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Category talk:Religion

Categories
We should try to add more categories to this category, and then tighten the categories of the associated news articles so fewer list on this main page and more are listed under tighter catgories. Wilhelm 06:01, 22 October 2007 (UTC).
 * Generally we list them under both categories. For example both category Religion and Scientology. That way they appear under both the religion portal and scientology. Bawolff ☺☻ 06:03, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Okay.  Wilhelm 06:09, 22 October 2007 (UTC).

Something is odd about the category "Baha'i" in that when one clicks on it, one subcategory appears, which is calle "Baha'i" and when that is clicked on, one subcategory appears, called Baha'i, and so on. I followed this process out to about the ninth step, with the same repetition appearing at every step. Jvian 03:58, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Its because the page added on top of the category has the category on it, so the category is on the category, forming an infinite loop. This is true for several categories (this could be changed by noincluding the cat on the portal page). Bawolff ☺☻ 04:48, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Category talk:Religion


text: Category:Falun Gong

title: Category:Falun Gong


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Wikinews:Briefs/October 22, 2007

The time is 6:30 UTC and this an Audio Wikinews Brief for Monday, October 22, 2007.

Cheney warns of 'serious consequences' of Iran's nuclear ambitions
In a speech on Sunday, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney warned that Iran will face "serious consequences" if it refuses to stop enriching uranium. In his speech, Cheney also accused Iran of being "the world’s most active sponsor of state terrorism," and called Iran's government "a growing obstacle to peace in the Middle East."

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said today that Iran's nuclear policies are "unalterable" and that terminating Iran's nuclear program "isn't on the agenda and won't be." Iran maintains that it is developing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, a position that has been backed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Turkey preparing for incursion into Iraq after PKK militants kill 17 soldiers
As many as 17 Turkish soldiers were killed and 16 were injured in an ambush on Sunday after Iraqi Kurdish militants (PKK) attacked the patrol in Hakkari Province on the Iraq-Turkey border. As a result, a large battle erupted and at least 32 Kurdish militants were killed.

Turkey has been building up troops along its border with Iraq with reports suggesting as many as 60,000 are currently stationed there. On Wednesday, Turkey approved a measure that authorized sending troops into Iraq to take out PKK militants, but on Sunday an official said that the incursion into Iraq was not urgent.

The U.S. and Iraq have stated repeatedly that they are against any military action against the PKK and believe that it would cause even more instability in the region.

Leaders in the Kurdish controlled areas of Iraq state that any attack on them would be met with retaliation.

First non-white Governor elected in Louisiana in over 100 years
On Saturday, it was announced that the first non-white Governor had been elected for the State of Louisiana in the United States in over 100 years. He is also the youngest Governor ever elected in Louisiana.

Bobby Jindal, 36, an Indian-American and Republican, won the election receiving 54% of the votes, with the nearest opponent, Walter Boasso having only 18% of all votes. Jindal plans to improve education throughout the state and cut taxes.

Interestingly, the local and statewide results from Louisiana's primary election yesterday have cast doubt upon the theory that the Republican Party was injured politically from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Teacher sexual misconduct rampant in American schools, says AP
An Associated Press investigation published Sunday revealed findings of more than 2,500 cases of sexual misconduct from minor to extreme types, by educators in the American educational system over a five year period.

Investigations suggest that many cases of sexual abuse are never reported, and those that are reported often do not lead to punishment for the offender. The cases do not always include enough evidence, and for this as well as other reasons the schools, courts, state governments, and federal governments cannot be sure that they are keeping sexual deviants out of teaching.

Certain academic studies estimate that only about 10 percent of victimized children report sexual abuse of any kind to a person who can take action to help them but when reported, teachers, administrators and some parents frequently cannot recognize the warning signs of a crime.

The full report is available online.

This has been an Audio Wikinews brief and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license at http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/

title: Wikinews:Briefs/October 22, 2007


text:
Australia Votes 2007: Analysts say Rudd wins TV debate

October 22, 2007

With Australian Prime Minister, John Howard and Labor leader Kevin Rudd facing off in a leader's debate on Sunday night, political analysts and body language experts declared Mr Rudd the clear victor. Experts said that Mr Rudd came across as believable and enthusiastic while Mr Howard appeared too negative.

The focus of the debate was on the economy, Iraq war, leadership and climate change.

On the economy, the Labor leader said that the cost of living had increased in Australia and that increasing the childcare rebate to 50 percent would help struggling families.

"That's putting several thousand dollars extra into the family budget," he said.

The Prime Minister tried to reassure voters on industrial relations, one of the key topics of the election, saying that despite his WorkChoices legislation being controversial it has largely achieved what the government aimed it to do. "Our whole design with WorkChoices was to underpin further growth in the Australian economy. It wasn't easy. It was heavily criticised, but the general evidence is WorkChoices has been good for the Australian economy," said the Prime Minister.

Mr Howard also ruled out making further changes to Australia's industrial relations system saying that the government had "gone far enough".

Mr Howard also dismissed claims that his planned AU$34 billion of tax cuts would cause inflation and a rise in interest rates.

"They will dampen wage demands that might otherwise be much stronger because of those cost of living pressures," he said.

The leaders debated over who the genuine economic conservative was. Mr Howard said that Mr Rudd's voting record in parliament seemed to contradict his claim. The Prime Minister warned that a Labor government would run budget deficits. "Being an economic conservative is more than a slogan in a TV advertisement, it is believing in things," he said.

"Everyone knows Labor governments equal budget deficits and Liberal governments mean budget surpluses."

Mr Rudd said there was now consensus between both sides of politics on economic issues and took the opportunity to remind voters of Mr Howard's performance as treasurer in the Fraser government of the late 1970s to early 1980s. Mr Rudd said that the prime minister was a treasurer at a time of high interest rates and ran four out of five budgets with deficits. "Let's have some honesty on the table here. Let's get the record straight," said Rudd.

Mr Howard dismissed his record attacking Labor's record of interest rates in the 1980s under Bob Hawke. "There is one interest rate figure that is seared in the memory of most Australian families - the level of 17 per cent," he said.

The Prime Minister attacked the Opposition's front bench saying that there were far too many former union members. Mr Rudd hit back by saying that Mr Howard's frontbench was disproportionate in its make up. "If something's out of whack in terms of an unrepresentative group in the community, a cocktail of lawyers and former Liberal Party staffers would have to be high up the list," he said.

The Prime Minister also used the forum to announce new climate change initiatives and an update of the role Australia is playing in Iraq. Mr Howard promised that low-income earners would be compensated for the "inevitable" rise in costs for electricity that moving to cleaner production would bring. By comparison the Labor leader reiterated his support for the Kyoto protocol and promised to ratify it if elected.

Mr Howard said that Australian commanders in Iraq would this week start discussing taking on a broader training role in Iraq to help train Iraqi soldiers.

Rudd questioned Howard on the shift of policies in Iraq and asked the Prime Minister why Australians should believe him after ruling out an increase in troop numbers before the last election, only to double them when elected. The comments sparked an argument between the two leaders with Mr Howard accusing Mr Rudd of involving the military in politics.

"You chose to use it in a very political fashion. I was providing some information to the Australian people and I was pointing out the evolving nature of the commitment of our ground forces in Iraq," said Howard.


text: Category:Unification Church

title: Category:Unification Church


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Sydney FC sack manager Branko Culina

October 22, 2007

Australian A-League club Sydney FC has sacked manager Branko Čulina, nine rounds into the 2007-08 season.

Čulina was appointed following Terry Butcher's sacking at the end of the 2006-07 season, after Sydney played unattractive football and only managed to finish fourth in the eight-team competition.

Čulina began his managament career at the St Albans Saints in 1989, following a successful career as a player which concluded at the same club. He has since managed seven other major teams, including the very successful Sydney United, before his appointment to Sydney FC.

According to reports, he was summoned to Sydney FC headquarters on the afternoon of October 22 (AEST), before being told his services were no longer required. Čulina, having been appointed prior to Sydney's first incursion into Asian club football as part of the 2007 AFC Champions League, only served six months of his two year contract.

His former team sit in sixth place, having won just two of a total of nine A-League games this season. They currently sit four points from the top four, which grants entry into the final series, after nine of twenty-one rounds.

title: Sydney FC sack manager Branko Culina


text:
Talk:Sydney FC sack manager Branko Culina

Notes from historical data etc. - "It was reported" comes from the SMH article.  Daniel  09:58, 22 October 2007 (UTC)


text:
Two US sailors killed, one wounded in Bahrain

October 22, 2007

In Bahrain, two unnamed United States Navy sailors were killed and one other was seriously injured when they were shot inside their barracks at around 5:00 a.m. (UTC+3) at a naval base located in Bahrain. The Navy has stated that the incident is isolated and is not considered an act of terrorism.

The injured sailor was taken to a hospital to receive medical attention, while the two dead sailors were pronounced dead at the scene of the crime.

So far reports say that all involved parties are American and that the incident was a "domestic" dispute between at least two female U.S. Navy sailors.

Bahrain is home to the Fifth Fleet which is part of the U.S. Naval Forces Central Command. At least 3,000 sailors are stationed there, but that number does not include the troops on ships currently docked at the Mina Sulman pier.


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Australia Votes 2007: Treasurer says Labor tax plan contains error

October 22, 2007

Australian Treasurer, Peter Costello has attacked the opposition Labor party's tax cuts saying they contain a "basic error". The error Mr Costello claims could cost 45 percent of Australians an additional AU$600 a year in tax.

