Thursday, June 12, 2008
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Stumbled Upon
Thanks.
It's nice to know humor is still appreciated.
Who says news and information can not be presented humorously!
And I Quote
Unicorn born in Italy
This wonderful unicorn was born at the Center for Natural Sciences in Prato, Italy. Nicknamed "Unicorn," the magical unicorn is just a year old. His twin, a Roe Deer, has two horns.
They stop Traffic
You know the time when the parking lot at the lake is packed and nothing is moving.
Only the 'parking lot' is actually the interstate highway crossing the lake.
Why is it a parking lot you ask?
On any given 'normal day' it can be a parking lot especially during 'rush hour' which around here consists of the time between the hours of 5am to 1am ... we're lucky to have a slow period 1am and 5am on a good day.
But what makes it the proverbial parking lot this time of year are boobs.
Yes you heard me, tits, knockers, boom booms or whatever of the over 2000 terms, (in English alone) for them you choose to use.
The ladies flashing the highway cause the traffic to stop over a narrow strip of land between three lakes ... most people assume it is a bridge over one lake but they are in error there ... on both sides of the strip.
What is funny is that the ladies who are nude on the lake attract less attention from the drivers than do the flashers.
The numbers seem to be about even between the nude and the boobie flashers.
So when traveling across that strip of land listen for the honking horns of a truck and count how many sets make an appearance.
And, no the ones already out do not count.
Daily Five (News Items off the Wire)
Japan: Video game launch canceled after stabbing
TOKYO - The suspect in a deadly stabbing rampage had an arsenal of knives with him during the attack, police said Wednesday, as an electronics maker canceled a launch event promoting a game that features a character armed with a huge dagger.
Tomohiro Kato, a 25-year-old factory worker who was spattered with blood when police arrested him after Sunday's assault, was carrying two knives and had two more stashed in his knapsack in a nearby truck, a police official said. Kato apparently dropped another knife during the attack, said the official, a spokesman for the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing protocol,
The official said it appears Kato only used one knife to stab more than a dozen people in Tokyo's trendy Akihabara electronics district, the center of Japan's comic book and anime culture.
Police conducted a search of Kato's apartment Tuesday and confiscated empty packages that had contained knives and a club. They also found catalogues and receipts for the weapons.
No charges have been filed against Kato. Under Japanese law, prosecutors have 20 days after receiving suspects to either file charges or release them.
The assault began when a driver crashed a rental truck into a group of pedestrians, killing three of them. He then jumped out of the truck and slashed his way through the crowd, fatally stabbing four people. Another 10 were injured.
The attack horrified Japan, where news reports and talk shows have focused on what may have prompted the assault, Kato's troubled personality and a string of messages he sent to an Internet bulletin board warning he was planning to kill.
Amid rising concerns about street violence, gamemaker Konami canceled three launch events scheduled in Tokyo - including one in Akihabara - on Thursday for "Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots," an action game in which a grizzled commando shoots and stabs his way through enemy lines.
Konami canceled the events with the "safety of participants in mind," though similar events in the U.S. were to proceed as planned, a spokesman said on condition of anonymity, citing company rules. The game is stamped with a "mature" rating due to graphic blood and violence.
Woman convicted in partner's plot on London subway
LONDON - The partner of a would-be suicide bomber who attempted to attack London's subway system was convicted Wednesday for not warning police about the plot.
A jury in London found 32-year-old Yeshi Girma guilty of failing to provide information before her partner Hussain Osman and others attempted to set off explosions on the transit system on July 21, 2005. The bombs didn't explode fully and no one was injured.
The attempted attacks came two weeks after four suicide bombers killed 52 subway and bus passengers in London.
Mulu Girma, 24, and Esayas Girma, 22, Yeshi's sister and brother, were also both found guilty of failing to disclose information and helping Osman.
Mulu Girma's boyfriend Mohamed Kabashi, 25, pleaded guilty to both charges before the trial.
A date for sentencing was not set immediately. The maximum sentence for failing to inform police is five years.
Yeshi Girma, who wept as the verdict was announced, had claimed that she was not married to Osman, with whom she had three children, that she didn't live with him, and knew little of what he was doing. Prosecutors say she is his wife.
They said she helped Osman flee the country after the attempt, and that her fingerprints had been found on tapes of extremist Islamic sermons. She allegedly also allowed Osman to take their young son to a training camp in northwestern England where he met others involved in the plot.
"Yeshi Girma had prior knowledge of the events of 21/7. She had some information about what the bombers intended to do on 21/7, but failed to bring this to the attention of the police," prosecutor Max Hill told jurors.
"Armed with that prior knowledge of what was going to happen, Yeshi Girma could have attempted to prevent the attacks, which, but for shortcomings in the production of the explosive devices, would have killed and injured many people," he said.
Osman was sentenced to life in prison in the case along with Muktar Said Ibrahim, Yassin Omar and Ramzi Mohammed. Another plotter, Manfo Kwaku Asiedu, was sentenced to 33 years in prison.
Five other men were also convicted and sentenced to prison for assisting the plotters.
A month after quake, Chinese wait for housing
China - The sun is low in the mountains as Wang Wenying fries up potatoes, beans and chunks of braised duck over an outdoor wood fire.
Behind her is the camouflage-patterned tent that she and five other family members have occupied since shortly after their once-bustling village was toppled May 12 by the worst earthquake to hit China in three decades.
"The living conditions are poor. It's hot in the tents, the lines are long for water. ... I don't know when things will improve. The sooner the better," said the 38-year-old Wang, a rotund pharmacist with a ready laugh despite the hardships.
One month after the magnitude-7.9 quake centered in Sichuan province killed more than 69,000 people and left 5 million homeless, tents - and for some, the lack of them - are defining life in the disaster zone.
The lucky ones have already moved into prefabricated homes being erected by the government. But most remain in hundreds of tent communities that have sprung up on fields, mountains and city sidewalks as refugees try to regain a semblance of normal life. Many are small and haphazardly planned. Others resemble miniature villages, with row after row of bright blue, government-issued emergency tents converted into homes, schools and shops.
Still, there are not enough of them. As of Tuesday, more than 1 million tents had been delivered to the earthquake zone, short of the 3 million the government says is needed. Relief workers had put up 68,000 temporary houses and were at work on another 23,400.
Some survivors complained that only those with connections to local officials got tents. Others said they simply did not know how to get them.
Wang Xiuyu, an unemployed widow with two young sons, lives under the eaves of the Jiuzhou Stadium in Mianyang city, where tens of thousands were taken right after the quake. Now, only a few thousand are left.
"We don't know where to go. We have no tent," said Wang as she sat on a thin mattress on the concrete floor. "We are still waiting for accommodations from the government. We have no idea how to get one and when we are going to leave the stadium."
The disaster was a milestone for China in many ways. Unprecedented 24-hour TV news coverage united the nation as journalists were allowed to report with rare freedom. Hundreds of thousands of troops, police and emergency personnel were mobilized in a frantic scramble to save lives. Volunteers from across the country swarmed into the region, and donations poured in, unusual gestures of charity in a country where most are still busy trying to climb into the middle class.
But as with any disaster of this size - from the tsunami that struck parts of Asia in 2004 to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 - restoring people's lives will take time. And it is already trying the patience of many.
With or without a tent, Sichuan's oppressive, muggy heat is the hardest part of living outdoors, said Wang Wenying, the woman cooking her dinner outdoors. She wore her hair pulled back in a bun, a white T-shirt, denim shorts and pink rubber flip-flops.
Wang's house in the village of Zundao, a solid two-story concrete building, remains standing but the walls are cracked. "I don't dare stay inside," she said. "Even as I'm standing here, I feel the ground shaking and my heart is beating fast."
Instead, she lives with her parents, her mother-in-law, her daughter and nephew in a tent with three beds, a sofa, a TV and computer, all taken from her home.
