Mood:  amorous

No Arrests!

(9/12/07)

When told only the "Corporate Press" was allowed in (sic)
When told "oh we did let KBOO come in"
When told "you were a protester at another action one time, therefore you cant come in"
The 5 dedicated citizens sat in the entrance way to the meeting room, and refused to move

It was inside the convention center
The police were there but stood way off to the side, and up the escalators 50 yards away
The cat n mouse "block the camera" game was played by one officer, as the group was exiting
It is actually hilarious watching him try to block numerous cameras from filming him, (which was caught on camera)
But I digress

The group sat there and read aloud the "constitution" (remember when the Constitution meant something?)
There were suit and ties, security, and some Corporate press" all watching at the entrance the "peace group" groups action
They read statements and spoke up as to why their is no Impeachment dialog from Pelosi "on the table?"
A rep from Earls office ("Willie".... I think is his name?) came out and sat on the floor to engage in some kind of dialog
Informing the group that a Town Hall Meeting was coming on Sept 23 (Sunday)to a North Portland location?
That was news to the group

Earls office rep, tried to patronize the group and tried to seem sincere, but trying and seeming are not good enough for the serious issues that that these Democrats are sidestepping. People are dieing every day that they (Congress) allow this all to continue
All the sincere "we are allowing you to protest" is fine, and I must say "much" politer than Smiths office and is fine n dandy. But now the group and especially the five sitting, all are demand that the office do .....
"as they swore to do and uphold the constitution!"


Their must a been a decision made to "not arrest veterans and grandmothers" for ......"No arrests were made"
The group numerous time said "we refuse to move, we are willing to be arrested"
There were some scuttling and some firm "positioning" by the security at the entrance, even a slight "Get your hands off me" type of jocking by the protest group for positions (once or twice)
One of the "Seriously Pissed Off Grannies" stepped past the line and a slight scuttle ensured as she was briskly stopped and not allowed to go any further

The Impeachment Peace Group gave up after 45 mins of protesting at the meeting room entrance
They were seen by a lot of the people leaving the conference
That said there was no Democrat Leaders that I seen walk past the group.... they were safely away from the free speech zone I guess

The Five Protesters were clear and precise in their demands and questions!
The Lone Vet spoke eloquently about the Iraq war and all the people dying from it
It numerous times asked the guards and staff "how many must die before you care enough to stop this"
Most of the Security staff/group stood and stared at him .... silent and motionless

The Lone Vet ..... was hitting the nail on the head repeatedly

I got all this on film - with any expediency it will be up on Indy Media and on joe-anybody.com by Friday morning at the latest

Hopefully it will be viewable within 24 hours

Thanks to all the five that were sitting there, the ones who stood outside with flags and banners, and thanks to those taking pictures and "just-being-there" in Solidarity with the brave 5 who risked their freedom to make their message heard to Congress

I Joe Anybody heard you loud and clear - Thank you - this city needs more concerned citizens who are not afraid to demand an honest government and a "just and moral one" - The Impeachment group will be back on Thursday at Earls office at high noon ......

.........isn't it about time the Front Lines get some support?

..pictures = outside on sidewalk
..video = inside sit-in action

This was posted on Indy Media at this link here:

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2007/09/365002.shtml

Posted by Joe Anybody at 6:11 PM PDT

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Mood:  smelly

 The War's for Sale, and There are Plenty of Buyers

Film Review By Gary Moskowitz

August 15, 2007

 http://www.motherjones.com/arts/film/2007/08/iraq_for_sale.html

Halliburton, Blackwater, no-bid contracts—the privatization of the war in Iraq is hardly news anymore. But Iraq For Sale: The War Profiteers, a new documentary on the financial and ethical excesses of private military contractors, still hits home. The film argues that a handful of contractors—Blackwater USA, CACI International , Halliburton, Titan, Parsons, Dyncorp International, and Transatlantic Traders—are over-charging the government for shoddy work, and that they've endangered the lives of American soldiers and private citizens in their pursuit of profit. The documentary also discusses how ex-military and ex-government workers head up these companies and use their connections with key players in the Senate and the House to win contracts without going through the standard bidding process.

The film is the latest release from Robert Greenwald, who previously directed or produced films such as Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism, and Uncovered: The War on Iraq.

