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(because DeBartolo quit) |
| Saturday, August 31, 2002: From today's NYT -- The National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers' union, came under so much fire for a suggested (9/11) lesson plan on tolerance that it has removed the material from its Web site. Yesterday, a Washington research group released curriculum written largely by conservatives, including William J. Bennett and Lynne Cheney, to counter what it called "the dangerous idea of moral equivalence" and "the usual pap about diversity" in other lesson plans. |
| Friday, August 30, 2002: Not only does the average US citizen consume more than anyone else on the planet, we throw away more as well. The BBC has an interesting interactive on the weekly waste output of the average US citizen. At 31.5 pounds, it’s the highest in the world. |
| NYT: The Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, said today that he and his fellow architects of monetary policy could have done nothing to deflate the stock market bubble of a few years ago. In fact, he said, there was no way they could be sure it was coming. |
| From the Institute
for War & Peace Reporting -- Hundreds of schools in rural Afghanistan
that re-opened in triumph after the fall of the Talaban have been closed
again because their teachers haven’t been paid for more than a year. It’s
another blow to the recovery plans of a country where the United Nations
estimates just one in three people can read and write.
The United Nations Development Program provides each teacher with a wage of around 40 US dollars a month, but it would appear that the money has been swallowed up by Afghanistan’s arcane banking system. |
| Thursday, August 29, 2002: By
Scott Peterson | The Christian Science Monitor | MOSCOW – The smashed
Iraqi laboratory may once have produced a million veterinary vaccines a
year, as Saddam Hussein's regime claimed. But in 1998 this site outside
Baghdad was ground zero in United Nations efforts to erase Iraq's biological
weapons program.
Armed with the most intrusive arms-control mandate in history, the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) destroyed whatever it could find of Iraq's chemical, biological, nuclear, and long-range missile programs. By some estimates, the seven-year mission disarmed the regime by up to 95 percent. But what is left? What weapons has Iraq been able to reassemble since UNSCOM departed in late 1998? Those uncertainties lie at the heart of the current debate over possible US military action against Iraq. The key question is this: Could renewed, unfettered weapons inspections contain Iraq and avert war, as many weapons experts say? Or, as the White House argues, is military action the only course that remains? |
| Washington
Times abstract | ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Afghanistan is preparing to
release captured survivors from an ill-equipped 10,000-man Pakistani army
that rushed to the aid of the Taliban last fall, raising fears that at
least some of them will go back to fighting Americans. The Pakistani "jihadis,"
who rushed into battle armed mostly with poorly working muskets, suffered
severely in the U.S.-led offensive that ended Taliban rule.
Northern Alliance forces captured about 6,000 of them, and 3,500 others are dead or missing, according to a defense analyst in Islamabad, though other estimates put the number of prisoners much lower. Only 500 made it back to the Pakistani border, where they were promptly arrested. Pakistani reporters who have visited some of the prisoners say the majority are 15 to 20 years old and joined the jihad after hearing in their mosques that they had a religious duty to defend Muslim forces against an infidel attack. Eight out of 10 detainees contacted by Reuters news agency in a Kabul intelligence service jail yesterday said they would not return to a violent way of life if released. But one 32-year-old said, "I will go wherever there are aggressors like the Americans in Afghanistan and fight against them." Another Pakistani shouted from his cell: "I shall immediately set to work against U.S. forces if freed." |
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| Wednesday, August 28, 2002: The number of black men in prison or jail has grown fivefold in the past 20 years, to the point where more are behind bars than are enrolled in colleges or universities, according to a recent study by the Justice Policy Institute (New York Times registration required). |
| A champagne and caviar lifestyle is being enjoyed by the Earth Summit delegates in Johannesburg, the British tabloid The Sun is loudly reporting. While mountains of lobster, oysters and prime cut steak are being served at the conference aimed at ending famine, children living nearby in corrugated shacks are dropping like flies. |
| Tuesday, August 27, 2002: Director of Homeland Security Tom Ridge has said cells of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network are operating in the United States and that further terrorist strikes were virtually inevitable. "It would be foolish to conclude - given the fact that at least 19 had made their way months, if not years, before into this country to plan for and prepare for the attacks of 9/11 - it would be very foolhardy to conclude that there were only 19," he said. |
| From a Gallup Poll taken August 5-8: |
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68% Approve 26% Disapprove |
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28% Excellent/Good 71% Only fair/Poor |
| Britain's chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, today delivers an unprecedented
strong warning to Israel, arguing that the country is adopting a stance
"incompatible" with the deepest ideals of Judaism, and that the current
conflict with the Palestinians is "corrupting" Israeli culture.
