war news for the bored.

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http://www.ridiculopathy.com/news_detail.php?id=932

WASHINGTON,D.C.- On Tuesday, the GOP-dominated Senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of a federal ban on certain abortion procedures.

...Farther reaching than previous proposals, the "Partial Freedom" abortion ban would specifically bar women from committing what lawmakers call "the mistake of abortion" by making the proper decisions for them, a whole range of choices from the grocery store to the voting booth.

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http://slate.msn.com/id/2090114/

The Bush administration seems, for the moment, to have stopped making analogies between post-Gulf War II Iraq and post-World War II Germany... Now President Bush himself has taken to likening the democratic prospects of modern Iraq to those of the early 20th-century Philippines... It is hardly more comforting. In fact, it is so discomfiting... that it's hard to imagine Bush would have made such a remark if he'd understood its full implications.

It is true, as Bush noted, that the Filipinos endured 300 years of Spanish rule and that they achieved independence in 1946. But Spain ended its rule in 1898. What happened during the 48-year unmentioned interregnum? Nothing pleasant... Until July 1902, when the Filipino guerrillas were finally subdued, the U.S. Army lost 4,234 soldiers. Another 2,818 were wounded. (By the Army's own estimate, 69,000 Filipino combatants were killed, along with nearly 200,000 civilians.) The American war effort was marked by much burning, pillaging, and torturing, and the commanders finally achieved victory through a strategy of isolating the guerrillas. They did this by forcing the civilian population out of towns and into "protected zones"; able-bodied men found outside the zones without a pass were arrested or shot. Even so, sporadic uprisings continued long after 1902. The American military occupation was forced [sic] to remain for 44 years.

...There is another unfortunate aspect to the Philippines parallel. Much of the resistance was led by "Moors"—i.e., Muslims. American politicians whipped up support for the war by painting it as a Christian crusade. President William McKinley... told a group of Methodist missionaries how he formulated this goal: "I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance more than one night. And one night late it came to me this way - that there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all and to educate the Filipinos and uplift them and civilize and Christianize them."

...The notion spread through popular culture. Rudyard Kipling's famous poem "The White Man's Burden" was subtitled, "The United States and the Philippine Islands."

...At the very least, can't the White House hire a good historian?

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http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,7634950%5E1702,00.html

US anti-war groups are planning their largest demonstrations since the start of the war in Iraq, with thousands expected at rallies on Saturday in Washington and San Francisco. Protesters were expected from 140 cities in the United States and Canada, organisers said today.

They hope to foment public pressure that will force the withdrawal of US troops.

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http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,60927,00.html

A group of students at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania has launched an "electronic civil disobedience" campaign against voting machine maker Diebold Election Systems. The students are protesting efforts by Diebold to prevent them and other website owners from linking to some 15,000 internal company memos that reveal the company was aware of security flaws in its e-voting software for years but sold the faulty systems to states anyway... Diebold has been sending out cease-and-desist letters to force websites and ISPs to take down the memos... It has been using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, to force ISPs to take down sites hosting the memos or sites containing links to the memos.

...Why War?, a nonprofit student organization at Swarthmore, and the Swarthmore Coalition for the Digital Commons, also composed of Swarthmore students, announced plans to defy Diebold and their college ISP. Why War? posted the memos on its website about two weeks ago but moved them to a student's computer after the college ISP received a cease-and-desist letter.

The college notified the student, who wishes to remain anonymous, that it would disconnect his Internet service if he didn't remove the memos. But Luke Smith, a sophomore, said students are planning to bypass that threat by hosting the memos on different machines. Each time one machine is shut down by Diebold, they will move the memos to another machine, passing them from student to student.

...He added, "It's not like people are reading these memos in order to steal Diebold's election system. (The company is) trying to use this law, and specifically the mandatory take-down section, to conceal flaws that directly affect the validity of election results. This is a threat to our democracy."

