Washington dément la capture d'Oussama ben Laden

The French press reports things the UK & US press can't or won't - can't because they are fucking partisan Blair-Bush bitch-lackeys.

So here is what I learned today from Libération what this em translated with some supplementary assistance from babelFish:

2004 February 28 (Saturday, 1809h): Washington Refutes Capture of Usama bin Ladin

Saturday, the American Department of Defence contradicted information the Pashtu-language Iranian Public Radio Service Irna disseminated about the arrest of Usama bin-Ladin.

Citing the Pashtu-language Iranian Public Radio Service, what is said to be based on a "very reliable" source, the official agency issued a précis that the chief of Qaîda was captured in a tribal zone in West Pakistan.

When questioned by Reuters, Irna's on-site correspondant specified what the radio announced the capture of the planet's most wanted a year ago. The correspondent affirmed that this time, a new informant gave credible testimony that the alleged instigator of the 20010911 attacks had been captured "for quite some time".

"Whether this happened a month or year ago, nonetheless it already happened," the informant assured the reporter, adding that the American administration had delayed advertising this fact in order to favour George W Bush's electoral push, which will need a new mandate to retain the White House in November.

A senior Pentagon official derisively refuted this information, assuring what this was nothing but a baseless rumour.

In Islamabad, the Pakistani Minister of Foreign Affairs, Kurshiid Mahmud Kasuri, declared during a press conference what he had been informed of this information from Iran but added, "We certainly unable to confirm it."

[snip quote about Pakis being lapdogs of Bush]

The American staff, for its part, announced their intention to launch a spring offensive against Islamicist rebels in Afghanistan as a part of a co-ordinated effort to get their hands on bin-Ladin.

You can read the article in the original French by clicking above. However, can you find anything about this in English? For my part, I've heard shit-all.Fucking using bin-Ladin's capture as a political tool by keeping him under tabs for months and months, maybe even a year? God, when does the shit ever fucking end.

Orson Scott Card is a Mormon & Don't You Fucking Fags Forget It

well, don't the assholes show their faces.

I used to love orson scott card for flying in the face of the LDS by blatantly writing science fiction (verboten under canon law). I used to love orson scott card for writing ender's game.

Unfortunately, now I have learnt that my trust, my appreciation, was wildly mistaken. because despite the fact that at least half his fucking audience is queer, he feels that it's crucial we understand the following stupid fucking points.

And we all know the course this thing will follow. Anyone who opposes this edict will be branded a bigot; any schoolchild who questions the legitimacy of homosexual marriage will be expelled for "hate speech." The fanatical Left will insist that anyone who upholds the fundamental meaning that marriage has always had, everywhere, until this generation, is a "homophobe" and therefore mentally ill.

[snip]

In the first place, no law in any state in the United States now or ever has forbidden homosexuals to marry. The law has never asked that a man prove his heterosexuality in order to marry a woman, or a woman hers in order to marry a man.

Any homosexual man who can persuade a woman to take him as her husband can avail himself of all the rights of husbandhood under the law. And, in fact, many homosexual men have done precisely that, without any legal prejudice at all.

Ditto with lesbian women. Many have married men and borne children. And while a fair number of such marriages in recent years have ended in divorce, there are many that have not.

So it is a flat lie to say that homosexuals are deprived of any civil right pertaining to marriage. To get those civil rights, all homosexuals have to do is find someone of the opposite sex willing to join them in marriage.

You can read this entire, loathsome article, Homosexual "Marriage" and Civilization, if you can stomach it.

i particularly like the way he ends by calling up metaphors of militarism and of a maquis-like resistance against the evil elite who are controling the world. (protocols of the elders of zion, anyone?)

jesus, is this really the same guy who wrote ender's game?

that's some fucking nerve.

Watch Your Languages

The linguist-author of this piece failed to find my love-bride. If only this man was a girl... sigh.

NYC: Watch Your Languages. They’re Ancient.

