|
| |
Woman is in church a saint , in the street an angel ,
in kitchens a devil , in bed an ape. attrib. 16th century
Wisdom cries in the streets and no man regards her.
Heav'n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn'd, |
The judge therefore adjourned the trial until Tue. Before Thursday's proceedings were interrupted Ms Andrews had been telling the court how she had been an abuse victim at age 8. But she said the abuse was not at the hands of her parents.
She had told her defence barrister John Kelsey-Fry, QC, that she did not want to go into details. The court was adjourned until the afternoon. Ms Andrews denies murdering Mr Cressman, 39, by hitting him on the head with a cricket bat and stabbing him in the chest, claiming she was acting in self-defence.
depression
|
princessas Americanas |
The 34-year-old said: "No, I don't think I did. It was an intense job, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. She told the court she had applied for "hundreds and hundreds" of jobs before she went to work for Knightsbridge jewellers Theo Fennell where she is "blissfully happy".
vicious arguments
Earlier, the jury heard she had been raped by Mr Cressman on the day before his death after she said she was
leaving him. She said the couple had rowed after Mr Cressman had refused to see a therapist despite admitting he
needed help for sexual and commitment problems and his "black moods". Ms Andrews has repeatedly denied she
intended to murder her boyfriend, to whom she was "devoted". She claims she was acting in self-defence following
a series of vicious arguments between the pair. She fled the scene in a panic, got into her car and "drove and
drove
and drove", thez court heard. She began sending a series of text messages to her friends proclaiming her
innocence and was found days later in a car in Cornwall having taken an overdose of pain killers.
Mini spy cameras are the latest consumer
'must-have' in southern China, as spouses try to keep tabs on partners and shops keep an eye on theft, according
to the China Daily. The state-controlled newspaper said the cameras, which can be easily hidden from sight, were
"selling like hot cakes" in south China's Guangdong Province. Worries about the cameras even reached China's
National People's Congress, where deputy Weng Weiquan called for laws to stop secret filming. "Residents feel
unsafe as this method has been used to expose aspects of people's private lives," he said.
Spy cameras shot into public consciousness after one was used in Taiwan to film a politician having sex with her
married lover. Taipei City councilwoman Chu Mei-feng was forced from office after the film, which was
made without her knowledge, was widely circulated. She has since resurfaced as a pop singer, appearing
last week in concert in Singapore. Videos of her sexual performance, reproduced on to
optical disks, have been selling well across China & other Asian countries.
China Daily said it found spy-cameras selling for between 100 yuan ($12) to 3,000 yuan ($360) in one Guangzhou
shop. "I wholesaled more than 400 micro-cameras last month," one dealer told the paper. The dealer said some
people were buying the cameras to oversee their spouse's activities, while shops & businesses were also
using them as security devices. For anxious spouses, the dealer recommended one wireless camera that was able
to pick up signals within 1km.
12.31.01 Michael Bristow BBC |
2.7.02 BBC 
Authorities seized video discs, but pirated copies circulated widely, on sale in Malaysia, Singapore and China. The
Chinese-language weekly has called the seizure of the discs "preposterous" and said the they were not
pornography but a move to "restore the face of the truth". Ms Chu, 36, New Party candidate in Dec.
parliamentary elections , did not deny she was the woman in the video and has apologised to the public. Not
available for comment following news of the charges, she told reporters late Wed. after Thailand holiday, "If the
society will accept me again, I want to do more good deeds," the Central News Agency quoted Ms Chu.
| ||
|
Immaterial Girl
ª
¹
ƒ
Part Buddha, part Madonna, Supreme Master Ching Hai promises immediate enlightenment to San Jose's Asian immigrants 3.28.96 Rafer Guzmán Santa Clara Valley Metro ²
| |||
She is one of the few drummers listed who has not been in a commercially successful pop, rock or jazz band. Instead Layne Redmond followed extremely unusual path specializing in small hand-held frame drum played primarily by women in the ancient Mediterranean world.
From 1981 through 1990 she performed & recorded the first contemporary frame drum compositions with percussionist Glen Velez for European & American labels.
1998 keynote lecture & performance at 8th annual Healing Sound Colloquium "Layne Redmond, leader of the Mob of Angels, is a superb percussionist; …. rhythms classic, melodies romantic, technique astounding."
"As I reevaluated it later in my life, cheerleading was a very important part of my training.
I was using rhythmic movement and chanted sound to entrain large groups of people with me. |
'Actually, my voice isn't very nice, and I don't sing that well, but you have given me strength,' she said demurely in
Mandarin at one point, her stiff body language betraying her nervousness. 'I'm behaving like a mummy. I don't dare to walk around, because I'm afraid I would step on my skirt,' she admitted at another point. Wrapped in a long, black dress, and with her face masked as if in a masquerade, she had made a dramatic sweeping entrance with 6 silk-kimono-clad dancers. As the Jeffrey Chung Models sextet stripped to black spandex slivers , the contrast of so much bare skin writhing next to the consciously covered-up singer became faintly ludicrous.
The shows' compere & organiser Yew How Peng aka Power Jackson took great pains in other ways to avoid references that might hark back to her VCD scandal. A $10,000 security bond he put up to obtain the entertainment licence for the 9 concerts would be forfeited by authorities if there was any mention of the taboo topic. Skirting around with words such as 'past difficulties' and 'unhappy events', the other 5 male performers still managed to make a running joke out of hitching a ride (da shun feng che in Mandarin) on the female star's notoriety
In the wake of her sex scandal, the former TV news anchor came under more media scrutiny when she published a tell-all book, started hosting a radio program and a late-night TV talk show. At the first concert at 7 pm, her reputation preceded her in the conspicuous presence of 15 security officers in shirt & tie, 6 uniformed policemen, and more than 50 members of the press from around the region, including Taiwan, Hongkong and Malaysia.
