The Rooster
Friday, August 19, 2005
July 23, 2005. Zajecar, Serbia. The doors to an Imperial Roman Palace from the III and IV centuries were opened to view the mosaics. These mosaics are normally protected by sand as can be seen in this picture. The sand is swept away for viewing and archeological investigation. This floor was the Hall of the Throne.
NA-Smithsoni NEG#171509 Photos by Michael Williamson 8/17/05 : Mr. Sternberg unethically used his credentials and professional journal to promote 'intelligent design' without scientific proof provoking political debate. Portrait of Richard Von Sternberg (taken at the Smithsonian Castle) who's engaged in a battle with the Smithsonian over Intelligent design theory. He published an essay questioning evolution.
Morning Papers - It's Origins
Rooster "Crowing"
"Okeydoke"
History
1791 African American astronomer and mathematician Benjamin Banneker sends a copy of his first almanac to Thomas Jefferson to disprove Jefferson's belief that blacks were intellectually inferior to whites.
1848, the New York Herald reported the discovery of gold in California.
1883, Coco Chanel, real name Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel (1883-1971), French fashion designer and one of the leaders of haute couture (high fashion), whose name was synonymous with elegance and chic. She was born in Saumur, Maine-et-Loire. In 1914 Chanel opened a millinery shop in Paris. By the mid-1920s she had launched the classic Chanel look, consisting of a casual but extremely well-cut wool jersey suit with straight, collarless cardigan jacket and short, full-cut skirt, worn with art deco costume jewelry and a sailor hat over short hair. Her Chanel No. 5, one of several perfumes she created, became world famous. Chanel designed nothing during World War II and its aftermath, but she successfully revived the understated Chanel look in 1954. The American musical Coco (1969) by Alan Jay Lerner and André Previn is based on her life.
1909 Howard Swanson is born in Atlanta, Georgia. He will become a
classical composer who will study in the United States and
Paris, France, and will write music for orchestra, solo voice,
piano, and chamber ensembles.
1934, a plebiscite in Germany approved the vesting of sole executive power in Adolf Hitler.
1934 Roberto Clemente is born in Puerto Rico. He will win the Gold
Glove award TWELVE consecutive years and play in twelve All-Star
games. He will be the National League's Most Valuable Player
(MVP) in 1966, the MVP in the 1971 World Series, win four separate
National League batting titles, post a .317 career batting average,
and play eighteen seasons, amassing 3,000 hits and hammering 240
home runs. He will join the ancestors at the age of 38, on a
mercy mission to deliver relief supplies to the victims of a
Nicaraguan earthquake. Tragically, his plane, carrying food,
clothing and medical supplies, will crash moments after takeoff
from San Juan, Puerto Rico on December 31, 1972.
1935 Rafer Johnson is born in Hillsboro, Texas. He will become an
Olympic athlete, winning a gold medal in the decathlon in the
1960 Summer Games in Rome and lighting the torch in the 1984
Games in Los Angeles.
1941 Matt Snell is born. He will become a professional football player
(running back for the New York Jets). He will be one of the key
players in the Jets victory in Super Bowl III over the Baltimore
Colts.
1942 about 6,000 Canadian and British soldiers launched a disastrous raid against the Germans at Dieppe, France, suffering about 50-percent casualties.
1953 Royalist forces acting on behalf of Reza Shah Pahlavi, with the aid of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, overthrow Iranian premier Mohammad Mossadegh.
1954 James E. Wilkins becomes the first African American to attend a U.S.
presidential cabinet meeting. He is Assistant Secretary of Labor
and attends because the Secretary and Under-Secretary are away.
1960 a tribunal in Moscow convicted American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers of espionage.
1963 James Meredith becomes the first African American to graduate from
the University of Mississippi.
1964 South Africa is banned from the Olympic Games because of its
apartheid policies.
1970 Malcolm-Jamal Warner is born. He will become an child actor and will
star on the "The Cosby Show" as Theodore "Theo" Huxtable. He will
also star as "Here and Now's" Alexander James and "Malcolm and Eddie's"
Malcolm.
1973 Georgios Papadopoulos, leader of the Greek ruling junta since a 1967 coup, abolishes the monarchy and declares Greece a presidential republic. Papadopolous is overthrown later in the year.
1974, U.S. Ambassador Rodger P. Davies was fatally wounded by a bullet that penetrated the American embassy in Nicosia, Cyprus.
1976 Vice Admiral Samuel L. Gravely Jr. assumes command of the U.S. Third
Fleet.
1977 Steven Biko, one of the most influential black student leaders in South
Africa, is arrested in Port Elizabeth on charges of fomenting unrest
among blacks in the city through his writings. Biko will join the
ancestors in police detention less than a month later, as a result of
a beating by the police.
1977 Comedian Groucho Marx, the best known of the Marx Brothers, dies in Los Angeles, California.
1980, 301 people aboard a Saudi Arabian L-1011 died as the jetliner made a fiery emergency landing at the Riyadh airport.
1981 Football running back, Herschel Walker, of the University of Georgia,
takes out an insurance policy with Lloyd's of London. The All-American
is insured for one million dollars.
1987 Earl Campbell, the 'Tyler Rose', announces his retirement from
professional football. Campbell, the 1977 Heisman Trophy winner,
played eight seasons in the National Football League -- and was a star
for the Houston Oilers.
1991 Communist hard-liners attempt a coup in the Soviet Union, putting Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev under house arrest and declaring a state of emergency. The coup fails two days later.
2003 A suicide bomber destroys the United Nations compound in Baghdād, Iraq, killing 23 people including a high UN official.
Missing in Action
1968 COLLINS THEOTHIS ASBURY PARK NJ
1968 HOFFMAN TERRY ALAN DANVILLE IN REMAINS RETURNED BURIED 1994
1969 BOHLIG JAMES RICHARD CROCKETT CA
1969 FLANIGAN JOHN N. WINTER HAVEN FL REMAINS RETURNED 1989 ID'D 06/26/97
1969 MORRISSEY RICHARD THOMAS UNIONDALE NY CACCF/CRASH/AIRCREW/10 YRS USMC/QUANG TIN VMFA 115 MAG 13 WITH RICHARD BOHLIG REFNO 1483
1969 SMITH ROBERT N. TRUCKSVILLE PA
1972 BEHNFELDT ROGER ERNEST DEFIANCE OH REMAINS RETURNED 09/24/87
1972 SHINGAKI TAMOTSU MAUI HI 03/29/73 RELEASED BY DRV ALIVE IN 98
Haaretz
IDF digs trench to keep Palestinians out of Gush Katif
By Nir Hasson and Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondents
Israel Defense Forces on Friday began digging eight-meter-deep trenches around the evacuated Gush Katif settlements in the Gaza Strip in a bid to prevent Palestinians from reaching the settlement bloc prior to its complete evacuation.
The evacuation forces will renew operations on Sunday as activity was halted for the Sabbath.
Defense officials said that the evacuation of the remaining Gaza settlements will be completed by next Tuesday, but IDF forces will remain in the Strip for several weeks to complete the removal of outposts and the demolition of the settlements.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/614836.html
German Jewish leader asks Pope to open Vatican archives
By Reuters
A German Jewish leader touched a sore spot in relations with Catholics on Friday when he urged Pope Benedict to open up all the Vatican's archives dealing with World War Two and the Holocaust.
Welcoming him on a historic visit to a synagogue in Cologne, Abraham Lehrer told the German-born pontiff he had a special responsibility to open files that critics say would show how much Pope Pius XII knew about the Nazi slaughter of Jews.
Jewish groups accuse Pius of turning a deaf ear to the Holocaust. The Vatican says he worked behind the scenes to save them and refrained from condemning the Nazis openly for fear of sparking reprisals across Europe.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/614877.html
Worshippers find pig's head in yard outside Jaffa mosque
By Roni Singer, Haaretz Correspondent
Worshippers found a pig's head Friday in the yard outside the Hassan Bek mosque, between Tel Aviv and Jaffa. Mosque employees alerted the police, and officers launched an investigation.
The pig's head was wrapped in a keffiyeh with the word Mohammed written on it.
Investigators will check whether the incident is linked to other attempts to sabotage the mosque. Rocks have been hurled at the mosque recently, and windows have been broken.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/614894.html
Israel seeks annual UN Holocaust memorial day
By Reuters
UNITED NATIONS - Israel is urging the United Nations to establish an annual international holocaust memorial day, a top Israeli diplomat said on Thursday.
An Israeli draft resolution, which it hopes will be adopted by the 191-member General Assembly during its 60th session opening next month, proposes Jan. 27 as a day to commemorate holocaust victims, marking the day in 1945 when Russian troops liberated Auschwitz, the largest Nazi death camp.
More than 30 European countries support Israel's plan, British Deputy Ambassador Adam Thomson said in a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Assembly President Jean Ping made public on Thursday.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/614572.html
The Middle East Times
Spanish witnesses say helicopter was attacked
AFP
August 17, 2005
SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS: International peacekeepers are seen near the wreckage of the Spanish helicopter which crashed on August 16 in the western province of Herat, Afghanistan. It is still unclear whether the crash that killed all 17 Spanish soldiers on board was the result of an accident or an insurgent attack.
(REUTERS)
MADRID -- The crash of two Spanish military helicopters in Afghanistan killing 17 soldiers and injuring five was more likely caused by gusting winds than a rebel attack, Spanish Defense Minister Jose Bono said Wednesday.
But eyewitnesses quoted in the press said the aircraft had been attacked, and the Afghan defense minister said the two aircraft probably had collided - a hypothesis that Bono rejected as "absolutely impossible."
The two aircraft were over different valleys at the time of the crash, he said.
http://www.metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20050817-014229-7355r
Hundreds of abandoned animals at risk as Gaza settlements evacuate
Amelia Thomas
Middle East Times
August 18, 2005
TEL AVIV -- In the midst of the uproar surrounding the ongoing disengagement of Israeli settlements from Gaza and the West Bank, one group of residents has been largely forgotten. They don't have loud voices, they can't wave banners; yet their fate hangs in the balance even more than the settlers who are currently being pulled from their homes. These are the domestic animals that roam the settlements, mostly hundreds of cats either abandoned by their owners, or strays living on the streets.
Israel's Cat Welfare Society is currently engaged in a desperate struggle to save these animals, fearing that once disengagement is complete, they will die from starvation and lack of available drinking water in the empty residential areas.
Indeed, says the society, on first inspection of the largely emptied West Bank settlements of Ganim and Kadim, Northern Samaria, many cats had already succumbed to the fierce summer temperatures. In the last week prior to the start of the disengagement, however, volunteers in Ganim and Kadim have worked tirelessly to trap, vaccinate and remove to animal shelters more than 140 cats from these two settlements alone.
http://www.metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20050818-072414-5950r
The Arab News
Police Lied in Menezes Case
Mushtak Parker, Arab News
LONDON, 19 August 2005 — Scotland Yard was yesterday accused of lying and a cover-up and trying to delay an independent police inquiry into the tragic fatal shooting by anti-terror police of 27-year-old Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes on a tube train at Stockwell station on the day after the failed 7/21 bomb attacks in London.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=68672&d=19&m=8&y=2005
Accidental Anarchists. They sure don't seem to believe in world order.
