To those who fight on foreign soil: We've got
your back. This column will try to keep you
around to honor your living soul on Veteran's
Day.
Support Our
Troops -- Vote Democratic
Such has convinced himself that he's a "War
President" and an ever-shrinking number of
gullible right-wingers get louder and smarmier in
his defense. Yet the exact opposite is
the case: He treats our soldiers like disposable
pawns, then lets them rot in cockroach infested
hospitals when they return.
Behind
the walls of Ward 54, (requires Premium
membership) salon.com coverage of mistreatment of
wounded Iraqi War vets February 18, 2005:
Feb. 18, 2005 | WASHINGTON -- Before he
hanged himself with his bathrobe sash in the
psychiatric ward at Walter Reed Army Medical
Center, Spc. Alexis Soto-Ramirez complained to
friends about his medical treatment.
Soto-Ramirez, 43, had been flown out of Iraq five
months before then because of chronic back pain
that became excruciating during the war. But
doctors were really worried about his mind. They
thought he suffered from post-traumatic stress
disorder after serving with the 544th Military
Police Company, a unit of the Puerto Rico
National Guard, the kind of unit that saw dirty,
face-to-face combat in Iraq.
A copy of Soto-Ramirez's medical records,
reviewed by Salon, show that a doctor who treated
him in Puerto Rico upon his return from Iraq
believed his mental problems were probably caused
by the war and that his future was in the Army's
hands. "Clearly, the psychiatric symptoms are
combat related," a clinical psychologist at
Roosevelt Roads Naval Hospital wrote on Nov. 24,
2003. The entry says, "Outcome will depend on
adequacy and appropriateness of treatment."
Doctors in Puerto Rico sent Soto-Ramirez to
Walter Reed in Washington, D.C., to get the best
care the Army had to offer. There, he was put in
Ward 54, Walter Reed's "lockdown," or inpatient
psychiatric ward, where the most troubled
patients are supposed to have constant
supervision.
But less than a month after leaving Puerto Rico,
on Jan. 12, 2004, Soto-Ramirez was found dead,
hanging in Ward 54. Army buddies who visited him
in the days before his death said Soto-Ramirez
was increasingly angry and despondent. "He was
real upset with the treatment he was getting,"
said Ren Negron, a former Walter Reed psychiatric
patient and a friend of Soto-Ramirez's. "He said:
'These people are giving me the runaround ...
These people think I'm crazy, and I'm not crazy,
Negron. I'm getting more crazy being up
here.'
Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy
Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs
in the air, weighted down with black mold. When
the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower
and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor
above through a rotted hole. The entire building,
constructed between the world wars, often smells
like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are
everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up
cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.
This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of
place where Duncan expected to recover when he
was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center
from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a
shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss.
But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the
hospital and five miles up the road from the
White House, has housed hundreds of maimed
soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The common perception of Walter Reed is of a
surgical hospital that shines as the crown jewel
of military medicine. But 5 1/2 years of
sustained combat have transformed the venerable
113-acre institution into something else entirely
-- a holding ground for physically and
psychologically damaged outpatients. Almost 700
of them -- the majority soldiers, with some
Marines -- have been released from hospital beds
but still need treatment or are awaiting
bureaucratic decisions before being discharged or
returned to active duty.
They suffer from brain injuries, severed arms
and legs, organ and back damage, and various
degrees of post-traumatic stress. Their legions
have grown so exponentially -- they outnumber
hospital patients at Walter Reed 17 to 1 -- that
they take up every available bed on post and
spill into dozens of nearby hotels and apartments
leased by the Army. The average stay is 10
months, but some have been stuck there for as
long as two years.
WASHINGTON 'Äî For just the second time
since the war began, the Army is sending large
units back to Iraq without giving them at least a
year at home, defense officials said today.
The move signaled how stretched the U.S. fighting force has become.
A combat brigade from New York and a Texas
headquarters unit will return to Iraq this summer
in order to maintain through August the military
buildup President Bush announced earlier this
year. Overall, the Pentagon announced, 7,000
troops will be going to Iraq in the coming months
as part of the effort to keep 20 brigades in the
country to help bolster the Baghdad security
plan. A brigade is roughly 3,000 soldiers.
The Army will try not to shorten the troops' U.S.
time, "but in this case we had to," said a senior
Army official, who requested anonymity because of
the sensitivity of the issue. "Obviously right
now the Army is stretched," the official
said.
