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Actually the issue of the horse being an "invasive species" is more complex then it first appears. Horses show up prolifically in the fossil record in North America and Cortez' escaped horses which became the first wild herds, it can be argued, were actually a reintroduction of the species. The first horses that the Native Americans tamed were from these herds that predate the American westward expansion.

I remember when I was a child our grade school was part of a nationwide letter writing campaign to get the wild horses federal protection. It is sad to see the trend reversing in the recent spate of BLM decisions which put ranching interests above all others. I like my beef as much as the next guy but would prefer more balance in our federal priorities in BLM's management of our resources.

My brother is a heroin addict. Several years ago I went with him to Baja to attend a clinic that had a controversial treatment. I forget the name of the drug but the gist of it is that they put you under and administer a drug that ends the physical addiction in 24 hours.

It worked. He was free of the physical addicition. We stayed around the clinic for a week and then headed back to the states where he immediately relapsed.

It is one thing to end the physical addiction, but if the psychological issues that led him to a life of drugs aren't addressed, then the rest is pointless. I don't doubt that a pill could be invented to end the physical craving, but it won't do a bit of good without therapy, a change of environment and an honest commitment on the party of the junkie.

Thank you for the assist.

The picture referred to can be seen on the link. I unfortunately am not savvy enough to put it in this thread.

Berg is the closest thing I've seen to Forrest Gump. This guy is in the middle of everything: Does work on a tower at Abu Prison, is detained by the US in Iraq, loans his computer to a 911 terrorist contact, and now allegedly has a link to Moore's movie. Too weird for words.

It's that time of the week again when Hamas gets to pick yet another leader.

I smell a new reality show.

Not everything the Vatican had to say today about Muslims was positive. FYI.

Vatican Warns Catholics Against Marrying Muslims

Fri May 14, 2004 12:43 PM ET

By Shasta Darlington

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican warned Catholic women on Friday to think hard before marrying a Muslim and urged Muslims to show more respect for human rights, gender equality and democracy.

Calling women "the least protected member of the Muslim family," it spoke of the "bitter experience" western Catholics had with Muslim husbands, especially if they married outside the Islamic world and later moved to his country of origin.

The comments in a document about migrants around the world were preceded by remarks about points of agreement between Christians and Muslims but they seemed likely to fuel mistrust between the world's two largest religions.

The document said the Church discouraged marriages between believers in traditionally Catholic countries and non-Christian migrants.

It hoped Muslims would show "a growing awareness that fundamental liberties, the inviolable rights of the person, the equal dignity of man and woman, the democratic principle of government and the healthy lay character of the state are principles that cannot be surrendered."

When a Catholic woman and Muslim man wanted to marry, it said, "bitter experience teaches us that a particularly careful and in-depth preparation is called for."

It said one possible problem was with Muslim in-laws and advised future mothers that they must insist on Church policy that children born of a mixed marriage be baptized and brought up as Catholics.

If the marriage is registered in the consulate of a Muslim country, the document said, the Catholic must be careful not to sign a document or swear an oath including the shahada, the Islamic profession of faith, which would amount to converting.

DIFFERENT APPROACHES

The document highlighted the contrasting approaches the Vatican has taken in recent years toward Islam, which has emerged as a strong rival for souls, especially in Africa.

Pope John Paul has broken ground in dialogue with Muslims and even prayed in a mosque in Damascus. He won plaudits in the Muslim world for his strong opposition to the Iraq war.

But Vatican officials and leading Catholic prelates have expressed increasingly critical views about the spread of Islam and the challenge this poses for Catholicism.

The Vatican's top theologian, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, said earlier this week the West "no longer loves itself" and so was unable to respond to the challenge of Islam, which was growing because it expressed "greater spiritual energy."

The migration document also discouraged churches from letting non-Christians use their places of worship.

This issue arose last month when Muslims in Spain asked to be able to pray in Cordoba cathedral, which was once a mosque. A senior Vatican official said this would be "problematic."

http://slate.msn.com/id/2080770/sidebar/2080771/

The article I posted at comment 21 has a click through to an interesting sidebar. This was also written by Deanne Stillman and origianlly ran on Slate. Here it is:

The conversion of American soldiers is one of the strange, little-told stories of that war. I encountered it firsthand during the course of research for my recent book Twentynine Palms about two girls who were killed by a Marine shortly after the Gulf War in Twentynine Palms, Calif. In the early '90s, over drinks in a Marine bar, I met several Gulf War veterans who had converted to Islam while serving in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. (Yes, in spite of their conversion, they were still drinking; for Marines, some things never change.) Like Mohammed, the prophet they now followed, they had wandered into the dunes and seen the light.