As with his previous films, Greenwald has continued his grassroots, activist approach to promoting his work. Approximately 3,000 people donated $25 or $50 to help pay for the production of the film through Greenwald's website. Fans are encouraged to take action by writing their representatives, and Greenwald claims that fans have taken the initiative to organize 5,000 screenings of the film in homes and meeting halls worldwide.

The exorbitant amount of private companies operating in Iraq—and the cash our government is spending to hire them—is astonishing. As one interviewee explains, "There are over 100,000 contractors working in Iraq, Kuwait, and the surrounding area." Many of Greenwald’s interview subjects echo this point. "The war in Iraq has been privatized more than any other war in history," a woman says off-camera. Another off-camera interviewee claims, "Forty cents out of every dollar Congress controls now goes to private contractors."

Most stories on contractor corruption have focused on big-ticket items like oil shipments and construction projects. But Iraq for Sale reminds us that many of the military's most mundane functions have been assumed—and mishandled—by private companies. Take, for example, water. Ben Carter, a former water purification specialist for Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), unsuccessfully fights back tears as he admits that the vast majority of KBR’s water treatment plants in Iraq may have produced unchlorinated or contaminated water. Soldiers who drank or bathed in the water "might not come home with a bullet wound, but a lot of them will come home with pathogens in their blood because of Halliburton."

Even food and laundry services are cause for suspicion, according to former soldiers interviewed in the film. For example, the outspoken former U.S. Army National Guardsman Sergeant Millard says that KBR, which operated Army mess halls in Iraq during his service there, refused to implement a 24-hour serving schedule, even though it might have deterred mealtime attacks by insurgents. He also criticizes KBR’s handling of soldiers' laundry. "[The contractors] get $99 a bag, for a bag of laundry that I could wash at home for three dollars. And everything still feels grimy," he says, adding, "If you don't know KBR, you've never been to Iraq."

The film illustrates the blatant wastefulness of contractors with testimonies about Halliburton executives ordering any faulty materials—including brand-new trucks and SUVs—to be thrown into a "burn pit" to be destroyed instead of being fixed. And the kicker, according to the film, is that stock for Halliburton has quadrupled in value since the war started. For the record, Halliburton says the film includes "yet another rehash of inaccurate, recycled information."

Greenwald dedicates substantial screen time to Abu Ghraib, by interviewing detainees and former interrogators—both civilian and military—about operations at the prison. CorpWatch executive director Pratap Chatterjee says that at the time of the abuse scandals, up to half of the interrogators at the prison were private contractors. Two former detainees, a small businessman and an electrical engineer, report that they were beaten, urinated upon, and sexually abused by men in civilian clothes. Yet to date, no contractors have been accused of abusing prisoners.

One of the most crucial moments in the film is when a reporter confronts president Bush at a press conference by asking, "In regards to private military contractors, if the code of military justice does not apply to these companies in Iraq, and I asked your secretary of defense this also, what law does govern their actions?" Bush is unable to answer the question, and in true form, he laughs it off and says he'll have to check with his people.

What really drives Greenwald's message are testimonies from parents like Donna Zovko, who talks about how angry she is that her son, Jerry, died in Fallujah during an insurgent attack while driving trucks owned by Blackwater that allegedly were not armored. But as Greenwald's interviewees point out early on in the film, the U.S. Army had no sufficient infrastructure to handle basic troop needs like food, laundry, and housing from the get-go, not to mention things like helicopter and tank maintenance.

So that brings up many questions: How could we have fought this war without private contracts? How can this government afford to pay contractors the padded bills we're currently paying them? When we do finally exit Iraq, how many years will it take to pay off our debt, and will that debt be for sale, too?

Starz Cinema aired the film July 14, and the film is now available on DVD. For additional information about interviewees, a full source list, and a montage of clips showing Greenwald unsuccessfully requesting interviews with company higher-ups, visit Greenwald's website.

Gary Moskowitz is an online editorial fellow at Mother Jones.

Posted by Joe Anybody at 5:48 PM PDT

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Mood:  loud

http://www.infowars.com/articles/sept11/911_truth_protesters_disrupt_fox_news_programing.htm 

Sept 9 2007 NY City

 Media activist and 9/11 truther Alex Jones was arrested after he and and a large group of citizens showed up on Fox News' doorstep and disrupted Geraldo Rivera and his "cookie cooking" news analysis with signs and chants that "9/11 was an inside job!"