In a move that will send shockwaves through Israel and the world Jewish community, Professor Sacks departs from his usual policy of offering only public endorsement of Israel, and broad support for moves toward peace, by giving an explicit verdict on the effect that 35 years of military occupation and decades of conflict are having on Israel and the Jewish people. "I regard the current situation as nothing less than tragic," he tells the Guardian in an exclusive interview. "It is forcing Israel into postures that are incompatible in the long run with our deepest ideals." |
| From the BBC -- The odds against being hit by a meteorite are billions to one - but a teenage girl in Great Britain may have had one land on her foot. |
| Monday, August 26, 2002: Things we learned en route to looking up other things --- Reported back on April 5 by Agence France-Presse -- "Members of the panel that selects the recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize said they regretted bestowing the prestigious honor on Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and would now revoke it from him if it were possible." |
| From the Jerusalem Post (registration required): "Israeli hopes to keep a low profile at the UN World Summit for Sustainable Development were already dashed on the first day of the conference Monday, when Palestinians accused Israel of torturing children, stealing land, and poisoning Palestinian water." |
| The Bush administration has warned European nations that the American role in NATO will change if the European Union refuses the US request for agreements to keep Americans out of the reach of the new International Criminal Court...Elsewhere in today's news - White House lawyers have told President Bush he would not need congressional approval to attack Saddam Hussein's Iraq. |
| Chicago-based Recycled Paper Greetings has created a birthday card inspired by Enron and its accounting scandals. Cover art - a smirking accountant sitting over an adding machine. Inside punch line - ``For your birthday, we hired Enron's accountants to figure out just how old you are.” |
| Sunday, August 25, 2002: Mark Fiore - United Media's stuff - Mister Buffo - Doonesbury - Calvin&Hobbes - more |
| Saturday, August 24, 2002: The UK Guardian reports - McDonald's has been accused of extreme insensitivity after releasing a new sandwich called the "McAfrika" in Norway, one of the world's richest countries, at a time when 12 million people are facing starvation in southern Africa. |
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The launch of this not-so-happy-meal – a concoction of beef, cheese, tomatoes and salad in a pita-style sandwich, said to be based upon an authentic African recipe - has infuriated the Norwegian equivalent of Christian Aid and the Norwegian Red Cross… |
| The Museum of Sex -- a serious, academically credentialed museum opens in Manhattan on Sept. 23. Much of its collection, it seems, comes from a retired Library of Congress curator, who, over 30 years, spent an estimated $100,000 on porn. While the details are few (‘cause the story runs in a family newspaper), you can real all about it in today’s Washington Post. |
| Friday, August 23, 2002: From an “Open Letter to America from a Canadian,” by W.R. McDougall. Be advised, this is the nice part. |
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Go get your ten billionth burger, America. Fatten your already fat asses with bacteria- and hormone- ridden meat and do nothing as you sit stupefied before your mind numbing television sets awaiting the next episode of sad families being humiliated on "Cops." |
| From the Islamic Republic News Agency in Iran -- "Deputy Cooperatives Minister for Research, Training and Development Abolqasem Mahdavi said here Wednesday that based on the figures released by the World Bank, the per capita income in Iran is $1,640 in US dollars…He said that the absence of income is one of the primary factors contributing to the chronic poverty in the nation." |
| Ray Hanania, an award winning veteran Chicago journalist and Arab American community activist, recently began publishing a weekly column in the Daily Herald, a suburban Chicago newspaper. Hanania, a Palestinian, provides a perspective that seems missing from our national Middle East debate. For example, he wrote this week that “Israelis often exploit the power of the term 'anti-Semitism' to silence critics and confuse…issues.” -- a thought we've had a million times but haven't read or heard in anything close to the main stream media before. |
| When three African nations facing famine reject emergency food shipments due to concerns over genetic engineering, it's time for Americans to reconsider their own government's policy toward biotech food...A week old, from the Pacific News Service. |
| Thursday, August 22, 2002: If you know anyone that suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, send them this NYT’s report on the latest research out of the Harvard Medical School. While some scientists in the past have proposed that rheumatoid arthritis attacks collagen, a fibrous protein in cartilage, bone and connective tissues, the new research suggests that the target of destruction is not a protein, but a type of carbohydrate known as glycosaminoglycans, a major component of cartilage, joint fluids, connective tissue and skin. The new finding goes a long way toward explaining why the dietary supplement glucosamine has proven effective in combating this disease. Because naturally occurring glucosamine can’t be patented by any major drug company, don’t expect this currently available and relatively inexpensive treatment to get much press, or to be suggested as a treatment by many traditional doctors. |
| Pulled from the BBC -- Lie detectors, or polygraphs, have been in use for over 80 years but have always been controversial. The first legal judgment that the machines are not reliable came only six years after they were invented. Though scientists and psychologists have improved lie detectors over the years, there is still little hard evidence on how effective they are. |
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In the aftermath of September 11th, polygraphs have gained a higher profile in the USA. Americans working at laboratories with stocks of anthrax have been tested. Skeptics would point out that the FBI has yet to make an arrest. |
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The fall of the Twin Towers and the anthrax investigations have also focused attention on newer ideas for lie detection which could be more reliable. Ideas include a heat-sensing camera which can measure tiny temperature fluctuations on people's faces, and magnetic resonance scanners which observe the brain's inner workings. Neither technique is ready for use, and civil liberty campaigners believe that both would bring new infringements to the rights of the citizen. |
| To maintain a healthy weight, anybody with a tendency to gain has to behave "abnormally and reject all the pressures to be like other modern Americans," says Philip James, chairman of the International Obesity Task Force. Millions of Americans, he says, will continue to struggle with their weight unless the environment changes drastically. About 61%, or more than 120 million people, in the US are either overweight or obese, according to government statistics. Obesity is roughly 30 pounds over a healthy weight. More in USA Today ... A possible reason behind the Krispy Kreme breakfast - A recent survey of 5,000 people found a bare majority of Americans like their jobs. Also in USA Today. |
| Wednesday, August 21, 2002: To commemorate the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, Vivendi Universal's Canal Plus production unit is unveiling a movie about 9/11, which consists of 11 separate submissions from key directors in as many countries. Variety (registration required) is reporting anti-US elements permeate the unique project. |
