SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- A campground at Natural Bridges National Monument has been closed because of bubonic plague detected among field mice and chipmunks.
Plague also has been found this spring in rodent populations at Mesa Verde National Park and Colorado National Monument.
Not that I was planning a visit, but this clinches it
National Park Service officials said there never has been a reported human case of bubonic plague originating from the parks or national monuments. "We come down on the conservative side when it comes to closing campgrounds," said Joe Winkelmaier of the U.S. Public Health Service. "We just like to be sure when it comes to plague."
Good idea
Several weeks ago, park rangers noticed a large number of dead field mice at Natural Bridges, about 40 miles west of Blanding. Chief Ranger Ralph Jones showed that tests indicated they died from the plague.
"Joe, I think we've got a problem here."
"Yeah, Ralph, not much git's by you."
Rangers plan to use insecticides to kill fleas in the campground area. Humans usually contract bubonic plague after being bitten by fleas that have bitten infected rodents. The campground could be reopened as soon as next week.
Plague occurs throughout the West, but is concentrated in the Four Corners area of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. An average of 18 cases involving humans are reported each year in the United States, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About one in seven victims die.
Posted by: Steve ||
05/16/2006 10:54 ||
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#1
Case in LA earlier this year. 2 cases in NYC last year.
Another hygiene disease, like avian flu. If you take precautions, like eliminating rodents, you prevent the disease.
I'd be curious if the pet population soared after the Black Death hit Europe. It would be reasonable to assume that communitied with a lot of pets could have seen less illness.
Ian Brown has revealed how he pretended to be a Muslim while in prison. The iconic former Stone Roses frontman revealed in a recent interview that he temporarily converted to Islam to get better prison food.
Temporarily? Heh, guess what, there ain't no such thing as 'temporary' in Islam.
Brown served a sentence in 1999 for an air-rage conviction. He says, "My sister bought me the Koran in 1990. I always thought the stories in it were magical."
"So I'd already had a love affair with it, but when I got in jail the first day, I saw what everyone else was eating."
"I didn't know what the f**k was in the pies, but the lads said if you were Muslim you got chickpeas, lentils, rice, chicken curry on a Friday. So I said my religion was Muslim." So, in muslim eyes, is he an apostate or merely someone using taqiyya against an infidel government?
None of the numerous UFOs reported over Britain in the last 30 years was a flying saucer, the government said as it released previously secret defence files probing mysterious aerial sightings. The declassified study -- "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) in the UK Air Defence Region" -- concluded that such UAP do exist and are "usually described as coloured lights and sometimes as shapes".
"Very occasionally they are reported with sound and even with smell," it added.
Even more occasionally, they're reported with fantastic looking creatures who all speak English, just like on Star Trek.
But it noted that "reports occur because they comprise unfamiliar and unexpected lights, shapes and patterns, in the context in which the observer sees them. The phenomena occur on a daily, worldwide basis".
Man-made objects, such as airplanes, are also often mis-seen or are actually meteors re-entering the Earth's atmosphere causing "bouyant plasmas". Rare weather, atmospheric conditions or other "barely understood" natural events could also be causes.
"There is no evidence that any UAP seen in the UKADR are incursions by objects of any intelligent (extra-terrestrial or foreign) origin, or that they represent any hostile intent," the unnamed author of the report said. "There is no evidence that 'solid' objects exist which could cause a collision hazard."
The study, which aimed to assess whether Britain was threatened by UAPs and "should the opportunity arise, to identify any potential military technologies of interest", concluded there was "nothing of defence intelligence value". But it warned Royal Air Force pilots, who are most likely to encounter such phenomena, not to try to intercept UAPs because of the threat of collision.
That just wouldn't do.
The report, marked "Secret. For UK Eyes Only", was made public following a request under the Freedom of Information Act.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/16/2006 00:17 ||
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#1
Let's not forget reflection of planet Venus and swamp gas or a formation of birds with highly reflective underbellies. ;-)
#4
we had one here in Lymington in South uk supposedly about a year ago, some guy claimed he filmed it and had perfect footage of it morphing into all differant shapes - Dumb fck local papers believed him too even though he couldnt produce this marvalous tape. On a side note though lifters are pretty cool if any of you heard of them, i've seen one working and are very magical almost, anyway thats enough from me today cya all
#12
"There is no evidence that any UAP seen in the UKADR are incursions by objects of any intelligent (extra-terrestrial or foreign) origin, or that they represent any hostile intent," the unnamed author of the report said. "There is no evidence that 'solid' objects exist which could cause a collision hazard."
Did this jerkoff ever see a crop circle ? There are about 2 dozen per year in Britain. Instead of making an assinine cover-yer-ass statement, why not point out that crop circles exist, and they cannot be explained. And remember, this guy is actually paid a salary.
#14
No. Note the red line right through the middle with Army on one side and Air Force on the other.
Note one pilot on one side and one on the other.
Its division of labor!
Crop circles are created by a group of fellows with plywood, ropes and a stick. The stick goes into the ground, the rope is attached to it and used to measure out a circle as they lay down the plywood and step on it time and time again to push down the crops.
I've seen a show where they produced the circles to pre-produced designs they made on a computer. They made the patters quickly (within an hour or two) and left little trace afterwards (circles tend to bisect a road or trail through the crops to allow for that). The documentary also compared their claims to evidence (entry visas and plane tickets) to a crop circle or two that appeared in New Zealand.
#17
Forget crop circles.
Just look at tthe reports made by trained observers:
POlice
Military on the ground
Public officials
Pilots military and civilian
VArious Naval personal
Astronomers (tough to crack)
Radar operators at all facilities (less w/ current filters)
#19
Please point out the astronomers that have said UFOs are real? They all say the odds of life out there is likely but I've not heard of a single serious astronomer that believes UFOs are real.
Beyond that your list of other folks are folks that might just as easily misunderstand how Venus can skip on the atmosphere (an idiot president made that mistake), how a blimp could rotate at night causing silent lights to race and stop suddenly (first call is usually to Goodyear to find out where the blimp is), or about stealth bombers flying above their security classification (not gonna get an answer to that one).
And I don't think its a coincidence that Robert Goddard the father of American rocketry moved his facilities to outside of Roswell New Mexico in the late 40s. Yeah he died prior to the Roswell incident but with the Cold War heating up its likely that his research continued and was covered up.
#20
WHY DON'T ASTRONOMERS EVER SEE UFOs? James E. MacDonald
I have had this question put to me by many persons, including a number of astronomers. Once I was speaking to a group from an important laboratory of astronomy when the director asked why astronomers never see them. In the room, among his staff, were two astronomers who had seen unconventional
objects while doing observing but who had asked that the information they had given me about their sightings be kept confidential. I understand such restrictions, but some of them make things a bit difficult. This phenomenon of professional persons seeing unidentified objects and then being extremely loath to admit it is far more common than one might guess. After hearing of an evidently very significant sighting by a prominent physical scientist who was hiking in some western mountains when he spotted a metallic-looking disc, examined it with binoculars, and saw it shoot up into the air (according to my second-hand report from a professional colleague), I tried for months to secure a direct report of it from him; he was unwilling to discuss it openly with me. NICAP has had reports from prominent executives in large technical corporations who insisted that, just because of their positions, their names not be used publicly. Similar instances could be cited almost ad infinitum. The very types of witnesses whose testimony would carry greatest credence often prove to be the most reluctant to admit their sightings; they seem to feel they have the most to lose. Within a day of this writing, I spoke to a veteran airlines pilot about a sighting in which he was involved about a decade ago. After the official "explanation" was publicized, he decided he'd never report another one. I predict that social psychologists are going to have a field day, in a few years, studying the "pluralistic ignorance" that led so many persons to conceal so many sightings for so long.
