RoadDave

It has been nearly ten years since JonBenet Ramsey, the six year-old beauty queen child was killed.  For months after the killing, the media played the deeply discomforting and disturbing beauty pageant videos of JonBenet dolled up as a child of six-going-on-twenty-five-years old.  There were many suggestions that the parents killed their daughter, or that some unknown weirdos killed her.  The theories ranged from deviant pedophiles to religious nutbars being responsible. 

We now know that John Mark Karr has confessed to accidentally killing JonBenet Ramsey as part of a kidnapping and sex plot.  He was arrested in Bangkok and is going to be extradited to the US for the formal side of charges and a trial.  There was evidence of sexual behaviors at the crime scene that eventually led to Karr being indicted.  There was other stuff too.

The company I work for does a lot of work on child sex crimes, tracking and gathering evidence on online predators to help the police track down these people.  Some employees who work with the BeWebAware unit occasionally see material and behaviors that will make you vomit.  The officer from the Toronto Police who started the BeWebAware program, resigned a few months ago, after a dozen years on the job.  He was having nightmares in the daytime from the material he had seen.

There are certain things that should not be done in this world.  My attitude has always been that what floats your boat is not my business as long as the parties involved can actively consent and are of the age of majority.  The rest of it might be painful, unsanitary, medically dangerous, or personally unappealing, but still not my business, as long as you act with some discretion, in private.  This behavior can range from putting jalapeno peppers on a good pizza (merely inappropriate) to watching videos of nude wrestling grandmothers cavorting in food (very odd), I don’t have an opinion.  Touching, eroticizing or sexualizing those under the age of majority is Wrong. 

The JonBenet Ramsey investigation?  If he’s guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, I can’t imagine a punishment that would be more appropriate, than putting John Mark Karr in the general prison population for the rest of his life.  I have the same opinion regarding Clifford Olson and Paul Bernardo, to name two of Canada’s most heinous sex criminals.  Put them in general prison population and treat them as you would any other bank robber, meth dealer, killer or biker thug:  Feed them, give them medical care, training, education and try to rehabilitate them enough to rejoin society after paying their penalty.

If John Mark Karr goes skydiving without a parachute from the third floor, then so be it.  It shows the penal system has failed, but I can live with that personal and societal guilt. 

What the arrest of John Mark Karr does not do, is to censure those who think a beauty pageant where children are dressed up as sex goddesses is appropriate by any definition.  I have no answer how to fix that.

The UN has announced that France will be leading the UN peacekeeping force that will sit in between the Hezbollah crazies and the Israeli Army crazies along the Lebanese border as brokered by the UN ceasefire deal.  Of course, France wants everyone else in the world to pony up some troops to help out. 

The force is supposed to be 15,000 soldiers, but today France has 2,000 pairs of boots on the sand from the current UNIFIL (United Nations Interim Force In Lebanon) crew:  These are the folks the Israeli Army likes to shoot at, when they’re not shooting at Hezbollah.  France is going to be the command and provide an additional 3,500 soldiers.  When asked if Canada wanted to add some more soldiers to the UN Lebanon job, our Chief of Defence Staff said that Canada “…no longer had personnel with enough Aeroplan Airmiles to get to Beirut. Or gear, or guns, or uniforms.  Thanks for asking, but we’d prefer to be shot at in Afghanistan as the hashish is better there.”

France running a peacekeeping force in Lebanon is going to be fascinating as long as the international community can keep from laughing out loud and spitting their coffee across the table.  France has a long tradition as a merchant of missiles, guns, aircraft, bullets and bombs to Hezbollah, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Egypt and Jordan.  Italy, also an international arms dealer of significant repute, has pledged up to 3,000 troops to help out.  To put a fine point on it, imagine having your secret stash of very old, very expensive, very tasty, single-malt Scotch, guarded by a full-time professional alcoholic who just happens to have a hankering for whisky and a parched throat.

There is a long tradition of tiny little countries being involved in UN peacekeeping and the line is forming over near that palm tree.  Indonesia and “several other countries” are interested in participating.  The “several other” probably includes Chad, Malaysia, Liberia, Yemen, Tuvalu, Kenya and Uganda.  The UN pays the participating government for each soldier, occasionally provides food that might be edible and blue helmets for the uniforms, but not much more.  Most of the tiny countries don’t and can’t send transport for their troops:  They have to thumb rides off the UN or whoever is running the show.  The UN has a fleet of antiquated trucks and lightly armored vehicles that the smaller countries might be able to borrow, assuming the soldiers have the ability to drive, or fix or fuel the vehicles, which usually is also impossible. 

