News -- March 8, 2006

Iran Threatens U.S. With 'Harm and Pain' - "Iran threatened the United States with "harm and pain" Wednesday for its role in hauling Tehran before the U.N. Security Council over its nuclear program. But the United States and its European allies said Iran's nuclear intransigence left the world no choice but to seek Security Council action."

Israel will have to act on Iran if UN can't - "If the U.N. Security Council is incapable of taking action to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, Israel will have no choice but to defend itself, Israel's defense minister said on Wednesday."

Iran will be stopped, Cheney vows to Israeli lobbyists - " Vice President Dick Cheney has vowed unshakeable solidarity with Israel, and condemned the new Palestinian government.Cheney made it clear Iran would not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon, described the Iranian regime as "irresponsible," and warned the United States had "all options on the table."" -- That means the nuclear option, as well.

Government: Neither By the People Nor For the People - "A spate of different opinion polls within the last few months or so has revealed that on almost every major issue the people of the United States and the people of Britain, in the majority are directly opposed to the actions of their governments. Despite this the Bush and Blair governments continually cite the backing of the people in their respective countries and argue that they are nurturing freedom and Democracy at home and around the world."

Gunmen kidnap at least 50 at Iraq security firm - "Gunmen in camouflage uniforms stormed the offices of a private Iraqi security company and kidnapped as many as 50 employees, police said Wednesday, as U.S. and Iraqi patrols discovered 24 bodies in various parts of the capital."

US envoy to Iraq: 'We have opened the Pandora's box' - "The US ambassador to Baghdad conceded yesterday that the Iraq invasion had opened a Pandora's box of sectarian conflicts which could lead to a regional war and the rise of religious extremists who "would make Taliban Afghanistan look like child's play". Zalmay Khalilzad broke with the Bush administration's generally upbeat orthodoxy to present a stark profile of a volatile situation in danger of sliding into chaos."

“No Immunity”; Israel’s policy of targeted assassinations - " Gangland violence is making us safer. That’s the message we hear today from Israel’s Defense Minister, Shaul Mofaz, who not only defended the practice of "targeted assassination" but threatened to use the controversial tactic against Palestine’s new Prime Minister-designate, Ismail Haniya. "We will continue the targeted killings at this pace," Mofaz stated. "No one will be immune."" -- This is humanity?

Kabuki Congress - "Imagine being stopped for speeding and having the local legislature raise the limit so you won't have to pay the fine. It sounds absurd, but it's just what is happening to the 28-year-old law that prohibits the president from spying on Americans without getting a warrant from a judge. It's a familiar pattern. President Bush ignores the Constitution and the laws of the land, and the cowardly, rigidly partisan majority in Congress helps him out by rewriting the laws he's broken."

Wanted: A Democratic Plan - "How about returning government to the people? How about a giant check representing the perks that guys like Tom DeLay and Duke Cunningham got in exchange for corrupt political deals? How about tearing up a big no-bid contract with corporations and promising to use the money that has gone to Halliburton, instead, for rebuilding our own infrastructure at competitive rates?"

The Last Patriot - "A third of this nation doesn’t really care who did what. They want this war and you’ll have little success changing their minds. Another third of this nation remains totally ignorant of the situation and probably prefers to stay that way. All the while, the last third is trying to educate the second, mostly over the Internet…but the problem seems to be, the second third “don’t surf”."

Another state's giant step backward for women - "The issue is seen as a flag-waving moment. For God and decency we will outlaw abortion. For God's sake, where is the human decency of forcing a 13-year-old child -- a child -- into carrying a baby to term? What will we say to the tortured and raped woman lying in the dark with a torn hymen, a broken jaw and green-and-blue bruises up and down her body? That she, too, must bear the penalty of her horror? "Compassionate conservatism." I am sick of the phrase. It has lost all meaning for me. I now dedicate myself to doing what I can for those women caught in a legislative hell that has no interest in their souls. We will not return to the back-alley, wire-hanger abortions."

Retirement Fund Tapped to Avoid National Debt Limit - "The Treasury Department has started drawing from the civil service pension fund to avoid hitting the $8.2 trillion national debt limit. The move to tap the pension fund follows last month's decision to suspend investments in a retirement savings plan held by government employees."

Reich: U.S. headed for 'day of reckoning' - "The United States is headed for a "day of reckoning" as oil prices and the budget deficit remain high, consumers keep spending and not saving, wages remain stagnant, housing prices rise and the working population ages, warned Robert Reich, former Department of Labor secretary in the Clinton administration."

Do Americans plan for the long haul? - "The national savings rate for Americans is at its lowest point since the Great Depression, yet 78 million Americans will retire in the next 20 years. These statistics cast doubt on the ability of Americans to plan for the long term and whether Americans consider long-term planning important, experts say. The savings rate in 2005 was at minus 0.5 percent, according to a report released by the Commerce Department in January. The rate has been negative for seven consecutive months, according to David Wyss, an economist with Standard and Poor's." -- Negative 0.5? How depressing.

House GOP unites to kill ports deal - "Republican House leaders last night split with President Bush and said they would derail a Dubai-owned company's bid to take control of operations at six major U.S. ports."

Decades later, Marines hunt Vietnam-era deserters - "Thirty years after the war ended, hundreds of Vietnam-era deserters are still on the loose. Conti's attorneys, Louis Font and Tod Ensign, say the Pentagon, and the Marine Corps in particular, are cracking down on long-term cases in an effort to warn current-day troops in Iraq against deserting."

Darwin smacked in new U.S. poll - "A new poll shows 69 percent of Americans believe public school teachers should present both the evidence for and against Darwinian evolution. ... The Discovery Institute noted Americans also support students learning about evidence for intelligent design alongside evolution in biology class – 77 percent." -- Welcome to the new Dark Ages.

Most Americans believe abortion wrong - "With the abortion debate in focus following South Dakota's new law challenging the Roe decision, a new poll finds 55 percent of Americans believe abortion is morally wrong most of the time."

Human medical experimentation in the United States: The shocking true history of modern medicine and psychiatry (1833-1965) - "The United States claims to be the world leader in medicine. But there's a dark side to western medicine that few want to acknowledge: The horrifying medical experiments performed on impoverished people and their children all in the name of scientific progress. Many of these medical experiments were conducted on people without their knowledge, and most were conducted as part of an effort to seek profits from newly approved drugs or medical technologies."

Surveillance on drivers may be increased - "Drivers talking on mobile phones or failing to wear seatbelts could find themselves tracked down through a widened use of road surveillance cameras, under proposals due to be floated in parliament tomorrow. The plans would form part of a major expansion of camera surveillance which critics say is already transforming Britain into the most watched country in the world."

The numbers behind the lies - "Fun with numbers. Corporate America likes to play that game, the better to boost stock prices. Folks might be surprised to learn that "Governmental" America also plays the game in its compilation of macroeconomic data. Beneath the surface are undesirable, sobering consequences for us all."

Women in science--and ramblings thereof - "As a woman in science myself, I have to say I don't 100% buy this argument: ... So, anyhoo, Greenspun's hypothesis, if true, suggest that women shouldn't major in science in the first place, because of lack of good-paying jobs compared to other potential majors. But the stats show otherwise. In 2001, there were roughly 200,000 female science and engineering graduates awarded bachelor's degrees, equal to the number of men:"

Body Artists Customize Your Flesh - "On a purely technical level, the process is neither controversial nor novel. Surgeons and gynecologists make a similar skin pocket for pacemakers, infusion lines for chemotherapy and the implantable birth control known as Norplant. But most piercers who are asked to perform implants have no medical background, and that's where the controversy begins."