Returning, however, to the question of why astronomers never see UFOs, a relevant quantitative consideration needs to be cited at once. According to a recent count, the membership of the American Astronomical Society is about 1800; by contrast, our country has about 350,000 law-enforcement officers. With almost 200 times as many police, sheriffs' deputies, state troopers, etc., as there are professional astronomers, it is no surprise that many more UFO reports come from the law-enforcement officers than from the astronomers. Furthermore, the notion that astronomers spend most of their time scanning the skies is quite incorrect; the average patrolman almost certainly does more random looking about than the average professional astronomer.
Despite these considerations, there are on record many sightings from astronomers, particularly the amateurs, who far outnumber the professionals. A few examples will be considered.
1. Case 20. Las Cruces, N.M., August 20, 1949:
A good account of the sighting by Dr. Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of the planet Pluto, is given by Menzel (Ref. 25). From my own discussions with Dr. Tombaugh, I confirmed the main outlines of this incident. At about 10:00 p.m. on 8/20/49, he, his wife, and his mother-in-law were in the yard of his Las Cruces home, admiring what Tombaugh described as a sky of rare transparency, when Tombaugh, looking almost directly towards zenith, spotted an array of pale yellow lights moving rapidly across the sky towards the southeast. He called them to the attention of the two others, who saw them just before they disappeared halfway to the horizon. The entire array subtended an angle which Tombaugh put at about one degree, and it took only a few seconds to cross 50 or 60 degrees of sky. The array comprised six "windowlike" rectangles of light, formed into a symmetric pattern; they moved too fast for aircraft, too slowly for a meteor, and made no sound. Menzel quotes Tombaugh as saying, "I have never seen anything like it before or since, and I have spent a lot of time where the night sky could be seen well."
Discussion:
Dr. Menzel explains this phenomenon as resulting from reflection of lights from the ground, possibly "the lighted windows of a house" reflected by an inversion or haze layer aloft. The movement he explains as resulting from a ripple on the haze layer. Such an "explanation" is not merely difficult to understand; it is incredible. For an "inversion layer" to produce such a near-normal reflection of window lights would demand a discontinuity of refractive index so enormously large compared with anything known to occur in our atmosphere as to make it utterly out of the question. However, it has been just such casual ad hoc explanations as this by which Menzel has, in his writings, used meteorological optics to rationalize case after case with no attention to crucial _quantitative_ details. It is a simple matter to show that even inversions of intensity many orders of magnitude larger than have ever been observed yield reflectivities (at the kind of near-normal incidence involved in Tombaugh's sighting) that are only a tiny fraction of one per cent (Ref. 36). In fact, I see no way of accounting for the Tombaugh observation in terms of known meteorological or astronomical phenomena.
2. Case 21. Ft. Sumner, New Mexico, July 10, 1947:
A midday sighting by a University of New Mexico meteoriticist, Dr. Lincoln La Paz, and members of his family was summarized by _Life_ magazine years ago (Ref. 37) without identifying La Paz's name. Bloecher (Ref. 8) gives more details and notes that this is officially an Unidentified. At 4:47 p.m. MST on 7/10/47, four members of the La Paz family nearly simultaneously noted "a curious bright object almost motionless" low on the western horizon, near a cloudbank. The object was described as ellipsoidal, whitish, and having sharply-outlined edges. It wobbled a bit as it hovered stationary just above the horizon, then moved upwards, passed behind clouds and re-emerged farther north in a time interval which La Paz estimated to be so short as to call for speeds in excess of conventional aircraft speeds. It passed in front of dark clouds and seemed self-luminous by contrast. It finally disappeared amongst the clouds. La Paz estimated it to be perhaps 20 miles away, judging from the clouds involved; and he put its length at perhaps 100-200 ft.
Discussion:
This observation is attributed by Menzel (Ref. 24, p. 29) to "some sort of horizontal mirage, perhaps one of a very brilliant cloud shining like silver in the sunlight - a cloud that was itself invisible because of the darker clouds in the foreground." As nearly as I am able to understand that explanation, it seems to be based an the notion that mirage-refraction can neatly _superimpose_ the image of some distant object (here his "brilliant cloud") upon some nearer object in the middle distance (here his "darker clouds"). That is a fallacious notion. If any optical distortions did here bring into view some distant bright cloud, it would not be possible to receive along immediately adjacent optical paths an image of the intermediate clouds. Furthermore, the extremely unstable lapse rates typical of the southwestern desert areas under afternoon conditions produce inferior mirages, not superior mirages of the looming type here invoked by Menzel. Rapid displacements, vertically and horizontally, are not typical of mirage phenomena. Hence Menzel's explanations cannot be accepted for this sighting.
3. Case 22. Harborside, Me., July 3, 1947:
An observation by an amateur astronomer, John F. Cole, reported to official investigative offices near the beginning of the period of general public awareness of the UFO problem, involves an erratically maneuvering cluster of about 10 objects, seen near 2:30 p.m. EDT on 7/3/47 on the eastern shore of Penobscot Bay. Hearing a roar overhead, Cole looked up to see the objects milling about like a moving swarm of bees as they traveled northwestward at a seemingly high speed, as nearly as he could judge size and distance. The objects were light-colored, and no wings could be discerned on most, although two appeared to have some sort of darker projections somewhat resembling wings. In 10-15 seconds they passed out of sight.
Discussion:
This is one of several dozen cases admitted to the Unidentified category in one of the earliest official reports on UFOs (Ref. 6). I have tried, unsuccessfully, to locate J. F. Cole. An account of the case is given by Bloecher (Ref. 8). It might be remarked that "swarming bee" UFO observations have cropped up repeatedly over the years, and from all over the world.
4. Case 23. Ogra, Latvia, July 26, 1965:
An astronomer whom I know recently toured a number of observatories in the USSR, and brought back the word that a majority of Russian astronomers have paid little attention to Russian UFO reports (details of which are quite similar to American UFO reports, my colleague established), a frequently- cited reason being that the American astronomer, Menzel, had given adequate optical explanations of all such sightings. I must agree with Dr. Felix Zigel who, writing on the UFO problem in _Soviet Life_ (Ref. 38), remarked that Menzel's explanation in terms of atmospheric optics "does not hold water." It would, for example, be straining meteorological optics to try to account in such terms for a sighting by three Latvian astronomers whose report Zigel cites in his article. At 9:35 p.m. on 7/26/65, while studying noctilucent clouds, R. Vitolniek and two colleagues visually observed a starlike object drifting slowly westward. Under 8-power binocular magnification, the light exhibited finite angular diameter, so a telescope was used to examine it. In the telescope, it appeared as a composite of four smaller objects. There was a central sphere around which, "at a distance of two diameters, were three spheres resembling the one in the center." The outer spheres slowly rotated around the central sphere as the array gradually moved across the sky, diminishing in size as if leaving the Earth. After about 20 minutes' observation, the astronomers noted the outer spheres moving away from the central object, and by about 10:00 p.m., the entire group had moved so far away that they were no longer visible.
Discussion:
I have no first-hand information on this report, of course. The group of objects was seen at an angular elevation of about 60 degrees, far too high to invoke any mirage-effects or other familiar refractive anomalies. Furthermore, the composite nature of the array scarcely suggests an optical distortion of the telescope, a possibility also rendered improbable from the observed angular velocity and apparent recessional motion.
