Hat tip: Lucianne.com
A Philippines judge who said he consulted imaginary mystic dwarves has failed to convince the Supreme Court to allow him to keep his job.
Florentino Floro was appealing against a three-year inquiry which led to his removal due to incompetence and bias. He told investigators three mystic dwarves - Armand, Luis and Angel - had helped him to carry out healing sessions during breaks in his chambers.
The court said psychic phenomena had no place in the judiciary. The bench backed a medical finding that the judge was suffering from psychosis.
The Manila trial judge had asked the Supreme Court to dismiss the complaint and return him to the bench, after being sacked in April. "They should not have dismissed me for what I believed," Mr Floro told reporters after filing his appeal in May. The judge said he had made a covenant with his dwarf friends that he could write while in a trance and that he had been seen by several people in two places at the same time.
Judge Floro reportedly changed from blue court robes to black each Friday "to recharge his psychic powers". In a letter to the court he said: "From obscurity, my name and the three mystic dwarves became immortal." However, the Supreme Court said dalliance with dwarves would gradually erode the public's acceptance of the judiciary as the guardian of the law, if not make it an object of ridicule.
THE remains of a fossilised stone age pygmy, hailed as a new species of human when it was found two years ago, probably belonged to a disabled but otherwise normal caveman, researchers have claimed. The discovery of the 18,000-year-old homo floresiensis on the Indonesian island of Flores was thought to be a major development in tracing human evolution when it was announced in 2004.
However, a new analysis of the 3ft skeleton, nicknamed the hobbit, along with other remains found at the site, has indicated they probably belonged to an early human suffering from microcephaly, a condition that causes an abnormally small head and other deformities. The skeletal remains do not represent a new species, but some of the ancestors of modern human pygmies who live on the island today, concludes a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, one of Americas most respected scientific institutions. The individual exhibits a combination of characteristics that are not primitive but instead regional and not unique but found in other modern human populations.
#2
Actually, Robin, I'd like to point out that the argument over these bones has been going on since their discovery. It's just that one side likes to declare that they've now proven their side beyond a shadow of a doubt.
They did that a couple years ago, when they temporarily "borrowed" the bones and washed them off in acetone before returning them, which precluded the use of genetic testing... wait another month, there will be more counterarguments against these.
Posted by: Phil ||
08/20/2006 0:33 Comments ||
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#3
Have they looked into the idea that it was one of Ahmadinahijab's not-so-distant relatives. :-)
A South African Aids campaigner has called on world leaders to speak out against the government of Thabo Mbeki, which he claims is responsible for the continuing but unnecessary devastation wreaked in his country by Aids.
Eight hundred people die from Aids in South Africa every day, said Mark Heywood, of the Aids Law Project at the University of the Witwatersrand and the Treatment Action Campaign (Tac). "We're treating only 17% of people with Aids. What is happening in South Africa is a human rights violation that needs leadership from outside of South Africa to address the crisis being created by the South African government." But, he said at the International Aids Conference in Toronto on Thursday, there was "a terrible silence" from the world. "Bill Clinton can't get the words out of his mouth to criticise Thabo Mbeki. Kofi Annan can't criticise Thabo Mbeki ... The long-term consequences for South Africa are enormous.
Can't criticize Mr. Mbeki, just wouldn't look right for the left-progressive crowd to hit one of their own.
"This crisis has to be broken somehow. The African Union and the G8 and the EU have to speak out about it. The British government, who are silent on this question, have to find a way to intervene."
South Africa has 200,000 people on antiretroviral drugs for Aids, of whom 130,000 are treated in the public sector. But about 700,000 people with HIV need the drugs and will soon die without them. Mr Heywood said there had been a lack of government will to roll out the treatment programme, after Mr Mbeki said he did not believe HIV caused Aids, and more recently health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said she had more faith in lemon and garlic to treat Aids than in drugs.
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/20/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
more recently health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang said she had more faith in lemon and garlic to treat Aids than in drugs.