Quote of the Day
"How fortunate for leaders that men do not think."
~ Adolf Hitler

News -- March 7, 2006

Meet the world's most dangerous terrorists - "The release of the names and backgrounds of the Guantanamo inmates has revealed what we knew all along, the world's "most dangerous terrorists" are nothing of the sort, they are poor farmers and the like who have simply been grabbed and stuck in cages and publicly tortured for the past four years."

Some Gitmo Prisoners Don't Want to Go Home - "Fearing militants or even their own governments, some prisoners at Guantanamo Bay from China, Saudi Arabia and other nations do not want to go home, according to transcripts of hearings at the U.S. prison in Cuba. Uzbekistan, Yemen, Algeria and Syria are also among the countries to which detainees do not want to return. The inmates have told military tribunals that they or their families could be tortured or killed if they are sent back."

A US Gestapo? - "Congress is about to renew the USA PATRIOT Act. After the act was first passed in 2001, members of Congress excused away their votes by saying they didn't have time to study it and were still under the influence of 9/11 shock. By now, they have had ample time to study it, and even to examine "improvements" added to the bill, such as section 3056A. ... Then, when I was at my dizziest, I finally ran across a news item that read, "A new provision tucked into the Patriot Act bill now before Congress would allow authorities to haul demonstrators at any 'special event of national significance' away to jail on felony charges if they are caught breaching a security perimeter."(3) This item wasn't in any of the more liberal of our "liberal media." It was from Fox News, which helped convince me that, sad to say, this story is for real. And the United States Secret Service Uniformed Division (SSUD) may already be operational."

Impeaching George W. Bush - "In fact, the case for the impeachment of President Bush is arguably the strongest in American history. The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) makes this amply clear in its recent book, a concise indictment of President Bush that lays out four clear legal arguments that point to impeachment as a necessary remedy for the gross violation of our Constitution. The Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush covers illegal wiretapping, torture, rendition, detention and the Iraq war. An appendix compares the impeachment proceedings of Andrew Johnson, Nixon and Clinton to the comparatively more powerful case against Bush."

Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau -- March 5, 2006

Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau -- February 26, 2006

Still evolving, human genes tell new story - "Researchers have detected some 700 regions of the human genome where genes appear to have been reshaped by natural selection, a principal force of evolution, within the last 5,000 to 15,000 years. The genes that show this evolutionary change include some responsible for the senses of taste and smell, digestion, bone structure, skin color and brain function."

South Dakota governor signs key anti-abortion law - "The governor of South Dakota on Monday signed into law severe restrictions on abortion, in a direct challenge to the U.S. Supreme Court's legalization of the practice 33 years ago."

Amendment would establish life at conception - "The designation would give any unborn child constitutional rights of due process and equal protection."

Democrat for Senate: Kill practicing 'gays' - "A Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Ohio wants to make homosexual behavior a capital crime punishable by the death penalty. ... "Just like we have laws against murder, we have laws against stealing, we have laws against taking drugs – we should have laws against immoral conduct," Keiser told WTOL-TV in Toledo. ... The trucker, who hails from Fremont, Ohio, says there needs to be more adherence to biblical values in government, business and education – something he claims DeWine is not promoting. ... Keiser told the Register the United States should make conversion to Christianity part of the war on terror to teach Muslims the error of their choice in religion. The candidate also decries evolution, saying it is contrary to the Declaration of Independence. ... "What if this hate-filled moron called for the execution of all blacks or all Jews?" she asked. "Would the public outcry be similarly subdued? Would the press still report it as a cute curiosity or merely an alternative viewpoint? Where is moral outrage in 2006?" White speculated Keiser was planted by the GOP. "He must be a Republican plant," she wrote. "Please ... someone tell me I'm correct.""

Dodge City showdown at funeral - "This is a painful drama playing out at dozens of military funerals across the country. The group is led by Fred Phelps.
He and his family have picketed and heckled military families at more than 100 funerals since June. They say the soldiers are fighting for an army that represents a country that accepts homosexuality." -- These people disgust me.

America the Pitiful - "Calling our form of government a democratic republic does not make it so. We are what we do. ... In this land of uncommon grace that is blessed with fabulous wealth, mantras are repeated over and over, without regard to validity, until they become ingrained in the public conscience and assume the authority of truth. They become our cultural paradigms, the bedrock of society, whose moral authority is rarely revisited. Centuries of self deception have led us unerringly to the present moment. Everything that contradicts our version of reality is expunged from the public record. Americans do not like to confront unpleasant realities. Let us not hear about the abuse of captives of war. Rather than take action to correct the gross injustices we routinely heap upon the world, as demanded by conscience, we simply deny their existence. We turn our backs on any reality that assaults our conscience and suppress the evidence. We go on as if there were no consequences. Cause and effect is not something we wish to ponder, so we sweep it under the carpet."

Amid AIPAC's Big Show, Straight Talk With a Noticeable Silence - "The undiplomatic diplomat went on to describe a war on radical Islam: "While it may be true -- and probably is -- that not all Muslims are terrorists, it also happens to be true that nearly all terrorists are Muslim.""

New Jersey Bill Prohibits Anonymous Posts on Public Forums - "Makes certain operators of interactive computer services and Internet service providers liable to persons injured by false or defamatory messages posted on public forum websites."

Reflections on Auschwitz and West German Justice - "My booklet, The Auschwitz Lie, has become an under-thecounter bestseller. It has appeared in French, Spanish, Dutch, Danish and even Hungarian, as well as in several Englishlanguage editions. Actually, there's nothing very remarkable about The Auschwitz Lie except that it was written by someone who was in Auschwitz and~who recorded his experiences and recollections. People generally prefer to read sensational reports, and my booklet is certainly not that."

Court says California oral sex law violates rights - "A 22-year-old Californian man who received oral sex from a sixteen-year-old girl should not be forced to register for life as a sex offender, the California Supreme Court ruled on Monday. The state's top court found that California denied Vincent Hofsheier equal protection under the law because those having intercourse in such circumstances would not be forced to register as lifetime sex offenders."

Many companies plan more outsourcing - "Eighty-nine percent of U.S., British and Asian corporate technology decision makers plan to increase their outsourcing budget over the next 12 months."

Anorexia largely determined by heredity - "An international study concludes that the eating disorder anorexia nervosa, a rare but dangerous mental condition, is primarily genetic in origin."

Schools Avoid Class Ranking, Vexing Colleges - "William M. Shain, dean of undergraduate admissions at Vanderbilt University, said, "There's a movement these days to not let anybody know that a kid has done better than other kids." Admissions directors say the strategy can backfire. When high schools do not provide enough general information to recreate the class rank calculation, many admissions directors say they have little choice but to do something virtually no one wants them to do: give more weight to scores on the SAT and other standardized exams."

Study Warns Cell Phones Could Cause Airliner Crash - " Lifting the current ban on use of cell phones aboard airliners could pose the risk of a major accident, according to a new engineering study."

Google lets slip talk of online storage - ""With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including emails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc)," the notes in the original Google presentation state."

Sun's next 11-year cycle could be 50 pct stronger - "Sun-spawned cosmic storms that can play havoc with earthly power grids and orbiting satellites could be 50 percent stronger in the next 11-year solar cycle than in the last one, scientists said on Monday."




Quote of the Day
"In the long run, every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom."
~ Thomas Carlyle

News -- March 6, 2006

Banned Fox News report on Israeli spy-ring and 9/11 - "The fact remains that these things occured. The four consecutive reports were filed by Carl Cameron. AIPAC did demand the reports be removed from their site and are now fighting to have it obliterated entirely from the net. So I decided you should at least be given the opportunity to view it on its own merits, while you still can."

America: From Freedom to Fascism -- Check out the trailer.

