...and here all these decades we thought Sweden was a progressive's valhala...
Couple fights for baby 'Metallica' name

46 minutes ago

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Metallica may work as a name for a heavy metal band, but a Swedish couple is struggling to convince authorities it's also suitable for a baby girl.
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Sweden's tax agency rejected Michael and Karolina Tomaro's application to name their 6-month-old daughter after the legendary rock band.

"It suits her," Karolina Tomaro, 27, said Tuesday of the name. "She's decisive and she knows what she wants."

Although little Metallica has already been baptized, the Swedish National Tax Board refused to register the name, saying it was associated with both the rock group and the word "metal."

In Sweden, parents must get the names of their children approved by the tax authority, which is in charge of the population registry and issues personal identification numbers, similar to
Social Security numbers in the United States.

Tomaro, who has appealed the decision, said the official handling the case also called the name "ugly."

The couple was backed by the County Administrative Court in Goteborg, which ruled on March 13 that there was no reason to block the name. It also noted that there already is a woman in Sweden with Metallica as a middle name.

The tax agency appealed to a higher court, frustrating the family's foreign travel plans.

"We've had to cancel trips and can't get anywhere because we can't get her a passport without an approved name," Tomaro said.

Significant information from Rowan at UNCOMMONTHOUGHT.COM
Iran hostage crisis becomes clearer Printable Version | [eMail this article!] | The headline reads "US rejects Iran captives exchange." My initial response was "Why is the US doing rejecting a captive exchange"? My second thought was, "not those hostages". Yes, Iran has asked for the five Iranian Consulate staff seized by the from Irbil, Kirkuk in January, 2007. You may recall that Bush had approved an attack on the Iranian Consulate in Kirkuk. Why did it take from March 23rd to March 31st for the issue at play in the holding of 15 UK sailors to be brought to light? Iran's arrest of 15 UK sailors has largely been painted as a "provocative" move by Iran. Presented as another "crazy" move by Ahmadinejad. However, now a totally different issue arises. In January, more than two months ago, the US raids a recognized Iranian Consulate in Kirkuk, Iraq. Along with taking computers and files, the US military also takes into custody, five staff people from the Consulate. Kirkuk and Iran issue a protest and a demand for the release of the captive consulate staff. The US claims they are part of Iran's Revolutionary Guard al-Qods force, and refuse to release them. We can imagine what has happened in the ensuing time. Through back channels and intermediaries, Iran has continued to demand the release of their five consulate staff. The US has denied or ignored the requests - through back channels and intermediaries as the US won't talk to Iran. Instead, the US decided to launch massive "war games off the coast of Iran." However, they were not seen as games by Iran. Iran ups the ante by taking their own hostages as a negotiating chip for their consulate staff. It even makes sense that they would arrest UK personnel rather than US military - who are surely in and near Iran. The US would take the capture of US personnel as a directly hostile move and a legitimation of retaliatory strikes. Bush seems to just be waiting for the opportunity to legitimate his "tactical" nuclear war against Iran. Instead, they arrest UK personnel, where any action to be taken is by the UK. In fact, if the US utilizes this as the opportunity to attack, it will make the UK look very bad indeed. One might even say it would preempt the UK's sovereignty and be "emasculating" of their national honor and rights. Suddenly, this very public action by Iran takes on a very canny sense. They are also making clear to the world that the UK sailors are being well cared for. For all that their statements may be coerced, the videos show them to be intact and in good shape. I am relatively sure that Iran has no such assurance about their five captive consulate staff. Regardless, the presentation of the UK sailors (while protested by the UK) is a very public statement that undermines a military response to the situation. What has happened (or is happening) to the five consulate staff who were captured by the US? Why isn't the corporate press or our Congress asking the Bush administration to report on the status of these high visibility captives? Will they ask now that Iran's hostage negotiations have become public - at least public in the UK? Posted by rowan at March 31, 2007 7:53 AM | Printable Version | [eMail this article!] |

Immigrants Stage Week-Long Boycott in Colorado...
Immigrants Stage Week-Long Boycott in Colorado.

Aaron Glantz, OneWorld US Thu Mar 29, 12:19 PM ET

SAN FRANCISCO, Mar 29 (OneWorld) - Immigrant rights activists in Colorado have launched a week-long economic boycott, saying they want to show how big an impact immigrants have on the economy.

"Immigrants have substantial buying power that is often taken for granted," Julien Ross of the Denver-based Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition (CIRC) told OneWorld.

CIRC is calling on immigrants to refrain from buying anything but necessities this week. In addition, the group is urging supporters to pull most of their money out of bank accounts and take a week-long break before sending any money to relatives who live outside the United States.

"We need fair and just immigration reform now," Ross said. "Families are being divided and children are being orphaned by immigration raids; women and children are dying in the desert crossing into this country. We have a labor crisis in Colorado where farms cannot find enough workers to tend their crops. By any measure, we have a crisis here."

Last week lawmakers in Washington introduced the so-called STRIVE Act, which would allow undocumented immigrants to obtain legal residency in the United States after paying a fee and undergoing a background check. It would also create a program to allow nearly half a million people to enter the country each year to work low-skill jobs.

Some immigration reform proponents have already come out against the bill, which also includes a slew of measures to ratchet up security along the U.S.-Mexico border.