March 11, 2007 | COLUMBUS, Ga. -- "This
is not right," said Master Sgt. Ronald Jenkins,
who has been ordered to Iraq even though he has a
spine problem that doctors say would be damaged
further by heavy Army protective gear. "This
whole thing is about taking care of soldiers," he
said angrily. "If you are fit to fight you are
fit to fight. If you are not fit to fight, then
you are not fit to fight."
As the military scrambles to pour more soldiers
into Iraq, a unit of the Army's 3rd Infantry
Division at Fort Benning, Ga., is deploying
troops with serious injuries and other medical
problems, including GIs who doctors have said are
medically unfit for battle. Some are too injured
to wear their body armor, according to medical
records.
On Feb. 15, Master Sgt. Jenkins and 74 other
soldiers with medical conditions from the 3rd
Division's 3rd Brigade were summoned to a meeting
with the division surgeon and brigade surgeon.
These are the men responsible for handling each
soldier's "physical profile," an Army document
that lists for commanders an injured soldier's
physical limitations because of medical problems
-- from being unable to fire a weapon to the
inability to move and dive in
three-to-five-second increments to avoid enemy
fire. Jenkins and other soldiers claim that the
division and brigade surgeons summarily
downgraded soldiers' profiles, without even a
medical exam, in order to deploy them to Iraq. It
is a claim division officials deny.
The 3,900-strong 3rd Brigade is now leaving for
Iraq for a third time in a steady stream. In
fact, some of the troops with medical conditions
interviewed by Salon last week are already gone.
Others are slated to fly out within a week, but
are fighting against their chain of command,
holding out hope that because of their ills they
will ultimately not be forced to go. Jenkins, who
is still in Georgia, thinks doctors are helping
to send hurt soldiers like him to Iraq to make
units going there appear to be at full strength.
"This is about the numbers," he said flatly.
That is what worries Steve Robinson, director of
veterans affairs at Veterans for America, who has
long been concerned that the military was
pressing injured troops into Iraq. "Did they send
anybody down range that cannot wear a helmet,
that cannot wear body armor?" Robinson asked
rhetorically. "Well that is wrong. It is a war
zone." Robinson thinks that the possibility that
physical profiles may have been altered
improperly has the makings of a scandal. "My
concerns are that this needs serious
investigation. You cannot just look at somebody
and tell that they were fit," he said. "It smacks
of an overstretched military that is in crisis
mode to get people onto the battlefield."
And this is just sad, and not just because it
has to be noted in News of the
Weird. Just when we need to handle heavily
wounded soldiers, some with PTSD and some with
very serious injuries that are not being taken
care of, the exact opposite is happening.
Small disability claims whiz through the system
while major claims get put in the In Basket. At
a time when the returning wounded from Iraq and
Afghanistan are meeting bureaucratic delays in
getting their own disabilities properly
compensated, Thousands
of vets get payments for hemorrhoids, other minor
claims. Scripps-Howard, March 28, 2007:
As it braces for a flood of war-disabled
veterans, the nation's disability compensation
system for former troops has become a $26 billion
behemoth bloated and backlogged in part by
overgenerous benefits for minor maladies barely
tied to military service, if at all.
Case in point: More than 120,000 vets from
earlier eras are collecting lifetime benefits for
hemorrhoids, which they are not required to show
resulted from their military duty.
Thousands of more veterans are receiving monthly
compensation for bumps on their faces from
shaving or for scars so small they are hard to
see _ and will for the rest of their lives.
In fact, hemorrhoids are the 11th most common
disability for which U.S. vets are compensated,
after such conditions as defective hearing,
arthritis, diabetes and hypertension. A
conservative calculation of the cost of the
benefits to veterans for hemorrhoids alone could
be $14 million a year or more.
With the first wave of what could be as many as
700,000 veterans of the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan already applying for benefits,
worries grow that they could soon suffer from
delays or a funding crunch because the system has
expanded far beyond its initial intent of
compensating veterans for loss of earning power
due to service-related illnesses or injuries.
As a result, some critics estimate that perhaps
775,000 of the 2.6 million veterans on the rolls
in 2005 are getting monthly checks for ailments
that don't hurt their ability to work, often are
treatable, are common in the civilian world, and
frequently are the result of the ordinary aging
process.
Darryl Kehrer, former staff director for the
House Veterans Affairs subcommittee on benefits,
says the combat veterans of the "war on terror"
will be ill-served by a system that some studies
have shown spends $1 billion a year on such
claims, which also contribute to the current
600,000-claim backlog. The average wait now for
benefits is six months, a lag that could balloon
to twice that, or more, once Iraq and Afghanistan
vets fully enter the pipeline.