"Our lives have been set back by 20 years," Wang said as she stirred her dinner.
On Taohua mountain, six members of an extended family live in a tent crafted from wooden poles and sheets of canvas. They and about 3,000 other residents of Qinglian town were forced up the slopes to wait for waters of a "quake lake" - the biggest of 30 formed after earthquake rubble blocked rivers - to recede.
The heat means their clothes are constantly soaked in sweat. At night, the mosquitoes swarm. The public toilets are overflowing, so they use the nearby forest and bury their human waste to prevent disease.
"I'm scared all the time. First there was the earthquake, then there are aftershocks and now maybe a flood," said Suo Jingyong, a 34-year-old clothing vendor, who shares the tent with her parents, her husband, his father and the couple's year-old daughter. The preserved meat they salvaged from their home is beginning to go bad, and fresh vegetables are hard to come by.
"There's nothing we can do," said Suo who makes sure visitors have cushions to sit on and apologizes for the spartan conditions.
A colorful maze of tents has been set up on the peak, a temporary village filled with makeshift homes, a clinic and a tiny convenience store offering shampoo and soft drinks. A water truck comes up to three times a day, and the area is disinfected at least twice daily.
But residents have been told they will be moved later in the month to another part of the mountain so that officials can better manage the area.
For some in the camp, it will be fifth or sixth time setting up a home since May 12.
"We're not scared of the earthquake, we're not scared of floods but we fear being moved frantically," Yu Taichun, a doctor in Qinglian, said in a text message. "It makes our lives harder. ... We appeal to the officials and the experts to think about the ordinary people."
The town of Hanwang, where almost all the buildings collapsed or were partially destroyed, is almost deserted. A few residents have salvaged furniture from their ruined homes and are selling it to scrap buyers.
A group of tents sit in front of a factory at one end of town. It is hot, and garbage is strewn on the ground. Residents sit slumped under any shade they can find outside the tents. One woman slicing sausage for lunch starts crying when asked how she's doing.
While many in the disaster area expressed gratitude for the central government's swift response, anger has been brewing over what some say is lower-level corruption and hoarding of donations.
State media reported one instance in which a tent was pitched in a well-to-do neighborhood of the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu, where there was little damage from the quake.
In Mianzhu county, taxi driver Yang Pengwei said he and his pregnant wife were denied a tent at an emergency station and a government office before finally getting one more than three weeks after the quake. Until then, they lived in a homemade shelter that trapped heat when it was sunny and leaked when it rained.
"The biggest problem is the long queues for food and the shortage of tents," said the round-faced Yang, 23, who cheerfully recounted his problems. "We've now entered the time of reconstruction. What needs to be fixed will be fixed, what needs to be torn down will be torn down."
Nepal's deposed king leaves palace for last time
KATMANDU - Nepal's deposed king has left the royal palace for the last time but has no plans to leave the Himalayan country.
Former King Gyanendra says he wants to stay to "help establish peace" as the country moves from a monarchy to a republic.
Hundreds of people came to see Gyanendra leave Katmandu's royal palace Wednesday night. His departure marks the end of the final chapter of the world's last Hindu monarchy.
Nepal was declared a republic last month after elections that saw the country's former communist rebels win the most seats in a special assembly charged with rewriting the constitution.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. The earlier story is below.
KATMANDU - Nepal's deposed king made final arrangements to vacate Katmandu's main palace Wednesday and begin life as a civilian in the newly declared republic, saying he had no plans to leave the country.
Ousted King Gyanendra said he handed in his royal scepter and crown of peacock feathers, yak hair and jewels to the Nepali government Wednesday as he prepared to move to one of his former summer palaces on a forested hill on the outskirts of Katmandu.
There, he will be protected by police but will otherwise live as any other Nepali - albeit an incredibly wealthy one who some believe should still reign.
"I have no intention or thoughts to leave the country," Gyanendra said in his first public statement in months. "I will stay in the country to help establish peace."
The vast majority of Nepalis have made it clear they are pleased to see the monarchy no more, and while Gyanendra's throne was formally abolished last month, Wednesday's move carries great symbolism in a nation that was ruled by Shah dynasty monarchs for 239 years.
"This marks the beginning of a new Nepal and the end of a dynasty that has done nothing but harm this country," said Devendra Maharjan, a farmer who came to Katmandu to see the king leave the palace. "If it had not been for the kings, Nepal would probably not have remained a poor nation."
Nepal was declared a republic last month after elections that saw the country's former communist rebels win the most seats in a special assembly charged with rewriting the constitution.
"I have accepted the decision," Gyanendra told reporters.
Speaking in a grand palace hall decorated with portraits of the Shah dynasty kings, stuffed tigers and ornate chandeliers, he said: "I have done all I can to cooperate with (the government's) directives."
The Narayanhiti palace has been Gyanendra's home since becoming king in 2001, after a palace massacre in which a gunman, allegedly the crown prince, assassinated King Birendra and much of the royal family before killing himself.
Government officials plan to turn the pink concrete 1970s palace into a museum.
After his brother's death, Gyanendra assumed the throne. But the killings helped pierce the mystique surrounding a line of kings who had once been revered as reincarnations of the Hindu god Vishnu.
No proof has ever surfaced that Gyanendra was involved in the massacre, but rumors have swirled for years that he was behind the slaughter.
On Wednesday, he dismissed the accusations as a baseless "campaign to defame the royal institution."
In 2005, Gyanendra seized power from a civilian government, a move that made him deeply unpopular. He said he needed total authority to crush the communist insurgency. But the rebellion intensified, and a year later massive protests forced Gyanendra to restore democracy, after which the rebels began peace talks.
The king does not leave public life a pauper, even if his palaces have been nationalized and his $3.1 million annual allowance cut.
Before assuming the throne, he was known as a tough businessman with interests in tourism, tea and tobacco. He also inherited much of his family's wealth after the palace massacre.
The government is letting Gyanendra live in the summer palace - which was among the royal residences that were nationalized - because the former king's son is living in the family's private Katmandu residence.
Canada prime minister to apologize to aboriginals
OTTAWA - Michael Cachagee was 4 years old when he was taken from his parents and forced to attend a state-funded school aimed at stripping him of his aboriginal culture.
"The intent was to destroy the Indian," Cachagee said of the decades-long government policy.
On Wednesday, Cachagee and more than 80,000 surviving students will receive a public apology delivered in Parliament by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
At least 200 former students have been invited to Ottawa to witness what native leaders call a pivotal moment for Canada's more than 1 million aboriginals, who today remain the country's poorest and most disadvantaged group.
From the 19th century until the 1970s, more than 150,000 aboriginal children were required to attend state-funded Christian schools, where many suffered physical and sexual abuse, as part of a program to integrate them into Canadian society.
"Aboriginal Canadians have been waiting for a very long time to hear an apology from the Parliament of Canada," Harper told lawmakers a day before the apology.
Canada's Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl said it would be a respectful and sincere recognition of widespread cultural devastation, as well as the physical trauma and sexual abuse, that continues to plague generations to this day.
The aboriginals say they are hoping it will be heartfelt.
"If it's just a hollow and shallow apology he might as well get one of the pages to do it," said Cachagee, who will have a seat on the floor of the House of Commons to hear it.
Phil Fontaine, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, agreed that if the apology is sincere and complete it would go a long way toward repairing the relationship between aboriginals and the rest of Canada.
"The fact that we are going to be there on the floor to witness this first hand, it's quite a moment," Fontaine told The Associated Press. "This is not just about survivors, this is about Canada coming to terms with its past and maturing as a nation."
The apology comes just months after Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a similar gesture to the so-called Stolen Generations - thousands of the continent's Aborigines who were forcibly taken from their families as children under assimilation policies that lasted from 1910 to 1970.
But Canada has gone a step farther, offering those who were taken from their families compensation for the years they attended the residential schools. The offer was part of a lawsuit settlement.
