Bone-white stretches of salt, leached up from the lifeless soil, lay like a shroud over the high desert where a paranoid Charles Manson holed up after an orgy of murder nearly four decades ago. Now, as then, few venture into this alkaline wilderness gold-diggers, outlaws, loners content to live and let live.
But a determined group of outsiders recently made the trek. They were leading forensic investigators searching for new evidence of death clues pointing to possible decades-old clandestine graves.
And the results of just-completed follow-up tests suggest bodies could indeed be lying beneath the parched ground. The test findings described in detail to The Associated Press, which had accompanied the site search conclude there are two likely clandestine grave sites at Barker Ranch, and one additional site that merits further investigation.
Continued on Page 49
#1
FREEREPUBLIC Poster > claims to had met former MANSON FAMILY/COMPOND MEMBER "WHITE RABBIT" [alias] - the latter allegedly says that he was privy = witnessed the gun murder of two young people whom tried to leave MANSON cult. Bodies were buried near a barn???
The four singers on the Afghan version of American Idol stood nervously on stage, waiting to hear who lost. Lima Sahar was the only woman, the only singer from the conservative Pashtun ethnic group in southern Afghanistan - the stronghold of Taliban-led insurgents - and she had faced worse in her life. In her home of Kandahar, she wore a blue burqa whenever she left her house. But on stage, she wore blue glitter on her hair, a matching head scarf and fake eyelashes. "Who is the person who should stay with us?" host Daoud Sediqi asked the audience, who shouted against Sahar. Sediqi paused, dramatically holding back the judges' decision. "I can tell you this time, something strange has happened."
In many ways, Afghanistan seems stuck, unable to defeat militants or drugs or figure out how to appoint qualified police chiefs. Radicals stage spectacular suicide attacks on government and Western targets, more than six years after a U.S.-led coalition forced the Taliban to flee for sheltering al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
Yet for many young people, the TV show Afghan Star points a way forward, to a better future of peace and song, and for them, Sahar represents hope. She is the story of the country's tragedies - she was kept at home during the Taliban years, and although she is 18, she is only in eighth grade. She cannot speak one of the country's two main languages, Dari, very well, and when she is in Kandahar, she has to completely cover her face and head when outside her home, like most other women. "If I speak honestly, I don't like her voice or her song," said Lima Ahmed, 24, an audience member who is also a Pashtun woman from Kandahar. "But I like her courage, and I want to support her."
On stage, waiting for the judges' verdict, Sahar held her elbows in front of her chest and stared straight ahead. When the vote came in, she had overcome the biased audience's preference and made it to the final three, although that was as far as she would go. On Friday night's episode, Sahar was voted out. "I am very happy to have come in third place," she said on the show. "This is an honor for me that the people voted for me. I really thank them and I also congratulate them."
Sahar was the first woman to make it to the top three in Afghan Star, now in its third season, and the first Pashtun, an ethnic group that traditionally keeps women at home or requires them to wear the all-encompassing burqas. Kandahar is considered the birthplace of the Taliban, which banned music and TV until being driven from power in late 2001.
Sahar and Afghan Star also highlight a cultural fault line in Afghanistan between West and East, modern and conservative. As some young people push more toward the West, switching out traditional tunics and beards for jeans and hair gel, many have rebelled, calling such behavior un-Islamic and anti-Afghan.
In January, the influential national council of clerics asked President Hamid Karzai to clamp down on the country's TV industry, mentioning Afghan Star as an example of immorality. A warlord has tried to remove Tolo TV, which carries the singing show and other such entertainment, from his province. "It's completely rejected by Islam," said Sayed-ur-Rahman Niazi, the cleric at Kabul's central mosque, which attracts 50,000 worshipers during weekly Friday prayers. "Someone who goes to listen to music is guilty of adultery. It's the same thing. And someone who enjoys it should be kicked out of Islam. He's no longer a Muslim." Just trying out for Afghan Star could be seen as an act of defiance, a political statement in song. Sediqi, the host, said he knew that clerics spoke against his show during Friday prayers.
