MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

Video shows US marines thrilled by the kill as shown on CNN. Note the scrolling text at the foot of the screen announcing a Passion Play about the torture and killing of Jesus Christ.

Another proud moment in US military history: Marines execute an Iraqi to the cheers of fellow soldiers

CROWLEY: Wounded, another Iraqi writhes on the ground next to his gun. The Marines kill him -- then cheer.
RIDDLE: Like, man, you guys are dead now, you know. But it was a good feeling.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fire!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah!
CROWLEY: When the battle is over and you are still standing, the adrenalin rush is huge.
RIDDLE: I mean, afterwards you're like, hell, yeah, that was awesome. Let's do it again.
CROWLEY: Inexplicable to some, but not to generations of veterans

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

US 'may need a bigger army' says Rumsfeld

US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld -- already in charge of the largest defence budget in the world, greater than the next 14 countries combined -- has said 'we may need a bigger army'.
Rumsfeld has been under pressure from Congress to expand the military by at least two divisions, or 20,000 troops.

GONAD GRABBING

Conservatives Target Testicles

This week US ultra-right-wing conservative shock-jock Rush Limbaugh rolled out a 'funny' faux advertisement for the 'Hillary Clinton Testicle Lock Box' that now any woman can use to clamp down on men's testicles just like Hillary does.
This was part of a sophisticated psychological operations program by conservatives that explicitly targets working men in America, and dates back to research first done for Richard Nixon.
Today's working poor and middle-class men, living with job insecurity and a declining standard of living, feel emasculated. Their ability to earn a living is eroding, and, with it, their sense of their own potency, their ability to project themselves onto the world and "conquer" it in a way that meets the needs of their family. The result is becoming conspicuous: working men are getting angry or falling into despair.

Boys lose penises after botched circumcisions

Five African youths have had their penises amputated after botched circumcisions in the Eastern Cape since the beginning of November, the provincial health department said on Friday.

ENTROPY FALLS APART

Beads of doubt: breaking the second law of thermodynamics

Scientists at the Australian National University (ANU) have carried out an experiment involving lasers and microscopic beads that disobeys the so-called Second Law of Thermodynamics, something many scientists had considered impossible. The law describess entropy: the tendency for all matter and energy in the universe to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity.
The finding has implications for nanotechnology - the design and construction of molecular machines. They may not work as expected.
It may also help scientists better understand DNA and proteins, molecules that form the basis of life and whose behaviour in some circumstances is not fully explained.

NEW WORLD ORDER

Lost? hiding? Your mobile phone is keeping tabs

Families and employers are adopting surveillance technology once used mostly to track soldiers and prisoners. New electronic services with names like uLocate and Wherify Wireless make a very personal piece of information for cellphone users — physical location — harder to mask.
Privacy advocates say the lack of legal clarity about who can gain access to location information poses a serious risk.
The new generation of tracking devices takes many forms, from plastic bracelets that can be locked onto children to small boxes with tiny antennae that can be placed unobtrusively in cars.

PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

A dishevelled Saddam Hussein and a shevelled Nora al Tamimi

Kurds captured Saddam, not US

Saddam Hussein was captured by American soldiers only after he had been taken prisoner by Kurdish forces, drugged and abandoned ready for US troops to recover him, a British Sunday newspaper said.
Saddam came into the hands of the Kurdish Patriotic Front after being betrayed to the group by a member of the al-Jabour tribe, whose daughter had been raped by Saddam's son Uday, leading to a blood feud, reported the Sunday Express, quoting a senior British military intelligence officer.

Daughter of slain Iraqi opposition leader says US helped Saddam in 1993 to quash coup attempt

The daughter of a prominent Iraqi opposition leader, who was assassinated in Beirut by Saddam Hussein's secret service in 1994 said the US was a virtual accomplice in her father's murder.
Nora al Tamimi said her father Taleb al Suhail al Tamimi had planned a coup d'etat to overthrow Saddam in1993. "But the Americans, who did not want the coup to succeed possibly because they were certain my father would not go along with their polices, tipped off Saddam about the impending putsch by my father and gave the names of his top aides," Nora said. "All of them died in Saddam's torture chambers."