5. Case 24. Kislovodsk, Caucasus, August 8, 1967:
Zigel, who is affiliated with the Moscow Aviation Institute, reports in the same article (Ref. 38), a sighting at 8:40 p.m., 8/8/67, made by astronomer Anatoli Sazanov and colleagues working at the Mountain Astrophysical Station of the USSR Academy of Sciences, near Kislovodsk. Sazanov and ten other staff members watched an " asymmetric crescent, with its convex side turned in the direction of its movement" moving eastward across the northern sky at an angular elevation of about 20 degrees. Just ahead of it, and moving at the same angular speed was a point of light comparable to a star of the first magnitude. The crescent-like object was reddish-yellow, had an angular breadth of about two-thirds that of the moon, and left vapor-like trails aft of the ends of the crescent horns. As it receded, it diminished in size and thus "instantly disappeared".
Discussion:
If we may accept as reliable the principal features of the sighting, how might we account for it? The "faintly luminous ribbons" trailing from the horns suggest a high-flying jet, of course; but the asymmetry and the reddish-yellow coloration fail to fit that notion. Also, it was an object of rather large angular size, about 20 minutes of arc, so that an aircraft of wingspan, say, 150 feet would have been only about five miles away whence engine-noise would have been audible under the quiet conditions of a mountain observatory. More significant, if it had been an aircraft at a slant range of five miles, and at 20 degrees elevation, its altitude would have been only about 9000 ft above the observatory. For the latitude and date, the sun was about ten degrees below the western horizon, so direct sun-illumination on an aircraft at 9000 ft above observatory level would be out of the question. Hence the luminosity goes unexplained. Clearly, satellites and meteors can be ruled out. The astronomers' observation cannot be readily explained in any conventional terms. Zigel remarks that the object was also seen in the town of Kislovodsk, and that another reddish crescent was observed in the same area on the evening of July 17, 1967.
6. Case 25. Flagstaff, Ariz., May 20, 1950:
Near noon on 5/20/50, Dr. Seymour Hess observed an object from the grounds of the Lowell Observatory. Although Hess' principal field of interest has been meteorology, we may here consider him an astronomer-by-association, since he was at Lowell doing work on planetary atmospheres, on leave from Florida State University. Spotting an unusual, small object moving from SE to NW, he had time to send his son after binoculars, which he used in the later portions of his observation. He said it looked somewhat disc-shaped, or perhaps somewhat like a tipped parachute. It had no wings or visible means of propulsion. Dr. Hess indicated to me that he probably had it in sight a total of about three minutes, during which it passed directly between him and a cloud, before disappearing (into a cloud Hess feels, though this point was not certain). From meteorological data bearing on the cloud-base height, Hess deduced that the cloud bases lay 12,000 ft above terrain (vs. Weather Bureau visual estimate of 6000 ft above terrain). The zenith angle was about 45 degrees, so the slant range would have been 17,000 ft or 8,000 ft, depending on which cloud height is accepted. For its 3 minutes estimated angular diameter (dime at 50 ft, Hess estimated), the diameter would then come out of the order of 10 to 15 feet. His subjective impression was that it was possibly smaller than that.
#21
Astronomers don't look in the sky and don't talk is not really a convincing arguement since their budgets would soar if they could find proof and their contrary their budgets would dwindle if they didn't keep the telescopes working constantly.
Logic rarely convinces UFO believers anymore than it convinces those that want to believe Sept 11 was a big government conspiracy so I won't even try. Good luck in your conspiracy world, its gotta be a scary place.
#22
Beyond that your list of other folks are folks that might just as easily misunderstand how Venus can skip on the atmosphere (an idiot president made that mistake),
Whic idiot President ? The one who was a NAval Commander ?
Venus just isn't that exciting. And it hardly ever comes down to
treetop level like lot's of UFO's.
how a blimp could rotate at night causing silent lights to race and stop suddenly (first call is usually to Goodyear to find out where the blimp is),
I guess you'd do that if you were doing a proper investigation.
Blimps are funny.
or about stealth bombers flying above their security classification (not gonna get an answer to that one).
You won't get an answer, because it probably wasn't .
#24
Logic's funny.
Logically I don't think that all of my fellow citizens who report odd things in the sky are morons or moonbats.
Logically I have an open mind and an unsuspicious bent, so I
doubt that folks make this stuff up seeing as how it is common knowledge that one will be ostracised. Common knowledge for the last 50 years.
Doesn't seem to stop tho'.
#27
Jim#6 you found the right President, just goes to show that you can run a Sub and a country and still be an idiot. My other points you simply agreed how people could mistake those common events (99% or so of known UFO events) as UFOs.
The remaining 1% are usually hoaxes or lies but there is noway to be sure because there is no evidence and generally science (Astronomers included) depend upon evidence. 50+ years of sightings and zero evidence. I don't think our government is so efficient when they can't even seal the border and manage to lose one dollar in every four they collect in taxes. Perhaps the UN is more efficient but I doubt it.
#28
Most astronomers don't look through telescopes at all - they take photos and look at those. The only people actually looking through telescopes are the amateurs. There have been some photographs over the years that have been classified, because they show things that cannot be explained.
I've had my own "personal" encounter with UFOs, driving across northern Texas in the 1960's. Saw four green meteors go shooting across the sky, north to south, with a pale yellow light following them that suddenly made a right angle turn. I've never heard of a meteor making a right-angle turn, and I'd like an explanation. The four green lights were definitely meteors, and acted like them. The pale yellow light was at about the same altitude (30-50 miles high). We had NO aircraft that could fly that high in 1966, and none that flew at night.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
05/16/2006 22:20 Comments ||
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#29
rjschwarz: Please point out the astronomers that have said UFOs are real?
Hmmm. Indeed. But why not? It's simple. Astronomers livelihood is dependent entirely on funding. Now imagine an astronomer that would claim he/she saw a UFO. What you think would happen? Yes, right, funding would be pulled lickety split, publishing in journals would be refused or the editors would claim that articles mysteriously disappeared. Astronomers don't look for UFOs, and even if they saw one, they would look the other way. That's the way it is.
Of course, the above does apply to other disciplines, if you rock the boat with something far less out there than UFOs. Just try to come up with a new idea that clashes with established theoretical consideration and you may as well start looking for a job in the industrial sector.
KHARTOUM, May 15 (Reuters) - A Sudanese Anglican priest has been arrested on charges of kidnapping a Muslim woman who came to his church wanting to convert to Christianity, clergymen said on Monday. Police detained the Reverend Elia Kumundan on Sunday and held him along with at least four other people, one from another church, after the 23-year-old woman, who cannot be identified for security reasons, disappeared in March. "The charges are kidnapping," said Sylvester Thomas Kambaya, provost of All Saints' Episcopal Cathedral in Khartoum. "It seemed the church is being targeted because one of them ... told me that they thought we had helped her to hide or sponsored her ... to leave the country," he said.
Kambaya said it was not the first time church employees had been harassed by the authorities for accepting apostates.
Apostasy is a controversial issue within Islam. Some scholars say it is punishable by death while others believe in the freedom of religion.
A few do? Reeaaaally? In the Sudan?
Sudan, under Islamic sharia law since 1983, executed politician Mahmoud Muhammed Taha in 1985, accusing him of apostasy.
