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Daily News January 24, 2007
&hearts I vividly remember the NYC cops drunkenly booing Hillary Clinton when she tried to speak to them, now they are begging her for help: A former New York policeman died Tuesday night shortly before his 21-year-old son appeared at the State of the Union address to symbolize the desperate health problems of some Sept. 11 workers.
Cesar Borja, 52, had been in intensive care, breathing through a tube, at Mount Sinai Medical Center, awaiting a lung transplant.
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&hearts Looks like Libby is going to try to take down Cheney and Rove (arrest them all!): White House officials tried to sacrifice vice presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby to protect strategist Karl Rove from blame for leaking a CIA operative's identity during a political storm over the Iraq war, Libby's lawyer said Tuesday.
After Libby complained "they want me to be the sacrificial lamb," Vice President Dick Cheney personally intervened to get the White House press secretary to publicly clear Libby in the leak, defense attorney Theodore Wells said in his opening statement at Libby's perjury trial.
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&hearts Earliest Phoenician text is an anti-snake magic spell: In 2002 one of the Egyptologists e-mailed the undeciphered part of the inscription to Richard Steiner, a professor of Semitic languages at Yeshiva University in New York. Steiner discovered that the phrases are the transcription of a language used by Canaanites at some point in the period from 25th to the 30th centuries B.C.
"This is the oldest connected text that we have in any Semitic language," Steiner said in a telephone interview while visiting Israel to present his findings in a lecture sponsored by the Academy of the Hebrew Language. The previous oldest Semitic text dates from the 24th century B.C., Steiner said.
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&hearts Nice to see the Chinese missile test move from back pages to front, as usual, I was first in line with correct analysis: The Chinese test "was an overtly military, very provocative event that cannot be spun any other way," said Rob Hewson, the London-based editor of Jane's Air-Launched Weapons. "So a bald assessment of that is that it's a big fat challenge."
The test is a shot across the bow of U.S. efforts to remain predominant in space and on the ground, where its military is heavily dependent on networks of satellites, particularly the low-altitude imaging intelligence models that help it find and hit targets. Japan, also seen as a regional rival, is similarly vulnerable, while any potential conflicts in space would put much of the industrialized world's economies at risk, given that satellites are used to relay phone calls and data and to map weather systems.
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&hearts All sea animals with ears have very sensitive hearing and they all use sonar and this really pisses me off, I hate loud noises myself: The Defense Department gave the Navy permission Tuesday to keep training with sonar for another two years, a move denounced by activists who say the sound waves can harm dolphins and other marine mammals.
Navy officials had sought the two-year exemption from the Marine Mammal Protection Act, allowed under the 2004 National Defense Authorization Act, saying they needed time to study how sonar use at major underwater training ranges affects the environment.
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&hearts The CIA has been fatally dumbed-down by Bush, Cheney and their neocon buddies: A blog item at the magazine Harpers yesterday indicates that the Central Intelligence Agency has failed to complete an intelligence assessment on Iraq demanded by senators.
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&hearts So, the quislings in Iraq don't want to be bothered with even pretending to work anymore: Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the speaker of Parliament, read a roll call of the 275 elected members with a goal of shaming the no-shows.Ayad Allawi, the former prime minister? Absent, living in Amman and London. Adnan Pachachi, the octogenarian statesman? Also gone, in Abu Dhabi.
Others who failed to appear Monday included Saleh Mutlak, a senior Sunni legislator; several Shiites and Kurds; and Ayad al-Samaraei, chairman of the finance committee, whose absence led Mr. Mashhadani to ask: “When will he be back? After we approve the budget?” It was a joke barbed with outrage. Parliament in recent months has been at a standstill. Nearly every session since November has been adjourned because as few as 65 members made it to work, even as they and the absentees earned salaries and benefits worth about $120,000.
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&hearts The second Cedar Revolution grinds onwards to the expected end when the Shi'ite majority take over Lebanon: Protesters bent on toppling Lebanon's cabinet blocked highways and roads with blazing tires on Tuesday, sparking clashes with government loyalists in which three people were killed and 133 people hurt, police said.
The violence raised the stakes in a campaign by Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah and its Shi'ite and Christian allies to oust Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's Western-supported government. Siniora, a Sunni Muslim, vowed to stand firm.
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&hearts Um, this is ridiculous, the Iraqis can fool us all the time, it seems:A license plate from a car registered to Iraq's minister of trade was found on an SUV used by the gunmen who killed five American soldiers in the city of Karbala on Saturday, an Iraqi police official said Monday.
Maj. Gen. Qais al Maamuri, a police commander in Hilla, said the plate had been stolen from a BMW that belongs to Abdul Falah al-Sudani, a member of the Shiite Muslim Dawa Party. He said Sudani wasn't a suspect in the attack.
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&hearts Chief prosecutor in England warns Blair to not imitate our dictator and impose draconian Saddam-style laws in England: The director of public prosecutions, Sir Ken Macdonald, put himself at odds with the home secretary and Downing Street last night by denying that Britain is caught up in a "war on terror" and calling for a "culture of legislative restraint" in passing laws to deal with terrorism.
Sir Ken warned of the pernicious risk that a "fear-driven and inappropriate" response to the threat could lead Britain to abandon respect for fair trials and the due process of law.
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&hearts This story broke in Israel during the Lebanon war but never made the news in America and this latest news will be equally ignored, of course: Israel's ministry of justice says it plans to charge the country's largely ceremonial head of state, Moshe Katsav, with rape and abuse of power.
