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First, Sad News from the House of War: Four marines were charged yesterday with murder in the killings of two dozen Iraqi civilians, including at least 10 women and children, in the village of Haditha last year, military officials said at Camp Pendleton, Calif. Second, News from the House of Free Food: It's been quite a while since the Lisablog folks went gleaning for free food. The free food is still out there, especially in the West Village (where you can gather your free food amidst the bustle of oblivious drunken NYU Business School students). The bagel place on University near 8th Street provided us with a freezer-full of bagels, and the fancy European bread chain on 8th Street near 5th Avenue provided mega French bread and rye. We try to make a point of sharing part of our catch with the homeless in the neighborhood. (Pre-sliced bread goes over better than the bagels which can be hard on the folks out there with bad teeth.) Third, on a Lighter Note, a must see Holiday Video. The Saturday Night Live Folks presented this on t.v. in an edited version. They've figured out a way around the FCC here via You Tube: Justin Timberlake SNL Video Fourth, if you can't get into the Catskill Organics site, it's because I set it up with HTML frames. That means if you're using an old browser, it's not going to happen. I will attempt to restructure the site this week for the non-framers out there.
And Fifth, from Dr. Walleye in Sacramento and China View, Terrific News That You've All Been Waiting For:
BEIJING, Dec. 21 (Xinhuanet) -- As Christmas approaches, a virgin mother is awaiting the arrival of her offspring.
In an evolutionary twist, Flora, the Komodo dragon, has managed to become pregnant without any male help. It would seem the timing is auspicious: seven baby Komodo dragons are due this festive season.
"We were blown away when we realised what she'd done," said Kevin Buley Wednesday, a reptile expert at Flora's home at the Chester Zoo in northern England. "But we certainly won't be naming any of the hatchlings Jesus."
Flora has never mated, or even mixed, with a male dragon, and fertilized all the eggs herself, a process culminating in parthenogenesis, or virgin birth.
"Nobody in their wildest dreams expected this. But you have a female dragon on her own. She produces a clutch of eggs and those eggs turn out to be fertile. It is nature finding a way," Buley said in an interview. He said the incubating eggs could hatch around Christmas.
Parthenogenesis has occurred in other lizard species, but Buley and his team said this was the first time it has been shown in Komodo dragons -- the world's largest lizards.
The scientists, reporting the discovery in the science journal Nature, said it could help them understand how reptiles colonize new areas. A female dragon could, for instance, swim to another island and establish a new colony on her own.
Komodo dragons are among the largest reptiles on earth whose dozens of razor-sharp, serrated teeth are so teeming with bacteria that one bite can prove lethal to a human.
Virgin Komodo dragon to give birth
Hi People of the Bog. Here is the News for this This and That Thursday which happens to mark the mid-winter's long shadows:
One: Harry found a new box. This is the box for the sander. He got tired of the sock box and Thomas's workshop scrap fabric box. He doesn't quite fit in the sander box, but it is his domain:
Two: Last night we had dinner with Jen and Allison.
We ate vegetarian food and discussed the pros and cons of a vegetarian lifestyle. Here are Allison and Jen posing as vegetarians and/or serial killers. Three: Karate Peak Performance Tip: As you begin to finesse your katas, it's important to remember not to bob up and down through the steps. You don't want to give your opponent an opportunity to catch you off balance and kick your legs out from under you. The goal for the holiday season should be to learn to slide through your moves and perfect your balance as a novice karateka.
Four: Lisa of Lisablog has started a new business called Catskill Organics. We'll be fully up and running by late spring. Until then, here is a website where you can check out our wares: co.lisajarnot.com.
Peace people, and eat the rich, not the fish or fowl or quadrupeds.
Our friend Juno Gemes was snapping this photo of Bob and Orlando, when suddenly a baby Bigfoot Wombat jumped into Bob's arms. Bob writes: "Bob and Orlando in Tasmania searching
for Devils, found Wally on the veranda of a trout lodge on Cradle Mountain."
In case you're behind on the news, Florida has temporarily suspended its death penalty after a fuck-up last week during the execution of Angel Diaz. Here's a clip from the Palm Beach Post:
And here's an op ed from the UK Guardian: (funny how America depends on Europe for the voice of Christian Conscience, when so many of our fellow monkeys across the Atlantic don't have any use for Christ)
December 19, 2006 07:00 PM
A week ago in Florida, Angel Diaz suffered an agonising, horrific death. His killers plotted how they would do it - injecting him with massive doses of poisonous chemicals that flowed not into his veins, but through his tissue, causing searing burns. He remained conscious for at least 24 minutes, and each moment must have seemed an age. There were eyewitnesses to the offence, and they told how Diaz's eyes were open, how he grimaced, shuddered, gasped for air and tried to speak. No one came to his aid. It was a torturous death.