"I call it BBC Aramaic - the standard form that continues to be used today," said Dr. Kiraz, 39. He began speaking it as a boy in Bethlehem (as in Little Town of Bethlehem, not the place in Pennsylvania). He uses it today with his daughter, Tabetha.

"Since she was born three years ago, I've only spoken the classical Syriac, which is Aramaic, to her," he said. "Now when she speaks to me, it's always in Aramaic. It's mostly a language used among bishops and priests. It would be like someone speaking Latin to his kid."

Aramaic, a Semitic language that in one of its forms is a cousin to Hebrew, has been around for 2,500 years or more. In Jesus' time, it was the lingua franca of the Middle East.

"Jews were probably not speaking Hebrew in the first century," said Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary. "They were speaking Aramaic."

I'm still not gonna go see that fucking film tho.

the experiences of the unimaginably rich

two articles. two years. 'your' tax cuts at work. also - the falling dollar has apparently swollen the fortunes of those who own their assets in euros. of course, for people of this caliber of wealth, nationality means nothing. they invest everywhere, and they have the kind of money that makes it easy to maximize their returns in a global way.

here, we see the 2003 forbes article about their list of billionaires for 2003. it is a tale of woe and pain. there was actually a tear in my left eye as i read it. i don't know what happened. a wave of deep empathy swept through me when i read the title and opening paragraph:

Survival of the Richest

It's hard enough making a billion-dollar fortune. These days it's harder just to hold on to it.

In this, FORBES' 17th annual ranking of the world's richest, 67 of the previous year's billionaires fell below the minimum this year. Four former billionaires were wiped out entirely. Of the 476 who remain, 218 of them saw their fortunes sink.

god. those poor billionaires. their fortunes shrank. i guess last year was just fucking tough for those guys. they could try looking for jobs on craigslist, but these guys really hate the people who post help wanted ads at craigslist. a lot of the jobs involve problems like the pay being less than minimum wage. or the ads are for unpaid 'interns' with 4 years of experience building enterprise java applications and a master's degree in computer science. but, hey, you gotta cast your net wide when times are hard.

i nearly wept a gushing river of one tear when i got to this bit:

As a group, this year's billionaires are worth $1.4 trillion, $141 billion less than last year but still equal to the GDP of the United Kingdom. In fact, Europe was the only region to remain relatively steady over the year; the other regions saw their accumulated wealth slip.

the dire straits of the world's billionaires clearly required an emergency solution. the fate of the world and the human race clearly hung in the balance. nevertheless, there were some bright spots as the sun of 2003 rose upon the dim and bleak existence of the billionaire:

Argentina's lone billionaire, Gregorio Perez Companc, sold his family's stake in Perez Companc, the Argentinean energy company, for an estimated $1 billion in cash and bonds.

BP announced in February that it was buying 50% of Russia's third-largest oil company for $6.75 billion, boosting the fortunes of Russians Mikhail Fridman and Viktor Vekselberg. Indeed, Russia illustrates the ebb and flow of global wealth. Ten new billionaires hail from the former Soviet Union, thanks to rising oil prices and a 38% spike in the stock market, bringing the total number of Russian billionaires to 17. Three years ago there were none.

in the world of energy magnates, things were pretty good at the start of 2003. argentina was a fucking mess, but argentina's one billionaire (how lonely) managed to sell the stakes in his energy company and salvage his enormous fortune. russia has been a mess ever since the revolution, but the lucky russian oil magnates are awash in fortunes that appeared out of nowhere in the last three years. it's a genuine fucking rags to riches story. yay for higher energy prices!

and, now, this year, summer is in full swing in billionaire-land. life is flush, so everything in the world is good and well. this year's forbes list of billionaires contains a record 587 individuals:

The Rich Get Richer

After two years of falling fortunes, the collective net worth of the world's wealthiest jumped half a trillion dollars in the past year, to $1.9 trillion. The biggest gainer in sheer dollars was Warren Buffett, who added $12.4 billion to his net worth and now is only a few billion dollars shy of ending Bill Gates' ten-year reign as the richest person on the planet.