Bush’s ‘A’ to ‘Z’ of Why America Went to Iraq
Sarah Whalen, sawhalen@xula.com.edu
Would you vote for an anarchist? Oops! If you’re British or American, you very likely did. Yes, real anarchists — people who advocate overthrowing existing, organized government and replacing it with “freedom”, now run America, the UK, and much of the Western and westernized world.
You surely didn’t intend to “vote Anarchist.” Why put into government someone who doesn’t believe in government? But we in the West did just that. Bush and Blair may be accidental anarchists. It’s hard to believe the Iraq debacle was deliberately their own idea. And Bush and Blair are picky anarchists. General anarchists want to destroy all forms of government in “freedom’s” name, whereas Bush and Blair only want to destroy Middle Eastern governments in “freedom’s” name. One state at a time.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=68691&d=19&m=8&y=2005
The Washington Times
Roberts Resisted Women's Rights
1982-86 Memos Detail Skepticism
By Amy Goldstein, R. Jeffrey Smith and Jo Becker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, August 19, 2005; Page A01
Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. consistently opposed legal and legislative attempts to strengthen women's rights during his years as a legal adviser in the Reagan White House, disparaging what he called "the purported gender gap" and, at one point, questioning "whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good."
In internal memos, Roberts urged President Ronald Reagan to refrain from embracing any form of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment pending in Congress; he concluded that some state initiatives to curb workplace discrimination against women relied on legal tools that were "highly objectionable"; and he said that a controversial legal theory then in vogue -- of directing employers to pay women the same as men for jobs of "comparable worth" -- was "staggeringly pernicious" and "anti-capitalist.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/18/AR2005081802041.html
Jury Awards Widow $253.4M in Vioxx Trial
By KRISTEN HAYS and THERESA AGOVINO
The Associated Press
Friday, August 19, 2005; 3:05 PM
ANGLETON, Texas -- A Texas jury found pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. liable for the death of a man who took the once-popular painkiller Vioxx.
Jurors awarded Robert Ernst's widow, Carol, $253.4 million in damages, which is a combination of his lost pay as a Wal-Mart produce manager, mental anguish, loss of companionship and punitive damages.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/19/AR2005081900256.html
Here is another incompetent. Iraq is not a matter of being 'against' or 'with' anything. It is about the legitimacy of a war. Invading a sovereign country is not a matter of a popular vote. Cheney is completely incompetent. He knows only how to bludgeon the public into submission to satisfy a personal wealth agenda.
Cheney vs. the Peaceniks
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, August 19, 2005; 12:18 PM
With President Bush kicking back at his ranch, the task of nipping a nascent antiwar movement in the bud fell to Vice President Cheney yesterday, and he went at it with his typical gusto.
To the extent that Cindy Sheehan and other supporters of an Iraqi pullout aim to start a national conversation about American options in Iraq, Cheney made it very clear that as far as he's concerned, that conversation only extends this far: Are you with us or are you against us?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html
U.S. Marine, Afghan Soldier Die in Clash
By AMIR SHAH
The Associated Press
Friday, August 19, 2005; 2:04 PM
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Militants clashed with coalition forces in eastern Afghanistan, killing a U.S. Marine and an Afghan government soldier, as violence flared ahead of the nation's key legislative elections, the U.S. military said Friday.
The clash, in which four Afghan soldiers were wounded, occurred near Asadabad in the volatile eastern province of Kunar _ the site last month of the heaviest coalition losses since the start of Operation Enduring Freedom, which ousted the hardline Taliban regime in late 2001.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/19/AR2005081900464.html
Doctor: Coretta Scott King Had Big Stroke
By DANIEL YEE
The Associated Press
Friday, August 19, 2005; 12:57 AM
ATLANTA -- Coretta Scott King suffered a minor heart attack and a major stroke that impaired her ability to speak and affected her right side, but she is "completely aware," a doctor said Thursday.
King's daughter said the family expected a full recovery.
Isaac Newton Farris, left, speaks to media, flanked by the Rev. Jesse Jackson outside Piedmont Hospital, Thursday, Aug. 18, 2005 in Atlanta. Farris, a nephew of Coretta Scott King, told reporters the hospitalized 78-year-old widow of Martin Luther King Jr. is expected to recover, though he didn't say whether she suffered a stroke, as family friends said. (AP Photo/Gregory Smith) (Gregory Smith - AP)
Dr. Charles Wickliffe, a cardiologist at Piedmont Hospital, where the 78-year-old widow of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. had been hospitalized for two days, said a blood clot had moved from King's heart and lodged in an artery in the left side of her brain.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/18/AR2005081801402.html
D.C. Matriarch Killed at Home By Stray Bullet
Shots Also Fired Nearby Hours Earlier, Injuring 1
By Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 19, 2005; Page B01
Dorine Fostion was watching television in her Southeast Washington apartment at 10:30 p.m. Wednesday when someone started shooting outside.
Her daughter rushed in from the bedroom when she heard her mother cry out, struck in the side by a stray bullet. Fostion, 46, died an hour later at Washington Hospital Center, becoming the District's 118th homicide victim this year.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/18/AR2005081801139.html
continued...
"Okeydoke"
History
1791 African American astronomer and mathematician Benjamin Banneker sends a copy of his first almanac to Thomas Jefferson to disprove Jefferson's belief that blacks were intellectually inferior to whites.
1848, the New York Herald reported the discovery of gold in California.
1883, Coco Chanel, real name Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel (1883-1971), French fashion designer and one of the leaders of haute couture (high fashion), whose name was synonymous with elegance and chic. She was born in Saumur, Maine-et-Loire. In 1914 Chanel opened a millinery shop in Paris. By the mid-1920s she had launched the classic Chanel look, consisting of a casual but extremely well-cut wool jersey suit with straight, collarless cardigan jacket and short, full-cut skirt, worn with art deco costume jewelry and a sailor hat over short hair. Her Chanel No. 5, one of several perfumes she created, became world famous. Chanel designed nothing during World War II and its aftermath, but she successfully revived the understated Chanel look in 1954. The American musical Coco (1969) by Alan Jay Lerner and André Previn is based on her life.
1909 Howard Swanson is born in Atlanta, Georgia. He will become a
classical composer who will study in the United States and
Paris, France, and will write music for orchestra, solo voice,
piano, and chamber ensembles.
1934, a plebiscite in Germany approved the vesting of sole executive power in Adolf Hitler.
1934 Roberto Clemente is born in Puerto Rico. He will win the Gold
Glove award TWELVE consecutive years and play in twelve All-Star
games. He will be the National League's Most Valuable Player
(MVP) in 1966, the MVP in the 1971 World Series, win four separate
National League batting titles, post a .317 career batting average,
and play eighteen seasons, amassing 3,000 hits and hammering 240
home runs. He will join the ancestors at the age of 38, on a
mercy mission to deliver relief supplies to the victims of a
Nicaraguan earthquake. Tragically, his plane, carrying food,
clothing and medical supplies, will crash moments after takeoff
from San Juan, Puerto Rico on December 31, 1972.
1935 Rafer Johnson is born in Hillsboro, Texas. He will become an
Olympic athlete, winning a gold medal in the decathlon in the
1960 Summer Games in Rome and lighting the torch in the 1984
Games in Los Angeles.
1941 Matt Snell is born. He will become a professional football player
(running back for the New York Jets). He will be one of the key
players in the Jets victory in Super Bowl III over the Baltimore
Colts.
1942 about 6,000 Canadian and British soldiers launched a disastrous raid against the Germans at Dieppe, France, suffering about 50-percent casualties.
1953 Royalist forces acting on behalf of Reza Shah Pahlavi, with the aid of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, overthrow Iranian premier Mohammad Mossadegh.
1954 James E. Wilkins becomes the first African American to attend a U.S.
presidential cabinet meeting. He is Assistant Secretary of Labor
and attends because the Secretary and Under-Secretary are away.
1960 a tribunal in Moscow convicted American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers of espionage.
1963 James Meredith becomes the first African American to graduate from
the University of Mississippi.
1964 South Africa is banned from the Olympic Games because of its
apartheid policies.
1970 Malcolm-Jamal Warner is born. He will become an child actor and will
star on the "The Cosby Show" as Theodore "Theo" Huxtable. He will
also star as "Here and Now's" Alexander James and "Malcolm and Eddie's"
Malcolm.
1973 Georgios Papadopoulos, leader of the Greek ruling junta since a 1967 coup, abolishes the monarchy and declares Greece a presidential republic. Papadopolous is overthrown later in the year.
1974, U.S. Ambassador Rodger P. Davies was fatally wounded by a bullet that penetrated the American embassy in Nicosia, Cyprus.
1976 Vice Admiral Samuel L. Gravely Jr. assumes command of the U.S. Third
Fleet.
1977 Steven Biko, one of the most influential black student leaders in South
Africa, is arrested in Port Elizabeth on charges of fomenting unrest
among blacks in the city through his writings. Biko will join the
ancestors in police detention less than a month later, as a result of
a beating by the police.
1977 Comedian Groucho Marx, the best known of the Marx Brothers, dies in Los Angeles, California.
1980, 301 people aboard a Saudi Arabian L-1011 died as the jetliner made a fiery emergency landing at the Riyadh airport.
1981 Football running back, Herschel Walker, of the University of Georgia,
takes out an insurance policy with Lloyd's of London. The All-American
is insured for one million dollars.
1987 Earl Campbell, the 'Tyler Rose', announces his retirement from
professional football. Campbell, the 1977 Heisman Trophy winner,
played eight seasons in the National Football League -- and was a star
for the Houston Oilers.
1991 Communist hard-liners attempt a coup in the Soviet Union, putting Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev under house arrest and declaring a state of emergency. The coup fails two days later.
2003 A suicide bomber destroys the United Nations compound in Baghdād, Iraq, killing 23 people including a high UN official.
Missing in Action
1968 COLLINS THEOTHIS ASBURY PARK NJ
1968 HOFFMAN TERRY ALAN DANVILLE IN REMAINS RETURNED BURIED 1994
1969 BOHLIG JAMES RICHARD CROCKETT CA
1969 FLANIGAN JOHN N. WINTER HAVEN FL REMAINS RETURNED 1989 ID'D 06/26/97
1969 MORRISSEY RICHARD THOMAS UNIONDALE NY CACCF/CRASH/AIRCREW/10 YRS USMC/QUANG TIN VMFA 115 MAG 13 WITH RICHARD BOHLIG REFNO 1483
1969 SMITH ROBERT N. TRUCKSVILLE PA
1972 BEHNFELDT ROGER ERNEST DEFIANCE OH REMAINS RETURNED 09/24/87
1972 SHINGAKI TAMOTSU MAUI HI 03/29/73 RELEASED BY DRV ALIVE IN 98
Haaretz
IDF digs trench to keep Palestinians out of Gush Katif
By Nir Hasson and Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondents
Israel Defense Forces on Friday began digging eight-meter-deep trenches around the evacuated Gush Katif settlements in the Gaza Strip in a bid to prevent Palestinians from reaching the settlement bloc prior to its complete evacuation.
