the Sibel Edmonds whistleblower case. She claims these espionage investigations have great bearing on what really transpired on 9/11.
How interesting then, that this same corporation is now being investigated (by the Israeli government) for spying on not only other Israeli companies but some American companies as well (Hewlett-Packard, for instance).
http://www.didjuneau.com/readhead2.php?UID=355
But Kosovo Albanians say the same. Without independence, they say, the radicals will begin an intifada, 'cleanse' the remaining Serb population and spread war into Serbia and Macedonia.
There is no easy answer for Kosovo. But one thing is sure. If nothing is done, the violence will be back and then British, French, Italian and US troops stationed there will come into the firing line and the UN mission could collapse.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1494868,00.html
Planned layoffs in the United States jumped 42 percent in May from April, led by hefty job cuts in the computer industry as a result of slow growth in the European economy, a report said Thursday.
advertisement
The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. said employers announced 82,283 job cuts in May, up from 57,861 in April, and up 12 percent from May 2004
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8073094/
US occupation forces announced on their propaganda radio beamed at local residents of ar-Ramadi that the US military would stop raiding houses and mosques, would open roads to local people and turn the electricity and drinking water supply in the city back on if local residents would cooperate by informing the American occupation troops of the locations and bases of Iraqi Resistance fighters operating in the city against the Americans
http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=iraq_war&Number=293667659
It sounds scary – like comic book super-villain scary – at first, this idea that Iran is plotting to hit American with a king-sized electromagnetic pulse, triggered by a nuke in the skies. Luckily, it's a scenario about as realistic as the X-Men
http://www.defensetech.org/archives/001526.html
We predict a stormy season ahead. Call it the "Summer of Bankruptcy."
Between April and October, an increasing number of Americans will file for bankruptcy protection. This action is inevitable because a harsher bankruptcy code begins Oct. 17. That law takes effect at a time when credit is becoming more expensive for ordinary consumers.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/226505_credited.asp
The Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program pays anthropology students, whose names are not disclosed, up to $50,000 (£27,500) a year.
...
They are expected to use the techniques of "fieldwork" to gather political and cultural details on other countries.He wrote in the journal Anthropology Today: "The United States is at war. Thus, to put it simply, the existing divide between academe and the intelligence community has become a dangerous and very real detriment to our national security at home and abroad."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4603271.stm
Re-igniting the medical malpractice overhaul debate, a new study by Dartmouth College researchers suggests that huge jury awards and financial settlements for injured patients have not caused the explosive increase in doctors' insurance premiums.
ADVERTISEMENT
The researchers said a more likely explanation for the escalation is that malpractice insurance companies have raised doctors' premiums to compensate for falling investment returns.
The Dartmouth economists studied actual payments made to patients between 1991 and 2003, the results of which were published yesterday in the journal Health Affairs. Some previous studies have examined jury awards, which often are reduced after trial to comply with doctors' insurance coverage maximums or because the plaintiff settles for less money to avoid an appeal. Researchers found that payments grew an average of 4 percent annually during the years covered by the study, or 52 percent overall since 1991, but only 1.6 percent a year since 2000. The increases are roughly equivalent to the overall rise in healthcare costs, said Amitabh Chandra, lead author and an assistant professor of economics at the New Hampshire college.
''One of the things we know about medical malpractice payments is that they're usually made when an injury occurred," he said. ''The injury has to be treated. And if it's more and more expensive to treat injuries, then that will be reflected in payments."
http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/other/articles/2005/06/01/rising_doctors_premiums_not_due_to_lawsuit_awards/
[How much clearer can things be than this?]She says screeners refused to give her paperwork or documentation of her violation, documentation of the pending fine, or a copy of the photograph of the knife.
"They said 'no' and they said it's a national security issue. And I said what about my constitutional rights? And they said 'not at this point ... you don't have any'."
http://www.komotv.com/stories/37150.htm
William Schulz, the executive director of Amnesty International USA, said on Wednesday: “Twenty years ago Amnesty International was criticising Saddam Hussein's human rights abuses at the same time Donald Rumsfeld was courting him. “In 2003 Rumsfeld apparently trusted our credibility on violations by Iraq but now that we are criticising the United States he has lost his faith again.”
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/55306c2a-d2c2-11d9-bead-00000e2511c8.html
Regardless of what you believe on this issue, it's sort of a moot point, because our nation is going bankrupt anyway, and much of that bankruptcy is caused by health care costs. Today, our health care costs absorb 25 percent of our gross domestic product. One out of every four dollars is spent for healthcare, and that number is rising. It is bankrupting our nation, and just as significantly, it is reducing our competitiveness in the global marketplace. It's now comparatively cheaper for employers to hire people in other countries, not just because the hourly wage costs are lower, but increasingly because the health care costs are more affordable.
http://www.newstarget.com/007763.html
[Of course the USg buys people. If they can buy Slobodan Milosevic, how could they not buy nobodies from the wilds of Afghanistan?]
The U.S. government gave the slave trade a boost by offering money for al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Afghan and Pakistani warlords simply rounded up people who looked Arab or foreign and sold them to the Americans as captured fighters. The "fighters" apparently included relief workers, refugees, and Arab businessmen. The tribunals looking into the classification of Guantanamo prisoners as "enemy combatants" have uncovered numerous examples of hapless victims of a naive U.S. government too flush with money.
The Bush administration, of course, denies that it bought its detainees, as it denies everything. However, on May 31, 2005, Michelle Faul of the Associated Press reported that in March 2002, leaflets and broadcasts from helicopters in Afghanistan enticed Afghans to "Hand over the Arabs and feed your families for a lifetime." One leaflet said: "You can receive millions of dollars. This is enough to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life, pay for livestock and doctors and school books and housing for all your people."
http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=6185
Those were the magic words of the time: "Papiere, Bitte." (Translation: "Papers, Please.") Hearing those words, even now, causes dull echoes of sounds akin to bodies hitting dirt, or bullets penetrating flesh to thud into my mind. Because, if those papers weren't correctly in order, or, if you were a Jew sneakily present in any place (including the grocery store) which displayed the usual "NO JEWS OR DOGS ALLOWED" sign, you were dead meat--literally. And, yes, of course I'm talking about my childhood as a little Jewish kid in Nazi Germany.
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=21363&mode=nested&order=0
http://www.morristribunal.ie/images/19031973.pdf
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/video/taser_video3a.html
Stun guns are credited with reducing assaults on officers. But in one-fourth of
Taser incidents reviewed by The Post, the suspect was not violent or
threatening.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/special_reports/tasers/index.html
The campaign of harassment and intimidation from agents of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security towards Narco News correspondent Bill Conroy continues to draw outrage from journalists and others who value press freedom. Journalists in the United States and around the world have seen this case as not just an attack on Conroy, or on Narco News, but on all of us. Momentum is already building for his defense.
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2005/6/2/132956/7309
Advocates for the homeless already are seeing veterans from the war on terror living on the street, and say the government must do more to ease their transition from military to civilian life.
Linda Boone, executive director of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, said about 70 homeless veterans who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan contacted her group’s facilities in 2004, and another 125 homeless veterans from those conflicts last year petitioned the Department of Veterans Affairs for assistance.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0603-06.htm
http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=29471
The Kurdish HPG (People's Defense Force) has published the war balance for a
period of 360 days. The balance sheet covers the period between July 1, 2004
(the end of the unilateral ceasefire by HPG) until May 26, 2005.
http://www.dozame.org/article.php/2005053102450027
An accelerating Arctic warming trend over the past quarter of a century has dramatically dried up more than a thousand large lakes in Siberia, probably because the permafrost beneath them has begun to thaw, according to a paper to be published today in the journal Science.