"This does a disservice to veterans who are truly
disabled, (and) to the men and women coming back
from combat," who now must get in the back of the
line, Kehrer said.
Mercenaries mask
the real number of troops in
Iraq
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said, "you
fight with the army you have, not the army you
may want", but the exact opposite is
happening. We are fighting with the army we can
buy, as we outsource more and more of the
support and fighting in Iraq.
The US military has gone headlong for
privatisation, urged on by the defence secretary,
Donald Rumsfeld. One 2002 memo from the secretary
of the army, Thomas White, suggests that as much
as a third of its budget is going on private
contractors, while army numbers are falling. The
rationale is to save money on permanent soldiers
by using temporary ones.
But the policy has other, political ad vantages.
When a mortar shell lobbed at Baghdad airport
earlier this year killed Corporal Tomasi Ramatau,
41, no one in the US media took much notice.
Names like his do not appear on the roll-calls of
US soldiers killed in Iraq, solemnly enunciated
on the daily TV shows. Ramatau was one of the
unemployed men from the Pacific island of Fiji
hired in their hundreds by another prominent private
military firm, Global Risk of London, to take the
bullets for the Pentagon.
The loose control of the 20,000-plus
private-enterprise soldiers in Iraq has been
thrown into painful relief by the accusations
that hired civilian interrogators and translators
encouraged obscene tortures at Abu Ghraib prison
and that one even allegedly raped an Iraqi boy in
his cell.
No senator or congressman appears to have had the
least idea until the scandal broke that the drive
to privatise the military had gone so far as to
use civilian contractors for such sensitive
jobs.
Aides to Democrat congressman Ike Skelton were
particularly incensed with a reply by Mr Rumsfeld
to a demand last month for information about
private mil itary firms in Iraq. Mr Rumsfeld
produced a list of 60 companies, half a dozen of
them British, but withheld all mention of two of
the biggest and best-connected recruiting firms
alleged to be at the centre of the torture
scandal - CACI in Washington and Titan in San
Diego, California.
One of the few people to have conducted a
full-scale study of military privatisation, Peter
Singer of the Brookings Institution, said: "No
lawmakers seemed to know that they were hiring
civilians as interrogators. They had this concept
that the civilians were there to mow lawns and
answer phones." In his recent book, Corporate
Warriors, he lists dangers in excessively
privatised soldiering, such as cutting corners to
save money, secrecy, and hollowing out the
genuine military by poaching their troops. All
have duly come to pass in Iraq.
How much do you know about Blackwater?
I didn't know much. After a flurry of articles
in 2004 when mercenaries started getting killed,
the compliant press stopped talking about them
much. Yet by some reports, the US has outsourced
the Iraq War to private contractors like
Blackwater which increase our actual presence by
about a third.
As journalist Jeremy Scahill watched the
U.S. armed forces lay waste the city of Fallujah
in Iraq, he wondered to himself why such a strong
response was prompted by the death of four
mercenary soldiers.
"I watched the 37,000 air strikes on that city
with utter horror," said Scahill. "How would the
lives of four private soldiers be worth the death
of an entire city and that's when I first heard
of Blackwater, and then just months later I saw
them openly operating on the streets of New
Orleans."
Those were the two major incidents that made
Scahill think to himself that the company
deserved some scrutiny.
What he found was a private company with deep
connections with the Christian Right, and with
the Bush administration.
"It's a company that has made its fortunes on
incredible suffering, war, misery, and violence,"
said Scahill.
The result is Blackwater: The Rise of the World's
Most Powerful Mercenary Army, an expose of the
company, its principals, and the work it has been
called upon to do by various departments of the
U.S. government, and what it's plans are for the
future.
Scahill will be in Burlington April 13 at the
Unitarian Church as part of 35-city tour for the
book. He will also take part in a limited seating
discussion to benefit the Peace & Justice
Center's Peace & Human Rights Project on April
14.
Key to Scahill's investigation is the growing
role Blackwater, and other mercenary companies,
are taking in the so-called "war on terror" and
the Iraq War.
There are about 100,000 private contractors in
Iraq, and almost half of them 'Äî 48,000 'Äî are
private mercenaries.
Just to recap: Your tax dollars are being spent on mercenaries and NOT
on our troops. Recruitment is down, and soldiers
are being sent back after too little rest, but
that isn't enough. Republicans are masking a
"surge" in troops by throwing money at it. Your
money, but from a different "supplemental" budget
line. For this, the rich got tax breaks and you
have high gas prices?
Our soldiers
were not told the truth: Prewar military
intelligence warned of catastrophe in
Iraq
Bush and the radical right insist that they were
operating under the
best available intelligence in making such
momentous decisions. In reality, the exact
opposite was the case.
