:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 6.30.2004 ::

:: "U.S. Forms Tribunal for 3 Terror Suspects" ::

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) - The U.S. military has formed a five-member military tribunal to preside over the first trials of terror suspects held at its naval base in Guantanamo Bay, officials said Tuesday. An Australian and two alleged bodyguards of Osama bin laden will be the first defendants.

The Pentagon announcement came a day after the Supreme Court ruled that prisoners at Guantanamo Bay can appeal their detention to civilian courts.

That ruling was a blow to President Bush's stance that the United States can jail terror suspects without judicial review and that the Cuban base was outside the reach of U.S. courts. Relatives and advocates are now planning hundreds of lawsuits to challenge the detainees' captivity.

The trials - of an Australian, a Sudanese and a Yemeni - would be the first military tribunals convened by the United States since the end of World War II.

"This is an important first step," Air Force Maj. John Smith, a lawyer who helped draft the tribunal rules, said in a telephone interview from the Pentagon. "We'd like to have a case tried by the end of the year."

Smith said the trials would be held at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, where detainees have been held since January 2002 and now number about 600 from 42 countries.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 12:43:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Fahrenheit 9/11 Sets Documentary Record" ::

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" took in a whopping $21.8 million in its first three days, becoming the first documentary ever to debut as Hollywood's top weekend film.

If Sunday's estimates hold when final numbers are released Monday, "Fahrenheit 9/11" would set a record in a single weekend as the top-grossing documentary ever outside of concert films and movies made for huge-screen IMAX theaters.

Adding the film's haul at two New York City theaters where it opened Wednesday, two days earlier than the rest of the country, boosted "Fahrenheit 9/11" to $21.96 million.

"Bowling for Columbine," Moore's 2002 Academy Award-winning documentary, previously held the documentary record with $21.6 million.

"Fahrenheit 9/11," Moore's assault on President Bush's actions after the 2001 terrorist attacks, won the top honor at last month's Cannes Film Festival and has attracted attention from both sides in the presidential campaign.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 9:32:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Poll: 54 Percent Say Iraq War a Mistake" ::

WASHINGTON (AP) - For the first time, a majority of Americans say they think the United States made a mistake sending troops to Iraq, according to a poll released Thursday.

The CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll found that 54 percent of people say the war was a mistake, up from 41 percent who felt that way in early June.

The poll also found that more than half say the Iraq war has made the United States less safe from terrorism. Only a third said it made this country safer.

The finding that more than half now think the Iraq war was a mistake recalls the disillusionment of Americans in 1968 with the Vietnam War. The first time a majority said that was a mistake was in August 1968.

In the Persian Gulf War more than a decade ago, the highest that level of concern got was three in 10.

The negative findings on the Iraq war come as the United States prepares to turn over sovereignty of the country to Iraqis. But there are few signs that American troops will be leaving anytime soon, with violence from insurgents on the rise.

As of Thursday, 842 U.S. service members have died since the beginning of military operations in Iraq last year, according to the Defense Department. Insurgents in Iraq set off car bombs and seized police stations Thursday in an offensive that killed more than 100 people.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:11:00 AM [+] ::
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:: Tux Redux ::

The Linux Killer
From Wired Mag
They call him Microsoft's sock puppet, the most hated man in high tech. SCO's Darl McBride is fighting a war for the future of free software. And he wants to make you pay.

Last February, Darl McBride received a Federal Express package at his home in Salt Lake City with a sticker proclaiming in big, bold letters: live worms.

Understandably cautious, McBride's wife brought it into the garage. When her husband discovered that there were, in fact, worms wriggling inside the cardboard box, he threw it away.

It was just another indignity for the chief executive of the widely unpopular SCO Group. McBride has also received death threats, a challenge to a fistfight, and a flood of denial-of-service attacks targeting his company's email servers and his home phone. He's started carrying a gun for protection. Friends tease him that in two short years, he has displaced Bill Gates as the most hated man in high tech.

It took Gates decades of hard work to achieve that distinction.

What has the son of a farmer, a devout Mormon, and the father of seven done to so swiftly earn the honor? McBride has transformed SCO into a legal missile aimed at the heart of the open source software movement. His strategy threatens to undo the progress of Linux and other free operating systems developed by programmers who believe that collaborative efforts have produced the most robust and reliable code.

