"I saw two dead babies who, when taken"

Headline, first sentence:

Telegraph UK:
Lula on brink of victory thanks to the grateful poor
When voters in the sun-drenched resort of Recife on Brazil's north-eastern coast went to elect a president four years ago, many of them had to climb from their precarious homes perched on stilts along the seafront, negotiating rats, sewage and open sea to reach the polling station

Brazzil Magazine:
Lula's Win Keeps Brazil on Its Course far from Washington
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's resounding electoral victory with over 60 percent of the vote places Brazilian politics on a new footing.

Reuters UK:
Lula, Brazil's first working-class president
Whether escaping from rural poverty with his family on the back of a truck or leading auto workers in huge strikes against a military dictatorship, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has shown a stubborn resolve

EuroNews:
Second term for Brazilian President
The Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has won a landslide victory in the second round of the country's election.

OhMyNews Int'l:
Lula Re-elected in Brazil
Election day in Brazil the polls have just closed (10 p.m. Local time, 10 a.m. KST). With 128 million votes counted, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva has won 68 percent of total valid votes against 39 percent for Geraldo Alkimim.

Mail&Guardian SA:
Re-elected Lula to champion Brazil's poor
Celebrating a landslide re-election, Brazil's leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva vowed on Sunday to fight for social justice while spurring economic growth.

People's Daily:
Brazil's president re-elected
Brazil's Presiednt Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, candidate of the Workers' Party, won a second term in the presidential runoff with Geraldo Alckmin, Brazil's electoral court announced on Sunday.

Headline, first sentence:

New York Times:
Brazil's President Re-elected in Landslide
Overcoming a series of corruption and political scandals that tarred his image and undermined his credibility...

Washington Post:
Despite Corruption, Lula Wins in Brazil
Lula's victory in Brazil does not mean the people have acquitted him of all the corruption scandals of his first term

Washington Post:
Brazil's Leftist President Re-Elected
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva won a landslide victory giving him a powerful mandate to press his anti-poverty campaign, but corruption scandals dogging his leftist party and thinner support in Congress...

LA Times:
Brazil's Lula captures a second term
subhead - The leftist president shakes off doubts and scandals and rolls to a landslide victory
A chastened President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva won a landslide victory Sunday...

Arkansas Democrat Gazette:
Brazilian soy farmers riled at Silva
Three years ago, farmers raced to plant more soybeans from Brazil's rolling southern hills all the way to the Amazon, profiting handsomely...

Yadanabon Silicon Village:

Vice-Chairman of the State Peace and Development Council Deputy Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services Commander-in-Chief (Army) Vice-Senior General Maung Aye yesterday morning inspected the Yadanabon Myothit Project in PyinOoLwin Township, Mandalay Division where Teleport and Incubation will be constructed, and gave necessary instructions.

The New Light of Myanmar
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link path
Inside Myanmar's secret capital
Clive Parker /AsiaTimes

unbiased unprejudicial and strictly informative:

Federal police in riot gear and armored cars took up positions on the outskirts of this southern Mexican city on Sunday, as leftist protesters who have taken charge of the streets stood firm at their barricades of tree trunks and hijacked trucks.

...the federal presence appeared designed to bolster law and order ahead of their return. But some strikers and their leftist supporters were outlining plans for street-by-street resistance...

...said police action could occur if there was another violent incident like Friday's killing of a U.S. activist-journalist and two local residents...

...Protest sympathizers gathered on Saturday in the nearly deserted, graffiti-smeared main plaza the arch-ringed square normally abuzz with tourists and vendors to mourn Bradley Roland Will, 36, of New York, who was killed during a shootout between protesters and men they claim were local officials...

...U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza said in a statement that those who shot Will may have been Oaxaca police...

Local police officers often out of uniform have staged sporadic attacks on protesters, who themselves have been blamed in at least one death...

