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Two things.

First, the artillery shell found being used as a roadside bomb did in fact contain sarin. It was also announced at about the same time that a round with mustard gas had been found a couple of weeks prior. I suspect that they are getting a bit more cautious about making announcements about findings.

Second, do you have any actual evidence that Fox has and should have less journalistic credibility than the other major networks? You seem to have a very negative opinion about them, but the only thing close to "evidence" you cite seems to undermine your point. In the link your provide labeled "news", they are quoting government officials and the story undermines the government position. I'm beginning to think that smears about Fox should be treated the way you say you treat WMD findings, with a big grain of salt until well proven. Or could it be that you will never agree with anything that Fox reports because they report news that doesn't fit with your views?

But even more than Moore's documentary, I hope more and more images and video keeps coming out of Iraq in regards to the abuse, torture, rape and slaughter of Iraqi citizens, most of whom are guilty of no crime. That more than anything is Bush's legacy, his mark upon the world and truly the images that best define our Fascist Leader and his doctrines.

InstaPundit.com has been posting links to other prison abuse stories. For some reason, these aren't getting as much attention in the mainstream media ("all Abu Ghraib, all the time").

Maybe the French, Germans, Arabs, public employees unions, California Attorney General, and their apologists should take note.

May 22, 2004

PRISON MANAGEMENT PROBLEMS AND A DYSFUNCTIONAL CULTURE OF ABUSE in the California prison guards' union.

posted at 03:53 PM by Glenn Reynolds

May 21, 2004

SOMEONE TELL 60 MINUTES about this secret underground prison:

'It starts off by being stripped naked in front of 10 police officers including two women, gratutious humiliation is used to break you down.' '... worst jail that you can possibly imagine.' 'Not even a hole to go to the bathroom. You have to piss against a wall and you sleep in piss on the concrete floor.' The torture victim demands 'the immediate shutdown of this secret underground prison'. It's not at Abu Ghraib, it's in Marseille, France.

No doubt Ted Kennedy will be condemning it soon.

posted at 07:41 PM by Glenn Reynolds

May 21, 2004

MORE STORIES OF ARAB PRISONERS BEING ABUSED:

ARAB prisoners beaten and tortured, innocent bystanders killed by gunfire - another damning human rights report.

But the difference this time is that the violence is being perpetrated not by coalition forces in Iraq, but by the Palestinian Authority, and the victims are its own people.

The report, partly funded by the Finnish government, claims Palestinian cities are in a state of near anarchy, with people on the payroll of Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority (PA) blamed for 90 per cent of gangland violence.

It highlights numerous incidents of torture of prisoners and refers to the killing of civilians in gunbattles between Palestinian factions.

It is another blow for Mr Arafat's organisation, which was recently accused of misusing 134 million of European Union funds. Mr Arafat was accused of signing cheques to people linked with terrorist activity.

I'm sure Ted Kennedy will have comments.

posted at 09:55 AM by Glenn Reynolds

May 18, 2004

IRAQI EMIGRES ON ABU GHRAIB: This is interesting:

Hadi Kazwini is an Iraqi engineer who moved to Australia in 1997 and lives in Sydney with his wife and three children. He is amazed at the gullibility of those Australians who have taken the Arab response to the photos at face value.

This sort of brutality goes on all the time, it is happening now in jails right through the Middle East, he says. But of course there are no photos. This is selective outrage.

Kazwini believes that the behaviour revealed by the photos is awful and the US soldiers involved should be punished. But he says some of the Iraqi prisoners shown were Saddam's killers and torturers. They have been responsible for far worse violations of human rights than the Americans.

Where is the outrage about this, he asks. I haven't seen

False positives are definitely the way to go now that the terrorists in Iraq have attacked with an Iraqi army artillery round containing sarin nerve gas. How long can it be before one of them pops up somewhere else?

Christine Large, director at Bletchley Park, said there were a number of possibilities the codebreakers had to consider.

One was that the letters were meaningless and etched on the monument to tease future generations.

Actually, the Palestinians have gotten billions of dollars/euros in humanitarian aid, much of which is suspected of actually being diverted to the extremists in their society.

While no one I know of has outright public proof this is happening, one Reuters piece suggests that over $900 million in aid over five years dedicated for humanitarian purposes was not used for that purpose . To be balanced a bit, it is also worth noting that the Israelis might not be considered playing fair in some circles because they charge the Palestinians for security procedures and hampering UN teachers's movements.

