cupacabra

"At a time when the American people are turning against the Iraq War
and favor a withdrawal of U.S. troops, and British and American leaders are
publicly discussing a partial pullback, the leading Democratic presidential
candidates for '08 are unapologetic war hawks. Nearly 60 percent of Americans
now oppose the war, according to recent polling. Sixty-three percent want U.S.
troops brought home within the next year. Yet a recent National Journal
'insiders poll' found that a similar margin of Democratic members of Congress
reject setting any timetable. The possibility that America's military presence
in Iraq may be doing more harm than good is considered beyond the pale of
'sophisticated' debate."
http://antiwar.com/justin/

Matthew, 31, decided that since he’d spent much of his time in Iraq lugging
around DU-damaged equipment, he’d better get tested too. It turned out he was
the most contaminated of them all.
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2298/

Brigitte Bardot, the 1950s and 1960s film star turned animal rights campaigner, has called on the French government to halt the reported use by fishermen on the island of Reunion of live puppies and kittens as shark bait.

"It is imperative that the government does something to end this practice," she said in a letter to the minister for French overseas territories, Francois Baroin, a copy of which was given to AFP Thursday.

According to Clicanoo, a newspaper in Reunion, a French island located in the Indian Ocean, a six-month-old puppy was found last month with hooks implanted in its snout and one of its legs
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/050825/1/3ui77.html

Several years ago, two Harvard researchers, Susan Starr Sered and Rushika
Fernandopulle, set out to interview people without health-care coverage for a
book they were writing, “Uninsured in America.” They talked to as many kinds of
people as they could find, collecting stories of untreated depression and
struggling single mothers and chronically injured laborers—and the most common
complaint they heard was about teeth. Gina, a hairdresser in Idaho, whose
husband worked as a freight manager at a chain store, had “a peculiar mannerism
of keeping her mouth closed even when speaking.” It turned out that she hadn’t
been able to afford dental care for three years, and one of her front teeth was
rotting. Daniel, a construction worker, pulled out his bad teeth with pliers.
Then, there was Loretta, who worked nights at a university research center in
Mississippi, and was missing most of her teeth. “They’ll break off after a
while, and then you just grab a hold of them, and they work their way out,” she
explained to Sered and Fernandopulle. “It hurts so bad, because the tooth aches.
Then it’s a relief just to get it out of there. The hole closes up itself
anyway. So it’s so much better.”
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/050829fa_fact

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Friday President Bush would be
to blame if anything happened to him after an American evangelist said
Washington should assassinate the leftist leader.

ADVERTISEMENT

Chavez, a former soldier who often accuses the United States of plotting to kill
him, was reacting to conservative evangelist Pat Robertson who said on Monday
that U.S. officials should execute the Venezuelan president
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050826/wl_nm/venezuela_chavez_dc;_ylt=AinZRBRSNswi1
sUB.lMm5hMUewgF;_ylu=X3oDMTA4NTMzazIyBHNlYwMxNjk2

A circumcision ritual practiced by some Orthodox Jews has alarmed city health
officials, who say it may have led to three cases of herpes - one of them fatal
- in infants. But after months of meetings with Orthodox leaders, city officials
have been unable to persuade them to abandon the practice.

The city's intervention has angered many Orthodox leaders, and the issue has
left the city struggling to balance its mandate to protect public health with
the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom.
...
But the most traditionalist groups, including many Hasidic sects in New York,
consider oral suction integral to God's covenant with the Jews requiring
circumcision, and they have no intention of stopping.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/26/nyregion/26circumcise.html?ex=1125720000&en=7f
688eb83442b177&ei=5070&emc=eta1

Anyone who still believes that the U.S. neo-conservatives who led the drive to
war in Iraq are diabolically clever geo-strategic masterminds should now
consider Iran's vastly improved position vis-a-vis its U.S.-occupied neighbour.