According to the American Friends Service Committee, "the STRIVE Act offers little to address the root causes of undocumented migration and contains several troubling provisions," including one that would require immigrants to leave the United States and re-enter before qualifying for legal immigration status.

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization, which has supported efforts to organize immigrants living in Colorado, said the bill does not meet fundamental standards of human rights.

This week's economic boycott in Colorado comes exactly one year after one the largest immigrant rights demonstrations in U.S. history.

Last March 25, more than half a million people took to the streets of Los Angeles to protest a Congressional measure known as HR 4437, which would have made it a crime to be an undocumented immigrant in the United States or to help those who remain in the United States without legal documentation. It also would have required churches and non-profit organizations to require proof of legal status before providing charity and it would have mandated construction of a giant fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Five weeks later, on May 1, millions of people took to the streets across the country, and Congress ultimately shelved the bill. Hundreds of thousands turned out in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami, and 75,000 protested in Denver.

But the scrapping of HR 4437 resulted in gridlock rather than a solution in Washington and the year since has not been kind to immigrants in Colorado.

Last November, Colorado voters approved two immigration measures. Referendum H, which denies a state tax credit to employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers, passed with 50.8 percent of the vote. Referendum K, which directs the state attorney general to sue the federal government to demand enforcement of immigration laws, got 56 percent of the vote.

The voter-approved initiatives came after then-Governor Bill Owens signed a law directing local police to ask about the immigration status of drivers they stop. The bill, SB90, also instructs police to pass that information on to federal authorities.

That, activists say, has created a climate of fear in immigrant communities. The law took effect in January. Sylvia Martinez of the group Latinos Unidos in Greeley, Colorado told OneWorld that reports of police harassment and racial profiling have already been coming in.

"Police officers are not only asking people for their documentation to be in this country but also adding to that their own personal comments," she said.

Martinez, who is a U.S. citizen, said, "unfortunately many people's perception of what an undocumented immigrant looks like is like me: Hispanic. How do I know that I'm not going to be either targeted or looked at differently as a citizen based only on my skin color?" she asked.

Farming interests in Colorado estimate that about 40 percent of migrant workers have left the state in response to the new laws.

"There's a lot of uncertainty about how these new laws that took effect in January 2007 will have an impact on the agriculture situation," Martinez added. "We're just getting into Spring and the planting season is only about to begin at the beginning of April. Even last year, there were several farmers that were not able to pick up produce from their fields: and we're talking about hundreds of acres."

Colorado officials are considering using prison labor to work in the fields if too few migrant workers can be recruited.

Julien Ross of the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition believes problems in Colorado and other Western states are intractable without "comprehensive immigration reform" from Washington.

"The new Governor of Colorado doesn't want to touch immigration," he said. "So the best way to address mistakes made last year is for the federal government to fix our broken immigration system. Comprehensive immigration reform will make SB90 and other laws obsolete."

Bush ex-strategist says loses faith in president...
Bush ex-strategist says loses faith in president!

By Randall Mikkelsen Sun Apr 1, 11:56 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chief strategist of George W. Bush's 2004 re-election campaign said he had lost faith in the U.S. president over
Iraq and other issues, in a high-level rupture of Bush's famously loyal inner circle.

Matthew Dowd, a polling expert who switched parties to become a Republican and also served as a senior strategist in Bush's 2000 presidential campaign, told The New York Times in an interview on Sunday that Bush must face up to Americans' growing disillusionment with the war.

Dowd said he had found himself agreeing with calls by Democratic Sen.
John Kerry of Massachusetts, Bush's opponent in 2004, for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

"If the American public says they're done with something, our leaders have to understand what they want," Dowd said. "They're saying, 'Get out of Iraq."'

He also cited the administration's bungled handling of the response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Bush's refusal to meet Cindy Sheehan, who had lost a son in Iraq, while she was leading a protest outside Bush's Texas ranch.

"I had finally come to the conclusion that maybe all these things along do add up," Dowd said. "That it's not the same, it's not the person I thought."

Although some other administration officials have expressed similar views over the years, the Times said Dowd is the first member of Bush's inner circle to break so publicly with him.

Dowd said he had been attracted to Bush by his ability as Texas governor to work across party lines but Bush had failed to do the same as president and had become isolated with his views hardening. The Times said Dowd was speaking out partly in an effort to get through to Bush.

"I really like him, which is why I'm so disappointed in things," Dowd said. "I think he's become more, in my view, secluded and bubbled in."

SHARED SACRIFICE

He said Bush had failed to call for a shared sacrifice among Americans after the September 11 attacks and followed a divisive political strategy.

Dowd helped develop Bush's successful re-election strategy of rallying his Republican "base" but sounded a different note in the Times interview.

"I think we should design campaigns that appeal not to 51 percent of the people," he said, "but to bring the country together as a whole."

White House counselor Dan Bartlett said Dowd's criticism reflects the U.S. debate over the war.

"This war is a complicated and difficult one and it brings out emotions in people from both sides of the aisle, even those who work closely for the president, and the president respects his position," Bartlett said on CBS television's "Face the Nation."

"Obviously, we disagree with him as far as him (Bush) being too insular or him bringing the troops home," Bartlett said. "What troubles me is that there is a perception that this president doesn't understand the difficulties of this war ... there's nothing that weighs more heavily on his mind."