Cachagee spent 12 1/2 years at three different schools in Canada beginning in 1944.
"I was beaten. I was put in tubs of hot water. I suffered great pains of hunger. I was force fed rotten food. They called me all kinds of names," he said.
The federal government admitted 10 years ago that physical and sexual abuse in the schools was rampant. Many students recall being beaten for speaking their native languages and losing touch with their parents and customs.
That legacy of abuse and isolation has been cited by Indian leaders as the root cause of epidemic rates of alcoholism and drug addiction on reservations.
Fontaine was one of the first to go public with his past experiences of physical and sexual abuse.
"All kinds of abuse was inflicted on innocent children," Fontaine said. "There are thousands of these stories, all of them true. I think it's important to acknowledge that."
Fontaine said the prime minister's apology should mention all of the injustices done to Canadian aboriginals, who didn't have the right to vote until 1960.
Fontaine said he's been told the apology will incorporate much of what they requested and said framed copies of the apology will be handed out.
In 1998, Canada's former Indian affairs minister Jane Stewart expressed "profound regret" for the establishment of residential schools, but aboriginals didn't consider it sufficient in detail or substance.
Aboriginals set a sacred fire and conducted a ceremony at sunrise near Parliament to mark Harper's apology. More than 100 people gathered for a ceremony at the site of a former residential school in Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, on Canada's east coast.
Television screens are being set up at locations across Canada so the event can be watched live. The House of Commons plans to put aside all other business for the apology.
In addition to the apology, a truth and reconciliation commission will examine government policy and take testimony from survivors.
The commission was created as part of a $4.9 billion class action settlement in 2006 - the largest in Canadian history - between the government and churches and the surviving students. About $59 million will fund the commission.
Also under the settlement, students who attended residential schools are eligible to receive $9,800 for their first they attended one of the schools and $2,900 for every year after. Victims of physical and sexual abuse are eligible for additional funds.
Aboriginal Judge Harry LaForme will oversee the commission and will eventually travel across the country to hear stories from former students, teachers and others. The goal is to give survivors a forum to tell their stories and educate Canadians about a grim period in the country's history.
*****
(all items above from the AP)
Incest victim awakens and the little things mean a lot.
She and other children who were held captive for years are also slowly adapting to modern life, they said.
Kerstin Fritzl, who doctors placed in an artificial coma after she was admitted to a hospital in April for multiple organ failure, is now well enough to speak, stand and walk with assistance, her doctors said.
Doctors said "little novelties" such as seeing a cloud go by are now big events for the former captives.
Kerstin has said she wants to see the ocean and go to a concert by Robbie Williams, the British singer, said Dr. Berhold Kepplinger, director of the clinic where the family are now living.
He described how excited Kerstin was to hear Robbie Williams songs in her hospital room, and that she was moving around to the music so much that doctors even had to quiet her down.
It was then, Kepplinger said, that doctors became confident Kerstin can eventually become fully healthy and develop normally. Her immune system has improved and she is continuing to have physiotherapy, including strengthening exercises, he said.
The two parts of her family -- those who were locked in a basement, like Kerstin, and those who lived above ground, apparently unaware of the abuse of their mother and siblings -- are getting to know each other again, the doctors and the family's lawyer said.
"We are so glad that things have turned out so positively so far," said lawyer Christoph Herbst, who appeared at a news conference at a hotel near Amstetten, west of Vienna, where Kerstin and her family are now recovering.
Kerstin is the oldest daughter of an incestuous relationship between her mother, Elisabeth, 43, and Elisabeth's father, Josef Fritzl, 73, according to police. He is awaiting trial.
Police say he confessed to holding Elisabeth captive since 1984 and raping her repeatedly, fathering seven children with her. Six of the children survived.
Kerstin fell unconscious in April and Elisabeth persuaded her father that she needed urgent medical attention. Kerstin was admitted to a hospital in Amstetten, where staff grew suspicious and called police, who opened an investigation and uncovered the abuse.
Kerstin was suffering from kidney, lung, and liver failure when she arrived at the hospital, said Dr. Albert Reiter, director of the hospital. Doctors were able to turn her health around but they kept her in a coma with artificial respiration for weeks, he said.
Doctors started reducing Kerstin's medication May 12, allowing her to emerge from the coma, he said. Three days later, she opened her eyes and smiled at her carers, he said, and doctors were soon able to take the breathing tube from her throat.
Her mother was at Kerstin's bedside regularly, and doctors credited that with helping Kerstin's health improve.
Sunday, Kerstin finally met with other family members and was able to say hello to them, he said. Kerstin and the rest of the family were also able to move into an apartment at a regional clinic nearby.
"It was a special moment where, walking, we were able to support her and cross the threshold into a new house and into a new life," Reiter said.
Kerstin and two of her brothers, ages 18 and 5, had spent their entire lives trapped in the cellar with their mother, never seeing daylight. A television was their only contact with the outside world.
The other three children Josef Fritzl fathered with Elisabeth were taken as infants to live above ground with Fritzl and his wife, who says she had no idea her daughter was being held captive.
In recent weeks, the wife and the three children have had several meetings with Kerstin and the others formerly held in the basement. The doctors said all are receiving therapy and are getting to know each other.
"It is clear that (the two sides) have a different temper of life," Kepplinger said. "These different ways of living, the two parts of the family, still have to come to some agreement."
Still, the entire family is "very happy" to be reunited, Herbst said. "This is an incredible drawing-near to each other. There is incredible joy among them," he said. "It is wonderful to see the way they are living together."
He appealed to the public and the media to give the family privacy.
There continues to be "big ambivalence" about the "grandfather issue," as Kepplinger called it, and therapists are helping the family members cope with the complicated relationship they have with each other and with Fritzl, who is now behind bars.
This is going to be an ongoing story for years to come ...
Paranoia harming our way of life
By Leonard Pitts, Jr.
Columnist for the Miami Herald
Monday June 9, 2008
*****
You've seen this gag in a hundred old cartoons:
Cat turns to flee angry dog, steps on a rake instead, knocks himself silly. It's not sophisticated humor, but it is a visceral illustration of an abiding truth: Panic can make you hurt yourself.
Some of us, I think, need reminding. Consider the case of Rachael Ray and the scarf that made people scream.
Ray, of couse, is the preternaturally perky host of cooking shows on the Food Network -- and a spokeswoman for Dunkin' Donuts.
In that capacity, she wore the aforementioned scarf around her neck in an online ad -- and people started screaming. It seems that in the eyes of conservative columnist Michelle Malkin and a handful of blogosphere blowhards, the scarf resembled a kaffiyeh, the Arab headdress most infamously worn by the late PLO leader Yasser
Arafat.
Me, I thought the paisley scarf resembled a paisley scarf, but then, I haven't been taking my paranoid lunatic pills lately, so what do I know? Those with more discerning vision cried foul, and late last month, the doughnut maker crumbled, pulling the ad lest anyone assume the company was selling mass terror along with its iced coffees and crullers.
As it happens, at roughly the same time the Guardian newspaper in London was reporting the case of one Rizwaan Sabir, a 22-year-old student working on his master's at Nottingham University. Sabir was arrested, held for six days and subjected to what he describes as psychological torture after he downloaded a copy of an al Qaeda training manual.
Also arrested: a university administrator, Hicham Yezza, on whose computer the manual was stored. It seems Sabir had asked Yezza to print the 1,500 page document because he could not afford to.
But neither man will be prosecuted for terrorism. According to university officials, the materials Sabir downloaded were directly related to research for his degree. And get this: You know where Sabir says he got the offending manual? From a U.S. government website. In other words, it was publicly available and hardly top secret.