Formal charges against him can be made only after a hearing at which he will be allowed to present his case.
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&hearts Criminals online are seeking new ways to worm their way into people's finances: Hackers have turned to other routes for infecting computers as companies realise the need to secure e-mail gateways.
They are also subtly changing tactics - instead of sending so-called spyware-infected e-mails, they are sending e-mails linking to websites which contain a malicious downloader.
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&hearts Royal, the photogenic French Presidential candidate, irks Canada over the French Quebec separation:Ségolène Royal, the French Socialist presidential candidate, sparked a diplomatic row with Canada yesterday after appearing to call for Quebec’s independence in the latest in a series of blunders.
Ms Royal, 53, touched a raw nerve when she backed demands for Quebec’s “freedom”, and was rebuked by Stephen Harper, the Canadian Prime Minister.
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Daily News January 23, 2007
&hearts The Cedar Revolution had now become the Cedar Firestorm: Lebanese opposition protesters blocked main roads in Beirut and other parts of the country with burned tires on Tuesday, the first day of a general strike called by Hezbollah-led opposition, in a bid to escalate their anti-government campaign.
The local ANB TV's footage showed that blazing tires were erected on major highways north and south of the city as well as the only road leading to Beirut's International Airport, setting black clouds of smoke into the air.
The road to Syrian capital city of Damascus and the highway slinking Beirut with the eastern mountain area were also blocked by burned tires, the report added.
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&hearts More mercenaries die as yet another helicopter is shot down by Iraqis (um, Col. X is upping the ante big time): A helicopter owned by the private security firm Blackwater USA crashed Tuesday in central Baghdad, and five civilians were killed, a U.S. military official said. A senior Iraqi defense official said the aircraft was shot down over a predominantly Sunni neighborhood.
The Iraqi official, who would not allow use of his name because the information had not been made public, said a gunman with a PKC machine gun downed the small helicopter of a private security firm Tuesday afternoon over the heavily Sunni Fadhil neighborhood in north-central Baghdad, where witnesses reported clashes between insurgents and U.S. and Iraqi forces.
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&hearts Many Americans will die fighting Sadr who is someone Col. or General X wants out of the way before he makes a deal with us: Iraqi and US forces have captured more than 600 fighters loyal to firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, the US military said, while violence across the country claimed another 31 lives.
The arrest of Sadr's militiamen came after a day of carnage that left 100 people dead in a string of bombings in and around Baghdad.
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&hearts Al Qaeda uses You Tube to send us valentines: Al Qaeda’s deputy leader on Monday mocked President Bush’s plan to send more than 20,000 additional troops to Iraq, challenging him to send the “entire army” and vowing that insurgents would defeat them, according to a new videotape released by an American group that tracks messages from Al Qaeda.
The group, the Washington-based SITE Institute, said it had intercepted the video from Ayman al-Zawahri, which had not yet been posted on militant Islamist Web sites, where his messages usually appear. SITE, which assesses and analyzes intelligence related to terrorism, did not elaborate on how it had received the message.
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&hearts Iran throws out UN spies/weapons inspectors since they are merely working for the USA to see if we can attack another oil pumping nation: Iran has barred 38 nuclear inspectors on a United Nations list from entering the country, the foreign minister said Monday in what appeared to be retaliation for the U.N. sanctions imposed last month.
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&hearts The lessons of Iraq are well learned as more and more Muslims pick up the bomb or the missile and go after us: A bomber blew himself up amid a crowd of workers outside a U.S. military base in eastern Afghanistan on Tuesday, killing 10 and wounding at least 14 others in the deadliest suicide attack in four months, officials said.
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&hearts This news means Libya is at the Hubbert Oil Peak and is now going to slide into chaos: The Libyan government is to lay off 400,000 people - more than a third of its workforce - to ease public spending and stimulate the private sector.
Libyan Prime Minister Baghdadi Mahmudi told parliament the number of civil servants had become excessive.
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&hearts Debasing the currency and raiding Iraq hasn't saved our empire so it is back to trying to figure out how to get a free lunch without anyone noticing the pile of IOUs building up: Shocking tourists into counting every penny, and getting Americans back home to spend less on costly imports, is part of what a weaker dollar is supposed to do to help pare America’s outsize trade deficit, according to economic textbooks.
But, so far, the dollar’s slide has not helped enough. Although the dollar has lost a lot of ground against many of the world’s major currencies — including the euro, the British pound and the Canadian dollar — the nation’s trade imbalance with the world has continued to rise, reaching $702 billion in the first 11 months of 2006, on track to easily outstrip the $717 billion of 2005 and set another record.
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&hearts I've actually seen ball lightning in Tucson during a very fierce thunderstorm, it happened when there was no wind at all: Brazilian scientists may have solved a shocking scientific mystery by creating ball lightning in the lab.
Physicist Antonio Pavão and doctoral student Gerson Paiva of the Federal University of Pernambuco have created orbs of electricity about the size of golf balls that mimic natural ball lightning.
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&hearts Um, people hated Carter when he asked us to cut back on energy use, I believe this will push the last 30% of his supporters into demanding he be impeached: In his first State of the Union address to a Democratic-controlled Congress, President Bush will urge that gasoline consumption be slashed by 20 percent, the White House said, and press lawmakers not to resist his Iraq war buildup.
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&hearts Something my children would never had done (I took care of more than one child for other people who acted like this kid): AirTran Airways on Tuesday defended its decision to remove a Massachusetts couple from a flight after their crying 3-year-old daughter refused to take her seat before takeoff.