The faded 1,400-seat theatre was 80% full for the first show, but the second show at 9.30 pm managed only 60% says the organiser. Ticket sales as of Saturday for all the 9 shows averaged 70% and Mr Yew stands to lose a 5 figure sum at the box office. But in a post-concert interview, he said: 'It's not that big a loss. I can still afford it and I have no regrets. Don't you think I have done something Singapore should be proud of? No one has ever done a show that attracted so much international media attention.' From the start of the 2 hour concerts, it was obvious whom the audience had come to watch. Uncles & aunties were spotted strolling around during the short sets by Singaporean singer Wang Lei, Malaysian-Indian singer Xiao Hei, Hongkong actor Michael Huang, and former monk & DJ Lin Youfa. The audience, made up of an even number of middle-aged men & women with a handful of families with kids, settled down only during the second last act by 1970s idol Hsieh Lei, getting ready for the climax by Chu. Xiao Hei, Huang, Lin and Hsieh joined her in the closing number, a most ironic choice in the 1980s mega-hit by Lin Shurong and Li Maoshan, Silent Ending (Wu Yan De Jie Ju).
|
Berlin 2 women committed suicide with their cat in Berlin early Friday by jumping together from the 23rd floor of a high rise building, police said. Police said the tabby cat was killed instantly along with the 2 women, aged 32 & 45, who jumped from an apartment block in the central Mitte district. The women left no clues as to why they had decided kill themselves or why they had taken the cat with them. Neither lived in Berlin; police said they were believed to have come from Rostock & Hannover to the German capital especially for the deed. Their identities were not disclosed; police said they did not know whether the 2 women were a couple or just friends. The younger woman left a farewell letter but gave no motive for the suicide. A 6 year old boy has been found dead & buried in mud near his home in a suburb of Dallas, TX, and his brother & sister have confessed to his killing, Texas authorities have said. Police were led to Jackson Carr's shallow grave by his 15-year-old sister after hours of searching, the AP news agency reported police as saying. She & her 10-year-old brother, who police say admitted to holding his little brother down during the killing, were being held at a juvenile detention centre on suspicion of murder, but formal charges have not been filed. The boy was reported missing on Monday evening. His brother had told their parents that he could not find him after a game of hide & seek. Mike Houser, a neighbour, was reported by AP as saying that the family had lived in the suburb of Lewisville for about 4 months. The children often played in the creek bed behind the home, neighbours said. |
|
Taiwan sex video scandal explained | |
|
Nemesis, goddess of retribution: "Baneful Nyx bore Nemesis, too, a woe for mortals..." |
per Hesiod, Theogony |
|
pursues the insolent & wicked w/ inflexible vengeance; "Only the doomed see me" |
per folklorist Micha F. Lindemans |
Cases against 3 suspects go to Loudoun grand jury 3.8.02 Maria Glod Wash.Post pB3 Yesterday's hearings marked the first time bizarre details of the Dec. 8 slaying of Robert M. Schwartz were recounted in the courtroom. Each of the hearings centered on signed confessions from the 3 defendants and interviews with detectives. Investigators testified Hulbert said he is a vampire and told them he tasted Schwartz's blood and went into a "frenzy." Pfohl & Inglis told detectives that Hulbert told them he "had a job to do" and they knew that meant he would kill someone, according to testimony. Schwartz's younger daughter, Clara J. Schwartz, 21, friend of the defendants, is charged with conspiring with the 3 to have her father killed. During yesterday's hearing, prosecutors focused on the night of the slaying and did not reveal any new details about Clara Schwartz's alleged role in her father's death. | |
Authorities allege that Pfohl, Inglis and Hulbert, friends who shared an interest in fantasy worlds & the occult, drove to Schwartz's isolated farmhouse. Hulbert went inside and slashed & stabbed Schwartz, 57, with a 27" sword.
Hulbert told investigators he confronted Schwartz about the alleged abuse and saw a "confession in his eyes,"
Russ testified. Russ said Hulbert told him that he pulled out the sword, attacked Schwartz and the 2 began to
struggle. During the fight, Hulbert told detectives, he got blood in his mouth and "went into a blood lust," Russ said. Hulbert told detectives he left the house, found Pfohl & Inglis trying to coax Pfohl's Honda Civic out of the muddy area on the dirt road where it had become stuck, according to testimony. Detectives testified the 3 tried for more than 2 hours before Hulbert went to a neighbor's house to call a tow truck. It was the driver of the truck, authorities said, who led them to the 3.
[ This little lamia must have laughed
herself sick when she spotted these idiots. ]
Defense attys for Pfohl & Inglis yesterday argued that their clients did not know Hulbert would kill Schwartz
and that they did not help plan the slaying. Cannon found that Pfohl & Inglis knew Hulbert planned to kill
someone and that both helped drive the car. Hulbert, of Millersville, and Pfohl & Inglis, both of Haymarket,
were arrested days after the slaying. Schwartz was arrested 2.1.02 after authorities spent weeks poring over e-
mails & instant messages sent among the 4. The Loudoun grand jury is scheduled to meet 3.19.02. Schwartz is scheduled to appear in court for a preliminary hearing 3.21.02.
|
Forester charged in Colorado fire 6.17.02 AP
Castle Rock CO U.S. Forest Service employee charged today with starting fire 6.8.02,
scorching more than 100,000 acres in the Pike National Forest and destroying at least 22 homes.
Forestry technician Terry Barton, 38, admitted starting campfire while patrolling forest to enforce a fire
ban, said U.S. Atty's Office Dist. of CO Bill Leone.