The Times said Dowd acknowledged that the expected deployment to Iraq of his oldest son, Daniel, an Army intelligence specialist, was a factor in his changed view of Bush.

Dowd said he now wanted to "do my part in fixing fissures that I may have been a part of."

The Times said Dowd cited Democratic Sen. Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) of Illinois as the only 2008 presidential candidate who appeals to him but said the idea of mission work also was attractive as a way to "re-establish a level of gentleness in the world."

Renewing an old controversy...
Updated:2007-03-31 18:05:47
Debate on 'Secret Mark' Gospel Resumes
By PETER STEINFELS
The New York Times
(March 31) -- Imagine the discovery of a previously unknown Gospel of Mark, a secret text suppressed by church authorities that pictured Jesus initiating his disciples with a hallucinatory, nocturnal and quite possibly homosexual rite. Imagine the headlines, the four-alarm book promotion and the cable network special.

Fact or Forgery?
The authors of two new books insist that Professor Morton Smith planted double entendres and teasing hints of his own authorship in the manuscript he claimed to discover.

Talk About It: Post Thoughts
Ho-hum, you say? Isn’t it simply Easter season, when fresh Gnostic gospels or dubious ossuaries show up like spring daffodils?

Ah, but those with long memories know that just such a “secret Gospel of Mark” once did make headlines. In 1973, Morton Smith published both a dense scholarly tome (“Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark,” Harvard University Press) and a popular book (“The Secret Gospel,” Harper & Row) describing a manuscript that he had found in a Greek Orthodox monastery south of Jerusalem.

Used as reinforcement for the binding of an early modern book, it was an 18th-century copy of an otherwise unknown “letter to Theodore” from Clement of Alexandria, a church father of the late second century.Renewing an old controversy...

Clement, in this letter, acknowledged the existence of a longer Gospel by Mark known only to initiates. Clement quoted a section involving Jesus’ raising of a young man from his tomb and a nighttime encounter in which Jesus taught the lightly clad youth “the mystery of the kingdom.” Finally, denouncing a heretical sect that had “polluted” this secret text with “carnal doctrine” and “falsifications” emphasizing the nakedness of the encounter, Clement demanded that Theodore deny the existence of this secret longer version of Mark altogether, even under oath.

This was enough to inspire reviewers with the word “sensational” — but also to cause them to question whether the passages quoted by Clement and their hints of libertinism really stemmed from the Mark who wrote the first of the four Gospels rather than from one of the many spurious texts later created by esoteric groups of Christians.

Yet there were always deeper suspicions — namely, that the whole thing, the letter from Clement and the Marcan passage it contained, was a clever forgery, perhaps the work of a mischievous medieval monk, perhaps the work of a modern scholar or perhaps even the work of — shh! — Professor Smith himself.

If some experts preferred merely to hint at his complicity, it was because Professor Smith, who died in 1991, was an eminent teacher of ancient history at Columbia University and a man of enormous erudition. He was also a superb writer — his account of finding the manuscript in the Mar Saba Monastery is a screenplay in waiting — and a fierce combatant in academic battles.

Add to that screenplay the complication that the manuscript and the book where it was found have disappeared; all that remains are photographs made by Professor Smith in 1958 and by other scholars in 1976. Add, too, that he had many of his personal papers destroyed at his death.

Rare Bible Found in Dump


Now two books have thrown down the gauntlet. “The Gospel Hoax” by Stephen C. Carlson (Baylor University Press, 2005) is subtitled “Morton Smith’s Invention of Secret Mark.” Peter Jeffery had finished writing “The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled” just published by Yale University Press, before receiving a copy of Mr. Carlson’s book.

In many ways, the books are complementary. Mr. Carlson, a lawyer, wields forensic science, the kind of handwriting analysis and word usage used to expose forgeries. Professor Jeffery, a musicologist at Princeton expert in the history of Christian liturgy, looks to the content of the Clement-Mark passages, arguing that its assumptions about Christian worship and initiation rites reflect ideas about early church practices popular half a century ago in the world Professor Smith inhabited rather than what is now known about the world of Clement of Alexandria.

The two authors converge on the point that the understanding of same-sex relations informing the Clement letter is in fact a modern understanding and unlike anything in the Hellenistic world.

And both authors insist that Professor Smith planted double entendres and teasing hints of his own authorship.

But this raises the question of what could have possibly motivated an eminent professor to devise such an elaborate fake and then spend from 1958 to 1973 bolstering it with every scholarly reference at his disposal. Mr. Carlson leans heavily on the category of “hoax,” a virtuoso’s one-upmanship of his academic colleagues, a notion that implies that proper recognition of Professor Smith’s skills would require the eventual exposure of his fakery.

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Professor Jeffery seems to waver in his view of Professor Smith, sometimes portraying him as an embittered survivor of his few years as an Episcopal priest. Yet Professor Jeffery also calls the fabrication of the Marcan text “an astoundingly daring act of creative rebellion” aimed at giving homosexuality a Christian foundation.

But the battle is not ending there. Scott G. Brown, who teaches at the University of Toronto, has come out guns blazing. Before these two books appeared charging that secret Mark is really secret Smith, Dr. Brown had argued in “Mark’s Other Gospel” (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2005) that secret Mark was indeed the New Testament’s Mark and not Professor Smith’s.