The evacuation forces will renew operations on Sunday as activity was halted for the Sabbath.
Defense officials said that the evacuation of the remaining Gaza settlements will be completed by next Tuesday, but IDF forces will remain in the Strip for several weeks to complete the removal of outposts and the demolition of the settlements.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/614836.html
German Jewish leader asks Pope to open Vatican archives
By Reuters
A German Jewish leader touched a sore spot in relations with Catholics on Friday when he urged Pope Benedict to open up all the Vatican's archives dealing with World War Two and the Holocaust.
Welcoming him on a historic visit to a synagogue in Cologne, Abraham Lehrer told the German-born pontiff he had a special responsibility to open files that critics say would show how much Pope Pius XII knew about the Nazi slaughter of Jews.
Jewish groups accuse Pius of turning a deaf ear to the Holocaust. The Vatican says he worked behind the scenes to save them and refrained from condemning the Nazis openly for fear of sparking reprisals across Europe.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/614877.html
Worshippers find pig's head in yard outside Jaffa mosque
By Roni Singer, Haaretz Correspondent
Worshippers found a pig's head Friday in the yard outside the Hassan Bek mosque, between Tel Aviv and Jaffa. Mosque employees alerted the police, and officers launched an investigation.
The pig's head was wrapped in a keffiyeh with the word Mohammed written on it.
Investigators will check whether the incident is linked to other attempts to sabotage the mosque. Rocks have been hurled at the mosque recently, and windows have been broken.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/614894.html
Israel seeks annual UN Holocaust memorial day
By Reuters
UNITED NATIONS - Israel is urging the United Nations to establish an annual international holocaust memorial day, a top Israeli diplomat said on Thursday.
An Israeli draft resolution, which it hopes will be adopted by the 191-member General Assembly during its 60th session opening next month, proposes Jan. 27 as a day to commemorate holocaust victims, marking the day in 1945 when Russian troops liberated Auschwitz, the largest Nazi death camp.
More than 30 European countries support Israel's plan, British Deputy Ambassador Adam Thomson said in a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Assembly President Jean Ping made public on Thursday.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/614572.html
The Middle East Times
Spanish witnesses say helicopter was attacked
AFP
August 17, 2005
SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS: International peacekeepers are seen near the wreckage of the Spanish helicopter which crashed on August 16 in the western province of Herat, Afghanistan. It is still unclear whether the crash that killed all 17 Spanish soldiers on board was the result of an accident or an insurgent attack.
(REUTERS)
MADRID -- The crash of two Spanish military helicopters in Afghanistan killing 17 soldiers and injuring five was more likely caused by gusting winds than a rebel attack, Spanish Defense Minister Jose Bono said Wednesday.
But eyewitnesses quoted in the press said the aircraft had been attacked, and the Afghan defense minister said the two aircraft probably had collided - a hypothesis that Bono rejected as "absolutely impossible."
The two aircraft were over different valleys at the time of the crash, he said.
http://www.metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20050817-014229-7355r
Hundreds of abandoned animals at risk as Gaza settlements evacuate
Amelia Thomas
Middle East Times
August 18, 2005
TEL AVIV -- In the midst of the uproar surrounding the ongoing disengagement of Israeli settlements from Gaza and the West Bank, one group of residents has been largely forgotten. They don't have loud voices, they can't wave banners; yet their fate hangs in the balance even more than the settlers who are currently being pulled from their homes. These are the domestic animals that roam the settlements, mostly hundreds of cats either abandoned by their owners, or strays living on the streets.
Israel's Cat Welfare Society is currently engaged in a desperate struggle to save these animals, fearing that once disengagement is complete, they will die from starvation and lack of available drinking water in the empty residential areas.
Indeed, says the society, on first inspection of the largely emptied West Bank settlements of Ganim and Kadim, Northern Samaria, many cats had already succumbed to the fierce summer temperatures. In the last week prior to the start of the disengagement, however, volunteers in Ganim and Kadim have worked tirelessly to trap, vaccinate and remove to animal shelters more than 140 cats from these two settlements alone.
http://www.metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20050818-072414-5950r
The Arab News
Police Lied in Menezes Case
Mushtak Parker, Arab News
LONDON, 19 August 2005 — Scotland Yard was yesterday accused of lying and a cover-up and trying to delay an independent police inquiry into the tragic fatal shooting by anti-terror police of 27-year-old Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes on a tube train at Stockwell station on the day after the failed 7/21 bomb attacks in London.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=68672&d=19&m=8&y=2005
Accidental Anarchists. They sure don't seem to believe in world order.
Bush’s ‘A’ to ‘Z’ of Why America Went to Iraq
Sarah Whalen, sawhalen@xula.com.edu
Would you vote for an anarchist? Oops! If you’re British or American, you very likely did. Yes, real anarchists — people who advocate overthrowing existing, organized government and replacing it with “freedom”, now run America, the UK, and much of the Western and westernized world.
You surely didn’t intend to “vote Anarchist.” Why put into government someone who doesn’t believe in government? But we in the West did just that. Bush and Blair may be accidental anarchists. It’s hard to believe the Iraq debacle was deliberately their own idea. And Bush and Blair are picky anarchists. General anarchists want to destroy all forms of government in “freedom’s” name, whereas Bush and Blair only want to destroy Middle Eastern governments in “freedom’s” name. One state at a time.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=68691&d=19&m=8&y=2005
The Washington Times
Roberts Resisted Women's Rights
1982-86 Memos Detail Skepticism
By Amy Goldstein, R. Jeffrey Smith and Jo Becker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, August 19, 2005; Page A01
Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. consistently opposed legal and legislative attempts to strengthen women's rights during his years as a legal adviser in the Reagan White House, disparaging what he called "the purported gender gap" and, at one point, questioning "whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good."
In internal memos, Roberts urged President Ronald Reagan to refrain from embracing any form of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment pending in Congress; he concluded that some state initiatives to curb workplace discrimination against women relied on legal tools that were "highly objectionable"; and he said that a controversial legal theory then in vogue -- of directing employers to pay women the same as men for jobs of "comparable worth" -- was "staggeringly pernicious" and "anti-capitalist.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/18/AR2005081802041.html
Jury Awards Widow $253.4M in Vioxx Trial
By KRISTEN HAYS and THERESA AGOVINO
The Associated Press
Friday, August 19, 2005; 3:05 PM
ANGLETON, Texas -- A Texas jury found pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. liable for the death of a man who took the once-popular painkiller Vioxx.
Jurors awarded Robert Ernst's widow, Carol, $253.4 million in damages, which is a combination of his lost pay as a Wal-Mart produce manager, mental anguish, loss of companionship and punitive damages.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/19/AR2005081900256.html
Here is another incompetent. Iraq is not a matter of being 'against' or 'with' anything. It is about the legitimacy of a war. Invading a sovereign country is not a matter of a popular vote. Cheney is completely incompetent. He knows only how to bludgeon the public into submission to satisfy a personal wealth agenda.
Cheney vs. the Peaceniks
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, August 19, 2005; 12:18 PM
With President Bush kicking back at his ranch, the task of nipping a nascent antiwar movement in the bud fell to Vice President Cheney yesterday, and he went at it with his typical gusto.
To the extent that Cindy Sheehan and other supporters of an Iraqi pullout aim to start a national conversation about American options in Iraq, Cheney made it very clear that as far as he's concerned, that conversation only extends this far: Are you with us or are you against us?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html
U.S. Marine, Afghan Soldier Die in Clash
By AMIR SHAH
The Associated Press
Friday, August 19, 2005; 2:04 PM
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Militants clashed with coalition forces in eastern Afghanistan, killing a U.S. Marine and an Afghan government soldier, as violence flared ahead of the nation's key legislative elections, the U.S. military said Friday.
The clash, in which four Afghan soldiers were wounded, occurred near Asadabad in the volatile eastern province of Kunar _ the site last month of the heaviest coalition losses since the start of Operation Enduring Freedom, which ousted the hardline Taliban regime in late 2001.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/19/AR2005081900464.html
Doctor: Coretta Scott King Had Big Stroke
By DANIEL YEE
The Associated Press
Friday, August 19, 2005; 12:57 AM
ATLANTA -- Coretta Scott King suffered a minor heart attack and a major stroke that impaired her ability to speak and affected her right side, but she is "completely aware," a doctor said Thursday.
King's daughter said the family expected a full recovery.
Isaac Newton Farris, left, speaks to media, flanked by the Rev. Jesse Jackson outside Piedmont Hospital, Thursday, Aug. 18, 2005 in Atlanta. Farris, a nephew of Coretta Scott King, told reporters the hospitalized 78-year-old widow of Martin Luther King Jr. is expected to recover, though he didn't say whether she suffered a stroke, as family friends said. (AP Photo/Gregory Smith) (Gregory Smith - AP)
Dr. Charles Wickliffe, a cardiologist at Piedmont Hospital, where the 78-year-old widow of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. had been hospitalized for two days, said a blood clot had moved from King's heart and lodged in an artery in the left side of her brain.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/18/AR2005081801402.html
D.C. Matriarch Killed at Home By Stray Bullet
Shots Also Fired Nearby Hours Earlier, Injuring 1
By Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 19, 2005; Page B01
Dorine Fostion was watching television in her Southeast Washington apartment at 10:30 p.m. Wednesday when someone started shooting outside.
Her daughter rushed in from the bedroom when she heard her mother cry out, struck in the side by a stray bullet. Fostion, 46, died an hour later at Washington Hospital Center, becoming the District's 118th homicide victim this year.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/18/AR2005081801139.html
continued...
Morning Papers - incomplete
The Washington Times
Since when does Michael Powell write for the Washington Post? Do they want to lose all credibility? They are on their way !
Intelligent Design is QUACKERY ! The Smithsonian is absolutely correct. Steinberg is "W"rong. Who did he vote for?
The below statement is false. He might not be convinced by intelligent design but the statement that science moves only forward on controversy is completely "W"rong and reminds me of scientists that accept money from oil companies to push back the issues of Global Warming. Mr. Steinberg inhibits science.
Science moves forward because there is always more not known and the knowledge accumulated is built on the shoulders of it's predecessors. The issue of evolution is well founded if in no other place but genetic assessments or Hox sequences. The idea that scientists get lazy when not challenged is hideous. A challenge like this wastes the precious time of scientific investigation. Scientific papers are years in the making and when a counter theory is thrown in the works without sound proof that only complicates research already being at work. There is no 'reference point' to disprove or prove against.