Not only did Washington knock off Tehran's arch-foe, Saddam Hussein, as well as
the anti-Iranian Taliban in Afghanistan, but, with this week's completion of a
new constitution that would guarantee a weak central government and substantial
autonomy to much of the Shiite south, it also appears that Iran's influence in
Iraq -- already on the rise after last spring's inauguration of a pro-Iranian
interim government -- is set to grow further.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0826-04.htm

I was talking to a friend of the 1/9th, the group we replaced, and he said when
he first arrived the market was open and the economy was puttering along after
the war, now the economy is gone and the lure of hard currency to become and
support insurgent activities is more common place.

On top of things you cannot win a hearts and mind campaign here so every time we
play that game people get hurt because it looks like weakness on our part and
they take advantage of it.
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=7875

New tensions between Guantanamo Bay detainees and the US military have prompted
89 prisoners to resume a hunger strike that so far has left seven in hospital.

The prisoners, protesting against their living conditions and their continued
detention without trial, had gone on a widespread hunger strike that ended in
July. Word that the hunger strike had resumed was disclosed on Thursday by Clive
Stafford Smith, a British human rights lawyer who returned from visiting clients
at the base a week ago.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/hunger-strike-restarts-amid-abuse-claims/2005/0
8/26/1124563027241.html

TONY Blair is expected to join one of the most exclusive groups of
businessmen in the world after he leaves Downing Street.

The PM is being lined up for a highly lucrative position with the Carlyle Group
- an American-based investment giant with strong links to the White House and
the defence industry.
http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/fullnewsbottom/tm_objectid%3D15880889%26metho
d%3Dfull%26siteid%3D106694-name_page.html

A press release from the American Legion declares "Delegates to the
nation's largest wartime veterans organization meeting here [in Hawaii] for The
American Legion's national convention vowed to use whatever means necessary to
ensure the united support of the American people to support our troops and the
global war on terrorism."

"Whatever means necessary"?

Is the American Legion now a domestic terrorist organization?
http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=80&contentid=2631

John Bolton, Washington's new ambassador to the United Nations, has called for
wholesale changes to a draft document due to go before a UN summit next month
aimed at reshaping the world body.
Mr Bolton, a long-standing UN critic who was given a temporary appointment by
George Bush three weeks ago after the United States Senate failed to agree on
his nomination, has proposed 750 amendments to the draft and called for
immediate talks on them.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0%2C12271%2C1556790%2C00.html

An Israel Defense Forces investigation into a shooting attack in Shfaram earlier
this month, in which an IDF deserter shot dead four Israeli Arabs, called for
the security forces to work together to identify soldiers with "terrorist
potential."
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/617324.html

Eleven EPA employee unions representing over 7000 environmental and public
health professionals of the Civil Service have called for a moratorium on
drinking water fluoridation programs across the country, and have asked EPA
management to recognize fluoride as posing a serious risk of causing cancer in
people. The unions acted following revelations of an apparent cover-up of
evidence from Harvard School of Dental Medicine linking fluoridation with
elevated risk of a fatal bone cancer in young boys.
http://i-newswire.com/pr43887.html

Illegal immigrants threw rocks at a Border Patrol helicopter, forcing the pilot
to make an emergency landing when one of the rocks damaged the rotor, the agency
said.

Neither the pilot nor the Border Patrol observer was injured.

The A-Star helicopter was two miles west of the U.S. Port of Entry in Andrade,
Calif., on Tuesday when a group of immigrants began throwing rocks at the
aircraft.
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/08/25/D8C71P6O0.html

KILLER whales and chimpanzees both pass on "traditions" to other
members of their group, according to two separate studies of feeding behaviour.
The findings add to evidence that cultural learning is widespread among
animals.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18725144.000

Journalists and other media representatives who wish to learn more about Paul
Hellyer's participation are invited to contact the symposium's Media Director
Victor Viggiani for pre-conference press interviews, press passes or questions
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/8/prwebxml276470.php

cupacabra
http://www.click2houston.com/news/4895017/detail.html