8A
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2006
» MEMORABILIA
CANvention draws beer collectors' organization
Attendees seek memorablia, containers,business cards
BY HEATHER HOLLINGWORTH ASSOCIATED PRESS
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Beer cans of all shapes and sizes, signs from long-defunct brands and even business cards from microbreweries were among the items collectors sought as they gathered this week for an event dubbed the CANvention.
John Ahrens recalls when he was sucked into beer-can collecting. The 63-year-old suburban Philadelphia man, who was among the more than 800 people attending the 36th annual convention of the Brewery Collectibles Club of America, was a student at Yale University when his classmates began lining a ledge with cans. The CANvention started Wednesday and goes through Saturday.
"You can start a collection walking along a country road."
By graduation, Ahrens had 250 cans, and he kept adding to them. The collection eventually grew to include about 30,000 cans — winning him a spot for about 15 years in "The Guinness Book of World Records."
Ahrens said he has since whitted his collection down to about 2,000 cans.
LEW CADY Beer can collector
including Moose Drool, a product of Big Sky Brewing Co. of Missoula, Mont.
"Some things are unmanageable," the law book salesman said Wednesday.
Many club members are professionals, including physicians and pharmacists. They are visible from the T-shirts they wear, toting the wares of lesser-known brewers,
They come from across the country and the world, including Japan, Germany, South America and New Zealand. Some ship their cans in advance, packing hotel elevators as they haul boxes to their rooms and
the exhibition space at the Hyatt Regency Crown Center just south of Kansas City.
Each is hoping to fill different gaps in their collections. Some are seeking one beer can from each country in the world. Others specialize
in memorabilia from brewers from specific cities or eras.
The group started in St. Louis in 1970, when about six people began meeting to discuss their collections. The first convention was held a year later in a suburb of St. Louis.
The group's membership peaked at about 10,500 later that decade and has since shrunk to under 3,000. Many members are nearing or well into retirement. Only 24 are under 30.
"It's the nature of our society," said Rich La Sua, of Gold Canyon, Ariz. "Young people don't collect."
Member bylaws discourage selling memorabilia, though it still occurs in the hotel rooms. Purists, members explained, believe cans and other collectibles should be traded or given away.
In the main exhibition area, members must trade to add to their collections.
But in the past 10 or 15 years, people started selling their cans, and the prices they can fetch are growing. Marcia Butterbaugh, a former president of the club, said one can recently sold on the Internet auction site eBay for $23,000.
Butterbaugh, 63, said the high-dollar can was produced in the 1940s by Anheuser-Busch Cos. and featured a cone-shaped top. But Butterbaugh said many cans can still be bought for about 50 cents.
She is one of the small number of women in the group and specializes in flattop cans that had to be punctured to free their contents. Her husband, Craig Retchless, collects specific types of signs.
Their collection is spread throughout their home in Kearney. "Even in the bathrooms," Butterbaugh said.
Another longtime member, Lew Cady, 69, of Denver, wrote "Beer Can Collecting." an out-of-print book that profiles several early collectors and features tips on restoring dented and rusty cans. About 80,000 copies were sold.
He said the hobby can be cheap.
"You can start a collection walk along a country road," he said.
One chapter of the group, the Rusty Bunch, searches for cans at former camp sites and along ravines - sometimes using metal detectors. Members of that branch are bringing their extra cans to the convention. They plan to dump their finds on the ground Saturday and allow attendees to dig through the rubble.
In between trading, conventiongoers also will tour Kansas City's Boulevard Brewing Co., which is contributing beer to a tasting event that will feature drinks from several other smaller breweries.
Congratulations to our New members! Welcome home to
Sigma Kappa!
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》 TERRORISM
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged Sept. 11 mastermind, is seen shortly after his capture during a raid in Pakistan March 1, 2003 in this photo obtained by the Associated Press. In a speech from the White House Wednesday, President Bush announced 14 suspected terrorists who had been held secretly in CIA custody including Sheikh Mohammed, have been transferred to the United States naval base at Guantanamo Bay.
Associated Press
President Bush reveals secret overseas prisons
Locations undisclosed for security reasons
Releasing information declassified just hours earlier, Bush said the capture of one terrorist just months after
helped us to take potential mass murderers off the streets before they were able to kill."
BY DEB RIECHMANN ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON President Bush on Wednesday acknowledged for the first time that the CIA runs secret prisons overseas and said tough interrogation forced terrorist leaders to reveal plots to attack the United States and its allies.