A 'theology' such as Intelligent Design when presented as a scientific basis is highly disruptive and unless scientists discard it as bogus others work cannot go forward. So to say every evolutionary biologist is stimulated by this theology is a grossly bad joke by a prestigious editor and journal.
Evolution is CHRONICALLY studied and that is completely evidenced by new discoveries all the time including those of hominids. The study is not in need of competition to go forward. It goes forward in the thirst for more knowledge and that is where it belongs, not in regression to languish in competition of theology. THAT could go on forever.
I find Mr. Steinberg minimally in violation of ethics and for those scientists who care to should proceed to put Intelligent Design on trial. I cannot help believe the Supreme Court will 'back' scientific theory as a legitimate documentary of science to lead to proven theory. Intelligent Design cannot meet those standards. I would not be afraid of putting it on trial if that is the passions of any scientist who cares to. Putting Intelligent Design on trail to challenge scientific standard is different than primary school teaching where 'liberal arts' rules all grade levels. THIS MY FRIENDS IS NOT CHILD'S PLAY !!
"I am not convinced by intelligent design but they have brought a lot of difficult questions to the fore," Sternberg said. "Science only moves forward on controversy."
These personal losses are the price for his activism without sound scientific reason.
Sternberg has seen stress piled upon stress in the past year. His marriage has dissolved, and he no longer comes into the Smithsonian. When the biological society issued a statement disavowing Meyer's article, Sternberg was advised not to attend. "I was told that feelings were running so high, they could not guarantee me that they could keep order," Sternberg said.
Again, below, there is NO SYSTEM. There is scientific theory. Scientific theory is NOT set, but proof has to exist for change to occur. The Null Hypothesis is the only measure one has to call a SYSTEM. It is a valid accounting for science. Anything else is theology and that is where Intelligent Design belongs. Mr. Steinberg regardless of his credentials is allowing his own personal agenda for creating waves to dictate good judgement.
A former professor of Sternberg's says the researcher has an intellectual penchant for going against the system. Sternberg does not deny it.
The statement below might be correct in that there maybe 'careerism' but there is definitely no 'herd mentality.' Those are political agendas and words. They don't belong anywhere near the argument of evolution. If Steinberg is unhappy with his ability to progress through a professional society then he needs to address the system through proper channels and not make a gigantic splash in an attempt to change a structural issue. If anything that will only make the structure more rigid out of safety measures for the science alone.
The science and the structure of professions is completely different subjects, one can be discussed without the other. If Mr. Steinberg wants to say the structure compromises the science then he needs to address that in good argument and THAT is what the clout of his position at the Smithsonian buys him. He's outrageous in his inappropriate approach to this subject. His poor judgement has made him irrelevant.
"I loathe careerism and the herd mentality," he said. "I really think that objective truth can be discovered and that popular opinion and consensus thinking does more to obscure than to reveal."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/18/AR2005081801680_3.html
Moscow Times
Chicken Farmers Sneeze at Bird Flu
By Conor Humphries
Staff Writer
Police stopping a car near a sign reading "Quarantine Bird Flu" in the flu-affected village of Oktyabrskoye on Thursday.
The domestic poultry industry is keeping its cool as a lethal strain of bird flu sweeps across the country toward European Russia.
Even as health officials scramble to contain the disease amid reports that it has crossed the Urals, market players say that Russia's centralized, highly regulated meat industry will be able to withstand the outbreak without any serious economic damage.
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2005/08/19/003.html
Over 31,000 Corruption Cases Opened From January to June
The Moscow Times
Police opened more than 31,000 investigations into state corruption in the first six months of this year, and about 500 officials have been arrested and charged, the Interior Ministry said Thursday.
Nikolai Ovchinnikov, head of the Interior Ministry's organized crime and terrorism department, said the 31,000 figure was an 70 percent increase from the first half of last year -- a possible reflection of a Kremlin-orchestrated drive to crack down on corruption.
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2005/08/19/015.html
Global Eye
Duck Soup
By Chris Floyd
Published: August 19, 2005
Now is the summer of discontent for President George W. Bush, a man beset on every side -- by a failing war and falling popularity, by scandal, suspicion and rising hostility, even in the red-state heartlands. With each passing day of his long vacation in the Texas wastes, his presidency is shrinking palpably before our eyes, his wildly inflated public image shrivelling like a punctured balloon.
The fountainhead of his trouble, of course, is the murderous quagmire he has created in Iraq. Some say he has no exit strategy, no way to escape the corrosive effects of this gargantuan disaster, which is draining his support and destroying the aura of the all-conquering "war leader" that he used to impose his radical right-wing agenda on the country. The tide has turned against him at last, some say; he's a lame duck crashing to the ground.
http://context.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2005/08/19/120.html
continued ...
Since when does Michael Powell write for the Washington Post? Do they want to lose all credibility? They are on their way !
Intelligent Design is QUACKERY ! The Smithsonian is absolutely correct. Steinberg is "W"rong. Who did he vote for?
The below statement is false. He might not be convinced by intelligent design but the statement that science moves only forward on controversy is completely "W"rong and reminds me of scientists that accept money from oil companies to push back the issues of Global Warming. Mr. Steinberg inhibits science.
Science moves forward because there is always more not known and the knowledge accumulated is built on the shoulders of it's predecessors. The issue of evolution is well founded if in no other place but genetic assessments or Hox sequences. The idea that scientists get lazy when not challenged is hideous. A challenge like this wastes the precious time of scientific investigation. Scientific papers are years in the making and when a counter theory is thrown in the works without sound proof that only complicates research already being at work. There is no 'reference point' to disprove or prove against.
A 'theology' such as Intelligent Design when presented as a scientific basis is highly disruptive and unless scientists discard it as bogus others work cannot go forward. So to say every evolutionary biologist is stimulated by this theology is a grossly bad joke by a prestigious editor and journal.
Evolution is CHRONICALLY studied and that is completely evidenced by new discoveries all the time including those of hominids. The study is not in need of competition to go forward. It goes forward in the thirst for more knowledge and that is where it belongs, not in regression to languish in competition of theology. THAT could go on forever.
I find Mr. Steinberg minimally in violation of ethics and for those scientists who care to should proceed to put Intelligent Design on trial. I cannot help believe the Supreme Court will 'back' scientific theory as a legitimate documentary of science to lead to proven theory. Intelligent Design cannot meet those standards. I would not be afraid of putting it on trial if that is the passions of any scientist who cares to. Putting Intelligent Design on trail to challenge scientific standard is different than primary school teaching where 'liberal arts' rules all grade levels. THIS MY FRIENDS IS NOT CHILD'S PLAY !!
"I am not convinced by intelligent design but they have brought a lot of difficult questions to the fore," Sternberg said. "Science only moves forward on controversy."
These personal losses are the price for his activism without sound scientific reason.
Sternberg has seen stress piled upon stress in the past year. His marriage has dissolved, and he no longer comes into the Smithsonian. When the biological society issued a statement disavowing Meyer's article, Sternberg was advised not to attend. "I was told that feelings were running so high, they could not guarantee me that they could keep order," Sternberg said.
Again, below, there is NO SYSTEM. There is scientific theory. Scientific theory is NOT set, but proof has to exist for change to occur. The Null Hypothesis is the only measure one has to call a SYSTEM. It is a valid accounting for science. Anything else is theology and that is where Intelligent Design belongs. Mr. Steinberg regardless of his credentials is allowing his own personal agenda for creating waves to dictate good judgement.
A former professor of Sternberg's says the researcher has an intellectual penchant for going against the system. Sternberg does not deny it.
The statement below might be correct in that there maybe 'careerism' but there is definitely no 'herd mentality.' Those are political agendas and words. They don't belong anywhere near the argument of evolution. If Steinberg is unhappy with his ability to progress through a professional society then he needs to address the system through proper channels and not make a gigantic splash in an attempt to change a structural issue. If anything that will only make the structure more rigid out of safety measures for the science alone.
The science and the structure of professions is completely different subjects, one can be discussed without the other. If Mr. Steinberg wants to say the structure compromises the science then he needs to address that in good argument and THAT is what the clout of his position at the Smithsonian buys him. He's outrageous in his inappropriate approach to this subject. His poor judgement has made him irrelevant.
"I loathe careerism and the herd mentality," he said. "I really think that objective truth can be discovered and that popular opinion and consensus thinking does more to obscure than to reveal."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/18/AR2005081801680_3.html
Moscow Times
Chicken Farmers Sneeze at Bird Flu
By Conor Humphries
Staff Writer
Police stopping a car near a sign reading "Quarantine Bird Flu" in the flu-affected village of Oktyabrskoye on Thursday.
The domestic poultry industry is keeping its cool as a lethal strain of bird flu sweeps across the country toward European Russia.
Even as health officials scramble to contain the disease amid reports that it has crossed the Urals, market players say that Russia's centralized, highly regulated meat industry will be able to withstand the outbreak without any serious economic damage.
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2005/08/19/003.html
Over 31,000 Corruption Cases Opened From January to June
The Moscow Times
Police opened more than 31,000 investigations into state corruption in the first six months of this year, and about 500 officials have been arrested and charged, the Interior Ministry said Thursday.
Nikolai Ovchinnikov, head of the Interior Ministry's organized crime and terrorism department, said the 31,000 figure was an 70 percent increase from the first half of last year -- a possible reflection of a Kremlin-orchestrated drive to crack down on corruption.
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2005/08/19/015.html
Global Eye
Duck Soup
By Chris Floyd
Published: August 19, 2005
Now is the summer of discontent for President George W. Bush, a man beset on every side -- by a failing war and falling popularity, by scandal, suspicion and rising hostility, even in the red-state heartlands. With each passing day of his long vacation in the Texas wastes, his presidency is shrinking palpably before our eyes, his wildly inflated public image shrivelling like a punctured balloon.
The fountainhead of his trouble, of course, is the murderous quagmire he has created in Iraq. Some say he has no exit strategy, no way to escape the corrosive effects of this gargantuan disaster, which is draining his support and destroying the aura of the all-conquering "war leader" that he used to impose his radical right-wing agenda on the country. The tide has turned against him at last, some say; he's a lame duck crashing to the ground.
http://context.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2005/08/19/120.html
continued ...
August 19, 2005. When does this stop? When does the USA military do what it is supposed to do and destroy al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan? When is the 'threat' to this civilization stop? The longer the USA is bogged down in Iraq the longer this hideous set of circumstances continues. The war is in Afghanistan. It was NEVER in Iraq until we were !! The children of Iraq are casualities that are not acceptable either.
Defendable Borders.
It is a promise by the USA to Isael.
That is why the issues of The West Bank are hugely different than that of Gaza.
Jordan knows today's attack is serious to the disengagement of the West Bank.