| The possibility of Bill Clinton hosting his own daily US chat show has moved a step closer to reality, after executives from CBS admitted they were back in negotiations with the his aides. From the UK Guardian. |
| The dollar fell today from recent highs against the euro and yen following a questionable report that Saudi investors were pulling billions of dollars out of the US. According to the Financial Times, disgruntled Saudis have withdrawn as much as $200 billion as relations between the US and Saudi Arabia come under increasing strain. Again, in today's Guardian. |
| Kathleen Christison, a former political analyst for the CIA, claims the New York Time’s coverage of the Middle East has a decided anti-Palestinian bias. The Washington Post, she says, does a better job. In today’s ArabNews. |
| BERLIN (Reuters) - An aging Berlin playboy has come up with an unusual offer to lure women into his bed by promising the last woman he sleeps with an inheritance of about $244,000. |
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Rolf Eden, a 72-year-old west Berlin disco owner famous in the German capital for his countless number of sex partners, said he could imagine no better way to die than in the arms of an attractive young woman -- preferably under 30. |
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"I put it all in my last will and testament -- the last woman who sleeps with me gets all the money," Eden said. |
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"I want to pass away in the most beautiful moment of my life. First a lot of fun with a beautiful woman, then wild sex, a final orgasm -- and it will all end with a heart attack and then I'm gone." |
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Eden, who is selling his popular "Big Eden" nightclub later this year, said "applicants" shouldn't wait long because of his advanced age. "It could end very soon," he said. "Maybe even tomorrow." |
| Tuesday, August 20, 2002: According to an August 5-8 Gallup poll, 56% of Americans believe they have a clear idea of why the US may invade Iraq. A large minority, however, is uncertain why the US might take this action, including 39% who expressly say they do not have a clear idea and 5% who have no opinion. |
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The responses among Republicans and Democrats nationwide indicate political overtones. Most Republicans (72%) respond positively, saying they do understand why the US may attack Iraq. Democrats are more uncertain, with the majority (55%) saying they do not understand the rationale or have no opinion. Independents fall in between, with a slight majority (52%) saying they understand. |
| How many planets would we need if everyone was to live like you? Take this interactive quiz, developed by the US-based think-tank Redefining Progress (and offered by the BBC), to estimate how much of the earth's resources you use up. |
| The UK's most notorious prisoner has written a fitness manual - - for people who live in small spaces. The book, entitled Solitary Fitness, is due to be published in the Fall of 2002. The inmate, Charles Bronson, who named himself after the Hollywood actor, has spent 24 years of solitary confinement inside a 12-feet long cell. From the BBC. |
| In Europe, the records of who people contact others via phone, e-mail or fax could soon be stored for years under a proposal drafted by the European Union. If passed, the law would force anyone providing communication services to keep records for at least a year of what customers have been doing. The records would be available to police forces across Europe investigating almost any crime. More from the BBC. |
| The New York City medical examiner released a list yesterday of 2,819 people it said were killed or missing in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. The accounting included a breakdown by age, finding that the largest number of victims ranged from 30 to 42. The largest number of people of the same age were those who were 37 years old, of which there were 121 victims. There were six victims 4 years old or younger, and four victims 80 years old or older, the report said. |
| If Major League Baseball players end up striking on August 30, and in the process alienate every fan in America, the players can always pack up their performance drugs and go to Afghanistan. Teenagers there are getting hooked on the sport big time. The boys are being taught the game by American soldiers, whose families have donated bats, gloves and balls. They hope to start up a girls' team as soon as they get more equipment. More from the BBC. |
| Monday, August 19, 2002: Next month, the Sunday Styles section of The New York Times will start publishing reports of same-sex commitment ceremonies in the pages that are currently headed "Weddings.” On occasion, the Vows column will also be devoted to a same-sex couples. |
| "Rarely has the need for a well-informed society been so great. Yet in the last several decades the ability of news organizations to provide probing and insightful information has been compromised." - from Saturday's Op-Ed in the NYT on the much needed rethinking of a journalist's education. |
| In the first tangible signs of a logistical buildup around Iraq, the Pentagon is sending weapons and other supplies to the Middle East that could be a critical part of the war stocks if President Bush decides to attack President Saddam Hussein, Defense Department and military officials have said in recent interviews. In today's NYT. |
| The chief executive of the US biotechnology firm Monsanto said today that hopes of expanding genetically modified crops to Europe have been scaled down in the face of fierce opposition from environmental groups and governments. In UK's Guardian. |
| Bad news -- An Islamic appeal court has upheld a sentence of death by stoning for adultery against a Nigerian woman…The largely-male crowd in the courtroom reacted to the judgment with shouts of "Allahu Akbar" (God is great). |
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Good news -- No one has yet been stoned to death for adultery in Nigeria. Indeed, a woman convicted under very similar circumstances last year won her appeal a few months ago. From today’s BBC. |
| Witness reports and the probing of a mass grave point to war crimes. Does the United States have any responsibility for the atrocities of its allies? A Newsweek investigation. |
| Sunday, August 18, 2002: A covert American program during the Reagan administration provided Iraq with critical battle planning assistance at a time when American intelligence agencies knew that Iraqi commanders would employ chemical weapons in waging the Iran-Iraq war, according to senior military officers with direct knowledge of the program...Iraq's use of gas in that conflict is repeatedly cited by President Bush and, this week, by his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, as justification for "regime change" in Iraq. In today's NYT. |
| Saturday, August 17, 2002: Here's the conclusion of Tina Rosenberg’s “The Free-Trade Fix” in Sunday’s NYT’s magazine - a highly recommended edifying read: |
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Hundreds of millions of poor people will never be helped by globalization, but hundreds of millions more could be benefiting now, if the rules had not been rigged to help the rich and follow abstract orthodoxies. Globalization can begin to work for the vast majority of the world's population only if it ceases to be viewed as an end in itself, and instead is treated as a tool in service of development: a way to provide food, health, housing and education to the wretched of the earth. |
| Leni Riefenstahl - dancer, actress, director, writer, photographer and now, underwater filmmaker - turns 100. From the BBC. |