Stevenson/ABC 29.Oct.06
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They have classes in this shit, right?
Some place you can go learn how to write like that.
It's that simpering mincing thing, that get-right-next-to-the-line and shuffle your feet til it disappears. What line?
Truth? I don't got to show you no stinkin truth.
Simple techniques like "Bradley Roland Will, 36, of New York, who was killed during a shootout between protesters and men they claim" where Will is followed by killed followed by shootout followed by protestors and men they claim.
The logic of it is the protestors did it and now are lying about it, even though the words don't technically, legally, say that.
That's propaganda, folks!
The way it's written the police are placed in opposition to the killing, but they did it.
"They" inasmuch as the official chain of command is energized by whatever it is down there that's fighting to stay on top.
A big mutant reptile with its fangs in the neck of the peasantry.
Thrashing its tail while the reporter imagines the praise and bonus from his handlers in Arlington and Langley.

Oaxaca:

Tres muertos y varios heridos por enfrentamientos armados en Oaxaca
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A U.S. journalist and two Mexican men were killed by gunfire in the Mexican city of Oaxaca, where leftist protesters have barricaded streets and occupied government buildings for five months in a bid to oust the governor. Several other people were injured.

Romero/AP/Chron 28.Oct.06
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At last report, Will was one of five people who died in the last day, along with 17 wounded, as paramilitaries and federal police poured in to retake the city, according to Centro de Medias Libres. The city had been in the hands of the workers for five months. Will is the first American to be killed in the months-long confrontation.

Indybay/Indymedia 27.Oct.06
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Al Giordano on Brad Will

President Vicente Fox has vowed to end the conflict
before he leaves office:

Gunmen opened fire on protesters in Mexico's colonial city of Oaxaca on Friday, killing a U.S. journalist and wounding several people at road blocks set up by leftists pushing to topple a state governor.

Will Bradley Roland, a cameraman working with Indymedia New York, was shot in the chest and died before reaching the hospital, the independent news group said on its Web site.

Emergency services said the journalist died after being shot in the torso in one of two shootouts in the city.

Nine people, mostly protesters, have been killed in a conflict that began in Oaxaca state five months ago, when striking teachers and leftist activists occupied much of the state capital, a popular tourist destination.

Reuters/Alertnet 28.Oct.06

Hello Google
"Google Custom Search Engine"
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hello
Google Custom Search Engine
also this promising addition to the Google news search engine:
archive search
with a timeline

a decent Arctic civilization with a very reduced number of people in the not too distant future:

Palmer, Lovelock, and Hoffert at Seed on global warming

acquitted of conspiring to brainwash:

The 64-year-old musician, who admitted to belonging to the Solar Temple cult during his trial in 2001, is accused of encouraging cult members to a "transit towards the star Sirius"

swissinfo 24.Oct.06

a truly Faustian bargain:

You can see a close-up of some of that futility in the new book "Design Like You Give a Damn" from the nonprofit Architecture for Humanity, a book that is lovely in every sense of the word. The group started by sponsoring a competition for new shelters for refugees, and the range of replacements that people thought up for canvas tents makes clear just how much talent is currently going to waste designing McMansions. There are inflatable hemp bubbles and cardboard outhouses and dozens of other designs and prototypes for the world's poorest people and biggest disasters. As time went on, the group also collected photos and plans for attractive buildings around the world: health clinics that generate their own power, schools cheap enough for communities to construct. Still, there's something sad about the entire project -- most of these designs have never been carried out, because the architects lacked the political savvy or influence to get them adopted by relief agencies or national governments. When there's a disaster, relief agencies still haul out the canvas tents.
[...]
The technology we need most badly is the technology of community -- the knowledge about how to cooperate to get things done. Our sense of community is in disrepair at least in part because the prosperity that flowed from cheap fossil fuel has allowed us all to become extremely individualized

Bill McKibben/Salon 24.Oct.06

OVERPRICED SPACE-ROOMBA

Bunnies in trouble:

Landslides caused by feral rabbits have destroyed fragile penguin colonies on a remote Australian island near Antarctica, and millions more seabirds are under threat, the environmental group WWF said on Tuesday. A plague of more than 100,000 introduced rabbits on World Heritage-listed Macquarie Island has stripped native tussock grasses, causing loss of nest cover at breeding grounds.