And they knew it. Bush, Cheney, Rice, et al
weren't just incredibly inept, they were lying.
U.S. intelligence analysts predicted, in
two papers widely circulated before the 2003 Iraq
invasion, that al-Qaida would see U.S. military
action as an opportunity to increase its
operations and that Iran would try to shape the
post-Saddam era.
The top analysts in government also said that
establishing a stable democracy in Iraq would be
a long, turbulent challenge.
Democrats said the documents, part of a Senate
Intelligence Committee investigation released
Friday, make clear that the Bush administration
was warned about the challenges it now faces as
it tries to stabilize Iraq.
"Sadly, the administration's refusal to heed
these dire warnings - and worse, to plan for them
- has led to tragic consequences for which our
nation is paying a terrible price," said Senate
Intelligence Chairman Jay Rockefeller,
D-W.Va.
....
Among other conclusions, the analysts found:
_ Establishing a stable democracy in Iraq would
be a long, steep and probably turbulent
challenge. They said that contributions could be
made from 4 million Iraqi exiles and Iraq's
impoverished, underemployed middle class. But
they noted that opposition parties would need
sustained economic, political and military
support.
_ Al-Qaida would see the invasion as a chance to
accelerate its attacks, and the lines between
al-Qaida and other terrorist groups "could become
blurred." In a weak spot in the analysis, one
paper said that the risk of terror attacks would
spike after the invasion and slow over the next
three to five years. However, the State
Department recently found that attacks last year
alone rose sharply.
_ Domestic groups in Iraq's deeply divided
society would become violent, unless stopped by
the occupying force. "Score settling would occur
throughout Iraq between those associated with
Saddam's regime and those who have suffered most
under it."
_ Iraq's neighbors would jockey for influence and
Iranian leaders would try to shape the
post-Saddam era to demonstrate Tehran's
importance in the region. The more Tehran didn't
feel threatened by U.S. actions, the analysts
said, "the better the chance that they could
cooperate in the postwar period."
_ Military action to eliminate Iraq's weapons of
mass destruction would not cause other
governments in the region to give up such
programs.
Ah, but America has a very short memory.
Gullible conservatives have reality drummed out
of them by Hate Radio and a 24 hour news cycle
that cares more about slutty celebrities than
battlefield deaths. What about now?
Q Thank you, Mr. President. You say you want
nothing short of victory, that leaving Iraq would
be catastrophic; you once again mentioned al
Qaeda. Does that mean that you are willing to
leave American troops there, no matter what the
Iraqi government does? I know this is a question
we've asked before, but you can begin it with a
"yes" or "no."
THE PRESIDENT: We are there at the invitation of
the Iraqi government. This is a sovereign nation.
Twelve million people went to the polls to
approve a constitution. It's their government's
choice. If they were to say, leave, we would
leave.
Q -- catastrophic, as you've said over and over again?
THE PRESIDENT: I would hope that they would
recognize that the results would be catastrophic.
This is a sovereign nation, Martha. We are there
at their request. And hopefully the Iraqi
government would be wise enough to recognize that
without coalition troops, the U.S. troops, that
they would endanger their very existence. And
it's why we work very closely with them, to make
sure that the realities are such that they
wouldn't make that request -- but if they were to
make the request, we wouldn't be there.
David.
Q Mr. President, after the mistakes that have
been made in this war, when you do as you did
yesterday, where you raised two-year-old
intelligence, talking about the threat posed by
al Qaeda, it's met with increasing skepticism.
The majority in the public, a growing number of
Republicans, appear not to trust you any longer
to be able to carry out this policy successfully.
Can you explain why you believe you're still a
credible messenger on the war?
THE PRESIDENT: I'm credible because I read the
intelligence, David, and make it abundantly clear
in plain terms that if we let up, we'll be
attacked. And I firmly believe that.
THE PRESIDENT: We are there at the invitation of
the Iraqi government. This is a sovereign nation.
Twelve million people went to the polls to
approve a constitution. It's their government's
choice. If they were to say, leave, we would
leave.
It's always difficult to separate out the
numerous lies. Bush doesn't have a moral
compass, and he doesn't seem to let reality
impair his "vision". It's like he's talking to a
five year-old... it's like his handlers are
talking to a five year-old. Reality doesn't
intervene as long as he can repeat his Big Lie
over and over. Let me pull out a few statements
to shoot down:
As demonstrated above, "leaving Iraq would be
catastrophic" is the exact opposite of the
conclusions drawn by prewar intelligence sources.
