Regarding ethics, morality, moral philosophy or whatever it is you want to call it or why laws are meant to be broken

The other day I was reading Randal's blog, in which he was talking about ethics. His comments brought me again to the issue of ethics, and why the world is upside down, fillled with alarming levels of corruption and immorality from the different governments of the world. Something to think about.

Bush foe makes friends with poor Americans

Venezuela's Chavez comes through with cheap heating oil.

"Our government is now giving Americans help while Venezuelans continue living in poverty, it's not fair," said Rafael Alvarez, a 33-year-old office worker opposed to Chavez."

(AP) STAMFORD, Conn. - The throbbing pain in Alan Francis' broken wrist worsened earlier this month when he ran out of oil to heat his home in frigid Maine.

But the 42-year-old ironworker was among a growing number of struggling Americans grateful to receive discounted heating oil from Venezuela, a country led by a man Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has likened to Hitler.

"It felt like Christmas," said Francis, who had been blasting his oven to try to stay warm. "This extra 53 gallons was awesome."

Venezuela, the fifth-largest foreign supplier of oil to the U.S., has been supplying millions of gallons of heating oil at a 40 percent discount to poor Americans and free heating fuel to homeless shelters. Venezuela's leftist, pro-Castro president, Hugo Chavez, is a fierce critic of the Bush administration.

Chavez's detractors say he is trying to embarrass President Bush and build support for himself in the U.S. through the discounted oil program, which has been spreading quickly over the past three months. Delaware agreed earlier this month to participate, joining most of New England and parts of Pennsylvania and New York City.

"He's a brutal Marxist dictator," said Michael Heath, executive director of the Christian Civic League of Maine. "He's teamed up with Fidel Castro. He's trying to split our nation."

Still, Chavez is clearly getting political mileage out of the oil.

"We'd love it if other oil companies would make similar generous donations," said Beth Nagusky, who directs Maine's program and receives calls from residents who have run out of fuel. "Washington is failing us and failing the people."

She said that because of high home heating costs, one elderly couple scrounged for wood in the garbage and another sat in front of a clothes dryer to stay warm.

The program is getting a mixed reaction in Venezuela.

"Our government is now giving Americans help while Venezuelans continue living in poverty, it's not fair," said Rafael Alvarez, a 33-year-old office worker opposed to Chavez.

But Wendi Padron, a Chavez supporter who hawks cookware on a street corner in Caracas, said: "Chavez is showing the people of the United States that we care, that we aren't against Americans, just the U.S. government. Chavez cares about poor people, no matter where they are."

Citgo Petroleum Corp., a subsidiary of Venezuela's state-run oil company, runs the program.

Feathers: What a charade, Chavez helping Americans whose income might be aprox. around US $ 15,000-20,000, a salary which would be middle class in Venezuela. Hello? Not that I am oppose for him helping others AFTER he help Venezuelans first. As you can see, he knows that he needs a good international opinion since he is dead among Venezuelans. He has learned well from his master Fidel.

Human Rights: Iran: Alarming Increase in Executions

(New York, February 27, 2006) – Hojat Zamani, a member of the opposition Mojadehin Khalq Organization outlawed in Iran, was executed on February 7 at Karaj's Gohardasht prison, Human Rights Watch said today, after a trial that did not meet international standards. Human Rights Watch also expressed grave concern for the safety of other members of the Mojahedin Khalq Organization imprisoned in Iran, including Saeed Masouri, Gholamhussein Kalbi, and Valiollah Feyz Mahdavi. Following the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last year, the number of executions in Iran has increased sharply. According to news articles in the Iranian media, between January 20 and February 20 alone, the judicial authorities executed 10 prisoners and condemned another 21 to the death sentence. The Iranian judiciary accused Zamani of involvement in a bomb explosion in Tehran in 1988 which killed three people and injured 22. He was condemned to death in 2004, after a court hearing that did not meet international standards for a fair trial, because Zamani was not allowed access to his lawyers. Zamani was taken from his cell by the prison authorities and hanged inside the Gohardasht prison on February 7, but his execution was not confirmed until a week later, after mounting international protests, by Minister of Justice Jamal Karimirad. In addition, Human Rights Watch fears the imminent execution of three persons accused of involvement in hijacking an airplane in 2001. They are Khaled Hardani, Farhang Pour Mansouri and Shahram Pour Mansouri. At the time of the alleged hijacking, Shahram Pour Mansouri was only 17 years old. The Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights prohibit the imposition of the death penalty for crimes committed before the age of 18. These treaties also prohibit the use of torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishments. Iran is a party to both treaties. Human Rights Watch called on the Iranian judiciary to stop applying the death penalty and to abide by its obligations under international treaties, including abolition of death penalty for juveniles and implementation of fair trial standards. Iranian human rights activists have repeatedly expressed serious concerns that under President Ahmadinejad the government will increasingly resort to violent means to suppress dissent. These worries are accentuated by the presence of several ministers in the cabinet who are suspected of grave human rights violations. The Interior Minister, Mustafa Pour-Mohammadi, for example, is suspected of crimes against humanity for his involvement in summary and arbitrary execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988.

Hitler speaks: Iran reassures Gulf states about nuclear plans

KUWAIT (Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad sought to reassure Gulf Arab states on Monday about Tehran's nuclear programme, saying his country was a "good neighbour" that wanted regional stability.

"We want peace, security, progress for all the countries of the region, especially our neighbours," he told reporters during a brief visit to Kuwait.

"History has shown that Iran is a good neighbour for the countries in the region. We are just working on nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes," he added, speaking through a translator.

Iran has already been reported to the U.N. Security Council, which has the power to impose sanctions, after failing to convince the world that its nuclear ambitions are entirely peaceful. Tehran flatly denies accusations that it is trying to develop nuclear arms.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, touring Gulf Arab states, said in remarks aired by Al Jazeera television that his country wants a peaceful solution to the standoff between Tehran and the West over its nuclear plans.

"They must reach a solution because a confrontation is very dangerous for the region and the Iranians ... We do not want a confrontation and we do not want the use of force against Iran," he said in Qatar.

His Qatari host Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani said Tehran appears to be pushing ahead with its programme. "We hope that they reach a solution but it almost is clear that the Iranians are pressing ahead with their projects," he said.

Ahmedinejad declined to comment on reports that Iran had reached a "basic" agreement with Russia on jointly enriching uranium. In Tokyo, a Japanese official quoted Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki as saying that Tehran would not suspend its atomic research and development.

Iran's Gulf neighbours say they are extremely worried about its nuclear plans, especially since they would be the first affected by any radioactive fallout from its Bushehr nuclear reactor if it was damaged in any way.

Moscow had offered to enrich Iranian uranium in Russia to ensure that Iran could not divert nuclear fuel for bomb-making. It has also demanded that Iran reinstate a moratorium on enrichment which it abandoned in January.

But Iran has insisted it has the right to purify uranium for nuclear power stations on its own soil, and it was unclear how the Russian proposal could be altered to satisfy Tehran.