The Reverend Joseph Taban Lasuba said Kumundan had been arrested for trying to convert the woman to Christianity. "They are very clever -- they will not come in the line of religion but it is always in the background," Lasuba said. "They know if they make it religious, the world is watching them," Lasuba said, adding he had been through similar experiences.
The clergymen said state security services had harrassed or even tortured converts in the past. Some had even been threatened with death by their own families and most had been forced to go into hiding or flee the country as the church was not able to protect them.
Sudan's new constitution was created last year after a January 2005 peace deal ended two decades of war between the mainly Christian and animist south and the northern Islamist government. It enshrines freedom of religion.
POLICE in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare, yesterday said they had rounded up more than 10,000 homeless people and squatters in a new clean-up operation designed to rid the city of "disorderly elements". Dubbed Operation Round-Up, it comes exactly a year after the authorities embarked on a controversial campaign of demolishing shacks, which reduced whole residential areas to piles of rubble and forced thousands of people to seek refuge in churches and with friends. According to the police, homeless people and street children are behind much of the crime in Harare.
Saudi Arabia has postponed plans to replace male sales staff in lingerie shops with women.
The move had been its first cautious attempt to bring more women into the work-place.
But even minor reforms have incurred the wrath of ultra-conservative religious leaders, such as the Grand Mufti Shaikh Abdel-Aziz al-Sheikh, who has denounced them as "steps towards immorality and hellfire".
In a country that requires women to cover up in public, and bans them from driving, shop assistants are invariably men - even in stores selling women's underwear and cosmetics. The kingdom's sole exceptions are the few all-female shopping centres.
King Abdallah's government last year ordered lingerie shop owners to hire all-female sales staff by next month. In 2007, the policy was to have been extended to stores selling dresses and abayas (the black robes worn by women for modesty).
The policy is being pushed by the Saudi labour minister, Ghazi Algosaibi, a former Saudi ambassador to Britain. But Mr Algosaibi has become a hate figure among puritanical Wahhabi clerics.
In an audio message last month, Osama bin Laden said he was a leading "heretic" who should be killed.
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/16/2006 12:48 Comments ||
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#6
And now pictures of veiled women in media are prohibited. Acn't be seen, can't drive, can't votre, can't work, can't be recorded visually as ever having lived. Nice place SA.
Looks like the recent reversal and withdrawl of images from media is a deparate plea to Osama to leave the "pious" alone.
KUWAIT CITY - The Kuwaiti parliament broke up in chaos on Monday when reformist MPs walked out in protest at attempts to block a redrawing of constituencies intended to counter alleged vote-buying. The reformers left the session when voting began on a motion tabled by conservative and tribal MPs that sought to refer a government-backed bill reducing the number of consituencies from 25 to 10 to the constitutional court.
Twenty-eight of parliaments 50 MPs walked out when a government minister became the first to vote in favour of the motion. Chants of Down with the government, Long live Kuwait, We want five (constituencies), came from a packed gallery as the MPs mounted the unprecedented walkout. The reformist MPs want to go further than the government bill and slash the number of constituencies to five in a bid to fight vote-buying and other irregularities.
Government members and their supporters in parliament left after the opposition walkout, prompting the reformist MPs to return.
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05/16/2006 00:00 ||
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Could it be that Fidel Castro, one of the great communist revolutionary leaders of all time, is one of the world's wealthiest despots? According to this article from Cuba's state-run Granma newspaper, Fidel has offered to resign if the magazine can prove that he has 'even a single dollar.'
Four-day death toll passes 80 as Sao Paulo, Brazil, erupts in unprecedented wave of violence
(AP) Masked men attacked bars, banks and police stations with machine guns. Gangs set buses on fire. And inmates at dozens of prisons took guards hostage in an unprecedented four-day wave of violence around South America's largest city that left more than 80 dead by Monday.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva prepared to send in 4,000 federal troops, and officials worried the violence could spread 220 miles northeast to Rio de Janeiro, where police were put on high alert and extra patrols were dispatched to slums where drug gang leaders live.
"What happened in Sao Paulo was a provocation, a show of force by organized crime," Silva said. He said the gangs' "tentacles are spread around the world and we must use a lot of intelligence" to quell the chaos their attacks caused.
The violence was triggered by an attempt to isolate gang leaders, who control many of Sao Paulo's teeming, notoriously corrupt prisons, by transferring eight of them Thursday to a high-security facility hundreds of miles away from this city of 18 million people.
The leaders of the First Capital Command gang, or PCC, reportedly used cell phones to order the attacks. Gang members began riddling police cars with bullets, hurling grenades at police stations and attacking officers in their homes and afterwork hangouts.
Then, on Sunday night, the gang employed a new tactic: sending gunmen onto buses, ordering passengers and drivers off and torching the vehicles.
Thousands of drivers refused to work Monday, leaving an estimated 2.9 million people scrambling to find a way to their jobs. While most stores and businesses remained open, almost all shut early, creating one of the city's worst traffic jams ever as workers struggled in vain to get home.
Worried parents kept many children out of schools, and many businesses shut by 4 p.m. so workers could get home by dark. Sao Paulo's main stock exchange, the Bovespa, canceled after-hours trading to let investors and workers leave early.
Near hastily shuttered businesses in a blue-collar neighborhood, a dozen officers wielding shotguns, pistols and revolvers said they were not scared of overnight gang attacks.
"Everything's closing up, but we'll be here waiting," said a grim Officer Edvan Oliveira, his finger resting on the trigger of his shotgun. "We want them to come."
As two buses smoldered near his home in a working-class neighborhood, engineering student Julio Cesar said the violence left him with a choice of skipping classes and risking his future or going to his night college and fearing his family could get caught in the crossfire of evening attacks.
"Of course I'm scared to take the bus, because now they are targeting people and not just police," said Cesar, 19. "I'm also scared to leave because my mom lives here."
There was no mention of injuries in the nearly 50 reports of bus burnings.
But 21 new killings were reported Sunday night and Monday morning, the state government of Sao Paulo said, putting the death toll at 81 _ 39 police officers and prison guards, 38 suspected gang members and four civilians caught in 181 attacks since Friday.
Prison officials said they do not know how many inmates have died in Sao Paulo's lockups because they were just retaking control of most of them. At least 91 people were arrested since Friday, police said.
Sao Paulo's Roman Catholic archbishop, Claudio Hummes, said the government had not done enough to stop the violence.
"Society cannot accept being held hostage by criminals," he said. "The state must improve the prison system to stop it from being a school for crime."
The governor of Sao Paulo state, Claudio Lembo, insisted that the federal troops offered by Silva were not needed.
"We are in control of the city and we will preserve this control," Lembo declared. "At this moment the army is unnecessary."
The violence also weighed on financial markets, helping to drive stocks down more than 2 percent as a perception took hold that Brazil is more risky than previously thought. The country's currency, the real, fell 2 percent against the U.S. dollar.
The PCC was founded in 1993 in Sao Paulo's Taubate Penitentiary and became involved in drug and arms trafficking, kidnappings, bank robberies and extortion.
It staged a massive prison uprising in 2001 in which 19 inmates died, and attacked more than 50 police stations in November 2003. Three officers and two suspected gang members were killed and 12 people injured in those attacks.
By Monday night, all 73 prison rebellions that broke out had been quelled and police pointed to a grim figure to push their claim that the situation would soon come back to something like normal. Mostly police officers and prison guards were killed Friday and Saturday nights _ but the tally of dead in overnight violence from Sunday to Monday was almost exclusively suspected gang members killed in shootouts with police.