TIME Person of the Year: The American Soldier

The US GI is TIME's Person of the Year: "They swept across Iraq and conquered it in 21 days. They stand guard on streets pot-holed with skepticism and rancor. They caught Saddam Hussein. They are the face of America, its might and good will, in a region unused to democracy."

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

DeLay says US should return to moon for strategic reasons

America must establish a more robust and permanent human presence in space, starting with our return to the moon, said US Office of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay
'It's time our space program took on a new mission, a new vision, a new calling,' DeLay said. 'In an age of dynamic technological advancement and military uncertainty, a national commitment to space is not a voluntary initiative: it is a strategic imperative.

PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

Albright thinks Bush hiding bin Laden

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told Fox News Channel analyst Morton Kondracke yesterday she suspects President Bush knows the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and is simply waiting for the most politically expedient moment to announce his capture.
Kondracke made the announcement about what Albright told him backstage before an appearance on another Fox show on 'Special Report With Brit Hume.'
Kondracke was incredulous that a former secretary of state could believe something like that about a U.S. administration.

HOT SPOTS

US embassy says 'throw in the towel' - leave Saudi Arabia

A travel warning was issued to alert Americans to security concerns, the Department of State authorized the departure of family members and non-emergency employees of the US Embassy and Consulates on a voluntary basis. "Private American citizens should evaluate their own security situations and should consider departing the country," the travel warning said. It superseded an earlier warning issued on December 8, 2003.

OUR GALAXY

Projected birds-eye view of the Milky Way, based on a census of 500,000 stars.

New arm of Milky Way galaxy discovered

Australian astronomers have discovered an extra cosmic arm in the Milky Way that they believe wraps around the outskirts of the vast galaxy like a thick gas border.
Astronomers at scientific research group, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), hope the find will help paint a better picture of the Milky Way galaxy, which is home to Earth.
CSIRO scientist Naomi McClure-Griffiths said the gas border, which is 6500 light years thick, showed the Milky Way had a structure similar to those of most other galaxies, which have gassy spiral arms extending beyond the more central stellar spiral arms.

Our growing, breathing galaxy

Long assumed to be a relic of the distant past, the Milky Way turns out to be a dynamic, living object.
The Milky Way is not a finished work but rather a body that is still forming. This realization has relied heavily on observing other galaxies and bringing the lessons back home. Our galaxy is tearing apart small satellite galaxies and incorporating their stars. Meanwhile gas clouds are continually arriving from intergalactic space. No longer can researchers speak of galaxy formation in the past tense.

BIG TIP OFF

Malaysia moots cross-cultural male circumcision

The Malasian prime minister's religious affairs adviser has suggested that circumcision can bring Malaysians of all races and religions together.
Dr Abdul Hamid Othman said that with the growing popularity of circumcision among the country's non-Muslim minorities - who see it as good hygienic practice - they too could be invited to join in the celebrations with their Muslim friends.
Circumcision is a rite of passage for young Muslim boys, and in Malaysia it is common for the ceremony to become an event with dozens, or even hundreds of boys being circumcised together.

PROPAGANDA CENTRAL

Congressman questions timing of Saddam capture

Washington Democrat Jim McDermott claimed the U.S. could have found Saddam 'a long time ago if they wanted.' Asked if he thought the weekend capture was timed to help Bush, McDermott chuckled and said: 'Yeah. Oh, yeah. There's too much by happenstance for it to be just a coincidental thing.'
McDermott said: 'I don't know that it was definitely planned on this weekend, but I know they've been in contact with people all along who knew basically where he was. It was just a matter of time till they'd find him.

GENIE REBOTTLED

A net of control

Developments in technology, law and commerce seem to be directed toward changing the open nature of the Internet. Internet II will create opportunities for business and government to control and monitor cyberspace.
Soon, it is feared by some expert analysts, nothing will be allowed to even appear on the Internet without having a proper technical authorization.

