Underground Journal of Initiation

Gravediggers are making less money... NAJAF, Iraq — At what's believed to be the world's largest cemetery, where Shiite Muslims aspire to be buried and millions already have been, business isn't good. A drop in violence around Iraq has cut burials in the huge Wadi al Salam cemetery here by at least one-third in the past six months, and that's cut the pay of thousands of workers who make their living digging graves, washing corpses or selling burial shrouds. Few people have a better sense of the death rate in Iraq . source

A new exhibition in Germany opens up a subject that has long been taboo -- the use of female concentration camp inmates to provide sexual services to male slave laborers as production incentives during World War II. A visitor to the exhibition looks at a map showing the location of the Nazi brothels which were created in ten concentration camps. "Hardly any other topic from the history of the concentration camps has, on the one hand, been kept so quiet and repressed and is, on the other hand, so tainted with prejudice and distortion, as the forced prostitution of female camp inmates for male camp inmates by the SS," commented Insa Eschebach, the director of the Ravensbrück Memorial Museum, at the opening of the exhibition.

WASHINGTON - A dozen states are competing for a government research lab full of killer germs like anthrax, avian flu and foot-and-mouth disease — a prospect some of their residents want to avoid like the plague.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Republican presidential contender John McCain, known for having a quirky sense of humor, joked about bombing Iran at a campaign appearance this week. In response to an audience question about military action against Iran, the Arizona senator briefly sang the chorus of the surf-rocker classic "Barbara Ann." "That old, eh, that old Beach Boys song, Bomb Iran," he said in jest Wednesday, chuckling with the crowd. Then, he softly sang to the melody: "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, anyway, ah ..." The audience responded with more laughter.