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Fit to be executed
by mattd 04 Jan '02

04 Jan '02

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) - A former Ku Klux Klansman who state psychologists testified was faking mental problems has been ruled competent to stand trial for the murder of four black girls killed in a 1963 church bombing. Circuit Judge James Garrett handed down the decision Thursday, reversing his own ruling last year that Bobby Frank Cherry was mentally incompetent. In a two-sentence order, Garrett said the retired trucker "has been restored to competency." The judge, without any detailed explanation, said his finding was based on legal briefs and on a recent hearing, at which psychologists testified about Cherry's mental condition. Garrett scheduled a Jan. 18 proceeding to set a trial date. Sarah Collins Rudolph, who was standing a short distance from one of the victims when the blast occurred, said she was pleased Cherry is going to trial. "It's his time to stand trial now," she said. "I hope it's finally coming to an end." Cherry's attorneys, Mickey Johnson and Rodger Bass, did not immediately return phone messages seeking comment. "We believed all along that he was competent," said Doug Jones, a former U.S. attorney who has served as chief prosecutor in the case. "We believe that ruling was the only ruling (the judge) could make under the law." The church, a rallying site for advocates of public school desegregation, was bombed on Sept. 15, 1963, as the four girls prepared for a youth day service. The explosion was the deadliest attack targeting the civil rights movement. Killed in the attack were 14-year-olds Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley and Carole Robertson and 11-year-old Denise McNair. Two other former Klansmen were convicted of murder in the blast, one last year and one in 1977. Cherry was one of a group of Klansmen who came under almost immediate suspicion. He left Alabama several years after the bombing and moved to Texas, where he worked as a truck driver and cleaned carpets before retiring in the town of Mabank. Cherry was indicted on murder charges in 1999. Garrett delayed Cherry's trial because of competency questions. Garrett ruled in April that Cherry, whose age is listed as both 71 and 72 in court records, was incompetent based on testimony of four mental health experts. They said he suffered varying degrees of vascular dementia, which can cause forgetfulness and confusion. Prosecutors appealed and Garrett committed Cherry to a state-run psychiatric hospital to be evaluated for 71 days. Psychologists testified during a two-day hearing last month that Cherry was faking mental problems and possibly taking too much of a medicine prescribed for anxiety. The Rev. Abraham Woods, who led demonstrations against Garrett's original ruling, said he thought Cherry misled attorneys from the beginning. "Cherry was faking, and after he spent 71 days and nights at Taylor Hardin (psychiatric hospital), those professionals affirmed he was faking," he said. Another ex-Klansman, Robert "Dynamite Bob" Chambliss, was convicted of murder in the bombing in 1977 and died in prison. Thomas Blanton Jr. was convicted in the bombing last year and sentenced to life in prison, and a fourth suspect, Herman Cash, died in 1994 without being charged. Blanton, who continues to maintain his innocence, is appealing his conviction.

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Dont go simple on me.
by mattd 04 Jan '02

