From the DNR website...
Brainworm
(Meningeal Worm)
Description
The adult brainworm (Parelaphostrongylus tenuis) is a roundworm or nematode normally found in the venous sinuses and subdural space of the brain of white-tailed deer in eastern North America. Moose, wapiti (elk), caribou, reindeer, mule deer, black-tailed deer, sheep, goats, and guinea pigs are susceptible to infection. However, they are abnormal hosts, and in them the worm frequently causes cerebrospinal nematodiasis, a disease of the nervous system, often resulting in death.
Distribution
The brainworm is found in most places in eastern North America where white-tailed deer exist in abundance. It has been reported from deer in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario, Minnesota, New York, Maine, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. It is generally absent, however, in deer from the coastal plains of the southeastern United States (coastal North Carolina, South Carolina, southern Georgia, Florida and southern Alabama) and St. Croix of the Virgin Islands. The incidence in deer herds can be extremely high.
Naturally occurring cerebrospinal nematodiasis is found fairly often in moose on the southern fringe of its distribution in eastern and central North America where white-tailed deer are abundant (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Maine, Minnesota and Michigan). It also occurs in elk (wapiti), caribou and reindeer introduced into areas in eastern North America where there are white-tailed deer.
In Michigan, brainworm is a very common parasite in white-tailed deer. The disease has been diagnosed in elk throughout their range in the state. It was first noticed in 1938; since then, a few affected animals have been seen nearly every year. Males and females seem to be involved in equal proportions and approximately 80 percent of affected animals are subadults. It has not been diagnosed in their calves.
Brainworm has been diagnosed in moose in Michigan since their reintroduction in 1985. It has been found in adult and subadult age groups, but not in calves.
Transmission and Development
The adult worm living in the subdural space of the brain, deposits eggs on the dura mater surrounding the brain, or in adjacent small blood vessels. The eggs hatch on the dura mater and young larvae emerge. The larvae penetrate small blood vessels and are swept into the lungs. Eggs deposited in blood vessels are carried directly to the lungs where they lodge in the smallest capillaries. The eggs hatch and young larvae emerge. Once larvae are in the lungs, they enter bronchioles and move up the respiratory tract until they reach the throat. They are swallowed and carried through the gastrointestinal tract, and eventually leave the deer in the mucus coat surrounding the fecal pellets. The mucus is fed upon by numerous species of snails or slugs and the mollusks thereby become infected. Species of gastropods that can be infected are Anguispira alternata, Arion circumscriptus, Discus cronkhitei, Deroceras laeve, D. reticulatum, Haplotrema concavum, Mesodon thyroidus, Stenotrema fraternum, Triodopsis albolabris, T. notata, Zonitoides arboreus, and Z. nitidus. The most likely species to be infected are D. laeve, Z. nitidus, and Z. arboreus. After a period of development, the larvae become infective for deer. An infected snail or slug is ingested by a deer, probably accidentally, while browsing or grazing. The tiny larvae penetrate the wall of the small intestine and enter the body cavity. From there, they migrate along nerves to the spinal cord. Once in the spinal cord, they begin to grow. They remain there only a short time before they migrate to the space surrounding the cord. They then migrate along the outside of the cord to the subdural space surrounding the brain. Here they grow to maturity, thus completing their life cycle. From the time a deer is infected, 82-91 days are required before the worm matures and larvae start appearing in the feces.
Clinical Signs and Pathology
The infection is largely silent in white-tailed deer, although temporary lameness and spasms of one front limb have been noted in fawns which were experimentally infected. There have been a few reports of neurologic signs in naturally infected adult white-tailed deer.
In naturally infected elk, an individual tends to leave its herd and remains near a road, field, or woodland clearing, and becomes less wary. In some instances, vision seems impaired. In advanced cases, the animal often walks aimlessly or in circles, and may carry its head in a tilted position. The disease is generally progressive and terminates in death, although there may be short periods of remission when the animal appears quite normal.
Severe neurologic disease terminating in paralysis has been produced experimentally in the young of moose, elk, mule deer, caribou, black-tailed deer, goats, sheep and guinea pigs, all of which may be regarded as unfavorable hosts. Signs of illness in these animals consisted of ataxia, lameness, stiffness, general and lumbar weakness, circling associated with blindness, abnormal positioning of the head and neck, and finally, paraplegia. Signs were variable in onset and character. Moose, elk and mule deer appeared listless and showed slight ataxia 10-60 days after infection. Signs appeared 5-7 days after infection in young caribou. In all the experimental cases, there were remissions of a short duration.
The lack of lesions is consistent with the absence or slightness of neurologic signs in infected deer. The neural parenchyma rather quickly assumes a normal appearance after the departure of worms, between 25 and 40 days. Lesions in the central nervous system are usually not visible grossly. In general, the lesions in elk, moose, caribou, and other abnormal hosts are similar to those in white-tailed deer, but much more severe.
Diagnosis
Tentative diagnosis can usually be made by finding larvae in the feces of infected animals. However, muscle worm (P. andersoni) larvae are indistinguishable from those of the brainworm. Therefore, a positive diagnosis can be made only by recovering and identifying the adult worms. In animals which develop clinical signs, worms are hard to find and diagnosis must often be based only on signs of illness and microscopic lesions.
Treatment and Control
Control of deer populations is obviously desirable, especially in areas where priority should be given to moose, elk or caribou. Control of mollusk populations is probably neither feasible nor desirable. Medical treatment of infected animals has not been reported.
Significance
It has been suggested, but not proven, that cerebrospinal nematodiasis caused by P. tenuis is responsible for the decline of moose in some areas of the United States and Canada and is a major factor preventing the establishment of moose, elk and caribou in areas where white-tailed deer are abundant. The worm is of no public health significance since it is not infective to humans, and meat of infected animals is safe for human consumption. The parasite may be of some importance to veterinarians since sheep and goats are susceptible.
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Updated: Thursday, 16 November 2006 2:37 PM CST
Updated: Thursday, 16 November 2006 2:37 PM CST
Pope, aides to discuss celibacy issues: Vatican
By Phil Stewart 1 hour, 51 minutes ago
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) -
Pope Benedict has called a meeting of
Vatican advisers for a "reflection" on issues related to celibacy in the Church following a schism led by a renegade African archbishop who wants priests to be able to marry.
Pope, aides to discuss celibacy issues: Vatican
By Phil Stewart 1 hour, 51 minutes ago
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) -
Pope Benedict has called a meeting of
Vatican advisers for a "reflection" on issues related to celibacy in the Church following a schism led by a renegade African archbishop who wants priests to be able to marry.
ADVERTISEMENT
The meeting, to be held on Thursday, was announced by the Vatican's press office on Monday in a short statement that a spokesman said did not imply a review of current rules that priests remain celibate.
The statement said the Pope and leaders of Vatican departments would hold a "reflection on requests for dispensation from the obligation of celibacy and on requests for readmission to the priestly ministry by priests who had married."
Asked for clarification, chief Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said the meeting was not being called to consider major changes in the celibacy rule but to discuss the issue generally and certain individual cases.
The main purpose of the meeting is to discuss the ramifications of the crisis sparked when Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo ordained four married men as priests at a ceremony in Washington D.C. in September.
That prompted his automatic excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church.
Milingo rejects his excommunication, which forbids him to receive the sacraments or share in public acts of worship.
He is planning a convention for more than 1,000 married priests -- and their wives -- in New York for December 8-10.
"The Holy Father has called on Thursday, November 16 a meeting ... to examine the situation created following (Milingo's) disobedience," the statement said.
The Roman Catholic Church insists that its priests remain celibate and has ruled out letting them marry, which advocates say would make some men more willing to join the priesthood and ease the shortage of priests in many parts of the world.
Priests were permitted to wed during the first millennium, but marriage was condemned by the Church at the Second Lateran Council in 1139.
Milingo is not just a keen proponent of marriage, but tried it himself in 2001 at a mass ceremony held by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. The union was never recognized by the Vatican and Milingo later rejoined the Catholic Church.
A proposal discussed, and rejected at a synod of Catholic bishops last year, suggested that the Church ordain some "viri probati" -- a Latin term referring to older, married men with families who are known to lead exemplary personal lives.
"Viri probati" also have a solid background in Catholic doctrine.
(Additional reporting by Philip Pullella)
The meeting, to be held on Thursday, was announced by the Vatican's press office on Monday in a short statement that a spokesman said did not imply a review of current rules that priests remain celibate.
The statement said the Pope and leaders of Vatican departments would hold a "reflection on requests for dispensation from the obligation of celibacy and on requests for readmission to the priestly ministry by priests who had married."
Asked for clarification, chief Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said the meeting was not being called to consider major changes in the celibacy rule but to discuss the issue generally and certain individual cases.
The main purpose of the meeting is to discuss the ramifications of the crisis sparked when Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo ordained four married men as priests at a ceremony in Washington D.C. in September.
That prompted his automatic excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church.
Milingo rejects his excommunication, which forbids him to receive the sacraments or share in public acts of worship.
He is planning a convention for more than 1,000 married priests -- and their wives -- in New York for December 8-10.
"The Holy Father has called on Thursday, November 16 a meeting ... to examine the situation created following (Milingo's) disobedience," the statement said.
The Roman Catholic Church insists that its priests remain celibate and has ruled out letting them marry, which advocates say would make some men more willing to join the priesthood and ease the shortage of priests in many parts of the world.
Priests were permitted to wed during the first millennium, but marriage was condemned by the Church at the Second Lateran Council in 1139.
Milingo is not just a keen proponent of marriage, but tried it himself in 2001 at a mass ceremony held by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church. The union was never recognized by the Vatican and Milingo later rejoined the Catholic Church.
A proposal discussed, and rejected at a synod of Catholic bishops last year, suggested that the Church ordain some "viri probati" -- a Latin term referring to older, married men with families who are known to lead exemplary personal lives.
"Viri probati" also have a solid background in Catholic doctrine.
(Additional reporting by Philip Pullella)
Iraq Vets Target Congressional Races
Aaron Glantz, OneWorld US Fri Nov 3, 3:48 PM ET
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 3 (OneWorld) - Veterans of the
Iraq war are mobilizing for Tuesday's elections nationwide--mostly on the side of Democrats critical of
President George W. Bush's handling of the war.
"Normally, the military and military families lean conservative, especially in a time of war, so to see these kinds of activities is very telling about the situation we're in now," said Tim Goodrich, a former Air Force pilot from Buffalo, New York, who served in
Afghanistan and Iraq.
Goodrich co-founder of Iraq Veterans Against the War, has joined other disenchanted veterans to form a political action committee called Iraq Veterans for Progress.
"We support candidates who want to end the war, against their opponents who are allied with the Bush administration's strategy of 'stay the course'," Goodrich told OneWorld. "We help them win by sending them unemployed Iraq veterans to campaign for them. We pay their salary and help get our message out."
Among the races Iraq Veterans for Progress is involved in is a contested House of Representatives seat in Ohio currently occupied by Republican Congresswoman Jean Schmidt, who gained national attention by calling decorated former Marine and fellow legislator John Murtha a coward because the Pennsylvania Democrat had advocated that the U.S. military withdraw from Iraq.
Schmidt repeatedly has voted against veterans' health care and against reductions in military families' taxes, according to Iraq Veterans for Progress. The group is backing Democrat Victoria Wulsin and is paying for veteran Thomas Cassidy to work on her campaign.