Presstitute Geraldo Rivera, ruffled and indignant, went into macho mode with "I wish I could..." shaking his fist in the air, implying that he would love to just whack one of the protesters. He also starts calling them everything under the book from "anarchists," "misfits," "nutjobs," "rabble," and the "least attractive group of demonstrators I have ever seen." Ouch! Now that really hurts! (I guess we can't compete with Kyla and the Fox News staff with their little white mini skirts and hooter tops).

Here Geraldo calls the demonstrators everything except what they really are -- citizens who want to get their censored message out.

He even says in one clip that the demonstrators are a "activist radical communist group. I don't know who they are." Geraldo, if you are a real journalist wouldn't it be incumbent for you to bring the microphone out in the crowd and ask them who they are?

Later, after the police come to arrest Alex, Geraldo ask Hooters' waitress Kyla Ebbert (who was escorted off of a Southwest plane for her "provocative" outfit) how she likes New York.

Kyla, "I think I will come back when things calm down in in a few years."

Geraldo "I am not sure of that."

That's right Geraldo, that is the one thing you got right that night. We won't be calm or quiet.

Watch Geraldo flip off the 9-11 Activists in this YouTube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_l1LvSoD48

Posted by Joe Anybody at 6:37 PM PDT

Updated: Tuesday, 11 September 2007 6:59 PM PDT

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Mood:  incredulous

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1760577708616795802

TODAY IS SEPTEMBER 11 2007

Six years ago - The Bush Administration began their Terrorism hype

Bush was warned

Cheney took control of NORAD

911 was an

INSIDE JOB

(quote from Forbes website today)

First, this war will be won not by military force, or even by financial muscle but only by a deep understanding of the enemy. As the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, known as the 9/11 Commission, says in its report on America's response to the World Trade Center attacks, "the most important failure was the failure of imagination."

(end quote)

USE YOU IMAGINATION

*****

 - WAKE UP AMERICA -

More on 911 Truth - here on my website

http://www.joe-anybody.com/id16.html

Posted by Joe Anybody at 9:15 AM PDT

Updated: Wednesday, 12 September 2007 5:52 PM PDT

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Mood:  d'oh

"ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny"

March 29, 2002

http://zgrams.zundelsite.org/pipermail/zgrams/2002-March/000260.html

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Joe Vialls, one of the widely read investigators of what really
happened on 9/11, has published another intriguing  question mark
about something we have been told was factual:  Barbara Olson's
alleged phone call from Flight 77 to her husband, US Solicitor
General Ted Olson.

Here you have Viall's "Mother of All Lies about 9/11."

[START]

This is a story about a little white lie that bred dozens of other
little white lies, then hundreds of bigger white lies and so on, to
the point where the first little white lie must be credited as the
"Mother of All Lies" about events on 11 September 2001.  For this was
the little white lie that first activated the American psyche,
generated mass loathing, and enabled media manipulation of the global
population.

           Without this little white lie there would have been no Arab
Hijackers, no Osama Bin Laden directing operations from afar, and no
"War on Terror" in Afghanistan and occupied Palestine. Clearly the
lie was so clever and diabolical in nature, it must have been
generated by the "Power Elite" in one of its more earthly
manifestations. Perhaps it was the work of the Council on Foreign
Relations, or the Trilateral Commission? 

           No, it was not. Though at the time the little white lie was
flagged with a powerful political name, there was and remains no
evidence to support the connection. Just like the corrupt and
premature Lee Harvey Oswald story in 1963, there are verifiable fatal
errors which ultimately prove the little white lie was solely the
work of members of the media. Only they had access, and only they had
the methods and means.

           The little white lie was about Barbara Olson, a
conservative commentator for CNN and wife of US Solicitor General Ted
Olson.  Now deceased, Mrs Olson is alleged to have twice called her
husband from an American Airlines Flight 77 seat-telephone, before
the aircraft slammed into the Pentagon. This unsubstantiated claim,
reported by CNN remarkably quickly at 2.06 am EDT [0606 GMT] on
September 12, was the solitary foundation on which the spurious
"Hijacker" story was built.