In Somalia, one country who had ‘peacekeepers’ helping out, didn’t want to take their armored military vehicles out of the fortifications to rescue some American soldiers, for fear the vehicles would be shot at by the Somali militias.  In the early 90’s, another country’s peacekeeping contribution all but starved to death when Rwanda imploded because their country couldn’t afford to send them food, fuel or even airlift them out of Rwanda.  They camped out in the Canadian compound and sat around all day waiting for meals and hiding from the bad guys with guns.

I’m not suggesting the UN peacekeeping contributions of the smaller countries are useless, but it comes close to it.  France had better be willing to train, house, feed, arm, fuel, transport, support and when needed, provide medical care for these little groups.  With any luck the arms dealers who will be parachuted in by France, will have some spare time to train the other participants in how to operate a proper arms sales organization in a war zone. 

In the first part, we talked about the unintended consequences of the TSA cracking down on flights from Europe.  The second part covers the things we’ve overlooked and will probably bite us sooner rather than later.

Cargo is the lifeblood of the world economy.  Be it cargo on ships, trains, trucks or aircraft, cargo makes the money go from A to B and back again carrying, well, everything.  Except for the lettuce you pick locally, it was cargo at one time or another. 

Air cargo is a huge industry, flying everything except bulk commodities like coal or potash, anywhere in the world.  Passenger airlines love cargo as it is found money.  The aircraft is going there with people in it, so why not make some money off the storage space under the floor, as long as the gas is paid for by the passengers upstairs.  Cargo doesn’t need much in the way of food, beverages or even oxygen.  Cargo doesn’t get a safety briefing or needs to be reminded to put on its seatbelts for landing.  The ramp rats are at the destination to unload the bags, so keeping them busy for another twenty minutes to unload a bunch of cargo is good business.

Where things fall over with cargo, specifically air cargo, is the security of the shipment.  To quote the TSA “All air cargo is screened”.  Don’t press for a definition of the word ‘screened’, as you might not sleep tonight.  Here is what ‘screened’ means:  Air cargo is not x-rayed or imaged.  Individual boxes in a shipment are not opened.  Bomb-sniffing dogs do not run over the cargo before it is loaded on the plane.  There is no hand inspection of the components in a shipment.  The sole screening of air cargo consists of the cargo company or middleman knowing the originating shipper, called a ‘known shipper’ in the Known Shipper program.  Nobody from the TSA or CATSA goes to the originating warehouse to check what is being put in the boxes.  It is all up to the shipping company to vet the originating shipper. 

The shipper promises the airline that the boxes contain what they say they contain on the paperwork.  The airline looks at the bill of lading and says “It ain’t labeled nuclear waste or live snakes, so let it fly.”  Often the shipment comes in, prepackaged for a unit-load container, those big aluminum igloo shaped things, and gets put in the unit load along with other shipments.  Truly smart shippers have their own igloos that they preload at their own shipping dock away from the airport.  All they do is roll off the unit load container and put it on a trolley to drag out to the plane.  As long as the weight and dimensions match what was planned for, the air cargo people don’t get involved. 

Technically, TSA and CATSA physically inspect a percentage of the air cargo shipments.  That specific percentage is not publicly available, as it is a question of ‘security’.  I’ve talked with enough ramp rats over the years to know that the TSA, CATSA and the police have little or no presence on the ramp or the loading areas, unless a load of diamonds or cash is being transferred via air cargo.  Only then will the uniforms make their faces visible. 

On arrival at the destination airport, the unit-loads are pulled off the aircraft and trolleyed to the loading dock for breakdown, if the unit load contains several shipments, or cross-dock, if the destination receiver is going to pick up the unit load in their own truck.  Roll it off, then roll it on.

The real number of inspected shipments traveling by air cargo, according to several sources including CNN, is around 5%.  This means that 95% of shipments are not physically inspected in any way shape or form.  Unless the cargo is actively ticking and smoke coming out of the boxes, there is no way to know if that unit-load is full of computer parts or explosives.

Shipping a load of badness is much easier that attempting to convince a young man to smuggle things on board an aircraft and blowing himself up in a sacred explosion.  If the cement-heads need martyrs, then put the badness in a piece of cargo and phone it from the airphone in the aircraft, setting off the detonator:  The end result is still aluminum rain and the usual terror.