This year Forbes reports a record 587 billionaires, including 64 newcomers. Among them, some real surprises. In a fairy tale as fantastic as her popular Harry Potter series, former welfare mother Joanne Kathleen Rowling makes her debut on Forbes' 18th annual billionaire rankings. So do two geeks who have barely turned 30: Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who created the ultrapopular Google search engine and are expected to take their company public this year. Canadian impresario Guy Laliberté, creator of Cirque du Soleil, joins the ten-figure club, as does Hong Kong's Michael Ying, whose Esprit line of apparel is spreading, Gap-like, around the world. Thanks to rising oil prices, Russia minted eight new billionaires and now has a total of 25, the third-highest concentration of billionaires in the world, trailing only the U.S. and Germany.

rising energy prices bring in another stellar year for the russian oil magnates. this article on the wire by michael p. regan lays it all out.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates remains perched atop the list for the 10th straight year but investor Warren Buffett is nipping at his heels. Gates' net worth is now estimated at $46.6 billion, still less than half the $100 billion it peaked at in 1998, but up about 13 percent from the $40.7 billion Forbes attributed to him in 2003.

Buffett wins the bragging rights for reaping the best gains of the year. He increased his net worth by $12.4 billion to $42.9 billion, significantly narrowing the gap between him and Gates, with whom he competes in bridge tournaments.

nothing like some good old jolly competition for status as the richest person alive.

Rounding out the top 10 were Helen Walton, wife of the late Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, and four members of her family. They were tied for fifth, with each worth an estimated $20 billion -- making for a Walton's mountain of money that's bigger than the holdings of Gates and Buffett combined.

All told, it was a fabulous year to be very rich.

The magazine counted some 587 billionaires around the world, up from 476 in 2003. Their total net worth jumped to $1.9 trillion from the $1.4 trillion the magazine counted in 2003.

nevermind that no matter what fucking year it is, it's very fabulous to be rich.

In the United States, billionaires likely gained last year not only from a 20 percent rise in stock prices, but also from reductions in taxes on dividends, capital gains and estate taxes, according to Mark Zandi, chief economist at Economy.com.

"High income, high net-worth households have done very well under the Bush administration," said Zandi, adding that technological advances and trends toward globalization also tend to benefit the rich.

thank you bush administration. you obviously took great care to make sure that the most important people in the world were well taken care of. it is clear as day to me now. i understand you had to act quickly and decimate the treasury in order to save the billionaires from the dire and awful state they were in last year. those tax cuts sure did the trick!

I Do Not Need to See Your Fat Ass Anymore

Maybe I've been in SoCal too long, but when I ran into Shukr randomly one day, I immediately fell in love. Shukr offers clothing that is comfortable, temperature-moderating (keeping heat off or in, as appropriate) and allows for human dignity.

It's hot here. Sure and it is. And hell, baby got back. All I know is that I'm bloody well sick of emaciated, fat ugly people wearing stretch jeans with flab overhang. Enough bellies! Damnit, people. Get some damn style.

I like an eyeful of cleavage, sure. Find any self-respecting dyke who don't. I want to see sexy shit. But maybe every single woman under the age of fifty doesn't need to wear assless chaps. I DON'T WANT TO SEE YOUR FAT ASS ANYMORE.

I'm pissed. No wonder the TV is covered in recommendations for Treating Your Yeast Infection - everyone walks around with cameltoes all fucking day long. Just pissed, I tell you.

So this girl is going to cut shit up. Maybe I'll get a jelaab and wear it with a matching cowboy hat. That dress looks comfy : let's cut it up to show off your cleavage then.

Or don't. Samantabhadra knows I sure like my privacy. I'm not ashamed of my body but let's be sure I'm tired of those men jerking off mentally when I walk by and I'm sure as fuck never gonna be caught dead in that highly unflattering pr0n-wear you think is clothing.

