[Quote:]

Saddam Hussain, former Iraqi president, accepted the initiative of the late Shaikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan to retire prior to the American invasion in March 2003.

General Shaikh Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, told Al Arabiya television last night that Saddam accepted Shaikh Zayed’s initiative, which intended to stop the American invasion.

The UAE’s initiative was presented to Amr Mousa, Arab League General Secretary, who refused to place it on the agenda of the summit.

This is the first time Saddam’s acceptance of the initiative was announced. It is widely believed that the US had accepted the initiative.

Observers believe that if the initiative had been implemented, the American invasion of Iraq would have been possibly avoided.

I’ve never based any of my business on Microsoft products. Because once you start “partnering” with Microsoft, you know that sooner or later they will want to get into the same business, and they’ll stab you.

Several times I’ve been asked to host Windows-based solutions, and I’ve refused.

And it looks like Microsoft is about to prove my point.

Had I been hosting windows servers, what would have been my argument? “Host with me, I’m better than Microsoft”? Get real. With Open Source I know I will have a competitive offer, instead of reselling something Microsoft wants for themselves.

dKos

Do Micro loans really work? They are perhaps the most effective way to help the impoverished that’s ever been developed. From the New York Times (archive, February 16, 1997):

Anyone who scoffs at the value of 62 cents should talk to Muhammad Yunus. In 1976, the Bangladeshi economics professor tried an experiment. From his pocket, he lent the equivalent of $26 to a group of 42 workers. With that 62 cents per person, they bought the materials for a day’s work weaving chairs or making pots. At the end of their first day as independent business owners, they sold their work and soon paid back loan.

Thus began the microcredit movement, which has become the world’s hot idea for reducing poverty. This month, microcredit’s backers met in Washington to begin to broaden the program’s reach and raise money from developed nations and institutions such as the World Bank. Eight million people are now getting microcredit, half of them in Bangladesh. Microcredit proponents want to expand that to 100 million people by 2005.It is a worthy goal that the United States should support.

The first microcredit program was the Grameen Bank, founded by Mr. Yunus. Now almost all its borrowers are women, who tend to be poorer than men, have fewer opportunities and are much more likely to spend new earnings on their children. Grameen requires its borrowers to organize themselves into groups of five. All are cut off if one borrower defaults. They meet every week to make loan payments at commercial interest rates and critique one another’s business plans. They also pledge to boil their water, keep their families small and carry out other good health practices. People who repay small and loans on time can take ones. Grameen, which now makes a profit, claims a higher repayment rate than traditional banks. One-third of its two million borrowers have crossed the poverty line and another third are close.

You don’t need to go back very far to hear of microcredit’s success. Try tying ‘microcredit’ into Google news. This is from today’s Vietnam News

HCM CITY — Tran Trung Tam lived hand to mouth for nearly 20 years, helping to feed and house his eight children by doing any odd job he could find. His wife, Tran Bich Lai, worked as a helper for market vendors, carrying food and other items from place to place.

With only a primary school education, the couple thought their lives would never improve. But after receiving a free house in 1999 from their local People’s Committee and a VND10 million (US$630) loan from the Bank for the Poor, Tam and Lai, 40, were able to set up a household business making plastic bags, which now earns them at least $250 a month.

There’s lots more information on microcredit on the web. But this diary is about just one program that uses the net to match those in need with individuals, rather than banks or NGOs.  Kiva is based in Palo Alto and works in Uganda. Colman over at European Tribute posted a story about KIVA from The Sharpener. After looking over the site and reading some press and blogging about Kiva I came away very impressed with the idea. Instead of sending off a check to some NGO and not knowing what happens to it, Kiva allows individuals to participate in the process. I except this will offer lenders real motivation.

