Protesters: Holding pens unfit for voting machines
By Mike McPhee The Denver Post
Article Last Updated: 08/15/2008 06:56:32 PM MDT
Convention protesters said this afternoon that the "secret jail" the city has set up for people arrested during the upcoming Democratic National Convention used to house the city's voting machines until the building was declared unfit for the machines.
At a press conference in front of the holding pens the city has built inside a dilapidated warehouse at 38th Avenue and Steele Street, protester Glenn Spagnuolo said the city stored its voting machines there until officials said the building was too hot for the machines and was without a fire sprinkler system.
"This facility has a long history," he told a small gathering of reporters. "The city pulled its voting machines from here because the building gets too hot. Yet now they'll put people in there who use those machines to vote.
"There are no toilets there. There's no water, no fire suppression. The city should be ashamed. It needs to stop criminalizing protests."
The Denver Sheriff's Department insists that anyone taken to the center will be there only a few hours while they're fingerprinted, issued a court date and released after posting bail. Others will be transferred to facilities designed for longer detention.
Sheriff's spokesman Frank Gale told the Associated Press that anyone needing bathrooms, running water or telephones would be escorted to them.
The dozen or so pens are made of chain link fencing with coiled concertina wire along the top.
Today, doors into the building were locked with the windows covered with cardboard. When a reporter looked through a cutout in the cardboard, an officer inside quickly closed the cutout window with a piece of cardboard.
Behind the speakers, a dozen protesters, some wearing bandanas over their faces, held banners. One read "Gulag DNC" in reference to the notorious work camps in the former Soviet Union.
Spagnuolo said the city has lied several times recently, denying that the holding pens even existed.
"Every time the city moves its lips, they lie," he said. "We asked them if a detention center existed. They told us it will be business as usual, don't worry about it.
"Apparently, the training received by the undercover officers in charge of crowd control didn't sink in. They're the guys who arrested John Heaney and broke his two front teeth smashing his head into the asphalt."
Police launched an internal investigation after a videotape shot outside Coors Field during the Rockies' season-opener April 4 shows officers Michael Cordova and James Costigan slamming Heaney's face into the ground, knocking his teeth out.
"We're asking that those officers be off-duty during the convention," said Spagnuolo.
Tom Mesnick, another protest organizer, said the city has been acting in bad faith, the same way New York City officials did when the made a sweep arrest of 1,800 people four years ago during the Republican National Convention.
"New York is still dealing with the lawsuits," Mesnick said. "They've paid out more than $1 million in claims. They arrested everybody, even people going home from work."
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_10217583