This map shows the type of missiles used against Israel by Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other extremist groups. The Katyusha Missiles have a longer range and are mobile on trucks. They were once called 'Hilter's Organ.' They are 'convenient' to close attack. At issue is the further disengagement of the West Bank. Bush wants Israelis out of Jerusalem to replace them with Christian Palestinians and will promise anything to achieve that end.
In my opinion, the PA and their leadership Abbas has a lot to prove before any of the West Bank disengagement can begin. As I have stated repeatedly, the settlements have protected Israel for nearly four decades. Hezbollah has to be reined in and disarmed. Hezbollah among the other extremists are throughout the area including Jordan, Lebanon and Syria's Sheba Farms. Israel has a lot on the line in regard to national security and sovereignty. The neighboring countries need to arrest and disarm their militants.
Morning Papers - continued ...
The Jordan Times
Mauritania shows risks in US strategy
By Nick Tattersall
Reuters
DAKAR — When it comes to fighting militants in Africa, choosing allies is a risky business.
Soldiers who overthrew Mauritania's president this month may have ended 21 years of authoritarian rule and triggered dancing in the streets, but they also deprived the United States of a key ally in its “war on terror”.
Maaouyia Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya assiduously curried Washington's favour in the later years of his rule, shifting support from former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein to Israel and the United States in a stunning diplomatic about-turn. He made Mauritania only the third member of the Arab League to establish full diplomatic ties with Israel and leapt at the chance to jail scores of Islamist critics in the name of the “war on terror.” The strategy may have won him friends in Washington but it infuriated many in a country straddling black and Arab Africa, who say it played a large part in contributing to his demise.
http://www.jordantimes.com/fri/news/news7.htm
Morocco to welcome home last PoWs
RABAT (Reuters) — Morocco prepared to welcome home on Thursday the last 404 prisoners of war (PoW) who were held by Western Sahara's exiled Polisario Front independence movement, many of them for almost two decades.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said the release in Tindouf, Algeria, followed US mediation. The men were being flown to Morocco to be reunited with their families.
http://www.jordantimes.com/fri/news/news6.htm
Nuke programme advancing despite suspensions
By Michael Adler
Agence France-Presse
VIENNA — Despite suspending sensitive nuclear activities due to Western fears it is seeking to make atomic bombs, Iran has still managed to make progress on its programme but analysts differ on just how far along it has got.
The question is critical, as Iran this month resumed work on part of the nuclear fuel cycle and wants to negotiate further agreement to develop enriched uranium, the reactor fuel that can also be used to make bombs.
http://www.jordantimes.com/fri/news/news5.htm
Iraqi Lawmakers seek constitution compromise with Sunnis
A boy, surrounded by family members, lies Thursday at the Kindi Hospital after being injured in a Baghdad car bombing on Wednesday (AFP photo by Karim Sahib)
BAGHDAD (AP) — A spokesman for the biggest Shiite party Thursday predicted a breakthrough on the constitution within the next two days, as negotiators scrambled to finish the draft by next week's deadline. A roadside bomb killed four more US soldiers in a city north of Baghdad.
Four days before the deadline, Sunni Arab members of the drafting committee met with Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari to present their objections to federalism and other issues blocking an agreement.
Afterward, leaders of the factions — Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds — conferred late into Thursday night at the home of Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi in the heavily fortified Green Zone. No statement was issued after the meeting, but representatives of all three factions spoke optimistically about prospects for finishing by the new deadline Monday.
http://www.jordantimes.com/fri/news/news2.htm
MAKANA empowers women to achieve positive change
By Mahmoud Al Abed
AMMAN — For the past 30 years, the residents of the southern town of Muta have been suffering from an environmental problem that authorities have failed to address.
A low-lying swamp, referred to by the local people as “the old bond,” throughout this time constituted a source of disease and threat to the health of the community of this town, situated about 15km south of Karak.
But much has changed over the past 18 months, thanks to a group of local female activists working under the Women's Empowerment for Democracy and Governance Project — MAKANA.
The project, sponsored by CARE Jordan, is a joint initiative by the Jordanian Hashemite Fund for Human Development (JOHUD) and the Queen Zein Al Sharaf Institute for Development (ZENID).
http://www.jordantimes.com/fri/homenews/homenews6.htm
Cleanup campaign warns of environmental impact of littering
By Mohammad Ghazal
AMMAN — The Ministry of Environment, in cooperation with the Greater Amman Municipality, will organise a cleanup campaign on Aug. 28 in Zai National Park, a popular tourist destination in the summer months.
Isa Shboul, the ministry's spokesperson, told The Jordan Times on Thursday that several ambassadors and ministers, along with schoolchildren will take part in the campaign.
http://www.jordantimes.com/fri/homenews/homenews8.htm
Another way of looking at Iraq
Jonathan Power
We are all, left and right, pro war and anti war, frozen in the headlights of Iraq. Even many of those who campaigned vigorously against the war are frightened to be bold and say the troops should come out. Anarchy is the state of political disarray we have long been acculturated to fear. “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,” wrote Yeats. To walk away is the height of irresponsibility. But is it?
An insurgency working in its home terrain enjoys advantages that are just as formidable as any precision-guided weaponry that soldiers of the coalition can deploy. The insurgents may not have ground down the American and British troops but they have certainly created enough mayhem to instil sufficient fear in every Iraqi and expatriate workman so that the economy remains almost where years of sanctions and two aerial bombardments left it — in ruins. The guerrillas have the advantage of being able to put the occupying forces in situations where they are damned if they do and damned if they don't. They have also succeeded in chasing the UN out of Iraq, the one institution that might have been able, over time, to become a viable alternative to the invaders.
http://www.jordantimes.com/fri/opinion/opinion4.htm
Cooperation will bring benefits
The announcement by Prime Minister Adnan Badran that Jordan and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) will set up a joint industrial zone in the Jordan River area is an ambitious plan that deserves support.
The prime minister made this announcement earlier this week at the meeting of the 4th Arab Business Community Forum in Amman.
http://www.jordantimes.com/fri/opinion/opinion1.htm
Immorality of occupation
George S. Hishmeh
WASHINGTON — The Israeli settlers who are being evacuated from the Gaza Strip's 21 settlements in fulfilment of the Israeli government's unilateral “disengagement” plan, a process that is due to end in three weeks time, are receiving an unbelievably sympathetic but myopic coverage in the media.
Here is how one writer in The New York Times put it last Sunday: “(The evacuation) is an admission not of error but of failure. Their (supporters') cherished goal — the resettlement of the full biblical land of Israel by contemporary Jews — is not to be. The reason: Not enough of them came.”
http://www.jordantimes.com/fri/opinion/opinion5.htm
The Jerusalem Post
Pope warns of rising anti-Semitism
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
COLOGNE, Germany
href="http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1124331702454"TARGET="_blank">Pope Benedict XVI warned Friday of rising anti-Semitism and hostility to foreigners, winning a standing ovation from Germany's oldest Jewish community as he made only the second visit by a pope to a synagogue.
Speaking in a Cologne synagogue rebuilt after it was destroyed by the Nazis, Benedict said that "today, sadly, we are witnessing the rise of new signs of anti-Semitism and various forms of a general hostility toward foreigners."
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1124417949297
Halutz condemns evacuation violence
By YAAKOV KATZ
Chief of Staff Dan Halutz declared Friday that the "rooftop youths" arrested for attacking security forces during the evacuation of Gush Katif settlements would not be drafted into the IDF.
"As long as I'm chief of staff, no one who dared attack a soldier or police officer will serve in the army," Halutz avowed to Israel Radio.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1124331704933
Home demolitions to begin Sunday
By HERB KEINON
The evacuation of the Gaza Strip settlements is expected to be completed by Monday or Tuesday, and the demolition of homes is scheduled to be in full swing by Sunday, security officials told the disengagement cabinet Thursday.
The officials said homes in Kerem Atzmona were the first slated for demolition, and demolition of homes in Rafiah Yam, Gan Or and Pe'at Sadeh would begin Sunday.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1124331702878
Iraq criticizes Arab media outlets
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
BAGHDAD, Iraq
The Iraqi government criticized the state-run television network Thursday for "whipping up emotions" by airing footage from the bombings at a Baghdad bus station and accused a leading Arab satellite station of airing false reports.
Criticism of the satellite station Al-Jazeera is not unusual but such comments against Iraq's television network Iraqiya are rare, especially since its news reporting follows the government line.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1124331702887
Eye of the Storm: Behind the scenes in Teheran
By AMIR TAHERI
Moments after it was presented to the Islamic Majlis in Teheran on Sunday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's first cabinet was labeled by his defeated rivals and most Iran-watchers as a group of "hard-liners" handpicked by the "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei.
Former majlis member Behzad Nabavi, a theorist of the Rafsanjani-Khatami faction which lost the presidential election to Ahamdinejad, has described him as nothing but "a presidential secretary to the supreme guide."
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1124072335640
Al-Qaida-linked group claims Aqaba, Eilat attacks
By MARGOT DUDKEVITCH, JPOST STAFF, AND AP
A Katyusha rocket landed near a car at 9:30 a.m. Friday morning in the tourist district of Eilat, and two rockets hit a warehouse near an American battleship in Aqaba port in Jordan.
An Internet statement released by the al-Qaida-linked Abdullah Azzam Brigades militant group claimed responsibility for the attacks.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1124417948754
The Katyusha Rocket Threat
Katyusha rockets are from time to time launched into towns in northern Israel by the Hizbullah Islamic fundamentalist group stationed in southern Lebanon. Residents are forced to sleep in bomb shelters, sometimes for days on end, in fear of the attacks.
It is rarely realized, however, the potential danger such rockets could pose to Israel's main population centers should they fall into the wrong hands.
http://www.iris.org.il/katyusha.htm
Israel's decision to disengage from the Gaza Strip has placed the future of the disputed West Bank at the top of the international agenda. Prominent voices have called on Israel to withdraw fully from the West Bank and return to the 1949 Armistice Lines (1967 borders) – a move that would undermine Israel's security and even pose an existential threat. It is therefore a matter of urgency that while the debate over the future of the Middle East addresses Palestinian claims for an independent state, Israel's rights and requirements for defensible borders, as proposed by President George W. Bush, are now placed squarely on the global diplomatic agenda.
http://www.defensibleborders.org/
Chicago Sun Times
Soft drink industry cuts back in schools
August 18, 2005
BY JANET RAUSA FULLER Staff Reporter
Advertisement
Soft drinks would be banned in elementary and middle schools and would be harder to find in high schools under a policy announced Wednesday by the soft drink industry, long criticized by public health advocates as a major contributor to the nation's obesity crisis.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-soda18.html
Report says Brazilian wasn't fleeing cops
August 18, 2005
BY MICHAEL MCDONOUGH
Advertisement
LONDON -- A leaked report into the death of a Brazilian man mistaken for a bomber and shot to death by police sparked outrage Wednesday because it said the victim was not wearing a heavy jacket and did not jump the ticket gate, as had been previously claimed.
