Well Ms barbie.
Why is it u show one face at one place and another somewhere
else.U attack grey and others here then u go somewhere else
and kiss up.
I went to ff to get away from here for awhile.When I got there
it was as if people there who is here have a total out look
on each other.
Why is it then that there u show a differant face than here.
Now if someone called u a leg licker I cant help it.But as
I can tell I think it was your friends who started the butch
thing.
If u think one thing about someone here why dont u think the
same antwhere else.
Sounds two face to me.
So u wont get an apogoly from me and please don't expect
one.
Holly why they have started on u who knows.I guess u r the
next in line to be sought after.I cant tell u why.Maybe its
because u answer as myself with true feelings on how u feel.
There is people here and u know who u are that just want to
bring trouble so they can get the votes to be on top.Look
at the list who is always on top now.Out of three u will see
two.As far as some one little lady I think also she is playing
the game with the others also.It starts with a d.
Yea I dont think I will raise any more hair on the fine people
here so have at it.Isn't it amazing.Barbie I have always
liked u and I guess I owe u an apology.Just as long as I owe
u I guess u will never be broke.
Bye now cu in FF.

A 23-year-old man remains in custody this morning, charged with running over his teenage girlfriend in Las Cruces over the weekend.

Las Cruces Police are still investigating an incident Friday night that sent a 14-year-old girl to the hospital and her 23-year-old boyfriend to jail.

Luis Carrasco, 23, was arrested and charged with one count of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and one count of criminal sexual penetration of a minor for his relationship with the underage girl.

Shortly before 11 p.m. Friday, Aug. 28, police were called to the Pic Quik at 2240 Missouri Ave. where the girl had been driven. After sorting through several conflicting statements, police learned that Carrasco, the girl's boyfriend, ran over her while driving a vehicle on the 2000 block of Stanford Dr. After hitting the girl Carrasco apparently dragged her underneath the vehicle for around 100 feet before coming to a stop.

The girl sustained multiple injuries and was airlifted to Thomason Hospital in El Paso. At last check she was listed in stable condition.

Carrasco was transported to the Dona Ana County Detention Center under an $11,000 bond.

Bureaucrats Being Bureaucrats: About 30 Iowa school districts had their funding applications for preschool grants tossed out in September, the state Department of Education said, because the paperwork was not double-spaced, as required.

In August, a Roman Catholic bishop in the Netherlands, Martinus Muskens, suggested that Christians start referring to God as "Allah" as a way of relieving world tensions. "Allah is a very beautiful word . ... What does God care what we call him? It is our problem." A priest in Rome said Muskens' intentions were good, "but his theology needs a little fine-tuning." Muskens said he spent eight years in Indonesia, where Catholic priests used "Allah" during Mass.

Oral-B's Triumph SmartGuide toothbrush, available in the United Kingdom for the equivalent of about $280, uses navigation technology to transmit the exact location of the toothbrush to a base unit so that the user can see which areas in his mouth the brush might have missed. The wireless LCD mouth display can be mounted on a mirror or held in the free hand.

The adolescent offspring of some well-to-do parents are serious art collectors, according to a September Wall Street Journal report, and their interest appears not to be motivated solely by parents' strategies to shield income from the tax collector. Ms. Dakota King, 9, for example, owns 40 pieces and specializes in animals and "happy colors." Ms. Shammiel Fleischer-Amoros, 10, who admitted, "I'm really scared, but Daddy told me I have to negotiate," succeeded in getting $200 knocked off of a $3,200 sculpture she really wanted. An 11-year-old last year "waved a paddle" to win a $352,000 Jeff Koons sculpture.

Just when Internet newspaper sites appear to be gaining ground as replacements for printed editions, a 70-year-old woman identified only as Maggie told the Edmonton (Alberta) Sun in September that her paper edition of the Sun is a crucial part of her daily diet, literally. She eats it, in strips, and has, she said, for the past seven years because it tastes good. "I can't explain it," she said, and it was only when she recently experienced a blockage of her esophagus, and doctors found a ball of paper, that she revealed her obsession. Doctors cited by the Sun said that except for the blockage danger, newspaper eating is not unhealthful.

Some Americans continue to prefer to "do it themselves" to get rid of pests on their property, with tragic results. In June, Mike Harstad of Jamestown, Calif., attempting to eliminate a wasps' nest with a can of Pledge and a cigarette lighter, ultimately burned down his mobile home and contents and destroyed an outbuilding, a truck, a boat and a trailer

In August, a Whitehall, Pa., man, William Sekol, 82, attempting to destroy a yellow jackets' nest beneath a storm sewer grate in his front yard, put a dried tree over the grate, doused it with gasoline, and lit it (supposedly to suffocate the yellow jackets underneath). However, some gasoline ran into the sewer, where its fumes combusted. In the resulting explosion, Sekol's mustache and eyebrows were singed

Bookkeepers Wanted: Pentagon investigators discovered in August that a small South Carolina company fraudulently collected $20.5 million in shipping costs, including one invoice of $999,798 for sending two washers (cost: 19 cents each) to a base in Texas. According to Bloomberg News, the Defense Department was said to have a policy of automatically and unquestioningly paying shipping bills labeled "priority."