Truck and sea shipping is just as porous.  Sea containers, or cans, to use the industry term, can easily hold a couple of cars worth of badness.  Again, the only screening the TSA and Canada Customs does is to look for suspicious shippers and contents.  Some freight is x-rayed, but more than 90% is merely screened, with the shipping companies doing the vetting.  Again the vetting consists of asking “Do we know these guys?” from the Known Shipper program. 

As long as the paperwork for the truckload or can doesn’t say “Heroin from Afghanistan” or “Fuck You Infidel Zionist Bastards” the shipment goes into the system.  A small piece of explosive trivia.  The Timmy McVeigh fertilizer bomb that took out the Murragh Federal Building in Oklahoma City weighed about a ton and a half and fit nicely into a Ryder truck.  A full-sized sea container will hold up to 40 tons.  You can see them stacked double on rail cars leaving ports, traveling across country on high-speed freight trains.  For that matter, you see cans on truck trailers being delivered to warehouses all over the place.

Getting on the Known Shipper program is about as easy as buying lottery tickets.  The company I used to work for was on the TSA Known Shipper Program because we actively sought to get on the program through our shipping company.  We sent big foam-lined cases full of laptop computers all over the continent as part of doing the Hands-On Labs in hundreds of cities.  Each case was a bit smaller than the size of an adult coffin and weighed 150 pounds each.  Most shipments had four cases.  Those cases had flight stickers from all the airlines in North America with the exception of Aloha Airlines.  The cases were always locked by us and sealed, so we would know if the contents had been tampered with, as each case held about $30,000 worth of laptop computers.  The cases were never opened.

The reason the TSA, CATSA and the rest are fixated on airline passengers is simple enough.  The original 9/11 attacks were passenger aircraft taken over by terrorists inside the aircraft, but that horse has already left the barn.  The public face of TSA and Homeland Paranoia is focused on being seen to be doing something with their hundreds of millions of dollars of budget.  Hassling air passengers is an obvious ‘doing something’.  Spending time away from the public, checking more than 5% of the cargo shipments coming into and moving around North America is not an obvious ‘doing something’ as nobody can see it being done. 

We have a couple of huge legally empowered agencies purportedly protecting us from terrorist threats who are more concerned with x-raying Grandma Hazel’s aluminum walker than doing the unglamorous work of opening boxes in warehouses and running bomb dogs over the cargo igloos at the airport.  The TSA will argue that they are trying to find a “technological solution” to examine all the shipments without causing undue delays in the system. 

We don’t need a technological solution, we need an agency with the commitment to say “Your shipment is going to be taken apart and everything checked by hand because we bloody well want to know what is in the boxes”.  Then, have the manpower to do it.  It doesn’t take high technology to check the contents of a box against the list on the bill of lading.  Reseal the box with TSA tape that says “Opened and verified by TSA”  Check more than 50% of the shipments moving around and you have actually done something useful.   

If the TSA and Homeland Paranoia were truly committed, then any complaints from the shippers would be answered with a simple “Screw off and shut up” Oh, wait a moment.  Interrupting the making of money and business in the interests of actual, real, Homeland Security is simply not acceptable is it?  Sorry, I just got the memo.  Hassling people in public is good.  Interfering with business is bad.

If the cement-heads want to create some real terror in North America, the easiest route is not smuggling small quantities of binary explosive onboard aircraft in Gatorade and hair gel bottles.  The easiest and forgive me for the pun, best bang for the buck, is to make every truck, rail car and delivery van an object of fear and terror.  Cargo in transit is everywhere.  You can build bombs big enough to take out bridges and buildings across the continent.  Plus you don’t have to mess with the ideological and security problems of training martyrs. 

All it takes is a warehouse.  TSA, CATSA and the Department of Homeland Paranoia have left you a 95% open door.

Over two postings I’m going to show you some of the unintended consequences of the most recent security clampdown at Heathrow.  It might change your travel plans, but that isn’t my aim.  What I want to explain is how one smallish change can have very large consequences.  The first one we’re going to tackle is the airline security mess crossing the Atlantic.  Some of this is background data you need to appreciate the linkages, so bear with me. 

A couple of decades ago, the only aircraft flying the trans-Atlantic routes were three and four-engine jet/turbofan aircraft.  The 747, 707, DC-8, L1011 and DC-10 tri-jets were the most common.  The reason more than two engines were used was for safety and redundancy.  If one engine fails in flight the remaining two or three engines can get the aircraft full of passengers to land and the ground safely.  Airlines didn’t like it, as three or four engines are expensive to keep, maintain and run, as they gobble gas the whole way, but the FAA in the US and the CAA in the UK said three engines was the minimum for safety. 