The show is similar to American Idol but with an Afghan twist. It is filmed in the Afghan Markopolo Wedding Hall, which resembles a layered peach-and-cream wedding cake with mirrored icing, in front of a live audience of about 300 people. There are flashing white lights, pumping music, and then Sediqi runs out on stage, announcing, "In the name of God - hello." The singers barely move, and most of the men wear ties and suit jackets or fake leather ones. They sing traditional Afghan songs with flowery poetry, such as, "Can I pick the flowers of rain from your beautiful hair?"
The judges are honest, but kind, telling poor contestants that they have to try harder next time. There is no Simon Cowell here - all the judges sound nice like Paula Abdul. Still, losing contestants cry. The winner, chosen from 2,000 contestants, will get at least $4,000 and a deal to record an album.
Since Afghan Star premiered, it has quickly grown into one of the most popular shows in the country. Even Niazi, the Kabul cleric, acknowledged in an interview that he had watched it. The stars are debated in rural areas - wherever Tolo TV broadcasts - and many stars run campaigns, urging people to vote for them by mobile phone text message.
#2
That video clip of Chinese killing Tibetans prior to the riots is old. I seem to recall seeing it years ago - not even confident it had the same narrative, but the images were the same.
Socialist Peoples Party leader Villy Søvndals picture appeared on the front page of an Egyptian newspaper Wednesday with the quote Muslims can go to hell attributed to him. Søvndal has been a hot subject in the news lately, but this most recent front page appearance is one over which he is not especially pleased, as he was misquoted.
Søvndals go to hell remarks were made over a week ago in response to radical members of the Islamic fundamentalist group Hizb ut-Tahrirs protests against the reprinting of the Mohammed drawings. The drawings were published again in connection with the arrest of three people who planned to murder the cartoonist.
The newspaper, Al-Gomhuria, did not mention Hizb ut-Tahrir in the accompanying article.
Everyone knows what it is I said and that I was talking explicitly about Hizb ut-Tahrir, said Søvndal. I would naturally never dream of generalising about people of another religion.
Per Stig Møller, the foreign minister, said Søvndal would have to make amends himself over the situation, but admitted that these things happen to all of us in political positions.
Naturally a simple explanation won't do, he'll have to grovel.
The Foreign Ministry has responded to the incident by planning a meeting with 12 ambassadors from Muslim countries, according to Claus Holm, the ministrys ambassador to Egypt. Holm said the misquote could have been a simple case of poor translation.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/16/2008 00:00 ||
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Everyone knows what it is I said and that I was talking explicitly about Hizb ut-Tahrir, said Søvndal. I would naturally never dream of generalising about people of another religion.
Oh, go on, it feels tingly at first but soon you will like it.
My version of this post has an ad from Muslima.com, The International Muslim Matrimonial Site, Browse Photos Now!. I'll know we've made it when they advertise in the DS&TP.
#1
Not exactly weapons technology. This is stuff you can pick up in any Radio Shack.
They exported resistors, capacitors and Intel i960 processors.
They claimed the recipient was NPOL (the Indian Navy's Oceanography lab), which is not on the "entity list" and is ok to ship stuff to.
The actual recipient was VSSC (which is on the entity list and requires a waiver).
VSSC is actually not in the missile business. It makes LOX/Kerosene and LOX/LH engines which are are not suitable for ballistic missiles. Not when the Indian DRDO already has large diameter solid fuel engines.
The i960s (an obsolete processor) which they could have salvaged from old laser printers was destined for HAL in Bangalore. The FBW computers of the Tejas jet use this processor. Ironically the FBW software was actually tested on an F-16 by Lockeed Martin. The engines of the Tejas are supplied by General Electric. The MMR of the Tejas is being converted to use ADI's Blackfin Sharc processor.
3 generations of this processor have actually been completely designed in Bangalore.
Indian critics of the US-India nuclear deal have also seized upon this case. They are asking why the Indian PM Singh wants to buy F-18 fighters from the US when even obsolete processors are under sanctions.
Posted by: john frum ||
03/16/2008 13:29 Comments ||
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#2
was destined for HAL in Bangalore
"...I'm sorry, Dave, but I don't remember any technology transfers like that."
