News, Weather, Mozart, Sports, Eurovision Love Ænema & Perverted Videogames from Vleeptron

assorted hallucinations

2006-07-03T16:26:00.000-04:00

Oh PLEASE click HERE for a wonderful music video. In Disney's "Dumbo," nasty circus people have spiked the baby elephant's water with liquor, and he hallucinates the famous Pink Elephants. It's one of the greatest moments of animation, but this remix features the cover by the remarkable jazz musicians from Saturn, Sun Ra and His Arkestra.

Pink Elephants On Parade

from the Walt Disney
animated feature "Dumbo" (1941)

lyrics: Ned Washington

Look out! Look out!
Pink elephants on parade!
Here they come!
Hippety hoppety

They're here and there
Pink elephants ev'rywhere
Look out! Look out!
They're walking around the bed
On their head
Clippety cloppety

Arrayed
In braid
Pink elephants on parade!
What'll I do?
What'll I do?
What an unusual view!

I could stand the sight of worms
And look at microscopic germs
But Technicolor pachyderms
Is really too much for me!

I am not the type to faint
When things are odd
or things are quaint
But seeing things you know that ain't
Can certainly give you an awful fright!
What a sight!

Chase 'em away!
Chase 'em away!
I'm afraid!
Need your aid!
Pink elephants on parade!
Pink elephants!
Pink elephants!

==========

I'm a little long-winded, so maybe The Columbus Dispatch might not run my Letter to the Editor.

Sue me. Read it on Vleeptron.

==============

Letters to the Editor
The Columbus Dispatch
Columbus, Ohio USA

To the Editor:

Of all the tasteless and insensitive things I have ever read in a newspaper, your public humiliation of Professor John Burnham of Ohio State University, by running his column "Former Drug Czars Believe Their War Has Been Won" (30 June), is surely the most shameful.

Professor Burnham is clearly suffering from the most virulent hallucination I have ever witnessed, with or without LSD or liquor's pink elephants. He's convinced 35 years of America's War On Drugs have achieved Victory.

In 1965, when I graduated from high school, I had never met a human being who had ever smoked marijuana. I couldn't have found any marijuana, heroin or cocaine if I'd waved a hundred-dollar bill all over my large city for a week.

Now, with Victory achieved, these substances, plus methamphetamine and ecstacy, are a phone call or a 24/7 open-air drug market away throughout America, at prices to fit any teenager's allowance. (Legal, taxed, government-supervised alcohol is far more difficult for teens to obtain.)

I feel such sympathy for Professor Burnham's inability to notice the reality nearly every American, urban or rural, can see and, by gunshots in the night, hear.

The Nutty Professor looks back on America's 14 years of Alcohol Prohibition and concludes:

"Historians have established that the 1920s experiment in alcohol prohibition was successful and was repealed in 1933 only because of a massive, well-financed propaganda campaign."

In other words, Professor Burnham believes that if America had Done The Right Thing, it would still be a crime for an adult to drink a beer or a glass of wine. Franklin D. Roosevelt was an evil drug legalizer.

America's Drug War has achieved one Victory. Led by these remarkable Drug Czars, a bipartisan political emphasis on police, prosecutors and prisons has made my Land of the Free the world's largest prison system.

When I was growing up, this distinction belonged to the Siberian Gulags of the Soviet Union, and before that, to Nazi-occupied Europe. In 2000, under the leadership of Czar and former Army general Barry McCaffrey, this pathetic Gold Medal passed to the USA, and we now boast 2,300,000 children, women and men behind bars. We're Number One!

Stop shaming this troubled man and enabling his problems. Get the guy -- and the USA -- some help immediately!

Robert Merkin
Northampton, Massachusetts

*******************

Friday 30 June 2006
Columbus Dispatch (OH)
Copyright 2006 The Columbus Dispatch
Contact: letters@dispatch.com
Website: http://www.dispatch.com/
Author: John C . Burnham
Note: John Burnham is research professor of history at Ohio State University, where he specializes in the history of medicine and American social history.

FORMER DRUG CZARS
BELIEVE THEIR WAR
HAS BEEN WON

The United States has won the war against illegal drugs. That was the conclusion of a unique gathering on June 17, which marked the 35th anniversary of the war's beginning in 1971 with the appointment of Dr. Jerome H. Jaffe, a psychiatrist, as the first White House drug czar.

Jaffe was joined at the the anniversary gatheing in by six other former czars, Dr. Robert L. Du Pont, Dr. Peter G. Bourne, Lee I. Dogoloff, Dr. Donald Ian Mac-Donald, Lee Brown and retired Army Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey. Also attending were 20 former staff members and a handful of experts, including me, a specialist historian.

The meeting, sponsored and hosted by the University of Maryland, was held for the purpose of making a historical record.

The seven former czars and former staff members held remarkably unanimous views, though they come from a variety of backgrounds and included Democrats and Republicans who worked for five very different presidents. And what they had to say was often surprising.

The main conclusion that we won the war on drugs was the biggest surprise, because advocates of illegal drugs have in recent years filled the media with rhetoric about "the failed war on drugs." The czars' straightforward conclusion may come as a shock, but, as they outlined what the war was about, what they had to say made a lot of sense.

Thirty-five years ago, the big worry was the veterans who were returning from Vietnam who had been using illegal drugs. And the drug causing overwhelming concern was heroin. A hard-headed public-health approach showed an alarming number of deaths directly related to heroin, not to mention crimes committed by addicts. As the veterans showed that their use did not continue after their return to the United States, and as methadone-maintenance programs came into place, along with enforcement and education, heroin use declined, and even more dramatic was the decline in heroin-related deaths. This was the great victory of the war on drugs. A recent small uptick in illegal drug use is remarkably insignificant compared with the original problem.

Only in the 1980s, when the price of cocaine, in the form of crack, went down did that drug become a significant public-health problem. But what about marijuana? At that time, the serious effects of pot smoking were largely unknown. But in the late 1970s, the parents movement developed parents who had seen what happened when their kids got addicted to marijuana and their young brains got fried. This was a huge group of very angry people, and they were political dynamite.

The main tension in the office of drug czar was between enforcement and treatment. Congress would fund enforcement but did not like treatment, although one czar told of taking a couple of reluctant members of Congress to view a treatment center and see how much money treatment was saving the public as addicts, often under court coercion, were enabled to work productively.

For historians like me, the collective experience of the former czars provides two lessons. The first is unwelcome to extremists of the right and left and their shady commercial allies: Prohibitory laws can work.

Historians have established that the 1920s experiment in alcohol prohibition was successful and was repealed in 1933 only because of a massive, well-financed propaganda campaign.
The leadership of the drug czars in reducing supply and demand of illegal drugs is reflected not only in the public-health statistics. They can also cite public opinion polls. Thirty-five years ago, illegal drugs were usually first or second and no lower than fourth as public concerns. Now the drugs issue trails many other problems.

Everyone at the conference knew that the problem is going to continue for American society, but at a much lower level than 35 years before. That is what laws do: They attempt to control problems, not bring perfection. Laws against murder provide hope to control the problem, not abolish murder.

The second lesson is more subtle. The title czar was ironic, because the appointees had no direct, executive power. Instead, they coordinated the many federal and local agencies dealing with aspects of the drug problem and drug-law enforcement. The czars used persuasion. They got a drug detection and treatment system into the armed services, where the programs served as models for private businesses and other units. When new substances of abuse came along, often the czar was able to get officials and private businesses, especially pharmaceutical companies, to get one substance or another restricted before it became a major problem.

So what if the amusingly designated czars had no real power? They proved that in American government, there can be impressive leadership beyond formal power.

2 poems; & what happened to the poet when he tried to go home

2006-07-03T11:54:00.000-04:00

Tenzin Tsundue, Tibetan

poet in exile in India

NGO Vleeptron
Preliminary Report
on Global Terrorism

In the view of the government of the Peoples Republic of China, any Tibetan who objects to China's military occupation of Tibet is a terrorist.

In the view of the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, any American who objects to Britain's military occupation of Britain's American colonies is a terrorist.

Well, after Americans defeated the British Army and won their independence, Britain doesn't think George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson are terrorists anymore. They're ... well ... okay, if Britain can't bring itself to call these ex-terrorists freedom fighters or liberators, they're, uhhh, political leaders of a new, recognized sovereign nation. We exchange ambassadors now, and Britain doesn't try to hang our leaders or line them in front of a firing squad anymore.

This article about the exiled Tibetan poet Tenzin Tsundue is from the Belfast Telegraph in Northern Ireland. In the view of the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, any Irish person who objects to Britain's military occupation of any part of the island of Ireland is a terrorist.

Well, after the British recognized the southern counties as the independent Republic of Ireland, the British government doesn't think the Irish freedom fighters were terrorists anymore.

In the view of the government of Israel, any Palestinian who objects to Israel's military occupation of the West Bank is a terrorist ...

In the view of the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, any Jew who objects to Britain's military occupation of Palestine is a terrorist ...

In the view of the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, any Egyptian who objects to Britain's military occupation of Egypt is a terrorist ...

In the view of the government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, any Hindu, Muslim or Buddhist who objects to Britain's military occupation of its empire in the Indian subcontinent is a terrorist ...

In the view of the government of the United States of America, any Filipino who objects to the US military occupation of the Philippines is a terrorist ...

In the view of the government of the Soviet Union, any Afghani who objects to the Soviet Union's military occupation of Afghanistan is a terrorist ...

In the view of the government of Myanmar, any Burmese who objects to the military junta which ignores, by force of arms, the overwhelming vote of the Burmese people to have a democratic government is a terrorist ...

Where the hell do all these fucking terrorists come from???????????

And how do so many of them end up as the political leaders of new sovereign nations? How do so many of them end up on currency and postage stamps?

And why do those damn Scandinavians keep awarding so many terrorists the Nobel Peace Prize?

====================

THE TIBETAN IN MUMBAI

by Tenzin Tsundue

The Tibetan in Mumbai
is not a foreigner.

He is a cook
at a Chinese takeaway.
They think he is Chinese
run away from Beijing.

He sells sweaters in summer
in the shade of the Parel Bridge.
They think he is some retired Bahadur.

The Tibetan in Mumbai
abuses in Bambaya Hindi,
with a slight Tibetan accent
and during vocabulary emergencies
he naturally runs into Tibetan.
That's when the Parsis laugh.

The Tibetan in Mumbai
likes to flip through the MID-DAY,
loves FM, but doesn't expect
a Tibetan song.

He catches the bus at a signal,
jumps into a running train,
walks into a long dark gully
and nestles in his kholi.

He gets angry
when they laugh at him
'ching-chong-ping-pong'.

The Tibetan in Mumbai
is now tired,
wants some sleep and a dream.
On the 11pm Virar Fast,
he goes to the Himalayas.
The 8.05am Fast Local
brings him back to Churchgate
into the Metro: a New Empire.

================

TERRORIST

by Tenzin Tsundue

I am a terrorist.
I like to kill.

I have horns,
two fangs
and a dragonfly tail.

Chased away from my home,
hiding from fear,
saving my life,
doors slammed on my face,

justice constantly denied,
patience is tested
on television, battered
in front of the silent majority
pushed against the wall,
from that dead end
I have returned.

I am the humiliation
you gulped down
with flattened nose.

I am the shame
you buried in darkness.

I am a terrorist
shoot me down.

Cowardice and fear
I left behind
in the valley
among the meowly cats
and lapping dogs.

I am single,
I have nothing -
to lose.

I am a bullet
I do not think

from the tin shell
I leap for that thrilling
2-second life
and die with the dead.

I am the life
you left behind.

================

Belfast Telegraph
Monday 3 July 2006

Tibetan dissident
to accuse Chinese
of torture and genocide

by Clifford Coonan

Tenzin Tsundue, a Tibetan poet and activist, takes his fight to Britain today when he files a sworn testimony detailing atrocities he says he saw and experienced while in prison in the remote Himalayan region.

Mr Tsundue’s testimony is a stark litany of beatings and torture doled out during his imprisonment without trial in 1999, and will be submitted today to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office legalisation office, where it will be officially notarised.

The testimony is for a criminal suit filed in Spain’s High Court by three Tibet support groups accusing former president Jiang Zemin and ex-parliament chief Li Peng, both of whom retired in 2003, of committing genocide and crimes against humanity in Tibet.

"Many European countries speak of peace and human rights and harmony. But on business they all cosy up to China, it’s hypocritical. Through asking for justice in an international court I hope they will have second thoughts," Mr Tsundue said. "The Tibetan people should have the right to run their own country, not the Chinese people," he said. The case accuses the retired leaders, who were in office during the 1980s and 1990s, of authorising massacres and torture in Tibet. The court could call for the Chinese government to arrest those accused of human rights abuse -- and even impound their property.

Tibet has been under the control of China since 1950 when the People’s Liberation Army marched into Tibet. Less than a decade later the Himalayan region’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, fled [to India] after a failed uprising. Tales of torture and abuse have abounded over the past four decades.

China has condemned the lawsuit, calling it absurd, and Beijing has accused Madrid of meddling in its affairs. Madrid is also investigating charges of genocide against the Falun Gong spiritual movement. Emilie Hunter, a spokesperson for the Madrid-based Friends of Tibet Committee, said she hoped that the effect of filing the testimony in Britain would be to stimulate broader government and public interest in the issue.

The lawsuit coincides with the opening of a hi-tech train line between Beijing and Lhasa, which the Chinese say will give Tibet an economic boost, but which Tibetan activists fear will lead to a dilution of Tibetan culture.

"This is one way to fight Beijing -- they may not listen to us Tibetans but this is a way to speak to Beijing non-violently with law and show this is injustice and we want them to address this," Mr Tsundue said.

The activist lives, along with approximately 110,000 other Tibetans including the Dalai Lama, in Dharamsala, close to the border with India. He was arrested in 1999 while crossing into Tibet at Ladakh and held for three months in two prisons. Here he says he experienced, and witnessed, the treatment of Tibetans who had been jailed for "counterrevolutionary" crimes.

"Over three months I was beaten, starved, became infested with lice and had a red-hot poker brandished in front of my eyes. For me, those long sessions of interrogation were so intimidating, humiliating, and disturbing that many times I found myself crying in the middle of night in my dark prison cell," he said.

He said he fears for the life of one political prisoner, Dawa Gyaltsen, who was arrested in 1996 and sentenced to 18 years in prison for designing and distributing "free Tibet" posters. He is now being held in Lhasa’s notorious Drapchi prison.

Mr Tsundue’s views are more extreme than those of the Dalai Lama, whom the Chinese view as a dangerous separatist who wants to wrest control of Tibet away from China. Beijing accuses him of continuing to spark independence movements among the 2.7 million Tibetans and refuses to allow him back inside its borders.

For his part, the Dalai Lama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, insists he is a moderate who preaches a "middle way," which seeks special autonomy for Tibet within China, not independence.

Many Tibetans, include Mr Tsundue, remain fiercely loyal to the figure they regard as a god-king. "For us Tibetans the Dalai Lama is our leader and he is our Buddha," Mr Tsundue said. "He has an immense sense of compassion and forgiveness. I don’t have the power of the Buddha to compromise on independence.

"On the political front I ask for independence for Tibet. The Tibetan people should have the right to run their own country and not China," he said.

- 30 -

Tsundue’s testimony

My name is Tenzin Tsundue. I am a Tibetan born and brought up in India. On 4 March 1997, I walked across the India-Tibet border. I was apprehended at Cha-gang by border police. For eight days I was interrogated every morning for many hours and throughout these interrogation sessions, they kept asking me who sent me, who backed me in my mission, what was it about, who I was meeting in Tibet -- the interrogators, who were mostly Tibetans, would kick me, punch me in the chest and often slapped my face -- Sometimes, after a hard slap I would almost go deaf, and for a long time I remained dazed. These sessions of interrogation were very intimidating, humiliating and mentally so traumatising that sometimes in the middle of the night in my cell, I found myself crying -- I was never produced before any court nor given any opportunity for legal support. In the jail, the food was poor and served only twice a day, leaving us starved all the time.

===============

Friends of Tibet (INDIA)

Dear friend:

Friends of Tibet (INDIA) is an effort by individuals from India to help, preserve and spread awareness about the issue of Tibet and the unique cultural and religious identity of the Tibetan people.

Tibetans living in exile are spread across more than ten countries. Although faced with unforeseen problems and unpredictable circumstances beyond their control, they have held together as a community and kept alive their national identity. Also very much alive is their yearning to return to their homeland. Even among the fourth generation in exile they have successfully preserved their language, their culture and their religion.

Friends of Tibet (INDIA) was formed on March 9, 1999, at Dharamshala, and its website was inaugurated by Ven. Yeshi Togden, president of Gu Chu Sum Movement of Tibet

Sadly, the same cannot be said about the situation inside Tibet. Throughout the early decades of the occupation tens of thousands of Tibetans were killed and many more sent to prisons and concentration camps. During this period more than 6,000 temples and monasteries -- including vast Buddhist universities and ancient libraries were looted, burned and destroyed. Even today, despite some cosmetic changes, largely for the benefit of tourists or visiting dignitaries; Tibetan religion and culture has not recovered from the decades of suppression and continues to suffer from neglect and discrimination. Rampant and indiscriminate exploitation of Tibet's vast natural resources is also threatening the fragile ecological balance of the Roof of the World. However, the single biggest threat to the survival of the Tibetan people is China's policy of population transfer aimed at reducing Tibetans to an insignificant minority in their own country by sending in millions of landless and jobless Chinese.

The distinct cultural ties between India and Tibet, the most obvious being the spread of Buddhism from India to Tibet in the seventh century, is perhaps too well known to bear repeating here. The trade and economic ties between the two countries is perhaps even older. It is equally important to remember that India maintained independent relations with Tibet throughout our shared history. Never, until China's military occupation of Tibet after 1949, has India ever shared a common border with China. Today India spends more money to defend our northern border with Chinese-occupied Tibet than we do to protect our border with Pakistan. Even in the case of our western border, much of the problem is linked to the political, economic and the military support that China gives to Pakistan.

Joined together by almost the entire length of the mighty Himalayan range -- India and Tibet are also inseparably linked in a physical sense. With such an extensive common frontier, the environmental changes on one side inevitably affects the other. It is for this reason that China's destruction of Tibet's fragile environment not only through indiscriminate deforestation and mining but also by dumping nuclear and other toxic wastes -- should be a major concern to every Indian. It is no longer just a question of helping an oppressed people and supporting a peaceful and friendly neighbour. Today the question of Tibetan independence is inseparably linked to India's long-term future. The implications of having China as our permanent northern neighbour or even the single issue of any of the rivers flowing from Tibet to India becoming polluted by toxic waste is too serious to be left to chance.

We believe that all the issues raised above are of a global nature not only in terms of the principles involved but also in terms of their impact. We, therefore, call upon freedom-loving people everywhere to join hands with the Tibetan people. We believe that Tibet Can and that Tibet Will Be Free. So join us by sharing your ideas, your time and your talents. Together we can make a difference to the lives of our Tibetan friends and also secure the safety of our future generations. For too long China has taken India and Indians for granted. Let us act now to make Tibet free.

Friends of Tibet (INDIA) believe that all the issues raised above are of a global nature -- not only in terms of the principles involved but also in terms of their impact. We, therefore, call upon freedom-loving people everywhere to join hands with the Tibetan people. With your help

‘Tibet Can and Tibet Will Be Free.’

Regards,

Sethu Das

(President, Friends of Tibet INDIA)

[photo:] Friends of Tibet National Committee with His Holiness the Dalai Lama

stoned California pelican attacks car, detained

2006-07-01T22:53:00.000-04:00

domoic acid

The Los Angeles Times (California USA)
Saturday 24 June 2006

Plastered Pelican
in Detox After Flying
Through Windshield

Domoic acid in algae is the likely
cause for inebriated seabirds

by Roy Rivenburg, Times Staff Writer

Four pelicans were being detained in an animal drunk tank Friday on suspicion of public intoxication, authorities said.

One of the birds was in guarded condition after allegedly flying under the influence Thursday and crashing through the windshield of a car on Coast Highway in Laguna Beach.

The driver was rattled but uninjured.

The other California brown pelicans [Pelecanus occidentalis californicus] were nabbed in backyards or wandering local streets in a daze.

Although toxicology tests aren't complete (there are no bird breathalyzers), such behavior usually signals domoic acid poisoning from eating algae, said Lisa Birkle, assistant wildlife director at the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center in Huntington Beach, which is caring for the pelicans.

Domoic acid was also the likely culprit behind a 1961 seabird invasion that inspired Alfred Hitchcock's classic horror film "The Birds."

According to news reports, thousands of befuddled birds rained down on Northern California towns in August 1961, slamming into buildings and even pecking eight humans.

Nobody is predicting a Hitchcockian invasion here, but Birkle urged Southern California residents to be on the lookout for pelicans acting disoriented or turning up in unusual locations.

In the last week, the wildlife center fielded 16 calls of suspicious bird behavior. And more incidents are likely because ocean waters south of Los Angeles Harbor have tested positive for the poisonous algae, Birkle said.

The pelican that collided with the car is recovering from surgery for a broken foot and a 4-inch gash in its pouch.

"She's hanging in there," Birkle said. On Friday, the heavily sedated bird began eating on her own, a good sign for full recovery.

Blood tests for domoic acid will take about three weeks, but Birkle said she's never heard of a sober pelican crashing into a car.

The birds have phenomenal eyesight, she explained, noting that from high above the ocean, they are able to spot fish.

After the pelicans being held in Huntington Beach have sobered up, they will be released on their own recognizance.

Copyright © 2006, The Los Angeles Times

=========
from Wikipedia:

Domoic acid

Domoic acid, which causes amnesic shellfish poisoning (ASP), is an amino acid phycotoxin (algal toxin) found associated with certain algal blooms [1].

In 1958, domoic acid was originally isolated from the red alga called "doumoi" or "hanayanagi" (Chondria armata [2]) in Japan. "Doumoi" is used as an anthelmintic [?] in Tokunoshima, Kagoshima.

Domoic acid is also produced by diatoms of the genus Pseudo-nitzschia [3][4]. The chemical can bioaccumulate in marine organisms that feed on the phytoplankton, such as shellfish, anchovies, and sardines.

In mammals, including humans, domoic acid acts as a neurotoxin, causing short-term memory loss, brain damage, and death in severe cases. Red tides are associated with the phenomenon of ASP. Considerable recent research has been carried out by the Marine Mammal Center and other scientific centers on the association of red tides to domoic acid and to resulting neurological damage in marine mammals of the Pacific Ocean.

In the brain, domoic acid especially damages the hippocampus and amygdaloid nucleus. It damages the neurons by activating AMPA and kainate receptors, causing an influx of calcium. Although calcium flowing into cells is a normal event, the uncontrolled increase of calcium causes the cell to degenerate.

On June 22, 2006, a California brown pelican, possibly under the influence of domoic acid, flew through the windshield of a car on the Pacific Coast Highway. The acid is found in the local seas.

Domoic acid poisoning was the most likely cause of a 1961 invasion of thousands of frantic seabirds in Northern California that inspired Alfred Hitchcock's film The Birds.

my HTML ate a bad fig and was constipated. Cured now.

2006-06-30T20:23:00.000-04:00

Okay, the original "Asymmetric Warfare" post seems to have eaten a rotten fig and caused a couple of days of Bad Constipation on Planet Vleeptron. Thus the re-post, and Vleeptron now believes the Constipation is Cured, and Vleeptron can now be accessed without problems.

Here is an original visual complaint about The Technical Problems Vleeptron's readers were experiencing the last day or two. Copyright (c) 2006 by Ron Bizer, All Rights Reserved.

The inevitable consequence of Asymmetric Warfare

2006-06-30T19:16:00.000-04:00

General Jacob H. Smith's infamous order,
"Kill everyone over ten"
was the caption in The New York Journal cartoon
on May 5, 1902. The Old Glory draped an American
shield on which a vulture replaced the bald eagle.
Caption is:

"Criminals because they were born
ten years before we took the Philippines."

(from Wikipedia.) Click.

The inevitable consequence
of Asymmetric Warfare

Asymmetric Warfare -- I don't know which twerp first used the phrase -- is Military Gobbledyspeak for a superpower's high-tek military which bumbles into a war against dirt-poor barefoot guerrillas who have neither air force nor navy and who arm themselves with 1940- or 1910-era firearms and $30 worth of box cutters and duct tape from the Tru-Value.

If they can't make their own high explosives, they steal them from our military depots, which have tons of the shit, or from our duds -- our unexploded bombs and ordinance. Then they make vests of plastic explosive and a Tru-Value thumb switch and walk up to an army platoon and FOOMF. Six American flag-draped coffins fly back to Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, and the bomber begins acquainting himself or herself with Paradise.

As a fine modern example of Corrupting The English Language, AW ranks with "Collateral Damage," which is Military Gobbledyspeak for a superpower's high-tek military dropping a planeload of bombs on a children's hospital. The bedridden children made the mistake of getting too close to bona-fide military targets.

This *quote,* as best I remember this startling live-TV moment, is very close to Ramsey Clark's outburst on CNN when some US Air Force fuckhead used the term during the NATO bombing of Belgrade (in which the Chinese Embassy was collaterally smithereened):

*Collateral damage -- for god's sake,
call it what it is:
Killing children, women,
civilians, old people.*

Here are our superpower military ideals and doctrine of warfare as we continue to teach them to the professional officer corps at Annapolis, West Point, the Air Force Academy, and the military staff and command colleges:

We go against some Third World nation with overwhelming destructive power -- the doctrine of Shock and Awe -- destroy their military's ability to continue fighting, accept their surrender in some insulting fashion, stand around waiting for the liberated native girls to throw their arms around our soldiers and kiss them in gratitude, and then cable the band to start rehearsing for the huge Victory Parade down Pennsylvania Avenue. Mission Accomplished.

Asymmetric Warfare is Evil, because our enemy refuses to stay surrendered, and then refuses to stand up and face us fair and square like Americans. They are cowards and murderers.

They are also winning. Just tossing out figures, but I put the ratio this way. If the US has to spend $12,000,000 per day to fight the War in Iraq, our enemies are spending $3,751.16 per day, not including newspaper coupons redeemable at the hardware store for electrical wire and lantern batteries.

And they're winning. We're certainly losing. Do you think we're winning? Make Vleeptron wise: Leave A Comment.

(Calling me a traitor is not a persuasive argument that we're winning. Aim that intimidating crap at Natalie Maines instead, if you haven't already.)

Our Season of Whistleblown Atrocities began pretty early after Mission Accomplished, with Abu Ghraib. The universal Pentagon response, of course, is that the abuses are committed by a very few rotten apples, but 99.99993 percent of all American soldiers and Marines are Straight Arrow Decent Guys who would never do anything like that.

By an astonishing coincidence, all the rotten apples who end up getting court-martialed are low-ranking enlisted men and women, PFCs, corporals and 3-stripe buck sergeants. Commissioned officers (and gentlemen, by Act of Congress) never force prisoners to strip naked and masturbate for the camera while threatening the prisoners with unmuzzled attack dogs, nor would any American commissioned officer ever countenance or encourage such things by his or her subordinates.