Taken together, these two episodes neatly illustrate what much of our world has become in the almost seven years since September of 2001. On the one hand, silly, able to see terrorism hiding behind every bush and hen house. On the other hand, petrified, convinced that overreaction is the only reaction. So we look suspiciously at everyone whose name is not Smith, Johnson or Jones, inspect scarves for terroristic subtext, but glance the other way as torture is committed, intolerance is embraced, habeas corpus is ignored and freedoms of speech, dissent and privacy are abridged.
It's like we have awakened into the 1950s. The paranoia is there, the gratuitous ruination of people's lives is there, the abiding and unrelenting fear is there. The only thing missing is Joe McCarthy asking, ``Are you now or have you ever been . . . ?''
Apparently, Colin Powell was wrong. ''We're Americans,'' he said after the Sept. 11 attacks, ``we don't walk around terrified.''
But we do. And because we do, we injure ourselves as surely as a cartoon cat panicked by a cartoon dog. So that here we sit, banged up something fierce: the rule of law, broken, moral authority, blackened, freedoms, fractured, seriousness of purpose on life support.
All in pursuit of a chimera called security we have yet to capture and never will. So we might as well go back to being America. I mean, when the Zeitgeist is indistinguishable from a Warner Bros. cartoon, something is wrong.
To put it another way, let me repeat: Panic will make you hurt yourself. What's it tell you that we have yet to learn something Bugs Bunny figured out a long time ago?
Now if the rest would have the proverbial light bulb turn on over their heads all will be Hunky Dory
FEMA gives away $85 million of supplies for Katrina victims
The material -- from basic kitchen goods to sleeping necessities -- sat in warehouses for two years before the Federal Emergency Management Agency's giveaway to federal and state agencies this year.
James McIntyre, FEMA's acting press secretary, told CNN that FEMA was spending more than $1 million a year to store the material and that another agency wanted the warehouses torn down, so "we needed to vacate them."
"Upon review of our assets and our need to continue to store them, we determined that they were excess to FEMA's needs; therefore, they are being excessed from FEMA's inventory," McIntyre wrote in an e-mail.
He declined a request for an on-camera interview, telling CNN the giveaway was "not news."
Photos from one of the facilities in Fort Worth, Texas, show pallet after pallet of cots, cleansers, first-aid kits, coffee makers, camp stoves and other items stacked to the ceiling.
FEMA said some of the items were donations from companies after Katrina, but most were purchased in the field as "starter kits" for people living in trailers provided by the agency. And even though the stocks were offered to state agencies after FEMA decided to get rid of them, one of the states that passed was Louisiana.
Martha Kegel, the head of a New Orleans nonprofit agency that helps find homes for those still displaced by the storm, said she was shocked to learn about the existence of the goods and the government giveaway.
"These are exactly the items that we are desperately seeking donations of right now -- basic kitchen household supplies," said Kegel, executive director of Unity of Greater New Orleans. "These are the very things that we are seeking right now. FEMA, in fact, refers homeless clients to us to house them. How can we house them if we don't have basic supplies?"
Kegel's group works with FEMA and other local organizations to rehouse victims of Katrina, the 2005 hurricane that flooded New Orleans and killed more than 1,800 people along the Gulf Coast. Community groups say thousands of people are still living in abandoned buildings in the city, though fewer than 100 people remain housed in tents.
Kegel said FEMA was told in regular meetings that Unity was desperate for household supplies and that the group has been forced to beg for donations. But she said FEMA never told Unity and other community groups that it had tens of millions of dollars worth of brand-new items meant for storm victims.
She said she learned of it from CNN, which found that those items never made it to people such as Debra Reed.
"An honest person like me didn't get nothing," said Reed, 54, who recently moved from a tent beneath a New Orleans bridge to a home with the help of Kegel's group. "I'm gonna turn, 'cause I'm gonna cry. I didn't get nothing. I fought to get my money, but they wouldn't give it to me. So I ended up going under the bridge."
FEMA confirmed it had kept the merchandise in storage for the past two years -- then gave it away to cities, schools, fire departments and nonprofit agencies such as food banks. In all, General Services Administration records show FEMA gave away 121 truckloads of material.
McIntyre said that most of the items given away were not "standard-issue type supplies" that FEMA would have distributed after other disasters. He said using the GSA, which manages federal property, to get rid of those stockpiles was "standard process."
Asked if FEMA believed Katrina victims no longer needed the items, McIntyre wrote: "If the state did not request the supplies, then FEMA would not know."
Pallets at the Fort Worth warehouse were piled high with boxes of buckets, boots, cleansers, mops and brooms. There were stacks of tents, lanterns and camp stoves for people still displaced, as well as clothing, bedding, plates and utensils.
Meanwhile, Kegel said, Unity's clients can take only "one fork, one spoon, one knife -- they can only take one plate. We don't have enough to go around."
But FEMA said the items were no longer needed in the stricken region. So it declared them "federal surplus" and gave them away.
Federal agencies such as the Bureau of Prisons, Postal Service and Border Patrol got first dibs on the material when FEMA started giving it away. Other agencies that received items include the National Guard, U.S. Marshals Service, the Air Force and Navy and the departments of Agriculture, Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security, according to a list the GSA provided to CNN.
These items also were offered to all states -- yet Louisiana, where most of the people displaced by the storm live, passed on taking any of them.
John Medica, director of the Louisiana Federal Property Assistance Agency in Baton Rouge, said he was unaware that Katrina victims still had a need for the household supplies.
"We didn't have anybody out there who told us they wanted it," Medica said.
Instead, 16 other states took the free items.
Kegel said she could not understand how Medica could not be aware of the need in the New Orleans area.
She said she had not heard of the agency and was not registered with them, but following CNN's interview, the agency contacted her about registering Unity of Greater New Orleans so it could qualify for available supplies in the future.
(From CNN)
*****
Yep, I can believe it. With this cabal anything is possible so long as it screws the people over.
Mom finds snake coiled around her baby
A woman who awoke to her baby's cries was shocked to peer into the crib and find a foot-long snake wrapped around her 7-month-old daughter's leg.
Cari Abatemarco said she was visiting family in the Long Island town of Brentwood last week when she made the startling discovery.
"Once I lifted her up and the snake fell off of her, she stopped crying. But then I was the one crying all night," Abatemarco told Newsday. She was in town from Troy, in upstate New York.
A relative removed the hissing snake from the crib with a back scratcher, and placed it in a bucket until animal control officers arrived. The child was unharmed.
The reptile, identified as a non-venomous California king snake, didn't belong to Abatemarco's family members. Officials say they don't know where the snake came from.
The animal is being cared for at a Long Island animal shelter.
*****
Talk about an eye opening discovery! Seven month olds' parents sleep little as it is, now this mom is getting none whatsoever ... who could blame her!
A Poem for thought
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
*****
Thought for the Day
'No Regrets' says the shrub
The shrub, making the final official visit to Europe of his malignancy, was speaking at a press conference in Germany after talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel.
He said he had told Merkel that diplomacy remained his preferred choice for dealing with Iran. But he added that "all options are on the table" and said Tehran needed to "verifiably suspend" its uranium enrichment program. Iran maintains that its nuclear ambitions are peaceful.
"The message to the Iranian government is very clear: that there's a better way forward than isolation and that is for you to verifiably suspend your enrichment program and the choice is theirs to make," the shrub said.
On Tuesday the U.S. and the European Union on Tuesday issued a joint declaration urging tougher action against Iran over its nuclear program.
It said the U.S. and EU would implement previously passed Security Council resolutions on Iran and stood "ready to supplement those sanctions with additional measures."
Sanctions in place should be enforced, the shrub said, and allies should work together for additional sanctions if Iran "ignores the demands of the free world."
Merkel said that further sanctions would follow if Iran failed to meet its commitments. "We again said we want to give room for diplomatic solutions, we want to give diplomacy a chance, but we also have to stay on that particular issue."
Asked about Iraq, the shrub said "substantial" progress had been made in helping the country, adding that efforts in Iraq would "change the Middle East for the better."