THE REVISION THING

Saddam key in early CIA plot

While many have thought that Saddam first became involved with U.S. intelligence agencies at the start of the September 1980 Iran-Iraq war, his first contacts with U.S. officials date back to 1959, when he was part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with assassinating then Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim.
In July 1958, Qasim had overthrown the Iraqi monarchy in what one former U.S. diplomat, who asked not to be identified, described as 'a horrible orgy of bloodshed.'
According to current and former U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Iraq was then regarded as a key buffer and strategic asset in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. For example, in the mid-1950s, Iraq was quick to join the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact which was to defend the region and whose members included Turkey, Britain, Iran and Pakistan.
Little attention was paid to Qasim's bloody and conspiratorial regime until his sudden decision to withdraw from the pact in 1959, an act that 'freaked everybody out' according to a former senior U.S. State Department official.

OUR ALIEN MASTERS

Journalists face jail under laws

Journalists face up to five years' jail if they report detailed circumstances surrounding the detention and questioning of terrorism suspects, under new ASIO laws passed in Parliament late last week.
Attorney-General Philip Ruddock believes the secrecy provisions 'enhance' Australia's national security and counter terrorism capabilities and 'protect' the effectiveness of intelligence gathering. But media organisations and Greens senator Bob Brown have warned that the limitations on the reporting of ASIO activities threaten democracy.

CLOAK AND DAGGER

Diebold vote machine paper trail "too expensive"

The politically-connected ATM giant Diebold - which is bidding for many electronic voting contracts across the US - plans to make the modifications to their new machines so expensive that city and state officials balk at the cost.
The modifications sought are to provide a verifiable paper trail. Incredibly, the e-voting terminals currently do not leave behind such information.

MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

Perpetual war, perpetual terror

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961

OUR ALIEN MASTERS

Saddam: US caught the wrong guy

Saddam Hussein, former employee of the American federal government, was captured near a farmhouse in Tikrit in a raid performed by other employees of the American federal government. That sounds pretty deranged, right? Perhaps, but it is also accurate. The unifying thread binding together everyone assembled at that Tikrit farmhouse is the simple fact that all of them – the soldiers as well as Hussein – have received pay from the United States for services rendered.
It is no small irony that Hussein, the Butcher of Baghdad, the monster under your bed lo these last twelve years, was paid probably ten thousand times more during his time as an American employee than the soldiers who caught him on Saturday night.

TECHNOPHILE RAMPAGE

Wal-Mart shoppers trample woman who was first in line for DVD sale

A mob of shoppers rushing for a sale on DVD players trampled the first woman in line and knocked her unconscious as they scrambled for the shelves at a Florida Wal-Mart Supercentre.
Paramedics called to the store found VanLester unconscious on top of a DVD player, surrounded by shoppers seemingly oblivious to her, said Mark O'Keefe, a spokesman for EVAC Ambulance.
Wal-Mart officials called the woman's family, and the store apologized and offered to put a DVD player on hold for her.

MAN V. MAN

Judge orders man blinded

A judge has ruled that a Pakistani man convicted of attacking his 17-year-old fiancee with acid be blinded with acid himself, police said Friday.
Mohammed Sajid, 19, poured acid on the face of his fiancee Rabia Bibi on June 24 in Bahawalpur, a city in the eastern Pakistani province of Punjab. His two brothers were also convicted of taking part.
The woman lost both eyes and her face was burned in the attack, which police said followed a minor dispute between the couple.

MIND CONTROL

Man shot dead on Kennedy 'X'

A man apparently shot himself dead early on Friday on the 'X' in Dealey Plaza that marks the spot where President John F Kennedy was assassinated 40 years ago, authorities said.
Witnesses said they saw a man in a camouflage jacket holding a gun on his chest and lying in the middle of the street on the spraypainted 'X', an unofficial memorial maintained by the publisher of a local conspiracy-theory publication.

EARTH CHANGES

Magnetic field is fading

In the movie 'The Core,' Earth's molten core stops spinning, with dire effects on the magnetic field that protects the planet from energy-charged particles from the Sun. People with pacemakers fall dead in the street; the Golden Gate Bridge collapses.
Scientists have known for some time that the magnetic field is in fact collapsing, at a rate faster than it would if flows of molten iron in the core had stopped completely.
And while the consequences would be nowhere near as catastrophic as those in the movie, geophysicists increasingly wonder whether the magnetic field has begun one of its occasional reversals that in the next few thousand years might lead to compasses pointing south instead of north.