| Friday, August 16, 2002: Frank Zappa, the founder of the Mothers of Invention died in 1993, but last week the former Communist town and German Baltic resort of Bad Doberan staged a Zappa comeback by unveiling a bronze bust of him in the town square. In today's UK Independent. |
| Doctors at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, reportedly say that in the seven months that the U.S. has been keeping al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners there, about thirty have tried to kill themselves. Read all about it at Military.com. |
| Relatives of victims of the 9/11 attacks - from Argentina, Canada, France, Paraguay, South Africa and the U.S. - have filed a trillion dollar lawsuit against various parties accusing them of financing Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network and Afghanistan's former Taleban regime. |
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Those accused include the country of Sudan, three members of the Saudi royal family - including the Saudi foreign minister - and various Islamic charities, in addition to seven financial institutions and the Bin Laden family's Saudi construction firm. They also accused the US Government of failing to pursue such institutions thoroughly enough because of lucrative oil interests. |
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Lawyer Allan Gerson, who also worked on a lawsuit for families of victims of the 1988 Pan Am airline Lockerbie bombing, said that the suit was aimed at uncovering the complicated financial transactions which funded the attacks. |
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"We're trying to expose the extent, the depth, the orchestration, the financial support that terrorist organisations have received for perhaps a decade from various Saudi interests." From the BBC. |
| More from the BBC -- A US invitation to aid agencies to bid for humanitarian work in Iraq has sparked fresh speculation that Washington is planning an imminent strike against Baghdad. American charities, whose activities are currently strictly limited in Iraq, have been asked by the US State Department to bid for millions of dollars in government funds to carry out relief work in the country... the primary objective of the relief program would be to respond to urgent humanitarian needs of people in Iraq and Iraqi refugees. |
| King Fahd, the 82-year-old ruler of Saudi Arabia, who has been in a Geneva clinic since May, has decamped to his marble Spanish palace – a gleaming replica of the US White House - amid mounting fears over his health and speculation about the future of his oil-rich kingdom should he fail to recover. |
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Diabetic, arthritic and overweight, King Fahd is still suffering the effects of a stroke in 1995 and his condition is said to be unstable after eye surgery in Switzerland. He is attended by hundreds of courtiers, relatives and hangers-on, all dependent on his favor for their political power and ostentatious wealth. |
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Unconfirmed reports say that within Saudi Arabia's hermetic secrecy, anti-American unrest, even revolutionary fervor, is growing. Western expatriates, alarmed by rumors of a royal power struggle after King Fahd's death that could presage upheaval and bloody reprisals, are quietly leaving. From the UK's Independent. |
| Cattle rancher Grover Chestnut died earlier this year at the age of 79. Before he cashed in, however, he installed an ATM on his tombstone and gave ten heirs debit cards, and told them were allowed to withdraw $300 per week from his grave. From the San Francisco Chronicle. |
| Thursday, August 15, 2002: The Boston-based New England Cryogenic Center recently became the first US sperm bank to seek permission from the British government to export "bulk shipments" of donor sperm to the United Kingdom. Other commercial US sperm banks report increasing online sales to the UK. |
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Driving the trend -- a nearly 60% decline in British sperm donations over the past 10 years. And aggressive Yankee marketing, which typically offers far more details about the appearance, personality and family history of sperm donors than do companies in the United Kingdom. In USA Today. |
| Swedish researchers have discovered a protein in the brain which appears to prevent the effects of coffee from wearing off. Differing levels of this could explain how a single cup of coffee can keep some people buzzing for hours, while others can fall asleep at Starbucks. From the BBC. |
| Nine months after calling Islam "a very evil and wicked religion," Billy Graham’s son, the evangelist Franklin Graham said yesterday that Muslims had not sufficiently apologized for 9/11 and they should help compensate victims' families. Ink/paper wasted by the NYT. |
| On average, "people are coping quite well'' after Sept. 11, said Tom Smith, one of the authors of a new University of Chicago survey of Americans on post-attack life. However, the survey found that the psychological effects of the terrorist attacks are lingering longer among women than men. |
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Aiming to explore Sept. 11- related physical and emotional changes, questioners from the university's National Opinion Research Center covered about 15 symptoms, including headaches, weeping, insomnia and increases in smoking or drinking. Women checked off more of the symptoms than men: 3.2 for females, 2.0 for males. |
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Low-income Americans and minorities also reported having Sept. 11-related emotional symptoms at a higher level than the general population. Smith said these groups traditionally have higher stress levels, so disaster-related stresses "pile up on top.'' Hispanics named an average of five symptoms, African-Americans 3.7, and whites 2.4. |
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In general, however, "we found a positive trend toward recovery,'' Smith said. By Andrew Herrmann in today’s Chicago Sun-Times. |
| Wednesday, August 14, 2002: The American Bar Assocation yesterday condemned the government's secret detention of hundreds of immigrants after 9/11, demanding to know who has been held and why many detainees have not received legal representation. |
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"It is essential that we not tamper with the most fundamental freedoms," said Esther F. Larden, a Georgetown University law professor who heads the ABA's Coordinating Committee on Immigration Law. "At the most difficult times, when our freedoms are tested, we speak out to preserve the rule of law, to preserve our core values and to preserve our national heritage." From the LA Times. Also, in battle over 9-11 detentions, Feds may be hiding more than identities. In this week's Village Voice. |
| County jailers have long known that housing INS detainees pumps easy income into the coffers. Nearly 900 facilities around the country provide beds for the INS, and in interviews over the years, several county sheriffs and wardens have described such detainees as a "cash crop." In this weeks'sVillage Voice. |
| If today's corporate criminal does time, will it be in a prison, or a "Club Fed" – a fenceless facility where inmates live in dorms and are protected from violent convicts? A decade ago while in prison, writer Joe Loya came face-to-face with Charles Keating -- probably the most famous jailbird of the 1980s Savings and Loan debacle. As Loya writes: "Keating, Boesky and Milken collectively swindled Wall Street out of more than $500 million. Yet together they served less than 10 years. I know a man serving 20 years for an $800 heist." |