She said she started burning a letter from her estranged husband within a designated campfire ring, where fires normally would be allowed, and then tried to put out the blaze. Barton was charged with setting fire to timber in the national forest, damaging federal property in excess of $100,000 and making false statements to investigators. If convicted, Barton could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison and fines of up to $250,000. She was arrested this morning. Firefighters gained ground today on the wildfire that had burned within 40 miles of Denver city limits since it was started. With blaze 35% contained, about 5,400 people remained out of their homes. It was one of 7 fires burning in the state today. |
After forester's arrest, disbelief & anger 6.18.02 Wm Booth & Gerard Wright Wash.Post … Barton & her husband John Mark Barton have 2 daughters. While she was fighting the fire, he was back in the couple's house in Florissant, caring for the girls. …
|
|
Nun quietly awaits prison for protest
Bellevue WA A light gong sounded the call to afternoon prayers, and the nuns gathered in the small chapel at the Congregation of Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace. Joining the group, Sister Miriam Spencer, 76, softly chanted the words to Psalm 137, the reading of the day: "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?"
Spencer wasn't looking to serve time behind bars, but knew she ran the risk. She believes it was worthwhile, telling the sentencing judge that she would not plead guilty because she has "no sense of guilt" about crossing the Ft Benning border as a "peacekeeper" charged with keeping the 3,400-person protest, a mock funeral procession, orderly & safe.
"When there is real evil going on, and your elected officials are not listening, … civil disobedience is a
sacrament," she said earlier this week. Main protest group School of the Americas Watch is led by Maryknoll priest Rev. Roy Bourgeois. Seattle Archdiocese spokesman Bill Gallant says Spencer's commitment fits well into a Catholic tradition where
"women religious & priests have been going to jail for acts of conscience since the church began."
School of the Americas protests began more than a decade ago, with opponents saying that its students, Latin
American military officers, are trained in ways that lead to torture & human rights abuses. The military has said that the school is meant to train Latin American soldiers in democratic principles, and that manuals from the 1980s that advocated torture & kidnapping as ways to fight rebels are no longer used.
Protests gained particular attention this year because of the ages of those sentenced incl 88-year-old Franciscan nun Sister Dorothy Hennessey from Iowa who told the judge to give her the same prison sentence as the rest, instead of the house arrest he offered. The Bellevue retreat of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace, with mature trees and lovingly tended grounds, houses more than two dozen nuns ages 47 to 99.
But they have sympathy for her stand; after all, some of them have demonstrated at Ft Benning, too.
Rourke, for example, said that after hearing Bourgeois speak out against it several years ago she prayed that the school would close. Then there came a point, she said, where she wondered, "Was I supposed to do more than pray?" She flew to Georgia and marched in the 1999 protests.
When Spencer went to sleep that night she dreamed of her aunt, also a nun in her order. She was telling her aunt not to worry about her, that she was going to be all right. The messages seemed clear. Spencer doesn't think she'll cross the line at Ft Benning again; she didn't intend to last year, either, given the written ban, and was swayed by a "desperate" call for peacekeepers. In the wake of 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, she said, organizers were worried that troublemakers might come in and disrupt the protest.
Her chaplain has told her she can probably bring her Bible to prison, and she expects she'll be able to minister to other inmates, a job that might make the months go by more easily. She doesn't expect the punishment to change her beliefs, or to keep her from future protests. She won't be there for the next ones, planned for November, but she doesn't think she'll be missed. "One of the other sisters has told me she'll take my place."
Anti-war nuns sentenced to 2½+ years
Denver CO Calling them ``dangerously irresponsible,'' a federal judge sentenced 3 nuns to at least 2½ years in prison Friday for vandalizing a nuclear missile silo during an anti-war protest last fall. Despite his strong words, U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn gave the women less than the 6 year minimum called for under sentencing guidelines. Jackie Hudson was sentenced to 2½ years, Carol Gilbert to 2 years 9 months, and Ardeth Platte to 3 years, 5 months.
The nuns had until Aug. 25 to report to prison but chose to go immediately. Some peace activists have said the
felony convictions were harsh and intended to have a chilling effect on other protesters, but the prosecutor said the nuns were repeat offenders who deserved prison. He said Platte had been arrested at least 10 times at anti-war protests, Hudson 5 times and Gilbert at least 13 times.
Beforehand, the nuns defiantly told a crowd of 150 supporters outside the courthouse they were not afraid of
prison. "Whatever sentence I receive today will be joyfully accepted as an offering for peace and with God's help it will not injure my spirit," a choked-up Platte said.
The Roman Catholic nuns are longtime anti-war activists. Platte & Gilbert lived in a Baltimore activist
community founded by the late peace activist Philip Berrigan. Hudson lived in a similar community in Poulsbo,
Wash. After their arrest, the women chose to stay in jail, refusing the govt's offer to release them on their own
recognizance. |
Since 1987, almost half of all demonstrations in Tibet have been led by women. Nuns in particular have been the leaders of most of these demonstrations. Nuns are more able to protest than other women because they have no one dependent upon them who will suffer if they are caught. Most of the demonstrations have involved a small group of nuns shouting slogans or putting up posters, and have lasted for only a few minutes. Many of the nuns who have protested have been very young, some only teenagers, yet the punishment for protest if they are caught has almost always been detention or imprisonment.
Among youngest imprisoned was nun Sherap Ngawang from Michungri Nunnery, reportedly age 15 when arrested 2.3.92. She participated twice in small demonstrations in Lhasa on 8.14.89 & 2.3.92 when she & 4 other nuns from Michungri and a monk from Sera Monastery protested together. Ngawang Wangdron, just 16 at the time, was among the other nuns involved in this protest.
Life for Tibetan nuns as political prisoners has not been made any easier because of their gender or their youth.
Even young teenage girls have been forced to endure extreme torture in prison. When Rigzin Choenyi was
arrested after 9.22.89 demonstration, she was 18. After her arrest she was detained in solitary confinement at the Gutsa Detention Center for 2 months where she was interrogated between one and three times every day.
After she received her sentence of 7 years in prison and was moved to Drapchi Prison, torture became worse. In Drapchi she was shocked with an electric baton in the mouth if she was caught reciting Buddhist texts, and forced to kneel in water & ice when she was caught prostrating. She also had blood forcibly extracted on 3 occasions leaving her so weak that she had to be hospitalized for almost a month.