Dr. Brown charges in with his own handwriting analysis and his conviction that Professor Smith is a victim of academic “folklore” about the man, that the detection of sly jokes and hidden confessions is nonsense and that the focus on homoeroticism is much more in the minds of his critics than of the professor himself. Dr. Brown has been firing away in The Journal of Biblical Literature and The Harvard Theological Review — and he promises more.

Scholarly debates are never to be quelled. But could it be time for the television producers and writers to take over? Maybe the world has had enough Easter season docudramas about Jesus and other people in robes, cloaks, togas or linen wraparounds. Bring on the secret Mark wars. Really, it is time for “CSI: Academia.”

Copyright ? 2007 The New York Times Company
2007-03-31 17:53:27

The "Thin Red Line" between Support inane Policy and Support the Troops, seems Very BLURRED!
Bush apologizes for poor health care of veterans

By Caren Bohan Fri Mar 30, 4:53 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
President George W. Bush apologized to wounded U.S. troops who endured dilapidated conditions and bureaucratic delays as he toured Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the flagship military hospital.

Bush, in his first visit to Walter Reed since a scandal over health care there erupted in February, met with some patients who had previously been at the outpatient building where the worst conditions were found.

"I was disturbed by their accounts of what went wrong," Bush said. "I apologize for what they went through and we're going to fix the problem."

A Washington Post article that found soldiers wounded in the
Iraq and
Afghanistan wars were living in a run-down building that was infested with mice, mold and cockroaches. Many soldiers also struggled with red tape in trying to get treatment.

"The problems at Walter Reed were caused by bureaucratic and administrative failures," Bush said.

The dilapidated building has since been closed and the patients have been moved to other facilities at Walter Reed.

The reports on Walter Reed provoked an outcry on Capitol Hill. Three senior military officers have lost their jobs and Bush has ordered a wide-ranging review of all U.S. veterans facilities. More than 24,000 soldiers have been wounded and more than 3,600 killed in the two wars.

Bush toured a physical therapy unit where soldiers, many of whom had lost limbs, were exercising on elliptical machines and weight presses.

Bush has often visited wounded soldiers and their families at Walter Reed and at other military hospitals but those meetings were almost always private.

Democrats called Bush's visit a "photo op" and urged him to back off his threat to veto a war-spending bill that has $4.3 billion in health aid for returning soldiers.

Bush plans to reject the Democratic-crafted measure because it includes timelines for troop withdrawals from Iraq. He has cited the need to support the troops in calling on Congress to urgently send him a clean bill.

Sen. Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record), an Illinois Democrat who is also seeking his party's 2008 presidential nomination, accused Bush of being slow to tackle problems with veterans health care.

"The problems plaguing our military hospital system will not be solved with a photo op," Obama said in a statement. "Our military hospital system is in a state of crisis. Delays and rhetorical band-aids will not move us closer to a solution."

(Additional reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20070327/sc_space/bizarrehexagonspottedonsaturn ...check out links
Bizarre Hexagon Spotted on Saturn

SPACE.com Tue Mar 27, 1:30 PM ET

One of the most bizarre weather patterns known has been photographed at Saturn, where astronomers have spotted a huge, six-sided feature circling the north pole.

Rather than the normally sinuous cloud structures seen on all planets that have atmospheres, this thing is a hexagon.

The honeycomb-like feature has been seen before. NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft imaged it more than two decades ago. Now, having spotted it with the Cassini spacecraft, scientists conclude it is a long-lasting oddity.

"This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides," said Kevin Baines, atmospheric expert and member of Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We've never seen anything like this on any other planet. Indeed, Saturn's thick atmosphere, where circularly-shaped waves and convective cells dominate, is perhaps the last place you'd expect to see such a six-sided geometric figure, yet there it is."

The hexagon is nearly 15,000 miles (25,000 kilometers) across. Nearly four Earths could fit inside it. The thermal imagery shows the hexagon extends about 60 miles (100 kilometers) down into the clouds.

At Saturn's south pole, Cassini recently spotted a freaky human eye-like feature that resembles a hurricane.

"It's amazing to see such striking differences on opposite ends of Saturn's poles," said Bob Brown, team leader of the Cassini visual and infrared mapping spectrometer at the University of Arizona. "At the south pole we have what appears to be a hurricane with a giant eye, and at the north pole of Saturn we have this geometric feature, which is completely different."

The hexagon appears to have remained fixed with Saturn's rotation rate and axis since first glimpsed by Voyager 26 years ago. The actual rotation rate of Saturn is still uncertain, which means nobody knows exactly how long the planet's day is.

"Once we understand its dynamical nature, this long-lived, deep-seated polar hexagon may give us a clue to the true rotation rate of the deep atmosphere and perhaps the interior," Baines said.

* Video: The Hexagon on Saturn
* Wildest Weather in the Galaxy
* Earth's Weirdest Weather

* Original Story: Bizarre Hexagon Spotted on Saturn

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"Tuesdays with Cheney..."
Bush serves jokes at broadcasters dinner

By ANN SANNER, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 1 minute ago

WASHINGTON - Tell us, Mr. President, how have things changed since the last broadcasters' dinner?
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"A year ago my approval rating was in the 30s, my nominee for the Supreme Court had just withdrawn, and my vice president had shot someone,"
President Bush said Wednesday night during the annual gathering.