[ Hal/off]
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
03/16/2008 16:47 Comments ||
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Barack Obama on Friday blamed fiery 1960s-era conditioning for racially inflammatory remarks by his former pastor and a prominent backer of Hillary Clinton.
In a wide ranging interview with Tribune editors and reporters, Obama denounced controversial sermons from Rev. Jeremiah Wright in which the just-retired pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago called on blacks to condemn the United States and accused U.S. leaders of state-sponsored terrorism that invited the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
At the same time, Obama sought to explain the context of those and other controversial Wright statements by drawing a connection to recent comments by Geraldine Ferraro, the former New York congresswoman. Ferraro recently stepped down from Clinton's campaign after saying that Obama enjoyed an electoral advantage over Clinton in the Democratic presidential contest because he was black. Both Wright, who is 66, and Ferraro, who is 72, were products of the often violent and racially divisive '60s and were stuck in a time warp, Obama explained.
Obama compared Wright to an uncle he was fond of but with whom he disagreed, adding: "Like a lot of African American men of fierce intelligence who came of age [then], he has a lot of the language and the memories and the baggage of those times." Obama said he didn't attend controversial Wright sermons excerpts of which are now circulating on the Internet.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/16/2008 08:55 ||
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That's actually an intelligent view of both of them. I would have just called them dinosaurs...
Posted by: Shakey Steve ||
03/16/2008 9:59 Comments ||
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#2
Gee...I didn't think BO was old enough to remember the 60's. What next, blaming the 80's for doing of cocaine?
#4
I attended church regularly and listened to all the sermons, of course, because I am a devout Christian and Pastor Wright was my spiritual mentor, but I never heard those sermons!
Posted by: B. H. Obama ||
03/16/2008 12:19 Comments ||
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#5
And nice how he dragged Hilly into his quagmire...
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/16/2008 12:19 Comments ||
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#6
heh - SondraK has got a great pic - the chickens are coming home to roost, indeed
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/16/2008 12:29 Comments ||
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#7
he (Wright) has a lot of the language and the memories and the baggage of those times."
Anyone with more than a passing familiarity with the black activist community knows that this sort of deranged Blame Whitey, Death to AmeriKKKa ranting is standard doctrine. It is what keeps media-darling black politicians like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton from being viable with the non-black electorate. So far, by being an empty suit and only talking about HopeAndChange, Obama has avoided a similar fate. It does not mean he is not a True Believer.
#8
Oh, I get it. It's THE MAN'S! fault the Rev is blaming THE MAN!
Well, geez, who can blame him then? Sorry, to doubt you, Barry. Here's another mulligan...
#9
Wright is a Satanic, hate filled monster. Anyone who defends anything about him other than his 1st Amendment right to be a Satanic, hate filled monster is likely the same.
OB is a huge disappointment to me. I could never vote for him...but at least I thought there was at least one honorable liberal politician I could respect...unlike PelosiReidBoxerFranksKennedy, etc.
#10
I hate fake people. Hillary is a fake, she wants to tax us into submission and make us into a nanny state. She doesn't say that she says she is "progressive". Nobody would dare call Rev Wright a racists but that is exactly what he is proclaiming from the pulpit. By the way I care in what "context" he said "God Damn America" there is NO WAY that kind of talk belongs in any "Church". Mrs. B.O. claimed that hse was misunderstood when she was "Finally proud of America'" She didn't mis-speak she was just passing on what she learned at church. She just could not understand that the rest of America does not feel that way. I will bet you that B.O. was surprised by all the attention given to a man that preaches to his family on Sunday. He believes it and don't anyone think otherwise.
#11
By the end of the campaign, obama's going to be scrubbing his hands raw, muttering "out damned spot!" Missus obama's going to be screeching "Barry! You blew our chance to put whitey in his place!"
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
03/16/2008 15:42 Comments ||
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#12
He did too much LDS in the 60's. A double dumbass on you!
#14
Obama said he did a "good job" navigating local politics without becoming "entangled in some of the traditional problems."
