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Thursday, March 30, 2006

Charlie Sheen, appearing on cable television news network station CNN on March 24, questioned the credibility of the theory that 19 hijackers caused all of the destruction to the World Trade Center.

Sheen said; “It seems to me like, you know, 19 amateurs with box cutters taking over four commercial airliners and hitting 75 percent of their targets, that feels like a conspiracy theory… I am an American citizen that loves my country…. People want the truth. They want the truth. And what’s been offered to us resembles nothing of the sort.“

In recounting his reaction on the day of the event, Sheen said,”I was up early and we were gonna do a pre-shoot on Spin City, the show I used to do. I was watching the news and the north tower was burning. There was a feeling, it just didn’t look like any commercial jetliner I’ve flown on any time in my life and then when the buildings came down later on that day I said to my brother, ‘Call me insane but did it sorta look like those buildings came down in a controlled demolition?’”

Writer Marc Jacobson, of the New York magazine, who co-appeared with Sheen on the same program said in response: “Well, I think he’s doing a reasonable rendition of what other people that believe in this stuff say. And when he says he has his facts straight, I mean, I think the facts are in question. I mean, I think, just because you know what it says on all of these different Web sites doesn’t mean that that’s necessarily the fact. That’s the reason why the United States government, with their endless amounts of resources, let us down by not doing the proper work on the 9/11 Commission. That’s a real problem. Well, you know, but, I mean, it’s just one of those kind of things where you do this work and nobody really cares, but then Charlie Sheen is interested, so then everybody is interested, and that’s fine. You know, obviously, this material needs to be looked at again, because there’s been a lot of problems with the 9/11 Commission report. People feel it’s not adequate. Most of the people who had lost people during that time feel it’s not adequate. And it’s just I think we’re living in a truth vacuum, in a sense, that any time there’s a truth vacuum, these ideas — because people are smart. They put two and two together. Sometimes they get five; sometimes they get 12, but sometimes they get 11, like 9/11, but sometimes they get four. And the thing is that, if you have a situation where the so-called facts are covered up and aggressively covered up, then you’re going to get these conspiracy theories.” One website is claiming that Google had been censoring out any news articles relating to Sheen and 9/11 from it’s search engine.

Regarding the plane that hit the Pentagon, Sheen also has questions: “Just show us how this particular plane pulled off these maneuvers… It is up to us to reveal the truth. It is up to us because we owe it to the families, we owe it to the victims, we owe it to everyone’s life who was drastically altered, horrifically, that day and forever. We owe it to them to uncover what happened.”

Some supporters of Sheen’s theories have complained about the lack of mainstream media coverage. They point to CNN’s recent cancellation of Ed Asner’s interview on Showbiz Tonight, where he was expected to support Sheen’s position, as an example of the “media blackout”.

Marina Hyde of The Guardian proposed a theory of her own with regard to Sheen: “Frankly, with dentistry as expensive as yours, you simply can’t afford to let The Man stamp his jackboot down on your face, and so it is that when faced with the inquiry ‘did Lee Harvey Oswald act alone?’, you find yourself thinking: ‘God, I mean… do any of us? Like, he had to have people, you know? At least an agent and a publicist.'”

Tuesday, December 28, 2004Faina Chiang (???; pinyin: Ji?ng F?ngliáng), the Russian-born former First Lady of the Republic of China (Taiwan) and wife of the late President Chiang Ching-kuo died on December 15, 2004 of pulmonary and cardiac failure in the Taipei Vetrans Hospitial. She was 88 years old, although using the Chinese system of counting birthdays she was said to be 90.

Her funeral was held on December 27, 2004 at the Taipei Vetrans Hospital with several prominent Taiwanese politicians in attendance including President Chen Shui-bian, Kuomintang Chairman Lien Chan, and People’s First Party Chairman James Soong.

Chiang’s casket was draped with a Taiwanese Flag as well as a Kuomintang party flag.

Chiang’s body was cremated and placed in her husband’s temporary mausoleum in Taoyuan County. Current plans are to have Chiang Ching-kuo, and his father, Chiang Kai-shek‘s, remains moved from their temporary mausoleums to the Wuchih Mountain Military Cemetery. Originally, plans were to keep the two former presidents in the mausoleums until they could be buried on the Chinese mainland after reunification. However, last year a request made by Chiang Fang-liang was granted to have the remains moved to the Taipei Cemetery, Chiang Fang-liang would also be buried there.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Last night HBO premiered I Am An Animal: The Story of Ingrid Newkirk and PETA. Since its inception, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has made headlines and raised eyebrows. They are almost single-handedly responsible for the movement against animal testing and their efforts have raised the suffering animals experience in a broad spectrum of consumer goods production and food processing into a cause célèbre.