Going into Iraq was predicted to be a
disaster, and it is. The "catastrophic"
consequences are due to the Republican-pushed
invasion of Iraq, the exact opposite of
what Bush still tells people.
The "we broke it, we have to fix it" argument
might have credence if the people saying this
haven't been wrong in every previous occasion.
As further demonstration of the right's complete
divorce from reality, another of Bush's lies in
the interview above is "We are there at the
invitation of the Iraqi government" and "but if
they were to make the request, we wouldn't be
there". Bush's English isn't good enough to say
precisely what he means by that last sentence,
but clearly the exact opposite of his
statements are true.
Poll:
Iraqis out of patience. USA Today, April 28,
2004. More than three years ago, the Iraqis
people wanted us out:
BAGHDAD Only a third of the Iraqi people
now believe that the American-led occupation of
their country is doing more good than harm, and a
solid majority support an immediate military
pullout even though they fear that could put them
in greater danger, according to a new USA
TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll. (Graphic: Iraqis
surveyed)
By Khalid Mohammed, AP
The nationwide survey, the most comprehensive
look at Iraqi attitudes toward the occupation,
was conducted in late March and early April. It
reached nearly 3,500 Iraqis of every religious
and ethnic group.
The poll shows that most continue to say the
hardships suffered to depose Saddam Hussein were
worth it. Half say they and their families are
better off than they were under Saddam. And a
strong majority say they are more free to worship
and to speak. (Related item: Key
findings)
But while they acknowledge benefits from dumping
Saddam a year ago, Iraqis no longer see the
presence of the American-led military as a plus.
Asked whether they view the U.S.-led coalition as
"liberators" or "occupiers," 71% of all
respondents say "occupiers."
That figure reaches 81% if the separatist,
pro-U.S. Kurdish minority in northern Iraq is not
included. The negative characterization is just
as high among the Shiite Muslims who were
oppressed for decades by Saddam as it is among
the Sunni Muslims who embraced him.
How did this translate to the new Iraqi
Democracy? Hey, it might be working after
all...
On Tuesday, without note in the U.S.
media, more than half of the members of Iraq's
parliament rejected the continuing occupation of
their country. 144 lawmakers signed onto a
legislative petition calling on the United States
to set a timetable for withdrawal, according to
Nassar Al-Rubaie, a spokesman for the Al Sadr
movement, the nationalist Shia group that
sponsored the petition.
It's a hugely significant development. Lawmakers
demanding an end to the occupation now have the
upper hand in the Iraqi legislature for the first
time; previous attempts at a similar resolution
fell just short of the 138 votes needed to pass
(there are 275 members of the Iraqi parliament,
but many have fled the country's civil conflict,
and at times it's been difficult to arrive at a
quorum).
Reached by phone in Baghdad on Tuesday, Al-Rubaie
said that he would present the petition, which is
nonbinding, to the speaker of the Iraqi
parliament and demand that a binding measure be
put to a vote. Under Iraqi law, the speaker must
present a resolution that's called for by a
majority of lawmakers, but there are significant
loopholes and what will happen next is
unclear.
What is clear is that while the U.S. Congress
dickers over timelines and benchmarks, Baghdad
faces a major political showdown of its own. The
major schism in Iraqi politics is not between
Sunni and Shia or supporters of the Iraqi
government and "anti-government forces," nor is
it a clash of "moderates" against "radicals"; the
defining battle for Iraq at the political level
today is between nationalists trying to hold the
Iraqi state together and separatists backed, so
far, by the United States and Britain.
The continuing occupation of Iraq and the
allocation of Iraq's resources -- especially its
massive oil and natural gas deposits -- are the
defining issues that now separate an increasingly
restless bloc of nationalists in the Iraqi
parliament from the administration of Iraqi Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose government is
dominated by Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish
separatists.
Let's see how the US media spins this story.
Are they critical of Bush? Do they quote his
speeches and point out just where he is lying?
Oh no, heaven forbid. They use the will of the
people and government of Iraq to come down on...
the Democrats, just like Karl Rove said to
in the memo.
It's beginning to look like Congress
should take lessons in democracy from the Iraqi
Parliament. The majority of Iraqi
parliamentarians have signed a draft bill that
would establish a timetable for the withdrawal of
US troops. Iraqi politicians are responding to
popular sentiment in their country, as reflected
by polls that show 65 percent of Iraqis want the
occupation to end. Would that American
politicians were as responsive to public opinion
here; a recent CBS News/New York Times poll found
that 64 percent of Americans want out. But the
Democratic majority in Congress is so razor-thin
that in late May it finally gave up the attempt
to pass a funding bill establishing a timeline
for withdrawal. The caucus was further undermined
by internal disunity, as the defection of Carl
Levin, Steny Hoyer and others prevented House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate majority leader
Harry Reid from forcing a timeline on the
Administration.
