Dowbrigade

The creator of Loverspy, software to surreptitiously
observe individuals’ online activities, has been indicted for allegedly
violating U.S. federal computer privacy laws.

If convicted, Carlos Enrique Perez-Melara, could face a maximum sentence
of 175 years in prison and fines of up to $8.75 million. His current whereabouts
are unknown.

Four individuals who purchased Loverspy to illegally spy on others were
also indicted.

So spying on your kids is OK, but not on your lover….

from PC
World.com

WASHINGTON — The ozone layer has stopped shrinking, but it will take
decades to start recovering, US scientists reported yesterday.

The specialists credited, at least in part, the 1987 Montreal Protocol,
which was ratified by more than 180 nations and set legally binding controls
on the production and consumption of ozone-depleting gases containing
chlorine and bromine.

And they say we bloggers never cover the good news! This
is actually pretty big news, if true, proving that international agreements
and human
actions can actually halt and correct some of the damage we have done
to the environment. We pray there is a carry over onto global warming,
before we all get washed off the map like New Orleans….

from the Boston Globe

Panicked by rumors of a suicide bomber, thousands of Shiite pilgrims
broke into a stampede on a bridge during a religious procession Wednesday,
crushing one another or plunging 30 feet into the muddy Tigris river. About
800 died, mostly women and children, officials said. from AP

They didn’t even have to waste a martyr or any valuable explosives,
and they managed to kill more people than in any suicide attack since
9/11. With a rumor!

New Orleans’ homeland
security chief, Terry Ebbert, said looters were breaking into stores
all over town and stealing guns. He said there are gangs of armed men
moving around the city. At one point, officers stranded on the roof
of a hotel were fired at by criminals on the street. from AP

Sounds a lot like Bagdad….

Fears of an international energy crisis mounted yesterday
as the scale of human and economic devastation caused in the southern
US by Hurricane Katrina became fully apparent. from the Financial Times

Why waste energy fighting the Great Satan, when we are
doing such a good job of fighting ourselves. Somewhere Usama is smiling…..

Swaziland’s King Mswati III, attends the annual reed dance in Ludzidzini, Swaziland, Monday, Aug. 29, 2005, where young girls perform a dance after days of gathering reeds to present to the king. The annual reed dance gives Mswati an opportunity to choose another wife should he so wish. Last week the king abandoned an unpopular HIV-prevention campaign, launched in 2001, that urged girls in the country to remain virgins. (AP Photo/Siphiwe Sibeko)

MBABANE, Swaziland –The Swazi king’s daughter has long raised eyebrows
with her Western-style clothes. Now her decision to hold a drinking party
to celebrate the end of a chastity decree has shocked members of Africa’s
last absolute monarchy — and resulted in a beating.

The scandal caused by Princess Sikhanyiso’s latest flouting of tradition
has cast a pall over Swaziland’s royal bride-choosing festivities, when
her father was to select another wife.

The annual reed dance, at which 20,000 girls in beads and traditional skirts
danced before King Mswati III, ended late Monday with no indication of
whether he had chosen a bride. In recent years, the king has increasingly
made his choice in private, after a screening by palace aides and his mother.

Royal officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the issue
is considered sensitive, said Tuesday the king had privately chosen three
potential brides and might unveil one at a ceremony in southern Swaziland
this weekend.

After the road test…

Royal officials had tried to keep word of Princess Sikhanyiso’s party
quiet during the reed dance, but acknowledged late Monday it had occurred
on
Friday to celebrate the end of a ban on sexual relations for girls younger
than 18. The chastity rite is separate from the bride-choosing ritual.

In 2001, Mswati temporarily revived the ancient "umchwasho" rite
— symbolized by the wearing of woolen tassels — to fight AIDS, which
is at crisis levels in Swaziland, but it was ridiculed as old-fashioned
and unfairly focused on girls. Days before the reed dance, the king announced
he was ending the ban a year early.

His eldest daughter, a 17-year-old who was rarely seen in the umchwasho
tassels herself, said Friday’s party with loud music and alcoholic drinks
was a private gathering that did not warrant the public scrutiny it received.