04 Jan '02

Blood Simple (1984) To mark the re-release of their seminal debut feature Blood Simple, fraternal filmmakers Ethan and Joel Coen created a brief, jokey prologue starring one Mortimer Young, a fictional film preservationist who heralds the second coming of their "exquisite masterpiece." Mr. Young may be laying it on a bit thick there, but he's not far from the truth, especially when he credits the film with "ushering in the era of independent cinema." In the 16 years since its original release, this shady little neo-noir number has been dog-eared as a primogenitor of the modern indie film. Taut, quirky, and jump-out-of-your-seat scary, Blood Simple is returning to theaters in a new director's cut "digitally enhanced and tastefully restored," says our host and it's well worth the second look. Texan bar proprietor Julian Marty (Dan Hedaya) believes that his wife, Abby (the excellent Frances McDormand, aka Mrs. Joel Coen), is canoodling with another man, so he hires private detective Loren Visser (M. Emmet Walsh in an wicked, prize-winning turn) to investigate and deliver evidence of her betrayal. So, Visser follows Abby and her secret consort, Marty's bartender Ray (John Getz), to a roadside motel and bingo snaps a few photos of the pair in flagrante delicto. When Visser confirms Marty's suspicions, the humiliated husband crumples, instantly demoted on the macho-meter from cocky bull to cuckolded steer all hat and no cattle, as it were. Marty fixes his focus on the repulsive Visser, a man upon whom flies instinctively come to settle, and wonders out loud if he shouldn't kill this unsavory messenger to bolster his sagging ego, or enlist him for a far more gruesome task than the first. Meanwhile, Abby takes up with Ray, a quiet sort, but one willing to go to unspeakable lengths to win her. Abby has a gun, she tells Ray, that Marty gave her, and now she's leaving "anal," gruff Marty before she snaps and points it at him. It would spoil the spring-coiled surprises and plot twists to detail too much more of the story, but let's just say that Abby's gun is the fatal link that connects all the characters. By the end, each of them just might end up on the wrong side of that little pearl-handled pistol . So why the re-release? For one, video certainly didn't do this film justice. The hazy transfer and changes from the original soundtrack (including one regrettable and repetitive country rendition of The Monkees' "I'm a Believer") date the VHS version above and beyond McDormand's banana clips and denim jumpsuits (both of which are in no way limited to '80s fashion in Texas). In the restoration process, the Coens said they went "back to the original camera negative to generate new printing elements," and clipped "some of the boring parts." The editing is tighter, the sound effects clearer, and Barry Sonnenfeld's skilled cinematography more discernible. These enhancements bring the audience closer to the characters on-screen, allowing the viewer to be startled by raspy breathing and buzzing neon, dreading the approach of a dragging shovel, and stunned by the sudden punch of bullets through drywall, as light cuts through in sharp rays. Simply put, Blood Simple becomes more bloodcurdlingly suspenseful in direct proportion to the size of the screen. It's a forceful and significant debut, well-deserving of its ranking as a classic, and it has aged well, thanks largely to the calibrated, attuned performances of the entire cast. The title refers to the delirious mental state that accompanies a killing half shocked, half hopped-up on adrenaline and base instinct and Marty, Abby, Visser, and Ray all taste it at some point in this precarious cat-and-mouse hunt. It's what a haggard Ray feels as he advises Abby, "If you're going to point a gun at someone, you'd better be ready to shoot it, and if you do, you'd better make sure he's dead." KASIA ANDERSON

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Tim May; Tomato can.
by mattd 04 Jan '02