"Ah," he said, "those were the good ol' days."

In keeping with the lighthearted traditions of the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association dinner, Bush poked fun at himself and a few others in remarks that drew laughter and applause at the Washington Hilton Hotel.

Bush thanked the organization for providing dinner, "and I'd like to thank Senator Webb for providing security."

Virginia's Democratic senator, Jim Webb, had to explain this week why an aide was carrying a loaded handgun as he tried to enter a Capitol complex building.

Noting that Vice President
Dick Cheney was not in attendance, Bush said: "He's had a rough few weeks. To be honest, his feelings were kind of hurt. He said he was going on vacation to
Afghanistan where people like him."

Cheney's recent trip to Afghanistan was marked by a bombing near where he was meeting with officials.

On the controversy over the Justice Department's firing of eight federal prosecutors, Bush said: "I have to admit we really blew the way we let those attorneys go. You know you've botched it when people sympathize with lawyers."

Acknowledging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., at the head table, Bush said some had wondered how he'd get along with her. "Some say she's bossy, she's opinionated, she's not to be crossed," he said. "Hey, I get along with my mother."

Looking ahead to life after leaving the White House, Bush said he might follow
President Clinton's lead and produce a memoir.

"I'm thinking of something really fun and creative for mine," he said. "You know, maybe a pop-up book."

Possible titles: "How W. Got His Groove Back," "Who Moved My Presidency?" and "Tuesday with Cheney."

But seriously, folks, Bush noted that another person missing from the audience of broadcast journalists was Sen. Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record), the Illinois Democrat running for president.

"Not enough press," the president cracked.

Comics from the TV show "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" provided the professional humor. Among other things, they persuaded Bush political adviser Karl Rove to participate in an improvised rap song.

The black-tie dinner, the group's 63rd annual gathering of journalists, politicians and their guests, features political and topical humor.

Power does not always assume Privilege.
China warns officials on family planning

Thu Mar 29, 12:38 AM ET

BEIJING - Communist Party officials in China's most populous province have been told they will not be promoted if they have more children than the law allows, state media said.

China's family planning policy — implemented in the late 1970s — limits urban couples to one child and rural families to two to control the population and conserve natural resources.

In Henan in central China, the provincial Communist Party boss warned party officials they would be banned from serving as department leaders or earning promotions if they had more children than they were allowed, the Xinhua News Agency reported late Wednesday.

"Any mistake in population work would have an irreversible impact on the rise of central China. We must make a low birth rate the top priority in our population and family planning work," Xu Guangchun was quoted as saying.

Henan, which has more people than Germany, has vowed to keep its population to 101 million by 2010 and 107 million by 2020, Xinhua said.

Population control laws vary from province to province in China, with some allowing couples who are both single children themselves to have a second child, but Xinhua said Henan does not.

China has 1.3 billion people — 20 percent of the world's population. The government has pledged to keep the population under 1.36 billion by 2010 and under 1.45 billion by 2020.

Evidence of cops' efforts to leave no witnesses...?
New arrest made in NYPD shooting

By TOM HAYS, Associated Press Writer 54 minutes ago

NEW YORK - A man has been accused of trying to discourage a last-minute witness from testifying before a grand jury that was investigating the police shooting of a bridegroom on his wedding day.

Melvin Cordero, 46, was arrested Wednesday and was awaiting arraignment on charges of intimidating a witness and other offenses, Queens district attorney's office spokesman Kevin Ryan said.

Authorities said Cordero was a supervisor for a cleaning service that employed the witness, whose identity was not disclosed. They allege Cordero repeatedly warned the witness he might be deported if he got involved in the case, which has sparked community outrage.

The witness appeared at the end of the grand jury probe into last year's fatal police shooting by five officers of 23-year-old Sean Bell outside a strip club. Two of Bell's friends were wounded.

"This office will not tolerate the intimidation of, or tampering with, witnesses and is committed to the vigorous prosecution of those who engage in such conduct," District Attorney Richard Brown said in a statement.

The district attorney's spokesman did not have the name of Cordero's attorney, and there was no home telephone number listed for Cordero.

Earlier this month, the two officers who fired the most rounds were indicted on manslaughter charges. A third was charged with a misdemeanor for a bullet that struck an elevated train station across the street where the witness was working the morning of the shooting, authorities said.

Union representatives and lawyers for the officers have said their clients, who were conducting an undercover investigation at a strip club, became convinced Bell and his friends were going to retrieve a gun from a car after overhearing them argue with another patron. No gun was found.

When one of the officers approached the car, it lurched forward and bumped him, then twice rammed into an unmarked police minivan as bullets flew, police said.

...under the heading, "Boys and Their Toys!"
Base tests latest Army concept vehicles

By MELANTHIA MITCHELL, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 35 minutes ago

SEATTLE - Taking a page from auto manufacturers, the Army has rolled out several concept vehicles it hopes will help spawn new technologies for the next generation.

The two utility trucks and two maneuver sustainment vehicles are part of a $60 million Army program to modernize military tactical vehicles like the Humvee and the Hemmet, the Army's large transport truck. They are to be used strictly for demonstration and aren't likely to go into production, Army officials said.

