Infamous Day of “East Wind, Rain”
by Richard Olivastro
It was early morning, Thursday, Dec. 4, 1941, when senior radio operator Ralph Briggs came on duty to his post at the U.S. Navy shortwave monitoring station in Maryland. The radio crackled as he tuned his receiver to a specific station in order to begin daily monitoring of the regional weather forecast from Radio Tokyo, Japan. He began transcribing what he heard....
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Jimmy Pflueger Indicted for Manslaughter for Kaloko Deaths
by Malia Zimmerman
On Friday, as the skies darkened over Kaua`i, a grand jury met in secret inside the Kaua`i courthouse for its fourth straight day to hear evidence on the 2006 dam breach. At issue was whether Pflueger, a wealthy retired automobile mogul, willfully covered or altered his dam’s main safety feature, called a “spillway”, causing the water in the 30-acre Ka Loko Reservoir to overtop and breach the dam when the rising rainwater couldn’t be safely released.
Before noon, the grand jury issued an indictment against Pflueger for seven counts of Manslaughter and one count of Reckless Endangering in the First Degree. Pflueger turned himself in to authorities today for booking, and according to his civil attorney Bill McCorriston, will plead “not guilty” when arraigned at a later date on Kaua`i. His $71,000 bail was posted on Kaua`i this morning by A&E Bounty Hunter Duane 'Dog' Chapman, a close family friend.
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Navy wins Sonar Case
by Robert H. Thomas
In Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council, a 7-2 decision handed down in early November, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an injunction which restricted the Navy’s use of mid-frequency active (MFA) sonar in training exercises off the Southern California coast.
Related: http://www.inversecondemnation.com/inversecondemnation/2008/11/navy-sonar-case-roundup.html
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Global Warming: “Near-Virtual Reality”
“As Barack Obama shifts from a waking dream to the real world, he faces the near-virtual reality of climate change. He has to move decisively.” (Ian McEwan, “A New Dawn,” Wall Street Journal, Nov. 8/9.)
by Dennis Avery
What is near-virtual reality? I’m fascinated that McEwan starts his sermon upholding his belief in man-made global warming by quoting George Berkeley, the 18th-century Irish philosopher. Berkeley contended that the physical world does not exist; that it’s a “virtual” product of our
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Islamic terror: Winning hearts and minds
by Steve Emerson
The New York Times November 29 ran an op-ed piece entitled "What They Hate about Mumbai", focusing specifically on the free market sins of that great city. With contrived evenhandedness, the op-ed managed to blame both Hindus and Muslim extremists - without blaming either party in particular for the murderous attacks.
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