In Oct. 1993, 14 nuns in Drapchi Prison, largest in Tibet, made a recording of freedom songs on a tape-recorder
smuggled into the prison with the help of a non-political prisoner. The recording was then distributed throughout
Tibet and later the rest of the world. Despite the great risk, each of the women stated her name on the recording
and dedicated a song or poem to friends & supporters. Rigzin Choenyi, in Drapchi Prison at the time of the
recording, stated that the 14 nuns had taken this risk in order to let the world know of their presence in prison.
The songs are testament to Tibetan political prisoners the Chinese claim do not exist. …
The young nuns who recorded these songs were all put in Drapchi Prison for peaceful protests for Tibet's
independence. Phuntshok Nyidron was arrested for 10.14.89 protest. Gyaltsen Dolkar, Gyaltsen Choezom, Tenzin Thupten, Lhundrup Sangmo, Rigzin Choekyi, Palden Choedon, and Jigme Yangchen were all arrested for protests August 1990. Ngawang Lochoe, Ngawang Tsamdrol, and Ngawang Choekyi were arrested for protests May 1992. Ngawang Sangdrol, Namdol Lhamo and Ngawang Choezom were arrested for protests in June of 1992.
One of the nuns who made the recording was Ngawang Sangdrol. She was born in 1977 and arrested for the first time in 1987, at the age of 10, for participating in a demonstration. At that time she was detained for 15 days. In 1990, at the age of 13, she was again arrested for participating in 8.28.90 demonstration in Lhasa. Although she was considered too young to be tried, Ngawang was detained for 9 months.
Ngawang is currently the female political prisoner with the longest prison term in Tibet. She is not due to be
released until 2010 at which time she will have spent more than half of her 33 years in prison. All of the young nuns who made the recording in 1993 continue to live behind prison bars. Since 1993, many other nuns like these 14 have suffered simply for singing songs in prison.
For 2 months after this Sherap Ngawang had extreme pain in her kidneys and was unable to walk. She &
Ngawang Wangdron were released Feb. 1995, at the end of their 3 year sentences. Yet Sherap Ngawang was still very ill even after returning home, due to the severe beatings she had received in prison. Although she was taken to many doctors nothing could be done and she died shortly after her release from prison. • Jackie O.'s Russkie Mata Hari ¹ ² another sparkler for the Gemstone file
|
… (suffragette Victoria) Woodhull's fascination has to do with her adventurous rise from a really sordid childhood as part of a frontier family of illiterate frauds and thieves to a position of national prominence, lecturing on the leading social issues of the day; publishing a newspaper; running for U.S. President; testifying before Congress on women's rights; running a Wall St brokerage firm; then losing it all and being thrown into jail; then miraculously recovering to establish a new life in a new country, finally dying peacefully in extreme old age, having lived for decades as a kind of rural Lady Bountiful as mistress of an English country estate.What is glossed over in Goldsmith's narrative is the extent to which all her story revolves around 2 big pots of money Woodhull got by immense good luck, both from Commodore Vanderbilt.
She arrived in New York in 1870, hoping to earn a living there from prostitution, from holding seances where people could communicate for a fee with departed family members, and from other vulgar schemes she had practiced with her family all her life.
Woodhull was able to pass this information to Vanderbilt, who invested heavily in the shares in question and sold out at the planned price, just before the stock collapsed. Vanderbilt paid Woodhull half his earnings from this scam, which came to about $700,000, transforming her in one fell sweep from a pauper to one of the wealthiest women in America.
All the rest of what she did was based on the combination of this money and her need for attention; the stock brokerage was a mere front for the Vanderbilt interests and never made her any money; the presidential candidacy and newspaper were publicity stunts undertaken to promote the ideas of suffragists and social reformers of all kinds who were drawn to her by the magnet of her cash, and flattered her.
When the money was gone she tried to get more by using her newspaper to blackmail public figures with threats to write about their sex lives, but got thrown into jail instead.>br>
Broke and near dispair she proved how much the gods loved her by suddenly and even more unexpectedly acquiring a new huge pot of money.
Commodore Vanderbilt died, leaving a will which gave small annuities to 9 of his children and the rest of his immense fortune to one favored son. Some of the disfavored children challenged the will, claiming their father had been mentally incompetent, and that the proof of it was his association with spiritualists and similar crackpots. | |
Sugar and spice 3 new books tackle the third rail of sisterhood: female competition at work, w/ men & w/ each other. Can a woman play like a girl and win? 2.15.06 Peg Tyre Newsweek
The authors of 3 new books set out to help women sort through those conflicting messages about competition and power.
• Tripping the Prom Queen the truth about women and rivalry
• I Can't Believe She Did That! why women betray other women at work
• The Girl's Guide to Being A Boss (W/o Being a Bitch) succeeding as chick-in-charge
In "Tripping the Prom Queen," (St. Martin's Press, March 2006), Susan Shapiro Barash, a feminist scholar, argues that it's high time women pulled back the curtain on feminist orthodoxy. Yes, sisterhood is powerful. But it can also be fraught with conflict, envy, betrayal and jealousy. Power makes us twisted, she argues. Why?
Women are at best ambivalent and at worst, demeaned by the success of other women. Women are uncomfortable about competing openly and run down women who do.
Calling upon a musty-feeling psychoanalytic paradigm, Barash argues, somewhat confusingly, that women don't see themselves as individuals. They don't measure success in their own terms either but rather envy women who succeed and take pleasure in their failure. (Did I mention it was confusing?)
In her book, she interviews women who confess their own ugly feelings toward other women. Her conclusion is one that only a sorority pledge could deny: women pay a steep price for constantly measuring themselves against each other.
Nan Mooney, who wrote "I Can't Believe She Did That!" (St. Martin's Press, 2005), dwells on the debt modern women owe to feminism. Then she sets about showing how difficult it can be to work with women and how tough it can be for women to admit that. The problem, as Mooney sees it, is that women compete: who's the best-looking, who gets the guy, who gets the plum assignments at work.