An 11% decline may not sound like much, but in the time-scale in which landscapes naturally change, this is extraordinarily fast.
Laurence C. Smith, an associate geology professor at UCLA
Comparing satellite images made in the early 1970s to those from recent years, a team of U.S. scientists determined that the number of large lakes in a vast 200,000-square-mile region of Russia's Siberia diminished by about 11%, from 10,882 to 9,712.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0603-07.htm
Faced with daily reports of car bombs and kidnappings, it's difficult to feel optimistic about Iraq. But last week in the south of the country I heard a very different story. A story of the movement that has formed to rebuild the country's economy and national pride, to create an Iraq with neither the tyranny of Saddam nor the pillage of military occupation.
Last week Basra saw its first conference on the threat of privatization, bringing together oil workers, academics and international civil-society groups. The event debated an issue about which Iraqis are passionate: the ownership and control of Iraq's oil reserves.
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0603-23.htm
To the rhythm of saya (Afro-Bolivian) music, the workers summed up their answer to the government’s actions: “Now, there will be civil war…” A group of youths carrying a pair of dolls representing Carlos Mesa and Congress President Hormando Vaca Díez; after marching for an hour through downtown La Paz, the dolls were burned.
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2005/6/3/20745/10741
r. Grizzle says current anti-nipple sentiments are steeped in the same notions
that cause some religions to keep women covered up and out of holy places
because a woman's "sexuality disrupts everything that men try to
accomplish."
http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=87634608-b248-44c7
-b1bc-d6e8ef4771f3
"There's simply not enough forces here," said a high-ranking U.S. Army
officer with knowledge of the 3rd ACR. "There are not enough to do anything
right; everybody's got their finger in a dike." The officer spoke on the
condition of anonymity because of concern that he'd be reprimanded for
questioning American military policy in Iraq.
http://www.military.com/Content/Printer_Friendly_Version/1,11491,,00.html?str_fi
lename=FL%5Fenough%5F060305&passfile=FL%5Fenough%5F060305&page_url=%2FNewsConten
t%2F0%2C13319%2CFL%5Fenough%5F060305%2C00%2Ehtml
Besides the recent decision to redeploy 1st Corps, the United States is busily
building up Guam as a "power projection hub," with, in the words of
Pacific Commander Admiral William Fargo, "geo-strategic importance."
The United States is also trying to shift Guam-based bombers to Yokota airbase
near Tokyo. Christopher Hughes of Warwick University, an expert on the region,
told the British Guardian, "The ramifications of this would be that Japan
would essentially serve as a frontline U.S. command post for the Asia-Pacific
and beyond."
...
The Chinese are acutely sensitive to issues concerning their borders, and Taiwan
in particular, but what has really put them on edge is a recent statement by the
right-wing mayor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, that the "U.S., Russia, and
Japan" should work together to strangle China's oil supplies. "It
would keep China in check greatly," he said, "since China has no
resources."
...
The drive to cleanse Japan's actions in World War II is led by the Society for
Historical Textbook Reform, backed by industrial giants Canon and Mitsubishi and
more than 100 Diet members from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. As Mark
Seldon and David McNeill of Japan Focus point out, not only have the textbooks
allowed an "extremist fringe" to put its version of history into homes
across Japan, but the campaign has pushed other texts "sharply to the
right."
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/hallinan.php?articleid=6195
If indeed Syrian intelligence murdered Kassir, they are incurably stupid—as in
making poor decisions and demonstrating a complete lack of political
understanding—because the assassination of a critic of the Syrians during the
election obviously plays right into the hands of the NED-USAID opposition. “The
killing of Mr. Kassir has once again united the opposition parties in a new call
for President Emile Lahoud to step down from office. Mr. Lahoud has condemned
the attack and denied any role,” reports PolitInfo.
http://www.kurtnimmo.com/blog/
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/download/BostonDeclaration.pdf
The evidence was clear. Both Admiral Kidd and I believed with certainty that
this attack, which killed 34 American sailors and injured 172 others, was a
deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew. Each
evening, after hearing testimony all day, we often spoke our private thoughts
concerning what we had seen and heard. I recall Admiral Kidd repeatedly
referring to the Israeli forces responsible for the attack as “murderous
bastards.” It was our shared belief, based on the documentary evidence and
testimony we received first hand, that the Israeli attack was planned and
deliberate, and could not possibly have been an accident.
I am certain that the Israeli pilots that undertook the attack, as well as their
superiors, who had ordered the attack, were well aware that the ship was
American.
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/ul-boston.html
We debate the details of a long-ago break-in by government agents – even as we
give government agents carte blanche to not only search our homes, but read our
mail and spy on ordinary, noncriminal citizens. As the prospect of armed
conflict with Iran darkens the horizon, I fully expect the Deep Thinkers and
intellectual trendsetters among us to begin an avid discussion of the pros and
cons of the Second Carthaginian War.
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=6202
Rachel Rogers, a single mother of four in upstate New York, did not worry about
the presence of National Guard recruiters at her son's high school until she
learned that they taught students how to throw hand grenades, using baseballs as
stand-ins. For the last month she has been insisting that administrators limit
recruiters' access to children.
..
"I had one father say if he saw me on his doorstep I better have some
protection on me," said a recruiter in Ohio. "We see a lot of
hostility."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/03/nyregion/03recruit.html?hp&ex=1117857600&en=74
88119338909c3e&ei=5094&partner=homepage
national conservation group filed suit Wednesday to force the government to
reveal the extent to which ocean mammals worldwide have died as a result of
massive sonic blasts from intense military search equipment.
http://newsobserver.com/24hour/nation/story/2446543p-10759553c.html
Bones of Contention
Is a small, 18,000-year-old skeleton the older cousin of modern-day Pygmies—or a
new human species?
http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501050606-1066965,00.html
OLDIE BUT GODDIE, WORTH A RE –READ!!
Instructive and humorous.
#60: In case your memory fails a P38/John Wayne/Can Opener are one and the same.
#65: At this stage of life this seems true. However, LIVING has major upside!
Lessons of a Vietnam Helicopter Crewman
1. Once you are in the fight, it is way too late to wonder if it was a good
idea.
2. Helicopters are cool!
3. It is a fact that helicopter tail rotors are instinctively drawn toward
trees, stumps, rocks, etc. While it may be possible to ward off this natural
event some of the time, it cannot, despite the best efforts of the crew, always
be prevented. It's just what they do.
4. NEVER get into a fight without more ammunition than the other guy.
5. The engine RPM, and the rotor RPM, must BOTH be kept in the GREEN. Failure to
heed this commandment can affect the morale of the crew.
6. A billfold in your hip pocket can numb your leg and be a real pain in the
ass.
7. Cover your Buddy, so he can be around to cover you.
8. Letters from home are not always great.
9. The madness of war can extract a heavy toll. Please have exact change.
10. Share everything. Even the Pound Cake.
11. Decisions made by someone over your head will seldom be in your best
interest.
12. The terms "Protective Armor" and "Helicopter" are
mutually exclusive.
13. The further away you are from your friends, the less likely it is that they
can help you when you really need them the most.