Speaking at a joint press conference with the Prime Minister, Mr Costello accused Labor of failing to increase tax thresholds. "In order to meet the goal of having 45 per cent of taxpayers on a 15 cent threshold or less you have to keep lifting those thresholds ... and they made a basic error," said the Treasurer.

"They understood you had to keep lifting the low income tax offset because they adopted that but they made a fundamental and basic error in not lifting those other thresholds."

Mr Costello said Mr Rudd has ignored the problem by admitting the error and adjusting his tax thresholds. "He refused to admit the error and as a consequence 45 per cent of Australians will be worse off," he said.

Mr Costello accused Mr Rudd of using his announcement of an increased childcare rebate to distract voters from errors in his tax policy. "He went on to announce changes to the childcare rebate to draw attention away from his blunder," the treasurer said.

Mr Costello accused Labor of copying it's policy and says that the parts the government didn't release are those on which Labor made errors.

Labor has dismissed the claims, saying that voters only needed to look at Mr Costello's history on tax.

He said Mr Costello is desperately trying to kick the tax debate along, but should have a good look at his own record.

"It's time Mr Costello got real about tax reform," said Mr Rudd.

"If he was a reforming Treasurer after 11 years he would have taken a meat axe to rates, what has he always done? Fiddle faddled, and fiddle faddled around on the whole question of thresholds, that's all he's ever done."


text:
User talk:Viriditas

 * /Archive 1

January 2015 - Update - Talk page access restored

restored talk page access for Viriditas on 19 January 2015, per rationale: "tentative restoration of talk page rights; it HAS been two years".

First of all, I agree with this loosening to allow talk page access.

There's precedent within our greater Wikimedia community of allowing a second chance, see example at: w:Template::2nd chance. There's also other precedent at w:Wikipedia:WikiPeace, w:Template:Peace dove, and w:Template:Olive Branch.

If Viriditas wishes to do so, I'd like to ask for him to post here on the talk page below, a draft of an article for Wikinews.

I can try to help review it and copy-edit it myself.

Hopefully once that goes smoothly I'd be willing to unblock.

-- Cirt (talk) 04:31, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
 * How should I present the draft? Should I just copy it here?  It might take me a few days to put it together. Viriditas (talk) 05:19, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, you can just put it in a new subsection below, and I'll look it over and help you copy-edit it. -- Cirt (talk) 05:59, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Here's a layout guide I made that might be helpful: User:Cirt/article layout. -- Cirt (talk) 07:40, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
 * It seems to me the process here was less than optimal; since the user was banned by the community, not just blocked, I would have thought a community discussion should have been required before partially lifting it. Realistically, had I been given an opportunity to comment beforehand, I would have expressed skepticism and asked some close questions.  Moreover, I would have appreciated being consulted, and the entire process (if it did proceed) would have been started off on a smoother footing.  --Pi zero (talk) 11:47, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Understood. On reflection, you are correct, . However, please keep in mind it was not I that loosened the user talk page restriction, but . No one has actually unblocked yet, and we can for sure bring that to the community for a discussion before doing so. :) -- Cirt (talk) 17:24, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Heh. I'm not blaming anyone.  --Pi zero (talk) 18:06, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Okay no worries! :) -- Cirt (talk) 18:09, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Cirt, these recent comments contradict the terms you originally wrote in your initial comments. You said you would consider unblocking after reviewing a news article I proposed.  Now, I see that you have changed this proposal to include some kind of "community discussion".  I will have absolutely no part in such a discussion nor will I have any interaction with Pi zero, a person who I consider a pathological liar and malicious user.  He personally invented fake evidence and made false accusations about me in order to create the block on the first place.  I will not interact or communicate with people who lack basic morals and ethics.  The sooner he is desysopped and blocked, the better. Viriditas (talk) 19:48, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Viriditas, since it was a community ban discussion and not just one other admin that resulted in your block, I can't singlehandedly go against the will of the community ban alone by myself. I am sincerely quite sorry you are disappointed. My proposal stands, and I would strongly support your unblock if you accept it. I would perform the unblock myself if I have support to do so from the community -- or at the very least a lack of objection -- Cirt (talk) 20:46, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
 * If Pi zero represents the community, then I want nothing to do with it. Again, I will have nothing to do with pathological liars like Pi zero. Please re-block this talk page until the time comes that Wikimedia figures out the situation and desysops and blocks Pi zero.  Let me know when that happens.  Until it does, I have no interest in having a discussion with liars. Viriditas (talk) 20:58, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Viriditas, what if I brought forth a proposal and I tried to get you unblocked myself without the w:Template:2nd chance, as an extension of good faith after the amount of time that's passed, to see how it goes? How would you feel about that? -- Cirt (talk) 21:04, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Cirt, please give it a rest. Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 21:28, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Okay, once again I'm sorry you're disappointed. Perhaps we can revisit this idea at some point in the future. :) -- Cirt (talk) 21:36, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Viriditas


text:
Report blames pilot error for Garuda Indonesia Flight 200 disaster

October 22, 2007

A final report released today has found pilot error to be the cause of the crash of Garuda Indonesia Flight 200 in Indonesia on March 7, 2007. 21 people were killed when the Boeing 737 airliner, carrying 140 people, overshot the runway at Adisucipto International Airport, near Yogyakarta. It crossed a road and then struck an embankment, bursting into flames, before stopping in a rice field, some 252m from the end of the runway.

The pilot is found to have been singing as he began the final descent, in direct contradiction to the Garuda Basic Operations Manual, which calls for activation of the Sterile Cockpit Rule at 10,000 feet and below. The pilot was probably emotionally aroused because his conscious awareness moved from the relaxed mode “singing” to the heightened stressfulness of the desire to reach the runway by making an excessively steep and fast, unstabilised approach,” the report continued. However, it does say that he was fully aware that something was wrong during the approach, as he is recorded as having said “Oh, there is something not right.”

The report found that that the aircraft was flown by the pilot in command at a speed far exceeding that at which the wing flaps were able to operate properly. The report continues to criticise the pilot further, saying that a cockpit alert by the Ground Proximity Warning System informing the pilot he was flying too fast sounded no less than 15 times, but the pilot failed to abort the landing. He also ignored the co-pilot telling him to execute a 'go-around procedure' after the aircraft struck the runway at speed and bounced back into the air.

The co-pilot is himself found to be at error by the report, which points out that he should have taken over the controls from the pilot when it became clear the aircraft was being flown in a dangerous manner. However, the report did note that Garuda Indonesia had failed to give him any simulator training replicating a situation whereby the co-pilot would take over control duties from the pilot in charge due to unsafe handling of the plane; in fact, training was found to be inadequate for both members of the cockpit crew.

In the report's own words: "During the approach, the Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS) alerts and warnings sounded 15 times, and the copilot called for the pilot in command to go around.

"The aircraft was flown at an excessive air speed and steep flight path angle during the approach and landing, resulting in an unstabilised approach.

"The pilot in command did not follow company procedures that required him to fly a stabilised approach, and he did not abort the landing and go around when the approach was not stabilised.

"His attention was fixated or channelised on landing the aircraft on the runway and he either did not hear, or disregarded the GPWS alerts, and warnings, and calls from the copilot to go around."

Authorities were also found to be at fault, with the Indonesian Director General of Civil Aviation criticised for failing to identify inadequacies in pilot training procedures. he was also criticised for the fact that the aircraft had managed to go virtually un-inspected, with only two safety checks in a decade.

The report adds that the Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting facilities at the airport were also lacking on the day of the accident, for struggling to access the crash site and for not having the appropriate fire suppressant upon their eventual arrival. The report says these delays likely had an impact on the survivability factors on board the plane in the moments after crashing, when the aircraft was in flames. It ultimately took more than two hours before the fire was put out. Another criticism leveled at the airport was that it failed to comply with international runway safety regulations. The report has triggered a call from Caroline Mellish, sister of Australian Financial Review Morgan Mellish, one of five Australians killed in the accident, for greater co-operation between different Indonesian authorities. "I think not working together as different departments in a government shows a lack of any sort of system," She said from Jakarta, to which she had travelled for the release of the final report.

"If they can't work together in different departments, I don't know how they are going to run a country and make any difference investigating this sort of accident and ensuring the recommendations do get carried forward to ensure that no more accident happen."

However, she did have some sympathy to spare for the pilot who was in control of the plane that day when the possibility of his prosecution was raised: "I think having 21 deaths on your conscience is probably enough. I don't think prosecuting the man is going to make any difference."

National Transport Safety Committee chairman Tatang Kurniadi said that no information from the report would be used in any criminal or civil liability investigations. "I would like to go back to the objective of this, the report was made by NTSC for safety purposes only, not for blaming,'' he said.

"If any institution wants to ... follow up that accident, that's their own decision.

"The report contained the results from the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder, but according to international regulations on aviation these black boxes are not allowed to be used for... liability purposes.

"We will not give police or any institution (information) other than for safety purposes only - it's in international regulations and we want to follow those regulations.''


text:
Second grader suspended from school after drawing disturbing picture

October 22, 2007

Kyle McDevitt, a seven-year-old, second grade boy at Dennis Township Primary School in New Jersey, was suspended for one day after drawing an image of one stick figure person shooting another.

The drawing depicted two stick figures, one labeled as 'me' by McDevitt and the other was labeled with the name of another student, with McDevitt smiling while shooting the other student. While on a school bus, the child gave the drawing to another student who took it home and showed it to his parents. The parents then filed a complaint with the school's district.

According to the boy's mother, Shirley McDevitt, the gun was a squirt gun filled with water. She also said that the boys are friends with each other. She has asked school officials to "expunge" her son's permanent school record of the incident.