Obama said [his earmark] was to help his wife for a good purpose but added his office should have asked Sen. Dick Durbin to put in for the earmark instead. [insert Roger Rabbit jawdropper here]
"I have a temperament that I think is suitable to the presidency, as well as campaigning for the presidency."
No shit. He's close to mastering teflon. Nothing to see here. Incredible.
Last week, I asked David Walker, the U.S. comptroller general, why he is quitting his job to travel the country on a "fiscal wake-up tour." His answer: Because we have only five to 10 years to address the federal government's looming shortfalls before we're faced with a fiscal crisis.
In about a decade, the twin forces of demographics and compound interest will leave few options for solving the fiscal mess Washington has created. By then, our options will all be ugly. We could make draconian spending cuts, or impose large tax increases that will undermine our economy in the competitive global marketplace. Or we could debase the value of the dollar by printing a large amount of money. This would shrink the overall value of the federal government's debt. It would also wipe out the value of most Americans' savings.
Mr. Walker is right. And I join many others in saying that federal spending is now as significant an issue as the war on terror, federal judgeships and energy independence. The U.S. stands at a fiscal crossroads -- and the consequences of inaction, or wrongful action, will be real and severe.
Fortunately, the presidential election offers us a real choice in how to address the fiscal mess. To use a football analogy, we're at halftime; and the question for conservatives is whether to get off the bench for the second half of the game.
I sat out the first half, not endorsing a candidate, occupied with my day job and four young boys at home. But I'm now stepping onto the field and going to work to help John McCain.
There is a yawning gulf between the viewpoints of Mr. McCain and those of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Nowhere is this more evident than on the critical issue of the steady collapse of our government's financial house.
Since 2000, the federal budget has increased 72%, to $3.1 trillion from $1.8 trillion. The national debt is now $9 trillion -- more than the combined GDP of China, Japan and Canada. Add in Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security commitments, and as a nation we are staring at more than a $50 trillion hole -- an invisible mortgage of $450,000 for every American family.
Hope alone won't carry us through the valley of the shadow of debt. Mr. Obama plans to raise taxes on capital gains, dividends and corporate profits. He wants to hike estate taxes by 50%. And he wants to eliminate the cap on payroll taxes. These tax hikes would increase the burden borne by individuals and decrease the competitiveness of our economy.
I was elected to Congress in 1994 as part of a Republican Revolution that captured control of both the House and Senate. A number of us tried to apply the brakes to the Washington spending train. We didn't succeed. Six years later, I left Washington convinced that only a chief executive willing to use the presidential bully pulpit could bring spending under control.
The Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr., whose remarks on Aids and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have sparked controversy, is no longer formally tied to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's campaign, an Obama spokesman said late yesterday.
Wright, Obama's longtime spiritual adviser and pastor of his Chicago church, was off Obama's African American Religious Leadership Committee as of last night, said campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor, who didn't elaborate. The move follows calls for Obama to sever connections to Wright after news outlets began airing some of the pastor's past sermons.
Wright's sermons have included suggestions the U.S. brought the Sept. 11 attacks on itself and that the government had a role in spreading the AIDS virus in the black community. Obama said he sharply condemns such comments and that he never heard those kinds of sermons from Wright. He also said he doesn't plan to leave the church. ``This is a church I have been a member of for 20 years. This is well-established, typical, historically African-American church,'' Obama told CNN last night. ``What I have been hearing and had been hearing in church was talk about Jesus and talk about faith and values and serving the poor.''
Obama spoke to supporters at a rally outside Indianapolis today about America's ``tragic history'' when it comes to race and the need to speak ``forcefully'' against remarks such as Wright's.
Wright, who is retiring from Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ after 36 years, has prompted a swirl of speculation about his relationship with the Democratic presidential frontrunner. Obama wrote about the influence Wright has had on him in his second book, ``The Audacity of Hope.''
Posted by: Fred ||
03/16/2008 00:00 ||
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Interesting isn't it? One campaign has the audacity OF hope, while the other campaign has audacity FROM Hope.
Sen. Barack Obama invoked Robert F. Kennedy on Saturday as he continued to try to distance himself from controversial statements made by his former pastor that are now widely circulating on the Internet. "Bobby Kennedy gave one of his most famous speeches on a dark night in Indianapolis, right after Dr. King was shot," Obama said. "He stood on top of a car."