Treasury Dept. Moves to Avoid Debt Limit - "Treasury Secretary John Snow notified Congress on Monday that the administration has now taken "all prudent and legal actions," including tapping certain government retirement funds, to keep from hitting the $8.2 trillion national debt limit. In a letter to Congress, Snow urged lawmakers to pass a new debt ceiling immediately to avoid the nation's first-ever default on its obligations." I know that you share the president's and my commitment to maintaining the full faith and credit of the U.S. government," Snow said in his letter to leaders in the House and Senate." -- Then show some fiscal responsibility.

'14,000 detained without trial in Iraq' - ""It is a dangerous precedent for the world that the US and UK think it completely defensible to hold thousands of people without charge or trial," Amnesty spokesman Neil Durkin said. The detainee situation in Iraq was comparable to Guantánamo Bay, he added, but on a much larger scale, and the detentions appeared to be "arbitrary and indefinite". "It sends a very worrying message to the people of Iraq that the multinational force does not think normal human rights standards apply," he said."

US envoy hints at strike to stop Iran - "The US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, has told British MPs that military action could bring Iran's nuclear programme to a halt if all diplomatic efforts fail."

West spreading fear 'better than Osama' - "Fear is the message from the world's leaders, Fisk says, and they are injecting it into voters as effectively as bin Laden could have wished after the September 11 attacks on the US. "Pollies feed us with fear," Fisk said. "Al-Qaeda is part of the monster they need for this. "They tell us, 'they're coming, they're coming'. "Why do we allow Bush, Howard and Blair to say 9/11 changed the world?"

AP: Thousands of Federal Cases Kept Secret - "Despite the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of public trials, nearly all records are being kept secret for more than 5,000 defendants who completed their journey through the federal courts over the last three years. Instances of such secrecy more than doubled from 2003 to 2005."

Bush declares war on freedom of the press - "Political scientist George Harleigh, who worked in the Nixon administration, says such use of federal law enforcement authority was illegal when Nixon tried it and still so today. "We're talking about a basic violation of the Constitutional guarantee of a free press as well as a violation of the rights of privacy of American citizens," Harleigh says. "I had hoped we would have learned our lessons from the Nixon era. Sadly, it appears we have not.""

World in peril, Chomsky tells overflow crowd - "There are dire consequences to the current direction of the U.S. foreign policy, said Noam Chomsky in a speech Saturday at Binghamton University. Among those consequences, he said, is a nuclear Armageddon."

Hundreds of Iraqi academics and professionals assassinated by death squads - " Intellectuals from all regions of Iraq have been killed. They include specialists in physical education, journalism, Arabic literature, and the sciences. Physicians have also been targeted at a high rate.The victims have been Shiites, Sunnis, Christians, Kurds, and Turkomans, and they have held a variety of political views. They have been shot down at work, at home, and in their cars or have simply disappeared."

Death squads take root - "There are an increasing number of reports that deaths squads have become a central tool of US strategy in Iraq."

Conservative Jews to Consider Ending a Ban on Same-Sex Unions and Gay Rabbis - "In a closed-door meeting this week in an undisclosed site near Baltimore, a committee of Jewish legal experts who set policy for Conservative Judaism will consider whether to lift their movement's ban on gay rabbis and same-sex unions."

Parental Notice Has Scant Effect in Teen Abortion - "For all the passions they generate, laws that require minors to notify their parents or get permission to have an abortion do not appear to have produced the sharp drop in teenage abortion rates that some advocates hoped for, an analysis by The New York Times shows."

Christian TV empire savors a tax blessing - "A ruling that means Sumner County and the city must refund the theme park-like Trinity Broadcasting Network complex here more than $300,000 in taxes ends an 11-year skirmish and gives the colorful owners much of what they’ve wanted — status as a church."

Children's Book Sparks Anti-Gay Complaints - "Parents complained to librarians in southwest Missouri that the book "And Tango Makes Three" has homosexual undertones. The illustrated tale is based on the true story of two male penguins who adopted an abandoned egg at New York City's Central Park Zoo a few years ago." -- Give me a freaking break.

HOUSING MARKET GLUTS UP - " A sudden glut in unsold new homes is threatening to snuff out the blazing housing market that's been carrying the U.S. economy."

An RFID solution to rush hour headaches? - "A traffic system from IBM has reduced Stockholm, Sweden rush hour congestion by 25 percent in a month, and Big Blue says it wants to bring it to the states."

Mac OS X hacked under 30 minutes - ""Mac OS X is easy pickings for bug finders. That said, it doesn't have the market share to really interest most serious bug finders," added gwerdna."




Quote of the Day
"One nation controlled by the media."
~ Green Day

News -- March 5, 2006

US to present Iran with 30-day ultimatum - "The United States will present a 30-day ultimatum to the UN Security Council this week, the Washington Post reported Saturday, calling on Iran to cease with its nuclear program. It was reported however, that the US would not request further economic sanctions on Iran." -- Because bombs are the next step?

Gitmo: The Worst of the Worst? - "Now dig this about "the worst of the worst" of the "bad guys" intent on killing Americans: There are now about 490 prisoners at Gitmo, and "55 percent of the detainees are not determined to have committed any hostile acts against the United States or coalition allies. "Only 8 percent of the detainees were characterized as Al Qaeda fighters. Of the remaining detainees, 40 percent have no definitive connection with Al Qaeda at all and 18 percent have no definitive affiliation with either Al Qaeda or the Taliban. "Only 5 percent of the detainees were captured by United States forces. [A total of] 86 percent of the detainees were arrested by either Pakistan or the Northern Alliance and turned over to United States custody. This 86 percent of the detainees captured by Pakistan or the Northern Alliance were turned over to the United States at a time at which the United States offered large bounties for capture of suspected enemies.""

Daniel Pipes - Civil War in Iraq would not be that bad for our interests - "I somehow think most Iraqi's would be quite relieved to hear of Dr. Pipes' concern for their welfare in a civil war fomented by U.S. intervention and disdain for postwar planning. Dr. Pipes believes that civil war will serve coalition interests in so many ways. An incomplete list of the good things (strategically) are as follows:"

UK, US to withdraw Iraq forces by early '07: papers - "The United States and Britain are planning to pull all their troops out of Iraq by the spring of 2007, two British newspapers reported in their Sunday editions, quoting unnamed senior defense ministry sources."

US denies Iraq pullout plan - "The U.S. military denied British newspaper reports on Sunday that it planned to pull its forces from Iraq early next year, saying the stories, sourced to senior British defense officials, were "completely false.""

Names Offer Glimpse Into Top-Secret Prison - "About 490 prisoners are being held at Guantanamo Bay, but only 10 of them have been charged with a crime."

GOP growing increasingly angry, frightened by Bush's missteps - "President Bush, once the seemingly invincible vanguard of a new Republican majority, could be endangering his party's hold on power as the GOP heads into this year's midterm congressional elections." -- But there's no opposition party.

Venezuela's Threat - "And of course this begins to explain why Chavez is viewed as a threat, as a "virus" that might "infect" others. An alternative development model where the citizens, not private U.S. foreign investors, are the primary beneficiaries of government policy is feared by U.S. elites. As Latin American expert Prof. Rosa Maria Pegueros observes, from Washington's perspective the real threat is that if Chavez succeeds, he may "create an eqalitarian society that has the power to resist United States hegemony." Who knows where this virus may appear next. To help it spread, I'm filling my tank at the Citgo station from now on."

Its Real: Prison Labor for the Military - "As you may recall, we reported a few weeks back that we've heard that troops are in such short supply in Iraq that ordinary seamen off Navy Trident subs are being given quickie training as sentries, rather than serving on strategic missile platforms, and off they go to Iraq. Now, with the receipt of the Army plans to use federal prisoners for labor, we have to ask what kind of picture this paints of the military's state of readiness?"