Usually, if such a terrible killing were committed in Florida, the perpetrators would be facing the death penalty. But Diaz was himself on death row, sentenced to die for a 1979 murder that he maintained to the end he did not commit. The perpetrators here were officials of the state of Florida.
Lethal injection is sold as a kinder, gentler form of execution. In theory, after inserting an intravenous line into the prisoner's vein, a barbiturate is meant to knock a person unconscious, so he feels no pain. Then a second drug, a paralysing agent, should paralyse the prisoner and stop his lungs from operating. Finally, a third drug, potassium chloride, should stop his heart. This procedure is used in 37 states and by the federal government.
Here is how it goes wrong: if the dose of the barbiturate is not a high enough, or if the IV is not inserted properly (as appears to have happened with Diaz), the prisoner remains awake. He is able to feel pain. The second drug then paralyses him, so he is unable to move, speak or cry out. This paralysing agent slowly suffocates him, but he is frozen into silence. The third drug shocks the heart so severely it stops beating, but if the prisoner is still awake at this point, the pain is unbearable.
In a separate case last week, a federal judge found evidence that the last six men executed in California suffered extreme pain as they died. Two weeks ago, judges in Ohio pondered evidence of similar torture there. Missouri has already halted executions for the same reason. Over the past few months, executions have had to be stopped in nine US states and the federal system.
Some may say that no punishment is too gruesome for a murderer, that Diaz got what he deserved. This assumes, first, that society wants to become a serial killer, in a particularly savage way, and second, that the system got it right. Diaz stated on the gurney that he was innocent of this crime. Since 1977, 123 people on death row in the US have been proven innocent, and Florida leads the way in mistakes, with 22 prisoners sentenced to death already exonerated.
But the true test of the system is not the number of prisoners lucky enough to have a lawyer who uncovered the evidence to set them free, but those whose executions were not stopped. And so the question remains: did Florida brutally kill an innocent man last week?
Death Penalty Trivia: Executioners in Florida are paid $150 (cash) for their services.
Two days after the Department of Corrections cleared itself in last Wednesday's botched, 34-minute execution of Diaz, the Alachua County medical examiner issued a second, unbiased opinion: Those who administered the drugs stuck needles through Diaz's veins and into his soft tissue. Diaz had to get a second dose of drugs and was still conscious after 24 minutes. Normally, the condemned man loses consciousness in three to four minutes. After hearing from Dr. William Hamilton, Gov. Bush suspended all executions and announced the formation of an 11-member committee, which will study Florida's protocol for lethal injection and report to the Legislature in March.
Lethal mistakes
Clive Stafford Smith
Hi People, I'm trying to track down Kaisa Ullsvik of the Boulder/Naropa area. I have a hat for her but I also have an outdated email address. Please send me an e at ljarnot@gmail.com if you have this info. Thanks mucho blog raccoons.
This came in from Steven Fama and was posted as a comment yesterday. We will reprint it in large print here. Get on this bandwagon and become a Yellow Belt in the anti-war struggle:
By M.L. LYKE
For Seattle peace activist Bert Sacks, the monthly act of resistance adds up to only 59 cents. Symbolically, however, refusing to pay the "war tax" on his Qwest phone bill represents a pocketbook protest against what he sees as misuse of U.S. military power.
"I object to the U.S. government policy of using famine and epidemic as tools against civilian populations. That's wrong," says the retired engineer, who has fought for a decade to get economic sanctions against Iraq lifted.
Sacks is one of thousands of Americans believed to be refusing to pay the federal taxes attached to their monthly phone bills -- money that helps fund military operations overseas.
Many are taking the step as a protest against the war in Iraq. And in many cases, the phone companies are helping them do it.
"We oppose! the policies of 'pre-emptive war' and an 'endless' war on terrorism, which led to the Iraq war, which violate human rights and international law, and which have cost us hundreds of billions of dollars while our states and cities face unprecedented deficits, and cutbacks of vital services and programs," reads the statement on a Web site called hanguponwar.org.
Although many activists have been withholding the phone tax since the Vietnam War, the act of disobedience is making headlines again as more Americans began to question the rationale for the Iraq war. A New York Times/CBS News Poll released this week shows that 52 percent of Americans believe that the Bush administration intentionally misled the public when its officials made the case for war.
The so-called tax resisters risk the wrath of the Internal Revenue Service. Yet that hasn't stopped them. Sacks said he has never been contacted about it, and he is not worried he will be. "After all, I've refused to pay a $10,000 fine, still in court now," he said.