Hardware War is incredibly frustrating for a modern superpower military which still thinks it's fighting World War Two in Europe.

We make a brigade-size battle plan, the helicopters, air support and wheeled and track vehicles all start to rock and roll at 04:45, we race into the sleeping town -- and find no one there whom we can unambiguously identify as enemy combatants. No one is standing up to fight us like Americans. They are all somewhere else, or are wearing sneaky, deceitful Civilian Costumes -- like little-girl and old-women dresses or schoolboy uniforms.

The week before Operation One-Two Punch, nine soldiers in the brigade were blown up or ambushed and killed and maimed. Everyone from Private to Major General, Commanding is Pumped and ready for Righteous American Military Vengeance. When the whistle blows on One-Two Punch, SOMEBODY's gonna be sorry. SOMEBODY's gonna wish they'd never been born.

Unfortunately, the Cowardly Fiends who killed our comrades are nowhere to be found. They've taken the day off to redeem their coupons at the hardware store and make some more Improvised Explosive Devices (MilGobble for Crude, Cheap Bomb).

But like 800 armored, locked-and-loaded, megapumped American soldiers all yelled at 04:45: SOMEBODY's gonna be sorry.

~ ~ ~

The problem is, these are Not Civilized, Gentlemen Warriors like we are. They are Barbarians, Savages. Massacre and Torture are the only language they understand. Their barbarian sneaky tactics are so frustrating that They are forcing Us to behave that way. We didn't want to. But it's All Their Fault. We came to Iraq to fight a gentlemanly, orderly, rational war with our overwhelming conventional forces vs. their pre-doomed silly antiquated tiny forces.

And we defeated them exactly as we predicted we would, for as long as the Fair and Square Phase lasted.

But they won't stop killing us. They lost. But they refuse to act like enemies who lost fair and square.

And now, if you are expecting SP5_Happy to launch into an Old Toothless Vet's Memoires of the Vietnam War, surprise: I'll skip MY Asymmetric War vs. the Cowardly un-American Barbarians (who won btw) for a change, and hurtle you back 65 years earlier, in the Heathkit TM-212 Time Machine, to America's first Asymmetric War.

They were barbarians. Torture and massacre were the only language they understood. They made us do those things to them. We didn't want to have to fight them that way. They forced us. We had no choice. What else could we do?

~ ~ ~

Agence-Vleeptron Presse Advisory

The following block of this Wikipedia article
runs stet, without changes.

A-VP has added only typographical emphasis:
boldfacing and supersizing.

To help readers recognize anything that might
sound faintly familiar to them.

Like the Army-organized campaign
of letter-writing --
identical language in
personal letters home --
by US soldiers early in the Iraq War.

~ ~ ~

from Wikipedia

The Philippine-American War

War Crimes

American torture and scorched-earth campaigns

In 1908, Manuel Arellano Remondo, in a book entitled General Geography of the Philippine Islands, wrote: "The population decreased due to the wars, in the five-year period from 1895 to 1900, since, at the start of the first insurrection, the population was estimated at 9,000,000, and at present (1908), the inhabitants of the Archipelago do not exceed 8,000,000 in number." [25]

U.S. attacks into the countryside often included scorched earth campaigns where entire villages were burned and destroyed, torture (water cure) and the concentration of civilians into "protected zones" (concentration camps). Many of the civilian casualties resulted from disease and famine. Reports of the execution of U.S. soldiers taken prisoner by the Filipinos led to savage reprisals by American forces. Many American officers and soldiers called war a "nigger killing business."

American soldiers' letters and response

From almost the beginning of the war, soldiers wrote home describing, and usually bragging about, atrocities committed against Filipinos, soldiers and civilians alike. Increasingly, such personal letters, or portions of them, reached a national audience as anti-imperialist editors across the nation reproduced them. [26]

Once these accounts were widely reproduced, the War Department was forced to demand that General Otis investigate their authenticity. For each press clipping, he forwarded it to the writer’s commanding officer, who would then convince the soldier to write a retraction.

Private Charles Brenner of the Kansas regiment resisted such pressure. He insisted that Colonel Funston [27] had ordered that all prisoners be shot and that Major Metcalf and Captain Bishop enforced these orders. Otis was obliged to order the Northern Luzon sector commander, General [Arthur] MacArthur, to look into the charge.

Brenner confronted MacArthur’s aide with a corroborating witness, Private Putman, who confessed to shooting two prisoners after Bishop or Metcalf ordered, "Kill them! Damn it, Kill them!"

MacArthur sent his aide’s report on to Otis with no comment. Otis ordered Brenner court-martialed "for writing and conniving at the publication of an article which ... contains willful falsehoods concerning himself and a false charge against Captain Bishop."

The judge advocate in Manila convinced Otis that such a trial could open a Pandora’s box, as "facts would develop implicating many others."

General Otis sent the Brenner case to Washington writing: "After mature deliberation, I doubt the wisdom of court-martial in this case, as it would give the insurgent authorities a knowledge of what was taking place and they would assert positively that our troops had practiced inhumanities, whether the charge should be proven or not, as they would use it as an excuse to defend their own barbarities"; and Otis went on, justifying the war crimes, "and it is not thought that his charge is very grievous under the circumstances then existing, as it was very early in the war, and the patience of our men was under great strain." [28]

Towards the end of 1899, General Otis attempted to repair his battered image. He began to work to win new friends among the journalists in Manila and bestowed favors on any journalist who gave him favourable press. [29]

Concentration camps

As one historian wrote about Marinduque, the first island with concentration camps: "The triple press of concentration (camps), devastation, and harassment led Abad (the Marinduque commander) "to request a truce to negotiate surrender terms ... The Army pacified Marinduque not by winning the allegiance of the people, but by imposing coercive measures to control their behavior and separate them from the insurgents in the field. Ultimately, military and security measures proved to be the (essential element) of Philippine pacification." [30] This assessment could probably be applied to all of the Philippines.

Filipino atrocities

To counter the bad press back in America, General Otis stated that insurgents tortured American prisoners in "fiendish fashion," some of whom were buried alive, or worse, up [to] their necks in anthills to be slowly devoured. Others were castrated, had the removed parts stuffed into their mouths, and were then left to suffocate or bleed to death.

It was also stated that some prisoners were deliberately infested with leprosy before being released to spread the disease among their comrades. Spanish priests were horribly mutilated before their congregations, and natives who refused to support Emilio Aguinaldo were slaughtered by the thousands. American newspaper headlines announced the

"Murder and Rapine"

by the

"Fiendish Filipinos"

General "Fighting Joe" Wheeler insisted that it was the Filipinos who had mutilated their own dead, murdered women and children, and burned down villages, solely to discredit American soldiers. [31]

Other atrocities included those by General Vicente Lukban, the Filipino commander who masterminded the surprise attack in the Balangiga Massacre, that killed over fifty American soldiers. Media reports stated that many of the bodies were mutilated. [32]

Sergeant Hallock testified in the Lodge committee [that] natives were given the water cure, "in order to secure information of the murder of Private O'Herne of Company I, who had been not only killed, but roasted and otherwise tortured before death ensued." [33]

Reporters and Red Cross accounts contradict Otis

During the closing months of 1899, Emilio Aguinaldo attempted to counter General Otis’s account by suggesting that neutral parties -- foreign journalists or representatives of the International Red Cross -- inspect his military operations. Otis refused, but Emilio Aguinaldo managed to smuggle in four reporters -- two English, one Canadian, and a Japanese into the Philippines.

The correspondents returned to Manila to report that American captives were "treated more like guests than prisoners," were "fed the best that the country affords, and everything is done to gain their favor." The story went on to say that American prisoners were offered commissions in the Philippine army and that three had accepted. The four reporters were expelled from the Philippines as soon as their stories were printed. [34]

Emilio Aguinaldo also released some American prisoners so they could tell their own stories. In a Boston Globe article entitled "With the Goo Goo’s" Paul Spillane described his fair treatment as a prisoner. Emilio Aguinaldo had even invited American captives to the christening of his baby and had given each a present of four dollars, Spillane recounted.

Naval Lieutenant J.C. Gilmore, whose release was forced by American cavalry pursuing Aguinaldo into the mountains, insisted that he had received "considerable treatment" and that he was no more starved than were his captors. Otis responded to these two articles by ordering the "capture" of the two authors, and that they be "investigated," therefore questioning their loyalty. [35]

When F.A. Blake of the International Red Cross arrived at Emilio Aguinaldo’s request, Otis kept him confined to Manila, where Otis’s staff explained all of the Filipinos' violations of civilized warfare. Blake managed to slip away from an escort and venture into the field. Blake never made it past American lines, but even within American lines he saw burned out villages and "horribly mutilated bodies, with stomachs slit open and occasionally decapitated." Blake waited to return to San Francisco, where he told one reporter that "American soldiers are determined to kill every Filipino in sight." [36]

Ratio of Filipinos wounded

The most conclusive evidence that the enemy wounded were being killed, came from the official reports of Otis and his successor, General Arthur MacArthur, Jr., which claimed fifteen Filipinos killed for every one wounded. In the American Civil War, the ratio had been five wounded for every soldier killed, which is close to historical norm. Otis attempted to explain this anomaly by the superior marksmanship of rural southerners and westerners who had hunted all their lives.

MacArthur added a racial twist, asserting that Anglo-Saxons do not succumb to wounds as easily as do men of "inferior races." [37]

Muslims

In the south, Muslim Filipinos resisted until 1913 -- the so-called Moro rebellion. They were never part of Aguinaldo's movement. During this conflict, the Americans realized a need to be able to stop a charging tribesman with a single shot. To fill this need, the Colt M1911 Handgun was developed for its larger .45 caliber ammunition (45 ACP), resulting in additional stopping power.

English education and the Catholic Church

The Catholic Church was disestablished, and a considerable amount of church land was purchased and redistributed. However, the bulk of the land was quickly bought up by American companies with little going to Filipino peasants. [citation needed]

During the U.S. occupation, English was declared the official language, although the languages of the Philippine people were Spanish, Visayan, Tagalog, Ilokano, Pangasinan and other native languages. Also, six hundred American teachers were imported aboard the USS Thomas. The first task of the Thomasites was to reform the education system to one that maintained an anti-Spanish curriculum but glossed over existing American atrocities. [citation needed]

The English requirement barred many from political office and ensured a dependency on American administrators.

Quotes

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Philippine-American War

In the fall of 1899, [General Arthur] MacArthur, who was still loyal to General Otis, said to reporter H. Irving Hannock:

"When I first started in against these rebels, I believed
that Aguinaldo’s troops represented only a faction.
I did not like to believe that the whole population
of Luzon -- the native population that is --
was opposed to us and our offers
of aid and good government.

"But after having come this far, after having occupied
several towns and cities in succession, and having been
brought much into contact with both insurrectos
and amigos, I have been reluctantly compelled
to believe that the Filipino masses are loyal
to Aguinaldo and the government
which he heads." [38]

Further reading

* Agoncillo, Teodoro A (1997). Malolos: The crisis of the republic. University of the Philippines Press. ISBN 9715420966. Kenton J. Clymer States "The book provides the best account to date of the inner dynamics of the Filipino side of the war." -- Review: Not so Benevolent Assimilation: The Philippine-American War, Reviews in American History Vol. 11, No. 4 (Dec., 1983), pp. 547-552

* Brands, H. W. (1992). Bound to Empire: The United States and the Philippines. Oxford University Press.

* Deady, Timothy K.; "Lessons from a Successful Counterinsurgency: The Philippines, 1899-1902" Parameters, Vol. 35, 2005

* Gates, John M. (1973). Schoolbooks and Krags: The United States Army in the Philippines, 1898-1902. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0837158184.

* Gates, John. "War-Related Deaths in the Philippines, 1898-1902", Pacific Historical Review 53:367+ (1983)

* Gates, John M., The US Army and Irregular Warfare, Chapter 3: The Pacification of the Philippines

* Linn, Brian McAllister (2000). The U.S. Army and Counterinsurgency in the Philippine War, 1899-1902. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0807849480.

* May, Glenn Anthony (1991). Battle for Batangas: A Philippine Province at War. Yale University Press. ISBN 0300048505.

* Miller, Stuart Creighton (1982). "Benevolent Assimilation": The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899-1903. Yale University Press. ISBN 0300026978. Kenton J. Clymer States "The War Miller describes is a more believable one than the one Gates pictures."

* Schirmer, Daniel B. (1972). Republic or Empire: American Resistance to the Philippine War. Schenkman. ISBN 087073105X.

* Schirmer, Daniel B. Stephen Rosskamm Shalom (1987). The Philippines Reader: A History of Colonialism, Neocolonialism, Dictatorship, and Resistance. South End Press. ISBN 089608275X.

* Shaw, Angel Velasco (2002). Vestiges of War: The Philippine-American War and the Aftermath of an Imperial Dream, 1899-1999. New York University Press. ISBN 0814797911.

* Smallman-Raynor, Matthew, and Andrew D Cliff. "The Philippines Insurrection and the 1902-4 cholera epidemic: Part I-Epidemiological diffusion processes in war" Journal of Historical Geography, v 24, n 1, January, 1998, p. 69-89

* T.A. Agoncillo / M.C. Guerrero, History of the Filipino People, Quezon City,1987, pp. 159

* Twain, Mark and Jim Zwick (1992). Mark Twain's Weapons of Satire: Anti-Imperialist Writings on the Philippine-American War. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0815602685.

* Zwick, Jim. Friends of the Filipino People Bulletin

* Zwick, Jim. Militarism and Repression in the Philippines

* Zwick, Jim. "Prodigally Endowed with Sympathy for the Cause:" Mark Twain's Involvement with the Anti-Imperialist League" (Ephemera Society of America (January 1, 1992) ASIN B0006R8RJ8

* Young, Kenneth Ray; The General's General: The Life and Times of Arthur MacArthur, Westview Press, 1994

Government and contemporary sources

* The Philippine "Lodge committee" hearings (A.K.A. Philippine Investigating Committee) and a great deal of documentation were published in three volumes (3000 pages) as S. Doc. 331, 57th Cong., 1st Session An abridged version of the oral testimony can be found in: American Imperialism and the Philippine Insurrection: Testimony Taken from Hearings on Affairs in the Philippine Islands before the Senate Committee on the Philippines--1902; edited by Henry F Graff; Publisher: Little, Brown; 1969. ASIN: B0006BYNI8

* See the extensive Anti-imperialist summary of the findings of the Lodge Committee/Philippine Investigating Committee on wikisource. Listing many of the attrocities and the military and government reaction.

The President ... is as powerful a monarch as Louis XIV ... and is not subject to the processes of any court in the land ...

2006-06-30T14:20:00.000-04:00

cartoon by Spooner for The Age

Ah, screw it, I give up. I can't find this guy's e-mail addie anywhere on the website of Australia's national broadsheet The Age. I want to write the guy an e-mail but I can't.

So I'll just filch his column, post it on Vleeptron, and maybe he'll notice and contact me to complain.

Oh, I'll say I'm sorry and offer to buy him a pizza.

But I want to tell him what a great column this is.

Why should anybody care about a loop job like David Hicks?

Mr Shaun Carney, an Associate Editor of The Age, tells us why.

It's called The Rule Of Law. Our President Bush suspended it, and ceaselessly tells the American people why he suspended the Rule of Law, and why he doesn't care who objects, and promises to keep suspending the Rule of Law for as long as he's the worst president we've had in living memory, and for as long as he's the worst "Commander-in-Chief" we've ever had during a national emergency or two.

Yesterday five justices of the United States Supreme Court told President Lawless that he had to stop acting as if he were Above The Law.

And five is enough to mean that one of our three co-equal branches of the federal government demands he Straighten Up and Fly Right. The Supreme Court just told the president to Obey The Law. Or Else.

(Or Else what? Watch This Space.)

A little peek at the future.

In 2008, our Constitution says we must hold a presidential election, and Bush can't run for a third term. Our Constitution says that in January 2009, a new guy (or mebbe a lady) will take the oath and be sworn in as the new President of the United States.

If you were Bush, and you were as self-hypnotized as Bush says he is that the entire safety of every citizen of the USA depends on his being Above The Law during a national emergency -- would you gracefully and happily turn your powers over to The Next Guy or The Next Gal? Would you gracefully and quietly go back to Texas and spend your days polishing up your Presidential Library?

Hmmm ... maybe, if the guy who wins in 2008 is another right-wing Republican pscyho loop job. Like his brother Jeb, the Governor of Florida -- just an example.

But what if the 2008 winner is a Democrat who ran on a platform of restoring respect for the U.S. Constitution and the Rule Of Law? What if the 2008 winner is sitting on a new Democratic majority in both houses of the U.S. Congress, after a flip in '06 and/or '08?

If I were as megalomaniacal as Bush -- I wouldn't go gentle into that dark Texas. America needs me! Only I can save America! America will be doomed if it votes mistakenly for some kommie pinko sissy liberal Democrat. And personally, I'd be convinced that it wasn't a fair vote, but that the Democrats won by rigging the election. I can't let them take over the reins of power if they stuffed ballot boxes and hung pregnant chads in some politically corrupt state.

More than that, Bush on several occasions has made it clear that he has a historically unique special mandate to be our President. A mandate from God. God specifically wants George Bush to be President of the United States.

If I were God, do you think I'd care about the U.S. Constitution? God is Above The Law. God IS The Law. God chose George Bush to be President. Four more years, says God -- or that's what The Voice of God in Bush's Head will be telling him.

By the way, this "There's a war on, I'm the President, I'm Above The Law" crap has been pulled before. Richard Nixon's lawyer specifically argued before the Supreme Court that, during a presidency, the President has the same powers as Louis XIV of France -- the original "We Are The Law" absolute monarch. Here is what Nixon's lawyer, James D. St. Clair, said to the nine justices:

"The President wants me to argue that he is as powerful a monarch as Louis XIV, only four years at a time, and is not subject to the processes of any court in the land except the court of impeachment."

This cartoon from The Age pretty much shows how the Supreme Court (unanimously, I think, 9-0) replied to Nixon's lawyer. A few months later Nixon climbed aboard the Marine helicopter and waved goodbye, the first and (so far) only president ever to resign while in office.

How can you compare a total fuckup (I don't exactly know what the Ozzie word "bogan" means, if you do, please Leave A Comment)

WIKIPEDIA: Bogan (pronounced ... to rhyme with slogan) is an Australian and New Zealand English slang term, at times derogatory, for a person who is, or is perceived to be, unsophisticated or of a lower class background. The stereotype includes having speech and mannerisms that are considered to denote poor education and uncultured upbringing. Mostly applied to white, working-class people.

Any discussion of the meaning of the term is likely to be controversial. Australians tend to have an image of their country as culturally egalitarian; by contrast, Britain and the United States are often stereotyped in Australia as obsessed with cultural and economic class respectively. The presence of an insulting stereotype for poor people is obviously in conflict with this self-image.

Like the British term chav and the American term white trash, the term is supposedly based on behaviour rather than class alone. It may be contrasted to the term 'povvo', which assumes that poverty as such is worthy of insult.

Further, the stereotype assumes a correlation between subcultural practices of particular working-class people (eg style of dress, accent, and musical tastes), and anti-social behaviour. It should thus be considered a slur.

The term, and the attendant stereotype, are far more acceptable in Australian culture than equivalent slurs. A person who used the term in the media, for example, would be unlikely to face similar consequences to if they had used a term such as nigger or kike. The popular Australian TV comedy Kath and Kim derived much of its humour from this stereotype. A TV comedy based on equivalent stereotypes of Aboriginal people, for example, would have been highly unlikely to be aired.

While it has been used as a derogatory term, the word 'bogan' is becoming much more accepted, particularly among bogans themselves. Many people proudly claim to be bogans, making a statement on their musical preferences, lifestyle and morals.

like the pathetic Australian David Hicks to Our Great and Mighty God-Chosen War President? What can possibly link these figures together?

Shaun Carney knows, and says so with such wonderful, amazing clarity.

It's the Rule Of Law. If we live under it, David Hicks is still pathetic -- but he's somebody, a recognized human being, and the Laws of the United States of America, and the Laws of Australia, say so, and require he be treated according to these laws.

Three associate justices (led by Clarence Thomas, who was such a sore loser he read his dissent from the bench, something he's never done before) say the hell with the Rule of Law, this president can ignore it, and this president should ignore it. We're at War, the president needs the unlimited powers of a Strong Man to defend the USA. Like Louis XIV, liked Mussolini, like Hitler. Bush is Above The Law.

Five associate justices said: No. The President is not above the law.

~ ~ ~

The Age (national Australian broadsheet)
Saturday 1 July 2006

Sacrificing David Hicks

by Shaun Carney

David Hicks must surely be the most celebrated Adelaide bogan ever. All that ink, all that air time, all the legal work done on his behalf. The protests, such as the mock prison cage set up on a Manhattan street. The high-level diplomatic representations. Now, even the loftiest jurists in the world's most powerful nation, the members of the US Supreme Court, have, by extension, considered his fate.

Many among us have, to varying degrees, made a mess of our lives. But Hicks has earned the right to be the poster boy for that particular subset of humanity. He could have evaded capture by the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan in late 2001 by staying out of that country. Instead, having taken off earlier, he went back in to get his meagre belongings.

That's when he was nabbed and eventually handed over to the United States. And his life, bad enough before -- with his poor schooling and ridiculous, possibly murderous adventures with al-Qaeda and the Taliban -- has been an utter nightmare ever since.

There can be no doubt that Hicks is the chief author of his own misfortune, which was to be consigned to a dismal existence in detention at Guantanamo Bay, and so much more. But he is not the sole creator of his own story.

It was Hicks' bad luck to hail from a country whose elected political leadership not only does not give a stuff about him or his legal rights, but appears to actively want his life to be broken as some sort of example or sacrifice. Or something.

If Hicks had been, say, a Saudi Arabian or a British citizen when he was captured, he would not be in Guantanamo Bay now. He would be back in his homeland.

I do not like what David Hicks did. I do not like the way he lived his life. I think many of his choices were stupid and wrong. In Afghanistan he made a conscious choice to do the bidding of very bad people. The Taliban are evil and Hicks appears to have taken up arms on their behalf. At the very least, he hung out with them and fashioned himself a fellow traveller.

Morally, there is no defence for that. But we long ago left behind the practice of deciding what to do with our citizens based solely on our judgement of their morals.

Instead, we have laws; they are the spine of our society. Laws are to be applied equally, free of political preferment and interference. If there is anything we are defending in our ongoing battle against the terrorists who try to attack our way of life, it is that.

Hicks has not broken any Australian laws. Prime Minister John Howard acknowledged this in a radio interview yesterday. "If he's brought back to Australia he can't be effectively charged because the crimes he committed were not, according to Australian law, crimes at the time he committed them," he said.

"It was not a crime back in 2001 to do as he admitted he did, and that is train with al-Qaeda and rejoin al-Qaeda even after the terrorist attacks (on the United States) on the eleventh of September."

For that reason, Howard says he has no interest in seeing Hicks returned to Australia. From that decision, that attitude, held widely at the senior levels of the Howard Government, everything about the Hicks case has flowed.

Because of it, Hicks has languished for 4 1/2 years at Guantanamo, first without charge and then awaiting trial before a US military commission. It was a remarkable thing to see: one nation effectively shopping around for a forum to which it could deliver one of its own citizens -- a citizen who had broken none of his own country's laws.

Whenever Hicks' plight was raised with the Government, the Prime Minister, Attorney-General Philip Ruddock and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer would say there was nothing they could do. Hicks was the property of the US, where he would be dealt with fairly by that great democracy.

Oh, and the by the way, they always added, Hicks is a terrible person who did terrible things. Totally guilty, you understand, even if he hasn't been charged with anything.

On Thursday Washington time, this entire approach to Hicks collapsed when the US Supreme Court ruled that the military tribunal the Howard Government was happy to see pass judgement on him did not have proper legal status and breached the Geneva Conventions.

Defiant to the end, Howard said yesterday that Hicks should be brought to trial. "There clearly has to be another method of trial -- a court martial or a civilian trial -- which conforms with the Supreme Court decision."

Reports from Washington suggest that there was a desire on both sides of Congress to refashion the military tribunals, to give them a proper legal status. However, the same reports said the Supreme Court had warned that this would not be easy because of the requirements of the Geneva Conventions, which include proper protections for defendants.

Yesterday the Prime Minister said he had no sympathy for Hicks, adding almost comically "but that doesn't mean to say his rights should not be respected."

The Government's best course would be to swallow its pride, submerge its ego or whatever else its leading figures have invested in this thing, and repatriate Hicks.

After all, the Supreme Court ruling would seem to suggest that Hicks and the other Guantanamo detainees have been held illegally. That is, the Bush Government has locked them up for an illegal purpose.

Beyond that, however, there is the issue of Hicks' punishment. Is the four-and-a-half years of hard time he has already served enough? How does this square with his former Guantanamo inmates, British citizens, who are now free?

There will be no great public outcry from the Australian public in the coming days for Hicks to be either released or dealt with in some other more humane or legally decent manner, so the Government will not feel under pressure to change its approach.

For that, Hicks can take some of the blame. His bad choices marked his cards with many of his fellow Australians. The tragedy is that the nation's political leadership, which makes laws and expects those laws to be respected, continues to be so anxious to serve up one of its own citizens for its own political and diplomatic ends.

Shaun Carney is an associate editor.

Copyright © 2006. The Age Company Ltd.

Romeo and Ethel, Abdullah the grocery delivery boy and Katherine the Honor Student

2006-06-29T14:45:00.000-04:00

My least favorite Shakespeare play. In Tom Stoppard's "Shakespeare in Love," the Bard is having writer's block with his first draft: "Romeo and Ethel." It couldn't have been worse than "R & J."

I don't know what Love is. But I know what it's Not. And it's Not anything you experience so wildly and violently at any age younger than 20.

Which isn't to say that the stuff you experience at 14, 15 or 16 isn't Fun. Teen Romance is the Theme Park Summer Thrill Ride of the emotions.

Too bad so many of the riders get thrown out of the cars and land on the concrete. But most of them manage to limp away from that.

Hmmmm a bit of Journalistic Subtext here. The family appeared on ABC TV's morning show and blabbed about their Family Problems to the televised world, but refused to talk to the Associated Press.

Is this because the AP doesn't bribe subjects with $$$$$ payoffs for interviews?

Next we turn to the Michigan prosecutor. Doesn't this asshole have anything better to do than torment this little girl? I mean, she just ran away from home to try to experience something she perceived as Love. She's not a Teen Thrill Killer. No Human or Animal Was Harmed in the Making of This Adventure. Doesn't this asshole prosecutor have any Real Crime in his county?

And Abdullah ain't no al-Qaida terrorist fiend, he's just your basic 20-year-old boy meatball, too, with a grocery delivery job and the confused and volcanic emotions of Youth. Romeo fell in love just like Juliet did. Leave him alone, too.

