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Lesbians take gay group to court over the term 'lesbian'

Fri, 02 May 2008 04:46:35 GMT

clipped by: kenstipe

A Greek court has been asked to draw the line between the natives of the Aegean Sea island of Lesbos and the world's gay women.

Three islanders from Lesbos — home of the ancient poet Sappho, who praised love between women — have taken a gay rights group to court for using the word lesbian in its name.

One of the plaintiffs said Wednesday that the name of the association, Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece, "insults the identity" of the people of Lesbos, who are also known as Lesbians.

"My sister can't say she is a Lesbian," said Dimitris Lambrou. "Our geographical designation has been usurped by certain ladies who have no connection whatsoever with Lesbos," he said.

The three plaintiffs are seeking to have the group barred from using "lesbian" in its name and filed a lawsuit on April 10. The other two plaintiffs are women.

The RAND Corporation - A litany of horrors

Fri, 02 May 2008 04:07:39 GMT

clipped by: kenstipe
clipper's remarks: The RAND Corporation was the ur-think tank, the Cold War granddaddy of them all, and it's still with us. In the 1950s, nuclear war-gaming a conflagration for which the usual war games would have been ludicrous, it took the U.S. military into virtuality and science fiction long before there was an Internet to play with. (And it had a hand in creating the Internet, too!) In the 1960s, it helped several administrations plan and fight the Vietnam War, making antiseptic theory into an all-too-grim reality. And that's just the beginning of the work RAND did on a range of hot-button imperial issues.

Clip Source: www.tomdispatch.com

The RAND Corporation of Santa Monica, California, was set up immediately after World War II by the U.S. Army Air Corps (soon to become the U.S. Air Force). The Air Force generals who had the idea were trying to perpetuate the wartime relationship that had developed between the scientific and intellectual communities and the American military, as exemplified by the Manhattan Project to develop and build the atomic bomb.

Soon enough, however, RAND became a key institutional building block of the Cold War American empire.

The most notorious of RAND's writers and theorists were the nuclear war strategists, all of whom were often quoted in newspapers and some of whom were caricatured in Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

Bush, Pol Pot related

Fri, 02 May 2008 03:49:48 GMT

clipped by: kenstipe

Clip Source: www.cnn.com

A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Thursday indicates that 71 percent of the American public disapprove of how Bush is handling his job as president.

No president has ever had a higher disapproval rating in any CNN or Gallup Poll; in fact, this is the first time that any president's disapproval rating has cracked the 70 percent mark," said Keating Holland, CNN's polling director

Mission Accomplished - Said John McCain

Fri, 02 May 2008 03:43:52 GMT

clipped by: kenstipe

Clip Source: abcnews.go.com

John McCain said Thursday that he believed five years ago that the "Mission Accomplished' banner was wrong.

The veracity of McCain's claim about how he felt regarding the banner, which appeared behind President Bush on the deck of the USS Lincoln on May 1, 2003, was challenged Thursday when the Democratic National Committee unearthed video of McCain talking approvingly of the banner in a June 11, 2003 Fox News interview.

In that interview, McCain pointed to the banner to bolster his contention that major conflict had ended in Iraq and that it was appropriate for the Senate Armed Services Committee to hold post-conflict hearings.

"I remain confident that we will find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," he added.