The trucks, which arrived at Fort Lewis earlier this month, were tested Wednesday by soldiers with the 14th Battalion and the 5th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division.

"We've given them to the soldiers to play with them and try to break 'em," said Tim Connor, a Defense Department contractor based at Fort Lewis who is overseeing the project.

All four trucks are equipped with remote weapons systems, night-vision capabilities and diesel-electric hybrid engines. They also include ballistics glass, video cameras and touch-screen controls.

The Army wants to explore such technology for future use on aging vehicles like the Humvee, which doesn't have enough power or protection to carry out today's military missions.

"What we're running with now has become antiquated," Connor said.

The quieter hybrid system would be especially useful during combat missions, Connor said.

"If you want to sneak up on someone, you turn on the electric ... which also boosts the horsepower," he said.

Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed Martin Corp., Warrenville, Ill.-based International Military and Government LLC and Jacksonville, Fla.-based Armor Holdings Inc. built the concept trucks, called joint light tactical vehicles.

Connor said the two utility variant vehicles are comparable to a Humvee, but are heavily armored, have bigger wheels and — like the other concept trucks — are designed to sustain a blast from beneath the carriage.

The larger maneuver sustainment vehicles have a robotic crane capable of lifting 13 tons of cargo. They also have a companion trailer with its own motor so it can be operated independently of the truck, Connor said.

"As big as they are and as heavy as they are ... when they hit dips in the road you hardly feel it," he said.

After testing them on gravel roads Wednesday, soldiers used the vehicles to move container-sized metal platforms, utilizing the crane to lift one end of the platform, then roll it on and off the truck. The test simulates supply drops at an airfield, Army officials said.

The trucks were then driven through large puddles of water that would intimidate most passenger cars.

The demo trucks will remain at the post south of Tacoma through April. The Marine Corps plans its own tests of the vehicles during the last two weeks of April, and then they will go on display at the
Pentagon, Connor said.

What happens when the Church (any religion) keeps people down to keep them!
Catholic-Muslim turf war still resonates at Cordoba cathedral
The scuffle over La Mezquita is echoed throughout Spain these days as members of each faith tests the other's tolerance.
By Tracy Wilkinson, Times Staff Writer
March 28, 2007

CORDOBA, SPAIN — Mansur Escudero knew the answer before he asked.

Approaching the guard at Cordoba's majestic once-a-mosque, now-a-cathedral, Escudero posed the question: May I say Muslim prayers inside?

The slightly startled Spanish guard gave an emphatic no. This is a Catholic church, he said, and as such it is absolutely prohibited to pray in any other faith. Escudero persisted, but the guard was firm.

This is a cathedral, the guard repeated, growing more agitated: "A CA-THO-LIC CHURCH."

The 1,200-year-old architectural wonder that is one of Spain's most renowned landmarks is at the center of a turf war over religious space, cultural recognition and rivalries that are both ancient and contemporary.

Known as La Mezquita in Spanish and the Great Mosque in English, its spectacular forest of striped arches and jasper-and-marble columns constitutes one of ancient Islam's most iconic legacies. But La Mezquita has served as a consecrated Catholic church for nearly 800 years — ever since Spain's Catholic monarchs ejected Islamic forces that had ruled most of the Iberian Peninsula for more than five centuries.

The scuffle over La Mezquita is echoed throughout Spain these days as members of each faith tests the other's tolerance in this overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country with a fast-growing Muslim minority. Tensions were further inflamed when Islamic militants blew up commuter trains in Madrid three years ago, killing nearly 200 people.

The dispute has special resonance in Cordoba, an Andalusian crossroads that beginning more than a millennium ago was the capital of Moorish Spain and one of the Western world's greatest centers of intellectual and artistic culture.

Some of today's Muslims may long for Islam's glorious past, but Mansur Escudero insists he just wants a place to pray.

"We could be an example for the world," he said, "awakening the consciences of both Christians and Muslims and showing it's possible to put aside past conflicts."

Inspired by the pope

Escudero, a Spaniard who converted to Islam 28 years ago, has been fighting to gain prayer rights here for much of his life. He decided to try again, inspired by the journey to Istanbul last fall of Pope Benedict XVI, who stood alongside an imam in that Turkish city's famous Blue Mosque, faced Mecca and prayed.

Escudero and the Islamic Council of Spain that he heads took the case straight to the Vatican, writing the pope to suggest that the site in Cordoba become a "singular and unique ecumenical space" in which both Christians and Muslims could pray.

The pope did not write back.

However, the bishop of Cordoba, Juan Jose Asenjo, was more than happy to respond. Far from fostering peace, he said, the sharing of places of worship would only "generate confusion" among the faithful.

The stone compound that embraces the cathedral, with courtyards and fragrant orange trees, abuts Cordoba's old Jewish Quarter, testament to a community that flourished and lived in relative peace under the Muslim caliphate. A few narrow, winding streets away is one of only three medieval synagogues that have survived in Spain.

Muslims are not allowed to pray inside the Great Mosque, with its ornate, golden mihrab, or prayer niche, that points to Mecca. But Catholics can attend Mass every day. On a recent Sunday, soon after Escudero made his quixotic pitch to the guard, Cordoba's clerics donned purple robes and led a morning service for about 50 parishioners.