Feathers: Iran has rights? really? How about the dissidents of the government of Ahmedinejad? Don't they have rights too? I don't think Iran is in a possition to ask for rights when they don't respects other people and countries rights. Yeah I believe in your good intentions Mr. Ahmedinejad... just when not paying attention to your actions.
C'mon world, don't fall again for another Hitler.

No progress in Iran-Russia nuclear talks

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Negotiations between Iran and Russia on the Iranian nuclear programme have made no significant progress despite talk of an outline agreement by both sides, the German and French foreign ministers said on Monday.

"It appears that no decisive progress has been achieved," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told reporters, citing reports from Moscow, after EU ministers discussed the negotiations at their monthly meeting in Brussels.

He said Iran appeared to be using the talks to try to divide the international community, but "this will not be successful".

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said the Tehran talks had not achieved a breakthrough towards halting Iran's sensitive nuclear activities, which Western governments believe are aimed at developing atomic weapons.

"The Russia-Iran negotiations have not succeeded. I saw with regret what happened yesterday in Tehran," he told reporters.

The French minister said Iran's actions continued to go in the wrong direction, resuming sensitive nuclear enrichment work, withholding full cooperation from the U.N. nuclear watchdog and making no progress on Russia's compromise ideas.

Moscow has proposed that instead of enriching uranium on its own soil, which could be a precursor to making nuclear weapons, Iran should form a joint venture to produce enriched fuel for its civilian nuclear reactor in Russia.

On Sunday, Iran's nuclear chief said his nation had reached "basic" agreement with Russia on a joint venture to enrich uranium, but it was unclear what the deal involved, and Iran's foreign minister repeated on Monday that Tehran would not suspend its own atomic research and development.

In a joint statement, the 25 EU foreign ministers said that if Iran continued to fail to heed repeated requests by the International Atomic Energy Agency board, the U.N. Security Council should put its weight behind those demands.

"Iran's decision to limit cooperation further increases international concerns and suspicions about Iranian intentions and makes it more difficult for the IAEA to resolve outstanding issues," they said.

The EU ministers welcomed Russia's efforts to seek a way forward, noting it was conditional on Iran suspending all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities.

They also called on Tehran to protect diplomatic missions after a series of attacks on European missions in protests against cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, and over the destruction of a Shi'ite Muslim shrine in Iraq.

Winds of Civil War for Iraq: Samarra's Shiia Mosque's bombing causing a political rupture between Shiia and Sunni arabs.

Not that they were too friendly before...

"Many ignorant people will be pushed to do the same to the Sunni sacred places," said Brig. Gen. Mudhir Moula, a high-ranking official in the Iraqi Defense Ministry. "This may be the start of the civil war." Read whole story here.

"Gunmen shot dead 47 civilians and left their bodies in a ditch near Baghdad today as militia battles and sectarian reprisals followed the bombing of a sacred Shiite shrine. Sunni Arabs suspended their participation in talks on a new government.

At least 47 other bodies were found scattered across Iraq, many of them shot execution-style and dumped in Shiite-dominated parts of Baghdad.

The hardline Sunni Clerical Association of Muslim Scholars said 168 Sunni mosques had been attacked, 10 imams killed and 15 abducted since the shrine attack. The Interior Ministry said it could only confirm figures for Baghdad, where 90 mosques were attacked in Baghdad, one cleric was killed, and one abducted.

Officials said at least 110 people had been killed across the country in violence believed triggered by the mosque attack.

Three journalists working for Al-Arabiya television were found dead in Samarra, the site of Wednesday's Askariya mosque attack. Al-Arabiya is viewed in Iraq as favoring the United States." Read whole story here.

"Iraq’s main Sunni political group on Thursday boycotted a meeting called by President Jalal Talabani to calm sectarian tensions in the wake of the bomb attack on one of Iraq’s most famous Shia shrines.

The Iraqi Accordance Front, the grouping of the three main Sunni Arab parties, said it was pulling out of the talks because the government had failed to protect Sunni mosques in the violence sparked by the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra." Read whole story here.

Bush: I'll veto ports bill

Arab firm's ties alarm Congress on security

By Richard Simon and Peter Wallsten
The Los Angeles Times
Published February 21, 2006, 10:37 PM CST

WASHINGTON -- President Bush vowed Tuesday to veto any legislation that would block the takeover of shipping operations at six large U.S. seaports by a state-owned Arab company, setting up a major confrontation between the White House and its usually steadfast Republican allies in Congress.

Bush's threat came hours after the top Republicans on Capitol Hill—Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee and House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois—joined a chorus of lawmakers in calling for the port deal to be reviewed because of security concerns.

Under the transaction, Dubai Ports World, a business owned by the United Arab Emirates, would operate ports in New York, Newark, N.J., Philadelphia, Baltimore, Miami and New Orleans. A British company had been in charge of the ports, but it recently was purchased by the Arab company.

The Department of Homeland Security gave the new owner permission to run the ports, but political furor over the decision has been growing.

Lawmakers from both parties have expressed security concerns about the deal, with some noting that some of the Sept. 11 hijackers had links to the United Arab Emirates.

The Bush administration views that as an unfair attack on the UAE, which it defends as a strong ally in the war on terrorism. More broadly, criticism of the deal threatens the White House's efforts to build better relations in the Arab world.

Frist said he would pursue legislation, if necessary, to delay the transfer of the ports' management.

Within hours, as Bush was returning from a speech in Colorado, he took the rare step of inviting traveling reporters to the front cabin of Air Force One before issuing his veto threat. He accused critics of attempting to deny a Middle Eastern company the same opportunity as provided to a British firm.

"I'm trying to conduct foreign policy now by saying to people of the world, 'We'll treat you fairly,"' Bush said.

Speaking a short while later upon his return to the White House, Bush sought to underscore that the Coast Guard and the Customs Service—not a foreign company—would be responsible for port security.

"If there was any chance that this transaction would jeopardize the security of the United States, it would not go forward," he said.

The clash could produce the first veto of Bush's administration.

Frist said the deal raises "serious questions regarding the safety and security of our homeland.

Hastert asked the president for a moratorium on the change in ownership until it could be studied further.

"We must not allow the possibility of compromising our national security due to lack of review or oversight by the federal government," Hastert said.

Maryland's Republican governor, Robert Ehrlich, during a tour of Baltimore's port on Tuesday, called the deal an "overly secretive process at the federal level."

The comments Tuesday from his fellow Republicans left Bush little choice but to respond.

The president's decision to hold an impromptu question and answer session aboard Air Force One and then to reiterate his comments upon landing—repeating several times the idea that reversing the deal would send a "terrible" signal to allies—was an unusual departure for a president who likes to appear far above the fray of Capitol Hill politics.

But Bush's assurances did little to quell a bipartisan rebellion on Capitol Hill.

"It should have been painfully obvious that a sale of this type would raise serious concern in Congress and before the American public," Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) said in a statement.

Frist also complained, "This is not the first time questions have been raised about the executive branch's review process, led by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States," a reference to the obscure panel of U.S. officials that rules on whether purchases of American businesses by foreign entities would impair national security.