From the Kiva website

Kiva was born out of Matthew and Jessica Flannery’s combined professional interests, experiences, and expertise. In spring 2004, the couple spent several months working in rural Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda – Jessica as a staff member with Village Enterprise Fund (VEF), and Matthew as a filmmaker. They were struck by the success of hundreds of small businesses started by VEF, the incredible impact of those businesses on their communities, and the vitality and potential of those businesses’ entrepreneurs. <snip>

What We Do

Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world.
By choosing a business on our website and then lending money online to that enterprise, you can “sponsor a business” and help the world’s working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive monthly email updates that let you know about the progress being made by the small business you’ve sponsored. These updates include reports on loan repayment progress, photos of new capital equipment, narratives on business growth and standard of living improvements, and more. As loans are repaid, you will get your original loan money back.
How does the loan process work?

By partnering with existing microfinance organizations and institutions, Kiva finds outstanding entrepreneurs who need loan funding. Our expert in-country staff works with these partner organizations to conduct due diligence on each business, and once approved, post each business’ profile on our website. This is where you come in. You can choose loan money online, using your credit card or Paypal, in increments as low as $25 toward the loan needs of a business. With your participation, Kiva gives entrepreneurs access to the capital they need to lift themselves out of poverty.

The Kiva site offers descriptions of business needing loans and of those who have already received them. This one is typical. Moses started with a $100 loan, and is now trying to expand his business.

Partner: Village Enterprise Fund
Partner Rep: Moses Onyango
Location: Tororo, Uganda
Entrepreneur: Geoffrey Obanja Jasu
Activity: Produce wholesales
Loan Amount: $500
Loan Use: Buying more produce each time for greater profit
Start Date: April 1, 2005

Loan Repayment Term Range: 6-12 months
Amount Repaid: $400

The following description was written by Moses Onyango, a volunteer with Village Enterprise Fund and partner representative for Kiva in Uganda:
Geoffrey Obanja Jasu is one of the most hard-working beneficiaries in Tororo District.
He got a grant of 100 US dollars form Village Enterprise Fund as a kick start.
He started with baking local bread called Mandazi, Kabalagala (pan cakes) and also Samosa.
After attending training on business skills twice, he got wide knowledge on how to choose and run his businesses effectively.
He then shifted to running a produce business, including the buying and selling of millet, sorghum, rice, groundnuts, peas, beans, green grams and sunflowers.
His business picked up very much and he got enough profit to hire a store for stocking the produce before selling it.

He now moves around the district buying all the produce from the beneficiaries of Village Enterprise Fund.
I expect him to do greater business to bring development in the lives of our people who are the poor of the poorest.
Given a loan of 500 US dollars, he will excel very much.
He is capable to handle repay the loan effectively.

The UN General Assembly designated the year 2005 as the International Year of Microcredit, so what better time to look at Kiva’s site. It really is a brilliant idea, and the site is very informative.

dKos:

As we approach the time that top Bush officials will be charged with serious crimes, the White House will be running a strategy to move the media off the story.  That began this morning.

At 9:00am the Dallas News ran the story announcing a “surprise”–Harriet Miers, the President’s nominee to fill Sandra O’Connor’s seat on the Supreme Court of the United States, has withdrawn her candidacy.  The article included this sentence:

Miers’ surprise withdrawal stunned Washington on a day when the capital was awaiting news on another front — the possible indictment of senior White House aides in the CIA leak case.
(read the full article here)

This is no “surprise.”

And any news agency that is currently running the Miers story as a “surprise” is aiding the White House’s campaign to distract the American public from the real story:  George W. Bush’s top aides will soon be charged with serious crimes.

Let’s think about this for a minute. Do we really think that Harriet Miers made this decision in private? That she confided in nobody and then just dropped a letter on the President’s desk?

Nobody in America is that naive. And it is an insult to the American people to use this Harriet Miers “surprise” in an effort to distract the media (which appears to be working).

Don’t believe it. Harriet Miers was forced out by the President when he realized she was not going to be confirmed. The reason? Because she is not qualified for the job. This decision was probably made last week. It is likely that the communications team at the White House decided they would throw it at the media as a “surprise” the day of the Grand Jury indictments.