According to the group's Web site, Cassidy "was born and raised in rural southern Ohio and joined the military on a whim to escape the boredom young people face in small towns."
He served in the Army's 1st Infantry Division from July 2001 to July 2005, including a year in the heart of Iraq's so-called Sunni Triangle, northwest of Baghdad.
"Thomas returned home in hopes of forgetting all he had been a part of," his biographical note on the Web site reads. "However, the levels to which American civilians have been misled have re-ignited his passion to make a change and bring the troops home."
Among groups dedicated to get-the-vote-out efforts ahead of the Nov. 7 polls, Iraq Veterans for Progress is among those closest to the grass roots but it is hardly the largest.
VoteVets, based on New York City's Park Avenue, is deluging contested Senate races in Virginia, Montana, and Pennsylvania with more than $100,000 worth of television advertisements in an effort to unseat pro-war Republican incumbents.
Republican candidates accuse VoteVets of being a Democratic Party front group, a charge the group denies.
"The DNC [
Democratic National Committee] does not dictate our policy or our strategies," retired Major Paul Hackett told OneWorld. After serving tours in Ramadi and Fallujah, Iraq, he returned to his native state of Ohio and ran for Congress in a special election in 2005. Hackett stunned many by winning more than 48 percent of the vote in a district where George W. Bush had received nearly two-thirds of the vote in the presidential election just 10 months earlier.
"Our ideas come from those who are affiliated with the group," Hackett said. "Some of us have more say than others, but we are certainly not a mouthpiece for the DNC. We're using it as an opportunity to get politicians to take note and listen and I think it's important."
The GOP also has put together groups of its own with veterans out front and political operatives behind the scenes. A group called Vets for Freedom is running television advertisements against anti-war Democrat Ned Lamont in Connecticut, for example.
According to an investigative report published in the Buffalo News, Vets for Freedom was started by Taylor Goss, a former Bush spokesman who also managed the president's public relations during the recount of votes in Florida in the 2000 election. William Kristol, founder and editor of the rightwing Weekly Standard, and Republican strategist Dan Senor, a former spokesman for the U.S. occupation authority in Iraq, also are advisors.
The non-profit Center for Media and Democracy found links between Vets for Freedom and the public relations firm that created the Swift Boat ad campaign against Democratic presidential candidate
John Kerry.
The research and advocacy group calls Vets for Freedom the "equivalent of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the Republican 527 committee whose attack advertisements in battleground states helped sink Kerry in the 2004 presidential race by smearing him as a phony war hero and a traitor to his country." Both campaigns have worked with the Republican-affiliated Donatelli PR firm but the group denies they have anything to do with the Republican Party.
Like Democrat Hackett, Vets for Freedom co-founder and former Marine Lieutenant Wade Zirkle denied any formal links to either party.
"If we were a Republican front group, we wouldn't be running advertisements for [independent]
Joe Lieberman," Zirkle said, referring to the former Democratic Senator and presidential hopeful from Connecticut whom Lamont unseated as the party's pick to run in Tuesday's midterm election.
"That's not something that Republicans do. They get involved in races where they want Republicans to win. I think it's pretty clear that we are what we say we are, a bipartisan group that concerns itself with one issue, the war on terror, specifically Iraq," Zirkle added.
Rafael ''Raf'' Noboa, a seven-year veteran of the U.S. Army, said he was ''torn'' over groups like Zirkle's.
When Noboa returned from a tour of duty in Iraq's Sunni Triangle, he became active in the anti-war movement. He worked on Ned Lamont's primary campaign earlier this year and helped found Iraq Veterans for Progress.
"If you're going to have folks like me who are against the Iraq war, then obviously you're going to have random guys on the other side," Noboa said.
"The problem,'' he added, ''is that these guys help legitimate what is an illegitimate enterprise. It's an illegitimate enterprise politically and an illegitimate enterprise morally. I'm not a fan."
Most vote for Georgia rebel region's independence
25 minutes ago
TSKHINVALI, Georgia (Reuters) - Georgia's rebel region of South Ossetia has massively reaffirmed its independence, a top election official said on Monday after a referendum on Sunday.
"I can only say there has been a victory for (South Ossetian President Eduard) Kokoity and more than 90 percent of the people have voted in favor of independence for our republic," Bella Pliyeva, head of the election commission, said.
The vote is seen as illegal in the West and there were no Western monitors present at the poll, but Russia says it should be respected.
Set on the Russian border in the Caucasus mountain foothills, South Ossetia broke away after a 1991-92 war that killed hundreds and forced tens of thousands to flee.
But amid increased tensions within Georgia, whose pro-Western President Mikhail Saakashvili wants to recover control of the region, voters went to the polls to re-affirm their independence drive and elect a regional leader.
Election officials said more than 90 percent of some 55,000 eligible voters turned out for the polls. They promised to give first election results later this morning.
"Of course everyone voted for him (Kokoity). In the past five years a lot has changed in our republic. We now have steady pay, light, gas and water," Inna Guchnazova, a 30-year-old mother of two, said.
China sub stalked US Navy carrier group: report
27 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Chinese submarine stalked a
U.S. Navy aircraft carrier battle group in the Pacific last month and was undetected until it surfaced within firing range, The Washington Times reported on Monday.
The Chinese Song-class diesel-powered attack submarine was seen within five miles of the carrier Kitty Hawk and its accompanying warships on October 26, the newspaper said, citing defense officials.
The surfaced submarine was spotted by a routine surveillance flight by one of the U.S. carrier group's planes, the report said.
A Navy spokeswoman in Washington had no comment on the report.
Disclosure of the surprise encounter comes as the commander of the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet, Adm. Gary Roughead, was making his first visit to China which began over the weekend, The Washington Times said.
The four-star admiral was scheduled to meet senior Chinese military leaders during the weeklong visit, the paper said.
Feingold decides against 2008 presidential bid
Sun Nov 12, 9:48 AM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sen. Russell Feingold, a leading liberal in Congress and an outspoken foe of the
Iraq war, announced on Sunday that he would not seek the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.
"I'm sure a campaign for president would have been a great adventure and helpful in advancing a progressive agenda," wrote Feingold, who is from Wisconsin, in a letter e-mailed to supporters and posted on his Senate campaign web site.
"At this time, however, I believe I can best advance that progressive agenda as a senator with significant seniority in the new Senate serving on the Foreign Relations, Intelligence, Judiciary and Budget committees," the three-term senator said.
Like many members of Congress, Feingold has been mulling for months a possible run for the White House in 2008.
His announcement that he has decided against a presidential bid came in the wake of Democrats winning control of the Senate and U.S. House of Representatives in last week's elections.
The new 110th Congress will convene in January with Democrats in control of both chambers for the first time in 12 years.
During the next couple of months, a number of Democrats and Republicans are expected to announce if they will run for president in 2008.
US Foreign Policy Set to Change Dramatically
Analysis by Jim Lobe, Inter Press Service (IPS) Thu Nov 9, 10:37 AM ET
WASHINGTON, Nov 9 (IPS) - The abrupt replacement of
Pentagon chief, Donald Rumsfeld, by former
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Robert Gates, combined with the Democratic sweep in Tuesday's mid-term elections, appears to signal major changes in United States foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East.
A career CIA analyst until his retirement in the early 1990s, Gates, a favourite of both former president George H.W. Bush and his national security advisor, Brent Scowcroft, has shared their 'realistic' approach to U.S. foreign policy and shown little patience with the neo-conservatives and aggressive nationalists, like Vice-President
Dick Cheney. Or with Rumsfeld, who dominated the younger Bush's first term after the Sep.11, 2001 al-Qaeda attacks on New York and the Pentagon and led the march to war in
Iraq.
As recently as two years ago, for example, Gates co-chaired a task force sponsored by the influential Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) with Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, which called for a policy of diplomatic and economic engagement with
Iran, a policy that was denounced as 'appeasement' by a number of prominent neo-conservatives.
Indeed, in the aftermath of Tuesday's electoral landslide, in which the Democrats gained at least 29 seats to win a secure majority in the House of Representatives and appear poised to win a narrower majority in the Senate as well, and Rumsfeld's departure, both Cheney and his neo-conservative supporters, now appear more marginalised than ever.
"If the trend in the Bush second term is viewed as what a friend of mine once called 'an imperceptible 180-degree turn' from neo-con ideology to political realism, then this would be a crowning achievement," says Gary Sick, an Iran specialist at Columbia University who worked with Gates in the National Security Council under former president Jimmy Carter.
"Viewed from my own knowledge and perspective, I think this is one of the most significant U.S, policy shifts in the past six years," he said, adding that, among other things, Rumsfeld's departure and Gates' ascension would, at the very least, give Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice -- like Gates, a Soviet specialist from the realist school -- more diplomatic manoeuvring room than in the past when she had to contend with both a hostile vice-president and a secretary of defence.
Although apparently discussed for some time, Rumsfeld's resignation on the heels of the election was no doubt designed at least in part as a sacrificial offering to victorious Democrats whose performance at the polls appears to have lived up to their greatest hopes. The quagmire in Iraq for which Rumsfeld was, of course, one of the most visible faces was, according to both the pre-election and exit polls, probably the single-most important factor in what Bush himself called a Republican "thumping'".
"At a minimum, Rumsfeld's departure buys the President time to adjust Iraq and other policies without the newly empowered Democrats screaming for blood,'' opines Chris Nelson, editor of the private insider newsletter 'The Nelson Report'. "But they will start to do that pretty soon, if nothing coherent seems to be happening.''
In his first post-election statement, Bush vowed to find "common ground'' with the Democrats on Iraq, as well as other issues -- a promise that seemed inconceivable just a month ago when he and Cheney were accusing the opposition party of wanting to "cut and run'' from Iraq and handing the "terrorists" there a great victory.
For their part, the new Democratic leadership -- the House Speaker-to-be Rep. Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record) and the likely new majority leader Sen. Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record) -- called for a national summit on Iraq policy.
While the Democrats are united on Iraq, many, if not most, including Pelosi, believe that Washington should begin "redeploying" the 140,000-plus troops from Iraq and setting timetables for an eventual withdrawal over the next one to two years in order to reduce the mounting costs in blood and treasure of the U.S. intervention, extricate Washington from what appears to be a growing sectarian civil war, and put pressure on the Iraqi government and its various factions to prevent one.
Both parties are likely now to defer to the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group (ISG), a bipartisan, Congressionally-appointed task force co-chaired by former secretary of state James Baker and former House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Lee Hamilton, which is supposed to release its report between now and early next year.
Significantly, Gates is a Republican member of the ISG which, under Baker's guidance, met in September with senior representatives of Iran and
Syria, governments that have been boycotted diplomatically by the Bush administration. Those meetings prompted strong speculation that the ISG is almost certain to recommend engaging both Tehran and Damascus as well as Iraq's other neighbours, as part of a strategy to facilitate a U.S. withdrawal and prevent the sectarian conflict from spreading beyond Iraq's borders.
Such an approach has been anathema to Rumsfeld, Cheney and the neo-conservatives who successfully vetoed Rice's suggestion during last summer's
Israel-Hezbollah conflict in Lebanon that Washington communicate at least indirectly with Damascus and earlier efforts by her to persuade Bush to be prepared to offer Tehran security guarantees as part of any package that would emerge from successful negotiations between the EU-3 and Iran on freezing its nuclear programme.