04 Jan '02

A black and white history of the heavyweight division Tuesday May 23, 2000 When John L Sullivan toured America a hundred years ago and more he would offer a thousand dollars to any man who could last four rounds with him - as long as he wasn't black. In his bareknuckled and gloved career, the world's first heavyweight champion fought only men of his own colour, and not many complained. Another Irish-American, James J Corbett, who followed him, was similarly reluctant. So when Jack Johnson became the first black heavyweight champion - by brutalising Tommy Burns for 14 rounds in Sydney in 1908 - he turned the sporting world on its head. Jack came to London the following July, performing on the bass viol and singing Baby's Sock is a Blue-bag Now for a white audience at the Oxford Music Hall. The Times noted that in the United States Johnson 'passed for a "flash nigger", a type not to be encouraged by those who have to keep ten millions of black men in subjection to the dominant race.' The Home Secretary sent him home, scotching a challenge by 'Bombardier' Billy Wells. After Jess Willard beat Johnson in Havana in 1915, Tex Rickard made a pile with Jack Dempsey in the Twenties. Each of five fights Tex organised drew more than a million dollars at the gate - but Dempsey too refused to defend his title against black challengers. It was left to Joe Louis in the Thirties to answer back, ever so quietly. 'Uncle' Mike Jacobs, heir to Rickard's baloney, promoted Louis and told him to keep his mouth shut. White America remained unthreatened by the polite but lethal Joe. By the time Rocky Marciano arrived in the Fifties, the Mob had really moved in and boxing went off-white again. Marciano, a terrific champion, did not dodge black contenders - he took the title from Jersey Joe Walcott in 1952 and beat Ezzard Charles and old Archie Moore - but he let in some ordinary white guys, including Roland LaStarza and Don Cockell. Floyd Paterson settled in for an undistinguished reign, before Sonny Liston frightened him out of the title. A few white heavyweights popped up - and down - around this time, none of them much good: Peter Rademacher, a first-fight world title challenger to Floyd; Ingemar Johannson, who won once and lost twice to Paterson; Brian London and Tom McNeeley, father of the even more awful Pete, who would be barged aside by Mike Tyson. After Muhammad Ali beat Liston to reinvigorate boxing, he accommodated his share of pale meat: George Chuvalo, Henry Cooper, London, Karl Mildenberger, Chuck Wepner, Joe Bugner, Jean-Pierre Coopman, Richard Dunn, Alfredo Evangelista, Oscar Bonavena, Jerry Quarry... with a few exceptions, not a galaxy of talent. Quarry, Joe Frazier, George Foreman gave poor Joe Roman his few moments in the headlights, Osvaldo Ocasio went in with Larry Holmes, John Tate beat Gerrie Coetzee, Holmes got back to Scott Le Doux, Mike Weaver stopped Coetzee, Gerry Cooney and Randall Cobb were brave against Holmes... and so it went. If you were white and breathing, with the right telephone numbers, you got a shot. But the white supply was drying up fast and the meaningful fights were confined to the black contenders after the Holmes era. Between the time Greg Page stopped Coetzee in Sun City in 1984 in defence of the WBA version and Francesco Damiani beat Johnny Duplooy in an all-whiter for the WBO title five years later, only Steffen Tangstad disturbed the ebony hegemony. The spectacularly obscure Daniel Netto went a couple of rounds with Damiani in Italy in December 1989 and then Tommy Morrison stumbled on to and off the set. A couple of South Africans, Frans Botha and Corrie Sanders, are currently pressing their claims - as, of course, are the Klitschkos.

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Ukrainian ballast
by mattd 04 Jan '02

04 Jan '02

Union denies ship sabotage From AAP 04jan02 THE seafarers' union has denied sabotage aboard a ship at the centre of a row over plans to replace its Australian crew with cheaper labour from Ukraine. Federal police are expected to meet representatives of the Australian-registered 30,000-tonne bulk carrier, CSL Yarra, when it docks in Adelaide on Sunday to investigate allegations of sabotage. The Yarra's captain said someone had opened a fire hose that pumped water into the ship's residual cargo hold containing 700 tonnes of cement which had set hard. The ship is at the centre of a Federal Court battle between CSL Australia and the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) over plans to replace the local crew with Ukrainian sailors. The Yarra left Brisbane three days ago and was sailing off the NSW south coast en route to Adelaide at the time of the incident. MUA South Australian branch secretary Rick Newland said the culprit was a leaky fire hydrant and not sabotage. "I dispute the use of that word simply because we're about saving that vessel and maintaining it to work on the Australian coast carrying Australian cargoes with Australian seafarers," he told ABC radio today. "To the cynical it would look at though there was something quite deliberate that happened. "I believe there will be an inquiry simply into the mechanical faults of that fire hydrant, on arrival in Adelaide, and we welcome that outcome." He said sabotage at sea was outside seafarers' view of life. Mr Newlan said the union was legitimately seeking to protect employment opportunities for Australian seafarers on Australian vessels. "We're not promoting the Australian coast to be open to Third World seafarers who are certainly not up to the skills." Open end the star system!, December 27, 2001 (from Amazon... >http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0900384409/qid=1010135372/ sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_8_2/102-1712066-7776933< Reviewer: professor rat (see more about me) Like the Abel Paz classic,"Durrutti,The people armed."This is one essential book.Second only to Durrutti in time.The place for the drama is the Ukraine,circa,1917-20.The history of the Makhnovista's is truly epic,gut wrenching and incredible.It is almost totally forgotten or ignored now,yet,this is one of those points in History with a capital H.The ripples of these extraordinary events and superhuman feats are still rippling outward in spite of several genocides wreaked on this reigon.The writers style seems a little old fashioned and unusual,yet, you get drawn in by the human interest story of the education and stellar rise of a genuine working class hero and revolutionary Icon,"Batko",Nestor Makhno met the author in prison and learnt the basics of anarchism from him.They were released in the febuary revolution and their battles in the south against tyranny's of white and red armies have become the stuff of legend.The study of what ordinary people actually do in revolutionary periods is intrinsically interesting.I would suggest that close study of the makhnovist libertarian socialist revolution should be rewarding,if only for entertainment.(Its 70mm cinematic.)