She was removed because "she was climbing under the seat and hitting the parents and wouldn't get in her seat" during boarding, Graham-Weaver said.
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&hearts Oh, oh---blowing a fuse is dangerous, note to self: Researchers found that women who tended to outwardly express their anger had a higher risk of artery blockages if they also had one of several other heart risk factors: older age, diabetes or high cholesterol. Other measures of hostility, like suppressed anger and hostile temperament in general, were unrelated to the risk of coronary artery disease.
It's possible that expressed anger was the most "toxic" aspect of a hostile temperament, according to the study authors, led by Dr. David S. Krantz of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Science in Bethesda, Maryland.
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&hearts Bush is now deep in Nixonian impeachment land, he is terribly unpopular and with the new gas cuts, profoundly unpopular with the race-car SUV driving wankers: When the leak investigation was launched, White House officials cleared Rove of wrongdoing but stopped short of doing so for Libby. Libby, who had been asked to counter Wilson's criticisms, felt betrayed and sought out his boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, Wells said. (Watch why jurists were asked about Vice President Cheney )
"They're trying to set me up. They want me to be the sacrificial lamb," attorney Theodore Wells said, recalling Libby's end of the conversation. "I will not be sacrificed so Karl Rove can be protected."
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January 21, 2007
&hearts Greater understanding how cold viruses work is a great breakthrough for medicine: The new study, detailed this week in the online edition of the journal Nature, revealed a key protein called Carabin is responsible for shutting down sniffles and congestion and reining in the body's immune response to viruses like the common cold.
"It's like having a built-in timer to keep the immune system in check," said lead researcher Jun Liu of Johns Hopkins University.
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&hearts Survivors of Bird Flu have very strong antibodies which can be a key for preventing this disease: Chinese researchers have found that a robust antibody against the SARS corona virus remained in the bodies of recovered SARS patients for more than three years.
"The discovery will help in the research of a SARS vaccine and help find the best therapy if SARS returns," said Li Taisheng, head of the research group, told Xinhua on Friday.
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&hearts Eating processed foods with transfatty oils means pregancy problems: Fats used to cook foods such as French fries and biscuits dramatically increase a woman's risk of becoming infertile, according to new research.
An American study of more than 18,000 women reveals that trans fats can reduce the chances of having a baby by up to 70 per cent.
Scientists believe that the fats — found mostly in processed vegetable oils — interfere with cells that play a vital role in ovulation.
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&hearts These nasty young men are probably going to be charged with manslaughter: As participants in KDND-FM's water-drinking contest chugged bottle after bottle, a listener called in to warn the disc jockeys that the stunt could be fatal.
"Yeah, we're aware of that," one of them responded.
Another DJ said with a laugh: "Yeah, they signed releases, so we're not responsible. We're OK."
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&hearts Bush and his gang have shredded the Constitution, they should be impeached and charged with treason:Yesterday, during Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales claimed there is no express right to habeas corpus in the U.S. Constitution. Gonzales was debating Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) about whether the Supreme Court’s ruling on Guantanamo detainees last year cited the constitutional right to habeas corpus. Gonzales claimed the Court did not cite such a right, then added, “There is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution.”
*************************************************************************************&hearts New Orleans is becoming a new Newark: But some economists and demographers are beginning to wonder whether New Orleans will top out at about half its prestorm population of about 444,000, already in a steep decline from its peak of 627,525 in the 1960 Census. At the moment, the population is well below half, and future gains are likely to be small.
“It will be a trickle based on what we know now,” said Elliott Stonecipher, a consultant and demographer based in Shreveport, La. “Low tens of thousands, over three or four or five years, something in that range. I would say we could start losing people, especially if the crime problem doesn’t get high visibility.”
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&hearts Why don't they just replay the tape of the 2004 press dinner where Bush peeked under his desk while chuckling, 'No WMD here!'? The White House press corps last week found itself embroiled in controversy -- a controversy over its efforts to avoid controversy at an event whose guests include President Bush.
Stung by criticism that comedian Stephen Colbert went too far last year in his remarks at the White House Correspondents' Association annual dinner, the group announced last week that it had lined up a different kind of entertainer for its next dinner on April 21: impersonator Rich Little.
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&hearts We have virtually no snow here but it is finally below zero which is more winter-like: Freakish high temperatures and rain revisited this posh ski resort in the French Alps and other mountain areas of Europe last week, prolonging a mild winter that is striking hard at alpine economies and fueling debate about what is causing the strange weather.
Hundreds of professional ski races in Europe -- as much as half the season's schedule -- have been canceled or disrupted, including downhill, cross-country and jumping events in Italy, France, Switzerland, Finland and Norway. Italy alone has canceled 104 races this season, including 35 in the first two weeks of January.
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&hearts Arthur can now laugh at my cat, Fluff: If you want to live a healthier life get a dog, research suggests.
The companionship offered by many pets is thought to be good for you, but the benefits of owning a dog outstrip those of cat owners, the study says. A psychologist from Queen's University, Belfast, said dog owners tended to have lower blood pressure and cholesterol.
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&hearts Interesting that the USA which is awash with gambling dens, is all keen on stopping online gamblers:THE US Department of Justice has ordered the world’s biggest investment banks, accountants and law firms to hand over all e-mails, telephone records and papers connected with internet gaming firms as part of an investigation into illegal online gambling in America.
HSBC, Dresdner Kleinwort, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank are known to be among the banks that have been issued with subpoenas — official requests for information — as part of a worldwide hunt to build a case against those who benefited from illegal online gambling.