But both approaches are likely to be advocated by Gates, and therein lies the possibility of a major overhaul of U.S. policy, particularly in the Middle East but also with respect to Asia, particularly China, where tension with Rumsfeld's Pentagon has been the main irritant in an otherwise relatively constructive relationship under Bush. Nelson points out that Gates is currently a leading member of the Baker policy advisory group.
Indeed, some right-wing commentators see Rumsfeld's replacement by Gates as a virtual coup d'etat by the old, realist crowd around Bush's father against the remnants of the hawkish coalition of aggressive nationalists, neo-conservatives, and the Christian right which seized control of Middle East policy, in particular, after 9/11.
"Bottom line, the Gates' nomination has Jim Baker's finger prints all over it," said J. William Lauderback, executive vice-president of the American Conservative Union. That analysis will likely be echoed in the coming days by a host of neo-conservatives howling about a realist takeover.
In fairness to the neo-conservatives, many of them have been calling for Rumsfeld's ouster, some even as early as the Iraq invasion when they determined that he was unprepared to devote the kind of resources and manpower "in ground forces and security" into the kind of "model" they had envisioned for the rest of the Arab world. In recent months, even neo-conservatives who have stood by Rumsfeld have publicly criticised him for botching the occupation.
They had urged Bush to choose Sen. Joseph Lieberman (news, bio, voting record), a Democrat with strong neo-conservative views on the Middle East, to replace Rumsfeld. Lieberman, who was defeated two months ago in the Democratic primary election by a virtually unknown anti-war candidate, Ned Lamont, was reelected with Republican votes and money to the Senate as an independent in one of the few pieces of good news that the hawks have received over the past 48 hours.
But Lieberman's reelection could not overcome the tide of bad news for the neo-conservatives and their main sponsor and protector within the administration, Cheney, who, now deprived of both his former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby (indicted for lying to a federal grand jury in October 2005), and Rumsfeld, now lies isolated and exposed.
"Rumsfeld is his guy," Woodward told the TV public-affairs programme '60 Minutes' in October. "And Cheney confided to an aide that if Rumsfeld goes, next they'll be after Cheney."
Remember Arlo and group "W" bench warmers unfit for military service, and have hope you don't get "Stuck in Iraq!"
"What if five people walked into Alice's Restaurant, and walked out?
People might think it is a movement...!" - Arlo Guthrie
FEMA official gets dunked in New Orleans
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI, Associated Press Writer Sat Nov 11, 9:46 PM ET
NEW ORLEANS - For $5, residents of one of the city's hardest hit neighborhoods received three tennis balls Saturday — and a chance to vent 15 months of frustration at the slow pace of rebuilding since Hurricane Katrina.
The object of their annoyance sat perched atop a dunk tank — Bob Josephson, director of intergovernmental affairs in Louisiana for the reviled and much-lampooned
Federal Emergency Management Agency.
"C'mon, the water's warm. Let's go!" Josephson cried out, as he shivered above the tub of frigid water.
It's a reminder that in spite of the devastation and lingering anger at government failures, New Orleans maintains its quirky sense of humor. Money raised was to go toward rebuilding efforts in the Broadmoor neighborhood, including planning and community activities.
Nine-year-old Robert Weiss, who lost his toys during Katrina, stepped up and handed over a crumpled $5 bill. In a single, graceful motion, he slammed the ball into the dunking wall, releasing Josephson into the water with a splash. The crowd roared.
In less than an hour, residents shelled out $250 to dunk Josephson. Several took repeat turns.
The dunking booth, a mainstay of county fairs, took on a political dimension a year after the Category 3 storm punched through the city's protective levees, submerging 80 percent of New Orleans.
Politicians invited to be dunked who politely declined included Mayor Ray Nagin and Gov. Kathleen Blanco. No shows included City Council President Oliver Thomas and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in charge of fixing the city's levees.
Wearing sweat pants, newly elected city councilwoman Stacy Head took the bone-chilling plunge. Her colleague, freshman councilwoman Shelley Midura, arrived wrapped in a warm jacket.
"Please don't make me do it. I'm chicken," she pleaded — and organizers agreed to accept a $50 donation to the Broadmoor Improvement Association in exchange for her no-show. An hour later, she braved the cold water, raising more than $100.
Broadmoor is one of the storm's few success stories: Sixty percent of the neighborhood's 2,900 homes are currently occupied and undergoing renovation, one of the highest percentages among the city's flooded areas. Although it took on between 8 and 9 feet of water, it was one of the first neighborhoods to produce a full-fledged rebuilding plan, as required by the Louisiana Recovery Authority.
Down Napoleon Avenue, signs proclaiming "Broadmoor Lives" hang from lamp poles, a message repeated on bumper stickers and on lawn signs.
Yet the neighborhood also shows the daunting challenges that lie ahead. Behind the dunking booth, red flowers bloomed in the garden of a manicured, fully renovated bungalow. Yet the lawn also had one of the ubiquitous "For Sale" signs, symptomatic of the ongoing exodus from the city.
After spending nearly 45 minutes in the dunking booth, FEMA's Josephson took off his sopping shirt and tried to warm himself with a towel.
He explained that FEMA is a part of the community and allowing himself to be dunked was an attempt to show that he and his much-criticized colleagues are not so different from their neighbors.
"It's all in good fun," he added, as residents thanked him and offered dry clothes and a place to change.
Saturday, 11 November 2006
"What if five people walked into Alice's Restaurant, and walked out?
People might think it is a movement...!" - Arlo Guthrie
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI, Associated Press Writer Sat Nov 11, 9:46 PM ET
NEW ORLEANS - For $5, residents of one of the city's hardest hit neighborhoods received three tennis balls Saturday — and a chance to vent 15 months of frustration at the slow pace of rebuilding since Hurricane Katrina.
The object of their annoyance sat perched atop a dunk tank — Bob Josephson, director of intergovernmental affairs in Louisiana for the reviled and much-lampooned
Federal Emergency Management Agency.
"C'mon, the water's warm. Let's go!" Josephson cried out, as he shivered above the tub of frigid water.
It's a reminder that in spite of the devastation and lingering anger at government failures, New Orleans maintains its quirky sense of humor. Money raised was to go toward rebuilding efforts in the Broadmoor neighborhood, including planning and community activities.
Nine-year-old Robert Weiss, who lost his toys during Katrina, stepped up and handed over a crumpled $5 bill. In a single, graceful motion, he slammed the ball into the dunking wall, releasing Josephson into the water with a splash. The crowd roared.
In less than an hour, residents shelled out $250 to dunk Josephson. Several took repeat turns.
The dunking booth, a mainstay of county fairs, took on a political dimension a year after the Category 3 storm punched through the city's protective levees, submerging 80 percent of New Orleans.
Politicians invited to be dunked who politely declined included Mayor Ray Nagin and Gov. Kathleen Blanco. No shows included City Council President Oliver Thomas and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in charge of fixing the city's levees.
Wearing sweat pants, newly elected city councilwoman Stacy Head took the bone-chilling plunge. Her colleague, freshman councilwoman Shelley Midura, arrived wrapped in a warm jacket.
"Please don't make me do it. I'm chicken," she pleaded — and organizers agreed to accept a $50 donation to the Broadmoor Improvement Association in exchange for her no-show. An hour later, she braved the cold water, raising more than $100.
Broadmoor is one of the storm's few success stories: Sixty percent of the neighborhood's 2,900 homes are currently occupied and undergoing renovation, one of the highest percentages among the city's flooded areas. Although it took on between 8 and 9 feet of water, it was one of the first neighborhoods to produce a full-fledged rebuilding plan, as required by the Louisiana Recovery Authority.
Down Napoleon Avenue, signs proclaiming "Broadmoor Lives" hang from lamp poles, a message repeated on bumper stickers and on lawn signs.
Yet the neighborhood also shows the daunting challenges that lie ahead. Behind the dunking booth, red flowers bloomed in the garden of a manicured, fully renovated bungalow. Yet the lawn also had one of the ubiquitous "For Sale" signs, symptomatic of the ongoing exodus from the city.
After spending nearly 45 minutes in the dunking booth, FEMA's Josephson took off his sopping shirt and tried to warm himself with a towel.
He explained that FEMA is a part of the community and allowing himself to be dunked was an attempt to show that he and his much-criticized colleagues are not so different from their neighbors.
"It's all in good fun," he added, as residents thanked him and offered dry clothes and a place to change.
Thinking of putting a lid on number of Crosses, Stars of David, and Cresent Moons...
As Iraq war drags on, so does a temporary memorial
By Steve Chawkins, Times Staff Writer
November 10, 2006
SANTA BARBARA — It looks like an engineer's dream: Forty-nine rows and 52 columns of white, wooden crosses a foot-and-a-half high, each exactly 36 inches from its neighbor, each row exactly 60 inches from the next, a precise reckoning of combat death gleaming on the beach beside Stearns Wharf.
Each cross in the display mounted every Sunday represents an American fatality in Iraq.
At its start three years ago, the project had 340 of them. Last Sunday, there were 2,831.
In a telling comment on the war's unexpected duration, organizers of the memorial called Arlington West now are talking about picking a number — perhaps 3,000 — and building no more crosses after it's reached.
"It's strictly a matter of logistics — there's just a limit to how much room we can take up and how many crosses we can handle," said Dan Seidenberg, president of the local chapter of a group called Veterans for Peace. "I mean: How long will this war drag on?"
About a dozen volunteers have shown up week after week since the start. They're joined by up to 30 others who appear now and again. Some started coming only in recent months, prompted by rumors that the project would cease for lack of help.
On a recent Sunday, Rod Edwards, an engineer for the Goleta Water District, walked briskly down the rows, hunching over to secure laminated, handwritten nameplates, using two rubber bands per cross.
"You almost feel you know them after a while," said Edwards, who volunteers for the task each week. "It just tears your heart out."
Here he draped a string of rosary beads that a soldier's parents had left for their son's marker; there he propped up a plastic-encased obituary for Sgt. Mark A. Maida, who "deployed to Iraq and adopted a puppy there named Maxine." He was 22.
On this day, Edwards made quick work of installing more than 1,200 nametags.
Marine Cpl. Jorge A. Gonzalez, 20, of Los Angeles: "Graduate of El Monte High School and father of a newborn."
Marine Lance Cpl. Jesus Suarez del Solar, 20, of Escondido: "RIP: Our Hero and Aztec warrior."
When there were fewer crosses, each name was displayed. Now, the names of all fatalities are dutifully recorded on nameplates, but volunteers put up only those whose friends or families have visited.
Not long ago, Edwards said, he comforted a sailor who had dropped by to seek out the name of his buddy.
"He seemed fine at first," Edwards said. "But when he saw the name, he just lost it. He threw himself on the sand and cried."
When the crosses are taken down about eight hours later, the nameplates are filed away just so, allowing Edwards and other volunteers to honor requests that troops who died together be grouped side by side. One such grouping has 17 crosses. One family asked for a Star of David instead of a cross, and that request also was honored.
Arlington West has inspired about a dozen similar installations around the United States, including one on the beach at Santa Monica. Except for a few rainouts, the Santa Barbara display has been erected every Sunday since Nov. 2, 2003.