           Without the "eminent" Barbara Olson and her alleged
emotional telephone calls, there would never be any proof that humans
played a role in the hijack and destruction of the four aircraft that
day.  Lookalike claims surfaced several days later on September 16
about passenger Todd Beamer and others, but it is critically
important to remember here that the Barbara Olson story was the only
one on September 11 and. 12. It was beyond question the artificial
"seed" that started the media snowball rolling down the hill.

           And once the snowball started rolling down the hill, it
artfully picked up Osama Bin Laden and a host of other "terrorists"
on the way. By noon on September 12, every paid glassy-eyed media
commentator in America was either spilling his guts about those
"Terrible Muslim hijackers", or liberating hitherto classified
information about Osama Bin Laden. "Oh sure, it was Bin Laden," they
said blithely, oblivious to anything apart from their television
appearance fees.

           The deliberate little white lie was essential. Ask
yourself: What would most Americans have been thinking about on
September 12, if CNN had not provided this timely fiction? Would
anyone anywhere have really believed the insane government story
about failed Cessna pilots with box cutters taking over heavy jets,
then hurling them expertly around the sky like polished Top Guns from
the film of the same name?  Of course not! As previously stated there
would have been no Osama Bin Laden, and no "War on Terror" in
Afghanistan and occupied Palestine.

           This report is designed to examine the sequence of the
Olson events and lay them bare for public examination. Dates and
times are of crucial importance here, so if this report seems tedious
try to bear with me. Before moving on to discuss the impossibility of
the alleged calls, we first need to examine how CNN managed to "find
out" about them, reported here in the September 12 CNN story at 2.06
am EDT:

           "Barbara Olson, a conservative commentator and attorney,
alerted her husband, Solicitor General Ted Olson, that the plane she
was on was being hijacked Tuesday morning, Ted Olson told CNN.
Shortly afterwards Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon" Š "Ted Olson
told CNN that his wife said all passengers and flight personnel,
including the pilots, were herded to the back of the plane by armed
hijackers. The only weapons she mentioned were knives and cardboard
cutters. She felt nobody was in charge and asked her husband to tell
the pilot what to do."

           At no point in the above report does CNN quote Ted Olson
directly.  If the report was authentic and 100% attributable, it
would have been phrased quite differently. Instead of  "Ted Olson
told CNN that his wife said all passengers and flight personnelŠ",
the passage would read approximately:-  Mr Olson told CNN, "My wife
said all passengers and flight personnelŠ"  Whoever wrote this story
was certainly not in direct contact with  US Solicitor General Ted
Olson.

           Think about it, people! If you knew or suspected your
spouse's aircraft  had just fireballed inside the Pentagon building,
how would you spend the rest of the day? Initially you would
certainly be in deep shock and unwilling to believe the reports. Then
you would start to gather your wits together, a slow process in
itself. After that and depending on  individual personality, you
might drive over to the Pentagon on the off chance your spouse
survived the horrific crash, or you might go home and wait for
emergency services to bring you the inevitable bad news. As a matter
of record, Ted Olson did not return to work until six days later.

           About the last thing on your mind [especially if you
happened to be the US Solicitor General], would be to pick up a
telephone and call the CNN Atlanta news desk in order to give them a
"scoop". As a seasoned politician you would already know that all
matters involving national security must first be vetted by the
National Security Council. Under the extraordinary circumstances and
security overkill existing on September 11, this vetting process
would have taken a minimum of two days, and more likely three.

           The timing of the CNN news release about Barbara Olson, is
therefore as impossible as the New Zealand press release back in 1963
about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. As reported
independently by Colonel Fletcher Prouty USAF (Retired), whoever set
Kennedy up, accidentally launched a  full international newswire
biography on obscure "killer" Lee Harvey Oswald, without first taking
the trouble to check his world clock.

           It was still "yesterday" in New Zealand on the other side
of the International Date Line when the biography was wired  from New
York, enabling the  Christchurch Star newspaper was able to print a
story about Oswald as the prime suspect in its morning edition,
several hours before he was first accused of the crime by Dallas
police.

           If the CNN story about Ted Olson had been correct, and he
really had called them about Barbara on September 11, then he would
most surely have followed the telephone call up a few days later with
a tasteful "one-on-one" television interview, telling the hushed and
respectful interviewer about how badly he missed his wife, and about
the sheer horror of it all.