But, unlike guys, who can be found pumping their fists in the air to celebrate a victory, women are uncomfortable even admitting they're interested in coming out on top. Instead, they do each other dirty in the dirtiest of ways, "attacking underground while continuing to appear warm and friendly on the surface."
Working women, she suggests, are often victims of their own inflated expectations for other women. Yes, we should all work together to create opportunities for each other. But "just because we are women," she writes, "does not mean we can predict or understand each other's needs."
The authors of "The Girl's Guide To Being a Boss (Without Being a Bitch)" (Morgan Road, April 2006), Caitlin Friedman and Kimberly Yorio, must have grown up in the post-Title IX era because their book doesn't concern itself much with the idea that "nice girls don't compete."
Just got the corner office? Relax, the authors advise. Enjoy. You've earned it. Friedman and Yorio, a public relations duo, have had enough experience in the workplace to know that being female doesn't make it any easier to manage or be managed. Want to be an excellent boss and a fine example to the younger women in your company? Make sure to use your power for good of yourself, your company and your underlings, not for evil.
The authors of "The Girl's Guide" weave in interviews from female small-business owners who describe the bitter and the sweet that comes with being the women in charge. Their revelation? If the woman you work for is a bad manager, it may have less to do with gender politics and more to do with the fact that managers everywhere can be anxious, insecure and poorly trained. The Girl's Guide lays out what women in power need to do in order to be firm, fair and above all, successful.
black widows
|
Crashes: did 'black widows' bring down the planes? 9.6.04 M.Hosenball & A.Kuchment Newsweek
Russian officials confirmed what the rest of the world suspected: that terrorism was a likely cause of 2 nearly
simultaneous crashes of airliners that took off from the same Moscow airport one night last week. The FSB
(formerly the KGB) announced that traces of the explosive hexogen had been found in the wreckage of Siberia Airlines Flight 1047, en route to Sochi, and Volga-Aviaexpress Flight 1303, to Volgograd. The planes had taken off from Moscow's Domodedovo airport within 45 minutes of each other and apparently crashed just 3 minutes apart. FSB spokesman Nikolai Zakharov confirmed that investigators had "defined a circle of individuals possibly involved in conducting the terrorist act." The 2 crash sites were about 500 miles apart. 90 passengers & crew are believed to have died.
Edgy Russian officials initially tried to steer speculation about the possible causes of the crashes toward the
accidental: it was suggested that mechanical problems or contaminated fuel could have brought the planes down. Western experts, citing the lack of precedent for the crash of 2 planes within minutes of each other, ridiculed the early Russian explanations. Speculation about possible accidental causes was undermined when reports surfaced that a radio transponder which broadcast the identification of one of the planes to controllers briefly sent out a hijack-alert message before it cut out permanently, apparently as a result of the crash.
Then the FSB announced its finding of explosives residue.A little-known Islamic extremist group called the Al-
Islambouli Brigades, which previously claimed credit for trying to kill the president of Pakistan, issued a statement on a jihadi Web site claiming that 5 member teams of its mujahedin had hijacked the 2 planes; U.S. intelligence officials were not sure the claim was authentic. |
European women join ranks of jihadis
Authorities confront an unsettling new trend: militants' wives who are suspected of plotting suicide attacks, with their mates or alone. 1.10.06 Sebastian Rotella L.A. Times
Amsterdam The women of the Dutch extremist network were a new breed of holy warriors on the front lines where Islam and the West collide. In the male-dominated world of Islamic extremism, they saw themselves as full-fledged partners in jihad. Wives watched videos about female suicide bombers, posed for photos holding guns and fired automatic weapons during clandestine target practice.
The story of the Dutch network, 14 members of which are now on trial, reveals the increasing aggressiveness and prominence of female extremists in Europe. In a chilling trend in the Netherlands and Belgium, police are investigating militants' wives suspected of plotting suicide attacks with their husbands, or on their own.
In November, a Belgian named Muriel Degauque rammed an explosives-filled vehicle into a U.S. convoy in Iraq, becoming the first Western female convert to Islam to carry out a suicide bombing for the networks affiliated with Al Qaeda. U.S. commandos killed her husband a day later as he was reportedly preparing a suicide attack wearing an explosives vest near Fallouja, Iraq.
For years, women have committed suicide attacks in places such as Chechnya and the Palestinian territories. At least one female suicide bomber had struck in Iraq before Degauque, and in November a would-be female suicide bomber was implicated in Iraqi operatives' bombing of 3 hotels in the Jordanian capital. |
Acquitted in the plot against Massoud, Aroud moved to Switzerland, where she has been charged with operating a website that incited terrorism. Newer female recruits include daughters of immigrant families who rediscover their Muslim roots as well as native Europeans such as Degauque. They are gaining more acceptance because of a perception among male leaders that all Muslims must defend the faith against attack, analysts say.
Western investigators are somewhat relieved that Degauque wasn't used for a more audacious attack in the West.
"It would have been valuable operationally to have a Belgian blond" for plots in Europe, said a senior French anti-terrorism official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "But I wonder if these networks are more erratic, more dispersed than that, leaving a lot to spontaneous individual initiative. Also, the Iraqi insurgency needs cannon fodder for suicide attacks."
Another case raised fears closer to home. In November, Moroccan police arrested Belgian-born Mohammed Reha, allegedly a top operative with myriad international connections. Reha told interrogators that he had met in Brussels with the wife of an extremist on trial in Belgium, investigators say. During the meeting at a train station last summer, the woman reportedly told Reha that she and other wives of imprisoned extremists were ready to become suicide bombers in Europe. She asked for help to get training and explosives, according to his account, which was first reported by Agence France-Presse news service.
Belgian police questioned the woman, who has not been arrested or publicly identified. She denied Reha's account, an investigator said.