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&hearts I am constantly seeking information online and yes, it is thinner than my own library but it is much more accessible: For Unbound was another move in a strange, complex and frequently obscure war that is being fought over the digitisation of the great libraries of the world. The details of this war may seem baffling, but there is nothing baffling about what is at stake. Intellectual property — intangibles like ideas, knowledge and information — is, in the globalised world, the most valuable of all assets. China may be booming on the basis of manufacturing, but, overwhelmingly, it makes things invented and designed in the West or Japan. Intellectual property is the big difference between the developing and developed worlds.
But intellectual property rights and the internet are uneasy bedfellows. Google’s stated mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. The words “universally accessible” carry the implicit threat that nobody can actually own or earn revenue from any information since it will all be just out there.
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&hearts Click here to see the comet: The brightest comet of recent decades was a surprising first sight for a new camera in space. The Sun Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation (SECCHI) instrument onboard the Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO) satellite had just opened up on January 11 when it snapped the above image of Comet McNaught. Visible was a spectacular view of the ion tail of Comet McNaught being swept away from the Sun by the solar wind in filamentary rays.
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&hearts O'Reilly takes heat for daring to say what I just pointed out today about kidnapped kids cooperating with their captors because they get a reward:On the January 15 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly said of Shawn Hornbeck -- who was abducted at the age of 11, held for four years, and recently found in Missouri -- that "there was an element here that this kid liked about this circumstances" and that he "do[esn't] buy" "the Stockholm syndrome thing." O'Reilly also said: "The situation here for this kid looks to me to be a lot more fun than what he had under his old parents. He didn't have to go to school. He could run around and do whatever he wanted." When fellow Fox News host Greta Van Susteren pointed out that "[s]ome kids like school," O'Reilly replied: "Well, I don't believe this kid did."
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Peter Pan And The Pirates And Modern Abductors And Abusers
Elaine Meinel Supkis
The desire for sentimentality can be very destructive. The media circus around several kidnapped children is profoundly disgusting to me. The latest example of this is the mysterious business of the kidnapped Missouri boy, Shawn, and why he didn't even slightly try to escape the clutches of the man who took him away from his family. I was once kidnapped and I know what happens as one deals with it all...the web of mixed feelings and disassociations.
&hearts Unlike this boy, I actually worked hard to escape.
ST. LOUIS, Missouri (AP) -- Ten months after Shawn Hornbeck's disappearance, he spoke with police to report his bike had been stolen but gave no clue that he was a missing child, a newspaper reported Saturday.That apparently was the first of two encounters Shawn had with police after his 2002 disappearance, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
The boy also may have placed a message on the Web site created by his parents during their search for him.
Shawn was missing more than four years before he was discovered January 12 with 13-year-old Ben Ownby, who had been reported missing four days earlier. Michael Devlin, 41, has pleaded not guilty to kidnapping Ben and has been charged with kidnapping Shawn.
Being only 5 years old, my efforts to return home were intense and successful. Indeed, maybe too successful. After losing my virginity, my parents were confused about what to do with me so they figured freezing me out would protect them emotionally. This destructive choice gave me some difficulties which I solved by going to wild animals for comfort. This allowed me to learn how to commune with other species and it was a fine thing, it gave me lifelong skills which I use today.
As a mother, I always feared my own children would be mistreated in the same way so I worried perhaps excessively about this and this was a burden for my own children. Letting go and letting them have their own lives and adventures took a lot of strength and emotional anguish.
Unlike this latest case, I wasn't the object of a massive media hysteria. This probably was a good thing. My parent's need for secrecy due to their government activities meant I could do even outrageous things and it would be blacked out. As a teenager in the heart of the Freak Years in San Francisco and Europe, I knew many famous people and did really tremendously outrageous things and remained very invisible even when I was on national TV or the cover of news magazines, etc. It was most peculiar.
Alas for Shawn, he is very visible and his every tic and mistake will be judged and pondered by millions of people who have no idea of what is going on but who yearn for tiresome, sentimental stories that will not match Shawn's reality! Psychiatrists and law enforcement will be unable to understand him, either. Shawn's quest to grow up and understand himself will probably careen along a very strange path and I am betting he will do what I did: become a 'freak'.
We freaks took up that name in 1967 because the Beats hated us. They didn't like our exuberance and colorful fantasies and would sneeringly call us 'freaks' and when we were called 'hippies' by the SF Chronicle, we sneered back to the paper, 'We are FREAKS!'
I went from the emotional vacancy of my parent's home to Never Neverland in California. And many of my neighbors and communard friends were like me, we were all equally astonished as to how similar we were to each other! Many an interesting tale! This is probably why I ended up doing counseling at the Free Clinic. My specialty: runaways.
&hearts Kidnapped children who stubbornly stick with their abductors are not that unusual at all.
Salt Lake City -- For a man now described as being at the center of one of the most intense missing-person cases in years, Brian D. Mitchell did not exactly try to blend into the scenery.With a veiled Elizabeth Smart and his wife in tow, Mr. Mitchell showed up at a downtown block party here, a grocery store, a restaurant, even living for about a week just one block from the Salt Lake City police headquarters, numerous witnesses say.
Throughout much of last summer, while the police and volunteers were looking day and night for Elizabeth after her kidnapping, it turned out she was moving among them in the open, dressed in the most flamboyant of outfits, and at times even camped just three-and-a-half miles from the Smart home. Mr. Mitchell was stopped by the police several times, and later arrested in San Diego on a burglary charge - all while still holding Elizabeth captive, the authorities said.