14. If being good and lucky is not enough, there is always payback.
15. "Chicken Plates" are not something you order in a restaurant.
16. If everything is as clear as a bell, and everything is going exactly as
planned, you're about to be surprised.
17. The B.S.R. (Bang, Stare, Read) Theory states that the louder the sudden bang
in the helicopter, the quicker your eyes will be drawn to the gauges.
18. The longer you stare at the gauges, the less time it takes them to move from
green to red.
19. It does too get cold in Vietnam.
20. No matter what you do, the bullet with your name on it will get you. So too
can the ones addressed "To Whom It May Concern".
21. Gravity may not be fair, but it is the law.
22. If the rear echelon troops are really happy, the front line troops probably
do not have what they need.
23. If you are wearing body armor, the incoming will probably miss that part.
24. It hurts less to die with a uniform on than to die in a hospital bed.
25. Happiness is a belt-fed weapon.
26. If something hasn't broken on your helicopter, it's about to.
27. Eat when you can. Sleep when you can. Visit the head when you can. The next
opportunity may not come around for a long time. If ever.
28. Combat pay is a flawed concept.
29. Having all your body parts intact and functioning at the end of the day
beats the alternative.
30. Air superiority is NOT a luxury.
31. If you are allergic to lead it is best to avoid a war zone.
32. It is always a bad thing to run out of airspeed, altitude, and ideas all at
the same time.
32a. Nothing is as useless as altitude above you and runway behind you.
33. While the rest of the crew may be in the same predicament, it's almost
always the pilot's job to arrive at the crash site first.
34. When you shoot your gun, clean it the first chance you get.
35. Loud sudden noises in a helicopter WILL get your undivided attention.
36. Hot garrison chow is better than hot C-rations, which, in turn is better
than cold C-rations, which is better than no food at all. All of these, however,
are preferable to cold rice balls (given to you by guards) even if they do have
the little pieces of fish in them.
37. WHAT is often more important than WHY.
38. Boxes of cookies from home must be shared.
39. Girlfriends are fair game. Wives are not.
40. Everybody's a hero on the ground in the club after the fourth drink.
41. There is no such thing as a small firefight.
42. A free-fire zone has nothing to do with economics.
43. The farther you fly into the mountains, the louder the strange engine noises
become.
44. Medals are OK, but having your body and all your friends in one piece at the
end of the day is better.
44a. The only medal you really want to be awarded is the Longevity Medal.
45. Being shot hurts.
46. Thousands of Vietnam Veterans earned medals for bravery every day. A few
were even awarded.
48. Running out of pedal, fore or aft cyclic, or collective are all bad ideas.
Any combination of these can be deadly.
49. Nomex is NOT fire proof.
50. There is only one rule in war: When you win, you get to make up the Rules.
51. Living and dying can both hurt a lot.
53. While a Super Bomb could be considered one of the four essential building
blocks of life, powdered eggs cannot.
54. C-4 can make a dull day fun.
55. Cocoa Powder is neither.
56. There is no such thing as a fair fight, only ones where you win or lose.
57. If you win the battle you are entitled to the spoils. If you lose you don't
care.
58. Nobody cares what you did yesterday or what you are going to do tomorrow.
What is important is what you are doing NOW to solve our problem.
59. If you have extra, share it quickly.
60. Always make sure someone has a P-38.
61. A sucking chest wound may be God's way of telling you it's time to go home.
62. Prayer may not help . . . but it can't hurt.
63. Flying is better than walking. Walking is better than running. Running is
better than crawling. All of these however, are better than extraction by a
Med-Evac, even if this is technically a form of flying.
64. If everyone does not come home none of the rest of us can ever fully come
home either.
65. Do not fear the enemy, for your enemy can only take your life. It is far
better that you fear the media, for they will steal your HONOR.
66. A grunt is the true reason for the existence of the helicopter. Every
helicopter flying in Vietnam had one real purpose: To help the grunt. It is
unfortunate that many helicopters never had the opportunity to fulfill their one
true mission in life simply because someone forgot this fact.
67. "You have the right to remain silent" is always EXCELLENT advice.
John Kerry announced Thursday that he intends to present Congress with The
Downing Street Memo, reported by the London Times 1 May 2005. As reported by
NewsMax, the memo purports to include minutes from a July 2002 meeting with Tony
Blair, in which Blair ostensibly said that President Bush’s Administration
“fixed” intelligence on Iraq in order to justify the Iraqi war. In an interview
with the Standard Times, Kerry said: "It's amazing to me the way it escaped
major media discussion. It's not being missed on the Internet, I can tell you
that."
http://www.theconservativevoice.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=6057
AOL censors E-Mail for its ‘politically incorrect’ Content – ‘blacklisted’ URLs
involving Zionism :
AOL's refuses to deliver E-mail to private parties. Here is their explanation. –
==============================================
Error 554 HVU:B1
* 554 HVU:B1 http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/554hvub1.html
EXPLANATION:
There is at least one URL in your email that is generating substantial
complaints from AOL members.
SOLUTION:
If you own all the domains linked to in your e-mail, please contact us to
discuss more effective management of your complaint levels. You can start by
setting up a free complaint loop through this form. This will allow you to
receive AOL member complaints against your domain.
If you do not own the domain, please have the owner of that domain contact us.
The United States accused 14 nations Friday of failing to do enough to stop the
modern-day slave trade in prostitutes, child sex workers and forced laborers.
The countries include Saudi Arabia, Washington's closest Arab ally in the war on
terrorism.
http://home.mobile.yahoo.com/raw?dp=rssnews&u=ap/20050603/ap_on_re_us/human_traf
ficking&rn=topstories
Canadian Arrow continues to develop the concept of a launch from an offshore barge since this would open up the possibility of flights near other locations in the Great Lakes system.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/launchers-05zzg.html
The European Union retaliated against the United States Tuesday launching a counterclaim in the World Trade Organization against U.S. aircraft manufacturer Boeing for receiving more than $29 billion in support from U.S. federal and state governments.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/aerospace-4zg.html
[The nuclear industry promotion board is really pulling out all the stops. If only they spent some money on actually making their facilities safer.]
Australia's most powerful state leader broke a long-held taboo Thursday by suggesting the country turn to nuclear power as a way to ensure energy supplies and combat global warming.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nuclear-civil-05s.html
o one knew until now what veteran television journalist Haim Yavin thought
about the news he has been announcing for more than three decades, and he is so
nonpartisan that one wondered whether he had an opinion of his own at all. Now,
at 72, he is coming out of the closet: "Since 1967 we have been brutal
conquerors, occupiers, suppressing another people," he says in "Yoman
Masa" ("Diary of a Journey"), which he filmed in the West Bank
http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story.php?sid=20050602041725561
He looked at me over the top of his glasses, saying, “we must approach this like
digital terror. Breaking into a computer could bring this country to a halt. It
could create a security issue, grind the country’s economy to a halt, destroy
the banks. It could even reach the country’s food supply.
According to Ofner, the country’s legal structure is “not built” to take care of
digital crime, and that red lines here have been crossed.
“We live in a jungle,” he says. “Israeli managers have no red lines. All the
stereotypes of the scheming, dishonest Israeli find expression (in the business
world). We create problems as well as we fix them.”
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0%2C7340%2CL-3094450%2C00.html
http://www.rense.com/general65/aip.htm
We have just finished observing Memorial Day in which we honor the soldiers who
gave their lives defending this countries' freedoms. The kind of law that
Sensenbrenner is proposing would be perfectly fitting in Hitler's Nazi Germany.