In reality, Kennedy, speaking in nearby Indianapolis on the night of April 4, 1968, spoke from the bed of a flatbed truck. "He delivered the news that Dr. King had been shot and killed," Obama continued. "At the moment of anguish, he said we've got a choice. We've got a choice in taking the rage and bitterness and disappointment and letting it fester and dividing us further so that we no longer see each other as Americans, but we see each other as separate and apart and at odds with each other. Or, we could take a different path that says we have different stories, but we have common dreams and common hopes .I think about those words often, especially in the last several weeks because this campaign started on the basis that we are one America."
Saying "the forces of division have started to raise their ugly heads again," Obama began to point to his own former pastor from Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's South Side. "Most recently, you heard some statements from former pastor that were incendiary and I completely reject, although I knew him and know him as somebody at my church who talked to me about Jesus," Obama said. "But if all I knew was those statements that I saw on television, I would be shocked. And it just reminds me that, you know, we've got a tragic history when it comes to race in this country. We've got a lot of pent up anger and bitterness and misunderstanding. But what I continue to believe in is that this country wants to move beyond these kinds of divisions. This country wants something different."
Obama told his audience in a high school gymnasium that he is someone who "has little pieces of America all in me." He suggested that controversies over his and other campaign surrogates could harm a more serious debate. "I will not allow us to lose this moment," he said. "When people say things like my former pastor said, you know, you have to speak out forcefully against them. But what you also have to do, though, is remember what Bobby Kennedy said that it is within our power to join together to truly make a United States of America."
Posted by: Fred ||
03/16/2008 00:00 ||
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Don't believe what you see - believe what I tell you to believe...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
03/16/2008 8:51 Comments ||
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if he'd stuck to: "I haven't listened to my wife in 20 years", I mighta believed him. You don't sit through 20 years of that frantic loud Hate-Amerikkka crap with the church audience going bonkers and not notice it. He's a lying scumbag and his "Change we can believe in" slogan just sounds false, now. Where's Michelle? Why isn't she speaking out? You'd hear more of the same crap that Wright espoused if she was ungagged
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/16/2008 11:22 Comments ||
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Michelle's in the back of the campaign bus bound & gagged, I suspect.
#5
I have to agree wid BOB BECKEL on FOX NEWS about Obama broadly seriously damaging his POTUS aspirations wid his suppor for Reverend Wright - I ALSO SHOULD SAY THAT OBAMA'S INTERVIEW ON FOX CAME ACROSS AS WEAK, SEMI-FEARFUL/WAFFLISH OF POSSIB CONSEQUENCES TO HIS CAMPAIGN, AND UNCONVINCING, including in comparison to Wright's own strong interview - NOT A GOOD WEEKEND FOR BARACK.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
03/16/2008 19:38 Comments ||
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#7
JoeM, I think we see a pattern. When Obama has time to craft a carefully empty but rhetorically polished speech, he seems impressive. When he has to actually respond to tough questions he falls apart.
It fits with his 'Present' votes on controversial bills.
TWENTY-two university students were killed in a fire when their bus collided with a vehicle transporting fuel in western Iran. The bus, which was taking the male students back home to the northeastern city of Mashhad, crashed with the heavy goods vehicle yesterday evening on a road between Khuzestan and Lorestan provinces, the official IRNA news agency reported.
According to the student news agency ISNA, the local police said the reason of the accident was "the speeding of the sleepy driver driving the fuel vehicle''.
Seven people were injured.
Iran's roads are among the most dangerous in the world. At least 100,000 people in the country of 70m have died in road accidents over the past five years.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
The Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr., whose remarks on Aids and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have sparked controversy, is no longer formally tied to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's campaign, an Obama spokesman said late yesterday. 
Sen. Barack Obama invoked Robert F. Kennedy on Saturday as he continued to try to distance himself from controversial statements made by his former pastor that are now widely circulating on the Internet. "Bobby Kennedy gave one of his most famous speeches on a dark night in Indianapolis, right after Dr. King was shot," Obama said. "He stood on top of a car."