Don't think this helped and problably will put Russia more on edge.
U.S. warship arrives with aid for Georgia
By Sergei Grits, AP
Russains soldiers ride near the village of Khurvaleti on Friday, moving north in the direction of South Ossetia. A top Russian general said it could be 10 days before the bulk of the troops are gone.
ABOARD THE USS MCFAUL (AP) — A U.S. Navy warship carrying humanitarian aid anchored at the Georgian port of Batumi on Sunday, sending a strong signal of support to an embattled ally. In central Georgia, an oil train exploded and caught fire, sending plumes of black smoke into the air.
A Georgian official said the train hit a land mine and blamed the explosion on Russian forces, who withdrew from the area Friday. The Russian Defense Ministry declined to comment.
The blast came amid persistent tensions in Georgia. Russia pulled the bulk of its troops and tanks from its small southern neighbor Friday after a brief but intense war, but built up its forces in and around two separatist regions — South Ossetia and Abkhazia — and left other military posts deep inside Georgia.
The guided missile destroyer USS McFaul, loaded with 72 pallets of humanitarian aid, is the first of five American ships scheduled to arrive this week.
The much-needed aid and the damaged train were a stark reminder that it will take substantial amounts of aid and many months of rebuilding before Georgia can recover from the war with Russia. Five days of fighting damaged cities and towns across the country and displaced tens of thousands of Georgians.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Moscow Turkey Ukraine Soviet Union Russians Romania Kazakhstan Coast Guard Bulgaria Azerbaijan South Ossetia Abkhazia Georgians Caspian Sea Poti Tomahawk Shota Utiashvili Russian-U.S Batumi Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn
West of Gori, an Associated Press reporter saw 12 derailed tanker cars, some askew on the railway line and others flipped onto their sides. Firefighters hosed down the wreckage.
Georgian Interior Ministry spokesman Shota Utiashvili said the train hit a mine. He said there were no casualties, but the blast had also set off explosions at an abandoned munitions dump nearby.
Utiashvili blamed the incident on the Russians. Georgian officials say Russian forces have deliberately damaged infrastructure to weaken Georgia, and accused them of blowing up a train bridge last week.
Georgian Public Television, which showed massive clouds of billowing black smoke rising from the fire, said another 20 train cars had been uncoupled and pulled away to prevent the fire from spreading.
The director of Georgia's railways, Irakli Ezugbaia, agreed the blast was probably caused by a mine. He said an investigation was underway and other mines had been found on the tracks.
Georgian forces removed a large artillery shell that had been jammed under the tracks and covered with stones.
Ezugbaia said the train was carrying crude oil from Kazakhstan to a Georgian Black Sea port.
Georgia straddles a key westward route for oil from Azerbaijan and other Caspian Sea nations including Kazakhstan, giving it added strategic importance as the U.S. and the European Union seek to decrease Russia's dominance of oil and gas exports from the former Soviet Union.
The conflict between Russia and Georgia, a small ex-Soviet republic whose pro-Western leaders have tried to shed Moscow's influence and sought NATO membership, has brought Russian-U.S. relations to a post-Cold War low.
A U.S. official said the American ship anchored in Batumi, Georgia's main oil port on the Black Sea, because of concerns about the state of Georgian port of Poti.
Russian troops still hold positions near Poti, and AP journalists there have reported on Russians looting the area. Georgian port officials say radar, Coast Guard ships and other port facilities were extensively damaged by Russian troops.
At dockside in Batumi, with the McFaul anchored offshore, U.S. Navy officials in crisp white uniforms were met Sunday by Georgian officials, including Defense Minister David Kezerashvili.
Local children gave the Americans wine and flowers.
Speaking to The Associated Press on the aft missile deck of the McFaul, anchored 2 kilometers (a mile) offshore, Kezerashvili said that "the population of Georgia will feel more safe from today from the Russian aggression."
"They will feel safe not because the destroyer is here but because they will feel they are not alone facing the Russian aggression," he said.
The commander of the five-ship U.S. task force, Navy Capt. John Moore, downplayed the significance of a destroyer bringing aid. "We really are here on a humanitarian mission," he said.
The McFaul, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, is also outfitted with an array of weaponry, including Tomahawk cruise missiles, which can carry either conventional or nuclear warheads, and a sophisticated radar system. For security reasons the Navy does not say if ships are carrying nuclear weapons, but they usually do not.
The deputy chief of Russia's general staff suggested that the arrival of the McFaul and other NATO members ships would increase tensions in the Black Sea. Russia shares the sea with NATO members Turkey, Romania and Bulgaria as well as Georgia and Ukraine, whose pro-Western president also is leading a drive for NATO membership.
"I don't think such a buildup will foster the stabilization of the atmosphere in the region," Russia's ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn as saying Saturday.
An Associated Press television cameraman and his Georgian driver were treated roughly and briefly detained by Russian troops outside Poti on Sunday as he shot video of Russian positions outside the port. A soldier smashed his microphone with a rifle butt, shoved him to the ground, then marched him to an armored vehicle and detained him and his driver. They were later handed over to Georgian police, who released them.
Hundreds of Georgians flocked back to Gori on Saturday, one day after the Russians withdrew, to begin the Herculean task of rebuilding their lives. Their homecoming was laced with despair, disbelief and anger.
"Barbarians, that's what they are. They kill innocent people here ... how many kilometers (miles) outside the battlefield? They bombed all over Georgia," Zurab Gvarientashvili, a 31-year-old engineer, said as he viewed his apartment, destroyed by a Russian bomb.
Gori is 30 kilometers south of the capital of the separatist region South Ossetia, where Georgian forces launched an assault on Aug. 7, sparking the war and an international crisis.
South Ossetian officials accused Georgia on Sunday of building up military forces along the edge of South Ossetia and claimed a Georgian unit had fired sporadically at villages overnight. There were no reports of casualties, but South Ossetian spokeswoman Irina Gagloyeva said residents were asking to be evacuated.
Georgian Security Council chief Alexander Lomaia denied that Georgian forces had fired any shots but said existing agreements oblige Russian forces to leave positions in the area, which is in Georgia.
"We are waiting for the Russians to withdraw and to take the area under our control. We do not intend to do this by force," he said.
Lomaia also said Russian forces were still holding 12 of 22 Georgian servicemen taken prisoner in Poti last week.
Next to one bomb crater in Gori, Merdiko Peredze's goats grazed on burnt grass.
Peredze said he was refugee twice over — once after fleeing his home amid fighting in the early 1990s in Abkhazia and now again, with his house in Gori in tatters.
"I'm an old man but I will return to Abkhazia," he vowed. "Russian, Georgians, Ossetians — we should all be living in peace together, like we did under Stalin."