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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/24/politics/24CUBA.html?ex=1067964049&ei=1&en=42cf4b6daca68a69

Oct. 23 — The Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly voted to ease travel restrictions on Americans seeking to visit [Cuba]. The 59-to-38 vote came two weeks after Mr. Bush, in a Rose Garden ceremony, announced that he would tighten the travel ban on Cuba... The Senate vote placed the president and Republican Congressional leaders on a collision course, leaving an angry White House threatening to veto an important spending bill that contained the provision easing the travel restrictions.

...The legislation approved by the House last month and the Senate today does not officially legalize travel to the island. Rather, it strips the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control of its ability to enforce the travel restrictions.

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http://www.ridiculopathy.com/news_detail.php?id=924

WASHINGTON, D.C.- A proposed sequel to the The Patriot Act ran into a snag late last week when Congressional aides discovered a clerical error that fundamentally altered the nature of the legislation. Rather than combat terrorism, the bill specific text of the bill is aimed at fighting tourism. On any other piece of legislation, a rejection on the floor of the House and a re-write would be all that is needed to fix the problem. Unfortunately, Congressional incumbents know all too well that voting against or attempting to amend anything with the words "Patriot Act" associated with it could be a career-ending move. So, Democratic and Republican leaders have decided to go ahead with the bill as written.

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http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/33540.html

The state of Georgia has pulled out of the U.S. Department of Justice sponsored MATRIX information collection program, leaving data only on its felons and sexual offenders behind in the Orwellian database. Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue has cited both privacy concerns and costs as the two key reasons the state will no longer participate in the MATRIX (Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange) pilot project. The MATRIX database has been billed as a way to keep track of citizens' information such as their credit histories, marriage and divorce records, fingerprints and social security numbers...The list of states willing to participate in the MATRIX project is dwindling. Kentucky, Oregon and South Carolina pulled out earlier this year.

... [MATRIX] should sound familiar. DARPA tried to get some backing for its Total Information Awareness (TIA) program before being shut down by Congress. It seems, however, that was bit a mini-bump in the road... The program does live on and is managed by Florida-based Seisint, which has a $4,000,000.00 budget at its disposal.

Lest you have any concerns that the company may let little bits of your personal information trickle out onto the Web, we urge you to rest easy - its MATRIX Web site runs on Windows 2000 and IIS 5.0. This is a security conscious outfit to be sure.

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http://www.sunspot.net/news/local/bal-md.olesker21oct21,0,5209589.column?coll=bal-pe-maryland

Oct 21 - A 12-year-old kid at Boys' Latin researches a paper on the Bay Bridge, and suddenly the FBI's Joint Terrorist Task Force shows up in the headmaster's office. You could laugh if you didn't know the jangled nerves that set off such a reaction.

This fall, Dorsey Boyle, a middle-school teacher at Boys' Latin, the venerable Lake Avenue private school, assigned his classes a series of research papers... [Seventh-grader John McLean] picked the Bay Bridge.

"He went to the Internet to research as much as he could," Bruce McLean, John's dad, was saying last week. He laughed a little ruefully. "He wanted to know how it was built and financed, how much concrete and steel went into it. But he was having trouble getting information. So Mr. Boyle told him a couple of Web sites where he could ask questions." One was a Bay Bridge Web site. The other, the Maryland Transportation Authority's.

...The Boys' Latin middle school headmaster, Rick Brocato... had an unexpected visitor: Jim Drotar of the FBI's Joint Terrorist Task Force. "We need verification," Drotar said. "About someone who claims he's a student here. It's about the Chesapeake Bay Bridge."

..."Somewhere in his questioning," said Brocato, "John had mentioned Boys' Latin. And the FBI guy said, 'All I need to know is, is he a student here?' He said terrorists can impersonate people to get information. I assured him John McLean was a student, and he was doing a paper on the bridge. He said, 'You need to know, students need to identify themselves.' They're very sensitive about bridges and tunnels."

All of this leaves one question: How did the FBI stumble onto the information? Are there agents who spend their days monitoring millions of private messages? ..."In today's environment," says Baltimore FBI spokesman Barry Maddox, "we take all leads very seriously."