Poor little girl got caught at the Amman Airport and sent home, embarrassed, humiliated all over TV and the front page.

Now leave her alone, let her rents handle it. She gets good grades in school.

And stop blaming it all on MySpace. Jeez. Teenagers are just being teenagers. But the adults in this Adventure really need to Get Smart.

And the little girl needs a few lessons in How Not To Get Caught. I was pretty good at that when I was her age. Contact Vleeptron for free Teenage Sneakiness Lessons.

Although the scam she pulled on her rents to get herself a passport -- pretty slick! Only an Honor Student can get from Detroit, Michigan USA to Amman, Jordan on a teenager's allowance!

A cheerleader probably couldn't have made it to Indianapolis on a Greyhound bus.

==================

Associated Press
Thursday 29 June 2006

'MySpace' Teen's Trip
Leads to Family Court

by DAVID RUNK (Associated Press Writer)

GILFORD, Michigan USA -- Weeks after trying to get to the West Bank to pursue an online romance, a now-17-year-old girl was set to appear Thursday in Family Court, where authorities have filed a runaway juvenile petition against her.

A judge could ultimately place Katherine Lester under court supervision until she turns 18 next June 21.

Her secret was uncovered earlier this month, when she slipped out of her mother's home in rural Michigan and made it as far as Amman, Jordan, before being sent home by U.S. authorities.

Lester is now living with her father, Terry, near Flint. A judge ordered her to surrender her passport and undergo counseling. In an interview last week on ABC's "Good Morning America," she declared her love for Abdullah Jimzawi, a 20-year-old Palestinian who works in his father's business delivering goods to minimarkets.

They still talk online, her father and Jimzawi have said, and she says she wants to marry him.

"Now that this is all over with, I know that if I would have told them about him, they would have understood my feelings for him," she said in the appearance with her father and stepmother. "I wish I would have told them about him."

"Now that our relationship is out in the open, I feel like I don't have to go there to talk to him or to be with him," she said. "I plan on him coming here and us being together over here."

Her father has declined requests from The Associated Press to interview his daughter but says her story should serve as a warning to families -- not about the dangers of the Internet, but about the importance of good family communication.

"She's her same old self," said Terry Lester. "She knows what she did was wrong, and she's willing to accept the responsibility."

Authorities don't think any local or state laws were broken in Katherine Lester's disappearance, but the FBI continues to investigate.

[Thank God! America's Security is at stake! Add 20 more FBI agents to the case immediately!]

MySpace, a social networking Web site popular with teenagers, has raised concerns among U.S. authorities, with scattered accounts of sexual predators targeting minors on the site.

But Jimzawi has said his love for Lester is pure. In a recent interview with the AP, Jimzawi said he met Lester online about eight months ago and was devastated when he learned they would not meet face-to-face. Jimzawi's mother, Sana, said Lester intended to sign a marriage contract in Jericho.

"When I realized she wasn't coming, I felt my whole world collapse," he said. "My tears didn't stop and I couldn't sleep for three days."

Back home, those who know Katherine continue to be stunned. For months, Katherine Lester had kept her relationship a secret: the then-16-year-old girl appeared to have a typical teenage life. Family members say she kept up good grades and went on two dates. But all along, she was crafting a plan to visit him, authorities said, securing a passport by telling her parents she wanted to go to Canada with friends.

The principal of her 200-student school in Michigan's agricultural eastern region said he expects there will be a lot of questions from students when they return from summer vacation.

The teen is a member of the National Honor Society at Akron-Fairgrove Junior/Senior High School and was an intern at the radio station where her older sister worked.

"It was a little shocking," said Joseph Candela, the school principal and district superintendent. "Katherine is a very good student, an excellent student. ... You would have never known it."

Her 19-year-old sister, Mary Lester, said that before Katherine's trip, she thought of her as honest.

"This story has taken a toll on not only our family, but on our entire lives as well," she said. "The sister that I have been around since this all happened is not the sister I have known for the past 16 years."

"She is not an adult," said Prosecutor Mark E. Reene at the Family Court proceedings. "That is something that should not be lost -- even though she is making a decision that could affect her whole adult life."

Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

2006-06-28T10:37:00.000-04:00

Oh absolutely, click several times,
it gets bigger and more detailed.
e-mail Vleeptron for ordering instructions
so you can hang this poster on the kids' bedroom wall.

You people laugh at me for spending half my time on Planet Vleeptron.

First, you think: Hey, that's ridiculous, nobody can travel to other planets.

But then you think: Now why would anybody ever want to leave this swell Earth planet?

I'm not posting this article to point any fingers at anybody. It takes two -- or three or four -- to start the Final Cataclysmic Apocalyptic Armageddon End Times Eschatological Global War prophesied by Saint John the Divine.

According to the Book of Revelations, after the Apocalypse, Colonel Harlan Sanders will climb out of his tomb and deep-fry us all a gigantic bucket of Original Recipe Kentucky Fried Chicken, with our choice of 3 sides. Like my brethren and sistern in the Fundamental Evangelical branches of Christianity, I can't wait.

I just went surfing to The Jerusalem Post to check out the latest developments in the start of Armageddon. In a region not particularly noted for wise leadership or Ghandi's ideals of non-violence, some Palestinian rocket scientists decided to kidnap an Israeli Army private in Gaza.

The Israeli government -- a parliamentary democracy which consists entirely of six ancient Orthodox rabbis and the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) -- is now responding in a measured, thoughtful, diplomatic way.

By the way, Israel possesses about 200 fission bombs, but that's a secret, you're supposed to pretend you don't know that.

The Vleeptron Roadmap for Peace In The Middle East consists (see previous post) of United Nations distribution of massive amounts of hasheesh from Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. Hahahahahahaha! That's funny, isn't it?

Let me know how funny you think it is three days from now. Let me know how well you think Serious Reality's Plan (currently designed by Condoleezza Rice) is doing.

Back in the Ancient Days of the Woodstock Sixties, during the Vietnam War, John Lennon urged everybody to Give Peace A Chance, and Cat Stevens urged us all to Ride On The Peace Train.

Fucking stoned peacenik hippie Commies -- Thank God nobody listened! What a disaster that would have been! Blacks and whites and Asians getting along, Muslims, Christians and Jews having hackeysack picnics and Group Hugs. We avoided that Nightmare just in time!

Since then, the leaders of the world have substituted an Alternative Plan. It kicks off on the Gaza-Israel borders today. Body Bag City. Atrocityville. Bidirectional Genocide.

=================

The Jerusalem Post (Israel)
Tuesday 27 June 2006

What Muslims think

by Daniel Pipes

To find out, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press [see Wikipedia article below] carried out a large-scale attitudinal survey this spring. Titled

"The Great Divide:
How Westerners and Muslims
View Each Other"

it interviewed Muslims in two batches of countries: six of them with long-standing, majority-Muslim populations (Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkey) and four of them in Western Europe with new, minority Muslim populations (France, Germany, Great Britain, Spain).

The survey, which also looks at Western views of Muslims, yielded some dismaying but not altogether surprising results. Its themes can be grouped under three rubrics.

A PROCLIVITY to conspiracy theories: In not one Muslim population polled does a majority believe that Arabs carried out the 9/11 attacks on the United States. The proportions range from a mere 15 percent in Pakistan holding Arabs responsible, to 48 percent among French Muslims.

Confirming recent negative trends in Turkey, the number of Turks who point the finger at Arabs has declined from 46 percent in 2002 to 16 percent today. In other words, in every one of these 10 Muslim communities, a majority views 9/11 as a hoax perpetrated by the American government, Israel, or some other agency.

Likewise, Muslims are widely prejudiced against Jews, ranging from 28 percent unfavorable ratings among French Muslims to 98 percent in Jordan (which, despite the monarchy's moderation, has a majority Palestinian population).

Further, Muslims in certain countries (especially Egypt and Jordan) see Jews conspiratorially, as being responsible for bad relations between Muslims and Westerners.

Conspiracy theories also pertain to larger topics. Asked, "What is most responsible for Muslim nations' lack of prosperity?" between 14 percent (in Pakistan) and 43 percent (in Jordan) blame the policies of the US and other Western states, as opposed to indigenous problems, such as a lack of democracy or education, or the presence of corruption or radical Islam.

This conspiracism points to a widespread unwillingness in the umma [Arabic: the community of Muslims, that is, the totality of all Muslims] to deal with realities, preferring the safer bromides of plots, schemes, and intrigues. It also reveals major problems adjusting to modernity.

SUPPORT FOR terrorism: All the Muslim populations polled display a solid majority of support for Osama bin Laden. Asked whether they have confidence in him, Muslims replied positively, ranging between 8 percent (in Turkey) to 72 percent (in Nigeria).

Likewise, suicide bombing is popular. Muslims who call it justified range from 13 percent (in Germany) to 69 percent (in Nigeria). These appalling numbers suggest that terrorism by Muslims has deep roots and will remain a danger for years to come.

BRITISH AND Nigerian Muslims the most alienated: The United Kingdom stands out as a paradoxical country. Non-Muslims there have strikingly more favorable views of Islam and Muslims than elsewhere in the West; for example, only 32 percent of the British sample view Muslims as violent, significantly less their counterparts in France (41 percent), Germany (52 percent) or Spain (60 percent).

In the Muhammad cartoon dispute, Britons showed more sympathy for the Muslim outlook than did other Europeans. More broadly, Britons blame Muslims less for the poor state of Western-Muslim relations.

But British Muslims return the favor with the most malign anti-Western attitudes found in Europe. Many more of them regard Westerners as violent, greedy, immoral, and arrogant than do their counterparts in France, Germany, and Spain. In addition, whether asked about their attitudes toward Jews, responsibility for 9/11, or the place of women in Western societies, their views are notably more extreme.

The situation in Britain reflects the "Londonistan" phenomenon, whereby Britons preemptively cringe and Muslims respond to this weakness with aggression.

Nigerian Muslims have generally the most belligerent views on such issues as the state of Western-Muslim relations, the supposed immorality and arrogance of Westerners, and support for bin Laden and suicide terrorism. This extremism results, no doubt, from the violent state of Christian-Muslim relations in Nigeria.

Ironically, most Muslim alienation is found in those countries where Muslims are either the most or the least accommodated, suggesting that a middle path is best -- where Muslims do not win special privileges, as in the UK, nor are they in an advanced state of hostility, as in Nigeria.

Overall, the Pew survey sends an undeniable message of crisis from one end to the other of the Muslim world.

The writer, based in Philadelphia, is director of the Middle East Forum. www.DanielPipes.org

This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150885865749&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Copyright 1995-2006 The Jerusalem Post

===========

Pew Research Center
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan "fact tank" that provides information on the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the USA and the world. The Center and its projects receive funding from The Pew Charitable Trusts. The Pew Research Center is a strictly non-advocacy organization, while the Pew Charitable Trusts supports advocacy and non-advocacy projects.

The Center's work is carried out by six projects:

* Pew Research Center for the People & the Press
* Stateline.org
* Pew Internet & American Life Project
* Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life
* Pew Hispanic Center
* Pew Global Attitudes Project

It's official: Pot-smokers are Communists, pot prohibitionists are Fascists.

2006-06-28T01:57:00.000-04:00

Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime

Meanwhile, same plant, two different planets.

Same United Nations, but one agency protects refugees, another saves ancient art, architecture and natural wonders, another safeguards human rights, another provides health care to children -- and another runs around screaming like a retarded clown.

Nobody's ever died from smoking cannabis, and there is no such thing as cannabis addiction. Don't believe everything you hear from a white guy in an Italian suit who gets driven around Europe in a stretch limo.

============

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06.n838.a01.html

The Times (London, UK)
Tuesday 27 June 2006

Contact: letters@thetimes.co.uk
Website: http://www.the-times.co.uk/
Cited: UNODC's 2006 World Drug Report
http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/world_drug_report.html
http://www.mapinc.org/topics/World+Drug+Report

Italy Relaxes
Cannabis Laws

by Richard Owen, in Rome

Boosted by its overwhelming victory in the referendum on devolution yesterday, the centre-left Government of Romano Prodi has moved to dismantle yet another legacy of the Berlusconi era by overturning its "zero tolerance" drugs policy.

The change will restore the distinction between "hard" and "soft" drugs, and will increase the amount of cannabis a person can possess without being arrested as a suspected dealer.

During its first month in power the Centre Left, which won local elections last month as well as the general election in April, has reversed the policies of Silvio Berlusconi's five-year administration on issues from Iraq to significant infrastructure projects.

Livia Turco, the Minister of Health and a member of the former Communist Democrats of the Left, said today that she would act immediately on the amount of cannabis permitted, an administrative measure that does not require parliamentary approval.

She said the amount of cannabis allowed for personal use -- 500 mg -- would be doubled. Nearly 10 per cent of Italians smoke cannabis regularly, according to a recent survey. A third of Italian teenagers between the ages of 15 and 19 say they have smoked it at least once.
Paolo Ferrero, the Welfare Minister, who is a Communist, said he would ask Parliament to repeal the "zero tolerance" policy and re-establish the distinction between hard and soft drugs. The emphasis would be on "prevention rather than punishment" and "treatment and rehabilitation rather than repression." This would help to fight illegal drug-dealing by the Mafia, Signor Ferrero said.

However, Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, issued a warning this week that cannabis posed "health risks" similar to those caused by heroin.

In the 2006 World Drug Report, he said cannabis had become more potent in recent decades and Governments that maintained "inadequate" policies "get the drug problem they deserve ... Policy reversals leave young people confused as to just how dangerous cannabis is."
Daniela Santanche, a member of the Far Right Alleanza Nazionale -- the moving force behind "zero tolerance" -- said Signora Turco's decision would "send a terrible message to young people that drug use is OK."

The new drugs policy has also raised alarm among Catholic members of the centre-left coalition. The Vatican objected strongly this month when Signor Ferrero suggested that Italy might introduce supervised "shooting galleries" where heroin addicts could inject themselves in a controlled, hygienic environment.

A number of nations, including Switzerland, Germany, Spain, Australia and Canada, have supervised "drug-consumption centres." But the International Narcotics Control Board says this appears to condone hard drugs and thus undermines the UN's prohibitionist policies.

Signor Ferrero also caused a furore recently by declaring that "many professional people in Italy, including politicians" use cocaine.

Health experts say there has been an 80 per cent rise in cocaine use in Italy over the past ten years. There are also an estimated 300,000 heroin addicts.

Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd

- 30 -

URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n837/a11.html

The Scotsman (Scotland)
Tuesday 27 June 2006

Contact: http://members.scotsman.com/contact.cfm
Website: http://www.scotsman.com/

CANNABIS AS BAD AS HEROIN,
WARNS UN DRUGS WATCHDOG

by Gerri Peev, Political Correspondent

THE drugs watchdog of the United Nations has rebuked the UK government's policy change on cannabis, saying it sent a confusing message to young people.

UN experts also warned that a major increase in the potency of cannabis means it now poses health risks similar to those of heroin.

The decision to reclassify cannabis as a Class C drug -- made by the Home Secretary in 2004 -- was implicitly criticised by Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, who warned of the growth in its use.

Cannabis had become more potent in the past few decades and governments that maintained inadequate policies got the "drug problem they deserve", Mr Costa said in the 2006 World Drug Report.

"Policy reversals leave young people confused as to just how dangerous cannabis is," he added. "

The cannabis pandemic, like other challenges to public health, requires consensus, a consistent commitment across the political spectrum and by society at large."

He warned governments against playing party politics with the classification of cannabis as its harmful effects were "no longer that different" to the damage caused by cocaine and heroin.
His remarks were made on UN Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.

But the Home Office stood by its decision to maintain cannabis as Class C.

A spokesman said: "Cannabis is controlled as a Class C drug. It is harmful and illegal and no-one should take it. In January 2006 the Home Secretary accepted the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs recommendation that cannabis remain a Class C drug. This decision to retain its classification is supported by the police and by most drug and mental health charities."

The Home Office said that consumption of cannabis had fallen from more than 28 per cent to 24 per cent in 16-24 year olds.

Scotland has one of the worst drug problems in Europe, with an estimated 50,000 addicts. At least half a million Scots are believed to have smoked cannabis and 200,000 are believed to have taken cocaine.

Last week, Tom Wood, Scotland's drug tsar, sparked controversy by suggesting the nation had "lost the war on drugs."

The European Commission has admitted that drug abuse in the bloc and the deaths it causes have reached "unprecedented" levels and that in any given month, 1.5 million Europeans take cocaine and 12 million use cannabis.

Since David Blunkett, the former home secretary, downgraded cannabis to a class C, ministers have proposed much lower limits for possession of the drug before an individual is prosecuted as a dealer. In contrast, the Dutch parliament is considering allowing the controlled cultivation of cannabis while Italy has also taken a softer stance.

The European Commission is asking for input into its drugs policy review from July to September.

Copyright 2006 The Scotsman Publications Ltd

- 30 -

sportsman

2006-06-27T00:36:00.000-04:00

European brown bear
Ursus arctos arctos

The Independent
& The Independent on Sunday (UK)
Tuesday 27 June 2006 00:29

The killing of Bruno:
act of cruelty,
or bear necessity?

by Tony Paterson in Berlin

Bruno, the first wild bear seen in Germany for 170 years, has been shot dead by hunters in the Bavarian Alps, prompting a public outcry and fury from conservationists who had fought in vain to capture the animal alive after it went on a month-long spree of farm livestock killing in the region.

The two-year-old bear, nicknamed Bruno by the German media but dubbed "rampant brown bear JJI" by the authorities, was killed by a marksman armed with a powerful hunting rifle at 4.50 am near the Spitzingsee lake in the Bavarian mountains yesterday, only hours after a ban on shooting the animal with live ammunition was lifted.

"The shot has been fired and the bear is dead," said Manfred Wölfl, a bear expert employed by the Bavarian government to track the animal. "Everyone knows that we would have preferred things to have turned out differently, but there was simply no other way of trapping the bear."

However, Bruno's death provoked a furious response from German and Austrian conservationists, who had enlisted a team of specialist Finnish bear hunters equipped with dogs, GPS position finders and anaesthetising stun darts in a forlorn attempt to take the bear alive.

Hubert Weinzierl, the President of Germany's Nature Protection Circle, described the shooting as: "The most stupid solution of all." He added: "I am deeply sad. The Germans should have taken a more relaxed attitude. In other countries bears and humans live peacefully alongside each other. Only in Germany are bears liquidated."

In Schliersee a press conference was interupted by self-described bear liberationist Bruno Engelhard, wearing a bear costume.

Spokesmen for the Bavarian and Austria hunters' associations said their organisations had been flooded with e-mails from the public, some of which threatened to murder hunters in retaliation for the bear's death. They said that as a result they were keeping the identities of hunters secret.

Germany's Nature Protection Association said the shooting was a "tragedy." A spokesman added: "In Austria, where bears were introduced several years ago, the animals walk past picnic tables and nobody bats an eyelid."

In Italy, Bruno's birthplace, Fulco Pratesi, the head of the country's World Wildlife Fund, described the shooting as an "act of barbarism."

Bruno wandered into Germany across the Austrian Alps from his birthplace in the Trentino district of Italy on 20 May. He was welcomed by the Bavarian state authorities as a sort of ursine prodigal son. Officials noted that the last wild bear was killed in the region in 1835.

But within days the animal started on a killing spree which led to the deaths of more than 35 sheep, dozens of chickens and domestic rabbits and the destruction of a beehive. Farmers in the region demanded the animal be shot on sight.

Bavaria was forced to admit that Bruno had become a "problem bear" but agreed to join forces with the WWF in an attempt to capture the animal alive, despite fears that its next victim would be human.

In the meantime, Bruno turned into a media celebrity, with reports of his whereabouts vying with the World Cup's progress on television. Germany was flooded with "Bruno T-shirts" and a mock "Bruno hunt" game featured on the internet.

The team of Finnish bear hunters was flown to Bavaria a fortnight ago. Equipped with a bear trap imported from the US, they covered more than 500 kilometres in the high Alps in a search for Bruno.

However, the bear eluded his pursuers at every turn. On one occasion Bruno managed to hunker down in a reception "blind spot," which made tracking him with GPS equipment impossible. Later, the bear was hit by the wing mirror of a car and was even seen sitting down outside a police station.

Bruno was last seen alive on Sunday evening by the owner of an inn located about 5,000 feet up in the Bavarian Alps. "My guests were having supper. I told them to stay inside. Then I went out and shouted at the bear and he ran off," the innkeeper said. The police were informed and hunters sent to track down the bear.

Several tourists in the Bavarian village of Schliersee, near where Bruno was shot, said they were relieved that the animal was dead. "It was high time that something was done. Any one of us could have been attacked," said one. But others said they were dismayed.

A spokeswoman for the Austrian WWF conceded that Bruno had become a threat to humans and said shooting the animal had always been an option. However, she insisted that the 20 wild brown bears ranging the Austrian Alps would not meet a similar plight. "They all live far from human habitation and pose no threat," she said.

In a gesture that seemed destined to provoke further outrage from animal lovers, Bavaria announced that Bruno's corpse would be delivered to a taxidermist and that a stuffed version of the bear would eventually be displayed at the state's "Museum for Man and Nature" in Munich.

- 30 -

I made the green in 2!!! I dropped the putt! I got a birdieAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!

2006-06-26T11:49:00.000-04:00

click if you have time
before you're vaporized

It's Sports Time on Vleeptron!
All the Sports from Vleeptron!
We've got the latest Qx'ii scores!
Guys playing golf in rivers of Lava!
Bear-baiting, fish-shooting,
cockfighting too!
Bare-knuckle boxing from 1902!
A fifth of our Sports
all take place in the Zoo!
Get your Sports on Vleeptron!
Get your Sports on Vleeptron!

This is a stale story from mid-May, but just last week I saw TV news film of this golf course, filled again with happy golfers.

Or maybe they weren't happy. Who knows who's happy? Who knows what happiness is?

All I can say for sure is that they were playing golf while, 5 miles off, Mount Merapi was the most violent, dangerous, earthquake-generating volcano on Earth.

I love erupting volcanos.

They love golf.

We have much in common.

=========================

Associated Press
Monday 15 May 2006

Play abandoned at erupting
Mount Merapi's golf course

MOUNT MERAPI, Indonesia -- The caddies have fled. A pair of cleaning ladies squat beneath the shade of a tree close to the 18th hole. The club's manager sits and smokes, knowing he is in for a quiet couple of weeks.

When dormant, the volcano that gives Golf Merapi club its name is its biggest draw.

Golfers from around the world come for the unique experience of playing on the flanks of a still active volcano, the crater of which is just five miles from the course.

But when the mountain is erupting, it stops play like nothing else.

"I tell people, it is probably safer to stay at home," said manager Sukirman, as the 9,800-foot peak belched out massive clouds of ash and sent searing hot gas clouds rolling down its slopes on Monday.

The club, which is situated just outside the peak's mandatory evacuation zone, is not the only business that is suffering because of Merapi's wrath, which scientists say could last for several weeks.

Scores of guesthouses popular with adventure tourists are now off limits, as are camp sites and restaurants catering for day trippers from Yogyakarta, the nearest city to the volcano.

The peak sputtered into life several weeks ago and activity has steadily increased.

On Saturday, officials hiked its alert status to the highest level, and more than 5,000 people were evacuated from their homes.

Many are staying in temporary shelters close to Merapi Golf.

Sukirman said the caddies that ply the 6,969-yard, par-72 course ran home when a particularly large eruption shook the mountain on Monday. The club closed its gates, and most of its 250 staff were told not to come to work.

"This is the risk of putting a club here," said Sukirman, who like many Indonesians goes by a single name. "When there is an eruption, it can make the future look pretty unclear."

© The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

=====================

Merapi Golf:
Golfing on The Top of Jogja

Merapi Golf: A Golf sitting on 800 meters above sea level, with just the perfect climate and the most breathtaking panoramic view of Mount Merapi with the hinterland of Yogyakarta and the Indian Ocean, is worth trying to play on.

Merapi The Perfect Golf Course

These 18 holes, 6370 meters par 72 course is located only 30 minutes drive from the ancient city of Yogyakarta. The stunning design of MERAPI GOLF COURSE is truly masterpiece of golf course, created by the golf course master: Thomson, Wolveridge & Perrett

The blend of the natural beauty and the freshness of mountainous weather, the challenging hilly landscape with Volcanic rocks of million years makes the golf course one of the most attractive courses in Central Java and difficult to forget.

Each hole is carefully planned and positioned, and is distinctly different with its own difficulties, serving a superb test for clubbing.

The quiet and peaceful surrounding, the spectacularly beautiful view, make the golfers enjoy the game and certainly would not miss this challenging course. This is really the place where golf lovers could play without being bothered by the heat and pollution.

Green Fee:
Weekdays : IDR 150,000 + V.A.T
Weekends : IDR 300,000 + V.A.T
Golf Car : IDR 100,000 + V.A.T (member)
IDR 100,000 + V.A.T (non member)

Golf Equipment, Pro Shop and Restaurant available.

PT. MARAPI GELANGGANG WISATA
Jl. Golf No. 1 Kepuharjo-Cangkringan
Kab. Sleman, Yogyakarta 55281
Phone: +62 274 896176, +62 274 896177, +62 274 896178
Fax: +62 274 896179
Shortcut URL:
http://www.yogyes.com/merapi-golf

Visit Yogyakarta / Jogja. Copyright © 2003-2006 YogYES.COM.

filching stuff from Asia again

2006-06-26T08:57:00.000-04:00

Some asshat left an anonymous Driveby Comment and told me I had a stupid blog.

Above, my new Feedback Software. It collects all the readers of Vleeptron and asks them what they think of it.

If it doesn't wiggle for you, go HERE.

okay i steal things god made me this way

2006-06-26T08:25:00.000-04:00

Grrrrrrrr I tried to filch this image and post it here, but it is Resisting me. If it's not here and if it's not wigging, go HERE it's wiggling like crazy here.

giggle i really like this. perhaps The Artist will tell Vleeptron a little bit about it, what its Title is (if it has one), how he made it, what it means, and perhaps show us some of his Other Stuff.

This is the first entry in The Vleeptron Animated Film Festival.

Postalo Vleeptron / 1st Day Issue: Henri Dunant / No. 1 in series: Very Very Big Swiss Cheeses

2006-06-25T19:11:00.000-04:00

Cliquez ici svp
Klicken Sie hier bitte
Scattare qui per favore

Okay I hope this image is viewed as Respectful. Vleeptron does not want to start a new violent Cartoon Riot with the good Volk von CH, one Cartoon Riot per year is more than enough. Having only Today discovered Herr/M. Dunant, Vleeptron is already a Big Fan from what we are reading and learning about him.

Like the USA Postal Service's simultaneous issuing of Young Svelt Exciting Elvis and Old Corpulent Disgusting Elvis, we present the Old and Young Henri Dunant; clearly these are the two most famous and recognizeable Icons of Dunant.