Much better the the show going on in China, at least it means more.
Vets go for gold in 'Golden Age Games'
('8/22/2008 12:18 AM')
By Tim Evans, USA TODAY
INDIANAPOLIS — Claire Brou stared at the checker board in front of her, then slowly reached out to move one of her red discs.
It was game over for Brou's opponent, Freeland Rea, 81 and a World War II veteran, in the 22nd National Veterans Golden Age Games — and gold medal time for Brou, an 80-year-old partially paralyzed veteran from Ocean Springs, Miss, who spent 16 years in the Navy and Air Force.
"I still have that competitive spirit," said Brou, one of 742 veterans taking part in the games that run through Sunday in Indianapolis. A record number of veterans 55 and older are competing this year in the games, first held in 1985, Department of Veterans Affairs public affairs officer Jose Llamas says.
Several competitors are World War II veterans in their 90s — the oldest is 97-year-old Jack Faust of California.
"A lot of the men and women have disabling injuries, but they are able to get beyond that through the competition and camaraderie of the games," said Diane Hartmann, director of national programs and special events for Veterans Affairs.
Competing in her first Golden Age Games, Gulf War veteran Franketta Zalaznik, 58, of Lexington, Ky., said she has been touched by the examples from older participants.
Zalaznik, who served as a nurse in the Vietnam War while in the Army and the Gulf War as a National Guard member, will participate Sunday in the air rifle and swimming competitions. She sees the games as an inspiration to younger vets returning from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"The older guys from World War II and Vietnam really want to reach out and help these guys and girls coming back now," she said.
Evans reports for The Indianapolis Star
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-08-21-Vet-games_N.htm

The following is a set of websites, that are designed to help kids with homework and stuff.
Might be some good site for you older guys (and gals) also

The Internet Public Library Kidspace has a long list of educational links, including a homework help section, compiled by a partnership of colleges and universities. The links are split up into categories like health and nutrition, math and science and even sports. The site even includes a link to science fair project ideas complete with instructions.http://ipl.org/div/kidspace/

Fact Monster is a reference Website by Information Please/Pearson Education. The site is a studying tool complete with flash cards, multiplication tables, history timelines and biographies of U.S. presidents. Try out the homework center, almanac or dictionary with your child when they hit a homework roadblock.http://www.factmonster.com/

Retired teacher Linda Guterba created Kid Info. She has links organized by the curriculum most commonly covered in U.S. schools. http://www.kidinfo.com/

Math.com is the ultimate refresher for parents who have long forgotten their old studies in algebra and geometry. What is a coefficient again? http://math.com/parents/helpyourkids.html

National Geographic Kids is a good tool for helping the kids with biology projects or social studies papers. The site includes information about any animal you can think of, as well as sections on countries around the world and the people who live in them. http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/