There was congressional uproar last year over a Chinese oil company's bid to buy Unocal Corp. Lawmakers from both parties said the takeover would compromise national security, and the Chinese oil company, CNOOC Ltd., abandoned the effort.

Also Tuesday, New Jersey's governor, Jon Corzine, said the state will file lawsuits in federal and state courts opposing the agreement.

A senior executive from Dubai Ports World pledged the company would agree to whatever security precautions the U.S. government demanded to salvage the deal. Chief operating officer Edward Bilkey promised Dubai Ports "will fully cooperate in putting into place whatever is necessary to protect the terminals."

A spokesman at the United Arab Emirates Embassy in Washington read a statement from the minister of foreign affairs saying the country has been a U.S. ally in the war on terror.

Bush bristled when asked about the political nature of the dispute. Asked specifically about Frist's comments and those from others in Congress, the president was blunt.

"They ought to listen to what I have to say about this," he said. "They ought to look at the facts, and understand the consequences of what they're going to do. But if they pass a law, I'll deal with it, with a veto."

Los Angeles Times; Times staff writer Joel Havemann and Tribune news services contributed to this report.

Appeasement markers

The Washington Times
Sat Feb 18, 2006

Commentary

By Victor Davis Hanson

It is easy to damn the 1930s appeasers of Adolf Hitler -- such as Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain in England and Edouard Daladier in France -- given what the Nazis ultimately did when unleashed.

But history demands not merely recognizing the truth post facto but trying to reconstruct the rationale of something that in hindsight seems inexplicable.

Appeasement in the 1930s was popular with the European public for various reasons. All are instructive in our hesitation about stopping a nuclear Iran, or about defending the right of Western newspapers to print what they wish -- or about fighting radical Islamism in general.

First, Europe was nearly destroyed in the Great War, a mere 20 years earlier. No responsible postwar leader wished to risk a second Continental bloodbath.

Unfortunately, Hitler understood that all too well. In a game of diplomatic chicken, he figured many responsible democratic statesmen had more to lose than he did, as the weaker and once-beaten enemy.

British intellectuals, like European Union idealists today, wrote books and treatises on the obsolescence of war. Conflicts were supposedly caused only by rapacious arms merchants and profiteers at home, not by antidemocratic dictators who saw forbearance as weakness. Winston Churchill was a voice in the wilderness -- and demonized as a warmonger and worse.

Today, the 50-year Cold War is over, and Europe is at last free of burdensome military expenditure and the threat of global annihilation. Like Osama bin Laden, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad senses a certain weariness in much of the West as it counts on perpetual peace.

He assumes most sober Westerners will do almost anything to avoid military confrontation to stop a potential threat -- even though, unlike Hitler, Mr. Ahmadinejad not only promises to liquidate the Jews but reveals his method in advance by seeking nuclear weapons.

Some naive conservatives in prewar Europe thought the German and Italian fascists would prove a valuable bulwark against communism and could be politically finessed. So, too, it has been at times with Islamic fascism. Arming the mujahadeen in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Saudi Arabia was once seen as an inspired way of thwarting Soviet communist imperialism.

At the time of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's homicidal fatwa against Salman Rushdie, religious conservative commentators from Patrick Buchanan to New York's John Cardinal O'Connor attacked Mr. Rushdie, rather than defend the Western right of free expression. Apparently, they felt such Islamic threats to supposed blasphemers might have positive repercussions in discouraging left-wing anti-Christian attacks.

In the 1930s, the doctrine of appeasement fobbed off responsibility of confronting fascism onto the League of Nations. Both France and England were quiet about the 1936 Italian invasion of Ethiopia and the German militarization of the Rhineland. They counted on multilateral action of the League, which issued plenty of edicts but marshaled few troops.

Likewise, the moral high ground today supposedly was to refer both the Iraqi and Iranian problems to the United Nations. But considering the oil-for-food scandals and Saddam Hussein's constant violations of U.N. resolutions, it is unlikely the Iranian theocracy has much fear the Security Council will thwart its uranium enrichment.

As fascism spread, France fortified its German border with the Maginot Line, Oxford undergraduates voted to refuse "in any circumstances to fight for King and Country," and British newspapers decried the Treaty of Versailles for unduly punishing Germany. This was all long before the "no blood for oil" slogan and Al Gore in Saudi Arabia apologizing to his Wahhabi hosts for the supposed U.S. maltreatment of Arabs.

But deja vu pertains not just to us, but our enemies as well. Like the Nazi romance of an exalted ancient Volk, the Islamists hearken to a mythical purity, free of decadence brought on by Western liberalism. Similarly, they feed off victimization -- not just recent defeats, but centuries-old bitterness at the rise of the West. Their version of the stab-in-the-back Versailles Treaty is always the creation of Israel.

Just as Hitler concocted incidents such as the burning of the Reichstag to create outrage, Islamist leaders incite frenzy in their followers over a supposed flushed Koran at Guantanamo and several inflammatory cartoons, some of them never published by Danish newspapers at all.

Anti-Semitism, of course, is the mother's milk of fascism. It is always, they say, a small group of Jews -- whether shadowy Cabinet advisers and international bankers of the 1930s or the manipulative neoconservatives and Israeli leadership of the present -- who alone stir up the trouble.

The point of the comparison is not to suggest history simply repeats itself, but to learn why intelligent people delude themselves into embracing naive policies. After the Taliban and Saddam were removed, the furious reply of the radical Islamist world was to censor Western newspapers, along with Iran's accelerated efforts to get the bomb.

In response, either the West will continue to stand up now to these recurring post-September 11, 2001, threats, or it will see the bullies' demands increase as its own resistance weakens. Like the appeasement of the 1930s, opting for the easier choice will only guarantee a more costly one later.

Victor Davis Hanson is a nationally syndicated columnist and a classicist and historian at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and author of the recent "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War."

Happy Valentine's

From yours truly,

What is wrong with this news??

This has to be the most upsetting news after Sept 11:

United Arab Emirates company to oversee six U.S. ports

WASHINGTON (AP) —A company in the United Arab Emirates is poised to take over significant operations at six American ports as part of a corporate sale, leaving a country with ties to the Sept. 11 hijackers with influence over a maritime industry considered vulnerable to terrorism.

The Bush administration considers the UAE an important ally in the fight against terrorism since the suicide hijackings and is not objecting to Dubai Ports World’s purchase of London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co. The $6.8 billion sale is expected to be approved Monday.

The British company is the fourth largest ports company in the world, and its sale would affect commercial U.S. port operations in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia.

Critics of the proposed purchase said a port operator complicit in smuggling or terrorism could manipulate manifests and other records to frustrate Homeland Security’s already limited scrutiny of shipping containers and slip contraband past U.S. Customs inspectors.

Shipping experts noted that many of the world’s largest port companies are not based in the United States, and they pointed to DP World’s strong economic interest in operating ports securely and efficiently.

DP World said it won approval from a secretive U.S. government panel that considers security risks of foreign companies buying or investing in American industry.