| The number of people scheming to get rich off 9/11 has reached the point where the American Red Cross and several other charitable organizations doling out assistance to victims' families set up fraud-review panels to check suspicious cases. In today’s San Francisco Chronicle. |
| China says it is preparing for the fourth - and perhaps final - test launch of its Shenzhou space capsule, the vehicle that is due to take China's first astronaut into space. According to state-run media, the fourth test launch could take place before the end of this year. If successful, the first manned flight may be just around the corner. From the BBC. |
| Wajeeh Nuseibeh, a 50-year-old Muslim, says someone from his family has opened and closed the massive wooden doors of Christianity's holiest shrine – Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre - pretty much every day for 1,364 years. Christian sects squabbling over stewardship of the place have never trusted one another with the key. From the AP. |
| A Long Island mother is fuming that JFK Airport security guards forced her to drink her own breast milk in front of other passengers before boarding a flight - to prove she wasn't carrying any dangerous fluid to wreak havoc. From last weeks' NY Post. |
| Tuesday, August 13, 2002: From an Aug. 5-8 Gallup poll -- a majority of Americans say they have a clear idea why the United States is considering attacking Iraq, but nearly four in 10 say they do not. Perhaps reading a brief history of Iraq from an Arab's point-of-view would help clear things up ... Also, the Gallup poll finds that just 37% of the public feels the United States and its allies are currently winning the war against terrorism, while 14% feel the terrorists are winning. The plurality of respondents, 46%, say neither side is winning. |
| "Steady" Ed Headrick, father of the Frisbee, has died. He was 78. His ashes reportedly will be molded into a limited edition of memorial flying discs and given to a select few family and friends and others who make donations in his memory. |
| Business Ethics magazine is devoted to a movement that crusades for what it calls CSR - corporate social responsibility. Its latest issue is pretty thin. |
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Per the Washington Post: The idea that corporations will shaft workers, shareholders and Mother Nature in pursuit of the almighty dollar should be obvious to anyone who has ever glanced at an American history textbook. And the fact that corporate executives might utter pious platitudes about ethics while stealing like gangsters would surprise no one familiar with the tale of Richard Whitney, the president of the New York Stock Exchange, who delivered a famous speech titled "Business Honesty" shortly before he was sent to Sing Sing for theft in 1938. |
| According to the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Delaware, the NYT reports, an average of 1,500 American city dwellers die each year because of the heat. Annual deaths from tornadoes, earthquakes and floods together total fewer than 200 ... Headline: Dozens Are Dead as Floods Sweep Through Europe, also from the NYT... Lastly, the UK Guardian has a special graphic report on the killer Asian Brown Cloud that's well worth watching. |
| President Robert Mugabe's program of land reform – meaning, confiscating all farm land owned by white people - is threatening the lives of millions of Zimbabweans, critics have warned. His Hitler-style stache scares us. |
| From USA Today -- School textbook publishers just happened to be conducting updates of their history and social studies texts when the attacks of Sept. 11 toppled the World Trade Center and scarred the Pentagon. So the events of 9/11 will be reflected in many of the new books that arrive in classrooms in the fall of 2003. |
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Some history experts, however, have reservations about the new material included in the texts. "My impression of the 9/11 material is that it is extremely superficial, which is not surprising considering that not much was known when the material was written," says Diane Ravitch, a former assistant secretary of education who now is historian and professor at New York University. "Students will learn that the event occurred, but not much more than that." |
| From the BBC -- French police have arrested a couple - said to be in their 60's - who had placed 17 hidden cameras in various nooks and crannies (including the bathroom) in the apartment which they rented out. The couple, from a coastal town in the south of France, are said to have kept video recordings of a series of tenants. |
| Monday, August 12, 2002: From the UK Guardian -- The first six months of 2002 have been the northern hemisphere's warmest in recorded history…and the Pacific ocean is yet again building up to another season of climatic trouble making - the dreaded El Nino. |
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But if you think the weather is unpredictable and extreme now, seems we haven't seen anything yet. |
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Yesterday a team of international climatologists led by Professor Paul Grutzen, whose work on the ozone hole won him the 1995 Nobel science prize, said that they had identified the "Asian brown cloud". This 10 million square mile, three kilometre thick, fluctuating haze of man-made pollutants is now spreading across the whole Asian continent and blocking out up to 15% of the sunlight. |
| In Britain, upper classes are being brought down a notch. Titles, families, matter less – cash emerges as king. "Nobody pays deference to the upper classes anymore," said television broadcaster Joan Bakewell. "And why would you, when they're reduced to selling tickets for tours of their gardens?" In today’s Washington Post. |
| From the BBC: |
| A woman in Thailand killed herself by jumping into a pit full of crocodiles in front of scores of horrified tourists. Police said Somjai Setabul left a suicide note in which she complained about her husband and apologised to members of her family. |
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The woman chose feeding time to throw herself into the enclosure...More than 100 watched as she was seized by one crocodile and then swarmed by more than 100 others…Workers at the park were only able to look on helplessly as she was torn apart. They were finally able to retrieve her body about 20 minutes later. |
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What could possibly have been left after 20 minutes? |
| More Guardian -- Iran has arrested and expelled to Saudi Arabia 16 al-Qaida members who had fled there from Afghanistan, according to the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud Faisal, despite the Bush administration's accusation that Iran is part of the "axis of evil"… |
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…it appears that Iran has been secretly turning over foreign suspects to governments including Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, where the detainees have been interrogated by their own governments… |
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It has been alleged that suspects are tortured for information in those countries and that the US has allowed them to be interrogated there in the hope of obtaining information they might not otherwise get... |
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The Saudi government has been anxious to prove its credentials as a partner of the US following a controversial briefing by a Rand Corporation analyst to a Pentagon advisory board that suggested that "the Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader"…The briefing has since been mocked as sensationalist and the credentials of its author attacked. |