"Removing Saddam Hussein made the world a safer place," the shrub said. But he admitted once again that he regretted the tough rhetoric he had used in the run-up to the conflict which had made it appear he was eager to go to war.
In an interview with UK's Times newspaper Wednesday, the shrub said using phrases such as "dead or alive" and "bring them on" had not created an impression of a man of peace.
He also said he had found it painful "to put youngsters in harm's way," adding that he had an obligation to make sure lives had not been lost in vain.
"One of the lessons of Iraq is that in order for a democracy to develop or for an economy to develop there has to be a measure of security, which is now happening," he said.
The shrub said he also believed that the U.S. would develop a bilateral strategic agreement relationship with Iraq, a pact now under negotiation.
He said reports that the United States wanted to develop permanent bases in Iraq were "erroneous."
"I think we'll get the agreement done," he said. "This will not involve permanent bases nor will it bind any future president to troop levels."
*****
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
SC trooper seen ramming man with car indicted
A South Carolina Highway Patrol trooper who was caught on video ramming a suspect with his patrol car was indicted Tuesday on a federal civil rights charge, the U.S. Justice Department said.
Steve C. Garren was indicted by a federal grand jury in Greenville on a charge of willfully depriving a man of his constitutional right to be free from the use of unreasonable force by a police officer, authorities said. Garren is white; the suspect he rammed is black.
State and federal authorities began investigating the highway patrol in March after videos emerged that showed troopers using a racial epithet and ramming their cruisers into fleeing suspects. The head of the patrol, as well as the head of the agency that oversees it, both resigned in February amid charges of racism among troopers. The investigations continue.
Garren was placed on suspension without pay immediately, said Mark Keel, who was confirmed last week as director of the Department of Public Safety. Garren had also been suspended for two days after the 2007 incident.
It was not immediately clear if Garren, who is from Greenwood, had an attorney. Keel and the U.S. Attorney's Office said they did not know, and a home listing for Garren could not be found.
Black lawmakers and Gov. Mark Sanford criticized the patrol after a four-year-old video emerged showing an officer using a derogatory term for blacks while pursuing a suspect on foot. Several weeks later, the patrol released more videos showing troopers using their cars to ram fleeing suspects.
"You better run," the officer yells in the first video released, using a slur, "because I'm fixin' to kill you."
If convicted, Garren faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
Walt Wilkins, recently confirmed as U.S. Attorney for South Carolina, did not say if more indictments would be forthcoming from the investigations. But he said he anticipated more presentations to the federal grand jury. He also said authorities would work to identify other possible federal cases.
The trimming of the shrub
Washington, Jun 10 - Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio
In the United States House of Representatives
Monday, June 9th, 2008
A Resolution
ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT FOR PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
Resolved, that President George W. Bush be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the United States Senate:
Articles of impeachment exhibited by the House of Representatives of the United States of America in the name of itself and of the people of the United States of America, in maintenance and support of its impeachment against President George W. Bush for high crimes and misdemeanors.
In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has committed the following abuses of power.
INDEX
Article I
Creating a Secret Propaganda Campaign to Manufacture a False Case for War Against Iraq.
Article II
Falsely, Systematically, and with Criminal Intent Conflating the Attacks of September 11, 2001, With Misrepresentation of Iraq as a Security Threat as Part of Fraudulent Justification for a War of Aggression.
Article III
Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction, to Manufacture a False Case for War.
Article IV
Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Posed an Imminent Threat to the United States.
Article V
Illegally Misspending Funds to Secretly Begin a War of Aggression.
Article VI
Invading Iraq in Violation of the Requirements of H. J. Res114.
Article VII
Invading Iraq Absent a Declaration of War.
Article VIII
Invading Iraq, A Sovereign Nation, in Violation of the UN Charter.
Article IX
Failing to Provide Troops With Body Armor and Vehicle Armor.
Article X
Falsifying Accounts of US Troop Deaths and Injuries for Political Purposes.
Article XI
Establishment of Permanent U.S. Military Bases in Iraq.
Article XII
Initiating a War Against Iraq for Control of That Nation's Natural Resources.
Article XIIII
Creating a Secret Task Force to Develop Energy and Military Policies With Respect to Iraq and Other Countries.
Article XIV
Misprision of a Felony, Misuse and Exposure of Classified Information And Obstruction of Justice in the Matter of Valerie Plame Wilson, Clandestine Agent of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Article XV
Providing Immunity from Prosecution for Criminal Contractors in Iraq.
Article XVI
Reckless Misspending and Waste of U.S. Tax Dollars in Connection With Iraq and US Contractors.
Article XVII
Illegal Detention: Detaining Indefinitely And Without Charge Persons Both U.S. Citizens and Foreign Captives.
Article XVIII
Torture: Secretly Authorizing, and Encouraging the Use of Torture Against Captives in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Other Places, as a Matter of Official Policy.
Article XIX
Rendition: Kidnapping People and Taking Them Against Their Will to "Black Sites" Located in Other Nations, Including Nations Known to Practice Torture.
Article XX
Imprisoning Children.
Article XXI
Misleading Congress and the American People About Threats from Iran, and Supporting Terrorist Organizations Within Iran, With the Goal of Overthrowing the Iranian Government.
Article XXII
Creating Secret Laws.
Article XXIII
Violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.
Article XXIV
Spying on American Citizens, Without a Court-Ordered Warrant, in Violation of the Law and the Fourth Amendment.
Article XXV
Directing Telecommunications Companies to Create an Illegal and Unconstitutional Database of the Private Telephone Numbers and Emails of American Citizens.
Article XXVI
Announcing the Intent to Violate Laws with Signing Statements.
Article XXVII
Failing to Comply with Congressional Subpoenas and Instructing Former Employees Not to Comply.
Article XXVIII
Tampering with Free and Fair Elections, Corruption of the Administration of Justice.
Article XXIX
Conspiracy to Violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Article XXX
Misleading Congress and the American People in an Attempt to Destroy Medicare.
Article XXXI
Katrina: Failure to Plan for the Predicted Disaster of Hurricane Katrina, Failure to Respond to a Civil Emergency.
Article XXXII
Misleading Congress and the American People, Systematically Undermining Efforts to Address Global Climate Change.
Article XXXIII
Repeatedly Ignored and Failed to Respond to High Level Intelligence Warnings of Planned Terrorist Attacks in the US, Prior to 911.
Article XXXIV
Obstruction of the Investigation into the Attacks of September 11, 2001.
Article XXXV
Endangering the Health of 911 First Responders.
____________
A listing of the 35 known high crimes and misdemeanors the shrub is guilty of in offense to the American people and their nation.
Six-Six-Six is coming!
See that wasn't so painful now was ... arrrghh!
Pardon the interruption the commentator has been replaced with a mindless drone.
Please continue as if nothing untoward has happened.
That is all.
L.
CNN has it wrong
Take a look at the map CNN has done as to how they see the run for the White House breaking down in each state and the electoral college votes they have.
Not very accurate at all though.
They have North Carolina leaning toward Mc Pain and that is not anywhere in the ballpark much less being close. North Carolina is solid Obama country. More than a few of the "Toss-Up" states and the other "Leaning toward Mc Pain" states are solid Obama country as well.
America is tired of the haters and deniers, and has sent the message in loud and clear terms to the haters and deniers, but they are incapable of hearing - understanding - heeding (take your pick), the message. The lunatic fringe will not be allowed to steal the laughter this time (to paraphrase Red Rider). The media, which is right leaning and more and more so daily, denies it and refuses to report it hoping we will forget it.
And before you howling screech monkeys begin screeching about that "liberal media" nonsense try and engage a brain - if you have one - corporations own the media outlets and corporations are notoriously right leaning - that's conservative, by the way - and that bias carries over to their 'news reporting'.