The U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which could have recommended that President Bush block the purchase, includes representatives from the departments of Treasury, Defense, Justice, Commerce, State and Homeland Security.

The State Department describes the UAE as a vital partner in the fight against terrorism. But the UAE, a loose federation of seven emirates on the Saudi peninsula, was an important operational and financial base for the hijackers who carried out the attacks against New York and Washington, the FBI concluded.

Feathers: If americans really think they are safe with a UAE company taken over ports, then I have to say they know nothing about the arab culture. Not to say thay they are all terrorist at all but as the article mentioned, there is a lot of money financing terrorism in the arab world. This is a total screw up from the Bush administration.

What is wrong with the Bush administration and his homeland security program? I can do a better job myself. Now if somebody can appoint me I will solve this problem ASAP.

Some contributors seems smart ... but are they really?

‘‘There are smart people contributing, not just weirdos. [This] is actually a community,’’ said Brandon Stafford of Cambridge. (Justine Hunt/ Globe Staff)

The idealist, the optimist, and the world they share.

by David Mehegan, The Boston Globe/ February 13, 2006

Wikipedians are a varied group, and while they may not know one another except online, most share two things: comfort with computers and the online world, and delight with the idea of contributing to a free encyclopedia for the entire world. Here are some faces and voices of Boston-area Wikipedians.

Brandon Stafford, 33, of Cambridge, works in information technology for a local company.

''In about 2002, I started noticing it in Google results and thought, 'This is stupid -- an encyclopedia that anyone could edit?' -- and dismissed it. About two years later, I started noticing [Wikipedia articles] are pretty comprehensive, better than most online references I have seen. Recently, I had a relative who might have Crohn's disease. I searched on Google, and the fourth item was the Wikipedia page.

''It might not be reliable, but I know that people are generally [contributing] because they want to provide accurate information. They're not getting anything out of it -- no money. I don't think disseminating false information is satisfying to people, but distributing useful information is.

Feathers: Really? Well, that's when politics are not involved my dear. How come this doofus can say that there's no interest to disseminate false information?

Read more here.

The devil is in the details....

Questions of fact

February 12, 2006
by David Mehegan, The Boston Globe

Article: Representative Tom Lantos, Democrat of California

Wikipedia says: ''His most significant act related to transportation was when he ran over a teenager in the Capitol parking area and refused to stop despite screams from the crowd. He never apologized for the hit-and-run either."

In fact: According to a 2000 story in The Boston Globe, Lantos accidentally pinned the foot of a teenager under the tire of his car, backed off, then proceeded forward. He was not charged with hit-and-run, but fined $25 for ''failure to pay full time and attention."

Article: Cardinal Bernard F. Law, former archbishop of Boston

Wikipedia says: ''The Archdiocese was forced to close 65 parishes before Cardinal Law stepped down from service."

In fact: The large-scale program of parish closures was initiated by Law's successor, Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley.

Article: Town of Hingham, Mass.

Wikipedia says: ''The town was named for Hingham, England, . . .the ancestral home of Abraham Lincoln's forebearers [sic], including Revolutionary War General Benjamin Lincoln. There are statues of both Pres. Lincoln and Gen. Lincoln located in or adjacent to downtown Hingham Square."

In fact: There is no statue of Benjamin Lincoln, and the two Lincolns were not related.

Article: George Weller, novelist and Pulitzer-winning war correspondent:

Wikipedia says: ''In 1946 he met Charlotte Ebner [sic], when the two were in a group of correspondents held for three weeks in Manchuria by the advancing communist Chinese army. They married two years later. . . . The couple had two childs [sic], a boy, Anthony, and a girl, Ann Tagge, and were married for 42 years."

In fact: Weller's two children had different mothers. His wife was Charlotte Ebener.

Article: Emily Dickinson, poet

Wikipedia says: ''Dickinson toyed briefly with the idea of having her poems published, even asking Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a literary critic and family friend, for advice."

In fact: Higginson, a prominent Boston abolitionist and author, was a stranger to Dickinson when she wrote to him.

David Mehegan can be reached at Mehegan@globe.com.

http://www.sudoku.com/

Guys, if you are not into SUDOKU, you are out of of the fad wagon!!

The wikipedians

Many Contributors, common cause
Wikipedia volunteers share conviction of doing good for society

By David Mehegan, Globe Staff | February 13, 2006

Second of two parts

Who are the Wikipedians, these unsupervised volunteers with strange pen names such as Schzmo, Hooperbloob, and Chlewbot, most of whom will never meet face to face? Who are these people who made Wikipedia, the phenomenal online encyclopedia of almost a million articles in English, with no one leading or directing them?

(...)

To some observers, the undirected, anonymous nature of Wikipedia is disturbing: Who are the people writing these articles, and why should anyone trust what they write? But to the Wikipedians, that mass of unmanaged anonymity is what makes Wikipedia great.

Read more here.

David Mehegan can be reached at Mehegan@globe.com.

Aaron Swartz, a 19-year-old Chicago native, said he’s edited ‘‘a couple of thousand’’ articles on the website. (Matthew J. Lee/ Globe Staff)

Emily Dunn, 18, of Lexington, has 123 articles on her Wikipedia watch list and checks for vandals. (Suzanne Kreiter/ Globe Staff)

More on the greatest disinformation tool of the century: Wikipedia

‘‘Wikipedia’s goal is to give everyone on the planet free access to information,’’ Jimmy Wales, the founder of wikipedia.org, said last week in a speech in Boston. (Janet Knott/ Globe Staff)

Feathers: There's something very upsetting on the face of Jimbo Wales in this picture. Wouldn't surprize me this guy is a serial killer or something. Do you know what's a pedosmile?

Bias, Sabotage, haunts Wikipedia's free world

By David Mehegan, Globe Staff | February 12, 2006

First of two parts

When the news broke last month that US Representative Martin Meehan's staff director admitted deleting unflattering material from Meehan's profile on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, it might have been a shock to some. Maybe it shouldn't have been. Wikipedia administrators have since turned up thousands of flattering or disparaging changes in profiles of dozens of members of Congress.

Last week, volunteer investigators discovered that staff members in the office of Senator Norm Coleman, Republican of Minnesota, removed descriptions of him as a ''liberal Democrat" in college. A reference to Senator Dianne Feinstein's payment of a 1992 fine for not disclosing her husband's involvement in her campaign finances was removed by someone in her office.

The revelations that political bias has crept into articles raises new questions about an Internet phenomenon that some are acclaiming as the future of information. And the issues plaguing the site run deeper than political spin. Wikipedia touts itself as ''the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit," and it is exactly that quality that is causing problems.

Two months after a highly publicized attack on the Wikipedia profile of a Tennessee newspaper editor -- in which a prankster falsely implicated him in the murders of President John F. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy -- the new disclosures sharpen a nagging question about Wikipedia: Can it stop sabotage and distortion without losing the freedom and openness that made the reference possible?

In five years, Wikipedia has amassed a mountain of impressive articles, written by thousands of anonymous contributors. But the dark side of that freedom is that Wikipedia's articles are becoming battlegrounds, pitting writers with biased viewpoints and vandals trying to sabotage entries against a volunteer band of ''Wikipedians" who constantly seek to set the record straight.