Respectful but also in Vleeptron's slightly verkakte avant-garde Wortspiel kind of way. We hope M. Dunant would appreciate a good joke. And also the design of his Memorial seems to be in the spirit of contemporary Public Outdoor Taxpayer-Subsidized Art by sculptors like Oldenburg.

Jetzt ist alles klar mit diese PizzaQ: Up from the fœtid Comment Sewers that flow deep beneath Ciudad Vleeptron

2006-06-25T16:37:00.000-04:00

bien sur cliquez ici svp

Okay okay The High Non-Junk Science Council of Vleeptron is pleased to announce that The Pizza with Tofu & Pineapple has been jointly awarded to Adam and PatfromCH. Adam had the right hunch, and Pat actually supplied the URL which makes Alles Klar Perfekt.

Originally when I saw the Imperfekt graphic from the Associated Press, I thought: Uh-oh, this is an entirely New Religion or Belief System somewhere. First I thought it was what Hindu ambulances look like in India or Bali or something. (I ain't never Wanderlusted to them places.) Or maybe Druse??? It just made me feel Stoopid.

Pat gets an extra slice for providing Vleeptron with the longest goddam URL in the history of the Internet. (abbas/hulleye uses TinyURL for these 211-meter anacondas.)

================

4 Comments:

adam said...

Palestine, I'm pretty sure, and it means the ICRC hasn't yet gotten around to giving the workers the red diamond, since while the symbol is meant to show unity between Christians and Muslims, it kinda leaves the Jews (and Hindus, or pagans, or Pastafarians, whoever else) out of the mix.
14:02

Bob Merkin said...

I LIKE IT!

but no pizza yet. i need a citation. a url. proof. i ain't giving pizza away without proof.
16:51

patproudlyfromCH said...

I have no blasting idea whatsoever. seen that one before though. could well be that this one is not in use anymore (like the red lion). maybe I can find out more about the origins of that little bugger. In the meantime hereßs some histrory on ICRC emblems
http://images.google.ch/imgres?imgurl=http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/emblem-questions-answers-281005/%24File/crystal_cross.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/emblem-questions-answers-281005&amp;h=200&w=200&sz=5&hl=de&start=1&tbnid=Cz47YNNllX51RM:&amp;tbnh=99&tbnw=99&prev=/images%3Fq%3D%2Bicrc%2Bemblems%2B%2B%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Dde%26lr%3D%26sa%3DG
06:07

Bob Merkin said...

AHA! Danke! In the URL you sent me, they reproduce this same symbol -- BUT look! The cross and the crescent are separated, there is a white gap between them. In the original Associated Press news story graphic, THEY screwed up, it was All One Continuous Red Thing with no gap. So yeah, I think Adam had the right guess -- it's for ambulances in (Palestinian) neighborhoods which serve both Muslim and Christian customers, and don't want to piss off either.

I will make my necessary drafting corrections.

Hey -- another gap in my History of Yerp, Helvetia, etc. Is this Henry Dunant guy a Very Big Swiss Cheese? Is he like one of your George Washingtons, a nationally beloved and venerated guy?

Or does the average Swissperson say, "Who?"

patmadeinswitzerland said...

yup, looks like Adam gets the Pizza. Congratulations !
here's a link (lotsa text though, but you can download the official emblems))
http://www.icrc.org/Web/Eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/emblem?OpenDocument
and here's another one on the icrc in israel and the occpied territories (also lotsa text and
htthttp://www.icrc.org/Web/Eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/palestine?OpenDocument#Key%20documentp://www.icrc.org/Web/Eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/palestine?OpenDocument#Key%20document

oh yes, Henri Dunant is a very very BIG swiss cheese. One of our few National Heroes. We are very proud of him
17:12

htthttp://

are you trying to mess with my head?

=========================

International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Henry Dunant, Author of "A Memory of Solferino"

Up until the middle of the 19th century, there were no organized and well-established army nursing systems for casualties and no safe and protected institutions to accommodate and treat those who were wounded on the battlefield. In June 1859, the Swiss businessman Henry Dunant traveled to Italy to meet French emperor Napoléon III with the intention of discussing difficulties in conducting business in Algeria, at that time occupied by France. When he arrived in the small town of Solferino on the evening of June 24, he witnessed the Battle of Solferino, an engagement in the Austro-Sardinian War. In a single day, about 40,000 soldiers on both sides died or were left wounded on the field. Henry Dunant was shocked by the terrible aftermath of the battle, the suffering of the wounded soldiers, and the near-total lack of medical attendance and basic care. He completely abandoned the original intent of his trip and for several days he devoted himself to helping with the treatment and care for the wounded. He succeeded in organizing an overwhelming level of relief assistance by motivating the local population to aid without discrimination. Back in his home in Geneva, he decided to write a book entitled A Memory of Solferino which he published with his own money in 1862. He sent copies of the book to leading political and military figures throughout Europe. In addition to penning a vivid description of his experiences in Solferino in 1859, he explicitly advocated the formation of national voluntary relief organizations to help nurse wounded soldiers in the case of war. In addition, he called for the development of international treaties to guarantee the neutrality and protection of those wounded on the battlefield as well as medics and field hospitals.

On February 9, 1863 in Geneva, Henry Dunant founded the "Committee of the Five" (together with four other leading figures from well-known Geneva families) as an investigatory commission of the Geneva Society for Public Welfare. Their aim was to examine the feasibility of Dunant's ideas and to organize an international conference about their possible implementation. The members of this committee, aside from Dunant himself, were Gustave Moynier, lawyer and chairman of the Geneva Society for Public Welfare; physician Louis Appia, who had significant experience working as a field surgeon; Appia's friend and colleague Théodore Maunoir, from the Geneva Hygiene and Health Commission; and Guillaume-Henri Dufour, a Swiss Army general of great renown. Eight days later, the five men decided to rename the committee to the "International Committee for Relief to the Wounded." In October (26-29) 1863, the international conference organized by the committee was held in Geneva to develop possible measures to improve medical services on the battle field. The conference was attended by 36 individuals: eighteen official delegates from national governments, six delegates from other non-governmental organizations, seven non-official foreign delegates, and the five members of the International Committee. The states and kingdoms represented by official delegates were Baden, Bavaria, France, Britain, Hanover, Hesse, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Prussia, Russia, Saxony, Sweden, and Spain.

Welcome home from the Vet, Elmer! Great to see you recovering and murdering things again!

2006-06-25T00:13:00.000-04:00

Vleeptron recommends: Click.

I Can't Give You
Anything But Love

music by Jimmy McHugh
lyrics by Dorothy Fields

from the Broadway review
"Blackbirds of 1928"

I can't give you anything but love, baby
That's the only thing I've plenty of, baby
Dream a while, scheme a while
We're sure to find
Happiness
And I guess
All those things you've always pined for

Gee I'd like to see you looking swell, baby
Diamond bracelets Woolworth's doesn't sell, baby
Till that lucky day you know darn well, baby
I can't give you anything but love

In the beginning, Bill created the Heavens and the Earth (virtually)

2006-06-24T14:13:00.000-04:00

Yeah yeah just click 2 times
& fine things will happen

giggle I stumbled into this last night on IRC Undernet #pakistan. Buncha guys chattering on in Urdu

{incrediblysexyfellow} yadda yadda Bill Gates

{handsomebrilliantguy} yadda yadda MITS Altair yadda

{incrediblysexyfellow} yadda yadda 1976 yadda

and then one of them put up a URL and I clicked on the URL and found this rather amazing typewritten pissed-off letter from the ancient past, from a Time that kneweth not Britney Spears nor Beyonce.

I'm sorry, but this is why I admire this guy.

I built me a kit computer about two years after he wrote this letter, not a MITS Altair, but an IMSAI (the computer in the kid's bedroom in "War Games"), and it used the same chip (Intel 8080) as the MITS Altair -- the world's first home computer.

Well, my amazing incredibly expensive home computer mostly just sat there doing nothing -- I called it The $3000 Alarm Clock, because that was the fanciest thing I could make it do in Machine/Assembly language, I had to program it in 0010010011110001110 off the front panel switches. (I am slightly grateful that I had to learn Machine Language to make it do something more than be plugged in and make 16 little red lights glow oooooooooooooooo)

Bill Gates' first BASIC compiler/interpreter/whatever was the first piece of software I ever bought. I could afford it, it worked, and suddenly my IMSAI could do interesting, even useful stuff. Bill Gates brought my home computer to life, like Dr. Frankenstein brought the monster to life.

In the 28 years since then, whenever I've needed software, Microsoft has had it, they've charged me a price I could afford, and the stuff worked -- if not perfectly, better than anything else I could find. (And usually there was nothing else to find. A million other companies have sold software, but a day late and a dollar short.)

But mostly I admire Bill Gates because in 1976, better than anyone else on earth, he saw the Future so clearly that he was able to Shape it largely the way he wanted. Who cares if I don't like the way he created the Virtual World?

Visionary. Prophet. If you think those words give him too much credit -- well, who's been better at seeing 28 years into the Future?

If you think he's just a greedy capitalist pig, compare what he does with his life and his fortune to that Publicke Asshole Donald Trump.

I apologize that The World Is Not A Simple Place. Bill Gates is doing more to help sick kids in the Third World than the US Government (Bush Administration). He and Melinda pay for their medical care, and they don't make them swear on the Bible to abstain from premarital sex before they can get the medicine.

First Day Issue: Postalo Vleeptron / Symbol Proliferation / 911 or 999 millidwings

2006-06-23T17:09:00.000-04:00

Sure, click. Who knows?

I think I've indicated now and then that, in contrast to the orderly Utopia of Vleeptron, its neighbor planets Yobbo and Hoon have a bit of a rough edge to them. They can indeed be a lot of fun to visit, but they're a bit wild, goofy, lawless, anarchic and meshuge.

This is often Good for their music scenes and clubs, not so good always for innocent backpacking tourists who don't know the ropes or don't have a native guide. For an Earth metaphor, think: Kaliningrad. Or maybe contemporary Praha. Or Hamburg, if the rest of it is anything like the neighborhood around the Bahnhof.

The Intergalactic Committee of the Dwingeloo-2 Red Cross also tried to pull that Symbol Proliferation crap, but the Yobbos and Hoons told them to shove it up their Võrkþ. On Yobbo and Hoon, the humanitarian emergency services are a fiesta of symbols festooning their ambulances and emergency relief autogryos. Few of the symbols make much sense to visitors. The $ is pretty obvious, but there was a misunderstanding, and somebody thought somebody was saying "Manet" rather than "Money," so that explains the symbol to the upper right of the $.

As for the symbol to the right of Melanchthon Mouse, the Administrator of Hoon Humanitarian Services delegated the design of their symbol to the teenage hoodlums Lenny and Spike, who volunteer as autogyro rescue pilots, and this was the rather predictable result. By the time complaints about the new symbol surfaced, all 293 emergency aircraft and vehicles had been plastered with the symbol and the budget could not afford to change the symbol.

Any questions about the other symbols, Leave A Comment, or make up your own story.

Bob is mementarily klooless: PizzaQ

2006-06-23T12:36:00.000-04:00

Okay, I give up. 3 Pizza Slices with Tofu. If an ambulance comes screaming around the corner and it has this Red Cross affiliate symbol on it -- WHERE ARE YOU?

Extra pineapple if you can also tell us anything extra about this symbol, what faith or belief system it represents, what the symbology reflects -- any stuff you know.

Bush's bonehead footshooting stunt; & a symbolic but important humanitarian leap forward

2006-06-22T14:48:00.000-04:00

The Red Whatchamacallit, or in Red Cross parlance:

The third protocol emblem, also known as the Red Crystal.
Graphic shows various Red Cross emblems.

(Agence-Vleeptron Presse
modification of AP Graphic)

Of all the bonehead stunts the Bush administration ever pulled, capturing and detaining human beings in the Afghanistan and Iraq war and the War on Terror (whatever the fuck that is) and refusing to permit the International Red Cross to serve as neutral inspectors of the conditions in which we detained them pretty much tops the list.

Now, five years after leaping into the pit to wrestle this Global Tar Baby, the absence of IRC inspections of our detainees has been a guarantee that we have utterly no credible evidence of how we have been treating these human beings. When anyone in the world accuses the USA of torturing, mistreating, abusing them or denying them the most fundamental human rights, the USA can only reply that the world will have to take our word for it that we're treating them humanely. In lieu of regular IRC inspections of our detention facilities like Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib, the USA offers the world The Honor System. Just take our word for it. Trust Us.

In all American history, we never faced a more demonizeable enemy than the Third Reich -- the Nazis. Here's an odd little thing about our war with the Nazis. When the Nazis captured American and British and Canadian soldiers, sailors and airmen, they permitted the International Red Cross to inspect Allied prisoners, observe the camp (Stalag) conditions where they were held, and listen to and try to address treatment complaints by our prisoners.

And the German military personnel we captured and detained and held in camps in the UK, Canada and the United States -- we permitted the same IRC inspectors to visit them.

As a result, American and Allied POWs don't recall having a nice holiday in the Stalags. But they remember being safeguarded and fed, their wounds and medical needs attended to, and not being abused, terrorized, tortured, degraded or humiliated. They were treated with a fundamental respect.

And our side did the same with German POWs. All watched over by the International Red Cross and its inspectors from neutral nations (Switzerland and Sweden).

More lessons from World War II show this current bonehead, foot-shooting refusal to allow the International Red Cross to inspect our detainees in even greater relief and contrast.

First, the Japanese treated Allied POWs horrifically, scoffed at the notion of IRC inspection -- and Japan is remembered for its POW atrocities with great and enduring bitterness and disgust, a stain and shame that their allies the Germans don't have to share. "King Rat," book or movie, by a Brit who survived Singapore's Changi POW Camp, James Clavell, is a very good and ghastly snapshot, as is "The Bridge on the River Kwai," book or movie.

But the Third Reich did not extend the inspection and treaty umbrella of the International Red Cross to their millions of civilian detainees/prisoners throughout occupied Europe. That earned Germany a stain and shame they are still struggling with and suffering politically and diplomatically from sixty years later.

Hitler is long dead and gone, but the Germans who became leaders after him must endure and cope with the Nazi mess.

How a government treats its prisoners and detainees now is an investment in history. Any government which claims it faces a crisis too dangerous and imminent to allow compromises like International Red Cross inspections has guaranteed its nation and people a harvest of shame for the rest of living memory.

Bush must leave office in January 2009. Whichever presidents follow him -- great statespersons or more Psycho Loop Jobs -- the statespersons will have to do their work shackled to a fœtid cannonball stenciled BUSH, and the Loop Jobs will have to employ propaganda morons and Professional Liars like Tony Snow to answer all world complaints with: "Fuck 'em, who cares what they say?" as America's reputation as a great historical advocate for human rights and dignity continues to spiral down the world toilet.

The IRC has won more Nobel Peace Prizes than I own cats. I could write an essay this size about the IRC's historical shortcomings, goofs and blunders.

But it's still in business, and IRC inspections of detainees, and its stewardship of the Geneva Convention ideals, are still the Hot Button at the Center of the world Cyclone, because the IRC's fundamentally important work is conducted so well that a world which still generates war, genocide, famine, plague and strife but has no IRC would be ghastly beyond imagining.

I don't like it when nosey people insist on going down in my basement to see how I treat my detainees, but when I grudgingly allow them access to my amateur home dungeon, they tell the world that I'm treating my detainees okay, and then they go inspect the other amateur dungeons in my neighborhood.

Even the Psycho Loop Job Bush administration should figure out this simple historical lesson and open Guantanamo and every detainee facility to the International Red Cross. Immediately. Why do they wait, stall and resist? Because it felt so good to shoot America's reputation in the foot that they want to do it more?

If anyone has a passionate rebuttal of why America should continue to tell the IRC and the Geneva Convention to go fuck itself, please Leave A Comment. No anonymous Drivebys. Make your case but sign your fucking name or identify yourself in some authentic way.

And now, some rather important news about the International Red Cross in a world still filled with war, genocide, famine, strife, plague, flood, tsunami, torture and human rights abuses. A new Symbol for an affiliate of the Red Cross may start appearing on ambulances in the Middle East soon. Symbols are important. I don't know why, but apparently they are.

=============

Associated Press
Wednesday 21 June 2006

Red Cross admits
Israel to organization

by Alexander G. Higgins

GENEVA, Switzerland -- The Red Cross admitted Israel to the worldwide humanitarian organization early Thursday, ending decades of exclusion linked to the Jewish state's refusal to accept the traditional cross symbol.

The approval came in the early hours Thursday following a two-day International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent.

With a round of applause the Red Cross federation admitted Israel's Magen David Adom society simultaneously with the Palestine Red Crescent. An optional new emblem was adopted so that Israel could retain its red star of David instead of having to adopt the red cross or crescent used by the 184 other societies in the global movement.

"This has been going on for 58 long years. It's time. It's overdue," said Bonnie McElveen Hunter, chairman of the American Red Cross, which had been campaigning for years for the Israeli society's admission.

Israeli Ambassador Itzhak Levanon said the International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent had earlier rejected a Muslim amendment that would have challenged Israel's occupation of Arab territory since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. The vote was 72 votes for the amendment and 191 against, he said.

Then the conference passed by a 237-54 vote a resolution setting up the legal basis for Israelis' admission and making an exception to the rule that societies have to be under a sovereign state so that the Palestinians could join as well.

Magen David Adom has sought membership in the Red Cross movement since the 1930s -- even before Israel became a state -- but has been barred from entry because it objects to using the traditional symbols of the movement to identify its medical and humanitarian workers.

The decision early Thursday completed a complicated process that included the creation of the optional, third emblem -- a blank, red-bordered square standing on one corner -- that could stand alone or frame the Israeli society's red star.

The emblem -- dubbed the "red crystal" -- was approved over Muslim objections in a hard-fought diplomatic conference last December. But that was only the first step, and the conference was called to complete the job.

Conference organizers said their aim was to make the movement universal.

The simple red cross on a white background -- the reversal of colors of the Swiss flag -- was adopted as the emblem of the movement when it was founded in 1863 by Swiss humanitarians trying to care for battlefield casualties who otherwise were left to suffer.

But the symbol unintentionally reminded Muslims of the Christian Crusaders, and they insisted on their own red crescent in the 19th century.

When Israel's society bid for membership was turned down in 1949, it objected to using either the cross or the crescent, and the Red Cross movement refused to admit yet another emblem.

The society and its friends have been campaigning for years to find a way out of the stalemate, and the new emblem was designed primarily to meet Israel's objections. Magen David Adom can combine it with the red star to create a new logo.

Israel's military will be able to use the crystal by itself on a white flag to protect medics and other humanitarian workers helping war casualties. But any society could combine the emblem with the cross or crescent -- or both -- for temporary use.

- 30 -

==================

International Committee of the Red Cross
Press Release 06/65
Thursday 22 June 2006

International conference
paves the way for red crystal

The 29th International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent has amended the Statutes of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement to incorporate the additional emblem of the red crystal, which now has the same status as the red cross and red crescent. In addition the participants to the International Conference requested that the ICRC and the International Federation recognize and admit the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PCRS) into the Movement.

As a consequence of this successful outcome the ICRC has now recognized the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) and the Israeli National Society, Magen David Adom (MDA), and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies will admit both National Societies. This outcome extends the universality of the Movement to an important area of Red Cross and Red Crescent operations and strengthens the operational cooperation of the two National Societies with each other and with their international partners in the Movement.
The Conference had been convened as a follow-up to the diplomatic conference of States in December 2005, which adopted the Third Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions, creating an additional protective emblem for the Movement, known as the red crystal.

The chairman of the International Conference Mohammed Al Hadid declared that: ‘‘This is an historical moment for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. We urge all governments to respect the red crystal, in addition to the red cross and the red crescent’’.

The acceptance by States party to the Geneva Conventions of the Movement’s amended Statutes also means that National Societies can benefit from the flexibility afforded by the Third Additional Protocol in the use of the red crystal or of a combination of emblems recognized by the Conventions.

The use of the red crystal will also provide additional protection to war victims and humanitarian workers in conflict situations where the red cross or the red crescent cannot be used.

The ICRC, the International Federation and the National Societies might use the red crystal temporarily and in exceptional circumstances. However no State or National Society is obliged to make any change to the emblem it uses. The ICRC and the International Federation will not change their respective names and emblems.

The International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent brings together representatives of the national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, the International Federation and the ICRC, with representatives of the States that are party to the Geneva Convention. In total 178 National Societies attended and 148 States.

For further information, or to set up interviews (ISDN lines available in Geneva), please contact:

Ian Piper, ICRC Tel: +41 22 730 2063 or + 41 79 217 3216 (mobile)
Marie-Françoise Borel, International Federation Tel: +41 22 730 4346 or + 41 79 217 3345

The International Federation, Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies, and the International Committee of the Red Cross together constitute the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.

See also:

# Resolution 1, 29th Conference, 22 June 2006

# Additional Protocol III relating to the adoption of an additional distinctive emblem

# List of signatories and ratifications of Additional Protocol III (in French on the Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) site)

# Design of the additional emblem

# Memorandum of Understanding between the Magen David Adom and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (on the Swiss FDA website)

# Council of Delegates: bulletin 1

# International Conference bulletin 2

# International Conference bulletin 3

# Statement by ICRC President Dr Jakob Kellenberger, 20 June

More information on the 29th International Conference page

Other documents in this section:

Focus\RC Movement\International Conference\29th Conference
Focus\RC Movement
Focus\Emblem
Humanitarian law
ICRC Activities\Humanitarian diplomacy
Humanitarian law\Emblem

Copyright © 2006 International Committee of the Red Cross 22-06-2006

================

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Your continued donations keep Wikipedia running!

Magen David Adom

This article documents a current event.
Information may change rapidly as the event progresses.

The Magen David Adom (Hebrew: מגן דוד אדום ) is Israel's national emergency medical, disaster, ambulance and blood bank service. The name means "Red Shield of David" but is usualy translated as "Red Star of David".

History

The Magen David Adom organisation was formed in 1930 as a volunteer outfit with a single branch in Tel Aviv. After opening branches in Jerusalem and Haifa, it was extended nationwide five years later, providing medical support to the public and the Haganah. In 1950 the Knesset passed a law making MDA's status as Israel's national emergency service official.

Current status

Though MDA currently staffs approximately 1200 emergency medical technicians, paramedics and doctors, it still relies heavily on over 10,000 volunteers who serve in both operational and administrative capacities. MDA operates 95 stations with a fleet of over 700 ambulances, mobile intensive care units and armored ambulances nationwide. Unique among civilian emergency medical services, MDA can become an auxiliary arm of the Israeli Defense Forces during times of war.

Involvement with the Red Cross

Since its creation, Magen David Adom has been denied membership in the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) since it has refused to replace its red Star of David emblem with a pre-approved symbol.

The official reason for the denial of membership is concerns about symbol proliferation; at the same 1929 conference which granted use of the Red Crescent and Red Lion and Sun, a limitation was placed on acceptance of any further emblems. The "Red Star of David" symbol was not submitted to the ICRC until 1931.

Similar concerns of India, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics regarding the use of non-Hindu and seemingly religious symbols were also dismissed by the ICRC, but their national bodies chose to adopt the Red Cross as their official emblems in order to gain entry. The Red Cross -- the inverse of the Swiss flag, the country of origin of the founder of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement -- is not intended as a religious symbol, but is often perceived as such.

Critics of the ICRC assert discrimination since Turkey, Iran and Egypt were granted membership in 1929 while using the Islamic Red Crescent as their emblem, citing the same concerns about the cross.

In her March, 2000 letter to the International Herald Tribune, doctor Bernadine Healy, then president of the American Red Cross, wrote:

"The international committee's feared proliferation
of symbols is a pitiful fig leaf, used for decades as
the reason for excluding the Magen David Adom
-- the Shield (or Star) of David."

In protest, the American Red Cross withheld millions in administrative funding to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) since May 2000.

Despite the continued lack of official recognition, the IFRC has increased assistance to MDA by helping with organizational development, and identifying opportunities to incorporate MDA staff and volunteers in trainings and deployments during international disasters.

Since the mid-1990's, there has also been extensive and growing co-operation between MDA and the ICRC including, among other things, a USD$2.2 million expenditure on strengthening ties between the two organisations, the signing in 2000 of a two year co-operation statement, the permanent placement of an ICRC co-operation officer in MDA headquarters, and extensive support of the MDA's blood bank activities. In addition, there are bilateral cooperation agreements between MDA and a number of national Red Cross societies.

In 2005, the ICRC added the third Protocol emblem, famously dubbed the "Red Crystal," hailed as a truly universal emblem free of religious, ethnic, or political connotation. The new symbol is a red square frame tilted at a 45 degree angle. MDA has adopted this symbol in addition to their pre-existing emblem. The third Protocol Emblem went into effect after final approval by the Geneva Conventions on December 7, 2005, establishing a solid foundation in international law for its use and recognition. Relief societies already using the red cross or crescent need not adopt the new emblem.

In the mean while, the MDA is recognised by the ICRC, and the Red Crystal symbol has been adopted in the ICRC statutes on the same level as the Red Cross and Red Crescent symbols. [1]

On June 22, 2006, the ICRC officially admitted Magen David Adom as a full member of the organization, together with the Palestine Red Crescent society. [2]

References

1. ^ ICRC website - Press Release 06/65, 22-06-2006
2. ^ CNN.com news release, 22-06-2006

External links

* MDA Israel (in English)
* MDA Israel (in Hebrew)
* Hatzolah Israel Affiliate of Magen David Adom that provides first response to medical emergencies.
* MDA, USA - A Support Site in English
* The Archetypal Mandala of India of the Star of David
* ICRC page discussing relationship with the MDA
* MDA page discussing relationship with the ICRC
* American Red Cross page discussing relationship with MDA
* IRC Discrimination, Jewish Virtual Library
* Canadian Court Denies Charity Status of Israel's Red Star of David

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magen_David_Adom"

* This page was last modified 14:12, 22 June 2006.
Wikipedia ® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

A-VP Sports presents the Offside Rule. You have until Thursday 10 am USA East Coast time to learn this.

2006-06-21T19:10:00.000-04:00

Offside (football)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Offside is a Law in football (soccer) which effectively limits how far forward attacking players may be when involved in play. Simply put, a player cannot gain an advantage by waiting for the ball with only the goalkeeper between him and the goal.

Application

The application of the offside rule is best considered in three steps; Offside position, Offside offence and Offside sanction.

* Offside position

A player is in an offside position if "he is nearer to his opponents' goal line than both the ball and the second to last opponent," unless he is in his own half of the field of play. A player level with the second last opponent is considered to be in an onside position. Note that the last two opposing players can be either the goalkeeper and an outfield player, or two outfield players. Also note that offside position is determined when the ball is touched/played by a team-mate -- a player's offside position status is not then altered by them or opposing players running forwards or backwards. It is important to note that being in an offside position is not an offence in itself. Another important point to note is that any player's offside position status is reset when an opponent touches the ball and is deemed by the referee to be in control of the ball.