RSOE 24.Oct.06

an infant analog to post-traumatic stress disorder:

In a statement, the Doctors Opposing Circumcision said the judge's ruling protected "the boy's legal right to bodily integrity."
"Male circumcision in an irreversible amputation of functional tissue," it added.
"The ruling opens a very interesting question," said the group's John Geisheker. "If the benefits of circumcision are not available to a 9-year-old, what does that say about infants?"
At least one study has shown infants that have been circumcised later show a greater sensitivity to pain, "an infant analog to post-traumatic stress disorder," Geisheker said.
On the opposing side, one study suggested an uncircumcised penis may be more prone to becoming infected with HIV.
The practice of circumcising infant males is rare in Europe, while it is declining but remains common in the United States.

Reuters 024.10.06
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The Ashley Montagu Campaign Against the Torture and Mutilation of Children
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An unbiased clip:
John Geisheker, a Seattle attorney who specializes in botched circumcision cases, is hoping for a new wave of cases based on the success of the New York case.
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A biased clip:
"Everyone I hear are waving their arms and saying we don't have a stick big enough to hit back at this issue," Tinari announces. "I've come to the conclusion, after years of studying, that no appeal to morality will ever end circumcision. You have to make it so financially painful that it ends by punishing practitioners. How do you do that? I may have the tool that we've been looking for."
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One scientific study:
These men were living in Orange Farm, a neighborhood near Johannesburg, South Africa, with high rates of HIV transmission and an existing male circumcision rate of approximately 20%. Prior to this study, the researchers had conducted a feasibility pilot study that found that 70% of men would consider circumcision if it were beneficial and safe.
Subjects willing to be circumcised were then randomized to receive immediate circumcision or to wait 20 months for the procedure. In the intervention group, medical physicians removed the penile foreskin after administering local anesthetic and using sterile surgical procedures.
At 21 months, the researchers diagnosed 69 new HIV cases, 51 in the control group that had yet to be circumcised, and 18 in the group that had been circumcised, Dr. Auvert said. This translates into a 65% protective effect (with a 95% confidence interval of 40% to 80%).
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A serendipitous appointment:
The research, presented at the International AIDS Conference here, builds on last year's finding that circumcised heterosexual men are at least 60% less likely to contract HIV than their uncircumcised counterparts.
Kevin De Cock, MD, director of the World Health Organization's HIV/AIDS program, says that if the findings hold up, the global agency will issue guidelines backing the procedure for HIV prevention.
[...]
No one's really sure how circumcision might prevent infection with HIV, but De Cock offers several possibilities.
The foreskin is covered with a much thinner layer of cells than the penis, which could facilitate invasion by the virus, he says. Also, the foreskin has more cells that have targets for the virus, De Cock says.
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Sobering numbers:
Overall, 26% of individuals in Kisumu and 28% in Ndola were HIV-positive. In both sites, HIV prevalence in women was six times that in men among sexually active 15-19 year olds, three times that in men among 20-24 year olds, and equal to that in men among 25-49 year olds.

Told you:

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney said on Tuesday he thought Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton could win the White House in 2008 and that a potential Democratic opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, was too inexperienced.
Clinton, a New York Democrat who is running for re-election, is considered a likely contender for the White House in 2008. Obama, serving his first term as a U.S. senator from Illinois, has been touted recently as a possible candidate, something he said he would consider.

"I think Hillary Clinton is a formidable candidate," Cheney said in an interview with Fox News Channel's "Hannity&Colmes" due to air on Tuesday evening.