SCO claims it owns the intellectual property rights to the Unix operating system and that contributors to Linux have pilfered that code. It further asserts that IBM in particular has illegally diverted the SCO family jewels into the Linux system. Every Linux user, SCO concludes, owes it money. To press these allegations - and scare the stuffing out of Linux users - SCO brought out the heavy artillery: Early last year, McBride hired famed litigator David Boies, who led the federal government's antitrust case against Microsoft and represented Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election recount.

SCO's legal fusillade has exploded over the past 18 months with jarring repercussions. SCO has either initiated or is defending itself in seven lawsuits before five judges in four states and two countries. It is taking on IBM and Red Hat, two companies that sell Linux-based products, as well as AutoZone and DaimlerChrysler, two that use them. Another claim, against Novell, centers on whether that company actually transferred the copyrights when it sold the Unix business in 1996 to the Santa Cruz Operation, one of SCO's precursors. These lawsuits have generated thousands of pages of legal briefs at costs that exceeded $3.4 million in the first quarter of 2004 for SCO alone. Hopeful Linux advocates predicted that courts would quickly dismiss SCO's claims. But the lawsuits plod along like horror-flick zombies that won't die.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 5:29:00 PM [+] ::
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:: BEAT BUSH! ::

From MSNBC.com
Bush loses advantage in war on terrorism
Poll: Nation evenly divided on president, Kerry

Public anxiety over mounting casualties in Iraq and doubts about long-term consequences of the war continue to rise and have helped to erase President Bush's once-formidable advantage over Sen. John F. Kerry concerning who is best able to deal with terrorist threats, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Exactly half the country now approves of the way Bush is managing the U.S. war on terrorism, down 13 percentage points since April, according to the poll.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 11:06:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Fahrenheit 9/11 puts it all together" ::

From MSNBC.com
Moore goes after Bush and reflects on the toll of the war in Iraq
REVIEW
By John Hartl

Michael Moore’s scathing indictment of the Bush administration, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” winner of the top prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, doesn’t break a lot of new ground.

If you’ve been watching recent installments of “60 Minutes” and Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show,” or if you’re familiar with this year’s best-seller list (especially Craig Unger’s “House of Bush, House of Saud”), you won’t find many surprises here.

Indeed, the opening scenes amount to a condensed version of Richard Perez and Joan Seckler’s 2002 documentary, “Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election,” which made the case that the 2000 election was stolen. Much of the rest is reminiscent of Robert Greenwald’s 2003 documentary, “Uncovered: The Whole Truth About the Iraq War,” which used interviews with CIA, Pentagon and foreign-service experts to demolish the rationale behind the war.

But put all these approaches together, connect the dots, throw in a few brand-new interviews and never-seen-before clips of President Bush looking especially befuddled, and you’ve got a remarkably powerful narrative — and a movie that communicates an unshakeable sense of non-fiction tragedy. No wonder conservatives are trying so hard to shut it down before it reaches theaters.

The freshest ammunition in Moore’s arsenal is a camcorder tape of Bush’s ultra-delayed reaction to the news that the World Trade Center had been hit by terrorists. On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Bush was reading to kids at a Florida elementary school. After being informed of the attacks, Bush froze and continued with the classroom lesson — for nearly seven minutes.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:55:00 PM [+] ::
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:: So Weird ::

From Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird

Scenes of the Surreal
(1) According to an April New York Times dispatch, the quiz show "The Mission," on the satellite TV channel of Lebanese militants Hezbollah, challenges contestants in categories such as naming Arab suicide bombers, with the winner receiving points toward the game's ultimate destination, "Jerusalem" (the retaking of which is a unifying theme of all the channel's programs). (2) Craig Gross, 28, and Mike Foster, 32, run the Christian Internet site "XXXChurch," designed to help the faithful overcome pornography and masturbation, according to a May Wired magazine report. (Recent advice: "Remain calm and tell yourself, 'You don't own me, masturbation!'" Recently, several online "parishioners" commenced a 40-day abstinence, to match the time Satan tempted Jesus in the desert.) [New York Times, 4-19-04] [Wired.com, 5-20-04]

