(More..)

I can see from this selfless public servant’s letter that while there may be a shortage of armor plate in Iraq–there are ample supplies of boilerplate in D.C.

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At least 648 people were killed in a stampede on a bridge Wednesday when panic engulfed a Shiite religious procession amid rumors that a suicide bomber was about to attack, officials said. It was the single biggest confirmed loss of life in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion.

Scores jumped or were pushed to their deaths into the Tigris River, while others were crushed in the crowd. Most of the dead were women and children, Interior Ministry spokesman Lt. Col. Adnan Abdul-Rahman said.

Tensions already had been running high in the procession in Baghdad’s heavily Shiite Kazimiyah district because of a mortar attack two hours earlier against the shrine where the marchers were heading. The shrine was about a mile from the bridge.

Abdul-Rahman said 648 were killed and 322 injured, with survivors rushed in ambulances and private cars to several hospitals, where officials scrambled to compile accurate casualty figures.

Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite, declared a three-day mourning period.

Thousands of people rushed to both banks of the river to search for survivors, and bare-chested men jumped in to try to recover bodies.

[..]

“We were on the bridge. It was so crowded. Thousands of people were surrounding me,” said survivor Fadhel Ali, 28, barefoot and soaking wet. “We heard that a suicide attacker was among the crowd. Everybody was yelling, so I jumped from the bridge into the river, swam and reached the bank. I saw women, children and old men falling after me into the water.”

A large collection of pictures here

Into the eye of Katrina: an impressive Flickr set taken from the NOAA-43 and NRL-P3 Hurricane Hunters as they fly into the hurricane’s eye. The set owner studies hurricane rainband intensity using ELDORA radar aboard the specially equipped planes. It’s a rough flight, but once inside, the results are awe-inspiring.

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When FBI supervisors in Miami met with new interim U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta last month, they wondered what the top enforcement priority for Acosta and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would be.

Would it be terrorism? Organized crime? Narcotics trafficking? Immigration? Or maybe public corruption?

The agents were stunned to learn that a top prosecutorial priority of Acosta and the Department of Justice was none of the above. Instead, Acosta told them, it’s obscenity. Not pornography involving children, but pornographic material featuring consenting adults.

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It appears that the money has been moved in the president’s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that’s the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can’t be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us.<

-- Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; New Orleans Times-Picayune, June 8, 2004.

[..]

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security — coming at the same time as federal tax cuts — was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.

President Bush plays a guitar presented to him by Country Singer Mark Wills, right, backstage following his visit to Naval Base Coronado, Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005. Bush visited the base to deliver remarks on V-J Commemoration Day. (AP Photo/ABC News, Martha Raddatz)

Is this the same man who flew up to the White House on zero notice for Ms. Schiavo?

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U.S. President Bill Clinton said his administration was doing all it could to answer the threat from Hurricane Floyd off America’s Southeast coast during a press conference with New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jenny Shipley in Christchurch, New Zealand, Wednesday, Sept. 15, 1999. Clinton is cutting his overseas trip by a day so he can return to Washington to deal with the pending hurricane. He and other Pacific Rim leaders were in New Zealand to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.

Because, you know, getting back from New Zealand a day early is so much easier than a trip from Crawford, TX.

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New Orleans resembled a war zone more than a modern American metropolis Tuesday, as Gulf Coast communities struggled to deal with the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

[..]

The death toll from the storm so far is estimated at 70 — mostly in Mississippi. Officials stressed that the number is uncertain and likely to be much higher.

[..]

Mayor Ray Nagin told CNN that at least 30 buildings had collapsed, but that no attempt had been made to determine a death toll.

“There are dead bodies floating in some of the water,” Nagin said. “The rescuers would basically push them aside as they were trying to save individuals.”

Nagin said that as of late Tuesday “a significant amount of water” is flowing into the bowl-shaped city and sections of the city now dry could be under 9 or 10 feet of water within hours.

“The bowl is filling up,” he said.

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De politie Rotterdam-Rijnmond heeft dinsdag een nieuw opsporingsmiddel ingezet. De politie heeft 17.000 mensen een sms-bericht gestuurd waarin de politie vraagt om medewerking bij het achterhalen van relschoppers rond de wedstrijd Feyenoord-Ajax in april.

In de sms staat: “Tijdens de voetbalrellen van 17 april 2005 was u nabij stadion De Kuip. De politie doet hiernaar onderzoek en vraagt uw medewerking. Zie politie: www.politie-rijnmond.nl.” De politie heeft alleen de nummers van sms-ontvangers achterhaald, niet hun namen.

Ik ben benieuwd of je dit ook tegen de politie kan gebruiken.. “nee, hoor, ik heb een alibi, ik was thuis, vraag het de telecomproviders maar…”

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The new version, aimed squarely at the hearts, minds and wallets of the teenage-to-mid-30′s set that Hollywood prizes, has blockbuster written all over it. Peter Jackson, the maestro behind the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, is directing; Naomi Watts is stepping into Fay Wray’s shoes as the imperiled, scantily clad heroine; and the film is rumored to be embroidered with mind-blowing special effects.