Tabassum Zakaria/swissinfo 24.Oct.06

The boy died while picking olives with his brother

Conditions In The Near East:
Report Of The American Military Mission To Armenia

From: Maj. Gen. James G. Harbord, United States Army.

To: The Secretary of State.

Without visiting the Near East it is not possible for an American to realize even faintly the respect, faith, and affection with which our country is regarded throughout that region.
Whether it is the world-wide reputation which we enjoy for fair dealing, a tribute perhaps to the crusading spirit which carried us into the Great War, not untinged with hope that the same spirit may urge us into the solution of great problems growing out of that conflict, or whether due to unselfish and impartial missionary and educational influence exerted for a century, it is the one faith which is held alike by Christian and Moslem, by Jew and Gentile, by prince and peasant in the Near East.
It is very gratifying to the pride of Americans far from home.

JAMES G. HARBORD,
Major General, United States Army, Chief of Mission.
On Board U. S. S. Martha Washington, October 16, 1919


[Armenia is] an area about as large as Montana, without political identity, but existing in 1914 in two parts, the eastern belonging to Russia, which consisted of Kars and Erivan, and some portions of the present territory of Azarbaijan: the remainder being Turkish Armenia, comprised in the Villayets of Van, Bitlis, Erzerum, Diarbekir, Kharput, and Cilicia,
[...]
For over 12 of the 25 centuries of its history Armenia enjoyed independence within borders that shifted with the events of the times. Its last king, Leon VI, an exile from his own land, spent his last years in the effort to bring about an understanding between France and England, then in the struggle of the Hundred Years War, and actually presided at a peace conference near Boulogne in 1386, which brought about the understanding which led to the end of that war.
[...]
...though at an earlier period 16 Byzantine Emperors were of that race, and ruled the eastern Empire with distinction. Many individuals, and even colonies, however, played a part in distant lands. Europe, India, and Persia welcomed them. They were translators, bankers, scholars, artisans,
artists, and traders, and even under their tyrannical masters filled posts which called for administrative ability, became ambassadors and ministers, and more than once saved a tottering throne. They carried on trades, conducted commerce, and designed and constructed palaces. Nevertheless as a race they were forbidden military service, taxed to poverty, their property confiscated at pleasure, and their women forced into the harems of the conqueror. Such slavery leaves some inevitable and unlovable traces upon the character, but in the main the Armenian preserved his religion, his language, and his racial purity, persecution bringing cohesion.
[...]
In 1876 a constitution for Turkey was drawn up by the Armenian Krikor Odian, secretary to Midhat Pasha the reformer, and was proclaimed and almost immediately revoked by Sultan Abdul Hamid.
The foregoing inadequately sketches the story of the wrongs of Armenia down to our own times. From 1876 it is a story of massacre and of broken and violated guaranties.
[...]
On the route traveled by the mission fully 50,000 orphans are to-day receiving Government or other organized care. We estimate a total of perhaps half a million refugee Armenians as available to eventually begin life anew in a region about the size of New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, to which would be added those, not refugees, who might return from other lands. The condition of the refugees seen in the Transcaucasus is pitiable to the last degree. They subsist on the charity of the American relief organizations with some help, not great, however, from their more prosperous kinsmen domiciled in that region. Generally they wear the rags they have worn for four years. Eighty per cent of them suffer from malaria, 10 per cent from venereal troubles, and practically all from diseases that flourish on the frontiers of starvation. There are also the diseases that accompany filth, loathsome skin troubles, and great numbers of sore eyes, the latter especially among the children. The hospitals are crowded...
[...]
All circumstances considered, the relief administration in the Trans-caucasus seems to have been conducted with more than average energy. It has rescued the refugees there from starvation, and brought the name of America to a height of sympathy and esteem it has never before enjoyed in this region. It extends now throughout the Near East, and is felt by the wild, ragged Kurd, the plausible Georgian, the suspicious Azarbaijan, the able Armenian, and the grave Turk with equal seriousness. With it or probably because of it there has come widespread knowledge of the Fourteen Points submitted by the President, and "self-determination" has been quoted to the mission by wild Arabs from Shamar and Basra, by every Government in Transcaucasia; by the mountaineers of Daghestan, the dignified and able chiefs of the Turkish Nationalist movement at Sivas and Erzerum, and the nomad Kurds who 10 minutes before had fired at our party thinking us to be Armenians.
[...]
Meantime, the Armenian, unarmed at the time of the deportations and massacres, a brave soldier by thousands in the armies of Russia, France, and America during the war, is still unarmed in a land where every man but himself carries a rifle.