CDC: 2 major drugs useless on flu strain - "The government, for the first time, is urging doctors not to prescribe two antiviral drugs commonly used to fight influenza after discovering that the predominant strain of the virus has built up high levels of resistance to them at alarming speed."




Quote of the Day
"I get so used to saying what people want to hear I forget sometimes they might just want the truth."
~ Howard, In the Company of Men

News -- March 4, 2006

Iraq: Pure War, Pure Crime - "The Iraq War is a pure war, a war for the sake of war. Congress is debating whether to spend another fortune on it, another fortune that could completely remake this nation if spent on useful projects, and Congress has no reason for the war. The reason is purely that the media won't like you if you vote against a war, but there's no actual reason for the war, not the weapons of mass destruction that Bush always knew weren't there, not the ties to 9-11 that Bush always knew did not exist on behalf of a ruler who anyway is no longer in power, not reducing terrorism which has been increased by this war, not improving global relations when this war has driven global opinion of the US to a record low, not preventing a civil war which the US attack and occupation have created, not supporting the troops when most of the troops want to come home and almost half of them openly admit to pollsters that they don't know why they're there. This is a pure war, but the vote for more funding will not be a pure vote. It will include nothing that the Iraqi people need, unless you think they're longing for larger prisons."

The Monolith Crumbles - "It is a well-known fact--except among the American media, the American government, and about 98.7 percent of the American people--that Iran is not a monolithic state where sheep-like masses bray with a single voice in chorus with their demented leaders, but is, on the contrary, a complex society where many conflicting opinions on matters political, religious, social, historical, etc., contend with each other in open debate. True, it does have a government dominated by repressive clerics, who exercise the kind of veto power over secular law that George W. Bush's vaunted "base" dreams of seeing established in the United States; but Iran is far more open than, say, Saudi Arabia or China, just to name two countries where the Bush Family and friends have long engorged their bellies through insider connections with the ruling cliques. Therefore it must have come as a great shock to the system for Americans this week to hear Iran's former president, Mohammad Khatami, rail against the ignorant Holocaust revisionism mouthed by his successor, the hardline flibbertigibbet Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. (Excerpts below.) Or rather, it would have come as a shock to the American system to hear Khatami's words--if Americans had actually been told about them. But it serves no interests among America's own ruling cliques to dilute the current line of the day: that Iran is a hellhole of unremitting evil, a new Nazi Germany led by a new Hitler. So Khatami's remarks, reported widely elsewhere in the world, were not allowed to disturb the lie-drugged slumber of the American consciousness."

The Man Who Wasn't There on 9/11 - "Zacarias Moussaoui was sitting in jail when the hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and in a field in Pennsylvania. Now, the government wants him executed for that day of terror because he did nothing to stop it."

Rumsfeld denies claims of torture at Guantanamo - "He insisted that there was no torture at Guantanamo Bay, adding: "We know that for a fact."" -- Just like you knew for a fact that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, right Don?

For the women of South Dakota: an abortion manual - "DISCLAIMER: I am posting this as information only. Whether anyone chooses to act upon this information is their own concern. I believe in the free exchange of information and ideas. I believe this information has been kept from women for too long, and there is no reason they should not know about a procedure being performed on their own body, and no reason women should be kept in the dark about how to perform it -- especially if someone they know is having their health jeopardized by this law." -- You know, I'm just not sure what to say.

White House Delays Release of Study Showing Toxic Rocket Fuel in Most Americans - "Following a published report that the Bush Administration is holding up a study that shows most Americans carry a toxic rocket fuel chemical in their bodies at levels close to federal safety limits, Environmental Working Group (EWG) is calling for the immediate release of the study so EPA and state agencies can take steps to protect the public."

Former anchor questions TV news priorities - " Former CNN anchor Aaron Brown had an epiphany following his network’s saturation coverage of the 2001 murder of actor Robert Blake’s wife. ... "I am sure there were other things we could’ve reported that night," Brown said. ... He suggested his eventual demise at CNN resulted from criticizing the network’s obsession with lurid celebrity gossip while short-changing meaningful news. ... "The news in this country is a business," he added. "You might not like to think of it that way, but it is." ... However, he didn’t let the casual TV viewer off easily. Because the news is a business, he argued, it is only giving consumers what they want. "In the perfect democracy that I believe TV news is, it’s not enough to say you want serious news, you have to watch it," he said."

God told me to - "What does it mean to say god told you to? It means that there is no rational explanation necessary for what you did. Sure, there were reasons and rationales aplenty, all false as it turns out, but that doesn't matter because god told me to. Worse than Abraham, Blair killed other people's sons and daughters, lots and lots of them. The asylums throughout the world are filled with people who killed at the insistence of the voices in their heads. In a rational world, Tony and George would be there too."

Blair under fire for evoking God in Iraq war decision - "Tony Blair triggered strong reactions from parents of soldiers killed in Iraq and the political opposition, after the British prime minister evoked God in his decision to go to war." -- Killing in the name of God is humanity's biggest downfall.

Venezuela aims for biggest military reserve in Americas - "Around 500,000 Venezuelans will start a four-month military training programme today to turn them into members of the country's territorial guard. They are the first group of a total of 2m Venezuelan civilians who have so far signed up to become armed reservists. By the summer of 2007, Venezuela is likely to have the largest military reserve in the Americas, which is expected to be almost double the size of that in the United States." -- They're not stupid.

Spousal spats can damage your heart - "The manner in which husbands and wives argue over such hot-button topics such as money, in-laws, and children, may be a factor in their risk of developing coronary atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries of the heart."

Monaghan backtracks on Catholic-based restrictions for new town - "Domino's Pizza founder Thomas S. Monaghan, who is helping to bankroll the birth of a southwest Florida town and university, backtracked Friday from comments that he'd like the community to be governed by strict Roman Catholic principles. His ideas about barring pornography and birth control, he said, apply only to the Catholic university. ... Monaghan's comments Friday contrasted with statements he made last year to a Catholic men's group in Boston that pornographic magazines won't be sold in town, pharmacies won't carry condoms or birth control pills, and cable television will carry no X-rated channels."

Old shack will give Madonna front-row seat for arrival of her Messiah - "MADONNA is trying to buy a house overlooking the Sea of Galilee at the place where followers of her Kabbalist faith expect the Messiah to reappear to herald world peace." -- The world is full of followers.

Officials: Woman's Gang Rape Story Is Bogus - "The Orange County Sheriff's Office just announced that it has arrested the woman who claimed she was raped by several men who work at Walt Disney World. They say the woman made up the story, and that the sex was consensual."

Professor Allegedly Shows Explicit Video - "A criminal justice professor at Grand Rapids Community College has resigned after showing a video in class of a man having sex with a pig, students and a faculty representative said."

Top exorcist condemns 'Harry Potter' - "Rev. Gabriele Amorth said: "You start off with Harry Potter, who comes across as a likeable wizard, but you end up with the devil. There is no doubt that the signature of the Prince of Darkness is clearly within these books.""