* Offside offence

A player in an offside position is only committing an offside offence if, "at the moment the ball touches or is played by one of his team", the player is in the referee's opinion involved in active playing with play; interfering with an opponent; or gaining an advantage by being in that position.

Determining whether a player is in "active play" can be complex. A player is not committing an offside offence if the player receives the ball directly from a throw-in, goal kick or corner kick.

FIFA World Cup issued new guidelines for interpreting the offside law in 2003 and these were incorporated in law 11 in July 2005. The new wording seeks to more precisely define the three cases as follows:

* Interfering with play means playing or touching the ball passed or touched by a teammate.

* Interfering with an opponent means preventing an opponent from playing or being able to play the ball by clearly obstructing the opponent's line of vision or movements or making a gesture or movement which, in the opinion of the referee, deceives or distracts an opponent.

* Gaining an advantage by being in an offside position means playing a ball that rebounds to him off a post or crossbar or playing a ball that rebounds to him off an opponent having been in an offside position.

In practice, a player in an offside position may be penalised before playing or touching the ball if, in the opinion of the referee, no other team-mate in an onside position has the opportunity to play the ball.

The referees' interpretation of these new definitions is still proving controversial until this day, largely over what movements a player in an offside position can make without being judged to be interfering with an opponent.

Offside sanction

The sanction for an offside offence is an indirect free kick to the opposing team, at the spot where the offence occurred. Most referees use their discretion and let play go on if the "offended" team already has the advantage or ball, in order not to slow down play with redundant free kicks that achieve the same purpose of giving the advantage or ball back to the "offended" team.

Officiating

In enforcing this rule, the referee depends greatly on an assistant referee, who generally keeps in line with the second last defender in his relevant end (exact positioning techniques are more complex). An assistant referee signals that an offside offence has occurred by raising his flag in a manner that signifies the location of the offence:

* Flag pointed downwards: offence has occurred in the third of the pitch nearest to the assistant referee.

* Flag horizontal to the ground: offence has occurred in the middle third of the pitch.

* Flag pointed upwards: offence has occurred in the third of the pitch furthest from the assistant referee.

The assistant referees' task with regards to offside can be difficult, as they need to keep up with attacks and counter attacks, consider which players are in an offside position when the ball is played, and then determine whether the offside positioned players become involved in active play. The risk of false judgement is further enhanced by the foreshortening effect, which occurs when the distance between attacking player and the assistant referee is significantly different from the distance to the defending player, and the assistant referee is not directly in line with the defender. The difficulty of offside officiating is often underestimated by spectators. Trying to judge if a player is level with an opponent at the moment the ball is kicked is not easy: if an attacker and a defender are running in opposite directions, they can be two metres apart in a tenth of a second.

History

It is often assumed that the offside rule is a recent addition to combat "goal scrounging", "cherry picking", "goal hanging" or (in Canada) "goal sucking", where attacking players hang around near the opposing goal in case the ball gets kicked upfield, but in fact it dates back to the early years of the game, and was much stricter in the past than it is today. A player was "off his side" if he was standing in front of the ball (compare with the current offside law in rugby -- a game descended from the same roots), that is, between the ball and the opponent's goal. This was by no means universal -- the original Sheffield Rules had no offside, and players known as "kick throughs" were positioned permanently near the opponents' goal.

In 1848, HC Malden held a meeting at his Trinity College, Cambridge rooms, that addressed the problem. Representatives from Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester and Shrewsbury attended, each bringing their own set of rules. They sat down a little after 4pm and by five to midnight had drafted what is thought to be the first set of "Cambridge Rules". Malden is quoted as saying how "very satisfactorily they worked".

Unfortunately no copy of these 1848 rules exists today, but they are thought to have included laws governing throw-ins, goal-kicks, halfway line markings, re-starts, and the disallowing of holding and pushing. They even allowed for a string to be used as a cross bar.

Slowly, as these rules were tried, tested, written and re-written over the following years, a revised set of Cambridge Rules was drawn up in 1856. A copy of these rules, thought to be the oldest set still in existence, can be found in the Shrewsbury School library.

As football developed in the 1860s and 1870s, the offside law proved the biggest argument between the clubs. Sheffield got rid of the "kick throughs" by amending their laws so that one member of the defending side was required between a forward player and the opponent's goal; the Football Association also compromised slightly and adopted the Cambridge idea of three. Finally, Sheffield came into line with the F.A., and "three players" were the rule until 1925.

The change to "two players" rule led to an immediate increase in goal scoring. 4,700 goals were scored in 1,848 Football League games in 1924/25. It rose to 6,373 goals (from the same number of games) in 1925/26.

In 1990 the law was amended to consider an attacker to be onside if level with the second last opponent. This change was part of a general movement by the game's authorities to make the rules more conducive to attacking football and help the game to flow more freely.

In 2003, FIFA issued more stringent guidelines for penalising offside infringements, to encourage attacking play. As such, whether a player in an offside position is penalised depends on his actions and location. With this modification, attackers are no longer penalised when they get behind the defenders from an onside position while having a passive teammate in an offside position. Thus there are more goals scored through legitimate defence-splitting passes without being penalised.

Offside trap

The offside trap is a defensive tactic. When an attacking player is making a run up the field with a team-mate ready to kick the ball up to him, the defenders will move up-field in order to put the attacker behind them just before the ball is kicked, hence putting the attacker in an offside position when the ball is kicked. Defenders using this tactic often attempt to bring an attacker's potential offside status to the attention of the assistant referee, typically by shouting or raising their arm.

The use of the trap is often derided as making for boring football. However, it can be a risky strategy as all the defenders have to move up together, otherwise the attacking players will not be in an offside position; if the offside trap fails, the attacking players will have an almost clear run towards the goal. The 2003 rule changes have made it even more perilous as a tactic.

One of the best-known defenders to employ the offside trap was Billy McCracken of Newcastle United. It is claimed his play pressured officials to modify the laws in 1925, reducing the required number of defenders between the attacker and the goal line from three to two.

The offside trap has become riskier since the 2003 law interpretation in which the definition of active play was made more stringent. Thus, teams attempting an offside trap are less likely to have an offside offence called when they have caught a player in an offside position if he was deemed to be not in active play.

Trivia

The offside trap is often used in a humourous manner; it is joked that Women are incapable of understanding the offside rule. Also in the Budweiser adverts during the FIFA 2006 World Cup one of the American commentators says "So if he, moves across here and he's back here. Is that offside?" to which his partner replies "Beats the hell outta me".

External links

* Laws of the Game - Offside (from FIFA)
* Offside Presentation June 2005 - PDF file (from FIFA)
* Flash Animation detailing the Offside law (from FIFA)
* Detailed history of the offside rule

* This page was last modified 20:03, 21 June 2006.

Wikipedia ® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

Die viele Gesichter von Heidi

2006-06-21T17:50:00.000-04:00

Danke Man-on-the-Ground in CH!

Bitte, translate the belly and t-shirt messages.

these hats? & more Suisse footie fans & a poodle

2006-06-21T16:24:00.000-04:00

Hmmm that's a Swiss Poodle on her lap.

On the right, she's not holding up her
red shirt to get a small tattoo.
The red shirt IST her tattoo.

Are these the Helvetian sombreros you're talking about? Compared to that nude Yank at the USA-Italy match who painted himself the color of our flag, these gentlemen look very refined and dignified. Do you have a Footie Costume? Any fotos of yourself?

Bad federal corrections officers! No donut! / or: Quis custodiet ipsos custodies? (Juvenal)

2006-06-21T13:55:00.000-04:00

John Hall, a senior British prison guard since 1991, was recently jailed for life for a series of rapes in northern England. Among his victims were girls as young as 12. (Photo: West Yorkshire Police, via Reuters.)

Since jail was invented, prisoners have wanted Stuff smuggled into them, and jail guards have smuggled the Stuff in for them, in exchange for Money, and if the prisoners didn't have money, there's barter. The prisoners have Orafices, and the guards want sex, so the prisoners get what they want, the guards get what they want, everybody unhappy.

If you think prisoners get their contraband from family visitors or defense lawyers, you're probably blind or on an LSD hallucination. See a doctor.

Every visitor is subject to thorough searches.

Guards entering the prison aren't searched. They're searched once in a blue moon. They come and go into and out of the prisons and jails every day without scrutiny. What scrutiny there is is the scrutiny of fellow prison guards.

Which delivery service would you choose to get drugs, alcohol or some secret time on a forbidden cell phone?

And yet in informal discussions about The World's Largest Prison System -- that's my nation's, USA Number One!!! More prisoners than Russia! More prisoners than China! -- people can't believe that the most reliable and common conduit for smuggling drugs and other contraband is always the prison guards.

It's called Uniform Denial -- who could suspect a sworn corrections officer in a uniform with a badge? It's unpatriotic. It's unAmerican. I ought to be ashamed of myself.

It's a Growth Industry. First we pass all kinds of laws to fill our prisons with 2,300,000 children, women and men.

Then we hire thousands of new prison guards.

The prison guards form unions which collect $$$$$$ in dues, and go to the state capital and lobby ferociously for -- guess what?

Yes, new laws that will guarantee more prisoners, new prisons, hiring more prison guards, and a lifetime of guaranteed employment.

In California, the most powerful lobby in Sacramento, the lobby that contributes the most to the campaigns of the elected legislators, is the corrections guard union. No politician has a snowball's chance in hell of resisting the wishes, desires and demands of the corrections guard union. If a California politician goes against the corrections guard union, he or she probably won't survive the next election.

The new laws and mandatory minimum felony sentences the prison guards demand, and promptly receive from the legislators they've bought, are mostly drug felonies, from Adult Consentual Non-Violent Transactions. Something is bought, money changes hands, no violence takes place, both Adults walk away happy. About 53 percent of America's prisoners are inside for non-violent acts.

California is just the most egregious example of the power of the corrections guard lobby. Almost every state's corrections union is the most powerful lobby at the statehouse. Those are the states building the new prisons and filling them up with more and more mostly non-violent (and mostly non-white) prisoners.

Incidentally, the law in most US places says that when a male prison guard has sex with a female prisoner, no matter how much she's smiling, or seems to be smiling -- it's Rape. A prison guard is actually charged with rape about as often as a duck sings Lohengrin.

Is America a Safer Place with 2,300,000 human beings locked up?

If most prisoners are there for drug crimes, does Gulag America have less drug use than it had when only a tiny fraction of today's behind-bars population was incarcerated?

Does the Pope shit in the woods? Does a bear wear a red suit?

Anyway, if you want drugs but don't know where to find them, get yourself arrested, then start chatting up your prison guard. If you don't have any money, bend over or get down on your knees.

============
KLTV-7 (ABC television affiliate, Texas USA)
Wednesday 21 June 2006

Sex-with-Inmates Arrests
Trigger Florida Prison Gunfight

Tallahassee, Florida -- A guard facing charges in a sex-with-inmates probe opened fire on federal agents trying to arrest him Wednesday at a federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida.

The shooter and a federal agent were killed in the gunfight, the FBI said. A Bureau of Prisons official was wounded.

Federal agents were serving arrest warrants on six guards when the shooting started, around 7:45 a.m.

A grand jury on Tuesday indicted the six on charges including exchanging contraband for sex with female inmates.

The guards also are accused of attempting to keep the inmates silent through money and intimidation, according to the indictment.

Jeff Westcott, spokesman for the FBI's Jacksonville bureau, said the guard fired on the federal agents as they moved in to arrest him.

Federal agents returned fire, killing the suspect, Westcott said. An agent with the Department of Justice's Office of Inspector General died in the shootout, he said.

The grand jury indictment charges six male guards at the women's prison with a single count of conspiracy. Named in the indictment are Bureau of Prisons guards Alfredo Barnes, Gregory Dixon, Ralph Hill, Vincent Johnson, Alan Moore and E. Lavon Spence.

The indictment, the product of a year-long investigation, alleges that from September 2003 until June 2005 the six guards conspired to swap contraband -- drugs, alcohol, money and favors -- for sex with at least 10 female inmates. The details of the scandal are laid out in the indictment's 70 charged overt acts.

Five of the six guards are accused of having sexual contact with inmates in exchange for contraband. The indictment does not allege that guard Johnson had sex with anyone, but does allege that he discouraged an inmate from cooperating with the investigation.

The guards are accused of facilitating the sexual contracts by covering for each other, swapping shifts and paying willing female inmates with cash and other contraband.

The guards also were accused of abusing their authority to keep the scheme going. They allegedly monitored inmates' phone conversations, abused their access to inmates' confidential computer files, and urged them not to cooperate with investigators.

In some cases, the indictment said, they threatened to transfer uncooperative inmates to other prisons father away from their families.

They guards allegedly paid cash and other contraband for some inmates' silence while threatening to transfer other inmates who indicated they would report sexual advances or otherwise expose the alleged scheme.

According to the indictment, at least one federal agent went undercover at the prison. The indictment states that, at Barnes' urging, the undercover agent mailed a $600 money order to purchase contraband.

Barnes allegedly called the undercover agent's cell phone to discuss delivery of the contraband, and Johnson passed on a message to an inmate on Barnes' behalf, the indictment charges.

The Tallahassee facility holds mainly women, but includes an area holding men awaiting trial.

The facility was put on lockdown after the shooting, officials said.

- 30 -

CNN's Patrick Oppmann and Terry Frieden contributed to this report.
============
Reuters
Wednesday 21 June 2006 12:18pm USA ET

US agent among 2 dead
in Florida prison gunfight

by Michael Peltier

TALLAHASSEE, Florida (Reuters) -- A federal agent and a prison guard were shot dead and another worker was injured in a gunfight during an arrest attempt at a federal detention center in north Florida on Wednesday, the FBI said.

Federal agents were trying to arrest six prison guards on corruption charges, including charges that some gave prisoners alcohol and other contraband in exchange for sex and money, an investigator said.

One of the guards targeted for arrest opened fire and was shot dead, FBI spokesman Jeff Westcott said. An agent from the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General was also killed, he said.

Another prison worker was also shot and taken to a hospital, where his or her condition was unknown, Westcott said.

Prison spokeswoman Carla Wilson said no prisoners were involved and the facility had been secured.

The six guards were indicted on Tuesday on charges of conspiracy, bribery, witness tampering and mail fraud, according to the U.S. Attorney's office in Tallahassee.

The suspects had conspired for nearly three years to trade contraband for money and other payment, and would face 20 years in prison if convicted, the U.S. Attorney's office said.

The detention center is one of two federal prisons located in the Florida state capital and is used for short-term incarcerations. It is located next to the Federal Correctional Institution, a long-term detention facility.

- 30 -

© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.

Reuters journalists are subject to the Reuters Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests.

Agence-Vleeptron Presse Sports: Guide to Team USA / World Cup 2006!!!

2006-06-20T21:49:00.000-04:00

Click! Kick! Use Your Head!

The people who read Vleeptron from Europe and Asia (caught a guy who hangs in Mexico reading it last week) cannot possibly imagine how little we know about Soccer (aka Football/Fusbol/Futbol/Footie) in the United States.

I know so little about Soccer that I couldn't even find an image of a Soccer ball, so I used two molecules of buckminsterfullerene, or buckyballs, instead. Buckminsterfullerene is a molecular form of carbon which consists of 60 carbon atoms; chemists who dreamed it up, then cooked some up, and eventually found some occurring naturally in deep space named it for the Geodesic Dome invented by the visionary architect Buckminster Fuller.

THE RULES OF SOCCER are fairly simple. A bunch of guys who can't use their hands run up and down a rectangular field and try to kick or head-butt a round thing which is not a sphere into a goal area. The goalkeeper can use his hands to try to keep the round thing out of the goal area.

Agence-Vleeptron Sports is indebted to U.B. of DE for explaining the Off-Sides Rule. "I can't explain it. But I know it when I see it."

TEAM USA tied Italy 1-1 the other day and so remains Mathematically Alive -- a form of Living which is pretty thready and marginal. If we lose to Ghana Thursday, we are Mathematically Fucked, and must go home, which, if you will check the roster, is the Netherlands, Germany, England, Belgium, and, in surprisingly many cases, the USA.

A Soccer Mom, in American political parlance, is a white suburban woman who drives an SUV and takes her kids to soccer practice, and then votes for Republican candidates, including Bush. But in an educated, prosperous way. Cf. also NASCAR Dad.

I am really going to make a big effort to wake up by 10 am Thursday to watch the game. What do you eat at Soccer games? Sausages? Okay! I like this game already!

GO AJAX!!!

Ars longa, vita brevis

2006-06-19T23:51:00.000-04:00

click

If you steal something, you can't keep it. You have to give it back.

~ ~ ~

Associated Press
Monday 19 June 2006 19:38 US EDT

Lauder Guides Museum
to Buy Klimt Painting

by MICHAEL R. BLOOD

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Ron Lauder first saw Gustav Klimt's "Adele Bloch-Bauer I" as a teenager in Vienna, and the gold-hued portrait of a dark-haired woman with bare shoulders left an impression that endured through time.

"It's a stunning picture. It overwhelms you with its beauty and its power," the cosmetics magnate told The Associated Press Monday during a telephone interview from Jerusalem.

It is a painting, he said, "we all wanted."

The 1907 masterpiece, whose extraordinary journey through the hands of the Nazis is part of its historical allure, was purchased for a record price of $135 million by a small New York City museum that specializes in German and Austrian art, Neue Galerie, which Lauder co-founded in 2001.

Lauder, a billionaire who serves as the museum's president, helped "put the museum in a position to acquire it" as part of a complex financial transaction, said Steven Thomas, an attorney who handled the sale for Maria Altmann, Bloch-Bauer's niece, and her family. "I don't think he loaned any money," Thomas added, but declined to release further details.

Citing confidentiality agreements, Lauder and Thomas did not confirm or deny the sale price, which was reported Monday by The New York Times. Thomas said it surpassed the prior record of $104.1 million paid at auction for Picasso's 1905 "Boy With a Pipe (The Young Apprentice)."

"When I heard it was available after coming out of Austria, I did everything I could to buy it as quickly as possible," Lauder said.

Beyond its dazzling beauty, the painting is part of a historical and family saga that courses through turn-of-the-century Vienna, the Nazi occupation of Europe, the U.S. Supreme Court and, finally, Los Angeles.

"Think of the time, then what happened to this family ... having to flee the country. The expropriation first by the Nazis, then the state," Lauder said.

"This painting is very much part of this story -- part of the 20th century," Lauder added.

As part of the agreement, the golden painting, now displayed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, will be moved to the New York museum with four other Klimts for an exhibition from July 13 through September 18.

When asked if he would seek to buy the other Klimts, also owned by Bloch-Bauer heirs, Lauder said, "Perhaps."

Altmann, 90, was a young newlywed when she watched the Nazis seize power in 1938 and loot the portrait and four other Klimt works from her aunt and uncle's home. Since then, the portrait has hung mostly in the Austrian Gallery Belvedere in Vienna, near Klimt's famous painting "The Kiss."

But in 1998 a law in Austria required museums to return art seized by the Nazis, and Altmann spent the next seven years fighting the Austrian government to recover the family collection. A lawsuit against the Austrian government eventually ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 2004 ruled in Altmann's favor.

Following arbitration, the Austrian government awarded all five paintings to Altmann and her family in January.

Lauder's ties to the New York museum and his relationship with Altmann -- he's known her for eight years -- apparently facilitated the purchase. Altmann's lawyer has said she wanted to ensure the art would remain somewhere in public view, where it would stand as a testament to the struggle of her family and other Jews in the Holocaust.

"The family always had in mind the Neue Galerie," Lauder said.

The painting will become the centerpiece of the little museum's collection in New York, where it should immediately increase the museum's popularity and reputation.

After so much, a happy ending?

"It's a happy ending for me," Lauder said.

As for Altmann, she was out of the country Monday but left a message on her home telephone answering machine: "We chose a museum that is a bridge between Europe and the United States." The museum will "be an excellent home for the gold portrait," she said.

- 30 -

i want a new drug 1 that won't make me sick 1 that won't make me crash my car or make me feel 3 ft thick

2006-06-18T03:22:00.000-04:00

A Fentanyl Primer.

It turns out Fentanyl was the main active ingredient in the gas the Russian police piped into the Moscow theater seized by Chechen nationalists/separatists.

===========

Wikipedia:

The Moscow theatre hostage crisis was the seizure on October 23, 2002 of a crowded Moscow theatre by armed Chechen men and women who claimed allegiance to the separatist movement in Chechnya. They took over 900 hostages and demanded the withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya. After a siege of two and a half days, Russian Spetsnaz ("special forces") raided the building with the assistance of an unidentified "knockout gas". All of the 42 terrorists were killed, along with 130 of the hostages, with no Spetsnaz casualties.

============

Down below, after a Musical Interlude, an interesting article about the status of Fentanyl gas as a new police/military tool in the international law of chemical weapons.

Then two U.S. newspaper articles reflecting, or claiming to reflect, a recent wave of overdose deaths in the USA which law-enforcement authorities are blaming on Fentanyl diversion, theft and abuse.

The newest Horror Plague Scourge Scary Killer Drug du Jour in the US War On Drug's law-enforcement/media/political cycle. Ultimately each frightening new drug results in larger budgets passed by state and federal legislatures for drug police particularly heavy on the paramilitary, and more new criminal laws, with longer mandatory minimum prison sentences, for prosecutors. Politically, each scary new drug du jour is like a little Red Scare or a mini-911 -- lots of government and elected officials encourage hysteria, because they know how to make money and increase their political power out of these little hurricanes of national hysteria.

It's also a hot story for the media, with enormous potential for scary graphics and terrifying headlines; headline writers on the finest newspapers get to Go Tabloid on the Front Page Above the Fold for a few months. It will be years -- and several subsequent Scary New Drugs -- before the media ever sobers up and holds itself accountable for actual factual accuracy and an authentic sense of proportion and perspective about the actual public health impact of the Scary New Drug du Jour. By then it will be Ancient History and beyond the horizon of influencing legislation and policy.

These cycles -- at least one per year -- have been going on, with the same mechanical characteristics [insert name of scary new drug here], since the Nixon administration.

The wiggling 3D Fentanyl molecule is a little on the cheesy side, but it's the only wiggler I could find. The other wiggler -- some sort of oscillating chemical bond (AMY!!!) -- is just up there because I thought it was cool. Vleeptron hopes they wiggle for you.

In a previous post, I wrote about losing 20 minutes of my waking memory -- I still have no recollection whatsover about what the hell happened to me -- when I had hose-cams shoved up my Lower Wazoo and down my Upper Wazoo a few months ago. Fentanyl, it turned out, was one of the Party Favors. I'd tell you it was a great drug, but for the life of me I can't remember what the heck it was like.

Agence-Vleeptron Presse may ask Vladimir/StereoBalls, AV-P's Man On The Ground, about the Spetznaz and the Fentanyl gas and the Moscow theater siege, but he has already indicated he doesn't like politics.

This isn't politics. This is chemistry.

=================================

I want a new drug One that won't make me sick One that won't make me crash my car Or make me feel three feet thick

I want a new drug One that won't hurt my head One that won't make my mouth too dry Or make my eyes too red

One that won't make me nervous Wonderin' what to do One that makes me feel Like I feel when I'm with you When I'm alone with you

I want a new drug One that won't spill One that don't cost too much Or come in a pill

I want a new drug One that won't go away One that won't keep me up all night One that won't make me sleep all day

One that won't make me nervous Wonderin' what to do One that makes me feel Like I feel when I'm with you I'm alone with you I'm alone with you, baby

[Instrumental Interlude]

I want a new drug One that does what it should One that won't make me feel too bad One that won't make me feel too good

I want a new drug One with no doubt One that won't make me talk too much Or make my face break out

One that won't make me nervous Wonderin' what to do One that makes me feel Like I feel when I'm with you I'm alone with you I'm alone with you, yeah, yeah

HUEY LEWIS AND THE NEWS - "I Want A New Drug"

===============================

from
http://www.lipidforum.org/

OPIATE ENDS HOSTAGE CRISIS

Fentanyl used to incapacitate Chechens
likely doesn't violate chemical arms ban

by LOIS EMBER

Responding to a request for clarification by Rogelio Pfirter, director general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Russian Health Minister Yuri Shevchenko revealed that an aerosolized opiate based on fentanyl was used to end the recent hostage crisis. The narcotic, normally used as an anesthetic, killed at least 115 of the 750 people taken hostage by Chechen terrorists in a Moscow theater on Oct. 23.

Although Shevchenko didn't mention use of any other agent, German doctors reported finding the anesthetic halothane in body fluid samples taken from two surviving German hostages soon after rescue. Halothane is often used with fentanyl in medical situations.

Arms control experts say the use of fentanyl for law enforcement purposes probably doesn't violate the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which Russia has ratified. Its use, however, may widen existing loopholes in the 1997 treaty, which bans the use of chemical weapons in warfare.

Russian officials initially refused to identify -- even to medical personnel treating victims--the gas pumped through the theater's ventilation system, the concentration deployed, or possible antidotes. While not condemning the rescue operation, U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Alexander Vershbow said that "with a little more information, at least a few more of the hostages may have survived."

Jean Pascal Zanders, director of the chemical and biological warfare project at Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, suggests several reasons for Russia's reluctance to reveal the toxic chemical used. In addition to the still prevailing culture of secrecy, he says, "Russia may fear that knowledge of what is available to its special forces may aid future terrorists." Also, he adds, Russia "may fear accountability under the CWC."

Through trial and error, Russian doctors found that naloxone, an opiate antagonist, reversed the effects of the then-unknown knockout gas. This fingered an opiate as the likely agent.

As anesthetics, opiates are usually administered by injection and are carefully monitored. Fentanyl, however, is a rapid, short-acting, inhalable narcotic painkiller. Fentanyl-like compounds can induce sleep, cause nausea and vomiting, and, at high concentrations, stop respiration and circulation.

During the 1970s, in a program dubbed ARCADE, the Pentagon researched fentanyl and its chemical cousins as possible riot-control agents, says Matthew S. Meselson, a Harvard University molecular biologist and a chemical weapons expert. Edward Hammond, director of the nonprofit Sunshine Project, says, "The U.S. has been looking at opiates as so-called incapacitating chemical weapons since at least 1994."

Meselson contends that Russia's use of a toxic chemical agent in what is considered a law enforcement situation "is arguably not a violation of the CWC." But, he adds, "the law enforcement section of the treaty, Article II.9(d), needs to be clarified."

That section states that the use of toxic chemicals for "law enforcement, including domestic riot-control purposes" is "not prohibited under this convention." Though the treaty doesn't define law enforcement, Meselson argues that such actions "would require applicable domestic law and the jurisdiction to enforce such law." Both conditions were met by the Moscow situation, he says.

What is unclear is whether the Moscow crisis satisfied the condition for domestic riot-control purposes. Article II.7 defines a riot-control agent as a chemical not listed in the treaty that produces rapid disabling effects that quickly disappear after exposure ends. Clearly, this was not the case in the Russian situation. At press time, hundreds of victims were still hospitalized, several in serious condition.