"When a child draws at that age, they're not drawing with thought," stated McDevitt.

She also stated that officials for the school district said that the boy was suspended because of the schools policy on "zero-tolerance" for guns.

Other sketches are reported to have been drawn such as a skateboarder, a cyclops and a ghost.


text:
Comments:Boston Red Sox win American League Championship

Sox blow. Indians rule Mobus 13:42, 22 October 2007 (UTC)


text:
MOEA Taiwan signs MOUs with 5 global WiMAX companies to connect with networking industry world-wide

October 22, 2007

At the 1st day of WiMAX Forum Taipei Showcase & Conference, Ministry of Economic Affairs of R.O.C. Taiwan (MOEA Taiwan) not only set M-Taiwan Pavilion supervised by Industrial Development Bureau of MOEA Taiwan, but also signed MOUs with five world-class WiMAX companies to enhance the advance of networking industry in Taiwan especially in WiMAX environment.

In the contract-signing ceremony, MOEA Taiwan chose Alcatel-Lucent, Motorola Inc., Nokia-Siemens, Starent Networks, and Sprint-Nextel to sign MOUs with different technologies such as interoperability testing (IOT) to help companies in Taiwan with testing and purchasing WiMAX networking devices and develop solutions with high prime costs to expand the opportunity in global marketing.

"Governments and networking industry in Taiwan is still promoting on M-Taiwan project, the investment with WiMAX infrastructure in Taiwan is the 2nd highest in the world, we estimate that by 2012, the production value of WiMAX will break NT$140 billion. With the MOUs signing, the industry development of WiMAX infrastructure in Taiwan will be improved rapidly with product testing and lots ways of applications to ensure the prime position in the global WiMAX chain." Steve Ruey-long Chen (Minister of Economic Affairs of Taiwan) remarked at the Ceremony.

According to MOEA Taiwan, this MOUs signing is the 2nd time after signing with world-class companies like Intel, NEC, Nortel, and Rohde & Schwarz Technology. With this MOUs signing, it will improve the networking industry and WiMAX infrastructure in Taiwan.


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Template:2007 WiMAX Forum Taipei Showcase & Conference

zh:Template:2007 WiMAX Forum Taipei Showcase & Conference


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Category:2007 WiMAX Forum Taipei Showcase & Conference

zh:Category:2007年台北WiMAX論壇展覽暨會議


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Talk:MOEA Taiwan signs MOUs with 5 global WiMAX companies to connect with networking industry world-wide

OR info
Please see Category talk:2007 WiMAX Forum Taipei Showcase & Conference for more information. Brock contact... 15:03, 23 October 2007 (UTC)


text:
User talk:Jedren Black

Welcome
Thanks for experimenting with Wikinews. Your test worked, and has now been reverted or removed. Please use Sandbox for any other tests you want to do, since testing in articles may disrupt the site's working and will be reverted quickly. , welcome to Wikinews! Please refrain from using content pages for testing. Here are a few good links for newcomers on how to edit Wikinews:

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title: User talk:Jedren Black


text:
Talk:Second grader suspended from school after drawing disturbing picture/Comments

Hah, New Jersey. MessedRocker (talk) 15:09, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Teachers rights
Funny how teachers can rape their students with reckless abandon (see other top story today) throw large objects at them and get them to kill domestic animals as part of projects (Ask anyone from Yoakum TX who had Coach Yaeger about that one) yet students are severely punished for speculative "crimes" such as this. Teachers are so defensive about it too cause there is practially no psychological screening so many of them have major jealousy complexes and think all their students think they are smarter than them. Just because your job is "hard" (hey, Cosco has some openings and great benefits!) is not an excuse for being a School House Mengele. 71.56.114.89 16:40, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Teachers DO have it rough. Poor Mrs. H has to put up with us ruffians, and has for 20-odd years. No wonder she always starts out on the offensive

zero tolerance = zero thinking
Its nice to know that a second grade child can be suspended for drawing a picture of a water gun, but rapist educators and schoolyard bullies are allowed to rampage through the school system. Bravo NJ, you have yet again earned my disdain.

Second grader= 7 years old. Age of first possible offense (According to The Order of Things)=8. 7<8. Simple math. WHATS UP HERE!?!?! anonymous

Reminds me...
I heard that a kid in Pre-school (age 4 years old) said the word "gun", and the kid got severely punished.

Can't they get it into their heads that this kid was drawing a squirt gun?? Contralya 20:57, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I doubt he was drawing a squirt gun. That was probably just a defense made up by his mother. That being said, this child still should not be punished at all. I draw pictures of guns and UFOs and nuclear explosions and people dying all the time; doesn't mean I'm a sadistic psychopath (I hope). A second grader who draws a stick gun isn't a threat - period. ~Planoneck~ 11:40, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

some people i know draw guns and stuff all the time, but they're just joking, for the most part.

Retard...
That is a retard school. What moron would suspend you for that?

Fine Lines
It's a fine line to walk. On one hand you can't give an inch to any real threat or you're made liable if an incident occurs. On the other hand you can't be overly sensetive at every mention of guns or bombs in a society emersed in violent media images. I believe a student teacher conference that informed the parents of the images and an attempt to kindly educate the child that you don't draw guns in school might have been a better route.


text:
User talk:Henri de Solages

Welcome
, welcome to Wikinews! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

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About your article
I did explain to you, if you read Basically, you need to read Original reporting and follow the guidelines there. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 21:28, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
 * the tags that were put on the article
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title: User talk:Henri de Solages


text: Category:Sathya Sai Baba

title: Category:Sathya Sai Baba


text: Category:Rastafarianism

title: Category:Rastafarianism


text:
User talk:204.193.6.90

Welcome
Thanks for experimenting with Wikinews. Your test worked, and has now been reverted or removed. Please use Sandbox for any other tests you want to do, since testing in articles may disrupt the site's working and will be reverted quickly. , welcome to Wikinews! Please refrain from using content pages for testing. Here are a few good links for newcomers on how to edit Wikinews:

Our key policies - if you read anything, read these! Here a few pointers to help you get to know Wikinews: There are always things to do on Wikinews: By the way, you can sign your name on Talk pages using four tildes ( ~~~~ ), which produces your name and the current date. If you have any questions, you can ask them at the water cooler or to anyone on the Welcommittee, or ask me on my Talk page. Again, welcome! DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 16:39, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
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title: User talk:204.193.6.90


text:
User talk:70.181.204.223

Hello and welcome to Wikinews, a collection of open-content news stories!

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DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 16:39, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

title: User talk:70.181.204.223


text:
User talk:Mousieart

Welcome
, welcome to Wikinews! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

Our key policies - if you read anything, read these! Here a few pointers to help you get to know Wikinews: There are always things to do on Wikinews: By the way, you can sign your name on Talk pages using four tildes ( ~~~~ ), which produces your name and the current date. If you have any questions, you can ask them at the water cooler or to anyone on the Welcommittee, or ask me on my Talk page. Again, welcome! DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 16:40, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
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title: User talk:Mousieart


text:
User talk:198.164.252.44

Hello and welcome to Wikinews, a collection of open-content news stories!

Why create an account for Wikinews? Are you asking yourself, what can I possibly do on this "boring website"? Or, is this a joke? Citizens writing the news? How can they write? They need a degree to write journalism!, etc.

We'll, here are some reasons:

 * The use of a username of your choice.
 * Greater security and privacy, your IP address will be hidden from most users.
 * You get your own personal user page and talk page, instead of having to share it.
 * Your contributions will be recognized as your own, and not confused with anyone elses.
 * The use of your own Watchlist which shows when pages you are interested in have changed.
 * You have the chance of creating articles with an account and get credit for your work.
 * You have the chance to advance your career in journalism by doing local and very rewarding first-hand journalism that will be shown on our Main page so everyone can read your work and comment on it.
 * You can talk and collaborate with other editors just like you.
 * You can have a nice cup of tea with the other editors you work with!
 * Creating an account is easy and only takes a few minutes of your time.

We hope that you choose to become a Wikinewsie and create an account. Feel free to ask any questions on my talk page or in the Welcommittee. Be sure to sign your posts and comments on talk pages with four tildes ( ~ ), this will let other editors know you said it.

DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 16:40, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

title: User talk:198.164.252.44


text:
User talk:71.56.114.89

Hello and welcome to Wikinews, a collection of open-content news stories!

Why create an account for Wikinews? Are you asking yourself, what can I possibly do on this "boring website"? Or, is this a joke? Citizens writing the news? How can they write? They need a degree to write journalism!, etc.

We'll, here are some reasons:

 * The use of a username of your choice.
 * Greater security and privacy, your IP address will be hidden from most users.
 * You get your own personal user page and talk page, instead of having to share it.
 * Your contributions will be recognized as your own, and not confused with anyone elses.
 * The use of your own Watchlist which shows when pages you are interested in have changed.
 * You have the chance of creating articles with an account and get credit for your work.
 * You have the chance to advance your career in journalism by doing local and very rewarding first-hand journalism that will be shown on our Main page so everyone can read your work and comment on it.
 * You can talk and collaborate with other editors just like you.
 * You can have a nice cup of tea with the other editors you work with!
 * Creating an account is easy and only takes a few minutes of your time.

We hope that you choose to become a Wikinewsie and create an account. Feel free to ask any questions on my talk page or in the Welcommittee. Be sure to sign your posts and comments on talk pages with four tildes ( ~ ), this will let other editors know you said it.

DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 16:42, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks
Thanks for reverting vandalism at African nations gather to support a ban on cluster bombs. Cirt - (talk) 21:11, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

title: User talk:71.56.114.89


text:
Comments:Two US sailors killed, one wounded in Bahrain

A military cat fight? THAT would of been interesting to see, I mean, they get trained in un-armed combat. Contralya 17:01, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Soldiers refer specifically to members of the United States Army. Members of the navy are Sailors.


text:
User talk:Breals

Welcome
, welcome to Wikinews! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

Our key policies - if you read anything, read these! Here a few pointers to help you get to know Wikinews: There are always things to do on Wikinews: By the way, you can sign your name on Talk pages using four tildes ( ~~~~ ), which produces your name and the current date. If you have any questions, you can ask them at the water cooler or to anyone on the Welcommittee, or ask me on my Talk page. Again, welcome! DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 17:26, 22 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Neutral point of view - tell every side to a story in a fair and balanced way
 * Cite sources - everything in a Wikinews article must be sourced
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 * Content guide - what's suitable for Wikinews
 * Style guide - how articles should look before publishing
 * Contents - the contents page.
 * Existing articles need expanding and checking for spelling and mistakes
 * The front page lead articles often need updating
 * Developing stories need finishing and publishing
 * Discussions need your input
 * Audio Wikinews could always use more contributors
 * And of course, stories need writing!

title: User talk:Breals


text:
User:David Shankbone/GayTalese

Legendary journalist and author Gay Talese wants to go to Iraq. "It so happens there is someone that’s working on such a thing right now for me," the 75-year-old Talese told David Shankbone. "Even if I was on Al-Jazeera with a gun to my head, I wouldn't be pleading with those bastards! I'd say, 'Go ahead. Make my day.'"

Few reporters will ever reach the stature of Talese. His profile of Frank Sinatra in a 1966 issue of Esqure, Frank Sinatra Has a Cold, was not only cited by The Economist as the greatest profile of Sinatra ever written, but is considered the greatest of any celebrity profile ever written. In the 70th anniversary issue of Esquire Magazine in October 2003, the editors declared the piece the "Best Story Esquire Ever Published."

Talese helped create and define a new style of literary reporting called New Journalism. Talese himself told NPR he rejects this label ("The term new journalism became very fashionable on college campuses in the 1970s and some of its practitioners tended to be a little loose with the facts. And that's where I wanted to part company.")

He is not bothered by the Bancrofts selling The Wall Street Journal ("It's not like we should lament the passing of some noble dynasty!") to Rupert Murdoch, but he is bothered by how the press supported and sold the Iraq War to the American people. "The press in Washington got us into this war as much as the people that are controlling it," said Talese. "They took information that was second-hand information, and they went along with it." He wants to see the Washington press corp disbanded and sent around the country to get back in touch with the people it covers; that the press should not be so focused on--and in bed with--the federal government.

On Gay Talese
'''David Shankbone: Does it bother you that your name has come to mean 'homosexual'?
 * Gay Talese: No, it doesn't bother me at all!  I've always been called that, I had bylines in high school.  I started getting bylines when I was in high school and I wrote for the Ocean City Sentinel.  I was Gay Talese.  I even had a column when I went to college in Albama, it was called Sports Gay-zing - I was the sports editor for the college paper.

'DS: [Laughs'']]  "Sports Gay-zing?"
 * GT: I don't know when gay revolution or gay rights...I don't know how it happened or when it happened, but it was a parallel movement that happened at the same time I was alive.  What's the difference?  It makes no difference.

'''DS: Is your ancestry Sicilian or Northern?
 * GT: No, it’s Southern Italian.

'''DS: Southern, not Sicilian?
 * GT: Calabrian. But it is close enough. It’s the total of both. That’s my ancestry. My father was born there, in fact. He was the only person from his family that came to the United States and he did so in 1920.

'''DS: Do you ever pay any attention to Italian politics and the happenings with the Lega Nord?
 * GT: I pay attention to it when it’s in the headlines. I read the papers. But do I pay attention to the point of caring? No. I don’t know that the Italians much care about politics. They capitalize on it. They exploit it. I think it’s a country of family influences. Families matter so much there. They’ve had a mistrust of government ever since the fall of Rome. I mean they’re really clans. Just a bunch of clans. Little cliquish people, even now. Even now, with transportation and communications pervasive. It used to be they were stuck in the hills and they didn’t have any means of getting from one part of the mountain to the other so they were insular. Their dialect was held firm. Now, it’s different, but it’s still not a country that’s a unified country. I mean Italy is called a nation, but ….

'''DS: They can’t seem to do anything politically. They can’t save Venice ….
 * GT: They can’t do anything. But on the other hand they live damn well. There’s a kind of underground economy that’s been there, probably for centuries. The surface tells you one thing. The statistics tells you this, this, this. But underneath, there’s a core management this kind of internal management of mercenary affairs, or family connections, or ways of gaining what is known on the surface, but underneath there’s a whole mysterious way of prosperity in Italy that isn’t shown. It’s very interesting. You find the news reports or the books that are out saying one thing. I don’t exactly ever see it and I’ve traveled a lot. I haven’t traveled very much in the last ten years in Europe.

On a higher power and how he'd like to die
'''DS: Do you believe in a higher power?
 * GT: I believe a higher power can exist for inspiring people toward fulfilling a dream.  That's religion.

'''DS: What do you think happens when we die?
 * GT: I was raised as a Catholic, and while I didn't marry within the church, my wife is also Catholic.  It doesn't necessarily hold that there dies within you all that you believe when you were shaped by the process of being born Catholic, so I do believe--I comfort myself, I comfort myself--with the notion of an eternal life.  But as George Eliot said in that great novel you probably read, religion is a fear of the hereafter.  Religion is a fear of the hereafter.  That's what it is.  It provides you a conviction or belief that there is something there in the hereafter, or else you won't have any long view.  Religion gives you a long view that what you do on Earth is going to shape your destiny in heaven.  That's comforting.

'''DS: Do you have religion?
 * GT: To the degree I stated I do, but to the degree that the Pope...I don't go to church, and I don't abide by anything the church preaches.

'''DS: Do you pray?
 * GT: Privately I do, sometimes, yes, I do.

'''DS: In certain moments more than others?
 * GT: In moments when I feel that I'm out of control.  That I can not affect the result.

'''DS: When do you feel out of control?
 * GT: When I fear I am going to die.  I remember praying on an airplane between Denver and Santa Fe.  It was a small commuter flight.  The co-pilot came back and said we are going to have turn back because our left landing gear will not go down, and we are going to have to dump gas over the dessert because we need to go back to Denver, because it is better equipped as an airport to deal with this crash landing we need to have.  More foam and the fire department is bigger.  We had twenty minutes before our crash landing.  During that time I prayed. I wrote a letter to my wife.  I was just about fifty.  I wrote a letter to my wife and daughters and prayed and thought, "This is it."

'''DS: What did the letter say?
 * GT: How much I loved them.  How sorry I was I didn't have more time.  How happy I was with the time I had.  How lucky we were, and how sad I was that I wasn't going to be back.  I feared that the letter was going to burn with me.  It was ridiculous to be writing a letter, but I did.  What a fucking place for the end of me, Denver airport!  So that was fear.  Fear of the hereafter?  Religion and prayers.

'''DS: How many times have you seen your own death?
 * GT: Well, sadly, my best friend was killed this year.  David Halberstam.  We were brothers.  I was his first friend when he came to New York to join The New York Times.  He lived in this house when he first came.  He lived upstairs.  When he got married to his present widow, who I was with last night, I was the best man.  That was the late 1970's.  And the last year we traveled together as a foursome, his wife and mine.  Then he gets killed.  Jean calls me up, "Some student in San Francisco...he got killed just like that!"  So that's a death!  Now that is horrible, but that's not so bad.  I wouldn't mind dieing like that.  The way I would not want to die...every time I go flying I see the porters by the plane waiting for some old crippled person to get off the plane and then they roll them through the airport.  I don't want to go like that.  I'd rather go like Halberstam.

'''DS: You wouldn't want to be a Terri Schiavo.
 * GT: I don't even want to be a cripple who gets pushed across the airport!  Forget brain damage.  I'm just talking about infirm, getting along and can't walk.

'''DS: You're quite sprite.
 * GT: Yeah, I wouldn't want that.  That's why I'd like to go to Iraq.  Why?  I don't care about dieing.  I'd rather go out like Halberstam.  Quick--

'''DS: Doing what you love
 * GT: Yeah.  Yeah.  Even if I was on Al-Jazeera with a gun to my head, I wouldn't be pleading with those bastards!  I'd say, "Go ahead.  Make my day."  Because when you're 75 you see around you your own generation, some of them hobbling along.  Some writers I know--Gore Vidal; poor Norman Mailer.  Not that he's feeling sorry for himself, I was just with him in Texas earlier this year.  He gave his papers to the University of Texas at Austin.  I saw someone has to push him in a chair.  I've known Norman Mailer for some fifty years, and this is the first time someone has to push him.  I had a dinner party for him as recently as a year ago, here.  And I said, "Norman, you have to come up the steps, maybe we should go some place where there's an elevator."  He said, "No, no."  So he had to come up the steps outside where you did with his canes.  But in Austin with the campus there was someone who needed to push him in a chair.  That may happen to me soon enough, but I don't like to think about it.  Halberstam...he finished his work, The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War, was also thinking of another book and was in the process of researching it, and he gets rammed by a student who shouldn't have been driving him in the first place.  But he went out like that--quick!  And he had a great life.