Electrician Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, was shot seven times in the head by police who tailed him to the station the day after the failed July 21 transit bombings in London.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/terror/cst-nws-brit18.html
Nationwide vigils call for end to Iraq war
August 18, 2005
BY ANGELA K. BROWN
Advertisement
CRAWFORD, Texas -- Hundreds of candlelight vigils calling for an end to the war in Iraq got under way Wednesday in a national effort spurred by one mother's anti-war demonstration near President Bush's ranch.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/iraq/cst-nws-mom18.html
Biggest Sunni group criticizes constitution talks
August 18, 2005
BY ANTONIO CASTANEDA ASSOCIATED PRESS
BAGHDAD, Iraq-- Lawmakers tried to reach compromises with Sunni Arab leaders Thursday on Iraq's draft constitution, and a roadside bomb north of Baghdad killed four American soldiers, the U.S. military said.
Government officials said that Wednesday's synchronized car bombings at a bus station and nearby hospital that killed up to 43 people in Baghdad were an attempt to target Shiites and stoke civil war between religious groups in the country.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/iraq/cst-nws-iraq18.html
Sydney Morning Herald
Three sought after attack on US ships
August 20, 2005
Amman: Three rockets were fired at two US Navy ships in Jordan's Aqaba port yesterday but they missed their targets, hitting a hospital, a warehouse - killing a Jordanian soldier - and the nearby Israeli port of Eilat.
A Jordanian security source said authorities were searching for three men over the Katyusha missile attack, which was launched from an industrial warehouse area near the entrance to the city.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/three-sought-after-attack-on-us-ships/2005/08/19/1124435146871.html
Koranic TV next step for radical sheik
By Tom Allard
August 20, 2005
The Koran is also a book of legislation, says Sheik Khalid Yasin.
Photo: Wade Laube
An Islamic preacher who advocates the execution of homosexuals, adulterers and armed robbers plans to start broadcasting his message in Australia on radio, TV and through the internet.
Sheik Khalid Yasin, who was born in the US, gained notoriety when his views on homosexuals - and that the Koran endorsed beatings of spouses - were aired last month, bringing condemnation from the then premier, Bob Carr.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/koranic-tv-next-step-for-radical-sheik/2005/08/19/1124435144954.html
Washington shrugs off Putin's call for Iraq pullout timetable
August 20, 2005
Sochi, Russia: President Vladimir Putin of Russia has called for an international conference on Iraq by the end of the year and a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops, saying many Iraqis considered them occupying forces.
"We consider that holding an international conference this year would give a new impulse to the normalisation of the situation" in Iraq, Mr Putin said on Thursday following talks with King Abdullah of Jordan.
"We deem it necessary to work out a schedule for the staged withdrawal of foreign troops," he said. "Many Iraqis perceive these forces as occupying forces, and this is a reality that should be taken into account."
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/washington-shrugs-off-putins-call-for-iraq-pullout-timetable/2005/08/19/1124435141727.html
Hopes fade for cut in Corby's sentence
By Mark Forbes Herald Correspondent in Jakarta and agencies
August 20, 2005
Schapelle Corby's hopes of overturning a 20-year drug smuggling conviction have dimmed, with Indonesian courts indicating they will not allow fresh testimony to support claims that four kilograms of marijuana were planted in her luggage.
Rumours that her sentence was about to be cut by Bali's High Court were dismissed by both Corby's lawyers and Australian officials.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/hopes-fade-for-cut-in-corbys-sentence/2005/08/19/1124435146874.html
Coming soon: electric cars you charge at home
August 19, 2005 - 12:34AM
Mitsubishi Motors Corp is planning to develop small electric vehicles that drivers will be able to charge up from power sockets at home.
The mini-vehicle will have electric motors in each of its four wheels and will be able to cover 250 kilometres on a four-hour charge from a residential power outlet, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reported on Thursday.
It is to go on the Japanese market by 2008 at a likely price of less than Y2 million ($24,000).
Mitsubishi is forming a partnership with Tokyo Electric, which will develop battery technology for the project.
Kyodo
http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/coming-soon-electric-cars-you-charge-at-home/2005/08/19/1123958189478.html
Michael Moore Today
http://www.michaelmoore.com/
"My son is 26. It could've been him."
Vigils Calling for End to Iraq War Begin
By Angela K. Brown / Associated Press
CRAWFORD, Texas -- Hundreds of candlelight vigils calling for an end to the war in Iraq lit up the night Wednesday, part of a national effort spurred by one mother's anti-war demonstration near President Bush's ranch.
The vigils were urged by Cindy Sheehan, who has become the icon of the anti-war movement since she started a protest Aug. 6 in memory of her son Casey, who died in Iraq last year.
Sheehan says she will remain outside the president's ranch until he meets with her and other grieving families, or until his monthlong vacation there ends.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3752
Montgomery, AL, Mesa, AZ, Little Rock, AR, Costa Mesa, CA, Fremont, CA, Marin County, CA, Monterey County, CA, Oakland, CA, Palm Springs, CA, San Diego, CA, San Luis Obispo, CA, Santa Cruz, CA, Vallejo, CA, Colorado Springs, CO, Denver, CO, Milford, CT, New London, CT, Norwalk, CT, Westport, CT, Wilmington, DE, Washington, DC, Fort Lauderdale, FL, Fort Myers, FL, Sarasota, FL, Tallahassee, FL, Atlanta, GA, Decatur, GA, Savannah, GA, Honolulu, HI, Cedar Falls, IA, Homewood, IL, Fort Wayne, IN, Indianapolis, IN, Muncie, IN, Kansas, KY, Lexington, KY, Louisville, KY, Skowhegan, ME, Baltimore, MD, Bethesda, MD, Hagerstown, MD, Orleans, MA, Sommerville, MA, Detroit, MI, Grand Rapids, MI, Ironwood, MI, Kalamazoo, MI, Burnsville, MN, Minneapolis/St.Paul, MN, Kansas City, MO, Springfield, MO, Webb City, MO, Jackson, MS, Oxford, MS, Lincoln, NE, Portsmouth, NH, Eastontown, NJ, Evesham, NJ, Hackensack, NJ, Highland Park, NJ, Trenton, NJ, Albany, NY, Brighton, NY, Great Neck, NY, Ithaca, NY, Nanuet, NY, Syracuse, NY, Charlotte, NC, Durham, NC, Akron, OH, Cincinnati, OH, Cleveland, OH, Tulsa, OK, Aliquippa, PA, Bethlehem, PA, Doylestown, PA, Harrisburg, PA, Lansdale, PA, Philadelphia, PA, Reading, PA, York, PA, Providence, RI, Nashville, TN, Austin, TX, Chesterfield County, VA, Roanoke City, VA, Montpelier, VT, Bellingham, WA, Seattle, WA, Charleston, WV, Madison, WI, Waukesha, WI
The Peaceful Occupation of Crawford (Day 12); Vigils
-- a message from Cindy Sheehan, Crawford, TX
Our candlelight vigil at Camp Casey was beautiful tonight. There were hundreds of people here and we are hearing that hundreds of people were involved in vigils around the country. We at Camp Casey are so amazed and gratified that there were almost 1700 vigils around the country.
CNN followed me around for the morning to do a 'Day in the Life' of Cindy Sheehan. I kept asking them if they were falling asleep from boredom yet. I was on Anderson Cooper and it was pretty good. Anderson didn't ask me about the Israel thing because he had checked with Nightline. But he followed with a talk show, hate monger host, Darrell Ankarlo who I have had problems with in the past. He said that I have said that I believe all of the troops are murderers and I have never said that, either. Darrell Ankarlo wanted me to be on his show, but I don't think so.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/mustread/index.php
Blaming The Anti-War Messengers
By Norman Solomon / Tom Paine
This article is adapted from Norman Solomon’s new book, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. For information, go to: www.WarMadeEasy.com
The surge of antiwar voices in U.S. media this month has coincided with new lows in public approval for what pollsters call President Bush’s “handling” of the Iraq war. After more than two years of a military occupation that was supposed to be a breeze after a cakewalk into Baghdad, the war has become a clear PR loser. But an unpopular war can continue for a long time—and one big reason is that the military-industrial-media complex often finds ways to blunt the effectiveness of its most prominent opponents.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3754
Bad Iraq News Worries Some in G.O.P. on '06
By Adam Nagourney and David D. Kirkpatrick / New York Times
WASHINGTON, Aug. 17 - A stream of bad news out of Iraq, echoed at home by polls that show growing impatience with the war and rising disapproval of President Bush's Iraq policies, is stirring political concern in Republican circles, party officials said Wednesday.
Some said that the perception that the war was faltering was providing a rallying point for dispirited Democrats and could pose problems for Republicans in the Congressional elections next year.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3759
State Department memo warned of post-war 'planning gaps'
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Little more than a month before the start of the Iraq war, State Department officials said they warned U.S. military planners about possible "serious planning gaps" for the post-war period, according to newly declassified documents obtained by George Washington University.
In a memo dated February 7, 2003, three senior department officials -- noting the U.S. Central Command's focus on military objectives and reluctance to take on policing roles -- warned that "a failure to address short-term public security and humanitarian assistance concerns could result in serious human rights abuses which would undermine an otherwise successful military campaign, and our reputation internationally."
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3756
BBC
Tamil Tigers agree to peace talks
The emergency powers allow the government to deploy troops freely
Tamil Tiger rebels in Sri Lanka have agreed to hold direct talks with the Colombo government.
The move comes less than a week after the killing of the country's Foreign Minister, Lakshman Kadirgamar, near his heavily-guarded home in the capital.
The talks will be the first high-level meeting between the two sides since the peace process stalled in 2003.
Norwegian mediators described the talks as a significant
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4164150.stm
Rapturous German welcome for Pope
Pope Benedict XVI was greeted by thousands at Cologne airport
Pope Benedict XVI has arrived in his native Germany for a Catholic youth festival in the city of Cologne.
The Pope's plane was met by cheering crowds as it landed at Cologne-Bonn airport, where Germany's chancellor and president were waiting to greet him.
The assembled crowds also performed a Mexican wave to welcome their visitor.
It is the Pope's first major foreign trip since his election in April. The engagement was originally scheduled for his predecessor, Pope John Paul II.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4161706.stm
China-Russia war games under way
Russian and Chinese commanders laid wreaths at a war memorial
Russian and Chinese armed forces have begun their first joint exercises, involving some 10,000 personnel.
Marines will storm beaches, to be joined by paratroopers in a mock invasion of an imaginary country.
The eight-day operation got under way in Vladivostok, in Russia's far east, with consultations between military delegations from the two countries.
Analysts say the two sides are signalling they are prepared to counter US dominance in international affairs.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4162054.stm
US shuttles grounded until March
The next shuttle flight will not be until at least next March
The US space shuttle fleet is to remain grounded until March at the earliest, Nasa officials have said.
Engineers need to find a solution to the foam debris problem which re-emerged during Discovery's launch.