"We were just enjoying ourselves," Princess Sikhanyiso was quoted
as saying in a local newspaper. Ntsonjeni Dlamini, who oversees traditional
affairs, was not amused.

"We were so shocked that the girls decided to turn the reed dance ceremony
into a drinking and dancing spree," Dlamini said Monday.

He said he was compelled by tradition to beat the celebrating girls –
including the king’s daughter — with a stick.

We smell a reality TV show – "The Swazi Princess Diaries". MTV is already making
inquiries..

from the
Boston Globe

BERLIN (Reuters) – Berlin’s mayor Klaus Wowereit on
Tuesday fended off criticism for giving an official welcome to a sado-masochism
festival expected to draw thousands of leather-clad visitors to the German
capital this weekend.

"The first weekend in September stands for the pure zest for life," Wowereit
wrote in a message of greeting in the official program of the Folsom-Europe
Street Festival. "A warm welcome to Berlin!"

Members of the conservative opposition Christian Democrats (CDU), and even
political leaders from within Wowereit’s own Social Democrat party (SPD),
said Wowereit’s public endorsement of the leather and fetish festival showed
poor taste.

They also questioned whether it was appropriate for the mayor of Germany’s
largest city, who became a nationally known figure when he outed himself
in 2001, to support the festival.

from Reuters

Ross Gelspan, in the Boston
Globe, argues
that not only Katrina but all the weird weather we’ve been experiencing,
are by-products of global warming, and he’s not a crackpot…

THE HURRICANE
that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the
National
Weather
Service.
Its
real name
is global warming.

When the year began with a two-foot snowfall in Los Angeles, the cause
was global warming.

When 124-mile-an-hour winds shut down nuclear plants in Scandinavia and
cut power to hundreds of thousands of people in Ireland and the United
Kingdom, the driver was global warming.

When a severe drought in the Midwest dropped water levels in the Missouri
River to their lowest on record earlier this summer, the reason was global
warming.

In July, when the worst drought on record triggered wildfires in Spain
and Portugal and left water levels in France at their lowest in 30 years,
the explanation was global warming.

When a lethal heat wave in Arizona kept temperatures above 110 degrees
and killed more than 20 people in one week, the culprit was global warming.

And when the Indian city of Bombay (Mumbai) received 37 inches of rain
in one day — killing 1,000 people and disrupting the lives of 20 million
others — the villain was global warming.

As the atmosphere warms, it generates longer droughts, more-intense downpours,
more-frequent heat waves, and more-severe storms.

Well, duh! When an organism gets
an infection, it runs a fever to fight back. Something tells the Dowbrigade
that Katrina is
not going to be the last killer hurricane of this star-crossed season.  What
really surprized meteorologists is how quickly Katrina ramped up from
a nasty cat 1 to a killer cat 5 within hours after hitting the super-heated
Gulf waters. The water in the Gulf of Mexico isn’t getting any
cooler; it’s temp is 90 degrees and rising, and any storm which wanders
into this hot box over the remaining six weeks of hurricane season is
going to experience the same super-charging. We predict that hurricane
measuring scheme is going to need a couple of new categories. Meanwhile,
insurance
company executives must be shitting bricks trying to figure out how to
protect their assets…..

Amidst all this destruction and human misery, it is nice to see some people getting what they asked for. All the party animals who ignored the authorities and decided to “ride it out” and party hearty, including some idiots who actually headed to the area from elsewhere for the “experience,” are waking up today to the reality of being trapped in an unescapable hell of 100 degree heat, no electricity, no water, dirty, wet cloths, rank, chemical-laden, undrinkable water everywhere, dead bodies floating by, disease rampant. Hard to keep the party going under those circumstances, but its no coincidence that the first places to be looted were liquor and drug stores.

from the Boston Globe

The
Associated
Press released a rather astounding piece today in which Darth
Rumsfield makes an Orwellian argument that the military
is actually on the same side as the environmentalists – because they
need to protect the habitat of some endangered species .

Why? So they have somewhere to blow things up and practice
killing people far from the prying eyes or offended ears of citizens…

Rumsfeld said the Defense Department recognizes that
some lifesaving military training depends on conserving habitat for
wildlife
and forestalling encroachment by suburban sprawl.