To Greece
To start off I go to the classic model of modern western society - Greece and say ...
Blog philosophy (if there is one)
Maybe, I have hit on something here?
For all those new readers here is a brief description of the 'philosophy' behind this Blog ...
That's it ... presented with humor and severity from an old warhorse who has seen enough to know he hasn't seen a thing.
Thanks for stopping by and staying a spell. Enjoy.
Monday, June 9, 2008
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Read by Michael Gough.
The History of the Universe in 200 Words or Less
This is a re-post from 2004. It was composed by astronomer and science humorist Eric Schulman, a member of the editorial board of the Annals of Improbable Research. He later expanded this piece into a book, A Briefer History of Time.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Mortgage Fiasco brought on by the cabal's desires
Bo Diddley sent off Rockin'n a'Rollin
For four hours, friends and relatives sang, danced and celebrated the life of the man who helped give birth to rock and roll with a signature beat that influenced Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, the Rolling Stones and many others.
As family members passed by the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer's casket, a gospel band played his namesake song. Within moments, the crowd of several hundred began clapping in time and shouting, "Hey, Bo Diddley!"
Diddley, 79, died of heart failure Monday at his home in nearby Archer.
"In 1955 he used to keep the crowds rocking and rolling way before Elvis Presley," Diddley's grandson, Garry Mitchell, said before kicking his legs sideways, high up in the air, the way Diddley did onstage. Mourners cheered.
"I'm just telling it the way it is," Mitchell said.
Diddley, who was born Ellas Bates and became Ellas McDaniel when he took the last name of a cousin who raised him, was remembered for much more than his songs. Friends recounted his generosity, manifested in concerts for the homeless and work with youth groups and other charities; and the way he loved to talk to just about anybody he met.
Gainesville Mayor Pegeen Hanrahan referred to one of his most famous hits as she told the crowd, "When the question is asked, 'Who do you love?', it's you, Bo."
The funeral was followed by a tribute concert featuring his touring band and other musicians.
Eric Burdon, leader of the rock group The Animals, attended the service, and flowers were sent from musicians including Jerry Lee Lewis, Tom Petty, George Thorogood and others.
Burdon, also a member of the Rock Hall, called Diddley a big influence.
"I've been a fan of his since 16, 17 years of age. Probably one of the first records I ever owned," Burdon said, recalling that his attention was immediately grabbed when he saw an album cover with Diddley sitting on a scooter with a square guitar.
Burdon said he saw Diddley play last year at a concert in Australia, and even though he could tell his health wasn't great, Diddley put tremendous energy into the show. He was known for his stage moves, which some presume influenced Presley.
"He's always been jumping around and very aggressive; if he was onstage with the Stones, he was obviously putting Keith Richards in his place," Burdon said. In describing the "shave and a haircut, two bits" rhythm Diddley made famous, Burdon said, "I call it bone music, because it goes to your bone."
But stories of another side of Diddley were told repeatedly at the funeral. A man who loved God and his family, who would always stop to talk in the grocery store and was always smiling.
His brother, the Rev. Kenneth Haynes of Biloxi, Miss., said Diddley always asked how he could help and what he could give.
"There was one thing he wouldn't give me. That's his hat," Haynes said, referring to the black hat the musician was also known for.
But Haynes said his brother grew weary of life on the road.
"'But this is what God gave me to feed my family,'" Haynes recalled Diddley saying. "'I have to keep doing it until God says it's enough.'"
Diddley was born in McComb, Miss. He moved to rural Archer in the early 1980s and had a recording studio on his 76 acres. Mitchell joked that Diddley got up so early, he would tap the roosters on the shoulder to wake them up. And he always sang at breakfast.
Diddley's friend Roosevelt Hutchinson described how the musician would wrap meat in several layers of tin foil, bury it and light a fire on top to cook it. Once the fire was lit, he would grab his guitar.
"He just enjoyed playing that thing under those trees," Hutchinson said.
But he enjoyed his family even more, friends said. He had four children, 15 grandchildren, 15 great-grandchildren and four great-great-grandchildren.
"Please know this, because I know Diddley," the guitarist's business manager, Faith Fusillo, told his family. "As much as you loved him, he loved you more."Saturday, June 7, 2008
America: At the edge of history once again?
One day this past January, Mary Kim Titla's parents left their home on the San Carlos Apache Reservation in southeastern Arizona and drove across the desert to Phoenix with a single purpose in mind - getting an up-close glimpse of a long shot named Barack Obama.
With them they brought two things: handmade signs that said "Apaches for Obama" and their grandson, Titla's nephew, a third grader. Carefully, they told him why he was there that day.
"This man," they told the little boy, "is going to make history."
Across the republic, we're hearing it everywhere in recent months, weeks and particularly in the days since Barack Obama became the presumptive Democratic nominee: In America, people say, the winds of history are blowing. And many are excited.
Last week, history became a buzzword. Jon Stewart mashed up clips of pundits rhapsodizing about history lessons. "Historic Choice: Obama," trumpeted the Richmond Times-Dispatch, one of many. "Barack Obama enters the history books," enthused CNN anchor Tony Harris.
"This is one of the most significant moments in American history," says Francine Childs, who in July 1956, at 14, sat at a Dairy Queen window every day for 30 days until she was served ice cream at the whites-only counter.
Obama is the most obvious historical figure. But he, John McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton have each spent months vehemently rejecting the old ways, promising that change is at hand. Each has professed to be the one to maneuver us through what they all call a pivot point in history.
"America, this is our moment," Obama said last week as his winning delegate count became apparent. "This is our time - our time to turn the page on the policies of the past."
But historic moments have everything to do with history - both what has happened in the past, and the instant or era when things change. And each of the major candidates this year is deeply connected with some unhappy aspect of our past, and the urge to move on.
For Barack Obama, it is the American tradition of racial discrimination - and finally hurdling it. For Hillary Rodham Clinton, it has been gender inequity - and the promise of a woman in the White House. For John McCain, it is the legacy of Vietnam.
In American history, certain years - 1776, 1865 and 2001 among them - have revealed themselves as obvious crossroads. But not since 1968 have we had a presidential campaign and candidates that summon so many of the fundamental tensions of our history.
So it's worth asking amid the sense of wonder: Is this election year a pivot point? When we talk about making history, can we really ever learn from our yesterdays? Are there lessons from the past for the candidates to carry into the fall campaign and the administration beyond?
"The past is never dead," William Faulkner, one of America's greatest writers, once wrote. "It's not even past."
And so it is in America in 2008. We are riding history's unpredictable currents - no matter how passionately we want to move on, no matter how much control we think we have, no matter how loudly our would-be leaders insist that tomorrow is where our priorities lie.
___
TRIUMPHANT HISTORY
What is happening in American politics this year is linked, in the oddest of ways, with Commonwealth of Kentucky Death Certificate No. 26469, a bare-bones account of the Nov. 4, 1930, gunshot murder of a 60-year-old "colored" carpenter named Ed Doneghy.
"Ed Doneghy Killed at Louisville Polls," the Chicago Defender, a black newspaper, reported a couple of days later.
Today, the Rev. Martin McMickle, 59, of Shaker Heights, Ohio, cannot stop looking at the smeared ink of the words on that death certificate. When McMickle was doing his family history several months ago, he learned of his link to Doneghy and followed up. He found out that the man was killed for trying to register to vote.
And in August, 78 years after a lethal gunshot at a Kentucky poll felled a man who wanted to vote, Doneghy's relative, Martin McMickle - minister, teacher, civil rights activist - will travel to Denver as a delegate to cast a vote for Obama as the Democratic nominee for president.
A pivot point in history? You bet. And not just because of Obama's triumph, either. To McMickle, this is a historic moment because of Clinton and McCain, too.
On Clinton: "I'm also mindful that my mother, who was born in 1914, was born into a country where women did not have the right to vote."