Stay tuned. This is just the first distraction. I fear that the White House may be cynical enough to pressure the Department of Homeland Security to issue a terrorism alert.

Beware of all “surprises” in the news, today. The big story is not a surprise. It’s the story we all know is about to hit: criminal charges against the White House.

[Quote:]

Do Not File Duplicate Disaster Assistance Applications

Release Date: October 24, 2005
Release Number: 1603-111

BATON ROUGE, La. — Louisiana residents affected by one of the two hurricanes to hit the state this year are cautioned NOT to apply more than once for federal disaster assistance. Multiple applications will delay assistance.

[Quote:]

Hit Twice? Register Twice!

Release Date: October 21, 2005
Release Number: 1603-102

BATON ROUGE, La. — Residents of Louisiana who suffered damages and losses as a result of Hurricanes Katrina and/or Rita are reminded they must register for disaster assistance for each storm. Registering for aid for Hurricane Rita is separate from any past registration for Hurricane Katrina.

[Quote:]

The federal judge overseeing Microsoft Corp.’s business practices scolded the company Wednesday over a proposal to force manufacturers to tether iPod-like devices to Microsoft’s own music player software.

Microsoft abandoned the idea after a competitor protested.

[..]

The disputed plan, part of a marketing campaign known as “easy start,” would have affected portable music devices that compete with Apple Computer Inc.’s popular iPod. It would have precluded makers of those devices from distributing to consumers music software other than Microsoft’s own Windows Media Player, in exchange for Microsoft-supplied CDs.

“I do want to know how this happened,” the judge said. “It seems to me at this late date, we should not have this occur.” She did not indicate she plans to punish Microsoft, but her comments were remarkable because she generally praises efforts by the company and government under the settlement.

A Microsoft lawyer, Charles “Rick” Rule, blamed the proposal on a newly hired, “lower-level business person” who did not understand the company’s obligations under the antitrust settlement. The agreement constrains Microsoft’s business practices through late 2007.

“This is an issue that Microsoft is concerned showed up,” Rule said. He added that Microsoft regrets the proposal ever was sent to music-player manufacturers and that the company was “looking at it to make sure this is a lesson learned.”

So they’re letting “low-level business persons” (perhaps a better name would be “designated scape-goat”) send strategy-level proposals to major business partners like Sony? I don’t believe it.

During a visit to the mental asylum, a visitor asked the
Director which is the criteria that defines a patient to be
institutionalized.

“Well,” said the Director, “we fill up a bathtub. We offer a
teaspoon, a teacup and a bucket to the patient, and ask the
patient to empty the bathtub.”

OK, here’s your test: (Those with an abnormal tendency will
scroll to the bottom to get the answer before taking the
test.)

1. Would you use the spoon?

2. Would you use the teacup?

3. Would you use the bucket?

“Oh, I understand,” said the visitor. “A normal person would
choose the bucket as it is larger than the spoon.”

“No,” answered the Director. “A normal person would pull the plug.”

[Quote:]

It was the most popular medal ceremony of all time. The photographs of two black American sprinters standing on the medal podium with heads bowed and fists raised at the Mexico City Games in 1968 not only represent one of the most memorable moments in Olympic history but a milestone in America’s civil rights movement.

The two men were Tommie Smith and John Carlos. Teammates at San Jose State College, Smith and Carlos were stirred by the suggestion of a young sociologist friend Harry Edwards, who asked them and all the other black American athletes to join together and boycott the games. The protest, Edwards hoped, would bring attention to the fact that America’s civil rights movement had not gone far enough to eliminate the injustices black Americans were facing. Edwards’ group, the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR), gained support from several world-class athletes and civil rights leaders but the all-out boycott never materialized.

Still impassioned by Edwards’ words, Smith and Carlos secretly planned a non-violent protest in the manner of Martin Luther King, Jr. In the 200-meter race, Smith won the gold medal and Carlos the bronze. As the American flag rose and the Star-Spangled Banner played, the two closed their eyes, bowed their heads, and began their protest.