Dan Gorder, a freelance photographer, took a picture of the odd-looking group, dressed in white robes that looked like hospital gowns, at a big outdoor party in downtown Salt Lake City last September, just three months after 14-year old Elizabeth was kidnapped from her home near Salt Lake City. The police said late today that they believed Elizabeth was indeed one of the people in the picture.
When I heard of Smart's case, I felt very badly for her. Like myself, she is musical and ernest and hardworking and wanting to please her parents. When she was abducted, she discovered some repressed parts of herself: her native romanticism. The heart beating faster as she glided about her home community out in the open while in costume was a romantic story with her as the princess in peril. After someone caught her and forced her to end the deceptive dream, she had to go home and play a new role: the captive who needs to be coddled. Instead of exploring her true feelings, she played a new role which was based on the previous one but at the same time totally divorced from it.
&hearts Unlike me, she appeared over and over in the news even to this very day.
On July 19, 2006, CNN's Nancy Grace interviewed Elizabeth Smart, who appeared on behalf of a bill requiring sex offenders to register with their state of residence. Despite Smart's objection, Grace asked Smart a long series of questions about her abduction, relenting only when Smart, clearly upset, said "I really—I really—to be frankly honest, I really don't appreciate you bringing all this up."The Smart family published a book, Bringing Elizabeth Home, which was used as the basis of a television movie that aired Sunday, November 9, 2003 on CBS. The Smarts claimed they wanted to avoid subjecting their daughter to the limelight, but that after realizing it was inevitable, they decided it would be preferable to allow a film authorized by them to be created, rather than allowing an unauthorized version to surface.
My sister Mary who became an actress, ran away with my sister Barbara's religious cult group that practiced child sex, the aptly named 'Children of God'. Mary was only 14 years old and she wanted love so she enjoyed the sexual life there, the key thing was, THERE WAS NO SCHOOL. She went with them in the streets all over the world, caging money and seeking recruits. She hated school and this was a great lark. When I counseled runaways, the main reason most of them left home was a strong desire to avoid school.
Steven Spielberg was going to make a movie about her adventures until she went insane on him and attacked him. Her public need to exploit herself meant lying about her motives and actions during that time. This is because everyone trying to 'explain' stories like her own (she ran away) end up needing to sentimentalize reality and turn it all into this fake good/evil screen play that is usually a tissue of lies.
One thing I know for certain is, many kids who leave home voluntarily or involuntarily, one of the chief atttractions to this dark world of Peter Pan is ultimately ending the parental demand to get up in the morning and go to school. Incidentally, it wasn't just the 'dumb' kids who tried to disappear into this perpetual pre-school, summer vacaction all the time, mode, it was often the SMARTEST kids. My own sister Mary's intelligence is near genius, for example. One of the biggest tools in the kit child abductors/lovers use is the possibility of living a life of nonstop fun and sleeping whenever one wants in a Peter Pan life of adventure, sex and irresponsibility.
&hearts The creator of Peter Pan had the personallity traits of a kidnapper/sexual predator.
James Matthew Barrie was born in the Lowland village of Kirriemuir, in Forfarshire (now Angus). His father, David Barrie was a handloom weaver, and mother, Margaret Ogilvy, the daughter of a stonemason. They had ten children, and Barrie was the ninth. Jamie, as he was called, heard tales of pirates from his mother, who read her children adventure stories in the evenings. Before her marriage Margaret Ogilvy belonged to a religious sect called the Auld Lichts, or Old Lights, and many the stories concerning it inspired later Barrie's work. His father Barrie seldom mentions in his autobiographical works.When Barrie was seven, his brother David died in a skating accident. David had been the mother's favorite child, and she fell into depression. Barrie tried to gain her affection by dressing up in the dead boy's clothes. The obsessive relationship that grew between mother and son was to mark the whole of his life. After her death Barrie published in 1896 an adoring biography on her.
At the age of 13, Barrie left his home village.
He 'loved' his mother and left home for good at an even younger age than myself. Impressive. His obsession with her was due to her abuse of his need for love. Her childish desire for one child forced another to destroy himself, the psychological suicide made his ability to grow up and love appropriately, impossible except if he exerted himself hugely.
Peter Pan evolved gradually from the stories that Barrie told to Sylvia Llewelyn Davies's five young sons. She was the daughter of the novelist George du Maurier, and a motherly figure, with whom Barrie formed a long friendship. Arthur, her husband, was not happy about Barrie's invasion of the family. In 1909 Mary Barrie began an affair with the writer Gilbert Cannan and Barrie's marriage ended. When Sylvia Llwelyn Davies and her husband died, Barrie was the unofficial guardian of their sons, but in reality he was perhaps more a sixth child than an adoptive father. George, one of the sons, died in World War I, Michael drowned himself with his boy friend in Oxford. Michael's death was a deep blow to Barrie. Peter, who became a publisher, committed suicide in 1960.
He created the perfect counter-world for sexually abused, kidnapped children. I could barely tolerate this story when I was young, and today, it is very clear with Jackson's child molestation manifestation named 'Never Neverland Ranch', being a powerful rich artist who was abused as a child, exploited by his parents and other adults, he emotionally was stunted and expressed this in hideous ways and still is destroying lives just like Barrie.
Shawn, the latest Peter Pan in the media circus, has a lip ring. His message to his parent's website was posted at nearly 2am. He rode his bikes freely about the community out in the open even more so than the Mormon girl. He didn't go to school which reminds me of the song from the musical, 'Peter Pan': 'I won't grow up....and never go to school'.
