Sunday, 12-10-06: One of Saddam Hussein's nephews was serving a life sentence for financing terrorists and possessing bombs. He escaped yesterday from a prison in northern Iraq. Ayman Sabawi was aided by a policeman. As one who has lived in the third world, I would suspect a number of bribes were passed, debts of honor were called in, and fantastic lies were told over tea.... Afghanistan is officially a democracy now, with constitutional protections against abuse. But Afghan society expects a woman to endure beatings and unfaithfulness in silence. The stories of Afghan women in a shelter are bone chilling. Sahara, for example, was forcibly married at 11, widowed at 12, kept as a slave and beaten often till she escaped after 8 years. Gulshan was falsely accused of killing her husband after he had an affair with her sister, sentenced to jail, and her husband's brothers have vowed to kill her on her release. "In this society a woman alone is less than nothing," she said. Iraq isn't the only problem Robert Gates will face when he becomes the next Secretary of Defense later this month. The Pentagon's finances are so scrambled that no one knows now much is being spent on defense at any given time. Their financial problems would put any civilian company out of business. Their annual budget is $500 billion. Crtics say it's the worst managed agency in the federal government. Monday, 12-11-06: Pinochet has died. He was the brutal dictator of Chile who overthrew an elected socialist named Allende in a coup in 1973. The US backed the coup. At least 3200 people were executed or "disappeared" during his 17-year rule, and thousands more were tortured. He stashed away $28 million in offshore accounts, and lived his final years living discretely but opulently in one of several luxury homes. A woman in Pagos, Colorado, put a Christmas wreath shaped like a peace sign on her front door. The president of the homeowners' association demanded she take it down because he "saw it as a protest of the Iraq war and a symbol of Satan." Al Gore has called the Iraq war "the worst strategic mistake in the history of the United States." At the airport in Seattle, all nine Christmas trees have been removed rather than add a giant Jewish menorah. The rabbi who requested the addition is appalled at their decision. He had hired a lawyer and threated to sue. Militiamen on horseback in the Darfur region attacked a refugee convoy and killed 30 people. African Union peacekeepers called to investigate were taken hostage by other refugees. In local news, an IRS case offers a glimpse into the world of the Gypsys. Last summer IRS agents carried off $2.7 million in cash from the home of the patriarch of a Portland Gypsy clan. Bobbie Ephrem is a 49-year-old used car salesman. There are about 3000 Gypsys in Portland. They typically marry young, speak Romany, seldom send their children to school, often cannot read or write, live in large households, and typically conduct business with cash. Wednesday, 12-13-06: Iran hosted a conference for Holocaust deniers. Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke was there. Aso present were six people from Jews United Against Zionism, which rejects the creation of Israel on the grounds it violates Jewish law. The airport in Seattle put its Christmas trees back up after the rabbi promised no legal action. The rabbi and other members of the community will work with port officials about next year's display. New studies say the Arctic Ocean will free of ice by 2040. That's several decades earlier than previously expected. The ice cover has been declining for 30 years. Lawmakers in Nigeria are considering a bill that would ban same-sex marriage and any form of association among gays, even sharing a meal at a restaurant. It's widely expected to pass. Being gay is illegal in Nigeria. Gay people are put in prison in the Christian south, and are executed in the Muslim north. In local news, a woman with 99 dogs in squalid conditions was sentenced to 30 days of electronic surveillance and 4 years of probation. And Esther Bereis was fined $5000. In more local news, a mother dashed into a store and left the car running with her 4-year-old child inside. She came back to find the car had been stolen. The thief dropped the child off near the store, and bystanders returned the child to the mom. Police are looking for the car. Thursday, 12-14-06: Mexican officials inspecting cargo containers from China found a 19.5 ton cache of pseudoephedrin, the ingredient meth's made from. That's enough to make a dose for every adult in the US. Hundreds of barrels were seized at a seaport. Friday, 12-15-06: There was a ferocious gun battle yesterday between groups of Hamas and Fatah at a border crossing into Egypt. Fatah was trying to kill the prime minister, who is Hamas. He was returning from a trip gathering donations, and he left the $35 million he'd gathered in Egypt. Palestine is close to civil war. A chauffeur for Yoko Ono threatened to release embarrassing recordings and photos of her, and then threatened to have her killed. Koral Kasan was arrested Wednesday. In Rock Hill, South Carolina, a 12-year-old boy was arrested for opening one of his presents early. The mother called the police. He was charged with petty theft and faces a court appearance. The world's tallest man saved the lives of two porpoises in Beijing, China. They got sick after nibbling on plastic from the edge of their pool. He reached in and pulled plastic from their stomachs. His arms are 41.7 inches long. The latest thing to emerge in Iraq is indiscriminate mass abductions. Gunmen in camouflage uniforms arrived yesterday at a shopping area in 11 cars, and spent thirty minutes going from shop to shop, selecting people to kidnap. The odd thing is that they took Sunnis, Shiites and Christians. Maher Arar is a Canadian Muslim. In 2002 he was abducted by FBI agents in New York and taken to Syria to be tortured. Last week the head of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police resigned over the part the Canadians played in the fiasco. An inquiry concluded that Arar was innocent, and the Mounties named him an "Islamic extremist" because of lies and "incompetence by an overzealous Mountie intelligence operation." New Jersey lawmakes passed a civil union bill. Massachucetts is the only state to have gay marriage. Vermont and Connecticut have civil unions. California has domestic partnerships. Saturday, 12-16-06: Here's a quote from a column by Joseph Galloway: "The power brokers in Washington spent the week carefully arranging fig leaves and tasteful screens to cover the emperor's nakedness while he was busy pretending to listen hard to everyone with an opiniion about Iraq while hearing nothing.... The White House hopes its much-trumpeted reshuffling of a failed strategy and flawed tactics will buy time for its bad luck to change miraculously.... Can nothing save this man from himself? From the voices that only he hears telling him that he, like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Harry Truman, will have his reputation and his place in history restored and burnished long after he is dead?" A flight bound for Portland from Houston on Friday night made an emergency landing at Colorado Springs after a seat cushion caught fire. It burst into flames after a passenger's personal air filter exploded. Say what?