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| Sunday, August 11, 2002: From the AP: A pilot for a Delta Air Lines subsidiary would not fly Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Michael Melchior from Cincinnati to Toronto because the pilot thought Melchior posed a security risk, an Israeli radio station reported Sunday. |
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This is the third time an Israeli official has been pulled from a U.S. flight because of a pilot's refusal to fly them, the station said. The others reportedly were Alon Pinkas, the Israeli consul general in New York, and a bodyguard of Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres. All of which makes us wonder why the first two incidents were apparently never reported here before. |
| There’s a rather long piece by Lisa Belkin in today’s NYT’s magazineabout “coincidence,” which seems unbalanced, insofar as it represents a purely linear, one-dimensional view of reality. Meaning, Western science strikes again. Carl Jung’s book, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, offers a much-needed, more Eastern view of things. |
| Saturday, August 10, 2002: About a third of newspapers' Internet operations are now operating in the black. New-media executives share strategies in the current issue of Presstime. |
| It's a damn shame SC Johnson, the manufacturer of OFF!®, is a family-owned business. Would have made a nice stock market play. |
| Gunmen from one family ambushed and killed 22 members of a rival clan on Saturday in the Upper Egyptian province of Sohag, according to the BBC. Blood feuds and honor killings are common in parts of the Arab world, they report. This is especially true in Upper Egypt, a rural area of the country where societies adhere to strict rules that have been followed for centuries. So we guess that makes it OK. |
| Also by the BBC, but a little closer to home: Black and Latino children are becoming increasingly segregated from their white classmates in American schools, a Harvard University study has found. |
| Yet another wonderful reason to stay out of hollow aluminum tubes, 35,000 feet above the ground traveling at 500 MPH - The Transportation Security Administration has warned airlines to be on the lookout for impostors wearing stolen uniforms. |
| Fat teenage girls get a break as more stores attempt to super-size it. It's a "fast-growing" market they say. "Little girls getting bigger is really on a collision course with clothes getting smaller and sexier," said Chris Ohlinger, chief executive of Service Industry Research Systems Inc. "Retail opportunities occur when you have socio-demographic collisions like this." (if the link doesn't work, cut & paste: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A1166-2002Aug9) |
| Friday, August 9, 2002: Just had a long lunch with nine Muslims from eight African countries - Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Senegal and South Africa. An interesting mix - a Major in Ghana's army, a member of Tanzania's Parliament, a Trade Unionist from Zambia, a few teachers, media people and youth workers. They were brought over by a US State Department program called "Emerging Muslim Leaders: U.S. Society and the Political Process; A Young African Leaders Project." DC, New York, Chicago, New Mexico, Salt Lake City, LA then back home. All in an effort to show them that we're not locking up Muslims for just being Muslims, as is being reported back home. Much was learned from everyone, except perhaps the Imam from Gambia who questioned the assumption Arabs were involved in 9/11. He still thought the Jews were. Other than that, and the cold soup I was served, it was an enjoyable exchange. Next month, a group of Saudis and Moroccans are due in. That should be fun. |
| The Massachusetts State Board of Registration has suspended an orthopedic surgeon's medical license because he left a patient anesthetized on an operating table in the middle of a back operation while he went to a bank several blocks away to deposit his paycheck. The 1992 graduate of Harvard’s Medical School told the board he had "exercised remarkably horrible judgment," but had bills to pay. |
| We missed this story last week. From the UK's Independent: You can't buy it yet, but a drug is being developed in labs in Australia and the US that may prove to be the ultimate lifestyle enhancer - you'd get a fantastic tan and a highly active libido, with a slim figure and clear skin as possible side-effects. |
| Some 144 critics, from Jonathan Ross to Camille Paglia, and 108 directors, from Bernardo Bertolucci to John Waters, have voted Orson Welles's Citizen Kane the best film of all time. Our favorite line: "There's no trick to making money, if all you want to do is make money." |
| Thursday, August 8, 2002: Free pizza delivery, long taken for granted by many Americans, is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. And the move is none too soon. In the United States, about 60 percent of adults are overweight or obese, as are nearly 13 percent of children (registration may be required for both story links). |
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| Researchers and psychologists, the BBCreports, say there's growing evidence of a crisis among twentysomethings, and rising suicide rates among young men seem to back them up. They call it alienation. |
| From the AP -- Saudi Arabia has made clear to Washington — publicly and privately — that the U.S. military will not be allowed to use the kingdom's soil in any way for an attack on Iraq, Foreign Minister Prince Saud said Wednesday. |
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From the Boston Globe -- Radio Sawa, the US Gov’s $35 million, 24-hour radio network in the Arab world, apparently isn't getting the spin right. You can listen to it here. |
| Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's televised speech last night to mark the 14th anniversary of the end of the Iran-Iraq war, is sure to outrage US conservatives – he used words like “God” and “homeland”. Read excerpts. |
| Wednesday, August 7, 2002: From the San Francisco Chronicle -- |
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On Tuesday, thousands of unionists, retirees and others in Buenos Aires waved anti-U.S. placards at Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who arrived on the last leg of a regional tour that included stops in Brazil and Uruguay. The protest underscored a growing resentment against the United States. |
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For the past decade, much of Latin America has struggled to adopt Washington's recipe of free markets and free trade. Across the region, governments promised prosperity through foreign investment, tight monetary policies and privatization. |
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Unfettered by sufficient oversight procedures, privatization programs and the transfer of government functions to the private sector have fueled patronage and what many call "crony capitalism." |
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In some countries, the middle class is disappearing. Argentina's economic crisis has caused a 21.5 percent unemployment rate, the highest in the nation's history, and half of its 36 million people are in poverty. Real hunger has appeared in a country that once provided food for the world. "A new group is emerging from the middle class in Argentina," said Buenos Aires charity worker Silvia Baez. "They are hungry, have inadequate clothing and anguish in their faces. We call them the 'new poor.' " |
| Obviously, conservatives can be as irrational as the Islamic zealots we're fighting -- The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is asking all 3,500 incoming freshmen to read a book about Islam. As a result, the school finds itself besieged in federal court and across the airwaves by Christian evangelists and other conservatives. Fox News Network's Bill O'Reilly, for example, compared the assignment to teaching "Mein Kampf" in 1941 and questioned the purpose of making freshmen study "our enemy's religion." Read all about it in today's Washington Post |