The periodic Christian Nudist Convocation took place in July at the Cherokee Lodge nudist camp in Tennessee, and according to a dispatch in Nashville Scene, the group evokes skepticism not only from most Christians (who dislike the flaunting of naked bodies, even if innocently done) but from most Cherokee Lodge members, who see them as too intense for naturism's laid-back attitude. One CNC attendee acknowledged that many Christians would not approve of Cherokee Lodge, but to him "(I)t's Jerusalem." Another compared his work at nudist camps to missionary work: "(S)ome people get sent to Africa, some people get sent to South America and the Lord was like, 'I want you to go to nudist resorts.' And I'm like, 'Wow, what an assignment.'"

Iran's state-sponsored news agency IRNA announced in July that its agents had broken up a Western countries' "spy ring" that employed more than a dozen squirrels trying to bring "spy gear" of foreign agencies into the country

A 60-year-old female rancher was killed in August in Mitchell, Australia, when a 10-month-old male camel (recently arrived as a birthday gift for the woman) apparently mistook her for a female camel, knocked her to the ground, and lay on top of her in what one camel expert said "no doubt" was "sexual" behavior, crushing her with his 330 pounds

1. Market analyst -- $27.18/hour
Market analysts work in government agencies, consulting firms, financial institutions or marketing research firms, where they research and predict the sales potential of a particular product or service. A bachelor's degree is the minimum requirement for many jobs; however, a master's degree in a field such as business administration, marketing, statistics or communications will provide more opportunities.
Average annual salary: $56,541*


2. Chemist -- $25.16/hour
Chemists search for and use knowledge about chemicals to discover and develop new and improved products, processes to save energy and reduce pollution, and advances in fields like medicine and agriculture. A bachelor's degree in chemistry or a related discipline is the minimum educational requirement; however, many research jobs require a master's degree or doctorate.
Average annual salary: $52,333


3. Civil engineer -- $25.29/hour
Civil engineers plan, design and oversee engineering for building projects like airports, bridges, buildings and irrigation systems. They often need a degree in civil engineering or certification as a registered civil engineer.
Average annual salary: $52,605

4. Social worker -- $25.06/hour
Social workers work for places like community centers, hospitals and penal institutions, where they develop programs to help individuals and groups enhance their personal relationships and social development. Social workers receive accreditation through a four-year college degree program in social work and on-the-job experience.
Average annual salary: $52,119


5. Human resources generalist -- $26.90/hour
Human resources generalists work to improve working conditions within an establishment by identifying, evaluating and resolving problems in employee relations and work performance. A combination of directly related training and experience is typically required for carrying out the responsibilities for this job.
Average annual salary: $55,959


6. Architect -- $26.41/hour
Architects apply their knowledge of design to plan and supervise the construction of building projects according to their clients' needs and financial resources. Architects need a degree from an approved school of architecture.
Average annual salary: $55,060


7. Speech pathologist -- $25.05/hour
Speech pathologists specialize in the diagnosis and treatment of speech and language disorders and study the science of human communication. Practice requires a four-year degree in the field of health sciences.
Average annual salary: $52,105


8. Budget analyst -- $26.71/hour
Budget analysts review financial plans and help institutions prepare budgets, improve efficiency and lower costs. Budget analysts typically have at least a bachelor's degree in accounting, finance, business, public administration, economics, statistics, political science or sociology.
Average annual salary: $55,579


9. Detective -- $27.02/hour
Detectives carry out investigations to prevent crimes or solve criminal cases. Detectives are appointed based on their eligibility under civil service regulations, their performance in competitive written exams and their previous education and experience.
Average annual salary: $56,197


10. Physical therapist -- $25.68/hour
Physical therapists plan and administer medically prescribed treatment for patients suffering from injuries or certain diseases to restore function, relieve pain and prevent disability. A combination of training and experience is typically required to practice, as well as compliance with state licensing requirements.
Average annual salary: $53,410

Area 51 in popular culture

Television series
The Groom Lake base is featured in episodes of the following television series:

American Dad
Codename: Kids Next Door where there is an operative known as Numbuh 51
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Dark Skies
Eureka
Family Guy
Futurama
Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius as Area 86
Kim Possible
Megas XLR as Area 50
NewsRadio as Area 52
Seven Days as Never Never Land
The Simpsons as Area 51A
Sonic X as Area 99
South Park
Stargate Atlantis
Stargate SG-1
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Taken
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Tracker
The X-Files
Unexplained Mysteries
Little Britain as Area 52

Movies
The base is featured in the following movies:

Groom Lake
Independence Day
Stargate
Hellboy
Looney Tunes: Back in Action as Area 52
Zoom as Area 52
Starman
The Hulk
Transformers mentioned as Sector-7
Dreamland
In 2004, ahead of the Area 51 video game's release, Paramount Pictures announced that they had acquired film rights for the game.[32] In March 2007, counter-cultural comic book author Grant Morrison was hired to adapt the game as a screenplay.[33]


Books
Area 51 is featured in several novels by Dale Brown involving General Patrick McLanahan and his top secret Air Force technology, used by the "Tin Man" commandos. It is the centerpiece of Robert Doherty's Area 51 novels, which take place after Area 51 scientists make contact with extraterrestrials. Apparent alien technology is stored at "Zone 91" in "Animorphs #14 - The Unknown" by K.A. Applegate. Area 52 is a four-part comic book series from Image Comics.