Although it was only a few Marines who told me of their Gulf War conversions to Islam, their stories were intriguing. For these Marines—all of them black—Islam was a refuge during the Gulf War, a way to dissent from U.S. policy. Two said they had been drawn to Islam because of the racism of a military that sent "all the black men to the front." Another told me, "This isn't my war"—echoing Muhammad Ali's sentiment during the Vietnam War that "No Vietnamese ever called me nigger."

Another Marine told me that while serving in Desert Storm, he had refused to take up arms against Iraqis. Consequently, he was ordered to remain with one of the rear companies, which was when he visited a da'wah, or propaganda tent, set up by the Saudis to convert troops on the spot. There had been many such conversions, he said. The Saudis were all over the scores of men and women who, like my source, were sent to the rear. The Saudis made an aggressive effort to convert GIs—plying them with expensive gifts and even cash, according to a report by Rick Francona, a retired Air Force colonel and interpreter to Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf during the Gulf War. At least hundreds of American soldiers, and perhaps as many as 3,000, converted to Islam during the war. The majority were black, the rest Indo-Pakistani, Arab, and white. Most of those Gulf War converts have presumably finished their military service by now.

Here's an article on the wider problem.

Uncle Sam's Jihadists

What's the U.S. military doing about radical Muslim soldiers? Not enough.

By Deanne Stillman

The most disturbing story of the war so far is the fragging at Camp Pennsylvania in Kuwait. According to news reports, on March 23, Sgt. Asan Akbar rolled a grenade into each of three tents of sleeping officers and senior NCOs of the 101st Airborne Division. Then he allegedly shot the soldiers with an automatic weapon as they fled from their tents. Two of them, a major and a captain, died, and 14 others were injured.

The episode is unsettling for a number of reasons, most of all because it exposes a fact about our military that commanders have tried their best to ignore: the presence of radical, anti-American Muslims in the ranks. Akbar, a convert to Islam, reportedly said when he was captured: "You guys are coming into our countries and you're going to rape our women and kill our children." It's increasingly clear that there is a small group of soldiers for whom anti-American fatwas issued in mosques around the world supercede the oath of loyalty they took to their nation.

Almost nothing is known about radical Islam in the ranks. Very little is known about Islam in the ranks, period. Today, there are somewhere between 4,000 and 15,000 Muslims in the U.S. military. The estimates are so vague because Muslims, like Jews, often prefer not to declare their religion, and the armed services don't require that declaration. Some American servicemen and women are Muslim by birth. Many are converts, and most of the converts are black Americans. It was during the first Gulf War that the U.S. military first grappled with the issues raised by Muslim conversion in the ranks: As many as 3,000 U.S. soldiers may have embraced Islam since then. Click here for more about the Islamicization of the military in Gulf War I.

For most of the Muslims in today's military—as for most of the Jews or Catholics or Baptists—religion poses no problem for service. They worship at different times and in different places than Christians or Jews do and have different dietary restrictions, but they're simply loyal American soldiers. The military does whatever it can to accommodate this growing group. In 1997, it opened its first permanent Islamic prayer center, the Masjid al Da'awah, at the Norfolk, Va., Naval Air Station. At least two dozen sailors attend weekly. In 1998, Fort Lewis turned a space that had been used for Catholic and Protestant services into a Muslim center.

Do some soldiers visit radical mosques? Do some follow the teachings of anti-American imams? There are no studies to answer this, and the military doesn't talk about it. But Akbar's alleged fragging and other recent incidents suggest that some Muslim soldiers have been radicalized. There are even indications that some may be infiltrating the military in order to undermine it.