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Re: Cypherpunk Ban
by mattd 04 Jan '02

04 Jan '02

>>As to the space cadet idea that space should be bought in newspapers so that CJ or Toto or Jimbell or Choate or Vulis or Detweiler or mattd or any of our other mental cases, knock yourself out. I wouldn't contribute a microcent. --Tim May Is it just me or does this sentence scan wrong? Lacks Irony at the very least.Id say he's rattled,theres blood in the water,its just a question of time.I think the idea was for an alternative style paper like the "stranger"might provide free space as a way to defy the blatent repression thats happening in your fascist snakes of Amerikkka.This involves concepts of solidarity that seem alien to crypto-fascist weasel May.Save your microbrain,your micromoney and your microballs,May.No one wants em. "You could create a lottery. A lottery whose payoff was a reward to the person who came closest to predicting the time of death of a given government official. "They knew I wasn't planning to kill federal agents", Bell said this month. "They were scared because I had written something that shows a way to eliminate government. They were afraid I could convince the public that I could replace existing government for no more than a 10th or 20th of its current cost." "Imagine for a moment that, as ordinary citizens were watching the evening news, they see an act by a government employee or officeholder that they feel violates their rights, abuses the public's trust or misuses the powers that they feel should be limited. What if they could go to their computers, type in the miscreant's name, and select a dollar amount. If 0.1 percent of the population, or one person in a thousand, was willing to pay $1 to see some government slimeball dead, that would be in effect, a $250,000 bounty on his head." I think that one last (temporary) hope for government is to delay AP. Chances are good that the "think tank" decided that the best way to delay AP is to discredit me, its author. It was a desperate gamble,"

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IP: Fw: Drawing A Blank -- ACLU Report on the Failure of FaceRecognition in Tampa (fwd)
by Eugene Leitl 04 Jan '02

04 Jan '02

-- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBMTO: N48 04'14.8'' E11 36'41.2'' http://www.leitl.org 57F9CFD3: ED90 0433 EB74 E4A9 537F CFF5 86E7 629B 57F9 CFD3 ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2002 20:04:45 -0400 From: David Farber <dfarber(a)earthlink.net> Reply-To: farber(a)cis.upenn.edu To: ip-sub-1(a)majordomo.pobox.com Subject: IP: Fw: Drawing A Blank -- ACLU Report on the Failure of Face Recognition in Tampa -----Original Message----- From: Barry Steinhardt <BSteinhardt(a)aclu.org> Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2002 15:27:36 To: Dave Farber <farber(a)cis.upenn.edu> Subject: Drawing A Blank -- ACLU Report on the Failure of Face Recognition in Tampa Dave, The use of the biometric facial recognition technology, along with video surveillance on the streets of Tampa, Florida is an overhyped failure that has been seemingly abandoned by police officials, according to a report released today by the American Civil Liberties Union. System logs obtained by the ACLU through Florida's open-records law show that the system never identified even a single individual contained in the department's database of photographs. And in response to the ACLU's queries about the small number of system logs, the department has acknowledged that the software -- originally deployed last June, 2001 -- has not been actively used since August. The report entitled "Drawing a Blank : The Failure of Face Recognition in Tampa", can be found at http://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy/drawing_blank.pdf. Our announcement can be found at http://www.aclu.org/news/2001/n010302a.html. Barry Steinhardt Sent from Dave's Blackberry. For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/