In Mato Grosso do Sul state, which borders Sao Paulo, three prison riots were brought under control.
Gilson Adei, 35, driving one of the few buses in downtown Sao Paulo, demanded authorities fight back against the criminals.
"It's absurd, the gang members can do whatever they want? They can just start a war? And why would they attack the transportation, normal people? Next it will be schools," he said. "We should get the military on every corner and kill them.
IF YOU are worried about being attacked or killed by a violent criminal, just be glad you are not living in Neolithic Britain. From 4000 to 3200 BC, Britons had a 1 in 14 chance of being bashed on the head, and a 1 in 50 chance of dying from their injuries.
Grisly figures from the first systematic survey of early Neolithic British skulls reveal that life then was no rural idyll. "It's certainly more violent than we'd considered," says Rick Schulting of Queen's University Belfast, UK, who conducted the study with Mick Wysocki at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston.
The discovery of craniums from the New Stone Age with signs of human-inflicted trauma is nothing new but this is the first clue to the overall frequency of violence. Schulting and Wysocki have so far identified and studied the remains of about 350 skulls, mostly from southern England. The pair found healed depressed fractures in 4 to 5 per cent of the skulls, and unhealed injuries in about 2 per cent - suggesting the person died from their wounds, or at some point in the attack.
Most of the fatal blows were to the left side of the head, which would make sense if two right-handed people were fighting, says Schulting. The injuries were mostly caused by blunt objects, although some of the skulls seem to have been hacked by stone axes and there is some evidence that ears were chopped off. Schulting presented the work at last month's annual conference of the Society for American Archaeology in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
From issue 2551 of New Scientist magazine, 11 May 2006, page 16
#2
and a 1 in 50 chance of dying from their injuries
Does this prove blunt trauma is a good stopper, but a bad killer???
IIRC, from what I've read online, the FBI stats are that (hand)guns wounds in the USA have a 5% lethality rate (IE 1 in 20 chance of dying), while knives have 15%.
(I also seem to recall that assault rifles calibers are at about 15% (Fackler states a 14% mortality rate for the 7,62x39 from his Viet Nam experience as a war surgeon), while shotguns are about 66%, I've even read in a swell russian site that 95% of thoses incapacited by shotgun blast during police raids die, against 5% of thoses incapacitated by pistols, not sure what to make of this.
Of course, all this supposes modern medecine, figures would probably would be higher without it, not counting short term survival from sepsis, permanent disabilties, etc, etc... prevented by it).
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/16/2006 18:29 Comments ||
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#8
If they ran this in the fertile crescent, I bet they'd find most of the fatal blows were to the right side of the head, which would make sense if right-handed pre-muzzies were attacking.
Big deal, Saint-Denis is an historically communist area, now *heavily* islamized, and besides, the bobo socialist Paris mayor and his green friends already made mummia an honorary citizen of Paris. This is a cause célèbre.
Check this site, by the way.
PHILADELPHIA - A street in a Paris suburb has been named in honor of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted of the 1981 murder of a Philadelphia police officer.
"In France, they see him as a towering figure," said Suzanne Ross, co-chair of the Free Mumia Coalition of New York City, who was part of an April 29 ceremony to dedicate the Rue Mumia Abu-Jamal in the city of St. Denis.
Ross said the street is in the town's Human Rights district, which includes Nelson Mandela Stadium.
Abu-Jamal, a former radio reporter and member of the Black Panther party, was sentenced to death in 1982 for the shooting of 25-year-old Daniel Faulkner. He has maintained his innocence. His writings and taped speeches have made him a cause celebre among Hollywood activists, foreign politicians and some death-penalty opponents who believe he was the victim of a racist justice system.
The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year agreed to consider three counts of Abu-Jamal's appeal, allegations that there was racial bias in jury selection, that the prosecutor gave an improper summation and that a judge in a previous appeal was biased.
Faulkner's widow, Maureen, called the street dedication "disgusting" and urged Philadelphia residents planning a visit to Paris this summer to cancel their trips. In 2001, the Paris City Council made Abu-Jamal an honorary citizen.
"This is so unnerving for me to get this news," Faulkner said from Los Angeles, where she lives. "It's insulting to the police officers of Philadelphia that they are naming a street after a murderer."
Daniel Faulkner has been honored by a memorial plaque installed at the scene of the shooting at 13th and Locust Streets in Philadelphia.
France yesterday revealed a plan to halt its declining influence abroad with a programme for cultural diplomacy described as a "British Council à la française".
President Jacques Chirac sees the project as a way of countering a series of crises that has tarnished the country's reputation and dealt another blow to his hopes of leaving office next year on a positive note.
A key feature of the offensive will be the building or refurbishing of French lycées in several capitals, including London.
The foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, has appointed actress Fanny Ardant as France's ambassador for the campaign to trumpet its cultural identity.
"We have incomparable tools at our disposal," he said. "But the effects of our work are not always clear. What our overseas cultural strategy lacks is a label, a signature, a product brand."
An agency, Cultures France, is being created with a £20 million annual budget to breathe new life into the work of two established bodies, the French Association for Artistic Action and the Association for the Dissemination of French Thought.
Another organisation, Campus France, will seek to overcome one legacy of the recent job law protests: the trail of damage left by students in the country's universities.
Its role will be to promote higher education opportunities for overseas students, especially those from China and India.
The government will also devote £35 million to boosting French language teaching around the world. Ministers will be hoping the plans prove a greater success than Mr Chirac's famous "CNN à la française", which will broadcast predominantly in English when launched later this year.
Much attention will focus on the proposal to build new lycées abroad or extend current premises.
The Charles de Gaulle lycée in South Kensington, one of the three largest in the world, produces outstanding exam results but is in dire need of a sister establishment.
Under the new plans, the existing school will be renovated while new accommodation is sought.
Although Mr Chirac recently walked out of a Brussels summit when a French industrialist began a speech in English, not all French academics accept the language of Molière is in decline.
Henriette Walter, a professor of linguistics at the University of Haute-Bretagne, said the essential difference between French and English was that "people learn French for pleasure and English because they have to".
#4
The Charles de Gaulle lycée in South Kensington, one of the three largest in the world, produces outstanding exam results but is in dire need of a sister establishment.
Brightest pupils will be awarded with a cruise on the Charles de Gaulle airrcaft carrier
#6
Henriette Walter, a professor of linguistics at the University of Haute-Bretagne, said the essential difference between French and English was that "people learn French for pleasure and English because they have to".
That is true. Given that the wealth of untranslated technical litterature in French not even touches what is available in French (a lot of French technical or scientific authors write directly in English and their books are not translated) you never have to learn French while a lot of people need to know English from pilots to. But the dirty b..ch implies that there is no people who learns English fior cultural reasons.
In fact Frenech litterature has produced little of value since Proust's "La recherche du temps perdu" (ie nearly acentury ago). Only pretentious, pseudo-philosophical crap while the US alone produced Faulkner, Capote, Fitzgerald, Hemingway. And Shakespeare in English has a musicality who is absent from Racine or Corneille in French
BTW I have read Shakespeare's plays and the Morte d'Arthur in their original elyzabethan and medieval english and I did it from pleasure not because I had to.
#7
Corrected version
Henriette Walter, a professor of linguistics at the University of Haute-Bretagne, said the essential difference between French and English was that "people learn French for pleasure and English because they have to".