Smith later told the media that he raised his right, black-glove-covered fist in the air to represent black power in America while Carlos’ left, black-covered fist represented unity in black America. Together they formed an arch of unity and power. The black scarf around Smith’s neck stood for black pride and their black socks (and no shoes) represented black poverty in racist America.

While the protest seems relatively tame by today’s standards, the actions of Smith and Carlos were met with such outrage that they were suspended from their national team and banned from the Olympic Village, the athletes’ home during the games.

A lot of people thought that political statements had no place in the supposedly apolitical Olympic Games. Those that opposed the protest cried out that the actions were militant and disgraced Americans. Supporters, on the other hand, were moved by the duo’s actions and praised them for their bravery. The protest had lingering effects for both men, the most serious of which were death threats against them and their families.

Smith and Carlos, who both now coach high school track teams, were honored in 1998 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of their protest.

An interesting side note to the protest was that the 200m silver medallist in 1968, Peter Norman of Australia (who is white), participated in the protest that evening by wearing a OPHR badge.<

[Quote:]

With palpable relief, I report that the statue does Smith and Carlos justice, and then some. It is a lyrical work of art, and a fitting tribute to two amazing athletes who rose to their moment in time. Credit should go to the artist, a sculptor who goes by the name Rigo23. Rigo23′s most important decision was to leave Smith and Carlos’s inventively radical and little discussed symbology intact. On the statue, as in 1968, Smith and Carlos wear wraps around their necks to protest lynching and they are not wearing shoes to protest poverty. Rigo23 made sure to remember that Carlos’ Olympic jacket – in a shocking breach of etiquette – was zipped open, done so because as Carlos said to me, “I was representing shift workers, blue-collar people, and the underdogs. That’s why my shirt was open. Those are the people whose contributions to society are so important but don’t get recognized.”

The most controversial aspect of the statue is that it leaves off Australian silver medalist Peter Norman altogether. This seems to do Norman a disservice considering that he was not a passive player in 1968 but wore a solidarity patch on his Olympic jacket so the world would know which side he was on.

But Rigo23 did this, over the initial objections of John Carlos, so people could climb up on the medal stand with Smith and Carlos and do everything from pose for pictures to lead speak-outs. Norman who traveled to the unveiling ceremony from Australia endorsed the design wholeheartedly understanding that its purpose is less to mummify the past than inspire the future. “I love that idea,” said Norman. “Anybody can get up there and stand up for something they believe in. I guess that just about says it all.”

Perhaps the main reason the statue is so good, so different, from things like Martin Luther King, Jr. shot glasses and Mohandas Ghandi mouse pads, is that it was the inspiration not of the school’s Board of Trustees but a group of students who pushed and fought for the school to pay proper respect to two forgotten former students that epitomized the defiance of a generation.

And, fittingly, the day of the unveiling was not merely a celebration of art or sculpture but a bittersweet remembrance of what Smith and Carlos endured upon returning to the United States, stripped of their medals and expelled from Olympic Village. Smith recalled, “The ridicule was great, but it went deeper than us personally. It went to our kids, our citizen brothers and our parents. My mother died of a heart attack in 1970 as a result of pressure delivered to her from farmers who sent her manure and dead rats in the mail because of me. My brothers in high school were kicked off the football team, my brother in Oregon had his scholarship taken away. It was a fault that could have been avoided had I turned my back on the atrocities.”

Carlos also said, “My family had to endure so much. They finally figured out they could pierce my armor by breaking up my family and they did that. But you cannot regret what you knew, to the very core of your person, was right.”

But it was also a day to speak explicitly about the challenges of the future and not turning living breathing struggles into a history that is an inanimate as a hunk of marble. “Will Smith and Carlos only be stone-faced amidst a beautiful plaza?” speaker Professor Ethel Pitts-Walker asked the crowd. “For them to become immortalized, the living must take up their activism and continue their work.”

