Alaska Ice Hotel Controversy Heats Up
November 29, 2003 7:38 p.m. ET

Gee, could this really be a fire hazard?

FAIRBANKS, Alaska (AP) -- The state fire marshal has put a freeze on construction of an ice hotel near Fairbanks, but the man behind the subarctic architecture is still chipping away.

The Alaska Fire Marshal's office on Nov. 21 ordered a halt to construction of the planned Aurora Ice Hotel at Chena Hot Springs Resort, citing unspecified building code and public safety concerns.

The 30-foot-high, seven-room Gothic palace was intended to be a tourist draw similar to ice hotels in Scandinavia and Quebec. Creator Bernie Karl had planned to charge guests $878 for a two-person, two-night stay that included Arctic-grade sleeping bags and other survival gear.

Karl is continuing work with champion ice carver Steve Brice, but now says what he's building isn't a hotel, but one of Alaska's largest works of art.

"Under my First Amendment rights, I have the right to create an ice sculpture and that's what we're doing," Karl told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner for a story in Saturday's edition. "I suppose that this could be a long, lengthy battle, but under my First Amendment rights, they can't stop me from making a work of art, I believe."

Karl said the structure, which he expects to complete by Christmas, will be very similar to the plans for the hotel.

Deputy State Fire Marshal Tom DePeter Jr. said the order to stop construction was issued because officials have many unanswered questions about the project, but he added that hotel construction could resume if the safety concerns are addressed.

"I think it's a great idea and hopefully it will be a real boon to the local economy and Mr. Karl," DePeter said.

Plans called for the structure to have 8-foot-thick side walls of snow and ice, reinforced with laminated wood arches, metal bands, chicken wire and refrigeration lines.

I wonder if this is all it's cracked up to be.

If ever there's a reason to bah humbug the Christmas season, this is a good example. Certainly, it could have happened another time, but it's particularly indicative of what Christmas has come to in America: retail riots.

Florida Woman Knocked Out in Shopping Rush
AP to My Yahoo!

ORANGE CITY, Fla. - A mob of shoppers rushing for a sale on DVD players trampled the first woman in line and knocked her unconscious as they scrambled for the shelves at a Wal-Mart Supercenter.

Patricia VanLester had her eye on a $29 DVD player, but when the siren blared at 6 a.m. Friday announcing the start to the post-Thanksgiving sale, the 41-year-old was knocked to the ground by the frenzy of shoppers behind her.

"She got pushed down, and they walked over her like a herd of elephants," said VanLester's sister, Linda Ellzey. "I told them, `Stop stepping on my sister! She's on the ground!'"

Ellzey said some shoppers tried to help VanLester, and one employee helped Ellzey reach her sister, but most people just continued their rush for deals.

"All they cared about was a stupid DVD player," she said Saturday.


Paramedics called to the store found VanLester unconscious on top of a DVD player, surrounded by shoppers seemingly oblivious to her, said Mark O'Keefe, a spokesman for EVAC Ambulance.

She was flown to Halifax Medical Center in Daytona Beach, where doctors told the family VanLester had a seizure after she was knocked down and would likely remain hospitalized through the weekend, Ellzey said. Hospital officials said Saturday they did not have any information on her condition.

"She's all black and blue," Ellzey said. "Patty doesn't remember anything. She still can't believe it all happened."

Ellzey said Wal-Mart officials called later Friday to ask about her sister, and the store apologized and offered to put a DVD player on hold for her.

Gee, the kindness of some retail chains is just astonishing, isn't it?

Wal-Mart Stores spokeswoman Karen Burk said she had never heard of a such a melee during a sale.

"We are very disappointed this happened," Burk said. "We want her to come back as a shopper."

Me, I want to come back as a calendar without the month of December in it. Bah humbug. (Expat post Thanksgiving blues.)