Computer and video games

Cover of the 2005 Area 51 FPS video gameThe base appears in the following computer or video games:

Alien Hominid
Area 51 (arcade)
Area 51
Banjo-Tooie
BlackSite: Area 51 a follow-up to Area 51 coming out in 2007
Dark Colony
Destroy All Humans! as Area 42
Deus Ex
Duke Nukem 3D
Fallout 2 as Military Base
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas as Area 69 near Las Venturas
Interstate '82 as Area 49
Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga as Area 64
Microsoft Flight Simulator X
The Pandora Directive
Perfect Dark as Area 51 and Area 52
Redneck Rampage as Area 69
Rogue Trip
Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 as Broom Lake
S.C.A.R.S.
SimCity 4 as Area 5.1
The Simpsons Road Rage as Area 51A
The PSP version of The Sims 2 as Division 47, an area of Strangetown
Tomb Raider III
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater but named Roswell, New Mexico
Twisted Metal 3
UFO: Aftermath
Vigilante 8 - Dreamland
World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade expansion pack, there is a neutral city in the Outland called Area 52.

Music
The progressive metal band Tool has two songs, "Lost Keys (Blame Hoffman)" and "Rosetta Stoned", on their 2006 release 10,000 Days that tell a story involving Area 51; a song called "Faaip De Oiad", on the Lateralus album, is based on a phone call by an alleged Area 51 employee to the radio show Coast to Coast with Art Bell. Guitar player Yngwie Malmsteen, on his album Alchemy has a song called "Hangar 18, Area 51". The thrash metal band Megadeth also has a song entitled "Hangar 18" and their album Rust in Peace also depicts an alien inside a metal encasement surrounded by what appear to be government officials. Hypocrisy also explores the possibility of an alien crash landing in their song "Roswell 47" off their album Abducted. A guitar luthier by the name of Keith Ray, located in Florida, has created a line of custom guitars under the brand name Area51 Guitars.[1] Major U.S. rock band Pixies have at least two songs related to Area 51 - "The Happening", from the album Bossanova (the artwork for which also includes an Area 51 logo design), and "Motorway to Roswell", from the album Trompe Le Monde. Area 51 is also the name of a Thai rock band and a punk rock band from Seattle.


Role-playing games
Area 51 has been used in several role-playing games as a plot element. In the game Conspiracy X, it is a safe facility and base of operations for the players' counter-extraterrestrial operations. On the flip side, in the Call of Cthulhu modern day conspiracy supplement Delta Green, the base is the site of laboratory facilities for studying and intercepting otherworldly beings. The alternate history roleplaying game Deadlands also features an 1880s version of the location called "Fort 51".


Other
Area 51 is the name given to a variety of unrelated products and companies, including the development area for the phpBB forum software,[2] one of the areas of the Geocities web hosting service, an Aprilia motor scooter, and numerous science-fiction bookstores and bulletin boards. An Area 51 / UFO theme was adopted by Laughlin/Las Vegas radio station 107.9 KVGS, which calls itself Area108 [3] and by Sirius Satellite Radio channel "Area 33". The "Flight of Fear" rollercoasters at Kings Island and Kings Dominion are themed "Area 47".

In 1994, Version 2.0 of the ROM for the Apple Newton personal digital assistant included the latitude and longitude coordinates of Area 51 in the time zones application as an "Easter egg". This feature was removed (supposedly at the request of the CIA) by applying a software patch, but it remained possible to bypass the patch fairly easily. [4]

The world's largest model railway in Hamburg, Germany features a fictional Area 51 model in its America section (showing aliens playing basketball with base personnel).

The tiny town of Rachel, Nevada (the nearest settlement to the base) enjoys minor celebrity status as being "the official home of Area 51". Located three hours from Las Vegas by car, Rachel receives a modest number of visitors year-round, and several small businesses offer food and lodging, as well as aerospace and "alien-themed" merchandising. Many of the tourists are aviation enthusiasts hoping to catch a glimpse of the RED FLAG exercises. A small museum sells maps, photographs, badges and other Area 51 material. A local inn, aptly named "The Little A'le'Inn" proudly displays a time capsule received from the production crew of Independence Day.

The minor league baseball team in Las Vegas, Nevada is called the Las Vegas 51s. Their logo includes the image of a "Grey" extraterrestrial.

Area 51 is the name of a skatepark in the centre of Eindhoven, The Netherlands.

In the 2001 Major League Baseball season, fans at Safeco Field, where the Seattle Mariners play their home games, began cheekily calling right field Area 51, because the team's right fielder, Ichiro Suzuki, wears that number on his jersey.

In the Disney movie Lilo and Stitch, the planet Earth (pronounced "E-arth") is located in Galactic Area 51.

UFO's Fact or Fiction..
They always surround this topic around Area51 by the way the Videogame was totally radical and fun in the beginning but,then it gets boring.

Its secretive nature and undoubted connection to classified aircraft research, together with reports of unusual phenomena, have led Area 51 to become a focus of modern UFO and conspiracy theory. Some of the unconventional activities claimed to be underway at Area 51 include:

The storage, examination, and reverse engineering of crashed alien spacecraft (including material supposedly recovered at Roswell), the study of their occupants (living and dead), and the manufacture of aircraft based on alien technology.
Meetings or joint undertakings with extraterrestrials.
The development of exotic energy weapons (for SDI applications or otherwise) or means of weather control.
The development of time travel technology.
Activities related to a supposed shadowy one world government.
Many of the hypotheses concern underground facilities at Groom or at nearby Papoose Lake, and include claims of a transcontinental underground railroad system, a disappearing airstrip (nicknamed the "Cheshire Airstrip", after Lewis Carroll's Cheshire cat) which briefly appears when water is sprayed onto its camouflaged asphalt,[29] and engineering based on alien technology. In 1989, Bob Lazar claimed that he had worked at a facility at Papoose Lake (which he called S-4) on such a U.S. Government flying saucer.