Peter Norman said, “There is often a misunderstanding of what the raised fists signified. It was about the civil rights movement, equality for man….The issues are still there today and they’ll be there in Beijing [at the 2008 summer games]and we’ve got to make sure that we don’t lose sight of that. We’ve got to make sure that there is a statement made in Beijing, too. It’s not our part to be at the forefront of that, we’re not the leaders of today, but there are leaders out there with the same thoughts and the same strength.”

But the last word went to Tommie Smith, proud of the past but with an understanding of the challenges in the future. “I don’t feel vindicated,” Smith said. “To be vindicated means that I did something wrong. I didn’t do anything wrong. I just carried out a responsibility. We felt a need to represent a lot of people who did more than we did but had no platform, people who suffered long before I got to the victory stand…We’re celebrated as heroes by some, but we’re still fighting for equality.”

Fittingly, when it came time to unveil the statue, the Star Spangled Banner was played -as a symbol of “how far we’ve come” since 1968. There was one problem: the curtain became snagged on the statue’s raised fists. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, we need our anti-racist history and our anti-racist heroes now more than ever. We need more fists gumming up the works.

[Quote:]

Vice President Cheney is aggressively pursuing an initiative that may be unprecedented for an elected official of the executive branch: He is proposing that Congress legally authorize human rights abuses by Americans. “Cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment of prisoners is banned by an international treaty negotiated by the Reagan administration and ratified by the United States. The State Department annually issues a report criticizing other governments for violating it. Now Mr. Cheney is asking Congress to approve legal language that would allow the CIA to commit such abuses against foreign prisoners it is holding abroad. In other words, this vice president has become an open advocate of torture.

What does the surface of Saturn’s moon Dione look like?

To find out, the robot Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn flew right past the fourth largest moon of the giant planet earlier this month. Pictured above is an image taken about 4,500 kilometers above Dione‘s icy surface, spanning about 23 kilometers. Fractures, grooves, and craters in Dione’s ice and rock are visible. In many cases, surface features are caused by unknown processes and can only be described. Many of the craters have bright walls but dark floors, indicating that fresher ice is brighter. Nearly parallel grooves run from the upper right to the lower left. Fractures sometimes across the bottom of craters, indicating a relatively recent formation.
The lip of a 60-kilometer wide crater runs from the middle left to the upper center of the image, while the crater’s center is visible on the lower right. Images like this will continue to be studied to better understand Dione as well as Saturn’s complex system of rings and moons.

[Quote:]

Manuel Presti, from Italy, wins the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2005 for his swirling image of a flock of starlings evading a peregrine falcon. The WPY is jointly organised each year by the Natural History Museum and BBC Wildlife Magazine.

[Quote:]

An internal memo sent to Wal-Mart’s board of directors proposes numerous ways to hold down spending on health care and other benefits while seeking to minimize damage to the retailer’s reputation. Among the recommendations are hiring more part-time workers and discouraging unhealthy people from working at Wal-Mart.

In the memorandum, M. Susan Chambers, Wal-Mart’s executive vice president for benefits, also recommends reducing 401(k) contributions and wooing younger, and presumably healthier, workers by offering education benefits. The memo voices concern that workers with seven years’ seniority earn more than workers with one year’s seniority, but are no more productive.

To discourage unhealthy job applicants, Ms. Chambers suggests that Wal-Mart arrange for “all jobs to include some physical activity (e.g., all cashiers do some cart-gathering).”

[Quote:]

For the past 11 years, on the last Friday of the month, cyclists numbering from a few score to, sometimes, several hundred have gathered near Waterloo bridge in London at 6pm. When some kind of quorum is achieved, they ride around en masse for a couple of hours before dispersing. There is no planned route, no identifiable leader, and no explicit political aim.