To recap: Bush lies about the reasons to go
to war in Iraq, the Iraqi people want us out and
the conservative news media blames the Democrats.
Unfortunately, it's our brave soldiers who are
dying so sphincter conservatives can avoid any
questions about their corruption and
incompetence.
Please join Erin Hart when she fills in for Jay Marvin on AM760 Progressive Talk, Monday, May 28th, from 6am - 10am MDT (8am - 12noon EDT, 7am - 11am CDT, 5am - 9am PDT)
Kick off the Summer with searing discussion.
An immigration bill only Kafka would love, the Democrats pulling of the
deadline, Bush's intransigence on the veto if a deadline for withdrawal
present, and Monica Goodling's testimony about Attorney General Alberto
Gonzalez and the broken Department of (In)Justice.
All that and Memorial Day thoughts about the troops and the nature of war.
Froma Harrop: The Working Class Is Not Stupid About Immigration (creators.com)
The American working class has few friends, and that sad situation is never more apparent than when the issue is immigration. The fat cats want unlimited supplies of cheap labor. It makes sense. That a giant union purportedly serving low-skilled workers would further that end does not.
James Hillis: Gay Newsmen - A Clearer Picture: Part II (afterelton.com)
"Being open and honest about who I am is part of who I am. It reflects the work that I try to do, which tries to look at the way the world really is." That is how ABC News correspondent Jeffrey Kofman explained to AfterElton.com his choice to be an out gay journalist.
Roger Ebert: Coen country
Gene Siskel and I came back from our vacations and went to a screening the next morning -- for a movie named "Fargo." We knew nothing about it. Sounded like a Western. After the lights came up after that great film, we gasped at the credits: Written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen.
Paul Newman to retire from acting (Reuters)
Paul Newman's career has included winning an Oscar, establishing a food company to fund charities, and operating a restaurant, but he said this week he is retiring from acting.
MTV FANS DIAL-CHALLENGED (nypost.com)
A BELEAGUERED receptionist for Horizon Health Sales & Development company in Lewisville, Texas, sent a scathing e-mail to MTV last week after receiving hundreds of calls from Sarah Silverman fans.
CBS opens the night with a RERUN'How I Met Your Mother', followed by a RERUN'Old Christine', then a RERUN'2½ Men', followed by a RERUN'King Of Queens', then a RERUN'CSI: The 2nd One'.
On a RERUNDave (from 5/4/07) are Ray Romano, Reggie Reg, and Dennis Haysbert.
On a RERUNCraig (from 4/30/07) are Frank Caliendo, Samantha Mathis, and Noisettes.
NBC begins the night with a FRESH'Real Wedding Crashers', followed by the FRESH'Miss Universe 2007'.
On a RERUNLeno (from 5/10/07) are Cameron Diaz and Nelly Furtado.
On a RERUNConan (from 2/13/07) are Eva Longoria, Fred Willard, and Lily Allen.
On a RERUNCarson Daly (from 4/10/07) are Ice Cube and Scanners.
ABC starts the night with the SEASON PREMIERE'Wife Swap', followed by the SERIES PREMIERE'Ex-Wives Club', then the SEASON PREMIERE'Supernanny'.
On a RERUNJimmy Kimmel (from 5/17/07) are Cameron Diaz, Mark Indelicato, and the Used.
The CW offers a RERUN'EVerybody Hates Chris', followed by a RERUN'All Of Us', then a RERUN'Girlfriends', followed by a RERUN'The Game'.
AMC offers the movie 'Patton', followed by the movie 'Tora! Tora! Tora!', then the movie 'Twelve O'Clock High'.
BBC -
[12:00 PM] Doctor Who - Ep 7 The Long Game;
[1:00 PM] Doctor Who - Ep 8 Father's Day;
[2:00 PM] Doctor Who - Ep 9 & 10 The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances;
[4:00 PM] Doctor Who - Ep 11 Boom Town;
[5:00 PM] Doctor Who - Ep 12 & 13 Bad Wolf/The Parting Of the Ways;
[7:00 PM] BBC World News - BBC World News;
[7:30 PM] How Clean Is Your House? - Episode 2;
[8:00 PM] Waking the Dead - Episode 6;
[10:00 PM] Footballers Wive$ - Episode 5;
[11:00 PM] Waking the Dead - Episode 6;
[1:00 AM] Footballers Wive$ - Episode 5;
[2:00 AM] The Weakest Link - Episode 20;
[3:00 AM] Murphy's Law - Episode 1;
[4:00 AM] Murphy's Law - Episode 2;
[5:00 AM] Murphy's Law - Episode 3;
[6:00 AM] BBC World News - BBC World News. (ALL TIMES EDT)
Bravo has 'Real Wedding Crashers', followed by the movie 'Carlito's Way', then the movie 'Carlito's Way', again.