One major hypothesis is that Area 51 is a place which simulates the environment of the moon.[citation needed] In 2000-2001, Fox Television broadcast a show about Apollo moon landing hoax accusations, in which it was suggested that the whole moon landing in 1969 was a hoax and was filmed in parts of Area 51.[citation needed]

Others, however, claim that during the mid 1990s, the most secret work previously done at Groom was quietly moved to other facilities, including Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, and that the continued secrecy around Groom is largely a successful attempt at misdirection.[30]

In July 1996, a man named "Victor" announced on Art Bell's Coast to Coast AM radio show that he had a videotape of an alien interrogation which had taken place in Area 51. He claimed that he had made a copy of the tape during a scheduled transfer of analogue videotape files on the base into digital form, and had then smuggled the copy out of Area 51. The video appears to show the head of an alien creature in a dark interrogation room, possibly using telepathy to communicate with military personnel and scientists.[31] The footage was eventually included in a video documentary entitled Area 51: The Alien Interview.


Another conspiracy popular among many is that Area 51 is actually the base of operations for the group known as Majestic Twelve.

Updated: 9:43 a.m. ET Sept 28, 2007
Good news for anyone who hates number crunching: You don’t need to add or subtract a thing to get slim. “Instead, focus on food quality, portion size and the timing of your meals,” says Ann Yelmokas McDermott, Ph.D., director at the Center for Obesity Prevention and Education at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. If you obsess over calories, you’re more likely to consume fat-free foods that are low in fiber, high in sugar and, ultimately, unsatisfying. The result? You never feel full, so you end up eating more. Instead…

Pile on produce. Have at least one fruit and veggie at every meal (or two fruits at breakfast, if that’s easier). They’re high in fiber, which helps delay hunger. Aim for nine servings daily; with a salad at lunch or dinner, you’ll easily hit your goal.

Eat bigger snacks. Add protein (a stick of lowfat string cheese, a cup of skim milk) to your usual nosh. Research suggests protein may enhance the effect of leptin, a hormone that reins in appetite. Protein is also filling and can help curb cravings for extra handfuls of fatty snacks. (See “Healthy Eating Made Simple,” for other nutritious foods to stock.)

Two kinds of oral contraceptives and a sperm blocker are being developed.

With condoms and vasectomies, men take responsibility for a third of contraception in the United States. But health officials would like to see that figure grow.

"Just imagine if they had another non-permanent option," said Elaine Lissner, director of the nonprofit Male Contraception Information Project.

Several promising possibilities — from a male pill to putting a cork in it — are on the horizon, based on presentations today at the second "Future of Male Contraception" conference, held in Seattle and sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, World Health Organization and others.

They include:

Sperm blocker: Researchers who have been developing the Intra Vas Device are expected to announce test results showing "substantial equivalence to traditional vasectomy methods" in a study of 90 men. The device — a set of removable plugs — blocks sperm in the vas deferens, the tube that's cut in a vasectomy. Further research is needed to find whether fertility returns after the plugs are removed.
Testosterone-like pill: A drug called "selective androgen receptor modulator," or SARM, is being tested on humans as an osteoporosis and muscle-wasting treatment. It also shows promise as a male pill, researchers said. A similar drug taken orally reduces sperm counts in rabbits.
Nonhormonal pill: Research shows a non-hormonal compound called CDB-4022 prevents monkey sperm from swimming to their destination. Upon stopping treatment, fertility returned completely in 16 weeks, according to researchers at the University of Pittsburgh. But the safety of the drug still needs to be tested.
"You'll never have all men interested" in new contraceptive methods, Lissner said. "But attitudes have really changed — studies consistently show a majority of men would consider it."

A new survey by the International Male Contraception Coalition found 61 percent of men would pick a nonhormonal drug over other contraceptive choices.

"Some men are quite desperate for better control over their fertility," said Kirsten Thompson, director of the International Male Contraception Coalition. "They're looking for something they can really count on."

I was wondering the same thing too. But, at the same time if i re-create my profile with a different nick-name will that break the rule of having more then one profile.

too late or i don't know how to change the nickname but, why make cracks or wise jokes at me even when you don't know me. Would you have preferred i called myself Democratic

Australia could have its first Anglican woman bishop as early as next year following a decision by the church's highest court.

The head of the Anglican Church, Archbishop Philip Aspinall, said the appellate tribunal had decided there was nothing in the church's constitution that would prevent a woman becoming a bishop.

In 2005, a group of 25 members of the church's national parliament - the General Synod - asked the tribunal for its view on the lawfulness of women bishops.

The tribunal, by a majority of four to three, today found that it was possible to consecrate women bishops.

However, it said it could only occur in a diocese that had both adopted a 1992 church law allowing women priests and which had ensured its own laws and constitution allowed it.

"So basically there is now nothing in the (church's) constitution to prevent a woman becoming a bishop," Dr Aspinall told reporters in Brisbane.

Among the larger dioceses in Australia that could go ahead with women bishops were Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra, he said.

But the tribunal found a 40-year-old church law still prevented women being assistant bishops - those who are not in charge of a diocese, but look after a smaller region.