OIL WAR

Fuel queues could be a tinderbox

With lines for gasoline stretching for miles and drivers forced to wait an entire day to fill their tanks, fuel shortages have emerged as a potent political issue with the potential to ignite civil unrest across the country. Two American soldiers were killed recently while standing guard over long lines at gas stations, and many Iraqis warn that the kind of widespread rioting that broke out in August in the city of Basra may be just around the corner.
Frequent power disturbances have shut down refineries for days at a time. So far, Kellogg, Brown Root, the unit of Halliburton paid by the American government to repair the oil infrastructure, has not offered to help. A spokeswoman for Halliburton said that the refinery was not damaged by the war and so was not a high priority for repairs, and that plant managers cannot expect to get all the equipment and technical help they need immediately.

[As Democrats demand further investigations of Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, President Bush says Halliburton Co. should repay the government if it overcharged for fuel in Iraq.}

CLOAK AND DAGGER

'Ladies and gentlemen, we got him.' -- US confirms Saddam captured alive

The US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer said Saddam Hussein, 66, was seized during a pre-dawn raid near his hometown of Tikrit, north of the capital Baghdad. 'Ladies and gentlemen, we got him,' Mr Bremer told a press conference in Baghdad.
US forces commander in Iraq, Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, said Saddam put up no resistance when he was found hiding in a two-metre deep hole, and was co-operating with his captors.
As the video was played the press room erupted with cheers and catcalls at the fallen dictator.
Lust for power matched only by ruthless streak.

[Now, does the name Osama ring andy bells?]

BIO WARFARE

Flu outbreak sweeps across US

The flu is spreading across the United States and the government is concerned enough to buy up 250,000 available doses of the vaccine to make sure it goes to those who need it most. Goverrnment health agencies are saving diminishing vaccine supplies for those at high risk of the flu including children between 6 months and 23 months.

NEW WORLD ORDER

US unleashes 'Avalanche' in Afghanistan

The United States military says it has launched its biggest-ever ground offensive in Afghanistan.
It involves 2,000 troops as well as soldiers from the Afghan army.
Many areas of Afghanistan have become too dangerous for aid workers.
A coalition spokesman says four American infantry battalions and troops from the Afghan national army are involved in Operation Avalanche.

[Nothing to do with protection of this season's huge opium poppy crop, of course.]

CLOAK AND DAGGER

Top secret advisor to four Presidents dies 'violently' In DC

Gus W. Weiss, 72, adviser to four presidents on top secret policy matters, died violently in Washington, DC, on November 25, 2003, but his death was not reported by The Washington Post until December 7 -- in the obitiuary section at the bottom of page C12.
His home town newspaper, The Nashville Tennessean, was a week late in reporting his death, but said, "The circumstances surrounding his death could not be confirmed last night."
Readers of The Tennessean might have had their suspicions aroused not only by the delay in the reporting of this important man's death, but also by the very next sentence in the article: "Friends of Mr. Weiss expressed shock at his death."
The Washington Post reported that Mr Weiss -- who had in the past been honoured with CIA's Medal for Merit and the National Security Agency's Cipher Medal -- died in a fall from a Watergate East residential building and that the D.C. medical examiner ruled his death a suicide.
The Tennessean obituary said Harris Gilbert, a Nashville attorney who had been friends with Mr. Weiss since childhood said Weiss 'was very interested in diplomatic strategy and was very, very opposed to the Iraq war. It was the first military action he ever opposed'.

OUR ALIEN MASTERS

George W. Bush resume

LAW ENFORCEMENT:
I was arrested in Kennebunkport, Maine, in 1976 for driving under the influence of alcohol. I pled guilty, paid a fine, and had my driver's license suspended for 30 days. My Texas driving record has been 'lost' and is not available.
MILITARY:
I joined the Texas Air National Guard and went AWOL. I refused to take a drug test or answer any questions about my drug use. By joining the Texas Air National Guard, I was able to avoid combat duty in Vietnam.
COLLEGE:
I graduated from Yale University with a low C average. I was a cheerleader. more...