           There is no record of any such interview in the CNN or
other archives. Indeed, if you key "Barbara Olson" into the CNN
search engine, it returns only two related articles. The first is the
creative invention on September 12 at 2.06 am EDT [0606 GMT], and the
second is on December 12, about President Bush, who led a  White
House memorial that began at 8:46 a.m. EST, the moment the first
hijacked plane hit the World Trade Center three months before. CNN
includes this comment about Ted Olson:

           "In a poignant remembrance at the Justice Department, U.S.
Solicitor General Theodore Olson referred to "the sufferings we have
all experienced." He made no direct reference to the death of his
wife, Barbara Olson, who was a passenger aboard the American Airlines
flight that crashed into the PentagonŠ"

           Regarding the same event, Fox News reports that,
extraordinarily,  Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson then said
Barbara Olson's call, made "in the midst of terrible danger and
turmoil swirling around her," was a "clarion call that awakened our
nation's leaders to the true nature of the events of Sept. 11."

           So Ted Olson avoided making any direct personal reference
to the death of his wife. Clearly this was not good enough for
someone somewhere. By the sixth month anniversary of the attack, Ted
Olson was allegedly interviewed by London Telegraph reporter Toby
Harnden, with his exclusive story "She Asked Me How To Stop The
Plane" appearing in that London newspaper on March 5,  thereafter
renamed and syndicated around dozens of western countries as "Revenge
Of The Spitfire",  finally appearing in the West Australian newspaper
on Saturday March 23, 2002.

           I have diligently tried to find a copy of this story in an
American newspaper but have so far failed.  The reasons for this
rather perverse "external" publication of Ted Olson's story are not
yet clear, but it seems fair to observe that if he is ever challenged
by a Senate Select Committee about the veracity of his claims, the
story could not be used against him because it was published outside
American sovereign territory.

           Regardless of the real reason or reasons for its
publication, the story seems to have matured a lot since the first
decoy news release by CNN early on September 12, 2001. Here we have
considerably more detail, some of which is frankly impossible. In the
alleged words of US Solicitor General Theodore Olson:

           "She [Barbara] had trouble getting through, because she
wasn't using her cell phone - she was using the phone in the
passengers' seats,"  said Mr Olson. "I guess she didn't have her
purse, because she was calling collect, and she was trying to get
through to the Department of Justice, which is never very easy." Š
"She wanted to know 'What can I tell the pilot? What can I do? How
can I stop this?' "

           "What Can I tell the pilot?" Yes indeed! The forged Barbara
Olson telephone call claims that the flight deck crew were with her
at the back of the aircraft, presumably politely ushered down there
by the box cutter-wielding Muslim maniacs, who for some bizarre
reason decided not to cut their throats on the flight deck. Have you
ever heard anything quite so ridiculous?

           But it is at this juncture that we finally have the
terminal error. Though the American Airlines Boeing 757 is fitted
with individual telephones at each seat position, they are not of the
variety where you can simply pick up the handset and ask for an
operator. On many aircraft you can talk from one seat to another in
the aircraft free of charge, but if you wish to access the outside
world you must first swipe your credit card through the telephone. By
Ted Olson's own admission, Barbara did not have a credit card with
her.

           It gets worse. On American Airlines there is a telephone
"setup" charge of US$2.50 which can only be paid by credit card, then
a US$2.50 (sometimes US$5.00) charge per minute of speech thereafter.
The setup charge is the crucial element. Without paying it in advance
by swiping your credit card you cannot access the external telephone
network. Under these circumstances the passengers' seat phone on a
Boeing 757 is a much use as a plastic toy.

           Perhaps Ted Olson made a mistake and Barbara managed to
borrow a credit card from a fellow passenger? Not a chance. If
Barbara had done so, once swiped through the phone, the credit card
would have enabled her to call whoever she wanted to for as long as
she liked, negating any requirement to call collect.

         Sadly perhaps, the Olson telephone call claim is proved
untrue. Any American official wishing to challenge this has only to
subpoena the telephone company and Justice Department records. There
will be no charge originating from American Airlines 77 to the US
Solicitor General.

           Even without this hard proof, the chances of meaningfully
using a seat-telephone on Flight 77 were  nil. We know from the
intermittent glimpses of the aircraft the air traffic controllers had
on the radar scopes, that Flight 77 was travelling at extreme speed
at very low level, pulling high "G' turns in the process.

