UPDATE: Latest reports say 15,000- Burmese dead from cyclone. Given that dictator Than Shwe said only three monks died during the peaceful demonstrations by Buddhist holy people last September, when in fact the numbers maimed and murdered were in the thousands… and given that after the September 2007 peaceful demonstrations, Than Shwe confiscated all cell phones and computers amongst the citizenry, jailing anyone or ‘disappearing’ anyone who had one…. thus Than Shwe managed...

PETA is demanding changes after Eight Belles’ death. From Game On page: Because of the Kentucky Derby collapse and death of filly Eight Belles, the horse racing world is about to find out what PETA’s spurs feel like. PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has called for the suspension and investigation of Eight Belles jockey Gabriel Saez, and also has started an online petition to change the rules of thoroughbred racing. Flatly ignoring PETA’s suggestions could be risky...

China, meaning those men and women at the top of all things, has sent out a country-wide alert to try to get Chinese citizens to wash their hands more often and to spray disinfectant – all in order to deal with a disease called Entero-virus 71, described as a hand, mouth and foot virus. (not the same as hoof and mouth disease in cattle) In one city alone, Entero-virus 71 has killed 22 children in the last week. Tens of thousands are said to be hospitalized across China, and in one city , over...

Barbaro. Now Eight Belles. My father comes from a place where the old men and old women still consider horses to be gods who came to earth. In Hungary, every tiny village had a council of elders: the old men in their szurs, long wooly white shepherd’s capes, the old women in their red boots with the black heels, the fine leather pleated and stitched with red thread all the way up to the knees… the old men who smoke pipes with drawing bows 18 inches long… the old women who if need...

This is Abebe Bikila. He is from Ethiopia. He was overlooked and did everything wrong. His was not an auspicious beginning. His father was a shepherd, and it was expected Abebe would be a shepherd too. But, he decided there would be more food for him and his family if he joined the Regimental Bodyguards. He did so, but did not progress past the rank of private. He was good enough, but nothing to write home about. The Bodyguards held maneuvers. A Finnish fellow, Mjr. Onni Niskanen, was brought...

A small reprise, given Shaun Mullen bringing news of the possibly suspicious suicide of Deborah Jeane Palfrey, 52, recently found guilty of racketeering, money laundering and other charges for running an escort service that drew many customers including one well known government official, Louisiana Senator David Vitter (R). The small piece of real estate at the V of the human body If I were from Mars, I would wonder why human beings concentrate so hard on what I once heard another human being refer...

I think of one thing over and over. The caskets. Those very few photos and brief film clips of the caskets. That Rumsfeld and others said no one could see, look at, photograph, no, no. no. The caskets coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan cannot be viewed. Some horrible something will happen… we cannot say what I wonder, since a cell phone user photo-filmed the hanging of Saddam after the entire event was declared off-limits to the press. I wonder, since paparazzi with lenses longer than...

Programming others to do one’s will, or else… When I first trained in my field, veterans from Korea and those coming back from Nam who’d been POWs, had often suffered extensive efforts by the enemy… to rearrange their impulses, instincts and attitudes. At that time too, deprogramming had become a watchword, and thus we studied deeply the psychological effects of vulnerable human beings being ‘programmed’ by others …Actual brain changes appeared to take place,...

Over 400 children were recently transported by bus away from the isolated Texas commune built by Warren Jeffs (currently in prison for forcing a child to marry an older man) and his brother (currently in charge of all the wives and children back at the ranch)…the brotherly duo being self-acclaimed polygamists and self-anointed heads of their own renegade LDS (Church of the Latter Day Saints– Mormon) temple. The State of Texas will seek to show, provided one or more of the seeming spellbound...

This was a debate? No. It was double jeopardy for both the candidates: the prosecution of an individual twice for the same offense. Take that back. It was umpteenth jeopardy. If most people were forced to watch the OJ trial all over again, they would consider it capital punishment. I sense strongly, that viewers were turning away from watching the kangaroo court, I mean, the debate being held tonight with candidates as defendants, I mean, opponents. Again. Perhaps the issue is who asks the questions. Most...