Seven members of an oversight panel also say Nasa's latest shuttle efforts were tainted by some of the problems that caused the Columbia disaster.
The official heading the team looking at the issue said it would take until early next year at least to find a fix.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4163908.stm
Zimbabwe to speed up land seizure
Legal battles have slowed down the transfer of land to new farmers
Zimbabwe's government has tabled a constitutional amendment bill to speed up the acquisition of white-owned land.
The proposals would nationalise all land and stop appeals to the courts.
Some 4,000 white farmers have been evicted from their land since 2000, but the government says legal battles are slowing up the transfer of ownership.
President Robert Mugabe's party gained the two-thirds parliamentary majority needed for constitutional change in March's disputed elections.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4163700.stm
Strange fossil defies grouping
By Julianna Kettlewell
BBC News science reporter
A strange 525 million-year-old fossil creature is baffling scientists because it does not fit neatly into any existing animal groups.
The animal, from the early Cambrian Period, might have belonged to a now extinct mollusc-like phylum, academics from America and China say.
Other researchers have suggested the creature could represent an early annelid or arthropod.
Details are published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4156544.stm
Mauritania shows risks in US strategy
By Nick Tattersall
Reuters
DAKAR — When it comes to fighting militants in Africa, choosing allies is a risky business.
Soldiers who overthrew Mauritania's president this month may have ended 21 years of authoritarian rule and triggered dancing in the streets, but they also deprived the United States of a key ally in its “war on terror”.
Maaouyia Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya assiduously curried Washington's favour in the later years of his rule, shifting support from former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein to Israel and the United States in a stunning diplomatic about-turn. He made Mauritania only the third member of the Arab League to establish full diplomatic ties with Israel and leapt at the chance to jail scores of Islamist critics in the name of the “war on terror.” The strategy may have won him friends in Washington but it infuriated many in a country straddling black and Arab Africa, who say it played a large part in contributing to his demise.
http://www.jordantimes.com/fri/news/news7.htm
Morocco to welcome home last PoWs
RABAT (Reuters) — Morocco prepared to welcome home on Thursday the last 404 prisoners of war (PoW) who were held by Western Sahara's exiled Polisario Front independence movement, many of them for almost two decades.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said the release in Tindouf, Algeria, followed US mediation. The men were being flown to Morocco to be reunited with their families.
http://www.jordantimes.com/fri/news/news6.htm
Nuke programme advancing despite suspensions
By Michael Adler
Agence France-Presse
VIENNA — Despite suspending sensitive nuclear activities due to Western fears it is seeking to make atomic bombs, Iran has still managed to make progress on its programme but analysts differ on just how far along it has got.
The question is critical, as Iran this month resumed work on part of the nuclear fuel cycle and wants to negotiate further agreement to develop enriched uranium, the reactor fuel that can also be used to make bombs.
http://www.jordantimes.com/fri/news/news5.htm
Iraqi Lawmakers seek constitution compromise with Sunnis
A boy, surrounded by family members, lies Thursday at the Kindi Hospital after being injured in a Baghdad car bombing on Wednesday (AFP photo by Karim Sahib)
BAGHDAD (AP) — A spokesman for the biggest Shiite party Thursday predicted a breakthrough on the constitution within the next two days, as negotiators scrambled to finish the draft by next week's deadline. A roadside bomb killed four more US soldiers in a city north of Baghdad.
Four days before the deadline, Sunni Arab members of the drafting committee met with Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari to present their objections to federalism and other issues blocking an agreement.
Afterward, leaders of the factions — Shiites, Sunni Arabs and Kurds — conferred late into Thursday night at the home of Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi in the heavily fortified Green Zone. No statement was issued after the meeting, but representatives of all three factions spoke optimistically about prospects for finishing by the new deadline Monday.
http://www.jordantimes.com/fri/news/news2.htm
MAKANA empowers women to achieve positive change
By Mahmoud Al Abed
AMMAN — For the past 30 years, the residents of the southern town of Muta have been suffering from an environmental problem that authorities have failed to address.
A low-lying swamp, referred to by the local people as “the old bond,” throughout this time constituted a source of disease and threat to the health of the community of this town, situated about 15km south of Karak.
But much has changed over the past 18 months, thanks to a group of local female activists working under the Women's Empowerment for Democracy and Governance Project — MAKANA.
The project, sponsored by CARE Jordan, is a joint initiative by the Jordanian Hashemite Fund for Human Development (JOHUD) and the Queen Zein Al Sharaf Institute for Development (ZENID).
http://www.jordantimes.com/fri/homenews/homenews6.htm
Cleanup campaign warns of environmental impact of littering
By Mohammad Ghazal
AMMAN — The Ministry of Environment, in cooperation with the Greater Amman Municipality, will organise a cleanup campaign on Aug. 28 in Zai National Park, a popular tourist destination in the summer months.
Isa Shboul, the ministry's spokesperson, told The Jordan Times on Thursday that several ambassadors and ministers, along with schoolchildren will take part in the campaign.
http://www.jordantimes.com/fri/homenews/homenews8.htm
Another way of looking at Iraq
Jonathan Power
We are all, left and right, pro war and anti war, frozen in the headlights of Iraq. Even many of those who campaigned vigorously against the war are frightened to be bold and say the troops should come out. Anarchy is the state of political disarray we have long been acculturated to fear. “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,” wrote Yeats. To walk away is the height of irresponsibility. But is it?
An insurgency working in its home terrain enjoys advantages that are just as formidable as any precision-guided weaponry that soldiers of the coalition can deploy. The insurgents may not have ground down the American and British troops but they have certainly created enough mayhem to instil sufficient fear in every Iraqi and expatriate workman so that the economy remains almost where years of sanctions and two aerial bombardments left it — in ruins. The guerrillas have the advantage of being able to put the occupying forces in situations where they are damned if they do and damned if they don't. They have also succeeded in chasing the UN out of Iraq, the one institution that might have been able, over time, to become a viable alternative to the invaders.
http://www.jordantimes.com/fri/opinion/opinion4.htm
Cooperation will bring benefits
The announcement by Prime Minister Adnan Badran that Jordan and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) will set up a joint industrial zone in the Jordan River area is an ambitious plan that deserves support.
The prime minister made this announcement earlier this week at the meeting of the 4th Arab Business Community Forum in Amman.
http://www.jordantimes.com/fri/opinion/opinion1.htm
Immorality of occupation
George S. Hishmeh
WASHINGTON — The Israeli settlers who are being evacuated from the Gaza Strip's 21 settlements in fulfilment of the Israeli government's unilateral “disengagement” plan, a process that is due to end in three weeks time, are receiving an unbelievably sympathetic but myopic coverage in the media.
Here is how one writer in The New York Times put it last Sunday: “(The evacuation) is an admission not of error but of failure. Their (supporters') cherished goal — the resettlement of the full biblical land of Israel by contemporary Jews — is not to be. The reason: Not enough of them came.”
http://www.jordantimes.com/fri/opinion/opinion5.htm
The Jerusalem Post
Pope warns of rising anti-Semitism
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
COLOGNE, Germany
href="http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1124331702454"TARGET="_blank">Pope Benedict XVI warned Friday of rising anti-Semitism and hostility to foreigners, winning a standing ovation from Germany's oldest Jewish community as he made only the second visit by a pope to a synagogue.
Speaking in a Cologne synagogue rebuilt after it was destroyed by the Nazis, Benedict said that "today, sadly, we are witnessing the rise of new signs of anti-Semitism and various forms of a general hostility toward foreigners."
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1124417949297
Halutz condemns evacuation violence
By YAAKOV KATZ
Chief of Staff Dan Halutz declared Friday that the "rooftop youths" arrested for attacking security forces during the evacuation of Gush Katif settlements would not be drafted into the IDF.
"As long as I'm chief of staff, no one who dared attack a soldier or police officer will serve in the army," Halutz avowed to Israel Radio.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1124331704933
Home demolitions to begin Sunday
By HERB KEINON
The evacuation of the Gaza Strip settlements is expected to be completed by Monday or Tuesday, and the demolition of homes is scheduled to be in full swing by Sunday, security officials told the disengagement cabinet Thursday.
The officials said homes in Kerem Atzmona were the first slated for demolition, and demolition of homes in Rafiah Yam, Gan Or and Pe'at Sadeh would begin Sunday.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1124331702878
Iraq criticizes Arab media outlets
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
BAGHDAD, Iraq
The Iraqi government criticized the state-run television network Thursday for "whipping up emotions" by airing footage from the bombings at a Baghdad bus station and accused a leading Arab satellite station of airing false reports.
Criticism of the satellite station Al-Jazeera is not unusual but such comments against Iraq's television network Iraqiya are rare, especially since its news reporting follows the government line.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1124331702887
Eye of the Storm: Behind the scenes in Teheran
By AMIR TAHERI
Moments after it was presented to the Islamic Majlis in Teheran on Sunday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's first cabinet was labeled by his defeated rivals and most Iran-watchers as a group of "hard-liners" handpicked by the "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei.
Former majlis member Behzad Nabavi, a theorist of the Rafsanjani-Khatami faction which lost the presidential election to Ahamdinejad, has described him as nothing but "a presidential secretary to the supreme guide."
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1124072335640
Al-Qaida-linked group claims Aqaba, Eilat attacks
By MARGOT DUDKEVITCH, JPOST STAFF, AND AP
A Katyusha rocket landed near a car at 9:30 a.m. Friday morning in the tourist district of Eilat, and two rockets hit a warehouse near an American battleship in Aqaba port in Jordan.
An Internet statement released by the al-Qaida-linked Abdullah Azzam Brigades militant group claimed responsibility for the attacks.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1124417948754
The Katyusha Rocket Threat
Katyusha rockets are from time to time launched into towns in northern Israel by the Hizbullah Islamic fundamentalist group stationed in southern Lebanon. Residents are forced to sleep in bomb shelters, sometimes for days on end, in fear of the attacks.
It is rarely realized, however, the potential danger such rockets could pose to Israel's main population centers should they fall into the wrong hands.
http://www.iris.org.il/katyusha.htm
Israel's decision to disengage from the Gaza Strip has placed the future of the disputed West Bank at the top of the international agenda. Prominent voices have called on Israel to withdraw fully from the West Bank and return to the 1949 Armistice Lines (1967 borders) – a move that would undermine Israel's security and even pose an existential threat. It is therefore a matter of urgency that while the debate over the future of the Middle East addresses Palestinian claims for an independent state, Israel's rights and requirements for defensible borders, as proposed by President George W. Bush, are now placed squarely on the global diplomatic agenda.
http://www.defensibleborders.org/
Chicago Sun Times
The weather in Chicago is "GHASTLY."
Ex-Sun-Times boss charged with fraud
August 18, 2005
BY MAURA KELLY LANNAN ASSOCIATED PRESS
Advertisement
Former Chicago Sun-Times publisher David Radler, a lawyer for the newspaper's parent company and a media holding company controlled by Conrad Black were indicted on federal fraud charges Thursday for allegedly diverting $32 million through a series of bogus deals.