The 8-year-old daughter of late Australian "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin kicks off her American showbiz career this week with a series of high-profile television appearances and speeches across the United States.Bindi Irwin, who will star in the 26-part "Bindi, the Jungle Girl" series on Discovery Kids network this year, will address the National Press Club in Washington, as well as appear on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" and "The Late Show" with David Letterman.
"She'll be welcomed with open arms and rightly so. She's a very special child," Discovery senior vice-president Annie Howell told Australian media on Monday.
This kidnapping of an 8 year-old's entire life is being done by her own mother. Out of sheer greed. I cannot imagine a little girl who adored her exploitive dad (who once pretended to feed his baby to an alligator!) who was planning to make money off of her, now he is dead in a horrible way and is this child being allowed to heal?
Grow up? Have some privacy? Nope.
The hyper-sexual displaced lust of the public, their need for sentimentality coupled with the horror of Captain Hook killing people, is being acted out upon the fragile mind and body of this poor girl. I am totally against the exploitation of children. The Disney twins who acted in all those TV shows and movies are now clearly going insane as young adults. Ashley Olsen is literally starving herself to death and both of them are acting like...Freaks! This may be why they now live in NYC, the city that never sleeps.
This desire to freak out everyone is a coping mechanism for abused or exploited children. I turned this innate desire to freak out into a force of good, it became my adult artwork and I slowly mutated it into forms that I liked so that now I am past middle age and going into the joys of elderhood as an adult, not a perpetual child.
Unfortunately and criminally, the country of Australia is planning on exploiting Bindi because they hope she will make international loot for them. This makes all of the people responsible for protecting her from her exploitive mother co-exploiters themselves. Namely, they will make this Wendy walk the plank while the crocodile with the clock numbering the lost minutes of her childhood, opens its mouth to swallow her when she reaches adulthood.
Culture of Life News Main Page
January 20, 2007
&hearts Many other nations such as India and Israel and Pakistan long ago had women Presidents or Prime Ministers: Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton embarked on a widely anticipated campaign for the White House on Saturday, a former first lady intent on becoming the first female president. "I'm in and I'm in to win," she said on her Web site.
Clinton's announcement, days after Sen. Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) shook up the contest race with his bid to become the first black president, establishes the most diverse political field ever.
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&hearts Except for the Italians during the Rennaisance, most politicians are tasteless barbarians: Art critics and politicians could not conceal their scorn yesterday at the new official portrait of Gerhard Schröder, the former Chancellor of Germany, which is to be hung alongside the more conventional pictures of his predecessors in the Berlin Chancellery. “There are statues of Elvis Presley that look like this,” sneered Holger Liebs of the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “Siberian oligarchs and Californian rappers have a need — alongside their collection of Rolex watches — to immortalise themselves in this manner.”
He suggested that the image — dubbed the “Golden Gerhard” — could be put on to a medallion, in the manner of Lenin badges, and be presented to Social Democratic party members.
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&hearts Usually, bloody despots die of old age unlike their victims (this includes Ronnie Reagan and Gerald Ford): Cuban leader Fidel Castro is battling to save his life, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has said.
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&hearts Global warming isn't all about fun in the sun: Many venomous reptiles are moving into residential and business areas in search of moisture. Last week a 16-year-old boy in Sydney died from a bite by an Eastern Brown, one of the world's deadliest snakes.
Many parts of Australia have been hard-hit by the drought, described as the worst for more than 100 years.
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&hearts In the spirit of 'workers of the world unite', activists demonstrate on behalf of the poor and oppressed: Thousands of anti-globalisation protesters have marched in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, at the opening of the annual World Social Forum.
More than 80,000 people have gathered to address a wide spectrum of social problems facing the world, including a focus on African issues.
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&hearts Armenian activist/reporter slain in Turkey, the Armenian Christian struggles against Ankara rage for 100 years: Istanbul Governor Muammer Guler said on Friday that three people were detained in regard to killing of Hrant Dink, editor-in-chief of bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos.
"There are three detainees. We have solid evidences. We have been conducting the investigation in accordance with statements of eyewitnesses. Experts are working on footage and documents," Gulerwas quoted by the semi-official Anatolia news agency as saying.
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&hearts I find it most amusing the Chinese light up the tunnel to look like it is outside, blue sky and trees: An 18-kilometer-long, double-tube and four-lane highway tunnel, the longest double-tube highway tunnel in the world, opened to traffic on Saturday in northwest China.
The Zhongnanshan highway tunnel, which begins in Qingcha, Xi'an City and ends in Yingpan, Shangluo City in Shaanxi Province, allows vehicles to travel up to 80 kmh.
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&hearts After flexing their outer space military muscles, China continues diplomacy initiatives: Canadian finance minister Jim Flaherty met with the Chinese finance minister Jin Renqing here on Friday.
Flaherty said that China and Canada are facing many opportunities and both governments are working together to take these opportunities. Canada has become an important energy provider and a center for science technology. China is an economic giant. So the need for cooperation between China and Canada is obvious.
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&hearts And now China is taking aim at our addiction to adding IOUs to their FOREX funds: Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said that China would steadily push forward the foreign exchange rates reform and actively explore and expand the use of foreign exchange reserves, Xinhua learned Saturday from the Third National Financial Work Conference.
The closed-door meeting was designed to chart the course of China's financial sector.
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&hearts China is one of the top three trade nations on earth: China's Ministry of Commerce has projected a 15-percent growth for foreign trade in 2007, down nine percent from last year.
The figure means that the country's total imports and exports would break the two trillion U.S. dollar mark this year.