Critical Mass, as this “unorganised coincidence” is known, is organised enough to have a website – but only to insist that it is not a protest; more a fun ride to “assert our identity as cyclists”. If you’re interested, there is probably a Critical Mass near you; many UK cities have one. I’ve only joined the London ride once. There was an exhilarating carnival spirit, but after an hour or so, I felt I’d got the idea and pedalled off.

Until now, the ride has enjoyed benign policing designed to minimise its impact on other traffic. But last month, officers – themselves on bikes – handed out leaflets explaining that, in future, if the Metropolitan police was not informed in advance about the ride, then it would be deemed an “unlawful demonstration” and participants “liable to arrest”. This Friday will be the first test of the “get tough” stance, but it has already drawn criticism, notably from the mayor’s road safety ambassador. In an open letter to Sir Ian Blair, Jenny Jones criticises such “heavy-handed application” of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (2005). According to the Met’s public order branch, she says, Critical Mass does not meet the criteria for a political demonstration.

What could have inspired such folly? Sadly, the Met seems to be copying the NYPD’s crackdown on Critical Mass, which began in August 2004 when the Republican National Convention came to New York. Some 237 cyclists were arrested. Across the bridge, Brooklyn Critical Mass continues, but in Manhattan, a ritualistic game of cat and mouse between cops and massers has taken place ever since – a costly lesson in how little can be achieved by pointlessly macho policing.

Zero tolerance: the most overrated concept of our age.

[Quote:]

If you are near to this picture, Mr Angry is on the left and Mrs Calm is on the right. If you view it from a distance, they switch places!

We’ve passed the 2000th death in Iraq.

Here’s a moving interactive photo essay of 27 funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq.

“Ik ben niet van de herdenkingen en ik wil niet mee om de man nog een keer te begraven, ik zie niets in gedoe met vlaggen, ik stem op Ayaan van de VVD, kortom, mij moeten ze niet hebben”

– Theo van Gogh, toen hem gevraagd werd een praatje te houden op een of andere herdenking van Pim Fortuyn.

Daar hebben ze in 020 goed naar geluisterd.

[Quote:]

Turn to page 1,850 of the 1975 edition of the New Columbia Encyclopedia and you’ll find an entry for Lillian Virginia Mountweazel, a fountain designer turned photographer who was celebrated for a collection of photographs of rural American mailboxes titled “Flags Up!” Mountweazel, the encyclopedia indicates, was born in Bangs, Ohio, in 1942, only to die “at 31 in an explosion while on assignment for Combustibles magazine.”

If Mountweazel is not a household name, even in fountain-designing or mailbox-photography circles, that is because she never existed. “It was an old tradition in encyclopedias to put in a fake entry to protect your copyright,” Richard Steins, who was one of the volume’s editors, said the other day. “If someone copied Lillian, then we’d know they’d stolen from us.”

So when word leaked out that the recently published second edition of the New Oxford American Dictionary contains a made-up word that starts with the letter “e,” an independent investigator set himself the task of sifting through NOAD’s thirty-one hundred and twenty-eight “e” entries in search of the phony. The investigator first removed from contention any word that was easily recognized or that appears in Webster’s Third New International; the remaining three hundred and sixty words were then vetted with a battery of references.

[Quote:]

When students post their faces, personal diaries and gossip on Web sites like Myspace.com and Xanga.com, it is not simply harmless teen fun, according to one Sussex County Catholic school principal.

It’s an open invitation to predators and an activity that Pope John XIII Regional High School in Sparta will no longer tolerate, the Rev. Kieran McHugh told a packed assembly of 900 high school students two weeks ago.

(Because if there’s one thing Catholic Church officials know about first-hand, it’s the behavior patterns of sexual predators.)

Effective immediately, and over student complaints, the teens were told to dismantle their Myspace.com accounts or similar sites with personal profiles and blogs. Defy the order and face suspension, students were told.

While public and private schools routinely block access to noneducational Web sites on school computers, Pope John’s order reaches into students’ homes.