More Things You Didn't Realize Were Art
In April, London's National Portrait Gallery showed an hour-long video of star soccer player David Beckham, sleeping; artist Sam Taylor-Wood said she wanted to do an original of the ubiquitously photographed Beckham and realized there was not much that hadn't already been done. And at a March exhibit at London's Nelson's Column, guest performers took turns reading Japanese artist On Kawara's book that consists only of 271,000 selected dates that occurred between 998,031 B.C. and A.D. 1,001,980. (Said a gallery director, "On Kawara's work speaks simply and directly about a subject relevant to us all, the passage and marking of time.") [Associated Press, 4-26-04] [BBC News, 3-29-04]

Not only does San Francisco's Solid Waste Transfer and Recycling Center (i.e., the city dump) have an "artist in residence," but sculptor Rick Carpenter is actually the 43rd person to hold that position, according to an April San Francisco Chronicle report. Carpenter said his specialty is discarded bulk items, citing, for example, the weaving he made from 40 orange extension cords, and his latest, an object stuffed with the contents of a 5-gallon bucket of wigs someone tossed. [San Francisco Chronicle, 4-22-04]

More Things to Worry About
In April, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of part of the Patriot Act (a public document) but couldn't publicly reveal what its lawsuit claimed because such disclosure without Justice Department permission is forbidden by the Patriot Act. (The Department OK'd a heavily censored press release 22 days later.) [Philadelphia Daily News, 12-9-03] [Washington Post, 5-13-04]

Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net

posted by me

:: 12:47:00 AM [+] ::
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:: In case you missed it ::

The Son of Patriot Act Also Rises
By Kim Zetter
Wired News

While activists and politicians work to repeal or change parts of the Patriot Act that they say violate constitutional rights, Patriot Act II legislation -- which caused a stir when it came to light last year -- is rearing its head again in a new bill making its way through Congress.

The bill would strengthen laws that let the FBI demand that businesses hand over confidential records about patrons by assigning stiff penalties (up to five years in prison) to anyone who discloses that the FBI made the demand. The bill would also let the FBI compel businesses to cooperate with record requests, and it would expand the government's secret surveillance powers over noncitizens in the United States.

"There is no reason for this legislation," said lawyer Chip Pitts, head of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee of Dallas and a former constitutional law professor. "Given the expanse of powers and secrecy already granted in the Patriot Act, and given the unclear security benefits and possible security detriments of that legislation, why do we need a further amendment of the law to grant more powers to the government?"

The bill, known as the Anti-Terrorism Intelligence Tools Improvement Act of 2003, or HR 3179, was introduced last September by Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin) and was co-sponsored by Rep. Porter Goss (R-Florida), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a possible contender to replace departing CIA chief George Tenet.

It contains four sections that first appeared in a proposed piece of legislation dubbed Patriot Act II. That proposed law was discovered last year by the Center for Public Integrity just weeks before the invasion of Iraq. Patriot Act II, or "Son of Patriot" as critics called it, was written by the Justice Department to expand Patriot Act powers, but the department was forced to shelve the proposal after news of it created an uproar.

But critics, like conservative former Rep. Bob Barr (R-Georgia), say that rather than abandoning the legislation altogether, the department has been extracting provisions and having sympathetic lawmakers slip them one by one into new bills to pass the legislation piecemeal. At least five other bills pending in Congress also contain provisions from Patriot Act II, but HR 3179 is the one that's in imminent danger of being passed under the radar.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 11:10:00 AM [+] ::
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:: WHILE REAGAN NAPPED ::

RONNIE, OSAMA AND THE CHIN DEFENSE
by Greg Palast

New York, Tuesday, June 14 - Vinnie the Chin had a great alibi. The New York mob capo shuffled down the street in his bathrobe, unshaved, drooling out the side of his mouth. When he got busted, he pleaded he was too gone-in-the-head to know about the Cosa Nostra running rackets from his candy shop.

Ronald Reagan out-Chinned the Chin. When caught paying ransom to Khomeini and his Hizbollah terrorists, Reagan did his aw-shucks I'm just a ga-ga grandpa routine, "I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart tells me that's true, but the facts tell me it is not." Oh, OK then.

If it were Jimmy Carter who'd been caught in such an act of treason -- arming our enemy -- Republicans would still be roasting his flesh today. You know it and I know it.

The Reagan Right has used the late President's funeral for a shameless political victory dance, carefully wiping the blood off the historical files. Before the truth is interred, let us have a moment of remembrance for the dubious doings in the White House while Reagan napped:

* South Africa's government went on a murder spree to insure that Black folk would never vote. Reagan blessed that police state with a smile, refusing, despite the pleas of Nobel laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu, to take even the small measure of limited trade sanctions against the evil white empire.