"We sent up an SOS this summer, and that brought a spate of new volunteers," said Bob Potter, a retired drama professor and an officer of Veterans for Peace. "But people get exhausted."
The ideal, Potter said, would be to continue to place a marker for each battlefield death — but the sheer size of the task might make that impossible.
A committee is grappling with the question of limiting the crosses, which now span nearly an acre of prime beachfront. Although the city has given its blessing to the project, some volunteers grimly anticipate that it might one day crowd sunbathers and spill over into areas reserved for beach volleyball.
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Measures not only inhumane but wrongly place the burden of punishment on the dogs, not the owners.
Beijing crackdown on dogs sparks protest
By CHARLES HUTZLER, Associated Press Writer Sat Nov 11, 8:05 AM ET
BEIJING - Demonstrators angry at a crackdown on dogs staged a noisy protest in China's capital on Saturday, decrying police killings of dogs and new limits on pet ownership.
About 200 police strung up tape to cordon off the roughly 500 demonstrators who waved signs and chanted near the entrance to the Beijing Zoo. Many clutched stuffed animals and wore buttons that said "Stop the indiscriminate killing."
Police detained at least 18 demonstrators in nearby vans for several hours before releasing them, protesters said. Police declined comment.
Touching off the demonstration were new restrictions that limit households to one dog and ban larger breeds. Police in recent days have gone through city neighborhoods, seizing unregistered dogs and beating some of them to death, witnesses said.
"All of us who have dogs to walk are feeling very anxious," said Wu Jiang, a protester and pet shop owner who has a yellow Labrador retriever. "Most of us only dare come out at night and even then we have to be really careful."
Keeping pets has been controversial in China for decades. Banned as a middle-class habit during the radical Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and '70s, dog-raising surged anew with the introduction of free-market reforms.
Complaints about vicious dogs, barking and excrement-covered sidewalks prompted Beijing to impose height limits in 1995, banning dogs taller than 14 inches from the city center. Many cities have enacted similar measures.
A sharp rise in rabies cases this year led to a renewed clampdown across China. State-run newspapers reported Saturday that 326 people died from rabies in October, again making it the leading cause of death among infectious diseases.
To enforce the crackdown, police in many parts of the country have beaten stray or unregistered dogs to death, sometimes in front of their owners.
Beijing responded by raising fines for having unregistered and unvaccinated dogs, adopting the new one-dog-per-family rule and extending the ban on larger dogs from the city center to encompass the surrounding suburbs.
"We're asking city residents to go along with us and if they discover any unregistered or stray dogs to report to us by phone," the Beijing News quoted the city's vice director of agriculture, Ren Zonggang, as saying in comments on the government's Web site.
In some cases, protesters said, dog-owners have been given as little as one week's notice to get rid of their large dogs or move to outlying districts. Protesters said the measures are not only inhumane but wrongly place the burden of punishment on the dogs, not the owners.
"The main point here should be the way dog owners raise their dogs," said Jeff He of the International Fund for Animal Welfare in Beijing, who watched the protest from beyond the cordon of yellow and black police tape.
Organizers of the protest said they had applied for a permit but had been refused. Though the demonstration was largely peaceful, anti-riot squads in helmets and dark uniforms were dispatched, plainclothes police milled through the crowds and large numbers of uniformed police sat in trucks down the street.
Police tried to prevent reporters from taking pictures and warned protesters that they could suffer serious consequences for their actions.
"It was like martial law out there," said Wu Jiang, the pet shop owner. "We said to them 'We're taxpayers. Why are you treating us this way?'"
Police used loudspeakers on a nearby van to urge protesters to take their complaints to a special desk set up inside the zoo. Nine representatives of the protesters were taken inside the zoo to discuss the protest with police, protesters said.
Confined Nobel laureate: aid needed
By AYE AYE WIN, Associated Press Writer Sat Nov 11, 12:32 PM ET
YANGON, Myanmar - Aung San Suu Kyi, the detained Nobel Peace Prize winner, told a U.N. official during a brief and rare meeting Saturday that she was in "good health" but needed more regular medical attention, a U.N. statement said.
Suu Kyi made the comments to U.N. Undersecretary-General for Political Affairs Ibrahim Gambari during an hour-long meeting at the diplomat's government guesthouse.
"Aung San Suu Kyi conveyed to Gambari that she is in good health but requires more regular medical visits," said the statement issued by the U.N.'s office in Yangon. The 61-year-old political prisoner has spent 11 of the last 17 years in detention, mostly under house arrest.
Criminal brains of the outfit still at large...like Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush, Rove, etc.!
7th mass grave found in northeast Bosnia
Fri Nov 10, 6:48 PM ET
SNAGOVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina - Forensic experts said Friday they found a new mass grave in northeastern Bosnia believed to contain the remains of more than 100 victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre where Serb forces buried some of the almost 8,000 victims.
The grave in Snagovo village, about 30 miles north of Srebrenica, was found after experts received a tip-off from an undisclosed source, said Murat Hurtic, head of Bosnia's Missing Persons Commission.
It is the seventh mass grave Hurtic's team has found near Srebrenica, the scene of Europe's worst massacre since World War II.
"So far we have exhumed 19 whole bodies and 4 incomplete bodies," said Alma Dzaferovic, district attorney in charge of genocide crimes. "We have found blindfolds, wires, wallets of the victims of Srebrenica massacre from 1995."
Local and international experts have been digging for years in Snagovo, finding so-called "secondary" mass graves in the area just outside of the city of Zvornik on the border with Serbia.
Such graves contain bodies originally buried elsewhere, but later moved to the "secondary" location in an effort to cover up the crime. The remains are often only partial, as those involved in reburying them often used bulldozers to bring them up from the first grave.
Bosnian Serbs overran the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica near the end of the 1992-95 war, which the
United Nations had declared a safe zone, and killed as many as 8,000 Muslim men and boys.
Thousands of Srebrenica victims have been exhumed from over 60 mass graves around the ill-fated town, with more than 2,500 of them identified by DNA analysis.
The Srebrenica massacre prompted the U.N. war crimes court in
The Hague to bring genocide charges against several suspects. Two main suspects, Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his army chief Ratko Mladic, remain at large.
More Corporate Generals coming up the line, Sir!
3rd son from Wash. family sent to Iraq
By MELANTHIA MITCHELL, Associated Press Writer Sat Nov 11, 7:02 AM ET
SEATTLE - Growing up, Charlie Parsons played sports, liked to travel and enjoyed learning other languages — just like his older twin brothers. When they went off to West Point, Parsons soon followed. Now, four months after Capt. Bill Parsons and Capt. Huber Parsons III deployed to
Iraq, younger brother Charlie Parsons is again following their lead.
"I didn't really look at it as following in their footsteps. We just have similar interests," said Charlie Parsons, a second lieutenant from Miami, who also has a twin sister, Christine, a teacher in Jackson, Miss.
All three brothers are members of the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, a Stryker Brigade Combat Team from the Army's Fort Lewis, south of Seattle. When Charlie Parsons leaves for Baghdad on Monday, he and his brothers will join an unknown number of siblings serving together in the military.
The Army doesn't maintain a database of family members serving at the same time.
"It's not normally something that you put on your records," said Joseph Piek, a Fort Lewis spokesman, noting he recalls only two sets of brothers who have served together recently.
One of the most famous military families was the five Sullivan brothers of Waterloo, Iowa, who died during World War II when their Navy ship, the USS Juneau, was struck Nov. 13, 1942, by a Japanese torpedo.
The Navy now discourages family members from serving together on the same ship, but policy doesn't exist that prohibits them from doing so, Piek said.
"In instances where siblings or a husband and wife might serve together ... they generally take their own precautions," he said. "They make sure they aren't traveling in the same convoy or living in the same vicinity of one another."
Though the Parsons are in the same brigade, they will likely have little opportunity to see each other.
Huber Parsons III, 28, will soon take command of A Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, while Bill Parsons is slated to lead A Company, 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment.
Charlie Parsons, 23, is currently assigned to brigade headquarters at Fort Lewis, but will receive a new assignment after he deploys to Baghdad for eight months.
"We're not there to see each other," he said. "The benefit isn't so we can hang out, but so we're all home together and can see each other on weekends."
Bill and Huber Parsons III, who are training Iraqi Army soldiers in Mosul, did not return e-mails seeking comment.
Their father said his older sons are looking forward to their brother's arrival.
"They're happy for him to be coming," Huber Parsons II said Friday in a telephone interview from Miami, where he works as a lawyer. "I think their view is he's ready and needed to shoulder his share of the load."
The Parsons won't be together on Charlie Parsons' last weekend in the United States, but they said their goodbyes earlier this month. And Charlie Parsons and his father got to spend time together on a cross-country drive to Fort Lewis.
Huber Parsons II believes his youngest son, like his brothers, is ready to serve, both physically and mentally.
"Our boys are very interested in service to others, in this case the nation and to something that's bigger than themselves," said the elder Huber Parsons, himself a former Army reservist.
The family has already endured several of the twins' deployments.
Huber Parsons III spent a year in Iraq in 2003 and Bill Parsons was in
Kosovo on a peacekeeping mission around 2002. Bill Parsons then deployed twice each to
Afghanistan and Iraq on three-month missions.
"Now they're back in Iraq and Charlie's packing his duffel bag," their father said.
The dangers of war do not go unnoticed by a family with so much to lose.
The elder Huber Parsons said he and wife, Phyllis, rely on their faith, as well as their sons' training, commanders and colleagues to protect what they can no longer keep safe.
"Yes, we shed tears from time to time, both of joy and apprehension," he said, his voice breaking. "There comes a time to let your children go, and we're past that point. They are doing what they feel called to do."
"I'd sell 36 or 37 dozen doughnuts a day. We made about a 33% profit,
THE STATE
Bakery truck driver puts the icing on a 54-year career
A slice of neighborhood history ends as Herman Langley, who delivered smiles and doughnuts for 54 years, retires.
By Bob Pool, Times Staff Writer
November 11, 2006
The doughnut man is on his last roll.
His ancient Helms Bakery truck — the battered 1965 van with the "Helms" sign repainted to read "Herms Bakery" — is making its final rounds through the City of Commerce and Montebello.
After 54 years making door-to-door deliveries of bread and pastries to people in southeast Los Angeles County, Herman Langley is retiring.
Langley, who will turn 79 next month, is a throwback to a more gentle era. Friendly and trusting, he is a reminder of a time when competing bakery trucks cruised the streets of Los Angeles and its suburbs, tooting distinctive whistles and selling 5-cent crullers and 19-cent loaves of bread at the curb.
It was a sweet service for customers and a decent job for doughnut men.
Homemakers and schoolchildren had easy access to fresh rolls and pastries in communities that sometimes had few neighborhood markets. Langley kept running tabs in a spiral notebook on the dashboard for those who needed to buy baked goods on credit.
When children clutching a few pennies flagged him down to get a doughnut, Langley was cheerful and courteous. After each purchase, he would escort the youngsters safely back across the street.
Children never forgot the doughnut man. One of them even married him when she grew up.
"My second wife would buy doughnuts from me when she was 12 years old. She recognized me on my route in Montebello when she was 27. I was with Linda for 28 years until she passed away," Langley says wistfully.
In the early days, gasoline was cheap, so bakery truck drivers could make a living even if they only earned a few pennies on each item.