How many people died in order to prevent Hitler from imposing this kind of
government on the rest of the world? Sensenbrenner's H. R. 1528 is Fascism, so
let us call it what it is. We show a fine sense of gratitude to our heroic dead
when we sheepishly allow miscreants like Sensenbrenner impose the Fascism that
they fought against on us
http://www.rense.com/general65/hr5.htm
http://www.couplescompany.com/Features/Politics/2005/ValueI1.htm
Pesticides and other man-made chemicals may lower male fertility for at least
four generations, according to new research.
Pregnant rats exposed to fungicide sprayed on vineyards and pesticide sprayed on
crops had male offspring with a sperm count reduced by 20 per cent.
If confirmed by further experiments, the findings could help explain the decline
in human male fertility over the past 50 years.
http://www.rense.com/general65/falsl.htm
With its stock gone flat and bad publicity in virtually every news cycle
Wal-Mart is feeling pretty defensive these days. Among recent company missteps
are fines and monetary settlements for hiring illegal immigrants and allowing
underage employees to operate heavy machinery.
...
There are alternatives to the Wal-Mart low-wage model. Costco, for example, has
449 warehouses internationally, $47 billion in revenue and 113,000 employees,
and uses a high wage model. And, depressingly, it has been attacked by Wall
Street for "caring too much about its customers and it employees."
http://www.alternet.org/story/22128/
Sharp metal objects, some as long as 10 cm, have been found protruding from
highway guardrails at about 600 locations in nine prefectures, central and
prefectural government officials said Thursday.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20050603a2.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-06-03-homeland-fraud_x.htm?csp=24&RM_Exclude=Juno
So why did I say that? It’s because of how they have built the EU up to now, there has been hardly popular discussion or popular approval of the notion of closer European integration for a long time, probably for over a generation. When I was over there around 2000 all these people in England were in a snit because some guy got sent to jail for selling bananas by the pound or some fool thing like that. According to EU law he was only supposed to sell them by metric weights or something, and there was a big hullaballoo over that because apparently no one in England _really_ realized that when they signed up for the EU they wouldn’t be able to use familiar ewights and measures. It seems that no one thought that is what they were signing up for.
So that was one little example. Then around the same time I think it was the Treaty of Nice was being peddled around and they had the Irish vote on it. Well so they voted to reject it because they had some different concerns about it they wanted addressed. So what happened? Did the government say “o sorry, lt’s go back and address those concerns”? No. Did it say “we stand by the verdict of our people over here”? No, didn’t do that either.
Instead what happened was that it was like a scandal within the European elite, how could the Irish elite let their people get so out of control and unruly like that as to not vote for this treaty? So the top Irish people were all embarrassed in front of their Euro-elite friends and swore to go back and straighten things out.
So what did they do? They sent back the same exact treaty for the Irish people to vote on again, without any changes, and they basically said they were oging to keep beating people over the head with the same treaty until they approved it. So of course, no one wanted to dragged out to vote on the same treaty every month til the next government elections, so the treaty narrowly passed on the second try as I recall. And there was a lot of kind of anger and resentment over that.
So I said to my friend, look what is happening with this European project already. Already people are grumbling and unhappy over how things are going. They rightly are complaining that democ goes up to the national level, and then above that the rest of the EU gets progressively less and less democratic as you go along. They’re complaining that the EU level people don’t pay attention to the needs of actual people all around the EU [also true]. They’re complaining that the EU is trying to undermine the national governments [also true, think of “a Europe of Regions”], and people don’t like all this stuff.
I actually do support _A_ European Union, so don’t get me wrong on that. I just don’t tihnk they are going about it the right way.
Well so anyway, I said to my friend if things keep on like this all these countries are going to get very tightly bound together, almost without people realizing it, and someday a bunch of people are going to wake up one morning thinking they are French or German or whatever and that they have their own countries and can do their own things, and they are going to be told very forcefully that that is not the case, and all of a sudden they’ll be a panic when they realize what has been put over on them, and there will be a civil war in Europe, and I don’t think you want Turkey mixed up in that. Europe’s civil wars are always incredibly destructive.
So for that reason I think the French and Dutch rejections of the European Constitution are a good thing. I really think that they have very possibly saved their own children or grand-children from war. And after all ins’t that what the European Union project was started for in the first place? To avoid another war?
So I salute the French and the Dutch for seeing moe clearly than their own leaders and doing the right thing.
I hope this will be the wake up call that finally gets the Euro-elite to go back the people and actually re-involve them in the process. This is really something that should have happened back when Denmark and England decided they weren’t interested in the Euro currency, or even when people were grumbling about the Nice Treaty. Wake up EU.]
A big cat is being blamed for an attack on a cow at a farm near Plymouth.
There have been a series of alleged sightings of big cats in the area around Langage Farm.
The cow's owners say they have no other explanation for the animal's injuries and say vets have agreed they are consistent with a big cat attack
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/4599441.stm
A tempestuous clash between the National Weather Service and private weather companies is prompting an influential senator to intervene to protect AccuWeather, WeatherBank and other firms that package forecasts for public use.
http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/local/11771045.htm
A little man living in every ballot box
The Diebold optical scan system uses a dangerous programming methodology, with an executable program living inside the electronic ballot box. This method is the equivalent of having a little man living in the ballot box, holding an eraser and a pencil. With an executable program in the memory card, no Diebold opti-scan ballot box can be considered "empty" at the start of the election.
The Black Box Voting team proved that the Diebold optical scan program, housed on a chip inside the voting machine, places a call to a program living in the removable memory card during the election. The demonstration also showed that the executable program on the memory card (ballot box) can easily be changed, and that checks and balances, required by FEC standards to catch unauthorized changes, were not implemented by Diebold -- yet the system was certified anyway.
http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/5921.html
Trust in a bottle? It sounds like a marketer's fantasy, like the fabled fountain of youth or the wild claims of fad diets.
Yet that's what Swiss and American scientists demonstrate in new experiments with a nasal spray containing the hormone oxytocin. After a few squirts, human subjects were significantly more trusting and willing to invest money with no ironclad promise of a profit.
http://www.rense.com/general65/scisa.htm
A stunned European Union warned against panic on Thursday after the Dutch joined France in a resounding "No" to the bloc's constitution, putting both further expansion and decision-making in jeopardy.
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=8680522
Nonfarm payrolls increased by 78,000, the lowest since the job expansion began in August 2003, according to a survey of business establishments
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?siteid=mktw&guid=%7b538EAC95-0D09-404B-87D7-40DF2D9660C5%7d&dist=bnb
Garden Grove? Long Beach? Home to terrorists? That's right. During the past year, Time magazine and several other mainstream publications have identified organizations -- with home offices in the Golden State -- that are plotting coups, planting bombs in other countries and raising money for more of these activities. And they're not your usual Cuban exile groups.
Two organizations -- the Long Beach-based Cambodian Freedom Fighters (CFF), and the Garden Grove-based Government of Free Vietnam (GFV) -- are finally drawing some attention from the U.S. government these days.
http://www.alternet.org/story/12073
Thailand said it will pursue terrorists described by Burma as CIA-trained, because "maybe someone did something along the border," resulting in a synchronized triple-bombing in Burma which killed 19 people.