Police, however, have confirmed that Reha met with a top suspect in the Dutch network, Samir Azzouz, who was allegedly planning an attack in the Netherlands. Belgian and Dutch authorities are investigating his claim that he offered to provide him with the aspiring female bombers from Belgium.
"It's very interesting to us," said prosecutor Van Boetzelaer. "Supposedly Azzouz says, 'I want to do an attack, do you have somebody for me?' Then Reha volunteers the 'sisters.' That's the version we have. But we have a lot to do to confirm this."
Azzouz, 19, was a central figure in the Dutch network whose members, mostly in their teens or 20s, were raised in a society proud of its progressive attitudes about equality of the sexes. That, investigators believe, helps explain the ferocity of half a dozen female militants in the group.
|
[ This person is very much more responsible than any other single individual for the shape of the Middle East today. ] 
"Both Bell and T.E. Lawrence stood hardly 5'5", yet both could ride with great determination and endurance through the desert for hours on end.
Both died prematurely after recurring bouts of depression, burn-out and exhaustion."
"It was she who in 1913 dashed off for Herbert Samuel a map of Palestine Prima, the biblical region which the Jews claimed as their inheritance,
without knowing that, within a year, in the turmoil of war, the recipient would present a paper to the cabinet entitled 'The Future of Palestine'."
Through her instruction of Kim Philby's father, she also determined creation of Saudi Arabia, and thereby the Wahhabi domination of the Arab world.
"In 1922, as the right arm of Sir Percy Cox, Britain's High Commissioner in the newly mandated Iraq, she drew the frontiers of Transjordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the Yemen and adjacent territories, for her chief to present to Arab leaders at a conference at Ujair on the Gulf Coast. When she arrived in Cairo with Cox and the Sharifian or Hashemite delegates to whom the largest of those promises was made, she was delighted to find Churchill's package, formulated in London with aid of pro-Arab TE Lawrence at one elbow and pro-Israeli Richard Meinertzhagen at the other, agreed in almost every detail with hers." |
Azzouz's wife, Abida, 25, came to Islam through her mother, a Dutch convert. His defense lawyer has alleged that Abida was the driving force behind Azzouz's radicalism, but authorities say they do not have enough evidence to charge her. Azzouz, who was arrested in October, is considered a top figure in the Dutch network, along with Nourredine Fatmi, a diminutive, Moroccan-born militant with a reputation as a hot-headed charmer.
Fatmi "married" a 16-year-old girl in a secret and unofficial ceremony presided over by another militant, Mohammed Bouyeri. The newlyweds spent the wedding night watching videos of suicide bombers, according to testimony.
"Once, when she was with Fatmi in a car, he said to her that she had to die as a martyr," said Wim de Bruin, a spokesman for Dutch prosecutors. "He talked about filling a car with explosives and driving it into a shopping center. He said they would do it together."
In November 2004, Bouyeri assassinated filmmaker Theo van Gogh. After his arrest, police rounded up Bouyeri's associates for allegedly plotting follow-up attacks. Fatmi left his "wife" and went underground. Last spring he met and quickly "married" another woman, Soumaya Sahla, a 21-year-old nursing student and ardent fundamentalist.
They floated among hide-outs in the Netherlands and Belgium. He took her to Morocco to meet his parents; he also took her to a forest outside Amsterdam to practice shooting with an Agram 2000 machine gun, according to testimony.
Sahla allegedly gathered intelligence on potential targets. In a wiretapped phone call June 20, she tried to persuade her sister, an employee of a pharmacy frequented by politicians, to give her the home address of legislator Ali, whose crusade against fundamentalism has made her a target.
During the couple's final days on the run, they hid at the home of Martine van der Oeven, an accused accomplice in The Hague. She drove them to Amsterdam on 6.22.05.
Fatmi has admitted that he was on his way to assassinate Ali, according to recent testimony. Police swarmed the couple on the platform of a subway station. The officers overpowered them as Fatmi reached into his backpack for the Agram machine gun and Sahla shouted, "Allah is great!"
Sahla is now serving a prison sentence for weapons possession. Fatmi is on trial. Minutes after they were captured, police outside the station arrested Van der Oeven, the driver. Her profile sums up the worst fears of investigators. She is a convert with cherubic Dutch looks.
Her former profession: policewoman.
|
2.28.06 BlackNews
NYC Much maligned by the U.S. media, Sudan's top selling literary novelist, Kola Boof, proves that she was Osama Bin Laden's mistress in startling detail as her autobiography Diary of a Lost Girl finally hits America today in hardcover.
Boof's 441 page autobiography is decidedly literary and contains over 90 detailed pages of her time with bin Laden, including hunting & fishing excursions with the terror chief, very graphic details about their sex life, bin Laden's gift for writing poetry, his marijuana smoking and his reputed illnesses (Boof claims that Ayman Al-Zawahri acted as Bin Laden's doctor and that his "kidney disease" is greatly exaggerated).
Boof, who is half Arab Egyptian and was born Muslim, has become infamous for her criticism of Arab Muslim "imperialism", particularly the abuse of black women and children in Sudan & Egypt, and writes quite passionately about "terrorism" and why she believes Americans should take it more seriously.
Kola Boof, who's published 6 books in 8 countries, was adopted & raised in U.S. by black Americans in 1979, became a U.S. citizen in 1993 and returned to North Africa as an adult in 1994. She's the mother of 2 sons. |
Interview w/ Osama bin Laden's former African mistress
2.06 & Bruce Dunne BlackNews
Author of 6 books published in 8 countries, Kola Boof is not only Sudan's top selling novelist, but in 1996, was the mistress of Osama Bin Laden, a fact that jeopardized her American citizenship 4 years ago, until Morocco's Prince Fabrizzio Ruspolli confirmed Boof's claim that she had been held against her will by bin Laden at Ruspoli's estate for sexual purposes.
Bruce Dunne : Where is bin Laden?
B. Dunne : What do you think of the recent rumors that Bin Laden is dead?
B. Dunne : You say you lived with bin Laden for 6 months in 1996, and I'll be asking you some very tough questions about that in a moment, but what was he like back then?