On the literary canon
'''DS: I spoke with a young novelist named John Reed. He wrote a book called Snowball's Chance that was an attack on Orwell and we were talking about the literary canon that’s taught in grade school and high school. He raised an interesting idea that I wanted to run by you. His point was that kids are not becoming readers. So much of what they learn with books and reading doesn’t seem applicable to their lives. I read in Newsweek that your five favorite novels and there was a lot of classics – The Scarlet Letter, The Great Gatsby, things like that. Reed’s point was that kids have a hard time bonding with these materials. What should be taught at those levels is modern literature. At the more senior levels, once they’ve developed acumen for reading and they relate to it on a personal level, then they’ll go exploring the classics and it’s almost more pertinent to them being able to understand it. An analogy would be as if you had children and they only watched Bette Davis and Joan Crawford movies and then the film genre, would wither because young people found it difficult to relate to it. What do you think about that idea?

 * GT: I think if you delay the reading of the classical works or whatever is defined as enduring in value, you postpone it. It’s too late. As to reading, what is contemporary? People do that anyway.

'''DS: Not kids.

 * GT: God, starting with Ms. Rowling, you’ve got Harry Potter. What’s more contemporary than that?

'''DS: That’s a phenomenon. It's not really that typical; I mean, it stands out because it’s a billion dollar author.

 * GT: I think so much of what we read that’s in the canons is pretty political, more now than ever. I mean you have to have women in there, you have to have blacks in there, you have to have Latinos in there. Go, if you should dare…

'''DS: And they can’t say certain things.

 * GT: That’s right. Of course, I grew up as a Catholic.  When I was a boy you couldn’t read certain things, say certain things, think certain things. So it’s not that we need this political correctness to remind me of restriction, restraint, guidance, governments. I grew up with them. It didn’t much matter. Do what you want to do anyway, but it’s covert. We were all in the closet in those days, one way or another.

'''DS: Would you agree with the idea that children don’t grow up reading much anymore, outside of what’s required?

 * GT: I think they do. There’s always been a number of young people who are in the category of being readers and the majority are not. And that was true when I was a child and when my wife was a child. My wife has now been a professional reader and editor for fifty years. But there were those who were drawn to reading and those who were not, found it boring or were more outward than internalized in their nature. Many of the people I know, who are very successful and read a lot, are people who experienced illness or injury when they were young. They grew up with books because they could not interact at a young age with their contemporaries.  Off the top of my head, Frances Ford Coppollo, people I know, Scorsese, Lee Iacocca... Or many people who have had to sit when they were eleven or six or five. They had to stay in bed, they were drawn to books and the books became their action. The books became their activity. They vicariously lived through the work of writers or maybe they lived through music, maybe they lived through something else. But that idea of being kept apart from the drive to be popular, the drive to be part of a clique that seemed to be in favor, when you are isolated, then maybe you are drawn out of your isolation by what you read and get a larger sense of the world.

'''DS: You’re saying that there never was really a time when people read more unless they had cause to read a lot based upon their circumstances?

 * GT: Well I’ll talk about what I really know, which is what I have personally experienced. I grew up in a home with very few books. There was one book, and I had no idea how my father got it. Maybe someone gave it to him. Short stories by the French writer Guy de Maupassant. I read those stories, all of them, twice probably, when I was ten. Later on, when I was in high school, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, I was reading fiction. The fiction I was reading, and I wrote about this in my last book, was Frank Yerby. People have never heard of him; he’s not in any canon. Frank Yerby was a black man, who lived in Spain and wrote these romance novels. And there must have been seven or eight or nine of them. They sold very well. A few of them were made into movies I never saw. I loved those stories because they were richly described. The characters were very very detailed. Very precise detail. And that shaped my life. I was a writer who does very much insist on and has affection for detail.

'''DS: Is that who you were reading at that age?

 * GT: When I became more mature, if that’s the word, it was about my senior year, going to college, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen years of age, I fell under the sway of the classic writers who were the generation or two before my own. Namely, Fitzgerald and Hemingway, and to a lesser degree Faulkner. I went to Alabama College, as you know. I assume you know. And so Faulkner was a name I reckoned with. And then, while I was still in college in my third year there, fourth year there, I started reading The New Yorker and reading the great stories of John O’Hara and Irwin Shaw and others … John Cheever. All those stories and all those writers I mentioned give detail. They are really descriptive writers, scenic writers, writers of city life whether it’s Fitzgerald invoking the sense of St. Paul, Minnesota or Coming To Princeton, his novel, or Irwin Shaw walking through the streets of the city of New York or O’Hara getting into New York with a chip on his shoulder from Pennsylvania or later on their literary inheritors, John Updike, William Styron, those other people closer to my generation. Philip Roth is my favorite writer. They all gave a sense of reality. Roth gives a real sense of history. I’ve read every novel he’s written.

'DS: I’ve read The Plot Against America''.

 * GT: Yeah, well that’s a distorted sense of the Wilke campaign. But you really get a sense of time and place with Roth, including his latest novel. All of his novels, every one of them. And I’ve never been tempted, with one exception, to write fiction. One exception being I did write a short story in 1965 and got it published and I was never interested in writing again because I thought reality is so remarkable. All you have to do is spend the time, take the time, and you’re going to find things that are hardly believable that are real. At least real to the degree that you say, this is as verifiable as it gets. I’m not saying it’s the truth, the full truth, the half truth, but this is at least something that did indeed happen, at least in the minds of those to whom it happened. And you are a chronicler of their reality. And you can write stories without changing names and altering the facts. And they sound as if they are concocted, imagined works of fiction, but they’re not. They’re not works of fiction. But my reading was fiction and remains fiction. I don’t read much non-fiction unless I have to. If I want to write about China then I’m going to read biographies of Mao. Or if I want to write about Unto The Suns, which is my book about my ancestry in Italy, I have to read all these book about Naples or 20th Century Mafia in Palermo or the English writers who were the great travel writers of the 19th century.

On travel to Cuba

'''DS: Yeah. When I was a kid my travels were very Europe-centric. But as an adult I have been drawn to places either seemingly “dangerous” to me or places that I don’t feel like I know because I’ve read so much about them or seen so many places. So Europe is off the map, now, though I snuck into Cuba.

 * GT: You have? When?

'''DS: In 2002.

 * GT: How did you sneak into Cuba?

'''DS: Through the Caymans Islands.

 * GT: How did you do it?

'''DS: Now they’ve stopped using the dollar. But back then, they were very much encouraging American tourists to come via Mexico.

 * GT: When was this you were there? 2002?

'''DS: 2002.

 * GT: They stopped using the dollar?

'''DS: They stopped using the dollar.

 * GT: I was there in ’96. I was there in ’82. And I didn’t sneak in, but I had to get a visa from the Czechoslovakian Embassy in Washington to get in there in ’82. Reagan was in power then and he didn’t want me to go to Cuba. I went. My wife also went for two weeks. And then in ’96 I went. And now you don’t have the dollar. What do you have?

'''DS: You have the Cuban pesos.

 * GT: Where do you get them?

'''DS: I’m not really sure now because when I was there they had the system where you could actually just use dollars. That’s what we used. The local currency was called pesos convertibles that were convertible into dollars. Of course they have no value anywhere else in the world except in Cuba, but then they stopped doing that. Castro has kind of created Batista’s society in some ways; not in every way. The poor are certainly a lot better off than they were under Batista. But with the embargo, the economy there is now very tourist-based, which creates this tourist class. We didn’t stay in the hotels. We wanted to stay in what they call casa particulars and I remember talking to a woman who was a doctor who made like $30 a month as a doctor. But running this casa particular, she was making around $300, $500 a month, which made her very rich.

 * GT: What’s the interpretation of that, translation of that mean? Casa particular. Like a rooming house?

'''DS: Like a rooming house. Exactly.

 * GT: Or like a Bed and Breakfast?

'''DS: That’s probably the best analogy. Staying at those the money goes more to the people. The other thing they tell you when you go to Cuba to bring aspirin and all these things that are in short supply there. The people who run these Bed and Breakfasts, if you will, make out with all the stuff the tourists give them to be dispersed in their communities. I went to Ecuador. I went camping in the Amazon. These are my adult travels. These are the places that interest me now. Do you find it similar in your own travels to really seek out things underneath, to pull up rocks and try and find what really exists under there. Going to Timbuktu or wherever. Do you have a travel philosophy?

 * GT: Well since we’re talking about Cuba, it was only four weeks in 1982 in which I traveled in Cuba to baseball towns. My idea often is to go to places with the announced notion of dealing with almost inconsequential parts of society. In China it was women’s soccer. In Cuba, when I went first in ’82, it was the idea of writing about sports fans and baseball games. The idea was to get me out of Havana. The only way I was going to get freedom, certainly nothing political. But if you’re writing about baseball fans in Cuba, it means you can go to towns, sit in the stands….

'''DS: And talk to the people.