"Thailand does not harbor terrorists, and the Thai government will not allow terrorists to shelter on the Thai soil," said Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who hopes to maintain Bangkok's lucrative business relations with Burma, also known as Myanmar
http://scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0505/S00219.htm
U.N. inspectors have been blocked from returning to Iraq since the U.S.-led war in 2003 so they have been using satellite photos to see what happened to the sites that were subject to U.N. monitoring because their equipment had both civilian and military uses.
In the report to the U.N. Security Council, acting chief weapons inspector Demetrius Perricos said he's reached no conclusions about who removed the items or where they went. He said it could have been moved elsewhere in Iraq, sold as scrap, melted down or purchased.
He said the missing material can be used for legitimate purposes. "However, they can also be utilized for prohibited purposes if in a good state of repair."
He said imagery analysts have identified 109 sites that have been emptied of equipment to varying degrees, up from 90 reported in March.
The report also provided much more detail about the percentage of items no longer at the places where U.N. inspectors monitored them.
From the imagery analysis, Perricos said analysts at the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission which he heads have concluded that biological sites were less damaged than chemical and missile sites.
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050603/ap_on_re_mi_ea/un_weapons_inspectors
Two Israeli soldiers have come forward to describe how they took part in what they say was an officially ordered "revenge" operation to kill Palestinian police officers among them several unarmed men.
In graphic testimony, one soldier has confessed that he "really enjoyed" a chase in which he shot an unarmed Palestinian in the head who was trying to escape during a series of reprisal raids ordered the day after the killing of six Israeli soldiers in an ambush by militant gunmen three years ago.
In what may be the first inside account of such an operation, the soldiers from two reconnaissance units say they were among troops ordered by their commanders to "liquidate" the police officers at a series of Palestinian West Bank checkpoints even though they were given no evidence they had been involved in the killing of the Israelis.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=643659
And no self-respecting Bush clansman would ever let some uppity little black girl and her foster mother make him look bad, no matter how egregious his failures.
Jeb had three choices after the verdict. He could have simply accepted responsibility for his agency's horrible neglect and paid the full amount. Or he could have accepted responsibility but asked that the large award be reduced, as often happens in such cases, which would still leave Marissa with enough money to afford the extensive and costly health care she will need for the rest of her life. The first course would have been just and honorable; the second, pragmatic yet not inherently cruel. But honor, justice and responsibility have no place in the Bush clan's ruthless operations. So Jeb picked the third choice, the "nuclear option." He asked an appeals court to throw out the entire award -- even the damages levied against other, non-state parties in the case -- leaving Marissa with absolutely nothing, The Palm Beach Post reports.
http://context.themoscowtimes.com/story/142897/
So, what does it mean? It means that our president and all of his administration are war criminals. It's as simple as that. They lied to the American people, have killed and injured and traumatized thousands of American men and women doing their patriotic duty, killed at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians, destroyed Iraq's infrastructure and poisoned its environment, squandered billions and billions of our tax dollars, made a mockery of American integrity in the world, changed the course of history, tortured Iraqi prisoners, and bound us intractably to an insane situation that they have no idea how to fix because they had no plan, but greed and empire, in the first place.
What does it mean? It means that everyone in this administration should be impeached. It means that our Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins and our Congressmen Tom Allen and Mike Michaud should call for immediate impeachment. They were lied to by their president, voted for war, and are thus complicit in the multiply betrayals of the American people unless they stand up now for the truth.
http://www.bangornews.com/news/templates/?a=114420
Attorneys for the gun distributor, the Valor Corp. of Sunrise, said Wednesday's ruling makes it clear that manufacturers or distributors of non-defective products cannot be held liable for their misuse.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/epaper/2005/06/02/c1b_valor_0602.html
Five girls and boys held on suspicion of attempted murder after a missing child is found with a neck injury and bruises
A BOY aged 5 was taken from his garden by an older girl and led to a wood where a gang of children apparently tried to hang him, his cousin said yesterday.
Three boys and two girls aged 11 and 12 have been arrested on suspicion of the attempted murder of the boy, Anthony Brown, who is not related to any of his alleged attackers. Police in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, are looking for two or three more suspects.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1637467,00.html
"The crucial detail is the erasure of the serial numbers. The numbers do not appear to have been physically removed. Instead, the guns seem to have come off the production line without any serial numbers, or they could have been erased with high-tech industrial technology. The lack of serial numbers suggests that the weapons were intended for intelligence operations or terrorist cells with substantial government backing."
These guns are probably from the Mossad or the CIA, or both. What we're seeing in Iraq is a national resistance against the American occupation, a resistance which is directed at the American troops and Iraqi collaborators (which include the Iraqi police). Any civilian deaths or injuries are collateral and accidental. Parallel to the resistance, we also see a concerted action by a major foreign intelligence service or services to create a civil war in Iraq by staging what appear to be sectarian attacks against specific groups in Iraq.
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2005/06/no-serial-numbers.html
http://www.watchingamerica.com/corrieredellasera000005.html
An article published today in the Seattle Post Intelligencer (follow link below) examines the ongoing investigation into several Israeli companies involved in a computer hacking/espionage scandal. While the story is rather big news in Israel--some of the companies are very prominent--it has received scant press here. The reason the article piqued my interest, however, was because one of the companies implicated in the scandal is none other than Amdocs. Who or what is Amdocs you say? According to the article, it is a company "that trades on the New York Stock Exchange..."
If you have not personally heard of Amdocs, however, I would suggest you read this >>> [Article]. In a nutshell, Amdocs is responsible for routing pretty much all of America's public telephone traffic and has been tied to an investigation of Israeli espionage in the United States. The investigation was further alleged to have ties to the Sibel Edmonds whistleblower case. She claims these espionage investigations have great bearing on what really transpired on 9/11.
How interesting then, that this same corporation is now being investigated (by the Israeli government) for spying on not only other Israeli companies but some American companies as well (Hewlett-Packard, for instance).
http://www.didjuneau.com/readhead2.php?UID=355
But Kosovo Albanians say the same. Without independence, they say, the radicals will begin an intifada, 'cleanse' the remaining Serb population and spread war into Serbia and Macedonia.
There is no easy answer for Kosovo. But one thing is sure. If nothing is done, the violence will be back and then British, French, Italian and US troops stationed there will come into the firing line and the UN mission could collapse.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1494868,00.html
Planned layoffs in the United States jumped 42 percent in May from April, led by hefty job cuts in the computer industry as a result of slow growth in the European economy, a report said Thursday.
advertisement
The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. said employers announced 82,283 job cuts in May, up from 57,861 in April, and up 12 percent from May 2004
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8073094/
US occupation forces announced on their propaganda radio beamed at local residents of ar-Ramadi that the US military would stop raiding houses and mosques, would open roads to local people and turn the electricity and drinking water supply in the city back on if local residents would cooperate by informing the American occupation troops of the locations and bases of Iraqi Resistance fighters operating in the city against the Americans
http://www.libertyforum.org/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=iraq_war&Number=293667659
It sounds scary – like comic book super-villain scary – at first, this idea that Iran is plotting to hit American with a king-sized electromagnetic pulse, triggered by a nuke in the skies. Luckily, it's a scenario about as realistic as the X-Men
http://www.defensetech.org/archives/001526.html
We predict a stormy season ahead. Call it the "Summer of Bankruptcy."