This is the your last warning. Put. Down. The. Fucking. Daisy. Dukes. That's it - next comes the shot off your bow. And even if you think I can't shoot this here IMI Tavor II to save my life, just recall that all I gotta do is hit the broad side of a barn.

Avalanche

via atrios, we learn that more horses are out of the gate.... or um, perhaps the rainbow flaming barn of this era's big civil rights movement. yee-haw, gurl-freeeeens!!! when two adorable old dykes can get married after fifty years together, you know them times is a'changin'. a chorus of bigots against gay marriage have predictably shoveled a mountain of logically tortured justifications for their stance to the media, which has obligingly repeated each screed ad infinitum*, but they are on the wrong side.

heterosexual marriage isn't under threat because gay people want to get married. straight people have fucked up marriage all on their own. if marriage has sunk to a culturally debased level, they cannot blame that shit on gay folks. what the hell do queer folks have to do with fucking marriage up?

* i listen to the radio while driving to work. no less than three times, i have been subjected to this nauseating ad:

ahem. cough cough. i present my concise translation (italics indicate the unspoken, yet painfully obvious messages):

concerned woman's voice: what is happening to our world? have you considered what will happen if gays... all those faggots and rug-munchers ... are allowed to get married ... in your church ... .

... society will collapse in a pool of lava burned hot by the glare of god's angry wrath. your wife might decide she's a lesbian and leave you. she can take your kids away and have her lesbian wife adopt them against your will. your cross-dressing husband might finally confess that he's a lesbian and get a sex-change operation and become your wife instead of your husband. walmart will go out of business and children will cease to be born ...

what's next? three men and a baby?

fade to silence ...

i shit you not about the 'three men and a baby' line. they actually used that in the ad. that's not a translation.

Bend Over For Your Regularly Scheduled Anal Invasion

my search for a second job is over. not because i found a second job. my current employers now want me to work 24 hours a week. it's good and it's bad. i have no room for fucking around at all this semester. the classes are harder, and i have no free time to speak of.

on the upside, i am not longer staring into the abyss of financial despair. at age 28, it is supremely embarassing to ask my parents or siblings for money. i also just paid for a $230 trip to the repair shop for my car. the front engine pipe had to be replaced, an oil change had to be administered, and of course, the 2004 state inspection had to be done. i was getting really paranoid about driving the car around with an expired inspection sticker in the middle of february. so, the increased demands at work are coming at a crucial time.

on the downside, my two cs classes are going to be awful. the professor for my assembly programming and hardware architecture class announced that we should do a warm-up assignment in preparation for our second programming project. he said this while gleefully laughing in amusement at our impending sleepless marathons in front of our computers.

three of the cs professors i have had so far are old school -- they were already working as programmers when the c programming language was developed. they know fortran and assembly language as if they grew up speaking them. they've been through their agony and ecstasy of learning how to program computers like gods. they know the hardware components of a pc intimately because they used to write code to run them.

they know exactly what we're going through. except that they think we've got it too easy since we have all these ridicuously easy high level languages to use. we didn't have to master register variables and system stacks during our introduction to the art of programming. we had java, a child's toy that automates an enormous number of common tasks that one would have to code from scratch with more primitive languages.

they are indulgent with us, however. we often get to drop the worst exam score. even then the lowest passing grade can still drop to 55% in some classes.

my second semester calculus class is going to be more difficult than the first. the material is more theoretical, and there is one student who won't ever shut up during class. yes, i have a genuine example of a person with absolutely no social skills whatsoever in my calculus class.

he irritates the professor by speaking out of turn several times during every class. when we were learning l'hospital's rule, this student asked if l'hospital had been a crusader. when we are going over homework, he asks the professor to do a problem, but he gives the wrong page and problem number.

it's almost if he's trying to look really clever. however, he is miserably failing. the students find him amusing and irritating at the same time. i am one who is mostly irritated, and now i try to avoid sitting next to him. his constant interruptions drive me up the wall.