The primary impetus behind the ban is to protect students, McHugh said. The Web sites, popular forums for students to blog about their lives and feelings about their teachers and schools, are fertile ground for sexual predators to gather information about children, he said.

[..]

“The idea of a private school regulating student activity outside of school is not unheard of and there is a long tradition in it,” said Kevin Bankston, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San-Francisco-based defender of online civil liberties.

While Pope John’s school handbook does not specifically forbid students from creating personal profiles on Web sites, it does prohibit students from posting anything on the Internet pertaining to the school, without the school’s permission.

“It’s an incredible overreaction based on an unproven problem,” Bankston said. “If they’re concerned about safety, they could train students in what they should or shouldn’t put online. Kids shouldn’t be robbed of the primary communication tool of their generation.”

Bankston said he believes the real motivation for school officials was to suppress negative comments about the school posted by students.

One student, who identified himself as a senior who was expelled, wrote that “pope john kicks you out once you think freely.”

Sometimes the Internet is, well, stunning.

How can I get my hands on a Vienna phonebook from circa 1938? I will be spending a weekend in Vienna next month, and I would love to see the apartment where my late grandfather lived before fleeing the Nazis. Unfortunately, nobody in the family knows the address, and there aren’t any letters or other documents to provide it. Things are also complicated by the fact that I won’t be visiting on a weekday, so any archives that might have this information will presumably be closed. Plus, I don’t speak German. Am I out of luck, or is there any way to track this information down in the next few weeks?

32 minutes after asking this question…

Honk if…

Yesterday, during Scotts least favourite part of the day (work, that is):

[Quote:]

Q You were going to make a statement, White House statement on the approach of the 2,000 Americans dead in Iraq at the earlier briefing, didn’t you? At the gaggle?

MR. McCLELLAN: Do you have a question?

Q The question is, what is the feeling about that? And also, does the President approve now of finally telling how many Iraqis we killed?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, a couple of things. One, we have lost over 2,200 men and women in uniform in Afghanistan and Iraq. There is no higher priority for the President of the United States than the safety and security of the American people. It is a responsibility he takes very seriously. No President wants to go to war. But four years ago, or just over four years ago, war was brought to our shores. This nation remains engaged in a global war on terrorism. It is a war against Islamic radicals who seek to spread their hateful and murderous ideology. Our men and women in uniform volunteered to defend the freedoms we hold so dearly. They are the ones who are on the front lines in this global struggle that we are engaged in.

We mourn the loss of each and every one of our men and women in uniform who have made the ultimate sacrifice to make the world freer and more peaceful. We are forever grateful for their sacrifice, and we will always remember and honor what they have done. They have given their life in defense of freedom, and the best way to honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice is to prevail in the war on terrorism. And that’s –

Q And kill more people?

MR. McCLELLAN: — and that’s exactly what we will do. We will prepare –

Q The Iraqis did not attack us.

MR. McCLELLAN: Let me just finish my response. I appreciate that. We will prevail in the war on terrorism. Our men and women in uniform are doing an outstanding job in helping us to win this war. And the President made a decision after September 11th that we were going to wage a broad and comprehensive war on terrorism –

Q Against any country?

[..]

Q Do we expect sovereignty of nations?

MR. McCLELLAN: Let me finish, Helen. Our troops understand the importance of the mission. They are laying the foundation of peace for our children and grandchildren. We live in a dangerous world; the threats are real –

Q That’s why you’re killing Iraqis?

[Quote:]

Kentucky has been awarded a federal Homeland Security grant aimed at keeping terrorists from using charitable gaming to raise money.

The state Office of Charitable Gaming won the $36,300 grant and will use it to provide five investigators with laptop computers and access to a commercially operated law-enforcement data base, said John Holiday, enforcement director at the Office of Charitable Gaming.

The idea is to keep terrorists from playing bingo or running a charitable game to raise large amounts of cash, Holiday said.

You know, now that I think of it, my neighbour has an awful lot of yard sales… hmmm….