 * GT: The people, how they get there, how they’re dressed, how they behave and really observe a lot of people because the town, four or five baseball towns. They’re big. And you can travel around the country. ‘Where are you going?’ ‘We’re going to the baseball game.’ You always can explain yourself. And I was very impressed in ’82. When I went back, I was writing a story I published called “Ali in Havana.”  It’s in a collection of mine called The Gay Talese Reader, but it was published in Esquire in ‘96. Since you mentioned medical supplies, I went back to accompany Muhammed Ali on a private jet that left Miami for Havana. He and about twenty people were on that plane able to circumvent the embargo because he was on a humanitarian mission, or at least convinced the government authorities in Washington he was. He got clearance because of who he is. And he took medical supplies down. But he, himself, was so sick with Parkinson’s. At the time, I didn’t realize how unable to communicate I would be with him because I couldn’t hear him. He didn’t make any sense. But that didn’t matter because I don’t really write Q&A kind of stuff anyway. Just hanging around with him was fine. But I was able to see a lot of the Cuban people. I was able to go to the medical facilities, hospitals and clinics to see nurses, see doctors, get a look at the interior of the medical quarters of the doctors and how the patients were dressed and what kind of equipment was around in a medical sense. I was very impressed by the resources of the people. Despite the attempts by such hostile nations as the U.S. toward Cuba, despite the embargo and all the other restraints and restrictions, to say nothing of the assassination attempts on Castro himself, people were very strong and, as you suggested, it’s a very equalitarian society and I was with a lot of black people who were part of the contingent of Ali.

'''DS: And a happy society. At least I found a lot of people who were very content. They may not have an easy life, but they were quite content.

 * GT: They have their honor. They have their dignity. They’re not a serf class to the aristocracy.

'''DS: People dancing in the streets at night.

 * GT: I went out at night and I saw a lot of that. That’s true. They have their values.

'''DS: And friendly.

 * GT: And friendly. Much more than those Cubans in Miami.

'''DS: My friend I was with was Colombian from Miami, and he made the exact same observation. He had a prejudice against Cubans from his time in Miami and he said, “These people aren’t anything like the Cubans in Miami.”

On Chinese gay bars
'''David Shankbone: Do you have a favorite country you have visited?

 * Gay Talese: Well I think the city I found most interesting was Beijing.

'''DS: You talk about China a lot.

 * GT: I found that really a place that changes every year. And it’s what you can do.  That’s one city. I spent so much time in Europe when I was young.

'''DS: Is it interesting to you to watch China change?

 * GT: Yeah, I read everything that’s in the papers about China. I completed a story today about how the Bush administration was using China.

'''DS: Do you get tired of going to the same region and then you’re like, ‘I need to go to Asia for a while?’

 * GT: That’s right. That happened to me in 1998. Kind of interesting. I was able to see without being interrupted with interpretation because I couldn’t understand anything. I so so enjoyed being places I’ve never been before like Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, not Hong Kong, but other places. You asked me about Beijing. It’s the most interesting city because it’s an international city in which there is this history going back hundreds and hundreds of years of turmoil, accommodation. They are such entrepreneurial people on the lowest level to the highest level, the Chinese. And they’re so quick in understanding how to survive and there are so many of them. God, there are so many of them. Have you been to Asia?

'''DS: I haven’t been to Asia. But it doesn’t particularly interest me all that much. There are countries I would like to see, Cambodia being one. South America is one of the areas that I am most interested to explore because I speak Spanish.

 * GT: I felt similarly when I first got out of Beijing. I said Beijing is an interesting city because it’s international, because it has the press from around the world and the political representation of the whole world in that capitol city. But at night, especially if you have some Chinese friends who speak English so you’re able to have them tell you a little bit about what you’re seeing as they take you around and you go to clubs. What first impressed me in Beijing was the great number of gay men, and women I guess, but gay men who had clubs, gay bars in Beijing. I don’t read this in the paper. But what impressed me was how open it is. One called Club Vogue. I went there.

'''DS: What are the gay bars like?

 * GT: They were just as you would find them in New York where gay men hang around and they have their music and their dancing.

'''DS: Are they flamboyant?

 * GT: When I first became aware of it, it’s like in Iran, Ahmadinejad says there’s no homosexuals in Iran…

'''DS: Well, it’s because they kill them.

 * GT: Well whatever it is, but in China I don’t hear of any, either boastfully or with reticence, the acknowledgement of homosexuals, but I always stayed in the hotel because I don’t have the language so I couldn’t stay in a Bed & Breakfast in China or wherever you did. You speak Spanish, you said. But I do not speak anything. When I noticed this, I would sometimes have room service, breakfast in my room sometime, and invariably it was a guy, sometimes two, who were very very effeminate. They really were. Later on, I realized that the hotel, which was one of the better hotels at the time in 1999 … probably it’s been surpassed by dozens of hotels now, but this was ’99 that I stayed five months. First time I went to Beijing, I stayed five months. Then on subsequent visits, three months, two months. It wasn’t one week. I did stay for a while and get around a little bit, within the city mostly. But there was just one thing about how free it could be.

'''DS: How did you get introduced to a gay bar in Beijing?

 * GT: I got introduced to it because I needed interpreters and in order to get interpreters, I had people who were college students, Americans, sometimes of Chinese origin.  One of them in particular who went to Yale, who came to Toronto from Canton as a young boy, went to school in Toronto, and when he graduated from high school in Toronto he went to Yale and after graduating at 21 or whenever it was from Yale, returned to China and taught English in one of the high schools in Beijing. When I went and needed somebody, it was very hard to get interpreters because anybody who could speak English and Chinese was taken by corporations at high paying jobs because all of these multi-national corporations having Chinese partners needed interpreters.

'''DS: Including the European ones, right? English is the international language.

 * GT: Everybody. Everybody. So people like me would have to really scratch around to find somebody. So I would, maybe through my people I knew who worked for newspapers or television. I would get to know journalists very easily because I knew the bureaus. I could go to the New York Times and they had a five or six man bureau and some of the Chinese workers were there. “Can I get somebody to moonlight for me for a little bit?” “Well no, we can’t give you one of our people, but he has got a cousin over here, who’s working part-time at Kentucky Fried Chicken and you can see him after. So this is how I met this fellow from Yale. Because he knew the city, he not only served as my interpreter when I had interviews, but he took it upon himself to escort me places, including these bars or sex shops. I mean I’m always interested in prostitution because that is really something that involves danger. It involves a kind of corruption because everybody abolishes it, but it exists.

'''DS: And it’s so basic.

 * GT: So basic. And who are the Chinese prostitutes? Are they from Mongolia…?

'''DS: Philippines?

 * GT: Yeah. So he would know or he would know people who would know. I was always interested in the side streets of major cities, what went on there. I was just very very curious about China particularly, because it was supposed to be such an autocratic place, totalitarian, repressive. Not at all. Not at all. Sure, if you’re charged with revealing state secrets like that guy from the New York Times. They put him in jail. He worked for the Bureau and they made a hero out of him, but he got information about the change of Jiang Zemin before that president left office.

On the media and Iraq
'''DS: The people that are responsible are the media. But what do you think is the reason there is this collective idea to give Americans a certain view of a place or a people that is not necessarily accurate? I think Iran is another good example, where we are consistently fed images and notions about a people and a culture that aren’t really accurate.

 * GT: Or fair minded.

'''DS: Or fair minded. In truth, the reality is far more interesting for a story.

 * GT: Well it involves more work. I think most journalists are pretty lazy, number one. A little lazy and also they’re spoon-fed information, whether it’s about weapons of mass destruction back in 2003. It’s easy. They have all these lobbyist groups, these special interest groups. Each of them has a position with regard to Taiwan, for example. The anti-China lobby is very strong. Whether it’s the gun lobby or the Israeli lobby or the Taiwan lobby, whatever the hell it is, you have these people who create a package of news, develop it as a story line, a scenario, and they find, as Mailer once said about the press, it’s like a donkey. You have to feed the donkey. The donkey every day has to eat. So these people throw in the damn animal eats everything. Tin cans, garbage.

'''DS: And Americans are the donkeys?

 * GT: Well the media ….

'''DS: But people are still consuming what they’re throwing out there though.

 * GT: Yeah, they are, because they’re getting stories. In Iraq the whole press is embedded. Those correspondents who drive around in tanks and armored personnel carriers, who are spoon-fed what the military gives them and they become mascots for the military, these journalists.  I wouldn’t have journalists embedded if I had any power. You said what would you do? Well there are stories to be done. There are a lot of stories to be done. You don’t have to have military protection, though I’m sure….. There are stories you can do that aren’t done. I’ve said that many times. What story would you do? Well even if you’re stuck in the Green Zone you can do stories.

'''DS: But it’s dangerous though, to actually go out there and hit the pavement.

 * GT: Supposed you don’t have to go out there? There are stories to be done in the Green Zone, within whatever the walls of protection are. You could do stories about Iraqis who work within the Green Zone. You could do stories about what kind of sexual activity goes on. Back to sex now. Here’s what’s important: In times of occupation of every historical event involving the United States, whether it’s World War II, whether it’s the war in Vietnam, Korea, occupation of Japan after World War II, World War I, there’s always been a private relationship with the people of the country that’s been invaded. Always.

'''DS: How could there not be?

 * GT: Sometimes it leads to marriage. Sometimes it's just affairs. Sometimes it involves just dealing with bar girls in Okinawa or Leone or Sicily or somewhere.

'''DS: Sure.

 * GT: Not so now. This is the first war like that, in Iraq.

'''DS: Have you been there?

 * GT: No, I haven’t been there. I’d like to go.

'''DS: Why haven’t you?

 * GT: Well, I have to have somebody that will give me credentials.

'''DS: That shouldn’t be too hard for you.

 * GT: Sure it is, because you think The New York Times, the Time Magazine, Newsweek Magazine….?

'DS: Esquire''?
 * GT: Esquire?

'DS: Esquire'' does political reporting.
 * GT: It so happens there is someone that’s working on such a thing right now for me. I haven’t heard from them yet.