PETA first made headlines in the Silver Spring monkeys case, when Alex Pacheco, then a student at George Washington University, volunteered at a lab run by Edward Taub, who was testing neuroplasticity on live monkeys. Taub had cut sensory ganglia that supplied nerves to the monkeys’ fingers, hands, arms, legs; with some of the monkeys, he had severed the entire spinal column. He then tried to force the monkeys to use their limbs by exposing them to persistent electric shock, prolonged physical restraint of an intact arm or leg, and by withholding food. With footage obtained by Pacheco, Taub was convicted of six counts of animal cruelty—largely as a result of the monkeys’ reported living conditions—making them “the most famous lab animals in history,” according to psychiatrist Norman Doidge. Taub’s conviction was later overturned on appeal and the monkeys were eventually euthanized.

PETA was born.

In the subsequent decades they ran the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty against Europe’s largest animal-testing facility (footage showed staff punching beagle puppies in the face, shouting at them, and simulating sex acts while taking blood samples); against Covance, the United State’s largest importer of primates for laboratory research (evidence was found that they were dissecting monkeys at its Vienna, Virginia laboratory while the animals were still alive); against General Motors for using live animals in crash tests; against L’Oreal for testing cosmetics on animals; against the use of fur for fashion and fur farms; against Smithfield Foods for torturing Butterball turkeys; and against fast food chains, most recently against KFC through the launch of their website kentuckyfriedcruelty.com.

They have launched campaigns and engaged in stunts that are designed for media attention. In 1996, PETA activists famously threw a dead raccoon onto the table of Anna Wintour, the fur supporting editor-in-chief of Vogue, while she was dining at the Four Seasons in New York, and left bloody paw prints and the words “Fur Hag” on the steps of her home. They ran a campaign entitled Holocaust on your Plate that consisted of eight 60-square-foot panels, each juxtaposing images of the Holocaust with images of factory farming. Photographs of concentration camp inmates in wooden bunks were shown next to photographs of caged chickens, and piled bodies of Holocaust victims next to a pile of pig carcasses. In 2003 in Jerusalem, after a donkey was loaded with explosives and blown up in a terrorist attack, Newkirk sent a letter to then-PLO leader Yasser Arafat to keep animals out of the conflict. As the film shows, they also took over Jean-Paul Gaultier‘s Paris boutique and smeared blood on the windows to protest his use of fur in his clothing.

The group’s tactics have been criticized. Co-founder Pacheco, who is no longer with PETA, called them “stupid human tricks.” Some feminists criticize their campaigns featuring the Lettuce Ladies and “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur” ads as objectifying women. Of their Holocaust on a Plate campaign, Anti-Defamation League Chairman Abraham Foxman said “The effort by PETA to compare the deliberate systematic murder of millions of Jews to the issue of animal rights is abhorrent.” (Newkirk later issued an apology for any hurt it caused). Perhaps most controversial amongst politicians, the public and even other animal rights organizations is PETA’s refusal to condemn the actions of the Animal Liberation Front, which in January 2005 was named as a terrorist threat by the United States Department of Homeland Security.

David Shankbone attended the pre-release screening of I Am An Animal at HBO’s offices in New York City on November 12, and the following day he sat down with Ingrid Newkirk to discuss her perspectives on PETA, animal rights, her responses to criticism lodged against her and to discuss her on-going life’s work to raise human awareness of animal suffering. Below is her interview.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

India is the latest of the countries where the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) experiment has started. Children from the village of Khairat were given the opportunity to learn how to use the XO laptop. During the last year XO was distributed to children from Arahuay in Peru, Ban Samkha in Thailand, Cardal in Uruguay and Galadima in Nigeria. The OLPC team are, in their reports on the startup of the trials, delighted with how the laptop has improved access to information and ability to carry out educational activities. Thailand’s The Nation has praised the project, describing the children as “enthusiastic” and keen to attend school with their laptops.

Recent good news for the project sees Uruguay having ordered 100,000 of the machines which are to be given to children aged six to twelve. Should all go according to plan a further 300,000 machines will be purchased by 2009 to give one to every child in the country. As the first to order, Uruguay chose the OLPC XO laptop over its rival from Intel, the Classmate PC. In parallel with the delivery of the laptops network connectivity will be provided to schools involved in the project.