Quote of the Day
"In God's name they use weapons, for the massacre."
~ Thin Lizzy

News (Page 2) -- March 3, 2006

The Ignorance Defense - "Condoleezza Rice said that no one could have imagined the September 11 attacks, while admitting that Bush had the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing on his desk entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States". Bush said "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees", and we now know he had received a full briefing about just that danger, before he went off to play guitar and present John McCain with a cake. Bush had detailed briefings from his own officials prior to the attack on Iraq that the substance of the arguments made by his own Administration in order to lead to war was false, yet the Bush Administration continued to lie until they secured the war they wanted, and now claim that they didn’t know that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. The neocons swear up and down that they are shocked by the violent uprising in Iraq, and yet Oded Yinon, strategizing for Israel, spelled it out years ago:"

I Do Not Wish to Be Associated With Torture - "On Thursday, March 2, Ray McGovern and 15 others took action today in the halls of Congress. The 16 donned orange jumpsuits similar to those worn by detainees at Guantánamo Bay. They wore gags over their mouths decorated with one word - torture. McGovern, a 27-year veteran of the CIA, also returned his Intelligence Commendation Award medallion which was given to him for "especially commendable service." He delivered the medal to Congressman Pete Hoekstra along with the letter below."

U.S. to sharpen focus on Iran - "The U.S. State Department is creating a special office to deal with foreign policy changes related to Iran and to promote a democratic transition in the Islamic republic, State Department officials said Thursday."

Pay too much and you could raise the alarm - "They paid down some debt. The balance on their JCPenney Platinum MasterCard had gotten to an unhealthy level. So they sent in a large payment, a check for $6,522. And an alarm went off. A red flag went up. The Soehnges' behavior was found questionable. And all they did was pay down their debt. They didn't call a suspected terrorist on their cell phone. They didn't try to sneak a machine gun through customs. They just paid a hefty chunk of their credit card balance. And they learned how frighteningly wide the net of suspicion has been cast. ... They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn't move until the threat alert is lifted." -- I'm too angry to comment.

Chertoff Has 'Few Days Left,' Sources Say - "In the aftermath of the public revelation of the presidential "teleconference" and mounting criticism of the performance of Michael Chertoff, Administration sources told HUMAN EVENTS today that the secretary of Homeland Security has "only a few days left" in the Bush Cabinet."

Rumsfeld Sept 10, 2001: The Pentagon cannot account for $2.3 TRILLION - "On Sept. 10, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared war. Not on foreign terrorists, "the adversary's closer to home. It's the Pentagon bureaucracy," he said. He said money wasted by the military poses a serious threat. "In fact, it could be said it's a matter of life and death," he said.
Rumsfeld promised change but the next day – Sept. 11-- the world changed and in the rush to fund the war on terrorism, the war on waste seems to have been forgotten. Just last week President Bush announced, "my 2003 budget calls for more than $48 billion in new defense spending."" -- For those of you who have forgotten the little story on September 10, 2001.

Resolution to Impeach Bush-Cheney Passes 7-3 - " On Tuesday, February 28, 2006, the City and County of San Francisco became the first large municipality to call for the impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney, by a 7-3 vote."

Katrina: Why aren’t we talking about Criminal Negligence? - " It is clear now that Michael Chertoff and George Bush can be directly implicated in the deaths of the 1,300 Americans who died in Hurricane Katrina. The newly released video from the Associated Press proves beyond a reasonable doubt that they were adequately warned of the gravity of the approaching storm and the risks it posed to people of New Orleans. The only question now is whether the charges should be criminal negligence or manslaughter. We leave that to the attorneys."

Why I Cannot Support The Troops In Iraq - "However, for those who do not approve of the president’s war (like that of the father alluded to earlier who believes that George Walker Bush lied to congress in order to obtain approval to send American troops into Iraq), there would be no reason for such to support the troops in Iraq. Really now, how could one support (much less respect) an arrangement in which unscrupulous military recruiters inveigle their way into high schools in order to convince high school seniors that it would be in their best interest to swap their souls for an “up front” payoff, you know what I mean, the enlistment bonus….. the “thirty pieces of silver” offered by recruiters to induce economically deprived young men and women to join the military for nothing more than a feckless opportunity to be a “stand-in trigger man” for the President of the United States, an abject mercenary grunt serving a commander in chief unwilling to send that of his own daughters into combat! No matter how you look at it, such an arrangement is a bargain with The Devil, a compact created in Hell. The military recruits the kids, and the kids allow themselves to become trained assassins assimilated into a ravaged culture of death!"

Kurt Vonnegut's "Stardust Memory" - ""Well," says Vonnegut, "I just want to say that George W. Bush is the syphilis president." The students seem to agree. "We have people in this country who are richer than whole countries," he says. "They run everything. "We have no Democratic Party. It's financed by the same millionaires and billionaires as the Republicans. "So we have no representatives in Washington. Working people have no leverage whatsoever. "I'm trying to write a novel about the end of the world. But the world is really ending! It's becoming more and more uninhabitable because of our addiction to oil. "Bush used that line recently," Vonnegut adds. "I should sue him for plagiarism.""

With God on Our Side? - "The moronic level of cable discourse notwithstanding, missing from almost all discussions of the role of religion in public life is what William James famously termed the "varieties of religious experience." The right-wing hijacking of religion's public role in our political discourse is as undeniable as it is inappropriate, and represents one of liberalism's most serious problems."



Hubble Portrait of the Pinwheel Galaxy - "The giant spiral disk of stars, dust, and gas is 170,000 light-years across or nearly twice the diameter of our galaxy, the Milky Way. M101 is estimated to contain at least one trillion stars. Approximately 100 billion of these stars could be like our Sun in terms of temperature and lifetime."



Scientists Capture The Speediest Ever Motion In A Molecule - "The fastest ever observations of protons moving within a molecule open a new window on fundamental processes in chemistry and biology, researchers report in the journal Science."

News -- March 3, 2006

U.S. Cites Exception in Torture Ban - "Bush administration lawyers, fighting a claim of torture by a Guantanamo Bay detainee, yesterday argued that the new law that bans cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees in U.S. custody does not apply to people held at the military prison. In federal court yesterday and in legal filings, Justice Department lawyers contended that a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, cannot use legislation drafted by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to challenge treatment that the detainee's lawyers described as "systematic torture.""

'War on terror' trials could allow evidence obtained through torture - "US military officers, breaking with domestic and international legal precedent, said that "war on terror" military tribunals at the Guantanamo naval base could allow evidence obtained through torture." -- Disgusting.

Arrow can block 'any Iranian missile' - "Israel's Arrow 2 anti-ballistic missile system is capable of intercepting and destroying any Iranian missiles, even were they to carry nuclear warheads, a high-ranking IDF officer told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday." -- So Iran is not a threat to Israel.

Scum-sucking traitors to their country - "The next time some loudmouth partisan puke Democrat gets in my face and starts yapping about how much better things would be if his party were running the government in Washington, I'm going to pull out the vote tally sheet for the USA Patriot Act in Thursday's Senate session and ram it down his lying throat. ... Only these 10 voted against the act: Daniel Akaka (D-HI), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Carl Levin (D-MI), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Ron Wyden (D-OR), James Jeffords (I-VT), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Patty Murray (D-WA), Russ Feingold (D-WI), Robert Byrd (D-WV). The rest voted with Bush and against freedom. ... Where I come from, that's called treason and everyone who voted for the USA Patriot Act should be considered a traitor to their country and treated as such. And the next Democrat who gets in my face to tell me how much better things would be with his party in charge had better have a good dental insurance plan."

Republican Congressman Predicts Bush Impeachment - "Republican Congressman Ron Paul has gone on record with his prediction that the impeachment of George W. Bush is right around the corner but warned that in the meantime the US was slipping perilously close to a dictatorship."

The bungling Bush presidency is falling apart - "An old acquaintance in Washington - a former member of Republican administrations whose foreign policy views are decidedly hard-line - recently had this to say to a friend about the Bush administration: This might be the most inept administration in American history. Considering some of the bozos who have served in the White House - James Buchanan and Warren Harding are two names that come to mind - that is a breathtaking statement. Considering the stakes involved with the United States, the most powerful nation in the world, it is also frightening."