Like his competitors in official Helms Bakery and Golden Crust Bakery trucks, Langley purchased his bread and cakes wholesale and sold them at retail prices. Driving slowly through residential streets, he announced his arrival by pulling a lever next to the steering wheel that pumped a tiny bellows, blowing the whistle.
He served rolls and doughnuts from wooden drawers tucked in the back of the van. Part of the cabinet was chilled so that creampuffs and berry pies stayed fresh even on the hottest summer day.
"We'd pay 3 cents for a doughnut and sell it for 5 cents. I'd sell 36 or 37 dozen doughnuts a day. We made about a 33% profit," Langley says.
Over the years, Langley drove nearly 609,000 miles covering his 45-mile bread route. He wore out six trucks — each purchased from West Los Angeles-based Helms Bakery. Always willing to sell surplus or used trucks, Helms also sold wholesale bakery goods to its own drivers' competitors.
Helms Bakery went out of business in 1969. Langley blames part of the demise on an effort by Helms drivers to unionize.
"I could never understand why they tried to do that," he says of the Helms drivers. "They were independent, just like me. We all bought our own stuff and resold it."
Langley purchased his current truck — a former Helms van still plastered with county health license decals dating to 1968 — about 16 years ago. Unlike the panel trucks that required him to step outside and walk to the back to reach the bakery drawers, the boxy Chevrolet van let him stay inside and keep dry in rainy weather.
But by then, life was starting to change for doughnut men.
Small, local wholesale bakeries began closing. That forced Langley to make a 30-mile round trip to downtown Los Angeles to buy his daily stock. The extra travel time meant that he got a late start on his route, forcing him to drive after dark most days to complete it.
When the lever-operated whistle quit working, there were no parts to fix it, so Langley installed a bell outside the driver's window. When the refrigerator broke, he stored pies in an ice chest. The cooler held sodas, tortillas and other snacks that he sold toward the end of his career.
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By Pardoning Nixon, Ford paved the way for these pissants. Book 'em, Danno!
U.S. group again seeks charges against Rumsfeld
Fri Nov 10, 4:48 PM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S.-based Center for Constitutional Rights again will seek criminal charges against outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in a German court over detainee treatment at
Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons.
The complaint also will name Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, former
CIA director George Tenet, high-ranking military officers and others.
The center hopes German prosecutors will take up the case under Germany's universal jurisdiction law, which allows them to pursue certain cases originating anywhere in the world, a spokeswoman said on Friday.
Rumsfeld resigned on Wednesday after nearly six years on the job after the opposition Democratic Party regained control of both houses of the U.S. Congress from the Republicans amid voter discontent with the war in
Iraq.
The Center for Constitutional Rights is challenging what it considers U.S. torture and indefinite detention of detainees in several court cases. In 2004, the center had asked German prosecutors to file a criminal case against Rumsfeld over the U.S. military abuse of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
German prosecutors dropped that case.
Now the center will try again, this time adding a plaintiff who was detained at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the spokeswoman said.
The complaint will be forwarded to German federal prosecutors on Tuesday, she said.
Private citizens can file criminal complaints in Germany but it is up to prosecutors to decide whether to pursue charges, the center said.
A
Pentagon spokesman declined to comment.
Except for children and others unable to vote, there are NO INNOCENT Israelis or Palestinians!
Palestinian PM offers to resign for aid
By IBRAHIM BARZAK, Associated Press Writer Fri Nov 10, 7:25 PM ET
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said Friday he would be willing to sacrifice his job if the international community would lift economic sanctions that have crippled his Hamas-led government.
Haniyeh's statement was the latest indication that the Islamic Hamas group was nearing a deal to form a national unity government with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' moderate
Fatah Party that would be made up of independent experts.
Such a coalition would presumably present a more moderate face to the world and convince the West to restore hundreds of millions of dollars in international funding.
"When the issue of the siege is on one side, and my being prime minister is on the other, let the siege be lifted to end the suffering of the Palestinian people," Haniyeh said, referring to the sanctions that have caused widespread hardship in the
West Bank and
Gaza Strip.
Haniyeh's comments came a day after Abbas spoke on the phone with his main political rival, Hamas' supreme leader Khaled Mashaal — their first conversation since April. Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said their discussion indicated the sides were nearing agreement.
The international sanctions, including tax revenues
Israel has withheld since Hamas took power in March, has made it largely impossible for Hamas to pay the government's 165,000 employees.
The West, including the United States, has said it will not lift sanctions unless Hamas recognizes Israel, renounces violence and accepts past peace deals, something Hamas has so far refused to do.
The program of the proposed new unity government is vague on the key issue of recognizing Israel, calling for a Palestinian state on only the lands captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast War. Hamas' charter calls for an Islamic state on those lands as well as Israel.
In addition to the economic sanctions, Palestinians in Gaza have weathered a monthslong Israeli offensive that began after Hamas militants tunneled into Israel and captured a soldier in June.
More than 50 people have been killed in recent days in the Israeli artillery barrage, which aimed at preventing Palestinian militants from firing rockets at Israel. Among them were 19 killed Wednesday in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun when shells landed as residents were sleeping.
The
U.N. Security Council will vote Saturday on an Arab-backed draft resolution condemning the Israeli military offensive in Gaza and demanding a withdrawal of Israeli troops from the coastal strip, a European diplomat said.
The draft requests the U.N. secretary-general establish a "fact-finding mission" to probe Wednesday's attack in Beit Hanoun, and asks the international community to restart the peace process with the "possible establishment of an international mechanism for protection of the civilian populations."
The U.S. blocked a U.N. Security Council resolution this summer demanding Israel halt its offensive in the Gaza Strip. It was the first Security Council veto in nearly two years.
Meanwhile, thousands marched through Middle East capitals Friday to protest an Israeli offensive, their calls often spilling into a broader outcry against America's policy in the region and its backing of Israel.
In Jordan, some 1,000 demonstrators filed into the streets after Muslim noon prayers, chanting slogans in support of the Palestinians, but also against the sentencing of
Saddam Hussein in neighboring
Iraq.
In Sudan, about 2,000 people gathered in front of the
United Nations mission building and burnt American and Israeli flags. "Down down USA, we won't be governed by the
CIA," chanted the crowd, which was prevented by police from approaching the U.N. building.
Similar protests were held in Egypt,
Syria and Lebanon.
In an interview with NBC's "Today" show Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert defended himself against critics who said Israel was using too much force against the Palestinians, saying he thinks "we are very, very restrained in using power."
"When someone criticizes us, I say what would you do when rockets fall on the heads of innocent Israelis?" he said.
Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz ordered the military to "re-evaluate its policy of artillery fire in Gaza," his ministry said in a statement.
Friday, 10 November 2006
As Iraq war drags on, so does a temporary memorial
By Steve Chawkins, Times Staff Writer
November 10, 2006
SANTA BARBARA — It looks like an engineer's dream: Forty-nine rows and 52 columns of white, wooden crosses a foot-and-a-half high, each exactly 36 inches from its neighbor, each row exactly 60 inches from the next, a precise reckoning of combat death gleaming on the beach beside Stearns Wharf.
Each cross in the display mounted every Sunday represents an American fatality in Iraq.
At its start three years ago, the project had 340 of them. Last Sunday, there were 2,831.
In a telling comment on the war's unexpected duration, organizers of the memorial called Arlington West now are talking about picking a number — perhaps 3,000 — and building no more crosses after it's reached.
"It's strictly a matter of logistics — there's just a limit to how much room we can take up and how many crosses we can handle," said Dan Seidenberg, president of the local chapter of a group called Veterans for Peace. "I mean: How long will this war drag on?"
About a dozen volunteers have shown up week after week since the start. They're joined by up to 30 others who appear now and again. Some started coming only in recent months, prompted by rumors that the project would cease for lack of help.
On a recent Sunday, Rod Edwards, an engineer for the Goleta Water District, walked briskly down the rows, hunching over to secure laminated, handwritten nameplates, using two rubber bands per cross.
"You almost feel you know them after a while," said Edwards, who volunteers for the task each week. "It just tears your heart out."
Here he draped a string of rosary beads that a soldier's parents had left for their son's marker; there he propped up a plastic-encased obituary for Sgt. Mark A. Maida, who "deployed to Iraq and adopted a puppy there named Maxine." He was 22.
On this day, Edwards made quick work of installing more than 1,200 nametags.
Marine Cpl. Jorge A. Gonzalez, 20, of Los Angeles: "Graduate of El Monte High School and father of a newborn."
Marine Lance Cpl. Jesus Suarez del Solar, 20, of Escondido: "RIP: Our Hero and Aztec warrior."
When there were fewer crosses, each name was displayed. Now, the names of all fatalities are dutifully recorded on nameplates, but volunteers put up only those whose friends or families have visited.
Not long ago, Edwards said, he comforted a sailor who had dropped by to seek out the name of his buddy.
"He seemed fine at first," Edwards said. "But when he saw the name, he just lost it. He threw himself on the sand and cried."
When the crosses are taken down about eight hours later, the nameplates are filed away just so, allowing Edwards and other volunteers to honor requests that troops who died together be grouped side by side. One such grouping has 17 crosses. One family asked for a Star of David instead of a cross, and that request also was honored.
Arlington West has inspired about a dozen similar installations around the United States, including one on the beach at Santa Monica. Except for a few rainouts, the Santa Barbara display has been erected every Sunday since Nov. 2, 2003.
"We sent up an SOS this summer, and that brought a spate of new volunteers," said Bob Potter, a retired drama professor and an officer of Veterans for Peace. "But people get exhausted."
The ideal, Potter said, would be to continue to place a marker for each battlefield death — but the sheer size of the task might make that impossible.
A committee is grappling with the question of limiting the crosses, which now span nearly an acre of prime beachfront. Although the city has given its blessing to the project, some volunteers grimly anticipate that it might one day crowd sunbathers and spill over into areas reserved for beach volleyball.
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Beijing crackdown on dogs sparks protest
By CHARLES HUTZLER, Associated Press Writer Sat Nov 11, 8:05 AM ET
BEIJING - Demonstrators angry at a crackdown on dogs staged a noisy protest in China's capital on Saturday, decrying police killings of dogs and new limits on pet ownership.
About 200 police strung up tape to cordon off the roughly 500 demonstrators who waved signs and chanted near the entrance to the Beijing Zoo. Many clutched stuffed animals and wore buttons that said "Stop the indiscriminate killing."
Police detained at least 18 demonstrators in nearby vans for several hours before releasing them, protesters said. Police declined comment.
Touching off the demonstration were new restrictions that limit households to one dog and ban larger breeds. Police in recent days have gone through city neighborhoods, seizing unregistered dogs and beating some of them to death, witnesses said.
"All of us who have dogs to walk are feeling very anxious," said Wu Jiang, a protester and pet shop owner who has a yellow Labrador retriever. "Most of us only dare come out at night and even then we have to be really careful."
Keeping pets has been controversial in China for decades. Banned as a middle-class habit during the radical Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and '70s, dog-raising surged anew with the introduction of free-market reforms.
Complaints about vicious dogs, barking and excrement-covered sidewalks prompted Beijing to impose height limits in 1995, banning dogs taller than 14 inches from the city center. Many cities have enacted similar measures.
A sharp rise in rabies cases this year led to a renewed clampdown across China. State-run newspapers reported Saturday that 326 people died from rabies in October, again making it the leading cause of death among infectious diseases.