Dr Aspinall said while he personally welcomed the decision, he recognised that the prospect of women bishops would be "difficult or distressing" for some.

"One of our first priorities must be setting in place arrangements for the pastoral care of those who maintain a conscientious objection to women bishops," Dr Aspinall said.

He said such arrangements could involve allowing a male bishop to minister to dissenting parishes in a diocese with a women bishop.

Sydney Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen, whose diocese led the case against women bishops, said he was disappointed by the decision.

"While I respect the judicial procedures which have led to this result I am disappointed that the matter has now been resolved in this way," Dr Jensen said.

"Those who are opposed to this development base their objection on conscientious grounds as a matter of biblical principle.

"The innovation will inevitably create ongoing difficulties around the church for decades to come."

Dr Muriel Porter, a leading advocate for women clergy, welcomed the decision.

"It means women are at last recognised as fully human, fully equal in the constitution of the Anglican Church of Australia," Dr Porter said.

Dr Aspinall said Australia's Anglican bishops had agreed earlier this year to hold off on consecrating any women bishops until at least their next national meeting in April 2008.

Women bishops are currently in place in New Zealand, the United States and Canada, but none has been consecrated in Australia to date.

Women priests have been allowed in the Anglican Church in Australia for more than a decade.

Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott has described Sydney's northern area hospital system as "wretched", saying it is so highly bureaucratised that no one can make a decision.

Mr Abbott's comment comes three days after a Sydney woman miscarried in a toilet after waiting two hours to be seen at Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney's north.

The NSW government is under increasing pressure to expand the terms of reference of an inquiry into the incident, after staff and experts yesterday came forward with their concerns about the hospital in the wake of Jana Horska's ordeal.

Mr Abbott said the federal government had increased health spending from 15 per cent to 22 per cent of the federal budget since 1996.

"The problem is that in the (Sydney Northern Area Health) hospital system, no one is in charge," Mr Abbott told the Nine Network this morning.

"I know Royal North Shore Hospital, I know Sydney Northern Area Health system.

"The problem is, no one in that wretched system can make a decision.

"That is a problem of a highly bureaucratised, highly politicised hospital management structure that's been put in place, I have to say, by the state Labor government.

He said he accepted the opposition would say the federal government was blaming the state of NSW.

"My oath I'm blaming the state Labor government," he said.

"They have let people down, comprehensively

well, if anyone really care i just told you that it was something sent to my e-mail. Thus, logically it would have to be a copy and paste in order to have it posted. Secondly, Barbie you misunderstood me when i said that singledad came out and attacked you for no reason at all and then he disappeared. The simply and plain facts: I was trying to see if there was a link between Gary and Singledad1 that's why i called it fishy.

Third, this is a forum under the topic of Current events and regardless whether the topics be of complete right information or not. Still to criticise the person with no cause of Justice is Cold-Blooded. I post what i read and what i see never have i made a derrugatory comment or statement toward anyone post. I am still new here even though i have 51 post and soon to be 52 compare to all you lifers who have over a 1,000 post under your belt.

This article written By Thomas D. Williams from http://www.truthout.org
I got this page in my e-mail box on netzero and wanted to share with my fellow colleagues and see what your reactions or opinions might be on this topic




"The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own." - Aldous Huxley, English Writer
Ever since the Persian Gulf War 15 years ago, countless spokespersons for the US Department of Defense and the US Department of Veterans Affairs have insisted they are intent upon giving hundreds of thousands of soldiers, veterans and war veterans the best medical care available.

Meanwhile, scores of US, United Nations and foreign politicians and military officials have constantly expressed immense concern for potentially millions of innocent civilian victims of the wars in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet, relatively little has been done worldwide to track their deaths, console family survivors or obtain health care for the wounded, maimed and sick. The combined ill and the dead from those four wars are estimated in the millions with no exacting figures available. Knowledge about sicknesses caused by the war in Bosnia-Serbia is scarce.

And, what makes US and allied officials far more culpable is this. The environmental hazards foreign civilians and US and allied service members have been exposed to and sickened by are largely generated by US and allied bombings, munitions and even medicines aimed at protecting service members. They include: radioactive dust from depleted uranium munitions, deadly chemical warfare gases released by US bombings of Iraqi bunkers, oil well fires during the first Gulf War, pollution of European and Middle Eastern foreign air and water supplies from wartime explosions and fires, pesticides, fumes from specialized military vehicle paint, and disease carrying insects.

The Pentagon's and the British military's mandatory use of the controversial anthrax vaccine and other experimental drugs, including US use of pyridostigmine bromide pills to protect against gas attacks, on troops have resulted in thousands of adverse reactions, many serious ones, some even listed on drug labels as possible but not provable fatal reactions.

The air and water hazards have had untold deadly impacts on innocent civilians in both Europe and the Middle East for more than the past decade.

Here is but one lone example of the lack of emphasis on care for wounded or sick wartime civilians: "A survey of Medline (a database of medical and health-related research articles) for articles on the Gulf War revealed 368 articles that covered the health-related issues. Only 4 out of these 368 articles were on how the 1991 Gulf War affected the health of Iraqi people."