U.S. Intel: Qaeda Plotting 'Big Bang' - "U.S. officials tell CBS News that intelligence has picked up reports that al Qaeda in Iraq is planning what one source calls the "Big Bang," a spectacular terrorist attack in Iraq against either a single high-profile target or multiple targets simultaneously." -- Well, al Qaeda will be blamed anyway.

Terrorist growth overtakes U.S. efforts - "Thirty new terrorist organizations have emerged since the September 11, 2001, attacks, outpacing U.S. efforts to crush the threat, said Brig. Gen. Robert L. Caslen, the Pentagon's deputy director for the war on terrorism. "We are not killing them faster than they are being created," Gen. Caslen told a gathering at the Woodrow Wilson Center yesterday, warning that the war could take decades to resolve." -- Thus, keeping the pockets of war profiteers lined for decades.

The real threat to U.S. security - "The greatest risk to our society today is not Islamo-fascist terrorism, but the people who use that term to scare us. As the human, fiscal and ecological damage caused by our nation's economic priorities grows, it's becoming clear that we're addicted to more than oil — we're addicted to military spending, too. The United States spends as much on its military as the rest of humanity combined: more than $400 billion annually (not including the hundreds of billions of dollars for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan). These military expenses are "off limits" as we sharpen our collective pencils to find $39 billion to cut from domestic programs. And yet, despite our already huge military expenditures, these days it's hard to get elected without promising even more military spending. ... Should we abolish the American military altogether? Of course not. But daydream with me for just a moment: What if we gradually scaled down military spending, chose not to rush off to foreign wars based on questionable motives, and began to take the name of our "Department of Defense" literally? Let's be honest: Is there anyone out there who would actually want to — or, more importantly, be able to — invade the United States? Consider today's biggest perceived threat, al-Qaida. Do Osama bin Laden and his gang want to ride into Washington, D.C., take over our government, and turn us into an Islamo-fascist nation? Or — as his recent offer of a "truce" suggests — do they instead want dignity for the Palestinians, Christian armies out of sacred Muslim territory, and freedom for the Arab world to control its own natural resources?"

RFID: Sign of the (End) Times? - "Katherine Albrecht is on a mission from God. The influential consumer advocate has written a new book warning her fellow Christians that radio frequency identification may evolve to become the "mark of the beast" -- meaning the technology is a sign that the end-times are drawing near."

God Loves Soldiers - "God LOVES you as a soldier and offers a wonderful PLAN for every soldier's life as an individual."

US censors websites - "US MARINES stationed in Iraq are complaining that the US government is restricting access their access to websites too much. Along with porn sites, on the Army’s list of banned sites include mail sites such as Yahoo, AT&T, Hotmail. The censors are also blocking blogs and sites that do not agree with the current administration."

But Karl Promised Me - ""I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." George W. Bush said those words to Diane Sawyer last Sept. 1, when desperate people in flooded New Orleans were still being rescued from their roofs. Now we know that just four days earlier, in a videoconference briefing, one of the nation's leading hurricane experts had explicitly warned that failure of the protective levees was "a very, very grave concern.""

Midwest Oil fined for selling gas too cheaply - "The Minnesota Commerce Department on Thursday announced plans to fine a gas station chain $140,000 for repeatedly selling gas below the state's legal minimum price."

Suit: W.Va. Police Chief Denied Gay Man CPR - "A small-town police chief was accused in a federal lawsuit Thursday of stopping a would-be rescuer from performing CPR on a gay heart attack victim because he assumed the ailing man had HIV and posed a health risk."

That spray under your arm could be a breast cancer link - "Evidence is mounting that an aluminium-based compound found in common antiperspirant agents can break through the skin and potentially cause breast cancer."

Pentagon Develops Brain Implants to Turn Sharks into Military Spies - " Military scientists in the United States are developing a way of manipulating sharks by remote control to turn them into underwater spies or weapons." -- Humanity saddens me.

Stealth sharks to patrol the high seas - "IMAGINE getting inside the mind of a shark: swimming silently through the ocean, sensing faint electrical fields, homing in on the trace of a scent, and navigating through the featureless depths for hour after hour. We may soon be able to do just that via electrical probes in the shark's brain. Engineers funded by the US military have created a neural implant designed to enable a shark's brain signals to be manipulated remotely, controlling the animal's movements, and perhaps even decoding what it is feeling."

New viruses aimed at Apple - "While viruses and security weaknesses are almost everyday occurrences for owners of Windows-based computers, they are virtually unheard of in the world of Apple. But that world is changing. Computer security experts say more viruses and security flaws for Apple computers will be found in the near future. It's the price of popularity, they explained."

Plastic Assests - "Free breast implants with every card!" -- I can't make this shit up.




Quote of the Day
"You do not become a 'dissident' just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society."
~ Vaclav Havel

News (Page 2) -- March 2, 2006

US and India seal nuclear accord - "The US and India have finalised a controversial nuclear deal after talks in Delhi between President George W Bush and Indian PM Manmohan Singh. Energy-hungry India will get access to US civil nuclear technology and open its nuclear facilities to inspection."

Nationwide protests as Bush arrives in New Delhi - "An unusually massive half million protesters, mostly belonging to the Jamiat ul Ulema-i-Hind had gathered at Delhi’s historic Ramlila Grounds, the milling crowd running more than a mile deep. The placards told President Bush to go back home, that he was not welcome in India."

Patriot Act wins final congressional approval - "Capping months of partisan wrangling, the U.S. Senate gave final congressional approval on Thursday to renewing the USA Patriot Act, a centerpiece of President George W. Bush's war on terrorism."

Politics of Choice - "“Women who are thinking about ending a pregnancy are not asking, ‘Is this a life?’ They know that it is. They are asking, ‘Can I take care of this baby?” explains the Center’s Kirsten Moore."

Teacher's suspension protested - "Overland High School students protest today, some in support and others against, a teacher who was at the center of a controversy over statements he made comparing President Bush to Adolf Hitler."

Why Americans Know More About The Simpsons Than The Constitution - "Similarly, the Rockefeller Education Board—which funded the creation of numerous public schools—issued a statement which read in part: "In our dreams...people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [intellectual and character education] fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple...we will organize children...and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way." These are the founders of the public education system in America. The agenda from the very start was to eliminate all forms of objective thought and use education to produce automatons of the state who would shrink from embracing higher forms of intellectual pursuit and truly understanding their role and potential to advance freedom in human society. No wonder that today a portion of Americans think that the 1st Amendment includes the right to own a pet. Lack of sufficient education about our freedoms and where they came from puts the free world in peril and if we don't increase our efforts to inform and enlighten tyrants will not squander their opportunity to create a prison planet."

Blasphemy and Power - "The phrase "a world of domination" is in fact a far more apt description of American ambition and power than it is of Islam. Islam is not credibly threatening to take over Europe or America, but the US has in fact taken over Iraq and has well advertised designs on Syria and Iran. And the long and bloody history of Western colonialism throughout the Islamic world can not simply be ignored. We have a lot more credibility when it comes to torture than when it comes to freedom."

Phones stolen in Iraq used for sex chatlines - "It certainly was not part of Britain's plans to win the hearts and minds of the people of Iraq. But the Foreign Office has been apparently paying for an adult sex chatline in a Baghdad street for 17 months without knowing it."

Cheney Urges Americans to Save More - "Last year, Americans' personal savings rate dropped to its lowest point since the Great Depression. The dismal state of savings comes as a big wave of baby boomers will soon start retiring."

America's Younger Workers Losing Ground on Income - "A new survey shows that median incomes fell for householders under 45, even as they rose for older ones, between 2001 and 2004. Income fell 8 percent, adjusted for inflation, for those under 35 and 9 percent for those aged 35 to 44. The numbers add new weight to longstanding concerns about whether younger generations of Americans will achieve living standards that are better — or at least equal to — those of their parents." -- Ok, Dick, how do you save money when you don't have any?