The remainder of this article is based on Carla G. Munroy’s Khairat Chronicle, which is available from the OLPC Wiki. Additional sources are listed at the end.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

The U.S. has announced full diplomatic relations will be restored with Libya and the country removed from the list of nations the U.S. considers to be state sponsors of terrorism following a 45-day open comment period.

Renewal of diplomatic relations between the two states comes after extended diplomatic efforts by both parties to end the 25-year break.

“It is a result of mutual interests, agreements and understandings,” said Abdurrahman Shalgham, Libyan’s Foreign Minister.

“We are taking these actions in recognition of Libya’s continued commitment to its renunciation of terrorism and the excellent cooperation Libya has provided to the United States and other members of the international community in response to common global threats faced by the civilized world since September 11, 2001,” said Condoleezza Rice, the United States Secretary of State.

Diplomatic ties were strained between the countries following the rise to power of Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi in 1969, and U.S. economic sanctions against the country beginning in the 1970s. They were severed following the U.S. removal of diplomatic personnel from Libya in 1979 after a mob set fire to the U.S. embassy in Tripoli, and the U.S. closing the Libyan embassy and expelling Libyan diplomats in 1981.

The UN removed international economic sanctions in 1999, following Libya’s acceptance of UN Security Council Resolutions regarding Pan Am Flight 103. In 2003 Libya announced efforts to dismantle military programs to develop weapons of mass destruction as well, which led directly to diplomatic negotiations with the U.S. and the opening of a diplomatic liaison office in Tripoli in 2004.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

The European Space Agency (ESA) is seeking volunteers who would be ready to take a part on three simulated missions to Mars.

The anticipated missions will be a joint effort from ESA and the Russian Federal Space Agency. Each crew will consist of six persons – two Europeans and four Russians. The ESA is looking for 2 crewmembers and two backups that must come from ESA member nations that participate in the ELIPS program.

The flight simulation should last between 105 to 520 days in a closed modules set of total space of 500 m³. The goal of the mission is to test the psychological stress of the long-distance travel. To make the experience as realistic as possible, the contact with the external world shall exist only via the radio with a time-delay of 40 minutes (simulating the time required for signals to travel between the Earth and Mars).

The first test of 105 days should start in middle of 2008 and the last one should start at the end 2008 or the beginning of 2009.

Interested persons can apply via an application form published on the ESA website.

Thursday, October 5, 2006

A 13-hour kidnapping of four people by a bank robber in Setúbal, Portugal, ended at dawn Thursday as members of the special operations group stormed the bank facilities.

The kidnapping started yesterday at about 1400 local time (1300 UTC), when a 57 year old man attempted to rob a Banco Espírito Santo‘s bank at the Rodrigues Manito Avenue, in Setúbal. The alarm was given by a man outside of the bank who noticed the robbery.

The rapid response by the Polícia de Segurança Pública‘s (PSP) district command of Setúbal forced the robber to barricade himself in the bank with two employees and two clients who were in the bank at the time of the robbery. Cornered, the man decided to take the four people hostage, not allowing many contacts on the part of the police negotiators.

According to a PSP source, the kidnapper was armed with a 6.35m pistol and said to the negotiators that he had a explosive device with him. The police immediately sealed off the block and interrupted all telecommunications in the area, only allowing calls to the Portuguese emergency telephone number.

At 0308 local time (0238 UTC) a dozen members of the Police Special Operations Group (GOE) stormed the bank. According to PSP’s officer Manuel Augusto Silva, the kidnapper was armed but was surprised by the members of the GOE team and didn’t react, being immediately arrested.

Some minutes later, the two bank employees, a 20 year old women and a 30 year old man left the bank building. The two clients were then handcuffed and escorted from the building and were not identified.

The last to leave the bank was the kidnapper, who left escorted by the police officers and with his head covered.

As the victims, kidnapper and members of the special forces officers left the bank, a bomb disposal unit entered the bank to inspect the possible bomb of the kidnapper. A suspicious package was later detonated by the technicians following security procedures, but no explosives were found.

Although both the Portuguese authorities and news agencies had said that two of the hostages were female, the hostages were in fact three men and a women. Also, the news of a €100,000 ransom requested by the kidnapper wasn’t confirmed.

“There wasn’t any record of any kind of injuries on the police officers involved, on the four hostages, nor on the detainee” Jerónimo Torrado, officer of the PSP of Setúbal, said.