For the true believers, Wikipedia is far more than a reference work. It's a movement, a social circle, a proof of the power of free Internet content, even a kind of optimistic cult. ''Wikipedia's goal is to give everyone on the planet free access to information," founder Jimmy Wales said last week in a speech in Boston. ''We're talking about bringing people in to join the global conversation."

At the same time, teachers and college professors are wondering whether they should allow students to cite Wikipedia as a source in term papers, which they are increasingly doing. Given its inherent nature as a work in progress, some wonder whether Wikipedia can ever be a reliable source of information.

Getting it wrong

Kate Clifford Larson, a Simmons College history professor who wrote a 2003 biography of Harriet Tubman, had barely heard of Wikipedia until her students began to cite it as a reference on research papers. Curious, she looked up the Wikipedia article on Tubman, the famous conductor of the Underground Railroad who rescued slaves from the antebellum South.

She was startled to find errors: the wrong birthplace for Tubman, as well as discredited legends that she had rescued 300 people and had had a $40,000 price on her head. Larson clicked on the ''edit" link with the article, and corrected the errors herself. Then she clicked the article's ''history" link, which shows all the changes that have been made since it was started, and got a second shock.

''Someone has vandalized the site on a regular basis," she said in an interview, ''inserting racist and ugly comments, misinformation, and some basic juvenile toilet talk."

The sabotage doesn't appear in the article itself, but it can still be read in the history. ''Someone would always go back and take out the racist stuff," Larson said. ''Who are these people who do this [sabotage]? I hope it's teenage kids. I'm concerned that there isn't some overarching editorial board."

With no editorial board, Wikipedia (at wikipedia.org) works amazingly well. According to statistics on the site, since it was founded in 2001, the English-language version has drawn 857,750 registered users. Far fewer than this are still active, perhaps as many as 15,000. Last week, Wales, 39, cited internal data suggesting that 0.7 percent of users, about 615 people, have made more than 50 percent of edits. However many there are, the Wikipedians have developed a complex and more-or-less democratic system of rules and policies for contributions, such as neutral point of view, civility, citation of sources, and no libel or vandalism.

The project has 150 computer servers in South Korea, Amsterdam, Paris, and Florida, all managed day to day by volunteers. Indeed, the whole thing is run by volunteers, with a corps of about 800 administrators at the center -- experienced, committed Wikipedians with special powers, elected by the community at large.

While Wales -- internally known as Jimbo, and sometimes referred to as the ''god-king" or ''benevolent dictator" -- retains ultimate control as president and chairman of the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, he doesn't supervise content and takes no salary. He has only two full-time staff members, and funds to support the project come mostly from public fund-raising, in gifts of $50 to $100. Wikimedia Foundation -- which has spun off such ''sister projects" as Wikiquote, Wikinews, and Wictionary -- spent $750,000 last year and expects to spend $1 million to $2 million this year.

Vandals strike

Wales's dream is high-minded, to be sure, but not everyone is sold. The best-known doubter is John Seigenthaler Sr., 78, retired editor and publisher of the Nashville Tennessean and founder of the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University. ''In mid-September," Seigenthaler said in an interview, ''my wife got a call from a retired industrialist in town, who said, 'What are you going to do about this stuff they're saying about you?' My wife called me and said, 'Google yourself, click Wikipedia, and take a look.' It knocked my eyes out."

In a Wikipedia biographical article, after the accurate statement that ''Seigenthaler was the assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early 1960s," someone had added, ''For a brief time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven." The sentences had been there for more than four months.

Seigenthaler called Wales, who was appalled at the slander and quickly wiped it out. However, he did not know who had done it. Wikipedia users don't have to give real names or addresses. Anyone with access to a computer can log in and do mischief. On his own, Seigenthaler tracked down the saboteur to a business in Nashville, and an employee there admitted altering the article. He had done it as a prank.

Seigenthaler wrote a scathing op-ed piece in USA Today. ''When I was a child," he wrote, ''my mother lectured me on the evils of 'gossip.' She held a feather pillow and said, 'If I tear this open, the feathers will fly to the four winds, and I could never get them back in the pillow. That's how it is when you spread mean things about people.' For me, that pillow is a metaphor for Wikipedia."

Wales and other Wikipedians say they were shocked by the incident and are working on new measures to fight vandals. ''We care deeply about getting it right," Wales said in an interview. ''At the same time, you don't have to beat up on yourself permanently. You have to ask, 'What did we do wrong and what do we do better next time?' "

Seigenthaler also called Larry Sanger, a key former member of Wales's team. Interviewed for this story, Sanger said, ''I felt horrible, almost personally responsible. It was a feature of the system that I set up that made it possible. I told him I always thought this would happen."

Loyal to the end

But not all Wikipedians felt horrible.

Every article has a link for discussion, and after Seigenthaler went public, his discussion page was soon filled with furious debate between those who were distressed by the libel and those who considered him an enemy of free speech who just didn't understand the greatness of Wikipedia.

''Mr. Seigenthaler's attitude and actions are reprehensible and ill-formed," said one typical comment. ''[He] has the responsibility to learn about his own name and how it is being applied and used, as any celebrity does on the Internet and the world-at-large. Besides, if there is an error whether large or small, he can correct it on Wikipedia. Everyone fails to understand that logic." Another wrote: ''Rather than fixing the article himself, he made a legal threat. He's causing Wikipedia a lot of trouble, on purpose."

And some clearly thought he should be taught a lesson. Since the USA Today piece ran Nov. 30, the Seigenthaler profile has been continually sown with obscene, homophobic, racist, or vindictive comments.

Someone wrote that Seigenthaler's wife had tried to kill Wales. On Dec. 21, the Kennedy allegation was inserted again. On Dec. 29, someone wrote, ''Some journalists have commentend [sic] on how odd it is that a proponent of 'free speech' is so intent on shutting down Wikipedia." On Jan. 11: ''He died last Tuesday while on vacation." On Jan. 5, someone replaced all the photographs of Seigenthaler in the article with pictures of Lee Harvey Oswald, and repeated the trick Jan. 14. Most of these changes were removed within minutes by administrators watching the article.

As disturbing to Seigenthaler as the original incident and the ongoing attacks is the link to the editing history. Though Wales deleted the history of the original sabotage, all the garbage written since is there for inspection.

''Why is this happening to me after 78 years?" Seigenthaler asks. ''I don't want my grandson or great-grandson to read that history, and by God, they can read it now. These people have nothing against me except that I have criticized Wikipedia. Wales call them vandals, but they think of themselves as being loyal to Wikipedia."

Anyone can edit

''There are many more good people than bad -- in the world, and in this project," said Wales. It's a remark you hear from many Wikipedians. Wales, raised in Alabama, made a fortune in the Chicago futures market in the 1990s, and moved to St. Petersburg, Fla., in 1996 to start his online Internet portal site, Bomis.com. At first, Bomis featured soft-core erotic content. But Wales had long had a dream ''to have a free, high-quality encyclopedia in all the languages of the world. I think that global universal access to basic information can have a transformative impact on the world."