Conspiracy theorist were increasingly dismissed as crackpots in the years following the assassination of JFK, the event, 40 years ago today, now seen as a turning point in the domestic credibility of the federal U.S. government. Now, it turns out, they are in the majority.

AP Wire Service offers these none-too-surprising stats and comments.

In 1966, three years after Kennedy's death, 46 percent of people surveyed in a Harris poll believed the assassination was part of a broader plot. By 1983, that number had reached 80 percent in an ABC poll.

Some experts have suggested that the Vietnam War and Watergate deepened Americans' cynicism and eroded trust in government.

"Many people look at the Kennedy assassination as a turning point, when people started realizing and thinking and believing their government would lie to them and lie to them repeatedly," said Gary Mack, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas.

Perhaps the most persistently questioned finding of the Warren Commission is the "magic bullet" theory.

The theory assumes that Oswald alone fired three shots and that one bullet zigzagged through both Kennedy and Texas Gov. John Connally. The bullet is said to have gone through Kennedy's throat, then into Connally, puncturing his lung, hitting his rib and wrist and then exiting relatively unscathed.

I was at the Monterey Pop festival in the summer of 1967 when rock star David Crosby, then of the Byrds, stepped to the microphone, to the horror of his band mates and said "JFK was shot from several sides by many guns. Witness have been killed and evidence is being supressed, "ending his diatribe with "and this is your country, ladies and gentlemen!"

It's been a long time since then but that fire still burns.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in Rolling Stone
In an upcoming (December 11)issue of Rolling Stone, Robert Kennedy's son and namesake, an enviornmental champion (they, fast becoming an endangered species themselves) lets loose on the Bush administration's horriffic environmental policies.

America's worst environmental president. In a ferocious three-year attack, the Bush administration has initiated more than 200 major rollbacks of America's environmental laws, weakening the protection of our country's air, water, public lands and wildlife. Cloaked in meticulously crafted language designed to deceive the public, the administration intends to eliminate the nation's most important environmental laws by the end of the year.
[...snip...]
Growing up, I was taught that communism leads to dictatorship and capitalism to democracy. But as we've seen from the the Bush administration, the latter proposition does not always hold. While free markets tend to democratize a society, unfettered capitalism leads invariably to corporate control of government.

America's most visionary leaders have long warned against allowing corporate power to dominate the political landscape. In 1863, in the depths of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln lamented, "I have the Confederacy before me and the bankers behind me, and I fear the bankers most." Franklin Roosevelt echoed that sentiment when he warned that "the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism -- ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any controlling power."

Today, more than ever, it is critical for American citizens to understand the difference between the free-market capitalism that made our country great and the corporate cronyism that is now corrupting our political process, strangling democracy and devouring our national treasures.

[...snip...]

The best way to judge the effectiveness of a democracy is to measure how it allocates the goods of the land: Does the government protect the commonwealth on behalf of all the community members, or does it allow wealth and political clout to steal the commons from the people?

Today, George W. Bush and his court are treating our country as a grab bag for the robber barons, doling out the commons to large polluters. Last year, as the calamitous rollbacks multiplied, the corporate-owned TV networks devoted less than four percent of their news minutes to environmental stories. If they knew the truth, most Americans would share my fury that this president is allowing his corporate cronies to steal America from our children.

You gotta love this guy and all Canadians for having such a whimsical PM.On the verge of of retirement, Prime Minister Chretien kicks up his heels a bit more.

Canada's Chretien Confesses Italian Rooftop Prank

Fri Nov 14,10:11 AM ET

TORONTO (Reuters) - And now we know what at least one of the world's leaders has done when his guards aren't looking.

Feeling shackled by the Canadian Mounties and Italian carabinieri who were protecting him ahead of a 2001 G8 summit in northern Italy, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien and his grandson scampered across rooftops to get free.

"My grandson said, 'Grandpapa, let's escape.' So we managed to escape ... and it was quite a thrill. You know, we jumped from one roof to the other roof to a third roof," Chretien said with a boyish chuckle in remarks broadcast on CBC radio on Thursday.