Zanders says the upcoming 2003 CWC Review Conference will likely have to "clarify the concepts of law enforcement as well as riot-control, peacekeeping, and antiterrorism activities that don't qualify as warfare but do require the use of nonlethal chemical weapons."

=========================

Media Awareness Project

US: Scores Of Deaths Blamed On Abuse Of Painkiller Patch
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n790/a04.html
Newshawk: Beth
Pubdate: Fri, 16 Jun 2006
Source: Rutland Herald (VT)
Copyright: 2006 Rutland Herald
Contact: letters@rutlandherald.com
Website: http://www.rutlandherald.com
Author: Jeff Douglas, The Associated Press

SCORES OF DEATHS BLAMED ON ABUSE OF PAINKILLER PATCH

ST. LOUIS -- Justin Knox bit down on the bitter-tasting patch, instantly releasing three days' worth of a drug more powerful than morphine. He was dead before he even got to the hospital.

The 22-year-old construction worker and addict was another victim in an apparent surge in U.S. overdoses blamed on abuse of the fentanyl patch, a prescription-only product that is intended for cancer patients and others with chronic pain and is designed to dispense the medicine slowly through the skin.

"I cannot tell you the amount of people I've seen and the creative ways they abuse this drug," said Dr. Scott Teitelbaum, director of the Florida Recovery Center in Gainesville, Fla. "Fentanyl has been abused for years. But recently there has been an increase. I've seen more chewing, squeezing of the drug off the patch and shooting it up."

Fentanyl, a synthetic narcotic, was introduced in the 1960s, but it was not until the early 1990s that it became available in patch form. Last year, the first generic versions of the patch hit the market.

At least seven deaths in Indiana and four in South Carolina since 2005 have been blamed on abuse of the fentanyl patch, along with more than 100 deaths in Florida in 2004. About a week after Knox's death in Farmington, Mo., in March, a second man in the same county was prescribed the patch legally and died after injecting himself with the gel that he had scraped from it.

Emergency-room visits by people misusing fentanyl shot up nearly 14-fold to 8,000 nationwide between 2000 and 2004, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The figures do not indicate how many of those ER visits were because of the patch.

(In recent months, more than 100 deaths have been reported from Chicago and Detroit to Philadelphia among drug addicts who overdosed on heroin mixed with fentanyl. And federal drug agents believe fentanyl is being made in clandestine labs in Mexico and elsewhere.)

The first fentanyl patch was Duragesic, made by Johnson & Johnson. Sales more than tripled from 2000 to 2004, according to the Pacific Law Center in La Jolla, Calif. Worldwide sales were more than $2 billion in 2004, and half of that was in the U.S., according to the J&J's Web site.

More than 5.7 million prescriptions were written in 2003 for the Duragesic patch, according to IMS Health.

Mark Wolfe, spokesman for PriCari, the J&J unit that oversees Duragesic, said the product comes with strong "black box" warnings about the dangers of abusing Duragesic.

One theory is that addicts are turning to the fentanyl patch because of a government crackdown on abuse of another powerful prescription painkiller, OxyContin, or oxycodone.

"The abuse of oxycodone and the fear of litigation is enough to scare doctors from prescribing it. Duragesic is in vogue, as we've seen over the last year and a half and two years," said Dr. John Brandt, a chronic-pain specialist at the University of Florida.

In Missouri, the man accused of illegally selling the fentanyl patch to Knox has been charged with murder.

"The awareness is just not out there. I had never heard of this patch," said Knox's mother, Rose Marler. "There's a new generation of drugs and people just need to be aware."

- 30 -

=====================

US: Overdoses Rekindle Tainted-Heroin Fears
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n790/a06.html
Newshawk: Beth
Pubdate: Sat, 17 Jun 2006
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA)
Copyright: 2006 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc
Contact: inquirer.letters@phillynews.com
Website: http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/
Author: Troy Graham, Inquirer Staff Writer

OVERDOSES REKINDLE TAINTED-HEROIN FEARS

At least 12 users fell ill, officials said. "Their next dose of heroin could be their last," a prosecutor warned.

At least a dozen drug addicts overdosed in Camden yesterday, authorities said, stirring fears that another wave of the tainted heroin responsible for more than 100 deaths nationwide has hit the region.

None of the victims died yesterday, though at least two were listed in critical condition at Cooper University Hospital. All fell ill with respiratory distress and seizures after injecting heroin, authorities said.

The killer drug also appears to have returned to other parts of the Philadelphia region. In Chester County, officials said they suspect three people died from the drug last week. They also said toxicology tests confirmed two deaths from the bad heroin that occurred in April and May.

In the Camden cases, the symptoms are similar to the adverse effects felt from the supply of fentanyl-tainted heroin that hit Philadelphia, South Jersey and Delaware in April. Around a dozen people died then, but the overdoses tapered off toward the end of that month.

Blood tests on the victims yesterday had not been completed, so officials could not say with certainty that the users had injected fentanyl-tainted heroin.

But that didn't stop them from issuing yet another urgent warning to addicts.

"The stakes could not be higher," said James P. Lynch, acting Camden County prosecutor. "They have to understand that their next dose of heroin could be their last."

The Camden victims all overdosed around Broadway, between Mickle Boulevard and Pine Street, an area blocks from Cooper Hospital. They had injected heroin from bags the dealers had branded "100 percent," "Nightmare," "Black Magic" and "Bad Boy."

Two people remained on ventilators after overdosing in Chester, Delaware County, earlier this week. Authorities there blamed those overdoses on fentanyl-laced heroin.

Philadelphia officials said they had seen no recent jump in overdoses.

Earlier this month, federal agents raided an illicit lab in Mexico they said could have been the source of the fentanyl. Still, overdoses have continued around the country, including a rash in Pittsburgh. Officials said that the supply of tainted heroin would take some time to disappear, even if they had closed off the source.

Police and drug enforcement agencies held a summit this week in Chicago, the city hit hardest by the fentanyl overdoses, to coordinate their efforts.

Fentanyl is a legal painkiller described as 80 times stronger than morphine. Drug enforcement agents have said just 125 micrograms - the equivalent of a few grains of salt - can be fatal. Authorities have found that some overdose victims unwittingly bought and injected bags that were nearly pure fentanyl.

Overdoses tend to drive up heroin's demand, as addicts seek out ever more pure product.

- 30 -

=============

Fentanyl
from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

To meet Wikipedia's quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup.
Please discuss this issue on the talk page, or replace this tag with a more specific message. Editing help is available.
This article has been tagged since January 2006.

Fentanyl
Chemical structure of Fentanyl
Chemical formula C22H29N2ClO
Molecular mass 372.931 g mol-1
Systematic name N-(1-phenethyl-4-piperidyl)-N-phenyl-propanamid

Fentanyl is an opioid analgesic, first synthesized in Belgium in the late 1950s, with an analgesic potency of about 80 times that of morphine. It was introduced into medical practice in the 1960s as an intravenous anesthetic under the trade name of Sublimaze. Fentanyl has an LD50

[Bobipedia: LD50 = Lethal Dose in 50 percent of test animals]
of 3.1 milligrams per kilogram in rats. The LD50 in humans is not known. Fentanyl is a Schedule II drug.

Analogues

The pharmaceutical industry has developed several analogues of fentanyl:

* Alfentanil (Alfenta), an ultra-short acting (5–10 minutes) analgesic,

* Sufentanil (Sufenta), a potent analgesic (5 to 10 times more potent than fentanyl) for use in heart surgery.

* Remifentanil, currently the shortest acting opioid, has the benefit of rapid offset, even after prolonged infusions.

* Carfentanil (Wildnil) is an analogue of fentanyl with an analgesic potency 10,000 times that of morphine and is used in veterinary practice to immobilize certain large animals.

Therapeutic use

Today, fentanyls are extensively used for anesthesia and analgesia. Duragesic, by Janssen Pharmaceutica, is a fentanyl transdermal patch used in chronic pain management. In the past few years, this compound has gone generic and is available for lower cost. Duragesic is manufactured in five patch sizes. They are 12.5 µg/hour, 25 µg/hr., 50 µg/hr., 75 µg/hr., and 100 µg/hr.. Dosage is based on the size of the patch, since the transdermal absorption rate is generally constant at skin temperature.

Actiq, by Cephalon, is a recently-developed solid formulation of fentanyl citrate on a stick that dissolves slowly in the mouth for transmucosal absorption. Actiq is intended for opiate-tolerant individuals and is effective in treating breakthrough cancer pain. It is also useful for breakthrough pain for those suffering bone injuries, severe back pain, neuropathy, arthritis, and some other examples of chronic nonmalignant pain. The unit is a berry-flavored lozenge on a stick which is swabbed on the mucosal surfaces inside the mouth - under and on the tongue and gums—to release the fentanyl quickly into the system. It is most effective when the lozenge is consumed in 15 minutes. The drug is less effective if swallowed, absorption from the alimentary tract being poor. Actiq is available in 6 dosages, from 200 µg to 1,600 µg (there are no 1,000 µg or 1,400 µg doses)in 200 µg increments.

Fentanyl is frequently given intrathecally as part of spinal anesthesia or epidurally for epidural anesthesia and analgesia.
Illicit use

Illicit use of pharmaceutical fentanyls first appeared in the mid-1970s in the medical community and continues in the present. United States authorities classify fentanyl as a narcotic. To date, over 12 different analogues of fentanyl have been produced clandestinely and identified in the U.S. drug traffic. The biological effects of the fentanyls are indistinguishable from those of heroin, with the exception that the fentanyls may be hundreds of times more potent - in some places, it is sold as heroin, often leading to many overdoses. Also, fentanyl has a shorter duration than heroin does. Fentanyls are most commonly used by intravenous administration, but like heroin, they may also be smoked or snorted. One common street name for fentanyl is china white. This is not always accurate, as it was originally given to alpha-methyl-fentanyl, although in recent years this terminology has faded somewhat. AMF has longer metabolism than fentanyl because the methyl group retards metabolism.

Actiq has begun to appear on the streets under the street name of "percopop", although the cost of the drug for actual patients is approximately US$16 to US$50 for each unit (based on strength of lozenge), with the black market cost is anywhere from US$20 to US$60 per unit, depending on the strength.

As of late May 2006, a mix of fentanyl and either cocaine or heroin has caused an outbreak in overdose deaths on the US east coast, heavily concentrated in the cities of Detroit, Philadelphia, Camden, Chicago, and Little Rock.

Both Actiq and Duragesic are becoming as popular as Oxycontin in pharmacy burglaries and robberies. In the U.S., law enforcement agencies are being instructed in how to tell the difference between Actiq and other medications, by sight, so they are better able to notice abuse of the drug.

External links

* Description of use of Fentanyl in Russia as an incapacitating weapon
* US DEA information: fentanyl
* BBC news report on Russian siege story
* Amid fentanyl deaths, investigation, addicts keep using in the Chicago Defender

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fentanyl"

* This page was last modified 14:06, 16 June 2006.
* All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (see Copyrights for details).
Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

===============
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written and performed by Cat Stevens
(Yusef Islam)

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more about the Fairly Small Flat-Top Halvah Pyramid of Hoon

2006-06-17T19:41:00.000-04:00

Yes, of course you should click.

Earthers think the Turks invented halvah, but actually halvah was invented by the vanished jungle people of Hoon, the Vodeeodo. I brought some back on the Zeta Beam, then travelled back in time in my Heathkit TM-212, and gave it to a Turkish guy in 1050 AD.

The Vodeeodo considered Halvah a Sacred Food, and only Royalty and the Priests were allowed to eat it. If they caught an Ordinary Guy eating halvah, they would immediately seize and disembowel him.

They made halvah into square sheets of such incredible thinness that when you put a piece on your tongue, Taste was the only sensation -- your tongue and teeth could detect no mass or bulk, there was no chewing required, it just melted into deliciousness on your tongue.

Eventually they began building their Sacred Pyramids by stacking gazillions of incredibly thin halvah sheets one on top of the other. As mentioned earlier, the Fairly Small Flat-Top Pyramid of Hoon is the only one left; travellers and tourists long ago ate all the other Pyramids.

Given such a Pyramid built of incredibly thin square halvah sheets, how can we derive the Volume Formula which won Jim the pizza slices?

If the LENGTH of a side of each square sheet is s units,

then its AREA is s^2 units squared.

Each sheet is so incredibly thin that it's impossible to assign a number to its thickness, so we just call the thickness dx .

Make no mistake -- dx IS really a dimension, it's Not Nothing. But if we insisted on assigning it a number like 0.000000000000000002 units, it would be cumbersome and unwieldy -- and still too large a number to accurately express the incredible thinness of the halvah.

So the VOLUME of each sheet of halvah is

s^2 x dx

or

s^2 dx units cubed

Now if

h = the height of a Pyramid

b = the length of a side of its square base

a = the length of a side of its square roof

we want to derive the simple Volume Formula

V = (h/3)(a^2 + ab + b^2)

Step 1. Kick the Fairly Small Pyramid and knock it over on its side.

Step 2.Skewer the centers of the bottom and top halvah sheets with a long, incredibly thin knitting needle. If you want to call this knitting needle the x-Axis , that's okay with me and Rene Descartes.

Now we want to juggle the measured lengths a, b and h to find the equation

y = f(x)

for the straight line from the midpoint of the side of the base to the midpoint of the side of the roof.

With this equation, no matter which halvah sheet we choose, we'll know exactly what the length of a side of it is at that height of the Pyramid: 2y units

And that sheet's AREA will be (2y)^2 = 4y^2 units squared

and that sheet's VOLUME will be 4y^2 dx units cubed

If we could Sum the Volumes of All These halvah sheets, we'd know the VOLUME of the whole Pyramid.

That's what that screwy Integral Symbol is -- a Sum. That's why Leibniz made it look like a stretched out S.

We're going to Sum the Volumes of all halvah sheets
from the Pyramid's Base (x = 0) to its Roof (x = h) .

Get a Big Bottle of Extra Strength Aspirin. (Canadians may use Over-The-Counter Aspirin with Halvah.)

The y equation isn't too hard to figure out. Things start to get algebraically jiggy when we multiply it by itself to find y^2 . Now take the first 2 aspirin.

Down by the Smiley Face, we Evaluate The Definite Integral.

The Face Is Smiling because the Lower Limit x = 0 . Because each of the 3 terms contains a factor x , and 0 times anything = 0 , this effectively halves the Algebra Nightmare we have to endure. We only have to evaluate this nasty expression for the Upper Limit x = h .

Four lines below, A Wonderful Algebra Miracle Happens, and the whole verkakte mess collapses nicely into the simple Volume formula. Please do not eat the Pyramid.

P.S. If you don't kick the Pyramid over on its side, then you end up with

x = f(y)

which is perverted and Against The Law, and I don't know how to evaluate stuff like that.

Pentagon seals Guantanamo base prison from media access, scrutiny

2006-06-17T04:02:00.000-04:00

In this April 6, 2006 file photo, reviewed by US military officials, the central cellblock passage of cells is pictured without detainees present, at Camp Delta 2 & 3 maximum security dentention center, at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in Cuba. (AP photo)

Associated Press
Thursday 15 June 2006

Military blocks
media access
to Guantanamo

by BEN FOX, Associated Press Writer

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- More than 1,000 journalists have visited Guantanamo Bay since the U.S. military began locking up suspected al-Qaida and Taliban militants there 4.5 years ago. But access has been severely restricted: Journalists could not talk to detainees, they had to be accompanied by a military escort and their photos were censored.

Now, the Pentagon [US Department of Defense] has shut down access entirely -- at least temporarily -- expelling reporters this week and triggering an outcry from human rights groups, attorneys and media organizations even as the prison comes under renewed criticism for the suicides of three detainees last weekend.

"Now is the time when the media is most needed," said Clive Stafford Smith, an attorney who has filed legal challenges on behalf of about 40 detainees. "The fact that right now, the most important time in the history of Guantanamo, they are being banned is un-American."

Pentagon officials defended the temporary ban on media, saying guards and base officials are preoccupied with investigating the deaths and maintaining security as detainees become more defiant. A clash with guards in May left six detainees injured. Another 10 prisoners were on hunger strike Thursday, including six being force-fed with nasal tubes.

U.S. officials say the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, which sits on cactus-studded hills in southeastern Cuba overlooking the Caribbean and mangrove forests, has been unusually open to journalists -- despite media complaints that access while they are at the prison is severely curtailed and requests for interviews often vanish in the military bureaucracy.

"It's the most transparent detention facility in the history of warfare," insisted Navy Lt. Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, echoing comments by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

But the Pentagon rejected all requests by news organizations this week to cover the investigation and aftermath of the suicides, the first detainee deaths since Guantanamo opened.

About 10 news organizations, including The Associated Press, were to cover a military tribunal this week for one of the 10 detainees charged with crimes. But the hearing was postponed and hours before they were to depart for Guantanamo, the Pentagon canceled the authorizations that reporters need to visit.

Reporters cover the hearings from the courtroom -- where they are barred from speaking with participants, even during breaks. Or they can view the proceedings on a large-screen TV near a media center where military censors peer at their photographs and video and decide what is out of bounds.

On Wednesday, the Pentagon expelled two journalists -- from the Los Angeles Times and The Miami Herald -- who arrived at Guantanamo on a charter flight Sunday and two others from The Charlotte Observer, who were at the base for coverage of a commander from North Carolina.

The Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders said Thursday the expulsions damage the credibility of the U.S. government.

"We condemn the Pentagon decision and we call on the U.S. government to take the necessary steps to guarantee the media free access to the naval base at Guantanamo," the group said.

Media visits have been common, drawing journalists from dozens of countries, but they have always come with thick strings attached.

Access to the base is available only through military planes or small charters. The charters take about 3 hours to fly from Florida to Guantanamo because they can't travel through Cuban airspace and must circle around the island.

On the base, a 10-page list of ground rules bars journalists from interviewing anyone without approval and prohibits photos of detainee faces and base features, such as radar or the coastline. The military says such restrictions are needed for security and to protect detainees' privacy.

But critics say the military is being disingenuous in saying it wants to protect detainees' privacy. One prisoner, speaking in English, once told a visiting AP reporter that he wanted to talk. But when the reporter asked the military if she could interview the detainee, the answer was no.

Other reporters have been hustled away when prisoners have tried to communicate with them -- through food slots in the cells of the highest-security section, or from behind curtains at the medical clinic.

Gordon said regular media access is scheduled to resume next week, with journalists from three European news organizations taking a tour that can take two months or more to arrange.

But without access to the detainees, Stafford Smith said such visits amount to little more than propaganda.

"The media sees a very sanitized view of what's going on," he said.

- 30 -

now you can see if Bob has a bald spot on the top of his head

2006-06-12T10:19:00.000-04:00

This can't possibly work, but maybe, with prayer and luck, if you

CLICK HERE

you'll be in Earth orbit looking down on where SWMBO and I will be for the next 3 days. So Vleeptron will be quiet and dark.

No pizza, if this link works, it's too easy to get a map with words on it.

volcano has moved, was Sumatra, now Java. Here, look straight into its maw.

2006-06-11T15:31:00.000-04:00

The Volcano Merapi on JAVA, one of the large islands in the Indonesian archipelago.

Boy have I really screwed the pooch geographically. In the previous Volcano Bulletin, Agence-Vleeptron Presse misplaced the volcano to Sumatra. The volcano that's blowing its stack this week is in Central Java. It's very near the city of ...

Yogyakarta (also Jogjakarta in pre-1972 spelling or Jogja) is a city and province on the island of Java, Indonesia. It is the only province in Indonesia that is still formally governed by a precolonial Sultanate, the Sultanate of Ngayogyakarta Hadiningrat. The city is known as a center of classical Javanese fine art and culture such as batik, ballet, drama, music, poetry and puppet shows. It is also famous as a center for Indonesian higher education. The official name of the Yogyakarta province is Special Region of Yogyakarta (Indonesian: Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta, or DIY). The city of Yogyakarta is the capital of the province. [Wikipedia]

Vleeptron puts you into Low Earth Orbit and lets you look straight down into Merapi's gaping spewing erupting maw. Click for a better view.

S210: Der Merapi auf Java

Landsat-7-Daten vom 28.4.2001
Hier das Original RGB = (543)
Ein Quicklook zeigt die Lage in Mittel-Java

Unterrichtseinheit:
- Vorbereitung
- Einstieg
- Inhalte
- Hausaufgabe

Ergänzende Materialien:
Vorbereitung:
Einstieg:
Inhalte:
Hausaufgabe:

Entwurf: Roseeu
Gymnasium Gröbenzell

! ! !

Let Bob tell you about the Pyroclastic Flow.

If you look up at the summit of a volcano and see a Pyroclastic Flow, you have just enough time to Think Of Mother.

===================

The Jakarta (Indonesia) Post

(aw heck, not really, it's their pickup
from the Associated Press. But pretend
The Jakarta Post actually sent their own reporter
and photographer and wrote their own story
about the monster erupting volcano in JAVA.)

Monday 12 June 2006

Merapi's lava dome partially collapses,
easing pressure; tear threatens larger bursts

MOUNT MERAPI, Java (AP): A massive blast of searing gas has collapsed a portion of Mount Merapi's unstable lava dome, easing pressure that threatened a full-blown eruption, but the volcano still could be deadly, a scientist said Sunday.

Vulcanologist Antonius Ratdomopurbo said a large, superheated cloud burst on Friday -- the biggest of the year -- brought down a section of the dome.

The blast allowed red-hot lava and scorching gas to escape into a newly formed crater, relieving pressure and lowering the possibility of the dome's complete collapse, which many feared could trigger a major eruption.

"Now that the magma can flow out into the new crater, the dome will become much more stable," Ratdomopurbo told The Associated Press.

But Ratdomopurbo warned that Merapi's 250,000 beleaguered villagers weren't in the clear just yet, as a crack at the foot of the lava dome's southern foot had widened, threatening more powerful surges of superheated gas.

"We warn people to remain alert of the hot clouds that could increase in size and frequency because of the crack," Ratdomopurbo said. "Merapi is still at its highest possible alert."

He said Friday's explosion reduced the lava dome's height from 116 meters to 93 meters, while its volume dropped to 3,300,000 cubic meters from 4 million cubic meters.

Merapi shot out more than 80 bursts of red-hot lava early Sunday, along with two deadly clouds of hot gas that roiled down the mountain, said Triyani, an Indonesian monitoring official.

Magma streamed as far as 4 kilometers down the southern and western sides between midnight and 6 a.m., he said. However, only two searing gas clouds steamed down the mountain, compared with 43 on Saturday.

"Merapi has calmed down since it only sprung gas twice overnight," Triyani said.

A pyroclastic flow -- a fast-moving burst of blistering gases and rock fragments -- is the main concern. More than 60 villagers died that way in 1994.

With the volcano smoldering above them, defiant residents of Merapi's lower slopes have returned from refugee camps to tend to their normally lush green fields, now coated with gray ash. About 15,000 people fled Thursday when hot gas, lava, and ash spewed down seven kilometers from the peak.

Scientists say they don't know for sure if a major eruption is imminent by Indonesia's most dangerous volcano, which has been venting steam and debris since 13 May.

Authorities last month raised Merapi's danger level to the highest mark, and urged residents living near its 3,000-meter peak to evacuate.

About 1,300 people were killed when Merapi erupted in 1930.

- 30 -

our Senators have little time left to take free trips to the Riviera paid for by Telecom lobbyists to study Net Neutrality

2006-06-11T12:26:00.000-04:00

If you're reading Vleeptron (why did I even say that?), you probably got it within 1 second of clicking on the URL or link. If there was some kind of annoying delay from click to full display, it was probably Blogspot.com's fault -- they had some kind of Constipation Event a few days ago. Right now if you perceive any delay on your trip to Vleeptron, it's just Mystery Tek Gremlins, and not too many, and not too often.

Enjoy this Infrastructure Environment. Look on these Gremlins as your friends, your annoying but beloved little pets peeing on your virtual rug now and then. Look on this moment of the Internet as the Golden Years, a moment to be recalled and remembered fondly.

If a big part of what you do in Cyberspace reflects One-Man-Band sorts of things like Vleeptron, and things physically and geographically (and legally and economically) going on in the USA, prepare (no, don't bother, there's nothing you can do) for The Big Slowdown.

Prepare for The Big Tollbooth on the Information Superhighway.

Big Corporate Web Users will get the E-Z Pass and whizz right past the Tollbooth at 70 mph.

Vleeptron and all the cool, goofy, beautiful, interesting One-(Wo)Man Bands out there on the Web are about to get Muy Constipado, and there'll be only one Hardware or Software Solution to speed these Human Flowers from Creator/Creatrix to your screen: Big Money. The kind you don't have. (Unless you're Bill or Melinda Gates -- Hi Mr. and Mrs. Gates!!! Please Leave A Comment!)

Vleeptron is hopeless. In the eighteen months Planet Vleeptron has been playing its Organ Grinder Monkey Music on the Sidewalk of the Information Superhighway, Planet Vleeptron has carried not a single advertisement or commercial message. We don't sell Viagra, we don't sell mp3s, we don't sell porn.

(Well, okay, we showed you where to buy the Fake Pizza, and when we filch a beautiful piece of art, we tell you where you can find the artist's website.)

But Vleeptron ain't making a Pfeneg of profit.

And so far, you still click and get your Planet Vleeptron jive and nonsense and pretty, silly images within a second.

The other day, the US House of Representatives caved to the Free Corporate Jet Vacations ("fact-finding trips") of the lobbyists for the huge Telecom corporations, monopolies and vertical (and horizontal) trusts. In the Lower House, our Congresschmucks whored out and killed Net Neutrality.

But it still has to pass the US Senate. America's 100 Senators must now take a lot of Fact-Finding Trips to the Caribbean and St. Andrew's Golf Course in Scotland on Lear Jets, tab generously picked up by their Telecom Pals, before they tackle Net Neutrality.

Nostrabobus doesn't have a clue how they'll vote.

All Nostrabobus can predict with absolute certainty is that on Tuesday 7 November -- ye Day of Reckoning -- one-third of the Senators will be up for re-election. And Nostrabobus can also predict with absolute certainty that, if Net Neutrality dies in the Senate, Vleeptron will be happy to tell you the name of every Senator who voted to flush NN down the toilet.

Every House member will be up for re-election. Vleeptron will tell you how your member voted on Net Neutrality, too.

Are you registered to vote? Voting is Good. On Monday, give a phone call to your Voter Registrar and double-check that you're still Good To Go in November.

Oh -- Very Curious Thing ...

Who reads Vleeptron? Who cares what Vleeptron says and writes?

If you checked [ nobody cares ] ... well, you're sorta Wrong.

Every time Vleeptron has posted about Net Neutrality, we get these strange Anonymous Comments -- no link, no way to trace who they are or where they come from -- and all of them explain why Net Neutrality is actually Bad for ordinary Web Surfers, and we'll all be better off if it dies.