'''DS: What would be the difficulties for you in achieving that? It seems like you would just have to make a phone call.
 * GT: You very much overrate whatever stature you think I have. I mean there are people that are there. The New York Times has probably fifteen, twenty people there. And they’re not going to underwrite me as a freelancer. People want staff now. Obviously you have to be covered by health and all this….

'''DS: I think you’re underrating your stature.
 * GT: The point is, I’m not there, okay. We can talk all morning about this, but the point is I am now working on something. But I’m trying to get back to what I was saying before, whether or not I’m there, I’m now here. Will I be there? Maybe. But there are stories. I mean I’m quoting myself as to what kind of stories. The television shows American troops kicking down doors and I wonder: who fixes the doors?  The other day I was on an airplane coming back from Bogotá and I sat next to a guy, an American, who was a Green Beret guy years ago. Well now he’s in Baghdad as one of these civilian contractors. He has a company and he invited me to go with this company. That’s my little thing that I have in the offing. But he told me that the worst thing, not kicking down the doors, but they go in there and they open the locks of what we’ll call the hope chests of women who hope to marry. The soldiers go in and they just break open the locks of these women’s hope chests or whatever you call them and that is really the ultimate insult. It’s like raping the women right there. And this stuff goes on all the time. Well you could write about that. And no one writes about that.

'''DS: I always wanted to know what the cemeteries are like there. What the funerals are like there. Are they like town meetings in a place where there is so much death?
 * GT: The journalists define news and their editors want news….

'''DS: It fits a template.
 * GT: And the reporting out of Washington is the worst.

'''DS: The press is often cited for it's laziness and for reporting any source without checking its accuracy.
 * GT: The press in Washington got us into this war as much as the people that is controlling it.  They took information that was second-hand information, and they went along with it.  It wasn't only the Judy Millers who got credit for being in the pocket of Hamad Chalabi and Wolfowitz and the rest of those people.  All of them.  The New YOrk Times bureau, not only Miller, but all of them.  They went along.  They don't want to get off Air Force One; they want to have access.  Also, you mentioned Floyd Abrams.  I wouldn't defend what he defended, this kind of sourcing that goes on.  These sources that lie?  New York Times allow such liars to affect news.  I'll give you several examples:  the story of the so-called Chinese spy, Wen Ho Lee, the guy who four or five years ago in Los Alamos was supposed to be a spy.  He was locked up with chains around his ankles.  That was leaked information, one of these celebrated reporters--Risen, or something, was the guy.  The story about that Anthrax fellow in Maryland who was supposed to be identified the source of this anthrax.  Wrong.  The Duke Lacrosse players, we were told, New York Times pushed it on their front page.  We didn't know the facts.  You use sources and identify, crucify people who never committed any wrong.  It turned out not true.  Then it's too late.  It's just like that whole period before the Iraq War.  That information--it was leaked, coming in, publish it.  Saddam has an atomic bomb.  And they publish it.  They publish it and we don't know the truth.  Journalists should withhold information like that.

On the Iraq War
'''DS: Has the war affected you as a person?
 * GT: I wish it had. The war hasn’t affect America as a person. The only ones affected are the 165,000 troops, relatives, kinfolk, cousins. That’s all.

'''DS: It hasn’t affected you then?
 * GT: I wish it had! It hasn’t. It hasn’t affected you either. It hasn’t affected anybody!

'''DS: It’s affected me.
 * GT: It’s affected you?

'''DS: Every single person I interview I ask about the war because I think it's important and it has affected me.
 * GT: Then you must have some relationship. Or you must have a human spirit unmatched since Billy Graham made his first speech. I mean you have to have a real conscience, social conscience, to care. Where are the protests coming out of the Ivy League or the University of Alabama? They’re not there because there’s no conscription. There should be conscription. There should be a draft. There should be. Everybody should serve.

'''DS: That’s what Charles Rangel says.
 * GT: He’s the only voice in Congress that ever said that and he said it five years ago. I don’t know of any other voice. I am not aware of another member of the Congress who said what Rangel said. Not one. Certainly not these candidates, Clinton and the rest of them. Because why? Because they know it would stop the war in an hour. Because then we would have involvement. Right now what’s the involvement? The ridiculous stickers, ‘Support Your Troops’ on the back of an SUV? The cost of gas matters not at all. Nobody sacrifices.

'''DS: That’s the only thing that does seem to motivate people to be against the war is to be paying more at the gas pump.
 * GT: They don’t care. Don’t care. There’s no sacrifice. Americans are unaffected, except those in the military or related to military people, doesn’t matter… I go out. I mean, yes you can have conversations at dinner parties about this, but it’s very political. It’s about whether McCain says this or Hillary says this and what’s the position of somebody in the defense department. That’s all bullshit. Really nobody cares.

'''DS: Does it bother you that there’s a lack of outrage?
 * GT: Yes it does. It does bother me. And it does bother me that the poor people who need money join the National Guard Reserves because they needed that money or they want to go to college. What most bothers me are the college students – the worst generation is what I call them. These college students are the worst and I’ve been to a lot of campuses. I taught last year at USC. I always go to USC in the spring in April every year. I go for a week or so. And I hang around. Across from the campus, there’s a motel I stay in. College students are always hanging around there. And I was, this year, at the University of Pennsylvania and I was at the University of Alabama, and I’ve been to a number of campuses this year and nobody cares about this war.

'''DS: Or really much about anything.
 * GT: Less so because of this technology that’s absorbed them, you know with their God damn ears closed and their eyes affixed. and the God damn games they play.

'''DS: It doesn't get better as you go higher
 * GT: It doesn't?

'''DS: No, that was one of the things that stood out to me at Fordham Law. It's a top 25 law school in a very vibrant city with a lot of thinkers. I told this anecdote to Floyd Abrams: I was in a Constitutional Law class right after Alito was nominated to be on the Supreme Court. The professor asked 120 law students on the first day of class how many of them thought he should be confirmed. About five students raised their hands. "New York," I thought. Then he asked how many of them thought Alito should not be confirmed. About ten students raised their hands. Then he asked how many did not feel they had enough information to know. about another five students raised their hands. What is that? 100 students in a Constitutional Law class at a top school can't proffer an opinion on a Supreme Court nominee? Is that apathy...confusion...fear...? What is it?
 * GT: When I was in the military, there was no war.  1954, 1955; Korea was over by then.  I had to camp with people from different parts of the United States.  Farmers, sons, rich people, poor people.  We were all together for at least six weeks of basic training, and then later on when you are assigned to a unit you really had a sense of the country if you didn't have the opportunity to travel.  Very few of us did; I never traveled anywhere until I was in the army.  I went to college, from New Jersey to Alabama as a student, so I was at least in a different part of the United States than that where I was born.  Out of college I went into the army, Fort Knox, Kentucky, and I was with people from Texas, North Carolina and people from Boston.  Those who don't have to serve, or choose not to, can say that it's not their war.  But it's an economic war; it's a sad commentary on who has to serve, because it is mercenary.  They are economic mercenaries.  They are economically deprived people, without opportunities, and they seek this opportunity and they never imagine how ill-chosen was their choice when they are missing a leg, or witnessing the horror.  It's been close to five years, and still no protests?  You don't find the students at Columbia protesting?  They can protest the President of Iran!  They're good at that, but they are no good at protesting what is going on in to their generation that couldn't afford to get into Columbia, or any place.  It's so unfair, and so un-protested after so many years...it's been close to five years!

'''DS: After Hurricane Katrina there was a lot of debate on whether we would rebuild one of our own cities as we were over in Iraq demolishing their cities. How did you feel about that?
 * GT: I was there a month after it hit.  I had a friend down there, Julia Kass, who I went to see.  I stayed in a hotel--there were hotels functioning.  It wasn't that everything was destroyed; there were parts that weren't--

'''DS: Yeah, the high areas; the rich areas--
 * GT: --that's right.  And this was a rich area.  It was a good hotel.  She would get in her car, Miss Julia Kass, and take me around.  And boy did I see that town...it...it...it was just like what you read.  And it's like the military:  the outside people just didn't care.  The poor blacks, as there are always those who are invaded by the forces of nature and are not protected then or later, they are the people who get sucked up into this swamp of military life or a disaster such as Katrina.  And the sense of humanity and human rights aren't there.  We have a human rights lobby in this country.  Amnesty International is very quick to point fingers at countries who are failing, at Darfur or the Chinese with regard to the Tibetans.  But right in our own country--New Orleans--the outrage was never equal to what should have been proper and humanely expedient.  It's still a class thing.  The country is really divided by class.

'''DS: More than it used to be?
 * GT: Well, considering that what this country's history should be, which is a learning experiment, which is going back to the time of legally abolishing racism in schools and jobs, what came out of the civil rights struggle; all those wonderful laws like Brown v. Board of Education and all.  But we are still a racial society.  And it's no less true with the schools in New York than the schools in Alabama.  I've been to Selma, Alabama every year for the last thirty or forty years.  I wrote about it when I was one of the reporters in 1965, and I have not failed to go to that town since then once every year.

'''DS: Every year you go to Selma? Why?
 * GT: To watch it.  I think it's a little town that gives a good face of America.

'DS: There was a Times'' report, I think, about Selma and they say that it is very changed.
 * GT: Bullshit!  There's always a report.  Absolute bullshit!  They go down there every March 7, John Lewis comes out of Atlanta and they go march, and there's some old crotchety group of what's left over from the Bloody Sunday massacre.