"And when we arrived (at the edge of the third roof) there was a bunch of carabinieri cars there, and my grandson wanted to slide along the pipe.

"(But) these guys shoot and ask questions after that, so we went back and we found another way and we managed to escape for about an hour," said Chretien, who is set to step down after a decade as prime minister.

After spending some time on their own outside the compound, near Florence, they sauntered back in. And the reaction of the security detail? "They were not worried, because they saw us coming back through the main door, and they said, 'Oh, we thought you were inside'." He added: "It was the spirit of Italy, I guess, that led me to do that."

I am familiar with the wonderful spirit of Italy. Good natured fun aside, I sincerely extend respect and condolences to all Italians, especially those who lost loved ones, in the recent attack on their brave ranks in the coalition working to win the peace in Iraq.

Tippling Cons

Three prisoners have been disciplined after visiting a pub and then sneaking back into their jail with alcohol.They are being held at Hollesley Bay, an "open prison" in Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK. The three inmates were spotted in a pub on October 27 by a local resident and police were informed.

The Prison Service spokesman said the men had returned to the prison on their own and were disciplined when they arrived back. A spokesman said the Prison Service was not aware of any other incidents at Hollesley Bay, but urged locals to contact police if they suspected "this sort of activity going on".

Hollesley Bay, originally established as a farmland environment to rehabillitate young offenders made the news earlier this year when prodigal noble Lord Archer was released from there after serving half a sentence for perverting the course of justice.

Kenyan police chase ends in farce
Wednesday 12th November 2003

A police chase in a Kenyan town ended in a debacle when villagers attacked officers thinking they were the criminals.

The police were chasing a car in Ruiru, northeast of Nairobi, which they wrongly thought contained a number of robbers.

The driver of the car thought the police were carjackers and sped away. The chase ended when the car was driven into a cul-de-sac and the occupants jumped out.

Armed officers shouted at the men to surrender, but as they searched the car they were attacked by villagers who'd seen the chase.
One officer was shot in the leg with an arrow, reports the East African Standard.

Police later established the car was actually a taxi taking people home.

Don't they believe in marked cars and distinctive taxis over there? Might save a spot of rucks, wot?

Police dog eats evidence in candy caper

Associated Press Thursday, November 6, 2003

OSLO, Norway -- When Varg the police dog was sent into a candy factory to track down two intruders, his sense of taste got the better of his sense of duty. The German Shepherd nearly ate himself sick.


Leif Berglund, of the police in the central Norway city of Trondheim, said police were called to the Nidar candy factory after seven 13- to 15-year-olds were found helping themselves to candy after they broke in.

Five surrendered at once, but two ran away. So police sent Varg to follow their trail. What he found was the trail of candy they left behind, as well as more candy in the building.

"He helped himself greedily," said Berglund. He said he was so full of candy "that we had to immediately transfer him to a more urgent assignment" on the lawn outside the building.

Car backfire sets dog on fire, which ignites grass fire

Associated Press Monday, October 6, 2003

CULDESAC, Idaho -- This dog was having a bad fur day. The dog, whose coat caught fire when the owner's vehicle backfired, ignited a grass fire just off U.S. Highway 95.

Firefighters doused the grass fire and reported the dog was unhurt, only smelling of burnt hair.

"I have been in firefighting for many years, but I have never seen anything like this happen," Culdesac Fire Chief Gary Gilliam said.

OK, get this. There is now an email client, SquirrelMail, which bills itself as "Webmail for Nuts." I kid you not. For the Mac, of course. http://squirrelmail.org/

• and for the Japanese, http://www.squirrelmail.jp/


• and for the French, www.squirrelmail-fr.org


• and for you Mac-heads in Czechoslovakia http://squirrelmail-es.ath.cx/

More international locations available.

Ever wonder what those URL Country suffixes are? Check here