| The AP reports, "U.S. Downplays Report on Saudis," while Arab News, Saudi Arabia's First English Daily, reports a “Call for balanced reporting by AP." |
| The UK is going to award Alan Greenspan, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, an honorary knighthood, reports the BBC. The honor, already approved by the Queen, is to recognize Mr. Greenspan's "contribution to global economic stability," the UK Treasury said. Because Mr. Greenspan is not British, he will not be able to call himself Sir Alan, but he will be able to use the letters KBE after his name. |
| Also from the BBC: A close encounter with a ½-mile wide asteroid this month can be viewed with binoculars or a small telescope, experts say. The nearest the asteroid will get is within 330,000 miles - slightly farther away than the Moon. |
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The space rock, designated 2002 NY40, can be seen from North America during the evening of August 17 (see the story for a sky map). Scientists will be able to use this close approach to plot the asteroid's future course. Right now, they say there's a minute risk - one in 500,000 - that the rock could strike Earth in 2022. In case you missed it last time we offered the link, here's what that long shot would look like. |
| While Saddam Hussein might rightfully be shaking in his boots, so, too, may the people of Taiwan. With Beijing rattling its sabre over recent remarks made about the island’s independence, it must have occurred to someone over there – what better time for China to invade, than the very day the U.S. military takes on Iraq? |
| Tuesday, August, 6, 2002: Today is Hiroshima Day, the 58th anniversary of the first use of the A-bomb. Paul Tibbets, 87, the man who piloted the Enola Gay on its mission to Japan, tells Studs Terkel, 90, why he has no regrets - and why he wouldn't hesitate to use it again. Read the entire interview in today’s UK Guardian. |
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Terkel: One big question. Since September 11, what are your thoughts? People talk about nukes, the hydrogen bomb. |
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Tibbets: Let's put it this way. I don't know any more about these terrorists than you do, I know nothing. When they bombed the Trade Center I couldn't believe what was going on. We've fought many enemies at different times. But we knew who they were and where they were. These people, we don't know who they are or where they are. That's the point that bothers me. Because they're gonna strike again, I'll put money on it. And it's going to be damned dramatic. But they're gonna do it in their own sweet time. We've got to get into a position where we can kill the bastards. None of this business of taking them to court, the hell with that. I wouldn't waste five seconds on them. |
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Terkel: One last thing, when you hear people say, "Let's nuke 'em," "Let's nuke these people," what do you think? |
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Tibbets: Oh, I wouldn't hesitate if I had the choice. I'd wipe 'em out. You're gonna kill innocent people at the same time, but we've never fought a damn war anywhere in the world where they didn't kill innocent people. If the newspapers would just cut out the shit: "You've killed so many civilians." That's their tough luck for being there. |
| From the Gallup Poll’s Tuesday Briefing -- Nearly six in 10 Americans feel the stock market will be higher one year from now, while more than six in 10 Americans feel that life of some form exists on other planets in the universe. |
| From the Washington Post -- Thousands of immigrants have been forced to leave their jobs in the last few months, the result of a little-publicized operation by the U.S. government to clean up Social Security records... |
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Since early this year, the Social Security Administration has sent letters to more than 800,000 businesses – about one in eight U.S. employers…"The impact is enormous," said Cecilia Munoz of the National Council of La Raza, which represents Hispanics. "We're hearing about it from all over the country." |
| Our NYSE isn’t the only market shaken by the Bush administration’s saber rattling, the Jordan Times reminds us. Because Iraq is Jordan’s main trading partner, Jordan’s 70-company Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) is doing about as well as ours. “Every time investors hear (US President) Bush threatening to hit Iraq, an atmosphere of pessimism prevails and shifts investor sentiment towards selling,” says one trader. |
| Monday, August 5, 2002: The nine Pennsylvania coal miners who were trapped underground for more than three days will be paid a mickey mouse $150,000 each for the TV movie and book rights to their story by the Walt Disney Company. We think the miners got shafted again. Read. Afternoon Update: the AP reports -- President Bush said...the against-all-hope rescue of nine miners..."really represents the best of our country." The reading of which somehow made us wonder how much Disney would have paid if they died. |
| By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS: KARACHI, Pakistan -- The United States has closed its consulate in the city of Karachi after local authorities reopened a street in front that the Americans deemed a security risk... |
| ''Ninety percent of the Al Qaeda cells in Europe are North African and emerge out of the Salafist school of Islam,'' said Magnus Ranstorp, director of research at St. Andrew's University Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence…The Salafist school is a fiery puritanical form of Islam that seeks to restore what its believers see as the true essence of an Islamic society, including the reestablishment of a caliphate [a successor of Muhammad] and the imposition of Islamic law…One of the doctrines that emerges out of the Salafist school is ''Taqiyyeh,'' Arabic for a process of concealment of true beliefs to confuse the enemy. Understanding Taqiyyeh, Ranstorp says, is at the heart of understanding why law enforcement has not fully laid bare the European staging area for the Sept. 11 attacks. |
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''That September 11th emanates out of Europe is not an accident or an aberration,'' said Jean-Louis Bruguiere, the chief French antiterrorism judge, who for 20 years has been at the forefront of tracking down and arresting Islamic militants in France and across Europe. ''It is the result of a long evolution that had gone ignored by law enforcement, by the government, by the US, by Europe, the media, and the public." |
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''Europe was and still is where the logistical core lies,'' Bruguiere said. ''I am not a psychic, but I believe there will be an attack on the West, and that it is likely to be an American target here in Europe.'' |
| One more reason to stay out of hollow aluminum tubes, 35,000 feet above the ground traveling at 500 MPH: Traveling on planes, the BBC reports, significantly increases the chances of catching a cold -- one in five passengers becoming ill after flying, scientists say. |
| WSJ columnist Daniel Henninger joins those who are somewhat skeptical of the upcoming 9-11 anniversary, Howard Kurtz points out. Those of us more fearful than skeptical, may enjoy reading it most. |
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"There's a fine line between remembrance and mawkishness. TV makes sure we cross it. The way American television production is conceived, with all of life reduced to melodrama, makes this inevitable, and we're used to it. But what happened September 11 transcended nearly all frames of human reference within which most of us have ever lived, and it's unsettling to know almost for a certainty that TV next month will absorb this event into its maw and make it their show." |