Comedy Central has has 'Scrubs', another 'Scrubs', an old 'Jon Stewart', an old 'Colbert Report', 'Reno 911!', 'South Park', 'Scrubs', and another 'Scrubs'.
On a RERUNJon Stewart (from 5/15/07) is Tim Russert.
On a RERUNColbert Report (from 5/17/07) are Randy Kearse and Rep. Tom DeLay.
FX the movie 'Man On Fire', followed by the movie 'Starsky & Hutch', then a FRESH'The Riches'.
History has 'Band Of Brothers', 'Star Wars Tech', and 'Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed'.
IFC -
[06:00 AM] Everyone Says I Love You;
[07:45 AM] The F Word;
[09:05 AM] Karate Bull Fighter;
[10:40 AM] Everyone Says I Love You;
[12:25 PM] The F Word;
[01:45 PM] Karate Bull Fighter;
[03:20 PM] Everyone Says I Love You;
[05:05 PM] The F Word;
[06:30 PM] The Grandfather;
[09:00 PM] A Love Song For Bobby Long;
[11:05 PM] Love! Valour! Compassion!;
[01:05 AM] A Love Song For Bobby Long;
[03:10 AM] Love! Valour! Compassion!;
[05:10 AM] Red Bull Ride to the Hills;
[05:40 AM] Karate Bull Fighter. (ALL TIMES EDT)
People look at rows of boots which are part of "Eyes Wide Open: An Exhibition on the Human Cost of the Iraq War" in Chicago May 25, 2007. More than 3,400 pairs of combat boots, one pair for every U.S. soldier killed in the Iraq War, were on display.
Photo by Frank Polich
Czech-born but US passport-carrying tennis legend Martina Navratilova said in a newspaper interview Saturday that she could receive Czech citizenship by the end of the year.
"By the end of the year I could get it (Czech citizenship)," the 50-year-old told the Czech daily Lidove Noviny. "I do not have it yet. I am not sufficiently organised," she added in an interview in which she harshly criticised the current state of the US under resident George W Bush.
Navratilova said she used to be ashamed of the former communist Czechoslovakia, which she quit in 1975 for the US, receiving American citizenship six years later.
"Now, I can be ashamed of what is happening in America," she explained. "The thing is that we elected Bush. That is worse! Against that, nobody chose a communist government in Czechoslovakia."
Navratilova added that the Bush "regime" operates a form of censorship by making sure that analysis and other material that is judged politically unsuitable never becomes public.
Ashley Judd celebrates as her husband, Dario Franchitti, wins the Indianapolis 500 auto race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indianapolis, Sunday, May 27, 2007.
Photo by Tom Strickland
Former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney said in an interview Sunday that working alongside stars such as Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder was "a disappointment" after working with John Lennon.
McCartney, 64, said he had been "a little bit spoiled" by working with Lennon from so early in his career. The pair met as schoolboys in 1957.
"It's a funny subject, the collaboration thing, because I collaborated with John and you're a little bit spoiled after that," he told BBC radio.
"I've done it quite a bit since and, I think -- and I hate to say it -- there's inevitably a sense of disappointment because it was just so cool for John and me to be working together, because we started so young and knew each other's ways and minds."
CNN said Thursday that it will drop charges on its Pipeline streaming video service.
Pipeline, which featured as many as four live streams of news as well as archived video, launched in December 2005 and had been offered in various subscription models (including day passes). But CNN is giving up on the subscription models and said it would offer Pipeline for free beginning July 1.
That would still include the four live streams and video archives, but it will be offered without a charge on CNN.com and without a player.
Max Baer Jr., who as Jethro in the 1960s sitcom "The Beverly Hillbillies" lived off his uncle Jed's oil riches, is hoping to strike it rich in the gambling market.
Baer purchased a 2.5-acre parcel last week for a planned casino in north Douglas County for $1.2 million. The deal followed his recent sale of the old Wal-Mart building in nearby Carson City for $8.5 million.