* Reagan's Secretary of Interior, James Watt, launched a biological pogrom against trees. Before he was indicted, the Environmental Protection agency became a country club for polluters' lobbyists. Reagan's heart told him it wasn't true, but the screeching chain saws said otherwise.

* AIDS was identified in 1981. Reagan's official policy was to hit the research snooze button. Our president did not mention nor act on the epidemic until 1987 -- 30,000 funerals too late. The gay death toll brought glee to Reagan's apocalyptic allies, the mewling mullahs of the Christian Right. (But As the Good Book warns, doing unto others has a price: the same fruitcake fanatics that slowed AIDS research also blocked the stem cell studies that might have saved the dying president from the horrors of Alzheimer's.)

* Reagan politically fathered those rascally Rosemary's Babies of the Bush junta: Dick Cheney, Ronnie's appropriately titled Whip in Congress; Paul Wolfowitz, the kind of Dr. Strangelove that scares even Henry Kissinger; John Poindexter, convicted of abetting Contra terrorists while in the Reagan White House, later Bush's first Total Information Awareness chieftain; and Reagan Treasury Secretary James Baker, who tried his damnedest to bankrupt America for Ron, and now, from his Bush White House office, is doing the same for Iraq as "special advisor" to the conquered nation.

But there can be no more dangerous creature to have burbled out of the Reagan Frankenstein factory than his Cold War comrade, Osama bin Laden.

In November 2001, with my BBC television and Guardian newspaper colleagues, I reported that, during the Reagan presidency, a US embassy official in Saudi Arabia was, in his own words, "repeatedly ordered by high-level State Department officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants."

Sounds icky but not too notable until you learn the identities of these "applicants." They claimed to be engineering students who, when queried as to what school they attended, answered they "could not remember." They didn't have to. The unlikely "engineers" had little helpers in the Reagan Administration.

After investigation, the career diplomat, attorney Michael Springmann, learned they were, "recruits, rounded up by Osama bin Laden, to [bring to] the United States for terrorist training by the CIA. They would then be returned to Afghanistan to fight against the then-Soviets."

Uh, oh. They returned to Afghanistan all right. But terrorists are like homing pigeons -- they have a bad habit of coming home to roost. In spook-world, it's known as "blow back." The Reagan-bin Laden killer brigade, skilled in such crafts as skinning Russian prisoners alive, blew back with a sickening vengeance.

That story ran world wide at the top of the BBC nightly news -- except in the USA where it bounced off the electronic Berlin Wall. Our media was careful not to wake America from its nap, to hide the deeply disturbing truths behind Grandpa Gipper's grin.

Ronald Reagan's loss of memory was, undeniably, a great personal tragedy. But lost in this week's circus of fakery and fawning for a failed president, is the greater national tragedy: America's amnesia, an unforgivable forgetting, a great sleep of reason from which we have yet to awaken, even after September 11.

****
Greg Palast is author of the New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, just released in a new Expanded Election Edition. To view Palast's report on bin Laden for the BBC and the Guardian report (winner of a 2002 California State University Journalism School Project Censored Award) try here.

posted by me

:: 11:05:00 AM [+] ::
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:: Venus ::

Thousands Spy Venus' Rare Transit
From Wired News
The planet crawls across the sun's face only twice every 122 years, and lucky stargazers around the world watch in awe as the celestial phenomenon unfolds. Missed it? You'll get another chance in 2012.

(Includes a couple of good photos.)

posted by me

:: 9:29:00 PM [+] ::
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:: The day after... ::

Ice core reveals a worrying truth about Earth's climate
Scientists drilling in the Antarctic have found evidence that man-made greenhouse gases are causing the planet's climate to destabilise - and could bring on a new ice age in 15,000 years
10 June 2004

The deepest and oldest ice core yet drilled in the Antarctic suggests that the world's climate is headed for an unprecedented period of turmoil brought about by man-made greenhouse gases.

Chemical analysis of the ice within the core - nearly 2 miles long - has revealed details of the eight previous ice ages that have affected the Earth durin the past 740,000 years. Scientists said yesterday that the present climate most closely resembled the warm "interglacial" period about 470,000 years ago, but with the difference that this time temperatures were set to spiral upwards as a result of global warming.