Yet, the International Red Cross reports these realities: "[Iraqi] Medical-legal facilities are struggling to cope with the rising influx of bodies, contending with insufficient capacity to store them properly or to systematically gather data on unidentified bodies in order to allow families to be informed of a relative's death. In 2006, an estimated 100 civilians were killed every day. Half of them remained unclaimed or unidentified. Thousands of unidentified bodies have thus been buried in designated cemeteries in Iraq. Meanwhile tens of thousands are being held in the custody of the Iraqi authorities and the multinational forces in Iraq. At the same time, tens of thousands of families remain without news of relatives who went missing during past and recent conflicts."

The US State Department only restarted one highly successful cooperative US-Iraqi medical program, US doctor video conferencing with hospitals Iraq-wide earlier this year, after news stories revealed it had been ended many months earlier.

"It is hard not to conclude that, for all our advocacy on behalf of civilians in need for protection and for all the resources that are devoted to all aspects of protection, [...] we are still failing to make a real and timely difference for the victims on the ground, countless thousands of whom had been killed, injured, ignored or treated as less than human," said John Holmes, the United Nation's Emergency Relief Coordinator and under secretary general for humanitarian affairs in June 2007 about the worldwide state of inaction for wartime victims.

Today, after two wars in Iraq, one in Bosnia and another in Afghanistan, involving hundreds of thousands of US troops, neither the Pentagon nor the VA, by their own admissions, are close to giving thousands of soldiers and veterans even adequate health care for potentially deadly illnesses.

Here is one startling affirmation from Kenneth H. Bacon, former assistant secretary of defense for public affairs in October 1997, regarding thousands of service members sick from hazardous exposures during the first Gulf War six years earlier. "No," he said, "we cannot say that we have yet a clear understanding of what caused what's called Gulf War Illnesses. And I might point out that if you've read the interim report by the Presidential Advisory Committee, they have not been able to come up with a clear view of that either. They thought that many of these might be stress related. But they also pointed out that there were a number of other factors ranging from the possibility of low-level chemical exposure to exposure to depleted uranium to exposure to pesticides to oil, fire, smoke, etc. And some of the medicines that soldiers took when they were in the Gulf."

And almost ten years later, in a June 2007 report to Congress, the US General Accountability Office gave this critical assessment about health care for service members and veterans involved in all of the recent wars. "Overseas deployments expose service members to a number of potential risks to their health and well-being. However, since the mid-1990s, GAO has highlighted shortcomings with respect to the Department of Defense's (DOD) ability to assess the medical condition of service members both before and after their deployments... GAO is recommending that DOD develop a comprehensive oversight framework with reporting requirements and results-oriented performance measures to improve the implementation of its deployment health quality assurance program. In reviewing a draft of this report, DOD concurred with GAO's recommendations."

Scores of department of veteran's affairs inadequacies in handling health care for war and other veterans can be found on its inspector general's website at http://www.va.gov/oig/publications/reports-list.asp. And most recently in 2007, "the GAO reported The Iraq War is literally a continuing nightmare for over 9,000 of the Operation Enduring Freedom and OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom) veterans at risk for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and their families..."

"A government study published in May 2006 clearly presents the inadequacies of the system in three vital areas: 1) adequately screening OEF/OIF veterans for PTSD, 2) providing effective medical care referrals after screening, and 3) assessing and planning for the increased demands on the VA medical care delivery system for the significant and increasing numbers of veterans who need specialized mental health care for PTSD,"says the GAO.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of veterans and soldiers fester inside and outside of military and VA medical facilities or make due with medical care elsewhere without needed drugs, doctors or rehabilitation. The scandals of after care for sick and wounded service members at the Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, DC, unearthed by the Washington Post is but one of many examples. That story was not as startling as it seemed to some, because at least three newspapers, The Hartford Courant, The Birmingham News and USA Today had been regularly covering the health care crisis in the military for over a decade. Scores of other news outlets had ignored it.

A January 2007 Harvard University Kennedy School of Government study says in part: "the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is already overwhelmed by the volume of returning veterans and the seriousness of their health care needs, and it will not be able to provide a high quality of care in a timely fashion to the large wave of returning war veterans without greater funding and increased capacity in areas such as psychiatric care." It continues: "the budgetary costs of providing disability compensation benefits and medical care to the veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan over the course of their lives will be from $350 - $700 Billion."

Recent Veterans for Common Sense fact sheets on returning Afghan and Iraq war veterans' needs say 40,000 veterans are still awaiting answers to their claims and the average wait time for answers to veterans claims is six months.

Even this inadequate overall care for US service members, is more than the health care given to Iraqis, Afghans and the innocent victims of the war in Bosnia and Serbia. Howard Zinn is a historian, playwright and social activist. His website, http://howardzinn.org, describes him as a former shipyard worker and Air Force bombardier before he went to college under the GI Bill and received his Ph.D. from Columbia University. Here is his take on war as quoted in Questionwar.com: "As wars have developed in the twentieth century, the ratio of civilian deaths to military deaths has changed radically. One hundred years ago 5% of war casualties were civilians. In World War I civilian deaths were about 10%. In World War II, 65%. Tactics of modern wars have shifted casualties to 90% civilians."

He continues: "More than half of these civilian casualties are children less than 14 years of age. This is only the direct casualties from bombs, bullets and landmines. Add to this indirect and long-term casualties caused by destroyed infrastructure and a fractured society, resulting in disease, starvation, homelessness, and the numbers become even grimmer. On top of this, add the long-term effects of highly toxic armaments rained down upon the victim country - Agent Orange in Vietnam, Depleted Uranium in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan - and the result is generations of suffering borne by civilians, mostly children."