Play around with Google or your favorite search engine a bit to find out more; I really do not have the time this morning to go into the details.

An article in the Scottish press has more useful info.

It only generates 150KW. That's not much. Typical wind turbines generate 200KW to 700KW each, on windy days. (Average values are much lower.) Typical nuclear power plants generate 1,000,000KW. Powering a home takes about 1-2KW on average, so 10,000 homes require perhaps 15,000KW.

The SNAIL people want to move up to the 750KW range or so. That's more reasonable. As wind power people have discovered, having huge numbers of little turbines isn't cost effective. But somewhere around a few hundred KW per turbine, the economics start to work. If you can find a good site with steady wind. As with dams, there aren't that many good sites.

It will probably take several decades of operating experience to turn this into a reliable technology, just as it did with windpower. It's been half a century since the Grandpa's Knob loss of blade accident. The first big power-generating wind turbine oversped and threw a blade several hundred feet. For many years, nobody built one that big again. Gradually, the aerodynamics and control problems were figured out. It's taken that long to make large wind turbines work reliably and profitably.

Anything with moving parts in the ocean is likely to be high-maintenance. Making one of these things work reliably for decades will be tough. Maintenance will be costly. There's no guarantee of success.

In short, there's no breakthrough here until it's been running for a few years without breaking.

Five different British news papers with reporters all over the world all starying the story with "Dough!".

Five different British news papers with reporters all over the world all starying the story with "Dough!".

Five different British news papers with reporters all over the world all starying the story with "Dough!".

Sorry. The British government would probably throw you in jail for asserting your rights - like protecting yourself or your property. This is only one true story of many - and note that the man used a sword not a gun.

The bright side is, of course, that it's almost unheard of for a mugger in the UK to have a gun.

Why should they, when a knife or bat will suffice against a disarmed populace forbidden to defend itself? Also, the down side is that "hot" (armed) home burglaries is on the rise in the UK.

-CT

Sorry. The British government would probably throw you in jail for asserting your rights to self-defense or private property. That's only one true story of many.

-CT

EMERGENCY services, homes and businesses were hit after an underground fire in Manchester city centre cut 130,000 phone lines.

The blaze, in a tunnel by the junction of George Street and Princess Street, destroyed cables connected to the national phone network.

Related News:

No time limit for Manchester phone lines fix
Fire wipes out internet in Manchester
BT tunnel fire cuts off Manchester phone lines
BT fire disrupts emergency services
Businesses hit by BT fire
Phones Out of Action after Fire in Tunnel
Tunnel fire knocks out phone network

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I posted this link of New Scotsman to slashdot.

Quote: 'The company also argued it could not have known its behaviour would infringe EU law and therefore it should not be fined at all.'

Microsoft's chief European lawyer, Horacio Gutierrez said according to New Scotsman(quote2):'We believe it's unprecedented and inappropriate for the commission to impose a fine on a company's US operations when those operations are already regulated by the US government,'

Dr Michael Brown, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, who led the NASA-funded research, said: "The sun appears so small from that distance that you could completely block it out with the head of a pin."

The temperature on Sedna never rises above -400C, making it the coldest known object in the solar system.

It must be an extremly bizarre planet because its temperature is WAY below the absolute zero which is known to be at -273 C

Computers Replace Musicians In West End Musical
Posted by timothy on 10:03 AM -- Saturday February 14 2004

Albanach writes "The Scotsman newspaper is reporting that despite opposition from the Musician's Union, Sir Cameron Mackintosh will proceed with his plan to replace one half of the musicians in his musical Les Miserables with a computer synthesiser. The Times claims that using Sinfonia will allow the show, the third longest running musical in history, to replace 11 musicians saving 5,000 GBP ($9,450 US) per week. Sinfonia consisits of 2 PCs, one master and one backup, controlled by an trained operator using a musical keyboard."

UFO's to be precise!

"London-based Apple Corps is owned by Sir Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and the widows of John Lennon [Yoko] and George Harrison." (from Scotsman News) Not just Paul and Ringo.

John's first wife only got 100,000 pounds in the divorce settlement. It sounds like a lot, but its nothing compared to his future earnings.

Don't get me started on the whole Northern Music, Michael Jackson, Sony thing.

MICROSOFT is working around the clock to find a way of avoiding a fine of up to $3.22bn that the European Commission is about to levy.

