Pravda Would Be Proud
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/home_page/188.php?nid=&id=&pnt=188&lb=hmpg1
Next on the front page of the NYT: Iran and a Mushroom Cloud over NY.
LAGOS, Nigeria - Soccer referees in Nigeria can take bribes from clubs but should not allow them to influence their decisions on the field, a football official said on Friday. Fanny Amun, acting Secretary-General of the Nigerian Football Association, said bribery was common in the Nigerian game. “We know match officials are offered money or anything to influence matches and they can accept it,” Amun told Reuters on Friday.
But Bob’s personal issue was more specific, and the prohibition more insidious. In his words, “I am instructed NOT to use hard numbers when telling kids how old rocks are. I am supposed to say that these rocks are VERY VERY OLD ... but I am NOT to say that these rocks are thought to be about 300 million years old.”
As a person with a geology background, Bob found this restriction hard to justify, especially since the new Arkansas educational benchmarks for 5th grade include introduction of the concept of the 4.5-billion-year age of the earth. Bob’s facility is supposed to be meeting or exceeding those benchmarks.
The explanation that had been given to Bob by his supervisors was that their science facility is in a delicate position and must avoid irritating some religious fundamentalists who may have their fingers on the purse strings of various school districts. Apparently his supervisors feared that teachers or parents might be offended if Bob taught their children about the age of rocks and that it would result in another school district pulling out of their program.
He closed his explanatory message with these lines: “So my situation here is tenuous. I am under censure for mentioning numbers. … I find that my ‘fire’ for this place is fading if we’re going to dissemble about such a basic factor of modern science. I mean ... the Scopes trial was how long ago now??? I thought we had fought this battle ... and still it goes on.”
The civil engineers group also rejected the explanation given by the Corps that the system had failed because Katrina had unleashed "unforeseeable" physical forces that weakened the flood walls. In a letter to Lt. Gen. Carl A. Strock, the Corps' commander, the civil engineers cited three previous Corps studies that predicted precisely the chain of events that caused the city's 17th Street Canal flood wall to fail. The breach left much of central and downtown New Orleans underwater.
Faik Bakir, the director of the Baghdad morgue, has fled Iraq in fear of his
life after reporting that more than 7,000 people have been killed by death
squads in recent months, the outgoing head of the UN human rights office in Iraq
has disclosed.
Elsewhere, one day after Seoul National University dismissed him for falsifying results, South Korean cloning scientist Hwang Woo-Suk claimed that the other nine of him still had jobs.
"Iraq was awash in cash - in dollar bills, piles and piles of money," says
Frank Willis, a former senior official with the governing Coalition Provisional Authority. "We played football with some of the bricks of $100 bills before delivery. It was a wild-west crazy atmosphere, the likes of which none of us had ever experienced." The environment created by the coalition encouraged corruption. "American law was suspended, Iraqi law was suspended, and Iraq basically became a free fraud zone," says Alan Grayson, a Florida-based attorney who represents
whistleblowers now trying to expose the corruption.
$23 Billion of Iraqi money entrusted to the US coalition. Billions completely unaccounted for, the money's purposes completely unfulfilled. Will Fox News get off Koffi Annan's back about the anti-climax of a scandal that was Oil-for-Food?
I won't hold my breath!
Here are the sources - on pages one and 10 for the yarn spun by reporters Josh Meyer and Mark Mazzetti: "US officials said", "said one US Justice Department counter-terrorism official", "Officials ... said", "those officials said", "the officials confirmed", "American officials complained", "the US officials stressed", "US authorities believe", "said one senior US intelligence official", "US officials said", "Jordanian officials ... said" - here, at least is some light relief - "several US officials said", "the US officials said", "American officials said", "officials say", "say US officials", "US officials said", "one US counter-terrorism official said".
Potential witnesses in the upcoming criminal trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, as referenced in court papers by Libby's lawyers. The trial is scheduled for January: