Eeyore's News and View

I saw this reported a little over a week ago and was going to blog it on Sunday. But it just sticks in my craw, that we go ther and our forces die for them and they can't put up with us just a little.
What do they think of us now, we hold no convictions, at all.
U.S. military destroys soldier's Bibles
The U.S. military is confirming that it has destroyed some Bibles belonging to an American soldier serving in Afghanistan.
Reuters News says the Bibles were confiscated and destroyed after Qatar-based Al Jazeer television showed soldiers at a Bible class on a base with a stack of Bibles translated into the local Pashto and Dari languages. The U.S. military forbids its members on active duty -- including those based in places like Afghanistan -- from trying to convert people to another religion.
Reuters quotes Maj. Jennifer Willis at the Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul, who said "I can now confirm that the Bibles shown on Al Jazeera's clip were, in fact, collected by the chaplains and later destroyed. They were never distributed."
According to the military officials, the Bibles were sent through private mail to an evangelical Christian soldier by his church back home. Reuters says the soldier brought them to the Bible study class where they were filmed.
The Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, told a Pentagon briefing Monday that the military's position is that it will never "push any specific religion."
http://www.wmal.com/UniversalSearch.asp?ZIPCODE=20015&index=t&WHERETOLOOK=web&LOOKFOR=military+burning+bibles

Bogus Trend of the Week: Raising Backyard Chickens
The press lays dozens and dozens of eggs.
In all of God's sweet aviary there exists no bird more diabolical and ruthless than the egg-laying chicken. Despite the darkness of this clucking beast's heart, our nation's press has gone on a rampage insisting that more and more citizens everywhere in the United States are choosing to board and feed these creatures in their urban and suburban backyards so they can harvest the eggs.
It is a trend, the press claims. But we know better, don't we? To begin with, keeping chickens is a filthy, time-consuming, and expensive way to keep the pantry filled with eggs. And as this continuing feature has taught its loyal readership, too many of the "trends" reported by the press are actually bogus trends, hyped up by a reporter or her editors to get a lame story into print.
See Jack Shafer's bogus trend stories about the booms in "ceco-migration," shoplifting, church attendance, kids with bombs, dudes with cats, Ivy League women, teenage hookers, teens shopping at the mall, obese teens, and online sales losing "steam." In a July 2008 grab bag, he attacked stories about the rise in locally grown food, the uptick in video conferencing, and an increase in motorcyclers. In 2008, L.E. Leone told the bloody truth about urban farming.Flaunty bogusity in this morning's (May 14) Washington Post Home section feature, "Hot Chicks: Legal or Not, Chickens Are the Chic New Backyard Addition," which claims to have discovered the "vanguard of a resurgent interest in backyard chicken keeping, especially in distinctly nonrural settings." But the closest the Post comes to actually counting chickens is reporting the press run of Backyard Poultry magazine, a bimonthly: It is 100,000. The Jan. 2 USA Today, which reports a "growing number of city dwellers across the country choosing chickens as pets," measures the hen-keeping renaissance by enumerating the size of the BackYardChickens.com community: It is 19,000 worldwide.
For more all-feather, no-bone journalism, see the May 10 Chicago Tribune Magazine, where "Chicken Chic: The Backyard Bird Is Back in Style" claims that chicken keeping is a "craze," is "[w]ay in," and is "a fresh fad." The piece insists that "[m]any an ordinary citizen of many an ordinary neighborhood owns an actual chicken," but never assigns a number to the "many." This is the paper's second example of crying chicken in recent months. The Dec. 15, 2008, Trib discovers "[s]igns of the burgeoning urban chick movement" in the mere publication of Backyard Poultry magazine, the existence of the urbanchickens.net blog, and the fact that a local workshop on raising your own birds sold out in 48 hours.
A bogus trend isn't a bogus trend unless the New York Times has signed on. The Dec. 7, 2008, Westchester Weekly section of the paper contributes "Chicken-Raising Trend Takes Hold in County." The well-to-do folks of that region have been sharing chicken-raising stories, the newspaper reports. It also publicizes the claim that a "growing number of people" are cultivating the birds as an easy way to connect with nature. Then, the story soberly acknowledges that "it is difficult to know just how many households are tapping into the chicken-raising trend." In other words, it's a trend for which there are no numbers. The May 9 Arizona Republic makes similar pumped-up claims about chicken mania in "Urban Chickens the Latest Healthful-Living Trend" before deflating the premise with the admission that it "is hard to know exactly how many people are raising urban chickens."
And so it continues throughout the land. "Urban Chicken Movement Taking Roost in KC Area" (May 11, Kansas City Star) compiles chicken-raising anecdotes and regulatory issues but never puts a number to the alleged trend. "Hot Chicks: More Raising Own Fowl" from the May 10 Providence Journal-Bulletin cites a growing demand for spring chicks but supplies no numbers. The Oregonian (May 14) backs the trend with a story that marvels at how quickly baby chicks are selling out all over town. But don't chick sellers manage their inventory to sell out quickly? If you're in the business of selling chicks, you don't want to over-order and end up with a bunch of unsold adolescent birds playing video games and smoking cigarettes in the store, right? An April 17 Associated Press story datelined Union, Mo., opens with an exciting scene-setter of 1,200 baby chicks peeping and cheeping at the Clearview Feed and Seed store. But the actual story—titled "More Suburbanites, Hobbyists Raise Chickens" on Nexis—undercuts the headline. "Mostly farm families wait to pick up the chicks," the story reports.
If backyard hen keeping is indeed a trend, it constitutes such a long-standing trend that it has ceased to be one. On March 29, 2002, the Wall Street Journal ran a piece about the "McMansion" coops some chicken owners were building for their birds. The April 5, 2004, Arizona Daily Star noted the high attendance drawn by Kim Fox at her chicken-raising speeches in Tucson: "About 50 people attended her last discussion," the Daily Star reported. The Sept. 14, 2003, Seattle Times explored the world of the city's backyard chicken farmers. In the summer of 2003, both USA Today and Newsday profiled the author of Keep Chickens! Tending Small Flocks in Cities, Suburbs, and Other Small Spaces. "We sold 2,000 laying hens last year," the owner of a downtown Houston feed store told the Houston Chronicle for its March 30, 1993, edition. Dialing the Nexis machine back even earlier, we find a syndicated Martha Stewart piece in the April 23, 1986, San Diego Union-Tribune oddly titled "Home-Grown Eggs—Can't Beat 'Em."
Before you place your Web order for chicks, consider the wisdom shared by experienced chicken-owner Jean Moore with the Albuquerque Journal for its July 26, 2003, article about the art of raising egg-layers in the city.
"On the warmth and entertainment scale," Moore said, "they're better than a snake, but not as good as a cat."
Don't raise chickens to save money, advises the Dec. 15, 2008, Chicago Tribune story "Chickens Earn Keep in Chicago Backyards: More Urbanites Have the Critters for Eggs—and Companionship." One chicken-lover says the coop, chicken wire, and feeders set him back $500. A 50-pound bag of organic feed costs $22. You have to secure the coop to keep out raccoons, dogs, and cats. A hawk or a teenager with a Wrist Rocket can waste a free-ranging chicken in a flash. Generally speaking, urban veterinarians don't know how to treat sick chickens. Hens don't start dropping eggs until about 20 weeks, the Denver Post reports, on average three hens will produce two eggs a day, and the birds reach their peak production at two years. There's no way around shoveling the chicken shit, and who the hell likes eggs, anyway? Twitter sounds like something a mutant chicken would say, right? Send poultry recipes via e-mail to slate.pressbox@gmail.com. (E-mail may be quoted by name in "The Fray," Slate's readers' forum; in a future article; or elsewhere unless the writer stipulates otherwise. Permanent disclosure: Slate is owned by the Washington Post Co.)
http://www.slate.com/id/2218390/?from=rss