In a study published today in the journal Nature, the international team of scientists from 10 European countries warns that the Earth's climate would now be in a highly stable period if it were not for the extra carbon dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere from human activities. "Given the similarities between this earlier warm period and today, our results may imply that without human intervention, a climate similar to the present one would extend well into the future," the scientists say.

Read more here.

:: 9:25:00 PM [+] ::
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:: G8 ::

Bush opens new rift over Middle East plan
• Chirac derides push for democracy • 3-point plan to reshape region
Larry Elliott and David Teather in Savannah

Attempts by President George Bush to exploit the diplomatic triumph of the United Nations resolution on Iraq were last night running into stiff opposition at the G8 summit, as France joined Arab countries in deriding the White House plans for a greater Middle East initiative.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 9:20:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "A little dot ..." ::

And the dash for the sight of a lifetime
Tim Radford, science editor
The Guardian UK

Millions in Britain, Europe and the Middle East watched the greatest show not on Earth yesterday: the transit of Venus across the face of the Sun.

This rare event - it pops up in the astronomical clockwork only four times every 243 years - was last seen and photographed by professional astronomers in 1882. This time it was monitored by at least one orbiting solar observatory, and Scandinavian airlines handed out eclipse-viewing spectacles to 3,500 travellers on Nordic flights.

The six hour transit left its observers star-struck.

"It teaches you about the universe and God Almighty's wonders," Nemr Ramzi, a 10-year-old Palestinian boy told Associated Press as he watched a monitor screen in a tent. "One day I want to be a pilot and reach up there."

Hala Kaiksow, 13, watching from the Bahrain University campus, said: "It is like an ant crawling on earth."

The transit happened in the American night, but a party from Sonoroa University in Mexico set up their telescopes at the American University in Cairo.

"This is an important and historical event, because Mexico took part in this event in 1874, when it sent an expedition to Japan," one of them said.

"It is an astonishing moment which I will explain to my grandchildren later."

In 1639 the first observations of the transit confirmed the Corpernican view of the universe and demonstrated that Venus was simply another world, like the Earth.

The 1769 transit launched the great exploration of the Pacific and observations in 1882 enabled the most accurate estimates to be made of the distance between the Earth and its parent star - known as the astronomical unit. This time astronomers had other challenges. A team from the US Centre for Atmospheric Research used sunlight filtering through the dense atmosphere of Venus to search for the spectral signature of water vapour.


posted by me

:: 12:58:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Legalizing Torture" ::

From The Washington Post
THE BUSH administration assures the country, and the world, that it is complying with U.S. and international laws banning torture and maltreatment of prisoners. But, breaking with a practice of openness that had lasted for decades, it has classified as secret and refused to disclose the techniques of interrogation it is using on foreign detainees at U.S. prisons at Guantanamo Bay and in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is a matter of grave concern because the use of some of the methods that have been reported in the press is regarded by independent experts as well as some of the Pentagon's legal professionals as illegal. The administration has responded that its civilian lawyers have certified its methods as proper -- but it has refused to disclose, or even provide to Congress, the justifying opinions and memos.

This week, thanks again to an independent press, we have begun to learn the deeply disturbing truth about the legal opinions that the Pentagon and the Justice Department seek to keep secret. According to copies leaked to several newspapers, they lay out a shocking and immoral set of justifications for torture. In a paper prepared last year under the direction of the Defense Department's chief counsel, and first disclosed by the Wall Street Journal, the president of the United States was declared empowered to disregard U.S. and international law and order the torture of foreign prisoners. Moreover, interrogators following the president's orders were declared immune from punishment. Torture itself was narrowly redefined, so that techniques that inflict pain and mental suffering could be deemed legal. All this was done as a prelude to the designation of 24 interrogation methods for foreign prisoners -- the same techniques, now in use, that President Bush says are humane but refuses to disclose.

There is no justification, legal or moral, for the judgments made by Mr. Bush's political appointees at the Justice and Defense departments. Theirs is the logic of criminal regimes ...