At best, military monitoring of radical black Muslims has been sloppy. The last year has witnessed three incidents, including Akbar's, suggesting the radicalization of Muslim soldiers. Beltway sniper suspect and former Army Sgt. John Allen Muhammad converted to Islam in 1985, around the same time he moved from the National Guard into the regular Army, according to news reports. During the first Gulf War, Muhammad may have been involved in a fragging incident very similar to last week's. Muhammad allegedly pulled the pin on an incendiary grenade in a crowded tent near the Iraqi border, setting a sergeant's sleeping bag on fire. No one was injured, but Muhammad was removed from the 84th Engineering company by MPs. "We assumed he was locked up," recalls a Marine who serviced with him. "Evidently that wasn't the case." It is not clear what, if any, punishment followed. Like Timothy McVeigh, another domestic terrorist who graduated from the Gulf War, Muhammad soon slipped back into the population and ultimately introduced the deadly combo platter of his military training, politico-religious views, and psychosis to the taxpayers who paid him to serve his country.

Shortly before Muhammad's murder spree, a black American Muslim named Jeffrey Leon Battle was among those arrested in Oregon, one of a group called the Portland Six accused of ties to al-Qaida. Battle was a former Army Reservist. According to the Justice Department, he planned to wage war against Americans in Afghanistan and may have joined the Army Reserves in order to learn how to kill American soldiers. And in May 2002, the feds arrested a Seattle-based Muslim cleric named Semi Osman as part of an investigation of a terrorist training camp in Oregon. Osman, a mechanic in the Navy Reserves, had access to fuel trucks similar to the type used in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 U.S. airmen. In January, he pleaded guilty to a weapons charge.

One of the weirdest stories of a radical Muslim is that of Ali Mohamed. According to various reports that surfaced after 9/11, Mohamed came to the United States in 1986 while he was a major in the Egyptian army, and secretly, a member of Islamic Jihad. After marrying an American, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and rose to the rank of sergeant. A busy soldier, he taught a class on Islamic fundamentalist perceptions of America to special forces at Fort Bragg, N.C., and also taught at the JFK Special Operations Warfare School where he stole classified military documents. After he was discharged from the Army in 1989, he hooked up with Osama Bin Laden's nascent al-Qaida operation. Using his new American passport and connections, he spent the '90s traveling around the world helping plot terror operations. The FBI finally arrested him in 1998, and he eventually pleaded guilty to conspiring with Osama Bin Laden to attack Western targets.

Even after the arrests of John Allen Muhammad, Jeffrey Leon Battle, and Semi Osman, alarm over jihadists with American military backgrounds has not been not widely sounded. "I'm shocked," former Gen. Wesley Clark told CNN after news of Akbar's alleged fragging broke. "I'm shocked," said the other military commentators on all the other networks.

Were they really? I hope not; as military men, they should have known what was going down in the ranks. But as high-profile members of the media, they were probably afraid to risk offense by speaking the truth, which is that a small number of anti-American Muslim soldiers endanger their brothers-in-arms and tarnish the reputation of Muslim soldiers generally.

Does the existence of a few poisonous soldiers mean that all Muslims in the military should be deployed to the sidelines? Of course not: That kind of silly response is exactly the prejudice that radical Islamists would like the United States to practice. It does mean that radical Muslims in the service, to the degree that they make themselves known or can be found out, should be treated differently. Civilians don't have to sign loyalty oaths, but servicemen and women do. And they should be held accountable. At the first sign of a problem, they should be told to step away from the weapons.

Certainly, the military can do a better job screening its recruits. Sgt. Akbar is a vivid example of this. He evidently had ties to the Wahhabi sect of Islam that has been the breeding ground for so many anti-American Islamic terrorists. Akbar attended the University of California at Davis, a school that has a very active chapter of the Wahhabi-sponsored Muslim Students Association. According to reports, Akbar's mosque in Los Angeles is partially funded by Saudi Arabia's Islamic Development Bank, which promotes Wahhabism. A college professor described Akbar as having a "chip on his shoulder" about Islam, and according to the news reports, he was permitted to guard a munitions depot even after he had displayed a so-called "attitude problem." Now, at least, recruiters and commanding officers should realize that these are signals they should heed.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2080770

This article appeared in Slate (of all places) way back in March. This was the only place I saw this "non-PC" perspective aired. The journalist said in an interview that she couldn't get any main stream media to run it, even with the many big-time magazines and newpapers that normally run her work. I guess that should be no surprise.

The picture you are looking for can be found here:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001915316_brodeur29m.html

The Seattle Times ran this story about this guy.

Nicole Brodeur / Times staff columnist

Fact is, wedding-dress guy's eBay pitch includes some fiction

"Uh-oh. Hang on a sec. Be right back."