That is true. Given that the wealth of untranslated technical litterature in French not even touches what is available in English (a lot of French technical or scientific authors write directly in English and their books are not translated to French) you never or near never have to learn French while a lot of people need to know English from pilots to computerr scientists. But the dirty b..ch implies that there is no people who learns English for cultural reasons.
In fact Frenech litterature has produced little of value since Proust's "La recherche du temps perdu" (ie nearly acentury ago). Only pretentious, pseudo-philosophical crap while the US alone produced Faulkner, Capote, Fitzgerald, Hemingway. And Shakespeare in English has a musicality who is absent from Racine or Corneille in French.
BTW I have read Shakespeare's plays and the Morte d'Arthur in their original elyzabethan and medieval english and I did it from pleasure not because I had to.
I will not mention the colossal gaps in the number of movies who deserve to be watched in the two languages. In fact many of the better French movies from the thirties to the fifties should not be watched in French because the actor's play sounds very artificial (more exactly theatrical) and affete to modern ears. Arletty in particular sounds as a duchess trying to talk like populace and every time I hear her I hesitate between willing to strangle all of its descendance or "me l'attraper et me la mordre" (catch my d.. and bite it). Compare her even to a secondary actress in an American movie from the thirties or fourties and the difference is abysmal.
#8
Forgot a very good reason for learning French, the Marseillaise scene in "Casablanca" is much more moving when you understand the words. I ever have tears when I watch it.
#11
Henriette Walter, a professor of linguistics at the University of Haute-Bretagne, said the essential difference between French and English was that "people learn French for pleasure and English because they have to".
Which explains why nobody is learning French and many people learn English.
The Charles de Gaulle lycée in South Kensington, one of the three largest in the world, produces outstanding exam results but is in dire need of a sister establishment.
A sister establishment, like a French Maid lycee. In Kensington, or in Kettering, Ohio. Not that the students would have to actually learn French (the language), but good foundations in slap-and-tickle and couture servitude' would do wonders in re-establishing the reputation of the French male, especially after the debacle of the hair of Villepin on Anglo-American televisions.
#14
Forgot a very good reason for learning French, the Marseillaise scene in "Casablanca" is much more moving when you understand the words. I ever have tears when I watch it.
It is quite moving. It is also rather sad and poignant when one considers what their legacy has become.
Spanish authorities yesterday pledged to use satellite monitoring and a diplomatic offensive to prevent fresh waves of fishing boats full of illegal immigrants setting out from west Africa for the Canary Islands. The move came after a weekend in which a record-breaking 974 illegal African immigrants reached the islands in boats that had set out from Mauritania and Senegal.
Spain's Socialist government held an emergency meeting yesterday and concluded that much of the work of stopping illegal immigration would have to be done in Africa. "The terrible truth is that there are millions of people who leave their countries looking for a better life," deputy prime minister Maria Teresa Fernandez said.
Gee, sounds like they need to build a fence ...
She announced a diplomatic offensive to persuade African countries to help control the flow of illegal immigrants along the route, which starts in the Atlantic ports of Mauritania and Senegal, and can take more than a week. About 1,000 people are believed to have drowned along the route over the past six months.
Spain will send 10 new diplomats to west and central Africa, and open an embassy in Mali - where many of the immigrants start their odyssey. Spain was already due to begin joint maritime patrols with Mauritania this week.
I don't see what good an embassy in Mali will do, it's not like they're going to be issuing visas ...
About 150 immigrants a day have been reaching the Canary Islands over the past 10 days, mainly at the holiday island of Tenerife. The total this year is 20% more than for the whole of 2005. Authorities have reopened an empty army barracks in Tenerife to house the new immigrants.
Last year Spain reinforced the fences and barriers around its two north African enclaves, at Ceuta and Melilla, after they were successfully stormed by crowds of immigrants.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/16/2006 00:06 ||
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"The terrible truth is that there are millions of people who leave their countries looking for a better life,"
What a tragic bit of bad luck that they should find their way to Spain instead.
COPENHAGEN: Nine Pakistanis living in Denmark went on trial on Monday accused of participating in the so-called honour killing of an 18-year-old woman who had married without parental consent.
Oh, horrors! Oh, hold me, Mahmoud!
Ghazala Khans brother shot her dead by firing two bullets into her heart in September 2005, outside Slagelse train station, west of Copenhagen. The prosecution has qualified the murder as an honour killing, the ninth to have taken place in Denmark over the last decade.
I'd heard Pakistan's exports were up.
The victims husband, whom she had secretly wed, was seriously injured in the attack thought to have been carried out in the belief that her marriage had tarnished the familys honour.
Had they left her alone, they could have just mentioned the 11-year-old Brit slut-babymom and held their heads high. But being Paks, they went for the blood.
Six members of the murdered 18-year-olds family, including her father and three family friends, were charged with murder and attempted murder. All the accused pleaded not guilty and the victims brother, 29, told the court that her death had been accidental, claiming he had had no intention of killing his sister.
"Yeah. Who'da thought a coupla slugs through the heart would hurt her?"
Posted by: Fred ||
05/16/2006 00:00 ||
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Too bad I can't find the pics, but if that's the same case, the shooting was captured by a bystander cellphone (this happened in broad daylight, in public), the girl is kneeling, arms stretched, imploring and/or trying to protect herself, while the man held an handgun straight at her head. Needless to say, this is a pretty intense and moving scene.
"No intention of killing her sister"... no shame at all, really.
#2
Too bad the Danes don't have a death penalty. Fill a revolver with five shots, spin the cylinder, and let the guilty ba$$$$d pull the trigger. If he "gets lucky", fry him. If he doesn't, gee, nothing more to do...
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
05/16/2006 22:34 Comments ||
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A new Ipsos Reid survey for CanWest/Global News reports that most Canadians (54%) feel the gun registry is badly organized, isnt working properly, and should be scrapped a level of opinion essentially unchanged from what was recorded nearly four years, and two Prime Ministers ago (53% expressed this opinion in a December 2002 Ipsos Reid survey).
And, if the Auditor General of Canada produced a report that indicated that there had been widespread mismanagement and waste within the gun registry itself:
* 56% say they would most blame the former Liberal Government and elected politicians who built the gun registry and oversaw it, while
* 37% say they would most blame the government workers who were put in charge of administering the gun registry on a day-to-day basis.
Rest at link.
Sounds like Canada is waking up from the socialist liberal nightmare they were in.
#2
Add 20% margin of error for it being an IPSOS "pay as you want" poll. Remember that this is a private French pollster with very shadowy credentials, that provides most of AP's very questionable polling data.
Greece will provide four frigates to the Pakistan Navy, two of which will be delivered this year, said Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Monday during the signing of a tourism cooperation agreement in Athens. Aziz heads a delegation to Athens including members of his cabinet, senior officials and businessmen scheduled to meet with Greek ministers, ship owners and commerce board members during a two-day visit. The prime minister said both countries were looking forward to stronger ties in defence and security matters and had agreed to the deal. "Pakistan will acquire used frigates," he said. He did not reveal further details.
It was either that or beach them for the wrecking crew in India somewheres, and you know how hard that is nowadays ...
Posted by: Fred ||
05/16/2006 00:00 ||
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Presumably these frigates will useful in hunting Al Qaeda in the Waziristan desert...
Posted by: john ||
05/16/2006 7:14 Comments ||
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Johannesburg (AND): Swaziland has failed to qualify for a seat in the United Nations Human Rights Council. The international media says the Kingdom's loss was imminent due to gross human rights violations.