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http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/content_objectid=13516409_method=full_siteid=50143_headline=-A-BIG-IRAQ-AND-FRIES-name_page.html

THE US military is backing a bid by McDonald's to open its first restaurant in Iraq. The fast food giant plans to offer franchises to help bring "normality" to the country. The first could open in Baghdad next year. The US Defence Department said: "That would be a fantastic idea. The Iraqi people would love a Big Mac and fries as much as the rest of the world."

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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,100935,00.html

Thursday, October 23, 2003

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld (search) was "livid" when he discovered a memo written to top aides made it onto the front page of the nation's largest circulated newspaper, a senior defense official told Fox News. [see below]

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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,100917,00.html

October 16, 2003. TO: Gen. Dick Myers, Paul Wolfowitz, Gen. Pete Pace, Doug Feith FROM: Donald Rumsfeld SUBJECT: Global War on Terrorism

The questions I posed to combatant commanders this week were: Are we winning or losing the Global War on Terror? ...DoD has been organized, trained and equipped to fight big armies, navies and air forces. It is not possible to change DoD fast enough to successfully fight the global war on terror.

...With respect to global terrorism, the record since Septermber 11th seems to be: We are having mixed results with Al Qaeda, although we have put considerable pressure on them - nonetheless, a great many remain at large. USG has made reasonable progress in capturing or killing the top 55 Iraqis. USG has made somewhat slower progress tracking down the Taliban... Have we fashioned the right mix of rewards, amnesty, protection and confidence in the U.S.?

...Today, we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?

...The cost-benefit ratio is against us! Our cost is billions against the terrorists' costs of millions. Do we need a new organization? How do we stop those who are financing the radical madrassa schools? Is our current situation such that "the harder we work, the behinder we get"? ...Does CIA need a new finding? Should we create a private foundation to entice radical madradssas to a more moderate course? What else should we be considering?

Please be prepared to discuss this at our meeting on Saturday or Monday. Thanks.

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http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L20637097.htm

AMMAN, Oct 20 (Reuters) - The U.S.-led war on terror has radicalised more Arabs angry both with the West and their autocratic rulers who are bent on curbing their political rights, a U.N.-commissioned study [The Arab Human Development Report 2003 ] released on Monday showed.

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for example

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/24/international/middleeast/24SYRI.html?ex=1067964016&ei=1&en=af68902b440e7724

Syria, Oct. 19 — Two decades after Syria ruthlessly uprooted militant Islam, killing an estimated 10,000 people, this most secular of Arab states is experiencing a dramatic religious resurgence... The widespread sense that the faith is being singled out for attack by Washington has invigorated that appeal.

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http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/10/22/MNGHN2GJ4K1.DTL

Washington -- After failing to attract large numbers of foreign peacekeepers to Iraq, the Pentagon is drawing up plans to rotate in as many as 30,000 more reservists early next year... Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld refused to discuss Tuesday how many more reservists might be needed.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A56494-2003Oct20

More than 30 soldiers who came home from Iraq for two weeks of leave have failed to show up for their flights back to the combat zone, military officials said yesterday... A military advocacy group cited two cases in which service members called to say they do not want to return to the long and difficult mission in Iraq... A survey of 1,935 soldiers in Iraq published last week by the military newspaper Stars and Stripes found that 49 percent rated morale in their unit as low or very low.

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http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/10/24/1066974315046.html

October 25, 2003 - Shot through both legs and held prisoner in Iraq for 22 days, Shoshana Johnson returned home to a difficult convalescence that lacked the media fury and official hype that attended her friend and comrade in arms Jessica Lynch... Now that she is on the verge of her discharge, the US Army is aggravating her injury, her parents say. While Private Lynch was discharged in August with an 80 per cent disability benefit, Specialist Johnson learnt last week she will receive a 30 per cent disability benefit from the army for her injuries.

The difference... amounts to $700 a month in payments... Private Lynch is white; Specialist Johnson is black... Specialist Johnson is 30, has a three-year-old daughter and has been living at home.