| Sunday, August 4, 2002: By MASATO TAINAKA, The Asahi Shimbun | HIROSHIMA - City officials plan to urge George W. Bush to reconsider what they say is an aggressive U.S. nuclear policy ... (and will) ... invite the U.S. president to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki to witness firsthand the atomic bombs' devastating impact. No incumbent U.S. president has ever visited Hiroshima during his tenure. |
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...The decision to invite Bush...comes in response to recent U.S. nuclear policy changes, such as the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review, which reportedly endorses a U.S. nuclear strike against certain nations, including Iraq...The review also sanctions a first-strike nuclear attack against non-nuclear nations... |
| Documents hidden in Arkansas since World War II showing the Japanese army's plans for an atomic bomb have been returned to the country, the BBC relays. A Japanese chemist turned professor at the University of Arkansas who died last year, kept the documents secret for more than half a century. His widow sent the 23-page dossier, including bomb blueprints, to a scientific research institute near Tokyo where the Japanese chemist worked as a young man. |
| We cerainly hope they're kidding, but the UK Guardian is running this headline today: "Bush ready to declare war" |
| Saturday, August 3, 2002: The generally successful U.S. campaign against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan is resulting in an increase of funds for terrorist groups around the world, resports the Pacific News Service. |
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"Thanks to the U.S. intervention, Afghanistan will again supply up to 70 percent of the world's heroin this year…The Taliban successfully reduced opium production by over 90 percent, even if only to maintain prices by restricting supply. As soon as they were driven out, farmers -- often at the instigation of local warlords -- began replanting their fields with opium. It is estimated that the 2002 crop will be about 85 percent of the record-breaking 4,500 metric tons harvested in 1999." |
| Friday, August 2, 2002: When it comes to the West Bank settlement issue, it seems Israel has started using ringers. As noted in the Jerusalem Report, after a 12-day crash course, 90 Indians from villages situated in the remote mountains of Peru were converted to Judaism by an official rabbinical delegation sent from Israel, then immediately flown to their new West Bank homes. |
| From the BBC: Five women were recently killed in India's West Bengal state by local tribesmen who believed they were witches. Apparently, relatively rich witches. Women’s rights groups say that local priests, tribal chiefs or greedy relatives declare widows or divorcees witches so they can take control of their property. |
| More from the BBC: U.S. scientists have discovered three things which help predict how long someone is going to live - lower body temperatures, lower levels of insulin, and those with higher levels of DHEA, than average. Note: You can buy DHEA over the counter at most drug stores, but men are advised not to take more than 5mg a day. The stuff is more potent than Viagra. Which might explain, if not the living longer, at least the will to do so. |
| John Madigan, The Tribune Company’s CEO, gets raked over the coals for selling more than $9 million of his company’s stock, while Tribune senior correspondent, Charles M. Madigan, shares his tale of being a coal miner’s son. Registration required for the latter link. |
| Bill Moyers, the PBS personality and former deputy director of the Peace Corps, was arrested Saturday night in Vermont and charged with DUI (as reported in today's Bennington Banner & lifted from MediaNews). What's next? Phil Donahue getting busted for slapping Marlo around? |
| Thursday, August 1, 2002: Arthur Miller’s new play, "Resurrection Blues," opens next week at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, MN. From the NYT: |
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It takes place in an unnamed Latin American country ruled by a military dictatorship that is backed by the United States. Drugs and violence are endemic, and 2 percent of the population has 96 percent of the wealth. A savior arises among the peasants, a peaceful revolutionary who some say is the son of God. The revolutionary is arrested, and the top general…decides the prisoner must be crucified. |
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"Shooting doesn't work," the general says. "People are shot on television every 10 minutes; bang-bang, and they go down like dolls, it's meaningless." A New York advertising agency offers $25 million for worldwide television rights to what is conceived as an hours-long event with the potential for commercials about products that benefit every bodily orifice. "The absurdity of so much around me is such," Miller said, "that the only way I could keep looking at it was to find something outrageously funny in it." |
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The deification of money is very much a concern of the new play, he said: "It's the commercialization of everything we look at, everything we do. We're buying and selling everything that exists. The value of everything is what it can be sold for." But that's about as far as he is willing to go. "When I want to state clearly what I believe, I write an essay," he said. "If I'm exploring a human dilemma, I write a play. This play is about the dilemma of how to react to a world with no faith." |
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The theater's bio of Miller points out he was denied a passport in 1954 to visit Brussels and attend the European premiere of "The Crucible" on the grounds his presence would not be in the best interests of the country. Given the recent report by the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations that asserts many countries see the U.S. as "arrogant, self-indulgent, hypocritical...", etc., the State Dept. may want to keep Miller stateside again. |
| A new survey by the Online Publishers Association shows Net users are increasingly willing to pay for content online. Consequently, to all 823 of you who check this blog daily, please note our new voluntary fee schedule: One act of spontaneous kindness per week – you know, pet a lost dog, smile at a crying baby, or help that old guy with a cane in the drug store read the small print on the glucosamine bottle (but steer him to the sulfate variety, the HCL doesn’t work as well). |
| If you encounter 2 canines lost together, please don’t pet one more than the other. Recent research relayed by New Scientist magazine suggests they can count. So says Robert Young, an animal behavior expert at the Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. |
| A 15-year study of 5,881 people shows that being as little as four pounds overweight increases substantially the risk of death from heart failure. Summarized in today’s LA times (registration required); abstract posted in today's New England Journal of Medicine (registration only required for full text study). |
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Service journalism: Consider bookmarking this interactive food finder, based on the book “Fast Food Facts,” by the Minnesota Attorney General's Office. |
| There’s an ongoing debate on Romenesko's Media News about the value of journalism school. That's where I found Robert Fulford's piece in the National Post. If you're leaning toward - not much - read it and feel vindicated. |
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