So Watch This Space and read the Comments.

The Telecom Behemoths are employing an Army of Paid Trolls to convince Surfers NOT to phone and e-mail their elected representatives to demand they preserve Net Neutrality.

It sure would be nice if some Real News Agency -- the kind you read in the dentist's waiting room -- tracked down this Secret Boiler Room and did a story on it.

====================

The Independent (UK daily)
Saturday 10 June 2006

Bloggers take on
telecoms giants
to save spirit of Net

by Stephen Foley in New York

Campaigners across the political spectrum are massing against plans to introduce "congestion charging" on the World Wide Web, which they say could kill the spirit of the internet.

An army of bloggers has been joined by celebrities including the singer Moby and the founders of Google and Microsoft to fight a decision in the US House of Representatives that allows telecoms companies to charge popular websites for priority access to the Web.

A law that would have enshrined the neutrality of the Net was voted down by congressmen late on Thursday.

[Vleeptron Editorial: Fuck You, Congress.]

Telecom and cable companies are in effect being allowed to erect toll booths along the information superhighway - and individuals who post their own videos or blogs online could find their websites confined to the internet's B-roads or even blocked altogether.

Instead of an anarchic free-for-all that has dramatically broadened free speech and democratised access to information, the internet would come to be dominated by the giant internet and media companies that could afford to pay to make their content most easily available, campaigners say.

The battle is shaping up as a clash between the corporate lobbying power of the telecoms and cable industries and a shambolic but powerful grassroots resistance movement fostered on the internet. That movement hopes that the US upper house, the Senate, will reintroduce the guarantee of Net neutrality into its own telecoms bill, which it starts debating next week.

Robert McChesney, founder of the savetheinternet.com coalition, said:

"If we lose Net neutrality, we lose the most promising method for regular people to access and provide diverse and independent news, information and entertainment. We will see the internet become like cable TV: a handful of massive companies will decide what you can see and how much it will cost. Gone will be the entrepreneurship and innovation that has made the internet the most important cultural and economic engine of our times."

Savetheinternet.com and others are fostering a resistance movement on the Web, through community sites such as MySpace and on amateur video sharing web services like YouTube.com.

Meanwhile, Bill Gates of Microsoft has been pressing the issue with politicians. And Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, was on Capitol Hill this week making his first stab at lobbying. Google started as an offshoot of Stanford University and grew through word of mouth, but it may never have got off the ground if it had to pay "congestion charges" in its early days.

Telecoms companies lobbied hard against the Net neutrality law, because they want to start charging popular websites for the large amounts of bandwidth they use. They contend that their cable networks will soon become congested because websites such as Google and even broadcasters are starting to offer video over the internet. Charging these companies is only fair, they say, and would generate cash to invest in upgrading the network.

- 30 -

Also in this section

* Driven to extinction: Who killed the Dodo?
* Strange rocks made by earliest known lifeforms Independent Porfolio Content
* Amateur unearths pygmy dinosaur fossil Independent Porfolio Content
* Rediscovered: rare species of frogs that were feared extinct Independent Porfolio Content
* Why the mind is life's greatest mystery Independent Porfolio Content

Brain food
Why Government wants your child to take Omega-3

Open relationships
One lover is not enough
Kylie Minogue

* Sun shines on England
* Cash-strapped biotechs to offer NHS profit-share
* Tip-off by police informer led to Forest Gate raid
* Brain food
* Carnage on the beach leaves truce hanging by a thread
* Who's next? The US got its man. Now it must target the real threat in Iraq

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited

Merapi volcano (JAVA, Indonesia) erupts

2006-06-11T03:12:00.000-04:00

Click to enlarge.

Earthtimes.org
Friday 09 June 2006 13:22 GMT

Thousands flee from
clouds of gas and hot ash
as Indonesia's Merapi erupts

Author: Ryan Jones

JAKARTA: The Indonesian government yesterday sounded a red alert to people living around Mount Merapi after it started spewing lava and gas clouds down its slopes.

Although denying media reports that the mountain had in fact erupted, the government warned people living within a 7-kilometer radius to leave immediately. Thousands have already abandoned all their belongings in a bid to save their lives. Many are praying fervently for the mountain to calm down.

Merapi, included in the 'Pacific Ring of Fire' list of the most dangerous volcanoes, started spitting out debris and smoke soon after the 27 May quake that rocked this region killing more than 5,000 people, injuring thousands and displacing as many families.

The mountain roared to life with a thunderous sound at 09:05 a.m. (02:05 GMT). Huge gas clouds started billowing out of its crater accompanied by lava flowing down its slopes into the villages, fields and rivers nearby. The lava destroyed several crop bearing fields and miles of forest trees in its path.

Although later today the mountain seemed calmer, the authorities continued to evacuate more people. 18,000 people have so far been evacuated from settlements within a radius of 7 km around Merapi, a military official said. They have also been provided aid.

The mountain has been active for a long time now. The last eruption in 1994 killed 70 people and the one before that, in 1930, had killed 1,300. Volcano experts said Merapi erupts when a lava dome within its crater collapses causing it to spew out hot clouds which then cascade down the slopes accompanied by streams of lava.

The mountain lies about 440 km to the east of the capital.

(c) 2006 Earthtimes.org, All Rights Reserved.

=======================

USGS/Cascades Volcano Observatory, Vancouver, Washington USA

Indonesia Volcanoes and Volcanics

From: Simkin and Siebert, 1994, Volcanoes of the World: Smithsonian Institution and Geoscience Press, Inc., Tucson, Arizona, 349p.

Indonesia consists of more than 13,000 islands, spread over an area approximating that of the conterminous United States. ... Although Chinese records show a Krakatau eruption in the 3rd century AD, and some 17 additional historical eruptions are reported from Kelut as well as Krakatau through the 15th century, uncertainty surrounds many of them. Europeans first began to document eruptions in 1512 (Sangeang Api and Gunungapi Wetar), about the time Portugal gained control of the Mollucan clove trade. ... The disastrous Krakatau eruption of 1883 was followed by several devastating eruptions on other islands and in 1920 a Volcano Survey was established by the government, leading to much improved volcano monitoring and reporting. ... The Volcanological Survey of Indonesia (VSI) now operates a network of 64 volcano observatories continuously monitoring 59 volcanoes.

The great sweep of the Sunda Arc, over 3,000 kilometers from NW Sumatra to the Banda Sea, results from the subduction of Indian Ocean crust beneath the Asian Plate. This arc includes 76% of the region's volcanoes, but those on either end are tectonically more complex. To the NNW, the basaltic volcanism of the Andaman Islands results from short spreading centers, and to the east the Banda Arc reflects Pacific Ocean crust subducted westward. North of this arc, tectonic complexity increases, with converging plate fragments forming multiple subduction zones, mainly oriented N-S, that in turn produce the Sulawesi-Sangihe volcanoes on the west and Haimahera on the east of the collision zone.

Indonesia leads the world in many volcano statistics. It has the largest number of historically active volcanoes (76), its total of 1,171 dated eruptions is only narrowly exceeded by Japan's 1,274, and these two regions have combined to produce 1/3 of the known explosive eruptions. Indonesia has suffered the highest numbers of eruptions producing fatalities, damage to arable land, mudflows, tsunamis, domes, and pyroclastic flows. ... Four-fifths of Indonesian volcanoes with dated eruptions have erupted in this century ...

===================

Merapi

From: Smithsonian Institution Global Volcanism Program Website, 2000

Merapi, one of Indonesia's most active volcanoes, dominates the landscape immediately north of the city of Yogyakarta in one of the world's most densely populated areas. Merapi is the youngest and southernmost of a volcanic chain extending NNW to Ungaran volcano. The steep-sided modern Merapi edifice, its upper part unvegetated due to frequent eruptive activity, was constructed to the SW of an arcuate scarp cutting the eroded older Batulawang volcano.

Pyroclastic flows and lahars accompanying growth and collapse of the steep-sided active summit lava dome have devastated cultivated lands on the volcano's western-to-southern flanks and caused many fatalities during historical time. Since 1953, activity has been characterized by extrusion of lava into the summit crater, with periodic lava dome collapse and nuée ardente formation. Summit lava dome growth has continued since the 1969 gas explosion. It is monitored from the Merapi Volcano Observatory (MVO) in Yogyakarta.

URL for CVO HomePage is:
URL for this page is:
If you have questions or comments please contact:
02/06/03, Lyn Topinka

My Daughter Is An Honor Student yadda yadda yadda / Blogs = Good / MySpace.com = Evil

2006-06-10T16:44:00.000-04:00

97.4 percent of what makes people fall wild and crazy in love can be transmitted entirely via computer ASCII text. You don't ever have to touch, see, hear or smell the other person.

=====================

The Associated Press
Saturday 10 June 2006

Teen's MySpace rendezvous
in West Bank thwarted

by David N. Goodman

DETROIT, Michigan USA -- A 16-year-old honor student from Michigan tricked her parents into getting her a passport and then flew off to the Mideast to be with a West Bank man she met on MySpace.com, authorities say.

U.S. officials in Jordan persuaded her to turn around and go home before she reached the West Bank. She was on her way home Friday.

The teen is a straight-A student, her father said. "She's a good girl. Never had a problem with her," he said.

MySpace.com is a social networking Web site with more 72,000,000 members that lets users post photos, blogs and journals.

There have been scattered accounts of sexual predators targeting minors they met through the site.

The student, who lives with her mother about 80 miles north of Detroit, disappeared Monday after talking her family into getting her a passport by saying she was going to Canada with friends, sheriff's officials said. They said she apparently planned to visit a man whose MySpace account describes him as a 25-year-old from Jericho and whom she contacted about three months ago.

The FBI traced the teenager to a Wednesday flight from New York's Kennedy Airport to Tel Aviv. At a scheduled stop in Amman, Jordan, U.S. officials persuaded her to return home, the FBI said.

MySpace forbids youngsters 13 and under from joining and provides special protections for those 14 and 15 -- only people on their list of friends can view their profiles. Older users also have the option of restricting certain personal data so it can be seen only by people they have identified as friends.

A sheriff's official said it was unclear whether a law had been violated because of the teenager's age.

The age of sexual consent in Michigan is 16, and the teen turns 17 on June 21.

- 30 -

geezer opera & theatre ... CATCH MAHAGONNY (und Godot und Mutter Courage) LIVE IN BERLIN!!!

2006-06-10T13:56:00.000-04:00

"Halloh, Joe! Schluck keinen Zahn!"
"Hey Joe! Don't swallow your teeth!"

A performance of Mahagonny in Berlin, from the website of the Heldentenor Elliot Palay, in the role of the lumberjack Jimmy Mahoney.

If I got this straight, "Mahagonny" will be performed from September thru December 2006 at the Komische Oper in Berlin DE.

Trust me -- you don't really have to speak German to figure out what's going on in "Mahagonny." And you'll remember it long after you've forgotten who won the World Cup.

"Mahagonny" premiered in Leipzig on 9 March 1930, was performed in Berlin on 21 December 1931 -- and then was dark until a British production in Sadler's Wells in 1963.

~ ~ ~

Okay in several recent posts Vleeptron has made references to the Alabama USA city of Mahagonny, and the Mahagonnydrinksalon, and we have explained that Mahagonny is an Opera by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht.

Vleeptron said "opera" and so everyone immediately clicked off Vleeptron and went surfing for digital virtual toon teen ultraviolent pixel porn.

Yup, there's nothing in an old Euro-opera that anybody could possibly be interested in.

Here's a song from "Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny," lyrics rendered into English. A few young people have heard this song, a few Americans have heard this song. Some old dead dude named Jim Morrison used to sing it. He had this band called The Doors.

But I filched these from a Nina Simone fansite. Make a list of the 20th Century's most famous singers -- jazz, rock -- and they just cover and cover and cover Brecht and Weill. And the crowd goes wild.

Though both Brecht and Weill would soon have to flee for their lives to America, neither had ever been to America when they created the Alabama city of Mahagonny. Weill died in New York City after doing some of his best work for the Broadway musical theater. Brecht was chased back to East Berlin during the USA's Red Scare of the 1950s. In Berlin he founded a great theater that's still there, doing great things.

VLEEPTRON EXTRA SUPER BONUS!!!

"Warten Auf Godot" ("Waiting for Godot") is on at Brecht's Berliner Ensemble on 15 and 16 June 2006 -- this coming week!!!

And then Brecht's "Mutter Courage und Ihre Kinder" ("Mother Courage and Her Children") on 24 and 25 June!!!

============

Alabama Song
(Whiskey Bar Song)

from "Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny"
"Rise and Fall of the City Mahagonny"

music: Kurt Weill
lyrics: Bertolt Brecht

Show us the way to the next whiskey bar
Don't ask why
For we must find the next whiskey bar
Or if we don't find the next whiskey bar
I tell you we must die
I tell you we must die
I tell you
I tell you
I tell you we must die

Oh Moon of Alabama
We now must say goodbye
We've lost our good old mama
And must have whiskey ... you know why

Oh Moon of Alabama
We now must say goodbye
We've lost our good old mama
And must have whiskey ... you know why

Show us the way to the next dollar
Don't ask why
For we must find the next little dollar
Or if we don't find the next little dollar
I tell you we must die
I tell you we must die
I tell you
I tell you
I tell you we must die

Oh Moon of Alabama
We now must say goodbye
We've lost our good old mama
And must have dollar oh you know why

Oh Moon of Alabama
We now must say goodbye
We've lost our good old mama
And must have dollar oh you know why

Oh show us the way to the next little girl
Oh don't ask why
For we must find the next little girl
Or if we don't find the next little girl
I tell you we must die
I tell you we must die
I tell you
I tell you
I tell you we must die

Oh moon of Alabama
It's time to say goodbye
We've lost our good old mama
We must have little girl oh you know why

Oh moon of Alabama
It's time to say goodbye
We've lost our good old mama
We must have little girl oh you know why

Burma's jailed Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi hospitalized

2006-06-10T03:02:00.000-04:00

More human wrongs from the only sovereign tyranny on Earth with the distinction of imprisoning a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. In a free election in 1990, the people of Burma overwhelmingly chose Aung San Suu Kyi and her party to govern. The military junta ignored the election and has kept Aung San Suu Kyi in prison or under house arrest and incommunicado for ten of the last 17 years.

Please do not travel (even a day trip from Thailand) and spend money in Burma/Myanmar, and if you have any opportunity to boycott any market activity (beware particularly of hardware store hardwoods, insist on knowing their country of origin before you buy) that will benefit the brutal junta, please boycott anything that will benefit the junta.

Notice that the US State Department is demanding Aung San Suu Kyi receive good medical care, but has forgotten to demand that she be freed from house arrest, and has long since forgotten to demand that the election she and her party won install her into office.

Fuck the junta. Free Aung San Suu Kyi. Free Burma.

============

Associated Press
Saturday 10 June 2006

Myanmar's Suu Kyi
Released From Hospital

Myanmar's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was taken to a hospital Friday with a stomach ailment but her condition has improved and she has returned home, a spokesman for her party said Saturday.

Nyan Win of the National League for Democracy party said that Suu Kyi was taken to hospital on Friday but was returned home after her condition improved.

Anti-government activists in the United States, citing contacts from inside Myanmar, had said Friday that Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel peace laureate, had been hospitalized with severe diarrhea.

Thaung Htun, the New York-based U.N. representative for a self-styled Myanmar government in exile, said Suu Kyi was taken to the hospital sometime after 3 p.m. on Thursday after she called her physician because of diarrhea and weakness.

There was no immediate explanation for the discrepancy in dates for her hospital treatment.

- 30 -

Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

===========

BBC News
Friday 9 June 2006 20:28 GMT 21:28 UK

US worried over
Sui Kyi's health

The US has expressed deep concern about reports that Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been taken to hospital.

A state department spokesman said he could not confirm the reports but urged Burma's military rulers to assure she had any necessary medical assistance.

Ms Suu Kyi has been held since May 2003, and has spent 10 of the last 16 years under house arrest.

Burma recently said she would be held for another year under house arrest.

"We have seen those reports ... We are, of course, very concerned," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in Washington.

"We would call upon the Burmese government to provide Aung San Suu Kyi any and all medical assistance that she might need and to do so expeditiously and to ensure her safety during any treatment," he said.

Ms Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won an overwhelming election victory in 1990.

But the victory was never recognised by the junta, which has ruled the country -- which it calls Myanmar -- since a coup in 1962.

Ms Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, while still under house arrest.

- 30 -

===========

Reuters India
Friday 9 June 2006 19:04 India Standard Time 14

Myanmar confirms
Suu Kyi detention
extended a year

PA-AN, Myanmar (Reuters) -- Military-ruled Myanmar confirmed on Friday that democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest had been extended for one year.

Police general Khin Yi confirmed the 27 May extension order during a press conference with reporters on a government tour of Karen state.

Information Minister Kyaw Hsan, who also addressed the conference, said there had been talks between Suu Kyi and the junta before her detention was extended.

"Yes, there were," Kyaw Hsan said without giving details of the discussions.

A government source said last month a military official had met the Nobel Peace laureate and discussed conditions for her release, presumably restrictions on her freedom of movement.

"As far as we know, the plan to lift her house arrest became abortive when the talks between the regime representative and her failed," the source said.

Western governments and rights groups have condemned the extended house arrest of Suu Kyi, who was detained in May 2003 after a clash between her supporters and junta backers.

She has been under some form of detention for 10 of the last 17 years.

The United States wants the United Nations Security Council to put pressure on the former Burma to change its policies.

However the U.S. initiative is likely to be strongly opposed by veto-wielding permanent council members China and Russia, as well as by Japan, an elected member that lacks veto power.

Kyaw Hsan said Yangon [Rangoon] would oppose the U.S. campaign with the help of "friendly nations", but he did not identify them.

"Myanmar does not pose any threat to the international community or to any neighbour," he said.

- 30 -

street directions for another brothel (duck your head)

2006-06-09T17:55:00.000-04:00

A dollhouse brothel in the dollhouse museum at the House of Broel, a 19th-century Victorian mansion in New Orleans, Louisiana USA, now run as a venue for elaborate weddings.

House of Broel
2220 St. Charles Avenue
New Orleans, Louisiana 70130
504-522-2220 or 1-800-827-4325

Oh please, click the image as much as you like, just go ahead and click. I'm so glad you came to see us. Make yourself comfortable.

A cowboy is taking a bath on the top floor, with his cowboy hat on.

Decorating dollhouses as bordellos is an extremely popular sub-hobby in the world of dollhouses.

Dwingeloo Institute of Very Small but Very Beautiful Brothels

In der Mahagonnydrinksalon / La vie secrète de guys / The secret life of guys / VLEEPXTRA: Yobbo City transit map

2006-06-09T16:00:00.000-04:00

Hey Guy -- click. It's a good thing.

Vleeptron is extremely
proud to display
the only map of the
Yobbo City Rapid Transit System
to be found anywhere
on Earth or on the Internet.
We present it as an educational
public service to guys everywhere.

e-mail from Curious George:

Got a link to Der Spiegel brothel article?

==============

Bob, renowned Man of the World, bon vivant, sophisticate of 3 (count 'em! 3!) continents, boulevardiere, feuilletoniste, etc., replies:

==============

Hiya, is this what you wanted? This has the Latitude and Longitude and the nearest subway stop.

So much for Sex with your Soccer. Where are the Drugs?

As a Certified Human Hetero Male, I am deeply embarrassed to report that I have been inside two brothels, by accident, for long periods of time, and didn't even realize I was in a brothel.

And a third, but not by accident. My passengers on the drive home from Mexico, the guy was a former high school jock from Texas, and he wanted to revisit "Boys Town," the brothel compound maintained by the Mexican government, where all Texan boys are introduced to sex by their uncles. (His wife, a former cheerleader, was muy pissed off.) We got there around lunchtime and had a pretty good Mexican lunch. If you're not having the sex, it's sort of a big truck stop with a big restaurant; most of the customers we saw were truckers taking a relaxing break from the highway.

Hmmmm okay so anyway I was a reporter in Miami and got this assignment to drive to an address in Fort Lauderdale with a guy photographer to interview a visiting celebrity named Margo St. James, a San Francisco woman who had become famous by organizing the first prostitutes' union in America. We got to the address, a very nice one-story suburban rambler -- it looked pretty much like Beaver Cleaver's neighborhood, except the homes backed onto pleasure-boat canals that led to the ocean. It was about 2 pm, and before we conducted the interview on the dock, the hostess lady fixed us iced tea in the kitchen. I noticed she and her husband seemed to have several attractive and healthy-looking high-school/college-age daughters who wandered in and out from the bedroom area, like with shower towels on their heads; they wore t-shirts and jeans. Outside and inside, it seemed just like the family next door.

The photog did his thing and I interviewed Margo for at least 30 minutes before the hostess interrupted, to make a point about what Margo was saying. The hostess said:

"When my husband and I
opened this brothel
three years ago ............."

The photographer's jaw fell to the dock and flies started buzzing around in his gaping mouth. Me -- well, my folks had paid a lot of money to send me to drama school, so I did a better job than the photog at pretending I wasn't having a massive stroke.

The other brothel was in Mexico City, and my Spanish sucks, so that explains how I'd rented a cheap hotel room there and didn't realize it. No other clues if you weren't good with the lingo. Just dozens of young luscious Mexican women leaning over the balconies with their boobs falling out of their peasant blouses and grinning at bunches of men going in and out of their rooms. Perfectly understandable how I missed that one.

I'll never forget that place, it was a block from the wonderful huge Eating Market, the Plaza Garibaldi, wonderful food and loud Mariachi bands 24/7/365. My establishment was the

R*i*v*a
P*a*l*a*c*i*o

and I recommend it very highly: *******. Unbelievably cheap hotel rates. That's how we found it. Our travel companions were two Nutty-Crunch women from Oregon backpacking thru Mexico on a superstrict budget, and they demanded that I (the Official Expedition Translator/Chauffeur) find them the cheapest hotel in Mexico City. I sure did.

During the four days we stayed there, I did indeed finally figure out Where We Were -- but I had to keep it a secret from the Nutty-Crunch women, or they'd be outraged and demand that we leave immediately and find the 2nd cheapest hotel in Mexico City. (I didn't want to do that, we had a ton of crap in the hotel room to carry out to the car.)

When we checked out, I was unable to convince the clerk that we'd been there four days. No one had ever been there for that long. No matter how hard I tried to explain, he only charged us for one night.

I don't think there's a more embarrassing thing in the world than to be a man in a brothel and not even know it.

============

Artemis (brothel)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Artemis is one of Germany's largest brothels. It opened in Berlin in September 2005, a four-story building complete with a pool, three saunas, two movie theaters, and with room for up to 70 prostitutes and 600 customers.

Prostitution is legal and widespread in Germany. The Artemis is organized as a sauna club, similar to several other German brothels: customers and prostitutes pay an entry fee (70 Euros) and can then use all facilities as long as they want; food and non-aloholic beverages are included (no alcohol is served). The women, about 30-40 in number at a typical night, are nude; the men are clothed in robes. Sexual services typically include oral sex without condom, french kissing, and sexual intercourse with condoms. The payment (normally 60 Euros for half an hour) is given directly to the women after the act; the house does not receive a cut but regulates the prices and services. The German prostitute support group Hydra has endorsed the transparent concept but has reserved judgement until the working conditions of the women could be evaluated.

"Although the outside of the building is about as erotic as a corporate office park, the interior is a bizarre cross between mid-1990s Las Vegas and a cheezy British "Carry-On" film." [1]

The brothel was created by the Turkish businessman Haki Simsek for some 5 million Euros. It has 40 employees, in addition to the prostitutes which technically are not employees. Prostitutes can stay at the brothel, renting rooms on the fourth floor which is off-limits to customers.

Artemis

52° 29' 58.2" N
13° 16' 56.6" E

is located near the West end of the Kurfürstendamm in an industrial area of Charlottenburg, close to the metro and railway station Westkreuz and about 0.5km south of the ICC International Congress Center. It is about a mile and a half from Berlin's Olympic stadium, famous for hosting the 1936 Olympics and the venue for several games of the upcoming 2006 World Cup in football (soccer).

[NOW! It's right NOW!]

"Norman Jacob, lawyer for the private investor who wishes to remain anonymous, said: 'Football and sex go together extremely well.'" [2]

Some newspaper articles have pointed out that the brothel's name is somewhat ill-fitting, as in Greek mythology Artemis was the virgin goddess of chastity.

Several comparable clubs exist in Germany, most of them in the area north of Frankfurt. One of them, Atlantis, was closed in 2004 after legal troubles.

[? gossip, rumor, court documents, newspaper articles in all lingos gratefully accepted @ Agence-Vleeptron Presse.]

* Artemis home page
* Independent news in UK
* MSNBC
* dw-world.de
* Spiegel
* The Guardian
* "Im Gewerbegebiet", Berliner Zeitung, November 10, 2005. Extensive report on Haki Simsek and Artemis. [German]

* This page was last modified 04:35, 6 June 2006.

Intersection Set [World Cup, Smuggled Underage Sex Slaves, Sports :-))) Fans]

2006-06-07T04:40:00.000-04:00

Naughty! You clicked!

It's Sports Time on Vleeptron!
All the Sports from Vleeptron!
We've got the latest Qx'ii scores!
All the games from
the Dwingeloo League!
Bear-baiting, fish-shooting,
cockfighting too!
Bare-knuckle boxing from 1902!
A fifth of our Sports
all take place in the Zoo!
Get your Sports on Vleeptron!
Get your Sports on Vleeptron!

* * *

Whole lotta things I never done
But I never had Too Much Fun

-- Jerry Lee Lewis

================

The Editorial Board of Agence-Vleeptron Presse has been having a major internal crisis over this story.

Which is all the worse, because the A-VP Editorial Board consists entirely of Bob.

The temptation has been nigh-overwhelming for Vleeptron to get out of the News Business altogether and just post nothing but Math Puzzles and satellite images of large icebergs. Because they make sense, are very orderly, and don't drive Bob nuts.

News, generally, is about People. People (whom I sincerely love deeply) regularly make no sense whatsover, are incredibly disorderly, and drive Bob totally nuts.

Another reason Vleeptron wishes this story would go away and Vleeptron would post nothing but Math Puzzles is that maybe some readers will think Vleeptron is Europe-bashing.

Vleeptron is nicht Europe-bashing.

Since there's been an identifiable (English-speaking, largely Protestant) America, a central thread of American culture is to accuse Europe of being a Wicked Place drowning in Sin and Immorality.

Which is total bullshit.

Maybe there is a such thing as Sin, and maybe there is a such thing as Immorality, but the notion that there is More Sin and Immorality in Europe than in upright, moral, puritanical America is total bullshit.

Prostitution is illegal throughout the United States, except in most of Nevada.Prostitution is legal throughout Nevada except the cities of Las Vegas and Reno.

If k is the coefficient of Sex Slavery in a particular country's sex trade,

k(USA) > k(Germany)

k(USA) > k(Netherlands)

and ditto the coefficient of children trapped in a particular country's sex trade; it's much worse in the United States than in the legalized, government-supervised Western Euro nations.