WATCH THE SKIES

UFO spotted by UK motorists during morning rush-hour

THE appearance of a UFO in the sky above a Scottish retail park last week caused spooked drivers to bump their cars with several morning commuters reporting a huge silver object in the sky. Drivers were so distracted by the bizarre sighting that at least two minor accidents were reported.
A winess said, "my friend saw something hovering, which was silver in appearance and looked like the dishes you see on the side of television transmitters.
"It was huge, and it was pulsating - he wasn't the only one who saw it, as you couldn't have missed it. He saw it and just said: 'Good God', and was really quite shaken by the whole thing. Then the object just suddenly disappeared - it was so strange."

PRIVATE LIVES

Cybercrime push 'imperils personal security'

President Bush this week urged Senators to back the adoption of a Council of Europe Cybercrime treaty into US law. But Privacy International (PI), the human rights watchdog, warns that if the Senate ratifies the Treaty, "dozens of countries will have 'on demand' access to the personal information and communications records of any American they may wish to investigate".
This data - including full email logs, phone records and mobile phone location data together with account and financial records - could be "cherry picked" by investigating authorities in countries that ratify the treaty.
The treaty, designed to streamline cooperation between signatory countries, will significant expand the power of investigators to access data and prosecute offences ranging from copyright infringement to "hate speech".

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

Losing the battle for hearts and minds

Mohammed Ali Karam wants to kill a U.S. soldier. He doesn't love Saddam Hussein, and he was happy in April when U.S. Marines rolled through his Baghdad neighborhood on their way to liberate the capital. But he turned against the Americans the night he saw his brother Hussein, 27, take two bullets in the neck. At 10:30 p.m. on Nov. 17, Karam says, he and three of his brothers were driving to a neighborhood where the pumps were working in order to get water for their home. Hussein, in the passenger seat, talked excitedly about having his new suit tailored for his upcoming wedding. That's when 82nd Airborne paratroopers, crouched in an observation post across the street, opened fire — after rounds struck their position, they say. Three of the brothers ran to the safety of a creek bed, but Hussein didn't make it. In the car, said Karam, the soldiers found Hussein — gurgling blood through his throat — but no weapons. Hussein died on the way to the hospital — three days before his wedding.

OUR ALIEN MASTERS

Rumsfeld wins 'Foot in Mouth' award

A bizarre comment by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the hunt for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction has been awarded the 'Foot in Mouth' prize by Britain's Plain English Campaign.
Mr Rumsfeld, renowned for his uncompromising tough talking, received the prize for the most baffling comment by a public figure.
'Reports that say something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know,' Rumsfeld told a press briefing.
'We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know.
'But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know.'

CRYPTOZOOLOGY

SA fossil could change evolution theories

The oldest fossil ever discovered was in China and it proved that animals with backbones - thought to be our forebears - probably lived in that region 530 million years ago.
Now scientists may have to re-set their evolutionary clock back a further 25 million years because of a fossil discovered in South Australia's Flinders Ranges.
The six centimetre long tadpole-shaped fossil is estimated to be 550 million years old. Most fossils of this era are similar to jellyfish or seaweed, but this appears to be a chordate, meaning it has a primitive backbone and therefore might be the earliest link in the evolutionary chain.

THE OTHERS

The Extraterestrial Exposure Law, like Patriot Act for ETs

If the US government claims to know nothing of aliens, U.F.O.'s, or anything pertaining to them, then why did they make up the 'Extraterestrial Exposure Law'? It is found in Title 14, Section 1211 of the Code of Federal Regulations. It is the law that made it illegal for the public to come in contact with extra-terrestrials or their vehicles. The law states that Anyone found guilty of such contact could face up to one year imprisonment as well as a fine of $5000. Also, any individual who had been "exposed" could be quarantined under armed guard by the NASA administrator without a hearing.
The law was passed originally to protect Earth from possible biological contamination resulting from the US Apollo Space Program.