Between April and October, an increasing number of Americans will file for bankruptcy protection. This action is inevitable because a harsher bankruptcy code begins Oct. 17. That law takes effect at a time when credit is becoming more expensive for ordinary consumers.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/226505_credited.asp
The Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program pays anthropology students, whose names are not disclosed, up to $50,000 (£27,500) a year.
...
They are expected to use the techniques of "fieldwork" to gather political and cultural details on other countries.He wrote in the journal Anthropology Today: "The United States is at war. Thus, to put it simply, the existing divide between academe and the intelligence community has become a dangerous and very real detriment to our national security at home and abroad."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4603271.stm
Re-igniting the medical malpractice overhaul debate, a new study by Dartmouth College researchers suggests that huge jury awards and financial settlements for injured patients have not caused the explosive increase in doctors' insurance premiums.
ADVERTISEMENT
The researchers said a more likely explanation for the escalation is that malpractice insurance companies have raised doctors' premiums to compensate for falling investment returns.
The Dartmouth economists studied actual payments made to patients between 1991 and 2003, the results of which were published yesterday in the journal Health Affairs. Some previous studies have examined jury awards, which often are reduced after trial to comply with doctors' insurance coverage maximums or because the plaintiff settles for less money to avoid an appeal. Researchers found that payments grew an average of 4 percent annually during the years covered by the study, or 52 percent overall since 1991, but only 1.6 percent a year since 2000. The increases are roughly equivalent to the overall rise in healthcare costs, said Amitabh Chandra, lead author and an assistant professor of economics at the New Hampshire college.
''One of the things we know about medical malpractice payments is that they're usually made when an injury occurred," he said. ''The injury has to be treated. And if it's more and more expensive to treat injuries, then that will be reflected in payments."
http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/other/articles/2005/06/01/rising_doctors_premiums_not_due_to_lawsuit_awards/
[How much clearer can things be than this?]She says screeners refused to give her paperwork or documentation of her violation, documentation of the pending fine, or a copy of the photograph of the knife.
"They said 'no' and they said it's a national security issue. And I said what about my constitutional rights? And they said 'not at this point ... you don't have any'."
http://www.komotv.com/stories/37150.htm
William Schulz, the executive director of Amnesty International USA, said on Wednesday: “Twenty years ago Amnesty International was criticising Saddam Hussein's human rights abuses at the same time Donald Rumsfeld was courting him. “In 2003 Rumsfeld apparently trusted our credibility on violations by Iraq but now that we are criticising the United States he has lost his faith again.”
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/55306c2a-d2c2-11d9-bead-00000e2511c8.html
Regardless of what you believe on this issue, it's sort of a moot point, because our nation is going bankrupt anyway, and much of that bankruptcy is caused by health care costs. Today, our health care costs absorb 25 percent of our gross domestic product. One out of every four dollars is spent for healthcare, and that number is rising. It is bankrupting our nation, and just as significantly, it is reducing our competitiveness in the global marketplace. It's now comparatively cheaper for employers to hire people in other countries, not just because the hourly wage costs are lower, but increasingly because the health care costs are more affordable.
http://www.newstarget.com/007763.html
[Of course the USg buys people. If they can buy Slobodan Milosevic, how could they not buy nobodies from the wilds of Afghanistan?]
The U.S. government gave the slave trade a boost by offering money for al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Afghan and Pakistani warlords simply rounded up people who looked Arab or foreign and sold them to the Americans as captured fighters. The "fighters" apparently included relief workers, refugees, and Arab businessmen. The tribunals looking into the classification of Guantanamo prisoners as "enemy combatants" have uncovered numerous examples of hapless victims of a naive U.S. government too flush with money.
The Bush administration, of course, denies that it bought its detainees, as it denies everything. However, on May 31, 2005, Michelle Faul of the Associated Press reported that in March 2002, leaflets and broadcasts from helicopters in Afghanistan enticed Afghans to "Hand over the Arabs and feed your families for a lifetime." One leaflet said: "You can receive millions of dollars. This is enough to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life, pay for livestock and doctors and school books and housing for all your people."
http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=6185
Those were the magic words of the time: "Papiere, Bitte." (Translation: "Papers, Please.") Hearing those words, even now, causes dull echoes of sounds akin to bodies hitting dirt, or bullets penetrating flesh to thud into my mind. Because, if those papers weren't correctly in order, or, if you were a Jew sneakily present in any place (including the grocery store) which displayed the usual "NO JEWS OR DOGS ALLOWED" sign, you were dead meat--literally. And, yes, of course I'm talking about my childhood as a little Jewish kid in Nazi Germany.
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=21363&mode=nested&order=0
http://www.morristribunal.ie/images/19031973.pdf
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/video/taser_video3a.html
Stun guns are credited with reducing assaults on officers. But in one-fourth of
Taser incidents reviewed by The Post, the suspect was not violent or
threatening.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/special_reports/tasers/index.html
The campaign of harassment and intimidation from agents of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security towards Narco News correspondent Bill Conroy continues to draw outrage from journalists and others who value press freedom. Journalists in the United States and around the world have seen this case as not just an attack on Conroy, or on Narco News, but on all of us. Momentum is already building for his defense.
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2005/6/2/132956/7309
Advocates for the homeless already are seeing veterans from the war on terror living on the street, and say the government must do more to ease their transition from military to civilian life.
Linda Boone, executive director of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, said about 70 homeless veterans who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan contacted her group’s facilities in 2004, and another 125 homeless veterans from those conflicts last year petitioned the Department of Veterans Affairs for assistance.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0603-06.htm
http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=29471
The Kurdish HPG (People's Defense Force) has published the war balance for a
period of 360 days. The balance sheet covers the period between July 1, 2004
(the end of the unilateral ceasefire by HPG) until May 26, 2005.
http://www.dozame.org/article.php/2005053102450027
An accelerating Arctic warming trend over the past quarter of a century has dramatically dried up more than a thousand large lakes in Siberia, probably because the permafrost beneath them has begun to thaw, according to a paper to be published today in the journal Science.
An 11% decline may not sound like much, but in the time-scale in which landscapes naturally change, this is extraordinarily fast.
Laurence C. Smith, an associate geology professor at UCLA
Comparing satellite images made in the early 1970s to those from recent years, a team of U.S. scientists determined that the number of large lakes in a vast 200,000-square-mile region of Russia's Siberia diminished by about 11%, from 10,882 to 9,712.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0603-07.htm
Faced with daily reports of car bombs and kidnappings, it's difficult to feel optimistic about Iraq. But last week in the south of the country I heard a very different story. A story of the movement that has formed to rebuild the country's economy and national pride, to create an Iraq with neither the tyranny of Saddam nor the pillage of military occupation.
Last week Basra saw its first conference on the threat of privatization, bringing together oil workers, academics and international civil-society groups. The event debated an issue about which Iraqis are passionate: the ownership and control of Iraq's oil reserves.
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0603-23.htm
To the rhythm of saya (Afro-Bolivian) music, the workers summed up their answer to the government’s actions: “Now, there will be civil war…” A group of youths carrying a pair of dolls representing Carlos Mesa and Congress President Hormando Vaca Díez; after marching for an hour through downtown La Paz, the dolls were burned.
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2005/6/3/20745/10741
r. Grizzle says current anti-nipple sentiments are steeped in the same notions
that cause some religions to keep women covered up and out of holy places
because a woman's "sexuality disrupts everything that men try to
accomplish."
http://www.canada.com/ottawa/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=87634608-b248-44c7
-b1bc-d6e8ef4771f3
"There's simply not enough forces here," said a high-ranking U.S. Army
officer with knowledge of the 3rd ACR. "There are not enough to do anything
right; everybody's got their finger in a dike." The officer spoke on the
condition of anonymity because of concern that he'd be reprimanded for
questioning American military policy in Iraq.
http://www.military.com/Content/Printer_Friendly_Version/1,11491,,00.html?str_fi
lename=FL%5Fenough%5F060305&passfile=FL%5Fenough%5F060305&page_url=%2FNewsConten
t%2F0%2C13319%2CFL%5Fenough%5F060305%2C00%2Ehtml
Besides the recent decision to redeploy 1st Corps, the United States is busily
building up Guam as a "power projection hub," with, in the words of
Pacific Commander Admiral William Fargo, "geo-strategic importance."
The United States is also trying to shift Guam-based bombers to Yokota airbase
near Tokyo. Christopher Hughes of Warwick University, an expert on the region,
told the British Guardian, "The ramifications of this would be that Japan
would essentially serve as a frontline U.S. command post for the Asia-Pacific
and beyond."
...
The Chinese are acutely sensitive to issues concerning their borders, and Taiwan
in particular, but what has really put them on edge is a recent statement by the
right-wing mayor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, that the "U.S., Russia, and
Japan" should work together to strangle China's oil supplies. "It
would keep China in check greatly," he said, "since China has no
resources."
...
The drive to cleanse Japan's actions in World War II is led by the Society for
Historical Textbook Reform, backed by industrial giants Canon and Mitsubishi and
more than 100 Diet members from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. As Mark
Seldon and David McNeill of Japan Focus point out, not only have the textbooks
allowed an "extremist fringe" to put its version of history into homes
across Japan, but the campaign has pushed other texts "sharply to the
right."
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/hallinan.php?articleid=6195
If indeed Syrian intelligence murdered Kassir, they are incurably stupid—as in
making poor decisions and demonstrating a complete lack of political
understanding—because the assassination of a critic of the Syrians during the
election obviously plays right into the hands of the NED-USAID opposition. “The
killing of Mr. Kassir has once again united the opposition parties in a new call
for President Emile Lahoud to step down from office. Mr. Lahoud has condemned
the attack and denied any role,” reports PolitInfo.
http://www.kurtnimmo.com/blog/
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/download/BostonDeclaration.pdf
The evidence was clear. Both Admiral Kidd and I believed with certainty that
this attack, which killed 34 American sailors and injured 172 others, was a
deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew. Each
evening, after hearing testimony all day, we often spoke our private thoughts
concerning what we had seen and heard. I recall Admiral Kidd repeatedly
referring to the Israeli forces responsible for the attack as “murderous
bastards.” It was our shared belief, based on the documentary evidence and
testimony we received first hand, that the Israeli attack was planned and
deliberate, and could not possibly have been an accident.
I am certain that the Israeli pilots that undertook the attack, as well as their
superiors, who had ordered the attack, were well aware that the ship was
American.
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/ul-boston.html
We debate the details of a long-ago break-in by government agents – even as we
give government agents carte blanche to not only search our homes, but read our
mail and spy on ordinary, noncriminal citizens. As the prospect of armed
conflict with Iran darkens the horizon, I fully expect the Deep Thinkers and
intellectual trendsetters among us to begin an avid discussion of the pros and
cons of the Second Carthaginian War.
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=6202
Rachel Rogers, a single mother of four in upstate New York, did not worry about
the presence of National Guard recruiters at her son's high school until she
learned that they taught students how to throw hand grenades, using baseballs as
stand-ins. For the last month she has been insisting that administrators limit
recruiters' access to children.
..
"I had one father say if he saw me on his doorstep I better have some
protection on me," said a recruiter in Ohio. "We see a lot of
hostility."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/03/nyregion/03recruit.html?hp&ex=1117857600&en=74
88119338909c3e&ei=5094&partner=homepage
national conservation group filed suit Wednesday to force the government to
reveal the extent to which ocean mammals worldwide have died as a result of
massive sonic blasts from intense military search equipment.
http://newsobserver.com/24hour/nation/story/2446543p-10759553c.html
Bones of Contention
Is a small, 18,000-year-old skeleton the older cousin of modern-day Pygmies—or a
new human species?
http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501050606-1066965,00.html
OLDIE BUT GODDIE, WORTH A RE –READ!!
Instructive and humorous.
#60: In case your memory fails a P38/John Wayne/Can Opener are one and the same.
#65: At this stage of life this seems true. However, LIVING has major upside!
Lessons of a Vietnam Helicopter Crewman
1. Once you are in the fight, it is way too late to wonder if it was a good
idea.
2. Helicopters are cool!
3. It is a fact that helicopter tail rotors are instinctively drawn toward
trees, stumps, rocks, etc. While it may be possible to ward off this natural
event some of the time, it cannot, despite the best efforts of the crew, always
be prevented. It's just what they do.
4. NEVER get into a fight without more ammunition than the other guy.
5. The engine RPM, and the rotor RPM, must BOTH be kept in the GREEN. Failure to
heed this commandment can affect the morale of the crew.
6. A billfold in your hip pocket can numb your leg and be a real pain in the
ass.
7. Cover your Buddy, so he can be around to cover you.
8. Letters from home are not always great.
9. The madness of war can extract a heavy toll. Please have exact change.
10. Share everything. Even the Pound Cake.
11. Decisions made by someone over your head will seldom be in your best
interest.
12. The terms "Protective Armor" and "Helicopter" are
mutually exclusive.
13. The further away you are from your friends, the less likely it is that they
can help you when you really need them the most.
14. If being good and lucky is not enough, there is always payback.
15. "Chicken Plates" are not something you order in a restaurant.
16. If everything is as clear as a bell, and everything is going exactly as
planned, you're about to be surprised.
17. The B.S.R. (Bang, Stare, Read) Theory states that the louder the sudden bang
in the helicopter, the quicker your eyes will be drawn to the gauges.
18. The longer you stare at the gauges, the less time it takes them to move from
green to red.
19. It does too get cold in Vietnam.
20. No matter what you do, the bullet with your name on it will get you. So too
can the ones addressed "To Whom It May Concern".
21. Gravity may not be fair, but it is the law.
22. If the rear echelon troops are really happy, the front line troops probably
do not have what they need.
23. If you are wearing body armor, the incoming will probably miss that part.
24. It hurts less to die with a uniform on than to die in a hospital bed.
25. Happiness is a belt-fed weapon.
26. If something hasn't broken on your helicopter, it's about to.
27. Eat when you can. Sleep when you can. Visit the head when you can. The next
opportunity may not come around for a long time. If ever.
28. Combat pay is a flawed concept.
29. Having all your body parts intact and functioning at the end of the day
beats the alternative.
30. Air superiority is NOT a luxury.
31. If you are allergic to lead it is best to avoid a war zone.
32. It is always a bad thing to run out of airspeed, altitude, and ideas all at
the same time.
32a. Nothing is as useless as altitude above you and runway behind you.
33. While the rest of the crew may be in the same predicament, it's almost
always the pilot's job to arrive at the crash site first.
34. When you shoot your gun, clean it the first chance you get.
35. Loud sudden noises in a helicopter WILL get your undivided attention.
36. Hot garrison chow is better than hot C-rations, which, in turn is better
than cold C-rations, which is better than no food at all. All of these, however,
are preferable to cold rice balls (given to you by guards) even if they do have
the little pieces of fish in them.