Sacks was fined $10,000 for violating economic sanctions against Iraq by taking $40,000 worth of medicine to help suffering children there.
Ruth Benn, who runs the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee in New York, said it is impossible to know for sure how many people are participating in the grass-roots movement.
"Before the war started, when the peace movement was really big, there was quite a bit of interest. Now it's picking up again," Benn said.
She said communications received by her organization and discussions with other protest coordinators suggest that at least 10,000 people nationwide are withholding federal excise tax payments because of the war.
"This is civil disobedience, and you can be at risk," Benn, 53, said. "But the government listens when it involves money. This is a good way to get their attention."
As it turns out, most phone companies aren't shedding any tears over missed federal excise tax payments. It's not that they sympathize with protesters' feelings about the war. They just don't like the tax.
Qwest Communications International Inc., which provides local phone service to most of the Seattle area, thinks the excise tax is "a silly tax that should go away," company spokeswoman Shasha Richardson said.
The Denver-based company said it adjusts customers' bills to remove the excise tax. It then complies with IRS Publication No. 510, Richardson said.
That publication requires providers of local, toll or private communications services to impose and collect a 3 percent tax on services rendered. If customers fail to pay it, the companies must give the IRS a list of those customers' names and addresses, the services provided, the dates and the amounts the customers owed.
Some phone companies may repeatedly insist that the money is due. Others, such as Qwest, make it easy for the protester.
"We believe this is an illegal tax, and we would support any legislation that repeals it," said John Britton, a spoke sman for AT&T.
He said AT&T will routinely eliminate federal excise taxes from customers' monthly bills if asked to do so in writing.
"We'll go into our system and make an adjustment," Britton said. "But we will have to report you to the government."
For its part, Cingular Wireless sends a letter to tax-resisting customers agreeing that the federal excise tax is "antiquated and discriminatory" and that it has "has far outlived its purpose."
"Please be aware, however," Cingular's letter warns, "that as required by law, Cingular Wireless will report your non-payment, and provide your name, address, amount of tax written off to the IRS."
Cingular, MCI and Verizon Wireless all say they adjust customers' monthly bills to write off the federal excise tax on a regular basis.
Tax resisters such as Benn advise would-be protesters to include a note with their phone payments explaining why they are not paying the tax. The note will make clear to the phone company what's happening and, in most cases, deter the carrier from cutting off one's service.
The federal excise tax on phone usage dates back to 1898. It was adopted under the War Revenue Act as a temporary levy to help fund the Spanish-American War. The war ended in October of that year. The tax was repealed in 1902 but didn't stay gone for long. It was reintroduced during World War I and was subsequently used to help fund the nation's military activities during World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
The tax was given permanent status in 1990. It raises about $6 billion a year for general federal expenditures, including military spending.
Aspects of the federal excise tax have been challenged in recent court decisions. Nevertheless, the IRS still insists that it be paid in full. Though phone companies are legally obligated to try to collect the federal excise tax, they have no enforcement power.
Because the amount of federal excise-tax money withheld per household is so small, it's highly unusual nowadays for the IRS to go after people for not paying.
Jesse Weller, an IRS spokesman, said that failure to pay the federal excise tax on phone bills is against the law.
"There is no law that permits a person to refuse to file a federal tax return or pay a federal tax based on what the government spends on programs or policies they disagree with," he said.
"This includes failure to pay the telephone excise tax based on moral, ethical or religious opposition to government spending for weapons programs or military operations," he stressed.
Moreover, he insisted that the IRS is determined to identify all those who evade taxes "based on their opposition to government policies or programs."
Weller said such people may be liable for all unpaid taxes, as well as interest and penalty fees.
Benn, at the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, said she hasn't paid her federal excise tax since 1980, and hasn't heard a word in all that time from the IRS.
"It's a pretty small thing," she said of the amount she denies the government each month. "It won't end the war all by itself. But perhaps it will help." If you go to hanguponwar.org, you will find this handy form to fill out and include in your phone bill:
The amount of Federal Tax on this bill, $_______,
has been deducted from my payment because I refuse
to pay for war. Please credit my bill as the FCC
requires and report this amount to the IRS. My
telephone or customer number is
About half of federal taxes, like this one, are devoted to
military-related purposes while millions of people in the
U.S. and abroad lack adequate food, shelter and health care.
I resist this tax to protest the use of my tax dollars for killing instead of
protecting and caring for life. Please join me and the many others who have decided
to oppose our massive military spending by refusing to pay some or all of the
taxes that finance it.