Halliburton

Cheney denies helping old firm to land Iraqi contracts
US Vice-President Dick Cheney has denied helping his former oil services company get multibillion-dollar US Government contracts in Iraq.
Democrats have questioned the role of Mr Cheney's former firm, Halliburton, in rebuilding Iraq. The company, headed by Mr Cheney before he became Vice-President, has contracts worth nearly $2 billion.
Mr Cheney bristled at the suggestion that his connection influenced the awarding of the no-bid contracts to Halliburton. September 2003

Cheney may avoid some embarrasing business
With a co-defendant's guilty plea, the focus of a federal weapons case shifts back to its key figure, David Hudak of Vancouver, accused of amassing thousands of warheads and training foreign troops in counterterrorist strategies in Roswell.
Hudak, president of Roswell-based High Energy Access Tools Inc., or HEAT, and co-defendant Michael Payne were arrested one year ago when the missiles were found. Payne pleaded guilty last month, acknowledging that he helped train soldiers from the United Arab Emirates in marksmanship and counterterrorism.
The prosecution had asked to have any mention of US Vice President Dick Cheney or Halliburton excluded from the case, contending Cheney joined Halliburton after the missile deal was finalized.
- August 2003

Halliburton agrees to settle accounting suits
Halliburton Co. said Friday it has agreed to pay $6 million to settle 20 shareholder lawsuits that accused it of using deceptive accounting practices while Vice President Dick Cheney led the company.
The lawsuits challenged the way that the oilfield-services company counted revenue from cost overruns and change orders on long-term fixed-price construction projects.
- June 2003

Cheney still paid by Pentagon's Iraq cleanup contractor
Halliburton, the Texas company which has been awarded the Pentagon's contract to put out potential oil-field fires in Iraq and which is bidding for postwar construction contracts, is still making annual payments to its former chief executive, the vice-president Dick Cheney.
- March 3003

Weapons of mass distraction
The Vice President, Dick Cheney, is now facing a civil law suit for fraud from the NGO Judicial Watch. This alleges that the Vice President and others inflated the earnings of Halliburton, a company he ran, in order to raise the share price.
- Oct 2002

SKY IS FALLING

Recent meteor reports from the alienation news archives

Recovered meteor reveals solar secrets
Meteoric metal found in crop circle
Metoer smashes through ceiling
Sonic boom likely caused by meteor

HOME GENETICS

DIY DNA analysis kit, a must-have this Christmas

This kit from Discovery Kids -- the first to feature a bona fide centrifuge and electrophoresis chamber -- will turn your kid on to the intricacies of genetics. Realistic lab equipment transforms the kitchen into a forensics lab, where your breakfast-bar biologist can extract clumps of real DNA from fruits and vegetables or solve "crimes" by revealing DNA "fingerprints" -- telltale blue protein stripes in a gel mixture.

OUR GALAXY

Dusty disc indicates Earth-like planets


The star, Vega, is one of the brightest in the sky, only 25 light-years away. It is three times larger than our Sun and, at 350 million years old, much younger as well. Vega has a disc of dust circling it, and at least one large planet which could sweep debris aside allowing smaller worlds like Earth to exist.

SUFFER THE CHILDREN

Hope dies for Africa's lost generation

Carol will let one of the men buy her a beer and maybe dance with her for a while. Then they will leave and head off into the night towards a guest house she knows where they can hire a room. He will give her maybe 20,000 kwacha, a little less than £3. If she can fit in another couple of men during the day, she will have earned enough to settle the bill for the room and to buy herself a little food. It is not good money, even by Zambian standards, but for a 13-year-old orphaned by AIDS, with nowhere to live and no-one to pay for her schooling, it is the best she can hope for. Carol has been doing this since she was 11.
Fragile and tiny, Carol sits sucking her thumb, spilling out her pathetic story - parents dead, nowhere to live, no means to pay for the rest of her schooling, friends who told her she could maybe make enough this way to live. She has been raped, she says, and beaten.

