Wednesday, August 20th, 2003
Daily Archive
Wed 20 Aug 2003
Posted by glenn under
News
Amy Worthington, The Idaho Observer, reports:
On March 30, an AP photo featured an American pro-war activist holding a sign: “Nuke the evil scum, it worked in 1945!” That’s exactly what George Bush has done. America’s mega-billion dollar war in Iraq has been indeed a NUCLEAR WAR.
Bush-Cheney have delivered upon 17 million Iraqis tons of depleted uranium (DU) weapons, a “liberation” gift that will keep on giving. Depleted uranium is a component of toxic nuclear waste, usually stored at secure sites. Handlers need radiation protection gear.
Over a decade ago, war-makers decided to incorporate this lethal waste into much of the Pentagon’s weaponry. Navy ships carrying Phalanx rapid fire guns are capable of firing thousands of DU rounds per minute.(1) Tomahawk missiles launched from U.S. ships and subs are DU-tipped.(2) The M1 Abrams tanks are armored with DU.(3) These and British Challenger II tanks are tightly packed with DU shells, which continually irradiate troops in or near them.(4) The A-10 “tank buster” aircraft fires DU shells at machines and people on the battlefield.(5)
DU munitions are classified by a United Nations resolution as illegal weapons of mass destruction. Their use breaches all international laws, treaties and conventions forbidding poisoned weapons calculated to cause unnecessary suffering.
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Wed 20 Aug 2003
Posted by glenn under
News
Phil Kloer, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, reports:
From the nasty spam that clogs your e-mail account to the XXX video rental stores that have mushroomed all over metro Atlanta, the once underground pornography industry is now very much aboveground and impossible to avoid.
And profiting from that industry now are major corporations and mainstream entertainment companies, including network TV, movie studios and book publishers. Revenues for the porn industry — about $10 billion a year — now equal the domestic box office for all of Hollywood’s major film releases.
“You’re seeing a corporatization of pornography,” says Blaise Cronin, professor of information services at Indiana University and a former consultant to the Justice Department on Internet pornography laws. “You have major corporations involved in the distribution, and the profits are very high.”
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Wed 20 Aug 2003
Posted by glenn under
Power Failure
:
HARTFORD, Conn. - When technology failed on a massive scale last week, some old-fashioned broadcasting stepped into the breach as ham radio operators took to the airwaves to reach emergency workers.
For millions of people in the Northeast and Midwest, the Aug. 14 outage took access to e-mail and the Internet with it. Landline and cellular telephones were jammed by a crush of calls.
But the ham radio, which came into being in the World War I era, connected firefighters and police departments, Red Cross workers and other emergency personnel during the most extensive blackout in the Northeast since 1977.
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