Read more here.

posted by me

:: 12:55:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Legalizing Torture" ::

From The Washington Post
THE BUSH administration assures the country, and the world, that it is complying with U.S. and international laws banning torture and maltreatment of prisoners. But, breaking with a practice of openness that had lasted for decades, it has classified as secret and refused to disclose the techniques of interrogation it is using on foreign detainees at U.S. prisons at Guantanamo Bay and in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is a matter of grave concern because the use of some of the methods that have been reported in the press is regarded by independent experts as well as some of the Pentagon's legal professionals as illegal. The administration has responded that its civilian lawyers have certified its methods as proper -- but it has refused to disclose, or even provide to Congress, the justifying opinions and memos.

This week, thanks again to an independent press, we have begun to learn the deeply disturbing truth about the legal opinions that the Pentagon and the Justice Department seek to keep secret. According to copies leaked to several newspapers, they lay out a shocking and immoral set of justifications for torture. In a paper prepared last year under the direction of the Defense Department's chief counsel, and first disclosed by the Wall Street Journal, the president of the United States was declared empowered to disregard U.S. and international law and order the torture of foreign prisoners. Moreover, interrogators following the president's orders were declared immune from punishment. Torture itself was narrowly redefined, so that techniques that inflict pain and mental suffering could be deemed legal. All this was done as a prelude to the designation of 24 interrogation methods for foreign prisoners -- the same techniques, now in use, that President Bush says are humane but refuses to disclose.

There is no justification, legal or moral, for the judgments made by Mr. Bush's political appointees at the Justice and Defense departments. Theirs is the logic of criminal regimes ...


Read more here.

posted by me

:: 12:55:00 AM [+] ::
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:: So Weird ::

From Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird

LEAD STORY
In January, University of Utah hospital surgeons removed half the skull of Briana Lane, age 22 and unemployed, in order to save her life after an auto accident, but because putting the skull back in place was not quite an emergency, it was delayed by negotiations over cost. The skull remained in a freezer for three months, with Lane battling serious pain (and wearing a plastic helmet for protection, feeling her brain "shifting" on her) while the hospital negotiated with the state Medicaid office, which pays only for long-term "disabilities." Her skull was finally reattached on April 30. [Salt Lake Tribune-AP, 5-11-04]

Questionable Judgments
Despite the 39-day waiting list for brain operations at the Queens Medical Center in Nottingham, England, the hospital suspended neurosurgeon Terence Hope in March (after 18 years' service), not for substandard work but because he had been accused of taking extra croutons for his soup in the hospital cafeteria, without paying. (The suspension was lifted three days later.) [Daily Telegraph (London), 3-25-04]

More Things to Worry About
In February, an unidentified audience member was led away, still shouting, after attempting to debate former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani at a University of Oklahoma speech about Sept. 11's effect on the city; contrary to Giuliani's blaming the attack on al-Qaida, the man insisted that the culprit was Wal-Mart (Norman, Okla.). And in May, several senior Japanese women (ages from their 50s through their 70s) met to discuss the revival of the sport in which they had once excelled during its heyday, female sumo wrestling, a gathering that included an exhibition by the 61-year-old Ms. Mikako Shimada (Mikatsuki, Japan). [New York Post, 2-25-04] [Mainichi Daily News, 5-3-04]

Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net (addtl. info)

posted by me

:: 12:49:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "The Clash still threatening after 20 years!" ::

Found at the Alternative Tentacles Web site
(From The Guardian UK)

A Special Branch officer questioned a punk rock musician as a terror suspect after he sent a text message containing lyrics from a Clash song to the wrong person, it was reported today. Band member Mike Devine, from Bristol, said he had been approached by the officer and shown a copy of a text he had sent in April, which contained the words "gun" and "jet airliner".

The 35-year-old, who plays bass in a Clash tribute group called London Calling, had intended to text the lyrics - from the Clash song Tommy Gun - to singer Reg Shaw. Instead, he sent the message to the wrong number.... [Devine] said the officer had then produced a printout of the text message, which read: "How about this for Tommy Gun? OK - so let's agree about the price and make it one jet airliner for 10 prisoners."

He said he had then been asked to explain what the message meant, and described how the detective had looked "puzzled" when told the words were by the Clash. The officer seemed "a little embarrassed" when he left, Mr Devine added.

posted by me

:: 12:27:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Bush Says Reagan Helped Save the World" ::

From The Guardian UK
PARIS (AP) - President Bush said Saturday that Ronald Reagan's death is ``a sad hour in the life of America.''