After a few years the aircraft and engine manufacturers got their ducks in a row regarding reliability and asked the various legal bodies to approve something called ETOPS, which means Extended Twin OPerationS over water.  In the early days ETOPS was also called Engines Turning Or Passengers Swimming, but that is an aside.  The reliability was such that a two-engine aircraft, well-maintained could safely fly from Logan or JFK to London with a full load of passengers.  The 757 was one of the first ETOPS-certified twin engine passenger jets on the trans-Atlantic route.  Following on was the 767, 777, A330 and even the A320 in certain configurations.  Two engines were just as safe as three or four and, glory be, much cheaper to run than a 747 per passenger mile.  ETOPS meant profitable to the airlines and safe to the regulatory bodies as long as the maintenance was done properly.  Many carriers still run the 747 on trans-Atlantic as they pack in more bodies, or move more cargo as part of the load to offset the cost of four engines, but twin jets are the norm.  Now notice the caveat that is in that paragraph:  “as long as the maintenance was done properly.”  This becomes important later.

Since 9/11 the TSA and the Department of Homeland Paranoia have required all flights coming to the US to send their passenger manifests electronically to allow the TSA to check for bad guys.  This is sensible and the airlines figured it was reasonable enough to let the US know who was coming, so they could intercept them at Customs at JFK, O’Hare or wherever.  However, the TSA now demands more than 30 pieces of data about each passenger, including credit card data and insists on as much personal information as they can get their hands on.  This is a bit troubling, but I’m willing to let some of it slide to keep the skies reasonably safe.  That kind of data collection didn’t spot Richard Reid the shoe bomber, but there are always a few that will slip through even the finest nets.  The airlines used to send the data after the flight had closed and was either off the ground or just taxiing out at Heathrow.

As of last week, the TSA will not allow the flight to leave until they are satisfied that nobody on the flight is even the slightest bit suspicious.  The airline cannot dispatch the US-bound flight without approval of the TSA.  The data must be sent after the doors are closed and locked, but before the flight leaves the ground.  What this means, in short form, is the airplane full of passengers is left to sit for the amount of time it takes for the TSA in Washington to run the passenger and crew data through their Magic 8-Ball Threat Assessment program.  This can, according to the British Airport Authority (who runs Heathrow) anywhere from one to three hours.  Heathrow, being a profit driven airport, cannot have a revenue generating gate tied up with an aircraft parked there, waiting for an omen from above.  The aircraft gets towed off to a parking stand.  The passengers are in takeoff mode, seat backs upright, table trays stowed, seatbelts fastened, no water, no music, no laptops, no cellphones, no service, no lavatories and no distractions whatsoever for an indeterminate period of time. 

The aircraft is sitting idle and not generating revenue.  At the same time, the aircraft has the Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) running to provide lights, instruments, radios and one tiny little fan circulating air in the cabin for 200 stressed, thirsty passengers.  A six-hour flight has now become a nine-hour ordeal.  Meanwhile the connecting flights are leaving on schedule in the US.  The air carrier has to reroute the delayed passengers from London, which costs the airline money.  The flight and cabin crew have a mandated maximum number of duty hours and the airline is paying for them to sit on their hands and twiddle their thumbs. 

Will this cause the air carrier to lose a lot of business?  You bet it will.  Passengers enduring this kind of hostility in the name of security will only do it once.  Expect the number of people flying to and from Europe to drop to very low levels regardless of the ticket price.  This will cut into airline profits in a very big way.

To complicate things even further, as of September 1^st, the European Union privacy laws prevent airlines from sending the depth of data the TSA requires to a foreign government, which is what the TSA is.  There are significant fines attached to violating the EU privacy laws.  There are also significant fines associated with not complying with the TSA-mandated information gathering, as well as having your flight turned back or declared hostile by the TSA and the Department of Homeland Paranoia.

Airlines are faced with dirt-cheap fares, wildly fluctuating fuel prices and insane insurance premiums.  Having slashed all the fat and many bones out of their costs, the airlines are faced with one last expense they can manage:  Maintenance.  Remember that one key caveat I brought to your attention:  “as long as the maintenance was done properly”?  The only way the airline system and ETOPS works as safely as it does, is maintenance. 