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3203847.stm

India has unveiled a series of measures aimed at improving relations with its nuclear rival Pakistan and forging progress in the Kashmir dispute. The proposals, revealed by Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha, include resuming cricket ties and boosting transport links. Pakistan replied by saying it would consider the proposals positively but also expressed disappointment that they did not include a direct dialogue on Kashmir.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1068186,00.html

Wednesday October 22, 2003 - Hamas launched a barrage of missiles at targets inside and outside Gaza yesterday in response to the heaviest air raids ever carried out by the Israeli military. Three homemade Qassam rockets were fired at a town beyond Gaza, one narrowly missing a synagogue, while at least seven mortars were fired at settlements inside the strip.

Monday's air strikes were launched in retaliation for the firing of eight Qassam rockets inside Israel, which left 14 people dead, including 10 civilians. More than 100 people were injured.

An opinion poll published yesterday suggested that the continuing violence and the impasse in peace talks between the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority had persuaded Palestinians to reaffirm their support for suicide bombings and their president, Yasser Arafat. The poll, carried out by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Social Research, found that three in four Palestinians supported the recent suicide bombing in Haifa which killed 21 people, yet 85% desired a mutual ceasefire and 66% wanted a unilateral ceasefire. Mr Arafat's support has risen from 35% in June to 50%, after Israeli threats against him... The poll [consisted of] 1,315 interviews in Gaza and the West Bank.

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http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/10/23/1066631570642.html

October 24, 2003 - An Israeli military official has acknowledged that an air force video appears to show Palestinians gathering in an alley near the site of a helicopter attack in the Gaza Strip, and that their presence could account for the high casualty toll in a missile attack on Monday... "It seems to me there may be people in the alleyway," an Israeli military official acknowledged. "It's possible this is the cause for all the casualties." The military said it would make no formal comment while it investigated.

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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/352340.html

The State Department yesterday warned U.S. citizens to avoid Israel because of the risk of terror attacks... [also,] a State Department statement reiterated its advisory that U.S. citizens leave Gaza. "The potential for further terrorist acts remains high," it said.

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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/351904.html

Israel vowed Wednesday to press on with building the separation fence in along its border with the West Bank, despite a U.N. resolution condemning the project as a violation of international law and demanding it be halted.

...The UN General Assembly overwhelmingly passed the resolution late Tuesday. The vote was carried 144-4, with 12 abstentions, with Israel's key ally the United States voting against the measure. Micronesia and the Marchall Islands also voted against.

...In response to the resolution, Israel vowed to press on with the construction of the barrier. "The fence will continue being built and we will go on taking care of the security of Israel's citizens," Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Israel Radio on Wednesday morning.

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http://famulus.msnbc.com/FamulusIntl/reuters10-22-034450.asp?reg=MIDEAST

BEIRUT, Oct. 22 — Israeli warplanes roared across Lebanon on Wednesday breaking the sound barrier over the northern city of Tripoli, witnesses said, despite a United Nations call to Israel last week to stop overflights. Witnesses said Israeli jets also circled over the capital Beirut and swooped over parts of southern Lebanon and the eastern Bekaa valley.

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http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/10/23/1066631565093.html

The Israeli army's Winter 2004 collection will feature second-hand long johns bought from the US military, the Israeli daily Ma'ariv reported yesterday. The second-hand merchandise will naturally be washed before being handed over to the men, an Israeli army official told the paper, stressing there was no shame in wearing used clothing and saving cash. The defence budget underwent deep cuts this year as part of an overall austerity plan adopted by the Israeli government.

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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=856&ncid=856&e=1&u=/nm/20031016/od_uk_nm/oukoe_odd_tanzania_underwear

DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) - Tanzania has banned imports of secondhand underwear, fearing the used garments might spread skin diseases, an official says... "This is a measure to safeguard human health," said Liandry Kinabo, head of process technology standards at the Tanzania Bureau of Standards, told Reuters on Thursday.