Is Your Gas Pump Ripping You Off? CBS News Investigation: Pump Inspection Standards Vary Widely State To StateThis CBS News investigation started with a simple question: When you fill up, are you getting every drop of gas you pay for? It's up to each state to make sure you're not getting ripped off at the pump. To see if you are, CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian and the investigative team turned to three reporters at CBS stations to see what they could find. Mark Greenblatt of KHOU in Houston reports that for the first time ever, the state of Texas is suing a company that runs a chain of gas stations - accusing it of deliberately shorting consumers. The company denies any wrongdoing, but they are not alone. Last year the state found nearly 2,000 pumps at other gas stations that were cheating drivers. The industry says about 90 percent of pumps pass inspection, and some even deliver a bit more than you pay for. But a two-month CBS News investigation raises serious questions about whether states even know if drivers are being cheated. CBS News uncovered huge gaps in how pumps are inspected nationwide, including: Inspection standards that vary wildly from state to state. A surprising lack of inspectors - only 600 or so nationwide. As Frank Vascellaro from WCCO-TV in Minneapolis reports, Minnesota doesn't inspect gas pumps annually. There aren't enough inspectors to do it. Of the pumps they were able to inspect this year, 11 percent had problems. The state says stations have to fix them, but only a quarter are ever reinspected. And even though the state can charge operators ripping you off with a crime, that's never happened in Minnesota. Overall, the investigation uncovered a pattern of inspection that was, literally, all over the map. Michigan, for example, inspects only after complaints. New Hampshire and Arkansas allow gas stations to hire their own testers, while Tennessee and Florida rely on "statistical sampling." "Some states are doing very well, others are struggling," said Henry Oppermann, the former head of the Department of Commerce division that sets guidelines for state inspections. "When the inspection period would get beyond, let's say, a year and a half, I think that's really going beyond what regulatory oversight should be." In fact, CBS News found 17 states allow pumps to go more than a year and a half without inspection. Among the worst: Arizona, at every three years. Maine's inspections are up to every four years. Same with Texas. One pump CBS News found in Fort Worth, Texas, was last inspected in 2003, when gas was $1.56 a gallon. Speaking with Oppermann, Keteyian said: "I gotta tell you something, I don't have a great deal of confidence right now ... that I am actually getting what I am paying for." "When there's a lack of oversight, there's a potential - a greater potential for abuse," Oppermann said. And even when pumps are regularly inspected, that's no guarantee. Anna Werner at KPIX in San Francisco found that in California, 94 percent of pumps pass inspection. But consumers can still be cheated. That's because pumps can pass even when they dispense a little less than what the pump says. It's a margin of error the law allows. So a high-volume station that routinely sells a little less than a gallon could rake in around $50,000 a year extra - for gas you never get. "Shame on them!" one driver said. "That's all I can say, shame on them." Is it time for Congress to look at this as a national issue? "It would be beneficial to have a national coordination of efforts," Oppermann said. Not likely. When CBS News tried to find out the last time Congress looked into the problem, but came up empty. Fact is: it never has.http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/08/21/cbsnews_investigates/main4371783.shtml#ccmm Here is a link for a little interactive thing to show ou prices around the Country http://www.cbsnews.com/elements/2004...ap611378.shtml