Sincerely, Date: For more information on telephone war tax resistance, see www.hanguponwar.org
War Resisters League, 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 • www.warresisters.org
Many refuse to pay 'war tax' on phone bill
Providers go along; IRS frowns, but does little
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTERExcise Taxes Help Pay for War
Hey Blog People, We're trying to update The Hundred Hats Website. Here's what you can do: If you own a hat, send in a photo. If you have not created a dedication for your hat yet, please do. If you're waiting for a hat, hold tight-- your hat is coming.
Peace people, and check out today's New York Times story with the title "Violence in Iraq Reaches New HIgh". And if you're still paying the Federal Excise Tax on your phone bill, it's time to stop. This is a tax that funds the war in Iraq. You can refuse to pay it. The good people and cats of Lisablog have stopped paying the Federal Excise Tax: you can too.
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This just in from Lisablog Correspondent Michael Smoler:
HIGH ENERGY
CONSTRUCTS
Please join the Los Angeles poetry community and High Energy Constructs in honoring the life and work of poet, artist, and (trans)gender activist, kari edwards. kari died of heart failure at the age of 52 on Saturday, December 2, 2006. kari's life and work was an ongoing revolution of body and language, as well as a revelation of human potential. Not only a dear friend and supporter of High Energy Constructs, kari was also one of the forty artists included in High Energy Constructs' Fall 2006 exhibition, Many Happy Returns. kari's work as a gender activist, radical writer, and social sculptor was - and will continue to be - some of the most honest, compassionate, and evolved necessary action in today's world.
Friends and poets, Marcus Civin, Jen Hofer, Mary Kite, Eileen Myles, Michael Smoler, Justin Veach, and others gather to read, perform, and speak in memory and tribute to the spirit of kari edwards, on Thursday, December 21, 2006, at 7 pm.
For more information regarding this gathering please call 323.227.7920.
kari's most recent book of writing, have been blue for charity, can be viewed and read at: http://www.blazevox.org/bk-ke.htm
kari edwards (1954 - 2006) was a poet ,artist and gender activist , winner of New Langton Art's Bay Area Award in literature (2002); was the author of have been blue for charity , BlazeVox (2006); obedience , Factory School (2005); iduna , O Books (2003); a day in the life of p ., subpress collective (2002); a diary of lies , Belladonna #27 by Belladonna Books (2002); obLiqUE paRt(itON): colLABorationS , xPress(ed) (2002); and post/(pink), Scarlet Press (2000), as well as poetry editor for Transgender Tapestry magazine. edwards' work has appeared in numerous publications, such as anthologies Blood and Tears: Poems for Matthew Shepard, Painted leaf Press (2000), and Electric Spandex: anthology of writing the queer text , Pyriform Press (2002); as well as been exhibited throughout the United States including Denver art museum, New Orleans contemporary art museum, University of California -- San Diego , and University of Massachusetts -- Amherst . edwards’ work can also be found in Bombay Gin, Belight Fiction, In Posse, Mirage/Period(ical), Van Gogh’s Ear, PuppyFlower, Vert, 88: A Journal of Contemporary American Poetry, Narrativity, Shampoo, xStream, Rain Taxi, Big Bridge, Nerve Lantern, muse-apprentice-guild, Avoid Strange Men, Bird Dog Magizine, RealPoetik, Raised in a Barn, and The International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies.
a reading for kari edwards
Thursday, December 21, 2006
7 pm
(this is a free and open event)
990 N. Hill St., #180
Los Angeles, CA 90012
Hello People of the Blog, and welcome to Lisablog Saturday. The news in Sunnyside is that the neighbors are going at it, and the cats are sleeping peacefully, proving once again that cats are the master species. Here are some pictures of the cats: Harry in the Sock Box Bela in her Possum Pose Mina with her Foot in Her Mouth Also, we had a nice dinner with Jenn and Bill the other night. Thomas took these photos: Also, a note about Peak Performance from Lisa of Lisablog, Kyokushin Yellow Belt. It is certainly the time of year that shouts "Revise Your Vision Statement". Maybe you have a few days off from your job at Holiday TIme. If so, it's a perfect time to make a Top Ten List of Household Goals. (Have some clothing that can be donated to the homeless? Need to catalog your music collection? Want to trim the cats' nails?) Now is the time for a top ten list. And remember also to adjust your vision statement to the season. If you worked hard through the autumn to meet various goals, you may want to envision some productive down-time for the winter season. This doesn't mean you should be lazy, but you do want to take care of yourself. For instance, a winter-time vision statement might include lighter work outs, but more sophisticated nutritional management. You might even want to include a search for the best and healthiest restaurants in the hood as part of your winter vision. Peace people, and fight the power, not each other.