The worldwide air safety regulation system is set up on a tombstone basis:  Tombstone meaning the rules, procedures and laws regarding aircraft do not change until a bunch of people die.  If the crash is caused by maintenance, it can take years for the investigation to finally get to the point whereby an airworthiness directive is issued to change maintenance procedures.

The TSA by mandating onerous security procedures from Europe are making it easy for air carriers to cut that last corner that risks a disaster.  More unfortunate, is that the TSA will, in all likelihood, insist on the same level of data reporting for domestic or North American flights.  As long as they wrap their demands in ‘the war on terrorism’, the public will go along with it.  Expect delays.  Then, expect deaths that have nothing to do with terrorism, but everything to do with money.

British police have, according to their press conference, put the brakes on a potential terrorist plot that would have seen close to a dozen US flights blown up by terrorists who were going to smuggle explosives onboard in carryon baggage.  As of right now, don’t bring any kind of liquids on your trip.  This includes shampoo, gel, coffee, perfume, bottled water and presumably, baby formula or breast milk.

The US Department of Homeland Paranoia has jacked the Terrorism Pez Dispenser up to Red.  So has the UK.  CBC Newsworld is saying the airport in Ottawa, which has a direct flight to Heathrow, has police-taped the soda machines to prevent anyone from actually buying anything that could potentially be brought onboard an aircraft.  Toronto airport is calling for international travelers to show up a further hour earlier, which now means you show up on Tuesday afternoon for a flight Friday night.  Just confirmed, human breast milk in bottles must be ‘proven’ to be safe, which means the person traveling with an infant must swig some to prove to the CATSA screener that it isn’t an explosive substance.

Heathrow and US airports are demanding everyone take off their shoes before going through security.  That includes flip-flops, sandals and sneakers of course.  Woe betide anyone who puts up a fuss.  You always have the choice of immediately being put on the global “no-fly’ list as a shit-disturber, kiddy-diddler and probable liberal democrat.

It is now time for me to bring back my favorite anti-terrorism proposal.  I came up with this one back in the days of the Cuban airline hijackings, when all kinds of flights were being forcibly redirected to Havana by cement-heads.  Here’s how it works. 

You check in, the usual hour before your flight.  You are not allowed to check your baggage.  You must take your baggage to the bottom of the airstairs up to the airplane.  Your bag is xrayed and inspected until the security folks are content.  This might take a couple of hours.  You hand your bags to a ramp rat, who puts it in the hold.  You see it go into the aircraft.  This gives us positive bag match, passenger to baggage.  It also means it is almost impossible to lose your bag, as you saw it being put on the aircraft and you brought it to the aircraft.

At the bottom of the airstairs you are sent off to a screened area.  Strip naked.  No bras, panties, underwear, prostheses, dentures, watches, rings, or jewellery are allowed.  Your possessions are put in a hospital style drawstring bag that you write your name on.  You put on a pair of shapeless disposable paper overalls and a pair of clean-room bunny boots.  Your clothing bag is x-rayed until it glows, then is put in the hold of the aircraft.  You proceed to the bottom of the airstairs. 

In exchange for your boarding pass and a thorough pat-down search, you are given a Glock 9mm semi-auto handgun and two clips of ammunition.  You can now board the aircraft and take your seat.  There will be no movies, music, beverage or meal service.  Do not ask for a headset, pillow, blanket, newspaper or magazine.  Fasten your seatbelt and remain seated with your seat back upright and table trays stowed and locked.       

Any terrorist who wants to take over an aircraft will be confronted with 128 angry, jittery, armed passengers.  Any passenger doing anything even vaguely suspicious will be confronted by their fellow angry, jittery, armed, passengers and quite possibly shot repeatedly from several directions.  There will be the occasional accident, but that is the price we’re all going to pay for increased security in the air. 

At your destination, at the bottom of the airstairs, you hand back your sidearm, unused ammunition and any brass casings you might have left.  In exchange for the turn-in, you get your drawstring bag with your possessions.  You enter another screened area where you can change out of the overalls and back into your clothes.  Outside the screened area, you are reunited with your probably intact baggage, which you can then carry into the airport yourself.   

Out of this process, which I agree, is a bit involved, we get a number of benefits. 