Making and keeping prostitution a crime in the USA has little effect except to maintain a machine of permanent police corruption, because you can't operate a sex business without paying off the local police. (In some towns and cities in Canada, the police squad that enforces drug and prostitution laws is called the Drug and Morality Squad.)

In the European nations where prostitution is legal but government supervised, the police protect rather than predate prostitutes.

Prostitution as a vector for transmitting AIDS gets a free ride in the USA where prostitution is against the law. The only interaction between the sex trade and the government is corrupt extortionist cops (who traditionally take part of their protection payoff in free sex). In Western Europe, under government supervision of legalized prostitution in Europe, sex workers are assisted and encouraged to have a regular close relationship with the public health authorities, and safe sex is a fundamental element of the sex trade.

The crux of the A-VP editorial crisis has to do with the statue of John Calvin which was toppled by a happy mob of Vleeptroids about 214 years ago and now lies on its side, pigeons and all, in downtown Ciudad Vleeptron.

Stories like this make me think about perhaps hiring a crane to lift Calvin's scowling statue upright again.

Except I don't think Calvin really addressed the true moral and ethical problems which the following stories illuminate. If Ciudad Vleeptron raises his statue again, his teachings, and the thuggish way he turned his beliefs into Law and Authority, aren't going to change much for the better. Calvin never really gave a flying fuck about what happens to ordinary human beings while they try to figure out how to live on this Earth; he and his Code of Morality were fixated entirely on Salvation in the Next World -- to my understanding, a more difficult and evasive place to find than Vleeptron.

So I think it's best, for Vleeptron's people and Vleeptron's pigeons, to keep him toppled.

I honestly feel that the spirit of Calvin and his Scots Presbyterian counterpart John Knox -- the spirit of Forbidding All Fun and Stopping All Parties as a Holy Obligation -- has caused an incredible amount of harm and destruction to the human spirit, particularly when their theological beliefs have gotten their nasty, scowling hands on Government Power, and tried to turn their particularly vinegar-puss Morality into Law (and Prisons). The equation of

Pleasure/Fun = Sin = Crime

is, at this moment, turning the United States of America into a theocracy again, where Religious Fundamental Moralists are steering the Ship of State, and threatening to make millions of ordinary, reasonably decent human beings Walk The Plank. A move to change the name of the United States of America to The Republic of Gilead is on the near horizon in the USA. (The Congressional elections coming up in November will be a Big Hint about whether this sick toxic crap gets worse.)

* * *

At the opposite end of the Universe from Calvinville and Knoxtown is the City of Mahagonny, in Alabama -- an opera Fantasie of Bertholt Brecht and Kurt Weill.

(Boston and Los Angeles will stage productions of "The Rise and Fall of the City Mahagonny" in February 2007; Vleeptron will keep its eye out for upcoming European productions as well, and maybe Asia and Africa will surprise us with this incredibly powerful opera.)

In Mahagonny, EVERYTHING (I said EVERYTHING) is for sale. (Yes, I said EVERYTHING.)

And in Mahagonny, there is only one crime: Not Paying The Bill.

People like to have Fun and Pleasure.

People like Sex.

People are willing to pay for Fun and Pleasure and Sex.

Lots of people are willing to pay lots of money for Fun and Pleasure and Sex.

And this brings us to .....

===============

WeNews (web news about/for women)
Tuesday 6 June 2006

Activists Blow
Trafficking Whistle
on World Cup

Germany expects 3 million soccer fans during the World Cup tournament over the next month. That has provoked concern about the trafficking of women into the country, which legalized prostitution in 2002.

by Mindy Kay Bricker
WeNews correspondent

PRAGUE, Czech Republic (WOMENSENEWS) -- Three million fans are expected to flock to Germany for World Cup soccer matches in 12 cities across the country from June 9 to July 9.

In a country where prostitution was legalized in 2002, that large and presumably heavily male guest list has caused a flurry of preparations by women's groups and European Parliament members to thwart the sex trafficking of women into the country.

The trafficking of women is a shadow behind all the large festivals for sport and similar big money-making ventures, said Lissy Groener, a German Parliament member and women's rights spokesperson for the Parliament's socialist group. "We will not accept this violation of human rights and this violation of women's rights."

The European Parliament along with the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, based in Amherst, Massachusetts USA, predicts that as many as 40,000 women could be trafficked into Germany for the World Cup, where an estimated 400,000 sex workers are already employed.

To pre-empt sex trafficking during the World Cup, the Berlin-based National Council of German Women's Organizations, an umbrella group of about 55 women's groups, in March launched a $90,800 awareness campaign funded primarily by the German government.

The campaign, along with Germany's record of prosecuting criminals, contributed to the nation's Tier 1, or top, ranking in the 2006 human trafficking report issued Monday by the U.S. State Department. The majority of women believed to be trafficked into Germany for the sex trade are from Central and Eastern European nations, the report said. Those include the Czech Republic and Russia. Both those countries were given middle, or Tier 2, rankings. The Czech Republic was cited for weak sentences for traffickers and concerns about forced labor practices. Russia was placed on a "watch list" for failing to comply with minimum standards for eliminating the problem.

The [US] State Department report estimates that 600,000 to 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders each year; of those, 80 percent are female and 50 percent are minors.

Some Red-Light Districts

Since the legalization of prostitution, which leaves related regulation and zoning to municipal governments, some German cities -- including World Cup hosts -- have designated red-light districts for the trade.

In recent months, for instance, city officials in the western city of Dortmund, with a population of 586,000, took steps to ensure that its red-light district on the outskirts does not spill into residential areas during the games. City officials arranged for the construction of drive-in sex huts equipped with emergency buttons to alert police to problems.

But major cities, like Berlin, have not tried to segregate sex work from the general economy.

Last year, a 3,000-square-meter brothel was built just down the street from the Berlin stadium. Its owners have denied that the World Cup prompted construction of the facility, which cost $6.5 million. In a September 2005 article [below], however, Spiegel Online quoted Norman Jacob, the project's attorney, as saying

"football and sex belong together."

During the World Cup, the National Council of German Women's Organizations will operate informational booths in each of the 12 host cities in Germany to distribute anti-trafficking literature, speak with fans about trafficking and encourage those purchasing sex services to look for signs of trafficking, which could be as simple as asking if a sex worker is there on her own, free will.

Thirty additional groups, such as the Bonn chapter of Amnesty International, will help distribute the group's pamphlets, posters and whistles, and hotlines are being funded by the government.

Football Federation Makes a Donation

The German Football Federation has donated €2,000 -- U$2,590 -- to the anti-trafficking campaign. The games are expected to generate about $3,200,000,000 billion in revenue for the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the organizers of the international soccer games.

Zita Gurmai, a Hungarian member of the European Parliament and chair of the Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality, called the World Cup an "occasion to raise public awareness about the existence of human trafficking and forced prostitution, all over the world and all over the year."

But some anti-trafficking groups take issue with the German effort.

Janice Raymond, co-executive director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, which objects to Germany's legalization of prostitution, calls the campaign "an ethical John's program" that certifies some women as usable and others not and is skeptical of its effects.

"The men aren't going to say, 'Hey, babe. Have you been forced here or are you here on your own?'" Raymond told Women's eNews during a phone interview from her office in Amherst, Massachusetts. "Our message is that sex is not a sport under any circumstances."

Raymond says her group has circulated an online petition against all forms of prostitution and has so far collected some 112,263 signatures from 120 countries to be presented to the German government and the governing body of the World Cup games.

German parliamentarian Groener calls that effort counter-productive.

"In Germany, there is a difference in the moral judgment," she told Women's eNews. "In Germany, prostitution is legal ... I want really not to split powers. I want to join powers to fight modern slavery."

Problem Beyond Prostitution

At La Strada, an anti-trafficking organization based in Prague, the Czech Republic, staffers say the World Cup campaign missed a chance to broaden awareness of human trafficking as a problem that goes beyond prostitution and involves people forced into various kinds of work, from selling souvenirs to working in sweat shops.

"On one hand, the campaign is good because you hear about trafficking," Petra Burcikova, national coordinator for La Strada, told Women's eNews. "On the other hand, you don't hear about the other forms of trafficking. All people walk away with is: 'Trafficking equals prostitution. Good. We were right.' ... If we talk about forced labor, it concerns everyone."

In March, La Strada alerted media to the possibility that the Czech Republic, as a neighbor and transit route to Germany, might experience an increase in human trafficking during the World Cup.

Burcikova calls the 40,000 projection figure for women who will be trafficked for sex a bit exaggerated. "I think the guys who are coming to watch the championship would not have time to watch any games because they would have to be engaged in having sex with all of those prostitutes all of the time."

Katharina Cetin, project leader of Hydra, a prostitute advice center in Berlin, supports any effort to stop trafficking, but she called the 40,000 figure "hype" designed by Germany to make the campaign more shocking.

The National Council of German Women's Organizations hope that its anti-trafficking campaign during such a high-profile event like the World Cup will help push the problem higher on the political agenda, said spokesperson Ulrike Helwerth.

Gurmai, the Hungarian parliamentarian, said the campaign will help measure the long-term response to trafficking in Germany.

"Germany's concrete measures to tackle this problem are still unknown," Gurmai said.

- 30 -

Mindy Kay Bricker is a freelance journalist living in Prague, Czech Republic.

Women's eNews welcomes your comments. E-mail us at editors@womensenews.org

For more information:

U.S. State Department / 2006 Trafficking in Persons Report

[United Nations] Trafficking in human beings: Global Patterns, April 2006

Women's eNews is a nonprofit independent news service covering issues of concern to women and their allies. An incubator program of the International Institute for Community Solutions, Fund for the City of New York, Women's eNews is supported by our readers; reprints and licensing fees; and the Carnegie Corporation of New York; the International Institute for Community Solutions, Fund for the City of New York; the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; the Barbara Lee Family Foundation; the Open Society Institute; the Rockefeller Family Fund; The Helena Rubinstein Foundation; the Sister Fund and the Starry Night Fund. The donations from readers are critical to our success. Donate now by going to http://www.womensenews.org/support.cfm.

Arabic Women's eNews
Letters to the Editors

Copyright © 2006 Women's eNews Inc.

=======

Spiegel on-line
Der Spiegel / Hamburg, Germany/Deutschland
23 September 2005

Der Spiegel [The Mirror] is Europe's and Germany's largest weekly news magazine.
[see Wikipedia description of Der Spiegel at bottom]

WORLD CUP

Soccer Fans Will
Get a Kick out of
Berlin's Latest Brothel

by Damien McGuinness in Berlin

As Berlin prepares itself for the World Cup soccer championship next year, the city is thinking about more than just hotels and stadiums. A unique new form of luxury brothel opens next week in the German capital. Although its owners deny that the crowds of randy soccer fans were the motivation, the brothel is just down the road from the World Cup Stadium.

[image] Loads of Leopard. The Artemis, Berlin's biggest and most luxurious brothel, has clearly decided not to hold back on the décor.

With plush red curtains, leopard-print cushions and more gold than you'd find at Posh and Beck's wedding, within about 30 seconds it is clear that the Artemis, is a brothel. The name may be odd for a bordello, since the Greek goddess Artemis was also known as the eternal virgin, but this place has been designed with sex in mind.

[Wikipedia: Artemis was the virgin goddess of the hunt, wild animals, wilderness, and childbirth. She was worshipped as a fertility/childbirth goddess in some places since, according to some myths, she assisted her mother in the delivery of her twin.]

Strictly speaking though, the new €5 million facility isn't really a bordello at all -- but it is an interesting experiment that could alter the traditional structures of the world's oldest profession. The women working here when Berlin's Artemis swings open its doors next Thursday won't be getting a paycheck. In fact, they won't even be employees. They don't have to work for a pimp and they certainly won't have a madam. Instead, they are required to pay an entry fee of €70, just like the men who come here seeking their services. Don't expect to find a prix fixe sex menu either -- at Artemis, women negotiate prices directly with the johns.

That's not the only thing Artemis's backers hope will be different. In a country where the illegal trafficking of prostitutes, often against their will, from Eastern Europe and further abroad is a rampant problem, the brothel's management say they will also take steps to keep out crime. Prostitution is legal in Germany, but the company is requiring that sex workers who want to do business here provide their tax number and proof of permission to work in the EU. Otherwise they won't be permitted to enter.

For the prositutes, the main advantage over a traditional brothel, says Artemis lawyer Norman Jacob, is that instead of paying 20, 30 or 50 percent to a madam, all the profits she earns here are hers to keep.

"She can go into the sauna or the swimming pool, get food and non-alcoholic drinks for free," Jacob said. "She can even spend the night here and just sleep. And if she has sex she earns money."

In Berlin, the concept is getting a good reception -- at least among sex workers. "We think it is really positive that it is all so transparent," said Katharina Cetin of the Berlin-based prostitute support group Hydra, "and the environment itself is attractive and hygienic. We also like the fact that no alcohol is served." But while Cetin has no problem with the concept, she is wary about being overly enthusiastic at this stage and says it is too soon to judge the actual working conditions.

More Vegas than St. Tropez

[image] Not-so-private dancer. But if the women aren't in the mood for pole-dancing there are also separate rooms.

Located at the Western edge of the city, Artemis is housed in a former warehouse spread over 3,000 square meters. Although the outside of the building is about as erotic as a corporate office park, the interior is a bizarre cross between mid-1990s Las Vegas and a cheezy British "Carry-On" film. The historical decorative flourishes, presumably designed to give the place a touch of class, are almost overwhelming: Greek and Roman statues nestle under Moorish arches, pseudo art deco frescos adorn the walls and even the odd Chinese character on black lacquer is thrown in for good measure. Pretty much every era which has ever been deemed erotic is represented.

The four-floor den of sin, which can accommodate up to 100 prostitutes and 650 male clients, is also equipped with saunas, jacuzzis, cinemas and a swimming pool, complete with the requisite mini-tropical island. Leopard skin textiles and strategically-placed mirrors abound, and there are both areas for sex in the open as well as private rooms for the more discrete.

Artemis's backers pumped millions into the project, hoping to repeat the success of other mega-bordellos in Germany. And when the flood of tourists arrives in Berlin next June as Germany plays host to the World Cup soccer tournament, Artemis will be awaiting them. Located just three train stops from Berlin's main Cup venue, Olympic Stadium, Artemis managers are hoping that football fans will seek even more traditional pleasures after games.

"We didn't even think about that when we started the project," said attorney Norman Jacob. "But obviously it's very nice for us that it is happening. Business will be booming," he added smiling. "Football and sex belong together."

- 30 -

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Der Spiegel
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Der Spiegel (German for "The Mirror") is Europe's biggest and Germany's most influential weekly magazine, published in Hamburg, with a circulation of around one million per week.

Overview

The first edition of the Spiegel magazine was published in Hanover on 4 January 1947, a Saturday. Before that, there had been a short prelude under the name Diese Woche (This Week), which ran for a few issues starting in November 1946 and was initiated and sponsored by the British occupational administration. After clashes with the British, the magazine was handed over to the principal German editor, Rudolf Augstein, and was renamed to Der Spiegel. From the first edition in January 1947, Augstein held the position of an editor, which he retained right up until his death on 7 November 2002, and of the editor-in-chief.

The magazine was owned by Augstein and John Jahr after 1950; Jahr's share was taken over by Richard Gruner in 1962. In 1969, Augstein bought out Gruner for DM 42 million and became the sole owner; in 1971, the Gruner + Jahr company bought back a 25% share. In 1974, Augstein restructured the company to make the employees shareholders. Every employee who works at the magazine for more than three years is offered the opportunity to become an associate and participate in the management of the company as well as in the profits.

Since 1952, Der Spiegel has been residing in Hamburg. It occupies its own building in the old town.

Der Spiegel is similar in style and presentation to American newsmagazines such as Time or Newsweek, but its long, in-depth articles are more comparable to the Atlantic Monthly or the British Economist. It is known in Germany for its distinctive, academic writing style and its incredible heft. A typical issue is over 200 pages, despite being a weekly and even while retaining a content to advertising ratio of 2:1.

Affairs and Scandals

Der Spiegel has a long track record of uncovering political misconduct and creating scandals, earning itself the moniker "Sturmgeschütz der Demokratie" (assault gun of democracy). In fact, it became notorious for this role as early as 1950, when the federal parliament had to launch an inquiry into the Spiegel's accusations that bribed members of parliament had helped make Bonn (rather than Frankfurt) the seat of the West German government.

The incident that cemented the magazine's image as a sentinel of democracy, however, was the so-called Spiegel scandal in 1962. After an article had been printed that reported on the low state of readiness of the German armed forces, minister of defence and right-wing figurehead Franz Josef Strauß initiated an investigation against the Spiegel, causing the editorial offices to be raided by the police and Rudolf Augstein as well as several other editors to be arrested on charges of treason. Although he had no authority to do so, Strauß even made sure that the article's author, Conrad Ahlers, was arrested in Spain where he was vacationing. The legal case collapsed soon, and the whole affair led to a major shake-up in the cabinet of chancellor Konrad Adenauer, including Strauß's resignation. It was widely viewed as an attack on the freedom of the press, with the Spiegel being the bastion the assault on which would rather lead to the downfall of the administration than to that of the bastion. Since then, Der Spiegel has played a significant part in uncovering various political grievances and misdeeds, including the Flick Affair.

[more at the full Wikipedia article]

computation of volume of Fairly Small Flat-Top Pyramid of Hoon

2006-06-05T00:06:00.000-04:00

Click all you want.

To be perfectly honest, Vleeptron is totally disgusted with the News from Earth this week, so we are not only fleeing to Vleeptron on the Zeta Beam, but we are also escaping to the only Realm of the Intellect that doesn't make us feel soiled and ashamed: Mathematics.

~ ~ ~

The Vodeeodo are a vanished, ancient people of the jungles of Planet Hoon, renowned for building their sacred architecture out of halvah. Subsequent people of Hoon have eaten nearly all the ancient buildings of the Vodeeodo, but the recently-discovered Fairly Small Flat-top Pyramid is the only building left.

The people of Hoon are notoriously crappy mathematicians. After discovering the Pyramid, they measured its dimensions carefully, but no one on Hoon has been able to compute the Volume of the halvah Pyramid. (The ancient Egyptians knew how to do this.)

5 slices of Pizza with double anchovies:

What is the Volume
(in cubic meters) of the
Fairly Small Flat-top Pyramid of Hoon?

If you don't care, or can't do it, maybe there's a child in your household who doesn't care either, but needs practice in geometry and algebra. Force the child to compute the Volume, and then share the Pizza with the child.

the puppet tries to cut its strings * Iraq demands that Freedom stuff Bush says we brought it

2006-06-03T23:08:00.000-04:00

In a previous post Vleeptron identified the Iraqi leader who went ballistic about alleged killings of Iraqi civilians by US military forces as Iraq's new president. Sorry -- Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

The new post-Sadaam sovereign government of Iraq -- an invention of the invading and occupying US-led Western military Coalition -- is, for the first time, asking for a divorce. It's trying to cut its puppet strings. It wants to act as if it truly were an independent government.

It wants that Freedom Bush keeps saying America gave to Iraq. It wants freedom from fear.

The Iraqi people used to fear Sadaam Hussein and his brutal, violent Ba'ath Party.

Now it fears someone else. And it's saying so.

=============

Reuters (wire service UK)
Saturday 3 June 2006

Iraq rejects
US probe clearing
troops of killings

by Mariam Karouny and Fredrik Dahl

BAGHDAD, June 3 (Reuters) -- Iraq vowed on Saturday to press on with its own probe into the deaths of civilians in a U.S. raid on the town of Ishaqi, rejecting the U.S. military's exoneration of its forces.

Adnan al-Kazimi, an aide to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, said the government would also demand an apology from the United States and compensation for the victims in several cases, including the alleged massacre in the town of Haditha last year.

"We have from more than one source that the Ishaqi killings were carried out under questionable circumstances. More than one child was killed. This report was not fair for the Iraqi people and the children who were killed," he told Reuters.

The U.S. military had issued a statement about Ishaqi saying allegations that U.S. troops "executed a family ... and then hid the alleged crimes by directing an air strike, are absolutely false".

It said troops had been fired on as they raided a house to arrest an al Qaeda suspect. They returned fire and called in air support, which destroyed the building, killing one militant and resulting in "up to nine collateral deaths".

The military had previously said one guerrilla, two women and a child were killed in the March 15 raid in Ishaqi, 60 miles (100 km) north of Baghdad.

It has repeatedly pledged to punish any soldier found guilty of atrocities in Iraq, but the decision to clear the troops in Ishaqi fuelled deep mistrust among ordinary Iraqis three years after the U.S.-led invasion to oust Saddam Hussein.

Police in Ishaqi say five children, four women and two men were shot in the head, and that the bodies, with hands bound, were dumped in one room before the house was blown up.

WIDESPREAD SUSPICION

Maliki, who took office two weeks ago at the helm of a U.S- backed national unity government, is battling a widespread public perception that U.S. troops can shoot and kill with impunity and Iraqi leaders are too weak to do anything about it.

"Ishaqi is just another reason why we shouldn't trust the Americans," said Abdullah Hussein, an engineer in Baghdad.

"First they lied about the weapons of mass destruction, then there was the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal and now it's clear to the world they were guilty in Haditha," he told Reuters.

A tribal leader in Ishaqi said it was clear that U.S. forces were above the law in Iraq.

"We expect the American soldiers to commit any crime to control this country," added Sarhan Jasim, 55.

Human Rights Minister Wijdan Michael said her ministry would send a fact-finding commission to Ishaqi in the next few days.

The incident was one of a handful involving civilian deaths being investigated by the U.S. military, including the deaths of two dozen civilians in the town of Haditha on 19 November 2005.

U.S. officials say murder charges may be brought against Marines after the probe into Haditha, which some commentators are comparing to the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam.

Maliki this week condemned the suspected massacre in Haditha as a "terrible crime" and demanded that the United States hand over the files on the investigation.

White House spokesman Tony Snow [previously Fox News commentator and editorial page editor for The Washington Times, owned by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon] said U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and the top U.S. commander in Iraq, General [4 stars] George Casey, met Maliki in Baghdad on Friday and promised to give him all the evidence and materials from the Haditha probe.

In the statement about Ishaqi, Major General [2 stars] William Caldwell, the U.S. military spokesman, said the investigation showed that the ground commander "operated in accordance with the rules of engagement governing our combat forces in Iraq."

One man in the town, 40-year-old Obeid Kamil, said on Friday that U.S. soldiers had a "licence to kill" Iraqi civilians.

"Their action is always to open fire and kill people, which is proof that they are afraid," he said.

- 30 -

bad cop! no tim horton's donut!

2006-06-03T18:10:00.000-04:00

don't bother clicking

Saturday 13 May 2006
Source: London Free Press (CN ON)
Copyright: 2006 The London Free Press
Contact: feedback@lfpress.com
Website: http://www.lfpress.com/
Author: Jane Sims, staff writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?236 (Corruption - Outside U.S.)

EX-COP GETS
HOUSE ARREST

Shamed and disgraced, the nine-year veteran is given a 12-month conditional sentence.

He sold confidential police information knowing it could land in the hands of the Hells Angels motorcycle club.

He sold anabolic steroids while wearing a London [Ontario Canada] police uniform. He hid marijuana in an in-line skate in his basement.

And yesterday, shamed and disgraced, Frank Boros was allowed to go home.

Boros, 36, a nine-year veteran of the London force, pleaded guilty in January to three charges -- criminal breach of trust, trafficking in a controlled substance and possession of marijuana.

Yesterday, in the courthouse where his lawyer said Boros "used to walk with his head high," he was given a 12-month conditional sentence and a $250 fine.

"You have disgraced yourself and you alone will have to live in the shadow of that shame," Ontario Court Justice Deborah Livingstone said.

During his sentence, Boros will be required to perform 150 hours of community service in the first 10 months.

Boros must be in his home each day from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., unless he is travelling to and from work.

Outside of court, Boros's lawyer, Glenn Donald, declined comment.

Prosecutor David Foulds, director of Crown operations for the West region, said in an interview he didn't see Boros's sentence as soft.

It reflects the former police officer's efforts to pull together "his devastating personal losses" since his arrest, said Foulds, who argued Boros should serve six to 12 months in jail.

Boros did not exit the courthouse through the only public entrance and avoided reporters.

During the sentencing hearing, he said he took full responsibility for his actions and described the toll on him.

"I lost almost everything," he said to Livingstone. "My career, relationship and especially my own self-worth."

Livingstone said the breach of trust was "very serious," but she took into account Boros's efforts to change his life and move forward as a productive member of society.

[Isn't that sweet?]

Donald, who asked for a conditional sentence, stressed to Livingstone the shame and disgrace Boros has lived with since his arrest in 2004.

Boros was charged in a police sting operation after an RCMP officer working with the biker enforcement unit told London police "Frank the cop" was passing on confidential information to a woman who knew a police informant.

A police agent gained Boros's trust when he agreed to sell him a special chainsaw for his sideline tree-cutting business for $300 -- a fraction of the actual cost.

The agent began asking for planted information that Boros found while on duty through the police computer system.

He was paid for the information and anabolic steroids.

Donald told Livingstone Boros grew up in London and was a high school athlete and air cadet. Through his summer jobs, he developed a love for nature and trees.

He studied to be a parks technician but drifted to policing because of few job opportunities in his field.

He began with Brantford police and eventually moved to London. His marriage failed and he has joint custody of a nine-year-old son.

His police performance reviews were positive and he received a certificate of valour for saving a man who wanted to jump from an 11th-floor balcony.

Boros also started Frank's Tree Service, a business he has since poured himself into since his arrest. It has three full-time employees and three part-time workers.

He was engaged to Natalia Gomez, 30, and the two of them purchased and furnished a home. The day before the couple was to travel to St. Lucia to get married, police conducted a search of his house and he was charged.

The marriage never happened and within weeks, the home was for sale.

At the time of his arrest, Donald said, Boros was under financial pressure. He resigned from the police force last October.

A custodial sentence, he said, would "put the nail in the coffin" of the business.

Foulds said Livingstone needed to reflect society's condemnation of the former police officer's actions.

"The victim here is the reputation of the London police service, the erosion of public confidence in the performance of police duties," he said.

Foulds said police investigations and officers' lives were put at risk by Boros's actions because of greed.

He was "the author of his own misfortune," Foulds said.

He reminded Livingstone the London police motto is "Proud of our past, prepared for the future."

"Mr. Boros' actions is a black mark on that past," Foulds said.

Livingstone said the black mark extended to Boros's "own reputation and the police force he represented."

She relied heavily on a Supreme Court decision that determined conditional sentences carry a heavy stigma and should not be underestimated as appropriate punishment.

Livingstone recommended Boros's community service be done in amateur athletics or in forestry and parks.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has vowed to do away with conditional sentences -- known as house arrest -- for violent offences.

- 30 -

==========

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