Reagan ``leaves behind a nation he restored and a world he helped save,'' Bush said in remarks from the U.S. ambassador's residence in Paris.

Former Presidents Ford and Clinton also reacted on Saturday.

``Betty and I are deeply saddened by the passing of our longtime friend, President Reagan,'' Ford said in a statement. ``Ronald Reagan was an excellent leader of our nation during challenging times at home and abroad. We extend our deepest condolences and prayers to Nancy and his family.''

Clinton said it was fitting that a piece of the Berlin Wall is featured on the building in Washington that bears the former president's name.

``Hillary and I will always remember President Ronald Reagan for the way he personified the indomitable optimism of the American people, and for keeping America at the forefront of the fight for freedom for people everywhere,'' Clinton says.

ALSO
Former President Ronald Reagan Dies at 93

On the Net:
Reagan Library official Web site.

posted by me

:: 6:50:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Pope Greets Bush, Urges Iraq Sovereignty" ::

ROME - (AP) Pope John Paul II reminded President Bush on Friday of the Vatican's opposition to the war in Iraq and said the world has been troubled by recent "deplorable events," an apparent reference to the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. troops.

Sitting alongside the president, the pope called for a speedy return of the country's sovereignty and said the recent appointment of an interim Iraqi government was an "encouraging step."

"It is the evident desire of everyone that this situation now be normalized as quickly as possible with the active participation of the international community and, in particular, the United Nations Organization, in order to ensure a speedy return of Iraq's sovereignty, in conditions of security for all its people," the pope said.

In an indirect reference to U.S. troops' abuse of Iraqi prisoners, the pope said, "In the past few weeks, other deplorable events have come to light which have troubled the civic and religious conscience of all." He said those events "made more difficult a serene and resolute commitment to shared human values. In the absence of such a commitment, neither war nor terrorism will ever be overcome."

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:07:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "George Tenet Resigns As Director of CIA" ::

From The Guardian UK
By PETE YOST

WASHINGTON (AP) - CIA Director George Tenet, buffeted by controversies over intelligence lapses about suspected weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, has resigned. President Bush said Thursday that Tenet was leaving for personal reasons and ``I will miss him.''

Tenet, 51, informed Bush of his decision in an hour-long White House meeting Wednesday night, and the president announced the news in a hurriedly arranged appearance before television cameras before leaving on a trip to Europe.

Tenet's move came amid new storms over intelligence issues, including an alleged Pentagon leak of highly classified intelligence to Ahmad Chalabi, an Iraqi politician. At the same time, a federal grand jury is pressing its investigation of the leak of a CIA operative's name, and Bush acknowledged he might be questioned in the case.

The CIA denied that Tenet's resignation was connected with any of the those issues. ``Absolutely not,'' said Mark Mansfield, CIA spokesman.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 3:12:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "SHAKESPEARE TURNS A SPOTLIGHT ON BUSH AND IRAQ" ::

Received via e-mail newsletter
By Arianna Huffington

As our anger, anguish and anxiety about Iraq continue to mount, I find myself looking for clarity and understanding not in the media's daily play-by-play, which confuses more than it illuminates (Did we win in Fallujah or get our butts kicked?), but rather in Shakespeare's "Henry V."
I've found it contains far more truth about our present situation than anything coming out of the White House or the Pentagon.

The impetus for this rearward search for insight was an invitation to take part in a debate sponsored by The Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C., about the wisdom of King Henry V's decision to lead an English army into
France in 1415.

The parallels between Shakespeare's wartime king and our current president, George II, are many and delicious — from the pair's hard-partying younger days (Prince Hal was a 15th-century feckless frat boy-prankster) to the challenge of following in a powerful father's footsteps right up to the critical matter of whether their wartime
adventures made them courageous commanders or failed leaders.

The central question, then as now, was whether the invasion of another country was a war of choice or a war of necessity. If the answer is a war of choice — and it is for both Henry and W — then the inevitable conclusion is that they were both immoral wars. For there can be no moral
war of choice.

As Shakespeare has a commoner tell a disguised Henry on the night before the decisive battle at Agincourt: "If the cause be not good, the King himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs, and arms, and heads, chopped off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day and
cry all, 'We died at such a place.'"