The UN General Assembly elected 47 countries into the Human Rights Council. South Africa, Zambia and Nigeria were voted in. This comes two weeks before King Mswati III's departs to attend the UN General Assembly in New York on 1 June.
King Mswati III was expected to leave together with the Minister of Health and Social Welfare Mfomfo Nkambule. However, Themba Dlamini the country's Prime Minister last Friday suspended Nkambule from embarking on any international trips until the probe into their corruption allegation is through.
King Mswati III is while in New York is expected to address the UN General Assembly and also meet in camera the UN secretary General Kofi Annan. Last week the King assured the Republic of China on Taiwan that Swaziland will continue supporting its endeavour to attain international recognition. In recent years the king used this platform to persuade other Heads of States to accept Taiwan into the UN body.
According to the Voice of America the new UN Council replaces the controversial 53-member Human Rights Commission, long criticized for being ineffective and including major human rights abusers among its member countries.
A number of nations in that category, including Burma, Belurus, Sudan and Zimbabwe, did not seek election to the new rights forum. Venezuela and Iran did but failed to muster the 96 vote majority necessary for election. Still, at least five nations that human rights advocates call abusive are now on the new Human Rights Council: China, Cuba, Pakistan, Russia and Saudi Arabia.
The United States did not seek a seat and voted against the creation of the Council, pushing to raise the threshold of standards for membership.
After the vote, US Ambassador John Bolton told the media that there were few surprises.
"I would say it is about the result we expected even though a number countries who are themselves gross abusers of human rights got elected again," said John Bolton. "I think as we have said for some time now the real performance of the Human Rights Council for a two or three-year period is going to be what is critical. Now the next stage is to see what happens when the Council itself begin work in Geneva later this summer."
Bolton says the United States will remain engaged and use its influence to shape the new Council.
Forty four of the 47 members were quickly elected in the initial round of voting. But it took two more rounds to determine the last three seats from among the Eastern European candidates. Lots were drawn to determine which members will serve staggered one, two and three year terms.
The new Human Rights Council will hold its first formal meeting in Geneva June 19.
#4
This council is starting out as a joke, where do you think it will be in 5 years? With China and Russia on the council you have a solid guarantee of not getting a damn thing accomplished anyway.
An order to kill gays in the "worst, most severe way possible" has been removed from the Web site of Iraq's most revered Shiite Muslim leader, the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.
An Iraqi gay rights organization in London, Iraqi LGBT-UK, made the announcement Monday. The group had protested the cleric's order, or fatwa, and negotiated with the leader to remove it. The offending section was removed May 10, but a similar call for punishing lesbians remains on the cleric's site.
"We welcome the decision to remove the most murderously homophobic part of Sistani's fatwa from his Web site," said gay Iraqi refugee Ali Hili, the leader of Iraq LGBT-UK.
"This decision does not go far enough," he added. "The fatwa has been removed from Sistani's Web site only. It has not been revoked. We want the entire fatwa withdrawn, including the hateful denunciation calling for the punishment of lesbians."
The group also called on Sistani to apologize and issue a new fatwa against all vigilante violence in the country, including attacks against LGBT Iraqis.
A robotic NASA spacecraft designed to rendezvous with an orbiting satellite instead crashed into its target, according to a summary of the investigation released Monday.
Investigators blamed the collision on faulty navigational data that caused the DART spacecraft to believe that it was backing away from its target when it was actually bearing down on it.
"The inaccurate perception of its distance and speed ... prevented DART from taking effective action to avoid a collision," the summary said.
The 800-pound Demonstration for Autonomous Rendezvous Technology spacecraft was supposed to rendezvous with a defunct Pentagon satellite during a 24-hour period last year.
DART successfully located the target satellite orbiting 472 miles above Earth and moved within 300 feet of it. But problems arose when DART tried to circle the satellite.
Investigators concluded that DART spent too much fuel steering itself toward the satellite. The excessive firings of its engines were caused by inaccurate navigational data from its on-board computer.
Determining that it wouldn't have enough reserve fuel to complete the mission, DART began shutting down about 11 hours into the mission, but not before crashing into the satellite.
Unbeknownst to engineers at the time, DART's main sensor mistakenly believed it was flying away from the satellite when it was actually moving 5 feet per second toward it, investigators found.
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The collision pushed the target satellite into a higher orbit. NASA said neither spacecraft pose a threat to other satellites and both will burn up upon re-entry into the atmosphere.
In addition, the investigation also concluded that DART overestimated how much fuel it consumed, although the remaining amount would not have been enough to complete the mission.
Investigators also raised issues with the mission's management style, saying that lack of training and experience caused the DART design team to shun expert advice. They also found that internal checks and balances were inadequate in uncovering the mission's shortcomings.
The 10-page document summarizing DART's failure comes a year after the spacecraft was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
Last month, NASA said it won't release the investigative board's full 70-page report, citing sensitive information protected by International Traffic in Arms Regulations. The summary was prepared by the space agency's exploration systems mission directorate.
Robotic technology plays a critical role in NASA's plan to send humans back to the moon and Mars. The $110 million DART mission was meant to test whether robots can perform some of the tasks astronauts currently must do.
DART was managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. It was built by Orbital Sciences Corp.
#1
Eventually, I imagine an inordinately complex scenario in which the soldier acts as a green replacement for a very seasoned combat unit. At first, he is led around by the nose and fed volumes of information that is immediately used.
"Nobody is in the room. Nobody move until I use my Silly String to check for booby trap wires!"
Moving to the really important phase:
"We asked this local shopkeeper, and he says it's just a pile of dirt." (But when the soldier looks at the "just pile of dirt", he sees something like a wire sticking out that nobody else noticed. What does he do? Does he just play along, or does he pipe up?)
Iran's parliament has launched a new initiative to promote Iranian and Islamic fashion, with MPs driven by the fear of a "cultural invasion" and inspired by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. "Young people's clothing does not reflect their Islamic and Iranian identity. It is an expression of foreign views," explained Laleh Eftekhari, one of the 12 female MPs in the 290-seat conservative-controlled assembly. "Even if someone wants different outfits there is nothing on offer," she complained, explaining the reasoning behind the new bill approved by majlis members on Sunday.
No wonder they're trying to start a war. They don't have anything better to do with their time.
Every post-pubescent female in Iran, regardless of her nationality or religion, is obliged to observe the Islamic dress code and cover her shape and hair whenever outside the home preferably in black. Although most Iranian women do abide by the rules, in many cities headscarves have been slipping, trouser hems rising and coats tightening. Ayatollah Khamenei voiced alarm over this state of affairs two years ago. "We have many good fashion designers whose expertise is not being used or their creations are not affordable. We would like to support them and help them display and sell their products," Eftekhari said. Once rubber-stamped by the Guardians Council political watchdog, the law would oblige the government to sponsor and promote fashion inspired by traditional Iranian patterns and encourage people to avoid "incompatible" foreign fashions.
For example, state television would need to play its part by making presenters and actors wear suitable clothes. "We are not going to impose anything on people. We are against a homogenised look," insisted Fatemeh Alia, another female MP and member of the parliament's cultural commission. "Our aim is to offer clothes that incorporate modesty, beauty and diversity and at the same time display cultural independence."
But not everyone is taken in by the idea, with some moderates voicing concern over a new "big brother" approach in a country where individual freedoms are already tightly controlled. "If we are to make a law about clothing, we should make laws about what people eat," complained one reformist MP, Ismail Gerami-Moghadam.