That was the sound of Larry Star becoming a star. The call-waiting, the driver taking him to another TV interview. The fact that it was almost 2 p.m. yesterday and he hadn't eaten a thing.

"I don't mean to be not funny," Star said when I tracked him down yesterday. "But I am fricking exhausted."

KING-TV news. MSNBC. The "Today" show. All wanted to see the tattooed, biker-booted computer geek who found his ex-wife's wedding dress in a closet, posed in it and wrote a hilarious sales pitch for eBay, asking only for "enough money for maybe a couple of Mariners tickets and some beer."

Star, 42, a Brooklyn native who tests software, got that all right.

When bidding on the online auction service closed yesterday, the size 12 Victoria dress ("How do you women wear this crap?" Star asked in his pitch. "I only had to walk 3 feet and I tripped twice") had sold for $3,850. And the listing was still getting some 800 hits per second.

Five women who saw Star's ad proposed marriage. He's been hearing from people all over the world. "I'm getting e-mails from Germans saying, 'Oh, ho, ho, you crazy American.' "

But what Star also discovered is that when you put a sad-sack story together with a wedding gown, people will start pulling at every thread of your life.

Interviewers queried Star about the sister who urged him to auction off the $1,200 dress, the ex-wife who had once worn it and the children whom he thanked God they never had.

And that's where his funny story started to get a little serious.

Is there a sister? I asked him yesterday.

"Let's just say we took some liberties," Star said.

OK then. No sister.

And the ex-wife?

"You're digging?" Star asked.

Yes, and it seems there's actually two. The first, Jill, married him on May 22, 1994. They separated on Oct. 12, 1996, and divorced on Jan. 13, 1998.

As for the other, the one who owned the dress, the one with the "Texas cheerleader hair" and the "drunken sot" of a father?

"No contact with the ex-wife," Star told me. "But she is in-state and I am sure I will get contacted because it is astronomical the way this thing has taken off."

For the record, her name is Janell. Star married her on March 2, 2000, in Bath, England.

Their son was born in 2000.

But on eBay?

"Thank the Lord we didn't have kids," Star wrote. "If they would have turned out like her or her family I would have slit my wrists."

Ouch.

Sorry, but there's more: In June of 2001, Star was charged with domestic-violence assault in the fourth degree, and interfering with the reporting of domestic violence.

According to the police report, Star and his wife had an argument. He said she was "stressed out." She threw something at him. He gathered up all the phones to keep her from calling the police (hence, the interfering charge).

When he turned to leave, she threw his guitar at him, breaking it. He pushed her. She fell and scraped her face.

They drove themselves to the police station to file a report, and formally separated within weeks.

The case was deferred on the condition that Star pay $150 and abide by a no-contact order. It was formally dismissed last June.

Star and his wife were divorced in Snohomish County in December.

She got the 1991 Ford Ranger and the 1993 Infiniti G20. He got the 2000 Ford Ranger and the 1981 Honda motorcycle.

She got the encyclopedias and other books. He got the personal computer and the entertainment center.

And who got the wedding dress? A winning bidder who goes by "absolutsth."

We tried to reach the former Mrs. Star, but couldn't.

"I'm not working anybody," he said. "All I want to do is make some people laugh and sell the freaking dress," he said. "I posted it last Friday and it went crazy."

Hani Durzy, spokesman for eBay, said Star wasn't the first to get swept up in the tidal wave a good eBay listing can bring. Just weeks ago, the site was barraged with traffic when it handled the auction of Bill Clinton's boyhood home.

"Larry's listing is a fascinating case study of what the Internet can bring," Durzy said. "I'm not sure that he thought it might gain this much attention.

"But people appreciate good writing and funny listings."

That's all Star really wants: to get paid to write funny things.

"I have been funny all my life," Star said, "and I have 6 zillion e-mails to confirm it."

So all this eBay exposure might do more for him than pay some bills and buy some baseball tickets and beer. It could land him a writing job.

But first, maybe one more auction.

"I found the gloves that go with the dress," he said.

And where is the famous dress for now?

"In a garbage bag. ... Oh, freak, I've got another freaking call. Hang on a sec."

The latest fro my Brother-in-Law who recently rotated in as a helo pilot.

"The FEDEX contract aircraft just came in. It took a rocket through its right wing departing Baghdad International along with some small arms hits the fuselage. The Russian crew laughed it off saying they were probably hit by one of their own Russian rockets. They cut the rough edges off the wing and took off for Kuwait. It is pretty real over here."