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http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ_PRISONER_DEATH?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- A Baath Party official who died in a detention camp in southern Iraq suffocated after a U.S. Marine reservist grabbed him by the neck and snapped a bone in his throat, according to a military investigation... Lance Cpl. Christian Hernandez and his superior officer, Maj. Clark A. Paulus, are charged with negligent homicide in the death. They have been assigned to Camp Pendleton north of San Diego for the investigation. [Marine spokesman 1st Lt. Dan Rawson] said Hernandez grabbed Hatab by the neck to move him, but it wasn't clear why he did it

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http://www.dawn.com/2003/10/23/int8.htm

KHALDIYAH, Oct 22: Some 100 people demonstrated on Wednesday in the town of Khaldiyah, west of Baghdad, calling for the release of three women arrested by United States soldiers. The women were arrested three days ago instead of their husbands, who are accused of participating in the Iraqi resistance against US occupying troops. American soldiers went to the men's houses to arrest them, and failing to find them, arrested their wives. Carrying Iraqi flags, the protesters gathered in front of the town's municipal council, chanting: "Americans, free the women immediately."

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http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=7514

US coalition troops released Thursday three women recently detained... "They were released after we demonstrated and went this morning to meet with the US base commander to tell him of the need to release the three women," tribal chief Sheikh Kharbeet Jassem Kharbeet said... He said the delegation "asked the US forces not to repeat any such detentions, especially of women."

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http://www.news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1168382003

23 Oct 2003 - REPRESENTATIVES from more than 70 countries were gathering in Madrid today to discuss funding of post-war Iraq... A Christian charity claimed yesterday that failure of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to set up an independent auditing board to oversee spending had left a question mark over what had happened to up to $4,000,000,000.00 that should have been spent on rebuilding the country... In its report the charity said: "What this report most shockingly reveals ... is that the billions of dollars of oil money that has already been transferred to the US-controlled Coalition Provisional Authority has effectively disappeared into a financial black hole."

...The United States hopes it can persuade the countries attending the conference to come up with $36,000,000,000.00 in aid.

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http://www.bobsfridge.com/skew.htm

Telecommunications giant WorldCom is being awarded a $45 million contract from the Pentagon to overstate earnings in Iraq. WorldCom was selected over other companies due to its undisputed reputation of having perpetrated the largest accounting fraud in business history. A Pentagon spokesman explained that WorldCom executives will teach Iraqi businessmen the techniques necessary to inflate the net worth of their companies and boost the Iraqi stock market.

Other firms with experience in this field such as Enron, Arthur Andersen and K-Mart are crying foul, claiming they were frozen out of the non-competitive bidding process for the contract.

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http://www.motherjones.com/news/dailymojo/2003/43/we_595_04b.html

Reporters Without Borders, a media advocacy group, has just released its second annual World Press Freedom Ranking... The report singles out U.S. and Israel for special mention:

"The ranking distinguishes behaviour at home and abroad in the cases of the United States and Israel. They are ranked in 31st and 44th positions [out of 166] respectively as regards respect for freedom of expression on their own territory, but they fall to the 135th and 146th positions as regards behaviour beyond their borders. The Israeli army's repeated abuses against journalists in the occupied territories and the US army's responsibility in the death of several reporters during the war in Iraq constitute unacceptable behaviour by two nations that never stop stressing their commitment to freedom of expression."

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55816-2003Oct20.html

Tuesday, October 21, 2003-- The Bush administration has... [banned] news coverage and photography of dead soldiers' homecomings on all military bases.

...Pentagon officials... said the policy covering the entire military... relieves all bases of the difficult logistics of assembling family members and deciding which troops should get which types of ceremonies.

...A White House spokesman said Bush has not attended any memorials or funerals for soldiers killed in action during his presidency.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/24/opinion/24KRUG.html?pagewanted=print&position=

John Snow, the Treasury secretary, told The Times of London on Monday that he expected the U.S. economy to add two million jobs before the next election... His prediction was a huge climb-down from administration predictions earlier this year, when the White House insisted that it expected the economy to add more than five million jobs by next November.

...The payroll employment figure right now is down 2,600,000 compared with what it was when George W. Bush took office... If we want to improve the dismal prospects of job seekers — currently, 75 percent of those who lose jobs still haven't found new jobs when their unemployment benefits run out — the number of jobs must grow faster than the number of people who want to work. Indeed, because the working-age population of the United States is steadily growing, the economy must add about 130,000 jobs each month just to prevent the labor market from deteriorating.