Bush said the CIA program "has
With the transfer of the 14 men
Democrats, hoping to make the elections a referendum on Bush's policies in Iraq and the war on terror, urged anew that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld be made to step down.
Some Democrats and human rights groups have said the CIA's secret prison system did not allow monitoring for abuses and they hoped that it would be shut down.
The president's speech, his third in a recent series about the war on terror, gave him an opportunity to shore up his administration's credentials on national security two months before congressional elections at a time when Americans are growing weary of the war in Iraq.
"If I did, it would help the terrorists learn how to resist questioning and to keep information from us."
to Guantanamo, there currently are no detainees being held by the CIA, Bush said.
Still, Bush said that "having a CIA program for questioning terrorists will continue to be crucial to getting lifesaving information."
"These are dangerous men with unparalleled knowledge about terrorist networks and their plans for new attacks," Bush said, defending the CIA program he authorized after the Sept. 11 attacks. "The security of our nation and the lives of our citizens depend on our ability to learn what these terrorists know"
A senior administration official said the CIA had detained fewer than 100 suspected terrorists in the history of the program.
The president declined to disclose the location or details of the detainees' confinement, or the interrogation techniques.
Nearing the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11, Bush pressed Congress to quickly pass administration-drafted legislation authorizing the use of military commissions for trials of terror suspects. Legislation is needed because the Supreme Court in June said the administration's plan for trying detainees in military tribunals violated U.S. and international law.
"I cannot describe the specific methods used — I think you under-
the Sept. 11 attacks had led to the capture of another and then another, and had revealed planning for attacks using airplanes, car bombs and anthrax.
GEORGE W. BUSH President
stand why," Bush said in the East Room where families of some of those who died in the Sept. 11 attacks gathered to hear his speech.
"If I did, it would help the terrorists learn how to resist
questioning, and to keep information from us that we need to prevent new attacks on our country. But I can say the procedures were tough, and they were safe, and lawful and necessary."
"I want to be absolutely clear with our people, and the world: The United States does not torture," Bush said. "It's against our laws, and it's against our values. I have not authorized it, and I will not authorize it."
Bush insisted that the detainees were not tortured.
Bush said the information from terrorists in CIA custody has played a role in the capture or questioning of nearly every senior al-Qaida member or associate detained by the U.S. and its allies since the program began.
He said they include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused Sept. 11 mastermind, as well as Ramzi Binalshibh, an alleged would-be 9/11 hijacker, and Abu Zaydahy, who was believed to be a link between Osama bin Laden and many al-Qaida cells.
He said interrogators have succeeded in getting information that has helped make photo identifications, pinpoint terrorist hiding places, provide ways to make sense
"Were it not for this program, our intelligence community believes that al-Qaida and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland." Bush said.
of documents, identify voice recordings and understand the meaning of terrorist communications al-Qaida's travel routes and hiding places.
The administration had refused until now to acknowledge the existence of CIA prisons. Bush said he was going public because the United States has largely completed questioning the suspects, and also because the CIA program had been jeopardized by the Supreme Court ruling.
Bush also laid out his proposal for how trials for detainees should be conducted, a plan he says ensures fairness.
His proposed legislation was hailed by some Senate leaders, but other lawmakers said it would curtails certain rights of terror suspects.
"It's important to remember these defendants are not common criminals," said Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. "Rather, many are terrorists, sworn enemies of the United States who would gladly use any information to harm us, and any opportunity to strike us again."
However, Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said Congress was being pushed to make a hasty decision on the plan for special military trials.
The proposal is likely to prompt a showdown on the Senate floor among Republicans. GOP moderates John Warner, John McCain and Lindsey Graham have drafted a rival proposal.
Skelton questioned whether Bush's approach would meet the requirements laid out by the Supreme Court.
Their version would guarantee certain legal rights to defendants common in military and civilian courts that Bush's proposal omits, including a defendant's right to access to all evidence used against him.
Graham, R-S.C., said withholding evidence from an alleged war criminal would set a dangerous precedent other nations could follow. "Would I be comfortable with (an American servicemember) going to jail with evidence they never saw? No," Graham said.
Also on Wednesday, the Pentagon put out a new Army field manual that spells out appropriate conduct on issues including prisoner interrogation. The manual applies to all the armed services, but not the CIA.
It bans torture and degrading treatment of prisoners, for the first time specifically mentioning forced nakedness, hoding and other procedures that have become infamous during the war on terror.
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