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SIDEBAR

Although US news media regularly reports on the deaths and woundings of US soldiers, it seldom inquires into the long-term illnesses of those wartime veterans or into the deaths, woundings and sicknesses of Iraqi, Afghan and Bosnia-Serbia civilians during wartime.

One estimate sets Iraqi civilian deaths in the 1991 Persian Gulf War at 100,000, while deaths from this current war are said by one source to total between 71,000 and 77,000. "Untold hundreds of thousands [of] civilians from both wars [in Iraq] are sick from hazardous exposures. The size of civilian casualties is as yet unclear. The Pentagon has refused to count Iraqi civilian casualties, and organizations trying to assess the number of Iraqi dead have said that the number may be unknowable. The Red Cross has stopped counting the wounded because the casualties were too high. Rep. Chris Shays, the first Congressman to go to Iraq, has said that humanitarian aid isn't reaching Iraqis quickly enough ... Before the war, the UN estimated that up to 500,000 Iraqis could suffer serious injuries, and estimated that 10 million Iraqi civilians, including more than 2 million homeless, would be in need of immediate assistance for food and medicine."

This Internet source supplies these death and casualty figures from various sources: http://www.unknownnews.net/casualties.html. However, there is no way to know the accuracy of its figures. That site says at least 832,962 people have been killed, and 1,590,895 seriously injured in Afghanistan and Iraq. Its breakdowns include these figures:

In Afghanistan

8,587 Afghan troops killed
25,761 seriously injured - July 2004

3,485 Afghan civilians killed
6,273 seriously injured - July 2004

342 US troops killed
1,026 seriously injured - January 2007

278 other coalition troops killed
834 seriously injured - June 2007

? US and coalition civilians killed
? seriously injured

In Iraq

30,000 Iraqi troops killed
90,000 seriously injured - August 2003

785,957 Iraqi civilians killed
1,414,723 seriously injured - June 2007

3,615 US troops killed
50,677 seriously injured - June 2007

287 other coalition troops killed
861 seriously injured - June 2007

160 US civilians killed
288 seriously injured - June 2007

251 other coalition civilians killed
452 seriously injured - June 2007

The number of people killed in the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina was around 102,000, according to research done by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Source: Kjell Arild Nilsen, NTB (Norwegian News Agency) www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1291965/posts and http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2004/11/bosnia-death-toll-revealed.html.

Estimates of illnesses during the war in Bosnia and afterward are difficult to uncover on the Internet or in the news generated by US television, radio and newspapers.



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Thomas "Dennie" Williams is a former state and federal court reporter, specializing in investigations, for the Hartford Courant. Since the 1970s, he has written extensively about irregularities in the Connecticut Superior Court, Probate Court systems for disciplining both judges and lawyers for misconduct and the failures of the Pentagon and the VA to assist sick veterans returning from war. He can be reached at denniew@optonline.net.

Japan as a country never stops amazing us. I am sure you have heard of, or seen the “Nyotaimori” (literally means female body plate), where the restaurant serves sushi and sashimi on a naked woman’s body.

If that is not weird enough , Japan has just invented another way of eating, where a “body” is made from food and placed on an operating table, much as though in a hospital.

You can operate anyway and anywhere you want by cutting open the body and eating what you find inside. The body will actually bleed as you cut it and the intestines and organs inside are completely editable. It’s a banquet of Cannibalism.

A man who bought a barbecue smoker at an auction of abandoned items in North Carolina made a gruesome discovery inside it - a wrapped-up human leg.

Investigators were able to track the item - which had been left at a storage facility - back to its original owner, Peg Steele, who said her son had lost his leg in a plane crash but kept the amputated limb for "religious reasons."

"The family was very much against it," she said.



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If you are in San Jose, Calif., you might not want to drink the water.

City officials have been looking into the possibility of converting sewage into potable water.

"This is a homegrown resource. It is the most reliable supply you can have," said Eric Rosenblum, manager of the city's water-recycling project.

Needless to say, public interest has been limited.



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A Malaysian woman lopped off her husband's penis when he made foolish remarks comparing her prowess in bed to that of his younger, second wife.

The man - who is Muslim and has two wives - somehow managed to ride his motorcycle to a hospital, where doctors were able to reattach the severed organ.



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An Australian barmaid who is known as a prankster was arrested after she served a patron a shot of disinfectant, causing him to become violently ill.

Emily Craig, 23, gave the man a shot of Pine-O-Cleen during a 6 a.m. drinking binge.

"This was a misguided joke at an ungodly hour," her attorney told the judge.

She lost her job and faces four counts of intentionally causing injury.

weird but True Pt. 2

Police in Bennington, Vt., are distributing free pint beer glasses embossed with the department logo to local bars and restaurants.

No, they're not endorsing hoisting a few.

The Ein-steins at police headquarters believe customers using the glasses will think twice before driving while drunk.



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Three teenagers out caroling in front of well-lit houses in Franklin, Wis., were stopped and frisked by a cop.

Seems the officer didn't believe they were out spreading holiday cheer; he was convinced they were out selling dope.

The boys, high-achieving students who belong to a band, came up clean - so they didn't end up singing "now we don our jail apparel."



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A second-division Romanian soccer team is offering to trade its star goalie - for a gas pipeline.

The mayor of Lupeni, who runs the Minerul team, said he'd give up his goalie if the wealthy owner of Jiul, a first-division team, invests $215,500 in a sorely needed pipeline for his town.