The indictment alleged the three diverted the money through a series of secret deals by disguising it as noncompete fees connected to the sale of newspaper publishing groups.
Soft drink industry cuts back in schools
August 18, 2005
BY JANET RAUSA FULLER Staff Reporter
Advertisement
Soft drinks would be banned in elementary and middle schools and would be harder to find in high schools under a policy announced Wednesday by the soft drink industry, long criticized by public health advocates as a major contributor to the nation's obesity crisis.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-soda18.html
Report says Brazilian wasn't fleeing cops
August 18, 2005
BY MICHAEL MCDONOUGH
Advertisement
LONDON -- A leaked report into the death of a Brazilian man mistaken for a bomber and shot to death by police sparked outrage Wednesday because it said the victim was not wearing a heavy jacket and did not jump the ticket gate, as had been previously claimed.
Electrician Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, was shot seven times in the head by police who tailed him to the station the day after the failed July 21 transit bombings in London.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/terror/cst-nws-brit18.html
Nationwide vigils call for end to Iraq war
August 18, 2005
BY ANGELA K. BROWN
Advertisement
CRAWFORD, Texas -- Hundreds of candlelight vigils calling for an end to the war in Iraq got under way Wednesday in a national effort spurred by one mother's anti-war demonstration near President Bush's ranch.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/iraq/cst-nws-mom18.html
Biggest Sunni group criticizes constitution talks
August 18, 2005
BY ANTONIO CASTANEDA ASSOCIATED PRESS
BAGHDAD, Iraq-- Lawmakers tried to reach compromises with Sunni Arab leaders Thursday on Iraq's draft constitution, and a roadside bomb north of Baghdad killed four American soldiers, the U.S. military said.
Government officials said that Wednesday's synchronized car bombings at a bus station and nearby hospital that killed up to 43 people in Baghdad were an attempt to target Shiites and stoke civil war between religious groups in the country.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/iraq/cst-nws-iraq18.html
Sydney Morning Herald
Three sought after attack on US ships
August 20, 2005
Amman: Three rockets were fired at two US Navy ships in Jordan's Aqaba port yesterday but they missed their targets, hitting a hospital, a warehouse - killing a Jordanian soldier - and the nearby Israeli port of Eilat.
A Jordanian security source said authorities were searching for three men over the Katyusha missile attack, which was launched from an industrial warehouse area near the entrance to the city.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/three-sought-after-attack-on-us-ships/2005/08/19/1124435146871.html
Koranic TV next step for radical sheik
By Tom Allard
August 20, 2005
The Koran is also a book of legislation, says Sheik Khalid Yasin.
Photo: Wade Laube
An Islamic preacher who advocates the execution of homosexuals, adulterers and armed robbers plans to start broadcasting his message in Australia on radio, TV and through the internet.
Sheik Khalid Yasin, who was born in the US, gained notoriety when his views on homosexuals - and that the Koran endorsed beatings of spouses - were aired last month, bringing condemnation from the then premier, Bob Carr.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/koranic-tv-next-step-for-radical-sheik/2005/08/19/1124435144954.html
Washington shrugs off Putin's call for Iraq pullout timetable
August 20, 2005
Sochi, Russia: President Vladimir Putin of Russia has called for an international conference on Iraq by the end of the year and a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops, saying many Iraqis considered them occupying forces.
"We consider that holding an international conference this year would give a new impulse to the normalisation of the situation" in Iraq, Mr Putin said on Thursday following talks with King Abdullah of Jordan.
"We deem it necessary to work out a schedule for the staged withdrawal of foreign troops," he said. "Many Iraqis perceive these forces as occupying forces, and this is a reality that should be taken into account."
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/washington-shrugs-off-putins-call-for-iraq-pullout-timetable/2005/08/19/1124435141727.html
Hopes fade for cut in Corby's sentence
By Mark Forbes Herald Correspondent in Jakarta and agencies
August 20, 2005
Schapelle Corby's hopes of overturning a 20-year drug smuggling conviction have dimmed, with Indonesian courts indicating they will not allow fresh testimony to support claims that four kilograms of marijuana were planted in her luggage.
Rumours that her sentence was about to be cut by Bali's High Court were dismissed by both Corby's lawyers and Australian officials.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/hopes-fade-for-cut-in-corbys-sentence/2005/08/19/1124435146874.html
Coming soon: electric cars you charge at home
August 19, 2005 - 12:34AM
Mitsubishi Motors Corp is planning to develop small electric vehicles that drivers will be able to charge up from power sockets at home.
The mini-vehicle will have electric motors in each of its four wheels and will be able to cover 250 kilometres on a four-hour charge from a residential power outlet, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reported on Thursday.
It is to go on the Japanese market by 2008 at a likely price of less than Y2 million ($24,000).
Mitsubishi is forming a partnership with Tokyo Electric, which will develop battery technology for the project.
Kyodo
http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/coming-soon-electric-cars-you-charge-at-home/2005/08/19/1123958189478.html
Michael Moore Today
http://www.michaelmoore.com/
"My son is 26. It could've been him."
Vigils Calling for End to Iraq War Begin
By Angela K. Brown / Associated Press
CRAWFORD, Texas -- Hundreds of candlelight vigils calling for an end to the war in Iraq lit up the night Wednesday, part of a national effort spurred by one mother's anti-war demonstration near President Bush's ranch.
The vigils were urged by Cindy Sheehan, who has become the icon of the anti-war movement since she started a protest Aug. 6 in memory of her son Casey, who died in Iraq last year.
Sheehan says she will remain outside the president's ranch until he meets with her and other grieving families, or until his monthlong vacation there ends.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3752
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The Peaceful Occupation of Crawford (Day 12); Vigils
-- a message from Cindy Sheehan, Crawford, TX
Our candlelight vigil at Camp Casey was beautiful tonight. There were hundreds of people here and we are hearing that hundreds of people were involved in vigils around the country. We at Camp Casey are so amazed and gratified that there were almost 1700 vigils around the country.
CNN followed me around for the morning to do a 'Day in the Life' of Cindy Sheehan. I kept asking them if they were falling asleep from boredom yet. I was on Anderson Cooper and it was pretty good. Anderson didn't ask me about the Israel thing because he had checked with Nightline. But he followed with a talk show, hate monger host, Darrell Ankarlo who I have had problems with in the past. He said that I have said that I believe all of the troops are murderers and I have never said that, either. Darrell Ankarlo wanted me to be on his show, but I don't think so.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/mustread/index.php
Blaming The Anti-War Messengers
By Norman Solomon / Tom Paine
This article is adapted from Norman Solomon’s new book, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. For information, go to: www.WarMadeEasy.com
The surge of antiwar voices in U.S. media this month has coincided with new lows in public approval for what pollsters call President Bush’s “handling” of the Iraq war. After more than two years of a military occupation that was supposed to be a breeze after a cakewalk into Baghdad, the war has become a clear PR loser. But an unpopular war can continue for a long time—and one big reason is that the military-industrial-media complex often finds ways to blunt the effectiveness of its most prominent opponents.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3754
Bad Iraq News Worries Some in G.O.P. on '06
By Adam Nagourney and David D. Kirkpatrick / New York Times
WASHINGTON, Aug. 17 - A stream of bad news out of Iraq, echoed at home by polls that show growing impatience with the war and rising disapproval of President Bush's Iraq policies, is stirring political concern in Republican circles, party officials said Wednesday.
Some said that the perception that the war was faltering was providing a rallying point for dispirited Democrats and could pose problems for Republicans in the Congressional elections next year.
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3759
State Department memo warned of post-war 'planning gaps'
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Little more than a month before the start of the Iraq war, State Department officials said they warned U.S. military planners about possible "serious planning gaps" for the post-war period, according to newly declassified documents obtained by George Washington University.
In a memo dated February 7, 2003, three senior department officials -- noting the U.S. Central Command's focus on military objectives and reluctance to take on policing roles -- warned that "a failure to address short-term public security and humanitarian assistance concerns could result in serious human rights abuses which would undermine an otherwise successful military campaign, and our reputation internationally."
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=3756
BBC
Tamil Tigers agree to peace talks
The emergency powers allow the government to deploy troops freely
Tamil Tiger rebels in Sri Lanka have agreed to hold direct talks with the Colombo government.
The move comes less than a week after the killing of the country's Foreign Minister, Lakshman Kadirgamar, near his heavily-guarded home in the capital.
The talks will be the first high-level meeting between the two sides since the peace process stalled in 2003.
Norwegian mediators described the talks as a significant
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4164150.stm
Rapturous German welcome for Pope
Pope Benedict XVI was greeted by thousands at Cologne airport
Pope Benedict XVI has arrived in his native Germany for a Catholic youth festival in the city of Cologne.
The Pope's plane was met by cheering crowds as it landed at Cologne-Bonn airport, where Germany's chancellor and president were waiting to greet him.
The assembled crowds also performed a Mexican wave to welcome their visitor.
It is the Pope's first major foreign trip since his election in April. The engagement was originally scheduled for his predecessor, Pope John Paul II.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4161706.stm
China-Russia war games under way
Russian and Chinese commanders laid wreaths at a war memorial
Russian and Chinese armed forces have begun their first joint exercises, involving some 10,000 personnel.
Marines will storm beaches, to be joined by paratroopers in a mock invasion of an imaginary country.
The eight-day operation got under way in Vladivostok, in Russia's far east, with consultations between military delegations from the two countries.
Analysts say the two sides are signalling they are prepared to counter US dominance in international affairs.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4162054.stm
US shuttles grounded until March
The next shuttle flight will not be until at least next March
The US space shuttle fleet is to remain grounded until March at the earliest, Nasa officials have said.
Engineers need to find a solution to the foam debris problem which re-emerged during Discovery's launch.
Seven members of an oversight panel also say Nasa's latest shuttle efforts were tainted by some of the problems that caused the Columbia disaster.
The official heading the team looking at the issue said it would take until early next year at least to find a fix.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4163908.stm
Zimbabwe to speed up land seizure
Legal battles have slowed down the transfer of land to new farmers
Zimbabwe's government has tabled a constitutional amendment bill to speed up the acquisition of white-owned land.
The proposals would nationalise all land and stop appeals to the courts.
Some 4,000 white farmers have been evicted from their land since 2000, but the government says legal battles are slowing up the transfer of ownership.
President Robert Mugabe's party gained the two-thirds parliamentary majority needed for constitutional change in March's disputed elections.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4163700.stm
Strange fossil defies grouping
By Julianna Kettlewell
BBC News science reporter
A strange 525 million-year-old fossil creature is baffling scientists because it does not fit neatly into any existing animal groups.
The animal, from the early Cambrian Period, might have belonged to a now extinct mollusc-like phylum, academics from America and China say.
Other researchers have suggested the creature could represent an early annelid or arthropod.
Details are published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4156544.stm
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