Calif. School Suspends 20 Who Saw Web Site - "A middle school student faces expulsion for allegedly posting graphic threats against a classmate on the popular MySpace.com Web site, and 20 of his classmates were suspended for viewing the posting, school officials said."

Soft Drinks Found to Have High Levels of Cancer Chemical - "Traces of a carcinogenic chemical have been found in soft drinks at eight times the level permitted in drinking water, it was revealed last night. Tests conducted on 230 drinks on sale in Britain and France have identified high levels of benzene, a compound known to cause cancer, according to the Food Standards Agency."

News -- March 2, 2006

Tape: Bush, Chertoff Warned Before Katrina - "In dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could breach levees, put lives at risk in New Orleans' Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage. Bush didn't ask a single question during the final briefing before Katrina struck on Aug. 29, but he assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: "We are fully prepared."" -- So, they were warned before 9/11 and now we learn they were warned before Katrina. Hmmmm.

Feingold on Patriot Act: 'The die has now been cast' - "The Senate on Wednesday swatted aside a prolonged filibuster against the renewal of the USA Patriot Act and agreed to add new curbs on the government's power to pry into private records under President Bush's antiterror law."

What to Do When the Emperor Has No Clothes - "But torture is something else. Most people agree with this, and in a democracy that puts the torturers in a delicate position. They must make sure to destroy their e-mails and have subordinates who will take the fall. Because it is impossible to keep torture secret. It goes against the American grain and it eats at the conscience of even the most disciplined, and in the end the truth will come out. It is coming out now."

Not necessarily the news, with Jon Stewart - " Don’t laugh. American culture, it seems, can’t decide whether to classify Stewart as a comedian or a journalist. ... Should we laugh at him? Or should we take him seriously? Both. Because Jon Stewart’s approach to the day’s headlines — too funny to be serious, too serious to be ignored — just might be where real TV news is headed." -- Interesting read on the possible future of television news.

U.S. invasion responsible deaths of over 250,000 civilians in Iraq - "New studies make the Bush administration's "liberation" argument for a 'pre-emptive' war against Iraq seem questionable."

Barbour says he'd likely sign bill to ban most abortions in Miss. - "Republican Gov. Haley Barbour said Wednesday that he likely would sign a bill to ban most abortions in Mississippi if it's approved by lawmakers. The state already has some of the strictest abortion laws in the nation. The bill that passed the House Public Health Committee on Tuesday would allow abortion only to save the pregnant woman's life. It would make no exception in cases of rape or incest."

Israeli 'ruler-in-waiting' plans to starve Hamas - "Israel's policy - described by a spokesman as putting "the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger" - has left London feeling squeamish. Tony Blair and Jack Straw will today undoubtedly show solidarity with Israel, saying Britain is not in the business of funding terrorists. But in private there is anguish that the policy will bring malnutrition to innocent Palestinians and punish them for taking part in a democratic election. The Palestinians are completely dependent on foreign aid for their survival and Israel's campaign to put 3.6 million people on starvation rations is foreboding."

10-Year U.S. Strategic Plan For Detention Camps Revives Proposals From Oliver North - "Oliver North represented a minority element in the Reagan administration, which soon distanced itself from both the man and his proposals. But that minority associated with COG planning, which included Dick Cheney, appear to be in control of the U.S. government today."

Halliburton Strikes Again - "Even though an Army audit determined that $263 million of charges by Halliburton were exaggerated or unjustified on its $2.41 billion no-bid contract for fuel deliveries and oil equipment repair in Iraq, the Army said it will pay all but $10.1 million of it. The Times reported Monday that the decision to withhold only 3.8 percent of the charges in question is far below the average of questionable charges that are withheld. That average has ranged between 56.4 percent and 75.2 percent over the last three years."

Bird flu likely in US flocks soon: Health Secretary - "The lethal avian flu that is spreading rapidly around the world could soon infect wild birds and domesticated flocks in the United States, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said on Wednesday."

FOX Ratings In Free Fall - O'Reilly Leads The Way Down - "The just released February ratings (pdf) for cable news networks tell a tale that is decidedly downbeat for Fox News. In a comparison with February 2005, the numbers for every network are up except for Fox."

High school teacher's comments investigated by district - "A 16-year-old boy at Overland High School doesn't want to hear what he calls his teacher's left-wing political rants. ... Towards the end of the class, Bennish goes on to say, "I'm not in anyway implying that you should agree with me, I don't even know if I'm necessarily taking a position. But what I'm trying to get you to do is to think about these issues more in depth and not to just take things from the surface.""

Relive Your Rape Or Go To Prison (While Your Rapist Goes Free) - "Uh, if she is shown this horrific tape, she will suddenly remember and announce in open court that (despite being a highly inebriated 16 tear-old) she consented to have strangers spit on her while she was naked in public? Please. That would have to accrue several levels of probability to rise to the level of being "implausible." We all know what's going on here: the defense wants to show the videotape to intimidate (and punish) the victim, and given the less-than-trivial probative value the balance of interests shouldn't even be close. Unless the transparent goal of intimidation is given essentially no weight at all, I don't see how the balance can favor permitting this defense strategy."

What Portion of Our FY05 Federal Taxes Supports Current and Past Military Activities? - "Military spending is continuing to take a big bite out of our taxes. Overall military-related spending (for past and current wars and military activities) increased about 9.5 percent in FY05 over FY04, while total federal funds spending grew by about 9.0 percent. An estimated 42 percent of our federal income tax dollars was spent on past and present military activities."

What Is the Value of Algebra? - "Here's the thing, Gabriela: You will never need to know algebra. I have never once used it and never once even rued that I could not use it. You will never need to know -- never mind want to know -- how many boys it will take to mow a lawn if one of them quits halfway and two more show up later -- or something like that. Most of math can now be done by a computer or a calculator. On the other hand, no computer can write a column or even a thank-you note -- or reason even a little bit. If, say, the school asked you for another year of English or, God forbid, history, so that you actually had to know something about your world, I would be on its side. But algebra? Please." -- No comment. No, really. No comment.

Algebra-hating and societal problems - "What's up with the people responding to the failure of our schools with, "Aw honey, you didn't need that knowledge anyway! And, give me a Biggie Fry with that." ?"

Nev. Proposal Raises Evolution Questions - "A proposed constitutional amendment would require Nevada teachers to instruct students that there are many questions about evolution — a method viewed by critics as an opening to teach intelligent design."

MIT Method Reveals How Radiation Damages The Body; Work Could Reduce Side Effects For Cancer Patients - ""We've come up with a tool to selectively irradiate blood vessels to study how radiation damages normal tissue over both the short term and the long term."

Why Not Just Castrate Them? - "Yes, I thought I'd seen it all. I thought that no proposed treatment for autism could be so bizarre, so unbased in science, so risky, that it would shock me anymore. ... They're talking about adding chemical castration with Lupron to chelation therapy as a "treatment" for autism."

Scientists Confirm Historic Massive Flood In Climate Change - "Scientists from NASA and Columbia University, New York, have used computer modeling to successfully reproduce an abrupt climate change that took place 8,200 years ago. At that time, the beginning of the current warm period, climate changes were caused by a massive flood of freshwater into the North Atlantic Ocean."

Kids Build Soybean-Fueled Car - ""We made this work," says Hauger. "We're not geniuses. So why aren't they doing it?" Kosi thinks he knows why. The answer, he says, is the big oil companies. "They're making billions upon billions of dollars," he says. "And when this car sells, that'll go down — to low billions upon billions.""