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http://www.statesman.com/business/content/auto/epaper/editions/tuesday/business_f3499d25e2bdd0360047.html

October 21 - Americans must face the "hard truth" that offshore companies not only offer information technology services for "a fraction of the cost," but they can "compete for increasingly more sophisticated and complex Information Technology work," Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America, told Congress on Monday.

U.S. workers may have to get used to lower wages permanently, Miller said.

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http://washingtontimes.com/business/20031021-094012-8975r.htm

A third of the nation´s workers without health insurance are employed by large companies, a study says. Thirty-two percent of all uninsured workers in 2001 were employed by big companies, up from 25 percent in 1987, according to the report released yesterday by the Commonwealth Fund... The study also noted that seven out of 10 uninsured workers at large companies were not offered health insurance, and 15 percent were ineligible.

...Access to health care is at the center of numerous labor disputes... Striking grocery workers and public transit mechanics have caused widespread inconvenience and economic losses in Southern California. Thousands of Kroger Co. grocery workers also walked out in West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky and Missouri last week. Unions are fighting to retain top-of-the-line medical benefits while employers want workers to pick up more of the cost.

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http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/nation/7061997.htm

CROSS LANES, W.Va. - To find the cause of the nation's three supermarket strikes, just follow Judy Ranson's shopping cart. An inveterate bargain hunter, Ranson used to chase down the best grocery deals at three stores: her local Kroger's in Cross Lanes or down the road at a Fas Check and at a Poca Supermarket.

Now she makes one trip a week, to the Wal-Mart Supercenter, which opened five years ago across Interstate 64 from Kroger's.

...Officials at Kroger and the nation's other dominant supermarket chains -- Ahold, Albertsons and Safeway -- cite competition from Wal-Mart Stores and other big box stores moving into the grocery business as a reason to hold the line on labor costs. Those costs include health care benefits that are the sticking point in United Food and Commercial Workers strikes of 3,300 workers at 44 Kroger stores in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio; 70,000 workers at three southern California chains; and 10,000 workers at three chains in Missouri. Similar struggles are expected within the next six months as UFCW contracts expire in the Phoenix and Washington, D.C., areas.

...Analysts say in just 10 years, Wal-Mart has become the biggest player in the grocery business, last year capturing a 5 to 15 percent slice of the industry's $680 billion pie... Including pension and health benefits, Kroger estimates it pays workers on average $6 an hour more in West Virginia than [does] Wal-Mart.

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http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/corporate/pr/pr003746.php3

Washington, DC -- A new report, "Class Action Cabinet," released today by the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR) shows that 13 of 16 Bush Cabinet members have been employed by, served on the board of, or have significant financial interest in corporations that have been targeted by consumer class-action lawsuits. Condoleeza Rice and Andrew Card, top advisors to President Bush, though not part of the Cabinet, were also found to have ties to companies targeted by class action lawsuits as was President Bush himself.

The report by the consumer advocacy group comes as the US Senate is set to debate Bush-backed legislation, S. 274, which would limit consumers' rights to file class action lawsuits.

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http://www.thememoryhole.org/feds/doj-attorney-diversity.htm

With no notice, the Justice Department recently posted to its Website a long-awaited report. Justice spent $2,000,000.00 for a study on the racial and gender diversity of its attorney workforce. The report has been complete for almost two years, but the Department stalled its release, despite numerous Freedom of Information Act requests.

The report appeared on one of the FOIA sections of the Department's Website sometime in October. It's one of the most heavily-redacted government documents in recent memory. Even Congress' report on 9/11 had a smaller percentage of its contents blacked out. The Memory Hole has posted a version with no redactions; instead, those sections are highlighted in yellow, so you can easily zoom in on the parts originally deemed too embarassing for us to see.

To download the report as originally released--with all redactions intact-- see http://www.thememoryhole.org/feds/diversityanalysis.pdf .