           Under these circumstances it would be difficult even
reaching a phone, much less using it. Finally, the phones on the
Boeing 757 rely on either ground cell phone towers or satellite
bounce in order to maintain a stable connection. At very low altitude
and extreme speed, the violent changes in aircraft attitude would
render the normal telephone links completely unusable.

           Exactly the same applies with United Airlines Flight 93
that crashed before reaching any targets. The aircraft was all over
the place at extreme speed on radar, but as with Flight 77 we are
asked to believe that the "hijackers" allowed a passenger called Todd
Beamer to place a thirteen minute telephone call. Very considerate of
them. The Pittsburg Channel put it this way in a story first posted
at 1.38 pm EDT on September 16, 2001:

           "Todd Beamer placed a call on one of the Boeing 757's
on-board telephones and spoke for 13 minutes with GTE operator Lisa
D. Jefferson, Beamer's wife said. He provided detailed information
about the hijacking and -- after the operator told him about the
morning's World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks - said he and
others on the plane were planning to act against the terrorists
aboard."  Note here that Mrs Lisa Beamer did not receive a telephone
call from Todd personally, but was later "told" by an operator that
her husband had allegedly called. Just another unfortunate media con
job for the trash can.

           As previously stated it is the Barbara Olson story that
really counts, a view reinforced by the recent antics of the London
print media. The photo at the top of this page is a copy of that
printed in the West Australian newspaper. You only have to study it
closely for a second to realize its full subliminal potential.

           Here is a studious and obviously very honest man. The US
Solicitor General sits in front of a wall lined with leather-bound
volumes of Supreme Court Arguments, with a photo of his dead wife
displayed prominently in front of him.  Does anyone out there
seriously believe that this man, a bastion of US law, would tell even
a minor lie on a matter as grave as national security?

           Theodore Olson's own words indicate that he would be
prepared to do rather more than that  On March 21, 2002 on its page
A35, the Washington Post newspaper printed an article titled "The
Limits of Lying" by Jim Hoagland, who writes that a statement by
Solicitor General Theodore Olson in the Supreme Court has the ring of
perverse honesty.

           Addressing the Supreme Court of the United States of
America,  US Solicitor General Theodore Olson said it is "easy to
imagine an infinite number of situations . . . where government
officials might quite legitimately have reasons to give false
information out."

[END]

Posted by Joe Anybody at 1:52 PM PDT

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Mood:  energetic

September 6, 2007

Posted by Joe Anybody at 11:05 AM PDT

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Mood:  chillin'

We've heard of stealth airplanes, but never a stealth airplane factory. What you're seeing above is a photo, circa World War II, of a Lockheed aircraft factory in Burbank, California. The US Army Corps of Engineers was given the task of hiding it--the whole darn thing--from air visibility, so Japanese bombers coming off the Pacific wouldn't spot it.

How did they pull it off? Click here to see how they disguised the entire factory as a suburb by wrapping it in camouflage netting, prop houses, and what has to be the largest trompe l'oeil ever made. It's Christo meets Carpaccio...meets G.I. Joe.

BEFORE

AFTER

+++ The pictures and article I found here +++

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/09/an_early_green.php

Posted by Joe Anybody at 7:06 PM PDT

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Mood:  bright

BEIJING

(Reuters news)

 http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyid=2007-08-26T105120Z_01_PEK274110_RTRUKOC_0_US-CHINA-ROBOTS.xml

A robot that can fly "like a mini-helicopter" and a second that can glide across ice will aid Chinese scientists during an Antarctic expedition slated for October, Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday.

The airborne robot can fly for an hour at speeds of 50 to 100 kilometers (30 to 60 miles) an hour and will be equipped with a camera and an infrared radiometer for observing ice on the sea.

The second robot can slide across ice crevasses and snowy slopes, the report said.

"The use of robots can reduce the risks and costs in scientific research," Xinhua quoted Qin Weijia, of the Polar Research Institute of China, as saying. "No matter how bad the weather is, they can still work normally."

The 200-strong expedition team will set up seismic stations in Antarctica to measure tremors and tectonic movements on the continent, the report said.

Posted by Joe Anybody at 11:53 AM PDT

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