But even the mighty Kong may not be safe from the clutches of a nebulous, tech-savvy network of film pirates who specialize in stealing copies of first-run movies and distributing them globally on the Internet or on bootleg DVD’s. While Hollywood has battled various forms of film looting for decades, this time seems different. Piracy in the digital era is more lucrative, sophisticated and elusive than ever – and poses a far bigger financial threat.

“Piracy has the very real potential of tipping movies into becoming an unprofitable industry, especially big-event films. If that happens, they will stop being made,” said Mr. Jackson in an e-mail message from New Zealand, where he is putting the final touches on his version of “King Kong.” “No studio is going to finance a film if the point is reached where their possible profit margin goes straight into criminals’ pockets.”

[..]

“It’s hard to say exactly what amount of money is involved, but it’s huge,” said Bob Wright, chairman and chief executive of NBC Universal, the parent company of Universal Pictures and a division of General Electric. “There is a very dark, black cloud in this game. It’s not in the hands of kids who live next door to you; it’s organized groups and organized crime.”

Good, because that means you can stop suiing the kids next door and start working on those organized groups instead, right? Right? And it also means you’re going to stop nagging the cinema visitor with those “don’t bring a camera you fucking criminal” slide shows before the movie, right? Right?

/cue crickets chirping….

Opera Software ASA is celebrating 10-year anniversary of its browser. As a surprise party favor they’re giving away free registration codes (for as long as the party lasts).

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The Mexico City newspaper that has been covering the Reverend Jesse Jackson’s visit to Venezuela, El Universal, is reporting that President Hugo Chavez is offering gasoline and heating fuel at very low and affordable prices to the poor and needy in the USA.

Hugo Chavez said yesterday that he will be apportioning 1.5 million barrels of oil daily at 40% less than market price through the Venezuelan government own “Citgo” in the USA. Citgo will refine the oil into gasoline and heating fuel and make it available to the unemployed, the poor and old folks who find it difficult to heat their homes in the winter….

….President Hugo Chavez said that he estimates that his offer will benefit from between 7 to 8 million needy Americans. He added that his embassy in Washington D.C. has already received 140 applications for the program because Americans are being “defrauded” and “gouged” by greedy US oil companies like Chevron and others.

Not many Americans know that Pat Robertson , the former US presidential candidate, is a failed “wannabe oilman” who squandered millions of his followers dollars in the purchased of a run-down oil refinery .

This information is mostly known to the citizens of Santa Fe Springs, California where Pat Robinson lost an expensive battle to startup the highly polluting refinery he purchased from a savvy business group that essentially dumped the old and useless refinery on the televangelist.

The refinery is now a rotting pile of iron junk and an ugly eyesore in the City of Santa Fe Springs. Pat Robinson is not very smart and the financial disaster represented by “The Oil Refinery Folly” in Santa Fe Springs may have led to the mental derangement of the televangelist.

The Pat Robertson’s oil refinery is located on the corner of Florence and Bloomfield Avenues in the City of Santa Fe Springs, California. La Voz de Aztlan has a Google Earth satellite photograph of the rotting refinery below.

Link to image.

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While scientific literacy has doubled over the past two decades, only 20 to 25 percent of Americans are “scientifically savvy and alert,” he said in an interview. Most of the rest “don’t have a clue.” At a time when science permeates debates on everything from global warming to stem cell research, he said, people’s inability to understand basic scientific concepts undermines their ability to take part in the democratic process.

[..]

Dr. Miller’s data reveal some yawning gaps in basic knowledge. American adults in general do not understand what molecules are (other than that they are really small). Fewer than a third can identify DNA as a key to heredity. Only about 10 percent know what radiation is. One adult American in five thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth, an idea science had abandoned by the 17th century.

[..]

Lately, people who advocate the teaching of evolution have been citing Dr. Miller’s ideas on what factors are correlated with adherence to creationism and rejection of Darwinian theories. In general, he says, these fundamentalist views are most common among people who are not well educated and who “work in jobs that are evaporating fast with competition around the world.”

But not everyone is happy when he says things like that. Every time he goes on the radio to talk about his findings, he said, “I get people sending me cards saying they will pray for me a lot.”

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Iraq’s parliament proposed a law on Monday to sack members of the National Assembly who repeatedly failed to turn up for work — but the decision was put on hold because too many were absent to hold a vote.

On August 30, 1146, European leaders outlawed the crossbow with the hope of ending wars. That worked out really well, guys.

The Mound Underpass on Interstate-10 is flooded near downtown New Orleans on Monday, Aug. 29, 2005, as Hurricane Katrina dumped torrential rain and battered the city when it made landfall near Grand Isle. (AP Photo/Bill Haber)

Debris from a fallen building covers several buildings in downtown New Orleans. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)

“I could have stayed at home and watched my roof blow off,” said one of the refugees, Harald Johnson, 43. “Instead, I came down here and watched the Superdome roof blow off. It’s no big deal; getting wet is not like dying.”