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http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apwashington_story.asp?category=1151&slug=Frozen%20Charity%20Money

The Bush administration is exploring... unfreezing assets that belong to Islamic charities suspected of funding terrorists and releasing the money for legitimate aid purposes... At stake is about $5,000,000.00 to $7,000,000.00 in frozen assets belonging to three charities - Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, Global Relief Foundation and the Benevolence International Foundation, Treasury Department officials estimated... The charities have been closed since the government took action to block their assets on the belief that money had been diverted to help bankroll terrorist activities, Treasury officials said.

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http://www.ksat.com/education/2572994/detail.html

HOUSTON -- The parents of a... Middle School honor student have sued the school district alleging it punished their daughter without a fair hearing over a pencil sharpener. Christina Lough, a straight-A student at Garland McMeans Junior High School west of Houston, received seven days of in-school suspension earlier this month after a teacher wrote her up for having a sharpener that violated the school district's zero-tolerance policy on weapons. Lough also was removed as president of the student council and honor society.

The South Korea-style sharpener has a 2-inch blade that folds into a small handle and is used to sharpen pencils. The girl's family is from South Korea... The school district says it had no choice but to follow its policy, which prohibits weapons.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-3299053,00.html

WARSAW, Va. (AP) - Crystal Foster's father advised her to spend the $500,000 income tax refund she got two years ago. When the government came looking for its money, the Fosters said it was their rightful reparations, since their ancestors were slaves. Though there is no federal reparations program, Foster had spent the money in eight days, buying a $40,000 Mercedes Benz, paying off her student loans and helping her brother pay for his first year at Virginia Tech. Foster's father, Robert Lee Foster, prepared her tax forms and was convicted along with his daughter of trying to defraud the government. He maintains he did the right thing.

...According to the Internal Revenue Service, more than 80,000 tax returns were filed in 2001 seeking nonexistent slavery tax credits, totaling $2,700,000,000.00. More than $30,000,000.00 was mistakenly paid out in slave reparations in 2000 and part of 2001.

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http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_830952.html?menu=news.quirkies

A Norwegian witch has won a £5,000 [$8,485.31] business grant from her government... so she can sell elixirs to residents around the forest of Nord-Odal, 93 miles north of Oslo... Her specialty products include night creams for vivid dreams, a day cream to combat indecisiveness and a foot cream to change a user's bad habits.

...Ove Gahren of the [funding agency]... said the notion of a witch getting a grant may seem out of the ordinary, but her business plan was "pretty reasonable and well thought out."

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http://www.freepint.com/gary/calendar2004.htm

[this site has links to the calendars and schedules of all the announced 2004 presidential candidates.]

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http://www.borowitzreport.com/archive_rpt.asp?rec=718

The race for the Democratic presidential nomination took a nasty turn tonight as Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-MO) were caught keying the car of former Vermont Governor Howard Dean in the parking lot of the town hall in Davenport, Iowa... The two mischievous Democratic hopefuls then used their keys to make disfiguring white scratches the length of Gov. Dean’s taupe-colored Toyota Camry.

In an official statement, Gov. Dean blasted his two rivals, saying, “Real mature.”

...Elsewhere, one day after Secretary of State Colin Powell taunted North Korean dictator Kim Jung-Il by saying, “You can’t eat plutonium,” Mr. Kim responded by saying that he could, in fact, eat plutonium and challenged Mr. Powell to a plutonium-eating contest next month in Pyongyang.

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http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/20031020-0711-bush-mother.html

October 20, 2003 WASHINGTON – Former first lady Barbara Bush and mother of President Bush described Democrats trying to unseat her son in the the White House as a "sorry group" of politicians. "So far, they are a pretty sorry group if you want to know my opinion," said Mrs. Bush in an interview aired Monday by NBC's "Monday" show, when asked about the Democratic line-up for the 2004 presidential election.

...Her husband also had some harsh words for the Democratic contenders... "The one who makes the most outrageous charges against the president gets his 20 seconds on the evening news. Hey, I did not ride in here on a watermelon cart. I know how it works," said the former president.

Fiercely proud of their son's achievements, former President Bush said his wife treated the president like any other member of the family, recently telling him after a run to get his feet off the table in their bedroom. However, Mrs. Bush said... "He still doesn't take my advice, that dirty dog."