i am also taking an intro philosophy class to fulfill the 'diversity' distribution credit. everyone has to fulfill this requirement regardless of how many gay and lesbian, african american, and women's literature classes they took to earn a degree in literature at their previous institution of higher learning. we are studying the controversial issues of abortion, assisted suicide, the death penalty, pornography, and censorship. happy happy joy joy.

la Zona Rosa

!Ay, diosamía! No soy hispanohablante, favor de se leer cuidademente porque mi español se asemeja las otras lenguas romanés (como, par ejemplo, la gascona [una lengua galloromanés del norteoeste de los Pirenés francés] y la italiana norteoeste). Cómo se dice en chinés, "Lo que puede entender mi escritura, lo que léala."

Lo que cree que los estados muestros solamente son los lugares únicos seguros y modernos en el Mundo Nuevo necesita leer un otro libro.

México Machista Se Muestra Liberal en la Zona Rosa

Una ventana abierta muestra en el interior unos sofás de colores brillantes y unos bancos de metal ocupados por parejas del mismo sexo, en su mayoría jóvenes. Quienes se toman de las manos, beben café y en ocasiones se besan.

Esta expresión franca de su sexualidad no está limitada al interior del primer café de la nación dedicado explícitamente a la población gay de México.

En toda la Zona Rosa, en el corazón del México machista, los hombres jóvenes caminan abrazados, se congregan en las esquinas y hasta echan una mirada a quienes pasan cerca. Se saludan entre ellos con un beso en la mejilla en un McDonalds. Las parejas lesbianas, aunque son pocas, también se abrazan frente a las tiendas, mientras deambulan frente a los escaparates de las tiendas.

Sin embargo, todavía no deseo ir a México. ;-)

Proving for Whom Public Officials Really Work

Boing-Boing reports an article from the St. Augustine Register detailing an elaborate journalistic survey proving a classic citizen's complaint.

To wit, journalists went to public offices as private citizens and asked for copies of easily-reachable public documents. They did this all over Florida. The report indicates 48% went away empty-handed - and many were stung for pursuing their rights.

Public officials lied to, harassed and even threatened volunteers who were using a law designed to give citizens the power to watch over their government. In six counties, volunteers were erroneously told that the documents they wanted didn't exist.

Many officials demanded to know who the volunteers represented and what they planned to do with the information - clear violations of the open records law, which ensures anonymity when desired.

Damn. This is (yet again) a shitty week for the American record on democracy. Fuck the Cleavers an those henrys & em'lys.

Violent Spewing Caused by eBay

Well, they've done it again. Just when I thought I couldn't be more repulsed by humanity, I am. I don't know why I'm surprised. I shouldn't be at this point.

I'll let the article from the Maui News speak for me. I'm so fucking outraged right now... fucking goddamn assholes.

Wailuku: An eBay auction of a skull claimed to be from an ancient Hawaiian who was buried at Kaanapali long ago was halted Wednesday after outraged Native Hawaiians contacted legal authorities.

"If he (the seller) had proceeded, he would have been in violation of federal law," said Eddie Ayau, coordinator of Hui Malama I Na Kupuna Hawai'i Nei, a group that has reburied numerous bones that have been improperly removed over the years. "We are urging him instead to do the right thing and repatriate the remains."

An eBay spokesman could not be reached, but Sara Collins, archaeology branch chief of the State Historic Preservation Division, said the company's senior lawyer immediately responded and was cooperative. Because it's against the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) to traffic in such human remains, the matter has been turned over to federal attorneys in California. The seller's hometown was listed on the eBay site as Irvine CA.

Charles Kauluwehi Maxwell Sr., chairman of the Maui/Lanai Islands Burial Council, said it was not yet known if the seller voluntarily ended the auction of the skull or if eBay authorities pulled it off the online auction site.

"The good thing is that we got it stopped," said Maxwell. "Our main concern is to get it back and bury it where it belongs."

