"Dick! The Supreme
Court Says Those Evil
Doers At Guantanamo
Have The Right To
Habeas Corpus!"
"...Whatever
Hay-Bee-Ass
Korp-Iss Is."

Saturday's Headlines: Alaska’s ‘golden goose’ is a fish: In Kenya's hotbed of postelection violence, a bishop sows seeds of peace: South African court bans trials of vitamin treatments for Aids: Thousands swell ranks of marchers to demand that Musharraf goes: Taleban jail raid frees hundreds: Gaza prisoners in bid to lift ban on family visits: Al-Sadr forms elite wing to fight US forces: Irish Rebuff Sends Europe Reeling Protests: spread as prices soar

Key Iraqi Leaders Deliver Setbacks to U.S.
Premier Rejects Terms of Proposed Pacts; Cleric Reactivates Militia
By Amit R. Paley and Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, June 14, 2008; Page A01

BAGHDAD, June 13 -- The Bush administration's Iraq policy suffered two major setbacks Friday when Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki publicly rejected key U.S. terms for an ongoing military presence and anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called for a new militia offensive against U.S. forces.

During a visit to Jordan, Maliki said negotiations over initial U.S. proposals for bilateral political and military agreements had "reached a dead end." While he said talks would continue, his comments fueled doubts that the pacts could be reached this year, before the Dec. 31 expiration of a United Nations mandate sanctioning the U.S. role in Iraq.

Originally posted 2008-06-07 08:29:18 -0500

I Will I Won't
I Will I Won't
What Was I Supposed To Do Today?

Saturday's Headlines: Holdouts at FEMA Trailer Park Test Limitations of Aid German city bans waste from Italy Negotiating a black hole Leading clerics urge Muslims to learn about other faiths in drive to promote harmony Israel cuts off Palestinian tax funds as relations hit new low Vote Mugabe or starve – the latest ploy from a regime clinging on to power Four accused of Tutsi genocide should be returned to Rwanda After quake, Chinese open wallets, a few of them under pressure Tighter Australia-China ties worry Asian neighbors Guevara children denounce Che branding Tijuana's elite flee to San Diego County to escape kidnappings and violence in Mexico

Water drains from swollen Chinese 'quake lake'
MSNBC News Services
TAOHUA MOUNTAIN, China - Water began flowing into a spillway Saturday from a swollen lake formed by a landslide in China's devastating earthquake, easing the immediate threat of a flood that had led to the evacuation of more than 250,000 people.

Engineers were monitoring bridges and river banks downstream to see if they would hold under the rush of water, and work crews were trying to dig a secondary channel to improve the flow, China Central Television and the Xinhua News Agency reported.

Originally posted 2008-05-31 08:53:04 -0500; bumped.

Aerial Photographs
Prove Existence Of A Shrub
In The White House
Do Not Contact

Burma policy costs lives, says US
US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has accused Burma of causing the loss of tens of thousands of lives by hindering international cyclone relief efforts.
Mr Gates said the United States had had ships and aircraft ready to help after Cyclone Nargis hit a month ago.

Unlike Indonesia and Bangladesh after major natural disasters, Burma had denied entry to the country, he said.

An estimated 2.4m people remain homeless and hungry following the cyclone, which struck on 2 May.

originally posted - 2008-05-24 02:58:13 - cho
I Didn't Mean To Say That
Until I said It
But It Wasn't Really Me Who Said It

Saturday's Headlines: 270 Illegal Immigrants Sent to Prison in Federal Push Obama would take California in November, Times/KTLA poll finds Ban praises China quake response Tibet could be 'swamped' by mass Chinese settlement after Olympics, says Dalai Lama French trawlers blockade straits of Dover in fuel protest Rubbish threatens Tuvixeddu necropolis Opposition leader returning to Zimbabwe ANALYSIS-Poverty a recipe for wider South Africa unrest Sign of change? Israeli, Palestinian officers meet Marines Won’t Charge 2 Officers Whose Men Killed Afghans After Car Bombing Cuban sting shows US diplomat handing over cash to dissidents

Hillary Clinton forced to apologise for staying in race ‘in case of an assassination’
From The Times
May 24, 2008
Hillary Clinton rushed out an apology last night after citing the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy as a reason for her to remain in the race against Barack Obama — an extraordinary admission which caught her campaign aides off guard.

Mrs Clinton, dismissing the idea of abandoning her increasingly longshot attempt to win the Democratic presidential nomination, said in South Dakota: “My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know I just, I don’t understand it.”

Originally posted 2008-05-17 09:08:15 -0500.

Unlike A Flopping Fish Politician The News Here Is As It Should Be
Straight Forward

Saturday's Headlines: Obama Strikes Back at Bush On Diplomacy Razor-sharp concertina wire installed at U.S.-Mexico border Burma 'guilty of inhuman action' Beijing open to foreign aid and scrutiny in wake of tragedy 68% of Italians want Roma expelled - poll EU may force car makers to reveal emissions in adverts How picture phones have fuelled frenzy of honour killing in Iraq Lebanese leaders gather in Qatar Displaced Kenyans balk at government push to go home Famine Looms as Wars Rend Horn of Africa Shakira, other Latin American stars sing for their cause -- ALAS

U.S. Planning Big New Prison in Afghanistan
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is moving forward with plans to build a new, 40-acre detention complex on the main American military base in Afghanistan, officials said, in a stark acknowledgment that the United States is likely to continue to hold prisoners overseas for years to come.
The proposed detention center would replace the cavernous, makeshift American prison on the Bagram military base north of Kabul, which is now typically packed with about 630 prisoners, compared with the 270 held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Until now, the Bush administration had signaled that it intended to scale back American involvement in detention operations in Afghanistan. It had planned to transfer a large majority of the prisoners to Afghan custody, in an American-financed, high-security prison outside Kabul to be guarded by Afghan soldiers.