In 2000, he founded Nupedia, intended to be a comprehensive online encyclopedia and hired Sanger, a computer nerd with a doctorate in philosophy, as editor. At first, they expected Nupedia to have articles written by specialists such as Encyclopedia Britannica. But it was slow going, with only 20 articles completed in the first year. Britannica has 65,000 articles, available in books or by subscription online.

What happened next is disputed by Wales and Sanger. Sanger, who at times calls himself the cofounder, and says he got the idea of using ''wiki" technology (''wiki" is Hawaiian slang for ''quickly"; ''pedia" comes from the Latin word for ''education") and proposed it to Wales in 2001. His Wikipedia profile says he ''spearheaded and named the project, and formulated much of the original policy." Wales's profile says he got the idea from someone else, and last week he said ''it's preposterous" to call Sanger the cofounder.

No matter whose idea it was, it allowed encyclopedia articles to be written much faster, since a theoretically unlimited number of authors can contribute.

At first, Wales says, he doubted the anyone-can-edit system would work over time. He had suspected that, ''as traffic grew, we would have to lock things down. The major revelation was how good people are -- the vast majority of edits are helpful. We were able to remain open and flexible after more growth than we thought possible." Today the encyclopedia has multiplied into versions in more than 200 languages, 85 of them with at least 1,000 articles. There are more than 960,000 articles in English. By some estimates, there are 40,000 contributors in all languages.

But the vandals multiplied, too, and the sabotage points up a fundamental philosophical difference between the Wales and Sanger schools. Wales believes open editing should remain, and that evildoers, or ''trolls," can be defeated or kept at bay by the good people, using sensible rules and effective tools. Sanger believes supervision should be in the hands of specialists.

''Wikipedia is not sufficiently committed to the involvement of expert contributors or to a review process that is credible to the public," he said. ''There is a difference between something that is more or less guaranteed to be the best representation of expert knowledge, and a pretty good guess on the part of amateurs working together."

The vandal fighters

Sanger also lost patience with the ''edit wars," in which a persistent ignoramus battles with a well-informed contributor, each side deleting the changes of the other. ''The idea that an expert should have to negotiate at length with someone who knows nothing about a matter of substance is ridiculous," Sanger says. Such wars erupt over politics, culture, biography, and religion, and pages often have to be ''protected" -- wholly or partially locked against changes. The George W. Bush page is currently protected.

Cynics might expect the vandals to win in the end -- after all, graffiti artists never quit. But there's a core of loyal Wikipedians who are determined that they won't.

Wikipedia administrator Ryan Kaldari, 28, of Nashville, is an active vandal-fighter. A programmer who edited his high school newspaper, Kaldari said John Seigenthaler had always been one of his heroes.

''I was especially concerned about that article," he said. ''I felt personally responsible, because I keep an eye on Nashville articles."

Now he watches the article like a hawk and several times has temporarily protected it. While he understands Seigenthaler's desire to wipe out the editing-history, Kaldari insisted, ''It's important for the history to be there -- to have a record of how an article has evolved."

Another vandal-fighter is administrator David Denniston, 48, of Santa Barbara, Calif. A high-tech manager and composer with a doctorate in music, Denniston has written 400 articles on medieval music.

''If you do a Google search on [15th-century composer] Guillaume Dufay," Denniston says, ''there is a link to Wikipedia. I intend to compete with Grove [the Grove Dictionary of Music], only my articles are free."

At home and at work, Denniston watches the ''recent changes" page and his own ''watch list," and using various shortcut software tools available to insiders, he zaps vandalism almost as soon as it appears. Asked why he bothers, Denniston said, ''Suppose you could go to a big city and wherever you see [graffiti], click a button and repair a surface. One after another, they're gone in 10 seconds. It's extremely satisfying."

Voices of skepticism

Aside from sabotage, for many people the big question about Wikipedia is accuracy.

A December article in the journal Nature found that at least in science, its articles are only slightly less accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica. And college students are increasingly relying on it. However, some academics are skeptical.

''It's absolutely not trusted, from a faculty point of view," said Gregory Fried, chairman of the philosophy department of Suffolk University. ''I don't doubt that it has good articles, but I don't know which are good and which are not."

Joyce Lee Malcolm, professor of history at Bentley College, said her students are citing it in footnotes. But, she says, ''for major papers, I don't want them to use it. The articles and books I assign are refereed and are accurate. With Wikipedia, someone may be cranking it out in a garage somewhere."

An e-mail request to a variety of scholars to look at articles in their fields turned up some complaints. David Garrow, author of a Pulitzer-winning book about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., replied: ''I called up their MLK entry, and right in the second sentence there's an obvious error: that King was awarded both the Nobel Peace Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom before he was assassinated. Wrong. He was awarded that presidential medal in 1977, by Jimmy Carter."

But most of those queried had no big complaints. ''Thus far my experience of Wikipedia has been quite positive, with quite high levels of accuracy," replied historian William Cronon of the University of Wisconsin and author of ''Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West." ''I just skimmed the entry on Chicago, and what I did read seemed basically accurate."

Even so, anyone may find errors. The article for Cardinal Bernard F. Law, for example, reports that amid the priest sex abuse crisis: ''The archdiocese was forced to close 65 parishes before Cardinal Law stepped down." In fact, the closures occurred under Law's successor, Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley. The article on Hingham, Mass., says the town has a statue of revolutionary war general Benjamin Lincoln, ''forebearer" of Abraham Lincoln. But there is no statue, and the two Lincolns were not related.

Wikipedians brush off such lapses. Wikipedia is a work in progress, they insist, and Larson's repair to the Tubman entry only proves that it works. The site has an explicit disclaimer: ''Use Wikipedia at your own risk. . . .Wikipedia cannot guarantee the validity of the information found here."

Despite the questions, there's widespread admiration for Wikipedia among the Internet intelligentsia.

''I keep waiting to find out that there's really a group of editors behind it," said Jonathan Zittrain, professor of Internet governance at Oxford University and cofounder of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. He has doubts, too -- not so much about sabotage as about the kind of manipulation that happened on Capitol Hill.

''It's not brute-force vandalism that will be a problem," he said. ''There's a more subtle bias and spin." Once publicists and marketers realize Wikipedia is one of the top results on Google searches, Zittrain said, ''whether it's Wal-Mart, a university, or a person, they will paint a positive picture on it. When it becomes so successful, people with agendas have reason to be part of the fray."

It's not only in Washington, of course. Around the time Governor Mitt Romney announced in December that he would not run again, a Wikipedia article about Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey, who is running for governor, was edited. She was praised as ''a rising star" with a ''distinguished career." No one knows who made the edits.

David Mehegan can be reached at mehegan@globe.com.

Check the wikipedia class action webpage at http://www.wikipediaclassaction.org/

No more soup for you!