To enforce the crackdown, police in many parts of the country have beaten stray or unregistered dogs to death, sometimes in front of their owners.
Beijing responded by raising fines for having unregistered and unvaccinated dogs, adopting the new one-dog-per-family rule and extending the ban on larger dogs from the city center to encompass the surrounding suburbs.
"We're asking city residents to go along with us and if they discover any unregistered or stray dogs to report to us by phone," the Beijing News quoted the city's vice director of agriculture, Ren Zonggang, as saying in comments on the government's Web site.
In some cases, protesters said, dog-owners have been given as little as one week's notice to get rid of their large dogs or move to outlying districts. Protesters said the measures are not only inhumane but wrongly place the burden of punishment on the dogs, not the owners.
"The main point here should be the way dog owners raise their dogs," said Jeff He of the International Fund for Animal Welfare in Beijing, who watched the protest from beyond the cordon of yellow and black police tape.
Organizers of the protest said they had applied for a permit but had been refused. Though the demonstration was largely peaceful, anti-riot squads in helmets and dark uniforms were dispatched, plainclothes police milled through the crowds and large numbers of uniformed police sat in trucks down the street.
Police tried to prevent reporters from taking pictures and warned protesters that they could suffer serious consequences for their actions.
"It was like martial law out there," said Wu Jiang, the pet shop owner. "We said to them 'We're taxpayers. Why are you treating us this way?'"
Police used loudspeakers on a nearby van to urge protesters to take their complaints to a special desk set up inside the zoo. Nine representatives of the protesters were taken inside the zoo to discuss the protest with police, protesters said.
By AYE AYE WIN, Associated Press Writer Sat Nov 11, 12:32 PM ET
YANGON, Myanmar - Aung San Suu Kyi, the detained Nobel Peace Prize winner, told a U.N. official during a brief and rare meeting Saturday that she was in "good health" but needed more regular medical attention, a U.N. statement said.
Suu Kyi made the comments to U.N. Undersecretary-General for Political Affairs Ibrahim Gambari during an hour-long meeting at the diplomat's government guesthouse.
"Aung San Suu Kyi conveyed to Gambari that she is in good health but requires more regular medical visits," said the statement issued by the U.N.'s office in Yangon. The 61-year-old political prisoner has spent 11 of the last 17 years in detention, mostly under house arrest.
7th mass grave found in northeast Bosnia
Fri Nov 10, 6:48 PM ET
SNAGOVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina - Forensic experts said Friday they found a new mass grave in northeastern Bosnia believed to contain the remains of more than 100 victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre where Serb forces buried some of the almost 8,000 victims.
The grave in Snagovo village, about 30 miles north of Srebrenica, was found after experts received a tip-off from an undisclosed source, said Murat Hurtic, head of Bosnia's Missing Persons Commission.
It is the seventh mass grave Hurtic's team has found near Srebrenica, the scene of Europe's worst massacre since World War II.
"So far we have exhumed 19 whole bodies and 4 incomplete bodies," said Alma Dzaferovic, district attorney in charge of genocide crimes. "We have found blindfolds, wires, wallets of the victims of Srebrenica massacre from 1995."
Local and international experts have been digging for years in Snagovo, finding so-called "secondary" mass graves in the area just outside of the city of Zvornik on the border with Serbia.
Such graves contain bodies originally buried elsewhere, but later moved to the "secondary" location in an effort to cover up the crime. The remains are often only partial, as those involved in reburying them often used bulldozers to bring them up from the first grave.
Bosnian Serbs overran the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica near the end of the 1992-95 war, which the
United Nations had declared a safe zone, and killed as many as 8,000 Muslim men and boys.
Thousands of Srebrenica victims have been exhumed from over 60 mass graves around the ill-fated town, with more than 2,500 of them identified by DNA analysis.
The Srebrenica massacre prompted the U.N. war crimes court in
The Hague to bring genocide charges against several suspects. Two main suspects, Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his army chief Ratko Mladic, remain at large.
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Updated: Saturday, 11 November 2006 2:46 PM CST
Updated: Saturday, 11 November 2006 2:46 PM CST
3rd son from Wash. family sent to Iraq
By MELANTHIA MITCHELL, Associated Press Writer Sat Nov 11, 7:02 AM ET
SEATTLE - Growing up, Charlie Parsons played sports, liked to travel and enjoyed learning other languages — just like his older twin brothers. When they went off to West Point, Parsons soon followed. Now, four months after Capt. Bill Parsons and Capt. Huber Parsons III deployed to
Iraq, younger brother Charlie Parsons is again following their lead.
"I didn't really look at it as following in their footsteps. We just have similar interests," said Charlie Parsons, a second lieutenant from Miami, who also has a twin sister, Christine, a teacher in Jackson, Miss.
All three brothers are members of the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, a Stryker Brigade Combat Team from the Army's Fort Lewis, south of Seattle. When Charlie Parsons leaves for Baghdad on Monday, he and his brothers will join an unknown number of siblings serving together in the military.
The Army doesn't maintain a database of family members serving at the same time.
"It's not normally something that you put on your records," said Joseph Piek, a Fort Lewis spokesman, noting he recalls only two sets of brothers who have served together recently.
One of the most famous military families was the five Sullivan brothers of Waterloo, Iowa, who died during World War II when their Navy ship, the USS Juneau, was struck Nov. 13, 1942, by a Japanese torpedo.
The Navy now discourages family members from serving together on the same ship, but policy doesn't exist that prohibits them from doing so, Piek said.
"In instances where siblings or a husband and wife might serve together ... they generally take their own precautions," he said. "They make sure they aren't traveling in the same convoy or living in the same vicinity of one another."
Though the Parsons are in the same brigade, they will likely have little opportunity to see each other.
Huber Parsons III, 28, will soon take command of A Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, while Bill Parsons is slated to lead A Company, 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment.
Charlie Parsons, 23, is currently assigned to brigade headquarters at Fort Lewis, but will receive a new assignment after he deploys to Baghdad for eight months.
"We're not there to see each other," he said. "The benefit isn't so we can hang out, but so we're all home together and can see each other on weekends."
Bill and Huber Parsons III, who are training Iraqi Army soldiers in Mosul, did not return e-mails seeking comment.
Their father said his older sons are looking forward to their brother's arrival.
"They're happy for him to be coming," Huber Parsons II said Friday in a telephone interview from Miami, where he works as a lawyer. "I think their view is he's ready and needed to shoulder his share of the load."
The Parsons won't be together on Charlie Parsons' last weekend in the United States, but they said their goodbyes earlier this month. And Charlie Parsons and his father got to spend time together on a cross-country drive to Fort Lewis.
Huber Parsons II believes his youngest son, like his brothers, is ready to serve, both physically and mentally.
"Our boys are very interested in service to others, in this case the nation and to something that's bigger than themselves," said the elder Huber Parsons, himself a former Army reservist.
The family has already endured several of the twins' deployments.
Huber Parsons III spent a year in Iraq in 2003 and Bill Parsons was in
Kosovo on a peacekeeping mission around 2002. Bill Parsons then deployed twice each to
Afghanistan and Iraq on three-month missions.
"Now they're back in Iraq and Charlie's packing his duffel bag," their father said.
The dangers of war do not go unnoticed by a family with so much to lose.
The elder Huber Parsons said he and wife, Phyllis, rely on their faith, as well as their sons' training, commanders and colleagues to protect what they can no longer keep safe.
"Yes, we shed tears from time to time, both of joy and apprehension," he said, his voice breaking. "There comes a time to let your children go, and we're past that point. They are doing what they feel called to do."
THE STATE
Bakery truck driver puts the icing on a 54-year career
A slice of neighborhood history ends as Herman Langley, who delivered smiles and doughnuts for 54 years, retires.
By Bob Pool, Times Staff Writer
November 11, 2006
The doughnut man is on his last roll.
His ancient Helms Bakery truck — the battered 1965 van with the "Helms" sign repainted to read "Herms Bakery" — is making its final rounds through the City of Commerce and Montebello.
After 54 years making door-to-door deliveries of bread and pastries to people in southeast Los Angeles County, Herman Langley is retiring.
Langley, who will turn 79 next month, is a throwback to a more gentle era. Friendly and trusting, he is a reminder of a time when competing bakery trucks cruised the streets of Los Angeles and its suburbs, tooting distinctive whistles and selling 5-cent crullers and 19-cent loaves of bread at the curb.
It was a sweet service for customers and a decent job for doughnut men.
Homemakers and schoolchildren had easy access to fresh rolls and pastries in communities that sometimes had few neighborhood markets. Langley kept running tabs in a spiral notebook on the dashboard for those who needed to buy baked goods on credit.
When children clutching a few pennies flagged him down to get a doughnut, Langley was cheerful and courteous. After each purchase, he would escort the youngsters safely back across the street.
Children never forgot the doughnut man. One of them even married him when she grew up.
"My second wife would buy doughnuts from me when she was 12 years old. She recognized me on my route in Montebello when she was 27. I was with Linda for 28 years until she passed away," Langley says wistfully.
In the early days, gasoline was cheap, so bakery truck drivers could make a living even if they only earned a few pennies on each item.
Like his competitors in official Helms Bakery and Golden Crust Bakery trucks, Langley purchased his bread and cakes wholesale and sold them at retail prices. Driving slowly through residential streets, he announced his arrival by pulling a lever next to the steering wheel that pumped a tiny bellows, blowing the whistle.
He served rolls and doughnuts from wooden drawers tucked in the back of the van. Part of the cabinet was chilled so that creampuffs and berry pies stayed fresh even on the hottest summer day.
"We'd pay 3 cents for a doughnut and sell it for 5 cents. I'd sell 36 or 37 dozen doughnuts a day. We made about a 33% profit," Langley says.
Over the years, Langley drove nearly 609,000 miles covering his 45-mile bread route. He wore out six trucks — each purchased from West Los Angeles-based Helms Bakery. Always willing to sell surplus or used trucks, Helms also sold wholesale bakery goods to its own drivers' competitors.
Helms Bakery went out of business in 1969. Langley blames part of the demise on an effort by Helms drivers to unionize.
"I could never understand why they tried to do that," he says of the Helms drivers. "They were independent, just like me. We all bought our own stuff and resold it."
Langley purchased his current truck — a former Helms van still plastered with county health license decals dating to 1968 — about 16 years ago. Unlike the panel trucks that required him to step outside and walk to the back to reach the bakery drawers, the boxy Chevrolet van let him stay inside and keep dry in rainy weather.
But by then, life was starting to change for doughnut men.
Small, local wholesale bakeries began closing. That forced Langley to make a 30-mile round trip to downtown Los Angeles to buy his daily stock. The extra travel time meant that he got a late start on his route, forcing him to drive after dark most days to complete it.
When the lever-operated whistle quit working, there were no parts to fix it, so Langley installed a bell outside the driver's window. When the refrigerator broke, he stored pies in an ice chest. The cooler held sodas, tortillas and other snacks that he sold toward the end of his career.
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Updated: Saturday, 11 November 2006 7:10 AM CST
Updated: Saturday, 11 November 2006 7:10 AM CST
U.S. group again seeks charges against Rumsfeld
Fri Nov 10, 4:48 PM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S.-based Center for Constitutional Rights again will seek criminal charges against outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in a German court over detainee treatment at
Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons.