There is something a bit incongruous about a Catholic Mass inside what still looks like a mosque: a life-size crucifix hangs under a horseshoe-shaped Moorish arch; arches also frame the priests' red velvet chairs.

Christian elements were added as a church was in effect erected inside the mosque during the 16th to 18th centuries, including giant mahogany choir stalls and altars, numerous gated chapels along the walls, Gothic crosses and a baroque bishop's throne.

On this particular Sunday, perfumed smoke floated from silver censers toward the cathedral's vaulted ceilings while parishioners recited the Lord's Prayer and took Communion.


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Pathetic! Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was cleared to be installed on the Texas Supreme Court!
Aide: Prosecutors fired over priorities

By LAURIE KELLMAN and LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writers 11 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Eight federal prosecutors were fired last year because they did not sufficiently support
President Bush's priorities, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' former chief of staff says in remarks prepared for delivery to Congress on Thursday.

Separately, the Justice Department admitted Wednesday it gave senators inaccurate information about the firings and presidential political adviser Karl Rove's role in trying to secure a U.S. attorney's post for one of his former aides, Tim Griffin.

In a letter accompanying new documents sent to the House and Senate Judiciary committees, Justice officials acknowledged that a Feb. 23 letter to four Democratic senators erred in asserting that the department was not aware of any role Rove played in the decision to appoint Griffin to replace U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins in Little Rock, Ark.

Gonzales' former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, in remarks obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, spoke dismissively of Democrats' condemnation of what they call political pressure in the firings.

"The distinction between 'political' and 'performance-related' reasons for removing a United States attorney is, in my view, largely artificial," he said. "A U.S. attorney who is unsuccessful from a political perspective ... is unsuccessful."

Democrats have described the firings as an "intimidation by purge" and a warning to remaining U.S. attorneys to fall in line with Bush's priorities. Political pressure, Democrats say, can skew the judgment of prosecutors when deciding whom to investigate and which indictments to pursue.

Sampson, who resigned this month because of the furor over the firings, is to testify Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

In his prepared testimony, he maintained that adherence to the priorities of the president and attorney general was a legitimate standard.

"Presidential appointees are judged not only on their professional skills but also their management abilities, their relationships with law enforcement and other governmental leaders and their support for the priorities of the president and the attorney general," Sampson said.

He strongly denied Democrats' allegations that some of the prosecutors were dismissed for pursuing Republicans too much and Democrats not enough in corruption cases.

"To my knowledge, nothing of the sort occurred here," he said.

The White House said it will withhold comment on Sampson's testimony until he testifies.

In a letter accompanying documents sent to lawmakers on Wednesday, Acting Assistant Attorney General Richard Hertling said that certain statements in last month's letter to Democratic lawmakers appeared to be "contradicted by department documents included in our production."

The Feb. 23 letter, which was written by Sampson but signed by Hertling, emphatically stated that "the department is not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint Mr. Griffin." It also said that "the
Department of Justice is not aware of anyone lobbying, either inside or outside of the administration, for Mr. Griffin's appointment."

Those assertions are contradicted by e-mails from Sampson to White House aide Christopher G. Oprison on Dec. 19, 2006, about a strategy to deal with senators' opposition to Griffin's appointment. In the e-mail, Sampson says there is a risk that senators might balk and repeal the attorney general's newly won broader authority to appoint U.S. attorneys.

"I'm not 100 percent sure that Tim was the guy on which to test drive this authority, but know that getting him appointed was important to Harriet, Karl, etc.," Sampson wrote. Former White House counsel Harriet Miers was among the first people to suggest Griffin as a replacement for Cummins.

In his written testimony to the Senate committee, Sampson also refers to the White House role in the firings, beginning with the quickly rejected idea of replacing all 93 U.S. attorneys after the 2004 election. He said he periodically provided to the White House over two years updated lists of U.S. attorneys whose dismissals were under consideration.

Sampson's testimony Thursday is voluntary, though committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record) told reporters he has kept a signed subpoena in case Gonzales' chief of staff backed out.

There was no indication of that happening. In his remarks, Sampson said he was pleased to appear and pledged to stay as long as necessary.

Nothing will stop the investigation, Leahy said Wednesday — not even Gonzales' resignation.

"In case anybody's thinking of shortchanging it that way, I have a message for them: We'll finish this investigation before we'll have any confirmation hearings for a new attorney general," said Leahy, D-Vt. "I want to know what the facts were."

The developments reflect the fragile hold Gonzales has on his job and the escalating tensions between Democrats in Congress and Bush over any testimony by White House aides and documents related to the firings.

Leahy indicated Gonzales' credibility had suffered from repeated attempts to explain contradictions between his account of his involvement in the firings and e-mails released by his department that suggest he may have done more than sign off on them.

"You can only do, 'What I really meant to say,' three or four or five or six times," Leahy said sarcastically. "Then people tend not to believe it."

Sampson said in his testimony that any inconsistencies were innocent mistakes.

"This is a benign rather than sinister story," he said.

Gonzales has refused to resign over the firings and the Justice Department's bungled response to questions about them from Congress. For now, he retains Bush's support — though the president has put the onus on Gonzales for resolving lawmakers' questions.