King Henry, unlike W who doesn't seem to lose any sleep over a heavenly reckoning, was so desperately worried about it that he worked hard to get the clergy to endorse his war. With the blessing of the Almighty's representatives on Earth secured, he could then invade France with a "conscience washed as pure as sin with baptism."

W didn't need such confirmation since he has a direct line to the Almighty. Instead he did all he could to secure the backing of the closest thing we have to clergy in our secular political world, Colin Powell.

As the horrors of the war in Iraq are coming home to us every day — 5,000 young American soldiers dead or wounded, liberators transformed into torturers, thousands of dead Iraqi civilians — we're reminded again that wars are so dehumanizing that only actual threats, not imperial dreams,
can justify embarking on them.

Shakespeare's play is full of the imagery of violence and aggression. In his speech before the Battle of Harfleur, Henry urges his men to "imitate the action of the tiger . . . disguise fair nature with hard-favoured
rage." In our own time we cloak the shattering of civilized restraint in the pretense that it's just "a few bad apples," not the impact of war itself, which explains the barbaric behavior. Shakespeare knew better. There are always atrocities committed in the course of battle. That's what war does to people, which is why we're not supposed to fight wars of choice.

When Tim Russert asked Bush on "Meet the Press" — "Do you believe the war in Iraq is a war of choice or a war of necessity?" — the president's initial response was, "I think that's an interesting question. Please elaborate on that a little bit."

So no matter how many "good causes" he tried to string together — WMD, yellowcake, Saddam's phantom ties to al-Qaida and 9/11, Saddam's torture chambers, Saddam's mass graves, an outpost of democracy in the Middle East — in the end, this was ultimately a war of choice.

The dying Henry IV had told his son to engage in foreign wars to distract the people from domestic crises: "busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels." The invasion of France is supposed to turn frivolous Hal into a strong leader — his youthful indiscretions a thing of the past.

Both men surrounded themselves with those in favor of going to war: Bush with his neocons, and Henry with the churchmen my fellow debater David Brooks dubbed the "theocons."

And both the president and the king were motivated by personal animus toward their enemy. Henry becomes enraged when the Dauphin sends him a gift of tennis balls: "This mock of his/Hath turned his balls to gun-stones." For his part, Bush was clearly furious that Saddam had once
tried to have Bush's Daddy assassinated. It was so personal, he now keeps the gun Saddam was captured with in a study next to the Oval Office as a souvenir. But responding to perceived personal slights or settling old
family scores is no justification for sending young soldiers to die.

Contemplating the invasion of France, Henry V says, "France being ours, we'll bend it to our awe/Or break it all to pieces." Iraq gave us shock and awe, and Powell's Pottery Barn rule: "You break it, you own it." We
did — and now we do. And we'll be paying it off for years and years and years.

In Henry V's time, history was much slower to cast its verdict. It took 30 years for England to lose control of France and dissolve into civil war. In the end, Henry “lost France and made his England bleed.”

The verdict on Iraq is already in: George II has lost the war, emboldened our enemies and made America bleed.

© 2004 arianna huffington.
distributed by tribune media services, inc.

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posted by me

:: 3:05:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Bush Consults Lawyer in CIA Leak Case" ::

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush has consulted an outside lawyer about possibly representing him in the grand jury investigation of who leaked the name of a covert CIA operative last year, White House officials said Wednesday night.

There was no indication that Bush was a target of the leak investigation, but the president's move suggested he anticipates being questioned about what he knows.

A federal grand jury has questioned numerous White House and administration officials to learn who leaked the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame, wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, to the news media. Wilson has charged that officials made the disclosure in an effort to discredit him.

"It speaks for itself that the president initially claimed he wanted to get to the bottom of this, but now he's suddenly retained a lawyer," said Jano Cabrera, spokesman for the Democratic National Committee. "Bush shouldn't drag the country through grand juries and legal maneuvering. President Bush should come forward with what he knows and come clean with the American people."

Plame was first identified by syndicated columnist and TV commentator Robert Novak in a column last July. Novak said his information came from administration sources.

Wilson has said he believes his wife's name was leaked because of his criticism of Bush administration claims that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium from Niger, which Wilson investigated for the CIA and found to be untrue.

Disclosure of an undercover officer's identity can be a federal crime. The grand jury has heard from witnesses and combed through thousands of pages of documents turned over by the White House, but returned no indictments.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 9:50:00 PM [+] ::
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