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RE: Future Gnu's,
by mattd 04 Jan '02

04 Jan '02

>>Spare your breath. The only way to shut up someone with a mental condition is to kick him off the list, to leave the list, or use filtering. << See the mattblog that ate cypherpunks. >>nut who takes up 30% > of the list volume with plaigerized articles from other, much > more creative and intelligent nuts. << You no likee,you no readee. See the mattblog that ate cypherpunks. >>The uncredited posting of someone else's work, well, that's a big problem unless it isn't someone else's work. Mike I was channelling a suppressed comrade,you want me to dob him in? See the mattblog that ate cypherpunks. >>entirely closed to rational argumentation<< TCM is,soightonly.Doesn't like debate one little bit. >>Overpermissiveness results in quality loss. << Sad,very sad.All those porno posts and blatant coatdragging by boring feds.( See the mattblog that ate cypherpunks.) >>Can't we just kick him: period? << weasl Run out of zyklon B? "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." -- Nietzsche

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Snitches out themselves.Canarypunk stool pigeons,peter Trei and declan Mc Crapface.
by mattd 04 Jan '02

04 Jan '02

>>Subject: FC: Politech humor: Future airline security news from 2002 Warning: off-color humor below. The author of this message (who knows how many people actually have access to a yahoo/hotmail account) appears to be C.J. Parker, a colorful fellow: http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=sonofgomez709 --- From: "sonofgomez709" <sonofgomez709(a)yahoo.com> To: "C J Parker" <sog(a)w-link.net> Subject: Future gNus Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2002 18:47:08 -0800<< AND >>This, of course, is CJ Parker's work, as published on Declan's Politech list. Peter Trei > ---------- > From: mattd[SMTP:mattd@useoz.com] > Sent: Thursday, January 03, 2002 7:47 AM > To: cypherpunks(a)lne.com > Subject: Future Gnu's > > Birthdays;Mel gibson,robert loggia and dabney coleman.Future Gnu's > February 4, 2002 > > An 86 year-old Amish woman on a Florida to Ohio flight detonates a bomb > in pants disguised as battery operated light-up "Viva Las Vegas!" > panties. Looks like seth,jya and I are correct to be concerned about declan.Peter Trei's addy is ptrei(a)rsasecurity.com Ill be researching this 'security company' Probably just an Idiot,like declan, but could be dangerous.

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by D. Woodward 04 Jan '02

04 Jan '02

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Lexipunks
by An Metet 04 Jan '02

04 Jan '02

t 03:31 PM 1/3/02 -0500, Sunder wrote: >www.m-w.com - type in punk, you get this: > >Main Entry: 1punk >1 archaic : PROSTITUTE --SEE FAUSTINE; AMIEE FARR >2 [probably partly from 3punk] : NONSENSE, FOOLISHNESS --SEE CHOATE, J.; MATTD, aka VULIS >3 a : a young inexperienced person : BEGINNER, NOVICE; especially : a >young man b : a usually petty gangster, hoodlum, or ruffian c : a youth >used as a homosexual partner --NO COMMENT >4 a : PUNK ROCK b : a punk rock musician c : one who affects punk styles Closest in meaning in CP; abstracted from 4 a to mean a rebellious person (see punk rock), with connotations of serious enthusiasm (see fan; afficionado; proponent) The CP etymology references an 80's cyberchick (J.M. IIRC) (see cyberchick) who referred to a prominant CP by that label. (see the archives) -A Future Linguist

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