News -- February 23, 2006

Victims of War Are Not To Be Seen Or Heard Or Mentioned - "In war soldiers and civilians die gruesome deaths and suffer horrific wounds. This is reality. Pictures that capture this miserable fact are not meant to be gratuitously violent. They are merely the unvarnished truth."

Unseen Pictures, Untold Stories - "U.S. newspapers and magazines print few photos of American dead and wounded, a Times review finds. The reasons are many -- access, logistics, ethics -- but the result is an obscured view of the cost of war."

Mosque Attack Pushes Iraq Toward Civil War - "With the gleaming dome of the 1,200-year-old Askariya shrine reduced to rubble, some Shiites lashed out at the United States as partly to blame."

O'Reilly: U.S. should leave Iraq "as fast as humanly possible" because "there are so many nuts in the country" - "Bill O'Reilly suggested that the United States "hand over everything to the Iraqis as fast as humanly possible" because "[t]here are so many nuts in the country -- so many crazies -- that we can't control them." O'Reilly has previously called those advocating immediate withdrawal from Iraq "pinheads" and compared them to Hitler appeasers." -- I know, I know. But this site has the audio clip of O'Reilly saying it. It seems to me that those who were so opposed to getting out of Iraq now may be coming to their senses but to save face they need to paint the Iraqi's as "nuts" and "crazies".

Deja Vu All Over Again - " In a comprehensive and frightening article, Heather Wokusch tells us that the neocons are at it again, this time getting ready for military action against Iran in the name of -- what else? -- the threat of WMD. While even France and Germany seem to be jumping on the "stop Iran" bandwagon this time, the evidence against Iran is murky at best, and, according to Wokusch, the consensus among U.S. intelligence experts is that Iran is still ten years away from having a nuclear weapon."

Time to Impeach Bush - "Well, there's no "if" about it anymore. The president approved warrantless wiretaps in 2002. Two years later, during a campaign appearance in Buffalo, N.Y. he volunteered he'd done nothing of the kind. That's called breaking the law and lying about it."

U.S. terror fears, stoked by Bush, now bite him - "For almost five years U.S. President George W. Bush has warned Americans to fear terrorism, but now those words may come back to bite him. The president, who has cast himself as America's protector against terrorism and Islamic militancy, has been thrown on the defensive by a bipartisan revolt over his administration's approval of a state-owned company from the United Arab Emirates assuming operation of six major U.S. seaports. Bush and his aides have argued that the United Arab Emirates is an anti-terrorist ally and that the company would have no security role. But even Bush allies, like South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham, have called the deal "politically tone deaf." With Republican and Democratic lawmakers drafting legislation to block the port deal, Bush vowed on Tuesday to use his veto for the first time should any such law reach his desk, drawing the lines for a high-stakes political battle." -- He must really want this deal to go through if he's threatening to use his veto power for the first time. Hmmm.

Officials: Al-Qaeda to strike this year - "Security officials estimate international terror network aims to carry out mega-terror attack in Israel in 2006; authorities concerned about strike that would eclipse September 11 attacks."

Bush Unaware of Ports Deal Before Approval - "President Bush was unaware of the pending sale of shipping operations at six major U.S. seaports to a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates until the deal already had been approved by his administration, the White House said Wednesday."

A Radical Idea, Control Your Own Ports - "Folks, the fundamental question: why is any foreign company ever allowed to own and manage operations so crucial as port facilities to begin with? Of course there is a material difference when a government owns a firm as opposed to an equity company. But where was the outrage when the Chinese positioned themselves at both ends of the Panama Canal? Is Long Beach any different from East Coast ports?"

UAE Deal A Distraction - "While America was in an uproar over Bush's plan to sell Eastern seaboard ports to UAE, Congress voted 404 to 4 in favor of condemning the government of Iran for violating it's international nuclear non-proliferation obligations and expressing support for efforts to report Iran to the UN Security Council. Of course, Iran has never been in violation of the NPT, since building a nuclear power plant is perfectly legal. And any hippie worth their weight in Crosby Stlls and Nash records knows that while nuclear power is not safe, it certainly isn't worth dropping nuclear weapons on a country over."

ACLU: New documents show senior officials approved Gitmo abuse - "The American Civil Liberties Union released newly obtained documents Thursday showing that senior Defense Department officials approved aggressive interrogation techniques that FBI agents deemed abusive, ineffective and unlawful, Raw Story has learned. “We now possess overwhelming evidence that political and military leaders endorsed interrogation methods that violate both domestic and international law,” Jameel Jaffer, an attorney with the ACLU said in a release. “It is entirely unacceptable that no senior official has been held accountable.” The ACLU's release follows."

