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Palestinian Resistance Not Terrorism: Assad Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said in an interview with a U.S. weekly magazine to be published this week that the Palestinian resistance movements are not "involved in terrorist activities." Speaking to the mass-circulation Newsweek, Assad said all the Arabs support the Palestinians and send them money. "You cannot stop that. No one in our area calls it terrorism. They are talking about freedom." On U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's demand to close the offices of some Palestinian resistance groups operating from Damascus, the Syrian Pesident said they do not have offices but "houses where...

SAY NO! to the blasphemous play 'The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told' scheduled to show at the Kresge Theater at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts on May 17. 'The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told' refers to Our Lady as a lesbian! "I wanted the Garden of Eden in Central Park, and Mary as a lesbian mother, which would certainly help me comprehend immaculate conception." (The New York Times, 12/6/98) "Contrary to church doctrine, the Virgin Mary turns out to be a flaky lesbian... "Adam, Steve, and company have gathered in a Chelsea loft to celebrate Christmas and a second immaculate conception."...

MIDI - LET'S ALL SING LIKE THE BIRDIES SING Let's all whine just like Robert Byrd...wah, wah, wah, wah, wah The theatre of the absurd...wah, wah, wah, wah, wah Jealousy's really obvious...Dubya sure looked neat His flight suit was cool...Robert Bryd, that fool, wears a dirty sheet

NEW DELHI: Officials and ministers are putting on a brave face, but the government feels let down by US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage's visit last week. Last May-June, Armitage was part of a torrent of high-level visits- British foreign secretary Jack Straw, US secretary of state Colin Powell and secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld- aimed at persuading the Vajpayee government to call off a military attack on Pakistan. The message was similar: Musharraf had given them assurances that Pakistan would end infiltration across the Line of Control (LoC) permanently. President Bush underscored this while speaking to reporters after...

It was to be "The Last Flight of the Roton," but the flight was not nearly as long as organizers hoped. The last vestige of an attempt to create a low-cost space-launch system, the Roton ATV was headed from its birthplace at the Mojave Airport for display at Classic Rotors, a helicopter museum located at the Ramona Airport. But like many flight experiments before it, this one ended in disappointment Saturday morning. The effort to carry the six-story, cone-shaped vehicle, created by Rotary Rocket, beneath an Army helicopter ran into unexpected difficulties once airborne and the two never left the...

CAMP DOHA, Kuwait May 11 — U.S. weapons hunters empty-handed after seven weeks of field work are still operating without translators, have had almost no contact with Iraqi scientists and can't tell what's missing from looted sites where suspected weapons of mass destruction were thought to be hidden. Some of the problems are logistical. Others seem to be the result of limited manpower and expertise. In interviews with The Associated Press, military planners involved in the search said they were working to solve them. While the basic work structure will continue, they said, several elements are expected to improve now...

Not every one of a president's judicial nominees has the right to a straight up-or-down vote in the Senate, Democratic leader Tom Daschle said Sunday. Democrats have held up votes on two of President Bush's picks, leading majority Republicans to propose last week a change in Senate rules to restrict the use of delaying tactics to block nominations. In theory and practice, senators should have the chance to cast a direct vote on all nominees for the federal bench, said Daschle, D-S.D. "That should be the rule but sometimes there are ... exceptions to the rule," he said. "There are...

NEW YORK (Talon News) -- The Middle Eastern Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley, has accepted funds from a member of the Saudi royal family and a Saudi businessman that the U.S. State Department maintains are responsible for supporting terrorism, according to the Berkeley, California Patriot, a student-run newspaper. The Center for Middle Eastern Studies at UC Berkeley runs two programs which both have stated missions to increase "understanding of Islam and of Muslim peoples and cultures in the United States and around the world." But each of those programs has ties to suspects in the War on...

Orgy of killing as Congo teeters on brink of genocide By Adrian Blomfield in Uvira (Filed: 12/05/2003) Wielding machetes and rocket-launchers, hordes of tribal warriors and drug-crazed children marauded through the Congolese town of Bunia yesterday, unleashing an orgy of killing and forcing tens of thousands of terrified refugees across the Ugandan border. United Nations officials warned the Security Council that the crisis was potentially a genocide in the making, drawing parallels with Rwanda, where between 500,000 and one million people, mainly Tutsis, were killed by Hutus in 1994. "Bunia is on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe," UN Secretary-General...

