3 June 2004 | USA Today by Paul Wiseman To an astonishing degree, the sexes are going their opposite ways in Japan. Young women are revolting against the traditional role of obedient housewife, opting instead to live at home and shop and socialize with girlfriends. Startled men are retreating into solitary ways. Check-ins at the country’s famed ‘love hotels’ are even falling. As birthrates slip, a social crisis looms.
Daily Archives: June 23, 2004
6 posts
22 June 2004 | DemocracyNow! Police Given OK to Stop & Ask ID From Anyone The Supreme Court, in a 5 to 4 ruling, decided yesterday that police can now stop anyone on the street and demand that they identify themselves as long as the identification is not self-incriminating. The Washington Post reports the ruling overturns one?s right to remain silent and allows for the prosecution of anyone who refuses to identify themselves to a police officer. Supreme Court Bars Patients From Suing HMOs The Supreme Court also issued a unanimous ruling yesterday barring health care patients from being able […]
21 June 2004 | DemocracyNow! A new study by the Defense Manpower Data Center has found the military discharged 770 people last year because they were gay under the Pentagon’s ?don’t ask, don’t tell policy?. The majority of the discharged were enlisted personnel. This comes at a time [when] the military is issuing stop orders to prevent thousands of soldiers from retiring or returning home from Iraq. Hundreds of the discharged were specialists including 88 linguists, seven of whom spoke Arabic; 39 specialists who worked on nuclear, chemical and biological warfare were dismissed as were 90 nuclear power engineers.
21 June 2004 | DemocracyNow! The National Lawyers Guild has called for President Bush to be prosecuted for war crimes for approving or for failing to stop the torture of detainees. The Guild also charged that the Bush administration has illegally tried to justify the use of torture by claiming the president has the right to disregard existing laws. In related news, more than 400 legal scholars signed a letter last week to Congress urging them to consider impeaching President Bush.
Noonday in the Shade 22 June 2004 | New York Times by PAUL KRUGMAN In April 2003, John Ashcroft’s Justice Department disrupted what appears to have been a horrifying terrorist plot. In the small town of Noonday, Tex., F.B.I. agents discovered a weapons cache containing fully automatic machine guns, remote-controlled explosive devices disguised as briefcases, 60 pipe bombs and a chemical weapon — a cyanide bomb — big enough to kill everyone in a 30,000-square-foot building. Strangely, though, the attorney general didn’t call a press conference to announce the discovery of the weapons cache, or the arrest of William Krar, […]
Flurry of Suicide Attempts at Guantanamo Came After New General Took Charge 22 June 2004 | Associated Press WASHINGTON — Three months after a get-tough general took command of the Guantanamo Bay prison for terror suspects, prisoners began a flurry of suicide attempts, according to military records. Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller took over as commander at Guantanamo in November 2002 after interrogators criticized his predecessor for being too solicitous for the detainees’ welfare. Between January and March 2003, 14 prisoners at Guantanamo tried to kill themselves, according to Pentagon figures. That’s more than 40 percent of the 34 suicide attempts […]