• NASA has known there were problems with tile flaking for a long time.
• Stress from the impact was noted on the black box recorder, but not transmitted to the crew or ground control
• Some of the shielding floated away during orbit, a fact confirmed by radar data, but no one noticed at the time.
• NASA turned down repeated requests to inspect the wing for damage during the mission.
• There was no real reason Columbia's flight couldn't have been delayed after tile problems with Atlantis except for the bureaucratic need to maintain "momentum."

NASA Watch is reporting that NASA has cancelled Servicing Mission 4 for the Hubble Space Telescope. The reason given is not for budgets, but for safety."

Associated Links:
thestar.com
news.scotsman.com

I do not understand this. We've got a wonderful tool up there a generating ton of data. Just because it's not getting great press anymore... and just because it's not the sexy thing right now, why forget about it?

They can easily (well, easy for me to say) work on it during their visits to the space station.

We'll spend a trillion to get men to Mars... but we can't take the time and energy to keep the space telescope up and running?

I like the push to Mars... but why abandon a tool that is gathering so much wonderful data?

AC

...which is dragging even Prime Minister Tony Blair into the quest to 'urgently conduct an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr Kelly'.."

Newsflash, the Hutton report is due to be released any day now which is the conclusion to the investigation.

And Blair hasn't been 'dragged in'. He's promised to resign if the report finds him guilty of lying.

More information

You mean the fellow who turned down person the year from Time so that it could go to the "American Soldier"?

Looks to me like you're not fit to carry his jockstrap, boyo.

A group of people in the UK recently came to the conclusion that IDS is actually the problem rather than the solution first hoped for.

I don't have the balls to do it, but can anyone get Ford on the phone? Or are there any Ford.com people who read slashdot who can verify?

... as it was just yesterday that it became know that Ford Motor Company is joining the ranks. They are switching from Windows to Linux

Mate, I'm going to refuse to watch Tony Blair's impersonation of a poodle in the forthcoming episode, I mean that shits already been done in George Micheal's video.

Why should sick and innocent people suffer?

You do realize that Iraq rapes the wives of political prisoners (with an on-staff professional rapist) tortures its Olympic athletes who fail to perform, and cuts out the tongues of people who criticize the government, right?

The people of Iraq are already suffering - a few may be accidentally killed during the liberation, but the only thing we know for sure is that if we do nothing the suffering will continue. I know of no liberation in the history of the world that has been causualty-free for the oppressed, but I also know of no liberation in the history of the world where the oppressed have asked their liberators to please go home.

Musicians in unionized orchestras do just fine

Until the orcestra goes under. And, unlike Chrysler, the fed usually doesn't step in to keep an orchestra afloat.

didn't think The Scotsman was short on details...maybe you were looking at their "breaking news" only?

The Scotsman http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=544202002

The Scotsman http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=547192002

Scotland on Sunday http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=540862002

Edinburgh Evening News http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=544842002

didn't think The Scotsman was short on details...maybe you were looking at their "breaking news" only?

The Scotsman http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=544202002

The Scotsman http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=547192002

Scotland on Sunday http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=540862002

Edinburgh Evening News http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=544842002

didn't think The Scotsman was short on details...maybe you were looking at their "breaking news" only?

The Scotsman http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=544202002

The Scotsman http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=547192002

Scotland on Sunday http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=540862002

Edinburgh Evening News http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=544842002

didn't think The Scotsman was short on details...maybe you were looking at their "breaking news" only?

The Scotsman http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=544202002

The Scotsman http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=547192002

Scotland on Sunday http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=540862002

Edinburgh Evening News http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=544842002

A grandfather is set to fulfil a lifetime's ambition by holding his official 21st birthday party - 63 years after handing out the invitations.

Martin Grundy was born on February 29 in the leap year of 1916 and so celebrates a proper birthday every four years.

As a law student in 1937, he held an informal 21st party with a few drinks on February 28 - and told undergraduates to come to the proper party in 2000.

I find it very strange that this happens just as I've picked up Shadowrun: Third Edition. The Net to a great number of people in this country is AOL. I loathe AOL. Almost anyone I know dislikes AOL. People who cannot really use computers (like my parents) use AOL because "It's easy".

Of course, these are the same people who read Time, People, and watch CNN for their news. Yes, easy-to-use, no control, no real content news.

Does anyone see a pattern?

I read BBC News, The Scotsman, etc. I can't wait for BBC World to come to the US in the spring.

Oh well, screw the masses. That's why they pay us so much. Because we can do what they never will.
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