Because I'm black and wasn't Muslim at that time, he considered me a "non-woman". A piece of meat for men to wipe their sins off on.
B. Dunne : Bin Laden biographer Peter Bergen has called you delusional. He says that Osama Bin Laden was never in Morocco in 1996. He claims bin Laden has never been to Morocco period.
B. Dunne : Peter Bergen says that bin Laden is a chronic prayer, praying ten or twelve times a day. |
B. Dunne : You say that you're annoyed by American women who complain that you don't act like a rape victim.
K. Boof : It was ten years ago that Bin Laden raped me. I can't imagine why I should be crying and acting emotional. Of course it was terrible being raped, but I had to survive and that meant I had to pretend to like the man. There was no time for whining..and, in writing the book, no time for feminist theatrics. He raped me the first night and we became lovers, because I had to survive.
B. Dunne : Most people definitely haven't read your novels and poems. They don't know that you're Sudan's most published literary writer. You say that it's because you're so intelligent that bin Laden was attracted to you.
K. Boof : Osama's mother was like a feminist, she refused to wear a burka, two or three of bin Laden's wives are university professors. I don't see why that's so hard for Americans to believe. They think because they've never heard of me or because my name sounds comical to them that I'm just a bimbo. And stupid. When they see that I'm black, they tack on "liar".
B. Dunne : I have to admit I loved your autobiography, but do you really believe that you know more about bin Laden than his wives?
K. Boof : Well in any mansion, it's the maids and the "whores" who know the most. Trust me.
B. Dunne : Bin Laden's been rumored to have suffered from kidney problems. Can you tell us anything about that?
K. Boof : I'd rather people buy the book, so they can read about his health difficulties in detail. An interview isn't the proper...
B. Dunne : You say that you're a liberal Democrat, but you're very supportive of President Bush's war on terrorism. Is that correct?
K. Boof : I'm not interested in President Bush in the least, and yes, I'm a liberal Democrat. I'm also a person who comes from the Arab world and I can tell you that I was raised in Sudanese elementary school to believe that America is Satan's country, that white men are "the devil" and to strap a bomb on my back and blow up innocent people at the post office in the name of Allah.
Look at this idiot president in Iran. I want blacks in America to understand that the "Arab" is just as much of a Satan as the White man. To me, the Arab man is more Satanic than the White man. No race likes black people, not Arabs, Caucasians, Asians, Latinos, Mulattoes; nobody likes blacks. Black Americans need to look at the recent massacre of Black Sudanese in a public park in Egypt and get a clue.
You have to be sensible about terrorism, and I think that Americans are way too spoiled, too rich and comfortable. They like to fancy themselves as fair people, but it's the relaxed, fair ones that die of poisoned drinking water while listening to their Barbra Streisand records, although I'm a huge Streisand fan myself.
|
|
Herodias 15 BC - 40 AD Jewish princess, Herod's grandaughter. Via her daughter Salome's salacious dancing, advocated John the Baptist's execution. Mistaken by name for nocturnal aspect of goddess Diana, deity of witches & lesbians. |
I advise Americans to question their govt's tactics, surely, but when it comes to Arab muslim imperialism and terrorism, support your govt. There is corruption in every world govt, but none are more corrupt than the govts of the Arab world, and that is Kola Boof's experience as a half-Arab, Black African woman, and my opinion is just as important any other American's.
B. Dunne : Who despises you the most? Arab Muslim leaders, the Nation of Islam, American media, Black American men or Bin Laden experts?
K. Boof : I don't know.
B. Dunne : In 2004, you were able to secure about 600 million dollars worth of guns & ammunition for Sudan's south rebel army by giving a rather powerful speech in Israel. You were also featured on Benjamin Netanyahu's web site. What exactly are your connections to Israel or the SPLA's for that matter?
K. Boof : Israelis and the South Sudanese are nothing alike, but we share a common enemy, a very common struggle. If it weren't for Israel we wouldn't have had food or medicine or weapons to defend our children in the South Sudan. We had no other offering of help. As a member of the SPLA, I had to work very closely with the Israelis on behalf of my people. I would do anything for Africa.
B. Dunne : Very recently, with the James Frey scandal and the debates about the integrity of memoir nowadays, how do we know that your book isn't a pack of lies, just another fabulous scheme to further your own writing career by getting rich off bin Laden's name?
K. Boof : You don't know. My book is true and none of it is fabricated, and for those who think otherwise, I really don't give a damn. This is my life story, my soul book.
|
1.1.07 Jessica Garrison L.A. Times
When Yanic Chan and Vanessa Van split up in 1995, they couldn't afford a lawyer. So, like thousands of other people without money, they filled out the divorce paperwork themselves, with help from a friend. In November 1997, Van went to the Riverside County Courthouse to enter a final judgment. "The clerk put the stamp on it," Van said. "I asked, 'Everything finished?' She said 'Yes.' "
Driven by rising legal fees, a shortage of legal aid lawyers and a do-it-yourself philosophy, about 80% of people in California handle their own divorces, according to court officials. Court officials across the state say they suspect the problem is vast. In Los Angeles County, Kathleen Dixon, who heads the Superior Court's programs for self-represented people, estimated that a third or more of all divorce petitions filed in the county in the last several years have not been finalized. |
One L.A. County Superior Court judge, Mark Juhas, found that about a third of the roughly 3,600 divorce cases filed in 2001 and 2002 and assigned to his courtroom remain open. Some of those couples may have reconciled, but Juhas suspects that many more are stuck or may even think they are divorced when they are not.
Bonnie Hough is supervising attorney for the Center for Families, Children and the Courts, a division of the state Judicial Council's Administrative Office of the Courts. She noted a study in Placer County in the 1980s that found that 30% of people there who filed for divorce did not complete the process.
At one legal services center in Van Nuys, officials say they see 20 people a month who incorrectly thought they were divorced.