A man videotapes a car crushed by the front of a building in downtown New Orleans, August 29, 2005. REUTERS/Rick Wilking

The Terme area of New Orleans lies under several feet of water.

An Interstate-10 sign is nearly underwater near downtown New Orleans.

Debris from a fallen building covers several buildings in downtown New Orleans.

Four giant pandas drink water at a pool at the China Giant Panda Protection and Research Centre in Wolong, southwest China's Sichuan province, August 26, 2005. Taiwan experts will arrive in Wolong Friday night to take part in the selection of two giant pandas as gifts of the Chinese mainland to Taiwan, local media reported. CHINA OUT REUTERS/China Newsphoto

The complete text of the draft Iraqi Constitution, as translated from the Arabic by The Associated Press.
Read the rest of this entry »

[source]

[Quote:]

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Fox News, 8/28/05:

This is a constitution, certainly, by Middle Eastern standards, that�s astonishing�while Islam is mentioned, it is not the controlling law of the country.

Iraqi draft constitution:

Islam is the official religion of the state and is a basic source of legislation. No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam.

Watch the video.

High winds and rain pound the Louisiana Superdome and New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina makes landfall along the Louisiana coast on Monday, Aug. 29, 2005. Officials report that part of the roof of the Superdome was blown off because of the storm and the facility, which is housing some 10,000 evacuees, is leaking. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)

Floodwaters surround a car in uptown New Orleans early Monday, Aug. 29, 2005 as high winds and rain batter the Louisiana coast as Hurricane Katrina makes landfall. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)

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A top US Army contracting official who criticized a large, noncompetitive contract with the Halliburton Company for work in Iraq has been demoted for what the Army called poor job performance, The New York Times reported.

The newspaper said Bunnatine Greenhouse has worked in military procurement for 20 years and for the past several years had been the chief overseer of contracts at the Army Corps of Engineers, the agency that has managed much of the reconstruction work in Iraq.

[..]

In a memorandum dated June 3, 2005, the commander of the corps, Lieutenant General Carl Strock, said the administrative record “clearly demonstrates that Ms. Greenhouse’s removal from the SES. is based on her performance and not in retaliation for any disclosures of alleged improprieties that she may have made.”

Kohn said Greenhouse had initially received stellar performance ratings, the paper pointed out. But her reviews became negative at roughly the time she began objecting to decisions she saw as improperly favoring Kellogg Brown and Root, he said.

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When he was charged with murder in 1996, James Thomas, an impoverished day laborer in Baton Rouge, became like many other criminal defendants: With no money to hire a lawyer, he had to rely on the government to provide him with one.

He then spent the next 8½ years in jail, waiting for his case to go to trial. It never did.

Last spring, a Louisiana state appeals court ruled that prosecutors had waited too long to try him, and it threw the charge out. By then, Thomas was 34, his alibi witness for the night of the murder had died of kidney disease, and his case had become a symbol of the increasing problems within the nation’s public defender system. “I can’t think of any reason why he would have so completely fallen off their radar screen except to suggest (public defenders) were so busy and so understaffed and underfunded, they allowed his case to slip,” says Chris Alexander, Thomas’ new private lawyer. Alexander got the charge dismissed after Thomas’ mother scraped together $500 to hire him.

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Recently, a secret draft revision of the national park system’s basic management policy document has been circulating within the Interior Department. It was prepared, without consultation within the National Park Service, by Paul Hoffman, a deputy assistant secretary at Interior who once ran the Chamber of Commerce in Cody, Wyo., was a Congressional aide to Dick Cheney and has no park service experience.

Now why am I not surprised?

Within national park circles, this rewrite of park rules has been met with profound dismay, for it essentially undermines the protected status of the national parks. The document makes it perfectly clear that this rewrite was not prompted by a compelling change in the park system’s circumstances. It was prompted by a change in political circumstances – the opportunity to craft a vision of the national parks that suits the Bush administration.

[..]

Mr. Hoffman’s rewrite would open up nearly every park in the nation to off-road vehicles, snowmobiles and Jet Skis. According to his revision, the use of such vehicles would become one of the parks’ purposes. To accommodate such activities, he redefines impairment to mean an irreversible impact. To prove that an activity is impairing the parks, under Mr. Hoffman’s rules, you would have to prove that it is doing so irreversibly – a very high standard of proof. This would have a genuinely erosive effect on the standards used to protect the national parks.

The pattern prevails throughout this 194-page document – easing the rules that limit how visitors use the parks and toughening the standard of proof needed to block those uses. Behind this pattern, too, there is a fundamental shift in how the parks are regarded. If the laws establishing the national park system were fundamentally forward-looking – if their mission, first and foremost, was protecting the parks for the future – Mr. Hoffman’s revisions place a new, unwelcome and unnecessary emphasis on the present, on what he calls “opportunities for visitors to use and enjoy their parks.”