Declassification in Reverse - "The CIA and other federal agencies have secretly reclassified over 55,000 pages of records taken from the open shelves at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), according to a report published today on the World Wide Web by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. Matthew Aid, author of the report and a visiting fellow at the Archive, discovered this secret program through his wide-ranging research in intelligence, military, and diplomatic records at NARA and found that the CIA and military agencies have reviewed millions of pages at an unknown cost to taxpayers in order to sequester documents from collections that had been open for years."

South Dakota passes abortion ban - "South Dakota's state senate voted on Wednesday for an abortion ban aimed at giving the conservative-tilting Supreme Court an opening to overturn rulings granting women the right to the procedure."

Peace groups under watch - "In the post-9/11 world, some unlikely figures have attracted the attention of local police and federal agents: the Raging Grannies, known for musical satire, and Quaker peace activists, known for non-violence."

DNA 'could predict your surname' - "Forensic scientists could use DNA retrieved from a crime scene to predict the surname of the suspect, according to a new British study. ... The technique is based on work comparing the Y chromosomes of men with the same surname. The Y chromosome is a package of genetic material found normally only in males. It is passed down from father to son, just like a surname."

Teens Plead Not Guilty in Homeless Attacks - "Three teenagers accused in a series of brutal beatings that killed a homeless man and seriously injured two others the same night pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges of murder and attempted murder. In one of the attacks, captured on a university surveillance tape, two young men with baseball bats repeatedly hit the victim as he lay on a sidewalk and tried to block the blows with his hands. In the other attacks, authorities said the assailants used a paintball gun, bats and a golf club. The videotaped attack sparked public outrage and helped lead authorities to the teens. ... In court, the teens' attorneys described each youth as contrite and upset about what had happened. "He's got the weight of the world on his shoulders," said Daugherty's attorney, Michael Gottlieb. "He definitely feels bad."" -- Hogwash.

Google Censors Revisionist Videos - "Hoffman's videos passed Google's review process and were approved for broadcast by Google last January. The finding of a "violation" almost a month later, can only be due to behind-the-scenes pressure that was exerted on Google."

Copyright violation for images of fornication! - "It was already determined in Kelly v. Ariba Soft that thumb nail images of this sort are sufficiently transformative, so as to constitute fair use (and not be infringing). With decisions like this recent one decided yesterday, I fear for the already tenuous "fair use" law. This is a 9th circuit district court that is not following a 9th circuit opinion. Will Google's picture search technology be long for this world?"

Students selling sex to pay off study debt - ""My girls don't walk out of here with less than $500 a day." ... He said students were notoriously popular with clients. "Especially the 18 to 25s ... they are pretty much the prime market," said the man, who also refused to be identified. "We could actually do with some students, to be honest. It's a great way for the girls to pay off their loan and live and party and juggle all of these things.""

Study: Men's Sex Lives Better at 50 Than 30 - "In short, men reported sexual satisfaction long after the heyday of their youth had passed."

Average American Family Income Declines - "The average income of American families, after adjusting for inflation, declined by 2.3 percent in 2004 compared to 2001 while their net worth rose but at a slower pace."

Food Bank Network Served Over 25M in '05 - "More than 25 million Americans turned to the nation's largest network of food banks, soup kitchens and shelters for meals last year, up 9 percent from 2001. Those seeking food included 9 million children and nearly 3 million senior citizens, says a report from America's Second Harvest."

Man sues drug company, casinos after losing $14 million - "When the retired doctor from Austin suddenly began spending big money in Las Vegas, the casinos assigned him a "host" and gave him first-class airfare, hotel suites, meals and shopping trips for his wife, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court in Austin. The casinos even gave him an Alaskan cruise, the lawsuit says. The retired doctor, Max Wells, kept coming back, the lawsuit says — and kept losing money. By the fall of 2005, Wells had lost $7 million, the lawsuit says. By January, another $7 million. Now Wells is suing the casinos and a major drug company, claiming that the prescription drugs he was taking for Parkinson's disease set off a compulsive gambling spree. Wells, 55, wants his money back. He declined to comment Tuesday."

Net video explosion triggers traffic jam worries - "The amount of video online is skyrocketing, whether it's "Lost" episodes or movie trailer mash-ups. The phenomenon is putting new stress on ISP networks, which are seeing the demands on their bandwidth burgeon. Now a new wave of companies--some newcomers, some with familiar faces--are stepping up to play the role of traffic cop, arguing that they have ways to manage this surge in video traffic and keep networks healthy."

A Solid That's Light As Air - "Faced with exactly this problem, scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory focused on aerogel -- an extremely lightweight, porous material that is chemically identical to glass, but weighs only a little more than air. Aerogel is the lightest solid known to science. It's also one of the most insulating materials on Earth, the most porous, and it's nearly transparent."












Quote of the Day
"Just don't try to show me nothing I don't want to see."
~ James McMurtry, (Soda and Salt)