In the modern metropolis of Tehran, many women were also on the defensive. "They sugar-coat it at first, but they could move on to make everyone wear a certain outfit," said Manijeh Afzali, a 47-year-old resident of the city spotted while out shopping for clothes. Her 20-year-old daughter was equally cynical: "I'm not sure about the patterns they are going to put out. They will probably be tacky and like villagers' clothes," she said. The MPs have not yet revealed pictures of what they regard as "correct" clothes, but they mention Iran's traditional and regional costumes as an appropriate inspiration. Under the new law, the ministries of industry and commerce would also be working hand in hand with the ministry of culture and Islamic guidance to hold exhibitions. But according to Parvaneh Hosseinpour, a clothing store assistant, the shift towards traditional costumes could bring some welcome colour into the sea of black usually seen across the Islamic republic.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/16/2006 00:00 ||
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As if life in Iran wasn't shitty enough already.
Taking out the trash...
Ward Churchill committed multiple, deliberate acts of academic misconduct, according to a review by a faculty panel, released today by the University of Colorado at Boulder.
While the panel was unanimous in its findings about Churchills conduct, it was divided about whether he should lose his tenured position as professor as politicians and many others have been demanding for more than a year. Three of the panels five members believe that the violations of academic standards are severe enough to make dismissal not an inappropriate sanction. But only one of those three members believes that dismissal is the most appropriate sanction. Two others favor suspension without pay for five years. and a commensurate besmirching on Academia
Two other members of the panel said that they did not believe that the violations were serious enough to merit dismissal. They recommend a suspension of two years without pay and say that they fear dismissal would have an adverse effect on other scholars ability to conduct their research with due freedom.
Among the violations that the committee found Churchill had committed were falsification, fabrication, plagiarism, failure to comply with established standard regarding author names on publications, and a serious deviation from accepted practices in reporting results from research. The committee also found that Churchill was disrespectful of Indian oral traditions in his writings about an 1837 smallpox epidemic.
Colorado administrators will now review the faculty panels reports and any response from Churchill before making a final decision. Churchill and his lawyers have repeatedly threatened to sue if he is fired.
The committee was created last year, after Churchills comments shortly after 9/11, in which he compared victims in the World Trade Center to little Eichmanns, set off a nationwide furor. A Colorado panel concluded last year that however offensive those remarks may have been, they were protected speech. The panel that reported today investigated research misconduct charges that surfaced after the 9/11 comments made Churchill so widely known. Churchill has consistently denied wrongdoing, and said that the committees work is tainted because it was created by those determined to see him lose his position because of his outspoken views.
The faculty panel acknowledged that the allegations it examined surfaced in the wake of the public outcry concerning some highly controversial essays by Professor Churchill and said that committee members believed that Churchills right to publish his views was protected by both the First and Fourteenth Amendment guarantees of free speech. The essays played no part in the panels work, the committee said, adding that it wanted to express its concern regarding the timing and perhaps the motives for the universitys decision to forward charges made in that context.
Some critics of the university from the right have said that Churchill never should have been hired and some critics from the left have noted that Churchill never attempted to hide the views that eventually led to so much scrutiny. The committee, in a nod to both sets of critics, wrote: We point out finally that when Professor Churchill was hired as an associate professor with tenure in 1991 and promoted to (full) professor in 1997, the university knew that he did not have a Ph.D. or law degree, as commonly expected for faculty at this institution, and was aware that he was a controversial public intellectual.
Churchill has not commented on the report yet he received it this morning.
Prior to last years uproar, Churchill was a regular on the college lecture circuit, frequently talking about and encouraging Native American activism. His writings on 9/11 became more broadly known when he was invited to speak at Hamilton College and some faculty members there circulated his writings. From that point on he became to the distress of many in academe one of the best known professors in the United States.
A full article about the report and reaction to it will appear on this site tomorrow.
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/16/2006 17:16 ||
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Just hang him for sedition and be done with it.
#6
Boy I bet he really is the darling of his students and the left! He made up data, wrote fictitious stories, and plagiarized other writers. People I give you that next Democratic Candidate for President Ward Walking Eagle Churchill. Cant wait for the defense, spin masters, and damage control specialists to gear up for his redemption tour. How stupid do all those Colleges feel now that they know they were duped by a liar and a fraud?
#8
3...2...1...Wiiiiitch Huuuuuunt! McCaaaaaaaarthyism! Blaaaaaaack list!
This'll be the best thing that ever happened to him. He's just been promoted from Lefty Hero to Lefty God. They'll be naming the next street over from Mumia Blvd in France after him...
#7
Well, I doubt they have much use for music, and for warez too (except thoses fps turned into jihad advertising, of course)... and as for PrOn, well, they already got all thoses wide-eyed soft-skinned, impressionable boys. And don't forget the innocent goats herding near by the madrassa. Which Holy Man would need PrOn when he's got that on hand, I ask you?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
None of the numerous UFOs reported over Britain in the last 30 years was a flying saucer, the government said as it released previously secret defence files probing mysterious aerial sightings. The declassified study -- "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) in the UK Air Defence Region" -- concluded that such UAP do exist and are "usually described as coloured lights and sometimes as shapes".
KUWAIT CITY - The Kuwaiti parliament broke up in chaos on Monday when reformist MPs walked out in protest at attempts to block a redrawing of constituencies intended to counter alleged vote-buying. The reformers left the session when voting began on a motion tabled by conservative and tribal MPs that sought to refer a government-backed bill reducing the number of consituencies from 25 to 10 to the constitutional court.
Spanish authorities yesterday pledged to use satellite monitoring and a diplomatic offensive to prevent fresh waves of fishing boats full of illegal immigrants setting out from west Africa for the Canary Islands. The move came after a weekend in which a record-breaking 974 illegal African immigrants reached the islands in boats that had set out from Mauritania and Senegal.
COPENHAGEN: Nine Pakistanis living in Denmark went on trial on Monday accused of participating in the so-called honour killing of an 18-year-old woman who had married without parental consent. 
A new Ipsos Reid survey for CanWest/Global News reports that most Canadians (54%) feel the gun registry is badly organized, isnt working properly, and should be scrapped a level of opinion essentially unchanged from what was recorded nearly four years, and two Prime Ministers ago (53% expressed this opinion in a December 2002 Ipsos Reid survey).
Greece will provide four frigates to the Pakistan Navy, two of which will be delivered this year, said Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Monday during the signing of a tourism cooperation agreement in Athens. Aziz heads a delegation to Athens including members of his cabinet, senior officials and businessmen scheduled to meet with Greek ministers, ship owners and commerce board members during a two-day visit. The prime minister said both countries were looking forward to stronger ties in defence and security matters and had agreed to the deal. "Pakistan will acquire used frigates," he said. He did not reveal further details.
Johannesburg (AND): Swaziland has failed to qualify for a seat in the United Nations Human Rights Council. The international media says the Kingdom's loss was imminent due to gross human rights violations.
Iran's parliament has launched a new initiative to promote Iranian and Islamic fashion, with MPs driven by the fear of a "cultural invasion" and inspired by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. "Young people's clothing does not reflect their Islamic and Iranian identity. It is an expression of foreign views," explained Laleh Eftekhari, one of the 12 female MPs in the 290-seat conservative-controlled assembly. "Even if someone wants different outfits there is nothing on offer," she complained, explaining the reasoning behind the new bill approved by majlis members on Sunday.