KENT, Ohio (U-WIRE) -- A New York Times reporter said Kent State is miscounting its football attendance. Kent State officials said he was lying. Laing Kennedy, Kent State's athletic director, said the article's author, Jayson Blair, never even contacted the university about how the school counts its football attendance. "It's full of inaccuracies," Kennedy said. "It's totally irresponsible and not true. It infuriates me." Neither Blair nor various editors at The New York Times could be reached for comments after numerous attempts. The story says the university has sponsored tailgating parties and counted those packed on flatbed trucks and sitting...

I searched and didn't see this posted. Tonight at 10 pm EST A&E: A Bill Kurtis Special Report An in-depth look at the rescue of Private First Class Jessica Lynch by American Special Forces from an Iraqi hospital. Bush Administration officials said that it was an Iraqi who passed a note to US marines which launched the daring mission that extracted Private Lynch from the Nasiriyah hospital. TV PG

A recent poll on the conservative website Freerepublic.com has Al Sharpton slamming the completion for Democrat nomination with Dennis Rodman at 18%. Politics has truly gone haywire since 911 and this is just but more evidence of such. It's hard to imagine October next year but we may very well have Al Sharpton debating George W. Bush on national TV. Freerepublic may soon run a poll testing the unbeatable combination of Hillary as V.P. on the Al ticket. People may think this is a joke but even Rush Limbaugh the bellicose radio political shock jock is encouraging his listeners to...

OTTAWA (Reuters) - It may sound counterintuitive, but Canadian Justice Minister Martin Cauchon believes that by decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana he will actually cut its use. Cauchon told Reuters in an interview on Friday that current criminal sanctions are being applied so rarely and unevenly that reducing the penalties and then enforcing them should result in a more effective deterrent. "The system is broken. It doesn't work. We have to fix it and we have to be realistic in fixing it," Cauchon said. "It's 2003 and we realize that the existing legislation hasn't been effective, and...

But some politicians on the mainland, and on the other side of the political aisle, criticized the president's tail-hook landing as an overpriced photo opportunity. Word about the partisan sniping traveled fast throughout the ship. Many sailors couldn't quite believe it was happening, that the historical presidential visit was becoming cheapened by talk that it was just a well-choreographed display that would win the president votes in the next election. It was the latest example. On ship or on shore, a person's position shapes their perception. Bush didn't need to land on the Lincoln's flight deck, or use it later...

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FBI Turns Focus To Islamic Jihad And Hezbollah Wielding new powers granted by a six-month-old federal court decision, the FBI has greatly intensified decade-old investigations of alleged U.S. supporters of the Islamic Resistance Movement and Hezbollah terrorist groups, according to government officials. Confident that its efforts to track the al Qaeda terrorist network in this country are beginning to pay off, the FBI is devoting more resources to the two Middle Eastern groups, which command more widespread support in Arab and Muslim communities here. Officials say that there are active Hezbollah cells in this country but that most of their...

I have a lib sys admin pal, He invited me over for lunch and I snuck into the computer room for the Democratic Underground. This is what I snapped of the server cluster. -Mal

Time: 12:30 PM Event Type: NPC Luncheon Event Name: Ramsey Clark Sponsored by: NPC Event Location: Ballroom Details: Washington, April 30-- “U.S. Militarism Threatens the Destiny of Humanity” is the title of an address by former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark which is scheduled to be delivered to a National Press Club luncheon on Monday May 12. Mr. Clark, Attorney General in the administration of Viet Nam War President Lyndon Johnson, is expected to argue that U.S. threats and use of devastating force against Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries has created “unprecedented fear and hostility towards the U.S.” Now a...

Risky business: Smugglers use various methods to get illegal immigrants across border from San Luis to U.S.SAN LUIS RIO COLORADO, Son. — While patrolling the desert a few miles east of this border city, Mexican immigration inspectors recently found a hole between two fence posts across the road from a popular cafe. The posts form part of the international line that separates the United States and Mexico, and the cafe is one of several places where illegal immigrants gather before they cross through a hole newly cut in the barbed-wire fence, inspectors said. "This is the new port of entry,"...

DID PRESIDENT BUSH arrive by fighter jet when he could have taken a helicopter -- for $7 less per hour? Democrats are only hurting themselves with churlish and petty complaints. Their real gripe with Mr. Bush is that he looked great; the president pulled off his "Top Gun" act as much as Michael Dukakis flubbed his spin in a tank. And what was the result of their agitating? Even more showings of the same dramatic footage of a triumphant commander-in-chief. Mr. Bush's visit to the USS Abraham Lincoln may have been the real kickoff of his presidential campaign. If the...