OK, let's get rid of basic research. - "Some of us, I think, see basic research as potentially worthwhile even in the absence of applications down the road.
But who cares what the technocrats think! If it's the public's money, then it's the public's opinions that matter here. Why on earth should they fund research whose only payoff is to deepen our knowledge and understanding of some bit of the universe? ... If science becomes more focused on applications versus basic knowledge, how will this affect science education at various levels? What kind of effects will this have on things like basic scientific literacy?I don't know the answers to these questions, but I think they're worth considering."

Microsoft says better than Google soon - "Microsoft will introduce a search engine better than Google in six months in the United States and Britain followed by Europe, its European president said on Wednesday."

Spotting the Liar - "Far more reliable than eye contact is tone of voice. With the exception of sociopaths, who are expert liars, most people sound tense, their voices highly pitched, when they fib."

Better Headgear Through Chemistry - "For the helmet-haters: a soft beanie lined with elastic polymers that stiffen upon wipeout."

When a stranger calls, Caller ID may not be trustworthy - "In the last few years, Caller ID spoofing has become much easier. Millions of people have Internet telephone equipment that can be set to make any number appear on a Caller ID system. And several Web sites have sprung up to provide Caller ID spoofing services, eliminating the need for any special hardware."




Quote of the Day
"The news and truth are not the same thing."
~ Walter Lippmann

News -- March 1, 2006

Armed forces are put on standby to tackle threat of wars over water - "Across the world, they are coming: the water wars. From Israel to India, from Turkey to Botswana, arguments are going on over disputed water supplies that may soon burst into open conflict."

Bush Confident Bin Laden Will Be Captured - "Standing alongside Karzai outside the presidential palace, Bush pledged that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and other planners of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks would be caught."

Who will extinguish the fires of this warfare? - "Since the fall of Baghdad to U.S. troops on April 9, 2003, a new kind of war has started in our country which is more barbaric, more vicious and more evil the modern world has ever seen. Instead of planting democracy, tolerance, human rights and reconciliation, the U.S. occupation has bred sectarian and ethnic strife and an atmosphere of insecurity in which human life has become worthless."

Bush denies Iraq heading toward civil war - "President George W. Bush, hit by polls showing America's support for the Iraq war at an all-time low, denied on Tuesday Iraq was sliding into civil war, despite the worst sectarian strife since a U.S. invasion."

Soldiers in Iraq know they are fighting and dying for a lie - "In another direct contradiction of stated White House policy, just 24% said that "establishing a democracy that can be a model for the Arab World" was the main or a major reason for the war."

http://tvnewslies.org/blog/?p=310 - "He said it again. Bush said that the world was a safer place without Saddam! OK…I’m listening…now tell me exactly how the world is safer? Show me one single person on the planet that is safer now? Are the tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have died as a result of “Operation We call Iraqi Freedom Even Though We Told You it Was Operation Protect Us From WMDs, And You Fell For It” safer?"

Has America's conscience fallen victim to 9/11? - "The Bush administration is fond of reminding us that we are in a "post-9/11 world." The effect of this grave reminder is clear to all around the world:"

Terra, Terra, Terra. Cry `terra` and let loose the dogs of war. - "Never before has one word, or its relentless repetition, done so much for one man as the word `terror’ (`terra` in Texanese) has for this Texan from Crawford that now resides in the White House. No other single word, it seems, is so much responsible for Bush`s continued fame among certain naive American quarters. ... The only other word that comes a close second, especially in the run ups to and the durations of external fiascos e.g. the upcoming Iran war, is the word ‘freedom’. The entire presidential tenure of the current White House incumbent is laced with the two words terra and freedom. Though most Americans have begun to suspect that freedom at home, like any fixed commodity, is depleting by the exact proportion of its alleged export abroad, there are still some out there who heed this incessant chant of terra, terra, terra."

Gonzales Seeks to Clarify Testimony on Spying - "Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales appeared to suggest yesterday that the Bush administration's warrantless domestic surveillance operations may extend beyond the outlines that the president acknowledged in mid-December."

Bush arrives to Indian protests - "Ahead of his arrival, tens of thousands of people protested in India. Huge protest rallies were held in Delhi and Calcutta. Speakers said he was not welcome and condemned the Iraq war."

Miss. House committee votes to ban most abortions - "A Mississippi House committee voted Tuesday to ban most abortions in the state - an unexpected move that left abortion opponents grappling to stake out a position on a proposal that could prompt a lengthy court battle."

Americans and Jews villains in blockbuster - "A virulently anti-Semitic film about the Iraq war has provoked a storm of protest in Germany after it sold out to cheering audiences from the country's 2.5-million-strong Turkish community within days of being released." -- Why is it "anti-Semitic?" The only thing I have seen mentioned is that a Jewish doctor removes the organs from Iraqi prisoners, comparing it to Nazi Germany. That makes it anti-Semtitic?

The Origin of Darwin - "Just as geography could create variation, Darwin began to see, so too could the passage of time. Wilson points to the skeleton of an armadillo-like creature about the size of a small pony. "That's a glyptodont. This was one of the extinct forms that planted a second seed in Darwin's mind," he says. "In Darwin's day, conventional wisdom held that extinct species hadn't made it onto Noah's ark. Darwin looked at the similarity between forms, like the glyptodont and the modern armadillo, and wondered why God would trouble replacing one species with another so similar.""

Unintelligent Design - "A monstrous discovery suggests that viruses, long regarded as lowly evolutionary latecomers, may have been the precursors of all life on Earth. ... This is striking news, especially at a moment when the basic facts of origins and evolution seem to have fallen under a shroud. In the discussions of intelligent design, one hears a yearning for an old-fashioned creation story, in which some singular, inchoate entity stepped in to give rise to complex life-forms—humans in particular. Now the viruses appear to present a creation story of their own: a stirring, topsy-turvy, and decidedly unintelligent design wherein life arose more by reckless accident than original intent, through an accumulation of genetic accounting errors committed by hordes of mindless, microscopic replication machines. Our descent from apes is the least of it. With the discovery of Mimi, scientists are close to ascribing to viruses the last role that anyone would have conceived for them: that of life's prime mover."

Study: Few Americans Know 1st Amendment - "Americans apparently know more about "The Simpsons" than they do about the First Amendment. Only one in four Americans can name more than one of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment (freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly and petition for redress of grievances.) But more than half can name at least two members of the cartoon family, according to a survey."

Space Hawks Chase Death Rays - "As tourists line up to ride private rocket ships into space, the galaxy has never seemed closer as a theater for war. The evidence goes beyond surreptitious surveillance of peace-loving space activists. Even now, lobbyists from the fledgling commercial space industry are besieging Capitol Hill, hoping to persuade the government to hand out contracts to help put the U.S. military into orbit."

Japan unveils fastest supercomputer - "Japan's fastest supercomputer system, running 59 trillion calculations per second, began operations Wednesday."

Study: Reading Key to College Success - "One major factor separates high school graduates who are ready for college from those who aren't, a new study shows: how well students handle complex reading. Trouble is, most states don't even have reading standards for high school grades, and not a single state defines the kind of complexity that high school reading should have."

Cat Gets MBA Degree - "Colby Nolan (pictured, left) is probably the first animal to hold this distinction -- an executive MBA from a university. Pennsylvania Attorney General Jerry Pappert isn't amused, since Colby is a pet cat and a Texas-based online college allegedly gave the feline a degree for $399."




Quote of the Day
"America, like no other country that ever waged a war, demonstrated to the whole of the world that wars begin not in Iraqi sands or in the Persian Gulf, not in Munich pubs or in Afghani mountains. Wars originate in the human minds and end there."
~ Andrey Sokolov