The U.K., in retaliation to the exchange of ugly words with Mr. Chavez, is thinking to boycott all exports of scotch to Venezuela. As many of you know, the U.K. is very dependant of oil, but "Venezuelans seems more dependent of scotch, specially Johny Walker's Blue Label (US $ 185 - 199.0 aprox. per 750 mil bottle)" according to Ms. Campanula Tottington, a spokeperson of 10 Downing st.

Uhmmmmmm apparently this new class of revolucionaries chavistas besides dress funny in red with che guevara t-shirts and berets are picking up the disgusting imperialist habits of the top class they seem to hate that much to drink scotch, only that the standard scotch that people used to drink in Venezuela on those imperialist days was black label (aprox US $ 30 a bottle), not blue . Who knew? Who do you think have helped increased the consumption of scotch by 55% last year? The old riches or the new riches of the revolution?? Too bad that many of those revolutionaries like to drink his blue label with "pepsi".

Seems to me that the real revolution will start in Venezuela when you can't buy a single drop of scotch in that country. I can portrait the caos: people smashing cars, a scene from "24 days later", etc, etc...

I sincerely hope that the MI-5 is reading this blogs and taking notes. U.K seems to have the key to eliminate chavismo without a single drop of blood shed.

I don't care how much britons hate Mr. Blair. Since today, this guy is my friend.

Now the show is against Blair

Thu Feb 9, 2006 8:28 AM IST

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez told British Prime Minister Tony Blair to "go right to hell" on Wednesday after Blair said Venezuela should abide by the principles of democracy.

Chavez, a fiery leftist who recently compared U.S. President George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler, accused Blair of bowing to Washington's interests and being "shameless" and "immoral."

"Stay in your place, Mr. Blair, you are not one that has the morality to criticize anyone," Chavez said during a speech. "Venezuela is a free nation. Do you believe we're still in times of imperialism and colonialism?"

"Go right to hell, Mr. Blair," Chavez said, using local slang that is more vulgar.

Shifting his aim after a recent flare-up in tensions with the United States, Chavez called the British premier the principal ally of "Hitler Danger Bush Hitler", referring to his favorite nickname for Bush, "Mr. Danger."

During a parliamentary session on Wednesday, Blair called on Venezuela to respect the rules of the international community and said he would like to see Cuba, a close ally of Venezuela, function as a true democracy.

"I think the most important thing is that those countries in South America and North America realize they have much in common, much to gain from each other and ... in particular through the principles of democracy," Blair said.

Chavez characterized Blair's remarks as an effort by London to fall in line with Washington's increasingly harsh criticism of Venezuela, whose latest spat with the United States flared up last week when Chavez accused its main oil buyer of spying.

Chavez noted the statement came shortly after Bush called for increased funding for a U.S. radio station broadcasting pro-American messages in Latin America.

Britain's ambassador to Venezuela was in Miami on Wednesday and unavailable for comment. "There's nothing to add to what the prime minister has already said," an embassy spokesman said.

Since Chavez -- a former army officer and leader of a failed 1992 coup -- was elected in 1998, ties with the United States have steadily deteriorated, although Venezuela still supplies some 15 percent of U.S. oil imports.

Chavez says his "revolution for the poor" is an alternative to U.S. capitalist policies in Latin America. He has sought energy and trade deals within the region and annoyed the United States by allying himself with countries like Cuba and Iran.

Note to the international readers: The legality of the Presidency of Mr. Chavez is in serious doubt since the taken over of the electoral council by chavistas members for the referendum held on August, 2004.

Chavez calls Blair imperialist pawn

Chavez in yellow.

Thursday 09 February 2006, 7:34 Makka Time, 4:34 GMT
From AlJazeera news (which seems to have taken side with Chavez against the western world war)

Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan President, has called Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister "a pawn of imperialism", accusing him of siding with Bush, the President, in a confrontation with Venezuela

"Mr Tony Blair is the main ally of Hitler," Chavez, who has recently taken to comparing Bush to Adolf Hitler, the Nazi leader, said on Wednesday.

Chavez criticised Blair for urging Venezuela to abide by the rules of the international community and saying he'd like to see true democracy in communist-led Cuba, Venezuela's closest ally in Latin America.

Blair "is being nothing but a pawn of imperialism trying now to attack us from Europe", Chavez told supporters during a speech in western Venezuela.

The comments were Chavez's harshest yet against Blair, whom he has criticised in the past over the war in Iraq.

Blair's comments

Chavez was responding to comments made by Blair earlier on Wednesday during a weekly question-and-answer session in the House of Commons.

"It is rather important that the government of Venezuela realise that if they want to be respected members of the international community, they should abide by the rules of the international community," Blair said according to an official transcript.

The Venezuelan leader's remarks on Wednesday came amidst a diplomatic row with the US, which has brought relations between Caracas and Washington to their lowest point in years.
AP

The new America according to Lory Toyle

Well, well, well... seems that Americans need to worry about more important things tha Osama Bin Laden. Yesterday I was listening to my daily dosis of spooky stuff on my nightly radio show and this lady called Lory Toyle from iamamerica.com was giving an interview. Apparently she received some type of prophetic information from some "master teachers" from another dimension. The map of America will change dramatically as you can see, due to a lot of climate changes being the most prominent one a meteor which would fal on Nevada and will create an ash cloud that will cause rain for two years in some places. This will create the earth shift and a change in the Earth's spin and set off polar shifts, quakes and volcanoes. Of course no date given.

San Diego (but not north county), would be relatively safe (seems to me we will be taken over Mexico, not that we are not to this day...), but the rest of California, specially the sin cities of San Fran and LA would end under the water.

She also mentioned that her masters told her that with pray and good intentions, this can be avoid.

(Read more here). You also can buy her book with more detailed info on her webpage.

What do I have to say about this? In Jesus I trust.

An image worth 10,000 words...

By John Sherffius, St Louis, MO.

The muslim cartoon controversy

By Mike Lester, Rome-News Tribune, Rome, GA

by Paul Zanetti, Australia

I guess this two cartoon said it all to me. This is a such a crazy topic! I am sure that many of you are familiarized by now with the anti-Danish protest all over the world by the muslim fanatics after one of its newspapers, the yllands-Posten published twelve cartoons last October depicting the prophet Mohammad. A lot of news outlets have defended the freedom of speech and the Danish newspaper, and others are completely outragged that such an insult to prophet Mohammad has been permitted. Yesterday a protest in Bethlehem turned deadly. On Sunday, italian father Andrea Santoro was killed on his church in Turkey by a fanatic teenager who got inspired by the muslim cartoon protests. But the followers of the religion of peace, don't want to settle, they keep adding gasoline to the fire. Recently, the biggest selling newspaper in Iran has launched a contest to depict the best cartoon about the Holocaust. I wonder what Mr. Ahmadinejad has to say about this since he certainly believes that the Holocaust never happened.

The real question in this story is that why in the Lord's name the Danish government has to apologize or censorship what a PRIVATE news outlet has to say or not to say?

Geez, what if the christians of the world would have the same attitude everytime an idiot makes a joke of Jesus? I respect the muslim religion but they also have to respect the boundaries of other people's beliefs (or disbeliefs for that matter) and more important, respect other nations if they want to be respected as well.