37. WHAT is often more important than WHY.
38. Boxes of cookies from home must be shared.
39. Girlfriends are fair game. Wives are not.
40. Everybody's a hero on the ground in the club after the fourth drink.
41. There is no such thing as a small firefight.
42. A free-fire zone has nothing to do with economics.
43. The farther you fly into the mountains, the louder the strange engine noises
become.
44. Medals are OK, but having your body and all your friends in one piece at the
end of the day is better.
44a. The only medal you really want to be awarded is the Longevity Medal.
45. Being shot hurts.
46. Thousands of Vietnam Veterans earned medals for bravery every day. A few
were even awarded.
48. Running out of pedal, fore or aft cyclic, or collective are all bad ideas.
Any combination of these can be deadly.
49. Nomex is NOT fire proof.
50. There is only one rule in war: When you win, you get to make up the Rules.
51. Living and dying can both hurt a lot.
53. While a Super Bomb could be considered one of the four essential building
blocks of life, powdered eggs cannot.
54. C-4 can make a dull day fun.
55. Cocoa Powder is neither.
56. There is no such thing as a fair fight, only ones where you win or lose.
57. If you win the battle you are entitled to the spoils. If you lose you don't
care.
58. Nobody cares what you did yesterday or what you are going to do tomorrow.
What is important is what you are doing NOW to solve our problem.
59. If you have extra, share it quickly.
60. Always make sure someone has a P-38.
61. A sucking chest wound may be God's way of telling you it's time to go home.
62. Prayer may not help . . . but it can't hurt.
63. Flying is better than walking. Walking is better than running. Running is
better than crawling. All of these however, are better than extraction by a
Med-Evac, even if this is technically a form of flying.
64. If everyone does not come home none of the rest of us can ever fully come
home either.
65. Do not fear the enemy, for your enemy can only take your life. It is far
better that you fear the media, for they will steal your HONOR.
66. A grunt is the true reason for the existence of the helicopter. Every
helicopter flying in Vietnam had one real purpose: To help the grunt. It is
unfortunate that many helicopters never had the opportunity to fulfill their one
true mission in life simply because someone forgot this fact.
67. "You have the right to remain silent" is always EXCELLENT advice.
John Kerry announced Thursday that he intends to present Congress with The
Downing Street Memo, reported by the London Times 1 May 2005. As reported by
NewsMax, the memo purports to include minutes from a July 2002 meeting with Tony
Blair, in which Blair ostensibly said that President Bush’s Administration
“fixed” intelligence on Iraq in order to justify the Iraqi war. In an interview
with the Standard Times, Kerry said: "It's amazing to me the way it escaped
major media discussion. It's not being missed on the Internet, I can tell you
that."
http://www.theconservativevoice.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=6057
AOL censors E-Mail for its ‘politically incorrect’ Content – ‘blacklisted’ URLs
involving Zionism :
AOL's refuses to deliver E-mail to private parties. Here is their explanation. –
==============================================
Error 554 HVU:B1
* 554 HVU:B1 http://postmaster.info.aol.com/errors/554hvub1.html
EXPLANATION:
There is at least one URL in your email that is generating substantial
complaints from AOL members.
SOLUTION:
If you own all the domains linked to in your e-mail, please contact us to
discuss more effective management of your complaint levels. You can start by
setting up a free complaint loop through this form. This will allow you to
receive AOL member complaints against your domain.
If you do not own the domain, please have the owner of that domain contact us.
The United States accused 14 nations Friday of failing to do enough to stop the
modern-day slave trade in prostitutes, child sex workers and forced laborers.
The countries include Saudi Arabia, Washington's closest Arab ally in the war on
terrorism.
http://home.mobile.yahoo.com/raw?dp=rssnews&u=ap/20050603/ap_on_re_us/human_traf
ficking&rn=topstories
Canadian Arrow continues to develop the concept of a launch from an offshore barge since this would open up the possibility of flights near other locations in the Great Lakes system.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/launchers-05zzg.html
The European Union retaliated against the United States Tuesday launching a counterclaim in the World Trade Organization against U.S. aircraft manufacturer Boeing for receiving more than $29 billion in support from U.S. federal and state governments.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/aerospace-4zg.html
[The nuclear industry promotion board is really pulling out all the stops. If only they spent some money on actually making their facilities safer.]
Australia's most powerful state leader broke a long-held taboo Thursday by suggesting the country turn to nuclear power as a way to ensure energy supplies and combat global warming.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nuclear-civil-05s.html
o one knew until now what veteran television journalist Haim Yavin thought
about the news he has been announcing for more than three decades, and he is so
nonpartisan that one wondered whether he had an opinion of his own at all. Now,
at 72, he is coming out of the closet: "Since 1967 we have been brutal
conquerors, occupiers, suppressing another people," he says in "Yoman
Masa" ("Diary of a Journey"), which he filmed in the West Bank
http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story.php?sid=20050602041725561
He looked at me over the top of his glasses, saying, “we must approach this like
digital terror. Breaking into a computer could bring this country to a halt. It
could create a security issue, grind the country’s economy to a halt, destroy
the banks. It could even reach the country’s food supply.
According to Ofner, the country’s legal structure is “not built” to take care of
digital crime, and that red lines here have been crossed.
“We live in a jungle,” he says. “Israeli managers have no red lines. All the
stereotypes of the scheming, dishonest Israeli find expression (in the business
world). We create problems as well as we fix them.”
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0%2C7340%2CL-3094450%2C00.html
http://www.rense.com/general65/aip.htm
We have just finished observing Memorial Day in which we honor the soldiers who
gave their lives defending this countries' freedoms. The kind of law that
Sensenbrenner is proposing would be perfectly fitting in Hitler's Nazi Germany.
How many people died in order to prevent Hitler from imposing this kind of
government on the rest of the world? Sensenbrenner's H. R. 1528 is Fascism, so
let us call it what it is. We show a fine sense of gratitude to our heroic dead
when we sheepishly allow miscreants like Sensenbrenner impose the Fascism that
they fought against on us
http://www.rense.com/general65/hr5.htm
http://www.couplescompany.com/Features/Politics/2005/ValueI1.htm
Pesticides and other man-made chemicals may lower male fertility for at least
four generations, according to new research.
Pregnant rats exposed to fungicide sprayed on vineyards and pesticide sprayed on
crops had male offspring with a sperm count reduced by 20 per cent.
If confirmed by further experiments, the findings could help explain the decline
in human male fertility over the past 50 years.
http://www.rense.com/general65/falsl.htm
With its stock gone flat and bad publicity in virtually every news cycle
Wal-Mart is feeling pretty defensive these days. Among recent company missteps
are fines and monetary settlements for hiring illegal immigrants and allowing
underage employees to operate heavy machinery.
...
There are alternatives to the Wal-Mart low-wage model. Costco, for example, has
449 warehouses internationally, $47 billion in revenue and 113,000 employees,
and uses a high wage model. And, depressingly, it has been attacked by Wall
Street for "caring too much about its customers and it employees."
http://www.alternet.org/story/22128/
Sharp metal objects, some as long as 10 cm, have been found protruding from
highway guardrails at about 600 locations in nine prefectures, central and
prefectural government officials said Thursday.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20050603a2.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-06-03-homeland-fraud_x.htm?csp=24&RM_Exclude=Juno
posted by abu nakba at 6/03/2005 06:59:00 PM
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