Such a deal would not be unusual in Romania, where players have been swapped for a half a pig, two sets of goalposts and a crate of wine.



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This British skydiver is berry, berry grateful.

Michael Holmes fell 15,000 feet when his parachute failed to open, but he survived - after landing in a brambly blackberry bush.

The 100-mph plunge at Taupo, on New Zealand's North Island, left him with a punctured lung, a broken ankle - and dreams of jumping again.



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Robots of the future may one day demand the same rights as humans, according to a study prepared for the British government.

And if the rights are granted, countries would be obliged to provide androids with housing and other social benefits, including health care.

That's one of the predictions offered in papers commissioned from "futures researchers" by the British Office of Science and Innovation

I wonder if singledad1b,

might be Gary... You notice how he blatantly attacked a few people under this topic for no reason at all unless he hade something to hide and was going on the defense.

In high school, when Miss Grundy rubbed your adolescent nose in Shakespeare, she was perhaps unaware that the Bard of Avon had ye pottye mouthe.

With more than four centuries of language shifts and Shakespeare's unmatched genius for puns and double-entendre, most readers today, unlike those of his time, skim past it.

But help has arrived in a book, "Filthy Shakespeare. Shakespeare's Most Outrageous Sexual Puns" by Oxford PhD Pauline Kiernan.

It's a romp of a read in which the author presents an original passage and then puts it into modern-day English.


Various nuisances have censored some of his raunchier efforts over time and they don't appear in some modern textbooks or play scripts. Fame saved others.

Hamlet's uncle killed Hamlet's father, the king ("murder most foul"), and to Hamlet's unalloyed disgust assumed the throne after marrying his mother. When Hamlet famously proclaims something is rotten in the state of Denmark, he doesn't mean the herring.

Rotten, Kiernan tells us, was a known reference to venereal disease in which London then was awash. "State" means the throne. So the prince is telling us, here and later, that the royal crown graces the dome of an incestuous, syphilitic, homicidal, licentious usurping weasel.

Then consider "Love's Labour's Lost," where Byron asks Rosalyn, "Did I not dance with you in Barbing once?"

She replies with the same question.

Byron: I know you did.

Rosalyn: How needless I was then to ask the question.

The modern version is impolite and you wouldn't read it to a bench of bishops.

The book's Oct. 4 release date somehow coincides with the American Library Association's Banned Books Week.

But it's through the lens of language that Kiernan gives us a glimpse of daily life in the rough-and-tumble streets of the Bard's London - not a pleasant place.

She writes that in Shakespeare's time, "People spoke a language that was full of figures of speech - bawdy, colourful or just plain gross" to disguise the cruel facts of hard, short and often-disease-ridden lives.

Today, words such as fie, white, fairness, merry, nothing, dale, tune, justice and Will have meanings of their own. They did back then, too, but not the same ones. Kiernan leads us by the hand.

The "F-word," she writes, is absent as such but shows up in myriad other forms. Various words for genitalia surpass 400.

The theatres were in the red-light district and many of the endless bordellos were licensed by the Bishop of Winchester, and to good profit. For variety, theatregoers could walk a short distance and watch heads being lopped off or prisoners burned alive or drawn and quartered.

Tough town.

Theatres were not high culture. Kiernan says they were ranked socially with brothels and bear pits "with all manner of lewd and grotesque entertainment."

She says the modern Shakespeare reader is at a disadvantage because many of his words are gone and that even ardent followers "experience bum-numbing moments" of seemingly meaningless banter "because we don't fully realize that the harmless-sounding words are actually exuberant displays of sparkling coded sexy dialogue."

Kiernan's research took her to writings from as far back as the 1500s, when "dancing school" and "nunnery" meant brothels, "expense" wasn't something to avoid, and "housewifery" had naught to do with dusting furniture.

Sexual punning, the author writes, was more common then and playgoers, even the rabble that paid a penny to stand at the Globe Theatre, probably grasped most of it. Without the puns and double-entendres, much of the humour would have been lost on the Elizabethan audience.

The Bard wasn't about to run off a paying crowd with jokes and puns they couldn't understand, she notes.

Not all of his language has vanished. On some campus in a time-warped coffee house, some guy with a lute and a beard probably is still singing something with a chorus of, "Hey, non nony, nony hey nony."

Ask Miss Grundy to look THAT one up

KATHMANDU, Nepal - Attention climbers: please keep your clothes on while climbing Mount Everest.

Nepal's mountaineering authorities are calling for a ban on nudity and attempts to set obscene records on the world's highest mountain. Last year, a Nepali climber claimed the world's highest display of nudity when he disrobed for several minutes while standing on the 8,850-metre summit in temperatures about minus 10 degrees Celsius.

Other record-setting attempts that sparked controversy included a Dutchman who attempted to scale the peak wearing only shorts.

Ang Tshering, president of Nepal Mountaineering Association, says the people who live at the foot of Everest worship the mountain as a god and mountaineering authorities have asked the government to ban disrespectful stunts.

Mount Everest has always attracted record-setters, including the oldest climber (71 years old), the youngest climber (15 years old), the first climber with one foot and the first blind climber.

In 2005, a Nepali couple exchanged vows on the summit as the first couple to be married on Everest.

Since Mount Everest was first scaled in 1953 by New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay, thousands of people have scaled the mountain.