China, the world's third largest trader after the United States and Germany, registered 1.76 trillion U.S. dollars in foreign trade and an aggregate trade surplus of 177.47 billion U.S. dollars last year.
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&hearts As the computer industry relocates to China and India, eventually the design work follows:The first batch of 80 computers powered by home-grown Chinese CPUs are undergoing user tests, Wu Shaogang, a manager from manufacturer Lemote Technology Co. told Xinhua on Thursday.
The computer, which uses a Linux operating system, comes with a 40-gigabyte hard drive and 256 megabytes of memory. It costs 1,599 yuan (about 200 U.S. dollars), and users have to buy the monitor, keyboard and mouse separately, the company said on its website.
Godson II E was developed by the Institute of Computing Technology (ICT) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
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&hearts Now that the cancer epidemic caused by nuclear bomb tests is fading, we have new possible sources of cancer possibilities:A mass study of the long-term impact of mobile phones is to be undertaken amid fears that people who have used them for more than ten years are at greater risk from brain cancer.
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&hearts Click here to see amazing pictures of Comet McNaught: On Jan 18th, "motorists in Bloemfontein, South Africa, stopped to look at a strange 'bush fire' on the horizon," reports photographer Gerrit Penning. "It turned out to be the extravagant tail of Comet McNaught!"
Even experienced astronomers have never seen anything like it--a sweeping fan of comet dust visible to the unaided eye despite city lights and twilight. Steve Crane sends this Jan. 19th picture from Cape Town, South Africa:
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&hearts Humans ate all the Neanderthals and homo habilis relatives: Armed rebels have begun slaughtering and eating protected mountain gorillas in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), conservationists reported this week.
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&hearts Even as humans eat the last gorillas, Californians fight off black bears:Black bears across North America are becoming addicted to human comforts, from snacking on "junk food" found in garbage bins to sleeping in the crawl spaces under designer homes. Relocating problem bears can be difficult, and in many communities the animal invaders are routinely shot.
Catch some marauding bears in the act, and go on assignment with a volunteer in California who hopes that "hazing" bear house crashers will keep them away from humans and save them from an untimely end.
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January 16, 2007
Are U.S. Treasury bonds really Triple-A rated? The junk bond market says No.Let’s look at the current situation. We find that current 10-year domestic junk bonds are trading at only 73 basis points over 10-year U.S. Treasuries. That’s an all-time low spread, mindful that the 20-year moving average of that spread is 474 basis points.
&hearts Outside of oil purchasing, the greenback no longer rules as world's top currency anymore:
The data consolidate news last month that the value of euro notes in circulation had overtaken the dollar for the first time. Outstanding debt issued in the euro was worth the equivalent of $4,836bn at the end of 2006 compared with $3,892bn for the dollar, according to International Capital Market Association data.Outstanding euro-denominated debt accounts for 45 per cent of the global market,
compared with 37 per cent for the dollar. New issuance last year accounted for 49 per cent of the global total.
&hearts
The value of the Renminbi (RMB) yuan overtook the HK dollar on Monday for the first time in history. The central parity rate was announced at 0.99945 yuan to one dollar by the Chinese Foreign Exchange Trading System.Chinese experts believe the yuan will remain superior for the time being as the yuan continues to appreciate. The value of the RMB against the U.S. dollar hit a new high on Monday, with a central parity rate of 7.7938 yuan to one U.S. dollar, breaking the 7.80 mark.
&hearts China's trade with Japan equals trade with USA:
China's trade with Japan topped 207.36 billion U.S. dollars last year, up 12.4 percent from 2005, according to the General Administration of Customs.The volume more than doubled the 101.91 billion U.S. dollars in2002, and was near 200 times the 1.04 billion U.S. dollars in 1972 when the two nations established diplomatic relations.
&hearts Like clockwork, every time Democrats take over, the government suddenly gets worried about deficit spending:
While he acknowledged the single-year fiscal improvement touted by the Bush administration for 2006, he said that "it did not fundamentally change our long-term fiscal outlook." He also noted that since 2000, America's net social insurance commitments and other fiscal obligations have increased to $50 trillion from $20 trillion, representing four times the nation's total economic output. Rising national health care costs are the greatest culprit according to data collected by Walker's agency.The head of the GAO also warned that if no action is taken now to control government spending, severe tax hikes could be necessary. He stated that, "balancing the budget in 2040 could require actions as large as cutting total federal spending by 60 percent or raising federal taxes to 2 times today’s level."
&hearts Free spending Bush will now blame Democrats for his budget mess, his plan is to make them propose tax hikes:
When he takes the House rostrum next week for the State of the Union address, President Bush will list among his goals a balanced federal budget, a shift for a president who has presided over record deficits while aggressively cutting taxes.Politically, analysts say, the president is calling the bluff of Democrats, who won control of Congress in part by accusing Bush of reckless fiscal policies. While Bush now shares the Democrats' goal to erase the deficit by 2012, the politically perilous work of making that happen -- cutting spending or raising taxes -- falls to the Democratic-run Congress.
&hearts This is a replay of the Great Depression's marathon dancing:
A woman who competed in a radio station's contest to see how much water she could drink without going to the bathroom died of water intoxication, the coroner's office said Saturday.Jennifer Strange, 28, was found dead Friday in her suburban Rancho Cordova home hours after taking part in the "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest in which KDND 107.9 promised a Nintendo Wii video game system for the winner.
&hearts Replacing the uterus is another medical breakthrough:
Now, doctors are planning the first womb transplant in the United States. A team based in Manhattan has begun screening women left barren by cancer, injuries or other problems who want a chance to bear their own children.