'''DS: Recently Obama and Clinton were down there marching...
 * GT: Bullshit!  It's all total bullshit.  The city of Selma--not to just single it out, the country is racist.  New York is racist.  This neighborhood!  I've lived in this house for fifty years, where you and I are now, and this neighborhood.  WHen I first moved in here in 1957, it didn't have any black neighbors.  I'm speaking in 2007.  No black neighbors.  Does that mean Michael Jackson couldn't move in?  I guess.  I don't see them.  I guess you could have stars.  But even they would have trouble.  And we still have a Harlem.    We wouldn't have a Harlem if we had an integrated and assimilated society.

'''DS: And that's going.
 * GT: If they drive them out...they'll go.  But what I'm saying is they are sectioned off.  So we talk about the segregated south, the black ghettos--the black quarter--of Birmingham. We still have that. We aren't so up front about it, meaning they are less honest and more devious in undemocratic ways.

'''DS: Did you see the election in Alabama when the Christian Coalition defeated the ballot measure to remove the segregation language from the Alabama Constitution that said nobody is guaranteed a right to an education?
 * GT: Such a high level of hypocrisy that has existed in this country from decade to decade.  I'm 75 years old, and it wasn't so different when I was 25 years old.  That's a fifty year difference--what's so different?  I don't know.  I travel and I don't see much change.

'''DS: Have you changed?
 * GT: I've gotten older and maybe more cynical.

'''DS: When you were 25 did you look at black people the same way as you look at them now?
 * GT: Yeah.  When I was 25 or 15, it was the same, because in my town Ocean City, New Jersey, I went to school with black people.  It wasn't segregated.  I was born in 1932 and when I was in 8 or 9 I saw the Klan in their white sheets on the Boardwalk.  This is not Birmingham, this Ocean CIty, New Jersey.  I saw the Klan.  My father was a tailor and he was a practicing Catholic.  A cross was burned across from his story; I was six or seven.  And we knew who the Klan were.  The leading pharmacist was a Klansman, my father told me that.  Two firemen in the town.  They would meet publicly, and black people were in the town.  They had their own Harlem in Ocean City.  So there is a real estate racism.  Ocean City, New York City, Selma, Alabama.  They all have their black quarters still.

'''DS: :Julia Kass wrote a book about a black attorney that I go to see in Selma, his name is JL Cheston Jr. He's a character in my book A Writer's Life. Schools that used to be all white are now all black, so now there's a reverse segregation. Alabama it used to be kids couldn't get into white schools. Now there is white flight and they are all black. That's true of Selma, public schools in New York, too. They are minority schools, now. They are either black or hispanic. '''DS: Do you think Joel Klein has improved it?
 * GT: Nope.  He might have improved the education because the mayor we have now is a very good mayor, and he chose Klein and he brings a certain articulation and wisdom to an egalitarian education.  But do we have it, really?  Every public school teacher that's in the system in this town is almost like a missionary.  They go off and risk life in the interest of humanism.  But the private schools, the disgusting sight of drivers picking up children, disgusting sight of limousine drivers lining up.  I'm only a block away from one of them here.  All over this city at two and three o'clock, you find dark-skinned women waiting for their young, white blazer-clad private school boy and escorting him either into a car that has a driver or walking the kids to wherever their homes are in the neighborhood.  The public schools and private schools are two different worlds.  Just like our American military.  The people who do not have the resources, and therefore they become dependent on the largess of military life to support their income or because the military affords them opportunity--so they think--because the military provides a life better than the meaningless life they have in private life.  They get out of high school--maybe, maybe not even that-- and what do they have to look forward to, these people?  Particularly the men, the undereducated male.  A life of minimum wage in some shopping mall working for some fast food place or driving a truck.

State of Journalism
'DS: What do you think about Murdoch buying The Wall Street Journal''?
 * GT: It doesn't bother me.  It's not like the wonderful Bancroft family was some noble dynasty!  It's not like we should lament the passing of some noble dynasty  to the corrupt News Corp.

'''DS: It's painted that way.
 * GT: He's better than they are!  It doesn't bother me.  Journalism -I think there is some very good stuff.  There's some wonderful writing as well as reporting in THe New York Times every day. It's not on the front page, necessarily.  THe sections I enjoy reading are The City section, stories about life in the city; and the Real Estate section.  There's stories about neighborhoods at night and neighborhoods at day.  If you are thinking about renting an apartment or moving into a neighborhood, the story says, "look at it at night.  Because at daytime when you usually look at a place you think you might want to rent or buy, it looks a certain way.  Then go at night and it looks a different way.  It might be more isolated at night; it might be the fact there are nightclubs you aren't aware of during the day so it has a lot of noise.  This is the real estate section - very interesting section.  The level or writing is now better at the paper in 2007 than when I was there up until 1965.  Of course, people are better educated now.  The journalist is now far more formally educated than we were.  The journalist today is probably second generation of college education in the family.  In my generation, most of us were probably the first to go to college in our families.  We had more of a sense of being an outsider.  Jews, the Irish and Italians back in the 1950s and 1960s, I do believe we had a sense of being isolated from power and therefore on the outside looking in.

'''DS: Not any more?
 * GT: Now the journalists and the people in power, the government and financial world, they're all of the same class, which is privileged class.  Journalists are people who are distant from those who are "The Deciders", to use Bush's phrase.  I think there is an all-inclusiveness, and I think the Washington Press Corp is represetnative of what I am saying.  They co-mingle; they live in the same neighborhoods and they go to the same places.  The Washington Press Corp. is the worse.

'''DS: Did you see Stephen Colbert roast the Washington Pres Corp and Bush at the White House Press Correspondence dinner? Nobody laughed, because they were all coming from the same place.
 * GT: And it got a bad review, and then a revised review!  The first account I read--I didn't see it or watch it--was that it was boring.  Then it took on a life of it's own!

'''DS: Because nobody reported about it, or they just said he bombed. THen it went out on the internet and took on a life of its own and people said, "This isn't bombing, this a roasting of the entire power structure and the power structure decided they didn't like it."
 * GT: I feel the Washington Press Corp. should be broken up.  Just have them distributed around the country.  PUt them in state capitals and just feed the state capitals with more reporters and have them feed the big papers.  Cover the country not from Washington.  It's so federalized.  More state's rights kind of reporting; represent power across the country not just overloaded in one place.

'''DS: A view of the federal government from the national scene? "Here in Denver the reaction to Washington..."
 * GT: That's right!  It would be harder, because they won't fed.  They'll have to do more...

'''DS: Reporting?
 * GT: [Laughs]  That's right!  They wouldn't really like that.  And they would probably be able to report the war better as it is reflected in towns with a lot of soldiers, and returning injured and dead in those towns.  They would really get a feel for the country, and not just those non-participants in Washington who are mouthing this-and-that and getting defense appropriations.

'''DS: The way it is now, they don't get an interview with so-and-so if they write something, or they don't get to go to someone's party!
 * GT: Yeah, well, cut half the leaking.  Just leave the capitol and cover the country.

'''DS: Do you think Bob Woodward is still an intrepid Washington reporter? He's often been accused of being too close to the people he covers.
 * GT: I don't have an opinion on Woodward; he's been successful.  I mean, when I was a young man there was a James Reston.  I wrote about him in The Kingdom of Power a lot.  He was the most important reporter when I was coming up in the 1950's, and he was in Washington and in bed with enemy all the time.  He had sources in the administration of Kennedy, of Eisenhower before Kennedy, or Johnson.  He was a guy who liked power and liked being around power, and he was very much a patriot writer.  He was very popular and wrote easy-to-read pieces.

title: User:David Shankbone/GayTalese


text:
New audiotape attributed to Osama bin Laden released

October 22, 2007

The leader of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, has released a new audiotape which was broadcast through Al Jazeera. The tape is entitled Letter to the people of Iraq.

On the tape, he reportedly calls for unity among insurgents in Iraq, but also says that insurgents have been "lax" in their duties. In the tape, bin Laden's main focus is on Iraq.

"Some of you have been lax in one duty, which is to unite your ranks. Beware of division ... The Muslim world is waiting for you to gather under one banner. The interest of the Islamic nation surpasses that of a group. The strength of faith is in the strength of the bond between Muslims and not that of a tribe or nationalism. Beware of your enemies, especially those who infiltrate your ranks. I advise myself and the Islamic nation not to follow individuals and countries. Everything should be seen in the light of Islam," said bin Laden on the tape.

The voice on the tape has yet to be confirmed to be that of bin Laden's and it is not known how the network received the tape.


text:
Talk:Wildfires burn in southern California

OR
I watched the press conference and it seems that the info being added is from there. DragonFire1024 (Talk to the Dragon) 19:14, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I live in San Diego and heard about an hour ago that Scripps Ranch has been ordered evacuated; this and several other evacuations probably pushes the number of people evacuated up to three hundred thousand. I don't think there's going to be any sourceable information about this that fast, though.--69.44.64.142 21:29, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

San Diego
I don't know why, but detailed information about the San Diego fires is astonishingly hard to find.

http://media.signonsandiego.com/fires/

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&om=1&msa=0&msid=117631292961056724014.00043d0e9ca465cefeeed&ll=35.960223,-117.443848&spn=4.827737,8.876953&z=7

Dunno if that helps any...

--Connel MacKenzie 07:53, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Sitting here in San Diego, Ive noticed its all on tv and not on the web (every local channel is 24 hr news right now). http://sosdfireblog.blogspot.com/ seems to be the local newspaper's official breaking news blog. I guess the format was chosen for quickness and so they can update it anywhere. 72.207.45.14 20:03, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I admit it
Mrs. O' Leary's cow probably has nothing to do with the San Diego fires, but who knows what the ghost of that cow might've wrought. 204.52.215.107 18:45, 25 October 2007 (UTC)