H1N1 flu deaths and cases edge higher - WHO
H1N1 flu cases rise to 10,243, death toll rises to 80
* Number of new cases in Japan rises to 210
GENEVA, May 20 (Reuters) - The number of confirmed cases of the new Influenza A (H1N1) flu has risen to 10,243 and the death toll has edged up to 80, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Wednesday.
Most of the new cases are in the United States, which has seen 5,469 outbreaks of the virus so far, the WHO said as it focuses on the H1N1 virus that has brought the world to the brink of a pandemic.
Another 51 cases have also been reported in Japan, bringing the total number of cases there to 210 and potentially making it more likely that the WHO will declare a full pandemic after it raised its pandemic alert last month to 5 on a 6-level scale.
Health ministers and experts at this week's WHO annual assembly have been discussing how to fight the virus with vaccines and drugs as well as what criteria the WHO should consider when deciding whether to raise the alert level.
Under WHO rules, signs the disease is spreading in a sustained way in a second region of the world outside its North American epicentre would prompt a declaration that a full pandemic is under way.
Ministers have urged the WHO to consider other factors such as the severity of the virus before moving to the highest alert.
Forty countries have confirmed cases of the new strain and nearly all of those who have died were in Mexico, but most patients globally have had relatively mild symptoms.
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSLK94712420090520