"I'm traveling a bumpy road these days," Gonzales said Wednesday during a brief lunch speech to about 1,000 members of the Houston Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

In another sign that the saga was far from over,
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (news, bio, voting record) has signed a contract with the law firm Arnold & Porter worth up to $225,000 through the end of the year to help with the investigation.

Republicans said the contract, which was first reported by The Washington Times, was evidence Democrats were willing to invest taxpayer money in efforts to conduct political investigations of the administration.

There are too many sad ironies here to make a comment!
Arab lesbians hold rare public meeting

By DIAA HADID, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 36 minutes ago

HAIFA, Israel - Arab lesbians quietly defied Islamist protesters and a social taboo to gather at a rare public event Wednesday in a northern Israeli city.

Many of the attendees said they were sad that the only place safe enough to hold a conference for gay Arab women was in a Jewish area of Haifa, which has a mixed Arab-Jewish population.
Israel's Jewish majority is generally tolerant of homosexuality

"This conference is being held, somehow, in exile, even though it's our country," said Yussef Abu Warda, a playwright.

Driven deep underground for the most part, only 10 to 20 Arab lesbians attended the conference, organizers said. Most blended in with Israeli lesbians and heterosexual Arab female supporters without making their presence known.

"We'd like all women to come out of the closet — that's our role. We work for them," said Samira, 31, a conference organizer who came with her Jewish Israeli girlfriend. Samira agreed to be identified only by her first name for fear of reprisals.

Outside the conference hall, 20 women protesters in headscarves and long, loose robes held up signs reading, "God, we ask you to guide these lesbians to the true path."

Security was tight. Attendance was by invitation only, and reporters were not allowed to take photographs, use tape recorders or identify people.

Israel's secular metropolis, Tel Aviv, is home to a thriving gay community. Jerusalem, with its large proportion of Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews, is strongly anti-gay.

Homosexuality, which is strictly forbidden by Islam, is considered taboo among most of Israel's Arab citizens, who make up 20 percent of the country's population.

Poetry readings, music and Arab women rappers entertained the conference, called "Home and Exile in Queer Experience," organized by Aswat, an organization for Arab lesbians with members in Israel, the
West Bank and
Gaza Strip.

"We are here to say they (Arab lesbians) are not alone," said Rawda Morcos, Aswat's spokeswoman, one of a tiny minority of Arab women who are openly gay.

Morcos said her car was vandalized repeatedly and she received threatening phone calls at her family home after her village in northern Israel found out she was a lesbian.

Even rapper Nahwa Abdul Aal, who performed for the gathering, didn't support it.

"Being at this conference hasn't changed my mind," she said. "I still think it's wrong."

Samira, who has a dozen brothers and sisters, said she told a sibling she was gay two years ago. The news quickly spread among the family, and her 70-year-old mother fell into a depression, begging her daughter to change her ways.

But she eventually accepted her daughter's homosexuality "in her own way," by packing large boxes of food for Samira whenever she came to visit.

"My mother said, 'take the food, for you and your girlfriend'," Samira recalled, agreeing to be identified only by her first name for fear of reprisals.

Some of her family never came around. A pregnant sister told Samira she would "never touch her children."

___

On the Web: http://www.aswatgroup.org/english/

Reinforcing Dark Age superstition is worse than sheltering child molesters, it's about POWER!
Nun in late pope's beatification named

9 minutes ago

Sister Marie-Simon-Pierre is the French nun whose testimony of a mystery cure from Parkinson's disease will likely be accepted as the miracle the Vatican needs to beatify Pope John Paul II, an official at the Paris maternity hospital where she works said Wednesday.

The identity of the nun has been one of the Catholic Church's most closely guarded secrets. The nun says that she was cured of Parkinson's after she and her community of nuns prayed to John Paul.

The nun, a member of the "Congregation of Little Sisters of Catholic Motherhood" in Aix-en-Provence in southeast France, works at the Sainte-Felicite hospital in Paris, the official said on condition of anonymity because an official announcement was expected Sunday.

In Rome, Monsignor Slawomir Oder, the Polish cleric spearheading the John Paul's beatification cause, said the bishop in the woman's diocese would announce details about her case during his Palm Sunday Mass this weekend.

French newspaper Le Figaro, in an unsourced report late Wednesday on its Web site, first identified the nun by name, saying she was 45 years old.

The nun is traveling to Rome for ceremonies Monday marking the second anniversary of the pontiff's death and the closure of a church investigation into his life which began after chants of "Santo Subito!" or "Sainthood Now!" erupted during John Paul's 2005 funeral.

The Vatican's saint-making process requires that John Paul's life and writings be studied for its virtues. The Vatican also requires that a miracle attributed to his intercession be confirmed, before he can be beatified — the last formal step before possible sainthood.

Pope Benedict XVI announced in May 2005 that he was waiving the traditional five-year waiting period and allowing the beatification process to begin. There is still no word on when any beatification or canonization might occur.

Only one document about the long-mysterious nun's experience has been made public: an article she wrote for "Totus Tuus," the official magazine of John Paul's beatification case.

She wrote of being diagnosed with Parkinson's in June 2001, having a strong spiritual affinity for John Paul because he too suffered from the disease and suffering worsened symptoms in the weeks after the pope died on April 2, 2005.

The nuns of her community prayed for her, and exactly two months after the pontiff's death, she awoke in the middle of the night cured, she wrote.