Shouldn't them be worried about this instead? You bet.

By John Sherffius, St Louis, MO

Remenbering Ronnie

Before Clinton and Monica, there was this great American President. His legacy will be always remebered.

"On January 20, 1981, Reagan took office. Only 69 days later he was shot by a would-be assassin, but quickly recovered and returned to duty. His grace and wit during the dangerous incident caused his popularity to soar. Dealing skillfully with Congress, Reagan obtained legislation to stimulate economic growth, curb inflation, increase employment, and strengthen national defense. He embarked upon a course of cutting taxes and Government expenditures, refusing to deviate from it when the strengthening of defense forces led to a large deficit.

A renewal of national self-confidence by 1984 helped Reagan and Bush win a second term with an unprecedented number of electoral votes. Their victory turned away Democratic challengers Walter F. Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro.

In 1986 Reagan obtained an overhaul of the income tax code, which eliminated many deductions and exempted millions of people with low incomes. At the end of his administration, the Nation was enjoying its longest recorded period of peacetime prosperity without recession or depression.

In foreign policy, Reagan sought to achieve "peace through strength." During his two terms he increased defense spending 35 percent, but sought to improve relations with the Soviet Union. In dramatic meetings with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, he negotiated a treaty that would eliminate intermediate-range nuclear missiles. Reagan declared war against international terrorism, sending American bombers against Libya after evidence came out that Libya was involved in an attack on American soldiers in a West Berlin nightclub.

By ordering naval escorts in the Persian Gulf, he maintained the free flow of oil during the Iran-Iraq war. In keeping with the Reagan Doctrine, he gave support to anti-Communist insurgencies in Central America, Asia, and Africa.

Overall, the Reagan years saw a restoration of prosperity, and the goal of peace through strength seemed to be within grasp... "

(Read more...)

Visit the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

It's the oil, stupid!

The populism of Hugo Chavez doesn't have frontiers. Venezuela is expanding heating oil subsides once again. In the meantime, a conservative religious group wants to boycott the purchase of gasoline from the country that wants to bring down the U.S. government. Oh, those Jesus people, what do they know!

Chavez responds to the responds of Rummy...

Chavez responds to the responds of Rummy. Seems to me that there's only one dog in the street who is looking for a fight.

Click on the title for link. From Aljazeera news.

Rummy responds ...

Less than 24 hours after Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez announced that his government had named Commander John Correa, U.S. Naval Attaché to the U.S. embassy in Caracas, persona non grata for alleged espionage, the U.S. retaliated by declaring that Jeny Figueredo Frías, chief of staff to the Venezuelan ambassador in Washington, had 72 hours to leave the U.S. “We don´t like to get into tit-for-tat games like this with the Venezuelan government, but they initiated this and the U.S. chose to respond,” said Sean McCormack, the U.S. State Department spokesman in Washington.

Brian Penn, spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, stated simply that “she was the number two diplomat in the Venezuelan Embassy. This is tit-for-tat."
Hours after Chávez’ announcement of Correa’s expulsion on Thursday, U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield had warned that, historically, Washington has responded in “a massive, decisive, and asymmetrical fashion” to such actions.

Pavel Rondón, Venezuela’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs for Latin America and the Caribbean, referred to Brownfield’s remarks on Friday, stating that this was, “an example of an asymmetrical reaction.”
“We expelled Correa because he was in violation of the Vienna Convention. We asked Washington to cycle him back, and they respond by kicking out a top diplomat, without offering any evidence,” said Rondon.
Brownfield pointed out on Thursday that the Venezuelan government had given no specific reason or evidence for the allegations against Correa.
María Pilar Hernández, Venezuela´s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs for North America tried to be more specific on Friday, but still avoided giving evidence. “Correa violated the Vienna conventions, specifically Article 3, No.1b that says you cannot obtain information through illicit means,” Hernandez said.
But she and the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the specifics of Correa’s alleged violation.
“They haven’t told us either of the precise ways in which Correa violated that article,” Penn pointed out.
“Correa performed his duties well, in accordance with what is expected of a naval attaché,” he added.
The Daily Journal reported Friday that Correa had left Venezuela almost two weeks earlier. On Friday, the Pentagon issued a statement to the press which read that, “the U.S. Naval Attaché in Caracas, Venezuela has been rotated back to the U.S. mainland for further duties as assigned.”

Reminiscent of the Cold War

“I can’t remember the last time a U.S. diplomat was expelled from Latin America,” Professor Riordan Roett of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies told Reuters. “For Chavez to do this means he is looking for a fight or has found a fight he wants,” said Roett.
Hernández disagreed and expressed some hope that this latest row could be settled amicably. “We don’t want to escalate tensions,” she said. “But this is an important act of retaliation.”
Indicating a pragmatic approach, she added that “We are awaiting further explanation for the U.S. order. For now, we are simply going to withdraw Figueredo and attempt a diplomatic solution.”
Toby Bottome, Editor and head of VenEconomía, thought the spat might end with this latest expulsion. “I don’t see this going anywhere,” remarked Bottome. “These accusations don’t mean a thing. This should die down.”
In Washington, Roett sounded a similar note. “This is not going to lead to a break in relations, but the government’s decision will have repercussions,” theorized Roett.
Meanwhile, Venezuelan Vice President José Vicente Rangel characterized relations with Washington as “complicated and difficult”, but added that the government would not allow the dispute to get out of hand. “They are moving their pieces and we are aware of the game and we will respond in a calculated manner to these aggressions without going to the extreme,” Rangel told reporters in Caracas.
Though echoing Roett´s warning that Chávez may want more sparring, Bottome pointed out that “Chávez has characterized himself by sticking his finger in Uncle Sam’s eye every chance he gets.”
Chávez himself warned earlier in the week that if he uncovers more evidence of alleged espionage, he will throw out the entire U.S. military mission. Reports indicate that there are 21 U.S. military personnel currently attached to the U.S. embassy in Caracas.
Washington’s expulsion of Figueredo is indicative of the strained relations between the U.S. and Venezuela.
On Thursday, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that leaders such as Chávez and Bolivian President Evo Morales who advocate the radical redistribution of wealth to the poor represented a “worrisome” trend in the hemisphere.
“You’ve got Chávez in Venezuela with a lot of oil money,” Rumsfeld said at the National Press Club in Washington.
“He’s a person who was elected legally -- just as Adolf Hitler was elected legally -- and then consolidated power, and now of course is working closely with Fidel Castro and Mr. Morales and others. It concerns me.”
Rangel, during a televised press conference Friday called Rumsfeld’s comments “unacceptable”.
If any world leader today can be compared to Hitler, “it is precisely President Bush,” Rangel said.
Meanwhile, Brownfield lamented the poor state of relations between the once close allies.
“I lament, and my government laments, that bilateral relations have reached this point,” said Brownfield. “There are many serious and important issues between our governments that perhaps deserve more of our time.”

By Sacha Feinman and Russ Dallen
Daily Journal Staff
www.thedailyjournalonline.com

Feathers: Where is the evidence Mari Pili?