Ah, two of my favorite topics: Baseball and the Desert.

From the December 2003 Idaho Observer: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Scientists closely monitoring Yellowstone

Recent eruptions, 200 degree ground temperatures, bulging magma and 84 degree water temperatures prompt heightened scrutiny of park's geothermal activity

BILLINGS, Mont. -- Yellowstone National Park happens to be on top of one of the largest “super volcanoes” in the world. Geologists claim the Yellowstone Park area has been on a regular eruption cycle of 600,000 years. The last eruption was 640,000 years ago making the next one long overdue. This next eruption could be 2,500 times the size of the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption. Volcanologists have been tracking the movement of magma under the park and have calculated that, in parts of Yellowstone, the ground has risen over seventy centimeters this century.

In July, 2003, Yellowstone Park rangers closed the entire Norris Geyser Basin because of deformation of the land and excessive high ground temperatures. There is an area that is 28 miles long by 7 miles wide that has bulged upward over five inches since 1996, and this year the ground temperature on that bulge has reached over 200 degrees (measured one inch below ground level).

There was no choice but to close off the entire area. Everything in this area is dying: The trees, flowers, grass and shrubs. A dead zone is developing and spreading outward. The animals are literally migrating out of the park.

Then during the last part of July one of the Park geologists discovered a huge bulge at the bottom of Yellowstone Lake. The bulge has already risen over 100 feet from the bottom of the lake and the water temperature at the surface of the bulge has reached 88 degrees and is still rising.

Keep in mind that Yellowstone Lake is a high mountain lake with very cold water temperatures. The Lake is now closed to the public. It is filled with dead fish floating everywhere. The same is true of the Yellowstone river and most of the other streams in the Park. Dead and dying fish are filling the water everywhere.

Many of the picnic areas in the Park have been closed and people visiting the Park usually stay but a few hours before leaving since the stench of sulfur is so strong they literally can't stand the smell.

The irony of all this is the silence by the news media and our government. Very little information is available from Yellowstone personnel or publications. What mainstream newsstories do appear underscore the likelihood of a massive volcanic eruption. Though geologists publicly admit Yellowstone is “overdue,” they have been quoted as stating another massive magma release may not occur for 100,000 or 2 million years. Others close to the story are convinced that a massive eruption is imminent. A source that has demonstrated first-hand knowledge of the park's history and recent geothermal events stated the following: “The American people are not being told that the explosion of this 'super volcano' could happen at any moment. When Yellowstone does blow, some geologists predict that every living thing within six hundred miles is likely to die. The movement of magma has been detected just three-tenths of a mile below the bulging surface of the ground in Yellowstone raising concerns that this super volcano may erupt soon.”

***

One has to wonder though exactly how much is in any given place. If it is spread out all over the Earth in very small amounts, there is very little threat. However, if enough HEU is stored in one location, the it could be a serious problem.

I guess the simple math on this would be to assume it is evenly distributed among the 43 countries. The total was enough for 1000 bombs. Using these simplifying assumptions it results in each country having enough Uranium for about 23 bombs. In actuality, it is doubtful the distribution was even so some of the countries have been given enough for more then 23 bombs.

We are probably only getting half the story but it still seems like an ill-fated program.

As a Jew growing up my Rabbi taught us the concept of being the "Chosen People". He said it spoke to our responsibility to work to help make the world around us better. It wasn't that we should exclusively help the Jews, it was that we should help the world. I suppose this is why it is not surprising to me to read that Jews give to non-Jewish charities. It is almost an imperative.

I grew up in an affluent Jewish community and there was a greater need to help with causes in other communities then with our own.

The author is not familiar with Joan Kroc's gift. She was the one who provided the vision for the specific program she funded. They came for a much smaller donation but she had a much bigger vision of how to help.

My brother-in-law leaves today to Iraq to fly Helicopters for the marines. That is one awesome video!!!!!!!!!!

Actually, many of the helicopters are the same equipment also. My brother-in-law flies choppers for the Marine Reserves and is being rotated in to replace their sister unit which is on the east coast as opposed to his west coast unit. They sent in the same choppers.

What you need to keep in mind is that the returning soldiers will need to have equipment at the base they return to. They left base with all their equipment so if they leave their stuff in Iraq then the other equipment would be needed to be moved to the bases they return to.