This is the real danger behind the Swine Flu (at least at the present time)and it will only get worse, and when the services start to suffer for lack of attendance at work and the police, fire and water services start to fail, then you will see real panic.
Hospitals swamped amid flu fears
Reporting from Washington -- On Long Island, N.Y., hospitals are scrambling to bring extra workers in to handle a 50% surge in visitors to emergency rooms. In Galveston, Texas, the local hospital ran out of flu testing kits after being overwhelmed with patients worried about having contracted swine flu.
At Loma Linda University Medical Center near San Bernardino, emergency room workers have set up a tent in the parking lot to handle a crush of similar patients. In Chicago, ER visits at the city's biggest children's hospital are double normal levels, setting records at the 121-year-old institution.
So far, few of the anxious patients have had more than runny noses. But the widening outbreak of swine flu, also known as H1N1 flu, is exposing a potentially critical hole in the nation's defenses.
Across the country, emergency care facilities are straining at the seams even though the outbreak is relatively small and the federal government has launched a mammoth disease-control effort -- dispatching antiviral drugs to states, attempting to contain the limited number of cases and beginning to develop a vaccine against it.
"It is a major Achilles' heel in our state of readiness," said Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University. "If we get a situation that is really out of hand with large numbers of people affected, I fear that our hospital and healthcare facilities simply won't have the materials or even the staffing to respond," he said.
Redlener and others are quick to point out that the outbreak is still a long way from such a critical stage.
Of the 136 cases of H1N1 flu authorities had confirmed in the United States as of Thursday night, only a handful required hospitalization.
By contrast, the Department of Health and Human Services' moderate pandemic influenza model, based on the last flu pandemic in 1968, envisions 90 million Americans becoming infected and 865,000 requiring hospitalization.
"If the outbreak stays in what I would characterize as its present mild form, I think we're in great shape," said James Bentley, senior vice president at the American Hospital Assn. "The key question becomes how many people at any one time have the flu, and how many people have it severely."
Prompted by the global SARS and avian flu outbreaks this decade, federal health officials and hospitals nationwide have been working to beef up preparations for possible disease outbreaks, helped by more than $2 billion in federal grants.
Hospitals have increased their supplies of staples such as face masks, and many have trained employees to care for patients out in the field.
In the last three years, California has spent more than $400 million to upgrade its readiness, including purchasing three fully equipped mobile hospitals and nearly 7,200 ventilators to respond to an outbreak of respiratory illness.
... The rest of the story can be read at
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-swineflu-hospitals1-2009may01,0,6976867.story

Better tighten up you security, in good and bad times people will always steal for drugs, but as the economy gets worse it will get worse.
Man reportedly took school's solar panels to buy drugs
OROVILLE -- A man who took dozens of solar panels from the roof of a Chico school stole them to buy drugs, according to his attorney.
Christopher Bess, 32, of Chico entered into a surprise plea bargain in court Tuesday.
He pleaded no contest to a single charge of receiving stolen property. He admitted having a prior "strike" on his record relating to a 1999 assault conviction, which increases his maximum potential sentence to seven years in prison.
He was already awaiting sentencing on a drug charge at the time of the plea bargain.
Prosecutors agreed to dismiss six additional stolen-property counts against Bess related to other items recovered with some of the missing solar panels from a Chico storage shed in March.
It was learned Tuesday that Bess was initially identified on surveillance videos taken near Little Chico Creek School, where 46 roof-top solar panels valued at nearly $50,000 were removed in mid-February.
Prosecutors said Bess was being held in jail on the unrelated drug charge, when guards covertly recorded a telephone call he made to another man asking him to move the solar panels out of two rented storage units on Highway 32.
Chico police then recovered 17 of the panels from the storage facility, along with other stolen items, including more than $100,000 in property taken from a nonprofit veterans group in Chico, according to the prosecutor.
A second man, who was videotaped standing next to a truck with Bess near the elementary school, has reportedly been asked to help police recover the remaining solar panels, according to Bess' attorney, Tracy Tully-Davis.
She said Bess chose to accept the plea bargain rather than risk as much as 15 years in prison if convicted at trial on all counts.
The defense attorney agreed there was strong evidence linking Bess to the stolen solar panels.
Based on the school surveillance videos, police initially arrested Bess on a felony drug-transportation charge, to which he subsequently pleaded guilty, according to deputy district attorney Robert Thomas III.
Bess was being held on the drug charge in the Butte County Jail when he was recorded placing a telephone call to a man in Nevada and telling him to "empty out" the Highway 32 storage sheds, where slightly less than half of the solar panels were later recovered by police.
In the storage units, which were being rented under the name of Bess' girlfriend, were bicycles stolen from Chico State University and lawn-care equipment taken from a Nord Avenue apartment, according to Chico police reports.
Also recovered was miscellaneous property, much of it cold-weather gear, stolen in February from Caring Veterans, Inc. on Rio Lindo Avenue, a non-profit group in Chico that assists military veterans.
Tully-Davis said Bess was stealing to support a drug habit.
"What was found in the storage shed, his behavior, is indicative of a drug addict going on a run," the suspect's lawyer observed.
http://www.chicoer.com/news/ci_12409050