The parcel was the first of two the longtime county resident will need for his proposed Jethro Bodine's Beverly Hillbillies Casino & Mansion. He won't purchase the remaining 20.78 acres until he has received the needed zoning changes and height variances for the casino, he said.
If approved, the casino would be part of the proposed 600,000-square-foot Riverwood commercial development located along U.S. Highway 395 just south of Carson City.
Comedian Will Ferrell introduces golfer Tiger Woods during the 10th annual Tiger Jam at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada May 26, 2007. Tiger Jam is a fundraiser for the Tiger Woods Foundation, which funds a variety of youth programs.
Photo by Steve Marcus
A taciturn, moustachioed gentleman -- who from all accounts would barely speak to anyone he had not known for a decade or more -- Edward Elgar mixed reserve with eccentricity and a sense of Empire to create music as varied as the best British weather.
You may get soaked or almost blown over following in the footsteps of the composer of "Enigma Variations" and "Dream of Gerontius," or tub-thumpers like England's unofficial second anthem "Land of Hope and Glory" and "Pomp and Circumstance."
"The weather changes so dramatically up there, it's scary," said Sarah Smith who, with her husband Robert, runs The Blue Bird Tea Rooms at the foot of the hills, which peak at 1,395 feet and are the highest point west of the Urals.
Elgar, who rode his bicycle "Mr Phoebus" 50 miles in a day, occasionally took tea in the rooms until he died, aged 76, in 1934.
Deep in the heart of the Florida Keys, wildlife officials are laying bait laced with poison to try to wipe out a colony of enormous African rats that could threaten crops and other animals.
U.S. federal and state officials are beginning the final phase of a two-year project to eradicate the Gambian pouched rats, which can grow to the size of a cat and began reproducing in the remote area about eight years ago.
A former exotic pet breeder, living in a small house, bred the species and allowed the critters to escape.
Without eradication, wildlife officials fear the rats could eventually make their way onto the Florida mainland where they could quickly destroy fragile ecosystems.
About 50,000 Indian low-caste Hindus and nomadic tribespeople converted to Buddhism before a vast crowd on Sunday in the hope of escaping the rigidity of the ancient Hindu caste system and finding a life of dignity.
Monks in orange and saffron robes administered religious vows to the converts as about half a million spectators, mostly Buddhists, cheered the ceremony at a horseracing track in downtown Mumbai.
For decades, conversion has been a sensitive issue in India. Right-wing Hindus have accused missionaries, especially Christian preachers, of converting poor Hindus with inducements such as free schooling and health care.
A Palestinian fruit vendor Abu Haloom, right, balances three large watermelons on his head trying to attract customers in the West Bank town of Ramallah, Sunday, May 27, 2007.
PHoto by Muhammed Muheisen
The Sea Stallion of Glendalough is billed as the world's biggest and most ambitious Viking ship reconstruction, modeled after a warship excavated in 1962 from the Roskilde fjord after being buried in the seabed for nearly 950 years.
Volunteers are preparing it for a journey across the legendary Viking waters of the North Sea - leaving Roskilde in eastern Denmark on July 1 and sailing 1,200 miles to Dublin, which was founded by Vikings in the 9th century.
The crew will explore the challenges of spending seven weeks in an open vessel with no shelter from crashing waves, whipping wind and drenching rain. Working in four-hour shifts, the history buffs and sailing enthusiasts will have to steer the 100-foot-long ship through treacherous waters with a minimum of sleep, comfort and privacy - just as the Vikings did.
An iceberg is reflected in calm ocean water at the mouth of the Jakobshavns ice fjord near Ilulissat in this photo taken May 15, 2007.
Photo by Bob Strong
Following are the top 10 movies at the North American box office for the three-day weekend beginning May 25, led by new release "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," according to studio estimates released on Sunday.
1 (*) Pirates of the Caribbean .. $112.5 million
2 (1) Shrek the Third ........... $ 51.0 million
3 (2) Spider-Man 3 .............. $ 13.7 million
4 (*) Bug ........ $ 3.3 million
5 (12)Waitress ... $ 3.1 million
6 (3) 28 Weeks Later ............ $ 2.5 million
7 (4) Georgia Rule .............. $ 1.9 million
8 (5) Disturbia .. $ 1.8 million
9 (17)Wild Hogs .. $ 1.1 million
10 (6) Fracture ... $ 1.1 million
NOTE: Last weekend's position in parenthesis. "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" also earned $14 million during previews on Thursday night.
Male African lion cubs Panji, left, and Gina are seen at Bali zoo park in Gianyar, Bali, Indonesia, Saturday, May, 26, 2007. The cubs were born here May 16.
Photo by Firdia Lisnawati
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