"They come in screaming," said Norma Valencia, a paralegal at the center operated by Neighborhood Legal Services. "They say, 'You don't understand my situation. I want a divorce right now.' "
Others show up weeping: They've remarried without a finalized divorce, and they're afraid to tell their new spouses. Many people, Valencia said, think divorce is like a traffic ticket and if they fail to take care of it properly, the court will track them down and notify them.
But it doesn't work like that. In California, getting divorced takes at least three steps: filing divorce papers, serving them on the spouse and then writing and processing a judgment with the court. The process can be more complicated if there are children or fights over assets. A divorce cannot become final until at least 6 months after the date the papers are served.
Increasingly, across California and the nation, people are handling their own civil court matters. In San Diego County, one of the few counties where statistics are available, 46% of people represented themselves in divorces in 1992; by 2000 that figure had climbed to 77%.
One reason: increasing fees for lawyers combined with decreasing legal aid services for poor people, said Richard Zorza, who coordinates a national network of organizations working on self-representation. Also a factor, he said, is a "Home Depot philosophy of people feeling they can do things on their own." But the legal system wasn't organized with a do-it-yourself approach. It's meant to be navigated by lawyers. And people without legal training often make mistakes.
"People just don't get it done. They don't know how to get it done," said L.A. Superior Court judge Juhas. "That's troubling. There are legal ramifications to continuing to be married."
Juhas said the problem was brought home to him a few years ago, when two people appeared in his courtroom on a routine matter. They had filed for a divorce a few years earlier, and both had since remarried. Juhas said he looked down at their file and then back up at the couple. "I said, 'Do you realize your judgment was never entered?' "
In plain English, that meant they weren't divorced. Luckily for the couple, and their new spouses, Juhas finalized their divorce without invalidating their new marriages. But it got him thinking: What about the thousands of other people whose files remain open?
Last spring, the judge, one of more than 40 who handle family law in L.A. County, began calling in about 100 people a month whose divorce cases have languished and asking them if they need help. About 10% say they have reconciled, and about 30% ignore his summons. But more than half, he said, want to be divorced and just need some help.
Just after 9 a.m. on a recent morning, Juhas hoisted a stack of divorce files onto his desk and began calling names. About a dozen people stared back. Some were alone. Some were with spouses. Some looked fearful. Others glowered. Juhas asked them to stand and follow Janice Shurlow, a lawyer who works with the court helping people representing themselves.
Shurlow led them to a conference room. "If both parties are here and you get along, please feel free to sit together," she said. "If you don't get along, feel free to sit on opposite sides of the room."
For the next two hours, attorneys, some volunteer, others employees of the court's family law resource center, assisted people with paperwork.
A man with tattoos lacing up his neck and down his arms bent over a stack of forms in the front of the room. The man, who said he did not want his name printed because of the personal nature of the matter, said he had filed for divorce in 2002.
"I thought I was divorced," he said. A moment later, he said he knew he wasn't divorced but was uncertain about what to do after his spouse refused to sign papers he gave her.
"Out of sight, out of mind," he said. He looked at the mass of paperwork in front of him and sighed. "It's so easy to get married. Sign your name and say, 'I do,' " he said. "Say I don't. I don't want to be married anymore."
Court officials say they are studying Juhas' approach and may expand it if it proves successful. At the same time, court officials in L.A. and elsewhere in the state have launched self-help programs so people can get divorced. But that does little to help the thousands who are stuck in legal limbo now, Chan and Van among them.
After they thought their divorce had become final in 1997, Chan married a second time. He divorced, properly, in 2003, although he later discovered that marriage was not legally valid. But that was nothing compared with the problem he encountered when he tried to bring his third wife to the U.S.
Earlier this year, he got a notice from the U.S. State Department asking for proof of his divorce from Van. He provided the paperwork the Riverside court had given him in 1997.
"They said everything is not final," Chan said. "I felt very upset. I could not eat for 3 days."
He found a lawyer, Faith Nouri. She said a judge had asked for additional information about child visitation. But Van and Chan say they had never received any notice from the court. In 2001, after their case had been dormant for 5 years, the Riverside court dismissed it. Again, Chan and Van said they were never notified.
But now there is no easy way for a judge to retroactively divorce them. Nouri said she plans to ask a judge later this month to set aside the dismissal, but she said "it's a long shot." If the judge won't, Nouri said, she doesn't know how Chan can bring his new wife to this country.
"Then he is in a bigamous marriage," she said. "There will be a lot of explaining to do."
3.22.02 Jim Parker ComputerEdge |
porn site pop-up ad
WARNING!!! Your computer is spying on you! 140,000 office workers fired for porn on work computers. Don't ruin your job, or your marriage, by having someone finding porn on your computer. Your computer is tracking your internet activities - protect yourself CLICK HERE TO REMOVE THE EVIDENCE TODAY
Emotional investment
… One wonders whether Brooks & his students misled themselves the moment they gave their
mechanical contraptions pet names. Brooks indirectly acknowledges this pitfall by retelling the story of computer
program ELIZA developed by AI pioneer Jos. Weizenbaum to simulate circular conversation technique of trained
psychotherapist, goal being demonstration of how easily a computer simulates conversation thereby proving
bankruptcy of efforts to reproduce human cognition. |
|
I activated Pop-up Stopper & closed all windows, then returned to the chat. There I noticed something odd
about "angie". I kept seeing the same generic messages, things like "hi everybody!" "a/s/l/?" and "anybodyelse got
a webcam?" (note the intentional typo). With a start, I realized that Angie was a bot. In this case, a simple
"chatterbot". A bot isn't just an engine for searching the Web. It's any little app that mimics human behavior in a limited way, like searching the Web or luring unwary people to pay porn sites. Anybody with a little Visual Basic experience can make simple bots, which are little more than fancy macros. I figure that MSN chat room had at least ten bots in it, among a whole bunch of lonely people. |
Adm. 