The skull apparently was dug up in 1969 on Kaanapali Beach by the seller, who didn't say whether he was a visitor or a resident at the time. In his pitch to get bidders to start the auction at $1000, the seller - who was only identified by his eBay tag name of "magicjer" - wrote:

"At the time, the site was being excavated for the development of the Whaler's Village and when a 'field' of battle artifacts and human remains were uncovered, construction was halted while an historical investigation was conducted by the Lahaina Historical Society and the Bishop Museum. ... Guards were posted at the excavation site to keep out the curious."

But one night, the seller - then a teenager - and some friends, including the son of a famous actor, "decided to sneak over ... and see what we could find."

"While digging in the sand, we began to uncover an entire skeleton and, of course, I decided to keep the skull. For the last 35 years, I've kept this 200-year-old Hawaiian warrior as a souvenir of my youth, but now it's time to give him up to the highest bidder."

The seller said he would include a notarized certificate of authenticity of "this brave warrior's skull" with the sale.

Several photographs of the skull were also posted on the site.

The seller claimed the skull was from someone involved in a bloody battle that involved King Kamehameha in the 1790s, but both Ayau and Maxwell said no such clash took place there. Both said the skull was almost certainly not that of a warrior who died in battle.

"It was just a regular burial ground," said Maxwell. "Many people lived there. There are numerous sand burials."

However, it appeared the seller was not exaggerating the circumstances of when he found the skull. Ayau said that Whaler's Village officials acknowledged that the complex was completed in 1972 after about a three-year construction phase.

Collins said eBay had been made aware of NAGPRA regulations and the concerns of Native Hawaiians last year when someone was trying to sell an ulu maika [sic] (a small stone used in an ancient game similar to bowling) that came from Kahoolawe.

"Because of our concerns, the senior counsel promptly amended the language of prohibited items (that can be sold on eBay)," said Collins.

That made it clear that Native Hawaiian remains, gravesite related artifacts and burial items should not be posted, she said.

"That was very helpful to us," she said. "It's fairly easy to find (the prohibition list) and any experienced sellers should know about it, but somehow this sale was announced without knowing it was prohibited."

Hawaiians were alerted to the sale Tuesday by an anthropologist at Appalachian State University in Boone NC who had seen the auction and knew it was a violation of NAGPRA. Ayau said the anthropologist located the Office of Hawaiian Affairs Web site and sent an e-mail, which triggered a landslide of electronic and telephone communications among Hawaiians.

Maxwell, who has repatriated countless burials, said he was nearly sick to his stomach as he viewed the pictures and read the sensational description.

Ayau said he quickly e-mailed the seller and asked him, without threats, to return the remains for a proper burial.

"I was trying to get this person to cooperate," said Ayau.

The seller did not respond, but when the skull was removed from the eBay Web site, Ayau wrote back to say he appreciated that and hoped to make arrangements for repatriation.

"It was very hard to not express my anger," said Ayau. "This could have been someone's parent, grandparent, daughter, we don't know. What hurts is that Hawaiians are dehumanized by doing this. That's the bigger issue here."

It could not immediately be determined what penalties the seller might suffer.

Collins said the skull must now be examined for further identification.

"If these are Native Hawaiian remains, they've got to be returned to their rightful place," she said.

His penalty? His penalty should be to be stuffed and posed in a public window after his death. Which, frankly, should be sped up by some hefty beatings with a qulu maika. [Polynesianist use of q for the glottal stop to clarify proper pronunciation - it's "a 'ulu [round stone or breadfruit]", not "an ulu [grove or flock]", hence the sic.]

Un. Fucking. Believable.

the Worst Terms of Service Ever Written

LawMeme, Yale Law student James Grimmelmann's law blog, has an article up entitled Worst Terms of Service Ever.

Boy, that henry ain't joking. I'm not sure if this is great metafictional writing of a ToS or if someone needs to change their dosage (they clearly need either considerably less or considerably more drugs, and I'm unclear as to which is the appropriate solution).

Muchos Gracías to bOING-bOING for this little joyita of (what I hope is) a sendup-cum-legal warning rolled into one sparkling package of loveliness.