&hearts More proof Alzheimer's disease is mostly hereditary:
Abnormalities in a gene called SORL1 increased the risk for the disease, and this finding could help scientists develop new treatments, the researchers reported in the journal Nature Genetics.
&hearts Red Cross has new, non-religious symbol as future universal icon:
The Red Cross will formally adopt the "red crystal" as an additional emblem on Sunday that can be used to protect humanitarian workers in certain conflict situations, the movement said in a statement on Friday.The "red crystal" symbol is actually a red square frame standing on one corner. It will join the existing "red cross" and "red crescent" symbols of the Red Cross movement.
&hearts A lady with the ability to see the future (like I have) was convicted of being a 'witch' during WWII in Britain:
The granddaughter of a psychic "medium" convicted of being a witch in Britain during World War II has begun a second campaign to gain a posthumous pardon for Helen Duncan."I will carry on fighting to clear her name," said Mary Martin who still vividly remembers being teased on the playground in 1944 as "witch spawn."
&hearts The English make life hell for young women trying to marry their crazy Princes:
The attorneys for Prince William's paparazzi-trailing girlfriend Kate Middleton have secretly filmed the photographers as evidence for any possible harassment claims, The Daily Telegraph reported on Monday.The lawyers for Middleton, who turned 25 last week, have written to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) after filming incidents outside her home and office, and when she arrived at and left nightclubs both with and without the prince, according to the newspaper.
&hearts You have to read this bizarre story from China, it seems a family too poor to pay for a traffic accident took the injured lady into their home to care for her only they all went crazy:
A Shanghai woman killed an elderly woman who was living in her home because she was "too picky about the food she was served and was very bad-tempered."
&hearts Griffith and his stupid 'Mars, bitches!' buddies are tremendously slashing funds for monitoring our very important planet, the Earth:
The government's ability to understand and predict hurricanes, drought and climate changes of all kinds is in danger because of deep cuts facing many Earth satellite programs and major delays in launching some of its most important new instruments, a panel of experts has concluded.The two-year study by the National Academy of Sciences, released yesterday, determined that NASA's earth science budget has declined 30 percent since 2000. It stands to fall further as funding shifts to plans for a manned mission to the moon and Mars.
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January 13, 2007
&hearts Woman sues Ottawa over CIA brainwashing at Montreal hospital
Huard had entered Montreal's Allan Memorial Institute in 1958 after suffering postpartum depression following the birth of her second child. Her newborn had become ill and Huard was having difficulty coping. But instead of helping her, the institute's director, Dr. Ewen Cameron, used her as a "guinea pig" to carry out experimental brainwashing techniques that he mistakenly believed could treat depression.
&hearts Lieberman, a party of one, takes only one week to break an important campaign promise
Sen. Joe Lieberman, the only Democrat to endorse President Bush’s new plan for Iraq, has quietly backed away from his pre-election demands that the White House turn over potentially embarrassing documents relating to its handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans.
&hearts Puritan American prosecutors want to put boys in prison for seeing porn online
Greg Bandy was handed the search warrant and informed that the central suspect was Matthew. According to the warrant, nine images of young girls in suggestive poses were found on the Bandy family computer. Yahoo monitors chat rooms for suspicious content and reported that child porn was uploaded from the computer at the Bandys' home address.
&hearts British MP Asking More Questions About Bilderberg
A British MP, who previously asked Prime Minister Tony Blair to reveal details of any Bilderberg meetings he has attended, has now officially asked the current Chancellor of the Exchequer, and most likely next Prime Minister, to reveal details of his own attendances at Bilderberg.
&hearts Unknown spy organization put RIFD chips in Canadian coins
Canadian coins containing tiny transmitters have mysteriously turned up in the pockets of at least three American contractors who visited Canada, says a branch of the U.S. Department of Defence.
&hearts Murtha keeps hammering away at ending the crimes the USA is committing in war on terror
The House of Representatives' top lawmaker in charge of defense spending said Friday that he intends to force the closure of the scandal-plagued Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay military prisons and curb U.S. engagement in Iraq, and that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi "absolutely" supports his efforts.
&hearts DEA denies Afghan heroin is pouring into American cities
U.S. Rep. Mark Steven Kirk, a Republican who represents suburbs north of Chicago, said the Bush administration had been slow to respond to indications that more heroin from Afghanistan was coming to the United States. U.S. law enforcement officials also told him privately that Afghanistan’s share of the American heroin market is growing, he said. Most heroin in the United States continues to come from Mexico and Colombia, experts said. Also, heroin addiction isn’t as pervasive in the United States as cocaine and methamphetamine addiction.
&hearts Russia and Belarus sign gas/oil treaty that intertwines the economies of each nation more securely
After some 10 hours of tense talks in Moscow, the two sides signed a three-year agreement on Friday, under which Russia will cut the duty on oil exports to Belarus to 53 U.S. dollars, down from the 180 dollars, and Belarus will share with Moscow a substantial amount of profits from the refined oil products it sells to Europe. Russian news agencies cited Fradkov as saying that Russia would receive 70 percent of revenues from Belarus's exports of refined Russian oil this year and the figure would rise to 80 percent in 2008 and 85 percent in 2009.
&hearts Small tsunami from very big earthquake
A small tsunami wave hit Japan`s northernmost island on Saturday after a powerful north Pacific earthquake prompted tsunami warnings for northern Japan, Russia and a wide swathe of Japan`s Pacific coast.
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