[Across sub-Saharan Africa, it is estimated that 25 million children will lose one or both their parents by 2010.]

GUN NUTS

One-shot kill: new 9mm round has explosive impact

Ben Thomas and three colleagues were driving north out of Baghdad when gunmen opened fire on them. In a brief but intense firefight, Thomas hit one of the attackers with a single shot from his M4 carbine at a distance he estimates was 100 to 110 yards. He hit the man in the buttocks to kill the assailant instantly.
“It entered his butt and completely destroyed everything in the lower left section of his stomach ... everything was torn apart,” Thomas said.
Thomas, a security consultant with a private company contracted by the government, recorded the first known enemy kill using a new — and controversial — bullet, an armor-piercing, limited-penetration round manufactured by RBCD of San Antonio.
The bullet is so controversial that if Thomas, a former SEAL, had been on active duty, he would have been court-martialed for using it.

[Conclusions: The US military is becoming privatised to avoid legal/constitutional problems which may arise from using illegal ammunition or perhaps even shooting people in the back(side).
The 9mm round weighs 60g and is quite expensive at US$35 for a box of 20.]

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE

US takes steps to ensure future conquests do not turn sour

Senior Pentagon officials are currently considering plans to set up two 15,000-strong divisions that would be dedicated to overseeing the reconstruction of countries in the aftermath of future military campaigns. It is understood their use has been included in Pentagon wargaming of potential invasions of countries such as Iran, Syria and North Korea.
As part of its ongoing 'transformation' project, the Pentagon has recently been updating wargame scenarios for these areas and concluded the United States can win battles faster and with fewer troops than previously been thought possible.

NEW WORLD ORDER

911 victim’s wife sues Bush

Ellen Mariani's husband Louis Neil Mariani was aboard United Air Lines flight 175 when it was flown into the South Tower of the World Trade Center. Now she wants those responsible to face justice. For that reason she and her lawyers are invoking the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and is alleging President Bush and officials including, but not limited to Cheney, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld and Feinberg that they: had knowledge/warnings of 911 and failed to warn or take steps to prevent the action; have been covering up the truth of 911; and have therefore violated the laws of the United States under the Civil RICO Act.
Mariani's amended complaint intends to expose the truth to remember the dead and to prevent continued deaths of American military personnel due to President Bush's "failure to act and prevent" the worst attacks on our nation since Pearl Harbor. [Global Free Press item.]

DOLCE VITA

How aspartame became legal

In 1985 Monsanto purchased G.D. Searle, the chemical company that held the patent to aspartame, the active ingredient in NutraSweet. Monsanto was apparently untroubled by aspartame's clouded past, including a 1980 FDA Board of Inquiry, comprised of three independent scientists, which confirmed that it 'might induce brain tumors.'
The FDA had actually banned aspartame based on this finding, only to have Searle Chairman Donald Rumsfeld (currently the Secretary of Defense) vow to 'call in his markers,' to get it approved.
On January 21, 1981, the day after Ronald Reagan's inauguration, Searle re-applied to the FDA for approval to use aspartame in food sweetener, and Reagan's new FDA commissioner, Arthur Hayes Hull, Jr., appointed a 5-person Scientific Commission to review the board of inquiry's decision.
It soon became clear that the panel would uphold the ban by a 3-2 decision, but Hull then installed a sixth member on the commission, and the vote became deadlocked. He then personally broke the tie in aspartame's favor. Hull later left the FDA under allegations of impropriety, served briefly as Provost at New York Medical College, and then took a position with Burston-Marsteller, the chief public relations firm for both Monsanto and GD Searle. Since that time he has never spoken publicly about aspartame.

WATCH THE SKIES

Another UFO sighted above Baku

Another UFO was observed in various parts of the Azerbaijan capital Baku. In a cloudless sky a large light stain similar to an extended "drop of milk" has appeared.
The abnormal object has caused interest not only among the people of Baku, but also Azerbaijani experts. Professor Elchin Khalilov, chief of a commission on the abnormal phenomena at the presidium of Academy of Sciences, caught the UFO on video. Mr. Khalilov has noted that they had already started to study the video.