The complaint also will name Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, former
CIA director George Tenet, high-ranking military officers and others.
The center hopes German prosecutors will take up the case under Germany's universal jurisdiction law, which allows them to pursue certain cases originating anywhere in the world, a spokeswoman said on Friday.
Rumsfeld resigned on Wednesday after nearly six years on the job after the opposition Democratic Party regained control of both houses of the U.S. Congress from the Republicans amid voter discontent with the war in
Iraq.
The Center for Constitutional Rights is challenging what it considers U.S. torture and indefinite detention of detainees in several court cases. In 2004, the center had asked German prosecutors to file a criminal case against Rumsfeld over the U.S. military abuse of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
German prosecutors dropped that case.
Now the center will try again, this time adding a plaintiff who was detained at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the spokeswoman said.
The complaint will be forwarded to German federal prosecutors on Tuesday, she said.
Private citizens can file criminal complaints in Germany but it is up to prosecutors to decide whether to pursue charges, the center said.
A
Pentagon spokesman declined to comment.
Palestinian PM offers to resign for aid
By IBRAHIM BARZAK, Associated Press Writer Fri Nov 10, 7:25 PM ET
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said Friday he would be willing to sacrifice his job if the international community would lift economic sanctions that have crippled his Hamas-led government.
Haniyeh's statement was the latest indication that the Islamic Hamas group was nearing a deal to form a national unity government with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' moderate
Fatah Party that would be made up of independent experts.
Such a coalition would presumably present a more moderate face to the world and convince the West to restore hundreds of millions of dollars in international funding.
"When the issue of the siege is on one side, and my being prime minister is on the other, let the siege be lifted to end the suffering of the Palestinian people," Haniyeh said, referring to the sanctions that have caused widespread hardship in the
West Bank and
Gaza Strip.
Haniyeh's comments came a day after Abbas spoke on the phone with his main political rival, Hamas' supreme leader Khaled Mashaal — their first conversation since April. Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said their discussion indicated the sides were nearing agreement.
The international sanctions, including tax revenues
Israel has withheld since Hamas took power in March, has made it largely impossible for Hamas to pay the government's 165,000 employees.
The West, including the United States, has said it will not lift sanctions unless Hamas recognizes Israel, renounces violence and accepts past peace deals, something Hamas has so far refused to do.
The program of the proposed new unity government is vague on the key issue of recognizing Israel, calling for a Palestinian state on only the lands captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast War. Hamas' charter calls for an Islamic state on those lands as well as Israel.
In addition to the economic sanctions, Palestinians in Gaza have weathered a monthslong Israeli offensive that began after Hamas militants tunneled into Israel and captured a soldier in June.
More than 50 people have been killed in recent days in the Israeli artillery barrage, which aimed at preventing Palestinian militants from firing rockets at Israel. Among them were 19 killed Wednesday in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun when shells landed as residents were sleeping.
The
U.N. Security Council will vote Saturday on an Arab-backed draft resolution condemning the Israeli military offensive in Gaza and demanding a withdrawal of Israeli troops from the coastal strip, a European diplomat said.
The draft requests the U.N. secretary-general establish a "fact-finding mission" to probe Wednesday's attack in Beit Hanoun, and asks the international community to restart the peace process with the "possible establishment of an international mechanism for protection of the civilian populations."
The U.S. blocked a U.N. Security Council resolution this summer demanding Israel halt its offensive in the Gaza Strip. It was the first Security Council veto in nearly two years.
Meanwhile, thousands marched through Middle East capitals Friday to protest an Israeli offensive, their calls often spilling into a broader outcry against America's policy in the region and its backing of Israel.
In Jordan, some 1,000 demonstrators filed into the streets after Muslim noon prayers, chanting slogans in support of the Palestinians, but also against the sentencing of
Saddam Hussein in neighboring
Iraq.
In Sudan, about 2,000 people gathered in front of the
United Nations mission building and burnt American and Israeli flags. "Down down USA, we won't be governed by the
CIA," chanted the crowd, which was prevented by police from approaching the U.N. building.
Similar protests were held in Egypt,
Syria and Lebanon.
In an interview with NBC's "Today" show Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert defended himself against critics who said Israel was using too much force against the Palestinians, saying he thinks "we are very, very restrained in using power."
"When someone criticizes us, I say what would you do when rockets fall on the heads of innocent Israelis?" he said.
Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz ordered the military to "re-evaluate its policy of artillery fire in Gaza," his ministry said in a statement.
Screwing with Hanoi about speed at which polity is evolving is stupid!
House nears vote on Vietnam trade bill
1 hour, 58 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives was set to approve permanent normal trade relations with Vietnam next week, but a Senate vote may not take place until December, congressional aides said on Friday.
House members were expected to pass the trade bill on Monday, shortly before
President George W. Bush heads to Vietnam for the annual
APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) meeting.
The bill would be the last step in normalizing trade relations between the former enemies. The two countries normalized diplomatic relations in 1995, 20 years after the end of the war.
Congress must approve PNTR for U.S. businesses to receive the market-opening benefits of Vietnam's entry into the
World Trade Organization, which is scheduled to happen next month.
With Democrats set to take over the 110th Congress in January, the Vietnam vote tests their willingness to stay engaged with Asian trading partners, said Grant Aldonas, a trade expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"It is very, very important that we press and see action by Congress in advance of the summit," Aldonas said.
In the Senate, a Florida Republican is the biggest obstacle to approval of PNTR before Bush gets to Hanoi.
Sen. Mel Martinez has been blocking a vote on the bill in order to prod Vietnam into releasing one of his constituents charged with plotting violence against the communist-run government.
On Friday a Vietnamese judge sentenced Thuong Nguyen Foshee and two other Vietnamese-born U.S. citizens to 15 months in prison -- including the 14 months they already have served -- and ordered them to be expelled within 10 days of finishing their jail terms.
That move appears to clear the way for Foshee to be back in the United States in December. Martinez said he would not be satisfied until Foshee is back on U.S. soil.
"As that has not yet occurred, I continue to use every tool at my disposal. I feel the administration is working diligently and at the highest levels of the State Department to resolve this issue and remain hopeful the Vietnamese government will do the right thing," he said in a statement.
Whose ass is covered when we deny the public's right to make conclusions?
YouTube.com video prompts probe of LAPD
By ALEX VEIGA, Associated Press Writer 17 minutes ago
LOS ANGELES - An
FBI investigation prompted by video footage of a man being punched repeatedly in the face by police has demonstrated anew the power of the Internet sensation of the year, YouTube.com.
In addition to being a monumental time-waster around the office, YouTube could also become a tool for keeping police honest, some say.
This week, a clip on the post-it-yourself video Web site triggered a police-brutality investigation by the FBI. The footage shows the Aug. 11 arrest of alleged gang member William Cardenas, 24. Two Los Angeles officers can be seen holding him down on a Hollywood street; one punches him several times in the face before they are able to handcuff him.
The Los Angeles Police Department is also investigating the officers' conduct.
Police Chief William J. Bratton said he found the video to be "disturbing," but stressed that the 20-second clip amounts to only a fraction of what transpired.
In fact, on Friday, the Los Angeles Times reported that a Superior Court commissioner viewed the video nearly two months ago, heard the officers' testimony, and concluded that their conduct was "more than reasonable" because Cardenas was resisting.
Cop Watch LA, a police watchdog group, posted the video on YouTube, said organizer Joaquin Cienfuegos. Cienfuegos said the video was shot by a neighbor of Cardenas with a cell phone camera. The neighbor gave it to Cardenas' family, who then gave it to Cop Watch, according to Cienfuegos.
In recent months, videos posted on YouTube have rocked political campaigns, brought fame — or infamy — to previously unknown talents and cast unwanted attention on the gaffes of the famous. YouTube and similar video sites are also increasingly becoming repositories for videos that purport to detail wrongdoing by police.
Such amateur clips help cast a spotlight on police wrongdoing that could otherwise go unreported, said Ramona Ripston, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California.
"Unless we throw light onto activities of government, all activities, you never find out what happened," Ripston said. "This video is an example."
Police said Cardenas had been wanted on charges of receiving stolen property. In an arrest report obtained by The Associated Press, the officers said they tried to arrest Cardenas after spotting him on the sidewalk, but Cardenas ran.
The officers caught up to him, tripped him and swarmed over him to apply handcuffs, the report said. In their report, they admitted hitting him repeatedly in the face, saying that he was resisting and that they feared he might grab one of their guns.
Cardenas suffered cuts and bruises on his arms, leg and face, and received stitches on an eyelid. His attorney, B. Kwaku Duren, accused the officers using excessive force.
As of Friday, the clip had received more than 155,000 views on YouTube. It was posted on Oct. 18.
A search on YouTube for the terms "police brutality" found more than 500 videos, including ones that claim to show police violence in the U.S. and as far away as Egypt and Hungary. A search of Google's video site also yielded hundreds of videos.
In response to the surge in amateur videos, some law enforcement agencies have installed cameras in squad cars to protect officers against false allegations.
Police defense attorney John Barnett said the public shouldn't draw conclusions when watching the clip of Cardenas' arrest. Barnett represented one of the officers in the 1991 Rodney King beating and an Inglewood police officer, Jeremy Morse, who was videotaped roughing up a 16-year-old boy.
Two juries deadlocked in Morse's case, and four officers were acquitted in the King trial, touching off riots in Los Angeles.
"It's very difficult to find jurors who haven't already come to a conclusion," Barnett said. "The public has the perception of what the facts are, but you have to figure out a way to get them back to square one."
Legal observers said the public has become somewhat desensitized to questionable police tactics caught on tape because such videos have become more prevalent since the King beating. In many cases, officers have been exonerated.
"The first reaction by people is one of outrage," said Eugene O'Donnell, a professor of police studies at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. "But the more you see police officers using force on tape, the more you get used to it."
___
Associated Press writers Greg Risling and Peter Prengaman contributed to this report.
___
On the Net:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?vGVW5_PJHzR4
...a chaplain at the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Fairbanks, said the veterans he knows "don't like to be told what to do."
Nearly 70,000 veterans call Alaska home
By JEANNETTE J. LEE, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 43 minutes ago
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - As a boy in upstate New York, Bill McCue spent many hours poring over articles in Field and Stream magazine about moose and grizzlies and dreaming about adventures in the Alaska wilderness.
Later, as a military man, he was stationed in Alaska, and "it was like a dream come true," said McCue, a Vietnam veteran who served at the Navy base on Kodiak Island in the early 1960s. "It's like no other place I'd ever been to."
McCue is now one of nearly 70,000 veterans who have chosen to make their home in Alaska, which according to the
Census Bureau has the country's highest concentration of former military personnel.
The high number reflects, in part, the simple fact that veterans tend to cluster near military bases. Alaska's two biggest cities, Anchorage and Fairbanks, have one Army and one Air Force base apiece.
"There are real advantages to staying near a military post once you've retired. You can use the PX, you can go on post for medical care and you've got a social network," said Catherine Lutz, a professor in anthropology at Brown University in Providence, R.I.
But why cold and snowy Alaska and not, say, a warm military town in the Sunbelt? Many veterans, like many non-military residents, are drawn by the untrammeled wilderness, the world-class hunting and fishing, and secure jobs with good pay.