From the BBC:

_____

'Hundreds buried' by China quake

Almost 900 students have been buried by collapsed buildings during an earthquake in south-western China, state media reports.
_____

What a horrible start to the day, and to the week.

The BBC article quotes the following statistics for recent quakes in China:

___________

• March, 2008: 7.2 quake in Xinjiang - damage limited
• February 2003: 6.8 quake in Xinjiang - at least 94 dead, 200 hurt
• January 1998: 6.2 quake in rural Hebei - at least 47 dead, 2,000 hurt
• April 1997: 6.6 quake hits Xinjiang - 9 dead, 60 hurt
• January 1997: 6.4 quake in Xinjiang - 50 dead, 40 hurt

___________

In other news, US planes carrying aid land in Burma after days spent negotiating with the government, and a US researcher finds a way to kill stowaway plants and animals from marine ballast tanks:

_____

US researchers say they have developed an effective way to kill unwanted plants and animals that hitch a ride in the ballast waters of cargo tankers.

Tests showed that a continuous microwave system was able to remove all marine life within the water tanks.

The UN lists "invasive species" dispersed by ballast water discharges as one of the four main threats to the world's marine ecosystems.
_____

That's all I've got for now -- busy, busy day ahead -- but I'm sure there's a lot more.

Have at it. :)

Originally posted 2008-05-10 08:53:40 -0500

You wanna play mind-crazed banjo
On the druggy-drag ragtime U.S.A.?
In Parkland International
Hey! Junkiedom U.S.A.
Where procaine proves the purest rock man groove
and rat poison

Saturday's Headlines: Iraq Contractor in Shooting Case Makes Comeback: FBI, ATF Battle for Control Of Cases: Hizbullah success in west Beirut replaces impasse with uncertainty: Turkish strikes 'kill 19 rebels': Part of Guinness's Dublin brewery to close: Tanks return to Red Square as Russia flaunts military might: Chinese factories, flouting labor laws, hire children from poor, distant villages:　S. Koreans Abuzz Over Their Obsession With the Office: Tsvangirai to run in second round: Pollution in paradise: Flamingos vs the factory: Mexico vows to continue war on organized crime

The River of Death
As Burma's junta spurns the world's offers of aid, Andrew Buncombe finds a landscape flooded with corpses – and a people begging for help
For the people living alongside the Payapon river – a branch of the mighty Irrawaddy – the slow-moving waters have always been a sustainer of life. The river has provided irrigation for their crops, as well as clean, sweet water for washing and bathing, and the fish from which so many of them make their livelihoods.

Now the same river is delivering the dead. The corpses of hundreds of people swept away and killed by the surging tidal wave of Cyclone Nargis are now being washed back.

They lie on the river's edge, snagged in the roots of the mangrove swamps, bloated and burnt by the sun. Many of the corpses have already been buried by family or friends but there are plenty more that lie floating and abandoned, as anonymous in death as they must have been named and known in life.

Support disaster relief in Myanmar (Burma) Through the UN

From last week, yet still strikingly relevant:

Police grapple for clues after a truck careered off the expressway and through a bus shelter under the elevated train tracks. The truck ended up wedged inside a stairwell leading from the station's street-level entrance.

Two people died and at least twenty-one (21) were injured in the incident, which occurred at the Red Line Cermak-Chinatown stop shortly after 5 p.m. in Chinatown, on Friday, April 25th.

This qualifies as yet another type of "transportation cost" in the modern world.

Promoted. Originally posted 2008-05-03 09:04:25 -0500.

You know the way
It throws about
It takes you in
And spits you out
It spits you out
When you desire

Saturday's Headlines: For Bush in Last Year, It's the Principle: Love and death in the South's deadliest prison: Elections 2008 London: In paintings by Monet and Manet we see how men's hobbies begin: Quartet opens door to ending Hamas isolation: Palestinian forces deploy to West Bank town: Ivorian ex-rebels begin to disarm: Election body confirms Mugabe lost the vote: Pakistan coalition averts collapse with deal to restore ousted judges: Cuba puts first computers on sale to the public

After Hiatus, States Set Wave of Executions
HUNTSVILLE, Tex. — Here in the nation’s leading death-penalty state, and some of the 35 others with capital punishment, execution dockets are quickly filling up.
Less than three weeks after a United States Supreme Court ruling ended a seven-month moratorium on lethal injections, at least 14 execution dates have been set in six states between May 6 and October.

“The Supreme Court essentially blessed their way of doing things,” said Douglas A. Berman, a professor of law and a sentencing expert at Ohio State University. “So in some sense, they’re back from vacation and ready to go to work.”

Off on your way
Hit the open road
There is magic at your fingers
For the spirit ever lingers
Undemanding contact
In your happy solitude

U.S. Afghan supply lines depend on Islamic militant
BARA, Pakistan — The only thing standing between Pakistan's Taliban and the lifeline for U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan may be an Islamist warlord who controls the area near Pakistan's famed Khyber Pass.

In an interview with McClatchy, Mangal Bagh, who leads a group called Lashkar-i-Islam, voiced his disdain for America but said he's rebuffed an offer from the Taliban to join them.

Truckloads of food, equipment and fuel for NATO troops wind through the Khyber Pass daily to the bustling border at Torkham. Last month, Taliban fighters bombed fuel trucks waiting at Torkham to cross into Afghanistan, and last week, fighting between Bagh's men and a pocket of Taliban resistance closed the highway for several days.