On McCain: "The whole idea that a person who is a senior citizen but has the energy and the vigor to sustain so far the primary campaign and is on the verge of beginning the general campaign says an awful lot about senior citizens and about when people ought to consider their active life has ended."
"So," McMickle says, "I think there's a wonderful biography in all three of them that can be instructive for the broader public: voting rights for African Americans, voting rights for women in America, and the importance of people continuing to live long beyond the artificial time lines of 65 or 70."
This sense of something special afoot - with Obama emerging last week as the most visible engine, but also including the other firsts of this unusual primary season - is part of why people who have had their own brushes with history feel a sense of it right now.
"We have had candidates who are not well known. We've had candidates who are African-American. We have had women. We have had a public which is disaffected from politics. But we've never had them all together. And in that sense, I think that makes it historic," says Natalie Davis, a political scientist who ran for the U.S. Senate in 1996.
Paul J. Matthews, a retired pharmaceuticals executive in Houston, has seen history and studied it. And he puts Obama's achievement in a very personal context.
In 1967, Matthews was a college student, a black man marching in a green ROTC uniform on a Prairie View A&M campus fired up by the battle for civil rights. He began to wonder about his choice to serve a nation that continued to treat blacks like second-class citizens.
He resolved his doubt by combing through books on military history. There, he found two paragraphs about the famed Buffalo Soldiers - the black regiments formed in the wake of the Civil War, comprised of men determined to show their worth as Americans.
It changed his attitude, and Matthews shipped off to Vietnam two years later. He logged 11 months, 29 days in a medical battalion, where he tagged the bodies of war dead and wrote notification letters to their families back home.
Today, Matthews runs the institution he founded: the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum, a place where people discuss not only blacks' experience in that war but the larger issue - how American blacks over the centuries have served a system that scorned them. And now ...
"I'm so elated that starting from a situation where blacks couldn't serve in the military to the possibility of having a black man as commander in chief. ... That's quite a leap," he says. "If that's not a teachable moment, we'll never have one."
That's what history provides, says David Anderson: tangible, valuable tools for us all. It offers reserves of strength for a candidate, particularly one like Obama, who owes it to America to be a man of color rather than downplaying his race, Anderson says.
Anderson, 78, the great-grandson of an Alabama slave, spends his days portraying Frederick Douglass, the iconic 19th-century abolitionist, in Rochester, N.Y. History, insists Anderson, is not a burden. Just the opposite.
"You don't leave it behind," Anderson says. "It is NOT baggage. It is strength and it is essential knowledge. And the more you have of it, the better you can understand who you are and what you're capable of."
After visiting West Africa several years ago, Anderson decided to add something to his name - "Sankofa," a word from the Akan language that translates loosely to "go back and take." Anderson interprets it to mean this: "Retrieve from the past that which you can use to frame the future."
Learning from history, in other words.
___
UNEASY HISTORY
History, of course, can be a burden. Because the past is not even past. It's still with us.
Most prominently, Barack Obama faces the heritage of three torturous centuries of racial unease and injustice - and continuing racism in some quarters.
For months, Hillary Clinton grappled with the benefits and detriments of being a female front-runner. John McCain faces a nation increasingly obsessed with youth and detached from military culture that wonders whether, at 71, he can govern robustly - and how relevant his Vietnam POW experience is to today's discourse.
More generally, America and its past have always had an uneasy relationship.
We fashion elegies to a simpler, more unified and politically pure past yet often brush our real history aside in the name of an optimistic, forward trajectory that is part of the basic American DNA. We are quick with the word "historic," using it for everything from celebrity trials to new-and-improved snack foods, but rarely do we pause to consider what something historic really is.
The candidates don't always help, either.
"You see history abused so much in the political process," says Seth Masket, who spent part of the Clinton administration answering letters sent to the president and fashioning his written communication - the written equivalent of a speech writer.
"A lot of these historical metaphors are strained, a lot are inaccurate," says Masket, who now teaches political science at the University of Denver. People's relationship to history, he says, is visceral: "It's an exciting time to be alive, but it's also very scary. People who like the idea of tradition aren't sure what to cling onto anymore."
Then, there is the uncomfortable feeling that no matter what we do, we can't quite shake off the past. Andreas Killen, for example, surveys 2008 and sees 1973, all over again.
The themes in Killen's 2006 book, "1973 Nervous Breakdown: Watergate, Warhol and the Birth of Post-Sixties America," sound familiar today: an unpopular president presiding over a divisive war; a country full of malaise and nervous energy trying to make sense of the civil rights and women's movements; rising gas prices, a faltering economy and an expanding unease about the government and the American message.
A generation later, every single item in that list weighs upon Barack Obama and John McCain.
"There have been many moments over the past few years when I've felt like we were reliving the early 1970s," Killen says.
The heritage of the early 1970s - war, malaise - could hamper the next administration "no matter how much of a mandate for change that president has," Killen says. History isn't always willing to let go.
Sometimes the intricacies of history can be summed up succinctly. Consider Mary Ann Vecchio, 52, who earned a place in the national consciousness at age 14 in 1970 when her cry of anguish during the National Guard shootings at Kent State was captured by a photographer's lens.
Her message to the candidates of 2008 is brief. And potent, too.
"What can they learn from the past?" she says. "Don't repeat it. Don't repeat it."
___
OPPORTUNITIES FROM HISTORY?
In the end, there is this, too: We are raising a generation less mindful of the American past and its messages than any that came before.
According to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, students can graduate from the nation's top 50 colleges and universities without ever taking a course in U.S. history. And the National Geographic-Roper Survey of Geographic Literacy found in 2006 that only 37 percent of young Americans can find Iraq on a map. A recent national news broadcast, showing a screen on the famed 1858 debates between Abraham Lincoln and Sen. Stephen Douglas, put up photos of Lincoln and ... Frederick Douglass.
"The Baby Boomers were forced as college students to take Western Civilization or to take American history. This new generation never had to do any of that," says Davis, who teaches undergraduates at Birmingham-Southern College in Alabama.
"These folks are in the moment. They cannot line up three presidents in the 20th century in terms of order," she says. "They are absolutely a-historical. .... It's about them - the world that surrounds them at that moment. And there's no looking back because they don't know what to be looking for."
And of course there is that niggling thing Americans have to deal with every day - the ravenous beast called the present.
"We care about politics. On the other hand, we're not going to spend that much time worrying about it," says John Hinshaw, a historian at Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania. "We're worried about $4 a gallon gas and what's going on in our kids' lives. It's intensely interesting to certain groups, but a lot of it is just not what we do all the time."
And yet ... there are times when Americans make history, or at least appreciate that they are witnesses to it. Times like 2008.
"The United States of America is an extraordinary country," Condoleezza Rice said at the State Department the other day, reacting to the flurry of Obama news. "It is a country that has overcome many, many, now years, decades, actually a couple of centuries of trying to make good on its principles. And I think what we are seeing is an extraordinary expression of the fact that 'We the people' is beginning to mean all of us."
That means the Rev. Martin McMickle, staring at a death certificate that chronicles an injustice and preparing to rectify it in some small way. It means Paul J. Matthews and David Anderson, preserving parts of the American past that they believe must be remembered.
It means Mary Kim Titla, whose parents journeyed from the reservation to see Obama. Two decades ago, she became the first American Indian TV reporter on the air in Arizona. This year, she is campaigning to be the first American Indian woman ever elected to Congress.
It means Marshall Trimble, a cowboy poet who is also Arizona's state historian. "Young black people or young women, young girls, young boys who say, `Hey, there's hope now. It can actually happen. It just isn't something that my parents talked about or that my school teacher said might happen. It did happen. It actually happened in America.' Think how that's going to provide inspiration to so many people."
And it means Francine Childs, the black girl at the Dairy Queen counter who grew up into a student activist, professor, author, world traveler. "Did I ever think this would happen?" she says. "It was something I'd always dreamed about, but (I was) never sure I would see that dream fulfilled."