For starters, no more lost bags.  Ever.  The passengers bring the baggage to the airplane and watch ramp rat put the bag on the plane.  The airlines get significant benefits, to help their struggling industry.  No more bursting overhead storage bins, as carryon, except for the weapon, are disallowed.  No more wasting money on things like movies, food or beverage for the passengers.  No more wasteful Public Relations departments at the airlines, as we have now transformed the industry into a flying, armed, penal colony.  No more letting the cabin or cockpit crew serve or interact with the passengers, which means we can get by with a barebones crew of three, two flying and one in the cabin.  We can hire flight attendants based on their familiarity with sidearms, not their ability to serve food, which means training will consist of a two-hour firearms course and that’s it.  Physical appearance, aside from a perpetual scowl, and good marksmanship scores, will no longer be pertinent.

The TSA will be able to focus more on people bringing a lighter, or an aluminum walker or cane on the aircraft, as they won’t have to worry about guns or explosives anymore.  Everyone will be armed, so it speeds up the selection process at security. 

There are people who will object, especially from the standpoint of untrained civilians having weapons readily available, that we are going down a slippery slope.  We are already down the slippery slope, at the bottom.  The question is how far into the manure lagoon at the bottom of the slippery slope are we willing to wade or snorkel. 

What we’re being distracted from is Iraq, Israel and Lebannon, the price of Oil and how much of a dickhead our various leaders have become.  The Terror Pez Dispenser is going to be pinned on Red from now until at least mid-November.  Get used to it.     

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

08/04/2006  Maxine Gauthier doesn’t own a computer. She doesn’t know the first thing about Web browsing or sending e-mail. She’s not even sure where to find a computer’s "on" button, as she describes it.

Yet for the past nine months, she has been fighting one of the most persistent and some say irritating institutions in cyberspace: AOL, formerly known as America Online. "They just haven’t wanted to let go," the 55-year-old St. Louisan said. "I don’t think they’ll ever really let go."

Her struggle has involved about a dozen phone calls often ending with an AOL customer service representative or manager hanging up on her. She even tried impersonating someone else in a couple of the calls. The giant online service provider wouldn’t budge. Advertisement

The problem? An AOL account once held by Gauthier’s late father still showed billing charges accumulating against it. The account had been dormant for months; the credit card he used for it was inactive at least as long.  Nevertheless, AOL kept charging $25.90 each month for dial-up online access. Late fees for non-payment accumulated on the credit card, too.

Gauthier even offered to send a copy of her father’s obituary as proof he truly was dead. AOL was unmoved.

"An AOL service guy told me to stop complaining and learn to use a computer," she said. "Then he hung up."

Now I know why it’s called AOHell. 

08/05/2006(REUTERS)  LONDON – Hundreds of Britons are being urged to attend what is being branded as Europe’s first "masturbate-a-thon," a leading British reproductive health care charity said Friday.  Marie Stopes International, which is hosting the event with HIV/AIDS charity the Terrence Higgins Trust, said it expected up to 200 people to attend the sponsored masturbation session in Clerkenwell, central London, on Saturday.  "It is a bit of a publicity stunt, but we hope it will raise awareness," a Marie Stopes spokeswoman told Reuters.

"We want to get people talking about safer sex, masturbation and to lift taboos."  Participants, who have to be over 18, can bring any aids they need and can take part in four different rooms — a comfort area, a mixed area, along with men and women only areas. However, the rules on the event’s Web site states there can be no touching of other participants, nor are people allowed to fake orgasms. "The amount you raise will be determined by how many minutes you masturbate and/or how many orgasms you achieve," the Web site said.

The Marie Stopes spokeswoman said local religious groups had been initially outraged, but after people had heard what the event was about, most had approved it. Police had also given it their approval. Similar events have been staged in San Francisco for the last six years raising $25,000 for women’s health initiatives and HIV prevention. If successful, Marie Stopes said it could take place elsewhere in mainland Europe next year.

We suspect the winner will be a twelve year old boy with a copy of Maxxim Magazine’s Swimsuit issue.

08/06/2006 ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) – In a sudden blow to the nation’s oil supply, half the production on Alaska’s North Slope was being shut down Sunday after BP Exploration Alaska, Inc. discovered severe corrosion in a Prudhoe Bay oil transit line.  BP officials said they didn’t know how long the Prudhoe Bay field would be off line. "I don’t even know how long it’s going to take to shut it down," said Tom Williams, BP’s senior tax and royalty counsel.  “We do know that our customers will be paying for this until we see blood come out of their eyes and they have to sell their children to refill the family car.” 

A spokesman for the White House said that President George Bush was on vacation in Crawford, Texas and was showing as “Away” on his AOL Instant Messenger.