Moreover, the libertarian frontier spirit and the extreme solitude in this sparsely settled state of 650,000 have a certain appeal to veterans who led highly regimented professional lives or saw too much of the horrors of war.
"There's a lot of open space," said state Veterans Affairs Administrator Jerry Beale. "You can be an individual. You can move out into the bush as far as you want and not have to see anybody for a year if you don't want to."
McCue said that for years he suffered from night sweats after serving on an aircraft carrier in the South China Sea during the Vietnam War.
"You come to get away from everything, especially if you've seen stuff you don't want to remember," he said.
McCue has since realized many of his boyhood imaginings. He has been a commercial fisherman, helped guide bear hunts on Kodiak and once filled the bed of a pickup truck with pink salmon after fishing for 11 hours with a rod and reel. Now, at 63, he drives a taxi in Anchorage.
Dave Landacre, who is a chaplain at the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Fairbanks, said the veterans he knows "don't like to be told what to do."
"Fairbanks veterans are the people that had 20 to 30 years in military service. They're very loyal, but now that they're done, they want to do things on their own," Landacre said.
Veterans make up nearly 17 percent of the state's 18-and-over population, versus 11 percent nationally, the Census Bureau reported in 2005.
Beale said most veterans in Alaska are originally from the Lower 48 and get their first glimpse of the state while on duty.
John Kelley, who served in the Air Force and Army, stopped in Alaska in 1968 on his way to Vietnam. He remembers the plane had to circle to scare a moose off the runway before landing.
"I said, `Alrighty, I'm coming back,'" he said. "I made it back in 1986 and haven't lived anywhere else since."
Many of Alaska's veterans work for state or federal agencies, with a high percentage in law enforcement as police officers, state troopers or prison guards.
But it takes a hardy sort to live independently in Alaska, and as many veterans grow old, they leave for retirement communities in Arizona, Florida or California. "The cold, snow and ice gets to a lot of people," Beale said.
But Landacre said he and his fellow veterans made an educated choice, having sampled cities around the world while in the service. Landacre, for example, was stationed in balmy places such as Hawaii, California, Cuba and Guam before settling on Fairbanks, where temperatures can sink to 60 below.
"The Fairbanks crew is not going anywhere. They're up here and they're staying," Landacre said. "I guarantee not one of us is planning to move to Florida."
___
On the Net:
Alaska Office of Veterans Affairs: http://www.ak-prepared.com/vetaffairs/
House nears vote on Vietnam trade bill
1 hour, 58 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The House of Representatives was set to approve permanent normal trade relations with Vietnam next week, but a Senate vote may not take place until December, congressional aides said on Friday.
House members were expected to pass the trade bill on Monday, shortly before
President George W. Bush heads to Vietnam for the annual
APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) meeting.
The bill would be the last step in normalizing trade relations between the former enemies. The two countries normalized diplomatic relations in 1995, 20 years after the end of the war.
Congress must approve PNTR for U.S. businesses to receive the market-opening benefits of Vietnam's entry into the
World Trade Organization, which is scheduled to happen next month.
With Democrats set to take over the 110th Congress in January, the Vietnam vote tests their willingness to stay engaged with Asian trading partners, said Grant Aldonas, a trade expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"It is very, very important that we press and see action by Congress in advance of the summit," Aldonas said.
In the Senate, a Florida Republican is the biggest obstacle to approval of PNTR before Bush gets to Hanoi.
Sen. Mel Martinez has been blocking a vote on the bill in order to prod Vietnam into releasing one of his constituents charged with plotting violence against the communist-run government.
On Friday a Vietnamese judge sentenced Thuong Nguyen Foshee and two other Vietnamese-born U.S. citizens to 15 months in prison -- including the 14 months they already have served -- and ordered them to be expelled within 10 days of finishing their jail terms.
That move appears to clear the way for Foshee to be back in the United States in December. Martinez said he would not be satisfied until Foshee is back on U.S. soil.
"As that has not yet occurred, I continue to use every tool at my disposal. I feel the administration is working diligently and at the highest levels of the State Department to resolve this issue and remain hopeful the Vietnamese government will do the right thing," he said in a statement.
YouTube.com video prompts probe of LAPD
By ALEX VEIGA, Associated Press Writer 17 minutes ago
LOS ANGELES - An
FBI investigation prompted by video footage of a man being punched repeatedly in the face by police has demonstrated anew the power of the Internet sensation of the year, YouTube.com.
In addition to being a monumental time-waster around the office, YouTube could also become a tool for keeping police honest, some say.
This week, a clip on the post-it-yourself video Web site triggered a police-brutality investigation by the FBI. The footage shows the Aug. 11 arrest of alleged gang member William Cardenas, 24. Two Los Angeles officers can be seen holding him down on a Hollywood street; one punches him several times in the face before they are able to handcuff him.
The Los Angeles Police Department is also investigating the officers' conduct.
Police Chief William J. Bratton said he found the video to be "disturbing," but stressed that the 20-second clip amounts to only a fraction of what transpired.
In fact, on Friday, the Los Angeles Times reported that a Superior Court commissioner viewed the video nearly two months ago, heard the officers' testimony, and concluded that their conduct was "more than reasonable" because Cardenas was resisting.
Cop Watch LA, a police watchdog group, posted the video on YouTube, said organizer Joaquin Cienfuegos. Cienfuegos said the video was shot by a neighbor of Cardenas with a cell phone camera. The neighbor gave it to Cardenas' family, who then gave it to Cop Watch, according to Cienfuegos.
In recent months, videos posted on YouTube have rocked political campaigns, brought fame — or infamy — to previously unknown talents and cast unwanted attention on the gaffes of the famous. YouTube and similar video sites are also increasingly becoming repositories for videos that purport to detail wrongdoing by police.
Such amateur clips help cast a spotlight on police wrongdoing that could otherwise go unreported, said Ramona Ripston, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California.
"Unless we throw light onto activities of government, all activities, you never find out what happened," Ripston said. "This video is an example."
Police said Cardenas had been wanted on charges of receiving stolen property. In an arrest report obtained by The Associated Press, the officers said they tried to arrest Cardenas after spotting him on the sidewalk, but Cardenas ran.
The officers caught up to him, tripped him and swarmed over him to apply handcuffs, the report said. In their report, they admitted hitting him repeatedly in the face, saying that he was resisting and that they feared he might grab one of their guns.
Cardenas suffered cuts and bruises on his arms, leg and face, and received stitches on an eyelid. His attorney, B. Kwaku Duren, accused the officers using excessive force.
As of Friday, the clip had received more than 155,000 views on YouTube. It was posted on Oct. 18.
A search on YouTube for the terms "police brutality" found more than 500 videos, including ones that claim to show police violence in the U.S. and as far away as Egypt and Hungary. A search of Google's video site also yielded hundreds of videos.
In response to the surge in amateur videos, some law enforcement agencies have installed cameras in squad cars to protect officers against false allegations.
Police defense attorney John Barnett said the public shouldn't draw conclusions when watching the clip of Cardenas' arrest. Barnett represented one of the officers in the 1991 Rodney King beating and an Inglewood police officer, Jeremy Morse, who was videotaped roughing up a 16-year-old boy.
Two juries deadlocked in Morse's case, and four officers were acquitted in the King trial, touching off riots in Los Angeles.
"It's very difficult to find jurors who haven't already come to a conclusion," Barnett said. "The public has the perception of what the facts are, but you have to figure out a way to get them back to square one."
Legal observers said the public has become somewhat desensitized to questionable police tactics caught on tape because such videos have become more prevalent since the King beating. In many cases, officers have been exonerated.
"The first reaction by people is one of outrage," said Eugene O'Donnell, a professor of police studies at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. "But the more you see police officers using force on tape, the more you get used to it."
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Associated Press writers Greg Risling and Peter Prengaman contributed to this report.
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On the Net:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?vGVW5_PJHzR4
Nearly 70,000 veterans call Alaska home
By JEANNETTE J. LEE, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 43 minutes ago
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - As a boy in upstate New York, Bill McCue spent many hours poring over articles in Field and Stream magazine about moose and grizzlies and dreaming about adventures in the Alaska wilderness.
Later, as a military man, he was stationed in Alaska, and "it was like a dream come true," said McCue, a Vietnam veteran who served at the Navy base on Kodiak Island in the early 1960s. "It's like no other place I'd ever been to."
McCue is now one of nearly 70,000 veterans who have chosen to make their home in Alaska, which according to the
Census Bureau has the country's highest concentration of former military personnel.
The high number reflects, in part, the simple fact that veterans tend to cluster near military bases. Alaska's two biggest cities, Anchorage and Fairbanks, have one Army and one Air Force base apiece.
"There are real advantages to staying near a military post once you've retired. You can use the PX, you can go on post for medical care and you've got a social network," said Catherine Lutz, a professor in anthropology at Brown University in Providence, R.I.
But why cold and snowy Alaska and not, say, a warm military town in the Sunbelt? Many veterans, like many non-military residents, are drawn by the untrammeled wilderness, the world-class hunting and fishing, and secure jobs with good pay.
Moreover, the libertarian frontier spirit and the extreme solitude in this sparsely settled state of 650,000 have a certain appeal to veterans who led highly regimented professional lives or saw too much of the horrors of war.
"There's a lot of open space," said state Veterans Affairs Administrator Jerry Beale. "You can be an individual. You can move out into the bush as far as you want and not have to see anybody for a year if you don't want to."
McCue said that for years he suffered from night sweats after serving on an aircraft carrier in the South China Sea during the Vietnam War.
"You come to get away from everything, especially if you've seen stuff you don't want to remember," he said.
McCue has since realized many of his boyhood imaginings. He has been a commercial fisherman, helped guide bear hunts on Kodiak and once filled the bed of a pickup truck with pink salmon after fishing for 11 hours with a rod and reel. Now, at 63, he drives a taxi in Anchorage.
Dave Landacre, who is a chaplain at the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Fairbanks, said the veterans he knows "don't like to be told what to do."
"Fairbanks veterans are the people that had 20 to 30 years in military service. They're very loyal, but now that they're done, they want to do things on their own," Landacre said.
Veterans make up nearly 17 percent of the state's 18-and-over population, versus 11 percent nationally, the Census Bureau reported in 2005.
Beale said most veterans in Alaska are originally from the Lower 48 and get their first glimpse of the state while on duty.
John Kelley, who served in the Air Force and Army, stopped in Alaska in 1968 on his way to Vietnam. He remembers the plane had to circle to scare a moose off the runway before landing.
"I said, `Alrighty, I'm coming back,'" he said. "I made it back in 1986 and haven't lived anywhere else since."
Many of Alaska's veterans work for state or federal agencies, with a high percentage in law enforcement as police officers, state troopers or prison guards.
But it takes a hardy sort to live independently in Alaska, and as many veterans grow old, they leave for retirement communities in Arizona, Florida or California. "The cold, snow and ice gets to a lot of people," Beale said.
But Landacre said he and his fellow veterans made an educated choice, having sampled cities around the world while in the service. Landacre, for example, was stationed in balmy places such as Hawaii, California, Cuba and Guam before settling on Fairbanks, where temperatures can sink to 60 below.
"The Fairbanks crew is not going anywhere. They're up here and they're staying," Landacre said. "I guarantee not one of us is planning to move to Florida."
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On the Net:
Alaska Office of Veterans Affairs: http://www.ak-prepared.com/vetaffairs/