Lemon and garlic would work assuming they haven't yet found out about brushing their teeth or Mbeki hasn't denounced it as voodoo.
#3
Scary thought. South Africa had most everything it needed when it got rid of apartheid; it could have been a real success. If Zuma comes in my bet is most of the white population bails (Australia?).
Posted by: Steve White ||
08/20/2006 9:48 Comments ||
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#4
Dr.
Try to mentally capture this crude analogy. Here in this country we sometimes hear it said that "our system of government is distressing and oftentimes disappointing, but it's the best in the world" I suspect few would argue that fact.
In Rhodesia and South Africa before Mugabe and Mandela, the system labeled "apartheid" (Afrikaans for seperation)was also "distressing and disappointing" but it was the finest Africa had to offer. In sad retrospect, i suspect few would argue that fact either.
Communists, facists and totalitarian regimes have always pointed to the 'oppression of the people' and the need for revolution and overthrow. Nothing much new under the sun.
#5
"World leaders" went on to more media-visible matters after apartheid ended and the ANC took over. Besides, it is not nice to criticise former communist-supported thugs turned African national leaders.
Zuma will be the final-nail. He is just a slightly smarter version of Mugabe.
#7
I hope that we are getting our ducks in line with respect to stragetic metals and elements before South Africa goes into the heart of darkness, where it is headed.
Posted by: Alaska Paul back home ||
08/20/2006 19:43 Comments ||
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For more than 60 years, they kept their military secrets locked deep inside and lived quiet lives as account executives, college professors, business consultants and the like.
The brotherhood of P.O. Box 1142 enjoyed no homecoming parades, no VFW reunions, no embroidered ball caps and no regaling of wartime stories to grandchildren sitting on their knees. Almost no one, not even their wives, in many cases, knew the place in history held by the men of Fort Hunt, alluded to during World War II only by a mailing address that was its code name.
But the declassification of thousands of military documents and the dogged persistence of Brandon Bies, a bookish park ranger determined to record this furtive piece of history, is bringing the men of P.O. Box 1142 out of the shadows.
One by one, some of the surviving 100 or so military intelligence interrogators who questioned Third Reich scientists, submariners and soldiers at one of the United States's most secretive prisoner camps are, in the twilight of their lives, spilling tales they had dared not whisper before.
"It's good. Very good to talk about all this, at last," Fred Michel said last week, steadying himself on his cane as he looked over the rolling, green land along the Potomac River in Fairfax County that once was home to prison cells and interrogation rooms embedded with hidden microphones.
#1
Thanks much for the post Moose. Almost seems surreal in an era of almost weekly intelligence community "leaks"...know all-tell all, etc. We owe these patriots a huge debt.
#2
Cool, I really hope Bies publishes a book. Sounds like these guys interrogated the Paperclip scientists. A few of them were chemists, one of whom, I'm 99% certain, was my thesis advisor at Cornell. He's 80-ish, Austrian, and his specialty happens to coinicide with what you'd need to know to design nerve agents.
He told me he "refused" a commission in the US Army in the 50s, spent 2 years as a sergeant in technical intelligence, and observed some rather bizzare things. He's been tucked away in prestigious posts, contributing to American medical advances for the last 50 years, and he's as nice as could be -- but damn, am I curious about what he was up to before 1952.
Posted by: ST ||
08/20/2006 17:10 Comments ||
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#3
They're not as secretive, but the Army Counterintelligence Corps retirees tend to have interesting stories along these lines too.
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.
THE remains of a fossilised stone age pygmy, hailed as a new species of human when it was found two years ago, probably belonged to a disabled but otherwise normal caveman, researchers have claimed. The discovery of the 18,000-year-old homo floresiensis on the Indonesian island of Flores was thought to be a major development in tracing human evolution when it was announced in 2004. 
A South African Aids campaigner has called on world leaders to speak out against the government of Thabo Mbeki, which he claims is responsible for the continuing but unnecessary devastation wreaked in his country by Aids.