The new silver - made with paper By The Mogambo Guru
Things are so weird lately that I nervously put a new layer of aluminum foil on the ceiling and walls of the Fabulous Mogambo Bunker (FMB) in another pathetic attempt to keep what I assume are Government Stupid Rays (GSR) from being beamed into my brain, too, as things are getting Really, Really Weird (RRW) out there. The weirdest thing of the whole week was that gold and silver suddenly collapsed in price when they should have been zooming to the freaking moon in response to the inflationary and deflationary horrors that are appearing everywhere. And you should have seen the gold lease rates jerking around on Monday! Weird! Many other people are likewise perplexed at this bizarre event, so it ISN'T just a change for me, given that many people have noticed that there is almost no silver for sale, and there are plenty of people who want to buy some, and when they do find some for sale, they find that the asking price is way, way, WAY above the spot price of silver! So that's something else weird! So perhaps it is not just coincidental that Chris Powell of GATA.org posted the headline "US Mint Suspends Gold Coin Sales", by which he means the news that "The US Mint has suspended sales of American Eagle gold coins." Mr Powell figures that "the suspension is overwhelming evidence that the futures contract price of gold on the commodities exchanges is substantially below the physical market price and that, indeed, the commodities exchanges are being used as GATA long has maintained - as part of a massive scheme of manipulation of the precious metals, currency, and bond markets," which is not really all that much news, as the International Monetary Fund, Bank for International Settlements, US Treasury, European Central Bank and US Federal Reserve officials have all long ago acknowledged that they do, and will do, these kinds of things any time they want. The result is that "the Western central banks, desperate to prop up a corrupt and tottering financial system, have put gold so much on sale that even the US Mint can't find any now", as nobody is stupid enough to sell their gold, or silver, at these low prices! Wow! But the question on my trembling lips remains, "Regardless of why silver went down by so much so fast, why did it go down at all?" Jason Hommel of silverstockreport.com explains, "Many people agree there is a shortage of retail investor silver, but they get confused by the lower price. They think a lower price means more silver must have come into the market." I naturally leap to my feet and exclaim, "Well, if one looks at the classical supply/demand dynamic, where the supply curve meeting the demand curve determines the price, then, yes; silver supply MUST have come onto the market to swamp demand, making the price go down! That's the way things work! Everybody knows that! Do I look like I am stupid or something? Is that what you are saying? You're saying I'm stupid, like I don't understand supply and demand or something? Is that what you are saying, punk?" Well, I could see Mr Hommel struggling to contain himself, as bitter experience has shown that everyone is always happy to tell me that, yes, I look stupid, and not only that, but I sound stupid, I act stupid, I am stupid, and I smell funny, which must be the fabled "smell of stupid", which must be (also learned by bitter experience) also something of a babe-repellent, looking back on it all after all these years. Instead, perhaps taking pity on me and my many, many personal problems in the areas of looking, sounding, being, acting and smelling, he says through gritted teeth, "That is not how our markets work." Of course, I figure that he is arguing with me! Happily argumentative, I retort, "Wrong-o! That's how ALL markets work; price equilibrates demand and supply so that they equal each other!" I was feeling pretty smug about this time, because if there is one thing I know for sure, it is that the prices going up and down make demand equal supply. So, thinking that I had finally, at last, bested Mr Hommel in an argument, I sat down with a cruel, sadistic grin on my face, crossed my arms in self-satisfaction, and thought, "Touche!" My comeuppance was, as usual, not long in coming, and almost instantly I see where he had cleverly maneuvered me into revealing that everybody is right; I really AM stupid! He wasn't taking about silver bullion at all! He was talking about paper promises to deliver silver! With my face burning in embarrassment at how easily I was duped, I could feel Mr Hommel's eyes burning into me as he said, "Our markets are affected by paper silver futures contracts, and very few people ever attempt to take delivery of that silver; they buy it on leverage, for the investment returns, not for real silver. So, some people can sell 'silver promises' to excess, and never deliver, and if they sell more 'paper silver' than exists, that can manipulate the price." This is entirely congruent with SeekingAlpha.com blaring the headline "The Disconnect Between Supply and Demand in Gold & Silver Markets". They explain that "western markets are, with the exception of some fabrication and industrial demand, almost 90% paper based", which is making it very easy for the world's bullion banks to affect the price of silver by "managing deliveries of physical gold and silver to artificially reduce the quantities delivered", which they do by restricting credit to buy gold. Then, out of nowhere, in one of those flashes that sometimes determines the course of history, I instantly decide that Mr Hommel, explaining the business plan of "sell 'silver promises' to excess, and never deliver", was too good a deal to pass up! I immediately went into the silver business! Within a matter of mere seconds, with a fanfare of trumpets I proudly introduced the new Mogambo Silver Service (MSS) - a trusted, old-line firm, founded by God-fearing Pilgrims when they stepped off the Mayflower onto Plymouth Rock and said, "This looks like a good rock to step on to get off of this damned boat!" So, from now on, if you ever want to buy some silver, MSS will sell it to you at the lowest price possible; the spot price! All you have to do is just send the money to me, in cash, in a plain brown envelope addressed to "Occupant", and I will gladly send you a piece of paper that says I sold you some silver. And this is real paper silver, too, made with real paper! With a stamp and everything, but without any fingerprints or DNA anywhere on the paper, the envelope or the stamp, so don't bother looking, as I am waaaAAAAaaay ahead of you and your ill-tempered prosecuting attorneys! And the ugly lesson is; you thought that the fraud of naked short selling was only for stocks? Hahaha! Wrong! It's every-freaking-where! Hahaha! And when you have that kind of pandemic, systemic corruption, created by greedy people exploiting inattentive regulators and complicit government, and financed by the damnable Federal Reserve creating all the money and credit to pay for it all, then you are 100% right to be buying silver and gold to protect yourself against the inflation in prices and economic calamity that are sure to follow. Your only mistake was to not take delivery of the actual silver, but instead taking a flimsy piece of paper. And even if the "paper promise" to deliver silver is not from Mogambo Silver Service (MSS), then it is almost certainly something of equal value when one considers that more silver has been "sold" in paper promises than the amount of silver that actually exists in the world! Hahahaha! Richard Daughty is general partner and COO for Smith Consultant Group, serving the financial and medical communities, and the editor of The Mogambo Guru economic newsletter - an avocational exercise to heap disrespect on those who desperately deserve it. (Republished with permission from The Daily Reckoning. Copyright 2008, The Daily Reckoning.)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JH22Dj01.html