Much talk recently about the administration wanting to block any number of measures in Congress that are rowing against the President’s mindset on what will and what work re the environment… The President has characterized all measures there as ‘a regulatory trainwreck.’ Today, in a news conference, the President said he had not signed the Kyoto agreement because – it did not bring all players to the table – it would have interfered with growing the USA economy,...

“–Wherever the land is dry and hard, you could be the water … –or you could be the blade disking the earth open; –or you could be the acequia, the ditch that carries water from river to fields; –or you could be the just engineer mapping dams that must be taken down, and those which would serve the venerable all, instead of only the very few; –or you could be the battered vessel for carrying water by hand; –or you could be the one who stores the water,...

Probably because the Pope makes little of it, many may not remember that today it’s the Pope’s birthday: Born April 16, 1927. He’s a sharp and strong 81 years old. Age alone is no determinant about a person’s abilities to be a strong… Pope… or a President. Relationships Catholics have long had what often seems strange to others, either a kind of an arm’s length, “Touch-him-not,-he’s-like-God” relationship with their prelates, or a deep personal...

Again, a disclosure: I am a Catholic. Catholic social teachings disagree with abuses of power, disagree with politics that omit and oppress the poor and needy, disagree with trampling the preciousness of the life force, disagree with any idea that preemptive war is good, disagree with any idea that humans are not worthy of justice and dignity… and much more. These principles are in place to keep the world from going dead black with avarice and sloth and cruelty and the sounds of many mouths...

First, a disclosure: I am a Catholic who comes from a long line of deeply ethnic old believers. I’ve had my bewilderments with the Church hierarchy, and my critiques and condemnations of some of the actions of some within the hierarchy as well…. but also hold to the deep social teachings from the heart of the Church which share their core with other philosophies and other faiths’ tenets, especially the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, to attempt, as one can, to take on the repair of the...

Long ago, in the 1800s and 1900s, they came for the boys, and forced them into the army. A war needed ‘material.’ Human material. It’s called conscription today. Back then, it was just a round up of village boys. What are called recruiters now, back then were just soldiers on horseback, riding with sabres and rifles, often in the night, arriving almost as a dream in the villages. Clouds of dust, saddles whining, silver tack shining, saddle blankets tasseled. What tribal boy could...

A lot of us are thinking, could the news media mince the minutiae any finer? Geez. The trivia that some few in media perseverate on: today a comment by a fellow introducing Senator McCain, a fellow who tried to make a joke by calling on the name Tiger Woods… a small matter really. But, all of a sudden Keith Olbermann, who I like, had on Professor Dyson, who I respect, saying in too long a segment, that this remark was “racial.” The remark was this, and I don’t doubt that it referred...

That’s what some of the pundits are hinting at. But, I wonder what the rules are for releasing one’s medical records if one is running for the presidency; surely it’s not required. Senator McCain’s had several brushes with cancer; it’s not his age, but perhaps some think it’s his vulnerability to cancer that ought be weighed. There’s a saying in the old religious stories that when we were born, God put a number on our heads, indicating the number of years we’d...

In Eldorado, Texas, there’s been a gathering up of women and children taken into protective custody from a commune that practices polygamy, one that claims LDS (Mormon) status, (Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints: FLDS) but long ago was exiled from the Mormon Church… Facts presented in affidavits brings again into the spotlight, evil toward children justified by wrapping it in robes of religion. Lawyers for the commune are arguing that this was ‘an unlawful raid,’...

Having worked at ‘the knife and gun club’…. that is, the ER of city hospital where gunshot wounds and lacerations are more prevalent than broken bones… I sense there is more to the young woman turned away from the hospital story… for these reasons: Anyone who has been to the ER of a large hospital , who afterward, goes back to retrieve even a simple paper record, knows you can spend hours and days and even weeks trying to get accurate info about your own contact there. The...