Senate Document No. 266, 66th Congress, 2d Session. Washington
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Anna & Karen Vrtanesyan
Armenia House
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also:
Frequently Asked Questions about the Armenian Genocide
Armenian National Institute
["Copying any materials posted on the ANI website is strictly prohibited"]

Increasing intelligence indicates:

Sources in the Israeli military say that Israel would bomb Unifil sites in southern Lebanon if Israeli warplanes are intercepted.

An Israeli newspaper, Maarif, reported on Sunday that the statements came after several European countries which have been putting pressure on Israel to stop its violation of Lebanese air space.
[...]
Peretz said on Sunday that the purpose of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil), was to act against Hezbollah and not Israel.
"Unifil is meant to act against Hezbollah and not against Israel," he said.
"Israel's security is the most important objective."
On July 27, Israeli warplanes bombed a UN observation centre in southern Lebanon and killed four observers.
[...]
Israel launched its war on July 12 after Hezbollah seized two soldiers and killed eight others in cross-border raids.
The war killed more than 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and more than 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.

Aljazeera 22.Oct.06

Scattered thoughts whose pertinence is made somewhat moot by the lateness of the hour:

Graph the development and use of pesticides on tobacco crops and compare with the graph of cancers attributable to tobacco use.
As far as I know no one's talked about this as a plausible contributor, but also as far as I know tobacco isn't considered a food crop, and the regulation of pesticides on non-food crops is, and especially was in the 1950's and 60's, pretty lax. Smoking pesticides can't be good for you.
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Keeping in mind that men a lot like Dick Cheney and his cohort are running the domestic meat production industries, keeping in mind that chemical regulation of fat-accumulation in market meat animals - hormones etc. administered in large doses to speed weight gain - is a primary tool for profit-making in those industries, keeping in mind the total disregard for the common weal in and by those men and industries - is it unreasonable to question whether the epidemic of obesity in Americans may be at least in some part attributable to the ingestion of chemical residues carried in domestic factory-farmed meat?
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George Bush is now in the center of the target for responsibility for Iraq; and as Matt Stoller said the other day on C-SPAN, no one knows why we went there and did all that damage. It's the question, and it's going unanswered, at least publicly.
Leaving Iraq, now, without an answer to that question is not what you'd call a noble gesture, though it may be the only moral one available.
The problem is how neatly it fits - Bush: crazy, stupid, wrong, incompetent, gone.
How frantically the contest is spun as Democrats v. Republicans, as though all those Democrats didn't vote to invade, didn't vote to burn the Constitution, as if the ones who didn't weren't vilified and accused of treason.
Look how neatly the country's ready to move from bewilderment at the treachery of these present actors to the next batch,without much actually changing. The Patriot Act's not going to be repealed, Iraq's not going to be set back on its feet anytime soon.
The results remain and, if we're going to suggest Bush was used - which we are in fact suggesting, loudly - the next puppet "steps up" to fix things, though of course not to the point where Iraq has a strong independent economy with no American influence, and certainly we aren't going to fix Iraq to the point where it's a strong military presence in the Middle East again.
So if the idea all along was a two-fold scam - to break the country, militarily and economically, and to get access to Iraq's western oil fields - then it's an accomplished mission, and the next phase would be a "meet the new boss" gambit. A change of uniform and language, but business as usual.