Is 2008 shaping up to be a historic crossroads? It's always difficult to judge from within; in presidential election years, history is never far away and "historic" flows easily from the lips.
But this is, most certainly, a teachable moment - for the candidates and for the people they presume to lead.
In a country defined by fast-forward but never all that adept with rewind, it's a chance to move ahead with real change - not merely to leave our national scars behind but to fashion ways to carry them with us. An opportunity to show that we can do more than lose ourselves in our own history; we can find ourselves there, too.
Word that!
This is NOT Cool
US reportedly withdraws from UN Human Rights Council
The news that the US has completely withdrawn from the Human Rights Council spread like wildfire Friday afternoon (June 6) through the corridors of the Palais des Nations in Geneva. There was general consternation amongst diplomats and NGOS. Reached by phone, the American mission in Geneva neither confirmed nor denied the report. Although unofficial, the news comes at a time of long opposition by the Bush administration to the reforms which created the Human Rights Council in June 2006. Washington announced from the beginning that the US would not be an active member but its observer status would mean that it could intervene during the sessions. To date even this has rarely happened.
One Hundred Ninety Five
Carolina Naturally is read in all 195 countries on the planet!
Who would have thought this little old blog would be a must read for so many.
Thanks.
Wildfire keeps burning NC wildlife refuge
A wildfire that has burned 30,000 acres in eastern North Carolina may smolder for months as it burns decayed vegetation that makes up the soil in the area, North Carolina Forest Service spokesman Bill Swartley said Saturday.
The fire, which was about 30 percent contained, continues to burn in the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, about 70 miles south of Norfolk, Va. The spread of the fire has slowed over the past few days and winds remain light, but it continues to threaten about 80 homes and businesses.
No injuries or structure damage has been reported.
Swartley warned that forecast temperatures near 100 degrees this weekend keep conditions ripe for the blaze, Swartley said. "When the fire comes near, the vegetation is that much more ignitable because they are already warm," Swartley said.
Gov. Mike Easley has declared a state of emergency in three counties. He warned that driving could be difficult with smoke-filled roads, but officials said none were expected to be closed.
For the past few days, smoke from the fire has blown north into heavily populated areas along Virginia's coast. But the winds have shifted, and forecasters expect the smoke to blow east toward the Outer Banks on Saturday.
Fire officials told residents that smoke from the blaze could linger in the area for months because the fire may smolder in the decayed vegetation that makes up the peat-filled soil. Peat is flammable, and over millions of years turns into coal, Swartley said.
"You won't see open flame. The ground is just really hot - you can't walk on it," Swartley said.
The only way to stop the fire from burning in the soil is to flood it. Firefighters are pumping water from nearby Phelps Lake to extinguish the ground fire in some areas. However, the only thing that will put all of it out for good would be several inches of rain at one time, like from a tropical storm, Swartley said.
The fire was sparked by lightning a week ago.
In California, a wildfire that briefly threatened 50 homes in the mountains northwest of Los Angeles pass was contained early Saturday. The blaze in the Grapevine area along Interstate 5 in the Tehachapi Mountains had charred about 500 acres - less than a square mile - of grass and brush by the time it was declared surrounded.
Residents of about 50 homes in Digier Canyon were advised to leave but the threat ended and the fire basically had stopped growing by Friday evening.
Damp weather during the night helped keep the fire down.
The cause of that fire had not been determined.
Not A Pretty Picture ...
Caribbean monk seal becomes extinct!
Federal officials have confirmed what biologists have long thought: The Caribbean monk seal has gone the way of the dodo.
Humans hunting the docile creatures for research, food and blubber left the population unsustainable, say biologists who warn that Hawaiian and Mediterranean monk seals could be the next to go.
The last confirmed sighting of a Caribbean monk seal was in 1952 between Jamaica and Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Service confirmed Friday that the species is extinct.
Kyle Baker, a biologist for NOAA's Fisheries Service southeast region, said the species is the only seal to become extinct from human causes.
The seals were first classified as endangered in 1967, and wildlife experts investigated several reported sightings over the past few decades. But officials determined they were other seal types.
The federal agency says there are fewer than 1,200 Hawaiian and 500 Mediterranean monk seals remaining, and their populations are declining.
"We hope we've learned from the extinction of Caribbean monk seals, and can provide stronger protection for their Hawaiian and Mediterranean relatives," Baker said.
The Hawaiian monk seal population, protected by NOAA, is declining at a rate of about 4 percent annually, according to NOAA. The agency predicts the population could fall below 1,000 in the next three to four years, placing the mammal among the world's most endangered marine species.
"When populations get very small, they become very unstable," Baker said. "They become more vulnerable to threats like disease and predation by sharks."
Vicki Cornish, a wildlife expert at the Ocean Conservancy, said the fate of the Caribbean monk seal is a "wake-up call" to protect the remaining seal populations.
"We must act now to reduce threats to existing monk seal populations before it's too late," she said. "These animals are important to the balance and health of the ocean. We can't afford to wait."
Monk seals are particularly sensitive to human disturbance. And the sea creatures have been losing their food supply and beaches, officials say.
"Once Hawaii, the Caribbean and the Mediterranean were teeming with fish, but these are areas under severe fishing pressure," Cornish said. "They'll eat almost anything - shellfish or finned fish - but their food supply is waning and they're in competition with man."
The Caribbean monk seal, first discovered during Christopher Columbus' second voyage in 1494, once had a population of more than 250,000. But they became easy game for hunters because they often rested, gave birth or nursed their pups on beaches.
From the 1700s to 1900s, the seals were killed mainly for their blubber, which was processed into oils, used for lubrication and coating the bottom of boats. Their skins were used for trunk linings, clothing, straps and bags.
The endangered Hawaiian monk seals face different types of challenges, including entanglement in marine debris, climate change and coastal development.
About 80 to 100 live in the main Hawaiian Islands and 1,100 in the largely uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, a marine national monument.
Biologist Bud Antonelis said NOAA's Fisheries Service has developed a monk seal recovery plan for the Hawaiian monk seals.
"But we need continued support from organizations and the public if we are to have a chance at saving it from extinction," he said. "Time is running out."
As for the Caribbean monk seal, NOAA said it is working to have them removed from the endangered species list. Species are removed from the list when their populations are no longer threatened or endangered, or when they are declared extinct.
Turkish speaker wants new constitution after ruling
Turkey's parliamentary speaker has proposed a new constitution and the re-establishment of an upper house of parliament to reduce the power of the country's top court.
Koksal Toptan's suggestions come after the Constitutional Court on Thursday rebuffed an attempt by the Islamic-oriented government to lift a ban on Muslim head scarves in universities.
Toptan's suggestions appear to be aimed at rearranging the sharing of power between the judiciary and the Parliament and immediately drew the ire of the main secular opposition party.
Toptan accuses the Constitutional Court of "overstepping its power and seizing the power of the Parliament," in remarks on Saturday. The government leveled similar accusations against the court on Friday night.
There was no immediate comment from the government to Toptan's suggestions.
It will never happen the way the fundies want as long as the military supports the majority of the non-fundies of Turkey so the better get used to the idea.Wonder Woman actress finds body on river in D.C.
The actress who played Wonder Woman on TV in the 1970s says she didn't do anything extraordinary when she discovered a body this week on the Potomac River in Washington.
Lynda Carter tells The Washington Post she was alone in a boat when she saw the body Wednesday. She says she didn't have a cell phone with her, so she yelled to some fishermen and asked them to call police. Carter waited until rescuers arrived and directed them to the body.
District of Columbia police say the body of 47-year-old Helen Johnstone of Washington was found floating on the river Wednesday. The medical examiner's office has not declared an official cause of death.
Carter says she "did what anybody would have done."
Way to go Wonder Woman!