Working with conservation groups and other agencies to set aside buffers
for wildlife habitat on nearby private lands has allowed the military
to conduct exercises without restrictions on noise and use of airspace
while simultaneously protecting the habitat, Rumsfeld said.

Yeah, and drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Preserve will combat global
warming by letting all that cold escape which is trapped under the icecap….

story from the AP

A robot that recognises up to 10 faces
and understands 10,000 words is to be offered to Japanese consumers looking
for a high-tech helper in the house.

The one-metre tall humanoid Wakamaru robot is being marketed as a mechanical
house-sitter and secretary.

Japanese manufacturer Mitsubishi Heavy Industries expects the first robots
to go on sale in September.

"This is the opening of an era in which human beings and robots can
co-exist," the
company said.

The company says the robot can watch over homes while the owners are away,
alerting them to possible burglaries.

It can also apparently help monitor the condition of a sick person.

And according to Mitsubishi, the robot can act as a secretary, recording
notes and appointments and reminding owners of them with well-timed announcement.

The Wakamaru weighs 30kg (66lb) and is expected to cost 1.58m yen (US$14,300).

Japan, lacking Mexicans to call its own, starts manufacturing
them, even achieving that whistful, hangdog sadness in the facial expression…..

from Reuters

Joseph Druce may now claim he did not kill notorious
pedophile priest John Geoghan in his cell, or if he did, he did it to "save
the kids."

But a macabre video shot in Druce’s cell shortly after the murder of the defrocked
priest and obtained by the Herald shows him reenacting in grisly detail what
is alleged to have happened when Geoghan was killed on Aug. 23, 2003. The clip starts with Druce standing in a cell naked
but for white boxer shorts, his sinewy body scrawled with crude jailhouse
tattoos. His pock-marked face is covered with a scraggly brown beard
as he talks to himself in a mirror.

There is no audio, so it unclear exactly what Druce is saying as he wraps a white
T-shirt around his broad shoulders and then pulls a red DOC scrub shirt over
his head. He then takes stretched-out gym socks and ties them around his waist.

He mimes walking into Geoghan’s cell. He talks to an invisible victim, then acts
out how he jams the cell door at Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center with a
carefully-cut paperback book. He spins around and throws a punch. He falls to his knees, pulls his hands behind his
back and wraps them with the white T-shirt. He then yanks an invisible
victim to his feet and kicks him face-down to the floor.

Druce’s face spreads into a cold grin as he reenacts how he allegedly choked
Geoghan with the socks, pulling off the defrocked priest’s own sneaker to use
as a lever for the tourniquet.

As he demonstrates the slow twisting of the noose, Druce’s face twists in pain
and he begins to shake, illustrating how Geoghan’s body went into convulsions.
But the violence does not stop there.

Druce starts to laugh to himself as he squats on the edge of the cell’s steel
cot. He points to his own neck, then leaps off the bed.

The motion is so brutal, the video shakes with the impact of each jump. One.
Two. Three.

When the third stomping is complete, Druce turns to an imaginary audience and
giggles. He shrugs his shoulders, smiles broadly and begins a victory jig, dancing
around his cell with his thumbs raised in the air.

No sign of the actual video yet. Anyone got a link?

story from the Boston
Herald

LUDZIDZINI ROYAL VILLAGE, Swaziland (Reuters) – More
than 50,000 bare-breasted virgins vied to become the King of Swaziland’s
13th wife on Monday in a ceremony which critics say ill befits a country
with the world’s highest HIV/AIDS rate.

King Mswati
III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, arrived dressed
in a leopard-skin loincloth to watch the Reed Dance ceremony, which he
has used since 1999 to pluck new brides from the girls dressed in little
more than beaded mini-skirts.

Wielding machetes and singing tributes to the king and queen mother, also
known as the Great She-Elephant, the girls danced around the royal stadium
in the hope of catching the eye of the 37-year-old monarch.

"I want to live a nice life, have money, be rich, have a BMW and cellphone," said
one dancer, 16-year-old Zodwa Mamba, who wore a traditional brightly colored
tasseled scarf.

Who doesn’t? Wonder if they test for performance-enhancing
drugs….

story from Reuters